When we think about our career, friendship, and other aspects of our lives, our minds go cray and blank. If you’ve been there, you know what I’m talking about; otherwise, brace yourself because you’re about to face that phase.
Ankur Warikoo, now an entrepreneur and public speaker who was a PhD dropout from the University of Michigan speaks at SeekhoX, a first-of-its-kind interactive event series featuring top industry leaders, where GenZ and millennials can get career advice and insights.
For GenZ and millennials going through their education or professional journey, here are some takeaways from his session:
Tip #1 – Find people who are nothing like you and learn from them
Go back to the first day of college, job or any social event. Our natural instinct in social situations is to find people similar to us. We want to belong to a certain group aka our tribe. People we can relate to. People who think like us. But being in a circle of people who are identical to us doesn’t promote learning. Ankur says, “You will never learn anything from someone who agrees with you. Consciously, spend time with people who are different from you. Make diverse friends, talk to more people, understand what it is that they know you don’t.”
Tip #2 – Growth stops when complaining starts
If we draw a comparison at any given point, most of us will find that we are quite privileged. We are a sum total of all the opportunities that our parents’ hard work opened for us. It’s easy to feel entitled and believe that the world owes us power, money, degree or anything at all. Just because something worked once, doesn’t mean it always will. In order to succeed, we truly have to stop cribbing and take control of our life. Ankur says, “The day you start complaining, you stop growing. The minute we feel we deserve something, we feel entitled. The truth is we don’t deserve anything in life. We are where we are in life because we were just plain lucky.”
Tip #3- Comfort breeds mediocrity
It’s very easy for us to believe that life’s purpose is to make life comfortable. With everything becoming one-click we are used to having convenience at our fingertips. Everything around us is designed to give us comfort and comfort creates complacency. Living in comfort is not the right way to think about life.
“The most successful people, people who inspire you, people you’d want to be are on a constant daily basis taking the path of maximum resistance. They are challenging their fear and whatever they believe in because that’s the only way to change your orbit,” said Ankur.