January 17th, 2018

Changing The Game

With Chetan Bhagat

 

 

Chetan Bhagat, an ‘Authopreneur’, as he called himself, came to give us a talk on Writer’s Fortnight. Before he came, I had heard from a lot of my friends that his writing was very simplistic. Although I had watched quite a few of the movies adapted from his books (some of them my favorites), I had never gotten to reading his books. However, I was determined to only make a judgment, when I heard him myself.

 

He started out with jokes, entertaining the crowd. Once he had captured all of our attention, he introduced himself. He wasn’t always a writer, in fact, he used to hate his job; a banker. It was then that he had begun writing his first book, ‘Five Point Someone’ (published in 2004). He made it very clear to us that he wasn’t the ‘Best’ author, but he was a ‘Best Selling’ author. He said when he first began writing, a lot of Indian authors wrote to win international awards. Although he had a different goal in mind; ‘change’, by reach the maximum number of Indians he could via entertainment and influencing them towards a progressive society. He talked about his strategy, ‘Reinvent by changing the game’. The adaptation stimulus here was the increasing number of Indians learning English.

 

He told us there are two winners in life.

 

• Those who do it better than others.

&

• Those who change the game.

 

After all,

 

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is not that is the most adaptable to change.” -Charles Darwin

 

“Literature does not have to be wrapped up into a book”, he said. Then talking about how he himself, began to scale things up and entering the film industry: Bollywood. This kept going and soon through forms such as social media, books, films, columns, TV & talks, he was reaching 100 million + Indians.

 

Next, he moved on to the topic of ‘Success’. “The definition of success differs for everyone, it was one you had to define for yourself”, he said. This definition would change, again and again. But how do we reach success? Goals. There were two sorts to these as well. Who would have guessed?

 

Short Effort Goals Vs Long Effort Goals

 

However, something needed for both of these was: Motivation. & Only one person could help you there. Yourself. “Motivate yourself”, he said, “Motivation is necessary again & again for big achievements.”

 

Short effort goals weren’t hard to master, but long effort goals? These took long periods of effort. It was like the difference between eating a chicken and an elephant. Both could be eaten, but one would just take longer.

 

Achieving Big Things

-Setting a clear goal

-Reasons behind that goal

-Finding the group

-Detailed Action Plan

-Setback dealing mechanism

-Faith

 

One thing that particularly stood out to me was the ‘Setback Dealing Mechanism’. For example, imagine you were on a diet. It had been going great, until you were invited to a party and tempted into eating unhealthy. This frustrated you, at this point lots of people would just give up. But this was like falling into mud, and then giving up and just rolling the mud. Instead in situations such as these, it is important to get up, clean the mud and keep going.

 

Success Tips

-Under promise and over deliver

-Reinvent

-Passion in intent shows

-Patience

-Partnerships

-Humility

 

“Be so busy improving yourself that you have no time left to criticize others.” – Chetan Bhagat.