Ep552: Jitender Girdhar – Question Opinions and Beliefs

Andrew Stotz 00:01
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning. In our community. We know that to win in investing, you must take risks but to win big, you've got to reduce it. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives to reduce risk in your life, go to my worst investment ever.com today and take the risk reduction assessment I created from the lessons I've learned from more than 500 guests. Fellow risk takers, this is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz, from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guests to tender guitar to tender, are you ready to join the mission? Absolutely. I'm excited. I'm excited to have you with us and learn more about you and hear your story. So let me introduce you, to the audience to tender is a best selling author, a TEDx speaker, and entrepreneur, Op Ed writer at The Times of India, mentor, an NLP professional. He is best known for his articles on mind and body, human behavior, and cricket. And for his thought provoking book Think epic, which became a number one international best seller in just a few months, and got success in various countries. His contributions to multiple disciplines broadly address the narratives of human behavior, he has got a massive following on LinkedIn and is an ardent reader and sports fanatic, to tender. Tell us a little bit more about the value you bring to this wonderful world.

Jitender Girdhar 01:43
So the angel and the social crowd, and the construction profession, and I co founded people of consultancy businesses, which serve international market. On the other front, which you just talked about in the intro is I'm passionate about human psychology, behavioral sciences. And that is where I keep learning and keep sharing the stuff to my writings on Times of India to book and through LinkedIn, or various platform I get access to, and then into public speaking to and have been talking at TEDx platforms, and at various colleges, and I love interacting with the students. But the reason I keep sharing is not because I'm an expert into any particular field, wanting a show that I've made more mistakes than anybody else would have had. So that's what I'm about to share. And the second reason I keep sharing on these platforms is, is what I've learned over the years, that sharing is the best way to expedite the learning, and to make your learning fun, or people make your learning, reciprocal. So these are the reasons where and you know, which, which helps me motivate into learning and sharing.

Andrew Stotz 03:17
Yet, it's a funny thing about speaking, you know, in public, it takes a lot of, it takes preparation, and then you go out there and you share your message. And hopefully you touch an audience and you touch an audience member with your message. But every time that we speak, the things that we've learned, we refine the way we communicate what it is that we learned. And I just love that I just recently watched the Netflix documentary on Elon Musk, and they were showing these rockets crashing and, you know, not being able to land them back. And they, the management team said we need to launch more rockets. And I thought, exactly, we need to keep iterating through something and the more we iterate through and if we're trying to improve ourselves, we ended up at the end of it with you know, a very clear message. And I thought maybe that would be a good way for us just to spend a couple minutes about you know, you've seen a lot when it comes to human behavior when it comes to you know, so many things related that thing you know, epic and all the work that you've done, maybe you could give us some ideas about you know, one or two things that you've learned that we the listeners, myself, and my fellow risk takers who are out there you know, what would be a little lesson of some advice that you'd give us or something that you've learned that we could apply in our life.

Jitender Girdhar 04:42
Just talk to you that will say one thing the way you introduce yourself that you're the worst podcast post, so this is gonna be a perfect combination because I'm gonna be your worst guests so far. Whoever you'd have been introducing. Because of simple reason I'm because I'm not trying to be modest. When I say, I genuinely think that I've made a lot many mistakes, which makes me the worst guest, and probably the, you know, the best combo on your platform, and the loving which the question you asked to answer that. Notice something is, in a cliche statement, people say that learning is a lifelong process. But the problem is, if you don't know how to learn, what is we're learning. And I didn't know that too. Few years back. So we have a lot of cliche statements, we speak a lot about learning, we hear a lot about learning. But very few people actually actually, you know, realize, not just known what the real me Yes. So that's what during this journey, or whatever it has been, other than I learned in my professional journey to, I cannot just say that, that's only my mode of earning the living, I have been learning the but after I got into this human psychology sphere, I learned quite a lot. I learned quite a lot about learning. And I'm pretty sure that it is not just a lifelong process, it goes beyond that. Because the more you learn, the more you get to know, you don't know anything. If learning does not make you humble, it does not make you realize that every day you learn something, and it should make you realize that you know the journeys, human just and there is no way you can complete it. And it should show you how insignificant you are in terms of overall scheme of things, then, then, then you're probably on the right track.

Andrew Stotz 07:04
It's interesting, because I mean, I've worked I studied finance, and I've worked in finance for 30 years, I studied my CFA to become a chartered financial analyst. And I've taught finance for 30 years while I've been working. And I did a PhD in finance. And I got all these books behind me that I've read, and so many others. And I still feel hungry to learn. I still find stuff and think, Oh, that's a great idea. You know, I even recently since I'm always reading, I started a little book club. And I call it the best business book clubs. And I just identified the 12 best business books of all time. And I did it by being an analyst I analyzed, I scrape the data off of Amazon and Goodreads and analyze it until I could come up with what I thought were the best 12. And so we're reading them and discussing them we meet once a week. And the challenge is how do we implement what we learn? You know, right now, we've been reading The Checklist Manifesto, which is such a great book, talking about implementing checklists in our life and how, you know, airline pilots have checklists. And but the challenge of implementing what we learn, you know, when you were thinking when you were just talking about how do we learn? Because it's one thing to kind of explore a topic and find lots of interesting fun things. But then how do you put it to work in your life. That's what I find the challenge now, at my experience. So I think it's time for you to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment thinking and will be, tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to it, then tell us your story.

Jitender Girdhar 08:52
As I said in the beginning, that I've made loads of mistakes, and you can call those mistakes as long investments, so it is a little difficult for me to find out and share one story. But if I have to share just one mistake or one wrong, if investments that I would say that not working on my mind, for a long period of time, say 10 years. After I got independence. I got into my professional journey, my education got completed. That was the time then it happened that I focused all my energies, I spent all my energies into working through the mind. And I didn't work on my mind. I was unaware of this concept. Usually, the first mistakes or the bad mistakes people have. It's either the investment of money gone wrong, or the time gone wrong. In this case, this is time and money both because the compounded when you have time and the learnings and the clarity I would have got that makes the difference. So, in the first part is when you lose money, you make a wrong investment, and you end up losing money. So there are some sites, which can open your eyes, you can see things are going wrong, you are not getting the ROI and things like that. But the problem is when you invest time wrongly, when you not work on yourself, you don't improve, then you are kind of in a state of blind spot, or a kind of ignorance or illusion, you may say that you're not even aware about. And I go through when again, you know, poor, gentle people get to know about it, not casually, when something, you know, shake them up, are they lucky, they come across something which makes them realize that what all they have been doing, all of you have been thinking was not appropriate?

Andrew Stotz 10:57
Can you think about when was the time a specific day or a specific time, when you realize the way you were doing it was kind of a dead end? And you realized, I have to start learning and I have to start improving myself? Like, did you ever come up against a challenge that you just thought this is the wake up call.

Jitender Girdhar 11:20
Usually, you know, if the time I use for that, let's see all our condition. And I say, as I'm sharing my story, I realized it. Few years back from now, that football I have been doing. As I said, I was putting all my energies in working through the mind. So I was getting results. In my professional journey as making money, I was doing good, the kind of the background I come from, it is very, very humble. And to reach to that level, at that point of time was encouraging no doubt about it. And since you're getting the results, you don't think about anything going wrong internal, it is only when something goes wrong. And who reflect you get to know that what all you have been doing, you need to put a question mark on to that. So I can tell you in detail that we in my situation. And in everybody's situation, we all are conditioned in our environment. When we are kids, we get the upbringing by our parents, and our family and realities. And there is a structure education system for us to teach and feed answers into our brain in a formal education. When you go to college, that happens at a little wider spectrum, but it is absolutely same. So they kind of give you all the answers. The patterns are already formed in your brain. And then you come out and you feel that you are allowed to independent life, you can make your own decisions, people won't decide things for you. That's when that illusion gets into picture. And most of us I would say for sure, I speak to a lot of companies in other countries too. So it's not what I'm saying is not a cultural thing that it happens in India and not other places. underlying reality is all human beings are the same. So we are conditioned in to see everything in a particular manner. We are conditioned to solve any problem funded solving, seeing a particular problem from a particular perspective. And we don't want to, we don't want to even think about if somebody says something is we don't want to talk to that person. And that's where, you know, getting along with the like minded people gets into picture. Blindness. If you're not, if you don't think like we you can't mindset that similar and like minded people, that's where that conditioning comes into picture. And the beauty is that your ego gets hurt, when you see something else that you are, you know, spoken something else. So that's what conditioning does to you. And I will seem to see an illusion. And if you are not getting the success, you might think about what I'm doing is right or not, why others are getting successful. The problem is when you're getting the success to you're doing a lot of hard work, there is nothing which can make you think that you are doing anything was wrong or you could have done it differently. So And the worst part is that you act in key that whatever is happening, whatever decisions you are making, but all opinions you have are yours. That is the biggest lie. Because you are programmed to think in a particular way. Unknowingly subconsciously, nobody did it directly to you. Your parents try and give best of the upbringing to Stop the value system. So the school trying to get on with school you went into, but overall structure is same situation when I when I realized that, and I started working on the mind, I can't tell you exact date, but it happened a few years back, I would say five or six years. And totally. And that's when I started working on that. And more I read to do more, I tried to open my mind, I saw something which is very, very scary. And then one can get to know that what all you have been doing, you were just working like a programmed robot, and not like a human being. So that's, that's, that's, you know, I call my biggest mistake, because the way I can see things now, I would definitely say I want to get it out, I've got gotten Nirvana, I've got the ultimate truth. But all I can say is that I'm out to that illusion. Which, to the listener, I would say is not a very pleasant experience. It's not something you would like, at times living that illusion for your entire life, which keeps you in a comfortable space. And that's where your comfort zone gets into picture. That's when people love that they don't want to leave their comfort zone because the moment you are out of it, you're nowhere. If you take what all you have been doing, and you have been getting success, it wasn't you, what would you know, you think about yourself.

Andrew Stotz 16:40
We have a saying in Thai language, I'm gonna botch it. But it's something like God, Nigella. And basically what it means is, it's like a frog under a coconut. And when you lift up the coconut, they just want the coconut put back down, and they're living in that world. So how would you describe the lessons that you learned from this experience?

Jitender Girdhar 17:03
So the lessons are many, but in order to highlight skill, as I said, that we, you realize that you're living in mechanical life, wherein any situation you face two times three times four times 10 times your response is going to be same. And that's where people get comfortable. And that's where people see you as a predictable person, because they know this is how you are going to behave. This is how relationships get established, because people find you that you will predict, they can predict your behavior, and you can predict other's behavior, and you find comfort somewhere in between, and things keep flowing. But it is absolutely mechanical way of living life. You can't you you're definitely I would say it is a closed minded approach, I would say, your mind is not even working. Simply because lesson wherein I could see that everything is happening in a very, very mechanical way, there is no way you can get something out of it. And I guess the second lesson I would share is that with whatever knowledge you have, then when I say that our mind is fed with lots of information, it means you have a lot of knowledge and knowledge, all you have, the knowledge is about what all has been created. But in order to create something new, in order to see things in a fresh perspective, you need to leave that knowledge and that memory sight and see it either through what it is in that current situation or through imagination. Whenever knowledge dominates your state of mind, you can't imagine it you can definitely not recreate repeat things that knowledge, but you cannot cannot see things afresh and cannot create anything new with that knowledge that memory you have. So if I can see the current situation as it is, then there is a very little possibility of something, you know, magical happening out there. If I leave my beliefs, my past opinions aside, in today's polarized world, you know, a lot of there's a conditioning by the family and school, they that kind of teach you sail. And once you know you have your feet are on ground. After that you can learn something new, this is my message to youngsters to that they can learn it at an earlier stage in their career, and then they can look to life. But the initial conditioning is to keep you safe. It keeps you back safe that you spent a time your life in that status zone. So those beliefs, those opinions, and that is if that was not enough. Today's world of marketing the world Politics, devoid of social media, it keeps you as it is, it identifies you who you are, it gives you that information, so that you are always that. So it further complicate things, though, there is no way you can challenge your beliefs, there is no way you can challenge your opinion. And that's why you say anything contradictory to any person, and you, you say anything about their beliefs, even if it is political belief level, you know, religious beliefs are very, very sensitive thing to talk about, Did they hurt you say anything about any, any opinion of death, and the protected like their identity, and that that's where the problem is. And the third essay is about identity only when you are so to those beliefs and opinions, those are kind of become your identity. And we as human beings are very, very dangerous species, when it is about protecting our identity, or hurting anybody else's identity. But 1000s of 1000s of years now, you know, people have been killing each other, just because of their identity, because they got identified with a particular thoughts, opinion or belief. So that's a scary thing. So definitely, if you talk about any individual, it's about getting that freedom, just seeing that what I know, what all I have been totally last 20 years, is just somebody else's standpoint. If I see things from another standpoint, things would be absolutely different. And I'm neither this nor that. There's no standpoint, I have the luxury to see cash 360 degree perspective, and still not get a pass to anything.

Andrew Stotz 21:49
So, um, maybe I'll share a couple thoughts of, you know, what I took away from your discussion, and I took some notes, I was just writing down, you know, saying, Okay, we're programmed to think in a certain way. And then I wrote down, you know, we start safe. Like, it makes sense that our parents and society teaches us the safe things to do. You need to be taught in a certain way, or else, you're going to be seriously hurt as a child. But there's this point where you have an opportunity to start thinking freely. And I just also wrote down, you know, you start safe, but then you have this opportunity to be free. But freedom is not free. Like you have to work to open your mind. And then the last thing I wrote is, I remember I was in Hong Kong, and I was asked to speak at a career event. And afterwards, a lot of young students came to me and asked me questions, and one of them said, I'm studying accounting, but I want to work in finance. But I heard that it's difficult, you know, to make that transition. I said, you heard from WHO? Well, I just heard. Okay, so you're basing your thought on something you just heard not even necessarily knowing where it came from? So I wrote down who said it? And what proof do they have and I teach a lot in my valuation masterclass about what it means to be a financial analyst. And that means you trust no one you trust nothing. You ask, what's the evidence? Who's saying it? What's the bias, and then you try to assess it. So I was thinking that if you really want to break free, you really have to, you have to you have to be maybe I don't know if the right word is structured, but you have to defend your mind, you know, and not just let anything come in your mind. I got rid of TV because I just didn't like what it was putting in my head. So those are some of the things I took away anything you would add to that

Jitender Girdhar 24:06
information thing, the last bit, you say, is I, for years, I'm into that habit of not watching news at all. I'm just as you said, the world of media, social media, mainstream media, it's about the electronic news platforms. They have their own agenda. They have their own you no reason and objective to earn their own bread and butter. And they're not thinking about you. So you will need to think about yourself. And I have been into this for years now that I don't follow news. And I believe in this that whatever news which is worth reaching me it foot by my friends, my family, by my colleagues, or any other platform, if it does not reach me and I'm still alive and doing fine. It wasn't right Be an afternoon. So it saves me a lot of time.

Andrew Stotz 25:03
Yeah, definitely. I like it. Yep. Yep, I like it. So based upon what you learned from this story and what you continue to learn, what one action would you recommend our listeners take to avoid suffering the same fate?

Jitender Girdhar 25:19
And have to mention just one thing, it would be the question and being curious. Once, I don't know how one would get to know that whatever they think about themselves, decisions, their opinions and beliefs, their conditions? And how would one get to know there is a lot of information about it, if they can reflect and see if we agree, they would get to the bad condition, or they are not, whatever they're doing, they are living in sub optimal life. And if they want to maximize it, even if they don't like to feel that they're anxious, and they still feel that all they're doing is a result of their conscious and conscious thought, I'm absolutely fine with that. But the action everybody need to take is the question. You will need to be scared less is not actually fearless, you need to fake it in a safe environment, you need to start questioning your strong beliefs, you need to put a question mark on that, you need to put it you need to put a question mark on whatever you get on your WhatsApp. As an information, you need to put a question mark on whatever news feed shows in your social media. And you need to think about it collects the country information and or whatever source you believe. But it needs to start with questioning, questioning is the beginning of 10 intelligence, when see when you start questioning started, it is very, very scary situation to be in and repeating it for the sake of it. But the moment you get into it, you read more you study more than that situation comes. And you need to be patient in the process to understand the concepts. Because if you question everything, you need to be patient, and you need to be studying place, understanding things deeply. That is at a superficial level. If you are intellectually lazy, then you are in a best space already. Because whatever is there at the surface is very, very superficial information, that's not going to help you. So you can listen to people who you think are sorted enough to help you uh, today while it is you know, doing amazing in terms of information, it just that when you are finding anything, don't rely upon the algorithm and the first available information on Google or any other platform. Because that is for their own benefit. You need to be smart enough that who you should be following in order to find the information, whatever topic you're searching for. And if you continue questioning and understand any subject deeply, that's where you will get to, you know, see some amount of clarity. But don't just say that the journey to the question mark of your understanding doesn't just start reading that I knew this was black. And now I think it is great. And I've got everything, put a question mark on that to imagine how a scientist would think a scientist has done multiple discovery on a particular thing. But when they go ahead and do one more experiment, they put a question mark on everything they got up till that moment, if they don't put a question mark, they will get the same answer they got in the previous instance. So any new discovery? Can cannot be wait until you put a question mark on what all you know about a particular subject. See, you need to constantly think like a scientist who to question has been absolutely, you know, zero space, I would call. And then what you see could be magic could be very, very simple fact about anything. But the problem is with these complex brains, they don't want to see and accept anything, which is very, very simple. At times distribution of the problems are so simple, that our ego cannot accept that. And we keep chasing for things we keep chasing for people who say something which is very, very complex, either in terms of content, or in terms of language or vocabulary they use, and we get impressed, but at the end of the day, we don't get any sort of duty to ask the right questions. Just one example. That instead of asking, How can I control my anger? Designed question should be what is anger? And if you study anger, if you understand anger, maybe you land in a situation maybe that you don't even need to fear and control your anger. People ask me a lot of session, how can I control my mind? If you don't? What is mind? How does it work? You probably don't need to control your mind at all. So it's about asking the right questions being patient be encourages. And again, don't don't get your ego swelled, when you get any answer, because that's not the ultimate answer. You need to put a question mark. And this is an that's, that's why I said it's a one way journey. It's beautiful. If you get into that, as your ego, when you are into that zone. And something changes internally, your conditioning, the words which come out of your mouth automatically are different. You will not believe what you're saying. Because internally, your patterns are breached, and new neurons and new patterns are blocked from internally.

Andrew Stotz 31:00
So it reminded me of something that someone said to me many years ago, which was anger is not a feeling. And I couldn't understand that at first. But I realized that oftentimes anger is a defense, it's a response to a feeling of fear or insecurity. Last question, what is your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Jitender Girdhar 31:25
I don't have any goal as such, because I'm enjoying this journey. I definitely want to keep learning, keep sharing, keep putting question marks and things, you know, I'm already attached to the left, so many of those put a question mark, but I want to continue this, I want to continue to share and sharing is the biggest reason for me to expedite the learning process. And that's where my main goal is,

Andrew Stotz 31:56
right. So listeners, there you have it another story of loss to keep you winning. If you haven't yet taken the risk reduction assessment, I challenge you to go to my worst investment ever.com right now and start building wealth the easy way by reducing risk. As we conclude Jitender I want to thank you again for joining our mission. And on behalf of AST Arts Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Jitender Girdhar 32:31
Just one thing you started with being hungry about learning. So that is the best thing one can do is stay hungry. Stay. Stay foolish because that's when somebody says something against your opinion, you are not getting hurt, when need to believe that I am foolish to if somebody says I'm fool, that's ego. If somebody says I'm the best person that is ego to but not many people know that if I say that I'm a senior or I'm a food that is also coming from a place. But if I say that I'm foolish to tell you that generally, but I'm foolish to I do certain things like that. That's where it gives you a lot of freedom from what all people are saying about you.

Andrew Stotz 33:16
Fantastic. Well, that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our well fellow risk takers. Today we expanded our mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz saying. I'll see you on the upside.