Author Interview from Podcast 'Books and Us' (Link below)
Our
community needs more leaders: Manthan Shah
By Ranjit Monga
People should strive to reach their full potential, lead fulfilling lives, and become the foundation of society by providing leadership, emphasizes Manthan Shah, the author of the extremely thoughtful book ‘Unstoppable: How Youth Icons Achieve Extraordinary Things'.
“We need
more leaders and not people who follow others like herds of sheep. Whether young
or old, one should think deeply about how to reach their full potential and
take on leadership roles. Our community, and India as a whole, needs more
leaders” says Manthan.
“Leaders drive
change. The youth of India, at this point, have a responsibility to themselves
and their communities. They should take initiative and be the change that they
want to see,” he explains.
Manthan is
himself an inspiring youth icon. At the age of 21, he was one of the youngest
authors to be commissioned by Penguin Random House India to write this book. He
has been a sportsman, winning many medals for the country, and becoming the
Under-18 national champion in Table Tennis. Recently, as a ‘Schwarzman Scholar’,
he spent a year studying India-China relations at Tsinghua University in
Beijing. Before that, as an undergraduate, he won all the awards that his
university had to offer, including the ‘President's Award,’ the ‘Global
Citizenship Award’ and was named four times on the ‘Dean’s list’ at the SP Jain
School of Global Management, Sydney. He has also been a podcaster hosting the ‘Planet
Impact’ show, in which he interviewed young change makers.
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| Manthan Shah, Author of 'Unstoppable: How Youth Icons Achieve Extraordinary Things' |
Manthan wrote
Unstoppable to fill a gap in knowledge and information about young
achievers he could look up to for direction.
After
winning many medals for his state and the country, at the school level, he had
to take the painful decision of ending his involvement in sports. “To go for higher
training for the Olympics at the international level, a lot of financing was
required which I did not have. I had a lot of fire in me and wanted to achieve
something that would compensate for my Olympic dream. And one day I found
myself looking for a book aimed at a youngster like me, that talked about
coming of age in a developing economy like India. I am talking about facing the
unique challenges of economic, social, political, and mental health issues,” he
elaborates.
What Manthan
wanted was guidance on how to achieve his potential. But could not find any
useful book. “Most of the books I came across were written by Western authors with
examples of people from the United States or Europe,” he states.
Manthan
could not relate to these stories and so decided to write a book himself.
Manthan read over 200 books, research papers or articles, surveyed 300
individuals, and authored a book with stories of 40 young overachievers. The
stories that other youngsters could relate to. So, he has strung together stories
of those who were at the average age of 25 at the time of writing the book.
Thus, he has the story of Olympians Dutee Chand and Dipa Karmarkar, rapper Kaambhari,
astrophysicist Dr Karan Jani and acid attack survivor Reshma Qureshi.
Manthan
describes their life situations and traces their journey towards achieving
their goals and fulfilling their potential. He analyses the qualities and
characteristics which helped them in achieving these goals. For example, in the
context of Anam Hashim, who achieved success as a stunt rider at an early age,
he reveals that her grit and perseverance saw her through the tough times and
brought her nearer to fulfilling her dream.
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Anam Hashim
was an Indian professional street bike freestyle athlete. And is the only
Indian stunt athlete to win an international stunt competition in 2017. Hailing
from Kanpur, Anam grew up in very abusive circumstances. At the age of 17 years,
she ran away from her home to Pune to live with her aunt. She loved riding
bikes and taught herself stunt riding. She even dropped out of college to focus
on her dream and with determination became the best motorcyclist in the
country. She has also earned her place in the India Book of Records. She is
known as the first woman who rode to Khardungla pass on a TVS Scooty alone and led
ten women to Khardungla in 2016 during the ‘Himalayan Highs’.
“Anam
achieved her goal by not following the path of others or by doing what is expected
of her by society. She created her own path,” Manthan asserts. Tragically, Anam
also passed away earlier this year in April 2024, due to ill health.
But to fulfill
her dream she remained a non-conformist, carving out her space in what is known
as a male-dominated industry, living her life according to her wishes.
“For most
youngsters today, the reality is they are somewhere in the middle in the sense
that they are neither completely conformist or completely non-conformist and carving
their own path in life,” he opines.
“In all the overachievers
whom I interviewed for the book, I found common patterns, and one of the things
I found was that they all had this unbelievable amount of grit, tenacity, and
perseverance to keep on doing things,” he adds.
Manthan also
found that they all had a clear goal and the vision to visualize it. They could
also clearly plan how to get there.
To help
others set their goals, Manthan has come up with a goal-setting exercise in his
book. “This exercise is based on three levels of goals - top, medium, and lower
level goals. Your top-level goals are like your North Star, where you are
headed, and where you see your future. A good starting point to define it is to
look at your past achievements,” he elaborates.
“To reach
that North goal, we have to divide it into smaller clusters of supportive goals
that enable you to reach that goal. And then there are smaller goals to help
you reach those goals,” he adds and explains that there are several such exercises
in the book to help the readers reach their potential and lead a fulfilling
life.
Manthan
perceived numerous qualities in the people he surveyed. Other such
qualities are consistency, having a growth mindset, ability to give back,
network, and build social capital, which he describes in the book.
“I think the
ability to reach out to people and network was helpful for me to get things
done fairly quickly and at a very young age - like getting this book published”, he admits
and adds “If you're someone who wants to build a network you should reach out
to people, and understand what they need in terms of resources, opportunities
or information. If you understand their problems, you will find a way to help
them - it could just be making a referral, sending them the link to an article,
or writing a review. Doing such things will build lasting relationships,” he
advises. “Of course, all this is best done instinctively rather than as part of
some formal strategy,” he clarifies.
Manthan also
shares the story of Pratishtha Deveshwar, whom he describes as a beacon of hope.
“Imagine
yourself being a happy outgoing child and one evening when you're 13, you have
a serious accident that leaves half your body paralyzed and then you have to
spend five years completely bedridden. Those years for her were a time of
extreme adversity when all her doctors and physiotherapists, failed to give her
any hope that she would ever walk again or lead a fulfilling life. In that
situation, she turned inwards and found solace in prayer, meditation, and journaling,”
he informs and adds that Pratishtha used to write out details of her dreams describing
what all she would do if she could get her old self back. In this way, she built
hope for herself which kept her going.
Manthan goes
on to narrate that things finally did work out for her. “She shared something
with me that has always inspired me. She said that ‘thoughts are things. If you
can dream it, you can be it. All it takes is hard work, great, great courage,
and hope,” he recounts.
Pratishtha
became the first wheelchair user from India to study at the University of
Oxford and is the recipient of the prestigious ‘The Diana Award’ for social
work. She is a TEDx speaker and also speaks regularly at different United
Nations conferences.
“So, grit is
made up of the following things: having a sort of a long-term goal and then
having an interest in what you do, practicing and becoming good at it, and
finding a sense of purpose in the things that you do. And when you are doing
these three things, that builds grit. But underlying all these things is hope,
like at every stage we should be hopeful that things are going to work out. And
Pratishtha is a beacon of hope for me,” he shares.
Manthan
thinks that the existing conformist system does not work for most youngsters. “Doing
what is expected of you and thinking in return you will be happy; I do not
think that it works that way. To break free from these chains, one has to do
something very unique to oneself, something that makes you happy,” he says. He
advises defining your idea of success, what it means to you and achieving it on
your terms.
“And you
have to take more agency to become sort of extraordinary, but not in the
traditional sense of you becoming wealthy or becoming extraordinarily famous. Whatever
you think is success for you and if you are achieving your own highest potential,
this book offers you stories and resources to help you in that direction,” he
adds.
To listen to
the entire interview on podcast 'Books and Us' click link below
On Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/4VKkmn6iRMzqohM3GQndCq?si=9aedc7bc3d96402c
Apple
First published here :
https://globalbihari.com/literary-speaking-people-should-strive-to-reach-their-full-potential/
