Meaningful advice from a President
Dear friends,
Last week, I stumbled upon some meaningful life advice from an unlikely source—Mr. Ajay Banga, recently appointed President of the World Bank, where I work.
Not that Mr. Banga has not inspired many over the course of his impressive career trajectory. From launching international fast-food franchises for Pepsi in India to becoming CEO of Mastercard and ultimately running the largest development bank in the world in his current role, Mr. Banga is an accomplished individual, and his words have mattered to many, I am sure.
Ajay Banga this past December at Muungoni Seaweed Farms in Zanzibar to meet women beneficiaries of a program supported by the World Bank to boost seaweed production and support sustainable growth and climate resilience in the country.
But these words caught me unaware—in the midst of listening to his fireside chat addressing youth at the University of Tokyo while on a writing assignment. And I admit, a part of me was surprised to hear a banker belt out life wisdom as seamlessly as weighing in on Sri Lanka’s debt crisis and the importance of reducing methane emissions to mitigate risks of global climate change.
Well, it’s not really surprising, I realized a few moments later. After all, international development, the focus of the World Bank and Mr. Banga’s work, is life—we are talking about how to lift people and nations out of poverty and towards prosperity. So, in many ways, robust wisdom about life must play as much a role in the business decision-making of such a leader, I’d think, as knowledge on core subject areas in development, like gender, climate change, infrastructure, water, migration, or sanitation.
Now on the first piece of Mr. Banga’s life advice.
“Take life as it comes,” said Mr. Banga. “Allow yourself to enjoy and take risks. You will have many questions about the decisions you have made. That’s normal. The ability to care about what you are doing is the biggest thing. Don’t overplay life like a chess game.”
While the whole statement is wrapped in a solid ring of veracity, “the ability to care about what you are doing is the biggest thing” particularly resonated. Stay in the present and the passion of what you choose to do, and the rest will follow, Mr. Banga seemed to say.
Mr. Banga added this second piece of advice with his characteristic confidence and blunt pragmatism:
“50% of life is luck. What you do with your luck is the other 50%. If you seize the luck and take the right risks in life, you will never look back with regret. You may regret one action here, have one regret there...I have my own regrets. But you won’t look back on life with regrets because you allowed it to take you to where you are capable of going.”
Mr. Banga went on to explain that youth today were planning obsessively for careers like a chess game, when the truth was, careers a decade from now will look very different.
True, when I got my (second) degree in public communication back in 2000, there was nothing called social media marketing. Today, communications is digital. Point well taken. Mr. Banga gave the interesting zigzag of his own career trajectory to make the point that while he marketed beverages at one point, he now led a development bank that shaped the course of hundreds of developing countries.
“The ability to care about what you are doing is the biggest thing” and allow it to “take you to where you are capable of going”—the combination delivered a solid smack of truth in the face, definitively. Let what you are doing engulf your being, teach you a thing or two about who you are, and let the learnings guide you, he seemed to say.
In that sense, the advice is very close to what the Bhagavad Geeta says—that it is only by doing your karma yoga, karma here defined as your work, that you stumble upon gyana yoga or wisdom to steer you through life. I wrote about this in my post on the French philosopher Voltaire’s Candide.
Bottom line, perform work in the present to our best and let our actions teach us about where to go next.
My career, my heart’s desire
These words of advice particularly resonated with me because my own career was dictated not by a grandiose plan, but letting my heart’s desire lead the way—from choosing to study French literature and teaching French to college kids in India and the U.S. to switching to public communication and pursuing a career in the not-for-profit sector in publishing, marketing, product management, and finally to what I realized I did all my life and that I like most, and that I now do now full-time—writing. Of course, I wonder sometimes why I did not get here sooner. But it’s precisely because I had allowed my career to take my abilities to where I wanted rather than deliberately lead it somewhere, that I got here when I did.
They were a tad unconventional, my decisions, in a land filled with scientists, engineers, and doctor wannabes. Career trajectories in humanities were not well understood and still continue to be looked upon with suspicion or not understood today (topic of another full post, might I say). But I am happy my career trajectory was dictated by heading straight on, in the direction of meaningfulness and happiness. The meaningfulness changed at different times in life of course—from being younger and single to married to later becoming mom.
Like Mr. Banga, I have my regret or two, but I don’t regret that I stuck to my instincts and chose what was meaningful at the time to take me to my next destination and enjoy all the good things that came along with.
And I turned out OK—I think—and I am confident and hopeful that my history and physics passionate son will also turn out OK.
“Young people,” urged Mr. Banga, “you are our engine of optimism and you are what could change our future. You should think about what you can do for development.”
In the world of youth today, everyone tends to do a lot because there’s a lot available to them. Competition is high and everyone is trying to figure out the next class, the next afterschool activity, and the next competitive event. Mr. Banga’s reminder that life is about the ability to care about what you are doing at the moment and factoring that hand of luck (or God, might I say) and what you choose to do with those opportunities, is solid and meaningful advice. My son appreciated it, and it helped that the advice came from someone other than mom and dad (smile). And I enjoyed a moment of unexpected validation in life from an unexpected source (smile). May we all arrive where we are capable of going.
What’s a piece of good life advice you encountered recently? Please do share.
Meaningfully yours,
Anu Prabhala