Hardeep - 00:00
Welcome back, my name is Hardeep. I'm a Canadian Gap Year Ambassador. Today's video is focused on the things that I learned in my gap year. So lots of failures and lots of successes that I already discussed in my last video. These are things that I really learned throughout my gap year.
Hardeep - 00:27
So the first one is, discipline is not lame. All my life I had this definition of discipline being this military style thing, it's just lame or whatever like that like I love being organized but I was like, oh discipline is just weird.
During my gap year, what I've learned was that you know discipline is actually the way that you get efficient. You prioritize goals that are important to you by managing your time wisely. So that's one major thing I learned by keeping my bias aside for oneself, you know the traditional discipline that I thought of and really learning self discipline myself, so that's one.
Hardeep - 01:05
Second, this one is kind of self-explanatory, but I've learned that giving yourself alone time is super important. For example, I'm an extrovert so I'm always surrounded by people all the time and I feel like people influence me a lot like whoever it is like I try to get like the good habits from everyone doing that. But, in its own way when I do this and when I’m around people all the time, I just don't get to reflect on myself alone and I think that's one thing that I got a lot of in my gap year and I have kind of made that into my schedule now. Even when I go out and I’m around people all the time, I try to give myself 3-4 hours of alone time every day just to reflect on myself, or be around myself.
It makes me have a better sense of direction of what I’m doing, what I want to do and why I’m doing things. So I think that's one very simple yet important thing that I have learned because, you know, further into adulthood, we're all going to spend a lot of time alone. I think it's one thing to just get a bit used and comfortable because it's pretty awesome.
Hardeep - 02:22
Third thing I’ve learned is that family is super important. Now, I live far away from my family, they live back home in India. It might be different for a lot of you guys, but like at the same time even when we live in the same home with our family for like a long time, it gets too normal and I think it's good to acknowledge once in awhile that like family is just super important and like it's important to share things with them, important to just be open with them like once in a while and especially when we’re growing up, I feel like our parents are adapting to that too, or at least they should. These people are pretty much the people who give us the value that we live with and it's important to just be around them.
That's what I learned on my trip from India this time this year, which was just phenomenal because I got to spend time with my grandma who I talked to every day, every week on Sundays and you know, now, after meeting her after like three years, it was just like an amazing experience. It was my favorite part of my month-long trip. The travels were fun, but spending time with my family was superior. You need to prioritize it in some way or another.
Hardeep - 03:36
Fourth, everyone takes their own time to accomplish goals, and I think that's something that you know it's so important to know in your gap year. It's so important to just acknowledge that fact and just live with it in a way, because take it in like I know someone who graduated from high school at the age of 16. I know someone who bought their house, their first house at the age of 18. I know someone who got their first internship at the age of 28! I know Barbara Oakley, she's an author and she started learning remedial math at the age of 26, then got her Bachelors, Masters and PhD in engineering, and now she's a professor of electrical engineering in the states and in her 30s she got her PhD and now she's a professor, and it's just got to say that everyone does their things at their own time, right?
Like everyone's got their own struggles, their own problems, or their own situations in life, and everyone is one their different timeline, so you don’t need to match theirs. This is so important because this gap year is a core part of it because you don't have to match timelines like I took an extra year and I'm so happy I did because you know it set me up for so much good reflection so much better off a program and going into for university then like the last program though like it was a whole other subject like before I was going to film production and now I'm going in business and it's so good
that I got this time to explore because I didn't before.
This is why I think it's so important just to get rid of this mindset of like everyone got to have a home or like get married at this point in life or get a degree by this time.
Screw all that like you're on your own and you figure out your own thing by your own timeline. Like I said, everyone comes from different privileges, different life situations.
Hardeep - 05:22
Fifth, and this could be a bit controversial, but I've learned that if you have Internet access and if you're watching this video, I'm pretty sure that you're privileged to a point in life that you can do a lot of things, and all that comes down to is mindset. Change your mindset and just make our life better ourselves because the thing is like everyone faces a lot of problems, right? Like I got problems, you got problems, everyone has their own problems in life and when we start feeling sorry for ourselves because of our problems like things just don't go well.
The whole point is like, you know, technology, the privilege we have to acknowledge so many things we are grateful for and what we have. Just use that as leverage to push through and I think in a lot of ways I have done that and it’s worked so well.
When you start focusing on things that are negative and negative situations, it’s just a roller coaster downhill. So that's one thing I've learned to like: try to keep a positive mindset even in the worst case scenarios.
Hardeep - 06:32
Sixth, and this is a very important one that I've seen like a lot of people my age, it is that you shouldn’t be so stubborn. I think it’s important to be stubborn in certain situations, for example, I’m stubborn about researching technology that I’ll go buy and I will do it no matter what, like it's one goal that motivates me a lot.
I've learned that a lot of people have seen a lot of people like their goal on 1 dream school they want to get into for example like 1 university program they want to get into and then they don't want to accomplish that everything just fall apart. It’s like a bunch of blocks of Jenga. Like you know that one core block falls down like the whole building just collapsed, like your self esteem just broken. I think that is very unhealthy in a way because you're so much more than one program. Your goal should be the one that should motivate you. In University, I have learned that it's a resource for me to reach that goal like I'm going to Western University and you know, if I was going to another university, I feel like it wouldn't matter much to me because the education everywhere is pretty much the same. We even have Harvard courses on EDX for free at this point in time, but the whole point is like meeting the right people and when you are really motivated towards one goal towards one thing that you really want to do in the world.
I think when you keep focusing on making that process better to reach that goal rather than making yourself seem like getting into university, I think you make you meet the right people in the process.
You're so much more than the program that you were getting into, no matter what.
So set goals that are higher than that. Set goals that really mean something to you and that you know are the things that make you wake up every day.
Hardeep - 08:56
Seventh, I recently learned how to make Pilaf. In the recipe it said that you have to put in 2 cups or something into the pot. Apparently this is half a cup like this is half a cup, and like you know, two of this is 1 cup.
I thought this was one cup, and that’s my seventh thing that I learned. I thought this was one cup, and I put three of these and I pretty much made enough rice that lasted us for six days. So,cup measurements are another thing I've learned.
Hardeep - 09:49
Eighth one, this is a big one that's gotten me a lot more confident than I used to be, and I have learned that, you know, we see these successful people and we are like wow, that is so cool. These people have accomplished so many things like I know, like someone on LinkedIn who has gotten a NASA internship, or an actor who won a Nobel Prize and you wonder how they do that or they have this inherent capability.
I've learned that through reading a few self improvement books that no one’s really gifted in these things. IQ is one thing, talen is one thing but these things don’t really determine what makes us succeed. What I've learned is that what really makes us succeed is getting out of our comfort zone in all aspects.
How do you know that the first person like, let's say like this guy who I know got a NASA internship, how do we know that he wasn't feeling nervous for his interview? Of course he was, everyone's feeling anxious at these times and I've learned that no one’s really gifted or they have so much talent to just ace these things.
The thing is that everyone's pushing out of their comfort zone a bit, everyone’s feeling a bit uncomfortable. The thing is, this discomfort is what makes us grow because if we stay at the same place, if we keep in the same comfort zone we actually get more fear than we would out by stepping outside of her comfort zone, which sounds ironical. However, when you stay in your comfort zone, you get this bubble. You start seeing this bubble of fear. The more you stay in your comfort zone, the more fearful you become of stepping outside though, so that it's kind of ironic. But if you wanna push out that fear of public speaking or driving a car or hosting that event or starting a company like I've learned that you just need to do it to get rid of the fear, that's the tricky part.
Hardeep - 12:03
And that's what my 8 learnings are and I hope these eight learnings of mine helped you learn something. I will see you in my next video and thank you very much for watching.