Not your average Mr. Sharma: A Series
My name is Abhishek Sharma and as anyone would tell you, Sharma is one of the most common surnames in India. However, I feel my story is not as common as my surname and it is a story that is anything but common. My journey over the past 15 years as a legal professional in India and the US, a teacher and legal entrepreneur in-the-making, has been nothing short of phenomenal. On many occasions, my experiences had me learn, unlearn, relearn and each time I came out wiser. I may not have a sob-story to offer or a quintessential ‘rags-to-riches’ story but I feel nothing less than a hero of my own story. And this is the legacy I want to bestow upon the younger generation.
My father told me once that a wise man learns from experiences and a wiser man learns from others’ experiences. Who knows one may find their dose of motivation in my story or might just get pushed enough to turn their life around. Over the course of this series, I intend to share the lessons I learnt so far and I hope to inspire some of you through my story. I write to you today, not as the Managing Partner of my law firm Pulastya Legal, but as a friend. I write as someone who truly believes that with perseverance, grit and a little bit of luck, almost anything is possible. I write as someone who believes that the power of not giving up is real. There were times when getting through a single day was also difficult, but more on that later.
One cannot reach great heights if one hasn’t experienced the lows, and that is exactly where my journey began. I grew up in a very crowded street in Karol Bagh in Delhi where I played street cricket and tipcat (aka Gilli Danda) with bicycles almost bumping into me, most of the time. Against all odds, my late-father became the first Advocate in our family and litigated in the District Courts of Delhi. Listening to his arguments in courts almost inspired me to be a lawyer but I wanted to try my hand at being a doctor as well. Thankfully, I realized sooner-than-later that I preferred a black coat over white. If you belong to an Indian family, more often than not, you are told to follow a safer and familiar path. From choosing the school to the person you will marry, I was told to play safe and not try-and-test too much. As problematic as that may seem, for me it turned out okay till a certain point.
The protected lifestyle that my parents tried to give me lead to a particular behavioural trait, that I identified as Risk Aversion. I can also call it the “What If..” fear. As a young law student, I often found myself wondering about what might happen and never doing anything out of the ordinary, because of my fear of the unknown. Funnily enough, all it took was a random quote written on my way to law school, to get me to question my fear. The quote read, “More Risk, More Gain”. While I laughed out loud at the absurdity of this quote, a small part of me kept wondering if perhaps this was true to some extent. That day was the first day of law school.
I believe that if something is worrying you too much, the best way to tackle it is to speak to yourself about it out loud. That is what I did with my “what if” fear. Should I be taking more risks in life in general? Should I step out of my comfort zone and try new things once in a while? For me these questions applied to simple things like bunking a class or jaywalking or even proposing to a girl that I liked, for which I thought I will be rejected instantly. How do I become the best version of myself when I fear all these things so much? That is where I mentally inserted the adjective “calculated” to the quote that triggered this exercise that went on for almost two weeks in my head. Yes, if I can take calculated risks after weighing the pros and cons, I will begin feeling more confident in my approach. Given my background and upbringing, I was still worried about taking too many unnecessary risks in life but my new found Mantra helped me keep some amount of control and reasonability intact, while I explored and challenged myself at every step of the way. To explain my learnings, I will share three (3) specific instances that changed my life. Stay tuned!
