 So thanks to Vishal for the amazing introduction. It was a great session that we had on the mental health. I have been like great advocate of it and I feel mental health is very important. The reason why I wanted to speak about empathy is I have been through certain mental health issues where I had a lot of anxiety. Then I realized that I lack empathy. Like where I was growing up, I learned about empathy but being around with a lot of people, I lost the empathy and I was being a lot obnoxious. Like overthinking and lot. Then I was like, let's get back to the roots. That's where I am, the real Ajit is there. So that's why I want to talk about the power of empathy, its impact and some anecdotes from my life. So I guess Vishal gave a great introduction so we can skip to the good part. So what exactly is empathy? So we can see that a lot of people talk, they meet and there is always a single-sided communication that is happening. So it is always you standing in front of you and someone and you are just like, okay, it's a mirror in front of me, it's only me, me and me. You want all the projection about you. You are never considering who is in front of you and when two humans are talking, there are two people and you have to think from that perspective and empathy helps you do that. And when you do that, you are connecting a lot with the other person around and you're getting a lot more in return and that is happiness and satisfaction. You don't overthink because once, if you are looking at a single-sided thing in the communication, there is a gap, there is assumption and constantly there is overthinking because you don't consider that person in the picture. It's a story of two people but keeping only one person as a hero. But there are two heroes in the picture. You make one villain and you make one hero and that's where the problem arise and that's where overthinking comes in. So as you can see, you don't have to be superhuman to show empathy, you have to just be human, that's it. So what exactly is empathy? It's not a skill, it's not a talent, it's plain human emotion which helps you connect and understand with other person around you. So if you roam around, if you see a lot of people out there, you will see that some people are connecting naturally, some are kind of being robotic, doing business, nothing wrong in that but I think in long-term sustainability you need to connect with people. Like you have to choose, do you want to be contact in someone's mobile email or you actually want to be in the most sustainable human relationship where both can help each other. Now why do you need empathy? Because it's helping you act constructive. Like let's take an example, if you don't show empathy and you are like, okay, I am the only one around and I am the one who matters a lot, then the world revolves around you. But you are not the world, different people make the world. People around you, communities make everything that you want and they are going to give you what you want. You are not alone. If I say I want to do business, you cannot do alone. You need people. If you want to work, you need coworkers. If you want family, you need people. You cannot be that someone alone. So you have to be constructive in what you are thinking. You have to do things for them. So now I'm going to share some stories and anecdotes like what exactly affected me and I went back to empathy thing. So when I was growing up, my father used to always give me lectures and lessons on empathy. So there was a small story around my school time. One of the friend shouted and was like, I need your help. And I was like, these buggers only remember me when they need me. My father was like, that's very wrong. I was like, why? At least you are meaningful in someone's life. If they are reaching out to you, understand that they are looking out for some help. Maybe they can't reach out to someone, but you are that one person where they are comfortable. So be there. There will be happiness you will find. And along the lines, I was like, okay, this, this. So like every kid is like my father talk service. Unless until you grow up and you're like, oh, there were great lessons that I was missing out. So when I grew up, I was like, why the hell is this anxiety affecting me? I was a young bubbly all over the place being happy. What suddenly happened? I was like, from helping people, being around them, being the people's person, thinking about them, taking them along with me. I started being someone who was like, I am the world, the world was around me. And that was the disaster, start of the disaster. I started getting anxiety, panic attacks. And I was like, what exactly changed there? I was the one day I was talking to my father and my father was like, you stop being yourself. So there was a time when I was not talking to my dad also. And then slowly I started doing that small fight and with sessions with him. And he started giving me great lessons. I was like, okay, I have forgotten that what I was. And then I had some great friends also who made me realize, stopping someone else. Show empathy that what is the core of yours. So let's look at some stories that anecdote from different walks of life. So first one is friends and families. We should consider them beyond contacts and networks. So my big brother is today in the hall and he has been a great help and support to me in where I am. So I have switched so many jobs. Like it was like working 10 days, 15 days and like boom, living it. So he knew that I cannot do something. So he was able to step into my shoes and realize he will never ever work under someone because he is a free flying spirit. So he encouraged me to do what I want to do. My father helped me. So I have some great friends also, I made them. So one of my friend is here, who's my business partner Praveen. And he understands me well. He knows exactly when I'm going to break down. Exactly when I'm going to burn out and he's like, take a break, go out. Let me handle this. So when three years I was like having a big break in the business, he was handling everything around me. So it is very important where friends and family understand you, you have to again give back. You cannot be taker. So now I try to give back as much as possible, try to involve them in the process. That's what empathy is. It's like coexisting with the people understanding them because people around you are the land where you are there grounded. You cannot say that, no, I want all the nutrition from this land, but I'm not going to give anything. You have to give it water, you have to give it soil. Then only you can exist. So look at the friends and family beyond contacts. So there is another story of, you know, I went to World Camp Udaipur. I don't know how many of you know about late Puneet Saloth. He has been like a family. Today community thinks that he is my cousin. But no, the way we have been living, people think that we were cousins or we are cousins. But no, the kind of bond that we shared, we used to understand each other and we were beyond contacts in each other's mobile phone. But we connected via a single tweet as a community members and we ended up being a family. And you know, I used to stay at his place, having food at his place. His mom used to cook food. I was like, this is beauty. This is beyond contacts, beyond networking. This is what I always want. Now let's talk about community. Like it has been a great part of my journey where I am. And a lot of great people from the community helped me out. So I'm like around 36 now. And when I attended World Camp Udaipur for the first time, there were young folks. They were doing a great, great contributions. I never contributed in WordPress in like, I have been into the community for like 12, 15 years. And it's like last six years I started contributing to it. And this young folks helped me out. I was like, how do you contribute? I don't contribute. So they figured out that somewhere I don't feel comfortable. So they started making me comfortable. They were like, do this, do that. They started guiding me irrespective of judging me that okay, he's like 30, he's like how we can teach? He should know. So nobody thought that I'm asking for fully shown. I'm being acting stupid. But they were like, okay, we'll help you out. So even when I started contributing to Co-Goodenburg, a lot of folks from the automatic helped me out. Like they were like, okay, nothing is stupid. They were like, don't think that you can't do it. They started pushing me out, right from writing notes to writing agendas, conducting meetings and everything. Everybody was helpful around me. So that's the thing that I loved a lot. And that's what I tried to give back also. Like there are a lot of folks who reach out to me where they want me to review their CVs, help them out with the interview processes. And I'm like, I will do it. Because I always found that gap where there was no one around to help me out. Because people were too busy with themselves. People think that no, this is not my job. It's not your job, but it's your responsibility. When you're around, you have to coexist. You have to help out people. Because everybody else around you is looking for help the way you are looking. You cannot assume that, okay, you need all the help, but you cannot help someone out there. So even today I get a lot of calls where people are like, okay, how do we craft our CVs? How do we apply? What should we do? You know, what exactly needs to be done? We run an agency. How do you tackle clients? So it has been a great experience. Like it makes me happy. Even standing in the booths, I constantly keep talking to the people. They are like, no, a lot of people know you. You know, you are connecting with so, so much people. So when people, what do you do? I'm like, I don't force myself. Just try to be there. And let's connect with the people. Let's understand what they are looking for. Everybody wants you to be happy and help each other. So try to be there. Don't look at a single site where you're like, okay, I will come here and get the business out. So community has been a great help. Everybody has been very good to me helping me out on the Slack. And that's what I'm trying to do. So like Vishal is there, store apps, you know, everybody is so, so kind and helpful. They exactly understand, you know, like if someone needs help or they need guidance, they immediately help you out with those things. So another experience that I have is around work spaces. Like it's very important to show empathy if you're working with people. Like you cannot be like, you know, they are money-extracting machine. No, you cannot do that. It is not sustainable. You have to understand why they are finding problems. So like we'll share one anecdote around this young girl who started working with us. And we work in a hybrid model where people can work remotely and they can come to office also. So initially she came from a background where it was a lot of a desk job. She was not habitual of working remotely. So we figured it out. We were like, okay, come down to the office. Let's get into the zone and then you can go back and do the remote work. When she started working, we realized that, okay, she's not comfortable with the workplace and everything. So we're like, let's try to create that environment. We could easily ignore that and say, okay, it's her job, make money for us, but we don't know. That's not going to work. If you want people to be productive, you need to treat them as humans first. Give them whatever they need, whatever is actually valid. So we started observing and we're seeing that, okay. So she was very short and it was not comfortable for her to kind of sit on an adjustable seat where legs were hanging. So we were like, first get a proper height table. And we saw that she was working very good, like productivity raised and she was happy day in and out. Then we realized, okay, the laptop she is working is not good. It might be good, but we need a more powerful machine. So she does not get frustrated waiting for things. Again, productivity suited. And then we realized now she wanted to transition, but she was feeling hesitant. So we asked like, what do you want? Like, no, she was like, I don't get time to read or learn things because there is too much time spent in traveling. I was like, okay, you can transition back to the remote and you can work in hybrid way however you want. You decide. So she was like, I come in the morning for four hours, work from the office and go back. I was like, that works for us. All we care about is deliverables. So she was again happy. Then we realized after some time, for some reason things were not panning out and we were like, do you want to exit or do you want to move out from here? And she was like, why you think so? Because we think you are not happy. We can feel those energies. So she was like, yes, that's it. So we explained your exit. We help her out, move away and find a better opportunity. So that's that's kind of culture. I am like in your family, in your friends, in a workspace you need to create because that's the empathy what help you do. Be productive and think constructive. So the last part is clients. So a lot of time when you work with clients, you are like, why they are creating like a pain in your ass with unnecessary requests, change requests. Why are they are doing that? Because we are thinking from single site, why is this happening? But we never tried to step in that shoe. So that is a small story about this marketing head from client, they were like e-coms. So that guy was constantly creating pressure on us. We want this, we want that. And we used to talk about why this guy is annoying. And one day I was like, let's try to understand. We were like, he have targets to meet. There are people on top of him who are like, where are the sales? Rather than we asking the question, we need to be the answer. Okay, what is the problem? How we are going to solve? So we started working in a different way. We were like, okay, let's have a weekly calls. Let's plan out. And then we already started tackling those issues and boom, now we are running behind him that this is what we need to do next. So now we are driving the things, he is getting the results and everything is working fine. So that's the, you have to step into the person who is behind you to make your life easy and his or her life easy. So showing some empathy to the client also, we are in a very happy zone. And if we find that some clients are very annoying, we are straight away like, things cannot work. Because either we don't understand you, you don't understand us. Rather than overthinking and going into that unproductive zone, it's better to stay away. So these were the four stories that I wanted to share from different categories. So there are key takeaways regarding to empathy. Don't get carried away. It's okay to be good, but not foolish. You have to do good, which comes naturally. Don't fake it. Human emotions cannot be faked. I cannot stand here and be like, you will figure out that he is fooling around. So you have to be natural. You have to be yourself. The moment you be yourself, people around you are the projection of your and they will be themselves. And that's where, because naturally, if you saw a seed, it grows naturally. If you create a fake environment, you get a substandard things to eat. You cannot get a good fruit also. That's why there is a huge market for organic foods. In the end, it's all about being human. So a lot of time we have discussions of my father and my business partner program. We always talk about one thing in common. In the end, we need to learn how to be human. Forget about what bad happened, what is happening. Just try to be human. The moment we try to be human, we stop being robotic in our emotions. So last thing, whatever you do, if you are working with someone, you are doing anything, explore the human side. We don't explore the human side because over the years or maybe centuries, we have come to that point where we are too robotic. We just want something, we want to achieve something and we want to be, we want to exist in the world, but we want to do things alone for ourselves. We have forgot about collaborating. We have forgot about thinking about others. So explore the human side and that's beauty. And this is one quote that we always echo in our office and I can say this is something, these words are from my partner Praveen. Be good, do good and everything good will follow you. And I would like to close this with something that's coming to my mind. Like you can go ahead by pushing people behind. That's the one approach that world is moving towards. I want to go ahead, push people behind because there is no empathy. It's you around everywhere, but let's flip it. Stand there, be with the people and they will freaking push you and lift you to the heights you have never imagined. Thank you.