Is your "Ego" short-changing you ? E-5

Movie Name:- Sultan

Book Reference-Ego is the Enemy-Ryan Holiday

Genre:- Leadership

“The ideal food for sustained weight loss is the one which is sensible, cooked at home, grown up eating and our grandmother recognizes”- Rujata Diwekar. An extract from her book “Don’t lose your mind, Lose your weight”?

India’s love for “Cricket” and “Bollywood” is a never ending appetite. The Nation worships “Sachin Tendulkar, Shahrukh Khan, Rajnikanth etc.”(Geographically agnostic). The ingredients of the Indian home grown diet must include the 3 B’s “Bread, Butter and Bollywood”?.Movies are ubiquitous and their characters impact our cultural mindset, and cuts across different groups of people and boundaries. If this is so ingrained in us, Let’s use this concept to cultivate the management mindset.

The Movie Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge(DDLJ),with tagline as “Come fall in love” was true to inspiring millions of girls to have “Raj Malhotra” as the dream partner and Switzerland became the next popular destination. New born kids were named as Raj & Simran too.

An interesting data point to pivot-In the Calendar Year-2021,Film Stars have 80% contribution of the 27% overall ad volume of celebrity endorsements in Television. Source:- BARC India-What India Watches.The quantum of releases in India, reshapes our beliefs of the Movie Buffs in the Indian diaspora. In USA and Canada between 2001 & 2021(22 Years), a total of 12939 Movies were released, during the same time, India released a total of 35200 Movies, which includes Hindi and other regional languages.

Plot of the Movie & Book Reference:-

Sultan Ali Khan is a middle-aged local wrestler and ex-wrestling champion living a lonely life in a small town of Rewari, Haryana. Aakash Oberoi, the founder of a private mixed martial arts league backed by Mr. Patel, is encouraged by his father to recruit Sultan to salvage its popularity. After traveling to Haryana, he gives the recruitment offer to Sultan, who bluntly refuses and says that he has completely retired from wrestling. In search of the reason behind his retirement, Aakash confronts Sultan's close friend Govind, who narrates how Sultan's career began.

Aspire Stage: A new goal, new setting, new calling for Sultan

In 2008, Sultan fell in love at the sight of Aarfa Hussain, a state-level wrestler and the daughter of a local wrestling coach. Although she is initially cold towards him, she accepts Sultan as a friend. When he claims that they are committed, she insults him, saying she would only marry a well-trained wrestler.?Determined to win her respect, Sultan dedicates himself to intense training and ultimately wins a state-level wrestling tournament and finally the two get married.?

Success Stage: Here Sultan wins various international games.

When the two are selected for the?Olympic?contingent, Aarfa discovers that she's pregnant. She gives up her childhood dream of winning an Olympic gold medal for India, which Sultan then fulfils. To her surprise, Sultan's accomplishment makes him arrogant, and he slaps a reporter at an event. He also leaves Aarfa nearing her due date to win a gold at Turkey.?

Failure Stage:

Upon returning, he finds that his new-born son had died due to severe anaemia. The baby had a rare O- blood type, identical to Sultan's, whose absence deprived the child of a donor. Angered, Aarfa decides to leave Sultan and reside with her father. Depressed from losing his wife and child, Sultan raises funds to open a blood bank of his son's name.

In the present day, Aakash promises Sultan that the tournament's prize money will fulfill his dream of opening a blood bank. Sultan agrees to participate and travels to train in Delhi, where Aakash introduces him to MMA coach Fateh Singh, who initially refuses him but agrees after seeing his determination. After two months of training, Sultan regains his physique and learns how to wrestle freestyle. In his first fight, Sultan defeats the opponent using capoeira style. He soon becomes a nationwide sensation by winning a series of matches and gaining Arafa’s support in the process.

During the semi-final round against opponent Tyron Woodley, Sultan wins the fight but is severely injured and has to be hospitalised. The doctor informs Aakash that Sultan should not fight again lest his injuries become fatal. Aarfa arrives at the ward and motivates him to continue fighting. During the final match, Sultan overcomes his pain to defeat his opponent and ultimately wins the tournament. Reunited with his wife, Sultan opens a blood bank using the prize money, and Aarfa resumes wrestling. A few years later, she gives birth to a baby girl, who Sultan begins to train as a wrestler. Source-Wikipedia

Learning’s

“Ego is-The unhealthy belief in one’s own importance.” — Ryan Holiday.

Lesson_1_Your worst enemy is inside “You”?

Lesson_2_Always be a Student

Lesson_3_ Ego will always short-change us. in the journey of Life from Success, Failure and then Aspiration

“My Opponent is my Teacher, My ego is my enemy”-Renzo Gracie.?

After Sultan defeated, the wrestler Tyron in the semi-finals, he was admitted to hospital due to major injuries and Dr did mention that “If he enters the ring, he won’t come out alive”. The opponent Tyron was well aware of his injuries. However this did not deter Sultan to enter the ring, he had a purpose, He knew his “Ikigai” his last question to Aakash was related to money collected for the Blood Bank. During the Round 1, Sultan was smashed, battered and was seen fighting for life. “The bigger the Ego, harder is the fall”-This statement stands so correct seeing him getting crushed.

In Round-2, Sultan crashes down with eyes closed in the ring. While his eyes were closed, he visualised the empty basket of the lost child and got up seeing himself in the ring, next to Tyron.?

Words by Fateh flashed in front of Sultan“ Your fight is bigger than the championship, because you will fight yourself Sultan followed by words of Barkat “ To earn respect, one must face humiliation” then of Arafa “ I asked you to earn respect Sultan And you did was inflate your Ego” now words of reporters” Can no one defeat you ? and final words to his mind “ Only one man can defeat Sultan…Sultan Himself”

Sultan was seeing fighting against himself, he clearly saw himself as the opponent in the ring and not Marcus.

Sultan learned 3 things during this match:-

1. Wrestling is not a sport, It’s about fighting what lies within
2. A true wrestler is not the one, who wins medals, but one who fights game of life and wins.
3. No one can defeat you, until you let yourself defeated.

Ryan Holiday explains the above moments as “Flight Club Moments”?when life changes and one feel thoroughly demolished as happened with Sultan and his last words to Govind were “To stay in touch with Arafa” , an indication that he won’t be able to live/fight long. These moments define us and force us to take action & change.?

The above 3 learnings resonate Steve Jobs extremely well and he shares this publicly in his famous Stanford Commencement Address, he took complete responsibility of he being fired from Apple and started a new company called Next, and in turn of events Apple bought Next and Steve came back as the CEO. Steve was a true wrestler & publicly acknowledged his failures, and mentions “Sometimes life hits with you with a brick, Don’t lose faith” In this case Sultan also loved “Wrestling” and rose sharply.

No matter what Sultan accomplished in his past, he had to be coached by Fateh Singh and remain grounded and be a student. This helped him win the battle.?

What’s your favourite Movie for Management Lessons ?