Introducing Praveen Pakala
Praveen is a senior IT professional living in the Netherlands for last 6 years. He is an Indian by birth and comes from the city of Hyderabad in India. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree from Osmania University and an executive MBA from the Rotterdam School of Management. After a deep self-reflection to find his Ikigai (purpose), he recently launched his dream project-an institution called ‘The Ramayana World’, connecting his passion for the ancient Indian epic called ‘Ramayan’ with his purpose ‘to promote morals & values from Ramayan for the betterment of society’. Through the Ramayana world, he is now teaching and mentoring kids across the globe on character building and personality development in his free time. In this interview he unveils his journey of discovering his purpose, which he calls his 'Bakfiets transformation story', and how he is realizing it to bring a change in himself and in society.
What is your perspective on change?
“To me change is a natural process by the definition of it. It goes from one state of being to another state of being. We have been going through change right from birth, and the world around us is constantly changing as well. Based on this perspective, we need to ask ourselves three questions. First, whether this change makes you comfortable or uncomfortable. The second is, how long will it take you to become comfortable with this change or get out of your comfort zone. And thirdly, what would you need to do in order to get there? I think these questions are necessary for us to understand change in a broader perspective. Additionally, I would like to add two dimensions of change, which are the inner change and the outer change. The inner change is the change you experience in yourself; and the outer change is the change you bring that impacts others around you. Both are completely different and they may not influence one another. For instance, one could be a very good at changing personally, but this same person may not necessary be good at instilling change in others; and vice-versa. I believe that you need to aim at converging both of these in order to reveal your true personality and bring great transformations within society. When you have both it will yield more purposeful results.”
"I believe that you need to aim at converging inner and outer change in order to reveal your true personality and bring great transformations within society."
How often do you experience change?
“To be very honest I don’t experience change much because I have a change averse personality. I don’t accept change that well. I realized this very recently when I was going through a self-reflection exercise in my MBA course called Personal Leadership Development. There was this framework by C. Clinton Sidle called ‘The Leadership Wheel’, which contains segments of all the characteristics of one’s personality, such as Empathy, Relations, Tasks, Identity, Change etc. This showed my blind spot towards ‘Change’ and made me conscious about my change averse personality. Since then, I have been working at ‘fixing’ this segment of my ‘wheel’ to make my leadership ride smoother, and I’ve have started to accept change more often.”
When are you change averse?
“To start, I would say that I’m always change averse when there is too much risk involved. Secondly, I also tend to be change averse when there is a lot of social pressure involved. Another situation is when the impact of the change goes beyond myself, especially when it touches my family. Finally, I believe I’m also change averse when there is a high probability of failure or a high degree of uncertainty. I think these four situations cover it all [laugh].”
How are you driving purposeful change?
“I started driving purposeful change when I realized my own purpose, which is teaching morals and values to society, instilling hope and optimism in this world through the philosophies of Ramayan. I want leaders to become leaders with values. I took my first step towards realizing this vision and mission by teaching character building and personality development to kids from Ramayan. Currently I have 21 students across the Netherlands, India and the US, and successfully conducted 4 batches of Ramayan Foundation courses in last 8 months. This is already proving to be effective in bringing a positive change in kids in terms of embedding values in their daily lives. In March 2023, I formally launched my website ‘The Ramayana World’ and the related social media handles and I’m investing my free time in building this ecosystem with strategic partners. But for me to reach this purpose, I needed to work on my own personality and take baby steps towards experiencing and accepting change.”
How have you come to embrace change?
“I’ve now reached a point where I’m enjoying change, and that’s because over the last year I’ve experimented a lot. It started with the MBA journey and the Personal Leadership Development course; which made me aware of this dimension of experiencing change for myself. Since then, I’ve been taking very small steps to embrace change; simple things in my daily life which I had never tried before. For example, I always wanted to swim but I never went into the water; and I always wanted to practice a sport but I never signed up for it. Currently I’m been taking swimming lessons and I’m able to float (which is a great change in itself! [laugh]), and I’ve signed up for tennis lessons. These tiny steps helped me feel comfortable with change. Another important thing I did was buying a ‘bakfiets’ (cargo bike). It’s a transport bike with two or three wheels and a large box at the front, which some people in the Netherlands use to transport children. This is very common in Dutch society but very uncommon in Indian society. Nobody in India would by a bakfiets for €2.000-€3.000; they would just buy a car! [laugh] But I bought it on purpose because I wanted to see whether I could withstand the social pressure as well as my own ability to feel comfortable with this change. This was completely weird and new for us, yet it worked wonders! It gave me great satisfaction to try something new that was also visible to others. I ‘beat’ the social pressure and showed others around me that it was a useful resource. In a way, I set an example in my own community. As this change worked well for me, I use this ‘bakfiets transformation’ as an analogy for the positive impact change has had on my life. At this point in time, I’m more comfortable with change and I’m trying new things each day. And whether they work or not doesn’t matter; I’m enjoying the experimentation.”
"When passion and purpose come together, wonders happen."
How did you discover and realize your purpose?
“I am an ardent follower of this ancient epic called ‘Ramayan’ and also a very spiritual person. So, in a way I am passionate about Ramayan and spirituality. But I could never connect my passion with any purpose. It was when I almost completed my MBA that I realized that the world doesn’t need just leaders but ‘leaders with values’. This triggered me and took me back to my passion, as the essence of Ramayan itself is to uphold and reinforce values in leadership through the characterization of Shri Ram. This was a ‘nirvana moment’ for me as I realized my purpose of life is to create leaders with values and to reinforce values in leadership.
I’ve always had this intent of teaching morals and values to people around me and especially towards children, but I never realized it was my passion or my purpose. When I was going through the personal coaching as part of the MBA, I really starting thinking about what my passion was. Together with my coach we brainstormed a lot and one day I realized that teaching morals and values was my way of contributing to society. But what was stopping me to move ahead was this other dimension of change, my change-averse personality. Just as I was working on embracing change for myself, I also decided to apply this same mindset towards my purpose; starting with small steps. I decided to try something, and if it worked out, I would move onto the next step. As I began, I first wanted to see whether I was even able to teach something to the children around me. I first started teaching philosophies from Ramayan to my own daughter, and it worked out really well. And then I tested my teaching and methods to the children of family members, and this was also successful. Morals and values are usually quite boring for kids, so I was happy to see that the children really liked my way of teaching it [laugh]. So, I scaled it up towards two batches of 14 children in my own home and it really worked wonders. I got a lot of positive feedback and realized that I was creating leaders with values. It became clear to me that I had always had this capability in me, I just never tried it.
People say when Passion and Purpose come together, wonders happen. I think the same happened in my life, which led to the establishment of ‘The Ramayana World’, through which I started realizing my purpose! Also, I did all of this during my MBA journey because I wanted to make sure I would be able to do it effortlessly, which was indeed the case. Now with this purpose in life, I am confidently moving towards my vision to create an ecosystem of Ramayan with a mission to promote morals and values from Ramayan!”
What inspires you to continue?
“Most certainly, it’s the satisfaction I get when I see the change in others. I was able to see the change in the children I teach, as well as their parents. This is a big motivation and inspiration for me. Also, as I get positive feedback, I realize that this is something important that’s missing in society. So, next to this change journey in itself being inspiring, it’s having a positive impact on others that gives me the biggest satisfaction.”
Is there a particlar resource that inspired you which you would like to share with others?
“As I said, I took tiny steps in learning to experience and embrace change, and this is also the advice I would like to give others. The first small step you take is a huge step in your change journey. The very famous ‘Tiny Habits’ by B.J. Fogg is a resourceful book which I follow most of the time when there is ‘change’ to take. I can definitely recommend this book which consists of very simple yet very effective techniques to embrace change.”
"The first small step you take is a huge step in your change journey."
If you could give 3 tips about embracing change and driving it purposefully towards a positive outcome, what would those tips be?
“As I’m still going through this change journey myself, I’m not sure whether I’m in a position to give advice to others. But I can share the things that helped me.
The first tip, which I also got from my coach, is to take small steps towards change. These shouldn’t be big transformational changes which would impact everything at once; just tiny steps. As mentioned in the book ‘Tiny Habits’, a small step will eventually trigger big change. I followed this advice, which really helped bring about change in my daily life. Also, don’t take irreversible steps. Make sure you can try and fail if needed.
Secondly, as you are taking these tiny steps, you need to validate whether this change is working or not. And you can only understand this by talking to your family or your near & dear ones. So, don’t just look in the mirror and see whether you are changing. Seek constant feedback from your family/friends about the change you experience or the change you bring. Because in the end, they are the ones that are constantly experience the change you are trying to create.
The third step I followed was journaling. I got into the habit or writing down all of the (change) decisions I took in the last few months and then look back and see the impact of those changes. It gives you an overview of the change decisions you took but didn’t follow through on, or the ones you took and their positive outcome. Personally, this gave me great awareness in my own change journey, making me more conscious of all the small steps that I took (or could not take) in life; just like a retrospective. This helps not only to look backwards but gives you ways to move forward with change in your life.”
Do you consider yourself to be a change misfit[1]?
“I would love to, yes! Going back to my framework of change (inner change versus the change you bring in others), it’s an immense transformational journey when you experience that journey yourself and are able to bring positive change in others. When there is a convergence between inner and outer change, the transformation sets off completely. You need to have both traits in you. I am reaching that path slowly… But for now, I would really want to consider myself a change misfit because it’s already yielding results in my personal life. I’m getting an immense satisfaction of it and I believe everybody should reach that stage, where you can bring wisdom and transformation into society.”
Want to know more about Praveen and what drives him? Have a look at these resources.
Praveen’s LinkedIn profile
His website ‘The Ramayana World’. The ultimate objective of ‘The Ramayana World’ is to create one single platform (an ecosystem) for Ramayan and bring together various forums/people/institutions working on spreading the philosophies from Ramayan for a better world.
[1] A misfit is a term used to describe a situation where there is a mismatch. Human beings are hard wired to be change averse, yet some of us embrace change. We call this type of person a ‘change misfit’.
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