Navigating Problems — Problem Solving and the Importance of Resilience

Sharan Aggarwal

As I write this brief article, I am wondering how to keep it short and simple. There is so much that I can go on about that this could potentially be a book. Maybe it will be some day in the future, when I have a white beard that looks like that of Gandalf, but I’m going to stick with a brief piece of writing for now.

The term ‘problem’ has been given a very negative connotation. It has been made to be looked at simply as an issue. I like to think of problems as opportunities. Being an angel investor and instrumental mentor, I always advise the startups that come to me for advise on how to create their pitch decks, to make sure that the problem statement is very clear. Problems and Solutions are 2 sides of the same coin. A problem statement generally, if not always, talks about something that is missing or that is going wrong and needs to be addressed. The solution of course, is how this problem will be solved.

When I talk about navigating problems in general, it goes beyond just companies and their mission statements. Life will always throw problems at you. It is upto you to decide whether you will seize the moment and address the problem, or accept failure by giving up.

I like to recall an incident from my school days when I was around 8 years of age. My school had signed us up for karate lessons, and I was particularly fond of them. At the time, my dream was to grow up and be a grandmaster with a red belt in karate! One day I had to break a brick with my bare fist in order to progress to the next ‘belt’. Every time I tried, I would fail to break the brick. My master kept urging me not to give up. Finally, when I was nearing absolute loss of hope, he let me in on the big secret. He told me “Sharan, just imagine that there is no brick”. I had to aim for the floor and not for the brick. As soon as I did this, the brick broke. I was reminded of this incident years later when I watched the movie ‘The Matrix’, when the little boy tells Neo about the world around him bending, and not the spoon.

The biggest takeaways from this for me were that life will only give you what you ask for from it. I had been aiming for the brick and so I was getting the brick. As soon as I aimed beyond it, I was able to move past my hurdle without any difficulty. Moreover, if I had given up, I would never have broken that brick. Persistence is key!

Businesses can also not let problems come in their way. They are simply barriers that they must break through to get closer to the goals they have set for themselves.

Another example I draw from, which I am very open about, is my epilepsy. When I was just 7 years of age, a year before the karate incident, I got my first seizure. It came as a huge shock to my entire family and to me (to some extent as I was too young to understand it); especially as this was non-genetic and nobody in my family had any history of it. I remember running from one doctor to the other and getting multiple tests done. I was swallowing tablets before any peer of mine (not that it was a competition), and the side effects were driving me nuts. However, I feel grateful. I had my family with me to support me. I had many good friends who did not care about it and treated me just as any other kid, and teachers who were very understanding. I had to take some precautions and take my tablets and I was living a full life — Just as I am even today.

Problems started around when hormonal changes started kicking in. The medications I was on, no longer suited me. Seizures increased, stress at school also increased as we crept towards higher grades of education and those gruesome board exams which everyone feared. It became a vicious cycle. More stress meant more seizures, and this meant higher dosages of medications, and they meant more side effects such as weight gain, and that meant higher dosages again, and so on.

By the time I was in the 9th grade, I was starting to spiral into depression as this was really affecting my mental health. That is when I decided, I am the master of my own destiny. I was not going to let my epilepsy be my ruin. Sure it could be a huge part of me, but the extent to which it would define me would be — the most successful person in my field of work, who by the way, also has epilepsy (as an afterthought). I made up my mind to be resilient. I got influenced by great people like Julius Caesar, King Ashoka, and even several celebrities whom I shall refrain from naming, and focused all my attention on just doing what I had to do. Sure I was gaining weight, but that was not my identity.

I managed to successfully graduate school, and ‘challenged’ myself with the notion of going abroad to do an undergraduate and masters degree. I would be living alone. I would have to manage my own stress. Everything would be new to me. “Screw it!” I said to myself. “Bring it on!”. Before I knew it, I was one of the most popular students at Cass Business School (Now known as Bayes), and topped my cohort there. I had managed to create a network of close friends to support me. The seizures would still take place, but my solution was to rely on my friends for help. I went on to do a masters from LSE. Not 1 seizure! The stress was multifold at LSE, but now I had learned to solve this problem too. I knew that my health was more important than 1 or 2 marks here or there and so it was not worth overthinking things and that what had to happen would happen. At the end of the day, nobody asks you how much percentage you got. they just want to know where you studied.

I still had one problem left to solve after graduating. I was in the worst shape of my life. More than 150kg in weight, and I would pant even while talking. When the pandemic hit, I decided that it was time to focus entirely on myself and on my fitness. I started a journey of nutrition and working out daily, and since then have lost 60kg. I am now at my ideal weight and am still working towards being a ‘beast’.

My point through this long example is that no problem cannot be solved. It is always in your own hands whether you want to actually ‘push’, as they say in Formula 1, or if you want to be a sitting duck and just ‘retire the car’. The choice is yours…

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