We All Need An ‘Alteration Tailor’ In Our Lives: Prakash Iyer

The covid phase drove many to try different things. In the case of Prakash Iyer, Best-selling Author, Motivational Speaker and Leadership Coach, the period evoked the idea that no one has actually given a script on how to deal with such unprecedented times. During this phase, Iyer recalled many of the small lessons that he learnt in his life and asked himself as to what he could do to share them with others.

Iyer said that this willingness to share the lessons which made a difference in his life is what got him to write the book. He explained that during this turbulent period, people started asking fundamental questions regarding their life such as its purpose and what do they intend to do in life.

Iyer stated, “I think it is interesting that it took a crisis like this to make many of us ask such questions. People suddenly realised that the future is now and you need to do what you want to do right now.”

Iyer speaks and writes extensively on motivation, leadership, storytelling, teamwork and winning. He has delivered 100 presentations in over six countries across various industries and is a regular at TedX talks on different topics pan-India.
 
What Do We Really Want?
Iyer recalled the time in Dubai when he went to pick his two children from their school and both of them insisted to sit on the right side of the driver’s seat. Eventually, the younger one got the nod to sit on that seat, but as soon as he reached the car, he asked: “Which is the right side?”

Iyer thus stated that in life we often make the mistake of wanting something just because everybody else wants it. The younger one wanted to sit there because the older one insisted.

He believes that there is a little bit of Iyer’s younger one in all of us where we are constantly worried about missing out on things and wanting things just because everyone else wants them.

Again, Iyer remembered his time boating in Kerala’s Ashtamudi Lake to see the sunrise with his wife when there came a point where the boat was approaching an upstream area. At that point, Iyer’s wife told the boatman to go from the other side to avoid the upstream to which the boatman replied: “Sure, that will be easy for me but you will not get to see the sunrise.”

Iyer shared that the boatman’s reply gave him a life lesson: in life the path or the road that we take cannot be the one that is easy rather it should be the one that takes us to our destination.
 
Need For Alteration Tailor
For Iyer, this whole idea of “alteration tailor” came about while reading some styling tips given by a stylist. Among those tips, the one that got him excited was regarding having an alteration tailor. An alteration tailor, according to him, is able to find small details in our clothing that may not be looking right and then sets them right so that our clothing looks perfect.

“After this, a thought struck in my mind that maybe what we all need is not just an alteration tailor for our clothes but an alteration tailor for our lives. Somebody who can look at us and tell that one minor change that we need to make to be more effective and productive in life,” he stated.
Iyer believes that all of us have certain skills and strengths which we don’t always use because we are not sure of ourselves and according to him, an alteration tailor can help in making that change for us.
 
A Hunger For Learning
Iyer said that as we grow older, we become resistant to change, resistant to new knowledge and information and we start thinking that our way of doing certain things is the right way, which can become a bit of a problem. He stated that learning such lessons at an early stage in life gives people a longer runway to ride on their benefits.

“Some of the older people, while reading the book might say that yes, I know a bit more of this or I have learnt this somewhere else but I think the younger people are probably hungrier for such lessons,” Iyer said.

Further, Iyer added that in the present context, the high point in his life is the ability to make a small difference in a person’s life. “If I get to know that I have been able to make a small difference in someone’s life and helped him or her to become a bit better or do justice to their talent — I feel the job isIt is a life well lived! and it gets me going,” he shared.

Iyer also said that he discovered the power of stories and storytelling at a very young age. “Stories are something that gets people starting to do a particular job and very often when that job is done, they will come and talk about how a story had motivated them to finish that job,” he said.

The power of stories and storytelling motivated Iyer to share what he has learnt in his life, in turn, in the form of a story.