My learnings were from three sources. Books, Films and People who have been there and done that. The People's access came through my extensive travel for both business and pleasure. In the age of algorithmic prompts and templated frameworks, it’s easy to forget that the most powerful creative tools often come from something far more ancient and personal, with a story.
Not the polished brand narrative or the tagline brainstormed over coffee. But the story in its raw, unfiltered form is absorbed from books that demand patience, films that teach restraint, and travel that dismantles certainty. These aren’t sources of inspiration in the Pinterest-board sense. They’re the furnace in which creative intuition and leadership instincts are forged. Here’s how I navigated with that.
Books: The Blueprint for Complexity and Human Mechanics
Books are the windows to the complex and savvy worlds of entrepreneurs, inventors, and researchers. In them, we can find an entire life of accumulated observation and knowledge captured in the form of a book. Personally, the books that I have read have given me valuable and precious lessons, which I truly treasure that have been a major part of my development and shaped my understanding of the world.
The magic lies in the evolving interpretation of these lessons of the book . As I grow, gaining experience, maturity, and the insights I draw from a book transform. Reading 'The Tipping Point' at 25 was much different than it was when I re-read it in my late 30s. This changing relationship with books just shows their eternal relevance, not only for the now but also for the future, as they fit with our changing selves and give new wisdom with every read.
Films: Idea to visual with Discipline, Rhythm, and the Power of Less
Films are an astonishing blend of ideas that are brought to the screen by discipline, rhythm, and the power of the less. They represent the simplification of intricate ideas as images that make us dream and learn. Just take a look at such films, for example, Steven Spielberg's blockbusters 'Minority Report' and 'Jurassic Park'. Not only do these motion pictures impress us with fantastic and in turn, new technology, they in addition, set sparks of curiosity and imagination in our minds. Both of them represent the phenomenon of using films to convey the ideas by means of light, sound, and motion.
Through this, a film goes beyond being just a form of entertainment because it becomes a medium of knowledge and inspiration, devising our minds and extending the limits of our creativity.
Travel: Empathy, Adaptability, and with a Contextual Intelligence
Getting lost where no one speaks your language and learning humility when your logic doesn’t match local customs. Observing how joy, grief, and ambition manifest in wildly different ways. Travel rips you out of your own worldview and that’s where true learning begins. Creatively, it’s a sharp awakening. Travel reveals that “universal appeal” is a myth. What matters is contextual truth, and the ability to create with cultural empathy.
As a leader, travel conditions allow you to navigate ambiguity. You become fluent in reading tone, not just words. You learn to ask before assuming. Most importantly, you will accept that your perspective is just one of many valid ones. That humility changes by how you show up for your team, for your clients, for yourself.
The Story-Forged Framework
Across all three books, films, travel a common thread emerges and the cultivation of instincts. Not just skills. Not theories. Instincts honed through exposure to depth, contradiction, and consequence.
- Complexity over simplification: Real stories resist easy answers and so do real problems.
- Emotion over argument: People move when they feel. Creativity and leadership must connect at that level.
- Context as currency: What works here may not work there and Awareness is a superpower.
- Adaptability as a constant: Stories evolve, so must strategies, and so must leaders.
An Armour To Your Ambition
These lessons weren’t picked up from keynote stages or self-help bestsellers. They were earned in quiet hours, in dark cinemas, in unfamiliar cities. They didn’t just influence how creative work is approached or how teams are led, they built the scaffolding for it.
The stories that shape us aren’t always loud because sometimes, they’re tattered, subtitled, or spoken in a language we don’t yet understand but they stay and recalibrate. If we let them, they forge the creative and leadership edge we carry into every room. Not just as an inspiration but as an armour to your ambition.
