Interview with Snezana Dakic (Serbian TV personality) on Instagram IGTV – Part 4
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Age is an attitude
Question: Here is another important theme for all of us. If not for you, then probably for your aunt, granny, or neighbour etc. For those who have finished a certain cycle in life. For example, their children have grown up, educated and started their own families. After a while, these people may feel that they are not needed anymore, feel empty, retire, and have that feeling of emptiness or even depression. My question is: How to find a purpose in that phase of life, especially when it is supposed that we are happy for all we have achieved until now. Mohanji, please, what is your advice?
Mohanji: Well, age is a thing which we have married to ourselves, or we have connected to ourselves. We think we are of a particular age, and we need to slow down, and we look at the society, and we decide that we should be slowing down now, etc. That’s not true. The great successful people have never ever become aged, for example, the owner of Kentucky Fried Chicken. He became successful after he was 60. So, there is no stopping anywhere. It’s an attitude.
Even if society says you’re 60 or 70 or 80, you still have youth in it. If you have the right attitude, and the right determination, the right purpose – always dig into yourself to find the right purpose. Don’t look at society. Society will give you many opinions, and some of them do not suit us. So what suits us will bring in power from within. You are the source of the power. You are the determination. You are the journey. You are the culmination; you are the satisfaction. Everything is you.
So, we have no age barrier. Age is an attitude. Sometimes at 30, people feel like 60; they slow down and behave like they are 60. But sometimes, while at the age of 80, you don’t feel 80! You’re very energetic, you have a lot of life in you, and you really want to express it, and you do express it, and that makes a difference in society. So if you really have the right attitude, age cannot stop you; death cannot stop you.
When I say death cannot stop you, it means what you do will become a legacy. You will become a game-changer or a trendsetter. So, this is in you. You do have that power. So never ever think, “Oh, I am of this age and now is the time to slow down and retire.” That question of retirement should never happen in life. Every day should be like, “Okay, there’s a new day, we have something to do.” For that, you need to have a great self-inspiration happening from within and have a clear purpose, a large purpose, and the whole world is your arena. Don’t look only at your country or your society.
The whole world is yours. If you really have the drive to do something, you have a great canvas to work on. But you need to have clarity and always dig from inside: what is your skill, what is your strength, what makes you happy, what makes you stable. That’s what you can deliver – not borrowed ones, not imitations. If you try to imitate somebody, it may not be successful. But if you feel I have a good recipe with me, I have a good, strong format, like I’ve been an entrepreneur or I’ve been a presenter, or I’ve been all these years what I’ve been doing successfully -that’s your strength. That’s exactly what you are, and that’s where you derive from; you dig out of that and make yourself better, improve as per the time, and always stay young in mind.
Believe in yourself
Question: Okay, so there we go back to not taking care of what other people say. And I think that is for most cultures, like for us in Serbia. In most societies, people really don’t express themselves because they fear what other people would say. So for the end, please once again – how can we avoid that and make that influence in our life?
Mohanji: We have to depend on ourselves. We cannot really depend on the opinions of people. People have opinions, and opinions can change, and based on that, our life does not change. So we must believe in ourselves. We must deliver pure stuff; our intention should be pure. We should not be manipulating, distorting, destroying or derailing lives. Instead, we should be rejuvenating, and we should be making the best things out of people and ourselves, and we must completely avoid opinions because people can have opinions, but if our heart is pure, our intentions are pure, we should not worry about it.
People may not understand at this point in time, but then they will understand in the future. And many times, great people are not recognized when they are alive, but we respected them, recognized them after they left. Like Jesus Christ, Nikola Tesla, so many different people; when they were alive, we did not really accept them or recognize them, but they became legends after they left. So this is the truth of existence. But we should not worry about it; we deliver good stuff, pure stuff with the purity of intention and determination. The attitude on our face or the conviction on our face will translate into success.
Question: Thank you very much for giving us strength and this really good advice.
Mohanji: Thank you. Thank you very much.
Transcribed by Nada Rakovic
Proofread by Rekha Murali