Mir Muhammad Ali Khan
My friend Brian tells me before i moved to Pakistan: Are you crazy Ali, do you even know what you are saying. You want to move back to Pakistan?. You are a stranger to that country. Except food and language you have nothing in common.
You left as a boy and now you want to move back as a man. Everything is messed up there. Everything. Bombs, Corruption, No healthcare, Nepotism, No educational system as good as here for your children, businesses run on last decade’s standards, Your field: Capital Markets are primitive…. And he goes on and on. I was on the phone smiling. And then i said, Are you done Brian?. And he said Yes, irritatingly.
I answered, Brian let me tell you that Pakistan is worst than what you are thinking. It is according to the standards that you and i are used to, an absolute chaos. Everything is messed up but if everything is messed up then everything needs to be fixed, Educational system needs to be fixed, Healthcare needs to be fixed, Technology needs to be upgraded, Transportation needs to get better, Capital Markets need innovation, Service industry has to become more efficient, you name it and it needs to get better and that is where the opportunities lie.
If everything needs to get better then it means that there are opportunities in everything and i mean everything. You can create a business out of any field for one tenth the capital that you require in the modernized world.
That argument went on for a few more minutes and then there was silence on the other end of the phone. I had made my point. And that is the same point i want to make to the youth of this country. I did not move back to Pakistan and left my own two sons at some boarding school in Switzerland. I moved them back with me because i believe in what i feel and say.
There is no conflict between my thoughts and my actions. My heart and my mind are absolutely in sync with each other. And you have to understand that as well. There is nothing wrong with moving abroad but if your only reason to move outside of your country is to make money, then there are better opportunities here than any other place.
What matters is how you are looking at the glass, you are looking at the glass that you are holding as full empty not even half full. You have to change your mindset to a positive one. An absolute glass all full mindset. You have to get rid of the self pity state of mind. 70 percent of the world population lives in underdeveloped countries. All these countries need to be modernized. All these countries will have to upgrade themselves to the standards of the Technology age. And in this day and age of technological upgradation, you are seconds away from information that your counterparts have in the most developed countries.
Your state of mind will determine if you succeed or not. Its not your physical presence in another country. You can move to the moon and still not be successful because if you are a negative person, then you will fail faster in a developed nation than here.
Its like having cancer and thinking that changing hospitals will cure the disease. It will not. You need to cure your mindset first and the world is your Oyster. Instead of thinking to move out, think about what innovations you can bring to this country that other countries already have. Search the web, talk to people, create an expertise for yourself, become a person who looks at choas and sees creation.
Instead of working for $3000 dollars a month in a country where the standard of living is so high that you would have spent $2900 by the end of the month and still be a second class citizen, like GCC, and be heavily in debt and away from your family and friends, think about how to create opportunities here in Pakistan. This is your land. This is your home. Good bad or ugly, Its yours.
Grass is always green on the other side. I have been to 62 countries in my life and i chose Pakistan for me and my children in the end,. Yes there is emotional reason behind that as well but the bigger reason is that my children will have better opportunities here in the long run than any other country.
Physical Location change is nothing because your desire to change yourself has to be much higher than your desire to stay the same as a person. And change brings opportunities. So instead of changing countries, change yourself and that will change your own country as a result.
This is guest article by Mir Muhammad Ali Khan.
Mir Mohammad Alikhan is internationally renowned Investment Banker, Entrepreneur & Capital Markets Advisor. At the age of 29, he became the youngest Chairman and Founder of a Full service Investment Bank in America and the first Muslim to have owned an investment bank on Wall Street. He has had a successful career as Founder & Chairman The Financial Group, Inc., Federal Advisor to Govt. of Pakistan, a Member of New Jersey Governors Council, a Senior Advisor to New Jersey State Mayors and US State Senators. He introduced Islamic Banking Research into mainstream America by co-sponsoring and advising Harvard University to launch Harvard Islamic Finance and Information Program (HIFIP).
He also developed “THE WORD’S FIRST ISLAMIC BANKING BENCHMARK INDEX on WALL STREET Named:KMS-SAMI: (Socially Aware Muslin Index) Which Is Now A Functional Index Run By The Dow Jones Indices. He has also been featured in “Who’s Who of Top Executives in the World”. Featured in “Humans Of Pakistan” and in 2015 he became the first Pakistani ever to have a movie produced on his life through a first time co-production of Hollywood and Pakistani production house Sermad Films, The Producers of the movie “JALAIBEE”. WWW.MIRMAK.NET/Biography
