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I took a free course by Padma Lakshmi. Here’s 5 things I learned
Padma Lakshmi is an American author, activist, model, and television host and has always been a source of inspiration for many. She rose to fame through her career as a model and is today best known for her role as the host of Emmy-award winning show, Top Chef.
Padma is also an established figure in the culinary space, having published three cookbooks, Tangy, Tart, Hot & Sweet, The Encyclopedia of Spices & Herbs: An Essential Guide to the Flavors of the World, and Easy Exotic.
She also authored a memoir in 2016, Love, Loss, and What We Ate, which earned mostly positive reviews.
In Find Your Passion: How Padma Lakshmi Found Hers, a free course on LinkedIn Learning, Padma digs into the life and career experiences that helped her find success.
Throughout the course, she shares practical strategies that can help professionals of all stripes find their unique place in the world, face their fears, and seize the opportunities that come their way.
In this course, Padma provides advice for young women to help them land their dream job. She also shares her thoughts on the importance of giving back to your community—both by helping to eradicate inequality and by being vulnerable about your own challenges.
Here are 5 things I learned from this 22-minute course.
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1. Stay resilient
In her course, Padma repeatedly emphasises the importance of staying resilient, even when things take longer than you think they should.
Many of us have struggled with setbacks this year and have had to alter strategies and plans to achieve the goals we have set for ourselves.
While plans may have changed and even derailed, it is important to keep the goal in sight and remain resilient in the face of adversity.
Something as simple as upskilling may take a long time to bear fruit and it may take a while for you to enjoy the tangible results of a promotion or raise.
It is very important to be patient with the process, and more importantly patient with yourself, she says.
2. Balancing and prioritising
“It’s hard to balance everything. And I have realised that you can have everything, you just may not be able to have it all at once,” Padma says.
Padma employs a simple strategy to organise her hectic schedule. She says that she makes a mental list of what she wants to accomplish in a day when she wakes up.
She then ranks these tasks in order of importance and tackles the most important tasks first.
This strategy is a great way to stay focused and manage daily tasks at home or in the office without getting overwhelmed.
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3. Seize opportunities
| Dec 16 | 4 mins read“Okay, somebody of authority is giving me this opportunity, I’m scared, I’m insecure, but I’m going to take it because I don’t know “when this is going to come up again.”
Padma started out with a dream to become an actor and studied theatre to meet this goal. Given that there were student loans to be paid, she accepted an opportunity to model when the chance came knocking and has not looked back since.
The Padma Lakshmi of today wears multiple hats, but says, “If you had told my 28-year-old self that I was going to actually be known as someone in food, rather than from my acting, I don’t know that I would have believed you.”
Padma’s advice for young women looking to make an impact is to seize opportunities, even if it comes from uncharted territory. “It’s best to push against the open door, it takes less effort, and that’s really important in life.”
4. Padma Lakshmi: The antidote to fear is preparation
Whether in our careers or personal life, fear can not only inhibit growth but force us to retreat before we take the very first step forward.
On the topic of conquering fear, Padma has this to say, “Fear is a very real thing. It can be an impediment that we create and exacerbate in our own minds.”
The most important way to move forward, according to Padma Lakshmi, is to banish the fear. This can be achieved through various ways including by, “educating yourself, by talking to somebody who you admire, by finding some way, even just online, to see what other people have done”.
These steps can help you move forward as they act to alleviate the anxiety that comes when embarking on something you have little knowledge about.
5. Land your dream job
Landing a dream role, in a dream company can take a bit of time, and you can expect competition to be stiff. After all, it is only realistic that many others share the same dreams that drive us to our goals.
Padma highlights a very interesting facet to this dilemma, in her course in LinkedIn.
“I used to always want to try to be like everyone else and then one day, I finally realised that my ticket or my golden ticket was going to be to lean into what made me actually different from everyone,” she said.
Reflecting on her journey, she credits her unique traits that often opened doors that led to her eventual success.
Padma suggests that those seeking to rise above competition should amplify and develop their unique traits.
“That’s what’s going to make you different and make them see that they have to hire you because you’re not like everyone else,” Padma adds.
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