Blackjack, muscle memory - Sonal Dabral’s 5 lessons will help you tide over tough times

Sonal Dabral, one of Indian advertising’s most famous creative leaders, explains “5 Lessons I Learned From Life” as part of The One Club for Creativity’s new ongoing “A Creative Perspective” series of original video content.

Drawn largely from his experiences involving writing, music, cooking and Blackjack, the five lessons covered in the exclusive and entertaining 12-minute video are: “We Are Our Own Best Stories”, “Doing is Better Than Dreaming”, “It’s Not About the Cards You Are Dealt, It’s How You Play The Hand”, “Focus on the Craft” and “There Will Be Blackjack Coming Soon”.

The brief video ends with a special surprise, revealing one of his many talents.

Earlier this year, Dabral left advertising after three decades to explore the content space, including writing, directing and even serving as a talk show host.  He most recently served as Ogilvy CCO for Southeast and South Asia, Vice Chairman, India.

Here’s Sonal Dabral in his own words:

Hi, I’m Sonal Dabral, a creative consultant based out of Mumbai I worked in advertising for the last three decades with agencies like Lintas, DDB, Ogilvy for a long time across three different markets – India, Malaysia and Singapore. I recently quit advertising to pursue my long-standing dream of becoming a writer-director, a creator and a chat show host.

You know, I really believe that creative people across the world are really blessed people, and if the current COVID-19 situation is putting you down, just think of that blessing and please don’t feel down. I grew up in small towns across India and went on to study design and then worked in advertising. I loved many different things such as blackjack, cooking, writing, music and a bit of singing Bollywood songs.

I have realised that my life, my work life, my passions and my hobbies have all taught me and keep teaching me quite a few lessons. So, that’s what I thought I will share with you today – 5 lessons that I’ve learnt from life.

Lesson 1: We are our own best stories

Let’s not keep looking at our screens for ideas, inspirations and all the answers. Once in a while let’s Google our own memories, let’s talk to our mothers, our grandmothers, our friends, our children, our neighbours, even our shopkeeper from whom we buy our groceries. That’s where our best ideas reside, that’s where our identity in all our inspirations stay. Hence, we are our own best stories.

Here’s a little story from my days in Kuala Lumpur and how I got an idea from my own neighbourhood. It was a hot Kuala Lumpur afternoon and I and one of my Ogilvy colleagues were in his brand-new car. I used to smoke a lot at that time, so because it was a stressful meeting, I took out my cigarette pack and I as I was about to smoke, this diehard non-smoker friend asked me not to smoke in his new car. Dejected, I closed my pack and put it back and we continued to drive. A little later he switched off the conditioning rolled down the windows and looked at me and said, “okay, let me be nice to you.” So, I took out my cigarette and started to smoke and started polluting his car. But one thing got stuck in my head, if I’m polluting his car, why should he be nice to me? Why should people be nice to smokers who keep polluting the environment? Then I got the answer, and in that answer was, what I thought, an interesting film idea. I was thrilled. Watch the film, and if there are smokers out there thinking of quitting, this is the time to quit.

Film for Cancer Patients Aid Association

Lesson 2: Doing is better than dreaming

What is COVID-19 teaching us? That the only thing predictable in this world is the unpredictability. So, don’t keep planning things; let’s make things, let’s do things. You know, the good thing about dreaming is that it is very comfortable and that is its biggest problem – dreams never make you better at something because you never fail in your dreams, in your dreams you always enter at the top. Doing makes you better, because every time you do something, you become better at it, even if you fail doing it.

I’m not saying it because we are in a lockdown because of this COVID-19 situation, but there will never be a better time to start something that you like than now. So, stop dreaming, start doing.

Lesson 3: It’s not about the cards you are dealt, it’s how you play the hand

I love playing Blackjack and in blackjack, depending on the cards you’re dealt and the dealers of cards, you either call hit, stay, split, double down or surrender. The decision you take dictates whether you win or lose, besides a bit of luck, of course. Now, we can’t change the cards we get, but it’s our response to these cards that decides everything, so think about it.

There are no bad briefs, there are no boring brands, there are no tough clients, it’s a response to them that makes them bad, boring or tough. How many times have you seen that a brand shifts from one agency to the other and suddenly great work starts to happen on the brand? Actually forget things like blackjack or briefs, let’s look at our situation right now – COVID is the cards we’ve been dealt. How will we respond to these cards? Will we surrender or will we double down?

Talking about how to respond to the cards we’ve been dealt, here’s one more story. We were once working on a film that told the story of this height challenged person. The shoot was in Amsterdam and a day before the shoot, we were all sitting in the hotel lounge, discussing the next day’s shoot and we were also expecting the person who was doing the height challenged person’s role – an actor called Kiran Desai, who was supposed to fly down from London. So, while we were discussing, suddenly I saw everybody sitting in the lounge turning to look at the entrance, so I also turned. Suddenly there was a hushed silence and there was Kiran Desai, wearing a jacket, jeans, boots, walking in with a swagger, full of confidence and laughing and chatting with the usher who was bringing him in. He sat with us and within 5 minutes he owned the meeting, he was telling us jokes, stories, anecdotes, and I was thinking to myself, ‘oh my God, this is the script that I had worked on and he is played it right in front of me. Here’s this person who is height challenged, but there’s nothing in his demeanor that could tell you that he’s actually got a handicap. He was truly enjoying life. Now that is what response to the cards you’re dealt is all about.

Lesson 4: Focus on the craft

I used to always like cooking, but this lockdown is now giving me ample time and opportunity to indulge in my passion for cooking. So, I got an expensive Japanese knife and a chopping board and got down to learning some slicing and dicing tricks. Now this knife is extremely sharp, so I got to be really careful. I’ve realised that when you give enough time to your hobbies and your passions, whatever they might be, they, too, teach you the value of craft. Now as I am learning to dice an onion the right way with this very sharp chef’s knife, it is also teaching me that the price of not doing it right is my beautiful chopped finger and that, mind you, is teaching me mindfulness. The idea being that as you continue to learn to use the knife the right way, it one day becomes a muscle memory and then you can slice an onion like Jamie Oliver or Gordon Ramsay – lightning-fast, but with all the craft. And here’s the point I want to make, as creative people, we are being asked to create ideas faster than ever before, so can we bring our level of craft to such a height that great execution becomes a muscle memory and we don’t have to ever choose between fast and great.

Lesson 5: There will be a Blackjack coming soon

These are bad times that we are all going through, but there’s one other thing that I’ve learned from Blackjack, that in every sixth game there is a probability of 4.749 per cent of getting a Blackjack. Now that means that there will be a Blackjack once every 21 games. So, every time I’m suffering from a creative block or generally feeling down, I always know that there’s a Blackjack just around the corner – a great creative solution, a great plot for a story, a great scene for a film, an idea for a start-up or any problem you’re facing; there will be a blackjack coming very soon. Twenty-one hands of bad cards and the world will get its COVID-19 vaccine too.