People should put aside their educational status and start thinking like a child to look forward to a happier future, Ketan Bhagat, author of the novel Child/God, said here on Friday.

Addressing participants at the Third International Conference on ‘International Marketing in Asia Pacific – Issues and Challenges’, jointly organized by the GRD Institute of Management and GRD School of Commerce and International Business, Mr. Bhagat, the younger brother of one of India’s leading novelists, Chetan Bhagat, said that people were born with different thoughts.

He lamented that the current education system had shrunken the thought process and had made it rigid rather than flexible. “Thinking is a critical interest in the future. It is also an investment for a peaceful future,” he added.

Talking about the importance of wisdom, the younger Bhagat said that it was wisdom that created successful personalities and not just education. “Education is one of the tools that help in the shaping of life. But it does not give wisdom. Wisdom comes from experience,” he said.

Bhagat also said that like children, people should do justice to their respective roles. “A child plays the role of a child with all its heart. But people often tend to imitate others and lose their identity. This also tarnishes the thought process,” he said.

He further urged that while choosing fields, people should choose a field where they would feel themselves. Only if people chose the field in which they felt alive, they could be successful. “We can never fill in the shoes of somebody else. People are entirely different from each other. Be yourself,” he pointed out.

The first time author said that people themselves were their greatest inspiration and should work with core intention in everything. “If the cause is right, the universe will manifest the execution,” he said.