The butterfly effect of following a dream

• I often get different versions of "so, what's your story?", here it is:
  (TL;DR: I adamantly pursued one simple dream & it ended up having a butterfly effect on my life.)

At 19, my dream was to travel outside India and see all the 7 continents on Earth but I had no money + weak passport -> after 189 rejections, I got three paid engineering internships abroad (UN East Africa, UWS Australia and NTU Singapore) -> NTU ended up hiring me as a full-time scientist -> I worked for 3+ years researching melanogenesis and nano-cages -> got selected to join two Antarctic expeditions for climate change where I led the first winter exploratory aircraft and minted the first NFT on the continent -> made the world's longest food delivery to Antarctica which became viral -> declined direct PhD & quit my job -> completed my journey of going to all the 7 continents by 25 -> got the selective Entrepass from Singapore & started my first company, SitesGo (which became the #1 website agency for academia; clients include MIT, Stanford, NTU, NUS) -> started my second company a year later, SuperBlond (got to work on creative campaigns for Tiktok, GoPro, Insta360, Meet The Drapers among others) -> started creating tools for dreamers online (DearDreams) with a pop-up store in California which completely sold out with zero marketing -> continued doing cool projects (some of which blew up) which led to more cool projects and a fulfilling life today.

During this journey, I got to experience hitchhiking across Iran, busking in South Africa, living in the Sumatran jungle, crossing African borders by foot, visiting the North Korean border, setting up world's southernmost ETH node in Argentina, flying an aircraft to Antarctica, work with my dream brands and people, become a digital nomad and more.

My parents come from a village in India that's not even on Google Maps and when I grew up the only thing we owned was a 3-seat scooter. By every probabilistic prediction, my life should've been impossible but my journey made me believe anything is possible if we never give up. Dreams are magical and pulling this off as a random nobody with no family money, network, or guidance broke the simulation for me and changed how I view the world. It taught me the art of doing whatever I put my mind to - I would’ve had the same shift in perspective had I decided to become the best carpenter in the world within 5 years.