Author: Parimal Aluri

I am a coach,consultant and trainer. Human behaviour has been at the core of my studies through experience and academic pursuits. I am a certified practitioner for NLP, CBT and Mindfulness. Mental health- it's benefits and ramifications go a long way in creating societies which are inclusive and progressive. Through my writings, talks and engagements, aim to bring about positive change and progress-one person at a time! I am also a professional astrologer and offer consultations.Through my writings and engagements around astrology; I contribute in my little way to do away with misconceptions and complexities around astrology and try to make it more simpler and easy to understand so that the benefits that it offers can be enjoyed by a larger audience!

The story of every new year!

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

Whether it is 2023, 2024 or 2025, or whether it was about the years bygone, fortunately or unfortunately for majority of the 8 billion inhabitants of the planet, thankfully enough the new year is more about a simple change of calendar! No, don’t have to jump to conclusion- there’s is nothing right ort wrong about it- it is indeed a change of calendar and for the different regions of the world- as humans we often end up celebrating the arrival of a new year multiple times within a set of any chosen preceding 12 months! This short article is not about dissecting this space but rather knowing this fact, trying to unravel how things measure up and how our minds get tricked into believing a lot of ghost whispers and fairy tales that often always leads us astray fro m where we ought to be- getting us back again and again to the 1st of January which more or less looks pretty much the same had it not been for the calendar keepers! So let’s roll and step a bit forward!

To begin with every new year often seems that time when individuals and corporations alike are compelled to that irresistible urge to re-dedicate and rejuvenate! Well, to begin with this approach itself has a challenge- because if that’s what was being done through the bygone years’ then how did you again land up at a point where this again became necessary? Whatever happened to the re-dedication and rejuvenated approach of 2022? Sure enough you can always come back saying- the effort needs to be altered to changed realities which are beyond one’s control- sure I buy that and that is precisely the point of this rant! You cannot set a frame for what is formless- you need to come up with a frame to capture the form as it begins to crystallise- whether that crystalizing form is a solution- a blessing or a challenge- ushering in a diversity that alone can decipher your path ahead and what becomes even more critical is the frame that one comes up with! Let me give you a quick example!

Say you are witnessing condensation of a liquid- now you want to collect the liquid into a vessel- what material you use will also depend on what is getting condensed- (condensation is not necessarily only water!)- so if your framing of a context is erred- chances are you will find opportunities slip by and in worst scenarios unwelcome challenges arriving at your door step with a predictable frequency but variable intensity! So what’s the plan? Well read on…

Whether it is January 1 you choose or any other day and call it as your new year (well your birth day is more apt for more practical reasons- all your joys and sufferings get started from there!), the fact remains that unless you evolve and develop with a mindset to stay fluid and in-step (if not a step ahead) with the times- each day coming your way will be sprinkled with anxiety on the bed rock of unforeseen surprises- positive and not serving as well!

Many coaches and guides will tell you that, the only sure way to stay relevant, resilient and in-the-game is not by only appreciating what is unfolding around but also importantly about connecting within and understanding your core drivers and competencies which can hold you steady in the unfolding times ahead! It is this vital essence of knowing yourself well enough and continuing be aware of this is what distills greatness away from the average! You see once you know who you are- what you are- you are able to define yourself- you know the extent of your limitlessness- everything else will soon begin to make sense! Let me explain …real quick!

In the workplace- wherever you are-what you see is that people more or less will have the same technical qualification- but what separates them laterally or vertically in the hierarchy is the expertise and tenacity that they would have developed over one singular function over the many others that they preform and this vital differentiator moves them where they are! Nothing to suggest, that one is greater than the other- but once you get anchored on what gives you comfort and ease to deploy your learnings you arrive ta a formidable place of confidence which only grows and consolidates with time to help you do what you do really well over a period of time in an incremental value- as long as you stay true and anchored to your core drivers within you.

What you thrive upon is what will drive you and make you travel through the journey of being good to great- with minimal effort and little resistance! Not all MBAs become CXO’s but many CXOs are MBAs! Likewise not all doctors are famous and many famous people are doctors! Its at the end of the day, how deeply you are entrenched in what you do and whether what you do is out of choice or compulsion- if its a calibrated and intellectually thought of choice- that decision will help you shine and rise- if its a compulsion that you are dragging on with- the brightness will dim and flicker through the course of time!

I will not spoil your much anticipated New Year Party….leaving you with these thoughts for you to reflect and mull over, as you sip into that enviable glass of wine! Here’s wishing you an empowering 2023 and hope you connect within and propel ahead on the core drivers that help you thrive!

Before I sign off, happy to inform you that we are now a 4000+ strong community and heartfelt thanks to all of you, who have been part of this journey! Look forward to continuing this journey in the year ahead! As always, stay sane, stay wise and yes, decipher what is hidden in plain sight!

Ciao for now! See you again in 2023!

The essence of Calm: Before, through & after a storm

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

At a time when I write this, we have a hurricane creating widespread damage along the South East coast of USA, this after having ripped through the nation of Cuba. Somewhere else in the world, there are massive protests and agitations owing to mishaps, political oversights, societal assertion of heir rights, at times with an overwhelming note that says, “enough is enough”! If you thought this was enough for a day on the planet Earth! Well, try to dig a bit deeper and you will find many unfolding events- seemingly isolated at the start- but as you begin to see the emerging pattern all these seemingly isolated incidents soon enough begin to throw up an interconnected and intertwined pattern that weaves the fate and future of the planet and humanity at large! Join me here as we try to decipher a way around the seemingly fluid conditions that arrive to greet us every morning- whether that’s the co-worker who has decided to move out, the business that wants to shut down or grow fast or a nation that wants to re-write it’s perception- the singular answer that humanity seeks is “How do we stay calm- anchored” with all or any of these playing out around us! So here we go!

To begin with, the reality is, storms are ever present and everywhere- at times visible, at times hidden in lain sight, at times expressed and yet at some other times subtly parked away- only to be sensed by those attuned with the contexts around! Whether it’a massive natural calamity that’s heading your way, a society (of which you are a part of) or perhaps a witness to the unfolding’s around, the only real way to grasp and act or decide not to, will all be achieved and remain effective only as long as you have a quick thinking, flexible, fluid and calm mind at work- a mind that knows too well, that no time is ever right for an emotive response- no matter what the situation is- what really makes sense and matters is a rational and collected calm mind which can open up locked challenges with or without a key- but for sure will always ensure that you as an individual will embrace the least damage in whatever you choose to engage with!

The Calm mind before the storm: A calm mind is able to foresee and anticipate the storm as it begins to gather pace- you may want to argue- why can’t it stop it- that’s where a lot of pre-emptive follies take place- when emotive anxiety overtakes rational and wise observations, many a times we need to act in a rush to solve a problem (which we think is arriving), we actually end up creating more grave and more intense problems which are far more real and damaging and pale in comparison to what would have actually come your way! You see, a calm mind is not about inaction or inertial resistance- it’s more about being able to stay collected, observant and pragmatically thinking to estimate two relevant parameters- how much of what is being gauged- is real and what is the probability of that reality coming to life! It’s only when a correct assessment of a perceived problem is done through this lens, that you will be able to hold a steady hand as you ride through choppy waters of a fierce storm! Like every chef knows too well, great food becomes possible only when ingredients are well picked and uncertainties are dealt with through the process of cooking- all of these requiring a focussed and calm mind!

The Calm through the storm: Whether or not you were able to prep your mind, before storm that came your way, you still have a decent amount of hope on your side if you are able to improvise and stay calm as the storm dawns upon you! Whether it is that tough deadline at work, those spreadsheets and presentations taking a toll, or it’s that number crunching that’s driving you insane or that eternal worry about a perspective client- will they or won’t they sign the dotted line! All of these and many other instances can actually arrive with little or no warning, throwing your minds straight into the proverbial boiling water! When this happens, and it will some or the other time- through your long and illustrious life- you will be gladly surprised that at times, doing nothing at all can be a wonderful thing to do! A calm mind has the potency and power to discern with laser sharp focus and no matter how cluttered the subject on hand- or how ambiguous things may seem to be- as longa s you have a calm and focussed mind- you will be able to firstly decide whether you need to act or not and if you need to, you will be able to calibrate the intensity, force and direction of your action- ensuring you are acting in the right way and the right direction to realize the right results! There’s never anything achieved by burning down your house to kill a rat! Right force- to the right space at the right time, is what translates into great results- don’t believe- talk to the paramedic or the fire fighter in your neighbourhood- they are the finest artists who have mastery on this art of staying calm through a crisis- always and each time!

The Calm after the storm: Now that the worst has passed by (for the moment), a clam mind helps assess the damage/benefit more accurately. Getting emotive, hyper reactive will end up damaging all and any benefit or lessons learnt through the journey, a calm mind will help you assess, articulate and formulate with finesse what works and what doesn’t, so that the next time you face a challenge you have a storm- you know what you should certainly not do! Sure enough not all storms are the same, neither in intensity, nor in their form, but the fact is, as long as you have learnt to harness the power of your mind by staying calm, chances are you will ensure that your damages are lessened with every passing storm, making you more prompt, wise and strong with each passing milestone of your life! Ins’t this the simple and foundational story and fact of our lives- no matter who we are, what we do and the different definition of success that we pursue- as long as we have a great ability of refined discernment- you will almost always be able to wriggle out of complex situations with as minimal damage as possible- the essence also lies in the fact, that to begin with try and avoid getting into those odd spaces (the area where the storms take birth!). This works well when it comes to deal with linear storms, that are unidirectional, but when individuals are confronted with multidimensional storms that have the potency to take down and impact one more more aspects of life definitions, that is when the real test of being “calm” is realized and if you ever happen to get into this space and walk out- perhaps even bruised and battered- but not bitter- trust me you will be completely newer version of yourself – as they say version upgrade2.0 or 3.0 whatever you may think fits well!

I leave you here with these thoughts for now, take some time to connect with that calm within and see the difference it makes for you- to choose your battles, check the storms and then ride ahead with more control and more resilience to emerge on the other side better, even though you may be a bit battered!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then the key word- “Calm”- realize, practise and cultivate it!

Tricked by your brain.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

We live in an era, which is just that our brains need! Whether you struggle to take simple decisions or end up taking complex decisions on an impulse, whether it is signing up for the wrong vocation or whether it is taking the wrong bus- you can simply put the blame on your seemingly innocent brain- seemingly, because, no matter what your IQ is when the brain decides to call the shots, even the best of minds can go haywire! Join me here we take a sneak peek into this space and try to unravel what perhaps is happening here! So here we go!

There are many wise books out there, written by eminent neuro-scientists, psychologists, medical professionals, psychiatrists, behavioural experts; more or less all of them agree to one simple truth that the human brain is one fascinating machine that can throw all your theories and scientific analysis out of the mind and present situations that one has never thought of! Sure enough, through the last 100 years, as technological advancements have made it possible to assess and experiment the working of the brain- it has simultaneously thrown up more new questions than answers that it has found! Perhaps that explains why more and more medical professionals have started to agree that they don’t have answers to all questions and there is a point where even the best of scientific enquiry will fail and falter!

We dwell in times where instant gratification has got hard wired into us. One primary reason for that is essentially how we have kept evolving as collective societies- some places this aspect has played out more than elsewhere. The reason why instant gratification is so empowering is that, your brain’s love for inertia begins to blossom! Whether it is that communication about a remedy for looking fit, a chocolate that you can binge without worrying about sugar, or that air purifier which promises air as clean as whatever, fruits, apartments, job offers too? well our brains are always seeking to optimize the energy balance of our physical bodies- that implies effort / benefit analysis! So wherever and whenever your brain is able to decipher a decent trade off over effort and benefit- you are tricked! So what’s it’s about eating away that chocolate in the dead of the night, or finishing off those finger crisps while no one is watching, it’s all the part of the game! yes, sure enough office delegation techniques- both upward and downward too are a factor of this albeit with the compounding effect of the ever diminishing intelligence! So what’s the deal here? (another gratification question, I must agree!)

Simply put, our brain’s ability to decipher accurately the effort/ benefit space is what makes us as a species so unique and successful, no doubt around that. The problems start when the brain begins to deploy this while being influenced by inaccurate/misleading/ half-baked content that it receives! This is perhaps what throws even our poor brain off-guard- for beyond a point analysis will give into intermittent analytical paralysis and which will eventually grow into chronic indifference and apathy and end up changing your brain- from being an active -active discerning tool into a passive-passive reactive tool! You’ve heard about that phrase right, “Listen to Act, not to react” well, something like that, but sadly with more long lasting and damaging consequences!

An easy way to guard our brain, from reaching such a seemingly painful and unwarranted stage is to begin to filter what comes it’s way- the old adage “The company you keep!” Well, it works , whether you like it or not, be surrounded by people who are inspiring, more driven to specific causes, pursuing thoughts and ideas those are empowering and aimed for the larger good, looking outwards and upwards through sunshine and storm- this one simple trick will bring in a refreshing change and begin to re-wire and correct the lethargy and inertia over time as these more meaningful impressions begin to over-ride the cobwebs of the less serving and closed loop instances of the bygone time! As with people so with everything else, your choice of residence, it’s upkeep, the hobbies that you pursue, the vocation you choose (importantly the people you choose to work alongside or work for or have them work for you!), the books you read, the information that you soak in- what you allow to assimilate and what is that you filter and delete immediately- all this matters- even as much of this happens in an ongoing manner subconsciously, once you try to apply a focussed and directed effort to fine tune with some effort the results can be far more rewarding and enriching!

More often than not, you will also see that when it’s a fatigued brain, your ability to discern on a topic or task at hand, will seem to sway more towards an emotional response rather then being a calibrated rational discernment which is more logic and facts driven! This is another fall out a tired brain as it tries to strive a balance between the effort/ benefit space, the only undoing being that it’s perhaps not in the best of it’s health to do so! Something similar to wanting to lead when you are not ready for it, or trying to hit the asphalt when you are kind of a little tipsy, if not all sloshed! A tired brain, is in a simple mode- “If this doesn’t kill me, whatever action follows I am good!” so whether it is that meaningless shopping, only to come back and find out you have the same dress back home, or eating to realise, you actually have to rush to the washroom- because you lost track on the amount you binged! or many other such instances, which are almost always followed up with statements like “I should have, could have or would have” acted, done things differently!”

The trick to ensure that the brain is all wired right and is able to discern (and not emote) on the effort/benefit space is to keep it nourished and alert- as you may have guessed it a lot of that depends on what you consume and what is consuming you! Whether it is the food, the ambience, the people, the books, the social fabric around you- as long as you are able to soak in that adds value and empowers you to create lasting value- you will find your brain is as alert as that of a baby and is ready to usher in an eternal bounty of creativity/art and scientific enquiry based on the fundamental trait of a healthy brain- Inquisitiveness! A healthy brain, is always seeking, learning, un-learning, re-learning, adapting, adopting and building on what is meaningful and beneficial on the basis of rational and pragmatic discernment rather than an impulsive emotional response! I am no way suggesting that emoting is of secondary importance, rather when your brain is nourished you will find a greater degree of alignment between your rational discernment and your emotional responses and that’s when you hear the statements like “I love this life as I get to follow my passion and be successful through that!”

I leave you with these thoughts here, urging you to nourish your brain, as you must so that when you have a geared up brain, the tricks that it plays, empower and surprise you in a more welcoming and pleasant way, ensuring you follow a path of empowered thinking, creating more empowered actions for an empowered life!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another topic, until then stay wise, stay nourished and consume what empowers you, not what consumes you!

Taming ambiguity.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

If the bygone years and months have brought to us any worthwhile learning, it is about a singular fact- uncertainty and ambiguity are on the rise and whether we have signed up for it or not, they will come vising us, every now and then! Ironically what makes ambiguity, what it seems to be is, how we receive it, why we do so and what we do about it! Join me here as we try to explore how we can remain sane in an ever increasing insane world around us! So here we go!

To begin with ambiguity manifests in all it’s entirety, when it chooses an individual, organization or a society at large! You may often find islands of peace and control when evaluating ambiguity on a social or collective plane, however that fine line (which is so very important) seems to blur or get lost when it comes to dealing with ambiguity at an individual level!

Unlike conventional thought, ambiguity, chaos, uncertainty are not necessarily regressive or negative- need not be- it’s almost always how we react and prevail over them is what makes them seem to what they eventually end up becoming! Case in point, nations across the world face issues with regards to natural disasters, every now and then, at times with cyclical and predictable accuracy of occurrence,even as the intensity varies- floods, hurricanes, land slides, forest fires, ponder about the region 200 kms around you and I am sure, there is an element of uncertainty that lingers out there from nature’s perspective- but rarely does any of that scare or bother us- because through the evolution and development of the collective society, ways and means have been thought through to deal and engage with these events and instances- at times the methodology is evasive and that of avoidance and at times it is about deploying modern technology and pushing for a calibrated co-existence with its usual trade-offs!

When ambiguity visits us at an individual level, the stakes are often much higher for they leave us fortified or scarred for life or at least for a longer duration of our seemingly shorter life! The reason why this happens is that, in the rush of the life that we have embraced and lead, we often get that moment of isolation (the fabled “me” time) which is the foundation needed for effectively engaging and dealing with ambiguity! In the endless hurry of wanting to deal and deliver with everything that comes our way- we end up using the same yard-stick for every unique event that comes our way! To begin with rarely do we even bother to think, if we even need to respond to what is knocking at our door! You see, for making that choice to act/react or ignore one needs enough space and time (proportional) to what the ambiguity seems like to begin with! Act in a hurry, chances are you will end up complicating further a seemingly simple scout knot, decide not to act and chances are you may allow a simple problem amplify with time to assume a monster like proportion, causing you to lead a war which could have been completely avoidable! So what’s the way around this?

The foremost step, for effectively dealing with ambiguity/chaos is to take a step back and hover above and over what seems to be arriving at you! A bird’s eye-view- should Is ay an Eagle’s Eye-view is what is needed when dealing with pressing uncertain issues cropping up and racing at you! Whether it’s about you, an organization that you lead or a society that you are a guardian for- as long as you are able to rise and hover above what seems to be coming your way- chances are you will be able to take decisive steps and actions to quell and tame the seemingly ambiguous situation and make it more meaningful and actionable and ensure that a repeat of those same instances are avoided going further! Once this has been done, the next steps all boil down to the contextual realities and the least damaging option that one has at hand!

A lot unwarranted sweat and blood gets lost while dealing with ambiguity also because we tend to act/ react on an emotional note rather then applying the power of a discerning mind! There’s nothing right or wrong about this- because the story of human lives and societies has always been about the follies and failures of emotional overreach when what was required was a simple rational approach based on “I think” rather then “I feel”!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, giving you that intentional moment to reflect and plan on what you think your next approach will be like to engage and deal with ambiguity that either has already on your hand or perhaps just around the corner! Last but not the least, no ambiguity or chaos is bad as long as you learn to tame it! It’s not about what comes your way, it’s always how you deal with what’s coming you way! The human brain has infinite tricks tucked within to make monsters appear when there are none and also provide a false sense of security even as the ground beneath is sinking! About that- some other time! Until then, stay safe, stay sane and yes, “Practise the Pause” before you hit the button on your device to embrace or ignore what’s staring at you!

Ciao for now! Will be back soon with another piece- Some facet about The Human Brain seems an interesting aspect to write next about!

Lost in Transit!

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

2022 has been what it seems to be! Exhilarating, Stagnant, Challenging, Uncertain, Ambiguous and certainly much more then all of this, perhaps even something else to many of us! As I keep saying, Truth may be absolute, but realities of life are always contextual! Join me here (after a long hiatus!) to decipher this space were individuals and organizations alike seem to loose their way even as they dwell on the perception of being in control and are racing full speed ahead to reach a place- the only challenge being, the vectors to the direction are all over the place! What unfolds from these journeys, needless to say is a space of further dis-ease and chaos which only continues to fuel people ,societies and nations into the never ending downward spiral of misplaced priorities and lost battles (which are nothing more but grave miscalculations based on perceptions, more then anything else!) So here we go!

Sure enough the last few years, through the global slow down owing to the pandemic, upheavals in political priorities and social realignments the world over, pockets of fluidity have crept up all over the world with varying intensities making those areas that much sensitive or should I say Insensitive to what is really that matters and what is being perceived as important! This in turn has ended up creating the apt context wherein it is much more easier for individuals and societies as a whole to loose their way and end up arriving at a point in the future which they had never planned to be or opted-in for! This is the real essence of getting “Lost in Transit” and this is (whether you agree or think differently) what resides beneath every failed or failing decision that we act upon either as individuals or collectively as societies in general. At a societal level, at times inaction is gravely detrimental and more unforgiving then action with errors! But why do we land up this way, what really is happening here and what is that we can do about it, is there anything really that can be done?

No one, absolutely no one (irrespective of access to opulence) would choose a complex way of life where every moment seems to be a test of survival! Each one of us, all of us each day, begin with a healthy spoonful of hope and direction but by the time the day has gone by, we at times find the day was controlling and directing us more, even as we then thought we are the ones’ who were in control! Let me break this down for you! Let’s take this scenario which is so familiar and simple, you decide to be on time, reach the office, deliver that assignment (which you have already re-read a dozen times) and win that appreciation and put a check on your to-do-list for the day! Now the chances are either it plays out exactly as you scripted it should in your eager and anxious mind (even as you have a ton of confidence) or the chances are that among all the other elements that are passive to this event- the people, the place and the technology- either one or few or all of them could fail and sabotage the whole thing! It is not about your intention or effort going amiss, it is about the readiness of the context around to embrace and implement what you script!

If this could cause so much of angst for a simple office presentation for an individual, imagine the chaos and ambiguity that multiple events and varying scenarios can beget collectively for societies and nations and it is these compounding set of endless individual events that shape the large macrocosm of a society which eventually end up short serving the wider collective- which could be an establishment providing livelihood to a few thousand, a society of a few million or even a nation of a billion people! This lack of synergy between the ability to provide/ act and assimilation of it within the relevant spaces of a society is what derails and throws off track the whole direction and soon enough misplaced priorities begin to over ride and whatever little sanity is remaining for a meaningful voice shouting out right directions is silenced in the ever increasing noise and chaos of ambiguity all around! So how do we go abut this?

Answers to complex issues are never easy, and when it comes to ensuring that what is relevant overrides all that isn’t , the resistance to change and progress (which is inbuilt within individuals and societies) does all that it can to derail and lead astray even the most noblest of intentions! Perhaps one way of looking at this is, simply devise a plan or strategy to act to the contexts around and build answers to what the wider challenge seems to be (whether or not that is relevant and then seed in the real solution within it and deploy!) A kind of Trojan approach where the recipients get to witness the arriving solution as what they want/desire it to be and as they are drowned in the excitement that they have been victorious, allow the real intent to play it’s part and complete what it is meant to- even before the excitement of victory is settled, the job would be done and the society or the collective cohort would have been left with no choice but to align as they only had welcomed what came their way with all pomp and gaiety! Seems unfair, but in a world that is ready to tear down every shred of fairness, nothing gets more equal then this approach! Sure enough, this is what is used all the time by governments and businesses all the time, offering lip service of discounts, amnesties, rebates and then hiking taxation so what you got is eventually taken away!

On a more smaller scale- the space of personal and individual interactions, it becomes far more easier to avoid being lost in transit- for you have control to stay or move away as soon as you notice things are not aligned to what they should be and begin to assume forms for which you never signed in! To gauge this though, moment to moment awareness and alertness is absolutely required. Often people are too drowned into an emotional twilight zone where the only hue is different and varying shades of ambiguity and grey! Constant ignorance and disregard to what doesn’t fit so well by filtering everything through the lens of emotions, is more often then not what leads to individuals being missing the real direction, journey and eventually the destination and end up arriving at places and with people that they never signed up for! Whether its is about your personal space or the work area- this inability to think and discern on a rational and pragmatic scale often leads people short changing their approach and eventually the story of their lives often begins with, “I could have, should have…but!”

Sure enough, there is no standard operating life-manual for each one of us is wired differently inside out, but guess that’s what makes the world a wonderful place to be in, it’s only when these amazing wonderful and intelligent beings wire with each other in less meaningful and dumber ways that regression overtakes progress and we end up creating a future that no one signed up for! This is the real story of being Lost in Transit! To avoid, stay authentic and know when to move away from what doesn’t seem to be what it is meant to be or says it is!

I leave you with these thoughts to ponder over, as you arrive at your much earned weekend! Ciao for now and will be back soon with another piece and yes, let’s stay wired in the right earnest to empower and uplift all those whom we can as much as we can and as many times as we can!

Bye!

Making sense through shifting narratives.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

What a year it has been! A lot of us would be glad that the year is drawing to a close, albeit even as each one of us pauses for a few moments to check our losses and come to terms with the collateral damage that we have all got into; even as we do so, we are staring with confidence and doubt, anxiety and hope into the new year that seems to be a few days ahead, yet seems to be so far away! Join me here for a short trip, to know, why I went silent for over a month, what is it with the shifting narratives and finally, what is that you and I can do, to stay sane, even as we race full speed ahead another seemingly fogged out welcome to yet another new year! So let’s roll…

If 2020 was about all the crying, wailing and screaming about a new virus- accidental or intentional, 2021 was all about allowing “Vulturism” to take centre stage! 2021 was dotted with ample instances of shifting narratives- be it the pandemic itself, the conflicting stories about the vaccines, their efficacy, politics, business corrections and what not! Every few weeks, our online screens have been successful in diverting our attention from one “so called matter of life and death” to another, every few weeks, you and I were told, “If we didn’t get it right and if we missed what was been told, we won’t live to see the end of the year” Sadly for these folks, you and I are still here and the bad news around this is, so are they and their factories that churn out these dumb shifting narratives! So you may, by now want to understand, what is that you and I can do about it and is there anything that we can really implement- even at a personal level to regain our lost sanity and basic attributes of humanity- well yes, we can do a lot, bit by bit, even as the mad circus on town gets played over and over again even through 2022, simply by choosing not to walk into that lane leading to the circus! So how do we do it? Well here we go!

To begin with, create your personal sovereign space- both physical and intellectual- this is like drawing lines which are non-negotiable and defined to ensure your physical and mental well-being is never compromised.To do this effectively, you need to come up with clear plans about knowing who your sources are and how credible they are- whether they ask you to take the next jab, the next pill or even about moving your house or exploring a new job, only once you have secured the first line of Influence that can alter or modify your decisions sufficiently and weighed them practically for their accuracy and neutrality- will you be able to have access to quality knowledge/ information and it is only when you have authentic and neutral information that you will always be able to come up with empowering decisions! May seem difficult to do, sure it is, good things and great events are never easy, only disasters and accidents happen fast and quick!

Once you begin to treat yourself like a sovereign nation and take the onus of a protecting your well being, trust me you will see a lot of unwanted noise getting filtered away in no time! The next thing is about knowing what you want to do with the information that you have! The world is constantly shifting- that is one side of the story, the other more not so visible side of the story is- what part and how much of meaningful change is brought to your notice or is available for your to decipher and what is really important and hidden away (either intentionally or otherwise!). This is another important aspect that adds fuel to the fire of shifting narratives! You go to bed, happy about your investment portfolio only to wake up the next day morning to realise you have lost 30% of value simply because some shit hit the roof in some Asian market- which you probably have never even heard about! Have your ever noticed, no matter how high or low markets hit- the companies listed always are safer then the retail investors who almost always have their wealth eroded after a finite time, in one way or the other! Sure, people do make gains, make profits and also earn millions- but, for that to manifest there’s always more then meets the eye playing out right in your blind spot! It is imperative that one needs to have or rather develop a great skill to sieve through meaningful context to decipher what’s missing rather then what’s available- for the missing links almost always set the tome for the next unexpected hair-pin bend on the road to your success!

Know the distraction, demonstrate acceptance to deviate and deflect! You see, whether it is the politicians, the screens that keep blaring information/ content at you, all of them are doing so with an intent and purpose and as long as you keep visibly defying them by word or action, they will just keep coming at you with all the power that they have or have grabbed and keep hammering away what they want you to accept/agree (at least until they are sure you have done so!) So, if you want to stop that unending onslaught, go back to your childhood days and deploy that ace trick- say yes and do nothing and keep repeating that in a loop, and that’s something for which there’s no answer!

As the world moves ahead to change calendar years, the upcoming years are going to be anything but ordinary or reassuring! What 2020 has shown is that nations will go to any extent to alter the course of human progress and that they will take any risk to alter the global power equations! No one will accept, neither will anyone be ever able to conclusively decipher whether the whole act of the setting off the pandemic was accidental or intentional- but one thing that has certainly emerged from this episode is that, nations can get away with mass murder- if they plan and deploy those strategies with finesse and a soft art of fluid diplomacy which swings between extremes of softness and borders on the edge of war mongering! No, this is not about fear mongering or about selling a possible doomsday story, but it is about encouraging you to think on the pivot of your intelligence and common-sense to decipher what;s hidden in your plain sight on an ongoing basis- for that alone is the only hope and way to stay clear of shifting narratives which show no signs of abetting in then near future as humanity keeps it’s onward march in pursuits of progress (or is it something else disguised within the definition of the word progress- think! you will know!)

I leave you with these thoughts for now, will be back with another one soon and yes a promise to keep, you will see more frequent and more varied topics coming up as we journey through 2022!

Stay safe, stay wise and decipher what’s hidden in plain sight!

PS: Beginning 2022, one-on-one coaching/counseling calls will be available through zoom! For more details please feel free to write to me at parimal.aluri@simplifylives.com

Maverick minds for maverick times.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

If there has been any commonality of all thats unfolded around the world in the last two years, it has been stitched by the fabric of maverick thinking- at times it has helped and yet at other times it has harmed. Join me here as we try to decipher, the what and why around this space and understand what makes being a maverick so potent! So here we go!

Contrary to popular assumption (which by itself is another pandemic of sorts!) being a maverick doesn’t necessarily mean that someone is or wants to be reckless, alternatively the converse may be more accurate! you see, when this whole virus episode cam visiting us, all the normal ways of thinking had to be pulled off and away and societies which did that, saw a slightly better result in terms of ability to save lives and ride the storm out with as much little damage- if we have to say it that way. Sure enough there have been lapses and there have been those systemic failures regarding infrastructure and people not being around when it mattered the most and that point itself is another validation of why we need people around who are and can think like mavericks!

Normal human behaviour, reasoning and logic works well and evolves when there is a linear disruption- where changes happen over a period of time; consider the fuel price rise or the rise in cost of living- over a period of few weeks or months you will be able to come up with a plan and method to sustain or adjust to the new realities that have walked in to impact your way of living. But when there is a mega event like what we have been witnessing in the recent past- whether it was the pandemic, the natural events- flash floods, forest fires, other natural calamities- the human mind simply is overwhelmed and as your emotional response begins to kick in to stay safe and stay alive- you stand a a greater chance of missing out on an opportunity to come to terms with what’s unfolding on the lever of rational thinking and logical thought process.

It is precisely in these environments, that maverick minds rise up to the occasion and provide a way out which seems like a terrible thing, but as it unfolds, in hindsight, that is the only thing that could have been the answer is what eventually it gets to be! So what is maverick thinking and how is it that you and I can tap into this space?

As I said in the beginning, it’s not about being reckless, it is rather about being observant, aware and resilient. It is about knowing the gravity of what’s unfolding and the ability to respond in a calibrated manner where the measures are just enough to tilt the moment in time in your favour but never in excess- which can go on to set loose a whole set of unwanted side effects and create solutions with more subsidiary and long lasting problems!

Maverick thinking, if you ask me is, being able to think fast, dealing with multiple variables and running simulations of varying degrees to choose a path among the many that are available in which the trade off is minima. You may say, but this is how we also normally think- don’t we? Evaluating multiple options and then taking an informed choice, well the difference here is that in the normal course of evaluations and solution deployment, we are executing a linear approach of negating or shooting down one option and then moving to the next one to analyse; in the case of the maverick mind- one needs to run concurrent evaluations under a confined time and changing situation and this is why maverick thinking is what excites a few and scares yet others! So how do you get one?

Each one of us has the ability to deploy our minds in a maverick manner, we have done it- at times we have realized it and sometimes we have just not taken note of it! Whether it was a sly trick at school or some amazing performance in sports or academics, none of that would have been possible with the conventional linear approach- which thrives on incremental progress and benchamrking- it is only when the definition of experienced comfort and perceived discomfort gets clearer and the contrast gets sharper are we able to deploy our wildest way of thinking and imagination- this is what sets the tone to deploy our minds in a maverick manner!

Whether it was about the fearless fire-fighters battling ferocious fires for months together or the management of the pandemic- it is only when the people responding to these emergencies have deployed weird executions and non-conventional approaches to the problem at hand, that humanity has got a long pause to re-collect, re-group and wage a more planned out and well laid out defence to the nemesis playing out!

To begin with a maverick mind, is swift and is aware- moment to moment- it has an ability to see what is visible and also what is hidden away- small pockets and aberrations which are quickly picked up, for it is within these that the next escalation or emergency can manifest from! Once the maverick mind has sized up or got an edge to be over the crest of an emerging situation, all that is left is to decide on the action that needs to be taken- more often then not- the maverick mind resorts to unconventional execution- which matches every word of the solution in speed, intensity and direction! If you go back to a very famous case around the end of the first Gulf War- around 1991-1992 when the oil fields across Kuwait were set ablaze with no real conventional solution providing an answer, it was a sheer genius and a maverick mind which thought of dousing fire with more fire (controlled explosions at the mouth of the burning oil wells!) The solution worked, worked well so much that now there is a whole science and progressive research around dealing with highly dangerous fire hazards within the oil and gas industry – all of which started with only one maverick thought!

The solutions of a maverick mind are not limited only to situations of emergency, you can see the effects play out as governments come up with some crazy rules, regulations – which seem to be something, but actually are a camouflage to help the government meet some other end result! Consider this, the recent few years has seen volatility of fossil fuel prices across the world, even as this is playing out every few months nations and societies are adding up to the electric mobility eco-system- in few societies that is the accepted and adopted policy position and while in few others, knowing the kind of complex resolution that may be need the governments, are simply holding on to the price rise of fossil fuel so that eventually when comparisons are made charging an electric battery may tend to seem cheaper then have a fuel thirsty old age vehicle! Not only does it help on this one front- but with the onset of electric mobility what you have is controlled movement and calibrated management of available units for mobility in the private and public ecosystem and needles to say each of these units would be end-to-end traceable. With all of this maverick approach, we are ushering in a new age of meaningful and purpose led mobility – so the days of throwing up the key and going in for an aimless long drive as we now experience will be a all but a tale from some other life time in the decades ahead!

Like with everything else, the harnessing of a maverick approach largely depends on who the owner of that mind is and how sane or insane that is! As humanity we have witnessed maverick’s make and break our world with precision and impunity- end of the day a maverick mind is perhaps one of the most potent tools, how you want to deploy it and how deploys it- is what eventually determines whether we rise with it or sink with it!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, grab your cup , try and reflect on your own frame of maverick success and failures and within them you will find latent seeds of promise and fears, what you choose to nourish is what then will grow and manifest as a cloak to your emerging personality!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay wise, keep thinking and be a maverick!

A mutating virus, a changing climate and stuck-on habits!

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

It has been a long hiatus since the last article, and has been for a good reason! No, nothing to worry, have been spared from the virus (as yet!), neither have I been been caught in the changing lines of raging forest fires or drowning streets or vanishing ocean coasts, what I was busy with was actually a deep observation and note taking of what’s unfolding on a macro scale all around us, whether its unfolding in the USA, some Latin American nation or some location within Asia, there are common threads that bind us in moments of triumph and despair and this short piece is all about navigating through these areas and try to realize the coded meaning that resides therein! So here we go!

It now seems like another life to even think and remember what normal social behaviour was and how it was to be “human” and to engage with fellow humans! Sure enough the virus did what it was meant to do (and continues to do so even as of now), sure enough there have been meaningless loss of lives all over the world and even more damaging has been the economic mayhem that has ensued- lost livelihoods, altered futures and what not, but within all of this chaos and ambiguity resides a singular fact and that is “We alone allow to be impacted by what comes our way, not because of what comes our way, but because of how we choose to respond or react to what is coming our way”!

The virus is a classic case, no one is taking away the potency and threat that it brought along with it, but what is equally important is the regard or should I say dis-regard that we as a society chose to offer it, which went on to empower the virus and allow it do what it did and continues to do! Stay on with this thought as I open the next unfolding challenge that plagues us on a routine basis- Climate Change!

I have written earlier on as well, to blame the Earth or to blame a changing climate is perhaps the dumbest thing to do! What we need to do and accept is that, we make choices which are in direct conflict with what nature wants to play out and if you build your home on a rail track, sooner or later you are going to be run over- you build it over a hundred times, you will be hit a hundred times! Like with the Virus, the problem with climate or rather the changing space around climate has more to do with what we have accepted and decided to pursue- call it development, greed or pursuit of the unknown- based on what suits the local narrative – stories are spun and sold day in and day out- the Earth really doesn’t care, when the next storm comes calling or the Earth begins to move and give away- it will not make a difference based on which political party is in rule over a given region- it will come down heavily as it desires to and will be indifferent on what side of the “argument on climate change” you decide to be on- as long as you stay in company of societies that violate basic and fundamental respect of nature- you too will be hit- more or less depending on how close or far away form the epicentre you happen to be!

Whether it is the story of virus or climate change, the common thread here is more to with the choices that we exercise and how they go on to shape our today and the oncoming tomorrow! The virus can and could have been halted by a simple act of “distance”, the issues of climate change could have been simply allowed to play out by providing nature the space that it needs and halting the senseless encroachment into nature especially in pockets where it has held it’s sway through eons.

Easier said, then done right, well sure that’s what it seems like, but that is the fact. The most complex problems almost always have simple and fundamental solutions; it is the unfounded belief and bias that we have developed as societies to come up with complex solutions to big issues, that leads us to create more complexity, rather then resolving the existing ones’ . This is perhaps the greatest paradox of the times that we live in! So you may now ask, so what next!

Well, real trick and the perhaps the only way is to shun away with the habits and behaviours that have “stuck-on” to us as individuals and as societies. It is these prejudiced dispositions which end up leading us to our own accelerated demise, as individuals, as failing thoughts or as failing societies and faltering governments’! Unless we resolve to bring about a fundamental and lasting change in what we seek, how we re-define success and failures, as Individuals and collectively as societies we will end up experiencing hits every now and then, each time our pursuits cross the delicate line between need and greed!

It is easy to blame a raging fire, a torrential downpour, those endless nervous landslides and earthquakes on climate change, flip channels and thank the heavens that your family and you are safe, but unless you do not adopt a behavioural change in consumption and way of living, you will continue to contribute to the effects of climate change and will only end up being a mute spectator to the ever increasing events. So what is that you can change as an Individual or a Society?

Well as an Individual, small choices, could be expensive, may not be can bring in a lot of change! Simple acts of prolonging the life of your clothes in the wardrobe, limiting your travel to meaningful pursuits, calibrating your consumption to what is necessary rather than what all that you can have an access to (simply because of who you are) can go a long way to make things a shade easier. Sure enough no one is asking you not to enjoy or live your life to the fullest, the only modification is to make that quest a bit more responsible and aligned to the right side of the line which nature wants you to abide by!

As societies, collective choices done with greater intent, focus and purpose can have a rapid and amplifying impact to bring about visible changes in a few years, doesn’t’ matter which is the next pandemic that wants to pay you a visit, or which weather condition is about to throw up a surprise at you, as long as you have built a robust social framework of value adhered existence for the holistic wealth of all the constituents and you have ensured you are well clear off the nature’s highways’ of change (the fire valleys and flood plains) you will be spared and more importantly the progress that you go on to make will be more sustained and more robust- simply because you will not have to walk into the trap of walking ten paces ahead every year, just to be pushed back by 100 paces every decade!

This fundamental acceptance to believe in meaningful and sustainable change at an Individual and societal level is the key and foundation on which resilience can be built to overcome the next challenges that may come our way either by the intriguing organism or by the splendid display of nature in all it’s glory!

I leave you here with these thoughts for you to reflect and decide on what singular change you would like to embrace to contribute and make the world around you and for you a shade better then what it was yesterday! Remember, it doesn’t have to be complex could be as simple as choosing your next cup of coffee with a little more responsibility!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay safe, stay wise and stay connected!

Your fail-proof plan to a fragile future.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

The ongoing pandemic has united the world like never before- united in similarities and through sharp contrasts; it’s a pity that it took so many lives and a pandemic to realise what we have collectively as a society have, nevertheless this is the time to sharpen and ensure that you empower yourself through a plan- a plan which is as fail proof as the contexts that it is going to meet head on and as fail proof as it can be in the face of the next challenge that comes its way! Join me here, as we take a walk around this space and try to make sense of what it is to be really fail proof- and why that really matters! So here we go!

There have been innumerable best sellers, articles and scientific papers elucidating the value and importance of being able to plan. Whether its a plan needed for a nation, a society, an organization or simply a plan for self-improvement, we need them and our choice of acceptance and walking through one, eventually decides how great or how dumb that plan was! You see, like an aeroplane pilot, once you cross the take off threshold velocity, you have no choice but to stay committed to the decision and you alone are the one who has the ability to keep choosing more meaningful choices as they keep coming up every few seconds to ensure that you stay in flight and even if you face a problem, you are able to deal with them , by deploying the most potent solutions and choices that you can make in that context of time!

Sans the unwanted and unwarranted jargons and overly complicated suggested methods that tend to crowd the fashionable space of solutions for problems; in reality, the choices that we need to make as individuals can very often be very simple and it is their simplicity that makes them so empowering and meaningful! Whether the choices are about simple mundane things related to what we consume or if those are related to one-off important decisions pertaining to life- choices, as long as they are kept simple, rational & aligned they will almost always be effective and potent and good enough to keep you on your flight path to arrive at the destination of your choice.

The real trick to make these simple and effective choices fail proof and future proof is by allowing them to be intrinsic and aligned to who you are and what you are, rather then what you can do and what you cannot do! The reason why choices turn out to be bad in the long run and often tend to create more challenges then solutions, is not because you would have intentionally raced ahead to make a bad choice, but it has more to do with the dependability of the choices that you make on factors that are beyond your control and external. The more your choices are dependent on external factors, greater are the chances that at some or the other time in the future they will fail or falter, sooner or later they will! irrespective of how good that choice would have been in the context of time when it was made!

Once you have made this fundamental change to your planning approach by making your plans more intrinsic to you, the next equally important aspect is about putting your plan to test and see if stands true to the contextual settings in which it is supposed to operate. Many great ideas have failed even before they could be carefully considered simply because they cam in at the wrong contextual setting.

You may want to argue that how can we have plans those are intrinsic, contextually mapped and aligned, well the answer to that is, if you fail to do this and embark on following the popular methods and approaches, when the odd reset hit, you will also have to take the hit and whether you are responsible for that or not, will really not matter, because you made a choice to be on a wrong ride even after knowing the odds! If you are wondering about a good example for this, well if you are employed, you know what I am talking about here- remember the last time you did not get the raise that you wanted, even after all you did was right and simply because the management said, the company was not doing well, so you could not be given more! Or worse still, even when you did everything right, one fine day the business is sold off and with that your future! Even when it is about business and entrepreneurial pursuits, as long as you stay dependent on that vendor, supplier, market, you will one fine day, sooner or later stall and falter, irrespective of how right or wrong you have been! This is simply because the choices and the whole approach to your planning in all these scenarios is dependent on others, external attributes with absolutely no space for you to leverage on your strength that you may have at an intrinsic level!

The only and really sustainable way to have or devise a fail proof plan for your life, is by leveraging that around what you as an individual can do- irrespective of the external factors and the next important step is to ensure that you get placed in a context or environment where the surroundings begin to favour you or at best remain neutral to what you propose to achieve so that you have minimum resistance and you can accelerate at a speed that you are comfortable with none of the unwanted obstacles and road blocks that people normally face as they begin their business pursuits. Sure enough, business and wealth creation doesn’t happen in isolation or in vacuum, but there is no need to always climb a mountain, you always have a choice to navigate around it, if not totally avoid it!

A fail-proof plan has to essentially be your story, your unique approach to a solutions or a challenge which can be driven only by you and be controlled as much as possible by you! Something like being a chef, you knows how to craft that perfect signature recipe, the only requirement being- being available and in an environment where one is allowed to exercise that intrinsic skill! As long as you use your skill to be your pivot, no matter how choppy the future gets, you will still stand a good chance to ride the storm and reach a harbour safe enough to re-boot your life, but if you embark on a voyage, strapped in all kind of popular belief’s and biases, if a storm hits and the ship sinks, you will go down with it as well, simply because you are too invested in the ship rather then yourself!

I have intentionally avoided a typical management approach to this pieces, because when we speak about simplicity, the essence of driving that point resides in using as simple and as few as words as possible to install that faith and confidence in you that, life doesn’t have to be complex or complicated and yes, simplified living and simplicity is a choice which you can make and rest assured, even if you don’t hit the jackpot every now and them, you will never keep running in circles, trying to achieve the same elusive goals year on year!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, grab your coffee and think around, what is that singular intrinsic pivot upon which you can lead, create and sustain all that you want to plan and manifest in the times ahead and just to be sure, how insular it can be from what can get thrown at it- by the contexts that you move around in!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay safe, stay wise and stay connected within!

The journey from shock to indifference.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

Humanity and the human mind have a strong intrinsic ability to flex and stretch, depending on what direction this flex and stretch takes and what purpose it serves or not, the space around and within that churn will either comfortable or simply daunting! Join me here as we take a look at a simple space which explains, why, whether it is about the pandemic or something routine about our lives- the phases that we go through will always remain the same, albeit the intensity and the impression may be stronger or lighter on us! So here we go!

Through history, if there has been a singular constant about humanity and the human spirit, it has been its ability to overcome all that nature or fellow humans can throw at them! The way of coping up with a new order almost always begins with a state of shock. The state of shock, which is more of, “what is this happening”, “I don’t believe this to be real”, “Why me”, “Is this for real”, “Is this the end” and so on and so forth. How long this stage lasts, determines how well and when a given society and individuals therein will be able to bounce back! The shock in itself has stages, the arrival, the onset and the subsidence. Often the arrival of shock , it’s onset leaves people confused, overwhelmed and hence many a times even after the shock subsides, people still continue to linger under the overbearing cloud of uncertain thoughts, which if not checked in time tend to become unfound fears or meaningless presumptions which go on to take the shape of limiting beliefs and thereby severely limiting the horizons of individual and collective possibilities for the society!

The way to overcome these limiting beliefs is more to do with the swiftness of acceptance and appreciating that the shock will subside. Acceptance is a midway beacon between shock and indifference. It is in this space that individuals and societies make a choice and that choice post acceptance of the shock and deciphering of the shock determines whether the society will move towards compassion, cohesiveness or embrace an unqualified and unwarranted indifference to everything that comes their way in the times ahead!

As long as acceptance is cohesive and progressive, societies and people are able to build themselves back and recalibrate the new terms of engagement and go on to create a meaningful life one more time all over again! But when this gets fragmented and societies emerge from the shock societies are more torn and race away to the final destination of indifference which then starts the timer tracking the imminent collapse!

Indifference is the hallmark of societies that are fragmented and divided in their attitudes and belief systems. The more the fragmentation , greater the indifference and when a challenge arrives, unless it is an existential one, almost all the time you will find one section looking towards a problem and another section looking away from it! This indifference then sooner or later creeps into the very nature of individuals and then you end up in a real time risk where no one really cares what is happening to anyone else, unless they face a similar and greater threat!

But then why is all this so important, how does it matter? Well if you have been awake through the last year and have been a witness to the unfolding events around you, is should be fairly easy for you to notice and identify societies that have been together and that drifted away and how that singular factor altered the future of the societies therein! Each one of us as individuals, soak in what we can, from what’s around us, if we are part of a fiercely cohesive social construct the whole approach towards a problem and the oncoming shock will be radically different, had we to tackle the same shock being fragmented and disconnected. It is in this journey from Shock to Indifference that, individually and collectively we end up making choices which either keep us aligned to the progressive path or at times we get thrown off guard and take a detour which comes at it’s own cost! So is there a meaningful way to stall and avoid indifference and should indifference not be allowed at all?

Like with anything else, what you decide to be Indifferent to and how, matters. Whether things are important or not is a very subjective area and what may be one person’s nectar could very well be someone else’s poison! How long that indifference is, and how that is impacting you in return is what will actually go on to decide how emerge out of a problem, whether you allow that shock to sink in more then it is required to or whether you deal and engage with it at a level where you should, and dissolve it completely!

As societies grow and emerging challenges continue to shock us, how we accept them and how we shape our indifference- whether on the pivot of wisdom or ignorance will determine the collective fate of a society.

I leave you with these thoughts for now, grab that coffee and think- what shocked you, how you accepted it and how did you emerge on the other side- indifference that helped or harmed! When you see this unfold in your individual space and are able to co-relate to the developments within the society, that you will know how aligned you are to the society you are in and if there is no alignment what you must do to ensure you can protect your sanity, around the chaos that you get caught in!

Ciao for now, stay connected and stay safe, will be back soon with another one!

Navigating the turbulence of uncertainty.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

The time may not be apt to throw a piece of positivity and hope when you have all valid negative and unwelcome news floating around, but this is certainly the time to decipher the approach that promises resilience and helps us anchor to our sanity so that we can take small steps or stay put, but never get nudged away form the chosen path that we have given to ourselves! So join me here as we take this journey and appreciate the finer aspects around this space.

Among the many things that I learnt – each time I have taken a flight, has been about the art and science of flying through turbulence. You see, every flight, each time is constantly aided by weather charts, reports and onboard navigation tools to help the flight commanders to steer away from possible inclement weather- which could have the potential to spill your favourite coffee or the well curated breakfast that you so much look forward to! Well the essence here relies around two areas- planning and training.

As with the science of flight, so is it about our lives, with ample or adequate amount of preparation and forecast, often one is able to navigate the odd patches that one may come across through learning from experience and observation, but this stands true only for scenarios where you have been kind of trained to watch out for and have some understanding of the probability of such events unfolding, when turbulence is caused by uncertainty, the stakes get even higher and needless to say, the rules of the game to ride over the situation also change.

When uncertainty comes visiting, there is simply nothing in your experience that will help you to begin with, for a simple reason that you have never experienced it before, the only thing that can sail you through and keep you stay afloat is your intrinsic construct of who you are and how well you deploy that space to manage,deflect and direct what is coming your way.

Anchor to your intrinsic attributes: When uncertainty comes in, the one thing and perhaps the only thing within you that can save the say for you, is your intrinsic construct- which of course is a factor of many things things that go on to make you- who you are! It is your intrinsic construct that has the the most robust wiring within you to help you stay calm and act when it is important to do so! Many a times it is not the problem, but our impulsive reaction to the problem that lands us in a more complicated space and we end up struggling with secondary issues with ever often people end more lesser focus and resources to deal with the real challenge at hand.

Seek Clarity: No matter how ambiguous the situation may seem, there is always a speck of clarity even in the most fogged out challenges that may come towards you. The trick lies in deciphering these in time and then using these unravel the entire challenge that you are dealing with. Often people end up fighting and dealing with the wrong elements within a problem and from thereon begins a deviation which leads to more new scenarios without solving anything in particular. Unless clarity is not there, no mater how well equipped you are, you will never be able to achieve anything worthwhile. You may have the weapon, but without a meaningful target, that’s hardly of any value!

Loose a few battles: As ironic it may seem, but this is the only way ahead! To win wars, a few battles need to be given up, often people get distracted by every other unfolding event or situation around them and end up loosing focus on what must be solved essentially and thereby even when battles are won, the war is lost and all that effort seems to go away in vain! Uncertainty feeds off such distractions and the only way to tame it, is by knowing where to strike, among the many moving targets in sight!

Don’t forget your destination: The turbulence associated with uncertainty is often intense, rapid and comes win with a formidable force, good enough to intimidate, threaten or even make you wonder, whether you will live to see another day, no matter what it is, how it manifests in front of you, as long as you know the destination where you want to be, a calm mind, some rational thinking and a generous dose of common sense can almost always see you through this cramped up space, the only reason why people seem to struggles is that, very often , all that is needed doesn’t become available in the measure that is needed and yet at other times, they come in when the timing is not right!

Everything has an expiry date: Whether it is the highs of life or the lows that you hit, everything and each area of your life has a finite shelf life, no tow days are ever the same and likewise uncertainty too, has an expiry date, the sooner you are able to gauge it, decipher it and approach it- it becomes a certainty and therein lies the solution to end it comprehensively and once for all! Hence the whole space and effort to decipher what you perceive accurately and in a time;y manner, often people end up being entrapped either in the space of over-thinking or of procrastination and either of those two ends can be harmful for you to gain control on an evolving situation that demands urgent attention to the pocket which is important!

Stay in the moment: One of the most important reason why uncertainty seems to be so overbearing is, that often we are not in-sync with our Now! As we go about our daily lives, we are constantly thinking about the future or reflecting about the past rarely being able to stay in the Now and siew the best tat the present brings to us and this is why uncertainty seems to be more ambiguous then it actually can be! Sure enough there would be cases when uncertainty is real and compel but even to know that difference, it is vital that we are able to stay in the moment to experience what is unfolding and discern well enough to arrive at a finite and rational conclusion so that we can tackle what’s emerging!

You don’t have to solve everything, all the time: In a rapidly developing situation it is often too complex and hazy to ascertain that at times doing nothing or not acting upon a situation is also an act! many a times, unfolding uncertainty tend to dissolve away as suddenly as they emerge and reasons for that could be many, but each of them are in a way reflective of the fact that, the control to the problem and the solution is much beyond your realm of action or thought and at times it is better to stay passive and embrace inertia, for time does solve , what you and I can perhaps can’t do much about in that moment of fleeting time! Whether you call this inaction by some name, attribute it some universal energy or simply to your intuition, it doesn’t matter, but staying steady and unshaken even as things around you seem to fall apart is a sure way of knowing that you will be able to engage meaningfully should that engagement be forced upon you!

Stay Realistic: Unlike the conventional stress around being optimistic and shunning away pessimism, the real trick (especially while dealing with uncertain scenarios) is all about staying rational and staying realistic! Hopeless optimism and too much of binding pessimism eitehrways is counter productive for that robs you away off all flexibility and adaptability that you can develop in a proportionate manner to address the challenge at hand. It could be the question of intellectual flexing or physical flexing depending on what the problem at hand is and hence the vital need to balance and stay aligned to what is really out there- rather then reacting to your presumptions and perceptions of what is that you are dealing with!

There could be many more attributes depending on what your uncertainty is, but these are the core areas which you need to know and deal with if you want to tame uncertainty and stall the oncoming turbulence in a meaningful way!

I leave you with these thoughts for today, will be back soon with another one soon, until then stay wise, stay safe and yes unlock your uncertainties and address them on the scale of simplicity, rationality and common sense!

(Painful and Lasting) Lessons from a virus.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

No matter what we think about the virus, from where it came how it came and who can be blamed or not, all of that really pales when you try to assess what is that the Virus has taught us the real hard way and ironically enough, these are the same lessons that all earlier calamities and challenges faced by humanity on a global scale have brought along with them, and like every time, history is forgotten in the greed for creating new economics and geography, putting us all in the direct path of oncoming peril- which then becomes a question of not, if such an incident will happen , but rather more about how and when it will happen!

Arrogance is vain: Human history is replete with examples where arrogance has been proven time and again to be as vain as it can be. Y:et our own choice to selectively delete important lessons from history often ends up leading us to repeat the same mistakes and that’s why History repeats itself! Whether it is the arrogance of an individual about not wanting to mask up or that of a government to claim everything is under control- the virus doesn’t care a damn and given an opportunity it will do what is is supposed to do- unlike humans, the virus’s choice and approach is singular and focussed- that of to infect. We ironically entangle ourselves into this space not realizing the potency of a microscopic organism and our mountain high ego’s and arrogance is the last thing that can ever help us! Whether to mask or not, you may want to debate, you may want to debate about the jabs, but for doing any of that, you need to be alive and that you can be- only when you shun the unrewarding arrogance around the virus and learn to accept a few things with a pinch of salt even though you run the risk of burning your ego!

Quality of Leadership matters: Every society is a reflection of the broader collection of it’s constituents. The quality of choices we make as individuals, translates collectively and this collective quality throws up leaders who we deserve. The one thing that the pandemic has exposed in a very uncomfortable way is the gradient of incompetence when it comes to leadership across levels and across segments of the society. The gross mis-management, wrong people at the right places and misplaced priorities and actions are all but a reflection of the quality of leadership! Whether it is about dealing with a virus or sending a spaceship into heavens above, as long as an Incompetent, myopic and faltering leadership leads, the results almost always will be disastrous.

Collaborative Trust: Whether you are a nation, the dozens of different agencies or local bodies, unless you decide to work together with focus and intent to stall the progress and onslaught of a common challenge, nothing meaningful will ever be achieved and you will sooner or later end up revisiting your past form time ti time as you try to fix the loose ends with no end in sight! The lack of this collaborative trust or the lack of its effectiveness is a direct consequence of the first point that we discussed earlier- Arrogance! At one end in this pandemic at a bio-molecular level we have viral mutations and progress wherein the virus seems to know how to make the most through infected host bodies and cells, even as we end up struggling to collaborate and share our resources to deal with and defeat this menace! The more worrisome part is that, the absence or presence of this collaborative trust is going to go a long way in showing future human societies engage and interact with each other and how effective that engagement will be!

Quality Resources are limited: As a geologist, coming across quartz samples was perhaps the most exciting thing for me during my growing up days, but with time and better understanding the whole aspect around quality, gradation and value of a crystal began to become clear and son enough even when many samples were placed around, the trained eye would almost always get locked on the most clear and pristine piece within the lot and this is what the human fascination with quality is perhaps all about- the flipside being- these high quality pieces are few and far in between among the vast ocean of resources that one may come across in a quartz mine! Likewise when you are hit by a challenge at a grand scale- needless to say- your resources, especially the high quality ones’ and the most promising ones will max out more quickly the you can ever realise and unless you have the dynamic ability to grow wings in flight and ramp up the quality circle of the resources and approach across the teams and stations, you will be left with more and more chaos eventually burning out and exhausting all of the limited high quality resources that you may have around you! Ins’t this what the pandemic has actually ended up doing? whether it be human or material resources, the very aspect of having sustained supply of high quality resources has got challenged and compromised like never before and even the best of technological interventions have seemed to pale every now and then as the infection spike keeps moving up and down across the continents!

Collateral Damage is real: As is the case in any warfare, when you are in midst of a pandemic, which is nothing short of a bio-war, collateral damage which goes beyond the immediate loss of lives is almost certain. How well you are able to minimise this depends on the points we discussed above and this collateral damage is in direct proportion to the intelligence or lack of it as people deal with the challenge at hand! What we have witnessed around the world, unfortunately has been a story of excessive collateral damage- broken families, shattered businesses and despair seemingly beyond hope!

Rational mind is the only potent force: A thinking (not overthinking) , rational and alert mind at both an individual and collective societal level is the only master key to deal with a challenge that tends to be larger then what you can deal with.Death by over-analysis and policy paralysis are well known terms and when you are up against a fast moving virus, the last thing you need is getting stuck in your mind games and staying entrapped within. The only meaningful and effective approach to deal with an overbearing situation resides in the ability to decipher whats unfolding and then act swiftly and decisively to minimise and mitigate the risks coming your was as much as you can. Confrontation of a problem coming from a wide scale event is perhaps not a sane way, even though it brings along a charisma of being a heroic effort, true heroism lies in staying low and waiting for the tide to wash over and rising again when the time is more conducive and when the opportunity to strike back is more realistic and the probability of a decisive counter strike are more!

You are responsible for your Life: Irrespective of who says what, how rich or poor you are, how well to do or not you are, nothing of that will ever matter unless you are able to take total ownership and responsibility of your own life! Over the last year, across the world society after society, as it got overwhelmed by the pandemic, the citizens were simply left to fight at their own level with what they had and what they didn’t! This is bound to happen each time and every time a systemic collapse occurs in face of a sever challenge and this is something that can happen more often then you think and hence the whole importance resides in being able to take stock of things around you and always be responsible for your own self- when each one begins to do this, the burden of collective responsibility reduces and immediately bounce back becomes more easy for a society.

I leave you here with these thoughts, given this is a blog, I stop here with these thoughts and you may want to add and curate your won list further, based on how you have experienced and felt the things around you, based on where in the world you are.The fact is, it is a pretty lonely place to get entrapped into- should you ever land up here, well you will have to throw everything that you have got to overcome the challenge and reclaim your rightful life back!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay safe and stay wise!

Unmasking our times.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

Amid the grim realities that the world seems to wake up these days, irrespective where you are, in the connected world that we live in- one nation in distress has the ability to halt the progress of many others in one way or the other and when that nation is powerful, influential and large- the impact and ramifications are, needless to say, long lasting, deep and cascading! but within these spaces of hectic and chaotic unfolding resides the promise of a wiser way. There is an opportunity to get more clarity on whats’ around, why it is the way it is and what is that you and I can do to ensure, that next time around- we remain as sane as we can! Join me here we take a quick journey around our today, to know how we arrived here, what could have been done better and what is that we can do even now to ensure we don’t let some unwelcome parts of history repeat themselves! So here we go!

Much of our world is dominated today with the developments and news around nations on how they are coping up to the pandemic, needless to say, the first area to unmask is to understand what really is happening around you! Based on your luck- not about being whether your are rich or poor, but about how dumb and clever your leaders are, you would have either by now overcome the brunt of this pandemic or would be still grappling with it! Sure enough as this pandemic unfolded, and people were still trying to figure out what hit them, many lives were untimely lost, and the whole world ended up being into one big clinical trial lab, with everything being thrown at the sick with an effort to save them, not knowing when, what will work! Yes, we did get the medicines which did buy us more time and eventually the vaccine, but the real unmasking that needs to be done is not about all of this, you too know all this too well, how well it played out in your neighbourhood, what needs unmasking is the understanding of what led to this mayhem in the first space!

Whether it was accidental or intentional is now purely of academic interest because, now after millions of lives lost and many more millions completely shattered economically, there will never be any sense of complete compensation or apology from anyone, even if anyone wanted to go ahead and offer one! The whole point in the pandemic space is more about, what was done, not done and how leaderships the world over reacted, making an already complex problem more easy or more complicated! The allowance of the pandemic to run riot the way it did across societies, also highlights the importance of having able, wise and mature leadership- whose ability to take timely and decisive decisions based on rational and scientific thinking could have made the real difference and saved many more lives then what we have collectively accomplished as humanity! This, is perhaps the first layer of unmasking- unmasking the fragility of failing and faltering leadership across societies- essentially having all the right people doing all the wrong jobs!

Irrespective what people say, the fact is that leaders and governments failed their people by being unable to provide what was needed when it was needed! This goes on to stress the point why public policy and politics is so vital and critical and why every vote matters and importantly what and whom you should vote for! It is this realization which will usher in change as and when the time comes for societies to make choices and correct their mistakes- whether they choose to forgive, forget and live to a dumb future or usher in change with a high accountability will vary from society to society and depend more on the other geo-political pressures that tick off at the very moment of decisive elections.

Apart from this broad level screw up on the public policy and administrative space- the pandemic also has created a deep impact on the way we work- I have earlier written about the Work From Home Pandemic which is yet another unfolding disaster in many ways! Add to this the layer of increasing levels of mental and personal disconnect and disengagement (which already was a menace in a connected world) we are staring at times in the future where we begin to wonder how to say a “hello” or perhaps start taking classes to know the right way to “shake hands” all over again!

For few, even the pandemic has presented opportunity to create wealth and profit, well no one can complain, if people start to seek warmth at the funeral pyres and death of other citizens, but this whole space of profit making, under cutting care and simultaneously making existing people slog over extended hours and at times fold up and shut down well working organisations under the garb of an pandemic -things like these are just adding up to the undercurrent of distrust and confusion that is already playing in the minds of the people! This just goes on to to show the amount of deterioration that a given society has undergone and the extent of indifference that has set in with regards to the well being of one another in a real genuine manner!

What the pandemic has done is, it has for once made a clear unmasking of the facts that, whether it be the political leadership, the business community or the so called fabled network circle that people tend to hold so close and dear all the time- when the crunch time comes, there is no assurance that any or all of them will stand by what they belief in and if not all, some of them will fail and depending upon how high your dependence is on what fails around you- the impact you feel and witness around you will be intense or mild! That is the singular reality that this unfolding pandemic has presented humanity with- it has gone beyond borders, to unmask the real abilities, orientations and preferences around societal leadership and depending on the quality of that leadership quotient, societies will stay afloat or sink rapidly!

The pandemic sure enough, has brought in a lot of pain, suffering and intense change which has altered the very core around the space of -who people were used to be and how they used to engage and connect with each other- going forward that will remain a psychological scar on every ones mind! The psychological scares of those who survived , those who witnessed the events unfold at close quarters and those who lost everything will create societies which are broken and fractured deep within and that is the next biggest risk that humanity faces- the challenge to heal the wounds and the scars of this global event! Unless a genuine and human approach is taken to address this space- social divisions and the emerging behavior from divided societies will go on to add more scars even as people struggle to heal the bygone ones’ .

The problem was never the virus- we were always going to find a cure- humanity always has- when it has been challenged to a grand scale- the real problem has been and continues to be the response and the reaction that we offer to solve a problem at hand- based on that defining choice that we make- either we simplify the problem or end up complicating it further and the latter is what has happened in case of the pandemic and we continue to suffer owing to the incompetence of the few who took the wrong turn to embed us more deeper into a corner rather then getting us out of the woods!

The pandemic has in fact brought into limelight glaring shortcomings all around us, Incompetence of Leadership, Collaboration, Trust, Failure to implement values that bind humanity across the world, the ugly face of opportunism, one upmanship, aid disguised as a favour, the real value of meaningful relations, social connects and for one time knowing well, that social media likes and dislikes have nothing at all to do when it comes to picking up the falling and faltering on the ground in flesh and blood! The real pandemic that will follow is the one, which will emerge from these cracked crevices of society- where every person will want to quickly and swiftly calibrate attitudes, pre-dispositions and approach to their own life and for those around them- as these readjustments happen- the world will set itself up for other subtler pandemics from time to time- which are more to to do with human behaviour and expression of all thats bright and all that’s dark!

I leave you here with these thoughts, take a moment in all this chaos around you to figure out what has the pandemic unmasked for you and what it that you are going to do about it- in the times ahead- so that you can create a better version of what you are today- just as I will and everyone of us should- to ensure that we are more resilient and prepared for the net wave that comes- not of the virus but of churning human thoughts and approaches rewired to a new context! Whether you like it or not, the fact is the world that we live in today is drenched in the blood of millions of innocent lives lost- not because a cure was not found- but rather humanity failed to come together when it mattered the most- to act with focus, intent and generosity!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then stay safe, stay wise and take care of all those, you can!

Simplifylives is offering a dedicated window to offer free coaching/Listening session for those who are seeking emotional support in these challenging times- It is our way to help people re-collect themselves and recover quick from the scars of this pandemic. For more details please write to us at simplify@simplifylives.com and we will reply to your requests as we receive them.

The leadership pandemic.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

If you thought or still think, that the virus is the problem, well think about it one more time! Sure enough the Virus does what it does and brings along, all the unpleasantness and unwanted scenarios, but what really allows all of that to manifest and emerge is the quality and quantity of Leadership that you have around you! The story unfolding around us, this very moment is a story of “Leadership Pandemic”- An emerging challenge of sorts which brings us simply back to fundamental spaces of how societies are built, operate and progress! Join me here as we take a look around this space and understand, what really is happening around us and what is that you and I can do or not do in this fluid state! So here we go!

History and even the present times are a testimony to a very powerful reality, which is a simple fact that “The problem rarely is the real problem”, the way we choose to respond to a situation is what either resolves it or ends up complicating it further, making the problem more menacing and complicated to deal with! The current context of the pandemic around the world is perhaps a glaring example of this! So now the real question, why would this happen, or rather why would we allow this to happen? Well the answer to that resides in the whole social space around “expert worship” and “conformation bias” orientation!

Even as the pandemic travelled across the world, taking down one nation after the other, the inherent inertia, ignorance and colossal refusal to act in a timely and decisive manner, failed one nation after the other and what perhaps could have been a managed and controlled health risk, was overnight transferred into a global health emergency. All of this boils down to the simple one question, “who was taking the decisions- For the resulting success or failures are nothing but a manifestation of the wisdom or stupidity of the leader’s mind- the ability to gauge, analyze and think ahead! This is from where the real problem begins and this is the space where the leadership pandemic begins to take shape! With that simple act of taking or not taking a meaningful action!

What really unfolds in a leadership pandemic is that, a problem at hand ends up being more complicated and what could have been easily or with less hardship overcome, tends to just keep getting bigger and bigger with no end in sight! The current spread of the pandemic is a classic example here, sure enough when the menace started everyone was taken by surprise (which as a thought itself, is too good to believe!), so needless to say, we can overlook and say everyone did what they could do best with the limitations and access to resources that they had, but when you see the same problem persists over a longer period of time and returning in a more menacing manner, well then what you need to look at is- what was done or not done in the in-between period of perceived calm and this uptick of the second, third resurgence! It is in the crucial months and days in-between the calm that the fostering of false sense of complacency , the “everything is fine” and the usual self-centred, self-glorifying approaches of establishments have led their societies straight into the path of an even more bigger disaster! So what do we do about this? Well read on!

Sure enough by now, many leaders both public and private are pretty much exposed with regards to their proven ability to deliver and inability to rise to the occasion, this brings us to the vital space that deals with the quality of leadership! The world right now is stocked up with leaders who are accidental at their best and have ended up being where they are simply because they happen to be better then those around them- not necessarily because they bring with them some defining vison or charismatic skill to lead or be a leader! Sure enough, there are a few original and authentic leaders across the political and corporate world, but there are few and far in between; given the kind of mess that humanity has got into- it just goes to exemplify what happens when few wise whispers are overlooked by the noise and chatter of proclaimed experts and leaders! Fair enough, you may argue, but what is that we can do about this?

Well, to begin with no one is asking you to hold a protest or get on to the digital world and express your opinion, emotion and bring about a change- well these may be valuable ways as long as you want to push in some constructive and creative element for a positive way to tackle a problem and bring about the necessary empowering alignment, but the whole point here is, “what is that you are doing about a problem at hand, at an individual level? How are you leading yourself?” Very often when it comes to compelling questions that a society engages or deals with, people tend to perceive those questions to be “they” as in the society versus “me” as in the individual, the fact is that all social challenges , whether global or local start at an individual level and depending on how powerful that individual is and what position and power equation are at that individuals disposition, the challenges will either accelerate, get complex , assume a larger and widespread scale or end up being limited and localised to a pocket withing the community or even perhaps to a few units in the community or just perhaps that individual! This is the foundational bedrock that needs to be visited and addressed if any society wants to being about even an aorta of meaningful and progressive change for a few or the many!

Unlike what gets played out on the TV screens day in and day out, depicting people in important positions as success stories of failures, the whole gamut of meaningful and purpose oriented leadership begins with each individual. Unless each one of us doesn’t take responsibility of who we are and what we do, it becomes impossible to check the quality of what someone else may offer- simply because we ourselves don’t behold the flavour and essence of meaningful and directed leadership. Unless this changes and we assume charge to lead ourselves to begin with, every and any attempt to deal and engage with social or community wide issues will almost always end up being a stop gap arrangement with no enduring or long lasting solution or approach! How we treat ourselves, is how society will end up treating us!

An empowered society is not about one magical leader dictating what others must do, on the contrary it is the ability to empowered individuals to keep their chosen, qualified leadership on the toes to achieve and foster what they have as individuals for the wider audience of a society or a community. This is how and when meaningful and progressive change and development happens! The real problem is and was never the problem, it has always been and will always be the response to the problem, which either simplifies it or complicates it! That well, depends on how bad the leadership pandemic has set into a given society and within the individuals who go on to make that society!

I leave you here with these thoughts, take a pause and do think about it, what is the real problem and what is a more failing pandemic, the one on our hands now or the one that always has been! Ciao for now will be back soon with another one until then, stay safe, stay wise and think!

As stars appear…

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

If you have ever got an opportunity to look up and see the stars appear one by one, this piece is for you! Even if you haven’t this is still for you, so that the next time you get an opportunity, you will make an effort to move out and look up! Join me here as we explore this space and decipher how a simple act can be so empowering and meaningful! So here we go!

As you step outside and begin to stare and gaze away into the dark skies over you, as you spend more time and more minutes, slowly you will see one by one, the stars appearing, soon enough as you continue for some more time , even in a limited section you begin to notice many of them and even the faintest of them eventually! As you zoom back out you soon are greeted by the sight of the hundreds that you can see and even as others around you are left wondering why you are gazing and staring at the few stars above, your eyes and you alone know what you have witnessed and what you have been able to decipher! This small act, although seemingly so very natural and normal has a deep message within, and that message is about, perseverance, belief and intent!

Many challenges that we face collectively or at an individual level have more to do with our ability or inability to decipher and engage with the perceived darkness that a challenge or a problem presents! Like the case with the stars, the more time you spend analysing and staying engaged with a problem or a challenge, the better are your chances of being able to resolve it! You see, the “problem” is not the problem, it never is, the response that you choose to deal with it, is what either simplifies it or ends up complicating it further!

The only reason why we are able to see the arrival of stars and appreciate the magnificence of the universe is because we ready ourselves for it and give the time it needs to appear, once we are where we are supposed to be. Unlike this, the fast paced nature of our life, constantly nudges us to move from one challenge to another and often we end up approaching new challenges even as we leave the earlier ones solved haphazardly or half way through, the result our lives end up becoming a cobweb of never ending situations where we are all but left fire fighting from one scenario to the next!

The real, yet elusive essence of life is not only about the material richness, sure enough that may be important, but when you are able to discover the greater and higher meaning associated with your intrinsic urge, is that real magic happens and it is then, that you will begin to decipher events around you, as they unfold with a clarity similar to that you may have as you look up and await for the stars to appear!

The simplest and perhaps the easiest, yet effective way to deal and engage with challenges or problems (as they are commonly referred to) is all about, developing an approach of proactive engagement with the challenges that come your way or your perceive them to come your way! Each day, make some time available for yourself to gaze over the infinite slate that your life is and try to figure out the emerging challenges. As you make this practise regular, you will be able to dive in quick and identify real issues from apparent ones and be able to swiftly deal with and pack them away so that when you face the sunlight and apply yourself to work, you will not be bothered by the lingering shadows of the problems within the spaces of your mind!

Life is beautiful not because there are no problems or challenges but rather you have them and they empower you to become who you become as you learn to deal with them or navigate around them! The story of human lives and humanity is not only about embracing success and being able to stand out or race ahead, it is more about being able to identify which problem you solve, when and how over the multiple problems that come your way, sometimes the simple trick of selecting the right problem to deal with, provides you a way to not only solve that pressing problem, but also liberates you from the other compelling situations around you- as you learn this technique which empowers you- a technique that is as unique as who you are to deal and engage with the specific challenges that come your way- for only you are meant to overcome them, the only differential being the way you choose to deal with them!

I leave you with these thoughts for today, step out and gaze the sky, allow the stars to appear and guide you to seek the answers to the questions that intrigue you and play with your mind on an ongoing basis! It is only when you learn to engage and begin to pick and choose your challenge that life will begin to change and align to the course that you want it to follow!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay safe and stay wise! For our one-on-one coaching appointments write to us at simplify@simplifylives.com for further details.

A strong government and a weak opposition.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

Well if thought, what this title has to do with the world of business or even individual empowerment, think again! At the end of it all of us, each one of us come from the same social set, whether we choose a private job, run for government employment or wear uniforms or perhaps lead the nation as policy and public matters, end of it all, things will eventually come back to a singular truth, which is not about how strong the government has been, but rather how weak an opposition we have earned! Join me here, we we take a look to decipher this dynamic, see how it can empower and perhaps how things can go wrong and what is that you and I can do in our limited way to adopt and practise a way of life which enables us to create a dynamic equilibrium for all engagement points within the society that we live! So here we go!

Masters and specialists of the political world have always thrived and furthered one singular goal- the never ending desire to hold power to never relinquish it! The bygone age of Kingdoms and Empires- almost always ensured smooth transition within dynastic rulers always survived irrespective of the cost at what it came. This lunatic obsession of blood lines leading the future of empires and kingdoms coupled with the diminishing incompetence and rising impatience within the ruled areas- created a prudent environment either for bringing in a radical change of governance models- from a Crown led- autocracy to People led democracy- which again could have multiple variations based on what the thirst for power and control is! Needless to say you always have the element where the uniform too wants to be part of the hustle- simply because either they don’t really have something to defend and fight against or perhaps because their approach and orientation is in that way- because someone wants it that way!

Irrespective what the reason is and what the variation is, the fundamental goal of any government or governing body is always about control and power! There is nothing to complain about this, why would you, I mean who would want their nation’s government to be weak and submissive, end of the day every member of a given society thrives on a sense of national pride, no matter how big or small your nation is! This is what makes the pursuit for power and control so intoxicating and endless. This is the space where everything right or wrong begins to emerge and when it pertains to the matters of a government, it all depends on which side of an invisible social divide you are viewing it from! If you observe close and long enough more often then not, what unfolds- irrespective of who rules or governs is the debate and competition on whose approach to things (read ideologies) is better even as the end result that is always aspired remains the same- seeking national interest!

The only way to tackle, deal with and engage with a government is by having a potent opposition which can discuss, deliberate and audit the progress being made or not as promised by the government of the day! Sure enough, the government will do what it can and always will- deflect questions on what it has not done and seek attention only to what it has done, unless the opposition is not coherent, congruent and focussed enough, sieving through this maze of conflicting narratives shared by a ruling government can be simply overwhelming and many a times weakened opposition succumb to this, resulting in further weakening and erosion of meaningful presence to even engage with a government, let along debate or audit! You see the real problem with any nation is not that it has a strong government, but rather a fragmented and perhaps weakened opposition. This, is not only the cause of worry for the people but ironically enough enough a problem for the government! Let me explain!

For a government to stay strong is needs two basic things, one an intrinsic strength and sense of direction through policy and action and secondly- perhaps the most important one- a competitive, focussed and constructive opposition which has an adequate representation to ensure meaningful and directed debate and audit around what the government does or not! When this opposition is missing, the government ends up being lost under its own spot light, unable to see it’s own shadows, which a working and focussed opposition can do it with much ease and partner towards ironing out finer aspects of what’s not working and make better what’s working! When the opposition goes missing, with it the government ends up having to do double the work- first carry on the works that it needs to and then, because the opposition is nonfunctional- also get into the space of introspection and self-critique to find out yet better ways and means of working and serving the society! This is where the major problems begin to occur! The government not only ends up doing it’s bit but also begins to take up the responsibilities of the opposition- not because it wants to – but perhaps because there is no real meaningful choice left to engage and deal with in a constructive manner! This is why when a strong government faces a weakened or fragmented opposition, it ends up having to do two jobs, one that it does and the other which the opposition doesn’t!

But why is this bad, well simply put, as long as the purpose and chosen direction of a powerful government aligns to the greater good, fosters humanity and gives common-sense a chance- everything will be just fine, the moment experimentation begins to border on unwarranted risks and respect given is misread as a license to start bullying everyone and anyone around- chaos is slowly but surely unleashed! This also then, is a factor of how weak really the opposition has got, because beyond a point you and I as members of the society will not give a damn to an opposition which has lost it’s relevance political or otherwise! Once this stage is reached and if the government decides to behave like a run away train, you have only one option, either be on that train or get out of the way- nothing and no one will be able to stop it! An opposition that is considerably weakened, at the best is given some compensatory presence by government giving attention now and then, just to have the record maintained that there is an opposition (at least on paper if not in spirit).

A weakened opposition not only fails to hold the government of the day accountable but also fails to draw attention to things that are important and this fleeting loss of focus and action goes on to further compound the problem of an already diminishing opposition. It is not always about the opposition being right or the government being wrong, it is also about being able to deliberate and debate with intent focus and direction on things that matter, which is essentially all but lost. With a weak opposition any discussion just goes on to solicit academic value more then any meaningful political or social engagement or drive! So, by now you may want to ask, how does all of this matter you and me and why should you care for it? Well read on!

Just as a strong and functional government is vital for the progress of any society, equally importance is the presence of a thriving and active opposition. An opposition which has the requisite numbers and more importantly a plan to ensure that the government of the day adheres to what it must and conform to the broader outlines of what the society stands for, beyond these fundamental spaces everything else can be negotiated, constructed and build upon – for that is the real essence of democracy- the rule of the people! A collaborative space of engagement and debate with intent and purpose is critical and essential for any government to perform irrespective of how strong it is; a measured and calibrated opposition is also necessary and important!

If you thought this is limited only to the space of politics, well, think again! If you see what unfolds in the corporate offices you will perhaps know what I mean here. You see the social construct remains the same, irrespective of what vocation we choose and once you have succumbed to the concept of consolidation of power in a unipolar manner in any one segment of the society, sooner or later that will transpire and be witnessed the way society conducts itself across all the other facets that go one to make it! Observe the business leaders around, see the sector leaders around you will be then able to relate how unipolar consolidation of power is so infectious , dangerous and a matter of concern- especially when you have the problem of diminishing incompetence looming over the horizon!

Well there is nothing right and wrong as I said earlier, the important point here is that skewed consolidation of power any side of a line should have any progressive society worried and alarmed for sooner or later as the power intoxicated government begins to erode, most of the times it doesn’t make a pretty picture and when power is given away reluctantly, well we have seen enough examples across the world what unfolds and how the new chapters begin to get re-written!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, take your time off and do reflect! Life is beautiful when there is a dynamic equilibrium and a reversible equilibrium within the spaces of power and control, whether you want to lead a society, an organization or yourself- try too hard one or the other- sooner or later- failure alone will be your enduring legacy!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until the stay safe sand stay wise!

We have opened up time slots for April 2022 for virtual coaching, for more details drop in a mail to us at simplify@simplifylives.com

Empowerment through Inaction.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

Contrary to popular belief and what our minds are almost always trained to do- in one way or the other- not everything that comes your way- calls you to act and not everything that comes you way requires you to act! Join me here as we take a quick look around this intriguing space- where Inaction- Stillness and mere Presence can create more empowering pathways which build clarity and direction and how this can eventually help you stop the habit of unwanted and unwarranted pre-empting behaviour which at times can work potently to disempower you and short change you- in the short and long term! So here we go!

We live in an era where “hustle” is perhaps the key word- whether required or not- we see millions of people day in and day out racing to their work desks and places of work to accomplish something that will be life changing, only to realize by evening that they have to go on with it for another day, then another and then another…the endless tomorrow simply sticks like super glue and the never ending hustle seems to live on! It is certainly good to set measurements, metrics, achievable goals and so on and so forth, for that is how human progress is made and monitored, but when the hustle keeps on going on endlessly with no real rhyme or reasons- eventually the only person who gets hustled is the hustler! You see, you don’t call for an earthquake to shift the furniture in your house- that is not how it works and that is as simple and straight an explanation why endless and meaningless hustle is not good and in fact is very much counterproductive- a major reason for may burnt out minds, failed hearts and lost-in- travel-personalities! A lot of chaos and complexity that we end up giving to ourselves originates from these rushed spaces of hustle which often are accompanied by bouts of instinctive and impulsive decision making- while that may work well for a few most of the time, for the many, it almost always ends up into manifesting even more chaos and begins a chain reaction wherein the individual is left with no other choice, but visiting one problem after the other and this newly found hustle of their lives, soon enough becomes all consuming!

A lot of hustle that we witness around simply evaporates with time, in weeks, months or perhaps a few years, but it will and it does- the real area of concern here is the damage that we end up doing at an intrinsic level to be part of facilitate hustle which is agenda driven to get something in the now, with no real essence or application for the long run- well that is the real story in most of the cases! You see, you may be a hustler and hitting your business targets year after year, but the question is at what cost and at the expense of what! The day you walk out of that business or office, you are only left with scars which tend to damage you at an intrinsic level more then anything else and that is the real and lasting price that one ends up paying for being caught up in mindless hustle of the world! Whether you are a victor or a survivor really doesn’t matter, because by the time the mindless hustle ends, you would have lost perhaps the most valuable thing- Your Time! Which, no matter what you do will never be back! SO does this mean, that hustle is not relevant? Or does it mean that we become passive and take things as they are and stop the effort to usher in change and a better tomorrow? Well none of that, the problem is not about the hustle itself, the problem is with the hustle for things that don’t deserve it for one or the reason! This could be different for different people and it is within these specific contextual realities that one needs to find the real mindful hustle that one needs to pay attention to! This only become possible through Inaction! The primary step before you decide to do something! Empowerment through Inaction is perhaps the only meaningful way to harness and manage purposeful hustle that creates an impact the way you want it to!

Inaction is not about being lazy, neither is it about being passive, Inaction is rather the ability to make a deliberate choice – a choice of not doing anything – because there are many instances, when you allow things to untie themselves they do and it all becomes relatively painless and more importantly when you do decide to act, you actions are empowering and potent enough to bring in a change or shift as you want them to! Inaction is an effective tool and approach because it allows you to observe, monitor and record- patterns, behaviours, impacts and allows you to create a meaningful cause and effect association of things that are unfolding in front of you, if you were to rush in and try to solve something, chances are that even as you try to solve one aspect of a perceived problem, other things will seem cropping up and then the cycle goes on endlessly with no end in sight! When you apply the approach of Inaction, what you immediately end up doing is you stop feeding into perceptions, unfound fears, rushed conclusions and skewed observations that would have been shared with you. You are able to see the dynamics of things as they unfold, people, processes and everything that goes along with it. It is only when you have captured enough of the depth and width of this unfolding drama and you decide to finally act and take a stand- your actions will almost always be decisive, clinical and laser shape- which is normal parlance of the working world spell out effectiveness or productivity!

Inaction is not the inability to act, rather it is the choice made not to act- simply because more needs to be known and understood before taking steps and moving ahead! Like I have mentioned earlier in my other articles, the pause is perhaps the greatest enabler that we have- whether it is the chat that you need to have with yourself or whether you want to assimilate the learnings coming your way and make an impact outwardly to the world. The next time you want to do something, like that in a snap of your finger, hit the inaction brake and take a walk- spend the time that you must in proportion to that impact that your decision will have- it is only when this practise becomes natural that you will be able to shift and sieve through rapid decisions and choices as your mind develops an ability to be in the state of inaction over one area even as it is engaged and implementing action for some other area once that has passed the space of inaction! Meaningful Inaction is always proportional to the probable impact of the ensuing action!

Even as communicators’ we have always been told the value of silence- which conveys so much more- then the spoken words- what silence is to verbal communication, Inaction is to the world of Action and Implementation! It is the vital space within the noise and rhythm that goes along with any implementation and any action, but it is within this pocket that a great sense of clarity and purpose can be derived and many a times the predestined course of impeding actions goes through a radical and decisive change to serve a greater cause and for the greater good!

I leave you with these thoughts for now and urge you to seek your meaningful Inaction to create an even more empowering actionable presence!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay safe and yes, embrace the silence in your action!

The many facets of poverty.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

If you thought anything and everything to do with poverty is all about access to money, food, shelter and varying degrees of opulence, well think again! Sure enough, these are important indicators and perhaps the most visible signs and displays of abject poverty the world over, but the real essence of poverty resides in everything and anything that allows these sad and inhuman scenarios to manifest! Join me here as we try to decipher what poverty is all about and what is that we can do and perhaps not do to manage this, the way we can!

Perhaps the most compelling and vivid memory or a nightmare to call it rightly about poverty is all the visually disturbing imagery, social struggle and strife that we come across through our daily lives. The whole concept of money linked poverty- in terms of ability to access or not access resources and opulence is perhaps just one way of deciphering and inferring about poverty based on broadly agreed social parameters. But this, if you ask me is no real meaningful measure to deal with poverty! The real and perhaps the only meaningful way of dealing with poverty, it’s definition, spread, control and mitigation is all about striking the very root of all that causes and allows this menace of poverty to manifest to begin with!

The whole idea and manifestation of poverty begins from impoverished thinking and acting! The never ending greed and desires to have more and more and all of it only for a few, is what hijacks and steers away any meaningful human essence for a social construct. Once societies agree to create rules that propagate variance and divide resources in a way that tends to serve a few and create dis-service to the many the stage is set for poverty to arrive! Sure enough, I am not promoting or advocating a social or a communist approach either, where- everything belongs to the state and there will be equality in distribution whether someone deserves that or not- no way- the point here is that we create rules and social markers in a way that people are simply left feeling and thinking uncomfortable about how and who they are- and this creates many a times unwanted and unwarranted self imposed pressure to race ahead and surge ahead- irrespective of whether anyone around really cares for it or not! No one is arguing over the ingenuity and the human spirit to progress and make their lives better and more comfortable- the whole issue is with the new age definitions of comfort and opulence and this is where the root of all modern day poverty resides!

If you closely observe, the commonality about being associated with varying levels or poverty or opulence the world over almost always is a conversation about, “where you study”, “where your parents works”, “where do you live”, and “how and where you spend”. This is all about it! All it takes is these few seemingly innocent enquiries and our socially conformed minds are more the happy to quickly start creating buckets and mental brackets to slot in the acquaintance and then either create a sense of happiness on how you are better then the other person in a few areas or start to sulk- because the other person has access to what you are yet to achieve and perhaps have always aspired for! So in a matter of few conversations- a connect with a fellow human- which could have been so many other things and facets of enrichment and exchange of ideas- almost ends up being a transactional encounter aimed at calibrating your own myopic approach and thinking on the world that you have given to yourself- due to the limitation of your perceptions! There are hundreds of examples around us and needless to say, no matter ho well we try, we too can succumb and we do, at some or the other point of time! Whether it is the chatter among growing kids, the grapevine and gossip in the offices or the monitoring of evolving opulence among the business and political class, each one of these instances are an example of impoverished mindset at play- which is the real radical and fundamental root and facilitator for all other visible manifestations of poverty!

No one is saying comparing is bad, no one is saying growing and making progress is bad- the challenge really is within the motive behind all the hustle that gets played out! You may have a great and long successful run- but if the fundamentals of your motive are pivoted over the mistaken understanding about poverty and an impoverished mind is at work- all that achievement and success will eventually all come apart- at some or the other time- simply because all that you build and do will have nothing to offer to the many and as long as that remains- you will be vulnerable and constantly working out of this insecurity to ensure you don’t have to “go back” which again is another fallacy of the over-thinking mind!

The vivid and repulsive play of poverty; really speaking is a measure and indicator of the impoverished thinking within a society and how myopic the leadership thought is as far as the approach to the subject and the chosen solution for it! These leaders could be the mass leaders from the political class or even the community leaders, but another grim and intriguing reality to this is, also about the space of “self drive” or the ability to lead oneself meaningfully by calibrating to the social confirmation, wisely and deliberately by choosing a trim level so that one does not get sucked into the endless and meaningless rat race to seek “socially conformed narratives for not being opulent or being one”!

The real issue around poverty is more to do about impoverished minds trying to create imagery and narratives that limit the many and liberate the few! Only once this is changed and thinking transcends form being impoverished to empowered thinking, will people be really able to see with impeccable clarity- their true value, worth and perhaps carve out a purpose which is more meaningful, enduring and sustaining, irrespective of where they stand- based on what social conformation narratives! The real problem around poverty the world over is not about varying resources and inequality of access- rather it is the minds who go on to create these and foster these to facilitate the agenda of a few while dis-serving the many! The only hope for humanity with regards to doing away with the menace of poverty of all kinds- intellectual, materialistic, social, psychological and spiritual is by allowing fellow humans to have enough time and space to experiment, fail learn and develop themselves on an ongoing basis, for that alone can provide empowered thinking and it is only empowered minds that can create empowered actions to bring about enduring and sustainable lives and livelihoods! Until this happens, each one of us is living an impoverished life in some or the other area and more often then not- the control dynamics will be with someone else!

I leave you with thoughts for now, urging you to take a pause and reflect upon the kind of approach that you would want to embark upon to at least end the pattern of impoverished thinking for yourself- it is only when you are empowered that you can share the spirit of empowerment with someone else!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay safe, stay wise and stay empowered with empowering thoughts!

Your real priority.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

Half way around the world, either you are planning to spend a calm Sunday or you are perhaps already preparing for the approaching Monday- well irrespective of that bit, no matter what you do or not, whether you are opulent or not and whether life has been fair or not, the game really is all about your real priority! Join me here as we take a quick paced walk down this route and decipher why most of us run the risk of running into and carrying further conversations which are more about “what could have been” rather then allowing it to be about “what can be”! So here we go!

Whether it is through the upbringing years at school, the formative years at college or the years spent through the corridors of the corporate world- we almost always end up leading a life – knowingly or unknowingly that is run and directed based on the priority listing methodology of someone else- who ever that could be and this is where the divergence commences!

If you are able to step back and embrace the pause, you will observe that many a things that “were high priority”, “so called defining moments” all tend to fade away and become meaningless or irrelevant with time as contexts change and things move ahead. Sure enough you may argue that, this is what hold true for almost everything and anything around us! Sure it is, but we don’t end up sabotaging ourselves the way we normally end up doing while we pursue the “so called priority” which almost allays is a case of someone else’s dream, requirement or necessity! It is this disconnect that ends up creating students graduating each year with ever more confusion about what they want to do next, with companies re-visiting their corporate strategies every now and then and wondering whether they should continue a product or service or not and governments who end up delivering what is not promised and never seem to deliver what has been promised. The whole social maze around strife and struggle is a whole lot because of this space of misplaced priorities and conformation narratives!

Through the student days, marks and grades are a priority – for that bit is sold to you- as the only assurance for an opulent life and only way to beat the race and stay ahead- well I am not saying this is not correct, the problem is this is not entirely true! You see if there are top 10 students across the thousands of universities then there are the next 20 from each one of them- so even for that visibly small variance of percentage or grades – as far as marking goes -which will never be beyond 10%, to believe that , this 10% difference can create such a wide and un-breakable barrier to earn and live an opulent life- simply doesn’t make sense and neither is that true! You have back benchers leading firms, business and doing exceptionally well, by the simple fact that they are able to hire the top performers at the price that they demand! So if the priority while being a student was only to get good grades or marks- why does this logic fail to deliver beyond an eclectic top 10-15% of the millions of students that exist at any given time?

If this was not enough, see what unfolds in the corporate world- you walk into that grand office each morning- or in today’s context, you hit your WFH desk to open up emails each morning only to find that “new priorities” have come in and as the week and month’s go by- if you ever reflect on what actually has happened- the corporate world end sup being a scene of accidental priorities and misplaced strategy- which often ends up achieving quite less when what could have been- simply by the latent power of the human potential that exists within each organization! You may want to say, that as organizations respond and react to market conditions things are bound to change- sure- but what is the meaningful variance- what’s the whole point of calling something “a priority” if the next market situation is going to ask you to throw all of that into a dustbin and sack half of your team? What does this speak about the whole approach to setting up and defining what a priority is, should be or can be? Think around this!

If you thought, this is limited to only the world of corporate and things that impact socially, think again, just see what has unfolded closer to you- your inner circle- your relations, ideals, mentors, coaches and what not! If you think that anyone or any of them were a priority for you- the essence of the word priority would imply that irrespective of what has unfolded or not- whether things have worked for you or not- you would still stand by them, their guidance and so would they too! But is that how it really gets played out? Well chances are they will not get played out that way and if they do, trust me and count yourself to be the luckiest among the lucky people to have some support system like that going around for you! So what is real priority then? Why is it vital and what makes it so encompassing and omnipresent? Read on!

Well, the real and perhaps the only meaningful and enduring priority that you will ever have in your life is “You”. Unless you make it a practise and a directed effort to place yourself and your core priorities first, no matter how successful you are or not, how rich you get to be or not, end of the day, all of that will be hollow and things will crumble at some or the other time sooner or later- simply because you have no control as you keep working and slogging for external priorities which are perhaps of core importance for someone else- a person or an organization and the trick in that space is, if you are not willing to stay enslaved for that, there will always be someone else to get that done and hence whether you like it, hate it or are good or bad,no one really cares a damn and irrespective of what you gain through that association, you will always end up loosing yourself from the context of failing to give priority to yourself!

Giving yourself priority is not about being self-centred, selfish or being disrespectful or disconnected or disengaged to working for others, with others or anything around that! On the contrary, once you are able to give priority to yourself, you know the value that you carry at an intrinsic level and that becomes a formidable push to achieve more in less time- especially when you are engaged to fulfil something for someone else- simply because you know that- only once that is done, will you be able to act upon what really matters to you at an intrinsic level – that is to work on your priorities! This is the real essence of moving ahead with a meaningful existence- being able to strike a balance between your real priorities- your intrinsic priorities and the external tasks and assignments that you race ahead to complete by virtue of your worldly engagements!

It is only when you begin to arrange the world around you by placing your priorities- which need to be aligned to your urge for expression, creativity and brilliance will you be able to contribute in any meaningful and uplifting manner to anyone else! You see, all of us want to be leaders and lead, but before we do that, what we must first and always do is lead ourselves! Unless you decide to lead yourself- why would anyone else even want to follow you, let alone being lead by you! No one likes to be lead by leaders who don’t have stories to share or who don’t have a compelling narrative and clarity- and for the leader in you to behold these aspects- you need to first put yourself at the highest priority. It is only when you act with clarity, decisiveness and meaningful directed purpose- will the others around you begin to trust and believe in your abilities and willingly surrender to follow you! Unless you don’t chart a course for your own life, you will not be able to make a great headway to lead a business, a nation or anyone else for that matter- simply because you too would be as lost as the person whom you are supposed to lead- only because you failed to recognise your real priority- which is no one else and nothing else but “You”!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, urging you to think around this and do take some time off and think around”what is your real priority?” Shouldn’t it always be you? The world is replete with examples where people keep racing ahead in a straight line along a circular track, to reach the same point where they started year after year, instance after instance- all simply because of missing the essence of who they really are!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay safe and stay wise! Remember, it all begins and ends with “You”!

Touched by Inertia.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

As ironical it may seem to be, the world keeps going the way it does, not only because of what we do or the way we act, but more because of what we do not do and what we don’t act upon! Join me here as we take a fleeting look at how this omnipresent problem and facet of Inertia- tends to serve us a world that we perhaps end up earning for ourselves- simply by deciding what not to do or by not acting when we ought to have acted! So here we go!

Our modern lives are nothing more then the play of Inertia, for a few of us it comes in as a blessing and yet for a few of us it comes in like an intertwined curse! Whether we like it or not, accept it or not, it persists and it very much pulls and pushes us- by simply through the nature of it’s existence around and within us! Whether it is the measure of success in the corporate world, the desire to create a new narrative for tomorrow or perhaps as simple as getting out of your bed and making it- each of these and many such day to day instances are replete with how Inertia influences what we are able to do, get done or not!

Whether it is the school kid that doesn’t seem to listen to you, or the grown up teen up or your boss at the workplace or the relationships that you deal with- each and every person that you connect and engage with, for whatever the reason there could be, is at all times either being what they seem to be working along their inertial construct- for some it could be about not doing anything and wanting to be the way they always have been and for yet others it could be about transforming on an ongoing basis based on what the surrounding developing contexts are simply to either consolidate their presence, grow it or at times just plain- survive!

There is nothing right or wrong about how you want to deploy your meaningful existence- whether you want to seem meaningful to a few or to the many- all depends on how compelling that drive is- something which is a story of your intrinsic love or hate for inertia. We have all known someone who got run over by change and then we almost always know someone who crated their lives because of change- so if you closely see what has actually transpired- in one instance it is the case of hugging inertia to stay where you are in the other instance it is about embracing it and partnering to take a leap of faith banking on what seems to be coming your way- hoping you will develop all that it takes to manage that bit on the journey to the new hazy destination!

The world of corporate houses and the corridors of political leadership that influence public lives and alter the way people live or can live is no different! You have leaders who want to stick to the ways of the tried and tested not wanting to rock the boat or even take it to some place and yet you come across Captains’ who are driven by an intrinsic urge of wanting to challenge what there is and want to chart a new compelling course which hold the promise of a better tomorrow. It is not that one approach is better then the other, the reality is that a little both of both is required to make an meaningful progress at optimum costs, go a bit too long either-ways- the chances are you would end up doing more damage then progress to whatever you are setting out to achieve! So what really is Inertia all about?

To put it simply it is that mind game that your brain is constantly playing with you- a function of our primitive mind- which only cared about one thing- not getting you killed! So when it comes to complex thinking and challenges of the modern day world that we have come to be- no matter how great or superb the brain is as a thinking organ- it too tires and fatigue sets in- when you a tired thinking mind- chances are it will push the button to hold on to what there is and follow the one simple rule- if doing what is being done and what has been done has not as yet got you killed- chances are you will survive going ahead! This is how students say “yes” when they are asked “if they understood or not” – simply because their mind has read it- if the teacher has not been able to explain three times- the fourth time is likely going to be a waste of time and energy- the teacher may have- but your tired and hungry brain has lost its interest to infer, deduce and compute so that’s when you cling to what there is! Likewise when you grow up and start walking the office corridors- “the boss is always right” because why would you care- if shit does happen- it is at the bosses’ table! Well when you have politicians and administrator’s who are given the task to create, sustain and develop the social framework-bitten by the inertia effect- well you see societies either stalling and stagnating or getting stripped and layered all the time on different parameters- looking statistically vibrant but completely wrecked at the human level!

The real point here is that, whether we act as individuals or as a society or a group- it is our disposition and orientation towards inertia that either makes us surge ahead or compels us to keep on repeating the same cycle over and over again! There is no truth in seeking continual change, just as there is no truth about never changing! The reality and essence of meaningful change resides somewhere in between- that space is empowering meaningful change aligned to what is required in the now and the arriving tomorrow! Needless to say not all of us can go on to decipher that bit and lead the many- the irony of the issue is that followers often have the ability and quite a few leaders are stuck to the earlier stories of the good old days and this fundamental difference of having to work for a myopic leader or a myopic leadership is at the heart of people leaving organizations and people failing to relate to the countries and societies that they live in! So what can be done? Well read on!

To being with you, can do something, only if you are able to agree and concur to the reality that something needs to be done- it is only when this compelling intellectual thought has been verified and has been able to successfully over-ride the pressures of your intrinsic inertial state is that you will be able to act decisively – either as an individual or as a leader of a group! Unless this step is not completed- it will almost always be the a case of few steps ahead and a few steps back! It is only when you are able to make your Intrinsic Inertia your friend that you will be able to decipher exactly when it is time to act and when it is time to wait and that is the secret and essence of being successful or not in the view of the world as it measures success, from your stand point- acting on the pivot of known inertia will empower you to make choices which are an expression of your identity and help you stamp your authority on whatever you choose to do- irrespective how big to small that act is!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, guess my Inertial urge for a coffee to think the next idea, is calling me in a quite compelling way! Until then stay wise, stay connected and yes, do strike a connect with your Inertial connect and decipher what tick you and what ticks you off- for there resides the secret to your empowerment!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then stay safe, stay wise and stay connected! Yes, before I go, A Big Big Thank You for being a part of this journey of ours- this is our 250th Blog! Thank You and Keep sending in those mails and ideas on what you want to hear next!