Category: communication

Failing is natural and Success should be too!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Before you want to jump in try to tell me that “I sound like I have lost it”, well do go through my earlier piece which talked about failure by design! In the mad race that we get ourselves into- for all the valid reasons that you and I may have, what we fundamentally tend to forget is how we got to the point where we are and why do we tend to stagnate after sometime at a point we are- whether that’s we here we rise and stay or whether it is a point where we come back to after rising and racing ahead- each of these aspects conveys one singular message- that message is about- failure being natural and success being something that we have to strive for! No one is urging you not to succeed, but the fact remains, unless you don’t fail safely enough and timely enough, you will never be able to gauge and arrive at the point which defines what success is meant for you! So here we go!

The story of human evolution has been a story of many failures and few successes, and for the reason who we are, we are naturally programmed to latch on to what works and do away with what doesn’t- well that is safe and fine until you reach a point of trying to “reinvent the wheel” and this is where problems begin to manifest! Walk into any bookshop or a library that you are allowed to visit, choose any subject area- what do you see, tons and tons of books written about success, how to get there, who got there, how did they get there, when and why- thats is what is – when you go back to history-m even within those books that speak or embrace success- very rarely do they talk in depth on the human aspect of failure that those individuals would have dealt with before touching success- whether they were great scientists,army strategists, innovators, creative souls- whatever they would have been- no where will you ever easily find the fragility of the human side to who they were written and documented in detail especially when it comes to moments of failure and distraught they faced. What this goes to do with our minds- is that we begin to believe on a few “captured” and “observed” instances of these success stories and as we try to extrapolate them to our contextual realities- we start to believe that we will be successful, because they were, altogether forgetting the individuality aspect of the person involved and the realities of their world when they walked the planet!

The observant human mind can get easily tricked, remember your school days when friends said they may get a B for the project work and land up with an A+ and you are left wondering what you failed to read! Well this is what keeps playing out through and around your life- whether it is your high school, college, work place, business, service unto society or just being plain yourself- the human mind simply cannot always capture what it observes holistically and is default to reinforce pleasure and delete pain (as long as it is not a threat to existence) and this is from where divergence begins and failure begins to become “the bad thing” and success anyhow begins to become “the only thing”!

As time has flown through civilizations, the reason why success has been given the crown and failure a back seat could have different reasons! These could be as simple- people around would not have been keen to know about the failing part, it would not have got recorded the way it should have been or simply for the fact (which is evident even today) that what ever mattered was “getting things done” whoever they came by! Sure enough, humanity has made great strides, but what this has led to is having the burden to lead and create pathways for human kinds progress on the shoulders of a few to dictate the lives of the many! Look around you, chances are that the society you live in is a chronicle of a few who have written the fate of the many within it and this is exactly what happens when people don’t give the time they should to learn from failures well enough by knowing the human story within!

Needless to say, we all are witness to the maxim, “Reaching the top, is easy, being there is the real essence of success”; what does this tell you, well, the plain truth that if success that isn’t as natural as what failure is, it always will be a struggle to hold onto it and a lot energy will simply get sapped up for being there! Let me explain, we have villages after villages at the foot hills of the Himalayas, having the formidable Sherpas living there- that is natural- they are acclimatized through the centuries to live and exits at altitude above 18,000 feet, but when they go climbing the great Himalayan peaks, which are basically a definition of “success” for the mountaineers, but for them are nothing else but a walk in their back yard- albeit a harsh one! So you see what is a great achievement- read as “success” for the mountaineer is a routine walk in the park for the Sherpa- that is what happens when success is not natural and this is why it becomes so difficult to retain it, even if you achieve it- simply because it isn’t natural!

Now, if you were to see the other stories of success, like the great works of art, creative expression through writing, building and innovating- these are the examples which are the real essence of success- but if you were to measure these by the myopic yardsticks that govern our lives today, all of these would seem to be nothing! Unless success too is natural and blends into who you are, you will always have to witness a never ending struggle to retain and manage it- whether it is the position you have at your workplace, whether it is getting your targets, whether it is completing a set of paintings- unless what you choose to do is not naturally aligned to who you are, you will always end up being limited as far as who you could have been and who eventually end up becoming! So is there something called natural success? A state of being successful sans being stressful or insecure of loosing it! Well read on!

Natural success, like failure, is silent, potent and lingers on- whether it is recognised or not and the individual who lives it- knows that well enough- irrespective of what others perceive about it! Have you ever heard about a surgeon who threw party after every successful surgeon? Have you ever heard about a Teacher- who got depressed when few students didn’t achieve the grades- well probable not! The reason for this is that both the surgeon and teacher know very well that essence of natural and real success resides in the simple space of doing what is being undertaken to the best of ones’ ability and knowing that people will continue to perceive to the best of their abilities to perceive and nothing clouds reality like perceptions do! The surgeon or the teacher doesn’t have to take an effort to save every life or send every kid to The White House (all though they may like it that way!); all that they need to stay glued upon is the fact that, they are deploying their skill to the best of what they can and hence they remain unflustered, calm and composed not being insecure or worried about their “success”quotient”!

The modern day narrative and definition has taken the whole essence of success and everything that goes along with it to a very limited and time sensitive space- the yardsticks, metrics to measure also go on to ensure that there is always a hunger for more and more with no real meaningful end in sight and this makes even what has been achieved meaningless in the future! The only people who are immune and are able to stay safe from this maddening and unwise spatial orientation are those who are able to define and calibrate their stories of success and failures built on the bedrock of their own intrinsic attributes and on the individuality that they bring along!

It is these rare eclectic species of humans in the nooks and corners of the society who go on to define the essence and meaningfulness of real success- the natural way and this is why when you visit that art gallery, that fine-dine heaven or read through those well written stories- you feel elevated- because each of those creative expressions arise from the inner solitudes of who these people are and with every story they weave, they are able to shed a bit of themselves into every bit of what it is! If you thought this is limited only to creative people-well humans are creative in what they choose to do, scientists, engineers, doctors, teachers, writers, you think of it and each one of them is- the only catch being each one of them can deploy or will deploy their individuality and intrinsic essence to a limited extent for different reasons and this what goes on to differentiate the ordinary form the extra-ordinary and some stories fade away in months and few linger on for centuries as personification of success- the natural way!

I leave you here with thoughts, urging you to connect with your essence of meaningful success which is measured not on the yardsticks given around to you, but rather on the yardsticks that you think they ought to be measured upon- only when you do that- you will be comfortable being successful and will you be able to enjoy the success the way you are meant to!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another piece soon! Until then stay wise and stay successful!

Stand Singularly, Fall Collectively!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Well, if you are surprised by the title, so am I! Unlike the age old adage of Together we are stronger and by ourselves we are a lot weaker, this is not to contradict that bit by any way! Sure enough, strong societies and nations are always and will always be built on the concept of a unifying cohesion within the elements of the society, but if you are not into public service or politics and if you are one of those who have landed on the planet just to make enough sense of where you are and where you are heading to and where you actually head to, this piece is for you! Join me here as we try to understand, what makes a diametrically opposite idea work for us as Individuals and is this why our societies are almost always a conflicting picture of who we Individually are? So here we go!

Since times of folklore and ever since books have got written, humanity everywhere around the world has been directed into thinking around value of “Together is Better”, “All is Stronger than U and ME” so on and so forth! Well there is nothing right and wrong around it, for the simple reason that these statements and narratives are more contextual, take them out of context and quote them for something else, they loose their potency completely and instantly becoming meaningless all the way! Let me explain, say if you had a million dollars of amassed wealth and simply because “Together is Stronger”, will you be glad to just share that wealth and distribute simply because everyone should have access and there must be a socialist approach to share all the riches and all the problems equally? I am sure you will not ever want that to happen, not because you are a miser or you have some kind of insensitivity, simply because you would want to extend charity as ling as it remains so- you see, charity gone overboard increases dependency and instead of people looking at it as a gift, people begin to look at it as some kind of a right- wherein others slog day in and day out to earn and make some money only to give away- for ensuring they seem human enough within the social lens!

Now if you consider that a society is going to be hit by a natural incident or is threatened by an act of war- what do you think will happen- well, as expected every member will race ahead to help one another simply because they know unless that is done- their future- the short term and long term both are gone and they are heading to a existential crisis- because in times like these- the money of the rich is as equally useless as the poverty of the poor- it is only when elements of the society come ahead and offer what they can- whether that be excess wealth or offer of in-person service all of that eventually tides the situation and ensures that when the challenge is done and dusted the society has something to go back to commence re-building! This is where “Together” wins over “Being alone”, This is the space of existential challenges and inflection points in a society which ask the question, “You may have what you have- is it worth it- given the society that you are in- should “a” or “b” incident happen!”

This is what this piece is all about, given the times that we are in, what matters is the ability to realize and realize well enough that individuality matters over collective group think! Sure enough, you may not be successful all the time, but as long as you are aware about this simple fact, you will be just as fine! You may want to yet argue, but how can this be, when a group signifies strength, sure it does but only as long as the “purpose” of the group and the “objective” that it seeks is clear and etched for the members of the group to know and follow! When you observe your engagements around the social arena that you float around, what do you see? What is that you witness?

Possibly you work in a place where you aren’t even sure how the rewards work and you always hope and pray you get those 10 $ more than your peers for the same work, or perhaps if you are trying to sell your services or products in the market place, you will leave no stone unturned to get that big order, come what may- simply because your business is what make you who you are and these are the fundamental aspects that define your existence or end up throwing you into an existential crisis, should you not be careful enough and think about sharing your riches with everyone around for no real and meaningful reason- these riches could be wealth or the potency of your mind! How many times have you felt let down when your idea or thought was improvised and someone else got the credit, how did you feel when you got few dollars less despite and inspite of having recorded the very best of what you could have done- simply because the other person was “someone to someone”! Well it is precisely in scenarios like these which manifest so rapidly around us in todays’ world that standing up for who you are and what you believe in” becomes so compelling and that will help you, as long as you don’t end up wanting everyone else around you become like you!

This is not about taking a moral high ground and calling anyone to be self-serving or selfish, it is rather about realizing that you alone are responsible for what you achieve- whether that’s a million dollars or a hundred millions dollars, all of that will pivot only and only around your individualistic and original approach and as long as you believe and continue to tread that path, you will do just fine as long as the idea is sane enough; the moment you involve others- who have no potential to think- as you do- or comprehend – as you can (simply because the idea and the thought is yours’), you will actually end up complicating things for yourself as you begin to get weird inputs that really make no sense but you then end up into an obligation to listen to others, simply because you have invited them to the party- not defining well enough, what is and how much is their role there! So, what’s the plan?

Plain and simple, know very well what are the things where you want to be and require to be all by yourself- because not that your are selfish, self-serving or unkind or inhuman, but because others will simply not be able to embrace what you think and feel to the last details as you do and that will go on to ruin all that you would have planned as soon as you begin to pay heed to inputs from people who don’t know what you are aiming for to begin with! You see, you never learnt to swim from a coach who never was a swimmer! More importantly, as you walk through the path of your life, there will be moments when you will require to be a part of a larger group simply to propagate what you are and what you offer, or to amplify what has been achieved or just to be sure that in times of great crisis your existential crisis are managed and that you live the day to be sure that you will emerge on the other side of a storm, perhaps a little bruised, but you will be alive and that’s what is more important when times become what they do and will from time to time!

I leave you with these thoughts here, for you to reflect and think around what were the times of your life when you hit the targets being by yourself, how you ended up complicating when you got others’ around into that and what were those times when being with the larger group saved you enough to live and fight for another day, another dream!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another piece, until then stay wise and stay safe- by yourself and in the group that you choose!

The Bucket Effect.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

I sure know it’s a Monday morning, but what stops us from sparing a few minutes to drive some sanity through the insane lives that we get served on a platter! Whether it is the dumbness that you are fighting off, or brilliance of a mind that keeps you on your toes, each one us at all the time is dealing with some mental energy to the best we can and at times this space is easy and at other times this is what bogs you and me down! Join me here, as we get to decipher what really saps us and what really excites us and what is that we can do (if there’s anything we can!) to ensure we spend more time around staying excited (of course in meaningful ways!) rather than being sulking and wondering at what will hit us next! So here we go!

Choose any society, any nation, you will find the same gradation of humanity- the rich, the poor, the intelligent, the dumb, the right aligned, the left aligned, the non-aligned and sure enough, the “I don’t know who I am and what I am doing” types! What this basically signifies is that, since the times that humanity has been developing on constantly evolving, if there has been any one thing that has always been there until this day is the “Inequality of contexts”, you see no matter how much those government’s or the corporate HR teams keep shouting about “Equal opportunity” the fact is that ends as long as you have the physical resemblance of being a human! So unless you want to be loading sacks or doing some job that calls for mechanical or physical abilities, that whole crap around “Equal Opportunity” means really nothing, simply because each one of us have “Unequal Minds” and for the sake of argument, even if we were to assume of two people having the identical minds the deployment and execution of what is held within the mind will always differ! So that’s as far as fairness of humanity goes in any direction- basically no where! But why should this intrinsic societal disparity emerge?

You see, as human societies evolved- the fruits of labor were not shared through a AI driven model, they were done in as primitive and as human ways as possible, the mightier (either through the mind or through power) always have retained the most and this continues till this day, if you thought it doesn’t happen in your corporate world or the governance model that your nation follows- you will be off target by miles! Even the performance management systems and reward mechanisms through organizations are almost always skewed in favour of the owners/ majority stake holders (right or wrong, doesn’t matter), likewise with governance- you will always find leader’s personal incompetence rewarded by the office that they agree to hold! A case of rising to their levels of incompetence! So where does all this lead us to? Well that is the space of what I call as “The Bucket Effect”- where societies and the people living within end up getting calibrated to the levels of agreed incompetence! If you are wondering if this is good or bad and how this impacts us, well read on!

If you imagine our world to be one large bucket and we have within that different buckets resembling the different social groups that we have as nations and then further smaller buckets based on whatever social stratification that is followed within there. Now you and I are among one of the many drops of water or honey or whatever you want to call that liquid and this is from where contextually you and I do what we do- whether it is inheriting the way of life, belief’s, the pursuits that we end up with, whether they be of self expression, creative, work, vocation whatever that all is – is within the bucket that you and I are in to begin with! It is only as you begin to outgrow your bucket that then you begin to nudge others around within that bucket through your value- creative or nuisance and soon enough you are seeking routes and ways to jump into other buckets (read societies/ nations) where you think, you will be more welcomed and will possibly have a better way to creative self expression that you want to manifest!

This is the long and short of all human strife and struggle, the need and urge to be known, to pursue fame, opulence and indulgence- some of us are able to achieve that space within the buckets that we are in and a majority of humanity lives and dies in the same bucket, praying on the death bed- that if there’s a next life perhaps we arrive in more aligned and meaningful bucket (which seems to be from your point of observation) and the show just goes on! Few of us end up overgrowing our buckets to an extent that we can control and dictate the rules of the bucket- read- business tycoons and the political class and then we have those odd few who are lucky enough to jump across to another bucket- read societies/ nations through migrations/ asylum and actually end up realizing the dreams and aspiration simply because that bucket was more aligned to what the individuals urge of self expression has been! This is the essence of the bucket effect and the story of entire humanity as simplified as it can be! So what next?

Well, if you have understood, the story so far, the singular point is that, “don’t sweat and struggle for what is not”! Once you know your bucket well, and you know where you reside in that bucket, it will be clear for you to know whether you really have the potential to grow within the bucket, control the bucket, outgrow the bucket or change the bucket and once you have known intrinsically, what is the potential that you hold within, you will be able to progress just fine by calibrating the right amounts of efforts for that to happen, because any more will not make any difference and any less, you will be alone responsible for being where you are!

A lot of struggle and wasteful effort is only because people don’t calibrate who they are to what they aspire to be! No one is questioning the human ingenuity, but unless aspirations and desires are calibrated you and I end up standing on the shores hoping for the waves to cease! Calibrated pursuits whether they be for work ambitions or creative expression, as long as they fall in line with an individual’s ability, the bucket that one is in, sure enough people will be able to reach their aspirations, touch the skies and etch themselves in human history! If you observe, a lot of stories of success within buckets and those of across buckets are almost always of self- expression and creative excellence- whether it is the field of arts, science or technology, unless the foundational spark of uniqueness is there, the story of human growth- collective and individual will stall and stagnate! Buckets- societies and nations which fail to nourish these human pursuits more often than not regress and those who nurture them always progress!

I leave you with these thoughts here, urging you to take some time off and reflect to figure out which bucket are you in and where you are and what is that you can possibly achieve within that bucket or by being in some other one; human life is too limited to have wasteful pursuits that don’t add up to anything either for yourself or for the society that you are in! Sure enough, you may not have got to choose your first bucket, but you can make a choice either to make the best within it or change your bucket as and when you can!

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

The secret of resolutions that work.

~ PA ~ 1 Comment

Finally we move closer to that time of the year, when all of us either by choice or by accident end up making resolutions, which hardly a few of us are ever able to stick through even the first month let alone the year! Join me here as we try to understand what makes some people realize what they set out for and why is that many of us get stuck, or hijacked into pursuing and doing things on the list which were never there even in the top 10 to begin with! So here we go!

If we were to assume, that each person always wants to be good, do good and share good and if that was to be the first line in everyone’s resolution- what a wonderful place the world would be! Isn’t it? But you and I know it very well that, this is something that never happens and whether you like it or hate it, in a way is good that things don’t go that way, else the world would be a hue of shades of one singular color or thought! Well coming back to why people falter and fail with resolutions, well one of the most fundamental things about this is the fact that, all of us are designed to fail, some sooner others later! You see, the whole aspect of success is not about never failing or faltering, it is always about that single instance which stands ahead of all your failing and faltering which goes on to become your definition of success. No one remembers, how many times a scientist failed (except the scientist), but all remember that one time when things went well and something amazing resulted out of it. So how does it go?

Simplicity: Most often people who are able to achieve anything meaningful in the context of the frame through resolutions always aim for simplicity. Simplicity of objective, or what they aspire to achieve. So you, see once you have a straightforward clarity around what is that you want to achieve- that thought itself helps you to de-clutter and stay focussed. The space around simplicity of goal or objective goes on to provide and empower and individual’s clarity of action and focus on the task. Don’t mistake these to be a easy goals, they could be as challenging as you may want them to be, but what remains at the foundation is the fact that they are always simple in the essence of the objective or what needs to be achieved.

Intrinsic Orientation: More often than not people who have achieved anything meaningful are the ones’ who have been self-driven, basically what that means is a mindset, an approach to life in general and all the things that matter, which is uplifting and propelling forward. This intrinsic orientation is vital, simply because you may have the most amazing thought around you, but unless you don’t defeat your inertia and make that first step, even the best of ideas will fade away with time as lost opportunities or missed chances!

Compelling Need: The human mind being what it is, only makes the effort when it is vital and to tell it that what you aspire or seek to achieve is vital , you need to either have a plain talk by tricking it with a gratification model, or incentivize the rewards staggered in proportion to the milestones achieved! Unless the mind doesn’t get the answer to “What am I to gain”? nothing will ever happen! You may argue, that isn’t the mind, the same very person? Well, sure enough, but this is what uplifting self-talk and wise mental conditioning is all about! It’s only when you reinforce your thought and belief systems and make them a natural default for your mind that you will be able to approach the whole space of wanting to complete your resolutions not because only you have to do them, but rather now you want to do them!

Influence: The chances of your resolutions’ success directly depends on what the area of influence will be! The more greater the influence you think, your achievement will have, higher are the chances that you will be able to deliver and succeed! You see, when you set up yourself for easy wins and easy gains and when no one’s watching or going to know about it, unless you are one those rare species of authors, philosophers or scientists, who keep doing what they do without caring a bit for anything or anyone else, I bet you will always want the world to know what you are upto and where have you reached on that journey! The primitive desire and hard wired human mind always seeks to show off what has been achieved, whether you hunted a wild boar five centuries back or achieved the sales target three years ago, you want to narrate stories and brag about what you achieved- same goes with resolutions, the more opportunity that your resolution provides you for bragging, greater are the chances that it will be pursued empathetically till you succeed, simply because that urge to narrate that story is simply too high tom let go off!

Challenge Level: Another factor which goes on to determine whether your resolution will come alive or not, is the challenge level. Each one of us sets up resolutions to the level where our competence trims off or our Incompetence begins to appear! Like everything is life, all of us are good to a point and there is a differential when it comes to do this. You see no two people can do the same thing exactly the same way, even if all things around are the same and this small incremental difference too plays a big role in determining how we will finish what we set out to achieve! As long as your resolutions make you stretch and flex your competence and abilities you will be just fine and you will be in all probability able to hit your goals! The moment you aim too low or aim too high, your resolutions soon begin to become meaningless either for the lack of challenge and the “x” factor that comes along with it or because it is simply too overwhelming and seems like a mountain simply impossible to get around, over or through! The damage is more severe and long lasting especially when resolutions are aimed at something which is completely utopian and even rationally impossible to attain!

The Art of Finishing: The chances that your resolutions will succeed increase as you begin to visualise and plan the finishing of the achievement. Basically as long as you are able to see how you are going to conclude and finish and it that bit seems doable and rational chances are you will complete them, but if the last mile seems fogged out, chances are you will want to abort your journey the moment that happens, either because you have lost the game plane or now that you don’t seem to know how the end will manifest, you want to simply move away! you may call this also as the “cold feet syndrome” but it happens, often people start with something to achieve and as they progress they begin to realize they have chewed off more than what they can swallow and well needless to say they have to decide either to force feed themselves to spit it out- eitehrways a not very helpful situation, especially when it comes to setting up business goals!

Meaningfulness: Well not to sound philosophical, but the chances of a resolution seeing the light of the day increase when they are meaningful in the context of not being rational or sane, but in the context of being able to add meaning and value to what you choose to do, are doing and what is that you will want to do as you achieve what you have set out for! You see, many resolutions simply fail because not the effort was lacking but rather the controlling factors which govern them to be manifested are almost always external and beyond the individual’s control! You see a goal or resolution of having less than 1% defect in deliveries done by you is meaningful, but if you add to that a clause that by doing so you will earn a 10% raise, the whole idea gets defeated simply because whether you get that 10% is something that you simply can’t control!

I leave you here with these thoughts, the list could have been longer or perhaps even could have been a book, but than each one has their won idea of heaven and hell so I leave you here to explore that part for yourself!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one soon! Make a resolution that is as meaningful as who you are!

Why perceptions win over truth.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

The human mind is only as potent as you want it to be, decide to turn it off and like a obedient appliance, it will shut down! Join me here for this weekend article on deciphering why perceptions almost always have a strangle hold over reality- read truth- truths about us, about the people, the society, the universe around us! So here we go!

To begin with, one must understand the challenges of dealing with truth, one part of that is, truth is always contextual and the second part is that truth is always difficult. I am not going to write in further depth and give a class on the “philosophy of truth” but in simple layman’s terms, as I have always been saying, “Each person’s truth is true”. Chaos and ambiguity commences when the others around either refuse to see the truth alongside of the context of the person who owns it or they observe the part which suits them and race ahead to draw inferences around that small limited understand- mis-understanding! Perceptions on the other hand are fun to engage with, like some stimulating, hallucinatory medicine, they engage and play with the human mind to create imagery, narratives and motives (for subsequent disastrous actions). If you are wondering why it is easy to shake hands with perceptions- well it taxes the brain much much less and as I have been saying- the human brain only cares if you are going to be dead- all that does not kill you is fine for your brain and that is the truth about the human mind!

The fact remains though that truth is easy to engage with and deal with only and only if people are able to do so holistically while connecting with the beholder of the truth and the contexts around it in the same moment of time! This is what judiciary is all about! Analyzing and observing comprehensive contexts of facts and data that arrive in front of them- read -evidence. This is what takes time and even at a people to people level engagement- whether they are members of your family, friends, co-workers, the feared politicians, bureaucrats,who ever you can think about- each one of them can be engaged with and dealt with only when you begin to invest enough time and mind to understand the origins of the truth that they hold on to- and as you begin to do that- you will be surprised to know that many of the truth’s that people hang on dearly to are more often than not – reinforced powerful narratives based on perceptions constructed over time- days, weeks, months, years and in case of political arenas and running or ruining of nations and societies- these are developed and curated over generations and through decades!

The eternal battle between “truth” and “perceptions” (often held on to as the truth) has been another hallmark of human societies- only societies and nations that have been able to successfully and selectively engage with few truths and many perceptions have made progress! Societies which have over-indulged into wanting to decipher the “absolute truth” have always suffered on an ongoing basis, simply because the only real absolute truth in the world is “death”! Everything else around is contextual and set to a specific audience and social scenario! But why this whole obsession around with “truth” and what allows perception to emerge and race ahead!

Well, what I think would have been the case is that as human societies began to evolve, there would have been a need to share innovation and knowledge and hence the compelling need to be “truthful” because anything short would almost always mean someone not making it back from the wild! You see back then if you were a soldier on guard or a hunter in the woods or a farmer in the fields, the only way to improve your skills and competence would be “wise words” from the “masters” who are the modern day equivalent of quality research journals- albeit which stand the scrutiny of being peer reviewed. Hence this is one of the many other genesis of applying the “Gold standard” to the virtue of beholding “truth” – to share it for the greater good! But as times and centuries changed, over simplification of truth started to back fire- and societies soon began to have a cohort of people who were second to none and from there emerges the birth of the war of narratives and development of perception- to tell the world why “A’s truth (which may again be a perception) is better than B’s). To this day, if you carefully observe the world is stuck with this same crap! Whether it’s your relatives, friends, offices, societies, governments, groups, whatever you choose to observe- you will find that people are more often than not dealing with the long overgrown shadows of perception rather than dealing with what the truth really is and this mindless, endless loop goes on to consume the human mind which after a point simple maxes out and basically is telling you, “whatever, you deal with this shit, I am fine as long as you don’t get killed”! Importantly our modern societies have ended up incentivising the pursuit of perceptions over truths and that has further helped perceptions race ahead of the truth!

You see, truth is plain vanilla- it is almost always a binary- either something is or isn’t , there is nothing more to add to create drama and intensity- you see like you believe in God or you don’t, you don’t sometimes believe in God based on your convenience! So your truth is that you are either a believer or an atheist and that’s about it- but this becomes boring- so how do I make this exciting and more entertaining- well I say you are too simple to be true, your are too uncomplicated to be real, I say, your approach to your faith is cause driven and with these small sparks of ignition, when I begin to create and weave stories the real essence of who you are gets left far behind and what the building narrative begins to do is, it very much starts to portray your perception from the eyes of the people who essentially want you to be known “as what and how they perceive or rather want you to be perceived as” What makes this so potent- well, it is effortless as easy as that meaningless gossip and as easy as intentionally throwing a few odd pebbles to create the ripples and let the “perception aggregators” do the rest! If you wondered why politicians give a damn to the media, well this is the reason- for they know a tad too well how to deal with perceptions and under the belt blows when their contextual truths (if they have any) are served on a platter as perceptions for the masses ort lap it up! So what’s the way ahead? Can and do societies win the war of perceptions and allow truth to have it’s place?

The answer is YES and a NO; Yes societies can change the narrative but for that it calls for a much orchestrated effort which is directly in proportion to the ability of the collective minds to be able to discern and see “what is” and “what is being told it is”! For this to happen you need social frame work which incentives people who are able to present the “what is” narratives and allow people to make up their own views and inferences- simply because each one sees “what is” from the context of “who they are and where they stand ” in the social scheme of things, needless to say also what we need to factor in the ability of their minds to deal with the whole space of the taxing discerning exercise which is o vital to sieve away “the what is” from “what it is said to be”.

The NO emerges from the very YES of this space! Simply because bulk of human kind is so caught up with the effort to simply survive is that, they hardly ever are in the time and space which allows them to be so methodical and clinical to understand and decipher between the real and the apparent and for the few from the society who have that option more often than not it is the case of “who will throw stones at other glass castles, when have their own”! This is why functional societies tend to lap up perceptions more readily than realities as they serve as a pivot to get even. This is the reason why societies stay replete with struggle and strife for one or the other reason around the world, all the time, because that’s what keeps the perceptions ticking and as long as they keep floating, the truth is boxed-in, in a tight corner unable to come ahead, unless and until there is some large scale systemic dysfunction which collapses the society and a new order begins to emerge. If the new order banks on the selective elements of truth, there is much respite, change and stability, however if the new order too begins to go the old ways, it’s just a matter of time before societies end into the dysfunctional stage one more time and this cycle goes one with truth remaining pushed in a corner with no one wanting to care about it! So what’s the meaningful way ahead?

Functional and operational societies tread a balanced path between truth and perceptions and you can apply this thought to individuals as well! As long as there is a fine balance between devoting the just time and space to appreciate the contextual truths on things that matter and soaking in perceptions (to know the truth- not the served perception), things will be just fine and you can very well mark yourself and your society as “safe”. The moment this changes, for whatever reason it may be- things will begin to change (good or bad) depends on who you get caught up as in that space! Depending on which side the leaning is more- either you will end up with people and societies which are vanilla, plain, with “people for rules” kind of environment (when you choose more of truth) or you end up in a fast paced, narrative driven and loud society (when you give in to perceptions far more than the reality) and you often find that here you have “rules for people”. There is nothing right and wrong between what societies or individuals choose to be- whatever the choice may be- the movement of the society or the individual will always be striving for hat lost balance and as the effort inches towards that balance progress is achieved and as it moves away you witness regression- societal and individual!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, allowing you to pursue your sense of balance, because what your contextual truth is, is yours’ and there is noting that changes that- not even powerful narratives emerging from driven perceptions! Be comfortable in your truth, for that alone will allow you to counter the narratives of perceptions that come at you!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another piece, until than stay safe, stay wise and observe “what is” not “what seems to be”!

Be In the “Now”.

~ PA ~ 1 Comment

You have had books written, best sellers written, seminars, team games, outbound programs, workshops and what not around this concept, yet so much of humanity continues to struggle to stay “in the now”! Join me here as we take a fleeting look around this subject and try to decipher if this is really a meaningful approach and if it is so, why and when does it work and when does it fail! So here we go!

To begin with, we must understand and try to decipher from where do the references to the whole concept of “Be in the Now” some in to play! Well there are two broad areas, one is that this concept is not as modern as it seems and there are references to the value and attribute of “being in the now” across different forms of faith, religious writings and belief systems in one or the other way across societies all the time, in fact all the great progress that societies have made have been when “they have been in their now” and whenever they have lost focus and raced far too ahead or regressed far too back, societies have faced problems! But I will leave this ancient civilizational aspect here for now, simply because all modern day approach to this concept banks of this old wisdom albeit with a twist to suit the modern times and societies that exist and needless to say adding a touch of further improvisation or confusion based on who is communicating this message! But what is the real content and message of this space?

As humanity evolved, societies realized through their way of living, what worked and what did not- there have been wise philosopher’s through the ages who went on to endlessly observe and record of how human behavior impacts the surroundings and when does work become meaningful and meaningless, when does it create value and when it doesn’t, when does thinking change into day dreaming and when does ambitions become mindless hallucination! As the wise people kept getting better and better through their observations around humanity and human enterprise, as kingdoms and empire got built and destroyed,as societies became opulent and bereft of opulence, one thing that stood out singularly was the fact that- all intelligence, wisdom, thinking and enterprise will be wasted unless and until it is executed- even if the result is failure- for from there alone will it be possible to improvise further again and again until success- that is- the desired result can manifest and see the light of the day! For this to happen, it was important to not only bank of knowledge (which basically is all but the past) and be able to apply that to the current context of people and resources for a thought to fructify into something meaningful (read intelligence). This is indeed the simple and real essence of being “In the Now”, the ability to apply Intelligence on the acquired knowledge to solve a challenge that provides a solution to alter something that is there in the “NOW”!

So, you see, “Being in the Now” is more about being connected with the realities and truths around, needless to say each one’s is going to be different and meaningful and the inability to decipher that bit leads to perceptions and more often than not we take those snap decisions/ judgements in all that we do paying heed to these perceptions- which are not always what the truth is and this is where the divergence commences and people begin to struggle to remain in the “now”! Human societies the world over whenever have portrayed creative excellence through art or science- always were slow and not as fast paced as we have them today and if you look carefully the quality of creative excellence (which is supposed to be the epitome of human expressions) has all but deteriorated inversely proportional to the acquired pace that a society or individual has got hooked up to! More faster you go, the less you are able to think right and that is why, so many “experts” wanting you to attend their workshops/ seminars and basically tell you to “slow down” , unless that is not done, neither can you meaningfully connect your acquired knowledge to the available intelligence that you have and nor will you be able to pursue anything meaningful with any contextual clarity! So what next?

Well, simple, don’t waste your money attending “Be in the Now” workshops and seminars unless you know what you are getting into! You will emerge just as you went in! Unless an individual or societies make a directed effort to attain a specific goal and unless they deploy their intelligence while engaging it with the available knowledge- staying in the now- will become fruitless and the mind will have no other option but aimlessly either wander into the bygone’s or get consumed into some futuristic hallucinatory thought process!

For “Be in the Now” to work effectively and on an ongoing basis, it calls for much discipline and effort until it becomes your natural orientation. It is only when you begin to get ample clarity of what serves you and what does not, does magic begin to happen! It is an exercise in de-cluttering your life like nothing else, doing away with meaningless and un-serving family, friends, talks, thoughts, aspirations, desires each and every of them, some are easier said than done, but this is critical, unless you free your mind from the accumulated garbage of life around you, it will almost always function at sub optimal levels, leaving you always struggling between your past- present and future and hence your wanting to be “In the now” will always seem to be elusive and stressful!

The “now” can be empowering only if it is deployed and worked upon in the way that takes you closer to your meaningful aspirations! Once you have decently de-cluttered your life, your mind will have more band width to deal with what is around you- your ability to observe and inference in the “present” will acquire a completely new level of potency and that is how you will begin to know that you have arrived “in your now”. You will start to see meaningful patterns- that nourish you and at the same time you will be able to identify patterns that seem helpful but are actually robbing you off vital time and energy for no real reason! As you continue to work and move ahead with this kind of awareness and ability to sieve through fleeting moments with a sharp focus- you will be able to stay more and more in the moments that you behold and deploy the best you can at all that you do- whether it is your office desk job, the novel that you are writing, the painting that you are at or perhaps just the travel you are embarking upon or even may be that meaningful dialogue at business or that time with qualified friends and family each of these elements will begin to create more value and in return you will be to create more lasting value!

I leave you here with these thoughts for now, so that as you race ahead for your much awaited weekend, perhaps you will be able to think about “how you want to be in the Now” and for what and in case you are the lucky one who already has been practising and thinks is “in the now” , well make it more potent, is all that I can say! Human lives are nothing more than fleeting moments- what we are able to create through them goes on to signify many different things at many different times in different contexts- there is nothing right or wrong about how you choose to live- what is wrong- is not correcting when you know you can and you should- especially when you have options around you that can amplify your creative excellence further, and one such potent approach is being meaningfully and intentionally, “IN THE NOW”!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another piece, until then stay wise and stay plugged into your today!

The anatomy of a crisis.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

For some strange reason the world seems to have ended up being an ongoing performance in crisis management! Whether you label those crisis situations as political melting points, ecological and environmental matters, social concerns or challenges, whether it is the access to a desired quality of holistic life, you name it and you will be pretty sure, not to find one but many similar crisis unfolding around our planet at any given time- the only thing in nature that comes close to this kind of continuous unfolding of uncertainty are the lightning strikes and thankfully as yet we can’t blame humans for that as yet! Join me here as we try to understand this space of “crisis” and make an attempt to the see singularities and commonalities irrespective what type of crisis you witness and why there’s almost always more than meets the eye, no matter what label has been attached to a developing situation! So here we go!

Like those relatives or people that you generally dislike, crisis more often than not- whether small or big always emerges with it’s own operational eco-system comprising of people, resources and technicalities, it is often the failure or a fault within one or multiple of these elements that actually to begin with is the root cause as to why a crisis precipitates in the first place! To this context when you add the whole socially agreed concept of “It’s a busy life”, well chances are that way too often you are crossing a road looking at the wrong side of it and it is only a matter of time that you will be struck by a vehicle- read crisis! So why would anyone a crisis to form, let alone play havoc?

You see, one of the most fundamental and important corner-stone’s of being human in the times that we live today is “The challenge of being able to accept what is, the way it is”! Push back from you chair right now, or head to your balcony and spend a few minutes and try to see how fair you have been in accepting life as it was given to you and how fair were you in doing that? Chances are that like most of us you too would have put up your best foot forward to change and alter the contexts around you to “suit” what your aspirations are, well nothing wrong with this, this is how it is supposed to be, but when you have a huge baggage of misplaced aspirations riding of fatalistic optimism, then you have a serious problem at hand and this is the point from where the crisis in your life will begin to manifest in the area where you have been trying to pursue something that basically isn’t there or even if it is there, it’s not meant for you! No one is asking you, not to be ambitious or not pursue your dreams, that in fact is the very essence of human expressions and of being human, what you mustn’t do is submit to mindless intellectual hallucinations and pursue mirages which manifest nothing but chaos and turbulence! Allow me to explain!

Say, you want to be a pilot, cool nothing wrong and now say, you come from a not-so-good space and you have to struggle- great (for once you achieve your goal you will value it even more!); well part of life- that is what the pursuit of ambitions is all about isn’t it? So in this case the crisis will not be ability to continue education, raise money or qualify as a pilot- all those or milestones that need to be accomplished – after struggle and strife- because the goal is to seek the ambition. The real crisis will commence when you try to do all this, knowing well you are not cut for the job and carry on just because your friend is a pilot- so you want to be! Trust me I don’t even want to be anywhere close to the plane where we may have a pilot like that, let alone be cruising 10 miles above! You may want to argue that people can be trained and they will qualify eventually- well sure they will but at what cost and what risk! If you want more clarity around this, do catch up with some great reports of air disaster owing to human factors and you will know what I mean! Let me ask you one thing, would you to a surgeon for a heart operation who is new and has accidentally killed a few or will you trust the fingers of a skilled surgeon who charges a bomb but has done thousands of procedures with no fatality? Yes, the young surgeon will grow and be better with time, the question, is “Do you want to put your life on the line and manifest a crisis in your life?”

You see a lot of crisis that emerges and comes to strike us whether it is at Individual level or at a collective societal level is almost often owing to treading into areas which are either best left alone or approached by people who are professionals and know what they are venturing into! You never ask a Clown to lead an Army and nor do you ask trained marines to entertain you at a circus- while at a personal level both can do that, albeit in their own way! So you see, crisis is never really about the universe or life wanting to get even with you, rather it is a factor of being in the wrong place with the wrong people and for all the wrong reasons! In fact, even if one of these factors is right, still the other two will have the potency to foment a crisis unless people who in the thick of the things are not alert and careful at what they are!

The other reason why crisis become what they do, is the contextual truth of the surroundings and the inability of the people within to read that right! You see, you may have a dumb boss, a great leader, a messed up economy or a pot headed neighbour- but if you aren’t able to decipher the real picture behind these visual cues, you will more often than not end up taking a route of confrontation rather than trying to unravel what resides behind what seems and instead of solving one issue, you will more often than not add up a few more layers onto the existing one like a nicely done Rainbow cake- which you can’t have!

The fast paced lives that all of us are (with or without choice) compels us to make those (sometimes inaccurate- well most of the times!) snap decisions/ judgements (read- prejudices) and that’s more than enough to create issues that don’t solve the existing one but begin to grow on them to achieve crazy complexities! Hence its becomes vital that to stem a crisis in the very beginning, as the practise of mindfulness suggests, step back, take a pause, rise high and take a good look at what things seem to be and try to deduce what they really are! It is only when you act upon situations holistically with a comprehensive view and understanding that you will be able to solve a problem in the right way and completely stalling it from becoming a crisis in the long run! Quick fixes and an amateurish approach are almost always a recipe to accelerate crisis!

By now if you are starting to think that humans are victims of their inability to read fellow humans or situations around and them by unwittingly allow crisis to foment- well nothing could be farther from the truth! In fact it is the potency of the human mind turned on in the wrong way for a right purpose (read self-serving) is when things can begin to go horribly wrong (read crisis) and too real quick! More importantly it does not always have to be the malfunctioning mind of an individual- when that happens losses are limited to the span of influence and area of control of that singular mind- which is now failing and faltering; but when you get a collective group of people with dysfunctional minds and views that ham can be dangerous and in fact that has been the genesis of many a war, conflict, social strife and unwanted human suffering more than anything else!

So you see, a crisis really in a way is a manifestation of dysfunctional human minds- individual or collective and the potency of that emerging criss will always be proportional to the extent to which the minds have gone wrong and how deep and wide their influence is carried! So is there anything that can be done? Is there a way to avoid crisis completely? Read on!

Well, crisis can be only avoided/ limited or mitigated as long as they are created by self-serving and psychologically malnourished humans, when it comes to the crisis created on account of nature- read natural events- floods, earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis and so on and so forth, you can limit those events becoming into a crisis as long as you agree to not be in or around nature’s path! If you still remain insistent about that home atop a mountain with a sunrise/sunset view or that beach front- well rest assured once in your life time nature will reward you with a bonus issue of “nature’s fury” and all that you would have put in- those millions of dollars will vanish in minutes- you will really lucky if you made it out in time! Crisis emerging from nature are not because of nature by itself- they are largely because of human interventions and people getting into places where they should not be in the first place to begin with!

So, if, by now you are really wondering, what is that can be done and not, well things are pretty simple and that’s where the real challenge is! Crisis manifestation is a combination of attributes- it could be a creation of human kind or nature and based on what that is, you nourish the human mind to health- individual and collective as a society and respect nature as you should and get away from where you have no business to be in! As I said, these are the real steps, simple but very very difficult to implement and follow and guess as long as that goes on- unhealthy minds will keep creating one crisis or the other in one name or the other- labels are a aplenty- the sad part is life is not forever- so whether you want to expend it completely this way or want to create something more meaningful and of value-more that is the choice that each ne of us has and we must appreciate that in the context of what that is and can be!

I leave you here with these thoughts, for now, allowing you time to manage the crisis that you are either dealing with or planing to create! Take some time off, step back, soar high and try to sieve your apparent context from the real one and avoid that unwanted crisis and think before you plan to create one!

Ciao for now, Stay wise and stay clear of crisis!

The”Flight Mode” principle.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

The very mention of the word, “flight mode” takes us immediately up into the air and sure enough to the memorable flight that you would have had! But this piece is about something different, it is about applying the flight mode to our daily lives and understand how and why “flight mode” is so potent! So fasten your seat belts and join me here as we get to understand the humble “flight mode” slightly better! So here we go!

While on a flight, what flight mode does is that it creates a pause- proportional to the duration of your flight and more importantly there is no way that anyone or anything can reach you from the earth below, unless you are tagging along some earthlings alongside you who have the authority to barge into your solitude by virtue of who they are! For the sake of simplifying, let’s assume you are all by yourself and disconnected completely; It is this moment created by “flight mode” of space and time which can give you authentic time worth it’s weight in gold simply because this is unadulterated “me” time and unless you are profoundly miserable with yourself, there is no reason why you should feel anxious or restless!

If you reflect back to your observations of the last flight that you took, you would have known the typical patterns of behavior- anxiety, controlled, overly jovial, unnecessarily snobbish, grateful, thankless and the whole range that humanity can offer- well each of these patterns is a statement of who these people are (don’t rush we aren’t judging them) in that moment of time. What is more disturbing is that they choose to be what they seem to be in the time and space of being in “flight mode” when they can be what and who they really are and actually get their 3 -4 year old self back! Think about it! No one is asking you not to work on your office presentation or watch that movie or listen to your favorite music- in fact when you do any of these- you simply are carrying the earthly pile of garbage camouflaged as work or leisure into the air and robbing yourself of valuable and precious time that you can have for yourself sans all and any distractions! Whether it is a 30 minute short flight or one of those wonderful 18 hour super-long haul flights- the time that you are on “flight mode” can be amazingly rewarding if you use it to realign yourself to the greater purpose of your life- and if you don’t have one- maybe start to seek one- I am not suggesting you will attain a “nirvana” or an enlightenment moment, all that I am saying is as long as you know how to make the best of your flight mode on a flight- rest assured when you switch your flight mode on while being on the ground can be even more rewarding! Surprised- well read on!

As we go through our daily routine at home and at work, we rarely get that spacious and meaningful pause! Just as our physical bodies need sleep to be rejuvenated and made ready for the next day, the human mind too, needs it’s space especially in the times that we live today, when changes are swift, severe and certain! This is not about trying to take a sly break and run away into mindless day dreaming or coercive thinking for a future that you don’t believe into or subscribe to, rather the flight mode on the ground is relevant and vital to re-wire and re-assess what your plans have been (if you don’t have, then get one) and tweak them along so that the upcoming U-turns and Hair pins bends can be navigated effectively and efficiently- not done away with- because that is not how life unfolds!

The “Flight Mode” principle when applied to our daily lives- whether you want to spare five minutes a day or a few hours- that’s your call- can usher in clarity and purpose like nothing else! What is important is that the minutes that you choose to be on “flight mode” you need to make sure that it is indeed a flight mode! The kind of sterile solitude that a flight mode can offer is very potent when it comes to reflect, introspect and accept what is unfolding and what will, you see it’s not about taking time off to plan your next strategic move , neither is it a time to sulk at things that have gone wrong or what may go wrong- the flight mode time is all about being with yourself to sustain your self-empowerment and ensuring that your life’s gyroscope is aligned correct and working as it should! Flying blind never helped any pilot and given the turbulence that life brings along, a blind flight is the last thing that you will even want and that too flown and commanded by you!

Now that we are nearing the fabled “New year Resolution Time”, perhaps it’s a great opportunity to just add a singular component of deciding on the minutes for your daily “flight mode” even if you do just this one thing, trust me you will find that you will end up hitting each and all of your meaningful and purposeful pursuits with greater efficiency, clarity and intensity! When you really are able to get to those minutes of solitude with no clutter from around, you are able to see what went by, how you acted, what you could have done better, you get the judge’s seat to see what you are doing “now” and how that is creating something for your “tomorrow” and then at the same moment know if your “now” is connected with your “tomorrow” , if it is how well and if it is not, what is that you are going to do about fixing your “now” by being “in the now”!

Irrespective of what people say and don’t the fact always will be that each one of us always strives to better our lives, no matter how incrementally small that may seem, at times you may feel a sense of stagnation, well that is an illusion, because even if you are sitting still, you are hurtling through space on a planet called Earth! So you, see this brings us to the “Framing your context” space! When you couple this practise to your ability to have dedicated minutes of your “flight mode” you will see magic unfold and will be able to help yourself with more meaningful minutes of engagement and connect when you off your flight mode!

No one is urging you to get mindlessly philosophical, no one is asking you to be hopelessly optimistic, no is suggesting you anything, if there is really anything that is being conveyed is the real and meaningful nudge to get to your valuable minutes of solitude and reflection by having your flight mode switched on for sometime each day, every day even as you go about your life on the surface of the planet! If you happen to be one of those lucky ones’ who have a second home in the skies above, well then what more do I say, than the fact that perhaps you have earned yourself a few bonus minutes of “flight mode”!

Well, before I conclude this piece, we all pretty much know the times that we live in and the push-pull that we all experience, unknown to us many of the unwelcome instances and unplanned interventions actually emerge simple because we haven’t been able to spend enough time on our “flight mode” and as you enrich your time value- you will begin to value what matters and as you begin to value what matters, you will begin to manifest value for yourself and other around you and that then will put you onto a growth and success trajectory like nothing else! To create value externally, one needs to be connected within and first and foremost create a value centric existence for themselves to begin with! No one likes to follow a leader, who has nothing to offer, people will follow you, even if you have failed in the past only as along as they see that you have a promise for the times ahead!

I leave you here, urging you to deploy your “flight mode” as often as you can and hope that it helps you to connect within and help you see all that would have otherwise been fogged out or missed out in the fast paced lives that we have! Remember, no greatness was ever achieved in the vacuum of time or space!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then, turn on your “flight mode” for a few fleeting moments and feel the magic!

Why wise people make dumb choices.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Whether it is about the individual decision that you took pertaining to some space of your life or whether it is the collective decision of an “empowered” group at work or in the society to vote for that project or that politician- each of these decisions sooner or later come under intense scrutiny and often leave us wondering “why the hell did that even happen!” “What the f**k was anyone thinking”! Life is replete with instances like these and many more, but before you rush to think that this is about bad choices or bad decision making- well the whole focus is not on what choice was exercised but on the vital component, “the people” who manifested the choices the way they choose actions to help that happen! Join me here as we take a quick look to understand what really unfolds in this space and why wise people end up making screwed up choices either for themselves or for everyone around! So here we go!

The real problem with our new age is that the line between “being wise” and “seeming to be wise” is blurred and still worse is intertwined! You see, for some reason, we believe in belief’s which are absolutely stupid to begin with and it is belief’s like these which contribute to creating chaos around the real wise and the apparent wise! Given the paucity of time that each of us have at hand and the flood of distractions and inherent lack of focus (don’t forget we are humans, not a jaguar or a puma to excel at focus) often end up up compelling people to click that button or say that “YES” or “NO” without applying any methodical thought or rationalized thinking! The result, well yes, actions and decisions which are then either corrected, repealed or altered in the times ahead at a huge cost of wasted human hours, lives and needless to say money! Sounds familiar? Well, yes this is how governments work- they work on what I call as “Allowable risk of dumbness over inaction” . In this space, when enough information is not available or is available and tends to be beyond comprehension of the holder of that data- the simple choice often made by people on the chair is- what is the loss for doing nothing and what is the loss for doing something with what I know- based on which option is more favorable the button is pushed through and this is why much of humanity and societies around the world end up seeing the same road being dug up a thousand time and redone that many time, all the while solving nothing!

If you thought, that this was limited to only the world of governments, well think again! The hyped world of corporate czars is no different! Gone are the days when leaders within the corporate corridors had time, wisdom and the ability to exercise a choice when it came to take action on a decision made- stakes for failure were high then and rewards for success too were great. What we witness now is, the same hurry to send that mail, say “YES” to a client and then struggle all through to provide what as agreed to! Whether it is the struggle of getting the right people to work (because even gate-keepers begin to make choices based on what the budget is, rather what is required) or getting the right product or service launched, or the right market understood well, choose any facet of the corporate world, here too you will witness a situation where day in and day out leaders in a hurry are more and more choosing between what is on the table and choosing in the now- never realizing how that will dent their tomorrow- for they know very well, tomorrow they are not here to sort out that mess! So now the million dollar question, why do we do this to begin with and what is that we can do and not to manage this?

One unmistakable cause that leads to this inducement of dumbness is the “Rush” factor, wanting to complete and do everything with an intent to “finish it off”, “off my table” rather than wanting to complete it in the essence of “it has been done the right way” or “it has been done to the best of my ability in the context it was presented”! Alongside this we have a world replete with examples where incompetence has been a measure to calibrate or trim leadership and as this happens, needles to say there is considerable chaos and ambiguity in proportion to the acquired level of incompetence. So, when you see wise people end up doing dumb things, it is almost always a factor of either of these two factors or a combination of them.

When it comes to managing, if not being able to completely avoid this issue, one approach that always works is to have checks and balances and ensure that there are always more than one entity to take a major call! Sure enough, this sets up the space whether it be political or corporate for the fallacy of groupthink, but if we end up having “groupthink” going wrong, then you can be pretty sure that the matter really is deep rooted and emerges from the society itself! In those scenarios then, corrective measures are more about community re-wiring and re-building. Group Think and Collective Decision making is perhaps the only way to stall the “rush” and “do away with” approach than over taxed, dis-engaged people may often deploy either owing to compulsions either personal or systemic! You may want to argue, that always group think is not possible, whatever would happen to individual genius and so on and so forth, well the answer to that resides in the question itself, genius never take the “rush” or “do away with” approach to begin with and secondly as far as secrecy parameters of business related collective decision making are concerned, these can be smartly managed by timing and sharing elements of content on a need-to-know basis, which can be then analyzed holistically to arrive are a more well-informed decision- which rides on a foundation of inputs form a group- which the group may or may not be aware of!

So, in a way when wise people do end up doing dumb things/decisions it’s almost always a story of the compelling contexts around them and when those get amplified by their intrinsic dispositions that alteration goes on to create more skewed approaches/attitudes that limit the application of “ability to rationalize and think” resulting in poor or ill-informed decisions which in one or the other way come back to bite!

The human mind is very potent at determining patterns of action/ inaction and those instances of half-thinking which do not get one killed and assimilate them as allowable patterns of thinking, which further goes on to compound problems! This is why many a times, when you find people doing dumb things, you will almost always find them soaked into it and enjoying it like nothing else!

I leave your with these for now, urging you to reflect on the time when you unwittingly contributed to or became a part of this un-serving space of dumb decision making and what did you do to emerge out- for that is your master-key to steer clear from any such future episodes and always remember , great things take time and group think when done right can help more than the harm it can cause when implemented with flaws!

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

Rationalize your desires.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

One key learning that 2020 has offered humanity with is the urgent need to rationalize every bit of time that we have with us and very importantly about rationalizing our desires! Sure enough, not that these aspects were not known to humanity earlier, neither it is that people have been reckless or careless about this, but 2020 has shown with absolute certainty that things will go wrong and when they do go wrong- even the basic freedoms will begin to seem like great privileges of your life! Join me here as nudge the space around why it is so imperative and critical that humanity begins to rationalize its desires and how that alone can help us collectively focus on our today to create a meaningful tomorrow! So here we go!

Sure enough, this is not going to be a write up on evaluating whether it is right to have desires or not, neither is it going to be about suggesting how much of desire is enough or anything around this things! What I want you to start to explore here with me is to decipher how desires have gone to shape our lives- individually and collectively and how people who make progress do differently from those who seem stagnated- remember the word is “seem stagnated” and irrespective of who says what, even the person embracing inaction is in a state of muted action! To explore this space of how to rationalize our desires, we need to perhaps first know what desires are and what is so meaningful and stupid about them!

Desires are what they are- I mean you will always get a more technically correct reply perhaps from a certified clinical psychologist on what they are, but from a layman perspective- desires are what makes us humans “tick” and when I use the word “tick” it implies for the better and for the worse! Humanity has evolved through the ages soaking in different experiences at different times wither within the same geographical space or by travelling and engaging with other regions. Those experiences and learnings go on to shape our thoughts in two specific areas among other things, the area of abundance and the area of deficiency! This is the essence of human desires- they almost always emerge from what is available aplenty or what is absolutely lacking and this from where the whole effort to pursue and realize them begins!

As I said in the beginning, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the space around desire, so say, you have one apple and you want one more that’s fine, you have no apples and you want one, that’s fine too, things begin to go wrong when you start to believe that either you alone should have an apple or there should be no apple in the world! This is why and how we arrive at the next step of rationalizing human desires! Unless human desires aren’t rationalized in the context of the potency of the desires, we will always continue to be in a path of conflict and uncertainty no matter how affluent or access to opulence our world and lives seem to have! So how do we about rationalizing something that’s so fragile, unpredictable and has the potential to be both rewarding and punishing!

Well, to begin with, it’s easier said than done, like a lot of things that hinge on human greed! Having said that, giving sanity a chance, the real and perhaps the only way to rationalize desires is either by virtue of self-realization or the more brutal and unrelenting way deployed by social compulsions and societal framework- more often than not it is the combination of both these factors that compel humans to calibrate – rationalize their desires- but as amore and more ways to cheat the real unbiased calibration or rationalization become available- people end up getting trapped by trying to pursue what is really not meant for them and believe me this has nothing to do with their abilities or inabilities!

It’s easier to understand why individuals would want to disregard their intelligence and keep pushing for some utopian desires endlessly, but how and why do societies end up pursuing the rabbit on the moon? Well, that is a factor of the diminishing individual and collective intelligence in a society and more often than not leadership with misplaced priorities! So you, see this becomes a great ecosystem to reward dumbness and continue pursuing it, as there is no one really checking anything meaningful and all the checks and balances are again looped in to the level of acquired collective dumbness! This is the space where humanity conforms and binds to an agreed and allowed level of dumbness and incompetence. Hence even desires often get mis-construed riding on this overwhelming backdrop of societal chaos or at times, just left to linger on with no real potency and purpose. But then how do few desires manifest and what makes them come alive?

The truth around the desires that come alive- whether they be individual led or collective manifestations of a society or nation resides in one fundamental truth and this is that those desires are more often than not compelling and fundamental to the existence of the individual or the collective and if not realized can directly drive them to a point of crisis which threatens their very existence! When an individual desires for that house, there is a compelling and urgency led purpose, when an individual needs that certification that signifies the urgency of purpose again and likewise when societies or nations pursue projects/ desires/aspirations and are able to manifest them- more often than not they are the very essence of what that society stands for! The leaders know it very well , what to manifest and what to hold back and to time the collective manifestation for a nation’s desire- simply because there is an added layer of credit taking which plays a pivotal role even when the desires that are being realized offer a promise of hope and future!

Unless a directed effort is made to rationalize desires, manifestation of what is being desired will almost always falter, not because there is perhaps a flaw in the desire, but largely because there will be ambiguity among the beholder of the manifestation with regards to what is to be done with what has manifested! This is that space of winning a million dollars in a lottery and not knowing what it means! So how does one rationalize?

Well, rationalizing desires begins by knowing and building a relevant foundation congruent to what is that is being desired, higher and further that your desires are, the deeper and wide is what the foundation needs to be! This foundation can be different things for different desires, it could be that certification, it could be that access to resources, it could be that potent network, it could be that powerful network around you, whatever that is, it has to be aligned to what you want to manifest through your desires. If you observe around your or perhaps even look for examples in your life, the chances are that the story of many of those unrealized desires resides in the misaligned foundations that were built, resulting in a life that is neither aligned to foundation nor the desire!

Once you are able to have a formidable foundation aligned to your desires then magic seems to happen and you will witness that you will gravitate towards circumstances and people who share the same thought for the desire that is being projected and the journey of manifestation begins to take shape! Once you are aligned through the process and you have calibrated the journey with definite mile stones and a final stop, rest assured even as you the rigour of the journey and the test of time- like every great idea and desire does- you will arrive safe and secure- simply because you would have amplified well that desire in people around you and in the processes around you to ensure that you will prevail sooner or later, irrespective of how steep the challenge is! This is the real essence of rationalizing your desires, it is never about desiring less or lowering your desires, on the contrary it is about, diving deep within and creating a strong bedrock for your foundation so that your desires can be pursued and realized in accordance with the laid foundations!

I leave you here with these thoughts, urging you to connect with your foundation and see how it serves your desires and tweak it in congruence to create enough amplification to propel you ahead to manifest the desires that you hold within!

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

The endless journey between I & WE.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

The story of our lives, each one of us, is nothing more then the endless trials, errors, success and failures that each one of us sets ourselves up either at individual levels or at a level of being part of some team.Join me here as we explore this space and try to understand what is the real essence of being in the “I” or the “WE” and when should we be where and what happens when that works for us or against us! So here we go!

When we are kids and going through our school lives- in the very early stages, even as we are still trying to make sense of what and who we are, we are told about the value of being assertive and being vocal and visible in different ways time and again! As you grow a little wiser and learn to flex and stretch you ability to self-assert through ways which are allowed and not, you soon start to get a dose on the relevance and value of “social care”, and how the “WE” is greater and stronger than the “I” kind of a parable and well sure enough, falling prey to the social conformation bias with the remining innocence that one may have- pretty soon you start to say “ok” to adjust play second or third or no fiddle at all simply to conform to the idea and belief that “WE” is more important than the “I”!

If you thought this piece of crap of being compelled to choose and adopt to either the “I” or the “WE” ends with your education, well sadly it doesn’t! The extent and the intensity with which the constant coercion continues goes on to permanently damage every bit of “I” and every attribute of the quality of collaboration that can be extended into the “WE”! even as people step into the corporate world to serve a business or step into the social arena to serve humanity! We actually end up in a world where damaged Individuals collaborate to collectively screw up the world further together and with time the world goes into that bit deeper rut and keeps getting nudged into spaces of being beyond repair in different areas at different times! This is not because there is a flaw with the “I” or the “WE” approach, the manifestations of all humankind problems are because the inability to know when is the time to allow the “I” and when to allow the “WE” to take charge!

At one stage of life you are told that “I” matters and soon enough you are told that “WE” matters, well the real thing is that both of these matter in the context of what the purpose is and what is at stake! There is no way of looking at life with an approach of either “I” or “WE”, it has to always be a blended approach of being “I” and “WE” in response to what stands in front of you to challenge and what is that you are supposed to create or offer to the world and the social context around you! Let me explain! As you embark to pursue your career in the initial days and years, sure enough you would be appreciated or reprimanded based on your performance more than the team;s performance, this is the space where your “I” approach is being evaluated and improved or rather you are made to improve so that business goals are met. Something similar to your primary schooling! As you grow and mature in the chosen job or vocation, soon enough, if your “I” has been empowering and meaningful, you will be given the responsibility to lead a few and soon enough you begin to get answerable not only for your standalone “I” but also for the collective “WE” that you represent and are accountable for! Unless you have understood and mastered your “I” you will fail and falter with the “WE” each and every time!

When it comes to the larger play of society- perhaps representing a community/society or a nation, the power of “WE” and the promise of “WE” over-rides whatever your “I” may be! The corporate world is pretty calibrated and metric driven, your “I” will only be given so many chances and as soon as you begin to falter and fail even the “WE” camouflage will not be able to rescue you from the eminent ejection- this is the space where CXOs begin to get fired and asked to leave! When it comes to the world where public support is garnered through competing narratives and promises and stories of hope, unless the people and sensitive elements do not see value in the collective “WE” they will not rally behind you, no matter how iconic the story of your “I” is and this is the real truth- the trial by fire when it comes to wanting to be a public figure- the constant scrutiny and evaluation is often too much then one can handle and with time those who can’t often fade away form public memory and the glitz simple because the “WE” did not accept or need the “I” or the “I” has already served it’s purpose and will be ejected like an idea whose time is bygone!

People often spend their whole life, trying to adjust their “I” to the “WE” and vice versa , not realizing ever that the real trick is to allow both of them to be there and evolve with the dynamism of the contexts around! The greatest fallacy is perhaps the idea to exchange or trade away your “I” for the “WE” or the other way around, simply because you need both of them at different times on an ongoing basis and the audience for both of them are almost always different and you then have a choice to choose which audience is more meaningful and valuable to you over the other and for what frame of time! It is only when you are able to apply this principle that you will find it easy to be self-asserting and open to ideas and wanting to lead others’ ideas with as much as ease as those of your own!

The real essence of life is about finding a progressive equilibrium with regards to applying the “I and the “WE” and knowing when to deploy which of these and for how long! History is replete with examples when Individuals have been iconic and when they have failed miserably, likewise there are examples of achieving greatness through group-think and precipitating disasters through it! The only real way to go about is to embrace the “I” and the “WE” at the right time to the right extent and ensuring you allow both of them to develop and thrive as the dynamic times around us constantly demand a new version and potent “I” and “WE” with every new sunrise!

I leave you here with these thoughts, urging you to take a pause and reflect what is that you have been deploying more? The “I” or the “WE” and what has worked and what has not!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then stay in the now and use what you must, your “I” and “WE” are as unique as who you are!

Distributed Leadership through People.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

The last few years have seen the rise and rise of something that I like to call as “Distributed Leadership”, other names to this space are “people movement”, “leaderless agitations”, “apolitical unrest” and so on and so forth! Depending on which part of the world you reside in and how allowing the government of the day is, you will come across the example of Distributed Leadership in varying degrees of intensity, aggression and intent. Join me here as we take a quick look into what this is all about, and how we can tap the energy of this attribute to work for us and when can it falter and how do we keep it under check? So here we go!

The past few years, in fact quite a few of them, the world has been a witness to unrest, agitation and rift among various sections of societies and more often than not the collective voice of people has been directed towards the people who govern (or should I say mis-govern), what has largely changed is, unlike earlier times, when these were lead and systematically planned by one political outfit or ideology to topple the other, this time around many of these agitations and unrest episodes have been the strong, uncensored, relentless and direct simply because these were the voices of people who were not engaging with a stronger opposition as individual members of a society, but rather as a collective team of individual leaders- this is the dawn of “Distributed Leadership”.

If you are wondering why would this happen, when societies most of the times have ideologies to voice out societal concerns and raise issues with those who govern; well it is precisely when these fail and when people have lost all faith and trust in them that they are not left with any other option but to take the things into their own hands and formulate and come up with virtually “leaderless collective” which goes on to play a pivotal role in the emerging fabric of a new reorganized social fabric!

When people begin to loose faith among the elected/ nominated leaders and their leadership, they are left with no other choice but to take things into their own hands- call it coercive empowerment if you like, but when this potent force is used well, timely and for a just cause, even the most seemingly unrelenting governing bodies seem to get ready to come to the table for discussions and finding a mid-way- this in social space is known as public face saving! Well we have witnessed this, union movement, union talks with governing bodies of large organization, in the more recent times, the ability of professional bodies and trade organizations to negotiate and arrive at solutions which are more workable all of these are nothing but an impact of the leaderless movements and stimulus which begin everything that finally reaches on a potent table to find the way ahead! The question here is, why would elected or nominated leaders not do what they have been elected/selected to do and perform? Why would they want things in society to reach these levels?

Leaders are human too and they will fail for sure, the question is never about, “If they will fail; it is always about “When will they fail” and life being what it is, sooner or later even the best of leaders that you may have will be presented with a challenge which simply ends up being beyond their capacity to resolve- either there is limitation through Incompetence- Intrinsic or by virtue of the wrong people who have been allowed to rally around the Leader. Whether you consider a small organization having 100 people or large corporate houses or even perhaps the running of a nation- the failure of leadership is only possible when leadership Incompetence begins to precipitate and once that happens it is only a matter of time that as alternatives within the working frame collapse one after the other- society gets more and more restless and eventually you have these mass protests and voices on the street communicating what matters the most- as long as they are heeded and understood, there is still time to salvage the leader and the leadership, but for some real insane reason if leaders get advised to embark on the confrontational route- well total collapse of the leader and the leadership is eminent – sooner or later- because instances like those are never forgotten neither forgiven from the public memory once they are etched!

Another great blessing in disguise emerging from the space of people movement is the promise of a whole new breed of leaders, who are driven by set of values, principles and believe in the cause that they stand up for and are ready to brave what comes their way- sending out important signals to the community that they now have alternatives, which are importantly connected with how the society feels- which by itself is so vital to bring about any meaningful change or transformation that governing bodies may want to embark upon- whether they are community services of the government’s of the day or large organisation with considerable community foot-print in a given area.

If you think that people movement is always about those protests on the roads- well think again- it happens all the time- that blog you follow, that writer who inspires, that Ministry which motivates you, the fellow worker who makes you want to join the team, the stories you want to let your kids and the future generations know, factors like these and many other go on to ensure that when the times get tough, people will rise, slowly but surely and in whatever limited way they can- If they can’t be on the street they will through their thoughts or actions, no matter how small they seem to be- collaborate, communicate and engage to keep the momentum going on, like the ashed out cinders in a fireplace- always warm enough to provide that spark and rekindle a new fire- that is what the essence of distributed leadership through people really is!

Nominated or Elected Leaders are comprehensively powerless until and unless they have this loyal base which goes on to work all the time promoting and striving to live up to the promise of what has been communicated from the very top! Say the leader of a nation appeals to their citizens to make that nation great again! Well unless citizens don’t add to the equation and do what each one of them can do in their own small or big way- the dream will always end up being a dream and if you really begin to experience change and an impact- then you surely know that there is this huge army of nameless leaders who are slowly but effectively contributing to the cause and ensuring that dream gets to see the light of the day!

If you are wondering can this space of People led Leadership movement be kept under check, well the answer is YES and NO, Yes, if it seems to threaten the fundamental fabric of a society or nation or tends to bring about great danger to humanity, the the nominated and elected class will clamp down- hard and fast and NO if the incompetence levels have been so terrible that they are actually putting the society and nation at risk to a point from where recovery seems impossible! As with a nation, likewise with other facets, as long as the threats are low to moderate and not a severe threat people movements will come and go- with limited impacts, but when the the threats seems to be severe, they sustain, linger, and tend to keep coming back for one or the other reason on an ongoing basis and to make matters complicated- the more effort that is made to clamp them down- the more resurgent they seem to become! There is never an absolute right and wrong when it comes to humanity and the truth always lingers somewhere between the extreme options that a society is always presented with!

I will leave you with these thoughts here, urging you to witness the next people movement/protest/agitation/ rift through the lens of leadership incompetence and social rewiring- for that is what it really always is and will be! Sometimes it happens dramatically on the streets and other times it is happenings in quiet corridors of power and the shop floors of factories when people assume Individual Leadership- no title- no designation- Leadership by Action to support and further the cause that they have aligned themselves to! This is the real secret about how human societies make progress even through the most challenging and daunting times and every time we miss to see this, rest assured we miss out on vital cues to decipher and decode what’s unfolding in the future- both the short term and the long term of it!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay wise, stay safe and be the Leader that you can be and always remembers Leaders don’t need labels- they earn them as they do what they set out to do!

The Gate-Keeper.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

The humble gate-keeper’s are the root cause for all the progress and problems that we see all the time as they manifest and play out around us! Whether its is about writing the story of political success or disasters or it is about organisations doing well at one point and then going down the drain in a few years, among the many other contributing factors, the silent passive role of the gate-keeper is almost always one of the reasons for all that manifests- it is the space when “too much” or “too little” from the gate-keepers goes on to create and manifest realities that no one want’s to embrace! Join me here as we undertake this journey to understand what really happens when gate-keepers misfire and what is that we can do to plug that bit so that we don’t end up fighting battles which are best avoided!

Unlike popular belief, gate-keepers are everywhere and every level, whether you want to start with your home, the community you live in, the work place that you go to or the business engagements that you are part of or if you are lucky enough to witness the building up and falling down of political fortunes of politicians and nations, each and every space around these aspects of our life are driven by gate-keepers- their effectiveness and balanced thinking is what propels societies collectively further and ahead and when they get mentally fatigued or confused, well, yes the social segment impacted begins to seem like a part of a zombie apocalypse movie! So what do these people really do, or should I say what is that they are really to do and why and how that helps to begin with?

Well, the easiest example of gate-keepers that you and I would have come across would be those fabled folks from the “HR” departments or from those “secretarial” areas where we spend much of our corporate life either hiring/firing people, dealing with them and their real and apparent skills (those mentioned on the papers) and trying to make that sale (once we are able to get appointments!) respectively! But it is is spaces like these of the corporate world oblivious to the C”X”O’s team and the so called “A” Teams or “Strategic Thinkers” a lot of talent gets wasted and a lot of incompetence gets added even as the higher ups continue to keep writing theories and attend conferences and networking events speaking about how they and their organization is ready for the future! We all have come across the normal painful and dumb practise of the “HR” wanting to know how long an individual will last, if selected and so on and so forth, not realizing that they are in fact hiring because a person who has left the organization was the one they had selected because that person was going to hang around for a long time! Then you have other instances when “empowered groups” are asked to validate new ideas (even as they suffer from some severe intellectual incomprehensibility) and many great ideas are either then killed before they come alive, or the people with great ideas leave and start on their own or worse still this educated evaluation body ends up selecting the worst idea (which is in line with their limited understanding and intelligence) thereby setting up the organization for its own slow and systematic demise.

The problems with the gate-keepers begins as soon as you end up having the wrong people to keep the gates! You see, over critical, over anxious people are really never too dependable when it’s crunch time, for they will screw up for sure and the magnitude of their stupidity can cause damages worth millions- which at times are even not realized unless that new competition comes up and that’s when the people say, “Oh that person used to be working here, next to me!”. Organizations end up paying the price for having the wrong gate-keepers and at times this folly can be fatal to the enterprise’s existence! But then why would anyone in their right mind end up deputing the wrong or an intellectually stagnated gate-keeper?

Well the, answer to this question we must realize that intelligence as a currency is worthless if it is not updated and fine tuned to what the contextual reality is in the moment and needs to be validated and certified on an ongoing basis, this is what makes intelligence so fragile and both- useful and useless at the same time! Don’t believe it ask your friend who had to deal with a salesperson for an hour on a Monday morning, simply because the secretary got outwitted to end up giving that appointment! As far as inability to comprehend the “next big idea” well the whole world is full of examples of how erstwhile colleagues ended up being business competition, simply because someone did not pay heed and attention when it mattered the most! In all probability because someone said, investing that time on an idea- whose time had not arrived- was not worthwhile- all this as “they thought”!

If you thought, corporate gate-keeping was damaging enough (when not practiced the right way), imagine or should I say don’t imagine the kind of mess it can lead societies and nations into when governments of the day end up having intellectually starved officials/ bureaucrats as gate-keepers and policy collaborators for them! This is what empowers corruption, slyness, chaos and ambiguity and whether you are a developed nation or an emerging one or a small nation- doesn’t matter- each nation and society on this planet has this rare breed of failing and faltering governmental gate-keepers in equal measure to the level of political incompetence and societal indifference that is played out! The only aspect (where it differs from the corporate world) about governmental or political gate-keeping going wrong is not about another nation picking up an idea- but ending up providing other nations with multiple opportunities on account of one mistake at gate-keeping related to one subject matter! So if you run a nation, now you know why a lot of politicians end up ruining the nation rather then running it! When multiple gate-keepers fail one after the other even if the political outfit or the government of the day has the best intentions to provide great governance can come to a nought and fail miserably!

By now if you are thanking your stars and thinking that gate-keeping and problems arising from improper or reckless gate-keeping are limited to the corporate world and the political universe, well think again- with like everything else that is human- believe it or not- this gate-keeping begins at home- like charity does and the innocent looking approaches of “not this”, “do this and not that”, go on to often calibrate potential of individuals and end of the day, before you realsie you have already ended up walking on a path which is nothing what you would have really wanted to – had you got a choice- which is what great gate-keeping always does provide!

Great gate-keeping and great Gate-Keepers are often iconic simply because the value that they are able to create by what they effectively do is astronomical- whether it is the ability to get the right candidate to lead a community or a society, or the ability to spot a fine talent who can be then molded into a visionary corporate leader or that finesse to know the next solutions and services that society eagerly awaits- each and every space around factors like these and beyond is often dotted around with some fine gate-keepers who are constantly sieving and evaluating the “next best story” over the horizon. It is their ability to tap into the idea whose time has come at the time that one should- is what makes them truly iconic and a blessing for humanity the world over! So what sets these iconic gate-keepers apart from the mediocre ones’?

Intent and Interest- Iconic gate-keepers are like those curiosity driven babies who want to constantly explore, evaluate and understand what the surroundings are communicating- through people and through objects and through patterns that come and go! This ability of wanting to know more alongside a laser sharp focus on what is that they are hunting for- whether it is talent, Corporate leaders, a Political successor, a great takeover, whatever that is on their agenda- is what makes them so potent and successful- sure enough being human and the fact that they deal with humans- they too will fail at times – but what matters is that their success rate and success magnitude far outweigh their losses and hence what stand out almost always are the stories of the wars that they have won and not about the battles that they have lost!

I leave you here with these thoughts for now, allowing you to practise and reflect upon your own individual style of gate-keeping and do ponder about the times of your life when gate-keeping helped you and when it backfired and how all of that has helped you become who you have become until now! The story of gate-keepers and gate-keeping is a story of humankind’s endless pursuit to reach their aspirations and doing it in the most effective and efficient manner!

Ciao for now, will be back son with another one! Until then be the gate-keeper you want to meet when you knock on the gates- that you desire to be opened for you!

Embracing Incompetence.

~ PA ~ 1 Comment

I would have with ease chosen the word competence over incompetence, but this one is all about Incompetence and if 2020 was nightmare owing to a pandemic, the next one 2021- will be another pandemic, a pandemic of failing leaders and faltering competence! Join me here as we take a quick look around this bit and try to understand the what is likely to unfold and what is that we can do or not do about it. So here we go!

No matter where you stay and what you do, chances are that either you have been at the receiving end of the societal incompetence issues or you have unwittingly contributed to manifest and accelerate them- only to come back to bite you! Whether it is the problems that you are facing with the meaningless barrage of rules through the pandemic- some of them being absolutely stupid and dumb! or it is about the new found and ever increasing challenges of engaging with more and more dumb people reporting into you and you reporting into- all of this is nothing more but the curtain raiser to the new age of human incompetence that all of us are going to end up embracing in the times ahead! For a few of us that will be a choice to deal with,but for the majority of human kind this is going to be an inescapable nightmare to deal with day in and day out and well, I have not yet added that incompetence creeping into your inner circle of family and friends for as and when that manifests- you will really have no place to hide or run! The only blessing being at least you have a choice to decide on your inner circle and if you end up making the insane choices- it will only go on to speak more about you rather then the people that you have ended up adding to your life!

The plain and simple fact remains that human incompetence is neither rare nor uncommon, in fact it is perhaps the singular trait that binds humanity like none other! Surprised? Well don’t have to be! Each one of us is always working at our levels of acquired incompetence, sure enough none of that is static and levels of incompetence will keep altering based on the dumbness and intelligence that people garner along the way! So how does it all begins and where does this all start? Well read on!

Incompetence is a societal phenomenon- for the simple reason that incompetence doesn’t work or show up in isolation! It is only when there are some agreed and given metrics to which things don’t measure up, is that the whole concept begins to get noticed!Societies too on their part don’t necessarily promote incompetence, but the established norms and agreed way of life and work contribute to a great extent in ensuring that there is a systemic replacement of intelligence with dumbness over a period of time and this is what really acts as a fuel to the fodder of incompetence and believe it or not all of this begins in our homes and schools!

Incompetence is systematically drilled down through schooling and parenting and later on through the so-called work culture to ensure that every valid bit of sanity and intelligence is done away with and people learn to settle for mediocre experiences in all that they get to do! This is why, people settle for the whole “ok” and “will work” or “will do for now” maxim even as they end up paying for a service which is supposed to be “best in class” each and every time! remember the last time you picked up your favorite handset and as it crashed when you rushed to the service centre what that experience was like? Well, chances are you would have received a far different learning about humanity and the whole concept of “smart marketing” would have left you wonder-struck!

You see, the incompetence that you get to witness play out all around you is not a factor of the dumbness of the individual or the collective group think (which again resides on the individual dumbness of people in the group), but rather is a factor of the success rate to which the minds of these people have been numbed to such a point that for everything in the world- they have to and need to only reach out for their favorite web browser and whatever garbage that throws up is the divine gospel of their life! But why does this happen, aren’t people with working minds suppose to be suave and wise? Well, certainly they are supposed to be, but when these very minds are systematically hacked and programmed to think and relate in a templated pattern of recurring and recycled thought patterns, they are never able to see anything original and every attempt to present these blinded minds with meaningful context goes for a toss, simply because these blinded minds are simply unable to latch onto anything original and they are automatically driven towards templated patterns and programmed thoughts. This goes on and on, and over a period of time our very potent minds, ends up just being an execution device rather than being a thinking powerhouse with a substantial loss of the ability to discern ,debate and think the way they should!

As societies strive to create more and more artificial intelligence, the natural intelligence is all but going to be surely wasted and that wasting intelligence often manifests and plays out as incompetence. Competent Leaders often struggle as they get incompetent team members to work along with and often competent workers get walked over when they have incompetent bosses to deal with, and if you are among those lucky yet unfortunate mid-level souls and should be sandwiched between two layers of incompetence above and below- well your life soon enough starts to look like a lunatic asylum from the Hollywood movies and that nightmare is strong enough to shake up even the most resolute and determined people around! Incompetence, as I said earlier need not necessarily mean the absence of intelligence or wit, it simply means the presence of overwhelming inertia to take that effort to do away with the cobwebs of the mind, stand up and question what is being presented and seek alternative pathways! The human mind- being the ardent follower of conservation of energy- relishes on the idea of rest- as long as it does not threaten your existence in the world and that innate hardwired animal brain- has a front row seat to the dumbness and stupidity of your life! This is one reason, why once you grow incrementally wiser, and as you look back at your poor life- you at some point will really stop and wonder- “wtf”, “how could I really do that”, “did I really do that” and so on and so forth!

Incompetence, if you ask me is a lifestyle disease- a dis-ease emerging out of the compelling need of not wanting to use one’s brain and rely on what an online search throws up or what the neighbor’s cat whispers! It is within these alleys that humanity is ending up doing great dis-service to it’s potential- both the individual and collective potential and as the equilibrium of the society keeps moving further and further into the space of being incompetent from being sporadically incompetent to consistently incompetent- societies begin to witness the exodus of the few remaining wise people around- for they realise there’s no medicine to this illness and the only remedy resides in the ability to safeguard their remaining intelligence and wit and apply it in societies and contexts where that would be welcome and rewarded the way to should be!

Societies the world over are progressive or regressive in proportion to their incompetence! As long as societies are able to check the growth and pace of incompetence by staying valid and competent, things are fine and these societies are needless to say innovative and leaders, if and when the equilibrium is altered and incompetence takes a grip, societies begin to experience regression and before that a puzzling stall as far as its directions and aspiration is concerned! So what’s the way forward?

The plain truth remains that the story of human incompetence is a social problem and it is something that we have allowed (willingly/ unwillingly) to grow and manifest both individually or collectively in different areas and spheres of our lives and needless to say this very incompetence then comes back to bite back at us through accidents, mishaps, errors, mistakes and what you have and then there are these two words to describe that space, “human error”. Incompetence is not a factor of someone being un-intelligent or dumb, rather it is a telling sign of intelligence not being used or rather being abused – using what you must for reasons other then what you must use for! You see, technically you can make a potato pickle, but we don’t do that!

To conclude for now, the only thing that we need to always remember is that Incompetence is not the absence of intelligence or with but rather the non-application of it for reasons that could be intrinsic or external. The way to defeat this, is to compel people to think and force thinking to arrive at alternative routes, innovative solutions and only when this approach becomes a new pattern, is that people will be able to stall the onward march of incompetence and ensure that solutions and approaches delivered and applied are always a product of applied intelligence and wit and not artificial intelligence driven by the inertia of incompetence! Sure enough, the times ahead will be more and more cluttered with examples and manifestations of incompetence all around, the only reassuring fact that will prevail within that space will be the beacons of intellect and wisdom shining in between those dim lit areas of humanity where incompetence seems to rule the minds!

I leave you here with these thoughts, urging you to think for a moment, what is that is driving you- is it your inertial incompetence or is it your directed intellect and wit!

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

When Leaders Fail…

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

To be very honest, failure by itself is a very contextual subject- you have instances in history wherein great advances have occurred on account of failing at something that was intended to be done and ending up coming up with something unexpected, which ended up being more potent then the original pursuits that people had set course for! Well,what really unfolds as and when Leaders fail? Why do leaders fail, is it them or is it something else and when is this failure good and when is it damaging? Join me here as we race ahead to try and answer these questions and get to know the leader in a new light!

To begin with Leaders too start like anyone and everyone else- they are individuals to begin with. Their leadership space begins to manifest as they begin to bank on their intrinsic or acquired abilities and rise up to the occasion as and when it presents itself to make their arrival known. Furthermore as if arriving to be a leader wasn’t enough- whether you lead a great nation or just lead your community or a few blocks of your local residence associations, every time you wear the hat of being a Leader- you will be under scrutiny- intense and continuous in proportion to the span and influence that your leadership commands! This is why few have said that Chairs are often aspired for, but when it comes to take that coveted seat- it takes much more than the astute planing that one would have creatively executed to reach there- it takes a new level of Leadership to ensure that the Chair welcomes you and goes onto enhance and compliment the Person who happens to be the new tenant of the coveted chair! Leadership has two core elements- One is THE CHAIR and the second one is THE PERSON. Unless these two don’t shake hands- nothing worthwhile will ever emerge from the office- no matter whose office it is!

THE PERSON- who gets entrusted with the space of leadership is always as vulnerable as you and I, irrespective of anything and everything. This for the simple reason that being human makes all of us equally susceptible to dynamism of the world matters and a random nudge or that odd push is often enough to derail even the best leaders, more so when the stakes are high and the contextual settings are charged with uncertainty- either intrinsic or contextual- both of which may or may not be in the control of the Leader and this is from where everything that can go wrong begins to go wrong and depending on who the leader is and how strong or weak their leadership fortress has been that slippage will either be slow or fast!

History has been replete with examples- whether it be about leaders who were asked to lead nations or it was about the much fabled CEO’s of the bygone golden era of management opulence- even if those leaders had done a 100 things right, it almost always took only that 1 fatal error of judgement which ended up pushing them into the dark alleys of history for all the wrong reasons and many a times wiping away every shred of greatness and goodness that they had got along with them- everything wiped off for that last miscalculation! Seems cruel- it is and this is why when people assume leadership roles they demand their pound of flesh in terms of the astronomically high pay checks and perks- often as a limited cushion to fall back upon – if and when the things horribly go wrong- for they too know very well- that no matter how much they strive and keep at it- it will always only take that one singular incident to rip away everything that they would have built and held together- irrespective of the fact whether the error of judgement stems from their overworked minds or whether it comes from the much coveted group think called as the strategic team) or from factors which are external and more importantly beyond control.

Rarest of the rare are the cases where Leaders and their Leadership are intentionally designed and set up to fail to send across a strong message to everyone rallying for that leader or for that ideology- so that when the castle comes down crashing- the time it takes to get rebuilt doesn’t take years- but rather generations and that is enough for the other opponent to make long strides and take quantum leaps to move ahead in the direction that they wish to- sounds familiar?- well this is the space of the fabled, contested and often accompanied by loud noise- this is the space of political leadership! Political Leaders and Political Leadership is altogether a different ball game and this perhaps is the only space where a Leader can’t afford to display their human and vulnerable side like the Leaders in the corporate world get to do- simply because, absolutely no one- and no nation- will ever like to be lead by a leader who seems to be lost or weakened- stronger the nation- stronger is the Leader need to match the deliverable and rise up to be worthy of the coveted CHAIR that awaits the Leader! This is why perhaps politics remains the only play field wherein defeated and lost Leaders are able to come back and robust and tall leaders at times get the flak- politics is one space where Leaders and their Leadership is tested to the max and the fluid dynamism that the contextual settings bring along with them either makes the Leader and their office buyout and propels it ahead or drags it down and sinks the whole effort of the Leader and the Leadership that is been practiced!

Coming back to our white collared leaders and their leadership, unlike the political class, when they begin to get too stiff and seemingly impregnable and start to assume iconic stature- is when the real problem starts! Sure enough there are those rare instances of the bygone eras, where strong charismatic leaders lead from the front and created corporations which are the global power houses of the world today- but this is what my precise point is- why aren’t those leaders not to be found anywhere around now- why no one- none of the leaders in today’s world seem to be even somewhere close to these masters of yesteryear? Sure enough, the world has changed and the contexts are nothing like what they were even perhaps five years back, let alone 70 years ago- but that is the whole point! Shouldn’t have Leaders and Leadership too matured and walked in-step to the changing dynamism of the world in equal measure- rather by being one step ahead? Well, in those rare instance where that has happened we have witnessed iconic organisations being created which have continued to “wow”humanity on an ongoing basis through their ability to continually innovate and rejuvenate and when that has not happened we have also witnessed great names biting the dust and walking their way to their own funerals in the corporate graveyard- with that sealing the promise of jobs, careers and any meaningful hope to the people who toiled and sweat their lives to create meaning out of a gasping and fading light!

If you thought that the challenge resides only with THE CHAIR or THE PERSON, think again- there is one more crucial element to this ecosystem and that is the space of other people who are directly and indirectly fueling the success of the failure of the Leader and their Leadership! History is a witness to the demise of great corporation on account of flawed “group think” and brazen “individual decisions” just to satiate bloated egos and capture the limelight of the moment- which needless to say more often then not has actually ended up turning to be the proverbial and celebrated final nail in the coffin of that organizations demise! Leadership is never practiced in vacuum and that is where the secret lies! The moment you have the wrong cooks in the kitchen, even the best of the recipe’s that you would have thought of or planned for are going to end up being a classical disaster! This is what happens to Leaders and Leadership when they assemble the wrong people around them- sure enough Leader’s must not be erring with judgement about people that they choose, but the weird ways of the corporate world more often than not end up serving even the wisest of Leaders, extraordinary dumbness in bountiful servings discussed as advisors and specialists!

So you see, the failure of Leaders, is not about the Leader alone, it is about the chair, the people around as well and it is only when any of these or many of these three aspects begin to go wrong and start to run away with a mind of their own, not being cohesive to the core aspirations of the Leader or the promise of The Leadership is that Leadership Failure begins to form and unless it is nipped in the bud, the runaway issues begin to manifest and one thing start to lead unto the next and in no time- what we have is an organization just ending up fire fighting day in and day out form one problem unto the next, from one department to the next, not realizing the real cause of what’s unfolding and where the real fix lies! So can’t failing Leaders and their Leadership be saved? Is it that once the failure commences it has to always end up the way it normally does?

The answer is a YES and a NO, Leaders and their Leadership can be save d and rescued from imminent failure only and only if it has the right circuit breakers and early warning mechanisms in place as a safe guard- pretty much lie you have a spike guard to save your valuable electronic assets, and NO if the Leader and the Leadership practitioners continue to believe in what they do and tend to simply ignore and look the other way around- with or without arrogance- then, in those kind of confrontational and non-accepting and hallucinated context- the whole suite of the Leader and the loyal practitioners are ejected from whatever they control and work for and in no time either you have a new set of sensible and more wise people take up the whole issue of stopping the failing enterprise or you have a complete collapse and wipe off of the entity from the pages of the corporate world for good- albeit after sever damage has been done! The story of failing Leadership and Leaders is perhaps the highest form of manifestation of Human Incompetence and whether nation is being lead or a chain of restaurants is being run- the damage is always proportional to what is being managed and almost always damaging and the time taken to repair that is considerable.

Sure enough, it is not a all gloom and all doom story, but when lessons are learnt and understood and observed in the space of failure of Leaders and Leadership, it is only then that humanity and society as a whole gets more serious on the efforts that it must take to ensure what was experienced doesn’t come back to them again! Every large problem that humanity deals with is nothing but an aspect of failure- failure of either of the Leader or their Leadership or partly of both and it is only when the failing element is corrected that balance is restored and societies tend to begin walking again on the path of progress and in the intended direction!

When Leaders fail the stakes are almost always high and then it really doesn’t matter who really failed- whether it was the Leader, The People around or the Leadership style- what alone matters is how fast and how quick the damage is undone and some sense or meaningfulness is restored for the greater good of everyone who is being impacted! Always remember Great Leaders are the most Vulnerable and that is why it only makes sense to protect them and their vulnerability- for that alone is the real way to avoid failure! I have intentionally not wanted to get into the technical space of arranging bullet points or numbering or listing down causes of failures of Leaders or Leadership and how to fix them , simply because that is not how life works and there is no real life manual to fix real world problems that way! All of that looks great for academic debates, but the trues tests and essence is realized only when the rubber hits the tarmac; you better want it to hold the things there for you, especially if that rubber is of a landing fighter jet or that presidential car zooming past by you!

I leave you here with these thoughts, urging you to take some time off and reflect on what is that you have been experiencing around you, both as a Leader that you are and as a member of the society that you are in and what is that you think you can still do differently to alter and change the balance in favour of a meaningful and vibrant future for yourself and for the people who matter to you!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then Lead and Lead well to overcome all that can or may derail what you try to Lead!

Meaningful Hustle.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

As we begin to draw the curtain over 2020 (what a year it has been!), what better time then now, to take that pause, hold that glass of wine around a wonderful fire-place and think around the hustle you have been through and try to identify what and which of those have been meaningful! The inability of people to connect and involve in meaningful hustle is what leads them away and farther from what they need to do and should do to stay aligned on the path that takes them to their aspirations! Join me here as we try to understand this space and ponder around how and what we can do and not do to ensure that our hustle stays purposeful and meaningful! So here we go!

We are all thinking and living beings, what that implies is the fact that what unfolds around impacts us all within and how those events soak within goes on to reinforce or shake our belief and value systems. A lot of this manifests because of pursuing hustles which, at the end of the day mean nothing and add absolutely nothing to our lives- forget about adding any value to anyone else around! So now the million dollar question- what are these meaningless pursuits, can we know them and how do we manage them?

If there’s one thing that we can all be thankful to 2020, it will be about the fact that the year has humbled humanity like nothing else! The year has been simply a masterclass in allowing people know what really stays back and what doesn’t- whether it has been about people, work, passion, hobbies or anything for that matter- the year showed us all “what really matters” and this is the pivot from where, we can further explore the space around “Meaningful Hustle”. As a coach, sure enough there is no reason to dictate and create myopic opinions about what is right and what isn’t- as I keep saying each ones’ truth is fundamentally and contextually relevant to the individual. However, what must not be ignored is the truth that a lot of odd corners that people get stuck into are nothing but a consequence of pursuing what should not be in the first place! This is nature’s equivalent of standing by the sea shore and expecting no waves!

Our daily lives are peppered with small victories and small losses from time to time and more often then not, the less successful people are those who are consistently wining the wrong battles of lesser or no consequence and loosing all the crucial ones’ and the reverse is true for the people who emerge as “successful” as defined by the society that they move around in! So what is it about those un-meaningful hustles? Many and most of those un-meaningful hustles are nothing more but a result of misplaced aspirations, pursuits which arise from the space of social compulsions, misplaced optimism and not to forget a complete failure to understand oneself and the contextual reality within and around! Let me explain! Remember going to that odd piano class or that guitar class because “x” went, or joining that regarding club because “y” was doing it- now if these were the experiences of your school or college days- and if you are lucky enough to see how many of those “x” and “y” have got anything to do with their piano or guitar in life- you will know what I am saying here! This is yet not much of a problem, because growing up years are all about experimenting, trying, failing, learning and moving ahead- but when this approach drags on into spaces of life in a measure which is perhaps not healthy and for the wrong reasons is when problems really start to manifest and that’s when hustle begins to get un-meaningful!

Take the case of our favorite topic- the pandemic- how much of all the hustle and sweat that you ended up spending on that was worth doing what you did! If you want an example from another quarter- run through the myriad of scenarios that have always been playing out at your work place- whether being there or through remote work- what do you see- well in all probability you see a mix of meaningful and wasteful hustle day in and day out and the balance between the meaningful and the wasteful one goes to speak a lot about the people that are on that boat and where that boat is going to eventfully land up- I mean whether it’s going to meet an iceberg or dock at a harbor of choice or get a makeover from being a passenger liner to a newly acquired pirate ship – well all of that eventually will depend upon the only single factor- that is what meaningful hustle people put in and how much wasteful hustle is limited!

Unless and until your hustle is directed to meaningful pursuits- you run the risk of turning your life into a “I could have” statement rather then allowing it to be “I can and I will”! Sure enough, no one is not asking you not to fail, failure is very much the basic ingredient to realize success and as a matter of fact success is only as proportional to the extent and amount of failure that one experiences! All those pursuits, each one of them that do not add value to your life ( as in your life- not your job, your contexts around, this is about U) are nothing else but meaningless wasteful pursuits and hustles that end up being the ultimate self-created drag which simply doesn’t allow you to soar high enough as you could have without them and reach further enough (given the intrinsic potential that you have!).

Meaningless hustles that emerge from within based on intrinsic aspects can be corrected with focus engagement and calibrated measures, what really are dangerous and more damaging are the ones’ that begin to creep in based on social compulsions, peer pressure and the senseless craze and compulsive urge to enact/do something because someone else has said or done! This is many steps ahead beyond the innocent looking arena of copying, mimicking someone- this is the space where people often tend to pursue some imaginary hallucinating idea/thought and end up selling themselves a future which doesn’t exist and while doing so end up ruining their present and endangering their future! The easiest way to avoid all this un-serving crap is pursue hustle that is meaningful and the good news is that meaningful hustles connect and create magic really very quick- sure enough time may be required to garner that material wealth and fame that the societal standards have laid out for defining and calibrating success, the fact remains though- the moment you connect to something meaningful- you know that second itself and you instantly feel being drawn in and nourished by the meaningful pursuit that you gave immersed into!

Meaningful Hustles are almost always Intrinsic, sure enough there can be and will be instances of being inspired externally, but that first compulsive connect has to arise from within and when that happens, is only when can anyone go ahead and pursue something meaningful and worthwhile! Don’t rush to think this is the space of some mad psyched out philosopher talk, this is is real, simple and each one of us knowingly or unknowingly are part of this every passing moment! Why do you feel great when you see that favorite food or yours’ or why do you feel elated when you team hots the bull’s eye, why do you feel great when you are heard and appreciated- well chances are that in each of those instances you have witnessed that your choices- your thought and your effort has been recognized and you have been practicing or doing what you do with each one of those instances out of a belief that each one of those instances nourish you and elevate you in a way or the other- whether that’s an ice-cream which helps you wade off a hot summer’s day for a few hours or it is that appreciation from your manager which helps you carve your a future for the next few years- either ways the whole element of being able to add “Meaningfulness to your hustle” around these things comes from within you and that is possible only and only if you are connected firmly from within and know how much to soak in, what to allow and what not to allow and this is the space where all the magic happens and people are able to sieve meaningfulness from un-meaningfulness and the more often you practise this, the more pro you end up at being able to decipher and decode what is your true hustle and what is not- what is that you must latch on to and what you must not get into!

This effort and practise goes on to make the journey of your life that much more lighter, relevant, creative and one that adds value to yourself and everyone around you simply because you are then proactively and even sub consciously connecting only with tings and people that matter in the sense of being able to create meaningful pathways by embracing meaningful hustle to help you reach your aspiration and desires sans the melodrama and baggage, which so many end up carrying for no real rhyme or reason right upto their graves!

I really don’t want to or like to get into the space to dictate or spell out what is meaningful and what is not- simply because that is private and personal to each one of us- given the unique beings that each one of us are- humanity must never forget one fundamental truth of our times-that we are similar but we are unique and that’s as much as we can get some sense of being the same and different- everything is wrapped up in that statement! As long as we are able to respect this fact and cater to it as we must with empathy and respect- everything will be fine- the moment we try to pluck the chords around this, we get music and at times noise and from there ensues the wanted and unwanted chaos of what human kind is all about!

I leave you here,with these thoughts, urging you to connect within and around to seek what brings you more closer to the really meaningful hustle of your life and do what you must to stay locked on that- for that alone is what defines who you are what you are and what legacy you cherish to leave behind!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay wise and pursue what you must, nit what you can!

The problem with “Problem”.

~ PA ~ 1 Comment

As we race about our lives, each day, each one of us is dealing, solving, creating or fixing a “problem” or at least what seems to be one! Join me here as we unravel with this space and try to understand the humble origins about these problems, why do they even emerge, when, where, the how and the why of it and as we sieve through this space, we conclude by trying to know if there’s anything that we can do about it and if the answer to that question is a “yes” what is that must be done! So here we go!

The very mention of the word problem, brings forth a range of emotions- depending on who you are- what your psychological construct is- either you will race ahead towards it or avoid it as much as you and as often as you can or end up having reactions and responses somewhere between those extremes- something that changes with the nature of the problem and the context of what it is to you! That’s how it is supposed to be and that is how it always will be! The whole story begins post this space! What we do and not do about the problem arrives much later! What we need to first understand and decode is what is it about the problem- how and from where does it all begin and come alive?

Humanity has been a saga of success and failures! Each time success has been more than failure, humanity has progressed and each time humanity has had more failures than success, it has regressed! This perhaps is one of the most fundamental of all the truths of our lives and without any discrimination is applicable universally, sure enough the impact felt will be more or less with the progression and regressions, largely depending upon who you are and where you have landed yourself up in the complex web of life!

Problems are nothing but a situation which arise when not expected and/or in the way they present themselves which compels us to think a way through/around/over it to re-establish the “normalcy” to what we were used to before the “problem” knocked our door! Let me explain! In the current situation around the world, what do you see- as I see and as so many of us witness- the pandemic- now the pandemic has been a “problem” on different levels- health, fatality, disruption of the earlier way of life and more significantly the way it hints at disrupting our future- which by itself is so dynamic and uncertain- for that is what the future is supposed to be! So where is the real “problem” in all of this? Is it the Virus? Is it the space of falling sick and dying? or is it the disruption of our way of life?

If you were to wear the philosopher’s hat, grab that cup of coffee and look with some calm and poise about all that is unfolding around you- you will understand the virus was or never will be the “problem”, it is our “attitude” and “approach” to life while it lurks around us is what is the real problem; for that alone determines the ability, extent and intensity to which our lives can be altered in the Now and in the coming times ahead. You see, the virus can only become a “problem” if you and I were to behave arrogantly, recklessly or with gross disregard especially as it lurks around (and when we know that it lurks around!). For it is only this action of recklessness that can put us in the direct path of self-harm and harm unto others which then becomes the real “problem” and from thereon it just starts off a never ending spiral of one problem to the next. So you see the virus is not the problem– it is how you and I behave and what we do and not do that either manifests a problem or keeps away a problem from manifesting! Like with the pandemic so with almost every other area of your our lives! Once you understand how to decipher the right way “what the problem really is” that is when you will be able to manage and control your present to move ahead in a controlled manner to the future that you aspire to realize.

Whether it is the so called problems that you face in your personal space, the work area, with people or with yourselves are often nothing more then ghosts of your own making and the real problems always tend to hide away in this fog of ambiguity and the pursuit to solve something that is not a problem is what majority of humanity is eternally entrapped with even as the real ones’ keep lurking within and around all the time- waiting for the right time to strike and catch us by surprise, at times when we least expect them to arrive! The real essence of dealing with a problem begins by learning the art and science of identifying and defining the problem the right way to begin with! So how does one get to identify a problem the right way? Read on!

It begins with the ability to know about yourself well! Surprised? Well don’t be! The fact remains that, to deal with anything and everything around you and people around you, the very first thing that is of prime importance is your ability to be self-aware- knowing who you are, what your construct is and when you have a fair sense of what and who you are- it becomes easy for your to align yourself to people and life around you- it becomes clear and simple to know what serves you and what doesn’t- this step helps you do away with “problems that seem to be when they aren’t” and what this then helps you get a clear sense of is “the real problems” and once you have developed this ability to identify them well in advance, and on an ongoing basis (like a weather radar onboard an aircraft) you can choose and plan out the only three options that anyone and everyone has when it comes to dealing and managing a problem- go through them, around them or over them!

Problems more often then not, are not what they really are, often they are the amplification of the games that our mind plays upon us and at times are nothing but the ghosts of our own imagination! Problems tend to become real problems only and only when people tend to misjudge, delay to act or resolve or even worse fail to recognize them altogether! The only way to stay ahead in the game of deciphering problems is by building a formidable understanding about yourself and the contexts around which you operate and move about! Like trained soldiers, the human mind becomes a potent weapon when it is allowed to figure out patterns that don’t seem to make sense and to decipher what doesn’t seem to be where it is supposed to be! To have this potency, the first step is to provide the mind with a blue-print of what normal dynamism seems like and it is only when and as this is done on an ongoing basis that the mind will get sharper by the hour and with every passing challenge to identify and figure out the real emerging issues and challenges among the many seeming problems around you!

Self-awareness and contextual alertness provide the much needed depth and sense to differentiate real problems from an apparent problems and this alone can help us to move ahead in a direction that we are ought to! Based on who you are and the context that happen to be the truth of your life, each ones’ definition and ability to deal and engage with real meaningful problems changes and that goes on to change the narrative of success and failure as well! When people spend more time and energy in dealing and engaging with real meaningful problems and are able to overcome them, then magic happens and success is manifested, when people spend more time battling imaginary problems- which are nothing but their minds tricking them in proportion their incompetence-cognitive and behavioral!

If there is any one singular fact that has remained constant with humanity through the ages, it has been the fact that “problems” of today become the “routine” of tomorrow and this goes on! The essence resides in the ability to engage timely, meaningfully with aspects that matter and which must be dealt with (especially when they hint disruption to harm the future). It is the diminishing ability to decipher and engage effectively with real problems which is the real problem! The ocean waves don’t harm the ocean- it is the nature of the waves and the rhythm which has the potential to either provide life or take that away!

I leave you here with these thoughts, urging you to engage and engage well with the real problems that you have on your hand so that you are able to overcome them to create a meaningful and worthwhile tomorrow! Problems are as unique as the person that they meet up with and this is what makes our lives so interesting! All can bake a cake, only a few are able to earn millions through a business, Think about this analogy, the next time you are getting overwhelmed or complacent with a problem at hand! Your problem is the cake that you need to bake, your way to get the flavors of the future that you aspire for!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then decode your real problems and create a meaningful tomorrow!

The Leadership Code.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Our lives are constantly touched by leaders- directly or indirectly; they are altered, manipulated and directed by the aggression and subtlety that leaders bring along with them and their style of leadership then goes on to manifest and determine the flavor and texture of the group that is being influenced! This group could be your family, your work place or the society at large- a nation perhaps- whatever it is, make no mistake, it is the choices of the leaders that go on to dictate how you and I see the next Sunrise! Join me here as we take a quick walk through and try to decipher the Leadership Code- the very essence of Leadership which separates Good Leaders from Great ones’! So here we go!

I have written in my previous articles about the need and genesis of leadership per say- why and what of it- how humanity always seeks and needs Leaders’ – this piece is all about taking it a step ahead and understand that critical Leadership Code- The code that creates impact, sets new directions and leads to new pathways and destinations for a society or the people in the context and how this very code can be absolutely destructive and sub-serving when deployed by accidental leaders or when even the best intents are executed in the worst possible manner!

Given the nature of a blog, I will be intentionally keeping it short and sweet and urging you to add further, based on what you have experienced as a Leader (who leads) and perhaps as a Leader (who follows a Leader), frankly I don’t but the idea of Leaders creating Followers’ that is the last thing you ever want Leadership to be or a Leader to be!Whenever you see something like that- just move out of that confining and narrowing space, for it will come back at you hard and fast- it is not about if- it is always about when!

If you ask me, what is the Leadership Code and the essence of it; well it is everything that you would have seen playing out among Great Leaders (not Good Leaders)! I share with you a few of those secrets/ observations here, which I have either been an observer of or have come across through my years of engagement and reading with leaders- who have been leading their lives and of people around them – either in the small pockets of society or on the big centre stage of world politics and business! So here they are!

Create a powerful sustained narrative: One fundamental corner stone of Great Leadership is a continuing and compelling narrative- which reinforces the beliefs and values of those die-hard followers and more importantly creates those important spaces for the undecided to come in and join your bandwagon! It is critical that this narrative and it’s content is supported by subsequent actions and the narrative should within carry and hint at the actionable areas- else- people will see the bluff and in no time- all the struggle and effort taken to reach the space of Great Leadership will begin to crumble and in no time- the regression from Great to Good to Nothing will be set off!

Great Leaders and Great Leadership is Infectious: One common feature across the board- when it is about Great Leaders- is the fact that they are all highly contagious- infectious; sure enough we are in the times of a pandemic- but trust me- if you ever walked around or with these rare breed of leaders- their persona, charisma, way of life and leadership is all compulsively infectious and that is an unmistakable streak of some Great Leadership at play! This is where all the learning happens and this is the space where Followers are converted into the next line of Leaders! How well the rub off is what goes on to decide whether the next line of Leaders is Good or Great!

Great Leaders Simplify: Unlike Good Leaders who operate on different levels of secrecy (with regards to guarding their knowledge and special art and skills- with regards to leadership), Great Leaders- almost always are open, transparent and have this one unique unmistakable ability to simplify and de-clutter- on an ongoing basis- whether it is the content of their talk, a column that they write or a message that they want to send across- they are simple, clear, crisp and powerful! This build trust and clarity of thought and action across levels and cadres and the by goes on reinforce their Leadership and keeps it nourished, well oiled and potent at all times- with or without power!

Great Leaders embrace failures and risks: Great Leaders embrace risk and failure- what is crucial though is that, they almost always embrace calculated and measured risks and failures! Very rarely they play blind- when that happens- it is a turning point in the history of the world! Good Leaders (typically the corporate world is replete with this variety) almost always stay away and steer clear from risks (even calculated ones’) and almost always want to dabble with only things and work that gives them success (even if that is 1%), never will you see them dabble with something that has never been done, something that has a low chance of success and so on and so forth! Well there could be valid reasons for that, but this is what separates the Good from the Great! History of the world is never written by operating from the comforts of the known spaces- new beginnings always are created from spaces where the known perimeters end!

All Great Leaders, Listen: Don’t mistaken, I don’t suggest that other Leaders are deaf! This listening is different and very potent- this is the space of directed listening and intentional listening. This is what provides Great Leaders with depth of frame and context, when people engage with them- this is what helps them set focus and be able to see far ahead into the future than anyone else! Potent Listening is much beyond paying attention to what is being said, it is also about listening to the why of what is being said and how and what can be done about what is being said! As the old wise adage goes, The more you listen, the lesser you need to speak! The problem with humanity is that majority of us are only listening to the point or to the extent of what we want to hear and this where everything goes horribly wrong! This is why we end up living and experiencing lives and leaders which are sub-serving and myopic!

Great Leaders choose to win Wars over Battles: As Great Leaders know the value of embracing failures and risks, so do also know the value of winning some and loosing some, what makes them so potent and effective is their ability to know which to loose and which to win! This trait goes a long way to make Good Leaders move up to become Great Leaders and when there is an error of judgement in this space, needless to say Leadership legacies are created and destroyed in proportion to the damage incurred!

Great Leaders practice proactive Empathy: Great Leaders know the value of investing in others, that way they ensure that their ideas and plans are not only accepted but also improvised by the people who embrace them and for this to happen, they need to practise and display proactive empathy- the art and science of knowing what the other person feels, thinks and does by being who they are and every Great Leader know, unless this vital step is not completed, nothing of greatness can ever be achieved or lived by anyone!

Great Leaders live their Values: All Great Leaders live the values that they believe in and in a sense are the living embodiment of the values that hold close to their heart! Great Leaders stand for something that they believe in and something that is intrinsic and non-negotiable to them for any reasons and their whole approach, attitude and action is aligned to this. This is what helps Leaders create more potent leaders over Followers, as the Values and the benefits of embracing them becoming evident and worthwhile, in no time you have a whole mass of humanity aligning themselves to the very same Values and what you then have is the pinnacle of Great Leadership- where the whole society seems to resonate with the singularity of a cause and belief which stand strong and firm on the foundation of the Values that are being cherished!

Great Leaders speak less and act more: Although it may seem contradictory, this is a fact, every Great Leader that you cherish, no matter how much news byte they offer or not, the fact is they are always in the action and in the thick of the things more, much more than how much they speak and communicate! Great Leaders know, that for them to be successful and relevant, every word that is spoken needs to be backed up by action and that’s why they choose to speak less, but frequently and keep displaying actions of their earlier words which goes on to reinforce their commitment to the audience that they hold sway upon and that further provides the much required fuel to sustain and further develop their Leadership by amplifying their Followership base!

Great Leaders take efforts to reach out!: All Great Leaders know the power to forgive and forget! They know when it is okay to forgive and when it is okay to forget and when it is vital to do both! This is what helps build empathy and at the same time display generous attitude to one and all and make a clear, visible statement about them as a Leader and about their Leadership style and Value systems! All Great Leaders know the power of connecting people and bringing them together, because it is only when many believe and embrace what is being communicated that societal change happens and manifests and unless there is a comprehensive okay from across the sections of the society, even the most noblest of intents will end up being defeated and that’s why reaching out is so vital and critical, whether you lead a nation or lead an organisation, unless the last person is won over to your side, it is never done!

Great Leaders know when it is time to exit!: All Great leaders know, that what they are pursuing is an endless pursuit and cause which is firmly planted on few core ideas, beliefs and values and importantly that journey must continue even after they no longer are at the helm of the affairs. Hence all Great leaders invest and share what they can and must among those who they must all that is vital to ensure the continuity of the ideas and values of what is being pursued even while they are firmly in the saddle and even as they call the shots! This ability to share and empower others without any hesitation is perhaps one of the most important hallmarks of Great Leadership! Great Leaders plan their exit even as they start to build and work upon their ideas right from the beginning! Great Leaders know the value and merit of the second line and they always have that around- so that no matter what happens the idea and the belief always lives on and that is the very essence of any Great Leadership model or the hallmark of being a Great Leader- the ability to influence long after you are no longer physically available!

I am sure there could be many more facets that go on to create the aura and magic of Great Leaders and their equally Great Leadership, but I leave you here with these thoughts, for you to reflect and perhaps add further on what you thought were other vital elements that went on to make a Leadership that you came across Great! I have intentionally not put names to the “Great Leaders and Great Leadership or even tried to suggest examples of Good Leadership, simply because all of those observations are always contextual and why I see through the lens of my intellect may not always be the same for someone else and every truth is equally justified from the lens of its beholder!

I leave you here now, urging you to connect with the passive Leader within you and the active ones’ around you to embark upon the journey to experience Great Leadership by being a Great Leader! Remember everything related to Leadership always starts by Leading yourself first! Be the Leader you always sought! Begin the journey to seek your Greatness and the first step to that is, to define the Leader in you and the Leadership that you want to bring with you!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then stay wise and keep inspiring!

Choose a finish-line.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Whether your are running for the presidency of a nation or for that coveted corner office with a panoramic view or simply wanting to clear off something that you are in the midst of; each one of those instances will have their potency and meaningfulness only and only if there’s a defined finish-line to what you choose to do and it is often the essence of those finish lines that goes on to define what that journey was all about and whether it was the realization of the aspirations with which it began or was it another living nightmare all of that will only be defined by the finish-line- that you choose! Join me here as we take a quick look into how and why finish lines are so critical and more often then not more important then the journey or even the results that one begets as they go about it! So here we go!

Ever since we have been kids, even as we go about living the lives that we have got, knowingly or unknowingly we end up working our way to one finish-line unto the next and that journey in a way also takes us to our graves- sooner or later, well that depends a lot on what you do during that journey that you have decide to be part of! Let me explain! Much of humanity is about following the norms laid by societies that we live in(whether we like it of hate it, there’s really only son much that often people can do about things and when you do stand out- there are only two outcomes- If you are a powerful outlier- you are termed as a classified idiots/ an oddity and left alone and if you happen to be one of them who can be walked over- rest assured you will be a door-mat in a blink of an eye! You see, societies are built to conforming standards and it is only as long as people are conforming that societies exist and one fundamental part of this whole societal conformation crap resides in the space of the preset and predefined finish-lines!

Depending on which part of the world you are, the story of your life will be similar when it comes to: education- where your finish line is either 15, 16 or 17 years of education, jobs – where your finish-line (at the start of your career) is getting to a wage of “XYZ $ per day/per month/per year), if it is about your family life- your finish lines could start with “age of marriage, number of kids, ownership of houses, vehicles, getting old- ensuring your kids stand on their feet….so on and so forth!” So, you see, our lives are basically and intertwined web of “finish-lines” which have their own flavor and when one of them is disturbed- even though that may be a momentary one- you have the ripples felt across the whole web that you have ended up weaving by virtue of begin who you are! The bigger, the better, the larger that you end up becoming in life- farther these ripples reach and it sets off a resonance which tends to keep on oscillating and swaying ever single web associated with some aspect of your life and this goes on endlessly and this is what the real essence of human life is- trying to balance the finish lines and their pathways on an ongoing never ending basis!

You may want to argue that, if this is not life then what is, well sure enough this is life- but my question is very simple- do you really need those many finish-lines to begin with? Think around it- for the one dear life that you have- does it really makes sense to complicate the way we actually end up doing it? What is the point of having so many check boxes and finish lines- when you are going to miss the whole flavor of the journey simply to tick it off your “Life’s to do list” I mean really? Is the story of your life really all about that alone? Is that how you want it? So what is really unfolding around and within our lives- why do we get trapped walking into scenarios where as soon as we pass one finish line, we set ourselves up for another and that never seems to stop? Whys does this happen? Read on!

Sure enough, I am not suggesting you to be any less aspirational or ambitious, neither am I asking you to bury your creative spark and lead a mundane life with no glamour or flamboyance, all I am asking you to do is define and agree to draw the lines so that your finish lines don’t end up finishing you off in the game of endless desires and mindless pursuits! Some of the finish lines that we have subscribed to are more often then not societal and there is hardy anything that you can do about it! Say if you are born in India, then even to think of education anything less then 17 years, would be an unpardonable crime! even if that education ends up adding no value, context or sense to your own personal life and vocational pursuits, but that is what as a society we have given unto ourselves and as yet, we don’t see any light of those aspects changing! Contrast this space to the the more liberal and open societies of the west- where every bit of what one desires has to earner- either through self earned wealth or through merit and the rewards there are instant and longer simply because everyone does not go in for a 17 years of mindless education and people truncate this first finish line of education- simply by being practical and sensible and exercising a choice for their life with regards to this one finish line pertaining to education and thereby straightway avoid all the other subsequent ripples that may arise!

As with education, so with every other facet of our life, whether it is the jobs that we pursue, the kind of family life that we cherish for, the way we define opulence and class, each and every bit of this is nothing else but a disguised statement of what our finish line is and when we say we have crossed it! What largely goes missing is the essence of the effort taken to reach that line and end of it, was all of that really worth it! You see, I have come across hotshot bankers who had a coveted MBA followed by a full time Bachelor’s In Engineering! Well, now if you always ever wanted to have a great career in banking or the business side, even a comprehensive master’s in Commerce or Economics or Accounting Practices provides more than what one would have ever needed to be on the top of the game in that sector! But the societal biases and need to conform ends up pushing people doing all kid of stupid things all the time! End result well a certificate which just sticks in your face- letting you know every now and then the wasted time, money and effort all of what went in to come to a big zero- in the present context that one is in! Sure enough Knowledge never goes waste and no Knowledge is bad- but again the question is if you always wanted to be a banker why would you want to first qualify as a mechanical engineer! Think about it!

When it comes to our office spaces, things are no different, we always want that corner office, many a times the moment we reach there, we want to be actually out of that office! The moment we have that house of our dreams, we realize that our dreams were ordinary! and we embark upon pursuing something else! Well instances like these and many more go on to make those finish-lines eternal even as we have mortal bodies to deal with and needless to say, the story of old age of many people is more about the un-reached finish-lines rather then being able to talk about the few finish-lines that were cherished for reached and enjoyed! So what is the right way around here, what is amiss, how can we be aspirational, ambitious yet content to limit the number of finish-lines that we can speak about heroically in the twilight tears as we wait for our call! Well read on!

Well, if you really want to hear from me on this, you have to start by being Authentic! Unless and until you are able to discern and agree to what you can (really can with the stretch and without it), you will always be hounded by the endless finish lines! It begins from within, within each one of us to know well and really well- about who we are- the essence of being who you are- as an individual as a component of the society that you have got to live in and from that point alone can you deduce what is that you aspire for, why and how much of it can you really achieve and what is that you must do to reach that place and how do you stop and sustain when you reach the pace where you want to be! This simple, yet powerful way of deducing and pondering is the real and effective way to not only have few finish-lines, but also ensure that the ones’ that are there are genuine, meaningful and once you reach them, they begin to add value to who you are and begin to be part of the definition of who you want to be known as! This also allows one to calibrate ambition to reality and ensures that mindless pursuits are nipped in the bud and all available intelligence is used to serve and achieve the meaningful causes and pursuits that one must address to reach the finish-line which now displays the potency to define who the individual is as one reaches that line!

I leave you with these thoughts here, urging you to decipher and read the finish lines that you have passed by and see for yourself how many of them were meaningful and how many of them were futile pursuits! As long as you have your breath there is always time to re-align and re-focus on the finish-lines that matter and stay away and stay clear from all of those which seem tempting but may be outright pointless especially when it comes to the value that they can add to you and for the people around you!

Ciao for now, will be back with another one, until then stay wise, stay safe and pursue the finish lines which make a real difference to who you are and for the people around you!

The Fluid mindset.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Beyond the realms of technical definitions of human behaviour, attributes and attitudes there resides a fundamental space and how this space is nourished goes a long way to determine how individuals are able to manifest what they desire and stamp that unique authority of who they are by what they choose to do! Join me here as we unravel what the fluid mindset is all about and how being fluid is not about being disoriented or lacking focus, but rather having the potent ability to prevail over multiple aspects and situations through shifting laser sharp focus! So here we go!

The human mind is a genius by itself, even without considering whether you want to put it to use or not! With an innate ability to learn and improvise, there is nothing out there in nature which comes anywhere closer to what it can manifest! Yet, it is this very mind which also is responsible for the untold misery that humanity has faced from time to time as civilizations have risen and fallen. So what makes the human mind so potent, whether it works for us or against us? It is the singular aspect of the ability of the human mind of being fluid which alone makes it what it is- a formidable ally or a die hard enemy based on how you want to use it or mess it up!

The fluidity of the human mind or rather the ability and the extent to which it can stay fluid has always defined the great achievements and the hardships that humanity has ever gone through! Fluidity of the human mind or the”Fluid Mindset” is not about having superlative intelligence or being wise than the other person- sure that helps, but it is more to do with the way the brain is harnessed to deliver and manifest what the aspirations of an individual are! So what is a “Fluid Mindset”? What are the indicators of having one or missing one? Well read on!

The human mind has this innate, natural ability to flex and stretch- whether it be something new to learn or a new problem that needs to solved or whether it is about making something that is routine interesting- the brain (if you allow it to do so!) has the ability to spring up surprises and provide options when everything else seems closed and locked away! This becomes possible only and only when the mind is allowed to wander and experiment and importantly fail and record those failures. Failures and hard knocks are the only incentives that a fluid mind ever demands, simply because these are what go on to make the mind more fragile, spontaneous and alert on an ongoing basis and the ability of the mind to discern between competing priorities becomes sharper then ever before!

If the mind is allowed to deal with uncertainties and new world;y engagements, it simply thrives on these opportunities and sharpens its ability to evaluate and create value as required for the individual to begin with and then for the others around! Let me explain! I hope you are one of those who like that ice cream or that piece of chocolate- well what do you do when you get an access to the favorite one and have a bunch of new friends around you? Well, mostly you will end up suggesting, offering, selling or singing about why you like that ice-cream or that chocolate so much! Why does this happen, even when possibly no one has asked you to do what you do- in terms of promoting that ice-cream or chocolate that you are so excited about! Well, your fluid mind just has gone overboard to share the goodness of what you experience with the people who are around you- because your mind thinks they are worth of experiencing that moment- just like you are! Likewise when you are with someone (whom you don’t technically hate, but not like either) the very same mind will keep that excitement mellowed down and play a flat card- indicating to the others around you that “well whatever” is the state of your mind! When actually you are relishing on the feast that you have hit upon all for yourself!

The essence of fluid mindset is all about allowing your mind to mind it’s business of what it is good at- dreaming and imagining! History and our modern lives too are a testimony to the fact that, all that we are touched by or we end up getting touched with, has at some or the other time being a story of human dreams or imagination! Those dreams and that ability to imagine have been held and envisioned by individuals who were able to embrace and sustain that vital, yet subtle fluid mindset! It is not about having a wandering aimless mind, it is rather about empowering that wandering mind to build meaning out of what it sees – whether that seeking is intentional or accidental! Great manifestations of human intellect have only become ever possible because of this ability of the mind to keep moving, stay seeking and decipher all that comes its way so that it formulates and creates sense around all that it senses and empowers its ability to be potent at discerning all the time!

The fluid mindset has the power to liberate and bind at the same time! Liberate from the templated and structured thinking patters and ability to bind to vague, uncertain, untested and new ways of thinking and expressing oneself! It is when these new pathways are walked upon that magic gets created and we see them manifest in the usual ways of creative or innovative breakthroughs all around us!

The sliver of difference between a fluid mindset and meaningless hallucination resides within the content and the contextual space around what is been dealt with! When there is a problem in this seemingly small attribute great imbalances are created and often you find people end up pursuing all through their live some utopian idea or a thought with nothing ever manifesting to see the light of the day! Human failure is all about the inability of the human mind to build over the fluid mindset which is so intrinsic within each one of us- make it too thin and wide- you are aimlessly wandering without any meaningful beacons to guide you either from within or externally, make it too narrow and deep- you are likely to get stuck with a structured mindset of conforming into the ever present traps of conformation biased based thinking and hence no matter how great your potential you end up trimming your levels much below then what you can actually achieve! It’s like flying an airplane well lower then its trim altitude- result-burns more fuel and needless to say that flight always encounters more turbulence at that lower altitude as you keep dealing with one weather front after the other all through the flight!

Humanity- most of it is actually an entrapment of fixed- structured thinking patterns and why this happens? Well, given the pace of our lives that we have given unto ourselves and the kind of routine patterns that we chose to adhere to- either by choice or by compulsion, we are really left with very limited choices and a mind that is anything but fluid! This is sure enough part required but the problem begins as this “part required” tends to occupy a major part of our lives and our thinking patters! Unless an effort is made to break away and strike a balance between structured thinking and the fluid approach, life almost always end up being more average then what it can be simply because the magic of the fluid element is lost under the burden of structured thinking!

The potency and efficacy of fluid thinking doesn’t imply that we need to do away with the structured and fixed thinking patterns, not a bit since those patterns are required for the routine decisions and way of life, fluid mindset is all about being able to create and weave magic through the ordinary times by unleashing an extraordinary approach and way to a situation or a challenge and thereby being able to manifest something that is unique and unlike anything before- some call this as creative expression, while some terms this as innovation and for the plain speak this is what refer to as individuality or being unique by virtue of being able to express the wholesomeness of who you are!

Fluid mindset has the power to create magic and help individuals reach their zenith of expressions whether creative or not, that depends on what is being held within and what manifests subsequently, but this is the very essence of the whole approach to beholding a fluid mindset- that of allowing your mind to flex, stretch, dream and imagine so that you are able to get that one fleeting moment which creates lasting value for yourself and others even as you go about your life through the routine patterns of work and play using your regular structured way of thinking!

I leave your here with these thoughts, urging you to take that vital pause and decipher for yourself that right balance between having fluid moments and structured moments so that you lead and live an empowered life that you always so much have cherished and aspired for!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then, allow your mind to flex and stretch and bask in the moments empowered by your fluid thinking!