Tag: #bloggers

Lose battles to win wars!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

As strange it may seem, but ask any military commander and you will have plethora of stories that go on to prove the point, why at times loosing a few battles, irrespective how hard or easy they are is in the larger interest to win the final war! No, I am not a military strategist, but this principle perhaps fits aptly to the lives and times that we are going by and more than ever before, it has now become more important to identify which aspect of your life is you war and which one is a battle! Which is the one that you can let go and which is the one that you must engage with day in and day out until you accomplish that ever elusive objective! Join me here as we explore this space and understand why loosing at time is the final step to a magnificent victory!

If you have read any of the authentic memoirs on World War I or World War II, you will perhaps get a quick understanding about what, “The fog of war” means! When you have military action unleashed across many theaters, and with military strategy at work between both sides, as the war ensues each side will try to deviate, distract, dodge, trap, escape and beat down the other side, even for that to occur these multiple theaters of war though acting independently at first glance necessarily need to deliver results at the right time and place to tilt the balance of the war in their favour and this is the essence of loosing a few battles to win the war (the main battle- to put it in another choice of words!)

As in war, so in life, irrespective whether you are a young student trying to make your mark in the world of academics, or a young professional racing ahead that corporate ladder or a seasoned professional trying to create the next set of industry wide benchmarks- across each of them lies a common thread- that commonality pertains to the fact that irrespective of whoever you are and whatever you choose to do- unless you have identified what is equivalent of war in your life and what is the equivalent to the many battles that you must wage (albeit winning some and loosing a few), you will always seem to be challenged in an ever increasing complex pattern both externally and as well as within yourself!

Each day, we are compelled to make choices and as I had written in my earlier article, choices are what eventually make us but, largely dependent on other aspects associated with it! It is from here that as we begin to decide and check out what aspect of our life is the war that we must win and what aspects are the battles- which we are fine wining some and loosing some as long as the War is won.- So what are these battles and what is this war all about? Read on!

The battles that we need to pick and choose as we go about our daily lives can crop up from any area of our life and are related to our value system and beliefs that we end up anchoring upon as we grow. If the value and belief systems remain congruent to the ones given to us and the ones that we experience around- the number of battles to be fought reduces considerably! The moment there is disconnect between what we have been given to believe, follow and aspire to be and what we experience as individuals, conflict commences and like any conflict there is only one side that can win- either what you have been given to believe or the ones’ that you have experienced first hand! Depending on which side wins- that etched moment will further add a layer of foundational belief and character to who you are. If that new acquired character serves you to win the big war that awaits you- this battle was worthy enough of a victory- else a defeat here- by giving up your new acquired beliefs over the older ones’ would have been more valuable! Think about this! Let me explain this!

Consider, you are aspiring to be a cop, now as you grow you are going to be exposed to all the right and wrong that exists with any law enforcement society- this is your battle front and the aspiration that you want to be a cop is the war that you must win! Now if you start to despise all the negative aspects of being a cop- corruption, political pressure, seemingly in-efficient judicial recourse- and start thinking that none of this can be changed and you begin to ignore and start to act recklessly by trying to course correct people and situations assuming you are the law- by beating up people- you will perhaps win the battle of being right in that moment- but all and any chances of you being a cop will be dashed beyond repair- in a few societies permanently! This is a classic case of winning a battle emphatically, myopically and loosing the all important war altogether!

In another scenario, you see all this negative- understand why it is what it is, and wait for your time when you have the power to change that from the legal stand point! So here even if you seem to be submissive in the shorter time line over a period of time as you harness the power of the uniform that you wear, you are able to make more lasting impact with changes that you always wanted to do and more importantly winning the war by becoming a cop that you always wanted to be even if you would have lost a few battles on the way before becoming ready to have the power to change their outcome in your favour!

I can give you similar examples from virtually all arenas of the lives that we live, corporate, theater, art, politics, you name it and there will be stories having uncanny similarities but the singular point will be the fact that, people who are able to win the war of their lives are the ones’ who have learnt to lose their battles and more importantly know which to loose and which to win so that the balance of war is always tilted in their favour! So what’s the key here!

It all boils down to this simple truth of life, sounds a bit philosophical, but then truths are truths, once you have identified that golden purpose, objective of your life- that accomplishment of that desire/aspiration becomes the only and all important war that you must pursue and win- win because that moment of victory is what will go on to define who you are and what your life has been and what is the legacy that you will leave behind! With so much at stake, it’s but obvious one needs to apply time, patience and intelligence to decide what that war will be and time it right! Once you have identified the War that you must win, needless to say, like ghosts from nowhere you will find scenarios and challenges coming towards you, multiple of them a few times, feeble sometimes and strong at other times, these are all those battles which you need to weigh carefully every passing day/ hour to understand which to fight, which to delay, which to ignore and when you do fight, when and whether you fight to win or fight to loose- all these decisions need to be aligned in a manner that ensures that you are always congruent to your final objective of winning the war!

Battles that sap your energy, drive you crazy, take you away in opposite journeys and directions from the direction where your final war zone is serve no purpose and these are better ignored, delayed or if necessary lost! Battles that mark your presence like a milestone and which keep you aligned to the trajectory of your war zone are the ones that you need to win, because each victory on the way is a statement- a statement of your arrival on the war theater and ask any military commander, they will tell you, apart from the loud noises that the guns and machines make, if there’s anything else that melts the resolve and minds of the enemies it is the courage and achievements of the people in command.

Once you reach the war zone of your life empowered by your won battles and humbled by the ones’ you have lost- you have a finer judgement to time your move and ensure that no matter what the odds you will be able to achieve your objective- whether that is a job as a cop, that corporate CEO chair, that leadership position in an office, starting your own enterprise, serving the people- whatever is your war cry- all of that can be realized once you arrive at the war zone as a battle hardened soldier whose vision is focused and glued to the victory of the final war!

Learning what to let go, learning what to hang on to and choosing to loose a few and never loose some, is an art and science which gets perfected not in any school, but in the lab of your life! As unique as we are, so will be our battles and wars- each one cut out to mold us, shape us and push us ahead- willingly or unwillingly so that we are able to reach the war zone to win and achieve what we have set out for and while doing so we are able to give up on things and people that don’t serve us in the context that they tend to drag us down rather then propel us ahead! It is certainly not a call for being selfish, rather it is the interest of selflessness of serving the greater good for the people around you that you must lead, by loosing some and winning what you must- it is only then that as individuals and societies we will continue to have real life everyday heroes who make the difference by doing ordinary tasks in an extraordinary way and thereby keep the human spirits high and hold that promise which says, as long as you know where you want to be- you will get there once you have made up your mind- and as long as you are wiling to pay the price that it may cost! Whether that cost is justified or not is another story because success is finally something that has to be shared with the community and in isolation nothing works, neither happiness, nor leadership nothing!

I leave you here with these thoughts, urging you to take some time this weekend that you have, think deep within and decide what is the war of your life which you want to get into- which is that war that will define you, to create a lasting legacy of values and beliefs that you stand for and what are the battles that you are ready to win and loose to tilt the balance of this grand war in your favour!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until than stay wise, keep thinking and yes breathe!

The story about choices.

~ PA ~ 1 Comment

This article is not about, the old wisdom about how choices make us and break us and how we end up becoming what we do because of the choices that we make, this is more about understanding how do choices present themselves, the way they do- and once we are bound to make a choice- that is what happens- we become who we are! Join me here, as we sieve through this aspect and perhaps, your choice of reading this empowers you to choose something!

Let’s begin from the start! How do choices manifest? Remember growing up? As a toddler, how did you go about choosing? Well difficult to remember? In all probability the choices would have been made for you- simply because you were not that equipped to make that choice between whether oats is better than cheese and bread! Hence your parents or whoever raised you, stepped in- their power came from their wisdom and knowledge about you to nourish you right- not because they knew it since they were a toddler- but rather because they began to learn all about it as they knew you would arrive! If they are wise enough and sane enough, their choices will nourish you well, giving you a great chance to stand firm in the life that you plan for yourself as a foundation to begin with! Your foundation of Health is a perhaps the first choice that your parents make for you and believe it or not that goes a long way to contribute to your potential and success in life! Sure enough as you grow, whether you decide to add to it or screw it up, entirely depends on you and that’s a set of choices that you make- to which we will visit in a moment!

The next important decision or rather choice that impacts your life is the school that you go- not I am not talking about you post grad schools, the very basic- and this does play a vital role- because the values that we choose to follow and choose to let go, the initial social communication and engagement steps are all formulated here and based on the choice of the school you will have the potential to emerge either as a flamboyant extrovert or a researching, probing , introvert or anything in between those two extremes- but any of this will manifest on the choice of the school you make! How much control you would have- well, depends on how many schools you got to change what the process of deliberation over choices is followed at one’s home- some case it could be a simple one liner- in few other cases it could be a get together of all relatives to make a consensus based call and there may also be those eclectic few- who would want to host a community lunch to learn the latest developments around the schools in the neighborhood and then take a call! Irrespective of what method is chosen, the fact remains that a choice is made and this one goes on to build, mold and shape the foundation of your approach to the world in pursuit of knowledge, learning and applying your imagination- how this gets played out, goes a long way to determine what vocation you choose and “who” as a label of work that you eventually become!

The fun begins now, by the time you have completed lapping up your knowledge, you are also more or less getting into the space where you commence to make active choices, unlike the earlier ones’ which were largely passive, from now on you are in control and you make the choice- what shirt, which trouser, which perfume, what party venue..so on and so forth and as you start with these seemingly trivial choices, you soon begin to get dragged into the more complex, few necessary and few completely unwanted (which arise because of some of your active choices gone bad!) choices and before you realize you are living a life of your own choices, made in rapid speed, with or without thought applied and the consequences are well, there for everyone to see and only for you to experience and live through!

Choices, surely go a long way to make who you are, but it’s importantly the quality of choices and the quality of leadership that you have applied to lead yourself, once you have committed to the choices made by you is what sets successful people apart from exceptional people! Let me explain! Say, you made it to the MIT and are graduating in Finance, a choice which you made, now the score with what you graduate will go to speak volumes about the depth of the choice you made and the application that you brought to it- you see, you could be a business tycoons heir so getting admission perhaps would have been easy and if end of the day you are going to head back to your family business and add dollars to it, nothing wrong with it- but then for that you never needed a MIT to begin with! Sure enough, you would have learnt a few tricks and secrets being there and made some great friends for the future, but hey! That would have been anyways possible given you are stinking rich and can afford to connect as you wish! This is how “choices gone wrong” look! Don’t be surprised, but the intellectual degeneration that we see around the world is because, people who care less for the cutting edge knowledge and application of that end up getting the front row seat to the show and those who really need it are often somewhere in the back rows trying hard to understand and make sense of what’s unfolding- eventually resigned to work and be enslaved to the front row guests! If end of the day the whole idea is to run your own business, the way your family has been running- then why waste valuable hours of others time- because end of the day, no principles that are learnt will ever get applied- for one reason or the other. The teachers and the institutes may be great, the students too based on who they are- but no one ends up helping anyone in the real context of it! Think about it! How many business heirs have gone to the top 10 colleges in the world and won a Nobel Prize for outstanding contribution to their chosen field? Let me know if you come across any! If you see the profiles of the people who have a made a difference to humanity and have served it exercising a choice that they had- their approach, selection and application of their choices is always consistent right from the start and even if that means- being an unsung hero, a failure (in the eyes of the corporate world) they are just fine with it- because they have made a choice to stay who they are and serve the way they have chosen to!

Likewise when it comes to the world of corporate chaos, of start ups, innovators’ and what you have, people make choices and not all of them succeed, the success stories of a few hundred start ups the world over are celebrated in the elite unicorn group- but beyond that glitz and glamour lie the ruins and graveyards of wrong choices that have buried themselves and also sometimes the people who lived and swore by them! Sure enough, not all those choices would have been bad, neither all of them would have been wrong, what makes the difference again is the quality and application of the choice that is made! When it comes to the big bad world of the corporate, why do you think, everyone doesn’t become a CEO, why doesn’t everyone in the Stock market become a billionaire? You will find people with similar qualifications and competing intelligence and experience everywhere, but there are only a few who last, endure and are able to make it to that coveted chair- so what is so different about the choice, that they would have made- same school, same college, same degree, similar experience and growth trajectories- so what is this slight difference that makes everything else fade away? Read on….

The slight difference which makes a world of difference is all about the Application and Implementation of the choices made topped with a layer of ones’ intrinsic intelligence and persona! This is what goes to give the slight wafer thin edge to pip others who are almost always very similar- but this intrinsic value holds the sway and does its bit when the time for those hard choices come in to play! Want proof- browse through the details of any management team/ board of directors of any large organisation and compare them with the current Managing Director or the Chairperson as the case may be- you will see my point clear and bright! If this is what it is, you may want to know, how can we harness the suitableness within us to make our choices more align and empowering?

The trick begins and ends by knowing yourself well and intentionally well as you grow- the trick is to force choices on yourself- that suit and align you on a daily basis to keep you on the path that you have chalked out for yourself- in terms of the gain that you have envisioned for yourself as part of the choice making process! The reason why, I say, this has to be about forced choices is because, unless you aren’t aligning yourself to these forced choices, you will be drawn to make other optional choices all the time and that will not only deviate and distract you from your core objectives but also sap your energies by allowing you waste your breath on things that really don’t serve you in any manner! It is only once that empowering choices become your second skin, is that you will find dramatic shifts coming in your life- where- everything that doesn’t hold value for you will vaporize and all that is required for you to keep moving ahead keeps arriving as you need it! You call it the, “Law of Attraction”, call it “Harnessing the Universal Energies to align the universe with your desires”, whatever you find fit- that’s you choice!

The essence here is the singular fact that sharp self-awareness, quality and intent driven application and implementation of choices made alone is the way to stand out even at the very top! Sure enough one must guard to ensure you don’t end up being a psycho at the top- the world has too many for now- choose any field you wish to see! As long as the objective is of achieving that defining success through high quality choices made with an focused intent, flawless implementation and intense application, the journey always remains to be one hell of an experience and yes it is again your choices alone through the journey which will ensure that this dream like journey and the final destination remain as pristine as they must and don’t turn into a nightmare because of one bad choice somewhere along!

I leave you here with these thoughts! The weekend is almost here, grab that inspiring book, hold that coffee and soak yourself into something that makes you choose something today for a wonderful tomorrow that you so badly want!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then make a choice to stay wise and stay safe!