Tag: empowered societies

Empowerment through Inaction.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Obedient slaves and Bad masters.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

The first time I cam across this concept was when I underwent a Health and Security training with a high profile organization around two decades back! The trainer was sure enough referring to various technical nuances of providing security detail to VVIPS that we may have to engage with, but as part of the training when he came to the vital part of dealing with “Fire” is when this statement (which I later understood is of foundational value!) came to the forefront! Since that day, it has remained stuck and continues to remain so for a simple reason that it is so fundamental and pivotal that everything around us and everyone around us knowingly or unknowingly is operating through these very attributes! Join me here as we explore this further and understand what is that we can do to make this space more meaningful and to begin with, why does it have to be so? So here we go!

Nature is perhaps the greatest and the eternal teacher. If you have been observant enough and ever had the opportunity to tame the elements of nature (if not all, perhaps a few) you will know what I am referring to! We all have known about the large massive dams that stand a testimony of humanity’s stamp of authority on wild and free flowing rivers, but every now and then when nature comes up with a trick up its’ sleeve, even the most seemingly formidable dams end up being just mere objects as they witness the massive amounts of water which they must allow to flow through and perhaps even flood downstream, simply to ensure that the dam doesn’t fail completely and collapse!

As with water, so with fire, wind and the earth itself- for when the elements on which we stand decide to take matters their way- humanity has almost always ended up paying the price for being reckless and disrespectful- remember the word “climate change” good! This is perhaps what is the simplest explanation for the whole construct of it! As humanity plays dangerously with the elements- what is manageable in no time becomes unmanageable and begins to create problems directly or indirectly of monstrous proportions! This is when the “bad” part of being a master begins to come alive and irrespective where in the world you live, sure enough you have got a taste of it in some or the other form! If you are wondering if this is all about nature and its ways, what does it have to do with us? Well, the truth is, no matter how much we would like to have nature out of our way, it seldom leaves us, and the way we behave with ourselves and people around us, is nothing but a reflection of nature itself!

Through ages, as humanity has learnt and emerged from the shadows of nature, it has learnt one skill and that is of being obedient when it is unsure/ vulnerable and being monstrous when its reeking with confidence/ certainty (more often then not, riding high on overconfidence and some times, arrogance!). This hardwired aspect of the human brain and way of connecting with fellow humans often manifests through the modern day dram that we see unfolding in homes, offices and across the social spaces! This is the reason why you see, overworked corporate slavery (because the vulnerability of being jobless is often too big a mountain to climb for the majority!), next to get around it, the usual tools and aides of sly and non-conforming approaches and behaviours, that is how the seed of corruption gets placed- because a way is found to get around and once you do it for one aspect, certainly you can and you will deploy that art for the next thing that seems to be an insurmountable wall! In case you happen to be the Master in the equation, you will be more aware of the sly ways of your corporate slaves (for Every Master some time has been a Salve!) and that ends up being the bedrock for you to deploy your monstrous approach to get work done!

Sure enough, I am not suggesting this is how everyone is, or everyone operates this way, but if you take a pause and reflect upon the behaviours that you have always seen around you and perhaps even your behaviour- you will always see that people are always oscillating between these two vivid extremes of being a dependable slave to being a ruthless master! The reality of our lives resides in between and as Individuals stack up societies tend to get a broader character of being either more obedient or rebellious both indicative a higher shade of one or the other manifestation!

The times that we are entrapped in, are reflective of this eternally conflict of “Wanting to control” and “Wanting to be controlled” as long as people are naturally aligned to what suits their innate and intrinsic nature, things are fine, but the moment you switch them into the wrong quadrant or they tend to outgrow their quadrant, chaos ensues and as that proportion increases, whether that be in our homes, offices or in the society in general! The compelling question here is, why do obedient slaves or why does obedience transform into brashness and harshness as one rises or work their way to become Masters at some or the other time?

Well part of an answer to that question resides in the space which is related to the nature of enslavement, quality and tenure! As long as that experience of being enslaved is within the flex and stretch of a thinking human mind and is rewarded and corrected within those meaningful limits, as people outgrow their learning and enslavement to become masters, they will retain their attributes and value systems to become meaningful and engaged masters, but when the enslavement space is riddled with conflict zones and confrontational narratives, as they grow and rise, they serve back the their distasteful experience in a more amplified manner and the story goes on! This is how individuals get entangled in never ending comparisons, jealousy, tactical slyness to derail the other, corporate bitching and back stabbing and societal unrest and mistrust, all of these are nothing else but a manifestation of enslavement gone wrong and obedience turned into anguish and aggression! So what’s next?

Well, the real essence is in the fact to accept these compelling realities of our lives and surrender to what comes your way and also ensure that all that is created by virtue of what you do remains meaningful! Perhaps the only way to sieve through this paradox within and around us is to remain rooted deeply within to the values and belief’s that are empowering and liberating! As we go about our lives, there will be times when we have to stay enslaved- perhaps not to anyone but perhaps to an idea, a thought, a belief and even as we do so, ensure we retain the character and flavour of who we are and don’t end up carrying the excesses of our entrapment through our journey of empowerment and liberation! The most dangerous way to emerge is ending up being a leader who is entrapped and enslaved within- in their beliefs, thoughts, fears and anxieties!

It is only when a moving fine, dynamic balance is reached as we go about living our lives between being a wishful slave and a leader by choice, will it empower us as Individuals who can then further go on to influence others sans the negativity of being a bad master and ensure that the enslavement or followership that emerges is not tied to something regressive but rather to some liberating thought which empowers even those who are enslaved to the cause of rising ahead and moving further!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, urging you to take some time to reflect the enslavement that you seek and the leader that you want to be when your time comes so that you stay an obedient slave to your liberated mind but never a bad master while driving your ambitions!

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

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!

Allow Thinking to be Intrinsic.

~ PA ~ 1 Comment

Thinking- the space which defines who we are and will become with the passage of time. Thinking that empowers us to create history or become part of it, which has the power to liberate us or bind us into timeless shackles of our own imagination and the ghosts that emerge within our minds. Thinking is perhaps the only one singular virtue which sets us apart and helps each one of us get that unique intellectual signature which has the hallmark of our unique thinking design all over it! Join me here as we take a fleeting look into what makes thinking so intoxicating and empowering and how something like that has the power to liberate and bind us in the same context of time but in a different context of arrangements around us! So here we go!

If there has been ever one thing that had the potency and the power to differentiate each one of us decisively, it is that intrinsic ability to Think! As simple it may sound, trust me there is nothing more complicated then this bit over here! The reason for that exceeding level of complexity with a simple act of Thinking , resides not in the ability to Think or not, it resides in the ability to be able to Think Intrinsically from the very core of who one is, as an individual and as discerning human! This is what is the holy grail of meaningful thinking is all about and this is what makes this so complicated and for the majority of us almost always a case of slip between the lip and the cup!

In the rushed lives that all of us lead, we are ever faced with that challenge of requiring to take decisions like that, hiring people, firing them off, picking up stuff for the home, planing that vacation, going for that event, that award ceremony, those bills that need attention, the modern human brain is simply working at its peak capacity – if I may say so- when it comes to enforcing the mind to take decisions like- now and here! You see the human brain was never designed that way, it was always designed to observe and record , calibrate and then decide- how fast and how rapidly these events unfolded and at what frequency well that would largely depend on what situation an individual is- say you are out there on the primitive woods and been stalked by a predator- your brain is going to race up and make you take those fight or flight decisions based on its assessment of the threat and your abilities to deal wit it, likewise if you have to select two packets of bread from a super market shelf- well- it’s going to allow you to take all the time in world that you need simply because it knows there is no urgency unless you are about to collapse out of starvation! This intrinsic default mechanism has of late, been put to much lesser use- in context of the ability and the quality of decisions that one can make good vis a vis what we end up feeding the mind with and the kind of decisions we ask it to make! Let me explain!

If you were to sieve through the last 1000 years of humanity and tried to find when were the greatest observations and intriguing questions were ever asked- chances are you would land yourself in the times of great civilizations, prosperous kingdoms which alone allowed the human mind to explore the fullest potential to question and more importantly Think! Think as in really think- not the mundane thought process of “What I tell my boss?” or “when do I get the next pay check”. Sure enough people back then would have been there who would have had similar challenges and questions bothering them as well, the only change for our times now is that more of us are engaged into Thinking about things that don’t really serve us and very few , very few of us are really asking the most pressing questions and Thinking as we should! This skewed off take between the overpowering density of useless thinking and very limited valid thinking is what keeps on drowning away any relevant voices that a society may have and thereby ends up pushing societies into that singular direction of less servicing and myopic scenarios.

Sure enough, I am suggesting we move to societies where we all have only philosophers asking finite and potent questions and finding the answers to these questions and we go about our utopian world just discussing! No, not a bit, what I am trying to share with you here is the compelling urgency that each one us must pay attention to make a choice to ask at least once in a while (if not often) some pertinent and valid questions which bring some justice to the fabulous thinking machines that each one of us has been gifted with! It is only when you allow that space to ask and get surrounded by intriguing questions once in a while that your brain will be stimulated enough and forced to come up with answers to perplexing observations that are beyond the routine and thereby provide your brain with that very much needed dose of stimulation to keep it abreast and tuning it to be always leaning and looking forward rather then only relying on past experiences and accumulated knowledge repository that is available at disposal on the click of a button!

The whole idea of allowing Thinking to be Intrinsic, is to allow it to be free of any pride or prejudice coming in either from the individual or from the surroundings that one may be in- for once that happens, then you are no longer thinking but rather aligning your observations and thought process to certify and validates what is around and what you desire for and this is where the fundamental disconnect happens and you are then entrapped for ever in a never ending circle of self- gratifying thinking either for yourself or for the people and things around you! Another level of conformation and compulsion just to get a sense of belonging among a groups- which again happens to be a hallmark of what humanity is!

Sure enough, you don’t need to think- the intrinsic way to buy that ice cream or those movie tickets or have that vacation, Intrinsic Thinking is for the more compelling questions about your individuality- about what you are – who you want to be as you transform through the stages of life and what is that you aspire and what to leave after you as a legacy that you have created- even if that has to be limited only for your family tree- if the stakes are higher and you have ever thought about influencing a society or a nation- then needless to say you need to have and embrace this space of Intrinsic Thinking more often then the others around you and need to also ask the right questions to have the right answers coming back to you in the time that they must! Thinking loses it’s potency as the quality of questions fall! Poor questions lead to poorer answers and thereby miserable solutions which lead to a myopic understanding of the life around us and then we are always left in that short served context until that next person arrives on the scene who asks the right questions, making it possible for the right answers to come in and thereby bring in the much needed change that the society would have been waiting for! So what is it that really makes Thinking Intrinsic? Well read on!

As I said earlier, It has to come from within and has to be pertaining to something that is compelling and which seems urgent in the context of the answers that the questions may provide- this is the space where great research, philosophical enquiry, scientific validations and myth busting takes place! Intrinsic Thinking is perhaps the purest form of thinking by staying focused on a perplexing question of high quality and then compelling your mind to provide equally high caliber answers/ solutions which are able to provide solutions or pathways which seem to deem fit to the quality of question asked in the first place! Once this is achieved (which in itself is a huge ask), what follows through the implementation of the solutions, needless to say is almost always in line to serve the greater good for humanity on a big scale! Use this Intrinsic Thinking with the wrong questions and what you get is the power to unleash hell on earth and cause misery to the millions around you! Intrinsic Thinking is all about carving a pathway to empowered thinking to allow individuals and societies to lead empowered lives by answering compelling questions in a way that high quality solutions and answers are found!

What happens when we do away with and shun this effort to allow and make way for Thinking in an Intrinsic manner? Well, you get what you are facing now! Screwed up ideologies, competing value systems and an omnipresent overbearing haze of ambiguity and myopic thinking across all levels within the society- right from individuals to the highest offices that a nation may have! When this happens, needless to say, everyone suffers, then it all falls back down to the scale of the majority- if the majority are wise – who practise Thinking the Intrinsic way- you still have a chance to think in an authentic manner and keep your head above the water line- but like it happens- if you are in a crowded society replete with idiots and dumbness, well you will have no other option to save your intrinsic thinking to just ensure you don’t get killed and walked upon over by the dumb-wits all around you!

I leave you here with these thoughts and urge you to mark that moment when you would want to deep dive into thinking by the intrinsic way and come up with some great answers for the great questions that you would have challenged and then race ahead to apply those finding to live an empowered life and perhaps also lead others through the empowered way!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then stay wise and keep Thinking the Intrinsic Way!

The fallacy of festive celebrations!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

If you ever wondered why you wait for the whole year for that one big festival ( whatever that you want to choose and define as one for your sake!) and then ended up being more miserable towards the end of it, well this quick piece is just for you, to help you know why after the highs get higher, the lows are simply unfathomable! So join me here as we unravel this space of humanity and try to know why and when do celebrations fail and what is that we can do about that bit, if we want them to linger on as something to look forward to in the real essence of it!

Humanity is perhaps the only other thing alongside wine that tends to get exciting with time! to know the fallacy of festivals, we need to take a step back, in fact, quite a few steps to try un and understand how the whole concept of festivals perhaps evolved- no I am not an anthropologist, just plain uncomplicated stuff based on common sense and science and sure enough you can read about this in more details by going through the favorite books of your choice of human geographers or anthropologists- whatever comes easy to you!

So the story starts right at the very beginning, when humans were able to form the very first types of ordered societies – the very first time! to monitor and create order within those- coupled with the existing and evolving belief systems/ values (which were developed over time), the dawn of festivals was ushered in! Back then festivals were more of a method to mind societies so that the element of cohesiveness and divergence was visible and was always within the allowable limits as set by those who ruled those societies! One way of doing that effectively was to align these festivals to the broader belief systems/ value systems and make them as a bench mark for social conformation! So typically, if you were part of society that broadly believes in the belief or faith type”A” then alongside with the duties and responsibilities of following that faith/belief the rewards would be these much sought after festivities which would further more work to reinforce the ongoing prevailing value/ belief systems (as they have been rewarded with the festive spirit!) All is well until this point as societies are still fragmented not much inter connected among each other and there is a more or less a steady space as far as the mix of the value systems/ faith/ belief followership within the social frames that exist. This ensures that festivities are held orderly with a purpose with an intent and with a solemn reaffirmation of realignment to the broader cause of the established belief/ value system of the said society!

Now if you were to move ahead in time, say the more evolved societies the age of the Kingdoms around the world, what you witness is a racemic mix of belief systems and value definitions leading to multiple approaches to festivities, the definition of the whole concept of a festival and this is the time in history where festivities begin to compete among each other as a mark of opulence and progress by one set of value/ belief system over the other in a given social construct! This is that point of inflection where, societies which failed to manage and keep these competing ideologies and their assertion through festivals in balance that problems have begun and festivities rapidly began to drift away from the ancient path of being aligned to the puritan belief system/ value system to something altogether new- the embracing of the narrative of the rulers/ governing establishments on how and what the festival must be and when and how it is defined as successful, a grand one so on and so forth! This is how festivals and the celebrations around them stepped into the modern age- already skewed away from what they really stood for to begin with!

Irrespective where you live and what you believe or not, if you take that fabled pause and ask yourself how much of value addition have the festive celebrations done to your own personal life through the years of your life- chances are that you would have too felt the diminishing value of their impact, sense and sensibility like the diminishing value of money! This is nothing to suggest that the value of the festivals or their celebration would have diminished with time, but rather the method, the way and the impact of the conduct has certainly undergone a sea change which has furthermore added to skew festivities and their associated celebrations more further away from even the fundamental belief systems/ values to which they would have been rooted! It’s a classic case of enjoying a party not knowing for what it is and by whom it is! This singular aspect then further easily destroys the remaining core of the celebration and then what we are eventually left with are shadows which are larger than what the festival would have earlier been and more irrelevant then ever! How does this all pay out and manifest? Well read on!

Choose a value systems/ belief system/ faith whatever you may want to refer it as , and seek one festival associated to that system and check for yourself how the values of that festival have eroded with time! You will be surprised when you take a pause to reflect to see that how even you have ended up unwittingly contributed if not accelerated to making those celebrations more and more irrelevant each time that you celebrated more and more! No, the problem is not the celebration of the festival, it is the problem with the changing narrative and the method that has been implemented to define celebration which has created more problems then anything else!

I have intentionally not mentioned any names for the faith systems or the value systems, simply because that sets in prejudice and then one things will lead to another and the whole essence of the subject will go astray! You see, there was never, nor is neither will ever be a problem with the celebration of festivals aligned to belief systems/value systems that’s fine, the challenge starts as the way and method of these celebrations begins to slip away with each passing year and more importantly at times takes or manifests exactly the opposite forms of what the original intent would have been! The result? More and more shopping competitions around every festival, more and more of “display”, “senseless consumerism” and “needless unwanted one upmanship in one way or the other” the result, more fractured societies and and more confused individuals, who know they are celebrating, they know what but sadly none one ever knows what is the right way and what is that should be celebrated!

This is why the moment the “New year” is ushered in come January 2nd and it is aback to to the same old grind of whatever you have grinding upon or been ground into! The moment that instance, the moment those high days of the festivities are over, there is this bounce back to the routine norms of sharing “displayed celebration” over social media handles (which has now assumed sort of compulsive obsessive disorder space now!), those senseless bithcihng around with friends (well that’s a whole new definition now a days!) and family and that non-stop gauging and comparisons of opulence and gaps in the furniture which just go on and on until the next big festival hits home, calling for another celebration and this mad circus goes on with no end and no real rhyme or purpose! All simply because, the original ethos and the connect around them have been forgotten and lost, some intentionally, some accidentally and overall this leads to depleting value and belief systems and that downwards spiral leads one thing to another which eventually leads to societies- where some or the other segment is always celebrating something or the other- whether that makes sense or not! You think you know some society like this? Well! Stay Blessed! and Stay Safe then! So what’s that we can do?

Simple, get back to the basics! That’s the only way to salvage any remaining sanity that a society can possibly do, especially when it comes to aligning festival celebrations to what they ought to be- celebrate a festival- a path way of thought, ideology, belief, value system and you know what the best part is, all of that can be done without needing to have a shopping festival , a discount sale, a selfie contest, posting on social media, none of that is anytime needed and that is perhaps the only way to take your time away from these non productive and senseless pursuits and align your self to the more pressing and more real matters pertaining to the festival and the values/ beliefs that it brings forth and do what you can, to spread the warmth through those timeless values and that, if you ask me is the real essence of the festive spirit and anything and everything to do with celebrating festivals!

I leave you here with these thoughts, urging you to connect with your value systems/ beliefs in a more authentic way so that once you are plugged in right, you can reflect all that matters right and importantly in the way it is meant to be! Festivals and celebrations are no doubt the hallmark of humanity in terms of the civilizational and societal progress, but all that only makes sense only and only when there is meaning to those celebrations and there is a definite method to the madness! Life by itself is no less then a celebration! Celebration of moments form one unto the next and the only meaningful way to celebrate is to utilize the fleeting golden moments as wisely as one can and create values around which outlast the time in which they were created! Think again the next time you head on to celebrate something, take that pause and see if you are living the ethos of that festival by the way you choose to celebrate it!

Ciao for now, Will be back soon with another one, until then keep the festivities on and if nothing else practise the art and science of celebrating life for what it is and what it can be!

Learn to navigate the 99.99% crap!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

As if the pandemic and a slowing global economy before that was not enough, we now have a whole community of morons and absolute idiots communicating and selling everything and anything promising everything but what a service or the product can do with that timeless 99.99% tag line somewhere around the communication!Join me here as we take a quick look into the what and why of this whole menace which seems to crop up each time humanity is faced with some odd, as if this was the elixir for which the pandemic had to happen for! What is really the unfolding and why do we, as humans individually and collectively get sold into this carp of 99.99% over and over again like a never ending roller coaster ride! So let’s move ahead!

Before you think, that I am one cynic of marketing, well I am not, what I am a little cynical about is, how people can be so gullible to buy into some stupid idea sold by someone who thinks they have been brilliant (while they are actually the ones’ who hang around on the edge of an average IQ which is fast diminishing with every weed and smoke that they consume!) which is anything but the truth! So from where does this whole crap of 99.99% emerge? Well to be honest, I did not have the time to do a thorough research, but my generous scientific and common sense based guess is that, sometime back somewhere in the streets of marketing some idiot would have done, at some point in time that unthinkable folly of claiming something to be 100% and would have ended up with tons and tons if law suits and claims, because of which this is the holy pathways that has been ever chosen- which is as senseless as the earlier one! This is so for the singular fact that no one really knows 99.99% of what! Sure enough, the labels and the packaging have all the technical narratives and explanations around “ideal conditions”, “test conditions”, “temperature, humidity conditions” so on and so forth, but still does not assure anything worthwhile or mean anything sensible that a scientific and rational mind may find it to be meaningful and welcoming! If you ask me, I think this is the biggest lie under the guise of marketing that has always been played over and over with consumers- whether they are consuming that priced cigar or that expensive piece of real estate or that odd perfume which is also labelled as “limited edition”! This whole 99.99% crap plays on one fundamental framework of the human mind- that intrinsic urge of the human brains to seek comparatives and alternatives (hardwired since our days of evolution to get the best of what we can in a “what if” scenario).

As the brain applies this frame to evaluate options that it is presented with (not that all of them have to existential choices- which they are turned into by those hyper smart catchy lines of a communication piece- at times hitting well below the belt of decency and ethics!) it ends up seeking short comparatives- data points, narratives, stories and as it does that what better and impactful then a few numbers- especially when they can be rounded off just below that magical 100, just a decimal or a few decimals short of it and there you go, you have a a great “stuck on” situation, wherein even an uninterested person is now going to stay for that extra fleeting second to know what that new crap of 99.99 % is about for this time! Let me tell you one thing, If you have someone that you care about in an ICU and your doctor wants to tell you the chances-you always want to hear is 100% and not anything short- simply because then you know that some shit is about to hit the roof- yet when the same garbage is served in a polished plate for some seemingly trivial product or service (which rip your wallets off using a baby face communication style) you are all ga ga and ready to lap to up like there is no tomorrow! So what is happening around with your mind? Why does it buy a set of numbers for one instance and relax for the other one?

Marketeers know this facet of the human mind too well to let that go (discount it, should I say!) you see the human brain, when left unto is more smarter then you! You see, the human mind is a powerful tool and runs on a very powerful sub-conscious engine, but when you begin to use it- the way you use it or not use it- greatly reduces the efficacy of that tool to help you and more often then not ends up harming you because the quality of choices that you force your brain to follow and there by the resulting actions take you onto a different route altogether! This is one of the reasons why not every scientist ends up being an Einstein and not every painter ends up being a Picasso! The moment your subconscious mind is fed with the 99.99% crap it knows it is all hog wash and relegates it as too trivial to engage with- basically it is telling you that this is all glorified garbage! But what happens here is that your interference and that dire need to socially conform to the masses around and ensure you don’t look like that child who missed out on that party “I was here”, “I too was here” kind of narrative nonsense buys up that crap and even as your brain may not want to, you end up splurging and buying that 99.99% of crap- knowing well all that it is being sold and all that promise of 99.99% has nothing to do with what the product or the services does and if there’s anything worthwhile that’s going to ever help you stay safe or sane it is going to be your own intrinsic unadulterated intelligence when applied right!

When the human mind notes that it’s laziness will not kill you, at times knowing your habit of overthinking and stretching, cribbing and sulking it simply gives up and gives into that stupid act of buying that dumb communication which promises a 99.99% free of virus, dark spots, blemishes, stains, surface cleansing and God alone knows what all! The sad part of all of this, people end up thinking they are being smart- when actually their own minds have really given up them from within , knowing that there is no end to this fool’s way of thinking! You see, you may have the most sophisticated brain on the planet, but if you decide to not use it for the purpose it was built and designed for, well you alone are to be blamed! if you buy a candles to keep your fire place warm! Well wait to see how wax shapes your melting future right in front of your eyes! So you may say fine, so what’s the problem if no one is getting killed? Does it really matter? Is it really that big deal?

Well ask any qualified psychologist and they will tell you, how big deal a conditioned mind can be especially when it is programmed and conditioned to crap theories and stimuli which go on to make it a wreaking machine rather then being a creative powerhouse! Through the story of human evolution, all greatness of the mind has almost always been achieved either in compelling situations of dire needs and existential crisis of societal proportions or these minds have flourished in times of serene calm and grandeur that made the minds to create and craft wonderful pieces of expression through science and arts! At no time was a mind ever able to produce a masterpiece which was calibrated at 99.99% of anything or something! Did you ever hear any scientists say that their discovery or innovation was 99.99%? I hope not! Deploying the human mind to read through the discount labels and 99.99% communication is nothing but an abuse of the magnificence of what the human brains is able to offer and gift us with! So what next?

Well to begin with allow science and common-sense to prevail! Sure enough if something doesn’t kill you enjoy the idiocracy around and smile about the dumbness around you (much needed in these times) but guard your mind- guard it fiercely from getting conditioned and receptive to these kind of false narratives and the only way to do that is to study the whole narrative of the 99.99% crap and see how the communication has been camouflaged and how smart of lousy that seems to the mind! This exercise alone will keep you mind ever more vigilant and ensure that the next time you get another piece of crap in your mail, you exactly know how to decipher what is not been said and what really the message is! As long s you are able to do this bit, your brain will be able to decipher and sieve through the onslaught of misdirected narratives and stories and promises which are anything but the truth and what’s more, you will be as sharp as you must and should be- no matter how dumb or idiotic the surrounding around you seem to be! Magically enough, the more you use your brain through the frame of enquiry and questioning based on rationality and science- you will begin to see dumbness and idiocracy more and more vividly and trust me, you will be entertained like no one else would ever have been! You will actual start to wonder if there has been a sudden surge in your IQ levels (which is unlikely of course) or is it that now you are able to see with more clarity all the crap that was always pushed towards you, simply because you took that small effort to change the frame of looking at the communication coming your way and did not lap it up as it came!

Well, I leave you here with these thoughts for now, urging you to see around your horizon to find instances of these 99.99% stories that are still nudging into your life all the time and see what is that you want to do about them, lap them up or decipher them and have a hearty laugh! These 99.99% stories are in a way also an indication of failing and falling creative opulence that humanity is now left around with and is reflective of the fact about how creative myopia sets in! Well, now if you want to know what is “creative myopia” all about, well I say, let’s look into that space some other time, perhaps the next article!

Ciao for now! Will be back soon and until then stay 100% at whatever you are and let that mean something sensible! Just remember you don’t want a doctor or that pilot flying your planet to be on anything less than 100% around you!

The oncoming Leadership pandemic!

~ PA ~ 2 Comments

Among many lessons that 2020 has brought ti us, one important one is about the fragility of leadership even as establishing the point why it is so scared and important! It is between these spaces the seeds of the next pandemic can be found and this one relates to the leadership pandemic and how well we are able to steer through this one will largely decide- as individuals or societies whether we progress or regress and whatever we choose to do- how fast or slow will that onset be! Join me here as we take a quick look through this concept and see what this is all about and what is that we can do about it- of we can do something about it!

Needless to say there is a whole lot of art and science to leadership, but what is equally important is the fact that neither can leadership be enacted in vacuum and nor can leadership be made available on demand! The whole of 2020 has seen the world over inter-personal engagement dynamics change- some of these may be welcome and few others may have been not that so welcoming but irrespective whichever one you have witnessed or have been part of there certainly would have been one certain casualty of all this disruption and that would have been the Leadership aspect!

Leadership was and never will be about recorded video logs of company CEOs, PR generated perfected newsletters and “From the CEO’s desk” communication”, simply because no one really gives a damn to any of that and none of that really matters! What alone matters to every soul on the team is the simple pointed question-what is my role in this changing space and how long am I needed here and for what! This is yet a very smaller instance around just the communication disasters that leaders worldwide have engaged with their colleagues and team members over the last few months! There are far more graver ramifications which perhaps have already been unleashed and the results of these will be needless to say more impactful, visible and played out in the open- through failing products, services, and organisations in the days and months that follow us in 2021! The primary reason for all that to set in, is not only the failure of the existing leadership mechanisms within organisations, but also because there are more than required number of organisations which stand out as brilliant examples of colossal organisational incompetence especially related to the critical space of Leadership and this in turn sets off a chain reaction- driving the firm and the people therein into a never ending death spiral of fading and failing leadership across levels- one level at a time!

What the pandemic has done is, that it has effectively stripped away the whole corporate world of all the necessary and unnecessary camouflage in one go! Needless to say, like a chameleon who has lost it’s colors, every element in that corporate set up lies exposed like a striking contrast to the chosen background- which makes it all the easier for the the other chameleons (read competitions) and the enticed viewers (read clients/ customers) all the more aware and clear of what really lies beneath the hood and thereby taking away all that built your charm, energy and warmth that would have ever been there in that ongoing engagement! Not only that even within the set ups of the myriad departments and organisational hierarchies, it has been now then ever before (thanks to the pandemic) that reality has set in and for once people know- who really works hard, smart or not at all and all those time-sheets have been begun to offer productive data which is far more meaningful now then ever it was earlier! In all this churn, there are casualties, many simply because they happened to be at the right place at the wrong time and few whose luck had eventually ran out- again the Pandemic to the rescue! Either ways what has now eventually evolved is a scenario where there are a few leaders left at the top, few people at the bottom and a middle level surge- where everyone seems to be herded together- with very few among them having the competence, knack or the finesse to lead that flock as the time moves ahead! But you may ask why should this happen? Well let me explain with a simple example!

For all those of you, who have spent some time being alert in the corporate world- a few things would have been absolutely clear- there are groups, group-isms, favorites and teams that work and teams that don’t work, leaders who work and who don’t so on and so forth! Before the pandemic hit, each organisation no matter how large or small it was, had the space within to navigate and allow a certain permissible and width of non-performances simply because it would be too costly, difficult and tenacious to monitor and track that- the effort wold have been more costly than the result of that observation! Hence earlier when colleagues said they had “Lunch meeting” you were never sure how much of that was Lunch and how much of that was a meeting! You never knew how much of meeting time was really required and how much was taken up! Before the pandemic you always needed the large conference room – full of people with additional chairs drawn in and tea and coffee raining all over the conference tables within the maze of wires and cables- only for everyone to come out of that conference room- agreeing on one thing that had to meet again! It is in instances like these that pandemic had eventually ended up being a blessing in disguise!

As soon as organisations, got their act together and established process and policies for the new world standard of the “WFH” (Work from Home) they began to realise and see their folly! Vendor expenses started to go down- no more travel, no more endless headache of tea/coffee, canteens, food orders so on and so forth, worrying about the light’s been left on, that AC left on – noting of all that at all! Furthermore if that was not enough, now you had a perfect chance to track and trim performance to the minute! No tea breaks, smoke breaks, no saying , “I was there”, “I was in a meeting”, all those long meaningless and conclusion-less meetings suddenly started to get productive under 30 minutes- simply because now you had to write the agenda in the subject line with the expected outcomes by the end of the meet (God alone knows why people had to wait for a pandemic to just get this bit done!)! Another fallout of this, unwitting expose of performance and competence/incompetence needless to say would be the head rolls, doing away with people and processes that do not matter anymore simply because there is nothing forthcoming from those areas in the Now or in the times ahead! This is the space from where the real onset of the Leadership pandemic starts!

Now that there are a handful of “resourceful leaders” having done away with “the ones’ not needed” and with middle layers of the organisation being told decisively that they hold the key to the future (not sure whose- theirs or the organisations) and not many junior level positions being retained or replenished (so that the mid level takes upon the incompetence of the higher ups and makes up for the loss of productivity due to the lack of resources at the lower levels!) the game is all set to usher in failing and fatalistic Leadership Incompetence! Why! Well, simply because organisations, as we speak right now are replete with doers’ they may be great no doubt but if you don’t have the visionaries who behold the vision of the future to lead and the support of the enthusiastic and curios generations that er to follow, every attempt to try and do something different or do the same thing better will fail- always and each time! This is how the leadership pandemic will manifest and play out as severe and un-treatable incompetence- simply because the real leaders are no longer steering the ship and with amateurs at the wheels who think it is easy to swim by reading a book, well the outcomes are almost always predictable and far way from the desired ones’ that an organisation would ever want to have!

This mindless rejig of organisations, by doing away with people and process without applying detailed thought and process and furthermore trying to expect the mid level to rise to the occasion ( at the same expense/cost and provide an output of the higher level!) and deliver what the seniors couldn’t with ever diminishing support from below and around, well it’s anyone’s’ guess what we are setting ourselves up for and what kind of leaders will emerge- if they ever do from these scary shadows of corporate dumbness! You may still want to present you case citing, why should thins be a problem- if there able people at the mid-level then why shouldn’t they rise and deliver! Well, I am sure there are and there will be- the problem is not about they being able to deliver- the problem will arise in the space of “how the deliver” well you can bake a cake as long as you learn how bake one, but to come up with the finest of them, you need to know the intricacies of the process and those magic moments where things begin to happen for taking that bread from the ordinary league to the premium league and this is what is missing at the mid – level- simply because the earlier masters would have forgotten to handover that secret key- either intentionally or unintentionally and without that no matter how many time you bake- your cake will yet remain ordinary! The story of Leadership pandemic is the story of rise of incompetence to further complicate things simply because the original masters are no longer on the scene!

If you look around you, you would have by now experienced some fall in the level and professionalism in the services that you seek, may be that engagement centre, the communication tonality, it could be the lacking warmth or simply renewed alignments on the agreed way of engagement- whichever way you are able to perceive what you do- the fact is that all of this is emerging out of the ever increasing leadership deficit, which is doing nothing but accelerating the onset of the leadership pandemic! If you thought this was limited only to the corporate world, think again! Just take a moment to pause and reflect on what can and will happen when this leadership pandemic sets in powerful offices which lead nations and societies! That is when the real ramifications will be felt and hit hard and fast and needless to say they will not be even an ounce pleasing to anyone for that matter! You would end up societies and nations having dumb rules and even dumber ways to manage that ever increasing dumbness within and around! Want proof?- I am sure, wherever you live, you would have heard about night curfews to manage the virus! There are many such subtle examples of dumb decisions coming up from powerful offices, for only one reason- the leaders (who are supposedly advising) are the ones’ who are part of the leadership pandemic and even as they are failing fast, they are preparing a whole new nightmare of even dumber people coming into succeed! So what’s the way ahead, can anything be done!

If you ask me, the only way to fix a systemic problem is either to set up a completely new system sans the garbage of the old ones’ or start rectifying existing systems at multiple fracture points and repairing them in tandem and ensuring that the right people are always at the right places ( no matter what their price tag) for quality has a prices and unless that is paid, rest assured all of us are on a one way ticket to a hellish dumb future! perhaps the only saving grace about Leadership is that it has a core intrinsic value- something that can’t be wiped off or taken away and if you are a leader in the real essence of that word then the chances are that you would be among the few people standing between complete chaos and method to the madness scenarios that we collectively look forward to face in the future!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, urging you to stay ever vigilant and practice what you can by being the Leader that you can be for yourself and the others around you so that we are able to stall the onset of the forthcoming leadership pandemic at an individual and a collective levels alike! Feel like you have already experienced instances of failing leadership- have heart- if you have noticed it and have been able to discern it- chances are you have the way around or over it to stall and overpower it!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay vigilant about this leadership pandemic!

Harness the Invisible to stay Invincible.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

As trivial as it may seem, in the times that we are in today, that cloak of invisibility is what alone can provide us with invincibility as we navigate through our lives pursuing our aspirations and connecting the dots and dashes! Join me here for a quick read through to learn about what this invisibility is all about and how that has the ability to empower us to a point of being invincible, why is it so elusive and what is that we can really do about it! So here we go!

Whether you are running for the Presidency of a nation or wanting to get that next big break or simply want to put on your 100% at what you have on your hand, it all begins with your ability to decode the invisible forces around and within you and harness them to make you invincible to attain what you are pursuing.

Often people end up being entrapped in all that is played around them and more importantly within the visible spectrum – of what they see or rather should I say more appropriately what they perceive to see! Even as they go about this, they completely forget to factor in the vital aspect of what exists behind what is apparently being played out and this critical component is often what gives strength and power to what manifests around us! Unless we are able to decipher these drivers which almost always remain hidden away form plain sight and what gets played around to the audience, we will always end up being short changed as far as being able to get to the reality and truth of what is there and what is being told is there! Let me explain!

Consider the ongoing crisis developing form the US Elections, what we get to see around is- whether you have loyalties to aligned to the Red or the Blue- irrespective of that- the fact remains that- in the ensuing war for the coveted chair- a lot of ugliness is now coming to the forefront and the way that is coming through is likely to end up doing more damage to the nation and rather than building it further- like every election is supposed to be actually doing, these have actually ended up making the nation more vulnerable and divided more than ever! But hidden away, far away from what media projects, analyzes and sells as stories to the dutiful unsuspecting viewer, are the real stories of how at this very moment politicians, bureaucrats, the judicial system and the uniforms that are under oath to serve and protect the nation would be working overtime and really fast to derive meaningfulness and sense from the chaos around to help the nation arrive at a sane decision which is just, fair, transparent and which holds the promise for the people of the nation for the now and the years ahead! Think around this, tucked away from all what happens in front of the cameras exists a whole world- a complete different eco-system which is all aligned to one cause- the cause of the nation- irrespective of the political ideology and it is this system that will eventually come up with the answers that the whole world awaits for!

If this is true about the political system, so it is for everything around us, whether it is the sales deal that you want to clinch or that decision that you want to implement for the organization that you lead- all of that will only work and work as it should only if you have deciphered who the invisible forces are and what is that they aspire for! Unless and until you don’t have a buy in or a nod so to say from those quarters, no matter what you do, and how well you do, what you do- success will remain as elusive and as certain as your ever growing confusion- as you fail to comprehend the reality around from the lens of the invisible forces! But what could be these invisible forces that control outcomes for Individuals? Well read on!

These seemingly invisible forces are your belief systems, your approach, your attribute, your competences, ability to discern and apart from these intrinsic aspects, you have the every changing extrinsic variables around you that have the power to impact what you aspire for and what you intend to do- the action that you are ready to take to get what you aspire! These could be the social construct (the passive ones’ which are so easy for one to overlook), the timing (of what you want to do- whether others are ready for that!), the intent (whether the larger intent of the society is aligned to you or not!) and finally the ever present great question “what is there in it for me?” and to make matters more intriguing this question can pop up n number of times from the same space or from new pockets and this ever changing flux is what goes on to alter the course of an individuals ability to hold on to success or experience a “yo-yo” effect on their success quotient as the extrinsic factors play havoc and try to scuttle the stability associated with their pursuit of success! So what’s the story? What’s the point here?

Well, the point is plain and simple; as gullible and deceptively simple it is to get sold into all that gets played around you all the time, that very attribute of the society or the individual ends up setting them up against the Invisible forces operating upon them and dragging them into an eternal battle zone where there is no winner and no looser! This is what ends up depleting a majority of individuals and societies; as they play to what is seen and what is perceived they neglect and disregard the value and the power of the Invisible forces and that is all that is required to embrace limiting success or continuing failure! It is only when individuals or societies are able to rise above and beyond the narratives that they are been served with and able to see the operating Invisible forces behind them, that they will be able to better manage and control the outcomes aligned to their aspirations, simply by deciphering the Invisible better and using that very force to augment and multiply their efforts to empower them for being resilient and strong as they keep walking on the path of their aspirations!

It is only this space of knowing what can provide you invincibility that will ever empower you and keep you on the trajectory of being successful by harnessing thee Invisible powers that are always at work- it’s just about getting them to work for you and not working against them!

I leave you with these thoughts here, take a break and seek the invisible powers around you and do reflect upon whether they offer or take away that vital Invincibility form you!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then stay Invincible and harness the invisible!

Through the eye of the needle.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Whether it has been for recreation or for some serious purpose, if you have ever held a needle and used it for the right purpose, then this short piece is for you! Join me here as we unravel what all unfold as we try to navigate through the eye of the needle and why this matters- or should I say how this sums up all that you and I are often engaging with as we go through our blessed lives- whatever way they are being blessed! So here we go!

The first interaction with the needle and it’s eye would have been in most cases on account of that crazy soft toy which either you would have seen your parents create for your or perhaps a little older you would have wanted to create one for your class assignment on middle school or for your little sibling or a friend, whatever that reason would have been, that interaction would have provided you with few valuable simple lessons of life- Attention to detail, Choosing the right thread and having a steady pair of hands to work with and an eyesight which is able to focus and stay! All of this or any of this for that matter is simply a good enough reason for one to be grateful and have a heart filled with gratitude, because there are a few who simply can’t even accomplish this, owing to some challenges that life would have placed in their way! Alongside this feeling of gratitude, is the valuable lesson, “the prick of the needle” well whether that happens owing to a prank or while you are working- it reinforces the point of “attention to detail”, focus and also tells one fundamental truth of life- All that is useful has a context, spin that out of context and the most useful facet can come down bearing upon you as a dreaded adversary! In this case, it is the needle- a tool which promises to help you personify and craft your creative expression, but at the same time, a moment’s slip and it has the power to pain you- so what if it’s momentary- the pain is intense and then you always continue to remember the value of your creation by virtue of the pain that came by! The needle is but one facet of this story and the other important one is the thread!

You see, you may be able to garner impeccable control over the needle and perhaps also develop tolerance to pain as well, through the trials and tribulations of life, however if the thread that goes through the needle is not calibrated, the whole effort is sure to be a waste of time and it becomes a perplexing dilemma especially when the thread goes through initially and then begins to play truant and behave in it’s own whimsical ways by literally getting “thread bare”. The whole effort of ensuring that the thread goes through the needle also depends a lot on the thread that is either chosen or the one that is given to you (when you don’t have a choice to select one!) Think about the times when you lived through this, when the thread was easy to work with and when it played the spoil sport, making you go back and re-start everything all over again, simply because it began to come into its real elements!

If you thought, that these are the only elements that impact the whole journey of travelling through the eye of the needle, there is one more omnipresent factor, the light around us- the presence or absence of it and how we engage with it! As trivial it may seem, ask a young grandmother or a old youngster, what the the struggle is to drive a thread through a needle when the contrasting or adequate background is missing especially when the eye of the needle is fine and the thread is even finer! This is where the real test of skill unfolds! The skill to hold the needle, have the right thread, have that safe pair of hands and fingers alongside the environment which empowers that act to be completed as desired by you- timely, smoothly and efficiently! This is where the real fun begins for we all know that like real life, even when it comes to the humble act of pushing a thread through the eye of the needle- perfect situations are far from true and more often than not it is the ability of an individual to know which element is working for and which is working against, is what makes that attempt successful or a struggle! So you may now want to know, fine, understood all this, so what’s the big deal?

Well, the big deal comes from these small facets! Like the needle, the thread, our fingers, our ambiance, so in life, We, our resources, abilities, skills and qualities and the surroundings that we move about in go a long way to determine whether we are ever able to hit our trim levels or whether we end up flattening out even before we realize our fullest potential in whatever we choose to do so! As long as you ensure that you will be rock steady and get to a task that you have set out for yourself, know well what will enable you to reach and get there, and also develop ample skills and qualities to execute that effort, with an environment which supports and further accelerates your seeking, you will be well on your way to achieve your trim levels- because you have a fine needle, a great eye to see the thread through it, an enabling environment and a rehearsed skill which ensures you keep moving ahead more and more as you keep practicing and pursuing what you have set out for- what your needle is! The thread and the supporting environs are the valuable resources which one must choose carefully, and if thats not possible, then must on the way learn to make the most of what is been provided, for the only thing that is within your control is the needle (the construct of you) and the safe fingers that you have with a discerning mind which knows how to harvest the environs to empower the slide of the thread through the eye of the needle! This indeed is the simplified story of our lives, we are the needles that we are and empowered or held back by what we hold within and what we bring out to play and offer to the world around us! As long as we uphold the value to serve the greater good of the many around, we are enabled by all that is around, and the moment we try to sabotage that and bow down to the arena of self serving thoughts and efforts, sooner or later, that very simple effort of going through the eye of the needle begins to seem herculean and impossible! So how do we ensure that we don’t go astray? Read on!

The trick is to know who you are to begin with i.e. what type of a needle are you, what thread are you going to allow to get through and what is that can be created by doing that! You see, many stories of human struggle are simply wasted potential in the wrong areas of life; at times owing to lack of guidance, few times un-supportive contexts and yet other times, plain stupid bravado! Knowing who you are (the needle) is the most fundamental tasks and often humans tend to rush through this very vital aspect! Unless you don’t really know what you are, you will simply be unable to make any use of the available resources around you and may end up thinking worthless things as important and vice versa and the story then is of endless trials and errors and for the lucky few, they live to see the light of success during their life time and for many others’ it is a story of going to the grave not knowing what they did with their lives and why!

Once you know who you are, you are able to know what exactly you need in terms of resources (the thread) and once that is done, you know very well, the craft that you want to come up with and the creation that you want to go ahead with to be known as your legacy! What’s more, once you know who you are and what resources you have around, you can then harness the powers within you to even turn a unfavorable context work for you by adjusting yourself accordingly and if the contextual settings are favorable, needless to say, the coming together of all the elements will propel you on the path to success and empower you to create a lasting legacy in proportion to who you are and what resources you have deployed (the needle and the thread going through it’s eye!)

I leave you here with these thoughts! Grab that coffee and try to think what is that you are, what type of a needle you are, what’s your thread and what is that you are creating or will create going ahead! Whatever that is, make sure, it ends up being a signature statement of who you are and have been and will be!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until than Stay safe and stay wise!

Foundation matters.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

This calm weekend, I share with you a fable! Journey with me as we understand why “foundation” matters and no matter who you are, what you do or not, this is the singular and perhaps the most fundamental of all things that as humans we must be concerned about, simply because everything gets done and undone from this space alone! So here we go!

In a certain place on the planet there were four friends, each one of them was offered an equal measure of land and a free choice to build upon that whatever they pleased! The first person, let’s call him “Perseverance” went on the task by going deep and deep into the earth and when he was asked by the others what he was planning to build, he replied. “it will be a religious place which will serve humanity for ages to come”. The others just shook their head and went back to their own piece of land to start their work and get off the block! The second person, let’s call this one “Belief” went about his task and to everyone’s surprise erected a structure which was minimal and functional at it’s best- but no one could ever tell how well it would weather the challenges of time. The next friend, “Intelligence” was no less, he was quick to assemble all things that mattered to have his structure ready and well he too began to work in a structured manner- rather more meaningfully than anyone else! Finally we had this person, called “Risk” who well as his name suggested, went on to accomplish what he had set out for, taking one step at a time, and well dealing with what the outcome was and then just moving ahead to the next one, by mitigating what must be and building upon what must be!

As Perseverance, Belief, Intelligence and Risk finished their tasks and when they began to see what was done/undone, they began to realize the power of manifestation on the strength of their intrinsic virtues! What Perseverance achieved was a great, deep and wide foundation, upon which the structure (irrespective of how small or large it would have been) would rest assured stand for ages to come, no matter what challenges are thrown at it! Intelligence’s structure was fluid, just what was needed, just right and having all what was needed just as it was supposed to be. Needless to say this lean and delicate positioning of this style exposed it to the vulnerabilities of stress and pressure that change could bring along with it and if times really took a change, then perhaps a lot of elements that were laid in within the complex built by intelligence would be simply redundant and of hardly any value in those future spaces! Risk, built as it thought was right in the moment of what was getting done! Needless to say, aesthetics were lost, but the form of the structure was fluid and dynamic, it was flexible at astonishing levels and everyone was astonished to see the way it had come up!

The day of he great test finally arrived when, the area where these structures stood got hit by the great storm and well, needless to say, as far as Perseverance was concerned only a big deep void remained where once the foundation stood and it all was filled up with the rain water and flood waters that simply flowed in to fill up that void! Belief saw that the only spire that it had erected over the structure to be visible from far away, had somehow managed to stand the storm, although bruised but not broken away, that spire survived the storm, but that is all that remained, with nothing beneath to support or assist! It seemed as if Belief was riding on thin air! Intelligence saw a lot of elements being ripped away simply because they were good for the time when they got built, but had lost their strength and relevance with time and when they got hit, except for the bare shell all the minor elements were shred away! Risk, perhaps was the luckiest of them all, simply because, all elements in the structure were made just to fit a purpose for a time and when the damage happened, there was hardly anything remaining to be damaged, because the approach of Risk necessitated a new order with each moment and hence, in no time as the storm abated Risk was raring to go and re-build all over again, not to forget so was the case with others too!

Just as they thought that it was time to begin all over again, the moment they all shared their stories and witnessed what had unfolded, it dawned on to them, that it was never about taking a singular approach and even though the foundation was the key, it was imperative for all of them to collaborate and add their intrinsic strengths to ensure that not only the foundation weathered the storms that come their way, but also the structure above and the elements within survive and are abe to get better and better with every storm that they face! Soon they began to work and toil, Risk added it’s flair to help Perseverance fix the loop holes in the deep foundation, Intelligence helped Risk calibrate its endeavors and Belief knew exactly where to be in the new structure so that it shined like a beacon of promise and hope for their today and their collective tomorrow! This is in fact the story of each one of us and this is the lost story of humanity at large; it is the missing foundation and the elements which make it what it should be; which (when lost) bring down what we have built and thereby threaten to erase all that was right and create ambiguity for humanity to live with!

Like in this story, in our lives too, all of us, in fact each one of us need and requires to build that foundation, have an imposing structure, replenished with all that the structure needs and a bright display of faith and hope fluttering tall over the structure that we wish to build! The structure is in fact who we are, the elements are the gifts that we have within and the flag that we fly high is the one of our achievements, ability to share and care for ourselves and the ones’ around us, the foundation is what we are at the very core of all of that we want to build over and that core is the cradle of the belief’s values and attributes that we have, we want to continue to hold on to and the ones which we want to share and advocate, simply because they serve the greater good and have something for everyone- more for few, less for others, but everyone has a seat at the table! This is the essence and the real meaning of building that foundation!

The foundation matters, simply because, what type of foundation that you choose will eventually determine the kind of structure you are allowed to build- how tall or wide and how much of elemental value it can hold within all of that will be in one way or the other a factor of the foundation! Take a look around you, all the great marvels of ancient times are etched in stone and stand on some solid foundations, even after thousands of years (in some cases) they have been able to stand- perhaps not in all their glory- but certainly enough to inspire and motivate the generations today! The longer you want your legacy to be remembered, greater is the depth of the foundation that you need to go for! Sure enough there has to be relevance of context and timing- but great things that are built over strong foundations are the only ones’ that are ever able to withstand the test of time and serve as beacons of human creative excellence and provide hope and inspiration in equal measures for generations to come!

I will leave you with these thoughts urging you to think about the foundation that you want for yourself, seek the elements that you would want to go along to make that happen and perhaps also define the structure that you aim to build for that alone will go a long way to define the legacy that you will be able to leave as mark for at least a few generations to come, if not forever! Take your time and run through your dose of Perseverance, Intelligence, Belief, Risk and all the other elements that you need to create that imposing structure which is perhaps your life or even better a legacy of your life that provides hope and inspiration for others that seek hope!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then stay wise and stay safe! Always remember, no matter who says what, we are all unique and as unique as we are, we all need different foundations, even if we tend to build the same structure with a common purpose to serve humanity with goodness and touch greatness as we go on to do that!

Saving democracy (in the digital era).

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Whether you are in the US, India or some other nation or any society for that matter, 2020 has shown us in greater contrast and vivid detail the power that the digital world and the elements therein have when it comes to creating competing narratives and stories which hold a formidable power to destabilize/ impact functioning democratic societies and place them on the edge- either forcing them to become operationally dysfunctional or change them completely into a new entity- which may serve or dis-serve the people living in those societies! Join me here as we take a quick look to figure out why and how democracies get nailed in today’s digital space and if there’s any real way around or through this to safeguard the values and principles of democracy for our collective today and tomorrow!

Democracies have thrived and survived without major glitches around the world since time in memorial, however as societies began to advance, gain access to more and more knowledge and as the power of print and the documented word began to be taken as a gospel, democracies the world over were beginning to set themselves up for failure in due course! The unchecked, unregulated and disproportionate access and power of media through agenda driven deployment the world over has done more harm to democracies than anything else! Think about it! Every time you hear about a scam, a scandal, an ideological narrative, the whole spread about labels like “RW”, “LW” who gives birth to them? Think about it! Whether these are endorsed by political establishments or not is a different matter, but the fact that these labels very often come from the cradles of media houses who desperately try to make news for themselves! Think about it, whether you like or not like a politician, whatever your ideology is, “why would any successful, right thinking politician want to jeopardize their individual careers as politicians and let go of all that power and control that they get to have by involving into something which at the very foundation of it, threatens to take that away form them!” So now the question, if politicians are not keen on this, why would media want to get into something that has the potential to threaten the existence of their business?

Well, the answer to this is embedded in the societal framework and how societies forgive and forget! Forgetful societies are often vulnerable to onslaught of media garbage with or without political endorsements! The simple reason why these societies are forgetful are, is because a large section of these societies is simply struggling to make their lives meaningful by surviving and rising just perhaps one notch higher then what they had inherited in terms of life standards and aspirations! This small step too is at times so all consuming that, in the very struggle of survival and touching their next aspirations, they are left with no choice but to keep ignoring every now and then what is unfolding around them and thereby the whole social ecosystem ends up being a blind animal with sensory perceptions intact but not wired to any purpose driven action or effort! Furthermore, as these onslaughts increase in frequency and variety (based on which section and for what reason they are coming from the society), these societies become vulnerable , anxious and thereby more narrowed down in their outlook to life and survival, simply taking away any remaining resistance, dissent or question that they may have for those who govern them, and who makes this happen- well who else the omnipresent media with or without the clout of the political system at work either behind, alongside or leading the charge!

Societies that are hard to forgive, are paradoxically spared and the media and the political clout weigh their options a thousand times before tinkering with these societies, because they know it too well, that one wrong move or perhaps even a right move at a wrong time and their careers are surely coming to an end with unprecedented speed and certainty! Societies which are not forgiving are the ones’ who have established themselves as a core and a foundation to nation building for generations together! These are societies which resemble small clusters developing into larger towns and cities, where growth has always been slow, steady and calibrated enough at all times to ensure that the local flavors are not trampled over and that essence is the key why these societies become successful and retain their strong identities even after 50-75 years or perhaps over 100 years in the case of some societies and nations! So what is really getting played out and why has democracy become so vulnerable especially in the last 20 years?

You see, based on what type of society you are part of , you perhaps witness a generous dose of narratives from the media spaces every day, every hour and in case of few societies (which suffer from information overload and are necessarily societies running on (mis) information steroids!) perhaps very few minutes! Now these narratives very rarely have anything to do with “you” and very often are at their very best “teasers” being sent out by “someone” who is managing the show. How and what reactions begin to crop up gives that “someone” the power to negotiate, bargain and leverage “something”, “somewhere” in the elaborate fabric which has interwoven spaces of media, political clout and bureaucracy!

With the advent of the digital ecosystem the abuse of democracy has only accelerated; knowing well the vulnerability of people across societies (not because they are dumb, simply because they are too busy fighting and figuring out their survival- the next meal or the next pay check!) it has just unleashed a relentless onslaught to drive agendas and narratives with little or no time for people to think, evaluate or even fact check! The result, is chaos- again based on the type of society and which part of the world map you are in, the impact can be mild or severe and the consequences of this agenda driven media hype (with or without political benevolence) is almost always detrimental!

This is how it always has been and this is how it will remain to be, the point is, earlier there were unspoken and unwritten rules, a point beyond and below which neither the political clout and nor the media would ever want to navigate and explore, but once those lines have been erased, it is a virtual free for all and with every person, every element of the “someone” trying to out do the other, the value systems begin to evaporate and societies start to appear like predictable simulations, wherein set pieces get played out before every major political event, announcement, strategic announcement or before regulatory changes are made! Depending on what type of society you live in and who that “someone” is (whether there is more power in the political clout or the media has enslaved the political clout) the rules of engagement will keep shifting and needless to say, the price will be heavy and more often than not paid by the members of the society who almost never realize what hit them and why! So does this mean that there is no respite for a democratic set up to survive in a space where the political clout and the media, either by themselves or hand-in-glove are working to erode the foundations?

The answer is a YES and a NO! Yes there is away to get over and beyond this heady cocktail of political clout and media nexus and NO if Inertia gets the better off the society! Societies and importantly democratic suffer from what I call as the “Curse of Democracy”, like Democracy has multiple blessings and people can write and write poems, essays and even their PhD Thesis on why Democracy is vital, fundamental, progressive and the true personification of the human spirit, nothing wrong with all or any of that, but what a lot of people fail to factor in the singular fact that democracy is not a state of a society or an end destination; it is rather a lifestyle, approach chosen by the society for empowering its people to reach their aspirations, it has to be and should be always in Action, it has to be practiced, preached , lived and kept alive by ensuring that the conduct of every member of the society is aligned to the laid down democratic principles and guidelines that have been chosen and adopted by the society! It is when this sensitive element fails, that the political clout and the media are able to drive narratives, (mis) represent intentionally or by error and create competing views and postures not for debates, but for confrontation and if you have read the story of human evolution, confrontation and aggression brings the best of animal behaviour among humans and that is what we get to see all around us, in one way or the other!

The only way to safeguard democracy and ensure that the adopted values, principles and the future are protected, is by breathing in and practicing what we have adopted! As individuals, don’t bribe that official, follow those rules, don’t ask for favors for jobs and business, be who you are, stay authentic, live a lifestyle that you can afford and then see how the things begin to change when a major section of society embraces this! Sounds utopian? Sure seems like that for me too, but that’s the essence, societies get driven to false narratives and unwanted ideological confrontations simply because of the latent inertia of speaking out when it matters the most and standing by what is right and allowing too many exceptions! Societies are at times forgetful and at times forgiving, what is needed is that they need to be unforgiving at all times and unforgettable each time, that’s when the political clout and the media will dare not drive false narratives or (mis” lead thoughts, (mis) plant ideas or resort to under the belly tactics to pursue their own selfish agenda of exercising demonic control and a falsified sense of achievement at the cost of millions of tarnished aspirations!

Democratic societies have the been a witness to milestones and achievements of scientific and creative excellence in the last 300 years of human history and also in the medieval and ancient times! There is a reason why the “I” matters alongside the “WE” and it is this spirit of finding the individual excellence among the collective good that hold the promise to the future of democratic societies! Shun the clout whether political or media, switch off that shrill channel, spend that time to develop yourself and your family, each house doing it, you will have a changed town in a year, a changed city in three years and a changed state in five years and in a decade a whole new breathing, vibrant and alive nation with a promise of the future!

Democracy is like a flowing river, dam it right, it will nourish and give you the bounties of nature, dam it wrong and it will wipe you off unleashing the fury of nature! The change begins with you, the next time you go to Vote, know that well! Vote today to align your future!

Well, honestly, switch off that “idiot box” and whenever you are presented with information, make a rule to fact check and do bother to know, if what you consume are candies or garbage coated in sugar!maybe it’s easy, maybe it’s difficult, perhaps will take an effort, but remember, as humans fundamentally we all are hardwired to care and share for each other, we lived millions of years earlier on that way and in these modern times it only makes simple plain sense to step away from all that puts us onto a path of confrontation and contradiction with each other to a level where we begin to think that “You” and “I” is greater than “WE” and nothing can be far away form the truth than this!

So I leave you with these thoughts, grab that coffee and switch on that news channel/entertainment channel and try to run a test to see what you are being served today- candies or garbage!

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

Stand by your ideas.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Whether it is the recent case of that Indian Jewelry brand, who had to take down a commercial (for whatever reasons) or whether it is the whole social context of misaligned priorities, many of the challenges that we see around us, are in one way or the other, a manifestation of quick fixes and the the inability of people to stand by their own original thoughts and ideas! Join me here, we we explore this space and figure out what this is all about and if there’s any way to fix around these aspects and if there is one, what is that!

The times of today, are like none other before, even as we had ventured into 2020, quite a few economies were under strain and the pandemic was the last thing that any nation or society ever needed! What eventually has played out is the partial or complete wrecking of economies and stalling and failing of life as it is meant to be. You may want to ask what has an “idea” even got to do with all of this social chaos; well it has everything t do with it! For starters, even the very approach taken by societies to deal with their failing economies somewhere in the 2019 was perhaps someones’ idea and zoom into 2020,how societies chose to deal with the pandemic was another set of idea- needless to say some of these worked- worked rather well and some of these ideas failed and failed real bad! So how does one really know what idea to stand by and which one must be stowed away?

Based on the social context of the society that one is and based on who you are within that immediate contextual settings, you are the only one who can take a call on whether you want your idea to see the light of the day or not! This is an area of some fine judgement and unless the person entrusted to take the call is not sure enough what they are actually unfolding, the whole thing can be detrimental and create a big mess, then one can think of! Societies the world over are more polarized and divided then ever before in the last 40-50 years- there could be multiple reasons- some right and some wrong- but let’s leave that too the other wise people to comment and debate! The point of relevance and importance here is that unless ideas aren’t evaluated from the stand point of what they serve and whether they serve the larger good, playing around with them will almost always be detrimental and there will be consequences, in the same breath; as long as there is enough clarity (which can be communicated aggressively, boldly and empathically) about an idea and through the idea, then it is the very duty of the originator of the ideator to protect, fight and stand by that original idea- as and how one can do so- depending on what is the position occupied in the society, the power equation and the ability to engage and do away with all the challenges that come in ones’ way!

If the originators’ of an idea, lack conviction and belief in their own ideas, then it really doesn’t matter whether they are good or bad, or anything at all, simply because, at the slightest nudge, the ideas will fail and fall like a pack of cards and ideas like these end up becoming a tool for something else and end up loosing their very purpose of being there on the first place! So the learning point- Well any idea can be good or bad only as long as the contextual environment is studied and understood in depth! A misjudgment about the pulse of the immediate society, can make even the noblest of the ideas fail and can also make even the stupidest of ideas come to rule! Let me explain!

All of us know about that one nation or society, where people are not happy with their government and paradoxically enough, it is they who have chosen it to begin with! so what does this speak about the ideas and thoughts that would have been playing around the minds of the people when they elect from the very same social bucket people who seem similar and aligned and end up getting treated in a radically different manner! Well, this is the space where ideas are camouflaged and mis-represented, you see very often the standard reply the governments of the day, when and if they are questioned about anything and everything that they don’t do – is that “they have inherited a legacy and there has been so much little time to get so much of the things done!” Well then why was all of this, not part of the election vote seeking promise? Well, this is how the war of ideas, ideologies is played out when it comes to the running of nations and societies en mass! Contexts, change and meanings are given and taken away with equal ease and the idea- with which the journey would have started is all but lost and new entity keeps taking form every now and then, depending upon who is beholding the thought in that moment of time!

If you thought, the fragility of ideas is limited only to the space and theater of politics, well think again, when was the last time your original idea got to see the light of the day, at the place where you work or even at your home? Is anyone even listening to the ideas that you have, if yes why? and if no, still why? This is the space of intermittent silence and pauses and this space is the literal graveyard of many ideas- good bad, ugly all sorts of them and the only reason why ideas prematurely end up reaching their graves before they see the light of the day, is the singular fact that the beholder of that idea- was simply unable to communicate and execute what the idea was- perhaps there was a competency challenge either with the idea itself intrinsically or with the beholder- who would have picked up that great idea off the wind and just failed to get things to work along to make it alive and breath! What makes Ideas fragile and so much prone to destruction? Do people ever end up living by their idea- through the storm of life? Does that help? Read on!

Weak ideas or ideas that can be weakened are never great and its better that they get an earlier burial than seeing the light of the day, playing havoc and causing chaos! The real crux of the matter lies in the space where we have great ideas, wielded by average people- average by terms of the ability to mange tat idea and drive it in a way to ensure that it achieves the greatness that it is qualified for! There could be multiple reasons why people fail at great ideas, not necessarily all of these people would have intrinsic flaws, at times it could be the overbearing construct of the society around them and at yet other times it could be the simple case of being the right person with the right mind, the right idea in a terribly wrong place! Well, so in these instances, forget about executing the idea, guarding that idea from probing dis-serving people and eyes becomes a life-long pursuit and very often, it is only after a long hibernation of years or decades that that idea gets to come alive- provided it has the ability to retain its relevance across the time lapse which may have occurred! If you are wondering about examples around this- well the modern day aerospace machines, those tall skyscrapers in the world top 10 list- well each and every one of them has had to wait for the right time for science and engineering to catch up even if the idea of that machine of structure would have been there, many years preceding to the time when they actually got top see the light of the day!

Ideas that are resolute, vital and which serve the greater good of the society will always see the light of the day, perhaps delayed but they will for sure! It is ideas like these that one must stand by for, not let them go or allow them to fade away- because if the idea holds the promise to serve the greater good and promise for the many- no matter how long the road is, that walk will be worth it- simply because at the destination, you will be welcomed with more people than that you have walked along with and as your idea is embraced, it will bring about a fundamental positive change for the many around you and that idea then goes on to alter itself and tweak itself to suit the exiting conditions of the society and play its part to benefit as it should! For all and any of this to happen, it’s fundamentally important that the conviction of that idea has to be steadfast and should be anchored deep within to face the storms that may come ones’ way or the challenges that may keep visiting! Many great Ideas get killed before they arrive, not because their beholders were weak or the social contexts were not ready, but rather because the beholders lacked the necessary conviction to drive and push for them when it mattered the most! So what’s the point?

Well, as long as the beholder of the idea, one has the conviction and faith that “it” is what it is, and it serves the greater good, rest assured the Idea will live and see the light of the day, sooner or later, but it will do for sure! In the same breath it is also important to note that if conviction is lacking, then even the best ideas will fail and they will rapidly and predictably!

I leave you here with these thoughts, urging you to take some time off and run through all the ideas that you ever had and evaluate- what made them click and what made them fail- was it something to do with you or was it something about the idea or have you been spending much of your valuable life in a place where you should never be!

Ciao for now, will be back soon, with another one, until then allow those thoughts to flow around and get hooked to an awesome idea!

The Courage Collective.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Courage is perhaps the most time sensitive of all attributes that we can behold and deploy! Use it wisely, at the right time and in the right proportion, it can work wonders, any imbalance in that deployment, either with the timing or the proportionality and you will in all probability end up more exhausted and famished rather than feeling like a victor! Join me here as we explore what makes courage so elusive and slippery to work with and why when it works it creates history more often than not!

Unlike what the normal belief is, courage is nothing glamorous and neither is it an unfolding moment; courage is actually the manifestation of all that you are in that moment of action! Courage is all your experience, knowledge, wisdom, intelligence and intuition applied in that moment to engage with what is coming your way- by exercising the choice for the style of engagement! Courage has never been about being that fluke of eccentric voyeurism and risk taking behaviour rather it has always been about calibrating the risks and working always towards avoiding and dealing with minimal risk at all times! So you may now want to ask, if this is what it is, then why have people glorified and written pages and pages through history about courage? Well it sells! Let me explain!

How would you feel if a military general told you that he won the war because he trained well, or how would you feel if the doctor told you that his exceptional skills at operating sick people came to him by hard work and training, or how about that school teacher- if the teacher told you that dealing with kids and educating them is what they are thoroughly trained for!- Well nothing inspires here, right- they are doing all that they are supposed to , win wars, heal people and uplift the next generation! Now if the same thing is re-presented to you as , “the military general, sensed that opportunity in a fleeting moment and acted with valor”, or that “surgeon acted instinctively and aggressively to stabilize the patient and revive from the brink of death” or “the school teacher- empathized and saw the things as the kids saw them to create that unparalleled learning experience!” Well, basically the same thing, expressed differently! So while the earlier narration lacked the dramatization through the play of words than the later, it communicated the same thing and so did the later approach, albeit with that drama added! This is exactly where courage gets lost in translation, if I have to put it in that way! You see, the act of being courageous is intrinsic and as I said earlier, is more reflective of who we are and what all we can get to that moment to face, sustain, avoid or overcome the challenge that we face, so whether one showers generous words or not- the element of courage and valor doesn’t diminish or change!

In fact, the misconception about the over- rated and over-glorification of courage happens more than anything is because, people who record, document and share it, do so after the event and than thats where their own personalities and figments of imagination start to play mind games- to try and feel what the characters of the story would have experienced- irrespective whether that is real or not and this is why courage gets distorted when it comes to its real essence and rightful representation! Courage is not in the moment- courage leads to the moment and helps one sustain and overcome and move unto the next by acting with intent, purpose and direction!

Real courage is rustic, ageing and non-glamorous- something pretty much what an iron- smith of the yesteryear were! Courage gets forged by the variation in experiences that one gets, the contextual settings, the intrinsic value systems, belief tables, intellect and how one chooses to deploy and use these to ones’ own advantage or to the service of others! Like all other human virtues, courage too, when used to self-serve is always short lived and unless there is enough goodness for the many around, the highs experienced will fade away much rapidly than they come in! Unlike other virtues the one place where courage differs, is that it depends a lot more on the contextual settings and the wisdom and alignment of the people around! Let me quickly explain this bit too!

You may be a wise person, living ahead of your times, say a scientist or perhaps an innovator and who has been able to come up with something unique to offer to the world around you- but if that world around you is pathetically dumb (sounds familiar!), ignorant or indifferent, guess what is going to unfold? All of that you have come up with is going to be wasted! Not because you were the problem, but the contextual settings around you were! You may want to ask- where’s courage in all this? Well courage is very much at the centre of all this!

You see, even for that individual scientists/ innovator to come up with something knowing that the society around may or may not lap it up – would have been a very bold and courageous step to take to begin with! So this is where, courage gets wasted away- knowing that you are courageous or have the ability to deploy bold and courageous actions is one thing, but doing it when the contextual settings are aligned is more important! This is what makes courage- so much intrinsic and extrinsic at the same time! Like a Leader without followers and Followers with no one to Lead- Courage applied at the wrong time or for the wrong reason- just fades away and is the essence of all the great failures of humanity which just missed being the headlines- either because they were ahead of their times, in the wrong contextual settings or simply because they were meant to be going that way!

Like other virtues another interesting space around courage is the factor of proportionality! Everyone likes to see the good crush the bad, everyone likes the right to win over the not-so-right, but now if you alter that question, how much force and how much of crush will you want to allow to prove your point of right being over the wrong- you will get a wide range of responses- ranging from total annihilation to the extreme other end of forgive- forget and join together type of a reaction! So what does this say? How much courage is enough- can courage be detrimental and can it backfire too?

The falsified stories around courage to be brutal, fierce, fast and rapid have just gone on to make more and more people fall prey to that fallacy and the results have been erroneous, disastrous and far from what they could have been, we all know about when nations attacked the other, thinking something was amiss, or because someone said, something was going to be amiss and in all that melee, nations attacked with brutal and unrelenting force and till this day global peace remains elusive as ever before only form one simple factor- misplaced courage and overzealous deployment of a generous amount of it for no real reason! You see, you don’t burn your house down if there’s a cockroach that get’s into it! You deploy and enact that much courage, as is needed to manage the cockroach, not wreak havoc and burn down your whole house and threaten your neighbors too! Calibrated courage is the only thing that differentiates someone who is on a progressive path from one who is either destroying that path or embarking on a detour by creating altogether new consequences as a result of excessive or less than adequate deployment of courage!

So my final words, courage is all about steadfastness, being steadfast in the moment to bring in all the resources that you can harness to meet, sustain, avoid or overcome a challenge using the right amount of it and at the right time and needless to say for a purpose that is aimed to serve the many at all the times! This is when courage shines and fables are built and legacies get created! Anything apart form this, if you ask me, is just a passing flash of lightening which will be soon forgotten as the wild fires subside and new forests grow in areas which have been lead bare by the unwanted and unwarranted use and deployment of courage!

I leave you here with these thoughts, urging you to sharpen your courage so that, as you arrive at that moment of yours when you need to deploy it, you are able to create a story which inspires not in the future, but even as it gets played out in the today and leaves no room for falsified representations or larger than life contexts getting woven into it!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Stay wise and stay courageous!

Why Simple is so Complex!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Humanity seems to thrive on presenting complex and complicated reasons,logic and everything that there is and the reality is that there could be nothing more contradicting to the truth- which is- simplicity is the only and the most essential building block to develop and build upon whatever that you choose to create! Join me here as we explore this space and try to understand why simplicity is omnipresent yet so elusive!

The progress of humanity has been a story of moving from simplified structures to more and more complex systems; whether it is about societies , the rules and regulations, belief systems, whatever you choose as an example, you will find that as humans we have this unwarranted and compelling desire to complicate and make complex things as scale begins to grow and perhaps the only industry which works in a complete contradictory manner is aerospace- where – minimal essential is the key word! If you observe the journey of a business conglomerate, you will see that when the beginnings were humble with a handful faithfuls believing in the dream and aligning themselves to the cause- rules of that fledgling organization would have been minimal and they would have worked well to propel and empower decision making and progressive styles of working hereby making it possible to writer the unfolding success story in the years that followed. But once these very organizations reach critical mass, they have more and more and ore rules to be followed and in all that, the whole pursuit and purpose of the work and the organization gets fogged out- may be not completely- but it tends to wear off its sheen and the sharpness of the earlier days and than that greatness just stays overhead by virtue of who they are and not because of what they want to be! Sure enough rules and structures are important, but there is a big difference between creating rules for people and having people for the rules!

As long as rules work to simplify and empower people, they can stay simple- that is the power of simplicity! The challenge commences as people begin to manipulate this simplicity to pursue what is not within the mandate and purview and there by necessitating building additional layers on exiting simplified rules and approaches- this intrinsic trait of a few to bend and flex simple rules is what pushes the majority into having to adhere to complex systems- even as this silent majority would have been compliant enough to follow even the simplified rules! Let me explain!

When was the last time you decided to board a train without a ticket, well possibly not, never unless it was in your teens when you were hanging out with your invincible friends in an attempt to show off your unique skills! But if you see around, even for simple things like booking of travel tickets, no matter where you are in the world, you will end up having to comply with at least 2-3 additional documents- whether you travel domestic or international! SO why did we end up building a complex system for something as trivial as booking or buying a travel ticket? Well, yes, you guessed it right, that predictable ability of a few eccentric characters, who believe in hacking, bending and flexing the system for their benefit, has ended up the majority to comply with additional check points and verification systems. If you thought this is just about the social aspects, just observe your work place- what do you see?

Even when it comes to the office world, even to swipe-in you have a minimum of two systems tracking you- sure enough you may say, part compliance, part redundancy, but that takes an altogether new meaning when one system shows you present and the other one marks you absent, simply because you did not log in through your device that day! beyond this, as you try to access your official tools, whether it is the mail system, the much hyped ERP, MIS systems, every point you will see systems have been designed not to suggest that “you can be trusted” and “you will do what you must as you should”, but rather on the premise “that you will not do it well and in a timely manner”! Remember the escalation matrix, well that’s not for you to be happy about, it just tells you the broad premise that your office is working upon- that you cannot be completely trusted! You may want to argue that, this is a process and this is how it is done everywhere, may be true, but all of that argument doesn’t answer, why it has to be done that way? and if you are the one who is going to solve what comes in your inbox, what’s the whole point of escalating and if something indeed needs to be escalated(because you aren’t empowered to deal with it) then why should you even be receiving all all that in your inbox to begin with! So, why is that, we have this mad dash for complexity and why is the ability to stay “simple” so elusive? What does all this really tell us about who we are and what we do with our lives? Read on!

The urge to complicate or rather create complexity on simple aspects has it roots in the foundation of human thoughts and belief systems, like modern day thinkers, much of the mid-age thinkers also saw humans broadly in two buckets- one who are self-driven, selfless, purpose drive and have a sense of community duty and the other set which was more self-centered, who would act only for reward and cared a damn for what unfolds around- either by being indifferent or being ignorant. Needless to say, if you see around, these broad buckets still exist around and the fact is that the second lot is in the majority and it is for this second lot that complicated rules are needed just to ensure that they ( by compulsion) contribute to what the first lot is doing (on their own accord) & more importantly these complex rules guard (to a certain extent) any attempts of sabotage that this majoritarian self-centered lot may want to embark upon.

So is there a way to promote simplicity over complexity? Well, the answer is yes and no! Yes, because you can embrace simplicity to empower your life- as an individual in that private space that you live about in- by uncluttering and doing away with everything and anything that attempts to cloud your mind space through unwanted complexity! But when it comes to the larger social construct of the society, as paradoxical it may seem, the fact is, those complex approaches help to prevent attempted sabotages of the existing visible simplicity that societies may have on account of the majoritarian lot who thrive on the chaos and ambiguity that complex systems get along with them. As they say, complex rules and regulations are for complicated people! So what next?

Well final words if you ask me, the fine balance of being able to deploy and work with simple systems and complex set ups is what will eventually ensure that all progressive efforts that you embark upon, both as an individual or as part of the social construct will alone determine whether your life gets written more about the simple and clear approach that you have taken up or the complex methods that you have developed and sustained to ensure that the fine balance between simple and complex people, systems and everything around only helps to progress and aligns to what you pursue!

I leave your here with these thoughts, urging you to get that balance of being simple and dealing with complexity right- for yourself and the people you lead!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another piece!

Why Inspiration and Motivation stalls.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Being an author, rather being into writing, speaking and coaching, one striking thing that I have always come across is that people are just as fine as they should be and each one is good at a few things and great at few others and a genius at one thing! More often than not majority of us, end up wandering away from that unique “one thing” that holds the key for us to realize that zenith of who we can be from who we are. Somewhere around all this hectic and urgent business of trying to know oneself, people begin to get flooded with a sea of books, talks, podcasts, workshops and what not all promising to bring about radical change, promise that they will feel inspired and will gain a new sense of motivation and so on and so forth, but the fact remains that only a tiny fraction ends up being where they ever wanted to be- without any of these tools and techniques- some trained some not-so-trained and few inspired, few motivated but all of them driven by purpose and an objective! So the question here is does inspiration/ motivation really work? If yes, why do they weave the magic only on a few? Why isn’t every person in that workshop proportionally successful, if all of them got the same tools, wisdom and opportunity? What makes motivation click for a few and why do some people succeed even if they are uninspired? Join me here as we try to unravel, how and why this whole business of inspiration, motivation works and doesn’t!

Since time in memorial, people have always looked up to someone- either it was their Gods’, their spiritual leaders, their protectors ( Rulers, Kings, Queens, Emperors), as the new age arrived, people of eminence too started to be looked upon, studied & admired for they seemed to have answers for questions that plagued humanity in the contexts of those times! The more recent modern times have seen people seek stories from the field of sports, arts, theater, music, films and many other diverse areas- choose an area that you can think about and you will find this space of people wanting to be inspired and who are either in the process or already aligned to that one source! In all this pursuit of looking up to people, there’s only one real mission, that of seeking a common ground with regards to something related to either skills, competencies, abilities, aspirations or craft which provide that ray of hope to drive through the challenging times that an individual must overcome to surge ahead and make their mark!

The whole process of Inspiration is a fallacy of the prevailing social biases and social compulsions, sure enough there would be genuine contenders, I am not denying that any bit, but if you see what drives or what majority of humanity uses the word “inspiration” for is to either relate to someone, feel a sense of belonging for someone or thing or just try to align their social acceptability by falling in line with what the majority of social behaviour seems to be! In the context of the recent times, people all over the world, say they feel inspired by healthcare workers, well that’s fine only to that extent, because half of this inspired world, doesn’t give a damn to the guidelines issued by their inspirational health care workers and end up jeopardize everyone in the game that is being played out now!

The other immediate cousin of inspiration, called motivation too faces the same challenge, you see, people are always (as they claim) motivated and self-driven about themselves ( that is a good part) , the real problematic area is, “motivated about what or by whom and for what?” A lot of human tragedies are nothing else but a result of these misplaced motivations and uninspiring inspirational stuff! So you may, now want to ask me, so what’s the point? Well, the point is really simple, Inspiration and Motivation, stall, become ineffective , not because they have a problem or the beholders who personify it have a problem, the problem lies within each one of us, who end up getting inspired and motivated by the right things at the wrong times or the wrong things at the even more wrong times! Let me explain!

Let me take you back to your early childhood! Remember, “Twinkle Twinkle little stars..” that wonderful nursery rhyme! Believe it or not, that perhaps has been the very nascent seed that has propelled many careers of people in the areas of aerospace! This is what pure and unadulterated Inspiration is like! It connects with you at the level of your soul and nudges your mind to follow that essence and undertake that journey, no matter how easy or difficult to achieve what it must to live that moment of being among the stars either seeing them out of an airline cockpit window or seeing them through the space modules high above the earth’s atmosphere!

Likewise if you think about that school sports competition that you won for the first time, someone or something nudged you and your team mates that day, and for that reason you played the game of your life (until that moment) and ensured each one of your team mates did and thereby translating those moments into a memorable victory! That is what puritan motivation looks like, no prejudice, no information overload, just a nudge, perhaps that motivation was a treat by a group of friends or the name of your team mates being called out during the school assembly, or perhaps receiving that shiny medal- whatever that it could have been, it was just a nudge- at the right time, at the right place for the right thing!

So you, see whether it is that inspiration that you seek or that urge to be motivated that you have- as long as you try to seek that by looking at others, the chances are you will end up complicating your matters more, then solving them- especially when you tend to start focusing on the person, and not on the content!

In a lot of cases when people go to workshops, seminars, events buying those valuable tickets and tables at the show, waiting anxiously to be drenched in the seeming elixir of truth that the presenter is about to share, what they end up actually doing is that, they end up buying some hope and optimism instead of inspiration or motivation!

The reason why inspiration/motivation stalls and fails to work its magic is not because it doesn’t work, but rather because that piece is simply not aligned to the contextual reality of who you are! Let me explain! You may sure enough get lucky to witness some “A” grade speaker, who is renowned to motivate speak, but the fact is unless the speech, the examples and the proportionality of the challenges that you face are not aligned, neither that talk will motivate you nor will you know something that you weren’t aware of! It will all end up being the first row ticket to a one act play! It is vital that you find a common ground, a connect which is based on proportionality of contexts for inspiration/motivation to work its magic upon you, else you will either be left indifferent, ignorant or confused more than ever before!

Another factor is the construct of who you are and what the contextual realities of your world are! You may get lucky and you may really get that vital inspiration or motivation, perhaps that great speech, or that great book, or that sudden incident, something right may just cross your path and also the timing could be as great as you ever desired, but unless and until, you aren’t constructed to embrace all that coming your way and unless your contextual settings – the kind of society, the social norms, social viability aren’t in place, even the greatest of opportunity will slip away from your grasp and in many cases, you may actually end up passing that idea to someone less inspired and less motivated, perhaps less deserving, simply because there was a framework available to deploy and act upon once that seed was made available! Say you always had a vision to provide education for the economically challenged kids- but if your local laws don’t allow you to raise the funds and run the show the way you want to run and manage it, chances are your idea will eventually get picked upon and played upon in some other society where there is a favorable climate to implement and execute! Needless to say the execution may not be that impactful or effective as you would have planned simply because the other person may not be even as half inspired or motivated to do! This is a classic case where the right motivation/inspiration comes at the right time but in the wrong frame and you have perhaps no other choice but to let it pass!

Finally you have those instances where these very rare and gifted individuals who never give a damn to anything that’s unfolding around them! The reasons could vary, at one end of the spectrum you may have that eccentric artist, who likes to lock away and keep doing what pleases irrespective of who says what, or that politician who likes to ruin a nation under the garb of running it! This space is the pinnacle of human behaviour and intent, above and beyond all inspiration and motivation, simply because this is the impregnable fortress of the self and this is the area where only one maxim works- “My way or the Highway”! It is in these by-lanes of self serving, self-centered personalities and human attributes that a lot of inspiration and motivation is wasted and what’s more damaging is that this time around the people who come forward to share and care end up going back with bruises and small patched of self-doubt no matter how inspirational of motivational they are!

My final words, well, inspiration and motivation like everything else will work only when there is a human connect to it, nothing that has progressed humanity has ever worked in isolation! As long as there is a conformity of alignment between the inspired, the being inspired and the contextual settings around both of them, things will work and work remarkably well, nudge one element in that equation and you may end up the Motivators and the Internationalists of today needing a master class on their craft!

I leave you with these thoughts here, urging you to nudge yourself and know whether you Inspire, get inspired or are you indifferent?

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

Go from “Had I” to “What If”

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

I know its a Monday, and Mondays’ wherever you are and whatever you do are what they are, notorious and unpredictable! Well, this short piece may just perhaps help you to ensure that your next Monday doesn’t end up being the one that you are facing now and probably it may just help to bring about a radical change the way you await for the next day to arrive! Certainly I am not suggesting that all days will be Fridays’ or all days are Sundays’ but the shift of your mindset from “Had I” to “What if” is the real game changer! Join me here as we try to understand what this is and how it may turn out to be just the key that you were looking out for to unlock your potential! So here we go!

We have a lot of those strange conversations, (especially when we have that odd free time to ourselves) which start to play within our minds and more often than not they start with, “Had I”, yes, that never ending eternal excuse, reason, fact, fiction, perception, truth- it could be almost any of these and there is nothing right or wrong about this- sure enough as one contemplates, a person will take this route to think and begin to reflect & it is here that getting a right balance of “Had I” thinking becomes critical. If this is not checked in the right time it can unleash chaos of unimaginable proportions! Let me explain!

Remember the last time you got your “me time”, if you have not got one, make an allowance for one now, and then continue to read further! In all probability that “me time” of your’s would have gone into the past and as you started to reflected what worked and what didn’t, almost always you would have ended up saying or thinking-“Had I then done it that way, or that instead of what I did, things could have been different Now! Had that been done, this would have happened and then because of this, that would would have happened! See your thoughts pretty soon, begin to encircle into a tight spiral almost crushing you and burying you into the past, irrespective whether that was a dream or a nightmare and what is unfolding here is- that your flirting with “Had I” is holding you onto a patterned approach of thinking to your life and you are reinforcing belief’s which may no longer serve you or your new realities! This is why most of the people are so scared about their “me time” and always crave for the companionship either with people- irrespective whether that adds value or not, with pets or with those tormenting digital screens- which recently have become far worse the world over than what they were earlier- instead of dissemination of knowledge or puritan information, have ended up becoming nothing more than propaganda tools! A majority of us hence come out more tired, confused and craving for sugar as we are done with our “me time” which when not used aptly ends up being not only waste of time, but starts to chip away slowly but surely whatever remaining resilience and perseverance that you would have built upon to safeguard and move ahead in life! So what do we do? Well, read on!

To begin with, a genuine hand shake with the “Had I” way is not bad, in fact it’s healthy, that’s an opportunity to explore omissions and mistakes and certainly avoid repeating what has gone by, but the problems start as people instead of having a conversation with themselves using this route, start to embrace it and begin to conclude that, because they had not done”ABC” or “XYZ”, they are fated to what they are in the now and this current fate is what will lead them to “PQR” irrespective whether they want to be there or not! This is perhaps the biggest hurdle, danger and problem with the “Had I” approach gone wrong! It not only short changes your present based on the inadequacies of your past, but also seeds in the unwanted and unwarranted thoughts about how vulnerable you are and why you should move ahead in a resigned to fate manner, rather than be a challenger in life! This is the space where majority of us get entrapped for a longer period of our lives and this is called by few others as the “mindset problem- rather the problem of mindset coming through limiting your beliefs- based on the out of control and un-managed “Had I” route! So what’s the cure to this?

Well, there are only two options, either you manage the “Had I” thinking and keep it under check and have it directing you in a purposeful way or do a radical shift in your mindset and move into the “now space”! You see, the whole idea of “Had I” hinges on what has happened to you or has been done by you in the past, but when you move the pivot of your reflective thinking to your present, you make a big shift in mindset and the way to do that is by replacing your “Had I” with “What If” more often! Once you have embraced “What If” in your today, it will empower and propel you to evaluate multiple scenarios for your oncoming tomorrow and the best part is, it starts with the moment you are in- the Now of your time! Let me explain you this very quickly!

Consider you are in one of the usual contemplative “me time”, now with the “Had I” approach you would slip away rather easily- almost dreaming away into your past and then begin to play upon what would have happened had you then done that- in a different manner than what you actually did! But the problem with this approach is that, it will very rarely help you to address something that you are dealing with in the present (unless and until you are on the verge of committing the same mistake again!) and that trip to your past serves you with no value- other then some light free entertainment or revisit to a horror story! The questions of your past don’t and very rarely can provide answers to your present- simply because you are a different person (from the competence and mind part of you) and the contextual settings too would have radically changed!

Now, to this contemplative zen of your “me time” when you decide to approach with the “What If” approach- you are actually expanding the horizons of your thinking pivoting on your now and with a greater chance to transform and shape your tomorrow! The “What If” question, unlike “Had I” doesn’t allow you to dream smoothly or slip away into the softness of your bygone times, rather it forces you really hard to think, think and think in the now of your moment to evaluate the competing approaches and solutions and furthermore extrapolate them ahead to see which of the may serve you more better in the times ahead as well! This powerful and simple shift is what makes”What if” thing so potent and when your “me time” is loaded with this, you are surely going to experience that much needed mindset shit. The shift in mindset originating out of “What if” thinking is powerful, potent and almost always gets you amazing clarity and elasticity for your thinking which serves you all the way along! “What if” thinking forces you to make choices and these choices when acted upon have the power to transform you- to meet the new reality that’s fast approaching you in the future and this future ready approach gives you that edge when it comes to beating the odds that may come your way!

If “Had I” gives you a reckoner to avoid the mistakes of the past, “What if” opens up limitless future possibilities and importantly empowers you to take the challenges head on by aligning your thinking to the new realities coming your way! Each of them have their strengths and place when we want to share our “me time” with either of them, but the more you spend your “me time” around “What If”, the more empowered will you be, for taking actions and leading yourself in the now and the approaching future!

I leave you with these thoughts here, urging you to move on from “Had I” to “What If” and experience a changed you who can lead you and create value for the times ahead, for the ones’ bygone can’t be revisited!

Ciao for now and will be back soon with another one! Stay safe and stay wise!

Don’t bite the dog back!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Even before you think about it, here’s my disclaimer, I love pets,cats, dogs, all animals except humans as pets- because humans being who they are, are simply un-tamable! Join me here to know why it is important not to bite back at what bites you!

The past few years, the time that we are transiting now and the few years that lie head of us, all have and probably will witness an ever growing approach of humanity- which is will be something like- you did this so I do this! Well, as long as this remains to be a child’s play date- it seems fine- that too when it is within the limits! When adults start to behave that way- as they run nations, corporations and to a certain extent their families and themselves- well society is all but set up for one disaster unto the next- because everyone’s speaking and no one is listening!

If Industrial revolution, made us more crazy workers, operational wizards and business tycoons were created from the cradles of that system, it also simultaneously held on to the values of humanity, collaboration, community care and so on and so forth, sure enough few of the social value were attained only after some struggle across different societies of the world. But essentially during this era, which lasted well until the early 80’s, even as human society made advancements technologically in almost every sphere that one could think about- humanity was still able to hold on to the proverbial human glue of compassion and care- perhaps not spread equally everywhere, but it was visible and could entrap any human who ventured too close so that even the odd care free souls could be knitted into this web of humanity!

Something changed as we embraced the dawn of the digital economy- the human connect- and the need of human interaction, the way we knew it and we should have continued it- changed forever- devices, gadgets, screens and automated messages began to replace that essential warm shake hand, that hug and that pat on the back- with the whole world of emoticons that you can possibly think of! But hasn’t the digital revolution eased our life? Sure it has, but like with every technology and every tool- as long as you apply that technology or tool at hand to create something meaningful it helps, the moment you want to abuse it, you will be harmed! A hammer that is used to shape molten metal to create metallic art forms, while that same hammer thrown at someone- could mean a certain walk to the hospital! You may say, that’s all fine, now what- what’s biting back and how? Read on!

Unlike the earlier revolutions that humanity witnessed, none has changed societies the way the digital revolution has, it has disconnected societies even as it has connected the world! As humans we have lost the value, the color and the intensity of the interactions that we had amongst us, before the dawn of the digital age- now while that may be a blessing for a few, it has undoubtedly turned out to be a curse for the millions of people across societies! You see, unlike the earlier times, even as people accepted and embraced the social divide between the rich and the poor, diverse opinions, the working class and the employment providers, there was never an unwarranted urge or drive to rush towards being a success story and make it the sole purpose even if that meant trampling upon anything and everyone that stood between the individual and the opportunity! So why did this change? How has the society of today, encouraged this, why has a digital society which should have been connected become seemingly so dangerously polarized and complicated where every other person seems to be hounding the other!

What digitization, has done is, it has played over our minds to begin with and later on as we progressed and advanced, with the cost of staying connected being cheaper than buying a nutritious meal, our malnourished minds have happily lapped up and consumed everything that is served over the screens- sense and non-sense in equal measure and needles to say- all that seems to be too easy to be true is readily believed – that is what the human brain is programmed to do! You see, as long as your brain is sure that you are not getting killed, it doesn’t matter which post you liked or which share you did or what you said or which snap you uploaded! It’s only when regulatory frame around has started to get more meaningful that now some minds have started to think before they rush to act over the digital space!

This reckless human behavior is now, not limited to the online space and this un- serving approach has trickled down into the way we engage offline too and the results are everywhere to see- road rage, outbursts of anger, bouts of fist fight, mob mentality, believing that might is right, failure to listen, connect, engage, listen and collaborate- because more and more time spent on the online world has gone to reinforce the belief that Alone is good, I am fine, perhaps the best! So when real life encounters with real smart people begin to manifest, the online perceptions about people engagement begin to fade away and one quickly is able to see the gaping void within oneself! This is where shit happens and that urge to start biting back at everything and everyone around!

People, not all, but a decent number have now reached a point where for them to define what is normal, is a task unto itself and the time will not be too far, when videos will have to played teaching people the right way to shake hands and communicate to re-engage with other people! Even as this starts to get corrected, it is vital for people and the society to learn and understand that, the problems of today that we have manifested are more within each one of us and unless those are addressed, no matter what and how much we do to help the people around nothing will work- simply because this habit of biting back- snapping at others, has to first be eliminated! The habit of reacting in equal measure to everything that comes ones’ way is the founding premise which has been perhaps the biggest curse coming in form the online space! The whole thinking process of doing “tit for tat” and mimicking to gain popularity, support (read social acceptance) are all but manifestations of the biting back problem! So you may, want to ask, fine so what can be done about it?

Well to begin with, it starts by having some wise self- discipline, say no to gadgets and say yes to people- while at home, when driving, while at the station, while commuting, throw away that screen and start to practise and rehearse the lost art of engaging with people- those chats, discussions, healthy opinions and those closing smiles and hand shakes- well that is what is needed to ensure that we regain our human aspect of the social fabric that we have and once this is done- the tendency to snap back and hit back at people for every opinion they say, every comment they make will be managed to a great extent- and to begin with even you may find how powerful this simple re-engagement trick is! The more people begin to connect and engage with people than gadgets, the lesser will be the instances of wanting to hit back, lash out, react, and comment on things and matters what others say and a better judgement will prevail and sane discernment will be applied to engage in what matters and all that doesn’t hold any value will be ignored or let go! Once this happens, as the brain is freed from the burden of unwarranted hit backs and episodes of mercurial swings- it begins to go back to its creative frame and ushering in a new promise for a better tomorrow for the individual and the society as a whole as more and more people embrace this approach to re-engage with humanity!

The only way to course correct anything, as individuals or as a society is to deep dive within and respond and not react- each time we end up reacting rather than responding we are just preparing for the next show down of who snaps first! and trust me the world has too many offerings around for you to excel at that! The real trick is observing these, know where they are and than ignoring all that crap, keep moving to achieve what you must through minimal conflict and maximum deliberation!

A few final words, no matter how mad we are at the dog, because it barked at us or probably tried to bite us, we never bite it back! This is what is at the foundation of who we are, each time we forget this and end up lashing out at everyone around us and start to bark at everything that is unfolding around- we just end up trying to bite that dog back and doing so we end up becoming more of an animal than being a human!

I leave you here with these thoughts, urging you to wear your smile, light up that warmth and when you have to choose between people and devices- go for people- you may not always be pleased- but you will always learn and that learning is critical to make you wise enough to either write the next book and or have some new context on the screens that you hold so dearly!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another article! Until then, stay wise, stay safe and yes, don’t bite the dog back- whatever that dog personifies as, in your life!

Listening > Speaking.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

I actually wanted to write the title urging people to “Listen to shut up” then I felt, perhaps everyone may not like it that way! But hang on, this article is certainly not that cliche,on why you must listen and speak less and all that crap around that Victorian model. I say, scream when you must speak and yell when you must whisper, but the whole point is that, you will not have to do any of this, if and only if you are able to develop your listening and this is absolutely not about only listening to the words! Join me here to explore what is that, we can go on to listen each moment, beyond words and why not paying attention necessitates us to spend so much of energy, time and words to just have the simplest of the things done or how we end up screwing up things because of this! So here we go!

Often, when people are talk about listening- they refer to the spoken word- what they hear- sure enough that is what it is and what it should imply- but what if I told you that you also need to see to listen, yes see- observe and gauge what is not been said through the spoken word but also through the cues of non verbal communication- the tense posture, the relaxed demeanor- whatever the context could be- the point here is that- when we focus only on what is spoken and don’t factor in the totality around the spoken word- we miss the point in a big way! I mean, if you happen to be by any chance a person who has been trained in the areas of security, intelligence etc. you know what I am saying- and yes- it does not have to be that high end as well- even your kindergarten teachers or the psychologists that you perhaps visit- are well equipped to figure out what is actually being communicated by listening into what is not been said alongside what is been said!

Now you may ask, fair deal- so what’s so difficult around this- well, the problem is that we are natural bad listeners, all of us- you and I included- you see the human brain the way we have evolved- is attuned to pick up distress, emergency and crazy moments over stable, steady, happy moments as a default- that’s our survival ticket- so don’t even bother complaining about it! Hence, we have so many experts always offering guidance and teachings around what is now fashionably called- directed/focused listening- well they are basically asking you to pay attention- nothing more and nothing less. The fact remains that, you pay attention during that training, because either you or your office has paid for that session and post that it’s again back to default settings in no time!

So why do we always slip back to default settings of only listening to emergency/urgency and just wander around our imaginary world as people keep on speaking, blabbering- well there are two parts to this- one- believe it or not- over 90% of what is spoken is pure garbage- you see what the neighbor’s cat did, how that dog bit the delivery guy, who eloped with whom, which President is dumber than who else, who wore which dress, who tripped, who fell, who won the lottery- now all of this rhetoric, the moment it begins- your brains is smarter than you think- it just asks one simple question- is any of this shit- a cause of concern for me- am I under threat- do I need to take any action- if the answers are no- than your brain allows that to play on like some gibberish background noise and hence when you are often asked in the middle- what did I say- you are actually trying to save your self!

The second important part is the fact that your brain is so smart than you can think that it uses sight/ your eyes to make out what the body language of the person is- is there a state of urgency, is that all to what is been said- is there anything that needs to be sought further- only when that space raises a concern of a veiled threat because something is been hidden, that you will get a signal, be prompted to ask more questions and that engagement of focused listening and an engaged conversation will continue until the brain looses its interest either it has got all what it needs or has concluded that this all too was a waste of time! So what about the listening part and why does Listening end up being greater than speaking?

When we practise what I call as directed/ focused listening , we end up helping our brain in multiple ways- see you are not going to cut the other person off, as the person is speaking- so you save time off your brain to rearrange those words, that logical flow and everything that will help you to throw your point of view even before the other one has completed theirs! So as a deliberate effort, once you stop cutting people- you get to hear their complete point of view, more than half of the times (unless you are the odd one- being the right person in the wrong place or the wrong person in the right place) if you listen, to the other person completely, you will be left with only few limited options- one could be asking that person to get lost as what was said has nothing to do with you, or now that you have heard the person and now you will act or take some action or you will seek more information/ more clarity and propose next steps. So in effect, you have hardly had to talk! You just saved yourself from wasting so much of energy that could have gone in- had you not listened with intent and focus- no more long meetings, no more reviews, no more, long emails, no more conference calls, all done with a few sessions of directed listening and being in the now when it matters the most! See when you really listen, you also learn and when you learn you can act, when you act- the task is done! Remember your school days, why do you think you have all that stuff packed in your brain- well back then you listened because you knew that only if you listened, you will understand and only if you have that crucial understanding , will you be able to apply and only when you apply what you have learnt, will you be able to sustain your success and live a life that you cherish and plan for! So this is why listening is always more potent and greater than speaking! Now, you may want to ask, me, whatever happened to that listening to what has not been spoken? Sure, read on…

Even as your would have factored that directed and applied listening is so effective, the fact remains, that is easier said than done! See our brain is constantly scanning our environments, with only one agenda to keep us safe- safe as in not that anyone is coming to take you out- just to ensure that the setting that you have chosen- is not being breached. Let me explain- say you are having an exit interview of a colleague- known or unknown to you- the brains of the person with whom you are speaking and your brain will be by default scanning for visible presence of either your manager or the manager of the person who is leaving- because both of them would be curious to know what is been said! The more toxic and dramatic the place- the higher will be the alertness of your brain and just as for this instance- every second you spend in your office, speaking with friends, family in a group setting, your brain is constantly working around the possible threats that may come your way- when you cracked a joke- who laughed and who shrugged- you see not everyone is going to be vocal enough- like I normally am- to walk into your face and say- boss- you’ve had enough of your shit, now move on or stay quiet! As people develop body language cues to express their emotions when words get drowned, your brain switches its scanner on and picks up these and that’s how communication is floating and is nudged around in a group setting! It is in settings like these, training classes, meetings – whether you are discussing critical details about something important with an individual or you are discussing something with many- your brain’s ability to scan the unspoken word- will help you know exactly what you need to speak next, with whim and possibly also when!

If you ever want to make a difference to your life or the lives of others, by your work, art, influence, the first step that you must embrace is to develop an unlimited amount to patience to listen- it’s only when you allow people to connect, express and feel safe that you will be able to understand them completely and only when that happens will they pay heed to what your spoken word is- for the simple reason that- they now know that you know them well enough to guide, counsel or advise them as the case may be! Only once you have arrived at a level of desirable competence of being able to practise directed and active listening, will you be able to deploy your abilities to train your mind to pick up the non-verbal cues with increasing finesse and accuracy! What all of this eventually will do is – the person speaking to you will have to use even fewer words than earlier and you too will possibly have nothing to say- just perhaps act based on what was told to you, because you would have also learnt to listen to, what was not said and your action is the spoken word that the other person actually waits to listen into!

I will leave you here, with these thoughts for now and yes, listen,listen and listen so that you you to speak less and when you do- you will be sure it matters!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Stay safe and stay wise! Nothing more to say for now, hope you listened to yourself as you read this!

Don’t stress(for nothing!).

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

This is not a pep talk article, about trying to give you ten tips to wish away your stress, rather this is about trying to simplify what stress really is, rather than what is ts thought to be and possibly explore what can we do about it, if we can really do something about it! So join me here and let’s simplify the formless shadow of stress!

Have you ever had the privilege of being part of a group of kids discussing their challenges? yes kids- those 3-4-5-6 year old who discuss amongst themselves and figure their way around either by themselves or with help from their buddies! Have you ever seen them talk to each other using words like “stress”? Consider this, you have this bunch of kids who are given a new jig-saw puzzle to fix, with no context and no background- what happens- well kids being kids- they will try for sometime, eventually as it makes no sense and if there’s no reward for what they are doing, they will simply put those jig-saw blocks to some other creative use and that’s where that will end! None of those kids are going to bed sulking and thinking about what that was, why it could not be done and so on and so forth! But these very kids, as they start to grow, they come under the influence of directed thinking (you see directed thinking is not about helping them think- it is about making kids thinking in a particular way that suits the broader social fabric of a society) and this is where the problems begin to manifest!

Humanity has always been lead and rewarded by curiosity and that innate value gets wiped off as modern day societies start to enforce directed thinking principles which conform to social biases and standards and don’t allow any kind of eccentric attributes, sure enough the ones’ that pose a threat to the social fabric should be curbed and managed, but with that approach we also end up loosing all hope of developing geniuses around us!– If you ever thought that great geniuses of any field were not eccentric- well it’s time you picked up and read one of those biographies to know the facts! The essence there was that their curiosity and eccentricity to a specific pursuit was always upheld and encouraged and that what led to innovation and discovery, which has gone a long way to share who we are today- as Individuals and collectively as societies the world over!

Once kids are programmed to think the way society wants, these kids loose all resilience that childhood would have naturally given to them. As they grow up they keep getting pushed from one scenarios of “what you must do and not” to the next and that shit also continues even as they begin to work and keep moving up the corporate world as they keep getting successful! You may be wondering how come they keep getting successful if they lack curiosity and ingenuity- well you see 95% of corporate world is all about directed work- the Big Boss shares the big plan and we have an army of all other smaller bosses and laborers working on that- while each one of them thinking that it is their thought!- If there was ever a personification of a hypnotized work force- that is the era that we are living in! This is why , when you see how things get played around, they rise and fall every time “The Big Boss” gets it right or screws up! So where is the stress coming in all of this?

Well the invisible stress is always there, as the born intelligent kids get to high schools and colleges, where they are again and again battered down to stop being creative and think the way they are ought to and furthermore as they land “The job” of their dreams they are further indoctrinated through the fabled ” corporate induction” which is nothing more than a kinder way of saying, “This is what we do, This is the way we do it, Either take it or leave it”! So, when does this stress begin to show up? Well it shows up every now and then when life throws questions in your face, where you don’t have templated responses- like the times when you are asked to go ahead with your first surgery , or that first assault if you are a cop, or that first fire rescue, the first time you asked someone out for date! See, stress starts to build and this stress is not building because you aren’t able or you are incompetent, but this stress builds up because for the first time you are in direct conflict between the way you have been hammered down to think and how you naturally think and feel about the reality that is staring right down back to you! In that moment of truth- you are evaluating your choices of being safe, alive and making it back in one piece with a result that works in your favour or in the favour of greater good! Since this is something that no business school or practise teaches- stress creeps in and this is how it starts to play havoc with you, each time from your first time! Whenever you come to the cross road where you don’t have a templated solution- you will start to feel that stress race up to you- not because you are dumb or can’t handle a situation developing in front- but the years of “programmed thinking” has been made your default thinking style to seek answers from around and not within and unless you don’t switch back your default to within- like you always did when you were a kid- stress is going to get the better of you- it doesn’t matter whether you make a few hundred dollars or a few millions dollars, unless you don’t begin to think and feel from within and learn to junk away programmed and directed thinking escaping stress is going to remain a very tough thing to do! So how doe we go about it?

Stress is not the absence of competence, rather it is the presence of it and importantly the inability to be able to deploy it- in the contextual settings that an individual finds themselves in! Each one of us are magicians in or own way- we are gifted at something to ensure that a task assigned to us, gets done the natural way which comes to us easily- unfortunately that is not how the real world works- from the call centre to the White House press briefing everything is scripted- some for the right reason and few others for the most stupid reasons! Consider this, how simple it would be to empower people to greet and speak to customers who call in the natural way which allows people to spread their personality and warmth as they speak- rather make them narrate the script written- the way it has been- even as the callers and the narrator have no clue what that is and than you have the timer to mark you off that call, simply because you were too slow or fast- I mean who really works that way! It is instances like this and many more- that go on to add stress to the people at all ends of that kind of a scripted approach- which does nothing more than taking away form our true strengths and puts us in a territory where we are completely disadvantaged and we are supposed to switch our thinking to a lower level of “do this and than that and do it this way” kind of a lever!

Given, this is a blog, will share a few final words before we wrap this piece up, stress is not about your competence, abilities and who you are, stress is nothing more or less than your inability to cope with the ways of directed thinking- the more creative you are as person- the chances are that you will always tend to experience higher levels of stress no matter what vocation you choose to pursue! Some areas of work do have in built stress associated with the kind of work- but people are trained about that- again not through directed thinking but rather by providing clarity and support to do away with that space- I am sure you don’t want to be in an ER where the Doctor is sweating more than you and wondering what to do next! The unwanted stress that gets added up to you, only robs you away of whatever creativity, ingenuity and intrinsic genius that you have and tries to align you to be normal as defined by the compulsions of your work place or society!

The only way and the real way to deal with stress, as I see it, is to be connected within and lead yourself as you always did when you were a kid- through curiosity, persistence and intellect- as long as you continue to do this, you will be able to sieve through everything around you with amazing clarity and immediately know when its time to act, which way and when it’s time to exit a place- simply because it threatens to steal the gifts within you and try to make your extraordinary story an ordinary one!

Well, think about it and trust me, don’t get stressed for nothing! You see when you have a situation, the realities are only two- Either you can do something about it or you can’t- this irrespective of whether they impact you or not. So when you can make a change- Lead yourself and get that done by being who you are- there is no social template for that! and when you can’t do anything, use all your gifts to ensure that you are able to stand the storm and emerge on the other side with as little as collateral damage as possible! Stress really makes no sense and has no place- junk directed thinking, social biases, read through the agendas and keep yourself intact and stress free!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then relax and be yourself! Always!

Conflict of Values.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

The title is what we were, are and will ever and always be! Three words but humanity is encapsulated into this frame, try it the way you want to! Join me for a short piece as we try to explore and understand what is this conflict of values all about and why does it play a vital role that it does!

Ever since we are able to make sense and through our formative years, we are always told about values, beliefs and way of life which is supposed to be “the way” and perhaps in a few extreme cases , “the only way” to live and go about our lives! Well so far so good, as long as you see this concept in isolation, one person’s truth remains to be with that person in the confines that the person is going about their lives! The fun really starts as people begin to cross your path and if you are blessed even with an average working brain- you are all set for the proverbial, “conflict of values” and this is where people are formed and destroyed, rise up or are buried into the oblivion, because when it comes to the conflict of values, it is never about whose value is better over the other, rather it is about how well is an individual’s value able to stand the test of time and competing values to keep your persona steady and on the chosen path that you have set out to tread upon! Let me explain this space for you!

You see, as individuals, we are indoctrinated with the values that are handed over to us from our family or the immediate impacting surroundings that may be surrounding us, as we make progress and begin to meet others, we become more and more familiar with what the other person’s values are, we do, what I call is a “value trade off”- remember the school days- something like those play dates, sharing of cup cakes kind of thing- ya, real cute bits like that- we basically start to gravitate to values which make our life easy- easy to manage, progress and maneuver and that’s how it is with each one of us- trust me there is nothing wrong and right about this bit. By now, you may want to ask, if we are all a mixture of traded values in terms of personality- why do we then end up being so different from each other- so much of individuality? Well, the answer is that depends on how you apply the values to what you do as you go about your life! You see values are like the proverbial double edged sword- it can cut the veggies for you and it can cut you as food for someone else! So our individualistic discerning mind, applied to the values that we hold in a context that we god about living our lives, is what we are- as a sum total of all of these variables! Each time either the value, the mind or the contextual settings are altered – you will no longer tend to remain who you are and you will experience a personality shift and that is how we come to the next bit of Value types!

If you ask me, knowing that I really like to keep things simple, I see Values only of two types- Negotiable and Non-Negotiable. Primarily negotiable values are those where you are ready to cross that line of social behaviour or approach to ensure something gets done- without inviting collateral damage or harm and whatever that is is manageable. Non-Negotiable Values are basically your personification- you in Action- and these are something that you are not ready under any amount of pressure to give up – even if that were to cause danger to your very existence! Consider this, say you imbibe the value of liberty and security of your nation- would you be ready to die, if asked to? Well, if that’s your non-negotiable value- you would certainly go all the way to be remembered as a fallen hero than rather live like a hopeless and coward member of an enslaved society. Consider another example, you believe that you will not pay bribes if found violating traffic signals and just as you had it, you are racing for that all important meeting and now, you have a choice, either follow the rule, leave your vehicle, miss that million dollar deal meeting, perhaps loose your job and walk your way home, or slide in that dollar, apologize a hundred times (be honest about that!) and get to that meeting and as you end your day, thank the Lord for being kind, you cracked the deal, made your money, still have your job and have your vehicle! You perhaps still feel guilty about paying that bribe- but than you see the entire context around it and settle down promising yourself never to anything like that ever again! So what do you think you would have done- something similar right? Well, sure enough- see as humans we are hardwired to ensure that we survive and in the modern day context our survival is no longer the wild animals and mad race to tame the world- it is about ensuring that we are able to sustain and progress the lifestyle that we have chosen or aspire to have and for doing that we utilize our value system as an internal gyroscope. Every time our values are challenged or end up in a conflict with another person’s (as it will normally be that way- unless you are that crazy scientist or that gifted surgeon- working away individually) we have life changing events and manifestations coming to the fore and these either form us or break us either-ways redefining who we are!

A lot of politics, conflicts and corporate bitching that goes on in this world , is nothing but the cloaked presence of these conflicting values! You see you have a manager that you report into who believes to that Tea is better than Coffee and hence all Tea drinkers are better than Coffee and you just mentioned to him the other day – how much you love your Coffee and how you are ready to even kill someone for that! (well this is just an example!). So, what you have now done is opened up a Pandora’s box to compete and pit values against each other and this is where the funnier part begins to get dangerous! Offices are replete with examples how, conflicts ensues from reasons ranging from email drafting, to picking up the phone in three rings , to wearing the ID in a particular manner and so on and so forth- these are all nothing more but manifestation of Value Conflicts- where the one who can impose their values on to other s always seems to be getting the upper hand! Well there is nothing wrong and right about this, as I said earlier, many organisations have this whole space around storming, norming an forming to being in congruence and alignment among people of a team. That works well only and only if there is enough space allowed for individual non-negotiable values to co-exist alongside non-negotiable values of the team or the organisation as the case may be! Let me explain!

Consider you run a design studio and have a bunch of design geeks with you, as crazy as they would be- not to forget each strong and rooted in their own individual design philosophy- so now if this organisation has to make any progress even for an inch ahead- it has always to remember to value the intrinsic value systems that these strong individuals hold and always work to ensure that these individual values align , co-exist and are applied to meet the organisational value systems that it may have etched itself with as far as design sensibilities and approach to design goes! As long as this is done and every individual gets that freedom around , there will be magic coming through their work, on the contrary if that individual value st system is stiffed and people are made to work to corporate templates and design manuals- in not time- whether you work for a burger company or an automobile company everything will begin to look the same! So should conflict of values be avoided? Certainly not!

In fact conflict of values is something that should be embraced and encouraged (but not intentionally planted or created for the heck of it). As we grow, not all values that we hold remain dear to us with the same intensity! You may have negotiable ones’ becoming non-negotiable, few may fade away, new ones’ would come in, that is what is reflected the way we mature and grow and how much of maturity, sanity and wisdom we bring to life is nothing but the aggregation of the values that we hold within us in that movement of time! We are constantly forming, day in, day out at times consciously and yet at other times unconsciously, we are receiving and giving away our feelers to the universe and everyone around us that’s how we begin to like whom we hate, dislike whom we adored and so on and so forth, that dynamism is the essence of human progress and growth! As long as you are able to create competition among values that individuals bring with them in a manner that helps these values compete and align to a greater cause and eventually either become something else which benefits all, everything is fine and helpful! However when these very values embark upon dangerous ego rides and get hitched on the wrong shoulders, disasters happen and that is when you have organisations folding up, nations going to war and society getting ripped apart! So what’s the final word? Here you go!

All of us, You, and I included are nothing but an act of our values within- how we present ourselves to the world personifies what we have within and who we are, sure enough not everyone will be able to see as we want them to look at us and that is a different challenge of perception (will talk about that some other time!). More importantly we are constantly changing as far as peripheral values are concerned- core perhaps will not change (unless you have really survived something nasty!) and that dynamism of values is vital to keep your presence as vibrant as it should be so that relevance and acceptance go hand in hand wherever you choose to project yourself! When your values get into conflict, You will always be the winner irrespective if your values stay, get altered or you acquire news ones’ for the older ones’ you had , as long as your mind is aligned to utilize those values for the causes that serve the greater good! You see copper sulfate is a great insecticide but if you forget to wash your fruits coated with it, you will end up having home runs to the washroom for a day at least!

Values are absolute, no two values are ever equal, because no two people holding them are ever the same! Once you have known this secret, you have aligned your life for the greater good, with a soul that yearns to embrace the conflict of values to form and forge you ever more, one moment unto the next so that you continue to be who you are, adding up what serves you and doing away with all that threatens to harm you or weigh you down!

I will leave you here with these thoughts, urging you to get in touch with the values that you hold within- which are negotiable, which aren’t, how do they make you- who you are in the now that you exist and how you plan to embrace the conflict of values as your venture out to meet new people, friends sand colleagues to make the world a shade better than what it was yesterday!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until than stay safe, Stay wise and stay authentic!