Tag: empowered thinking

Defining your essence!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

As deceptively simple it may seem, but this seemingly unimportant task of knowing and connecting within and knowing what your essence is perhaps the most valuable “one thing” that anyone could ever do! For this is the bedrock from where you can align your pursuits, ambitions and virtually anything and everything that is around you and once aligned, engage in a meaningful manner that ushers in empowerment for yourself and everything and everyone around you! Join me here, we take a look into this space and understand why our lives are much more than we think it is and why you are never what your business card says or your last name signifies! So here we go!

We often end up living our lives and perhaps even defining who we are, only based on a singular fact- “what is that we do”, “what our business card say about us” or at times, “defining ourselves in the context of the societal opulence that has come our way”. The fact remains that even as these aspects may have their own merit, their whole context is relative and calibrated to things and people around! You see, working as what you do, does not anyway help to understand how you teat your family , friends, your pets or let alone anyone else, even yourself! You may have more opulence compared to then remainder of the other 80%, but that neither guarantees that you have the taste to enjoy it or the class to display it! The greatest fallacy of our times is that people often end up living a life- based on what they have got “sold into ” understanding what their life is!

You see, if the case had to be that each one of us was to be defined by the mere space around calibrated success and failure and the materialistic enjoyment that comes our way- we would have been a different personality construct altogether by birth! But that is not how it is, Isn’t it? Irrespective of what we work we do, how we are known and perhaps not known (normally referred to as misunderstood) there is yet another layer to our own self and that layer is about getting connected to who you are and what is that your soul’s urge! Perhaps sounds too preachy, spiritual or even condescending, but that is the very important and subtle aspect of our lives and believe it or not, every one of us, stands on this foundation of what our innermost desires and essence is all about- whether you like it or not- you will always gravitate towards that- perhaps it may help you or at times it may not- but all our life stories are a collection of moments when we we are aligned to this space and when we had deviated away from our won essence! Nothing more, nothing less! So how do we stay connected to our essence and how can we encash that space to put this foundation to good use? Read on!

The real magic to work along the pivot of your essence is by first being able to define it- and define it well! Your essence has to be something that you behold uniquely as your own- could be as unique as your innovative thinking or your fertile research oriented mind or could be the innate ability to see uncommon realities i the everyday common things around! One easy way of knowing your essence is that while you are engaged with an activity or a thought- it comes in natural, makes you feel empowered even as it seems comfortable, irrespective of the fact how complicated or easy it may seem to the others viewing that space! You know you are in your elements (your essence) when you act with confidence, direction and purpose on issues with even the most limited insights or details and come out enriched with a new dimension for the whole topic- something that ushers in a new pathway for the existing challenges or opens up a new challenge for humanity to tests their competency against- simply through your power of innovative thinking- which perhaps is then your essence!

Sure enough, you may want to ask, but if that is true for one, it will be for everyone so how does it work? Well, say your essence is around culinary skills, sure enough there would be many with similar skills, perhaps even for the same segment of cuisine, but if you are really connected by the pivot of your essence in what you do, you will be able to add a twist to all that you do,like no one else, even as others continue to do the same- what we then have is a world around us of empowered individuals working and deploying their expression of life through their essence that they have connected with! paradoxically enough, this is also the reason that limits people from connecting with their true essence and more often than not majority of us are happy with that job, that business or simply by doing what we have got into doing and even happy to repeat the same thing year after year- with nothing really changing for us or for the others in a meaningful or empowering way!

When you continue moving through your life disconnected with your essence, sure enough you will live well, thrive and perhaps even surge ahead earning and enjoying all that you desire- but all of that will always keep you very malnourished and deprived at your soul level- and well if you think – that’s alright- that too is fair- because the world that we get to experience and see around is a factor of majority of humankind working themselves for the heck of it- not being connected to their essence- hence mediocre solutions are ok and “just enough” principles take precedence over “what is right” or “the right way to do it”! There is no right way to experience life and share that with others or even with yourself- else all of us would have been born with a manual or handbook to live our lives- driven down to the last detail! It is a deliberate choice that one must make to pivot around their essence even as social compulsions and echoes of insecurity tend to tempt and push us away from what we should be to who we end up becoming! So what next?

Well, the meaningful way and perhaps the only way as I see it, is to stay connected with your essence- the very essence of who you are, what drives you and what is that you want to contribute further to- that has to be something to do with the urge of your soul- it is something purely intrinsic and essentially which define who and what you are and will be- irrespective of the socially accepted and prevailing definitions of success and failures! Your essence does not have to be certified by anyone else but yourself and your essence does not have to be about limiting yourself to be working with “XYZ firm” or “ABC designation” or making $$$ of money, it is beyond and above all of this, sure enough, I am not suggesting the other aspects are irrelevant- but to connect them to be your essence and wanting those things around you to be your definition- is a fatal fallacy- simply because business will rise and fall, jobs will come and go and so will your fortune- but the only thing that will ever remain is what your essence is- unless you realize this bit and learn to pivot on the foundation of your essence you will almost always find yourselves as crossroads- every time any one external variable that you use to define you is taken away from you!

It may be possible that your essence may not serve a materialistic goal that you have given to yourself- nothing wrong with it- but if you are able to reach that goal tapping through the pivot of your essence- which by it’s very nature- defines your value construct- all the journeys in life that you undertake to achieve some or the other goals- you will find them to be more easy and welcoming and the struggle quotient will greatly be reduced! Each one of us, are on this planet- not to only learn- unlearn- relearn-pay the bills- travel and die- for as long as you limit yourself to these aspects of the routine- you will end up creating a life as common as the next stranger you walk past by! It is only when you begin to script the story of your life through the power of who you are and what your soul’s urge is to express that is when real magic will happen- that urge could be a creative expression through arts, science, technology or could be as simple as being a humanist- who strives to empower others around- you may have a philosophical or a cut throat business like approach- doesn’t matter- as long as you pivot your journey of life on the real essence of who you are and what your soul’s urge is- rest assured you will behold peace within and share warmth around even as you lead an empowering presence for yourself and others around you! This is the essence of leading a meaningful life and by being rooted to who you really are and deciphering that secret!

I leave you with these thoughts here, take that break, grab a coffee and do reflect and try to fathom, what your essence really is and what is that you are doing now- which further or stalls the same! Magic and miracles are rare because they only manifest through the urge from within and for that you need to be anchored pretty well intrinsically!

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

Calm within the Storm.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

All of us have heard about the saying, “The Calm before the Storm”, but humanity and it’s modern advancement also brings us face to face with something called as “The Calm within the Storm”. Join me here as we travel down this space and understand how this can help us and why each one us- irrespective of who we are, is a story of holding greater calms within the storms that brew! So here we go!

The old known way of the calm before the storm arrives, is pretty well known, that is how nations makes their presence felt, that is how societies react and that also is how Individuals act and react. But when it comes to the matters of holding the Calm within the storm- things change completely and this change is what goes on define the event as a normal one or an iconic one depending on how well you embrace the calm within the storm that you are engaged with!

Human lives, today, are as complex as one can think about! At one end the ever present challenges of managing and dealing with the human elements of the stories that surround you and at the other end is the completely enslaved lifestyle- enslaved to your work or the technological dependence (which has been sold to each one us as Independence). What this ends up doing is that, irrespective what we pursue as individuals or collectively as a society, we end up fighting battles at different times for different reasons- with or without provocation and even as we do that in a particular area- we tend to be at absolute calm or bliss in yet some other facets of our life! This is what is the real essence of the clam within the storm- why is this so important- simply because, if we are able to shift the calm within to the sectors where the storm is brewing as transiently as we end up being in a storm, we would be able to manage a major part of our “real and apparent problems” more effectively and in a timely manner!

You see, as we end up living the many lives and the roles that we have to play, given the life that we have and who we are to whom and how many around- it is simply impossible to be all fine, all the time with everyone around- the reality of life is that we will end up being fine with a few, not so great with a few and in between with yet other things and people- it is within these spaces that many a times we end up stirring up the storms in the tea-cup for trivial issues and often neglect the real issues and when they come biting back- we are almost always lost with the “why me” phase and more often than not we end up misdirecting the calm quotient that we have to areas where we don’t need to stay clam and end up burning up ore intensely situations where a momentary calm would have eased up the situation and provided the much required breathing space.

The whole idea of appreciating and reaching “the calm within the storm” is also about being able to practise restraint and continue with a calm composed working mind even as you are fighting a battle or waging a meaningful war! Many a conflicts that people face or end up raking up is all about not being able to harness this internal oasis of clam even as they venture to deal with emerging challenges. irrespective whether these challenges are intrinsic, contextually propagated or manifested by virtue of who you are and what you are supposed to do and enact- as long as you are able to tap into the space of your internal calm, you will be able to prevail whatever comes your way! This also is another hallmark of iconic leadership- something that great international leaders display- even as they are maligned, misquoted, misrepresented or sold out by other of being something different from who they really are- it is their intrinsic ability to tap into the depths of their calmness that empowers them to overlook all and any provocation coming their way. Problems become irreparable only when they fail at this ability to overlooks and run short of their intrinsic calm and that’s when rapid actions are manifested and at times they tend to be detrimental to all that has ever got built or achieved earlier on! So how do we cultivate this space of inner calm- it it is so vital and of core value to our ability to stay engaged with worldly affairs? Read on!

It all starts by developing a high level of self-awareness and a deliberate approach by practising the pause, as that initiates you to embrace the calm withing even as you are in the thick of things! Even as you are trying to figure out solutions for compelling problems, once you have reached the calm within- rest assured you will be able to take a better and holistic path to solve what you are dealing with and more often than not your quality of decisions will greatly improve thereby resulting in fewer problems on hand as times progresses! This provides you greater clarity as well and this ensues that you can pick and choose your battles well and once you are in midst of one of them, you are able to decisively take them and end them at a place and time of your choice! Great political leaders have mastered this art and as you sieve through pages of history, you will find many such examples where- despite great odds, a calm and resolute approach has helped to turn the tide of time and created new history and at times even drawn new geographical lines on the face of the earth!

Apart from the intrinsic greatness, what also is needed is the appropriate contextual setting and the apt audience without which even the deepest oasis of calm will be misread as being passive, inert or incompetent- for when it comes to the virtue of perseverance or resilience often people are mistaken to be weak or inapt to act decisively fast!

As long as you are able to hold your calm and tap into that reserve when it matters the most and are able to time it well and to the extent that it must be- you will almost always end up surprising your detractors and be able to grow your team, no matter what the overbearing circumstance around you! “John C Maxwell has always said- Leadership is Influence- Nothing more, nothing less” and if you want to know about one powerhouse that provides that vital source of dynamism and momentum- it is the depth and spread of the calm that you hold within- all the while as you are engaged with and dealing with the routine worldly battles to foster what serves the greater good. Making routine choices between choosing battles which either represent the “need to have ” or “good to have” becomes easier when they are done by tapping through the intrinsic calm and more often then not the decisions taken then are more meaningful and long lasting!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, urging you to tap and maintain that inner reservoir of your calm, for that alone will empower and assist you when the crunch time arrives as you keep shifting your focus from one battle to the next as you keep moving towards your life aspirations!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then stay safe and stay wise! Remember, all greatness is held within and for the same to manifest externally it has to draw the power from your oasis of calm!

Deciphering ” The Radical Thinking” mind.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

If you are left wondering about what happened at the Capitol Hill on January the 6th and are feeling anguished, angry, dejected, proud or sad or perhaps little bit of everything, this piece is for you; simply because what happened at the Capitol Hill is not an isolated incident as it may seem and is played out across societies all over the world for one or the other reason and depending on which side you view what’s unfolding, either you will be elated or sad and either ways- what unfolds seldom serves you or the society in terms of moving it closer to the larger and greater good! So join me here, as we go further to understand what the so called, “radical thinking” is all about, from where does it emerge and what is that can be done about it- does it only harm or is it helpful too? So here we go!

The dynamism that human societies have witnessed in the last century have laid the foundation to what we witness and experience as our societies around us! Societies which have typically witnessed oppression, war, strife, struggle, more often than not tend to become more mellowed, humble and accommodative with time and as people in those societies begin to get equitable access to opportunities of growth and learning! On the other hand, societies which have always had a very intrinsic and unipolar view of the world and about everything and everyone around them tend to live and die in their own unwarranted over confidence or lack of it!

The challenge that societies have always faced and continue to is about being able to share the dividends of progress in a proportional manner- no one is suggesting socialism here, neither am I suggesting Capitalism is bad, what is relevant and contextually important is the fact that, unless the fruits of labour of progress are not shared in a proportionate manner (whatever that proportion is), societies will feel moving at different speeds within the sub-segments and thereby- you will witness people racing ahead and people being left behind and it is from these extreme scenarios of societies that radical thoughts begin to emerge- the ones’ who are racing ahead feel right about what they do because they are enjoying what the aspire and those who are being left behind, tend to feel right about what they do, thinking that is their way and approach to reach their unfulfilled aspirations! So you see in a sum total way, the essence of radical thinking emerges from the extreme ends of societies hinging on their association with their aspirations- at one end- being enjoyed and wanting more and at the other end wanting the basic ones’ first! Based on what society you live in, you will have different standards for aspirations and different levels of volumes at the extreme end and in the middle of the given society.

As long as societies have the majority of their constituents around the centre, the few on the extreme ends can be managed, but as polarization sets and more and more people start to feel compelled to take extreme stands (as part of the larger social conformation bias) the societal balance is thrown away and what you are left is with few people standing in between of two extremely polarized sections who have a large volume as well! This is what the story of many societies across the nations is today! The cause of that polarization could be anything from, political ideologies, personality worship, religious belief’s, genuine like or despise of available quality of leaders’ , whatever other hundred reasons that you can think about- the fact remains that no human is ever born with a polarized mind or heart and it is the society which goes on to indoctrinate that aspect and whether that helps or harms largely depends on what is injected into the impressionable minds of the people through their forming years and this is perhaps the on stage where societies can strive to check the run away polarization that only comes back to bite them at the end! But how and why do people get sold into extreme views or end up taking a radical stand?

As people begin to race ahead or begin to get left behind, despite and inspite of everything, the ones’ ahead are ready to do anything it takes to stay ahead and the ones’ left behind are ready to do anything that it takes to make that move ahead! For achieving this, whatever comes to their rescue works! This could be taking hardstands on political ideologies, personalities or perhaps even using matters of faith as deemed appropriate, all of this- just as tools or instruments to achieve something that is totally different and what’s worse is that, scoities which allow this to develop and get strong- do so with unwritten laws and incentivization based on how far to an extreme a person leans to! More often then not the heady cocktail of the political class and the people from the society and tool used for the hard-line stand ends up destroying and ripping away whatever would have been the unique identity of the society itself!

Before the rampant industrialization, societies had time and space and were more accommodative and allowing for people to pursue without the fear of getting left behind nagging anywhere around their minds! Today’s world is a different place altogether, trust me if Picasso or Gustav Eiffel or Einstein would have been present today, they would have at the most ended up leading the design or science lab at one of the large corporate houses and that would be their limited claim to fame! They too would have ended up being enslaved to fit into the social frame either as leaders racing ahead or as oddity left to struggle and sink in their own corner- which again are the same positions of the two extreme ends of todays’ world! It is almost easy to go on to a television debate show and claim that there should be no space for extreme thoughts in the society, well the problem with that statement is that all great discoveries and innovations have always had when extreme and radically different thinking was applied to something that can serve humanity and hence the problem is not with the space of radical thinking but rather the deployment of that ability for the serving or unnerving causes! So what’s the plan?

The plan is simple and straightforward, it is about creating enough space within societies to accommodate all the voices, feelings and thoughts that are there and try to resolve and address them the way it should be done! The maddening race to be ahead and the unwanted fear and anxiety of being left behind has to be done away with in totality- sure enough a tall and utopian order, but unless that happens, societies will keep drifting away from humanities foremost agenda of meaningful and purpose driven progress and end up sub-serving ourselves and the generations that rely upon us! If you though this is just a civic problem or the ones’ that politicians should be left to deal with it, think again!

The elements of societies are all of us, You and Me included, as we walk in and out of our offices, get driven in the cabs, are taking trains, buses, co-workers, vendors, clients, visiting stores and going about our social community engagement- we are knowingly and unknowingly touching and connecting with various segments of our society and the way we carry ourselves, behave and speak we are sending out a signal not only about the society around us but importantly also about who and what we have ended up becoming as Individuals while we have been either busy either racing ahead- to stay ahead or we have been striving and struggling to catch up as we have got left behind!

It is only when societies are able to create enough space for all constituents within its frame and enough scope for them to express and explore that we will see the beginning of the end of radical thinking and radicalization! may sound utopian, but that is the only way, human progress has been a story of the ingenious ability of the human mind to come up with new thinking and new solutions for perplexing problems at hand, with time sure enough, even this problem of radical thinking will be addressed- once the root causes that accelerate and provoke it are taken care of!

I leave you here with these thoughts for now, not pushing you to either edges of your thinking mind, and just sharing a final thought with you that, the problem is not about the human mind that thinks, neither it is the problem of the mind that thinks radically, the real problems is about what is the contextual truth around that mind which makes it to think the way it does! Fix that and you have fixed all the minds around you -fixed for good!

Remember, average thinking always produces average results, great thinking produces great results and all great thinking happens at the very edge of the thinking process and that is what Radical Thinking is all about- use it wisely and humanity will be endowed with gifts and bliss unlike ever before!

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

The “Comparison pandemic”.

~ PA ~ 1 Comment

We all have been at the receiving end and also at the origin of this comparison fallacy and needless to say, no matter how you or try to do something about it, we almost always end up creating another case for comparisons and comparative approaches! Join me here as we take a quick look into this space of what I call as “the comparison pandemic” and decipher when it is ok and when does it begin to slip away from being helpful to being outright harmful! So here we go!

Right from childhood, what individuals normally experience is the ongoing onslaught of comparisons! Irrespective of the fact whether those are valid or not – that is not the primary concern (though a concern, for sure!), the more compelling issue is, why do we do it, encourage it or even allow this bit to propagate- even as each one of us who has lived the life of a child despised it so much. The other aspect around this “comparison pandemic” is that it doesn’t stop with our childhood and this runs deep- at times subtly and at times loudly through our college days, professional lives and even to the moment right upto our graves- because even in that fleeting moment (perhaps a little short of it)- as a human- if you are able to communicate- you still will strive to make that comment which just wants to reinforce the space that you lived a better life than “abc” or “pqr”! Even as comical and harmless it may seem. this “comparison pandemic” plays havoc and has caused perhaps the greatest damage to humanity by stiffing away young innovator’s and humanists even before they could embark on their journey to make humanity a shade better! But why has this been allowed, how did this space of comparing take on these pandemic proportions? Well read on!

Human societies since the bygone ages have been an effort to make the life experienced by the society member better- better in the sense of ease of life- starting right from the primitive goals of being alive (not getting eaten by other predators), then moving on to a life of shifting settlers and further on to eventually be permanent settlers and then go on to develop rapidly into settlements, villages, kingdoms, empires and in today’s contest the nations that we know them as today! Through this journey of the ages- every inflection point (where something meaningful and great would have been achieved) has always been when the normal ways and practises have been reset, improvised or changed completely- at times this has world and yet few other times this has been detrimental for humanity and it is from these spaces of compelling change and transformation and the creativity and destruction that goes along with these period that a vast majority of the social set- felt the urge and need to stick to what was momentarily comfortable rather then wanting to dwell into the risk prone attitude and approach (especially when things didn’t work in the societies favour!) This is the space and context from where the baby steps of the art of “comparing ” perhaps have emerged- as a survival guide more than anything else!

You see, I see you clap your hands, and you are unharmed, I too will want to do that bit and experiment, I see you cut the vegetables and accidentally cut one of your fingers a bit, well, I sure will venture ahead to chop them, but with some caution- it is these kind of everyday observed and indoctrinated ways of life that go a long way to reinforce the comparative approach and once you have become comfortable around this, you have automatically enrolled for a life of mediocre pursuits for yourself and all those who rally around you- simply because you will not move beyond a set range and the reality of life is that all great and iconic stuff happens much beyond the threshold of comfortable range! This is why when you promote the comparative approach- you end up creating intellectual clones who are as smart or as worse as the next one around and then add to this the intrinsic incompetence (which only grows with time) you set up the individual and societies with such individuals for a downward journey and a mediocre approach for eternity!

As Individuals get compared and kind of get calibrated to what is acceptable and what is not, people around often tend to overlook the intrinsic construct of the Individuality of the person and thereby anything of value that can be there is simply walked over and done away with- so once you have someone’s core intrinsic value taken away- by suggesting that what they behold is not needed in the world- instead “be like that person” who does “this or that and there and how” well, you just end up creating a templated robot who is cloned as much as possible to the so called role model! You see, being Inspired or Motivated by people who have been successful or icons is not the problem, it is when these people and their achievements are presented as the only way and approach that an Individual should pursue as their life path, is where problems begin to manifest, simply because, no matter what you do or not, this person can simply be the Master for a thousand reasons- the most fundamental among them being the “contextual settings and truth of the time in which the people lived and worked!

You may want to argue, whatever happens to the whole space around Being Inspired and Being an Inspiration for someone, well, no one is discounting that bit, but if you begin to sell Inspiration with an intent to change a crow into an eagle- you will most probably end up having a very dumb crow which just gets beaten up by the other crows! What the whole “comparison pandemic” ends up doing, is just this, creating asymmetric and unqualified ways of relativity and expectations and when these strike a cord at the fundamental beliefs of individuals- either they become more rebellious to go ahead and assert their Individuality more strongly – a kind of statement which says, “You know what, this is who I am, live with it! or at times they simply crumble and accept a life that is being thrust upon them – like a never ending role play- and with every passing moment- ending up being more fake and disconnected from within and from who they really are- could be and aspired to be!

Well, you may but what about being ambitious, what about trying to be innovative- how can we do that without comparison? Well, no one is asking you, to give up your innovative spark and neither is anyone asking you not to be inspired or learn or observe from what is unfolding around you- what is important is that you don’t end up fooling yourself, thinking that you are being innovative even as you possibly end up copying or cloning some original idea! You see, the whole premise that innovation or iconic stuff needs some comparison is absurd and wrong! If that was the case- we would have all cars similar in design and all what you see around in the world- would have ended up being just copies of some or the other things around and we would have embraced a templated world! That is not the case, isn’t it?

You see, as long as we are able to have clarity about inspiration, contextual truths of the examples around us and are fundamentally aware about who we ourselves are as Individuals, we will be able to keep in check this innocent looking yet dangerous pandemic of comparison! The Human mind is fickle by the very construct of it and what it appreciates at one point in time will be easily junked away as something better comes to it’s purview- this is- believe it or not- the evolutionary safety valve of human thinking- thousands of years back- who would not want to run into an orchard of apples or some wild fruits which could promise an abundant supply to the group, than having to risk every day in and day out their own lives as they went out for a hunting spree!

Comparisons, aren’t all bad, but how they are done, for what and the contexts more often than not make them a nuisance holistically! Not going too back into human history, the recent Covdi19 pandemic was and is a glaring example- how governments after governments went on to copy what the others did and how that ended up screwing up one nation after the another in their won unique ways simply because all similarity with human kind ends with the fact that we are humans and beyond that point each one of is differentiated or levelled to the society that we have got to live around in and as diverse societies try to strike a common line of similarity- almost always the outcome will be disastrous!

Meaningful comparisons stand true in the test of science. The big corporate world- though having its own set of challenges has fared a shade better when it comes to do meaningful comparisons- You see when the corporate world is able to make meaningful comparisons based not on the intrinsic individuality of the people, but rather on the Authority, Position, Span of Control and Sphere of Influence, that is when magic happens and you are able to find it much earlier when teams and people are performing or perishing and the possible why around it becomes easy- as long as the study is on the process and not on the Individuality and Personalities of the Individuals!

Well, to put it simply, comparisons to work, they need to be meaningful and they need identical (not similar) contexts of time and space- everything done without this fundamental attribute under the garb of comparison is plain stupid and is actually meant to drive some or the other human agenda based on what the content of study is and what is being compared and why!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, urging you to shun the space around the “comparison pandemic” in your lives and around you and embrace Individuality of people around you, as much you would like them to reciprocate the same! Just remember- there is a reason why nature is asymmetric and why each one of us is unique- even if you happen to be that Identical Twin- that is how far your similarity will go- rest all is about the matter that the mind beholds within! The next time someone tells you, “You are not like , B or C”, just tell them who you are and possibly reintroduce yourself! Their feeble minds should start working from that point!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay safe, stay wise and yes- compare what is meaningful enough to compare; everything else, is best the way it is!

Being Mindful is also about being Creative.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Hello there! Now that you have changed the calendar, settled down on to the new countdown for a new year, what better then to begin the year by taking a shot at what matters and what can create value to you and me alike! Join me here for a quick journey to understand the whole space around being mindful (which you will hear quite often through 2021) and why it matters and how it propagates creativity and why individual creativity is of paramount importance for all of us in the times ahead! So here we go!

Unlike what is presumed, being mindful is not about being passive or trying to escape or avoid challenges coming ones’ way, rather on the contrary it is being able to offer the best that one can moment to moment in whatever is been dealt with so that the very possibility of emergence of problems or challenges is halted right in the bud! The daily chaos of the corporate world has offered this vague presumption around mindfulness that it is for creative people or for those who work on their own pace and aren’t governed by the laws of pressure and corporate dynamics! The easiest way to understand this is that, many a times book stores will have books on Mindfulness not in the Business Management or Wellness or Health section but rather in something called as “Self Help” a section, which by the convention of it’s name itself discourages people from walking close by, let alone going through the titles and trying to make the sense of the contents presented! The creative human mind is always seeking and trying to create new realities and rationalize observed facts around it, this continuing subconscious act of the human mind only is empowered when the mind is trained to be mindful and anchored where it should be! So what is being Mindful really about? Well, read on!

Mindfulness, if you ask me is the ability to rationalize, accept and work through, around and over compelling and favorable contextual settings alike! You see, mindfulness can’t and never works in vacuum! It needs the relevant audience, the task or simply put something to be worked upon by someone and when we understand this bit, we then now why it is so elusive; well the moment you have “the others” in the sterile contexts of your life, you will feel the push and pull of all that gets around you and it is within these spaces and confines of our everyday world that mindfulness gets reduced to fleeting moments of temporary attention and is almost always lost and disconnected at the drop of a hat! You may be tempted to ask, don’t meditation and allied techniques foster and promote mindfulness? Well they do but that space of mindfulness, it is all related to introspective enquiry aimed to empower the vibrance of intellect and sharpness of awareness.

The nature of day to day mindfulness that is required for us to “stay in the moment” is all about being able to give our best in the fleeting moment on hand for the task undertaken- nothing more nothing less! Whether it is the talk that you give, that meeting you conduct or the orders that you pay attention to, when each f these and many such tasks are dine with utmost deployment of directed mindfulness you will find, your day change dramatically in the sense that- you will always seem to get more clarity than earlier and this will empower you to take wise decisions and this cycle of empowered thinking and empowered action will go on as long as you are able to apply your mind holistically in the fleeting moment that you are in! This,if you ask me is the real essence of begin mindful in the context of the type of daily lives we lead and are part of! So what about the Creative part of it?

Well, as the mind becomes aligned and focussed to being “In the Now”, needless to say, it always is seeking to decipher recognizable patterns (that is what it always does to reduce the burden of re-wiring and re-recording observations!) and as long it manages to come up with some intrinsic and unique ways for doing that bit, rest assured even routine tasks and days will begin to become awesome and you will be able to find something new and meaningful even in a seemingly “same day, all day long” situation! The creative mind is perhaps the most potent tool on the planet, from tooth picks to nuclear weapons all have been but a manifestation of the creative abilities of the human mind and when this is coupled with the power of being mindful, all that you can expects is magic and the magic felt is all about bringing in newness, opulence and a continuing differentiating value to life on an ongoing basis!

The creative mind has this innate advantage to decipher a challenge in multiple ways and more importantly wrap the solution as aptly as it can to the contextual settings of the problem, thereby making it look better then what it is (if it’s not really good enough!) and when it’s a real doo one, it simply empowers it to shimmer and provide a newly laid pathway to address the compelling problems! you add mindfulness to this space and you have a state of intellectual bliss! You can harness the best of what your mind has to offer- being focussed like a laser and at the same time being able to work out meaningful alternatives (solutions) at a rapid pace- with each one trying to be the better then the last- thereby ensuring that the task at hand is dealt with a high level of applied intelligence so that outcomes are almost always best in class!

If mindfulness is the space that allows your mind to stretch, creative approach adds that, much needed flex to it and together they are able to manifest innovation, breakthrough’s and answer problems of humanity like nothing else can!

I leave you with these thoughts here, urging you to harness your trim level by deploying your creativity in the mindfulness that you are able to touch! Ciao for now, will be back soon with another article soon! Stay safe, Stay wise and Yes, have a great 2021 – the mindful way!

Managing your Intellectual Graveyard.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

The human mind is the birth place and the reason for all that is around us and within us and it also is the eternal graveyard for all those things that didn’t manifest (for good or worse) and for all that we didn’t become! Join me here as take a quick trip to understand what this graveyard of our mind seems like and how it nourishes us even through the power of seemingly dormant ideas and experiences! Sounds creepy, but that is what humanity has arrived to be- in some or the other form- facts being stranger then fiction! So here we go!

Philosophers for long have stressed on the value and the potency of the human mind- whether to create lingering masterpieces of art, to raise kingdoms that seemed eternal or the aspect of bringing in utter destruction and misery to humanity- each of these facets have been nothing more but the coming alive of human mind and more importantly the human intellect held within the mind being deployed to manifest what it aspires! This is the space of living ones’ dream, ambitions, so on and so forth and being able to make that indelible mark in pursuit of immortality- the reasons could be right or wrong- again that remains to be at the mercy of the viewers lens and frame of context about what is being studied! But our story really starts as this episode ends!

As long as people are able to flush out what they think either by their expressions or by acting them out, the mind tends to remain dynamic, engaged and productive (which can be a matter of debate, simply because the aspect of “productivity” is a function of the contextual frame and who you are, as you witness the same!). The problems start as the minds begin to get stuck and drowned in their own ideas and thoughts as they get pushed deep within the confines of the mind and soon enough the mind begins to resemble an intellectual graveyard! You see, every human being is constantly abuzz with a hundred thoughts each day and within these few stick on and within that bucket, yet a few get experimented upon and if the idea is really a contextually relevant one than it goes into execution and thereafter it’s measured by defined metrics to be called as a success or a debacle! As the rejected or unused ideas and thoughts begin to stall and stagnate they get moved to the graveyard within your mind and unless they are able to be re-designed or resurrected in some way- their final resting place here is final and if this graveyard is not tended to aptly, it can unleash havoc to wreck even the most potent and brilliant ideas and thoughts and end up creating more chaos and anxiety rather then allowing one to bask in the glory of their potent idea or thought! So what is really happening around here?

The human mind and it’s efficacy is all about having a dynamic forward balance between the ideas that work and the ideas that have stalled (for whatever reason it could be!). As long as the mind is able to keep progressing ahead, things are fine and like the case of many of our lives- it is the instance of daily struggle and strife to overcome what we must to reach where we ought to! It is only when the dynamic of moving ahead is much much greater is that magic happens and great ideas give birth to great actions and thereby equally great manifestations! But when this does not go this route and as minds falter and fail owing to the pressure of more and more failures or stagnation of ideas (rather inability to deploy them as intended) these redundant ideas and thought begin to flood the mind and drown the mind from within leading to more chaos and turbulence. This in turn goes a long way to adulterate the quality and character of the emerging potent thoughts and thereby begins to skew the very originality of an individual and thereby with every idea, every thought the individual begins to move away from what really is the essence of the individual and begins to embrace acquired circumstantial relevance! This is why the size and depth of the intellectual graveyard matters!

As the mind begins to get cluttered and strewn with the corpses of the failed and faltered past-ideas and thoughts, it soon starts to loose it’s potency and efficacy on what it can achieve as it’s approach begins to get fogged out and this is what makes the intellectual graveyard so interrupting and dangerous- it simply stalls or tries to stall efforts made by an individual to re-focus and rejuvenate each and every time an attempt is made! So what’s the way ahead around this? What can be done?

Well, the only meaningful way to do something around this is to ensure that the graveyard is managed to a size and depth so that it doesn’t develop the power to interrupt the ongoing progressive intellectual pursuits. For this to happen it is very important to practise complete burial of thoughts and ideas and practise detachment (like so many belief systems do!), unless this complete surgical clean cut from the failed and faltered efforts and past is not done completely every effort and every attempt to move ahead and latch on to progressive and forward thinking will be blocked and challenged by the un-serving bygone spaces residing within the graveyard of the mind!

How this is achieved,well that will depend individual to individual and context to context since, each one of us is as unique as we can be and hence there is no real text book or one size fits all solution to solving the challenges poised by the intellectual graveyards!

I leave you here with these thoughts for now, urging you to practise what you must and can to manage your own little graveyard well enough so that it doesn’t overpower your today to dictate your tomorrow!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay wise and keep thinking to manage your own little graveyard well!

Social Divergence: A story of our times.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

The wealth of nations’ must never be about and can never really be about how opulent the opulent have become- rather it has to be a story of how richer poverty has got and how much higher as it climbed up the ladder to sustainable quality of life and aspirational meaningful opulence! Join me here as take a fleeting look into this space and try to decipher what really drives nations’, who are the powerhouses and what is that is right and so wrong about this space! So here we go!

Irrespective which nation you live in, chances are that as soon as you cross, what I call as the “Circle of Opulence” you will be struck by abject contradictions and challenges that seem to land up in front of you from some bygone era! The holidays are around the corner, if you can move (if it is safe, and allowed to move around), do try to move away from your radius of opulence (I presume that’s where you are), and observe what greets you! This circle of opulence can mean different things across different societies and even the very definition of opulence can range from as simple as being alive to enjoying the latest eclectic wine or having that latest gadget or business jet to fly around in! So how does one come to know that they are within the circle of opulence and and how does one know as they move out of it?

Well, it’s really simple, if you have the five things that are “good to have” and already have access to “the need to have”, chances are you are living “the opulent life”. What these “good to have” and “need to have” are will vary from society to society, but importantly- they will help you know how deep within the Circle of Opulence you are in and how far the edge of that is. You see, when you hear people speaking about the “up’s and down’s of their financial fortunes they are basically getting moved around – still within the circle of opulence- the only thing being as their fortunes deplete they begin to drift towards the edge of that circle and as they begin to amass wealth they begin to re-assert and plant themselves firmly towards the center and sure enough, each society will have their own definition of the center and highest manifestation of opulence and so also about the edge! This is from where all struggle, strife emerges in a society, the ones’ outside the radius want to get in, the ones’ inside want to gravitate towards the center and amass the most for themselves- what is right and wrong, is all contextual, what is absolute within this frame is the fact that, each society has just so much space at the center of the circle, within it and around it and as struggles ensues, you witness the victors and the defeated strewn all across this landscape. This is the very essence of humanity’s existential paradox, where everyone wishes good for the other but seldom facilitates that bit! Think around it!

All this ends up creating divergence within the society and although having diversity within societal blocks may be a good thing, but add to that a dash of divergence and if your further allow that too run amok, you will start to see issues emerge! What this does is, it further reinforces thoughts and feelings (which may not be always be true) among different people within a given society the feeling of being left back, neglected, intentionally side tracked and so on and so forth and when that happens, the human mind begins to look for patterns and tries to develop reasoning for what it experiences and this is how false narratives and incorrect assumptions begin to take birth. If this was not enough, people at the center of the radius, within and around it do what they can do build narratives majorly to stop people getting into that radius and at at times to shed off the exceed within the radius and this is the playground of politicians and policy makers who do what they- at times to help and some other times to harm- but each time they do what they do- they almost always end up helping few and harming few- who gets helped and who gets harmed- well that again is a contextual story! So what next?

Well, as long as societies go about doing what they do, oblivious to what is really playing out, the why and the who, the daily struggle and strife that we witness, will remain, intensity may vary society to society- but this ongoing discontent and chaos will ensue. Sure enough, I am not urging you to believe in any utopian or hallucinatory concept of a perfect place, society or nation, simply because imperfection is the hallmark of humanity and nature alike! So as long as the struggle is to correct what must be and what needs to be- it’s I presume a fair game- but the society must too think alike and a majority of it- when that happens- you have what we call a revolution, the arriving of a new age! When there is a disconnect among the various elements and narratives end up being competing and conflicting rather than being unifying and reinforcing- you have a society which is stationary yet travelling in all directions at the same time with a net result of being regressive rather being progressive! So what’s the plan?

The onus of course correcting a society resides with each one of us, however small that effort may seem, it is only when every element within a society aligns itself for the larger belief and direction that societies will commence to move in a decided direction with commonality of vison and purpose, sure enough this is a tall order and that’s the reason why mass movements that usher in change are so few and far in between! Societies do take time to arrive at a consensus!

What we must not forget is the abject paradox of the lives of humans around us- it is not only the opulence of material wealth, but it also is about the opulence related to the creative expression of the human mind- because that too is a benchmark of humanities progress! What hampers human progress is this paradox, you see, like I said in my previous article, we all come from the same bucket and the more complicated the bucket gets, the more chaotic, yet colorful our lives end up becoming! The human dexterity and ability to prevail over this space and put it to some sane use, is what actually defines what we are, collectively and individually and that further spells out where we will be and as what in the times to come!

The next time, you come across someone less fortunate then yourself, know a few things well, you too are part responsible for allowing that to manifest around you,simply because you are all part of the same social framework- you may not have intended for that to play out- but whatever you did intend for has manifested what you see around! I have for long believed that charity is a way to reduce the burden of guilt to a limited extent and that is what unfortunately it seems to be; as we witness,the way things emerge across societies in the world today! I leave you with these thoughts for today, urging you to take some time to reflect and figure out where do you reside as far as the circle of opulence is concerned and where are you heading- towards the center or are you getting edged out!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another piece! Until then stay wise and stay anchored as you are meant to be!

The Bucket Effect.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why perceptions win over truth.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The anatomy of a crisis.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The”Flight Mode” principle.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rationalize your desires.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The endless journey between I & WE.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Gate-Keeper.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meaningful Hustle.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The problem with “Problem”.

~ PA ~ 1 Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Leadership Code.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Choose a finish-line.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Fluid mindset.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Creative Fatigue.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

I did tell you sometime back I will write something around “creative myopia” well, here we are! No, don’t jump to think this is only meant for those eclectic designers, and creative folks, in fact there is much more to this whole space and whether you are able to use a color pencil or not, creative fatigue manifests in funny ways- whether you are an artist or a teller at a cash counter- the day you get hot by this space of creative fatigue- life begins to slip away as you have known it and the same exciting burger that you so cherished,starts to look pretty ordinary! Join me here as we take a tour down this route and understand what is creative fatigue, why does it happen, what is that we can do to manage it and why all of that is so vital irrespective who we are!

Humanity and it’s hallmark or stamp of authority is nothing more then the pockets of creative excellence here and there! Think about it, whether you live in the top 10 cities of the world or some quaint town in the countryside- what drives us is the quintessential space of being able to find solace and sense in the contextual surroundings that we live about and when those surroundings stay exciting and dynamic- is when our mind is stimulated and empowers us to keep thinking to keep that dynamism alive and when that surrounding fails, we stagnate- intellectually and creatively! Let me explain!

Remember the first time when you saw that train pull into the train station, or you saw that airplane take off high above your shoulders, what was that moment like for you (I am assuming you were a kid then), liberating and something magical right? And as you grew up and began to decipher the science and art behind those instances what happened- well chances are if you have already killed that kid in you- you would have all but lost that excitement of seeing that train coming in or that airplane taking off- simply because those instances now, no longer stimulate or “wow” your brain, well sure enough makes rational sense, but it is within these spaces when you are able to still retain that kid like excitement to seek joy and happiness even as you grow up- that you will be able to see some different context and who knows bring in that creative stroke of a genius and create something altogether new or add lasting value to what exists around you!

If you want to get a sense of examples of creative fatigue, you need to first understand the space of creative magnificence! Creative opulence through architecture, buildings, technological solutions, designing of processes, creating lasting value through access to resources and empowering the ability to think beyond the now and allowing people to dare to dream and fail forward, these and many such thoughts, attributes and attitudes to life go on to make what our world really is- a creative melting pot! Whether it’s that great skyscraper or that piece or music or that communication that melted your heart- each of these has the hallmark and stamp of creative excellence and this is what helps to build hope, give pathways and chart the course for the future of humanity. This is an ever ongoing dynamic space which flows with it’s own highs and lows and problems of creative fatigue begin to emerge as this flow starts to get dammed for reasons that are not natural to the process of that creative flow!

Creative Fatigue begins as societies start to get lazy! Yes lazy and lax, and contend with what is there and not wanting to go to the next place or the next best place,imply because the comforts of today outweigh the hardships of today for an unknown future! How does this play out? Well just look around you, if you are in middle of a residential block or a business district in your city, what do you see- buildings and buildings built to the same specification and exactly the same way- sure you can argue the plot size is same the approvals are the same, still what stops from making them with a strong identity for each one of them? Aren’t Architects supposed to breathe life into these structures? Move ahead and get into corporate world- what you see, similar broad based actions taken at certain levels accompanied by the senseless play of designation labels- which proclaim a lot but mean nothing! Look closely what do you see in the space of imparting of knowledge, education, training, year on year students learn the same things and move ahead (irrespective whether the contextual validity of what has been taught has remained or not!) Sure enough contextual background is much needed as we advance and move ahead as a society but that does not mean we end up having graveyards of creativity in our back yards even as we want to plane the design for the front lawn of our house!

Typically societies, which don’t compel themselves to stay ahead on the creative curve to embrace the next big idea, moment to moment, often fall back on older ideas and though process and keep on endlessly tweaking and working over them, at times to such a point that it starts to get outright boring and an intellectual pain rather then a creative gift of any kind! The easiest way to come across this is the crazy world of communication- yes- that space where the marketeers rule and leave no stone un-turned to sell what they want- irrespective whether you need it or not and doing that by telling you stories which at times are magical and creative and more often outright dumb, boring, condescending and absolute pieces of intellectual hallucination, in plain speak outright dumb! When creative fatigue sets in this world- you end up forgetting the product or the service and just remember the music or the lyrics and never really know what it was actually for! A classic case of the bridesmaid being one step ahead of the bride! As creative fatigue sets in, societies suffer from an intellectual diarrhea of unimaginable proportions, everything starts to get painted in the same color, tonality, conformation biases are stronger then ever, rules are made, re-made and just keep adding up, with no one ever knowing whether the rules are for the people or whether the people in the society are for the rules that have been made!

As comical it may seem, when creative fatigue sets in, it can turn outright deadly and fatal for the society! Think about it, if as an Individual if you were to loose that creative spark and now multiply that by thousands who go on to make the society in which you live- what do you think is going to happen? Yes, more sulking, more downward spiral and reinforcement of a common belief that nothing can be done and no good will ever happen and it is when societies reach these spaces that all the negative thoughts and attributes begin to get a hold on the value and belief systems and that begins to gnaw the society from within with each passing moment and the damage that is unleashed with time is simply beyond repair and often fatal!

If you happen to be in a society where challenging the norm is becoming increasingly difficult and if you come across many people around you saying , “what difference will it make” for every idea that you share, you have your first clue that you are seriously with the right mind in a wrong market place! Creative Fatigue starts as societies and elements within the societies start giving their golden “ok” for anything and everything simply to have that task moved out of their way- not bothering for once to realise the impact that it will have! Sure enough, I am not suggesting that every building in the neighborhood has to be an architectural design marvel or every aspect of work has to be reactive and there needs to be some entertainment in allow that we do- well surely none of that- we don’t want our doctors or cops dressed up and showing up like clowns- but the fact remains we don’t want people to unnecessarily live a monotonous and more then serious life either! You see, there has to be that balance- a dynamic balance which keeps yup the buoyancy of a society so that it moves forwards and stays progressive no matter what the hardships and no matter what the challenges that it needs to overcome! This is the essence of dealing with and managing creative fatigue before it can run amok and do irreversible damage! So what’s the plan? You may ask!

The plan is really to be alive, being alive and being connected with the people around you and that is around you, for that is the very essence of what will empower you with the spark to break the norms and set standards and benchmarks in whatever you choose to do, whether big or small , once in a life time to every day of your life and this space of empowered application of creative thought alone is the way to stall and stop the setting in of creative fatigue! As along as you stay committed to find something new, better and more effective and more impactful to communicate what you do and follow in life as your way of creative expression, you will hold the flag of creative renaissance high and ensure that no stalling comes your way and you keep advancing and more importantly keep inspiring everyone around you on your journey! Sure enough, not every moment can be a moment of creative excellence, but every moment can be and must be the one of creative inspiration and that is what alone can set the course for individuals and societies to seek and manifest what is missing and make things more meaningful and purposeful thereby keeping the pursuit of creative thinking and creative expression alive and vivid as ever!

I leave you here with these thoughts, urging you to do your bit to stall and keep away the elements of creative fatigue that may come your way- knowing the creative person who you are and do what it takes and as it takes to keep that creative inspiration always high and always alive- so what even if you are going to build only one masterpiece in your lifetime or so what if your work is plain and monotonous- it is the ability of recognizing that speak- which can inspire creativity as you go about your life is what is needed and for that- you can be almost anyone doing any job you think is fine and yet be someone creative and more importantly someone who inspires others to be the same!

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