The oncoming Leadership pandemic!

November 16, 2020 ~ PA ~ 2 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Harness the Invisible to stay Invincible.

November 6, 2020 ~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Racing ahead to nowhere!

November 3, 2020 ~ PA ~ Leave a comment

The biggest irony of humanity is perhaps that even as we all know- very well- that we all have a limited timeline within which to get done what we desire to, we tend to keep wastefully engaging ourselves in activities and pursuits which eventually mean very little or nothing at all! Join me here as we take a short tour along this space and try to figure out why does our intelligent mind nudge us towards these unknown paths even as we know even going on them will often lead to wasted time- one commodity which, as yet can’t make good no matter what!

Everywhere and anywhere you look, what you see is people helplessly and hopelessly trying to finish off something or the other- nothing wrong with people being busy- the real problem starts as people begin to “finish off” instead of completing what they are doing or what they are supposed to be doing! You may call this play of words, but there is a method to this madness- you see when you have that burger, you can stuff that right through and gulp it not ever realizing whether it had cheese or not or you can bite it slow and relish every aroma and every ingredient that has gone into making it and then move ahead to whatever you plan to do next! This is the simple yet big difference between “finishing off” and “completing”. Great Leaders know this secret and hence no matter what pressure or what kind of challenge they face- they take their relevant and valid time to arrive at a decision! Sure enough the time taken has to be contextually relevant and needs to empower the decision that ensues- I mean if someone is going to take time and again come back with a poor decision- well then what can one say! But then why do people do this? Aren’t we supposed to be intelligent and discerning? And what is that makes people want to “finish off”, where are they heading next and why?

Well, the real part of the problem is human intelligence too – as paradoxical at may seem, but that remains to be a fact! You see, like I have shared it with you in my earlier writings as well, psychologists the world over will always agree to one things- that is – the human brain even now baffles them! At times it seems to come up with something completely different, rebellious, “out of the box” as they say and as long as this pathway contributes to build up the society around us- all is well, but in those rare instances when this pathway leads to some selfish or self-serving idea- it causes destruction and needless to say- the mind which beholds that thought too ends up becoming a victim eventually! The human brain is a power guzzler when it comes to the energy demand from our body- given the fact that majority of us are more often than not binge on stuff which really doesn’t help the brain- the brain does what it can- adjusts it’s power ratings (output) aligned to the nutritional input that it receives! So if you ever wondered why fatigued and famished bodies don’t have a healthy brain or don’t come up with empowered ideas and breakthrough’s well I just answered that for you! This is the genesis of “finishing off” syndrome!

Along side this frame, it has now become more and more fashionable to do what is “socially conformable” and “what is widely acceptable” simply because either there is no energy left to bring around a change of thinking and adoption to something new or better or simply because there is paucity of genuine wealth of ideas and original thinking to begin with! Whatever the reason is, the fact is society today gets served by “I copy you” and “You copy that one” space. No one is really original enough, everyone is piggy back riding on someone else’s idea and coloring and coating it to be their own! This is what further aggravates the problem and contributes to the mindset of “finishing off” things!

Apart from the lack of originality, in this mad race among humans where (well all sensible race’s do have a finish line) there is no sensible end line- so to say, humans normally end up indulging in something that is plain stupidity! The very philosophical concept of a race has always been a differentiation of competence, skill and abilities- between individuals and teams or even societies and nations for that matter- but all of this makes sense only and only if the contextual frame and settings between those who taking part in the race are the same! This is the underlying reason which rides over “finishing off” syndrome and completely leads people and societies astray, simply because the race is among unequals’- in terms of the contextual settings of the frame of the contest even if we were to assume that the participants are all equal at all times (which is as absurd as a statement as one can get!! Let me explain this!

You may always have wanted to be that CEO or that Head of “something” simply because your friend is, without ever realizing the other important elements; the “Why’s” which would have made that possible or not! Likewise societies, nations go about their lives hastening through by creating unwanted and unnecessary hustle around something that may not contextually be relevant and true the way they perceive it to be and that’s what actually manifests into this whole one mad race about nothing, for nothing with no finish line! It is this heady cocktail of human intellect, inertia and lack of discernment that creates these races with no ends! Whether it is that race to be the all powerful, all encompassing or being able to lead in select areas / sectors as an individual or a society or a nation, as long as you continue on a path of participating in endless and meaningless pursuits, you will always have a restless existence!

These endless struggles manifest and play around us all the time, and it is their ever increasing complexity that keeps pushing people into one scenario after the other- all the time thinking that it is a worthwhile effort, while the fact often is completely different! But why do people get sold into these corners of life? Well often, these endless races are a case of ending up over complicating our lives, even as individuals set out to have it simplified! People simply fail to understand that a functional car would be good as the latest sports car- simply because there is no “motor sports” that you are ever going to participate in!

The endless race to nowhere is the product of never ending aspirations simply because they are never reached or achieved! The reason why that happens- well partly because of misplaced aspirations, intrinsic construct and differing contextual frames! So is there a way around any of this?

Well, yes if you agree to have clarity and limitation and calibration of your aspirations and pursuits aligned to who you are, where you are and why you are! Unless you get down to this fundamental space of doing an intrinsic cross check on what your goals and aspirations are, you will ever be finding yourself riding on waves of shifting aspirations and never ending pursuits which will end up depleting all that you have leaving you famished and fatigued in mind, body and soul!

I leave you with these thoughts here for today, urging you to hit that brake pedal and take a look around your life and try to decipher, if you are indeed pursuing what really matters and is worth it or if you too are caught up in the endless race!

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

The Story of Hope.

October 28, 2020 ~ PA ~ Leave a comment

In these wonderful times, dotted with a deadly pandemic and politically charged hysteria; what more can people offer each other than some healthy dose of hope! For Hope alone (at least for now) seems to be the only constant that has always been there with us in this ever changing dynamic world that we face each day- which seems to get more and more volatile and insane! Join me here for a quick read to decipher Hope and why it works and why it doesn’t and thereby try to understand how much hope is healthy and when does hopelessness help! So here we go!

Through evolution of human societies, if there have been silent sentinels to humanity, hope is undoubtedly one of the foremost of them all! So what is hope and what is that makes “hope” so contagious? The genesis of “hope” can be found throughout our history- whether we were at peace and engaged in creative pursuits of grandeur or we lived in times when war and conflict ruled, “hope” has always made it’s way into our lives- at times to empower us further and make us more creative and at other times coming in to strengthen us to develop enough courage to deal with what we would have been facing! But how does “hope” manifest? Like everything else, “Hope” too is a figment of human intelligence, wisdom and knowledge ( each of these aspects, similar yet completely different) amalgamate to form what we term as “hope”. Without “Hope” there can be no humanity, but at times, this very misplaced “hope” endangers humanity like nothing else!

Hope has always been about allowing the human intelligence to expand and explore what lies beyond what is visible. Hope is what made crusades possible and the made explorers who they were! Hope being a function of the human mind- drawing its strength on rational thinking, a generous sprinkle of intuition, empowered by virtues like courage and patience is what has made the human society reach where it has reached today! The advancements of civilizations through the ages, the breakthroughs in science and engineering, the renaissance of the creative world , each and every element that you perhaps see around you is a story of the victory of human hope under some testing times, some years back! Consider this, today when we get the flu (not the pandemic one) we know we will be alright, that was not the case about 150 years back! With time as science and medicine advanced and a better understanding about the illness and the causes came to the forefront, scientific and rational approach to cure the sick has saved many lives and these lives continue to be saved each day all over the world, all of this became possible only because a few healthcare workers and scientists were ever hopeful and pivoting on that hope they were able to find the cure to a medical condition. This is what has made us to arrive at a stage- where we are in a better space to decipher all that gets opened up around us, all the time no matter how high or complex the challenge, a healthy does of hope is all it takes to turn the tide in the favour of humanity! But then why does hope end up getting mis-sold? How do peddlers of hope at times place humanity at the cross hairs of disasters and unleash untold misery on fellow humans? Well here, like in the case of all vices, it has to do more with human greed- individual and societal rather than a problem about hope! Let me explain!

Humans come in as many hues and colors as nature can present us with and needless to say each of those variations come in with their own package of intelligence, wisdom and knowledge. When there is a dash of the wrong ingredients a self-serving approach begins to take precedent, that’s when problems begin and that’s how these individuals begin to sell “hope” when it is actually something else (basically an agenda, a narrative- which looks and feels like hope- but sadly isn’t) and what’s more worrisome is that fact that these “pseudo-hope” stories end up creating skewed and fractured societies and individuals thereby bringing around the whole debate about “how much of hope” is alright and when does “hope” begin to turn into despair! So what’s the way ahead?

Once “hope” starts getting mis-sold or rather should I say, once everything else begins to get sold as “hope” is when the problems start to compound and depending on how high an individual is in the social frame, what that person’s span of control and circle of influence is. It is this, which leads to the systematic and structured decay of real “hope” and with time what you end up having, is a society replete with individuals who are high on unfounded hope and eternally waiting to see the Sunrise even as they stand facing the west! It is these spaces where people don’t lie but neither offer rational or realistic understanding that false narratives get sold as hope and that takes away whatever limited courage and strength individuals are left with to deal with what they may be facing! But the question why would people do that? Why would anyone falsify and mis-sell falsified narratives disguised as “hope”? Well that really depends on the people who are involved in that space and the purpose of why that is been done! You see, a parent telling a kid that the grades will be better next year (knowing well they may not go beyond another 4-5% points) is just helping the kid stay aligned and not go astray! Genuine and Valid, this is how real “hope” is encouraging, progressive and harmless, on the other end, you have that parent who wants you to lead the pack and stand number uno (knowing that in the whole family people have struggled to get a B grade) is where stress will start to creep in and false and fake perceptions and narratives then begin to outdo “real hope” and thereby manifest everything but the desired outcome!

Likewise when it comes to dealing with people, whether be relations, work, social interactions or even in the instances where societies and nations have to be led, as long as individuals and leaders stay aligned to the space which offers, “real, meaningful, directed and objective driven hope” it works wonders and creates a vibrant, engaged and proactive individuals and social cohort. The moment people begin to sell fake narratives and falsified hope, social decay commences and sooner or late, both (the person who offers these misleading narratives and the people who soak into it) come back to the very same cross-roads where they had earlier met, only to realize what a waste of time it has been for both- the only person who perhaps will not mind that- is the person who would have profited from that exercise and this is the space where those sooth sayer’s and hope sellers operate- without thinking for a minute- what hardship and challenges will individuals face once the narratives fade away! Few politicians operate in this space, come election time, you hear the same sob story of “they did what they could” which is the underlying narrative and all time favorite, rarely will you come across a politician who says, “Inspite and Despite of all this, I did this and will continue to this, knowing well the obstacles on the way”! When you do find someone speaking this line- You have found a rare gem! So what’s the takeaway, you may ask?

Well, it’s simple, always know that “hope”- that is real hope is as rustic and unglamorous as our lives are- it is equally vulnerable as all our other virtues and feeds on your ever changing levels of confidence and fear. Real hope is hard and needs patience and courage for one to withstand the time of their lives hanging on the sliver of hope- simply because the strength and impact of hope always is proportional to an individual’s courage and patience! Hope too is intrinsic and how hopeful one person is the other will never be at the same level- the broader frame may be the same, but the depth and intensity will differ and that depends on the social context of the individuals and other ambient factors! It is when there is a broader social alignment to few issues among the many that societies tend to see the change and that’s when hope begins to manifest! Whether that cohort is a force of fire-fighters , people having a similar political ideology or pursuit of some defined cause, when these are aligned and synchronous is when hope begins to manifest and that’s how “being hopeful” consistently begins to translate and bring in the aspired transformation within individuals and around societies! It has never been a question about being hopeful about “hope”, what matters is staying clear and away from narratives which are disguised as “hope” (which are replete around us) and this is perhaps the leading cause of all strife and tribulations that individuals’, societies undergo, given the times that we live in!

If you ask me, I will say, stay hopeful about what is rational and all that looks unglamorous, hard-work and vital; all else that looks too easy, too loud and too glamorous in all probability is nothing more than a falsified narrative which is being peddled as hope!

I leave you with these thoughts here, urging you to stay “hopeful” for yourself and humanity on all things that matter and must be dealt with, no matter how difficult or challenging they seem to be! Take that pause and check, how much of “real hope” you have received and how much of it have you offered to others! Did you ever fall prey to something else that was peddled as hope?

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

Be an Artist!

October 7, 2020October 7, 2020 ~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Your life is but a piece of art that you create, by being the artist that you are now, will become and will continue to be, moment to moment! Join me here, as we unravel how artists can teach us more than we think, they can and how that can be a game changer to look back upon what we do, the way we do,what we do and how those choices can get altered, the moment you realize that, you are the one who is going to be eventually recognized for all the achievements and all the brickbats that you ever get in life and how being an artist alone can save the day for you, by learning to deal and engage with things and people around like the artists do!

In the mundane life that all of us are blessed with (apart from the excitement that the pandemic has brought into our lives- whether we like it or not!), everything seems to flow in a sequence and order and is often repeated over some cycle- for few of us these cycles are short/annual and for few others, these cycles of life are longer- occur every few years or perhaps once in a decade- but that is what the whole story of human life is, choose a part of your life- any part- professional, personal, student life, being the young professional at work, or that leader who has been leading that large corporation- whatever that you may be doing and whoever that you might be, the plain fact remains that each one of us is more or less tied down to a routine with a limited flexibility and thereby we end up creating our future instances within the limitations of the flexibility that we allow to govern us! The Artists are the only ones’ who have the ability, the craft and the context to break this monotonous life cycle and embrace multiple truths through fleeting windows of time by practicing their craft and thereby ensuring that they live a thousand lives in one life time and mesmerize us by what they achieve and what they don’t!

Very few of us, ever realize that we just end up consuming the limited resource of time, irrespective of what we choose to do or not and importantly that is one commodity that still can’t be made good no matter what you say and how you try! As readers’ of my blogs, I am sure that most of you would have at some or the other time spent time in meaningful contemplation, checked what worked, what did not and well left it at that and rarely done something around that- whatever it would have been- eventually after some time- you would have ended up with the same mixed feeling of being directionless, confused, confident, happy and sad all at the same time and well that’s pretty much the story of each one of us around the world as we flow through our life journeys’- one moment to the next- if there’s anything that beats this- it is only the mindset and the magic that can be woven only by an Artist and this is the compelling reason why we must all reach out to the Artist within us- not to escape- but rather to liberate- our thinking, our contexts and our truths and fantasies- for only once this has been done- will you be really aligned to what is the meaningful and real purpose driven meaning of your lives’ journey and that is something that you will thoroughly enjoy, irrespective of that corporate label or not! So how do Artists get into this zone, how can they beat the mundane path and who is an artist really? Read on!

The Artist- is perhaps the most evolved expression of being human- whether it is the dazzling world of celluloid stars, the silver screen experts, the fine painters, the lucid dancers, singers who are soft as velvet, the sculptors who breath life into stones or the ones’ who are gifted enough to mix the worlds of philosophy and science to bring to life timeless innovations, discoveries and much more- each one of them, and all of them are an artist- in their own space and unlike the many of us who have been perennially entrapped into the mundane patters of life- the Artists are the ones’ who are liberated by the virtue of their ability to express their presence through their craft and stay liberated even in the times of utmost confinement!

Consider this, you have that famous celluloid star, the many roles portrayed- which made you emote while experiencing the journey of the character played by the star-in that short span of 120 minutes, leaving you with a variety of emotions, ideas, thoughts, inspiration and what not! Now if that one character played by your star has left you with so many experiences, thoughts and emotions, just take a moment and imagine, what that Artist goes through in their lives’ as they portray and play o over hundreds of such colored characters as part of their craft! How much would all of that script reading, embracing the character must be rubbing off them and how challenging it must have been for them on an ongoing basis to retain who they are – their authentic self- in face of the ceaseless onslaught of all the personalities that get imposed on them as they play to the role! It is the knowledge of this secret that often goes a long way to make these Celluloid Artists so humble, accommodating, down to earth, knowledgeable and humble! Through their study of human characters (some fictional some real) they come face to face with all that could have worked well and gone horribly wrong each time they choose a project and that character ends up being their teacher for them for that period of the project- leaving the star with key learnings and ensuring they stay humble, grounded and grateful for all that they are- for the better could not have been managed and any worse would have been a terrible way to live! This is why real stars are never all that glam and dazzle but on the contrary are all the humble, polite, grounded and selfless- holding on to virtual nothingness, for they know that the more you hold on to- the more tougher it is to surge ahead- unless you liberate yourself from the chains of your current perceptions and entrapment and and all effort to reach a new and better tomorrow- a goal or a place will be in vain- unless you severe the chains of your today that limit your abilities to move ahead on that journey of liberation and seeking something new and better! As they say, what did not serve you until now, will never serve you to get you where you want to be tomorrow! A new future, demands a new version of your thoughts and efforts!

If you thought, being an Artist, was always only about being on the celluloid or silver screen, think again! As I said, earlier, every form of artistic expression is a statement by the artist- painters, sculptors, designers, singers, musicians, writers, every aspect of human expression which embraces creativity and originality is a piece of art and the person beholding that super power is an artist- doesn’t matter whether that artist is widely recognized or not, whether that artist is awarded or not, what matters is that, that Artists has learnt the Art to stay liberated and continue to progress on the journey of creative expressions despite and irrespective of the settings around! These liberated artists and expression of art is the real essence and a vital indicator of the development metric of the society that they come from! How an Art form is respected and how well Artists are treated is a measure to know how mature a society is and how progressive and promising its future can be! You may ask, why is this important and how does this impact you and me- we may not be technically “artists” or are we and we know not about it as yet?

Each one of us, everyone of us is an artist in our own way and right- the only difference between those who make it big on the canvass of the Artistic horizons and us is that we do not pursue the abilities that we have professionally as our lives’ calling and we try to spend most of lived trying to apply that unspent artistic level on mundane things! Let me explain- ever known about that friend who bakes really well, that person who clicks a great shot always and that person who could act and drive you crazy- not allowing you to know when it was real and when it was a joke- well all these and many such incessant are nothing more but those streaks of artistic brilliance that ooze out as the opportunity arrives, simply because we never exercised them, the way we could have and instead settle for the routines of life as they seem more safe, predictable and long term! I mean given a choice between being a painter- who ever keeps wondering when will his next painting get sold and being a creative director at a firm, majority of us would end up choosing the later- not because we are not great or good or there is a challenge with the competency- but simply because most of the times our immediate contextual setting simply don’t allow enough lee way to exercise that freedom and when an assessment of the choice is done, the earlier route seems far more risky than what an individuals risk appetite could be! This is why you will find hidden streaks of artistic flair among the majority of us and give the chance, you will find people around you perform like there’s no tomorrow- simply because they are delivering their art from their soul and that connect is beyond anything and everything! So what’s the takeaway, you may want to know!

Well, the takeaway is simple and clear- You are the Artist of the Art form that you behold- whether you want to pursue it as a professional or allow it to accompany you and embrace you occasionally or whether you want to use it to surprise others occasionally is a choice that you make! Whatever the path you choose to take, as long as you embrace the art within you, the artist in you will be able to liberate you and keep you steady, and progressive in the pursuits of your life- whether you choose to do that by living the one life that you have or by portraying a thousand lives on the screens and the mediums that you can touch! Allow that artist within to lead you and you will be surprised to see how well and easily you are able to do away with mundane routine of life and embrace and live it further and deeper- sharing and experiencing all that you behold within and around by virtue of the artistic flair that you have!

I leave you with these thoughts here, urging you to take that long walk and reach out to the artist within you and embrace the craft that you have, for you never know, you may just get to live that many more lives in the one life that you so dearly hang on to!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then stay artistic and allow your life to be one great Art Story!

Know your buffet!

October 5, 2020 ~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Simply because ignorance can’t be bliss anymore and indulgence can turn fatal, knowing your buffet is perhaps the most important thing that you can decide to master! Join me here as we take a quick fleeting look to understand this space!

Our lives have never been serviced or should I say, over-serviced like ever before, to the extent that even a pandemic which was supposed to halt the world dead in its tracks, failed to do so completely! At the most what we witnessed collectively the world over were mere hiccups and even as nations and societies went into lockdowns and closures, it was clear that this was not going to be the real solution to the overwhelming problem! Our lives even now, irrespective of the level of restriction that we live in are sprinkled with instances of deficit and over indulgence in various areas! It is within these contextual settings that it becomes important than ever before to know your buffet and ensure that you are nourished well enough with all that you consume, but are never malnourished or overtaken by gluttony! So what is is this all about? What is this buffet actually?

This buffet that I am referring to here is the buffet of your life! Yes, every second that you spend, you are being served with a buffet, a buffet which consists of ideas, ideologies, facts, fiction, realities, perceptions, truths and conspiracies and everything that you can ever imagine of through the workings of your mind, simply because all that manifests in front of you each moment is all but a figment of imagination or reality or the perception of reality of someone else’s mind! Think about it! What you consume from this dynamic spread in front of you goes on to further determine your next buffet and that’s how we make choices- individual and collective at times- which take us from one buffet to the next, as we continue to consume what we choose to and how we choose to! It is within these pockets of making a choice to consume in a moment that our buffets and course of paths get written, re-written and inter-twined at times with purpose and many a times, leading us through meaningless wandering and false pursuits which simply go on to amplify the impact of having consumed something which we were not supposed to!

You see, as you go about your daily chores of life, whether you lead a nation or lead yourself or even just drag yourself, every point you are making a choice and that choice that you make (either by a free will that you have or as a coercion) is indeed made by reviewing the buffet that exists in front of you. The buffet that presents itself to you at any moment, at all times comes from the choices that you made previously- so your story can either be one of moving from one fulfilling buffet to the next or one unhappy buffet to the next, simply because, what you desire is not presented or it either gets presented the way you can’t really do much around it! So how does one ensure that the buffets being presented always and at all times are the ones’ that you would be the ones’ that serve you and you can look forward to them?

Well, the answer to this question is simple and at the same time, that much difficult to implement- simple because it is you who- can begin the journey of one buffet to the next and difficult because as the variables of the contextual settings get added upon- there will be more and more distractions that will tempt you at all times to have that dish which will simply conclude your ongoing buffet and short serve your future ones! As long as you make choices and aim for the right stuff at the first buffet that you come across your life, rest assured all your subsequent buffets will get aligned to what your purpose is and that’s when you have a life as mentioned in the fairy tales! When you make incoherent choices in between the matrix of making them, at times you are forced to take a few steps back, at times take detours which are demanding and at times, it simply the case of too little too late and you have to settle down with what you are then eventually served and left with no choice to make the most of what you have around! So you may now want to know what is that First Buffet really about, what is it like? When do we face it and how do we know we are facing one now?

The First Buffet is different for each one of us and unique to who we are, for some it is about that first choice of a school that is being made, for yet others it is the first million dollars earned, for yet others it is the first 100 millions dollars invested and it really depends on who we are and at what point in time one comes face to face with a question that demands a decision- a major one- either by choice or by being forced to exercise that decision! Let me explain! Consider this, you may be a stable, well to do businessperson, but then one fine day, you come face to face with a decision- to stagnate and level off or should you go for the leap of faith and plan for the being bigger and better- that moment in this case – is the first buffet and the buffet is served with a plethora of options of, “If this then that” scenarios and it is the individuals ability to use wisdom and intellect in those moments that either propels them into the next orbit of greatness or holds them captive in a never ending loop in the orbit where they are! This is the real essence of The First Buffet- It shapes and forms your paths ahead and mandates the time when you will be able to achieve what you pursue. More importantly it also indicates, whether you will really reach what you are pursuing or will you be left to settle with something that you had not bargained for and if that is the case how much of value will you be eventually be able to make out of all that manifests!

People often rush through decisions on a daily basis, not for once realizing that every decision taken is either taking them towards or away form what they pursue or what their goal of life is. Sure enough no one is asking to have a brainstorming session for buying that pack of chips, but then there are those seemingly innocent and harmless decisions, like what to study, where to work, with whom to work, when to start your own venture, is it now or later to do “a” or “b”- it is these situations in the buffet space of life that go on to create our realities and perceptions for others! Needless to say a lot of success stories around the world are more anchored on perceptions of others than the realities and the truths as experienced by the people who live that tale! Think about it! This is why to unleash the potential of your life and the purpose that you have either chosen or want to be chosen for, it becomes important to weigh those “yes” and “no” well in time as much as you can, you will not succeed always and that’s how it is supposed to be- the trick is in failing less and succeeding more and ensure that even if that margin is as slender as it gets, your “yes” are leading and this alone will ensure that you are making progress from one meaningful buffet to the next with minimal detours and unwanted set backs!

The options that the world today presents are mind boggling, it’s no wonder that you come across many people who walk into buffets thinking one thing and end up doing the exactly the opposite or something different purely on impulse and in majority of cases that choice made through fleeting moments comes to bite back at the very pulse of existence of the individual and sure enough in those rare instances, these impulse driven decisions go on to create history and usher in a new future for humanity! So what’s the takeaway?

Well, it’s simple- Life is all about the buffet that you get an entry to and then from that moment, it is from one to the next, to earn yourself a ticket to that right First Buffet is a matter of wisdom, intelligence and at times a chance or luck as well! For that first step goes on to decide whether you lead and live a life narrated in a fairy tale or have to embark upon a crusade for yourself and others battling the odds and wining and loosing, just enough to keep moving on the path to your purpose and goals! The essence also lies in the ability of an individual to stay aligned and focused through the distractions that the typical buffet of life comes with and as long as one doesn’t succumb to them, rest assured you will have a sumptuous life!

I leave you with these thoughts here, for you to figure out, how your buffets have been, if you are in middle of one now or if you are heading into the next one anytime soon! Whatever the case may be- just remember- The First Buffet is what will define your subsequent ones’ and the more right choices you make, the easier will that journey be, from one buffet to the the next!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then Stay safe, stay wise, and hit the buffet now! Go ahead and make an empowered choice for now and for the times to come!

Acquire the Presidential Mindset.

October 3, 2020 ~ PA ~ 1 Comment

As strange as it may seem, but another trick to empower yourself is by embracing the Presidential Mindset! We are just about a month away from perhaps the most crucial and important elections on the planet- The election to The White House and what better time than now, to share a few thoughts around embracing the Presidential Mindset- so that even if you do not want to necessarily lead a nation, you can always be sure enough that the choices that you make to lead yourself and those around you are at all times as aligned as they can be to what the chosen path is! So join me here and let’s decipher how this unique Presidential frame of mind can go a long way to assist you to counter challenges as they manifest!

No matter which nation you live in, the most powerful office- almost always is going to be the one that belongs to the Head of the State- some nations have Presidents, few have Prime Ministers and yet a few have Monarchs or Rulers! Irrespective of what type of designation label you have on that chair, the common strand that runs through each one of them is the simple fact that- It is THE OFFICE that decides the fate of millions! That Chair comes with it’s own contextual frame and irrespective of who occupies it- the moment the person is seated- THE chair has the power and ability to transform and extract all that is due from the person who beholds it! Very often people are inspired, in awe, at times in disbelief and yet at few other times left wondering- did we really put this person to be on that chair! But there are then those times, when the people of a nation also feel, Thank God! We have this person on that Chair! So what is so special about THE Chair and what is the real transformation that happens- which manifests in front of the nation as leadership in action from these power corners?

You see there are two basic aspects to deciphering the Presidential Mindset- One is THE CHAIR and the other is THE PERSON who occupies it! Let me explain, this bit quickly! The Chair really acts like a calibration device- it safeguards to a greater extent that irrespective who comes to occupy it- the fundamental fabric and duties that are expected to be discharged- in the normal contexts (which are so rare now a days) will not be disturbed. This is what lays down the rules of engagement- if you want to see it that way and then allows the person to play to that game using the allowances that the chair has provided. The Chair- gives an opportunity to enhance the service quotient and reduce the tape around- but very rarely will you find anyone occupying it- wanting it to be used that way! So to give a sense of it, THE Chair sets up the trim level- you see as a President or a Leader of “ABC” you will be able to only extract “xyz” and not “pqr” as someone else occupying the chair of another nation can do- simply because the trim level of the Chairs around the world are set and every time nations have tried to play around with that bit- results have never been in anyone’s favour- be it war or the economic crisis!

Next you arrive to meet The Person- Unlike what normally people seem to think, decisions of THE Chair are never really an individual decision of the person on The Chair, but rather a collaborative effort and a consensus driven decision of the “Inner Collective”. Sure enough, the decision, to pull that plug off some nation or whether to hit that button to unleash a device, rests with the Chair and the Person who occupies it- but to arrive at that, the “Inner Collective” presents well informed scenario’s that may stem form the “Go- No GO” situation and this why you find that any Leadership of a Nation is not only good or bad, because of the Person who leads it, but rather more importantly is a function of the “Inner Collective” who are by the Leader and suggesting/guiding/ advising/ collaborating at all the time! So you may want to ask, so does the “Inner Collective” really run the nation? Well the answer is Yes and No! Yes- Because the “Inner Collective” is the Guardian of the laid down principles, ways of working and internal and external connect of the nation and No because- unless the Chair doesn’t allow the “Inner Collective” to function, it may have all the solutions to all the problems, but simply will be ineffective as it can only make the difference if allowed to do so! So what is this Inner Collective?

The Inner Collective is the whole association and ecosystem of people and processes that go to present the Leadership with information of challenges on hand and the possible solutions and the timelines of deployment and execution and these are the people who get the things implemented on the ground once the Chair signs them off and for the Chair to sign things off, unless the compelling case isn’t made (which promises some socio-economic benefit, needless to say with a political one) it won’t go ahead! So you see, in a way the rise and fall of a Presidency or Leadership of a Nation is not only about the Person, but rather is a reflection of the whole ecosystem and the quality of the Inner Collective that the Chair has, as it’s support system! It is the totalitarian impact of these wise people that advise, guide and implement what they must in accordance with the Presidential Consent that goes a long way either to create a legacy of accomplishments or a story of blunders! and the only one person that gets to be labelled by the rights and the wrongs is always THE Person on THE Chair and not THE Chair, neither The Inner Collective! Think about it! So what am I trying to tell you here and how is that relevant to you and me?

Just like, The Presidency is as an outcome of the Inner Collective, The person and the boundaries set by the Chair, each one of us, is an outcome of who we are as a person- the chair that we hold or aspire for and the Inner Collective that we have around us- The family, friends, colleagues, mentors and all that can influence and nudge you as an individual!

Acquiring the Presidential Mindset is all about harnessing the power of the Inner Collective that you have, the Chair that you hold or aspire for and becoming the Person that you would want to be , being on that Chair! The Presidential Mindset can go a long way to, not necessarily making you a President in the literal sense, but making you lead yourself like a President and once you do that with finesse, you will be surprise to see the ease with which you can de-clutter and streamline your pathways and realize your goals with considerably reduced friction and unwanted challenges as many of them are managed and taken care by the Inner Collective- that you chose- so that you are aligned to only things and pursuits that matter the most and are not left battling out every small disagreement and battle on the way!

Once you have developed this knack to understand that to lead yourself, is nothing short of leading a sovereign person that you are and begin to know the value and importance of having the right Inner Collective around you, rest assured you will be well on your way to create a lasting legacy and govern yourself! As you pursue your aspiration to reach that Chair- which then becomes the final icing and final frontier for empowering you- you will continue to become the person that the Chair demands and needless to say your Inner Collective will get aligned to your dynamic needs as you stay glued to the path that is needed to reach where you aspire to be!

Sure enough, I could have gone into further details and discussed here with you, how President’s think and how they don’t and how good decisions go wrong and and sometimes how even the most brazen ones’ align to the most progressive developments, but, given the limitations of a blog, would not wont to deep dive in this piece for now, this piece was more to let you know that, like the nation you live in- You too are a Sovereign entity and You too can lead yourself like a President of your own Sovereign Mind and Space!

The Presidential Mindset is the secret to lead yourself like a sovereign state, by drawing up the principles that go onto define who you are as a person-state and more importantly as you do so the quality of your Inner Collective and the choice of it, will go a long way to decide whether you do reach The Chair that you aspire for and if you do so, for how long you will be able to sustain it and if you do sustain, whether you end up creating a legacy or a story of blunders!

I leave you here with thoughts, for you to seek your Presidential Mindset, know your Inner Collective and seek That Chair so that you too can write a story of the Person-State that you are!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then keep Leading!

Know the knot.

September 29, 2020 ~ PA ~ Leave a comment

As trivial it may seem, do not be fooled, for the humble knot tells a lot about who got it done and who will get it undone! Join me here as we try to fathom this seemingly simple aspect of our life, but has a big message for all of us, whether we are the ones’ putting the knots in, getting them out or simply playing the role of an observer.

Perhaps the biggest playtime for few kids, and I say few kids here, has always been about getting to know the knot and in that process, getting to know a little bit more about themselves! You see the knot is essentially, by itself -nothing, but it rather becomes easy or difficult as a function of the person who decides to have a go at it, either by tying the knot in or by untying the same!

The biggest strength and perhaps the most fragile aspects of the human brain lies in the ability to perceive what is being presented- more often people end up spending their lives battling and waging wars against perceptions rather than focusing on what really the matters are or perhaps ought to be! This is what also is true about the “knot”! People often come in two broad groups, if you ask me, one is the group that simply relishes on creating the knots and untying the knots and you have another one which has no other role but to either avoid the knot either out of ignorance or fear, or just look out for people to help as soon as they realize that they just have unintentionally either created one or untied a knot, which was meant to remain the way it was!

So why is that some people relish the knot, while others avoid? Well, there could be varied reasons for that, but this happens to be the fundamental aspects of human societies and the way we shape ourselves, individually and collectively as societies, this is also what further gets reflected into the advancements and development potential that societies are able to embark upon- societies that have an uncanny accommodating approach to knots – creating them and deciphering them needless to day, race ahead and stay in control of not only their immediate contextual needs of today and tomorrow, but also play a pivotal role in determining the path for the times ahead for everyone else to follow, collaborate and share!

The whole human defiance and avoidance of the “knot” arises because the normal- majoritarian views about the knot across societies have been associating it with a problem- and more importantly as a difficult to solve problem, but the point that majority of these societies end up missing out completely is that, beyond that problem stance lies the real realm of creating something new, unveiling new frontiers by answering questions never answered before! The tighter the knot, the more exclusive the knot, the rewards for finding that answer by untying the knot are all the more greater and satisfying! Need proof for this, check all the discoveries and inventions of the 19th century- whatever field you choose- you will see a singular construct of the relentless pursuits of intelligent minds to answer a question- a pursuit to untie the knot and create history by opening up possibilities that were locked in time of the knot that locked away!

There is another aspect to the knot thought and that is of letting the knot be where it is! You do remember when the knot would have saved the life of someone you know- if you were anytime with the scouts or the national defence guards or some sort of civil defence set up on your society! If you are a mountaineer, who else will be better to know the value of those fluid knots on that rappelling line! Those are the fleeting moments when your life is literally hung on by knots on the line and the flex over the line! If one goes wrong, you are sure to find yourself in some trouble!

Knots, like human virtues have no other layer to who they are and what they are- the only thing that differentiates between a workable and meaningful knot and the odd knot (which is meant to be left the way it is) is what lies within and beyond it, once it is untied! So this brings us to the effort aspect of untying the knot, as I said earlier, only a small portion of humanity will ever want to untie a knot, in the era that we live in, where cutting the line almost always sounds, fast, classical and effective- well nothing to argue on that bit, next time try asking the surgeon do it while your angioplasty is on! Knots that hold value/ contents whose time has arrived are meant to be unlocked and these are the knots that propel humanity ahead- a few risk to solve the challenged at hand and serve the whole humanity- development of cutting edge technologies in aerospace, medicine are all a apart of this space! Next, you have those knots- which are best left untouched and unmoved- for they hold the power to undo everything that has been achieved till that moment- these knots can manifest either as a technology that has a larger double edged attribute or some ideology that has the ability to ruin everything that has ever been created until the moment that they are set loose! Sounds, familiar, yes pretty much they are and in fact it is the fallacy of humanity that as a race we have globally ended up untying more and more of these less serving or rather counter productive knots than the ones’ we should have actually untied! Why we end up doing this? Well, the answer to that lies over the past knots that we have chosen to untie!

If you think everything to do with knots has limitations only to the societal frame, well think about it! Take a pause and reflect into your own efforts at the very intrinsic level and what do you see, what are the type of knots have you been tying up, untying, avoiding, dealing with and how has that effort lead you to where you are in the journey of your life, has that propelled you or has that made you take a detour or has that halted you dead in your tracks to where you want to go! Well this is the space where the knots become very private, real and intense and it is the choices that we as individuals then go on ti make- informed or other wise that ends up us either being served by these knots that come our way or we end up being entrapped within them and then are just left at the mercy of one knot unto the next in a seemingly never ending knotted existence of our life- where the only goal seems to be moving form one knot to the next, while untying none!

Knots, have a character too and that character is a combination of what that knot is about and who is tying up that knot or untying that knot! As the knot gets untied or is let loose, all that character is let loose and how much one is able to manage that aspect goes on to determine what element of that knot will come to play a major role!

Well, given the limitations of being a blog, I would not want to (no matter how much I would have loved to) dwell and deep dive into the different types of knots their manifestations and the whole aspect of either dealing with them or living with them, but I would want to stop short for now, here with a thought- a singular thought that says and conveys only one thing- Know your knots, for which you untie and which you keep closed- determine where you head and what you become and perhaps what you don’t become!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, take a break, grab that coffee and think about the knots as you have time- examine which served you well and which harmed you well, for what you are today is a sum total of all those knots that came your way and all those that are lined up will go on to make who you will be in the times ahead!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Stay safe, stay wise – knotted or otherwise!

The Courage Collective.

September 28, 2020 ~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Leadership Quotient.

September 27, 2020 ~ PA ~ Leave a comment

You may be the best and there may be no doubt about that bit, but all that greatness and being the best will go in vain, unless you have a progressive and well defined “Leadership Quotient” to bank upon at your foundation! Join me here as we explore around this concept and try to embrace a singular fact that leadership has nothing to with what your business card says, but has everything to do with you!

The biggest fallacy about leadership is that people tend to wait for someone to ask them to lead and more importantly all that managerial direction is often and always mis-interpreted to be leadership! Like many of the great masters who have been advocates on Leadership has said time and again, leadership is all about – being a leader and no matter who you are, what you can do and not do, the fact is that leadership can be practiced and furthered even in the smallest way- that may seem trivial for a someone else, but that same act can be empowering and encouraging for the other person! This is the essence of leadership- it always start from you and unless you don’t take charge for yourself and decide to lead your life, why would anyone else ever want to collaborate and walk alongside you, forget about having followers and people being drawn to you by inspiration!

People have always argued and debated about leadership being in the blood or whether it can be developed- well, if you ask, me like anything and everything else, you can embrace and develop leadership as a trait- but if you are also blessed by a natural affinity for it- then the chances of one being a success story at leadership are far more amplified! (or should I say instances of errors of judgement for practicing leadership are reduced!). So, now, on to the million dollar question, how do you know, if you are a leader or how much of leadership you have with you? How do you go about deciphering the leadership quotient? How do you deploy and how do you ensure it doesn’t get lost? Well, let’s go!

Unlike, enrolling for that costly weekend seminar or that workshop, or that psychometric test (sure they do play a role, but I will come to all of that later), revisit your childhood- yes, childhood, I mean when you were still malleable and ductile enough to be stretched by imagination and flexible enough to adjust (especially when you thought it was uncomfortable!) If you spend good enough time reminiscing your childhood memories (unless you too have a lost memory problem- like the one I do!), you will come across multiple instances of that fabled “first time” and when you begin to sieve through those “first times” you will start to see a pattern emerge- this pattern is about what your natural behaviour is and what is that you are comfortable- leading (to what extent and when and for what) and comfortable following or collaborating (again to what extent , when and for what). This proportion and frequency is what determines what is that triggers you to stand up and lead and what is that triggers you to collaborate or follow others. The in-depth deciphering around this fundamental aspect will further begin to throw light about what parts of your life you want to lead more over the others! People often feel leadership, is about taking all the decisions all the time and the fact is that nothing could be more away from the truth! Leadership is about taking those decisive stances when that moment arrives, it is about leading what matters and leading when only you can and you have to- because only your way of leadership is the answer to resolve that challenge at hand! This is the space where iconic stories about leaders get built and a whole new cult of followership is born- aligned to this unique new style or practise of leadership which has is nothing more or nothing less than the personification of who you are! Effective Leadership is always the Leader in Action- It is the personification of who you are in action!

So, to drive the point here, your leadership is about the choices that you make with regards to when you want to lead and when you want to be by the sides! It is about making those meaningful choices which then go on to define you- through your practise of leadership and this is what is the essence of the “Leadership Quotient”. The Leadership Quotient, if you ask me is not about a specific metric that can be measured rather it is an observation and assessment in terms of what makes your leadership practise great and when does it fail! You see, as you you choose what to lead and what not to lead, if you end up erring by making some weird choices, you will start to see your leadership decline and falter, this faltering will not be because you aren’t a leader or you aren’t capable of leading, but rather, because you made a choice to lead something that you aren’t great at leading! let me explain!

Let me take you back to your childhood, identify that one instance when leading gave you an immense high! It could be leading that debate competition, that sports team, or acing that quiz, it could be that rattling off numbers and wining a competition or it could be acing the class and leading your way to win the annual award- and now zoom back into your now and just run through the recent examples of when you think you lead well, really well! Do you see a connection, you possibly will! Leaders always lead exceptionally well on matters that they are intrinsically hardwired into- who they are, that is when leadership personifies and that is when magic happens, simply because you are playing to your natural strength of who you are, when you lead on aspects that are acquired and not natural to you, is when your ability to lead will drop from being great to good and this is where you will find majority of the corporate managers- who are actually good and perhaps great at directing- but average when it comes to the ability to lead!

There is also another bit that plays a vital role in impacting the leadership quotient and that is about the contextual settings! You see as long as the contextual settings are aligned to what your natural strength to lead is, you will see it easy to go further and wide, on the contrary, if you are coerced into leading that isn’t natural to you and if anther layer of competing context is applied by virtue of the settings around you, needless to say, that leadership assignment will seem to be like a boulder around the neck rather being a jewel adorning the crown of your professional achievements! So what is leadership quotient all about actually? What is the path to take and when do you know, something is not going the way it should and that you should pull those brakes!

Well, leadership quotient, as I said earlier is a personification of who you are and all that comes to you naturally to lead and sustain helped by supportive contextual settings! When each of these elements align aptly and you are adequately empowered that is when you get to deploy and utilize your leadership to the maximum potential and thereby your quotient will sail higher than the rest around you! Likewise, when any of these factors falter, they will tend to be a drag, that is when you will experience a drag towards deploying your leadership and eventually will find it more and more complicated to lead yourself, let alone others!

The trick to sail high on leadership quotient, is to play it to your natural fields that you can lead effortlessly, next, if that is not a choice, than make the acquired ones’ as naturally aligned to yourself as much as possible and work towards making the contextual settings fall around in alignment with the purpose of you active leadership! Sure enough, not all leaders get to experience high leadership quotient all through their leadership, but the essence lies in increasing the frequency of all that blends in to enhance your leadership quotient- the ability to deliver, in a sustained manner over a long timelines, playing on your strengths- natural or acquired by ensuring that the contextual settings align and work to further your cause!

So, final words if you ask me, I would say this, Leadership Quotient is all about practicing leadership in a way that personifies who you are and practicing it in an area that is natural to you, if not that than in a field which you can embrace as your own and while doing all of that ensuring that all the other variables around align to empower and further your cause so that your Leadership stands out as a shining example about, “How Leadership must be” and that is what the essence of being high on the Leadership Quotient is all about!

Leadership begins with you and so does it rise and fall with you! Leadership is but a personification of who You are and resonates in action all that you are and all that you stand up for and stand against for! High Leadership Quotient is a recognition of the Leader within you, whether you are busy leading yourself or an organization, how well you do it or will do it, is what the leadership quotient is all about!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, urging you to engage with yourself to begin with and assess, how high you think you are or want to be on the Leadership Quotient and what is that you want to do next to take that to the level- where you can say that- You have arrived as a Leader- that You always wanted to be!

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

The antidote to mindless pursuits.

September 26, 2020September 26, 2020 ~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Much of humanity loses its breath and time pursuing a thousand of acts for one or the other justified reasons to eventually achieve nothing! Whether it is about the career that you want to pursue, that college you want to be in or that big corporate brand that you want to be associated with or whether it is the eccentric dream that you are caught up with to create something great and awesome or perhaps none of these and you just want to be doing what pleases you in the moment that you are, without giving a second thought for the next moment- well each of these aspects have been one of us at some or the other time in our lives and many of us end up realizing that- whatever that pursuit was, it was a colossal waste of time and energy, because you never ended up where you wanted to be, by pursuing what you did! So what’s unfolding here actually? Read on!

The human mind is at the forefront creating this overbearing drive to pursue! Well, there is nothing wrong to seek enquiry and then go on to pursue to find the solutions; problems begin when the whole pursuit not because of what it should be, rather it is because of the created simulations of the mind which fog out clarity of thought and purpose! Let me explain!

Like with anything else, the mind works exceptionally well as long as it is nourished and is utilized to pursue what makes practical and realistic sense, sure enough taking risks is a part and parcel of life (without which nothing great would have ever seen the light of the day), but the key word when it comes to risks is calibrated and measured risks- risks from which you can walk away- should your attempts fail! It is when people remain stuck with ever failing attempts and simply refuse to budge is when the pursuits start to become mindless! Yes, there are stories about scientists and innovators who failed and failed and failed only to succeed after the 10^th, 50^th or perhaps the 100^th time, but the only factor- albeit a slender one which stands between their pursuits still being meaningful rather than being mindless is that – their risks were fundamental to alter the course of history and thy knew about it, even as they embarked upon it! You see, once people become clear what is at stake, then it becomes easier to know what is that must be pursued and what is that must be left alone and when it is the time to walk back to seek a new frontier! But then what is it that makes the human mind go berserk and get off-course in the first place?

The trim level of any machine is not always determined by at what point it fails (sure enough that is a key parameter), but rather what does it do- how does it react when it is made to stretch to a point beyond normal and the scenario of failure is eliminated! This is precisely what fails the human mind and makes it wander into spaces which yield nothing more than an intellectual experience that can be either rewarding or a nightmare! Once the option to fail, breakdown or stall is done away with, the human brain, pressed on and on- like a machine whose stop switch has gone wrong- will simply keep wandering in the universe of thoughts and self-reflection (bordering on either self-doubt or unwarranted over confidence) and this the moment from where that journey into nothingness commences!

The human mind as potent as it seems, has this feature to take you to long never ending scenario simulations- which at times are like a free movie premiere- for a movie which only you can see and experience- simply because it has in all probability got to do something with you! More importantly it has got everything to do with what you have achieved and not achieved and it’s often the things that you have not achieved that trigger your mind to carry you along into that mindless journey with no end and no result in sight! Let me explain this

Consider this, you have been a good doctor- you have treated people well and you have not ended up killing someone due to wrong diagnosis-but despite years put into this, you have never received the recognition or that position where you could influence many and address the crowds! So in this backdrop- although psychologically you are fit and fine, these unrealized desires, when the time comes take shape and they can shoot off in any of the two ways!

One- either by your involvement and proactive management of your mind- you can ensure that you get more busy doing what you are good at and make peace with what the fact is- that your social recognition for service is not coming now or anytime soon or may never come!

Alternatively you can allow your mind to take control and start to create simulations of forced thought which essentially all begin to provide creative solutions on how you may get that elusive recognition, which you logical and rational thinking has said you can’t! It is fine until this point too! A whole part of creative reflection, contemplation, over passed detours and challenges is what makes people wise to deal with their approaching times in a more progressive and directed manner- the problems start as soon as people start to act on these simulations, without thinking whether it is really meaningful, sensible and practical to take that route!

As long as that odd eccentric scientist, continues on the path of pursuing what is a figment of imagination of the mind, with no current science to back up or no rational thinking to cover the actions, the only possible outcomes that will ever play out are either a ground breaking invention which will alter the course of humanity or the deafening silence of lost hopes and misplaced expectations that will play out privately, leaving the scientists all alone to defend oneself and either course correct or walk into a trap of yet another mindless pursuit!

You may now be tempted to ask, if these are indeed the two levers on which the human mind operates then why sweat? Choose one over the other and keep going and when one fails, go back to the other, well sure enough that’s the only way around dealing with the mind, but that’s easier said than done, for the simple reason that, the judgement to know when to use which facet of the human mind is the key to keep a check on the mindless wandering and yet harness the creative genius that it has to offer and this is the only antidote to stay away from mindless pursuits!

The ability to harness the potency of the mind effectively and in a timely manner between the flex and the rigid stand is the only antidote to keep that urge to mindlessly wander under check! The mind works well and in fact very well, when it is given its own space and time to stretch and limit- stretch is important to allow it to create simulations- wayward- meaningless and out of the world- for it is in this realm that magic and new age solutions appear seemingly from no-where, limiting the mind on the other hand has the power to make it answerable to the faculties of logic and rationality- whatever the thought is, has to abide by the laws that govern the universe! Say you even wanted to imagine a spaceship or a faster than the speed of light craft- it has to adhere to the principles of physics and astronomy to even get to the equation board!

Given, the limitations of a blog, I will leave it here, urging you to experience for yourself-how were the times when your mind wandered away in pursuits- that perhaps yielded nothing of what you have now with you or perhaps that wandering itself has provided you with everything that you have with you now! Whatever, the outcome would have been, sure enough that has gone a long way to make you more wise and progressive when it comes to choosing your pursuits and perhaps has kept you aligned to your goals despite the detours and situations that would have arisen owing to the pursuits of your free mind!

Tame your mind- to stretch and flex, limit and expand as you demand and not the other way around! Once you have developed the ability to sustain this ability, you will be able to tap into the vast reservoir of imaginative and creative brilliance that your mind has to offer you, and trust me you too will be surprised with the way solutions begin to present themselves, only because you have learnt the art and science to tame the waywardness and limit those mindless pursuits!

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

Why Simple is so Complex!

September 25, 2020September 24, 2020 ~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fight Fear with Fear.

September 24, 2020September 23, 2020 ~ PA ~ Leave a comment

As paradoxical it may seem, the fact remains that only fear can be used to quell fear! Join me here for a breezy read through on how this works and why it works and when it works to your advantage and when it doesn’t work to help you!

As part of the evolution of the human race, the element of fear has helped us to survive and dominate, the slender difference between what to survive and what to dominate is what comes only by embracing and understanding the very nature of the fear that you come face to face with! Let me explain, this quick! The evolution of humans from small dispersed populations, fighting to survive the elements of nature, to being able to establish structured societies is noting short of a miracle of human intelligence and the milestones on the way have been knowing when to tame which fear and when to surrender and stay away from the one’s that are simply overbearing and all powerful! You see through the thousands of years, we learnt to defeat and overcome the wild animals and tame much of what the wilds had to throw at us, however few aspects like natural calamities have been ever challenging and even to this day, with the best resources at hand, still we often end up getting caught on the wrong foot! Sure enough there is no “fear” as in the “fear” of dealing with a wild animal while you deal with a flood, but that again will end up depending already on where exactly you are stuck in a flood! On high ground you can click your photos and thank your stars that you are safe, but if you are the one trapped in between fast flowing flash flood streams, the whole dimension changes! So you see, like everything else, fear too has a contextual framework and the first step of overpowering fear is gauging this contextual framework right!

Once you have learnt this bit, you know what you are dealing with, whether you can tame it or not and based on how that unfolds, you have the path ahead to decide how you want to fight the fear that you face, with nothing else, but fear that looks more menacing then the one that you face! You may want to now, ask why should I do that, whys should I deal with fear by deploying a larger fear? Well the answer to that is pretty simple, the only thing that can halt the menace of fear is an opposing and more powerful fear equation, don’t believe, well just look around the world and observe what the governments of the day are deploying to manage their affairs! Yes, fear one over the other, disguised and camouflaged as a rhetoric that blends into the contextual settings of the society that they govern! Well, even if you were to ignore what the government wants to do or not, the fact is that the reason why only fear can tackle fear is because there is nothing else can match the speed, surprise and intensity that fear brings along with it!

Consider this, you are taking a walk and suddenly you are attacked by a dog, that very moment as fear hits you, you have two choices, escape (if you really think you can outrun a dog! good luck on that!) or then with the same intensity try and instill a bigger fear in the dog’s mind!You may ask, want a peaceful way work, well when an animal is about to attack you try talking peace! The essence of dealing fear with fear is more of a mind game, stratagem and being able to accurately gauge the pulse of the fear that is coming your way and devise a counter strategy to overpower and quell the same.

The reason why fear works is because fear is formless, sure enough you know what’s arriving, you may also know how, when and where, but you will never be able to know how and why will you react the way you do when it hits you and this element of fear is what makes it so unpredictable and difficult to deal with unless and until you too have a similar counter strategy with an equal or more overpowering stance! So how do you develop the right amount of fear and how do you know when to deploy it?

The whole world works on the currency of fear equilibrium, small nations fear bigger ones, tycoons scare off mid size businesses , bigger corner offices instill that fear within mid-level workers and that’s how things work- well they do work as long as the amount and quantum of fear- intensity and frequency is calibrated.The moment this calibration goes haywire, fear loses its potency and becomes nothing! Let me explain!

You would have come across that boss or that teacher or that parent, who kept on yelling, threatening, shouting on an ongoing basis, how was your reaction? Well, sure enough the first time you would have got worried, but as you learnt to study and decipher what was unfolding, you would have started to ignore and disregard! That’s because you now have deciphered the intensity, authenticity and intent of that seemingly menacing fear in its reality and discovered it to be really nothing! This is why fear is so over rated! So how does fear quell fear?

When you are able to deploy fear as a counter measure effectively what it does is, it not only stalls the advance of what’s coming your way, but it also reasserts your position on an issue from a place of strength and ensures you get that vital seat at the table when its time for negotiations!

Embracing fear is the first step for being able to deploy fear effectively! As long as you are able to deploy fear in a calibrated measure with visible manifestations, fear will be your slave and work for you, on the other hand if you were to end up using it just as a propaganda tool, sooner or later that bluff will get blown away and you will be left with no defence when serious stuff hits you!

Like with anything else, once you have known how to manage, fear, it no longer baffles or creates that overwhelming mirage, but rather accelerates your journey to reassert yourself and helps you stay aligned on the course to face challenges, overcome them without being fearful about fear!

I leave you with these thoughts, urging you to develop your approach to deal with the fears that come your way, you never know you may be fearing just a large shadow to a small problem!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another article! Until then take care and stay safe!

Why Inspiration and Motivation stalls.

September 23, 2020 ~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Score through moving goal posts.

September 22, 2020September 22, 2020 ~ PA ~ Leave a comment

We have always heard about people complaining and expressing their inability to achieve something simply because the goal post (owing to the conditions/situations/circumstantial realities) changed even as they took their shot! Join me here, as we try to decipher this and possibly ensure that no matter where the post moves, you always are able to take your shot and celebrate that elusive accomplishment! So here we go!

Needless to say, we come across a majority of people who are living a life that they never wanted in the first place! Well, this is not to be confused with whether someone is rich or poor , happy or sad, well off or struggling, no, none of all that! The plain truth is that majority of humanity ends up doing what they don’t want to and that’s at the very foundation of the whole aspect of the moving goal post! Well, not to take a prejudiced view about anything, never helps, the fact remains that majority of us get bogged down by the failures and challenges that we face, at some point! Based on who we are, what our construct is, what our approach is and what resources we have , that point in our lives will arrive sooner or later! Hence, if you see, you can find people settling for doing something which they never wanted to, simply because they don’t want to go on waging that battle with the overbearing circumstances that surround them- it may be a good thing to do or not a good thing to do, because that depends alone on what you are set out to do! What your original goal post is! Let me explain!

Consider this, you are a scientist and you want to find that pressing cure for a dreaded disease, now as you research through those long years, in obscurity, with no fame, recognition, perhaps investing your fortune for furthering that cause, unless you reach that goal post of finding that solution, you will not quit and this is where magic happens and this is that space wherein the goal post doesn’t move, irrespective what the challenges are! Now take another example, say you are designing a writing instrument and you reach a point where you find that a crucial resource for that device is not available or even if it is, your initial cost estimates are all over the place! So what do you do next, well you have two options, just junk everything and let go (normally what people do!) or, see what you best you can do with, where you have arrived and this too is a vital element of scoring through moving goal posts!

Go back to your childhood and try remembering what you wanted to be when you would be grown up, 9 out of 10 of us are not what we said we will be when we were in our schools, graduating and perhaps even when we did that specialization later! So what happens here? Why do things unfold the way they do? Why do people end up doing what they never wanted to and what can be done about this, can anything be done?

Well, it starts with the intention and desire, yes the very basic of all attributes that one can think of, as long as that intention and desire is not focused like a laser beam to back up what words you say or write, everything stays fluid and then, even at the slightest nudge, you run for cover and are happy to alter the course of your whole journey and never tread that path for whatever the reasons might have been- this is why 8 times out of 10 you will come across people settled and content- because anyways they are doing or pursuing what they don’t care about and their quality of work too then reflects that space! These are the people who you find in the “one size fits all” industries wherein the emphasis is more on processes, mechanized, semi robotic working environments, don’t mistake thinking that the people here are any less intelligence or qualified or able- they have simply at some point in time, resigned themselves form the pursuit of the shifting goals posts that they were trying to hit, either they aimed for the wrong one or they did not or could not give their best when it mattered the most and things would have all been but against them! So how does one really go about scoring through moving goal posts, what’s the approach?

Well if you ask me, it’s simple, first, have that desire and intention and next calibrate all that to who you are! You see, even I want to be on top of Mount Everest, but well when reality comes vising through your medical reports, you know how far you can stretch! So it starts with stetting and evaluating the right goals and sure enough, given the times that we live in, no goal post is static in the sense of the term, whether it is the routine job you want or that excellent career you want to pursue, everyday is a new day, as things change, rules change, software’s change, rules of engagement change and all these dynamic variables in the work areas go on to make the seemingly achievable goals of routine work life as elusive as being on Mount Everest! Consider this, everyone in your team wants that promotion, there is only one slot, not all will get in, only one- and what do you think will still differentiate between all of them,if competencies, experience, qualifications and skills, performance are all equal and personalities are alike?

The critical differentiating factor is the unfailing ability to decipher what is likely to unfold once the chair/position is acquired! You see, you will be only able to hit a moving target when you can predict where it is likely to move next, when and how fast an for you to know that, you will need to know your target too well and sure enough you will not necessarily get it right all the time, that never is the point, the point is the early acceptance and acknowledgement that all that you aspire and aim for is a moving target and will not be what it seems to be when you acquire or reach it! The earlier you understand and unlock this dynamism about what you aim, you will also start to realise whether you really want to pursue that target to begin with and then if you still answer yes, you will automatically come up with plans and strategies to ensure that your hit ratio is higher then the average so that you begin to excel at what you do and what you aim next and that is the secret of growing and touching success even as your goals and targets keep shifting and moving all the time!

The whole idea about being able to hit and score as your goal post keeps moving is aligning yourself to what your desires are (not wishful thinking), calibrated to who you are and then all it boils down to is being able to decipher the goal post itself, what it is, what it seems to be and what it is not, being able to relate the way it is, how it may move, how fast and what is that you are going to develop within yourself to ensure that you match that speed and maneuverability to present yourself to the goal in the space of dynamic equilibrium -a moment where your movements nullify each others and you arrive at the right moment, at the right place and with the right preparation to embrace and control the goals and targets that you had set out to achieve and once you are there, the goal posts seems to be stationary as long as you are able to be in-sync with its’ movements.

The essence of scoring through moving goal posts, is much of who you are, and who you want to be and separating that from who you think you are and you you wish to be! Once you have anchored well, you are more equipped to evaluate and choose the goal post that you want to hit. Any goal post that you evaluate and decide to hit, once you have anchored yourself is almost always within reach, as long as you are also able to decipher the whispers that the goal talks back to you!

I leave you here with these thoughts, urging you to reflect upon the goal posts that you hit and missed, which moved and what did you do as they moved, did you resign yourself or did you get going! If you did resign, why was it then, and if you did hit, how was it then? Grab that coffee and think!

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

You are a collection of invested moments!

September 21, 2020September 21, 2020 ~ PA ~ Leave a comment

As you get ready to face a crazy Monday, whether you are working from home or racing away to your workplace, what you do next will go a long way to determine who you become! Sure enough, knowing it’s your Monday, no long read for now, but just a reminder that all that we become in the moments ahead, is nothing but a net result of what we have done in the moments bygone! Join me here for a quick take to understand what this is all about and what is that you can do to ensure that you become who you really want to be!

We all are aware of this old adage that we end up becoming what our thoughts are, or we end up becoming like the people with whom we spend the most time with, so on and so forth! That, may be perhaps true, but what really matters beyond all of that is, what is that you are planing to do in the now- so that your coming moments align you more and more towards the person that you aspire to be! A lot of people get into what I call as the “sulk trap”, you would have come across these gifted individuals who just go on and on in an endless loop whining and complaining about everything that they can and as often as they can! but will simply refuse to do anything at all to alter the outcomes so that they may be as they want! These people are the ones’ who will go on and on to tell you glorious tales of the past and the greatness that they achieved and then, how all of that came crashing down, but they will never discuss what are they doing about it now- are they even planing to get up, dust themselves, roll up their sleeves and get going again doing what they were so proficient doing or what is that now they want to be! So why do these people behave this way to begin with?

The human mind is very funny at times, to an extent that human intelligence ends up sabotaging human potential many a times! You may be amazed, its more of the intelligent people that cause more grave dangers to humanity than the odd dumb wits out there and this has to do with, what I call as “Intellectual Inertia”. Intellectual Inertia, is very similar to the whole Newtonian concept of inertia, the only and life changing difference being that here the inertia is that of the mind and this is not only detrimental but at times can also be fatal! You see human mind is a great machine, it too always wants to achieve the bare minimum with the least effort- so if your brain is given a choice of achieving 80 with a 20% effort Vs achieving 100 with an 50% effort, it will gladly settle down at 80! This is natural and there are good enough reasons why it has been constructed that way- it is for our own survival! You do remember, the old stories right- evolution of the human species and about the grand development of our thinking faculties! Well, sure you do and this is all a part and parcel of that ever ongoing process!

When the body is well nourished and the immediate social structure around is stable, it is but natural for the human mind to get lackadaisical and hence if you see through history the greatest of discoveries, inventions and innovations have only come to see the light of the day, when there was pressure and some compelling reason applied that made individual and teams to collectively keep thinking in a coercive manner to seek solutions about problems which to begin with were thought to be an impossibility to deal with and this in fact, is the very essence of why your next move will eventually determine who you become! Read on!

As long as there is no coercive pressure either from within us or from someone who we work for, you and I both know the story of our efficiency at work or getting a job done, it’s only when the shit hits the roof, that we scamper around and since the reprimands can be very severe we try to salvage the situation as we can and try to make the most of what we can; never ever in a moment realizing that, what we do in all that under pressure survival mode is prepare ourselves for the subsequent moments that follow- whether they are of glory for having achieved what we were meant to or whether they happen to be of despair and challenges, if we indeed end up loosing out on what he had set out for, is what determines the outcome of who we become post those moments! Those moments of being a victor or a survivor is what goes on to create the pathways for us and irrespective of what our aspirations are, these developing pathways go on to make that journey either easier or that tad difficult as we keep moving ahead! So what’s the story, you may ask?

Well, the story is really simple, as long as you know how wisely you are investing in the moment that you in the now, that much easier will it be for you to govern and control the ones’ that follow and thereby ensure that time as the master of these moments strides alongside you and you are able to become what you aspire to be- by simply being mindful about your moments- the one that you are in the now and the ones’ that follow! It’s the impact of not being mindful- perhaps to the extent as would have been required, is why most of us, almost always arrive at the crossroads especially when the signal is red and then go on wait endlessly until we have earned that green signal to move ahead and well, I need not speak about what happens when we plan to jump that red signal!

These moments alone are what go on to make who we aspire to be and that either happens the easy way or the difficult way! As long as we are aligned to the aspirations that we seek and we ensure that our approach and utilization of each second that we have is invested (not spent) towards that aspiration, we have universal congruence working for us and that makes the journey more relaxing and seemingly easy to achieve. The minute there are discords and detours from the paths, conflict of aspirations and so on and so forth setting in, we not only begin to face an investment deficit (sine time is no longer being used up for what our aspiration are), but also we start to spend away all that we would have gained until that moment and end up depleting ourselves with whatever resources that we would have internalized within (setting off a barrage of confidence and self-doubt issues!)

You see, it is our over intelligence or baffling dumbness that goes on to complicate matters and we end up becoming the lower version of ourselves with each passing hour! Unless there is coercive effort of directed thinking and pursuit by being invested in oneself, whether it is the business goal that you are chasing or it is that target for your boss that you chase, none of that will come to you, unless you have truly stayed invested with intent towards those aspirations! The way to do that is avoid arrogance and repel ignorance!

Perhaps the only way to create value and be a value, is to stay invested in your moment- the moment that you are in, for that is the only real way to reach your aspirations and goals! Unless you aren’t invested within, creating value for yourself and being true to the aspirations that you have set out to achieve, everything else will be nothing else but a mirage of wishful thinking and self pitying self-talk about why nothing ever got done and how you were always right and everything and everyone around you was wrong!

So final words? Well, just accept this one truth of your life, we all are nothing more or nothing less, but an aggregation of moments, one unto the next and it is the choices that we have done in those, which either go on to align us to our aspirations or end up taking us on far away detours’ in one case we will be able to stay invested within and in the other case we will rapidly deplete ourselves and even if we reach what we aspire for, perhaps we will end up reaching the destination more famished than nourished! The choice is of your’s to make, how do you want to be in the next moment that is on the way to embrace you and the subsequent ones’ that follow, for you are nothing more than a collection of invested moments! The more invested you have been, the more enriching your journey will be and the more aligned will you be with regards to your aspirations!

I leave you here with these thoughts, take that pause, make that pledge to stay invested within yourself, for that alone is the way to reach your aspirations, more nourished than being famished! Each one of us, is but a personification of our invested moments!

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

Your wind-screen wiper!

September 18, 2020 ~ PA ~ Leave a comment

As humble it may seem, believe it or not, the little wind-screen wiper has a lot to teach us as long as you are wanting to learn! Join me here as we take a quick look into the health of your wind-screen wiper and understand why it is so critical for ensuring you stay relevant and don’t become “was” from “is”! So here we go!

Well, you do certainly remember that time when you dared to venture out in the rains and git stuck really stuck as your wiper would simple not move, or if it did, it did not move the way you wanted it to and either you reached your destination late, tired, famished, exhausted or you banged into something and limped your way to reach where you had to! Coming to think of this scenario, to begin with, you would have probably known that the rain was on it’s way, you would have known the route, you possibly- just possibly known your wiper’s health, then why did you still move out? Even if you did so, you have a good pair of eyes, so when and why did you become so reliant on the wiper that you almost became blinded by the lack of it!

Remember, it’s not the rain that blinds you, it is the inability to wipe away those fast hitting drops of water which creates that blindness! So in a way, a failing wiper is good enough to blind you (in the context of that fleeting moment) and that small capsule of time is good enough to force you to come out with the best that you can be or you can resign to your fate and allow time to what it wants to! So what’s the whole point? Well the point is simple and straight, as humans we have this small intrinsic percentage of our personality where we throw caution to the winds and go about doing what we please- when that percentage dominates a personality, that becomes- brash, reckless and dangerous- which can cause self-harm or put others in harms way! If that is absent, it makes you a resigned pieces of furniture, very often the first people in the organisation and the last to vacate! The trick lies somewhere in between those two aggressive and resigned approaches to life, a calibrated response to what we do and how we go about doing what we do and that is the essence of the wiper!

You may have the best of the cars or you may be flying the most automated jets in the world, but when the heavens above open up and if you happen to be in control of that car or flying that plane, sure enough one thing that you essentially need and badly need is a well functioning wiper that responds and reacts as per your request so that you can than direct your vehicle or that jet to where you want it to be! So what is that wind-screen wiper really about? Is it just about a wiper, what is it’s significance? Read on!

The essence of the wind-screen wiper is to be a tool, a proactive/responsive aid that aligns itself to your demands and helps you meet the desired objectives that you have set out for! There is no doubt that the wind-screen wiper works only when it rains and doesn’t really do anything else, but that’s what the whole point is, it works well and awesomely well, when it matters the most and ends up being that critical nut in the machinery without which that million dollar car or that expensive jet all will become useless in the face of pouring rain! That wind-screen wiper is your mind and that vehicle or jet is you!

Like the physical wind-screen wiper, your mind is the most powerful tool you have, which alone has the capacity to flex and stretch as the time and situation demands and once those challenges are overcome, it has the unique ability to store vital information and race back to the original state. Once the same external trigger is applied again, the response is more emphatic, at times proactive and certain with outcomes always aligned to what meets your requirement! You see, like the vehicle or the plane, you may have the best personality, aura, eloquence and may be perhaps the best ever “engineer”, “manager” or whatever other label you want to think about, the fact is that if you have a faulty mind (a broken down wind-screen wiper) you will almost end up ruining every opportunity that comes your way and end up complicating the simplest of tasks at hand!

The blinding rain, that I had talked about, well that was not the rain essentially only limited to that context, but are in fact the real life blinding rains of the innumerable challenges, problems and sudden developments that our mind is supposed to deal with on an ongoing basis! Unless you have a functional mind, the rain storms of your life will never seem to cease of go away and you will be left moving from one to the next, in a never ending loop all because of one reason that you had a malfunctioning wiper! You may want to ask, fine, got the point, the mind is the wind-screen wiper and the rains are the challenges so what? Isn’t the mind supposed to address those challenges on an ongoing basis, that’s the role right? Right, it the role, but as I said earlier, you keep on going in the same loop again and again, your mind will also at some point begin to give up on you and that functioning wind-screen wiper will start to stay stuck leaving you blinded for a longer time than you can think! So what’s the plan? What is the way to manage the wiper and also the vehicle?

The vehicle or the plane I referred to you, is “you” your construct, your intrinsic resources, your value systems, your beliefs and your purpose and your competence and everything and anything that goes to make “you” who you are! It is but obvious that a beautiful body is reflective of a beautiful mind! Let me explain, if you are a start of range sedan, you get a wiper aligned to that model, because it’s functioning is calibrated to that vehicle make, likewise your mind and it’s ability is calibrated to you, your physiological, physiological and physical construct and as long as all of this is in-sync with the mind, you have a great vehicle and a well functioning wiper! The moment this balance is breached for some reason, you will start to see that, as problems begin to manifest within the vehicle, the wiper starts to work erratically and this is how vital the whole connect between the Human Mind and the Individual is!

To overcome the challenges thrown at us, on an ongoing basis, we need strong minds(a functioning wind-screen wiper), to sieve through all that races towards us, essentially de-clutters all that one must and helps us align our efforts towards what is necessary, relevant, what creates value and serves the greater good! You see if you are a jet plane and have a wiper that takes 10 seconds to complete one swish you will be toast!Likewise if you are a sedan and you have a wiper going 10 swishes per two seconds, that too will not help you! What is critical is the balance of the swish to the vehicle that it is mapped to! Your mind has to aligned to the body that you are! Unless that foundational sync is not achieved, you will always have cases of the wiper breaking down or the the wiper swishing away even as your vehicle stands stationary!

The whole crux is embedded in the fact that for being able to overcome challenges that life presents us with, it’s but imperative to have a resilient and strong functional mind which is able to sieve challenges and obstacles in sync with our motion and direction of progress! Keeping away all that should be, and responding the way it should on matters that matter! Unlike the wind-screen wiper, the mind is used on an ongoing basis and hence it becomes even more imperative that the sync between the body and the mind; the vehicle and the wiper is, as it should be. Any weakness in this arrangement provides a potential for future discord and than it becomes a matter of not “if” but of rather “when” that gets manifested!

Final words, like in the earlier piece, that I had written about the “rear-view mirror”, it’s important for each one of us to realise the importance and value of the wind-screen wiper (our mind) that we have, it is the only thing that stands between us avoiding a problem or running into one! How we map it to who we are, what we do and how we align ourselves to the mind that we hold and what it’s construct is will provide us with our unique pathways to success and achievements that we so much long for! As bad as it seems to have a dysfunctional vehicle or a dysfunctional wiper, what’s more worse is to have a functional wiper of of a plane fitted onto a sedan or vice-versa! It is the balance that goes on to make the difference and ensure that we end up having the wiper that we need, for the person who we are and that in turn empowers us to create the tomorrow that we cherish for!

I leave you here, with these thoughts, take some “me time” and tune your wiper, have your vehicle checked, for it’s well being and ensure you have an empowering collaboration, for that alone is the key to your future and beyond!

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

Fail before you Lead.

September 17, 2020 ~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Irrespective about what ideas you have about success, being the victor and about leading yourself and others, the singular fact remains that, unless you fail, you will never be able to lead- neither yourself and nor anyone else! Failure, ironically teaches more than success can ever and this is the essence of this short piece! Join me here as we explore, what makes Failure so intense and educating while success reached without it, just seems to fizzle away unless it has been forged on the robust foundation of failure from where one can rise above! This is the space where learning from failing and failing forward (as someone has said this) matters! So let’s roll!

If you pick leaders across the spectrum of politics, business, community service, the corporate world- one singularity will come back hitting you hard and that is the fact that the most revered and successful ones’ have been the ones’ who have either been spectacular at failing or have kept failing predictably and yet achieving what they had set out for! But aren’t people supposed to be crushed and finished by failure, we have corporations and business go bust and never rise back again, we have examples of political careers wiped away and business vaporized owing to leadership failures- what about that bit? Well, sure enough even the other space exists and this is what makes failure so interesting! Failure rewards only as long as you learn from it or when you learn when enough is enough! You disobey either of the two rational scenario, try stretching your luck a bit too far and you are history in the works and sure enough not for the right reasons! So let’s understand why and when failure gets fatal!

We have heard fables about politicians, who went on and on loosing one election after the another, we have heard about that self-driven, eccentric business boss who went on and on with his rant and obsession to do what he deemed right, we have come across those proverbial managers (damagers) who went on and on to spell check you mail and insist what you say, write and do (something that would even put your family to shame!)- when you eventually look back and analyse what has happened to most of them- well in all probability they have either hit their trim level of incompetence and settled down in their little pond and called it “The Pacific Ocean” or in few cases have managed to have themselves completely erased away- as in physically from the realm of the planet! So you may ask, if failing is going to lead to success, why don’t these scenarios qualify for that? Well, the reason for that is, as I said earlier, one needs to know when to stop and when “enough is enough”! like everything else, failure too gives you a fair chance to bounce back and re-align your life, but failure gets brutal and fatal once you stop learning from it and keep doing the same things again and again expecting different outcomes!

It is only when people begin to embrace failure- from the context of being able to learn, improvise and realign themselves that things begin to change and that change comes from within you! The first things that meaningful failure does to you, is that it will change your context and approach to the things that you are failing at (as long as you are ready to learn and work over it). All great leaders, that the world knows today have been baptized by failure first and it’s only when that baptism has liberated them to seek more clarity, touch gratitude and realize their trim levels in the honesty of it, that they have been able to change to create the success stories that we all get to witness today! So how do few people manage to learn from failures, while most withdraw and stagnate themselves- shelving away all their aspirations by giving themselves the permanent credentials of a certified failure?

People who emerge as Leaders, post failures and setbacks have a few things in common. To begin with they have a clear purpose and they want that to be achieved and are ready to receive the accolades and brickbats on that journey even as they begin to walk it! This mental resilience and conditioning to embrace things as they come, evaluate if they serve the required purpose or not, check if they create value or not and keep going is what makes these people formidable learners, adapters and artists in the way they deal with challenges thrown at them and even as the world gasps in abated breath for the news of their impeding doom, they almost always bounce back and come out as not only a survivor but also as a victor! Importantly people who learn from failures know when enough is enough and are absolutely clear about their trim levels!

Think about this, why do you think that not all great businesses are able to be the same spot – all at number 1? Why are even great businesses trimmed at some levels and numbers in the leader board- even though they are successful & progressive- this is because their leaders and the people who lead and direct have held on to the purpose and clarity of what they do and why they do, what they do and more importantly have resisted all temptations to avoid getting into doing something either what they don’t understand or don’t concur with! The first thing that failure teaches you is the zone that you belong to- you see, whether you are an individual or a collection of individuals (that is what a firm is), as long as you learn from failure what your real competence is and where the trim line for that competence is- you will be great because then you know the top line and you then just have to focus on improving within and that’s really easy once you have the right people to help you with that! Let me explain!

Say you want to build house on a plot that you have, well wise people will assess the context of the plot, know the purpose of the house (the utility aspect) and then decide how to design and build that beautiful structure knowing the limitation of resources at hand (people, technology, skill, competence, time and money).So gauging this, you will probably settle for a state-of-the-art, beautiful, one or two floor building that meets your need within the parameters that you can work in. This is what calibrated success looks like( sure enough you don’t necessarily have to fail first here because you have analysed well to start!). Now, instead of this, if you were to just go on building floor upon floor, not knowing when to stop and why you are building that thing to begin with- well the inevitable will happen- either you will break financially to continue building that never ending structure or the structure will collapse on accord of the sane principles of physics and gravity!

Even as many leaders fail, very few learn from it and even fewer apply those learnings to their today to create a more valuable tomorrow! This is what differentiates between Good and Great Leaders! Good Leaders will help you navigate your today, for that serves their today as well- This is the stuff that you come across successful managers in the corporate world and those content small businesses who are happy earning the same annual amount even if the inflation has changed and cut their profits by half! What great leaders do differently is that they not only apply the learnings of their failure to their work and create awesomeness at work, but they are at the same time, consistently failing forward at something else- experimenting with new ways, processes or even new businesses and even these failures present valuable lessons which go back to create more value to the functioning business to make it better and should the other experiments click- which they will- needless to say you are just witnessing the birth of a conglomerate and this is how business empires are built- by sharing the knowledge of failures across the board and applying those valuable lessons across to create value and control in a more meaningful manner!

On a more human level, failure brings in humility and sanity, it teaches you to embrace and learn from everything around you and also presents you with absolute clarity about what matters, and what doesn’t and makes a real shortlist of valuable resources- people or otherwise! Not all failures are owing to a person or a collective of people running a business at times, it also could be circumstantial and beyond human control, but again in even those scenarios, the ability to learn, analyze and apply those learnings back to the business as the group hits the re-start button is what creates the difference- the difference in terms of chosen trajectory, speed, expanse and the choice of people for the new journey! It is only when the limits of competence, skills and contexts are properly calibrated post a failure and applied to the purpose on hand that magic is created and progress is made on the chosen path!

Final words, as they say, “Failure is never fatal and Success is never final”, that may be true but for that to manifest this frame of being able to consistently learn from failures, embrace them and seek them is what is vital to create the shift from being Good to being Awesome! Failure does’t finish one, it’s the inability to learn from failures and apply those learnings to life and business, is what makes failure dangerously fatalistic!

I leave you here with these thoughts, will be back soon with another one, until then stay safe and stay wise! Ciao for now!

The cost of leadership.

September 16, 2020 ~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Everyone wants to lead and everyone has an opinion (valid or not) about the leader that they see, everyone concurs that they, are better, smarter and more able than their leaders (especially when it comes to the political or community space), whereas the fact remains that, none of this is really true, authentic or accurate- for the Leaders alone knows what holding on to that leadership position has cost them- the untold saga of sacrifices, decisions going wrong and being coerced to choose between the evil and the lesser evil! Join me here as we try to decipher what plays on the mind of the leader as they sieve through multiple decisions that they must take, to continue leading what they lead and ensuring that all the stakeholders are safe, secure and the greater good is served over everything else at all times!

To begin with, one needs to understand that Leadership and Leaders are quite different from Mangers and the Bosses that you come across every now and then, Good Leader by default make great managers or bosses- that is what leading is all about, however the converse is not true! To that effect we must know what leadership and leading is all about! Sure enough there are volumes and volumes written by experts who have worked in the area of leadership and leading teams, but if you were to condense all of that and try to decipher what is the essence of leadership- it will eventually come down to a few things, like Leaders are courageous, vulnerable, rooted yet able to soar high and apart from many other things they are, they connect heart to heart and lead from the heart, creating more leaders then followers! Certainly Leadership experts, will add more aspects to what goes on to define what leading is and what leadership is, but since this is a blog, having the limitations, I will not dive further into this space, but now move ahead into what we are here to discuss- the cost of leadership!

Ask any Leader, that you come across and you will at an instant notice, leadership or leading people, is nothing like the way it is marketed or the way fables are written around it to motivate and inspire people! Leaders & their Leadership comes often with an intense and intimate cost; which rarely leaders will admit in the open- whether the costs of their leadership is the price paid by their family, their health or simply the acrimonious contextual settings that they operate in (based on the society that are in); every and all leadership comes at a cost! These costs at times outweigh the brief of the what is been lead and at times, the greatness of that position, makes any cost look too trivial and leaders keep pushing ahead to serve and lead upon what they have embarked! Let me explain!

Consider this, let’s say you are a leader (not a manager) and are given the task to lead a faltering organisation and get it back on it’s feet, given the fact, you are a leader, you will get it done, you may take a few months, a few years, perhaps a decade- based on what the organisation is, how complex the challenge is, but you will persevere, stay put and deliver- that’s what leadership is all about, isn’t it! Now, add a little twist to this, say while getting this assignment, if you were told that, you know what, by the time you finish getting this done and dusted, you will have probably increased blood sugars, an enhanced blood pressure and added waist line and you can meet your family only once a year- now- – what do you think will happen? What would have you done? This is the point where every leader evaluates- and rightly so- this is that moment which every leader undergoes before saying “Yes” to any assignment that comes their way- this evaluation of what is at stake- what is the cost to be paid and who will it involve is what plays on the Leader’s mind and sure enough, once this is settled the Leader’s are quick to start with the business and hit the ground. Now if you want to raise the stakes higher, how about if you are given the chance and choice to lead you nation? Feel the shivers? Based on where you are on the planet and whether you are dealing with millions in a multicultural society with sharp ideologies or in a bipolar society which just thinks the society and the world is either black or white!, You have a touch assignment and then start adding up layers of diplomacy, political prudence, media glare, intragroup rivalry, opposition pressures, international alignments and yes that ever looming threat being the person on the chair! You still want to lead? You see, it is very easy to give opinions and say things about people in power or in general about leaders- but if you only knew the cost that have paid to be where they- you will have a rethink before you race to say anything to them either appreciating or criticizing them! You may want to say, but that’s what they have signed up for!

Sure enough, Leaders do sign up for challenges around the work and for leading people and holding them together as they achieve goals that they have been entrusted with; but Leaders never sign up for the price that they at times end up paying which can far outweigh anything & everything that they would have signed up for! Like the earlier example, if you were to take up an assignment knowing your health will be irreversibly damaged- well then your move actually puts a whole big question mark on your leadership competence- Simply because Leadership is not Suicidal! If you were to say yes and go ahead with that corporate offer to lead compromising and damaging your own health, rest assured you will end up rubbing the same down through the team and the consequence would be higher medical bills for the organization to settle, increased health related absenteeism and in that rare event death on the job!

Leadership is raw, painful, thankless, invisible yet omnipresent, rewarding and fulfilling- the real leader knows the way to find the right essence between being an eccentric genius and a soft spoken suave presence. Often than not the real cost of leadership is never seen in the open and except for that small inner circle of the leader, hardly ever will everyone know the multiple battles and jugglery that the leader undertakes just to ensure that the team still has their job in the month ahead and your salary cheque will reach you as it should! Often the biggest misconception is that the “Corner Office” people have nothing to do, just go on for endless lunch meetings and evening catch up’s on the way back home!

What people miss out is that, it’s these very lunch meetings that usher in the promise of a sustained lunch for all the people that the Leader leads and the meetings on the way back, suddenly extend robbing them away of their family time, more than anyone else! Given the construct of the culture that we have and the working associations and equations, Leaders will rarely open up to tell you how they felt nervous before the client said or whispered that “yes” over lunch, neither will they tell you what kind of ruckus that they had to face, simply because they could not attend their kids school function…the list is endless and this selfless sacrifices, measured and done on a daily basis, is what Leaders face!

Whether you lead as a doctor, a cop, a defence warrior, a corporate head honcho, or you are that next big start up success story- you could be any of these or you could be as simply as leading yourself and you will see even the effort to lead yourself too comes at a cost and the cost that you pay to lead yourself is the time you waste/invest in creating greater value for yourself to become a better version what will be relevant in the approaching tomorrow! Every Leader starts by Leading themselves first! It really doesn’t matter what you have signed up for, unless you are game on and you are able to spread that contagious warmth and exuberance among your team mates, the whole journey will end even before it starts!

The simple and singular fat is leadership and leaders pay the price or rather should I say the cost for the leadership that take responsibility for, at times the decision is far more important than their personal comfort and there is a greater social cause and hence must be held on to and at other times, leaders begin to soak in more and more into their work, not because they are workaholic maniacs, but simply because they can’t allow the team to fail, for the team’s failure is their own failure! Every leader weighs and evaluates the cost, even before they start and for some reason if they miss out on this bit, we get to see what is a full blown leadership crisis in the workplace and you can see leaders come and go- simply because there is not contextual setting and clarity on what is to be achieved and at what cost! If you ask me, another term for Leadership is Clarity of Purpose- when you have that, you are able to lead, yourself first and as that conviction led warmth spreads, other join you sooner than you think and you are well on your way to create new milestones in the task that you have chosen ahead!

To wrap it up, the next time, you come across a leader (not a manager) just know this, that the person has sacrificed something, you may know that or may never know that, but that is a given! Leadership is never about Lights, Camera, Action, It’s all about sweat, grit, determination, failures and bounce backs from one moment unto the next until the objective is achieved!

I leave you here, with these thoughts for no, do reflect, think about all the leaders you ever came across and what do you think their leadership cost them, and if you happen to be a leader (not a manager), what is the cost that you have paid and is it worth it?

Ciao for now, will be back soon! By the way, do get in touch with us for appointments pertaining to Leadership Coaching that we have now commenced! For more details drop in a mail or visit us at http://www.simplifylives.com

The Knowledge overload.

September 15, 2020 ~ PA ~ Leave a comment

In the crazy times that we exist, surely it feels like the Heavens above must have been in an overdrive while planning to lead humanity to the place we are, no I am not going to talk about the pandemic, already have shared a lot! I am referring to possibly a greater pandemic, which is perhaps more dangerous than the one that we are facing now! This is about dealing with the knowledge overload- a knowledge pandemic; if you want to look at it that way! Join me here as we take a quick look at what this is and what does it mean to us and what is that we can do to survive this challenge, collectively or individually as the case may be! So here we go!

This is not only about cribbing about the invasion of the digital screens into our lives (although they do) this is not about the grueling efforts that go into pursuing higher & specialized education, in terms of money and opportunities around, this isn’t only about how many books, research materials, manuscripts are available or not, this is simply about the maddening pace at which knowledge gets consumed, gets outdated and leaves us ever famished and wanting more and more of it, even as we are aware that there is only so much that we can achieve in the life time that we have and there is only so much that one can really apply and bring into action, irrespective of how much knowledge one holds within!

This mad race to soak in as much as knowledge on can, irrespective of how much of that is validated or relevant has led to chaos and ambiguity more than what natural confusion would have provided! Ever heard about, “All the experts who came together to agree that nothing can be done” well that’s a classic case of knowledge overload! What knowledge overload does is, that it begins to make you pace up against yourself and that by the very definition of it is a very self-defeating approach! But why does this happen in the first place, why do people fall into this senseless trap of wanting to behold all and know all kind of stuff (knowing very well that, it doesn’t work that way!) The reason for this, is the contextual framing that we have allowed to seep in, across societies wherein knowledge has become a tool to achieve something further and not a destination in itself! Let me explain!

If you observe around, what do you see, parents, teachers and almost everyone who has this ability to give free advise to a teen, is going to just say one thing, “study this, go to that university, get that degree” so on and so forth- not because that will enrich the individual or make that person wiser, but because that assures well off life and a sustained source of income- nothing wrong with it – sure enough, well that’s what is needed, what do we do with knowledge if money doesn’t come in- plain, simple, effective, but the big point missed out here is that- no one asked you not to get wiser even as you make your money! This is where the knowledge overload problem begins and how does this manifest? Well, read on!

Have you ever dealt with that boss of your’s who always said just do it this way- and don’t ask me why? or that boss who came to you rushing ten minutes before the presentation and asking you to change 15 slides immediately? Did you ever come across a person who knew everything and was sought after by everyone for some listening but not for any action? I am sure you would have come across multiple such instances wherein people have been glued to the pivot of the knowledge that they hold and are in process of applying- few of them seem to be in control of it (like the judges, the doctors, the law enforcement people- most of the times!) and at times, you will come across people who seem to be just struggling to cope up with the dynamism of the knowledge that they hold, every next day that challenge to update just seems to get insurmountable for them. So why do people react to knowledge in completely two different ways- one while being in supreme control and at other times being completely run over by it?

They do so because in one case they are able to tame knowledge and shape it to the way they want to action through it and in the second case, knowledge is nothing but a fast moving rapid and it will knock you over your feet, if you don’t know where you are putting your feet next! So what’s the right way to engage with knowledge?

The real essence of engaging with knowledge is about soaking it only until it enables and empower you to apply it to create some meaningful value for you or for others! Anything done half way through that in a rush or anything done long after you have soaked yourself beyond repair- is all counterproductive- because knowledge too, like everything else is sensitive to time and context! Let me explain!

Consider you are a new doctor, and heading to the first surgery in the ER, what’s your frame of mind? are you trying to yet mug up, Grey’s Anatomy- page 456 or are you planing to go ahead with what is presented in front of you and pursue your line of treatment based on what you see in front of you? You don’t open up a person and say, “hey, I read it in the book, this pieces, is not supposed to be here, can we move it by a few inches?” This is what the context and time element of knowledge is all about! In that contextual setting of the ER, it would have really not mattered how much of medical know how you have or not, as long as you were able to understand what is in front of you and as long as you are able to provide the recourse as science would require you too! This is real essence of working with knowledge, no matter what field you pursue, unless you develop this approach of being pragmatic, in the now and being able to what it is that you are dealing with, you may have all the gold medals in the world, but you will get drowned by the same overload of knowledge that keeps moving around within your mind like a lost ghost! So what’s the takeaway?

Simple and to the point, Knowledge works only as long as you work upon it and you don’t get worked up because of it! Understanding, updating and staying relevant is one thing and being able to think on your feet in the now and deliver to a perplexing problem in front of you applying the principle of the knowledge that you hold is the real essence of being able to manage and overcome knowledge overload! Once you are able to this, rest assured scaling up your learnings and applying them as fluidly as you want to are all but a part of simple design. Too much of anything and everything is not helpful, simply because it creates an imbalance and when it comes to knowledge, an imbalance leads to unwanted eccentricity- individually it looks funny- but when that gets extrapolated to a society as whole- you end up heaving polarized and radicalized views which don’t go to help anyone on anything, no matter how knowledgeable people are or how wise the society is! Balance- dynamic balance is the key to tame knowledge- soaking in it, just enough to create and share value and not getting drowned into it to create more chaos or ambiguity!

I leave you here, hoping that you are always as soaked up in knowledge only as much is relevant to what you do and you are always able to work upon the knowledge that you behold and never get run over by it!

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