Tag: humanity

Go from “Had I” to “What If”

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Empty your bag!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

This is a short breezy article for a Sunday read, wherever you are on the planet! If you have seen the movie, Up in the Air, well there is a reference to this bit, however let me be very clear my thoughts are original as always! Join me as we try to know what this bag is all about and why does it really matter what we have in there and why we need to empty it from time to time!

The journey of your life is the pursuit of your soul to seek what it aspires for- your mind and body are the only resources that it ever demands to make that journey possible, sure enough, for that mind and body to function, you would need the required support that comes to you being part of the society that you are and this is where all the fun begins! Society sabotages your journey and purpose of your life by ending up putting into your bag a lot of stuff that you never really need and guess what, that burden of the excess baggage is the real enemy that not only slows you down greatly but in a few cases ends up most of the journey’s even before they really commence in the real earnest! Let me explain!

Consider, you are going for a trek in the high mountains, what would you carry with you? Mountain gear, medicines, first aid, food that lasts you with the relevant buffer and clothes that you just need about and the required tools and gadgets right? Now consider if instead of this, you were to add your high heels, professional attire, your laptop, a generator for power back up, a satellite dish ,a coal grill, food supplies for 7 days ( when you need for 2 days plus a day of buffer), what you will end up doing is, burdening yourself with unwanted and unnecessary baggage that has nothing to do with your aspiration to climb that mountain peak, neither does that excess load, serve any benefit to you (simply because you have too much of it!), so what’s the impact- well if you even start to think about getting started with that kind of a burden, any mountaineer will tell you, you are finished even before you begin! This is what also plays out in the book of our lives!

Grab that coffee and look around yourself wherever you are now, what do you see, you will see you are surrounded, hounded and always approached by all the things, people and situations which often mean so little and at times nothing when it comes to adding value either to you or to the other person or even for that matter to make the settings a great one! When was the last time you hit the office party and people actually said- that the party would be incomplete had you not come? And well when you actually not turn up- what happened? Did they stop the party? Cancel it? Or did the show go on and perhaps you were not even missed! You would be fortunate even if someone thought about you! The worst thing is that in the times that we live, we are glued to multiple screens and our day begins and ends by counting friends on a social media network, the number or likes , shares and what not- we just end up sweating for no real reason!

You see, get a life, the fact is no one really cares and the burden that you build upon yourself with this perception that you matter- is perhaps the biggest invisible load within the bag that you carry and that bag which seems to be getting bigger and bigger is nothing else but the bag of your mind! The bag is nothing but your fleeting, racing mind- and every time you drown it in clutter and all that doesn’t serve you or anyone else who matter you- you are just wearing it down and if you try to lead your life with a fatigued mind- you know where you will reach and in what shape you will reach- even if you get lucky enough to reach your destination or goal- you will barely be alive and instead of celebrating your success, you will just thank your stars, that you made it and fade away into nothingness in the pages of history!

We all more often than not, end up living and going about our lives, mindlessly aligning it to the sometimes unwanted bindings of social compulsions, peer reviews, “what will “x” think, what will “y” say kind of realms and this is from where the small pebbles start to fill in the spaces of your bag (read mind), once you have succumbed to this trap, then one after the other, you will end up aligning yourself to please that person, that group, that sector, that industry and so on and so forth and in that mad race to please, appease and be likable with the many, you will end up shortchanging yourself so badly that, at the end of the day you will start loosing the whole idea of who you are and the next time when someone asks you, “who you are”, your answer is almost always- I am the “ABC Sr. Director, Sr Manager, CEO, COO, CMO” you will be glued to the crutches of a label that the society has thrown at you and this label comes at the bargain of loosing your own self into the vastness of the world that you move around in! Think about this and tell me, how many of your best colleagues, mentors or people that you admire or that admire you , know one thing about you that makes you the unique person that you are- no I am not asking you whether they know if you can sing or not- I am asking, “How many of them know, how unique are you- what makes you who you are?” and likewise how much invested are you among the hundreds of online friends and colleagues that you say mean the world to you? How much do you know about who they are, what makes them special?

The chances are by now, you too have figured out how shallow and hollow all of this is and perhaps many things around have always been! Sure enough, there are genuine relations, people and connections that is what humanity is all about, the point that I am trying to make is the same, that there is genuine human connect out there, but once our bags are full of all that unnerving garbage that we have filled it up with, we have no space for what really matters to us and we have the burden of all the non-productive and un-serving nonsense that we get tagged up with and end up carrying that all our lives, for no real rhyme or reason!

Whether it’s about the relations- personal or professional, the connections that we make, the contexts of society that we find ourselves in, all of these are nothing but a manifestation of our own intent- how badly do we want to achieve what we aspire for! The more feeble is that urge to achieve ones’ aspiration, the more clutter and baggage will one find around and as one gets more aligned to what their aspirations are and as that urge begins to intensify, all that clutter, and non-serving garbage gets vaporized by the power of purpose driven action which is based on that founding intent to achieve what the aspirations are! So what’s the plan?

Simple, empty your bag, as often as you can and as much as you can, that’s the only way to fill it with the lightest possible necessities that will really serve you and provide you with is needed as you reach your goals/aspirations! Do away with all of the non-serving burden and garbage, memories that don’t help, friends who seem not to be there, when they should be, family that doesn’t heed, colleagues who aren’t what they mean they are…people, places and things everything that does not serve your purpose and your journey in the direction of your aspiration is but a baggage that will eventually sap you off every little ounce of your energy that you so badly need to reach the zenith and celebrate that puritan achievement! Hold on to, all that, is a part of that journey, people, places and things, for they serve you, are your strength, perhaps anchor you, perhaps propel you, perhaps guide you, perhaps nourish you, but that’s about that! All that adds value to you and to what you add value is what will create an empowering context and this is the unfailing foundation that each one of us needs to build upon for an unfailing future and live our aspirations and more importantly be able to celebrate them as we achieve them!

Final words, everything that adds value to you, to what you add value and all that creates an empowering environment for you to race ahead and achieve what your aspirations are, is what the essence of a good bag is! Everything and anything else and less than what I said above, is nothing but baggage disguised in the many forms that it can manifest – relations, obligations, favors, adjustments, peer thankfulness, etc. etc. eventually it is this baggage, which if carried along unchecked for too longs, ends up burdening an individual beyond a point of repair and more often than not people end up celebrating mediocre lives when in reality that would have had everything that it takes for being that extraordinary soul that they could have been! Human souls entrapped in this never ending, camouflaged baggage of relations, things and contexts is indeed the fundamental reason why, so many individuals are never able to be who they can be and why for every one success story there are possibly hundreds or even thousands of stories of failure and anguish, not because the people fell short, but rather they were shortchanged by the contents that they added up in the bags that they carried!

I leave you here for now with these thoughts, it’s a nice Sunday, time to clean up your bag, what do you think? Just keep it simple, all that helps stays and all that harms or doesn’t help, goes! Declutter the bag (your mind) and stay aligned to your aspirations! Lesser the baggage greater is your speed and longer is the celebration once you accomplish!

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

Lose battles to win wars!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The story about choices.

~ PA ~ 1 Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thinking on the go!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Sometime back, I had written about dealing with job losses, this article is a slight extension to the earlier one, in the sense that it calls for individuals to develop the skill of being able to think on the go! For the given fallacy of the collective intelligence that humanity has now, it’s now clear than ever before that the pandemic has become a challenge not because of the virus, but rather the way it was handled, by the people who handled it! This goes on to reinforce the fact, that it’s not only important to have wisdom in your own house, but you also need to have wise neighbors and a social set with more wise people than fools around! Because you may do all it takes to safeguard your house, but it only takes one random foll somewhere to bring down your house, for no fault of yours! So join me here and let’s explore what Thinking on the go, looks like and what is it, that makes it tick!

Whether it is the job that you have lost or that steep fall in your business which is making it difficult by the hour to even stay sane, all of this, whether you believe it or not, is not a problem outside of us, it is something that we have ended up creating within us! Yes, as they say, as we die to point that index finger to someone or someplace, the fact is we have more fingers pointing back us and that is the truth of life! Let me explain!

Sure enough, you did not have any role in allowing the virus to get loose or have it come into your society, but even as that was unfolding, early Jan- mid-Jan depending on where you are in the world, the warnings had been put up- some places had them orange and some societies were figuring out which shade of orange would be fine, until all hell broke loose and pretty much the whole world was in a deep red by March-April! You may ask, so what is that you could have done? How can you be accountable for the place you are stuck in! Well for the simple reason, you simply failed to assess what was unfolding in the context of how that would impact you!

Perhaps you did not read well enough into what is the organisation, that you signed up for- which at the slightest nudge from the market conditions, would be ready to have you sent home to worse still halve your income and ask you to work twice as hard and as if that was not enough you continue to manage your normal or even more increased expenses with a lesser source! You see, irrespective of which organisation you are in, how old or new it is, you would have got an opportunity to assess the settings for your firm, in the backdrop of the unfolding pandemic and evaluate if it was going to sail or float- but instead of doing this, if you would have applied your generous opinion to never ending suggestions and talks on what the government should be doing, you would have all but missed that window!

Similarly, if you have been in business, you will find that, we have witnessed all over the world, overnight manufacturers shoot up, from face masks to the PPEs, to the sanitizers and all that paraphernalia that goes with our times today, sure enough, I do understand that not all manufacturers would have had the opportunity to be so lucky to have the suppliers/ vendors and machinery all ready to throw out these new products- but the fact is that a few of them did eventually have it and that has possibly saved some sanity for them, unlike for the vast majority of others, who have been stuck only for one reason- being a specialist- You see like an endangered species in the animal list, being a specialist is great- but that greatness itself ends up becoming the strongest weakness and once that is altered- you are reduced to nothingness! So what’s the point- Well the point is very simple- only when you are able to develop an ability to keep thinking, observing and running simulations in your mind of what’s happening around and importantly about all that can and will impact you with a scale of probability and intensity of the impact- you will be better prepared to deal with this kind of shit, better the next time around!

Early Jan, mid-Jan of February as the market place started to come apart, the writing was pretty much on the wall, the world over, instead of debating and discussing what the government must and mustn’t do, it would have been far better, to assess your work place and see what you need to do or not and understand if your workplace is going to stay warm to you or give you a cold shoulder at a time when you needed the warmth the most! Some firms have done one or the other and well, not to be judgmental, even at their levels would have had a good enough reason to shut shop, lay off, offer pay cuts- because they too did not assess themselves- possibly they too ended up being busy about something which was inconsequential to them at their level!

Thinking on the go, is all about assessing all that can impact you, it’s about being aware of what’s unfolding around and then running simulations in your mind, so that if push comes to shove, you are more ready than ever before! The firms that changed their products and got into manufacturing masks and PPE gear instead of garments, sure enough, they were blessed by the availability of the same machinery and with a few tweaks they were able to deliver- but even for that too happen, it would have taken some team and few people who saw the tragedy as an opportunity to bank upon and end of the day- these firms have made their moolah, even as the product changed and as sad it may look, sure they have profited from creating these products!

Even at an individual level, if you are able to continually assess and monitor the way your industry/ sector is moving and where your firm sits in the relevance of the value chain ecosystem for that industry, you know whether you will be sailing through or sinking staying on that boat- it is observations and analysis done in this space which can help one decide, explore and attempt alternatives- whether that alternative is to go to a more stable firm, with a pay cut or start an enterprise or pursue something new altogether; you will be able to take a shot at these options only if you are aligned to think on the go and don’t fall into the entrapment of security and safety of your current workplace or business model!

Thinking on the go, is being aware- about yourself, about what’s unfolding and how and where you want to be and seeing what are the current options that help you stay on that trajectory and route plan! It is about creating a great level of self-awareness, some cutting edge observations and ability to analyse flawlessly. Sure enough it also calls for running hundreds “What if” simulations in your mind so that you are able to choose from what seems to be the best option available in the contextual settings that are presented to you! It is not about getting anxious or paranoid about what you see around, it is rather about, understanding and deciphering what you see around so that you are able to avoid and do away with that unwanted paranoia and anxiety at the very beginning. Self- awareness enables one to empower oneself and actions resulting from empowered thinking almost always translate into manifestation of success and accomplishment of objectives!

I leave you here with these thoughts, asking you to reflect- when was the last time you deployed something like this- when was the last time that you were forced into a corner and had to think hard and straight to come out and move ahead of a situation? How helpful was that and how helpful do you think the ability to think as you move, will be to you- considering all that you do or plan to do!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! By the way, we have commenced our Personal Coaching sessions for one-on-one paid coaching. Feel free to write in to us at simplify@simplifylives.com for more details around that bit!

Are you fooled by numbers?

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

I am not too sure, but perhaps there was a wise person who one fine day decided that humanity must pursue all and only those things that can be measured and all that is been pursued must be measured, this self-defeating thought has led us to a point where that even the amount of happiness that we seem to experience in our lives has got reduced to the digital world of likes, comments and shares! Join me here as we try to understand why numbers are not everything- always and why the context and totality of the circumstances too matter!

Walk into any high performing sales organization, and yes, the only things that will ever matter are going to be number, well nothing wrong with that- whether those numbers are for the sales achieved or for the earnings and incentives made- either ways it works for everyone who is part of that system- but if you were to start evaluating the How and Why of the sale and When and Where of the sale, things will suddenly start to seem much more different then they are! Let me explain! Consider this, you have a young person who has joined the organization in the last quarter and has been able to win back three lost clients but the sale values are less then 50% of his target for the quarter- so has he performed or not? Did he do it the wrong way by investing more time to win clients back, rather than going for the easy kills and hitting that 100% target achieved tag? Well this is just one of those many examples that we come across the corporate world where in all the time people are talking about % achieved, “x” numbers instead of “y” a year back, 125% over the target (ask a puritan mathematician and they will tell you why anything over 100% looks outright stupid! The essence of % is to record what is within the 100% not ever above it!). In all these crazy and at times dumb and outrageous measurements what we forget to factor in is the most important aspect of everything around us- the human aspect associated with numbers!

Consider the pandemic that is being played out, apart from the real health issues that we have to fight and deal with as a society, what is also baffling is the amount of statistical junk and unwanted data that gets thrown out on our face day in and day out! More often then not all these numbers are data that are thrown are pure junk, let me tell you why! When what should be communicated is actual number of active cases (that is real people infected as of in that moment of reporting), often what is shared is the total number of cases since the onset of the pandemic- needless to say higher numbers are shared, more fear mongering and more chaos! If you thought the way we are dealing with the pandemic was bad, just see what’s happening around with the vaccines! The sample size of volunteers for the vaccines is not in the millions or the thousands (at least- what should be when it comes to clinical trials- across morbidity and medical health spectrum),but what we have as 100% success and promise about vaccines is limited to a few hundreds of people undergoing accelerated trials! So when these vaccines tested and cleared on the fast route hit the market shelves- I am not pretty sure if you want to be the first ones to go ahead and take that intriguing shot!

So why have societies taken a sudden liking to play around with numbers and represent only what the numbers say (which often is not the whole picture!)? What is playing out here? Well …read on!

You see, whether you like it or not, numbers have this power which is intrinsic to them (as they are absolute), it is only when metrics are added and when they are added the way it suits the person who is recording it- rather the way the big bosses want it to be- even a healthy number begins to look bad- let me clear this for you- the earlier example of that sales person- who won back three old clients- well so if you were to measure his success on the measurement of old clients won- keeping the target 0- he would have outperformed! but when you measure his performance only against his target- well he will look bad enough at 50%- possibly hanging on to his dear job! So what is the truth? Before I answer that, consider the vaccines’ that are likely to come up- they are 100% safe among how many- 100, 200, 300 and what are the population numbers that are going to get the shots- around 2 billion! Think about that- a trail done on a few hundreds is going to decide the fate of 2 billion people world over- let that sink in! Numbers are never the whole truth or the entire truth- like nothing is- I don’t want to sound philosophical here, but that is what it is- absoluteness is a mirage when it comes to applying that principle to the worldly things around us! So how do we go about this and make sense of the junk that we face day in and day out?

Well, first things first, if you are that sales guy and if you in that spot where you have not been appreciated or even had a mention of your efforts to win back lost clients, you should know right away- you are in a wrong place! You are basically in poker yard- where only sleight of hands matter and if you were to loose a few hands too often, you will be actually thrown out of that arena! As far as the other things that are concerned, the magical % and numbers and averages and fractions, the GDP’s, the Growth and Decline graphs everything that you see, think before you consume it! Practice the pause, and try to see what the numbers aren’t communicating enough– there has to be a contextual set around what has been presented and the first step is to see whether that is the right lens or frame to see and evaluate things through to begin with even before you want to decide what is the right thing to measure! In the case of a pandemic, measuring deaths is perhaps the only definitive metric to gauge the aggressiveness and severity of the infection and the spread of the virus among the vulnerable- everything else is just a statistical model- because eventually all of the other sets/ sub sets of data will live to tell the tale!

So, the next time you come across a hotshot, telling you details about stats and numbers, ask that person to pay a visit to the section of human studies, social construct and public policy, perhaps the person will have a changed mind- if not a changed heart- to revisit the numbers that they have- because they will too realise that- numbers are not the whole truth but a part of the whole truth and the whole truth can never be complete unless the human story is aligned and is part of that narrative! If numbers were truly supreme, the world would have been lead by all the people who had high scores across all the IQ and MENSA tests ever designed and administered- We all know for a fact that- we live in a world where fools have opinions louder than their wisdom and the knowledgeable are at times far too silent to even realsie that it’s not the noise around that they hear but their beating heart- which seems to be racing up and down as it witnesses dumb rule and the wise fail!

I leave you here with these thoughts, urging you to reflect upon how was your relation with numbers, how did you manage to extract completeness from them? Were you able to create value by adding relevant contexts and how did you stay away from adding ambiguity and ensuring that you did not measure what did not serve any purpose!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until than stay wise and yes, do read the text that comes with the numbers- always!

Stay Authentic.

~ PA ~ 2 Comments

At a time when everyone wants to end up being someone, the real secret is embedded in a very simple fact- that is of staying authentic- staying and being who you are and who you are comfortable being! Join me here as we explore, what does it take to stay authentic and how does this small shift alter the entire narrative of your purpose enriching it with greater value, depth and direction.

Irrespective of where we are and what part of the social fabric we contribute to, the singular fact remains, that each one of us is Influenced- by someone or the other- now there is nothing to be judgmental or prejudiced about being influenced. Since the dawn of civilizations, humans have been long programmed to seek- leaders and have been benefited by able leaders and have been broken by terrible ones’ and these erstwhile experiences have gone a long way to create the different societies as we witness them around us today! It is these Influences that we receive, which further go on to create an ability within a few of us from the society to continue that Influence- which could be pertaining to an ideology, a belief system or simply an agreed framework of how the society would like to function.

The whole issue with this whole process of Influencing and being Influenced, leaving aside the context and the content what is being shared deals with the subtle aspect of altering the real essence of personalities as who they are and who they should be- unless people are careful- you will witness that Influencer’s and those being Influenced tend to rapidly loose a vital connect with themselves and thereby begin to wear off the charm of who they really are and begin to assume imagery which is nothing close to who they are and what that ends up doing is, you have an entire social fabric that is made of mirrored, fabricated and shallow personalities and ideas. This unwanted outcome of Influence comes to exist, once the true self- the authentic self- is lost- both from the side of the person who is the Influencer and also the audience who are being influenced.

If you were to analyse the global horizon for great Leaders and great Influencer’s , you will see one commonality- As long as Leaders or People of Influence tend to stay true to who they are and share that truth with the audiences that they connect- they are not only effective, impactful and motivational but they also empower their audiences as well to be the same and thereby urging them to, embrace their truth and rise and live by it even as they overcome the challenges that they may be facing at their levels! This is the real essence of Authentic Leadership- or should I say, Leading by staying Authentic! It is only when Leaders lead from this intensely private space, which brings forth who they are their personalities, their vulnerabilities that, they gain the trust and connect which is so vital to lead and influence- this is one way of the leader saying, “This is Who I am and this is where I want to take you along, this is how we are going to get there- Are you coming along?”

When leaders fail to create this foundation of authenticity as they lead or engage, they end up adding veils and layers to their leadership- the whole value around it and the process around it- this goes on to create pseudo value systems and as opacity ensues, one can then witness the rapidly diminishing connect between the leader and the community. The question you may ask, what is so difficult about staying authentic, sound simple? The fact is, there can be nothing more difficult than doing that! Let me explain!

Staying authentic, or bringing authenticity- to the forefront requires more courage than one can imagine, because in this space, whether you are a leader, a follower or a leader in the making- you need some real divine courage to accept – firstly who you are (that calls for some insane levels of self-awareness) and next being able to share that with the community that you are part of – the society, the nation or whatever that group may be! This style of leadership by being authentic, exposing your vulnerabilities is a potent tool to connect, engage and empower everyone around in perhaps the fastest way- the only catch being that you mus be dead sure that the audience or the contextual settings are what they seem to be and aren’t a trojan horse designed to defeat you! How does being authentic help? Read on!

Once you have this incredible sell-awareness about who you are and once you have found out the purpose and how you are going to approach, what remains is merely knowing what serves you and what doesn’t! What serves your cause, your journey and what doesn’t- for all that aligns alongside you empowers you and all that creates a blockade- saps you of that vital energy that you need so badly to keep going to achieve the purpose that you have set out for – not only because you want it- but because the whole process and the journey is nothing more but the personification of your authentic self- and your existence. Anything ambiguous here, will end up creating fogs of doubt, defeating your purpose and also of those who rally around you!

Embracing Authenticity is perhaps the easiest way to let the world know that you are connected within, you know your stuff and hence you are in a better position to tell others how to find their stuff, as you have already done that journey! Authenticity provides adequate empowerment for an individual to have a voice, share, lead or follow, no matter what is the choice made, as long as an authentic approach is applied every role taken up seems to align with the purpose and direction of serving and achieving the greater good for all of those who have embarked upon the journey!

Being authentic, is saying no to a lot of things around and agreeing to a few, because as unique as we are, should we want to hold on to our valid authenticity, it only suggests that there would be few and far in between possibilities to experience the same around us! The journey surely calls for a lot of turbulence within and externally for not everyone will be pleased and neither will everyone be dejected!

The essence of applying authenticity lies in the fact that, through self-awareness, knowing oneself, being true to who you are and the purpose that drives you, can you influence, collaborate, share or follow and navigate across the social fabric around you urging every member to be who they are! Progressive societies are all but a collection of authentic Individuals who have connected and engaged themselves with each other for a common purpose that achieves some greater good for each member of the society even as they retain their authentic self and touch their individual aspirations as they accomplish the larger goals!

I leave you here, with these thoughts for now, urging you to seek your authenticity lever and use that as a pivot to empower yourself and the society around you! Societies that are united even through the diversity experienced by virtue of the authentic constituents thrive and progress each time and every time!

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

Marketing through fear.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Through evolution, if there has been a singular thread that the human mind has been able to hold on to apart from being creative it has been the thread of respecting and taming fear! Join me here as we take a quick look on how this space of fear- has gone to shape us, what we do as individuals and societies and why the marketing of fear is not limited only to companies that sell products and services, but runs beyond that and is much deeper than you can think! So here we go!

Fear- the most basic of human emotions and something that has gone a long way to make who we are today. Fear certainly played it’s part to ensure that as a species we survived and thrived. Experts have written books upon books on how fear helps and how it harms, so I am not going to go ahead and more to that bit, but this is the base point that we will have our piece anchored upon- the singular fact that fear works and perhaps works too well to ensure that we survive and we thrive.This is why people who do market through the angle of fear- almost always get what they set out to achieve! Let me explain!

The pandemic sure enough has brought the entire humanity face to face with a situation that even by standards of pure science and scientific research is mind boggling and giving a tough time even to the renowned experts in the respective fields of study- but what do we observe as we look around? You have anti-viral clothing- formal wear, you suddenly have anti-viral “x”,”y”, “z” and almost everything from the ball pen that you hold in your hand to the mobile cover that you may have or the humble body wash/ hand soaps all of them have been suddenly transformed into oversight anti-viral heroes sure enough with that golden sly condition of 99.99%*** written and said all over as the choreographed visual sleight is played out! Not to forget the sudden wonder foods that have cropped up which are supposed to keep you safe by boosting your immunity even as you smoke and drink and load cholesterol in your system! I mean really? The marketing through fear angle when it comes to what we consume as humans is not limited to this pandemic alone! Let us jog down the memory lane!

If you have been observant, try and recollect how food was marketed to you- whether it was that milk- for protein and health or those humble oats, that white meat, that steak, that vegan movement, that fish with supposedly the most potent pack of Omega 3 fatty acids or those canned shrimps, to the whole narrative of micro plastics in sea food, antibiotics in meat, pesticides in plants and fruits , to chemicals in formulation…so if you actually walked through this who;e circle- by now- you would have checked out almost everything that you can think of eating or drinking simply because for every one narrative that says you should have it else you will get “abc” problems, there are competing narratives which suggest exactly the opposite which say, if you have this, you will certainly get “pqr”. So finally people do what they can, ignore as much as they can, apply science if they have the time and energy and if it is available with them try to apply age old granny’s wisdom and common sense and get moving ahead in life! The people who get sold into these narratives are the ones’ who are entrapped for ever and it is these masses that are than played over by people who want to sell to them whatever they please to, whenever they choose to and at a price that they command! If you thought this fear led communication is only limited to marketing of products and services or the world of communication, think about it- there is virtually not one sector which is untouched by this malaise! Even Governments play out the same strategy, the only difference being that their playbook gets camouflaged into visual-less,boring and printed pointers (change of rules you see) which are often ignored and missed until the IRS or the tax man in your nation comes home paying a visit to you! Let me explain this space too quickly!

Governments the world over have the big task of managing societies- societies which are at times diverse, cohesive, divisive, polarized, idealistic, plural, liberal, accommodating, welcoming, closed..so on and so forth. The matter here is not about what is right or what is not so right, you need to see in this space, how is your government (if you have one!) working on the entire social fabric that you exist in- what is the story that is has been selling to you- do you or rather did you ever or maybe – do you always get a sense that the government is always trying to reach out to you and tell you something that is not right! Think about it, when was the last time that a leader of a society/ nation took to the stage and said, you had given me “x” time and I had 10 things to provide and this is what I have accomplished! Well, hardly any right? So humans, being humans- it doesn’t matter whether you are just who you are or you lead a nation- when you have nothing to say, they spin a story and since being in politics, crime won’t help, neither will any of the other vices, fear is the only instrument of choice to distract, divert and draw people to a non-issue that either doesn’t exist and if it does, blow it so much out of proportion that, by the time everyone is consumed by it- people are left wondering and saying to themselves, ” What was all that about, anyway”!

Whether they tell you stories of the enemy within or around, whether they paint the picture of climate change (even as they themselves clear forests- unknown to you!) or whether they talk about eradicating poverty- while they sustain and increase their personal wealth- all that approach is to instill fear and sell fear- aggressively or subtly to ensure they are able to manipulate and control and get what they want the society to do and allowing only permissible flexibility to resist/divert or stay non-committal- anytime that percentage threatens to wreck the balance of the social balance- an incident will come to the limelight and very often that just goes on to reinforce the stories earlier sold by marketing fear!

Final words, well, whether it is the promise of that tooth paste in your hands about being anti- whatever or that apparel which assures you 99.99%** of whatever that makes sense or it;s that news about that bad country, or bad people or those Vs Us kind of a narrative- all and each of these nudges are to make you feel vulnerable, unsafe and anxious- because it is only when you are vulnerable, opened up and exposed with a mind filled with self-doubt and confusion- that a marketeer or a government will be able to plant the seed of fear and if you make the mistake of allowing that to happen and you go on to nourish it- well you just end up writing a blank cheque to your life- some call it loyalty, I call that ignorant slavery! So what’s the way around, is there any? If everyone seems to be hell bent on manipulating and conspiring all the time! Read on!

Individual awareness, access to multiple verified sources of information and education are the essential ingredients for empowering people to compare, contrast and discern of what is actually unfolding! Debate, discussion in a directed manner to address an issue or a challenge or a developing problem are all but the next steps followed by proactive implementation of legislative steps to safeguard and govern the society with transparency and clarity! Sure enough seems to be a fairy tale, because the moment this happens, what we have is distributed ownership of society where no one member of the society is more important than the other and everyone is as equal and as important as the other person and this is what a few will never want the many to have access to and hence the story of marketing and selling through fear will go on and on unless you are able to discern at your own level and share that insight around your sphere of influence so that at least a section of the society is able to see clearly what lies ahead and is able to save the day for the many- should the time ever arise! This is the space where new leaders are born and new orders are created!

Remember, fear must be respected to be overcome, but not surrendered to! No one overcame fear by surrendering, people have always conquered fear by embracing it!

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

The Teacher.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

As over a billion souls celebrate “Teachers’ Day” in India, what better to write about on this, 5th day of September. If you want to know why and how about this day, click here and get the context! Dr. Radhakrishnan was a great soul, a giant among the giants- it was that time in the history of India, when even within the political class there was space for brilliant geniuses to take centre stage, collaborate, contribute and lead! Well sure enough this piece is not about him, rather giving a context was necessary before we moved ahead to know “THE TEACHER”! What is it to be a teacher? Who can be one? and what does a real teacher do? Join me as we understand, unravel and get a bearing on this subject, which touches us every day of our life!

I had written sometime back on Guru in the workplace- to write about a teacher is a whole new level! India, is as ancient as one can think about and the civilization’s strength were not always the material wealth but more importantly the wealth of knowledge! Wise people, sages, seers and the great philosophical minds across the world have known this singular universal truth, that irrespective of everything and anything, the most potent weapon/ tool as you may like to address it has always been and will ever be the human mind and what goes into this wonder of evolution is what- your teachers nurture you with!

Teachers’ as a term is not limited only to the ones’ you came across in your school or college or your managers and seniors at the workplace, your gym instructor, your yoga or meditation teacher, it is basically everyone and anyone that you have been able to, are and will learn from- learn something that enriches you- your soul- to first uplift you to see a new perspective and than enabling you to share the same with the others around you- who are able to assimilate and sustain that new learning!

We live in an era now a days, where students get to choose teachers’, unlike the times of the ancient Gurukula system when the student would be fortunate enough to be taught by a much sought after teacher! Anyways, there’s not much that we can do individually around that, but what I am now going to discuss, perhaps will be of much value and interest to you as well! Great Teachers’ don’t always have Great Students and neither do Great Students always have Great Teachers! So what does this tell you something about being a teacher? read on!

The essential connect between the Teacher and the Student (apart from their personalities) is the Quality and Value of the Content! Learning doesn’t take place in vacuum, it needs social space and settings to be practiced, improvised, rejuvenated and deployed. Consider this, if you were to learn to swim- fair enough- you can swim in the swimming tank with a depth of 5 metres, now what if you are asked to swim across the notorious English Channel or in the Sea- what do you think? Will you swim or will you sink? Technically you have learnt what it takes to swim- so by that measure you should be able to swim, isn’t it? But, you too know for a fact that taking an approach route of going from the swimming tank to the Sea- will be nothing more than a shortcut to your grave! So why does the learning not help here? For the simple reason that all teaching and all learning happens in a contextual setting and unless there is improvisation done by the student on their own, applying their discerning mind- that learning will ever be stagnated with no way to go- forward and no place to come back! It’s that uncomfortable feeling of being stuck- plain stuck! So how do people achieve greatness, you may ask? Sure enough people do, but the story there lies not merely in the technical detail about what is been taught, but the real essence lies in who is “THE” teacher and who is “THE” student- what are their goals, aspirations, desires, vision. Unless there is an alignment of vision, desire, aspirations between the Teacher and the Student- no matter how sincere the intent is- how genuine he effort may be- the student’s mind will ever remain a half soaked sponge! Unless and until the contextual settings of their lives, the desires/goals don’t sync-in end-to-end, there will be no magic of greatness created and hence greatness is a rarity by itself and when it comes to evaluating that between a Teacher- Student relation, it’s even more rarer! Think about this bit! There are so many sport coaches around the world- not all are famous- but all are competent to be a sport coach! Sport coach may teach thousands of students, only one among them goes to be the game changer- an icon for the game, not all become world famous- only a few! This happens only when the intent/desire/goals/ aspirations of the students and the teacher align and are favored by contextual settings around. This is the singular secret to achieve greatness by learning from a great master and being able to create magic for everyone by deploying those great learnings!

Another vital aspect of teaching is that, the success/ failure of the teacher is not reflective of the competence/ incompetence of the teacher, rather it is reflective of the student- the student’s ability to remain steadfast, focused, observant and importantly the degree of awareness that the student has acquired! Consider this, if the teacher was the problem, you would have had either equally dumb or equally wise students and likewise the societies would have been too uniformly smart or dumb across, but that never happens ( how I wish!), and the reason for that is the fact that, is the Teacher- Student relationship, even the best teacher and the most vibrant content and quality will be of hardly any use, unless the student allows that to impress upon their hearts and minds! This final veto power- rather how that is used or abused is what goes on to shape the students approach, attitude and altitude that they are able to touch in their lives! As long as this is attuned to the philosophies, guidelines, content quality and has been improvised well, education and learning serves its purpose and individuals are empowered. It is these empowered individuals that go on to create vibrant societies and thats what makes the world a better place- as you see variation in the quality of empowerment- the society too will reflect corresponding variance in its ways of life!

One more final truth- The Teacher can be anyone- for the observant and curious mind- if you remember how you were when you were a toddler and a young kid- you went to everyone (unless you were cranked up) and you observed, studied and grasped what you could from everyone and anyone around- whether that was a human, an animal, a stone or a toy! All of that gave your mind a bossier dose of imagination, which as you grow also helps you to dream and perhaps the ability to dream is the biggest gift that we as humans have (sadly lot of them are forgotten, by the time we wake up and only nightmares keep coming back!). As long as you are able to keep your mind young- vibrant- like that of a baby- ever curious, asking questions, re-visiting the basics and reading that subject again and again just to know perhaps you will find something different now, maybe that sentence did not connect than, but now it does….so on and so forth, once you arrive at this frame of learning- you are a student for life and of life and there can be- rest assured no greater Teacher that you will ever meet than the life that you live and the lives that you are able to influence around you!

So what does a teacher do? You may want to finally ask this! Well as the Zen masters have said- The Wise Teacher, doesn’t tell you what to see, but rather where to look!, Likewise a wise Teacher doesn’t ever ask you what to think or how to think- the teacher simple presents the knowledge and the context. Applying your mind, researching, seeing the contrasts of narratives and deducing inference and logic is what the student’s mind is supposed to do! We live in an era, where what we hear, is crap, what we see or are shown is perhaps misleading, at a time when every person lives unto their own truth and one person’s reality seems to be another’s fiction, it only makes sense to empower students, by helping them to know the contexts allow their minds to deduce what they seem more appropriate through their research, curiosity and observation! The higher that quality, the higher will be their relative success in the times ahead!

Teachers’ through ancient history have always been and will always remain to be the unsung heros’ of the progress that we as humanity have witnessed across societies! Societies/ Kingdoms / Nations alike have risen and fallen in proportion to the rise and fall of the quality and value that teachers’ have been able to create and share with members of the society. Whenever and wherever Teachers’ have suffered, societies have taken a dive, when they have been empowered, societies have risen and raced ahead!

I leave you here, urging you to reach out to the student and the teacher within you and see who’s playing on your mind and who’s playing with your mind! Stay curious, stay inquisitive and no matter how far or how high you reach- stay grounded and read those lesson again- as your experiences of life get altered, the same things read earlier, begin to mean different!

Ciao for now! Will be back soon with another article, until then keep learning, keep teaching and stay connected! Observe and Think!

The crossroad challenge.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Whether you take the beaten path or are one of those explorers who believe in creating your won way, there will be a time when you will hit the cross road and when you do arrive there, the choices that you make either will make you keep moving ahead or you will end up coming back to the crossroad over and over again, until you are able to choose the right path and say a final bye to the crossroad! Join me here, we we try to understand what is this crossroad really communicating to you, how do you make a choice when you are there, and what do you do when you get looped back in or are able to race ahead! So here we go!

As we go about our lives, each one of us passes through the crossroad- at different developmental stages- when we are studying, as we build and destroy relations and as we succeed and fail in our worldly pursuits of success. Few of us are very blessed, in the sense that whether they rise higher or perish, they have no other option to take a pause at the crossroad and evaluate their next move- say you are born in a politicians family, you are born as a heir to a business empire of few billion dollars- and frankly in those kind of scenarios why should you really care about the signboards on the path of life- I mean who would- because just by the virtue of the context that you have got- you are already way ahead in the race- and if you succeed- no one gives you the personal credit- unless you do something radically different and if you fail- you are still let go- with a minor warp because everyplace knows you can still live the way you want to- whether you do or don’t do anything! So if this the kind of unimportance that the crossroad attracts from these few blessed souls, why does much of humanity struggle when they arrive here? Read on!

For the large majority of humanity, our arrival at the crossroad is as certain and as fatal and final as are the chances of living and dying without anyone knowing we were here on this planet and we did make a difference! The only issue that pops up here is that, most of us are really unprepared when we reach this point, and unless and until you have your personal progress checklist handy and ready- no matter what you do- every time you arrive at a crossroad you will be taking a chance and as the rule is with the game of chances- you have to be very very lucky indeed to get it right the very first time and if you don’t then the never ending looping back to the cross road commences! This never ending loop is what makes our life a wonderful engaging story or a nightmare based on not only what the choices we make, but importantly also how we respond and deal with the choices that we make- how well we are able to stand by, face and tame them- irrespective whether they are working in our favor or conspiring against us! Let me explain…

For the blessed few, who happen to be in the settings where they should be, the crossroads are just an intersection where the light is always green for them, so they just whizz past hardly ever bothered about what is around, for their purpose and goal is etched and they are on the way given the foundation that they have to bank on. When it to come sot the majority of us, like you and I , the crossroads that we come across seem something like these- what field should I study , or perhaps now that I have studied, what should I further specialize in, now that’s done, should I work or be on my own, if work, where, if on my own, how….so on and so forth! Don’t even think that these are normal decisions that you are supposed to take- these are decisions where you are forcing on a choice comparing a few alternative. This is surely not that kind of a pizza question- with cheese or without- this is more with so many pizza’s around me, which one should I go for! The crossroad is not about what you do with a given option, it is about choosing an option from what is around you- based on how and where you have arrived! Think about it! So how can we make the most out of it when we are at a crossroad? Read on!

Like with everything else, your ability to make most of it when you arrive at a crossroad- will depend largely on how prepared are you when you arrive at that point! Consider this, you join an organisation at an X level and you have this finite aspiration of one day being at the corner office.You arrive at this day when you are been told that – you are not enough for that office- what do you? You have options- smack that person- ask him to get lost and you seek a new place that gives you that corner office- next week or you listen, assimilate and work around to become eligible for it in some more time, or you just jump out of the window, whining you are finished, or you just hit the bar! How you react will depend on what your readiness, preparations have been as you were working towards your aspiration of being in that corner office. You see, you can dream- that’s the easy part- working upon it- is the difficult part and what’s where shit happens to 95% people! The reason for that is not that you are incompetent- but the the process- you see the goal/the aspiration- of the corner office or being able to win over the person of your dreams is the easy part- the difficult one is work- know- learn and apply yourself to all the non glorious part that goes on to sustain and manage what your aspiration or desire is!

As long as you arrive prepared with the necessary hard work, have few thoughts and plans about what you really want to with your life; each time a question is poised to you, either by the people or the circumstances that you come to face, you will be able to evaluate, decide and move ahead by an empowering choice and that’s when the crossroad will end up being more helpful than you think! A lot of us, would have heard about- “I had a choice, I thought about it….but than I did this, or that happened and than life took a turn…..away….form what….I aspired!. Well these are nothing more or nothing less but the confessions of people who were at the crossroad- perhaps unprepared or perhaps they faced the odds where they had no other choice but to take a detour! This seems bad- don’t think that way- because- may success stories are ever indebted to these forced/unplanned detours- as people than became more cautious, alert and observant as they walked a path that they had not intended to- and that powerful learning on a new path- made a whole new person out of them- which rewarded not only them but as they shared their learning with the worlds- helped us all- you know these people- this is more or less the story of all the great people who have offered to us the world as we see today! Innovators, Scientists, Business disruptors, Statesmen who lead nations(in the real sense of the words), you think about all the magic you see around that goes to make your life easy- it’s already because of the direct or indirect detours that a few souls had to undertake when they were at the crossroads of their life! So when do crossroads really hurt bad?

When people arrive at crossroads, less prepared, take detours and still not learn, coming back to the same crossroad and going on and on in that loop, that’s where the life giving magical crossroads seem to become a nightmare and simply don’t go away even in broad daylight! Why does this happen- well- the person- you see unless you don’t change-your approach doesn’t change- whether the problem is the same or the problem is a new one- you will end up taking the same action owing to your limited thoughts and that will end up bring you back to the same point! So you basically end up travelling a lot in the same place! The only way, if you ask me to over come this vice like grip of the crossroad- is to bring in a new you to the point- by altering your thinking and approach- unless that is done no matter what your choices look like and what your crossroad is- you will just spend away your whole life in this meaningless loop taking everyone who you care about along with you- adding to their confusion and irritation!

Final words, embrace the crossroads and keep an eye out for them, because as long as you are prepared, you have a goal, a destination, an aspiration, no matter how blurred that may be- the crossroad will be the best direction board that you will ever have come across in life and you will remain ever grateful to that- every second of your coming tomorrow! The best part – not all crossroads are lifeless- few of them also assume human forms- they are your teachers- your coaches, your guides, your friends, your allies- who tell you all the time about the options and consequences and help you by being a reflective board that amplifies your thoughts by weeding out the ambiguity and provindg you clarity- that is so vital for you to set out and achieve what you aspire!

I leave you here, for bow, grab that coffee and think about the crossroad you are now at , or you had been and what was that time like and what did you do, was it an informed decision, an enforced detour that helped you or are you in that loop and want to move out of it now! Think about it and stay prepared- you never know, the next crossroad may be arriving soon- to usher in a wonderful tomorrow just for you!

Ciao for now, stay safe and stay wise and yes be prepared- It helps- always!

Listening > Speaking.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Buried by memories.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Hello there! Does your present life look like a burial ground of your memories every time you speak or do something? Well whether it is or it isn’t this article is just for you! As we age, no matter how fine tuned your brains is, it will start to play these magic tricks which take you along a guided tour of your memories- whether you want it or not and whether these memories are sweet or not! Join me here to understand how this impacts us and what is there that we can do about this, if there’s really anything that we can do and how can we use our memories to create an empowering present rather than be knocked down by them!

Each one of us has our own unique superpower and in the case of a few, that superpower happens to be the astonishing feats that their brain can achieve by replaying incidents and images from the past- with vivid details bordering on being outright spooky in a few cases! Any psychologist or a psychiatrist will be more qualified than me to share with you how memory helps and harms and what role it plays in constructing the person who we become- both in reality and in perception, but this piece is slightly of a different take on the same subject, it is about how even in day to day conversations and approach that we take- we relentlessly keep on going back to this memory bank (many times for no real reason) and that in fact ends up going more damage to us- especially when it doesn’t serve any purpose on our today or the fact approaching tomorrow! Let me explain!

What does your normal day look like? how many times during your day do you end up conversations referring to, “it was good then”, “this is what was done then”. “this is how it should, because that’s how I had seen it or done it”, “that vacation was great”, “that person is an idiot”, “those people are awesome”, “that family, that colleague, that friend, that cousin and so on and so forth”! You see, through the day at least once you will end up touching one of these chords- well there’s nothing wrong and right about it as long as it starts to interfere into what you are doing today! Sure enough if you are relying on your experience or learning to accomplish something, that still makes sense because here you are tapping into your memory cells to empower your today, the problems start to manifest, when you pluck the chords that don’t serve your present and neither seem to serve your future any time soon!

Sure enough, you would have had a great vacation, sure enough you would have had great colleagues and friends in life- but the only valid and golden questions is – how is any of that empowering your today? or how does any of it hold a promise to empower your future? If you have an answer- that they do- than hold on to those memories like your life depended on them- because these are not only your memories but, the tools that have the power and influence to shape your today and tomorrow. Everything else that you have stored in your brain and what you are able to recall- is pure waste of energy! Trust me, given the size that your brain is and the amount of tasks that it needs to get done- to just ensure you stay safe in a dumb world that we are living about it, it will only help the brain if you make a choice to weed out all that unwanted clutter from your memory bank and allow your brain to be that bit free to ensure it doesn’t get exhausted thinking about matters that really don’t matter!

Like with all else, the quality of memories that are recalled and that are stuck with you, go on to define the quality of your today and the arriving tomorrow! As long as you have un-serving, self-centric memories from your past (which perhaps stir up cautious to self-doubting tendencies) you will find those memories which border on being nightmares impact and dictate your ability to embrace the world as it really is- simply because your ability to perceive the world accurately gets fogged out by the overbearing presence of these nightmarish memories of the past! How many times have you said, “People from”xyz” are “abc” because you had a bad experience some time back?”, How many times you have made generalized, sweeping statements about people, religion, culture, vocation, orientation and what not- without really being bothered to know what the reality really is- just because your one experience made you feel that way!

Similarly, when you have empowering memories that added value to your in the past and show the promise to do the same in your today- those memory tires than constitute to add that vital touch of magic to further your shine in the world that you live in your today! Consider this, if you remember how you made a great mock-tail when you were in college and when you are able to spin the same magic at your daughter’s wedding reception- how does it feel for you and everyone- WOW right! That’s what meaningful memories are all about! This is how the magic of memories should be put to use, by not allowing them to bury you into your past but by rather allowing you to stay liberated in your present and by keeping you hopeful about your future!

As long as your memories are harnessed with the thought that they serve some purpose in your present or in the future, it’s best to have them buried away lest they come back to bury you in the present that you exist! Many problems manifest from this space of harnessing misplaced memories and these haunting memories in no time turn into nightmares and eventually begin to consume all the islands of calm that you may have within you and around you, because frankly no one really cares what happened in you past- you see even your boss doesn’t care of you were the beast employer last year or five years ago, if you are screwing up now and making it embarrassing for your boss “in the now”- that’s a good enough reason to fire you and get some peaceful sleep!

Perhaps the biggest mistake that people end up doing with their memories is that- they think others will be as excited as they themselves are and nothing could ever be farther from the truth! You see human memories are completely intimate and virtually second skin! They are only and only meant for consumption by the beholder of those memories. Thankfully, the way our brains are physiologically structured- it is often very difficult to narrate a memory without help of an external visual cue- consider this, say you want to describe that splendid Florida beach to your friend who has never been there- you can go on and on and even sing a song or write a poem- the other person is just going to end up thinking what an idiot you have been- it is only when you are able to share a snap or a video form that locale – will that person be able to relate, like, dislike, share a thought or an opinion and that if the person has a liking for the beach!- If the other person is a mountain or a plains lover- well you are toast and you can say bye bye to whatever fragile bond that you hold! This is what the magic of memories really is! They belong to the beholder and are for the beholder of the memories and do not call for participation of anyone else- unless they have been co-created by people with a singular thought for a purpose!

As one taps into their memories, sieves through them in the context of what empowers them and what harms them, it empowers an individual’s present once they are able to tap into the meaningful memories. This also helps to develop a sustainable charisma that goes a long way to help them navigate their world and better equips them to face their tomorrow!

I leave you here, for now, urging you to do a deep cleaning of your memory bank, weed out all that doesn’t serve you anymore, arrange what does and apply what helps so that you can empower your today on the foundation of your memories and not ever get worried about getting buried under their overbearing past from the past!

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

Redefine failure to succeed.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

You failed at something? Great! Failed at it again? Awesome! Still at it and going to try one more time? Splendid! Well, if you think, I am out of my mind, this is what the life of a crazy innovator, scientist or explorer looks like and if you ever wondered from where does humanity get it’s answers to complex and new challenges that keep popping up- it is this space of learning from failures by redefining as them as they happen! Join me here as we explore what failure really is, why it is good and why failure alone can prepare you for success and when it does that- why that success almost always is enduring and self-sustaining!

The next time you get a chance to visit a library, I urge you to go to a section that tells you stories between the 1800’s and until 1970’s! That is the period where all the magic that we see around today happened- sure enough we did not have the computers than in the way we have, neither did we have the internet nor the so-called smart phones- but what was built during that period in the history of mankind across the continents- remains to be the foundation that has made everything else to stand up eventually! This is also the period that was marked by intense and successive failures, one after the other, day in and day out only to eventually allow someone to keep working on the earlier omissions to come up with the required adjustments to get the answers that were been sought and thereby touch success and create something that would open up a new world altogether! If you ever wondered why few nations are more technologically advanced than some others, the reason again lies in the study of those 170 odd years, the nations which have struggled, failed, got beaten, broken and have risen up are the ones’ who today lead the world and that is perhaps the biggest visible lesson in front of us to understand that Failure does not and it never has limited or stalled success, rather it is the one that has forced humanity out of their comfort zone to search further, look beyond and reach for something new, establish the new normal’s of life almost every 20 years- all of this- we owe to the the bygone failures- its is on those foundations that we have got all of our today built! So why is failure so intense? Why does it get so deep inside and sting so bad? Why do we shy away now, from failure if it is what it is- a motivator in disguise? Well, read on!

The human brain is perhaps the most awesome machine that we have ever come across, even after thousands of years of evolution, every other moment it tends to keep throwing up surprises and we are all but compelled to say, “Well I didn’t know this about you!” Through our evolution, our brains have had to be hard wired for tough conditions, before we established permanent settlements and cradles of civilization. In those formative stages of humanity, failure was equal to death. you see, you went ton hunt a wild boar, the chances would be if you missed the boar, you would be back with some serious injuries (with no remedy at that time) spelling slow and sure death! Likewise if you were a farmer, watching out for pests, and keeping a check meant ensuring food to survive and failure on that bit meant seriously bad news! So this from where the story of why “failure is fatal” became so hard coded and even as humanity started to thrive and prosper the new age sins of gluttony, greed and all their cousins, embedded a sick idea into some person’s mind, “If I don’t do “XYZ” , I fail and If I fail, I am finished”, well sure enough that kind of statement makes sense as long as you are one of those troopers, law enforcement agents, critical member of the society, saving lives and keeping community safe, you don’t hear about a bank teller shooting themselves in their foot , because they misplaced the 50 cent coin right! This is the reason why that wrong notion of “failure is bad” , “failure is the end” and “failure is fatal” got stuck like an unwanted excess postage stamp on the dashboards of our mind and every time we go out to do something, we end up unnecessarily putting ourselves into more scrutiny than what is required, sure enough there are some vocations where one must never throw caution to the wind- you, see you always want your co-pilot doing the checks even as you command the plane, but that’s about it, what you need to know to begin with is that, if there is something really that important, it will come in with its own set of checks and balances either in human form or through the interface of technology that we use and if that doesn’t happen, there are only two inferences, wither what you do- is not important or you have just set yourself up for the greatest learning of your life through failure- for failure is always a step closer to you than success! So what next, how do we know when to keep going and when to stop and choose a different path? Sure enough you don’t want someone to be martyred at the alter of failure pursuing success- it was fashionable back then in the olden times, now a days that’s called being stupid!

The best part is that, like with everything else, failure starts and ends with you- your thinking and your approach, change any of these one variables and you will either alter the type of failure experience or you will hit the jack pot and touch success right away! Let me explain! If you study the life of inventors, scientists and innovators, the singular aspect that you will come across is that they relied on some founding principles of science and observation and persisted until they perfected what should manifest as an outcome to support what science told them in theory! They changed processes, steps, catalysts, ingredients, conditions of the experiment and everything that could have, except the pursuit of the finality of the experiment. Sure enough many scientists ended up inventing, discovering something else alongside what they were pursuing , that became a double cherry in many a case! When it comes to other creative facets likes, arts, literature, visual arts, etc, we all know how many times a writer would have trashed away a copy, a few pages at times the whole book! So what is getting played here? You would heard about why a painter just tore down a brilliant piece- this is the space wherein the finality doesn’t come to live with the imagery that the creator has in mind! This perhaps is the finest point of human exuberance and excellence in terms of pursuing an abstract value to be called successful! I mean a painter could be just fine, leaving the painting the way it is, the art connoisseur would have interpreted the way they would have wanted to and given the dollars and moved on, but that is exactly how it doesn’t work and that’s what separates the masters from the ordinary mortals and the only thing that these masters do differently with their failures is that they use it as their springboard to propel themselves even higher and farther to work on the next idea- as they use the current failure to touch the eluding success that they pursue! By now you must be wondering, if this is all about failures than why do we not fail that often now a days and why aren’t we able to realise the success as we aspire for? Read on!

The fact of life is that the modern corporate circus is all about risk avoidance, sure enough you want some critical aspects of business to work like that, makes sense- but this has all got to do with technological aspects! The human approach and attitude necessarily needs to be the one that embraces failure, if one wants to taste real success! You see most of our corporate work methods are more based on cherishing success and demeaning and looking down upon failure, so the human mind- being what it is, does what it should- mimic- yes- mimic- because it has seen “X” doing “ABC” to get that result which has the reward attached, so it will just do that so it too can get a chance to get rewarded- sounds familiar- yes, “corporate sales training” is a close resemblance for this! Then why aren’t everyone successful equally- why few fly and others fall, well that is simply because the ones’ who fail, learn, improvise and re-apply their learning- fly, the ones’ who face the wall and are only hanging by the structured corporate gospel, will fall every time they are faced with a negating experience unless they too learn to embrace failure as the first step to reach success!

As organisations become more and more risk averse and want to stay within an allowable band of human ingenuity and creativity- failures are far and few in between and so are the chances to improvise, re-learn and re-apply virgin human thought and that’s why we end up creating newness within what is there- but rarely coming up with something completely new as the earlier pioneers and inventors could! Sure enough, we have a few exceptional minds even now who world on complex problems and are able to come up with something that is path breaking- but again these are those geniuses- who have known to value failure and have always thrived on risking to venture into areas where normally no one would want to- you see, magic and success happens beyond failure and in a zone which is far uncomfortable and alien- a space within the human mind where dreams come alive and ideas take birth through some awesome persistence and application of wisdom!

My final take, seriously, do a retake on the whole concept of failing and failure. Do yourself a favour- just redefine your failure and from there allow the foundation of your success to be built! You will be simply amazed at the new areas that light up, the new pathways that open up and how you begin to see the same age old problems and challenges in a newer and brighter perspective- certainly I am not saying, you will have all the answers to your perplexing problems, but what you will be now armed with will be the right questions that you must ask yourself so that those right questions, bring to you the right answer which align you to the path of your success by digging deep into the learning’s from your failures! If you ever wondered why great things take time, this is one of them, great things and people both take time, for they are required to be forged by the forces of time, people and above all failures that they must experience to bring out the best of what lies hidden within them to serve the greater good of humanity around them even as they go about their lives being ordinary mortals doing some extraordinary service to humanity!

I leave you here, with these thoughts, urging you to embrace your failures and reach your success by building upon the foundation of your learnings through your failures!

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

Don’t stress(for nothing!).

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conflict of Values.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leadership matters’.

~ PA ~ 1 Comment

No there is no mistake in the title, the topic is about matters related to or about leadership. Sure enough this is a blog, so staying within the limitations of the same, join me as we explore the fundamental facets about matters of leadership. No matter which way you look at it, there are always three basic requirements that, anything to do with leadership has to qualify, first there has to be the audience- these can be either the followers or the leaders in the making, next there has to be a contextual setting- a social space available withing the settings of a given society to allow leadership to breathe and live and finally we need to have the leader, you may be wondering, shouldn’t the sequence be the other way around- like, Leaders first then the society and than the audience- well it never is that way and that’s where many people go wrong in understanding what the essence of true leadership is all about, by the time we finish this piece, possibly I would have made my point clear! So let’s explore!

The Audience- The audience is a critical segment to leadership. Eventually leaders arise from the audience (most of the times) unless they are handpicked and forced upon the masses to accept! Whether the audience has the ability to develop followership or has the latent ability to cultivate and create more leaders in the times ahead- depends on who the current leader is and if the current leader has come from the very same audience, then how interlinked and impactful is the association between the leader and the audience. The settings could be anything, it could be a political outfit, a group working towards a cause or it could also be your typical office settings- end of the day- this dynamic equilibrium and the relationship between the audience and the current leader goes a long way to shape the collective future of all those who are a part of this connect.

The Contextual settings- the social fabric. This perhaps is the most important part among the the three elements that go on to make the whole ecosystem driven by leadership to work. Society in general and the contextual settings is nothing more or less than the aggregated truths of individuals in the society (not the average) , it is the truth that holds it‘s ground for every member and when multiple people have multiple truths- you end up getting a net truth that holds good across the board- you may want to ask why not call it average- because average implies that it’s the sum total factored against the number, but this is not the sum total of contextual truths, these are the contextual truths and the only thing that can be perhaps aggregated in the sense of aggregation is the vector of the direction in which these collective truths wish to move! Forward or regress and that choice is empowered by the address who often arises form the same contractual setting and when the leaders is placed from outside into a preexisting dynamic ecosystem, the leader has almost always very limited time to understand and apply what truth and prudence the leader has been able to comprehend and as long as this comprehension aligns with the society, the leader is accepted and accommodated, if the views seem to be foreign, in not time the leader will be ejected! Such is the power of the aggregate truths of a society and the collective truths that a society sees. These aspects go on to impact the aspirational value and direction that the society looks to take ahead and this is where the next bit- The Leadership and its attributes come into play!

Leaders and Leadership- They are the final, though not as important as the other pieces to the trinity of leadership, let me explain. Say you have a person gifted and checked on all personal, intellectual attributes of leadership and seems to the greatest personification of communication finesse, oratory, ideation and vibrance. Well all of that will go to waste if there is no audience and there is no contextual settings in the parlance of a social motive around those attributes! You see, leadership doesn’t and simply can’t operate in vacuum! Leaders and Leadership need and thrive of developing that vital connect with their audiences in the contextual settings that prevail, so that either the leader or the members of the audience are able to influence, impact and create some new value propositions to their present existence so that a path to collective progress and direction opens up! This is where the real essence of leadership lies- about creating, sustaining and developing vital connect with the audience and leveraging that to the aspired progress of the society.

Sure enough, how the audience responds to a leader is a very dynamic process and that equilibrium decides the pace at which the society advances or regresses. When leaders create more followers than more leaders, the society is always taking two steps forward and one step backward- simply because the whole pivot if that societies tomorrow hinges on a single person and should there be some not so welcome development with that individual, the whole social fabric comes falling apart like a pack of cards! Knowing this fundamental fact (alongside the other technical ones) you will find large organisations and corporations and people who matter ], always have a succession plan by them- that plan is precisely meant to uphold societies should there be a glitch in the leadership delivery and as that manifests you have the next able people stepping in and ensuring that the continuity, direction and momentum of the social progress is maintained even against strong odds! This magic also happens beyond the corporate walls and when that manifests, you are really witnessing leadership that is in action to create more leaders and add value, progress and clarity of direction and purpose as a given on an ongoing basis!

You may want to ask, if this is what it is, than why does it get complicated? Well, this is what the principle is and sure enough this is what the broader aspect of leadership is, but what I have not got in here is the range and depth of human emotions and thought process- these parameters are very potent and have the power and ability to fail even the greatest leaders once the followers or the social ethos begins to feel something else even as their thinking may be aligned! You see, when leaders fail to connect through their hearts and allow only the minds to connect- they set themselves up ultimately for their own downfall. The society then has to ask only one question- are they going down with that leader or rather would they dump that leader and connect and engage with another one- who possibly has the ability to keep the heart first and allow the mind to follow later! This is also the folklore of the corporate world of leadership disasters! Organisations often end up hiring leader to drive and deliver on a task (the mind part) without noticing how that is going to impact the personal connect for a team or among teams (the heart part), the result, either objectives are met and people leave or objectives aren’t met and people leave- what stays common is people will leave if the leader does not share the heart before the minds are sought! So what’s the great plan to ensure leadership thrives, the audience thrives and the contextual settings are also kept safe?

Deceptively simple and effective,Leaders arrive as the time comes. Leaders do not seek permissions, neither do they take approvals, when they see what is unfolding they will act and when they do act, one important thing that they ensure is that they act by remaining transparent and share one strong message- all goes well credit is yours’ and if we hit the wall- It’s me! As leaders emerge with this mindset to take charge and create narratives that help and provide more to the social settings around them- they influence, inspire and soon enough start to lead in the essence of the word “to lead” and as they do, based on what is that they lead (a nation, a social group or an office team) they either create followers or leaders). As long as leaders do all of this by being connected with the audiences through their hearts and minds- communication, language, clarity everything gets aligned and the social fabric gets stronger and more robust and leading too becomes simple and effective, something very similar to leading an attack platoon- there is clarity of objective, communication and purpose.

What is that you should choose to be? A Leader or an Audience? Well actually both, no matter who you are, where you are and what you do or don’t, at any given time in your life you are wearing the hat of a leader for some aspect of your life and for other aspects you are the audience (even as you may want to lead!). A a parent, you are the first leader that your kids have and no matter how badly you want to lead your nation (given the circus you witness everyday), the chances are you may be perhaps nothing more than a disconnected and un-engaged audience- with some feeble engagement only if you are still courageous enough to make your voice heard- knowing nothing will change!

This is all folks, for now on leadership matters’. The truth is each one of us is leader, the depth, width and span of that reflects how much of acceptance and accommodation we have earned as individuals within the people that move around and how much of ear we have to the ground to know what really matters and amplify that so that our audiences are able to look upto us and create more leaders than followers, because the true essence of leadership is creating more leaders! Always!

I leave you here for now, take some time to reflect on what kind of a leader you have been, what kind of an audience you have been and perhaps its also time to know if the contextual settings are still what they weer or whether its time to change all or few of these variables to ensure your journey as an empowered individuals is racing ahead in the directions that you have always aspired for!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another thought initiator! Until than lead- if not anything or anyone- start by leading yourself!

The makings of a banana republic!

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As the world races from one election to another, one political narrative to another, what better time to actually explore if you and I are part, cause or effect of a banana republic in the making! Join me as we explore, to understand if we are where we should be or we are in some grave tight spot and if that’s the case is there anything that can be done about it? Except the high handed bitching and tea sessions wherein ideas are born and buried with no real consequence or intent!

All banana republics almost always start with an utopian concept- which wisdom says is pure shit, but for reasons varying from society wide ignorance, to war of the narratives everything in between colludes and ends up presenting the chosen path to be THE path and this how the disaster starts to unfold! More often than not banana republics at this stage are always enslaved to what I call as “Sway of the popular idea” These ideas can actually promise everything and anything, but what people tend to overlook is the fact that, these promises are completely useless and never what is actually required by the people! You would have seen recent examples around the pandemic as nations raced to develop strategies, you had everyone becoming an overnight expert on Virology and Viruses – irrespective of what qualifications people had or not- everyone had a brilliant idea (almost short of a Nobel Prize for Medicine) and every two weeks that idea resembled to be as dumb as the originator of it! In that space few wise people across the world gave this brilliant thought of shutting down the economies world wide and ended up transforming a health emergency into an economic one! So you, see examples like these and others are rampant everywhere and this is perhaps the first indication that the society where you are is racing ahead to be a ripened banana republic! So what gets societies and people to this zone?

Ignorance and Indifference- these are perhaps the the most fundamental of attributes that cause societies to become banana republic in their won way- at times – sections of societies pertaining to a particular service area end up becoming a sham or at times whole societies end up becoming one happy-go-lucky tribe and needless to say when that happens- anarchy sets in. The indifference and ignorance however manifests when societies are failed by people who are supposed to lead them and more importantly that goes a long way to speak volumes about the quality of leadership that a society has been exposed to not for a few moths or years, but in many cases for decades and generations! If you look around and want to see the singular thread that binds all progressive, non-banana republic societies it is the quality of leadership! The quality of leadership alone ensures that elements and constituents within society never end up being indifferent or ignorant- whether members of a society like something or not, their being vocal and visible about an issue is at the core of a vibrant and thriving society!

When leadership begins to fail people, ignorance sets in first, if not checked, then indifference sets in and once this overlooked, well nothing actually remains about the original society to begin with! Based on intrinsic attitudes and disposition of individuals few people will embrace ignorance as nothing really matters to them, likewise few will try to be indifferent and try to stay focused only on what matters to them! Let me explain, say you have the most challenged sections of the society- these are those people who, even in normal times are struggling to just stay alive- Naturally they will not give a damn to anything because all that they care is about staying alive and that’s how it is- these are the people who bring in the element of ignorance. Next, you have that section of society which has access to what they aspire for and hence that brings in the indifference to all the other aspects developing around because as long as they are not impacted, they would really not care even if the neighbor’s house burns down! No matter which society you are part of, these two sections can drive a sane society crazy to become a banana republic and societies which have an increasing numbers of these two sections of indifferent and ignorant people, reach that stage rapidly with predictable certainty! So what can be done about this, is there some way ahead?

It all starts with the quality of leaders and their leadership. You see, true leaders who inspire, lead and act not only manage to lead and direct societies, but importantly are able to carry along with them each and every section of the society thereby reducing the number of people who tend to be ignorant or indifferent. True leaders rally empathically and solicit participation from every corner of the society that they lead and this goes on to create live, vibrant societies, where discussion, debate and collaboration become healthy and way to live all done with a singular focus to create a better tomorrow for everyone involved! Needless to say, it is only when real leaders are allowed to lead and connect that societies thrive and are kept away form the impending dangers of turning into a banana republic. So how can you and I make the difference?

Well each time you get an opportunity to select a leader, weigh the importance in this context, you want a leader who can direct and lead to a future that is inclusive and for everyone and not for a select few. You want to elect a leader who thrives and believe in individuality and collaboration as well. It is only when unique individuals collaborate that a vibrant society emerges and it is from this vibrance that stories of human progress and growth get etched into the memoirs of humanity! When you and I become the leader or choose a leader, we are not only ensuring our today but importantly we are creating a promise for the future to ensure that the societies that we are living in don’t end up being a banana republic threat we don’t want them to be! Finally, even if they do, we all know how long ripe bananas live and the rejuvenation is always certain, the only problem that, its painful, rapid and complicated, all of which is better avoided!

I leave you here with a singular thought, that whether you lead or are being lead, do ensure that you carry along with you every single person that goes on to make the fabric of your society, vibrant and thriving societies are the only real promises that we can offer to our following generations to continue the advancement and progress of humanity, the way it should be!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until than, stay connected, lead or be lead mindfully!

Collective Intelligence.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

The way that you have been familiar about collective intelligence is perhaps through the ways that it presents itself, like a group think, empowered groups, think tanks, special advisory task forces and so on and so forth. Join me here as we explore why collective intelligence works and at time doesn’t and what is that we can do to harness its seemingly unlimited power of the aggregated human minds!

To understand about why and how collective intelligence works, we must understand what is the whole story about intelligence to begin with! Well, I am no psychologist, but if you ask me what Intelligence means to me, well simply put- it is about bringing together, your experience, academic credentials, skills, competencies all of that to a moment and applying it to overcome a challenge that you are staring at! Sure enough you also require to add in other external aspects like knowledge, information and your own ability to stay wise to the context that you may be living about. So what limits our individual intelligence?

The whole issue with intelligence is that, it is dependent on multiple intrinsic aspects and the most important being- the Quality- the quality of the past experiences, quality of the value system followed and everything that goes on to construct the individuality of the person, needless to say if this quality is average- what is an ordinary problem ends up being an extraordinary challenge for an individual, while the same becomes a cake walk for someone else and that’s how we have end up having intelligent people acting dumb- because they are limited by the boundaries of their own intelligence. Can this be overcome? certainly, it cane be and hold your thoughts as we will visit this part towards the end of this article.

When it comes to collective intelligence, it is about applying the intelligence of a group of people to address something that they are working on or have been asked to sort out! The essence of collective intelligence is that, collective intelligence is only as effective as the quality of individual intelligence of the people in that group! In a way collective intelligence is the net intelligence of the members in a group (not the average intelligence) because when you have very intelligent people or very average/ dumb people coming in to apply collective efforts- it almost always ends up into even more ambiguity! You see the super intelligent group- will spend a lot of time shooting down great ideas (you know how this bit works!) and the average or below average group will go after every idea or thought (hoping something will work!) to hit one crisis after the other! Hence it’s no wonder that at one end of the spectrum you have some amazing minds working as a group and deploying solutions through pure innovation and ingenuity- space exploration, futuristic technologies are all part of this group and on the other end you have those never ending mundane groups which go on to address the routine problems of the corporate world and those meetings just seems to go on and on and strangely enough the problems too tend to keep coming back and back each time disguised as something else! So what is getting played out?

As I said earlier, people get limited by their intelligence and whether you are working on something individually or collectively, this remains! So as long as the horizon of your intelligence is far and wide, you will get into a tight spot, not because that you are reflecting incompetence, but simply because you are trying to venture into something that your intelligence is not equipped to deal with! Intelligence led failures are not because of incompetence, but mostly are owing to not been equipped to deal with what is manifesting- our pandemic is the case in point! No matter how advanced our science has been, irrespective of hundred and hundreds of the best minds collaborating to seek solutions to the menace, even to this day, as I write, we come across new findings and new insights about the virus and what seemed a scientific solution three weeks back, now seems to be all but vain! So how can we overcome this fragility of our intelligence, is there a way? Sure you can and this is how you go about it!

It is about doing, what great thinkers, seers and philosophers have always done- Internalize and Reflect. The human brain happens to be is a one of the most potent bio machines- and when it finds no challenge – it goes into a mode- what I call- “Leave me alone” or “Do whatever” and when people start functioning and going about their lives using this mode of the brain- the result is recurrence of same problems in different ways- as the vital, radical course correction is missing which is so much needed to arrive at a different outcome! Similar or same actions will almost and always give the same result as long as the context are the same, only when the thinking alters, will the outcome!

So, the only way, if you ask me to overcome the challenges of limited intelligence, is by expanding your horizon of intelligence and whether you want to do that for problems that you work upon individually or as part of a group. The way to expand your intelligence is by constantly spilling the cup of your mind, emptying it regularly and replenishing it with what’s relevant and recent! We live in an era where we are bombarded by information and not knowledge, unless you align your mind to acquire knowledge that is recent and updated and that serves your area of life and work- your intelligence will always continue to be more hollow than you really know!

Minds that are constantly emptied and replenished are the ones’ that lead and provide fresh perspective to age old problems or are often better equipped to provide solutions to new challenges! Although it looks deceptively simple, the task of throwing away something that you know (when it doesn’t serve you) and making space for something new (for which you have to take efforts) is perhaps the most difficult to do! It’s only when you have gained the ability to direct and manage your mind well, that you will be able to (with practise) see new perspectives and possibly identify the blocks to your thinking mind. When you do this is as an individual and when individuals in a group are able to do this, as a routine and make it natural to have a fresh and vibrant mind on an ongoing basis, a mind that is filled to the brim with what serves and and all that doesn’t make n impact is junked that the quality of collective thinking improves and you can than see groups coming up with path breaking ideas and moments!

Collective Intelligence progresses and fosters only as long as the minds of the individuals that form the group apply themselves to the conscious effort of keeping themselves relevant, updated and in-synced with what serves them and do away with thievery that doesn’t help.

For an organisation, society or a nation to progress, it is but imperative that vibrant thinking by empowered minds remains at the forefront at all times and for that to happen the quality of Intelligence needs to be enhanced with every passing moment by replenishing what helps and weeding out what doesn’t hold up to the present beliefs and the oncoming future!

I will leave you here with these thoughts for now, urging you to reflect on how you are ensuring that your Intelligence is vibrant and what are the groups that you represent and when was the last time, were you able to come up with a vibrant idea that was path breaking empowered by your expanded and updated Intelligence!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another article! Until than stay progressively intelligent! Stay safe!

Three steps to sanity!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Given the kind of crazy times that we are all living by, whether be it our work, homes or the social nonsense played out on the news channels every day, there could be no no better time, to get our hands on the master key to sanity and try to move away from what doesn’t serve us and stay aligned to what helps us become the better version of ourselves with each passing moment! Join me here as we try to understand why sanity is, almost always just three steps away form you, no matter what the situation!

A lot of what, unfolds around us is simply unimportant and whatever little around is important, most of the time doesn’t pass the test of the context! So you wake up in the morning, go on to grab your cup and switch on the television just to realise how dumb society has got and how glorified nonsense can be played out on millions of screens, just because someone is ready to pay for that kind of shit! Although, one may argue, so what’s the big deal, you can always go ahead and switch the idiot box off, but given the way our brains play the fool with us, this option is deceptively tough to implement! Social compulsions, confirmation biases and that aspect of self-imposed non-productive small talk forces people to switch on the idiot box- like a drug addict high on their favorite drug- these enslaved people go on to consume the garbage played out on the screens, because that is what grabs social entertainment value- kind of talk needed to get going in those social encounters when you are keen to impress! Sure enough this also speaks about the kind of social circle you are a part of, but to be very honest when we have the very battle of existence going about- no matter where you are and how high or low you are in the socioeconomic fabric, there will be this damaged aspect of society which you will always have to come to face- what remains in your control- the amount of exposure you want to have and that will go on to determine- the extent of progress or regress you encounter! The truth about societies is that, each one of them are playing out what the master demand and who these masters are- whether many or few- goes to create the script, direction and length of what gets played out and how much nonsense will be allowed or checked! You may be wondering if this is what it is, and this is how societies eventually are, is there anything that you can do? anything at all to gain some relative control to dodge this minefield of under-serving scenarios which add little value to you and on the contrary end up sapping away every ounce of what you have and who you are- to try and end up making you one of the many- rather allowing you to be one of a kind – an unique jewel embedded in the crown of a flourishing society! What is that can be done?

Well, there are three basic and simple steps, if you choose to walk upon, irrespective of what the temptation, you will almost always be able to hold on to yourself and stay clear of the corrosive influences that seem to always come your way!

Awareness- Creating an awesome amount of awareness about yourself to begin with and of what’s around you alongside an innate ability to observe- not see- is what will help you to sieve what matters from the clutter that’s coming your way! Awareness works only when you are assertive about who you are, you know what you seek and you are firmly in control of what you think and feel- this certainly like everything good and nice will come at a price- not every person will like you and neither will you be comfortable being around everyone that comes your way- what is important here is unlike the ignorant earlier self- once your awareness levels are fine tuned- you will have a strong reasoning and belief system to stand by you for all the decision that you take- whether to engage with a person or not, whether you want to take up that assignment or not, almost everything that you do or plan to do-will come from your alignment to your core beliefs, values and awareness that you go on to build and sustain on an ongoing basis!

Lens of Context- Once you have reached a decent understanding about who you are and what drives you fine and what drives you crazy-not to forget the who’s- the next step is about applying the Lens of Context! As you increase your awareness you will realise, that not everything that you see around, serve you now, later or anytime and a lot of it, really a lot of it- is always something about which you can do nothing- not now- not tomorrow- the only thing that you can do is- if that aspect begins to be an existential crisis for your personal self- is leave the place and get out of the way- unless your life is aligned to the the very cause of fighting this out! Say, you live in nation wherein you don’t agree with the political narrative- your ignorant self- will get into the bitching mode- which is what the majority of less aware people would do- does that serve you or the society- absolutely not- what do you gain? A few more beers, few more smokes, occasional heart burn, arguments, raised blood pressure and everything that doesn’t seem to help you! So how would a person who displays awareness behave- well simple- see what the facts are and make sense of what it really is and what it is been shown to be- next- analyse what is that you can do or not do- and by doing or not doing how will the unfolding events impact you? So once you begin to deploy your awareness and frame it to the lens of your context- you will know exactly how much attention each aspect that comes your way deserves and you get a choice to act- and how you act- is the final step which ensures you stay sane! read on!

Act with Calibrated Ownership- “Calibrated Ownership” is one word here, as long as you you deploy your awareness, through your lens of context and act with calibrated ownership- you will begin to rapidly evolve- disconnecting away all that is clutter and adding up and building upon all that empowers you to provide and share what your awareness brings forth! Calibrated ownership is different by the sense that you need to have ownership in the right proportion to the context and the level of awareness you may have developed around it! Consider you come to know that there is a need of an animal sanctuary around your place- that is awareness- you may have the place and fund for that- thats the part of understanding the context-calibration comes when you know how much of what you are doing is enough- that is when to stop- at what animal types and how many!

Only when individuals learn to know you they are- It is this collection of aware individuals that goes on to create an aware society/ nation and that helps everyone to focus on what serves the community and also helps them act with necessary prudence- collaboratively, with a purpose that creates and adds value!

If you ask me, the best way to know the health of any society is to study who the recent philosophers have been in the last two hundreds years and if there are any living legends around who have the ability to show the way but stop short of directing what to see!

Awareness, context and ability to act with calibrated ownership will ensure that you spend your valuable seconds on what creates value for the next one and will count your breath to give life to some great cause that serves you, the society around in a way that remains as your signature when you are long gone by- do it well and you end up being an icon- you decide not to enact and do anything- you will fade away in the crowd of humanity. Nothing is right neither is anything wrong- its your life and its your choice and its the choices that at the end of it make us who we are and will always be!

I leave your here with these thoughts, urging you to start working on your awareness, your contextual settings and that managed ownership drive!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another article, stay wise and stay connected!

Patterns are everywhere.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Through history, nations have risen and fallen, corporations have been built and have faded away, people have progressed and have got destroyed, if there is anything that remains to be common across all these developments, it is the pattern! No matter what you choose to do or not, whether it is about you or about the other person, almost every manifestation that we come across is but an aggregation of acquired and emerging patterns of human experience and aspirations with a dash of intelligence and a sprinkling of dumbness! Join me here as we try to figure out what these patterns are, how do they look like and if there is anything that we can learn or benefit from them to sustain our lives and guard our sanity!

Societies have always been, but an aggregation of human spirit and aspirations- both individual and collective. It is when the alignment of individual aspirations and focus meets the collective rhyme that a resurgent, vibrant and fast paced society emerges that becomes formidable by virtue of the singularity of the cause. The cause, the inspiration and the aspirations could be what they are- perhaps not everyone else may agree but that is what works for that society and this is what lays the foundation for a pattern. Once the critical elements of the society- the people- their beliefs, the value system- the singularity of their cause, goal are etched into a form- by virtue of their attitude, approach and behaviour and this goes on to create the pattern which then becomes the truth for everyone in that space! This pattern needless to say, is ever fragile and can be nudged about every now and then like a boat that is rocked by the waves- as long as the seas are clam and the rocking is gentle- the society adjusts- pull back- pushes over and realigns itself to what their beliefs are and nothing much else happens- the whole social ecosystem keeps doing what they have been, but when those freak tidal waves come crashing in- even the most firmly aligned societies simply get washed away and either completely disintegrate or are re-formed with a complete new identity unlike anything before with a new set of belief systems, values which the society then believes will help tide over what became a challenge and what can perhaps become a challenge in the future- the accuracy of this belief holds true only until the next big wave emerges and shows what really works! So what ere these waves that keep crashing in and dismantling or tearing up societies? Who causes these and are these internal or eternal?

As societies go about their work- every element of the society creates an allowable limit of what works and what doesn’t- whether it is about religious expression, whether it is about degrees of freedom or perhaps simply the way of going about ones’ life as handed down from generations, all of these are the rooted components of the society and as long as the majority of the members of a society adhere to this, everything seems to be just fine, the problems start as this status quo is challenged by a few to begin with and when this few become the many- society arrives at a tipping point- from whee it can either move ahead or fall back and that entirely depends on which aspect of the society has been challenged, by whom and why! Importantly these events are not random and develop at specific periods of time and manifest in uncanny predictable way- the only problem actually being that, people are so engrossed in the chores of today and the anxiety of tomorrow that they forget, overlook and repeat the mistakes of history and that happens- in proportion to the error- this is how a pattern gets broken and the extent of damage to the pattern unfolds the choices that the society than must exercise to move ahead! Let me explain!

Choose any favorite nation of your choice, and pick one parameter, it could be anything for that matter and study it over a period of time in co-relation to the rise and fall of the society against a measurable metric, say you study rise and fall of crime with regards to opulence of a society- you may think that as societies get richer- crimes increase- well the contrary is actually true! Each time that societies end up creating a huge chasm between the have not’s and those who have- it set up itself for trouble in terms of increase of lawlessness and rise of the crime graphs! You may wonder why should this happen- should there not be more problems when societies are richer and well to do- well the fact is that if societies are well to do and rich across- than there is what- we normally refer to as higher chances of proportionate spread of that richness- so if 1000 people are rich and 300 are poor- chances are that those 300 will be taken care of by the 1000 relatively rich people- but if 100 are rich and 1000 are poor- well you have a serious issue to deal with! Because neither those 100 will be able to help all of the 1000 people and neither they will be helped in a way that empowers them to move out of their rut and progress ahead, which can happen in the earlier case! This was an example where one of the social patterns of a society was touched upon and you could see that massive impact- now we all know that societies are multivariate (that is having multiple touch points) that can be altered or influenced to provide divergent outcomes for a similar situation- so just imagine how crazy it is on a day to day basis for societies to keep moving ahead, regressing back, accepting, rejecting,a accommodating and negating influences, impacts and threats on an ongoing basis! This is what happens to societies the world over- their established patterns are constantly under fire from one or the other space and depending on what that is you will see shifting attitudes, beliefs and behaviors emerging form that society! So what do you think unfolds in your favorite business world?

If you see the corporate world around you, it too reflects pulsating instances of patterns- these emerge from the values, goals, objectives and beliefs of the organisation and it is nothing more but a group of people working together to further a common business objective! So when there is some rocking around that happens within this tightly knit space, you know it’s not going to be comfortable! Well, sure enough this piece is not about why these patters are rocked- but about presenting the fact that everything that is around you and within you will be rocked every now and then and there is a pattern to that rocking. Coming back to the corporate world- one very familiar pattern- annual increments- well you know the pattern of what goes around in those times isn’t it? Flared tempers, quick exits, equally quick replacements, surprises, disappointments and so on and so forth- now when that established pattern gets disturbed- say your organisation decided to defer the increments- now what happens- the pattern has been broken and in no time what you will see is new groups, new alignments and new issues cropping up all across the organisation- some help and some harm! Now you may want to ask- so how often can this happen, well that really depends on who and what the organisation is and what is it’s natural response mechanisms- see like individuals every organisation too has a natural response that comes from its founders/board- either to fight or flee and depending upon what an organisation settles in for- the adjustments and the subsequent manifestations will align it and the people within for that new approach and an emerging personality which is more reflective of the today than what it was earlier! What do you think, when will an organisation pay more- when the markets are going good or will it pay well when the markets are in the doldrums? Well ironically enough organisations tend to reward performers more when the market conditions are adverse for the simple and perhaps the right reason that performance had come in when it mattered the most and that contribution would have anchored he boat and saved it from running aground! When waters are clam everyone is a mariner, it takes real sailors to tame the rogue waves!

Finally when it comes down to the individual level, as long as you continue to do what you have been always doing, chances are you will end up being who you are for – kind of forever, it is only when you develop the courage to break and overcome the routine (which doesn’t serve you anyways) that you will be abe to craft a new pattern, a way, to progress and move what you set out for! Unless the pattern of what doesn’t serve you is not broken and that leap of faith is not taken, you will never know how the new pattern could have propelled you into the next league! The biggest and perhaps the most simplest and effective way to pursue self-development and improvement is to study your own patterns, eliminate what doesn’t serve you and add on what does so that the new cycles/patterns created are aligned to your individual journey and aspirations in the times ahead!

Patterns are everywhere, around us, within us and even in nature and every pattern has a story to tell, once you equip yourself to decipher these and align yourself to those patterns which serve you the most- no matter how strong the headwinds are, you will soar above the clouds and have a steady flight into your future as long as you continue to read, decode and work on the patterns as they emerge with every passing milestone!

Why these patterns come up, the way they do, what they could be, well that’s a long story, maybe for some other time, what is important is, as you start to see the patterns, you will find yourself to be perhaps more prophetic! May be the first one to know, when a government will form or fall, when will markets rise or fall and whether you will reach that corner office or not- and how/when! All secrets are hidden in plain sight of the patterns around you always, you just need to see with your mind and trust your eyes, both at the same time!

I will leave your here with these thoughts for now, will come back with another article, until than ciao! Stay safe and stay wise!