Tag: mindful living

Racing ahead to nowhere!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get “A Philosopher’s mind”.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Human progress and development, believe it or not owes a great deal to the powerful and enigmatic minds of the many great philosophers who have walked through this planet and have made their mark at different points in time across civilizations and nations, ushering in new hope, thinking and empowering them to create a wonderful collective future for the society in particular and the nation in general! Join me here as we try to get a broader sense into what goes into the minds of these magical beings and what is that we can emulate and carry with us so that we too get a few anchors that help us through the choppy lives that we have!

Choose any point in history, and each time you arrive at a society that was flourishing and leading in that context of time, chances are that alongside art, culture and trade that would have been flourishing, there would have been instances of philosophers too (many of which) who till date, continue to inspire, motivate and keep us engaged on some relevant facets of life! Why does this happen? Well, simply put, as our needs are satiated and as we begin to climb higher up on the ladder of enquiry and begin asking more and more compelling questions that is where the realm of the philosopher commences! You see, majority of humanity takes birth, lives and dies and more or less has a templated pattern- either a job or business or a profession with varying levels of success and failures and depending on what is played out and more often then not, the general outlook and perception about everyone and everything around gets developed in this way! Importantly, this is the very space where, acquiring a philosopher’s mind helps! Let me explain!

Most of us when confronted with failure and rejection will almost always start with the first question, ” Why me?”, but when you face the same scenario and have a philosopher’s mind, the questions change based on the depth of the philosophical enquiry! Consider you got fewer marks or that pay rise which was much less than what you thought it would be – the normal way would be to crib, bitch and sulk on the outcome and come up with excuses which are disguised as reasons- the impact- well nothing really changes in your life or the other person’s life in the NOW or anytime in the future! Instead of this, if you were to hold on to the philosopher’s mindset the range of questions and the depth of questions (sure enough depending upon your own intrinsic intelligence) could range from, “What next” to “Why did I think I would get more”, “Why did my judgement on this fail?” “Was my judgement only wrong on this one instance or is there a problem with the way I come to judgements and outcome analysis?” You see, using a philosopher’s mind, you can dive deep into the abyss of human intelligence and seek answers from within and depending on where you stop your questioning, from thereon you get to develop and build a foundation for your future instances!

The mind of the philosopher, is all about being able to hold on to compelling questions and undertake long and challenging journeys to get the answers to them! Sure enough it is not the space of wishful thinking, day-dreaming or intellectual hallucination, rather it is the quite opposite of all of this! The mind of the philosopher and the process of questioning is all based on sound science, unforgiving rationality, clarity and a huge generous dose of common-sense which is so important to de-clutter the ambiguity that almost always tends to creep up on to our mind and cloud our ability to think, and discern in the way that we really should!

What we often miss in plain sight is the fact that the quality of our lives is not a factor of the answers that we are able to provide to others or ourselves but rather the questions that we are able to ask ourselves and others! The relevance of these questions, their depth, their impact and what their unlocking potential is, determines how high we will be able to fly individually or collectively how far and how fast we will be able to lead the society!

Acquiring “The philosopher’s mind” is perhaps one of the most simplest ways to bring about a compelling and visible transformation in our lives; a transformation that will stick and not fade away! Once you are able to embrace the mind of a philosopher, you will begin to see come amazing things happen! Importantly you get to understand what can be controlled and what can’t be, you realize there is a reason for everything and everyone around you, no matter how trivial, helping or harming that is and that everything else fades in front of a commodity that we all call “time”! Sure enough there can be more in-depth and more intriguing questions that one can arrive from this space and one must; for that’s where magic happens and new breakthroughs are achieved, sometimes to empower the material plane of life and yet other times to uplift the spiritual and intangible pockets of peoples’ life! What also unfolds unmistakably is the ability to stay collected and firm- not to be mistaken with ego! This ability to be- steadfast is what makes a vital difference- for this provides amazing clarity and as anxiety is stripped away- all that is left within the mind is only relevant and a scientific process of progressive questioning to a problem or an incident- this method then allows people to see through and frame instances with a proper context thereby de-cluttering and avoiding unwanted layers of ambiguity, chaos and artificial hues which tend to distort what the reality is and what perception perhaps gets built over or around it!

The concept though seems to be simple, it is that much more challenging and unless one is able to stay firm, resolute and unwavering, the path of walking through the mind of the philosopher remains uncertain!

I will leave you with these thoughts here and urge you to take some time off and wade away into the depths of the “philosopher’s mind” that exists within you and see what new questions you are able to deal with and what are the answers that you see coming back to you! Engage within and liberate yourself that’s the way to move ahead with an empowered mind and a frame that is fluid, wide, in-depth and built on compelling questions and thoughts which make a difference to you and to the world around you!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then keep walking and keep asking! The only way to be sure of success is to keep failing towards it and keep moving towards it always asking vital questions through the frame of a “Philosopher’s mind”!

Embrace “Minimalistic Opulence”.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

This quick one is to share with you thoughts on what I call as, “minimalistic opulence” ; which in turn can bring welcome changes to your life and even in the lives the people around you! Join me here as we try to unravel and decipher what this is all about and how it manifests and what are the tell tale signs of minimalism with opulence. As we skim through this, we also understand why this matters and how this can empower individuals to do what is possible in their own realm! So here we go!

The challenges that we see around the world have fundamentally to do a lot with the natural (yes natural) tendency of humans to hoard and hold! You see, as we evolved, through the ages, human settlements have flourished and perished on account of having and not having- now what those elements were changed from time to time- in the earlier days, historic times it was as simple as sustainable and on going food shelter and safety (from the wild and fellow humans in a minor way) but as we progressed and settlements began to change into civilizations and rules and regulations of societies began to come in- everything else changed, but the problem of the people on the fringe- the people who in these societies still have to wage a war to just ensure they have a shelter over and food on the plate! But within these same societies you have people who have all what they would ever need and continue to hold on and hoard on still more and more and this is the setting which makes a compelling case for embracing “minimalistic opulence”

I am not asking you to be opulent in a minimalist way, rather I am urging you to stay a minimalist and stay opulent ( not being miserly or frugal) and this is perhaps the only way that society can accelerate resource re-distribution, re-allocation and re-prioritize what the society needs and how much of it! Sure enough, you don’t have to be a billionaire to do this, but every action that you take, just by being who you are, you will end up transforming the ways that billionaires probably want to sun or ruin the societies as the case may be and just one intervention from you- will set the clock in motion to create enough ripples to bring about changes that you want in the society that you are in! It certainly will depend on what’s been held up and what’s been hoarded in a society, but rest assured a slight nudge from your end and walking away from that party- will soon enough destabilize the social frameworks as you begin to embrace this route of “minimalistic opulence”. Don’t be mistaken this not any socialist rant, it rather is a way to empower individuals so that they can keep shifting the balance of a society in a dynamic manner which discourages hoarding and promotes the idea of “minimalist opulence”. So what is this really? How can we practise it? How can we see it manifest around us? Is it viable enough? Read on!

Since this is a blog, I am going to keep it short and to the point! Whichever society you live in if there’s any way to stop the skewing of opportunities and resources within the context of the frame- it will have to start by knowing when “enough is enough” about everything and anything that we do and is around us! How many clothes are enough, how much travel is enough, how much money is enough? Well you see, you can come with different answers and don’t mistake there’s nothing wrong in wanting more or less- that all depends on who You are and what your aspirations and chosen path of life is- the real issue is- is the society ready and able to give you what you choose? Because if the social frame doesn’t allow you to (by making or promoting conditions so), nothing will matter, whether it is the extra dollar you want to make or those millions of dollars that you aspire for! This is where Minimalistic Opulence again comes to your rescue! How? Read on!

To begin with, as I said earlier, it is not about frugality or being a miser or being a Robin Hood to equally reallocate wealth to everyone! No, that’s not how it works! It all starts at the very foundation of everything, and that foundation is “You”. Once you are able to know yourself well enough-then you know what is that you need and what is that you aspire for! These are two different and fundamentally important things! When you don’t get what you need- you have an existential crisis- but when you don’t get what you aspire for- you still exist but don’t get to live the way you aspired for! The whole process of “minimalism with opulence” gets played out in the space of your needs!

It all starts by you getting to know who “you” are and once you have done that, then the only thing remains is to arrange all that you “need” on the canvas of your life. These needs can be big or small , easy or challenging , possible in your social frame or may be not- what matters is this is what you “need” to have and this is what will make “you” complete and this is the essence of social opulence! Once you reach this space, decisions as trivial as, “how many clothes in your closet”, to “which car” to “what profession” or “which vacation” all of these begin to get answered and go a long way to de-clutter your life and thereby ensure that at all times your inner circle of life is always filled and complete with(as much as possible) things and people that go on to make your “needs” and this is what “minimalist opulence” is all about! It is about knowing yourself, your needs and then living a life pursuing what matters and is critical to your existence! So what about aspirations?

Aspirations are important, no one is asking you to do away with your ambition or aspirational attitude to be better and ahead than where you are right now! What is important is that these aspirations have to be allowing your need horizon to expand naturally and in a congruent way so that even as you grow and thrive in the times ahead, you do not succumb to the hoarding or holding mentality and get drawn into the mad race of wanting beyond your needs- immediate and long term both! Let me explain this, say you are a doctor and doing well and everything that you ever wanted is there around and in your life- one fine morning you get an offer to own a hospital- your own hospital and with a little stretch you know you will be able to own it- Now the question is how natural will that step be to expand the horizons of your need and how much of that will manifest in an non-divergent way! You see owning the hospital is one thing and being able to run it like a business is a different ball game altogether- that’s why not all Doctor’s make great surgeons and neither are all of them great administrators! There are very few and rarest of the rare who are able to blend in the best of the both worlds and it is eventually these set of doctors who end up running the biggest and the best medical and healthcare facilities- simply because their aspirations melted into being their needs with the passage of time and they allowed that to manifest and evolve slowly and in way that allowed them to practise and embrace the change!

As long as your aspirations are aligned to your current needs and hold the ability to be transformed into the needs of tomorrow, you are all set to live your aspirations; provided the social frame permits that! The moment your aspirations are synced out of your need, you will begin to get consumed in the war of wanting more and holding to what you have (simply because you will find it difficult to understand how long what you have will remain!). This is what leads to never ending strife, chaos and ambiguity and often people end up spending entire life time trying to pursue aspirations that are in direct conflict of their needs and which perhaps never have the potential of transforming themselves into becoming needs in the times ahead! This is why “minimalism with opulence” helps, it helps to significantly de-clutter all that will not serve you now or in the times ahead and hence leaving you with more time and energy to pursue what matters, whether it is related to the realm of your needs or your aligned aspirations so that the journey stays congruent and converges to present you with empowering frames through the moments of your journey on an ongoing basis!

The word “opulence” you may be wondering why is it here, well opulence is all about being suave to know what really matters and how does that serve you in the now and in the times ahead! This frame of opulence alongside minimalism creates magic to help de-clutter in a rapid and aggressive manner all that one must!

The moment you start to want less, aspire less ( in line with what your trim level is) you will find you start to do a great service by buying less, wanting less, spending less and thereby no more holding back, unwanted hoarding of resources (whatever type they may be) and importantly you live a life- moment to moment- with greater focus and depth which again brings amazing clarity to build empowering moments which serve you in your now and in your oncoming tomorrow!

I leave you with thoughts, urging you to think around this space and embrace the frame of practicing “minimalistic opulence” to have an empowering now and a resilient tomorrow!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then Stay Safe and be in the now!

Designed to Fail.

~ PA ~ 1 Comment

As surprising it may seem, the fact is that all of us, each one of us are designed to fail and fail as spectacularly and proportionally as our success is and this is one thing that doesn’t change, whether you like it or not, it is only the ability to change and translate that failure into something meaningful is what can ensure that you retain your sanity and keep moving ahead! Join me here as we try to decipher the why and what that makes us designed to fail and how all of that plays out and if there’s anything that can we do, to make all of those unfolding events to play out to our advantage!

When we see the world around us, what you see is that every product, every service and every aspect that touches our lives comes in with an intrinsic notification of failure! In case of some products (and what you can perhaps easily relate to) will the Expiry Date on the product- it does not mean that the product dies- rather what it implies is the fact that beyond that date- the product will not be able to function as it should and deliver the promise what it holds- that is – it has commenced to fail to it’s own standards of efficacy and value! If you thought this is limited to only food products, medicines or things that we consume, think again! Heard about accidents owing to mechanical fatigue/ mechanical failures, engine failures so on and so forth, accidental fires because of fail-safe mechanisms failing! Well, the whole universe around us is sprinkled with cases of accidents, disasters and what not, each of them having the same underlying reason- the instance when the accident or the disaster unfolds it the moment when the design fails or rather the failure of design begins to manifest!

You see every object that has been ever created has been forged by crafting multiple elements to make them what they are so that they can work and provide the service that they are supposed to- in fact almost every machine that we use, whether its the laptop on which you are reading this, your car, that plane you fly or the humble pen that you use to write your memoirs, each of them come with a service manual- some have written elaborate technical literature- which can be out rightly spooky requiring a qualified and technically competent person to decipher the language and apply method to that madness and yet at other times a generous use of common sense can help resolve and arrest developing failures! Consider this, you have that Cessna Aircraft as part of your private aircraft fleet and it comes with an elaborate maintenance manual and even if you would not be perhaps more knowledgeable about the aircraft of the need and urgency of a timely maintenance of the equipment, each time you reach out to a pilot to fly you out of that place and get you back, the first question and the first document that the pilot will be requesting you is going to be it’s maintenance records! Not because the pilot is an aeronautical engineer, but simply because, glancing through the records the pilot knows which parameter needs to be watched over which other- which is perhaps more likely to fail than the other and that’s what helps to take split second decisions, if the shit indeed hits the roof! There are innumerable such examples strewn all around us all the time and when those fabled accidents do strike, more often than not it has an element of one component that did not work the way it is designed to- be it the Human or the Machine! So now the big question- Why do things and people fail? What is failure?

Everything and Everyone by the virtue of their construct is designed to fail; just as all of us who are born, eventually end up being dead one fine day! Some fail early, some delay that, and it all boils down to a singular facet of how well does one manage and work over their failures to move from one to the next- this inversion of failure is often also referred as success in the world and how frequently and how well one is able to carry out this inversion is what sets apart a few from the others! Now if this is what failure is really all about, why do people fail? You see, failing and bouncing back is a very natural process (although it doesn’t seem so, because we have ended up planting negative social dogmas and references around it) and the reasons why things or people fail are broadly one of the two- There could be Intrinsic reasons- that is things and people fail because who they are and how they are or Extrinsic reasons- the context in which people and things are put into or operated within which ensures that they fail each time as they try to perform! This is something akin to stepping on the accelerator pedal with the hand brakes on! You may say now, so can we do something around this or are we just fated to fail?

We may be fated to fail owing to one of the attributes and depending on which one is more or less of the two adjustments on those fronts can ensure that you are able to incrementally nudge the contexts in your favour and that simple effort is more often than not enough to ensure that you move ahead and din’t remain stuck or get dragged back! Once individuals are able to determine what is contributing to their failure and what type of failure they are experiencing, it’s just a matter of time that adjustments can be done and executed to change the tide and turn failures inside out into success! So how do we go about this and if this is so simple, then why isn’t everyone successful using this technique?

Well, the trick to turn failure into success relies on two fundamental things; firstly the ability to know yourself- what is that you are or the thing that you are dealing with is and second is consistency. It is only when purpose and consistency meet that magic happens, because purpose keeps people and things moving ahead in the direction to achieve a set goal or reach a set destination and every time there is an obstacle or a hurdle in that process (read failure), the consistent approach to decipher the causes, correct them and keep moving on is the only way and perhaps the simplest approaches to take! Why is not everyone able to do this then, well, patience is perhaps the most rare of all virtues that we come across and without the sprinkling of patience around, consistency does not stand a chance!

Before I leave you on this piece, a few final words- Believe it or not the compelling fact of life is that we are all designed to fail and everything that humanity has every forged will also fail at a point in time- the only question is whether that will be an intrinsic failure or an extrinsic one and that goes on to determine the timing of that failure! This is the crux and this is what paradoxically empowers an individual to take a path to fail fast, forward and walk ahead or plan and delay that failure, either ways aligning themselves for an early or late success story!

I wanted to keep this piece intentionally a short and breezy one, so that you can have more time at hand, thinking and contemplating about the failures that you have experienced and how that unfolded then and were you able to turn that failure inside out to be a success story or was it something altogether different that walked into your life from that moment on and was that “success”?

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then Stay Safe and Stay Wise!

Through the eye of the needle.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be the person you seek!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

One fundamental challenge with books that are written all over the world, classified as “Self-Help” which by itself is a little ambiguous section is the fact that, these books more often than not pick up stories of success- either failure overcome to script a success or a the story of toil that eventually ends up manifesting as success, there is noting beyond this! Then you have the few titles which go on to bring in the elements of the network, social parameters and the essence of timing things and actions, well so far so good! What all of these end up doing importantly (which is real of great essence) is that they simply tend to overlook the most critical aspect and the crucial person in all this haste to narrate stories that appeal to them- they simply forget about the reader- “You” who is reading that book, who really is seeking an answer from within and couldn’t really care enough how “x” became a billionaire after doing “abc”! Join me here as we take a quick look into this core space and understand why seeking the person you want to be from within is so vital and life changing and why this is the only thing that will even appeal to you or make sense to you! So here we go!

Right from the beginning, even as we are toddlers, we begin to undergo social conditioning which is really all flawed and dangerous as it tries to dampen our core identity (of who we really are and what we can thereby achieve). Let me explain!Have you ever experienced that family get together over the holiday’s when you were in school or in college and how every relative that walked into the room had an opinion about what you should do with your life -academics, profession, settling down and all that? It was painful right? To the point you felt like asking the person to just f**k off and get a life! Well and if that was not enough you see these behavioral intrusions continuing all the time , your work place, your friends, your colleagues, even that odd stranger who met you on the last flight or that train ride! So what’s really happening here? Why do “educated” people behave in such a condescending and intrusive way when it comes to others, even as the reality and chances are they themselves would have achieved much less that what they would have set out for, when they started to walk on the road to their aspirations? Read on!

We humans are really one of a kind! You see, within us we have that fundamental sense of being belonging to a community or a group or an identity and that’s never going to move away! This is an evolutionary mechanism that is meant to protect us if ever as a species we feel threatened- this is the emergency button – when activated ensures that humans are able to keep their individual and community based differences at bay and rally behind defending the larger community- haven’t we seen this unfold the world over as we deal with the pandemic! How effective this is or not and what is the effective way to harness this space is a different matter! So this habit of continually looking out for the other person subconsciously with time has changed into looking into the lives’ of the other person- warranted or not! This slight change has ended up us collectively wasting valuable human talent and resources the world over- doesn’t matter what society, what ethnicity or how much access one has to resources or not- this behavioral intrusion has led to the failing of many dreams and aspirations even before they saw the light of the day!

In the wild too, very often you find animal parents guiding their offspring to varying levels of intelligence as necessary for the species to survive, likewise in humans too this intrinsic value persist and is all meant to ensure that kids survive and emerge as “successful”, things begin to get complicated as the perception and reality between the definition of “success” as seen by the kid or the person in question and the others start to deviate ans this is the point from where all human hustle of life and for the aspirational life commences! So is this good or bad? Well, depends, on whether it empowers you or robs you off the very essence of who you are!

Human Intelligence is the only parameter that continues to bring about the changes that we see around, that constant urge to have something new, better and more efficient to be created to empower humanity is perhaps the singular frame from where all innovation, invention and development is pursued! The flip side of this has been that, expectations of humans among themselves have gone to take a hit!Parents expect intelligent children, when their own intelligence could be hardly average! You have bosses who want great juniors, when they themselves have been great corporate disasters! You have that company who want’s to be number 1 and knows that they are not even in the consideration set of the competition! It is this kind of distorted and hallucinatory approach that ends up shattering whatever remaining intelligence an individual may have and more often than not what you come across is human zombies- all around you- people who are doing things, because they have been told to, asked to, instructed to without batting an eyelid- for they know (sometimes) it is futile to wrestle with dumbness and at times peace is more valuable than an unintelligent and unending conflict! But why does all this play out like this?

It all starts with what is being done with an individual- Are the people entrusted with the development and progress of this individual (and in that way of humanity) empowering this person or taking away the empowerment and creating dependent zombies for the future? What is that frame that is being applied to usher in progress and growth? If you take a quick look into the the recent human history and try and find streaks of geniuses of human intelligence, chances are that many of them and most of them have been in the period between 1700 and 1950. These 250 years have witnessed advancements in human societies the world over unlike ever before and laid down the foundation of what the societies have ended up becoming today! The flaws and challenges of “followership modelling” which gained wide momentum in the last 40-50 years has systematically wiped off any and all of original thinking that a human being can be capable of and the onslaught of requiring to be complaint to social biases continues to haunt advancements of our lives across spheres to this day! So how does one escape this trap and seek originality of thought and practise?

The simple trick to stay authentic is by being the person who you always want to be, by trying to become the future self that you seek for yourself- it’s be modelling your life on the future version of yourself that you want to be rather than anyone else! This is critical because, your frame of context is unique to you and the ability to apply intelligence in that frame is what makes you who you are! This is where the magic happens and this also the reason why “self-help” books don’t help- the only people that they help are the publishers! Unfortunately the social biases and the belief systems more often than not shun the propagation of original thought and space- at times because the social context is too risky and yet at other times the challenges- financial and personal are simply too much- at times this is valid, but many a times, this fleeting judgement erodes away a possible magical future for the person in question and in a way not only robs the individual of a great future but also does great dis-service to humanity as a whole! Even as we celebrate the new gadgets, innovations, inventions and discoveries and breakthroughs, rarely we know about the people and the experiments which were crucial and meaningful, but simply were not taken ahead- because they don’t make profitable sense! Who knows what great dis-service we have already done to humanity until now, by this one simple narrowed approach to thinking!

Staying original and contextually relevant is perhaps the most important thing that humanity requires today! It is this paucity of original thinking that ends up killing innovation, invention and creative thinking which can go a long way to empower individuals and people around by simplifying the complexities of the life that they have either created for themselves or have inherited! As Individuals start to shun leadership worship and pay attention to the latent leader within them and align themselves to the purpose that they can sense within- magic will manifest and as long as that purpose holds the promise for serving the greater good for people- in no time- the results of that original approach will be rewarded! Want proof? Think about the best book you ever read, think about the medicine that helped you overcome common cold faster, think about that car which gave you better mileage or more ease of driving through automation! This is how original thinking manifests- it simplifies lives for others and for the owner of that thought as well! For all and any of this to start, the first step is to decide to pursue a future/purpose by seeking your won future self! There is nothing wrong to be inspired, by others and appreciate what they have done, what is wrong is allowing inertia to build within and begin to think that someone else will solve something that you are thinking about! It simply doesn’t happen that way- even if thoughts are the same, approaches are unique and it is within these unique approaches that the stories of success and failures get written and it all starts by getting aligned to the leader within you- who can lead you to be the person that you seek within other around and ensure that you are able to be the future self of what you want to become by pursuing what you must! Think around this! There must be a reason why you are, who you are in the frame that you are in, seek that by connecting with the leader within and empower yourself by becoming the person that you always sought to be!

I leave you with these thoughts, here, take a pause and try connecting to the leader within you and sense where that leader wants to lead you to and what is that definitive purpose that you can get aligned to, so that you end up being in the times ahead the person you always sought to be! Your greatest powers come from within- contemplate and execute!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then think and think and sure enough, apply that thinking!

Foundation matters.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stand by your ideas.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be an Artist!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Know the knot.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Courage Collective.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why Simple is so Complex!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Score through moving goal posts.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You are a collection of invested moments!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Knowledge overload.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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!

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!