Tag: simplifylives

Practice Mindful Hiring to avoid Mindless Firing.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Yes! I know folks, you may want to start with a negative thought about this article, but trust me, it’s gonna be more fun than you think, remember my last article? about the layoff thingy, Well this is to put the context more clearly and possibly help people at both ends of the table to formulate their own strategies to avoid unwanted miseries in their life- given the times that we live in! So here we go!

Well, to begin with,let me make one point clear- Let’s stop blaming a microbe for everything and anything around us! Well, admit it, the world economy was stalling, faltering and failing it across nations around late 2019, even as the pandemic was manifesting itself- whether that was intentional or not, is a different story altogether, we will leave that for some other time, the point here is that the world was already on it’s way to a meltdown and there was just one trigger that was needed which could accelerate the fall- the pandemic came in as a surprise- although like always war would have been a favorite candidate to precipitate the economic slow down that we are witnessing today! So why did businesses fail because of a Virus? read on…

We need to understand, how geopolitics and collusion of business with politics and politicians runs deep behind the scenes and scrutiny of the public eye! All that the Virus was scientifically was asking one to do was – keep social distancing and stay away from vulnerable people (ill/aged/those who have weakened immunity) and avoid public places (basically places where it becomes difficult to stay away and trace who came from where , when, for how much time and why!) Given. this fact- see how nations reacted- Lockdown! Well, most of them did it and as this was unleashed- it ensured that business obituaries started to get written one sector after the other, one regions after the other and this whole event created a chain reaction which has now plunged the whole world into a severe economic crisis even as nations continue to battle out with the health emergency! You may now want to ask, what has all this got to do with hiring and firing of people? You may want to present a case, “Why should business continue to pay employees, if there is no business activity?” Well actually that is far from what the real problem is!

You see, when all was smooth sailing, businesses, their favorite bankers, their lovely political friends all of them came together to ensure that each and every business is magnified with an intention that every business seems to be bigger, better than the next competitor and so much so that, even the “I am Number 1” parameters begin to come up with different metrics and business bodies end up with “Award functions” all through the year, where every organisation gets awarded for the same reason by a different awarding agency! Well anyways- nothing to say bout this right or wrong- each person’s nectar is divine for that person! This is the point where the problem starts!

You see, humans all have egos, even I have a much earned one- where I refuse to speak with people with lower intelligence than myself!- The point here is the Business egos are far more dangerous and destructive especially when they collude with politics, the whole market place becomes one big rigged casino- no matter which machine you want to play at- you are already defeated even before the game starts!

Companies have been traditionally into the space of what I call Myopic resource management- whether that is people or other things. Myopic People Management is by far the most fatal of all the flaws that businesses can come up with and when these get operational, slow and painful death of an organisation is all but certain! Business always have had a tendency to keep hiring- at times for no real reason-Sometimes to fill up a large office space, do the cheap multiplier- get more for less dollars, just let there be a buzz, anticipating clients coming in- which is nothing but hallucination provided by the “close inner circle” who themselves have often no fucking clue of what they are upto! All these myopic dealings eventually end up being a case of ,”Too many cooks and nothing to cook”, situation for organisations every year – every few years; and you will notice, some companies do this with striking predictability- they will fire- than after a few months they will re-hire- and the cycle goes on and on! In all this happening place- big names get thrown around- some picked up, some left out and there will be multitudes on unnamed workers who will be left wondering- what did they do deserve what they are been given?! They worked the shifts, they took no leaves, they put in long hours- Why did the company not make any profits if they were working day in and day out? Who kept an eye out of the watch tower? Who was charting the course to ride the waves of business turbulence?

These firings that happen on account of business not doing well, are actually seeded into the very business plan when the business starts off in the first place! When not enough thought is applied and when no real projections and honest discussions happen in those long, polished boardrooms, this is how shot happens! Boardrooms when are not transparent and are hidden away- almost always translate into becoming the secret chambers where lotteries are picked up to name and shame the fall guys for the organization from time to time, season to season! So what can we do about this? is there anything that can be done?Well surely there is something that can be done, as long as we have the intent, the “we” here implies those blue eyed boys and girls who “own” the businesses. I mean “own” in the literal sense of “owning it” not “working to slog” because some investor has pumped billions from an Atlantic Ocean Island which happens to be a tax haven!

People have been and will always continue to be at the centre of all that we do, automation yes, but even to manage and drive that automation, people will be required! Once businesses and companies make an intent to pursue, “Mindful Hiring” and stop being reckless about themselves as firms and about the people that they cross paths with through their professional journey, the problem will start to solve itself even before it reached menacing proportions!

Mindful Hiring is not about, not making mistakes, it is more about learning on the way as mistakes happen and fixing them on an ongoing basis rather than ignoring them and allowing them to become eventually unmanageable! Once businesses hire people with an aim to provide livelihoods for a decent future timeline which could be anywhere from a 12 months period to a 60 months period depending upon the nature of the business, the planned growth strategies and than plotting the projected growth story for the individual through that time within the organisation, half the battle is won!The remaining half is achieved as the newcomer starts to get the value to the table and keeps growing and moving ahead along the plotted trajectory of growth for that individual within the organisation! Mindful hiring is more detailed, it is about knowing “who” you are hiring, “why” and “what” is the value that you are seeking from that individual and “how” all of that fits in and magnifies the business outcome in the given context of time and space during which the person is supposed to be working. It is as simple as this and doesn’t get any simpler than this!

So now you may want to ask, if this is so simple, why don’t organisations do it? Well two reasons, one because we deal with “people” and a lot of unplanned shit happens to them and keeps happening all the time- even if the business environments get sanitized and completely mindful- an individuals approach and the self-destruct button (which all of us have) is good enough to screw up everything either by accident or by design! Secondly because of this very reason”people being a little weird” having that kind of extensive team to simply keep track and measure attitudes and behavioral manifestations of individuals as they work on an ongoing basis becomes more difficult- easier said than done -as they say! So business do what they always have been doing- where they need 100, hire 160- they know eventually only 25-30 will remain- sure enough not all businesses thrive this way- you certainly don’t want the hospital you visit to have doctors being hired and fired this way! Don’t you? So what’ the way ahead?

Well, simple- Once businesses start “Mindful Hiring” with an intent and focus to provide growth and plotted trajectory for limited times for people- they will find even the people that approach are clear about what they can offer and what is that they wish for in return- so no baggage burned or carried and as the value exchange is done, each of them can shake hands and part ways without any bad blood! This step also automatically does away with the need of “Mindless Firing” because once you have the right nuts and bolts working the way they should, rest assured you have developed some formidable immunity to deal with business emergencies and financial challenge- because your machine is lean and mean and knows exactly what to do and how to ride over the turbulence – because you always knew “Who you hired” and “What value they bring”!

I will stop myself here, and urge you to make an effort to embrace “Mindful Hiring”, Whether you are hiring someone or you are the one who is being hired- take a pause and think about the plotted growth trajectory and the value exchange- if none of this is clear-walk away now and don’t do it- because a flight with no flight plan is surely not coming down easy! Embrace Mindful Hiring to avoid Mindless Firing!

Ciao for now, have your coffee, think! I will be back soon with another piece!

The experience paradox and flawed followership.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Through the last three months, wherever you are, your living rooms would have been flooded with “experts” and people having “experience” and being appointed as advisors, “expert committees” who would have pledged in one way or the other, about not worrying on anything and that they have control and will end this pandemic quick! The fact though remains that the virus is here to stay among us- not necessarily wanting to kill us- unless we have a screwed up immune system- which is because of what we do- what we eat and drink! So who are these “experts” what is all about the magic label of “Experience” and who are these people “followers” whose “followership” qualifies these idiots to lead and make a bad problem worse! Whether it’s a national view, about your immediate community or the work place that you go to, you would have either suffered or have had unwillingly contributed to aggravating problems rather than offering solutions; Thanks to these “experienced” people! Join me here as we try to understand why “experience is over-rated” and why “quality of follwership matters”!

The simplest of facts remains that, “experience” explained the ability to perform a similar or the same tasks over and over again and that made a lot of sense when you needed a shop floor worker to tighten up the screws of physically end up welding joints through a manufacturing process and still it does hold good when key skills are need to perform a task which is routine with utmost precision and accuracy. Surely enough you may want your heart surgeon to have experience because that person would have opened up and closed many beating hearts to ensure they keep beating afterwards too! But the moment you ask the heart surgeon to open up the brain and fix things up! Well, yes, you’ve got what I a m trying to say, you are asking that person to do something which that person has never done before! So you see all that accumulated experience becomes of zero value! Likewise if the welder knows how to work on a particular machine /component and tighten bolts for a particular product type- and now if that person was to move over to a new assembly line- his entire so called “experience” will be of little or no consequence as things change! What remains is competence and skill- A skilled worker or a surgeon- one will always remain- who they are- skilled and competent- but the accumulated experience does not help them solve something that they don’t know what to do with it! The current pandemic that the world is facing is getting aggravated by exactly this kind of disposition where all the governments of the world have assembled armies of “experienced” people who don’t have a f**king clue of what to do and how to deal with what they are trying to solve! – simply because this virus was manufactured either by man or nature just few months back to engage with the biochemistry and physiology of humans! It would have been roaming in the wild among animals for millions of years- who knows- but these changes and the impact is new and what is needed to tackle this is not “experience” but “intelligence” to study and work on solution pathways by studying the ongoing impact so that quick fixes are made available keeping in mind regional, geographical, demographical specificity of each nation and the regions within large nations!

This approach is the only hope that so called “experienced” people can bring to the table to ensure the world emerges from the shadows more rapidly rather than wasting time, money and resources to feed on their egos of misplaced experience which has no or little consequence simply because they have never experienced anything like this before and all their accumulated learnings are a big zero to this new challenge- what remains is the their skill and competence which needs to be supported by available intelligence to over come these situations- which I believe is a different problem of diminishing intelligence and also the fact that these “experienced folks” have never seen a problem like the one they are trying to solve with their limited past experience which has nothing to do with what they face!

This misplaced experience not only is detrimental in situations like of a global pandemic, but when these”experienced” geniuses walk the corporate world, they leave a trail of destruction like no one else and yes, fundamental reasons are almost always same- trying to solve a new age problem with an old age belief system and based on what they would have previously done; add to that the next layer of “flawed followership” which ends up becoming the final nail in the coffin for a corporate meltdown!

Firms hire- people with “experience” not realizing that the problem being faced is unique to the organisation and the circumstantial set around it- yes you can hire for people who show competence and skills to deal with complex situations but that is no way a guarantee for being able to fix the new problem at hand (it may be a recurring problem for the organization- but for the people walking in new – it will be a new problem and with time either they are able to fix it or end up growing avoidance strategies like everyone else around so that the problem stays and grows alongside their careers in the organisation! What’s the easiest way to know if this has manifested- watch out for the words- “This is how it is- this is how it will be!” How to go around this? Well only one way- Always hire for competence, skill and personality- These attributes are at the very foundation of an individual which will tell you whether a person that you want on your team is an all weather solution or a fair weather peacock!

But then why do people have so much of misplaced stress on “experience” well this has more to do with the “Followers” and importantly the “Quality of Followership”! Remember folks we get our urge of being followed and high of leading even as we evolved from being chimps into humans- but the quality of followership speaks a lot more about the Leader than the follower! If you want to ever decide whom you want to to work with- do check the followership for the person! In an ideal and highest form of Leadership- Leaders are meant to create more Leaders and not Followers (Refer- John C Maxwell), but given the short supply of common sense and reducing intelligence- even if Leader’s are able to get high quality followers, I will pleased enough! Look around you, whether it is your office, it’s your city council, your national politics- what do you see- you will see an unfailing pattern- Like attracts Like– That’s the universal law and holds good very much when it is about the quality of Followership! Say you have an intelligent leader- but obviously the followership will be more of intelligent people who are able to understand and contribute to the leader’s cause and actions- those who don’t understand a shit of what the Leader is saying will simply walk away- saying that the leader is an idiot! Well at times it may be true- when Leader’s camouflage their dumbness and call it as intelligence which is lapped up by an equally greater number of dumb followers- who also are believed into thinking that they are wise because they are following a wise leader!

This eternal strife between real and assumed intelligence and the quality of followership ends up serving societies with leaders who now have “experience” and become “experts” who are then entrusted with all our lives when we meet global challenges! Well I am certainly not suggesting that all are idiots, what I am saying here is- the quality of follwership and giving more importance to individual intelligence, competence and skills is much more valuable and meaningful if the world needs to find it’s way back not only from the pandemic but also from a growing economic disaster which will turn into a socio economic problems with law and order connotations in the coming weeks and months!

Experience only helps if you are going to go about doing the same thing again and again the same way as you have been doing it earlier! When contextual settings change- as life changes- what will help and what alone helps is – intelligence, skill and competence which are as intrinsic to every individual just as their blood group and it is all about doing what best they do with it that makes the difference between surviving and crashing during a meltdown event!

I will leave you with my thoughts here, time for a coffee and will be back soon with another piece, until then do think about what leader’s,experts and followership quality have you seen around you and what is that you want to change for the larger good, form this moment on!

Moving forward through turbulence.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

The world provides ample opportunities to learn and reflect; as long as we are ready for it! When humanity faces ambiguity, it has always relied on the founding bedrock of established and proven approaches to overcome the challenge at hand and then move ahead! This short article I bring forth a few of them – the easiest one perhaps and the most simple ones, which when practiced at an individual level are potent enough to see you through most of the turbulent weather that life may have in store for you and ensure that you stay on your flight path to the destination of your choice! So let’s race ahead!

Anchor your anxiety: Whether it is the pandemic that you are dealing with or it’s after effects, as we deal with problems large or small, one needs to remember to stay in control and one of the easiest way to achieve that is to “Anchor your anxiety”. Anchoring your anxiety comes an Individuals ability to clear the clutter and see through the smokescreen that the mind is presented with. It is only when this has been done, that one can see beyond the chaos, what really does exist and more often then not, the proverbial devil is nothing but a figment of an overthinking mind which has gone into a steroidal overdrive of imagination! Once you figure out the fact and clinically cut that away from the fiction created by your mind- you have done a great service unto yourself by anchoring  your anxieties- unfound fears of things not going your way, rather going a way which can be counter-productive to your desires! This is the crucial first step, if you want to remember that way and always begins when you start to wonder, “Why is this abc person or  pqr event or incident, bothering me so much, what is the real “why” behind the apparent reasons that are projected over to the mind.

Trust your Intuition: Your Intuition is your internal compass- this keeps  you in good shape and no matter what the weather seems to be across your windscreen, as you keep moving ahead, it keeps pace with you and plays the role of a much needed early warning mechanism. This further ensures that you always have an inbuilt and  working risk avoidance or risk mitigation system at hand to overcome the odd            bumps or incursions that tend to creep up into your path! These odd bumps or incursions can either come with a fair degree of warning or at times appear out of the blue! Either ways, if you have a working and tuned Intuition, that can do real wonders for you and ensure that you are able to overcome most of the times and continue to stay on course to your planned destination, may be with some unavoidable yet meaningful detours on the way!

Choose your route:  Experienced mariners and navigators have one thing in common, even if they rule two different realms of transport, they are experts when it comes to charting their course in their space! They know exactly when to cruise, when to slow down and when something is safe enough to take that risk or when it is wise to move around and take a longer path, if that ensures that they will reach the destination! Likewise when stuck by uncertainty and ambiguity, even though it may seem difficult and unclear at the beginning to chart a course or look ahead, once you start forcing your mind to seek direction from the clutter that it first seems to see, you will eventually start to get a sense of clarity and direction which will help chart the course which at some times could be as simple as what you decide to do tomorrow and at times can be a compelling detail about how you want to keep moving ahead.

Break the routine: The human brain is an amazing machine, yet it has it’s own lethargy, when it is presented with similar conditions over and over again and it tends to start assuming things and that can be dangerous– if you want to know what I am talking about- well just consider remembering these few things- how many lace-holes does your shoe have for the lace to pass through, or how many teeth do you think you have! Well the point that I want to make here is that, the brain gets easily bored with routine and then starts to play the game of assumption and these assumptions then start creating non existent demons, eventually leading to complete ignorance to real issues and not being able to dig deeper and see through what is being presented. A break from routine upsets the predictable pattern that the brain would have been tuned into and thereby helps it retain it’s optimum alertness levels as it normally should! This alert brain is vital as you strive to move around and over through turbulence!

Re-build yourself: As long as individuals stay invested in themselves, no matter how big the problem seems to be, they will always be able to find a way to overcome and keep going ahead! Re-building oneself is like carrying out that engine overhaul or that complete strip down maintenance of the building or your bungalow, where you remove all that is rusted, ain’t working and replace it with what you require moving ahead and what you possibly did not have as yet! Perhaps, new gadgets, tools equipment, areas so on and so forth, likewise when it comes to U, you will have to see what is holding you back and check what you can possibly do, to eliminate all that is working against you and holding you back and add up all that will help you! Certainly this is easier said then done and this has to be an ongoing exercise, irrespective how calm your journey appears to you at the moment! This re-building is all bout adding skills, wisdom, street smartness and components of perseverance in the new emerging contexts that you start to feel as you continue to move ahead.

Make your journey too a destination:Unknown to most if us, travel detours and turbulence are an opportunity to learn, practice and get familiar with something that we would have otherwise missed out. Having a mindset to explore every moment of the journey will do two things, firstly it will make every moment an unique destination unto itself and secondly the learning that comes to you through these moments will definitely come in handy as you keep navigating and charting the course of your life! Still unable to get this bit, well try and recall the last time you have  shared a chat or an idea with a stranger on your flight or on the train that you boarded, what kind of stories did you hear and what is the story that you shared;was that a learning and uplifting experience or was it counter productive. Like wise when mariners and aviators chart their course and when they do hit the rough odd patch, as they will some or the other time, they apply all their learnings to ensure they keep everyone safe and even as they come out of the odd space, they have yet learnt something new either about the problem or the way they handled it! This way the learning goes on and each of those moments becomes a captured moment- a destination unto itself!

Focus on what matters: Whether it is the theater of war or the scene at a fast paced workplace, with multiple things simultaneously developing and popping up with passing time, and the mind being fed with more and more information very second, the ability to take reasonable and rational decisions gets even more challenging and the only way to manage this and ensure that this clutter doesn’t fog your thinking is to stay focused on what really matters! You have to develop a dynamic approach to ensure that you receive the most critical and vital information that is relevant to the contextual moment of time that you are transiting, because one moment later that information in all probability will become redundant and you try to apply that content a bit earlier, chances are that a preemptive assumption may put you into a more grave situation and precipitate unthinkable complications for trying to rush through by assuming what is not there and what would have possibly never manifested! Timing is the essence here and staying focused on what really matters in the contextual moment of time is the key! Through your journey, you will be hit by an onslaught of information nuggets, some wise, some useless, your ability to judge and pick and choose at the right time will eventually determine the quality of your judgement and the resulting action will speak volumes of your success or missed chance in an equal measure!

Learn to “Let it go”: There will be times when you will have to simply let go of things, consider this, you are a pilot and flying into an airport and the weather near the destination airport has suddenly changed over the last 20 minutes and now there is no way that you can land- so what do you do- well nothing- but divert to your next secondary airport. Now in this case if you were to try to go against and execute a dangerous landing well, you would have landed with a certain degree of risk, but the cost of risk is too big to allow for someone to even try that! Many challenges and odd patches are similar that we face, whether it is the moment where you are supposed to speak up to you boss, your government or people in authority, what you need to understand is the singular fact that fighting battles and wars which have a pre-determined outcome is never a wise strategy!-Learning to choose and pick your battles is of utmost value and knowing when to Let off is even more valuable! The lesser the baggage you carry, lighter will be you journey moving ahead! 

Make your own lemonade: As the saying goes” When life gives you lemons, squeeze them and make your own lemonade” Your intrinsic ability to see a challenge clearly and knowing how to crush it completely to your advantage is of prime importance, fighting with the same problem over and over, eventually may make you fall in love with the problem and succumb to it- whatever that may be, but once you learn to deal with a challenge with intent, focus and a will to crush it completely once and for all, you will see how liberating that feeling is- when you know that you have possibly not only cleared away a threat permanently but also have created a strategy to deal with it if it ever resurfaces in the manner and the intensity with what it would have earlier fostered!

Believe: Believing in yourself perhaps is the one of the final things that i have on my list! The ability to have faith and self- belief is vital for one to be able to cover come challenges and turbulence and let me tell you this is not about misplaced optimism or a gung-ho macho approach, rather it is a deliberating and slow non glamorous approach which depends only and only on all the accumulated experience and wisdom that you would have gathered to make those critical decisions in a crisis which eventually ensures that you either live to narrate the story or go down in history with your final moments being constructed on the theories that come up based on circumstances! This belief within you must stay and remain- always- this is the only attribute which can either ensure you that you sustain and overcome the turbulence or loose out at the very end moment and end up vanquished even as success and victory was within your reach!

I leave you here, with these thoughts, for you to reflect and think what are the other things/ attributes that you can think of and which perhaps may be more relevant for you in the unique way that you approach world! As I said, this is not the “Know it all” and “Elixir of Success” this is merely a starting point to start getting collected and identify what are the aspects that help you and what are the things that harm you- so that the next time you hit that odd patch, you know exactly what to reply on, how much and what not to run after!

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

 

Staying sane through insane times!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Humanity, never disappoints! The moment you go to bed thinking all is fine with the world- No one is threatening anyone with a war, growth stories are being written around the nations- few true, few fictional ; the next morning, you wake up  to your living nightmare in the form of the news of a pandemic and worldwide economic melt down! Well, this article is more about trying to isolate the real problem from the apparent one (the perceived one) and try to ensure we stay sane and don’t get done by our own dumbness by keeping the reason and behavior blaming the virus aside for some time (unless of course you have tested positive!).

One of the ever perplexing issues with the human mind has been that, it always tries to rush into finding solutions to a challenge that is been put to it!- It simply wants to get that task done and relax! Well, this part is normal; the fun begins it, when it starts to operate the way it has been conditioned to operate by the person who is the owner of this wonder-machine- that is you! Going by the “Who the majority of us actually are!”(Irrespective what our social media handles projects who we want to be or we want to be perceived to be); The way we have programmed ourselves to think; by wanting to be or being at times, fast- quick- rational- irrational- impulsive- brash- well, these and many more decision types come in all colors and hues of the personality that we hold;  which again is another byproduct of the way we have conditioned our thinking! Well- wait- read this sentence again- don’t get confused- but that is a fact! More often then not our actions driven through our thought processes are nothing but an extension of our personality statements which have been conditioned by our brain- based on what we have fed into it as experiences- memories- shades of pleasantness, fear, disgust, avoidance and affection etc. etc! So how do we tame and learn to debug a mind that has the potential to run away with it’s own unfound areas of fear and gross disregard- which can actually make you history in no time!

To begin with, you can try a simple technique- Whenever you are presented with a scenario- try to evaluate and ascertain- what is expected out of you!– Whether you need to do something- if yes, are you supposed to lead someone or follow someone or be doing it all alone, what are options available- which is the one that offers the least harm to you (read risk mitigation) and finally going ahead with the chosen step! The irony here is- this kind of level headed and process oriented thinking needs space, peace and time to arrive at wise decisions- and normally when push comes to shove- normally we end up making bad quality decisions – which are a result of why we tend to be where we are in our lives! Many a times- the best decision is about doing nothing and just letting things be the way are- “There’s never a point trying to fix something that’s not broken!”

Another important thing to remember is to do a PRA (Personal Risk Assessment) whenever you are hit by uncertain situations- whether at home or at work- or in general wherever you are on the map of the world- doing whatever you choose to pursue! This PRA technique has to be simple and operational. This is something that you will have to design for yourself!- As I keep saying each one of us- is fundamentally a different being- we may be similar and aligned to common goals of larger good to humanity in many ways- but the way we can engage and contribute is a value of the Intrinsic ability that we have within us by virtue of many things that go on to make who we are! This ability to come up with a correct, consistent and accurate PRA on an ongoing basis for the small events and large unforeseen events largely determines how we ride the waves and ensure that our ship holds good in stormy weather and calm seas with equal ease! The ability to come up with a refined and good quality PRA, again loops back to how well our cognitive and thinking ability has evolved and what kind of sensible and critical data points we have shared with it to ensure the outputs that we get are actionable sane and safe enough!

Finally, using common-sense along with the supply of intelligence that you may have- is the last line of defence that you have in times of extreme pressure- like the one that we are facing right now!– At a time when the media seems to be in an overdrive- and everything around you seems to be sending out signals of things around failing and falling- It is your generous use of intelligence and common-sense alone which will help you stay away from unnecessary hysteria, melodrama and ensure you do not end up being victim or a contributor to mass hysteria (which more often then not is completely useless, unverified, unproven and unfound!). Make it a practice- to always weigh what you get as an information input- weigh it against the source from where it comes- weigh it for credibility- authority and validity-and finally do check if it really, genuinely makes a difference in your life! Even as we have the virus outbreak across all the nations unfolding- if you happen to be one of those astronauts right now aboard the International Space Station- it will do humanity a lot good if you remained focused on your experiments up there- 440 kms above us- rather then trying to dole out sympathetic verses or worrying about things- on which you have literally no control! The trick then is to control and manage what you can and ignore and leave out, what does not impact you and certainly what remains beyond your effective control!

I leave you with these thoughts for you to think and come up with your own little nuggets of wisdom and value, so that you ensure your safety and sanity and thereby ensure the mental health of others around you!

Ciao for now! Grab your drink, stay sane and stay safe!

 

 

The art of disrupting a disruption!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Hello there! I am sure not many people would be in a mood to seek introspection and dive deep within even as the world around “seems” to be caving in. The word here is “seems” and this quick piece is further to my last one- a step ahead if you like- to possibly fog out whatever ambiguity is remaining within our minds and stay glued towards the sensible way of making sense around the nonsense!

So, at this moment, possibly you too are among the many humans worldwide who have been disrupted, from what used to be an otherwise “structured routine”( irrespective of how fulfilling that was or how dumb your daily routine was), the simple fact that you have been thrown off guard and forced to comply with another routine makes that rebel in you to wake up- even as you remain unclear about what you are actually rebelling about and why! But once you have overcome this initial shock of being sent into a space of your discomfort! (if people think- work from home- is all joy and glory- well wait and watch as news starts to hit headlines across the world- how homes have found new challenges in dealing with never seen faces, attributes and behaviors of family members!), what follows is a wide space where you are equally lost as even your fellow mates are lost by seeing the sudden freedom and trust ushered in on you by the companies that you work for! Your brain is right now somewhere in this zone – “Why was I cribbing about my job for such a long time- see no supervisors- no meetings- no politics- plain freedom and what I say is being believed upon- even if I am binge watching the web series and having a house party!” Sooner or later once reality sets in, over the next two – three days or following weeks (depending on where you are right now on the world map)- you will for sure start getting those pesky mails- saying- “If I can reach and work- why can’t you”, “that strong mail from a client who wants to jump back and have the first advantage to be back in the saddle” or even more gloomier news that surely will follow-  people quitting, few  being asked to leave- and few others will simply vanish! (read incomprehensibility of the mind over the surroundings!). This stage then will be quickly replaced by a strobe light effect which will hold  anxiety at one end of the blip and boredom at the other! Now all of these or any of these will happen only  if you resign yourself to the fate of your disruption and allow it to dictate your future! The good news is there is a way to beat around this seemingly sluggish and clawing up menace and that is to disrupt what is disrupting you within the disruption!

What governments and organisations, fail to notice is that although, one public notice and one official email is all that it takes to change the way people are going about, the fact remains that we are reaching out to Individual human beings (who are a world unto themselves and micro ecosystems of responsibilities, planning and tact even at that micro level)!Well, at the macro level an organisation or a government may do it’s job by sending out that communication- but when you try to deep dive and see how the construct of every individual is the stories will be many and different with no common thread to fall back on except that dictate from the organisation! For few (if not all) being confined to their place of stay could be far more worse then being at office (reasons could be multiple- family elders being disrupted- health issues of family members- genuine paucity of space- ambiance – privacy- their accommodation are many grades down then their office premises- an issue of affordability, fear psychosis of being dis-connected- read dis-connected from office grapevine and  the ongoing maneuvers that have got left half cooked which can come back biting!) So how does an individual navigate this space and emerge with sanity intact more then anything else! well read on!

Among the many things, that one can do, limiting to the length of the blog, I will share with you a few simple aspects that I can think of and will emphatically urge you to find your heaven because, remember, no two of us are alike- each one of us- each of the 7.5 billion of us are different when it comes to our psychological frameworks and orientations! One way of disrupting a disruption is to analyse what is the element within the disruption is nagging you! The moment you seek that and address it- trust me half of your battle is already over! This can be known by knowing what keeps you ticking you and what ticks you off and the only person who can find this out- is U!– no one can do this for you! Next, once you have found out – what is helping and what is not helping you – keep focusing on what’s working for you as much as you can, so that you are able to nudge out the “not working elements” of disruption completely from your line of sight and top of mind thought placards! Consider this if you always wanted to finish reading that favorite book (which you long wanted to and did not have time to finish it), seize this opportunity and go for it, and every now and then as those thought placards start to pop  up(which reflect your anxiety, concern, worry about being isolated, or when your mind tries to drag into playing futuristic role plays of what happens next); use this book reading time more and more so that your mind knows that “this reading of the book” is the “new assigned task” and this will automatically stop the diversionary tricks that draw your mind into the endless chaos of ambiguity! Well, this was just a plain example and each one of us can find our own safe haven and island of calm- even as others tend to struggle around the chaos with clouds of ambiguity and smoking high on their own unfound fears! 

Once you begin to take charge and effect change for yourself – for who you are- through a directed and sustained effort; irrespective of the times- whether they are disrupted or not- things will never remained fogged out for your vision!

I leave you with these thoughts- Embrace disruptions and use them to Your advantage! Will be back soon with another piece, until then take care and stay safe!

The isolation advantage!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Well, in the context of what’s happening around the world, for now, “isolation”, may be the only word that is so respected  and feared at the same time! So even as nations battle it out there using all the tricks that they have in their book- one common thread on all this happens to be “keeping distance” and “isolation” as much as possible- well certainly that’s the way and perhaps the only way to fight contagious diseases from spreading (we learnt this as students of grade four, I guess), until we have the vaccines in place. But still what’s important to observe and study is how the human mind is coping up with or loosing it, as social interactions are restricted and at times when Isolation becomes the norm! This is about knowing how amazingly we the see the best and hope even in the darkest and most trying times! So here we go!

We all know about humans being “social animals” and have learned this at school (and even if we have not been to any), through the mere fact that we are related and would have a dozen of first cousins and over two dozens of second level relations, merely reflects how human society has evolved through the last three centuries! As the promise of resources (read food, water, shelter and safety) grew over the last three centuries, humans have resigned themselves to the comfort of community support for all situations good and bad– whether it is a community fun fare, marriages in the little town tucked away far from the city, political representation (unless you are yet being ruled by kings/ autocrats) or it is about saving lives in face of natural calamities and being there for one another when disaster strikes! This is more or less how we have always been and this is how it is supposed to be – irrespective of all the differences of ideologies and pressures acquired by a society by virtue of the urge to control and dictate- this fundamental thread of being able to look out for one another for good and bad and expecting nothing in return ( and you always thought only animals are wired like this!).It has always been so and it is again, we humans who have from time to time either ignored this or played even this to our advantages!

Looping back to the times that we are experiencing right now, the induced isolation, through self-quarantines and medical quarantine worldwide to protect ourselves and the ones around is throwing up some strange strategies to cope with this new dictate of the ruling governments! There are some communities which even under lock-down situations have managed to connect through human voice and music (even as they stay isolated), there are yet who have possibly sought refuge to engage and interact online, so that they feel and stay connected, yet others roam about as if nothing happened ( and these are the gifted ones’ who have always remained in self- imposed quarantine either because of their lengthened intelligence or completely extinguished cognitive ability- either ways it’s helping the world for now! More strange have been those instances where few- really handful few- who have mustered the courage to escape and run away form quarantined zones! So what are all these behavioral attributes saying about us and the human mind! What are we now evolving into as we face and overcome this global menace which is requiring us to manage social distance and be unto ourselves- how will this help or harm the future of our societies?

Human brain seeks companionship and that’s how it is hard-wired – you may be the most eclectic of yogi’s or saint’s seeking divine bliss- but even for you to tell the world that you have attained it- you will still need someone to speak to about it! So when you put people in completely unnatural situations- the first involuntary reaction is of disbelief- “No this can’t be happening- not to me- the medical guys have made a mistake- they are idiots- It can’t be”, this is followed by a quick realization of the next point- “well what if they are right and I am not taken care of – I may not exist and I may be well on my way out of the planet and the end up being a statistical number!- This powerful thought then overcomes the initial disbelief and shock making co-operation possible and then resigning oneself to the orders from perfect strangers who call themselves whoever they are-doctors, paramedics, you name it – The simple promise that you will be fine and safe by doing what we say- is such a powerful statement that almost 99% people will comply and pay heed to what these strangers are saying(In different context of history though- read dictators- it is exactly a similar response that has ended up having more people killed then cured!).The remaining 1%, well yes they do exit and these are the one’s who will end up doing eccentric stuff- running away, not following rules, not taking medicines, playing dumb- intentionally and unintentionally- they do this not because they want to – but simply the situation has become so overwhelming to their minds that they no longer can cope with it and hence neither have a trusting bias or a doubting bias (if you have one of these biases you can be managed and cured by developing an alternative narrative- but when you keep switching fast between the narratives- you end up becoming a living nightmare for the world – far worse then the battles against a virus! So what’s the way ahead and how do we make most of a situation which gets labelled as “Isolation”

One way, is to change the narrative from the word itself-instead of calling it Isolation- Call it “Time for personal investment”- a time to invest into yourself – to develop your personal strengths, learn to do away with your fears (demons in your head) and your weaknesses, a time to pursue something your daily routine and rush of life kept you away from (as long as it can be pursued within the confines of being isolated- I am not suggesting someone to pick up a guitar and arrange for live concert- rather pick it up and upload a video online!). This “Me time” can be used to assess your priorities in light of the new vulnerabilities that the world is bring to you- maybe you need to move to a new place- maybe you need to reassess the job you do – maybe you need to learn how to be strong and focused by yourself to keep you safe and maybe its time for you to realize that “Life cant and should not be taken for granted”! Once we flip our view of isolation and start to fill it with the books we needed to read, the films that we wanted to watch, the chats that we wanted to have with our friends, the peace that we would have wanted to hold within or as simple as the afternoon nap that you wanted to have in so many years- just seek what was amiss from your busy life and let this curse of isolation be turned into a blessing in disguise and use it to your advantage so that we the crisis is finally over and you emerge- you emerge as a person changed for good – who now values each moment of life in a more meaningful and mindful way- and possibly by then you know what wise issues you should engage with and when you should walk way from what doesn’t make you feel enriched and a better person!

I leave you with these thoughts on a Monday, wherever you are reading this, no matter how isolated you are, now you know how to make isolation work for you! Remember it is not the Isolation that hurts, it is the fear of missed opportunities and lack of connect that troubles us- because we tend to have a fear of missing out the social beacons (which we normally  use as our glide path as we navigate around society!). Once you have reached deep within yourself and re-assessed your priorities- thanks to the available time through isolation- you will no longer be in search of beacons and will most probably end up being a light house for others in the society to follow!

Ciao for now, grab that drink and stay wise! Run wild  with your thoughts and imagination and pursue your dreams- for this is the time to build upon your strengths, dreams and ideas and these will come alive eventually as you sustain and their time arrives!