Tag: wise living

Making sense through shifting narratives.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

What a year it has been! A lot of us would be glad that the year is drawing to a close, albeit even as each one of us pauses for a few moments to check our losses and come to terms with the collateral damage that we have all got into; even as we do so, we are staring with confidence and doubt, anxiety and hope into the new year that seems to be a few days ahead, yet seems to be so far away! Join me here for a short trip, to know, why I went silent for over a month, what is it with the shifting narratives and finally, what is that you and I can do, to stay sane, even as we race full speed ahead another seemingly fogged out welcome to yet another new year! So let’s roll…

If 2020 was about all the crying, wailing and screaming about a new virus- accidental or intentional, 2021 was all about allowing “Vulturism” to take centre stage! 2021 was dotted with ample instances of shifting narratives- be it the pandemic itself, the conflicting stories about the vaccines, their efficacy, politics, business corrections and what not! Every few weeks, our online screens have been successful in diverting our attention from one “so called matter of life and death” to another, every few weeks, you and I were told, “If we didn’t get it right and if we missed what was been told, we won’t live to see the end of the year” Sadly for these folks, you and I are still here and the bad news around this is, so are they and their factories that churn out these dumb shifting narratives! So you may, by now want to understand, what is that you and I can do about it and is there anything that we can really implement- even at a personal level to regain our lost sanity and basic attributes of humanity- well yes, we can do a lot, bit by bit, even as the mad circus on town gets played over and over again even through 2022, simply by choosing not to walk into that lane leading to the circus! So how do we do it? Well here we go!

To begin with, create your personal sovereign space- both physical and intellectual- this is like drawing lines which are non-negotiable and defined to ensure your physical and mental well-being is never compromised.To do this effectively, you need to come up with clear plans about knowing who your sources are and how credible they are- whether they ask you to take the next jab, the next pill or even about moving your house or exploring a new job, only once you have secured the first line of Influence that can alter or modify your decisions sufficiently and weighed them practically for their accuracy and neutrality- will you be able to have access to quality knowledge/ information and it is only when you have authentic and neutral information that you will always be able to come up with empowering decisions! May seem difficult to do, sure it is, good things and great events are never easy, only disasters and accidents happen fast and quick!

Once you begin to treat yourself like a sovereign nation and take the onus of a protecting your well being, trust me you will see a lot of unwanted noise getting filtered away in no time! The next thing is about knowing what you want to do with the information that you have! The world is constantly shifting- that is one side of the story, the other more not so visible side of the story is- what part and how much of meaningful change is brought to your notice or is available for your to decipher and what is really important and hidden away (either intentionally or otherwise!). This is another important aspect that adds fuel to the fire of shifting narratives! You go to bed, happy about your investment portfolio only to wake up the next day morning to realise you have lost 30% of value simply because some shit hit the roof in some Asian market- which you probably have never even heard about! Have your ever noticed, no matter how high or low markets hit- the companies listed always are safer then the retail investors who almost always have their wealth eroded after a finite time, in one way or the other! Sure, people do make gains, make profits and also earn millions- but, for that to manifest there’s always more then meets the eye playing out right in your blind spot! It is imperative that one needs to have or rather develop a great skill to sieve through meaningful context to decipher what’s missing rather then what’s available- for the missing links almost always set the tome for the next unexpected hair-pin bend on the road to your success!

Know the distraction, demonstrate acceptance to deviate and deflect! You see, whether it is the politicians, the screens that keep blaring information/ content at you, all of them are doing so with an intent and purpose and as long as you keep visibly defying them by word or action, they will just keep coming at you with all the power that they have or have grabbed and keep hammering away what they want you to accept/agree (at least until they are sure you have done so!) So, if you want to stop that unending onslaught, go back to your childhood days and deploy that ace trick- say yes and do nothing and keep repeating that in a loop, and that’s something for which there’s no answer!

As the world moves ahead to change calendar years, the upcoming years are going to be anything but ordinary or reassuring! What 2020 has shown is that nations will go to any extent to alter the course of human progress and that they will take any risk to alter the global power equations! No one will accept, neither will anyone be ever able to conclusively decipher whether the whole act of the setting off the pandemic was accidental or intentional- but one thing that has certainly emerged from this episode is that, nations can get away with mass murder- if they plan and deploy those strategies with finesse and a soft art of fluid diplomacy which swings between extremes of softness and borders on the edge of war mongering! No, this is not about fear mongering or about selling a possible doomsday story, but it is about encouraging you to think on the pivot of your intelligence and common-sense to decipher what;s hidden in your plain sight on an ongoing basis- for that alone is the only hope and way to stay clear of shifting narratives which show no signs of abetting in then near future as humanity keeps it’s onward march in pursuits of progress (or is it something else disguised within the definition of the word progress- think! you will know!)

I leave you with these thoughts for now, will be back with another one soon and yes a promise to keep, you will see more frequent and more varied topics coming up as we journey through 2022!

Stay safe, stay wise and decipher what’s hidden in plain sight!

PS: Beginning 2022, one-on-one coaching/counseling calls will be available through zoom! For more details please feel free to write to me at parimal.aluri@simplifylives.com

The problem with “Problem”.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ 1 Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be the person you seek!

~ Parimal Aluri ~ 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.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ 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!

Be an Artist!

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Know your buffet!

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Courage Collective.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Leadership Quotient.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why Simple is so Complex!

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fight Fear with Fear.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why Inspiration and Motivation stalls.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Score through moving goal posts.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ 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!

Empty your bag!

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The story about choices.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ 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!

Buried by memories.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Patterns are everywhere.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Avoid the pandemic of errors.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

As the world begins to open up once again, we will be served front row seats to the ingenuity and dumbness of humanity is equal measure! The only worrisome part being that dumbness looks funny as long as it does not hit you hard and where it hurts the most! Join me here as we take a look at what is this pandemic of errors all about and can we do something about it and yes, what is it that we can do?

Irrespective of where you are in the world the chances are that you would by now completed around 150+ days either working from the dis-comfort of your home or you would have been waging a war with the limited resources available at your work place (you included) and to all of this add a top layer of diminishing intelligence on an hourly basis!– Well we have just got setting up ourselves for untold misery- and whether this misery translates into 2$ getting debited form your bank or a few millions wiped off– really depends on bad is your karmic debt! So what is really unfolding here? Why would suddenly a functional and orchestrated society falter and run into a myriad of errors and operations take a beating? Well read on!

As trainers, managers, practitioners of human resource management, behaviorist we have all heard about the theories about habits been formed and destroyed over a period of 21 days (some agree and few disagree), the placebo effect and so on and so forth. The whole Covid19 onset and the unwitting response mechanism has virtually ended up playing havoc with our brains (leave the mind out for now!) causing physiological alteration leading to health issues which extrapolate into behavioral problems with time and few of them could manifest like loosing the span of attention, hyper anxiety and so on and so forth! Not to forget these broad generic indications are further amplifies or subdued based on intrinsic traits of individuals and when you end up having a bunch of wrong individuals with a developing problem- it within no time will blow up into a society wide degeneration and read to all that one doesn’t want to see unfold in any neighborhood! Yes, those dark alleys from where normally we never wish to pass by- talk about crimes pertaining to physical harm, scams and allied manifestations which are nothing but an indication that the society has got consumed by the problem and rather then finding the path ahead or a solution, resigns itself to ways that serve the Now rather than the Tomorrow! Let me explain!

The chances are that by now, you too would have felt the change coming into your patterns of approaching people and issues that come your way. You would have perhaps noticed that you don’t speak that much now, your choice of words has reduced, perhaps your answers are more crisp, more in one liners and possibly also as single words, chances are that we you do speak- you seem like you are never going to stop! By now you would have also started to think about whatever happened to those two hour long meetings, why and how are the meetings for the same cause been wrapped in under 30 minutes! If these evolving patterns within your work areas were not enough just reflect on the experience that you are getting as you walk into restaurants, stores, dial into call centre agents, across the board you will see a common pattern emerging- the pattern of falling and failing quality of conversations, commitments and engagement! This seems fine as long as it deals with these vocations that I mentioned, but think about like in the case of the banks, aviation, armed services, political class, bureaucracy- these are the sections of societies for any nation that alter and direct policy and if these sectors begin to witness rampant failure and collapse of systems – people and process- you can imagine the outcomes! Already the world has seen multiple incidents of industrial fire accidents– like in India, in Beirut, the recent Oil spill near Mauritius– Somewhere this failing engagement of people is certainly a contributory factor in these and many other such incidents and that’s why it becomes very crucial to correct and stem this issue right now! So how do we go about this before this behavioral trait assumes some chronic proportions and suddenly we start to live in a society where erring becomes the new normal (like living with the Virus has become one!)? Read on!

When societies are hit hard by, what I call this a Sledge-Hammer event or episode- say like a building collapse, a terror attack or a war- the initial reaction of the society as a whole is to freeze and individuals within the society race to secure what they can as they can based on who and where they are in the social scheme of things! Next, as the initial shock is absorbed, people start to emerge and check what can be salvaged and what can be re-started and operated and what can’t be-In case of the pandemic of this virus- this empowerment unfortunately went into the hands of the governments- and needless to say- based on their acquired level of incompetence- many of them ended up complicating an already fragile situation and the whole world ended up being plunged into an economic melt down from a health crisis and the best part- none of them were solved! It is against this backdrop that as people begin to gain their connections back through work with other people- they are greerted by surprise- albeit an unwanted one- the same people who seemed to be compassionate and warm are now suddenly cold and blunt (if not rude) as yet! Speaking about compassion well that’s on thin ice right now, across the world!

So as people begin to re-connect with an already compromised social setting coupled with rapidly diminishing competence (as in many cases the way of working would have altered and the new way may not be suiting everyone equally!), as a society we are yet again setting up for another disaster on the making! Poor listening, poorer cognition and analytical ability and a colored contextual setting will only create more forced errors than anything else and that will translate into losses of unimaginable magnitude putting at times even nations at risk, not to forget people and their lives! Solution to stop this?

Well, start at the start go back to the basics! As it is a human problem, trust the specialists who deal or have been at the helm of dealing with human behavior. These folks and the HR specialists are the ones’ who can make a difference between an organisation thriving or diving as things begin to heat up! For their intervention and sensing of the state of mind of their employees alone will ensure that their organisation is as error free as humanly possible and when this approach is replicated across the board, a society is safeguarded and trust is put back into the whole space (earlier then one would have thought)! If there was ever a time when HR was vital and critical for organisations, it is now! Perhaps there has been no better time across the globe for people to seek People specialist to safeguard individual sanity and protect business interest which cumulatively run into billions of dollars the world over and that is what keeps the world moving, apart form astronomical factors! So how does one go about it?

Start at an individual level, perform an HR audit of yourself- seek what has improved and what has lost its shine- see what you need to get it back and then stay around that focus area and keep walking ahead. When teams come into picture, it is vital to know what each member of the team has been through- the personal cost- and how that may alter re-engagement patterns within the team knowing the construct of the team and the individual temperaments in the team, solutions like re-shuffling of teams, re-jig, breaking down, disbanding, or creating anew- all and any of these strategies could be deployed to ensure that personal hues don’t end up coloring a team intent and goal which in these times of hard to come business is that last thing that any organisation will need! Finally once the Individuals are aligned and the team is, its all about refining the top of the pyramid- the people- the process- the goals and the paraphernalia associated with that space. This whole exercise then goes a long way to eject errors- both people and process related, stem them across levels and ensure that as the re-engagement continues to build within the organisation and externally- the trust element is reached at earlier levels quickly and then the pandemic discussions really are left restricted only to that up of tea and all other engagements and conversations get aligned to business challenges and solutions therein!

Although this “pandemic of errors” statement looks comical and innocent, don’t be fooled by the grave risk that it brings along to each one of us and societies across the world- irrespective how progressed we are! It just takes the grave error of misjudgment of one person to bring an airliner down or one piece of miscommunication to start a brisk war between nations or just one misunderstanding to turn tables of a political tide and thats how errors can end up doing some serious damage! These forced errors, sure enough arise from different challenges that individuals face- and there are certain ways and means to address those and people have been doing that all the time- so I will not get into the details of those aspects here, the only flag that I wanted to raise through this piece was that, All is not well in the Human Fairyland and all of us need to be looking over the shoulder of the next person around us – not because you don’t trust that person- but simply because that person is probably too self-consumed and fatigued to even know what’s unfolding and his intentional or unintentional act will end up having consequences for you- at times they may end up being more damaging for you than the person who sets it off! You may call this a prophecy or call it an anxious rant, but the truth is that the current hard stop that the world got sold into, will cause more damage over the next 18 months, unless we are genuinely looking over each other!

I leave your here, for now, take some time to reflect and sieve through the errors that you think are lurking around and within you and get into the proactive pest control mode now to have a peaceful time ahead!

Ciao for now! Stay wise and stay connected! Guys subscribe here and to my page on FB so that you don’t miss any article!

The life of ideas.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

With over 7.5 billion of us around, every second there is a thought, an idea coming to birth and dying away somewhere around this planet! This article tries to look into what makes ideas stick, what makes them fizzle away and why some never see the light of the day and importantly why like with everything else, its not about how many ideas but rather, what’s THE Idea, that always goes on to make the difference! So here we go!

As humans, even when as we come to this world as a fragile bundle of soft and hard parts, that wonderful hard wiring of nature- called curiosity kicks in much before we begin to connect and make real sense of the people and objects around us. The initial formative years are where all the difference is created- between genius innovators and smart innovators and day dreamers! Someone rightly said this, we are all born intelligent and smart, it’s the education (really speaking the quality of education) and the social framework that ruins our potential and with that our ideas and the intrinsic ability to ideate! Certainly I am not suggesting that education is bad or under-serving- the real issue is that much of today’s education is directed at asking individuals to think in a particular way (which serves the immediate social context!) rather than simply helping them to master the process of creative thinking! Like the great philosophers have said earlier, real teachers and masters never ask their student what to see- rather they tell them where to look- what they find, interpret, infer after seeing what they do see, is what creates that differentiation between the power of individual minds to be either awesome, rich or average! Anatomically speaking we can’t be comparing about our brains more than what we can about our complexion or natural color of our eyes or hair, what matters is irrespective of what we are endowed with, how well is that we end up using what we have rather than cribbing about what we don’t have (in many cases its good that we have what we have!) Knowing this background of competing complexities, its really a wonder that humanity has been able to come up with clutter breaking innovative thoughts, ideas and implement them and contribute to the progress which has git us to the point where we are today! Not to forget, behind every success story of an idea, are hidden hundreds, if not thousands of stories of failures and second best solutions which never saw the light of the day, simply because, when it comes to ideas-during a bygone time of our history- it was about- who arrived first and now it’s about who markets it the first! Needless to say, behind every celebrated innovator, are hidden in the closet, skeletons of hundreds of equally intelligent and wise souls- who simply were failed not because of anything to do with their idea- but the simple essence of timing- being there in that moment of time, place and audience- when it mattered the most! So where does the journey of an idea begin really? How does it unfold and what is there for us to learn and unlearn about it? Read on..

Human curiosity when given the right contextual settings rewards us back with an amazing result, ingenuity and the ability to come up with complex or simple solutions that provide relief to some pressing challenges which are in front of us! As long as the immediate surroundings are conducive, receptive and eager to adapt the idea into their fold- as a society or a nation- the idea will live to see the light of the day, then what follows the story of its extent of success is more to do with the quality and the content of the idea- how much meat that idea has intrinsically within and how much is that really dependent on the original ideator! Let me explain this! We have all now about the great surgeon in our country who changed the face of some surgical method and thereby made it easy for everyone to access and get healed! Well now since this technique is perfected by that particular individual, needless to say, as long as he stays there, it works, even if he were to train others, there is never a guarantee that they will be as good as he is or if they will continue to remain as economical and accessible as this person was! So you see, in this case this great idea will only as long as this person is there and with his going away, the context of that idea will never remain what the original thought would have been behind it! This is a classical example wherein the idea remains as the sovereign domain of the Ideator!- Nothing good or bad about it- it’s just that some ideas are supposed to stay this way as far as their lifespan is concerned! Great artistes, innovators, designers, engineers- virtually everyone whoever came up with a creative genius of an idea which could be done and executed in a specific manner- always ensured that the idea had a limited shelf life- albeit the lifetime of the original ideator!

Next, we have those moments in history where the opportunities were out there hidden in plain sight and all it took was some casual or directed observation of an individual to create a rage and a new order or etiquette within societies to adapt and move on with a new lifestyle. This is the domain of ideation wherein the birth of the idea has largely been to facilitate ease of living for humanity and all it takes is one person to observe carefully and plan out a way around the problem! Recent examples the drones that come to drop off your shopping bags, the hailing apps to get a cab or a transport, sure enough that online shopping portal- which has simply gone ahead to make our lives easy and expensive! Well, if you have a closer look to all these modern day, application driven or rather technology based ideas that have made ease of living a possibility- one thing is common that is- they are empowering, simplified, well designed end-to-end (else they would not stand a chance for a day) and they are salable, reproducible and no one is ever complaining about the format or the scheme of the model being replicated- because it just goes to add to the reinforcement power of the original idea and thereby ensures that people stay glued to this space- Basically as more and more people tend to emulate- more and more people start to believe this is the right way and tight thing to do- so these are those ideas which alter lifestyle sand bring about change, sure enough they come with their own costs and banes- which we will discuss some other time!

Finally, the space of that club of ideas, which I call them as milestones in humanity which changed the equation for us to advance further like never before! These are those ideas which come through the mind of a genius but then have to be carefully crafted, worked and developed on an ongoing basis to ensure that ideas stays in-sync with the time and continues to serve the purpose that it has been created for! Very often, this is the space of ideas that come from the areas of pure scientific research and applications that go on to work in various areas of our society from thereon! There are multitudes of industries where you can find these ideas, that exist and thrive- whether its the aviation sector, the weathermen around the world, the medicines and medical devices that keep you alive longer than you actually should be around, that technology of drip irrigation which enabled deserts to bloom, the whole concept of renewable power and integrated electronics, so on and so forth, many such- All these are what I call as great ideas that came from one mind but through collaboration, creativity and openness became better and better with time and today our world seems to be a better place largely because of these collaborative ideas that live their own life alongside us- simply refusing to go away in majority of the cases these have been iconic and a blessing; but in a few rare cases these have been colossal disasters and are as yet a looming danger on our head- yes, you guessed it right that troubled double edged sword of the connected world through social media and all that snoopy surveillance that goes along through the gadgets that we use (or at times abuse, should I say) that led to this unwanted and unwelcome development- which also has ended up sticking around with us!

To give it a kind of sense, an idea whose time has come, is perhaps the most potent force, the reality of that fact although remains within the confines of the contexts where that idea is going to be deployed and how far or how deep it serves of impacts societies! An idea, in some cases as we saw, lives as long as it’s creator lives, in a few other cases, that idea which has been crafted stays much longer even after the creator has gone away- like a gleaming monument testimony to human intellectual finesse and in yet other cases, the idea simply breathes through us and lives alongside us- with every push of a button, there’s an automated idea algorithm already shaping the future of that application that you hold today or that purchase you did today and with every action, engagement, and disengagement we are creating and contributing to the ideas of tomorrow which will either ending up serving us the way we want them to or end up altering our approach and behaviors and make us behave the way the ideas want us to! If you ever wanted to get spooked by living in an era of runway idea and ideas created by machines- well we are already into it and at the moment wading through knee deep waters and with time, we will learn to swim and dive or drown away depending upon whether we adapt or ignore!

I will leave you here, for now; do take a pause to reflect on the idea that either you are working upon or shaping and think for a moment what its is all about and whether you are altering it or you are being altered by it, for that alone will define the future of humanity and decide whether we are able to guard our innate curiosity to be ever more enterprising and ingenious or we surrender to technology to come up with predictable scenarios of the future with needless to say predictable outcomes and pathways!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another article, until then stay wise, think, ideate and live that idea!

Guard your intelligence.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

Waking up every day to some next level of crap seems like has become the new normal in the times that live in! Even in times of global pandemic societies the world over have been blessed to witness arson, rioting and looting for one reason or the other. If this political and social unrest is not enough, we have the never ending surprises springing up at the workplace that we are yet engaged with or we were engaged with! Whether it’s the uncertainty of the next paycheck, or the heavily laced work environments as each person tries to protect their turf and survive the job cuts and pay adjustments as much and as far as possible- Every sense and sensibility seems to have been thrown right out of the window and people are now, more than ever before in the recent history of humanity are reacting and reacting to situation as they evolve rather than proactively altering the narrative and responding to what emerges! Join me here as we try to understand what the real stories are behind the ones that get played out and is there anything that one can do in these contextual time warps to guard their intelligence and sustain their sanity! So here we go!

So, to begin with what does your mormal day seem to be like- well chances are you are waking up to that piece of aggregated advertorial- which some refer as newspaper- where the headlines are nothing more than a well curated orchestra of the collusion between the politicians of the day and the business that owns that piece of information thrown in front of your doorstep. Depending on who has how many such pamphlets are thrown public opinion is been swayed and directed to think in a particular manner about a certain topic and this is where the real game begins! If that was not enough- you have other avenues of intrusion that come into your life- that post on a social media handle, that craze for the likes you want to garner, or that comment which either puts you on cloud 9 or throws you into the abyss which either calls you to start with a smoke or start getting worked up for no real sense of reason! Add to this the real or created challenges at the workplace where you are possibly still hanging around by a thread or the business that your struggling to keep afloat! Politics, corporate bitching, undercutting, changing polarities, missing common sense and that rare arrival of intelligence among all this noise- sure seems to be too much to be handled by an individual for even one day! Well, the fact is that we actually ending up whiling away our whole lives doing this same thing or variations of these day in and day out and seldom realize what we have really achieved in the sense of the word called achievement and what we have really missed- missed as in something that web should have been anchored to and which we have lost never to get back! To all of this when you add that penultimate layer of your inner circle of your family and friends- well that is almost all about it and beyond this point you are already drowned enough, at times even forgetting to breathe for yourself to ensure that you stay alive! So what’s this chaos and noise all about, which simply doesn’t seem to go away and the more we try to fix it, it ends up fixing us and our approach to it and life in a way that we even forget what we had set out to do!

This, my friend is the modern day warfare of information which attacks, continuously and repeatedly your mind and more importantly your intelligence! You see, knowledge is about knowing what has already happened and all the entirety around it- What helps humans to keep progressing ahead and moving ahead is Intelligence- Intelligence which uses, Knowledge coupled with experience to create a pathway using ingenious ways to secure a pint in the future which moves away from the problems of yesterday and today as we see them emerge and dissipate and at tims compete around us all the time! Once Intelligence is attacked it is the proverbial death sentence to our very existences- because then we are no longer thinking and feeling humans- we are rather directed biomechanical units which perform what is expected of us by the people who have the power to have that done from us- this is that dangerous place where the top 1% control, strategise and direct humanity to perform and execute what works for them! Think about it a planet with over 7.5 billion souls all controlled and directed by a few thousand people- politicians, businesses, technocrats, innovators, authors,mercenaries, spiritual gurus- there is virtually almost one representative from every imaginable sector that you can think of who are part of this elitist of the elite club that wants to reduce humanity to cyborgs and biomechanical machines who think less and feel nothing and this is why the very critical need to guard your intelligence so that you don’t end up being the next victim in this scheme of things! Don’t trust or find it hard to believe- well live you life and tell me ten years later- if thats’ the way you think it works! Being a scientist, I can tell you one thing, you don’t have to burn your finger to know if the water is bling or not and this is what separates people who guard their Intelligence and those who outsource it! So why does this occur and is there a way around, through or over it? Well read on!

As societies evolved we have had different ages or definitions of power, there was a classical ancient time when knowledge was power and the ones’ who had it, manipulated and directed kingdoms and empires to their whims and fancies at times for the greater good and at times leading them to catastrophic disasters especially when a layer of human greed and the aspects of cardinal sins was applied around that! We then had a period of medieval history and recent modern history which saw the maturity of kingdoms and nations as governance matured and innovators and scientists arrived at the scene as new age heros and they were hailed and nations/kingdoms who had more of them invariably saw more progress and development and this has been the foundation of the last century and this is what has lead us to where we are now in this moment! If there has been any singular common thread running through the centuries, it has been the fact that each time humanity has worked cohesively for the greater good of society the society or nation has thrived and made great progress benefiting every person associated with that network! Each time the efforts have been subverted, sabotaged owing to greed of a few in those very societies we have seen downfall and misery arising again and again and all the negative aspects of humanity, whether that be wars, famines, capitalistic greed, political and social unrests all of these and many such challenging connotations of society have made their presence felt and very often robbed away those societies of all the progress that they would have done in the last few decades! Now the question you may want to ask is, why do supposedly intelligent sections of the society fall into this kind of unsettling trap? Well as statisticians say, numbers are very funny, once you learn how to play around with them, you can have 1 being greater than 2 depending on where the decimal lies and where the zeroes fall!

Once people let their guard down and start to consume everything that they see, read, hear or are spoken about as true and fail to apply common-sense and science to verify and test the veracity of the claims, individuals and societies set themselves up for their downfall by shutting down their ability to think! This is why you must guard your intelligence, because intelligence alone is what gives the potent power to analyse, debate and critically test everything and anything that is presented and this is why people who are locked into the prison of their knowledge seldom shake hands with intelligence- as they are trapped in the times bygone which hardly have any or have a rapidly losing contextual relevance to the present moment and for those yet to arrive!

Sections of societies, that elite group knows this fact quite well and hence the war of the narratives– eternal and evergoing- where they want to create issues where none exist,want to sweep away what needs to be addressed and all this done- with a single purpose- to direct your thinking to the way that suits their agenda and purpose and unwittingly people succumb to this and before you realise it, you have diminished your ability to think afresh, anew or be innovative and than are permanently resigned to the instructions and apparent guidance by these very 1% lords that hold the power to sway individuals and societies the way they wish to! So if this is that bad, is there a way around it, can individual make a difference? What’s the path ahead? Read on!

The most assuring part of intelligence is that it is there- it’s about whether you use it or not! So it’s like that electricity supply which is always on and you need to flip that switch to access the light you need to or that AC that you want, but the whole point here is that there has to be an effort made to flip that switch! Flipping the switch and the right one is the essence of using intelligence sparingly like salt is to food to create magic and outcomes that have the promise for the masses and serve the greater good rather than becoming a self-centric exercise! This intrinsic power of intelligence is what is feared by the 1% club and hence the ever aggressive race to create smokescreens and false narratives to try and blind out intelligence! So where and how do we begin?

The easiest and the the perhaps the right place is to begin with you- beginning with oneself- as the foundation – as an aspect of self-awareness and knowing well what serves you and what doesn’t- is the first step to ensure that your immediate circle remains free of unwanted garbage, clutter and nonsense that can creep in- under the guise of “critical or breaking news”. Once you have sanitised your immediate area- you have ample space to think, deliberate, maneuver and progress at a pace, time and path chosen by you- yes you alone and that is what makes the whole difference between being a leader/clutter breaking individual or a follower and part of the masses! Once you have secured his inner space, the next step and perhaps equally important one is about building gates that check and recheck what’s been allowed into your clean zone, ideas, people, opportunities, thoughts, everything and anything- because like a virus on the prowl, one bad entity is enough to unleash a cascade of unfortunate events which can bring down even the most intelligent of people, ideas and opportunities! I will stop short of getting into details of how we do it and what steps does it entail, because each one of us is unique – as unique we can be and our contextual truths of life are perhaps stranger than fiction and that’s where the opportunity too lies to defeat and win over the 1% elite club- by creating distractions and moves banking on our intrinsic intelligence to help us achieve what serves the greater good for us and the society around us! This, my friend is the essence of guarding deploying our intelligence, no matter what the pressure we face or what the odds that we face!

I will leave your here with these thoughts, urging you to take a moment to notice what’s driving you- rather what is that you are driving you life through or are you getting driven around! Wisdom lies in deciphering Knowledge from Intelligence and applying Intelligence to make knowledge work for your present and future and not allowing Knowledge to entrap your intelligence to the bygone eras!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another article, Until then stay wise, knowledgeable and intelligent and yes, don’t consume all that comes your way- remember -even the virus got sent!

Practise the Pause.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ 7 Comments

We are all but prisoners of our own doings and undoings! The times that we live in, even after the abrupt brakes that the global pandemic has applied to our routines, a majority of us still want to rush right back to the “earlier times” and in all that hurry, the world seems to be cutting corners with everything that’s related to bring about that erstwhile sense of normalcy! Whether it’s about the new vaccines that are been developed, the medicines been given or the new so called adapted way of the working that corporates are hinging upon- these and many more such developments all around us display the one common thread- The Inertia to Practise the Pause, which will end up setting us up for even more complications tomorrow for uncomplicated scenarios of today! Join me here as we try to make sense about the value of this simple approach and why it matters now more than ever before!

As humans, we are slaves of curiosity! This has been the holy grail for all the development and all the accidents that humanity has ever witnessed! As individuals and societies we have been hard-wired to observe, reflect and simplify everything around us so that it creates an ease of existence for us- whether it’s automation, development across various sciences that make our suffering lesser and create more value to our lives or whether it’s about the plethora of gadgets and technologies that impact us every second-all of these, in fact most of these are a reflection of human genius and restlessness with regards to making life easier, though not simpler anymore! and this is that fleeting moment where the “pause” lives which often gets trampled upon and ignored on an ongoing basis- the result- is the world that we have around us!

Over the last 200 odd years the rush of humanity to create value and ease of life driven societies, has brought in some amazing breakthroughs which few times have put us in direct conflict either with nature or amongst ourselves as societies and nations! This further deepens the crisis as this international competition only ends up creating more imbalances and thereby does away with any possibility of practising the pause – to have an organised and planned approach to life! The result; we end up having nations racing against each other on all the wrong parameters! Do you ever recall being in your school and being rewarded for walking into the classroom with the longest knife? No, I hope so, then why do you think nations pat themselves for every nuke that they ever built? Well nations are eventually nothing but an assembly of people who at some point in time were school children, isn’t it? So what’s gone wrong, why have our priorities changed so drastically, that we simply ignore and are ready to seek ease of life at any costs- even if that cost, risks annihilation? What is it? Well the reason is the missing “pause” not convinced? Well fine, let me explain!

What has changed within the framework of global societies and communities in the last 50 odd years has been the pace at which people want to reach their definition of opulence and success! We live in times when, getting two meals a day is a sign of opulence in some remote corner of the world and in the same moment at yet another place, it could be the ability to net in a wonderful diamond for a few millions dollars! So you see, as divergence within human societies, and nations widens the definition and story about being successful and well off changes and this is one of the core reasons why the holy “pause” is trampled upon and ignored by the millionaire and also by the seeker of the meal! Unlike medieval societies there simply isn’t enough cohesion of gratitude to care and share left anymore, for another belief (which may or may not be entirely true) tells humanity that resources are limited and not indefinite hence those who have access will get an access to them and those who have that access alone will race ahead! This aspect too, plays that vital role- another reason- as to why we ignore the “pause” and why we can’t stop this ever widening societal divide across nations and even within nations!

This ever widening and ever growing divergence among societies has ended up creating individuals who are continually pushed to believe that “pause” and “time to reflect” are only meant for the philosophers or saints who are disconnected and disengaged with the world and its realities and trust me nothing could be more dumb than this! In fact, it’s often the people who practise the pause and who invest their time for reflective thinking are the ones’ who come up with those clutter breaking simple yet powerful interventions for societies – through policies, governance or business or just be by being who they are- wise and empowering individuals! So what is it like “practising the pause” and how does it really create a difference?

The pause is all about initiating a delay to the action that you have agreed to take and this delay is all about running through all the ramifications of the actions that you have taken, are taking and will be taking until that moment when you are into the pause! Sounds cryptic and challenging, well yes its is a bit challenging but once you develop a way to naturalise it- it will become your identity and align itself to the way you begin to think naturally in everything that you do! Whether it’s the next time you want to honk your car or want to shoot that missile to an enemy target! The pause helps you get clarity and absolute reassurance that what you have been deciding to do, what actions you have taken and what you propose to take are the best ones that “You” can apply given the contextual settings that you are operating within! remember this, the pause is perhaps the most powerful yet the most underrated tool that one has which can provide some amazing clarity and sense when it comes to dealing with ambiguous and conflicting scenarios and very often you will find, people who are in those kind of high pressure chairs often deploy the delay once they have practised the pause and these moments often become the turning points in world history! Do read up some war stories from WWII and you will possibly know what I am referring to!

You will often find people who practice the pause are the ones’ who can influence- whether they influence five or five million is another story- but that is the relevant part- the ability to influence outcomes which will be lapped up by society and nations in some cases as the elixir of tomorrow and as a promise from the leader! The pause becomes very important once individuals begin to ascend in their ability to influence people! The higher one rises, the greater the need to practise the pause and more often is it required! As people rise higher, complexities and their frequencies increase and thereby it becomes more like an ATC dashboard wherein alternative scenarios are put on pause and released in a choreographed manner to ensure that there are no disasters made and everything that is in the moment is directed safely to the pathway that it must be!

The pause helps uncomplicate situations and scenarios by deploying the allowable delays so that outcomes can be weighed and the one with the least negative impact or the maximum leverage can be voted in for! There are situations when decisions of the pause too, need to be wrapped in in a few seconds- like if you are a fighter pilot in a dog fight with an enemy plane and than there are those scenarios wherein the pause can be extended for months or years before a wider understanding and consensus is developed to avoid any backlash and unwanted unrest- yes you guessed it right- this is the realm of the political and bureaucratic class! So, in a way even the pause works only when it is timed right and deployed right- the pause and the delay, but what is more important what comes after the pause- If the pause has been used for direct thinking in the manner which serves the greater good, the results post the pause will be reflective of the same and if the pause has been just a freeze fright and incapacitation to take a decision or even think straight that will also end up showing up through some great disasters and accidents wherein the major contribution would be the incompetence of the human mind to act eitehrways more than anything else! It is the pause which has saved the day for many pilots to land safely when the magnificent planes have failed partly or completely and it is the same pause when not utilised effectively that has caused catastrophes or air disasters like never before! The pause too, hence is a ambivalent weapon- use it to your advantage for ensuring your well being and of those that anchor upon you or you can be as reckless as you wish to be, stifle away the pause and and unleash chaos for yourself and those around you!

Like everything else, the pause is only as good as the individual deploying it and that richness of the individual is eventually the construct of the society that the person comes from! What we feed into the society around us comes back to us eventually in one way or the other! When society pauses to reflect, introspect and deploy action, it creates a whole generation of people who are anchored to core elements, values and rest assured are naturally inclined to act with deliberation and caution to impact in a positive manner through the pause! On other occasions, when societies have not got that kind of space to operate, the results can be mixed or at some other times even more damaging and detrimental!

I will leave you here, or should I say, “I will take a pause now”, grab your coffee and allow your pause to work wonders for you and those who rely on you! Who knows the next pause that you embrace may be the hug of life that alters and changes the direction for your future in a way that inspires many!

Ciao for now and I will be back soon with another article! Until than stay safe, wise and yes, pause and deploy!