Tag: #writers

A mutating virus, a changing climate and stuck-on habits!

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

It has been a long hiatus since the last article, and has been for a good reason! No, nothing to worry, have been spared from the virus (as yet!), neither have I been been caught in the changing lines of raging forest fires or drowning streets or vanishing ocean coasts, what I was busy with was actually a deep observation and note taking of what’s unfolding on a macro scale all around us, whether its unfolding in the USA, some Latin American nation or some location within Asia, there are common threads that bind us in moments of triumph and despair and this short piece is all about navigating through these areas and try to realize the coded meaning that resides therein! So here we go!

It now seems like another life to even think and remember what normal social behaviour was and how it was to be “human” and to engage with fellow humans! Sure enough the virus did what it was meant to do (and continues to do so even as of now), sure enough there have been meaningless loss of lives all over the world and even more damaging has been the economic mayhem that has ensued- lost livelihoods, altered futures and what not, but within all of this chaos and ambiguity resides a singular fact and that is “We alone allow to be impacted by what comes our way, not because of what comes our way, but because of how we choose to respond or react to what is coming our way”!

The virus is a classic case, no one is taking away the potency and threat that it brought along with it, but what is equally important is the regard or should I say dis-regard that we as a society chose to offer it, which went on to empower the virus and allow it do what it did and continues to do! Stay on with this thought as I open the next unfolding challenge that plagues us on a routine basis- Climate Change!

I have written earlier on as well, to blame the Earth or to blame a changing climate is perhaps the dumbest thing to do! What we need to do and accept is that, we make choices which are in direct conflict with what nature wants to play out and if you build your home on a rail track, sooner or later you are going to be run over- you build it over a hundred times, you will be hit a hundred times! Like with the Virus, the problem with climate or rather the changing space around climate has more to do with what we have accepted and decided to pursue- call it development, greed or pursuit of the unknown- based on what suits the local narrative – stories are spun and sold day in and day out- the Earth really doesn’t care, when the next storm comes calling or the Earth begins to move and give away- it will not make a difference based on which political party is in rule over a given region- it will come down heavily as it desires to and will be indifferent on what side of the “argument on climate change” you decide to be on- as long as you stay in company of societies that violate basic and fundamental respect of nature- you too will be hit- more or less depending on how close or far away form the epicentre you happen to be!

Whether it is the story of virus or climate change, the common thread here is more to with the choices that we exercise and how they go on to shape our today and the oncoming tomorrow! The virus can and could have been halted by a simple act of “distance”, the issues of climate change could have been simply allowed to play out by providing nature the space that it needs and halting the senseless encroachment into nature especially in pockets where it has held it’s sway through eons.

Easier said, then done right, well sure that’s what it seems like, but that is the fact. The most complex problems almost always have simple and fundamental solutions; it is the unfounded belief and bias that we have developed as societies to come up with complex solutions to big issues, that leads us to create more complexity, rather then resolving the existing ones’ . This is perhaps the greatest paradox of the times that we live in! So you may now ask, so what next!

Well, real trick and the perhaps the only way is to shun away with the habits and behaviours that have “stuck-on” to us as individuals and as societies. It is these prejudiced dispositions which end up leading us to our own accelerated demise, as individuals, as failing thoughts or as failing societies and faltering governments’! Unless we resolve to bring about a fundamental and lasting change in what we seek, how we re-define success and failures, as Individuals and collectively as societies we will end up experiencing hits every now and then, each time our pursuits cross the delicate line between need and greed!

It is easy to blame a raging fire, a torrential downpour, those endless nervous landslides and earthquakes on climate change, flip channels and thank the heavens that your family and you are safe, but unless you do not adopt a behavioural change in consumption and way of living, you will continue to contribute to the effects of climate change and will only end up being a mute spectator to the ever increasing events. So what is that you can change as an Individual or a Society?

Well as an Individual, small choices, could be expensive, may not be can bring in a lot of change! Simple acts of prolonging the life of your clothes in the wardrobe, limiting your travel to meaningful pursuits, calibrating your consumption to what is necessary rather than what all that you can have an access to (simply because of who you are) can go a long way to make things a shade easier. Sure enough no one is asking you not to enjoy or live your life to the fullest, the only modification is to make that quest a bit more responsible and aligned to the right side of the line which nature wants you to abide by!

As societies, collective choices done with greater intent, focus and purpose can have a rapid and amplifying impact to bring about visible changes in a few years, doesn’t’ matter which is the next pandemic that wants to pay you a visit, or which weather condition is about to throw up a surprise at you, as long as you have built a robust social framework of value adhered existence for the holistic wealth of all the constituents and you have ensured you are well clear off the nature’s highways’ of change (the fire valleys and flood plains) you will be spared and more importantly the progress that you go on to make will be more sustained and more robust- simply because you will not have to walk into the trap of walking ten paces ahead every year, just to be pushed back by 100 paces every decade!

This fundamental acceptance to believe in meaningful and sustainable change at an Individual and societal level is the key and foundation on which resilience can be built to overcome the next challenges that may come our way either by the intriguing organism or by the splendid display of nature in all it’s glory!

I leave you here with these thoughts for you to reflect and decide on what singular change you would like to embrace to contribute and make the world around you and for you a shade better then what it was yesterday! Remember, it doesn’t have to be complex could be as simple as choosing your next cup of coffee with a little more responsibility!

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

The journey from shock to indifference.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

Humanity and the human mind have a strong intrinsic ability to flex and stretch, depending on what direction this flex and stretch takes and what purpose it serves or not, the space around and within that churn will either comfortable or simply daunting! Join me here as we take a look at a simple space which explains, why, whether it is about the pandemic or something routine about our lives- the phases that we go through will always remain the same, albeit the intensity and the impression may be stronger or lighter on us! So here we go!

Through history, if there has been a singular constant about humanity and the human spirit, it has been its ability to overcome all that nature or fellow humans can throw at them! The way of coping up with a new order almost always begins with a state of shock. The state of shock, which is more of, “what is this happening”, “I don’t believe this to be real”, “Why me”, “Is this for real”, “Is this the end” and so on and so forth. How long this stage lasts, determines how well and when a given society and individuals therein will be able to bounce back! The shock in itself has stages, the arrival, the onset and the subsidence. Often the arrival of shock , it’s onset leaves people confused, overwhelmed and hence many a times even after the shock subsides, people still continue to linger under the overbearing cloud of uncertain thoughts, which if not checked in time tend to become unfound fears or meaningless presumptions which go on to take the shape of limiting beliefs and thereby severely limiting the horizons of individual and collective possibilities for the society!

The way to overcome these limiting beliefs is more to do with the swiftness of acceptance and appreciating that the shock will subside. Acceptance is a midway beacon between shock and indifference. It is in this space that individuals and societies make a choice and that choice post acceptance of the shock and deciphering of the shock determines whether the society will move towards compassion, cohesiveness or embrace an unqualified and unwarranted indifference to everything that comes their way in the times ahead!

As long as acceptance is cohesive and progressive, societies and people are able to build themselves back and recalibrate the new terms of engagement and go on to create a meaningful life one more time all over again! But when this gets fragmented and societies emerge from the shock societies are more torn and race away to the final destination of indifference which then starts the timer tracking the imminent collapse!

Indifference is the hallmark of societies that are fragmented and divided in their attitudes and belief systems. The more the fragmentation , greater the indifference and when a challenge arrives, unless it is an existential one, almost all the time you will find one section looking towards a problem and another section looking away from it! This indifference then sooner or later creeps into the very nature of individuals and then you end up in a real time risk where no one really cares what is happening to anyone else, unless they face a similar and greater threat!

But then why is all this so important, how does it matter? Well if you have been awake through the last year and have been a witness to the unfolding events around you, is should be fairly easy for you to notice and identify societies that have been together and that drifted away and how that singular factor altered the future of the societies therein! Each one of us as individuals, soak in what we can, from what’s around us, if we are part of a fiercely cohesive social construct the whole approach towards a problem and the oncoming shock will be radically different, had we to tackle the same shock being fragmented and disconnected. It is in this journey from Shock to Indifference that, individually and collectively we end up making choices which either keep us aligned to the progressive path or at times we get thrown off guard and take a detour which comes at it’s own cost! So is there a meaningful way to stall and avoid indifference and should indifference not be allowed at all?

Like with anything else, what you decide to be Indifferent to and how, matters. Whether things are important or not is a very subjective area and what may be one person’s nectar could very well be someone else’s poison! How long that indifference is, and how that is impacting you in return is what will actually go on to decide how emerge out of a problem, whether you allow that shock to sink in more then it is required to or whether you deal and engage with it at a level where you should, and dissolve it completely!

As societies grow and emerging challenges continue to shock us, how we accept them and how we shape our indifference- whether on the pivot of wisdom or ignorance will determine the collective fate of a society.

I leave you with these thoughts for now, grab that coffee and think- what shocked you, how you accepted it and how did you emerge on the other side- indifference that helped or harmed! When you see this unfold in your individual space and are able to co-relate to the developments within the society, that you will know how aligned you are to the society you are in and if there is no alignment what you must do to ensure you can protect your sanity, around the chaos that you get caught in!

Ciao for now, stay connected and stay safe, will be back soon with another one!

Navigating the turbulence of uncertainty.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

The time may not be apt to throw a piece of positivity and hope when you have all valid negative and unwelcome news floating around, but this is certainly the time to decipher the approach that promises resilience and helps us anchor to our sanity so that we can take small steps or stay put, but never get nudged away form the chosen path that we have given to ourselves! So join me here as we take this journey and appreciate the finer aspects around this space.

Among the many things that I learnt – each time I have taken a flight, has been about the art and science of flying through turbulence. You see, every flight, each time is constantly aided by weather charts, reports and onboard navigation tools to help the flight commanders to steer away from possible inclement weather- which could have the potential to spill your favourite coffee or the well curated breakfast that you so much look forward to! Well the essence here relies around two areas- planning and training.

As with the science of flight, so is it about our lives, with ample or adequate amount of preparation and forecast, often one is able to navigate the odd patches that one may come across through learning from experience and observation, but this stands true only for scenarios where you have been kind of trained to watch out for and have some understanding of the probability of such events unfolding, when turbulence is caused by uncertainty, the stakes get even higher and needless to say, the rules of the game to ride over the situation also change.

When uncertainty comes visiting, there is simply nothing in your experience that will help you to begin with, for a simple reason that you have never experienced it before, the only thing that can sail you through and keep you stay afloat is your intrinsic construct of who you are and how well you deploy that space to manage,deflect and direct what is coming your way.

Anchor to your intrinsic attributes: When uncertainty comes in, the one thing and perhaps the only thing within you that can save the say for you, is your intrinsic construct- which of course is a factor of many things things that go on to make you- who you are! It is your intrinsic construct that has the the most robust wiring within you to help you stay calm and act when it is important to do so! Many a times it is not the problem, but our impulsive reaction to the problem that lands us in a more complicated space and we end up struggling with secondary issues with ever often people end more lesser focus and resources to deal with the real challenge at hand.

Seek Clarity: No matter how ambiguous the situation may seem, there is always a speck of clarity even in the most fogged out challenges that may come towards you. The trick lies in deciphering these in time and then using these unravel the entire challenge that you are dealing with. Often people end up fighting and dealing with the wrong elements within a problem and from thereon begins a deviation which leads to more new scenarios without solving anything in particular. Unless clarity is not there, no mater how well equipped you are, you will never be able to achieve anything worthwhile. You may have the weapon, but without a meaningful target, that’s hardly of any value!

Loose a few battles: As ironic it may seem, but this is the only way ahead! To win wars, a few battles need to be given up, often people get distracted by every other unfolding event or situation around them and end up loosing focus on what must be solved essentially and thereby even when battles are won, the war is lost and all that effort seems to go away in vain! Uncertainty feeds off such distractions and the only way to tame it, is by knowing where to strike, among the many moving targets in sight!

Don’t forget your destination: The turbulence associated with uncertainty is often intense, rapid and comes win with a formidable force, good enough to intimidate, threaten or even make you wonder, whether you will live to see another day, no matter what it is, how it manifests in front of you, as long as you know the destination where you want to be, a calm mind, some rational thinking and a generous dose of common sense can almost always see you through this cramped up space, the only reason why people seem to struggles is that, very often , all that is needed doesn’t become available in the measure that is needed and yet at other times, they come in when the timing is not right!

Everything has an expiry date: Whether it is the highs of life or the lows that you hit, everything and each area of your life has a finite shelf life, no tow days are ever the same and likewise uncertainty too, has an expiry date, the sooner you are able to gauge it, decipher it and approach it- it becomes a certainty and therein lies the solution to end it comprehensively and once for all! Hence the whole space and effort to decipher what you perceive accurately and in a time;y manner, often people end up being entrapped either in the space of over-thinking or of procrastination and either of those two ends can be harmful for you to gain control on an evolving situation that demands urgent attention to the pocket which is important!

Stay in the moment: One of the most important reason why uncertainty seems to be so overbearing is, that often we are not in-sync with our Now! As we go about our daily lives, we are constantly thinking about the future or reflecting about the past rarely being able to stay in the Now and siew the best tat the present brings to us and this is why uncertainty seems to be more ambiguous then it actually can be! Sure enough there would be cases when uncertainty is real and compel but even to know that difference, it is vital that we are able to stay in the moment to experience what is unfolding and discern well enough to arrive at a finite and rational conclusion so that we can tackle what’s emerging!

You don’t have to solve everything, all the time: In a rapidly developing situation it is often too complex and hazy to ascertain that at times doing nothing or not acting upon a situation is also an act! many a times, unfolding uncertainty tend to dissolve away as suddenly as they emerge and reasons for that could be many, but each of them are in a way reflective of the fact that, the control to the problem and the solution is much beyond your realm of action or thought and at times it is better to stay passive and embrace inertia, for time does solve , what you and I can perhaps can’t do much about in that moment of fleeting time! Whether you call this inaction by some name, attribute it some universal energy or simply to your intuition, it doesn’t matter, but staying steady and unshaken even as things around you seem to fall apart is a sure way of knowing that you will be able to engage meaningfully should that engagement be forced upon you!

Stay Realistic: Unlike the conventional stress around being optimistic and shunning away pessimism, the real trick (especially while dealing with uncertain scenarios) is all about staying rational and staying realistic! Hopeless optimism and too much of binding pessimism eitehrways is counter productive for that robs you away off all flexibility and adaptability that you can develop in a proportionate manner to address the challenge at hand. It could be the question of intellectual flexing or physical flexing depending on what the problem at hand is and hence the vital need to balance and stay aligned to what is really out there- rather then reacting to your presumptions and perceptions of what is that you are dealing with!

There could be many more attributes depending on what your uncertainty is, but these are the core areas which you need to know and deal with if you want to tame uncertainty and stall the oncoming turbulence in a meaningful way!

I leave you with these thoughts for today, will be back soon with another one soon, until then stay wise, stay safe and yes unlock your uncertainties and address them on the scale of simplicity, rationality and common sense!

(Painful and Lasting) Lessons from a virus.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

No matter what we think about the virus, from where it came how it came and who can be blamed or not, all of that really pales when you try to assess what is that the Virus has taught us the real hard way and ironically enough, these are the same lessons that all earlier calamities and challenges faced by humanity on a global scale have brought along with them, and like every time, history is forgotten in the greed for creating new economics and geography, putting us all in the direct path of oncoming peril- which then becomes a question of not, if such an incident will happen , but rather more about how and when it will happen!

Arrogance is vain: Human history is replete with examples where arrogance has been proven time and again to be as vain as it can be. Y:et our own choice to selectively delete important lessons from history often ends up leading us to repeat the same mistakes and that’s why History repeats itself! Whether it is the arrogance of an individual about not wanting to mask up or that of a government to claim everything is under control- the virus doesn’t care a damn and given an opportunity it will do what is is supposed to do- unlike humans, the virus’s choice and approach is singular and focussed- that of to infect. We ironically entangle ourselves into this space not realizing the potency of a microscopic organism and our mountain high ego’s and arrogance is the last thing that can ever help us! Whether to mask or not, you may want to debate, you may want to debate about the jabs, but for doing any of that, you need to be alive and that you can be- only when you shun the unrewarding arrogance around the virus and learn to accept a few things with a pinch of salt even though you run the risk of burning your ego!

Quality of Leadership matters: Every society is a reflection of the broader collection of it’s constituents. The quality of choices we make as individuals, translates collectively and this collective quality throws up leaders who we deserve. The one thing that the pandemic has exposed in a very uncomfortable way is the gradient of incompetence when it comes to leadership across levels and across segments of the society. The gross mis-management, wrong people at the right places and misplaced priorities and actions are all but a reflection of the quality of leadership! Whether it is about dealing with a virus or sending a spaceship into heavens above, as long as an Incompetent, myopic and faltering leadership leads, the results almost always will be disastrous.

Collaborative Trust: Whether you are a nation, the dozens of different agencies or local bodies, unless you decide to work together with focus and intent to stall the progress and onslaught of a common challenge, nothing meaningful will ever be achieved and you will sooner or later end up revisiting your past form time ti time as you try to fix the loose ends with no end in sight! The lack of this collaborative trust or the lack of its effectiveness is a direct consequence of the first point that we discussed earlier- Arrogance! At one end in this pandemic at a bio-molecular level we have viral mutations and progress wherein the virus seems to know how to make the most through infected host bodies and cells, even as we end up struggling to collaborate and share our resources to deal with and defeat this menace! The more worrisome part is that, the absence or presence of this collaborative trust is going to go a long way in showing future human societies engage and interact with each other and how effective that engagement will be!

Quality Resources are limited: As a geologist, coming across quartz samples was perhaps the most exciting thing for me during my growing up days, but with time and better understanding the whole aspect around quality, gradation and value of a crystal began to become clear and son enough even when many samples were placed around, the trained eye would almost always get locked on the most clear and pristine piece within the lot and this is what the human fascination with quality is perhaps all about- the flipside being- these high quality pieces are few and far in between among the vast ocean of resources that one may come across in a quartz mine! Likewise when you are hit by a challenge at a grand scale- needless to say- your resources, especially the high quality ones’ and the most promising ones will max out more quickly the you can ever realise and unless you have the dynamic ability to grow wings in flight and ramp up the quality circle of the resources and approach across the teams and stations, you will be left with more and more chaos eventually burning out and exhausting all of the limited high quality resources that you may have around you! Ins’t this what the pandemic has actually ended up doing? whether it be human or material resources, the very aspect of having sustained supply of high quality resources has got challenged and compromised like never before and even the best of technological interventions have seemed to pale every now and then as the infection spike keeps moving up and down across the continents!

Collateral Damage is real: As is the case in any warfare, when you are in midst of a pandemic, which is nothing short of a bio-war, collateral damage which goes beyond the immediate loss of lives is almost certain. How well you are able to minimise this depends on the points we discussed above and this collateral damage is in direct proportion to the intelligence or lack of it as people deal with the challenge at hand! What we have witnessed around the world, unfortunately has been a story of excessive collateral damage- broken families, shattered businesses and despair seemingly beyond hope!

Rational mind is the only potent force: A thinking (not overthinking) , rational and alert mind at both an individual and collective societal level is the only master key to deal with a challenge that tends to be larger then what you can deal with.Death by over-analysis and policy paralysis are well known terms and when you are up against a fast moving virus, the last thing you need is getting stuck in your mind games and staying entrapped within. The only meaningful and effective approach to deal with an overbearing situation resides in the ability to decipher whats unfolding and then act swiftly and decisively to minimise and mitigate the risks coming your was as much as you can. Confrontation of a problem coming from a wide scale event is perhaps not a sane way, even though it brings along a charisma of being a heroic effort, true heroism lies in staying low and waiting for the tide to wash over and rising again when the time is more conducive and when the opportunity to strike back is more realistic and the probability of a decisive counter strike are more!

You are responsible for your Life: Irrespective of who says what, how rich or poor you are, how well to do or not you are, nothing of that will ever matter unless you are able to take total ownership and responsibility of your own life! Over the last year, across the world society after society, as it got overwhelmed by the pandemic, the citizens were simply left to fight at their own level with what they had and what they didn’t! This is bound to happen each time and every time a systemic collapse occurs in face of a sever challenge and this is something that can happen more often then you think and hence the whole importance resides in being able to take stock of things around you and always be responsible for your own self- when each one begins to do this, the burden of collective responsibility reduces and immediately bounce back becomes more easy for a society.

I leave you here with these thoughts, given this is a blog, I stop here with these thoughts and you may want to add and curate your won list further, based on how you have experienced and felt the things around you, based on where in the world you are.The fact is, it is a pretty lonely place to get entrapped into- should you ever land up here, well you will have to throw everything that you have got to overcome the challenge and reclaim your rightful life back!

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

Unmasking our times.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

Amid the grim realities that the world seems to wake up these days, irrespective where you are, in the connected world that we live in- one nation in distress has the ability to halt the progress of many others in one way or the other and when that nation is powerful, influential and large- the impact and ramifications are, needless to say, long lasting, deep and cascading! but within these spaces of hectic and chaotic unfolding resides the promise of a wiser way. There is an opportunity to get more clarity on whats’ around, why it is the way it is and what is that you and I can do to ensure, that next time around- we remain as sane as we can! Join me here we take a quick journey around our today, to know how we arrived here, what could have been done better and what is that we can do even now to ensure we don’t let some unwelcome parts of history repeat themselves! So here we go!

Much of our world is dominated today with the developments and news around nations on how they are coping up to the pandemic, needless to say, the first area to unmask is to understand what really is happening around you! Based on your luck- not about being whether your are rich or poor, but about how dumb and clever your leaders are, you would have either by now overcome the brunt of this pandemic or would be still grappling with it! Sure enough as this pandemic unfolded, and people were still trying to figure out what hit them, many lives were untimely lost, and the whole world ended up being into one big clinical trial lab, with everything being thrown at the sick with an effort to save them, not knowing when, what will work! Yes, we did get the medicines which did buy us more time and eventually the vaccine, but the real unmasking that needs to be done is not about all of this, you too know all this too well, how well it played out in your neighbourhood, what needs unmasking is the understanding of what led to this mayhem in the first space!

Whether it was accidental or intentional is now purely of academic interest because, now after millions of lives lost and many more millions completely shattered economically, there will never be any sense of complete compensation or apology from anyone, even if anyone wanted to go ahead and offer one! The whole point in the pandemic space is more about, what was done, not done and how leaderships the world over reacted, making an already complex problem more easy or more complicated! The allowance of the pandemic to run riot the way it did across societies, also highlights the importance of having able, wise and mature leadership- whose ability to take timely and decisive decisions based on rational and scientific thinking could have made the real difference and saved many more lives then what we have collectively accomplished as humanity! This, is perhaps the first layer of unmasking- unmasking the fragility of failing and faltering leadership across societies- essentially having all the right people doing all the wrong jobs!

Irrespective what people say, the fact is that leaders and governments failed their people by being unable to provide what was needed when it was needed! This goes on to stress the point why public policy and politics is so vital and critical and why every vote matters and importantly what and whom you should vote for! It is this realization which will usher in change as and when the time comes for societies to make choices and correct their mistakes- whether they choose to forgive, forget and live to a dumb future or usher in change with a high accountability will vary from society to society and depend more on the other geo-political pressures that tick off at the very moment of decisive elections.

Apart from this broad level screw up on the public policy and administrative space- the pandemic also has created a deep impact on the way we work- I have earlier written about the Work From Home Pandemic which is yet another unfolding disaster in many ways! Add to this the layer of increasing levels of mental and personal disconnect and disengagement (which already was a menace in a connected world) we are staring at times in the future where we begin to wonder how to say a “hello” or perhaps start taking classes to know the right way to “shake hands” all over again!

For few, even the pandemic has presented opportunity to create wealth and profit, well no one can complain, if people start to seek warmth at the funeral pyres and death of other citizens, but this whole space of profit making, under cutting care and simultaneously making existing people slog over extended hours and at times fold up and shut down well working organisations under the garb of an pandemic -things like these are just adding up to the undercurrent of distrust and confusion that is already playing in the minds of the people! This just goes on to to show the amount of deterioration that a given society has undergone and the extent of indifference that has set in with regards to the well being of one another in a real genuine manner!

What the pandemic has done is, it has for once made a clear unmasking of the facts that, whether it be the political leadership, the business community or the so called fabled network circle that people tend to hold so close and dear all the time- when the crunch time comes, there is no assurance that any or all of them will stand by what they belief in and if not all, some of them will fail and depending upon how high your dependence is on what fails around you- the impact you feel and witness around you will be intense or mild! That is the singular reality that this unfolding pandemic has presented humanity with- it has gone beyond borders, to unmask the real abilities, orientations and preferences around societal leadership and depending on the quality of that leadership quotient, societies will stay afloat or sink rapidly!

The pandemic sure enough, has brought in a lot of pain, suffering and intense change which has altered the very core around the space of -who people were used to be and how they used to engage and connect with each other- going forward that will remain a psychological scar on every ones mind! The psychological scares of those who survived , those who witnessed the events unfold at close quarters and those who lost everything will create societies which are broken and fractured deep within and that is the next biggest risk that humanity faces- the challenge to heal the wounds and the scars of this global event! Unless a genuine and human approach is taken to address this space- social divisions and the emerging behavior from divided societies will go on to add more scars even as people struggle to heal the bygone ones’ .

The problem was never the virus- we were always going to find a cure- humanity always has- when it has been challenged to a grand scale- the real problem has been and continues to be the response and the reaction that we offer to solve a problem at hand- based on that defining choice that we make- either we simplify the problem or end up complicating it further and the latter is what has happened in case of the pandemic and we continue to suffer owing to the incompetence of the few who took the wrong turn to embed us more deeper into a corner rather then getting us out of the woods!

The pandemic has in fact brought into limelight glaring shortcomings all around us, Incompetence of Leadership, Collaboration, Trust, Failure to implement values that bind humanity across the world, the ugly face of opportunism, one upmanship, aid disguised as a favour, the real value of meaningful relations, social connects and for one time knowing well, that social media likes and dislikes have nothing at all to do when it comes to picking up the falling and faltering on the ground in flesh and blood! The real pandemic that will follow is the one, which will emerge from these cracked crevices of society- where every person will want to quickly and swiftly calibrate attitudes, pre-dispositions and approach to their own life and for those around them- as these readjustments happen- the world will set itself up for other subtler pandemics from time to time- which are more to to do with human behaviour and expression of all thats bright and all that’s dark!

I leave you here with these thoughts, take a moment in all this chaos around you to figure out what has the pandemic unmasked for you and what it that you are going to do about it- in the times ahead- so that you can create a better version of what you are today- just as I will and everyone of us should- to ensure that we are more resilient and prepared for the net wave that comes- not of the virus but of churning human thoughts and approaches rewired to a new context! Whether you like it or not, the fact is the world that we live in today is drenched in the blood of millions of innocent lives lost- not because a cure was not found- but rather humanity failed to come together when it mattered the most- to act with focus, intent and generosity!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then stay safe, stay wise and take care of all those, you can!

Simplifylives is offering a dedicated window to offer free coaching/Listening session for those who are seeking emotional support in these challenging times- It is our way to help people re-collect themselves and recover quick from the scars of this pandemic. For more details please write to us at simplify@simplifylives.com and we will reply to your requests as we receive them.

The leadership pandemic.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

If you thought or still think, that the virus is the problem, well think about it one more time! Sure enough the Virus does what it does and brings along, all the unpleasantness and unwanted scenarios, but what really allows all of that to manifest and emerge is the quality and quantity of Leadership that you have around you! The story unfolding around us, this very moment is a story of “Leadership Pandemic”- An emerging challenge of sorts which brings us simply back to fundamental spaces of how societies are built, operate and progress! Join me here as we take a look around this space and understand, what really is happening around us and what is that you and I can do or not do in this fluid state! So here we go!

History and even the present times are a testimony to a very powerful reality, which is a simple fact that “The problem rarely is the real problem”, the way we choose to respond to a situation is what either resolves it or ends up complicating it further, making the problem more menacing and complicated to deal with! The current context of the pandemic around the world is perhaps a glaring example of this! So now the real question, why would this happen, or rather why would we allow this to happen? Well the answer to that resides in the whole social space around “expert worship” and “conformation bias” orientation!

Even as the pandemic travelled across the world, taking down one nation after the other, the inherent inertia, ignorance and colossal refusal to act in a timely and decisive manner, failed one nation after the other and what perhaps could have been a managed and controlled health risk, was overnight transferred into a global health emergency. All of this boils down to the simple one question, “who was taking the decisions- For the resulting success or failures are nothing but a manifestation of the wisdom or stupidity of the leader’s mind- the ability to gauge, analyze and think ahead! This is from where the real problem begins and this is the space where the leadership pandemic begins to take shape! With that simple act of taking or not taking a meaningful action!

What really unfolds in a leadership pandemic is that, a problem at hand ends up being more complicated and what could have been easily or with less hardship overcome, tends to just keep getting bigger and bigger with no end in sight! The current spread of the pandemic is a classic example here, sure enough when the menace started everyone was taken by surprise (which as a thought itself, is too good to believe!), so needless to say, we can overlook and say everyone did what they could do best with the limitations and access to resources that they had, but when you see the same problem persists over a longer period of time and returning in a more menacing manner, well then what you need to look at is- what was done or not done in the in-between period of perceived calm and this uptick of the second, third resurgence! It is in the crucial months and days in-between the calm that the fostering of false sense of complacency , the “everything is fine” and the usual self-centred, self-glorifying approaches of establishments have led their societies straight into the path of an even more bigger disaster! So what do we do about this? Well read on!

Sure enough by now, many leaders both public and private are pretty much exposed with regards to their proven ability to deliver and inability to rise to the occasion, this brings us to the vital space that deals with the quality of leadership! The world right now is stocked up with leaders who are accidental at their best and have ended up being where they are simply because they happen to be better then those around them- not necessarily because they bring with them some defining vison or charismatic skill to lead or be a leader! Sure enough, there are a few original and authentic leaders across the political and corporate world, but there are few and far in between; given the kind of mess that humanity has got into- it just goes to exemplify what happens when few wise whispers are overlooked by the noise and chatter of proclaimed experts and leaders! Fair enough, you may argue, but what is that we can do about this?

Well, to begin with no one is asking you to hold a protest or get on to the digital world and express your opinion, emotion and bring about a change- well these may be valuable ways as long as you want to push in some constructive and creative element for a positive way to tackle a problem and bring about the necessary empowering alignment, but the whole point here is, “what is that you are doing about a problem at hand, at an individual level? How are you leading yourself?” Very often when it comes to compelling questions that a society engages or deals with, people tend to perceive those questions to be “they” as in the society versus “me” as in the individual, the fact is that all social challenges , whether global or local start at an individual level and depending on how powerful that individual is and what position and power equation are at that individuals disposition, the challenges will either accelerate, get complex , assume a larger and widespread scale or end up being limited and localised to a pocket withing the community or even perhaps to a few units in the community or just perhaps that individual! This is the foundational bedrock that needs to be visited and addressed if any society wants to being about even an aorta of meaningful and progressive change for a few or the many!

Unlike what gets played out on the TV screens day in and day out, depicting people in important positions as success stories of failures, the whole gamut of meaningful and purpose oriented leadership begins with each individual. Unless each one of us doesn’t take responsibility of who we are and what we do, it becomes impossible to check the quality of what someone else may offer- simply because we ourselves don’t behold the flavour and essence of meaningful and directed leadership. Unless this changes and we assume charge to lead ourselves to begin with, every and any attempt to deal and engage with social or community wide issues will almost always end up being a stop gap arrangement with no enduring or long lasting solution or approach! How we treat ourselves, is how society will end up treating us!

An empowered society is not about one magical leader dictating what others must do, on the contrary it is the ability to empowered individuals to keep their chosen, qualified leadership on the toes to achieve and foster what they have as individuals for the wider audience of a society or a community. This is how and when meaningful and progressive change and development happens! The real problem is and was never the problem, it has always been and will always be the response to the problem, which either simplifies it or complicates it! That well, depends on how bad the leadership pandemic has set into a given society and within the individuals who go on to make that society!

I leave you here with these thoughts, take a pause and do think about it, what is the real problem and what is a more failing pandemic, the one on our hands now or the one that always has been! Ciao for now will be back soon with another one until then, stay safe, stay wise and think!

A strong government and a weak opposition.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

Well if thought, what this title has to do with the world of business or even individual empowerment, think again! At the end of it all of us, each one of us come from the same social set, whether we choose a private job, run for government employment or wear uniforms or perhaps lead the nation as policy and public matters, end of it all, things will eventually come back to a singular truth, which is not about how strong the government has been, but rather how weak an opposition we have earned! Join me here, we we take a look to decipher this dynamic, see how it can empower and perhaps how things can go wrong and what is that you and I can do in our limited way to adopt and practise a way of life which enables us to create a dynamic equilibrium for all engagement points within the society that we live! So here we go!

Masters and specialists of the political world have always thrived and furthered one singular goal- the never ending desire to hold power to never relinquish it! The bygone age of Kingdoms and Empires- almost always ensured smooth transition within dynastic rulers always survived irrespective of the cost at what it came. This lunatic obsession of blood lines leading the future of empires and kingdoms coupled with the diminishing incompetence and rising impatience within the ruled areas- created a prudent environment either for bringing in a radical change of governance models- from a Crown led- autocracy to People led democracy- which again could have multiple variations based on what the thirst for power and control is! Needless to say you always have the element where the uniform too wants to be part of the hustle- simply because either they don’t really have something to defend and fight against or perhaps because their approach and orientation is in that way- because someone wants it that way!

Irrespective what the reason is and what the variation is, the fundamental goal of any government or governing body is always about control and power! There is nothing to complain about this, why would you, I mean who would want their nation’s government to be weak and submissive, end of the day every member of a given society thrives on a sense of national pride, no matter how big or small your nation is! This is what makes the pursuit for power and control so intoxicating and endless. This is the space where everything right or wrong begins to emerge and when it pertains to the matters of a government, it all depends on which side of an invisible social divide you are viewing it from! If you observe close and long enough more often then not, what unfolds- irrespective of who rules or governs is the debate and competition on whose approach to things (read ideologies) is better even as the end result that is always aspired remains the same- seeking national interest!

The only way to tackle, deal with and engage with a government is by having a potent opposition which can discuss, deliberate and audit the progress being made or not as promised by the government of the day! Sure enough, the government will do what it can and always will- deflect questions on what it has not done and seek attention only to what it has done, unless the opposition is not coherent, congruent and focussed enough, sieving through this maze of conflicting narratives shared by a ruling government can be simply overwhelming and many a times weakened opposition succumb to this, resulting in further weakening and erosion of meaningful presence to even engage with a government, let along debate or audit! You see the real problem with any nation is not that it has a strong government, but rather a fragmented and perhaps weakened opposition. This, is not only the cause of worry for the people but ironically enough enough a problem for the government! Let me explain!

For a government to stay strong is needs two basic things, one an intrinsic strength and sense of direction through policy and action and secondly- perhaps the most important one- a competitive, focussed and constructive opposition which has an adequate representation to ensure meaningful and directed debate and audit around what the government does or not! When this opposition is missing, the government ends up being lost under its own spot light, unable to see it’s own shadows, which a working and focussed opposition can do it with much ease and partner towards ironing out finer aspects of what’s not working and make better what’s working! When the opposition goes missing, with it the government ends up having to do double the work- first carry on the works that it needs to and then, because the opposition is nonfunctional- also get into the space of introspection and self-critique to find out yet better ways and means of working and serving the society! This is where the major problems begin to occur! The government not only ends up doing it’s bit but also begins to take up the responsibilities of the opposition- not because it wants to – but perhaps because there is no real meaningful choice left to engage and deal with in a constructive manner! This is why when a strong government faces a weakened or fragmented opposition, it ends up having to do two jobs, one that it does and the other which the opposition doesn’t!

But why is this bad, well simply put, as long as the purpose and chosen direction of a powerful government aligns to the greater good, fosters humanity and gives common-sense a chance- everything will be just fine, the moment experimentation begins to border on unwarranted risks and respect given is misread as a license to start bullying everyone and anyone around- chaos is slowly but surely unleashed! This also then, is a factor of how weak really the opposition has got, because beyond a point you and I as members of the society will not give a damn to an opposition which has lost it’s relevance political or otherwise! Once this stage is reached and if the government decides to behave like a run away train, you have only one option, either be on that train or get out of the way- nothing and no one will be able to stop it! An opposition that is considerably weakened, at the best is given some compensatory presence by government giving attention now and then, just to have the record maintained that there is an opposition (at least on paper if not in spirit).

A weakened opposition not only fails to hold the government of the day accountable but also fails to draw attention to things that are important and this fleeting loss of focus and action goes on to further compound the problem of an already diminishing opposition. It is not always about the opposition being right or the government being wrong, it is also about being able to deliberate and debate with intent focus and direction on things that matter, which is essentially all but lost. With a weak opposition any discussion just goes on to solicit academic value more then any meaningful political or social engagement or drive! So, by now you may want to ask, how does all of this matter you and me and why should you care for it? Well read on!

Just as a strong and functional government is vital for the progress of any society, equally importance is the presence of a thriving and active opposition. An opposition which has the requisite numbers and more importantly a plan to ensure that the government of the day adheres to what it must and conform to the broader outlines of what the society stands for, beyond these fundamental spaces everything else can be negotiated, constructed and build upon – for that is the real essence of democracy- the rule of the people! A collaborative space of engagement and debate with intent and purpose is critical and essential for any government to perform irrespective of how strong it is; a measured and calibrated opposition is also necessary and important!

If you thought this is limited only to the space of politics, well, think again! If you see what unfolds in the corporate offices you will perhaps know what I mean here. You see the social construct remains the same, irrespective of what vocation we choose and once you have succumbed to the concept of consolidation of power in a unipolar manner in any one segment of the society, sooner or later that will transpire and be witnessed the way society conducts itself across all the other facets that go one to make it! Observe the business leaders around, see the sector leaders around you will be then able to relate how unipolar consolidation of power is so infectious , dangerous and a matter of concern- especially when you have the problem of diminishing incompetence looming over the horizon!

Well there is nothing right and wrong as I said earlier, the important point here is that skewed consolidation of power any side of a line should have any progressive society worried and alarmed for sooner or later as the power intoxicated government begins to erode, most of the times it doesn’t make a pretty picture and when power is given away reluctantly, well we have seen enough examples across the world what unfolds and how the new chapters begin to get re-written!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, take your time off and do reflect! Life is beautiful when there is a dynamic equilibrium and a reversible equilibrium within the spaces of power and control, whether you want to lead a society, an organization or yourself- try too hard one or the other- sooner or later- failure alone will be your enduring legacy!

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

We have opened up time slots for April 2022 for virtual coaching, for more details drop in a mail to us at simplify@simplifylives.com

Empowerment through Inaction.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

Contrary to popular belief and what our minds are almost always trained to do- in one way or the other- not everything that comes your way- calls you to act and not everything that comes you way requires you to act! Join me here as we take a quick look around this intriguing space- where Inaction- Stillness and mere Presence can create more empowering pathways which build clarity and direction and how this can eventually help you stop the habit of unwanted and unwarranted pre-empting behaviour which at times can work potently to disempower you and short change you- in the short and long term! So here we go!

We live in an era where “hustle” is perhaps the key word- whether required or not- we see millions of people day in and day out racing to their work desks and places of work to accomplish something that will be life changing, only to realize by evening that they have to go on with it for another day, then another and then another…the endless tomorrow simply sticks like super glue and the never ending hustle seems to live on! It is certainly good to set measurements, metrics, achievable goals and so on and so forth, for that is how human progress is made and monitored, but when the hustle keeps on going on endlessly with no real rhyme or reasons- eventually the only person who gets hustled is the hustler! You see, you don’t call for an earthquake to shift the furniture in your house- that is not how it works and that is as simple and straight an explanation why endless and meaningless hustle is not good and in fact is very much counterproductive- a major reason for may burnt out minds, failed hearts and lost-in- travel-personalities! A lot of chaos and complexity that we end up giving to ourselves originates from these rushed spaces of hustle which often are accompanied by bouts of instinctive and impulsive decision making- while that may work well for a few most of the time, for the many, it almost always ends up into manifesting even more chaos and begins a chain reaction wherein the individual is left with no other choice, but visiting one problem after the other and this newly found hustle of their lives, soon enough becomes all consuming!

A lot of hustle that we witness around simply evaporates with time, in weeks, months or perhaps a few years, but it will and it does- the real area of concern here is the damage that we end up doing at an intrinsic level to be part of facilitate hustle which is agenda driven to get something in the now, with no real essence or application for the long run- well that is the real story in most of the cases! You see, you may be a hustler and hitting your business targets year after year, but the question is at what cost and at the expense of what! The day you walk out of that business or office, you are only left with scars which tend to damage you at an intrinsic level more then anything else and that is the real and lasting price that one ends up paying for being caught up in mindless hustle of the world! Whether you are a victor or a survivor really doesn’t matter, because by the time the mindless hustle ends, you would have lost perhaps the most valuable thing- Your Time! Which, no matter what you do will never be back! SO does this mean, that hustle is not relevant? Or does it mean that we become passive and take things as they are and stop the effort to usher in change and a better tomorrow? Well none of that, the problem is not about the hustle itself, the problem is with the hustle for things that don’t deserve it for one or the reason! This could be different for different people and it is within these specific contextual realities that one needs to find the real mindful hustle that one needs to pay attention to! This only become possible through Inaction! The primary step before you decide to do something! Empowerment through Inaction is perhaps the only meaningful way to harness and manage purposeful hustle that creates an impact the way you want it to!

Inaction is not about being lazy, neither is it about being passive, Inaction is rather the ability to make a deliberate choice – a choice of not doing anything – because there are many instances, when you allow things to untie themselves they do and it all becomes relatively painless and more importantly when you do decide to act, you actions are empowering and potent enough to bring in a change or shift as you want them to! Inaction is an effective tool and approach because it allows you to observe, monitor and record- patterns, behaviours, impacts and allows you to create a meaningful cause and effect association of things that are unfolding in front of you, if you were to rush in and try to solve something, chances are that even as you try to solve one aspect of a perceived problem, other things will seem cropping up and then the cycle goes on endlessly with no end in sight! When you apply the approach of Inaction, what you immediately end up doing is you stop feeding into perceptions, unfound fears, rushed conclusions and skewed observations that would have been shared with you. You are able to see the dynamics of things as they unfold, people, processes and everything that goes along with it. It is only when you have captured enough of the depth and width of this unfolding drama and you decide to finally act and take a stand- your actions will almost always be decisive, clinical and laser shape- which is normal parlance of the working world spell out effectiveness or productivity!

Inaction is not the inability to act, rather it is the choice made not to act- simply because more needs to be known and understood before taking steps and moving ahead! Like I have mentioned earlier in my other articles, the pause is perhaps the greatest enabler that we have- whether it is the chat that you need to have with yourself or whether you want to assimilate the learnings coming your way and make an impact outwardly to the world. The next time you want to do something, like that in a snap of your finger, hit the inaction brake and take a walk- spend the time that you must in proportion to that impact that your decision will have- it is only when this practise becomes natural that you will be able to shift and sieve through rapid decisions and choices as your mind develops an ability to be in the state of inaction over one area even as it is engaged and implementing action for some other area once that has passed the space of inaction! Meaningful Inaction is always proportional to the probable impact of the ensuing action!

Even as communicators’ we have always been told the value of silence- which conveys so much more- then the spoken words- what silence is to verbal communication, Inaction is to the world of Action and Implementation! It is the vital space within the noise and rhythm that goes along with any implementation and any action, but it is within this pocket that a great sense of clarity and purpose can be derived and many a times the predestined course of impeding actions goes through a radical and decisive change to serve a greater cause and for the greater good!

I leave you with these thoughts for now and urge you to seek your meaningful Inaction to create an even more empowering actionable presence!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay safe and yes, embrace the silence in your action!

The many facets of poverty.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

If you thought anything and everything to do with poverty is all about access to money, food, shelter and varying degrees of opulence, well think again! Sure enough, these are important indicators and perhaps the most visible signs and displays of abject poverty the world over, but the real essence of poverty resides in everything and anything that allows these sad and inhuman scenarios to manifest! Join me here as we try to decipher what poverty is all about and what is that we can do and perhaps not do to manage this, the way we can!

Perhaps the most compelling and vivid memory or a nightmare to call it rightly about poverty is all the visually disturbing imagery, social struggle and strife that we come across through our daily lives. The whole concept of money linked poverty- in terms of ability to access or not access resources and opulence is perhaps just one way of deciphering and inferring about poverty based on broadly agreed social parameters. But this, if you ask me is no real meaningful measure to deal with poverty! The real and perhaps the only meaningful way of dealing with poverty, it’s definition, spread, control and mitigation is all about striking the very root of all that causes and allows this menace of poverty to manifest to begin with!

The whole idea and manifestation of poverty begins from impoverished thinking and acting! The never ending greed and desires to have more and more and all of it only for a few, is what hijacks and steers away any meaningful human essence for a social construct. Once societies agree to create rules that propagate variance and divide resources in a way that tends to serve a few and create dis-service to the many the stage is set for poverty to arrive! Sure enough, I am not promoting or advocating a social or a communist approach either, where- everything belongs to the state and there will be equality in distribution whether someone deserves that or not- no way- the point here is that we create rules and social markers in a way that people are simply left feeling and thinking uncomfortable about how and who they are- and this creates many a times unwanted and unwarranted self imposed pressure to race ahead and surge ahead- irrespective of whether anyone around really cares for it or not! No one is arguing over the ingenuity and the human spirit to progress and make their lives better and more comfortable- the whole issue is with the new age definitions of comfort and opulence and this is where the root of all modern day poverty resides!

If you closely observe, the commonality about being associated with varying levels or poverty or opulence the world over almost always is a conversation about, “where you study”, “where your parents works”, “where do you live”, and “how and where you spend”. This is all about it! All it takes is these few seemingly innocent enquiries and our socially conformed minds are more the happy to quickly start creating buckets and mental brackets to slot in the acquaintance and then either create a sense of happiness on how you are better then the other person in a few areas or start to sulk- because the other person has access to what you are yet to achieve and perhaps have always aspired for! So in a matter of few conversations- a connect with a fellow human- which could have been so many other things and facets of enrichment and exchange of ideas- almost ends up being a transactional encounter aimed at calibrating your own myopic approach and thinking on the world that you have given to yourself- due to the limitation of your perceptions! There are hundreds of examples around us and needless to say, no matter ho well we try, we too can succumb and we do, at some or the other point of time! Whether it is the chatter among growing kids, the grapevine and gossip in the offices or the monitoring of evolving opulence among the business and political class, each one of these instances are an example of impoverished mindset at play- which is the real radical and fundamental root and facilitator for all other visible manifestations of poverty!

No one is saying comparing is bad, no one is saying growing and making progress is bad- the challenge really is within the motive behind all the hustle that gets played out! You may have a great and long successful run- but if the fundamentals of your motive are pivoted over the mistaken understanding about poverty and an impoverished mind is at work- all that achievement and success will eventually all come apart- at some or the other time- simply because all that you build and do will have nothing to offer to the many and as long as that remains- you will be vulnerable and constantly working out of this insecurity to ensure you don’t have to “go back” which again is another fallacy of the over-thinking mind!

The vivid and repulsive play of poverty; really speaking is a measure and indicator of the impoverished thinking within a society and how myopic the leadership thought is as far as the approach to the subject and the chosen solution for it! These leaders could be the mass leaders from the political class or even the community leaders, but another grim and intriguing reality to this is, also about the space of “self drive” or the ability to lead oneself meaningfully by calibrating to the social confirmation, wisely and deliberately by choosing a trim level so that one does not get sucked into the endless and meaningless rat race to seek “socially conformed narratives for not being opulent or being one”!

The real issue around poverty is more to do about impoverished minds trying to create imagery and narratives that limit the many and liberate the few! Only once this is changed and thinking transcends form being impoverished to empowered thinking, will people be really able to see with impeccable clarity- their true value, worth and perhaps carve out a purpose which is more meaningful, enduring and sustaining, irrespective of where they stand- based on what social conformation narratives! The real problem around poverty the world over is not about varying resources and inequality of access- rather it is the minds who go on to create these and foster these to facilitate the agenda of a few while dis-serving the many! The only hope for humanity with regards to doing away with the menace of poverty of all kinds- intellectual, materialistic, social, psychological and spiritual is by allowing fellow humans to have enough time and space to experiment, fail learn and develop themselves on an ongoing basis, for that alone can provide empowered thinking and it is only empowered minds that can create empowered actions to bring about enduring and sustainable lives and livelihoods! Until this happens, each one of us is living an impoverished life in some or the other area and more often then not- the control dynamics will be with someone else!

I leave you with thoughts for now, urging you to take a pause and reflect upon the kind of approach that you would want to embark upon to at least end the pattern of impoverished thinking for yourself- it is only when you are empowered that you can share the spirit of empowerment with someone else!

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

Your real priority.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

Half way around the world, either you are planning to spend a calm Sunday or you are perhaps already preparing for the approaching Monday- well irrespective of that bit, no matter what you do or not, whether you are opulent or not and whether life has been fair or not, the game really is all about your real priority! Join me here as we take a quick paced walk down this route and decipher why most of us run the risk of running into and carrying further conversations which are more about “what could have been” rather then allowing it to be about “what can be”! So here we go!

Whether it is through the upbringing years at school, the formative years at college or the years spent through the corridors of the corporate world- we almost always end up leading a life – knowingly or unknowingly that is run and directed based on the priority listing methodology of someone else- who ever that could be and this is where the divergence commences!

If you are able to step back and embrace the pause, you will observe that many a things that “were high priority”, “so called defining moments” all tend to fade away and become meaningless or irrelevant with time as contexts change and things move ahead. Sure enough you may argue that, this is what hold true for almost everything and anything around us! Sure it is, but we don’t end up sabotaging ourselves the way we normally end up doing while we pursue the “so called priority” which almost allays is a case of someone else’s dream, requirement or necessity! It is this disconnect that ends up creating students graduating each year with ever more confusion about what they want to do next, with companies re-visiting their corporate strategies every now and then and wondering whether they should continue a product or service or not and governments who end up delivering what is not promised and never seem to deliver what has been promised. The whole social maze around strife and struggle is a whole lot because of this space of misplaced priorities and conformation narratives!

Through the student days, marks and grades are a priority – for that bit is sold to you- as the only assurance for an opulent life and only way to beat the race and stay ahead- well I am not saying this is not correct, the problem is this is not entirely true! You see if there are top 10 students across the thousands of universities then there are the next 20 from each one of them- so even for that visibly small variance of percentage or grades – as far as marking goes -which will never be beyond 10%, to believe that , this 10% difference can create such a wide and un-breakable barrier to earn and live an opulent life- simply doesn’t make sense and neither is that true! You have back benchers leading firms, business and doing exceptionally well, by the simple fact that they are able to hire the top performers at the price that they demand! So if the priority while being a student was only to get good grades or marks- why does this logic fail to deliver beyond an eclectic top 10-15% of the millions of students that exist at any given time?

If this was not enough, see what unfolds in the corporate world- you walk into that grand office each morning- or in today’s context, you hit your WFH desk to open up emails each morning only to find that “new priorities” have come in and as the week and month’s go by- if you ever reflect on what actually has happened- the corporate world end sup being a scene of accidental priorities and misplaced strategy- which often ends up achieving quite less when what could have been- simply by the latent power of the human potential that exists within each organization! You may want to say, that as organizations respond and react to market conditions things are bound to change- sure- but what is the meaningful variance- what’s the whole point of calling something “a priority” if the next market situation is going to ask you to throw all of that into a dustbin and sack half of your team? What does this speak about the whole approach to setting up and defining what a priority is, should be or can be? Think around this!

If you thought, this is limited to only the world of corporate and things that impact socially, think again, just see what has unfolded closer to you- your inner circle- your relations, ideals, mentors, coaches and what not! If you think that anyone or any of them were a priority for you- the essence of the word priority would imply that irrespective of what has unfolded or not- whether things have worked for you or not- you would still stand by them, their guidance and so would they too! But is that how it really gets played out? Well chances are they will not get played out that way and if they do, trust me and count yourself to be the luckiest among the lucky people to have some support system like that going around for you! So what is real priority then? Why is it vital and what makes it so encompassing and omnipresent? Read on!

Well, the real and perhaps the only meaningful and enduring priority that you will ever have in your life is “You”. Unless you make it a practise and a directed effort to place yourself and your core priorities first, no matter how successful you are or not, how rich you get to be or not, end of the day, all of that will be hollow and things will crumble at some or the other time sooner or later- simply because you have no control as you keep working and slogging for external priorities which are perhaps of core importance for someone else- a person or an organization and the trick in that space is, if you are not willing to stay enslaved for that, there will always be someone else to get that done and hence whether you like it, hate it or are good or bad,no one really cares a damn and irrespective of what you gain through that association, you will always end up loosing yourself from the context of failing to give priority to yourself!

Giving yourself priority is not about being self-centred, selfish or being disrespectful or disconnected or disengaged to working for others, with others or anything around that! On the contrary, once you are able to give priority to yourself, you know the value that you carry at an intrinsic level and that becomes a formidable push to achieve more in less time- especially when you are engaged to fulfil something for someone else- simply because you know that- only once that is done, will you be able to act upon what really matters to you at an intrinsic level – that is to work on your priorities! This is the real essence of moving ahead with a meaningful existence- being able to strike a balance between your real priorities- your intrinsic priorities and the external tasks and assignments that you race ahead to complete by virtue of your worldly engagements!

It is only when you begin to arrange the world around you by placing your priorities- which need to be aligned to your urge for expression, creativity and brilliance will you be able to contribute in any meaningful and uplifting manner to anyone else! You see, all of us want to be leaders and lead, but before we do that, what we must first and always do is lead ourselves! Unless you decide to lead yourself- why would anyone else even want to follow you, let alone being lead by you! No one likes to be lead by leaders who don’t have stories to share or who don’t have a compelling narrative and clarity- and for the leader in you to behold these aspects- you need to first put yourself at the highest priority. It is only when you act with clarity, decisiveness and meaningful directed purpose- will the others around you begin to trust and believe in your abilities and willingly surrender to follow you! Unless you don’t chart a course for your own life, you will not be able to make a great headway to lead a business, a nation or anyone else for that matter- simply because you too would be as lost as the person whom you are supposed to lead- only because you failed to recognise your real priority- which is no one else and nothing else but “You”!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, urging you to think around this and do take some time off and think around”what is your real priority?” Shouldn’t it always be you? The world is replete with examples where people keep racing ahead in a straight line along a circular track, to reach the same point where they started year after year, instance after instance- all simply because of missing the essence of who they really are!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay safe and stay wise! Remember, it all begins and ends with “You”!

Touched by Inertia.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

As ironical it may seem to be, the world keeps going the way it does, not only because of what we do or the way we act, but more because of what we do not do and what we don’t act upon! Join me here as we take a fleeting look at how this omnipresent problem and facet of Inertia- tends to serve us a world that we perhaps end up earning for ourselves- simply by deciding what not to do or by not acting when we ought to have acted! So here we go!

Our modern lives are nothing more then the play of Inertia, for a few of us it comes in as a blessing and yet for a few of us it comes in like an intertwined curse! Whether we like it or not, accept it or not, it persists and it very much pulls and pushes us- by simply through the nature of it’s existence around and within us! Whether it is the measure of success in the corporate world, the desire to create a new narrative for tomorrow or perhaps as simple as getting out of your bed and making it- each of these and many such day to day instances are replete with how Inertia influences what we are able to do, get done or not!

Whether it is the school kid that doesn’t seem to listen to you, or the grown up teen up or your boss at the workplace or the relationships that you deal with- each and every person that you connect and engage with, for whatever the reason there could be, is at all times either being what they seem to be working along their inertial construct- for some it could be about not doing anything and wanting to be the way they always have been and for yet others it could be about transforming on an ongoing basis based on what the surrounding developing contexts are simply to either consolidate their presence, grow it or at times just plain- survive!

There is nothing right or wrong about how you want to deploy your meaningful existence- whether you want to seem meaningful to a few or to the many- all depends on how compelling that drive is- something which is a story of your intrinsic love or hate for inertia. We have all known someone who got run over by change and then we almost always know someone who crated their lives because of change- so if you closely see what has actually transpired- in one instance it is the case of hugging inertia to stay where you are in the other instance it is about embracing it and partnering to take a leap of faith banking on what seems to be coming your way- hoping you will develop all that it takes to manage that bit on the journey to the new hazy destination!

The world of corporate houses and the corridors of political leadership that influence public lives and alter the way people live or can live is no different! You have leaders who want to stick to the ways of the tried and tested not wanting to rock the boat or even take it to some place and yet you come across Captains’ who are driven by an intrinsic urge of wanting to challenge what there is and want to chart a new compelling course which hold the promise of a better tomorrow. It is not that one approach is better then the other, the reality is that a little both of both is required to make an meaningful progress at optimum costs, go a bit too long either-ways- the chances are you would end up doing more damage then progress to whatever you are setting out to achieve! So what really is Inertia all about?

To put it simply it is that mind game that your brain is constantly playing with you- a function of our primitive mind- which only cared about one thing- not getting you killed! So when it comes to complex thinking and challenges of the modern day world that we have come to be- no matter how great or superb the brain is as a thinking organ- it too tires and fatigue sets in- when you a tired thinking mind- chances are it will push the button to hold on to what there is and follow the one simple rule- if doing what is being done and what has been done has not as yet got you killed- chances are you will survive going ahead! This is how students say “yes” when they are asked “if they understood or not” – simply because their mind has read it- if the teacher has not been able to explain three times- the fourth time is likely going to be a waste of time and energy- the teacher may have- but your tired and hungry brain has lost its interest to infer, deduce and compute so that’s when you cling to what there is! Likewise when you grow up and start walking the office corridors- “the boss is always right” because why would you care- if shit does happen- it is at the bosses’ table! Well when you have politicians and administrator’s who are given the task to create, sustain and develop the social framework-bitten by the inertia effect- well you see societies either stalling and stagnating or getting stripped and layered all the time on different parameters- looking statistically vibrant but completely wrecked at the human level!

The real point here is that, whether we act as individuals or as a society or a group- it is our disposition and orientation towards inertia that either makes us surge ahead or compels us to keep on repeating the same cycle over and over again! There is no truth in seeking continual change, just as there is no truth about never changing! The reality and essence of meaningful change resides somewhere in between- that space is empowering meaningful change aligned to what is required in the now and the arriving tomorrow! Needless to say not all of us can go on to decipher that bit and lead the many- the irony of the issue is that followers often have the ability and quite a few leaders are stuck to the earlier stories of the good old days and this fundamental difference of having to work for a myopic leader or a myopic leadership is at the heart of people leaving organizations and people failing to relate to the countries and societies that they live in! So what can be done? Well read on!

To being with you, can do something, only if you are able to agree and concur to the reality that something needs to be done- it is only when this compelling intellectual thought has been verified and has been able to successfully over-ride the pressures of your intrinsic inertial state is that you will be able to act decisively – either as an individual or as a leader of a group! Unless this step is not completed- it will almost always be the a case of few steps ahead and a few steps back! It is only when you are able to make your Intrinsic Inertia your friend that you will be able to decipher exactly when it is time to act and when it is time to wait and that is the secret and essence of being successful or not in the view of the world as it measures success, from your stand point- acting on the pivot of known inertia will empower you to make choices which are an expression of your identity and help you stamp your authority on whatever you choose to do- irrespective how big to small that act is!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, guess my Inertial urge for a coffee to think the next idea, is calling me in a quite compelling way! Until then stay wise, stay connected and yes, do strike a connect with your Inertial connect and decipher what tick you and what ticks you off- for there resides the secret to your empowerment!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then stay safe, stay wise and stay connected! Yes, before I go, A Big Big Thank You for being a part of this journey of ours- this is our 250th Blog! Thank You and Keep sending in those mails and ideas on what you want to hear next!

Fucked up nations and a screwed up world.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

If you have woken up each day to tune into the news and discover that not much has changed (which empowers you or your life) and if you have gone to that much cherished office desk of yours’ whether based out of your home or at your real office and always thought about the meaningless banter that you end up through the enslaved long hours (for tasks which you too know could have been done in a few hours, sans the melodrama of the “socially accepted way of working” , that insatiable addiction to meetings, gossip and throwing up meaningless words and ideas which go on to serve very little at the end of the day, leaving you more sapped and disempowered rather then uplifting you; well this is all in a day’s work scenario for the millions of us and the best part is, we don’t even relate this to the wider menace of, how misplaced ideations, policies at national level ends up screwing up the communities within the nation and furthermore rubs off all that it should not to the global space! Join me here as we try to decipher this space and perhaps think around why and what it is, that has led us- as humanity to a point where we are happy to accept what comes our way even without an intelligent or focussed discussion or deliberation. So here we go!

The world seems to be a kind of aggregation of dumb places and over countless cups of tea and coffee ! The world over, every person has a point of view on what the people managing the affairs of their nation should be doing, but the real problem are not the leaders or their ability to manage- the real problem that the nations and the world in general has reached a dismal bend in terms of what could have been better, has more to do with the more innocent and inconspicuous looking elements within the society- which by design or accident end up creating a social conformation of mediocre standards and when societies thrive and propagate on this foundation, needless to say, nations are messed up and the world in general!

Someone rightly said, it is not about decisions, being taken or not- it is about the quality of decisions being taken or not that are the real game changers! The world needs stoic silence as much as it needs vibrance and noise! The real trick is about knowing when to pump up the noise and when to embrace quiet and unless this essence is understood and held on to by the majority, the few that run or ruin the nations and the world will continue to thrive and progress at the expense of directed ambiguity and chaos unleashed towards the majority!

We live in times where societies are more and more closing and folding unto themselves for one or the other reason and all the righteous space of enquiry, deliberation and progressive ideation is being short changed to drive home the narratives of a a few- increasingly our societies are turning into reality show labs playing out to the scripts directed by the few who can do so! As original thinking and genuine enquiry is lost in the race to serve fast food solutions to an ever restless society, we are managing the chaos of today, with no idea on how to engage and deal with the future that is just around the corner! The more humanity keeps digging into its’ heels and obeying the Law of Inertia- it will do nothing else but get further complicated and paralysed to create any meaningful social frameworks that empower individuals to progress and influence! By now, you may want to ask, why this banter? How does this even start? Well read on!

Like with everything good or bad, societal deterioration and the ensuing mess emerging from it always starts small; how small? Well at the very foundational levels in a society- at the level of families- irrespective of whatever the serious and challenging situations that a family may have- whether being affluent or not, more often then not it is within these microscopic spaces on a societal context that we end up promoting disempowerment, myopic outlooks and narrowed down narratives- whether it is about feeding in ways of life or the holy grail of the supposed to be modern education systems that are rampant around us- what each family more often then not ends up doing is destroying the core value of human curiosity and power to enquire and once this is done and the drill to accept what is being preached is set in then we end up having generations and generations that thrive on accumulated information mistaken as knowledge and needless to say- every now and then as that pile of informative garbage fails us- societies across the world are left to fend for themselves as they can- because that is when all the so called experts begin to fail and each one has a point of view which is contradictory and undeserving to find a real meaningful solution to a problem at hand- sounds familiar- well the present pandemic right? yes- well thats how it has been even before the pandemic and will always be!

Disempowerment at an individual level when multiplied and amplified many times over, is what sets back societies and when that is done at a societal level, you end up having a messed up nation! It is from these confines of restricted and challenged spaces that the world leadership emerges and when they too are a byproduct of such beginnings, needless to say hardly anything substantial for the greater good is ever realized! The problems that we see around us and leave us wondering why they don’t get ever solved is not the real issue;the real issue is about trying to solve a problem a hundred times in an exactly same way, which never worked in the first place!

The whole journey of messing up societies and nations begins with placing embarrassing, stupid and dumb goals and targets for the lives of young kids and as they begin to grow and explore the world around, all the innate curiosity and originality is rapidly destroyed and what we end up creating instead is a generation of think alike, feel alike and sink alike people! Everything from parenting to schooling to the way jobs are offered, business is conducted speaks volumes about the intrinsic orientation of the societal fabric and the individual constituents within. Unless this space is altered, you will witness, politicians and policy makers playing out the same narrative year after year, without really achieving anything worthwhile and even when something is achieved, it looses its essence and meaning for the time has already flown by! Unless people stop the intentional deliberate attempt to label human life based on “job”, “relation”, “perception”, or “skewed success definitions”, humanity is all but a hopeless case, racing ahead on the edge of a circle to come back to bygone milestones and fated to repeat mistakes of the past!

Perhaps the only way to untangle, stall or mitigate this seemingly unsolvable mess of humanity, is by going back to the basics and learn not to mend what is not broken- that is what it is all about! No complicated solutions, complex strategies, it is just about being rational, discerning and giving common-sense and human ingenuity and curiosity space and time to breather, thrive and execute. The moment this is done ground up, you will witness transformation unfolding which increasingly comes up solutions and innovation to serve the greater good of humanity. Sure enough, not everything can be charity and there has to be a price to be paid for research and scalability of solutions, but that can’t be an excuse to make the spirit of being human redundant! Senseless automation is a classic example where humans ended up being redundant! technology and automation sure enough are great enablers and game changers, but unless that every moving dynamic balance between people and process is not made, things will end up, with one trying to annihilate the other! Unless people realise this and pledge to build social framework that serve human rather then the other way around, the ever faltering and failing world around us will go on the way it does, banking on the pivot of generous dumbness and sparing intelligence!

Take the step today and make a pledge to yourself to try and connect with the intrinsic and innate human quality that you have within, sans what society says, what your business card says and so on and so forth, once people begin to practise this simple act of self-empowerment and mindful approach to their pwn life and begin to believe that their own lives are much beyond the business cards and the relationships that they build and destroy on an ongoing basis! It is only when empowered and anchored individuals begin to direct and associate at community and societal levels that change will be experienced as it should be and it is then that un-serving and nonsensical rhetoric of the so called leaders and policy makers will begin to get calibrated- for they too would have evolved from the same space of empowered thinking and staying curious for the greater good!

No matter who says what, unless humans are empowered and liberated in their approach to think and stay curious, we are destined to deal with the garbage that gets played out on the screens all day long and we end up trying to define ourselves to what best suits us- from what gets thrown at us! The saddest part of our times is about many people living and dying away not ever realizing what they were capable of and perhaps could have done amazingly well- all because of the overbearing rhetoric of fucked up nations and a screwed up world!

Ciao for now, will be back with anther one, until then stay safe, stay wise and unshackle yourself to embrace empowerment and nourish your curiosity- that is where the magic happens and that is where you find yourself and your purpose; rest all is as simple as a rocket engine!

The problem with “equality”.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

Before you even want to jump the gun and try to start racing ahead with suppositions, presumptions and prejudiced thoughts about what this piece is likely to be about, I would simply say that none of that will help or is even required, because the fact of our times is that, no matter how much “equality” is showered from the roof tops and through the societal touch points, we endure only one thing at the end of it all- an equally unequal world in whatever way you choose to study and decipher it! Join me here as we try to unravel why equality is perhaps not what it seems or should be and why the obsessive fallacy of promoting “equality” has led humanity to a point where we are now! So here we go!

You don’t need to study advanced rocket science to learn or observe that the story of humanity is all about societies dotted with individuals and these individuals who go on to make the framework and all working, thriving, not so thriving elements of the social construct are never equal- no matter what measure or metric you choose to compare! You may have two individuals doing the same thing and getting rewarded in exactly the same manner for the work they do- whether in cash or kind- but that in no way is any real authentic or sensible reflection to use the term of “equality”! Simply because individuals, each one us are different and as unique as the last extinct plant or animal! We may have similarities in terms of feeling, thinking and approach on a few fundamental spaces that govern our survival, universally, but that is where the common ground ends and beyond that it is almost always about who we are as an individual and all the blown up garbage around “equality” is nothing more but a glorified publicised rant to drive some or other unequal agenda!

We all studied the grand equality sign (=) as students of elementary maths and we all know and agree that only when the variables or numbers across that sign are the same is when this sign or equality carries any meaning! Likewise when it is about our lives, two sides of the equality sign that are vital are the ones’ that signify who we are as an intrinsic construct and the what are the contextual settings that go on to influence us, as we evolve and go on to engage with the society and the world around us! Needless to say, even the same contextual settings will influence differently individuals as they have different intrinsic construct and, yes, even if you wanted to argue about identical twins and all that space, well, do tell me how much percentage do these gifted identical twins make up of the global human population! So this much for now, as far as the foundation of the concept of equality goes- as humans each one of us are unique, in one way or the other and no matter who says what- equality doesn’t travel beyond the definition about us as a species! So, if this is true, why the global hue and cry about this concept?

Well, the human mind has this habit of wanting to be incentivised and urge to feel good first before thinking good or thinking right- so when you have these utopian concepts thrown at it- it acts like an ice cream given on a hot summers day and soon enough all rational guards of the thinking mind are lowered and the emoting mind takes over- not realizing what it ends up signing up for! This is why most of the time everything related to equality, more or less ends up in a grand public spectacle of office access, conferences, workshops or high tea conversations and that’s where they get buried as well! The real and perhaps the only meaningful attribution to equality only comes from ability have a definite metric which is independent of the person performing a given operation! You see, all apples are sure sweet and the way they ought to be, but they are not equal! They may be similar, but similar never means equal! So what’s the point you may ask? What is this raking up the hay all about…

Well, it is all about grounding your intelligence, wisdom and common-sense to one fundamental aspect of life that, it is our uniqueness which brings in vibrance and variety to the world that we have created and if at all there has to be any meaningful measure or discussion around equality- it has to be not only about equality of access or employment or gender neutrality or any of these (you may still want to root for them), but rather it has to be about equality in terms of human expression based on skills and competence whether that be a field of arts or science or any of their applied fields! Blue blood innovation doesn’t happen in incubation labs and confined corridors and sealed windows, it happens where liberated minds are able to breather, and express freely whether that space is a pent house or a garage and that is the whole essence of human progress and development! The ability to provide a fair and just platform for human expression irrespective of who they are and from where they are, is what is the real essence of equality- It has to be only about equality of expression and the ability to share and improvise on those fleeting expressions and breakthroughs which alone can go on to add meaningful and enriching experiences to the lives of people all around!

If you understand this core aspect and are able to further the same, your immediate community, society, nation and the world will be forever much indebted to you- simply because you allowed the human spirit to remain equal in the real essence of it, by allowing it to flower and flourish on the pivot of human expression rather then any other modern day banter- which is nothing else but an agenda driven narrative-almost always!

I leave you with these thoughts here, urging you to take a pause and reflect; what is the equality narrative that you ever got sold to and what is the real essence of equality mean to you! Can there ever be anything greater and further then equality of human expression? Think around it!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay wise, stay safe and yes, don’t get sold into all the crap that comes your way, some is fine!

Limited by Thoughts and Liberated by Action.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

We live in a world, where we are constantly bombarded with some data point- relevant or irrelevant, meaningful or meaningless, true or not, really doesn’t matter! We are in effect becoming what we are consuming, perhaps less about food and more about the data bits that are being served to us whether we willingly seek them or not! Join me here as we take a look into this space and try to understand what this is all about and what is that you and I can really do about it to create a meaningful and engaging outcome around our existence on an ongoing basis! So here we go!

Societies have always been known for their potency of ideation and original works, the more original and greater the contribution that societies have been able to offer, more have they developed, progressed and thrived. if you were to flip the books of history the period of 1700s onwards has been more or less a saga of success by virtue of individualistic and collective brilliance and this paved the way for what a wonderful place the world can be- science, arts, innovation all that we see and experience around us are nothing more but the seeds of yesteryears which are now bearing fruits! The only reason why the fruits that we harvest today are so uplifting, is solely because of the empowering thoughts that lead to their creation in the first place! The bygone area was of limitless ideation and a consistent strife and struggle about not wanting to accept status quo and keep moving ahead, sure enough, you may argue so what is so different about that, it is unfolding even now- well the only difference and the most impacting one is that- today’s pursuits are more and more a story of application of limiting thoughts to seek calibrated outcomes, rather then creating an open canvas that allows collaboration and a more lasting contribution!

The problem with these limited thoughts resulting into calibrated outcomes is not limited to the closed lab doors or political powerhouses, but rather every segment of a society ends up getting entrapped, the moment you limit your thinking to address issues or create new innovations to meet what is unfolding in the now or to alter the way what is being consumed in the now and this is perhaps one of the greatest fallacies of our modern age! If you have ever wondered why despite so much of breakthrough, very often a lot of it means so little, well this is the answer- the trap of limited thinking!

Needless to say, as thinking and ideation begins to get limited and narrowed down in its focus and purpose, the resulting actions too will end up manifesting half baked solutions and recurring problems which keep coming to haunt you with a predictable schedule! Well climate change, save nature, plant more tress, go green, recycle- all of these (important or not) keep coming every year, at a scheduled time, every year announcements are made for new breakthroughs, solutions and technologies to address the problems, but the problem simply continues to be where it is and what just goes on is more conferences, meetings and more solutions for a never ending problem! Think! This is why limited thinking ends up entrapping and societies keep finding solutions for problems that are not there and real problems remain as they are, going nowhere! This is what brings us to the critical importance of knowing what liberating action is all about!

The translation of ideas into action, execution, operations has been the core of all management education for a long time and perhaps the corporate world has been the best testimony to see first hand how limited thinking creates more problems rather then solving the existing ones’ let alone come up with something awesome for tomorrow! You see, the problem with limited thinking or that of, limited circulation of thoughts is that it ends up being a death spiral for any innovative and original thought for an existing challenge or any new challenge with each passing moment. This deadly entrapment of human intelligence by virtue of short sighted and myopic definition and deployment of intelligence and intellect through thought and corresponding flawed actions ends up short serving our future and screws up our today as well! We end up being a society nothing to celebrate today, nor having a party planned for tomorrow, just being survivors for today and the tomorrow which always seems to be a continuation of the bygone yesterday! So what must be done and can be possibly done?

Sure enough, this is not a public policy document, to come up with fine print strategies for arresting the problems related to myopic intelligence and the resulting feeble ideation and thoughts from that space, however one thing that can be done and must be done, is encourage and propagate original and unconventional thinking and ideation as much as any society can! For the real essence of the future and the ability of creating empowering and life changing narratives only will be upheld when space is made available to allow limitless yet directed thinking which is aimed at the greater good! So what’s the way ahead?

Well, as a first step, to come out of this endless spiral of self-consuming and self-centred construct of pursuits at individual and social levels is all about incentivizing thinking and ideation that is selfless and for the greater good and the next crucial step is allowing a platform to sustain and propagate that thought- not by force but by compelling choices that are able to narrate with clarity the benefits and promise of those ideas. It is only when this stage is achieved, that any meaningful action will emerge and that action will be empowering and liberating as it stands on the solid bed rock of empowering ideation which is meant for the many!

Liberated action when unleashed has the power to embrace all those who believe in it and even those who are skeptical about it! Just as the Sun doesn’t make any discrimination as it spreads its’ light, the ability to progress on the power of liberated action too rests on what is being perceived, how well and whats is being done with what has been imbibed! The essence of empowering lives doesn’t reside in the self-help books or motivational workshops or leade4rship games, those things perhaps do help for that fleeting moment, but for enduring and sustaining shift in an approach for being able to receive and share something empowering all the time, we all need to be surrounded by limitless thoughts and liberating actions, all the time or should I say, as much as possible! The progress and growth of societies and individuals will be directly proportional to the exposure and acceptance that they display to adapt these new age, relevant ways of empowering ideas and allowing them to breathe and live through equally accommodate execution and deployment spaces in the social construct!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, urging you to take a moment from your life and strive to make a habit of creating limitless thoughts and liberating actions- whether that is a seed that you plant or a corporation that you lead!

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

Colors through the Prism.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

We live in times, where the war of narratives simply refuses to die down and no sooner that one fire of warring narratives is doused we have some other narrative rising up some where else, given the connected global collective future that we all share as humanity, what more can be more important then to take a pause and try to understand how did and why did we arrive where we have today, and why have narratives become so driven, compelling and sacrosanct, that without a daily does of “breaking news” we simply refuse to recognize that a new day has arrived and there can be a day without a “breaking news”! Join me here as we explore this space and try to make sense of the gross nonsense floating around us and take a moment to think what is that we can do to stay on the right side- or should I say, the sane side, as much as we can! So here we go!

Never before have societies across the world, found themselves to be dodged and challenged each day on some or the other issue, whether that is a social problem confined to a limited area, society or a nation, or whether it is a global challenge which touches areas of international trade, commerce, public policy, diplomacy or the so-called space of the new-age climate change fanatics! All these arenas have one thing in common and that is the compelling urge for the whole of humanity to take a position on each and every issue that comes their way- either you are for something or against something, even when you think that you would like to stay neutral and not join the fools’ bandwagon for meaningless pursuits, you are soon labelled by both ends as being a coward, incompetent or still worse a human wreck!

Humanity, as it evolved always had to battle and put forth one new age thought over the other and that is what the essence of progress and development has always been and will always be, but never before was anyone compelled to take a position like each one of us are required to do so- call it social conformation bias, societal pressures or simply a social model, if you don’t belong to something or someone, you belong to no one, that is what the human race has sadly come to be! But how did we reach this place? Why has it become so necessary and qualifying to take stands and demonstrate ones’ likes’ dislikes’ ideological affiliations such a pronounced way? What is really unfolding in all this space? Read on!

Our disconnected world, was perhaps more unifying and collaborative in the sense of being able to bring together the finest of human minds across varying fields- arts, sciences, innovation and that is what has been the hallmark of the modern age renaissance across the world through the 16th century onwards! Unique thinking was debated, discussed and either adopted or left alone, but never was the beholder of that thought vilified and neither were the people who rallied around exponents of different thoughts were made to pledge their allegiance and choose one of the many or the choices that lay in front of them! This is what empowered the free spirited and unabashed, care free thinking and experimentation!- A foundation on which all human development and progress- even until this day stands on! The fact remains that, the fabric of stretched space and time and space between developments gave enough time for people to think through a much required calibrated pause and that further went on to enrich the original ideas and made them stick like nothing else ever has! In fact many of the modern day marvels of engineering, appliances, gadgetry are nothing but an example of in depth pursuit of an original idea, followed up by continuing improvisation as the changing times would have called for!

Paradoxically enough as this boom of ideas began to get more and more predictable and routine, through the 18th century and the earlier part of the 19th century and as humanity began to exhaust, the meaningful pursuit of ideation breakthrough’s for “need to have” aspects of our lives and began to move towards “good to have” spaces, things soon began to get complicated! This complication stemmed from “the rewards that were being offered to come up with a new way at looking towards old things!” Well, needless to say in no time, narratives, competing statements and ambiguity began to replace- simplicity and clarity and once this approach starts to take a strangle hold on the ways of working of societies, all your intellectual ammunition thrown at it to bring in some much needed sanity, is almost always misused and thrown back at you, further aggravating an already worsening problem and in no time- the ground is set to create two powerful sections and segments within a society “With” or “Against”. This is the very moment which gave birth to what we see manifest around us, every now and then with an ever increasing instance, this compelling greed of wanting to control, wanting to belong to “x’ or “y” or “z” and wanting to just rant off “it’s only mu way” all the time is what sets the tone to further drive the divide even more further and at times make it wide enough, so that no meaningful bridges can ever be built, even if someone later would want to!

It is this modern day, madness that urges people to see things in the binary, or of either being black or white, for or against them, and situations like these is what makes humanity really color blind in the real essence of the definition of being color blind! It is this modern day approach of wanting to push through a specific narrative, direction, way of life, way of existence, way of belief, way of going about is what really ends up creating a sharp divide among humans- within families, friends, societies and nations- add to this a layer of “intelligence gone berserk” and on a trajectory of “wanting to control” and you have a recipe for disaster- which is what our modern world is more or less all about!

This menace of wanting people to see the world around them in a “black or white”, “my way or your way” kind of binary set up is perhaps the most un serving aspect of humanity as it stands today! If the digital age has done something to this space, it ahs gone further to add to the chaos and ensured that the dumb become more dumber and the wise become more sly- enough to ensure that the ambiguity and confusion is spread and sustained more rapidly and with more driven intentions, to further shirt serve people, societies and humanity at large! The digital age has indeed become one potent weapon of mass destruction- which if harnessed meaningfully can add colors and vibrancy to the lives of millions around the world, but as the few strive to retain control over the many- needless to say- this magical digital world- often ends up being an extension of compelling narratives and a larger then life intellectual graveyard in its own sense! So what is the way forward, is there something that you and I can do about this? If yes, what is that we can do? Read on!

Sure enough, there is no one size fits all solution to this overhanging menace of our modern times, simply because all situations and contextual realities are almost always different even though they seem to be similar enough, they are never the same. Having said that, the only meaningful way to deal with this compelling pressure of living in a binary world is by allowing yourself to see your life through a prism! Just like the prism splits white light and leaves us awestruck with the array of the rainbow colors, we too can arrive at meaningful inferences, rejecting the compelling binaries that are thrown our way! There certainly will be times when binaries may be true and correct, but unless things around you are made to pass the test of the prism, you can never be certain about what colors are hidden in the plain light that is shining your way! Now you may be wondering, what is this magical prism all about!

Well that magical prism is the prism of your intelligence which is anchored on the pivots of wisdom, rationality and humanistic realities! You see, no matter who says what, unless science develops to a very advanced level, this third rock from the Sun is all that we have got and if you think escaping a situation was a great act, you will be gravely mistaken, for some other contextual settings may soon entrap you and compel you to solve some problem which is not even yours’ to begin with! This is the truth of our connected world, problems come from some odd pocket, created by few actors residing some where else and the consequences being faced by yet another society!

Unless you and I don’t make that extra effort to behold the sights and sounds of our fleeting world through the prism of discernment anchored on values and attributes that serve the greater good of the society that we are in, everything that you and I try to do will always be seen to be either “for” or “against” and we risk being entrapped into the binary world and end up being the unwitting contributors furthering a meaningless pursuit!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, urging you to bring in your prism to behold the life around you so that you see the colors hidden away in the ordinary looking light that comes your way! Life is certainly beyond binaries and the competing narratives that we are always left to play around with! The real essence of life and meaningful narratives only thrive once you are able to see beyond the binaries and are able to take a stand which does not necessarily mean a choice between “for” or “against”!

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

Know your Knot.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

Our lives revolve around the “knot”, well seems trivial, perhaps you never even get to notice it, but that remains to be a fact! Our modern world is all about knowing which knot is the one that you need to keep knotted and which is the one that you require to liberate, end up opening the wrong knots or tying up where you don’t need any and you will sure enough end up creating more problems, rather then solving the ones that you already are dealing with! Join me here as take a quick look around this space and understand what could be a meaningful way to engage and deal with a knotted world that all of us have inherited and continue to share and pass on! So here we go!

The extent of simplicity or complexity or the extent of being empowered or feeling disempowered is a direct measure of how astute one has being with regards to the ability of dealing wit the knots that have come their way! The more knots your come across the more enriched your life will be through the lens of the experience and stories that you are able to gather. The prudence and wisdom that you display by leaving a few as they are and focus on opening up the ones’ that matter sets the course for the trajectory of your life’s story and everything around it! How far you will reach, how that journey will be and what that long lasting definition of success will mean to you- whether that is an expression by virtue of harnessing opulence, staying simple, being empowered tom lead for others or creating narratives for empowering others!

The approach to play around with the knots can be many and as unique as who you are as a person! The compelling need for you to open up a specific knot, may not be that high for someone else and like with truth and reality- end of the day it is each one to their own! Nothing right or wrong- the knots that you come across are only for you- what you choose to do with them today, is what sets the tone and pace for what comes your way in the future! The whole essence resides in knowing which one to open up and which one to leave alone for that time or forever! So, how do we get this done? Read on!

To keep it really simple, just know that there are fundamentally two types of knots- one which you must untie and the others which must be left as they are! Within the first types of knots- the essence of untying them comes up with two important aspects- one is the timing of their opening and second being able to manage with what emerges once you have untied that knot! If you have wondered why humanity- most of it is, almost always complacent and good with status quo- it is because once they have untied that knot- they seldom know how to deal with what begins to come their way and it is this incompetence or not being prepared to deal and engage with the new realities of the world around that many people tend to fall back and begin to seek comport in the known zone- never realizing that, the known zone for everyone, each one of us is shrinking by the moment and every time we try to outgrow our lives through any enrichment we bring it- that known zone will shrink even further and eventually push you to experience life as it comes to you when you are probably the most vulnerable and least prepared- simply because you opened up the knot and never learnt what or how you will manage what emerges from that!

Sure enough you may argue, that how can one be prepared to meet the unexpected and the unknown- well, this is why- the whole concept of “self-awareness” and being attuned to yourself (forget about anyone else around) matters so much! It’s not only limited to the knot, but for that matter any action that you decide to take- without being immersed into it completely will always short change you even if the results are in your favour! If you have ever instinctively slowed down your vehicle at a pedestrian crossing even as you saw no one and then actually in the last few seconds, got zapped by someone just umping across- you know what I am talking about!

That instinct to slow down is your signal to open the knot and being able to think in the hindsight about being aware of things developing around ( to stay secured) is what empowers you to deal with the sudden surprises that a new untied knot may throw at you- as long as you are aware of this space and are vigilant to ensure the greater good for yourself and everyone around- rest assured you will almost always stand to benefit from the untying of the knots- as long as you untie the right and meaningful ones!

You may want to really decipher what are these knots all about to begin with? Well, depending on the layers of life that you have added to the canvas of your soul, you will find these knots opened up, half open, locked away at every layer across the layers of your soul! There are these passive knots of dead secrets, lost relevance and unwise narratives which serve no meaning in your now or the approaching tomoror0w- even as they serve as valuable lessons of life- these are best left to where they are in the graveyard of life’s mystical manifestations- call them hallucinations, unwanted bravado’s or perhaps simply mistakes or grave miscalculations- each and all of them are ought to be here and that is the space where they belong to- never to be touched or re-visited! This is the space where the remnants of your life’s expeditions stay buried for all the right and wrong reasons- but each one of them having added their colors and shades to make who you are in the now- before they went silent!

Then we have the set of knots which are meant to be opened up and acted upon to create more meaningfulness, empowerment in our lives’ for only then will you be able to create some meaningful narrative to others’ life! No one ever became an influence unless that person was able to first and foremost influence and lead himself or herself! This is what brings us to the “knotted thinking” which very often has the potency to stall and confuse even the brightest of minds and unless there is an adequate space of checks and balances around- people often fall prey to this knotted thinking and end up living a life- much mellow than what actually it could have been!

This space of knotted thinking is visible everywhere around us, each one of us has this and sure enough is an essential construct of our human mind to ensure we don’t become unwisely reckless or risk driven- which can jeopardize others too around us! But when this very knotted thinking begins to replicate and follow others and the human mind begins to get comfortable with conformed thinking, is when meaningful knots that are supposed to be untied begin to get tighter and tighter and eventually end up becoming too many to deal with- resulting in a complete depletion of originality and potency of thinking that finally takes a toll on how advanced the society can eventually become!

The essence of success and being able to create a meaningful narrative resides in an individual’s ability to untie the knots that one must and leave alone the one’s that must not be touched! It is only when you play around with meaningful knots and begin to decipher new aspects of life is that you will be able to come up with a new unknotted way of thinking to provide new innovative ways to deal and engage with the new reality that you begin to create through the opening of the meaningful knots which come your way as challenges or problems! These meaningful knots take on different manifestations in our real world- family, friends, work places, social fabric, outlook towards tomorrow- and many more such spaces- as long as you are able to traverse these spaces by opening up knots when it matters the most and how it is meant to be opened up- is that you will be able to better harness the new reality that comes you way and rest assured be more equipped to deal with it!

The irony of our times is that people often end up investing a lot of their limited time on opening up unmeaningful and wasted knots and then keep wondering around those futile bygones, futile because, nothing can be now corrected and nothing valuable can be applied to your now or tomorrow by re-visiting those spaces again and again! Sure enough the past is important and that is why it is your past! Your today, stands on the foundation of what you do today guided along the path that you have walked upon to reach where you are now! What matters is that the next knot that you go on to open will decipher where you reach next and that is when- your now will become a past- to be knotted and kept away, even as you race ahead to open up a new knot coming your way!

Final words, choose your knots wisely as you can, for what you are able to do or not, will depends upon your ability to decipher the knots that you open up and more importantly which ones you leave alone and which ones you engage with! As long as you are able to figure out the meaningful and the unmeaningful knots in your life and around you, you will be able to make progress on the path that you have chosen- the more time you waste dealing with unwise knots, your journey only ends up becoming that bit tiring. Whether these knots coming your way, are the people around you or the things around you or the work around you or a mix of all of these (which will normally be the case!) doesn’t mater, what matters is how well you are at selecting and engaging with, which one of them at what time- for that alone will set you on an accelerated course of progressive life learning!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay wise and yes, open up the knots that matter and that begins with opening up your knotted mind to embrace the unknotted soul that you are! Ciao for now! Stay safe, stay wise!

Obedient slaves and Bad masters.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

The first time I cam across this concept was when I underwent a Health and Security training with a high profile organization around two decades back! The trainer was sure enough referring to various technical nuances of providing security detail to VVIPS that we may have to engage with, but as part of the training when he came to the vital part of dealing with “Fire” is when this statement (which I later understood is of foundational value!) came to the forefront! Since that day, it has remained stuck and continues to remain so for a simple reason that it is so fundamental and pivotal that everything around us and everyone around us knowingly or unknowingly is operating through these very attributes! Join me here as we explore this further and understand what is that we can do to make this space more meaningful and to begin with, why does it have to be so? So here we go!

Nature is perhaps the greatest and the eternal teacher. If you have been observant enough and ever had the opportunity to tame the elements of nature (if not all, perhaps a few) you will know what I am referring to! We all have known about the large massive dams that stand a testimony of humanity’s stamp of authority on wild and free flowing rivers, but every now and then when nature comes up with a trick up its’ sleeve, even the most seemingly formidable dams end up being just mere objects as they witness the massive amounts of water which they must allow to flow through and perhaps even flood downstream, simply to ensure that the dam doesn’t fail completely and collapse!

As with water, so with fire, wind and the earth itself- for when the elements on which we stand decide to take matters their way- humanity has almost always ended up paying the price for being reckless and disrespectful- remember the word “climate change” good! This is perhaps what is the simplest explanation for the whole construct of it! As humanity plays dangerously with the elements- what is manageable in no time becomes unmanageable and begins to create problems directly or indirectly of monstrous proportions! This is when the “bad” part of being a master begins to come alive and irrespective where in the world you live, sure enough you have got a taste of it in some or the other form! If you are wondering if this is all about nature and its ways, what does it have to do with us? Well, the truth is, no matter how much we would like to have nature out of our way, it seldom leaves us, and the way we behave with ourselves and people around us, is nothing but a reflection of nature itself!

Through ages, as humanity has learnt and emerged from the shadows of nature, it has learnt one skill and that is of being obedient when it is unsure/ vulnerable and being monstrous when its reeking with confidence/ certainty (more often then not, riding high on overconfidence and some times, arrogance!). This hardwired aspect of the human brain and way of connecting with fellow humans often manifests through the modern day dram that we see unfolding in homes, offices and across the social spaces! This is the reason why you see, overworked corporate slavery (because the vulnerability of being jobless is often too big a mountain to climb for the majority!), next to get around it, the usual tools and aides of sly and non-conforming approaches and behaviours, that is how the seed of corruption gets placed- because a way is found to get around and once you do it for one aspect, certainly you can and you will deploy that art for the next thing that seems to be an insurmountable wall! In case you happen to be the Master in the equation, you will be more aware of the sly ways of your corporate slaves (for Every Master some time has been a Salve!) and that ends up being the bedrock for you to deploy your monstrous approach to get work done!

Sure enough, I am not suggesting this is how everyone is, or everyone operates this way, but if you take a pause and reflect upon the behaviours that you have always seen around you and perhaps even your behaviour- you will always see that people are always oscillating between these two vivid extremes of being a dependable slave to being a ruthless master! The reality of our lives resides in between and as Individuals stack up societies tend to get a broader character of being either more obedient or rebellious both indicative a higher shade of one or the other manifestation!

The times that we are entrapped in, are reflective of this eternally conflict of “Wanting to control” and “Wanting to be controlled” as long as people are naturally aligned to what suits their innate and intrinsic nature, things are fine, but the moment you switch them into the wrong quadrant or they tend to outgrow their quadrant, chaos ensues and as that proportion increases, whether that be in our homes, offices or in the society in general! The compelling question here is, why do obedient slaves or why does obedience transform into brashness and harshness as one rises or work their way to become Masters at some or the other time?

Well part of an answer to that question resides in the space which is related to the nature of enslavement, quality and tenure! As long as that experience of being enslaved is within the flex and stretch of a thinking human mind and is rewarded and corrected within those meaningful limits, as people outgrow their learning and enslavement to become masters, they will retain their attributes and value systems to become meaningful and engaged masters, but when the enslavement space is riddled with conflict zones and confrontational narratives, as they grow and rise, they serve back the their distasteful experience in a more amplified manner and the story goes on! This is how individuals get entangled in never ending comparisons, jealousy, tactical slyness to derail the other, corporate bitching and back stabbing and societal unrest and mistrust, all of these are nothing else but a manifestation of enslavement gone wrong and obedience turned into anguish and aggression! So what’s next?

Well, the real essence is in the fact to accept these compelling realities of our lives and surrender to what comes your way and also ensure that all that is created by virtue of what you do remains meaningful! Perhaps the only way to sieve through this paradox within and around us is to remain rooted deeply within to the values and belief’s that are empowering and liberating! As we go about our lives, there will be times when we have to stay enslaved- perhaps not to anyone but perhaps to an idea, a thought, a belief and even as we do so, ensure we retain the character and flavour of who we are and don’t end up carrying the excesses of our entrapment through our journey of empowerment and liberation! The most dangerous way to emerge is ending up being a leader who is entrapped and enslaved within- in their beliefs, thoughts, fears and anxieties!

It is only when a moving fine, dynamic balance is reached as we go about living our lives between being a wishful slave and a leader by choice, will it empower us as Individuals who can then further go on to influence others sans the negativity of being a bad master and ensure that the enslavement or followership that emerges is not tied to something regressive but rather to some liberating thought which empowers even those who are enslaved to the cause of rising ahead and moving further!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, urging you to take some time to reflect the enslavement that you seek and the leader that you want to be when your time comes so that you stay an obedient slave to your liberated mind but never a bad master while driving your ambitions!

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

Decoding money.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

This is the time of the year, when nations are racing ahead and so are corporations for their favorite annual activity- the matters of the budget! No matter what your take about money is, whether you have a lot of it or struggling to arrive at your desired lucky numbers, the fact remains that irrespective of the varying facets and lenses that you may want to apply for deciphering what comes your way, the universal truth of societies has been that; ever since the modern concept of “government controlled money” has come into existence, social disparity has only widened and will continue to do so! Join me here as we explore this space and try to understand what really is unfolding and what is that you and I can do around it to make sure we have enough to survive and some to spare! So here we go!

To begin with the whole extreme concept of money being either useful or useless is a complete illusion! The truth about money and all money matters resides somewhere in between mapped to your contextual realities and the truth that beholds sanity for you! Let me explain, at some or the other point all of us have signed up for that awesome looking monetary incentive plan! If you sell “x”, you get “y”+1,2,3 so on and so forth, but what that actually translates in reality is almost always no where close to what your mind was tempted with to begin with for you to sign up! Call it the smartness of the others who ensured you fall for that trap or your own acquired level of incompetence for being able to see something hidden in plain sight- either-ways one of that would have done the trick! The same goes for the awesome offers on buying properties, schemes that are supposed to save your taxes and so on and so forth- from a chocolate to the coffin you end up buying for yourself, everything eventually is discounted and offered at a price tagged to some different factor! So why is that money is so tempting and seducing, why do people continue to fall into the trap pursuing it (no one is questioning whether they should or not), especially by discounting the realities and the truth which almost always sets up trim levels!

If you observe carefully and patiently enough the whole drama around the modern day concept of “government controlled money” and policies that go on with it are simply a tool to benefit one segment of a society over the other from time to time, well nothing yet to be prejudiced about this, perhaps a 100 years ago this thought was perhaps the only way, to ensure people who can empower others should be provided more resources over others so that through their iconic ways they can create new pathways for a new future! It surely worked and worked well, that is what the story of success through the industrial age has been, however that did not answer one question then and even now for that matter and that question is, “What happens when you have multiple potent icons who have formidable and lofty dreams and aspirations and all seem to be true, rational and perhaps intersect each other, what do you do then? Add to that a layer of equally dis-enchanted people who want to keep shifting allegiance from one dream to anther at a drop of a hat, what do you think the outcome will be? Well that outcome is what all of us get to see across societies around the world! The societies of today are a compelling narrative of handshakes and bruised association among the polity and business class which endlessly alter the ongoing narratives of their societies and compel people living in those spaces either to pursue utopian dreams or become too shy to even bite their realities!

Much of the modern day challenge with money is not about its availability but rather the timing and the method of its availability. This is what makes the pursuit of money never ending- irrespective whether you have enough of it or less of it! Unlike the modes of commodity exchange before the advent of the modern day concept of money, barter and medieval coin systems which were often made of precious metals and their alloys made it possible for a fair chance for people to rise and progress as long as they had individual ingenuity or ideas and action. You may argue, that this aspect still exists, it sure does, but unlike the earlier times when an individual had control to slow down or pace up, today; you and I don’t have that choice left to ourselves, those aspects are almost always controlled by the external factors that are so wrapped around us in varying disguises of government bodies, agencies and regulatory offices, what they end up doing is altering the course of our journey either by urging us to accelerate or slow down- when we ourselves may be thinking otherwise! This is where the whole modern day chaos commences- whether you employ a 100 people or you are one of the 100 people employed, everything that is wrapped around you is a maze of empowering and dis-empowering disguises and narratives, all that you need to do is, end up being in the wrong time at the wrong place and years of your hard work and ingenuity will evaporate right in front of you!

We live in times of complex narratives, where everyone is trying to gain an access to more and more of “government controlled currencies” the world over and their supplies are needless to say controlled and driven to help a few, not help a few and help everyone from time to time and place to place, for some strange reason you happen to be in the wrong timezone, rest assured you will be written off beyond repair and if your arrival coincides with the sweet spot at a right time, you will race ahead to your own surprise- never to realize what the hell happened and how you managed to do what you did! The question is never about whether money is good or bad, how much is enough or not- for all of these are different truths for different people, a billionaire may still cry for the next billion even as a struggling life may be more then grateful for the first 1000 dollars!

The real problem with the money collective in todays’ era is the superimposed script which is run by governments and a close circle of companies who want to drive a narrative- a compelling one which tends to alter the social behaviour, norms and ways of life to embrace what products and solutions they propose to usher in as part of that new social conformation bias story! Think about it, perhaps 30 years ago showing up at your friends or cousins house was “surprising”, the new age of communication arrived and defined that space to be rude and soon we have a whole new world seeking and waiting for permissions through communication channels to meet our friends and family and now this seems courteous! If you thought it is only this space, think again, whether it is the food that you eat, the fabric that you wear, the travel you undertake, all spaces around you always are nothing but a intrusive dialogue by select capitalists directing you to live and lead a life which suits and serves their purposes of business and more importantly helps your government know that the extent of oddity within the social structures is limited and manageable!

The whole modern day concept around money is to make you feel miserable- whether you have it or not- when you have it- by making you think and feel you deserve more- and when you don’t have enough- make you feel and think that you are entitled for more! Either-ways it’s a never ending trap, with no end line and no meaningful conclusion! It is on these sensitive spaces that governments of the day latch upon and drive societies to the pockets of managed chaos to keep the struggle on- a struggle with no end in sight and no meaning within! This is how millions the world over end up spending their entire lives pursuing what is simply utopian, not necessarily because they were incompetent, but perhaps they landed up in a place and time, where that is all what was going to be! You see, you may land up on a gold mine of an opportunity, but if that areas is already marked to be blown up by dynamites- the first thing you want to do is move out and watch from a safe distance and then revalidate your thinking based on what remains after the mayhem of the destruction!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, before I go, I urge you to rethink and calibrate your association with money- whether you have a lot, or are struggling to reach those magical numbers, take a pause and do think, is it really worth all of what you are going to undergo to achieve what you aspire- for money is simply a tool to achieve something else and even if money can buy you a thousand things, there are a few things that it will never be able to buy for you, among them is your peace of mind and your ability to cheat death! All of us have an opening balance of limited seconds, the moment we arrive, perhaps that is the most precious of all the things that you and I behold and it is this invaluable commodity of Time, which alone has the power to tame money and create an iconic life with or without it! Think around this and pursue a life that is enriched in the real essence of the word and not by the show “controlled money” which is almost always as fickle as its’ masters!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay wise, stay safe and yes, pursue an enriched life in the real essence of it! Money may be important, but it is not the only thing, it never was!

The future of jobs.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

Gone are the days when there was relevance to the question, “Where do you see yourself in “x” years, simply because in that time frame, the question itself will most probably end up being pointless! As the world embraces a more potent mix of automation and human intelligence (and latent dumbness), we are racing ahead to throw out a big majority of “jobs” which seem to be so cherished and meaningful in the context of today! Join me here as we decipher what really is unfolding and what is that you and I can do about ensuring that we develop meaningful relevance to our existence by associating with something that is timeless and ever relevant! So here we go!

The history of human progress in the last 300 odd years has been a complete circle of sorts! Starting with the promotion and encouragement of individual genius, greatness and spark of being a master- to moving ahead and encouraging social cohesion through promotion of similarity of thought and action (the great dawn of the MBA era- where rules were given to follow and break alike!) to an age that we have been witnessing through the last two decades- a confluence of ingenuity, cohesive effort through focussed asymmetric collective thinking! Going ahead what we are about to witness will be an age where if there is any one thing that will be held up with high regard and requirement- it will be your UQ – your Uniqueness Quotient! In the decades to follow through this century and beyond, before the reset to collective and cohesive collaboration again begins, there will be an oasis of calm that will reward humanity and humans who display a higher UQ!

There is no doubt that automation is here to stay and perhaps even out do humans when it comes to the space of managing the routine and in certain areas even the creative engagement with or without human assistance, but what will empower and enable people to ride this automation wave to build their fortunes will be their intrinsic opportunity to develop ingenious solutions and services by ensuring that the human element supersedes and rides over the whole stack of automation. So how do we go about it and what is that you and I can do to survive and excel at what is destined to come our way? Read on!

It all starts by tapping within and staying connected to your intrinsic competencies. For this to happen what is important is, being abe to develop an impeccable ability to behold awareness- about self and everything and everyone around you- minute to minute! It is only when you are engaged and connected from this pivot of unflinching endurance that you can measure what matters and see what is perhaps cloaked– both so vital as far as deciphering and decoding the future is concerned!

As the world races ahead to embrace automation, it will only become more and more vital to have intellect and innate wisdom to lead the way to ensure that the automation that humanity is signing up for is safe and sane! The world is replete with examples where automation has ended up throwing up unwanted and unnecessary glitches and aberrations which have then further gone to add more problems rather then provide solutions to the ones’ on hand! The way to decode this compelling paradox is to understand why did we agree to embrace automation to begin with!

Through the advancement in science and technology and the appetite for consumerism, the world moved ahead and began to experience the first wave of automation wherein goods could be mass produced through an engaging blend of human and machine dexterity, as time progressed more and more of mundane and routine, repetitive functions began to get handed down to the automated spaces under the garb of allowing enough free time for humans to further excel at their creative pursuits and come up with further and higher innovations and inventions- whether that worked or not is a different story to agree and disagree- but what that certainly ended up doing is that in no time humanity ended u being enslaved to the curse of automation! Today we have ended up in a zone wherein automation not only projects the overview or identifies the problem or suggests alternatives, but rather does all of this and even more importantly executes further instructions to alter and manage further scenarios of dynamic nature that geos on to impact production and supply chains not only at one location but across multiple locations all over the globe! This is the space where human intellect is being tested and challenged to stay relevant and deliver meaningful options overriding the mind boggling crunch game that powerful computers and nimble machines are able to do all by themselves!

It is only the application of intrinsic and directed intelligence and wit that can ensure that automation stays relevant and in command of human wisdom- that alone ensures that we have defined family of jobs and vocations in the future too which are able to walk side by side of prevailing automation. The singular fact however will be that all jobs of the future that have a human engagement will thrive and stand on the foundation of the UQ of an individual- whether organizations would want to further promote and propagate a collective UQ to deal with a compelling large problem at hand- is a different matter, but as long as Individuals are able to apply themselves to the tasks at hand on the pivot of their UQ, they will remain relevant and valuable, irrespective of the extent of the automation blended around what they do!

In a sense, the future of jobs is more to do with services and solutions that Individuals can offer- because of who they are and what they are- both as Individuals and as a part of some collective group or team and how well this is realized and deployed is what will go to define how and where automation will be check-mated and where it will go on to advance! There is no reason to fear or shun automation, as long as it is meaningful and relevant and in the real sense is able to liberate human intellect to pursue something higher and compelling, but when automation threatens to mimic and over ride human engagement and value based assessment of situations and processes, be assured it will fail and falter and the consequences of that melt down is something perhaps societies are not yet ready to pay up for!

What I see coming our way in the future is the excellence of automation and human intelligence going hand in hand aligned to their own respective core value ethos and needs! Professions and Vocations that elevate the human spirit, soul and the provide directed guidance, innovative thinking and accelerate deployment of wit and human ingenuity will thrive and progress. Jobs that empower people and create an impact and ring in continuing hope and promise for humanity will linger on and perhaps even get better with time! Likewise automation that helps take away the mundane, repetitive, low engagement and high risk job functions will get more advanced and better at getting things done with every new generation of research and firmware upgrades! For everything else that humanity chooses to do, it will almost always be the case of fleeting dynamism between varying degree of automation and human control! Sure enough a lot of it will get standardised with time and through trial and error!

Like the cycles of the bygone era, we are moving ahead to experience the finesse of human wit, intelligence and wisdom in the coming few decades and for the remainder of this century, even as automation races ahead to liberate and empower us, it is only the discerning human mind that will be able to behold any meaningful essence to achieve a dynamic balance between human efforts and automation!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, urging you to tweak your mind and set it up in an automated mode to empower you so that you may deploy your UQ and devise your own personal niche to embrace automation through the wisdom, wit and intelligence of your mind!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay safe, stay wise and take that journey to tap into your UQ to embrace the automated future coming your way!

When numbers don’t add up!

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

As we come close to end of January, many nations around the world and organizations are busy diving deep into the number game! For some or the other reasons these numbers communicate and convey what their masters want them to say and no matter what you think, they never really add up! Join me for a short walk through this space and decode why the world embraces this number and data driven craze and what is that you and I must guard against and be wise enough to see beyond what the numbers portray!

To begin with let me share some statements with you, I got a 100% increase on reader engagement, I have a strike rate of 99% to finish articles and I write them; now let me add two additional information, first I have only 10 readers and I write only one article per year! Now what happens to your understanding and appreciation about me- am I effective or ineffective? Struggling or Great? Well, this is what the reality and truth of the world of numbers and data sets is, all the time, everywhere people are almost always presented with what will empower decisions to be driven in a particular way to conform to some needed outcome and as long as that happens, governments stay, CEOs can relax on their chairs and societies can keep doing what they do, but when the numbers and facts begin to stand out on the basis of what they are without any shadows around them, reality ushers in and people begin to get a taste of an oncoming reset and realignment of priorities! But why does this happen? Why do people get discreet and secretive with numbers and data? Why is it almost always shared on a need to know basis and never- rarely- in a comprehensive and holistic way? Well read on!

Part of the answer to the trickery involved in sharing numbers and data resides in the core values, strife, struggle of the bygone and the promise of the future and what path has been embraced to achieve the same! Say, you are a nation sure enough you may never want to- you will not and should never have to- share intricate details pertaining to your armed forces and preparedness as a nation- thats perfectly sane and when it comes to elements and sensitive data points like these, nations, societies, organizations guard them with all that they have! But when the guarding and distorting commences for all that is available in public domain, it sets the tone for competing analysis, conflicting inferences and a more confused decision making- courtesy- the conflicting data points and numbers which seem to have a mind of their own!

This happens all the time, sales targets are revised upwards with no or limited rationale, under the garb of operational efficiency and optimization, resources and people are driven to work and perform right upto their breaking point! Business have one number for the government ( to ensure their tax optimization is achieved) and one for the workers and yet another one for the investors! It is this space of conflicting objectives done simultaneously that creates a mirage of information which seems true all the time- depending upon who you are and what you are searching in that number maze! The reality, sure enough resides hidden away somewhere around and within that universe of staged appearances and narratives and this is what becomes the foundation for entities to either rise high (when their compelling cause is wise and just and sink deep when they are on a trajectory of self-destruction, already passed the stage of repair! So what’s the sane way to deal with this space and is there anything that you and I can do around this?

Well, the only real and meaningful way to deal with the number and data maze that keeps coming your way endlessly is by being pragmatic and being able to apply what is coming your way to the contexts that mean to you, even as you appreciate the contexts in which they were recorded! You see, like my first example a 100% increase in readership will have meaning and efficacy only when the numbers that go on to reflect that percentage are sizable and meaningful in the ocean of readership data! Sure enough nations, companies and agencies have their pressing compulsions to do what they do with the numbers that the have access to, but the ability to gauge and see what is not been shared, is where your intelligence and prudence comes to play and the more better you get at that bit, the higher are your chances to excel and surge ahead!

When governments, experts and organizations play with numbers to avoid chaos in the society, that is understandable, but when these data points are selectively played out and represented in a manner to benefit a few sometimes and yet few others all the time, things start to get undone and this is where mistrust and gross disregard for any sort of metric begins to manifest! Once this stage is arrived at, even the most well managed aspects of a society can come crashing down. What’s more worrying is the fact that when the big corporate world steps in to create compelling narratives on the bed rock of staged data sets by the governments, it takes the whole society on a joy ride to no real destination and this is what manifests as companies go bust and as markets crash every now and then!

Even as all this is unfolding, it is always worthwhile to remember that, there may or may note be a compelling need to cheat to trick per say, but when an intent to trick is set, things really begin to get awkward and chaotic, eventually the only way that they are controlled is by allowing them to run their race, fizzle out and diminish! No data set or number story has ever been complete or whole and there are good reasons for that to be that way, there are reasons too for stories to go the other way; what really matters is your ability to decipher this fluid nature of numbers and data points and appreciate that no matter how well you control or manage what you do, given the interconnected world that we all are a part of, there is very little real and meaningful control that you can exercise to be sure that numbers will always stand by you or your aspirations!

No matter what you do, and how much power you wield the numbers and data sets that wrap up around you, are the only ones’ that you get to play with and as long as you are alert, prudent and wise with regards to dealing with them, you will be covered! The moment you stretch or flex beyond what is manageable, things will begin to unravel and all the data and numbers that the world need not see, will end up getting spread to create even more challenges even for your tomorrow, than the ones’ you probably face in your now! Every segment of a society will have a contextually valid reason to assert and vouch for the data that drives their narrative and no matter what anyone else says or not, nothing will ever be accepted or paid heed to! The only way to work with numbers and data to ensure they at least seem to be agreeing upon something, is by creating pathways and mid-ways for converging divergent observations and summarize narratives withing permissible and meaningful margins of variance!

Individuals and businesses that are successful and resilient often are so because they have also been able to decode this crucial number game alongside building up and exceling at their competence in what they choose to do! Numbers and data, by themselves are never inaccurate, it is how they are actioned upon and inferred upon that either goes on to make them more potent or a piece of crap!

I leave you with these thoughts here, urging you to practise the pause as and when you immerse into the numbers and the data that comes your way, so that you are able to not only see what is shown but also what is hidden within and not visible at first sight!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one soon! Until then stay safe and yes, keep crunching those numbers and data set, but ensure that all what you do stays, relevant, meaningful and directed in the contexts that come wrapped along with them!