Tag: #writingcommunity

When numbers don’t add up!

~ PA ~ 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!

The real miracle.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

If you have been wondering what the world has ended up becoming and if you have been wondering if miracles do exist and how does one embrace them; join me here we we take a quick trip down this space and decipher the real essence of miracles and what is that we can do, to harness them and have them within and around us! So here we go!

Each one of us wake up every morning seeking, hoping or praying for a miracle, whether the definition of that miracle is wining that odd lottery, that lucky hand at poker or just being able to survive a day at a crazy workplace or perhaps even plain simple staying alive- whatever that means to you, the fact remains that human lives are an expression of this mad obsession to seek and hold the miracle that one pursues!

Humanity has always been a story of hope and within that space resides the compelling belief for a miracle to break free and manifest to address some pressing challenges, whether they are for an individual or for a collective society. But what are thee miracles really? Why are they so rare and infrequent? Why do they seem to favour a few and disregard the many? Why do they manifest when they do and why do they stay elusive at some other times? Well if you too have been plagued by these questions and others as well, read on as we take a step to understand these “miracles” more aptly!

Based on what it means to you or a society, the miracle could be a factor of either of the two fundamental blocks- they can either be intrinsic or extrinsic and each one of these will almost always have a rational and scientific explanation- which more often than not is either hidden in plain sight or for some reasons (best known to the people who do so)- is just overlooked! Whether it is about that sudden spell of rain (or should I say rain when you were not expecting it – for your lack of knowledge of the weather around you!) or that winning of lottery or game of chance (as you came closer and higher in the probability space) everything that the human mind has attributed to being a “miracle” almost always has been a story of manifestation of efforts whose count has been lost! This is the space where so much of labour has gone in and for so long that when the seed begins to finally emerge from the shadows as a tree laden with fruits- very often in the daily hustle of life we have lost track of that seed and all the fruits coming our way seem to be simply magical and a miracle- the real essence here is that the seed may not have been planted by you- but by someone else- either intentionally or unwittingly- you just end up being there to enjoy the fruits of labour (perhaps connected or not to you!)

When it comes to the bounties of nature and the miracles that happen as we engage with nature- they follow the rule of nature! We expect pleasant weather- where none is possible and end up creating a template around what to expect and not- this even as we know that the whole of modern science of appreciating and deciphering nature has evolved only in the last 300 years and the planet has been here longer than that and as humans we too have evolved through the eons! So when storms dissipate, we are thankful, when we sense that earthquake – we are on the edge and as we get to tame the waves, note the rain and decipher the snow around us- we begin to read the cryptic messages of nature and in no time- miracles seem to dwindle away as regular occurrences and it is then left to only a handful rarest of the rare weather manifestations which are left to qualify for being a miracle and more often then not these are a direct impact of a localized geographical phenomenon which binds the elements of nature in a strange manner!

Miracles are nothing more or nothing less, but the last remaining frontiers of time and space for which the rational thought and explanation is yet to arrive! However when it comes to the intrinsic space, the real miracle has been very accurately identified and deciphered- that space of the miracle is really who you are! The real miracle is you! Each one of us are a living example and an unfailing citation of being a miracle- by simply being who we are and what we are- whether that helps us to pursue what we strive for is a different story- but the fact remains that each one of us is a miracle unto ourselves and that is the real essence of humanity! This is what makes the world what it is- a diverse, complex and yet unifying mix of pursuits and passion which help us propel human societies a step ahead from where they were earlier! Then why is it that there is so much strife and struggle?

Well, the strife and struggle emerges as we begin to pursue and seek what is not meant for us – not because we can’t or we shouldn’t, simply because that is not what is meant for us to seek! Ships look grand in the harbour and aeroplanes look beautiful by the hangars, but that is not where they are meant to be! This is what is applicable to us as well, we may be good perhaps, too good being what we are, doing what we do, but the million dollar question is, whether that is what we are supposed to be doing? If you have ever wondered, why nothing miraculous has ever come your way, perhaps the answer resides in this space, your pursuits are in the wrong direction and perhaps for the wrong intent! Miracles will emerge only once you align yourself, your life and pursuits to do what you are meant to do and for you or me to understand and decipher that code- could be a day’s job or at times a lifelong pursuit that comes calling only when we have perhaps few extra months or hours to spare! This is the essence of relation that humanity has with miracles and perhaps that is what makes them seemingly so rare and elusive- as a large chunk of humanity keeps pursuing what is not meant for them, they simply keep moving farther and farther away from realizing their true potential to touch and experience the miracle that they are entitled to and this is what makes miracles seem so unrealistic and elusive!

The miracles are as real as your efforts, intent and pursuits are in the right direction and if there is any real meaningful miracle- that is about being able to find that right direction, at the right time and in a right way- for unless this happens- everything that is about to manifest- gets either vibrant and enduring or tends to get complicated and ambiguous- however in either of those scenarios- there will be a strong prevailing case for the onset of the miracle with a different timeline as far as the enduring value that it will bring along with it!

Miracles are only as real as your ability to decipher and behold them, timing is of essential value and alongside that unless the miracle doesn’t serve the greater good- rest assured it will lie buried or at it’s very best manifest as some half-done job by a great master!

Do take some time off and do ponder around the miracle that has come your way- if nothing has ever come your way- chances are- you- yourself perhaps are the miracle manifesting in the lives of the people around you- simply by doing what you do!

Ciao for now, will be back soon, until then stay safe and stay wise- yes miracles are real- as real as your ability to dream, behold and manifest them!

STOP THE STEAL.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Every moment of your life, you are being robbed off something and at times unwittingly you are the one stealing away something from someone, even as the same courtesy is being extended to you! Join me on this short journey, to understand why it is so important to “STOP THE STEAL” and what really is at stake for all of us, individually and collectively as a society or a nation! So here we go!

Perhaps the most recent example of a collective voice urging to “Stop the Steal” was witnessed during the US elections! The question is not about whether did something really happen or not, but the very element that, questions were raised and there were fleeting shadows ( I say so, because nothing ever got meaningfully converted to evidence- at least in front of the beholders of law!) is an uncomfortable place to be in to begin with! The very thought that the voice of people and the expression of a choice of people can be suppressed or manipulated- proven or not- is enough to create a strong divisive line which even time finds difficult to heal- simply because with the slightest wind of tough times, the coverings and overalls that tend to cover these divisions get blown away and society remains exposed and vulnerable to fare more grave intrinsic dangers which can be manipulated and worked upon by people who want to see it align to one side ort the other! The grave danger here is that as the voice of the people and the ability of the people to make choices and see them manifest gets stolen, people are pushed to the wall only to further intensify their disbelief and mistrust and societies continue to struggle to arrive at workable mid-way and with the slightest nudge often always end up rushing to the either walls of extreme ideas- thereby manifesting everything that is simply undesirable- all of this for one simple reason- Stolen voices, stolen choices and stolen expression- whether true or not- even if that remains a matter of debate- the manifestation irrespective of the fact- is something real and there to be dealt with!

If you are starting to think, this “steal” happens only in the political theatre, think again! The big world of glass-clad corporate houses are no different, the only real difference being, the steal here takes place is hushed voices, quiet whispers and subtle nudges which more often then not get overlooked, misread, lost in the chaos of the daily work and at times missed altogether as they are superbly camouflaged to manifest as something which they never are! The result;- Furthering of Incompetence at all levels that you can imagine! I am sure you would have heard stories of good people leaving great companies to start something of their own- take a pause and reflect upon this- what does it say- sure enough, they would have had an entrepreneurial opportunity- but what does this say of the big firm that they had to move out of- a case whether ideas were being stolen- either by suppression or by hijack!? If you were to argue that people need to be wise, smart and on their toes as they wander into the corporate world- I would readily agree to your point, but how does that justify the whole concept of allowing the “steal” to go on? It is like saying, you follow the traffic rules and yet I will crash into you- just to check you driving skills!

The process of steal also goes on even on the very intrinsic or should I say personal levels that you can imagine! Those lost opportunities with regards to your business or work, because your family would not allow you to take it up, that saying “no” to a firm simply because you had a ideological difference high enough to be scaled, every aspect of our lives- is about trying to save ourselves from being stolen off something and ensuring we don’t end up stealing something- that deprives someone else of something that is so relevant and contextually important for the other person! So what does all this really signify and what is that we can do about it? What’s the way ahead?

Whether it is a nation that you want to save from a pertinent steal, or your own life- it all begins by pivoting on a strong foundation of empowering thoughts ramped up by equally empowering action! The key word here in “empowering”! When people begin to think and act (whether as individuals or collectively as a society) with an empowered mindset- they are free from acquired and perceived prejudice and dispositions, there by ensuring that whatever they think or want to act upon is almost always based, not on what is sold to them or what they “perceive”, but rather is more aligned to what their intellectual assessment is and what common-sense and rational thinking denotes! Seems, simple but is a tall order, as we live in n age of deception and in an age of competing and conflicting narratives! We live in times, when all that we see, can be an elaborate hoax and what we experience can be a continuing hallucination! So how do we really make a wise judgement to stay empowered through our thoughts and action to stop the steal?

Alongside empowerment, what you also need is an innate ability to decipher and slice through the fog of what comes your way- minute to minute- sure enough can be very tiring and that is what it is! A fatigued mind often ends up allowing the trojans to flow in and that’s why the next time when you really see some meaningful stuff coming your way, instead of trusting and gong ahead with it, you end up perhaps stalling it and thereby ending up creating more challenges then solving the ones that are already present! The real trick here is not to mistrust everything that comes your way or to trust all that comes your way- but take a incident by incident approach to all that comes your way and practise the pause before you hit that button so that you know- in that extra second that you earned for yourself- your mind was applied as it should have been- to discern based on what was presented and not owing to some prejudice or pre-meditated disposition!

The real way to “STOP THE STEAL” is to stay ever vigilant and guard what you cherish and value- as an individual, as a society or a nation on an ongoing basis- it is only when your alert mind becomes natural and stays untiring and formidable- even as it sieves rapidly through one scenario to the next on an ongoing basis. Seems, a tall order, a challenge, sure it is- but what is the price that you are ready to pay- for allowing a teal to happen? This is the million dollar question! What good is all your empowerment and intellect if you have your opportunities stolen away and what good is your ability to unravel complexities and challenges if you can’t guard your own intrinsic fort of cherished values and non-negotiable attributes which go on to define who you are as an individual and a society or a nation!

The practical truth though remains, that human mind- being fragile as it is- will fail and falter and the steal will occur now or later- big or small- irrespective of how vigilant you are or not- the real metric here to validate is not about if and when you got stolen- it is about what got stolen and how soon or well can you get it back- unless that is nit done- you will keep getting ripped off from time to time, by politicians, co-workers and people around you! Unless you don’t learn what you hold valuable around and within you- you are an open vault, waiting to be stolen! Guard what you cherish and value and if it’s that important- it must be valuable!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, take some time and do make a plan to ensure you can stall the steal coming your way and ensuring you don’t end up being a part of some orchestrated outfit that is unwittingly stealing away the future by conspiring with the low-lives today!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then stay safe, stay guarded and if it’s that valuable and cherish-able- do what you must to “STOP THE STEAL”!

Lessons from The Trump Presidency.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Whether you love him or dislike him, doesn’t matter, the fact remains that no matter what you do, you simply can’t ignore him! The Trump Presidency showed the world that it is possible to deploy governance with intent and there can be a result oriented and deadline driven approach even to the knotted world of politics and like business when you add intent, conviction and purpose to this- the results will emerge and manifest as you want them to! The White House since the dawn of the modern age, has been and continues to be the most powerful office in the world and when you add a flavour of potent nationalism and intent driven approach- great things happen! Sure enough politics being what it is, at times people are required to negate even the presence of the Sun and the Stars (simply because they can’t be seen in the night and day respectively!), but at the end of it, heart in heart, we all know these were perhaps the most intense, dynamic, colorful and purpose driven four years of any US Presidency in recent history! Iconic and Inspiring! Join me here as we take a quick peak into what all this means and what is that we can hold on to as the golden nuggets of learning.

For a multi-billionaire to jump in and agree to take on to the reins of the world’s most powerful nation, learn and deploy on the go for the next 48 months that too at at age, when most of us are either happy to age gracefully or wondering what hit us, to sustain, develop and enhance wit, intelligence, humour and political strategy is no easy task. Sure enough not everything and all that is done, is done all by The President, but even to be wise enough to have the select the right President’s Team to accelerate, walk, collaborate and enhance The President’s Chair and the deliverables for the nation, is no simple achievement by itself! So what are the quick takeaway’s from The Trump Presidency, well here we go!

It’s never too late to start something new: Iconic as the business story of Mr. Trump has been and continues to be, needless to say even the courage and intent to jump into the race for The White House and emerge as the winner, was no simple achievement. That goes on to prove the old adage of , it is never too late to experiment and start something new, as long as the contextual settings around and your competencies are aligned for that desire to manifest! The same intent and approach became quite clear through the Presidency as many (not so popular) decisions were taken on an ongoing basis- the first of it’s kind to address long standing concerns and issues which were thought to be of risk and un-serving to the American people.

Leadership through crisis: When President trump arrived on the scene many had already written off his tenure at The White House in months, but if there is one thing that came out of all that political maneuvering and mudslinging was a more strong President, a more focussed President and a President who was on his toes to correct his mistakes, sack the incompetent and keep moving ahead on the set course for achieving what the team was out there to achieve! This indomitable spirit and approach not only took detractors and nay sayers by surprise but also empowered the team that works for The president, simply because, when you have a strong, focussed and committed Leader, who you know will not let you down and watch you back; every team member shares that spirit of empowerment and is able to deliver and share much beyond what even they thought they could do! This space is of paramount importance, especially when you are speaking with context to the most powerful office in the world and where you receive cables from over 190 countries on an ongoing basis! This is the space where Great Leaders get the work done and Iconic Leaders break the mould and surge ahead!

Learn, Apply, Correct, Repeat: Sure enough for a business tycoon, the earlier few months would have been challenging as well, to sieve through the apparent and the real, but what this Presidency has also shown is, that there is no substitute to learning (Unlearn<>Learn<>Relearn), applying that learning at the right time, in the right amount, quickly course correct as required and repeat this on an ongoing basis is the essence of a fast paced model to govern and lead whatever you choose to!

Unconventional Communication: The trump Presidency showed the world, that even the most powerful office in the world had a duty of being transparent, communicative, driven by action and purpose that accelerates the well being of the people of the nation! Instead of allowing social handles to be just digital space holders, the Trump Presidency turned it into a parallel quasi official means to communicate and makes its point of view known to the world and for whomever the message would have been! A method, that was soon lapped up and began to get replicated by other world leaders with differing levels of tonality and communication strategy as it suits their audience! This move went on to show the world, that if you have nothing to hide and if you have a clear set agenda of governance, you can communicate and govern in tandem and pivoting on the power of social media can course correct and alter narratives to make their potency ever more greater and in-depth!

Numbers, Facts, Data and Meaningful Nationalism: Trump Presidency brought forth the single line importance that if governments wish, they too can speak only based on facts, data and numbers and this Presidency did it far better then anyone could. Perhaps this is a space where many nations have a lot of catching up to do and perhaps will never want it that way! nationalist pride was given a new definition by aligning that to, protecting local jobs, workers, enhancing and creating more meaningful access to opportunities in education- sure enough, no one can ever say everything was achieved in this space, but a beginning was done and now it is for the others to follow or detract from that route! you can never go wrong when you place your nation above and first over everything else and that is the real essence of being patriotic! As far being a protectionist or being a nationalist, political rhetoric and views have been different across social segments and the political class, but irrespective of who says what, as long as you work towards the interest of the nation and it’s people you can never be wrong!

Surprising through action and results: This perhaps has been the hallmark of The Trump Presidency, the ability to apply business acumen, to ensure that fund starved vital governmental agencies get a life, ensure effective prioritization is furthered and bring in results where none ever seemed possible! Perhaps the finest deployment and integration of business finesse and political strategy!

Deploying global resilience and staying relevant: The last thing that any superpower wants to face is a diminishing and waning global foot print and this is one area, where The Trump Presidency was able to keep everyone , friends and foes alike on their toes- simply because they never knew what new trick could come out of the bag and take them by surprise! With friends, who tried to take advantage of the skewed business engagements, corrections were made- needless to say you would end up with some not so very happy grumpy friends, but that means nothing when you are able to put up smile on the face of American workers back home! Likewise when it comes to international diplomacy, I have not known about any American President or any Head of State who would have been nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize- even being nominated is a big acknowledgement of the extent and impact of the work that was done and achieved!

Empowering and Re-Defining being an American: This Presidency has showed with great courage (although what came with a great cost) that putting the Nation First is never a bad idea, even if it leads to a never ending global diplomatic slugfest to protect the interest of the nation and its people! Whether it was about engaging with long isolated nations- to try and have a meaningful pathway ahead or whether it was taming the maverick ways of a few friends gone wrong- each and every diplomatic endeavor made a statement- that was USA is open to welcome, embrace and collaborate as long as you don’t end up harming the American interests and as long as there is a need to restore balance of power and uphold humanistic value systems, the world over- USA will be there like always- but at no time will it ever allow it’s own people or business being tricked and made to pay an undue price under the various opaque and confusing treaties of business which were never signed off by any businessmen but by seasoned politicians!

Your team is as good as you are and you are as good as your team: The initial phase of Trump Presidency saw multiple appointments and perhaps an equal number of exits, the way to explain this, is not what the news channels sell you, but the underlying fact of the business world- which is- when a conglomerate needs results and when stakes are as high as they could be- when it is about The White House- there can be no place for mediocre approaches and “will do” attitude. You see, if you want to be in The Best and the Most Powerful Office of the World- You have to be one of the finest- if not the finest and there is nothing second on this bit! If you are not what the chair demands, either you will end up being ejected from the team or worse still your incompetence may have a cascading rub off, jeopardizing the entire working of The Presidency!

Politics is an Art and Science, where the slightest distraction is enough to bring you to an unplanned halt: Perhaps the greatest contribution to the ejection of The Trump Presidency came not from the ongoing narrative from the opposition party- that is what their job is- that is what they will do, but the simple miscalculation of being unable to fathom the onset of the global pandemic in a time bound manner and check the conflicting narratives and further allowing all of that to snow ball into a communicative and implementation failure- and worse still allowing that to be played out in the open- has been the ultimate trigger on which every other agenda git piled up and ensured that even of far more number of people stood by The Presidency, those numbers simply weren’t enough at the end! Sure enough, there were reports of inappropriate methods being deployed through the process- but well, as long as nothing gets proven and nothing gets documented beyond doubt in the court of law- everything is but a case of political slug fest and this is wat Politics is all about-it is a game of intellectual strategy like nothing else and the moment when political strategy overtook the business side of governance , it was always going to be a tough challenge to navigate, simply because you don’t expect a business tycoon, a multibillionaire, whose focus is on rebuilding American businesses and lives to step into the muck of political games simply to hold on to the most powerful chair, high on some ego ride!

There are and am sure could be many more vibrant facets to what I believe has been one of the most colorful Presidencies that I have witnessed in the last 30 odd years, and if you ask me, I think Mr. Trump won; he won more hearts, then he had earlier and there’s no doubt, whatever the outcome has been, he has given a pathway for the American people to hold their political bosses more accountable, transparent and has laid a path where every ounce of doubt in governance can be fiercely scrutinized and challenged all for one reason to have that smile on an American face! The White House’s primary role and accountability is for the people of America, sure enough, incidentally it also wields a great power across the world, but what all any great nation or President achieve globally, if the people and citizens within the nation are left to fend for themselves!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, and by now if you are wondering whether I support Mr. Trump or not, well there have been many decisions of his Presidency which I thought were great and few of them could have been better and yet few which could have been avoided, but as they say, I view it from my lens of limited knowledge, who knows really what the pressure is really like to be on The Most Powerful Chair in the World- and we will never know unless we sit on it- How Great or Shallow the People who occupied it were!

All said and done, The White House and The Chair at The Oval Office will go on dominate the world as we have known- what colors it embraces and what vibrancy it retains and gives away is what only time will tell!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another until then stay safe, stay wise and yes, always remember, The Power is of The Chair and the Person who beholds it, the only factor being which of these dominates which of the other, is that goes on to determine the flavour of the times ahead!

Transformation through Change.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Change becomes empowering when you agree to transform as it ushers in and each time you try to hold on to a status quo- whatever that may be- you will almost always struggle with change and subsequently with the compelled transformation! Join me as we take a look through this space and understand what really is unfolding here!

Even as we know for sure that change is the only certainty and it is an ongoing basis, the mind tricks us enough to view it from a point of disbelief, insecurity or fear- which at times is nothing more than the hallucinatory powerplay played upon you by your overthinking mind! Sure enough, there are times and episodes when these fears and anxieties may turn out to be true, but going about your life fearing what is perceived and exhibiting disregard to what really persists, is a grave miscalculation! Most of us end up living a life that we behold simply because we see the process of transformation induced by change as two separate things and that is where the real essence of our pivot to success resides!

Leaders, Humanists and masters of the science of human behaviour have written, spoken, discussed and debated about the aspect of change and its ramifications on humans- both as Individuals and collectively as societies many a times. They have done so by applying different contexts and viewing lenses- if you may say so- but a singular fact across all studies and all scientific and value based deciphering of the concept of change is the fact that change is inevitable! It will happen- sooner or later- whether you like it or not- it will and the path too is pre-determines- the only thing that you and I can control or determine is the intensity with which it embraces us or we embrace it- whatever way you want to take that and this only is possible when you are ready to be transformed and ride the crest of the wave that change ushers in!

You would have heard the phrase very often, “Being in the right time, at the right place and with the right people”, now think around this sentence as the crest of the wave of the oncoming change! Makes sense? Well, this is why leaders who lead and set course for societies- either as politicians or the business tycoons- are almost always ready and prepared for what’s heading their way- at times it seems too real to believe- but we have seen and observed that all around us all the time! Remember- how property rates alongside a forgotten country side suddenly began to rise and by the time you woke up to make a decision all was sold out and some “known firms” have already captured all the golden assets!, do you recall people investing in a particular way, simply to be benefitted by a federal policy a few months down the line! Likewise there could be hundreds of examples around you, which seem stranger then fiction, but are present in front of you in the form of great successful business or public icons! This is how transformation manifests when it aligns it to change in the real world in real time- whether that is about businesses, political dexterity or about Individual smartness- all of these fall in this same confined space of being alert, agile and prepared for what’s heading their way!

You see, unless you aren’t ready to transform as a response to the change coming your way- you will be a furniture! Whether you transform to benefit and propel yourself ahead pivoting on the changing contexts and truths around you or whether you decide to take up an endless battle with what’s coming your way, only to defeat yourself and tire yourself fighting nothing, is a choice that every Individual and every society has to make. there is nothing right and wrong about change, simply because it depends on what the contexts mean to whom- a boom in financial markets may be a great asset to the white collared community, but what happens on the Wall street, may mean nothing to someone managing a ranch in Texas! Contextual reality is equally important and hence even for the transformation to begin- whatever way you plan to deal with change- you first need to have a fundamental and basic understanding and awareness of what is that you stand for, what your story is and will be al about and what is that you are going to do about it!

It all begins from the space of Intrinsic and Unique attributes, values and dreams that an Individual has and when empowered Individuals come together, you have a society which is fluid and empowered to embrace whatever change comes it’s way and take it in its stride- Observe around and you will notice, societies which have had a stronger and higher record of resilience to hardships, strife and struggle have faced the pandemic of the bygone year with more relative success then those who have almost always believed to be organized, clinical and measured! Well sure enough, there could be more reasons too, but, humanity through evolution has had one trick up its sleeve all the time, that trick is about- being able to stay in a state of alert especially when life has not been an easy one and this is why societies which have been edgy, have shown more promptness and did what they weer told, simply following the need for human survival! In this space of stressed and fragile societies, there is no space for television debates and intellectual arguments for or against any development of oncoming change- there is only one response to do what it takes to survive!

Change becomes unforgiving and punishing once you decide not to transform! It doesn’t matter whether you want to align along it or against it or take some other position, but you will need to take a call, you simply can’t not do anything and stay inert or passive! You simply don’t have the choice to freeze in time and rescue yourself- you will have to do something and that something whatever you choose is almost always a process of transformation- simply because you are doing it as a response to the stimulus and triggers being sent to you by the oncoming change!

However an important aspect about transforming through change remains to be the intrinsic foundations on which you stand as an Individual or collectively as a society. More often than not, how you will respond to change is encoded in your genetic fingerprint! You will either have a natural affinity for it or a natural dislike and based on this attribute, each time you will either be eagerly waiting for it or praying for it not to occur- the real magic happens somewhere between those extremes, because only when change takes you by surprise is that it will put your intellectual competence to test and thereby based on your approach to change, either you will scale high and fast or retreat and defend with a proportional intensity and the reason for the first case will be to transform and make good of an opportunity and the second case will be about surviving for now and living another day to make the right amends! Our lives are actually a mix of these two in different proportions, the more enabling and empowering change we get to live through, our lives are enriched that better, the more stalling change that we come across, our lives end up becoming that much more challenging and inspiring should I say!

The only real and meaningful way to embrace change is to have a fundamental willingness to transform and transform through change in a way aligned to your Intrinsic ethos of who you are, what you stand for, what your journey is and where you want to reach! Whether you are a society or an Individual, as long as you embrace change as an instrument to transform, you will be rewarded with or without strife and struggle- depending on what the other elements of your story are!

Always remember, change is the only real currency for your future, and it all depends on how well you spend it by starting your transformation journey today!

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

Vaccinated Minds and a Vaccinated Future.

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If there was one defining statement that 2020 made about humanity, then it had to be the pandemic- not the pandemic itself but very importantly how humanity responded to it and eventually ended up making the solutions to deal with it even more complicated and hard! Sure enough, no one is arguing whether the pandemic was real or not and there is no reason to take away or doubt the selfless service provided by a few to save the many, but one fact can never be overlooked and that is – collectively, as human societies the world over we had our windows to course correct and stall the nightmare- which we missed – at times owing to irrational thoughts and at times owing to brazen oversight- whatever that was- all of these incidents have now pushed humanity is a tight corner- where we are now making the next blunder of trying to live a vaccinated future through the dis-empowered thoughts originating from vaccinated minds! Join me here as we take a look around this space and try to decipher why, perhaps the pandemic was the least of all the problems and how dealing with it, has ended up complicating our today and the future, and is there anything that we can really do about it- today for a better and meaningful tomorrow. So here we go!

Even as the pandemic began to make it’s presence felt, even those initial weeks (what now in hindsight seem to be the most critical) were squandered by a misplaced bravado- coming from the decision makers for nations and societies across the world- the best part- the world was waiting for decisions from people who were never ever qualified to make a sane, scientific and a rational assessment of what was unfolding- so no surprise when the decisions came- they were late, all over the place and completely irrational! You see, the virus does not really make any sense between a night curfew or a day curfew or a lockdown or whatever you call- the only thing that it is bothered about is infecting a host and moving on to the next one- if it gets lucky enough to find one! So if even the most basic thought around propagating physical distance at all places (this is important- all the places) would have been implemented in a scientific way- things would have been much better, then what they eventually unfolded to be!

The problem, was the whole concept of requiring to promote physical distance went on to become a BIG TECH agenda and a corporate agendas to make good of what could perhaps never been corrected the world over- the new ushering in of the Work From Home (pandemic) – saving corporate dollars at the expense of health and domestic peace of employees! As all of this unwanted drama began to fast take over the real issue, the virus got to do what it was always good to do, so whether you wore a mask or not, if you were stupid enough to get into a close encounter with strangers for no reasons- you were all set to pay the price! Needless to say the conversion of requirement of “physical distancing” to “social distancing” has ushered in a new extent of human to human communication break down (which anyways was fast deteriorating and average) and rest assured the costs of this new illness is yet to be factored in- no matter which part of the world you live in!

You see, science and many of the wise things and people around, really don’t care- what your individual tastes, political preferences or ideological hallucinations are, all organisms and the earth in general follow the laws of science and wherever they are flouted, some shit is bound to hit the roof – somewhere or everywhere! Sure enough, I am not suggesting, humanity did not do anything, but the whole point is all of that would have not been required in the first place, had people given science a chance over unwanted bravado and hasty decisions which simply went on to complicate a problem, leaving humanity wondering- which of the prevailing ones’ are better over the other! If you ask me, the pandemic , was a screaming example highlighting why the world needs meaningful leaders and meaningful leadership! Leadership Pandemic by virtue of Leadership Incompetence is more fatal and dangerous then the virus we found in the year bygone! So now, the million dollar question, fair enough, we screwed up, so next is what? Well, read on!

Well, the clear and present danger going forward is not about the last pandemic or even about, what if that happens again, more importantly it is about, how fundamentally humanity has been altered and how that will unfold! You see, viruses are still predictable once you study them, humans, no matter how much you study them , almost always have the ability and potency to spring up a surprise! This is the real unfolding turbulence and what makes it so fluid, is the fact that humanity (with regards to the people who call the shots) will do so by applying their vaccinate minds- a vaccinated approach to thinking!

The challenge around this development, is that, as a case of once bitten twice shy, even the most routine decision making and calibrated risk (which is so vital and has been a hallmark of humanities progress) is severely compromised and embracing inaction over action tends to become the new normal! You will begin to see decisions unfold which aim to fix what the apparent problem seems to be rather than fixing the real root of the issues cropping up! This is similar to building a bridge with no roads at either ends! The reason why this will develop is that, when you begin to limit human thinking to confines of comfortable and predictable templated outcomes- you end up creating a status quo for humanity and the playground for creative and scientific experimentation begins to shrink! Vaccinated thinking may be very good, perhaps excellent to provide a sterile, isolated social construct to alter a narrative and drive the society in a pre meditated direction, the real issue will start once people reach the destination and realize there is nothing worthwhile to cherish about and the whole journey was a wild trek with no real essence of discovery – internal or external!

The real issue of living a vaccinate future empowered through vaccinated minds is not only about limiting or constricting human expression and discovery, it is also about creating new rules, regulations and norms- written and unwritten that suit a few, drive the agenda of a few and the majority are left with no choice but to comply simply because every small breath of expressive freedom that humans will want to portray will come at a cost- either directly or indirectly and that will go on unless some next big humanist approach sets in to correct the balance! You may ask, but why should this happen, why would people and societies allow this? Well, simply because the nightmare that was created and allowed to manifest was too much too handle for many constituents of the societies world over- so like the small school kid in you, when you mess up with your home assignment and your teacher begins to set a new way of working for you to put you ion a course correction- you listen to all this is said- this is very much like that- and even as that is done- the teacher is completely indemnified and discounted from any element of doubt or incompetence- from the context of “how well was the teacher able to teach to begin with ti reprimand the student!”

Having said this, let me tell you there is still hope, no we will not end up being biometric zombies anytime sooner, but unless societies don’t begin to stand up to stupidity, dumbness and everything that defies science and common-sense, things will keep getting worse and worse! The only way to deal around with the space of vaccinated minds and ensuring our future doesn’t end up being sterile and clinically disconnected or disengaged- is by overpowering meaningless narrative by sensible and meaningful- human centric approaches and anchor on a singular pivot- that all human social progress and development has only been a story of people coming together and collaborating or working together with inspired, meaningful and sane leaders and leadership! You see, you may have a great leader, but if the leader has gone nuts and is aiming to jump down a high cliff, it’s upto you to either stop that leader or at least stop your jump!

The human story, always has and will ever remain to be of creative expression- through individuals, collectively through societies by choosing different mediums of arts and sciences- this is the fundamental bed rock on which human civilizations have thrived, survived and made meaningful progress. As long as you and I know this, assimilate this and act empowered by this thought, we will be able to deal with the dumb vaccinated minds, their un-serving thoughts and disempowering actions and will be able to change and alter the human narrative once again to stories of human empowerment- individual and collective! All that is needed is human centric leader and their humanistic leadership with a generous serving of rationality and common-sense!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, urging you to keep believing in the wisdom of science, rationality and common sense and no matter who says what, no human greatness was ever achieved by limiting human thoughts or expression and the proponents and followers of the vaccinated thinking- will stall sooner than later!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay safe, stay wise and yes give common-sense a chance, always!

Are you lost in your wonderland?

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As you go about your busy lives, what is that you are actually engaged in? Are you by any chance a victim of being lost in your own wonderland? Join me here as we take a short walk in this interesting space and try to understand why a major part of humanity almost always ends up living a life entrapped in their own perceptions and hallucinations and what is that we can do about this to break free of these limiting shackles and propel ahead! So here we go!

No matter where you have grown up, all of us have some or the other time read about, “Alice in Wonderland”- that sublime story of adventures of a young girl – something that even to this day brings a smile to any face- just by thinking about it- perhaps one of the most potent examples of great writing and story telling! Coming back to the real world, each one of us too, are entrapped into this “wonderland concept”. You see, you and I included all of us end up living our lives in our small or big wonderland- ever checking into something new, getting excited with something that goes as we plan and getting sad when things don’t measure up as we expect them to- well nothing to complaint about this, because this how human life is supposed to be- the regular journey between achievements and near misses! But the important aspect that we tend to miss is that, we almost always end up limiting our lives within our own found wonderlands!

Now if you have started to wonder about, what kind of wonderlands I am speaking about here, well yes, these are made up of all the perceptions, hallucinations and unfound realities that you tend to stay engaged with on an ongoing basis! What’s more funny is that, often people end up living their full lives running after their limited pursuits confined within their wonderland. So what is really happening here? Well, people are more often then not tricked by their minds and sold into believing what they think with regards to their view and approach is just fine and this is where the “wonderland effect” commences! You see, unless the mind has a ceaseless ability to question, enquire and re-validate whats around and what is being observed on an ongoing basis, people end up calibrating themselves to some metric or standard, which may or may not be relevant and thereby begin to set all their pursuits against this flawed calibration of their own abilities and competencies!

The wonderland effect is operational all around us, all the time, it goes by how we define our life, our approach and what we set out to achieve, the only problem here is that as we succumb to this effect and we tend to forego what we can be really capable of and end up short serving ourselves and others around! You see when you begin to get comfortable with all that is around you- whether it be that job or business you are engaged in, that apartment that you stay in or any other facet for the matter- you are actually ending up short serving yourself- if you tend to say quite often , “I would do this, if only…” for all that is around you! You see the wonderland effect, is all about getting lost into the maze that you have created around you by accumulating unwarranted clutter of people and things- which don’t serve you in any manner and on the contrary tend to drain you to the last drop of sanity that you are left with!

Your wonderland, rather each of our’s wonderland is a reflection of the horizon of our minds where it limits ourselves! This is the zone wherein we become comfortable about who we are, what we can achieve and how we are set on the path of our journey, the reality, sure enough is something altogether different, the reality is all about, going beyond and further then what is apparent and this is exactly why the wonderful effect is so dangerous and damaging- it holds your mind captive to its own imagination! Human minds, are almost always limited by their ability to think and that thinking is limited by the wonderland that we end up gifting ourselves, which, of course again is a product of our thinking, with a touch of our life’s learnings and experiences! If you have observed, I have not said, what is the right way, or the wrong way around this space, simply because there is none and that is what is so wonderful about humanity! It is only when people begin to accept the realities of their wonderland over the truth of their existence and ability, is that problems begin to manifest!

These wonderlands can be a thousand different things to a thousand people and more often then not the hallmark of the wonderlands stems from the foundation of insecurity, missed opportunities and mediocre acceptance before giving a worthy enough fight and attempt! You see, if you take a step back and try to rethink just around who you are, what you could have or can be and what you are currently doing, you will know the essence of what I am saying here! Sure enough there is nothing to sulk, complain or stay pessimistic about whatever life you have chosen or what has come your way- in the case where life ends up choosing you; the million dollar question is, whether you have the realization of the fact that, the life that you have given unto yourself is a sliver of what it actually could be and can be, simply because you are entrapped within your wonderland! So what’s the real story?

Well, as you stay locked into your own self-propagated wonderland, you will run a risk of not achieving what your true potential is, because that always will reside beyond the confines of your wonderland! This is the reason why you find so many people lost and confused each time whether they don’t get that promotion that they desired or when their business does not proceed the way they thought it would! People often end up living a confused life confined by their wonderland, never ever realizing what their real potential is or could have been and only if, they would have taken that one step to move beyond that comfort and predictable zones of their lives- which gives them an enduring sense of surety and safety- both of which are an enduring illusion which melt away as soon as the first major crisis emerges!

How big or small that entrapping wonderland is well largely depends on who and what you are, but more often than not it is proportional to the fears, anxiety and self-doubt and inversely proportional to the intrinsic wisdom and courage that a person may hold! So what’s the ahead?

Well, the only and perhaps the only meaningful way ahead is all about being able to know your wonderland, live through it and while doing so, stay ever aware about the greater world that resides beyond it’s entrapment! It is about developing enough intrinsic courage and leading yourself when the time is apt to move beyond and away form your wonderland to create a new reality for yourself and those around you! Enduring success becomes a lifestyle when you begin to make your wonderland a place of recreation and ensure that you come to visit it once in a while and don’t get trapped within it’s convenient and appealing comforts! The real essence of creating a meaningful life almost always resides beyond your wonderland , unless you are Alice!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay safe, stay wise and get going for your real life beyond your wonderland!

Ciao, take care!

Empowered by Alignment.

~ PA ~ 1 Comment

Whether you want to be the President of the USA or head that major business global conglomerate or perhaps let alone everything around aside, just plain survive and live another day, each of these scenarios have one thing in common, which is that, all of them are empowered by alignment- alignment to the contexts, people and places which play a vital role after you have encashed your intrinsic attributes! Join me here as we explore this space and understand how alignment empowers and what is that You and I can do to ensure we have an endless supply of this potent empowerment! So here we go!

Books written around success and failures are more often about specific instances and stories that are meant to share some insights about the times and places that went on to contribute to either make the people who they became or not! Importantly what they often miss out or perhaps intentionally leave out is this vital piece (may be a small sliver of information) which primarily provides clarity on the space around the alignment which went on to create what has eventually manifested! You see, the food used in the kitchens of our homes is almost the same, but the magic happens only when a chef touches it! Not that we end up cooking bad, but it is simply about the ability of the chef to excel and surge ahead, making even our best efforts ending up looking average! So what is alignment all about and how does it empower?

To understand alignment, you need to imagine left in a room with everything that you probably need in life, strewn across the floor, sounds overwhelming and challenging? Well, yes it is and that’s what perhaps life is all about! Sieving through challenges and being able to get answers in the nick of time as and when they are most needed! All of us know, a sorry doesn’t make a dead person come back to life! But at the same time, merely having all that we require through our life around us, doesn’t assure progress or success! This is the space where alignment steps in- by default for some and by design for yet few others and by accident for yet others; it is only when alignment takes charge that things around- people , places and contexts included- each one of these begin to make sense and as these are deployed with intent and purpose magic begins to get created and people find their lives turning in the direction that they wish it to and that’s when you begin to hear the phrases, “Success has been magical, I just had this thought and then everything seemed to conspire for it’s success!” This is why and how alignment empowers and accelerates an individual’s life journey!

Alignment can mean different things for different people! People may have challenges with the very fundamental aspect of aligning their life to a meaningful purpose to begin with, if that is sorted then there can be a challenge to find alignment to the right path to take them ahead on the chosen path, and if that was not enough, there are the ever going alignment issues that are dynamic- which deal with the people and the contextual surroundings around! It is only when people are able to decipher these fine areas and apply their pursuit consistently in a way that it traverse these questions that, alignment is felt and experiences, that is when you begin to meet all the right people, at the right time and at the right places and when this is empowered by your intrinsic intelligence, drive, purpose and intent- success is more or less assured- how big or small that will be, whether it will be momentary or a long term one- that depends on the dynamic elements of people and contextual settings all through the cherished journey that has been undertaken!

So does it mean that without alignment, you and I are destined to fail and falter? Not at all, in fact depending on what your intrinsic construct is, if you are the type that enjoys more challenges and have mastered the art and science of enduing sustained pain and challenge- a misaligned contextual setting of life around you may actually make you work with a more fierce focus and intent thereby not only assuring your success, but making you someone- about whom mentions are etched in the books of history and human excellence! Alignment only ensures that you can reach and achieve what you set out for, in the most optimal way as it should be! Deviation from alignment is an indicator that one of your elements that contribute for alignment is not firing well enough and in fact, creating divergence rather then congruence within the finer spaces of an integrated pursuit of your goals!

For alignment to work for you, it all begins by tidying up your room! It all starts by putting in that first step of having your resources well marked and well identified at the right places- seems selfish, but that is how it is supposed to be, something as elementary as identifying the scholarship that you wish to have during high school to the city where you would like to pursue your research or those mentors under whose guidance you would like to appreciate the subject of your choice- choices like these and many more- are what go on to make alignment become real, meaningful and something that serves your pursuits so that you not only achieve what you have set out for , but do so with optimal ease and maximum efficiency! This is the very essence of having an aligned approach to your life! Once you have taken that extra effort of the first step, rest assured as time flows, a lot that doesn’t serve you will be washed away and what needs to stay gets cemented and reinforced and at times acquires the flavour of your personality and thereby help you to stamp that iconic style that you eventually become- simply because you led an aligned life which has empowered you!

Sure enough, based on who you are, what you do and where you want to be, alignment, it’s nature, effort and variables will change, some will be easy, some difficult, but irrespective of all that, one singular fact always remains and that is; alignment has the power to empower and for that to happen the first step begins with You, tidying up your life and then pursuing meaningfulness, designed along the journey and the destination that you choose to undertake!

I leave you with these thoughts for today, urging you to take some time off and run a “C” check on your alignment space, who knows, it may just accelerate your empowerment in the year ahead!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay wise, stay active and align to empower!

What you search is what you find!

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The real essence of human excellence resides not only in being able to have the right answers or solutions on hand, but importantly it is about being able to ask the right questions! Join me here as we take a quick short tour around this space to understand why being able to ask the right questions, matters more than having the right answers!

The greatness of humanity is seldom an act of accidents, rather it is a culmination of events one after the other, either synchronous or asynchronous all based on the potency of the questions raised by the ever curious and nourished mind! Societal progress has been a factor of having more such potent questions which go on to engage the brightest minds and thereby alter the course of societal growth and pathways!

The mind limits its pursuits in accordance to the questions that it is engaged with. As long as the questions are not routine and are original, the mind will be compelled to seek answers and depending on the rewards that go alongside will be steadfast and consistent until the answers are found! This is the very essence of great inventions and discoveries! A state of human mind where it simply is programmed to achieve what it has set out for and all that being made possible by the essential first step- that of asking a potent question!

Sure enough, this seems to a philosopher’s territory, but isn’t that who we are at the very foundation? Modern lives have set us up for some fast paced lifestyle where our thinking, questioning and solution seeking has all ended up being another menu on the fast- food table! We tend to seek short ended questions and sure enough get served with short serving answers! There is nothing right or wrong around this space- As a coach I can tell you that, you see everyone has the right to calibrate what their life’s mainstay should be or can be, but what then becomes singularly important is the fact of acceptance of life that comes your way- it has to be firm and unambiguous! You see, you can’t expect a great and iconic life or life style if you are hinged to mediocre questioning mindset! Neither will you be able to lead a normal and ordinary life if you stir up the hornet’s nest by taking a deep dive into fundamental questions that perhaps plague humanity or your society and when the answers come you way- there is no escaping, but taking them in your stride and working selflessly to execute and deploy them as it is meant to be!

We all are pretty aware of the elementary facet of the human minds’s never ending curiosity and wanting to seek more and more- but within this space of wanting to seek more- bringing in the qualitative part of the question becomes critical! As long as the questions have a great amount of depth, consistency and potency in terms of their influence and impact, rest assured you will always reach meaningful solutions and answers and once they come your way- your ability to deploy has the power to establish a new order! But how can this be made possible? Is the mind able to deal with this level of engagement on an ongoing basis without being entrapped into fatigue?

The secret to this answer lies in the intrinsic alignment that an Individual has when it comes to the space of enquiry! Some of us are naturally more inclined to ask questions that are compelling, far reaching and more challenging and there are few of us who are quite contend with the answers provided to the routine questions that life presents us with. based on what is your natural alignment, you will find it comfortable asking questions which are mapped to who you are and hence even the potency of your questions will be sharper or diffused accordingly! Ever wondered why not all researchers end up getting the coveted Nobel Prize, or why not all Actors end up getting The Oscar, part of that answer lies in this space! People who end up creating and weaving magic or some breakthrough almost always are engrossed and hooked up to some compelling fundamental questions and unless they find a meaningful closure which befits the question, they don’t stop and it is this pursuit which ends up defining what their life is all about and hence- in a way- you can say- they end up living a life which is nothing more but a pursuit of one fundamental question – which their curios mind has set them up against as their seeking of a lifetime!

As it happens with Individuals, the same can be sensed at a societal levels! As long as societies are able to ask pertinent questions and seek meaningful answers, societies progress, the day societies tend to get myopic and begin to hang up on short term questions for quick short term answers, in the long run they almost always are left short changed with no real purpose of direction and no meaningful leader to lead the way! So whats the way ahead, you may ask!

Well, to really keep it simple, the meaningful way ahead is to behold a dynamic balance of questions- few pertinent – long term and fundamental and yet a few others which are meant for the short term and that yield short term answers- because all of us can’t be philosopher’s and neither can all of us as part of humanity get dressed up everyday for a party that doesn’t exist! Unless Individuals and societies understand this bit and are able to deploy a balance in meaningful pursuits through a healthy mix of different types of questions, progress will tend to get sporadic and sublime, rather then being consistent and predictable!

Whether it is the pursuit of a belief system that you follow, or that of your favourite philosophical approach or perhaps a directed and focussed contemplation about the world around you, whatever your compelling need may be- all your pursuits will almost always end in proportion to the quality of your questions and what is that you set out to seek- as long as you are consistent with that bit! This is the reason why life is almost always all about serving you, with what you set out to seek, seek greatness you shall receive it, seek the routine pursuits and that’s exactly what you will end up having served to you!

I leave you with these thoughts for now and urging you to make an attempt to understand what is that you have embarked upon as a journey, based on the questions that you behold- for the answers and the manifestations, all of them will only be aligned to what you begin with and what you seek!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another piece soon! Until then stay wise and seek great solutions through some awesome questions!

Calm within the Storm.

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All of us have heard about the saying, “The Calm before the Storm”, but humanity and it’s modern advancement also brings us face to face with something called as “The Calm within the Storm”. Join me here as we travel down this space and understand how this can help us and why each one us- irrespective of who we are, is a story of holding greater calms within the storms that brew! So here we go!

The old known way of the calm before the storm arrives, is pretty well known, that is how nations makes their presence felt, that is how societies react and that also is how Individuals act and react. But when it comes to the matters of holding the Calm within the storm- things change completely and this change is what goes on define the event as a normal one or an iconic one depending on how well you embrace the calm within the storm that you are engaged with!

Human lives, today, are as complex as one can think about! At one end the ever present challenges of managing and dealing with the human elements of the stories that surround you and at the other end is the completely enslaved lifestyle- enslaved to your work or the technological dependence (which has been sold to each one us as Independence). What this ends up doing is that, irrespective what we pursue as individuals or collectively as a society, we end up fighting battles at different times for different reasons- with or without provocation and even as we do that in a particular area- we tend to be at absolute calm or bliss in yet some other facets of our life! This is what is the real essence of the clam within the storm- why is this so important- simply because, if we are able to shift the calm within to the sectors where the storm is brewing as transiently as we end up being in a storm, we would be able to manage a major part of our “real and apparent problems” more effectively and in a timely manner!

You see, as we end up living the many lives and the roles that we have to play, given the life that we have and who we are to whom and how many around- it is simply impossible to be all fine, all the time with everyone around- the reality of life is that we will end up being fine with a few, not so great with a few and in between with yet other things and people- it is within these spaces that many a times we end up stirring up the storms in the tea-cup for trivial issues and often neglect the real issues and when they come biting back- we are almost always lost with the “why me” phase and more often than not we end up misdirecting the calm quotient that we have to areas where we don’t need to stay clam and end up burning up ore intensely situations where a momentary calm would have eased up the situation and provided the much required breathing space.

The whole idea of appreciating and reaching “the calm within the storm” is also about being able to practise restraint and continue with a calm composed working mind even as you are fighting a battle or waging a meaningful war! Many a conflicts that people face or end up raking up is all about not being able to harness this internal oasis of clam even as they venture to deal with emerging challenges. irrespective whether these challenges are intrinsic, contextually propagated or manifested by virtue of who you are and what you are supposed to do and enact- as long as you are able to tap into the space of your internal calm, you will be able to prevail whatever comes your way! This also is another hallmark of iconic leadership- something that great international leaders display- even as they are maligned, misquoted, misrepresented or sold out by other of being something different from who they really are- it is their intrinsic ability to tap into the depths of their calmness that empowers them to overlook all and any provocation coming their way. Problems become irreparable only when they fail at this ability to overlooks and run short of their intrinsic calm and that’s when rapid actions are manifested and at times they tend to be detrimental to all that has ever got built or achieved earlier on! So how do we cultivate this space of inner calm- it it is so vital and of core value to our ability to stay engaged with worldly affairs? Read on!

It all starts by developing a high level of self-awareness and a deliberate approach by practising the pause, as that initiates you to embrace the calm withing even as you are in the thick of things! Even as you are trying to figure out solutions for compelling problems, once you have reached the calm within- rest assured you will be able to take a better and holistic path to solve what you are dealing with and more often than not your quality of decisions will greatly improve thereby resulting in fewer problems on hand as times progresses! This provides you greater clarity as well and this ensues that you can pick and choose your battles well and once you are in midst of one of them, you are able to decisively take them and end them at a place and time of your choice! Great political leaders have mastered this art and as you sieve through pages of history, you will find many such examples where- despite great odds, a calm and resolute approach has helped to turn the tide of time and created new history and at times even drawn new geographical lines on the face of the earth!

Apart from the intrinsic greatness, what also is needed is the appropriate contextual setting and the apt audience without which even the deepest oasis of calm will be misread as being passive, inert or incompetent- for when it comes to the virtue of perseverance or resilience often people are mistaken to be weak or inapt to act decisively fast!

As long as you are able to hold your calm and tap into that reserve when it matters the most and are able to time it well and to the extent that it must be- you will almost always end up surprising your detractors and be able to grow your team, no matter what the overbearing circumstance around you! “John C Maxwell has always said- Leadership is Influence- Nothing more, nothing less” and if you want to know about one powerhouse that provides that vital source of dynamism and momentum- it is the depth and spread of the calm that you hold within- all the while as you are engaged with and dealing with the routine worldly battles to foster what serves the greater good. Making routine choices between choosing battles which either represent the “need to have ” or “good to have” becomes easier when they are done by tapping through the intrinsic calm and more often then not the decisions taken then are more meaningful and long lasting!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, urging you to tap and maintain that inner reservoir of your calm, for that alone will empower and assist you when the crunch time arrives as you keep shifting your focus from one battle to the next as you keep moving towards your life aspirations!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then stay safe and stay wise! Remember, all greatness is held within and for the same to manifest externally it has to draw the power from your oasis of calm!

More than meets the Eye!

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If you have been simply overwhelmed by what’s unfolding in the US or getting tormented by the worsening pandemic in Europe or being simply anxious due to the lack of focus on your nation by the big world of news, relax and breathe easy! There is always more then meets the eye when it comes to scenarios like these and many more, what’s more important is the fact, that these aspects not only impact the social fabric or nations, but also impact the way we engage with people around us, family, friends, clients, vendors and co-workers! Join me as we explore this space and perhaps understand what really is happening, why is it that way and what is that we can do about it! So here we go!

Irrespective of how we want it to be, our world tends to remain as complex as it is and moves a notch higher with each passing day complicating even what was uncomplex earlier, whether this is good or bad, right or wrong is not the question, the real question, is why is the world allowed to function with this approach even as so called experts and eminent people are at the helm of affairs- no one would argue right? we have the best brains at the best places- fair enough you may say, you don’t with a few or many- but the point here is- we have the finest human minds around- all societies across segments- yet we allow this ever increasing complexity around and within our lives- why does it happen? Well read on!

The essence of our modern world is all about distraction and deviation! If you have any friends in the community that wears an uniform or even in the ones’ that don’t, do ask them! The arena of global geo-politics has always been about deviation and distraction for the simple reason that it gives nations some time on hand to tweak what they must within their nations to be ready for the externally altered realities as they unfold! The real mess begins when nations start to deploy this age old technique to manage and govern their own citizens. As this sacred instrument is used rampantly for no real rhyme or reason just to score some political brownies points for stupid reasons, what it ends up doing largely all over the world is that we end up having more confused societies that are replete with overconfidence of what they believe reality is! Furthermore once you add to these different influential and sensitive attributes of a society like access to education, health and poverty- you have a complete disaster unfolding at any given time across some society, some nation! If you thought these problems end here, well think again! What manifests in the broader spectrum of the social space, ends up walking into the corporate world and at times even goes further to impact Individual behaviour and their dependence!

You see, as long as the game is played to safeguard national interests with limited collateral damage of assets, things are generally acceptable the world over, however when usage becomes rampant, uncontrolled , unchecked and importantly when private firms – read Big Tech’s assume and seize control to manipulate and complicate things further, the world ends up being a playground of the select few, who at any given time are playing out their moves to fulfil their short term and long term agendas and you will be surprised to learn that at times even the most seemingly powerful political establishments of the world, end up being mere rubber stamps and allow them to flow unchecked (simply because it is a case of tiger which was raised mistaking it to be cute kitten! Think about it! Just choose a political development of your choice, do you really think that the highest office in your nation would not have been aware of what is likely to unfold? Think! As I said in my earlier article, when big stakes come in the picture, the games are bigger and the moves are equally unforgiving and outright dangerous!

When it comes to the corporate world, remember the last big institutional sale you made, or someone you know made, or that government order, someone from your firm got, what was the story like? You got it right? There were those missing links which you would have never known- even if you would have sold some service or product- this is how this aspect of “More than meets the eye” plays along in the corporate corridors! Whether it is that surprising rejig, new appointments, dismissals, resignations, joint ventures, sell offs’ the whole spectrum of business moves is almost always shrouded by calibrated distractions and higher the stakes, higher, wider and deeper is the distraction! So what is that we can do about these aspects, is there anything that we can really do, if all of this is so deep rooted and widespread?

Well, to begin with, if you ask me, perhaps the only way to emerge wiser to the other side, while dodging all this, is by verifying, checking and fact checking multiple times across different contexts, people and settings, simply because, everyone’s truth is owned by each one of them and one person’s truth can be another person’s lie or nightmare! Sounds daunting right? Well, but if the stakes are as high as running a nation or taking a call on a billion dollar deal, what else would you do and how else would you go ahead? Sure enough no one is asking you to deploy this approach as you rush to buy that soft drink or pick up your burger, but you need to calibrate and seek your own level at which you would want to and should deploy a greater understanding about what’s unfolding around you with regards to a chosen area that impacts you in a greater way the perhaps the way it does you friends siting next to you or anyone else for that matter! That is the real essence of dealing with the deployment of deviation and distraction- by enhancing your understanding and mentioning on things and spaces that really impact you greatly to a point that neglecting them could land you up in what I call as existential crisis!

You see, deviation and distraction is an art and science much needed when it comes to securing nations or societal safety, but when this is used too often and for wrong reasons,it can have disastrous consequences and further complicate the matters to a level that segments within the society begin to mistrust each other and when that goes further unchecked you can feel the same vibes as you begin to interact with and work with people in a given society- that is when you start to see social segmentation and preferences gaining more speed and priority over Individual competence and that’s how social degradation commences!

Final words before I conclude here, whether you like it or not there is always more than meets the eye, in almost everything around us and when it comes to big stakes, greater is the deviation and distraction- be wise enough not to get sold into what is seen or shown to you- reality could be something else and the truth can be something altogether different!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay safe, stay wise and see what is hidden in plain sight!

Deciphering ” The Radical Thinking” mind.

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If you are left wondering about what happened at the Capitol Hill on January the 6th and are feeling anguished, angry, dejected, proud or sad or perhaps little bit of everything, this piece is for you; simply because what happened at the Capitol Hill is not an isolated incident as it may seem and is played out across societies all over the world for one or the other reason and depending on which side you view what’s unfolding, either you will be elated or sad and either ways- what unfolds seldom serves you or the society in terms of moving it closer to the larger and greater good! So join me here, as we go further to understand what the so called, “radical thinking” is all about, from where does it emerge and what is that can be done about it- does it only harm or is it helpful too? So here we go!

The dynamism that human societies have witnessed in the last century have laid the foundation to what we witness and experience as our societies around us! Societies which have typically witnessed oppression, war, strife, struggle, more often than not tend to become more mellowed, humble and accommodative with time and as people in those societies begin to get equitable access to opportunities of growth and learning! On the other hand, societies which have always had a very intrinsic and unipolar view of the world and about everything and everyone around them tend to live and die in their own unwarranted over confidence or lack of it!

The challenge that societies have always faced and continue to is about being able to share the dividends of progress in a proportional manner- no one is suggesting socialism here, neither am I suggesting Capitalism is bad, what is relevant and contextually important is the fact that, unless the fruits of labour of progress are not shared in a proportionate manner (whatever that proportion is), societies will feel moving at different speeds within the sub-segments and thereby- you will witness people racing ahead and people being left behind and it is from these extreme scenarios of societies that radical thoughts begin to emerge- the ones’ who are racing ahead feel right about what they do because they are enjoying what the aspire and those who are being left behind, tend to feel right about what they do, thinking that is their way and approach to reach their unfulfilled aspirations! So you see in a sum total way, the essence of radical thinking emerges from the extreme ends of societies hinging on their association with their aspirations- at one end- being enjoyed and wanting more and at the other end wanting the basic ones’ first! Based on what society you live in, you will have different standards for aspirations and different levels of volumes at the extreme end and in the middle of the given society.

As long as societies have the majority of their constituents around the centre, the few on the extreme ends can be managed, but as polarization sets and more and more people start to feel compelled to take extreme stands (as part of the larger social conformation bias) the societal balance is thrown away and what you are left is with few people standing in between of two extremely polarized sections who have a large volume as well! This is what the story of many societies across the nations is today! The cause of that polarization could be anything from, political ideologies, personality worship, religious belief’s, genuine like or despise of available quality of leaders’ , whatever other hundred reasons that you can think about- the fact remains that no human is ever born with a polarized mind or heart and it is the society which goes on to indoctrinate that aspect and whether that helps or harms largely depends on what is injected into the impressionable minds of the people through their forming years and this is perhaps the on stage where societies can strive to check the run away polarization that only comes back to bite them at the end! But how and why do people get sold into extreme views or end up taking a radical stand?

As people begin to race ahead or begin to get left behind, despite and inspite of everything, the ones’ ahead are ready to do anything it takes to stay ahead and the ones’ left behind are ready to do anything that it takes to make that move ahead! For achieving this, whatever comes to their rescue works! This could be taking hardstands on political ideologies, personalities or perhaps even using matters of faith as deemed appropriate, all of this- just as tools or instruments to achieve something that is totally different and what’s worse is that, scoities which allow this to develop and get strong- do so with unwritten laws and incentivization based on how far to an extreme a person leans to! More often then not the heady cocktail of the political class and the people from the society and tool used for the hard-line stand ends up destroying and ripping away whatever would have been the unique identity of the society itself!

Before the rampant industrialization, societies had time and space and were more accommodative and allowing for people to pursue without the fear of getting left behind nagging anywhere around their minds! Today’s world is a different place altogether, trust me if Picasso or Gustav Eiffel or Einstein would have been present today, they would have at the most ended up leading the design or science lab at one of the large corporate houses and that would be their limited claim to fame! They too would have ended up being enslaved to fit into the social frame either as leaders racing ahead or as oddity left to struggle and sink in their own corner- which again are the same positions of the two extreme ends of todays’ world! It is almost easy to go on to a television debate show and claim that there should be no space for extreme thoughts in the society, well the problem with that statement is that all great discoveries and innovations have always had when extreme and radically different thinking was applied to something that can serve humanity and hence the problem is not with the space of radical thinking but rather the deployment of that ability for the serving or unnerving causes! So what’s the plan?

The plan is simple and straightforward, it is about creating enough space within societies to accommodate all the voices, feelings and thoughts that are there and try to resolve and address them the way it should be done! The maddening race to be ahead and the unwanted fear and anxiety of being left behind has to be done away with in totality- sure enough a tall and utopian order, but unless that happens, societies will keep drifting away from humanities foremost agenda of meaningful and purpose driven progress and end up sub-serving ourselves and the generations that rely upon us! If you though this is just a civic problem or the ones’ that politicians should be left to deal with it, think again!

The elements of societies are all of us, You and Me included, as we walk in and out of our offices, get driven in the cabs, are taking trains, buses, co-workers, vendors, clients, visiting stores and going about our social community engagement- we are knowingly and unknowingly touching and connecting with various segments of our society and the way we carry ourselves, behave and speak we are sending out a signal not only about the society around us but importantly also about who and what we have ended up becoming as Individuals while we have been either busy either racing ahead- to stay ahead or we have been striving and struggling to catch up as we have got left behind!

It is only when societies are able to create enough space for all constituents within its frame and enough scope for them to express and explore that we will see the beginning of the end of radical thinking and radicalization! may sound utopian, but that is the only way, human progress has been a story of the ingenious ability of the human mind to come up with new thinking and new solutions for perplexing problems at hand, with time sure enough, even this problem of radical thinking will be addressed- once the root causes that accelerate and provoke it are taken care of!

I leave you here with these thoughts for now, not pushing you to either edges of your thinking mind, and just sharing a final thought with you that, the problem is not about the human mind that thinks, neither it is the problem of the mind that thinks radically, the real problems is about what is the contextual truth around that mind which makes it to think the way it does! Fix that and you have fixed all the minds around you -fixed for good!

Remember, average thinking always produces average results, great thinking produces great results and all great thinking happens at the very edge of the thinking process and that is what Radical Thinking is all about- use it wisely and humanity will be endowed with gifts and bliss unlike ever before!

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

The game of Presidential Checkmate!

~ PA ~ 1 Comment

When the stakes are really high, the players too know it well and the game goes that way, all the way! Join me here as we take a fleeting quick look what the latest developments in the United States of America really imply and how irrespective of which side your heart beats, the collateral damage that has already been done and the damage that will come in sometime will once again end up creating more questions than answering the present ones’! Nevertheless this article is not about the political stand point that one may have around what is unfolding, but it has more to do with the high stake games where we come across, what I term as the “Presidential Checkmate”! So join me here as we take a fleeting look around this space and whether it is the office of President of the USA or of any other world leader, if they are not careful to choose their inner circle, they will sooner or later have to come face to face with this space! So here we go!

Higher the office, higher are the stakes, m,ore are the people working for the success of the chair that they rally around and many more than that are always around that inner-circle eternally exploring the proverbial “clinks in the armor” to weaken, sabotage and derail what that chair stands for and what it promises! To add to this, when you get a even more powerful invisible conspiring cloak of big businesses that control the audience of the societies (read the Big Players of the Social Media space- you know who I am talking about!), you have a really deadly game of chess which you really want to avoid, but should you get into the cross hairs of that, because of the chair that you occupy- that of being The President- well, you have no other choice but to play, survive and win! Now the million dollar question, but why should this happen? Why would people want to be gunning down the most powerful office in the nation and perhaps in the world, after all everyone comes from the same societal cohort- called The Nation! Read on!

The real essence of what we see playing out in the game of the Presidential Checkmate is a reflection of the very society itself! The more a society is self-serving, selfish and ungrateful, higher are the chances that sooner or later The President will have to come to terms with a checkmate and how well and effectively that is dodged will all depend on the Intrinsic competence and political acumen that the owner of the Chair beholds! Apart from this, there is the compelling overbearing pressure from the blue eyed tycoons- why? Well needless to say in a world that is replete with favors and exchange of pleasantries, when the times comes, these seeming tycoons, turn into the most murderous negotiators who venture out to demand their pound of the flesh and when negotiations don’t work, don’t even blink before they begin to destroy, undo all that possibly would have been achieved and the most scary part of it is that, all this mudslinging is played out in the public (through the social media) and by now if you have guessed it right, what is served and how it is served is almost always far from what the truth perhaps is!

So you see, whether you like The President or The Leader or not, even as things seem normal on a daily basis- that Chair and the Person beholding it- is always battling endless ongoing onslaughts from one or the other quarter, where everyone is wanting and demanding something or the other and even as that is been done, even the ones’ asking or rather demanding what they do, know pretty well that any giving in to their demands will end up jeopardizing some other section, but as I said earlier, no one cares as long as their self-serving agendas are met! This is why you find The Presidential offices, moving and fixing one problem after the other- at times resembling more of a fire station rather than a Presidential office! But there is one more sinister angle to all of this and that is when the game really becomes ugly and dirty and that is perhaps what is been played out right now on the screens in front of us!

It is when non-state actors or state-sponsored actors from other nations begin to get embroiled into what is unfolding within another nation and end up making alliances either with the blue eyed tycoons or some pivots within and around The President’s Chair, that is when the game gets really ugly and deadly- read political and societal instability and regression – why this- well as the old adage goes, “When you can’t increase your speed, do what it takes to reduce the speed of the competition”, and this is what is being played out at grand scale as part of the Checkmate game! This is perhaps what America is witnessing now and this is what the other nations will witness if what is being done now is left unchecked and allowed to propagate as it has been this time! The incidents flowing out of the USA right now are being watched and studied by experts, strategists the world over and depending on which side of the line you fall into, people can use and deploy these new learnings as as successful templates to discredit and pull down all that they please and when they please and this is the real and present danger! So if this is now high, deep and wide these conspiracies can run through and can have so many actors- direct and in-direct- is there nothing that The President can do? Well, read on!

The answer to this question is Yes and No, Yes- because The President is the Chair which is all encompassing and all powerful and till the Chair is being held by the owner firmly and supported by the vital components that are the pillars/legs to this char- The Military, The Judiciary, The People, The Legislative and The Constitution- The President can deal and effectively demolish all that may be thrown at the Chair by the plethora of the Conspirators and No- If any of those supporting legs/ pillars go weak or get compromised then the situation is dire and ends up being nothing more than a calculated risk and whichever way the game is then played- sooner or later there is a price which it will end up extracting from someone within and around the system which is the Nation!

Never lap up what is being served unless you have valid access to first hand documents and facts and figures which are credible in the real essence of the word credible- I have already written about the Experts’ fallacy– you may want to read that along side this piece! No matter which side of the political spectrum you fall in and what you support or not- irrespective of all of that- its worthwhile to remember that when the game begins to Checkmate The President- the very fundamental fabric of the society gets altered- for better or worse- that depends on who you are and from where and what contextual truth you observe what unfolds! But eventually in this game, as The President gets a checkmate- it is not The Person, but The Nation, that pays the price for it and sooner or later and everyone and each aspect of the society gets pulled into that bit whether or not they like it or not and whether or not they played a role either side to manifest that Checkmate!

I leave you with these thoughts, for now, just remember, if the big companies could go ahead an put a communication lid or embargo on The President of USA’s office, you stand no chance and when the game of high stakes comes visiting your nation or the society you live in, you definitely want to get out of the way- because if the world’s most powerful office can get undone and miscommunicated on an ongoing basis- nothing else really stands a chance! No matter what, always remember, the chair of The President is about The Nation and The People- any disrespect, undoing, mischief around and to that Chair, is a disrespect to The Nation and its People! and yes, finally, to tell you something that I always believed in, the plain truth that “All lives matter, all the time, everywhere and each time! The power of The Chair of The President, is a reflection of The People and The Nation that it belongs to!- Nothing more, nothing less, the next time you find your President being compelled into or driven into a corner- stand up and stand by The President- for The Presidency speaks more about The Nation, then The Individual who presides over it for a few years, every few years!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then stay safe, stay wise! God Bless America and God Bless The President! In God We Trust!

The “C” check approach.

~ PA ~ 1 Comment

The “C” check is perhaps one of the greatest learning points that we can borrow from the aviation industry! Typically in a “C” check the aeroplane is take out piece by piece, section by section, to have a through inspection, fault rectification and retrofitting of latest technology updates, hardware and software and so on and so forth- all with a singular purpose of making them as safe as ever, create that feel of newness and importantly to do away with accumulated clutter- through wear and tear and perhaps juts by being there! By the time you complete the comprehensive “C” check on the aeroplane it is as good as it gets- perhaps a shade short of being a totally new piece! Join me here to understand how this “C” check coming from the aviation industry is so relevant to who we are as Individuals and what is that we can learn from this space and apply to make our lives a shade better and brighter so that we feel empowered enough to keep soaring higher and flying further as we pursue the goals of our life!

Given the kind of complexity, that we have given to ourselves through the modern lives that we live and lead, we too are a complex piece of bio-engineering with a fleeting, thinking mind all empowered through our available sensory and extra-sensory perceptions! Like any other machine, we too fail, at times that element of failure is manageable and yet some other times that can end up being a disaster- as you have with aeroplanes- sometimes they have minor incidents and at times big disasters unfold! So what does the “C” check really do?

Well, sure enough I am no aeronautical engineer, but in plain speak- the “C”check is when the aeroplane is completely dismantled piece by piece and section by section and experts for relevant areas are put to work to check what’s working, fix what’s not and make better what can in the areas that they have expertise! What this ends up doing is, that by the end of the “C” check, the aeroplane is almost as new as it can get! The “C” check is where, the obsolete hardware and wear and tear is taken out- what doesn’t seem to be the right thing to stay on the aeroplane is done away with, what needs to get updated- does get updated and while doing so, all the relevant flight deck logs are checked for the aeroplane in concern- comments by pilots, observations by flight engineers, dispatch notes, cabin crew remarks- anything and everything that can be accessed is accessed with a sole purpose for getting as much as details as one can get so that the teams can fix all that is essential and all that is possible, so that the need to have is done right- first always and all the time and the good to have is too cared for as much as they can! When there are issues and things aren’t seemingly going anywhere, adequate safety guidelines and measures are updated and communicated to those for whom it matters and that’s how after a “C” check you have a completely rejuvenated and re-calibrated aeroplane- ready once again to touch the skies and travel the world!

Given the kind of complex machines that we humans are, it is just a matter of time before we begin to experience our kind of wear and tear- for some it is part emotional, intellectual and part physical, for few it is one of these three and for yet others, they experience varying degrees between the three at different points in time of their life and the fact remains that no matter how well you manage to pilot your life- you will hit turbulence some or the other time and you will have odd days while landing and taking off- so you too will end up having considerable wear and tear in areas where the exposure is the most!

Like with the aeroplanes, with humans too a complete resurrection is possible, but for that too happen, we must be ready to get ourselves grounded for some time! the societies we live in today are fast paced that even the compelling visit to the doctor often ends up getting optional – result- what was a simple problem, more often then not ends up getting more complicated and complex! Unknown to most of us, many of the problems that we end up facing are largely apparent and a result of the inadequate time that we are able to provide to decipher and appreciate what is unfolding around us as we tend to rush through the daily routine of our assumed lives! The first and most important compelling condition for getting a “C” check done is not when problems begin to become frequent or when a disaster unfolds, rather it is much before any of this can manifest- the time for the “C” check is every few months, years or perhaps a decade depending on who you are and what is your contextual reality of life! Your “C” check is directly hinged upon what you do and what you don’t, what you think and what you don’t, it is deeply intrinsic to who you are and the “C” check will only work for you as long as it is designed and deployed the way it addresses the challenges faced by you! So what is that really can be achieved and done through a “C” check for the human machine- that is what we have become!

Well, to begin with , always have all the checks , “scheduled”. There is no place in aviation for breakdown maintenance, the whole industry is all about preventive maintenance, we need to apply this space and ensure that, based on our intrinsic and unique requirements we are able to schedule our routine pit stops and checks and even the all important “C” check. Depending on who you are and what you do, this “C” check could be once a year, once every few years or perhaps once in a decade and it is also vital (for most of us) that we have a separate ‘C” check for our intellectual, emotional and physical health simply because, in the times we live in- we are very unlikely to have a sync or unity of gaol and purpose across all the three segments that go on to govern and define our health and well-being! But what will the human “C’ check be all about- rather what can it be about and how can it help?

Well, on each of the segments that go on to define our well being (the physical, emotional and intellectual) we need to choose our scheduled “C” check and as we do that, the more wear and tear we have in any one area, will begin to stand out and you will know with absolute clarity what is that hold you back in a given area and what is that you can do to resolve it! Whether it is the challenge of a career you have at hand, or the challenge of embracing a healthy life style- whatever that could be, once you schedule your “C” check and decide to take an adequately long pause- you will be able to come to terms with what is that really holds you back in a given area and disempowers you from realizing your fullest potential! Once you are able to do this and decipher the challenge , you will find that with each new “C” check up your problems and challenges will begin to get more unique new and something that progressively uplifts you to the next level of who you can be!

Your “C” check is a deliberate time that you are ready to invest in yourself so that once the creases are ironed out- you are a tad better then what you were earlier and are able to focus on what you intend to with a renewed approach and zeal! Just as in the case of the aeroplane, during the “C” check as every component is checked, double checked, calibrated and finetuned for the aeroplane’s performance, your “C” check too is meant to transform your life for the days ahead in a similar way- something that empowers you and aligns you to your chosen path of progress and pursuits that you may have!

I leave you here with these thoughts, urging you to take some time off and have your first “C” check scheduled in the area that troubles you the most, rest assured as you come on the other side of your scheduled down time, you will be more aligned, focussed and rejuvenated then ever before!

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

Shaping the future of our Future!

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We all know this too well, that the future of humanity is not in the workplaces or the offices as I type this, but rather it is across the different grades of lower school, middle school and high school across societies at this very moment! Join me here as we try to take a look into what is unfolding around that space and why we must be so concerned and what is that we can do to influence our future, just enough to nudge it in the right direction so that they have a wonderful future! So here we go!

If you are able to take that necessary pause and just observe around you, what you will see is that, unlike the earlier times (perhaps when you were a kid) there was a enough space and content for you to imagine, research and innovate. The current lifestyles that societies have embraced have simply ended up the free space and time for introspection, reflection and enquiry. No one is suggesting you to pursue philosophy, but the fact remains that unless the human mind is able to perform directed and focussed enquiry, nothing worthwhile or meaningful can ever be achieved or realized, individually or collectively as a society!

Societies around the world, even right upto the early 90’s were spaced out in the sense that, there was a choice that people could exercise, with regards to what they wanted to pursue and how they wanted to pursue it! Societies then had the space to accommodate and facilitate much of the diversity that society had to offer. If you have some doubt around this bit- just study the great organizations and icons who have made their names in the last 10-15 years, chances are they were a product of the societies of the bygone era and what they were able to create was a direct consequence of the society that they moved around in and that’s how magic and an enduring foundation for human progress has always been built!

Human imagination and creative pursuits require space and time, both of which have become a rarity- given the way societies have gone ahead and embraced the lifestyles in the last two decades. If global connectivity has been a great asset for accelerating progress and development of human societies, the same has robbed away societies of valuable space and stretched time which are so vital for ensuring that innovation and pace of progress is managed and furthered on an ongoing basis! This is why it becomes so important to understand what is unfolding around today, because all of that influences the young minds and since they are the future- the ability to create their future becomes easy or difficult depending upon what is happening in the now!

Our todays’ are invariably unforgivingly compressed and intense which leave little or not time for that much needed spaced out enquiry and that is the real danger that the current young minds face across societies all throughout the world! What this is invariably resulting into is a world where everyone is just thinking and solving apparent problems which they may have to face as long as they are and hence nothing enduring or worthwhile is ever made or come to life! Whether it is the arena of science, creative arts or even perhaps commerce- all equations and strategies are aimed to solve the problem of this year and perhaps the next few years or may be at the most of a decade but no one is really focussing enough for what resides beyond that horizon and this is what needs to be changed and that too pretty urgently- unless we want to end up handing over the world complete with myopic solutions to the future generations who in turn end up creating further such myopic visions and that eternal short changed world keeps moving on! So what needs to be done?

The first step to get humanity and the youngsters out of the rut of boxed and good-to-have thinking is all about ensuring that they have access to adequate time to think and observe what there is- rather than being asked to observe “few things around”. This small yet fundamental change can go a long way in empowering young minds to see beyond and observe aspects that surround their lives in a more holistic manner so that when the time comes to apply their thoughts, innovation or action, they are able to discern well enough and now how pulling the chord at one end of a social fabric can unleash cascading impacts not only within their society but also perhaps across societies around the globe! The only way that young minds today can insure and safeguard their future is by being able to direct their thinking and observation more towards what will be and what is that they want there to be, rather then focussing on what is and what can be- that is what happens as young minds take the first few steps of the corporate world!

Sure enough there are great organizations which allow their work force to innovate and possibly develop solutions that seem to be the promise of the future ahead, these manifestations only happen in organizations whose founders have appreciated the value of the human mind, its potency to seek solutions through stretched space and slowed time! What we can do today is that we can create that much needed stretch of time and space for the young minds around us. This can be the first and foundational step wherein we begin to encourage enquiry of all that is around us an prompt these young minds to seek advancements that outlast their lifetimes and go beyond! This change of approach to thinking wherein Individuals and collectively societies are urged to seek solutions and answers to what is around for a long hauls, is what will go on to make the big change and difference in the young minds and empower them enough to pursue a future that they will be proud to behold and pass on!

Humanity’s progress has been a testimony to the fact that great advancements have been made possible only when the most gifted human minds were free from oppressions, directed thinking and boxed-in settings! All great discovery and meaningful greatness which has lingered on for centuries and beyond was only possibly when the human mind was given that critical space and time to ponder, observe and infer in a way that serves the larger good for a longer time for everyone around!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, urging you to get that free space and slowed time for yourself to begin with to hold that meaningful enquiry which can set you on to the path of enquiry and once that happens you can go on to influence the young minds around you, so that they are able to emulate what is more potent, dynamic and answers the challenges of their tomorrow and not of our today!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then stay safe and keep pondering about what could be the great idea of your life!

The “Comparison pandemic”.

~ PA ~ 1 Comment

We all have been at the receiving end and also at the origin of this comparison fallacy and needless to say, no matter how you or try to do something about it, we almost always end up creating another case for comparisons and comparative approaches! Join me here as we take a quick look into this space of what I call as “the comparison pandemic” and decipher when it is ok and when does it begin to slip away from being helpful to being outright harmful! So here we go!

Right from childhood, what individuals normally experience is the ongoing onslaught of comparisons! Irrespective of the fact whether those are valid or not – that is not the primary concern (though a concern, for sure!), the more compelling issue is, why do we do it, encourage it or even allow this bit to propagate- even as each one of us who has lived the life of a child despised it so much. The other aspect around this “comparison pandemic” is that it doesn’t stop with our childhood and this runs deep- at times subtly and at times loudly through our college days, professional lives and even to the moment right upto our graves- because even in that fleeting moment (perhaps a little short of it)- as a human- if you are able to communicate- you still will strive to make that comment which just wants to reinforce the space that you lived a better life than “abc” or “pqr”! Even as comical and harmless it may seem. this “comparison pandemic” plays havoc and has caused perhaps the greatest damage to humanity by stiffing away young innovator’s and humanists even before they could embark on their journey to make humanity a shade better! But why has this been allowed, how did this space of comparing take on these pandemic proportions? Well read on!

Human societies since the bygone ages have been an effort to make the life experienced by the society member better- better in the sense of ease of life- starting right from the primitive goals of being alive (not getting eaten by other predators), then moving on to a life of shifting settlers and further on to eventually be permanent settlers and then go on to develop rapidly into settlements, villages, kingdoms, empires and in today’s contest the nations that we know them as today! Through this journey of the ages- every inflection point (where something meaningful and great would have been achieved) has always been when the normal ways and practises have been reset, improvised or changed completely- at times this has world and yet few other times this has been detrimental for humanity and it is from these spaces of compelling change and transformation and the creativity and destruction that goes along with these period that a vast majority of the social set- felt the urge and need to stick to what was momentarily comfortable rather then wanting to dwell into the risk prone attitude and approach (especially when things didn’t work in the societies favour!) This is the space and context from where the baby steps of the art of “comparing ” perhaps have emerged- as a survival guide more than anything else!

You see, I see you clap your hands, and you are unharmed, I too will want to do that bit and experiment, I see you cut the vegetables and accidentally cut one of your fingers a bit, well, I sure will venture ahead to chop them, but with some caution- it is these kind of everyday observed and indoctrinated ways of life that go a long way to reinforce the comparative approach and once you have become comfortable around this, you have automatically enrolled for a life of mediocre pursuits for yourself and all those who rally around you- simply because you will not move beyond a set range and the reality of life is that all great and iconic stuff happens much beyond the threshold of comfortable range! This is why when you promote the comparative approach- you end up creating intellectual clones who are as smart or as worse as the next one around and then add to this the intrinsic incompetence (which only grows with time) you set up the individual and societies with such individuals for a downward journey and a mediocre approach for eternity!

As Individuals get compared and kind of get calibrated to what is acceptable and what is not, people around often tend to overlook the intrinsic construct of the Individuality of the person and thereby anything of value that can be there is simply walked over and done away with- so once you have someone’s core intrinsic value taken away- by suggesting that what they behold is not needed in the world- instead “be like that person” who does “this or that and there and how” well, you just end up creating a templated robot who is cloned as much as possible to the so called role model! You see, being Inspired or Motivated by people who have been successful or icons is not the problem, it is when these people and their achievements are presented as the only way and approach that an Individual should pursue as their life path, is where problems begin to manifest, simply because, no matter what you do or not, this person can simply be the Master for a thousand reasons- the most fundamental among them being the “contextual settings and truth of the time in which the people lived and worked!

You may want to argue, whatever happens to the whole space around Being Inspired and Being an Inspiration for someone, well, no one is discounting that bit, but if you begin to sell Inspiration with an intent to change a crow into an eagle- you will most probably end up having a very dumb crow which just gets beaten up by the other crows! What the whole “comparison pandemic” ends up doing, is just this, creating asymmetric and unqualified ways of relativity and expectations and when these strike a cord at the fundamental beliefs of individuals- either they become more rebellious to go ahead and assert their Individuality more strongly – a kind of statement which says, “You know what, this is who I am, live with it! or at times they simply crumble and accept a life that is being thrust upon them – like a never ending role play- and with every passing moment- ending up being more fake and disconnected from within and from who they really are- could be and aspired to be!

Well, you may but what about being ambitious, what about trying to be innovative- how can we do that without comparison? Well, no one is asking you, to give up your innovative spark and neither is anyone asking you not to be inspired or learn or observe from what is unfolding around you- what is important is that you don’t end up fooling yourself, thinking that you are being innovative even as you possibly end up copying or cloning some original idea! You see, the whole premise that innovation or iconic stuff needs some comparison is absurd and wrong! If that was the case- we would have all cars similar in design and all what you see around in the world- would have ended up being just copies of some or the other things around and we would have embraced a templated world! That is not the case, isn’t it?

You see, as long as we are able to have clarity about inspiration, contextual truths of the examples around us and are fundamentally aware about who we ourselves are as Individuals, we will be able to keep in check this innocent looking yet dangerous pandemic of comparison! The Human mind is fickle by the very construct of it and what it appreciates at one point in time will be easily junked away as something better comes to it’s purview- this is- believe it or not- the evolutionary safety valve of human thinking- thousands of years back- who would not want to run into an orchard of apples or some wild fruits which could promise an abundant supply to the group, than having to risk every day in and day out their own lives as they went out for a hunting spree!

Comparisons, aren’t all bad, but how they are done, for what and the contexts more often than not make them a nuisance holistically! Not going too back into human history, the recent Covdi19 pandemic was and is a glaring example- how governments after governments went on to copy what the others did and how that ended up screwing up one nation after the another in their won unique ways simply because all similarity with human kind ends with the fact that we are humans and beyond that point each one of is differentiated or levelled to the society that we have got to live around in and as diverse societies try to strike a common line of similarity- almost always the outcome will be disastrous!

Meaningful comparisons stand true in the test of science. The big corporate world- though having its own set of challenges has fared a shade better when it comes to do meaningful comparisons- You see when the corporate world is able to make meaningful comparisons based not on the intrinsic individuality of the people, but rather on the Authority, Position, Span of Control and Sphere of Influence, that is when magic happens and you are able to find it much earlier when teams and people are performing or perishing and the possible why around it becomes easy- as long as the study is on the process and not on the Individuality and Personalities of the Individuals!

Well, to put it simply, comparisons to work, they need to be meaningful and they need identical (not similar) contexts of time and space- everything done without this fundamental attribute under the garb of comparison is plain stupid and is actually meant to drive some or the other human agenda based on what the content of study is and what is being compared and why!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, urging you to shun the space around the “comparison pandemic” in your lives and around you and embrace Individuality of people around you, as much you would like them to reciprocate the same! Just remember- there is a reason why nature is asymmetric and why each one of us is unique- even if you happen to be that Identical Twin- that is how far your similarity will go- rest all is about the matter that the mind beholds within! The next time someone tells you, “You are not like , B or C”, just tell them who you are and possibly reintroduce yourself! Their feeble minds should start working from that point!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay safe, stay wise and yes- compare what is meaningful enough to compare; everything else, is best the way it is!

The Legacy Collective.

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Humanity has always had an intriguing relation when it comes to the whole concept of legacy! Legacy means so many different things to so many different people based on who they are and where they are, but one singular aspect of the legacy collective is the fact that, each and every act and thought deployed with the thought of legacy anchored within has always been associated with a fleeting want of immortality! Jon me here as we try to understand, what the legacy collective is all about and why the pursuit of creating a legacy and wanting to uphold one is so fundamental to humanity even in these dynamic times and how our world makes that pursuit so fragile and dynamic! So here we go!

Human kind has always been fascinated with the whole aspect of heroism, heroics and the legacy that have been handed over through the generations! Take a walk down the countryside anywhere around the world, you will be sure to find the local folklore and the intricate details around the legacy developing through all that unfolded there or is unfolding there! The real challenge to understand and define legacy is not in these pockets of humanity where time has stood still or moves slowly but it is the fast paced corridors of the mega cities and nerve centres of the world where people anyways are struggling to get a firm hold around their environments, let alone wanting to create a legacy, but ironically though, the majority of people who always talk about- wanting to create a legacy will always be found around here! Legacy can mean a thousand different things and there can be as many reasons to believe and debate that! So what is that people are normally pursuing and doing- thinking that it’s a legacy that they are creating? Well, not all may be right, but neither all of them are wrong and the real essence of being able to carve out and create a meaningful legacy resides somewhere between the two extremes!

I said this earlier, in one of my articles; In the times we live today, you would be lucky enough even if the third generation in your family fondly remembers you (writing about is a long shot anyways!). Say you are lucky and that happens, then you would really start counting your blessings if the next tow generation after that remember you (for all that you have done that goes on to impact them, influence them or effect them!) and if this realm moves beyond the confines of your family and moves on to your immediate society, your nation or the world that you traverse; it is then that you have a real claim and case for Legacy in the real essence of the word and in context of the influence and impact that “legacies” are meant to have! As long as you know this truth and time your action and work for the sphere where you want to linger along, long after you have kissed the ground, you can have a meaningful case for leaving a legacy! This is the real essence of legacy and all that goes along with it!

The daily casual use of words like “I want to work this way ane create my legacy at workplace” well sorry to disappoint you, but the day you are ejected of the chair that you are in, rest assured the next person stepping in will not only change the colors and the furniture of your beloved office, but also wipe away all that threatens to be your lingering soul- your people and your ways of working included- this is how long and short legacies are really in the corporate world! There is nothing right and wrong about how this happens or why this happens- simply because the whole corporate eco-system is basically a summation of people working and rising to their levels of incompetence!

The first and meaningful way step towards wanting to create a legacy is all about knowing the audience that you want to behold what you leave behind! You see, if you know what is that you want to create and what you want to be done with that bit, once you are no longer there to propagate or further it,that is when you get absolute clarity in what you do and not even while you are still walking around the planet! Often people end up sweating a lot of their lives for no real apparent meaningful reason simply because they align their thoughts around the legacy bit- completely disassociated with what the reality around them is! Result of this? Well, you have many legacies that lie wasted in the unsung graveyards of humanity- where no one really bothers to pay a visit or even when they do stumble upon them, they are merely a passing reference in the vast ocean of history and time! Only if the people knew that they really don’t have real heirs to the legacy they propose to leave behind, they would have either stooped dead in their tracks and charted a different course for their own lives or alternatively they would have aligned their legacy to a new and more fitting audience or a meaningful heir- in -the- waiting! So what’s the plan?

Well, the only and simple meaningful plan is about really starting by understanding whether as an Individual you are equipped to leave a legacy- whatever that may be- doesn’t matter and second important step- knowing if the heirs that you have identified are really bothered about what you want to offload to them and if that’s too much of a bother then trying to align the ones’ who would be keen to take that offload when the time comes and even as you decide to go ahead- you knowing that your legacy is safe and is being left the way you intend to!

There is no rule about leaving a legacy- how much- who can , when and where so on and so forth, but the fact remains, even that tiny speck of Legacy that you are able to leave, when done right can go on to influence the audience you want to for times to come and that is the essence of the art of immortality! The ability to linger on through the thoughts/ ideas for a long time simply because of the vibrancy, potency and the contextual relevance of the idea/thought which seems to be defying the conventional boundaries of time by being in step with the times whenever it is sought for and for the purpose that it is sought for!

I leave you with these thoughts for today, urging you to take that first step this year to carve out and create a legacy that you want to, for the audience that you have in mind- or perhaps let the world know what your journey is all about and allow people aligned to that cause rally around you- that is how you will be able to surge ahead and keep walking on your chosen path, even as you begin to form a formidable legacy of your own- at times known to you and at times being completely oblivious- but as you journey along and make the meaningful connects- sooner or later magic will happen and you will be able to get a sense of how you will be remembered when the final curtain comes down!

The story of your Legacy can be as simple as the smile you put on the face of people around you or could be as complex as leading a nation or being a global business tycoon- whatever that is, as long as you align your action to your definition of legacy with the right audience in mind- you will stay on- for quite some time, long after you are gone!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one! Until then stay safe, stay wise and yes, take those first steps today to create that enduring magic- what people normally refer to as legacy!

Being Mindful is also about being Creative.

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Hello there! Now that you have changed the calendar, settled down on to the new countdown for a new year, what better then to begin the year by taking a shot at what matters and what can create value to you and me alike! Join me here for a quick journey to understand the whole space around being mindful (which you will hear quite often through 2021) and why it matters and how it propagates creativity and why individual creativity is of paramount importance for all of us in the times ahead! So here we go!

Unlike what is presumed, being mindful is not about being passive or trying to escape or avoid challenges coming ones’ way, rather on the contrary it is being able to offer the best that one can moment to moment in whatever is been dealt with so that the very possibility of emergence of problems or challenges is halted right in the bud! The daily chaos of the corporate world has offered this vague presumption around mindfulness that it is for creative people or for those who work on their own pace and aren’t governed by the laws of pressure and corporate dynamics! The easiest way to understand this is that, many a times book stores will have books on Mindfulness not in the Business Management or Wellness or Health section but rather in something called as “Self Help” a section, which by the convention of it’s name itself discourages people from walking close by, let alone going through the titles and trying to make the sense of the contents presented! The creative human mind is always seeking and trying to create new realities and rationalize observed facts around it, this continuing subconscious act of the human mind only is empowered when the mind is trained to be mindful and anchored where it should be! So what is being Mindful really about? Well, read on!

Mindfulness, if you ask me is the ability to rationalize, accept and work through, around and over compelling and favorable contextual settings alike! You see, mindfulness can’t and never works in vacuum! It needs the relevant audience, the task or simply put something to be worked upon by someone and when we understand this bit, we then now why it is so elusive; well the moment you have “the others” in the sterile contexts of your life, you will feel the push and pull of all that gets around you and it is within these spaces and confines of our everyday world that mindfulness gets reduced to fleeting moments of temporary attention and is almost always lost and disconnected at the drop of a hat! You may be tempted to ask, don’t meditation and allied techniques foster and promote mindfulness? Well they do but that space of mindfulness, it is all related to introspective enquiry aimed to empower the vibrance of intellect and sharpness of awareness.

The nature of day to day mindfulness that is required for us to “stay in the moment” is all about being able to give our best in the fleeting moment on hand for the task undertaken- nothing more nothing less! Whether it is the talk that you give, that meeting you conduct or the orders that you pay attention to, when each f these and many such tasks are dine with utmost deployment of directed mindfulness you will find, your day change dramatically in the sense that- you will always seem to get more clarity than earlier and this will empower you to take wise decisions and this cycle of empowered thinking and empowered action will go on as long as you are able to apply your mind holistically in the fleeting moment that you are in! This,if you ask me is the real essence of begin mindful in the context of the type of daily lives we lead and are part of! So what about the Creative part of it?

Well, as the mind becomes aligned and focussed to being “In the Now”, needless to say, it always is seeking to decipher recognizable patterns (that is what it always does to reduce the burden of re-wiring and re-recording observations!) and as long it manages to come up with some intrinsic and unique ways for doing that bit, rest assured even routine tasks and days will begin to become awesome and you will be able to find something new and meaningful even in a seemingly “same day, all day long” situation! The creative mind is perhaps the most potent tool on the planet, from tooth picks to nuclear weapons all have been but a manifestation of the creative abilities of the human mind and when this is coupled with the power of being mindful, all that you can expects is magic and the magic felt is all about bringing in newness, opulence and a continuing differentiating value to life on an ongoing basis!

The creative mind has this innate advantage to decipher a challenge in multiple ways and more importantly wrap the solution as aptly as it can to the contextual settings of the problem, thereby making it look better then what it is (if it’s not really good enough!) and when it’s a real doo one, it simply empowers it to shimmer and provide a newly laid pathway to address the compelling problems! you add mindfulness to this space and you have a state of intellectual bliss! You can harness the best of what your mind has to offer- being focussed like a laser and at the same time being able to work out meaningful alternatives (solutions) at a rapid pace- with each one trying to be the better then the last- thereby ensuring that the task at hand is dealt with a high level of applied intelligence so that outcomes are almost always best in class!

If mindfulness is the space that allows your mind to stretch, creative approach adds that, much needed flex to it and together they are able to manifest innovation, breakthrough’s and answer problems of humanity like nothing else can!

I leave you with these thoughts here, urging you to harness your trim level by deploying your creativity in the mindfulness that you are able to touch! Ciao for now, will be back soon with another article soon! Stay safe, Stay wise and Yes, have a great 2021 – the mindful way!

Welcome 2021 the 2020 way!

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As ironical it may seem, the fact remains that what did not kill you probably nourishes you! Join me here as we take a quick look through this last blog on 31st December 2020 about what 2020 really signified, what were it’s whispers (which were heard and which went unheard) and what is that 2021 is already signalling even as you eagerly await for it’s embrace- which either could be a warm hug or a deathly embrace! So here we go!

Sure enough, each one of us would have had many small stories of personal victories and success and all of that went down the drain- literally in 2020 and pretty much rapidly everything and all that seemed to be humanistic and normal began to seem absurd and all things strange and stupid began to become the new bright thought of new age thinking! Remember those endless meetings in the office meeting rooms before the lock downs and then the ensuing disaster that followed for you to having to deal with the same ordeal with an added layer of technological complexity compounded by your technological incompetence and ignorance! Well this perhaps would have been one of the many such moments that 2020 brought to all of us where the singular message was , “If you think you know it All, Life always has a plan B and that plan B has the potency to uncomplicate what you complicate and complicate what you strive to simplify!”

Each one of us began 2020, the way we usually did all our lives and when the spanner was thrown it showed us the fragility and the momentous existence that all of us hang by! Needless to say, few of us have been humbled, few destroyed, yet few counting their lucky stars and yet others who did feel nothing much- but all in all humanity has been impacted and what we have seen unfold and what we will see unfold will all be but a testimony about what happened to us in 2020! People and their disposition in 2021 will all be but stories about what happened to them in 2020 and how they dealt with them! Furthermore it will be a test of human resilience and fortitude to keep battling what 2021 keeps throwing at you, day in and day out- sometimes as extensions of the prevailing pandemic and yet at other times nudging people into a tight corner- require them to re-calibrate and re-assess – promoting the new onslaught of innovation!

If there is something else too that helped people survive if not thrive, it was their ability to fall back on their intrinsic abilities- basically living their lives and finding a way through their lives- for one time- by being who they really were! You see, until the pandemic arrived, everyone always had the liberty to cloak their reality and move around the world pulling over suitable attire that could match an occasion and thereby successfully hiding away the real and creating more and more compelling illusions and camouflage around them, just like everyone else did! No sooner the virus came calling, these mansions built on created and apparent illusions and hallucinations owing to societal compulsions cam crashing down like a pack of cards and soon enough societies across the globe soon began to find their new definitions across the strata and these newly established definitions will linger on for a good time to come- because the new founded world order within the social strata has just begin to form and it will take some time to formalize the agreed ways of engagement once again and 2021 will be a story which will capture this essence of humanity in great detail! People will see societies simplifying, expanding, contracting and getting more wrapped in or vocal based on what is being played out on the home turf within those pockets across the world! People within societies who successfully align to these dynamics will be safe- those who choose to take a different route either will emerge as lighthouses or perish as unsung sand bars- depending on how well they choose, what they do and how they time what they choose to to!

Given the fact that 2021 will have lingering shadows of 2020 and haunting visits of the year bygone, intrinsic abilities will be tested like never before and individuals will have to bank upon them to begin re-connecting and re-engaging with fellow members of the society in a more meaningful and purpose driven manner. It is just a matter of time, in 2021 that so called “experts” will come to the foray and start writing articles and papers on the “horrors of work from home” and begin stressing for people to engage and communicate, well, I had actually talked about this much earlier! The ability of individuals to see and sieve through conflicting narratives (as they did in 2020) too will be of paramount importance to ensure that they don’t end up entrapping themselves in some illusionary challenge and end up fighting a war that no one cares about and nobody is watching!

Similarities for all the years begin and end with the societal set that will be influenced and that will influence it and this is why it becomes easy as well as difficult in the same breath to navigate changing calendars! You see, the rational part of the mind says, that same problems have similar approaches and solutions that would have previously worked, while in the same instant, the mind desperately seeking some “kick” want to experiment and try out and at times this unwanted and unnecessary indulgence ends up screwing up even the most noble of intentions and efforts!

Finally what will remain at the foundation of what you and I do, will be the humanistic construct that we behold within ourselves and how we plan to deploy that to serve others and take a persuasive stand to ensure it goes that way! 2020 was all about being in gratitude and being grateful for what we had, have and what we aspire to have and this practise is what must and will continue in 2021 as well. As long as this approach to life enshrined with gratitude and humility prevails even the challenges thrown by 2021 will seem to fade away rapidly then before and importantly will accelerate the pathways to create new approaches and solutions for a more meaningful interconnected cohesive human existence with shared experiences and values which go a long way to nourish the essence of being human!

I leave you here with these fleeting thoughts for this last day of 2020 and hold each one of you in my prayers and thoughts- for the journey together will certainly continue with a fresh promise, new hope and unfailing human resilience- that is the way which saw humanity through 2020 and that is what will also empower humanity to see through 2021 and enables you and I to come up with compelling stories and narratives of hope, success and humility in all that we achieve and also in things where we fall short to achieve! Always remember, there is a reason, what you and I have come this far and the onus is now upon us- each one of us to ensure that with the Life that we have, we make sure that the reason why we came this far- creates something meaningful and purposeful- something that serves not only us but to the many around us who reach out to us and perhaps even those – to whom we need to reach out to!

What worked to overpower 2020, sure enough will help you and me to prevail over 2021 as well, should the need arise, but that is where the similarities end and it is beyond this space, when we apply who we are to what we choose to do is that we will begin creating differentiating value and empower ourselves and others around us to surge ahead and stay ahead in the race to carve out meaningful existence in an ever changing dynamic and chaotic world that we own!

Before I sign off, Here’s Wishing Each One of You, A Very Happy New Year and hope you are able to weave your magic the way you aspire to do so in the year that promises to be both same and different in the same construct of time and space! Stay Wise and Stay Blessed! Ciao for now, will be back soon with another article- in the new year and our journey, goes on unveiling a new sunrise for a new pursuit!

Leadership nuggets for a new world order.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Well, sure enough you may be busy right now, packing your bags or navigating your travel for that much needed and required escape from the realities of the life that you have been blessed with; here’s a quick share with you on what is that the rejigged onset of leadership will possibly seem like as you arrive back to your workstations! So join me here and let’s take a quick sneak peek into what promise the corporate world holds and what is that you and I can do when it comes to leadership and deploying the same!

Well, if 2020 was what and how it turned out to be, it just goes on to stress the importance and relevance of leaders and leadership! Whether the space is about being a leader in the public domain, whether it is about leading a corporate house or whether it is just about leading yourself, irrespective of what is the mandate that you are accountable for, 2021 will be more of a benchmark timeline wherein new leaders will emerge and current leaders will have to reinvent themselves and their leadership styles to meet with the changing dynamics of the social construct around them and the evolving contextual realities! Importantly, whether you just choose to lead yourself or others as well, there will be few fundamental aspects that will have to be met with and which will go on to set up the narrative for leaders and their leadership in the times ahead! These fundamental spaces are what will go on to make leaders and leadership relevant or obsolete depending on how well these are either assimilated and deployed or ignored and forgotten! So what are these aspects? Well,read on!

Empathy: Empathy perhaps is the biggest pivot that will have to be deployed and leveraged upon in the times ahead! As humanity begins to take baby steps to re-connect and re-engage trying to establish the new normal or in-person connect, empathy will be the foundation on which everything else will reside. Leaders who are able to sense this aspect and demonstrate adequate amount of empathy will find it easier to collaborate, lead and inspire fellow members and thereby paving the way for an accelerated growth or that of a rapid pursuit of what has been set as an objective.

Intentional Listening: The times ahead will demand a new age of focussed and directed listening, what I call as “Intentional Listening” wherein the whole approach to listen is not to respond or react but to understand the contexts around what is being discussed and said and analyse the content with a holistic lens of what the matter is, who is delivering the message and sure enough, what the ecosystem is within which the impacts will be experienced and improvised. Leaders who invest more time in this space of “Intentional Listening” will be better equipped about the real over the apparent and thereby will be able to take empowered and decisive decisions based on a holistic detail that they will be be able to decipher through this space!

Simplified and Focussed objectives: The times ahead will demand leaders to provide ongoing clarity and demonstrate a continuing ability to uncomplicate complexities. With majority of humanity already tested to their limit of mental resilience in 2020 through the pandemic, before it and now after it, the last thing that co-workers, colleagues and members of the society want will be any remaining element of ambiguity or chaos – especially when it comes to areas of work and societal equity. Leaders who are able to uphold simplicity and clarity will be able to race ahead and make significant impact over others as they engage and work alongside teams to create magic like they did in the good old days!

Intrinsic Leadership: Sure enough effectiveness through leadership can be achieved by leaders emulating different styles and approaches, but the times ahead will demand a new way and that is the way of the “Intrinsic Leader”. You see, given the contexts from where societies are emerging and the challenges that they face, leaders who are able to share, display a strong intrinsic, unflinching and unwavering leadership approach in areas that they represent will see a surge of followers and leaders alike simply because “Intrinsic Leadership” is highly contagious and it is that super glue which empowers societies to move mountains, should the need arise. This enormous power comes from the fact that Intrinsic Leaders, lead from within and as they do so, they rely on their superpowers and their uniqueness to create unparalleled approaches which go a long way to address compelling challenges on hand!

Automating Human Intelligence: Leaders who will be smart enough to focus on the aspect of automating the available human intelligence within their teams and around them, will be the ones’ who will be able to make the most optimum use of any technological automation that happens around them to further their business objectives! You see, you may have the bets dashboards, the greatest MIS tool, or the simplest automated diagnostic tools at your disposal to propel your business or social experiment, but if the “people” who are entrusted with their management and design are handicapped in their ability to think the human way- well even the best automation will go waste and will end up being another piece of glorified digital garbage! Leaders who are able to fine tune their technological automation in line with the human intelligence at their disposal, will be able to take significant advantage and there by create an innovator’s edge to provide unique solutions and niche approaches to problems on hand! Global Leaders know this space too well and hence if there’s one thing that happens all the time behind the scenes with regards to artificial intelligence is the effective and resourceful deployment of human intelligence behind the scenes to ensure that what unfolds in services stays relevant, meaningful and viable! Leaders who are able to create an ongoing handshake between human kind and automated technological interfaces will be the ones’ who will be at a significant advantage and will also hold the key to create new bed rock for subsequent innovations!

The Humanistic approach: Leaders who embrace the humanistic approach will stand tall to reap the benefits of their approach, especially in the arena of public and societal leadership. If 2020, has done one thing, it has been a great leveller and a great teacher for humility! Leaders who continue with this belief will be able to see beyond the routine people engagement and will be able to carve out meaningful and directed interventions to serve humanity in the context of their span and reign of influence and control.

More the Leaders Greater the Influence: Leaders who recognize and are able to deploy their Leadership through others- by creating more leaders (as opposed to followers) too will define the Leadership style and success stories of the future! Humanity has learnt through 2020, that the same work can be done through different ways and even as that is been done- the efficiency or effectiveness would have more or less remained in the same broad range (else you would have either shut your shop or would have begin to hate the color pink- because of the slip provided!). This has created opportunities to devise new definitions of success for leaders and leadership alike and one such compelling metric involves the ability to influence so as to create more leaders and and thereby enhance influence through more leaders- rather than followers! Companies of the future that are able to identify and encourage more leaders will stand to gain as more leaders will go on to create a larger circle of influence overlapping among the leaders in an organization and externally create a more positive story for the services through their leaders and their leadership style!

Being Authentic: Finally this is one aspect that will matter in a big way, simply because the disruption of 2020 has brought home a vital lesson that templates don’t necessarily always work and that uncertain times call for unconventional solutions and answers! This can only be realized and delivered as long as Leaders and their leadership style empowers people to stay authentic and have their original ways of thinking working alongside the routine “work to order” set of thinking! It is the power of original thinking that has always empowered and rescued humanity from calamities time and again and history is replete with such miracle of human mind, especially when they were allowed to think independently, unconventionally and by being who they were, that is encouraging thinking in an authentic manner!

I leave you with these thoughts for now; sure enough this is not a limited list and you would want to expand it further and develop it in a more aligned matter to all that you pursue. Be the Leader that you always sought and deploy the Leadership that you always wished for and then you will be surprised to see the change and empowerment that you bring along for yourself and the ones’ around you!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one soon, until then get that much needed break and gear up to face another impressionable day!