Tag: young minds

The story of every new year!

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

Whether it is 2023, 2024 or 2025, or whether it was about the years bygone, fortunately or unfortunately for majority of the 8 billion inhabitants of the planet, thankfully enough the new year is more about a simple change of calendar! No, don’t have to jump to conclusion- there’s is nothing right ort wrong about it- it is indeed a change of calendar and for the different regions of the world- as humans we often end up celebrating the arrival of a new year multiple times within a set of any chosen preceding 12 months! This short article is not about dissecting this space but rather knowing this fact, trying to unravel how things measure up and how our minds get tricked into believing a lot of ghost whispers and fairy tales that often always leads us astray fro m where we ought to be- getting us back again and again to the 1st of January which more or less looks pretty much the same had it not been for the calendar keepers! So let’s roll and step a bit forward!

To begin with every new year often seems that time when individuals and corporations alike are compelled to that irresistible urge to re-dedicate and rejuvenate! Well, to begin with this approach itself has a challenge- because if that’s what was being done through the bygone years’ then how did you again land up at a point where this again became necessary? Whatever happened to the re-dedication and rejuvenated approach of 2022? Sure enough you can always come back saying- the effort needs to be altered to changed realities which are beyond one’s control- sure I buy that and that is precisely the point of this rant! You cannot set a frame for what is formless- you need to come up with a frame to capture the form as it begins to crystallise- whether that crystalizing form is a solution- a blessing or a challenge- ushering in a diversity that alone can decipher your path ahead and what becomes even more critical is the frame that one comes up with! Let me give you a quick example!

Say you are witnessing condensation of a liquid- now you want to collect the liquid into a vessel- what material you use will also depend on what is getting condensed- (condensation is not necessarily only water!)- so if your framing of a context is erred- chances are you will find opportunities slip by and in worst scenarios unwelcome challenges arriving at your door step with a predictable frequency but variable intensity! So what’s the plan? Well read on…

Whether it is January 1 you choose or any other day and call it as your new year (well your birth day is more apt for more practical reasons- all your joys and sufferings get started from there!), the fact remains that unless you evolve and develop with a mindset to stay fluid and in-step (if not a step ahead) with the times- each day coming your way will be sprinkled with anxiety on the bed rock of unforeseen surprises- positive and not serving as well!

Many coaches and guides will tell you that, the only sure way to stay relevant, resilient and in-the-game is not by only appreciating what is unfolding around but also importantly about connecting within and understanding your core drivers and competencies which can hold you steady in the unfolding times ahead! It is this vital essence of knowing yourself well enough and continuing be aware of this is what distills greatness away from the average! You see once you know who you are- what you are- you are able to define yourself- you know the extent of your limitlessness- everything else will soon begin to make sense! Let me explain …real quick!

In the workplace- wherever you are-what you see is that people more or less will have the same technical qualification- but what separates them laterally or vertically in the hierarchy is the expertise and tenacity that they would have developed over one singular function over the many others that they preform and this vital differentiator moves them where they are! Nothing to suggest, that one is greater than the other- but once you get anchored on what gives you comfort and ease to deploy your learnings you arrive ta a formidable place of confidence which only grows and consolidates with time to help you do what you do really well over a period of time in an incremental value- as long as you stay true and anchored to your core drivers within you.

What you thrive upon is what will drive you and make you travel through the journey of being good to great- with minimal effort and little resistance! Not all MBAs become CXO’s but many CXOs are MBAs! Likewise not all doctors are famous and many famous people are doctors! Its at the end of the day, how deeply you are entrenched in what you do and whether what you do is out of choice or compulsion- if its a calibrated and intellectually thought of choice- that decision will help you shine and rise- if its a compulsion that you are dragging on with- the brightness will dim and flicker through the course of time!

I will not spoil your much anticipated New Year Party….leaving you with these thoughts for you to reflect and mull over, as you sip into that enviable glass of wine! Here’s wishing you an empowering 2023 and hope you connect within and propel ahead on the core drivers that help you thrive!

Before I sign off, happy to inform you that we are now a 4000+ strong community and heartfelt thanks to all of you, who have been part of this journey! Look forward to continuing this journey in the year ahead! As always, stay sane, stay wise and yes, decipher what is hidden in plain sight!

Ciao for now! See you again in 2023!

The essence of Calm: Before, through & after a storm

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

At a time when I write this, we have a hurricane creating widespread damage along the South East coast of USA, this after having ripped through the nation of Cuba. Somewhere else in the world, there are massive protests and agitations owing to mishaps, political oversights, societal assertion of heir rights, at times with an overwhelming note that says, “enough is enough”! If you thought this was enough for a day on the planet Earth! Well, try to dig a bit deeper and you will find many unfolding events- seemingly isolated at the start- but as you begin to see the emerging pattern all these seemingly isolated incidents soon enough begin to throw up an interconnected and intertwined pattern that weaves the fate and future of the planet and humanity at large! Join me here as we try to decipher a way around the seemingly fluid conditions that arrive to greet us every morning- whether that’s the co-worker who has decided to move out, the business that wants to shut down or grow fast or a nation that wants to re-write it’s perception- the singular answer that humanity seeks is “How do we stay calm- anchored” with all or any of these playing out around us! So here we go!

To begin with, the reality is, storms are ever present and everywhere- at times visible, at times hidden in lain sight, at times expressed and yet at some other times subtly parked away- only to be sensed by those attuned with the contexts around! Whether it’a massive natural calamity that’s heading your way, a society (of which you are a part of) or perhaps a witness to the unfolding’s around, the only real way to grasp and act or decide not to, will all be achieved and remain effective only as long as you have a quick thinking, flexible, fluid and calm mind at work- a mind that knows too well, that no time is ever right for an emotive response- no matter what the situation is- what really makes sense and matters is a rational and collected calm mind which can open up locked challenges with or without a key- but for sure will always ensure that you as an individual will embrace the least damage in whatever you choose to engage with!

The Calm mind before the storm: A calm mind is able to foresee and anticipate the storm as it begins to gather pace- you may want to argue- why can’t it stop it- that’s where a lot of pre-emptive follies take place- when emotive anxiety overtakes rational and wise observations, many a times we need to act in a rush to solve a problem (which we think is arriving), we actually end up creating more grave and more intense problems which are far more real and damaging and pale in comparison to what would have actually come your way! You see, a calm mind is not about inaction or inertial resistance- it’s more about being able to stay collected, observant and pragmatically thinking to estimate two relevant parameters- how much of what is being gauged- is real and what is the probability of that reality coming to life! It’s only when a correct assessment of a perceived problem is done through this lens, that you will be able to hold a steady hand as you ride through choppy waters of a fierce storm! Like every chef knows too well, great food becomes possible only when ingredients are well picked and uncertainties are dealt with through the process of cooking- all of these requiring a focussed and calm mind!

The Calm through the storm: Whether or not you were able to prep your mind, before storm that came your way, you still have a decent amount of hope on your side if you are able to improvise and stay calm as the storm dawns upon you! Whether it is that tough deadline at work, those spreadsheets and presentations taking a toll, or it’s that number crunching that’s driving you insane or that eternal worry about a perspective client- will they or won’t they sign the dotted line! All of these and many other instances can actually arrive with little or no warning, throwing your minds straight into the proverbial boiling water! When this happens, and it will some or the other time- through your long and illustrious life- you will be gladly surprised that at times, doing nothing at all can be a wonderful thing to do! A calm mind has the potency and power to discern with laser sharp focus and no matter how cluttered the subject on hand- or how ambiguous things may seem to be- as longa s you have a calm and focussed mind- you will be able to firstly decide whether you need to act or not and if you need to, you will be able to calibrate the intensity, force and direction of your action- ensuring you are acting in the right way and the right direction to realize the right results! There’s never anything achieved by burning down your house to kill a rat! Right force- to the right space at the right time, is what translates into great results- don’t believe- talk to the paramedic or the fire fighter in your neighbourhood- they are the finest artists who have mastery on this art of staying calm through a crisis- always and each time!

The Calm after the storm: Now that the worst has passed by (for the moment), a clam mind helps assess the damage/benefit more accurately. Getting emotive, hyper reactive will end up damaging all and any benefit or lessons learnt through the journey, a calm mind will help you assess, articulate and formulate with finesse what works and what doesn’t, so that the next time you face a challenge you have a storm- you know what you should certainly not do! Sure enough not all storms are the same, neither in intensity, nor in their form, but the fact is, as long as you have learnt to harness the power of your mind by staying calm, chances are you will ensure that your damages are lessened with every passing storm, making you more prompt, wise and strong with each passing milestone of your life! Ins’t this the simple and foundational story and fact of our lives- no matter who we are, what we do and the different definition of success that we pursue- as long as we have a great ability of refined discernment- you will almost always be able to wriggle out of complex situations with as minimal damage as possible- the essence also lies in the fact, that to begin with try and avoid getting into those odd spaces (the area where the storms take birth!). This works well when it comes to deal with linear storms, that are unidirectional, but when individuals are confronted with multidimensional storms that have the potency to take down and impact one more more aspects of life definitions, that is when the real test of being “calm” is realized and if you ever happen to get into this space and walk out- perhaps even bruised and battered- but not bitter- trust me you will be completely newer version of yourself – as they say version upgrade2.0 or 3.0 whatever you may think fits well!

I leave you here with these thoughts for now, take some time to connect with that calm within and see the difference it makes for you- to choose your battles, check the storms and then ride ahead with more control and more resilience to emerge on the other side better, even though you may be a bit battered!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then the key word- “Calm”- realize, practise and cultivate it!

Tricked by your brain.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

We live in an era, which is just that our brains need! Whether you struggle to take simple decisions or end up taking complex decisions on an impulse, whether it is signing up for the wrong vocation or whether it is taking the wrong bus- you can simply put the blame on your seemingly innocent brain- seemingly, because, no matter what your IQ is when the brain decides to call the shots, even the best of minds can go haywire! Join me here we take a sneak peek into this space and try to unravel what perhaps is happening here! So here we go!

There are many wise books out there, written by eminent neuro-scientists, psychologists, medical professionals, psychiatrists, behavioural experts; more or less all of them agree to one simple truth that the human brain is one fascinating machine that can throw all your theories and scientific analysis out of the mind and present situations that one has never thought of! Sure enough, through the last 100 years, as technological advancements have made it possible to assess and experiment the working of the brain- it has simultaneously thrown up more new questions than answers that it has found! Perhaps that explains why more and more medical professionals have started to agree that they don’t have answers to all questions and there is a point where even the best of scientific enquiry will fail and falter!

We dwell in times where instant gratification has got hard wired into us. One primary reason for that is essentially how we have kept evolving as collective societies- some places this aspect has played out more than elsewhere. The reason why instant gratification is so empowering is that, your brain’s love for inertia begins to blossom! Whether it is that communication about a remedy for looking fit, a chocolate that you can binge without worrying about sugar, or that air purifier which promises air as clean as whatever, fruits, apartments, job offers too? well our brains are always seeking to optimize the energy balance of our physical bodies- that implies effort / benefit analysis! So wherever and whenever your brain is able to decipher a decent trade off over effort and benefit- you are tricked! So what’s it’s about eating away that chocolate in the dead of the night, or finishing off those finger crisps while no one is watching, it’s all the part of the game! yes, sure enough office delegation techniques- both upward and downward too are a factor of this albeit with the compounding effect of the ever diminishing intelligence! So what’s the deal here? (another gratification question, I must agree!)

Simply put, our brain’s ability to decipher accurately the effort/ benefit space is what makes us as a species so unique and successful, no doubt around that. The problems start when the brain begins to deploy this while being influenced by inaccurate/misleading/ half-baked content that it receives! This is perhaps what throws even our poor brain off-guard- for beyond a point analysis will give into intermittent analytical paralysis and which will eventually grow into chronic indifference and apathy and end up changing your brain- from being an active -active discerning tool into a passive-passive reactive tool! You’ve heard about that phrase right, “Listen to Act, not to react” well, something like that, but sadly with more long lasting and damaging consequences!

An easy way to guard our brain, from reaching such a seemingly painful and unwarranted stage is to begin to filter what comes it’s way- the old adage “The company you keep!” Well, it works , whether you like it or not, be surrounded by people who are inspiring, more driven to specific causes, pursuing thoughts and ideas those are empowering and aimed for the larger good, looking outwards and upwards through sunshine and storm- this one simple trick will bring in a refreshing change and begin to re-wire and correct the lethargy and inertia over time as these more meaningful impressions begin to over-ride the cobwebs of the less serving and closed loop instances of the bygone time! As with people so with everything else, your choice of residence, it’s upkeep, the hobbies that you pursue, the vocation you choose (importantly the people you choose to work alongside or work for or have them work for you!), the books you read, the information that you soak in- what you allow to assimilate and what is that you filter and delete immediately- all this matters- even as much of this happens in an ongoing manner subconsciously, once you try to apply a focussed and directed effort to fine tune with some effort the results can be far more rewarding and enriching!

More often than not, you will also see that when it’s a fatigued brain, your ability to discern on a topic or task at hand, will seem to sway more towards an emotional response rather then being a calibrated rational discernment which is more logic and facts driven! This is another fall out a tired brain as it tries to strive a balance between the effort/ benefit space, the only undoing being that it’s perhaps not in the best of it’s health to do so! Something similar to wanting to lead when you are not ready for it, or trying to hit the asphalt when you are kind of a little tipsy, if not all sloshed! A tired brain, is in a simple mode- “If this doesn’t kill me, whatever action follows I am good!” so whether it is that meaningless shopping, only to come back and find out you have the same dress back home, or eating to realise, you actually have to rush to the washroom- because you lost track on the amount you binged! or many other such instances, which are almost always followed up with statements like “I should have, could have or would have” acted, done things differently!”

The trick to ensure that the brain is all wired right and is able to discern (and not emote) on the effort/benefit space is to keep it nourished and alert- as you may have guessed it a lot of that depends on what you consume and what is consuming you! Whether it is the food, the ambience, the people, the books, the social fabric around you- as long as you are able to soak in that adds value and empowers you to create lasting value- you will find your brain is as alert as that of a baby and is ready to usher in an eternal bounty of creativity/art and scientific enquiry based on the fundamental trait of a healthy brain- Inquisitiveness! A healthy brain, is always seeking, learning, un-learning, re-learning, adapting, adopting and building on what is meaningful and beneficial on the basis of rational and pragmatic discernment rather than an impulsive emotional response! I am no way suggesting that emoting is of secondary importance, rather when your brain is nourished you will find a greater degree of alignment between your rational discernment and your emotional responses and that’s when you hear the statements like “I love this life as I get to follow my passion and be successful through that!”

I leave you with these thoughts here, urging you to nourish your brain, as you must so that when you have a geared up brain, the tricks that it plays, empower and surprise you in a more welcoming and pleasant way, ensuring you follow a path of empowered thinking, creating more empowered actions for an empowered life!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another topic, until then stay wise, stay nourished and consume what empowers you, not what consumes you!

Lost in Transit!

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

2022 has been what it seems to be! Exhilarating, Stagnant, Challenging, Uncertain, Ambiguous and certainly much more then all of this, perhaps even something else to many of us! As I keep saying, Truth may be absolute, but realities of life are always contextual! Join me here (after a long hiatus!) to decipher this space were individuals and organizations alike seem to loose their way even as they dwell on the perception of being in control and are racing full speed ahead to reach a place- the only challenge being, the vectors to the direction are all over the place! What unfolds from these journeys, needless to say is a space of further dis-ease and chaos which only continues to fuel people ,societies and nations into the never ending downward spiral of misplaced priorities and lost battles (which are nothing more but grave miscalculations based on perceptions, more then anything else!) So here we go!

Sure enough the last few years, through the global slow down owing to the pandemic, upheavals in political priorities and social realignments the world over, pockets of fluidity have crept up all over the world with varying intensities making those areas that much sensitive or should I say Insensitive to what is really that matters and what is being perceived as important! This in turn has ended up creating the apt context wherein it is much more easier for individuals and societies as a whole to loose their way and end up arriving at a point in the future which they had never planned to be or opted-in for! This is the real essence of getting “Lost in Transit” and this is (whether you agree or think differently) what resides beneath every failed or failing decision that we act upon either as individuals or collectively as societies in general. At a societal level, at times inaction is gravely detrimental and more unforgiving then action with errors! But why do we land up this way, what really is happening here and what is that we can do about it, is there anything really that can be done?

No one, absolutely no one (irrespective of access to opulence) would choose a complex way of life where every moment seems to be a test of survival! Each one of us, all of us each day, begin with a healthy spoonful of hope and direction but by the time the day has gone by, we at times find the day was controlling and directing us more, even as we then thought we are the ones’ who were in control! Let me break this down for you! Let’s take this scenario which is so familiar and simple, you decide to be on time, reach the office, deliver that assignment (which you have already re-read a dozen times) and win that appreciation and put a check on your to-do-list for the day! Now the chances are either it plays out exactly as you scripted it should in your eager and anxious mind (even as you have a ton of confidence) or the chances are that among all the other elements that are passive to this event- the people, the place and the technology- either one or few or all of them could fail and sabotage the whole thing! It is not about your intention or effort going amiss, it is about the readiness of the context around to embrace and implement what you script!

If this could cause so much of angst for a simple office presentation for an individual, imagine the chaos and ambiguity that multiple events and varying scenarios can beget collectively for societies and nations and it is these compounding set of endless individual events that shape the large macrocosm of a society which eventually end up short serving the wider collective- which could be an establishment providing livelihood to a few thousand, a society of a few million or even a nation of a billion people! This lack of synergy between the ability to provide/ act and assimilation of it within the relevant spaces of a society is what derails and throws off track the whole direction and soon enough misplaced priorities begin to over ride and whatever little sanity is remaining for a meaningful voice shouting out right directions is silenced in the ever increasing noise and chaos of ambiguity all around! So how do we go abut this?

Answers to complex issues are never easy, and when it comes to ensuring that what is relevant overrides all that isn’t , the resistance to change and progress (which is inbuilt within individuals and societies) does all that it can to derail and lead astray even the most noblest of intentions! Perhaps one way of looking at this is, simply devise a plan or strategy to act to the contexts around and build answers to what the wider challenge seems to be (whether or not that is relevant and then seed in the real solution within it and deploy!) A kind of Trojan approach where the recipients get to witness the arriving solution as what they want/desire it to be and as they are drowned in the excitement that they have been victorious, allow the real intent to play it’s part and complete what it is meant to- even before the excitement of victory is settled, the job would be done and the society or the collective cohort would have been left with no choice but to align as they only had welcomed what came their way with all pomp and gaiety! Seems unfair, but in a world that is ready to tear down every shred of fairness, nothing gets more equal then this approach! Sure enough, this is what is used all the time by governments and businesses all the time, offering lip service of discounts, amnesties, rebates and then hiking taxation so what you got is eventually taken away!

On a more smaller scale- the space of personal and individual interactions, it becomes far more easier to avoid being lost in transit- for you have control to stay or move away as soon as you notice things are not aligned to what they should be and begin to assume forms for which you never signed in! To gauge this though, moment to moment awareness and alertness is absolutely required. Often people are too drowned into an emotional twilight zone where the only hue is different and varying shades of ambiguity and grey! Constant ignorance and disregard to what doesn’t fit so well by filtering everything through the lens of emotions, is more often then not what leads to individuals being missing the real direction, journey and eventually the destination and end up arriving at places and with people that they never signed up for! Whether its is about your personal space or the work area- this inability to think and discern on a rational and pragmatic scale often leads people short changing their approach and eventually the story of their lives often begins with, “I could have, should have…but!”

Sure enough, there is no standard operating life-manual for each one of us is wired differently inside out, but guess that’s what makes the world a wonderful place to be in, it’s only when these amazing wonderful and intelligent beings wire with each other in less meaningful and dumber ways that regression overtakes progress and we end up creating a future that no one signed up for! This is the real story of being Lost in Transit! To avoid, stay authentic and know when to move away from what doesn’t seem to be what it is meant to be or says it is!

I leave you with these thoughts to ponder over, as you arrive at your much earned weekend! Ciao for now and will be back soon with another piece and yes, let’s stay wired in the right earnest to empower and uplift all those whom we can as much as we can and as many times as we can!

Bye!

Making sense through shifting narratives.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maverick minds for maverick times.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

If there has been any commonality of all thats unfolded around the world in the last two years, it has been stitched by the fabric of maverick thinking- at times it has helped and yet at other times it has harmed. Join me here as we try to decipher, the what and why around this space and understand what makes being a maverick so potent! So here we go!

Contrary to popular assumption (which by itself is another pandemic of sorts!) being a maverick doesn’t necessarily mean that someone is or wants to be reckless, alternatively the converse may be more accurate! you see, when this whole virus episode cam visiting us, all the normal ways of thinking had to be pulled off and away and societies which did that, saw a slightly better result in terms of ability to save lives and ride the storm out with as much little damage- if we have to say it that way. Sure enough there have been lapses and there have been those systemic failures regarding infrastructure and people not being around when it mattered the most and that point itself is another validation of why we need people around who are and can think like mavericks!

Normal human behaviour, reasoning and logic works well and evolves when there is a linear disruption- where changes happen over a period of time; consider the fuel price rise or the rise in cost of living- over a period of few weeks or months you will be able to come up with a plan and method to sustain or adjust to the new realities that have walked in to impact your way of living. But when there is a mega event like what we have been witnessing in the recent past- whether it was the pandemic, the natural events- flash floods, forest fires, other natural calamities- the human mind simply is overwhelmed and as your emotional response begins to kick in to stay safe and stay alive- you stand a a greater chance of missing out on an opportunity to come to terms with what’s unfolding on the lever of rational thinking and logical thought process.

It is precisely in these environments, that maverick minds rise up to the occasion and provide a way out which seems like a terrible thing, but as it unfolds, in hindsight, that is the only thing that could have been the answer is what eventually it gets to be! So what is maverick thinking and how is it that you and I can tap into this space?

As I said in the beginning, it’s not about being reckless, it is rather about being observant, aware and resilient. It is about knowing the gravity of what’s unfolding and the ability to respond in a calibrated manner where the measures are just enough to tilt the moment in time in your favour but never in excess- which can go on to set loose a whole set of unwanted side effects and create solutions with more subsidiary and long lasting problems!

Maverick thinking, if you ask me is, being able to think fast, dealing with multiple variables and running simulations of varying degrees to choose a path among the many that are available in which the trade off is minima. You may say, but this is how we also normally think- don’t we? Evaluating multiple options and then taking an informed choice, well the difference here is that in the normal course of evaluations and solution deployment, we are executing a linear approach of negating or shooting down one option and then moving to the next one to analyse; in the case of the maverick mind- one needs to run concurrent evaluations under a confined time and changing situation and this is why maverick thinking is what excites a few and scares yet others! So how do you get one?

Each one of us has the ability to deploy our minds in a maverick manner, we have done it- at times we have realized it and sometimes we have just not taken note of it! Whether it was a sly trick at school or some amazing performance in sports or academics, none of that would have been possible with the conventional linear approach- which thrives on incremental progress and benchamrking- it is only when the definition of experienced comfort and perceived discomfort gets clearer and the contrast gets sharper are we able to deploy our wildest way of thinking and imagination- this is what sets the tone to deploy our minds in a maverick manner!

Whether it was about the fearless fire-fighters battling ferocious fires for months together or the management of the pandemic- it is only when the people responding to these emergencies have deployed weird executions and non-conventional approaches to the problem at hand, that humanity has got a long pause to re-collect, re-group and wage a more planned out and well laid out defence to the nemesis playing out!

To begin with a maverick mind, is swift and is aware- moment to moment- it has an ability to see what is visible and also what is hidden away- small pockets and aberrations which are quickly picked up, for it is within these that the next escalation or emergency can manifest from! Once the maverick mind has sized up or got an edge to be over the crest of an emerging situation, all that is left is to decide on the action that needs to be taken- more often then not- the maverick mind resorts to unconventional execution- which matches every word of the solution in speed, intensity and direction! If you go back to a very famous case around the end of the first Gulf War- around 1991-1992 when the oil fields across Kuwait were set ablaze with no real conventional solution providing an answer, it was a sheer genius and a maverick mind which thought of dousing fire with more fire (controlled explosions at the mouth of the burning oil wells!) The solution worked, worked well so much that now there is a whole science and progressive research around dealing with highly dangerous fire hazards within the oil and gas industry – all of which started with only one maverick thought!

The solutions of a maverick mind are not limited only to situations of emergency, you can see the effects play out as governments come up with some crazy rules, regulations – which seem to be something, but actually are a camouflage to help the government meet some other end result! Consider this, the recent few years has seen volatility of fossil fuel prices across the world, even as this is playing out every few months nations and societies are adding up to the electric mobility eco-system- in few societies that is the accepted and adopted policy position and while in few others, knowing the kind of complex resolution that may be need the governments, are simply holding on to the price rise of fossil fuel so that eventually when comparisons are made charging an electric battery may tend to seem cheaper then have a fuel thirsty old age vehicle! Not only does it help on this one front- but with the onset of electric mobility what you have is controlled movement and calibrated management of available units for mobility in the private and public ecosystem and needles to say each of these units would be end-to-end traceable. With all of this maverick approach, we are ushering in a new age of meaningful and purpose led mobility – so the days of throwing up the key and going in for an aimless long drive as we now experience will be a all but a tale from some other life time in the decades ahead!

Like with everything else, the harnessing of a maverick approach largely depends on who the owner of that mind is and how sane or insane that is! As humanity we have witnessed maverick’s make and break our world with precision and impunity- end of the day a maverick mind is perhaps one of the most potent tools, how you want to deploy it and how deploys it- is what eventually determines whether we rise with it or sink with it!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, grab your cup , try and reflect on your own frame of maverick success and failures and within them you will find latent seeds of promise and fears, what you choose to nourish is what then will grow and manifest as a cloak to your emerging personality!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay wise, keep thinking and be a maverick!

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

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your fail-proof plan to a fragile future.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

The ongoing pandemic has united the world like never before- united in similarities and through sharp contrasts; it’s a pity that it took so many lives and a pandemic to realise what we have collectively as a society have, nevertheless this is the time to sharpen and ensure that you empower yourself through a plan- a plan which is as fail proof as the contexts that it is going to meet head on and as fail proof as it can be in the face of the next challenge that comes its way! Join me here, as we take a walk around this space and try to make sense of what it is to be really fail proof- and why that really matters! So here we go!

There have been innumerable best sellers, articles and scientific papers elucidating the value and importance of being able to plan. Whether its a plan needed for a nation, a society, an organization or simply a plan for self-improvement, we need them and our choice of acceptance and walking through one, eventually decides how great or how dumb that plan was! You see, like an aeroplane pilot, once you cross the take off threshold velocity, you have no choice but to stay committed to the decision and you alone are the one who has the ability to keep choosing more meaningful choices as they keep coming up every few seconds to ensure that you stay in flight and even if you face a problem, you are able to deal with them , by deploying the most potent solutions and choices that you can make in that context of time!

Sans the unwanted and unwarranted jargons and overly complicated suggested methods that tend to crowd the fashionable space of solutions for problems; in reality, the choices that we need to make as individuals can very often be very simple and it is their simplicity that makes them so empowering and meaningful! Whether the choices are about simple mundane things related to what we consume or if those are related to one-off important decisions pertaining to life- choices, as long as they are kept simple, rational & aligned they will almost always be effective and potent and good enough to keep you on your flight path to arrive at the destination of your choice.

The real trick to make these simple and effective choices fail proof and future proof is by allowing them to be intrinsic and aligned to who you are and what you are, rather then what you can do and what you cannot do! The reason why choices turn out to be bad in the long run and often tend to create more challenges then solutions, is not because you would have intentionally raced ahead to make a bad choice, but it has more to do with the dependability of the choices that you make on factors that are beyond your control and external. The more your choices are dependent on external factors, greater are the chances that at some or the other time in the future they will fail or falter, sooner or later they will! irrespective of how good that choice would have been in the context of time when it was made!

Once you have made this fundamental change to your planning approach by making your plans more intrinsic to you, the next equally important aspect is about putting your plan to test and see if stands true to the contextual settings in which it is supposed to operate. Many great ideas have failed even before they could be carefully considered simply because they cam in at the wrong contextual setting.

You may want to argue that how can we have plans those are intrinsic, contextually mapped and aligned, well the answer to that is, if you fail to do this and embark on following the popular methods and approaches, when the odd reset hit, you will also have to take the hit and whether you are responsible for that or not, will really not matter, because you made a choice to be on a wrong ride even after knowing the odds! If you are wondering about a good example for this, well if you are employed, you know what I am talking about here- remember the last time you did not get the raise that you wanted, even after all you did was right and simply because the management said, the company was not doing well, so you could not be given more! Or worse still, even when you did everything right, one fine day the business is sold off and with that your future! Even when it is about business and entrepreneurial pursuits, as long as you stay dependent on that vendor, supplier, market, you will one fine day, sooner or later stall and falter, irrespective of how right or wrong you have been! This is simply because the choices and the whole approach to your planning in all these scenarios is dependent on others, external attributes with absolutely no space for you to leverage on your strength that you may have at an intrinsic level!

The only and really sustainable way to have or devise a fail proof plan for your life, is by leveraging that around what you as an individual can do- irrespective of the external factors and the next important step is to ensure that you get placed in a context or environment where the surroundings begin to favour you or at best remain neutral to what you propose to achieve so that you have minimum resistance and you can accelerate at a speed that you are comfortable with none of the unwanted obstacles and road blocks that people normally face as they begin their business pursuits. Sure enough, business and wealth creation doesn’t happen in isolation or in vacuum, but there is no need to always climb a mountain, you always have a choice to navigate around it, if not totally avoid it!

A fail-proof plan has to essentially be your story, your unique approach to a solutions or a challenge which can be driven only by you and be controlled as much as possible by you! Something like being a chef, you knows how to craft that perfect signature recipe, the only requirement being- being available and in an environment where one is allowed to exercise that intrinsic skill! As long as you use your skill to be your pivot, no matter how choppy the future gets, you will still stand a good chance to ride the storm and reach a harbour safe enough to re-boot your life, but if you embark on a voyage, strapped in all kind of popular belief’s and biases, if a storm hits and the ship sinks, you will go down with it as well, simply because you are too invested in the ship rather then yourself!

I have intentionally avoided a typical management approach to this pieces, because when we speak about simplicity, the essence of driving that point resides in using as simple and as few as words as possible to install that faith and confidence in you that, life doesn’t have to be complex or complicated and yes, simplified living and simplicity is a choice which you can make and rest assured, even if you don’t hit the jackpot every now and them, you will never keep running in circles, trying to achieve the same elusive goals year on year!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, grab your coffee and think around, what is that singular intrinsic pivot upon which you can lead, create and sustain all that you want to plan and manifest in the times ahead and just to be sure, how insular it can be from what can get thrown at it- by the contexts that you move around in!

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

Empowerment through Inaction.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The many facets of poverty.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your real priority.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Touched by Inertia.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fucked up nations and a screwed up world.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The problem with “equality”.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Connected to disengagement.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

Even before the fabled pandemic came visiting, human societies the world over have been and continue to grapple with an even more subtler and far more dangerous issue and health emergency and that is about, humans loosing the essence of what it is to be human! Join me here as we take a look around this space and try to understand what is unfolding and what is that we can do and not do about it, to preserve our limited sanity! So here we go!

Societies across the world are increasingly becoming a reflection of technological enslavement either by design or by default- this has further gone to result into loss of human engagement and the very essence of it! result? Well you have a family that sits together engaged and connected with their different world’s and not for a moment realizing what is amiss! We are increasing creating societies where short abbreviations and “yes”, “no” or “idk” are becoming the acceptable norm! Instead of protracted ideations, sharing of thoughts, debating over them, refining them or junking them which always created an uplifting and enriching space for the human mind and fueled the endeavor and enterprise that a human mind is known for. This sort of meaningless self imposed isolation and lack or urgency to connect and engage with fellow humans is making us more and more dangerously dumb and enslaved to structured protocols and ways of life- which almost always are designed to serve and profit the few who want to rule over the many! Sure enough there are many facets to this space and there is nothing about being morally right and to take up one point of view over the other, but as long as this evolving and sub-serving ecosystem of disconnected behavioral dispositions exists, meaningful pursuits which can cater to the greater good of humanity will always stand stalled and lost in unknown fogged corridors of the worldly ways!

The problem of disconnected humans and engaged gadgets is not new per say, sure enough technology has been a great tool and instrument for change, however the million dollar question is whether it has changed what it should have or what is shouldn’t have! At the end of the day, whether you call it Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning or whatever the next thing you want to call technological advancement, behind each of those developments are potent human minds who have now deciphered the power and vulnerabilities of what has been unleashed and it is now a simple bidding game where the highest bidder gets access to unleash what one chooses to do- whether to influence and market a product or service or whether to change the social narrative. This is the danger- real and present which threatens to hijack all original and human centric essence of humanity to enquire, answer and progress and this is why whether it be family tables or office work stations, you will find more and more people who are glued to an electronic screen searching something or the other- either mandated or required- which often really does not make any long term impact in terms of value creation and enrichment to an individual’s presence!

I had written sometime back about our disconnected times, but the only reason I was compelled to take this up against, was not because I am technologically challenged or despise technical advancements, but rather to share the fact that humans are becoming more and more enslaved to the developing technological advancements rather then being liberated by them! This is what is perhaps will be the next biggest pandemic- a pandemic of enslaved societies and community spaces that drive and further the agenda of an eclectic few, even as the many stand the risk to suffer and be lost into the oblivion not only in the modern terms of definition of the word “success” but also in the context of the ability to behold the human spirit of questioning and progressing in a manner that nourishes the human soul. By now, you may wondering, what is this rant, all about and what is that I am trying to say? Well plain simple words, societies need to decipher the clear and present risk and danger that our modern day adapted “social hashtags” driven lives bring along with them! For now they are busy robbing away the concept of original thinking and meaningful innovation, the next stage will be where, humans will end up having to prove their worth to a machine, to get access to any service or social benefit that they may require! So what is the plan, what can be done to manage this space well and in a purpose driven way?

It’s pretty simple, as Individuals, as long as we give common-sense, rational thinking and clear headed prioritization a chance, we are most likely to harness the power of automation and artificial intelligence (or dumbness) to impact, influence and serve the intrinsic attributes that make us who as are as humans and that alone is the foundation to achieve any meaningful greatness in the times ahead! For this to happen, people need to practise deliberate, directed disconnect from meaningless engagements over the # world and circle back to the original way of people to people dialogue for it is only when this happens that any automation can be really developed and brought in to serve the people in a more engaging and meaningful way! No one is saying automation is bad, or meaningless, the whole point is as more and more people spend more and more time doing meaningless acts over the # world, they are robbing away valuable time either from their personal space or their professional settings, both of which promise to give in a lot more if nourishes and catered to- unlike the likes, hashtags and shares over the digital world arena!

The time has arrived to say “no” to undeserving digital presence, which does only one thing, pushes in your face a string of algorithm built menu, suggesting you every now and then what is that you should do, shop or consume! The real problems here is two fold; societies are rapidly getting templated to resemble a broader sense of similarity- no matter which part of the world you are in- as good as this seems to be- within that goodness resides the problem of possibly loosing out on the nascent flavour and originality of a social space and what it stands for- call cultural dilution or cultural alteration based on driven and directed agenda of a few! Well, to give you a case in point, good until three decades back, packaged drinking water was an option and today- well it has become almost the new normal! The world- over the menace of web searching experts and their expert solutions (derived from these protracted- unverified searches) are yet another league of chaos creators! Every second you take time to be online, you are doing that at the cost of not being available offline- and trust me, as yet, at least- we are all born offline and guess that’s the medium of communication that we are meant for- else we would have lived and died online like any other portal or web service!

The essence of human progress, both as Individuals and as a society, is not only about being technologically advanced but more importantly being able to stay fundamentally anchored to the core values that a society represents and embrace the identity of who you are and engage with other people around proactively in a progressive way! Sure enough sounds great to send an digital invite to your next door neighbor, but when you are traveling through the same elevator, makes more sense to share a warm smile rather then texting a smiley!

I leave you with these thoughts for now, take your time and do reflect on what is that you are connected with and what is that you are disengaged with and do check if the priorities are right the way they should be!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay wise, stay safe and yes, speaking to another human being is completely legal and you don’t need to send an email or a digital text before you do that!

Colors through the Prism.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The essence of timing.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

We have all come across instances when our trains have arrived early or late and that flight we have boarded has either come in early or late! Although as these seem to the routine realities of our busy connected lives, but in a way if you see, that is what is also the story of our lives! A story that is all about trying to be in-step with the times, most of the times, like that train which comes in early or late, we tend to fall back or race ahead and needless to say, that is what reflects in all that manifests in and around our lives! Join me here as we decipher this space and decode what “timing” is all about and how this one element goes on to create a reality which either uplifts or limits us! So here we go!

Whether you want to be successful or want to embrace failure as your first stepping stone or many to lead you to that enduring definition of what you call and know as success is all about this magical, mystical and elusive space around “timing your time” well! So what is timing really all about? Well if you have ever gone through what is mentioned about people who have touched success and also about those who have just missed it, you will know that all of it is a story of either being there or not being there, “in that moment of space and time”! So how do we decipher this right time and space?

The story of human development, progress and innovative excellence has always been about being able to decode compelling problems and find solutions when it mattered the most! This is in fact the very essence of how potent products and services come alive and stick around with us for a long time! When the manifestation of the solutions through a breakthrough gets altered- either bringing it in too early or realizing it too late- the whole concept/ idea tends to loose its relevance and ability to influence, engage and weave in within the social construct- this is what makes products and services fail (irrespective of how relevant they are or not!). If you have been lucky enough or happen to belong to the generation which saw and knew what a pager was- well then you will know exactly what I am trying to tell you! You see, the pager was a great breakthrough and a hallmark of human thinking brilliance, but when the next great idea emerged almost simultaneous, the pager ended up having its future curtailed by an unceremonious and premature death sentence not because as a product it was bad or a failure, but simply because the next great idea- was coming in fast- and too early- which simply wiped off the remaining relevance of the pager and ushered in the mobile era that we live in as of today!

The essence of timing is not only limited to what human mind can achieve or not, but also influences and alters the very nature and core of human values and human engagement! You would have worked long enough with organizations, irrespective of your experience or the size of the organization, the one thing that you will almost always notice is the fact that you almost always happen to be where you are simply either you timed your arrival well or mistimed your arrival that further goes on to put you either on the escalator of success or the never ending upward ascent through the staircase and depending on what comes your way- you sure enough reach the destination that you are out to reach- albeit with a differing ability to enjoy once you reach there. So what is the that you can do to ensure that you arrive well in time at the place where you want to be?

To begin with, it could be as simple and as defining as where is that you really want to be! You see, the whole hustle of your life, is almost always of wanting to be there, when the moment is right! For that to manifest, what one needs is utmost clarity and focus so that a pre-defined destination or goal is locked on and once you have done that bit, you will know pretty sure why, how and when you want to reach there! Sure enough, things are certainly more complex and easier said then actually done, not because there is an element of doubt about the competence of the individual, but simply because enduring and sustainable success is always a factor of many things and people conspiring for you to succeed, even if one element of that vital cohort were to fail, for whatever reason, that will be more then enough to stall your success story and the slight slip of time will ensure that you are going back to the drawing board to re-start all over again either for the same thing or something new altogether, depending on how bad the damage has been!

When you read all the success stories of people, organizations and nations, more often then not what is hidden away as the fairy told is shared is the fact that there are always many more than who you see on the stage and unless those invisible actors and contextual settings would not have aligned to the people on the stage, life would be just a saga of more or less of mistimed adventures! Human progress is all a story of timed interventions that align to create a new pathway which promises advancement in the field under consideration! So what’s the key here?

Pretty simple! Timing is everything! People who make their mark are case studies of converging timed interventions of people, processes, technology and contexts, unless that happens, no matter what you want to usher in and how brilliant that idea is- it will stay confined to the realms of who and what you are and more often then not end up with you in your grave! If anyone has ever told you that “Success is Individualistic” , it is a blatant lie! Sure enough, Success is Intrinsic, Original and Reflective of who you are as an Individual, but for that to come to life and create any meaningful impact for you and others around you, there have to be collaborative and converging interventions coming in and accelerating the spread and growth of that fledgling idea, unless this occurs in an orchestrated manner- success will either be elusive or will be erratic with turbulent pockets hitting it every now and then!

The whole essence of timing is about being able to deploy and sustain the seeds of success through timing them well and for that timing to be flawless and effective you do need a great lot of experimentation, failure and what is normally called as “luck”! This is the only reason why even though we may have millions and millions of people who are good or great at what they choose to do, when the scales of relative success are measured, the handful few who tend to lead the pack are almost always those who have been able to time their timing well enough, perhaps in a more superior way then the others!

I leave you with these thoughts for now; as the definition of success is specific and aligned to what an individual idea is all about, needless to say the finer aspects around the wise way to time ones’ time will also be very very niche, thereby doing away the fallacy of requiring to compare and calibrate against someone else; that really never works, simply because each one of us at any given time is dealing with a challenge that is as unique as who we are simply because the way we choose to deal with it!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then, whatever you choose to do, just remember to check if what you plan to do is being timed well!

Obedient slaves and Bad masters.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Defining your essence!

~ Parimal Aluri ~ Leave a comment

As deceptively simple it may seem, but this seemingly unimportant task of knowing and connecting within and knowing what your essence is perhaps the most valuable “one thing” that anyone could ever do! For this is the bedrock from where you can align your pursuits, ambitions and virtually anything and everything that is around you and once aligned, engage in a meaningful manner that ushers in empowerment for yourself and everything and everyone around you! Join me here, we take a look into this space and understand why our lives are much more than we think it is and why you are never what your business card says or your last name signifies! So here we go!

We often end up living our lives and perhaps even defining who we are, only based on a singular fact- “what is that we do”, “what our business card say about us” or at times, “defining ourselves in the context of the societal opulence that has come our way”. The fact remains that even as these aspects may have their own merit, their whole context is relative and calibrated to things and people around! You see, working as what you do, does not anyway help to understand how you teat your family , friends, your pets or let alone anyone else, even yourself! You may have more opulence compared to then remainder of the other 80%, but that neither guarantees that you have the taste to enjoy it or the class to display it! The greatest fallacy of our times is that people often end up living a life- based on what they have got “sold into ” understanding what their life is!

You see, if the case had to be that each one of us was to be defined by the mere space around calibrated success and failure and the materialistic enjoyment that comes our way- we would have been a different personality construct altogether by birth! But that is not how it is, Isn’t it? Irrespective of what we work we do, how we are known and perhaps not known (normally referred to as misunderstood) there is yet another layer to our own self and that layer is about getting connected to who you are and what is that your soul’s urge! Perhaps sounds too preachy, spiritual or even condescending, but that is the very important and subtle aspect of our lives and believe it or not, every one of us, stands on this foundation of what our innermost desires and essence is all about- whether you like it or not- you will always gravitate towards that- perhaps it may help you or at times it may not- but all our life stories are a collection of moments when we we are aligned to this space and when we had deviated away from our won essence! Nothing more, nothing less! So how do we stay connected to our essence and how can we encash that space to put this foundation to good use? Read on!

The real magic to work along the pivot of your essence is by first being able to define it- and define it well! Your essence has to be something that you behold uniquely as your own- could be as unique as your innovative thinking or your fertile research oriented mind or could be the innate ability to see uncommon realities i the everyday common things around! One easy way of knowing your essence is that while you are engaged with an activity or a thought- it comes in natural, makes you feel empowered even as it seems comfortable, irrespective of the fact how complicated or easy it may seem to the others viewing that space! You know you are in your elements (your essence) when you act with confidence, direction and purpose on issues with even the most limited insights or details and come out enriched with a new dimension for the whole topic- something that ushers in a new pathway for the existing challenges or opens up a new challenge for humanity to tests their competency against- simply through your power of innovative thinking- which perhaps is then your essence!

Sure enough, you may want to ask, but if that is true for one, it will be for everyone so how does it work? Well, say your essence is around culinary skills, sure enough there would be many with similar skills, perhaps even for the same segment of cuisine, but if you are really connected by the pivot of your essence in what you do, you will be able to add a twist to all that you do,like no one else, even as others continue to do the same- what we then have is a world around us of empowered individuals working and deploying their expression of life through their essence that they have connected with! paradoxically enough, this is also the reason that limits people from connecting with their true essence and more often than not majority of us are happy with that job, that business or simply by doing what we have got into doing and even happy to repeat the same thing year after year- with nothing really changing for us or for the others in a meaningful or empowering way!

When you continue moving through your life disconnected with your essence, sure enough you will live well, thrive and perhaps even surge ahead earning and enjoying all that you desire- but all of that will always keep you very malnourished and deprived at your soul level- and well if you think – that’s alright- that too is fair- because the world that we get to experience and see around is a factor of majority of humankind working themselves for the heck of it- not being connected to their essence- hence mediocre solutions are ok and “just enough” principles take precedence over “what is right” or “the right way to do it”! There is no right way to experience life and share that with others or even with yourself- else all of us would have been born with a manual or handbook to live our lives- driven down to the last detail! It is a deliberate choice that one must make to pivot around their essence even as social compulsions and echoes of insecurity tend to tempt and push us away from what we should be to who we end up becoming! So what next?

Well, the meaningful way and perhaps the only way as I see it, is to stay connected with your essence- the very essence of who you are, what drives you and what is that you want to contribute further to- that has to be something to do with the urge of your soul- it is something purely intrinsic and essentially which define who and what you are and will be- irrespective of the socially accepted and prevailing definitions of success and failures! Your essence does not have to be certified by anyone else but yourself and your essence does not have to be about limiting yourself to be working with “XYZ firm” or “ABC designation” or making $$$ of money, it is beyond and above all of this, sure enough, I am not suggesting the other aspects are irrelevant- but to connect them to be your essence and wanting those things around you to be your definition- is a fatal fallacy- simply because business will rise and fall, jobs will come and go and so will your fortune- but the only thing that will ever remain is what your essence is- unless you realize this bit and learn to pivot on the foundation of your essence you will almost always find yourselves as crossroads- every time any one external variable that you use to define you is taken away from you!

It may be possible that your essence may not serve a materialistic goal that you have given to yourself- nothing wrong with it- but if you are able to reach that goal tapping through the pivot of your essence- which by it’s very nature- defines your value construct- all the journeys in life that you undertake to achieve some or the other goals- you will find them to be more easy and welcoming and the struggle quotient will greatly be reduced! Each one of us, are on this planet- not to only learn- unlearn- relearn-pay the bills- travel and die- for as long as you limit yourself to these aspects of the routine- you will end up creating a life as common as the next stranger you walk past by! It is only when you begin to script the story of your life through the power of who you are and what your soul’s urge is to express that is when real magic will happen- that urge could be a creative expression through arts, science, technology or could be as simple as being a humanist- who strives to empower others around- you may have a philosophical or a cut throat business like approach- doesn’t matter- as long as you pivot your journey of life on the real essence of who you are and what your soul’s urge is- rest assured you will behold peace within and share warmth around even as you lead an empowering presence for yourself and others around you! This is the essence of leading a meaningful life and by being rooted to who you really are and deciphering that secret!

I leave you with these thoughts here, take that break, grab a coffee and do reflect and try to fathom, what your essence really is and what is that you are doing now- which further or stalls the same! Magic and miracles are rare because they only manifest through the urge from within and for that you need to be anchored pretty well intrinsically!

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

The real miracle.

~ Parimal Aluri ~ 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!