Antidote to insecurities

Do you know what is the funniest thing about insecurity? That it is a good thing and also a bad thing at the same time. Yes, you heard me right. And this my friends is not just an academic argument but also a practical one. Your disagreement with me at this stage of the article is normal, it will cause insecurities in either of us if we do not come on the same page, by the end of it, ok, it was a bad joke, let’s put it behind us. We are the sociable species in the animal kingdom, which enables us to mingle with people in our immediate surroundings. We spend time and effort in becoming like others, you see we descended from monkeys. Aping is our first nature. What makes things rather complex is that we are also living animals with ambitions and from it stems everything positive as well as negative. It is counter-intuitive to give away one of the key conclusions right in the introduction paragraph. But let the instinct take over the reasoning for now. Insecurity in your growing years is more useful than it is in years when people see you as grown up or expect you to behave like one. It is ok for a front line executive of an organisation to be insecure but not for those who sit from higher to highest chairs. When I say so, do I forget that even the C Suite executives, CXOs or another dude/gal from across the street who kept getting lucky over the years masquerading as a big deal leader, is also made of flesh and blood and therefore will have the tendencies that are prevalent in people who have just begun. But if both the grown-ups and the infants behave in the same manner; what is the point of growth? You get the point I hope. Education, well, quality education is a rare privilege in our society, sadly. I really wish for it to change but till it doesn’t it will do a great deal of damage to us, in ways more than one, it cripples the potential of our collective evolution. 

All undesired and unhappy outcomes like poor performance, lack of equitable culture, poor infrastructure both physical and logical, regressive approach to change, the tunnelled vision of future, unskilled manpower etc, even organisational insecurities can also be turned around and corrected. But while other deficiencies require rather simpler framework change, insecurities take longer to go away. It is chronic in nature. I have said, a few lines ago, that it is a good thing in junior staff. Why do I say so? Let me answer, irrespective of the industry and the geography, that you choose you’ll find that bottom of the pyramid is occupied by the workhorses, the real people, the real deal: if I may say so. These are the people who work with their hands, efficiency from these groups is often valued more than anything and perhaps everything else that they bring to the table. This class of workers ( we are all workers, don’t you take off on Mayday?) are generally young, in their early twenties, beaming with energy and at the pink of health. Full of desire and hopes. The design is thus laid out to make this section compete with each other fiercely. You would notice a plethora of reward and recognition being organised. People are made to compete in useless disciplines, the idea is to keep the animal at the boil. If they get easy with their life, the wheel of progress or let’s just say production will come at a halting stop. Therefore, it helps overall progress. When young people are insecure, they mostly take it sportingly, also because they haven’t build anything which they consider worth protecting from intrusion. It is like a fresh start when age is by your side things look easier than they actually are. Your neurons fire and you learn to hop, skip and jump, it is all in the good spirit. Things are not quite the same though when the grown-ups become insecure. Their fears cost heavily on them in the long term and catastrophically in the near term on the area that they control. Some of the symptoms of the big boys and grown-up girls surrendring to insecurities are.

1. Fear of getting exposed.
2. Difficulty accepting change.
3. The inability of accepting the mistake.
4. Killing the messenger without reading the message.
5. Forming allies to counter the force.
6. Ugly politicking.

The number one mistake that these smart men and women make is falling in the trap of believing that they are too clever and they can go undetected. Let me bring it open to you; people who have the eye for it will see it even if it were to exist between blinks and those who don’t have an eye can always borrow binoculars; so it is just unwise to think you can pull it off. You can’t so face it.

Let me also say this that I sympathise with you, it is not easy to let go of things. We are all control freaks, in ways we do not even recognise. For instance, don’t each one of us have a certain way in which we prefer our drinks (both hot and cold, both intoxicating and toxic). Ordinary people call it preference and psychologists categorise this tendency as the desire to control. And at some level, one has to concede that we are not only social, ambitious, but also combative and above all animals. To learn, we must make mistakes. But because we are the most intelligent animals, we must quickly detect our own problems and correct them to get better. And there is absolutely no shame in the minds of the wise in accepting their follies because they know to err is human.

Let’s look at possible ways to ward off the demon of insecurity. Before we move any further let’s accept this that we are all good people deep inside and wish to remain that way but when challenges appear insurmountable we sometimes lose our judgement and do things which we initially are not proud of but because we have difficulty accepting our own errors we start defending those errors and in no time to create a smoke screen of evidence, repeat it so many times that it becomes our natural response. But it is never over .. should you wish to change, you can do it, right now. All it needs is a sacrifice of some ego, courage and above all conviction.

Here are a few things that you can try: Antidots to insecurities.

Be discourteous to yourself: If you happen to spot any of the above symptoms, stop, take a reflective pause and tell yourself that you would not let yourself getting reduced to a sulking looser and will make amends. You have built something worth protecting but what is sensible is to better it, open it up for others to collaborate. Your signature will not evaporate if you show a larger heart and get people involved in your mission. The only way for you to not become history is by letting others make your creation a part of their present; it is a great way of giving yourself a lease of life.

Bring objectivity: You’ve to be your own worst critic. Detach yourself with your creation and also yourself. You must know that you are not as important as you think you are. You are just as ordinary today as you were the day you started. Day one innocence and day one ego is worth gold, preserve it. Your hard work, dedication, grit has got you all that you’ve and if you do not learn to let it go you will lose it in no time. Things change, the grandeur of the past is your legacy it may and may not impress others. In fact, you shouldn’t even expect others to find your story awesome. Remember this, if your story is good .. it will be told and re-told. Has Mirza Galib died? Not really, even today, you and I relish his work. Very little do people know that he was receptive to feedback ( Read Diwan-e-galib) you’d know. Look for problems and when you find them announce it to relevant people and correct them quickly but not quietly and certainly not secretively. Coward hide mistakes and you are not coward, or so I hope.

Re-count your victories: You’ve won, there is no one who has not won! Some victories are bigger than the other, some attract more applause than the other but at its core every victory is important and it shapes your character. Every action will be judged on the plains of morality, ethics, law & performance (social, business and financial). Victory is achieving your goals; if you plan to wake up at 5 AM and run 4 miles every day, every single day that you manage to do it you win. Remember, you fought illiteracy, if your teacher went insecure and did not pass on the knowledge of letters to you, your life would have ended before it even got off to a start. So the act of giving is core to success. Every time you have won, someone willingly, gave up something for you; recognise it and make that pool bigger. Don’t be another ‘I-me-myself’ fool.

Commit to renewing: Promise yourself that you would not get old. Well, you will get chronologically, your body will get tired, organs will give up slowly on you, but your mind must not get old. Your commitment to stay mint should not get dusted ever. Day one mentality, for as long as you can keep, it will serve you well. Remain agile, keep learning newer and better ways of doing things; make yourself uncomfortable - the need to grow and way of it do not change. In doing so you will need partners, welcome them to join you in your quest and achieve together.

Whatever virtue helps you appreciate people, make the group better and bigger is a good one to champion and in doing so your insecurities will fade, almost automatically. 

The unambitious, you!

All of us need to truly love something to exist meaningfully; it doesn't have to be one thing. It can be a combination of things, people or situations.. just about anything that we identify with unthinkingly, something that feels like our own, a natural extension of who we are, in its most elementary form. There are many ways to want ..not so many to know. The story of human evolution has been written in letters of adaptation and with the ink of patience, there has never been a shorter method to mutate naturally into a higher race, from fish to monkey to monkeys staring at blue screens all day, using both opposing thumbs to press mostly and not so much to grip, has happened in millions of years. Some advance laboratories today are creating working models of human heart and in some capacity also the brain – these aren't dwarf achievements, these could potentially change how we conceive our world. But even in its most profound state it is not evolution but an attempt to emulate, another proof that we are monkeys for the most part of our being. Monkey see .. Monkey do.. until we find what we love. That realization alters that course of being for better, does little to speed though.

Through centuries of recorded history, we have been educated about the need to progress and prosper, heroic stories of accomplishment has presented to us with the sole purpose of igniting inspiration in us. We pick up our idols and start emulating the qualities that made them who they become. It is a good thing to do .. we have to create something out of limited existence, we must leave behind things for people to remember us by. Nature is a great leveler.. it allows successful as well as failures to leave the same things behind – stories. Tales of who were we and how did we deal with our lives, in our times. And what can be better than creating a story about something we love. How we come to love a few things more than others is a topic in itself, the neural science, making it work is interesting .. we will surely touch upon them some day. Today, however, it is about identifying which is that thing, or if we have actually found it.

Would you believe me if I told you that everything that we do unambiguously has the potential of becoming things that we truly love and desire? But hold on, isn't being competitive and coming out as the winner a thing? It most certainly is, but what we are talking about today are things which exist at the level much deeper than the sense of accomplishment in our thought center, in the most pristine parts of our brain. These things define who we are in far more meaningful ways than how much money we make, what our net worth is, what job title we have .. how big our homes, our cars, and offices are. Let me put this straight, I'm not trying to make a saintly argument here. Nor am I trying to hike to a moral high ground from which wealth seems as waste and material belongings are another representation of limiting chains. While you are at it .. make the money you want .. create the home that you've always wanted, be on the cover of every magazine that you liked reading in your growing years. Possibly be so awesome that every poster is in the town dreams to have you in it. Material matters are important ..it is the unit by which society measures success and you have to score. Go be the person you must become.

My argument is simply this .. to get better at being that person that owns stuff, good stuff, you will first have to be the person who loves, and this is only the romantic love, that SRK has fooled our generation to fall for. This love is admiration that Gandhi had for truth, respect that Nelson Mandela had for equality, and importance that human/civil rights had in Martin Luther King’s world — you see what I'm saying? This love is not Manmohan's silence or Modi's chatter .. this love is the time that Dr. Tharoor takes out to keep writing books and publishing them at a stage in his life when he can simply reap the benefits of who he has been in the first 40 years of his life. This love is feeling that got AJP Abdul Kalam to take up teaching .. after leaving the majestic Rashtrapati Bhawan. This love is also in some ways called "purpose", life's mission, identify or just a hobby. Pick the word that you think describes it the best, as long as the definitions are aligned expression isn't a problem.

For all we know life is not a lazy Sunday afternoon or a busy Monday morning .. it isn't a laid-back Friday evening or an exhilarating Saturday – life is a concoction of all these and more. It is the routine of Tuesday, weight of Wednesday, throbbing of Thursday .. all if it mixed into one. Have you ever wondered why you find it difficult to concentrate in your silent bedroom but find it easy to read your book, in a crowded café that you like? Have you mulled, why discourteous staff bothers more when the food is not particularly tasty? The same traffic jam feels ok when you are on your way to meet a person you know as a horrible being?  Why do we procrastinate a few things on the same day as on which we absolutely can't sleep to encounter an important event, the following day? Mind is a mess for some and mystery for others but is always is the key to the world that we like to build for ourselves. Product of our mind is thought and these thought are the only things that we really have .. everything else is just an illusion. Coming back to the definition that I attempted creating, I based it around being unambitious, I say so because in things we love .. we do not compete and this fact that we are not in a race promotes the kind of peace that is needed to create unison & tranquility, in other words concentration or happiness or simply put pleasure. Let me give you a few examples, if you like reading and Ruskin Bond happens to be your writer of choice, when you read his finest creations you do not bother about reading too fast or too slow .. you just enjoy being there. So much so that you often re-read, revisit the plots even without the book, think about what your writer said before sleeping amidst the emptiness of night. Now, think of a contract that you read at your work .. what things come to your mind? You've to read comprehensively, objectively, quickly .. make notes, be ready etc.. these are important things but at a cognitive level, to read that contact masterfully, you will need to have a Ruskin bond in your life .. if you do not have it .. you can't do an awesome job at reading and comprehending that contact.

Neither me nor your best friend .. will ever be able to tell you what should you love and why? Your mother can .. mothers know everything .. and they are always right. Whenever I have been defeated in life .. I have always run towards my mother .. her company gives me the strength to fight back. Maybe she is the one who inspires me the most and from her, I find things to love and be the person that I wish to be. I'm not sure .. if this method will work for you. On finding what you love .. you are truly on your own. I can tell you when you find the thing that you love .. you will experience one or all of the three things & thus .. you'll know you've found it. When you do, keep it close to your heart, keep growing into its stronger, bigger and better shape – that alone, will give you the story that you'll leave behind.

The three things are:

1) You'll be willing to reconsider, restart and even resume ..

2) It will make you forget .. everything else that you otherwise consider important. ( This forgetfulness is not a mental disability but the general phenomenon of being substantially more aware of something and giving other things lesser importance, momentarily)

3) It will be addictive, you will effortlessly want to do it more and more    ( so is smoking, drinking and drugs – but those aren't things that you love .. those are things you simply get trapped in for lack of education and dare I say, lack of awareness)

I will end this with a hope that you find what you truly love and create a wonderful story with it, one worthy of leaving behind.

You have a good Sunday.

‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’

‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’ I’m borrowing this line from a legendary business writer, if you’ve read him too, you’d know he means it. Will reveal the name of the gentleman towards the end of the article. Not all business houses and leaders think as high of ‘culture’ or invest enough resources in setting it right .. they often, on the contrary, are found wrestling with challenges that crop up as a result of not having strong cultural fabric tying loose ends of their organization together. For some reason they miss the fact that covering a wound doesn’t take the pain away; but this write up is not about them but the 'subject', so let’s get back to it.

Organisations have multiple identities, they exist for economic reasons, they also have a social purpose and sometimes even a moral signature; all at once. Travel far and wide, pick up any sector, county, sect or society in the Morden world, you’d find that wealth creation is at every core of its existence. Why else would you see democratic governmental setups talk about GDP growth.. etc? It is a good thing. Prosperity in practical terms is believed to be a close blood-related relative of happiness and therefore pursued wildly. There is no prosperity without wealth. This is not just a boring business administration line, you’ll find substantive evidence of it in mythology too, Hindu mythology in particular. The fact that we worship Goddess Laxmi and in her praise sing and chant mantras which when translated from Sanskrit into our language of daily use means “ to make happiness possible .. we need wealth so .. lord grand me it, in abundance” in summary 95% of the times, balance 5% is chorus, trying to match up with it, is proof enough.

For prosperity one needs perspective, though: this is true even for those who see happiness in things unrelated to wealth. For instance the great poet, Mirza Ghalib held that to lead a good life, all one needs is a good heart, someone to love and great prose to say so differently in different times of the day. If you read Diwan-e-Galib you’d find it. ( This is a rare book and is found only in the national Mirza Galib library at New Delhi, besides Nizamuddin Aulia Dargah). Do check it out.

Perspective is important and integral to organization building. Let’s agree that there is no right or wrong perspective .. as long as your straight view is legal and permissible you’ve every right to pursue it. It, however, needs constant reiteration in an organization to

a) keep people adequately informed and

b) making sure that people do not forget it. 

While an organization is way more , but for the sake of simplicity, let’s just assume that organization is a huge money-making machine : A huge press that prints currency, coming together of many moving parts some mechanical and others human ( accounting, sales, customer service, branding, information technology, procurement, and other, business acumens). From dusk to dawn it prints, converting paper into powerful currency. People who run it are happy seeing how humble paper with their labor turns into one with ink valued a lot more than when it arrived raw on the other end of their press and so are those who supervise it and fund its operations. Imagine, that the machines aren’t oiled routinely, its motors aren’t greased frequently, as a result.. some parts fail, causing a portion of the paper to get wasted, some ink going down uncountably. Let’s just say that workers are lazy, uncaring, selfish and insensitive, instead of letting the supervisors know about what caused the waste of paper and as a result lesser output, they choose to cobble a convincing tale, attach very little significance to it when presenting it to the top guys with the intention of having them pass it without they attaching much attention to it. And this happens over and over again as more parts fail thanks to aging, wear and tear over time. The insincere lot, keeps making their concocted story sound more believable by sprinkling experience to their false cover up reports.

Or they are nice people but in absence of reiteration do not find motivation to report the issue, some may be at a level of less than required intelligence, thus unaware. Silence irrespective of reason is not healthy.

Because not all organizations are small and confined to a small & manageable by physical inspection geography/ office; not every business leader has it in within his means to check and verify every bit of information that is being shared. As a result, having heard the story so many times, they begin to believe in it as much. The real problem keeps flourishing unchecked. Neutral voices that go a-galore against the malpractices are subdued or gagged easily for they are a minuscule minority, as a result, the misdoing continues till that curial breaking point is reached when it becomes terminal and death seems the only cure.

Things come to an end: of what is left people make their last sum of money and walk their separate ways to their next destination. 

In the process what could have been a prosperous endeavor ends in misery, distress, and disrespect. 

Let us imagine, the same set of circumstances in an environment that drives ‘truth’ for a culture, one that rewards dispassionate reporting of events negative as well as positive. A currency factory, that doesn’t reprimand unreasonably, one that encourages people to come forward to own problems and faults and of course has practices and people in place to quickly respond to the situation and correct it. The error would have gotten reported and perhaps the press would still be running as respectably as possible. 

When you’re a 200 to 500 people organization; setting these things right is not as big an issue. In all probabilities most sensible people would have been a part of the hiring process, there is near real-time interaction between management and the delivery apparatus. The problem comes when you have an operation running in scale when you have half a lac or more people operating out of a geography well spread out, in diverse areas of work. Then the challenge is real and it is not just of setting the culture right but also developing detection methods to know what is broken and where? Because the complexity is of an enormous order not acting is equivalent to inviting untimely death.

In this write-up, we will only deal with the detection of the broken and I shall follow this one up with another article on restoration, in the coming weeks. Do keep an eye on this blog for it.

What we need to understand is that broken things are not a problem. In the real world things break all the time, the problem is not having a pair of conscious eyes set to find out what’s broken and then also not having an honest intention of fixing it. Time is of the essence when it comes to fixing.

What we need to know here is that ‘doing’ part of any job is relatively easy .. in deciding what is to be done, how and when lies mastery. Everyone knows that to score decent marks one must study hard, yet not everyone scores well .. because the underlying behavior of all students isn’t healthy. One who sleeps in the class, doesn’t complete his homework and disobeys the teacher is less likely to do great in academics .. may turn out to be a great dancer but if the need is to have an academician .. you will have to look for the traits that make one. 

Therefore, organizational symptom study is vital.

Below are a few detrimental symptoms for you to observe in your organization, if they exist .. your organization is a positive candidate for restoration. 

1. When people agree ‘all’ the time with those in the position of power: Let’s accept this we’re not right all the time and when people simply agree with all that we say, we are headed for a disaster. You need people who without fear, favor or malicious intent disagree with you, give you a contrarian view. One size doesn’t fit all, don’t we know this?
2. When good news outbalances the bad ones on a continuous basis: Let’s say when you review a process or a business and it only tells you all that is right all the time with very little mention of what went wrong and why .. you have got a problem. Well, even Sachin has had to walk back to the pavilion on ducks, if the unit is not failing either it is not trying hard enough or just faking it.
3. Evident Follow ups: If you preside over a system that runs on follow up and delays .. it is a clear indication of the fact that either you do not have competent people or your competent set isn’t sincere. In both cases, if you do not get your people to change their attitude towards ‘on time’ delivery/ response; you will have to change them and if you do none of the two.. you’re setting virtual lighted matchstick to a stack of hay which is dripping with petrol. Someone is always monitoring, natural justice, you see!
4. Disregard for conformance: This one is rather easy when you see people not conforming to the norm for the heck of it.. you have a problem. The common way of finding it out, when people run late for a scheduled meeting, all the time. When they wilfully come unprepared, almost always. Or better yet, do not attend crucial meetings. You should know they do not care enough and you should care little for them.
5. Shortage of Ideas - When the group that you work with starts falling sort of Ideas.. you experience relatively long & unexplained lull, often .. you must know that your people aren’t thinking and because thinking is 50% of doing an excellent job. Chances are they aren’t even doing what they are really supposed to do, let alone anything nearly good.

Well, if you see any of these symptoms surfacing enough in your organization, you should declare an emergency. At this point, you should slow down expansion and fuel restoration. Because if you do not fix .. it will break .. and sooner than you think. 

BTW,  Mr. Torben Rick, is who said "Culture eats strategy for breakfast"

Have a great Sunday, catch you in the next one!

Make hope your culture!

Happy new year, people! I hope 2018 is treating you well.

Earlier this week, I, kickstarted series of education session for brilliant people in my team .. the objective was to get to know them better and give them a different perspective, some thought for them to ponder over! Four sessions to cover the entire staff. And in the process, I essentially repeated myself, four times over and that got me thinking that perhaps, the message will find deeper application if it reaches a wider audience, so here I’m.

Organisations cannot survive in our times if they aren’t heterogeneous in composition, ‘more of the same’ is no longer a winning mix. You need people from various educational & social backgrounds, skills, personalities, and beliefs to come together to achieve what is the common objective. Everyone in their unique ways takes the group forward, every day, by contributing in the space that they work. A techie writes compelling codes making the product complete and competent, that enables the salesperson to go out there, stand hand and shoulder above the competition to win customers, those won over .. need help and support by a group committed to making bitter experiences better by applying what they consider valuable - service skills. Someone works tirelessly on excel files trying to make sense of it all and everyone else that is there is between who try and give it shape and enable it to work like a machine that is well oiled and up to date.

Often times, however, we get so overwhelmed, by the challenges we conquer that we begin to undermine the values that others bring on to the table and there seed of conflict is sowed; it only grows bigger if not checked in time. People who are there in the field get seduced into considering that those who operate from the office are lazy and unconcerned and those at office desk begin to believe that those fighting it out in the streets are outright ignorant and often times ill-behaved too- hair-splitting may get the observers a clearer view of who is right but then the organisation is not served well with these conflicts not even in the least bit.

It is said that when strong personalities come together conflicts become inevitable; because people generally do not like to budge. What does one do in such situations? These are real-world issues and often do damages which are far more grave than a bad business decision, they tend to make the organization shallow from within. People then come together only to pose for photographs not so much to really be together. These situations are just as tacky as they are tricky !!

In my talk, I spoke to my people about the great leveler that nature is when it rains .. no matter which way you pray, which school you went to .. whichever subject you could be major in - you’ll all great drenched! Sun rays do not light rich homes more than poor huts. Morning breeze is just as soothing to all people, of all background and beliefs - we’re the same people, we hold dear similar aspirations! ‘Expression’ however differ and that alone creates all the ‘differences’ that exists today. We must all be watchful of what, how & where we express ourselves. 

Whether we like it or not ; whatever we do for a living has a profound impact on who we are and even before we realize what we do all day starts reflecting in our behaviors and quietly creeps into our belief systems too, changing us from within, sometimes irreversibly. Be very sure of what you wanna pick up as a profession.

A goldsmith values precision over power; blacksmiths love power more; Pain in patient doesn’t prick emotions in a doctor, a worker at a construction site doesn’t mind dust, a scientist is not afraid of failing, customer service professional have fragile emotions yet are resilient - these remarkable traits are not what that these people were raised on or born with - but were acquired working and slowly it shaped their worldview. They all think differently of the same thing, sometimes.

These forces are so strong that it can come in the way of the larger objective at times, greater goals may sometimes, succumb to these differences. Every organization needs to be aware of these challenges and should have a strategy to overcome them.

Alongside financial & performance goals, the organization should also keep in mind, cultural goals and invest strongly in making it happen. In the face of most difficult times, it is the strength of character that pulls people up, organization are no different. Clearly identified values and very well articulated intent; are a good start but it mustn’t end there. If you look at Indian business landscape, we have more than a handful of successful business houses but if you were to name top two, The Birla and the TATA group walk away with the prised perceptional value, there! The reason is that these organizations really invest in values.

Every passing day makes it tougher for organizations to survive, they deal with multiple challenges, from rising cost to shrinking capital to customers walking away to difficulty in keeping top talent. Things will continue to get more complex and confined as time progresses.One can choose from the open ocean of positive adjectives and traits and make it their own by sweating to act in accordance at all times, but if, I were to pick one, I would say, it must be “hope”!

Without the audacity is ‘hope’, integrity, kindness, candor, respect, resilience, forthrightness, frugality and just about everything else is just as incomplete as is a cup of tea without the tea bag! Nothing is going to live until the end of time without failing and when failure sees you in the eye, “hope” comes handy. The failure can be of any shape or size but the undeniable fact is that it will always be there in some proportion or the other, it is inescapable and a lot/group that is not hopeful and madly so - will not always get thru difficulties.

The group I was addressing, did buy the message and wanted to know how does one really apply the currency of hope to buy goodness. Answering it is simply, you gotta practice “self-talk”.

It is a system in which you give yourself instructions mostly verbal that you’d be the best at whatever you’re doing. When on the road, you would try and be the best-behaved person there. When playing a game you’d instruct yourself to be the best gamer - not every-time you’d end with the best score but if you have the value of hope by your side.You’ll find reasons to try again at being the best at what you do. 

Hope keeps us going, in the shiniest of the times and the darkest of the hours. It is hope that made cars on the road and airplanes fly in the air, possible ( and also innovation and the engineering ;) . With unwavering faith and untiring effort, we can achieve whatever we set our minds to. Let us not forget, we should do what we must but in sight of the fact that our journeys can be singular but the destination is shared! We must remain one hopeful force, in all our rises and in all of our falls, we must hope and win together.

So here’s my message - always remain hopeful and keep telling yourself that you have to be the best at whatever you’re doing - everything else will find its own sweet place.

Until next time ;) 

Failure, a roll of the dice!

As we enter into the final week of 2017, I have to thank you for your continued support, I had not hoped to cross 7K on readership, so soon, but we did, 7056 to be precise ( till 24th Dec 3:45 PM). It has been a great year for me. Early this month, I sent out emails to randomly selected returning readers/commenters to ask them if there is a specific topic on which they’d like to hear from me. I received 347 responses, studied them to ascertain that roughly 86% people hinted at hearing on “failure”!

I thought a great deal about it .. re-lived most of those moments when I encountered failures and what transpired from each of those events and how life kept changing, sometimes irreversibly. I also got drawn into thinking how would life have been without those moments of failure, for a brief while that thought felt really nice .. and I did get seduced into devoting more to a failure free life but as I scratched the surface a little, I realised that my thinking had quietly shifted from being realistic to wishful, a few hours later, the idea almost appeared unreal to me and then I jogged back to my failures again to gather all that I had learnt from my own falls.

A day and a half with these thought & I got fairly certain, that my life wouldn’t have been what it is today ( could be better, and I’m working towards it) had I not failed. I tried looking at it a little more dispassionately, separating emotions from the core issue or the event. Most of my failures started to make perfect sense, then.

Come to think of it .. life is only a tad better than roll of dices more so because one thing leads to another. If decisions operated in isolation, failure & success wouldn’t have mattered as much, but because life is a series of events one coming after another in a logical and progressive sequence - each event is indeed imp. 

Let’s accept this - Shit happens! 

Don’t you agree? As much as we would despise failing; we all do once in a while, ins’t it? 

Everything counts, from you letting the snooze button win most mornings to you not choosing right things to eat or loosing to your own lazy self and thus missing on your exercise routine. Even in areas which are more formal in nature, lets say an investment tanking or an assignment flopping big time - We’re in a way a sum total of these!

Let’s open it up a little. Failure often times is considered bad, expect for that fact that is not always so. Some failures actually propel us to a progressive future, enables us to make amends and move on with our life just fine and even those which do not really make us into something better at least leave us with a better understanding of who we actually are. 

Both successes and failures start at a decision .. irrespective of the size, impact or even the context, a decision is always the starting point.

I like to think of life as a puzzle and each decision as a block in that massive build up that spreads itself across a stretch as long as a lifetime.The choices that you make lead you in a certain direction, remember nothing is absolute- your wrong could be someone else’s right, our lives are interconnected more interestingly then it may  appears to us. We keep moving forward each day a little irrespective of us failing or succeeding - because that puzzle called life, knows one thing and that is how it would like itself to get concluded. While it may seem like you hold the console but for the most part .. you actually get played.

No one I know has it figured out completely .. nor do I have it completely within my grasp but what I do know is that no one ever walked this earth without failing more than a couple of times, at things, they today are successful at. Failure really is the GPS to success, in ways more than one for those who really desire to succeed. 

Life will never be free of failures .. there will always be victories and losses. All of us will have to not only put up a fight for a seat at the table better yet try work harder to get to the seat at the head of the table. So long as there is life .. there will be struggle and so long as you struggle .. possibilities of meeting failures will be there.

So what you really can and should do is to think of an approach towards dealing with failure. The questions is to work towards a strategy to make these stumbles rare and too far and few in between by being meticulous, sincere, alert and above all careful. 

I wish for you to succeed but if life catches on .. you could make use of these three tips.

1. Quitting too early is uncool: Quitting is easy but not fun. In more than half of the occasions where I have chosen to be persistent, I have succeeded. Even in the face of most strongest opposition and most unfavourable of the circumstances you sometime have to just hang in there. You can’t finish first without being in the ring for longer!
2. Regard for Rejection: We give in, because we face rejection, sometimes even from people who we trust & look up to. Rejections can’t be the reason to give up on anything, what you need to pick up from it is the clues to change, to get better. You need to work your way thru rejections. Our world is not always very warm but it does get kinder to those who handle rejection gracefully. Validation is not as valuable as you may think. It is ok for some to not understand you or your plan as well as you do. Offer a nice smile and move on.
3. Future is not a mere repetition of past. - Everybody commits error, the important thing is to learn from them. Because you’ve failed in the past .. you shouldn’t try in the future is the most unwise advise that you’d ever get. If you care for it .. go for it! Let not failures of past limit your ability to carve a future full of success. You can change the pattern.. if you really want to.

If you ask me .. it is a constant struggle between the below two.

1) Desire to succeed

2) Fear of failure

There will be times when these two mingle into each other and become inseparable, you have to remember - nothing defines you better than your will. Law of averages applies to everything and it will caste its spell on you too, you will stumble, you will fall, you will get knocked down sometimes in the face and hard - it is all part of the procedure.

Fear and failure is part of life, the trick is to recognise it as a fact ; you’ve to give strength to your desire to succeed and in that long journey take a few failures here and there with a grain of salt. Nothing great has ever been achieved overnight. If you wish to succeed be ready to be in the middle and fight it till you knock your opponents down.

You real opponent is “failure” - deal with it. 

Gather yourself & stand again - for it is worth it.

With that I end this.. wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy new year 2018.