Game of your life

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In this changing world you don’t know what is there in the future but you can predict the future. We travel through life looking for success.  If we consider life as a game, We all have that choice to create a new kind of game to survive regardless of what others are doing. You can create your rules based on your values to win, you can make your strategies and design your success through your objectives and actions, however it is important to be flexible to redefine the game. 

Everybody has the power to invent the game though we don’t realize it. We don’t need to follow someone else’s rules. Only one thing we need and that is “a beginner’s mind”. A beginner’s mind means having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject, even when studying at an advanced level. How can you do it as we all have some assumptions and a lot of baggage?

Instead of following rules we need to create those. For that you need the eye of an artist. 

My wife (Read her blog here Art and Colours In Life) is an artist by heart and doctor by profession. She has created amazing artifacts and paintings. She has only siporex blocks, blank papers or canvases, random material required, that’s it. But she knows. 

• that the block or blank page (or empty canvas) can become anything.
• that any drawing can be changed, erased, or thrown out at any time.
• how to step back and shape the picture until she is happy. 

So life is like that. You can create anything in your life. If required you can change the course of action, erase earlier learnings and change everything if required. 

Everybody has the opportunity to create a new game of life. The game should have promise. Promise to be successful and winner. Every player has the potential to win however it depends upon how you design your game. During this process, you may make yourself uncomfortable with yourself and others. You may get challenges. People may force you to change the rules of the game but understand it is your game, you make your strategies and rules, of course in an ethical way, you create the masterpiece  and then you say what’s next? 

(Opinions are purely personal & does not represent my organizations, current or past) 

Author's books are available on Amazon, Flipkart, Pothi and BookGanga. You can buy the print copy of Vitality in Human Resources on amazon. Click >> Vitality in Human Resource: Adding human dimensions in HR processes    

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Break that idiot psychological space.

We all have that idiot psychological space which keeps us away from the progress. It restricted human beings to be adventurous and kept them where they are. People who broke that space became successful and rich. Few of them built their career. 

That psychological space that we don’t want to leave is our comfort zone. We all know that when we are out of our comfort zone, we learn a lot. Just observe your day, what you do? We always sit at the same place; we always take lunch with known people in the office; we always use the same route while driving. Why is this so? We don’t want to break the routine because of the comfort zone which we create. Because when you use the different route, then you have to think and have to take the risk. When we sit with different people, you have to stretch further to interact with them. If in such small things we become so comfortable, then imagine when somebody asks you to take the risk to do something you never tried.   

During one of the internal conferences, one of the senior leaders attended the first day morning in a short and t-shirt. Everybody was wearing a formal dress, but he was with the clothes like he is in a picnic. He mentioned in his speech that he just wants to make a point that he wanted to stretch himself and come out of the comfort zone. That was a simple symbolic message given to the participants. Most of the time, we worry about what people will say. 

Once a wise man was just screaming and walking around in search of somebody. One of his disciples asked him, “Oh great master, to whom you are searching for?”

“I am searching for those 4 people.” He replied.

“4 people? Who are they? And why?” asked the disciple.

“My parents and elders always asked me to think about those 4 people, to whom I had never seen?”

Disciple got confused. Looking at the confusion on the face of the disciple, the master said,” See, whenever I used to do something different, my parents and elders used to interrupt me saying, “If you do that, what those 4 people will say or think.”   

Those 4 people have almost ruined our life. We never gave justice to our dreams only because of those 4 people who are representative of the society. We have the capability and potential but we never challenged ourselves to go out of the comfort zone.

Over time, we have created that psychological space called, comfort zone.

Along with those 4 people (society), we have 2 more villains in our life. Those are your assumptions based on your own experience or somebody’s experience and fear of unknown things.   

Our mind is conditioned to use the known paths and not to create a new one. Human beings normally follow the crowd. Good news is that if you think, you can come out of your comfort zone by creating a little bit of anxiety. Leaving the comfort zone will increase productivity when you are experiencing the healthy amount of anxiety.

You can break your comfort zone just by starting something. For example, if you want to start the exercise, just start doing it; if you want to wake up early in the morning, just start waking up early in the morning.

Another measure you can take to break the comfort zone, is just change the routine, like take a lunch with different people on different days in the office, just speak to somebody to whom you think he is difficult, just break the routine and regular habits and start a new one. This looks simple, but very difficult to follow.

It is about the intention and creating habits, once you create habits you can think something big. It starts with one step.  

Please read the print replica of my latest book written for leaders on amazon kindle, Vitality in Human Resource: Adding human dimensions in HR processes

(Opinions are purely personal & does not represent my organization)         

Me time, we time, our time

My son was just sitting idle doing nothing. He was totally in himself, in trance, just ignoring what’s happening around.

“Is anything wrong Sona?” my wife asked him the question. He is a grown-up child now, in his 12th class. Being in 12th he also may have a lot of stress which we understand. I also got attentive and asked him, “What’s happened, all well na?”

He just smiled and said, “Nothing wrong mom, just wanted to have “me time”. I am bored with all online classes, weekly tests and all this stuff.”

I put down my phone. Wife sat with him and our conversation started. We discussed his fears, his role model, his friends, books, art, except study. We shared our stories. He shared his feelings. Believe me that conversation was a heart to heart dialogue among us. We still continue doing this regularly. This gives energy to us.

This is the power of just speaking and conversing. I remember, I was in school, I had limited resources and ample time, no gazettes, no television and a lot of books in the library. I used to spend (or invest?) a lot of time with my patents, my teachers and friends. Sometimes it was just asking questions, getting scolded, reading children magazines and most of the time just sitting idle outside the home and watching everything, people, sky etc, sometimes just dreaming and sometimes just doing nothing.     

Free internet, social media, serials, web series, different shows and news channels are spoiling the society. Imagine the time spent by people on such platforms. After college, I always wanted to be updated about the events happening in the world. The intention was to improve the general knowledge. It was fine when there was limited broadcast news, however when the multiple news channels were introduced, it was too much. It was fun watching those shows initially, but then I realised that it was a total waste of time. We don’t gain much from watching those channels. For the last 4 years, I totally stopped watching news channels. I watch it just when I think I should know something and that’s also for getting updates. Anyways, all journalists are biased nowadays and they run their own narrative. They are like spokespersons for the political parties, so why to worry what they say. By doing this, I have not lost anything.

Today, the explosion of information is huge. We really need to filter that information. Our jobs are becoming demanding, so work times are stressful. Screen time is impacting our lives and we started believing that if we are not in the race, we will be behind. But the good thing is the world is full of abundance, there is no scarcity. The question is how you find it. There is abundant time available, you have to find it. There are abundant opportunities if you find it. Fortunately, the generation, which my son belongs to, believes in this.

Today, I am happy that we, in the family, have stopped watching weird news channels, senseless serials and reality shows. We control what we want to watch for just entertainment and education. Social media also should be used only for the advantage. We should not get carried away with the newsfeed, likes, and comments.   

Good organizations don’t focus on work life balance, but they focus on work life integration by giving flexibility to their employees. This includes flexi time, work from home, enough freedom to do the job. In such an arrangement, you get time to spend with your family and also yourself. Fortunately, my organization gives that flexibility to me and this also helps me to have some time for me and family. 

So, I have ‘me time’, ‘we time’ and that’s our time to enjoy the meaningful & enriched life.    

Whenever, you feel that you don’t have enough time for your family, yourself, your hobbies, just pause and reflect. There is abundant time you will find. 

In summary

• Believe in abundance.
• Stop watching news channels, senseless serials and TV shows.
• Limit your time on social media, control your newsfeed.,
• Think about ‘work life integration’ instead of ‘work life balance’ by being flexible.  
• Engage in Conversation, Communication with Curiosity.  

Please read the print replica of my latest book written for leaders on amazon kindle, Vitality in Human Resource: Adding human dimensions in HR processes

(Opinions are purely personal & does not represent my organization)     

What is your Dharma?

The Purpose

The purpose of human existence is always debated. When we are frustrated, in dilemma, in struggles, we tend to think more about the purpose and meaning in life.   

In Hindu philosophy, the purpose of human being is nicely explained. Purpose of life is to achieve four aims in life. Those are Dharma (moral values), Kama (pleasure, love), Artha (prosperity) and Moksha (liberation). Hindu believe in leading a righteous life and achieve liberation finally. Every human being has their personal Dharma.  However, it also believes in pleasure and prosperity. These are different stages of life. Few find the purpose in early stages and work on spiritual liberation. It is always expected that humans should make morally right decisions in order to achieve good karma. Karma explains the impact on the personal life of different deeds human beings do. Sometimes it has positive and sometimes negative consequences on life. It believes that every action has the reaction; You get back what you do with others. So, the purpose in different stages may differ but the final purpose is to be happy. Once your full potential is achieved, your life is fulfilled, and you are happy. 

Greek philosopher Aristotle also believed and taught that human beings were driven by purpose, autonomy, and the natural desire to seek out and understand the truth. A person’s ideals manifest when they are pursuing and then attaining a life of purpose, ultimately the end state of human well-being. This end state is sometimes referred to as eudaemonia, the Greek word for human flourishing. 

As per the priority we work and satisfy our different needs. Maslow in his theory explained different human needs and finally explained “self-actualization” which is higher human need. Everybody needs to ask, “What is my Dharma & purpose in life?”

Lot of research explains that human need is to find purpose and if the purpose is found, life is easy and enriched. The team of Harvard School of Public Health researchers finds that if you feel, you have a higher sense of purpose in life, defined as having meaning, a sense of direction and goals — you are more likely to remain healthy and physically strong as you grow older. (Eric S. Kim). Similar researches are conducted by different researchers globally and findings are similar. If you have the purpose, you are more successful, you are happy and fulfilled and live long. 

In human history, every generation had their own struggles, but they adapted to the situation very well. They found the purpose. Today we can live an easy life because of great inventions by scientists, we have witnessed great artists and leaders. All those made the difference in the world by finding their purpose. They have done this for human beings, but they also lived their own accomplished life. However, sometimes human beings are too emotionally connected with certain materialistic things and relations where the person ignores the purpose. In such conditions, internal conflicts are inevitable which finally impact the peace of mind.  

Finding the meaning in life will help you fulfill the purpose and goals in life. We can’t live the life as it comes. There should be the reasons you get up in the morning. If you have a purpose, it can guide life decisions, influence behaviour, shape goals, offer a sense of direction, and create meaning in life. 

So? What is your Dharma - The purpose?  

Please read the print replica of my latest book written for leaders on amazon kindle, Vitality in Human Resource: Adding human dimensions in HR processes

(Opinions are purely personal & does not represent my organization)

How you go at home from office? Cool, it’s simple….

Travelling back to the home form office is always another struggle. Sometimes I feel that most of the problems are created by human. To make the life easy, they manufactured vehicles so that we can commute easily from one place to another place. However as usual, he never planned to face consequences. The fuel prices and congested roads are the consequences. To take care of these consequences, human made industries so that people earn more money spending on such things. This is a cycle and we lost our sleep. Pollution, noise and stress are the part of our life.

The question is how to make this journey meaningful. You can’t hire the driver so that you rest at rear seat and read some good books, or just take a nap. If you hire a driver, still he will make you feel that you have made the mistake and at last you have to drive on your own. I made this experiment and then came to the conclusion that by hiring driver you make your life more complicated. Finding good driver is impossible.  

There are certain ways to make this daily journey meaningful. You can listen music, audio books or Vedic chants. Meaningless radio jockeys from FMs are also there to make your driving enjoyable. But then you get bored listening same songs and foolish commentary of radio jockeys.

After doing this all, I came to conclusion that you yourself have to take the charge of your life. Off course, I never speak on mobile while driving and even don’t use the hands free. I have seen people who plug hands free to the ear and don’t miss a single call even while driving. I always surprise why people keep themselves so busy even while driving. Great two –wheeler riders sometimes put their and others life in danger by doing this.

For driving, only driving skills are not necessary, if you want to make your life simple and stress-free, you also need to be great saint on roads. I tried this lot and I have accepted that in any condition, I need one hour to go home for 20 KM distance and I am not in hurry. I enjoy my ride back to home. When I stop on a red signal, sometimes person behind me bangs his horn without any effect on me.

I give the way to the pedestrian on zebra crossing. Once when I stopped, the group of small children waived hands towards me. Their smiling face made my evening. Near Hotel Sarja (Aundh, Pune) crossing, there is always a mess. During pick hours traffic wardens enjoy their paan and ghutka at corner paan stall. And you know, people are always in hurry crossing the road, banging the horns. They are more aggressive on road. Few days back, on the same crossing, I put my hand outside the window asking another person to stop so that I could cross the road. Surprisingly he stopped and as another people saw him stopped, they also stopped.  It was my duty to thank him. I did by it by saluting him. Next day the same car was coming, I thought the person yesterday stopped, let me stop today. And he waived his hands thanking me. Now we both know each other at least by face and help each other to cross the road without pushing our accelerators. Someday I do, next day he does.

Off course, the traffic problem is still there, but whenever coincidence happens and he is on the road on same day, we both make our life simple, juts by respecting each other. This is working.

Why always be aggressive when not required. Apply the mind and let’s be human…

Self Instructions

Instruct your mind positively...

“Keshava, what are you doing? Please check first and then enter into the system…” one of the accounts officer in my organization was speaking with himself (or computer?) while making some entries in the system. I was behind him. I asked, “What is this Keshav? To whom you are speaking with.” He laughed. His colleague seating next to him told me that it is his regular practices. Sometimes they get confused by his self –talking.

Our mind is powerful and believes on what we do, what we say. Self-instruction is a very powerful but simple tool to make your life happy.

Normally self-instruction is used in education systems considering the students’ ability of one to cognitively plan, organize, direct, reinforce, and evaluate one’s own independent learning without a teacher's prompting. In our day to day job, we need to work without the support of seniors or peers and not necessary they have the time to teach you everything what’s happening in the organization.

However Self instructions here I mean to say is to instruct positively to the mind. Our mind is powerful in bring the positivity in our life.

If you are driving towards the office and you see the traffic on the road is moving fast. You have two options, either to curse the situation or keep the mind cool and wait. You have meeting and you need to go at office on time. How to keep the mind cool? Here just instruct your mind by speaking with yourself. “Oh, the road is jam, but what I can do now? Send the message to boss first and keep your mind cool dear. It is not your fault XXX (you name). The road is with full of idiots.” and laugh. Make the situation funny. You will see the difference. It is the choice of yours’ and you need to choose positive option.    

How to do that?

1.      Identify the situation: Situation can be anything. From you day to day issues to professional ideas. E.g. traffic is jam; you need to prepare the report for the boss; or you have to give the presentation to the critical customer.   

2.      See the positive side: Check the positive side of the situation. Traffic is jam but traffic police is already there. Or can I come out and do something? Or Oh I am ready for the presentation and boss is with me in case of any problem.

3.      Instruct your mind: This is a self-instruction phase. Make the positive statement and alternate plan in case of failure. Instruct yourself what actually you need to do and tell yourself everything good about the situation. Just start the conversation with yourself with positive affirmations. Have a good talk. You are instructing your inner, (subconscious) mind.

4.      Enjoy the event: Life has its own destiny. It will not work always as per your expectation. One think in your hand is to enjoy every moment in life. See around and enjoy the faces of people. Relate them to some analogy, animal or birds. Comment on such situation and people involved there. Make a next plan. Tell your mind what is your next plan and how are you going to implement that.

Life and time are the two best teachers. Life teaches us to make good use of time and time teaches us the value of life.

Find out some time...

It's all about Life Management…

People always ask me about my different activities. I write blog and articles. Colleges and institutes call me as a speaker. Sometimes I spend my time with NGOs and also involved in CSR activities. This all is done after office hours. In professional life there are lot many tasks which are beyond my JD and still I perform with passion.

 “How you get the time to write all this?” One of the friends asked me.

“I don’t get the time, I find out the time.” I answered.

We all run with the time. Sometimes we also don’t know what we are doing. People have great excuse of time always. People really work hard but getting some time is dream for all. This is all about the attitude towards our life.

Here I remember the statement of famous person, “Assign responsibilities who have lot of work, people who just say that they do not have time for doing something, will not do the job best.” Fact is you will not get the time anyways, but the reality is if you find the time for something, you will definitely get the time.

This is all about the attitude towards life. If you have positive attitude about the time, time will be there to support you. The question is how you go the extra mile. Sometimes we do not challenge ourselves. I am involved in budgeting exercise. Making budget and then aligning with the finance is real challenge. We have different styles. In past I use to spend almost 10 days in making the budget. Today I complete the budge within 2 days without errors. In past I was doing hard work and now I do the smart work, the result is more time for more value added activities. I recognize that my time is very important to the company. I need to spend my time on relevant value added tasks. However I even can’t delegate the budget exercise to team members as it involves lot of confidentiality and integrity. So what I did, I made a programmed excel file, where I just need to put the relevant percentage for increment as per the cost center and whole calculations are done automatically.

I have seen, people actually spending time on the tasks which can be handled with effective technical knowledge. Actually, you need to be innovative. Every morning when I go in the office, I ask one question to myself, how can I improve, innovate and change today.

How many times, we go extra mile and push ourselves? When I decided that I have to find out time for some other activities, I push myself. Coaching you team for taking more responsibilities and delegating some activities will definitely help. For getting some personal time, I started to cut my sleep by ½ hour by every morning.  

There is everything available on Time Management, but we will not get the time by just reading such references. We actually need to go extra mile and push our attitude..

Hence first find out some time to get the time. After all Life is not about finding yourself, Life is about creating yourself.