#PictureStory 6 : Riot

Let the clouds pass by. Let the sea call out to them. Let the sun create a riot of colours. And just feel lucky to witness this magic unfold in front of your eyes!

Pic Details: Clicked at the a Bang Tao Beach in Phuket in August, 2014

#PictureStory 5 : Clouds

As mountains and with our peaks, we thought that we stood tallest amongst all! That was our pride.

But today, as these planes fly above us, we accept with all humility that it is stupid to ever think that there is no one above you, because that is when you will be proven wrong.

Pic details: Clicked on a flight from Kathmandu to Delhi in Sept, 2014

#PictureStory 4 : Solitude

Today the kids have not come to play. All of us stand in solitude. We are not sure whether to enjoy this rain and great weather or to miss those kids and their laughter who find joy in hanging around us.

Pic Details: Clicked at Lavasa, India in July, 2014

#PictureStory 3 : Fiery

They say humans have mood swings. I say I have far more mood swings than humans. I change mood every month, every day and sometimes every few hours too!

Don't even attempt to understand my mood. You will fail miserably. Today I show you my fiery mood!

Pic details: Clicked on a flight from Phuket to Bangkok in Aug, 2014

#PictureStory 2: Fairy tale

I am not a part of any imagination or an illustration from a kid's fairy tale. I am a place that exists. Very few people visit me and I prefer it that way.

Pic Details: Clicked in Brugge, Belgium in 2012.

#PictureStory 1: Stability

As clouds travelled in one direction and cars travelled in another, it was the tree that stood its ground showing how life can move to and fro, but it is the stability within that allows you to face it all!

Pic details: Clicked at Worli Seaface, Mumbai

Don’t Fall for That Resolution Trap!

Image Source: www.forbes.com

Yes, you read that headline right. Another year is here upon us and there will be people all around you talking about their New Year resolutions, flaunting them like gold medals only to be disappointed a few weeks or months later when they fail to keep up with their resolutions. 

Statistics worldwide have shown that only a small percentage of people are able to keep their resolutions, while most of them start faltering and then feeling miserable. One of the best proofs of that is in the increase in the number of gym memberships at the start of the year and then the actual number of people really coming to the gym from the third month onwards. 

Resolutions are inherently flawed as they are set on the premise that you cannot break them and the minute they are broken, people tend to think that they cannot be fixed or mended resulting in disappointment with oneself, waiting for yet another year with another set of resolutions to conquer. 

I stopped keeping resolutions many years back when I realized about this flaw. I believe that a ‘Theme’ based approach for the year is a more powerful way of achieving something because there is no concept of breaking it. You keep doing things and moving forward with a theme-based approach and every incremental gain is another step closer to your goal. 

Let me explain by sharing with you all the Theme that I have chosen for myself for 2019. My theme for this year is ‘Value and Growth’. So, everything that I do should help me in delivering Value or Growth. 

Now it is important to elaborate further on what I want to do to stay true to this theme: 

1. Increase my own value intellectually, financially and emotionally: As you can see, through this single statement, I can push my boundaries on my knowledge, my reading, my relationships and my investments. 

2. Give value to people through knowledge, content and charity: It is not only about the value that I seek for myself but the value that I give out to others and there are various ways to do it. I can give my professional knowledge to my juniors and people I know or work with, I can share content on social media and digital platforms to known and unknown people which they find valuable, and I can give value back to society through financial support or any other kind of support to people who need it and do not have the means. 

3. Growth for self, for others and for the organisation that I work for: I can grow significantly and also be the catalyst of growth for others – people and companies by following points 1 and 2 consistently throughout the year. 

Now as you can see, everything that I do or achieve will only help me in staying true to my theme and by the end of the year, I will only feel nice about the distance I have travelled rather than feeling miserable about a resolution that I broke. 

So, what will your theme for the year going to be? 

Elon Musk - The Game Changer

One of my previous line managers gifted a book on Elon Musk to me a few years back. The book was called 'Elon Musk - How the Billionaire CEO of SPACEX and TESLA is shaping our Future' by Ashlee Vance.

Although the title and the topic seemed very interesting, but yet for some reason, I was not able to come around and read this book until now. I am so glad that I was finally able to get the time to finish reading this book. It is a great #biography on a man who is on a mission. A mission to change the world, to do what has not been done till now, to challenge the status quo and to ultimately make lives better for humans – directly and indirectly.

This book is a great insight into the person and the personality that Elon Musk is. Not everything is good and wonderful about him. It is clear that he is not an easy person to work with or work for. However, what you tend to appreciate is his genius mind, his thinking ability, his challenging mindset and his clarity of goals. The way he sees interconnections between the work on rockets, cars and solar energy and how he and his team apply learnings from one industry to another is quite fascinating!

I have always enjoyed watching some of the #TED talks and TED interviews of Elon Musk as well as his key team members. In fact, for the past many years, I have been in awe of the kind of work that #Musk and his companies are doing, but when you go deeper into their journey, their obstacles and their plans, you tend to understand and appreciate it much better. I would hope to see these companies churn out more path breaking initiatives in the years ahead and change the world for the better.

Finally, a big thumbs up from my side to this book as Ashlee Vance has written it quite well, getting interviews, opinions and anecdotes from people who have interacted with Elon Musk and been in some part of his life, either in a good way or bad way.

Open that Jam Bottle to enjoy its Sweet Taste

Have you ever been in a situation where you were keen to enjoy the taste of jam from a jam bottle that you were trying to open, but somehow you were not able to enjoy its sweet taste once the bottle was opened? 

Source: https://www.graphicsfuel.com/2016/01/jam-bottle-mockup-psd/

Now before you start imagining what I am trying to say, let me give you two scenarios: 

Scenario 1: You have guests over at your place and at the breakfast table, you decide to open a new bottle of jam. Imagine that you are using all your strength in twisting the lid of that jam bottle. You are huffing and puffing, your arm has started to pain and yet that lid does not open. You look around and hand over the bottle to the person sitting next to you, requesting her or him to open the bottle. She/he now applies a similar tactic like yours and Voila! Within a few seconds, the lid opens; there is a smug smile on the face of the person who opened the bottle. Everyone around applauds the effort of that person and looks at you sympathetically with a presumption that you do not have the strength that is needed to open a jam bottle. What you nor does anyone else know, is the fact that with all your efforts, the lid had started loosening from the neck and if you had persisted, you would have been able to open the lid within another a few seconds. 

Scenario 2: You are busy applying your strength to open the jam bottle and someone comes and offers help. You gladly hand over the bottle. As expected, the bottle opens soon. The person who helped you now starts telling the entire world that it was he or she who opened the bottle and not you, even though it was your job to open the bottle. They take the entire credit without bashing an eyelid. 

Does this sound familiar to you? Has it ever happened with you? 

In life as well as in organizations, this common situation happens to many people. Some people learn fast and avoid such situations while there are others who keep falling in the same situation repeatedly. 

Here are a few simple tips and suggestions that can help you to open that jam bottle and enjoy its benefits completely: 

1. Do not give up: This one is easier said than done. I do understand that there would be situations and times when you think that you have tried all possible solutions and yet you are not able to move forward. That is exactly the time when you need to draw your utmost inner strength and continue finding ways to achieve a task or overcome a problem. Remember, there are chances that the lid has started loosening from the neck. You do not want to miss the great tasting jam at this stage. 

2. Be careful of who you seek help from: If you have been a victim of your jam bottle credit being taken by someone else, then you should know who are the people who will happily open the botte and give it back to you without even mentioning it to anyone. These are the ones who deserve genuine thank you. You would also know the ones who would love to help in a situation, but would then let the entire world know. You should not be asking for help from them at all. 

3. Give enough visibility of your project milestones: If your project has high stakes which means, that if delivered it can help the company move forward in a significant way, then there are chances that people will come forward to help and soon they will be talking as if they are the ones leading the project. To avoid such situations, it is extremely important to share key milestone achievements of the project with various stakeholders at different stages of the project so everyone knows who the commander of the ship is and how you are steering the ship forward even though the other person might claim credit to the project. 

4. Confront the person: If a person is repeatedly doing this to your projects, it is best to sit down and confront the person. Understand the reason of their behavior, their concerns with you and let them know your discomfort. You will be surprised that sometimes they may not even realize what they are doing and how it is affecting you and just bringing it to their notice can work. 

What I have mentioned above is quite simple and obvious but sometimes it is the simple and the obvious that gets missed out in the chase of the complex and difficult. I hope that these suggestions help you to enjoy the sweet taste of your jam more often. This is not an exhaustive list, and depending on your circumstances, you would discover other ways and means of enjoying your jam and I would be happy to know some of the suggestions that you may want to offer.

2018 is ready for you. Are you ready for it?

Another year is behind us. Another year is ahead of us. It is a matter of how you look at things, how you look at life. As some say ‘The glass if half full’ whereas some others say ‘The glass is half empty’. None of the two statements is wrong, but it is a matter of perspective, and perspectives, dear readers, can change for you depending on the context, your frame of mind, your situation in life. Who says that if you see the glass as half full today does not mean that you cannot see the glass as half empty tomorrow? Maybe you would, maybe you wouldn’t. 

Coming back to where I began….another year is behind us and another year is ahead of us. The question is whether you want to look back and reminisce in nostalgia or look forward and see the frontiers that lie ahead. In my opinion, reflecting on the past is not wrong, but the past should be like that rear-view mirror in the car that you would look at every now and then to avoid any mistake. Rear-view mirror is there to guide you and let you know about the cars behind you and the pace at which they are coming, to ensure that you are not blocking someone’s way and to enable you to change lanes without harming yourself or someone else. However, you cannot drive a car and move ahead by just looking at the rear view mirror, but rather by looking ahead at the road, the signals, the signboards, the speedometer, the lanes…

2018 is that road ahead. Every day, every week and every month are those signals, those signboards and those lanes that you need to traverse to keep moving forward. There will be traffic in the form of distractions, things that will take away a lot of your time and slow you down but are not the ones helping you to move ahead. You will have to navigate through them, be patient yet firm with them, be willing to avoid them through alternative routes yet always remember that you cannot let go of them completely. 

What is important is that on 31st Dec, 2018, when you look back from where you started and where you have come, that is the time you should reflect on your journey, feel proud of the distance you have traveled, the road blocks that you have overcome and once again say and say it proudly ‘Another year is behind us’. 

Cheers to a great 2018. Let the road ahead lead to many milestones that you cross - slowly but surely.

Why Don't You Write?

`Why don’t you write these days? It has been a while since you wrote something.`

He did not have a response. He knew he was guilty. Guilty to her and guilty to himself. There were thousands of stories within him, hundreds of poems bubbling, waiting to be leashed out and a string of words that came into his dreams every night, but yet there was something that was stopping him. Was it the famous writer’s block? Was it inertia and laziness? Was it distractions that gave him instant gratification without much effort in comparison to writing which took its own time and effort and the gratification wasn’t even guaranteed?

Yet, whenever she would ask him innocently on why he wasn’t writing these days, he felt as if he owed it to her to sit down and write something. It was even ironic that while he himself was struggling to write, he kept pushing her to write every now and then and she would oblige by coming up with the most beautiful stories that were recognizable and relatable to all, stories that resonated with its readers, stories that stripped the outer layer of human emotions that were all made up and went deeper. It was as if she had access to the realms of people that they themselves weren’t aware of, but yet, every time they would read what she had written, it would leave them with a pang of pain, a sense of moral dilemma or deep pathos that made them sit back and reflect.

He was her biggest critic as well as her biggest admirer. He would read lines and words in her story that would make him wonder in awe on how she thinks, what brings to the surface such deep lines and how she surprises him by going one step further in her craft than what he would think is her limit.  Oddly, he would feel proud that she belonged to him and loved him, that she had the purest heart which got reflected in her stories, that she wrote on his insistence every time and yet his writer mind would also feel a tinge of jealousy. He would happily tell the world that she writes and would urge others to read what she wrote and yet he would wish that someday his craft would get sharper enough to stand next to hers. He knew there was some distance to be covered, he knew that her writing was the spark that he needed every now and then to improve his writing but what he kept forgetting was that to even come close to her, he had to write first.

Why don’t you write these days was a question that she asked him innocently but she didn’t know that it started the rusting machinery once again. 

Swimming in the Shark Tank for Lessons

“Television is an idiot box” was a term that was coined decades back, but this is so far from truth today than it could ever be. Today, television informs, educates, inspires, trains and does so much more.

They say that if you want to swim with the sharks, then you better be a good swimmer and a good communicator because sharks are not the gentle and docile creatures that dolphins are, and one wrong step can turn out to be fatal. This brings me to one of the shows that I am hooked onto – Shark Tank.

Before you read any further, if you have not seen Shark Tank, then click on the links below and have a look at a few of these episodes:

Shark Tank: Season 8, Episode 15 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IromI9Nyfuc

Shark Tank: Season 8, Episode 17: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipyc0-V0kR0

This show is in its 8^th Season and it is only growing bigger with more sharks coming into the show. As you would have seen, this show is all about dreams. One person dreams, comes to the show to sell his/her dreams and the sharks then invest in his/her business if they see merit and value in his/her dream.

I believe that there are lessons in this show for everyone, whether you are a businessman, a venture capitalist, a startup entrepreneur , a corporate employee, a marketer, or a student.

I have tried to put together a list of lessons that I think anyone and everyone can get from watching Shark Tank:

1. Presentation: One of the key lessons that you learn from watching Shark Tank is the different styles and ways of presenting your idea. Some present their ideas the way they would in a serious corporate Board Room, whereas some others go over the top and present their ideas with complete playacting, costume and voice modulation. Some others use their props in a smart manner and make it a part of their presentation like this person:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N4v17aWzjs

The lesson here is that there is no right or wrong way of presentation as long as you are able to tell your story to the audience and make them feel involved.

2. Negotiation: In life, irrespective of what you do, you come across situations where you have to negotiate with someone else. The amount of negotiation may be big or small, but if you do not want to be shortchanged, it is important that you know proper negotiation skills that involve knowing when to draw the line, when the other person is pulling a bluff on you and when the person will take your bait or leave it. Shark Tank will teach you amazing skills in negotiation not only from the sharks who are experts at this, but also from people who have come to sell their ideas. The best parts in the show are when either of the two parties are raising or dropping the bait to see who falls first. It gives you a good insight into human psychology and how desperation makes people do stupid things or how false bravado makes them miss their deals.

3. Innovation: The entire premise of this show is built around innovation. The sharks are not interested in investing in your business if you bring them run of the mill stuff which does not have a competitive advantage or where the barriers of business are too low. This show opens your mind to the world of innovation and the kind of ideas that people are coming up with. It changes your perspective on categories and makes you think on a different dimension.

4. Consumer Insight: The most creative and innovative idea is a waste if it is not built on a strong consumer insight. Every idea should solve a problem/cater to the need in the consumers’ life, even if the consumer is aware or not aware of that problem or need at that point of time. The kind of ideas that people come up with in this show and the genesis behind the creation of those ideas gives a fantastic lesson on how consumer insight can be mined or formed. Sometimes, the insight that the presenter presents on a category seems like an Aha moment because it is so obvious and yet it never struck you or any other company so far.

5. Vision and Valuation: It is important in life to know your worth and for others to be able to see your worth. Shark Tank is a great place to see how people are able to carve out a vision, value themselves and their vision and then ask for the sharks to invest in their vision. Sometimes the sharks agree with the vision and valuation and sometimes they do not and they give advice to the presenters on what the right value should be. Some of them agree whereas some of them take this on their chin with a clear agenda to prove the sharks wrong.  

6. Marketing: There are people on Shark Tank who come with sales figures already running in millions and it is a delight to hear their marketing approach on achieving these figures and reaching out to their audience. If you are smart, you can easily take some of those marketing ideas and adapt it to your own job or category.

7.  Selling: I began my lessons by talking about presentation but Shark Tank will also teach you that while a great presentation is helpful, you can still sell your idea or your business if you are a great salesperson. While a good presentation is normally a prerequisite, but even if that is not your forte, as long as you know your business and your passion and you are able to serve the fusion of this business acumen and passion to the sharks on a platter, their money is for yours to grab. “I’m Out” is one of the statements that no person presenting to the sharks ever wants to hear and only a good salesperson can avoid that.

I am confident that these are not the only lessons that Shark Tank teaches you and am sure that you would have your own lessons from this show. I would be glad to know what those lessons are so please let me know what lessons have you learnt from Shark Tank.

One thing that surprises me is that how come, India being a country of so many start-ups doesn’t have a show like this yet, or is it that a show like this exists and I am not aware of it. Do you guys know of any such show?

Respect - What It Means

Respect. It may seem like a simple seven letter word, but it is powerful enough to be seen as a complete sentence as well. Respect condenses within itself the power to sustain many relationships, it contains within itself the ability to show other people your emotions about how you feel about them, about a situation or even about someone you may not know personally. 

Let me explain myself a bit. One of the foundations of any relationship is the presence of respect in that relationship. Right from our childhood, we are taught that we need to respect our parents, our teachers and our elders and those are the building blocks of our relationship with them. Respect is the adjective that you use when you want to address people from stage. It could be “Respected Guests” or “Respected Judges” and that is the badge value of respect. 

Go deep into the healthy relationships of any couple and they will tell you that the reason our relationship is so strong is that we respect each other. Many broken relationships occur because one of the partners did not respect the other. 

In a professional set up, respect as a value comes into play once again and people like to work for organizations and bosses that respect them.

The beauty of respect is that it does not differentiate between strangers and familiarity or between gender or hierarchy. You could respect someone you do not know as much as how much you would respect people you know. When you react to a video of a friend who has done something that is admirable, you show respect for that. Similarly, when a soldier of your country shows an act of valour to protect you and your borders, you show respect for that as well, even though you may not know the soldier personally.

Respect is something that needs to be earned and one has to work hard for it. Often, our heroes earn our respect because of their acts and deeds, and sometimes they earn this respect at different stages of their lives. No one knew Malala Yousafazai when she was a young student until the time she got shot by the Taliban and then became a Pakistani activist at a young age. The world started respecting her from then on. Nelson Mandela become a worldwide respected personality only after he was sentenced to life imprisonment at the age of 44. 

              Respect is for those who deserve it and not for those who demand it.

While it is difficult to earn respect, it is extremely easy to lose respect. We see this many times when our heroes and our idols fail us and our first reaction is “I have lost all respect for him or her.” World famous cyclist Lance Armstrong lost lot of respect of his fans when he confessed taking drugs to improve his performance.  

They say that knowledge is power but it is respect that defines your character. A true character of a person gets reflected when he speaks ‘respectfully’ not only to his seniors or people who are higher than him in the economic society but also to his juniors and to people who are lower than him in society. So you may be very successful in life and maybe earning a lot of money but if you do not have the respect of others and if you do not show respect to others, then you are still very poor.

Another aspect of respect is that it is not only outward driven, but it is also inward created. That is what self-respect is – the respect that you give to yourself as an individual and that is a sacred wall that no one can trample on, because when people trample on that, it causes lot of hurt.

As the saying goes:

               Respect is earned. Trust is gained. Honesty is appreciated. Loyalty is returned.

While you may be a trustworthy person, a loyal person, an honest person but you would never call yourself self-good, self-loyal or self-honest but you wouldn’t shy away from calling yourself a self-respecting individual. That is the power of ‘Respect.’