I am writing this after just having listened to Sundar Pichai’s speech at AI Impact Summit at Bharat Mandapam.
And it made me think how leaders speak.
Their words are measured. They talk about the things they are doing. They bring their team along. They do what they do the best and are not about becoming the best at everything else (like Sundar does not care on speaking by memorising). And, they inject a little bit of humour too here and there.
Even though all of this is practised, someone who does not believe in these things could not ever execute them so well.
It reminds me of the Wankhede WC trophy celebration, when the Indian Mens Cricket Team had returned from Barbados after winning the T20 Word Cup 2024. There was a clip that went viral on the internet of the entire team singing “Maa Tujhe Salaam”, where Virat and Hardik were at the front. Someone from the audience threw their t-shirt at Hardik, and the other players behind him started laughing off at that gesture. But Virat, Virat Decent Kohli did not even happen to notice it. Or perhaps did not find it worth laughing off. If that is not leadership, I don’t know what is. Not to forget, he was not the “official leader” anyway.
Leadership is a choice you make, and the choice that eventually becomes a part of you instead of being just a loose creature.
We all are strong enough to draw boundaries. We all have drawn boundaries. Everyone at work can treat us a certain way. And not treat us a certain way.
But when our parents critique us, we are liberal with them. We don’t raise our voice, mostly not even our concern. That is our love for their love, I guess.
What I am trying to say is that at a subtle level we all love being critiqued by our parents. We look forward to it. We crave it. It keeps us on our toes. As it should.
In 1947, my grandparents bought their first home after partition. My father, uncles and aunts (aka Buas) were born and raised there. So was I and every single one of my siblings/cousins.
Around the year 2000, both my uncles vacated their parts of the house. Ten years ago, in 2016, my parents also moved out from that house to the new one they currently live in. Yet they decided to keep the old one, for the memories.
But life has a way of serving you surprises when we least expect it. Around the pandemic, our business suffered a bit to an extent that my father was finding it difficult to pay the EMIs. I was also going through a career change and was in a similar situation. Now the situation is very different for both of us, but it wasn’t the case in 2020-21.
My father eventually decided to sell off the old home, pay off the loan of the new home, and not worry about EMIs every month. We did exactly that. For the first few months, he was trodden with guilt and helplessness. He unfortunately thought he could not even save a home.
Over time, I think he sort of moved on. My mom kept nudging him that no house was worth trading for his peace of mind and mental and physical health. To me it is the boldest thing my father has done ever.
I can say he moved on because some two years ago he sat all of us sisters down and told his life regrets. Notwithstanding what he said, I am glad the house was not one of them. I would like to hope so at least.
The reason I am sharing this with you is that sometimes we are all stuck to our childhood way too much. In a way we do not even realise. Truth be told, it still blows my mind away that till date whenever I have dreams that have my family, they are always in that old house and never in the “new” one which is a decade old now.
I see so many people stuck to some part of their childhood things, pieces of past that aren’t pristine anymore, and even houses that are homes long gone. At some point, it all makes sense to move on. At least from things we have zero control over. My father still is filled with lores of how things used to be when his parents were around. And that’s fine too. It’s a part of him. Yet he is someone who is always planning for the future, making things happen, giving us advices which he wish he had.
This is the picture of the ruins of the house that used to be our home, after it was sold. I haven’t shown it to anyone in my family ever (the irony of posting it on social media is not lost on me lol).
But we are so much beyond and better than the things we owned, the things we had and the things we could be.
Once we know that, we create a version we could have been but never were. It is all in our choice, in our agency, of what we pick from the past and use it in our present to enslave our future or to enlarge it.
Most of us have to make that choice every single day.
A picture of a team offsite pops up on my social media feed. The team is decked up in a queue filling their plates from the buffer lunch.
It makes me wonder, so much of the wonders in our lives are a consequence of breaking the queue of what everyone else does.
If you eat healthy, you will carry your dabba from home to eat along with your colleagues. You have broken the queue.
If you want to get a job, you will reach out to the decision maker in the company. Instead of waiting for the HR to get back to you. You have broken the queue.
If you want to sit at home and do meetings only if you want to, step-by-step you will build a client base, a home office, a pipeline of work that supplements exactly that. It might mean you have to break the chain of job hopping in lieu of creating a life on your own terms, but with wisdom, work and working on the side with your main job, you have broken the queue.
So much of life is about remembering the fact that when you go inside instead of following the world outside, you have broken the queue. And that is exactly what life is about.
When we go out there into the world, it is a fact that not everyone will agree with you or resonate with you.
Sometimes things may go worse and you might not have the easiest conversation with your client.
I would still say it is not the most mature thing in the world to go out there on social media and put out a version of “I was good. My client was bad.” In most cases it also projects you as a reactive human who lets their emotions get the better of them.
Learning the lessons, using those lessons in future assignments and learning to draw your boundaries are some of the ways you can escape the same tyranny again.
Being the torchbearer of someone else’s flaws never helped anyone, including the flawed.
It breaks my heart to see writers I have been following for over a decade to succumb to writing their books via AI.
They perhaps seem to think that no one is noticing. Or that writing via AI would make their writing (presumably) better. Spoiler: It isn’t. Or that they think that they should outsource writing to an LLM and do something more meaningful themselves.
I only wonder, if a author thinks something else is more important than writing, what is the point of even playing that game?
As a reader (and writer and a book ghostwriter of bestsellers that have never used a single word of AI), here is what I think:
That the author did not do the emotional labour to think through the difficult parts of the book.
That the author did not have the understanding of their own thoughts, let alone providing the clarity to their audience.
That the author really does not care about a connection with the audience, and all they care about is capitalising on their past success, which was either through their previous works or millions of followers.
Art was hard even when Shakespeare used to write. Art is hard now even when we write on laptops lighter than Shakespeare’s pen. It is the journey of going through that hard which makes art worth consuming.
If one of your life goals is to grow in your career, you have to be ambitious.
To take on one thing or the ten things you do with the zeal and zing that no one but you could have, that people would love to work with you.
Please know, this does not mean killing yourself and working 18-20 hours a day. Even if you work 2 hours a day, work like everyone watching you would pause to say “this is what work and worship looks like”.
The world already has too many people thinking there are too little jobs. I’d rather go and say there are too many jobs for people who really care. It all begins with us, like it always has.
The world will prescribe you everything you cannot get to getting what you really want.
Every day, you have two choices:
To listen to the world and shut your inner voice.
Pretend to listen to the world while you listen to your inner voice, and do what you know in your bones is right.
The first option makes you follow the herd. The second one makes the world fidget first, and then worship you silently.
More than the world, you are in alignment with yourself when you go for what you really want. That alignment could never be provided by a world addicted to a paved path.
If you really want it, you will really make it happen. And eventually the world will follow along. They have no choice but to.
And here we are, forgetting all the magic and hugging our screens or our blankets. Magic is found in the moments we show up to, instead of choosing to curse our life like the rest of the world.
If someone suffered because of you, you are responsible. Even if “they could have made a better choice”.
If someone is following up with you but you are unable to do the thing, it makes practical sense to buy some time. Leaving someone hanging even though they are much better off than you never solves the problem.
If you think you can do a task by tomorrow, take time for two days. Just in case the task doesn’t get done, at least you have a buffer.
Accountability is a wise man’s armour to relationships and reliability. People too busy to look beyond themselves cannot usually afford it.
A book by an author who did not want to simply replicate their Instagram ideas onto paper.
Books written because the author could not not write the book.
Short-form online content was made to make your interest quiver and your focus narrower. Depth resists and wins over instant gratification every single day. And with that depth, every short form content (like a blog or one-liners) also come out to be meaningful.
Our existence has to find a destination beyond scrolling.
All my life, I have run away from Sudoku. Like run away. Never ever tried the ones that used to be a daily feature in newspapers. Cringed at people who did them. Never fathomed myself to be able to solve them.
But then some 10-15 days ago I tried a Sudoku (easy version) in the NYT games app, and quite liked it. (Also, because I was able to solve it.)
Doing it consistently over the past few days, and it has taught me some lessons too:
There is always a hint. You have to be open enough to look at it.
If a number is not showing any hint, move on to the next number. True for life also. But there is a hint, a small door somewhere.
If a game could be won, you could be the one winning it too. If you are interested and committed enough. This is particularly true for life because not everything is going to be a piece of cake. You have to be lovingly passionate and committed to the game in order to win it.
Look at all the options. Clearly. A hurry is more often the reason for an error more than a wrong judgement.
The best part is also the fact that you might gain a sharper brain in the long run by doing Sudoku, but I would happily outsource that to reading good books. Other than that, do it for entertainment. And know the game you are playing. Instead of just blindly copying someone else.
A couple of months ago I lost the keys to my car. It’s a new car. Like 6 months old. Not the fate I wanted to land into.
It reminded me of my previous car too. Whose first pair of keys had landed into the same fate perhaps a year down.
So this time I decided to do something different.
I told myself that I will find the keys somehow. Each time I was reminded of the keys, I visualised myself telling my landlord uncle with celebration that I found the keys. I kept visualising this scenario about “finding the keys and telling my uncle” each time I was reminded of the keys. Other than him, I told no one about the lost keys.
Note that the car was still being used with the other key. The goal was to find the first key back.
Lo and behold, I found the keys at one of the places I used to keep the keys at, but had stopped doing that lately. I don’t know why I had stopped doing that. Also, I found those keys because I knew like I knew like I knew I would find the keys, and never stressed about “not finding it”. I just let go, and I knew.
So much of life is just that. If we just keep manifesting, instead of “not hitting it right in week 1”. You are always manifesting. Why not manifest the right things anyway?
And too little time spending time alone, thinking and going within.
The former makes you confused, entangled and left with “no options”.
The latter gives you clarity, a beeline to the solution, and a joy that most people hardly experience their entire lives. But often this decision is harder than the first one in the short term. So most people don’t even tread that path.
The ones who do, are rewarded with courage, calmness and eventually way more cash.
Divorcing chaos should be a course everyone must be taught in college.
One, helplessness. “What can I do?” Deciding outright that you have no power to change anything, and thus, succumbing to victim mode.
Two, responsibility. “What can I do?” You understand things have not been working as expected, and you are curious to help. You know that sometimes one step of help and understanding towards positive change is more than enough.
You can do a lot. Or you cannot. The best thing is you are the one who decides, regardless of what is happening.
Yes someone acted out of character and hurt you badly. They made you diffuse your trust in them. They did something that you know would hurt you.
But till when would you hold your hostility towards them?
It is wise to know better and act better the next time. But for now, just let yourself be easy.
If you think you being easy would make you think you are easy to lose your power, you are making that come true by clinging on to anger. Read that again.
Learn the lesson. Let go. And let love be your forever nature. Someone else’s wrong should make you even more right. It should not turn you wrong too.
