Tag: people

Knowing Yourself, Life

The only problem with our problems

The only problem with our problems is we think we shouldn’t have them.
We, thus, go about hiding them from others.
In so doing, we aren’t doing well either – neither at work nor outside of work.

What’s the solution, then?

The solution is to tell those around you, that you are going through some problems, that might not make you your 100%.
If we don’t tell them and try to do whatever we can, “whatever we can” becomes our default standard.

This is not who we are.
And living life as someone else, helps no one else.

Manager

Making of a manger 3.0

Life lessons from being a manager:

1. You can be kind and assertive. You must be.

2. Raising your words and calming down your words is the balance you have to know.

3. Trust people, but push them to be better.

4. You don’t need to be on email and WhatsApp all the time.

5. You cannot be friends with your colleagues. You can either be friends or get strict work done. Can’t do both.

Manager

Making of a Manager: 2.0

Since I’m juggling with my new role as a manager, I’m documenting all my experiences in this category of my blog.

Some recent life lessons:

  1. No one will value your time unless you do.
  2. Kindness is superpower.
  3. Be prepared for every type of issues. It will make you calmer.
  4. Give away the credit.
  5. Trust, but verify
  6. Appreciate in public. Criticise in person.
  7. Keep writing. NEVER EVER EVER EVERRR stop.
  8. Empathy. Be there for them. But don’t allow for lethargy in work.
  9. You can be friends and chill around; or get work done. Can’t do both.
  10. When you get work done, though, it does not mean that you have to be rude. You can still be fun and chill, but friendship is another dimension.
  11. Be kind when they screw up. We have NO IDEA what they are going through.
  12. Be honest. Because YOU are watching.
  13. What you think about your team in your head, is what will manifest on the outside.
  14. You don’t HAVE to speak when there is nothing to speak.
  15. If you do not require any follow-up, you are GOLD.
  16. If you follow-up with people when they are supposed to deliver, it shows how diligent you are.
  17. Leave signatures through your work and your vibes.
  18. Measure yourself. Because what does not get measured, is not treasured.
  19. Writing a progress mail to your manager helps. You get to know where you are, and where you could be going.
  20. And, don’t be too harsh on yourself.
Success

How my writing journey began

When I was in Class 6, I wrote my first poetry.

In Class 9, I asked my English teacher: “What shall I do in order for you to give me more than 7 out of 10 marks, in the Writing section?”

In Class 10 and 12, I was the national topper in English language.

In University exams, I got 63 out of 70 in English and Commercial Communication – the only exam I did not study ANYTHING! (Don’t know who the topper was :D)

In the 3 months vacation after giving CA exams, I ended up writing my first book!

In 5 years after writing that first book, I was finally able to let go of a stable career as an Internal Auditor and plunge into writing full-time.

What we see that happens suddenly, has years of unseen practice that goes into it.

But here is what I know for sure:

1. Your heart knows it, before you know it.
2. Your life is always showing you signs, it is just you – who has to stop and listen.
3. Your journey is always going to be different from someone who “made it before you.” But still, your journey is yours. And you won’t want it different.

Happiness

They’re not talking?

Do you have someone around you, who is not talking to you?

You’ve tried everything, yet there happens to be some mystery?

I came across this quote of Tony Robbins, that would help:

“The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence.” – Tony Robbins

Read that again. And again.

And then, bless them. And move on!

Life

The art of asking

The best way to ask for a busy person’s time is NOT by asking them when they’re free.

They value their free time more than their “busy time” and would protect it at all costs.

A more effective way is: To ask how they can help, where the response most likely would be a one-liner.

If you convince them to care, they will dig out the time when they are “busy.”

Clients

The best people I work with…

A part of the work I do has these processes:

  • Go through the rough draft the client sent
  • Create a clickworthy post out of it
  • It gets posted on social media.

Mostly, the post is about adding value. Sometimes, that value added comes with some backlash from people (that is one of the secrets of getting viral…more about that later btw :D)

Now, there are two types of people I work with:

  1. Whenever the backlash from people points at the author (aka yours truly), my clients straight away state that they are the author. I love that so so soooo much! Standing as a guard to protect their people. Awesome folks they are 🙂
  2. They highlight a tiny spelling mistake for two consecutive weekly meetings. My writing for them hardly generates any virality. Because what they are always talking about is how will the people that know him, will respond.

I just love the type 1 clients. Never argue with them for money. They pay whatever I ask. Never interfere. Rather I request them to interfere.

Find clients like those, and keep upping your game. You will be left with awe, work you love, and most importantly, self respect.

Career

Why time sheets kill productivity

Organisations have time sheets for their employees to fill.
Which every employee fills with productivity hours.
Not realising, it indeed hampers their productivity.

This is how it works: If an employee works for 8 hours and another one for 5 hours, the first one is more productive.

Except that its not true.

What if the second employee took 30 minutes to nap?
Or went for a walk for an hour that indeed multiplied her productivity?
Or perhaps went to the office balcony and stared at the nature for a few minutes, which indeed let her look at an error that the “8-hour-productive employee” failed to look at?

We all function at different levels of efficiency. But most people term people just as “productive” or “unproductive” on a system that silently makes the productive one also unproductive. Because she cannot do all of that and has to be at work for 8 hours, she will lose her interest, curiosity, and of course, productivity.

The last thing we signed up for, while creating timesheet productivity!

Uncategorized

So much injustice?

Think of a team of 20 people.
All are doing their work.
Some are rockstars, some are just getting along.

But you see the management treating everyone at par.

When you are a rockstar, this might irk you.
Someone else who is not performing is also being treated as well.

But…there comes a time, when things get levelled up.

We’ve all experienced this before.
The question is: What are we experiencing even when we are doing our best work? Envy or happiness?

Clients, Uncategorized

My client ain’t responding!

Last Sunday, my client and I worked on a particular task to be done by him.

Today’s Friday, I didn’t get a response from him so far.

Should I be mad? (No, I don’t do that anymore.)
Should I remind? (Who am I? A primary class teacher who ruins the curiosity of a kid?)
Should I stop doing the work because he didn’t respond? (No, he didn’t hire me to do stuff when everything was going fine, I was hired to figure out stuff even when things weren’t fine.)

So, I went ahead with doing his stuff. Even if it was at 60% output, it was way better than 0% output.

And today he messaged that he delayed because of a due diligence audit.

See – such serious reason and I would have reasoned him to simply avoiding our work.

This not only applies to our professional life, rather also to our personal lives. We are creating mental constructs based on our assumptions of feeling worthless, while the reality is someone is trapped in other physical constructs.

Strange, no? Not really. We get to choose our thoughts baby!

Humour

A peek into my DM’s

People reach out on social media to get work done. Quite normal.

But I don’t do this kinda work 🙂

Some of the reactions of my team members:

1. I have a nibha. I can assist you in writing 🤣🤣🤣

2. I have some unsent letters, lemme know if you want to use them. Doing a giveaway 🙂

3. O boy, ye bhi outsource hota hai?

And many 🤣🤣🤣 emojis.

Have you ever done something weird like this?

Process

Everything but mindset

A friend I know, has been working on YouTube channel of a celebrity. They are a team of four people managing different tasks.

Looking at all of this, an agency approaches them and hires them.

And now the plot twist begins.

The guy who is the main speaker of the videos tries to copy everything of that celebrity.
The way he speaks.
The colours of his clothing.
Video lengths
And of course, the team 🙂

Except just one thing: This celebrity’s mindset. The celebrity’s humility. The celebrity’s wisdom to let people do their own thing instead of dominating them.

So he does all these things the opposite.
Just like all people who want to copy but not emulate.

We all draw our external imageries from people around us. Nothing wrong with it.

However, if we do not work around creating our right vibe and mindset, and just refuse to change, no celebrity would ever be able to help us.

Growth is a personal responsibility. Not something you can pay others and expect to happen with the same old angry and resistant methods.

Emotions

Why so angry, baby?

Anger. The word whose existence kills most relationships.

Even when people are aware that they need to stop getting so angry, why aren’t they able to change it?

Because they want their needs to be met first.

I want to be respected by my friends.
I want to earn more than a colleague.
I should be the priority for getting perks.

I want…

And when we don’t get these things we get bruised in our minds. That inner hurt is reflected as anger, sooner or later.

What if, we try the other way round?

I respect my friends and I know they also love and respect me, even if they don’t express it.
What I earn is right for me and whatever raise I deserve, will come to me.
Everyone is getting all the perks they deserve. It’s us vs me.

It turns out, when we change the inner conversation, the outer and inner anger vanishes.

Guess who is responsible for our anger then?
Guess who has the power to change it?

The power we look for outside, is the inner power we do not use.

People

People do help

If you tell people that you need help, they will reach out to you for helping.

However, we need to see to it that we ask 🙂

People

It pays to NOT be the cool kid

Do you sometimes feel that your hard work isn’t validated?

Let me tell you a story of the cool kid.

It is easy to be the cool kid.

The cool kid does nothing significant.

The cool kid is just hanging around trying to look cool.

Does things that get attention of everyone.

Anything that escapes hard work and still brings in validation is what the cool kid lives by.

Except, that they themselves know they are hollow.

And that’s sad.

Because every effort of theirs is an attempt to look cooler by covering up that hollowness.

And in a sheer suddenness of move, the cool kid does something that they were supposed to do. When they do this, all of a sudden they become cooler. Because no one had expected them to do this!

Isn’t that a “virtuous” cycle?

Friends, we all come across “the cool kids” in every setup, in every work structure that we are a part of.

But you know what?

I have never seen a cool kid being trusted.

Or being entrusted with responsibilities.

Or even being looked forward to as a professional.

We can play around with colleagues. Because their validation was the first thing the cool kid was after.

However, rising higher is always preceded by hard work. Always.

Success

Excuses that shouldn’t exist

The world is filled with wonderful people. And I mean it!

However, it is heartbreaking to see those really capable not hold themselves accountable for everything in their lives.

For example, some of the excuses that are given that shouldn’t exist:

  1. I couldn’t find that influencer’s email:
    O c’mon Bro! Digging out emails, creating permutations and combinations, and checking if the email is right is exactly what uncle Google is your home page. We can find out ANYONE’s email ID, if we are willing to do the research 🙂
  2. You are strong, so you can do it:
    Strong people become strong on the pillar of tons of tears and wisdom of words from the right books to minutest minutes of meditation that we think are insignificant. Being strong is a choice, and this comes from someone who has been through valleys of weakness and now does not allow those weaknesses to touch her.
  3. I have registered this event in my mind:
    Someone does something bad to us once by mistake and we forget all the good they did to us as well as all the time we spent in building that relationship. Is that the value we want to place to the people we love?

We are a product of either of two things: the imaginations we create without a limit or the non-existent limits we place on ourselves daily.

Uncategorized

One drop of poison

If out of four people you liked three people and didn’t like one, it is like having one drop of poison instead of four.

It will still affect you.

The question is, are we giving up our venoms every single day?

Family

Parents and kids

When parents force their grown up kids to do something, kids feel pressured.

When kids finally take their plunge, they feel guilty.

And I want you to know – in either situations, do what is right. It never goes out of style. When you do that, you don’t need to feel guilty. Do your best. And then trust yourself.

Emotions

A weird dream I remember

This morning I had slept again after meditating.

In that sleep, I witnessed two dreams in one. The weird part is, for the first time I remember such a weird dream.

One was from the first guy I (perhaps) loved. I received WhatsApp messages from him dropping me three locations where I would have to “meet” him later during the day. Of course I ignored those messages.

Later when I reflected, it dawned to me that this was the essence of our so-called love: “Meeting” as per his convenience and then becoming absolute strangers.

Another one was from a school friend. In fact, we were never friends in school. Very late, almost 2-3 years ago we connected on Facebook and became sort-of friends. But then he vanished all of a sudden. I was never told why or how, nor was any conversation brought in. He tried bringing his “forwarded messages” into my inbox quite recently but now I was unsure.

It was just friendship from my end. And his as well. But somewhere I always felt he needed something from me. Can’t point out exactly. But there was something. In the dream as well, he took my iPhone from me for making a call and as I moved around a bit, he had already lent my phone to a careless friend of his, who was just playing around with it. It was in a moment of luck that I saw his friend and got my phone back.

That’s it! These were the two dreams. I don’t know what they mean. Except that I do. Here’s what they mean:

  1. I still haven’t forgiven them. As a matter of fact, I didn’t think about either of them for a long long time, yet the subconscious knows everything. Sometimes, to move on, you have the grant the apology even when no one asks for it.
  2. If I still believe in these “shoddy definitions of love”, how will I ever be able to witness the true love that IS me?

That was it! Weird dreams that I weirdly remembered. Perhaps so that I could finally forget them!

Self Love

The manufactured definition of love

Love. Such a beautiful word.
We are born with it. We are not taught how to love. It is our real nature. We come along with it.

We smile at our family and strangers alike.
We talk to anyone and everyone irrespective of their colour or race.
We trust people for who they are.
We forgive quickly.
We are just real, with no judgements, no gossip, and definitely no need to control anyone.

This is who we are when we were born – real and untainted.

Then a terrible thing happened.
We realised the world does not function this way. The world is sadly living in a manufactured definition of love. 

Where we will be loved when we recite a poetry in front of our relatives.
Where we will be loved when we get certain percentage in schools and colleges.
Where we will be loved when we pursue a life choice that isn’t ours but of people who “love” us.
Where we will be loved when we agree to making “love” with a partner otherwise they will question our character.
Where we will be loved by our “friends” if and only if we gossip with them about other friends.

And if we do none of these and walk our own talk, we will not be loved.

Be like him.
Talk like her.
Look at what he has accomplished.

Words and people that were meant to make us rise, end up diminishing our self confidence infinitely. 

And then we wonder why don’t we feel the love we used to feel as a kid.

At this point, each one of us has two choices:

  1.  Fall for this manufactured definition of love, follow the norms others have laid down for you, and be someone who again gives manufactured love. But wait, you will have everyone there with you, to “love” you. Other than you.
  2. Be who you are, being respectful of others yet doing what you feel is right. Own your life, and take the steps that you want to take. It will be easier. But guess what? You will almost always be alone on this journey.

Most of us fall for the first one. Not because we cannot hear our inner voice. But because the external voices of manufactured love will stop coming to us if we love ourselves. And that’s scary.

Very few of us, very very few of us, who take the plunge to love ourselves, live a life of real luxury. There are roadblocks and hurdles at the start, but when you overcome them (and you always do), what comes out is You. Real You. Who is love. Not manufactured. Rather real love. And then solving all problems becomes a skill that gets compounded and works in your favour 🙂

Every single day, we have two choices – be the Real Love or fall for Manufactured Love. It is not a one-time choice. It is a daily choice.

The choices that we make daily, will determine how much real love we become.
And give to the people looking at us to show them how the world works.