Tag: Success

Manager

Making of a Manager 4.0

Life lessons from being a manager:

  1. Your team will always be going through stuff – someone is in an airplane, someone is shifting, someone is occupied, someone will not respond, someone might be going through a break up – and asking them to work might make you feel apologetic. Why? Be the one who is there for them, helps them navigate life without excuses, and more than anything else – lets them shine in every area of life.
  2. Give away credit when you need it the most.
  3. Indulging in gossip groups with a subset of team is disastrous for the team. Not to mention, for you as well. Your team loves you, and you owe it to them to be unbiased.
  4. Taking time off for meditation and sleep isn’t luxury, it is a necessity.
  5. Karma yoga – where you say your affirmations and meditate for one minute – that is where all the magic happens. Doing it or not doing it will decide whether you are effective or impulsive.
  6. You may try your best on people and they may still choose to be angry at you, and then leave the company. If you have a pact of honesty with yourself, you need not feel bad. At all. People have their lives and they own their choices, not your mood.
  7. Chill baby, you have the Brahmastra – God. Everything else, will just fall in place.
Life

Three truths of life

1. You always somehow know what is going to happen next.

2. Keeping yourself busy is the ultimate anecdote to keeping yourself free.

3. Procreate is a cool place 😊

Humour

Ironies of life

There is a wonderful client of mine, whose business is making Ayurvedic drinks.

He once graciously sent me a huge pack of Ayurveda drinks, along with two packs of hot chocolate powder and gourmet coffee.

It turns out, everyone in my family loves hot chocolate powder more. Which comes from an Ayurveda drinks manufacturer. Ironies of life.

The other day, I was having that chocolate shake, while my Mom asked, “You’re still working with this client, right?”

I couldn’t stop laughing. Ironies of life – me who was having it once a month, and my Maa who doesn’t have it either – both trying to love the chocolate product of an Ayurveda manufacturer.

PS: Here’s a pic, of that chocolate shake. Enjoy 😊

People

The saint and the prostitute

There was once a saint who lived up there, in the mountains. To meditate. And think positive thoughts.

In the hut, just opposite to his, used to live a prostitute. Every day, she used to look at the saint and be inspired – as to this is how I should be living my life – filled with positivity, and thinking of God.

Meanwhile, the saint used to look at the prostitute’s house, and think about how she is ruining her life, how her life is terrible, and how he would never want a life like that.

Several years later, they both died.

Up in the clouds, it was decided that the prostitute will go to heaven and the saint will go to hell.

“Why, I was meditating whole day?” rebelled the saint.

Here’s what the administrators up there told them:

It is not what you do, it is what you are thinking about whole day, that makes the difference. While you were busy mocking the prostitute in your mind, she was busy idealising a meditative lifestyle.

It turns out, our thoughts actually run or ruin the world.

Uncategorized

What happens after your time comes?

I read a post of a very successful business owner.
Started his business from scratch – 4 years back.
Quit his handsome day job.
To pursue his passion.

During those days, as he mentioned, his father was asked by a friend about his son. When the father told of him quitting the job, the friend mocked him.

The business owner, who is quite successful these days, went on to add about son of father’s friend, who is now looking for a job due to being laid off during the second wave.

The guy went on to remark about times changing over time 🙂

While time does change, if it also changes you from a humble human to a mocking man, the better things that time brought with itself are of little use.

The real richness is in staying humble. That is when you are able to enjoy the flavours of money.

Money without modesty is a misery.

Life

45 KM per hour

I drove 70KMs yesterday.
All the way to Manesar to my place.
Took 1.5 hours – typically less time, but it was good because the roads were empty, because of Sunday.

If we calculate the average speed, it is 45 KM per hour, as per this.
However, did I drive at that speed?

Not at all.

Rather, for most part of the journey, it was 80-100 KM per hour, due to national highway being empty.

It was rather the slow movement at some traffic signals, that brought down the overall speed.

We all know this. We’ve all experienced this. We are at a place of accepting this.

However, this is what makes life go average:
Small useless insignificant things done small number of times, come down to reduce the overall average of your phenomenal epic performance.

Our days, certainly, aren’t any different from those drives.
The question that might help us, is: Are we setting ourselves up for the 100KM per hour drive, or the 20 KM per hour, that brings the huge average down?

Process

Random life lessons

Haven’t done a life lessons blog in quite some time, so here you go:

  1. You cannot enforce love. Not for people, not for work.
  2. Stay away from having calls during the afternoons. Sleep, baby!
  3. Stretching is as important as (if not more important than) working out.
  4. Sirsasana and sarvangasana are lit.
  5. Ghee khichdi with papad is the ultimate tummy-filler.
  6. Life becomes joyful when you are grateful.
  7. It takes years to get to a place of doing it in seconds.
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.

Thoughts

Pro tips for productivity

  1. Go for a walk to the parking of your home’s building during working hours. We can’t wait for offices to open up, to get our much needed share of outdoors.
  2. Read a lot, baby!
  3. Be kinder than necessary.
  4. Request, instead of dictate.
  5. Apply #4 for yourself as well.
Success

Three things to change your life right now

1. I could list out thirty things

2. But you already know of

3. The One Thing that will change your life.

It is all about what you do right now, once you know that you know.

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.

Art and Creativity

Conversation with an artist

Yesterday I had a conversation with a colleague of mine, who happens to be the video editor.

Of the kind and cute fellow he is, one line stayed with me:

“The only thing I don’t like is bad quality videos.”

Wow!!! That is an artist.
He is willing to learn.
Super happy to have 1000 feedbacks.
Rather DMs me often to share feedbacks.
And, LOVESSSSS his work – and that is visible from his art.

It is such an absolute pleasure to go through his videos.

Life is great when you are surrounded by artists.
Life is wonderful when you choose to be an artist.
Life gets gratefully incredible when you love your art. There is no one who can take it away from you. Unlike people who come and go, the art is a part of our existence.

In the process of making that art come alive, we come alive.
Isn’t that incredible?

Career

It’s been a while

It’s been a while, and all this while, I have been thinking of what I’ve lost. I never knew I loved my old work so much. Who misses work so much?!

Everyone has to lose everything some day. What stays back is how you responded to such losses.

You know what’s the worst part? A friend of mine is dealing with another loss and all this while I have been bringing her back. And she’s recovering quite well, despite the fact that she is the most vulnerable om the weekends.

Another example I see is of Brahma Kumaris. They had a well established network of services in India, when a senior Sister of the organisation was told to leave this and begin her services in London. And as much as she resisted it, her stint in London paved the way for more and bigger services.

Strange how “me” and “mine” works. While in reality, only God is mine. Because I am not this body, I am the observer in this body. That observer is answerable to God – to create karmas that set an example, not something that sets ego boundaries.

Nishtha, no we are not going back. Staying true to your karma is your dharma. And life always moves beyond.

Life

Believe it or not…

Believe it or not, the phone IS responsible for all the problems.

Believe it or not, work from home is causing issues at home and at work.

Believe it or not, we need to be more grateful, not more depressed.

Believe it or not, reading good books does solve all the problems.

Believe it or not, we need to make time for free time daily.

Believe it or not, it will only get better when we make it better.

Believe it or not, meditation, good videos and morning and night affirmations ARE magical.

Believe it or not, but in our hearts, we know that what we spoke above was the truth…

Art and Creativity

The love of the art and the artist

There is this special love between the writer and her writing.

The love that does the extra things that “no one will notice”.
The love that does everything because there are no limitations in true love.
The love that makes you detached because you gave your best.
The love that no one will see or understand, other than the writer and her art.
The love, that transcends the money and validation, because they follow effortlessly.
The love, that comes from within.

The Love, that the writing becomes the writer’s signature.

No one will understand this, unless they have been in love.
No one will value this, because the writer does not crave for that value.
As a matter of fact, it is this privacy that the writer enjoys the most, as writers who love their work would agree 🙂

Knowing Yourself

How slim is too slim?


A few days back, a relative called up on my birthday.
After exchanging pleasantries, they said, “I have heard that you have gotten very slim.”

“Yes, you have heard the truth,” I laughed that off.

“No, but very, very slim I mean,” they shot back.

I used my fun tone again, and asked, “But you would be still commenting on my looks even if I gained a lot of weight!”

“O, even that’s the truth!”

The truth is, no matter what you do, someone will figure a way to raise a question.
If you are kind, someone will ask you to be stern.
If you are stern, someone would want you to calm down.

If you are formal, someone would want you to be more casual.
If you include casual conversations, someone would want you to stick to the point in official meetings.

There are always going to be people raising a question on you.

The question is:
What is YOUR truth?
What do you want to do?

How much weight you want to gain/lose?
How do you want to set up your relationships?
Do you value kindness more than anything else?

And when you know what YOU want, here’s a repetition for the nth time:
It DOES NOT matter what others say.

Some good friends figure out a way to chill.
Most others figure out a way to negatively thrill.
Focus on the former, and life will never be still 🙂

PS: I don’t talk to my relatives per se, but this time I had to, because of my birthday :)))

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, 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!

Books

A relationship of 10 years!

It was June 2011 when my friend dragged me to a seminar after college.

It was “Aadarsh Amdavad”, a 15-day self-help workshop, that consisted of:

  • Daily 2 hour sessions by an acclaimed speaker
  • Had a spectrum of audience instead of a narrow group
  • It did not want us to “get better”, but the way it was designed, ended up making us better.

After that fortnight of daily wisdom, I felt a surge of happiness that I didn’t want to let go of.

So I started walking to Crossword Book Stores near my college, after the workshop got over.

For hours, I would just sit there and read, not knowing I was getting into an affair it would be impossible to get out of.
For hours, I would not care about anything in the outside world, just me and the books.
For hours, daily, it was a retreat from everything else in the world!

That love affair has lead to a lifetime partnership with books now.

More than anything else, keeping myself lost in that world has lead me to find myself, over and over again, peel by peel, page by page.

Here’s to a decade of that relationship 🙂
Here’s to a relationship that is with you ALWAYS…
Here’s to a lifetime of companionship!!!