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Many do not want to work regular jobs nowadays.
They want to be free from the rat race.
They want to ‘start-up’.
Because start-ups can make them a lot of money, while they work on their own terms.
They think they will get peace of mind this way.
But speak to those who have experienced both.
“There is no difference at all”, they say.
The race might be different, but everyone is still a rat only.
Leave a Comment“I’m a mispriced asset”, is what a friend told me recently. He took up his job because he didn’t have a choice. He wanted to break into a specific market, and because he didn’t have the relevant work experience, he had to take a pay cut.
We know how this story ends right? The guy after 3 years in his ‘compromise’ job, managed to get another offer elsewhere, better pay, and before you know it, it was mispricing no more.
Each of us who is in the corporate world comes across this question often. How much am I worth?
The answer as the experts will tell you, is not your intrinsic value. Rather, what you are worth, is simply what someone is willing to pay you. Aka, the greater fool theory. It’s just like the stock market, or the market for art or collectibles, or cryptos or NFTs today. If someone will pay 10, then why settle for 6?
While this is great in the business world, it doesn’t matter in anything in life outside of economic comparisons. Keep wealth aside, and the equations change. If you pay for your house help’s kids’ education, they will likely shower you with more gratitude than any billionaire could hope to amass.
But even that, is looking outward. Your real value, only you can ascribe. And that too might be quite limiting, and mispriced.
Leave a CommentNope, this one is not about the President’s wife.
This is about an amazing true story I heard on a podcast recently. The lady in question was the first female employee at Ford Motors many decades ago. And what a crazy journey she had getting there!
This was being recited by the lady’s son. She grew up in a refugee camp on the Indo-Pak border. There was no running water and no electricity. But she did something really amazing. She taught herself how to read. And the first book that she read from cover to cover was the biography of Henry Ford. She started visualizing that she wanted to be an engineer at Ford Motor Co.
This looked unlikely if not impossible, but somehow her parents saved every penny and managed to put her on a boat to America. She ended up getting a scholarship, and graduated as the only female engineer in her class. The next day she was in Detroit to find some way or the other to apply for her dream job. The man she met there said, “Sorry, we don’t have any female engineers. Goodbye.” To which the lady made her case, detailing everything she had gone through to get to this point. The man was moved, and said he would take it up to fight for her. She ended up being the first lady at Ford Motor Co., back in 1967.
What about us, what do we do in the face of adversity?
Leave a CommentEveryone talks of software coding to be the next great money-spinning skill in life. I don’t know much about that, but I did see one nice quip by a child recently. “Coding is nothing but a glorified bunch of ifs and for loops.”
Our lives aren’t very different. We keep repeating various patterns and rituals like for loops. We also are faced with many conditionalities, like the ifs, based on which we make certain choices and move ahead in life.
But the real problem? We worry about the ifs. A lot! What if this happens, or what if that happens. Constant worrying.
So here’s a lovely story about tackling the what ifs.
You know Sparta, the ancient Greek city famed for having really tough citizens. King Phillip II of Macedonia had invaded many other neighbouring territories, and then he set his target on Sparta.
King Phillip sent a letter to the Spartans in advance. “Should he come as a friend or a foe?” They replied, “Neither.”
So Phillip sent another message. “I advise you to submit without further delay, for if I bring my army into your land I will destroy your farms, slay your people and raze your city.”
Once more, the Spartans replied with just one word: “If.”
Leave a CommentWe’ve probably heard the phrase, “pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.”
The Buddha teaches this in another way as well, with the concept of the two arrows.
Any time we go through a rough patch, or a bad event occurs, it is like being hit with one arrow. That’s bad right?
Now imagine you yourself pickup the bow, and shoot another arrow, at yourself. That’s even worse, and that’s the second arrow.
The first arrow touches our skin, or body, physically in some way perhaps. Maybe we didn’t get the reward we thought we deserved, and so a pain in the neck, some tears, some lightness of the head etc. Okay gone. But then, if we continue to cogitate on this, we allow the second arrow to pierce much deeper – right into the mind and the heart.
Which is to say, that at any given point, even if things aren’t as messed up as we think, we prefer to tell ourselves that it is really really really messed up.
Best way out? Use the second arrow as a learning experience. Find a way to ascribe some meaning to the pain. And then we’ll realize that it wasn’t pain in the first place, but an opportunity in disguise.
Leave a CommentThe opening lines of a podcast I was listening to recently were eye opening.
It was all about innovation.
Everyone loves innovation. We want newer gadgets, faster gadgets, cooler gadgets.
And its not just gadgets, but even services. Anything that helps get our work done better and faster.
So what was this podcast saying?
That innovation is all about only one thing.
“Failure”
That one has to fail, if they have to innovate, because it is inherently an iterative process.
But schools and social media and the world in general is all about glorifying the exact opposite of failure. “Success”
How can we hope to succeed, if we don’t know how to fail?
Leave a Commentis what one would think if they are asked to read books like Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. As we have discussed here before many times, my Guru absolutely loves the book.
Why do people consider it boring nonsense? Because it only emphasizes the basics. Like deeply listening to people (not just hearing them). Making eye contact. Smiling. Being interested in the other person. Not criticising others, at least not publicly. And so many other such simple things.
There is no magic formula. No get rich quick scheme. And hence reading the same ‘basic’ book 10 times appears to offer limited value.
The problem lies only in the fact that one is trying to read 10 times but implementing not even once. Every day I see this ‘lack of implementation’ around me (and surely I’m guilty as well). In a recent meet up with friends, no one bothered to check on the other person, because everyone was too busy peddling their own stories. Think about it – how many people outside of your immediate family checked on you in the last year or so? And now vice versa? People are also rude to waiters and househelp. People are forgetting to use their mouths for the one awesome thing God made them for in the first place – to smile! (no, not to talk) etc etc etc.
The basics may be boring nonsense, but the basics are exactly how to win people. And if we want to win success, then we need to win people first.
Leave a CommentNow that we understand no one really is thinking about us, how can we use this to improve our lives? Easy. By ‘letting go’. By being sincere, but not serious. By taking things with a smile, but not lightly. Read this:
When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.
—Lao Tzu
When I let go of what I have, I receive what I need.
Isn’t this just phenomenal advice? For instance, we might feel tensed and anxious before an important meeting. We are already well prepared and know the outcome. But still, there are those butterflies – “what if it doesn’t go well?” And once the meeting is over? Almost instantly we feel better, no matter the outcome.
That’s why letting go is so important. Letting go of our need to be perfect in everything – looks, speech, writing, presentation, cooking, and everything else.
But letting go doesn’t mean we don’t care. Letting go only means “okay if it happens, and okay if it doesn’t”. Once we ‘let go’, we stop focusing on the future, and how others may or may not perceive us (and we know most people don’t have the time to care!). Instead, we begin to enjoy and live in the present.
Leave a CommentHere’s a question you should try to hazard a guess about: How many people this very moment, anywhere in the world, whoever they may be, are thinking about you?
Most likely zero? Or maybe one or two? And even in that case, do you think they are thinking about you in a nice way? Or because they want to go out of their way to do something for you? Or is it because they are jealous, or want something from you? Most likely the latter, isn’t it?
As the US Federal Reserve said in 2020, they are not even “thinking about thinking about raising interest rates.” In the context of this post, most people are so self-absorbed that they aren’t even thinking about thinking about us.
Then why do we spend so much time worrying about how others perceive us? Is it really possible to keep everyone happy? Do they even care how we look or feel? This is not to say that the people around us are bad. It is just that they (and we) are all wired in a particular way. We live as though the universe revolves around us, that’s just how it works.
Then why do we worry so much? And what to do about this? Concluded tomorrow…
Leave a CommentContinuing from yesterday, here are some awesome snippets from the book 6 Months to Live by Dr. Sangeeta Raman Girdhar.
As mentioned yesterday, today’s and tomorrow’s posts will contain some gems from the amazing book 6 Months to Live (available here).
Concluded tomorrow, with some more gems!
Leave a CommentThere’s an outstanding short-book that I just finished reading.
It’s called 6 Months To Live, and written by Dr. Sangeeta Raman Girdhar.
The book is only about 70-odd pages long, and can easily be finished in one sitting, and within the hour.
But the convenient length of the book not the reason everyone should read it.
What the book captures so beautifully, is a combination of 4 things:
I’m going to share a few powerful takeaways from the book over the next couple of days, but the book has much more than just these, so do consider reading it. The author is my cousin sister, who is an amazing human being. The least I can do is feature her work on FHN! The book is available here.
Leave a CommentWe’ve all got quite accustomed to hearing victory speeches for awards ceremonies like the Oscars.
Celebrities take to the stage, and then thank a long list of people, including their cast members, the director, the stunt team, the writer, the choreographer and so on.
In a similar speech by singer/rapper Snoop Dogg, he had an interesting sentence to add.
“I’d like to thank me.”
And then he gives out a sly grin, and then repeats.
“I’d like to thank me, for believing in me.”
Maybe he was kidding, maybe he wasn’t. But in this age of increased stress, anxiety and inferiority complexes, it is surely a great feeling to back oneself up.
Leave a CommentWe never say “Oh look, his leg has gone for a walk”, or “hey her hand is making food in the kitchen”, do we? No we don’t, because we always consider everything about a person to be one singular entity.
In the Gita, Lord Krishna breaks it up, and for good reason. He says there is a clear pecking order:
Gross body < sense organs < mind < intellect < HE
This is to say, that it is our body and sense organs that get attracted to sense objects, because they give in to desires.
If we are able to use our intellect to focus the (monkey) mind on to HE, then that would be cool wouldn’t it? No need to worry about desires much then. But how to do it? Through karma yoga, aka the principle that work is worship (remember The secret to success at work?).
Also, this is a step by step process. When we know we are doing something bad, and we want to change it, we immediately try to jettison it, throw it out – and then we struggle with withdrawal symptoms. Whereas My Guru’s approach is always more measured, calibrated and sustainable. How? By aiming for something higher, so that whatever is lower and weaker, will automatically drop off. Work is good, but working selflessly as worship is the highest good.
Leave a Comment“How can we get rid of corruption, and how can I prevent myself from becoming more corrupt, as I earn more money?”, was the question asked by a disciple to Sadhguru. I listened to this on a podcast, and found the answer enlightening.
Power corrupts. Isn’t this the famous statement we have all heard so many times? And we look nastily at bureaucrats and politicians as if they are solely to blame. Maybe some of them are, who knows.
However, Sadhguru’s take is different. What does he say?
That people are either corrupt, or not corrupt. It has nothing to do with power. How so?
He links this back to spirituality. Our corruption starts from the moment we identify with ourselves. Not just ourselves, but only ourselves. Because that means we favour only us over someone else. This is the seeds of corruption being sown right there. And then, we get married, have kids, have a large family to take care of and so on. Which means only one thing. More corruption.
The way out? To stop being so self-centered, and to be a citizen of the world. That’s why my Guru doesn’t pray for small small things anymore. His only objects of prayer? Desh (country) and dharma.
Leave a CommentAn 18 February 1882 newspaper carried an advertisement for cigarettes with the following benefits:
This was a time when even doctors and nurses were not just smoking themselves, but also encouraging their patients to follow suit.
We may think we have come a long way – evolved. Yes we have, at least when it comes to smoking.
But there are so many things today’s generation has little clue about. Parenting. Food choices. Exercising. Health choices. Professional choices. Lifestyle choices.
Another 100 years, and people from then will look back at us and laugh. All the while going through their own sets of blind follies.
Leave a CommentYou probably know the story of the 3 old men who were invited into a home. They were love, wealth and success. But they refused to all go in together. So the house owner had to choose which one he wanted. And he chose well, i.e. he picked love. Automatically, the 2 men representing wealth and success followed as well. If he had chosen either of the other two, the home would have only had that chosen one.
This is a nice story, and is probably very true. My thoughts are of a sliding scale, with spiritual success at one end, and economic success at the other.
No doubt, most of us are hankering for economic success. Our every breath is directed towards earning more or reaching higher. While such focus is admirable, does it really give us peace of mind? Even if we wanted a way out, do we have any time left for a spiritual search?
The alternative, at the other end of the sliding scale is better. If we are steeped in spirituality, if we understand the non-permanence of it all, if we realize that all that we seek is within, then the scale itself will disappear. Much like the 3 old men who all traipsed in together, spiritual success automatically brings all other successes with it. But no other success will matter much at that time. Win-win!
Leave a CommentSurely you’ve heard of that neighbor’s son who’s so successful right?
We all live in different apartments, towns, cities, countries and even continents. Yet we all have those “neighbour’s sons / daughters” that we are invariably compared with.
This is not about comparing with others, as much as it is about our own definitions of success. But can we really define our success?
Were we successful when we cleared first grade? Or weren’t we?
How about when we cleared grade 12? How about when we graduated? When we got a job? Or when we got another job, and then another and another? How about when we were promoted to head of a department? Or when we started our own company? Or when we donated a decent sum to the charity of our choice? Or when we were able to use our ‘influence’ to recommend a friend to a good job? Or when we got to the Board of Directors? Or CEO or Chairman of a small company? Of a large company? Of a Fortune 500?
Who decides if we are successful or not? Is it really us? Or is it an arbitrary line in the sand, drawn by someone else, that declares that you have arrived?
Leave a CommentIn chapter 3 of the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna provides an interesting break-up of karma yoga.
This comes in verse 30. Here is how we could break it down for daily application:
1. “Renounce everything to the Lord” = make spirituality a priority in life, which will make life peaceful and content. Let it not just be a 5 minute activity, but the substratum of every waking moment.
2. “Quality matters” = Work in the best way possible; treating it like worship, with the knowledge that this is the highest offering there is. The benefit? We wont slack off or cut corners, irrespective of whether someone is inspecting or not.
3. Niraashi = no aasha, no expectation or hope of a specific outcome = receive the result with grace.
4. Nirmama = no mamakaar = no ‘i’ness = work with the attitude of custodianship; i.e. none of my achievements are possible without the support of those around me.
5. vigata-jJwara = “without fever” = this is not body temperature, but the fever of the mind, i.e. stress and anxiety, which can be eradicated if the above points are followed.
Such a nice and implementable way to live, isn’t it?
Leave a CommentNo today’s post is not about meme stocks or meme cryptos or meme NFTs. Although it is interesting that the word meme was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book called The Selfish Gene, and the book title has a clue!
But here’s a really short story you may have come across.
An exceptional doctor was nearing his end. He didn’t want to die though. So he created another version of himself, right down to the tiniest detail. Both him and his alter-image were laid down on beds side by side, absolutely still, not a movement. When Death approach, it got confused, because the two were impossible to tell apart. So then Death played a trick. It said, “I know which of you is the real doctor, because the real one made a mistake.”
The real doctor blurted out, “That’s impossible, there’s no mistake.” And Death immediately said, “There you go, that’s the mistake!”, obviously referring to the man’s me-me-me, aka ego.
Leave a CommentRemember those movies which were underdogs?
So many of them. Unheard of. The lead actors are practically unknown.
The movies? Least expected to do well.
Next thing you know, they become huuuuuge hits.
Massive runaway successes!
There’s a runaway success in the Bhagawad Gita as well.
For example, shlokas 19 to 23 in chapter 4.
They talk about giving up desires, giving up attachments, and maintaining equanimity in all situations of duality (like pleasure or pain, joy or sorrow).
These kinds of shlokas are absolutely successful in making even the staunchest of karma yogis runaway.
Runaway success of a different kind!
Leave a CommentAs a kid, my memorization skills were terrible. We used to have those competitions in school where we’d be blindfolded, taken into a room, showed a number of objects, and then brought back into our classroom to write within two minutes everything that we could remember from that visit.
I would hardly get 7 or 8 right, while kids around me easily did 30 or more.
Even to today, I struggle with names, places, birthdays (shhh, don’t tell my wife!), faces, events and everything else. How I cleared exams, especially engineering, where I didn’t understand so many of the most basic concepts, really befuddles me to this date.
But you know the best part of having a poor memory? It extends to all walks of life. If someone tells me something rude or hurtful, I forget that as well. If someone passed some nasty comment – poof, a few weeks later I often have no recall of the event. It sucks when there are fights, if I need to prove a point, then I can barely connect past events to make my case.
But in the long run, does it really matter? Once the ego clash is taken out of the equation, is there really a winner or loser? There likely isn’t, and which is why to me personally, a bad memory isn’t a problem, it is a divine gift!
Leave a CommentA tough aspect of spirituality is not in reading what is said, but in actually understanding and implementing it.
For instance, Lord Krishna in the Gita often asks Arjuna to give up desires.
Is this practical? If I give up all my desires, I wouldn’t even be able to get up from my bed on a Sunday, let alone on a Monday morning!
Maybe there is something deeper and subtler. This is my Guru’s amazing interpretation.
When Krishna says ‘give up desires’, he actually means ‘give up the cravings in your mind’. Having dharmic desires is fine, but it is critical to cut the umbilical cord between desire and happiness.
Our happiness is always linked to the fulfilment of desires. “Think of a time when you were happy” tends to be accomplishments like “when I won the game, or topped the class, or got married, or had kids, or got promoted”.
But what if everything we did, could start from happiness, rather than end in it? This is possible, and it (too) starts with gratitude.
Leave a Comment“Land sales tops US$ 100 million in one week”
This was the headline that grabbed my attention recently. I thought about it for a split second. Come on, 100 million is big, but not that big. Surely many billionaire businessmen and celebrities would have many mansions all over the world and 100 million would be consumed in an instant. And that’s when I noticed the land sales happened in the… metaverse. Wow.
Yes, we’ve all been reading more and more about the metaverse these past several months. Some virtual reality world where avatars can come together to do various things. I don’t understand this stuff well, but a 100 million bucks for land in the virtual world? Wow that sounds like a lot of people have gone cuckoo.
But still, these transactions happened, and many years later, I’ll probably have to eat my words as well.
Indeed, everything has become virtual now. People don’t even speak to each other, greet other or see eye to eye. It’s all done on social media. Nothing wrong with this of course. Except that life on SM is totally filtered. All bad stuff is filtered out. And all good stuff (including every imperfection being neutralized) is amplified. Much like Hollywood kissing scenes right after waking up in the morning, because their mouths presumably auto-brush themselves when their eyes open.
It’s important to periodically remind ourselves what constitutes reality and what doesn’t.
Leave a CommentThe poet Kabir has an outstanding line:
The fish in the water is thirsty, and every time I see that, it makes me laugh!
What does this mean?
Well, we are the fish!
Aren’t we always wanting something or the other? What we have, never seems to be enough. There are people who would do 2x our work at 1/10th the salary. And still we are unhappy and want more. Compared to the poor and destitute, we are nothing but kings and queens!
Yet we are thirsty for more. We have all the water around us, yet not a drop to drink will quench this thirst 😅
Is there anything that can quench this thirst? Yes there is, and you know all about it already. It is called gratitude.
Leave a CommentAs a leader, what is expected of us? In verse 21 of chapter 3 of the Gita, Lord Krishna says the following.
"Whatever a great man does, other men also do. Whichever standard he sets, the world follows it."
This is a very interesting shloka, and it seems like a motivational quote for one’s goal setting, doesn’t it? We should all have great goals, be great leaders, so that people follow in our footsteps. But that’s not all.
Krishna in this verse is also talking about Himself. Is he subjected to the same rules? He says he is! Isn’t He also constantly working to keep the universe running? Brahma creating, Vishnu sustaining, Shiva destroying, in a sense?
My Guru would be another example – an already-realized soul, but why is he working so hard? Why would he need to do aarti thrice a day? Why would he choose to live his life in a rural setting to help educate the poor? Why would he need to wake up at 5 am daily to do yoga? Why does he work 7 days a week 365 days a year?
Because as Krishna says, “whatever a great man does, other men also do. Whichever standard he sets, the world follows it.” What are each one of us doing? What are we striving to achieve? It is a question we need to answers for ourselves, and honestly.
Leave a CommentYes you are. One way or another. How, you ask?
Because you are a son/daughter/mother/father/brother/sister/colleague/friend, and that too a one of a kind.
As a parent, your kids look up to you as their leader.
As the one running the household, your spouse looks up to you.
As the one running the family, your family members look up to you.
As a guide for life, your siblings look up to you.
As a mentor, your employees look up to you.
As a shoulder to rest upon, your friends rely on you.
Aren’t you thus a born leader? Aren’t we all?
Now that we understand this, how should we conduct ourselves? Lord Krishna has a clear directive for each one of us. Coming tomorrow… stay tuned!
Leave a Comment“All well?” “Yes, yes all well.”
“What about you, all well?” “Yes, yes all well here too.”
This seems to be a very standard greeting exchange nowadays. Wasn’t like this say a decade ago. Wonder how it crept in.
“No worries” is another one that people use a lot. Probably came from hakunamatata as taught in Disney’s The Lion King.
A more recent one that I’m becoming increasingly exposed to is “Correct me if I am wrong.”
It might have started off on a nice note. Someone didn’t want to sound haughty or a know-it-all, and so prefixed their statement with ‘Please correct me if I am wrong.” All good till here.
Except that now everyone uses it all the time. I counted 10 of these in a 20 minute conference call yesterday! And the worst part?
People actually butt in and say “Yes you are wrong, let me correct you here.” <facepalm>. In a group of 10 people. Seniors, juniors middlers, everyone. Just unbelievable how self-obsessed people can be, never wanting to lose the opportunity to give someone a hard time, or make themselves look good.
Leave a Comment“But I am like this only.”
“But this is how I’ve always been doing it.”
“This is how it has been since… forever!”
Heard such statements before? You surely have. Do such statements leave a good impression on you? Probably not. Why? Because we all know, that if we want to get ahead, to improve, we need to adapt and change. But sentences like the ones above, indicate exactly the opposite. Something has been done a particular way, and there is no way I’ll change that.
This actually has a name. It’s called the sunk-cost fallacy. It is also called the Concorde fallacy. That second name was a bit of a giveaway wasn’t it?
This refers to the stubbornness of the governments that made the Concorde. They kept drowning it in cash even after it was clear that it was a commercial disaster. They had already put in so much money and effort, i.e. ‘sunk costs’, that they were just unwilling to change.
We all know the ultimate fate of the Concorde. Would we want to end up like that?
Leave a CommentHere’s an incident which happened a while ago, but quickly taught me the importance of being humble.
In a previous avatar, I was once called by someone from the tech support team. This person told me that my superboss had asked for me to bring his laptop to him, from his desk, to a meeting room where he was sitting then.
Surely this was not my job – delivering laptops!
But (luckily) I didn’t think twice about it, walked across the room, picked up his laptop, and took it to the meeting room where he was. When I knocked and went in, my superboss was surprised too, and said, “Hey, you’re here? I’m so sorry, I didn’t ask you to bring my laptop over, I think the tech support guy misunderstood me. I told him to have someone get my laptop to me, and then have it sent to you for the specific task we discussed today morning.”
I quickly replied, “Not at all a problem sir…”, and then he cut me off and motioned towards another gentleman seated in the meeting room, “Please meet Mr. ABC, who is the owner of a large chain of jewellery stores.” And he invited me to sit down. Turned out that we both spoke the same mother tongue, which led to an interesting conversation. My superboss invited me back to the room a while later as his guest wanted to convey something only in the mother tongue, which he was unable to translate otherwise.
If I’d just thought “What the heck, why should I be the laptop courier?”, surely such an interesting experience wouldn’t have transpired!
Leave a CommentRemember our discussion on verse 35 from the Gita? One of those often misunderstood shlokas. Why should I do my own duty badly when I can do someone else’s well?
Surely you remember. They key is to understand one’s duty well.
The word in Sanskrit, is swadharma. This too comes a summation of dharma and swabhava. Dharma we know, duty, which for human beings is to attain moksha. Swabhava is our internal innate quality. Whatever we naturally gravitate towards.
Here’s a nice story that drives home the point. A watchman sees his building owner leaving for the airport. He immediately warns the owner not to take the flight that day. Why? Because in his afternoon siesta, the watchman saw a dream that the flight would meet with an accident. The building owner heeds his watchman’s prophetic advice and stays home. A few hours later, indeed the flight meets with a fatal accident. The watchman is elated, thinking that he will now be showered with gifts from the owner. The owner comes up to him, thanks him profusely, but also does not give the watchman any money. Instead, he tells the watchman, that he needs to do his duty more alertly, instead of sleeping in the afternoon on his watch!
This story is just for fun, not for nitpicking, but it underscores the importance of sticking to our swadharma in the long run.
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