Category: choice

When things don’t go well, we want and expect it to get over asap.

But when everything is going great guns in life, we feel we are entitled to our success, and in denial of its temporary nature.

If something goes badly, we may say it’s not our fault.

But would we attribute our success also to something outside our control?

If the source of failure can be outsourced, then why not the same treatment for success?

Both success and failure are nothing but meaningless labels in the cyclicality that is life.

The only thing we control is our own reaction to these external eventualities. If we choose to give up control of that also, then only peace remains.

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We’ve all heard the quote “Consistency bests talent”. This is absolutely true, but usually only when measured in the long run. If one has both talent and consistency, then they become unbeatable!

A simple example I love every morning is the New York Times’ Wordle. If you haven’t tried it yet, you should. It takes just a few minutes to do everyday.

There are different approaches to solving it. Some prefer to guess the words directly, so that they finish within as few tries as possible.

There’s also the more consistent approach, where you can try the same set of words daily, but over time increase the probability of your success. For example, starting with ADIEU, SPORT and LYNCH means you cover the most letters with none of them repeating. This improves your chances of success over time. But it may not be the best to win an individual game. The choice is ours. Consistency? Or short term success?

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For any fan of the movie, the title of this blog post would immediately remind one of The Godfather movie – one of the most iconic ones ever to be made. But making the movie itself was no easy task. Low budgets, a string of prior failures, struggles with casting, involvement of the real-life mafia, you name a problem and it was present.

All of this is captured beautifully in a TV miniseries released recently aptly called The Offer. The producer of the film and the CEO of Paramount at the time had this dialogue exchange:

Charlie (CEO): A word to the wise, Ruddy. When you fail alone, there's no one else to blame.

Ruddy: That's the only way I want it.

Why I find this so beautiful and so profound, is because it represents the struggle each one of us goes through in life daily. Should we just take it easy, and go with the flow? Or should we go against the grain where needed, and really do something pathbreaking?

I suppose it depends on what we want in life. Do we want to make the most of the time we have here in this life? Or just come unknown and go unknown?

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The new superhit movie from India made on a shoestring budget called Kantara is making waves all over the country.

It’s actually not a generic Indian movie but one from a specific part of Karnataka, a state in the country.

Not just any random love story, but one of demigods and people with superpowers. Not beams flying out of their eyes, but powers given to save the citizens of the district, while enabling them to live in harmony with nature.

While this may sound like superstition and mythology to some, there is certainly an element of truth to it. The spiritual energy is tangible to those who are receptive to it. Not just the movie, but more so of the same rituals practised in real life.

But folks have watched this movie, and said it’s nonsense. “These things can never happen. Random magic and superstition and silly ancient rituals”

And yet the same people will watch spandex-clad caped-crusaders shooting webs from their wrists and light from their eyes and gloat in amazement. Go figure.

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If a doctor has been giving simple cough syrup to cure someone’s cough, but later realizes that this is a deeper lung issue, of course the doc will have to quit giving cough syrup and progress to more potent medication.

If the workplace is really toxic, then what’s the problem in quitting? If there’s a better opportunity available, shouldn’t one take it?

There’s a concept in economics called ‘opportunity cost’ that exactly defines this, and businesses use it all the time. With a limited set of resources, how can you make the optimum use of the opportunity at hand? No matter what happens, if there are multiple opportunities, one or more will have to be sacrificed, and that is the cost of missing out. But it’s fine, we cannot do everything at the same time, all the time.

Quitting isn’t bad. It’s why one quits that matters.

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There’s a whole “quiet quitting” movement that is going on in the corporate world. Employees don’t actually quit but they are so disillusioned with work, that they quit mentally. So they would not put in the efforts required and do a half hearted job perhaps.

There’s something about quitting in our world that just evokes the deepest of passions.

“How can you quit? Quitting is for losers. Tough people never quit.” Haven’t we all grown up hearing these?

This even exists with the greatest most successful folks. Nobody says they quit. They want to be seen as evolving, not quitting, even if it’s a tennis star keeping down her racquet or a footballer hanging up his boots.

Why is quitting so bad? More tomorrow.

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The 73 year old ultra successful billionaire investor and founder of the Carlyle Group, David Rubenstein, had the following to say when asked about what kind of projects he takes on or spends time on.

1. Work on starting things that others aren’t able to start.
2. Work on finishing things that others aren’t able to finish.
3. Wherever possible, attempt to make tangible progress, rather than something that might or might not happen in a distant future.
4. Give your time to your projects of choice, in addition to giving your money.

Isn’t this very instructive and insightful on how we each could look to prioritize our own times as well?

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What is more important, work or family life?

That’s a trick question, because both are important, as we well know.

Balancing both is very difficult, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

I came across the story of a celebrated author who was writing his best ever book yet. He was so engrossed in the book, that he forgot everything around him, family included.

He unfortunately passed away while writing the last chapter. His wife said this after his death:

"I do miss Larry, but it's not like he was here even when he was alive"

Is that how we want to be known?

As one of my mentors always says, it’s never work-life balance, but always work-life choice.

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We may know what the right thing to do is, and yet not do it when the time comes.

Elbert Hubbard, the American writer and philosopher who lived in the 1890s had this to say:

Self discipline is the ability to make yourself do what you should do and when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.

Truer yet harder-to-implement words were perhaps never spoken.

Elbert goes on to say:

There are 999 other success principles I have found in my reading and experience, but without self-discipline, none of them work. And with self-discipline, all of them work!

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You know how we struggle sometimes to say “No”?

Especially when we know deep down, that “No” is indeed the right answer.

It might be to a friend or relative asking for your money, or a boss asking you to work every weekend, or a colleague expecting you to always fill in for their gaps.

We may think that by saying “Yes” to such requests, we are actually doing something good, doing something divinely karmic.

However, it is good to remember that every coin has a flip side. By saying “Yes” to everything, we are actually saying implicit “No”s to ourselves and to our loved ones. How?

Because every extra hour or dollar wasted on someone unnecessary, is an equivalent hour or dollar unavailable for us to spend with ourselves or our loved ones. Not that we should not help others, but thinking this way helps us discriminate between who really needs our help, and who is being parasitic.

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There was a bit of a medical emergency recently. Not a big scare or anything. But some medicines were needed, and pronto.

There’s so many “10-minute delivery” apps nowadays, that any one of them should have done the trick.

Except that at 4 am, none of them deliver medicines even in 3 hours, let alone 10 minutes.

That is understandable of course. Can’t expect the world to be awake in the wee hours of the morning to make medical deliveries.

Until you open the food apps that is, and realize that you can order burgers and fries and high-sugar fizzy drinks at 4 am for immediate delivery, but not critical medicines.

We collectively as a society seem to have our priorities clear ?

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