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Category: money

Rich walls

Came across a life story (his own) narrated by a stylish and talented Indian actor of yesteryear called Jackie Shroff.

He was describing his own poverty-stricken upbringing. Some 6-7 people slept huddled on the floor of his 1 room house.

When he or his siblings would cough as kids, his mother would just reach out and put her hand on their chest and and rub and calm them down.

And then, he says, they became rich and famous. Big cars and big houses.

No more sleeping huddled together on the floor. Everyone had their own rooms. And one day his mother suffered a heart attack in the adjacent room and passed away.

Jackie recounted how as the money came, the walls came too. His mother was in the other room, behind the walls, and so he couldn’t hear her cry out for help. Nobody heard her, else she might have been saved. He says that if he didn’t have the money, they may still have been sleeping on the floor together, and he would have immediately known his mother’s discomfort and saved her.

So thoughtful isn’t it?

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Great deaths

A man was once seen lamenting the death of a close relative.

A friend approached him to offer condolences and to console him.

The man said he was crying not because his uncle died, but because he had left him an inheritance of a million dollars.

His friend was aghast. “You just got a million dollars, and you are crying?”

The man continued to cry. “Just yesterday, another uncle of mine died, and he too left me a million dollars.”

“And the day before that? One more uncle died, and he too left me a million dollars.”

The friend just couldn’t take it anymore, “You just inherited 3 million dollars out of thin air, and you are crying?”

“Yes”, said the man, “now I don’t have any more uncles who can die!”

What do we focus on in our lives? The money or the uncles?

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Investments in life – part 2

A few more gems from the 2023 Berkshire Hathway event – applicable to investing, but more so for life and success and happiness itself!

  • Keep learning all your life.
  • Delay gratification
  • Avoid toxic people – get them out of your lives and do it fast
  • Know how people manipulate others and avoid doing that to other people
  • Praise by person, critize by category.
  • Anyone who had been kind has not died without friends… Can’t say the same about money.
  • The best part about investing is that there is uncertainty. If you play golf and score a hole in one then people won’t enjoy it… The fact that you hit in the woods and in the sand makes it more fun.

As my Guru says, living in uncertainty alone is spirituality!

Lovely no?

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Great Alex, Smart Alec

Everyone knows Alexander the Great for his Amazing and brutal conquests.

But maybe there’s another reason he is Great. Because he realized that all this materials greatness is of no value.

As he neared his death, he gave a set of 3 instructions to his aides.

1) That the best doctors in the country should walk beside his dead body. Why? To show that even the best medical help cannot prevent death.

2) That his all wealth be laid down from his kingdom to his grave. Why? To show that no amount of wealth earned in this life can be carried into the afterlife.

3) That his hands be left hanging outside his coffin, during the long procession to his grave. Why? Because even he, Alexander the Great, would go back from this world empty handed.

What a brilliant takeaway isn’t it? But here many are, constantly running after more and more wealth. Smart Alec in sight only…

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Unconditional

We all know what unconditional love is. Such as the love we have for our parents and spouses and children. There is no condition that is attached. They do not have to do anything for us for our love to exist. This love is not transactional.

Similarly, there is unconditional creation. When creation becomes conditional, we call it “work”, or after a lovely Sunday, we call it “Monday morning blues”.

If we want to make money, that’s good. But our goal of making money is never the end, only a means to an end. Because the money itself is useless. It is a means for us to buy what we want or earn status in society. Thus whatever we create in order to get money becomes conditional. We are creating something to get something else, and hence we can never enjoy the process.

In unconditional creation, we work because we want to. No conditions attached. No T&Cs. Just unconditional chill.

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What will you make?

Saw this short but brilliant clip of a boy maybe 5-6 years old being interviewed on a TV channel.

The news reporter asks him, “What do you wanna be when you grow up?”

He replies, “I wanna be a doctor.”

The reporter follows up with, “What will you make?”, clearly trying to see what amount of money would make the kid happy.

The child replies beautifully, “I will make… everyone feel good again.”

Isn’t that truly what doctors are supposed “to make”? And likewise every profession is supposed “to make”? Money is necessary, but is also polluting at times…

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Monetary policy

Here’s a simple question.

If you go from having 1$ to $1 million, would you be happy? Ecstatic, I’m guessing.

If you go from having $10 million to $1 million, would you be happy? Devastated, in guessing.

But the end result in both are the same. Still a cool million dollars!

Then why are we letting our minds trick us?

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Forgive and forg…

Is this practical? Isn’t spirituality supposed to be practical? Can we forgive and forget everything? Wouldn’t that tantamount to foolishness?

My Guru has a simple solution. He says we must forgive, but not forget.

Why forgive? So that the incident doesn’t consume us anymore, neither mentally nor emotionally. We’ve made peace with what happened.

Why not to forget? So that the same thing doesn’t repeat! If we gave money to a relative and they never returned it, and we “just forget about it”, we will end up giving more money to the same person and find ourselves in the same cycle again.

Hence forgive, but do not forget. That’s spirituality in practice!

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Who are you?

Much of spirituality is about answering the question “Who am I?”

The Self, the Atman, the Soul, the Brahman, the Superconsciousness etc.

I got a whatsapp message last evening from my MD & CEO. The message asked me to do a task for him, urgently, because he could not speak at the time as he was on another call.

“Sure, of course”, I thought, and replied as such.

The next message asked me to buy 5000 gift cards and send it to his email.

Clearly I was in the early stages of getting scammed. Realized it in time luckily, phew. This wasn’t about “who am I” anymore, but “who are you”.

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Doing the right thing

Everyone wants to do the right thing. But nobody knows what’s right. Because everyone’s definition of right is different. At least in life.

But what if ‘right’ is pre-defined. Would it help in doing the right thing? It should, in theory, right (pun unintended)?

Let’s take investing as an example. How does one make money from investing? Simple, buy low, sell high. Couldn’t be an easier formula.

But then why isn’t everyone around us rich?

Because while the formula is ‘right’, we aren’t. When the price is 10, isn’t that nice and low? It’s low, but what if it goes to 9 or 8 tomorrow? Or 5? Wow, wouldn’t I like to invest 50% cheaper? And so the buy never happens. Similar story for the “sell high”, as our minds conjure up utopian futures that seem all too obvious to get.

So, is it easy to do the right thing, even if it’s pre-defined?

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Multi trillionaires

As of today, there’s no world’s rich person’s list that has a trillionaire in it. But revisit this blog post in a few decades, and surely someone will feature.

For me personally? I think a milion dollars is more than enough.

But those with a million? They want a few million.

Those who are multi millionaires? They want a billion.

The billionaires? They want to be multi-billionaires.

And the multi-billionaires? They want to get into the world’s richest list.

And those on this list already? They want to get to the top of the list.

And those on top of the list? They want to ensure they remain there on top.

How much money you reckon is enough?

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Wealth transfer

Family office advisors and wealth managers around the world are seeing an incredible boom in their businesses. Why? Because more and more rich and well to do families are setting up their inheritance and wealth transfer processes.

They want the transfer to be as smooth as possible, and rightly so. It is estimated that the boomer generation is currently transferring $68 trillion dollars of wealth to their spouses and children. What an incredibly large number. Insane almost.

But you know what happens when people who haven’t worked hard to earn money end up with ridiculously large sums of inheritance money? Surely you do.

Here’s a nice quote I came across:

“Parents are good at preparing the money for the person, they are often less good at preparing the person for the money.”

Jess McGawley
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Flow of Gold

We may have all heard of the famous Kanakadhaara stotram. Kanaka refers to gold, while dhaara is its flow.

Whenever someone is impacted by financial troubles, the remedy suggested is this beautiful ode to Goddess Lakshmi. But why will she give us gold or money? Spirituality asks us to give up attachments and desires. Here on the other hand, we are asking for more?

A quick background is helpful to contextualise this: Adi Sankaracharya, as a young Brahmin boy, went to a poor lady’s house for alms for his lunch. The lady, mired in poverty, offered him the only possession she had – a single amla (gooseberry) fruit. Sankara was touched by her kindness and selflessness and sang 22 stanzas in praise of Goddess Lakshmi, which is now known as the Kanakadhaara stotram.

The Goddess appeared before him and asked why he had remembered her. Sankara implored her to reverse the lady’s fortunes by granting her riches.

But Goddess Lakshmi refused! She said the lady’s fate was bound to poverty due to karma from her prior births. Sankara pleaded for the Goddess to absolve the lady’s past sins and change her fate, saying that she has surely transformed spiritually now, given she gave away the only thing she had! Goddess Lakshmi was pleased and granted Sankara’s request, showering the lady’s house with golden gooseberries, aka the flow of gold.

To get some, we have to give some, or maybe give all!

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DAKM

The 4 Purusharthas as they are called, are DAKM = Dharma + Artha + Kama + Moksha.

One wonders if these are supposed to be separate or they go hand-in-hand?

Here’s a few lines I came across written by Mata Amritandamayi:

Dharma and moksha are interdependent. One who lives according to the principle of Dharma will attain Moksha and one who has a desire to attain moksha will lead a Dharmik life. If they are used incorrectly and unwisely, money and riches can become big obstacles. They are obstructions to those who wish to evolve spiritually. The more money you have the more obsessed you are likely to become with your body. The more you identify with your body the more egoistic you become. Money is not a problem but unintelligent attachment to it is. 
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Money flight

Money is awesome. But is too much money too awesome?

One of the world’s richest men and owners of one of the world’s most premium fashion brands, recently disposed off his private jet.

Wow. Everyone who thinks of being super rich someday surely dreams of owning their very own private jet. And here’s someone who’s giving it away?

No, it’s not an act of charity. But one of personal and corporate safety.

There are apps nowadays that can track all airline information, live and in real-time. And that’s what people had been doing of this gentlemen’s flights across the globe. They knew which country he went to for dinner, for a business meeting, for a personal meeting even. And so tata-byebye private jet.

So much money, yet no privacy. Is too much money too awesome?

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Want name, fame, money?

Here’s what I saw in the newspaper recently. Someone moderately famous had bought a house. A fairly big house.

Now for most people, that should be a private, intimate transaction. But the newspaper got wind of it. How? By looking through the property-tax papers that get filed alongside. Yes, apparently it’s a paparazzi thing-to-do now!

As if mention of this wasn’t enough, the article also proceeded to state that they were the first to break this news.

Still not enough? They also wrote that they tried reaching out to various members of that family, “but repeated texts and calls remained unanswered at the time of going to press”.

Is this what we are all chasing after? With great power comes great responsibility. But with great money comes great liability. Ironic isn’t it?

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Is there MORE than one type of wealth?

We’ve all heard of the book Atomic Habits. Brilliant book written by a no doubt brilliant author, James Clear.

Given his surname, you’d expect that he has clarity in life – and boy does he not disappoint.

I’ve always equated wealth with money, and never thought about it much beyond that.

But that’s no fun is it? So Mr. Clear has clarified (what a bad pun I know) that there are 4 types of wealth:

  1. Financial wealth (aka money)
  2. Social wealth (aka status)
  3. Time wealth (aka freedom)
  4. Physical wealth (aka health)

It’s good to run after wealth to an extent. But are we running after all 4? Or just the first one, maybe the second?

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Kaun banega crorepotty?

The winner of one of the regional versions of Who Wants to be a Millionaire went from pussycat to lion to starving dog.

After winning the grand prize, our man was hounded by the media. Not for a few days, but for a few years. More like 5. Interview after interview, and ad after ad. He began spending out of pocket too. Plenty of fake stories were published about him. His education took a back seat. He made large donations, and was often taken for a ride on philanthropic reasons. At the end, he was pretty much back on the road. Did I mention his wife left him?

Money money money. We want to have it in the billions. But are we confident we can handle all that comes with it?

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Garbage

You know those garbage bags, the black ones that are used to collect trash, and then handed off for disposal the next day when the garbage truck comes around?

Yes, yes, what about it? A blog post on that? Really?

Well imagine carrying a similar looking garbage bag, but slung around your shoulder.

No there won’t be garbage in it (hopefully, because many handbags do look like garbage inside!), but this is no ordinary garbage bag.

It is a designer handbag, costing nothing less than 10,000 dollars, but for some inexplicable reason, designed to look exactly like a garbage bag.

And you know what? It’s apparently selling like hot cakes! Phew, if it’s not enough that such designs even get approved in the first place, there are hundreds or thousands of people queueing up to throw their hard earned money at these things. No wonder it’s so difficult to give up attachments and desires.

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Hailer

Ride hailing services in India at least have become funny.

Years ago, if you’d want to take a ride in the middle of the night, you’d have to already know a cab driver who’d come and pick you up. Heaven forbid if he slept off or forgot, that would have been a missed flight right there.

Now if you want to hail a ride, you select it on the app. The driver first calls you to find out where you want to go. If he doesn’t like your destination, he will cancel the ride. This can happen 3-4 times before you are successful in booking a cab. When the cabbie comes, he will ask if you will pay by cash. This is because ride hailing companies only pay their drivers at the end of the week. And then the driver will insist on “cancelling the ride on the app”, so that he can pocket the entire fare for himself.

As mentioned in the Gita, all progress is the Lord’s creation only. But progress comes with its own challenges. Because of the involvement of the human mind – bringing with it greed, anger, jealousy and fear.

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Fired up

‘Tis the time of The Great Resignation.

Some are leaving the workforce altogether, while others are leaving for better jobs.

The latter often find fatter paychecks elsewhere.

If a person’s salary was 100, and they asked for 120, sometimes they’re let go, only to be replaced by someone with a salary of 150. Isn’t that insane?

As they say, train someone so well that they can leave anytime. But treat them so well that they never want to leave.

Nice saying, but does anyone implement this in real life?

Most retention exercises are purely fire fighting exercises. Running from pillar to post to douse out the flames.

Why not start by not having any fires in the first place?

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Rich people

On a recent business trip, the cabbie was a chatty fellow.

Looking at where our hotel was (apparently in a posh locality, although the hotel itself wasn’t!), he said “Are you guys from the top of the food chain in your country?”

We tried to deflect, “No, no, no such thing, our travel agent just happened to find this hotel convenient for our meetings and such.”

To which he quickly replied, “Hey I have no problems with rich people, none of that inequality angle or the attitude or jealousy or anything. In fact I like rich people, because they’re the ones that keep my business running!”

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Emoshunned – part 3 of 4

We may use disappointed and sad interchangeably. But are they both the same?

Apparently not. If there is a lot of expectation behind the negative emotion, then that would classify as disappointment. We really expected something to do very well, and that not taking place would leave us disappointed, not sad.

Why is this important? Because if you don’t know the illness, how would you know what medicine to take?

If you are sad, then maybe watching a comedy movie might make you feel light again. But if you are disappointed, it might be better to come to terms with our lofty expectations in the first place.

Another simple example is the difference between jealousy and envy. Honestly, I always thought the two were the same!

Apparently envy is wanting what the other person has. Like someone bought a brand new car, and now I envy them. And jealousy? That is when I already have something, but fear losing it to someone else. Like I have a car, but I’m jealous of my neighbour who I believe can easily buy two such cars if he wanted to. This would kill my perceived status in the way I view society.

We are weird, I know, but it is what it is! Closure tomorrow…

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Successhun – part 1 of 2

It’s funny that the word ‘success’ is a part of the word succession. If you’ve watched the brilliant HBO TV series called Succession, you know that that the two don’t go too well together.

Sure, it looks mighty awesome to be born into a filthy rich family such as Waystar Royco.

But is it easy? Absolutely not. There are always sharks circling the water, waiting to draw blood.

Every family member doubles up as an adversary. The worst words, are not the ones that are spoken, but the ones that aren’t.

There is so much backbiting, so many scheming members, everyone secretly working their own private agenda, even the characters themselves don’t know what they truly stand for. A loose wind blowing towards the direction of a temporary one-up is enough to bring all the scavengers flocking.

It’s unreal that even a billion dollars at that level is considered meaningless, because someone else has more. And trust me, such comparisons aren’t just in the reel world, but in the real one too.

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Thirsty fish

The 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.

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Inheritense

Had a client meeting recently after ages. It was an in-person meeting, at a café. And my word was the café full! Absolutely jam packed, teeming with people. Open air, yes, but still, hard to believe that just a few months ago, people were scared to so much as just get out of their homes, for fear of an invisible killer. Such is human memory. So short, not necessarily so sweet.

Another thing that we don’t remember too well? The price paid for luxury. The price paid for money. “For”, not “with”.

My client had this to say. He has 2 brothers. And his dad died some time back. Did the 3 brothers get an inheritance? Not even a dollar. Instead, it was the other way around. He had left some overdrafts and other dues which the 3 men only discovered after the man’s passing. They got together and paid off the balances.

Here’s my client’s thoughts after he recounted this. “I’m really thankful that my dad did not leave us any inheritance. Because if he did, then we brothers would have squabbled over who gets what. And no matter how fairly we tried to divide it, we’d still have ended up unhappy, and this would have broken the family. I’ve seen this in the case of so many families it’s not funny. I’m really glad we got nothing, because having money is a curse.”

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From raags to riches

Raaga in sankrit refers to attachment. This attachment is considered to be one of the greatest barriers to spiritual evolution. Why so? Because if we are attached to our own body, our own families, our own this and that, then there is no scope for appreciating the one true Consciousness, which is everywhere at once.

The requirement then is to get rid of this raaga. This is called vairaagya or detachment. Defining it is easy, but actually living it is nearly impossible. Just play with a cute baby for a few hours, and you’ll find yourself attached, and thinking of the baby many times a day “Oh so cute!”.

As my Guru recently commented:

  1. Bhakti or devotion, means inseparable pain when away from the Lord. Which them implies needing to give up everything else, i.e. devotion begins when raaga ends.
  2. Parents believe that giving their children a lot of wealth would tantamount to their welfare. But no, their welfare is in their vairagya or detachment to the wealth.
  3. Someone did something bad to you. That is over. Now forget about it. Don’t replay it a 100 times for 100 years. If we are mentally at peace, then vairagya becomes easy.
  4. Supremely detached fellow is giving hundreds of thousands to charitable organizations but is fighting for a few rupees with the roadside vegetable vendor.

All worth pondering over deeply.

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Monetime

A very interesting book called Layered Money that I’m reading traces the evolution of money through time. In the very earliest days of commerce, there was no money – only the barter system. If I had potatoes from my farm, but desperately wanted cotton, then all I could do was to offer my potatoes and hope the cotton farmer wanted some. Of course potatoes were important (still are), but there could be a limit to how many potatoes a cotton farmer could eat.

So people devised ways to get around this. In the earliest days, money wasn’t coins or paper as we know it today. It was mostly seashells. Big and shiny meant richer and wealthier. But of course not everyone lived near a beach, and so that had to change. Iron pieces were then used too – for quite a while. And then unsurprisingly, silver and gold came along the way. People with a lot of gold and silver even today are considered rich.

Alongside that wealth, came human ego. Coins were introduced, and standardized in design and weight. And then coins were embossed with the faces of the kings and queens of the time. Currency notes too had the same features. Many rulers would kill and plunder simply to change the faces on them coins and notes. It was a matter of great personal pride. Coins from hundreds of years ago – of perhaps the greatest kings that ever lived in those times – are but worthless now. That face – completely unrecognizable and irrelevant to those born today.

And now we have digital currencies, like Bitcoins and Ether. Even these aren’t as individualistic as their creators would want them to be, because there are over 9500 cryptocurrencies. And anyone with coding knowledge, can create a new one. Time takes care of all egos.

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NWL

In the amazing Netflix show The Crown, there’s an interesting scene. The show itself chronicles Queen Elizabeth’s life and her ascension to the throne at a relatively young age. I don’t know if that’s what the entire show is about – we’re only on season 1, and there are three more to go at least. But soon after her coronation, her mother (now the ex-queen Mary) feels quite suffocated and heads off to Scotland to be with some friends and to get some air (riding horses by the seaside, hiking in amazingly scenic landscapes, you get the drift). In this particular scene, the ex-Queen is asked by her friends, “Has it been very difficult?” To which she replies thus:

"I don't want to sound self-piteous but loss has followed loss. First and foremost, the loss of a husband.
Then the loss of a home, having to leave the palace. The loss of motherhood, as daughters become adults.
Loss of a routine, a sense of purpose. The loss of a Crown. Imagine, 17 years' experience as Queen and being the head of the family. Bertie was a wonderful husband and father, but he needed a great deal of help as King.
And then we lose him and, at precisely the moment when they should be giving me more to do, stop me falling into despair, they take it all away... They put it all into the hands of a girl who's totally unequipped for it."

If this were to be on Twitter, people would tag it as #firstworldproblems. Of course, a bereavement is never easy. But it also shows that power – especially got from position – is impossible to let go of. What she went through, every human being must go through as they age – whether queen or not. It begs the question – do we even realize when our needs becomes wants, and our wants become luxuries?

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Not just a librarian

We learn and discuss much about giving and its importance. Yet we may be gnawed by doubt at the time of the act. Are we giving away too much? Does the recipient really deserve my generosity? What if s/he uses it for the wrong reasons? What if they turn out to be a fake, a hoax amongst hoaxes?

Meet Mr Palam Kalyanasundaram from South India. Probably around 75 years old now, he worked as a librarian for 30 years, and donated every single rupee he earned from it to charity. 100% of his income – wow what a feat. How did he sustain himself? By waiting tables at a nearby restaurant, and doing other odd jobs.

He was awarded the title of Man of the Millennium by the USA, being the first person in the world to give away his entire earnings for social causes, and given a gift of INR 300 mn. All the money was of course immediately donated to orphanages and to children’s educational funds. He had earned INR 1 mn as pension, which too he donated to the needy.

Mr Kalyanasundaram in an interview has said that there is nothing in this world that is more fulfilling or brings more happiness than donating one’s own hard earned income to charity. When he can do 100%, despite not being a billionaire or millionaire, surely we can do 10%?

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Bubble territory

The financial markets have gone crazy, is the view that many people share today. Excesses of all kinds have made their way to the fore. Bubbles and manias are in the pink-paper headlines often.

The base is always strong. It’s what piles up, that can be…way off. Say a company worth $100, has a 100 shares each worth 1$, and 99 of these do not trade. But that 1 remaining share that does trade, has now found a new buyer. That buyer is willing to pay 50$, for just that one share. You know the new value of the company now? Even though only that 1 new share was traded at $50, all the 100 shares are now implied to be worth $50 as well. This makes the value of the entire company = $50 x 100 shares = $5,000! All because of one trade. The same is true on the downside too. If just the one share was exchanged at $0.5, the company would be valued at $0.5 x 100 shares = $50. This is how extremes get created in the market. A few crazy trades, and suddenly the tide of sentiment has seen a tectonic shift.

It’s not too different with human beings. We too have a solid base. But we let the most recent events – like someone shouting at us, or not believing us, or our inability to clear an exam or such – to define our whole lives. These stray incidents should be seen exactly as that – one-offs. But we extrapolate this to our entire existence, and go into insane levels of depression and anxiety. The opposite is true as well, as we may extrapolate some recent success and take it to the moon, with no ego in check.

We are a sum total of all our life experiences, not just the ones we came across today or yesterday. This is good to keep in mind, so that our moods are always cheerful, and balanced.

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Oh killer!

A slow-walking saint hit a metal box with his walking cane. He looked down to see what his cane had touched, and realized it was a treasure chest, partly open. He immediately exclaimed “Oh killer!”, and then went along his way.

A few hours later, two men came there from opposite directions, and laid eyes on the chest at the same time. Each knew that the other had seen the treasure too. What to do? They decided to divide the contents amongst them. “Total 100 coins, 50 for you, 50 for me.” Great, that’s settled. Then they realized that the treasure chest itself had not been divided. How to divide it? Not possible. They bickered for a while, and then decided to resolve the matter the following day because it was already getting dark.

One man said to the other, “Hey, it’s getting dark, and we’re both hungry. Why don’t you go to the nearby town, eat some food, and pack some takeaway for me as well? I’ll safeguard your 50 and my 50 till you are back.” The other man retorted, “You think I was born yesterday? I’m not budging from here. If you want, you go and get the food!” The first man relented, went to the town, had his fill and came back with some food. As soon as he arrived, the second man stabbed him with a knife. The bleeding wouldn’t stop, and soon enough he lay dead. The stabber sat down relieved that all the 100 coins were now his, and ate to his heart’s content the food brought to him by the other man. In a short while, he too lay dead, as the food had been poisoned.

Hours later, the same slow walking saint came by, looked at the 100 coins, and the two dead bodies, and exclaimed, “Oh killer!”, and walked on.

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Divorced from reality – part 2

Twitter has been awash with memes and posts on the recent divorce announcement of a tech mogul.

No more comments on that.

But one thing that did come up was an interesting thread written on the “gradations of the rich”. The premise is that we usually think rich = awesome = same benefits. But one guy has gone into more detail. All ‘rich’ is not equal. Pretty interesting:

  1. Net worth US$ 10m to 30m – all needs met, fly first class, 4/5 star stays, some business stress, not yet ultra HNI
  2. NW US$ 30m to 100m – fly private jet, multiple global residences, own big company, own cool cars, socialize with elite
  3. NW US$ 100m to 1bn – all of above + socialize with movie stars, corporate elite, any car you want. But very hard to find family and friends who love you for who you are, i.e. irrespective of your money
  4. NW US$ 1bn+ – You can literally buy access, influence, experiences, impact, respect and even time (by saying no to things/anyone that were otherwise not possible). But even at this level, one thing you cannot buy is love. Why? Because to love someone means to sacrifice for that person. But all the money you have means you never need to sacrifice anything. Probably explains why the top 10 richest people in the world have 13 divorces amongst them

In any case, it is not easy to be at the top of this list, always having to look over your shoulder. Thoughts?

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Divorced from reality

The world’s richest man? Divorced.

The world’s second richest man – divorced thrice previously.

The world’s third richest man – also getting a divorce now.

No this is not to suggest that if one is super rich, then hanging on to the spouse is difficult. It may very well be the case. But that is besides the point.

Each of these individuals must have gone through some pretty trying times – having a rough relationship can make one just feel like running away from it all. To where? To nowhere, but just away from everything. Can you imagine running away from everything when the whole world is watching you, tracking your every move?

The questions we need to ask are – how much money is useful in success? what is success to us? If we make a lot of money, but struggle with family life, is that still considered success? Is your success defined by you, or by those around you? Do you define your success based on what you want, or based on what you think others want for you? Do others really want anything for you? Time to ponder…

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