Dependencies

During my early working years, I used to depend on others for getting my way through difficult situations. Not even difficult, just situations which demanded some deft handling, that’s all. Or, some smart thinking.

My dependence on certain people increased as time went by. I looked up to them even for personal advice.

I am not saying it is a bad practice as such.

But dependencies create risk factors.

Not everyone has your success in his or her heart. Why should they?

After all, are you not supposed to define your own life and your own success? And also are you not supposed to be the navigator of your life, solving problems continuously on the way?

I can pardon myself (as Trump is going to do during his second term) for not understanding the basic issues of creating unnecessary dependencies in life. Maybe I was too young? Unlike Trump who is getting to be too old.

No excuses however. Apart from unforeseen risk factors, dependencies on other individuals have a habit of perpetuating themselves on and on……….you keep activating the dependency on almost every occasion. You lose the ability to think through issues and situations. You lose analytical capability.

Of course I realised all this soon enough. I stopped asking for advice. I listened to unsolicited advice with one ear always closed. Sometimes people were forced to ask “are you listening?” because my eyes were straying.

Neither did I depend on luck or fate. It has been a time-tested, well-established practice to blame fate for almost anything in your life which did not happen as desired. You almost get to develop a fascination for fate in all its anticipated glory. The same with luck – there is nothing like a “luck factor” in life. We attribute our success to luck as we wish to be shy about claiming that our success is indeed the result of our hard work and nothing else. Luck is a glorified excuse which belittles your own success in life.

If you want certain things in your life to happen the way you want, then there is no point in depending on luck or fate. It is you alone who will decide how those things should happen, you become the “director” of happenings in your life. You have to step up your game and make things happen the way you had planned. You cannot expect anyone else to understand the complexity of your situation in life, and then extend their hands out to help you. Not going to happen.

We are defined by our background, the way we were brought up by our parents, and the value system we were imbibed with – those are the characteristics which define us. Are we going to be substantially different from these critical attributes when we deal with a situation in life? Not a chance.

As human beings, we apply rational thought processes in deciding what we wish to do in life. Why? Because we have the knowledge and understanding which come along with our evolution to help us out. Are we unaffected by what we do in a specific situation? Surely not. We will be affected by the actions we take. This applies to everything we do in life. Can someone else do the thinking and doing on our behalf? Surely not. There should be no dependencies at all.

As life goes on, we start to develop certain dependencies for obvious reasons. For instance, I knew it would be difficult for me to handle mountain passes with steep turns and ascent, though I always think I could. My son helped me out by making the decision easy for me (I am referring here to mountain passes in the U.K. and Scotland). He said that “listen, let me cross over to the other side because you have to wait on the ledge on one side of the road to let the other car pass through, and you cannot be impatient to proceed. After I cross to the flat side, you can take over”. Simple but it was done without making me feel bad. Neither was I forced to feel “dependent” on my son’s driving skills.

There are many examples in life and business when you could avoid dependencies and move forward confidently. You just need focus and determination. Of course, you need to know how to “navigate” the ship.

Hope I made some sense here.

Cheers, and have a good week ahead,

Vijay Srinivasan

3rd December 2023

Nobody knows anyone

Today is 1st January 2023, the beginning of yet another year. Hopefully (!) it will be a better year than what just finished off last night.

I was debating this morning on what to write (ChatGPT did not work out as I mentioned in my blog post of yesterday – no point in trying again as it refused to search the web on the topic that I wanted it to write about). I decided against writing on something that almost everybody knows (at least in my erudite! circle), and settled on discovering some of my writing skills on a rather inscrutable topic. Which is what I have chosen.

Does anyone of us truly and really know someone else that we claim to know? Like for instance, do I really know my closest friend – what are his problems or the challenges he might be facing in his life which he might have shielded from everybody else?

No, I don’t. And you don’t.

You would never know or understand what someone is going through. It may be the worst possible thing that you could imagine, but you would never know.

What is the reason?

Almost always we try to hide our innate problems from even the closest relatives or friends. We do not share, and we do not wish to share. Our fear is that our true status and situation would be revealed, it would be out in the open, and we might be subjected to derision. What we probably miss out is the potential learning we can secure from our closest associates, as no one is immune from similar problems – almost everyone (including Elon Musk) faces intractable challenges. So, what is new with us? Why should we not share our issues with someone very close to us and who does not have any motive?

I think we should. The rationale is simple. Even if we are highly educated, we tend to be illiterate in tackling some serious setbacks in business or personal life. We might really need some dispassionate advice. And that advice is only likely to come from people who know you intimately.

The point I am making is two fold – you need advice and it is always available without strings attached; and there need be no fear that your problem would be disclosed to a wider audience.

So why not try it out?

I recently used this approach to seek advice on a very challenging problem, and I was really surprised with the candid advice I got. I would not have myself thought about the solution offered by a close personal friend. I used it, and best of all, it worked. It shows that there are always people who are willing to help you out, and who have had the benefit of facing similar circumstances in their lives.

We must not stand on false prestige. Even if someone concludes that we are useless because of the nature of the help we are seeking, it is all right. There is no need for bemoaning the necessity to seek out help. If somebody that you are close to wishes to help, take it. That would be your best bet.

However, please execute the advice that you get, otherwise there is no point in seeking advice. Further, provide help to someone in your network in a similar fashion, if you could.

This brings me to the inevitability of maintaining and strengthening relationships with just a handful of close people that you have grown up with. We really need to know each other very well, not just the names of respective children. Occasional yet regularly spaced out coffee discussions would lead to more knowledge than we can ever get by other mechanisms, as such meetings almost always never have a set objective, except for catching up on either side. With no pressure from goal-setting, such meetings become a catch all, but can be directed and leveraged for mutual benefit. Remember, the benefit always has to be mutual – one-sided benefit extraction would not work out even for the medium term.

To truly know about someone, a significant investment of time and effort is required. It is not due diligence mind you, as I am talking about folks that you already “know” well. It is true learning of the other self, without any objective or motive. It does not come easily. Most of us do not have the skills necessary for intimate conversations.

Nevertheless, this is a crucial aspect of building sustainable relationships and seeking impartial advice/rendering advice to people who seek it.

I am kicking off this year with this goal (!) of enhancing my skills in this area. Some of you might have perfected the same, which can only mean that you have probably solved all your problems in life!

Have a wonderful year ahead, folks, and try to forget the bad things of 2022,

Cheers

Vijay Srinivasan

1st January 2023

Accountability for your life

I might have written about this topic under another title in the past, I guess, but not sure. As I reflect on my life, sitting on a breezy balcony in slightly chilly weather, my thoughts travelled to my past as always…………..how the society in which I lived always prescribed how I should behave, function and operate. It also predetermined my responsibilities and my accountability as a member of the society.

Now I realise that I should not be accountable to anyone as far as my life is concerned. Not the extended family, not close friends, not office colleagues, not any other countless acquaintances, and definitely not the larger society. Irrespective of the country or the nature of the society (such as its conservatism) in which one lives. The accountability should only be to yourself because it is your life and you are the master of it. How you conduct your life is your own business, and no one has the capability to understand it as much as you do, and no one has the authority to intervene in it. The most anyone can do is to render unsolicited advice, and it is upon you to take it or leave it.

The rationale for accountability to one’s life lying exclusively within oneself is quite simple. Accountability and responsibility go together. If you do not feel that you are responsible for key things or happenings in your life, then you will not feel the pressure to be accountable either. Life revolves around defining your responsibilities, the charting of actions emanating from those defined responsibilities, and the outcomes that you have planned as a result of those actions you took. If the outcomes go wrong, then the result is on your own head, and not someone else’s. Quite simple. But I wonder how many times I have tried to deflect the blame on others, whether it is a family matter or business matter. That was a result of my self-righteousness most of the time. “I was always right” in my mind, and “I’m the most responsible person in the room” and so on………”how can I go wrong”, “someone else has goofed up”, etc.,

Not unreal, right?All of us go through such notions in our mind, but the bad thing is that we also go public, either within the precincts of our own house, or in a larger context. Such public expressions will upset the apple cart and create negativism all around, which is not healthy.

Credibility comes when you take responsibility for your own actions. That reflects well on your self-accountability. You will be surprised to know that this is not a common practice in any environment – very few people actually demonstrate these very important notions of behavioural characteristics.

Part of growing up is making decisions on your own inspite of the consequences – good or bad. When those consequences hit you, you face and accept them. Like what real people should do. If you don’t, you will never be able to make critical decisions affecting your own life.

I have been in positions wherein my decisions would affect a few thousand people, so very careful consideration was always warranted. While I am by nature careful and cautious, sometimes I have been forced to throw my caution to the winds when the corporate HQ demands immediate action without “careful consideration”. If I am the authorised signatory, then my signature is needed for executing those corporate mandates. Since decisions have already been made (without advise from respective country or region leaders), the signature part and the tough communication part are considered to be mere formalities.

But not for me – I always felt the pang of being forced to let people go for no mistake of theirs. I believed that the buck should stop at my desk. If I hired a person with all the necessary corporate approvals, I am responsible for that person’s existence in my operation and his/her success. If now I am forced to lay that person off due to corporate non-performance in some other big market, I think it is totally unreasonable, it is a reflection of not owning up one’s responsibility, it is acting without a solid rationale or an explanation which would make sense to that person being laid off.

Many of us have gone through what I am describing above. Nothing unusual, but extremely disturbing and serious. The foundation of your accountability to yourself gets shaken due to such unprovoked actions.

Whether you are a male or female, you should own up your actions, and be responsible for the same. All of us are responsible towards our families, right? We feel the ownership, so we feel the responsibility. It is quite natural. It might be very challenging, very taxing, vexing, sometimes we might feel the futility of it all – but then we anyways go forward and execute what we feel is necessary.

Ultimately, I never could allow other people to say or do things on my behalf. I really believed that I was capable of doing it all by myself. Many of us are like that – we are absolutely confident of ourselves. But when it crosses the red line of self-righteousness without our knowledge, we might get into trouble as I referred to above in this post.

Further, when you execute your responsibilities, you need to be cognisant of the fact that there is no such thing as “luck” in life. Luck is a concept which you should dismiss from your mind. The only thing about luck is that if you think well and positively, then your “luck” might improve! If you think in a bad way or negatively, then you might face misfortune!

Do I sound like I am meandering all over? No, not really. This is a post from my heart on the crucial importance of the concepts of “responsibility” and “accountability” to oneself. We should feel these ideas all the time in our heart and mind. Let us not forget that these concepts keep us grounded all the time, and make us operate like real human beings with feelings, conscience, and a sense of eternal duty.

Have a great week ahead, folks,

Cheers,

Vijay Srinivasan

19th December 2021

The Big Waves

Don’t you think that your life is replete with big waves, with peaks and troughs all the time?

Yes indeed. In our lives, big waves will hit us for sure, we cannot stop those waves from constantly rolling towards us. There is no point in running away from the big waves, as they will pursue you wherever you are, or wherever you try to hide. The big waves will find you and crash on you.

The key learning in life should be instilling the ability to ride the big waves. Several people who I know personally have withered away from facing the harsh challenges of life. They are smart, bright folks who just couldn’t withstand the pressures of life. They failed in building their strength and character to face the big waves. They did not learn how to ride those big waves in their lives. What a waste of life?

It is absolutely fine to take false steps in life – either you believed too much in your own capability and capacity, or you foolishly followed someone else’s advice without applying yourself. But that does not mean you should be defined by those false steps. Let someone not tell you who you are and what you are capable of. Your innate ability to recover from those false steps, correct your thinking, and take modified actions will define you.

Sounds like a lot of nonsense? No it is not. I am speaking from experience as I almost always try to do.

I failed in a number of things that I had set out to do in life. But I did not allow those failures to define me and my character. On the other hand, when I succeeded in what I had set out to accomplish, I did not allow the success to get to my head. I did not even celebrate my successes most of the time. More importantly, when I came across people in my life who I figured will be of disruptive influence, or could evolve into a causative dissonance in my corporate life, I slowly learnt to disregard them. Let me assure you, you will see many such characters both in your personal and business life. You need to develop a skill to disentangle from their bad influences which could easily corrupt your progress, and even belief in yourself.

Achieving some level of equanimity is critical in life. Don’t be seriously affected by your failures and false steps, and don’t get drunk (too much I mean!!!) when you succeed. Successes and failures in life are part of the “big waves” that life throws at you. While I am quite firm of the view that both are caused by my own thinking, judgement and actions, I know of many others who attribute the challenges and successes of their lives to a greater being. That’s fine, I am not going to argue. My arguments have always been with myself.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that you need to be a “Buddha” kind of person to disown every material thing in life and adopt a composed mind irrespective of what happens to you. No, not at all. I am just saying that you should not allow your failures to define you, and similarly your successes should not let you assume that you have reached the pinnacle, and so every action of yours henceforth will lead only to success. Nothing can be more suicidal than that kind of cocky thinking.

Equanimity and composure are essential to enjoy the inherent beauty of life. Life does not always throws big waves at you, life also brings many happy things. If you are damaged by the big waves, you wouldn’t be able to enjoy the happiness and beauty of life. Bring down the blood pressure, let your body mingle with the happiness of life.

Of course, to ride the big waves, you have to train yourself. I would go as far as to say that you should try to fail. Failures are difficult to stomach. Once you imbibe the failure and the reason for the same, you get better at tackling the next challenge in life. Analysis is very important – you need to sit down and analyse why you failed. The reason is almost always you, not anyone else. It is easy to point fingers at others or blame climate change for instance (!), but inside of you, it should be absolutely clear who made you fail.

Learning from failures is not something that a business school teaches (at least when I studied several decades ago). Business life was expected to be characterised always by success. Why would you think of failures? We are training you to be outlandishly successful in business endeavours, right?

One of the serious mistakes that I used to make was to take impulsive actions. It never turned out right. Impulsiveness is driven by the urgent need or desire to do something quickly in order to fix something. Impulsiveness tells you that you should move fast and take action, and no need to waste time thinking. Impulsiveness characterises you as an “action man”, but also a “wild west” character who shoots first and asks questions later.

Impulsiveness is different from instinctive gut feel. It is generally not intuitive. It is a rash behaviour in most circumstances. On the other hand, people who do think it out before moving ahead could be inaccurately characterised as being slow, and even useless.

In summary, I would like to reiterate a couple of things – (a) learn to ride the big waves in your life, and enjoy the ride allowing you to see the beauty of life; (b) learn to be balanced and composed in dealing with both failures and successes in life; and, (c) always think before you act, or make a decision in life. You are defining yourself by what you do, so you should think and act.

Hope it was useful on a Sunday morning!

Have a wonderful week ahead folks,

Cheers,

Vijay Srinivasan

25th July 2021

The perils of conformance

Most of our life, we are told what to do and what to expect as a result of what we do. Is that not true? Thinking back, I was always told what to do and how to behave by my parents; that should not be a surprise to anyone. But it instilled in me a sense to play by the book at school and in social circumstances. I played it so well that people around me always told me that I was “a good boy with good manners”. When I was less than 15 years old, it did not really matter to me, except that it made my parents happy and confident about me. The same principle of conformance to rules was instilled strongly in the Jesuit school that I attended. I was considered academically good and behaviourally, very good!

Did I lose anything in the process? in the way I grew up? in the manner in which I built my own life? in the the impact on my later life?

Yes, of course.

Not many of us would have the courage to say this, but it is an undeniable fact that very young children who are given a well-designed freedom to operate, behave and study on their own (you must be thinking “sounds like Western culture”), develop more of an exploratory talent as they progress through life. I have seen youngsters as young as 18 travelling around the world on their own, and discovering new things which are of interest to them. They develop passion and a serious interest to investigate further.

The problem with strict conformance is that it robs one of that inquisitiveness which is crucial in discovering new things in life, and the ability to take risks. I was forever worried about navigating a new place in a new country without a guide or a friend, and about even reasonable risks that I should be taking. I did not become an academic researcher or a PhD candidate, because I came to the conclusion that it would be a waste of time and money, but that was actually the result of my lack of experimentation, my lack of inquisitiveness, my lack of wanting to do new things in life.

In the corporate world, people who conform to rules are viewed more favourably than those who aspire to take risks (except when a person is at the CEO/CXO level!) and bend the rules to develop something new for the company, or do something new that has never been done. Almost each and every company I worked for during my corporate life would fit into that description. If someone is worried about keeping his or her job in a company, then he or she would also play by the rules, right? Wrong. Leave the company which does not offer you the space to experiment.

Most bosses (a.k.a. “managers”) discourage risk-taking, as that would paint them as mavericks in the eyes of their bosses. After all, they are running a business with quarter-to-quarter revenue and profit tracking, and they would not like to disturb that delicate balance. While aggressive pushing on sales performance happens in the conference rooms of companies, there is always a disconnect when it comes to exploring new things such as new markets, new ideas, new product offerings, new unconventional team members, et al. The ability of a young person to define his own performance metrics is rather limited, or non-existent. The ability of a young person to define his role in his own way in an experimental, experiential manner is very limited, of course.

None of my managers, save a couple, took a risk-taking approach to their business, and encouraged mavericks. That should not also come as a surprise. We still live in a world of conformance all around, except in one special space: the “start up ecosystem”. I am excluding academic research and industrial research from this analysis, as I do not understand those areas.

Now that I am in my own start up for the second year running, I wonder why I did not do something like this during all those years in corporate wilderness. Of course, not everyone can do. I was more of a “conformance creature” as I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post, so I actually thrived in the sphere of conformance in my corporate experiences – nothing to complain on that count.

If you choose to leave the corporate or government world, and venture out on your own, then you would chance upon one immediate revelation: that is, “don’t do anything you don’t want to do”. Do you agree? No one is going to force you to do something that you do not wish to do, because it is your own business. You do not have to follow similar kind of rules which exist in corporate organizations (to ensure that no one deviates and thereby creates a risk for the organization) and there is no artificial pressures in your own business. You are not reporting to your boss in another country, and engaging in late night calls in which hardly anyone speaks apart from your boss and his boss. You become an experimenter, an investigator, an explorer – doing what you want to do. The only problem that could arise is that if you do not know what you want to achieve. However, that should not be an issue as with past experiences, we can determine what we wish to develop and achieve in our own business.

I always thought that serious intelligence is the real ability of a person to adapt to new things, new surroundings, new people, and new discoveries. I am not yet there myself, and I am learning every day. It is not the innate intelligence that each one of us possess – it is the “intelligence” we acquire in a totally new world due to our ability to adjust, learn and adapt ourselves to a completely new and different ecosystem. This is what I am engaged in every day now, and I can only say that it has been a revealing and totally refreshing experience. I would never get back to the humdrum of the corporate world, even if there is an outstanding job offer!

I agree that not all of us are tuned to such an ecosystem, and many of us may not want to do that as well. That is understandable. Conformance delivers measurable success (provided one is otherwise competent), a sense of stability, and a career progression. The outcomes of conformance are well established and well understood. Why disturb it?

Well, I chose to disturb it. I would not know the real outcomes of what I am doing, compared to the measurable outcomes of conformance in a corporate setting. Sometimes, it is better to live the surprise at some point in life. For a person like me, I have to acknowledge the shock – moving from an entire life of conformance at home, school, university, corporate world, customers, partners, etc., to a world where there are actually no rules at all. The work culture is unique. It is completely different and an entirely new kind of adventure.

Let me keep an open mind and turn myself into an inquisitive creature!

Have a great week ahead,

Cheers,

Vijay Srinivasan

17th January 2021

Thinking while Walking

I have almost always failed to keep my mind blank during my early morning walks. My mind has always been clouded with task lists for the day and a variety of life’s problems yet to be solved. I try to address this issue by playing songs on Spotify – I have only some 15 or so albums and keep repeating the same.

But nowadays, the music is not having much of an impact on me, though ABBA or Karen Carpenter or Elvis Presley or Bee Gees or Ed Sheeran or Stevie Wonder are all very much there in my selection, apart from a series of famous Indian singers such as RD Burman, Alka Yagnik, Sunidhi Chauhan, Sony Nigam, AR Rahman, Ilayaraja, Mukesh, and the likes.

The mind is now ever more clouded with world’s problems, no longer with my own problems. As we are all acutely aware, the world has been brought to its knees with the CoronaVirus or COVID-19 disease, which has seriously affected all aspects of human endeavour. Business is affected, normal human movement is impacted, a limited sense of fear is prevalent (depending on the country in which you live), schools are closed, offices are increasingly getting shuttered, economies are going into recession, and no amount of pep talk is going to change the status of things towards a positive frame of mind for the people as things stand today. This has now become a seemingly intractable global problem.

So, it is not surprising that my mind is besieged with CoronaVirus-related news coverage (which I read before heading out to my walk every day) and the actions taken by various governments and the expected outcomes, and so on and so forth. I cannot claim any clarity on issues surrounding the matter, despite the various articles (including scientific ones) that I have read over the past couple of months, apart from a lot of WhatsApp nonsense.

The one clear conclusion that hits me repeatedly is that the world is not a “learning” mechanism – what I mean is that the world has consistently refused to learn from its past experiences – be it the global financial crisis, or the world wars, or the cold war, or the health crises which have plagued the world. Having gone through SARS, MERS, EBOLA, and the likes, one would make the reasonable presumption that the World Health Organization (WHO) and other global and national healthcare institutions would have made contingency plans in case a similar pandemic or epidemic arises again. Apparently not. Sometimes I wonder how taxpayers’ monies are getting absolutely wasted by funding large stupid bureaucracies which do not have any intention of fulfilling their stated mission. Apart from this fact, many countries do not even invest 3% of their national GDP on their citizens’ healthcare – should we not mandate investment percentages for healthcare and education which are always far less than what countries spend on defence and lose on corruption?

So, as I walked this morning I thought more on this matter. Multilateral institutions have been mostly failures. WHO clearly pandered to China in this latest CoronaVirus pandemic, praising China for its delayed actions on revealing and then containing the virus, instead of taking expeditious actions in warning the world – why worry about one single country however big or powerful it is, when the pandemic is going to sweep the entire world? Why praise China instead of admonishing it? The same principle should apply to any nation which flouts basic public healthcare regulations. Suppression of information pertaining to public healthcare is an international crime. Further, now that China is re-opening its wet markets selling wild animals, what actions are being taken by WHO in trying to push China not to do so?

This however, does not absolve the Western countries of their responsibilities in containing the impact of this insidious virus. Almost every Western nation has taken a rather lackadaisical approach with the idea that the virus cannot enter their country – including our famous U.S. President Donald Trump. Stupid people abound everywhere, especially in governments, and it is not surprising to see that CoronaVirus caused a major hit on unprepared countries such as Italy, Spain, the U.K., Iran and the U.S.

When I am focused on walking and meeting the deadline for reaching a particular spot in my path, such issues cloud my mind. I cannot say these issues do not affect my thinking or orientation. Unfortunately, the impact is there and it is negative, so much so that it has driven me to write this blog post!

Life is full of surprises and challenges, but one rarely prepares for such an event which impacts everyone around – almost everyone is cautious even while pursuing their walk or waiting for their bus at the bus stop. I saw people at the bus stops keeping a safe distance from each other, this can only be safe and good.

My worry is what happens when countries lift their lockdowns and restrictions. As I found my way back to my apartment, I was wondering about, for example, day 22 in India, or 5th of May in the case of Singapore – will restrictions get lifted and if they are lifted, how will the population respond? Will they continue to follow the safe procedures that have been put in place, or they are going to run wild with a sense of abandonment, throwing all precautions to the wind? There is of course, a significant sense of bottled-up pressure in most individuals who have apparently lost even their freedom of movement, and are waiting for relaxation. But I thought that (a) relaxation will always be premature because of the urgent need and pressure to revive the economy; and, (b) people will rush back into their work or schools almost immediately which could result in a second or third wave of CoronaVirus.

I also thought about China losing its global reputation irrespective of the phenomenal pressure that it could bring to bear in the aftermath of CoronaVirus. This is going to be an uphill task even for such a powerful nation. Countries everywhere will start to question China’s strongman approach to global affairs. China has a long way to go before it could claim parity with the U.S. and it knows that. Now that distance has been further increased due to the CoronaVirus pandemic. A world leading nation should have acted more responsibly. I am worried that the U.S. is also behaving erratically in countering the pandemic.

Well, I am concluding thoughts from my morning walk on that note.

Have a good week ahead working from home!

Cheers,

Vijay Srinivasan

5th April 2020

Unlocking your mind

Our mind, as we all know, has tremendous potential. It has the ability to invent new things, to analyze situations, to think through the consequences of one’s actions, to map out future scenarios, and so on and so forth. Good examples abound all around us and before our times – such as great inventors of scientific innovations which have benefitted all of mankind. The mind also has the uncanny ability to cause harm and destruction – it is not all “pure” and “good”, as we know from our own experiences and from seeing what harm can be unleashed by cruel minds on an unsuspecting world (example would be Hitler’s mind plotting the extermination of all Jews).

Whichever way you look at it, the option of doing things in a mundane manner is not the right and only one to exercise. While we continue to do things everyday in the very usual manner, we will fall behind the curve if we do not at least attempt to derive even 10% of our own mind’s potential. Every human is capable of doing so, but most people do not even make an attempt, because they never thought about the idea, or think that they are already smart, competent and capable, so they ask: “what is there that needs to be done more with their minds”?

They are absolutely wrong. Nothing new will ever come into play and affect mankind if everyone thinks that they are already operating at their respective peak potential of their brains.

The ability to tap our mind lies in securing a total calmness in the midst of the daily chaos which surrounds us. It is not just the ability to think through a solution for a domestic or business problem on hand. It is different. You are working on your mind to create a new problem which does not exist, and using its power to solve it for your own good or the public good. Or, it could be an existing problem which has defied solutions. The mind has a great ability to see far into the future in a sea of calmness in which you should imagine that you are swimming. You could achieve this sceanario when you meditate with full consciousness. You are not flying off somewhere else, you are firmly rooted in your conscious state of mind, but your mind is totally calm and serene. Does not sound feasible? It is absolutely possible to achieve this state of mind.

I have tried and it is difficult. I can achieve calmness of mind on a long walk around a water body with nobody around. I need the water body, a reservoir in Singapore terminology, and thats why I have chosen to live near one over the past several years. The water body calms one’s senses, and in my opinion, is better than living near the sea side, facing the rolling waves. The second important aspect is that there should be a pathway around this water body on which you can calmly spend an hour every day. On the other side of the water body, there should be trees or greenery with thick shrubs. All these contribute to a serene state of mind and reduces the impact of the surrounding world and its chaos. And I do this walk around the water body starting very early in the morning when the daylight has not broken – you see the stars or the moon on a dark grey sky which adds to the mental serenity.

Does all these kinds of stuff really help, as compared to intense prayers or deep meditation? I think it does, but I am not qualified enough to make a rightful comparison. One needs to figure out such stuff for oneself, in one’s own way, I guess!

Did I unlock my mind’s potential, even to the extent of 10%? Not yet. Long way to go, but I am firmly on my way. Are you?

Have a wonderful week ahead folks,

Cheers,

Vijay Srinivasan

23rd September 2019

Camp: Chennai

Long Winding Road

As I sit down to write this post, I am influenced by the vast expanse of bluish-green water body surrounded by a green forest that looks at me everyday. It is a rarity in the concrete-dense Singapore that you get both a huge lake (reservoir) and a forest just in front of your building. I guess people will pine for such a view, though there are many seaview apartments in Singapore, or even ones overlooking a hill or greenery. But the combination of both water and greenery just outside all our windows and balcony mesmerizes me regularly, and throw in the beautiful sun setting in the evening into the water, and there you go, the poet in you will come out. In my case, I am no poet, so my blog post writer comes out!

My rumination today is about life – the long and winding road that we had crossed, and more such road ahead of us. I am thinking on what constituted my life and its long road till now – it has been a good journey, though there were plenty of surprises and some disappointments, like everyone else must have endured. I was shown the path to the main road by some very important people like my parents and one of my teachers in secondary school, and I followed that path. But once I hit the main road, I was in full control of it all by myself, with occasional guidance by some other important people who kept popping up along my “own road” – these are your guides and might include a variety of folks : your own family, your relatives, your classmates, your friends, your business colleagues, your bosses, your peers, your subordinates, your remote acquaintances, and so on and so forth. In my own road, I have been lucky to receive guidance and counsel from a few people who I cannot forget under any circumstances. There were detractors too, and I cannot forget them either.

But one thing I am clear in my head – it was just me who drove my own car along this long winding road. Nobdoy even taught me how to drive my own car! I figured out how to service my car, at what speed I should travel, who should be my car companion(s), and where to load up on petrol – if you see what I mean. Sometimes before my wedding, my car was empty, I was the sole occupant, and that is the time I gained my independence, individual thinking, acceptance of my own “self” as I was, and my own moral compass. I led my own life, and refused to be drawn into any kind of stereotype. Of course, I had the big challenge when someone understood where I came from just purely from my name: that is a tough one to crack as I was expected to behave and perform in a particular way, which I did not do most of the time.

If you do not fall into that behavioural pattern, then sometimes your “own road” could get longer, as you are outside the mainstream and too individualistic. I had this problem early on in my career and had to develop a response mechanism based on how well I did in my work. This carries on through your life, and your ability to steer clear and keep the head above generic conformity required to maintain a specific pattern actually increases and eventually makes you a deep thinker.

In my life, I had to change my “car” and take a “different road” once in a while, and that requires courage. The thing which requires a big courage is of course choosing your life companion. A wrong companion will derail your life for sure, but a good companion can make the journey a pleasant happy one while enhancing your ability to deal with steep curves on the life road. When I had to make a decision to move from Singapore to Mumbai in 2006, I depended a lot on my wife’s advice – it made the difficult shift a bit easier and allowed me to reach a level in my corporate life which I was looking for. You also add companions as you travel further – I mean your children. They will be your companions for quite a long while, but eventually will get down and choose their own set of car / road / life companion. They may proceed on an entirely different road, as is to be expected.

So, each one of us have our own vehicle, companion(s) and road. Sometimes our roads intersect and we happen to meet. Such meetings are essential especially when it involves an old friend, a classmate, a distant yet good-minded relative, or even your own children. You should ensure that such meetings continue to happen and cherish them for the memories they bring along as you continue your journey towards the end of the longish road.

Is there an end to your own longish winding road?

What do you think?

If you have lived your life well and have not committed any harm to others, there is actually no end to your road.

Am I blabbering? No. You are thinking death signifies the end of every individual’s road. Not true.

As a person loved by your own family and friends, as a human being who contributed in a positive sense to this world, as a life companion to your spouse, as a companion to your children, as a mentor to many colleagues in your professional life, your soul will linger on. For the soul, the road never ends, and it is permanently “marked” as your road with your name on it. Other people will remember you for many things, but most essentially for the good things you did.

So, your road goes on. On and on. Forever. And, your soul keeps travelling on it.

You just need imagination and a serious sense of purpose in your life to visualize what I am saying here, and I am sure you do. Think about it. Do good things to others. Contribute to the well being of all your “life companions”, and persuade them to follow their own conscience.

At the end of the day, it is our conscience and soul which matter to this world.

Your road never ends friend. Keep going, and Do good.

Have a wonderful week ahead,

Cheers

Vijay Srinivasan

21st October 2018

A Reckless Mind-Altering President

Democracy is a demon.

How else can we describe the current sorry state of affairs in the U.S., which in turn is causing consternation all around the world?

At the outset, it is difficult to challenge the “simpleton” logic employed by Donald Trump.

• Is it wrong to make an attempt to control illegal immigration?
• Is it wrong to separate young children from their parents who are illegal immigrants?
• Is it wrong to challenge China for its trade policies which have caused a huge lopsided trade deficit with the U.S.?
• Is it wrong to arm twist the European Union on defence spending for their own protection?
• Is it wrong to select a conservative Supreme Court Justice who shares common opinions with the President?
• Is it wrong to impose customs tariffs on imported goods which affect American industries and cause unemployment?
• Is it wrong to attempt to control legal immigration and disallow spouses of temporary legal corporate employees from working?
• Is it right for American manufacturers to shift production to low-cost countries like what Harley Davidson has done?
• Is it wrong to attack the “fake” media when it has been proven that there are instances when the real media reported fake news?
• Is it wrong to attack long-standing American allies on trade, immigration and defence spending?
• Is it right to exit from the U.N. Human Rights Council?
• Is it right to throw away an international agreement with Iran which was signed by the previous Presidential administration?
• Is it right to schmooze with President Putin of Russia when there is significant evidence that Russia had interfered with American Presidential Elections in 2016?
• And so on, and so forth………..

Prima facie, it appears that the President is doing all the things that he committed to do while campaigning for the President job, and it also appears that he is right to carry out his commitments to the American people who elected him President, right?

Right. That’s for him.

Right. That’s for the vocal electorate in Middle America who voted for him.

Right. That’s for the coterie of his cabinet members who are not allowed to have their own unique opinion which could be different from those of the President.

Wrong. That’s for the rest of us.

But does he care? Absolutely not.

President Trump is convinced that he is doing the “right” thing for America and the American people. It is his unshakeable belief.

What he does not understand, or does not wish to understand, is that the U.S. is currently the #1 Nation impacting global policies in all facets of human life. Almost. When the U.S. is in such a unique and vaunted position, it is absolutely necessary for it to take the global impact into consideration, notwithstanding the fact that it could sometimes appear to be a philanthropic action, or cause temporary negative impact on the U.S. itself. Unfortunately, no other nation has been able to rise to the level of the U.S. over the past 70 odd years or so. American Presidents cannot be reckless and clueless about rules governing international law, trade, immigration, security, and diplomacy.

While what President Trump does to his people is his own business, Americans are now sufficiently global in their thinking that they should see through if their leader is violating global compacts and policies. Fortunately for President Trump, the U.S. economy has been doing well, and unemployment rate is falling. But, this is a time-sensitive phenomenon, and it only takes a couple of months before things start to unravel, as his trade policies are sure to cause trouble.

Global diplomacy is not about just getting to know each other, shaking hands and indulging in small talk. There is a huge amount of work which goes in, preparing for a global summit meeting. President Trump is now realizing that fact with reference to North Korea.

President Trump indulges in propagating fake news himself at his election rallies. There is only one single truth on every matter, and factual inaccuracies are mounting in his talk at his rallies where wild crowds of supporters cheer him on. He goes back to the White House with increased drive to continue his policies. His twitter feed has become a series of utterances against his “enemies”.

Overall, here is a President who self-indulges himself, berates constantly against his opponents, derides the Special Counsel investigation on Russian interference in U.S. elections, stumbles on conflicts of interests, communicates his racist tendencies, and his bad views on women in general. When a global leader of stature meets President Trump, what do you think will be going on in the mind of that global leader?

It is not hard to guess.

So, President Trump needs to get back to the basics of governance which are probably taught in a U.S. university of repute such as Georgetown in Washington DC itself, or consult past Presidents who could provide him some serious counselling. He needs to kick out sycophants from his Cabinet. He needs to listen to some seasoned leaders such as Angela Merkel of Germany. He needs to understand that running the U.S. government and managing global affairs is totally unlike running a corporation. And, he needs to kill his twitter handle. His digital skills have ruined policy making.

In a nutshell, President Trump can recover from his governance lows by actively seeking counselling assistance. All of us need counselling or mentoring at some stage in our lives, and it is nothing to smirk or laugh about. So, here we are – President Trump will hopefully read this blog post of mine and adopt my sage advice rendered to him without any prejudice by a global citizen who thinks globally.

Have a great week ahead,

Cheers,

Vijay Srinivasan

8th July 2018

 

Life in Simple Steps

In today’s world, life has indeed become very complex.

It appears that every individual not only has the need for an economic strategy, but also a social, political, and in fact, even a “gobalization” strategy to boot.

Life was simple in the past, when the connectivity between people was based on face-to-face talk, and at the most phone talks, and written communication. There was a need to think through everything carefully, due to the incisive impact that one can have in such interactions.

While the need for thinking through has not decreased, it is relegated to second position, as youngsters believe that a rather quick response is far more important than a “considered” but delayed response [we are talking here about a delay of say, 30 minutes !]. Given the rapidity at which the world today values responses of any kind rather than well thought through delays, it has become essential to train our minds to react in a superfast manner, while trying not to make mistakes and trying to think through all relevant angles for a meaningful and impactful response.

Come to think of it, this sounds hilarious. Sometimes, we do not take phone calls, due to various reasons – could be family dinner time, could be movie time, could be that you are at a clinic for a doctor consultation. And, if we do not take calls then it is considered as a “non-response”, even if we try to return the call later on. Text messages are expected to be responded to without any delays. LinkedIn messages are another mode of communication. Of course, the most dominant form of communication today is WhatsApp, and I have elected to make most of it “noise free” meaning my phone will not buzz when the message arrives. I will look at the WhatsApp messages when I get a break. However, business communications are received with a ringer, so that I know that I need to respond almost immediately, if not after my current engagement.

Today’s life is full of such interrupts, intrusions into your current activity, and expectations which sometimes defy logic. Life today also demands that we plan for every eventuality – in business or personal matters. A person who does not actively plan his future and the strategies in every sphere of his/her life, can expect to have shocks and consequences of not planning. Today’s world does not forgive or even forget slackers of any kind. The teenagers of today need to understand that world is demanding and unforgiving and necessitates active planning, like what we do in the corporate world.

One way to overcome the hurdles is to plan the life in simple steps, not in leaps and bounds. While planning is crucial, we need to have the tenacity, grit and determination to handle things as they come. If our planning has been good, these things would have been part of the scenarios which you would have worked on anyway during the planning process. Sometimes, simple thinking would facilitate clarity of mind. Our complex minds lead us to confusion sometimes, as we let our minds plot the tree of actions and counter-actions and deliberate on consequences and results. For simple things in life, it is better to let the mind think in simple steps, and “enjoy” the consequences of our actions !

Attaching heavy seriousness to every simple step in life complicates our lives unnecessarily. I have been the victim of some heavy thinking in most everything major I did in life, and in hindsight, I believe I could have had better results without such heavy interventionist thinking. Mind was not clear.

In any case, my suggestion is two-fold: plan your future well with a strategic approach designed to deliver intended results/outcomes, and run your daily life in simple steps. Sounds contradictory, but it is not. Think carefully !

Cheers,

Vijay Srinivasan

20th February 2016