In 2016 for almost a year I coached a student who was preparing for her IAS exams and dealing with all kinds of struggles in life. Her commitment and perseverance paid off eventually and today she is an Assistant Collector working day and night ON THE FIELD, risking her own life, fighting the battle against Corona.

I was so touched when she sent me a screenshot of our Whatsapp chat this morning to show what she’s saved my number as. These are things money cannot buy. So blessed that I could serve her and be useful to so many others we well.

TODAY.. after her 7th session with me, a client who had signed up for 10 sessions, decided to STOP taking coaching from me.

“Milind, in the last 6 sessions itself I got what I wanted. I got clarity on my thinking. On what the next steps on my career should be. I’m no longer thinking of 10 things at the same time. I’ve made peace with my job and I know what my future ought to be.”

——————————————
You know it reminded me of one thing. As a Life Coach I am happiest when my clients become so powerful, they DON’T NEED ME anymore. Sometimes I coach a client for months or years together.. the client shares secrets with me he/ she doesn’t dare share with anyone else. And gives me permission to say things nobody would dare say to him/ her.

And one day their life starts working so beautifully that they LEAVE ME. I’m almost always heartbroken but the breakup is part of the reward! And in 8 years I’ve had more than 250 heartbreaks!

But I tell every client who leaves me. “Wherever I am, a piece of your heart will always be with me. Wherever I go, you go with me.
And better still, wherever you are, a piece of my heart will always be with you. When you leave, I leave with you.”

(Secrets about my first public workshop that I never revealed to anyone.)

I had booked a banquet hall in Hotel Deccan Plaza, Chennai for 26th April 2009 full day by paying Rs 10000 advance. It was one of the last swipes on my already overloaded credit card. I was already sitting on Rs 25 Lacs of debt – 3 credit cards and multiple personal loans because of bad personal financial management.

I had heavily marketed the workshop for 1 month (Fees Rs 5000 per person) but guess how many participants I got – ZERO!
The day before the workshop I was extremely disappointed and depressed because of my FLOP show right at the beginning of my self employment career.

I didn’t want the hotel advance to go waste so I called up 25 people I knew and offered them the full day workshop for FREE. They happily accepted the offer and the workshop was a SUPERHIT.
The participants generously offered to contribute Rs 250 each so that at least part of my Rs 10000 hotel advance would be covered. (A Big Thank You to all of them!)

It was a HUGE morale booster for me as the participants gave me positive feedback about my abilities as a trainer. I still made a loss of Rs 5500 odd because of the workshop material and all, but the experience I gained was priceless!

Between 2009 and 2011 I successfully conducted this same workshop 10 times with paid participants and a full house each time.
In the second edition of the workshop itself (in Aug 2009) I bumped into a business owner who hired me as a consultant and I made roughly Rs 40 Lacs over 3 years through services I offered him and his group companies. That was my bread and butter for those 3 years and it helped me clear a lot of my ever growing debt.

Meanwhile I tried my hand at lots and lots of things and for every one thing I succeeded at, I FAILED at three!
And then in 2012 I switched to Life Coaching. This too I struggled till June 2014. In June 2014 I did a 6 day Art of Living Course and my coaching practice took off like an ISRO rocket. (Till this day I don’t know what’s the connection!).

The rest is history. ( One Lakh Sixty Two Thousand Minutes of Life Coaching to 262 clients across the planet so far).
All this because I DID NOT GIVE UP and go back to a corporate job when I got Z-E-R-O participants for my first workshop!

From that day I decided.. whether it is your career, or your relationships, or your bank balance or your health or whatever.. COME WHAT MAY.. NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER EVER GIVE UP!

Here are some SHOCKING THINGS I learnt about money and banks AFTER I became an adult:

LESSON 1
Central banks cannot run out of money because they are the ones that create the money. And you cannot run out of something you create yourself. And that is why the value of money erodes over time. Because when there is MORE money in the system, it becomes LESS valuable.

For almost a decade I thought a 10% increment is a decent increment. Till I realized that a 10% increment is actually only a 3% increment if inflation is at 7%. So because of the way the banking system works, you’re doing one full year of maghachmaari to STAY IN THE SAME PLACE!
To deal with a recession you have to be financially intelligent. More than ever before!

LESSON 2
As an individual you cannot print money.. but you can CREATE MONEY for yourself from thin air. In 2009, after 15 years of working in various corporate jobs I learnt that the amount of money I CAN MAKE has nothing to do with my education, my designation or my job responsibilities.

I learnt that if I want money, all I need is an IDEA. If I can develop the ability to convert my ideas into money.. I can NEVER run out of money. As an experiment, in 2011, I once bought a 500 rupee book, read the book, mixed the ideas of the book with my own and sold the new set of ideas to people and made Rs 50000. In 2 weeks time. That’s the only way out I could think of to pay the banks to whom I owed money. My ideas have saved me from going to jail so many times I have lost count.

I still do that. Whenever I need more money than I am making, I spend time and money on creating/ developing an idea. That way I am recession-proof.

LESSON 3
The biggest thing I realized is that wealth has nothing to do with how much money I MAKE. It has everything to do with WHAT I DO with the money I make.

I’ve become SMART about money only in the last 5 years. The first 21 years of my career were a financial disaster. Not because I didn’t make enough money – but because I earned LOADS of money (about 2 cr) and SPENT it all !!! I know that’s really stupid but being stupid is the first step in the journey to being wise.

The sad thing is that I see a whole generation of people making the SAME MISTAKES that I made. I hope they progress from stupidity to wisdom faster than I did!

————-
We played Monopoly a couple of times in the last few weeks. It was fun. And at home, Seema and me make it a point to discuss money and financial intelligence with our children. The intention is that our children don’t make the same money mistakes we made and they don’t develop the same limiting beliefs about money which we grew up with.
We’ve been working with them to help them understand that being rich or middle-class or poor is JUST A MINDSET.

You could have tons of money in the bank and have a poor mentality and suffer. Or you could have no money in the bank and still have a rich mentality and live a very fulfilling life. Or you could be rich AND happy.

It’s all about what’s in your HEAD.. and not about what’s in your BANK.

Photography (and life) have taught me one thing. The beauty of something is not in a subject.. it’s in the lens through which you see the subject. If you want a beautiful world, you just need a change of lens.
And strangely, for humans, how we LISTEN, how we INTERPRET things.. that’s the lens with which WE SEE the world.
P.S. Shot this rose in our balcony. Strictly indoor shoot!

LIFE COACHING is a very serious profession. Every day I deal with people who have productivity challenges, severe relationship problems, major self confidence issues etc etc. After 8 years of being in this profession, coaching day in and day out often drains me out.
To put some life into my sessions I make it a point to lighten up the conversations. Here are some of my favourite interactions from my sessions. And my clients love them! 😃

➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖
1) CLIENT: “I don’t want people to judge me. What do I do?”
ME: “You chose the wrong planet. Next time ask God for a different planet. Yeh planet pe aisaich hota hai.”

➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖
2) CLIENT: “I always think negative. Some people are always thinking positive. I want to be like them.”
ME: “Don’t be crazy. I mean it.. literally. The mind is negative by default. It is wired to think negatively. The so called people who are always thinking positively.. you should admit them into the nearest mental hospital.  THEY are the ones who are abnormal. If you are always thinking negative, you are perfectly normal.”

➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖
3) CLIENT: “You are a Life Coach. In the next few months you will motivate me and inspire me, right?”
ME: “Wrong. In the next few months, I will do an eye transplant surgery on you. Through my coaching you will get a new pair of eyes to see the world.”

➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖
4) CLIENT: “How do I shut the inner voice in my head which troubles me so much?”
ME: “You can’t shut it yourself. But when it does shut down, the Electrocardiogram will go BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP…  Net net.. make peace with your inner voice, let it be, don’t try and shut it down!”

➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖
5) CLIENT: “Milind, I need a kick in my butt. Tell me some ugly truth about myself.”
ME: “Ugly or not, here’s the truth about us all. We’re inauthentic and we’re inauthentic that we’re not inauthentic. We pretend and we pretend that we don’t pretend. We’re always lying and we’re lying that we’re not lying.”

➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖
6) CLIENT: “When will my problems end?”
ME: “Oh! It’s a matter of time. When you’re 6 feet above or 6 feet below the ground.”

➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖
7) CLIENT: “Milind Sir, I want to generate more time. How to do that?”
ME: “Arrey Baba for that we’ll have to get the Earth to rotate more slowly. Thoda mushkil hai.”

➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖ (last one is little senti)
8) CLIENT: “I’m really mad at my mother. I’m 50 years old and a successful CEO of an IT company. Yet she’s always nagging me and fixing me.”
ME: “You’re not 50 years old, you’re more like 5. At least to your mother. To the world, you’re a super successful CEO, to your mom you’re that little boy with a running nose who always forgot his hanky at home. You will never grow up in your mom’s eyes. NOBODY EVER DOES. That’s her way of loving you.  Accept her the way she is. Make peace with her behaviour. Ek hi to Maa hai. When she dies you will miss all this. Plus you stayed 9 months rent free in her womb na. And as you grew up she was the one who washed your bummy. Now it’s payback time my friend. Your love is all you can give her. And that’s all she wants anyway.

THERE ARE 2 FUNDAMENTAL STEPS NEEDED TO GET WHATEVER YOU WANT IN LIFE:

This one is straight from my coaching sessions. I was sitting at the lawns of my apartment complex sometime back watching the moon and it got me into the mood for some power writing!

STEP 1: Best told through the story of American President John F. Kennedy. In 1961, in a now famous speech, JFK made an audacious statement to the American Congress. “By the turn of the decade, we will put man on the moon.” He made what is called in linguistics, a DECLARATION.

After the speech it seems NASA was pretty pissed off with Kennedy. “Sirji, we don’t even have the technology to put a satellite properly in Earth’s orbit, how could you commit to putting one in Moon’s orbit?”

Like Amitabh Bachchan in K3G, JFK was also a baap aadmi.. he replied, “Ab bol diya to bas bol diya. Now that I’ve said it, IT WILL HAPPEN. I don’t need reasons to believe that it will happen. It will happen BECAUSE I-SAID-SO.”

JFK had cracked the first secret of getting whatever you want in life.. YOU HAVE TO DECLARE IT PUBLICLY.

STEP 2: Declarations are not enough. You need to back them up with a RESPECT FOR YOUR WORD.. for your promises. You need to be a person who walks the talk, a person who always does what he/she says. Your commitment towards that has to be right up there. Without that, your declarations are useless.

“Achche din aa rahe hai” is a VERY POWERFUL DECLARATION. It can be a future altering sentence provided it is backed up with a system that walks the talk.
I often ask my clients, “Kya hai tumhare zabaan ki keemat?”

Over 400,000 people at NASA worked on the Apollo project. They had no idea what kind of rockets, engines, landing craft, space suits, underwear to take to the moon. With no Google Maps how do you find your way to the moon? And how on earth (literally!) do you get back home?

But their commitment was the glue which held them together. They didn’t cut corners. They didn’t take shortcuts. And in 1969, less than a decade after JFK’s powerful declaration, the world watched Neil Armstrong take that first giant step.

IN SUMMARY.. like Kennedy you have to get into the habit of DECLARING what you want. And parallely make yourself a person who honours your PROMISES and commitments.
Gandhiji and the other freedom fighters also made public declarations, “We will drive the British out of the country.” Mother Teresa did the same, “I commit my life to helping the homeless and the destitutes.”

YOU can make your own declarations, “I DECLARE that l will get a promotion this year”, “I DECLARE that I will start a new business in the next 6 months,” “I DECLARE I will lose 28 kgs in the next 9 months”, “I DECLARE I will make a trip to Spiti Valley this year” or whatever..
You can get WHATEVER you want in life. Because your WORD creates your WORLD. And that’s why you need to respect your word. And in any case, if you don’t respect your word, who will?

WHAT YOU CAN SEE IN THE PIC:
My friend Tushar happy after participating in his first FULL marathon in Mumbai.

WHAT YOU CANNOT SEE IN THE PIC:
1) He completed the 42km Tata Mumbai Marathon in 6 hours and 22 minutes. (that’s a lot of running!). He told me many people give up after 30 kms.. it requires physical AND mental toughness to go beyond that.

2) Tushar is Captain of an Oil Tanker off the coast of Brazil. He maintained his fitness in the last few months in the gym of the ship. He told me this morning how the treadmill in the ship’s gym had stopped working so he used the gym cycling equipment to keep fit !!

3) Tushar has often told me how stressful his job is. Technically he can go to jail even if one drop of oil leaks into the sea. There is crores of cargo at stake. The work shift is 12 hours and then he has to be on standby in the remaining 12 hours to handle any emergencies.

Most people on the ship, he told me, are too tired to work out after a 12 hour shift. But that didn’t stop him either.  Tushar’s commitment is such an inspiration. This March I’ll turn 50 and I told myself this year I’ll train to become a runner as a special birthday gift. I told myself – I will not allow my work pressure, my work schedule, my lifestyle.. in short my excuses to stop me. Thank you Tushar!

“DON’T BELIEVE ME. I AM NOT TELLING THE TRUTH.”, I told someone this morning.
“Actually I never tell the truth. Simply because I don’t know what the truth is. And that’s why I don’t even claim to know the truth.

All I have is a bunch of opinions. Opinions about you, opinions about my friends, my relatives, about the government.. And it’s okay to have opinions, but opinions are not the truth. Opinions are like dark glasses. They’re cool but you’re not seeing the real thing.

In fact opinions are the lowest form of human knowledge. They require no accountability, no understanding. “He’s a good for nothing friend.”, “She’s an insensitive sister.” I can say just about anything about anybody if I want to. Opinions are cheap.

Empathy is expensive. To discard your opinions and understand what someone else is dealing with takes effort. To shift your focus from a person’s behaviour to understanding the REASON for their behaviour is hard work.

Not everybody wants to do the hard work. It’s easier and more convenient to throw opinions around and insist that your opinions are actually the truth.
Do YOU want to do the hard work? That hard work will shift you from average to great, from ordinary to extraordinary.
If yes, I will coach you. If no, do not waste your money and my time.”

P.S. I say this at least once every day to someone or the other and STILL I sometimes screw up in my personal life. So I understand how difficult it is to practice giving up the habit of having opinions and being sensitive to human beings around you.

And if you have opinions about ME, especially negative ones and you think they’re absolutely true, you’re completely right, I totally understand and I still love you!

As a couple Seema and me are OFF TRACK 90% of the time. The key is that we have a sense of destination. We know what the ‘track’ looks like. And we keep coming back to it time and time again.

It’s like the flight of an airplane. Before the flight takes off, the pilots have a flight plan. They know exactly where they’re going and start off in accordance with their plan.
But during the course of the flight, wind, rain, turbulence, air traffic, human error and other factors act upon that plane. They move it slightly in different directions so that MOST OF THE TIME the flight is not even on the prescribed flight path!

But with a CLEAR VISION of the destination and a GUIDING COMPASS the pilots eventually make sure that the plane arrives at the destination.

Although Seema and me are individually nowhere close to being perfect, the VISION we have and the GUIDING COMPASS we follow (on what’s acceptable and what’s not, what works and what doesn’t), make sure we get back on track as a family..
.. despite being OFF TRACK …90% of the time!

I REALLY DON’T CARE about what’s going to happen in my life in 2020.
But I DO care how TODAY,  is going to turn out. When I hit the bed tonight, I’m going to ask myself:
Did I use my day well?
Was I kind to people who love me?
(Or like Ellen DeGeneres says, was I kind to EVERYONE, including those who don’t love me?)
Did I make a difference to someone’s life today?
Did I thank those who made a difference to my life today?
Did I consciously learn something from whatever I screwed up on today?
Did I become wiser, smarter, better, today?
Did I live well today?
2020 is still far, far, FAR away.. the question is.. was I really alive TODAY?

THE SECRET TO HAPPINESS is having great relationships, says the world’s longest study on happiness. For over 80 years, Harvard Medical School has been studying the happiness of a group of people in the hope that the study would reveal clues to leading healthy and happy lives.

The study revealed that CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS, more than money or fame are what keep people happy throughout their lives. People who keep warm relationships live longer and happier and the loners often died earlier, the study reveals. “Loneliness kills.. it’s as powerful as smoking or alcoholism”, say the researchers.

“The surprising finding is that how happy we are in our relationships has a powerful influence on our health,” said Robert Waldinger, director of the study, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “Taking care of your body is important, but tending to your relationships is a form of self-care too.”

You can read more details about the Harvard study HERE.

We spent most of today in intense discussion. That discussion involved emotion, upset, hurt and regret. More importantly that discussion involved clarification of misunderstandings and misinterpretations. It involved authentic expression of our present met and unmet needs.

Twelve hours after we started the fight/ argument/communication we wound up agreeing to disagree and we resolved to unconditionally accept each other. We also expressed fully our love for each other and our commitment to strengthen our marriage. At the end of the day we both felt lighter and happier.

And that’s how we spent our 21st wedding anniversary. We now start year number 22 tomorrow with no past baggage. ❤

In the last 2 years or so I’ve been on a rampage of self-expression.. online and offline. Most of the four decades before that I’ve mostly been a very shy and timid person, so in that context this is a huge breakthrough.

Here are 5 TIPS that I’ve put down to help anyone express themselves better.

1) It is in people’s nature to judge others. Not expressing yourself IN THE FEAR that people will judge you is absurd. Your job is to express yourself and their job is to judge and that’s that! Their judgement is just their judgement.. you are perfect in your self-expression despite their judgement.

2) Focus on expressing, not on impressing. Trying to impress others puts pressure on ourselves. Express like there’s no audience. Be free. Like when a bird sings, it just sings. It doesn’t sing to impress anybody. It sings because it has a song.

3) Do not worry about what you are saying is right or wrong. There is NO such thing as right and wrong. That’s merely a matter of perspective. What you are expressing is merely a view.. not the truth. As long as you are clear about that, you can say whatever you want to say.

4) Be clear, focussed and intentional in your communication. Don’t beat around the bush. Life is short, my friend. Say it point blank. Shoot between the eyes. Come to the point and just say what it is.

5) There is a beautiful old saying, “When ALL the good things have been said and ALL the bad things have been said and ALL the ugly things have been said, all that will be left to say is I LOVE YOU.” Express your love fully, authentically and unapologetically. Love is created in the moment of speaking. When you love people, for God’s sake, TELL THEM, don’t keep them guessing. Expressing love is the highest form of self-expression. If you can freely express LOVE, you can freely express ANYTHING.

In a nutshell.. I live my life like a child. I know the gift of self-expression is the most beautiful gift I have as a human being. And I’m going to use this gift fully, so that when I die, I DIE EMPTY.

Just in case you didn’t know, I HAVE THREE WIVES.
One you see on the top (the one I HAD).
One you see in the bottom pic (my PRESENT one).
And there’s one you’re yet to see (the one I discover every morning.)
Sssshhh.. she’s yet to wake up!

I LOVE all three of them.
I don’t judge which one is better.
Or which one suits me better.
Or which one is more
C-O-N-V-E-N-I-E-N-T for me to deal with.

The earlier one was perfect the way she was.
The future one will be perfect the way she will be.
And the present one is perfect too. The way she is. And the way she is not.

And she is perfect not because
THERE IS SOME REAL THING
IN THIS WORLD CALLED PERFECT!
She is perfect because I SAY she is perfect.

By the way she has three husbands too!
And ALL of them are as paagal as can be.
She thinks the one she HAD was really paagal.
Because I’ve done a lot of things in my life, most humans wouldn’t even imagine of doing.

But she has ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA
how paagal the future one is going to be!
When she wakes up today maybe she will get a hint!
Please wish her all the best. She will need it!
P.S. So will I. 😲

All I had to do was fly to Delhi, then take an overnight train to Shimla (switch from broad gauge to narrow gauge in between), then drive from Shimla to a tiny village called Lhalung in Himachal located at an altitude of 4000 meters (imagine 6 Lonavlas of 624m altitude on top of each other). Lhalung’s population is less than the population of “A” Wing of the society where I live!

Getting from Shimla to Lhalung is also very easy. The distance is only 450km but you have to keep driving for 4 days for approx 8 to 10 hours each day, taking overnight stops at Kalpa (3000m), Nako (3500m) and Kaza (3800m). If you cover the distance too fast your body may not get acclimatized to the low oxygen levels and you could get headaches, giddiness or you could go into a coma.

Night driving is avoidable because out of the 38 odd hours it took us to reach Lhalung from Shimla, for 37.5 hours there was a DEEP valley on one side of the road. Plus it’s a one way kaccha road meant for two way traffic, so if you stumble upon a vehicle coming from the other side, first you have to pray to a God you really believe in.

When I finally got down to shooting the night sky at Lhalung it was mind-blowing. The Milky Way is visible with your naked eyes. IT IS MASSIVE! It was a sureshot way to put my bloated ego into place. I realized how tiny I am compared to this GIANT Universe. I also realized how petty, crummy and silly my life’s problems are.

At 4000m altitude it is so cold you need to have TWO pairs of gloves (inner and outer) to protect your hands. With gloves on, you can’t handle the camera and without gloves for an extended period in that extreme cold, the risk is not much.. at most you will have frost bites, and if they are bad the doc will have to cut off your fingers.

I was getting blurred images initially and I am grateful that my friend Manish Patankar taught me how to focus the camera to the nearest visible star which is ONLY 4.2 light years away.

Once I got that right, and I had gotten over all my WTF moments, I just had to follow the 500 divided by focal length rule and set the exposure to 20 sec. Then ONE CLICK and I captured the Milky Way. So easy na?

All this while my family and friends kept watching shooting stars and GPS satellites .. WITH THEIR NAKED EYES. Sheer Bliss!
(This was part of my trip to Spiti Valley in the Himalayas)

A lot of nice people came into my life. I learnt how to be like them. A lot of weird people came into my life. I learnt how to love them anyway.
Short tempered people gave me practice on how to be calm.
Angry people made me realize that I must be empathetic and understanding.
When I learn lessons it’s great. When I refuse to learn lessons, life gives me a kick in the backside.
I’ve realized that people come into our lives in all shapes and sizes. They are ALL our teachers. They come into our lives BECAUSE we need to learn some lessons. Nobody walks into our lives by accident.
I tell myself every morning: All of life is nothing but a school. And as long as I am breathing, class is in session. When I celebrate Teacher’s Day, I am really celebrating Life.
Thank You to all the teachers who came into my life and gave me valuable life lessons. And by that I mean I thank I EVERY HUMAN BEING who ever came into my life!
MJ is now ready for more and bigger lessons!

“THIS IS NOT A JAIL.. it’s a juvenile observation home”, I was told before I walked into it today to conduct a group coaching session for the inmates of Pune’s Juvenile Home at Yerawada which houses 40 odd under-trial/ convicted youngsters between 16 and 18 years of age.

To be honest I was QUITE NERVOUS when I walked in after having heard that typically the inmates here face charges for petty offences (pick pocketing and thefts) as well as serious ones (murder and attempt to murder).

Despite some minor violence which I witnessed firsthand in the hall while I conducted the session, my nervousness gave way to compassion and empathy.

There was a mix of positive and negative energy in the room and I quickly realized that I had the task of inspiring, motivating and empowering them as well as healing and calming them down.

I have no idea how effective my session was, but it was heartening to see some of the youngsters come to me and ask me “Thank you Sir, tumhi parat kadhi yenar ithe?” (When will you come back here?)

I also had some amusing moments with them asking me questions like, “Why are you so fat?”, “Show me your phone/ what you have in your bag” and “Sir, take care of your wallet, one of us might steal it!”

C4U the NGO that organized this, as well as several other NGOs such as Pankh, Muskaan, Hope for Children, Prison Ministry India’s Pune chapter and others routinely conduct rehab programmes for these youngsters.

It is my dream to coach prison inmates at Yerawada Central Jail in Pune and do whatever I can to transform their lives but to be honest my own fear and nervousness have stopped me from doing that. And that has reduced a lot today.

It was really a privilege to touch the lives of these lost but wonderful souls. It was easily the most fulfilling thing I have done this year!

1) COMFORT ZONE: Life is not working but you feel too resigned to do anything about it.

2) FEAR ZONE: You WANT to do something different but you worry about what people will say if you fail. You justify to yourself why it is better to stay where you are. You keep yourself stuck because being stuck is a convenient place to be. But you also complain about being stuck!

3) LEARNING ZONE: You develop courage. You master that little voice in your head which tries to plant doubts. You stop blaming others and start taking responsibility for life not working. You start taking ACTION.

4) GROWTH ZONE: You become like a child again. Adventurous. Curious. Fully self-expressed. ALIVE. You ‘JUST DO IT’. You screw up a lot. You become stronger, wiser, better. You become UNSTOPPABLE.

Life is a journey where we have to travel through all 4 zones, sooner or later. Which zone are you in right now?

The biggest lesson I have learnt in my life is: “Authenticity is EVERYTHING.”

If I want to feel powerful, I should be authentic.
If I want to be successful, I should be authentic.
If I want love, I should be authentic.

I have learnt it the hard way that when I feel powerless, when I fail continuously, when I stop receiving love from people, the ONLY thing responsible is MY OWN INAUTHENTICITY.

In plain simple English, it means, “If I am fake, I am screwed! And if my life is screwed up, I need to ask MYSELF – In what way am I being fake?”
I really like this Sadhguru quote because it reminds me how LITTLE I know about life.

I am a Life Coach, but I AM NOT A GURU. I am not dead sure about anything. I’m not even sure if I am intelligent or if I am an idiot.
I’d rather keep wondering about it. That’s the way I love it!

The Date: 7-7-7. Apollo Hospital, Chennai.

My wife’s gynec comes out of the Operation Theatre and tells me, “I’ve got Good news and Bad news for you!”
“Good news is, you’re now the father of a baby girl.”
“Bad news is, you already had one Cancerian in the house, now you have ONE MORE! All the best, Milind!”

Maybe she was joking! But she sounded serious.
11 years later I’m still trying to figure out how having two Cancerians in the house (or even one) can mean bad news. The way I see it, we MAKE UP STORIES IN OUR HEAD about how people are. Oh, she’s a Cancerian so she must be moody and she’ll give you a hard time. Or, he’s a North Indian so he must be aggressive. And so on.

We generalize. We make assumptions. We make up interpretations. We assign meanings. We are Master story tellers. WE MAKE UP OUR WHOLE WORLD! And then we get upset. WOW!

When I get caught in my own web of stories, I PINCH myself. I tell myself, “MJ, DROP the story. People are not demons and people are not saints. They are just people. And Men are not from Mars and Women are not from Venus. Everyone is from Earth! Including Cancerians.
DEAL WITH THAT!”

Whatever you are resisting – unwanted people, unwanted communication from people, unwanted habits, unwanted health conditions, unwanted career situation, unwanted financial situation.. STOP RESISTING IT. The more you resist it, the more it will persist in your life. You will keep getting more of it in your life.

On the other hand, when you ACCEPT whatever you are resisting, I mean when you accept it … when you completely, unconditionally, whole-heartedly accept it, all your unwanted stuff will just DISAPPEAR from your life.

“You want any help?” My wife asked me a few minutes back as I was getting ready for the day.
“No.” I replied.
“You want a BIG hug?”, I asked her.
“OF COURSE, YES”, she replied.

And that’s so typical of how our day begins. And how it ends. And typical of the rest of the day in between.

Here’s a HOT TIP: GO HUG someone this morning. Make their day. Make hugging people a way of life. In the stressful times that we live in, it’s the most beautiful gift you can give to another human being. And to yourself.

P.S. Credit for the BIG HUGS in my family goes to The Teletubbies show.

Spent the morning cleaning and polishing a trophy my mom had got in 1985. It was for the MEGHDOOT AWARD – instituted by the Department of Posts for Honesty and Integrity in service.

My mother was the first woman postal employee in India to get this award. In the early 60s she was one of the first 4 women in India to join the Postal service (It was considered unsafe for women to work for the Postal service at that time because of the occasional night shifts).

When I reflect on her career and her life’s achievements, I not only feel proud, it strengthens my resolve to make a difference and serve people, the way she did throughout her career.

For me my mom and her award are a symbol of the effort women put in to balance family life, work life and personal life – an effort for which there are no trophies, no recognition and in the case of housewives, no pay.

“Milind, It’s a VERY DEPRESSING ENVIRONMENT here. It’s minus 14 degrees, everything’s covered with snow and there’s not a human being in sight on the roads.”

This 28 year old Ivy League MBA student I’m coaching lives on the US East Coast and she was feeling really low when I started my weekly coaching call yesterday.

ME: “Send me a picture. I want to see what something depressing looks like.”
She sent me the picture (the one in the post).

ME: “Smriti (name changed), yes I can see a lot of snow. But I don’t see a signboard which says ‘DEPRESSING ENVIRONMENT HERE’. That signboard isn’t OUT THERE. It’s IN YOUR MIND. You see what I mean?”
What was true for her is true for all of us. We say things like ‘stressful job’, ‘depressing family situation’, ‘difficult life conditions’ etc. The reality is that there is A job, A family situation, A set of life conditions. The labels we give are NOT REAL, they are simply a reflection of what’s going on IN OUR MINDS.

The moment we realize that, we move from feeling helpless to feeling ‘If I work on my mind, my world can change. How ‘snowy’ or ‘stormy’ my environment is, won’t matter then.”

For the last 6 months I’ve been coaching a young businessman who goes scuba diving with sharks every year. He has no fear of sharks because he knows sharks don’t like to eat people (and that’s simply because they don’t like the way we taste!) Studies show they respond strongly to the smell of seals and fish, but not humans.

A LESSON here: Fear is a function of knowledge. Or the lack of it! When we don’t have enough knowledge all we rely on is the voice in our head. And we believe it to be true. That voice in the head is nothing but chatter… noise.. GIBBERISH!

ACTION POINT: Next time you feel fear,
1) Ask yourself, “What do I NOT KNOW that I can find out?”
2) Tell yourself, “This fear is not real. It’s just a CHATTER in my head. It’s just my brain talking to me as it tries to understand the world around me.”

DISCLAIMER: This post is not meant to motivate you to go jump into the ocean and swim with sharks. If you still choose to do that without researching shark behaviour and out of sheer curiosity (or your fishy movements), a shark comes and nibbles at your legs (which it seems they love doing) THEN I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE OUTCOME.. 😂😂😂

Often I am asked in coaching, “What is a guaranteed way to avoid failure in life?”

Here are some examples:
Don’t want a failure in a relationship? Don’t get into a relationship, stay single.
Don’t want a failure in business? Don’t get into business, stick to your job.
THE ONLY WAY to avoid failure in life is to stay where you are and avoid committing to anything new.

BUT THEN, that’s a RI-DI-CU-LOUS way of living life, isn’t it?
When you are creating the possibility of success, you are AUTO-MATI-CALLY creating the possibility of failure. Whenever you try anything new, it is INEVITABLE that life WILL throw a stumbling block in your path. And when that happens, you have to embrace the obstacle, deal with it in the best possible way you know and move on.

Life comes with NO GUARANTEES. Chasing a goal, however small or big, is R-I-S-K-Y business! RISK is an INSEPARABLE part of living. Like Clint Eastwood famously said, “If you want a guarantee, go buy a toaster!”

“Is the glass half empty or half full?” is the proverbial phrase to indicate that a particular situation could be a cause for optimism (half full) or pessimism (half empty).

There’s a THIRD WAY you could look at it. You could look at the glass as “half empty AS AN OPPORTUNITY” as opposed to the old way of “half empty AS A PROBLEM”.

So suppose you say, “I don’t like my job and I’m not getting another one.”
.. the pessimist in you will say “You’re in a soup!”
.. the optimist in you will say “Count your blessings.. at least you have a job! There are millions who don’t.”

YOU could look at the same situation and say, “What opportunity does this present to me? What is MISSING here that I can address?” (which puts you in the driver’s seat and propels you into action).

MORAL OF THE STORY: Stop wondering whether the glass is half-empty or half-full and START FILLING IT!

A few months back thanks to my daughter’s insistence we got home a small fish called Fighter and put him in a small fish bowl. Last month I thought Fighter must be getting bored alone in his small bowl so I got him two friends (small fish called Rainbow fish).

Then the bowl seemed too small for the three so I upgraded their home to a small tank. The three started having so much fun in the tank that I got a bigger tank (the one you see in the picture) and got the trio four more tank mates. One of them turned out to be a bully and Fighter got so stressed, he died. I was heartbroken.

But the remaining fish enjoyed their new home and with all the food I was feeding them the tank walls started getting coated with algae. So I got a fish called Sucker (the big black fish you’ll see in the picture – breed name Plecostomus). Sucker is a super-cute, super-friendly fish who feeds on algae and in the process he ends up cleaning the algae from the walls of the tank. (He’s the in-house janitor; he cleans the walls, the tank bed, the decorative plants, everything… and that’s a real cool deal because he cost me only 50 rupees and the time he saves me is priceless.)

But now there is a risk of Sucker starving to death if there isn’t enough algae in the tank for him to feed on. So now I have to get something called Algae Wafers to supplement his diet!

You see whether we’re dealing with fish or we’re dealing with our own daily lives, THE SOLUTION TO ANY PROBLEM ALWAYS LEADS TO A NEW PROBLEM! Think about it. Every problem you have today was once a solution to some other problem. Nature has weird ways of keeping us busy!

During a brutal study at Harvard in the 1950s, Dr. Curt Richter placed rats in a pool of water to test how long they could tread water. On average they’d give up and sink after 15 minutes.

But right before they gave up due to exhaustion, the researchers would pluck them out, dry them off, let them rest for a few minutes – and put them back in for a second round.

In this second try – how long do you think they lasted?
Remember – they had just swam until failure only a few short minutes ago…

How long do you think?
Another 15 minutes?
10 minutes?
5 minutes?
No!
60 hours!

That’s not an error.
That’s right! 60 hours of swimming.
The conclusion drawn was that since the rats BELIEVED that they would eventually be rescued, they could push their bodies way past what they previously thought possible.

I will leave you with this thought:
If hope can cause exhausted rats to swim for that long, what could a belief in yourself and your abilities, do for you? What if you had faith that this is a friendly Universe and whatever your situation, the Universe would protect you? What would then be possible for you?

Just to clear my head and to remind myself how I am choosing to live my life, I’m going to write 10 life fundas and as soon as I finish I’m going to hit the POST button:

1) I am on this planet to learn lessons. Every person in my life is a teacher, especially those I find difficult to deal with. I am not a victim of life, I am a student of life. If I want people to be the way I want them to be, I should have chosen a different planet.

2) When somebody does something ‘wrong’ to me, it is not my job to teach them a lesson. That job I leave to the Universe. I have better things to do in life.

3) In any case, what I consider ‘wrong’ is actually ‘right’ for someone else. I can keep debating on who’s right and who’s wrong till the cows come home but still not manage to convince the other person. So I give up boxing up everything as right or wrong. It’s just a smarter way of living life.

4) Considering ‘happiness’ to be a goal is the most ridiculous thing I can do in life. I am already happy. I went to bed last night and woke up in one piece this morning, alive and kicking and that’s a damn good reason to be happy.

5) I am not Superman and I don’t care about being one. I screw up a lot. And I learn every time I screw up. The ability to screw up is what makes me human.

6) Because I am not Superman, I’m not going to pretend to be one in the eyes of others. At the same time I’m not going to run myself down. I am cool with whoever and whatever I am.

7) After 50 monsoons on this planet I have learnt that there is nothing more important in life than relationships. God sent us all here to learn to love each other… especially the idiots we don’t like. Once I graduate from this love lesson in this life, I’ll probably be born as a dog in my next life, coz dogs don’t need the love lesson, they have mastered it already (that’s probably why stray dogs lick me so much).

8)I will do what I say and I will only say what I intend to do. Even when I have amnesia.

9) I did not come from God, I came from my parents. My parents are my source, and my source of power. And they are as imperfect as me. And I chose to get born from them, so I’m not going to blame them for anything.

10) None of what I’ve written here is TRUE or RIGHT. I mean, how does it matter anyway. All that matters is that my life works the way I want it to work.

Have a great week folks!

As I was going through my files just now I stumbled upon this set of 9 affirmations my wife Seema had put together for me about a decade back when I was DOWN IN THE DUMPS and perhaps at my lowest phase in life. (Many of the affirmations are from various Louise Hay books she has read.)

These affirmations played a key role in me bouncing back. Sharing them with you now:
• Everything is working out for my highest good
• Out of this situation only good will come
• I am safe, protected and guided by divine powers
• I make choices that are beneficial for me
• I believe – Miracle follows Miracle in my life. I accept miraculous occurrences in my life and in my world.
• I am open to receiving with Gratitude and Joy the lavish abundance and prosperity of this friendly Universe.
• I trust the process of life to bring me my highest good. I deserve the best and I accept it now.
• All is well in my world.
• Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Just finished a coaching call with a young businesswoman. She asked me “How do I let go of worrying about what people will say if my newest restaurant fails? Is there an affirmation that will help me with this?”

I’m a highly intuitive coach, so out came out of my mouth, “Screw what people will think. Just give your best and then detach from the outcome. If you love yourself adequately enough, you won’t need others to validate you all the time.

The only affirmation you need is ‘I love myself.’ Even better if you say ‘I AM IN LOVE WITH MYSELF’ or ‘I am head over heels in love with myself’, or ‘I am the best thing that ever happened to me!”

Do good to others, people will remember it.
(Although in the real world people don’t always come back later and acknowledge the good we did for them.. but that doesn’t mean that they don’t remember it.)

Thanks to my profession I have the privilege of seeing what kind of AWESOMENESS human beings are capable of bringing into their lives.
But the two amazing people who inspire me the most are my mom and my wife. Everytime I see them together, I become present to how these two ended 16 years of ‘typical saas-bahu’ conflict and created a fairy-tale relationship between themselves! What they accomplished strengthens my conviction that RELATIONSHIP TRANSFORMATION IS REALLLLLLY POSSIBLE.

Here’s the simple formula for transforming your relationships..
1) Become aware of how your LISTENING virtually shapes the person you are listening to, in your mind. There is no reality ‘out there’. The so-called-reality gets shaped in the space between your ears. 😀
2) Give up the old way of listening. Give up “I know him/her.. he/she is like this only.”
3) Give up labelling everything as right/wrong. When we die God is not going to give us a report card showing how ‘right’ we were anyway. In short, give up your right to be right.
4) Get into the other person’s shoes. Get the other person’s world. When you do this, MAGIC HAPPENS!
5) Most importantly.. be a catalyst of relationship transformation. Be the one who takes the first step. Don’t WAIT for the other person to change first. Be a writer of your life’s script. If you WAIT, you’re not a writer, YOU’RE A WAITER!

One imperfect woman + One imperfect man, each of whom have unconditionally taken 100% responsibility for marital harmony
= One perfect marriage 💘.

Here’s some life advice from the ancient Greeks:

Instead of simply having one concept of love, the ancient Greeks believed there were SIX DIFFERENT TYPES OF LOVE, all equally important:

EROS, the fiery, passionate love you feel toward a lover;
PHILIA, the platonic love between friends and family;
LUDUS, the playfulness found among new lovers and children;
PRAGMA, the deep understanding between partners that grows over time;
AGAPE, the selfless, charitable love for our fellow humans; and
PHILAUTIA, the love of the self.

Rather than relying on ONE partner to satisfy all these needs, the ancient Greeks believed each role could be played by DIFFERENT people in your life. This allowed them to spread their emotional needs across a wide range of people, making it easier for them to find happiness in love.

I so often notice when I coach people that we do the opposite (i.e. expect a handful of people in our life to satisfy ALL our love needs).. and that often leads to disappointment.

SMART TIP OF THE DAY (courtesy the ancient Greeks): There are more than 7 billion people on this planet.. each of whom is a source of love! 💙💛❤️
Love is all around us. We just need to go out and SEEK it. “I don’t feel loved enough” shouldn’t exist in our vocabulary..
P.S. If your love needs are still unmet, go get yourself a pet!

I’ve been coaching this young lady who (like most of us) has been dealing with countless problems.

Last week she went on a week-long trip to Ladakh and in this morning’s coaching call she told me, “Sir, after the trip all my problems have disappeared. I now realize that ALL I NEED is Oxygen and Food. Now I understand what you always tell me, “A problem is a problem only because WE call it a problem..”

And I said to myself, “Life is the best Life Coach!”

Why say this?

Because you are not your strengths. And you are not your weaknesses. What you did and what you had or have doesn’t define you either.
If you say you’re stuck, you are. If you say you’re just OK, you surely are. And if you say you’re finished, you most definitely are.

You see you are whatever you SAY you are. You might as well say YOU ARE AWESOME. Don’t question whether you are that or are not. You become whatever you say you are in the MOMENT of your speaking. Your word has a magical power. We all know we should be really careful and conscious of what we say. Well, now you know why.

There was a point in time when I always used to envy some of my illustrious IIM Bangalore batchmates. 26 years after graduating, many of them are country heads, CEOs and Managing Directors of multi-million dollar companies in India and abroad. They jet set around the world, stay in 5-star hotels and some of them earn more in a month than what I earn in a year.

Till one of them (who I coached) told me.. “Milind.. you are self-employed; you get to choose what you want to work on, when you want to work, from where you want to work, how much you want to work, with whom you want to work.. and YOU get to decide your annual increment. I will give up everything I have to get to the place you are in.”
(To which I told him.. “I did.”)

Now it’s great to be a highly paid CEO and it’s great to be an independent professional.. and we all want to grow and change… and all that’s fine… but it’s beyond me why human beings have this crazy idea about life (me included).. Being THERE is always better than being HERE!

“Whoever has, will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.”
You have to admit that when you read the passage it appears unjust, as it seems to be saying that the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer.

But there’s a riddle to be solved in this passage, a mystery to uncover, and when you know it a new world will have opened up for you. The answer to the mystery that has eluded so many for centuries is in one hidden word: GRATITUDE.
“Whoever has GRATITUDE will be given more, and he or she will have an abundance. Whoever does not have GRATITUDE, even what he or she has will be taken from him or her.”
From Chapter 1 of the book : THE MAGIC by Rhonda Byrne.

————————————
About 10 years ago when I first read this book and starting practising its principles, I did it not because I believed in it but because my coach Ashraf introduced me to it and I believed in HIM.
10 years later, now that I look back, practicing an ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE has given me what I couldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams.

What am I grateful for?
My wonderful family and loving relatives/friends who care for me. My clients and my profession. My ever supportive body – a brain that works (mostly) and a heart that functions like a miracle. And of course, a house (that I don’t own), a 20 year old car, blah blah.. the list is so long, I could write a book on it.

Thank you Ashraf!

If you too have said Thank You to someone today you have uttered the most powerful prayer in the Universe!

And thank you my friend for reading till the end of such a long post

So my daughter’s coach (an Australian lady who’s 77) told my daughter (who is 13).. “Tell your parents why you love them..”
My daughter began.. “I love them because…”
“No no.. tell THEM why you love them.. don’t tell ME.”
————————————
Lesson 1: LOVE is a function of communication. Most of us make the mistake of thinking that our actions are good enough to tell people how much we love them.
Love is created IN THE MOMENT OF SPEAKING. You have to explicitly use the words “I love you” or “Love you” to let people in your life know that you love them. (My wife Seema and me do this exchange MULTIPLE times a day.. and it’s been 18 years now.)
Unfortunately we live in a society where we are conditioned to use the ILU words only in a romantic context. Which is why we
struggle to say those words to our bosses, our friends and even our parents. (We can blame Bollywood for that).
And we hide behind “Just because I don’t say it doesn’t mean that I don’t love so and so…”
————————————
Lesson 2: Don’t say I love you when you don’t mean it. Love means UNCONDITIONAL ACCEPTANCE. Unconditional means 100%.. not 99.9999% !
That is why “I love you BUT…” doesn’t work..
Neither does “I love you BECAUSE….”
When you love someone, you don’t need reasons to love them.. you just love them. That way you can love just your mother or your wife or half of humanity.
Lesson 1 I learnt from our daughter’s coach.
Lesson 2 I learnt from our daughter. You know why? Because after her coach corrected her, our daughter looked at my wife and me and said..
“I love you BECAUSE I love you.”
(Not because you buy me Barbie dolls and take me to the mall and stuff like that).
————————————
A last note: Fear and Love are the two most primary human
emotions.
If you are afraid.. say “I am afraid.” Don’t be shy to admit.
And if you love someone.. say “I love you.” Don’t be shy to admit that either.
You know what.. in my humble opinion.. the world could do with more of love and less of fear. And more love will happen only when more people express it more often.

One of the biggest side-effects of traditional educational systems is that they train your brain to categorize everything into right and wrong territory.

Well the real world doesn’t work like that. Nothing is black and white… there are a zillion shades of grey in between. What makes perfect sense for someone else might look dumb or ridiculous to you (and vice-versa).

You want to transform your relationship with your husband or wife or boss? Or mend a broken relationship with an old friend or relative? TAKE UP THE RESPONSIBILITY of seeing the world from their point of view and act accordingly.

And then see things change. They will. They have to.

If only you knew how beautiful you really are, you wouldn’t even think of competing with those next to you.

Even your imperfections are part of your beauty. In fact your imperfections make you unique. Why would you even want to be like someone else?

You may want to work on yourself and that’s ok. You may want to finish the unfinished painting that you are. But that’s no reason to feel unloved and unworthy of being loved.

A flower does not think of competing with the flower next to it. It just blooms.  So should you. Because you are you.

Have a great week ahead!

..and today also you will say tomorrow. And tomorrow also you will say tomorrow. And before you realize it December will come and then you will say I’ll start on 1st Jan.

If you don’t want to do something, tell yourself .. “I don’t want to do it.. and I’m willing to take responsibility for the consequences of my actions (or inaction).” When you speak the truth, when you are authentic with yourself, you’ll feel powerful.

Saying “I’ll do it tomorrow” is you lying to yourself.
Don’t do that.

One of the single biggest problems of human beings is that we predict the future on the basis of the past. It’s the ultimate illusion!

Life is NOT like an arithmetic progression! Things won’t happen in the future simply because they happened in the past. Whatever happens in our present and in our future is a function of OUR CHOICES in the present and the future.

Life will alter dramatically when we believe that WE are the source of life and when we believe that WE CAN MAKE THINGS HAPPEN TODAY.. irrespective of what happened yesterday and last week and last year!

I have a framed version of this poster in my house.. I’ve had it for many years.
Don’t miss the bottom of the poster, which says ‘Taking risks takes practice.’ I agree. I have taken SO MANY risks in my life, especially big ones, I’ve lost count.

Obviously not all risks work out. With some I had spectacular failures. With some I had mind-blowing successes.
But one thing I can tell you.. I NEVER REGRET taking risks.. never did, never will. Because NOT taking risks, is THE BIGGEST risk of them all. If God didn’t want me to take risks, he would have given me the life of a mosquito. (And even mosquitoes risk their lives when they try to bite me! )

Remember.. when you do something that scares you, strangely it makes you feel more confident.

JUST IN CASE this message is still undelivered to you:

1) You are good enough. In fact you are AWESOME!
2) Screw your weaknesses. Focus on your strengths and you’ll go a far far way in life.
3) People around you not just need you, they’re dependent on you, so what if they don’t express it.
4) You’re so much better off today than you were 10 years ago!
5) You’ve survived EVERY damn problem you faced in your life. Haven’t you? So chill na!
6) You’re loved by many more people and much more than you think. High time you loved yourself as much.
7) Good morning and have a great week ahead!

If you think you’re not doing well financially, look at this:

A Govt driver in INDIA earning Rs 25000 per month is in the Top 5.55% of the WORLD’s population ranked by income!

See other figures:
– Engineer: Rs 50000 per month: Top 0.86%
– School principal: Rs 75000 per month: Top 0.29%
– Private sector doctor: Rs 100000 per month: Top 0.13%
– Senior private sector professional: Rs 150000 per month: Top 0.08%

And let’s say you’re earning a meagre Rs 12000 per month, you’ll still be in the Top 17.87% with (according to my calculations) more than 5,749,100,000,000 people WORLDWIDE poorer than you. Cool no?

MORAL OF THE STORY: Count your blessings and stop complaining about your financial position.
P.S. If you want to know where YOU stand in the list of world citizens ranked by income, go to http://www.globalrichlist.com.

Real power does not come from money. Or fame. Or popularity.

You experience real power when you can say what you want to say and do what you want to do. Real power comes when you are unstoppable in the face of fear. And when you give up worrying about what people will think about what you say or what you do. Real power comes when you give up looking good in front of people and be completely free in your actions and your self- expression.

Real power is not a function of the size of your biceps or the fancy designation on your visiting card or the number of digits in your bank balance. Real power is a function of what goes on in your head.

One of my clients was on a vacation to Switzerland with his wife and while driving across the country they stumbled into a small town called Saanen. The Saanen airstrip, the railway station and the surroundings seemed way too familiar and it’s wasn’t long before he discovered that these were the locations at which many of the scenes of the movie Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge were shot. (The St Mauritius church in Saanen is where the church scene was shot and the airstrip features in the Mere Khwabon Mein song, where SRK is running alongside an aircraft that’s taking off.)

He remembered having seen the movie in 1994; it was the first Hindi movie he had seen. At that time he had never stepped out of his hometown – Calicut, Kerala and every beautiful location in the movie had mesmerized him so much that he had promised himself that some day when he’d get married he would take his wife to the bridge where the famous ‘palat’ scene happens. And that iconic bridge is right next to the Saanen railway station!

Unlike many tourists who go looking for these locations, our man had bumped into them by ‘accident’. I have no doubt that this wasn’t an accident.. it was the images from the movie that he had held sub-consciously for so long that it was inevitable that he had to pass through Saanen (and that too because he lost his way and took the mountainous route instead of the highway.)

Like the Law of Gravity and every other universal law, the Law of Attraction works. Whether you believe in it, or not!

Today I complete ONE HUNDRED MONTHS of no salary.

On this emotional day I thank all the people who helped me financially and emotionally to ride out all those months when I was struggling and when my income was either NIL or less than what I needed to pay my bills. These include my mom, sister, mother-in-law, father-in-law, sisters-in-law, brothers-in-law, my generous-minded landlord in Chennai and some close friends.

I also thank my wonderful wife Seema who at one point in time sold off all her jewellery to generate cash just to run the house for a few months. She has a heart of gold. She says I am her greatest piece of jewellery.

Today I coach people across 5 continents, in 9 different time zones. I have coachees in 20+ International cities and 15+ Indian cities. I do all my coaching on the phone and my smartphone is my office. (Thank you Samsung!)

A BIG thank you to all my clients who trusted me to serve them and paid me 100% advance without even seeing my face!

To all those who helped me in the last ONE HUNDRED MONTHS… this success is as much yours as it is mine. I am LIVING my dream. For that I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

If any of you wants to leave your job and start on your own… first pray for a spouse and a set of relatives/ friends who will NEVER give up on you.
I do that every day.

They say.. DON’T GIVE UP! DON’T GIVE UP!

I say “GIVE UP TODAY!”
1) Give up your “CHALTA HAI” attitude
2) Give up your right to be RIGHT
3) Give up your right to REACT
4) Give up your need to LOOK GOOD and impress others
5) Give up your deep need to COMPLAIN
6) Give up your RESISTANCE to change
7) Give up living in a world of REASONS and excuses

In the pic.. you probably see a Before-After Rubik’s cube. What I see is the journey of a client I’ve been coaching for the last 5 months.

This young client used to take 30 odd minutes to solve the cube a few months back. Now he does it in less than 25 SECONDS. He used to score 500 odd in his GMAT mock tests; now he touches a score of 720.

He is yet another proof to me that when you are committed, ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE. He is every coach’s dream client.. HIGHLY COACH-ABLE and open to change.

Like I told him when I spoke to him yesterday, it’s really not about the timing or the score (or the gold medals or the bank balances). It’s about who he WAS then and who he IS today.

The journey is less about the goal and more about the person you BECOME in the process of achieving that goal! It’s about the character you develop and how you grow as a person even as you work towards your goal.

He is now close to his dream target of 750 score in GMAT (that will put him in the TOP 2 percentile of participants) and the main exam is just 30 days from now. I wish him all the best!

There is a story about a man phoning Dr. Schuller…
The man said, “It’s over. I’m finished. All my money has gone. I’VE LOST EVERYTHING.”
Dr. Schuller asked, “Can you still see?”
The man replied, “Yes, I can still see.”
Dr. Schuller asked, “Can you still walk?”
The man replied, “Yes, I can still walk.”
Schuller said, “Obviously you can still hear or you wouldn’t have phoned me.”
“Yes, I can still hear.”
“Well,” Schuller said, “I figure you have got about EVERYTHING LEFT. All you have lost is your money!”
——————
MY COACHING NOTES:
As a Life Coach, I come across hundreds of people every year who fear losing their jobs, who fear failure in business, in relationships etc.. who feel terribly insecure in life.
I share with them.. and I’m sharing with you… the feeling of security doesn’t come from outside.. it comes from within. Security comes from your ability to create value.. to be of service to people on this planet.
And if you have your two eyes and your two hands and your two legs and your one brain.. you have all you need to feel secure!

You only live once?
False. You live everyday.
You only die once.
MAKE EACH DAY COUNT

I’ve been thinking all day today why I follow my heart much more than I use my head.. came up with two reasons:

1) I remembered what I had read it 2002.. that we have THREE brains. One in the head, one in the heart and one in the gut region. Neurological research has proven that the second and third are way more powerful than the first.

2) Whenever I’m confused about whether to follow my heart or use my head, I toss a coin. I don’t have to wait for the coin to fall back in my hand to take a decision. Because in the brief moment that the coin is in the air, my head shuts up but my heart starts praying.. and that tells me what outcome I’m REALLY hoping for.

My heart ALWAYS wins.

We all have a GABBAR SINGH in our life, who in reality is not as bad and menacing as he looks. It’s just that we’ve never seen the other side of him. The GABBAR we have in our life is perhaps playing just a role.. he is there to teach us “Jo dar gaya, samjho mar gaya.”

Each of us also has a THAKUR in our life, whose past, whose world, whose other side we don’t know.. because we never bothered to find out. How sad.

And of course each of us has a JAI or a VEERU in our life, who we deeply love and who will leave us one day.. for good. And that’s a lesson for us to value our friends and the people we love while they are still alive. Go tell the people you love that you love them before their GABBAR fires on them. Life happens in one continuous take; THERE-ARE-NO-RETAKES.

The only difference between REEL-LIFE Sholay and REAL-LIFE Sholay is that in the second version we are the actors, we are the script-writers and we are the directors and producers.

And so often we forget all that and we live our life as if life is “happening” to us and we are simply the audience!

I had this interesting conversation with my one of my coachees.. She’s self-employed and wanted to increase her own client base and was asking me the secret to my successful coaching practice. Here’s what I told her..

Me: “Whether you are employed or self-employed, the secret is to GIVE more than what you get paid for.”
Coachee: “That sounds like a losing proposition.”
Me: “Exactly why most people don’t do it.. and you should. It will set you apart from your competitors.”
Coachee: “Where did you learn this business secret?”
Me: “In a book called The Go-Giver. It’s a small book. You can finish reading it in one day. In fact I learnt more business secrets in one day of reading this book than I learnt in my 2 years of MBA at IIM Bangalore in 1992.”
Coachee: “Hey that book is listed on your website as a book you recommend reading. ( https://www.milindjadhav.com/go-giver/)
Why are you giving away your business and coaching secrets away freely on your website? If people get your secrets for free why will they sign up with you for coaching? And won’t your competitors overtake you?”
Me: “In reality, the opposite is happening!”
“Don’t you get it?”, I told her,”the secret to success is to GIVE away the secrets to success!”

Watched Cars 3 yesterday – here’s the central message I got:
“Don’t worry about winning or losing. Worry about not having that chance..”
So true: Very often in life we just sit in the stands and judge the game. Which does neither us nor the scoreboard any good.
You want to experience ALIVENESS? When you get a chance, GRAB IT, get out there on the court and give it your best shot! You win, you lose – it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you dared.. that you took that risk.
Surely you don’t want a sign on your grave: “Died with potential intact..” Do you?
Coach’s recommendation: MUST SEE

Super inspiring poster: “MAKE MISTAKES.. Penicillin was discovered by accident. Don’t be afraid to experiment.”

No wonder a wise man once said.. “A mistake is simply another way of doing things.”

I made tons of mistakes all my life and it’s never too late to make some more. I made a huge mistake last week and now that I’ve recovered from that one, I’m ready to make the next big one!

Time to experiment !!!!!!!! Zindagi…. here I come.

VOGUE MAGAZINE interviewed me recently to get tips to help people work from home efficiently. I listed down 17 tips – all of them coming from my own experience of working from home for 11 years now (since 1st March 2009). They published 8 of these tips in their article, but here’s the whole list:

1. Mark out a space at home to work from and keep it organized. Remember mess creates stress. (Tennis icon Andre Agassi wouldn’t let anyone touch his tennis bag because if it got disorganized, he’d get distracted.)
2. Check email in the afternoon so you protect the peak energy hours of your mornings for your best work.
3. Lock yourself in the room you’re working in so that you’re not distracted by other family members. If that doesn’t work, find yourself a co-working space close to your home where you can work from.
4. The biggest problem of working from home is the lack of routine and accountability. Create your own strict daily routine (what time you wake up, what time you start work, what time you exercise and what time you will relax). Commit to this routine and get a family member to hold you accountable to your routine.
5. Start your day early. The biggest advantage of working from home is that commuting time is ZERO! You can wake up at 5am and start working at 5:30am when the rest of the world is still sleeping. Use this to your advantage.
6. Being at home will give you a lot of flexibility to do a lot of things for other people. Don’t say yes to every request. Don’t be available for everybody just because you’re working from home. It just stems from a deep need to look good in others’ eyes. Saying no more often will keep you more productive.
7.  Be a contrarian. Buy your groceries in the afternoons when the store is not busy. Go to the movies in the mornings. Hit the gym when it’s less crowded. Do things at off-peak hours and you’ll save so much time. As a work from home professional you can afford to do all this – a typical office goer can’t.
8. Use Todo lists and Calendars to record all your tasks. When you work from home you don’t have a boss, so you have to create your own structures to hold yourself accountable. Under any circumstances do not let tasks hover on your mind. When things are off your mind and captured into a system that you trust, that’s the beginning of stress-free productivity.
9. Stop waiting for perfect conditions to launch a great project. Immediate action fuels a positive feedback loop that drives even more action.
10. Give up multi-tasking. Research has proved that that’s the slowest way of getting things done.
11. Use your flexible work schedule to take fitness breaks. Go for a 5 pm walk. It will not only do good to your health, it will clear your head so that you can come back and continue working with renewed energy.
12. Take a 20 minute power nap. This is again something most office goers can’t afford to do. A quick nap will renew your energy and virtually split your day into two.
13. Work in 90 minute blocks with 10 minute intervals to recover and refuel.
14. Drink more water. When you’re dehydrated, you’ll have far less energy. And get less done.
15. Find ways to keep you away from distractions. Give away your smartphone to a family member when working on an important project. Or install apps that prevent you from accessing social media sites.
16. Keep a track of how you’re spending your time at home. Be mindful of this and record the number of hours you’re actually working (and wasting).
17. Get yourself a coach or a mentor to whom you can report your progress week on week, at least initially till such time you get into a certain rhythm.

A TV anchor once asked Martina Navratilova, “How do you maintain your focus and manage to keep playing, even at the age of 43 ?”  Her suave response was, “The ball doesn’t know how old I am. Besides, for 90% of the match I don’t have to focus”.

In a typical tennis match, the players spend less than 15% of their time hitting the ball. During a round of golf, golfers spend less than 20% of their round swinging a golf club, and in American football, the ball is actually in play for only 6% of the game.

In his excellent book, Stillpower, Sports Psychologist Garret Kramer says that a key factor to performing well in sports (and in life), is your ability to control the quality and quantity of your ‘internal dialogue’ i.e. YOUR LITTLE VOICE.

Always remember:
Performance = Potential – Internal Interference

In other words, you need to stop yourself from stopping yourself. Sports, business, and indeed, life are played on a 6-inch course.. the space between our ears!