..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:
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!
Whatever you are resisting – unwanted people, unwanted communication from people, unwanted habits, unwanted health conditions, an unwanted career situation, an 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 completely, unconditionally, whole-heartedly accept it, all your unwanted stuff will just DISAPPEAR from your life.
That’s how life works!
On 1st March 2019 I completed TEN YEARS of Self-Employment and freedom from the corporate world. Here are TEN tips if you want to break free (and stay free) from the Golden Cage someday:
1) “Someday” will NEVER come on its own. “Someday” is created by you saying.. “That’s it. I’m done with this 9 to 9 routine. I am ready to start now. And I’m ready because I SAY I am ready.”
Continue reading 10 tips to help you break free from the Golden Cage
To quit or not to quit. That is not only the question, it is often the ultimate question!
There are times when we feel enough is enough and we feel a huge urge to quit our jobs. And we don’t because we aren’t quite sure if that’s the right thing to do. Often we go through this dilemma over and over again. In May 2015, a person I eventually coached, called me to tell me that he felt like quitting every Monday morning!
Here are a few points to ponder upon whenever you go through this dilemma:
Continue reading To quit or not to quit?
Time flies. One more year. One more opportunity to live the kind of life you’ve been wanting to live. Sometimes the resolutions we make for the new year are pretty much the same as those in the previous year. Sometimes the list is longer. The resolve is strong. But somewhere at the back of our mind is the fear that like in the previous year, the momentum we pick up in the beginning of the year will be lost even before February arrives.
Here are some simple tips to make sure that doesn’t happen. It’s a list I’ve compiled on the basis of the successes, failures and struggles in habit formation I’ve seen in coaching clients over the years.
Continue reading 7 coaching tips to make your New Year resolutions stick
As part of my coaching practice, I often come across situations where a Client is in a blissfully happy state and wants to stay in that state forever. Who doesn’t want to? But for some reason that state doesn’t last. Here’s what I have come to understand of how life works and WHY it works that way.
First – an exercize for your mind. Remember the genie and the magic lamp story? Imagine YOU have the magic lamp, you rub the magic lamp and out comes the genie.
Continue reading A 50:50 Life
Our typical day is filled with things to do. Sometimes it looks like that’s all there is to life.. DOING THINGS! And when you finish doing things… you have more things to do!
It can be overwhelming. In the kind of complex world we live in, there is no shortage of things to do. There’s things to do at work, at home, on the way home, on weekdays, on weekends and even on vacation.
Continue reading Just Did It!
In my previous post “How to be responsible. Even when you’re not accountable.”, I shared with you what a gift responsibility can be. A gift for ourselves.
In this post we will see how we can use this gift to feel more in control and generate power for ourselves.
Continue reading The three levels of responsibility
There was a time when I used to think that Responsibility and Accountability meant pretty much the same thing. The distinction between the two became clear after I became a coach. The distinction was not just necessary, but critical to my practice. Soon I realized, knowing the distinction between the two is an essential part of understanding either of them well. Not just for me, but for everybody else.
Continue reading How to be responsible. Even when you’re not accountable.
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” said Alice.
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where ..” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
” .. so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
– From the book “Alice in Wonderland”
Continue reading If you can BE it, you can SEE it.
Admit it. We are all meaning-making-machines. We keep creating meanings all the time. And we don’t have to work too hard to do that. Creating meanings is an automated task for us.
Somebody says something to us.. we create a meaning.
Somebody keeps quiet when they are with us.. we create a meaning.
Something happens to us.. we create a meaning.
We read the headlines in the newspaper.. we create a meaning.
We watch a movie.. we create a meaning.
Continue reading Inventing Empowering Meanings
Here’s a magic mantra that changed the way I looked at people completely.
“We can never see people the way they actually are. We can only see them the way our mind creates them.”
No information goes into us without our mind filtering it. We see what we want to see. What we see is very selective and our mind is very clever at sorting out what it wants to let in and what it wants to block.
Continue reading We create people the way we see them
I come across a lot of people who ask me how they (and their businesses) can survive in an economy that’s hit by recession. I want to share with you what I usually share with them. It has to do with a much abused term. Value.
Firstly, I believe there are two economies. The Actual Economy and Your Economy. They are both real, yet they are parallel to each other. It means.. one has nothing to do with the other.
Continue reading How to make your economy recession-proof
Your 5 year old kid throws a tantrum and refuses to go to school anymore. Your older son gets pathetic marks in 8 out of 9 subjects. The wash basin in your house starts leaking in the middle of a party. The household help bunks work for the fifth time in the month. The cabbies decide to go on strike. You drop your expensive phone into the kitchen sink. Your blood tests show your sugar levels rising. Your CEO implements a 15% pay-cut. You tear your trouser right at the bottom while jumping into the train. The house owner asks you abruptly to vacate your rented apartment. Your biggest client sacks you. You’re late for a meeting and a cop stops you for jumping signals. You tell yourself – something AWESOME is going to come out of this.
I agree this is crazy. It is irrational, outrageous. This is not a normal way of thinking. This is EPT. Extremely Positive Thinking.
Continue reading Extreme Positive Thinking (EPT)
Even as I write this, I’m experiencing the joy and privilege of “being alive”. I can feel the breeze at my window, hear the sounds on the street below, sense the pain in my back..What a wonderful feeling! And it sure feels great to be able to focus on the present moment and be completely oblivious to the hundreds of challenges and “problems” that wait for me in the future.
Continue reading Life is RIGHT NOW!
“Ah Shifu. There is just news. There is no good or bad.” – Master Oogway in the movie Kung Fu Panda
Master Oogway’s simple words hide the profoundness of the wisdom they express. Profound but still puzzling, especially in an age where we can’t get by one day without the media and society bombarding us with news clearly categorized as good or bad.. mostly bad actually! Master Oogway’s words are therefore difficult to digest. But because they are Master Oogway’s, I thought I’d examine them a little more closely.
Continue reading There is just news
You’re sitting in front of your comp. And forwarding a joke to your friends. You smile to yourself even as you’re sending the joke. You can imagine your friends smiling too. Guess one of them does. Coz he replies immediately “Good one, pal!”. You’re not the one who made up the joke, but you almost feel as if you did. Ah, that makes you open many of the unread mails in your inbox. You find many nice jokes in those. Very soon you have a cleaned up inbox. What an accomplishment! Something you had planned for the last one week is finally over.
You open the door only to find two leaking milk packets at your feet. The milkman sucks.. is what you would have normally said. Not today. Not now. You’re in too good a mood to get mad at him. You decide to spare your wife of the agony as well. You want to give her break. Let’s give her a surprise, you think. You hate making tea, but today is different. You make tea and toast the bread as well. Which wife wouldn’t want a husband who does that? An early morning thank you kiss is all you need to keep going.
Continue reading Today is different!
Do you remember times when you’ve been positive and empowered for several days in a row and all of a sudden, one negative situation drained you of your energy and put you in a low-life state? Or you’ve been optimistic and productive all day, and the energy just dropped fast as evening approached? We all go through such phases and then it seems to take hours or even days to get back into a more positive state of mind.
Continue reading Want to stay productive? Stay motivated!
Need to concentrate on creating something significant? Need focus? Staying focused in itself is a big achievement today especially with the information overload and the multitude of distractions that surround us. When you’re focused, the results are amazing. You don’t just get more done, you get it done better. Here are 5 ways you can get that laser focus back into your work.
Continue reading 5 ways to stay focused at work
Next time someone asks you ‘Do you have brains?’, tell them you have THREE of them. Yes you really do. We all have three brains, one in the head, one in the heart and one in the gut. No kidding! It’s a proven fact of neurological science. And it’s also proven that the brains in the heart and the gut are far more powerful than the one in the head!
What that tells me is that I need to use my head less often. Ah, what a relief! Have you ever faced a situation where you’ve thought and thought.. and thought and thought.. and the more you thought, the more confused you got? And you concluded.. “My brains are just not working!” Well, maybe the problem was not with the brain. Maybe, you just used the WRONG one.
Continue reading Use your Brains. All Three of them!
How often have you heard someone telling you “I’m the type who likes to be busy.” Or “My house is always neat and tidy.” “I’m a class-topper.” Or even “I always play to win.”
The list can go on and on.. “I CAN NEVER…” ,“I’M TOO FINICKY TO …”, “ I’VE ALWAYS BEEN A…”,
You might think “What’s wrong in saying all that?” Problem is when we say such things we’re setting ourselves up. We tend to get so attached to that cute little story we’ve created for ourselves, we want that story to come true. Every single time. And when even once something that doesn’t conform to our story happens, we feel the heavens have collapsed on us! We feel lost, identity-less! I’ve seen people who live their stories all their lives. They carry their labels on them whether they change professions, cities, relationships..
Continue reading Unlabel yourself
Are you caught up in the ‘SHOULD BE’ trap?
I was. I always felt that things SHOULD happen the way I expected.
My clients SHOULD be reasonable.
My family SHOULD be more understanding.
My boss SHOULD be more sensitive.
My colleagues SHOULD be less jealous.
The traffic SHOULD follow lane discipline.
The neighbour’s dog SHOULD bark less at night.
The government SHOULD be more effective.
The weather SHOULD be ..
Continue reading The ‘should-be’ trap
What do you do when you’ve opened too many programs on your computer and it hangs? REBOOT IT! What’s the best thing to do when your phone’s memory is jammed by too many open applications? RESET IT!
What happens when you reboot/reset electronic devices? The unwanted data disappears from memory and the device starts functioning the way it was supposed to.
Many years back I had a boss who used to do exactly this. He used to start afresh. He used to RESET himself. EVERY SINGLE DAY! Every day he told himself – Today, is the first day of the rest of my Life! Every Day. And that was his Reset button. The moment he pressed that button, he forgot every negative, unpleasant thing that had happened to him till the day before. He had made it a habit to learn IMMEDIATELY from every mistake he made, because he knew that in a day’s time, the learning would stay (on his hard disk, you might say..) but the incident was going to vanish from his memory.
Continue reading Ctrl-Alt-Del
Look.. for the right job. Look.. for the right product. Look.. for the right relationship. Look here. Look there. Is life all about looking around? When will you stop looking and start doing?
You know what, sometimes it’s more exciting, when you have a good look.. RIGHT AFTER you’ve done something! So what if you end up saying “Look! What a mess I’ve created!” No problem. The world will respect you more for creating a mess and learning from it, than just fooling around watching other people create their mess!
Continue reading Leap before you look
We all want to be loved right? By our family, by our friends, our colleagues, our neighbors.. And so often we do get that love. We really do. Even if we don’t believe it! Question is, how much do WE really love OURSELVES? I would say most of us are so caught up in attracting attention, care and respect from others, we rarely stop to experience that beautiful feeling of love for ourselves – from within.
Much of this thinking is because of the conditioning we get from society around us. Society has always considered ‘giving’ to be a much bigger virtue than ‘receiving’. Love thy enemy, love thy neighbor, love thy family.. We do all that, and forget to love ourselves.
Continue reading I love Myself
Don’t put off to tomorrow what you can do today.. is what everyone says. And I agree. Yet I procrastinate..so often. Like most people alive, it comes really easily to me! But there’s one thing I don’t procrastinate about.. living Life!
Life is far too precious for me to put off to tomorrow. But I did try.. mind you. Many years ago, I convinced myself that there are a million other things more important today than living my life. And I promised myself that I would live life to the fullest.. tomorrow! And I waited.. and waited.. and waited. But tomorrow never came! While I was busy working and worrying and fire-fighting, Life kept waiting for me.
Continue reading Tomorrow is an Illusion
Why is it that some people are always cribbing about lack of time and there are others who seem to have it in abundance? They say people who crib about lack of time are actually disorganized, inefficient, lazy. I thought – shouldn’t it be the other way round? People who have lots of time probably have it because either they have nothing to do or are actually disorganized, inefficient and lazy and are not doing what they’re supposed to be doing!
In fact I went one step ahead – I felt God ought to give the first group MORE time to finish the things they want to do. Like maybe an extra hour every day. Isn’t that a pretty fair thing to expect? Ya, they are the ones who are working hard. And they could do with some extra time. They need it Man! Believe me, I even know what these people need more time for.. I happen to be one of them!
Continue reading All the time in the world
I once read something really interesting about our brain. It is said that there is a powerful part of the brain, the Amygdala, that wants the world to run on routine, not change. Located within an ancient area of the mind that deals with the way you perceive and respond to the world, the Amygdala urges us to favor the familiar and routine. It craves control and safety, which at times can be vital. It dissuades you from embracing anything that involves risk, change, or growth.
Continue reading Expand your comfort zone
When I was 22 years old (that was nearly 20 years ago), I was not the same person I am today. I was shy, timid, weak (literally!) I remember I was on a train journey from Pune to Bangalore, a distance of over 600 miles. My first long distance journey alone! I was scared like hell! I thought the world was out there to cheat me. Barely a few hours into the 22 hour journey, a group of youngsters asked me to remove my suitcase from the ‘upper’ berth where I had kept it, as one of them wanted to have an afternoon nap on the berth. I refused! I pretended to be tough. The guys ganged up on me and threatened to offload me from the train. I surrendered but protested “You guys are bullying me” I told them, and asked myself “Why should this happen to me? It’s unfair..”
Continue reading Everyone who walks into your life is a Teacher
Inertia is a BAD word. It can wreak havoc in your life. Sometimes getting out of bed and wearing your jogging shoes can seem to be the most difficult thing to do in life. Yet one day you are able to move yourself out of lethargy. You not only wear your shoes, you actually go for a 20 minute walk too. That day and the next day and the next day! You feel delighted. A sense of accomplishment engulfs you. The mega business order you bagged the previous week pales in comparison to the significance of this achievement! You tell yourself.. now only if I could continue this tomorrow and the day after and.. forever. And then disaster strikes!
Continue reading Change is always challenged
“We are here to learn lessons, the world is our classroom and Life is our teacher” – Andrew Matthews.
If there ever was one thought that changed my life, it is the quote above. This philosophy suddenly gave new meaning to my life. I started seeing sense in everything that was happening around me. I had always believed that every problem I was facing was an opportunity in disguise. What I now realized was that many of my problems were recurring, again and again, and I understood that I was stuck in the same class and Life was teaching me that lesson again and again simply because I had not yet learnt it completely.
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A 50:50 Life
Just Did It!
The three levels of responsibility
How to be responsible, even when you’re not accountable
If you can BE it, you can SEE it.
Inventing Empowering Meanings
We create people the way we see them
How to make your economy recession-proof
Extreme Positive Thinking (EPT)
Life is RIGHT NOW!
There is just news
Today is different!
Want to stay productive? Stay motivated.
5 ways to stay focussed at work
Use your Brains. All Three of them!
Unlabel yourself
The ‘should-be’ trap
Ctrl-Alt-Del
Leap before you look
I Love Myself
Tomorrow is an Illusion
All the time in the world
Expand your comfort zone
Everyone who walks into your life is a Teacher
Change is always challenged
Classroom of Life