Where do we go from here?

Tolerance is our perception of an Utopian society and Intolerance is the way our perception merges with reality. This is my view when i think about these two words.

We as human beings have always projected ourselves as a tolerant society. Peace keepers for not shaking the boat and letting our small ego's take the better of us. Then how come this world is becoming more intolerant to everything?

Is it us who are changing, yet we are dominated by our old mindset, which does not want to shake the boat or is it the growing unrest in the world. Somehow the solutions don't seem to be many. Large population, huge gap between haves and haves not. Poverty and illiteracy is maximum in the merging and third world countries. Everyone wants a piece of the mature world therefore mass immigration of people looking for better opportunities.

War and terror is playing its part in shifting the dynamics and culture of many countries. Yet we are watching this silently. We get angry when someone calls us, Intolerant society. Yet we know in our hearts we are who we have become..... Indifferent.

Our frustration levels are on all time high and we need scapegoats to vent out our feelings. At times i feel when a human is most vulnerable; thats when the beast comes out. It is happening everywhere, and the maturity to handle this conflux is not existing in this world. Patience is the key, and not jumping to any given opportunity to pull the trigger, is the need of the hour. Yet how did we reach this stage? How did we let all this to happen and now we find ourselves stuck right in the middle of this mess.

These random thoughts play in my mind as i watch people. We all are good people, even though there is no definition of good or bad. Once again its my perception, that all people have some good in them. How we use this good nature of ours, is what defines us, as good or bad. Patience is a virtue of the wise, is what we have read and have been told a million times. But patience alone is not a virtue. We are all silent patient observers, of all the ill, which is happening in this world. Some how the fairy tales read in childhood, hold great value to us, that in the end everything will be fine. As if a magic wand will make everything okay for us. Nothing becomes okay on its own, there is a lot of work and we as people, need to raise our voice, for unjust which is happening all around us.

I remember a year ago, a child's body on beach with massive Syrian immigration triggered a lot of unrest with people. Why was Europe not opening its doors. Well now we are changing our Facebook picture every week for some killing happening in Europe in name of terror. So much for opening the doors. Funny part is countries which were safe from this migration were the ones making the maximum noise of insensitivity of Europeans. So as long as it does not effect us we make all the noises. Anything comes closer to home and hell will break loose. Its easy to judge others and pass judgement, the difficult part is to stick the conviction which one believes in. But then we are all good in imparting opinions and judgement. All of us are the same.

We talk about love and peace in one breath. Take any beauty pageant and the famous lines of helping economically weak women and children with global peace being the message. Ya rite Global peace and helping people, we don't even think of helping our own family many times and we will help strangers.

I was very disturbed when i went to visit a NGO, which rescues rape victims, mentally tormented and unstable people from streets and takes care of old people who are left at their gates. No one wanted to take care of them, children were not interested in taking care of their parents, neither were they interested in putting them in old age home where they would have been taken care off. No, they just decided to take the father's or mother's money and leave them as cowards either the door step of this NGO or on streets.

I met a girl there at this NGO, who had lost her memory and was mentally unstable, due to being gang raped. She had not spoken to anyone for 2 years. Somehow there was a connect between us and i would read books to her and talk to her. she would just keep staring at me initially. As she would not let anyone touch her therefore she had torn clothes and would not take bath. I got her some clothes and she would just keep staring. After few months, she started coming around. She would wait for my visit , take bath and be ready with clothes i had got her. Slowly her memory started coming back and she started talking. I am happy that the NGO traced her family and now she is back with them. Such stories are many, and i don't know why i have shared this story today. My point is, A good deed is only a good deed till it is not made public. No one needs a gratification for doing good, neither a pat for helping people "good job done". This is what should be within us to help unconditionally without ever saying it that you have helped.

We create all the noises about racism, child labour, human trafficking, terror, human rights, animal rights .... list goes on. Some are doing fantastic job in making the change. What about the rest of us? 7 billion + people on this planet and we are growing like rabbits but we have no respect for anything. Money is our new god. We will do anything for money, poverty and illiteracy is at its highest, terror is the king and we just watch. The noise clutter is deafening, yet we choose to scream without any solid purpose. Our indifference shows clearly, we only destroy or create concrete jungles to populate more of our kinds. I feel we stopped respecting ourselves as a human race many centuries ago.

Maybe this is the Utopia which we all imagined and wished for. 

Where do we go from here?

Tolerance is our perception of an Utopian society and Intolerance is the way our perception merges with reality. This is my view when i think about these two words.

We as human beings have always projected ourselves as a tolerant society. Peace keepers for not shaking the boat and letting our small ego's take the better of us. Then how come this world is becoming more intolerant to everything?

Is it us who are changing, yet we are dominated by our old mindset, which does not want to shake the boat or is it the growing unrest in the world. Somehow the solutions don't seem to be many. Large population, huge gap between haves and haves not. Poverty and illiteracy is maximum in the merging and third world countries. Everyone wants a piece of the mature world therefore mass immigration of people looking for better opportunities.

War and terror is playing its part in shifting the dynamics and culture of many countries. Yet we are watching this silently. We get angry when someone calls us, Intolerant society. Yet we know in our hearts we are who we have become..... Indifferent.

Our frustration levels are on all time high and we need scapegoats to vent out our feelings. At times i feel when a human is most vulnerable; thats when the beast comes out. It is happening everywhere, and the maturity to handle this conflux is not existing in this world. Patience is the key, and not jumping to any given opportunity to pull the trigger, is the need of the hour. Yet how did we reach this stage? How did we let all this to happen and now we find ourselves stuck right in the middle of this mess.

These random thoughts play in my mind as i watch people. We all are good people, even though there is no definition of good or bad. Once again its my perception, that all people have some good in them. How we use this good nature of ours, is what defines us, as good or bad. Patience is a virtue of the wise, is what we have read and have been told a million times. But patience alone is not a virtue. We are all silent patient observers, of all the ill, which is happening in this world. Some how the fairy tales read in childhood, hold great value to us, that in the end everything will be fine. As if a magic wand will make everything okay for us. Nothing becomes okay on its own, there is a lot of work and we as people, need to raise our voice, for unjust which is happening all around us.

I remember a year ago, a child's body on beach with massive Syrian immigration triggered a lot of unrest with people. Why was Europe not opening its doors. Well now we are changing our Facebook picture every week for some killing happening in Europe in name of terror. So much for opening the doors. Funny part is countries which were safe from this migration were the ones making the maximum noise of insensitivity of Europeans. So as long as it does not effect us we make all the noises. Anything comes closer to home and hell will break loose. Its easy to judge others and pass judgement, the difficult part is to stick the conviction which one believes in. But then we are all good in imparting opinions and judgement. All of us are the same.

We talk about love and peace in one breath. Take any beauty pageant and the famous lines of helping economically weak women and children with global peace being the message. Ya rite Global peace and helping people, we don't even think of helping our own family many times and we will help strangers.

I was very disturbed when i went to visit a NGO, which rescues rape victims, mentally tormented and unstable people from streets and takes care of old people who are left at their gates. No one wanted to take care of them, children were not interested in taking care of their parents, neither were they interested in putting them in old age home where they would have been taken care off. No, they just decided to take the father's or mother's money and leave them as cowards either the door step of this NGO or on streets.

I met a girl there at this NGO, who had lost her memory and was mentally unstable, due to being gang raped. She had not spoken to anyone for 2 years. Somehow there was a connect between us and i would read books to her and talk to her. she would just keep staring at me initially. As she would not let anyone touch her therefore she had torn clothes and would not take bath. I got her some clothes and she would just keep staring. After few months, she started coming around. She would wait for my visit , take bath and be ready with clothes i had got her. Slowly her memory started coming back and she started talking. I am happy that the NGO traced her family and now she is back with them. Such stories are many, and i don't know why i have shared this story today. My point is, A good deed is only a good deed till it is not made public. No one needs a gratification for doing good, neither a pat for helping people "good job done". This is what should be within us to help unconditionally without ever saying it that you have helped.

We create all the noises about racism, child labour, human trafficking, terror, human rights, animal rights .... list goes on. Some are doing fantastic job in making the change. What about the rest of us? 7 billion + people on this planet and we are growing like rabbits but we have no respect for anything. Money is our new god. We will do anything for money, poverty and illiteracy is at its highest, terror is the king and we just watch. The noise clutter is deafening, yet we choose to scream without any solid purpose. Our indifference shows clearly, we only destroy or create concrete jungles to populate more of our kinds. I feel we stopped respecting ourselves as a human race many centuries ago.

Maybe this is the Utopia which we all imagined and wished for. 

dear Stress, lets break up

Busy is a choice,
Stress is a choice,
Joy is a choice
We all have choices and we need to be careful what we choose.

I am not sure what are the right parameters of Stress. Some stress is good for us to be alert and creative. But then who has ascertained the percentage of stress which is good. Each person has a different level of stress which can be handled by them. There are millions of website and stress management classes helping people combat their stress and telling them how to de stress themselves.

What is Stress? Where does this phenomenon come from? Medically there are lots of documents on stress, there is enough and more written about this topic. We all know about how chronic stress can lead to depression and how it effects our body and health.

So i ask you this again what is stress ?

Is it the flutter one has when there is a deadline? or is it the hyper breathing one has when a bill needs to be paid and there is low balance in the bank? Is it the stomach pain in expectation of good marks for students and parents? Or is it the cold sweat of expectation of job or promotion? There are so many more such symptoms  which i can list, which in one form or another bring this stress in our life. If i look into this, all this is our expectations which await a desired result by us, which leads to certain symptoms. So is it our desires and expectation, giving rise to a symptom called Stress?

If we look closely and access then we realise that most of these symptoms can be avoided. But then the human nature of desires and wants will not be happy. My desire to have more than my earning capacity is one level of stress, my pending bills with less balance in bank is another level of stress, my promotion with too much of competition is third level of stress, my job security is as good as i work is forth level, my need to be accepted by my peers and friends is fifth level.... the list keeps building and levels keep getting added as our desires are endless.

I have seen people eating like crazy while in stress, thats where stress food terminology came in. Many companies made a killing by generating stress foods for the desired hungry people. While these companies made profits, people kept building their thick waists. Every inch gained put additional money in the fast food and snacks balance. Some how we seem to be highly indisciplined in nature. We just cannot control neither our desires nor our taste buds. But i have also seen the extreme cases of dieting too. To gain a size zero figure many females will not eat anything, many become anorexic in leu of thinking they look beautiful. Well beauty lies in the eyes of beholder, and a healthy body which does sports and eat healthy is way more beautiful than anorexic stressed body.

My work used to be highly stressful. I used to feel i was on a perpetual roller coaster of high's , low's, anger leading to madness and then calm for a second and again the crazy cycle would start. Everyday was a learning of how to stress myself more. Initially i was hyper ventilating and the day i realised
that if i need to be stressed then it will be my stress and my way. Guess this chain of thought worked wonders for me. All of a sudden i was less stressful and passion was infused in my work. Strangely i was not stressed like i used to anymore. Slowly the stress started disappearing and fun at work and fun at finding solutions than problems became my mantra. I realised i can only do so much and there is no way i would like to stress over things which i cannot change.

I am not someone who can diet, i love cheese and breads. Therefore i went to my first love of running everyday in morning to combat any stress which i felt at work. This really helped me big way. No stress eating ever happened other than occasional chips. More the stress , more i spent time running and in gym. The product of this was that while i was at work i was neither over weight nor was anorexic but healthy and fine. Funny part is i often used to say if stress burned calories i would have been supermodel. But in reality thanks to stress i never gained weight. My fitness regime also ensured that i had no medical problem of diabetes , high cholesterol or any chest pains which is again a by product of dull stressful life.

I personally have no problem with stress, as its not stress leading my life but i choose to have stress when ever i need a creative side kick in life. As i said, my stress-my way. Meditation helped me in understanding my stress triggers. My fears were many and i came to accept them. To transform my mindset, i worked very hard on being non judgemental and neutral to any situation. Through these disciplined thought pattern i learned to be confident to take chances in my life.  I worked hard on my perceptions, as past fears, rejections and hurt does not go away easily. It was discipline and focus which led me through the darkest phase of high stress for me.

Today i know that stress is a by product of what i want in life and is more a friend than an harmful enemy. Its how we look at a situation, either we rise to meet the challenge or we submit ourselves without giving ourselves an opportunity to excel.

Sometimes life hits you with a brick. Don't lose faith and don't stress over things.

Someday a breakup is eminent between the old thinking and new way of life.

No regrets _ Just lessons learned

I dont regret the things i did. I regrets the things i did not do when i had a chance.

Looking back i often wonder what would have been, if i had done this or that. These questions raise a slight fervour in me, as i don't know the outcome of what could or would have been. Would i have led a different life if i had followed the road which opened up for me but i was too scared and stuck to the known? I will never have the answer to any of these questions which take me down the memory lane.

How often does one go down memory lane and relook at the scenes of our life? How often do we imagine a different story than the one which is happening currently? I don't know but i do know that queasy feeling when it comes and for a split second we are in an alternate world.

I remember asking my mom on her deathbed , what was she thinking? All she said to me was her life story was written not by her, but by circumstances and she played her part. And she has many regrets as she did not live life as per her terms. For that moment i had my regret of not fully understanding my mom and it was too late for me to do any thing about her regrets. I could see the vacant eyes with no dreams but full of sadness and i did not want to say goodbye to mom like this. I guess she realised the dilemma i was in, immediately after she had said these words, her next sentence was " I could never be strong, but i am happy that you my daughter , you are a very strong woman and i have lived my life through you as you don't compromise and live life by your terms."

That was the day 4 years ago, i understood one question which comes to us probably only on our last breath. My life, what did i do?
That was the turning point for me too. A workaholic by nature, no time for any one other than my work, all of a sudden i saw a change in my thinking. Work yes still priority but on my terms. No more deadlines as per any one else other than me. I realised that moment that we can either be slaves of what is expected out of us or we create a life taking chances on our own terms.

I saw a lot of flutter and shaking happening around me when my perspective and mindset changed about my life. But my resilience to be who i am and follow my heart prevailed all challenges faced by  me from work , friends , family etc.

One day i thought about making a bucket list of what all i want from my life. I sat down and watched the empty page open on my laptop and the blinking cursor and i could not think of one thing to start this list. I was baffled and kept thinking but no even after half hour nothing. I went into meditation to find the answer of this blankness which had enveloped me. Through this journey within, the findings baffled me more for few days and then the answer came to me.

All my life i have never looked back at my actions or repercussions of my actions. My actions were necessary for me to move forward in my life. Future is an unknown territory on which i had no control of. Best laid plans stay as plans when the dice is rolled and often one gets an odd number when expecting a full house of six. I had through out lived life by moments, these moments made my life and i had said my gratitude when ever change happened.

This feeling has stayed with me always , yet it felt alien at first when i took the journey within. I realised my happiest moments were when i had not compromised on what i believed in. Sorry is the most abused word in our vocabulary. We mean to say and do things which our heart desires and then due to our fears and scared of losing we promptly say sorry. I realised i could count on my fingers when i have said sorry and this shocked me.  I also realised when i felt i had over stepped on someone's boundary, i was the first to make amends. Therefore ego was very low on my chart of fulfilment.

This discovery let me to believe that my bucket list was non existent , as my life was my best seller and to take chances to feel alive was my mantra. Was i so selfish all my life? or did i understand that each one of us is playing a role. The question that arises is do i follow a given script to have harmony around or do i paint the canvas as per my liking? I am sure we all find these crossroads every moment of our life. Some follow the script to be accepted, while some take chances and make their own place.

But in the end what matters is that we have.....

A conscience without regrets .. to live life without having to say you are sorry!!

i am

I am a thought, one day I was born, for there was an interaction between the consciousness and the environment, I had no gestation period, my birth was instant. I was able to find my pedigree of all the similar thoughts that reside in the collective unconscious. 
If you recite me I will be a verse, if you articulate me I will be an expression, if you explore me I will be thoughtfulness, if you act upon me It will be an action. If you let me be, I will remind you later.
I want to travel in the realms of different spheres, I want to feel the satisfaction of being seen, may be on paper, may be on canvas, may be in action. I want to hear myself being expressed, discussed, dissected, tossed around, discarded, and more. All of the above is creation of my progeny, more thoughts. Can one trace my Pedigree? I am within and without. 
I am your collective experience.

Road to success is always under construction

When you conceal your will from others, that is Thick. When you impose your will on others, that is Black (Dark)." by Li Zongwu

I remember reading a very interesting book " Think face, Black heart" by Chin-Ning Chu, it talks about Asian thinking and how our mindset and perceptions play an important part in our day to day business dealings.
According to the author's view of history, the 'Thick Black Theory' describes the ruthless and hypocritical means people use to obtain and hold power: "thick faces" (shamelessness), "black heart" (ruthlessness).

Philosophy is one topic which can look at the same situation multi dimensionally. Every one of us sees what suits our purpose and conclude accordingly. Any successful person must have done something "Bad" in their lives to be where they are. A common story which weaves in by common folks and these folklores are plenty when discussing about some ones success .
All of a sudden "Did you know" trivia plays and sometimes one wonder's that so many know so many personal things about one individual. Perhaps if these people instead of spending time on someone else's life had given attention to understanding themselves, they might be successful or even close to achieving their dreams.
In todays's world, winning isn't everything, but wanting to win is.
If i conceal my will from others , i am thick meaning what ? I have a right to keep my decision to myself, i also have a right to reveal my decision or will when i want to. In the end its my life and my decisions which matter for me. At work, one does not often openly make comments or reveal their will. Its all about winning and doing one's job. Therefore for a person to be open and reveal what their strategy for work is often called inexperienced or naive in business. Then i would assume all of us are thick?
If i impose my will on others, i am black? Well if i can make people react to my actions as i anticipate, then my success is assured. But then i am manipulative and insensitive to people other than my own wants.
Success is what defines us, makes us who we are and our endeavour to be successful makes us realise the true potential of ensuring that we understand our circumstances , our strengths and overcome our weaknesses.
I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everyone.
We try our very best to keep everyone happy, be it our professional or our personal life. Really can we actually keep everyone we meet happy? I avoid people who are always very sweet to me on my face, somehow they give me a very uncomfortable feeling. A person who cannot even voice their concerns or opinion but agrees with you without a thought is someone to be avoided. Thick face , black heart.... Nah.. just plain simple opportunists who wants to take the elevator to success without realising its hard work which makes one successful.
Life teaches us many things, to accept failure and success is all part of life. A person who stays calm, resilient and focussed will overcome anything that life has to give. Some where i feel, we make our life as we want to. If we are not sure of our plan, we fail, yet if we are resilient enough to believe in ourselves, we succeed.
Life is simple, we complicate it.
Success is what we want, not what others expect. Therefore every person to me is successful in my eyes, as thats what they have worked for. For some its money, for some family time, happiness and peace. Success comes in many forms, yet we only understand one which is making money. Its a pity we have partitioned success only as money not by any other form. Having money,  being famous, known nationally or internationally is what success means to many.
What does success mean to you? Its a road which to me is always under construction. Every dream, every goal has a ending. The beginning is of having a dream, how we reach our goal is what defines our success. A person who has a goal can never be a failure. As to me failure is part of success.

Success isn't just about what you accomplish in your life, its about what you inspire others to do.

Re-think and reboot

I play this scene in my mind many times. Every time i get a different scenario, but the end result somehow is always the same.
Imagine one day you get a chance to witness a dialogue between Resistance and Transformation. True to their name, both are stubborn and both feel they are right in their own way. Poor human being at times i feel, actually has no say between the two of them. When any one of them feel they want to run your life, well you just let them, do as they please.
So what would transformation say to resistance, that can make our whole life turn upside down? or what is it, that we will do if a choice is given to us?
Transformation is what we call evolving ourselves, but many times we are not prepared as the unknown is scary and our little power spots resist such transformation from within. I am a non vegetarian person, for me i can eat vegetarian meal provided i do not have any compulsion of eating vegetarian meal only. Now if i look at this objectively, as long as i have no compulsion i am fine with eating vegetarian, the moment its a bet or i to de-toxify my system, insist that for a week i will only eat vegetarian meal, well hell will break loose in my mind and body.
Is it my mind resisting the transformation or it is my addiction resisting? Million dollar question with a penny to give for the right answer.
As rightly said "People don't resist change, they resist to change themselves." I would love to see everything around me change, as per my liking. But i would not agree, that change happens within, our mindset to evolve to see things in a different perspective.
I like watching calm waters, they bring a sense of serenity within me. If by chance someone wants to create a ripple, by throwing a small stone, my first emotion would be anger leading to fear, that why has someone changed my calm serenity, or maybe i might find the ripples interesting, to see how the wave moves in motion as one, and slowly fades away; leaving behind a different atmosphere. Now this change happened with external factor but it was within me the transformation, of watching the waves create a symphony of music before calmness settled again. So does resistance need an atmosphere to transform?
There are many who live mundane ordinary lives. Waiting for that one moment which will transform the mundane into extraordinary. Yet it deceives us and we just live. Looking at this one would feel that even after hoping for a change it eludes us. If we had a rewind button, we could go back and see all the opportunities which presented themselves to make the ordinary extraordinary, yet how many times we chose to let go of taking a chance and resisting the change.
"For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them" an interesting quote by Thich Nhat Hann. We always have a plan, and all things need to go as per this plan which we have envisaged for our progress. To transform one needs to have an open mind and accept the change within and around. Sometimes the things we can't change, end up changing us.
I had a very interesting conversation with a friend last week. I told him about my humiliation and lies weaved by my colleagues, for me to move out of my job, he could not stop laughing. I was upset with his attitude initially, but then suddenly realised my own foolishness. This was my moment of change and transformation. I had moved out of events, and the only reason i got back was i needed some time to be in my comfort zone to move on with life after Simba died. The time period was over and i didn't want to be an event manager for the rest of my life. Therefore all i can say is thank you to all the people who were scared of change and said lies to get me out. Had they been not scared of change i probably would have been stuck in a mundane life once again.
Still your mind meditation helps in understating the chaos which we go within . Our fears are many, we are creators of our own pain and misery yet we chose to blame any one and everyone for making our life miserable. Once you take a journey within , you would realise that change and resistance are two sides of the same coin. Sometimes we change, sometimes we resist. Thats how our life is and whoever can break this circle and accept change with out any questions will make the ordinary extraordinary.
In the end all it matters it that, you have lived your life to the fullest and there are No Regrets.

Transformation isn't about improving, its about re-thinking.

Trick or treat

You talk a good game, but i am watching how you play.

Each one of us, have met people, who believe their one chance to grow up the corporate ladder is by playing games, don't realise that one needs to be competent enough to not get caught while playing. But then many incumbent people seem to have joined the high ranks by playing these games through centuries.
Politics as the word goes is for those who believe in the false sense of power. These are the people who in their life time, can never take any risk, but hide their incompetence by wasting precious time and play these games to keep their positions.
Once i remember talking to my friend who heads a multi national, he said that fear, addiction and mindset are three pillars of stress for any CEO. We sit with a seat belt on. At that time i pondered on this conversation. Why would a CEO sit with a seat belt? Why will that person not take risks and form a great company?
After many years the answer came to me. In today's world we have many people under 40 heading companies and the way to work now is more about Respect and knowing your product and creating a healthy work relationship. One hires professionals who are most sought after in industry. They are paid good salaries and high incentives to get a job done. This maintains a healthy growth within an organisation and if one person leaves, there is no stress as the organisation is self sufficient.
No human is indispensable, companies run with or without you.
People who have crossed this age are stuck with what they have if they don't up their skills and knowledge. There are some great leaders who have always carried their teams and work with them. These are the untouchables and every body has huge respect for these leaders.
But then how do we tackle people who by playing games got their jobs and know they are worth nothing outside the job they have? What do these people do? No worth in market, no job which is available, no respect outside or within and no knowledge of the brand. This is a challenge many companies face. What do we do with this dead stock which creates a very negative and conducive environment for no professional to exist.
Some how i fail to understand how can great entrepreneurs or companies hire such people? And if a wrong hire has been done , then why are the measures not taken to rectify the mistake. Its a vicious circle as the incompetent would never hire professionals and by mistake if a professional gets hired in the company, that's when insecurities start rising of many.
Somehow these people who take pride in their stories and games fail to understand that " One loves listening to lies, when one knows the truth"
An intelligent person would excel by playing the game through work, not by accusations . But then if the person is intelligent, then that person does not need to play any games.
Those games are very different, they are on a very different level all together. Unfortunately the small gamers don't even know what these games are all about.
I chanced through this experience myself recently and was amused that, i was supposed to waste my time on lies and hearsay and try to give explanation. Its not the lies that bothered me. Its the insult to my intelligence that i found offensive.
Really, if i want to play mind games then i would buy a Rubik's cube.
Time is too precious to waste on frivolous things.