The power to choose

What makes us humans so unpredictable is our power to think, power to suppress our instincts, and power to choose. That makes us so different from all other animals and all interactions involving humans so much more complicated. Our emotions and our logic make our actions unpredictable. It is so contrary to our innate understanding :-).

Random thoughts

What makes me feel great is the spirit to fight relentlessly in the right way. Similary there is so much capacity in human heart to be selfless and do what is right. It is there in every human heart - some places more and some places less. Great things can be accomplished only when they make sense to the heart.

I don't know how many of you have watched a Mandarin movie called Hero - even though there may be very symbolic characteriztion, the sword fighting sequences and background music are etheral. The message "Everything under One Sky" is so simple and yet so profound. It talks about the unity of everything without saying as much. Once we realize this truth, I believe we will stop being "self centered" maniacs. Why do we need a sword? To establish peace. If everybody realizes that peace is the normal state, then suddenly there is no need for sword.

Ok, Ok - I understand. Life is unlike less than 2 hours movie, but there is quite a lot we can learn, if we are ready to listen.

Route Number 27

route number 27 is the shuttle that carried us back and forth between our home and the office. The beauty of shuttle lay in its travelers capability to make the best out of the long journey hours and have fun. There were conversations - meaningful and meaningless, there were laughters - many, there were sullen silences, celebrations and so on. It was world in itself. Everything put together it was fun and had great time.

So what I learnt - life is also a journey. We remember it through the conversations, celebrations, laughter and tears that we have. Without these there is nothing to remember about our journey of life - it will be monotonous like the sleep that I find myself in when I travel using the other route number.

Prayer

Oh, Great Spirit
Whose voice I hear in the winds,
And whose breath gives life to all the world,
hear me, I am small and weak,
I need your strength and wisdom.

Let me walk in the beauty and make my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunset.
Make my hands respect things you have made and my ears sharp to hear your voice.
Make me wise so I may understand the things you have taught my people.
Let me learn the lessons you have hidden in every leaf and rock.
I seek strength not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy - myself.
Make me always ready to come to you with clean hands and stright eyes.
So when life fades, as the fading sunset, my spirit may come to you without shame.

- Native American Prayer - Times of India, Sacred Space, 2009-11-30

Communicate :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uy0HNWto0UY&feature=player_embedded

Assumption & Reality

The general assumption for a society to function normally is that "everybody is trying to do something that is right". Right here means doing the things that are in line with normally accepted human values - truth, justice, & compassion and not doing things that are utterly selfish and unlawful.

This assumption that people will do what is right is being put under severe test in emerging economies like our country. It is becoming extremely difficult for the people who "trust" and work according to the "right" set of values as the existing reality is diametrically opposite to what they assume to be reality.

Kung Fu Panda Continued ...

What does it take to become successful apart from raw talent (I believe this must be there)?

Patience - There will be no result over night
Courage - Needed to take risks
Confidence - Self belief when entire world is saying it is not possible
Discipline - To consistently work systematically to attain your dream
Compassion - To stay human, to stay humble, to be able to understand, and to be understood

All put together should be directed towards attaining happiness/perfection (This is the quest).

Again got the opportunity to watch the "The secrets of the Fabulous Five" in sister's home :-).

Simple Truth

One day, I was expressing my displeasure about the hustle & bustle of city life and how I planned to go back to my village one fine day. My friend, I am pretty sure who hasn't read any philosophy, asked me a simple question - where does the calm that you are chasing lie? I had to answer it is within me. Then she asked "what are you going away from?".

So all the journeys intended to find clam, peace, & happiness must start within oneself. External entities can facilitate seeking the answer, but are not the answer.

Lessons about life - finding the other half :-)

Alright, this is one other area where I have learnt few things in life.

As I am neither for nor against, and as I did make a late attempt, and as I made mistakes, I will simply write about what I learnt:

1. Know what you want in life, know your priorities. Also realize in life things are not always sequential, many things have to happen in parallel. Can't keep thinking C after B after A all the time.
2. Have a list of mandatory things that you are looking for.
3. Be ready to choose.
4. There is no ideal one, grab the first one who is at least above 70 % of what you expect. School and college time - may be good to find the right one. Keep in touch. Once you have organized your life as an adult may be you realize they are the best. There is no way to find out unless you talk.
5. Let go of your ego, talk if things are not looking up, don't make hasty decisions.
6. If you make a mistake, as soon as you realize, go back and check - may be you are lucky.
7. Don't think too much about the future - understand life is transient. In the long run all of us are dead. Being happy while we live is what matters.

If you are planning to look, if you are thinking whether you have stomach to jump on to the merry-go-around, a read of the above will help. So have fun.

One more thought from my corporate life about Hiring

Hm, as a person I learn by reflecting on my past actions and analyzing their results. I was actually building a team more than 2 years ago. I selected some good people, who are better than most of the people present in the organization. As I was also new to the organization I hadn't realized that. We agreed on certain salary for these people, based on the "bands" the people were being hired into and also on their past salaries.

One year down the line we realized that for most of the team mates, the salaries should be higher, but with the recession we were not allowed to make any change to the salary.

So what is the learning from this episode:

When hiring
1. Always assess the person's capability
2. Benchmark the the person's capability against the capabilities of existing set of people.
3. Then fix the salary using this benchmark rather than using the past salary and the band in to which the person has to be hired as the benchmark.

This would ensure that person gets a fair pay, gets in to appropriate band and even if person compares his/her salary the reason for discontent would be very less.

Where have all the people with evolved thinking gone?

Again in some dinner time discussion about what does it mean to be being cultured and what is not, we ended up with the following thoughts.

In today's India, among the people, we find people for whom the modernity means having various gadgets and aping the western clothes and the way of living. Then we also find people to whom being cultured means being ritualistic and going around to places of worship and following arcane rules to live life by. Even though the preceding sentences do not mean that most of these people are devoid of real understanding of the word refinement as a human being, mostly I find that they haven't thought what does it actually mean to be a human being.

I believe if each of us understands that the goal of life is to live with joy and move away from being self centred, performing actions that are right, we have again started on the path of evolution.

Seeking completeness

Unless i am challenged realy hard, we don't think too much about the thing. Even though I can not find the elusive soulmate, at least I can think hard why I need to find one / don't need to find one.

The "Eureka" thought is each is searching for the completeness (unity) one way or the other. As I wrote earlier, we can create that by acquiring something that is missing or completely annhilating the already existing entity. For us humans it is very hard to let go and relatively easy to acquire. Even nature has made the task of finding completeness acquisition oriented.

May be if we are able to find that elusive person/soulmate, may be we will find the path to reach that completeness/happinees.

Enthusiasm for living (Jeevanotsaha)

I and my mom were discussing "what makes a person look beautiful?". It's definitely the internal joy that person has and the happiness the person radiates. What makes a person radiate this happiness? It definitely is the person's enthusiasm for living.
A person who is enthusiastic about living will cope with setbacks and still maintain a smile in the eyes and on the lips.

Life and Soulmate

Life - What is this about? I am not writing any original thought. The thought from movie Hitch sounded very good; hence just typing it here. A person's life is all about the small interesting moments that the person is part of; because without those moments that person can not experience "living" or can't find the "purpose" of life. So it is about those events that happen during our life that give meaning rather than the act of "breathing".

Soulmate - Somehow it again goes back to the principle of being nothing is being everything. We most of the times define this entity as the one with which we can communicate and be understood without struggle. I believe it would be the thing with which a person is absolutely at peace, the mere presence of which would calm the person and no words need to be exchanged to be understood / to understand. So absolute absence of words becomes communication :-).

In earthly sense it is good to strive to find a person with whom one can be at peace, where mere presence of that person is good enough for one to feel great. If two persons could sit next to each other and feel joyous even without speaking a word, they are soulmates :-).

We must know why and what if we are searching for something - may be those will help us define how.

Am I crazy - because this is way out of my domain? may be.

My life and destiny

Let me just say this - My career sprang back to life from the dead today due to tremendous help by many people who were ready to listen and make corrections to what they felt didn't go right. There is always an element of luck in all these.

I was in my van returning to my house. The HR manager called and told about the new job and at the same time somebody in my van returning from Tirupati started distributing the famous "prasad". Yes, by the way Timmappa is our family diety.

This is one of many such things that have happened in my life.

Why Organizations/Humans Fail

Organizations/Humans create plans based on their view of what the world needs now and in future. This is entity's view of reality. It is based on certain assumptions regarding the various things that pervade this world.

As long as these assumptions about the world are good enough to create a theory about the world and predict future, organization/person keeps succeeding. At regular intervals there is a fundamental shift in people's perception such as what they want from the world, what they want to pursue in life, and how they want to live. Then many of the the assumptions that explained how the world functioned get invalidated.

Once the assumptions are wrong, any theory and action plan based on those assumptions is wrong. Companies don't question if the change has happened and if that needs changing the assumptions and creating a new plan. They because of earlier success try to do the same old things more efficiently instead of doing different things and eventually end up as failures.

Parents & Inspiration

As I grow older, my admiration for my mother keeps growing as I realize how hard it is to be as disciplined as she is, as selfless as she is, and as broad minded as she is.

My parents taught me to ask myself "Am I about to do what is right?" before I tried doing something. It simply made me and my sister to strive hard to live up to that ideal.

The best compliment that I got was when my manager who is a veteran of industry said that he wanted to meet my parents because he admired what I did day in and day out.

My thoughts about avoiding recruitment pitfalls.

What they teach and don't teach at IIM are the following. They tell "you need to create your own rules of thumb to live the life by" and their goal is to only expose you to the thinking you may want to have or to the lines of thinking that you may wish to pursue.

Now is there any possibility to prevent offices becoming resorts where people get paid for spending their time at the expense of people working hard to earn their daily bread?

Some thumb rules:

1. Test a person's integrity - if he/she fails this test don't hire.
2. Culturally people are very different. In every culture there are basic values. In India in modern time these are cheating, lying, and pursuit of money by any means. People who cheat and lie are strict no no. People who are ready to put in the work required to earn the money are the only part of the population that we can employ.
3. Never hire a person who has screwed up the his/her personal life.
4. Never hire a person who has not achieved a single significant thing in life till date.
5. Never hire a person who does not feel good about himself/herself or is at war with the external world.
6. If you have doubts during the probationary period just fire, because it will save lot of heart ache that the person and you are going to have in the days ahead.
7. Talk with references for each person you want to hire. More persons the better.
8. Don't hire if person is worried more about benefits even before taking up the job.
9. Don't tolerate any breach of rules. Warn sternly, give chance , indicate maximum chances available. If offence is repeated simply take the corrective and preventive action. Don't keep saying "I will shoot", "I will shoot" - just shoot. Sometimes fear is also a good motivator. For many of us in India who have become shameless, fear is also an effective motivator along with greed.
10. Never hire if person has entitlement mentality. Nothing is guaranteed in this life. We need to work hard to get these things. With entitlement mentality rewards come before the work. In nature it never happens so.

Alright I will keep writing more. I did not follow some of these thumb rules. So don't make the mistakes that I have made.

Fanfan and Alexander

Representative of our need to hold on perpetually to something rather than cherishing the moment. As soon as we start striving to hold on to something especially in relationships - it becomes stifling / twisted. The realization that we can't hold on to something will let us cherish the moment without worrying about the loss that the tomorrow might bring. Hm, in a bout of philosophy I should not forget the surreal beauty of most French women. Some how so much harmony / beauty has a calming effect on the mind. It simply makes one feel joyous. On the account of beauty now I must add Spohie Marceau to the list of Monica Bellucci, Kate Winslet, Natalie Portman and my sister.

Donkeys and Horses and Ways of the world

Some how in many industries it appears that "number of years" put in matter more than what a person could do. This makes me think industries are mostly oblivious to the fact that with age a donkey/mule does not become a race horse. It just becomes a very old donkey/mule. So it is important to understand
a. whether it was originally a donkey or a horse
b. has it been used to fight wars or has it been used to lug the dirty linen
I believe this donkey becoming a horse mentality is very much true of the "knowledge work" industry.