measure

Should we measure our life in terms of relationship, contribution to the world?

We get evaluated at work or in seeking education. What about our life? What are the metrics one has to measure the meaningfulness of their life?

Is it the number of friends we make, how we treat our siblings, parents?
Is it how we shape life in better ways to people around us?

Or is it the wealth, glory or materialistic possession? What is the measure of our life? What makes us go to sleep in peace.

What are that measurable metrics which ensure we die happily?

leader

Leaders are also a human-like me and you. They are no gods and they are prone to committing mistakes as well.

Accepting a mistake and fixing it gets them more loved by their peers. In the end, an organization is a collection of many humans with unique persona and ways of seeing the world.

Tune

It is difficult to stay focused in this noisy world. Everyone has got advice for others.

In building a product what matters most is your customers, who have got pain. Focusing on such a tribe is the only way to succeed. Everything else is noise.

I remember my Hindi teacher repeating proverb: Elephant walk on its own tune.

negative

What makes us see things in the negative? Is it our life long conditioning or lizard brain? We give up easily and losing is the default assumption. How will we win without a positive mindset?

What would have happened to Cars, if Ford had followed on buddy owners? What would have been to the society if Martin Luther King Jr or Mahatma Gandhi had not taken a stand? Also what about the light bulbs if Edison had given up?

Persistence and radical self-belief is key to our life journey. If we will give up, who will be with us on the journey?

memory lane

Someday I get lost in the past. Papa shared a picture of mine with my grandma, I would have been 5-6 years old I am assuming. I have been thinking about my grandma, my village and the summer holidays.

I am not sure about others but I am lucky that a good part of my childhood had village life in it. Be it swimming in the village pond or bathing in boarding pump in paddy fields. I have had a share of it all.

Not to forget all the love from my grandma which meant favorite meals, money to buy sweets. Sometimes when parents would get mad at me[cos of not studying], I would go to the village and be with my grandma.

The summer holidays were 60 days long. Eating mangoes, sugarcane and guava were past times, few times we did get caught by Mali.

Fishing right outside my home during the rainy season as a result of monsoon floods. Our school would get closed for a few weeks.

These little memories are giving me goosebumps.

lost

It is good to be lost. We have more opportunities to think, introspect and question ourselves and the decisions we have taken so far in our life.

Being lost is not a bad thing as we fire up more of our neurons and get in the zone of pushing more for seeking uncomfortable questions.

Most of us are just living, we are not asking hard questions with self. That is the reason we feel everything is sorted and we never get lost.

vulnerable

We are all vulnerable. So with our identity and others with reaching somewhere. Being vulnerable can be a burden and burns lots of our neurons. We start self-doubting, questioning everything happening to us which can be good or bad.

We should ask ourselves why situations or conditions make us vulnerable. What can we do to get over it? Is vulnerability a manifest of our own mind?

old age

My friends keep telling me, Instead of living now I am preparing for old age. My response to this is simple: I have to stay healthy and independent.

To be both healthy and independent I don’t have t prepare or wait for old age. It is a virtue one can inculcate now and live every moment. When you are healthy, you can act/think and operate more rationally. When you are independent financially you can live life on your terms.

airport

I find the airport center of innovation. Every time I travel I get to see something new. The premise is more efficient, making things get done quickly. Be it luggage drop, security check or getting your booking pass.

Once you are inside an airport, you find a complete cosmopolitan. People from various sectors, society, backgrounds immersed in a single place. Each has own reason for the travel: leisure, vacation or health reasons.

I also see elderly escorted by their sons and daughters.

With the advancement in technology, our lives have gotten much better. We are traveling more, spending more and have gotten closer to the world.