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Sailing Over The River of Life

I usually maintain a small list of topics and bullet points on articles I want to write upon. Most of the times, I always have around five half-written articles in that document, from which I usually pick one and finish for posting. Even at this moment, I have a list of 5-10 such articles, all from more than 4 months ago when my life took a complete u-turn.

Though I have started writing again now, my frequency of writing is still very less. One reason for this is because most of the topics I have noted down to “write later” doesn’t seem relevant to me now, or the thoughts which I have already noted down seem alien to me now. Even from the already posted articles, my views are not aligned with many of them.

Of course, life happens over a large period of time, and it brings along its own challenges and surprises, successes and failures, learnings and lessons. And everybody’s thinking changes in the course of a life time. Looking back, I can very easily see how I (and my actions and behaviors) have changed multiple times. I can hardly recognize the person I was when I completed school, then when I completed engineering or when I moved to Bangalore in 2008. In fact, I can see a lot of changes in me from the person that I was just a few months ago.

Having said that, it would not be wrong to say that whatever I have done or thought in the past had certainly resonated with my thoughts at that time, even though I would not do many things the ‘same way‘ now. Standing in now, I don’t have any regrets on the decisions or actions I have taken in the past, even though I see many of them as mistakes or blunders now.

I have no idea what the future has in store for me, or what my thoughts would be in the future. I think what is important is going through with what we are thinking at this moment, and not taking actions based on what we have done in the past or how our thought process had been in the years gone by. Even if that means throwing away all the articles or topics I have already written, or taking a sudden career path, or deciding to interact with a different set of people – perhaps even in a new city or country.

This quote by Emma Smith looks so appropriate now – “Life is like the river, sometimes it sweeps you gently along and sometimes the rapids come out of nowhere.”

And that is what I am going to do, live each day as it comes, and doing what seems best at the moment, irrespective of how others feel about it, or even how I have felt about it in the past. Just as the flow of a river never stops until it joins the ocean, our lives also never stop or pass through the same spot twice. The river might change its direction due to obstacles in the path, which it either wears down or finds a way around until it reaches its destination, slowly and persistently. We should always do the same with our lives too.

In Business – Don’t Take Care, Take a Chance

As I have written in some of my previous articles, what distinguishes great people and organizations is not how they succeed, but how they fail. Great organizations (especially dealing with innovation) are about taking risks to do things that haven’t been done before. And like with any experiment – you know there are going to be more failures than successes. That is the definition of innovation. If the odds were higher and success was almost certain in every one of two cases or so, every Tom, Dick and Harry would be doing it.

Take Intelligent Risks
We live in a world of risks, and we live in a world of failure. Entire industries like venture capital, portfolio management and insurance work on the model of taking intelligent bets and risks, and making the few big wins count more than the numerous failures. So rather than eliminating risks, we should take intelligent risks and learn to eliminate the uncertainties. Because without risks, there is no moving ahead.

Look Far Ahead – The Bigger Perspective
When you look at the big picture you will realize that when you fail you are not finished. Failure doesn’t mean a full stop, it just means a temporary barrier on your way to wherever your vision is going to take you. Failures build our character amid immense challenges, and that is an incredible muscle to build for tough times. Over the period of a long journey, the definition of failure changes for most people, and we start becoming much less scared of it.

Be Ok with the Fear of Failure
What is lacking in the current environment is the concept of constructive failure, by which I mean the ability of doing things and failing, then learning from the mistakes and iterating until you reach the milestone of success. Failures can by compared to the lighting lamps on the way to every success story. Being able to take failure as an asset is a unique trait. When you really learn is when you are confronted with failure.

Dont Live Life, Be Alive
Many people say you can learn from the failure of others, but there is only limited knowledge and experience you can gain from reading books and listening to others. You can’t relive the experience of falling from a bike by reading about it. So in terms of failure, if we ‘really’ want to learn the lessons and want our time and money’s worth from failure, they better be our own. There are some experiences which must be felt if you have to learn the lessons with them, and there are no short cuts.
Infact, most of the success stories we know today are also stories of many more failures which are never highlighted by the media. To give a few examples, Henry Ford failed in five businesses before starting the Ford Motor Company and Soichiro Honda was turned down by Toyota for a job and was jobless for some time before he started making his own scooters at home. Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper for a “lack of imagination” before he started Disney. To stress the point that innovation in business is similar to experiments by scientists, we have the examples of Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers. We will have examples in art, politics and sports too of such people, and some names that come to mind are Winston Churchill, Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, JK Rowling, Elvis Presley and Michael Jordan.

Either You Do It or Not, There is no Trying

Have you ever ‘tried‘ to do something? Think about it for a moment, how can one actually ‘try‘ to do anything? Because if you succeed in your intention, you would have done it, and if you failed, you would not have done it. But where did the ‘try‘ go?

If you are not getting what I am proposing, let us try a simple exercise. You must have your mobile phone somewhere lying near you. Just try to pick it. Yes, seriously! Try to pick it up. Have you picked it up? No, no no.. I didn’t ask you to pick it up. I only asked you to try to pick it up. After some time you will realize that you just can’t ‘try‘ to pick it up. There is either picking it up or not picking. There is no trying.

Having established that there is no such thing as trying, why is this word so common in our day to day lives? Why is it that this word is often associated with the ‘doing’ of things? I would guess that ‘try’ or ‘trying something’ is another of the commonly used phrases we use in our daily lives without even being conscious about it. It is just like the ‘Thank God it’s Monday‘ example I illustrated earlier. Using the word ‘try’ is just an escape route our sub-conscious mind takes and helps us justify our actions (or lack of them) later on.

Reasons and Justifications
Remember any instance where couldn’t do something you ‘tried’ to do. After the failed attempt, we often find ourselves using the word ‘try‘ to justify the same to others and to ourselves too. We never ‘tried’ to do anything, as it is something which can’t be done. But we have our reasons and justifications to defend ourselves with. Lets be honest and accept that we are only fooling ourselves and nobody else by falling into the trap of trying and following it up by reasons. I am not saying there is something wrong if you don’t accomplish a task, but to take responsibility and not hide behind the ‘try’.

Just Do It
Nike has got the perfect message in their tagline – Just Do It! We should let go of all the trying we do and get into the world of doing. The difference in the ‘doing‘ world is that the focus is on being in action. In the ‘trying’ world, there is a lot of thinking and analysis involved, but in the doing world, there is either success or failure in the ‘doing’. There is no successful ‘trying’, only successful ‘doing’. And as we are stopped by different obstacles (which will naturally come), being in the ‘doing’ world will not give us any reasons and justifications to fall back on and instead we will spend our energy on how to actually ‘do’ the task. There is always growth in the doing world.

What to do in the face of obstacles?
If we are doing something worthwhile, there will obviously be some hurdles on the way. Instead of focusing on the hurdles, we should strive to just learn our lessons and doing the same thing with a different approach. Now it is very easy to fall into the trap of such words again. So don’t ‘try’ to overcome the obstacles, just overcome them 🙂

Every Obstacle has an Opportunity Hidden beneath it

The only people I have ever known to have no problems are in the cemetery, says Dr. Norman Vincent Peale. If this reality hasn’t hit you in the face, let me make it clear – If you are alive, you will have problems and obstacles in your life. It is as much a truth as the air we breathe, and the earth we walk on. Yet we live all our lives avoiding problems or solving them. What an irony?

When Lance Armstrong says that cancer was the best thing that ever happened to him, and that if he would have to choose between his Tour de France wins and cancer, he would choose cancer, he is saying a lot. He won the Tour de France seven times after recovering from cancer to give a light of hope to the millions of cancer patients out there, and his tryst with cancer has given him the purpose of his life, the LiveStrong Foundation.

Even in the Mahabharata, Krishna saw fighting as an opportunity which Arjuna saw as a problem. The way we see the problem is the real problem, and if every time we face a problem we ask ourselves – “What is the opportunity here?”, we can open closed doors of new opportunities which can enliven us and the people around us.

If we can learn to do this everytime, our life is taken care of

If we can learn to do this everytime, our life is taken care of

Let’s take an example. In the current tough economy, let’s say one is out of a job. It might look as a problem, but we can ask “What is the opportunity here?”. What are the answers we can get? Being without a job could actually be an opportunity to start a business, or to go back to study or take some time off to travel. When we are in a job, we are often too stuck in our comfort zone that we don’t even look at what all we are capable of. But when we are shocked by some so-called problem, we often are forced to do what we never thought we could, and that always leaves behind a better version of us.

If I look back at my life, the best things have come out from the times which I have considered my worst. Whether it was the dissatisfaction at work which led me to create Sukip and SaleRaja, or later the failure of SaleRaja which led me to writing which has now led me to another entrepreneurial venture (CricketRadius), the times which I have considered my worst at one time have given me the best results.

In times when we think the whole world is against us, what we need is the maturity to seek the hidden opportunity. We also need the patience which will allow us to wait and bide time till we can see the opportunity hidden in that obstacle. We might not be able to see the opportunity at that time, but if we can show faith in life, we will only come out stronger and better prepared for the future. I will end with this quote by John Ruskin –
“The highest reward for man’s toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it.”

Top Four Lessons Learned from the Pick a Fight Journey so far

It has been almost 10 months now since Pick a Fight came into being, and it has been a pretty amazing journey so far. Starting very small working with just a few NGOs in Bangalore and doing a few events, we have now seen three events in Delhi in the last few months. There have been many lessons learned along the way, and I am sure many more are yet to be discovered as we have plans to go pan-India in the year ahead. Here are the top four lessons, in the broader sense, that I have personally taken from the journey so far.

All Human Beings are Equal
After seeing the amazing work being done by numerous NGOs and the great people behind them, and even many individuals who are fighting for their chosen causes alone, I have realized that they are not any different than any one of us. I totally believe in this quote by Napoleon Hill – “What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve”. Each one of us, and yes, each one of us, can achieve what we can dream. There is no human bigger than any other human, and in the same vein, there is none small than another. A social leader is no better (in potential) than a criminal. There is none any more good than anyone else, and neither is there anyone bad. We were all born equal, and we all die equal.

A pic from a picnic Pick a Fight organized to the Delhi Zoo for kids of NGO Protsahan

A pic from a picnic Pick a Fight organized to the Delhi Zoo for kids of NGO Protsahan

Empowerment is Needed, not Help
You must already be asking – If everyone is equal, why do some produce results and some don’t? Well, there are two aspects to this question which need answering. Let me elaborate –
a) Results are a matter of Perception
What you see as results might be very different from what any other person sees it as? You might believe in social activism and see its protagonists as examples. Another person might regard business leadership and results as the only good result that there is. While others might see art (writing, painting, movies) as the real expression of human potential and some others might see achievements in the sporting arena as worthwhile. So the first thing to understand when you feel, think or say that person XYZ is not producing results is that they are not producing results by YOUR definition of results. They might be producing results by their own or by others definition of it.
b) What is Empowerment?
If everyone is equal and capable of doing amazing things, the only thing needed is empowerment, and not any support, help or aid. Words like support, help and aid, by definition makes the receiver smaller than the giver in some aspect. While charity is good and no doubt needed (for fire-fighting), it doesn’t provide any long term solution. Instead aid has the negative effect of making the receiver dependent on future help from the giver. Empowerment is, in contrast, making the other person realize their own potential and that they are not any less than anybody else in the world. In fact, I would say that we can’t really give someone anything they already have, and the potential to produce amazing results falls in that category. What empowerment does, and what its role is to show people the path and taking away their mind and skill blocks which might be preventing them from realizing their full potential as a human being. Let me repeat for clarification, empowerment is more about taking the perceived barriers away, rather than helping or giving someone something.

Actions and Consequences
When people realize their potential and the amazing things they can do, they will invariably take risks and play bigger games in life. Now, when you expand your playing field and take on bigger challenges, you are bound to face some hurdles or failures (if I may call them so). These hurdles are the real test of your greatness, and you must see them not as pointers to you being weak or incapable, but as a consequences of the bigger game you are playing. It is a part of the game, and since you have chosen your actions, you must accept the consequences of it with full responsibility too. In short, you should change the meaning of hurdles in your dictionary as – ‘one step closer in the direction you are heading‘.

Having fun and being happy is the most important
When I say above – ‘one step closer’, it doesn’t mean that you tie your happiness to some end result. We can, and must have goals, but we should never tie our happiness to the result of those goals. Whether we reach the destination or not, it doesn’t matter (in terms of happiness). We should learn to be happy NOW, because that is the only moment we ever have. In fact, I would say that it is the happiness in people which produces great results, rather than the other way round.