Self-help?

Do we really need all the self-help books out there?

Honestly, what do they teach us that we already don’t know? If James Maxwell asks you to be positive or Anthony Robbins asks you to courageous, does it really help other than your adrenaline rising for that moment?

I don’t want to take anything out of all the self-help gurus out there, they are incredibly talented and they mean good. But, honestly, all these self-help books give you temporary comfort blankets that make you feel good about yourself.  And yes, that is the zeroth step. The that is all it remains – the zeroth step.

If you really want to find solutions to your problems, you need to look inside objectively. Know every aspect of yourself and study it as if you would study these off-the-shelf-make-you-feel-good books. Until you don’t understand the ins and outs of your reactions to your surroundings, how do you expect somebody else to help you?

It is scary and deeply humbling to look inside ourselves. When we really observe how we talk, walk and react to the things that keep popping up in our day to day lives, we will be surprised by the revelations. Once we understand ourselves, our problems will go away without a self-help guru.

 

 

Not my day?

I play table tennis quite regularly at office. I usually play with couple of friends of Chinese origin. They are amazing players. Quite frankly, I used to get kicked in my butt quite often for one year! Then, the game got better, techniques got more sound, my defense improved and gradually, I started winning games more often. Now, on my day, I make them look like rookies, and those days happen quite frequently.

Yesterday, some interesting thought came up while I was playing. I was down three games to zero. The games were not going quite my way. There were several narrow misses and there were streaky points taken against me. It seemed that there was no luck. Thats when I thought – Maybe, it is an indication for me to just concentrate harder and adjust my game. I decided to bank on my strength to come out of the dip. I started attacking more, which was my game and backed myself to deliver. I stood a foot back from my normal position to increase the probability of landing my smashes on the table. I completely sleepwalked the game. It was a phenomenal turn around. The next game went really close (several deuce points) but I hung around and nailed that game as well.

The point I am trying to make is – when you feel you are in bad patch and things are not going your way, it is important to show more determination and trust your strengths to bring yourself out of whatever bad patch y0u feel you are in. In game, it shows faster; in life, it takes longer to see the result. But, it will show. The principle is still the same.

Change the world?

This seems to be the most overloaded and overused term in the entrepreneurship circles. I am guilty of it on several occassions. So, the other day, I was thinking about what it really means to change the world and what is the first step to doing it?

What is changing the world? for whom? You want to change the world because you don’t like something. You want a better world, and hence you go about creating it for you. The more I think about this, this term or a notion of changing the world seems to be loaded with selfishness and ignorance. Sorry for being harsh. But, isn’t it true? We say we want to eliminate poverty and help people and therby change the world for good. But, aren’t we doing this because this gives us pleasure and a sense of importance? I am not talking about this being a good or bad thing. I am just trying to underline the root cause of doing something like this. Everything we want to do seems to be driven by a need for pleasure (intellectual or otherwise) and gratification. There is a famous quote by Mahatama Gandhi – “You be the change that you want to see in the world”. Several thousands of interpretations of this quote have been inspirational and motivational. However, I believe there is a much deeper philosophical meaning to this quote. Changing the world first comes from changing ourselves, our mindsets, our attitudes towards others, our perceptions and projections, our knowledge, our desires, etc. It is true that every one of us has infinite potential to do whatever we desire. However, to conquer this so called world, you must first conquer yourself. That is the change you need to be in order to change the world.

These days, this term has become a fashion. There are some selfless individuals who have dedicated their life’s journey to humanity and service. They serve for humanity sake and not for feeling powerful. I am not talking about those people here. Others, my god, it gets really amusing sometimes. Look at a flower or a cloud or the wind. They radiate happiness and life to anyone who takes a moment to observe them. They are changing the world by spreading beauty and joy. They seldom claim that they are changing the world, but they are.  Changing the world is easy and simple and can be done everyday with simple tasks. Our mindset, attitudes and thoughts can stop even a greatest disaster like war. It is just that most of the time, our priorities and understanding of how the world operates is very shallow. It is very important to first observe oneself and change as you desire the outside world to be.

How aware are we?

Are we living or just motoring along? How much aware are we to our surroundings? How much of that awareness tranlates to learning?

Awareness + learning = Happiness

A simple exercise will illustrate what is going on with our lives – Just for 10 minutes, walk outside in the open (your community, college, workplace, anywhere where you can see the sun and feel the wind) and observe everything. Don’t ignore anything or take it for granted. You will surprised to see how many things we take for granted on a daily basis.Simple things like growing grass, scent in the breeze, your neighbor’s kids playing, cloud patterns, etc. Once you observed these things, ask yourself, WHY? See if you can explain the reason behind these to your mom or grandmom or your kid. If you can’t, that might be because you don’t know yourself and you’ve been taking these simple things for granted in your lives.

The real secret of happiness is awareness translated to learning translated to knowledge. Once you become wise, world will make much more sense. But for that, you first have to step out of your ignorance and become aware of every wonderful thing that happens around you.

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Choice

How do you choose between doing and not doing something?

Easy, choose the hard one. For instance,

• If you have a choice between temptation and restraint, choose restraint.
• If you have a choice between perfection and lazyness, choose perfection.
• If you have a choice between quality and quantity, choose quality.
• If you have a choice between following and leading, choose leading.
• If you have a choice between kneeling down and standing up, choose standing up.
• If you have a choice between reasoning and blame, choose reasoning.
• If you have a choice between guilt and experience, choose experience.

Remember, easy does not necessarily mean right.

The “Hope” Factor

As an intrapreneur, one of the biggest factors that I have found to win over people’s hearts is hope. Yes, providing hope can be one of the greatest ways to attract people’s attention and cut through the layers of resistance and bureaucracy. As I mentioned previously, I had been invited to a leads meeting (meeting that is attended by all the chip leads, directors and VPs) to give a presentation on the software I developed. I saw that everybody became super excited and provided insights on how much this tool can help our projects. If I should summarize one factor that won their hearts, I would say – “hope that some of the outstanding challenges will be addressed”.

Even when I did the 10 minute presentation to a senior VP over a month back (which resulted in this invitation), I focused specifically on things the tool will help solve. These are not trivial problems, these are the problems that the industry is concerned about. I showed how we are already a step ahead in addressing these challenges. This tool provided the hope that we can be leaders in spearheading this process.

As an intrapreneur it is important to pick problems to solve early in your career. Picking tough problems and solving them is one third of the path. Doing this without making a lot of noise is one third of the path. The last third of the path can only be conquered by knowing how to present/woo. The hope factor helps a great deal in conquering the final frontier. If you think about this early on while you are thinking about the problem to solve, it will also help you pick the problems to solve.

Hope is a magnet

Tag lines: What do they mean?

Stay:

1. Stay under the radar
2. Stay out of politics
3. Stay out of ordinary (or common)
4. Stay out of submission
5. Stay away from bragging your plans
6. Stay on the shoulders of giants
7. Stay away from gossips
8. Stay away from playing the superiority cards. Don’t belittle anyone.

Design (Or Implement):

1. Design a prototype/alpha-beta version
2. Design your prototype to be visually stunning
3. Design for easy usability

Woo:

1. Wooing is making everyone above you believe it is their idea
2. Wooing is taking extra efforts in your demo and design to give an out of the world experience
3. Wooing is not done by mouth, but by actions. So shut your mouth and get to work
4. Wooing happens when you show great loyalty to them and their visions
5. Wooing happens when you step up to implement an idea that seems crazy or even impossible
6. Wooing is delivering on your promise and maintaining credibility
7. Wooing is when you answer “nobody’s fault” for the question – W(h)oo(se) fault?
8. Wooing by making your boss always looks good to his/her bosses

Deploy:

1. Deploy your ideas in the form of prototypes
2. Deploy your prototypes/product in the form of traction
3. Deploy your leadership skills in the form of support
4. Deploy your ideas using credibility

Please spread the word…

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If you were the CEO…

Say, you are the CEO or VP of your organization and you have a seriously cool idea to implement. What do you do? Maybe the following…

1) Gather some people who can implement this idea (Maybe directors, other VPs, Staff Managers, etc) and talk to them.

2) Hire people/interns who can explore the idea.

3) Push people to get these things done. If the idea ends up what you visualized, convince your bosses (board of directors) of a possible product based on this.

If I say that as an employee, you can still do the same, you might be giving me _are_you_insane?_ look. So, instead of seeing what CEOs/VPs do, let us rewrite the above tasks:

1) They get support of masses

2) They build momentum and prototype

3) They give it away and encourage (force) people to use it and later show the traction to their bosses.

Implementing an idea is principally same everywhere at any level in an organization. The biggest difference is the way of persuasion. A CEO or VP can use authority to persuade people to accept his/her idea. A “junior” employee does not have the same luxury. Hence, he has to woo people to get his support. Wooing can be by means of effective communication or playing politics or gathering friends and admirers, etc. However, the first step is to create something of substance (prototyping the idea). Then, giving it away for people to use it. I cannot emphasize the importance of giving your inventions or ideas for the global (in this case, corporate) good. It does not mean that you give away your raw idea. To be honest, an idea is not worth anything unless it is in a digestible form. Digestible form is a prototype, or even beyond that! If you are visualizing a new software that can revolutionize your field, work silently towards creating a beta version. When it is ready, invite your peers to use it. These people are going to be your evangelists.