When I was young my parents used to say (even our relatives) about the hardships that parents go through in order to raise kids. Now being a father of a 7 year old and an 8 month old my feelings lean towards the contrary.
Like Khalil Gibran said children came along into existence because of life’s
Longing toward itself, they came through you, they did not come from you, you can house their bodies but you cannot house their souls, they have their own minds, you can try to reach into their world, but you cannot expect them to understand your world.

Parenting is a dubious topic, where parents think they have to condition their offsprings to fit into the social and cultural structures they know. This may have been relevant for the agrarian societies where children grew up and resided in the communities that their parents belonged to. Now you have no clue, where your offsprings are planning to sprinkle the pollens of their life. Where they will float into, what kind of experiences they will encounter, what solutions they will discover, what are the neural connections unknown to you that they will nurture and develop into skill sets and what ways they will engage an unknown world with their love for change, with their love for innovation, with their love for art and the ease at which they will manoeuvre the complexities that intimidate you. So when you get asked what legacy will you leave for your children, it is better to emphasise the importance of exercising an ‘empty cup’ mentality, so that they never approach life with pre-conceived notions, and always carry the sense of wonder and curiosity.

Many of us have cut off our emotional resonance to the external world at an early age following some crippling experiences in our lives. Some of us identify that and seek medical help, some of us search for solutions within ourselves through increased awareness and some of us search for a miracle to dawn on us. Whatever be our inclinations , kids bring a difference to our world healing our souls as part of a grand design.They are able to elicit emotional connectedness from us effortlessly through non verbal communication and engage us to lose ourselves in a world of “we”

Choosing a life centred around a kid and then choosing to build a family to accommodate that choice was probably not an act of love or search for meaning, it was a gift seeking a recipient and I was the recipient. The non verbal communications with our child without any ambition to teach him the world of grown ups, but to immerse ourselves in their world of endless possibilities, where realities and dreams are intertwined, where there is no craving to fit the world into structures that we know, for there is no knowledge. There is only wonder. As there is no language, there is no left brain, only right brain which was subdued by years of school and college seeking to release itself from the clutches of conformity to stimulate hitherto unknown neural activities and nurture the mind into a more integrated and mature entity, with increased awareness and compassion.

When you become a parent and start celebrating the early years of your kid, suddenly you feel a part of you becoming tender and alive in ways that you have not known before, a disconnect from the sense of need and a connection to the sense to give, energy to go on without feeling tired and an anchor to the soul directing the decisions you make in life, encapsulating a wider sense of being, connecting yourself to the community and the world, you seldom cared about before.

Life takes us through complete acts of self renewal, in ways we never thought possible and when you feel connected to a possibility, which manifests itself through you, you feel gratitude for being chosen as a medium and humbled, for there is no you, only a grand design.

This is true for most generations. Our previous generations worked with instruction manuals. We adore intuitive products like iPhone or iPad, which does not need instruction manuals.

Our previous generation either wanted to put a man on the moon and adored science or loved John Lennon, read ‘Siddhartha’ and smoked grass. New generation reduces the gap between liberal arts and modern science.

Our previous generation wanted a job to pay their bills. New generation wants to be part of projects that create a dent in the universe. They don’t mind skipping their meals and sleeping under their desks.

Our previous generation learned from colleges and universities. We learn from TED, YouTube, twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia and amazon.

Our previous generation stopped learning when they got a job. We continue learning throughout our lives

Our previous generation were loyal to the tribes they were born into. We create the tribes we want to be part of.

Our previous generation lived their lives seeking fulfilment of their desires. We were born fulfilled, we are giving our lives away, for FREE.

Our previous generation has the Indian mindset, trying to fit the world into explanations, like Bhagavat Gita. We realised the limitation of human mind long back, changed the rules of the game, chose the Japanese mindset, which goes beyond explanations, which goes beyond language and experience oneness with the ultimate wisdom, with our souls, not our minds.

Like one of Henry Miller’s character said, ” Age means nothing, experience means nothing. You are either quick or dead “

The invention of future is the product of choices that we make in life.

Choices of mindsets
Choices of channels
Choices of people

Steve Jobs in his famous Stanford speech said, it is very difficult to connect the dots looking forward. He used the example of learning calligraphy during his college days which did not make any sense at that point in time, which resulted in the beautiful typefaces of Mac and Windows.

Whom or what do we trust in making the choices in our life, business?

Small decisions like buying a car or a house could be consultative process. Big decisions like marriage, career, choosing Amazon.com over an MBA need to be instinctive. Nobody else can find the correct match for you because nobody knows you, like you do.

Years ago when reading “Maverick” by Ricardo Semler kicked off a life time reading of business books, it kicked off a career path that I never had dreamed off.

When I bought my first iPod and got hooked to Apple, a lifetime relationship for seamless content consumption was formed, which spreads through a Mac, 2 iPads and an iPhone.

Choosing ‘Economist’ 13 years back, just for the reason it satisfied my information craving soul, and gave a deep perspective of anything they reported made me an ardent follower.

Choosing not to take a cable tv connection,
Choosing not to marry for love,money or fitting into conventional social norms,
Choosing a life without music, football or cricket,
Choosing only the substance and not the form,
Choosing design over numbers,
Choosing a mindset free of the need to prove myself, but with a craving to improve meaning and content,
Choosing to peel off every year of my life and throw it into the bin for a choice of complete self renewal,
Choosing the road less travelled by,
Choosing friends, relatives and a son listening to my instincts,
All these choices help me connect the dots looking back and looking forward.

My favourite movie is “the Scent of a Woman”. If I have to choose between eyesight and internal sight of the Colonel played by Al Pacino, who can change the life of a schoolboy on the verge of starting his adulthood, forever, who can get away from a police officer without revealing he is blind after driving a “Ferrari” at insane speeds, who can charm a lady (name her perfume) at a dinner table and dance a tango with her, I will choose blindness, if I get the depth of that character.

People say you cannot choose your parents. Yes you can. You can transform them into the souls you want them to be with the correct choices, if they are around. Remember that these choices not only transform others, they transform you too and growing up is a choice that you make, freeing yourself from social, parental,cultural and religious conditioning. Taking the world along with you in your journey is another choice you make.

It is the way human mind is conditioned to see what they want to see. Sales Teams are conditioned to see the “the big prizes or benefits” offered to them by customers or partners in a reality distortion field created by smart crowd. The creation of reality distortion is pretty easy – promise of a lottery money when you have not taken any lottery ticket through email – was one of them.

In Sales this comes as promise of a market you have never been able to tap, promise of a corporate account you have not been able to approach, promise of government of ministerial business you have not been able to break into – these promises make Sales people drool. They often forget at the yield you are able to break into the said market segment, you would have wiped the floor clean, with a catch – you would have compromised on profitability. Your partner is asking you to give a discounted fare to win a corporate account – Your partner would not have given you anything to win the said account and if you start courting the account, you probably would not have discounted anyway to get the business.

So the question is how to make intelligent decisions to amidst such confusion, how to segregate signal from noise?

The first key is being aware.

I have found myself falling into the same trap when I interact with customers or partners – getting carried away. So as a ground rule for myself I do not make decisions on the spot, I ask for time. I come back and deconstruct the whole story. Approach it from every different angle and many a times when I replay the sound bites, body language, who was trying to sell – me or them. During the reconstruction process of the story – I rephrase many of the sound bites in common language, without the sales pitch and it becomes very evident that – the reality was being distorted.

Second step is being aware – you are not that smart, people you interact with are smarter. You need to work very hard, develop soft eyes, keep your human brain thinking (animal brain sedated, so that the carrot does not appear again and again, distorting realities), in order to make intelligent decisions.

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Have you ever come across a blog post that you enjoyed so much you wanted to easily share it with the readers of your own blog? Sure, you can copy and paste the link and perhaps even a snippet of text with your own comments, but overall it's not a particularly enjoyable experience. We wanted to change this and make sharing other posts with your readers as easy as posting to your blog. Today we're introducing a new like and reblog feature enabled … Read More

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