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This morning I saw a couple of egrets flying in the sky.

Beautiful white egrets, against the green trees, in a seamless flight.

It was a sight to watch, as I stood there in my balcony, admiring them.

And I wondered

Have they always been there and it’s only today that I have seen them?

Or

Have they come only today, because we have created the space for them to do so?

It’s the same with every beautiful thing in life

Has it always been there and it’s only today that I have seen it?

Or

Has it happened today, because I created the space for it to happen?

Peace happens when we wish to be peaceful

Peace happens when we create space for peace

During the time of crisis, it is not the dollars that earn you brand loyalty.

Instead, when you chose to listen, to be patient, to go out of your way, to help, to display empathy, to solve, it builds a brand name that stays forever.

When you fight against all odds to serve the customer, it tells them that they can trust you.

With their money, with their time.

Marketing in the time of crisis does not exist in the marketing department.

It exists in the customer service department.

“I can’t do this”

“I can’t understand”

“I can’t figure out how”

“I can’t decide”

Each time you find yourself saying “I can’t”, remind yourself that you can.

It is not a capability issue. It is an intent issue.

You can.

You just chose not to.

So the next time you say, “I can’t do this”, replace it with “I can do this. I just chose not to”

And see how that sounds.

We have to teach our kids a lot.

How to read, write, even speak.

How to eat, wear clothes, even walk.

How to play, build, even gather.

But we don’t have to teach them how to love.

They know how to hug, how to express, how to smile. How to love.

They are somehow born with it.

But here is one thing they weren’t born with.

How to hate.

They don’t know how to hate.

So all the hate that you see in the world today, is a result of them being taught how to hate.

How to differentiate based on colour, caste, religion.

This begs the question.

Are we encouraging our kids to love?

Or are we teaching our kids to hate?

How would you react if 3 months back I told you that you could now work from home everyday, spend time with family, not travel anywhere anymore, cook, read, watch TV, listen to music and anything else that you wish to do with your time?

That’s your wish come true, right there, no?

But today, it may seem like a trap. It may seem like you are caged.

Because your wish has been made mandatory.

It’s amazing how the concept of choice is so powerful for the human mind. Choice almost equals power.

And the absence of choice creates resentment, even if we were to make the same choice that we are forced to chose today.

If your wish comes true, by choice or by force, it is your wish coming true!

Whenever designing a new process or a new system, we have a tendency to think of the desirable flow, the ideal path, the happy path, the path that will happen more often than others.

And to then stop at that.

It is our way of avoiding chaos.

However, things don’t break because the desirable flow didn’t work. They break, because when the desirable flow wasn’t applicable, nothing else worked.

Things break because we didn’t think behind the desirable flow.

That’s where chaos comes in.

If, instead of starting with the desirable flow, we started with chaos, we would experience a lot in a rather short period of time.

If we allowed chaos and not order, to drive our design, we would end up with a design far more capable of handling different situations.

To design the product that works almost always, start with chaos.

To design the life that works almost always, start with chaos.

The Golem effect is intuitive.

If a supervisor or the individual themselves have lower expectations, then it leads to poorer performance by the individual.

It’s the Pygmalion effect that isn’t so obvious.

That if a supervisor or the individual themselves have higher expectations from themselves, it leads to higher performance by the individual.

We can understand how someone can lower their performance. But how can someone deliver higher performance? Isn’t there an upper limit to how much one can do?

Asking the question about the upper limit is precisely where the Pygmalion effect comes in. There is no upper limit. There are no limits.

Can you play that role for someone out there? When the entire world, including themselves, is bashing them up, can you act as the one who says, “I believe in you. Your capabilities. Your intent. Your potential.”

“And I know you will make it”

We don’t need 10,000 reasons why we will fail. We need the 1 reason why we will win!

As we live our lives, we create an image of who we are, for our own selves.

We live by that image, stick to that image, believe that image to be permanent and true.

And rarely stop to ask ourselves, what if there is no image. What if there is no me.

If I didn’t create this image of myself in my own head, who would I be?

At some point of time in our life, we were introduced to the mirror.

That was the first time we saw ourselves.

The first time we created an image of ourselves in our own head.

And from then on, we have continued to hold that mirror in front of us, reinforcing the image.

Who were we, before the mirror was invented?

If your life were to be made into a movie, would you be proud of it?

The question isn’t whether it will do well at the box office, or flop. Whether it will win awards or not. Whether it will be loved by critics or not.

Would you be proud of it?

Living life everyday abstracts us from the highlights that we create. Highlights that will form the basis for any 90 minutes representation of our entire life.

Those big decisions, those meaningful relationships, those turning points.

We get so busy living our lives that we rarely stop to see the milestones we are leaving behind.

And a movie will do just that.

Pick up the milestones and create a narrative around them.

Would you be proud of it?

If your life were to become a movie, would you be its biggest critic or biggest fan?

One

The world is global in ways we can’t imagine now. What started in a rather unknown city of China in Dec is in 112 countries by March.

We are no longer separated by land, water and air. We are connected by these very same elements.

Two

We suffer more in imagination than we do in reality.

People, for most part, has been paranoid. Of course there is reason to worry, to take precautions.

However, the extent of ill information floating around, the desperate need for conspiracy theories, the mindless accumulation of masks and sanitizers and toilet paper – shows the fragility of the human mind, yet again.

Three

The smartest, most capable individuals all across the world, would have made the most robust plans in December, for 2020.

None of these plans will materialise.

None of these plans will work.

It is not the one with the best plan that wins.

It is the one with the most responsive mindset that wins. The one who doesn’t fixate on the plan. Instead, realises the plan is the means. Not the end.