Kush Srivastava's Blog, page 20

Being Thankless!

Today, I got up early than what my usual time is ;). Had a mixed feeling, on one hand happy to see the sun rising, on the other, feeling a bit tired having not fulfilled the quota of my life that I allocate to sleep each day.

Did my usual chores, took my usual ride to the office and started working. Soon after, a dear friend shared a talk (https://www.ted.com/talks/jen_brea_what_happens_when_you_have_a_disease_doctors_can_t_diagnose#t-88366).

And it somehow shook me a bit.

How much for granted do we take all our usuals in life? After all, it’s just a matter of breath coming in and going out and if it doesn’t come back, you know you are not reading this anymore.

And what if the breath comes back with a bane of sorts, which takes away the so called life from you?

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Somehow, instead of considering the chores that we are able to perform, as blessings in disguise, we have got into a habit of taking things that come to us easy, so casually.

Somehow, we have got accustomed to getting hurt by the so called bigger things in life, be it work, money etc etc, instead of appreciating the fact that we are still alive and living the life we have chosen to live.

Somehow, the very essence of developing an understanding about what your mind and body have on offer, we have diverted all our energies to fit in with the societal definition of success and failure.

Somehow, I just wonder, with the thankless manner, in which we are chosing to live our lives, in turn raises a cause of concern, challenging the very idea,

Are we all living?

Source for the Image: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohxlb...

Taken for a Ride?

The moment we all hear the phrase, “taken for a ride”, a negative image of some incident, more often than not, comes to our mind, where we find ourselves living the same and developing negative emotions because of who so ever or what so ever caused us to be taken for a ride.

We tend to think, how stupid in time we were, how bad the world was, or for that matter, how could one not see something coming, trying to calm ourselves at the same time, that is was an anomaly in the entire scheme of things that we happen to go through each day of our lives and that we are too intellectual to have been taken for a ride.

We go on to convince ourselves of the goodness in ourselves, which enabled us to bring out qualities like trust, faith etc etc and which made us believe what was on offer. Having said the above, taken for a ride, doesn’t necessarily mean bad things.

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After all, when we were kids, our parents also took us for a ride ;), by making us eat all the nutritious food that we were supposed to consume at that point of time in our lives.

Our teachers, by hook or crook, made us learn the valuable lessons, which made us a better individual (supposedly ;)).

Our siblings, who taught us the very essence of togetherness and love, our friends who made us understand, what the dynamics of a society was.

As we grow old, we somehow tend to start having interpretations and perceptions which tend to swing towards the negative side of things.

We forget that our mind, which was supposed to see the positive side, has got conditioned into a dreaded monster of sorts, where we have developed a tendency to burn ourselves in the wrath of our perceptions and negative emotions and thoughts evolving out of the same.

What’s needed is for you to revisit your your younger self, and start enjoying the very nature that taken for a ride was supposed to bring to you.

The only thing you need to convince yourself, per say, is that after all taken for a ride was how it was supposed to be, if it were not so, you would not be, who you are meant to be :).

Source for the Image: https://www.youtube.com/user/RIDEChannel

2017 App World!

Came across an article (http://zeenews.india.com/apps/top-5-superstar-apps-of-2016-that-will-continue-to-rule-2017_1966067.html), where in the apps that are supposed to rule (don’t really understand the term and would have preferred serve well instead of rule, but kudos to who so ever thought about the same

In Need of a Poker Face?

The first time I came across something that was close to a professional relationship, sort of opening up to me, over a couple of drinks (had to be), and the first advice that came across was, “you need to be a poker face in the office!”.

Not knowing what to do with such an astonishingly unique advice, in the first instance, I thought about ignoring the same, but on second thoughts, I wondered whether what he was telling was true, considering that he was supposed to be the poster boy of the company, worth few crores at least, going by the little that I could think off at that point of time in my life.

I wondered whether all his success came from the magical formula that he had shared with me, or was it because he was trying to act wise after giving up his inhibitions, courtesy, the wonderful drinks that we were having.

I decided to observe. The more I did, the advice seemed to find validation in the offices that I happened to spend time within.

Though, a very poor emulator of sorts, I could never get into the groove and probably stayed away from treading the so called successful path.

Now that I look back at what has happened over the past decade or so, he has gone on to become one of the who’s who of business (wouldn’t want to get into the names

Smile while You Are!

Recently had the pleasure of speaking with one of the most successful of guys, my senior (S), who has gone on to make, as they say, a killing of sorts. Here is what came out of the conversation:

S: “You know, I have had the chance to experience lot of offices through out my life, and one thing was prevalent in all”

Me: “What was it?”

S: “The gloomy faces of people sitting in front of their desks, few seem to be having the worst time of their life, and few trying to show that there was lot of work and hoping that 10-12 hours that they are supposed to spend will pass by somehow.”

Me: “What do you think, was the reason behind the same?”

S: “I used to wonder the same. Somehow, I thought, it might be that most don’t like their work, and do it for their survival, some, I thought, might not like the team or their bosses they were working with.”

Me: “And?”

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S: “But you know what, slowly, I realized that people have got into a mode of remaining gloomy. Somehow, they have been conditioned to be sad and grim-faced. They have lost the charm of what life was supposed to offer to each one of them.”

Me: “So, how did you ensure, that such a thing didn’t happen in your office?”

S: “You know, the first and probably the only thing, I looked for in the guys whom I was hiring, was their attitude and perspective towards life. How they looked at their past? What they thought about their future? And the most important of all, what do they think about their present?”

Me: “That’s it?”

S: “Yup. For if they were too depressed about their past, or too hopeful about their future, having loads of expectations, without focusing on the present, then they were bound to create an environment and build a culture, laden with fear and insecurity. And you would be bemused to know that along with their offer letter, I gave them a piece of advice on the letter head of our company.”

Me: “?”

SMILE WHILE YOU ARE

Success = Suffering!

If you are wondering how absurd the blog title of equating success to or leading to suffering is, by the time you end up reading this peace, either way you might have different views altogether

Resolutions!

Time for yet another new year and time to hop on the resolution wagon?

Mary Kom Vs Vijender Singh!

Marriage or for that matter, any relationship that has to do with physical attraction cum emotional binding (if it exists that is ;)) brings along with itself a sense of possession and accomplishment, to start with.

As the years pass by and the two become used to and tend to lose that sense of wanting, it looks like a dream bout between Mary Kom and Vijender Singh, if such was ever to take place, with each party throwing around the load of expectations on one another.

Just wonder, when the society was being formed and roles of each party were being formulated, the one who said, behind every successful man there is a woman, forgot to mention, behind every successful woman there can be a man, who can pretty much play the supporting role and should take great pride in doing the same.

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If an entire movie, ki and ka, was not enough to inspire you to think about the same, I am sure you should by now, realize, that there are so many women doing some fantastic work in every field of work that you can possibly imagine.

If they have it in them, then what’s the issue in admitting, that they indeed are better at doing certain things which a man can only possibly wonder, in the wildest imagination of theirs.

I guess, that’s what being flexible and open minded means. Isn’t it?

Statements such as, “how can one survive on bahu’s income!”, which by the way is not so uncommon in Tier II and beyond cities and towns in India, need to be introspectively looked at.

If we are to evolve in the right sense of the word, this kind of mentality and perspective needs to change big time.

After all, it’s about discovering the consciousness inside oneself and not really get influenced from what the things and beings external to you teach.

As far as Mary Kom and Vijender Singh are concerned, they will continue to remain champions in their respective zones, just that when they come together at the same place at the same time, wonder how it would turn out to be

Figure out the GOOGLE in you!

One day, a philosopher was sitting beneath a tree, thinking about the usual, what is life, what is my purpose etc. etc. 

All of a sudden, he felt a cool breeze embracing his hair and face with love and warmth. Don’t know why, that experience made him believe very strongly in, life is about the little experiences that touch our being every moment. 

So many guys have tried, some have taken the path of a sanyasi , few have tread the middle path proposed by Gautam Buddha, few have committed suicide, few have become hippies but no one has been able to figure out the existence of the almighty.

The question is not whether God exists or not, but whether one should actually be wasting his/her time in figuring out the same.

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For what we are, a physical mass which tends to interact with whatever is around us, if it were not because of the experience per say, what is it to live.

In sweet and simple terms, if you are not experiencing, if you are not making yourself open to the little pleasures of life, you are not living. For life was meant to be experienced.

So, instead of trying to find who built Google, why not figure out the Google in you and get on an exploration spree.

Source for the Image: https://www.thinglink.com/scene/74468...

जी लो, मरना तो है ही !

It’s not often that you tend to meet a baba of sorts, who discusses things, which might seem logical to your little self that you are and one such conversation is what I would want to share with you:

Baba—“you should do what you love doing”

Me—“but baba, it’s not so easy. What you love doing don’t bring you the same materialistic assets, the thing you end up doing is what makes you rich and successful.”

Baba—“what you are calling success, is it really success? the thing that you are calling rich, are you really rich?”

Me—“at least the world perceives so.”

Baba—-“why else do you think people are so dissatisfied with the kind of lives they are living.”

Me—“hmm!”

Baba—“why do you think people take small things so seriously and get upset because of the same, why people have lost the knack of laughing at themselves!”

Me—“may be because they are too engrossed in what they are doing!”

Baba—“why do you think there is so much gap in what people do and what people want to do?”

Me—“the pay offs?”

Baba—“may be, but more than that, it’s the ability to take risk and chasing one’s mission which is much bigger than the wealth that comes along with the same”

Me—“but many wouldn’t know what is their mission in life”

Baba–“might be, but one thing they would know for sure is what they like dong and what they don’t, after all jee lo marna to hai hi.”

And then baba left traversing the path that he was supposed to, leaving me wondering about what he had said in the end.

After all, if A was the set of things you were doing and B the set what you want to do, then A intersection B, one should try to make as big as possible, is what I could comprehend from what the baba said.

Might be wrong or right, if such a thing actually exist, but one thing we all can and, in my opinion should do, is to give it a thought and figure out what that A intersection B could mean for each one of us.

Source for the Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venn_di...