Life - Suresh Dinakaran's Blog

Did you no?

“Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough.”

Yes, there is nothing half hearted about a no. It’s a complete answer by itself. That said, you are not closing the door on momentum or progress. When we offer a generous “no” to someone we care about, we honor our work and their role in it. We care enough to offer them insight about the change we seek to make–and to tell them the truth about what we can’t do at the same time that we’re celebrating what we can do.

We live in a world where saying ‘yes’ is rewarded by reinforcing social habits, whether in professional situations, sharing responsibilities at home, or even navigating intimate relationships.

When you say ‘Yes’ to others, make sure you are not saying ‘No’ to yourself- Paulo Coelho

Look at the Yes sorry X factor in saying no. The no of being mediocre, the no of getting away from doing something that degrades someone else’s self respect or dignity and possibility, the no of wanting to be mediocre and being in a race to the bottom..

Short changing yourself is easy..saying maybe when you should have said no, or saying yes when you should have said no.

Zig Ziglar had a great quote: “I need to be a meaningful specific, not a wandering generality.” It is about putting our neck on the line and standing up for what matters, rather than toeing the line and ending up saying yes just to please the person sitting in front of you.

The most brilliant movies are just that not because of what you see but more for what you don’t. In a culture besieged by adding more, subtracting can be highly relevant and disintermediating and that begins with ‘ no ‘.

Saying yes to the life we all want will begin with knowing our no.

ENDS

Hope. Chimera. Action !

We know that ideas are aplenty but ideas without action are regrets.

Actually I quite like some of the vocabulary that permeates social media communication. Often times you come across someone responding to your WhatsApp or DM with just one word ‘ Done ‘. This four letter word would surely be going along with the grain of crossing the bridge before coming to it. That said, notably, it is also a promise made in advance for action to follow.

So practice or principle? Practice, any time. Promise or performance ? It’s a no-brainer, ain’t it? Performance. Knowing, willing or doing? Doing wins hands down.

Author and screenwriter Ray Bradbury had this to say on the power of cumulative action:

“Action is hope. At the end of each day, when you’ve done your work, you lie there and think, Well, I’ll be damned, I did this today. It doesn’t matter how good it is, or how bad—you did it. At the end of the week you’ll have a certain amount of accumulation. At the end of a year, you look back and say, I’ll be damned, it’s been a good year.”

Attitude precedes outcome. You need to show up before inspiration knocks at your door.

There is no better domicile to be in than at the intersection of thinking, feeling and doing. That is where the biggest contributions stem from. The people that really create the things that change this world in their own little or big ways are both the thinker and doer in one person. As they say, it takes two to tango.

When we think about trying out a new restaurant or an outfit that you normally wouldn’t have or wave a flag against a policy that you are not in alignment with, it is easy to fall into the trap of expecting everyone to notice your action. But, alas, at most times, no one does. That’s because no one cares about the noise in our head (or the actions we take) nearly as much as we do. You might think it’s going to cause a big commotion when you do something that’s inconsistent, but if it’s generous and useful, it’ll simply happen. So stay the course.

We are enveloped by a system that resists the hustle, the action for the short-term. Because status quo is a comforting territory to be in. But patient, persistent and focused action can pay off.

The world is tumultuous. Urgency defeats emergency. The world needs your leadership. The journey of a thousand miles remember, begins with a single step.

Action precedes change. And as the as the seminal philosopher Marcus Aurelius quoted “ Universe is change. Life is just an opinion “.

ENDS

Taking A Chance Called Luck!

As luck would have it..

This popular refrain has stood the test of time..both good and bad..

For all those of us staking a claim on luck..

Good luck seems something that has been unearned..a freebie..

And bad luck seems like an excuse..

It’s like being between a rock and a hard place..

The false promise of meritocracy decries luck in all its forms..

It goes for the countless things that happens to us in our lives..

That I was lucky to get that job or the contract..

That I was unlucky not to get that big meeting some years ago..

Giving credit(or blame) to luck makes it easier to get back to the hard work of making things better..

We do remain guarded about our luck..especially if there has been a windfall that has come your way or you have had a prized catch..the feeling that good luck is scarce, only adds to that sense of secrecy. Though you might want to attribute your new state of success to your skill or talent, on deeper introspection, you would be the first one to acknowledge that is not true.

So, WTL(What The Luck)?

While we are on this mindset you could take a look at this article on The Power Relentless Optimism in BrandKnew.

ENDS

Why Is Enough NOT Enough?

Not until something challenges you to rise up, you shall always stay down; not until you realize your enough is enough, you shall always have enough.

The scars in our culture will never let you get away from the imagined slip between the cup and the lip in this case. Present day bookkeeping(at least the one that most of us seem to practice) seems to have only debit, deficiency and gaps.

This is our modern curse: A century of conspicuous consumption has trained us to be dutiful citizens of the Republic of Not Enough, swearing allegiance to the marketable myth of scarcity, hoarding toilet paper for the apocalypse. Along the way, we have unlearned how to live wide-eyed with wonder at what Hermann Hesse called “the little joys” — those unpurchasable, unstorable emblems of aliveness that abound the moment we look up from our ledger of lack.

What are you chasing? Or what is chasing you? Counting on life or making life count?

The democracy of inadequacy is NOT of the people, by the people, for the people. We all need a different domicile.

It’s time to script your own countercultural invitation to rediscover life’s true priorities amid our confused maelstrom of materialism and compulsive productivity.

“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily Dickinson lamented in a love letter. In his splendid short poem about the secret of happiness, Kurt Vonnegut exposed the taproot of our modern suffering as the gnawing sense that what we have is not enough, that what we are is not enough.

You, you-er, you-est is the perennial journey you will embark on and the ticket for that ride will be your investment.

This civilisational trance and the unabashed quest for more needs a wake up call and the time is now. Enough said.

If a contrarian take on productivity is of interest to you, allow me to take you there https://www.sureshdinakaran.com/blog/2020/06/08/rip-productivity-productivity-is-not-working/

ENDS

Words Worth!

Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity.

“Words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within.”

“Words—so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become, in the hands of one who knows how to combine them “!

We take the stage. The spotlight is on us. There is a great opportunity calling. Our words- it can connect, engage, open up possibilities, create progress. With the audience. Or, our words- could severe, distance, delink us from moving things forward.

Just an an arrow that has left the security of the quiver cannot be retrieved, as is so with our words. So measure our words, use them for respect, by respect and with respect. Love is life in search of words, and words are wings that lift us, break us, join us, melt us, like rain.

The person in front of you keeps the door open for you as you enter behind her. You say ‘ Thank you ‘ and she responds by saying ‘ No Problem ‘. Nothing wrong with that. Except, that it may convey that the good deed she did of keeping the door open for you was a huge hassle but she did it nevertheless. A better expression of words could have been ‘ My Pleasure ‘. After all, she had a choice, and she chose to do this work precisely so that it could have an impact on someone else, in this case you. The story we tell ourselves about the work can be fuel for finding ways to do it better.

If culture and community are the bedrocks of our existence, then hospitality and connection give them the wings. Words are like loose canon. You can choose your words. But you cannot choose the effect they can have on people.

To quote from some wisdom of the past- ” Don’t use words too big for the subject. · Words are sacred. · Words kill, words give life; they’re either poison or fruit— YOU choose “.

May I direct you to this article from BrandKnew that just may dovetail into what I touched upon above.

ENDS

Go Luck Yourself!

In short, Luck’s always to blame..

It’s good to be cognisant of this saying about luck..

” You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from. You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocket ship underpants don’t help. Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck “.

Nothing is a mistake. There is no win or no fail. Everything is MAKE. Betting on lucky isn’t nearly as productive as simply establishing a platform where you can benefit from the occasional arrival of good fortune.

Life is full of luck, like getting dealt a good hand, or simply by being in the right place at the right time. Some people get luck handed to them, a second chance, a save.

Luck might not be a strategy, but setting yourself up to be lucky might be. The luck as tactic can be a workable tool if you are bringing in your deep work, resilience, showing up and shipping out and be on a perennial path of exploration and discovery. If you maintain that consistency, chances are high that you would get lucky more often than not. But that is very different from the default mindset that there is a correlation between past behaviour and lucky outcomes.

If you show up with good work and generous action, again and again, sooner or later something that appears to others to be luck will appear. So, go for it!

I urge you to read this article on Relentless Optimism in BrandKnew

ENDS

Being An Employee Of Our Own Myth!

We are all frauds.

Creating is hard for every last one of us( including those from the allegedly superior Aryan race). Yes!

Coal mining is harder. Do you think the miners stand around all day thinking about how hard it is to mine for coal? Certainly not! They simply dig.

Throughout life, you collect data points or dots. And you probably don’t have a clue as to how these dots will connect in the future. As Steve Jobs said, you can connect these dot only by looking backward. But you have to collect them moving forward.

Without the mistakes we make, the decisions we regret, and the experiences that didn’t live up to our expectations, we would be woefully short of material and ammunition for our creative work. These things are all ingredients for your soup, material for making meaning and creating art.

The creative life, just like the creative process isn’t linear. We don’t know how each of our life experiences will impact us down the road. With each step forward, the landscape differs, the view changes, and the most insignificant experiences of our lives at the moment can serve as the most informative ones in our future.

Our creativity is not something that someone can give to us or take away. It’s always something within us. Happily domiciled. Whether it’s the degree we earn or the job we hate, every experience provides us with seeds to plant for the stories we tell.

Life doesn’t pause to make room for our precious creating time.

” There is an unknown room in the soul that is constantly turning the stuff of daydreams into myths for us, helping us to get at meaning we can’t get to through the front door “- Phil Cousineau

ENDS

The HURRY Cane in our lives!

Caveat Emptor

I am not making a compelling emotional and spiritual case against hurry and in favor of a slower, simpler way of life- but writing as someone all too familiar with ‘ hurry sickness ‘, I desperately needed this salve. Some of you may as well. Hence taking the liberty.

” Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished “- Unknownymous

” Don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens – The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away “— John Steinbeck

Everything which you can conceive and accept is yours! Entertain no doubt.

Most of us seem to miss the wood for the trees in our pursuit of pleasure because of the breathless haste in which we go about, we hurry past it. Irony! As Lily Tomlin beautifully articulated ” The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat”.

Burnout is not a badge of honor.

When Marcus Aurelius( Stoic philosopher and Great Roman Emperor from 161 AD to 180 AD) spoke of his own impending and inevitable death, it wasn’t to remind himself to squeeze in as much crap as possible–it wasn’t about picking up the pace. It was to remind himself of what was important, of the standard to which he needed to hold himself. He said, “Do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life.” That is: Do it right. Not do it as quickly as possible so you can say it’s complete.

Yes, it’s true, we will die. It could be tomorrow, or it could be fifty years from now. Which is why this very moment is so important. And why we can’t let anyone rush us through it.

You’re in a hurry. To get to the office. To get through this meeting. To get to the restaurant. To get the kids in bed. To get to go on your vacation. We rush because we have somewhere to go, something we want to do more, stuff we want to get over with.

But it’s worth asking, as the Stoics did, what were we really rushing through? And what we are doing it at the expense of the present moment. We tell ourselves that the future—the thing we are after—will be better. But the truth is, it’s not guaranteed. The only thing for sure is now. What is lived we never get back. We are dying every minute, every second. When we hurry we are speeding that along.

That’s the purpose of memento mori—”remember that you will die.” It’s purpose is to make you slow down. To not rush through this moment but to exist in it. To be present for it. Even if it is mundane. Even if there is something else you’d rather be doing, even if what may come next is likely better.

The practice of memento mori has the profound potential to wake us up and breathe more life into our lives. The whole culture is telling us to hurry while the art tells us take your time. Listen to the art. And the heart.

Patience doesn’t mean making a pact with the devil of denial, ignoring our emotions and aspirations. It means being wholeheartedly engaged in the process that’s unfolding, rather than ripping open a budding flower or demanding a caterpillar hurry up and get that chrysalis stage over with— Sharon Salzberg

Time for us to slow down. Or the other option is to Hurry up and wait 😄 !

Sorry got to go. The next ‘ shiny object ‘ beckons. And I am all taken in by the ‘ thrill of the chase ‘ and the potential ‘ after glow ‘.

It’s worrying..or hurrying???

ENDS

One Picasso A Day?

If one were to ask what is the most loyal thing in the world, it would be the ‘ bodyclock‘. Time after time, day after day, it never lets you down in waking us up. I guess, that too, is a creature of habit.

Being an old schooler, waking up and writing down the ‘ to do task list ‘ of the day is de rigueur. And on the rare occasion, the list falls shy of occupying a full A4 page, disappointment gets writ large. After all, ‘ Men are from Mars ‘. And Machiavellian abilities for Herculean tasks are expected to go hand in hand. How remiss!!

We have been hardwired to think that working is productivity. But, is productivity working? After all, the map is not the territory. Nor is noise, the signal.

“ Distraction is the only constant “. How things have changed! In an on-demand, 24/7 society, where distractions cost millions of people relationships, health , peace, productivity and profitability, it’s time to pay attention to what matters most.

We are living through a crisis of distraction. Plans get sidetracked, family and friends are ignored, work never seems to get done. And that in the wake of first love and passion being firmly put long ago on the back burner, be it music or sport, travel or discovery, reading or writing..not worth it.

To create extraordinary lives, we can (re)learn to “unplug” from the constant barrage of disruptions and “plug in” to the tools, strategies, and mindsets that will allow us to harness our attention to reach our highest potential.

You sit down at your desk to work on an important project, but a notification on your phone interrupts your morning. At home, screens get in the way of quality time with your family. Another day goes by, and once again, your most important personal and professional goals are put on hold. Story of our distraction fueled, notification driven lives.

If we can prepare ourselves to be as indistractable as possible, zero in on distilling the vital few from the trivial many, and be prepared to look in the ugly mirror, we can stop running on the treadmill of mediocrity. Not just that. With high focus, extreme prioritization and unflappable emotional labour, we can all get to producing our ‘ one Picasso for the day .’ What do you uniquely do that matters the most? After all, you can only do one thing really well at a time. SIP by SIP. Engage in some Mutual Fun!

Most big, deeply satisfying accomplishments in life take at least a few years to achieve. This can include cultivating a loving relationship, writing a book, getting in the best shape of your life, raising a family, building a business, and more. A few years is a long time. It is much slower than most of us would like. If you accept the reality of slow progress, you have every reason to take action today. If you resist the reality of slow progress, five years from now you’ll simply be five years older and still looking for a shortcut.

Where’s your paint brush? The canvas and the easel awaits. And your version of the Guernica.

So, time to offer a serenade to life, in all its terrifying and transcendent uncertainty, sung in ink, watercolor, and wonder.

WANTED: Editor-in-Chief: For LIFE!

I was never even mediocre at either math or arithmetic. Hence, if this fails to add up, I am completely at home with it.

” So the writer who breeds more words than she needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads ” – so said Dr. Seuss.

Every year at the Oscars, the award for Best Picture gets all the fanfare( this year, of course Will Smith had other ideas). That may be stating the obvious. What might be not so obvious is in contrast, the award for film editing flies under the radar. But you may be surprised by the correlation between these two awards.

Since 1981, only three films have won “Best Picture” without also being nominated for “Best Film Editing”.

Why is editing so crucial in filmmaking?

A good film editor removes distractions by eliminating trivial or irrelevant things. She uses deliberate subtraction to add life to the ideas, setting, plot, and characters.

The best films are exceptional not because of what we see but because of what we don’t see.

We can draw parallels here. And use the same principles to edit our own lives. We might be from Mars or Venus but on Mother Earth our never ending to-do list need not be a perennial match for our Herculean, Machiavellian competence and calibre that we seem to have been willy nilly blessed(cursed?) with. Probably there is a space to begin by ‘ separating the vital few from the trivial many ‘. The over ignored practice of essentialism.

Mind you, this is no easy task. To distill and rein in our incorrigibly elastic task list. How will we answer our ego? Or camouflage our insecurities? We find comfort in “keeping our options open”. But having too many options leaves us without direction. Having a few focused options gives our life a clear direction and makes decision-making easier.

Eventually, every cut we make brings joy. Maybe not in the moment, but soon we will realize the time we have gained can now be spent on something better.

We, as people, systematically overlook subtractive changes, instead following our instincts to add. There is nothing inherently wrong with adding. But if it becomes a default path to improvement, that may be failing to consider a whole class of other opportunities.

The paltry rate of subtraction in our life or organizational-improvement journey is appalling. To improve a redundant piece of writing, few produce an edit with fewer words. To improve a jam-packed travel itinerary, we hardly remove events or places to allow us to savor the ones that remained. To improve a Lego structure, we hardly take pieces away. Whether we are changing ideas, situations, or objects, the dominant tendency is to do so by adding.

In an increasingly attention starved, attention craving economy, subtraction has a noticeability problem. When we add things, apparently it gets noticed. But when we subtract..we seem to miss the point.

Life has a way of taking over. We start running on auto-pilot especially when we are overwhelmed, in over our heads, or simply worn out from all that life is throwing our way. And this year, life is throwing more than ever our way.

After a while of trying to keep all the balls in the air, we stop paying attention and simply start reacting. Amidst all the chaos, we know something has to change, but we don’t know what or how.

When was the last time ‘ nurturing our heart and soul ‘ was part of our to-do list? It hardly makes the list of things to take care of during the day. If we prioritize the nurturing of our heart and soul, by taking time to listen to what they want, by engaging in soul-soothing activities and by using them to guide our actions, we can get our life back. We’ll remember who we are(otherwise in the stage called life, we are all practicing ‘ selective amnesia ‘) and begin to attract people and projects that are a perfect fit for the real us.

So what is the take away? Yes, you guessed it, take away, to make way!

BEGINS