You have been working since years now. Maybe right from the very next day you were out of college.
And yet your goal for retirement seems quite far in time? Where are my savings and why haven’t they grown multifold as promised while setting them aside?
But earnings were never supposed to make anyone wealthy in the first place. They don’t multiple and grow exponentially. A penny saved is not a penny gained. Rather a penny invested is a penny made!
Therefore choose your investment tools wisely. Start early and build big by compounding.
Afterall no one ever went broke by under-living for sure!
Change is the only constant they say. So why does the eventuality of a change scare us, drive us into a frenzy and make us loose our sleep?
Because while humans are highly adaptable, we are drawing comfort from the known, finding cosyness in the routine and grounding ourselves in the familiar. Similarity is what gives us a sense of belonging. Knowledge of what’s coming next lends us confidence of being in control. So when plunged into the unknown, how soon do you find your footing and start calling it home?
Instantaneous recovery
Awareness of the need for change is the first step. Hurray, afterall the first step is the most significant one, without which there would be none of the further ones! It’s more than a superficial scratching the surface or tick off the checklist, it’s way more deeper than that. Awareness awakens the intellect to be cognizant of the VUCA world. It throws light to striving for relevance via going through uncomfortable decisions and taking bold measures.
Desire to participate and support the change. Now that there is acute understanding of the disruption knocking at your door, build up your appetite for it. Both in your spirit and skills. Taking a stock of current state and what this change entails is where the devil lies; exactly in the details. So keep gnawing at the future state to build a rough sketch of the collaboration that would be required to make this change successful.
Knowledge on how to change. Once you are aware and locked in, now is the time to train. Get out in the arena and sharpen your axe. Haggle and learn to handle the ammunition you never had but is needed now – this maybe negotiation skills, operating with a new tool or speaking a new language. Nothing beats being informed via a secondary search so put in all your efforts at this stage.
Ability to implement desired skills and behaviour. Developing capabilty needs patience, calls for consistency and requires relentless efforts. Now that you have clarity on the skills and behaviour required, time to get onto the training zone and upskill self and other recruiters. Afterall it does take a village to bring a change so get your army ready for combating the new terrain.
Reinforcement to sustain the change is critical like the nail in the coffin. Without it all the efforts from the previous steps may be under threat. Afterall a change is only as great as is it’s acceptance. So it is our onus to repeat, reiterate and reinforce the value addition of the disruption. Overselling is far better than under selling so go shameless and keep playing your trumpet on loop until the change becomes the new normal for all stakeholders.
There you are, armed with the strategic and tactical know how of creating positive disruption. If you don’t welcome disruption, it would find a way in anyways. Hence fore- warned is fore-armed when it comes to living in an ever changing world.
Hail all the ‘I told you so’ when everything is done and dusted. Afterall who is not an expert at post-mortems here; we all are isn’t it?! What if you could jump to this step even before you made that big decision. Read on for a step by step guide to do just that.
Before locking in on what’s been decided, how about flipping the narrative. By doing so, you either end up reinforcing your hypothesis or falsifying your assumptions. It’s a win win situation, forcing you to double check before crossing the T’s and dotting the I’s. Every decision is a trade-off you make, with regards to time, money and any other resources you eventually shall invest. So why gamble; be rational and beat your the logical reasoning by being your own best critique.
Double click
PET framework. Don’t get lazy to rethink. & don’t be overzealous to go down a rabbit hole either. Analysis paralysis is what we are avoiding here. Rather time travel and re-look this decision in the future, one year down the line, five years down the line. & do so the PET way i.e., PRIORITIZE, EMPATHIZE, TRAVERSE.
Prioritize the what. Once you made a choice, be clear on the tactical actions required to make it a success. Double click on the underlying tasks and critical factors for success. Even before you doubt the critical thinking that went towards the conclusion, make sure you lay all the bare facts out in the open.
Empathize the why. It is the soft, inner reasoning of why we do what we do. What makes us vote in favour of an outcome fully knowing the odds it faces. The gut decision making factor, the real reason of why we weigh things the way we weigh them.
Traverse the when. Now fast forward to 12-18 months after you having taken this decision. Life has changed and yet is in unchanged. Play out what went right, what went wrong, how things changed due to it. Was the ‘success’ a mere outcome to prove or it brought in a unique value proposition?
This by playing the devil’s advocate, you can validate your assumptions, beliefs and reinforce your success measures. All of this right before making that huge investment, many productive dollar hours saved!
Feeling overwhelmed by all thats surrounds you? Do you think you took a bite too big than you could chew off? It is only wise to build what one can manage, only create as much as you can keep up!
In other words learn to say No. By saying Yes to all things coming your way, you end up doing more harm than good to yourself. Drowning in the self-invited pressure of keeping up with the various commitments you made. By being discernful, you respect your time, guard your space and can eventually have a more efficient headspace.
Another way to look at this is that guarding your calm requires doing things at your own terms. If you are not chasing conventional goals then why keep conventional ways. It is essential that you build systems and processes that can help manage your path to success. Orthodox ways equals othrodox results, perfect formula unless that’s not what you were hoping for.
Anything you build requires maintainance. Anything created requires sustenance. Hence use your energies wisely and be picky. Prioritise relentlessly and ask yourself is this for the long haul? Would I be able to commit to it for a lifetime? Does it add or subtract value from my being? Only then should you expand your horizons. For example a pet is cute to see, but behind all that cuteness is tons of upkeep. Buying the latest fad is easy but piling it up is quite unwise. Aspire to adopt a certain lifestyle, great and do pause to double check your priorities. The thumb rule is if your can’t maintain, don’t get. Leave alone hoard time or resources in that direction.
The one with all the riches? The one with great health? Or the one with freedom to spend time at their leisure? What was once considered success maybe labelled toxic today. And that which someone aspires maybe what someone else despises!
Historically success had a very clear, narrow and rigid definition. As you started making a living, expectations were that your earnings double, assets grow commensurately and then an ostentatious display of this wealth would announc to the world that you had arrived!
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As most of the world reeled under the aftermath of the world wars, famines and other such crisis of humanity; this seemed a clear path to success. You were to make your survival sustainable and lineage last. In a nutshell survival of the fittest, adapted by humans to meet their social expectations. Fair and square.
Conventional success called for conventional labels. And times have changed. We are no longer plagued by existential crisis. It is (some may say) an easier world to survive in today. Not many an educated graduates have to squander for the basics of Maslow’s hierarchy. But at the same time, basics remain the same for all. Those with a cushion, aspire a higher launch pad and can be choosy about what they want to succeed in. Those with a not so privileged start aim to be atleast ‘there’.
To those who can, should chase their aspirations. Should choose their passion over convenience. Not saying it would be any easy, rigour is expected when you want to make it long lasting and sustainable. Choose flexibility over rigidness and balance over obsession. To those who can dare, get uncomfortable making tough choices!
Dreaming, wishing, thinking? Good And bad. Good because that’s how humans grow. Bad because beyond this what is required is action. To turn things into reality, to bring life to what’s been in the air until now.
Have you often caught yourself day-dreaming? Wishing for more riches in life? Hoping for things to fall into your lap? Desiring that your mind’s wishlist come true one day? Well it’s amazing that your keep a wishlist, that you desire more in life and that you hope for betterment.
SoWhat next?
But what after that? Hasn’t it been long waiting for the magic to happen. Time to wake up! & smell the reality. To take charge of what you can do. To chalk out a rough draft. To build a plan of conquering that wishlist. To put things into action. To bring to life the dreams you dreamt of.
And how do I move?
Easier said than done. Roll up your sleeves and do some digging. Research the critical factors required for success. Size up whether you have the right ingredients. Take baby steps with all this information. It would be scary to execute; so far all you made was a strategic path, now what you need is the courage to bring it to life.
Build A Accountability Stack
Take your closed group into confidence. Share your dreams and vulnerabilities with a chosen few. Make yourself accountable. Document your process, plan and progress. Big or small, consistency is the name of the game. Most importantly, don’t be afraid to start small.
If you are reading thus far, clearly you are committed to turning your dreams into a reality. So treat yourself special and prioritize taking action. Victory always calls for courage.
Sip, click, eat, click, post! Taking off, click, Touched down, click, Exploring new places, multiple clicks, post! Made coffee click, picked a book to read, click, post! From mundane to exotic, every moment gets framed, touched up & broadcasted.
Talk of peer pressure, this is the zenith of it. Every age group; whether the baby-boomer granny or the collegian Gen-Z, is constantly feelling cornered to glorify their lives. To show-off to their peers how ‘happening’ their life is. It’s like a never ending hurdle race, one with no guardrails too. Someone goes all elaborate to synthesize a reel with the perfect soundtrack, somebody hastily posts a story while another sits for hours creating a perfect post with meaningful captions. And then there are those who just dump it all on their chat, making sure everyone they interact with can see their ‘status’.
I got it too!
All this for what? For fulfilling the deep seated need of getting acknowledged. Seeking external validation. Displaying how ‘rich’ you are. Parading precious moments of your life to make it else’s fodder. Showcasing your inner vulnerabilities or just responding to fear of FOMO. Not that every social share is intentional but these are the reasons underneath the surface.
But isn’t reality far from the glamourous life portrayed? That hike with the perfect sling bag is more of a ramp walk in nature. Those captures shot by a drone camera are more of a ostentatious display of lifestyle than soaking the place. In essence, what you see is what they show you. And like always there are industry secrets. Beneath the rosy updates is the struggle to get one good shot, edit carefully, catch the right lighting, find the perfect soundtrack, post at an appropriate time to get most eyeballs and so on.
Let’s embrace living IRL. Try being outside the frame for once. Free from the burden of perfection, moving at your own pace. Clicking with your eyes, capturing with your ears and letting your nerve endings feel the rush. Afterall it’s hard to explain all of this to someone who thinks sitting by the pool was the greatest time ever! But then to each her own, as long as it recharges your body, mind & soul.
It is said that thoughts become us. But then thoughts we generate are also completely in our hands. While the output of all our other organs is involuntary, our thoughts are quite in our voluntary control. Not easy, but then what is?!
The journey to training our monkey mind is tough. It requires patience and a great amount of training. Just like Rome wasnt built in a day. But then the first step is always the hardest, and a beginning made with complete intention and awareness is always purposeful.
To train a monkey mind to become a monk mind isn’t easy. You have to train yourself to see the world differently. You got to stop fighting the multiple versions arising within, so that peace can come to you. In tactical world, it means practising mindfulness, ekagrata towards one task. So that when you do, you do just that one task and avoid meandering your mind in lost alleys.
Near yet far
Once you are aware, remember you got to stop carrying the world on your shoulders. Releasing things from your locus will grant you more calm. By concentrating on your breathing alone, you can be more still and mindful. If every living breathe could be felt, lived and experienced, our mind would rarely wander stray!
Influencers are everywhere. Every social media platform has a unique terminology for them. Yet the packaging is the same, in short, users who have amassed a huge number of ‘followers’ thereby putting themselves on a higher pedestal of worship. Some of them have even gone on to form a cult of sorts. Some achieve fandom similar to mini-celebrities. But how many of the ones inspired or following these influencers actually get moving? Or does the influence end with the browsing?
Real influencing is when one brings some reflections from online to offline. IRL is the keyword here. It’s about actually doing things rather than just wishlisting them. Things which are beyond your comfort zone. Those that have been on the backburner since forever. They are part of the buried wishes and plans since aeons now.
And let’s not count aping the latest fashion trend or makeup hack as getting inspired. It has to be a longer commitment making a significant lifestyle change to your old ways. Something which is both sustainable and enhances your persona.
One way to approach action out of this bucket list of inflluencers is to rise above the scrolling and start making a list of your areas of improvement. Now prioritize this list and pick the top 2-3 at maximum. We all know anything which is a priority #4 or beyond hardly ever gets done, so let’s keep it real.
Now fix a source of inspiration for yourself. From those multitude that you currently ‘follow’, shortlist a handful and start by drawing actionable inspiration from one at a time. This way you get a coach for what you intend to pick up. Finding a guru should be based on facts and figures, not asthetics alone! So use your cerebral cortex to customize the journey you intend to embark on. There maybe a plethora of templates, playbooks and guides off the internet and many a summaries that AI tools can generate for you, but what matters is your grey matter personalizing it to suit your lifestyle and end goals.
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