Category: Everything else

Building – brick by brick

I’ve read many a book, seen many a video where the founder of a successful business or concept talks about his thrill at his first loyal customer/reader and how he/she toiled away in the early days to build some traction. What is always heartening to me is that most of these great achievements came one small step at a time, were built one brick at a time.

I can relate – for I experience a great amount of satisfaction when I notice a new ‘Like’ on the facebook page or a new follower on the blog. I immediately, pretty excitedly, check out who the new person is. And I’ve looked at bigger blogs and often wonder what it must be like to have a few thousand people read a post as soon as they put it up, to have more comments than they can handle. And I remind myself that there would have been a time when they, too, were read only by close family and friends.
I also remind myself that almost nothing in life comes thanks to a windfall. Millionaires don’t become so because they won a lottery. In fact, the ones who win a lottery almost never are millionaires.. the ones who build are the ones who are there to stay.
The tough thing to do is to keep building though because like in any journey, you are bound to have ‘wall-breakers’ or incidents that ruin that wall you built brick by brick. And as tough as it may be to continue then, what doesn’t kill us makes only makes us stronger after all.
And those who have tasted the joy of building will realize that it may not quite matter that the wall you built is not as big as you imagined it to be or not as game changing as you thought it would be. But, just the fact you spent years creating something that could be destroyed overnight (and it probably even was), made you learn, grow and made you somebody who you would never have been – had you never spent that time building.
And in the process, if you did manage to build something magnificent, that’s fantastic. Congratulations to you! The world will laud you for your ‘genius’. This message though, is for all those unrecognized builders – the ones who are still waiting for that break through, toiling hard to make a difference, make a dent.. make no mistake, the time will come. And when it does, all that you are doing now will only make sure you are ready for it.
Let the building continue, and in some cases, begin!
‘It takes 10 years to become an overnight sensation’ – Robin Sharma

As far as this blog goes, it’s 2 and a half years down. 7 and a half to go.. :)

A Walk to Remember

Ever since I’ve been on project here in Oman, I’ve literally zoomed through my ‘To Watch’ movie list. I barely made any progress on that list in university (contrary to expectations one would imagine) but it is a fact that I barely get to catch a movie in Singapore. Work takes care of the work-week, and friends take care of the weekends. There is the occasional movie we catch altogether but it basically resulted in me building a ‘to watch’ list.

In my case, 2 things have happened being away from family/friends –
1. I’ve watched more movies than I would ever have imagined. This is largely because my introverted nature tends to have me enjoy solitude over the weekend and this results in one movie after another being watched, and shelved.
2. I’ve watched more ‘chick flicks’ than I would have thought possible. I’ve always been the kind of person who loves the inspirational/thought provoking genre (Think Shawshank Redemption, Remember the Titans, Million dollar baby – most recently, The Social Network etc) that I’ve never been a big fan of chick flicks. But, of late, I’m beginning to move over to the dark side.. and gladly so because they often tend to remind me of the more overlooked simpler joys of life.
One such chick flick that stood out was ‘A Walk to Remember’. If you haven’t watched, I would recommend. The movie could have been made better but it’s story line and message were memorable..

The hero, in particular, is someone I’m sure we all will be able to relate to. A boy, who practically spends all his time being a person he isn’t, thanks to peer pressure. And the story revolves around his tryst with the heroine who ends up changing his life. And, what makes the movie special is that the storyline dares to resemble life.. (Saying any more would ruin it for you)
If you do get a chance to watch it, I think it would be worthwhile.

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I’ve been corrected by one of the commenters that ‘A Walk to Remember’ is not a chic flick –
A Walk To Remember is a 2002 American romance film based on the 1999 romance novel of the same name by Nicholas Sparks. (see wikipedia)
I guess my definition of chick flick differs from wikipedia. :)

The Sound of Silence

One of the biggest reasons attributed to sales people who continuously fail to convert sales is their discomfort during silence. Sales stars are known to use silence to their advantage by letting the customer talk and express all misgivings while the amateurs always try to fill up the air-space and end up losing the customer in the process.

How comfortable are you with silence?
For an introverted person who needs time with himself, I realized that I am actually not all that used to silence. While I’m used to spending long periods by myself working on ‘my stuff’, I typically have music playing all the time. So much so that I think I equate background music to the silent or ‘base state’.
I caught myself today as I found myself scrambling for my speakers to switch on music after 5 minutes in my room. So, I stopped for a few minutes and just sat in the silence, left to my thoughts.
I wasn’t comfortable with it as I was itching for the music to be back on. Eventually, I yielded to that temptation.
So, it is a question right back at myself – how comfortable am I with silence?
It amazes me that it has taken me so long to notice this about myself. So much to learn about ourselves, after all.

The Gift Habit

One of the big realizations over the past 3 months on project in Oman is that I don’t give enough gifts.
I’ve been struck by the hospitality of the Omani’s I’ve been working with. Every time a colleague has left the team after finishing his/her stint on the project, they’ve showered them with gifts and I realized this myself when I was given a gift by a friend here for Christmas.
And when I gave it some thought, I realized that gifting wasn’t even on my agenda/mind. I also know that it is a result of 4 years of penny pinching in university where friends’ birthdays meant extracting treats rather than giving them gifts.
Time for change.

Tweaking the ‘why’ question

I have been a big proponent of the ‘why‘ question. I can be annoyingly curious and I’ve always taken pride in my attempts to understand why things are the way they are. And I’m always amazed at how the simple word ‘why‘ can redefine our thought process. I’ve experienced it many a time in a deep discussion where we find ourselves lost in details – just asking the ‘why‘ often clears our minds and results in progress.

It was at a dinner conversation the other day when an experienced (and inspirational) friend drew my attention to the ‘other side’.
He took me back to his first big consulting gig 20 years ago when he was a young man about to interview an important CEO. He was all prepared with tons of good questions and when the meeting began, he asked one question after another. And by the end of it, he was feeling very good as he was sure he had demonstrated his competence. At the end of the interview, his final question was to ask the CEO how he felt the interview had gone.
The CEO looked at him, smiled and said – ‘The questions were all really good. But, the experience was very intimidating’
This friend was completely taken aback. This was a 50 year old legend telling him he was intimidated!
‘All those questions – they made me feel like I should have known all the answers. And, not knowing them was pretty embarrassing and intimidating.’
At this point in his story, he said something that rung a bell – he said that often there is a component of our ‘ego‘ present when we are deep into asking questions. Our eagerness to find the answer, to ‘figure it out’ often gets the better of us and we tend to forget the real purpose – to understand where the other person is coming from, what the other person is feeling and why the other person is feeling so.
This question led to quite some reflection on my part. I know of times in the past when I’ve gotten carried away with my problem solving ‘genius’ (in my opinion, of course!) while solving a friend’s problem without much consideration of what the friend was probably feeling. The excitement takes over, and before you know it, you are all over the person’s private space.. And it is this tendency that has lead to me appearing intimidating to many a friend when the intention was far from it.
There are some discussions in life that lead to breakthroughs in our own thinking. This was a big one for me. There’s a lot I’m going to be doing differently from here on in, thanks to this.
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To demonstrate how it could be intimidating –
Imagine you asked me – ‘Why did you choose that dress?’
I would most likely start with a passionate defence of the dress and my decision before moving onto anything logical or really answering your question. The response is purely emotional.
An alternate way to ask is –
‘What made you choose.. this shirt?’
This question accompanied by a politely curious look, a smile and lots of humility could help meet the original point of asking the ‘why‘ question – to actually understand the rationale behind a decision or an action.
In short, when asking the ‘why‘, it helps understanding why we ask the ‘why‘ question in the first place.