I will not allow the memories of my yesterday to ruin my today…

Was a part of a major conference recently. The event was a runaway hit, but as it goes with any event involving a large number of people, we had a lot of challenges, differences, failures, internal issues etc. End of all, it was a great event and I have a lot of beautiful memories of it.

Yesterday when I was talking to the friend about watching the video recording of all the events, he said – “I don’t want to watch the videos”

“Why?”

“Because I have so many bad memories of it that everytime I watch the video, I will remember those bad things”

“But there are so many good things, speeches, learnings from the video”

“Still, I can’t enjoy it…”

What has happened here is that my friend is now going to lose out on the good memories because he is holding on to the bad ones. Everytime the discussion about the videos comes up, he can remember the bad things.

Why is it that we all like to hold on to the bad experiences rather than the good ones.

I fell in the trap once when I went to watch the movie with my girl friend. Just before we entered the movie theatre, we decided to pick up some pop corn and soda. It was taking long for the snacks and she did not want to miss the beginning of the movie,  so she rushed into the theatre and asked me to get the snacks. I remember feeling very upset about the whole thing --- “She thinks that movie beginning is more important than me” “She doesn’t care if I have to stand alone over here” “I wanted to spend time with her” and so on… at one point I felt like leaving the snacks then and there and let her watch the movie alone… Of course, finally we watched the movie together and enjoyed it.

She didn’t hurt me purposely and probably I was acting childishly and overreacting. Of course, we patched up later.

We would have seen a number of movies together but this one experience is what I remember more clearly than any other experience (Of course, without the hurt)

I’m sure I would have done similar mistakes where I have unknowingly hurt her.

Lets do this exercise, take each one of your relationships, try to recall  atleast 3 overwhelmingly positive experiences in this relationship. Now try to recall  any 3 negative experiences. I can bet my moustaches that its easier for you to recall the negative experiences.

That is a trap.

More important issue is that we hold on to these negative experiences and allow that hurt to spoil our present. Even if there is a slight disagreement, we pull out all the past experiences to show where all the other person has been wrong.

This is not just about relationships…

Just because I failed once in the exams doesn’t mean I should write off myself. I have seen so many students going through this. They wrote an exam and failed. Now while preparing again, they go through self condemnation, considering themselves failures and writing themselves off. Hey, if you could pass all exams always, then they won’t be exams.

In business, if 3 sales calls go bad back to back, you start considering yourself as a bad salesman.

We all hold on to the hurt of our yesterday and destroy or today in the process.

“Does that mean we should totally forget the past?”

“No”

We should remember the past, because the mistakes from the past will make us wiser. What we should drop is the hurt.

By holding on to the experience and the learning from a past event, I become wiser.
By dropping the hurt, the memories of my yesterday can no longer ruin my today.

Be Careful what you Wish for

Was watching this english movie called Bedazzled. In the movie, the hero is a total loser, good for nothing guy, nobody cares for him, nobody loves or respects him. He was fed up with his life and always busy complaining about everything.
One day, the devil came in the form of a beautiful girl and promised him 7 Wishes. The hero's very first wish was - "I want to be rich and powerful and married to this girl".
Poofff!!!! and he is what he wanted. But there is a small glitch... The devil had just turned him into a spanish drug mafia - he is rich, powerful, married to this girl... but also wanted by police and everyone wants to kill him.
The story goes on and everytime he makes a wish, the devil finds a way to spoil it. He uses up almost all his wishes this way.

My Granddad was a very emotional person, he had snapped a few links in his lifetime and decided never to keep in touch with some people, he went to the extent to saying "Don't come to my funeral" to a few of them and you should know, none of them were able to come for it. Some got stuck with Visa / Passport problems, some didn't get the tickets and ended up coming 2 days late when all was over.

One day when I was in 6th or so, I scored very good in Maths and my dad proudly said that day "I will make Gulshan a Chartered Accountant, there is a lot of scope for outsourced accounting. CA can never be unemployed. Even if he is out of job he can just do accounts of small businesses, charge Rs. 5000 a month, have xxx clients, he will earn 5000 * xxx per month."
In 2009, life came a full circle when I quit my first job for a change, I was already a CA, having exactly the number of clients which my Dad had said and earning exactly the amount he has said.

Even when I was in selling, I was focusing on small clients as a market strategy. Idea was that when the small clients grow big, they will stick around and I will have big clients. I always used to say this statement during my sales calls "We prefer to focus on small and medium clients as a strategy and big clients are not on our priority list". Over a period of time, I realised that all the clients on our portfolio were small clients, after some time, these clients started growing and as they grew, they started leaving us and moved on to different service providers. Reasons for these clients leaving were different, but the result was that I was always having only small and medium clients.

Those of us who have watched mythological TV soaps will recall this as a very common routine. A person does something wrong, the sage gets angry and gives a curse to that person, person apologises, sage says that the curse cannot be taken back but this is the remedy for the curse.

Looks like there is a detailed science behind the whole thing. To understand it will take more time and to share it will probably take another blog post.
The understanding I have so far is that we say what we wish, the moment we say something, the system is set into motion to make it happen. If we say good, it comes back to us; if we say bad, it still somehow comes back to us.
So... I will be careful what I wish for because for all I know, it could come true.

My clients decide my clients...

Was a part of an event recently where we were the organisers. We were using some of the infrastructure and workspace for hire from a service provider. This workspace and infrastructure were on a sharing basis. That is, we were using only 30% of the vendor's resources and the remaining were hired out to other clients. The service levels, work quality, equipment etc were excellent quality and more than served our purpose.
But, if you ask me "Gulshan... will you use this service provider again?"
My answer will be "NO"
Why?
Reason - Their other clients...
While I was there, I had a chance to interact with the other clients of this service provider, and honestly, they were very very ordinary quality users. The reason they were there is because this service provider works at very low pricing and has them as his target customers. I had not seen these other clients when hiring this vendor. The quality and the standards at which we prefer to work, we don't even want to be around such people.

When I was in selling in my earlier job, a number of times, my prospective clients used to ask for the list of our existing clients. I had a very limited list of clients back then, based on that very list, I was able to get some new clients and I lost some prospective clients.

Now the whole reasoning behind it really adds up. And knowingly or unknowingly we all do it.
Just imagine that you go to Westside, Shopper's stop or any nearby apparel store. The collections are great, prices are awesome, service is top class and you like to go there. One day, while in the store, you bump into another customer who is properly, totally, absolutely drunk. He just says sorry and goes away. Would you feel like going to that store again?
That one drunk customer has now decided the store's clientele.

If you feel that you are not able to get the clients you want, maybe its because of the clients you have. Check if you want to leave some of those clients which you are currently having because they are not in tune with your long term goals.
This very fact is known to the businesses and they apply it as well. Haven't you noticed that the doorman of a 7 star hotel stops you if you are not properly dressed (wearing pyjamas and flipflops), or the discotheque which allows only couples to enter and so on...

Just as I am typing this, I realised, that this is true with our friends too... If I have a friend who is pervert, drinks or smokes, very soon I will find myself having a bunch of friends who drink and smoke. At the same time I will start losing out on my good friends.

Looks like its not just about clients, but in so many other aspects of life...
My friends decide my friends
My relationships decide my relationships

New beginnings...

Have heard this Gyan over and over hundreds of times, read in forwarded SMS and mails - "you cannot go back and change the beginning but you can always make a new beginning today and change the ending"

"Hi, Gulshan..." These are the words I always use to introduce myself. These very words were used to begin a friendship 8 years ago. That was a beginning and back then nobody bothered to think how it was going to end. After nurturing that friendship for so many years, I'm making yet another new beginning in the same relationship. This time, I think I know how I want it to end.
It took me 8 years to reach this new beginning. There were so many times we had differences of opinions, those differences could have been a beginning of a breakup, we had so many other friends walk in our lives, those friends could have become new beginnings, but somehow we were destined to reach this stage today and create a new beginning of our own.
There is something weird about beginnings. We can make a new one whenever we want and that becomes the foundation for a new ending.
Too much bogged down with your studies because your parents wanted you to study? You can start a business alongside and make a new beginning today...
Got sucked into family business even though you wanted to study? Start studying again and make a new beginning.
Made a mistake and broke a relationship? Go back and make a new beginning.
Lost your health? Start jogging today and make a new beginning.
BEWARE!!!
It is good to make a new beginning, but too many changes could bring instability, too many and too frequent job changes in the name of new beginning are not okay.
Just because you read this blog, don't go searching for a new spouse / boy friend / girl friend by leaving the one you have, you could make a new beginning with the same person.
Every time I pray, I'm making a new beginning in my relationship with Him.
Right now as I type this, I see a beautiful orange ball rising on the horizon and I know it's yet another beginning.
Wish you a happy beginning...

Give "why" a break...

I have a major strength. I have a very logical mind and will never do anything which I don't understand. This applies to all places... Work, studies, everywhere... If I'm asked to do something in a certain way, I need to understand why I'm doing it that way, else I won't do it. It's a great strength and I know the value it has added to me. The rule of life has become --- "Don't do anything unless you know why you are doing it..."
At times it does become my weakness.
Through a bunch of recent experiences, I have learnt that at times we need to do things for someone else even if we don't know why and what we are doing.
It's perfectly ok to ask why debit and why credit.
It's perfectly ok to ask why hydrogen and oxygen both fuel fire but water puts fire out.
It's ok to ask why we should jog every morning.
It's ok to ask why we should be punctual everywhere.
It's ok to ask "whys" which have answers...
But, at times, there are "whys" which don't have answers...
Why do you love me?
Why should I love you?
Why should I put flowers at the feet of that statue with an elephant head?
Why does this happen to me?
Why did he/she do this to me?
Why me?
There are tonnes and tonnes of whys which we can go on asking but will never find a satisfactory answer.
If my loved one is asking me to do something and if I love and trust that person and it's something that could possibly not hurt me, then I think I can skip the why and go ahead and do it.
Especially in relationships, it's the best thing to skip a few whys every now and then. Life just might become easier.