Deassetisation

I returned from Bangkok without buying a gadget!!! I was very happy with myself that i stayed with the resolution. Before leaving for Bangkok, I had browsed my cupboard to find how many things that i bought on various trips have been unused/partially used. And there were many - a camcorder bought 5 years back used for 10 minutes of video recording, a GPS system bought in Shanghai is unused as it does not support India maps (but i can see Shanghai roads neatly), there are 4 handsets that were bought during various stages of Nokia's evolution lying idle, 3 cameras bought at the time of announcement of every trip to make it memorable used only during that trip etc etc.

To top it, I ensured that we clicked very limited no of photos during the trip as most of the photos have a shelf life of a month - I am a big fan of the "living in the moment" thinking.

Fundamentally, I am moving towards a deassetised lifestyle. I read a tweet a few days back, "Its no more about how many assets you own, its about how smart you are to not own too many of them". And, I completely get it. During the Bangkok trip, I kept thinking, if there was a shop that leased a canon DSLR for a few baths per day, it would meet my need of checking the ability to photograph and also not carrying a camera. Similarly, if I have a choice of renting various cars as the need arises, there wont be a need for me to buy one ( btw i own a car that is 10 years old and i have no immediate plans to change). I am extending this philosophy even for a home, I do not own a flat and have no plans to buy one for a while, there are enough furnished flats available, as your location preferences change, you move to a new house.

If, this thinking develops an appeal for a large section of people, it will make this world a very different place. We wont run after creating assets and in the process will develop a very positive attitude to sharing. This will make the world far more asset efficient and create a democratic availability of services. By no means I support the idea of giving up, what i support is the idea of consume as you require.

Birthday celebrations

" This should be the most memorable day and a birthday for her " persuaded a friend to all others while we were working on the mega party for another friend, transcending from being young to so called middle aged - how can one in a night is not the question expected in such a situation. We did actually put up a reasonable show, not sure if it turned out to be the most memorable birthday for her.

Coming to birthdays, I can never get over the foresightedness of my parents - I don't mean my birth, but about my birthday. Can you believe, I do not know my real birthday. Whenever I ask my mother, she is unable to place it in the flow of time, forget the day, I asked the year and she drew a blank, may be if i widen the timeframe to a decade, she will be able to place it. To make things easy for her, once, I opened the hindu calendar and cued, was it a ramanavami or was it close to Padva, didn't work even then. I turned to my father once and pleaded, I am sure you atleast can recollect, how did you admit me in a school. He started laughing and said thats another story, actually, those days ( it sounds like i am such an antique piece), no one asked for a certificate, so I told a date that will work for the admission, not necessarily the birthdate. Not sure he wanted to keep the information confidential, he just did not remember it. When i pressed it too hard, he started saying, i think, it was a year or two earlier to Pakistan war. I just gave up. One possible way to have a count of the years could have been the no of birthdays i have celebrated, that was not to be as we never celebrated our birthdays, not that there was any negativity around it, just that we did not know such a thing called birthday celebrations.

So why is it being foresighted. I think my parents believed that one may chose to not count the years you are alive. In the overall scheme of the universe, we come and spend so little time living, its not worth its while to count it. And if the birthdays are meant for making some one special for a day, that day can be a day of your choosing.

The story of my school admission - some other day.

Personal commitment

During the month of December, I had an opportunity to attend two training sessions, one was about entrepreneurship conducted by Ram Charan and Sadhguru and the second was about Transactional Analysis (TA 1O1) conducted by Saru, an authority on TA.

One common theme of both the programs was about the personal responsibility we have in making things work for ourselves. During one of the discussions, Sadhguru brought out very emphatically the role of "me" as in I, in making things happen. Similarly, basic premise of TA is, if I need to bring change in any situation, I need to change myself to bring that change. A friend of mine says it very well, I take the responsibility for how I feel about every transaction.

I feel this is a very powerful concept and makes me feel being in charge in all the situations as its no more about the others but its about me. If I change myself, I will be able to achieve anything that i desire to. Most of what we do, starts in our brain, most of the times its subconscious, point is making it conscious and equipping ourselves to achieve.

How does this translate to business parlance - I was reading an interview of Larry Page, cofounder of google, he was asked a question about how he views the competition, his response quoted verbatim - "Obviously we think about competition to some extent. But I feel my job is mostly getting people not to think about our competition. In general I think there's a tendency for people to think about the things that exist. Our job is to think of the thing you haven't thought of yet that you really need. And by definition, if our competitors knew that thing, they wouldn't tell it to us or anybody else. I think just our strengths, our weaknesses, our opportunities are different than any other company". Very clearly, focussing within and driving excellence is a much better strategy than keep worrying about the competition.

In the same context, sadhguru spoke about the investment we need to do in ourselves to make us equipped. One form of that was keeping our body agile and receptive to stimuli so that we can be perceptive. He emphasized a lot on maintenance of our spine through yoga. He compared the spine to an information highway - receive the stimuli and make it travel to the brain for a suitable response. For a speedy response, the spine needs to be unclogged.

I have made a promise to the self, I want to be conscious of how I am thinking all the time.