Author: animeshjmathur

Flow for financial freedom

Financial Independence, Flow, investment, money

In India, yesterday,  we celebrated the festival of Diwali.  Its also called the festival of lights, because people light up candles and put up electric lights all across their homes.

There are two reasons for this festival.  I am not going to talk about the planetary significance but more about the metaphorical significance. For most Hindus , who celebrate this festival,  its to welcome Lord Ram who was supposed to have come back to Ayodhyay after 14 years of exile.

The other reason why we celebrate this festival is because we would like to welcome Goddess Lakshmi. She is the Goddess of wealth.  Mythology has it that she’s supposed to visit earth during the night, so the best decorated house with the best lighting will attract her.

If you look at the Goddess, you will notice two elephants showering water, which eventually flows down. Now the Goddess Lakshmi is supposed to be very temperamental and does not stay anywhere if she does not like it as per the myths. So you need to keep her usefully occupied while she is at your home.

This is such a strong metaphor. If you don’t keep the money you have , flowing into useful purposes, it will lose its value. Money has to be put to productive use, if you want it to grow. If you try to hoard it, it just loses value.

So when you get money ensure you invest some of it, put some of the money to a good cause (like charity). Only from the remaining use for spending. When you invest, the money goes into productive uses and multiplies. Similarly when you donate, it helps spread good in the world.

Always ensure that money is not lying stagnant. Make it work for you rather than you working for it.

Till next time then….keep the money flowing and increase your financial freedom.

Carpe Diem!!!

Analytics,  causation and human evolution

books, Brain size, Evolution, Human Brain, Thinking

About a month back I was giving a training to our team on Analytics  and what could be the uses for customers.  During that training I spent a lot of time on how Analytics can be used to do correlation and also causation. These are 2 concepts which a lot of people mix up. So I  spent a lot of time on that, clarifying doubts.

Today I was reading the book “Framers: Human Advantage in an Age of Technology and Turmoil” by Kenneth Cukier, Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger, Francis de Vericourt.

I am right now in the first half of the book. There’s a specific chapter on causation.

If you have been following my blog, you would notice that I have been interested in understanding why humans succeeded in advancing so much while the whole animal kingdom and other living beings are where they were millions of years back. Zebras thousands of years back still had the same stripes and ate grass as they do now. But humans moved from stones to weapons to flying and all kinds of other advancements.

I already believed that because the real estate for the development of the human brain was much larger than other animals , it gave our brain more capabilities to evolve physically. The second reason in my opinion was the motor mechanism where we have the concept of grip which helped us to hold things and also walk on 2 limbs rather than four.

One of the things that the authors are suggesting is the fact that humans had two key skills which the other animals did not. One was the ability to see causation and the other were social skills. With causation they were able to think about how the same causes could be caused to have the same effects while with social skills they could ask for help and collaborate.

While some animals do live in colonies, they don’t seem to seek help for achieving tasks. On the other hand even if you were to put 2-3 kids who don’t know each other into a room, you will soon find that they are playing with each other trying to help each other.

As I read further I will see if they have more information on this subject. But for me , now if I have to give another training on Analytics and its uses, I will have some more content to talk about on how causation has helped humans evolve.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Mental rumination

Human Brain, Worry

This was a term I learnt a few days back, I don’t remember the exact book I read it in because I have read about 3 books int he last oe week. But this term has left a lasting impression.

Everyone’s brain is hyper active. The human brain was designed to ensure survival. So by its very nature it has a negative bias. Which means that the brain will always try to see the negative in any situation first. If you are enjoying something, maybe you are at a party, you have this nagging feeling that something would be about to go wrong. Its just the way the brain tries to keep you safe and attentive to possible dangers.

But because the brain is hyperactive, it is able to float through different scenarios in your mind. Suddenly you start to actually feel terrible, if you have worked yourself up. This author used a very good term mental rumination. Its not a new term. If you go on Google and do a search for this term you will find that the search returns more than 3 million results. So it is a very well known term. It talks about the negative emotions that get generated when the brain is idling and starts thinking negative thoughts which slowly go out of control in terms of negativity.

However why it stuck to me, was that it is a term which I had heard the first time and I related it to how a cow regurgitates its food to chew further, while its resting. I have many bouts in the day where because of some random or stupid stimuli, my mind goes in a spin and then I am rewinding into the past and then imagining the negative future on some action I have taken. Its like I have become the cow who is moving its mouth to digest the food while its resting.

That image is what I am now trying to bring in front of me, whenever my brain gets into a spin. Its a little crazy, but it gives my brain an impulse and pulls it out of the negative spiral it has gone into. This is similar to what the NLP folks talk about to get the brain into a different state immediately.

Not only does mental rumination make you feel negative, it also ends up wasting so much of your productive time in useless activity.

If you also face a similar situation to what I face of mental rumination, I suggest you also visualise some crazy image, whenever you think you are going into a negative spiral, and come out faster.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Leveraging on soft assets in the market

assets, Leverage, Marketing, possibility thinking, Riding the elephant

I have always spoken about “riding the elephant ” a philosophy which is extremely useful when you are a small player trying to get into a new market.

Sometimes you have a  reverse scenario.  You have something “deep ” in the market. It could be relationships withkey customers, some typically solutions which only you have, or a place in a specific location.

I remember there was a time about 20 years back, when the company I used to work for used to do trainings for internal staff. So there were multiple training rooms. These training rooms had servers, individual desktops etc.with individual network connectivity.

Many a times, these training rooms used to be vacant. Since we had already spent capital in setting up these class rooms, if left vacant, they were only getting wasted. At that time we were going through a crunch and had to figure out what other possibilities existed for making profits.

So we went about figuring out who else could need training rooms with the specifications that we had. Necessity is the mother of invention. To utilize the asset we had, we now needed to find a buyer who would use the asset only at times when we didn’t use it.

Jay Abraham is a master at building and utilizing these kind of assets. I used the strategies he lists in his book to figure out how we could leverage. We figured that companies could use these rooms, but not everyone needed the individual computers, so those companies were not willing to pay a worthwhile amount. Then we thought of software companies who need to get trainings done both for their staff and customers.

That was the master stroke. Once we could get a handle of who owned customer trainings in these companies, we showed them the rooms and to top it we offered to take care of 2 meals and tea/coffee during the sessions.

It became so good that some of the people who came for the training then asked us about our primary business and we ended up making some of them, our customers for the main business as well.

This was pure profit because the asset had already been paid for, so increasing the utilization only increased the profits.

Till next time then….leverage on what you have and count the gains

Carpe Diem!!!