Financial Freedom – gain the experiences

charity, experiences, Financial Independence, investment, Karma, travel

I have written multiple times in different posts about how my father had an agenda to make us get different experiences to make us better human beings. Today is his birth anniversary and I thought of visiting his philosophy again.

My father wanted to ensure that both my brother and I had a more than our share of areas to excel. He was a self made man. Our grandfather had lost his job during India’s fight for freedom from the British rule. Being the eldest in the family he had the responsibility to ensure that the family stayed afloat and prospered. Eventually all the brothers and sisters actually turned out to be very good in their individual professions and retired and eventually left behind a great legacy.

My father always had this idea of “giving” in whatever form to help others. His view was that when you give, the world conspires to give you back multiple times over. If you have been following my blog then, my thoughts on the Karmic cycle come from there. Always do good in whatever way you can.

The other one, which I didn’t understand till much later in life was taking us to different parts of the world after he had finished showing us most of India. Each time you go to a new place and you see the historical sites, the way people move, the marvels of different cultures your mind tends to expand. All these experiences helped me get a much wider appreciation of different cultures in the world, which I found missing in most of my peers. That was one of the reasons, I could relate and do business with people in countries across all continents except maybe Latin America ( Visiting places especially to see the ruins of the Mayan and Aztec and other ancient civilisations in that continent is on my bucket list incidentally)

I have written a lot of times why you need to get financial freedom, so that you are no longer a slave of money. Money starts to work for you. This does not mean that you need to become a miser and only try to scrimp every piece to save. What is life if you don’t get the experiences that money can buy. You have to enjoy the journey, otherwise you will end up living an unfulfilled life.

Learn to put some money into investments that can periodically help you get to enjoy your life. For my father and me it has been travel to different places. If you like to go hiking, do that. If you like to go surfing, do that.

The money that works for you, should help you get experiences, which will make you happier, live longer with less disease.

Till next time then….target the experiences, not the outcomes.

Carpe Diem!!!

Time is a relative term – Good or Bad

arrogance, ego, Karma, Time

I think it was Einstein who spoke about time being short or long depending on the relative situation. If you were with you “girlfriend” it would seem shorter and if you were sitting on a hot stove, it would feel so long before you could switch off the stove.

I have a different take on time. Not to contradict Einstein. But thinking of time in a totally different way. After spending more than 50 years on earth, I have realised life goes through different phases like the weather. And they happen to everyone, like the weather.

When things go wrong with us, we tend to blame others for some trigger or the other. Suddenly the people who caused that trigger to happen, become “BAD” people. My take is most people are not bad. Its the specific “time” of our life which is good or bad. And times change, like weather changes.

The other way of also looking at this is that, when we like to transfer the blame of something, anything, to someone else….it means that we don’t have faith in ourselves. And till you don’t have faith in yourself, you will never learn the lesson which life teaches you. And life will keep giving you those lessons till you learn the lesson. The more arrogant you are about things, or bigger the ego, the more difficult it is to handle these things.

As Dan Sullivan says, till you learn the lesson, the “bad” thing which happened to you, the brain will keep relieving the issue and cause you more and more pain depending on the circumstance you are in. Once you decide to see what was the learning and how you will utilise the learning, the pain goes away.

NLP Professionals and Tony Robbins etc. have a different way of handling this issue. Some of it ], I have used and has worked. However Dan Sullivan’s rational explanation appeals most to my brain and therefore I have tried to utilise it more and more.

So “first lesson ” – Most people are good – times are good or bad and second, you can make BAD times – not so bad – if you get the learning out of the whole experience. Since times will change, anyway, its best to be equanimous in whatever situation you are and get the best out of it and bid for the time to change. As part of the Karmic cycle, I believe, when you do “good” even during these “bad” times the suffering is lesser and the change is faster.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!

Sometimes opportunities come looking for you.

Karma, Networking, relationships

Being in marketing and sales I am always looking to find ways to get opportunities. Some of the methods I have written about in separate posts are finding the right “elephant ” to ride so that wherever the elephant finds opportunities, it takes us alongside.

Then I have written multiple times about other partnership mechanisms to help you get closer to opportunities.

Today I will write about what Richard Koch talks about in his wonderful book, The 80/20 for Manager- the power of loose and distributed networks .

One network is what you build consciously by nurturing various people, by giving value in advance. This is something that Joe Polish calls his Genius Network. With these people you stay in touch, help them and they in turn help you. So when they see an opportunity they join hands with you to address the opportunity or you take their advice to get that opportunity.

Then their are networks where people know you through other people or because you have at some point worked with them. In either case they remembered you because they believed that you are good person and good in the job.

It is these kind of people who refer you for an opportunity to a friend or to a third party , without any possible gain to themselves, except the feeling of helping someone.

It’s then that opportunities come searching for you. If you have helped enough people, and you’re known for doing a good and honest job , then people love recommending you. This is what happened today with me.

Out of the blue today somebody came seeking me out to showcase our products/ services at an event they are doing and they won’t be charging me anything. We are always looking out for opportunities to showcase our solutions to a wide audience and this is a God send eventhough the time is very short.

It comes back to my basic philosophy to always help people, excuse some where the Karmic cycle plays its role.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Karmic cycle in play again

charity, Gratitude, Happiness, Karma

I keep coming back to these topics of Gratitude, Karma, Charity time and again. Actually these things keep you grounded when things are going well for you and lift you when you feel low.

Sometimes the universe has a way to send things your way for doing good. Today has been a very specific example. India had gone through a very tough period during the second wave of Covid between mid April to June this year. Quite a few people lost their lives and a lot of families were left without earning members in their families.

Through those time I had tried to do my little bit by doing some amount of charity.

Today it so happened that out of the blue I got a message on my mobile phone from one of the ‘Apps” called CRED that I use. Its an app that I have been using for a few years now and I had accumulated more than half a million points. While the App gives us an option to use the points to get different items on discount, somehow, I could not find any item in the recent past to utilise the points and they had just been accumulating.

Today I was just thinking randomly and this message came, where I could liquidate a hundred thousand points and feed 12 people. CRED has tied up with a NGO to feed victims of the Covid pandemic. This was like a God send. I didn’t have any use for the massive number of points that I had accumulated and they were going waste.

Now those same points can get used to do good. Amazing isn’t it. Something which was a waste for me, now gets utilised to feed people. I get the benefit of feeling good and also writing about it, while hopefully all those people get fed meals by this NGO.

I immediately liquidated 500000 points so that 60 people can be fed. if you have the intention to do good, the universe finds ways to help you get the capabilities to do good.

My father always said, you give a small thing in charity and God will find ways to give you many times over. I hope God keeps giving me the ability to keep doing good even more often.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!