...shoOOonya...

Back in 2020 (pre-pandemic months), during our annual supply chain conference at Landmark Group, I got the opportunity to hear the keynote by Venkatesh Maheshwari wherein at some point, he asked a poignant question "What's Your Everest?" (By the way, Venky has scaled Mt. Everest and he is a brilliant keynote speaker - I aspire to inspire like he does) The annual conference concluded but the question remained with me. I kept asking myself that question over the course of weeks and months ... and coming up with multiple answers which included some goals that I had put on back-burner as well as some new goals that the ambitious me was cooking up.  And then COVID happened. Very hectic few months working from home with work load shooting up. But the question kept coming up again and again ... with new and varied interesting answers that I was cooking up.  And then one fine day, my job got Covid (sounds hilarious and tragic at the same time) and that those answers became sudden...

You think this is out of place at this time of the year? We are still 40 days away from the new year (2022). Well, 1st Jan is when pretty much the whole world celebrates the New Year. In addition, based on the individual religious belief and following, people also celebrate their other 'new year' – the Hindu new year, the Islamic new year and so on. AND then there is a very personal New Year that everyone has. Their BIRTHDAY 😊 The birthday marks the start of another year of our life. A day we celebrate. A day we can use to look back at our past year and plan for the coming year. Yesterday was my New Year (the Birthday kind) and I wished 'a Happy New Year' to a small group of people who began their transformation journey with me. I kicked off my new coaching batch and it's a start of something incredible for them (as well as me). To each one out there, we are 40 days away from 2022. What are your plans for 2022?   Have you 'planned' what your goals are? Wha...

THE CARNOUSTIE EFFECT Today, a colleague of mine mentioned the CARNOUSTIE EFFECT - something I have never heard before.  And immediately, I could relate it to so many different occasions in my own life, both professional and personal.  I am surprised this is not a common board-room terminology, thrown around by consultants and CXOs / senior management all year round to explain what was going on (before throwing up their hands in despair).  If you have heard about this for the first time .. let me introduce you to the very interesting and pretty much universal phenomenon!  THE CARNOUSTIE EFFECT ...  ... is a term arising after the 1999 Open Golf Championship at Carnoustie, Scotland, when the world's greatest players, many of whom were reared on manicured and relatively windless courses, failed to play to theoretical par for the distance and were frustrated by the unexpected difficulties of the Carnoustie links compounded by the weather. Even the winner finished six strokes over par....

Halo Halo ... We are Half Done !! The "half-empty half-full glass" visual is a common sight and kicks off a conversation that I don't want to get into today ... half of 2021 is gone and the other half is before us. As they say, TODAY is the first day of the Rest of your Life. Well, lets focus on 2021 for now. 2020 was a wierd weird wired year. (yes, I deliberately put 3 of them in there) At the end of 2020, most of us had high hopes from 2021 and even made some lofty resolutions / goals for 2021 - challenging ourselves to achieve them and make the best of the year after the pandemic. 2020 gave us many revelations on personal and home front ... and we were determined to make changes in our lives in line with those revelations. With 2021 half gone, its time to do a quick but exhaustive audit of where we are versus where we were supposed to be in the context of what we aimed for. (It like appraisal .. but its only you, and you gotta be honest) The half year audit is import...

VSS 033 – The Lottery   It was a whim that he had purchased the lottery ticket. More influenced by the salesgirl rather than by his faith in luck. And yet, with the ticket in hand, he would dream of all the riches and things he could do with them. He made castles in the air and set up his dream world. Result day shocked him when he won the lottery of 10 Million Wearing the all new crisp shirt, he caught a cab to the lottery office. Next day headlines – Drunken driven plunges cab in the river in broad daylight. No survivors.   --------------   Life is not just unpredictable but also cruel in its way and twists in the tale. It surprises and shocks us in the most unexpected ways and leaves us speechless and breathless … sometimes, quite literally.

    She Hates Him But She’s In Debt To Her Millionaire Foe  Releasing on 25th October About the Book: When the songbird owes the business tycoon... Former gangster, Devansh Thackeray has finally managed to carve the life he’s always aspired to. Building a chain of seven-star hotels all over the world, a reputation for being an honest businessman...and all the women he could ask for. Ansh’s life is perfect. Or so he thinks. Because he is about to hit by a lightning bolt from the past that’ll make him question everything he’s worked so hard for. And her name is Kahini Palekar. Kahini’s life is a nightmare. She works three jobs to pay off the loan sharks circling her. But, Kahini doesn’t mind because she also gets to do the only thing she’s always wanted to do. Sing. Even if it is at a shady nightclub in the backstreets of Goa, the beach paradise of India.  Kahini’s day of reckoning arrives when Ansh arrives back in her life, right when she’s almost assaulted by the ...

She was 50. She had staunchly kept away from computers and smartphones. She did not need them in personal life. People at work understood her limitations and helped her around. She did not need the computer even for her work. And then COVID struck the world and she realized that as a primary school Teacher, she had to connect to the Internet via a computer to connect to 'her kids'. She scaled the steep learning curve and got over her technology inhibitions. She is now beaming at her kids on the laptop. You are never too old to learn.          --------------   Teachers across the world had to re-skill themselves to meet the challenge of online schooling. A large population amongst the teacher were the not-so-young and they were not tech-savvy either. For them, the challenge was massive. Not only did they meet the challenge and got up to speech with tech, most of them have gone above and beyond to bring in the same level of warm...