Posted in Art, Coaching, Creativity, Drawing, Fun, Happiness, Life, Personal, Perspective, Sketch, Spiritual on June 12, 2007 | 6 Comments »
Here is a simple sketch of Buddha as I “see” it. Just looking at this sketch brings so many different emotions and thoughts. Sketching Buddha was very peaceful.
This is the fourth sketch in my series of simple “starter” sketches. The other three were Baby Hanuman, Flower Vase and A View from Up Here.
Posted in Balance, Book, Bottom of Pyramid, Coaching, Creativity, Decision Making, Entrepreneurship, Happiness, HoMe, Leadership, Life, Personal, Professional, Psychology, Review, Spiritual, Venture Capital on June 6, 2007 | 4 Comments »
I read Randy Komisar’s “The Monk and the Riddle“. I just could not stop when I started reading it. By the time I finished reading it, the clock struck 4 AM. I think it was a night well spent.
Randy Komisar is a Venture Capitalist with Kleiner Perkins. This book tells Randy’s evolution (thus the word Monkey in this post’s title) and search for his passion. Autobiographies are generally boring but Randy does a great job by weaving his life nuggets with a great story of an entrepreneur, Lenny.
“We will put the Fun back in FUNerals”, says Lenny. He is trying to sell an internet business called funerals.com to Randy. This story is set in year 2000, when the whole world was going online – from pets and groceries to well funerals and caskets. I could relate to this story since a number of my friends were pitching get-rich-quick-internet-business-plans those days (and with Web 2.0 they are doing it all over again).
Lenny is a vulnerable soul like many of us who go through life in two phases. In the first phase we do what we HAVE to do so that in the second phase we can do what we LOVE to do. Randy’s point is to start doing what we LOVE to do NOW. He asks us to not live a life plan which is always deferred till we pay our dues. How practical is it?
Randy does a good job explaining the importance of following our passion, but he lacks concrete steps and examples to find out what that passion is. That search for passion is a very individual matter and requires a lot of personal effort. Bill George’s “True North” does a great job providing a framework to search for that passion. “True North” picks up where “The Monk and the Riddle” ends.
This book is a must read for anybody who thinks business is all about the bottom-line and chasing money. It will convince you to look at business and your professional life through a new lens.
Posted in Art, Balance, Coaching, Creativity, Drawing, Fun, Happiness, HoMe, Leadership, Life, Personal, Perspective, Psychology, RandomThoughts, Sketch, Spiritual on June 1, 2007 | 1 Comment »
Here is the third post in my series of sketches. The first one was the view from my patio and the second one was Baby Hanuman. This one is a flower vase that I sketched just before it was broken by accident. It was good that I captured it in some form before we lost it.
I really like this quote about giving – “Smell remains on the hands of someone who gives a rose”. It is in line with what Karma Kitchen is doing in Berkeley. I will write a separate detailed post about Karma Kitchen. I went there with my family last Saturday. It was an amazing experience and a great feast. The check total at the end of a tasty meal was $0.00. Amazing, isn’t it?
Posted in Art, Balance, Bottom of Pyramid, Creativity, Drawing, Entrepreneurship, Fun, Happiness, Leadership, Life, Personal, Perspective, Sketch, Spiritual on May 29, 2007 | 4 Comments »
Here is the next sketch that I tried. This is the second one in my series of posted sketches – first one was a view from my patio. This one is a Baby Hauman sketch based on Indian animation film Hanuman. Pardon some of the shade which is because of scanner issues. More sketches to follow.
Posted in Art, Creativity, Drawing, Entrepreneurship, Fun, Happiness, Leadership, Life, Personal, Perspective, Sketch on May 28, 2007 | 4 Comments »
I recently started sketching again (after 18 years). It had been a great experience.
Here is one of the first sketches that I came up with. It is a view from the patio of my townhouse in the University Village. I know it is far from perfect. It is a beginning (restart actually). I will post more of these sketches to show my evolution as a sketcher. I will appreciate any feedback from pros on blogosphere.
Posted in Balance, Creativity, Decision Making, Entrepreneurship, Happiness, Leadership, Life, Personal, Psychology on May 25, 2007 | 1 Comment »
HAPPINESS – It is the single most important goal of human life. All our actions could be traced to “seeking happiness”. While happiness is so important and sought after, it is not properly understood. There is a huge element of subjectivity involved and that makes it hard to define, measure, monitor and fix.
Uncertain Future: Our brains have a number of issues that make it hard for us to predict “what would make us happy”. The most significant shortcoming is the lack of details in our imagination. When we think about a future event we tend to just imagine a few important aspects of it. Our brain misses on a number of details.
What differentiates human beings from other animals – our ability to imagine and “plan” for future. This long-term thinking is also responsible for our misery. Our super ancestors’ brains did not have a faculty to “worry” about future. Just like cows, cats and dogs they just had sufficient brain power to handle the immediate future. Our frontal-lobe in the brain is responsible for future long-term thinking and it was developed in the middle of our evolution cycle. This lobe is a part of brain which is non-essential for the basic functions of human body. We would still live if we don’t have this worrisome frontal lobe with our brain.
Unclear Past: Second shortcoming for our brain is related to our past memories. Contrary to common belief our brain is actually not a good storage device. The way it stores past events is by leaving out a lot of details and compressing what it stores. The problem that it manifests itself in is the fact that we are not able to do a good job of “looking back” and deciding what makes us happy. E.g. the only thing our brain might remember about our family reunion is the great panaromic view from the hotel balcony. It does not remember the details of pickerings with our cousins. Because of this we make irrational decision of going to our reunion every year.
What To Do?
Two things one could do to work around these limitations -
Posted in Balance, Coaching, Creativity, Decision Making, Entrepreneurship, Happiness, Leadership, Life, Personal on May 25, 2007 | 1 Comment »
We make so many decisions everyday, ranging from as simple as which brand of coffee to drink to as significant decisions as whether to use nuclear weapons against Japan.
How do we make these decisions? What is our personal compass that we use to navigate through this web of decisions? And, Is that compass directing us to our best estimate of “happiness” in future?
Happiness is so subjective and all of us have so different definitions. This subjectivity and variety in how we interpret our own compass of happiness results in this magnificent variety of life experiences that we go through. It results in so many different life stories.
What is important in all these journeys is the “seeking” part of happiness. We strive to be happy and thus we do all those things that we “think” will make us happy.
Three important decisions that one makes in one’s life are -
In the last couple of decades the possibilities in these choices have exploded exponentially. In this global world the way we decide where and how to live our lives is very different than how it used to be. A number of us end up being nomads or “global citizens” as we call ourselves. The happiness comes from the eclectic experiences that one gets by moving to different locations, meeting different people and doing different things.
The HARMONY that we can build around our three choices is important. The dissonance that arises is responsible for unhappiness.
Just follow the high-level personal compass instead of going into the detailed analysis and planning for future. There are so many variables anyway on your way – focus on the most important ones.
Posted in Balance, Bottom of Pyramid, Coaching, Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Happiness, Life, Personal, Professional, RandomThoughts, Venture Capital on May 24, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
I met and listened to Vinod Khosla, a renowned Venture Capitalist, at a US-India Venture Capital Association meeting. His speech gave a glimpse inside his mind. It was a very personal speech unlike his previous speeches. Khosla talked about some of the decisions he made in life and why he made those decisions.
Move to India – Remember 1993 – Technology world was eclipsed by Microsoft, the King. There were others like Nortel but mostly big things were happening in Redmond. Khosla lived in Northern California at that time with his family. At that time he observed a lot of action happening in Asia. To go to where the action is – he moved with his family to India.
Disillusionment – When in India he tried to find out about the non-profits that he could help and work with to make a difference. He could not find any good organizations. He was shuttling between India and the US – spending six weeks in India and six weeks in the US, alternatively. He was trying hard to help solve some of India’s biggest problems like poverty and rural development. He gave up – thinking that these are big issues and he is not even able to make a dent in these huge problems.
Khosla Version 2.0 – After spending three years in India he came back to the US again. The current run is his second attempt at solving world’s problems. This time he is more successful.
Positive Future - His prediction for future is that entrepreneurship and innovation will thrive with great opportunities ahead. He also predicts that with the growing complexity of the world, people would move to the more relevant (for happiness) things like relationships, family and enjoyment.
Responsible Capitalism - One of his core beliefs is that capitalist solutions work best for the global problems. According to him a sustainable solution is to have someone make money while solving these problems. Subsidies would take you only so far. His rule of thumb – For a long-lasting solution you need the venture to be in black within five years.
Open Source – He believes in the power of open source. One of his pet projects (where his wife is working full time now) is the open source text-books project. The goal of this project is to make textbooks freely available to all the kids. According to him California alone spends more than half a Billion dollars on text-books every year. That money would be rather well spent on the teacher’s salaries for example. Is open source (and free text-books) not contradictory to the capitalistic principles?
Gut Feeling – He mentioned that we never looks at the extensive spreadsheets and financials calculating ROI and all the good stuff for making investment decisions. He evaluates opportunities solely relying on his gut feeling.
In this meeting I saw in him an ordinary person like you and me who goes through contradicting battles in his own mind. One who is trying his best to make a dent in these massive world problems utilizing all his resources to the best he can. Good luck Mr Khosla in your pursuit of happYness (with a Y instead of i).
Posted in Balance, Happiness, Personal, RandomThoughts, Spiritual on May 19, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
When we make music we don’t do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.
–Alan Watts
Posted in Balance, Happiness, Personal, RandomThoughts, Spiritual on May 12, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
A good question – “Now that we can be in touch with anyone at any time, do we risk being out of touch with ourselves?”
Posted in Balance, Bottom of Pyramid, Decision Making, Entrepreneurship, Happiness, Leadership, Life, Personal, Professional, RandomThoughts, Spiritual on March 24, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
When we ask this question about “How green is this purchase of mine?” – Remember this -
There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.
Posted in Balance, Coaching, Creativity, Decision Making, Entrepreneurship, Fun, Happiness, Leadership, Life, Personal, Perspective, Psychology on February 13, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Popular Belief: Discipline hinders creativity.
Reverse: Discipline fosters creativity.
The most prevalent way to depict creativity is Einstein’s photo with his shabby hairstyle and chaotic looks. Creativity does not always come packaged as this confused picture. The other well-behaved gentleman shown above is C.V. Raman – another physics Nobel Prize winner. It is a different face of creativity than what is popular. Raman was a disciplined scientist who performed ground breaking research while still receiving a gold-medal in college [Einstein got into repeated trouble at school].
Quantity of ideas is very important for creativity. Discipline provides a platform to create an “idea factory”. Discipline helps create a fine-tuned operational process to generate a lot of ideas. A lot of ideas are always better than the few ideas that shabby zealots find themselves boxed in because of their inflexible mindset.
Being chaotic has suddenly become hip. It is the current fad in the enterprise. We have gone too far when it comes to creating an “informal” culture. Being informal does 
not mean being dirty and messy.
A number of chaotic-creative-people never get to implement their creative ideas because they are not focused. They do not have a goal in mind when they start with their creative process. Disciplined thinking requires you to clearly state your goal in mind before you start any creative endeavor. With structured thinking you start on a stated goal, identify a compelling motive and follow a disciplined approach to finding creatively disciplined ideas.
Another related popular notion is that a shabby work environment is a sign of creativity. A clean environment is much more helpful when it comes to creating good ideas. A dirty environment breeds dirty ideas. A messy environment creates stress and stress in turn kills creative juices. A clean environment on the other hand lets you focus on the creative task at hand.
In conclusion, do not get rid of the basic discipline which is required in the creative process. Do not create unnecessary chaos just hoping that creativity is directly linked to dirty desks and lunatic looks. Discipline is a virtue – embrace it when you embark on your next creative endeavor. And, please get a decent haircut.
Posted in Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Happiness on January 23, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Yesterday I attended a class on “Creativity and Innovation”. Our guest speaker Pat Christen (President: HopeLab) described some fascinating insights into how they are working on ReMission, a video game for teens and young adults suffering from cancer.
Creativity is sometimes applying the old concepts. She described how she applied the same old concepts she learnt with SF AIDS Foundation and applied them to get ReMission tested within one year.
Posted in Happiness, Spiritual on December 30, 2006 | 1 Comment »
The whole essence of Zen consists in walking along the razor’s edge of Now – to be so utterly, so completely present that no problem, no suffering, nothing that is not who you are in your essence, can survive in you. In the Now, in the absence of time, all your problems dissolve. Suffering needs time; it cannot survive in the Now.
Posted in Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Happiness, Personal, Professional on December 4, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
Posted in Bottom of Pyramid, Happiness, Personal, Spiritual on November 12, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
Posted in Bottom of Pyramid, Entrepreneurship, Happiness on October 19, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
I heard Dr. Theogene Rudasingwa (Former Rwandan Ambassador to the US) speak in the Management of Technology lecture series at Haas School of Business (UC Berkeley). One striking thing he talked about was how African countries did not buzz much during last three decades in terms of the health standards and the per person income. At the same time East Asia and the South Asia made tremendous upward movement. Large chunk of population under poverty line (less than $1 a day) comes from the African nations.
He used the examples of Singapore and Malaysia vs Rwanda and Nigeria. While Singapore and Malayasia have progressed greatly in terms of income and child mortality, Rwanda and Nigeria are still at similar levels as they were in 1970. Why?
Some very vivid and descriptive animation about the world income distribution could be found in this really good report titled “Human Development Trends 2005″.
http://hdr.undp.org/docs/statistics/data/flash/2005/2005.html
Posted in Bottom of Pyramid, Entrepreneurship, Happiness on October 19, 2006 | 1 Comment »
Economic growth may have been spectacular since 1993 — that is, post-economic reforms — but it seems to be trickling down rather slowly.
A soon-to-be-released official report has estimated that poverty declined by a mere 0.74% during the 11-year period ended 2004-05. Although there are signs of things moving a little faster, at 0.79%, between 1999-2000 and 2004-05, going by another measure, the number of people below poverty line may have remained unchanged.
National Sample Survey Organisation’s (NSSO) findings show the number of people living below poverty line (BPL) at 22.15% in 2004-05, compared with 26.09% in 1999-2000. In the same period, the country’s GDP grew at around 6%. This mismatch between growth and its distribution is politically worrying as it indicates a rise in economic disparities.
Economists say uneven growth often leads to social unrest which, in turn, can cause problems for politicians. Anyone consuming less than 2,100 calories in urban areas, and 2,400 calories in rural areas, is classifed in the BPL category.
The NSSO study also shows that poverty declined the sharpest in the poorer states.
Posted in Bottom of Pyramid, Entrepreneurship, Happiness on October 14, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
A great day for those who aspire to make this world a happier place – one person at a time – with small contributions.
Yunus is an ispiration for many of us. Yunus getting the Nobel peace prize endorses the view that development and peace are both linked to each other.
Here is an inspirational article by Yunus -
Posted in Balance, Entrepreneurship, Happiness, Professional on October 7, 2006 | 1 Comment »
Posted in Happiness on September 4, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
Posted in Happiness on September 4, 2006 | 1 Comment »
Interesting research by Liz Gould that tries to look at the psychology of poverty and stress.
According to her – “Poverty and stress aren’t just an idea: they are an anatomy. Some brains never even have a chance.”
The subject of stress has been the single continuous thread running through Gould’s research career. From the brain’s perspective, stress is primarily signaled by an increase in the bloodstream of a class of steroid called glucocorticoids, which put the body on a heightened state of alert. But glucocorticoids can have one nasty side-effect: They are toxic for the brain. When stress becomes chronic, neurons stop investing in themselves. Neurogenesis ceases.
“Poverty is stress,” she says, with more than a little passion in her voice. “One thing that always strikes me is that when you ask Americans why the poor are poor, they always say it’s because they don’t work hard enough, or don’t want to do better. They act like poverty is a character issue.”
Gould’s work implies that the symptoms of poverty are not simply states of mind; they actually warp the mind. Because neurons are designed to reflect their circumstances, not to rise above them, the monotonous stress of living in a slum literally limits the brain.
Posted in Happiness on August 20, 2006 | 1 Comment »
A new Canadian index will gauge how people are faring overall, not just how much they’re spending.
The Canadian Index of Wellbeing will be far more accurate than its economic cousin, the gross domestic product, says Roy Romanow, who was in Toronto last week to present it at the United Way of Canada conference. “(The GDP) tells us how much total income we are producing, but tells us nothing about how that income is distributed,” said Romanow, the former Saskatchewan premier who chaired the 2002 commission into medicare. The index has been five years in the making, and some of its first quarterly figures are due to be published in the fall.
“When the single most influential national lens that we use to measure our progress and wellbeing as a country is confined to a narrow set of economic indicators, it sends inaccurate and even dangerous signals to policy makers.” The gross domestic product is driven skyward when bad things happen and money is spent to fix the problems, Romanow said. Problems like the Quebec ice storm, traffic accidents, street crime, deforestation. But the Canadian Index of Wellbeing is driven down by negative things like crime, poor health and unaffordable tuition.
The index takes its cue from countries like the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, where the government measures the level of satisfaction among its populace and attempts to shape public policy to better those levels. In Canada, a national working group of about 20 organizations was convened with funding from the Atkinson Charitable Foundation. “We, along with others, had been doing this work in a very scattered way,” said Ron Colman, executive director of Genuine Progress Index Atlantic, a non-profit organization that had been developing a wellbeing index for Nova Scotia. “What the Atkinson foundation did is bring everybody together.” Measuring the level of life satisfaction among the people of a country is certainly not confined to Bhutan, although it was there that the king declared in 1972 that “the Gross National Happiness is more important than GrossNational Product.”
New Zealand also produces national reports on the wellbeing of its citizens, which are often taken into account by the government in making decisions.
Colman says the Canadian group is learning from the models of New Zealand and Bhutan how to best ensure the government, which has no real connection to the wellbeing index, acts on what the data indicate Canadians are experiencing.
“We’re learning how to push this further along on the public policy agenda,” he said. “But they are also learning from us that there is strength in having data come from an independent source.”
Researchers across the globe have been attempting for decades to find a formula that objectively measures how satisfied people are with their lives, without much concrete success.
Dutch professor Ruut Veenhoven, a highly regarded researcher in positive psychology – the study of what makes us happy and why – has for 20 years been working on the World Database of Happiness. He has found that, although the most prosperous nations tend to score higher than the poorest ones, there are exceptions. El Salvador for instance ranks 7 2 out of 10 the same as Great Britain Salvador, for instance, ranks 7.2 out of 10, the same as Great Britain.
Veenhoven’s research was largely based on people’s own judgments of how satisfied they are with their lives. The Canadian Index of Wellbeing will be calculated based on data gathered by about 20 researchers, from Statistics Canada, Environment Canada and researchers from several universities.
While it’s unavoidable some self-reported data will be used, researchers are planning to take into account harder numbers, such as the costs of education and of everyday essentials.
“This is not a feel-good type of self-survey,” said Charles Pascal, executive director of the Atkinson foundation. “This is using data to measure, in a very tangible way, the things that matter to Canadians.”
The working group will measure areas such as living standards, health and welfare and levels of political engagement.
Said Dr. Robert McMurtry, a London physician who also serves on the Health Council of Canada: “I can remember the days when you didn’t have so many people who couldn’t afford higher education, when you felt a lot safer walking the streets at night and when pollution wasn’t such a problem. I’d like to see us have a standard by which we can measure whether these things – which are so important to us – are going upwards or downwards.”
Posted in Happiness on May 25, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
The best gift is the gift of your valuable time. Be a volunteer with Seva (www.seva.org).
Posted in Happiness on May 14, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
Here is Nipun – an inspiration for many to bring happiness to innumerable lives.
Nipun’s Blog – http://nipun.charityfocus.org/
“My life is an attempt to bring smiles in the world and silence in my heart. I want to live simply, love purely, and give fearlessly. ” – Nipun
Posted in Happiness on March 28, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Posted in Happiness on March 28, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Posted in Happiness on March 27, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
“If you want to know what India feels like today, it’s very simple. Pull out a champagne bottle, shake it for an hour, and take the cork off. You don’t want to get in the way of that cork.”
- Tom Friedman
Posted in Happiness on February 14, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
This article and the book with the same title is one of the key motivations behind this Blog.
Posted in Happiness on February 13, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
This is how ICICI doing it – http://www.icicisocialinitiatives.org/microfinance/microfinance.asp
Having come from India I appreciate this effort and understand what it takes to pull off something like this.
Posted in Happiness on February 11, 2006 | 1 Comment »
What does WWHappiness stand for? World Wide Happiness.
World Wide Happiness (WWHappiness) is an effort to consolidate the initiatives of all the individuals and groups working for the upliftment of the 4 Billion+ poor people in the world. We believe that the fortune is there at the Bottom of the Pyramid and we could dig and distribute that fortune to spread happiness.
Posted in Happiness on November 24, 2004 | Leave a Comment »
Keep moving. If I stay here attachment will form.
Keep moving like a river … impurities and sediments and filth can never settle there.
Posted in Happiness on November 22, 2004 | Leave a Comment »
Have you found yourself in a situation where your “TO-DO” list goes beyond what you can handle? Have you found yourself swamped with things to worry about that go beyond your cerebral limits? You are normal 
We get entrenched into our list of things to do and start worrying about them. The “TO-DO” lists are exactly what their names indicate. These are things-to-do and not things-to-worry-about.
It is not efficient to worry about all your worries all the time. Worrying does not help at all. While you are worrying about one job, you are actually taking away resources from what you could have used to perform other task.
Some points of the day are good for some tasks and some others are good for some other jobs.
You should divide your day into Task Zones. Work through the constraints of when can you perform certain tasks and then remain in that Task Zone. Try to divide and conquer. It will be much more efficient if you are consciously aware of the constraints of time and task.
More to come …
Posted in Happiness on November 20, 2004 | Leave a Comment »
This is a classic example of the contradiction in the corporate world.
Michael Tushman and Charles O’Reilly describe this strategy in their recent book, “Winning Through Innovation”. They define technology life cycles and innovation in terms of “streams” and explain how a selected few large companies have managed to create two different organizations under one roof to manage these streams. One is dedicated to maximizing the value of the traditional technology, the other to commercializing radical innovation. There are difficulties with such dual strategies: “The contradictions inherent in the multiple types of innovation create conflict and dissent between the organizational units – between those historically profitable, large, efficient, older, cash-generating units and the young, entrepreneurial, risky, cash-absorbing units.”
Posted in Happiness on November 15, 2004 | Leave a Comment »
We’re giving you this exquisite position in this company and we want you to know you’ll have a great deal of independent decision-making-power
SURRENDER – What are you giving up? A hollow little trip that is good for another 40 years (at best). You’re giving it up for ETERNAL UNION, PURE ENERGY and PURE LIGHT. Because, surrender means you no longer die. It’s as simple as that. That’s what it means. Because: You that lives and dies is you – Ego – and fear of death only comes through the brittleness of the ego.
Posted in Happiness on November 8, 2004 | Leave a Comment »
BUT, how do we define the box? It is a cliche to say we should think outside the box. Nobody knows how to limit the box. Remember Einstein’s theory of relativity (http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/vvc/theory/relativity.html). I am trying to redefine my box my new frame of reference.
