Reflection # 1 - Sep 26th

Everything work when reset. This certainly applies to human & human relations as well. Managing Kids & their schedules, Managing family, Office schedules & expectations, managing the external stress, all adds up, it takes a bigger toll on you, your life and your loved ones. We must take some time off & do something different, unless you break the routine schedule, you don’t feel like living. Everyone needs some time & space for solitude. This weekend is one of best to count in, in that aspect.

Kids don’t listen to us, they repeat actions. Regardless of the situation, if you can’t behave well, you can’t expect kids to behave well either. I could see Kovid & Tanvi shouting at each other occasionally, maybe it’s because of what we are doing without consciousness. Time for simple changes when I am talking: think before talk, express dissatisfaction without anger/shouting. That rolls up the most impact and finally reflects this weekend. 

Communication. The proverb - Talk is cheap and action speak is true, doesn’t mean talk is always cheap, talk is the most impactful and easy mechanism to build trust and relation. Choose your words carefully, think as if someone saying the same thing. Choose impactful conversation vs talking more. Connect with your loved ones regularly.

Pic: Kovid & Tanvi, never say no for ice cream. 

Small is Big

Daily small progress is much more effective, productive & efficient, compared to taking up a gigantic task all at once.

I just got great joy and satisfaction in following this principle once again in my personal life. Going into details...I firmly believe in DIY theory. Recently I purchased an additional storage rack for my garage. After reading the manual, watching online videos, I summarised the DIY process as six steps.

1) Find the correct position on ceiling joist and drill holes for the ceiling brackets
2) Fix ceiling brackets to the roof
3) Assemble Vertical Posts and FixVertical Posts to ceiling brackets
4) Attach outside frames
5) Central frame
6) Finally fixing the wire decks.

Hardest was the first step, finding wooden studs on the garage ceiling joist was the hardest, for my home they are side to side and they are not uniformly distributed. I spent a couple of hours and tried two more times to find correct positions, tempted to call in Amazon Home Services to fix it several times, and then strongly reminded my self about small-and-regular-progress theory. I started to carefully measure lengths, using a stud finder to find ONE position per day and I stoped the work once I find a position. It took 3 days to find a rite spot for the first two horizontal ceiling brackets. It took two more days to find the right position for the next two ceiling brackets, drilling one more day.  Final assembly one more day.

Overall start to finish, it was a week-after-office-work. Small progress made on a daily basis results in a very fulfilling product. 

Here is a Before & After picture for the storage rack. 

Purpose Driven Actions & Ideology

If we can define the 'Purpose' (why - are we doing) for our actions, writings, talks & thinking, then, Purpose will help us to set priorities, plans, energy, focus, drive, and responsibility. A Purpose will make us feel that we are working to achieve something bigger than just actions or talking. If you strongly believe the purpose, you don't feel tired or working hard or discouraged or unhappy. Once you have strong grit and will towards achieving the purpose, that purpose-driven mindset makes you wake up at 5 AM without an alarm and let you work till 5 AM the next day. Finally, you will feel - fulfilling that purpose is as important as 'breathing'.

I defined and calibrated my purpose in life several times based on situations & conditions. Example, When I was an engineering student, my purpose was to support my family financially by getting a job, as simple as that, given financial situations in my family, I need to support my mom. I always selected my goals, learnings,  plans, friends, projects, and subjects aligned with my purpose, which was to get a job. I always checked my self am-i-job-ready by attending mock interviews, communication classes, and professional courses. Sometimes I avoided bigger ambitions like doing Masters (MTech) or MBA because I strongly believe in my purpose and I strongly feel my purpose was relevant for that stage.  March 13th, 2006 when I got a job in Wipro Technologies, it was the most fulfilling day of my life, I was really happy that day, I know I was going to support my family from now on. To date, I redefined my purpose to stay relevant to the situation, challenged myself to rediscover my purpose.

Now I am 15 yrs into my Job, have two kids. Learning on how to be a role model for my kids (my son is teaching what not do too many times), I need to support my wife Nikhila to be independent, working women, I need to move up in the job, taking more responsibilities in office, learning new technologies, reading bookings, stay healthy, sleep well, eat good food - lots of goals. It's really important for me to be careful about what are my priorities, what job's or works I need to pick up, where I need pay attention, time and focus, that means, it needs a define a purpose for this stage. After working on this idea to have a purpose definition, I finally came up with a simple one. That's, Be Happy. I know several people said the same on the internet, their purpose of life is to Be Happy, but, How do we find Happiness in everything we touch, feel, work, think & talk. 

Applying Filters: 

It drills down to what choices we are marking on day to day basis, Are we saying "No" if that's not relevant to us, what are the things I evaluate  (Values) &  what guiding rules (Principles) I follow for the tasks I committed.

The finding purpose for various stages or actions or thinkings, several times help me to self-discover my limits and helps me to define new learning goals. I did a lot of mistakes in this journey and I am sure I will be doing in future, but I simply followed & will follow my principle of being honest with myself to accept, retrospect my choices & actions to make things better... take full responsibility for the results. It's not that there is a fixed algorithm or a program I run to check If I can work on something that can make me feel happy. Its a process of self-discovery. Sometimes it's my intuition vs intelligence which kicks in to tell me what's the whole point of doing something. 

Here are ...(Some) Values & Principles I defined for myself:

(Some) Values I defined for myself:

1) Relations 

2) Learning & being challenged 

3) Helping others

4) Financial Independence 

(Some) Principles I defined for myself:

1) Honest

2) Trust 

3) Integrity

4) Leadership

5) Avoid comfort zones & conflicts 

What's Your Choice?

How do you make choices? 

How do you finalize your options?

You remember your last miserably failed decision?

How do you re-calibrate your choices to stay on course?

What makes you think you made the right choice based on the situation? 

When you fail, you take responsibility or blame external factors or influences?

On a day from the moment, we wake up from the bed, till we go back to sleep, At an average human will get around 70K thoughts.  Most of them are about making choices and decisions.

let's see if we can breakdown our choice making process, with two hypothetical situations,

Situation 1: You Found a ten 10$  and 100$ note on a desk, and you are allowed to take only one, which once you choose and why? (Don't read, make your choice & think why?)

My simple answer is 100$ note because it got more value & I can buy or invest more with it if I make this choice.

Situation 2: You got 100$ note and 4 tickets for your families favorite premium show for the coming weekend? What's your choice?

My answer will be premium show tickets, why? that's costly to buy for this weekend, most importantly if I attend that show, I emotionally feel happy and hopefully, my family will be happy too, any journey with family is always memorable.

More I think about how I make my choices, decisions, behavior, communications, actions, retrospection's & gratitude is based on how I "value" the outcomes. Simply, based on my values, or value system. Now, we got a new question (remember, our original question is "What's your choice?") What are your deeply rooted core values? What's are the benefits "value" based decisions system? (We will discuss more in my next blog post)

Let's see how one can define your value system. It's simple(!), just revisit some of your best & worst decision, what instincts made you move that direction? oh, wait, if that doesn't look simple at all, with a daily rate of 70k thoughts per day, If you can't look back! Okay, let's look forward, let's see if we can think about every choice you make now on wards and re-think end of the day or week to retrospect why you made that choice & prepare your core values.

Think about what are your core values? At the end of the day, week, month, a year or even on last day of your life, what do you cherish the most, must be your top value right? 

Will continue to ponder my thoughts about core values based decisions & will share a glimpse of my own values, I worked on it over the last several months, all in my next blog.

Warm regards,

Mohan Vamsi

Tanvi's birth story..

When I saw Tanvi first time, my first thought was like, "Looks like Kovid". Tanvi was born on the perfect score like date in October. In labor room except me, everyone was female, from the moment she was born everyone talking about Tanvi's eyelashes.

I can't imagine, the pain, anxiety, relieve, love, excitement Nikhila experienced in this 9 months journey, hopefully, she forgets everything looking at someone looks like her.

When we told Kovid we going to the hospital, Kovid was super excited to meet his sister, All day he was excited bit shy, bit nervous, a bit like a big brother, a bit of everything. That was the cutest version of my Kovid I ever saw.

Kovid gifted a toy to Tanvi, spent all day with his sister. At the end..."I can take her with me"...

Look at his eyes, I never saw them that anxious :) 

First Time: Kovid met Tanvi 

ఓ పచ్చటి పాఠశాల

తన్నుతాను నిలువుగా చీల్చుకొని..

ప్రతికూల పరిస్థితులకు ఎదురొడ్డి..

నేలను పెకళించి..తన గుండెను, మండే సూర్యుడికి చూపి.. తనలోని జీవానికి అర్థం వెతుకుతూ..విత్తనం చిరు చిగురాకుగా మొక్కగా ఎదిగింది!! 

ప్రతి మొక్క, ఓపికతో, శ్రమతో, ఆశావాదంతో, ఎలా ఎదిగి ఒదిగి ఉండాలో నేరిపే ఓ పచ్చటి పాఠశాల.

ఆయుధప్రేమ?

ఆయుధప్రేమ?

అరాచక..అమానుష..అతిక్రూర...“ఆయుధం”

అమృతతుల్యం..జీవనపరమార్థం..ఆనందం ..“ప్రేమ”

‘ప్రేమ’ రోజున ఓ బిడ్డకు ఆయుధాన్నిచ్చి, పదుల కుటుంబాలకు ప్రేమను దూరం చేసిందెవరు?

ప్రోధున బిడ్డలకు ముద్దులిచ్చి పంపిన తల్లికి, రేయికి శవాన్ని మిగిల్చిందెవ్వరు?

గువ్వలా రివ్వున ఎగరవలసిన పిల్లల భవితను గాలిలో కలిపేసిందెవ్వరు? 

బతుకును సైతం చావులా బ్రతకమని, చావుతప్పి బతికిన పిల్లల మనస్సుని శపించిందెవ్వరు? 

తమ “ప్రాణాలను” ఎర్రటి నెత్తుటిలో చూసుకొని, తమ “ఆశలను” శవాలుగా మోసుకొంటున్న తల్లి తండ్రుల బ్రతుకుకు అర్ధం చెప్పేవారెవరు? 

రాజ్యమా, నీకు పట్టిన ఆయుధ జాడ్యయాకి బదులివ్వు, బిడ్డలను బ్రతకనివ్వు. 

- ఓ తండ్రి