Blog Shifted

I thank every reader who has spent some time with my posts. I invite you visit my blog which has my writings in a new avatar: http://vinsomequotes.wordpress.com/. I am discontinuing this blog. My special thanks to all those who have been following my blog. Thank you for your support all the while. And thank you blogspot for providing a platform to express my thoughts.

Regards,

Vinay Sarda

Truth - Lies

Truth can not be created. It can only be discovered. A lie has to created. A lie has to be invented.

Truths are like basics they might remain unexplored, undiscovered, silent but they keep working. A lie starts working only after it is communicated.

A lie is detected. A truth is realized.

Truths do not depend on the explorer. Lies depend on the inventor.

Lies have different versions. Truths have different representations.

Lies lie in answers. Truths lie in questions.

The moment you realize the truth you can detect a lie. Whereas detection of a lie does not guarantee the discovery of truth.

There is a possibility of existence of The Ultimate Truth. There can never be The Ultimate Lie.

Idea |Trap|

An idea can change your life; especially a wrong one. More especially when it is the only one that you firmly believe in. 

When I say ‘idea’ I don’t mean a creative solution. I mean a thought or an imagination or an ideology or a principle. These ideas could also be in the form of a concept, theory, philosophy, person, or any entity.

I would use a term ‘Idea Trap’ for the wrongly understood ideas that prove counterproductive. Idea traps are like mirages that make you head in wrong direction. They are fantasies. Illusions. They are half truth.

Example: Consider an idea ‘Work hard enough and you will succeed’. The idea looks perfect. An ideal quote to be put on the flaps of the prism shaped calendar on your office table. Raju reads it. He also reads about Dr. Kalam/ Sachin Tendulkar, hard work and success. And he forms an idea ‘Work hard enough and you will succeed’. He devotes himself to this idea completely and works hard, very hard. He becomes just like Boxer (the horse) from George Orwell whose answer to every problem, every setback, was 'I will work harder!'But what he does not understand is that ‘The common belief that everyone can do anything if they just try hard enough is a formula for inefficiency at best and for complete failure at worst.’ It’s not always about capability. It’s often also about suitability.

Here are some of the traps:

1.    Personality trap: Whatever my papa/guru/teacher speaks is always correct. Chanakya was the best person and only his way of managing is right way. Marketing ends after Peter F Druker.Etc.

2.    Theory trap: Everything depends upon the genes/ kundali/ vastu/systems thinking/ marketing/ design thinking/ science/ blue ocean strategy/ game theory etc.Everything is written. No one can change his destiny. Or man writes his own destiny.

3.    Memory trap: Memory trap is the result of unwise extrapolation of memories or generalisation of a rare events. He helped me - He is a nice guy- He will never do wrong with anybody (and vice versa). ‘This always happens to me. I fail at the last moment’. ‘Whenever I don’t listen to my mom things go wrong’.

4.    Religion or philosophy trap: The religious text of a particular religion being supreme. Meditation is everything. Karma is everything. Oshos philosophy is the best. etc.

5.   Imagination trap: You imagine the future and consider that it will be as per your calculation. You believe the idea that you have is the next Facebook the victim thinks he is the next Zukerberg. Most start-ups are victim to this, wrong investments occur due to imagination trap.

The victims of idea trap might not talk about above beliefs clearly because they don’t want to sound ‘closed minded’ but deep within they hold these ideas so close to their eyes that they can’t see anything else but the idea. Just like the famous jargon Marketing Myopia. They see everything in the light of that idea. They are possessed by it. They are prone to the idea trap and they don’t accept it, because they don’t realize it.

One of the most common idea trap is a regular phenomenon amongst teenagers. It is ‘Infatuation’. First infatuation is often mistaken for love. So is the case with the second one. It is only after being shattered twice or thrice Raju understands what is it truly. He has been through the trap during his schools and then college and now he knows when it is a trap.

The ideal tool to get out of the trap is ‘awareness’. The moment you are aware the trap vanishes. First you got to realize there exists such traps and that you have been through such traps and it is a regular phenomenon. To avoid an Idea trap you need to be 'aware & alert'.

I would say 'Ideas' are 'software'. 'Idea Traps' are 'malwares'. Only when you are aware and accept that you can be a victim of malware, you will be alert to scan for them. 

For those who have seen the movie ‘Inception’, the idea (malware) is installed in the mind by entering into dreams and creating the situation so that the victim finally thinks that it is his own idea and destroys himself. To be alert during the dream every conspirator has a tool to indicate if he is in dream or a real world. That tool is the tool that keeps you away from idea traps. Find out a way to know if you are into an idea trap or not.

The people who want to get their friends out of some idea trap (analogy- charming girl and infatuation) must not negate the malware directly. The victim will not accept it. He is blind. He is in love (read infatuation) with the idea. A better way to help your friend would be to take lessons from Inception and make some arrangements by which in very subtle way you install a new idea in the mind of the victim and he starts accepting it as his 'own' idea. Present to him another ‘charming girl’ who again infatuates him and if he accepts the new idea (new girl) he will lose focus from the malware (past girl) and slowly after some introspection he will realise that it was infatuation in both the cases. The charming girl could be some book or movie or personality or philosophy a new idea/ concept. The two ideas should be mutually exclusive e.g Raju’s malware is ‘hard work pays’ so you install a totally different yet not opposite software ‘chanakya’s management’.

Hope you liked the idea of ‘Idea Trap’!

Confidence - Courage

Here are a few points that tickled my brain while thinking over the topic:

• Confidence is to think. Courage is to believe.
• Confidence is to analyze. Courage is to act.
• Confidence is to know the way out. Courage is to believe that you will find and get through a way out.
• Confidence is a result of reasons and calculations. Courage is a result of optimism and self belief.
• Confidence is scientific. Courage is humane. 
• Confident people compare options. Courageous people either create or kill the options.
• You can have confidence in others. But can never have courage in others.
• Confidence makes you ask ‘what all can happen?’. Courage makes you answer ‘No matter whatever happens, we will see’.

True that confidence helps to build courage and vice-versa.

But it is also true that no matter how confident you are, you still might not have the courage to act based on your confidence. A great business idea can remain just a business idea because of lack of courage. You might be confident about the hindu philosophy of birth and rebirth but you can still be afraid of death.

When you gamble you don’t have confidence in your luck (infact you know the chances are trivial) but you still show the courage to gamble. A soldier or a VC is never sure but he is courageous.

Confidence comes from study, understanding, calculations or miscalculations, reasoning, belief.

Courage comes either from- ignorance (pseudo courage or fantasy) or self belief (I can and I will) or optimistic thinking (this time i will win the gamble) complete faith in something (soldiers for their nation) or because of situation (fire in your house and you act like a hero) and experience (from others and self).

Still, I don't think that the two words not mutually exclusive. Courage can be an act based on extended self confidence. Confidence can be the useful product produced silently by the courage in you.


Choose to be Confident. Choose to be Courageous.

Lost | Confused

There are moments in life when you are lost. And there are moments when you are confused.

Confusion is a state of mind when you 'think' that there exist more than one equally good or bad option and you got to choose one out of them. The question being- "which one"?

Being lost is a state when you don't "where are you standing", "where do you want to go (next)?" and once you know the first two, the third is "how will you get there?".

To give you an analogy: Consider that last night you slept in your bedroom but today when you opened your eyes you found yourself in a jungle. You don't know where you are, where you should go next (search for a highway or a tribe or a river bank to seek help from fisherman. You don't even know if these options exist or not) and you don’t know how to get there. In simple words you are "Lost".

Being confused is a similar situation where you have a GPS device. So the confusion is which way to follow. Should you climb the mountain or cross the lake. Which is less risky and easier?

You are lost when you feel that there are no boundaries to distinguish between right or wrong, good and bad. It’s a situation of complete darkness. In darkness you can’t see the boundaries. You cannot see what exists and what doesn't. You cannot even see yourself. In the battle field of Kurkshetra, Arjuna was lost. At such times one has to ask the most difficult yet the most important questions. The answers to these questions provide the light needed in such darkness.

There are three ways to avoid confusion. First: following someone blindly; second: avoiding the knowledge of existence of other options. But a better way to avoid confusion is the third way:  understanding the technicalities, utilities and risks associated with the options and select the one based on suitability. Be it your career, business, relationship, life or a small thing like buying a smart phone you must be smart enough to the cumulative effects of different permutations and combinations i.e know the options and the effects in detail.

In simple words to avoid being lost one must look inwards. To avoid confusion one must look outwards. But to take the right decision one must look at both the sides simultaneously.

You are lost when you ‘feel’ that you don’t know anything. You are confused when you ‘think’ that you know but you are not sure.

The one inside yoU!

“Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.” 
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
― Albert Camus

Its better to spend time with yourself than to introspect yourself.
Generally when you introspect, you will interview yourself. You force yourself to answer questions.  Only a conscious mind can question. When you are consciously asking question you force yourself to answer consciously and you tend to connect two disjoint thoughts, do some reverse reasoning and come up with answers to justify things and actions, you don't find the reason so you create one.

To spend quality time with yourself can never mean that you keep on questioning your subconscious mind like an annoying reporter. When you spend time with yourself you are not an interviewer. You are an observer, a listener, a companion. Spending time with yourself means waiting for your mind to speak, enjoying the silence, giving time to your inner-self to boot. I have used the word "spending" and not "using" cause you don't be with yourself with any intention or purpose, you can't start with the aim of "utilizing" your time with yourself. You don't try anything (except ignoring distractions and which over the period of time don't bother you). Its like watching a dance. You enjoy the steps, you enjoy the movements of pause, you don't ask a dancer to make the next move quickly, you don't ask how and why did you not take one more round; instead you just observe and enjoy the dance. 

“In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.” 

Inner dance answers all of the questions automatically, because when you consciously ask yourself a question your subconscious mind also registers it. This is because your subconscious mind is always awake. Only when u let your subconscious mind to flow, you can get the answers to the most complex and important questions in life. This occurs at the right time these answers also connect the missing links but easily without using any reverse engineering technique. Archimedes discovered his buoyancy to displacement principle when he asked the question consciously but got his answer when he was expecting it the least. 

When you have spent enough time watching the beautiful dance, your inner-self invites you again and again to watch it and then just like your body tells you that it wants food your dancer sends you the signal that it wants to talk to you. Unless you once again watch the dance you feel restless. This article was written after I felt the urge to see the dance. I did not think over the points for the article. They just occurred to me and I kept writing. 

"Silence is all that is needed, and everything else follows on its own accord" -Osho

Beautiful Intelligence and Intelligent Beauty.

Intelligence is being conscious. Beauty is being subconscious.

Intelligence is driven by a pilot. Beauty is always on autopilot.

Intelligence causes “How?”. Beauty causes “Oh Wow”.

Intelligence is thinking. Beauty is non thinking.

Intelligence is artificial. Beauty is natural.

Intelligence is complex. Beauty is simple. When intelligence becomes natural it becomes beautiful.

Intelligence is divisible. Beauty is non divisible.

Beauty is DNA. Intelligence is to decode DNA.

Intelligence has some intent. Beauty is intent less.

Intelligence is a force. Beauty is a flow.

Intelligence is always tensed between past and future. Beauty has only present.

Intelligence is concentration. Beauty is meditation.

Intelligence is “Is this it?”. Beauty is “This is it.”

Mathematically: Intelligence is a segment. Beauty is a number line, a circle.

Intelligence is when you are learning. Beauty is when that learning has got ingrained in you. Intelligence is practice. Well practised intelligence is beauty.

Intelligence is like a dance step. Beauty is dance itself. Intelligence is like music notes. Beauty is the music itself.

Intelligence is a move by Viswanathan Anand. Beauty is a shot by Virendar Sehwag.

Intelligence is am "I" am Vinay Sarda. Beauty is "i" am Vinay Sarda.

Intelligence will debate about Intelligence Vs Beauty. Beauty will talk about "Beautiful Intelligence and Intelligent Beauty".

Choose to be beautifully intelligent. Choose to be intelligently beautiful.