When The Penny Drops

To solve any problems, we need to have the outcome in mind. Without any outcome in my mind, you can only avoid the problem, delay the response, or try to blend in, at the expense of your well-being.    The effective way to solve any interpersonal problem, or any problem in our lives is to objectively consider how the other person is contributing to the problem, what my response is, and how that dynamic is creating the problem.  But, before that, to analyse the situation effectively, we need to ask ourselves some questions.   The famous 9 questions / well-formed outcomes we need to ask are: What do you want (think positive):  we need to fix the goal and think how we will be benefited if we achieve what we want, not what we want to avoid.  This is not to say that we'll put what we want negatively or as a reaction to something.  I've prepared a comparison table below and I'll show how important it is for us to interpret a problem corre...

"  Be like water making its way through cracks.  Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around it or through it.  If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.  Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes a bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot.  Now, water can flow or it can crash.  Be water, my friend." - Bruce Lee (Founder of the Jeet Kune Do philosophy of life and framework of martial art fight system).     At the end of the day, it's how we see things that happen to us that matters if we want to become successful.  If we interpret the events in terms of their long-term consequences on the situation and the people concerned then we prove our long-term focus.  But is that always useful?  We then tend to focus on values but not on long-term res...

Year 2020: A colleague's tribute for me in my funeral: Nayeem.  As his colleague and well-wisher, I had the opportunity to witness how he evolved as a person in his career from one position to the next and how he lit up our lives with his charismatic presence.  In terms of dealing with people, he had the extraordinary ability to mingle with clients and colleagues from all the social classes and easily relate to them.  Does that means he lacked a sense of direction when it came to selecting whom to hang around with?  Certainly not.  He had a clear sense of direction and what he wanted to do with his life.  As far as I can remember, he made "giving voice to those who don't have a voice" his life's vision.  Some people enjoy building relationships just for the sake it, the shotgun social networkers we call them !  I think our Nayeem was a strategic networker - he built his relationships with industry colleagues who were in the same boat as him...