Preaching

to be filled

While dealing with non-humans, this issue comes up frequently. Do you build it, do you buy it. Or do you reverse engineer it or do you invent/develop it from scratch. For example, it is probably not smart to go looking for an animal to kill if you are hungry. It is easier to pick up meat at the super market. At the same time, eating food in a restaurant meant for general public is not a smart idea either. This issue comes up in computer programming also. Do you use Dreamweaver or do you hard code the html? do you write the javascript code from scratch or do you use a library.

The short and obvious answer is "find the right balance". The definition of right is person dependent, it is whatever is good for you. It is true that almost everything in life is about finding balance and the choices we make have consequences and nobody is really sure about what the right balance is. Most people I know are always adjusting in a manner similar to tightrope walk. In this particular conversation, we are going to talk about how we adjust to find the right balance.

If one is hungry and cooked food is available, it would be a balanced approach to eat the cooked food, instead of finding the animal to kill first. If you are in a jungle with no cooked food around, it would be smart to look for an animal to kill because sooner or later we will get hungry and we would need food. Everything in between is an interesting situation that requires some thought.

There is a part of the mind that cares about well being of the self with respect to society. When this part is active, we think about what we can get from society and what we have to do in order to get it. It generates ideas which we try to put in practice. Different people allocate different time to it and the effectiveness of its product also varies.

If we define success by our ability to obtain/achieve what we decided to, then this part of the brain has to be developed well and given sufficient time to do its work. There are other parts of the brain that compete for attention but this must be the differentiating factor between a more successful person vs. a less successful person if everything else is same.

A conversation like this is pointless with a new born baby. A conversation like this is too late with a 80 year old person. With a 40 year person, this conversation is more along the lines of "let us do best we can with the given". However, a young person has unlimited potential and that is the best time to develop this part of the brain. We are not talking about what a person should choose to do, we are talking about how to be better at doing whatever you want to do.

A common attribute of all successful individual is their ability to effectively communicate with their target audience. If there are 10 homeless bums sitting next to a fire on the street on a cold night, they will also develop a pecking order very soon and the views of one person is likely to prevail over others. The decision to attack Iraq may have had input from hundreds of people but at the end, the decision was made by a handful of people and the people who articulated for intervention won that case. I should also note that none of the people who participated in the decision actually went to battlefield with a gun.

There can be a separate discussion on how much time to allocate to this part of brain activity. This discussion is about how to make best use of that time. How can we make this allocation more productive. The proposal is to use the tools available in 2012 for it. The ideas underlying the tools have been around for a long time.

First of all, let me say that I am not making any judgement if one is better than other. I am highlighting a contrast between two thought processes and helping you figure out what is more natural for you. Between me and my mother, for example, she has always been a team player. Her objective was to keep everyone together and have a home that everyone would want to come back to. I am on the rebellious side, I wanted what I wanted and I am not usually willing to give up just because someone else fails to appreciate my wisdom.

You have been part of various teams growing up. You know what a team players does. Each player is assigned a spot and the player is expected to train for it. On the day of match, you are supposed to hold your spot and do the best you can in that role. Should there be a conflict with another team member, you do what is best for the team even if it is not necessarily the best choice for you. A good team player needs a good team to excel. Alex Rodriguez, the most talented baseball player in recent memory, did not win a world series until he came to play with Yankees. Derek Jeter, another very gifted player, had 5 rings in first 6 years with Yankees because the team was winning those days.

A team manager, on the other hand, is usually not playing as part of the team. His job is to put the team together, assign spots to others and then find ways of make a winning team. He is not working with others and compromising where required. He has a set of rules which is same as every other manager and he has to the best he can given the resources. Good managers have won big games with teams containing players that were not the first choice of other managers.

Let us not read the above descriptions as "a team member has no leadership opportunities or a manager never compromises". I am not saying that. I am saying that the roles are different in nature. When you look at yourself in the mirror, what do you see. A team player or the team manager?

The doctor sitting in the community, the lawyers, the bankers in the retail bank branches, the accountants who help people with taxes, the plumbers, electricians, teachers, lawn mowers, carpenters, painters, nurses, engineers are all position players. They all have their specializations and they get paid whatever the market commands. The compensation is driven by supply and demand. If the demand is more than supply, the price goes up. If the supply is more than demand, price comes down. If there was a eye specialist on every street corner, it would cost a lot less to go to one. Like any other team, the quality of a town is a combination of quality of all these factors and how they work together. The land in some towns is worth more than similar land in other towns because of the people who live in that neighborhood. Different person get paid different for doing similar job is a well documented fact.

The leadership role typically involves taking the society forward. The reason western societies are richer and more powerful is because it has a process of creating leaders who take the society forward. The forward movement may be good or bad depending on your political, religious or spiritual beliefs but the society is moving. Life was very different before google, smartphone and navigation systems. In early 70s only 1% of families had microwave owen. In 1986 25% of american families had one. Imagine life without these things. There are still humans in the world who live a good life without electricity, roads and other things that we take for granted. They are powerless to defend themselves against other humans. As long as they are sitting on land that nobody else wants, they can go around their way of life happily. Should someone else want what they have, they will be forced to do it.

The society we live in today is a result of work of lot of other people, none of who exist in physical form today. In a modern society, you take it for granted that you own your possessions and that nobody can take it away from you. Is it the case all over the world? Will you feel comfortable walking around anywhere on the planet earth as you feel in your neighborhood. So, how does one make a society that continues to function as designed even after the death of the visionary who imagined a society. The answer is that each society (organized group of people) have its own way of creating a new generation of leaders.

To make a leader in america, it takes a combination of internal desire and a lot of training. Nobody makes a leader without training and you cannot train everyone to be a leader. A leader can usually find a way to make use of the rest of people in the group (society, company, community). A leader can develop training program for those who want to excel in certain positions. It can find a way to feed those who do not want to do anything so they do not create too much trouble for others. A leaders typically develops certain rules and finds method of enforcement so the team functions as designed. It is not typically a binary relationship where one is leader all the way and other has no leadership role. Between the two extremes of black and white there is a lot of grey.

Coming back to the question, what do you see yourself as when you look in the mirror. Do you want to stand outside the pack or do you want to be part of the herd. Remember, it is not given if one is better than the other. It is an individual choice. If you want to grow up and paint people's nails all working day, there is nothing wrong with it. If that is the case, let us focus on that life and not try to be the person who changed how people live their lives. At the same time, if you have a desire to lead, then let us not waste our time reading romantic stories all the time. Let us train for the job so we can perform when called on stage.

1. A dog can be on leash or it can be unleashed.
2. Both live their life, limited as life is.
3. The challenge is to figure out the balance between two.
4. In the wild, the winners are likely to be unleashed.
5. In the predictable world, leashed ones are likely to peform better under guidance and training.
6. it is also the function of the person who is performing. some are more suited for one terrain and others are suited for another terrain.
7. As one goes through the college process, it is a decision point where this thought is to be considered.
8. in my imagination, we are best served by unleashing.
9. I do not believe we are yet part of mainstream america where our surrounding will support us.
10. We were fortunate to be part of a stream that had a good run in last few years but terrain changes over distance.
11. The mainstram continues to flow, the side streams are not so fortunate.
12. A leashed person can only go as far as the leashholder allows.
13. but in some environment, a guided person is likely to go farther than someone who does not know the way.
14. On the other hand, a leashed person is likely to be lost if the map and paved road is missing. that is one thought.
15. The other thought is about skill and interest.
16. There are three things I love as you know.
17. However, to enable myself to enjoy what I love, I need to do something that someone is willing to pay me money for.
18. The question is what you can do to enable you to experience what you like.
19. Usually the two are not same, in some exceptions they are.
20. college gives you widest possible exposure.
21. you never had it before and you will never have it after you leave college.
22. This applies both to personal life (who you associate with) and external life (what you do with your time from waking up to sleep time.
23. You want to figure out what type of people you like and what you are good at, something that people will do business with you for.
24. but if unleashed life is not the right match for you and you want to be guided, it is also a good time to figure it out.
25. You want to figure it out sooner rather than later.
26. We can work on the leash and put forward a point of view.
27. However, it only works when you are open to it.
28. A conflict within a family unit does not make anyone a winner.
29. college is also the time to have some fun.The fun that you can only have while in college.
30. it is also a very short interval in life. Just like high school got over, college will be over soon.
31. so, my thought of the day is have fun, keep an eye on future, decide if unleashing works or if guided life is better for you and then we can work with the reality.
32. Let us not be lost forever, constanly trying to learn by mistakes. Making mistake is only one of many ways of learning.

It is observed that most living beings are programmed to feel secure. We are not meant to be carefree creatures and either by birth or by training, we are constantly seeking security, a place where we feel secure. When we find our secure place, we stop and then defend it. Until we find it, we are running around to find it.At the same time, there are some of us who step away from our comfort zone and seek new things and try to experience stuff that people in comfort of their security do not. It is a differentiating factor among us and we ignore it at our own peril.

The same idea is captured in games like musical chairs. You run around whiel the music is on, you know the music will stop and if you are left without a chair, you will be out of the game and you are encouraged to stay within the game because there is some prize at the end of the game. And you find it in many other aspects of life. Get good grades in school, get into a good college followed by a good job, regular income and pension. If you have a family business, get ready to be deployed in it, serve the family head for some time before taking over and passing it to next generation. Most people I know are playing the game of musical chair - oh lord, please let me find a chair before the music stops. Like the game, people try all kinds of shenanigans to hold on to chair. Some hold one chair until the next one is available, some push people around. Some just give up and find a place on the side to be the audience and cheer the remaining fighters.

Clearly, there is a lot of value in security. Nobody wants to rest in the rain, we all need a shelter. Clearly both extremes, staying in comfort zone all the time and living life without any comfort zone, add little value to the life. Frequently, life is not binary between staying within a hole and sticking the neck out. Different people take different risks based on their comfort. One can get more value out of breathing time by understanding the risk profile of oneself and that of others. In a social setting, we are impacted by the behavior of others.

One frequent source of disappointments when there is a difference of opinion about what risk one should take. Someone exercising a different risk profile than what I expect is usually cause of disagreements. This is in addition to break between result expectations and comfort with the risks. In my case, I want my daughter to be super successful but I am uncomfortable with any risk she may take.

To be most productive, I should consider the following.

1. What risks am i capable of taking. Am I taking all the risks that I want to and can and avoid taking risks that are beyond my capabilities.
2. What is the risk perception and the idea of a comfort zone of people around me
3. To what extent, I can convince them to change their risk perception so they can contribute more to my growth.

1. The critical change is to know that winning is a habit, not a project.
2. at every turn in life, you want to know what the win is, how you get there and then think about the next win.
3. it can also make your personal life miserable in some situations but at the end of the day winners are better off than losers.
4. Today is the first day of rest of your life.
5. God will give you only finite count of opportunities to wake up.
6. Every time, you wake up is an opportunity to make rest of your life better.
7. That is the best way to make use of gift of life.

Winners	Losers
winners are able to see a path forward for them	losers tend to find safety in groups.
winners tend to take risks	losers are risk averse
winners have faith	losers depend on wishful thinking
winners try new ideas	losers stick with ideas even if they always fail.
winners focus on productive tasks	losers get stuck on distractions
winners measure success by how far they travelled	losers focus on if they can dedend their actions.
winners are planning for battles that will come 10 years from now	losers talk about their luck in the battle 5 years ago.
winners build long term alliances with bigger persons	losers feel good comparing themselves to peopel worse than them.
winners look forward	losers are looking in rear view mirror
winners know what is good for them.	losers know how they can hurt themselves to get sympathy from company around.
winners save their energy to work on things that can make an improvement	losers find ways to energy on stuff that means nothing.
winners win something everyday	losers lose something everytday.
winners learn from their losses count their wins	Losers feel comfort in their loss are embarassed by thier wins.
Winners train	losers blame
Winners are unaffected by the results	Losers are constantly focused on results.