Ananth Gunasekaran's Blog

There are numerous people around us to tell us why we shouldn't do something. They tell us not to take risks, not to upset the balance which is imaginary. This is one incident that impacted me.
As part of my job, I had to visit a person in Nagercoil and train some of his employees. After the training, I sat with him and the conversation spiralled out of the gamut of my job. This was an inspiring person who was always motivated and bubbling with energy. 
He told me his story, his rise as a businessman to become one of the wealthiest men in the region. I told him I wanted to do something like that myself and I laid bare a few ideas I had been toying with. When I said, ‘This is what I want to do, but I don't know how to make money out of it’, he laughed.
‘Forget the money.’, he said, rubbing his head, ‘It will come’. This made me pay more attention to his words.
‘When you are in the dark, you don't know where the bell is,' he said, expecting acknowledgement from me. I did not stir.‘But you have so many pebbles’, he said and smiled. I smiled back.‘Keep throwing the pebbles. At least one of them will hit the bell’, he said, ‘Once you hit the bell, there’s no stopping you, and this analogy is not applicable to those who want just money'
What he said was inspiring to me but there was something else that had always been nagging me.
‘What about the expectation placed on us? Family, friends and relatives expect a guy of my age to earn substantially,  to have a car, to have bought a house and be paying monthly instalments for a home loan and many such things’
‘Yes, such people are necessary.’, the man said coolly.
‘You mean, people like me or people like the relatives?’
‘We can employ both,' he said and laughed. I couldn't help but join him.
‘Some people hit the bell after throwing many pebbles, Some people hit it with fewer pebbles. That’s okay’
I nodded.
‘ Most people don't even throw pebbles. Don't be one of them and don't listen to them ’





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You may have come across any number of articles, speeches and books on time management.They are all spoken and written with either of these assumptions: we don’t understand time or we understand time. Unfortunately, all the people do not fit into these two categories.The perception of time is highly subjective. It differs from country to country, city to city, person to person and for the same individual, time to time.At times, we find ourselves behaving like we have no time to live. Other times we find ourselves relaxed as if we have all the time in the world. A self soothing argument would be that we have to do some tasks urgently and some others, at our leisure. And neither of these can be declared as right or wrong.
What the time management experts are trying to tell us is this.(Read the italicised paragraph more than once. It contains a valuable message)
This moment that you are reading this particular word is the moment you live in. Even the ‘particular word’ changed by the time you finished this sentence. The moment you are living in now, is this moment that you are looking at this full stop.So you see how it works?When you read this sentence, you read this particular word. You may refer to the previous words to make sense of the current word you are reading and the words you are about to read.You were about to read the words ‘about to read’ in the previous sentence but, by the time you finished reading them, they were already in the past and so are all the words including this last one.

We can dream about the future and make plans for the future, but we cannot live in the future. When we come to the future, it becomes the present and before we can realize, it becomes the past.You reap what you sow.You can sow only in the present. You can reap only in the present.You can reap in the ‘present’ what you had sown in the ‘present’ that went by already.Life is happening now.An understanding of this reality can have profound impact on our perspective.The most successful people are the ones who have a consistent perspective about time. They do not let their perspective of time change according to their needs and the urgency of their tasks.If they find themselves straying away, they pull themselves back in.
Imagine that your perspective of time is a rope tied from point A to point B. If it is tight, it can guide you from point A to point B. If it is loose, it comes with you without resistance, in whatever direction you take it. You may or may not reach point B.
Importantly, point B has different meaning for different people.

Let's all live in the present. Now!Wish you all the best!

 I wrote this article in my 'present' and you are have just finished reading it in your present.

A few weeks ago, a member of the middle level management in our company called us, three new recruits, to his cabin. We expected to hear some encouraging words.‘You are Management Trainees’, he said, ‘So which are you, Managers or Trainees?’
I found the question a little stupid.

‘So you guys aspire to be in the CXO league someday?’ he asked.We answered in the affirmative.

‘How many years do you think you will take to reach there?’, he asked.The answers were 10, 20 and 25 years. He began laughing aloud.

‘If you become CXOs in 10 years, where will I be?’, he asked, ‘I still have over 12 years of service left.’I felt my positivity draining. He then said, ‘I have worked for 22 years in this industry. Yet I am 5 levels below the CEO. When I entered the industry 22 years back, all 37 in my batch aspired to reach the CXO league. None of them have managed to do that till now’

The three of us remained silent. I thought he was trying to motivate us in some way.‘So, you should understand that’, he continued, ‘not everyone can be a CEO. You are trainees. Aspiring to become CXOs is not wise, if you ask me. Be happy with what you have and do your job properly. Do you understand?’

We nodded and left his cabin. The other two trainees too felt drained of energy after spending a few minutes with the person. I knew I had to work on myself to handle such negativity better.

When I was 14, I broke my arm. ‘Monteggia fracture dislocation’, the scan report said. ‘You can hope to recover in 3 months’, the doctor said after the surgery, ‘if you eat healthful food and take rest’

Many who saw me with the plaster and sling invariably told me, ‘Don’t do any monkey business. Keep your arm safe’Some added, ‘Once a joint is dislocated, it will keep happening again and again. So you have to be very careful’. I remember I felt drained of energy whenever I heard such comments.

About twenty days after the surgery, I met a gentleman. He asked me how I broke my arm. I explained to him how I made a judgement error while swinging from one bar (parallel bars) to another and fell.He smiled at me and said, ‘So you like gymnastics’

‘Yes’, I said.‘Very good! Don’t worry about this injury. It will heal.’ he said, ‘Very soon you will recover and get back to swinging from one bar to another but this time’, he paused, ‘with stronger arms.’ 
I recovered in less than two months. The person was an army man.

A few days back, I attended a behavioural training session conducted by a seventy one year old gentleman.His closing words on the first day of training had a profound effect on me.

‘I was informed about this session about 4 months back. From then on, I have been preparing myself to be of value to you. Though we met only today, you have been in my thoughts every day, for 4 months. So, you are part of my life. Thank you’This person seemed to emit some sort of energy that made me feel good about myself. I made a note to tell him about it.
‘You will feel positive around me’, he said as if he heard my thoughts, ‘because I bring with me immense goodwill’.


I never understood what goodwill meant, until this incident took place. Now I have the answer to the question the person I described first had asked, ‘If you become CXOs in 10 years, where will I be?’
My answer: ‘I don’t know if I’ll be CXO in ten years. But I sincerely wish you realise that positive intentions and a few positive words can make another person’s life much better and eventually, yours. This realisation may take your higher than CXO tags can take you. I wish this upon you with immense goodwill’
I wish to meet more people like the other two gentlemen I have described. I also wish more people meet these two gentlemen. Theirs is the league I aspire to be in.Maybe awesome CXOs crop out of this league.Sam Houston, former American politician says, 'A leader is someone who helps improve the lives of other people or improve the system they live under'

There was a family in our neighbourhood. Whenever they brought us any delicacy, my sister would sigh because sweets were always followed by requests for favours, rather demands. They have an impeccable track record.
They believe that it is courtesy to gift something before asking the person a favour. They think it makes the receiver of the gift, obliged to oblige. They also think the other person would be flattered. Worst of all, they think the other person expects something in return for the favour.

My colleague, a jolly fellow, is new to this city. He is put up about twelve kilometres away from our workplace and unfortunately, doesn’t own a vehicle. He asked a few colleagues if they were headed in the direction of his place. They answered in the negative.
While waiting outside the office premises, we noticed another colleague struggling to take his motorcycle out of the parking lot. The steering of his motorcycle got entangled with that of another and he seemed to lose balance. Before I could assess if he needed help, my friend rushed to help the struggling man. After moving the motorcycle out of the parking area without pushing down any other motorcycle, my friend had a conversation with the other colleague.He then walked back to where I was waiting.
‘So, he too refused to take you?’ I asked.‘Take me where?’ he asked.‘Didn’t you ask him if he was going towards your place?’, I asked.‘Oh no! We shouldn’t ask for a favour immediately after offering help’‘Why?’‘It would appear like I helped him just to ask for a favour in return’‘Why are you bothered about what he would think?’‘I am not bothered about what he would think. I am bothered about how he would feel, because that’s what he would remember about me’
It made sense.

In a bank, while waiting for our turn to meet the manager, I noticed my father watching something keenly. I followed his gaze and saw a toddler sitting on the floor. The kid looked around for a while and then began to crawl under the chairs in the waiting area. She bumped her head on some chairs but she kept going. She stopped and smiled when she neared a piece of shiny paper. She sat, picked the paper and began exploring. She looked around momentarily; probably searching for her parents, then went back to exploring her new-found treasure. Nobody disturbed her. She often smiled to herself.Suddenly, the mother appeared, lifted the kid from under the chair and carried her to one of the counters in the bank.The kid fiddled with the paper she had picked. The mother noticed the paper, gently took it from the kid and dropped it on the floor.The kid looked at the mother for a moment with a confused expression and then began to wail.The mother was embarrassed as she got the attention of everyone in the bank.My father smiled. I smiled too.‘Why are you smiling?’ he asked me.‘Nothing’‘Tell me. What did you see?’‘The kid picked a paper. The mother took the paper away. The kid is crying now’‘Is that all you saw?’‘Yes. That’s what happened right?’‘Let’s review it in detail. The kid sat on the floor and looked around. She set her eyes on the shiny piece of paper. She went after it. She bumped her head into many chairs. It must have hurt but she did not care. She went on and did not stop until she had that shiny piece of paper in her hand. She smiled to herself.‘Her mother came and picked her. She didn't cry. The paper was snatched from her. She didn't cry.‘She cried’, I butted in.‘No she didn't cry when the paper was taken away. She looked at her mother for a moment and then began to cry, rubbing her head. I looked at the kid immediately. She was still crying and was vehemently rubbing her head.‘So’, I said, ‘when the thing she desired was taken away from her, she felt the pain in her head’‘Well, that is one way of seeing it’‘What other way can there be?’ I asked.‘Can you not also say that the pain did not stop her from getting what she wanted?’I saw the same incident as my father. But he saw something more. He saw something inspirational in what I saw as a mere incident. Perspective matters.There is something to learn from every incident and every person.‘Well’ he said, ‘when we have a goal and we are after it with all our heart, the obstacles don’t matter.’‘But the baby began crying when she lost the paper’, I said.‘That’s what most of us do. We cry when we fail.’ He smiled. I did not.