Wake up

Different persons wake up differently.

Some wake up with a shock. They are shocked as they realise they have woken up late and they have to rush to catch up on commitments.

Some wake up with anger. They growl and roar against the one who may have directly or indirectly roused them out of their sleep.

Some wake up with an air of resignation. They do not like getting out of bed but they also feel helpless about it.

Some wake up lazy and sleepy. They drag themselves to daily chores like washing their face with eyes closed.

And there are others who choose a response that was suggested to me by my favourite muse, Fr Peter Gatti – an Italian priest who was my teacher for just one year at Don Bosco School. But he continued to be an inspirational influence for a few more significant years of my life, till death snatched him away.

Fr Gatti would repeatedly urge us, ‘when you wake up, you must be happy!’ …and each time, he would add, ‘ask why?’… and each time, we would comply, ‘Why?’ … and he would declare, ‘because, you are alive! ... because you did not die in your sleep!!’


The simply act of waking up can make or break our mood for the day. We must choose to take ownership of the gift of life and look forward to the journey across opportunities and challenges. It is said so well that well begun is half done. When we wake up with a cheer, we choose to celebrate life!



Each day is a gift, truly dear…

Wake up to it with a big cheer!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Momentum

‘Hesitation is bad, momentum is good’
- Mathew Childs, veteran rock climber
during his TED talk presentation on ‘9 life lessons from rock climbing’.

Mathew Childs was speaking in context of ‘friction climbing’ where the rock surface does not have any sort of hard positive edges. Hence in friction climbing, you are climbing on little dimples and nubbins in the rock. The most friction you have is when you first put your hand or your foot on the rock. And then from that point on, you're basically falling. So momentum is good. To stop, to hesitate is bad.
Try holding a small weight in your hand with your arm outstretched and parallel to the ground. With every passing moment, the object seems to get heavier and the elbow and shoulder joints begin to hurt increasingly to the point of becoming unbearable. However, if you were to keep moving the object between your two hands and keep moving continuously, the task remains easy.

Consider our own predicament. When we maintain momentum we move easy. But if we pause too long, we get weighed down. Hence, we need to keep moving. Not just during a task, but keep moving across tasks… doing different tasks! Too much of hesitation pulls you back but maintaining momentum will ensure that you never feel the heaviness that comes from hesitation.

Don’t you stay where you earlier stood…
Keeping up the momentum is truly good!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Cog

In my training workshops, I use the video ‘Cog’ to rationalize roles in teams. The ‘Cog’ is an advertisement made by Honda in 2003 to promote the Accord car. It opens with a transmission bearing rolling down a board triggering a domino chain of reactions between a gear wheel cog, camshaft and pulley wheel, automated water sensors, wiper blades and other parts of a disassembled Accord.

The interactions grow from simple collisions to ziplines made from cable, scales and see-saws constructed from carefully balanced parts. The sequence ends when the button of an electronic key fob is pressed, closing the hatchback of a fully assembled Honda Accord on a carefully balanced trailer. The car rolls off of the trailer, while the narrator asks ‘Isn't it nice when things just work?’

As the video concludes, I point three types of parts in a car: functional ones which make it move effectively; comfort ones which provide relief to the occupants and aesthetic parts which give the vehicle an attractive look. Similarly, teams have members who are the drivers of the team, the ones who provide for logistics as well as those who make the working environment a beautiful place to be in.

A cog is a tooth of a gear or cogwheel. It is also used to refer to the gear itself. A cog engages with another cog and motion in one results in motion of the other. Similarly, we see teams work like a cog if team members engage with each other and set in motion other members, by influence and inspiration.

Things work nicely if everyone plays their part in the cog! However it is important to recognise that though we may play greater or humbler roles, but it is collectively that we add value to our teamwork. After all, the value of the car is not dependent only on its functional forte or aesthetic looks or comfort quotient... it is together that all parts in the cog determine the worth of the vehicle.

Members determine the worth of a team
By playing their part in the cog scheme!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Can’t circumvent

Every visitor to Pedro’s college was treated to the spectacle of his special ability to jump over ten steps from the mid-landing of the staircase to the landing below. However, one visitor was not amused. He was an athlete and sought to prove that Pedro’s feat was ordinary.

Pedro pleaded with him not to try it out. It was not prudent for a winner athlete to consider an ordinary person’s feat as a challenge. But the athlete would have none of it. He went up to the mid landing and jumped off only to fall spread-eagled on to the last three steps.

Pedro helped him to his feet and told him an enduring lesson. Pedro had initially started jumping off the fourth step. After a few days he moved to the next step. One step at a time over four months, he was able to develop the skill of jumping from the tenth step. Pedro asked the athlete, ‘why did you go straight to the tenth step?’

Things are not always as easy as they seem. It is pertinent to note that we cannot circumvent the journey to acquire the abilities of those who make it seem easy. We can cover ground faster by putting in more effort and following a well planned process. But things will not happen immediately.

Even if we are better equipped, than the achiever, we cannot circumvent the distance by taking shortcuts. We get better only by aligning to a process that requires time, thought and most importantly confidence that is not clouded by conceit.

Slow and sure... one step at each instance…
we can’t circumvent the journey’s distance!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Imitation

An Aesop’s fable was set at a village fair. A mimic made people laugh by imitating the cries of various animals. He finished off by squeaking like a pig to a thunderous applause. But a man intervened to say: ‘That’s not a pig's squeak! Give me till tomorrow to show you a real one.’

Next day, he appeared on the stage, and putting his head down squealed until the spectators booed him and asked him to stop his lousy imitation. He held up a real little pig that had been making the squealing sound.

So often, so many of us applaud an imitation and ridicule the real thing. We are aloof from real experiences and we end up indulging in imitations. We push ourselves to the point of accepting the fake for the real and treat the real as fake.


We are born with an open mind. Our observations are keen and insightful. But as we grow up we tend to become restrictive in using our senses sufficiently. On the other hand we are fast to jump to conclusions and hence easily get swayed by the illusion of the senses.

So often, so many of us jump to conclusions and mistake imitation for reality. We must escape the illusion behind various imitations by using an open mind and alert senses. Otherwise we will be taken for a jolly ride whether in history or economics, personal or social life, real or virtual world.

We deceive our imagination
By seeing validity in imitation!

- Pravin K. Sabnis