Category Archives: Life & People

Life & People

Branding moments…

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Don’t we all go crazy for brands? We have a favorite brand for everything – from cola to cars. We even brand people around us, by keeping names that are easier to remember and fun to call out. Then why don’t we brand the greatest moments of our lives?

Consider this: you went on a date that was really great – something that made you realize the meaning of ‘awesomeness’. Then why don’t you just go ahead and call it ‘Awesomeness Redefined’? Isn’t that sweet? ‘Date’ is just used as a homophone here; you can go on to brand every notable event in your life. And this need not be the good ones only, after all people have tagged Bloody Sunday & Black Friday (who knew that such a catastrophic day could leave people eagerly waiting on streets?).

And trust me, there are notable advantages of doing this:

  • It will make it easier to remember that event, thereby avoiding embarrassment & tirade that follows when you miss it
  • When it appears on your calendar, not only will it bring you a smile but it will also help restore the excitement
  • Its cryptic enough to be understood by anyone other than those involved, making it ideal for things that make you hide your head in the sand
  • It can be used as a good reason to get away. Think about it: When you’re celebrating that date 15 years hence & have to leave kids behind, you can disguise ‘awesomeness redefined’ as being anything else: from a live music concert to a food festival to a session on ‘better parenting’. And your kids won’t really mind you going for the last one 😉

So what brands have you created yet? And take my advice, bringing in an advertising professional in your life just to help you with this is simply an overkill. However, there could be other, better reasons to do so 😀

Life & People

Guide to a Better Life

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Randy Pausch, 47 yrs old Computer Science lecturer from Carnegie Mellon University, died of pancreatic cancer in 2008. Before his death, he wrote a book ‘The last lecture” , one of the best sellers in 2007. What a legacy to leave behind. In a letter to his wife and his children, he wrote this beautiful “guide to a better life” for his wife and children to follow.

Personality:
1. Don’t compare your life to others’. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
2. Don’t have negative thoughts of things you cannot control.Instead invest your energy in the positive present moment.
3. Don’t over do; keep your limits.
4. Don’t take yourself so seriously; no one else does.
5. Don’t waste your precious energy on gossip.
6. Dream more while you are awake.
7. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need..
8. Forget issues of the past. Don’t remind your partner of his/her mistakes of the past. That will ruin your present happiness.
9. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone. Don’t hate others.
10. Make peace with your past so it won’t spoil the present.
11. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
12. Realize that life is a school and you are here to learn.Problems are simply part of the curriculum that appear and fade away like algebra class but the lessons you learn will last a lifetime.
13. Smile and laugh more.
14. You don’t have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.

Community:
15. Call your family often
16. Each day give something good to others
17. Forgive everyone for everything
18. Spend time with people over the age of 70 & under the age of 6
19. Try to make at least three people smile each day
20. What other people think of you is none of your business
21. Your job will not take care of you when you are sick. Your family and friends will. Stay in touch.

Life:
22. Put GOD first in anything and everything that you think, say and do. Continue reading Guide to a Better Life →

Life & People, Thoughts & Opinions

Advice is a form of nostalgia… wear sunscreen

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Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen) is a song by Baz Luhrmann, an Australian film personality, adapted from an essay by one Mary Schmich which was published in the Chicago Tribune back in 1997. Although this song makes me quite sentimental, I make a point to listen to it once in a while to take stock of my own life. I am attaching the lyrics here and highlighting parts that make a lot of sense to me. Do read through, you’ll love the song too!

Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of ’99
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience…I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh nevermind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded. But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked….You’re not as fat as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday. Continue reading Advice is a form of nostalgia… wear sunscreen →

Life & People

Dealing with surprises!

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My dear one always complained that I am not so fond of surprises. Deep inside, I do appreciate an element of surprise in my life. But sometimes life brings along difficult surprises to you, and they are so surprising that you start doubting the law of gravity. Anyway, $#i+ happens! But one needs to learn to deal with such hostile situations in life. This talk is not authoritative enough due to the uniqueness of each situation, but discusses the human nature that decides how we deal with them.

Like most artificial intelligence engines do, the human mind also runs on a learning model. This model is prepared and maintained by the brain by storing information about situations in the past along with environmental factors around them,  the decisions taken then, and the outcome of the situation. And it is this model that the mind tries to exploit when dealing with new situations. Don’t we always try to relate to the past? We somehow try to force-fit the current situation to something in the past and then apply the known outcome to the situation. But this model needs to be used with caution. Worse enough, we also involve statistics based on other people’s experience of similar situations and impose it on ours. The urban dictionary calls it ‘superstistics’, the use of prior evidence of one event to predict the outcome of another unrelated event – from the words superstitious and statistics. Continue reading Dealing with surprises! →

Life & People

The Mayonnaise Jar

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“The Real Winners in life are the People who look at every situation with an expectation that they can make it work or make it better” – Barbara Pletcher

I do not intend to use my blog to publish silly chain email. But this one was a real exception! And for a couple of reasons: It was a pleasure reading this although prolix, and that my friend Rohit Patkar sent me this. Rohit has also been in my good books (of etiquette) for his email habits – sheer quality and nothing else. For other things, he is an atheist. Read on… Continue reading The Mayonnaise Jar →