Make a molehill out of the mountain of issues! Mountain #1- The boss

My manager scrutinises my workplan with her invisible magnifying lens. She 'ums' and 'ahs' as she reads on, sweat pours down my forehead in anticipation of the invisible guillotine board. Sure enough, being the perfectionist and the micromanager that she is, she tells me that my workplan (my personal task planner) could and should be improved. She is the 'mountain' currently and I have been seeing every encounter with her as a giant uphill incline with no forward movement. A silent tear trickles down my cheek.

Ever experienced such a moment? Maybe not as dramatic but excruciatingly painful none-the-less? Well, this is not a forum for 'bashing the boss', this is about learning to look for signs of good leadership. Learning to identify whether the "pain" leads to a "gain" or whether you are just hurting yourself for no good reason.

Sun Tzu's THE ART OF WAR (translations by Gary Gagliardi), states that the characteristics of a strategic leadership require one to be smart, trustworthy, caring, brave, and Strict. Does your leader have these qualities?

Intelligent - In a larger system, intelligence is required to know your battle ground. look for intelligent qualities in your manager, a balance of EQ and IQ. Also learn to differentiate the "know it alls" from those who really know. If you feel you cannot learn from your leader, then you have crossed out one big important check box.

Honesty and Self reflection - Honesty is required to create successful strategic methods of working. Whoever said "Honesty is the best policy" knew what they were talking about. An Honest manager is one who will give you honest feedback to help you improve as an individual. An honest individual is also one who can look into the mirror and admit that they are sometimes wrong. If your Manager does not like feedback themselves, then there sits a person who has not self reflected.

Caring -  Caring and compassion are other key philosophical factors of good Management, if your manager is insensitive to your needs, if you do not see compassion in the eyes, he/she will not be able to support you.

Bravery - As Sun Tsu once said, "Bravery is necessary to weather the adversities of climate". We must be able to fail and keep going. Have you ever been given a task that requires work from another Team, and the task fails because the Leaders within the organisation failed to communicate? Is your Leader innovative and creative? Does he/she attempt to find other ways to get the task done till it is completed? The sign of a brave leader is one who will look for alternate means to achieve an outcome. The "Never give up" attitude is a must!

Strict - Last but not the least, it is very important for us to do the unpleasant parts of the jobs as well as the fun parts, if your leader is unreliable (because of shifting objectives on his/her whim) then supporting him/her will be very difficult.

A very beautiful and wise person once told me "Part of the beauty of growing up is in knowing which battles can be fought and which ones to walk away from".

Touching lives: A means to Happiness?

As we were walking along the beach this morning, I noticed a young girl sitting on the rocks and examining some sea shells. Our conversation went something like this:
Me: You look happy, have you found what you are looking for?
She: I like looking at shells, they make me happy. I particularly like the ones that shine on the inside. 
Me: I used to collect a fair few in my younger days but then someone told me one day that every-time we remove shells from the beach a living organism loses its home. 
She: Aaah, that sounds depressing....but maybe some little crab went into the shell and then decided that he/she had 'outgrown' that shell and as a result has discarded that shell and decided to move on. Everytime they move on though, they leave their little 'shell armors' behind, as a result of this, the shells fuse into each other and become thicker and stronger and tougher, with more character!
Me:  Where did you learn this? 
She: I just made it up as we were chatting (smiles sheepishly).
Me: (As I point excitedly towards two shells fused together)I love it! I am going to write about it this morning!

So riddle me this, just like the shells that help each other grow stronger and stronger and more beautiful, how many of you have been touched by different people you have come across? How many of you have been enriched by their touch? How many of you have tried to enrich their lives as well? Have you honored your relationships with those special people? As the wise Stephanie Dowrick once said: "It's impossible to think deeply about yourself without also thinking deeply about your impact on other people - and understanding them better". 


How can we honor our relationships with people? 
We could attempt to spend more quality time with the people around us. What activities can you think of that would bring the touch of quality into your time? Activities like Hiking, roller blading, Indoor (or outdoor) rock climbing, running, walking down the beach, or a relaxed picnic somewhere nice are some of the quality activities I do with my family and friends.


We could learn to love as children do. To love without self-consciousness, without restraint.


Gaining self-knowledge in relation to other people, remember this, other people are never out of the picture, so lets observe our effect on other people and then reflect on the situation and our actions.

Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.  

  - Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics (384 BC - 322 BC).

The Pursuit for meaning: The search for happiness begins

The Pursuit for meaning: The search for happiness begins: "Today a friend decided to let all of us know that he has finally taken a bite of the forbidden apple and quit his high paying job to travel ..."

The Pursuit for meaning: The search for happiness begins

The Pursuit for meaning: The search for happiness begins: "Today a friend decided to let all of us know that he has finally taken a bite of the forbidden apple and quit his high paying job to travel ..."

The search for happiness begins

Today a friend decided to let all of us know that he has finally taken a bite of the forbidden apple and quit his high paying job to travel for the next 6 months. Now THAT to me is one form of happiness. To let go of everything you know and dive into the deep unknown...there is no greater feeling than the one that comes from releasing yourself from attachment to a job that you could possibly...well...hate!


I have to admit that I have decided to look for my own form of happiness.I have been contracting for the last few years and in each job I felt like something was lacking in my role/life. Now I have decided that I want to work towards doing my own thing for the next few years. This page is my personal pursuit for meaning in a life that sometimes, does not make much sense to me. The ultimate goal is "Happiness"...how the journey of a thousand miles will begin is anyones' guess.


Look around you...have you ever had a conversation with a close friend, family member, or colleague and talked about happiness? So how can we go about discovering what it means for us? This is not about getting that expensive outfit, or that fancy car, or your dream man/woman or the dream house, this is about your inner happiness, what it means to you to feel complete. Think about things this way, you have arrived at this wonderful buffet called life and you have been savoring a whole lot of different items, some you like a lot, some you like less, and some you cannot be bothered with tasting at all! The trick is in knowing when to stop and feel satisfied and walk away from the buffet before you throw up because you ate too much or you become anorexic because you ate too less.


So lets go back to the example of the friend that has started his journey towards his own happiness, what is one of the essential steps he has taken? He has trusted in himself as a source of his happiness. He has decided to listen to his heart and do what he has always wanted to do -  Travel! Think about this, a "happy" person you know can have just about everything that you might consider as important (perfect job, perfect partner, perfect house,etc), but another person that you know could also have all those things and still not be happy with themselves. What is the difference in their lives? The thing that rings true is this:If you do the things you love, you will love the things you do, you will also love everything around you more. Inner trust in yourself, being optimistic, content and honest enough to discover your needs is one of the steps to discovering happiness.


Happiness, it might seem out of reach, out of sight, and impossible some days, but if you let that little flicker of light called Hope into your life, the dawn will break one day. Take solace in the fact that you are not alone in this search, there are millions of us out there and together, with shared ideas and shared hopes, we will enlighten our lives and bring meaning to it.

One step forward at a time!