Tenny Thomas

Stop thinking too much…or should you?

Each and every one of us at one time in our lives have been accused by someone or the other of this fatal flaw- thinking too much. Whenever we have issues in life, whenever we find something is not right, we spend time thinking a myriad of thoughts. Every new thing or event in our life we try to understand and reason, sometimes with deep and profound thought. If you google “thought quotes” you are presented with an array of quotes by famous people about this aspect of the human condition- i.e., thoughts. Have you ever felt crippled by thoughts or have you ever been unable to come into terms on how to control your thinking? As always some pointers for help and discussion.

Thinking is an excellent idea: Our small thoughts are like water bodies. Most of the time water bodies are connected or eventually flow into a bigger water source such as an ocean. Our small thoughts should be allowed to flow into such bigger thoughts because if you search within an ocean, you may find some deep treasures. Our small thoughts should be allowed to grow bigger and join with its source for us to unlock its true potential- the message. Most of the time, unfortunately, we don’t think too much because we have been told from childhood to get stuff done, no matter what. In doing so, we drown our ability to think and rationalize. Remember just as we are given two hands to work and two legs to move ourselves in getting our work done, we are given our mind to understand why are we doing the work and what will it accomplish in addition to how we can do the task at hand in a better way.
There are no good or bad thoughts: Am I stretching it too far by saying that there are no bad thoughts? Suppose there is someone who has left a deep and intense wound in your life and the very thought of that person, you would like to just destroy or eliminate him/her in the best possible way. Is that a good thought? Nope. Is it a bad thought? Nope. It is your feeling at that time which makes you think in such a way. Instead of running away, you should encourage that thought. Think of how you can eliminate or teach him a lesson. Then as you think further you will be presented with outcomes- execute a plan at getting even or do nothing. Your mind then explains the outcomes to you where in the former case you may invite trouble and sometimes disastrous consequences at a cost or in the latter case you can train yourselves at forgiveness and letting go with the hope that by doing so, you accumulate good karma for the future. Also doing the latter is difficult than the former, but more rewarding. Thus by allowing and training the mind to reason in such a way, you open newer doors of enlightenment and understanding, you never thought you ever had!
Never stop thinking: Most of the time I have seen how good initiatives don’t reach their intended outcomes, not by what is not done but by a lack of thought put into it (it results in a product with no purpose). Think about this, we are amazing products created with deep thought and purpose and put in this world for this time and age for a reason. The thinking that has gone behind our creation is unfathomable. So if we are created in the image of God, why should we not think before we leap, think before we act, think before we talk? What is wrong in thinking? I believe the biggest mistake is not when we think but when we don’t think.

In a day of 24 hours, we spend upto 8 hrs sleeping, 8 hrs working and the remaining time for eating, enjoying or getting things done in our quest for a meaningful life. We should spend atleast one hour thinking about our purpose and search within ourselves and our experiences for meaning in our lives. If we can create this margin in our lives on a go forward basis, we will be able to change our it significantly and live an enormously successful and resourceful life.

Stop consuming, start creating

Have you ever wondered each day, the amount of content that gets thrown to you. You wake up and check your Facebook and you are bombarded with updates from friends and various organizations, you open up Twitter and you can witness the various hashtag battles that anyone with a username has with unknown strangers, delivering lethal blows to all those who try to disagree with them. You shut the computer off and as you switch on your television, you are either in a 24 x 7 news cycle or in the never ending reality shows, television shows, syndicated shows to anything that can provoke your thoughts and sometimes even instigate your intelligence to thinking in their way and ideas. Now you switch the TV off and you can hear tales and opinions from everyone around you. You go to a boring job, hoping to change the world-only to end up working in a desk job, under a boss, who works under a boss, who himself works under someone else. You do what you are told to do and when you get tired of doing that, you end up looking for newer pastures where you can work under someone in a better position but still within the realm of the earlier cycle. This cycle goes on till one day, you are lowered six feet beneath the ground and people pray around you.

This my friends is the irony of the human life. We are in a never ending cycle of slavery. I remember reading in history texts how slavery was abolished everywhere in the free world by the second world war. But from reading the stark reality of your life from the above paragraph, I don’t think anything has changed, except for the fact that slavery has become more civilized!

With the rapid population increase, we are at a pivotal point in human history where we have enormous amount of resources in terms of people, finance , etc., to get things done; we have the tools at our disposal to create anything that we dream; we have the means to learn, means to fight the system-means to do everything. Then why are we not doing something to change the world we live in? Population is increasing, resources are depleting-we still live in a hydrocarbon economy, we still drive internal combustion engines (since 1920s), we still haven’t colonized any planets and we still haven’t figured out wireless electrical transmission (N. Tesla discovered it in mid 19th century) and most parts of the world are dark-with no electricity,rampant poverty and never ending sickness. We live in a hyper commercialized capitalistic system, where incremental changes are made to technology and our way of life. Our education teaches us to be continue the slave mindset, and we are forced to cheer about the next football game played between millionaires in a stadium in Europe or nearby.

What has happened to us? We belonged to a human race that hunted at one time for food, that looked up to the skies and figured out world afar without any instruments, that knew the age of a tree by listening to the chopping of the wood , etc. Today we live in a world where we consume, consume and consume!

Why don’t we stop this stupidity? Lets do a simple exercise. Let us stop what we are doing, close our rooms, shut off the cellphones and our computer and simply close our eyes. We see darkness-lets remain in that darkness for sometime. Then lets think, what can I contribute to this world each day? If I think I am living a perfect life, what am I doing about the imperfectness in a world that was perfect since creation? Ideas will start floating in and before you know, you will be energized by that unknown power that has been waiting for a long time for you to ask this question!

Our role as humans is not to consume, but to work hard at creating a better world for us, others and our future generations. We can consume to be prepared, but we have to be prepared to create.

Featured Image courtesy: http://krishnagee.deviantart.com/art/Life-s-about-creating-yourself-205874987

Designing your life

Have you ever wondered, whether in this unpredictable life that there is any scope for designing it in such a way that you feel is suitable for and would meet your needs? Is it even possible to do it in this crazy and unpredictable mayhem that we wake ourselves up to each day? How do we understand and reason with our lives from its demands versus what we need to get from it? I would like to put forth some thoughts of what I feel would be apt in designing one’s life.

1. Checklists
Did you know that in the airline industry that they have a checklist method to ensure that not even one single step in managing the aircraft is not missed both while on ground and in air? Before 90s, the airline industry had a lot of reverses in the form of incidents/ accidents, mostly which arose from human error. Today with a large volume of flights in air, these have reduced significantly through many programs designed in mind to ensure the safety of the millions who travel each day. I am not going to mention the specifics which can be read elsewhere, but a fundamental aspect was the origin of checklists. This to me is an amazing tool to ensure that life is organized and the vagaries that it throws to you each day can atleast be managed. I used checklists widely in work and of late has been using it in Evernote to manage the needs of my life. Although my success in life has been limited, I am sure it will help me eventually for continued success.

2. Plan:
It’s better to start off something with a plan in mind. Most of the time, when I plan I try to visualize the outcome in mind and try to do the following checks on the proposed outcome:

Am I doing the right thing or is it the right thing to do? If yes, proceed to the next step, else stop and reevaluate.
Is my definition of right the same as what is being affected by whatever I am doing ? If yes, proceed and complete the task, else move to next step.
What will be the collateral damage? Can I manage or live with it?

Planning in the above manner has helped me most of the time. I may not influence the outcome, but I have always been helped by the universe if and when my timing was right. I might get it wrong mostly because of poor timing but I have seen that eventually all is well in the end.

3. Procrastinate
This is the easiest to do when compared to the above two methods mentioned here. Timing is very important in execution and what I have realized is that even though it is important to have a sense of urgency, it is also important to procrastinate. Most of the things that is needed to be done can be put off simply because they can wait.

Concluding, you should always remember the 80-20 rule. Use only 20% of your effort to get 80% of what is needed to be done. This is the key to having a smart and successful life. Use checklists, plan and even procrastinate to ensure that you get the best of what could be done to have a fruitful and successful life.

Photo by Aziz Acharki on Unsplash

Conversations

I had the incredible luck to attend Inspire 2014 and listen to an amazing talk by PR specialist and author Jim Hoggan. His talk dealt with communicating in today’s world where no one trusts anyone like they used to. He was explaining in his message how it is important to have the right conversations with people. I would like to list some of the important takeaways from his talk and discuss them further here.

People arrive at conclusions very quickly in today’s world due to the over exposure to all forms of media, surrounding and vested interests.
Once they have framed an opinion, they follow a downward pyramid of self justification.
People don’t like being told what is right and wrong especially since they have arrived at an opinion.
Most of the time people arrive at an opinion because they always listen to people who knows what the hell they are speaking about.
Even when you lay out facts in front of people, they wouldn’t like to change their opinion and would stubbornly not do so.

I again had the incredible luck to experience this first hand recently and I learnt how important it is for one to be nimble and adept at the art of having heartfelt communications. In today’s world, people are going to be suspicious if you are going to be seen as too nice and also (definitely) when you are seen as too bad for their liking. There are certain rules of communication, which I was able to understand from Jim Hoggan, such as:

Communication is a conversation. It is not a dialogue or a monologue.
You have to be empathetic to the fact that the person listening to you have all the right to frame an opinion good or bad about you.
Once they form an opinion, you cannot make them change that opinion and they will be virulent in defending that opinion.
The conversations from then on should be directed at how to ensure that the right thing is done, because the outcome from any partnership should be at,
Doing the right thing. Always do the right thing or be seen doing the right thing for that partnership or friendship. Make sure you don’t confuse them up.

Photo by Matheus Ferrero on Unsplash

We SHOULD do better

Have you ever wondered that whenever you do something in life, for you or for others, whether or not you are giving it your 100% ? Have you ever thought that whatever you did for them is not enough and you could do better? I believe many of you would have thought on the same lines. As human beings we are also conjurers while we are also artists. We like to put up a show, good or bad, in front of our family, friends, colleagues and even those who hate us. We as human beings, never like to be left behind. We always like to prove that we are the master of our destiny and it is our ultimate responsibility to ensure that in the ‘show of life’ that presents in front of us, we are the leader of the show.

Confused? Let me explain. Charlie Chaplin once famously said “In the end, everything is a gag”. Everything including the life that we live, is a show, a visual treat for our mind and body. When the show climaxes and ends, we inevitably die. Think about people who are on their deathbed. Most of the time they feel like an artist who has overstayed his role.

Why is the view that I am proposing in this article important? We as human beings need to understand one inevitable fact in our lives. In the end, we are just an obituary. We live finite lives and the experiences that we have are also finite in nature. Just like a good movie has to end, our lives also has an ‘expiry date’. Once we realize and accept this painful yet true fact, we set out on a mission to change the way we do things in life differently.

I don’t know if any of my readers have watched The Truman Show, where Jim Carrey brilliantly portrayed Truman Burbank, who doesn’t realize that he is living a life, which was actually a constructed television reality show. I saw that movie long time back and like many who watched the movie even wondered whether our life was infact a big show.

So what if your life was one big show? Will you have stage fright, forget your lines and bow out in shame? Or will you look at your audience and act it out from your heart. Believe me you have nothing to lose in your life, but everything to gain from portraying a stupendous performance. What will you do ?

unsplash-logoSara Bakhshi

Fear

“One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his greatest surprises, is to find what he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do”. Henry Ford

What is fear?

A simple check on the dictionary app built into my computer, reveals that fear is an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat. Each and everyone of us is held hostage to this emotion, the feeling of unknown consequences, that creeps in when we are in the cusp of doing something far different from our normal routine. We humans like routines till we are bored of them, we like order, we like systems and process that work for us. We like to control our circumstances and we would always like to setup ourselves for success.

Fear to us is the biggest anathema to everything that we would like to control. Most of the time, fear works in our minds and from there to our hearts. Fear curtails our thinking process and prevents us from achieving our best potential. With time, fear becomes ingrained in us till we are convinced that achieving something is simply impossible.

Where does our fears come from?

Unlearnt lessons from our experiences: Throughout our lifetime we are exposed to a million experiences. One thing that is common in these diverse and mostly unrelated experiences is the fact that there are lessons to be learnt from them. Sometimes we learn from these experiences because they tend to happen again and again till we learn. Most of the time we do not learn from our experiences and mostly they end up manifesting as our fears.
We do not believe in miracles: In addition to point 1, our stubbornly secular affirmation and logic thinking prevents us from accepting anything that is a miracle. It happens from a consistent effort to rationalize the simple fact that something that is impossible could ever happen. For e.g., in a match between haves and havenots, how many of us root for the underdog? Even today after a million examples in history, we would never believe in miracles.
Belief in yourself: Life is a struggle, no doubt about it. With a strong sense of self belief and self confidence one needs to feel for himself so that he could live his life and withstand its darts effortlessly. This self confidence doesn’t come overnight. It requires constant practise by meditation or even belief in a supernatural being or thought. Ancient people worshipped everything because they felt that such a belief and understanding took them to the next level. Many of their beliefs are now being verified by science.

How do we conquer our fears?

Living in fear of God, or any belief makes us believe that we can achieve greater things. But living in fear of temporary issues is/are simply futile. Living in fear is a huge waste of one’s time and life. These periods could be effectively used in something meaningful such as creative pursuits of one’s soul or creating lasting value for your family or community. We cannot and should never live a life of fear. We should either believe in God or any supernatural being and affirm with ourselves that all things are possible. We can conquer or make an effort to attack or fears by doing some of the following:

Make a list of our top 10 fears and write a line next to them why we consider them as our fears. For example, driving a motor vehicle is a constant source of worry for many people. To many people, seeing a busy traffic road, causes them to shiver, sweat etc.
Make a list of people who successfully do what you are mostly afraid of doing. For example, make a list of your closest friends who are better drivers than you are.
Initiate a one-on-one private conversation and communicate with them your fears while doing such an activity. Ensure that you record the feedback in your list.
Analyze the feedback to your fears and how your closest friends tackle them.
Make changes to your activity in private by yourself or in the presence of your friends, provided that they do not have issues in volunteering to help you tackle your fears.
Ensure that you consistently practise and record your learnings.
With time, your confidence builds up and you can strike off one fear from your list.
Repeat all the steps for the next item in your ‘fear’ list.

Conquer your fears. You live just once. Live it king size. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” Franklin Roosevelt.

Image Courtesy: http://www.bitrebels.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Fear-Illustrated-In-Photo.jpg

Leadership Lessons from Jesus

One of the biggest drawbacks about the world that we live in is the fact that we are bereft of any good leaders. Every now and then, in each generation we have certain gifted people that emerge with great promise to redefine the human march to progress. They leave behind a great deal of teachings and values that the successors look up to and imbibe, till the next big idea emerges. One of the leaders that redefined the way we live even today is Jesus. The spiritual leader of billions of Christians worldwide, it is believed that thousands of years ago, he was born into a poor carpenter’s family. Being a member of a royal lineage of Jews, he was instrumental in propagating a new message of inclusiveness and salvation. The Jews under the cruel colonial oppression rejected and assassinated him because they couldn’t believe that he was the promised Messiah from their scriptures and lore. However it is believed that he was risen on third day in accordance with the scriptures and after spending weeks with his disciples he was taken into heaven. His followers known as disciples, aided by the extensive shipping lines and roads built by the Roman Empire, took his message to the ends of the world. Within a few centuries, the entire world followed the teaching of Jesus Christ and became known as Christians.

How did Jesus succeed so well? His message of inclusiveness, forgiveness, salvation, hope and grace might have been powerful and revolutionary for the people of those times. However how did this movement grow so huge and wide and became so relevant, even today? I believe there lies the answer that any successful leader needs to learn and understand.

Based on my observations over the years and based on my notes, a leader is one who needs to be at peace with God, himself, the nature and everyone around him. He needs to have the following qualities:

1. He needs to have the faith in God and himself to weather storms and if needed, walk on water.
2. Personal good should never be factored in the equation. He should empower and live for others.
3. He has to clearly communicate the following:

Vision.
What are you doing?
Why are you doing?
How are you doing?
Clarity of how they align with the vision.
Execute, learn and continuous improvement.

4. He needs to be concise, focused, creative and gracious.
5. He needs to have a team of doers, delegate and hold them accountable to deliver the vision.

If you look at the life of Jesus, one can find Jesus after being anointed by John, he:

First built a team of doers: fishermen, tax collectors etc. he chose them because they were not elite, but because they were doers.
He had a purpose, plan in place and he was a good communicator through his parables and sermons.
He tenaciously built his team, delegated works to them and held them accountable by the power of Holy Spirit,

I would like to conclude by one simple statement:

Leadership is vision, communication, teamwork, execution and continuous improvement.

Adversity

Life is unpredictable. It is sometimes too tough, with too much hard work, too much craziness and sometimes too unfair. These days I was reading about King David, one of the most revered kings in the Bible. A mere shepherd boy, he had just God in his mind as he looked after his father’s sheep. As he grew older, God anointed him to be king over Israel. But it wasn’t a peaceful transition as he had to fight King Saul who was rejected by God, Israel’s enemies, rebellion from within his own house and also from the defunct House of Saul and even from within the state. He had to fight urges of adultery, in addition to family strife. Yet today we know of him as the greatest king of Israel that ever lived.

A good portion of the content in the Bible is about adversity. It teaches how one gains from adversity as soon as he gains perspective about his struggles and how it has shaped him. Each struggle has been uniquely crafted by God to take you to the next level. Struggles in life are building blocks to being a fantastic human being. God wants us to live life to its full and utmost potential. If everyone lives their life to their full potential, this world would be a much better place.

I was reading recently that the baby boomer generation is retiring and there are no talented people to take over the workforce. That too me is an adversity but a bigger blessing in disguise. When I joined the oil and gas industry, I was never coached or mentored as some of the baby boomers would have been. Yet within in a limited time, I was able to do a fairly decent job as a Process Engineer. How is this possible?

Adversity and the perspective that you bring to it redefines us and takes us to the next level faster based on our willingness to learn from it.

But it doesn’t mean that adversity is always needed to take a man to the next level. I believe it is more or less imposing a type of step change. It means that business is not as usual and a step change is highly imperative. Easy times can refine you but seldom it provokes a step change.

David became great through his struggles and lived to see an united Israel. He was glorified and his time is still remembered as the greatest time of Israel that has ever been. When he died Israel was united and strong that it ever would be. His son Solomon, had so much grace from God and even wisdom that was granted from a God and not from any experiences. He took the kingdom to such greater heights, yet after he died, the country split painfully into two. The Bible says he forgot God and that’s why. I believe otherwise.

Loving and following God means you shoulder the cross. Life is then full of adversities as you shoulder the weight of that heavy cross in addition to the lashes from unidentified Roman soldiers (struggles in life). But you still make your way to the cross and then you are glorified.

Photo by Ian on Unsplash

Football is a Religion

Football is not just the beautiful game. It is absolutely and freaking the most beautiful game ever played in this world. Since the time of the ancient Greeks, till date, a game of football is about simple harmless fun and competition. I remember from my childhood growing in a football crazy city such as Abu Dhabi, how much the beautiful game had influenced me. Watching the Arabic football cartoon, Captain Majid used to inspire me into doing some of the acrobatic shots shown, much to the disdain of my neighbours. From then till now, I was never a good player, but I really loved the game and whenever I played, I did it passionately.

Millions of people around the world love this game. South American countries like Brazil play football as a way of life. Football legend Pele once said that ‘Brazil eat, sleeps and drinks football. It lives football’. It is a very simple game where two teams play against each other try to break the others’ defenses in scoring a goal.

Read the above said line once again. It is a game of teams and not individuals. Its a game of a million formulations and combinations. Its a game that requires perseverance, sacrifice, tenacity, aggression, dedication, respect for others and even authority. To be a good soccer player one needs the highest levels of fitness and discipline. Everything has to be balanced to ensure that you enjoy a good game and even play one well.

Football is a game for humanity. It doesn’t need too much technique, too much learning, basically there is nothing to be learnt or unlearnt here to ensure that you become a good player. All one needs is to play within the confines of a team, together in dribbling and passing the ball, cleverly through the opponents side into their goalpost for a goal.

This year is a blessed year just because of that. We have the World Cup being held in the most passionate country in this world for the beautiful game – Brazil. This year it will be bigger and better, and from the first few days into the competition that would seem an understatement.

A few years ago, on a beautiful summer day in Edmonton, yours truly had the fortune of being with few of his friends, a football and huge ground in the University of Alberta. We did not even have the required numbers to run across half the field. I remember remarking ‘With such less people, how do we even play?’. ‘Dont worry friend, they will come’ remarked a colleague of mine. Within the next couple of hours, I was startled to see many a passerby join us and we had more people to play, and eventually we had to bench a few of them. The game we had was too good and crazy fun!

That my friends is the power of this game. It doesn’t need any followers, it doesn’t need any planning. All you need is the ball and a place to play. Then wait and watch, how in no time people joins you. It is the nature of this game, that makes it inclusive, addictive and religious.

Amen to the beautiful game !

Featured Image Courtesy: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/06/10/article-2653771-1E9ED2A400000578-366_964x582.jpg

Never ever say NO

We live in a risk averse world. These days, whenever something of significance is announced, one can find a million dissenting voices that threaten to drown the ones that support them. Living in North America and working in oilsands, I am no foreigner to these type of voices. Anything we do, or not do, are analyzed with a nanoscopic lens and criticized heavily. You want a new road, NO. You want to upgrade the airport, NO. You want a new vehicle, NO. You want a new home, why? NO. Everything ends in a resounding and relentless NO.

Why have we become a generation of naysayers. Where is the flying cars that were promised to us in science fiction? Where is the space exploration campaigns exploring new worlds? Where is the promise of time travel? In a rhetoric accentuated by paralysis by analysis, our time in this world will be known by what we haven’t done or failed to do.

Read the news today. All we can see is tales of leaders who have failed to act when it is needed, tales of big business and their countless and meaningless mergers and acquisitions, an impatient shareholder community that is risk averse and focussed on quarterly profits, startups that promise too much in the beginning only to be brought by bigger business and shutdown later, only because the founders did not have the spine for the long haul.

This picture is absolutely not right and extremely frightening. We are creating a culture of being absolutely and extremely risk averse. I have worked as a Process Safety Engineer and we believe in executing work by understanding the base risk and installing safeguards to make the risk as low as reasonably possible and then executing it. But what we do see today is that, people are scared of the risk associated with any task or project, that they shy away from planning or even executing it.

Oilsands development is a classic example of human ignorance. Here we have one of the largest natural crude oil deposits in the world, second only to Saudi Arabia (based on the current extraction methods). This valuable resource is highly important and valuable in the onward march of human progress and development. The struggles this industry faces from environmentalists and vested interests to deny its development has been well documented earlier in this blog. Rather than assemble together as a team focussed on the sustainable extraction and development of this valuable resource, the debate has veered to its total decimation and its harmful effects to environment.

‘Fortune favors the brave’ is a belief that I have believed since childhood. It exhorts us to go ahead and do something. Whatever or whoever you are, think about something great and DO IT rather than say NO and back off. ‘Just Do It’ is a famous tagline by NIKE that was coined in 1988. Nelson Mandela used to exhort by the following saying, “It is always impossible, till it is done”. I believe it is easier to say something is impossible, but the sense of satisfaction that one receives after getting something done is simply unparalleled.

Concluding, before we say NO or it is not possible, let us for a minute think, WHY NOT?

Photo by Drew Hays on Unsplash