Suresh Dinakaran's Blog

 

A couple of years back I was visiting England with family. And since renting a car was the best option to go around the south central, west Midlands, we did the obvious. The booking was done 25 days prior to our dates of travel and the car rental brand is perceived to be the best and the largest in the world. But, what we experienced was shoddy, sub-standard and far from even remotely enterprising. You get the drift by now.

 

There was an appointment made over a call(after holding on for a good 20 minutes listening to mindless, tasteless music on the IVR, dodging the robots to eventually get a human on the line) and me and family reached the car rental office at the appointed time. There were several customers waiting in that small office and all seeming more restless than the next. The wait was getting to them clearly.

 

What I notice about these car rental brands is that there is never enough to go around. Even though what they ALWAYS claim is their intent to go the ‘ extra mile ‘ (never mind the spiralling fuel costs)- I mean if the staff required to handle traffic at a certain time(where appointments have been given) is 3 or 4, there is barely one. And that individual is supposed to be, being honest and fair Hercules and Machiavelli combined. Checking the booking, handling telephone calls, collecting payment, driving the car to the delivery area, taking pictures of the vehicle before handing over the keys and briefing( in a well-trained cut and dry hard to understand manner) the customer on the do’s and don’ts. Not to mention looking askance at you based on the colour of your skin.

 

Since it didn’t seem like that I would be getting my car anytime soon, I decided to look around the dingy office (armed with dirty carpet, poor lighting, an unwelcome vibe) and what caught my attention was a well framed poster on the wall which screamed ‘ Mission Statement ‘. Without exaggerating any bit, here it is verbatim:

 

” Our mission is to fulfill the automotive and commercial truck rental, leasing, car rental and related needs of our customers and, in doing so, exceed their expectations for service, quality and value.

We will strive to earn our customers’ long-term loyalty by working to deliver more than promised, being honest and fair and ” going the extra mile ” to provide exceptional personalized service that creates a pleasing business experience.

We must motivate our employees to provide exceptional service to our customers by supporting their development, providing opportunities for their personal growth and fairly compensating them for their success and achievements..”

 

And it drones on..and you are there in full protein form and reading all this crap and wondering, ” what kind of idiot do they take me for?” The words on the paper are clearly disconnected from the reality of the experience. And this coming from one of the top global car rental brands in the world, at least perceivably. So much for mission statements!

 

After almost an hour of waiting the counter customer disservice executive comes up to me and barks ” sir the SUV that you booked is not available- you will have to make do with a scaled down version as that is the only one available “. With no hint of an apology or anything even resembling that remotely. And since the demand was more than supply, there was no discount or any other entitlement offered.

There was nothing that we could do at that stage since the motivation of getting to Oxford and also to see Shakespeare’s home in Stratford-upon-Avon was far more over-powering, we took the compromise choice.

 

Sum summarum, for all those brands who continue to behave like this, here’s a simple message: standing for something isn’t just about writing something down. It is about believing and living it. Unless the mission is to con and massively under-deliver.

 

 

Our zeitgeist will not have it any other way. Complete.

 

That is far from the reality and we remain tricked by the ‘ tyranny of completion ‘.

 

The reality though is vastly different. Human beings are rough drafts that continually mistake themselves for the final story, then gasp as the plot changes on the page of living. @Maria Popova!

 

Far from complete.

 

It is our ego, a benchmark that we have of ourselves, the stories that we tell ourselves and the world at large, a passive succumbing to facades of coherence and continuity, that leaves us moored to what is a static idealized self.

 

Without much effort we are willing captives of comfort in our thoughts or feelings ; victims of certainty- a supreme narrowing of the mind. But, “When nothing is sure, everything is possible “– Margaret Drabble

The assertion here, however, is that there really is no creativity without uncertainty. Put another way: dubito ergo creo. This is Latin for, I doubt therefore I create.

 

More here on Creativity & The Certainty of Uncertainty !

 

 

 

As a tribe, we are obsessed with the concept of more. More stuff, more food, more of this, more of that..even as we write, the default is how do we add more words to create impact and impression.

 

‘ Thank you so much’ is easily replaceable with ‘Thank you’. ‘ It is very good ‘ can find comfortable solace in ‘ It is good ‘. ‘ It is extremely hot ‘ can sound as cool when you say ‘ It is hot ‘.

 

By design and habit, we over index to more in the belief that it will drive home the point and enable engagement. In a culture obsessed with adding, less but better seems out of sync.

We, as people, ​systematically overlook subtractive changes, instead following ​our​ instincts to add. There is nothing inherently wrong with adding. In the culture of the day, people like us, do things like this. But if it becomes a default path to improvement, that may be failing to consider a whole class of other opportunities​. So, more is NOT equal to better, more often than not.

 

Don’t mind the contradiction- in a world where we are oversold the value of more and undersold the value of less, its time to stop missing the wood for the trees and soak in the abundance of less.

 

A syndrome fanned by our reluctance to look up from our ledger of lack as we seek perennial validation in this Republic of Not Enough.

 

 

 

“ Emotional choice theory posits that individual-level decision-making is shaped in significant ways by the interplay between people’s norms, emotions, and identities. While norms and identities are important long-term factors in the decision process, emotions function as short-term, essential motivators for change “.

 

The common perception is that we think that our decisions are guided purely by logic and rationality, but our emotions always play a role in our good decision making process. So, cherish your own emotions and never undervalue them.

 

You can access this link if you are keen to understand more about The Power of Emotions

 

This link offers a short clip on how to inject emotions into your marketing

 

A lot of us suffer from what we call the ‘ Hero Trap ‘- an over reliance on our ability to handle something that becomes infuriatingly urgent which could have easily been avoided had it not been the temptation of the short term hack. It is always the toss up between urgent or important.

 

One of the sought after items when you went to see a circus was the Juggler’s act. And you were always left wondering how she is managing the act of throwing and catching consistently without fail amidst all the audience excitement and bewilderment. It is about attitude preceding outcomes. An attitude of training is far more important than the desire to have six-pack abs. Likewise, the act of throwing is more vital than the act of catching. And that is the secret to the Juggler catching ball without fail, time after time.

 

Life has parallels from juggling. Disaster Management Teams are seized of this. It is said that emergency response is overrated compared to emergency avoidance. If one were to introspect, we will realise that we spend most of our life catching aka reacting. Attending meetings that have been called by someone else. In fire fighting. Distracted by people who are making the loudest noise.

The lesson we can learn from jugglers is not catching. But throwing. Initiating. Contributing. Caring. Showing up. Shipping out. And soon we will spend far less time worrying about catching in the first place.

 

A project gone sideways, the end of a rocky relationship, the loss of a crucial game etc all leads us to think about what happened at the last moment, which is where we miss the wood for the trees. Actually, what is overlooked is what happened in the beginning or the middle, where the patterns could have been picked up, where one could have distilled the signal from the noise, when you had a stronger chance to make things better.

 

“Life is a juggling act with your own emotions. The trick is to always keep something in your hand and something in the air.”

Chloe Thurlow, Katie in Love

 

 

 

 

 

Probably the blog caption runs counter to the perceived wisdom that is floating around a k a that growth and learning are Conjoined twins. And we are besieged by a culture that offers pride of place to addition– adding things to life which effectively means the default remains-once onboarded, it becomes identity, which you are not expected to edit, expand or update. There is nothing inherently wrong with adding. But if it becomes a default path to improvement, that may be failing to consider a whole class of other opportunities​.

 

The best films are exceptional NOT because of what we see but because of what we don’t see. More reading for those who might see relevance in this can be found at https://www.sureshdinakaran.com/blog/2024/08/20/wanted-editor-in-chief-for-life-3/

 

It is said that half of wisdom is learning what to unlearn.

 

“We are what we are because we have been what we have been.” “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” “To become what one is, one must not have the faintest idea what one is.” “Self-knowledge is not knowledge but a story one tells about oneself.” These curated quotes from the likes of Sigmund Freud, Lao-Tzu, Friedrich Nietzsche & Simone De Beauvoir, in that order, beautifully summarises the strong co relation between deficiency and identity.

The deficiency=identity syndrome!

” I can never learn Spanish, I don’t have an ear for languages “.. ” Risk taking and number crunching is not my forte, I can never be an entrepreneur “. Because such thinking highlighting deficiencies is highly robust and powerfully self-reinforcing, they begin to become our identity. 

 

And because the belief is so deep rooted, you will do everything in your power to come in your own way and not learn and fail at learning the new language or embark on the journey of being a business person. Such self-sabotage acts as a virtual loop going back to strengthen the original belief. Time to realise that ‘ the obstacle is the way ‘.

 

The caveat here is that unlearning is not a walk in the park. Having a guide or a coach as a partner in rhyme who will help you wear a new lens and hoover out what has rigidly domiciled in the recesses of your mind will be handy.

 

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.

 

Clint Eastwood: “What you put into life is what you get out of it”.

 

Maya Angelou: “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have” .

 

The body achieves what the mind believes. It’s the will, not the skill. So, keep going! No matter how hard things may get, it’s important to keep going – a skill takes time to achieve and nurture, the most important thing is to be consistent and the results will come.

 

Because personal growth is a long-term effort, you’re bound to encounter obstacles along the way. Whether you’re pursuing a new dream, working hard toward ongoing goals or making a plan to transform your life in some way, you’re bound to encounter challenges along the way. But those challenges could be a gateway to growth and new opportunities. As Ryan Holiday mentioned with a book by the name ” The Obstacle is the Way “, the path to your next and best is somewhere in those obstacles.

 

The law of attraction and manifestation is a two way street.

 

Want to have committed people around you? You stick to your commitment!

Expect reliability from others first by being reliable.

Earn trust first and then expect others to become trustworthy.

Attitude precedes outcomes. The desire for six-pack abs is far weaker than an attitude for training.

Be ready to die empty! There is always a tomorrow but all our tomorrows are finite. We will run out of them. Give all that it takes to do the things that brightens your day. Today. And day after day. The returns will surprise you. And pleasantly at that.

 

Abundance is a dance with reciprocity – what we can give, what we can share, and what we receive in the process- Terry Tempest Williams

 

Sometime back, during some random readings, I had come across a concept called ” pattern interrupt ” and the analogy used to explain the term was of the ‘ elevator pitch ‘. The typical elevator pitch is all about ‘ I, me, myself ‘ where one is doing one’s best to articulate an idea or thought to the person willing(or is it?) to give you an ear for the next 30-45 seconds. The pattern interrupt on that runs counter to what convention has established as an elevator pitch. It turns the concept on its head and crafts the elevator pitch being about the other person and not you. And potentially, leaving you with an open door to re-connect and re-engage with that person well after the elevator doors have closed, metaphorically speaking!

 

Humour is a pattern-switching process. A joke is funny because it causes ‘ insight switchover ‘ from a familiar pattern to a new, unexpected one. And it is this moment of surprise and delight that triggers laughter.

 

Sometime back a joke that launched an artistic revolution was Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain. It went on to become one of the most influential works of the twentieth century. For a six dollar fee, any artist could submit their work to an exhibition held by the Society of Independent Artists. For a joke, Duchamp submitted a porcelain urinal that he’s bought from a New York plumbing supplier, signed it R MUTT 1917(the maker’s name) and titled it Fountain. Not surprisingly, the piece was never exhibited, the curator refused to display it- but its submission caused an uproar. Was it art or not? The Fountain was thrown away. Forgotten. A photograph was the only record of the original object. The key to its success was that the photo was reproduced in an avant-garde art magazine with an accompanying article that eloquently explained the concept of ‘ ready-made ‘. It started the ball rolling. The reputation of Fountain grew. It was repeatedly reproduced in art magazines and books. Collectors clamoured to buy it because of its fame, so Duchamp decided to remake it. There was a problem though: the manufacturer had stopped producing them. Duchamp had to hire craftsmen to make an exact replica from the photograph ‘ by hand ‘- a delicious irony!

( Marcel Duchamp Fountain, 1917, photograph by Alfred Stieglitz at 291 art gallery following the 1917 Society of Independent Artists exhibit, with entry tag visible. The backdrop is The Warriors by Marsden Hartley. )

 

The format of a conventional joke is that the listener is led down a familiar, ‘reasonable‘ pathway. While they are travelling down this familiar road, the punchline suddenly shifts them onto an unexpected, different sidetrack. Creativity is about producing the unexpected and seeing things from a new perspective. Humour can be instrumental in shifting that expectation.

It hardly helps that our society believes that if you’re having fun then you can’t be getting the job done. Rather than being weighed down by a serious mindset, what we really need is humour. Humour is a key that opens the door to subversive and counter-intuitive thinking.

 

” Only those who are capable of silliness can be called truly intelligent “- Christopher Isherwood

 

We passed through a phase wherein information was considered power.  That said, we are in a world deluged by a lot of information, most of it irrelevant, we need to rephrase the line to ‘ clarity is power ‘.

 

In such a context it is extremely difficult to maintain a clear vision. While there is a debate raging about the future of humanity, a lot of us are clueless what the agenda is or what are the key questions to be answered. As the bills are not going to be paying themselves anytime soon, we are busy fending for ourselves, raising kids, attending to our aging parents, moving from one daily hustle to the next. Which means we do not have the luxury of investigating or understanding what is going on.

 

Unfortunately, history gives no discounts. If the future of humanity is decided in your absence, because you are too busy feeding or clothing your kids or struggling to keep the home fires burning- them and you will not be excluded from the consequences. This is very unfair, but who said history was fair?

 

All these years, we have studied history, only, never to learn from it!. History has a way of getting back at us(by repeating itself), but, even then, we are too busy looking the other way.

 

Seven plus billion people around the world have seven billion plus agendas. And as already observed, thinking about the big picture is a relatively rare luxury.

 

A global world puts unprecedented pressure on our personal conduct and morality. Each of us is ensnared within numerous all-encompassing spider webs, which on the one hand restrict our movements, but at the same time transmit our tiniest jiggle to faraway destinations. Our daily routines influence the lives of people and animals halfway across the world, and some personal gestures can unexpectedly set the entire world ablaze, as happened with the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia, which ignited the Arab Spring, and with the women who shared their stories of sexual harassment and sparked the #MeToo movement.

This global dimension of our personal lives means that it is more important than ever to uncover our religious and political biases , our racial and gender privileges, and our unwitting complicity in institutional oppression. But is that a realistic enterprise? How can you find a firm ethical ground in a world that far extends beyond one’s horizons, that spins completely out of human control, and that holds all gods and ideologies suspect?

 

Without wanting to sound overambitious, it is time that Homo sapiens gets into the act. Philosophy, science and religion are all running out of time. Unless you are happy to entrust the future of your life to the mercy of quarterly revenue reports, you need a clear idea of what life is all about.

 

The end of history has been postponed.

 

“The real measure of your wealth is how much you’d be worth if you lost all your money. ”

 

“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.”

 

“There is something very freeing about being anonymous because nothing is expected of you; nothing is getting back to anyone, and no one cares.”

 

” Life wouldn’t be so precious, if there never was an end “..!!

 

All of the above quotes have been attributed to no one in particular. So, it is to the credit of anonymous. And because they are all so insightful and inspiring, our clamor to know more about the person behind it only increases.

 

When J K Rowling had become the world’s highest selling author, she stunned the book world by revealing that The Cuckoo Calling was her book, written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. She said she wanted to keep this fact a secret a little longer because being far lesser known or even being an unknown Robert Galbraith was such a liberating experience. Agatha Christie wrote sixty-six highly successful detective novels under her own name. She also wrote six romance novels under the name Mary Westmacott. Christie wanted to explore another genre without the baggage of her reputation pulling her down.

 

There are many such examples of writers. A pseudonym gave them the freedom to write without the shackles of their reputation and an opportunity to explore genres that are not generally taken seriously. They don’t want the credit for writing them. They love the freedom to experiment and make mistakes. They simply want to enjoy their writing.

If we are not accountable for something, we work with freedom. We experiment in a way we would not normally have the nerve to. Sometimes our egos get in the way and tie us up in knots.

 

Sometimes it’s good to put your ego in a box under the bed. There is freedom in being nobody. We live in a culture where everyone is obsessed with getting credit for every little thing they do. Working in anonymity will free you of others’ expectations but, most importantly, free you of your own expectations.

 

” It is that anonymous person who meanders through the streets and feels what’s happening there, feels the pulse of the people, who’s able to create. “- Cyndi Lauper