Things Successful Businessman Leader implement…

Every Business leader gives his or her 100% to create a flawless team, so as to get the flow right. Even then they fail to produce results. Why and how to rectify is the question that must be running in your mind right now. It can be unavoidable calamity, a business plan failure or a wrong decision. Every leader has to sail through troubles, this the time business leadership really really counts, lets understand how to face the next situation as an Business leader to make it humongous big…
  1. Action: it comes with efforts and choices. Every choice will have its consequence. The moment we get a failure we tend to give up or move on to something new, my dear darling friends no action of the choice you made is risk free. Let the failure be an opportunity to bounce back. History has thousands of examples of success stories out of a failure.
  2. Change: Nothing is permanent in this world and your life. Change is the only permanent factor to growth. The power of a successful business leader lies in evaluating the situation, learning from mistakes, shifting direction, and continuing to move forward. Every failure is the key to the next success door.
  3. Awareness: Let’s take the example of a car driver here, he has to move in the required direction with the right speed knowing he has to be aware of the traffic on his sides and rear of his car. Awareness gives you the power to make the right decision at any given point in a situation to bounce back towards success.
  4. Positivity: Human beings are not creatures of intellect, they are dominated by emotions. Most decisions taken are with emotions and implemented with intellect. Let it be Ramayan or Mahabarat the wars took place out of emotional decisions. If you can fuel yourself with positive and proactive fuel you will be able to take a pause before taking any negative decision as a business leader.
  5. Values and Belief system: Every legend born on this mother earth has achieved legacy through operating with their values and belief systems. What is right is right in every situation and what is wrong is wrong in every situation. They don’t manipulate for personal benefits. The legendary Mahatama Gandhi lived his belief of achieving freedom through non-violence in every situation in freedom fight of India
  Failure will come that much is guaranteed. But successful business leaders know that where they are standing at thatmoment and will follow the above 5 rules of successful leadership…   Wishing you Peace and Abundance… M.A.D Ashay

A Perfect Recipe to Customer Loyalty

All businesses, big and small, aspire to have a loyal customer base. Any business that has earned customer loyalty will never fail.  But the question is how you earn customer loyalty. It is not something that you can buy. It has to be earned.

Promotional activities, free gifts, etc. would increase your footfall. But, it is temporary. As soon as the promotion is withdrawn, the customer loyalty shifts. So what do you do?  I will tell you.

But, before going through how to create customer loyalty, let’s understand what customer loyalty is.

What is Customer Loyalty?

Customer loyalty is a customer’s inclination towards a particular brand or business over all other brands or businesses. When you buy all your groceries from that one store, despite having a lot of other available choices, it is customer loyalty. When you get your haircut from the same salon always, no matter how long you have to wait in the queue, it is customer loyalty.

You must have seen people who wear clothes from only one particular brand. Or people who only use one brand of toothpaste their entire life. There are people who use the same fragrance always. No matter how much you convince them about other brands, they just don’t budge. Even if their favourite brand increases its price, they won’t shift their loyalty. The rival brands would try to woo them with offers and freebies but they stay firm.

To witness this extent of loyalty is amazing. But for a business, to have such loyal customers is a blessing as well as a challenge.  To create such customer loyalty, you first need to understand the underlying phenomenon. What motivates a person to make constant repurchases from the same brand?

The Underlying Phenomenon

If we closely examine the customer behaviour, you will find out the reasons of customer loyalty. One of the most important contributors to customer loyalty is customer satisfaction and customer delight. When your customers are constantly satisfied with your product and service, they are bound to come back to you. When you go out of your way and do something completely unexpected for your customer, they stay with you for life.

Other reasons for customer loyalty are convenience, quality and performance, familiarity and comfort level with the brand. If you are able to create convenience for your customers, they are likely to favour you over others. Great quality and excellent performance ensure that your customer comes back to you again and again. Building a long-term relation with your customer that builds a sense of familiarity, belongingness and comfort would help you gain customer loyalty. 

The Recipe

Now that we have become familiar with the concept and underlying phenomena of customer loyalty, we are ready for the recipe. Let’s get started.

Ingredients

The underlying phenomenon of customer loyalty will be our ingredients. The perfect mix of these ingredients would give us loyal customers.  The ingredients are:

  • Customer Satisfaction
  • Customer Delight
  • Quality and Performance
  • Familiarity and Comfort

The Steps

The steps of creating customer loyalty are as follows:

1.Be responsive:

The first step is to be responsive. Instead of waiting for your customer to explain their needs, understand them yourself. Try to be on your toes always. Always listen to your customers intently. Observe each and every thing about your customer. Analyse their buying behaviour. Nowadays, it is quite easy as you can use technology for all this. But try not to lose the human touch. You need to understand your customers’ needs better than they understand themselves. Don’t just provide a product; provide solutions to their needs and requirements. Be proactive, not reactive. This will create customer satisfaction.

2.A single touch point

We know convenience matters a lot in today’s times. People want their buying experience to be seamless and smooth. This is where most of us lack.  You must have called a customer care at least once in your life. You know how painful it is!! They bounce you from one executive to another. Like this was not enough, you are asked to press this number then that number. Even getting a simple query answered becomes an immensely painful experience.

How great would it be, if your customers don’t have to go through all this? What if you could provide a single touch point to your customers to solve all their queries? Try to make the shopping experience very convenient for your customers. Instead of having them run from pillar to post, give them a single point of contact. Make some qualified and trained people in the organization responsible for all customer related issues.

3.Constant Improvement

Attaining customer loyalty is not a single day act, it is a life-long process. A lot of efforts and dedication are required. To surpass customer expectations, you need to keep on improving your products and services. After all, quality and performance of the products and services are also one of our ingredients in the recipe of customer loyalty.

To provide unmatched quality and performance, daily improvements are required. Not just in the product or service, but also in the systems and processes of the organization. Keep all your resources including the human resources updated by providing constant training and development.

4.Take feedbacks actively

It is very important to know what your customers think of your company and your products and services. Then only would you be able to improve your products and services and satisfy and delight your customer. Ask for their honest feedback.  Don’t just make them rate your services, ask for their complete opinion. Ask them where you should improve? What they like in your product or service? Why do they buy from you? What are their expectations? What could make them happy?

And not just customers take feedback from your employees as well. They are the ones who interact with the customer. They understand your customers better than you. Empower them to speak up, to express their opinions and ideas. This should not be a “once in a blue moon” activity. It should be a daily exercise. But, don’t just take the feedback, implement it too. Make it a point to inculcate these feedbacks into your products and services.

5.Go out of your way

To retain your customers, you need to go out of your way.  Create a comfortable environment for them .Let them know you care. Build long-lasting relations with them. It is not always about earning revenue. Sometimes relations are important than revenues. If for once you cared for your customer more than your revenue, be assured that you have won him forever.

A Ritz Carlton hotel in Bali went all out of their way to get special food for one of their customers’ son from another country as he was allergic to the regular food. They could have simply told them that they do not have that special food. They would not lose that customer as they were not supposed to have it. But understanding their situation, they put in extra efforts to make sure the kid gets his food. Flying someone from another country must have cost them a lot. But, what they earned is priceless. They earned that family’s lifetime loyalty.

To build long term relations with customers, you need to encourage your employees to go out of their way. Protocol is not everything. Sometimes, empathy and understanding give better results. Create a customer centric culture.  Make your customers feel that you value them .Let them feel a sense of belongingness, a familiarity and a comfort with you.

When you satisfy and delight your customers, make things convenient and effortless for them, value their opinion, provide them unmatched quality and performance and go that extra mile for them, you have got yourself the perfect dish of customer loyalty.

Do try this recipe at your business!!!

Wishing you Peace and Abundance…

Ashay

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Simplicity

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” – Confucius

We often run after the desire of acquiring more and more and in this race, we unnecessarily complicate things. I want a closet full of dresses, shoes and accessories. I want a fleet of cars in my courtyard. I want 5 bedrooms in my house just for myself. I think with this I will be having more choice, but what I don’t know is that with choice, I am also adding unwanted complication and confusion to my life.  Now, even trivial things like what to wear would require at least an hour of contemplation.

In order to look fancy, sophisticated or intelligent, we unnecessarily complicate things. But complications look fancy just from the outside, but when you have a closer look, there is a lot of confusion and chaos.  You may be momentarily impressed by a person’s excessive use of jargons, but the moment he stops speaking, you will immediately forget what he said. The most impactful conversations are those which are simple to understand.

If a book, fiction or non-fiction, is written in a complicated language, you may start reading it but would never finish it. You will read a book from start to end only when you find the language lucid and understandable.

Everyone wants to look sophisticated but they forget that humans love simplicity. Things that are simple attract our attention and have the highest recall rate. There are some TV ads that fail miserably and then there are other ads which make a product or a brand iconic. A lot of money and efforts have been spent on both then what is the difference? The difference lies in how simple or complicated the ads are. When an ad is simple and easy to understand, it creates a connection between the brand and the audience.

Simplicity, whether it is in our habits, our life style, our work process or our business, will always give better results. When you are at your home, open your closet and empty it on the bed and then select the dresses/shirts/trousers that you have never worn. Then ask yourself, why did you buy them?

Go to your kitchen identify the electronics, the fancy cookware, the silver crockery that you have never really used. Why did you buy them? Go to your office; look at your to-do list, how much of this work is actually necessary to fetch results. Why are you adding unnecessary burden to yourself? Keep a log of your day and see how many things you did which you could have easily done without. Why did you do them?

The answer to all these questions is “to look sophisticated”.

“Shun sophistications, embrace simplicity and see how the world becomes a better place”. If you are able to manage with 10 pair of clothes, don’t buy 100, if you can walk till the supermarket, don’t use your car, If a single course meal is sufficient to satiate your hunger, don’t yearn for a 7 course meal, If the work can be done by 2 people, don’t hire 10 to look big, If the nature of your or your employees’ work is such that it can be done from home, why waste your office space and time.

 Eliminate complicated systems and replace them with simple systems. Use technology to make life better.  Instead of manual reporting, use online tracking. Replace paperwork with online real-time documentation. Use CRM and MIS to create marketing and sales database. Use software to track your employees’ attendance and performance.

 Instead of having an isolated system for everything, have a centralized system and integrate all the systems to it. Create apps and software to let your customers and employees interact and do business without being physically present at the same time. Deliver products and services to your customers’ doorstep. Minimize the time and effort of your employees and customers. “Decrease the quantity of time spent and works done to increase the quality of time spent and work done.”

“As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness, weakness.” – Henry David Thoreau

 

Wishing you Peace and Abundance…

Ashay

Negotiation

What is negotiation? It is a conversation or a discussion through which we want to create a win-win situation for all involved parties.  It sounds a bit technical but it is a part of our everyday routine. We knowingly or unknowingly keep on negotiating with one person or the other. When your alarm is blazing in your ears and you tell yourself, “Let me sleep for 5 more minutes”, what are you doing? You are negotiating with yourself. Your lazy self and your disciplined self are trying to reach on an agreement which is acceptable to both. When you are running late for office but your mom wants you to eat something first, and then you promise her that you will grab a bite before reaching office is a negotiation between you and your mom. When you ask your dad for a new bike and he says, “I will buy you a new bike if you get 90% marks in your board exams”, it is a negotiation between you and your dad. When you go to a shop to buy something, what happens between you and the salesperson is negotiation. When sales target is being discussed in the office meeting that is a negotiation between you and your team. And I can go on and on about what is negotiation. But yeah, you have got my point. Negotiation is a very routine part of our life so we should be the masters of negotiation. But sadly that is not the case. We may be able to negotiate very well with our friends and family but when we go to a client, something snaps, something happens and Bam!! We lose the deal. Why? Something must be lacking… Let’s see what… Before we actually start the process of negotiation, the first and foremost thing we need to do is Homework. Research, research and a lot of research is required. You need to carefully study the complete background, history, strengths and weaknesses of the other party. Collect all the material and information you can get about them and spend a good amount of time on every little detail even if it seems trivial. You never know which information will help you when. No matter whether the negotiation is a personal one or a professional one, if you want to be a winner, do your homework seriously. When you are loaded with all the information, don’t forget to take along your Confidence. Confidence is a must for every winning situation. If you are not confident about what you are saying, no matter how hard you try, it shows in your words or actions and the other party takes it as a negative sign. No matter how good your offer is, if you don’t sound confident, the negotiation will head to a wrong direction. Now that you have packed your confidence with your homework in the safe of your mind, we are ready to go. There are a few other things that we have to keep in mind while we are negotiating to come out as a winner.Adam Grant and Adam Galinsky, two management professors, have proposed 6 best negotiation practices after a lot of research.  (Reference: Forbes.com) Let me take you through them.
  1. Share Information: Everyone knows “what goes around comes around”, but we don’t apply this during negotiation. When we are negotiating, we are naturally very guarded and cautious. We don’t want to share too much information but at the same time want the other party to open up. How is that possible? To create an atmosphere of trust and openness, you will have to initiate the process of sharing information. This is not to say tell them everything but just a little bit and if you don’t want to tell them anything about the deal, talk about unrelated things. Talk about your hobbies, interests and let them open up too. When you talk about such stuff, the other party finds you genuine and starts to trust you. This helps you to be in a winning position.
  2. Rank order priorities: When you start a negotiation, you know what you want from it, your priorities are pretty clear. But Grant and Galinsky tell you to rank order your priorities. For e.g. If you are looking for a flat, your priorities would be reasonable price, convenient location, spacious house, etc. Now what you need to do is rank order these priorities in the order of most important to least important. If you have a limited budget your first priority would be reasonable price, followed by may be, convenient location and so on. When you rank order, priorities are pretty clear for both the parties.
  3. Go in knowing your target price and walk away price: Your target price or term is what you really want from the deal and your walk away price is what you can settle for. For e.g. your target price may be to get a 1bhk flat for 30,00,000 but you would be ok even if you have to pay 40,00,000. When you know your range, negotiation becomes easier.
  4. Make first offer: Contrary to the popular belief, Grant and Galinsky have proven that the party that makes the first offer is more likely to be in a winning position because the first offer acts as an “anchor” around which both the parties start to negotiate. For e.g. If you make the first offer of 30,00,000 that would be the price around which you and your agent would automatically start discussing and this will increase your chances of getting a deal that is near your target price.
  5. Don’t Counter too Low: If somehow you were not able to make the first offer, don’t counter too low. For e.g. your agent made the first offer for 40, 00,000, if you immediately make a counter offer of 20, 00,000, your agent would not agree and you will have to increase your offer to somewhere around his offer. In order to have the deal in your favor, make an offer that is not too low or too high to create a counter-anchor. In our example, instead of 20,00,000 you can make an offer of 30,00,000 to tilt the deal in your favor.
  6. Make more than one counter offers: Gant and Galinsky have proven that making more counter offers leaves both the parties more satisfied. Both the seller and the buyer want to get a sense of achievement from the negotiation.  When many counter offers are made, the seller feels that he has struck a hard bargain and the buyer in turn feels that he got the best price or best deal, which makes both of them happy and more likely to involve in further business with each other. On the other hand, if the very first offer made by the first party is accepted by the second party, it would leave the first party dissatisfied and doubting that they could have got a better deal, had they offered lower price. This concept is called “Buyer’s Remorse”. To prevent yourself and your customer/seller from experiencing buyer’s remorse, never accept the first offer even if it is what you want, keep on making counter offers to get better results and a sense of satisfaction.
  Be confident, do your homework, follow these practices and you will win all the negotiations in your life and business!!!   Wishing you Peace and Abundance… Ashay

THE THREE MISTAKES

There are three instances in our lives, where we are vulnerable to failures the most. These can be called the three mistakes that almost everyone makes in their lives. One may think when these mistakes are so common; the consequences would not be huge. That, my dear friends, is a myth that we will bust today. Today we will discuss the Three Mistakes that we make, not the Chetan  Bhagat novel, but a reality of our lives.

The first mistake has cost Vijay Mallya a fortune. Who can forget Kingfisher Airlines? It perfectly blended the glamour of international business class with an economy class price. Travelling Kingfisher made you feel like royalty. Who wouldn’t like a television screen in front of their seat, extremely beautiful and polite air hostesses at their service, a warm welcome and free meal at a time when other economy airlines charged you for almost every service?

But despite all the glamour and an extremely loyal customer base, Kingfisher Airlines failed miserably. One might wonder, why? Because the airline was not given the attention it required. When everything was going fine, Vijay Mallya must have thought that I am providing such good services at such an affordable price, what could possibly go wrong. And the moment he left the airlines without monitoring or paying any attention, things started going downhill resulting in what could be called the biggest airline venture failure.

And this is not a unique case, it happens to all of us in our daily lives.  The loss of focus caused a huge financial loss for Vijay Mallya but for someone else it may cause loss of customers, loss of employees, loss of relationships, even loss of life. When you are overconfident about your driving skills and stop paying attention to the road, you are most prone to accidents. When you think your partner is very understanding and you start taking him/her for granted, that is when trouble starts brewing between you. No matter how well things are going right now, if you divert your attention from it, the possibility of failures is the highest.

The second mistake that we commit most often is that we are not able to read the signals of our own body and mind. Our body and mind give us signals that they are tired and cannot work more but instead of stopping and taking a break, we push them harder and the results are disastrous.  I personally have this habit that I cannot rest until my work is done satisfactorily. Normally, it is a good habit but at some times, instead of good results, it gives bad results.   Want to know how? Let me give you an example.

Imagine you have been traveling the whole day and have not been able to finish the work you were supposed to do that day, but by the time you reach home, you are extremely tired. What would you do?  The moment you reach home, you would immediately start working and complete your work. No matter how much your mind and body shout that they need rest, you won’t stop until the work is done. Right?

And you are very happy with yourself. You think you have sacrificed your rest for the work and pushed your limits, you might even nominate yourself for the Nobel Prize (in your imaginations, of course!!!). But in the morning, when the only thing you can feel is pain, your beautiful bubble starts to burst. Anyhow you get dressed, go to your office thinking at least I have completed my work, the appreciation I will get for it is worth all the pain. And then you submit your work, and another blow, your boss calls you and points out all the silly mistakes you have done. And there, the bubble that started bursting in the morning has breathed its last. Poor you, all you got from your supreme sacrifice were pain and humiliation!!

Wouldn’t it be better, that you let your body and mind rest for a while, take a nap, eat something, do some refreshing activity and then get to work. If you punish your body or mind by depriving them of the much needed rest, they will punish you by spoiling your work. Karma!!! “What goes around comes around”. It does not apply only to your conduct with others; it applies to your conduct with yourself as well.

The third mistake is the most common of them all.  It is multi-tasking. What is wrong with multi-tasking now? It is the need of the hour. In this rat race, multi-tasking is the key to success. Yes, I know all these arguments. But I still stand by my words. And No, I am not crazy. Hear me out and decide for yourself.

You are chatting on facebook with your girlfriend/wife/friend, preparing a presentation on your laptop and watching your favorite series on television. Sounds familiar?   Now your favorite character in the series dies suddenly. You are obviously very frustrated. Life seems so cruel, the whole mood has changed. The sweet conversation you were having with your girlfriend/wife/friend does not seem so sweet now, the clients for whom you were preparing the presentation does not seem so much important right now. Yes, this is just a momentary thing and in a minute or two or may be five, you will be back to reality.

But since you were multi-tasking, this momentary mourning of yours has reached your girlfriend/wife/friend and your presentation too. Now your clients or your girlfriend/wife/friend don’t know the tragedy you have been through, they are going to confuse your mourning with your incompetence or ill-behavior. Had you not been doing all these things at once, you could have saved your day.

See, this is why I say multi-tasking is a mistake. Your brain is not conditioned to work on many things at the same time and as a result it carries the emotions and thoughts from the one to the other. Even research has proven that men cannot multi-task and women can do it but to some extent only.  Give your undivided attention to one thing at a time. You may get slow but you won’t create disasters. With undivided attention and focus, everything you do will be with the best of your abilities. After all, “slow and steady wins the race”. What is the point of running fast and breaking your leg just before reaching the finishing line?

Remember, confidence is a must but when you attach the word over to it, mishaps are bound to happen. Remain grounded; don’t let your success reach your head. Always be focused and pay attention to each and every detail. Read the signals of your mind and body, don’t punish them. Avoid fatigue, take rest whenever required. Don’t hurry, the world is not going to run away, but if you don’t stop, you might pass away (a. k. a heart attacks, strokes, hemorrhage, etc.). Don’t try to have too much on your platter. Pay attention to one thing at a time. You are a human, not a Windows P.C, you don’t need to multi-task.

Wishing you a Happywala New year with Peace and Abundance…

Ashay

The Power of Focus

“I don’t spend time wondering what might be next; I just focus on trying to savor every day“- Trisha Yearwood

Today when I started writing, I was stuck for a very long time, I just could not jot down my thoughts. Putting my thoughts into words has never been this difficult for me. And as I peeped into my mind, I could see my poor brain getting tired in wandering between my home, my work, my future and what not .That moment, I understood that the reason I could not write is that I am not able to focus on one thing. For the sake of my dear little brain ( the sole source of my bread and butter), I stood up, started walking up and down the room, took my imaginary broom, swept across the thick clouds of vague and random thoughts and then I found it, my article, hiding behind all these random thoughts. As I focused on it, it shone bright and that is how this paragraph came through.

Now that I have given you a nice virtual tour of my brain, it is the time to peep into your own brain and say hello!! While you are reading this article, what other things are you thinking about?  Approximately how many thoughts do you have in a day or while doing a particular piece of work? So may that you can’t even count.

Have you ever woken up in the morning feeling already tired? Yes, you read it right, tired in the morning before doing anything at all. Why does this happen? Weren’t you supposed to feel all energetic and fresh?

Before you attribute it to a psychological disorder or any sickness, let me inform you that it happens mostly because your mind was burdened with endless thoughts, his facebook post, her tweets, that whatsapp message, that character in that movie, those harsh words of that friend, those photographs, that dinner, tomorrow’s meeting, Sunday’s date, Saturday’s party and the list goes on and on and on..

How could you not be tired in the morning when your mind has been running this “thought marathon” all the night? When you are going to sleep, clear your mind of all the thoughts and focus only and only on rest and sleep and see how fresh you will feel in the morning.

While you are at it, do not stop just here; apply this approach to everything you do. Focus only on the present, on the work in hand; do not let your thoughts wander here and there. Put all your energy, your thoughts, your concentration and all your focus on what you are doing right now and put all other thoughts, problems, and worries on mute.  This will help you feel less tired and less burdened. You will feel lighter and thus become faster.

Focusing on current does not mean losing the sight of your goals or your vision. Your ultimate focus has to be on your goals only. You cannot afford to lose the sight of your goal while focusing only and only on the present work. But didn’t I say we need to focus only on the present?  Is it confusing?

Let’s make it simple, if your goal is to travel the world in a stipulated time, how would you accomplish it? You would allocate a particular number of days to each country, plan your journey and start from one country. Imagine you are in the first country of your plan and all you are focusing on is how many more countries are left, how much time it would take and so on. Would you be able to enjoy it?  No.

Now reverse the situation, you are travelling in a country and all your focus is on seeing it, enjoying every bit of it and you get so lost in one place that you forget all about your plan and extend your stay. Would you be able to accomplish your goal? No.

Consider one more situation, while you are in one country, you focus only on being there, exploring and enjoying it but at the same time you have your goal in the rearview mirror and as a result you know when you have to start focusing on travelling to another country. Would you be able to enjoy every bit of your travel? Yes. Would you accomplish your goal? Yes. Simple as that.

Now that we know what to focus on when, it is important to address the how part too. How would I be able to focus? How can I stop my mind from wandering?  How can I reduce the endless thoughts in my mind? How can I stop worrying? The answer is:

  • Always see your glass as half full and not half empty,
  • Appreciate what you have; don’t keep whining about what you don’t have.
  • Remove all distractions,
  • Focus on one thing at a time,
  • Focus on the present, the now, don’t linger too much in the future
  • Schedule your work, set deadlines for your long term goals.
  • Set your priorities and focus only on them, forget everything else,
  • Be determined,
  • Be completely dedicated to whatever you are doing in a particular moment,

And whenever you feel your mind is becoming a trash bin of unnecessary thoughts, take the imaginary broom of determination and sweep your mind clear and keep that one thing shining bright which you have to focus on.

Remember, “The direction of your focus is the direction your life will move. Let yourself move toward what is good, valuable, strong and true”- Ralph Marston

Wishing you Peace and Abundance…

Ashay

Needs and Desires

What is the difference between a need and a desire?

Are your needs connected to your desire?

Simply put, a need is what you ought to do while a desire is what you want to do.Hunger is a need that has to be satisfied but having a gourmet meal is a desire. Having a mode of transport is a need but owning a fleet of premium cars is a desire. Clothing is a need but owning only premium brand clothes is a desire. A need is the bare minimum requirement for survival but a desire is what pushes you forward to get more. 

Needs are pretty much generic but desires are very individualistic and that is what sets people apart. Everybody needs food, clothing and shelter but someone may desire to be able to afford the best of everything while someone else may desire to have just enough for survival and nothing more.

Needs keep on changing with time and when one need is satisfied, it gives birth to another need. But desires keep on increasing, they are never satisfied. For e.g. when an unemployed person gets a job with a decent income and job security, he is able to afford the basic needs of food, clothing and shelter and thus his physical needs are satisfied and he will move on to social needs, i.e., the need to be associated with people, to be accepted and appreciated by people and to have friends.

But if this person has a desire of being very wealthy, instead of moving to social need, he will be stuck with finding ways of earning more and more money.  No amount of wealth accumulated by him is going to satisfy his desire as the more money he earns, the more he would want to earn.  This obsession with wealth will detach him from all his actual needs and make him restless and anxious. But he would still try to find peace in earning more as he would not be able to realize that he has enough wealth now and it is no longer his need, it’s just a desire.

Sometimes, we are not able to differentiate between our needs and desires. What we perceive as our needs are actually just our desires and they have nothing to do with our needs. And it is only after fulfilling those desires, we realize we didn’t need them at all, and all we are left with are just regrets. What is sadder is the fact that many a times these realizations strike us after wasting a lifetime on something that we never actually needed. All our life we run after money, power or fame, only to realize later that we have lost what we needed in the pursuit of what was unnecessary. Running madly after your desires without even thinking whether you really need them is sheer stupidity.

But this is not to say that having a desire is bad because having a desire is very necessary. In fact not having a desire at all is very dangerous. How would you differentiate between a success and failure when you have no desire at all? A desire less life is no life.How meaningless is everything going to be, when you have no desire at all? People move forward in their lives only because they have a desire. All great stories are based on a person’s desire to do something, to achieve something. All conquests in the world, all discoveries and inventions happened because somebody desired to achieve them. Desire is the essence of life.

You may ask if desire is really that important then why I spent so much time writing about why not to follow a desire. Actually following a desire is not wrong in itself, what is wrong is following a desire without realizing what you actually need. Needs and desires have to be aligned. You need to follow a desire only till the time it is relevant to your need. When a desire goes way beyond the need and becomes completely detached from the needs is the time when problems arise. It is the time when you get trapped in following your desires and you start losing the sight of your needs. And this is where you need to stop yourself. This is where you have to use all your will power and control your desires.

No matter at what stage of life you are, pause and think, do you really need to do what you are doing? Introspect and ask yourself, what are your desires and what are your needs? Are your desires connected and aligned to your actual needs? Do you really understand your needs or are you running after superficial needs? Are you happy doing what you are doing? Do you feel peaceful? The ultimate need of every person is peace and you will find peace only when all your needs are fully satisfied. Blindly following your desires may take you away from satisfying your needs and thus leave you anxious and in a constant search of peace.

 Stop yourself from getting trapped in the vicious cycle of desire but also do not let your desires die. Having a desire less life is as bad as running blindly after your desire. Understand the difference between your needs and your desires and align your desires to your needs. It is a balance that you have to maintain to attain peace in life and have no regrets.

Wishing you Peace and Abundance…

Ashay

3 Mantras To Get Organised

                   Do you remember Monica from the popular sitcom FRIENDS?  That freakishly organized lady. We all have at least one such person in our circles who is just like her. They can tell the difference even if you have moved just a cup an inch away from its usual spot. Their precision and that uncontrollable urge to have everything at its right place drives you insane.

                 But what I personally admire about such people is how they exactly know what thing is at what place, they know when exactly they are supposed to do what, unlike us, they do not have to waste time figuring out all the what, where and how. They are sorted and scheduled always.

                And no matter how much these organizing freaks annoy you, you have to admit whenever something is lost or whenever something has to be sorted; these people come to your rescue. Somewhere you know their habit of organizing everything is not that bad after all, if anything it is a saver. So, why don’t you adopt it yourself? Why not become organized?And I don’t mean annoyingly organized, just the right amount of organized.

              I know what you are thinking, I am not an organized person, I don’t want to be organized, I am just fine with the way I am, So what, if I don’t know where I have kept what, So what, if I keep on losing stuff or I don’t have any fixed schedule, it is fun, it is cool.  But that is not true.

            You know how important it is to be organized, especially in today’s fast paced life when everything seems to be so rushed. And it is not like you have to learn some rocket science; all you have to do is to follow some simple rules.

            The first MANTRA “First things first and First time right”. Don’t do things haphazardly, do what is required exactly when it is required.  Set your priorities, do things according to their urgency and importance starting with the most urgent and most important work.  Imagine your boss has given you two presentations to make and both have to be submitted till the evening. One is to be presented to a very important client and other is required for a regular employee meet. You start working on the employee meet presentation first. You work really hard and create a very beautiful and impactful presentation but it was very timeconsumingand you only have an hour left to complete the client presentation. You give your best despite the shortage of time and create a nice presentation but the previous one is far better than this one. As a result, the clients were not much impressed by the presentation and your company lost the deal and your boss actually scolded you for creating a better presentation for the employee meet. What went wrong?

               Although both the things were equally urgent, you overlooked the importance part. Client presentation was more important than the employee meet presentation and was supposed to be done first and more carefully. Doing the wrong thing first made everything wrong and all your efforts were wasted. Had you done the first thing first, you would not have done any mistake.

              The second MANTRA “A place for everything, everything at its place”. There is always a right place for everything and everything needs to be at its right place. How weird would it be if there was a shower in the middle of your living room or your office desk in the rest room? Why do you think these things would be weird? Because that is not their right place. The shower has to be in the washroom and the office desk needs to be in the main working area in the office. Similarly everything else in our life has to be kept at its right place so that we do not lose it. It must have happened with you numerous times that you had to spend hours looking for a thing that was sitting just next to you. Why does this happen?  We just keep our things anywhere and everywhere and that is why when we need them we have no idea where we had kept them and start looking for them here and there. It wastes so much of our time and energy and also creates a lot of panic and anxiety.What would happen if you are not able to find your original documents that you have to submit for seeking an admission in a very prestigious college and today is the last date of submission? Panic, chaos, anxiety and a tsunami like situation in your entire house. Don’t you want to avoid such situations? If yes, then let’s make it a point today that we would not place any of our belongings randomly. We would create a place for everything and keep everything at its right place so that we could easily fetch anything from its place whenever it is needed.

             The third MANTRA is “A time for everything and everything at its time”. Nature has created day and night to make us understand that there is a time for everything, the day has been created to work and the night has been created to rest. Whenever we go against this rule, our health is adversely affected. Similarly for everything else also, a proper routine has to be followed. Everything has to be allotted a particular time and it is to be done at that time only. Whether it is your meals, your exercise, your office work, your family time, your phone, your social media, waking up or your sleep, everything has to be done at its proper time to avoid any kind of chaos and confusion.

             Set your priorities, do first things first and first time right, have a proper place and time for everything and do each and everything at its proper place and time and you will be properly organized. Being organized is not difficult; all you need is some effort. Just a small effort from your side is going to save you an enormous amount of time and energy.

  WISHING YOU PEACE AND ABUNDANCE… Ashay

The What’s and Whys of Relationships.

We all have some expectations from life, from the people we love, from our work, from almost everything around us. Expectations are only normal; there is nothing wrong in expecting. Expectations are in fact a manifestation of us being humans and not animals.But, I bet there must have been at least one moment in your life when you would have decided that I am not going to expect anything from this person now onwards.

Girls do you remember the time when you were super excited about the first anniversary of your relation and you were secretly expecting your boyfriend/ husband to take you for a ride or a romantic dinner or make some really romantic gesture and when the day finally arrived, he didn’t even wish you… How hurt were you??

Guys, remember when you had a really long day at work and all you wanted to do was go home and take some rest, and you were expecting your wife to welcome you sweetly and serve you a nice meal but just the moment you entered your home, your wife started yelling at you and complaining about your mom.. God, how annoyed were you??

Almost every one of us has faced these or similar situations. What do we do in these situations??Get so hung up on what has happened that we don’t even bother to think about why it happened.

How dare he not wish me on our anniversary?? How could he do this to me??  How insensitive is she??  Doesn’t she see how hard I work for all of them?? Couldn’t she at least offer me some water first? These questions keep on racing through our minds all the time but not once do we think about the reasons of such behavior.  May be he was so stressed about his work or something else that the anniversary slipped through his mind. May be she has been holding it for too long and her patience has finally worn out.

Do these possibilities cross our mind??      No!!  Why??

Because we are so obsessed with the result that we hardly notice the path leading to it. We are more concerned about what happened than why it happened. This approach and not our expectations, is the root cause of all our disappointments.

Life is not only about where we are now, it is about how we reached there that is why life is called a journey and not a destination. So, Dear Readers, next time when somebody falls short of your expectations, take a moment to introspect, to think about the possibilities that may have led to this situation?  Before blaming others of not understanding you, just think how much do you understand them?Before fretting about how little you are getting, think about what you have given.

Instead of taming your grudges, take some time to communicate your expectations compassionately to the other party, be it anyone, you’re parents, your spouse, your friends, your kids, you’re professional / business contacts or your colleagues.  Give some time to your loved ones and pay a lot of attention to them. Keep on discovering things about them notice them and most of all keep on communicating your feelings and listen to their feelings.  When you take care of every step of the process, the result will take care of itself.

So, thank you somuch for reading this!!!!!! WISHING YOU PEACE AND ABUNDANCE…. Ashay Shah

THE MAGIC WORD “THANK YOU”

You were supposed to meet your friend an hour ago but you are still stuck in traffic. He is waiting for you in scorching heat at a road crossing where there is no shade. You know he is going to be very mad at you and no amount of apologies is going to pacify him. What would you do when you reach there?

You instinctively would start the conversation with a big sorry and a long, boring, even yawning explanation of why you reached late.

Instead, the moment you see him, say “Thank you so much for being so patient. I am really grateful to you for waiting for me for so long in such a hot weather.And see how his expressions change and his anger disappear.  He would say, “It’s ok yaar, hota hai, I know how bad our city’s traffic is. It’s not like you kept me waiting on purpose, etc.”

Using a Thank you instead of Sorry saved you both from a bad face off and created a pleasant atmosphere. This is the power of a Thank You.

As Alfred Painter has rightly put it, “Saying thank you is more than good manners. It is good spirituality.”Saying a thank you is not just about being courteous, it is about your whole attitude towards life.  It is about bringing positivity in your life.

Saying thank you is about appreciating the worth of life, it is about being grateful for all things around you. Thank you is about taking pleasure in every little thing and seeking learning from even the worst of situations.

So how come we say Sorry for almost everything and thank you for hardly anything? Don’t we have anything to be thankful for?

We do have a lot to be thankful for but we take all of it for granted. In fact we should be thankful for the very life that has been given to us, we should be thankful for all the successes and the setbacks we have faced in our lives.

Take a minute from your life and think:

Have you ever thanked God for giving you this life? Have you ever thanked “HIM” for the beautiful world he has created for you?

Have you ever thanked your parents for raising you into the wonderful human beings you are today? Have you ever thanked them for dedicating their entire life for you?

Have you ever thanked your that best friend who is always there for you?

Have you ever thanked your siblings for holding your back?

NO!!!  In fact we are in such a sorry state that we are not able to appreciate even the good things happening to us, let alone the bad things.

Let’s take a pledge today that we will be thankful for each and everything that comes our way, no matter how trivial it seems. Even when the going gets tough, we will be thankful because that situation is going to make us better and stronger.  We will appreciate even the smallest pleasures of life and will be grateful for the worst pains that come our way. We will say thank you to everyone who has helped us even in the smallest possible way and also to those who have affected us in the worst possible way. We will replace out Sorry with Thank you. We will replace each of our complaints with a Thank you.  Because when you are thankful for what little you have, you end up having a lot more.

So, thank you so much for reading this!!!!!!

WISHING YOU PEACE AND ABUNDANCE….

Ashay Shah