A bit about my awesome Coachees at Landmark SELP

I am assisting in Landmark Education as a Self Expression and Leadership Program Coach. I am so inspired by my coachees! I have 5 coachees.

Its a big privilege to be an SELP coach. You’ve got to be responsible. You’ve got to honor what you say. And all this becomes all the more enjoyable when the people whom you coach play the same game as you are playing. When I did the program, I was full of reasons for not completing my homework, coming late etc etc. But my coachees aren’t. They DO honor their word. They are absolutely unreasonable with themselves.

Everything in life becomes very easy when we do what we say we would do at the time when we said we will do it. Each of these guys and gals, are pretty much in route to reaching that stage. For instance, today, each of them (barring Madhavi who is out of station), came on time and with their homework complete. This makes life just so easy. We can invest our time in growing rather than addressing why being out-integrity keeps us from growing.

Besides, they inspire me to take on living my life just as powerfully. To plan my work and work my plan. To generate my present and future free from the constraints of the past. To get a ‘yes’ from people, no matter what the situation.

I salute you guys.

Thanks for enriching my life with your presence.

Truckloads of Love,

Amit Singh

Its not that easy to make money out of your hobbies!

I am smiling as I am writing this post!

I am sure I’d come back years later and read it and smile again.

Today was a harsh day! Every single thing I tried to earn out of my hobbies – failed. Or rather I did not give my heart and soul to achieving success. I firmly believe in the fact that, we create our destinies and everything that looks ambitious initially, becomes downright practical if you focus your attention and energy into making it happen.

However, I am not that great at FOCUSing yet! In fact I have realized that “Lack of focus” is my biggest impediment to success.

May is about to come and I don’t have the resources to last it. In the midst of a heartache, I chose to pick up a job again. I’ll give my final burst to earning from my hobbies till 15th of May, and if I am still broke, I’ll pick up a job.

This journey has not ended yet, so I will not jot down everything that I have learned from it. But I do wanna acknowledge the tremendous amount of good that it has done to my psyche. Man, I am so glad that I got this chance to experience life and do all the wacky things that I have done in the past 4 months.

I have discovered several mental blocks, attitudes and fixed ways of being that stop me in life! I have also realized that getting a job and sticking to it is the easiest thing one can do in life. But thats a sure shot way to mediocrity as well. I quit my job to live a life I love, and being in the rat race is actually 1/(Living a Life I Love). But none the less! There is something called Stomach as well

Freak yar! I am not turning so negative!

I’ll fucking make my way out of this negativity business.

I declare – By May 15th I would be having 10,000 bucks in my Bank Account. Earned by me without writing any code.

My bike got towed away!!!

Ya so I come out of National Market (read the post below), and discover that my Bajaj Discover is not where I parked it! I ask the parking fellow and he said that It was parked on the road and has been towed away! I think “Wow, what next”. Now I had recently given my bike for servicing and had forgotten my papers home. I couldn’t go and get my bike without the Registration Certificate!

Now under normal circumstances I would have said “WTF man, why did this have to happen now???”. But something is happening to me these days and I was surprised to realize that I said this to my self – “Awesome man, I get to go home in a bus from Majestic in after 3 years!” I was genuinely excited at the possibility!!! They talk about “Glass half full or half empty” right, I was realizing this.

Good things happen to happy people and I get a Volvo standing just for me.

I reach home and remember that I had not been able to find my home key in the morning so I had slammed the door tightly putting a sock in the chaukhat to keep the door from opening. I give a clearing* to find my home key and woosh I find it. I had spent an hour to find it in the morning. Next I realize that I have lost my bike’s papers. I search my home for 5 mins but no avail. But some how I am still not panicking. So I give a clearing of finding them. I search for another 2 mins and an impossible thought comes to my mind. I go downstairs and ask my landlady if she has seen my bike’s papers. OMG, she says yes! I had dropped them somewhere sometime?!? But it was a profound manifestation of the distinction called clearing.

I ask my best friend Braj to take me to the Bus-stop and we discuss Numerology, Moh Maya, Life’s purpose, Clearing, Friends and IPL en-route.

Then I get my bike and we both come back separately.

It was a great day! I had a breakthrough in seeing the bright side of things in tough circumstances. You know, as Spencer Johnson puts it in “The Present” – “Seeing what is Right right now”.

* What is clearing?

Clearing is a pure thought in which we imagine something and look for it to happen and it happens. These kind of things are tough to understand for some people. But thats ok. Clearing is basically a distinction I got as a Landmark SELP coach.

The misadventures at National Market!

Ya, so I go from OCC (refer to the previous post) to National Market to get my phone repaired. I recently dropped it and the camera isn’t working and I managed to break its stylus as well . Ya so I go there and search for a stylus. None fit my handset! I try every shop out but no avail! There is this shopkeeper who gave my phone to a kid and asked him to get a matching stylus from another shop. But I see him carry it out of the building! I asked them to stop him, but he had already gone. I am told, he’ll come in half an hour! This was funny. I didn’t gave the phone to the shopkeeper to find a matching stylus and he gives it to a kid without my permission and off goes the kid! Whatever, I asserted a bit and made the shopkeeper go and intercept him mid-route. I got my phone back within 10 mins.

Then I go search for someone to repair the phone’s camera. The dude says 450 bucks. This sounded very unreasonable to me. I bargain but he reduces only to 400. So I say sorry and look for another shop. This guy quotes some price that I couldn’t hear. I tell him that the other guy was willing to do it in 300. So he gets down to 250. But he said he’ll have to format the data! Now I couldn’t do without my phone numbers, so I asked him not to do so! But had a breakthrough in bargaining none the less. I am one of those types who will easily overpay the shopkeeper if he cooks up a good story around the product.

So I didn’t end up spending my money on my phone! Which is good because my I was about to discover that my bike had been towed away! That deserves yet another post!

Had Sandwich at Open Coffee Club meet @ Core Objects Bangalore!

I reached an hour late for the OCC meet that happened today at the Core Objects cafeteria. But I guess that I didn’t miss much because many were late and I reached within 10 – 15 mins of when the interesting conversations started. The theme was “Co-Founder”. Make everything you wanna make of the word and discuss.

It was fun as usual. Prateek of Muziboo, Ram of Kasenna, Rahul, Harsha of adventure and Amarinder of Core Objects shared their startup experiences. Abhishek spoke a bit about Venture Capital and I had a big chat with Ram about Seed Funding and Market Research.

I got some interesting insights.

• Co-Founders are not necessarily the best of pals.
• Chemistry and wavelength may go for a toss if you are not open to ideas.
• Bootstrap it baby. But if you have the money, its best to do it fulltime.
• This girl, I don’t know her name said that if you are < 25, you’ve got a friggin good chance to succeed. I think this statistic was pointed out by Marc Andreesen Zuckerberg.

I had the opportunity to speak to more than half of the 20+ people who were there. And I had a few interesting conversations. At one point of time during the discussions Vaibhav asked, “Who is searching for a co-founder?”. I raised my hand. I am in fact looking at implementing one of my ideas that I recently brainstormed with Saurabh at BCB6. I also met Deepan who is making educative games and stuff. Though what he is doing and what I intend to do are completely different. But the motivations are similar. I shared my ideas with him in significant depth. Spoke of the market and money. He is full time into his own venture, yet I offered him to club his ideas with mine and start off together. He said he was interested and took my number. Lets see if he calls up!

I had a whole big adventure after OCC, but that calls for another post later!

Oh and I completely forgot about the sandwich, but let it be!

Finally started sketching! :)

Yeeayayaaay! I have finally started working towards my lifelong dream of being a good artist. Even though I have won many awards for my drawings as a kid, I never thought I was good enough an artist because I was good at copying. I could not imagine and draw cool stuff consistently. As in, you know it when you are good enough in our own eyes. It comes very naturally.

So I basically started with a sketching book for art students. It looks like just the thing for me. The stuff that probably a teacher will teach a student. Things like proportion and perspective. Its a book on drawing human figures, by Shankar Modekar. (hopefully I have spelt the name right).

So basically I have taken on drawing 1 page of the book everyday. I am on page 10 now. The book has 60. I haven’t sketched for 2 days in a row, so I will start posting my daily sketches here in my blog so that it keeps my motivation going. If I survive till day 40, I am gonna come back to Bangalore and take the help of my good friend ‘Anju Pradeep’ who is an amazing artist to help me with the advanced sketches. They are made with charcoal and so many types of pencils.

As of now I am doing it just for fun. And I don’t think I would be able to give it 2 to 3 hours a day subsequently (when the sketches get tougher) so I may just leave it when the fun stops

I’ll put up the sketches that I have already made soon.

The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy (A Trilogy in 4 parts) : Douglas Adams : Some Doubts!!!

Aha I just finished reading ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy’ (A trilogy in four parts).

It was fascinating. I am not sure how many parts are there in the trilogy but I read the following 4:-

1. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

2. The Restaurant at the end of the Universe

3. Life, the Universe and Everything

4. So Long, And Thanks for all the Fish

It’s wonderfully written. Its light, imaginative and humorous. Anyways, A lot must have been written about the series any way so I’ll not add yet another review. But its entertaining to the core! I like the narrative that Douglas Adams uses. The art of repeating something that has been mentioned earlier… I just loved it!

I have a few questions that are left unanswered though.

1. I did read something about the earth being replaced soon after it was demolished. From where came the earth that exists in ‘So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish’?

2. What did Arthur Dent really do that made him famous? As in made him ‘the Arthur Dent’?

3. I am really curious to know what was the great insight that ‘Fenchurch’ got?

If you can throw some light, then please do

Thanks.

5 books that I read in Feb!

I had amazing fun trying to continue my budding habit of reading at least 5 books every month. And I succeed . Thanks to a 2 day train journey from Bangalore to Bhopal. I nearly cheated, (the last one being less of a book and more of a booklet) but I’ll count it in none the less.

Here are the 5 I had the pleasure of reading.

1. ‘Surely you’re joking Mr Feynman’ by Richard Feynman: I have written a small review of the book here.

2. ‘Just for Fun’ by Linus Trovalds and David Diamond: This has been another fascinating read. Linus, he is such a wonderfully frank man. Reading his semi autobiography of sorts gives amazing insights into the mind of a great man. A simple man who is not simplistic. It was really inspiring to read his version of how Linux came up. All the time till now I was thinking that Linus was a student of Andrew Tanenbaum (check spelling). And its just so good to know the inside story of the biggest and the most successful open source project – Linux. The book is written on a very light note, with Linus being pretty frank and open about his idiosyncrasies, about his being a typical nerd in the days when being a nerd was not all that cool, about his family and the [birth, adolescence and maturity] of Linux. Another enjoyable read.

3. ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy’ by Douglas Adams: Need I say much about this one. It has been in my ‘to read’ list for a long long time. But I had never gotten my hands on it because I was always struggling with time. But those were my college and working days. Reading in general and reading this book (which was one among my 10+ ‘to read soon’ books) was pretty low in the priority. But now life has changed and both fun and reading fare pretty high in my priority list. Ok, coming back to the book, Its different. Its a sci-fi classic. Its HILLARIOUS. Not much of science in it though. But well they did call ‘War of the Worlds’ a Sci-Fi as well didn’t they? I am not sure. But I am sure the meaning is conveyed.

4. ‘The Restaurant at the end of the Universe’ by Douglas Adams: This is part 2 of the book mentioned above it. Something suggests that there might be another book between the two of them but I haven’t read that yet anyways. I don’t remember anything worth remembering from this one, but for the fact that it was just as enjoyable as the 1^st one. Well that could be because the next in the series ‘Life, The Universe and Everything’ (Which I have now read) was incredibly entertaining and most of my memories are associated with that one.

5. Next comes ‘Skill with People’ by Les Gibson: Now this one is a small booklet. And I like books like these. Small and to the point. It wraps up all its fundas in 47 pages, most of them containing an average of 10-12 sentences. Its a quick fix book on improving your skill (communication skill mostly) with people. Its full of common sense insights (that are not so common) and manipulative techniques for getting things done. Even though the book is full of techniques and strategies, I think implementing these strategies in real life will require whatever it takes to be a human being who is genuinely interested in people. Given that the author wanted to wrap the book up in as few words as possible (maybe to gain a word to price ratio record), he couldn’t have afforded to bore the readers with the detailed life altering processes that other self help books are full of. The author starts with stating “People are primarily interested in themselves, not in you” which makes perfect sense. And the rest of the book is based on how to use this knowledge towards improving your skill with people. Handy if you are giving the domain a serious shot.

Some Habits that I wanna build

Some other habits that I want to build are :-

1. Explore the basics. Eg, I should know the basics of the Internet. If I want to understand or explain something, I should be able to break it down to the basics.
2. Another is the habit of imagining things. I would like to be able to imagine the sketches that I am making. I would also like to be able to imagine abstract pictures of the concepts that I am studying. The way Feynman did.
3. Another habit is the habit of persistence. Basically a habit of deciding to do something and sticking to it till the end. It also means seeing things to completion. The sheer joy of seeing things that I once imagined as complete. Along with this habit comes the responsibility of carefully setting a target. It should be something that I am absolutely inspired to follow.

4. Doing and learning from Simpleology. This will help me build the all important habit of hitting my target.

Some of the goals that I have are :-

1. Earning 60k in the month of April. (Seems unlikely) {Now that I am at the end of April, I have absolutely failed to come anywhere near to the 60k mark. 10k is possible if I slog till 30th.}

2. Earning 1lk in the month of July. Another unlikely possibility.

3. Having real fun! all the time. Basically, right now I have the opportunity to have fun working with the inmates of a jail with Mumma. Doing cool things like giving personality development courses at Chatarpur. Well, in my life to be, its these kind of things that will excite me the most. Just what is it right now that stops me from enjoying all this? Well I guess, its the habit of not doing my things on time. If I conduct myself in such a way that I have taken care of all the things that I need to do, in the morning itself and am free to do anything I please during daytime, this problem won’t be there. 1 life baby, live it!

Some other random thoughts that are coming to my mind are :-

· What to do about my website?

· Basically I gotta build this habit of planning my day every morning, after having a steady look at my goals. And then work my plan with integrity. Yeah, working my plan . This way I’ll be able to generate enough free time to take care of the random activities that keep happening.

So what can my daily routine be like???

• Review the goals
• Make a list of things that I wanna do today
• Distribute them in different time slots and plan the day
• Work the plan the rest of the day.

Yeah this one looks much better.

Wow! looks like I screwed up the CSS of this template!

I found some of my older posts that I couldn’t publish.

When I was on my vacation, I wrote a few posts for my blog. I couldn’t post them because I didn’t have a net connection at my home. I’ll be posting them here now.