“A life is lived in hours. What we do with our lives will be a function of how we spend those hours, and we only have so many … Life is full and life has space.” - Laura Vanderkam in the Busy Person’s Lies.
INSIGHT
Life is full and life has space, both statements are true. Evaluate your own time and discover how you can repurpose it to do things you find fulfilling.
The China Disneyland was inaugurated recently. One of the actions CEO Robert Iger took to push the deal, was to seek a personal relationship with China’s paramount leader, President Xi Jinping. On learning that Xi’s father, a revolutionary leader, had visited Disneyland in 1980, he pressed his staff to find a photograph. They found one which showed the President’s father, wearing a Mao suit, shaking hands with Mickey Mouse. Iger presented the photo to the leader as gift and a symbol of the partnership.
INSIGHT
Poor, peasant, privileged or president we all love to be made to feel special.
Alibaba Group Holding founder Jack Ma already has an eye to posterity. He tells investors that more than 90 percent of key company meetings, decisions and events have been recorded on video to be analysed by future generations studying his company.
INSIGHT
When we are conscious of the legacy we are leaving behind, our present becomes motivated and energised by the envisioned future.
“We live in two worlds: one that is given and the other that is provoked by the attention we pay to it.” - Villem Flusser, Philosopher
Insight
We live in two worlds - the subjective world and the objective. The objective world is as it exists and the subjective world is the one we create from our experiences filtered through our senses. Occasional cleaning of the filters through reflection and introspection helps remove biases and prejudices.
The entire cast of the award winning film Thithi, comprises locals of a Karnataka village. Asked how he got such incredible performances from them, the film’s director R. Reddy explained there are two approaches to dealing with non-actors:
1. Don't tell your cast anything and create a work of art that only you know.
2. Tell them everything they need to know and understand to own and deliver a performance from their ‘within’ rather than your ‘within’.
INSIGHT
When the leader shares ‘his story’ with his people, it becomes ‘their story’, which becomes the canvas for together painting the larger ‘our story’.
Flash back It was several years ago that I met him on a Bombay Walk - the ones where they take you around to see and learn about the colonia...
