Author: S Ramesh Shankar

Born in Trichy, Tamil Nadu, India, I have been brought up in different parts of India. Graduate in chemistry and post graduate in personnel management and industrial relations. Have been a HR practitioner for 38 years in the industry and have experience in working in steel , automobiles, FMCG and engineering industry. Was head of HR for Siemens in South Asia based out of Mumbai till March 2019. Currently founded hrishti - joy forever, a social enterprise to give back to society and work as Chief Joy Officer.

How do you define success in life ?

Success in life could mean different things to different people and that is absolutely fine. It is like beauty could be defined differently by everyone based on their own perceptions in life. While some of us may think that creating wealth is success, there could be others who define success as helping as many people in their lives.

Each one of us look at the world through our own lenses and define success in our own ways. In my view, an individual has a right to define or redefine success the way they want to as long as they do not decry the definition of success by others.

The word success is defined by us based on our own life experiences and perceptions of the world. We are born in a family which is the basic social unit of society. Our family moulds us in a particular way and we form our idea of success.

Then as we grow up, go to school and college, our teachers help us in refining our concept of success. This further gets reimagined when we enter our career as a professional or an entrepreneur. Our journey in life adds to this definition and we keep re-inventing ourselves as we grow up.

Our friends and colleagues also influence our thoughts, deeds and actions. Certain life events impact our world view and we keep reflecting on “ what success and happiness means to us in life ?”

As I said earlier, there can be no right or wrong answers to this fundamental question of life. Each of us have a right to look at it the way we want to and keep changing our definition as we experience life over the years.

The only caution could be that we should not look at others from our world view of success. A sportsperson may look at an Olympic medal as their ultimate success in life. A career professional may want become a CEO. On the other hand, a social worker may be interested in saving human lives in every possible way.

We cannot say one is more successful than the other. If we look at so many ordinary women and men, who have been conferred with national and international awards, we realise that success can and will mean different things to different people.

I would go one step further. Let us define and redefine success with every learning in our lives. It is evolutionary and has to be so. There can never be a beginning or an end to success. It is like excellence. Success is a moving target in life and it can best be defined by the individual only. The moment others try to define success for an individual, it becomes redundant for that individual.

Let us learn to experience life in our own way and define success the way we want to see the world. It is like some people may like to see the sun rise, while some others may enjoy the sun set. Neither of this group is right or wrong.

If you do not like to see sun rise or sun set but want to enjoy only the moon, it is your choice and you have the absolute right to ignore the sun and only watch the moon. Success is indeed ephemeral and it is up to us to make it tangible the way we would want it to be.

As in the photo above, success could mean “capturing the right moment” for a professional photographer.

We need to learn to live life in absolute and not in relativity. As long we want to compete with everyone around us and live life vying with others, success will always elude us.

Let us evolve success in life our own way on every single day in our lives.

S Ramesh Shankar

9th August 2022

Life is beyond brands

We all grow up in our childhood from different socio-economic backgrounds. Values are instilled in us by our parents, family and society around us. We grow up aspiring to do better in our lives than what our parents achieved through their grit and determination.

We realise that life is not a cake walk. As we finish our schooling and enter college, we experience the competitiveness of life. As we graduate out of college, we get clearer on what we want to do in life. Today, we have the opportunities to pursue what we want and aspire for. The world is an open playground for us.

We dream big and as we begin our career we realise that life is not an easy drive. We dream of acquiring all the best material things in the world, which we only dreamt of in our childhood. However, as we move on we realise that we cannot get everything we want in life the moment we dream of it.

Today everything in life is signified by a brand. We end up living and breathing brands. Aspiring from small brands to big brands is a natural evolution of human aspirations. However, in the process we sometimes may forget that we need to first build our own life brand before we acquire other brands.

We need to realise that brands we possess do not reflect our personality. Nobody in life remembers which suit you wore or which hand bag you carried for a meeting. What people remember is how you treated them and what is the lasting impressions you left in their mind as a good human being.

Human values are beyond brands. We need to realise that we have to first build our brand by living human values of gratitude, humility, respect and trust. This may be a difficult lesson to learn in life. It may be easier to acquire materialistic brands in life but more challenging to live human values.

At a young age, we all believe that the best brands we possess reflects our personality. We tend to believe that people admire us for the car we drive, the suits we wear or the watch we possess. This may be an illusory belief. It is natural and all of us have gone through this stage in life. However, the earlier we realise that human values are more valuable in building our brand in life than all the best materialistic brands we possess, it is better for us.

Life is a journey of continual learning. We all make mistakes and learn from them. This learning journey is no different. There may be nothing wrong to aspire for the best brands in life the day we have earned them through our own sweat and blood. But it is important to realise that the best brands we possess do not reflect our true personality as a person.

As in the photo above, this young girl is looking pretty in a simple white dress, which may not even be branded.  So is life.  You are not valued by the brands you wear or possess in life but the values you live and the way you treat people around you.

Let us learn to first build our own unique brand in life by living our values and then we may realise that all other brands in life fade away in the background.

Life is learning journey.

S Ramesh Shankar

23rd June 2021

Life is all about attitude & gratitude

I have always been wondering as to how I could define life in simple terms. The other day a friend of mine summarised my article and stated that “Life is all about attitude & gratitude”. I felt it was a great insight and so this blog is an attempt to understand life from this beautiful perspective.

If we reflect and rewind our life, we may realise that life is indeed all about attitude and gratitude. The difference between the best and the rest is always attitude. We can look at any walk of life from academics to sports, art to culture and music and we find that the best of talents master that area because of their attitude to learn and share with others. The day they feel that have reached their peak, their decline begins. But the best never rest and hence always conquer newer heights of excellence every day in their lives.

The second quality of masters of all crafts is that they are always grateful to the people who have made them what they become in life. They will never forget their gurus, parents or friends who were with them in the arduous journey of life before they become icons in their respective fields.

We thus can easily summarise that life is after all about attitude and gratitude. If we recall our own lives, we realise that the best people we have met so far have always had a positive and infectious attitude. They spread positivity through their thoughts and their actions. Secondly, they never forget the people on their way to success in life. They remember the people, who supported them through the thick and thin of their life journey.

It may be worthwhile to understand these two key terms – “attitude” and “gratitude” in life. “Attitude” is our way of looking at life in every way. We all have a choice at every stage of our life and almost every single day. We can choose to be happy, sad or mad. It is upto us to convert every crisis as a learning opportunity. It is upto us to be grateful for all that we have rather than keep cribbing about some things we don’t have.

If we start believing in ourselves and think life is a journey of multiple possibilities, then we have varied options to choose from. On the other hand, if we we think that life is an endless journey of despair moving from one crisis to another, then our life seems that way. After all we need to realise that everyone goes through ups and downs in life. There is always a sun rise after every sunset. It may be worthwhile to learn from our failures as much as we may bask in our successes.

The second term to understand is “gratitude”. I would say “gratitude”is our ability to bow in reverence to every single person who has contributed to our journey of life. If we remember all the people who have supported us directly or indirectly in our lives especially after we have reached our peak of success, it will help us understand the meaning of gratitude in life. While many of us are willing to share our success as our gift of hard work, we may forget the silent contributors, who stood by us when the world looked the other way.

If we have a positive attitude in life and are grateful for all that we are blessed with, God will keep us smiling always as in the photo above.

The essence of life is our ability to look at life as full of choices we can make and our eagerness to be indebted to the people who made us what we are today. The day we realise these two basic tenets of life, we may have arrived. There can be no peak we cannot surmount and no goal we cannot achieve in our lives.

Life is all about attitude and gratitude.

Let us realise it today.

S Ramesh Shankar

5th August 2022