The simple and basic things in life ,are the most difficult. If you ask a teenager ,how difficult it is to jump out of the bed ,on a cold winter morning and brush his teeth, he could possibly explain this better, than me. This is a fact ,most of us keep denying ,right through our lives.

God has given us two ears and one mouth. This amply explains that , God as the ultimate designer of the human body ,expected us to listen more than we speak. But the reality of life ,is the other way around. We generally end up speaking more ,than we listen.

We possibly do that ,since many of us believe ,that if we do not speak before the others in the room, we may never be heard. Our parents, teachers and friends, have always encouraged us to speak and make our first impressions, on every occasion. This may not be wrong ,but if we listen before we speak, we may possibly make a better impression.

A simple analogy from a real life situation – if we buy a new product, we do not read through the instructions, before we start using the product. Some of us at least, read the quick fix guide ,before we assemble the product. Life is no different. We seem to be running a 100 meters race ,all the time. We do not have the time to listen .before we speak.

We are wired to speak ,before we listen. But imagine a situation, where we are forced to listen, before we speak. The first time my wife attended a “Vipasana” ( a deep mediation course) , she told me ,on her return ,of how they were compelled not to speak to anyone ,for a week or ten days ,at a stretch. Some of us may need such an intervention to understand the value of “listening” before we speak.

I once attended a training programme on “Communication”, where the facilitator demonstrated the power of “listening” ,through a simple exercise. Imagine a situation, where we have to convey something very important in our life ,to someone and nobody is listening to us. It is at this juncture, we understand the value of listening.

We can easily learn the art of listening ,from our mothers. They listen to the new born kid ,even before their kid is able to speak. Every one of us communicate both verbally and non verbally. According to the experts in kinesics, we communicate more non verbally than verbally. This means ,that unless we listen actively ,before we speak, we can never get the message, as we will not observe ,most of the non verbal communications ,from the sender.

On the other hand, imagine chatting with an active listener. A counsellor for example ,is generally a great listener. When we go to them for help, they listen to us, more than they talk. Their listening itself heals us and enables us, to deal with our own issues. At home, our parents, especially our mothers play this role very well.

The reality of life is that, if we listen twice as much as we speak, we may understand more, speak more articulately and our listeners will be keen to interact with us. If we recall from our own personal lives, we always love to interact with people, who are great listeners and not the other way around.

Let us listen before we speak from today.

S Ramesh Shankar

4th May 2025

A common saying from our childhood days ,will always remind us that we need to “Look before you leap”. This may look simpler than we can imagine. In the competitive world of today, where we want to ,out beat one another ,in minutes, rather than months or years, the need to jump into action ,may be irresistible.

The risk-return analysis ,may need time and we may imagine ,we do not have it. So, we tend to jump ,at every possible opportunity before we realise ,where we have landed ourselves in. In my book, there is space for every individual, in this world.

But some of us ,may not agree to this. We may believe that we are not running a marathon but a short distance race and hence we need to leap ,before we can even look. The risk of jumping before we look ,may be deeper ,than we could imagine.

Let me illustrate this point ,with some real life examples ,I have come across ,in my life. The first time I experienced this, was when the Y2K phenomenon hit the corporate world. Everyone believed that the world will come to a halt with the advent of Y2K ,since our computers were not designed for this transition and hence they need to do something about it.

Many dotcom companies spurned up in the late nineties and the best of talent from the corporate world, jumped into this bandwagon. They were enticed with swanky cars and huge salary packages. The Y2K ,did not shake the world as anticipated and thereby ,many of these dotcoms disappeared as fast ,as they came up. Thereby ,many of these talented employees lost their jobs ,along with their benefits. They had come to back to the real world and their real pay packages.

The next phenomenon ,was in the early part ,of this century. The IT and services industry ,boomed in India and the world. Many youngsters got posting in the developed world ,with great salary packages and ended up ,investing in multiple flats and other assets at home. This resulted in monthly EMIs to bank and lending institutions .when some of these people lost their jobs during the next recession, they had to sell their flats ,at below market prices and came crashing down to mother reality.

So ,the lessons of life are real. We need to look before we leap ,always. Today is the age of start ups, they appear even before the sun dawns in the east. Many of us at various stages of our career ,are jumping into this scenario. Some of them wind up ,even before the sun sets in the horizon.

The start ups provide a great environment to take risks and also experiment and try out new things. So, there may be nothing wrong to try out this way of working. But, we need to realise ,that the start up world is different from the rest of the corporate world, before we join them. They may start, grow and flourish and we may become millionaires. On the other hand, they may wind up ,even before they launch their product or service and hence we need to have the financial capability ,to survive this storm .

Life is the art of balancing risk and reward. We need to learn to look before we leap. We can leap if we have ,all the grounds covered and are ready to take the risks ,associated with them.

Let us learn to look before we leap from today.

S Ramesh Shankar

4th May 2025

We all love to dream for the best things to happen in our lives. As kids, we dream about ,what we want to become in life. As we turn teenagers, we dream for more material things, for our comforts. Then, as adults we want the best of cars and our own home to live in. I think, it is human to dream and all of us ,love to do it.

There is nothing wrong to dream. Even the visionaries in life or in corporates ,dream of where they want ,to take their organisations. Then they work on ,how to convert those dreams into reality. The problem with most of us is that ,we dream and we allow it ,to remain a dream. Even before realising a dream, we start dreaming about the next and they become like the gas balloons we played ,during our childhood.

I recall my childhood when I was playing with a gas baloon, my parents had bought me, to play with. As the baloon went higher in the sky, I was over joyed at the bouyancy of the baloon. But very soon, the thread tied to the baloon, got cut and it flew away. I ran after it for a few kilometers, till it disappeared into the cloudy sky.

Dreaming for most of us , is like the gas baloon. We keep buying more gas baloons and let them off in the air and it disappears. We need to realise that dreaming could be the first step for success in life but it is by no stretch of imagination, the last step.

The difference between “Dream”& “Reality” is “Action”. If we have to put it in the form of a formula , it would be – Dream + Action = Reality. If we do not act on our dream, they would remain dreams forever. It is almost like the new year resolutions for many of us. We resolve to lose 10 kgs in six months. We plan to jog or walk for 5 kms every day. But, as winter sets in, we dream more ,by sleeping more rather than walking or jogging , as we had planned. So, our goal of reducing weight remains a dream.

Even in corporates, many employees make grandiose plans and set goals to achieve them. But, if there is no systematic planning, action steps and tracking mechanism to measure progress, the plans remain on paper and have to be reviewed every quarter and may be become the plan again ,for the next year.

Life is no different. Every dream has to be followed up with systematic planning, evolving actions ,measuring them to track progress and take corrective actions, in case our actions are not sufficient ,to achieve our desired goals.

A dream will remain a dream ,if there is no consequent action.

S Ramesh Shankar

18th March 2025