Out of 24 hours a day, we are spending 8 hours in sleeping.  Minimum 9 hours for office.  1-2 hours for travelling.  1 hour for personal work. After which we get 4-5 hours for family.

Every Individual has different priorities in life . According to our priorities we adjust some time between all these activities. And this is art of work life balance.

What is my idea of balancing ?

My work expect me to spend 8 hours in office and my passion toward work keep me busy for office work for more than 8 hours a day.

We are working couple.  Me and My wife, both are working in software industry.   My daughter is going to school for more than 5 hrs .  I have to give sufficient time to my family. We have facility of Flexi work hours. I use this to give appropriate time for my family.  I adjust my schedule to match maximum time available for family and friends.   My Daughter goes school at 8 AM. I also get ready by this time and leave for office. My wife also start around same time.  Reaching early to office helps me to finish my work earlier and then I can leave office earlier.  By the time I reach home,  both my wife are daughter are at home .  This way I manage to give additional time for my family and myself.

I don’t gain anything, if I start late from home.  Morning time can’t be used much for other activities. Also , if I reach late in office, I will leave office late . And when I reach home , my daughter will go to bed and I won’t be able to spend time with her.

I feel it is very important to give sufficient time to kid. It becomes more important, when both Parents are working and there is no elder member available in family.  Maid /Care taker can just keep the kids but they can’t give  very important lessons which kids need at this stage.  We should not expect maid/care take to give Love, Manners, Family values to Kids.  These lessons are not available in any school but only available in institution called Family.  First school for Kid for everything, is Family. And if we leave kids more time with maid/care taker, kids will learn same values and manners.

Some time back,  One of my friend offered me  Carpooling for office commuting on daily basis.  But then found that my colleague can start for office not earlier than 10 AM.  If I choose to go along with him, In morning  I will be spending 2 Hrs morning at home without much of benefits, and then coming late home by 2 hrs. So technically I’m wasting 2 hrs from my family time. Or if I leave early for family, then I’m compromising my work ethics.  In return, what I’m saving is some money from fuel , and some  time for friends.

But I realized, 2 more hours for family is more valuable than cost of fuel.

We may find different friends  and  different work at different stages of life. But family remains same.  For short gains at work or friend circle, sometimes we ignore our family/ kids.  Unless kids are grown beyond teen,  we are their work and friend circle.  They need sufficient time from us . Whenever, I have to give extra time for office work, I make sure that I give some additional time for family or give my kid some more happiness.

This is Basis of my work life balance. In all situations, I use this basic principle and keep my work life in proper balance.

This is not related to the casteism which Aamir Khan talked in his show last week. This is something, which I have been noticing since long time but recent incident made me facing this dirty face of Modern Casteism.

Recently, I happened to visit a Police station near my home.  Some evilhead person was pelting stone at basement of our building since last few nights. Building watchman was not able to find who is doing it.  One night it broke Rare window glass of my neighbor’s new Car. We decided to file a complaint in nearby police station to have a stop on stone pelting . It was 10:30 PM , I went to police station along with my neighbors.   As it was late evening, we thought there will be less crowd. But there were more than 50 people around the officers in police station.  They all were talking in Telugu ( local language in AP ) and I was not able to make out why so many people are there.  Any ways, we have been asked to give a complaint in writing  and my neighbor got busy in writing the letter. Meantime, I was trying to understand the environment in the police station.

There were two Sofa and Chair kept in front of Officer In-Charge’s Room for visitors.  There were few guys sitting on those and few were standing near to those. All those were appearing some businessmen.  Waiting for their leaders  who were in meeting with Officer.

Next to them, a lady was sitting on floor with two kids and her husband. It was easy to understand from their look that they are very poor. Husband’s shirt were ripped off so appearing like he was beaten by someone and came to file complain. Kids were very sleepy and were finding difficult to sleep on the cold bare floor.  Few minutes later, a police man came and asked businessmen to go out and wait.  Now chairs are empty so poor kids sit on the chair …but Policeman asked them to not sit on chair .

Then policeman came to us, and when he understood reason of us being there, he asked us to wait on those chairs .

I got a place to sit …. But I was not feeling good sitting there and thinking, why those kids ( or the family ) were not allowed to sit on those chairs ?

It is just because they  were poor ? yes.. this was the only reason.  This is very common behavior across the world  and This is the Modern Casteism; Poor , Middle Class, Rich, Super Rich.  Poor are being considered as untouchable.  They were asked to sit on floor. The family had small kids , they were waiting there since long time . On all grounds, they were supposed to get the chair before us.

We waited there for more than an hour.. all this time, the kids were trying to sleep on floor.  There was so much of delay and it was late night.. the family left the place as no one was willing to understand their pain . They came to Police station in search of Justice  and they had to leave without meeting officer.

This is very ugly face of modern casteism.  Poor people in the society is being denied for their basic rights.

So called “Open Minded” /”Broad Minded” /”Progressive”/”Modern” people of the society are raising their voice against Casteism. But they are ignoring the Modern Casteism and sometimes even they are promoting it.

I know one thing for sure .. Neither of these casteism are good for society and we must get rid of both. I don’t know .. and I’m still thinking .. which Casteism has to be attacked on priority.

A few days back, I was talking to one of my friend.  She was travelling  on vacation with her parents, leaving her son at home. She was undergoing emotional stress leaving her son for 3 weeks.

But she was shying to express this emotions .   I was wondering, why she was shying to express or talk the emotions she has for her own kid ? Moreover , she said that she feel weird when someone else express such emotions . This was surprising to me , as this lady is very mature and expressive .

Why we shy to express any of our feelings or behavior ?  I think , It is mostly because of two reasons . one, we consider it as a bad thing.   Second , we think that it is a weakness and we want to be strong.

Obviously, emotions for own kid can’t be considered as bad. So she must be having second reason for not expressing it. She think herself very strong and consider emotions as weakness.

Are emotions  sign of any weakness ?

No ….expressing emotions is very courageous . Emotions are true feelings of heart. Only strong people can show their emotions to others.  Hiding emotions is as good as wearing mask to hide our true face.

To gain success in any area of life, we need dedication . Dedication is nothing but a form of emotion.  Here emotions are focused to achieve some goals.  Not having these emotion, it is difficult to stay focused and achieve goals.

We mostly feel proud on our professional emotions, but when it comes to personal emotions, we consider it as weakness. This is result of very high Ego. We think ourselves a self-made person and don’t want to have any dependency. But when we have some emotions for other person, it brings some dependency and this hurts our ego.  In this ego, we forget contribution of others in our life and want to stand alone.

When we don’t consider existence of others and keep doing for our own, it is same like wild animals ..in fact animals also have emotions.  Being a social animal, human behavior demands to accept existence of  other people in life . Emotions is the only bonding  and key element of any relationship.  So when we don’t shy in expressing relations, then why to shy expressing emotions ?

I’m very much introvert. When it comes about personal emotions, I don’t shy expressing my emotions .Sharing emotions with wrong people may create problem for us, as they can take advantage and use us. I share my personal emotions only with people whom I trust and who can understand them.

If we leave our ego aside then we realize .. then our life is nothing , but Emotions . Find your emotions and express 🙂

There is a very popular cake shop near my home. I love that cake very much, and many times I buy cake from there.  Once I went there , and there was not much rush in the shop. A couple of customers were there in shop and I was waiting for my turn.  In the meantime , some more  customers came in and shopkeeper went to attend them, ignoring my turn.

I was expecting shopkeeper to attend customers in queue. I felt very bad and immediately left the shop, and never turned back to that shop again.  What was it ? my it my self-respect or it was my ego ?

Few days back, I went to a party along with my brother. The party was hosted in honor of my brother and I had invitation as nearer and dearer to him . There the host was asking all their guests to have lunch. Even though , I was with my brother, host didn’t asked me anytime to have the lunch.  The host was knowing me, but ignoring me. I felt very insulting and wanted to leave the place immediately. But me leaving like that could hurt my brother as well.  So I just absorbed my insult and stayed  with my brother . I was not even feeling to take a sip of water there, I ate full lunch there.  Just because, I didn’t want to hurt my brother.  But yes, it did hurt  my self-respect/ego.

I believe in God , and used to bow my head when crossing some temple. When I go to temple, I show full respect to god, without asking anything for myslef. In 2004, when everything went out of control from my hand and anybody on earth, I prayed in many temples just like mad and wished for betterment.  Dont know, what God was willing for me, he didnt give what I was asking, but made the thing worse.  After that incident, I didnt stop believing in god .. but I stopped going in any temple .  I stopped bowing head in front of temples.   I started going to temples after few years , as my mother wanted me to go. But some  temples , I still dont step in , where I used to go very regulalrly earlier.  Offcourse,   I dont keep my self above the God . Then what was/is my behaviour  … ego or self-respect ?

I was following up with one of my friend for a party for some collective reasons. Initially, he agreed to give party and asked me to choose venue and date. When I fixed both, he kept on ignoring for some time. I felt like he was treating me like a bagger. I shouted on him very badly.  But understanding that he might be having some reasons for not giving treat and I do care for him,  I apologies for my shouting. After that,  I asked him for few more times for party and he gracefully denied for lack of time.   I never rated party higher than the relation, so I ignored it.

Now , same friend was talking to me about giving party to some other friend. Off course , I can understand, he might be having some reasons to give his friend party and other friend might be more deserving . There is no question of comparison and I didn’t want to compare. But was trying to understand, what message my friend is trying to give me ? he knows that I’m still waiting for that party from him, then why he is talking to me about giving party to other friend ? Whatever message he wanted to give,  … it did hurt my self-respect .  But since I do care relation more than ego, I will absorb this insult as well, just like I did for my brother.

And now the open question is .. Is it my self-respect or is it my ego ?

There is a very fine hairline difference between self-respect and ego.  And mostly ego gets mixed in Self-respect. Normally, I don’t expect respect from anyone and for anything. But internally, I’m very conscious about my self-respect. And extra  consciousness turns my self-respect in to ego.  So not able to answer myself. Is it my self-respect or is it my ego ?

I received a feedback that there is a decline in my maturity level in last few days.

Had it been some other person giving this feedback, I never would have accepted it.  I very conscious about my behavior. Even If I’m at a big loss, I don’t give up my maturity.

But this  feedback came from a very nice and matured person. So I have to trust this feedback and take it in positive sense to improve upon my mistakes. I definitely try to get back to my old level of maturity, if I can’t get to higher.  But in the meantime, I lost confidence of people because of this immaturity.   Now I must look at the reasons what caused this . It’s not about finding excuses but more of  introspection.

I found two reasons… one is frustration and illusion…

A few days back,  I faced a shocking revelation.  One of my ex-colleague was going through some tough time and I was helping her finding better job and her husband.  I tried helping her all the ways I can do for her.  Now I got to know, that there is not so tough condition for her and she is already having a good job.  This broke me very deep inside . I found myself in world of illusions , and not able to understand, whom to trust and whom not.  This was the incident I couldn’t share with anyone and I had no one to talk and take out my frustration.  There was only one friend whom I can talk about it , but I annoyed and hurt him as well with my stupid ways.

I am feeling very insecure because of all this illusions and frustration.  And made some more mistakes with this insecurity .  At this time, my maturity must have stopped me doing stupidity. But got in control of my illusion and kept on doing more stupid things.  .  I might have recovered much better, having some help. I just need to talk out from deep which I can’t talk with anyone. Thoughts are boiling and most of them are junk, but need to speak up and get them away from my mind.

Unless it is shared , people don’t understand our state of mind and they expect same old behavior and maturity. The feedback gave me a chance to rethink about it Now, I only have to control my frustration and come out of illusion.  There will be internal fight with illusion and frustration. At the same time,  I need to be more careful that I should not hurt anyone anymore.

I have been recovered from worst situations and I am sure, I will recover soon from here as well. Only worry is , I should not lose more things which I don’t want to lose.

The other reason…desire and eagerness,

I have some desire,  and which is one of my deep focus for now.  The desire makes me restless some times. But my Maturity often helps me to get back to normal most of the times.  But when my desire had bad hit because of my illusions, I became more restless and insecure. My eager caused more damage.  I mostly care others than I do care myself and I don’t expect anything in return. In eager of  desire,  I expressed my care as my honesty, but it came out in some idiotic ways which  appeared like I am asking favor against my care.  This is obvious enough to create anger in other person as no one is asking me to take care of them.  My maturity also tells the same thing. It’s my nature of caring others, it should not be used to ask favor from other.  But the damage is already done.  Immaturity in the expression is already noticed.

I lost too much because of this immature behavior. But I must thank to the person who gave me this feedback. It really helped me in two positive ways. First , gave a chance to retrospect my behavior and improve. Second … gave me confidence, that I had higher level of maturity and bar is higher to deliver higher .

Thank you. 🙂

One day , I planned to go for a movie in last show with some of my friends. There was not heavy traffic on the road and I was driving as normal.  And one of the friend asked me a question. ..How much you rate your driving skill on a scale of 1 to 10 ?

Well, this question was not very surprising for me. These were friends staying in same building where I was staying. I was learning car that time and  I used to go office with these friend .  I was not a bad driver, but the way other people drive on the road is always scary for me.  Anyhow, so these guys were knowing ,  when I started learning the driving.  After some time , these guys moved out to an apartment in different building . we used to meet in office, but no more driving together . So when they see my driving after  more than a year, this question was quite normal, probably to check my confidence on driving .

I was not very aggressive driver. No rash driving and racing on road.  Never tried my skills on worst road conditions, but knew how to drive in city . I had good enough control on steering to drive through tight traffic in city. So I rated myself between 7  and 7.5.  My friend didn’t react on this answer.

After the show, when we were returning back , it was late night and very less traffic on the road. I was driving little fast , negotiating curves comfortably.

Now same friend told me that  he is agree to my 7/7.5 ratting of driving skill. And then he reveled, why he asked me the question and why earlier he was not impressed with my own rating.

I was driving  with discipline. I was continuously tracking the traffic behind me using rare view mirror and side view mirrors. I was avoiding overtaking from wrong side  and waiting for front vehicle to give me side.  I was avoiding to get in way of other vehicles  and changing lane when sufficient space is available for other driver to watch. When ever changing lane, I was using proper indicators, no matter if anybody close behind me or not.

My friend thought, I’m driving with so much of care because I still don’t have good control on car.  But in the night when he seen me driving fast with good negotiation on curves and other vehicles, he understood that I have control on my car. Even though I was driving with same discipline .

Now , this was surprising for me.  I was driving with discipline , because it is not only safe for me but also good for other drivers on the road.  Then why it was considered as my weak driving skill ?

I thought about it and realized that this logic is being used  everywhere. If we are honest and disciplined, very less people will appreciate it. Most of the people thinks that the person is having some weakness, that’s the reason he/she is following rules. If we break rules, we will be considered as cool and or we will be considered as powerful person. It is being assumed that person with good skills don’t follow rules.

Having this assumption, no one like to follow rules. Everyone what to project himself/herself as more powerful and more skilled than others.  And in this race , Honesty and Discipline have lost all their values.  In fact, being honest has become a kind of punishment these days. I have many examples in my life where I paid too much for being honest.  But that is topic for some time later.

Rules are being made for comfort of society, not for individual’s benefit.  But most of the people think about themselves and break rules for their own benefits.  Breaking rule creates domino effect.  Also , when some people gets benefited by breaking rules, others get motivated to break the rules. Until there is benefit of going with rules, very few people follows rules. And most of them are people those who understand meaning and importance of discipline.

Discipline is very very important for society and but now it is becoming a rare behavior.  Schools don’t impress upon discipline  anymore. Organizations want growth at any cost and so  don’t care about rules. Families want to show their power and so breaking rules. Then from where discipline will come in society  ?

I don’t have answer to this question. But I’m sure,  till the time people will think that being disciplined is a weakness ,  we will see very less people following rules. And we will continue damaging our society.

Other says :

• “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” – Charles Darwin
• “Knowledge Speaks but Wisdom Listens” – Jimi Hendrix
•  “We learn something every day, and lots of times it’s that what we learned the day before was wrong” – Bill Vaughan
• “It’s so much easier to suggest solutions when you don’t know too much about the problem.” – Malcolm Forbes
• “Winners never quit and quitters never win.” – Vince Lombardi
• “The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity.” -Doug Horton
• “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” – Socrates
• “There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• “Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.” – Theodore Roosevelt
• “Good judgment comes from experience, and often experience comes from bad judgment. “
• “Winning is not everything, but wanting to win is.” – Vince Lombardi
• “Patience is the art of hoping.” – Luc de Clapier
• “Success is a journey, not a destination.” – Ben Sweetland
• “It is not to be expected that human nature will change in a day.” – Frank B. Kellogg
• “Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” – Thomas H. Huxley
• “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” – Socrates
• “The superior man understands what is right, the inferior man understands what will sell.” – Confucius
• “Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.” – Thomas A. Edison
• “Apologizing Doesn’t Mean We are Wrong & Others Are Right.it Means We Value The Relationship More Than Our EGO”
• “When u r surrounded by idiots, just remember, murder is illegal and sarcasm is way more satisfying!” – Ritu Patil
• “Stupid conversation makes sense when you are talking to someone special”
• “There is always Truth behind JUST Kidding, and a lot of Words behind Silence.”
• “Just because something doesn’t do what you ASSUMED it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.”
• “You can close your eyes to the things you don’t want to see, but you can’t close your heart to the things you don’t want to feel”
• “Dreams is not what you see in Sleep … is the thing which doesnt let you sleep” – A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
• “Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things”-Robert Brault
• “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”   – Mahatma Gandhi
• “Whenever you are confronted with an opponent. Conquer him with love.” – Mahatma Gandhi

My Quotes :

• Independence does not only mean “Freedom”, but to work with responsibility.
• Don’t be very honest with anyone, you will be deceived
• I have full respect for those who respect others.
• A little modified…. “Knowledge Speaks, Wisdom Listens but Half knowledge … Shouts”.
• Being Nice is not good enough. It is important to build trust for earning friends.
• When I write alphabets of my life, V and U comes before I .
• Human behaviour is nothing but Emotions. Hiding emotion is same as hiding human inside us.

At that time , I was about 8 year old and as other kids I used to try follow my father . One day , I found one mini lamp and  wire. I tried to connect open wire in Electric socked in the hope of lighting the lamp.  As soon as I connected the wire I had a shock which pushed me on ground.  I was lucky enough to survive from there.  This was a bad incident for me, but gave me a good learning.  Though I got a bad  shock, I didn’t stop using electric equipment. Rather I learnt to handle them with caution.

This is very common way of our life. When we meet bad incidents, we learn from them and apply this learning while dealing with similar situation in future. We change our style of working , but we don’t stop working. 

Later, when required to check power, I used to check with Phase tester. And don’t touch live wire or socket without protection.

After few years,  I was at my uncle’s home.  His light was not working and I offered help to fix this.  To check the I found a phase tester in home . I didn’t ask anyone, picked up the tester and inserted into the socket.  And …… got a electric shock .. The tester was faulty and leaking current on the other side.  Device which I was using for safety , didn’t protect me. Now what’s next. .. should I stop using all electric equipment’s and avoid touching any electric wire ? Nope .. I didn’t do that.  I learnt the lesson that protection also can go wrong. So better to double check. 

One of my friend has bad experience in business. He has very good technical knowledge and  he started his business with one partner, The partnership didn’t last for longer as partner cheated him badly. It was not a big loss of money . Later he made partnership with some more folks. And it didn’t work for him again. Now my friend is stopped believing anyone. He don’t want to make any partners. He being very sound technical person, several Good and honest people approached him for partnership. But he refused all of them , just because of past experience.  Some of our friends also tried to help him, but he is not ready to take any help. In a way , he locked himself in a castle. Where he is not allowing anyone to enter.

We might face multiple bad incidents in life. We can’t stop our life . We have to look for other positive things happened in life . we take all the good and bad learning , and collect them as our Experience.  This experience remains with us and help us in making good judgment.

I had few friends in my student life. Being friend, I was very open and honest with them as well.  But they just took advantage of my honesty and used me for their purpose.  I was deceived by them. This was a setback for me.  But I didn’t stop making friends.   In professional life as well, I made friends. Some of them back stabbed me , and grown up pushing me down. After these experience also, I don’t want to lock myself behind walls.  I have faith in life.  There might be something good coming for me … If I sit back behind walls, I might miss the opportunity. 

Experience is nothing but collection of good and bad learning. I don’t want bad experiences to rule my life. But I want to take risk for good experience. I just want to use my experience as my Best tool, to pick correct things for me.

Experience makes the person prefect.  I want to try good and bad experiences. Even if I don’t get perfect, I will be certainly better .

It’s about 5 years back, a rosy winter morning and we colleagues were out for a coffee break . Enjoying the sun and talking about future . Lot of money, Big house, Super luxury cars, bungalow , farm house, vacation at dream palace, working in the home town, enjoying with family …. and many more .. lots of things were there in the desires list.

And one colleague expressed his wish for money. He was working for money and wishing that If he gets 25 Lakh Rupees, he would leave the job and go back to his home town and open a small kirana shop for time pass.

Now , the same guy has much more than 25 Lakhs and he still want more. He wanted to go back to home town with Family, now  he is further away from home . He full filled his desire of Rs 25 Lakhs, but he developed desire for  more money.

Desires are endless. We fulfill one, we get five more . If we try to kill one, we get ten more.  Either fulfill or kill, it multiplies with every efforts.

So is it bad to have desires ?

No…it’s not bad to have desires ,but need to have control on it. Desires are like adamant kid. More you pay attention , more they demand. Its better to attend them occasionally, but do not ignore them.

Increasing desires creates restlessness, anxiety , depression . with fast running life, we want to achieve everything in one day. We have lot of desires to fulfill and no time to wait for them. Sometimes, we don’t even have time to enjoy whatever we achieve.

Today I was talking to one of my colleague . She is dull these days and feeling bored. Even she is little depressed. She has some desires, she want to fulfill all at one time, but that is not possible all the times.  So , what is point to keep desires burning , when there is no time to attend them ?  The best thing is to pick few most desired wishes, give quality time and enjoy them .  And when they are done, move to next.

Certain time, we are tied up with some restrictions, we can’t go out of a limit or we have some other duties to take care. Desires don’t consider these limits and keep on growing.  This develops more frustration and depression. This situation is more dangerous. We have limit to follow and desires are multiplying without limit .

Now since we can’t break boundaries, we should find ways to enjoy within them.  Do something different or do things differently. Control the desires and wait for opportunity. When we start enjoying , we find lot more ways to overcome boundaries and get lots of opportunity to attend our desires.

Sometimes, we get so busy with our wishes we starts getting into  silo and ignoring people around us.  And even we lose some opportunities of enjoying , running behind multiple wishes.

Best approach to win desires is control  them  and enjoy them …

Well … there are many desires ahead of me , and I’m also running behind them…  but yeah, I am able to prioritize them and now following some very high important things in my life and ready to compromise and sacrifices at other places. I hope , I will succeed and have more fun in life.