The forgotten art of Reading

I've never been a big fan of reading. At least not in the last 30 years. Prior to that, I did read as we did not have TV or Internet or Smartphones or ... And the only available entertainment was Books.

While my elder daughter Freia did read a lot and still does, Reia hated books. And reading. And like me, we preferred the easier "Watching".

While my elder daughter Freia did read a lot and still does, Reia hated books. And reading. And like me, we preferred the easier "Watching".

Around 6 months ago, while going through my credit card statement, I found a charge for "Audible". I was surprised and checked with Freia and Reia if either of them had added Audible. Neither had. I went back and checked and we were paying Audible for over a year, helping make Mr. Bezos the world's richest person. It seemed like 1 of the 3 of us had mistakenly or assuming its Free, clicked on Audible and Amazon had made it easy by charging the attached Amazon credit card. And none of us even knew.

We always knew we had Audible credits. And had assumed it was free with Amazon Prime. Like Movies and Music. I went back and checked and found that while Freia and Reia had used some credits, we had lost around 6 credits, that had expired. I wrote to Amazon and they were nice enough to give me back the credits. And another interesting thing happened. Now that we were paying or rather we were always paying, but now knew we were paying our interest in Books increased. Exponentially.

I never in my wildest dreams thought Reia would love Books. And like most other things, anything I'm sure about, I'm surely Wrong. Not only did she start reading, or rather listening to books, she became a voracious listener. And started recommending books for me to listen. And I loved most of her recommendations.

I'm giving below 3 of her recommendations that I found to be awesome and must reads or listen.

- The Third Door
Alex Bunayan
The wild quest to uncover how the world's most successful people launched their careers.

- Delivering Happiness
Tony Hsieh
A path to profits, passion and purpose

- Super Pumped
Mike Isaac
The battle for Uber

What's interesting is that Reia tweeted about it. And the author responded. Thanks @reialobo and @Mikelsaac

And here are 3 of my favorites.

- The World Is Flat
Thomas L. Friedman
A brief history of the twenty-first century

-  iWoz
Steve Wozniak
How I Invented the Personal Computer

 - The Gray Rhino
Michele Wucker
How to recognize and act on the obvious dangers we ignore


I guess this is one of those times where a mistake turned out to be awesome. For Reia. And for me. And I strongly encourage you to keep the not so smart phone aside or use the smart phone and start reading or listening. It allows us to do the one function we were built for and yet don't do often enough.

THINK !

Inner Engineering

Around a year ago, my colleague Kurund had done a course "Inner Engineering" and highly recommended it. He felt that it was extremely useful. I've always found Kurund's recommendations to be "on point" and so wanted to do this course. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find a time when the course was being held in my city and me being there.

A few weeks ago on Diwali, I saw an ad for the online version of the "Inner Engineering" course. And best of all, it was free. I immediately signed up. And did the 7 part course over a 2 week period.

It was definitely interesting. And educative. And there were several takeaways. And like most good education adds yet another layer and dimension to Life.

What is Inner Engineering?
Inner Engineering is a 7-session online course that provides tools and solutions to help manage stress, overcome anxiety and live joyful life. This course is a combination of methods derived from the ancient science of yoga that addresses every aspect of human wellbeing. The program includes guided meditations and deeply engaging discourses about the nature of the mind and practical wisdom to manage life’s situations.

Empower Yourself - Take a program Online with Sadhguru at your own Convenience: https://www.InnerEngineering.com/

I recommend that you watch a few videos of Sathguru on YouTube. And if you find his style and thoughts appealing, do consider doing it. Most of all, you need not consider it from a spiritual or religious perspective, but from a philosophical perspective.

Here are a couple of interesting talks by Sadhguru.
 

 
 

And as I did, we need not agree with everything or even most of the philosophy or the content. We just need to listen carefully, evaluate it and then take those parts we agree with, learn from them and implement them.

Better Conversations

If I said my conversation skills were poor, I'd probably be exaggerating. And I always assumed that some people are naturally gifted and most people made decent if not excellent conversations. And I was one of the few who sucked at it.

Recently I started keeping track of conversations which included multiple people such as meetings. And after the meetings casually checked with, as many of the participants as practical, what they thought of the conversations we had and what they got out of it.

An interesting pattern emerged. Most times people felt that they had contributed significantly and most of the others had wasted their time as they already knew everything the other speakers discussed. I also had my own list of the value of each of the contributors to me.

Ironically I found that the ones who scored highest in my model had a very high appreciation of the others and a reasonable level of their own contribution. Even when their contributions were huge. And the rest minimal. And those who in my opinion had contributed the least had a bloated opinion of their own contribution and a very low opinion of everybody else.

This seems to be a pattern in life. When we were discussing Training and Education a thought that occurred to me was:
"Those who need training, don't think they need it. And hence training will be wasted on them.
And those who don't will keep training themselves because they believe they need to improve and so keep getting better."

Now a new thought occurred. Maybe I wasn't doing enough in conversations and its time I start getting better at conversations. And went to the fountain of all knowledge aka TED. There were several dozen talks on the subject. And one that stood out. It was practical, made sense and seemed like could be applied by most of us. Including me.

Celeste Headlee
Writer and radio host
When your job hinges on how well you talk to people, you learn a lot about how to have conversations -- and that most of us don't converse very well. Celeste Headlee has worked as a radio host for decades, and she knows the ingredients of a great conversation: Honesty, brevity, clarity and a healthy amount of listening. In this insightful talk, she shares 10 useful rules for having better conversations. "Go out, talk to people, listen to people," she says.

In her talk Celeste mentions the most important part of a conversation is the ability to listen. So here's 5 ways to listen better

Julian Treasure
Sound consultant
In our louder and louder world, says sound expert Julian Treasure, "We are losing our listening." In this short, fascinating talk, Treasure shares five ways to re-tune your ears for conscious listening -- to other people and the world around you.

My takeaway "... most importantly, be prepared to be amazed."

Diwali

Monday was Diwali. And just when I thought I would not have an opportunity to have good Indian food to celebrate, a friend invited me for Diwali lunch at their office. It was a sumptuous and tasty Indian lunch.

When I got back, my colleagues whom I had told I was going for a Diwali feast, wanted to know more about Diwali. And while I told them the things I knew, I realized I did not know  enough. As I suspect many of us. And so I found out more about Diwali.

And here are the 3 videos that in my opinion gives an insight on Diwali.

Lets start with the Story of Diwali.

Ramayana : Story of Diwali
Mythological Stories from Mocomi Kids

What is Diwali?
Global News

And finally lets celebrate with Diwali Carols. Yes, Diwali Carols.

EIC: Ultimate Diwali Carols
East India Comedy