What have I learnt from my years of soul searching?

1. Persistence - You need to stick it in there to get to where u want and wade through the muck. You want be able to do your dream job from day one. Sometimes you are so close to living your dream when you throw in the towel, for the wrong reasons.

2. People problems are the clumsiest reason to leave a job – if you don’t like someone who is working with u, it is more the reason to work harder and not give up. [NOT the other way about]

3. Indecision – is the greatest killer of time and opportunity. Why? Because sometimes one choice might be as equally good as the next, but the more time you just dwindle in limbo trying to choose between the two, both have rushed past you.

4. Contacts – the ‘professional name’ and contacts you build in any job takes you far. And it’s a small world. Everyone knows everyone. A shoddy job in one place can unravel the whole spider’s web.

5. Education – You CAN blissfully get a job and thrive in it even though you don’t have a formal education in the area, if you have a passion for it and is willing to dive in the deep-end and learn the ropes. So sometimes formal education leads to zero. Ultimately it’s the ability to get something done as opposed to your knowledge about something [which hopefully would help in the former, but usually formal education doesn’t teach you anything about doing anything useful] that wins the day. So is it worth spending years just learning theory? Nope. Unless you have a specific use to put your education to, most of the ‘institutionalized’ learning just goes to waste. Feel sorry for all those years of stuffing my head with hay.

6. Explore – it doesn’t kill to change anything in life. Jobs, religion, behavior etc.. Just make sure the people around you don’t go bonkuz with the rate of change [aaah.. dats tough]

7. Giving up – Sometimes its best to giveup the obvious track and travel the un trodden road. But its harder. Because its not defined. And you can get easily lost unless you have a focus, which is even harder to find.

8. One step at a time – I’e realized that although you want to do a lot of things with life, you can only do them one or oki may be two at a time if you really wanna do them properly. Just trying to do it all, all at once, just makes you do nothing properly at the end and when you look back, it would merely be time wasted doing a lot of half baked things.

9. The Greedy Solution – Sometimes its best to just take the best option for the moment as opposed to throwing things away thinking ‘ah this doesn’t fit in the long term plan’ because you never know what is round the next bend in life [and you can assure that its some surprise you never anticipated]

10. Pieces of the jigsaw – Everything does happen for a reason. So don’t discard even a single experience. And Yes, everyone who tangos into life also has some kind of impact on it.

11. Wasting days – letting time pass you by, and letting precious weeks and months slip through your fingers is much easier than you think. There is nothing more easier than sleeping through weeks of precious time just to notice that you have killed the time to live your dream.

12. Approval – ah, although you try to be a brave lone star who tried to trod the unbeaten track, the need for approval [it could be from different people, family, close buddies, other irrelevant people at large] sometimes eats you up. Because if you are going on a track that no one else has taken, no one knows where you will end up [ although you think you’ve got the destination figured out in your head, sometimes you are not sure yourself] Your lucky if you find someone who also believes. But that’s almost always impossible. SO it’s a long road littered with the treacherous landmines of insecurity, self doubt and stomaching disappointment and disappointment.

13. Rejection – man this has been one of the hardest feelings to stomach. Makes you feel like a sack of potatoes. However much you try to rationalize and think, ah its not because of any of my faults, anyone who’s ever got ‘rejected’ out their.. ooh it kicks you in the softest, most painful spot. And hmm.. it takes quite a while to get over it – well that’s what they say – but do u ever get over it? Doesn’t it leave an indelible little crack in your personality somewhere? But guess we need to make sure that that little punch doesn’t end up corroding into a little whole, through which our soul leaks out.

14. letting your self go – sometimes when things don’t go your way, you loose all bearings and let your self go completely. Its human, yet dangerous, specially if you let your self fall into the hands of many a vultures waiting to devour you body and soul. But what can you do in a scenario like this. I am yet figuring it out and chasing off the vultures,

15. Surrounding your self with good buddies – sometimes, it is simply inspirational to surround yourself with people who have gone through the real scorching fire of life and come out blazing like true stars. I guess I’m lucky to find Rajini, Lakshmi and Judy. Kudos to the lady trio who have become heroes through their true like struggles.