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The Pursuit of Mastery
When building a habit we sometimes get bored in a few weeks. But a pianist may practice 20,000 hours for over a decade to qualify for an orchestra. To be a meditation master, you need 10,000 to 20,000 hours of practice. In fact, Mingyur Rinpoche...
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Saving Childhoods
At a typical IITJEE coaching center in Andhra, a student wakes up at 6 am and studies till 10 pm. For 16 hours, 6 days a week, they slog, with a few...
Persistence Pays
Once I was talking to a friend whose extended family had built a pharma business from scratch to worth tens of thousands of crores. Now, here is the...
Beyond the Startup Drama
The startup world has today become a circus. Once, ‘startup’ meant innovation. Today it has become this drama of VC funding, valuation, unicorn,...
The Power of Daily Meditation
I have been working out regularly for more than a decade but it took years of struggle to make meditation a daily habit. Without guidance, it was...
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Handling difficult life-situations
In 2003, I was facing a potentially career-ending crisis. A group of tribals from northern Kerala landed in Trivandrum and started agitating. As the City Police chief, I had to ensure that there was no violence or obstruction. Since these were...
Happiness from Within
In investment banking and Wall Street jobs, the ‘bonus day’ is an interesting one -- everybody gets a cash windfall. Naturally, they should all be thrilled, right? Yet, NOT everyone is happy. Why? Did they not just get more money? Here are the two...
Life is unpredictable
When I joined the Indian Police Service, I was in for a big disappointment -- I was assigned to serve in the Kerala cadre for the rest of my life. Folklore says that for the Civil Services, the north Indian states are ‘good cadres’ -- good...
Grind Leads to Success
Two decades ago, when I was serving as in the police, I saw the current Kerala Chief Minister, Mr. Pinarayi Vijayan, personally lead a protest ‘dharna’ before the Trivandrum Collectorate. At that time, his party was in the opposition. He was...