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| Sailing Out In The Ocean by Shari Weinsheimer |
Who says we have to take whatever is given to us as given?
That our lives have to be limited to same old same old?
That new paths were not meant to be traveled?
That glass ceilings were not meant to be shattered?
That horizons were not meant to be expanded?
And boundaries changed?
To explore is to discover.
And to redefine.
We have the freedom to put on different glasses and hats
and experience the world from a different perspective.
Through travel.
Through books.
Through watching TV with an observant eye.
Through talking to people from all walks of life (Socrates style).
Through creating something and exploring what that
something does.
For us.
For others if we have the courage to allow them to
experience it.
A piece of music
A painting
A story
A sculpture
A tapestry
A dish
A bottle of wine
A speech
A performance
A blog post.
We don’t know the fate of anything we bring into the world.
It’s an exploration.
We must be prepared for anything.
To be tested by indifference.
To be delighted by complete and utter praise and approval –
think Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love.
To be startled by outrage - think Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses.
The worth of an activity is not determined by its
popularity, or its effect on our net worth, our status, or our power.
Exploration is worthwhile in itself.
It expands our horizons.
What is growth after all, but expanded horizons?
Recently, I met an IT professional who has a secret passion
to learn to decorate cakes. I would
never have learned of this. It’s only when I told her Tanita works at Baskin
Robbins that she jumped up and said, “oh, does she decorate cakes? I so badly want to learn to decorate cakes.”
She could hardly contain her excitement.
What’s your secret passion?
Exploring doesn’t mean we have to become good at what we explore.
It only means we want to get involved and find
out more about it.
If we become good at it and take to it like a duck to water or a gardener with green thumbs, that's great.
But we should give ourselves the freedom to explore without
the burden of success.
Whether it’s trying out a new recipe with the help of
YouTube, or learning to decorate a cake at Michael’s, or exploring new ways of
eating and living, we should relish the learning and ask for nothing more.
In mid 2010, I quit my full-time job.
A series of explorations followed.
Wondering what to do, I thought I might explore getting Xactly Administrator Training.
Problem was Xactly training offerings were for Xactly
customers only.
Fingers crossed, I picked up the phone, called the Xactly trainer and appealed to her. I said, "I am a Commissions
Analyst who is unemployed and would like to make myself more marketable. If you let me do the Xactly
Administrator training paying on my own dime, it would help me get a job."
Score 1 for asking. It worked.
Xactly introduced me to Don Gootee of Solution Partners. I
joined his Xactly implementations team.
I was involved in 3 full implementations with them. Solution
Partners also gave me the opportunity to do UAT testing for Salesforce.com. I
did this 2 years in a row.
Then along came Spectrumbiztech.
Spectrumbiztech is a visionary company and they offer a
whole spectrum of SPM services covering all the different popular solutions:
Xactly, Callidus, Varicent, Nice, and more.
Spectrumbiztech sponsored me to attend Varicent training
and I am now on an assignment through them at a company which uses Varicent.
I have also written White Papers for Spectrumbiztech.
On the personal side, I have many exciting explorations to
talk about.
This blog is one of them.
It is now 230 posts long and counting.
The posts on Minoo Jha Life Strategies include many popular guest posts.
Here’s the list by the different guest posters:
Ajay
Sachdev
Anita
Saran
Cindy
Pinkston
Don
Gootee
Gurshuran Summan
Jacinta
Correa
Jim
Cobb
John
Paraskevopoulos
Colors of LifeJuliet Pinto
Shantel
Chavez
Thanks to all my guest-posters. I appreciate the extra oomph you’ve
given Minoo Jha Life Strategies.
About a year ago, I spread my wings from blogging into book
reviewing, which intimidated me at first, as any new exploration will.
I have written 10 Amazon book reviews. My first book review was of Anita Saran’s On Becoming Vegetarian – One Woman’s Experience. My latest book review
was of Ajay Sachdev’s Oh Bangalore.
Food has been another area of exploration for me.
There was the Green Papaya discovery.
And sushi – for which I have to thank Don Gootee and Tanita.
And the deeper dive I have done into Vietnamese food, thanks
to my friend Helen.
Nina and I have had an ongoing love affair with Asian food as
you read in my post The Unites States of Friendship Part 5.
She introduced me to Fey in Menlo Park, where I was able to
explore the spiciest and scrumptiousest Sichuan cuisine. She also introduced me
to Bay Leaf in Sunnyvale, where I was able to explore Indonesian fare for the
first time. Craving Dancing Fish or Stink Bean? You should start your ignition
and head to Bay Leaf.
I have also explored new ways of eating at home thanks to my friend Julia.
Of course, reading being one of my favorite activities,
I’ve explored a lot of new books in the last few years. I’ve made mention of Socrates, A Man For Our Times, How Will You Measure Your Life by Clay Christensen and Three Little Steps by Trevor Blake.
I owe a special debt to Richard Nelson Bolles’ What Color Is My Parachute? It filled me with hope and
encouragement and gave me ideas.
You can read more about what this book has meant to me in Can a Book About Job Hunting Show You the Path back to yourself?
Any area of our lives has the potential for exploration.
After making some foolish investment mistakes and flaming
out – as I explained in my post How I Lost A Thousand Dollars on Donuts – I decided
to explore a completely different strategy – as I explain in my post Yoga For Investors. This strategy has served me
well.
Of course, exploring will result in bloopers sometimes –
that’s par for the course. If we decide we want to avoid all the pitfalls, we
won’t be able to explore at all. We have to take a chance, even at the risk of making a fool
of ourselves.
The most satisfying of my explorations has been in the
field of the spiritual.
My friend Gerri, whom you first met in United States of Friendship Part 2 introduced me to her Bible Study class. I’ve been going there
off and on for the past 2 years. It’s
been a wonderful exploration.
I also started meditating in late summer of 2010.
Meditation has brought me the rewards of peace and
acceptance and cheerfulness and stoicism and connectedness.
Exploring is all about being open to experience.
And meditation has made me more open to experience and accepting
of anything that happens to me.
Don’t think that when you explore, you have to have one
plan and one set of ideas.
You can have a palette of plans and ideas and go with your gut.
You can leave room for improvisation to happen.
Did you know that the titles and endings of many movies are
left open till the very end of filming and in fact, several alternate endings are
often filmed with the final one being selected just before the final edit?
Further, directors do not stick to the script and many
scenes happen by happy accident.
“I’ll have what she
is having” the memorable line uttered in the restaurant scene in When Harry Met
Sally is one of those happy accidents.
Billy Crystal came up with it when the scene was being shot, and everyone
liked it so much, the director decided to include it.
I also found out something interesting about Al Stewart’s hit
Year of the Cat album.
The entire music
and orchestration for all the songs was scored and recorded (with the help of
Alan Parsons) before Al started work on any of the lyrics. What’s more, when Al got down to writing lyrics,
he wrote 4 alternate sets of lyrics for each song.
So Year of the Cat and On the Border might have been Foot of the Stage and Ships in the Night - if things had turned out differently.
Apparently, throughout his career –
Al has approached song-writing that way - writing 4-6 sets of lyrics for each one and then making a selection from those.
For inspiration, he cracks open an atlas.
What a way to go.
Exploration should be fun.
It should be about going with the flow.
It’s okay to start down one path and veer off onto another.
I do that almost every week.
I start writing a post about one thing and then halfway
into the post, I veer off and a different thought stream leads me to write a
completely different post.
This week I started writing about sportsmanship, and here I
am, completing and publishing a post about exploration.
We can become more exploratory in everything, including in
our significant relationships.
If we’ve always related to a child, spouse or partner one way, we can start
relating to them in another way.
For instance, we may want to light a fire under our kids because
we feel they lack ambition, drive, purpose and focus.
There are two ways to do this.
We can be critical and nagging and insulting – this is the
arsonist way of lighting a fire – we are trying to burn them with our words,
brandish our opinions and judgments on their minds.
Or we can be encouraging and supportive and guiding –a
source of light and warmth.
If you’ve never explored being a giver of light and warmth
to your child, perhaps you can explore that now.
When I explored a different way of relating to my child, I
was very happy with the results.
Some of my most satisfying moments have come from exploring
different reactions to emotional stimuli.
I am not always successful with avoiding a negative
reaction, but when I am, I find it liberating.
When I was a child, I was over sensitive and if you said
boo to me, I would cry.
As I grew older, though I was able to stay composed
outwardly, I continued to be over sensitive – I would just bottle it all up
inside.
Now that I’ve learned to meditate, I am becoming less and
less sensitive, and I find a way not to identify with the slings that are
hurled my way.
Once, I was in a discount store and I suddenly crossed from
browsing the shelves on the left of the aisle to the right. I got in the way of a rough looking couple. The husband was clearly annoyed and assuming
I didn’t know English, he commented to his wife about me, “Bozo”.
The old me would have been very upset for the rest of the
day. The new me knew the guy didn’t know
better. It was even quite possible he
would change as the years went by.
I changed, didn’t I?
I will end this post with the opening lines of the post.
Who says we have to take whatever is given to us as given?
That our lives have to same old same old?
That new roads were not meant to be traveled?
That glass ceilings were not meant to be shattered?
That horizons were not meant to be expanded?
And boundaries changed?
To explore is to discover.
And redefine.
Put on a different pair of glasses and a different hat and
experience the world from a different perspective.
Life’s more fun and gratifying that way.
As always, thanks for reading and have a great day and week…..M…..a Pearl-Seeker like you.
1 comment:
A fascinating post, Minoo....reminds me of Tennyson's 'To Strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield'
More power to your pen and onward to 1000 posts! What Ho!!
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