The Element of Simplicity and Its Hope for Living a More Satisfying Meaningful Life

When I was young, I felt poor and disadvantaged and felt my background was unsophisticated.

I compared myself to people whom I thought had a better home life than I did; neater more stylish houses, life with more routine. I felt unsophisticated and out of whack compared to them.

I did not understand there are many types of home lives.

That desperation resides in quiet elegant houses seemingly without drama; and the inhabitants of those homes may actually long for the crazy connectedness and wild times and interactions that were prevalent in my childhood home.

Without the benefit of this knowledge, when I became a teenager, I strived to develop the sophistication I assumed I lacked. 

Most of the ways in which you can acquire style and sophistication require money. 

Since I did not have money, I had to come up with something else.

I found my answer in the dictionary.

Yes, the dictionary.

I thought to develop a rich and complex vocabulary which I would impress others with. So in my free time, I started studying the dictionary. I pounced on impressive foreign sounding words such as sobriquet and ennui and zeit geist. I started using them at every opportunity.

I was still in India at the time. 3 of my sisters had already left the nest. Two were in America, a third was in Calcutta - studying management at IIM.

I would write long letters to these sisters.  I would pack these letters with words like sobriquet and ennui and zeit geist.

One of my sisters said in a letter to my mother, "we don’t understand a word of what Minoo writes to us." The comment stung.

When I look back at that time, I now see it was an attempt to feel important and worthy.

We all need to feel important and worthy.

We think if we are not sophisticated and worldly, then we are not important and worthy.

I was trying to fill this perceived lack with big words.

Whenever we perceive a lack in ourselves, we will try to fill it with something.

The bigger the perceived lack, the more we will try to compensate and the grander will be our efforts.

  

I compensated for the fact that I was not rich, sophisticated and privileged by using words which were associated with having a rich, sophisticated and privileged background.

But "Big hat, small cattle" as they say.

It was all a game.

I now see I was just as precious without these big words as with them.

The feeling of lack came from comparing myself with other people.

We make the mistake of comparing ourselves with other people and feeling inferior about all the things we don’t have that they do.

We think we have to have this, this and this to be worthy (a good education, a job, a marriage, a stylish home, successful normal kids).

In actual fact, we don't need any external crutches to support who we are.

And all our treasures are on the inside.

There was no place for my big words in advertising.

I had to learn to be brief and simple, to make my message universally understandable.

In writing this blog, I rarely use big words.

I now understand there's more sophistication in restraint than in anything else.

And it takes restraint not to want to come off superior to anyone else - whether through words or the things we surround ourselves with.

I read somewhere when people think about time, their thoughts become philosophical and spiritual, and noble and ethical ideas spring to their minds

When people think about money, their thoughts become materialistic, and selfish and unethical ideas are more likely to spring to their minds.

I have observed this in myself and know it to be true.

Whenever I think about time, it makes me think about how limited it is as a resource and makes me question whether I am using my time well.

It brings a sense of urgency in doing things which are truly valuable and meaningful.

It keeps me writing these posts.

And it makes me more compassionate in my thoughts about, and interactions with others.

I think to myself, "When I am gone, what will my life have been good for?  Would I have been a net positive to this world?”

When I think about money, I think about deals and steals - how I can earn more money,   how I can hold on to the money I have, how I can get the best deal, how I can get around taxes - all selfish stuff connected with me and my net worth.

Sometimes I have to stop myself and say, "Minoo switch your thoughts back to time – learn to let go of the idea that you need to think about money all the time, otherwise you will be losing time which is the most valuable thing you have.”

Doing this has helped me keep money and material things from taking over my life.

Everything we buy beyond the necessities and comforts in our life could be related to false thinking and believing we have a lack...

A lack of looks

A lack of personality

A lack of love

A lack of excitement

A lack of sophistication

A lack of power

A lack of prestige

A lack of relative status

When we move beyond this false thinking, we will start spending our time well.

In order to do that, we should embrace Laozi's prescription:

“Manifest plainness,

Embrace simplicity,

Reduce selfishness,

Have few desires."

We do some activities in a repetitive way and then we can't give them up - whether it's renovating our houses again and again – adding a deck here, a porch there; tinkering with our cars again and again – tricking them out with this now, then with that; trying to fix what is wrong with our bodies again and again – now botox, now liposuction, now chin lift, or whatever. 

We become guinea pigs of our own making. 

We go round and round in mouse traps of our own design.

We should look at everything we do and ask ourselves, is it worth it to keep doing this?

What would I lose if I stopped? What would I gain?

Henry David Thoreau, who was a master of simplicity said: “Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.”

I can testify to the truth of this from my own experience.

I quit my job in June of 2010 and because I embarked on the new adventure of becoming a commission software implementer and an SPM consultant, and it took some time to get there and to get up to speed, I earned very little money in the next 2 years. In fact, by US Census levels, my income was below the poverty level.

But because I had pared back and simplified my life, I did not feel poor.

I felt rich.  I felt blessed.

To be doing Xactly implementations

To have become a successful meditation practitioner

To be blogging

To be able to go for 5 mile walks every other day

I couldn't have asked for more.

Other people did not see my situation in the same way.

They saw poverty where I saw riches.

They saw scary idleness where I saw freedom to use my time as I please.

They saw loneliness where I saw time to meditate and reflect and grow as a human being.

One of my friends said to me, "When I told my children I was unhappy in my job the other day, one of them said," please don't do a Minoo on us.  Don’t quit your job like she did."

I said, "Did you tell them how happy I am?"

Indeed, while everyone around me was whining and complaining about their jobs, and their contractors and what not, I was reveling in my new way of life.

No longer was I walking around like Gulliver tied down by all sorts of false Lilliputian concepts of what it meant to live life.

But then thinkers and philosophers and artists have always known that simplicity can do for us what all the tinkering with our lives may not be able to do – fill the lack.

August Rodin said, "The more simple we are, the more complete we become."

My financial circumstances have improved in the last two years.

But I continue to live the simple life I adopted 2 years ago.

Why would I give up the golden treasures dug up from that time?

I am reminded about a Diogenes story.

Diogenes is one of my favorite historical characters and I have blogged about him before.

Bread and Lentils

Diogenes was eating a simple meal of bread and lentils for supper.

When Aristippus, who lived comfortably by being a toady and advisor to the king, saw this, he said 'Diogenes, if only you would learn to be subservient to the king, you would not have to live on lentils.'

Diogenes replied, 'Aristippus, if only you learned to live on lentils, you would not have to be subservient to the king".”

One of the reasons I live a simple life is because I do not want to be subservient to the rat race.

Besides “bread and lentils” has opened up my life to intellectual, spiritual and creative riches.

When I was no longer a spoke in the great commercial wheel, a long sleeping creative spark awoke in me.

It manifested itself in new adventures like learning Xactly and becoming an SPM consultant, starting this blog, learning to meditate.

Having experienced this, I feel everyone could do with a "bread and lentils" time.

A time, in which, even if you have enough money, your connections to power and status and identification with particular ideas of who you are and what you are meant for, are severed.

A pause like the one I wrote about in the Element of the Creative Pause And Its Hope For Turning Us Into Idea-Generating Machines.

"Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication” said Leonardo Da Vinci.

Indeed throughout my life, I have been surprised by the nobility of simple souls.

In my last post, I told you about Debbie.

Debbie was a simple down to earth soul.

She was also a noble soul, as I was to discover.

If you remember from my last post, one of the many wonderful things Mariam did for me was offer me the use of Debbie's secretarial help when she was travelling.

Debbie cheerfully threw herself into this. There was no “why should I work for someone who is not my employer?” vibe whatsoever.

Besides helping me with typing, she was ever ready to help me any way she could.

I thought she might help me call my clients to collect on my payments and she readily agreed when I asked her.

Debbie would get on the phone with a client who owed me a payment and say, “I am calling from Purple Patch.  You owe us $x……for the ….assignment.  When can we pick up the check? ”

She would do this every day till the client wrote the check.  Then she would call me and say, “Minoo, your check is ready to be picked up.”  And I would send my driver to pick up the check.

But I was to find out how noble Debbie was when the “waste paper” incident happened.

Once upon a time in the pre-recyling days

From early in my advertising career, I had this thing about wasting paper.

I always used both sides of paper to write copy.

And if I found any waste paper lying around - paper on which something had been printed and then discarded - I would immediately pick it up and use the back to write copy on it.

Advertising produced a lot of waste paper in those days, because even if we changed a single word of copy for an ad, the copy would have to be printed again.

When I started giving Debbie typing work, it suddenly struck me I had a new waste paper source.

Debbie often had to type copy over and over again because of spelling mistakes or changes.

I could ask her to give me the discards.

“Debbie,” I said, “please give me any paper you are wasting.  I can use the reverse sides to write copy.”

Debbie appreciated this, and whenever I went into Mariam's office, she would give me a stack of waste paper to take home.

Now as I said in the Element of Believing in Someone and Its Hope for Helping Them Move Mountains, Mariam, Debbie’s boss who was also my ex-colleague and client, was very sensitive to my needs.

So one of the things she had started doing for me was to send me the advertising brief through her driver ahead of meetings, so I could familiarize myself with the materials before we met to discuss the brief.

One day with an assignment coming up, Mariam called Debbie into her office, handed her some materials and said “Debbie, please give this to my driver to deliver to Minoo”.

I hadn't been in Mariam’s office for a while, and Debbie had not been able to give me any waste paper in a while. 

So thoughtfully, she took out a little stack of waste paper and threw it into the envelope along with the brief and gave it to the driver to deliver to me.

Two days later, Mariam called me and said she had received some further background information for the assignment, which she would have Debbie send me.

When Debbie got this material, she threw in another stack of waste paper into a second envelope and handed it to the driver.

Now it so happened I didn't open either of these 2 envelopes. 

I had been extra busy, so I brought them unopened to my meeting with Mariam.

“Hey Mariam, I didn't get a chance to go over what you sent me, but let's go over it now.” I said, handing her the unopened envelopes.

Mariam opened the first one and out fell out all this waste paper, including letters she had written to banks, and what not.

You should have seen the look on her face.

“My goodness,” she said, “I don't know what's wrong with Debbie.  She has put a whole lot of junk into this envelope along with the brief.”

I immediately realized what had happened – all the so called “junk” was the waste paper Debbie had thoughtfully sent me.

I was still collecting my thoughts on how to deal with this, when Mariam pressed the bell on her table to summon Debbie.

Ding.  Ding. Ding went the bell.

Debbie came into the room.

“Yes, Mariam?” she said.

“Debbie, what’s the matter with you?"  You put all this junk in the envelope we sent to Minoo.  Where is your head, girl? ”

Debbie glanced at me ever so briefly.

Meanwhile Mariam was opening the second envelope, even as she was ticking off Debbie.

Lo and behold, another stack of papers unrelated to the advertising brief fell out of that envelope too.

“My goodness, Debbie.  This envelope has them too.  Whatever has gotten into you?”

I was amazed at what happened next.

I was ready for Debbie to spill the beans and put the blame on me.

But without looking at me, Debbie said “I am so sorry Mariam.  I don't know what got into me. It won't happen again.”

“It better not” said Mariam. “You can go now.”

Mariam shook her head and rolled her eyes after Debbie left the room and we returned to the briefing session, on which I could hardly concentrate.

I was waiting for it to finish, so I could go to Debbie’s desk and deliver Debbie an apology and a thank you, both of which I urgently owed her.

As soon as Mariam and I were done, I ran out of Mariam’s office to Debbie.

“I am so so sorry you had to take the rap for me like that,Debbie,” I said. “And it was so nice of you not to say anything.”

I told her I never wanted her to get into trouble again, and she should stop giving me any more waste paper from that day.

But I have never forgotten Debbie’s kindness and nobility till today.

In fact, whenever I think about nobility, I think about Debbie and how she took the fall for something that was my fault.

Yes, nobility is the ultimate sophistication.

I will end this post with a simple prescription for health and vitality from Laura Ingalls:

"I once knew a woman, not very strong, who to the wonder of her friends went through a time of extraordinary hard work without any ill effects.

I asked her for her secret and she told me that she was able to keep her health, under the strain, because she took 20 minutes, of each day in which to absolutely relax both mind and body. She did not even “sit and think.” She lay at full length, every muscle and nerve relaxed and her mind as quiet as her body. This always relieved the strain and renewed her strength.”

What is that if not meditation - which is another simple prescription for the ills of today which are all related to the lack we feel.

As always thanks for reading and have a great day and week….M ….a Pearl Seeker like you.  Thanks to Ajay, Ananda, Audrey, Badri, Rosie and Subhakar for their comments on Facebook on my last post and for everyone else for their votes.  P.S. If you are attracted to the simple life, I have written other posts promoting a simple life, including The Simple Life and You've Heard About Wasabi.  How about Wabi Sabi?

The Element of Believing in Someone and Its Hope for Helping Them Move Mountains

Silhouette Hands Thumbs Up by George Hodan

In The Element of Affirmation and Its Hope for Believing in Ourselves, I told you how Laura H believed in me even when I did not believe in myself.

Thanks to her faith in me, I was able to take on the role of being a one-person commissions team at one of the hottest Silicon Valley companies.

Palm Inc - the company that launched the much desired and much loved Palm Pilot.

Laura H had an uncanny instinct for understanding this:  if you believe in someone, they will do great things.

Laura’s belief in my capabilities changed my life.

I was able to break into a new career that really fit my lifestyle.

I learned to handle commissions.

And then I stuck with it because the job helped me command things which were important to me.

Things like autonomy and flexibility.

In my job, no one told me what to do.

And though I had to fight for it, I got to where I could set my own schedule; and work from home a lot.

Working from home cost me visibility in an already invisible job.

While handling commissions made me visible to the salespeople whose commissions I calculated, I was invisible to the Finance team - except when the accrual did not match the payout, when they would jump on my neck.

But since it allowed me to be more efficient and balance my work and personal life better, I chose to work from home over getting recognition and getting ahead.

I loved the extra time created from not having to dress up for work, or pack lunch, from not having to commute to the office, or spend time on office chit chat.

If my boss rarely recognized me for my contribution (having grudgingly given in to the telecommuting), the sales team made up for it.

They were genuinely appreciative of my hard work and would let me know at every turn.

Whether I was working at the office, or working at home, I would spend a good part of each day quite isolated.

So when a sales person would call with a question –it would be the social highlight of my day.

I have a story to tell you in connection with this.

Tara, one of the Palm salespeople who had been with the company for several years, rose to become the VP of Sales.

One day after she had taken up her new position, she called me.

“GODDESS”, she said, when I answered the phone, “how are you doing?”

My job was invisible, so hearing the VP of Sales say “GODDESS” to me was music to my ears.

I felt terribly important and valued.

And it wasn’t just a one-time thing.

Thereafter, every time we spoke, Tara would start the call by saying “GODDESS” to me.

One day – maybe six months to a year after Tara had first said “GODDESS” to me, I was conversing with one of the other Palm folks who were in a sales support role like me, and dealt with Palm sales people frequently.

Tara came up during our conversation.

The sales support person said: “You know Tara absolutely loves me.  Every time we talk on the phone, she calls me GODDESS.”

Pop. My bubble burst.

I realized I had not been singled out for the “GODDESS” honor.

Tara was bestowing “GODDESSES” left, right and center.

But I resisted bursting the bubble of the sales support person by telling her Tara had been calling me GODDESS as well.

And I liked Tara so much, I didn’t grudge her this revelation.

If Tara called all of us GODDESSES, so be it.

We all needed to be encouraged.   

We all needed to feel special and important.

I continued to appreciate it when Tara called me GODDESS.

When you know someone likes and appreciates your work, it goes a long way

Praise and recognition, if given on a solid foundation of trust in someone’s capabilities, can be a powerful influence on their performance, motivation, and desire to excel.

When someone has earned their chops, it never hurts to acknowledge it.

In fact, if you need them to pull more rabbits out of the hat, this is what you should do.

In one of my advertising jobs in India, there were these two account servicing guys who worked as a team.

Okay– I will tell you one of their names – it was Uday.

Whenever Uday and Kalyan (yes I think his name was Kalyan) had a new creative assignment for us (by us, I mean Ravi D, the Art Director and myself), they would come to us and say “How’s our favorite creative team?  Ready for a new challenge?”

This would work like magic on us.

Ravi D and I would be inspired to do our best. It didn’t matter that the client was TVS Electronics, and the product was a printer.

We did some of our best work at Contract Bangalore for Uday and Kalyan. 

I remember one of the other account servicing teams coming to me, and saying, “Is it because we don’t flatter you like those guys, you always try to blow us off and avoid working on our assignments?”

It was partially true. 

This other team rarely showed excitement for anything we produced. They never ever went “wow” or “great job”.

How could we want to pull out all the stops and do great work when we didn’t feel the work mattered to them at all?

People live in constant fear their fires may be spent, they are past their prime, and they will not be able to pull another  rabbit out of the hat.

So they need to be reassured as often as necessary, and reminded they have a successful track record and can do it again.

They will especially need to be reminded of this when they are at a low point.

I feel strongly about this, which is why I wrote How To Feel Good About Your Accomplishments When the Chips Are Down.

The positive benefits of praise are tremendous. It may be the only bright spot in someone’s day. 

When we have had a good day at work, we go home with positive energy and we are able to deal with whatever is waiting for us at home. I have talked about this in my post Element of Affirmation and Its Hope for Believing in Ourselves.

We should praise more, because the impact of praise does not stop with the recipient, but rolls over to all the people they come in contact with the rest of the day.

It doesn’t take a crystal ball to predict that when someone is praised, they are likely to be more cheerful, more cooperative, more inspired, more understanding, more tolerant, more generous and more patient the rest of the day.

As I said, I continued to enjoy Tara’s GODDESS praise.

This is because I trusted the intention behind the compliment.

Tara never used it as a tool to get me to do something special for her. 

Every call was a GODDESS call.

Beyond praise

Frequent recognition rewards can also be a powerful motivator and keep our creative fires burning.

On my first stint in HTA, I was the beneficiary of some pretty cool practices to recognize and encourage creative spark. 

One of them was the practice of bestowing a Creative Person of the Month award.

If you won that award, you got to see a caricature portrait of you (like the artists do on Fisherman’s Wharf) go up on the wall of the Creative Aisle, alongside caricatures of previous recipients of the Creative Person of the Month award.

Whenever you did a good job, or went above and beyond the call of duty, HTA would also privately recognize you with a gift card to the Taj Coromandel bookshop next door

Praise – useless when phony, gold when genuine

Praise is tricky. 

It is a clichéd scene in almost every family movie, or sitcom which has parent and teenager characters: A teenager will try to toady the parent with a compliment. The parent then will ask “So what do you want now?”.

Right enough, the son or daughter will have a hidden agenda – such as wanting a chunk of money to buy an expensive pair of sneakers, or seeking permission to go on a trip with friends. 

This is manipulative praise and should be reserved for family sitcoms.

If you praise someone only to get something specific out of them, they will cotton on to it sooner or later.

And they will never trust your praise again.

Praise must be delivered on a foundation of trust. 

Trust is built up over time

Trust takes time to build. Only when people have seen your performance and work ethic over a period of time, will they trust you to deliver the goods.

From this trust, can come not only greater autonomy and flexibility, but greater responsibility and opportunity.

I am grateful to all the people who have believed in me; people like Laura, who believed in me before I proved myself, and people who once they believed in me,  trusted in me, and based on that trust, gave me autonomy, flexibility, greater responsibility and new opportunities.

My friend and one time client Mariam is an example of one of them.

Let me tell you about her.

From trust can come greater autonomy and flexibility and opportunity

Shortly after I gave up full-time employment to start Purple Patch, which was after my second stint at HTA, I ran into Mariam.

She was an account servicing manager whom I had worked with in my first stint at HTA.

She now had her own subsidiary business within the ad agency Sistas, and she specialized in financial advertising.

 “Minoo, “, she said, “I heard you have gone independent.  Come work for Sistas.  I will get you a retainer.”

Mariam introduced me to Chari who was the manager at Sistas.

Chari, like Mariam, proved to be a steady supporter of my dreams to successfully go independent.

I enjoyed working for both of them.

But the rest of this story is about Mariam.

Like Laura, Mariam wanted anyone who worked for her to succeed and thrive, and cared deeply about them.

One of the first things she said to me after I started working for Sistas on a retainer basis was, “Minoo, since I am traveling so much, feel free to use Debbie in my absence for typing or other secretarial assistance.”  This was a boon to me.

(Debbie was Mariam’s secretary. She turned out to be a person with a heart of gold. I will tell you a story about Debbie and me some other time)

Soon Mariam had built up enough of a clientele, she could leave Sistas and go independent with a full-fledged financial communications agency, TnQ Communications.

At this time, Mariam began to pay me for each assignment I did for her new agency.

TnQ quickly became one of the bread and butter clients of Purple Patch.

Though pre-ipo corporate advertising by its nature, had to be stodgy and staid, I liked working for Mariam.

She valued my work and made me feel good.

And she cared about me.

Let me tell you the story about my mother’s poetry book.

My mother was a person who lived to write.

In her lifetime, she wrote one published book “The Incredible Mrs. Martin”, one unpublished book, “Temple Bells”, several stories for the newspaper, and a large number of poems.

Mummy kept up with her poetry literally till the last year of her life.

One day, when Mummy and I were both still in India, but in 2 different cities, a cousin of mine who was a regular visitor to Mummy said to her, “Aunty, I have a friend who can compile your poetry into a book and print it for you, if you like.  If you give us a small advance, we can start the typesetting right away.”

My mother was very excited.  She forked over the advance and eagerly waited.

But though my cousin might have had the best intentions, the project got waylaid, and my mother had to forget about the money and about seeing her poems in print.

Until an idea came to me. I was in advertising. So didn't I have the resources and connections to get this book printed?

I secretly decided to print the book of poems for Mummy and surprise her with it.

First I had to select the poems which would go into the book. 

Mummy had written a lot of poems, and I could not fit them all into the book.

I did not know which ones to select.

So I sent the poems to my friend Anita and asked her to make the selection.

I also asked Anita to identify the best poem in the book.

On one of my trips to see Mummy, I then had Mummy write this poem in her own handwriting. 

I didn’t tell her what it was for, but I was going to use this poem written in her own handwriting on the cover of the book.

An art director at Sistas designed the cover for free; and the print manager of Sistas assisted me with getting the book printed economically; I knew hard cover would cost me more than soft cover; but I was set on it.  And so, two hundred hard cover copies of a Twig in A Torrent got secretly printed.

At the time, I was doing a lot of work for Mariam.

When she learned of the birthday present I was getting ready for Mummy, you’ll never guess what she did.

She knew she would be in Bangalore, the city where my Mum lived, during mummy’s birthday week. 

She said “Minoo, I’ll tell you what, ask Debbie to book you a ticket to Bangalore on my account, so you can be there on your Mum’s birthday and give her the book.  I will meet you in Bangalore, and we can discuss the campaign you are working on at lunch at the hotel where I am staying during the week.” 

So I flew to Bangalore on Mariam’s account on Mummy’s birthday and I surprised her with the first 4 copies of her poetry book.

This was Mariam. 

In my working relationship with her, she continued to surprise me with gestures big and small  - which showed me she cared for me beyond our professional relationship.

Not everything has be negotiated

Telecommuting and being able to set my own schedule have been a big deal to me, ever since I became a Mom, and tools like vpn, web conferencing, email, instant messaging, skype and voip have made it possible for people to work from home. 

At every full time job and on every assignment in America, I have worked hard to build my credibility, so I could then ask to telecommute.

But telecommuting is a privilege that is hard to keep and is forever threatened. 

In down times, particularly, telecommuters become targets for dumping new work on – it is assumed they are handling less than a 100% workload.  I have experienced this again and again, and have often had to fight tooth and nail to stave off the dumping. 

So I am very grateful to the managers who didn’t put me through this. 

Judy and Garyn were two of them.

I was a contract Commissions Analyst at a company reporting to Garyn, when he requested me to become a permanent employee.  

I said “Sure Garyn, but I was wondering if I could work from home two days a week during the summer when my daughter is out of school.”

“Sure thing,” he said.

When summer was ending, I went back to him and said, “Garyn, summer’s coming to an end, so I will be back to working all 5 days at the office”

I was surprised when he said,” I have no problem with you continuing to work 2 days from home, Minoo, if it’s okay with Judy.”

Judy was the new commissions manager who had just been hired. I now reported to Judy and Judy reported to Garyn.

When I told Judy what Garyn had said, she said “If you want to continue to work two days from home, Minoo, I have no problem with it either.”

I said, “Judy, if it’s okay with you, I’ll come to office all 5 days of the week, but I would like to leave office every day in time to pick up my daughter from school and work from home the rest of the day. 

“That’s fine too, Minoo. Go ahead”, she said.

This was just the beginning.

A year later, when gas prices blew through the roof, Judy said, “Minoo, with gas prices being so high, if you want to work 1 or 2 days from home to save on gas, I will be okay with it.”

Imagine – she offered telecommuting to me, over and above the great schedule I already had.  I was so grateful.

Judy would also keep track of when the school breaks were coming up – whether Christmas break, Winter Break or Spring Break.  She would come to me a week before the break and say, “Minoo, do you want to work from home during Spring Break. I know Tanita is going to be out of school.”

She would spare me the embarrassment of asking for extra flexibility.

Judy’s kindness would inspire me to give my very best to my job.

Unfortunately, the downturn in the economy starting 2008 impacted us, and my telecommuting became a big issue for the managers above Judy.

Once again, the threat of being dumped with unrelated work came up; as I said in my post The Element of a Beginner’s Mindset, employees become powerless during downturns. I wanted to reclaim the power I had lost.  So I quit my job in 2010, and have been a contract Commissions and SPM consultant ever since. 

But I will always be grateful to Judy and Garyn for the autonomy and flexibility they bestowed on me. 

Since becoming a contract SPM person, I have worked remotely more than gone into offices.  I try and feel out a manager’s comfort with working remotely and having a flexible schedule.  I am pleased to say that every manager, including the ones who are not used to it at all, have come round and given me leeway.

The Inner Drive

We must remember that every human being has an inner drive.

They want to succeed.

They want to meet a challenge and beat a challenge.

They want to beat expectations.

They want to hitch their wagon to a star.

But they can’t do any of this if you don’t have faith in them.

The challenge of every manager is to communicate your faith and gratitude to every person working for you in both word and deed.

If you do that, you will get the best work out of them.

They will follow you to the end of the world.

And put many of the normal considerations aside.

Understanding what makes people tick

This is what I know from my own experience.

I will take a small flat fee to get a break in a new field

I might work on an assignment which appeals to me for very little money.

If I like an environment, I would be willing to earn less money just to continue working in that environment, even eating up extra hours worked.

I will be tempted to work an assignment with an easy commute, or one in which I can telecommute and set my own schedule.

I enjoy working on assignments for people who believe in me and are good for my self-esteem.

I will end this post with one of Mummy’s poems, remembering the manager who made it possible for me to fly to Mummy on her birthday with her poetry book A Twig In a Torrent in my hand.

A big thank you to the manager who made that possible… and to every manager, who, by being sensitive to my needs, has made me want to give them my very best.

On to Mummy’s poem……

The Sage’s Words

And they approached the sage’s robe.

And touched the saffron coloured hem.

O master! Cast they eye upon our woe

The utter desolation of our souls!

They trod on stormy waves and stretched

Begrimed and earthly care-worn hands

For soul-uplifting “darshan”.

And the sage looked upon their helplessness

And the sick panic of their inner state.

His eyes were filled with pity for their pain

And casting searching gaze on them, he spoke.

Look’d you for happiness from pleasure’s lure,

Yea from the glitter false of riches’ galaxy.

From passion’s short-lived ecstasies,

And sensuous caverns of delight;

From foods and wines and pleasure’s phantasies,

And grisly grin of grabbing avarice –

Thus plunged you into denser, deeper night.

Bound in the fetters of your earthly might,

Wrapped in possessions, now you stand;

Souls stifling, bound at feet and hand –

My friends you are indeed, a sorry sight!

Go then! He raised his arm aloft –

Shake off these fetters from your hearts

And clad in simple nothingness,

Naked of all these earthly glorying –

Thy only jewels, the precious timeless pearls

Of faith and truth and boundless love.

Adorn thyself with these.

And having turned thy back upon the gaudy world.

Having washed off its clinging, tarnished dust,

In un-encumbered, pristine, nakedness –

Return to me.

As always thanks for reading and have a great day and week….M …..a Pearl-Seeker like you.  Thanks to Ajay and Majella for their comments on my last post on Facebook, and thanks to all the rest of you for your votes.  P.S. This post is for all the great managers out there. P.S.2: My post No Need for 23andme features another of mummy's poems. You can link to the post here.