We have different stages in life. Sometimes we learn from history and sometimes from present situation.
We read business books to find solutions to the problem about business. We read history to get different perspectives on things. We read spiritual books to know and practice peace and positivity in our life.
It all about the stages we're in and we keep experimenting it.
It's not the critics who counts...
" It's not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt, 1910 AD
Whenever we are supposed to chose a cookies or a brand of shoes or dead basketball player most of us come up with chocolate chip, Nike and Kobe Bryant.
It is not because it is popular but it has made huge impact in our life. We are already consciously or unconsciously aware of it. We can decide it without any help from others.
There are many such things that has made an impression on our life due to which we chose them without any assist or suggestions. We are unconsciously aware of many things.
How can this be possible?
Today morning while I was running, I listened to a Tim Ferriss Podcast where he was interviewing Robert (Bob) Iger - the CEO and chairman of Disney. Listening to his journey was very interesting and motivating.
It was very inspiring to hear the story of accumulation of Pixar (2006), Marvel (in 2009), Lucas film (in 2012), 21st century Fox (in 2019), after Bob became the CEO of Disney on 2005.
He pointed out three factors for his success: Hard work, Luck, and mentorship. These three have contributed Bob in negotiating deals and make him and Disney to the position where he and Disney is right now.
A wind extinguishes a candle but fans a fire. A negotiation unites two countries but infuriates the third one.
Everything has two sides. Sometimes we see it, sometimes we don't.
It depends on our perspective how we perceive things and situation we encounter. People are stressed and depressed not only because of the situation they encounter but because of how they perceive the situation. They suffer because they see the wrong side and judge themselves based on that seeing.
They don't realize it has good side in the hindsight. It's very important to realize that everything that happens has two sides, one that happens to us and the other that happens for us.
They said when things comes faster, you don't realize its worth. And it's true. We have seen a lot of examples how people have lost their stuffs that have come easily without hard work and determination.
The bigger the aim, the longer time it takes to get there. Believing this, we have been practicing patience and moving slowly in Imind projects. Imind is not about short term success. We are not in the short-term game. The purpose of Imind is to make a sustaining and long-term products. We are in the infinite run and I'm sure it doesn't come fast.
But it will obviously reach its goal if we have the same unwavering faith and the courage to continue this journey.
We often look to the success of others for a spark, but true inspiration doesn't come from someone else's highlight reel. It comes from our own archives of failure.
True inspiration is found in the quiet, repetitive grind—the small wins earned through consistent work. When you realize you are capable of overcoming your own obstacles, you no longer need to look elsewhere for a reason to keep going.
We search happiness in outer world. We seek respect from others. We are hungry for praise and pride. We always look at the outer world for everything we do. But in most cases it doesn't work.
It is because most of the content we are looking for are present within us not in other people or outer world. Happiness is within us, the story is within us. We just need to have that eyes to see it.
It has been about a year and half that the idea of Imind first came in my mind. The inception of Imind has been very humble and I'm proud of that because every great story has a humble beginning.
Indeed, the journey of Imind have been tough but always inspiring and motivating. Of course, it’s always jovial to execute on your dream or goal (or whatever you want to call it), if not, at least the fantasy of working on your dream is.
The pursuit of dream is what gives life a new flavor.
Before having this idea, I was fond of writing (Well, I still am) about entrepreneurship, leadership, self-realization, and execution. I’m also fond of reading because I love learning as this is what makes me grow. I studied and observed various patterns in successful startups (like weWork, Uber, snapchat, and other small Asian startups) and well-established companies (like Kimberly Clark, Walgreens, IBM, Walmart, Tesla, Apple, Amazon, etc.) by reading their stories.
When the idea of establishing a tech brand hit me, I was in an engineering college always executing to become visionary. I was not in search of ideas but, maybe, this idea encountered me while I was in search of being a visionary entrepreneur.
Visualizing my country, Nepal, on one mind and making plans and blueprint sitting in USA on other wasn’t and isn’t (while I’m writing this) that easy. This made me realize that when you persist on what you are deeply passionate about the persistence you have will shatter the defiance.
With the vision of bringing huge positive transition in the lives of Nepalese people in technology, economy and daily basis, building an organization that can endure and adapt multiple generations is very substantial. This is the vision behind Imind. In this profitable world, it’s very difficult to find sustaining organization because everybody is focused on short-term success and profits.
Execution in Imind didn’t began until a year later in August 2019 a team of eight people (electrical and computer engineers) was formed. I had read a lot of books about managing team, leaderships and organizing people and it seemed so easy. But in reality, it wasn’t that easy to manage team as it seemed.
From that day on, “my” “Imind” became “our Imind” and me as well as all the team members were very excited about it because it was something that me and all our team members were deeply passionate about and it was everyone’s end goal. Soon we defined our core values and we had to lose two of our members (This taught me a lesson that to stay in a team we got to be aligned with the core values). Our phase of losing didn’t end there. We also had to lose our one and only advisor (a professor from our University, who had been advising us for our first project) as he couldn’t manage time (as per his email, but he only knows the true reason).
This was a huge blow for me and my team as we felt like a small boat left in the middle of the ocean not knowing which direction to go. We became like a small cub being left by her mother in the middle of huge jungle feeling unsafe and vulnerable. But the inspiring story was that this feeling (whether it was a true feeling or fake) were not expressed by any of our team members because we all sensed deep inside our bones that there was a way out of this situation and we started to seek it.
This situation reminded me of the author named Jim Collins, who in his book “Good to Great”, by researching how good companies in United states became great during the interval of 30 years from transition, insisted that all those companies started by answering first “who” then “what” questions because when you move forward because of who else is in your team rather that what are we going for or where are we going, it’s easier to change the direction as the world is always dynamic. He wrote that all those companies started by having right people in the bus and wrong people off the bus. After all this situation we faced, for the first time I felt like we now have a right people in our Imind bus.
We started to find our way from the middle of ocean. We started to divide our work by assigning every member their individual task. While they were doing their individual task, I had to do thoroughly research on all of their task that means I have to be prepared on all of their subjects(task) as well as mine because I always believe in fruitful arguments which always comes from good preparation.
I learned a lot and our team took this as an experiment. We took all encounters as our test of character and creativity to learn more and become more.
This (2019) was the inception year for Imind (even though the idea was since 2018) because it was made alive by all these team members.
Then the 2019 was gone….
And 2020 began…
A new year, with a new resolution, with a new approach, and with a new perspective, we decided to start fresh as we already have built a team. We then began to ride the left-over boat from the ocean towards the shore to sail it again towards the right direction; towards the direction where we all have knowledge about.
We started researching the tech stuff. All of our members are now preparing on their presentation for next week based on their research. This I believe will give a positive outcome and we all are determined towards it. Some are researching about technology-based agriculture, and some about medical devices, and other about technological transportation. Wherever we researched, we tend to blend our experience and knowledge we have about technology. As I’m writing this, I’m also researching about nanotechnology in my laptop windows.
And to end today’s writing with the words of Ray Dalio, my purpose, the Imind purpose, your purpose & the purpose of everything and everyone else is to evolve and contribute to the evolution to move the human race forward in some small way.
Strategy is the moral and the main value of the game we are playing. It is the foundation of ourselves and our organization’s commitment.
Tactics, on the other hand, is the technique we use to meet our commitment and promise.
Changing strategy leads us to new game. So if our goal is to remain in the same game then we got to change the tactics. We got to use new one, time and again.
We got to watch for the result from the old tactics and analyze it then find when to change it. Our goal here is to play the game we choose to play unshakably and for that we got to remain in the game.
We got to persist the resistance to change. Our persistence will finally shatter the defiance.