Abhijit (John) Singh

2011 - The Road Ahead.

I want to firstly THANK everyone that has graced me with their support and acquaintance in 2010. Thank you to all my family, friends, staff, partners, customers, well wishers and adversaries. I am truly grateful and humbled for all your support and lessons. For your thoughtfulness and generosity, from you I have learned much of life's philosophy - Thank you sincerely.

2010 was a very special year for me personally as I found closure in some of my most difficult adversities which I have been battling through over the last few years. I feel very relieved to have gone though it and come out ok at the other end. As the year ended and the New Year has begun, I feel very strong, motivated, focused and excited about the hope that 2011 brings personally and professionally.

Last few weeks in New Zealand has been simply bliss. It has given me the opportunity to recover from the tiredness of a tough and long year. I feel mentally prepared to work extremely hard and smart in 2011 and achieve all the things I plan to achieve.

My primary focus in 2011 will be focusing on the growth of Macquarie IT. I will be launching a new client acquisation product called xYzed which I have spent the last 4 years planning and building in my lab. I will focus a vast majority of my time in registering new businesses with Macquarie IT and building relationships with them as we continue to help them become profitable. 

At a personal level I will be more focused on my health by eating well, exercising at the gym 4 days a week, practicing yoga 1 day a week, reaching new heights in fitness and dedicating one day a week entirely to leisure & relaxation. I will focus on improving on my current friendships and form new ones as I expand my social network. I will also focus on improving my knowledge by spending a minimum of 1 hour a day on continuous education and 1 hour a day on my writing endeavours (private and blog).

Above all, in 2011 I hope to maintain a well rounded balance in all things and achieve my highest potential in all areas of my life.

I’m very excited by the promise of 2011; the new challenges I will face, the new relationships I will form, the new innovation I will deliver, the goals I will achieve, the fun I will have and most importantly the people I will deliver happiness to.

Regards,
John Singh.

Who are you?

Is that an important question? If you tell me who you are, will it really matter? Will reading a menu of a restaurant really satisfy my hunger? Will I truly understand you just by you in a few words telling me some of your characteristics, beliefs, values, etc. or will I have to experience it for myself clean heartedly and without any expectations?

When understanding who we are, don’t you think we need to dig deep and ask ourselves; are we not the result of a lot of imitations, guided by our aspirations and insecurities and crippled by conformity? Therefore, are we not limited to understanding others by our own barriers and limitations? So how do I expect to really know who you are?

When we really think about it, do we really know what will make us rise above the societal trap that we have fallen into? Do you know what will make us grow the awareness and courage to rise from it and then make it our duty to progressively add value to the same society that has corrupted us in the first place, without any expectation of recognition for it?

Are we not obliged to give it our best in everything that we do with a sole focus to improve the lives of others around us and beyond? Or are we inherently selfish? If so, then what will make us change that? Can it change?

Do we not understand that the love that we keep running after all our life is only gifted to us when we give a lot of love without any expectations of receiving it back?

Are we limited by our experiences, knowledge, personality and hence ability? Or are we powerful enough to be a light to ourselves in a world that is constantly becoming dark?

Are we capable of giving and receiving unconditional love? Are we capable of never bringing conflict into one’s life? So is it not important to see that things like jealousy, antagonism, conflict and all the pain of relationships has no place in love and life? Can we be free of all that? Not tomorrow, NOW?

Are you ready to really know who you are? 

Think about it.

John Singh.

How deep are your thoughts?

You are either a thinker or a talker, if you are a deep thinker then there’s a good chance you don’t know how to communicate your thoughts as effectively as you should due to your lack of passion, which intern is a waste of your talent. If you are a talker, then there’s a good chance that you recycle other’s thoughts, punch drunk on passion and miss the point in every conversation or you are subconsciously more focused on the attention rather than making sense.

The most remarkable people are the rare breed who are a combination of all three, they spend a lot of time in solitude allowing their thoughts to materialise and build a passion for their interests so when they come to the public arena, they are bursting with valuable insights which carry a lot of substance, weight and an honest thought provoking dose of reality.

I’m currently reading ‘Conversations with Myself’ which is an intuitively organised compilation excerpts from diaries that Nelson Mendela had kept while he was imprisoned for 27 years. Its no wonder great men like him have the magical balance and gift of deep insights, ability to communicate their thoughts with clarity in their values, with the help of the most important ingredient PASSION which is built over time spent in deep thoughts.

I would like to share one of his letters to his wife Winnie Mandela that he had written in Prison on 1^st Feb 1975:

The cell is an ideal place to learn to know yourself, to set realistically and regularly the process of your own mind and feelings. 

In judging our progress as individuals we tend to concentrate on external factors such as one’s social position, influence and popularity, wealth and standard of education. These are offcourse important in measuring one’s success in material matters and it is perfectly understandable if many people exert mainly to achieve all these. But, internal factors may be even more crucial in assessing one’s development as a human being. Honesty, sincerity, simplicity, humility, pure generosity, absence of vanity, readiness to serve others; qualities which are within every soul at the foundation of one’s spiritual life. 

Development in matters of this nature is inconceivable without serious introspection. Without knowing yourself, your weaknesses and your mistakes, at least if for nothing else, the cell gives you the opportunity to look daily into your entire conduct to overcome the bad and develop whatever is good in you. 

Regular mediation, say about 15 mins a day before you turn in, can be very fruitful in this regard. You may find it difficult to pinpoint the negative features in your life, but the 10^th attempt may yield rich rewards. 

Never forget that a saint is a sinner that keeps on trying.


Regards,
John Singh.

What would the child I once was think of the adult I’ve become?

Having been asked this question over lunch a few weeks back by a friend, it got me thinking...

That is a difficult question, not only for me but I’m sure it’s difficult for you too. I will however try and brainstorm my thoughts here and hopefully I can find the answer to this question.

Walking up the hill next to our house in Bombay on our regular Sunday Morning climbs with dad in 1987 I remember my dad asking me, “son what do you want to be when you grow up”. It is my first memory of the question being asked to me and I vaguely remember being puzzled with the question for a little while. My first reaction to him was that, “dad, I never want to grow up. I’m quite happy the way i am”. I kept walking up the hill huffing and puffing and after thinking about it for some time; I told him that I wanted to be just like him by the time I get to his age in the sense that I would love to be talking my son for a long hill walks every Sunday morning. I remember dad asking me what I wanted to do for a living when I grew up. After him giving me one of his very serious looks, I did think about it for some time and then finally told him that either I wanted to have my own chain of restaurants in every city of the world (so I can eat yummy food and travel the world) or I wanted to become an air force pilot. I remember my dad being very angry at me as he disapproved of both those professions and he ended up giving me a lecture on how I should concentrate on my studies so I can be an engineer just like him. I was 7 years old and my dad was 31.

Many years went by and over the years I grew up becoming quite the humanitarian; always putting people first and helping them at every chance I got. I also ended up becoming very creative and entrepreneurial. Growing up, I found some aspects of school very easy whilst I struggled at other aspects. I was very experimental and artistic but a lot of that was suppressed by Dad’s strict single dimensional point of views and rules which despite all my efforts of holding myself back and trying my level best to please him; at times my natural self would take over and subsequently rebel.

Today, I run an web consulting firm in Sydney. I am also currently working on launching an online portal which I have invested my every bit over the last 4 years and I hope it to be my life’s legacy as I wholeheartedly  believe that it will change the game of the web industry and lead us all to a better future; if I am lucky enough to execute it in a way I have planned to over the next couple of years.

Over the last few years, my only regret has been that I found my feet in where I belong too late in my life. I very strongly believe that I could have achived a lot more both personally and professionally if I had the alignment of my natural strengths with my professional and personal endeavors earlier in life, instead of having to battle though it at every stage and learn life the hard way.

Over the last few years, one topic which has been of great interest to me is the topic of Parenting. I have grown to believe that it is a sin for parents not to educate themselves on how to best raise their children to give the children the best possible future. Its saddens me that most parents stunt the child’s natural potential to flourish and often cause a lot of damage by raising them based on their own aspirations rather than the child’s natural strengths and aspirations.

If the child from that day I was walking up the hill with Dad was to come and visit me today, I believe that he would have at least 5 things to say to me:

1) I hope you never lose the child like sense of wonder and the courage to experiment and seek until you have found.

2) I hope you’ve learnt by now that you can’t catch butterflies and keep them in your briefcase as you did when you were young and always wondered why they didn’t live for too long. Butterflies belong in the gardens and it’s about time you build your own garden.

3) I’m happy to see that you have kept your free spirit in all that you do and I’m happy that you have learnt to make your own decisions in life where you feel it to be right without being obligated to follow other’s rules which you believe to be obsolete.

4) I am sad to see that you have not yet started a family as you’ve always aspired to. I hope that you will soon think about this very seriously and find that perfect butterfly glowing from her inner beauty, that you've always been looking for.

5) You didn’t end up in the Air force and you don’t have your own chain of restaurants. I hope that once you feel settled and satisfied with your contribution and service to your IT endeavours, in the next few years, you will follow your heart and invest in a boutique restaurant just the way you’ve always wanted to. Call me a 7 year old foolish kid, but I know that it will bring you a lot of satisfaction and happiness as it was always your childhood dream.

I believe that the child that I once was would have mixed feelings about the adult that I have become and he would encourage me to follow my heart and have the courage to do things that would make me happy, as foolish as it may sound or be...

Abhijit.