Bundle of Joy....

“Our bundle of Joy has arrived”, this is the common phrase which you see when a person announces the arrival of a new born. Though our parents didn’t have WhatsApp or Facebook those days to announce our arrival in a similar way, they still would have felt that we are their “bundle of joy” (Hopefully J). What happens to that bundle of Joy over a period of time? It slowly changes from “Bundle of Joy” to “Bundle of (Sorrow, Worry, Frustration, Resentment, etc)”

For some reason this change happens in our life. I won’t say that we are always unhappy, but I can surely say that our happiness is reducing a lot. Very recently, I met a person who is still a “Bundle of Joy”. I used to see him with a smile in his face always; one day I asked him whether he has never faced any problem in his life. With his trademark smile, he replied that everybody will have problems in life, but how you face them is what matters.

That is when I remembered this statement which I had read multiple times "Life is 10% of what happens and 90% of how you react to it". I learnt from my friend that he doesn’t worry about what happens to him; rather he chooses to face it with positive attitude.  One question from him made me think, “Will all your problems be solved if you are unhappy/upset/worried?”  Then I realized, whether I am upset or not, the problem is going to remain the same. What matters is what I do to resolve it or how I react. If that is the case, then what is the fun in being upset, I could rather be face it with a smile (if not a smile, at least I can avoid being upset)

This thought triggered me to search for content about positive attitude. And I found some interesting links about Tal Ben-Shahar who is a lecturer at Harvard University. He handles popular course in Harvard called Positive Psychology.

Few tips from Tal Ben-Shahar to be happy:

1.       Accept the painful Emotions

2.       Avoid Multi-Tasking

3.       Exercise (Surprised to know that this also contributes to Happiness)

4.       Express your gratitude on Daily basis

You can find few video on this topic by Tal which will help you to learn more. To conclude, even under pressurized situation, the smile in my friends’ face will never fade away. I wish I can also be like him and become a “Bundle of Joy” J

Loyalty cards...

Last weekend, in preparation for my Yelagiri trip with my wonderful team, I was cleaning my bag. I took out my purse; I could find more than 10+ cards in it. These are in addition to my Credit and Debit card. What are those cards? Loyalty cards J In Wipro, employee’s loyalty is shown by the color of the tag they wear (Blue, red and Green), similarly our retail stores also distributes Loyalty cards which is their way of attracting customers.

During your purchase, you will be asked for your membership card and if you have one, you will be getting few credit points which can be redeemed during your subsequent purchases. My purse had 10+ such cards: Big Bazaar, Titan, Pantaloons, Landmark, Naturals!!, Mega Mart, RMKV, Pothys etc. the list goes on like this.

I was just thinking why we can’t have one Loyalty card across all the retail stores and each retail store can tie up with that Loyalty card vendor. This will eliminate the need for manufacturing so many cards and having separate software to manage them. This will also benefit the customers to simply carry one card when they go for shopping.

This Loyalty card vendor can have software to track the points earned by the customer for each of the retail store separately. In the retail store when you swipe that card, they should be given access to data which is relevant to them alone, which means if I swipe my card in Titan, they can access my data related to purchases and points earned from Titan and no data related to Pantaloons will be visible to them. Software should also have feature to add a new retail store.

Gone are those days, when we used to carry money for shopping. Now each transaction is using card (credit or debit). The new problem is about carrying too many (Loyalty) cards. Will there be a solution to this also soon?

Learning from Fun City...

Last Sunday, I took Rohit to Phoenix mall. Kumaran was not in station, so it was time for me and my son alone J I wanted to make it special for him. Rohit wanted to visit Fun city in the mall. I had to purchase some grocery items, so I felt mall will be better option for both of us. Fun city taught me a good lesson.

We started at 10:30 AM, took an auto and started our fun day. We reached the mall and went to Fun City. We were told that we have to get a card for minimum of Rs.300 and plus tax. For each game we need to swipe the card and the amount to be charged for that game will be deducted from the card. I bought the card for him and handed over to him. He was all excited; first he went to some Road crash game and played that.

When he went and swiped the card for the second game he realized that the amount in the card is reducing considerably. He thought for a moment, he understood that he has to pick and choose the game based on what he likes and amount that is getting charged for that game. It was interesting to watch him after that. He went to every game station, checked the game rules, looked at the charges mentioned and then decided which one he should play.

That is exactly the case for us in life. Similar to Rs.300 which Rohit had for playing, we have got 365 days in a year for us to use. How are we using to use it? What is our priority? How effective and efficient we are going to spend the time in hand? When a kid spends some time to decide which game to pick and play, are we not supposed to spend quality time in deciding what we want to do in life?

If you think 365 days planning is a very long term, let’s look at the 24 hours which we get in a day. How are we going to use that time? How much time are we going to spend for family, office, exercise, fun, growth and self in a day?