Ditch toxic people

One of the most significant things you can control is association -- your choices of who you permit into your world, who you give time to or invest time with, and who you look to for ideas, information and education. The people around you rarely have a neutral effect. They either facilitate your accomplishment, they undermine it, or they sabotage it outright.

The first useful association tactic is the elimination of toxic people and saboteurs. It's not an easy thing to face facts about a friend, family member, long-time employee  or long-time vendor when they are, in some way, interfering with or disapproving of your accomplishment. It's important to face these facts and to act on them because the more time you spend with people who are unhelpful, unsupportive, disrespectful, envious, resentful, dysfunctional or outright damaging to you, the less value all your time has.

These people don’t just harm the minutes you and they are in the same place. Few people can so perfectly compartmentalize that they can lock every thought, assertion and act of a toxic person in a little mind box and without leakage into other mind boxes. Paraphrasing a Chinese proverb (I found in a fortune cookie), if you lie down with mongrel dogs, even for a short nap, you wake up with fleas -- and they ride with you wherever you go.

Ideas, beliefs, opinions and habits work just like that. Even if you're associating only occasionally or briefly with someone who is intellectually or emotionally toxic or someone who is feckless and inept, it’s enough time for the fleas to leap from them to you, burrow in and be carried away by you to subtly affect your performance and productivity. If your creativity or constructive thinking or work performance is thus diminished, so is the value of your time.

People who are detrimental for you to associate with are not necessarily of evil intent. They may all be “good people,” but that doesn’t mean they’re good for you. Good chocolate cake is not good for a diabetic. In fact, it’s poison. Associating with somebody who is always pushing it to you, saying “Just have a tiny piece” is just as suicidal as baking it for yourself.

There are lots of ways a person can be toxic and poisonous to you. I’ve had clients describe how recurring disputes with a particular employee were mentally exhausting but couldn’t be helped because otherwise, that person was a great asset. The “otherwise” is a big problem. Many small businesses wind up with a ruthlessly defensive key person who goes into murder mode anytime an attempt is made to add a second person but is “otherwise” terrific.

There's the “we tried that before” guy. If it were up to him, we’d light the place with candles because Edison would have been limited to one try. There’s the “constructive critic,” always making you feel inadequate or undeserving, in the guise of being a cautionary ally worrying over you stubbing a toe.

On the other hand, constructive association with creative, inspiring, encouraging people can do a great deal to bolster your performance, thus making your time more valuable. Each minute of your time is made more or less valuable by the condition of your mind, and it is constantly being conditioned by association.

The entrepreneur is particularly susceptible to gaining or losing power by association because he has so many diverse responsibilities and is often operating under pressure, duress and urgency. Playing this game in a compromised mental state, weakened or wounded by poor ideas and attitudes seeded into the mind by association, is extremely difficult. Playing it strengthened and empowered by rich ideas and attitudes seeded into the mind by association can make the difficult easy.

Simply put, you want to deliberately reduce and restrict the amount of your time left vulnerable to random thought or association, and deliberately, sharply reduce the amount of time given to association with people who won’t make any productive contribution and may do harm. Does that mean you can only spend time with people you are in complete philosophical agreement with? No. In fact, such isolationism can be dangerous. But it does mean you should avoid association with people who believe and promulgate beliefs diametrically opposed to “success orientation.”

You want to deliberately increase the amount of your time directed at chosen thinking and input, and constructive, productive association. You want to associate with strivers and achievers, with winners and champions. This is an uplifting force that translates into peak performance, which makes all your time more valuable.

Quintessential me

I keep trembling at the thought of an overlapping distress that often rises out of pretty much believable anxiety i am going through.Setting things right ,doing them fine and moving forward is essentially the lecture I hear out.See,I have made a choice and when I was doing it,I truly wanted to throw myself at the aisle and feel the heat of the dusty charcoal.There are different ways in which a life shapes up.Everyone can be successful I think and all of them in different ways.What drives me is not success at all,my perception of life is very subjective.Discussing that will infact make sense only when there is something substantial which it tells to the world.
Now,entrepreneurship to me is giving back a lot and lot to the world.I believe beyond Politics,beyond what an IAS could do in India for eg. and beyond other walks people take in life,this journey of building up an organisation can in a great way encompass all the dimensions one can think of.It is indeed very important for me to dream very big,I am a dreamer and I have no boundaries.I remember telling my girlfriend in college once that,you will see that India will rise above the west,people will earn better,live better and be much more proud.When she asked how will this happen and who will do it,& since she was very lovely and understanding,I thought she will understand this as well.I said to her then that I will contribute my part and try and make it happen.She didnt laugh and I think that was a moment my love just turned eternal for her.It was at the age of  20 or 21 I think.
Even before,I remember drawing a flow chart on one of the 2002 diaries dad gave me,had written very clearly what I wanted to do some 4-5 pages.Diary is lost sadly .But,I have all the memory of that diary being read by my sis one evening and she feeling great while reading it.She involved herself totally into it and asked bhaiya how!!what will be the name!!where will you go!!etc.etc.That day,I think I started respecting my younger sister a lot.I was 15 then.
So,its always been damn clear in my head and I have often seen the path take a shape when I do close all other doors viz-the worlds drama-polity-dismay-failure-crap-shit etc.The feeling of getting lost into that endless world of possibilities shakes me up,positively.At that moment,I am often aware of my capabilities.I think then,I should do it because I could do it.At most I could fail,and then probably still manage to make a livelihood and just live-which in any case I would have made and done had I choosen the typically correct walk to life.
This journey has begun.It has still not taken the peak though.Still searching for the escape velocity,and sometimes getting carried away by the menial possibilities of the punk culture of capitalist corporates.Paycheck-Promotion-Missile-Bomb,thats fine-but not for me.As I begun,I drew this thick line of difference in each and all.I stand by it and I am all tied up setting myself to differentiate my individuality as well.This difference if I can create it,I will owe to the few who mean a lot in my life.Even if I fail,I will still owe my life to them.