2022: Progressing, intentionally

I had a chance to reflect on how my time was spent in 2021 and realized the damage of the myriad app notifications, determined to rise up in 2022 and move beyond what didn’t work in 2021 and add value and intentionally increase the spectrum of what I can give to others.

As Morgan Housel says in the Psychology of Money , “The highest form of wealth is the ability to wake up every morning and say, “I can do whatever I want today.” If there’s a common denominator in happiness – a universal fuel for joy – it’s that people want to control their lives. The ability to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, for as long as you want, is priceless. It is the highest dividend money pays.”

I am entering 2022 with a great desire to be more intentional and make dynamic progress in all endeavors of life. I am very keen to contribute to the UN's SDGs through the platform of BSG for SDG , an initiative by the organization that I have been a member of since 2009. I attended a ‘Seeds of Hope and Action’ webinar last week and got awakened to the need to act now and especially support the youth who are leading the charge on these critical set of issues that impacts everyone.

Bringing new focus to these areas will need time and energy! I am actively working on reducing the clutter from my weekday and weekend schedules, turning off notifications and starting to use the Digital Wellbeing suite of features on Android.

As is my annual ritual, sharing with you a few mind expanding thoughts I came across over the last few weeks:

1. Interconnection with everything around us | Audrey Shenandoah, Onondaga Nation Clan Mother, writer, adviser to the UN

2. Co-regulation, a gift we can give | Stephanie Blackburn Freeth, Leadership Coach??

“Co-regulation means that we as humans are wired to co-regulate our nervous systems with other humans. Co-regulation starts when infants are tuning in with their mothers or caregivers to find resonance, connection, and safety.

An incredible gift of co-regulation can be that when one person is grounded in their own stable nervous system, another person with a dysregulated nervous system can more easily connect with and draft off of the stable nervous system on a path back to regulation within themselves”

3. Decoupling our ideas and identity | Adam Grant?

4. Victory over our “lesser self” | Dr V T (a family friend we met for breakfast on Christmas morning)?

“... there's no one in the whole world around me that I have any negative feelings about.”?

5. Courage in Business | Peter Drucker

“Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.”

6. Love the questions themselves | Rainer Maria Rilke, German Poet

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

7. How to be strategic : Align, Identify, Prioritize | Julie Zhuo, Chinese-American businessperson and computer scientist

“a good strategy is a set of actions that is credible, coherent and focused on overcoming the biggest hurdle(s) in achieving a particular objective.”

8. Creating a “Brave Space” together | Micky Scottbey Jones

9. Judge less, Help More | Dr Sanjay Arora

“Everyone is fighting a battle that we cannot see.”

10. Become a better listener | Robin Abrahams & Boris Groysberg (of HBS)

(overall, a great set of tips but what resonated with me the most was this snippet)

Many successful adults have discovered mid-career that they have undiagnosed sensory, attention, information-processing, or other disorders that can impair listening ability.

I hope you find some of these useful.?

I also realized that 2022 is the year I complete 15,000 days of living! That’s definitely set off some thinking on assessing my impact in the service of others over such a long period of time - another key reason to be more intentional going forward and make dynamic progress on areas that align with my purpose and mission.

I look forward to learning how your last few weeks were and your plans for 2022.

Wishing everyone a happy, memorable and fulfilling 2022!?

Best regards,

Rahul