Have A Break..Have a Dis-Dat

So I am going back to corporate work. Some of the standard expressions of current developments in my life may go like this.......poor guy, he must have gone through a lot...... to, this too has passed ....... or, all good things come to an end......or moving from a good place to a great place. However the way I will look at it..... it is moving from one life-situation to another life-situation.....from one event to another event. Just as I wrote in one of my blogs.......there are no good or bad, fortunate or unfortunate events, they are just that.....EVENTs. They are neutral.

I guess it is this approach I am blessed with, last almost 11 months of being on a break from 9 to 5 work were so beautiful, blissful, complete and fulfilling and how. In this blog, I want to talk about some of that. But first thing first, just before my break, my last 3 years at Mars Chocolate were also incidentally the best 3 years of my corporate experience. I mention this as it had a big role in shaping my break. Destiny planned this break and I embraced this break at a time when I felt I was in my self-assessment, at my best, at my peak and in complete command and control of the role I was doing. Now I say this also for a reason. I say this because it was this feeling that made me embrace my break with all love and no bitterness, with utmost peace and no insecurity. I say all of above and what follows with complete humility. 

As I finish my first week in my current job as CEO, I realize, I have already done this role, however for a short duration of just 11 months. Yes, I was the self-appointed CEO of my life-situation and of the beautiful eco-system that existed around me during this break. First and foremost aspect of CEO role, it demands complete Accountability. I was accountable to myself, my family for the life-situation I embraced. Rarely in the last 11 months despondency, victim mindset, insecurity visited my business. I quickly took charge of the P&L. Equity trading, consulting, guest lectures were quick and successful product launches that immediately started adding to top-line. These products were the outcome of a thought through business model.... zero Fixed and 100% Variable cost model. What was non-negotiable...........as CEO I had to generate cash flow from month one. Luck favours the brave. Share market crashed to almost 7K in Nov 2016. It was just right timing for me to enter the market. I was making good money almost every day, week and month. CEOs job is also about Deciding. I didn't hesitate in booking losses on investment that didn't go as expected. I also got consulting assignments at $300/hour. We got possession of our Bangalore home and suddenly rent was coming from 2 places. So top-line started behaving.....line I learnt from some of my CFO colleagues. 

Shilpi and I have prosperity mindset. We believe we always have enough money we have needed at any moment. But we still took a stab at some of the cost lines we had never questioned. We decided to embrace Repair Economy mindset v/s Replacement Economy. We used the 4 Action Framework of Eliminate-Reduce-Enhance-Create. We worked at Eliminating and Reducing wasteful expenditure without getting into limitation mindset. Let me share examples. So often we take things for granted and accept status-quo. One visit to Airtel shoppe brought down our telephone bills from 18 K to 7K and without giving up any meaningful features at all. How about this one......We are movie buffs. And we discovered we could still watch at our favourite PVR, E-row, but at less than 200 than the 700/- we were shelling out. All we had to do change the timing to first-day-first-show. As they say "bachat ki bachat aur double mazaa". There were few more such changes we made. So top-line taken care, costs being tamed, it was a more than 'meets expectations' on P&L management. 

As CEO of the company called Life, my promoter, my wife Shilpi ensured we did not lose connect with the ground. She ensured we travelled extensively and spent a good time going to new places, meeting new people and trying new things. We cracked Diwali crackers in Kasauli in October. In November 2016, we travelled to Bikaner to savour their ‘bhujia’, December we were a part of team building exercise with larger friend group in Gwalior, January 2017, we were in Jaisalmer. March year end closing happened in Pragpur. May was a summer bonanza trip to Manali. June was a celebration party in London and August was about chilling at Shillim Hilton near Lonavala, a heaven on earth. This is how we "Enhanced and Created" a 'health, happiness and sukoon ' mindset. 

There were times people checked on us, if we were still living in the same place or shifted to less expensive places......some would check with sensitivity, whether we sold our big jazzy car...others wondered how we justified so much and so often travel.....yet others questioned my living on the edge of irresponsibility by being in a situation of no job and no 9 to 5 work. I knew it then and I say it now, most of these queries and comments, barring few, were well intentioned and well meaning.

Let me explain what a lovely phase this was!!! Every day was a new day. Some days I simply took to writing. Some days I would meet some of my dear friends and colleagues from the past who wanted to catch up with me, discuss their thoughts, situations with me or I would go and meet people I looked up to. I took consulting sessions. I did calls with audience logging-in from international locations, wanting to discuss my blog they liked. I got my Lucknow parental home renovated. Those 3 months, several calls with stakeholders and quite a few up-down travels to Lucknow I know I couldn't have done with a regular job. My son Kabir would never go down to play and mingle with kids. How my playing cricket with him regularly in the last nine months created father-son bonding to an extent where now he equally enjoys playing with 5-10 other kids. We had CONVERSATIONS. Shilpi and I handled some of the interesting dilemmas and situations we faced, through infinite conversations. Conversations that are otherwise beginning to disappear from our lives and getting replaced by not so fun and few 'crucial conversations'......list is unending. 

To summarise, I write this to share that it is OK and your Life doesn't come to end if you decide to Pause. It is perfectly OK if you decide to slow down if you decide to take a break. If anything you actually turn a page and move from one interesting chapter of your Life to another and to yet another. I turned the page. I took the break and I did This and That.