Week 12: Month for Dreaming; Social Cohesion Erosion; Books to Read

This week we complete the first month of 2022 as per the Gregorian calendar, of course, a couple of days are still left. The point I want to bring up is that most people would have started the year with some goals, plans and aspirations, sometimes a.k.a "resolutions".

We have been following the Gregorian calendar for over 400 years by now and I am sure this practice of keeping resolutions have been in place for many years now.

An interesting element of this resolutions game, in case you are not aware of, is that 17th January is considered as Ditch New Year's Resolution Day?and 19th January is called Quitter's Day.

So if you made some decisions to follow through during the year and have come this far you can consider yourself already a success because many must-have quit by now.

?"January is the month for dreaming." —?Jean Hersey

While January is considered the month of dreaming, today I want you to know that all of this is just in our head. If you are keen to make any change, you shouldn't be waiting for the clock to tick or the date to change. All that is required is within you already, it's just that we need to be ready mentally and feel secure to make the change.

If you regret missing new year eve to plan some goals for yourself, why wait till 31st December 2022? Choose the Chinese New Year 2022 that falls on 1st February which is in the next week itself. It is considered the year of the tiger.

Are you looking for some random inspiration? Here is a random quote:

"Better to live one year as a tiger, then a hundred as sheep." — Madonna.

If you feel that your January went wasted in dreams, I wish your first month of the Chinese New Year be filled with lots of action and progress.

Topics of the week

Like the last week, I have only one topic to share and it is something on which I spend most of my personal time, trying to study and think deeply, as much as I could.

Social Cohesion Erosion

Apart from the fact that the World Economic Forum listed it as the most worsened global risk, I notice social cohesion erosion as an encompassing issue that touches many of us. Be it in society or at the workplace, most people are feeling more and more lonely and it continues to make people feel a lack of camaraderie.

Earlier this week I wrote a brief article referring to some of the technical definitions like what is social cohesion and what is social cohesion erosion as defined by experts.

But the message is not about definitions while they are important. I felt a deep sense of urgency to focus on the awareness required on such a fundamental topic.

As subscribers of this newsletter, I request you all to not stop at awareness but take action and be ambassadors.

I don't mean to be a superhero here and I am also not expecting any of you to be one. Yet my wish for all of us is that we play a little role in increasing social ties in where ever we live because even a little curiosity to understand the other person goes a long way.

Here is what Malcolm Gladwell had to say (watch the video) about how curiosity can change the world:

From the internet/metaverse

I remember listening to Daler Mehndi songs many many years back. This week I happened to stumble upon his performance in the metaverse.

P.S: I am not endorsing the content inside the video and must not be held responsible/accountable for any sort of loss, financial or otherwise. Sharing it here was only meant to demonstrate how the internet/metaverse is changing the world.

Personal updates

I see a lot of people sharing what books they completed each week.

I must admit that I don't complete many books that I start reading. I think you too should not aim to "complete" books but seek what is genuinely required for you at that moment.

How to read books can be a topic for another day but in this edition, I want to share a few books I am trying to read so you may explore them too, only if you don't know about them.

The above list of books seems to be dominated by business, people and life which are coincidentally the topics on which I spend most of my time.

(By the way, I am telling you, neither yellow nor white are my favourite colours but clearly seem to be the book cover trend, for some reason that I am not aware of.)

This marks the end of the Week 12 edition.

Until next Friday,?keep?tracing your mastery.

#TraceYourMastery

If you missed the previous editions of my newsletter,?that's okay?because you can check them here:?1,?2,?3,?4,?5,?6,?7,?8,?9,?10, 11