What is your measure for happiness?

“Let us make up our own game,” I shared with my 7-year-old. She was equally animated.

The tiles on the floor gave me an idea. The game was simple (see picture above) — speak aloud a positive word and jump forward.

And the words trickled — good, excellent, fabulous, delighted and more. As we crossed each other, we turned 180 degrees and continued by jumping backwards facing each other. We played the game, back and forth, for a couple of rounds.

Soon, positive words were in short supply and so, we switched to “something…

I am a collector of hidden treasures in plain sight. Words — simple, ordinary words — used slightly differently can uplift our conversations.

1. Something vs. Anything: What I learned from Doctor’s language.

Prof. John Heritage of University of California, Los Angles studied how patients responded to a simple follow-up question, “is there anything else we need to take care of today?” To compare the results, one set of doctors used a small twist, “is there something else we need to take care of today?”

The something option provided statistically significant increase of reporting concerns. You are welcome to dwell into the technical details of the research here.

I discovered…

Wheat was a problem in Prussia.

Some years it was a feast and many years it was a famine.

The King of Prussia wanted to find a second staple food that was more stable. His team zoomed on the South American food — potatoes. But change is hard. He was not sure on how to make his peasants adopt potatoes.

He huddled a group of geniuses. They brainstormed ideas. Some petered out, some stayed longer and one idea made many chuckle.

The king studied it and then signed off on it.

The next day, publicly, the king declared the potato…

The donkey declared, “grass is purple.”

The tiger intervened, “No, the grass is green .”

The discussion became heated with no resolution in site.

They submitted their case to the king of the jungle.

The donkey screamed, “Your Highness, isn’t it true that the grass is purple?”

The lion quipped, “If you believe it’s true, the grass is purple for you.”

The donkey was mighty pleased. He requested that the tiger be punished for annoying him.

The king decreed, ′′The tiger will be punished with 2 days of silence.”

The excited donkey exited with words, ′′The grass is purple, purple…

Relationships | Parenting | Conversations

Couple of years ago, during a quiet moment with my daughter, I wanted to stimulate a curiosity conversation, I asked her, “Why is the sky blue?”

She answered with a look only a child can muster — earnestness, seriousness and playfulness rolled into one. I could sense that she was stumped and yet quick on her feet with her answer, “The sky is blue because blue is the color of the sky and my favorite color.”

It took me a moment to register. I smiled and gave her a tender hug — in her answer she gave me a peek…

Story of Dan Price, CEO of Gravity who was called a socialist and laughed at. Today, he is having the last laugh.

Before 2015, Dan Price salary was 1+Million dollars. He dropped it to 70,000 and raised the minimum salary at his company to 70,000 dollars. He had a press conference and let the world know.

It was made for good headlines. And it did. Some thought that it is not meritocracy. It was socialism. Many others thought it was an experiment worth watching in the sidelines. Some wished they worked there. Others we were too busy to notice.

Years…

1. Silence salutes the human ingenuity to connect the dots

I flicked this from my grandmother.

When I was in elementary school, my grandmother (father’s mother) shared a few stories from her stable. Our ritual was very predictable — she sat on the floor mat (tamil word pai) with her legs crisscrossed. I dutifully and earnestly followed suit. Here is one of the gems engraved in my heart — a young man, his wife and preschooler son lived in the city. His father became frail, so he came to live with them. As the days progressed, the old man broke a few plates. The young man was annoyed, so he…

Relationships |Family| Life

Something about marriages, you have to reinvent them.

My grandparents got married again when my grandpa hit 60.

I was way too young to remember then, but I did see a snapshot later — black and white photos. In the picture, I poured water over my seated grandparents (it’s a south Indian wedding tradition) and what I remember was the joy in grandparents face as I did it.

Few years later, I sat on my grandma’s lap and we looked at the photos together and I asked her the question — “why did you and grandpa get married again?”

I…