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…

A Son’s Guilt and A Mother’s Effort

My mom had a predicament — her bonding with her grand kids were curtailed. The problem — my kids were fluent in English, my mom in Tamil (my mother tongue).

Through the years, she was shoring up her English. She often joked, “It’s a work in progress.”

And COVID hit, it amplified her bonding problem. I live in Houston, TX. She lives in India with a visit nowhere in sight — yet. …

This is real. This is personal. I adore food, I am perpetually looking for ways to reduce weight. By trial and error, this works for me. May or may not work for you. With that caveat, here is my story.

If you walk for solid 60 minutes, you burn equal to 2 Indian rotis ( 2 tortillas). You can consume the same in less than 2 minutes. The math is loaded against us in the world of easy food.

Exercise is good. Looking at weight loss as a math problem is even more significant. …

Family | Money | Inspiration

Most news is drama. Most of these dramas have short attention spans.

Recently, we heard about the David vs. Goliath story — how small investors in Gamestop stock battled the massive hedge funds in a few short weeks.

We often hear about a lottery winner and their instant wins that make news.

Real life, for most of us, is different. Routine triumphs drama. And routines accumulate slowly. Nothing instant about it.

Routines don’t trip people as much as mindsets.

Take the circus elephant in Ken Blanchard’s gem of a book, Self Leadership and the One Minute Manager: Increasing Effectiveness Through Situational Self Leadership. A young circus elephant tries…

Inspiration | Career | Life Lessons

There is something universal about gifts — some gifts surprise us, some gifts become acquired taste, but all gifts fill us with joy — the joy of sharing with family and friends.

In a similar vein, what could be a great gift that could propel the talented and passionate?

My answer: gift of history. If you are puzzled, let me explain.

Hired For Talent, Fired For Fit

While war veterans have their moments to reflect back and share, what about the rank and file in the business world? What are they proud of? What are their stories within the organization’s history?

Does anybody new joining their…

Family | Power Outage | Texas

Late last week, the weather forecast was ominous — Alaskan cold in Texas that could last 5 days. My wife asked me in all seriousness, “will we be ok?”

I was confident. We have a diversified fuel for home. We had gas for cooking balanced by electricity for rest. We double checked the stove. Charged our battery devices and backup batteries.

Cold icy days [interspersed with snow] arrived as expected, we lost electricity in the night. Torches worked. The house was still warm in the morning. Felt a morning tea/coffee would be nice.

Natural gas was available. Great. The default…

As parents, most of us want to be better than our parents. I feel different, I want to be a useful parent.

Raising children is not my aim. Nurturing them is.

Helping them is not in my radar. Empowering them is.

I do not plan to go out of their way when they turn 18 nor do I plan to micromanage their life before they are 18.

My 6th grade daughter knows one rule — if she has a tough homework question, I wouldn’t solve it but I will work with her to edit her first answer proposal. She always…