A gift to myself

Its 4.30 am and an itch to write.

To reflect on life, to feel its essence and what flavours I really like.

Life was beautiful as far as I remember, with childhood birthday celebrations and feelings which made me feel special

Abba always captured my smile in his camera and milestoned my every little progress

My first teeth, my first baby step all stand now as a reminder of how I was loved and cared.

I had gifts like every child has its own, to emote, to dance, to narrate and write.

As days grew by and the norms set in, I forgot how loved I was and how special I felt.

Each day was a competition to get approval, each day became a struggle to beat the rest.

Slowly and steadily I became an expert in this game and started to live a life by what other’s claimed.

This went on for years, where the gifts just beat the dust deep inside of me.

I pulled up a cover and began to shine and polish which was never me.

As one day I realised, I was a fake diamond. A diamond which had forgotten its own beauty and now wanted to shine like other fake diamonds.

That’s the day I realised why life lacked lustre, it was my own light which had gone dim and needed duster.

I made a choice to the get my gifts back, to reflect on life and claim me back.

Like every journey begins with a single step, I have definitely taken the step within.

Since then life has become so spacious, the inner child in me has taken a breather

The gifts are back and I love the new me who now remembers how loved she was and will always will be.

And as I reflect on my life on this special day, would not change a thing which made me love and care.

The greatest joy is when gifts are shared and this expression is my gift to be loved and cared.

If you want to return a gift my dear friends, it’s just a leap away to check within

And when you find your gift ready to shine, I will be ready again to share mine.

Coming back to neutral

'Coming back to Neutral' is a phrase I learnt in the acting course i did from the London school of dramatic art. 'Coming back to neutral' is a skill learnt by all actors to arrive at a neutral space within. This neutral space is the space where my personality as 'Tazeen' does not exist. What exist is pure potential for the director to paint it's character which I am potraying. Learning this skill as an actor made me wonder , can be neutral in all the roles which I play in life ? Can i be that neutral space where creation happens. Where i leave room for the creator to paint it's picture , it's movie. !!.... Now I catch my self playing my personality and make an effort to come back to neutral for wonderful creation to happen.

Have you tried coming back to neutral from all the roles which you play in life ? be it an employee, boss ,daugther , mother , sister , son , father , husband , wife , brother etc? ...just try 'coming back to neutral' and see the relationships creating themselves !!

The ignored skills of being human

As I delve deeper and deeper within myself during meditation pratices I see so much of my mind with it's trivia and detail . When I shine the light of awareness these thoughts vanish and a serene me emerges to face the world.I wonder so many times why is that being aware , observing mind , allowing the universal energy to flow through me are not taught at school ? Why is that mind and storing information and ability to retrieve information skill has become so dominant in determining the quality of a human being ?
Once I have deep dived into being aware as a  capability life has expanded for me and become so much spacious. The moment i recognized and got connected to my feelings and emotions which is the language of the heart i noticed the quality of my relationships improving and definitely the quality of my life improving. Why did I learn all these skills so late in life ? Why was I not made aware of these aspects of life earlier ? Why is that so many people are still unaware of these wonderful human skills ? I imagine a day in life when awareness and coming from a space in the heart will be considered as superior quality human skills . If these skills are valued only then they will be measured for all decisions in life like choosing a career , choosing a life partner , financial decisions and most importantly nuturing the next generation (children). Life will be so amazingly wonderful with it full magnificiance of all human beings!! I need to play my part and keep these wonderful human skills of being aware , coming from heart and living life in this moment alive in me. 

The journey from inside out

This whole concept looking at healing inside out visa vi outside in practiced by traditional Medicine intrigues me.Till recently I have lived my life believing the world outside of me impacts me, circumstances create me . It is almost like living a life of reaction. Because of some life changing events like my divorce and my father's sudden death have led me on a path to re validate my beliefs.I felt like I have missed the point completely.On this self searching, soul finding journey I have been introduced so many spiritual concepts like gratitude , unconditional Love , Compassion , forgiveness. The most intriguing concept which catches my attention every time is the concept of ' oneness', the concept of we all being one Universal Energy and our purpose in life to let this Universal Energy shine through self. It's an Inside out approach and when we block this energy's expression of  it's true magnificence through us we dis align and create dis-ease.According to me , this imbalance  is the reason the world is facing so many symptoms of war, terrorism, Financial crisis and of course dis-eases.This shining from within requires us to work on ourselves to lift the lamp shades of fear , anger , agreed , jealousy . When I talk about living from inside out to my friends and family , they seem to think it's a lot of hard work and it will open a lot of cans of worms. I am amazed at people's choice to live a lesser life than let the magnificence shine through.I have made that choice to live inside out . To trust the flow of energy , to trust my feelings and emotions to guide me . It's definitely an uneasy feeling at the moment and does not come naturally. But I am hoping with practice I will be able to let the magnificence shine through me and in this light my loved ones see themselves and get inspired to do the same.

Stakeholders Buy in into an Approach : A Key Leadership skill for all Business Analysts

I have been working on a software project in the requirement Elaboration phase . The biggest challenge the BA team was having an Approach to requirements. And the even more bigger challenge was having all the stakeholder 'Buy in' to the approach. I think this capability of 'buy in' , getting an acceptance of all stakeholders in your point of view , your way forward is a key capability of leadership for all business Analysts. I speak Business Analysts as that my profession . Fortunately on this project i got a glimpse of what it takes to get a 'buy in' from all stakeholders of the project . In my case is the was the business for whom the software was being built, the IT department of the organisation and of course our BA team. This is what i observed were the key skills that we demonstrated in order to role out a successful solution to an unknown problem.


1) Observing what's going on : I read somewhere that the mark of intelligence is to hold 2 contradictory point of views and remain unbiased. This skill is required to observe what exactly is going on. In today's information laden world it's easy to apply concepts /jargon /styles/methodologies to so called problems without even identifying the real problem. Observing what's going on was the first step.We observed , heard each stakeholders point of view /concerns and arrived at certain probable problems. Why i say probable is because it's not easy to identify a problem upfront , you need observation , detachment and patience for the problems to surface.

2) Arriving at an approach to surface the problems : It was identified that the key problems are not surfacing. Even if they were, people were in a mode of denial to accept the problems.Most of the times projects fail due lack of proper escalation of the correct problem at the correct time. People rarely understand what's happening. To arrive at proper indicators to identify where the problem lies was the next step to be put in place. This approach brought to surface the real challenges of the project . we could clearly identify whether the problem was unclear business processes or capability issues or bandwidth issues .


3) 'Buy in' into the Approach : You might have the best of the solution to a problem , you might have resolved things in your mind but if the team who is living the problem day in and day out does not believe in your solution , it's bound to fail. Therefore the biggest challenge we faced was the buy in from all the stakeholders. Building trust that this approach will work and keeping a space of revisiting the rolled out approach. The Approach was communicated to all types of stakeholders. Their concerns were heard . Approval was sought . Even if there was a single team member who had issues with the approach was invited to put their points across . Stakeholder by Stakeholder , person by person , this approach gained acceptance. We all together in the end believed that the approach was our own !! And now it's internalised in each team member and rolling .


4) Fine tuning the Approach : We can never begin with 100% clarity . We have to roll out a solution , observe , learn and implement improvements . With the new internalised approach , problems kept surfacing and the approach was fine tuned to build in efficiency into the whole process of requirements elaboration.Again all stakeholders were heard and accommodated.

The take away for me as business Analyst were these four skills that i need to inculcate in order to be an elegant business Analyst. However the key skill where most effort , energy and patience required is the skill of building 'buy in' .And now i know !!..Knowing always the first step.

The Division of Humanity -- An Illusion

It's been 20 odd days that I have been staying in UK. I am at Reading which is a small city in UK.

This is the first time in my life that I am seeing so many nationals at the same time British, french, indians, pakistanis , nepalis , cubans , chinese , americans...One thing i realised all the colonies ruled by British had people from that place settled in UK.... That is the reason probably for so many nationalities under one roof...

What I noticed was how my mind was biased towards these different nationals.... My mind is already so conditioned by origins of people .... In India it was a division of states bias and now in UK it is a division of Nationalities bias....My mind is trained to create biases....

It's only when I have a deeper connect with individuals that I realise that every human being is the same with same set of ambitions , likings for good living ,good food, passion of some sport , cribs about traffic and weather.....

And a step deeper from the same conversations into people's heart , i find people as lost as I am in finding the life's purpose. Some claim to know, some given up, some still searching and some truly enlightened.

For me it's been a thrilling journey so far to find out my mind's own Illusions and my own strenght of defining these mind games as Illusions.

Building Domain Expertise for the Organisation

I have been struggling to get the definition of 'Domain Expertise' for an IT Organisation. Software companies in order to show case their expertise get on board Domain Experts who can speak the customer language.Though this might help in the short term , how do you sustain and spread domain knowledge within the organisation at junior levels.
Only Certifications is NOT the complete answer. Text book answers are normally skin deep and customers are quick to grasp the lack of knowledge.

A few things that come to my mind are :

- Building a language for the Domain Area. This glossary can be a wikipedia where software professionals working in the projects can keep updating.

- Also creating industry point of views will help build the depth of knowledge in the Area.

Any more suggestions to quickly help an IT company build domain expertise are most Welcome