New year, new year on the wall…

BattleCat III and I in the ‘zone’, where everything else is but a blur!

This was written on 01 April 2024, when the Indian financial new year begins.

How are your New Year Resolutions going?
Here are mine:

1. Take my intimate relationship to the next level. My second divorce came last year, and I am lucky to have found myself a new partner six months ago. I am determined not to repeat the same mistakes I made earlier (but perhaps new ones? Nah! Just kidding…I intend to make no mistakes!).
2. Be more considerate to my rapidly ageing mother. I have known her for 9 more months than anyone else on Earth, and I owe her in every way to be there when she needs me. Parallelly, I have to continue to be a good father, now from a distance, given that my daughter’s other co-parent (my ex-wife, for whom I have nothing but the deepest respect and affection, a feeling that those who know me know is equally reciprocated) has decided to move her to another town. I would not get to see her every day like in the past 10 years, but I would still have to ‘be her father’ (as my child’s mother so succinctly and perfectly put it, a sentiment with which I agree wholeheartedly). I love both my mum and my baby to bits, and I have promised myself that I will not let either of them down.
3. Let go of things I cannot control. My anger and stress need to be controlled from inside my mind. I have to stop blaming externalities and learn to accept the world around me more equanimously. For 50+ years, all that my anger has done has poisoned my own insides. It served no purpose but to slow me down. I have resolved not to allow it to win this year.
4. Work towards being a better motorcyclist. Ride more. I have consistently averaged 2,200km a month over the past two years, and I need to increase that to 3,000km. I also want to learn and ride off-roads with more confidence, or at least as much as I do twisties. That involves conscious learning, which I fully intend to do.
5. Lift more. Weight training reduces muscle atrophy at my age. I have not done serious exercise for over 5 years. I must change that this year. I know that fitness is more than just lifting weights. I do regular cardiovascular activity, and I also do some heavy-duty stretching every day. And I follow an IF diet (16-8) with one (or sometimes two) cheat days a week (because the idea of the diet is not to denude my life of joy but to make me happy, and so am not religious about it). So, before you start advising me on health (or on IF, by quoting a non-peer-reviewed unpublished study), let me assure you I am aware of your objections, but this article is about my new year resolutions and lifting it is!

What about your  New Year Career Resolutions?
Here are mine:

1. Find an area to focus on. Currently, I am a sounding board/coach to first-generation entrepreneurs, a process consultant to fast-growing founder-run enterprises, a business strategist for complex international businesses, and an entrepreneur in between businesses looking for the next big thing, amongst half a dozen other things (which includes entering the social media scene as a YouTube content creator). As you can no doubt see, I am all over the place, quite unlike a regular 51yo on LinkedIn. I want to change that. I will let go of all but one and focus. I just don’t know which one. Yet.
2. Leverage the network built over three decades of international entrepreneurship to create opportunities I would not have had ten or even five years ago. I have travelled, started, run, and closed down businesses and lived in half a dozen countries across four continents. I realised I was not using all that capital I had earned. I need to.
3. Be a catalyst in at least one enterprise (whether commercial or social) where it isn’t the money or fame that drives me but purely the need to be of use. I’ve approached this half-heartedly until now, but as I approach the sixth decade of life, I think it would indeed be a waste for me not to have used my time to better other lives without expecting anything in return.
4. Find time for the new long-term career in active electoral politics that I launched myself into three months ago. At the beginning of 2024, I offered to run a candidate’s campaign for an official party ticket for the Lok Sabha Elections 2024. I think I was better at it than I thought. And certainly better than most others I ran into, people I thought would be so far ahead of me that it genuinely surprised me to see how no one seemed to really have it figured out (nor do I, to be honest, but at least I am not alone!).
5. Write that web series. I’ve been toying with (and writing on and off) creating a universe that encompasses and showcases the new motorcycling culture in India and then uses that as a backdrop for a crime thriller. I know exactly what I want. And I know I am capable of writing it. I have also tried in fits & starts to get it together. But I have not been serious. I plan to be this year.

And your  New Financial Year Resolutions?
Or should I say, ‘New Year Financial Resolutions?’
As FY2024-25 starts, here are mine (I know this will totally shock those who didn’t pay attention when I confessed to not being the average 51yo from LinkedIn):

1. Get insured. I have no insurance. Zero. I need term insurance. I need health insurance. I have got the latter recently. I now have to figure out the former.
2. Buy equity. All my life, the only equity I have owned was in my own business(es). It sounded cool and committed then. In hindsight, it was silly as it was reckless. I need to change that. Urgently.
3. Have a long runway. I have never thought it necessary to have a runway longer than 6 months. It was risky as hell. The funny thing is that I always made enough money to extend that runway before it ended. So, it worked—until it didn’t. I have resolved to focus on creating a runway that is at least 3 years long this time.
4. Not borrow or lend any money. From or to anyone. Period. This has been my Kryptonite for as long as I can remember (believing, only partly rightly, that debt is the way to fast growth), and if I do not change this now in the second half of my life, it’d be a very costly mistake, and not just for me but for those that depend on me.
5. Make enough money to achieve the above goals! I mean, duh!

The last list of resolutions (wishes?) seems more like a five-year plan than something I can achieve this financial year. But what the hell! A boy can dream, right?

There are other short-term goals too: I will be learning how to paraglide (with my 10-year-old daughter) this winter. I plan to finish a few books that have been on my TBR list for long (ask me for the list if you are interested in the sort of stuff I am). And I am teaching myself how to make websites from scratch using WordPress. So, these are not included in my list of resolutions because they don’t seem big or hairy as such. But yes, there they are.

Now that I’ve been totally transparent and honest with you (maybe even given you TMI), tell me yours. Tell me how I can help you get there. And tell me how you can play a part in getting me to mine.