Moving States, New Job and Caregiving: How To Make It All Work?

Here is the complete transcript of the podcast

Today’s podcast is again, an answer to a question that came in life on my radio show this past Tuesday. welcome, or welcome back to success for Srini. Happy Saturday morning to you. So my radio show success with Srini airs on Bali 92.3 FM. This Tuesday, this past Tuesday, five minutes into the show. Nilesh calls me with a question which I sincerely appreciated because it sounded like the way he started the question. I did not check with him. But the way he started the question, it sounded as if he was listening to the show for the very first time, he probably did not have any idea who I am. I do not know that. So I’m just making it up. This is what I feel about the way he asked the question. So if you are juggling your time between your parents, and your children, you have parents who are demanding more of your time. If you have parents for whom you are the caregiver, then this question and today’s podcast episode is for you. And before I go any further, let’s go to the question that we play the question. And I’ll come back, and I’m going to add a few more things to the answer that I already gave on air. So let’s go to that. Appreciate the call. Thank you. What’s your name? And how can I help you?

Nilesh, Srini.

Nilesh? How can I help you Nilesh?

Yeah, I have a question. Basically, I used to work in Virginia, for 10 years, and just recently got a new job in Burlingame, California. And I have like my family, my mom stays with me and I have to move here. But my mom has Parkinson’s. So needs some help, you know, during the work day. So I’m really looking for some guidance or tips on how to do this move. Because of the big move for the family. I just joined the job in like six days. And slowly and slowly. I want to settle down and bring the family here. Find help for my mom for any suggestions or guidance.

Okay, Nilesh, first of all, I’m sorry. How old is your mom?

My mom is only 77 years old.

Do you have any other help? Like you have any family here?
And no help here.
Okay. Yeah. So, you know, the reason why I’m pausing on this question is that this is something that I deal with. And, you know, I’m a caregiver to my dad, who is 89 years old with dementia, stroke, all that so I can relate to this. I live with this problem every day. So and you have a new job. And I understand it’s very difficult to, you know, balance the outside activities with an inside activity, things you can hire caregivers. If you’re new to California, I’ll suggest something. Do you have insurance and all those things sorted out?

Yeah.

So I suggest that you talk to a social worker in the county, in which county you’re going to live in.

My job is Burlingame. But then my mom is only … So I don’t know.

Okay. do me a favor, text me. And what I’ll do is I will connect you to my social worker at the Santa Clara County, and let them help them to find a social worker who can speak Gujarati and then they can, you know, I can help you with all the support that that that you can get, including, you know, enrolling into HSS. I don’t know if you did that or not. But there are many programs that you can enroll in and things like that. And the reason why is because there are certain benefits that kick in, in my understanding, I could be totally wrong, but certain benefits kick in beyond the age of 70. So that’s why I was asking the age. Okay, text me. And let me get all the details.

Thank you so much.

Thank you appreciate the call. Thank you. Nilesh. Okay, welcome back to Saturday. So we are inserted in now. Okay, so I played that question because I felt somewhere within that I did not answer the question at a level that I should have answered when Nilesh called in. So my office reached out to Nilesh and said, there will be a detailed podcast with an answer to this question one more time. Srini is going to record it, and we’re going to send it to you. So the question was, I’m moving How do I do this move, but the way I heard it, I heard as if he’s looking for some resources. Now, I don’t think answered the question at its core, which is how do I do this move?

Now, here is how I can tell you What you should do, but if I wake up in your shoes tomorrow, then how would I do this move? First, I will either establish the family or the parent. So I’ll move the family first. And make them comfortable here. And then I’m going to bring the parent because moving a parent with a challenge like that is hard. It’s difficult. And it involves a special focus, not saying effort, but focus. So I would do that. That’s fine. My question was, is that help? Available? I did go there. But I didn’t get the time to really complete, my processing so I could answer it. And glad I have this podcast so I can answer. If there is a family in Virginia, in this case, then I would have the mother stay with the family or find some caregivers locally there. If not, then I’ll move the mom here first, and then get caregivers to come in and take care of her while I go back and move the family something like that I would structure this I wouldn’t do it at once. Because clearly there is work involved here there is a new state involved and all that. So that is there is more to this. Now, where do you find caregivers a question I get all the time. So care.com is one such website that gives you the flexibility to find caregivers on an hourly basis. If you want to go a little bit more elaborate, then you have homecare california.com, which homecare desk california.com, which gives you a little bit more detailed, you know, options, such as somebody sleeping in the night in the house and daytime care, hourly care, all that.

So you know, hands-on care, hands off, get all that stuff. So there are all these resources that are available. There are two other things that I talked about, as you heard as I was responding to Nilesh, which is California State also does what’s called the SS in-home support services. That means you can have somebody come in and take care of the bear and for which the state will pay. That option is there. And then there are some other options also, that are available, depending upon the need and the kind of insurance. So it’s very difficult for me to say this because I’m not qualified to talk about it. But then because I go through it, hence, I’m just collecting everything that I have experienced myself to put this forward. And then there are depending on insurance, things like more specialized services, come in skilled nursing facilities, and all those things can be added. If needed. I’m saying if needed, looks like this may need some skilled nursing also, all that is available depending on the age, the program, and the insurance. So it’s a combination of these three. But California is amazing. Those benefits are there here. So welcome to California Nilesh. And welcome to the Bay area. So you’re in a great place, you will provide great care to your mother. And at the same time, you will also create an incredible career for yourself.

I have said multiple times on this podcast, that one of the disadvantages of growing old as we are growing old is that you see your loved ones suffer as they even age further. So not a good thing to go through. And specifically not a good thing for a child to go through this process of taking care of a parent and juggling professional situations and the next-gen and everything is very hard. It’s very difficult. And I expressed that emotion very early as Nilesh called him into the show. It’s hard, it’s difficult, but it has to be done. And very few people have this blessing of their parents with them in America. So that blessing is there for you. Nilay Shah, I also forgot to mention this on the show when you call them. So it’s a different thing to say that hey, my, my parents were with me in the past away, but says my parents worse in a different country. And I could not go. I mean I couldn’t see them for years. And I have a friend of mine who expert who is going through this agony right now where he couldn’t see his father pass away due to COVID and all those things happen. And then recently mother passed away I see I can really really feel the pain that he goes through. He can’t express it in words. So all the power to you know less and everybody else. Anybody who’s listened to this podcast today, all the party caregiving is not easy, but it’s also cosmically very rewarding.

That’s all for now. Hopefully, today’s podcast is helpful. And if it is, let me know and I will come back tomorrow with, in fact, I’m going to record tomorrow’s podcast today. That’s the beauty of it and make it available for you tomorrow. And I’m going to take the second question from Guarav who called in on my show, and I’m going to share a few more thoughts about the answer that I got up. Okay. So that’s all for now, wherever you are, be safe, and I’ll talk to you soon. Bye now.

How To Stop Doubting Yourself and Start Performing At Your Best

Here is the complete transcript of the podcast

Welcome back. Happy Friday morning to you today on the podcast. Again, I’m taking up a question that has come in from a long time and a daily listener of this podcast, asking me Srini, how are you, I wanted to ask you for some advice at my workplace, my manager has left and I have been given the role, which is a leadership role. With stakes. I know that I’m capable of delivering, but have been very anxious about what if I don’t keep up with people’s and my own expectations. Also, acknowledging that people are watching me perform in this position is making me nervous and worried. I just wanted to get your advice on how to keep my confidence up and perform at my best potential. Thanks as always, okay, so Okay, so let’s get into this.

First of all, it’s very difficult to live up to our own expectations. Living to somebody else’s expectations is even, it’s literally impossible. So I met people who keep on changing themselves, to meet the perception of others around them, because they love them, they take care of them, they care for them, they’re been born into situations that have been married into situations that have been hired into situations, I’ve seen people who just want to satisfy everyone. And that is the single biggest formula for pain, agony, and suffering in life, you try satisfy everyone, I guarantee you, you’re not going to achieve anything. So the only expectation we are talking about here is your expectation of yourself. And the answer to that is, is very obvious. You know, your strengths, you know, your weaknesses, you know, what you can do you know what you cannot do, doing something so that others will become happy, even though you’re not capable of doing, even though you know, it’s not the right thing to do, and satisfying them in the process. dissatisfying yourself, I think it’s not good, you can’t enjoy the position, you’re promoted, you can’t enjoy it. So over and over again, I keep saying this life is a happiness game.

You know, it’s not a wholesome happiness game, you cannot have a life full of happiness. But you will have a life within which you will have happy moments, your job is to create those moments. And there will be situations that will make you unhappy, there is going to be a pain, there is going to be agony, there’s going to be suffering, there’s going to be tears, there’s going to be heartbreaks all back. But your job is to keep looking and creating those happy moments. And if you spend eight hours a day doing this job, where you’re unhappy, you’re trying to please everyone, when will you please yourself? So I’m going to share a paradigm. Hopefully, this is helpful. This is the issue. There are two things going on here either you are comparing yourself with others. Somewhere deep within you think that you are not supposed to get this role, you got it. And now, because you never thought you should be getting it. Now you’re struggling to keep it. This is more like a combination of a self-image issue. And also a comparison issue. That means people are watching you are better and more skilled and qualified than you. These two things are self-images, I think the two issues are comparison-contrast, and self-image is somewhere in between these somewhere this issue is three things I want to share.

First and foremost is as a leader, your job is to shut down outside noise and give importance to your inside noise. You should shut down both by the way. But inside noise is the reason why you need to give importance to inside noise is that you need to figure out what is right for you to do so that others who depend on you. You’re doing right for them. So if you start giving importance to outside noise, noise is nice, then you’ll never be able to achieve what you are set out to achieve. This is the important thing. I’ll give you an analogy on this. People who go to see concerts, you know 50% of people who go to concerts, whichever concert it is, they want to listen to their favorite singer sing. 50% of people are good singers themselves.

And the chances are throughout the concert that singing. But for the singer to sing from the stage, the real performance on the stage they need to shut the audience down. He or she has to shut the audience down. And it’s the shutting is done by putting a louder microphone and a loud sound system so that everybody can listen to the singer the performer. That’s the only sound the audience is there to listen to. But individually, each attendee could be a good singer too. But they are not there to perform. So be loud, be clear, be precise, be decisive, because you are the leader, okay? The second one I think I already talked about, is people’s perception of you, you cannot change it, if they are going to say that you are bad, you’re bad anyway. If they say that you’re good, you’re good, I get that. But if you keep on catering to the perception, then it’s going to become a very difficult thing. I would restrain myself, taking my mind there to satisfy them. The last one, and I want to also, I think I already talked about this before on one of the podcast episodes, which is you need to affirm the gifts, the talents, and the strengths that got you here. Somebody’s dropping the ball, while you are here, who you are, what have you done to get here you have forgotten, the hardships, the pain that you’ve gone through the suffering, you know, everything that you invested all that you haven’t gotten here easily. So I want you to kind of give some importance to those things. So go deep into your gifts, your talents, and your strengths. Think about them. Every time you walk into a meeting, think about them every time you step into the office, think about them. And once you just go inward with those thoughts, everything else outside is going to look minuscule, as compared to what you have inside of you.

So this is a confidence issue. Yes, but I think it’s also a self-image issue. So hopefully this is helpful. If it is let me know. Those are my thoughts from the top of my mind. I could elaborate on this a little bit more but if I do that, then I may sound repetitive I don’t want to Okay, so that’s all for now. Wherever you are listening to this podcast episode, you all be safe and I’ll be with you as early as tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Why You’re Failing to Achieve Your Goals -The Truth Nobody Talks About

Here is the complete transcript of the podcast

This morning, as I was just getting ready to kind of get my thoughts aligned and record the podcast. And suddenly I got this email, a long email from a listener, obviously, of this podcast and also my radio shows, asking me about a very deep question early morning question. And the gist of this question is I’m failing, to achieve my goals. I have no idea what I am doing wrong, or what is incorrect. That’s the question, long email explaining the situation, the problems and years and years of working hard, and all that. I don’t want to get into all that here. But the gist of this question got me excited. So I stopped whatever I had in my mind. And I said I’m going to record this as today’s podcast. So stay with me, I’m sure you’re going to find some incredible value from this. Because we all fail at fulfilling our goals or achieving our goals. So here is what I found out. And I could be totally wrong at this. But after working with hundreds and hundreds of people, through different situations, different geographies, and different circumstances, I think I have a fair understanding of how this whole thing works. Every time I meet an individual, who says, you know, I’m working at this, it’s not happening, I’m going to give it a year or two. Usually, the way I read them is that they are not properly setting their goals, they’re not working, they’re not their intent is not clear, and they have a good heart. But then, you know, there is an impression that people like this create, and after going through so many different tractions, over the years, I can read those impressions. So there are four or five things that might be going wrong in this specific case because those are the five things that go wrong in almost every case.

So let’s get into these five. And I’m going to come back and maybe share a couple of resources that can help you overcome this. The first and foremost question is how do you set goals? What is the goal setting, the paradigm you use, or the system you use? Because everything is a goal. You woke up this morning, you took care of all your waking up this morning, you’re taking care of your stuff. In the afternoon, we are taking care of a few more things in the evening, you will in the night will everything is a goal and everything is an accomplishment. The question is how are these goals meaningful? How can these goals be? First of all, envisioned? Then thought through? Then kind of taken seriously? Intent, focus, energy, all those things applied? And how can these goals be given identities? whatever goals you have, in your mind, how can you give identities to those goals? So that when you walk, when you breathe, when you inhale when you sleep when you move? These goals are truly falling off of you. See, if I was supposed to go and climb Everest, everything I was doing was Everest, my thoughts Everest, my diet Everest, my sleep Everest, my exercise Everest, my interactions Everest, everything is Everest. So whatever goal you have, and this is in fact, I’m, I went through it. So I know because it’s very easy, to make a comment on somebody’s situation. But when you live through it, you know exactly, you know, you have a different understanding of anything once you lived through it. So I have a different understanding because I lived through some of the goals that I set for myself. And some of them, I did not achieve some of them I failed. Obviously, this Everest thing did not happen. But I lived through the process for a year and a half. So I know how this works. So there are four or five things I want to call out. There are many more things to it, it’s very difficult to get everything into a podcast like this. And back to a question that came in just moments ago, very difficult for me to put all my thoughts together. But I’m speaking from my mind, as I’m recording this, there’s no preparation for this nothing.

The first and foremost thing is you’ve got to have your schedule in place. You set your goal, the goal setting paradigm, the goal setting formula, it doesn’t matter who’s whose principles you use, whose methods you use, which book you read, it’s totally up to you. But once you are there, and things are not happening, it means that you are not taking your time seriously. You’re not giving enough energy to your intent. You’re not taking your schedule, seriously, the schedule is the right word schedule encapsulates Time and events and all that so the schedule is an important part you don’t really take so you schedule some time to do a few things maybe. But something else comes up you kind of compromise you compromise. So you probably have a challenge of saying no to things and you say yes to everything. That’s coming your way. And now you really don’t have control over your time, people who don’t have control over their time, they don’t have control over a thing. Step one.

The second one is once you have the schedule in place, and the second is action. So listen, if you want to manifest anything, you want to create anything, you want to take action, there is no shortcut to this. But people tell me that I, I have a schedule, I take action if things don’t happen for me. Then that leads me to the third point, which is the focus. What are you thinking when you’re taking action? Are you getting sidelined? Are you getting sidetracked? distractions, like you, need real focus to get things done. So I would take five minutes of extreme focus in in one hour, then 10 hours of unfocused time. So 10 hours of work, no focus versus one hour with five minutes of focus. It’s amazing what focus does. And I think 99% of all performance issues can be broken down to this one thing called the focus. And I did multiple podcasts here. Talking about focus, of course, I did a lot many podcasts on goal setting and achievement and goal fulfillment and all that. You have a schedule, you are taking action, you are focused, still, things are not happening. Then the last one is your belief system. See, once the belief system itself is compromised, doesn’t matter what you do, everything is cosmetic. It’s like taking a fox and painting the fox to look like a tiger doesn’t work. Back in the day growing up in school, my teacher used to say this, you can’t take a fox and paint it to look like a tiger. So you can’t paint this. So your belief system is incorrect. You are scared of success, you are fearful of success, you’re fearful of failure. There are things that are overriding you internally, then you can’t any of these things work. They may have worked, but then will not work to a level where you feel good about accomplishing. So belief system is an important Black Swan. Everywhere I hit this point of values and beliefs, values and beliefs everywhere wherever I talk because it’s the mindset and everything else.

Secondly, people give lots of importance to other things. Money, credentials, accomplishments all. It’s the mindset. I’ll tell you this, I met a multi, not a billionaire, but a multi-multimillionaire, right? I couldn’t spend three minutes with him, I just couldn’t spend three minutes with him. Every word that comes out of his mouth doesn’t make any sense. There is no logic or there is no rhyme or rhythm to why he became successful how he could make this kind of money, why his employees tolerate him, I have no idea. I don’t want my employees to tolerate me. I think that my employees work with me, not for me me, because of the currency. And that currency is the words that take change with them. At any point in time, I don’t look down upon them. I never say anything to them that compromises their identity, their self-esteem, or their self-worth or value. Every time they talk to me, they feel that they are seeing a better version of themselves in them. I have no idea why this man is so successful make so much of money. But then, you know, individuals’ work is measured through the words they say and the way they say them. Just spend five or 10 minutes with people, if they are doing F bombs everywhere they’re talking, you know, you know what their worth is they may have the wealth, they don’t have the word. belief system is an important part, I want you to look into the belief system and just talk about goals. Now there are two other elements. I’m gonna do this, this podcast is running too long. And just dialing in I just see I just woke up dialing into this.

The two other things I want to share quickly. When you’re setting goals, make sure that the goals pull you and don’t push yourself towards the goals. It just you know don’t do things because others are doing do because you inherently deep within yourself feel that this is the right thing for you to do. Don’t do it don’t again, this goes back to the earlier comment about cosmetics. Right? I want to set goals such that I feel empowered goals. I wake up you know, sometimes I wake up in the morning, I don’t feel like achieving anything doing anything. Think about the goal. Oh my God, I need to do this I need to complete the goal that somehow inherently pulls me. That’s not my idea. Not my idea. But there’s something that I picked up in one of the books I think before James clear, tiny habits I believe. Not sure. Then this is something else. There’s a second part to this. When you set goals, make sure that the initial effort rewards.

The initial few steps, the initial few actions you take for achieving a goal make sure that those actions succeed so that you now have the kind of validation. But yeah, whatever I’m trying to do here, it’s going to work because I’m seeing success. If the first couple of steps are successful, the first couple of steps, stand as validation, then you will stay longer with your goals, you will put in the effort, you’ll spend more time, and then we’ll succeed. As simple as that. Okay, I just see this answer is pretty big and pretty broad and pretty could be driven in different directions. But hopefully, this is helpful. Hopefully, I answered your question. If not, let me know. And if you have a question for me, by all means, please text me at 888-818-0404. 888-818-0404 where you can text me.

Now, My tough day is a very busy day, as I’m recording this early morning. So I’ll just go and take care of a few critical things. Three, or four things are waiting on me as I’m recording this. But I should have done a little bit more research in answering this question. But I think whatever I said came out of my own being in this so still, I hope this delivers some value. That’s all for now. Wherever you are, you’ll be safe and I will catch you as early as tomorrow morning right here. Take care. Bye now.