The Assist

The world cup is just finished. There were 172 goals scored at the 2022 World Cup, a new all-time competition record, surpassing the 171 scored in both 1998 and 2014.  Lionel Messi has been directly involved in 21 goals at the World Cup for Argentina (13 goals, eight assists), the outright most of any player for any nation at the finals on record (since 1966). For the source of these numbers, go here.

From the above sentence, "Involved in" means assisted indirectly in the scoring of the goal. Here's what it looks like on the football field. 

The art of assisting does not get its sufficient credit in football. Now though, with video tech and analytics, fans are beginning to identify how vital these second-last passes can be and the skill it takes to thread a ball by breaking defensive lines.  

Similarly, in our regular lives, we sometimes tend to forget that we got to where we are because of the assists of particular people.  I'm not just talking about the cheerleaders, but also the ones who challenged us rudely, rejected our views and ideas or just created roadblocks for us where none were expected.  These negative assists really made us UP our game, and have also played a key role in bringing us where we are by getting us to use our strengths knowingly, as well as differently.

So as  2022, draws to a close, I thought it important to thank all those who assisted me, both positively and negatively in my journey.  You may wish to do the same.

Have a great 2023.

A Thankful 2021

 Here are some of the things (in no particular order) that I am thankful and grateful for in 2021:

• A chance to go on a short vacation with my family.
• An overall healthy life through the year for me, my family and friends.
• The opportunity to go on a residential Facilitation Skills Training Program.
• The many career coaching and resume /interview coaching clients who signed up with me.
• The chance to sing in my choir for Christmas (I probably missed this the most since Apr 2020).
• My IAF colleague Varsha Chitnis for the opportunity to work on a long term senior leadership  intervention, that helped me use another assessment tool from the PRISM Brainmapping Inventory toolkit.
• The time to read 54 books this calendar year - a mix of fiction and non-fiction.
• My IAF fraternity, who gave me the chance to give of my time to Facilitation week by designing and delivering facilitated sessions on topics like Resilient Leadership and Difficult Conversations..
• The opportunity to be a part of the marketing team at the online IAF Facilitation Summit.
• The time to write 4 articles this year on topics like Resilience, Emotions, Job Descriptions and Goals. 
• My social media followers who have read and shared my articles, posts and other responses on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
• My friends who helped me record and release a few videos for my business.
• My mentor Sekhar Chandrasekhar, who generously gave me some of his favourite books.

FINALLY - 

• To all the errors I made, and the things that didn't go my way - thank you for the opportunity to reflect, learn and do better.  I hope I meet some new friends of yours in 2022, and I hope they will as kind (if not kinder) as you.