About

About Me

My name is Paresh Mishra. It's pronounced purresh (esh as in fresh) mishraw. I am a professor of Organizational Leadership at Purdue University Fort Wayne. I have a Ph.D. in Business from Indiana University - Bloomington. I conduct research on topics such as resilience, envy, organizational justice, leadership, workplace spirituality, and corporate social responsibility. Outside work, I am a passionate long-distance runner, a musician (singer) and a yogi. I have but one goal in life, and that is to be a little better today than I was yesterday.

Why Barefoot Professor?

No, I don't literally go to work barefoot, but I do love running barefoot. The word also reminds me to keep life simple. Not that there is no need for shoes in this world. They certainly do help protect our feet. But we can do without many things that we believe are absolutely essential to our survival and life. All we need to do is to allow ourselves to be a little vulnerable and challenge ourselves to push our boundaries. I believe that we can never experience life fully when we are trying to protect ourselves every step of the way. Overprotection is a key ingredient for a life of mediocrity. Life also needs to be lived with a certain amount of abandon. When we work towards developing our core selves, we become less dependent on external things for our security and happiness. Metaphorically, that's what being barefoot is about.

About this blog

I started this blog in 2007 when I was a first-year doctoral student at Indiana University. Initially, I blogged to get practice in the art of writing. But over time it has become a platform where I could freely express my thoughts on any topic that excites and intrigues me. On this blog, you will also find some of my music, poetry, sketches, and photographs. They are not meant to showcase my "talent" in multiple creative fields. Rather they are just a reflection of how I approach living my life. i.e., with a spirit of play. My creative outputs may be no better than trinkets created by little children when they are playing with clay. But that's alright because the fun is in the play, not in the outcome. If the Vedas and the Upanishads are right, the entire universe is an outcome of God's play (or leela), not work. Yet, most of us adults get so caught up with achieving success in life that we lose our natural propensity to play. So this blog is one of my ways of recommitting myself to embracing life with the spirit of a child's play...one baby step at a time.

Thank you for visiting this blog!

~ Paresh Mishra