Secret of Happiness

 The secret of happiness eludes everyone. We are fooled into thinking that being success / achievement will bring us happiness, only to realize that after reaching our goal, we are yet again set on to achieve something else that will make us "happier". What then is the path to happiness?

 In my opinion, one need not wander far and wide. It is all in the mind. Often, we are not aligned with our inner self, our true desire and our real sense of purpose in life. This is the reason why, even though we reach the so called pinnacle of our life, we remain unhappy. Most of the time, we set goals out of peer pressure, to gain approval of the society, instead of setting goals that appease our true self and desire.

 To attain true happiness, it is then imperative that we spend some time searching our conscious and sub-conscious mind, for our true self. How does one identify ?

 In my case, I looked back to identify things that I did not do for the sake of adulation / eulogy, but just out of passion. I then looked back to identify those skills that come naturally to me. It dawned on me that the trick is in marrying these two, to be able to leverage skills that came naturally to me, in fields that I am passionate about.

It might just be possible that none of what we do in our daily life aligns with our true self. We have to then start aligning our hobbies to our true self. This is a perfect example of Pareto law unfolding. Spending 20% of our time doing things that are aligned to our true self, would bring us happiness.

 The other realization that has been pivotal to my sense of happiness is detachment - detachment from worldly possession like name, fame and power, which is the quint essence of spirituality.  The more you get these worldly possessions, the more you want it, and you get sucked into this vicious cycle of unhappiness. Worldly possessions are those which are not entirely in our control. We cannot control the thoughts and actions of others, but we can control our thoughts and actions for our happiness. The solution lies in being contented and happy with what has been ordained, and living a life with purpose, aligned with your true inner self.

What have your experiences been?

Start 'em Young Raise 'em Right

I am a big fan of the quote that's the title. Many times I wonder how I can drive in the principles taught in our scriptures to my kid, a pre-schooler. How do I make it simple and relevant to her age? Reading out fables and anecdotes from scriptures is definitely one way. But if I want her to start putting it into practice, how do I get her initiated?
 I started out by looking at some of the common problems that she has , and realized that it is not very different from what we face as adults ! One of the biggest problems that kids her age seem to be facing, is that changing loyalties among friends, peer pressure and factions. On deeper probing, I find that it is the same "attachment to ego" that we face as adults. We want our ego to massaged by external approval, appreciation, adulation and even sub-ordination. When our ego is not boosted, we submit ourselves to primal instincts like anger, hatred, jealousy. Sensing that this is a canker that must be nipped in the bud, I set out to create stories around the problem of being attached to ego. But for a preschooler ! How could I pull that? This has been an experimental learning for me. I create stories around how other friends would not want to play with her, if she always wants to get it her way, how she needs to be sensitive to the interests of other kids', and the joy that she would get out of playing and being together with other kids, just by letting go her self indulgence. Going by the recent anointment as a "helpful and friendly child" by her teacher, I am presuming this has worked.
 Though in times of fight or flight, I wonder whether it will be the primal instincts that will take over.

 Any thoughts or experiments with teaching Spiritual principles to the young?

How to create good presentations?

 There are many tips and tricks of trade that has been taught to people in the corporate world, for creating a "great" presentation. I am happy if we gave "good" presentation rather. Why "good" and not "great" must be a question that you might have in mind....

 Well ... what is the objective of presenting? To put across our point of view and rally people around our "Point of View". Do you think people will rally around you just because you have fancy animations and pictures in your presentation? Or talking at length about it?

The answer is NO. It is much like having a conversation, except that a presentation could be for a larger audience with common or related interests. For others to be able to support you, your first intention must be to have a win-win situation.

What good can you do to others by this "Point of View"? How will it benefit others? Put others' interests before yours. These are what our scriptures have taught us as "golden rules" or "principles" of life. If one sticks to these, we would naturally create a riveting presentation which has the "goodness" in it. And that is what I meant when I said I would rather create a "good" presentation than a "great" presentation.

 In my own presentations I try to stick to 3 ways in which my "Point of View" can benefit the audience. If I can't identify the "goodness" factor, I open up the session to get views on how the audience thinks it can benefit or would like to see. That way even if I don't have the answers, we get to agree on a cause / action, which in essence , is the whole purpose of "presentation".

The conflicts, obscurity and all of it is taken care, when there is "goodness" for everyone. In my opinion, people generally don't agree or don't understand when they don't see the "goodness" factor.

Any thoughts or experiences that you would like to share?
 

Meditation - Way to Personal Effectiveness

Meditation is known to be beneficial to health and mind. To be able to fully benefit from meditation, it is important to understand the effects of meditation on the evolution of brain and how it influences our demeanor. Humans are gifted with the "crown" i.e. the conscious brain, which is what differentiates humans from animals. And it is only natural that only by firing this crown can we rejoice in true glory.
 The conscious brain gives us the free will to choose the right from wrong, focus, observe, invent etc. The more we flex the conscious brain, the better we are able to focus, observe our own patterns, eliminate bad patterns, and chalk out our life. The most important for all of this is focus and attention. The conscious brain is prone to distractions and we need to "train our thoughts" to shut out the distractions. This is where meditation helps. Meditation helps us to train our mind to focus. The better we get at it, the better we are able to focus on our personal traits and resolve to change for the better.
 To put it simply, mediate to train your mind to focus and pay attention to your self deprecating patterns and eliminate them.What makes us an individual is our repeating behavior patterns, and personal effectiveness is nothing but pruning and taming our behavior patterns.
Anyone has any personal experiences from meditation? I have personally experienced a distinct sense of calm and composure after meditation, which equips me with the fortitude to embrace a challenging situation. It helps me take objective decisions rather than be carried away by subjective emotions, which in essence is the "glory" of being a human.
Look forward to thoughts and views on this.

Live an Let Live ! – Mantra for Communication with focus on leadership

One of the first instincts of human-beings soon after birth is Communication, and yet,

as mature adults we have a myriad of problems Communicating! Strange! One might

argue that the purpose of communication of a baby is different from that of an adult. It

is multipurpose, multidimensional etc. etc. and hence it is challenging. We go through

some of the best and tested corporate training and grooming to COMMUNICATE. I

would instead take a leaf from our ancient Indian scriptures and make it simple. We can deal effectively with differing social styles in people; Handle problems without harming

relationships; address challenges in collaboration; Cross cultural communication;

communicate effectively to establish and maintain mutual purpose and mutual respect

• with just one mantra - Live and Let Live! Wondering how? Read on ….

What is the essence of this mantra? No matter what technique you use, if the underlying intentions are not noble, it will show through. Noble?? I can already see eyes rolling. What has noble got to do with effective communication? Can we have noble cause and intentions and still survive in this world? I am convinced it is.

Irrespective of the differing social styles, culture, religion, “survival” instinct is the

basis of human race. And anything that seemingly threatens this instinct leads to

conflicts - harms relationships, destroys trust, destroys mutual purpose and mutual

respect.

Self preservation is the behavior that ensures survival instinct. Everyone wants to

preserve their views / opinion, their respect, their interests. It is instinctive to put

“mine” before the others – my views, my opinion, my respect, my interest…

Everyone tries to put theirs first and then think of mutual purpose and interest.

I for example, would start with … I need to finish task A in my project, I can do x,

y, z, but need help with two other activities, which can be done by Betty, so let me

talk to her. Now, when I go with this intention and mind-set, I would try to make it

mutually beneficial, but still my priorities and interests would be placed above Betty’s

and that’s when I will have to try putting it in a way that is attractive to her social

style, and might still sometimes end up harming our relationship.

Communication would become much simpler and effective, if we are

genuinely interested in others. This is the essence of “Live and Let Live”. Live and

Let Live means, genuine, unadulterated interest in people, which lets us grow as a

person and professional and lets others grow as well. This I can promise will lead to a

fulfilling life both personally and professionally.

Let me take the same example above, and walk through it, following Live and Let

Live mantra. I would not talk to Betty just because I need to complete task A, and I cannot complete a few activities. I would ask Betty to help me out, only if it is going to bring some benefit to Betty. Benefit could be in terms of visibility, growth, reward / recognition etc. Here I am being genuinely interested in Betty, while also trying to get my task done. If I do not see anything truly beneficial for Betty, I will not ask her.

But, can this be applied to all situations? What about communicating for your own

growth? Let me walk through this scenario. It is natural to want to grow in the Organization. But, what is the Organization going to get out of it? My thoughts

should be, what can I bring to the Organization if I take up the new role? How can it

benefit the organization and my management? If you can answer these, and then

communicate about your growth, it would be very effective.

Interpersonal Relationships

 This has been and will always be a topic of interest. It will in my opinion continue as long as beings as intelligent as humans exist. The human race thrives on the basis of interpersonal relationships. In the same breath, I also consider it the reason that endangers the existence of human race (well not literally in the near future in the very least !).

 Empathy, love, affection, respect are some of the positive dimensions of interpersonal relationships, in the sense, we have a relation with another person out of empathy, love, respect etc. Yet an overdose of these very emotions fuels selfishness, hatred, jealousy etc. One can see the paradox immediately, and am sure everyone has experienced it in either personal and / or professional life.

For e.g., in your personal life you might relate to your child / kin with empathy, love and affection. But because of your attachment to these emotions and your child / kin, anything remotely threatening this relation / attachment will be dealt with hatred, jealousy etc. which is in itself an act of selfishness.

In the professional life, one would develop professional relationships with team members, superiors etc., and one would want to thwart any situation or person posing a threat to professional relations.

From my own experience, I find this self deprecating, nonetheless every once in a while I see myself repeating the mistake. One cannot but agree with the misery that negative emotions like hatred and jealousy bring. Though at the moment we vent out our negative emotions, we are deluded into thinking that the target is affected, in reality, these negative emotions consumes the source i.e our own self.

Why is it so, and what is the solution? Our Indian Hindu scriptures harp (that is an under statement) at how wasteful "attachment" is, and that one needs to "let go". This is in fact the solution to many problems and interpersonal relationship problems is no exception.
As long as you are attached to someone or something, you will always have the fear of loosing it. No matter however much you try to protect / guard it, it seems to be imperiled. The sense of insecurity in many cases stems from the paranoia that comes with attachment. And by over-doing, we might sometimes end up jeopardizing the relation itself. This is what we mean when we talk of over-powering relations. In an over-powering relation, one tries to tweak and control the relation by all means, and gets stressed out by being paranoid.
Hence we must "let go" our attachment to people, money, fame, power and then we would naturally have genuine interest and relation with people. If we did not mind whether we had the support of people, money or fame, then we do not fear anything or anyone, we do not manipulate anything or anyone, and thereby avoid being miserable ourselves. By submitting ourselves to external support, appreciation, fame etc., we are only letting ourselves be manipulated, twisted and pushed to misery. Because, to manipulate someone, we would need to please that person, even if it means doing something that we would not like to. That is the beauty (or rather ugliness) of manipulation and attachment !
To end this cycle of misery, one needs to "let go" and enjoy every moment in this life and every relation.

Easily said than done ! But helps reinforcing within ourselves and practicing it most if not at all times.

Creative Visualization(a Book by Shakti Gwain) - Use The Power of Your Imagination

I have started reading the book titled "Creative Visualization" by Shakti Gwain. I chose this book to understand how she melds Eastern World of spirituality with the Western psychology, and explore how it can be adopted for personal and professional growth.
 After having gone through the first few chapters, I don't feel let down. My own interpretation on the crux of the book is,  "Meditating on good for the greater cause, leads you to success in your own life".   The book while doling out techniques for meditation, dwells on why it is important to mean and do well unto others.

 She recommends that we start practicing it with a simple goal. I started off with the goal of reaching "x" hits within a day for this blog :) And I achieved 85% of  my goal ! Not bad for a start :)

 The lessons learnt from this simple exercise were
1. Though the goal might be materialistic in a sense, it is important that the purpose or end objective be spiritualistic, as in benefit others. It could be as little as benefiting your kin to as big as benefiting the larger world
2. Meditation and other techniques that I learnt from my spiritual leanings helped me get going
3. Affirmations are key. Shakti gives various examples of positive affirmations in her book. I found my source of strength / positive affirmation by prayer. Each of you could hinge on your own instincts.

If each of us as individuals use this in our personal and professional life, imagine what we could achieve as leaders or otherwise. Can it be used to bring us out of economic doldrums? Can it bring harmony between warring nations?

I am setting out to start visualizing for a bigger goal. Will keep you all posted in a later blog.

Until then would like to hear from others who might have / have not read this book, and experiences with visualizing, auto-suggestion etc. I am also looking for neuroscience research in this area, so any insights there would help energize this movement / thought.