Personal Alchemy Blog

Simplify Your Life This New Year!

2012-01-09T19:23:00.000+08:00

This is the season for resolutions. I reckon you haveconsidered one or two yourself. Unfortunately, as the year progresses, most NewYear resolutions tend to fall by the wayside and end up as mere intents. Here’san insightful approach towards creating a life that’s not only happier and morefulfilling, but one that also automatically responds to your most meaningfulresolutions.

We complicate life

Driven sometimes by ambition and other times by a sense ofinner incompleteness, we instinctively immerse ourselves in a myriad ofpursuits. We often act out of the fear of losing out, compared to our peers orour social network.

We would rather be overwhelmed than miss out on theslightest chance to please the boss, make more money, enhance our status,accumulate more clothes or gadgets, or go to the extra social event. We alsofind it hard to let up on instantly responding to text messages, checking oure-mails or facebook accounts multiple times a day or randomly watching television.

What suffers in the process is our attention to our mostimportant priorities – the ones that actually make us feel fulfilled andhappier. No wonder then we are unable to see through many of our resolutions,the New Year ones being no exception.

First, the familiar lesson

"A philosophy professor stood before his class andhad some items in front of him. When class began, wordlessly he picked up alarge empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with rocks, rocks about2" in diameter. He then asked the students if the jar was full? Theyagreed that it was. So, the professor then picked up a box of pebbles andpoured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles, of course,rolled into the open areas between the rocks. The students laughed.

The professor picked up a box of sand and poured it intothe jar. Of course, the sand filled everything else. "Now," said theprofessor, "I want you to recognize that this is your life.""The rocks are the important things - your family, your partner, yourhealth – anything that is so important to you that if they were lost, you wouldbe nearly destroyed. The pebbles are the other things that matter like yourjob, your house, and your car. The sand is everything else. The smallstuff."

"If you put the sand into the jar first (which iswhat we often do), there is no room for the pebbles, and the rocks. The samegoes for your life. If you spend all your energy and time on the small stuff,you will never have room for the things that are important to you.”

Only threethings matter

Among all the innumerable activities that we get suckedinto, it's worth reflecting and determining the ones that really matter.

Based on my experience- both, personal and working withdiverse clients-, I find the discipline of clarifying three things that are most important to you in life veryhelpful. Three is a magical number – big enough to cover what really mattersand small enough that you are compelled to sharpen your focus and keep the listmanageable.

I lead a simple life - a far cry from my 24/7 days of thecorporate days. On a typical weekday, I spend about six hours in my coachingpractice, an hour at meditation, an hour exercising or playing a sport, threeto four hours with the family and a couple of hours reading and writing. Mydays are built around satisfying my top three priorities, namely personalwell-being and growth, family (and friends), and helping others in theirjourney of personal growth.

The impact

Becoming attentive to the most important priorities of yourlife starts to simplify your life. Rather than storing these priorities in yoursubconscious, but staying busy with everything else, you begin devotingappropriate amount of time towards them. Create the time for your rocks in yourdaily/ weekly calendar first, before other activities encroach on your time.

You would perhaps end up doing fewer things, but then thosewould be the most relevant few. This is not easy for most of us. It requiresdiscipline and learning to say No toother distractions. It also demands building our inner conviction about what’smost valuable to us in life and overcoming the fear of losing out.

We then need to weigh every new commitment based on whetherit serves our chosen three rocks or not. Simplifying your life, towardsfocusing on the most vital priorities this way, has the magical power to makeyour each day more fulfilling.

5 questions to get started

Do you sometimes yearn for a simpler but a more meaningfullife – one where your top priorities are well met and your progress is rathereffortless? If you do, then here are five questions that you may want toreflect on.

- What are the three things most important to you in life

- How much time are you currently devoting towards themin a day/week

- How much time do you need to start dedicating towardsthem to justify their importance to you

- What do you need to do to make that happen

- What are you willing to give up for that

As you respond to these questions and commit yourself tothis new way of life, not only would you be equipped to accomplish your NewYear resolutions, but also experience greater happiness, peace, balance andfulfillment.

Wish you an Uncomplicated, Happy and Fulfilling Year ahead!

Are you the Aggressor or the Victim?

2011-12-06T19:14:00.001+08:00

Photo by Tiffany

"Thereal voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new lands but seeing with neweyes" - MarcelProust

Ourchildhood experiences, coupled with our genetic makeup, significantly influencethe type of emotional personality we acquire as adults. Our sense ofself-esteem, temperament, perceptiveness, relationship skills, and ability togive and receive love are directly impacted with these factors.

Based ondifferent combinations of these attributes, there are surely a large number ofdistinct personality types possible (please also see my earlier post on Being Myself). However, there are two typesnamely, the aggressor and the victim, that are prominently displayed in our relationships. Unfortunately,living either of these archetypes limits us from enjoying deeper and moreloving relationships.

TheVictim

As thetitle suggests, people with a Victim personality believe that they are the victims of the world– that the others do not care for their emotions and that they are routinelyleft alone to fend for themselves. They tend to be inward looking and areeasily given to self-blame. Experiencing any setback, they are quick to judgeand blame themselves for their situation. These aspects are partly a reflectionof their low self-esteem.

They alsohave a propensity to be reserved, introverted and uncomfortable with any formof confrontation. Operating from a strong fear of rejection, they would ratherconform than confront, to avoid the risk of being in the wrong and not beingloved. Consequently, instead of sharing freely, they are prone to instinctivelysuppressing their true emotions.

However,these suppressed emotions of frustration and disappointment eventually do getreleased, in the form of sudden bursts of anger. To the others, these burstsare usually unexplainable, as the immediate trigger is generally somewhatinsignificant. Some of these factors make it challenging for such individualsto have deep and honest relationships – in fact, many of them have difficultywith intimacy, lest their true selves be discovered.

TheAggressor

TheAggressors arealmost the opposite. They have high self-esteem – their high self-confidencearguably higher than their actual abilities. This sometimes even spills into asense of entitlement – the belief that the world owes it to them. Theygenerally believe that they are in the right and are comfortable expressingtheir point of view.

While theyhave a high respect for themselves, they tend to have lesser respect andempathy for others. For them, the problems are always outside of them. Notgiven to looking within, they operate from the instinct that it’s generallysomeone else who’s at fault and not them.

They tendto be more vocal, louder and pushy in their approach. They like to get theirway and can be dominating in a relationship. While the victims are comfortable sacrificing andgiving (so they would be loved), the aggressors are better at receiving (as theydeserve it)!

RelationshipChallenges

Operatingfrom either of these conditioned psychological patterns, we have challenges inbuilding deeper relationships. The victims restrain themselves from sharing their true feelingsand subliminally keep their partner at a distance. The aggressors can be intimidating, making theirpartner uncomfortable in getting close to them.

Natureperhaps plays a cruel joke in bringing these two opposites together in many ofour closest relationships – if one spouse is the aggressor, the other is predisposed to being thevictim; if a parentis the victimpersonality, the child turns out to be the aggressor; if a boss is the aggressor type, the employee they attracthappens to be the victim profile and so forth.

While thatmaybe nature's way of ensuring that the relationship survives (two aggressors or two victims together would perhaps be even moredysfunctional), it does perpetuate our individual personality limitations.What’s more, unless we make a deliberate choice to alter this, we are alwayssubconsciously drawn towards people (spouse, boss, colleague and friends) withthe opposite traits – so we can have a symbiotic relationship and sustainliving in our comfort zone.

TheThird Possibility

It ispossible for us to break free from these conditioned mindsets. We do not haveto be either the victim or the aggressor. Instead, we have to learn to be assertive.

Being assertive in our interactions suggests thatwe have high respect for both, others and ourselves. In this state, we areself-confident but not arrogant; we are firm but polite and respectful; we areopen to other’s views but fearless about expressing our own; honest aboutsharing our feelings but empathetic of others’ feelings.

It’s thatoptimal spot in the relationship where neither do we take the other for grantednor let the others take us for granted; we are equally comfortable in both,loving others and receiving their love. Besides, our conversations then are farmore authentic; devoid of any emotional drama (of either anger and aggressionor sadness and withdrawal).

Gettingthere

Making thisshift requires working on ourselves with the belief that the change is withinus; recognizing that rather than blame others (our partner, parent orcolleague), we have to change ourselves; and that when we change, ourrelationships and the world around us change automatically.

Only whenwe chose to reflect on our habitual patterns, bring them into our activeawareness and focus on dealing with them, do we start the process of realchange. Observe your self and establish which of these is your dominant style,particularly within your relationships? What would your spouse, boss or friendsdescribe you as?

You canthen determine the steps you need to take to be more assertive, authentic andloving in your relationships. What emotional blocks do you need to overcomeinside you to be more assertive? Do you need to build greater love and respectfor yourself or learn to be more respectful of others’ views and feelings?

Once wepractice being assertive and authentic in our interactions, not only do we feellighter and complete but also our relationships deepen and are filled withlove.

Demystifying Death

2011-11-06T21:53:00.000+08:00

Photo by Ray MacLean

An important law of physics, the law of conservation ofenergy, states that the total amount of energy in a closed, or isolated, systemremains constant over time. What this means is that in such a system, energycannot be created or destroyed. It can however change forms. We also know fromEinstein's theory of relativity that mass and energy are one and the samething. Thus, we can infer that in a closed system, the total mass and energy ofthe system stay unchanged over time.

Given that the universe is such a closed system, it isunderstandable that there is no new energy or mass being created inside it;there’s instead a shuffling and metamorphosis of forms that’s happeningconstantly. Take the example of a snowflake, an ice cube, a water droplet and asteam vapor. What do you notice is common in here? All these are nothing butdifferent expressions of the same entity. While the underlying essence of eachof these forms is water, we attach different labels to each of the forms and,in the process, get distracted from connecting with the truth.

This is what explains death. The universe is constantlyevolving and, in the process, continues to take different forms– galaxies,stars, planets, animals, plants and humans. All the forms arise from theuniverse and dissolve into it, but are neither born nor die. Death is a conceptof the mind and of its identification with the body form.

Consider the life cycle of a butterfly. It starts with anegg that gets fertilized and hatched into a caterpillar; the caterpillar growsin size, sheds its last skin and in its place grows a tough flexible shell; andfrom this shell emerges a fully developed butterfly. In a few days, thebutterfly dies and its remains become organic manure for the plants; flowersbloom on the plants; a young butterfly feeds on the nectar and pollen from theflowers, turns it into protein and other nutrients, and lays eggs. And, thecycle continues.

Through all these forms of an egg, the caterpillar, and thebutterfly, the only constant is the underlying consciousness. All these forms areimpermanent; the only thing eternal is the formless consciousness that justtakes different identities from time to time. How else would you describe thetransformation of forms in the above example of the egg and the caterpillar?Would you say, the egg died or later, the caterpillar died, even though the eggand the caterpillar physically ceased to be so at some point in time?

It’s another matter that with our conditioned beliefs, wetend to identify rather strongly with our physical form – the body, the mindand the senses. We fail to recognize that the physical form is not solidmatter, even though it appears so, but essentially made up of fluid energy –the same energy that runs the universe. This energy is unborn and undying andirrespective of whether we are dead or alive in the human form, we remain thisconsciousness. As is said, “We are not human beings having a spiritualexperience, but spiritual beings having a human experience.”

This awareness guides us into living our life in harmonywith nature’s evolution. That’s what brings us true joy and deep inner peace.

(I had recently written this article for The Speaking Tree column of the Times of India)

Discovering Your Calling

2011-10-10T09:44:00.000+08:00

Photo by Jesus

In one ofmy earlier posts (Areyou following your calling), I had talked about the difference betweenpursuing a job, career or your calling and the impact pursuing your calling hason your level of happiness at work.

Now,following your calling is understandably easier said than done. How do you evengo about the crucial step of discovering your calling? If you are not one ofthe lucky few, who somehow landed themselves in what they truly love, what canyou consciously do about it?

Here aresome steps that can support you in that discovery.

Setaside time for reflection

I believeeach one of us is uniquely gifted and has a special purpose on earth. However,we get so caught up in the treadmill of our fast-paced lives that we fail todiscover this purpose. Slowing down is essential for developing deeper clarity.

You need tocreate time and space to reflect on what is most important for you – do youwant to be more successful or make a significant contribution; do you want moremoney or be happier; do you value social recognition or inner fulfillment; whatrole does family and community have for you and so forth.

Plan forthose reflective moments, maybe 10-15 minutes every day or at least some everyweek.

Create apowerful vision

As is said,“If you can see it and believe in it, it will happen.”

We all havefleeting ideas, from time to time, of what we would like our life to be about.The idea of a vision is about articulating them cogently.

Write anote, describing in vivid detail, what you envision your ideal life to be like– not just work life, but your entire life. What kind of work would you beengaged in, what would you like most about it, what would your typical work daylook like, what would you be busy with outside of work, how would you feel thenand so forth. I would recommend writing this note in the present tense, as ifyou are already living this vision.

Discoverwhat you really love doing

As youdescribe your vision, search within yourself what you would love to do if youhad no constraints – financial, social or any others. My personal experience ofleaving a successful corporate career and following my calling has been that ifyou are passionate about pursuing what you love, other things eventuallyfollow.

Reflect onyour life thus far, including your childhood, college days and initial years atwork, and see if you can find some common threads that emerge around what youhave most enjoyed being engaged in. Was it organizing events, performing,singing, acting, sports, physics, psychology, connecting with people, teaching,learning new things and so forth.

Sometimes,you find a couple of things that you really enjoy – you then need to explorehow you can bring them together. For example, if you love public speaking andsports, is becoming a sports commentator an option for you? If you love writingand are passionate about cars, you could get involved in auto journalism.

Clarifywhat you are good at

Next is toarticulate your strengths; know for yourself what you are good at. Organizing,marketing, acquiring new customers, designing, analytical thinking, forgingrelationships, starting new projects, execution, strategizing, big pictureideas, communication?

Reflect onhow these strengths can be applied to what you love doing. You can alsoarticulate your pronounced areas of weakness and be mindful of attending tothem while creating a vision of your new life.

Matchyour core values and needs

This is acrucial step. One of the significant underlying reasons we are unhappy at workis that we are either unable to live our core values or are unable to meet ourcore needs.

Write downyour five core values. Values are your personal beliefs, convictions and ethicsthat you would ideally like your life to be governed by. These are deep-seatedprinciples that are really important to you. Examples of values includeexcellence, integrity, authenticity, awareness, service, experience, create,discover, nurture, care, relate and empathize. When we can fully live ourpersonal values in our life, we feel more fulfilled, happier and confident todeal with life’s challenges.

Likewise,articulate your five core needs. Needs are the specific personal requirementsthat you must get in order to feel complete and content. Examples of personalneeds could include – be remembered, respected, recognized, accepted,appreciated, loved, heard, perfect, liberated, responsible, forthright, or todominate, win, prove oneself, and connect. The needs evolve over a lifetime butprovide some of the deepest motivations for our actions. Like the values, whenour needs are fully met, we feel happier, satisfied and are at our best.

Whatever visionof future profession or calling you gravitate towards, evaluate how your chosencore values and needs will be effectively fulfilled in that pursuit.

Realize your purpose

Whileunderstanding your values and needs helps provide an insight into your intrinsicmotivations, crystallizing the personal purpose gets you connected with yourdeepest inspiration. Clarity of purpose is the cornerstone for finding greatermeaning in your work.

It isgreatly useful to coherently articulate and actually write out a statement thatdescribes the purpose of your professional life. If you are unable to perceivea consistent purpose of your existing professional life, you can write astatement to describe the purpose of your future professional life. Ideally,this statement should be no longer than a sentence – that discipline will forceyou to sharpen the single-mindedness of your purpose.

Serve asocial need

A truecalling, besides fulfilling your purpose, invariably serves some contemporarysocial need as well. When we search deep within and connect with our true self,our inner voice invariably guides us towards a purpose that helps other peoplein some way too.

Examples ofthat connection between the purpose and satisfying a social need would includestatements like, ‘I want to invent apps that simplify people’s lives; I want tocoach people to be the best they can be; I want to write to inspire others; bea financial advisor to help families become financially independent; createmusic to help people connect with their emotions; and want to teach to make adifference to the youth’.

When youput it all together, such a calling is likely to bring forth those of yourunique talents that you most delight in being engaged in – the ones that youwere meant to bring to this planet and the ones that serve some meaningfulpurpose for the society. When you discover your calling and commit to pursuingit, work and life become less of an effort and more of a journey offulfillment!

The Grand Illusion!

2011-09-19T17:00:00.000+08:00

Photo by NeilsPhotography

One fishsaid to the other, “Do you believe in this ocean that they talk about?”

So goes anancient Chinese saying and I think it well illustrates how narrow our vision ofthe world and the universe can be. We see the world from our limited perceptualframework. Despite an overwhelming evolution of the human race, the human mindis severely restricted by what it can perceive through the senses.

What wehear is limited by the frequencies our ears can process – dogs can hear manyhigher frequencies and hence have a very different perception of the samesounds. Our sight is limited by the light frequencies our eyes can relate to;since pit vipers can sense heat from infrared rays (somewhat like the nightvision goggles), they must construct the same world rather differently.

Further,from our knowledge of science, we know so many things are just not what theyappear to be – the sky isn’t blue, only the scattering of the blue lightabsorbed by the atmosphere makes it appear so; the moon doesn’t rise in thenight; and the house we live in is not standstill, but rotates along with theearth. Essentially, we see, hear and process what we can and not what thereality is.

Besides thehuman handicap in picking up the absolute truth in the first place, ourperceptions are further clouded by our personal thoughts and emotions. As aBuddhist verse goes – “Is anything on earth universally and unanimouslyrecognized as beautiful? For a lover, a beautiful woman is an object of desire;for the hermit, a distraction; for the wolf, a good meal.”

What is thetruth then?

Theultimate truth is that everything in the universe is made up of energy. Allbeings- the plants, animals and all of humanity- are manifestations of the sameenergy. This vital spiritual force breathes life into every living being andsustains every cell and organism. This enormous field, of colorless andodorless energy, encompasses everything and every being – all of that existing,not disjointed, but in one continuum.

Whatappears solid is only so because of the frequency of wavelengths that oursenses are capable of perceiving. Our minds create a three-dimensional worldfrom this continuum of free flowing energy. Like the fish in the above saying,when we cannot see this continuum, we are limited to noticing the individualparts of the creation. As a result, the trees, animals, humans and all otherobjects seem disjointed from us. The reality is ‘I’, as an individual, do notexist – the sense of ‘I’ is merely a perception of our limited mind.

FromEinstein’s theory of relativity, we know that matter and energy areinterchangeable and are essentially one. When broken down to its barest form,all matter is the same energy. We can break a glass jar into pieces but eachpiece, however small, will still be glass. It’s similar to knowing that God isin each one of us, and we are part of the same whole. The knowledge of thisultimate truth can set us free.

Stayingconnected with this realization, we become better equipped to playing the rolesof our life- businessman, teacher, wife, father, friend and so on- withtremendous happiness and inner peace. This connection facilitates us to be likean actor who plays his role on stage with great sincerity but stays consciousthrough the entire drama that he is really not the character he’s playing – andthus not overly identify with the fortunes and misfortunes of his given role!

(I had recently written this article for The Speaking Tree column of the Times of India)

3 Steps To Highly Engaged Employees

2011-09-09T13:17:00.002+08:00

(Photo by Kai)

“The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.” ~ John Buchan

One of the top challenges that leaders face today is related to creating a highly engaged workforce. We all know that a highly engaged workforce not only helps nurture a happier work environment, but also means better business and leads to higher performance results. Moreover, it’s expensive to have disengaged staff - unengaged workers are estimated to cost their organizations billions of dollars annually.

What builds employee engagement?

Coaching style works

I had previously written a post (Leading through coaching) on this theme. Therein, I had tried to reason that when leaders employ a ‘coaching-style’ of leadership, it significantly supports the process of creating higher employee engagement. Coaching style focuses on self-directed learning, by relying on the other person’s self-awareness and their sense of self-responsibility.

It effectively helps employees feel autonomous (the employees drive the agenda of the discussions not the boss), learn and grow (through self-discovery rather than being directed), feel valued (coaching is a non-judgmental conversation, of equals), and empowered (by discovering their own solutions) – thereby helping them become highly engaged.

Another unique and supportive perspective

I recently came across a short video, by Dan Pink, which provides a unique, and yet a supportive, perspective to creating meaningful employee engagement. His video led me to his latest book, Drive, that’s revealing about what really motivates us.

He makes the point that money is not an effective motivator for people who are involved in jobs that require reasonable cognitive skills. In fact, he argues that the traditional carrot and stick approach has the risk of negatively impacting such employees’ ability to come up with most effective and creative solutions. Although, he agrees that money does matter in a limited way in that employers need to pay employees enough to take the issue of money off the table.

Instead, he highlights three specific elements that he believes make for deeper engagement for any individual, and specifically for employees. These are autonomy, mastery and purpose. While these are self-explanatory, here’s a brief summary of his thoughts.

Autonomy

He relates autonomy to facilitating employees towards self-directed learning and giving them space to do their jobs, learn and grow – as against the traditional approach of ‘managing’ them and their time. He provides evidence of 3M, Google, and Best Buy, among others, in how they create a work culture that supports this.

Google allows its employees to have one day out of the week (equivalent of twenty percent of their time) to work on projects and ideas of their choice. Even though these are not necessarily related to what the organization is working on then, activities of this day are a significant source of Google’s new offering in a typical year. Similarly, through its Results Only Work Environment (ROWE), Best Buy allows its employees to work wherever and however they choose; as long as they achieve specific agreed goals.

Self-directed work is satisfying and provides a sense of freedom for the employees. They are in a better control of their time and can attend to many more things in their life that they otherwise miss out on (for example, their child’s ballet performance). The increased flexibility on work timings also allows such employers to draw on a wider pool of talent, some of who may be otherwise lost to the conventional work setting.

Mastery

Mastery relates to humans’ need to challenge themselves, constantly improve and contribute. It doesn’t matter whether it’s at work or in their personal pursuits, people want to learn, grow and get better with time. This provides a sense of personal accomplishment and fulfillment.

Creating a work environment where employees are constantly learning and developing in their field supports their sense of mastery. Pursuit of mastery is one of the biggest sources of engagement for everyone, including employees. This gets employees totally absorbed in what they are doing and no wonder they then produce better results.

Purpose

Finally, he talks about the importance of purpose (something I have been writing about regularly). When employees can work towards a larger purpose, that the organization is aspiring towards, their motivation levels are higher than when money is the only motivation.

The sense of purpose connects them to something larger than themselves and provides higher meaning to their work and life. A strong purpose also provides an anchor during the vicissitudes of personal life and corporate fortunes.

The Video

Here’s the video, very creatively illustrated by Dan that beautifully captures the essence of his ideas. Hope you enjoy!

Endnote

The underlying premise for these three factors is that when individuals are given the space for being self-directed and are empowered enough to be guided by intrinsic motivation, they deliver better results in the longer-term. Further, when these factors are brought together, people are much better engaged and happier in their roles and are much less likely to move to another opportunity for monetary benefits alone.

Finally, the same principles of creating conditions, for autonomy, mastery and purpose to flourish, can also be applied in our lives to other aspects, like parenting and education.

To Create a New Reality, Start with Your Beliefs…

2011-08-08T15:13:00.018+08:00

“Ourlife is what our thoughts make it.” – Marcus Aurelius

Oneof the principles of the journey of personal mastery that I have been writingabout is self-responsibility: taking charge of ourselves and putting intopractice all the meaningful ideas that emerge from our efforts at raisingself-awareness. It is about making conscious choices that help us breakawayfrom our conditioned responses and instead create a new reality for us.

Self-responsibilityis grounded in the tenet that the real change lies within us and that the onlyway to change our world is to change ourselves. It demands that we areopen-minded about the capacity in each of us to discover- and implement- ourunique solutions to our personal dilemmas.

Itrelies on the conviction that all of us do have a choice in every situation –the notion that it’s not what happens to us, but how we react to it that makesthe real difference; the understanding that our inner thoughts have the powerto create the reality we want to experience; and that we are indeed theco-creators of the world we inhabit.

Changinghabits

Sincehumans are creatures of habit, real change is possible only by changing ourdeep-rooted habits.

Instead of trying to undo well-ingrained old habits, it ismore effective to introduce new positive ones. Working with new habits makesthe process of change far more positive and solution-oriented and is hence moreempowering. For example, instead of working on how not to get angry frequently,it’s more effective to focus on being calmer more often.

Thesehabit changes often operate at different layers of our personality. Startingfrom our behavior patterns, they encompass working with our thought processes,emotional responses and our fundamental beliefs. Practicing to stay calm in theface of a disturbing stimulus, becoming accustomed to actively appreciatingone’s colleagues or sticking to a diet plan are all examples of desiredbehavioral changes.

Evenso, at a deeper level, they involve altering our belief systems. For instance,in the above situations, nurturing a belief that whatever happens, happens forthe best, approaching work as an opportunity to leave a legacy, and building anew and loving relationship with one’s body and health, would be thecorresponding changes at the level of beliefs.

Habitsan outcome of our beliefs

Now,our specific behavior is dictated by our habits; our habits in turn emanatefrom our persistent thoughts patterns and emotional make-up; and our thoughtsand emotions are a result of our deeper beliefs. What this tells us is that forsustainable change to occur, we need to go deeper within and work with ourinner beliefs.

Changethen is not about fixing a behavior pattern but resolving the more fundamentalknots in our mental and emotional psyche. It is not about losing five kgs ofweight once (by somehow getting ourselves to aggressively exercise or diet),but becoming fit for life (by forming new and thoughtful beliefs about ourbody, food, fitness and health).

Letme illustrate how while responding to a given personal challenge, we end upworking at different levels of our personality. Here are a few real examples ofsome of the challenges that have come up during my coaching conversations and aglimpse of the possible ways in which clients landed up dealing with them atdifferent levels.

Particularly,let’s pay attention to the behavior change and the corresponding shift in thedeep-seated belief that they undertook.

Challenge	Goal	Behavior Change	Shift in the belief
Anger	Being calm	Think before responding, relaxed body language	Everything doesn’t need to be perfect, I don’t need to win every time
Not enough time	Being better organized	Finishing work in time, delegating better	Focusing primarily on a few but important priorities can be rewarding
Team effectiveness	Becoming an inspirational leader	Greater empowerment, quality reviews	Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care
Intimidating boss	Being assertive	Speaking up more often	I don’t have to always conform to be accepted; When I respect myself, others do so too
Feeling depressed	Being happy	Engaging in activities I enjoy	Happiness exists within; Be grateful for what I have than be anxious for what I don’t have
Always preoccupied	Enjoying the moment	Work on a fewer, key priorities	Being on a purposeful path is more important than the distance I travel; I am whole and complete as I am

Workingwith your beliefs

Everytime you choose to work with a behavior change, reflect on the underlyingbelief that makes you behave that way. Then explore what alternate beliefsmight be possible in that situation. Further, look for examples in your ownlife that demonstrate how that alternate belief may indeed be possible. Livingwith these alternate beliefs, reflecting on them and regularly remindingyourself about them, would support you in your journey of real change.

Recognizingthat, every time you feel unduly anxious or fearful, there is always anunderlying belief that is making you feel so provides the opportunity to experiencethe reality differently. In every such situation, it is relevant to askyourself what other belief could you adopt here that will help you be at peace.

Happypeople are so because of their beliefs that support that happiness. When youoperate from a belief of abundance, that there would always be enough for you,you feel content and generous; alternately, living with the belief that youhave to always compete to get enough leaves you feeling perpetually inadequate.Similarly, the belief that you are perfect the way you are is enormously moreempowering compared to believing that you are not smart enough which onlydeflates your self-confidence.

This preference for peace is not about escapingthe reality of a situation but about being responsible to pursue the paththat’s more meaningful, positive and helpful. By catching the wave of ourthoughts, and the underlying beliefs, we can initiate the course correctiontowards having positive thoughts and healthy beliefs. As we sustain thisapproach, our behavior is bound to reflect that shift – our level of optimism,strength, confidence, peace and happiness gets an inevitable lift!

So, what are you addicted to?

2011-06-01T15:19:00.011+08:00

(Photo by procsilas)

"People often expect different results from doing the same actions" – Alcoholics Anonymous

When we think about addiction, the first image that crosses our mind is that of someone addicted to alcohol, tobacco, gambling or drugs. However, addiction includes any form of fixation, obsession or habitual indulgence in an activity. So much so that when addicted, we cannot resist this indulgence despite being aware of its injurious impact. While in some cases this dependence on a substance or an activity is apparently physical, in most situations it’s essentially a psychological one.

Addiction starts with our initially flirting with the substance or the activity, mainly to enhance our mood at that moment or seek some momentary pleasure. However, with frequent flirtation, this indulgence becomes a habit – one that we find difficult to live without. All the same, overtime, once we get addicted, engaging in this fixation merely serves to make us feel normal.

Many more of us are addicted than we know

Addiction then includes any uncontrolled obsession that we have – for example, for food, sweets, watching television, work, shopping, buying latest gadgets, facebook, or loveless sex. It refers to any deeper emotional dependency that we develop to feel good. While some of these may be less harmful than the others, they all have a significant negative impact on us. Defined this way, I feel we all are perhaps guilty of multiple addictions.

Furthermore, while many of us escape the more visible addictions, we do get caught up with our own set of inner demons. Our recurring stream of thoughts and feelings about stuff- routinely getting anxious about situations, our persistent desire to control outcomes and the volatility of our temperament that we find challenging to moderate- are all examples of a compulsive behavior.

To my mind, all these are addictive patterns we live with, but are ignorant of, for the most part. These instinctive responses get so ingrained in our state of being that we find it difficult to shake them off our personality – they, like for an addict, start to define our ‘normal’ behavior.

As an illustration, here are some quick examples and symptoms of such prevalent addictions.

Anxiety

You are prone to readily getting worried about the slightest deviation from the expected in your life. Everything from your child arriving home late from school or your spouse traveling overseas to your appraisal meeting with your boss or your next big presentation is a source of panic for you. There’s always a reason to be fearful about something, that you convince yourself about, that can or will go wrong.

Perfection

You obsess about every action, behavior and situation that appears less than perfect for you; the mismatch of reality and your expectations bothers you no end; you suffer from the phrase, as one poet put it, "If I’m 98% perfect on anything I do, it’s the 2% I messed up I’ll remember when I’m through.”

Control

You believe that your actions alone impact your destiny and hence want to control the outcome of your efforts. You take yourself too seriously and are very uncomfortable accepting failure. You are naturally drawn to controlling others’ behavior too- be it your spouse, children or colleagues- and are easily angered by their lack of adherence to your expectations.

External approval

Your sense of identity is derived entirely from your perception of how others perceive you. You are very sensitive to others’ comments and easily get upset by the slightest criticism. You are willing to sacrifice your interests and happiness to receive their approval; you even rationalize it within yourself as a reflection of your being a very generous and caring person.

Action

You are a restless soul. Action beckons you relentlessly and being still even for a few moments is frustrating for you. You are constantly engaged in something or are making plans of one. Time is always finite for you and the underlying belief you work with is that ‘not doing something’ is a waste of time.

Power

You crave for powerful roles and are possessed by a strong desire to appear important and prevail upon others. You believe that position and power in the socio-economic context alone reflect your success in life. Those with limited visible status are losers in your eyes.

Criticism

You cannot but help constantly criticize something – your circumstances, your neighbors, your family, the Government and so on. You constantly judge yourself and others and are quick to notice people’s limitations rather than their positives. The world for you is always getting worse and there’s routinely someone to blame for it.

Self-improvement

You are forever striving to get better. You love self-help books and videos and any time spent away from devoting yourself towards conscious improvement is a waste of time for you. Setbacks are a particular personal challenge for you as you are quick to blame yourself for your actions and circumstances.

And this list goes on…

The impact

These and other such compulsive behaviors get chiseled into our psyche and impact our state of well-being at multiple levels. These distorted mental models create perceptions for us that are clearly removed from reality. As a result, we often find a gap between what we want and what we get, leading to unending frustration, emotional angst and trauma.

Our recurring inappropriate behavior undoubtedly has a negatively influence on how we interact with others and our relationships. Invariably, it impacts our physical health as well. Extreme cases of obsessive thoughts can even lead to paranoia, depression and other mental health issues.

What’s really happening in all these situations? We are so conditioned to these thoughts and beliefs that we don’t even realize how addicted we are to these patterns. We are instinctively drawn to these thoughts or behaviors and find it hard to stop ourselves. Further, there’s somewhere the belief that once we indulge in these thoughts or actions, things will go our way and we will be happier and peaceful.

The cause

However, the thought arises in our mind, we cannot take our minds off it, it grows uncontrolled and is eventually satisfied only by our succumbing to it’s desires. We impulsively get angry, eat too much, buy possessions and want to manipulate our circumstances to get ahead.

Underlying all these obsessive thoughts and behaviors is our sense of incompleteness. We see ourselves lacking in some way or another and are constantly striving to become complete by indulging in these behaviors. We convince ourselves that this way, we would be better loved or be happier or have better control of the outcomes of our actions. All false hopes!

Dealing with inner addictions

The only way to break this stalemate is by learning to be present in the moment. When we are present, we can consciously become aware of these excessive thoughts as soon as they arise and deal with them effectively. In the very moment, when the thought is born, if we are present with ourselves, we are in a position to acknowledge it and consciously choose to put it aside. We neither need to suppress them nor let them fester. We simply recognize that we have the thought and without judging it, in any way, let it go.

You can then pause before rushing to check your e-mails, before considering to distort the reality to suit your needs, before starting to be hard on yourself, before judging others, before acceding to every demand made on you while ignoring your own needs, and before criticizing someone.

The crucial steps of pausing and reflecting, while being present, open new possibilities in every moment. Every situation that warrants control also offers the possibility of acceptance; alongside blame, there’s the possibility of compassion; instead of criticism, there’s appreciation; instead of perfection, there’s wholesomeness; instead of looking outside for approval, there’s inner strength and self-belief; and instead of constant action, there’s the joy of simply being.

Needless to add, like with alcoholism or drug addition, rehabilitating ourselves from these inner demons takes a long time. Also, withdrawal symptoms and relapses are only normal. But with patiently committing to the path of living in the present, we can get there. As St. Francis de Sales said about undertaking such a journey, “What we need is a cup of understanding, a barrel of love, and an ocean of patience.”

OMG...kids these days!!!

2011-05-07T12:35:00.007+08:00

"Adolescence is a period of rapid changes. Between the ages of 12 and 17, for example, a parent ages as much as 20 years."

Are you too a parent struggling to cope with the stress of bringing up a teenager? Do you often catch yourself screaming, audibly or otherwise, what all is wrong with your children? “Why can’t my son remember to throw his laundry in the basket rather than leave it on the bathroom floor or put away his shoes in the shoe rack and not in the living room, despite daily reminders?” “How do I get my daughter to be more focused on her studies, she just doesn’t seem to care about her grades?” “Why are kids these days so irresponsible, when are they going to start putting some real effort towards achieving results?”

It is our nature to judge people. And as parents, we seem to appropriate a carte blanche to do so with our children – constantly evaluating what’s good about them and what not, what’s acceptable and what not? All their perceived shortcomings are then a source of disappointment and angst for us. To make matters worse, when our coaxing often does not yield desired changes, we feel frustrated and stressed.

I believe it is important to understand that it is not what happens to us that’s the real source of stress, it’s our thoughts attached to what happens to us. No sooner than we notice something about the kids that seems amiss, our hyperactive minds race ahead with thoughts of concerns – how his lack of responsibility towards organizing his life is a precursor of a distraught adulthood, how her limited zeal for excellence is bound to result in recurring under-performance, and how their inability to follow parents’ guidance spells doom for their capacity to deal with the real world. As these thoughts recur in our mind, they gain traction and solidify as definitive future scenarios. Needless to say, as committed parents, we see it as our responsibility to make amends to avoid such unacceptable outcomes. We naturally take it upon ourselves to use all the means at our disposal- suggesting, coaxing, preaching, emotional blackmailing, threatening- to change the ways of our children. Unfortunately, it’s not very often that we succeed. Disappointment, frustration, anger and blame follow.

It transpires that there is a way out of this stressful situation. Developing a clearer understanding of the reality, and graciously accepting it, paves the way for both, peace in our minds and potential for change in the children’s behavior. In all the above parental comments, there’s an underlying sense of an ideal scenario – a craving for what should be. In the same breath, there’s also a lack of acceptance of what is.

If only we were present in the moment and could check our stream of thoughts, we would be in a different place. By merely altering how we think about the situation, and not automatically start by resisting it, we could make the shift towards being more peaceful, happier and confident about our children. When we start to accept what is- a child who is not well organized, a son who appears uninterested in excelling, a daughter who seems to lack responsibility-, however hard it may initially be, we earnestly initiate the process of change. Simultaneously, acknowledging that it’s not the lack of responsibility on their part, but our mental stories- the anxious thoughts and feelings of fear, worry, and disappointment- that get us all wound up, we accelerate the shift. Choosing to let go of our attachment to specific outcomes brings us to a more comforting and peaceful spot.

In that regard, I recently found The Work, a technique developed by Katie Byron, to be rather useful. While her process is hugely relevant for any relationship situation, let me demonstrate it in the context of parenting. The Work revolves around asking the following four key questions against each of our stressful thoughts or comments about our children:

- Is it true?

- Can you absolutely know that it's true?

- How do you feel when you think that thought?

- Who would you be without the thought?

For instance, borrowing on her approach, let’s apply it to a typical parental comment like, “My teenage son never listens to me. In fact, he doesn’t care about me. He ought be more respectful of his mother.”

Are these statements true? When the mother steps back and inquires within, she recognizes that perhaps the son does listen to her and does care about her. However, when she keeps repeating the complaining thoughts, she convinces herself of those traits as being permanent in her son, thereby reducing any real chances of a meaningful dialogue. On the other hand, when she conducts herself from the belief that the son does care about her and yet accepts the reality that her son (at the end, only a teenager) does not sometimes listen to her, she feels more relaxed and has a more open communication with the son.

Further, let’s examine the deeper reality of the comment about how the son ought to be more respectful. How do we know the correctness of this expectation? Based on our perceptions and our worldview? Are those necessarily accurate indications of the reality? The only way to know the truth is to experience it - and her experience is that the son is not as respectful as she would like him to be. How does she feel when she stays stuck in her beliefs - stressed, frustrated and unhappy? Who would she be without her story? Only when she drops her own expectations, and becomes open to embracing the reality that her son is not very respectful and that it’s all right that way, she begins to find some comfort and peace. She may also find that perhaps she needs to more respectful to her son’s needs as well. Simultaneously, she may discover that in order to feel respected, rather than look to her children, she needs to respect herself first. From that space, her interactions with her son are likely to be more open, loving and compassionate.

The suggestion of greater acceptance of children’s behavior should not be confused with complacence or turning a blind eye to the situation. It’s really about refusing to live with our conditioned beliefs and working towards appreciating the reality; it’s about understanding our own demons and stopping to project them onto our children; it’s about unconditional acceptance of the uniqueness and preciousness of our children in their entirety and not driven by cherry picking the traits that better appeal to us; it’s about loving them fully, yet without attachment to our own agendas.

Furthermore, only when we conduct ourselves from that space, do we have a chance of inspiring any change in others. While people don’t mind change, they hate being changed. No wonder, despite our committed efforts, we see very little change in the children’s behavior. Our compassionate acceptance of their reality and our openness to both examine our own expectations and listen to theirs provide a real opportunity to nurture the relationship. The focus on love, candid communication, quality listening and belief in their individual potential create the foundation for any change to occur. Judging and generalizing their behavior does not facilitate change, providing specific feedback may. Remarks like, “If you had worked hard for your exam, perhaps you would have done better” are far more supportive of change than commenting, “You never work hard and hence you always do badly in your exams.”

Finally, children change and evolve not by what parents tell them but how parents live their lives. Rather than preach to them, we need to be the role models that they are inspired by. As novelist, James Arthur Baldwin, writes, “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”

In that context, as parents, if we want to be happier and have more of a stress-free home environment, the onus is on us. As we change our thoughts, the world around us does change. It’s perhaps not the kids these days…but the parents!!!

Are You Following Your Calling?

2011-03-18T14:02:00.006+08:00

(Photo by Tom)

I have written in previous posts about the issue of a growing lack of meaning in our life. Specifically, I would like to highlight in this post the role our choice of work and professional pursuits play in contributing to the level of fulfillment we experience in life.

How do we choose our profession? We decide it based on whatever offers the best mix of career prospects, financial rewards, status, security and challenge in the overall context of our skills. Why are so many people not that happy with their work then?

A variety of research reveals the lurking sense of dissatisfaction among a large proportion of the employee workforce. A leading indicator of this is the level of employee engagement in the workplace. Towers Perrin, a leading employee research and consulting firm, found only 17% of 35,000 employees surveyed as ‘highly engaged’; studying over 20,000 diverse employees, Harris Interactive concluded that only 37% of the employees had a clear understanding of what their organization was trying to achieve and why and only one in five was enthusiastic about their team’s and organization’s goals.

While the leaders of the organizations have a role to play in correcting this dismal situation, through greater empowerment, creating opportunities for greater learning and growth, better matching employees’ skills and jobs, and employing a more of a coaching style to leadership, this state is a reflection of the prevailing confusion at the individual employee level. Either we are in a job that doesn’t match our skills or we are pursuing it for the wrong reasons. Lacking clarity about the core purpose of our professional life, we are easily swayed by what seems like a popular ladder to climb. For example, with disregard to their real interest or aptitude, we have hordes of MBAs chasing investment banking or consulting jobs. Looking out for quick success, individuals are then disappointed at any pace of personal growth that’s slower than expectation.

Besides, attuned to constant comparison, we are quick to feel dissatisfied when our progress appears undermined by someone else’ faster advancement. Focused on financial rewards, we find the compensation we had earlier aspired for no longer enough to meet our fast growing aspirations. Alternately, we come to recognize the emptiness of single-mindedly chasing financial rewards. Further, for reasons of their personal emotional make-up, many employees search for perfection in their work, boss and rewards, and are easily dissatisfied at the mix the job offers. Clearly, their engagement levels suffer. In addition, for many, there’s a strong correlation between work and life – in fact, work indeed is their life, and their sense of identity is drawn purely from the work they do. With such a strong identification, any ups and downs at work have an immediate impact on their emotional and mental well-being, and consequently on their state of happiness.

Several of my clients also feel conflicted between their deepest values and what they get accustomed to revering at work. Over time, they observe that their actions and behavior are not necessarily in alignment with their core personal values and that’s the underlying source of discontentment for them.

With lack of clarity of purpose, it is not surprising that people hit some kind of a dead end at some stage in their careers, when their achievements thus far fail to provide a greater meaning in life and they start to experience a sense of incompleteness. Occurring commonly in people’s forties, it is sometimes referred to as the ‘mid-life crisis’. We are then keen to search for the work that will fulfill that void.

While reflecting on your professional life, the key issue you need to address for yourself is what are you really after – is it a job, a career or your calling? A detailed study of attitudes and general orientation towards work, done in 1997 by Dr. Amy Wrzesniewski, a professor of business at the New York University, showed workers broadly divided into three groups – those who saw their work as a job, those as a career, and finally those as their calling.

The people in the first group are in employment because they really need the money to run their household. While the socio-cultural aspects of the work place can have a positive influence, the monthly paycheck is of paramount importance to them. They would perhaps be willing to consider moving to another organization for a higher salary. The second group is focused on building a career – they are driven more by the position, career growth, opportunity for recognition, and the prestige of their roles. While they tend to have a longer-term perspective towards their work, they can easily get demotivated when their string of promotions begin to slow down or stop. Finally, there are a small percentage of people, who are engaged in what is their true calling. They have a deeper connection with their profession, are inspired by their purpose, and then every day, work is like play for them.

In that background, it’s critical to explore whether you are pursuing a job, a career, or your true calling? Do you want that investment banking job because of its lucrative prospects or because you find true meaning in your work? Are you engaged in your current business because of the social change it brings about or the money and the status? We are so consumed by our whirlwind of activity that we don’t even have the time to stop and reflect on these issues. While we are preoccupied with climbing the corporate ladder, rarely do we pause and wonder if our ladder is leaning against the right wall in the first place. Some of us do end up creating the time and space to discover these answers but then hesitate to follow them through for varied reasons – fear of stepping out of comfort zone or perception of low potential rewards or other apprehensions. Deliberating on these thoughts can help us guide towards our true purpose and calling.

As Woodrow Wilson remarked, “We are not here to merely earn a living and to create value for our shareholders. We are here to enrich the world and make it a finer place to live. We will impoverish ourselves if we fail to do so.”

I believe each one is uniquely gifted and has a special purpose on earth. Such a calling is likely to bring forth those of your unique talents that you most delight in being engaged in – the ones that you were meant to bring to this planet and the ones that serve some meaningful purpose for the society. In a way, the true calling optimally integrates your responses to the following three questions:

- What do you love doing the most?

- What are you really good at?

- What social need would such a pursuit serve?

The Buddha preached an eightfold noble path as means for one’s awakening. Among Right speech, Right effort, Right action, Right mindfulness, Right concentration, Right understanding and Right view, he also recommended Right livelihood. Finding one’s calling, and engaging in the work associated with that, takes us a step closer to what the Buddha referred to in Right livelihood.

As we determine our calling and make a conscious choice to follow it, we take a leap towards creating a happier and fulfilling life!

Q & As – Part III

2011-03-05T11:41:00.005+08:00

Here’s the third piece of the three-part series.

Q. I have all the traits an individual needs to be successful in life. But there's one thing that holds me back - self doubt. I believe that there's a lot I can achieve but I’m unable to deliver despite my potential. Can you guide me?

A. We are the co-creators of our reality. See how you can amplify that inner voice that talks to you about your real potential. At our deepest core, we are connected with the universal consciousness and our attention and intentions play an important role in the experiences we have. Regularly visualizing the desired personal future - in vivid detail - can help send signals to the universe to create it. Strong positive emotions further strengthen the signal. This exercise not only gives us inner confidence, but coupled with letting go and faith, it also allows the universe to support our journey.

Q. My elder son lives far away with his family and is not in contact with us. Is this because of our karma? And is there any way we can remedy this situation?

A. We often experience situations needed for our spiritual growth. While it’s natural to want our closest family members to understand our reasonable expectations, these special relationships also present a unique opportunity to grow — by practicing unconditional love (loving our children without any expectation of return), acceptance (learning to accept reality as it is, without judging it as good or bad) and detachment (not from our relationships but from the ongoing suffering emanating from them, by learning to let go). As the prayer says, “May I have the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Q. I am 32 and live with my husband and two children. I work in an office and do the housework too. The end of the day finds me lonely and in tears. I feel that there is no one to share my feelings with. My children are small and my husband is busy with work. Sometimes, I feel really depressed. I am in a deadlock. Please help.

A. Many of us are uncomfortable with sharing our feelings openly. But suppressing our feelings, does not make them go away – they linger, accumulate and show up in multiple ways, including sadness or anger. First, we need to recognize that each of us is worthy of true love. Then, we need to get comfortable with the idea of expressing our needs and true emotions. Initially takes courage, but pursuing it responsibly can slowly create the conditions for our needs to be met.

Q. I am 16 and completed my Class X this year. Now, I have started feeling sad because I am losing my friends. I can’t sleep at night. I feel lonely. What can I do to be happy?

A. It is understandable that you feel sad and anxious about losing friends. But, change and movement are the only constants in life – the fact that day follows night, and that spring and autumn are both equally meaningful, makes life more joyful and complete. As we align to this law of nature, and learn to integrate all our experiences, we renew ourselves and grow. Holding on to any state or resisting change leads to inner turmoil. See how you can assimilate your friendships into your life – perhaps by continuing to nurture your current friendships and simultaneously being open to starting wonderful new ones.

Q. If our lives are governed by destiny, everything we get or whatever we do is controlled by a higher power and we are mere puppets in the hands of the Almighty. Why then should we work hard?

A. Destiny is nothing but life unfolding in line with the laws of nature. Sometimes, we are unable to comprehend those laws and feel disappointed with the results of our efforts. These laws suggest that we do have a significant role to play in creating our own reality. It’s not what we do, but how we do it that determines the future of our inner being. When we align our actions with the laws of nature by being less egotistical (not seeing things only from our selfish perspective); being non-judgmental (learning not to evaluate the results as good or bad), and letting go (trusting nature to support our efforts), we create a happier inner state irrespective of destiny.

Q. I am 21 and have been married two years. We married for love. I feel physically inferior to my husband and that’s why I suspect he is having an extramarital affair. How do I rid myself of such feelings?

A. Our closest relationships are a powerful mirror to show us the emotional challenges we need to work on. It’s not uncommon for us first to worry about getting a prized possession and then fretting about losing it. As long as we remain externally directed, we continue to be overwhelmed by emotions of fear, anxiety, and inadequacy. Real self-confidence and security come from inside – based on our strength of character and the depth of our love. As Khalil Gibran said, “Beauty is not in the face; it’s a light in the heart.” Inner beauty built on these principles can be stronger than outer appearance.

Q. I often get a headache after a long meditation session. Why does this happen?

A. Meditation offers a powerful pathway to our inner being and can facilitate a deeper understanding of the true nature of things and ourselves. However, it’s possible that the journey to the inner core may bring other layers of dormant unresolved thoughts and emotions to the fore. This causes temporary discomfort. Meditation is a way of letting go. But, stress and headaches can come about if we stay attached to our thoughts. Acknowledging whatever thoughts and feelings come to the surface, and gently putting them aside without judging them, can be helpful. Also, some experts suggest shifting the focus and source of meditation from the head (rational thinking mind) to the heart (intuition).

These answers are based on the principle that the solutions to many of our problems lie within ourselves and it is important to raise our levels of self-awareness before we can make positive changes in our lives. This interaction is not a substitute for personal coaching, counseling or therapy.

Q & As – Part II

2011-02-14T11:54:00.004+08:00

Here’s the second of the three-part series.

Q. Why do we hurt people unintentionally? And why does the other person get angry despite knowing it was not deliberate?

A. It’s our ego. The ego drives us to act towards enhancing our relative status, of being right or in control, in every interaction. In this self-centered mode, we sometimes make comments that can hurt others. Ego also makes us take others’ comments personally, potentially leading to anger. Moreover, we carry several unresolved emotions from our childhood and past experiences that can quickly resurface with small triggers, causing anger – it’s like walking around with an open wound, we are exposed to even a pinprick. By becoming more aware of our ego and emotions, we can learn to put them aside and reduce their hold on us.

Q. I am 25 and have a good job and wealthy family. But everything seems utterly futile. It’s been a long time since I lost interest in and enthusiasm for life. I started to meditate 10 years ago but that didn’t help. Please suggest a practical way to find my real potential and achieve inner peace in my journey through life.

A. As Lao Tse said, “He who knows others is learned; he who knows himself is wise.” The search for greater meaning in our lives must begin with the inner journey of raising self-awareness. You may want to think about what you value most in life — success, money, love, recognition, family or community — and reflect on how well your life is aligned to those values. You could then put it together to describe what you want the core purpose of your life to be. Committing your life to that purpose may begin to provide a clearer pathway towards realizing your potential.

Q. I am a 20-year-old student of mass communication. I have everything one needs to live a happy life but I still feel deprived. I was in love but we parted more than a year ago. I have even got addicted to alcohol. Am I spoiling my life? And why am I doing this to myself? Can you help?

A. Appreciate your reaching out. Often, it’s the lack of unconditional love during our formative years that results in our growing up feeling inadequate and incomplete. We then tend to seek that completeness externally – in money, success, recognition, relationships. With any setback in these outwardly pursuits, we become more anxious and in some cases, can fall prey to addictions. But if we choose to look within, we begin to realize that we, ourselves, are the greatest source of love in this world. Connecting to that inner source makes us feel complete – actively spreading love within our family and community can facilitate that process.

Q. Am I having a bad time because I have bad karma? Do I deserve my lot? If so, is there any point in asking God to help overcome the obstacles I face? I am depressed about a friendship, which didn’t grow beyond a certain point even though I had been selfless. It’s been a year since we parted, but I still feel the pain.

A. I understand that going through a troubled phase is hard for us. And in such a case, it’s not unusual for us to blame ourselves and our actions for our current state. Irrespective of its cause, how can you embrace this suffering and grow stronger from it? As Epictetus said, “It's not what happens to you, but how you respond to it that matters.” If we remain mindful, such situations present us with an opportunity to grow – by connecting with our deeper tender self, growing compassion, learning to forgive ourselves and others, letting go of the past and enjoying the present. Whatever supports us in this practice, including prayer, is helpful.

Q. I often get a headache after a long meditation session. Why does this happen?

Q. Why do holy texts say the ultimate goal is breaking the cycle of reincarnation? I understand that with bad karma, reincarnation is possible as another, less able creature. But with good karma, should we not expect that a human being would be reincarnated as a better human being? Why is it necessary for him to complete the whole cycle of different births?

A. Good karma is preferable as it creates a more harmonious inner state for us. However, as long as we identify with our separate ego and the duality of good and bad, we continue to create karma. Per the scriptures, this also results in the continued perception of rebirth, which is nothing but an appearance of different physical manifestations of the universal consciousness. Only those who can realize their true nature of pure consciousness and completely stop identifying with their individual identity, understandably experience merging with the divine — thereby breaking the cycle.

Q & A Series – Part I

2011-01-08T22:25:00.010+08:00

Greetings for the New Year!

It’s been a while since I posted something on this blog. I have certainly been missing the rhythm of the blog and have been touched by the number of people who have reminded me and encouraged me to get back to it soon. I have just been busy with some other writing engagement and am now looking forward to reviving the regular posts.

Sometime back, I had started doing a column for a leading Indian newspaper, where I used to respond to reader’s queries around different life issues. I am planning to reproduce some of those question-answers here, through a short series of three blog posts. I have removed the names of the querying individuals in these posts. I have also included, at the end of the post, the disclaimer that usually appeared at the end of these responses.

Here’s the first of the three-part series.

Q. If the philosophy of Karma is true, then is it right for me to pray to God and ask Him to rid me of my miseries? If my sufferings are a result of my deeds, then do I have the right to pray for my sorrows to be alleviated? I’ve been struggling with this question for quite some time.

A. Rather than seeing Karma as fatalistic destiny, there’s an alternate way of looking at it. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction and this principle applies to our thoughts, emotions, and actions as well. Every intention of ours leaves a corresponding lasting impression in our psyche, creating Karma – which, in turn, gets activated in our thoughts and actions, thereby continuing the Karmic cycle. However, the choices we make today can alter this cycle and shape what happens to our inner selves in the future. Spreading love makes us feel loved inside; choosing to grow from suffering gives us new strength.

Q. When someone close to me feels hurt or needs emotional support, I try to heal them. But when the same happens to me, I feel there’s no one to soothe me. What should I do when I feel hurt?

A. We all want to be loved. As we grow up, we form varying beliefs of the best ways to receive love – beliefs such as ‘when I love and take care of others, I will be better loved’ and that ‘others will automatically understand and reciprocate’. Fearful of being judged, some of us also feel vulnerable about seeking help. We need to become as open to receiving love as we are to giving. Other people may not always be aware of our state of mind. Choosing to honestly share our feelings and needs with them, and then being comfortable about receiving care and affection, can serve us well. Increasing our ability to love without expectation increases the flow of love in our life and reduces our likelihood of getting hurt by others.

Q. I believe that every human being is the mirror image of God and the lives of each of us has a purpose assigned by God. I’ve long been trying to figure out what’s the purpose of my being on earth. Is it just talking, eating, working, listening to people and fighting with them? How do I align my purpose in life with the one God surely sent me here for?

A. I appreciate your searching for true purpose in life. As you embark on this personal journey, you may find that amidst all the roles we play, our deeper purpose revolves around undertaking the inner journey of self-realization – building a deeper understanding of who we essentially are; conquering our fears and anxieties; experiencing love and compassion in all our dealings; learning to be present in the moment, and eventually transcending ourselves. This is what provides us with higher meaning and guides our conduct in whatever we do – at work or in relationships.

Q. I am a 36-year-old qualified doctor. I have been in medical journalism for eight years. But now, I want to get back to practicing medicine. My problem is that I feel bogged down by my age. All my friends are way ahead in their careers. I am constantly engaged in analysis-paralysis about my age. What if I can't make it now? Can my medical career take shape at this age? Will I be able to support my family? Please suggest a way out of this mental mayhem

A. It’s natural to feel nervous about embarking on an uncharted path. You may want to reflect on your deeper motivation. Do you want to restart your practice to serve society, grow financially, gain social recognition or find happiness? Aligning our pursuits to a greater purpose can help dilute fears and boost inner confidence. Additionally, if we pay attention to something it grows in our life. As Lao Tzu said: “Water your dreams with worry and fear and you will produce weeds. Water them with optimism and solutions and you’ll cultivate success.”

Q. I married two years ago and separated from my husband because he doesn’t have a good character. We have a child. I feel devastated and am not able to understand why this has happened to me.

A. This must be hard for you and I can understand your feeling like a victim of circumstances. Acceptance can be a powerful tool to help us through such situations – acceptance of the current reality, and the fact that you are in no way diminished by this painful experience; understanding that irrespective of outer conditions, your true inner self is complete, whole and perfect and nothing can alter that. By regularly affirming this truth to yourself, you may discover that this suffering can become an opportunity for personal growth. Simultaneously, it’s alright to experience emotions such as isolation, anger and loss, on the path to acceptance and peace

Q. I am an MBA student and have been in touch with spiritual gurus and organizations for a decade. For the last four years, I have been feeling the urge to become a sanyasi, but I realize that I am not fully prepared for vairagya (detachment). However, I do find this world useless. How can I relate to it?

A. I acknowledge you for searching for some deep answers about life. Our ability to relate to the world begins with our ability to relate to ourselves. This involves diving deeper into our inner being to better understand our true identity – who we are, and how at the very core, we are interconnected with every other being as well as with the universe. To me, sanyas does not necessarily mean renouncing worldly activity, relationships or society; it means renouncing suffering or rather the causes of suffering - our ego, and ignorance about our true self. Irrespective of our environment - an ashram or home - committing to this spiritual practice can help lead a meaningful life.

Did You Love Enough?

2010-03-23T15:29:00.006+08:00

The last couple of months have been a real trying time for my family and me. However, they have also been a source of receiving a wonderful lesson in life. During these weeks, I lost my mum-in-law, who I dearly loved. As she received treatment in Singapore, she spent the last five weeks of her life with us. The initial shock of her sudden diagnosis of a lethal cancer, and later, losing her within weeks of diagnosis, despite our best efforts to get her treated, have left my wife, her family and me distraught. Strangely enough, despite the emotional turmoil, there’s been a certain amount of peace and strength within all of us. As we reconcile to this irreparable loss, we have been reflecting on the entire crisis and searching for the lessons it offered us. While there are many lessons to be learnt from this experience, I would like to share what I felt was the most important one for me.

As her serious illness engulfed our lives, numerous questions flooded our minds. Besides wondering about why after leading such a loving and meaningful life, she has to experience this early and difficult end, what disturbed us most was the coming face to face with the meaning of life and questions around what remains of a person and their life’s actions in the end. The consistent answer we received was what sustains life, and what sustains after life, is purely love. Despite the challenges of the situation, somehow we were all quite calm, positive and strong all through. Besides our meditation practice, I believe it was really the strength of our love that gave us this special strength during this troubled time. The tender moments all of us had the privilege to spend with her in her last days were truly special. It was the depth of our love that held the family together and made those short five weeks so precious. It is also the anchor of love and compassion that is now slowly beginning to provide the support needed for the grieving family to deal with this void.

As I continue to ponder over the amazing power of love, I am becoming more and more convinced of its ability to melt away all other blocks in our mind and body. The shift that I had been steadily experiencing, over the past couple of years, from carrying the intellectual understanding about love in my head to experiencing it more fully in my heart definitely got accelerated during this time. I have come to believe that love indeed has the strength to dissolve all emotional wounds and differences. It is perhaps also the only thing that lasts beyond space and time. As Emily Dickinson, the 19th century American poet, wrote, "Love is anterior to Life, posterior to death; initial of creation, and the exponent of Earth." Love brings us together; love leads to our birth; love nurtures us; love provides us the force for growth, love sustains our existence, and love is the legacy that eventually remains. However, how easily we can forget or ignore to pay attention to love in our daily life. How limiting our thoughts and actions can sometimes be? We fail to recognize that it doesn’t matter what we do, but it is the motivation behind it that makes the difference. When done with love and kindness, even a small task can spread happiness and joy around us. On the other hand, even a large project done with egotistical objectives may not be of great service. Love and compassion have the potency to be the guiding force behind all our actions and interactions – at work, they determine how we treat our colleagues and customers; in our careers, they can be the motivation that differentiates what we choose to pursue and so on. Love contributes to furthering the cause of the universe and thereby, gives our actions greater meaning.

Similarly, love is undoubtedly the single biggest nurturing force in relationships. While we intellectually know this, how much attention do we pay to this in how we conduct ourselves even in our closest relationships? Every so often, we get caught up with our conditioned responses of ego, fears, insecurities, attachment and anxiety and get swept by these emotions away from our ability to love. Instead, they make us feel separate and isolated. In the process, the love inside us gets conveniently buried under the weight of these limiting thoughts and emotions. For example, anger at a child is a result of the deep rooted love of the parent, only that in those moments, it is heavily clouded by other fears and insecurities. When we consciously focus on giving and spreading love as well as become open to receiving it, we feel totally interconnected, complete and whole. We then feel empowered, strong and peaceful. Marriage, partnerships, and parenting offer the greatest opportunity to practice such unconditional love. As we begin to experience love in our closest relationships, our gratitude automatically leads us to be kinder in all our interactions. The compassion inside us then starts to flow outwards – towards our friends, community and the broader humanity. In this process, the circle of love continues to grow. The hundreds of people who attended her death ceremony was a testimony to the number of lives my mum-in-law touched in her short life. As Alfred Tennyson aptly wrote, “I hold it true, whate'er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; 'Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all.”

All of us yearn to be loved – it is one of our deepest motivations; receiving unconditional love makes us feel complete. As Mother Teresa said, “There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.” To be able to love someone unconditionally and to be able to openly receive their deepest love can be one of the greatest and most energizing emotions of a human experience. In this process, we continue to journey into our own inner self and connect with our true nature – one that is full of love and happiness. Our ability to love others is often limited by our love for ourselves. As we connect with our deepest core, we start to notice the reservoir of love inside us that’s just been waiting to express itself. Like the soul is never lost, so is our true nature of love. Recognizing this is liberating – which in turn, facilitates our spreading love around us and thereby, the virtuous cycle of love grows in and around us. Love can then give us the courage to wrestle with and overcome the limitations in our life. When we experience deep love, we not only feel strengthened in the present but also in the past and the future – it makes us feel confident of the future and complete with our past..

Coming face to face with death of a loved one, you recognize that the only moment to love is now. The only time to express our love and the only occasion to make someone feel special is in the present. Finality of mortality is not something we generally consciously think about while going about our daily business. However, when the relevance of all our other attachments seem to wane, the most haunting question on the death bed can be – did you love enough? This is a question that crosses the mind of not only the dying; but also their loved ones. Did they use all the time they had with the person to express their love? This is a question that we all have the opportunity of an entire lifetime to prepare an answer for – a response that can well make the difference between feeling complete with life or otherwise. For people we fear losing the most, they say, love them so much now that you don’t have to miss them when they are gone. All this requires being more aware in the present moment; being conscious of our inner thoughts, beliefs and emotions; paying attention to, and choosing to affirm, our loving, kind and compassionate intentions in each moment. The Sufi poet, Rumi captures the essence of this effort well while writing, “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

Climate Change, Ways Forward and the Journey of Personal Change

2009-11-16T11:23:00.004+08:00

Mark Twain might as well have been talking about climate change when he famously remarked, "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody ever does anything about it.”

Climate change is for real and its alarming impact has been evident all around us. The proportion of hurricanes reaching categories 4 or 5 worldwide has risen from 20% in the 1970s to 35% in the 1990s; the increased frequency of extreme local weather like the 2003 heat wave across Europe that killed over 30,000 people; the receding glaciers (according to the UN, Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035 possibly impacting over two billion people); the increasing deterioration of ecosystem and the ensuing diseases with newer mutants of viruses; and the disappearing bee colonies, impacting agricultural produce in many developed countries, are all examples of this change. It is even leading to social strife in parts of the world - the reduction in rainfall in Darfur has turned millions of hectares of already marginal land into desert, leading to one of the largest social conflicts. As we look into the future, the dangers of increased hurricane activity in Central America and Southern US, the risks of places like Maldives, Bangladesh and Cairo being exposed to higher sea levels, the challenges of large scale social migration, and spread of new and unknown diseases worldwide are ominous.

While there’s a significant debate (although often more political than scientific) about whether humans are causing this climate change or if it is merely the result of a broader planetary cycle of change, the scientific community unequivocally suggests that humans are contributing to it. As we know, one of the biggest causes of climate change is the rising level of carbon emissions, brought about by burning of fossil fuels, like oil and coal, by cars, planes, homes, factories, and power plants. On average in the US, a passenger car emits over 5 tons of CO2 every year and a home emits 4 tons of CO2 per person each year. The Ecological Footprint Network has estimated that humanity’s burden on the planet now exceeds its carrying capacity – we use 1.3 planets to provide the resources we use. Moderate UN scenarios suggest that at the current trend of population growth and consumption, by the mid 2030s, we will need the equivalent of two Earths to support us. Research on global consumption levels done by Professor Jared Diamond of UCLA highlights that as developing countries, led by China and India, aspire to match the consumption levels and lifestyle of the developed nations, the world is likely to face a major resource crunch – for food, oil, metals, water and so forth. India and China together catching up would triple the global consumption rates. Further, the lifestyles of the wealthy and city folk account for majority of this global footprint – the wealthy 25% of the world’s population has a footprint equivalent to the Earth’s entire sustainable productive capacity.

It is also quite evident that this is not an issue we can hope to sort itself out with time. Despite the uncertainties of various projections, the risk of not doing something effective are way too high and can be devastating. Now, the solutions to this challenge include the roles of the Government, business as well as individuals. Governments around the world can contribute in multiple ways – by according high priority to sustainability in all their policies, raising awareness about climate change, introducing suitable tax breaks for businesses to embrace green technologies, actively promoting setting up of effective carbon pricing and trading exchanges as well as earmarking a meaningful budget towards research and development of non carbon emitting technologies. Businesses have a significant role to play in reducing and potentially reversing the damages of climate change. Organizations can begin by reviewing, reducing, and potentially capping, their direct and indirect carbon emission linked with their entire operation – the technologies they use, the location and type of raw materials they source, the extent of fossil fuel energy they consume through electricity and airplane transportation and so forth. Globally, buildings alone contribute to as much as a third of all greenhouse emissions – employing suitable temperature regulating technologies can not only reduce the level of emissions, but also save money for businesses. Similarly, restricting air travel to only the most critical meetings can greatly help reduce carbon emissions – not only does it take ten tons of ordinary fuel to produce one ton of Jet fuel, but it also happens to burn much higher in the Earth’s atmosphere, making it a deadly proposition. At a deeper level though, it’s the organizations’ resolve to incorporating social and environmental goals in every aspect of their business conduct that can have a real longer-lasting impact. Coined by John Elkington and ratified by the UN, the proposition to expand the role of organizations from merely delivering profits to being responsible for the triple bottom line (profits, people and planet) is a significant step in the right direction.

Finally, there’s an awful lot that each of the global citizens can do. From driving less and using alternate means of transportation to driving more fuel efficient cars; from buying energy saving light bulbs to choosing goods made from environment-friendly technologies; from eating more organic foods to turning vegetarian; from consuming less to buying goods produced in the neighboring communities; from cutting less trees to planting more and so forth. To my mind, while all the three segments- Government, businesses, and individuals- have meaningful contributions to make towards helping save this planet, in the longer-term, the greatest power and responsibility of change perhaps lies with the individuals. When individuals begin to make appropriate choices, the policy makers and the businesses will willingly follow that lead. Left alone, the Government may have to juggle multiple political compulsions – despite a broad global agreement to reduce carbon emissions by 60% in 1990, the emissions actually grew by 15% by 2001. Similarly businesses, driven by overly capitalistic objectives, maybe tempted to rewarding primarily the financial shareholders. Based on new choices that consumers begin to make, businesses may find going green not only environment friendly, but also better business.

Furthermore, at its very root, climate change is essentially a symptom of the deteriorating relationship individuals have with their environment, the planet, and the universe. It appears that since the industrial revolution, we have been paying disproportionate attention to scientific and technological advancement and much less to the development of our inner selves – resulting possibly in the current ecological imbalances. Recognizing this requires a fundamental mindset shift – entails paying attention to understanding our true identity and our interconnectedness with all beings and with nature. As the authors of Natural Capitalism highlight, “While it is unwise to believe in any one environmental projection of the future, it is important to bear in mind that nature bats last and owns the stadium.” Only when we commit to growing our self-awareness and building clarity of our personal purpose (one that encapsulates our social and environmental linkages), can we learn to live in harmony with nature and make real and sustainable progress to tackle climate change.

This journey has to begin with each of us – hopefully then spreading to our families, communities and the broader society. Top-down decisions, devoid of this sense of purpose and inner conviction, can have limitations of not being holistic. For example, encouragement of bio-fuels as replacement for fossil fuels has already led to greater global deforestation to plant corn, sugarcane and palm oil – resulting in both fresh emissions as well as higher food costs. When we make a commitment to the journey of personal change, it begins to reflect in each of our thoughts, beliefs and actions. As we relate to plants and earth as living beings, we acknowledge that single-minded pursuit of profit and growth, like cancer, is dangerous for the survival of the whole and are naturally drawn to sustaining a healthy co-existence. Also, learning to live with greater mindfulness, we then take decisions out of conscious choice rather than out of a sense of sacrifice and compulsion. Finally, public sector and private enterprise leadership is nothing but a collection of individuals – when they personally commit to this journey, the Government and business decisions too automatically sing in greater ‘natural’ harmony.

Meditation III: Joy of Mindfulness

2009-10-22T11:50:00.000+08:00

In continuation of my last two posts on meditation, here’s the final one focused on mindfulness. Mindfulness meditations relate to the practice of being present and becoming aware of true nature of things – our own real identity and that of the world around us. While there are any number of specific approaches connected with mindfulness, they can largely be categorized as Concentration meditation and Mindfulness meditation.

The Concentration meditation techniques require focusing single-mindedly on an object, a mantra, or often the breath. Concentrating in this way stills the mind and sharpens its focus, facilitating a deeper clarity and fresh awareness to emerge. Further, staying close with the rhythmic nature of the breathing process has a calming effect on the mind. Breath is always in the present, we are only breathing the current breath never the last or the next one. Thus, focusing our attention on the breath helps us be in the present, without getting caught up in the drama of the past or the future. This not only relaxes our body and mind, it also creates space for new awareness to appear. As we recognize the depth and potential of the present moment, the empowering nature of that feeling enhances our inner strength. Breath is also the connection between our body, mind and the universe and observing it provides us new insights into the connection between our mental and physical states. The moment to moment profile of the breath can be a great reflection of our shifting mental states – when we are angry, anxious, or agitated, the breath becomes quicker, shallower and inconsistent; when we are calm and relaxed, the breath becomes slower, deeper and more consistent. Observing the breath thus automatically brings us in closer touch with our inner states of mind. Lastly, practicing this technique over time can significantly raise the level of our concentration in any given moment, resulting in greater focus and productivity in whatever we maybe engaged in.

Mindfulness meditation is directed towards becoming more aware of our true identity. It is about nurturing an ability to being a witness to whatever comes up – leading to a state of great acceptance, insight and equanimity. The practice requires sitting down in a quiet place and observing our thoughts, feelings or sensations. The key is to observe the thoughts (or feelings or sensations) without judging them or getting attached to them. Observing the thoughts is focused less on the thoughts and more on the thinking process; it’s about witnessing their ephemeral nature and examining how they incessantly arise and pass away. Observing our thoughts in a detached way, like an independent scientist doing research on them, makes us realize that the thoughts and feelings are nothing but passing packets of energy that don’t have any power to grow unless we pay attention to them. This cultivates a unique non-reactive state within us and sustaining that through a larger part of the day can lead to our identifying much less with each of our thoughts – whether of fear and worry or of greed and craving. This does not mean we become devoid of emotions or feelings; instead, we become better equipped to feel the entire spectrum of emotions but with a new awareness of not necessarily favoring one over the other. Such mindfulness makes us feel more abundant, whole, calm and joyful. It also brings us closer to the realization of our true identity of pure awareness, which merely observes and reflects all experiences with an honest mirror-like neutrality. Advancing in this practice helps shine further light on true nature of things by assisting the recognition that there is no independent me, only an ever evolving awareness.

Buddhist meditation practice of Vipassana takes this understanding a level deeper. Here the focus is on observing the sensations. Based on Buddha’s experiences, the teaching suggests how the deepest source of our motivations is not the thoughts and feelings, but the sensations, and how observing them, without identifying with them, can slowly bring us out of the human suffering. It stresses that as our senses interact with the environment, they produce several sensations in our body. These sensations are quickly judged by the mind as pleasant or unpleasant and driven by its conditioned responses (stored karma), the mind craves for more pleasant sensations and wants to get rid of the unpleasant ones – thereby also continuing to generate new karma. This bi-polar evaluation of every situation is the real cause of human suffering. We can spend an inordinate proportion of life’s time in craving for things we don’t have and fearing to lose what we have. Such a bipolar version of life is flawed as it assumes that one of these states is preferable over the other and that somehow it maybe possible for us to create circumstances in our life for only one of them to prevail. The process of deeply observing our sensations, accompanied by letting go of their constant evaluation, slowly trains our mind to recognize that everything is impermanent and hence there’s no point getting attached to any pleasant sensations as it is futile to becoming averse to painful experiences. It teaches us how pleasure and pain are nothing but our reactions to these passing sensations. With practice, mindfully observing even our most painful sensations, without reacting to them, can help them subside. When we resist them, we feel frustrated (with the situation) and/or guilty (of our past actions) – which in turn lead to further distortions in our emotional make-up and generation of new karma in our psyche. Cultivating equanimity, and accepting the current reality as is, not only strengthens our character, but also provides a deep sense of calm and happiness in our life.

As Thich Nhat Hanh said, “There is no enlightenment outside of daily life.” As the name suggests, all mindfulness meditations are an invitation to be more mindful of our true identity and of our present reality at all times. For example, the breath is always with us and we can always go back to observing it at any time during the day. When we are more aware, we think and behave from a very different level of consciousness. The greatest relevance of this practice is in being more mindful in every aspect of our daily life – eating mindfully, walking mindfully, working mindfully, and conversing mindfully and so on. What this requires is being fully present in whatever we are doing and letting go of our mind’s multiple agendas. Highlighting its relevance to relationships, Thich Nhat Hanh commented, “The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.” When we lead a life governed by these practices, it equips our minds to both capture the details (through concentration) as well as be aware of the big picture (through mindfulness) in all situations. It is akin to listening to an orchestra and being able to soak in both the melody of an individual clarinet and the harmony of the entire symphony in equal measure. While the primary objective of these meditation techniques is to learn about our true self, mindfulness undoubtedly also helps reduce mental stress and physical pain. Needless to add, pursuing these practices can be challenging and requires significant commitment. Try closing your eyes for 2 minutes and just observe your thoughts without getting attached to them! As they say, mastering any creative craft takes a practice of at least 10,000 hours – sounds like meditation is no exception to that. Committing to meditating regularly, irrespective of our circumstances, is a real test of patience. As St. Francis de Sales said about undertaking this journey, “What we need is a cup of understanding, a barrel of love, and an ocean of patience.”

Meditation II: Power of Visualization

2009-10-02T10:53:00.001+08:00

"The greatest discovery of the 19th century was not in the realm of the physical sciences, but the power of the subconscious mind touched by faith. Any individual can tap into an eternal reservoir of power that will enable them to overcome any problem that may arise. All weaknesses can be overcome, bodily healing, financial independence, spiritual awakening, and prosperity beyond your wildest dreams. This is the superstructure of happiness." – William James, Harvard Psychologist, the Father of American Psychology

In the last post, I had attempted to highlight the salient aspects of meditation as well as briefly introduced two broad techniques, namely visualization and mindfulness. In this post, I would like to expand on the visualization techniques – specifically, the theory behind them, examples of their successes, and some practical approaches.

Visualization techniques have been used to great results by many. Tiger Woods uses visualization to picture the exact trajectory of the shot he wants to make and then lets his mind relax (in a manner, get the mind out of the way) and let his body automatically perform the actions to imitate the picture. It is believed that Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel with a similar approach. Einstein, who supposedly demonstrated limited potential at school, suggested that his theory of relativity came less so from a deep knowledge of physics and mathematics and more so from his ability to imagine and conduct ‘thought experiments’. In an interesting research, Soviet sports scientists studied the impact of mental training, particularly including visualization, on four different groups of elite athletes before the 1980 Olympics – group 1 doing 100% physical training, group 2 – 75% physical and 25% mental training, group 3 – 50% physical and 50% mental, and group 4 – 25% physical and 75% mental training. The results were truly amazing – group 4 that did the most mental training, fared the best, while group 3 did better than 2 and so forth. Louise Hay, famous for her books on healing, rid herself of cervical cancer without any medical treatment, by primarily following a regimen of forgiveness, affirmations, nutrition and therapy. Similarly, Reiki is proven to have healed people from deadly ailments as well as supported others in achieving personal and professional growth in multiple ways.

The theory behind the power of affirmations and creative visualization techniques has four key elements – Intention, Attention, Emotion, and Faith. To appreciate the importance of intention and attention, we need to start with recognizing the fact that at its core, every thing and every being is made up of the same universal energy – called by different names in different belief systems (please feel free to read an earlier post on this theme, The Ultimate Reality). Since this energy is all-pervading, every thing in the universe is interconnected and is in a continuum that forms the collective consciousness. Our thoughts connect with this continuum via our individual subconscious. Thus, our every thought and action has the ability to influence, in however small a way, the workings of the entire universe. Similarly, every movement in the universe has an impact on our individual thoughts, actions and experiences. As we deeply visualize a desired reality, our mind sends out commensurate signals to our subconscious which passes them on to the collective consciousness – which in turn works through presenting in our life people, events, and circumstances that support the manifestation of those thoughts. Our subconscious is both a store of all thoughts, information, and memories, as well as a doorway to the collective consciousness. That’s why so many creative ideas and actions emanate just by silencing the mind and connecting with the subconscious. This aspect also lends itself to a Reiki practitioner’s ability to be a channel of the universal energy and heal others, who may even be present at long distances.

When these visualization thoughts are coupled with emotions, they get strengthened further. Emotions engage the body and mind more deeply towards actualizing the desired future state. Furthermore, what gives visualization its greatest power is presence of faith. Faith in the power of our creative minds and the universe’s desire to support us; the ability to let go of our limiting beliefs and align to the forces of nature, all along feeling safe in the knowing that the best that needs to happen will happen. This provides visualization the necessary capacity to connect with the universal consciousness and works like a strong magnet attracting all similar thoughts and experiences in the person’s life. There’s sometime the debate about whether visualization can be considered a spiritual exercise given the focus on ‘wanting’ something to manifest. I believe that visualization can be really effective only when accompanied by a deep sense of let go of our mind and its attachments – and that crucial step makes it a spiritual practice. The other important aspect of let go and faith related to these techniques is that they work only with positive thoughts – negative thoughts, of doubt and fear, act as canceling energy and deflate the power of those thoughts and emotions. Finally, visualization is the most potent when used towards the fulfillment of our highest purposes, and for the broader good of all.

In order to bring this theory into practice in our daily life, we can use this technique in any number of ways. Some people like to remind themselves of their key set of affirmations by writing them out or thinking about them several times daily. There are others who like to draw their desired future state and look at that picture often. These affirmations can be linked to well-being, self-esteem, healthy relationships, career enhancement, financial security, personal and spiritual growth and so on. Experts in this field suggest two important details for this practice – one is to imagine the desired future state in as much vivid detail as possible, and the second is to write out the affirmations about the future state in the present tense, as in – I am healthy and abundant, or I am enjoying a beautiful relationship, or I am complete, whole and perfect as I am, or I am always enjoying the moment etc. – living with these affirmations expedites the actualization of the visualized goal. Another significant area of these techniques includes working with gratitude. Many a times, we are overly focused on feeling disappointed with what we don’t have rather than being thankful for what we do have. If we spend a few moments to reflect on what all each of us has, including the uniqueness of a human body, the beauty of nature, the creative power of our minds, the opportunity to contribute meaningfully, the love and support of our relationships, the progress we made from generosity and kindness of others and so on, we begin to feel grateful for what we have and where we are. Making a list of things or people we are grateful for and remembering that frequently supports our journey of growth. Also, being thankful for what we have makes us more open to receiving further.

Finally, visualization can be extremely effective with wishes for the well-being and wholeness of something larger than ourselves – others in our family and community, a nation, the planet, or the universe. Individual affirmations not only change the attitudes and actions of that individual, but when combined with the affirmations and prayers of other like-minded people, they have the strength to bring about any kind of meaningful change. This could potentially include ending wars, eradicating poverty or slowing and reversing the trend of climate change. There are over ten billion nerve cells in the human brain, arranged in an orderly manner, and as Napoleon Hill, a great believer in the power of mind and thought, said, “This in not to take care of the physical bodies alone but to provide the infrastructure for meaningfully communicating with the collective conscious.”

Meditation: An Introduction

2009-09-19T12:35:00.003+08:00

I have been writing about the relevance of the journey of self-awareness and personal mastery – a journey that requires us to better understand and work with our personal emotional, mental and spiritual make-up. Among the various psychological and spiritual growth tools that can support us in this journey, many people find meditation to be one of the most effective ones. In that context, I thought of writing this blog piece to briefly introduce some key facets of meditation, its benefits, and share some thoughts based on my learning and experiences in this space.

Meditation is defined as engaging in a mental exercise towards reaching a deeper state of relaxation or awareness. It originated from the Latin word meditatio, meaning contemplation. People engage in meditation for a whole host of varied psychological and spiritual reasons – higher mental peace and relaxation, reducing anxiety or stress, boosting self-esteem, strengthening the mind, sharpening focus, enhancing creativity, and achieving higher states of self-awareness. While it has some definite background in religious upbringing, meditation can easily be a non-religious and purely spiritual exercise. However, in all situations, it tends to lay emphasis on direct experience rather than on any dogmas or beliefs.

Benefits
Significant quantum of research is now available on the benefits of meditation. Starting with studies on the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique in the late 1960s, various research findings have shown that meditation practice can noticeably improve all aspects of an individual’s life – health, relationships, work productivity, creativity and even academic performance of children. Independent studies at the National Institute of Health, and at Harvard, reported that regular meditation reduces chronic pain, anxiety, high blood pressure, cholesterol and cortisol (the stress hormone). Research has demonstrated that during meditation, the metabolic rate and oxygen intake drops significantly. Also, the meditators' levels of anxiety and tension, as measured by their skin resistance to an electrical current, have been found to decline. Meditation is also proven to increase serotonin production which influences mood and behavior. Low levels of serotonin are normally associated with depression, obesity, insomnia and headaches.

Similarly, other studies have demonstrated that sustained meditation practice can help business -and other leaders- build greater foresight, clearer thinking, authentic relationships, and enhance their productivity. Furthermore, children are proven to improve in their academic performance, creativity, and self-esteem through meditative practices. Meditation supports an individual’s growth of self-confidence, calmness, and tolerance. Such personal transformation at the deepest level also has a ripple effect in their environment – peaceful thoughts, speech and actions, developed by meditating individuals, lead to greater harmony not only in their immediate relationships, but also in the broader society.

How does it work?
Two key things that occur during meditation are a quieter mind and a greater focus on the present. Meditation generally requires pointed focusing on something and this forces the mind to stop getting entangled in the day-to-day challenges and worries. With greater practice, the number of thoughts arising in one’s mind during any given time also reduces – thereby, quitening the mind. Further, the pointed focus also requires focusing on the present moment. There’s a common emphasis across different practices to work on acknowledging and letting go of any other thoughts that may arise – this takes the mind away from living with the regrets of the past and anxieties of the future. A quieter mind, focused on the present, results in a higher level of awareness and a unique state of restful alertness.

Further, meditation can also facilitate positive physical changes in the brain. Until the 1980s, neuroscientists believed that an adult human brain had limited capacity to change. However, more recent research has established the concept of neuroplasticity – the idea that the brain is constantly evolving and forming new neural connections, based on its training and experiences. Meditation increases brain activity in an area of the brain associated with happiness and positive thoughts and emotions, and some evidence shows that regular practice brings prolonged positive changes in these areas.

Types of meditation
There’s a multitude of meditation techniques available and practiced by different people, ranging from focusing on breathing, or on an external object to visualization and chanting mantras. To keep it simple, I would like to categorize them all in what I find to be two of the broadest categories, namely – visualization and mindfulness. Visualization techniques focus on building a deeper understanding of our desired state and then visualizing it to be manifesting in our life. The desired state could be related to any aspect of our life like, better physical health, stronger relationships, lower stress, greater effectiveness at work and so on. The underlying principle of visualization based techniques is that we create our own reality based on our intention, attention and actions. When we pay greater attention to negative thoughts (I am not that smart, or I never seem to do well, or I am always unhappy, and so on), we are perpetuating these manifestations by letting our body-mind act out these very thoughts. On the other hand, when we intend to move towards our desired state, and start paying attention to positive thoughts towards the future state (I am becoming smarter, I am beginning to or really doing well, and I am always happy), our body-mind sends out corresponding signals to the universe and that helps us create that state. There are countless success stories from the use of these techniques from all areas of life, including from sports where a number of sportsmen use this technique to great results. Examples of this approach include Reiki, SilvaUltramind system, Holosync audio meditation, and various affirmation techniques. Mindfulness techniques, on the other hand, are generally related to focusing our entire attention to a specific thing. This may involve focusing on an external object or reciting a mantra (such techniques are generally referred to as concentration techniques) or focusing on our breathing, thoughts, feelings or sensations (more specifically referred to as mindfulness techniques). The broader principle behind these techniques is to observe the true nature of things – see things as they really are. These techniques help focus and sharpen the mind and that leads, firstly to deeper mental and physical relaxation, and secondly to a greater ability to observe and comprehend the true nature of things. A number of Buddhist meditation techniques (including Anapana, Vipassana, Metta and Zen meditations), Raja Yoga and TM are examples of this approach. I hope to describe these two broad techniques in greater detail in the next two blog posts respectively.

Endnote
Meditation serves different purposes for different individuals. For many, meditation is a spiritual practice – a way to journey within ourselves, to ultimately find the source of our very existence and universal intelligence. As Upanishads, the ancient Indian spiritual texts, describe the process of meditation on the self – “The self is the witness of the mind…it is not thought, but the thinker we must know. It is not what is seen, but the seer which must be known.” We are used to observing the object; here we need to observe the subject itself – in a way, it is like knowing the screen on which the thought images appear. For others, it may be a practice towards experiencing greater relaxation, peace and harmony. At the same time, when we examine the key facets of meditation like a quiet mind, focus on the present, and a sense of relaxed alertness, there many may be several other experiences in our lives that lead to a similar sense of flow – activities like painting, gardening, yoga, sewing, writing, and other creative pursuits. Now, for starters, it may be a useful discipline to create dedicated time for meditation on a daily basis. Simultaneously, it’s also worth noting that we always have the opportunity to be mindful of our thoughts and actions, learn to let go and be absorbed in the present moment and thereby, experience being in meditation throughout the day…irrespective of what we are engaged in.

Breaking the shackles of destiny…

2009-09-07T11:08:00.003+08:00

As we journey through the path of self-awareness, one of the questions that often comes up is how much of our lives and actions are dictated by destiny and how much by our conscious choices. Are we the masters of our own fate or mere puppets of a bigger schema of life unfolding through us? Over the years, there has been a spectrum of viewpoints expressed on this by diverse philosophical schools of thought. The two prominent, and diametrically opposite, views being Determinism (everything is pre-determined) and Free Will (we have complete freedom of choice). Broadly speaking, ancient Eastern philosophies have tended to lay greater emphasis on Determinism, while there’s been bigger support for Free Will among modern libertarianists. The ascent of individualism in modern society has furthered the notion that we create our own reality – thereby shoring up the concept of Free Will. In this article, I would like to examine the case for each of these notions and wish to draw some conclusions that can hopefully better support us in our own personal journeys.

Determinism represents the view that every event, including human cognition, decision, action, and behavior, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. In its extreme version, it suggests that human beings may have no means to change the future course of events. Even though this thought sounds paralyzing, it may be grounded in more truth than we may commonly accord it. From a biological approach, there’s the role of the genetic code – the DNA carries the entire history and the future of any being. The small seed of a tree already contains all the characteristics of the full-grown tree. From the standpoint of the spiritual philosophy of karma, human beings are primarily acting out the effects of their past karma. Every action is preceded by a conscious thought and every conscious thought is preceded by a subconscious conditioning that makes us have the thought in the first place.

Free Will on the other hand espouses the existence of our rational agency through which we can exercise control over all our decisions and actions. Free Will also implies that the universal laws of nature or any omnipotent force does not exert any power over individual will and choices. Besides our intuitive belief that each of us has the ability to take independent decisions and actions, there are enough examples of an individual’s ability to create their own destiny through vision, focus, talent and commitment. Our personal experiences may also support the view that we always have a choice, and the choices we make determine the future we experience. We choose the career we want to pursue, decide on the food we want to eat, determine the extent of hard work we put in our efforts, have the freedom to choose our leisure activities, and so on.

Addressing the debate between Determinism and Free Will thus requires understanding the relationship between cause and freedom, and examining whether the laws of nature are causally deterministic of our actions. The working of the entire universe is governed by several laws of nature (like the cycle of birth and death, karma, etc.) and destiny is nothing but these laws of nature unfolding – scientific and spiritual progress merely helps us better understand these laws. Now, the law of karma brings forth the truth that our motivations as well as experiences in the present are dictated by our cumulative stored karma of the past. Why, with the same stimulus, some people instinctively get angry and others don’t, why some children are predisposed to an ambitious drive while others are comfortable going with the flow and so on, may all potentially be pre-arranged in our karmic psyche. We are born with this karmic psyche and with every interaction with our environment, we continue to generate and store additional karma in that psyche. Each of our thoughts, volitions and actions is then dictated by this storehouse. To that extent, all our motivations, decisions and actions are a pre-programmed disposition, even though we may confuse them with free choice; our decisions in the present are at best an outcome of our conditioned will (and not Free Will) and significantly constrained by our hereditary and environmental limitations. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Swami Vivekananda’s teacher, explained it as, “man is like a cow tied to a pole with a rope, bound by the karmic debts and human nature, and the amount of Free Will he has is analogous only to the amount of freedom the rope allows.”

The above argument, based on the law of karma, strengthens the case for laws of nature being causally deterministic of our moment to moment future. Does true Free Will exist at all then? Free Will comes into play only when we are able to make a conscious choice of not being automatically governed by our conditioned responses. At any instant, what we experience maybe pre-determined, but how we react to it is where we have a real choice. Our ability to make a meaningful choice is determined by our level of mindfulness at that moment – how aware we are of our true identity and how connected we are with our inner consciousness. This universal consciousness that is alive inside each of us can be a doorway to examining every situation with a new awareness and in an open-minded way. To give potency to this intelligence, we need to learn to let go of our limiting mind and its conditioned responses and instead let our inner wisdom guide us. Committing to a path of self-realization- of greater mindfulness and equanimity- where we are not easily dragged into our habitual patterns, can support our journey towards developing greater freedom and Free Will. Living in the present and attentively observing every new thought or feeling as soon as it arises strengthens the practice. Swami Ramakrishna completes the above explanation by saying that “as one progresses on the journey of spirituality, the rope of freedom becomes longer” – allowing for greater access to authentic Free Will.

Thus, unless we take conscious steps to break out of its shackles, we could spend our lifetime just living out our pre-programmed volition, thoughts, actions and destiny. Paradoxically, the process of creating our own inner reality works best with learning to let go, living in the belief that whatever best needs to happen will happen. Concurrently, it requires us to recognize that with greater mindfulness, we become better attuned to creating such a reality. At its deepest, it is about letting our higher inner self express itself through us towards manifesting the reality that we were meant to create. This is the experience that sometimes exceptional achievers in creative fields like art, music, writing, and sports relate to – an experience of co-creating along with the universal intelligence. Lastly, I would like to believe that as humanity continues to evolve, we will likely grow in our levels of awareness with time – however, how centered and conscious we are while making every choice in the present may determine how enjoyable the journey becomes for each of us.

Of Well-being and Healing…

2009-06-24T09:54:00.003+08:00

A healthy sense of well-being is really important to all of us. Well-being is often one of the top wishes (possibly along with happiness and wealth) that people have for themselves and their loved ones. As people age, other than financial security, well-being and longevity are what they long for. Despite that yearning, how much attention do we pay to our overall sense of well-being on a regular basis? Even if we do, it’s often directed primarily towards our physical health – centered on the exercise routine and possibly some watchful eating. That is hardly sufficient attention, as our more complete sense of well-being emanates not just from improving our physical but also mental, emotional, and spiritual health. According to a Harvard Medical School publication, "Recurrence of cardiovascular events, including heart attacks and strokes, is more closely linked to depression than to high cholesterol, smoking, high blood pressure, or diabetes." – reinforcing the importance of mental/ emotional health. Similarly, highlighting the need to nurture our soul, Roman philosopher Cicero said, “Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than those of the body.” Taking a cue from the above, in this post, I would like to highlight the relevance of a more integrated approach to well-being, one that encapsulates healing and growth on all these four levels.

What are these different levels of healing and well-being? Physical well-being relates to our ability to effectively conduct various physical activities, including recreational ones, without any pain. It entails being physically healthy and inculcating healthy habits – taking care of our body through physical exercise, eating habits, hygiene, and maintaining effective balance between work and rest. Mental well-being is related to our intellect – our ability to think, our thoughts, understanding, values and beliefs. It facilitates our ability to create suitable mental maps to effectively navigate the world. Emotional well-being talks to our emotional health. As Mother Teresa said, “There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.” It’s the ability to understand our emotions, connect with others and their emotions, ability to face failure, resilience and so forth. It is critical for building meaningful relationships, at both work and home. It is also relevant in our ability to deal with the ups and downs of life. Spiritual well-being is connected with our levels of self-awareness, clarity about purpose of life, and our state of being. It is about knowing who we are, our place in this universe, and our interconnectedness.

For our true well-being, it’s important to make progress across all the four levels of well-being, without which we continue to experience a sense of incompleteness in our inner self. Physical well-being entails taking care of all aspects of our body – building endurance, strength, balance, and flexibility as well as eating a balanced diet. It also requires paying attention to the signals emitted by our body – towards rest, sleep, pain, and any illness. Every illness offers the opportunity to learn further about our body and engage in greater healing. Mental healing involves becoming more aware of our thoughts and beliefs; recognizing that the mental maps we have developed to navigate the ways of the world are not necessarily the reality; being open-minded towards new ideas and approaches; and addressing our inner mental scripts that often hold us back. Emotional well-being relies a lot on overcoming the delimiting emotional experiences of our childhood, a time where we are constantly judged and get used to suppressing our natural emotions. Healing in this area requires becoming better aware of our inner emotions, getting comfortable with experiencing the entire range of them, openly sharing them, being authentic in our interactions, and connecting with the true love that exists deep inside each of us. This not only allows us to be our true free self (please read the post on “being myself”), but also supports our ability to freely give and receive love. Spiritual well-being necessitates undertaking a journey within to connect with our core inner being, discovering our real purpose in life, learning to be present in the moment, and building equanimity under all situations. Progress in this area gives greater meaning to our lives and helps us to be happier and more peaceful.

While the above are some suggestive thoughts towards a more wholesome well-being, there is no one way to progress on this. It’s likely that we are already more developed in one/ some of these areas and may choose to begin working on the others. Different people may also find different approaches equally powerful and relevant for their personal situation. Sometimes, specific events, like layoff at work, a major health problem, or a deeply troubled relationship, can trigger the need for us to examine our lives more deeply. For others, it just maybe a broader sense of dissatisfaction with their existing life. However, all these areas are often interrelated and progress on any one may have a ripple effect on the others as well – learning about our inner self (spiritual) may allow us to better understand the source of our thoughts (mental) and feelings (emotional) too. Likewise, working with our feelings and relationships (emotional) may require an enhanced level of acceptance and letting go, resulting in spiritual growth. Similarly, it’s not uncommon to see physical challenges linked with deeper emotional issues. One of the recent winners of “The biggest loser”, a reality TV show about a competition to lose the maximum weight, described how his real breakthrough came by overcoming his discomfort with expressing his true emotions. He mentioned that he had previously been storing those emotions inside (akin to storing fat) and often resorted to overeating to overcome his emotional inadequacy. I have also written in the past about the interplay of our thoughts and emotions with what we experience in our bodies (please read “where is our mind located”).

All the same, while there are fairly well-established links between physical illness and psychological well-being, these linkages do not fully account for all our experiences. This maybe an important distinction, worth remembering, particularly when we are suffering from any significant physical or emotional challenges. With the modern society’s focus on individuality and the new age beliefs around “we create our own reality”, it’s possible for us to blame ourselves and have self-pity for every unsatisfactory state we find ourselves in. Now, every illness probably has a psychological aspect and every healing process is similarly influenced by psychology. However, as Steven Locke and Douglas Colligan write in “The Healer Within”, the challenge is that we maybe confusing psychosomatic (physical disease can be affected by psychological factors) with psychogenic (meaning illness is caused solely by psychological factors). There can obviously be other factors that influence physical health, like heredity, age, occupation, drugs, and living environment. One could perhaps add karma and other spiritual factors to the list too. In that context, I found Ken Wilbur’s perspective, of treating the illness at the level it exists at, quite insightful. That suggests treating a purely physical issue (fracture) at the physical level (fixing the fracture) and a psychosomatic issue (frequently getting a fracture) at a physical (fixing the fracture) and emotional level (understanding the emotional issues that attract accidents) and so forth. As he describes in “Grace and Grit”, treating a hurt at a level higher than required generates guilt; treating it at a lower level generates despair. Believing that the fracture was caused by our thoughts alone and trying to treat it with purely a mental level technique, like visualization, can lead us to feeling guilty and blaming ourselves. Alternately, someone suffering from low self-esteem (a mental, emotional issue) maybe best healed with mental-emotional tools of visualization, affirmations, and therapy; just focusing on diet will likely lead to despair in this case. Similarly, meditation and spiritual exercises maybe best suited for spiritual healing.

It is evident that we need to regularly create time and space to take stock of our lives and reflect on the state of our personal growth. As we become more self-aware and make a conscious effort towards healing areas that require attention, we begin to experience a greater sense of well-being. Further, developing an attitude, of learning and growing from every difficult challenge, facilitates this journey and gives us strength and inner peace. As we heal ourselves, we support the process of healing the world too.

Leading Through Coaching

2009-05-28T15:01:00.001+08:00

"You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself." - Galileo Galilei

We all know that a big chunk of effective leadership revolves around managing and leading people. Leaders with high EQ tend to better connect with their people and are able to motivate each of them to be the best they can be, thereby generating superior long-term results. However, it transpires that only a small fraction of leaders seem to get this right. A leading indicator of this is the level of employee engagement in the workplace – series of comprehensive employee surveys demonstrate how low employee engagement levels are. Towers Perrin, a leading employee research and consulting firm, found only 17% of 35,000 employees surveyed as ‘highly engaged’; Corporate Executive Board placed only 11% of 50,000 employees studied in the ‘true-believer’ category. For all the supposed focus of organizations on their people over the last few decades, these statistics are disturbing. All the same, employee engagement remains critical to an organization for multiple reasons. First, engaged workforce means better business – an extensive survey conducted by Towers Perrin found a 52 percent gap in the one-year performance improvement in operating income between companies with highly engaged employees versus those with low engagement. Second, people are an extremely valuable asset and a key source of competitive advantage. As per the Brookings Institute research, 80% of an organization’s market value comes from intangible assets, which include brands, intellectual property, and the workforce. Further, it’s expensive to have disengaged staff. Gallup research in 2003 estimated that unengaged workers in the UK alone cost their organizations US$64.8 billion annually.

What builds employee engagement? HR and management consulting firm, DDI defines engagement simply as “the extent to which people enjoy and believe in what they do and feel valued doing it” – enjoyment in the context of the match people find between their skills and their job, a sense of autonomy, and the opportunity to learn and grow; belief that what they are doing matters in the bigger picture of the team, organization, and society; valued in terms of respect, rewards and recognition. In light of the above definition, a coaching style of leadership can be hugely effective. Working with leaders from diverse backgrounds in my coaching practice, I have often noticed a strong correlation between a leader embracing a coaching style and their increased levels of employee engagement. A coaching approach to people is rooted in the following principles.

First, that each of us has the answers to all our dilemmas and challenges within ourselves; it’s just that often with our busy lives, we are unable to devote the time to find those answers. Coaching helps create the time and space for that discovery to happen. Second, the most meaningful and sustainable change occurs when people discover the solutions themselves. Neuroscience research demonstrates that the process of self-discovery creates brain patterns that are clearer and longer-lasting, versus when individuals are told the answers by someone else. Further, all adult learning theories suggest that adults have a great need for a flexible and self-directed learning approach. Finally, coaching advocates that the best way to help others is through a conversation where we have no personal agenda, are totally non-judgmental and treat others as equals.

All these principles make coaching an enjoyable, engaging and empowering journey of positive change. It can effectively help employees learn and grow (through self-discovery rather than being directed), feel autonomous (self-directed, they drive the agenda), feel valued (conversation of equals, non-judgmental), empowered and engaged. Sounds like just what the doctor ordered for improving employees’ engagement. A coaching style relies heavily on the belief that each individual is highly capable and just needs a supportive environment to discover and fulfill their potential. Thus, to sustain change, a coaching leader constantly looks out for what’s working well with the employee rather than being preoccupied with what’s not. As the noble Goethe said, “Treat people as they ought to be and help them become what they are capable of being." Further, each employee’s requirements are different and a coaching style allows the leader to better recognize and work with the employee’s specific needs. Management gurus believe that at least two-thirds of corporate conversations are “push” conversations, where the leader is trying to push his/ her agenda, often with limited regard to the employee’s situation or personal circumstances. Personal conversations based on direct, open-ended and learning questions can be greatly useful here – questions like, what conversation would you rather have? How do you feel about your current performance? What could help you do your job better? How else could you solve this problem? What do you enjoy the most about work? What would you do if you were the CEO? These types of conversations not only challenge the employee to reflect on their own, but also get them emotionally engaged. Employees then feel cared for and supported in their journey, leading to a higher intrinsic motivation and higher loyalty. Another of Towers Perrin’s worldwide survey found that the top driver globally for the level of employee engagement is an employee's belief that senior management was interested in his/ her well-being – not compensation, or career growth but a feeling of being valued and cared for. A coaching style is also extremely empowering. A leader focused on coaching approach is keen to help his/ her employees not only develop greater self-awareness but also build a sense of self-responsibility for their decisions and actions, substantially increasing the employees’ sense of autonomy.

Employee engagement comes from the top and perhaps the person who can impact it the most is the employee’s immediate supervisor. Notwithstanding the relevance of a business agenda and the pressure of time for a supervisor, a coaching approach can significantly enhance their effectiveness. Such an approach requires them to hone in skills related to listening, being totally present (for the employee, without getting distracted by any personal agenda), being non-judgmental, empathetic, trusting and supportive. As a leader embarks on this journey, he/ she becomes such an inspirational role model for the team that the effort to manage, direct, or lead is no longer required – the team wants to follow him/ her anyway. As they say, “The mediocre leader tells; the good leader explains; the superior leader demonstrates; the great leader inspires.”

Here’s the little extra. Besides helping leaders be far more effective in their roles, coaching has some significant side benefits for them as well. The three most prevalent causes of stress are supposed to be dealing with ambiguity, delivering results under pressure, and being seen/ evaluated by others. While these come with the territory of an executive role, it is believed that coaching others can not only reduce, but reverse, the damaging effects of long-term executive stress. As Richard Boyatzis, a leading scientist in the area of the links between neuroscience and performance highlights “When they experience compassion through coaching others, it has psycho-physiological effects that restore the body’s natural healing and growth processes, thus enhancing their sustainability. We thus suggest that to grow their effectiveness, leaders should imbibe coaching as a key part of their role and behavioral habits.”

Being Myself

2009-05-11T19:52:00.002+08:00

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.” Marcel Proust

Have you ever caught yourself saying, “I love catching up with my old school buddies, it’s so easy to be myself in their company”? Or, “Felt so miserable at that party, making polite conversation with bunch of superficial people.” It transpires that we are often not our true selves in the company of others – subconsciously and repeatedly wearing masks that project a certain image of us to the world. We seem to have a collection of these masks that habitually surface, intending to best serve our self-interest, based on the need of our immediate environment. These masks come in varied shapes and colors like, the aggressor, the conformist, the nice guy, the shy one, etc. Only when we are able to bring these masks into our active awareness and deal with them, can we be ourselves and experience the freedom that brings.

We acquire these masks from various experiences through life – those gained during our childhood being the most notable and lasting ones. It’s our primal instinct and desire to be loved. This is such a deep longing that right from our childhood, we are constantly adapting to our environment and building different strategies, so we can better fulfill this need. Depending upon what seems to work, meaning specifically what helps gain our parents’ love during our early years, we subliminally begin to cement those strategies into our psyche. Some of these become so deep rooted that as adults, we see them as an integral part of our personality – acknowledging it with comments like, “this is the way I am and it’s hard for me to be any other way”. As bestselling author, John Gray explains in “What you feel, you can heal”, this is how it works. If we were recognized for exceeding our parents’ expectations, say at school, we can grow up believing that being a high performer is the real ticket to be loved. As a result, one may always aspire, and even go to great lengths, to exceed others’ expectations, be it one’s supervisor, peers, or spouse. Falling short of our own expectations in any way then is a source of disappointment and an opportunity to blaming ourselves. Also, with this approach, we have high expectations of others and can be very judgmental of them. Similarly, if we were loved and encouraged every time we followed our parents’ directives, we can easily grow up being a conformist, believing that it would not be in our self-interest to go against the norm in any group – a family, social circle or an organization. Similarly, we could play the diplomat, keeping our true feelings to ourselves but seeking to create a congenial atmosphere in a group; the reserved one, always hiding our true selves in the belief that we are not lovable anyways; the poor me, believing in the notion that only when I am in deep trouble and wronged can I attract others’ attention and love; the aggressor; for whom anger and show of superiority is the way to get noticed; the critic, constantly finding faults with others in order to hide their own inadequacies; the bragger, where lack of self-esteem leads to eulogizing about oneself in the hope of being loved and admired.

These masks get hard wired in our personality and show up in every aspect of our life, including at work and in our relationships. A high performer belief system may result in a workaholic or a perfectionist; a poor me mentality may constantly attract trouble – physical or emotional; a critic is never happy with the way things are in any setting and so forth. As these patterns are accompanied by suppressing our true feelings, they create ongoing emotional baggage in our lives. There’s always then an inner sense of incompleteness, and we are unable to fully experience an emotionally satisfying life.

"There is but one cause of failure and that is a man's lack of faith in his true self." William James

Despite our subconscious behavior patterns, we can free ourselves from these limiting beliefs and tendencies. This requires making a conscious choice to be true to our feelings and being honest in all our interactions. At a deeper level, this entails connecting with our pure inner self and realizing that we are truly worthy of being loved, and are capable of fully loving others. That then provides us the courage to express our true thoughts and feelings, without the fear of being judged. Social interaction is such a key part of human experience that social neuroscientists now believe that as many as four out of every five thoughts we have are in the context of relating to others. Further, research by Richard Boyatzis, an Emotional Intelligence expert, highlights how fear of social rejection is one of the three most common causes of human stress. A commitment to being authentic in all our interactions can liberate us – feeling confident of being lovable allows us to not suppress our emotions, making us emotionally healthy and resilient. As Mark Twain said, "If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything." It also supports us in being more open to seeking others’ help and be willing to be vulnerable, which in turn, may make us even more endearing.

Let me share a couple of quick examples from my coaching experience here. A senior executive, who wanted to work on his relationships, was described by his colleagues as the critic - very controlling, had high expectations of them, and dealt with every shortfall with harsh words. As he consistently received negative feedback about his relationships and felt highly stressed from his work life, he was committed to make some real changes. As he became more self-aware, he started to notice the underlying beliefs for his difficult behavior – felt it was his egoistic desire to be right, perfectionist nature, and a deep desire to succeed. As we worked together, he started to shift his expectations from seeking perfection to more wholesome progress; started to better listen to others and put their agenda before his own; became more comfortable with his true self and less judgmental of others – accepting himself as he was and others as they were; overall, becoming more authentic in his listening, sharing, and conduct. Guess, authentic leaders realize that the power lies not in being right, but in being real.

Another client of mine was always striving to be the nice guy, trying to find a suitable compromise to resolving any friction between his parents and his wife. While this served him alright in the initial years, over time, he started to appreciate that this wasn’t really working – his parents expressed always feeling short changed; his wife felt her point of view was never fully respected; the client himself felt stifled constantly searching for convenient solutions that could somehow please everyone. Paying attention to this, somewhere he recognized the need to begin expressing his honest thoughts and feelings to all parties – this meant bringing the problems of family disconnects in the open for all to see rather than hide them. As he gathered the courage to candidly confront the problems, the family collectively decided to take on some hard decisions – resulting in the client feeling relieved, and everyone feeling comfortable with the decisions.

As is evident in these examples, this process kind of involves two steps – knowing myself and then, choosing to be myself. Knowing myself revolves around building a deeper understanding of our tendencies to hide behind various masks and being willing to examine them. As long as there is friction in our relationships and a sense of incompleteness or dissatisfaction in our hearts, we need to remain open to examining ourselves and our inner belief systems. A willingness to dive deeply into our core leads to realizing who we are and how whole, complete and perfect we all are – and that raises our ability to love ourselves as well as to stop doubting our worthiness to receive others’ love. Being myself then is about taking responsibility towards overcoming our habitual traits and building the capacity to express ourselves fully and honestly. This means being mindful of our choices at all times and choosing to being totally authentic without being fearful of the outcomes of our words and actions. Being myself eventually shifts us away from the inner emotional turmoil and towards feeling lighter, liberated and happier.

Happy For No reason!

2009-03-13T11:18:00.004+08:00

When Buddha professed, “Life is suffering”, he was likely referring not to a gloomy picture of our lives of sadness and suffering but to the constant inner struggle we have with our thoughts and emotions. Thoughts are ceaselessly traveling to the past or to the future – what I did well, what could have been better for me, what I would love to happen and so on. These thoughts are not an occasional occurrence but are a human preoccupation. A human mind typically has over fifty thousand thoughts in a day – and, all these thoughts are accompanied by corresponding emotions. Thoughts of things going are accompanied by feelings of satisfaction and happiness; thoughts of things potentially going wrong lead to emotions of fear and anxiety. As a result, our moods and state of happiness is always at the mercy of our thoughts and emotions. Is there an alternate to this existence? Can one have greater equanimity, irrespective of the direction of thoughts? Can these thoughts be minimized?

As we attempt to answer these questions, we need to first recognize what causes these thoughts in the first place. It’s our ego. It’s the notions of ‘I’, ‘me’, and ‘mine’ that we grow up with, which develop a deep sense of independent personality and separateness of our identity. We then begin working towards our own survival and growth and can end up leading an entire life focused on pursuit of personal pleasures. This sense of duality (I am different from others) is the genesis of our thoughts. As long as we see ourselves disjointed from the whole, we will continue to feel incomplete and have thoughts driven by our craving for more (money, success, knowledge, happiness etc.) or fear of losing something that we already possess (money, power, reputation, happiness…).

While there are numerous methods out there to deal with this unending train of thoughts, one powerful approach is related to connecting with ‘awareness’ or ‘consciousness’. Awareness is not the mind, or our thoughts; it’s the consciousness which allows us to observe our mind, thoughts, and emotions. If we close our eyes and just focus on the thoughts that arise in our mind, it’s the awareness which allows us to notice these thought patterns and we can notice the observer as distinct from the thinker. We can then train to recognize that this awareness is like a mirror – it only reflects what the mind is going through, without any projections of its own. The mirror has no worries, fears, anger or cravings – its pure awareness, pure consciousness. All the thoughts and accompanying emotions arise in the mind, even though we experience them only through this awareness. As we begin to connect with this inner awareness, we start to realize that this awareness is who we really are. In our normal life, we are so busy with external stimulus that we lose connection with our true inner selves. We can simultaneously learn to comprehend that this awareness is omnipresent, and governs everything; all of us are made of it and that we are all connected and part of the same whole – the awareness continuum. Just observing ourselves, without paying attention to our circumstances or potential outcomes, can be a great way towards liberating ourselves of many of our inner struggles.

Being such a witness makes us realize we have no independent identity, which in turn reduces our ego and our overarching sense of separateness and duality. Instead, it initiates us into greater equanimity – that can assist us in reducing our continuous thoughts of craving and clinging, and of judging everything as good or bad. Cultivating equanimity can help us better normalize what the Buddhist teachings identify as the eight variations of our tendency to continually hope and fear – pleasure and pain, praise and blame, gain and loss, fame and disgrace. Practicing mindfulness (by staying connected with our awareness) and an attitude of equanimity can open us up to all types of experiences (pleasant or otherwise) with equal acceptance. In fact, if handled well, suffering can then become another opportunity for further learning and personal growth. Suffering can teach us greater compassion by helping us better appreciate the difficulty of others in similar situation.

Of course, one can argue against all these ideas with a “so what, who cares?” attitude. It is so possible to continue living without bothering to analyze these aspects in our daily existence. There’s also the question around, when and where do I begin, if at all? I reckon there are various perspectives to that. I believe we are all at different stages in the circle of life (not ahead of or behind any other) and spirituality works for those who need it at their stage for personal growth. Further, it makes eminent sense to start from wherever we are – we can never be too early for it or too late; our own time is the right one for us. Having said that, once we do become conscious of these aspects, it can be hard to ignore them any further. As Socrates said, “A life not examined is not worth living.” Socrates, who lived at a time not very different from Buddha's, believed that each person is born with full knowledge of the ultimate truth and we need only be spurned to conscious reflection to become aware of it. Socrates went a step further, to also differentiate between this quest and other self-help processes. Like the contemporary self-improvement trend, there were the Sophists in ancient Greek, who Socrates felt were more driven by imparting worldly knowledge that could be used to further one’s own interests and not really interested in searching for the truth. Like many other philosophers and sages, he believed searching for the truth to be the deepest purpose of human life.

As Patanjali, the great Indian sage, said, “The Self is pure, free from decay and death, free from hunger and thirst and free from sorrow. This is the Spirit in man. The only thing this Spirit desires is truth. This is the Spirit that we seek and know: we must each find our own Self. When we have found our Self and gotten to know about it, we have reached the ultimate, and there is nothing more to desire.” In that context, any baby steps we can patiently take towards learning mindfulness, connecting with awareness, gaining equanimity, or striving towards the journey of truth, can greatly help us experience inner joy and peace. With that, more of our actions also tend to arise from pure motivation rather than from desires of gain and loss. We then also no longer need a reason to be happy!

Parenting: Love, Limits and Inspiration

2009-02-16T14:00:00.001+08:00

We all want our children to do well and be successful. While there can be any number of expectations from our children, when asked about what they want their children to accomplish most in life, most of my coaching clients respond with goals like, “we would like them to be successful at discovering and fulfilling their true passion”, “we hope they can get involved in happy and meaningful relationships”, “it’s important that they grow up to be good and caring people”, “we hope they can be responsible citizens and someday contribute to the broader community” and so forth.

Parenting can be a really challenging experience. While we all intend to make the best effort towards helping our children achieve their dreams, more often that not, we are operating from limited experience and are at best learning from “on-the-job” training. It is further onerous to realize that childhood experiences indeed substantially shape the future the children have as adults and in a way, unless we pay attention to make amends, impact of ineffective parenting can continue to perpetuate from one generation to the next. Decades of psychology research clearly brings forth the power of childhood experiences – about how children of preoccupied parents grow up to be avoidant individuals or how sometimes loved and sometimes ignored children become anxious adults. Research also proves that childhood experiences can predict the personality traits in adults in terms of their being secure, anxious, or avoidant, with up to 70% accuracy.

Based on my personal coaching experiences, here are three powerful thoughts (love, limits, and inspiration) that I believe can significantly contribute to effective parenting.

Love
“If you start judging people, you will have no time to love them.” Mother Teresa

Love provides for a very basic need of a child – the need to feel secure. Loving parents can create a strong foundation of inner security for a child to spring forth other values and skills. Loving environment at home builds a child’s self-esteem and self-confidence – a sense of knowing their unique and special place in this world. High self-esteem may also lay the groundwork for the child’s exploration and discovery of his true passions. Love also builds a child’s emotional strength – vital for, developing stronger relationships as well as dealing with failure.

Now, while love comes naturally to parents, the leap required is in practicing unconditional love – one that is free from any judgments and parental agenda. How often do we judge our children for what they do well and what they don’t – and then admonish them for their mistakes? These could be related to daily irritants like not neatly organizing their rooms, feeling shy in front of visiting adults, poor performance in school test, or not following parents’ instructions carefully. While these reprimands are all intended to make the kids become better equipped to face the challenges of life, this evaluative approach poses two challenges – one, this is largely driven by the parents’ subconscious desire to see the kids turn out to be like their idealized versions of themselves and second, this constantly gives the impression to the children that they are always short of perfect. Maybe as a society, and surely as parents, it’s time for us to move away from inculcating perfectionism to encouraging much needed wholesomeness. Unconditional love requires us to feel love for them at all times – even when we notice patterns that are different from our expectations. This requires parents to have the inner confidence that their children are wholesome and complete and will grow up to effectively live out their own unique purpose in life. As children feel confident that they will be loved irrespective of their achievements, it creates the environment for them to experiment with diverse and new ideas and be fearless of making mistakes. Mistakes are then not scolded upon but seen as natural and used as powerful learning opportunities. An additional way to nurture children’s sense of self-worth is by engaging with them on their area of interest. It is also better than plain adulation as that can divert their interest as well as potentially get them conditioned to becoming interested in an area only for admiration.

On the other hand, lack of love can alienate children from their true selves, resulting in inconsistent behavior. Lack of time from busy parents can lead kids to be largely influenced by TV, internet, and the peer group. Some of the results of that trend have been disturbing. More than a third of all murders in the US are committed by offenders under the age of 21 and over the decades, incidence of, teenage pregnancies, drug-abuse among the youth, and depression at puberty have grown substantially.

Limits
“It is not giving children more that spoils them; it is giving them more to avoid confrontation.” John Gray

Within the space of unconditional love, there’s certainly place and need for setting limits as well. These limits are essential for children’s wholesome development and can range from things like, time for TV and video games, bed time, junk food, late nights to more severe issues of alcohol, sex and drugs. While the idea of setting limits may rest easy with many parents, the crucial aspect is the manner in which they are set. Set arbitrarily by the parents, the kids are likely to either rebel or not adhere to them or both. Alternately, the kids while submitting to the rules may end up subconsciously suppressing their true feelings and desires. However, if the limits are set in the context of family values and beliefs and communicated to the children in an open and engaging manner, they may surprisingly be well respected. In fact, rather than it be a disagreeable discipline, the process of setting the limits can be a great platform for some candid sharing, bonding and reinforcing important values. As children grow older, such open communication may also assist them to become true friends of the parents, something many a parent long for.

Needless to add, these limits need to be age appropriate. In that context, it’s important for parents to set some boundaries for themselves too. There is a precarious balance between love and suffocation. Excessive parental protection can easily stifle a child’s individuality – alternately, thoughtfully listening to the kids’ perspective can support their sense of self-identity to flourish. As parents we need to realize when to step back and give the children sufficient space to learn from their own experiences. Further, while correcting children, we need to learn the distinction, as Martin Seligman highlights, between specific and pervasive comments. Pervasive comments like, “you always mess up your tests”, hamper the opportunity for improvement; whereas, specific comments like “if you had worked hard, you would have done well in this test” are more supportive. Finally, parents need to be cognizant of the thin line between healthy and excessive self-esteem. Children with unrealistically positive views of themselves can feel they are better or worth more than others, that can overtime lead them to be self-indulgent and arrogant.

Inspiration
"There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.” Buckminster Fuller

Despite the number of hours spent at school, home remains a powerful source of learning about life for kids. They learn an awful lot by observing. Parents can talk through important values but they won’t sink in unless the kids see them practiced by the parents, particularly in crunch situations. It’s the values people imbibe about love, money, relationships, hard work, careers, empathy, community and spirituality during childhood that drive their attitudes and behavior as adults. If we want our children to be compassionate, we must be kind and caring with others. It would be hard to expect children from an environment of constant friction among parents to grow up to be great at relationships. Rather than preach, we need to be the role models for our children. John Crabbe from Oregon Health and Science University espouses that while we are born with a diverse range of genes, it’s the upbringing that determines which genes get better expressed - making a strong case for parents to be the inspiration for their children to be the best they can be.

How else can we inculcate and reinforce these values in our children? So much of our time with kids is spent in transactional and relatively inconsequential conversations – are the kids ready to go to school, have they finished their homework, have they had their dinner and so forth. What maybe powerful to do sometimes is to engage them in more meaningful dialogues – ask them to describe the values they believe to be the most important in life, have a candid discussion about it, share our own experiences and so forth. Not only does this inculcate the key values, it allows them to think and discover these values for themselves. We can further help them internalize these ideals by generously acknowledging them every time they demonstrate those values. Similarly asking open-ended questions about their views of their own thoughts, feelings, emotions and behavior allows them to grow in their self-awareness, character and self-responsibility.

My Never Ending Things To Do List…

2009-01-31T16:24:00.010+08:00

(Photo by Koalazymonkey)

"People often expect different results from doing the same actions" – Alcoholics Anonymous

Today’s world has a definite bias towards action – the numerous management practices around building a broad vision and then breaking it down to long-term objectives and short-term goals guide us into that direction; the modern society’s value for individualism and the connected belief that we alone create our destiny based on our actions, propels us towards a busier life; and, the mindset towards success and achievement driven by deep-seated attitudes of more is better, winner takes all, and perfectionism make us restless without constant activity. As an outcome, we find it hard to take our hands off the blackberry and wouldn’t mind being caught dead with our things to do checklist.

Behind this constant urge to make something happen and engage in action is an underlying inner sense of incompleteness about ourselves. Driven by the external stimulus of our social context, we never seem to notice it. As a result, we are easily caught into the vicious cycle of “doing, having, and being” – once I DO this (work hard, get my promotion…), I will HAVE that (more money, success, time…) and I will then BE there (happy, satisfied…). However, every hill we climb then appears to be bottom of the next peak. When we do get the much awaited promotion, we do not necessarily have the extra time we had longed for or the sense of fulfillment we had conveniently assumed; and in any case, we maybe already eyeing the next promotion, the next milestone, the next activity to move forward. This eventually leads to a never ending list of unfulfilled goals, burn-out, poor work-life balance and so forth.

As someone said, “Life is what happens to us when we are busy making plans." The only way to break this cycle is to reverse the above sequence to “being, doing, having” – first choose to BE what we want to be, knowing that it will guide us to DO what we love doing, and as a result we will indeed HAVE all that we need. So, if I choose to be happy and peaceful all the time, I will get directed to the profession/ vocation that will facilitate my being happy and peaceful all the time, which in turn will ensure that I gain enough time and resources to sustain myself, allowing the cycle to continue. The reality is we are presented with these choices all the time, how we respond determines who we become over time – tilting the choice in favor of BEING may manifest in choosing to be loving (instead of just spending time together), being present in the moment (rather than multi-tasking), being principled (in place of pursuing efficiency) and so on.

Descartes, the 17th century French philosopher pictured human beings as thinking beings when he said, “I think, therefore I am” and this very sense of individuality has only got further strengthened by modern society. There is always an agenda in all our thoughts and interactions – an agenda of our pronounced sense of self. Also, all along, we are constantly evaluating how the events we are experiencing impact us – whether it’s the evening news or a conversation at work. These are then quickly assessed by the mind as good or bad, leading to further thoughts and new actions. Moving our focus towards BEING helps us move away from a life driven by self-centered goals, agendas and judgments. Consider this scenario. A Dad decides to carve out an hour in the evening to play with his kids. At the planned time, the kids are tired and in no mood to play. If the parent is driven by the “to do” approach, he is likely to judge the situation from his perspective and maybe disappointed at the prospect of not being able to play with them and DOING his bit with the kids. However, if his focus were to be towards using the time to “connect with the kids“(a BEING approach), he couldn’t care less whether the kids want to play or chat or just wander around – he will BE CONNECTING with them in all situations. The same approach is relevant in all aspects of our conduct on any given day – at work, with spouse, kids, at leisure and so on.

Making these choices more consciously may require deeper clarity of personal purpose and values – what do I want my life to be about and what do I stand for? Driven towards achieving our personal potential, very often, we correlate that to how far we can get in our profession, financial status, or public recognition – and that leads us to a treadmill of activity but not necessarily to inner fulfillment. We can start the journey towards discovering and fulfilling our potential only by working on our inner selves and setting a direction of purpose and meaning for ourselves. As they say, “Like in golf, so in life – direction is more important than distance.” Rather than struggling to relentlessly climb the ladder (corporate or social), it may well be more important to determine whether our ladder is leaning against the right wall in the first place. An achievement orientation tends to make us live in and for the future- depending upon time for its fulfillment- whereas living based on deeply felt purpose enables us to live in the present. The human mind typically believes it can control its destiny by DOING stuff. However, the universal life energy creates and moves forward towards its potential by staying in a state of being. When we start staying connected with BEING, we get in greater synchronicity with the universe and that helps us to progress in our path more effectively. This way, choosing to BE allows us to better align ourselves into the journey of better discovering our true potential.

Making this shift can allow us to stay focused on what’s important to us in all aspects of our life, which in turn can lead us to greater happiness, peace and fulfillment. Finally, for those of us die hard fans of making lists, it maybe worth experimenting with the idea of converting our things to DO list into a things to BE list…some sample ideas are mentioned below, enjoy!

Things to do…………………………………......Replaced with things to beDo a good job……………………………………........Be in sync with my calling
Organize my day…………………………………......Be disciplined
Attend client meetings………………………….....Be fully present
Rehearse an important presentation………….Be confident
Work towards the next promotion…………….Be committed
Spend time with children……………………….....Be connected
Holiday with wife………………………………….....Be loving
Attend dinner at a friend’s house……………….Be fun
Grow my network…………………………………....Be engaging
Make things go my way…………………………....Be detached
Perfect the things I do……………………………...Be wholesome
Support my spouse……………………………….....Be committed
Water my plants…………………………………......Be immersed
Earn more………………………………………….......Be content
Exercise regularly…………………………………...Be healthy
Learn more………………………………………….....Be wise

Change is Coming to Planet Earth…

2009-01-14T20:33:00.002+08:00

“In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order” Carl Jung

There appears to be a tremendous increase in incidence of negative news in our lives over the recent past. Natural disasters, climate change, violence, financial crisis have run havoc in people’s lives – better monitoring and live media coverage notwithstanding. The 2004 Tsunami killing over 200,000 people, Cyclone Nargis leaving 100,000 dead, deadly Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake in China that rendered over 4.5 million homeless. Similarly, the impact of climate change has been alarming – worldwide, the proportion of hurricanes reaching categories 4 or 5 has risen from 20% in the 1970s to 35% in the 1990s; the increased frequency of extreme local weather like the 2003 heat wave across Europe that killed over 30,000 people; the receding glaciers (according to the UN, Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035 possibly impacting over two billion people); the increasing deterioration of ecosystem and the ensuing diseases with newer mutants of viruses; and the disappearing bee colonies, impacting agricultural produce in many developed countries. Then there’s the destruction caused by social strife – the reduction in rainfall in Darfur has turned millions of hectares of already marginal land into desert, leading to one of the largest social conflicts. Simultaneously, we still have about half of world’s population living below incomes of US$2 per day (World Bank, 2001). Violence emanating from wars, terrorism, religious fanaticism, and social-strife has been enormous – over 10,000 people died or got injured from terrorist attacks during 2008; the number of casualties from Iraq war alone is estimated to have topped a million; over 200,000 people killed and over two million displaced in Darfur. Finally, there’s the recent economic crisis, worst since the great depression – adding despair to millions. The global chaos and despondency is all around us.

“You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.” Friedrich Nietzsche

Based on numerous spiritual scriptures, it appears the time for a new world order to be born on Earth maybe upon us. For example, Hinduism has the concept of four Yugas (ages or eras), Satya Yuga (Golden Age), Treta Yuga (Silver Age), Dwapara Yuga (Bronze Age) and Kali Yuga (Iron Age), which succeed each other endlessly. Satya Yuga is the age of Truth, where everything is perfect, every manifestation or work is close to the purest ideal, and mankind allows intrinsic goodness to reign supreme. A decline marks the Treta Yuga, followed by Dwapara Yuga and finally the Kali Yuga, considered to be the darkest time of all, where wickedness and violence rules. It is believed that such an awful time is eventually followed by Satya Yuga, leading to reestablishing of righteousness, social and income equality, and peace and joy for all. This concept of Golden Age is also found in several other faiths – the Greek mythology, Islam, and Christianity. The Biblical Revelation 21: 4, describes the time when God will "wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain…" Further, most interpretations of the Hindu scriptures believe that Earth is currently in Kali Yuga, reinforced by the despair I talked about above, and that it will be followed by Satya Yuga. The above chaos may well get worse in coming years before such an evolution is underway. Interestingly, a number of spiritual faiths believe that 2012 could be the year of this transformational shift. As per the Mayan calendar, believed to be one of the most advanced in time-science knowledge, 2012 is interpreted to herald a major change in world order through spiritual transformation. Remote viewing Tibetan monks are understood to see special powers saving the world from destroying itself in 2012. Founders of Golden Age movement strongly believe that there would be enough enlightened souls in the world by 2012 for the new Golden Age to be born and slowly spread around the world….

“Let chaos storm! Let cloud shapes swarm! I wait for form.” Robert Frost

While the increased violence, natural disasters, and climate change are signs of worsening life on Earth, there are simultaneous signs of change towards a more peaceful, harmonious and spiritually conscious society. Dissatisfied with the outcomes of the material world and searching for new answers, a growing number of people seem to be turning towards spirituality. Like in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, science provided new direction to mankind, in form of reason and potential economic well-being, and away from the dogmas of religion, the new spirituality offers a way forward from the current social crisis in meaning and the clash between religious fundamentalism and modern values. Appealing to both religious and atheists, this spirituality is about committing to inner personal growth and building a sensitive and contemplative relationship with the universe. It appears this shift maybe gathering some critical mass. BBC’s recent survey of “Soul of Britain” revealed “In 1990, 54% of us called ourselves 'religious'. Today, that figure has fallen to 27%, while 31% now prefer to call ourselves 'spiritual'.” Everyone I personally know in India has had exposure to some form of spiritual practice – among yoga, meditation, art of living, reiki, pranic healing and so forth. Growth of spiritual books, dedicated TV channels, vegetarianism, and human potential movement further reflects this growing shift. Another significant area of international development over the past decade has been the remarkable growth of civil society and “giving” around the world. In countries like Netherlands and Belgium, over 10% of the economically active population is involved in non-profit sector work. There are over a million non-profit organizations in India, engaging close to 20 million people (including volunteers), more than the number of people employed in the central government.

There are other powerful trends too. There’s the emerging proposition of a one country/ one world model, where geographical boundaries can lose much of their historical meaning. Given the issues facing the individual countries today are global in nature, be it terrorism, climate change or the financial crisis, the idea has definite merits. We also have a great example, in EU, of an international Government for 27 countries – with its currency, independent laws and civil service. In that context, I was also impressed by the philosophy and growth of the Bahá'í movement. Over five million in numbers, spread over 189 countries, Bahá'ís are dedicated to creating a new and peaceful world civilization based on principles of justice, prosperity, and continuing advancement. Their vision reflects not only an appreciation for humanity's historic longing for peace and collective well-being, but also relies on the possibility of a society founded upon cooperation, trust, and universal love.

“Peace comes within the soul of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its power.” Black Elk

All these factors make me believe that we are on to some transformational change in our societal being in the coming future. The question is how prepared are we and what role can we play in it? Even though conflict and suffering may make us feel vulnerable, we must remember they only serve as important steps in the soul’s journey and growth of human spirit. We also know that despite the apparent broader trends of cosmic changes at work, spirituality teaches us not to be a passive bystander of the universal events or depend upon a messiah to come and lead us to safety but instead work with our inner selves to actively participate in co-creating and evolving universal consciousness. Divine intervention manifests through us only and it’s our spiritual state that determines the shape it takes. As spoken by a number of indigenous tribes, the climate change may well be a cyclic purification of Earth, but we all can play a role in the manner it impacts life. With greater awareness of our environment and an approach of thoughtfulness towards Earth and its inhabitants, we can possibly make the evolutionary process easier for all. Simultaneously, we can continue with our journey of personal growth, joyous in the knowing that post this makeover, a lovely new way of life will indeed appear on this special planet!!

The Most Fascinating Movie of Our Lives!

2009-01-06T21:28:00.001+08:00

One fish said to the other, “Do you believe in this ocean that they talk about?”

So goes an ancient Chinese saying and I think it well illustrates how narrow our vision of the world and the universe can be. We see the world from our limited perceptual framework. Despite an overwhelming evolution of the human race, an average human mind is severely restricted by what it can perceive through the senses. What we can hear is limited by the frequencies our ears can process; dogs can hear many higher frequencies and hence have a very different perception of the sounds out there. Our sight is limited by the light frequencies our eyes can relate to; since pit vipers can sense heat from infrared rays (like night vision goggles), they must view the same world very differently. If we had a different receiver mechanism, we would be hearing other frequencies and seeing differently. From our knowledge of science, we know so many things are just not what they appear – earth is not flat, the ground below us is not stationery; the sun doesn’t rise in the east and doesn’t set in the west.

The fact is we are seeing and hearing what we can and not what the reality is. The world out there is an unprocessed and formless data, waiting to be interpreted by us. The human nervous system takes in only the minutest proportion, less than one part per billion, of the total energy vibrating in the environment. As Marshall Glickman describes, “Research shows that each conscious moment is actually comprised of many much smaller and unconscious “mini” moments, each appearing and disappearing rapidly.” According to Buddhist texts, it takes 17 mind-moments for a cognitive experience to register. As this happens real quickly, we register uninterrupted awareness – no different from a movie that seems continuous even though it’s made of several rapidly flashed still photos. We are so engrossed in this fascinating movie that we are unable to step aside to distinguish between the movie and the reality.

Besides the limitation in our ability to pick up the absolute truth in the first place, our perceptions are further clouded by our own thoughts and emotions. It is believed that 20% of what we see is objective data and the rest is a projection biased by our thoughts and emotions. Neuroscientists highlight that the electrical impulses that reach our retina, to enable us to “see”, must also interact with both the thinking and the emotional part of the brain. We thus don’t see a mosaic of blue, white and colorless space, but sky and clouds. As French author, Anais Nin said, “We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are” – our thoughts and emotions project their own hues and colors to whatever we observe. We are also quick to dole out intrinsic qualities to things and people, thinking “this is beautiful, that is ugly,” without being cognizant of the fact that these attributes are assigned by our mind. As a Buddhist verse has it – “Is anything on earth universally and unanimously recognized as beautiful? For a lover, a beautiful woman is an object of desire; for the hermit, a distraction; for the wolf, a good meal.”

What appears solid may not be. As we gain deeper insight, we learn that the smallest units of energy are just in free flow thought it all. What appears solid is only so because of the frequency of wavelengths that our senses are capable of perceiving. We create a three-dimensional world from what is a continuum of free flowing energy, comprising of electrons and neutrons. Like the fish in the above saying, when we cannot see this continuum, we notice the separate parts of the creation – the trees, the animals, the objects – as disjointed from us, which in turn make us feel separate from the whole. The question is would a tree falling in a forest make any sound, if there was no one to hear it? As an eminent British neurologist said, “I want you to realize that there is no color in the natural world and no sound – nothing of this kind; no textures, no patterns, no beauty, no scent.” It’s our presence and perception that gives way to the formation of reality as observed by us.

What is the truth then and how do we experience it? The powerful thing is that among all the living beings, humans alone have the ability to comprehend and experience this reality and that’s what makes the human life so precious. We can get initiated into grasping this reality by starting to reach out to our inner awareness. This inner awareness is not the mind, or our thoughts; it’s the consciousness which allows us to observe the mind, and our thoughts and emotions. It’s this awareness which allows us to remember parts of a dream even when we are asleep. If we close our eyes and just focus on the thoughts that arise in our mind, it’s the inner awareness which allows us to notice these thought patterns. While it’s easy for us to initially get swept away by the thought patterns and not be able to observe steadily, with practice, we can begin to recognize the observer as distinct from the thinker and the actor. We can then learn to see that this awareness is like a mirror – it only reflects what the mind is going through, without any projections of its own. The mirror has no worries, fears, anger or cravings – its pure awareness, pure consciousness. All the thoughts and accompanying emotions arise in the mind, even though we experience them only through this awareness.

This observer, the inner awareness, is who we really are. In our normal life, we are so busy with external stimulus that we lose connection with our true selves. As we become more conscious of this awareness, we begin to get closer to understanding our own reality – which in turn allows us to better comprehend the truth out there. Meditation can be greatly helpful in building deeper clarity as well. When we feel connected to this inner awareness, we realize that this awareness (and hence our true self) is never born, never dies; it’s vast and is in no way limited to time and space and so forth. We can then start to comprehend that this awareness is omnipresent, and governs everything; all of us are made of it and are not discreet individuals but just parts of a continuum of awareness. It’s similar to knowing that God is in each one of us, and we are part of the same whole – and the knowledge of this ultimate truth can set us free. Interestingly, this does not take us away from the regular worldly life but infact helps us to lead it with much greater joy and fulfillment. As we make a conscious effort to stay connected with our inner awareness and our true selves, we become better equipped to playing the roles of our life – businessman, doctor, husband, father, friend etc. – all with tremendous happiness and peace within. Yet, it aids us in not getting so identified with these roles that we lose sight of the reality or get directly impacted by every little pleasant or unpleasant event related to these roles. This knowledge facilitates us to be like an actor who plays his role on stage with great sincerity but stays conscious through the entire drama that he is really not the character he’s playing – and thus not overly identify with the fortunes and misfortunes of the dramatis personae.

Personal Change and World Peace!

2008-12-14T16:44:00.005+08:00

Three of the biggest long-term challenges facing our world today are wars/ terrorism, poverty, and climate change. Although at varying levels, and in some ways interrelated, each of these has already disrupted our lives and holds substantial potential to escalate and truly threaten the survival of the human race. In light of the recent events in Mumbai, here is an article I had written for the Sunday Times of India, focusing on one of the fundamental aspects related to creating long-term world peace.

Wars and violence have been an integral part of our civilizations. However, in recent times, spurred by terrorism, world peace is threatened at an unprecedented scale. A quick search shows over 10,000 people died or got injured from terrorist attacks during 2008 itself. Similarly, the number of casualties from Iraq war alone is estimated to have topped a million. As one wonders about the root cause of this extraordinary violence, some of the obvious reasons that come to mind include – religious differences, socio-economic inequality, technology and ease of communication, and globalization of arms trade and people mobility. However, underlying all these seems to be a more fundamental and longer-term issue – and that’s the deeper emotional issue of anger and hatred. It originates at an individual level and as it spreads and gains acceptance among a wider group, it has the potential to get substantially amplified. It doesn’t matter where the violence is directed, anger and hatred remain at the very core of it.

Anger is a strong feeling of annoyance, displeasure, or hostility. It is an emotional state that may range from minor irritation to intense rage. It can be caused by any number of triggers – someone cutting our lane on the freeway, someone saying hurtful things to us, someone doing things that appear unjust and so forth. Often, the underlying factor bringing up anger is a sense of lack of control – a perceived threat to getting what we want. This desire for control maybe inborn or may grow through our childhood and other experiences. In situations of acute perceived threat, uncontrolled anger can turn into hatred. Such hatred often comes from the belief that the real source of our unhappiness or provocation is entirely external to us and is hence targeted at an external object, person or group. As Matthieu Ricard highlights in his book “Happiness”, “Hate exaggerates the faults of its target and ignores its good qualities.” Simultaneously, there is a belief that all these negative aspects are completely intrinsic and beyond any hope of change. Possessed by these thoughts, the person then starts to construct a repulsive image of the target, resulting in feeling justified in taking strong action towards elimination of the threat in some way and form, without any care for others’ welfare. Now, amplify these emotions at a group level and we can begin to see how a person or a group can build on any hateful ideology and act towards fixing the perceived ills of a society. Such actions then generate fresh hatred among the impacted people and through that the cycle of resentment, hostility and suffering lives on unabated.

How can we break this vicious cycle? As Mahatma Gandhi said, “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.” The effort towards seeing a world with less anger, hatred and hostility, has to begin with each of us individually. This can be one of our greatest contributions towards a better society. As this effort gains critical mass, it can surely become a meaningful force for broader social change to occur. When we look around, we find umpteen examples of small irritation to rage-like situations in our own lives – from people losing temper at work, or adults getting angry at home, or protestors going out of control and rioting. What we see played out through terrorists is a reflection of the collective anger and hatred in this world. Every time we get angry, the collective anger grows; every time we notice it and learn to put it aside, the collective anger decreases. Working with ourselves- even though that’s one individual at a time and can appear to be a slow process- is the real long-term solution towards producing sustainable shift in social behavior. We have to be willing to look inwards, identify our own emotional triggers, reflect on them, and slowly eliminate them from our lives. We have to realize that getting angry does not solve the situation in any way – it only exacerbates it. As The Dalai Lama says, “By giving in to anger, we are not necessarily harming our enemy but are definitely harming ourselves. We lose our sense of inner peace, do everything wrong, and make life impossible for those who live with us.”

Following an alternate path of love, compassion and forgiveness offers the distinct possibility of breaking the cycle of hatred and hostility. Living in this way can also enable us to support the same journey in others. We can learn a great deal in this regard from our bodies as well. Our body works with all its parts so harmoniously that we don’t even notice it; until the time we get hurt or fall sick. Generally, our body has enough intelligence to heal itself without any external assistance. In fact, in many cases, it’s our overworked mind that comes in way of the natural healing process to take over – we become anxious thinking about similar patterns of the past or worrying about an imagined future. The choices we have when a part of our body is hurt is to a) feel awful about it and curse it, or b) ignore it, or c) embrace it and help it slowly heal. As we learn to take the last approach, and accept what is, we accelerate our own healing process – both physically and emotionally. We become more tolerant, more peaceful and confident, and eventually see better results. We can apply the same approach to every one who’s hurt or angry as well – work with them to slowly heal them of their suffering. When one of our arms is hurt, it’s not that the other arm refuses to cooperate; it continues to compensate the best it can. In the same way, once we realize how we are all interconnected parts of the same whole; diverse manifestations of the same universal energy; micro replicas of the same God, we can begin relating to all others as different parts of our bodies and start treating them with greater acceptance, affection and kindness.

Our actions will thus automatically dictate a preference for larger social good over our normal obsession with self-interest and control. As Leo Tolstoy said, “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” Slowly but surely, our individual efforts at eliminating anger and hatred from our lives can build momentum for broader social change. As we learn to work wisely with others to allow their inner goodness to appear, we can contribute towards creating happier families, peaceful neighborhoods and more harmonious communities. Loving parents would facilitate growth of loving children; compassionate business leaders would inspire deeper understanding among co-workers. With this approach, we can even reach out to working with reforming challenging groups. There are enough examples of criminals getting effectively reformed and rehabilitated through counseling and meditation. As this virtuous circle of understanding and compassion grows, world peace can eventually become a possibility – however, it all has to begin with our individual commitment to self-awareness and self-responsibility towards personal change. Let me end with the serenity prayer –
“God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change
Courage to change the things I can
And wisdom to know the difference”

Madly in Love…

2008-11-18T09:54:00.003+08:00

They say marriages are made in heaven. At the time of marriage, all couples seem ecstatic about their relationship and sound crazy about each other. They all express that relationship to be the best thing that ever happened to them and they are willing to walk on water to please each other. However, as time passes, some things begin to change. Somewhere down the road, the intensity of that love begins to wane; for some, all it takes is the honeymoon trip for the feeling of disappointment to surface. Consequently, many marriages eventually go through a significant deterioration in the relationship. Some of the stats are scary - in many western societies, one out of every two marriages results in divorce; and, in some, only a third of all second marriages survive. While the numbers currently look much better for Asia, the trends are equally alarming.

What happens to all those beautiful marriages? Where do we go wrong in our relationships? There are obviously many perspectives to this, but let me point out a few key aspects related particularly to our emotional make-up that are at play here and how we can learn to deal with them. First, it’s the limitation of our emotional intelligence – our inability to understand and manage our own emotions and that of our partner. How well do we know ourselves, our triggers, our filters, our hot spots? How deftly can we read our partners’ feelings and emotions? Even if we can understand the partner’s emotions, what choices do we make in reacting to them? At the start of the relationship, all mannerisms of our partner seem so adorable – over time, as the magic of initial infatuation begins to wear off, many of the same habits begin to annoy us. Because of our limited emotional bandwidth, and consequent impatience and discomfort with giving space to the partner, we have the tendency to want the partner to be identical to us – in our likes and dislikes, behavior patterns, parenting style and so forth. Our inability to reconcile differences thereof further adds to the undertone of discontent.

A powerful and intimate relationship like marriage also tests and brings out our stored unresolved emotions. All the childhood experiences and psychological impressions that comprise our emotional past begin to surface quickly in this relationship. Interactions with the partner bring out feelings, suppressed in our personal psyche, of rejection, blame, fear, shame, lack of acceptance and so forth. It is our inability to recognize these emotions and deal with them successfully that leads to continued revival of these feelings. Every time we are unable to cope with them, there is a related tendency to blame the partner for our emotional state, anger and sadness – which inadvertently then leads to arguments and added distress. These stored emotions also make us cling to acting out our personal control dramas to cope with all our difficult interactions – we could be playing out the victim (emanating from old beliefs of never being loved or accepted) or the aggressor (need to find faults or take charge to fix others). Then there is the entire related space of our ego – it just makes it harder for each one to give in or be generous in accepting mistakes or appreciating the partner. Our ego makes us self-centered and selfish – it comes in the way of effectively listening to the partner as we are always listening with an inner assessment of how what is being said affects me. It’s because of our ego that we also take our partner’s comments or actions personally.

Finally, the challenges of relationships in general get some additional and unique accents in a man-woman relationship. Men and women are very different in many ways – from what they value to what their greatest needs from a relationship are. As John Gray writes in his book Men are from Mars and Women from Venus, men are about achievement, women about feelings. Men are looking for success, autonomy, and respect, while women are after nurturing and cherishing. When faced with a problem, men tend to withdraw in to themselves to work it out; women like to share and discuss. When women share, they are not always looking for solutions but just want to be heard and understood. Because of men’s desire to achieve and take charge, every time their partner expresses concern about something even broadly, men have a tendency to take it personally and feel blamed and offended. Also, men are likely to then offer solutions when all their partner is looking for is empathy. Similarly, women’s desire to nurture encourages them to often correct or improve their partners. Men hate the idea of being constantly improved, what they are seeking is respect and appreciation.

In this background, how do we make this very special relationship not only work but actually blossom? I am inclined to believe that it requires us to deeply examine the true purpose of this relationship in our life. Companionship and procreation, while very important, can’t be the sole drivers of this deep relationship. As I have written earlier about how we have an external and a core purpose in our life (read finding your thermal), the core purpose relating to our undertaking the inner journey of self-realization – of building greater self-awareness and deeper understanding of who we essentially are; of conquering our own fears and anxieties; of experiencing love and compassion in all our dealings; of learning to be present in the moment, and eventually transcending ourselves. In that context, the purpose of marriage appears to be to experience true love in our lives and in the process heal ourselves (and our partner) emotionally and spiritually.

Psychologists believe that every time we get upset, as much as 90% of our hurt comes from our stored unresolved emotions and barely 10% from the immediate incident that triggers it. These unresolved emotions have the ability to overpower us and prevent us from engaging in loving communication. We need to listen to these emotions and become aware of them as they arise. As we begin turning a witness to these emotions, rather than identifying with them, the emotions start to heal and lose their power. As we learn to be present in the now, it allows us to dilute the risk of becoming hostage to our past emotional triggers – thus diffusing the hold our emotional past has on us. Further, our being present in the now prepares us to not get invested in the emotional drama of our partner – thereby, letting us help heal our partner as well. Additionally, as we talked about the differences about men and women, building a better understanding of each other’s unique needs and learning to allow each other to be our true selves can be powerful as well. Finally, giving expression to our difficult emotions, including sharing them with our partner, can be of great help in the process of healing ourselves. Needless to add, such sharing requires both partners to be willing to participate in such a process and respond to each other in a non-judgmental and supportive manner.

Building clarity about the purpose of a married relationship and practicing the above steps can be emotionally healing and spiritually liberating, creating a wonderful relationship where we can experience true and unconditional love – where one is devoted to giving without judgment, ego or any expectation of receiving; where one is equally comfortable receiving, knowing that each one of us truly deserves it.

Reinventing Ourselves in Times of Trouble

2008-10-25T17:24:00.004+08:00

In the background of how the current economic and financial crisis is impacting individual lives and families, a leading Indian newspaper had recently asked me to write a short piece on some thoughts around reinventing ourselves in such challenging situations. The same is reproduced below.

Every time we are faced with a real personal crisis — loss of job, onset of a terminal illness, divorce or financial crisis — some of the questions that cross our mind are: Why did this happen to me? Will it ever get better? How will this impact my social position? It is only natural to start feeling down and feel anxious about the future. However, people who have weathered such storms, and whom I have had the opportunity to meet during my corporate career and my life coaching practice, usually say that the crisis was the best thing that happened to them. It made them to get off their treadmill of maddening activity and do some real soul searching towards creating a better and happier future.

Drawing from those experiences, it may be useful to look at ways of dealing with such crises in multiple dimensions.

First, it is critical to maintain a healthy sense of optimism about the future — not because we want to psyche ourselves into positive thinking but because things do get better from points of high pessimism. Surveys of people faced with a personal crisis demonstrate that the same people generally feel much better about themselves and life in general just a year after the initial event. It is equally important to have a strong sense of self-belief — the belief that not only will things get better, but that I will also have a meaningful role to play in it. As Graham Bell said, “When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the ones which open for us.”

If the crisis involves some form of financial impact, it may be useful to also reflect on our needs and wants. In today’s consumerist society, we constantly want more — a bigger house, a flashier car, a new cellphone. Very often, unfulfilled wants may be the biggest source of disappointment and stress in our lives, and this is accentuated during adverse times. It may be pertinent to ask ourselves whether we need all these gadgets. In most cases, our needs are usually much simpler than our unending wants.

Further, crisis tests the strength of character. What differentiates the outstanding from the ordinary is not how well they do in good times, but how resilient they are through a crisis. As Albert Einstein said, “Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.” Committing to living with core personal values in all aspects of our life builds character, which provides us with the inner strength to keep forging ahead, and the courage to see our failures as mere stepping stones in the quest for larger goals.

As they say, the Chinese characters for crisis mean both danger and opportunity. Indeed, a crisis may be an opportunity for unparalleled personal growth. We can easily spend a disproportionate amount of time ruminating over our losses or being anxious about the future. The question is when things do get better, will we be well prepared to take advantage of the new opportunities? Adversity offers the luxury of time to learn and hone new skills — enroll in hobbies or educational courses we always wanted to pursue but never had the time for, perhaps reflect on our true passions and give them shape — this may mean anything from starting a new business or community initiative to discovering latent writing skills.

Finally, such times also provide us with a unique opportunity to reflect on what's most important to us—who am I and what is the purpose of my life? Am I pursuing a job, a career or my true calling? Do I want that investment banker job because of its lucrative prospects or because I find true purpose in that work? Engaging in our calling can inspire us to operate at a much higher level and away from the delimiting struggle around external success and recognition. As Patanjali, the great Indian sage, said, “When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all of your thoughts break their bonds. Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.”

Maslow’s Hierarchy Revisited…the Eastern Way!

2008-09-25T17:36:00.009+08:00

Reading through some of the ancient Vedic texts, I was amazed to notice some uncanny similarities between Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs and the text’s description of the sequence of psychophysical energy centers in our body. Even though the two theories are drawn from very different perspectives, and during substantially different time periods, it was their curious similarities and differences as well as the resultant implications for personal growth that got me energized to write this piece.

You are probably quite familiar with Abraham Maslow’s work – a theory in psychology, written in a paper published in 1943, which set out five fundamental human needs and their hierarchical nature. Maslow studied what he called exemplary people such as Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt and Frederick Douglass, along with the healthiest one percent of his college student population, to postulate this theory. As you will notice from the pyramid below, the five needs are physiological needs, safety needs, belonging needs, esteem needs and self-actualization needs. A key aspect of the model is the hierarchical nature of these needs. The lower the needs in the hierarchy, the more fundamental they are and the more a person will tend to abandon the higher needs in order to pay attention to sufficiently meeting the lower needs. For example, when we are ill, we care little for what others think about us – all we want is to get better. The first four layers of the pyramid are what Maslow called "deficiency needs"; if they are not met, the body gives no indication of it physically, but the individual feels anxious and tense. Maslow believed that while the deficiency needs may be seen as "basic", and can be met and neutralized (i.e. they stop being motivators in one's life), self-actualization is a "being" or "growth" need and hence can be an enduring motivation and a driver for long-term behavior.

Let’s now briefly examine the concept of the psychophysical energy centers in our body. First mentioned in Vedas, the ancient Indian texts of knowledge written around 7th Century BC, varying versions of this idea have also been found and are popular in the Chinese, Tibetan, and Japanese traditions. Seven in number, these centers called chakras (meaning wheels), signify the basic energy centers in the body. Each of these centers correlates to major nerve ganglia branching forth from the spinal column and provides the vital energy for our existence. Theories on chakras fit within systems that link the human body and mind into a single unit, described as psycho-physical, or sometimes called the body-mind. Besides the body functions and the developmental stages of life, they also correlate well with the levels of consciousness of an individual. Reference the picture and the table below, you will note that each of these chakras, denoted by seven different colors that comprise the white light, has a relationship to a specific physical, emotional and psychological aspect of a human being. For example, the Root chakra, located at the bottom of the spine, is responsible for adrenals and kidneys, and relates to physical survival needs. The Sacral chakra is responsible for sexual organs, bladder and prostrate, and related to needs of sexuality and other emotional gratification. And so on and so forth.

Similarities
As you read through the above description, you will recognize some amazing similarities between Maslow’s western psychology and this Eastern philosophy. In a way, the chakras represent the energy centers that govern the hierarchy of needs – Root chakra relating to survival and safety, Sacral chakra relating to love and belonging needs, and Solar Plexus chakra to esteem, power and position; the first three chakras thus representing Maslow’s four deficiency needs. Similarly, Maslow’s self-actualization need kind of correlates to the last four chakras taken collectively, starting from Heart chakra (self-acceptance, balanced perspective, compassion) to Throat (self-expression, deeper connection with others), Third Eye (self-reflection, awareness, intuition) and Crown chakra (self-knowledge, higher consciousness). Interestingly, Maslow did broadly describe certain aspects that he believed to comprise the self-actualization needs, which have subsequently been recognized to be independently important. They have lately been updated as a collection of the following needs – cognitive needs (knowledge, meaning), aesthetic needs (appreciation and search for beauty and balance), self-actualization needs (realizing personal potential) and transcendence needs (helping others to achieve self actualization). Examined this way, they make the Maslow’s theory and the Chakra philosophy look an even greater fit.

Differences and Implications
Having said that, there are significant differences between the two and that has deep implications for the journey of personal growth. I find the chakras philosophy far more comprehensive and powerful in its scope. First, it better captures the relationship between the emotional and psychological facets of an individual and the various body organs. Second, while it has an implicit hierarchy among the different chakras, the philosophy does not preclude someone being more advanced on a higher chakra before being making sufficient progress on the lower chakra – for example, someone could be hugely driven by power (3rd chakra) despite feeling substantially insecure (1st chakra). Finally, the chakra philosophy has a very detailed methodology to heal and bring the various chakras in balance and harmony. While Maslow’s theory outlines the state of a person’s psychological motivation, it inherently assumes that the person is at that stage primarily by nature, or childhood experiences, or the last satisfied psychological need. As against that, the Chakras philosophy lays much greater emphasis and provides guidance on undertaking a path of self-awareness and self-responsibility, akin to willfully following the journey of personal mastery towards greater consciousness.

As we become more familiar with the chakras, it is easy to see how a large part of our society is stuck in the first 3 chakras – food, survival, sex, power and position. However, the philosophy details a method of empowering the other four chakras towards the journey of self-discovery and actualization. As we begin to become more familiar with our true nature and learn to connect with others based on who they essentially are (not biased by age, color, personality, position), we empower our Heart and Throat chakras. As an individual reaches sufficient spiritual awareness to see the larger picture of the universe and not feel attached to any one perspective, they gain greater intuitive ability to clearly see the laws of universe at play; strengthening their Third Eye chakra. Lastly, as the rare few individuals who reach the state of an awakened Crown chakra, they become one with the universe and, devoid of any sense of individuality, reach enlightenment. Several suggested approaches, including yoga, meditation and healing techniques like reiki, provide us ways for healing the chakras and empowering them towards a truly meaningful journey of personal growth.

Reflecting on Death, if only to Start Living!

2008-09-19T15:17:00.002+08:00

Death is not a subject we often think about or are even comfortable talking about. Infact, a number of contemporary sociologists believe that despite widespread liberalization of thought in modern times, death is one of the topics where the extent of taboo has actually grown.

What if I said that despite your feeling totally healthy while reading this piece, millions of cells in your body are dying right now? How about the fact that a sizeable chunk of the healthy tree’s trunk that you see across the road from your house is actually dead inside? All organisms are evolving and renewing simultaneously in some form; we are dead and alive at the same time. Our bodies are made of cells, and cells are made of atoms, which in turn are made of electrons, protons and neutrons. These sub-atomic particles, moving about at amazing speeds, zoom in and out of existence all the time. Simultaneously, atoms and molecules vibrate, dance and reconfigure continuously. Same for our cells which break down every second, only to regenerate – 98% of atoms in a human body are replaced annually, stomach lining dies partially every time we digest food and rebuilds itself about every 5 days, skin, nails and hair cells are dying all the time and made afresh every month. That tree has some old leaves that are dead and except for the outer ring that feeds the leaves, the wood inside its trunk is dead as well. Everything is constantly changing, the universe is fluid, and there is no fixed solidity anywhere. Also, everything is in the midst of the greater circle of life. Take for example a rabbit. At some point, it was a bunny, before that a fertilized cell, and before that an egg, and before that the twig eaten by its mother who turned the food into the egg. After the rabbit dies, it will decompose, its elements will nourish plants, and the plants will have twigs to feed other rabbits. And, so goes for the human existence as well!

Through all these forms of an egg, a cell, and the body, the only constant is the underlying consciousness. All these forms are impermanent; the only thing eternal is the formless consciousness which just takes different forms from time to time. It’s another matter that based on our conditioned beliefs, we tend to identify rather strongly with our physical form – the body, the mind and the senses. We fail to recognize that the physical form is not solid matter, even though it appears so, but essentially made up of fluid energy – the same energy that runs the universe. This energy (or consciousness) is unborn and undying and irrespective of whether we are dead or alive in the human form, we remain this consciousness. How else would you describe the transformations of forms in the above example of the egg and the fertilized cell? Would you say, the egg died or later, the fertilized cell died, even though the egg and the cell physically ceased to be so at some point in time? So, while we may die in the physical plane, we never die in the spiritual one. Once we realize this, we can appreciate, as is said, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience but spiritual beings having a human experience.”

As we become familiar with this thought process, it begins to provide us a perspective on the purpose of our life and existence. As we begin to see the ephemeral nature of all our sensual experiences, we begin to become less identified with our physical self. We begin to realize the futility of many of our vain pursuits after titles, power, money and external success. When we are even slightly prepared for death, we can appreciate each moment of life’s beauty better. The purpose of reflecting on death is not to fear it all the time, but to live in the awareness of the fragility of our existence. Reflecting on death guides us towards more clearly focusing on how we may want to dedicate our lives towards more meaningful objectives. Only when we begin to know about death, do we actually learn to start living. As David Wolpe, an accomplished Rabbi, said, “The aim of life is not to know whether there is immortality, but to live so you deserve it.”

Often times, this wisdom about death begins to dawn on us only when we grow old and notice the limitations of our selfish existence. That’s when people start to realize the impermanence of their egoistic pursuits and acquisitions. As the possibility of death draws near, the attachment to possessions and form begins to fade – this provides the golden opportunity for many to start becoming spiritually aware. That’s when people may become more compassionate and focus more on serving others. Sometimes people, who are challenged in some way or face significant hardships at an earlier stage of their life, may become spiritually stronger even earlier. But for the better part of our lives, we chose to ignore thinking about it. Guess, we are somewhat like the Buddha’s father, King Suddhodana, who hoped that as long as his son wasn’t exposed to death, sickness and other suffering, he would never give up worldly ambitions. In a way, we all have a strong side in us that easily convinces us that as long as we don’t think about death, life is quite okay and in many ways fun – failing to acknowledge the possibilities of true joy that may lie ahead if we are willing to gather the courage to reflect on and face the thoughts about death more often. Also, sometimes people fear that if they focused too hard on these issues, they may lose interest in life at large – their work and family etc. This fear makes us cling to the world of attachments and physical form. However, when we reflect deeply on death, we realize that this is not the case – in fact, as we thus conduct ourselves with an attitude of let go and surrender, our productivity at work goes up and our relationships blossom further.

Guess, the point is, if living this way and becoming spiritually aware is important at a later age, how can we learn to live that way through our lives. “Are you not ashamed,” said Seneca, the Roman philosopher “to reserve for yourself only the remnant of life, and to set apart for wisdom only that time which cannot be devoted to any business? How late it is to begin to live just when we must cease to live!” If only we could start to live this way when we are younger, we can not only create meaningful lives for ourselves but also make this unique planet a more joyful place.

Where is Our Mind Located…and its Powerful Significance!

2008-09-13T15:26:00.003+08:00

(Photo by rooneg)

When our mind is at peace, our bodies lookrelaxed. When we are physically hurt, we become more prone to experiencingunpleasant feelings. Feelings of joy reflect on our faces as do feelings ofanger and anxiety. Every time we are scared, our bodies go stiff. If the brainis the nerve center of our thoughts, and the heart of our emotions, how doesour body so well reflect what we are thinking/ feeling at any time? Is itpossible that our minds reside throughout the body and not just in the brain?Also, if we didn’t have some degree of innate intelligence all through ourbody, how could we experience sensations everywhere?

There has now beenextensive research on the presence of mind in our bodies, that suggests thatthe neuropeptides, chemical substances that form the communication network ofour emotions, are present not just in the brain but everywhere in the body. AsDr. Cadence Pert, chief of brain biochemistry at National Institute of MentalHealth in the US writes, “These findings go beyond the often-mentioned conceptof power of mind over body. Indeed, the more we know about neuropeptides, theharder it is to think in the traditional terms of a mind and a body. It makesmore and more sense to speak of a single integrated entity, a body-mind”. So, while the brainremains the primary analyzer, our mind is not located there and is instead morelike an information-processing field spread across the body. Every cell in ourbody is capable of feeling; every cell can express emotion. No wonder then,people’s thoughts, emotions and expressions sometimes change after undergoingan organ transplant.

Once we recognize that feelings areessentially felt in the entire body, it is easy to appreciate how emotionalproblems can manifest into physical disease. As Marshall Glickman writes, “Neuroscientistshave learnt that there is a sophisticated communication network between thevarious cells throughout the brain and body. Every time we deny or block whatwe are feeling, we restrict the information flow to an area, resulting in thestressed organs becoming more prone to illness.” A number of traditionalhealing techniques, like Reiki, too have always espoused that our thoughts andemotions have a direct impact on the physical state of specific parts of ourbody. Reiki practitioners advocate that at the time of birth, our bodies areconducive to freer flow of the life-supporting, universalenergy, through them. However, as we grow up and experience negativethoughts and emotions, of anger, fear, insecurity, jealousy etc., they impactthe energy flow through the body. Repressed and stored emotions create blocksthat interfere with the body’s synchronized functioning. They believe, forexample, that lack of trust and self-acceptance may lead to heart problems,rigidity in our outlook makes the body stiff and cause joint pains, andfeelings of insecurity about the future tend to lead to lower backache, and soforth.

Now, all life forms have their ownintelligence, akin to this life energy flowing through our entire body. Thisintelligence forms the basis of functioning of all aspects of our body – be itthe digestive system, the neural connections, or the hormone system. We don’trun our body, the intelligence does. The interesting thing is that thisintelligence spread across our body cannot tell the difference between anactual situation and a thought. Thoughts are treated by the body-mind as real and they bring about the samechanges in the body-mind as an actual physical event. Thus, agenuine threatening situation or fearful thoughts – both have the same impacton the body. Further, when these thoughts are combined with emotions, theytruly engage the body-mind and have a deeper and stronger impacton it. This insight not only allows us to better understand how our thoughtsand emotions impact us, but can also be helpful in healing ourselves andothers.

Healing ourselves requires us to be better aligned to our inner intelligencewhich in turn can create a smoother flow of the universal life energy throughus. For this, we need to be aware of our thoughts and feelings at all times. Weneed to recognize that every time we are angry or anxious, not only is there apsychological impact but also a physical cost attached. It’s not aboutcontrolling our emotions but about becoming aware of them. When we are consciousof our thoughts, we are able to notice our negative thoughts as soon as theyarise and are better able to put them aside. In this manner, they lose theirability to impact our body-mind in any significant way.Simultaneously, when we notice positive thoughts (optimism, compassion,courage) and build on them without any attachment, they result in healthierbodies. When these positive thoughts are supported by likewise emotions, theyfurther strengthen the positive impact. That’s how visualization techniqueswork so well. When we visualize ourselves to be healthy, abundant, calm andjoyous, the neuropeptides carry those thoughts (as if they are real) and makeour body begin to feel that way. These techniques are actively used by athletesto actualize their potential by visualizing a 100-metre dash or a perfect golfshot, several times in their minds, before the actual event.

Finally, we can use these insights towards even healing others. The body-mind intelligence present throughout ourbodies is also connected to the universal intelligence that runs the universe.That also highlights how, in some way, we are all interconnected through thisall-pervading intelligence. Through techniques like visualization and reiki,supportive thoughts coupled with deep genuine emotions, sent out to theuniversal intelligence, manifest in reality in other physical spaces. Bringingawareness to a body part or another person’s illness galvanizes theintelligence to consciously address it. This is almost like radio waves travelingacross long distances without losing the coded signal. Needless to add, for usto be able to heal others, we need to be ourselves first in sync with natureand its intelligence. For us to be able to tap into universal intelligence, ithas to be deeply connected and flowing through us. This requires us to becontinuously working on healing ourselves physically (body), emotionally(feelings), mentally (thoughts) and spiritually (inner faith).

The Olympics, Transcending Ourselves, and Personal Mastery

2008-08-22T10:24:00.002+08:00

“The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well” – The Olympic Creed

The underlying emphasis in the above message seems to be based on a human being’s journey towards overcoming one’s own limitations and achieving personal peak performance – in a way, somehow transcending oneself. Watching the Olympics over the last few days has brought to fore the ability of certain individuals to do this with uncanny consistency. While Michael Phelps, Tiger Woods, and Roger Federer are great recent examples of this in sports, various individuals like Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, and Neil Armstrong have achieved this state at the very highest levels, in other fields as well.

In this post, I have attempted to capture what I believe are some of the most critical ingredients for achieving this level of peak performance in any type of profession or vocation we maybe engaged in.

Is it your calling?
For starters, is it a job or a career or your calling that you are pursuing? A detailed study of attitudes and general orientation towards work, done in 1997 by Dr. Amy Wrzesniewski, a professor of business at the New York University, showed workers broadly divided into three groups – those who saw their work as a job, those as a career, and those as their calling. The people in the first group are in employment because they really need the monthly paycheck and may be willing to move to another organization for higher salary. The second group is focused on building a career – for them it’s more about the position, growth, and the prestige. However, they may get disenchanted when the string of promotions stop. Finally, there is a small percentage of people engaged in what is their true calling – they are extremely passionate about what they do every day and work is like play for them. Being engaged in your true calling, I reckon, is an essential part of creating the conditions for peak performance to occur. Such an alignment with higher purpose results in staying committed to action and the process, without attachment to the result. After winning a record eight gold medals in Beijing, Michael Phelps said,”My goal is not personal records but it is to change the sport of swimming.” As Brad Kearns captures Tiger Woods’ purpose in his book, How Tiger does it, “the only thing I can do is to give back. If it works, it works”. Such commitment to inspiring others towards their sport or to giving back to community makes their focus on the game almost selfless. They are then more committed to higher goals and achieving genuine excellence than to chasing their personal glory. Such commitment to our calling can provide us the true inspiration to operate at a much higher level and away from the delimiting struggle around winning and losing. Also, when we are in sync with a higher purpose, the universe supports us in our journey in powerful ways – effectively raising our ability to transcend ourselves. As Patanjali, the great India sage who lived in the 6th century BC, said, “When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all of your thoughts break their bonds; your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be”.

The stillness within
The second big area that consistently comes up, for becoming ready for peak performance, is the ability to live in the present. All the peak performers, from sportsmen to artists to spiritual gurus, have the ability to shut out the rest of the world as well as their inner thoughts and concentrate single-mindedly on the task in front of them. The game is not fought at the physical level but at the mental level. As the commentators remarked about Phelps, “If anything, he just wouldn’t lose his concentration. It wasn’t just his power and speed that made this happen, it was sharp mental focus.” That’s how Pete Sampras and Federer consistently pulled off aces when they needed them the most. As Mahatma Gandhi said, “I try to strive on without fear of failure and without hope of success.” Similarly, such thoughtlessness is the key to hitting the bull’s eye in archery or to immaculately conducting those incredible gymnastics routines – the athletes have to be able to totally immerse themselves in the moment and not be ruminating over a previous miss or be excited about the potential win. As sports psychologist James Loehr describes in his book “Stress for Success”, the ideal performance state is “physically relaxed, mentally calm, fearless, energized, positive, happy, effortless, automatic, and confident.”

Character
And, finally, it’s the strength of their character. Consistent peak performers strive hard to build a strong character. They are highly self-aware and commit to living their core personal values in all aspects of their life. As Albert Einstein said, “Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.” A strong character provides them the inner strength to keep forging ahead as well as the courage to see their failures as mere stepping stones in their quest for fulfilling their purpose.

As one reads about these awe-inspiring individuals and reflects on the themes of their purpose, character, and ability to live in the moment, their accomplishments seem very much like an out-of-body, spiritual experience. Needless to add, I believe, among other factors, the path of personal mastery – of high level of self-awareness and living one’s purpose – which I have been writing about, seems an integral part of the journey towards transcending ourselves.

Attachment, Suffering, Ignorance and Personal Mastery

2008-08-15T11:16:00.004+08:00

Enough and more has been written about attachment being the primary source of human suffering – attachment to money, fame, power, relationships and so on. Buddhism has strong grounding in it, Hinduism talks at length about it. Simultaneously, most spiritual scriptures also talk about the journey of self-awareness, leading to gaining knowledge about the ultimate truth about one self.

One of the things I have been lately wondering about is the sequencing of what comes first – detachment or self-knowledge? Does one lead to the other? Further, are the two related in some manner? What all does the context of detachment encompass – ambition, money, relationships?

My sense, based on coaching engagements with a wide diversity of individuals, coupled with my personal experiences, is that it’s the journey of self-awareness and gaining knowledge about the truth of our existence that is at the core of overcoming our daily frustrations, anxiety, regrets and suffering. As we embark on this journey, it allows us to get closer to our inner selves, the true selves. As we become aware of how our world is created by our perceptions, it moves us towards realizing that we are not our minds; even though we find it hard to not be controlled by our minds. As William Blake said, “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite”. It initiates us into becoming an observer to our conditioned minds and witness the games the mind plays – how the mind stays focused (and anxious) of the imaginary future, or the regrets of the past, keeps us closed to several opportunities for love and sharing, loves to remind us what we don’t have rather than encourage us to feel grateful for what we have. This then leads to the question of who are we then? As we search for the answers and begin to appreciate the truth about our reality and the manifestation of that reality in multiple forms, including our current existence, we move significantly forward in that journey. This is the beginning stage of experiencing great inner calm, peace and joy.

Going back to where I started though – how and where does detachment fit into all this? My submission is the new state of mind will likely lead to some level of detachment as the person begins to see the futility of certain actions of the mind. Does that mean one begins to lose interest in work? In relationships? Absolutely not. On the contrary, I believe this state leads to becoming more effective in choosing the right work, the work that leads to fulfilling the purpose of one’s life. It also leads to overflow of love and compassion for others – be it the closest relationships or the broader society.

I suppose we tend to typically see detachment as becoming disinterested with a situation; sometimes even assuming it would mean we are devoid of any feelings. However, the state of mind that I talked about above is one of equanimity, rather than of disassociating ourselves from our feelings or emotions, or in any way suppressing them. It’s about acceptance of what is rather than constantly reacting to it. It’s one about experiencing that our usual imagination of freedom – to be able to disassociate ourselves from any situation or even wish it away – is not only a fantasy, it’s exactly the opposite of what true liberation is about; which is having no resistance to whatever is. The Serenity prayer captures this well, “May I have the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” As we delve into it, I reckon somewhere the answers also lie in building a clearer understanding of detachment. I am coming around to the view that detachment is nothing but a level of self-knowledge that makes one realize the limitations of the outer world and the power of our inner selves. It is the detachment from living with continued ignorance of reality more than anything else. Hinduism has had the concept of Sanyas (renunciation), in pursuit of becoming one with God – seen as some kind of ultimate detachment. To me, true Sanyas does not mean renouncing worldly activity, or relationships, or money, or society; it means renouncing suffering, or rather the causes of suffering, our identification with our mind and our ignorance about our true selves. It is about living in the deep knowledge of oneself and one’s reality for as often in a day as possible – in all actions, at work, in relating to others and so on. Through that, the more one is aware of the Godliness in oneself, the more one becomes closer to God.

As I have talked about the concept of personal mastery in several pieces in the past, that journey of self-discovery and consistently living the purpose of one’s life, is indeed at the core of the inner changes I spoke about above.

The Cycle of Karma…and How Come Nice Guys Don’t Always Get The Top Job?

2008-07-07T18:22:00.001+08:00

Must be their karma? Many a time when we are faced with an unusually challenging situation or get a windfall, we tell ourselves, “Oh, this must be our karma”. In India, where the word karma and its related concepts originated around 5th century BC, often times the contentment on the faces of the financially poor people is explained as their reconciliation with their karma. It appears the word karma is often used to describe the correlation between one’s past deeds and one’s current or future circumstances. While that’s a fairly accurate expression of the concept of karma, here are some additional insights into the subtleties of what it is and how we can better apply it to our lives.

The ancient Indian literature on karma brings it forth as the notion of a cyclic process of our every action or intention leading to lasting impressions on our psyche, that in turn impact our future behavior (action or intention), leading to new lasting impressions being formed. As Chip Hartranft explains in his book on the teachings of Patanjali (an Indian sage who lived in the 6th century BC), any kind of volitional body or mind movement, physical or mental, constitutes a kind of karma. Each action, or even intent, leaves an impression in the deepest part of our psyche and comes up in the future at the time of a related thought or action. This is how our childhood impressions of relationships, role of parents, money, success, social conformity etc. create an inner perceptual map that shows up to determine our response in relation to similar issues in the future. The outcome of that behavior, in turn, creates new inner impressions, thus continuing the cycle of latent impressions and activation. As Eckhart Tolle illustrates in his recent book “A new Earth”, this cycle can also be explained through a scientific principle. As Newton’s third law of motion states, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Since this law applies to all types of energy forces, it must apply to our thoughts and emotions too. What that means is that every desire, thought, volition, action, and reaction has an equal response – the experience in this case leaving a lasting imprint on our psyche. Every time we spread love, we feel loved inside. Similarly, we cannot harm anyone consciously, without harming ourselves. As Joseph Goldstein said, “Our only real possessions are our accumulated wholesome and unwholesome intentions.”

Notwithstanding those definitions, here’s an important consideration. While the concept of karma is truly relevant for our psycho-emotive destiny, which is directly impacted by our intentions and actions, it may not necessarily be for our physical and material future. What we experience at the level of our psyche and inner state is a direct reflection of our volitions, thoughts, and emotions. However, what manifests in our lives at the physical level has another dimension to it as well – and that is the dimension of other external forces; the environment; the circumstances; the laws of nature. Thus, what we experience is a result of both our past actions (karma) and the environment (people, economy, nature’s laws of birth and aging and so on). That’s what begins to explain why nice guys don’t always get the top job, or the best marriage. While being genuinely nice directly and positively impacts what we experience in our own inner emotional state, it does not dictate what we achieve in a material sense. In that context, the saying, “what you sow, so shall you reap” well encapsulates the notions of karma, though relevant only at our psychological and emotional level.

Further, it’s not what happens to us at the physical and material level, but how we respond to it, that has a deep impact on our inner state – and, the cycle of karma. That’s why our level of contentment and inner peace is not a function of the material success; but entirely of the value we internally attach to it. It transpires then that we can indeed be masters of our inner destiny through the thoughts and emotions we choose to have in relation to any experience (see related article on the journey of personal mastery). It is also apparent that for our true happiness and inner peace, we should have more positive thoughts – be more compassionate, be calmer, be more trusting and accepting – as that sustains the virtuous inner cycle for us. As Buddha said, “Those who are free of resentful thoughts surely find peace”. Also, as this is a cyclic process, it’s possible to break old patterns and change its course with what we do in the present moment. By living with greater awareness in the present, we can surely begin to flush out the historical baggage of the past latent impressions inside us.

Finally, it maybe worth mentioning that in the context of the karmic cycle, the sages also talk about a much more profound objective to work towards – one of pursuing true inner liberation. At a more spiritual level, it is believed that it is not possible to have only positive thoughts – the moment we have a label of positive and negative, good and bad, to thoughts, emotions, and situations – we cannot avoid having some negative thoughts and emotions as they are part of our bipolar perceptions. Also, even positive thoughts may carry underlying impressions of one of the potential sufferings – of egoism, attachment, aversion, or clinging to life. The sages then espouse that the only real way to break the cycle of karma is to not have any thoughts altogether – a state of Nirvana, where no new impressions are being formed in the psyche and the person experiencing it is one with the divine*!!

* Several Eastern meditation practices are built around this notion, but more about that another time!

Finding Your Thermal…

2008-06-29T07:50:00.001+08:00

Whilst attending the intermediate course of paragliding many years ago, I remember taking a short flight from the top of a 600 feet tall cliff and truly loving it. I recall marveling at the effortlessness of the entire 45 seconds flight, before gravity took hold, and wondering how some of the experienced paragliders managed to stay up in the air for hours. As I learnt, it was their ability, like the migratory birds, to find progressive air thermals that allowed them to stay up and even travel long distances, of sometimes up to a thousand kilometers. Were those long flights enervating for them? Never, they were always effortless and exhilarating, as they soared, in complete harmony with nature.

Comparing that scenario to the way we live our lives, I often wonder why there is so much struggle to our existence. There appears to be this constant underlying stress all around us and the innumerable choices that we are surrounded with – of, products, services, careers, gadgets, leisure and so on – instead of empowering us, leave us feeling deprived. Like the migratory birds, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could find such thermals that make our lives more effortless, balanced, and peaceful? Those thermals could sweep us away from our daily dilemmas to a life where making choices was much easier, where we experienced minimal effort to move forward, and where we were fully supported by nature in all our pursuits.

The key to this I believe lies in gaining clarity about the purpose of our own existence. Why are we here and what are are we aiming to do? I do believe each one of us on earth is hugely gifted and has a special purpose – but do we take the time to discover it in ourselves; or are we just on a treadmill of activity going almost nowhere. What do you value, what’s most important to you? Do you want to be more successful or do you want to make a more significant contribution? Do you want more money or greater happiness? What’s the role of family and friends in our life? What’s our commitment to community and environment? If you had to make a real choice, what’s that one thing that you would like your life to be about? On your deathbed, what is that you would feel most proud about your life?

I have reflected a lot on this and coached a number of clients in this space as well. Interestingly, some of the most powerful statements of purpose tend to revolve around an absolute and an inner goal – absolute in that it is not set relative to others and inner in that its progress is not measurable by external parameters of evaluation like career, money, fame, achievement etc. Examples would include statements like, “I want to be always happy”, or “want to lead a meaningful balanced life”, or “want to give back to society”, or “want to leave a legacy”. Many a times they also include a component that is focused on others – “I want to be happy and want to make others around me happy” etc. As you think deeply about your purpose and begin to anchor your life around it, including relying on it to make various choices, you may well be surprised with the presence of powerful thermals in your own life and the wonderful direction your life may take.

At a deeper level, we can comprehend the notion of our thermals and purpose in two dimensions – consider that we have two types of purpose in our lives. There’s the external purpose and then there’s the core purpose. The external purpose of living is the roles we choose in our lives – the roles at work and in our relationships; whether we want to be a tennis player, an artist, a scientist, a business owner or a homemaker. Also, our role as a parent, as a child, and as a friend. Additionally, it includes our varied interests and pursuits. However, often times, we build such strong identification with these roles that we lose perspective of our core purpose. That’s when the relentless pursuit of these external goals causes struggle and doesn’t seem to provide us with that illusory happiness, balance, and peace. What we really need then is a stronger alignment of our external goals with our true core purpose.

The core purpose, it appears, may well be the same for all of us – it seems to circle around undertaking the inner journey of self-realization; of building greater self-awareness and deeper understanding of who we essentially are; of conquering our own fears and anxieties; of experiencing love and compassion in all our dealings; of learning to be present in the moment, and eventually transcending ourselves. Once we grasp that and make it the central theme of whatever we do, the notions of happiness, balance, and legacy are no longer illusory. As they say, “it does not matter what you do, but how you do it”. Once we embrace this purpose, it reflects in how we conduct ourselves in whatever we do – at work or in relationships. We are then less focused on how far we reach in achieving the external goals in life, but more on enjoying the inner journey of being on the right path. It provides us a higher meaning in everything we do. For a tennis player, it’s the difference between wanting to win a grand slam and being driven by the purpose of inspiring greatness among millions of tennis players and fans. For a writer, it’s the difference between a desire to be famous and her purpose of helping innumerable readers experience their powerful inner emotions.

Now, even without aligning our external goals with the core purpose, we could very well achieve great results through effort, determination, and hard work. However, the journey is unlikely to be a joyous one and may still lead us to some form of inner suffering. As Roman philosopher, Seneca said, “As is a tale, so is life; not how long it is, but how good it is, that matters”. Once we align our external roles with the core purpose, life becomes effortless, smooth, peaceful, harmonious and well supported – and then, you are really flying!!

Our Extraordinary Universe and a Brief Perspective of Who We Are, Where Did We Come From and Where We Are Going

2008-06-03T11:04:00.001+08:00

Reading my six year old daughter’s science book with her the other day, I learnt some amazing facts about the universe, space, and pre-historic life. It set me off on a brief but very exciting research that has led me to learning some new perspectives on the correlation between the way the universe is organized and who we really are.

First, a bit about where did we come from. As per the Big Bang theory, the Universe was created ex nihilo (Latin term meaning “out of nothing”) approximately 13.5 billion years ago. Some of the spiritual scriptures also independently mention this. The Bible talks about about “Son, look upon heaven and earth, and all that is in them: and consider that God made them out of nothing.” It is believed that the Earth was formed about 4.6 billion years ago. For the first four billion years or so, the only living things on Earth were microscopic, single-celled organisms. Then about 700 million years ago, the first real animals, such as jelly fish and sponges appeared in the sea. Over the next 200 million years, these evolved into creatures with hard parts (shells and bones). Then came the fishes, then life arrived onto land in the form of plants and insect-like animals. Post the extinction of dinosaurs about 65 million years ago, started the age of birds and mammals; with the first human-like creatures, the hominids, appearing about 2 million years ago. They were small and looked like their ape ancestors. Gradually, they evolved to become taller, with larger brains; the modern humans probably evolved only 200,000 years ago. While mulling through this data, two things came up for me. First, we are a mere organism, although evolved with a developed brain. Second, our entire existence pales in significance to the existence of the universe. If the Universe were 100 years old, human race would have been born only about 80 minutes ago and an average human life span would be less than 20 seconds.

Let me now share a bit about what the universe is made of and its connection with who we really are. The universe is made 99.99% of space, and interestingly, so are we – it’s just that with our limited vision we are unable to grasp that. To appreciate the vastness of the universe and how it’s made almost entirely of space, consider this. It takes light, traveling at over 1 billion km/ hour, about 1 second to travel from the moon to the earth. The sun is about 150 million kilometers away from the earth and it takes light about 10 minutes to travel from there to the earth. There are over 200 billion stars like the sun in our galaxy, the milky way, and it would take light about 4.2 years to travel from sun to its nearest star. If that’s not mind-numbing, consider that there are about 100 galaxies in the universe but it would take light about 25,000 years to travel from our nearest galaxy, the Canis Major Dwarf, to reach us.

And, we are quintessentially the same. We are all made of atoms, which in turn are 99.99% space. Also, 99.99% of what’s around in groups of atoms is space. The nucleus, which accounts for almost the entire mass of an atom, is so miniscule compared to the rest of the atom that if the atom were to be a room, we would not be able to even see the nucleus. For the nucleus to be the size of a grain of salt, the atom would need to be the size of a 14-story building. Incredible but true – our physical bodies are 99.99% space and that we are identical to the universe in our essential core. Although inner space has no form, it’s intensely alive. The empty space is life in its fullness, the unmanifested source out of which all manifestation flows. That brings us to the ultimate truth I previously wrote about, although at that time from a different perspective. We are a microcosm of the unmanifested universe. That is also the same as saying – we all have the God in us; or that we are all made of the same universal life energy; or that we are identical to each other and the universe in our essence. However, it’s our enlarged brains and our identification with the physical form (our bodies, the earth, and the small nucleus of the atom), however insignificant they maybe, that keeps us away from this awareness.

Where do we go from here? The universe is constantly evolving and it continues to take different forms in the process – galaxies, stars, planets, animals, plants and humans. The universal life energy that powers the universe flows through us too; it just takes different forms from time to time. All the forms arise from the universe and dissolve into it, but never die. Death is a concept of the mind and of its identification with the body form. This awareness helps us realize the immortality of our fundamental nature. That in turn guides us into being and doing whatever is in synchronicity with the evolution of the universe – and that’s what brings us true joy and inner peace.

Domination of Our Senses and Personal Mastery

2008-05-21T14:34:00.001+08:00

We live in a world dominated by our senses. The five senses are our window to the external world; and eventually, the way we perceive the world through our senses becomes our internal reality. The greatest pleasures in our lives seemingly come from experiences derived from these senses – as eyes admire the beauty, the taste buds relish the gourmet food, the sense of a lovers’ touch makes the heart sing, and so on. As we begin to experience these pleasures, we tend to want more of them; we desire to increase the frequency of such experiences and also want them to ideally last longer. However, simultaneously, we also experience situations that seem not to go per our desire and make us uncomfortable and unhappy. We hate to go through those experiences, wishing we could somehow totally eliminate them from our lives.

This desire to seek only the pleasant sensations and avoid the supposedly unpleasant ones is what sets us up for future suffering – either the excessive want for these pleasures or the feeling of lack of enough of these experiences in our lives then leads to frustration, anxiety and unhappiness.

If we include our mind, along with its conditioned thought forms and mental patterns, in the list of our sense organs, we totally and absolutely live by these senses. The mind adds the unique dimension of attaching judgments to every experience; with the sense of a separate self, the mind also adds the evaluation of whether the experience is good for us or not. The mind also adds the sense of time – making our thoughts (and resultant feelings) always wander in the past or the future. The mind then wants to cling to the pleasant experiences and makes us believe that as we seek out more such experiences, we would be happier on an ongoing basis.

Many of us eventually find our own ways of accepting and living with a mixture of both pleasant and unpleasant experiences. While this provides some balance and calm in our lives, how do we create sustained happiness?

Living a life ruled primarily by our senses may have some fundamental limitations. It escapes an understanding of the laws of nature and the reality of our existence. It does not capture the impermanence and transient nature of all thoughts, feelings, and sensations. After a few hours of a tasty meal, one craves for the next mouth watering experience. After enjoying the time with one’s beloved, one has to deal with the loneliness that follows. They say the only thing constant is change. But learning to become aware of the ever-changing nature of existence is part of starting the journey for truth. As we become more aware of our own truth – how we are no different from the universal life energy that lives and breathes through every living thing, only in our case happens to flow through the manifestation of a human form; and how we are all made of the same energy and are very much part of the same whole and that only our conditioned minds and senses make us believe in the sense of separateness – we begin to move away from the duality of our sense-based experiences.

We can then begin to become aware of taste as simply taste, without mentally attaching labels to it as pleasant or unpleasant; same way for our thoughts and feelings. As we learn to be a witness to our own minds, we start to discover the transient nature of all our thoughts and feelings. This allows us to be non-judgmental of all our experiences and train our minds to be detached from momentary sensations. As we become skilled at living with greater consciousness of our true nature and just playing a witness to our minds and senses, we also become better equipped to living in the present and not letting our thoughts (and resultant feelings and sensations) constantly wander in the past or the future. As we develop greater self-awareness and begin to notice the miracles in all aspects of our life (including the one of our breath going in and out), we start the process of living in greater harmony with nature and away from the dictates of our senses. Living in fuller consciousness of our true nature, and its eternal permanence, creates the ability to live a life full of sustained joy, bliss and compassion.

To me, this journey of change, self-awareness, and inner growth, is integral to the journey of personal mastery that I have been writing about.

Capitalism Needs a Soul

2008-05-15T14:33:00.002+08:00

Adam Smith, a pioneer of modern economics and author of Wealth of Nations (one of the most well-known books on free market economics), wrote another book The Theory of Moral Sentiments before that. It was based on the idea that intentional virtue and goodwill are the foundation of both an economic system of free enterprise and a political system of a representative democracy. He acknowledged that if individual virtue deteriorated, neither the free market nor a democracy could ultimately survive.

It is in that background that, in this post, I would like to examine the current state of capitalism.

Capitalism, as defined by Wikipedia, refers to an economic and social system in which the means of production are predominantly privately owned, are operated for profit, and in which investments, distribution, income, production, and pricing of goods and services are determined through the operation of a market economy. It is usually considered to involve the right of individuals and corporations to trade, using money, in good and services, labor and land.

Some of the key principles of capitalism, both from the above definition and its current practice, include, high focus on individual (ownership and advancement), pursuit of profit (or wealth creation), and efficiency (determined by competition and free market dynamics). While this system has delivered enormous results for the better part of last century, I believe it needs to now evolve to cope with the changing needs of our current and future society.

Let us examine some of the evident limitations of the above three principles (focus on individual, wealth creation goal, and efficiency) of the capitalist system, as we know it. The sharp focus on individual economic progress, as one of the core elements of the system, has led to an all too familiar approach of "winner takes all" and the corresponding disproportionate and instant rewards for individual success. According to the Economist, the top executives in America received on average 475 times as much salary as the average worker (similar figures for Japan and the UK are 11 and 22 times respectively). While this approach has produced some of the highest achievers in diverse fields (from scientific research to sports), it has also created numerous social challenges. The stress created in personal and family lives of individuals, by the pressure to win and the fear of being a "loser", has resulted in enormous social costs of health-care, broken families and teenage crimes. According to the Institute of Management in the UK, stress costs the country upwards of 40million working days and ₤7 billion. The greed of greater wealth accumulation has also led to multiple scandals that seem to breakout off the corporate world with uncanny regularity. Further, the focus on individual success has also resulted in poor distribution of prosperity - according to the OECD, the US is the most unequal society of all industrial nations.

The capitalist systems’ overarching goal of profit and wealth creation is presenting similar challenges. GDP as the primary indicator of a country’s progress is rightfully beginning to be questioned. While it well captures the economic progress of the country, it does not fully reflect the impact of the economic policies on the quality of life at large. Despite higher per capita consumption in the US, the standard of living in many parts of Western Europe is higher in terms of life expectancy, health, financial security, vacation time, quality of public schools and support for the arts. The UN in 1990 created the Human Development Index (HDI), an alternate measure that captures a more complete picture of such social development. Interestingly, the US and the UK stand out among many of the developed nations as countries whose rank on HDI is noticeably lower than their per capita income rank. As against that, for many of the European nations (particularly the Scandinavian countries), and Japan, it’s the opposite. Interestingly, Bhutan has recently introduced the concept of GNP (Gross National Happiness), as it believes that true development of human society takes place when material and spiritual development occur side by side to complement and reinforce each other.

Finally, let us review the notion of efficiency. While efficiency has been an important mantra during times of infinite resources, what we need today is a drive towards effectiveness. We don’t need a system that works on doing things right (efficiency); we need a system that leads with doing the right things (effectiveness). We need a system that goes beyond the limiting pursuit of profit to pursuit of a broader social purpose; a system that rewards employment of its principles towards solving bigger social issues – of poverty, wealth distribution, environment, human development and sustenance; a system that can judge when growth and wealth is enough, so we can stop accumulating and start sharing; a system that can balance raising economic standards with greater stability and equality; a system that acknowledges that relentless pursuit of profit and size, like cancer, is dangerous for the survival of the whole.

We need capitalism with a soul. Such capitalism would not only engage the entrepreneurs and employees in meaningful pursuits, it will also contribute to creating a more balanced and sustainable social structure. Suffice to end with a quote from Woodrow Wilson - "We are not here to merely earn a living and to create value for our shareholders. We are here to enrich the world and make it a finer place to live. We will impoverish ourselves if we fail to do so".

Nature, Nurture and Personal Mastery

2008-05-01T10:49:00.001+08:00

In many of my recent posts, I have talked about the principles behind personal mastery and its relevance to our lives and the world around us. In this post, I would like to highlight how this journey can become an important source of change in our lives, particularly when seen in the context of the ever non-conclusive, biological, social, psychological, and neurological, debate about “nature versus nurture”.

The other day, my wife read out my supposed personality traits from a horoscope website and I was amazed at the quality of matches. While I am not one taken to reading the weekly forecasts or be fatalistic about the future, the accuracy of the assessment did leave me with a couple of questions – is the deepest part of my personality predetermined at birth or can it change? What could create the change? And, that’s what has led me to this article.

The genetic DNA imprint is probably the single most significant factor of the future destiny of a child at birth. The DNA comprising of three billion bases, tied up in one unique combination out of zillions of possible sequences, provides the first perspective of the predisposed personality traits, likes, dislikes, health patterns and inclinations of the child. If it weren’t for the power of genes (and nature), two siblings who have been provided largely the same upbringing, won’t turn out so different in their attitudes, preferences, and behavior – one is totally organized, very expressive, and loves art; the other forgetful, very analytical and crazy about sports. In a spiritual sense, each child is the product of that special circumstance of universe which brings together the ancestral history of several past generations in a unique manner. All medical examinations begin with checking the medical history of the parents and grand parents; sounds like nothing could be more important than the genes we are born with.

But then, decades of psychology research would have us believe in the power of the childhood experiences – about how children of preoccupied parents grow up to be avoidant individuals or how sometimes loved and sometimes ignored children result in anxious adults. It’s the values people imbibe about money, relationships, hard work, careers and empathy during childhood that drive their attitudes and behavior as adults. Research done on identical twins brought up by different parents conclusively demonstrates the difference in personalities of siblings shaped by the environment. Extensive psychological research also proves that childhood experiences can predict the personality traits in adults in terms of their being secure, anxious, or avoidant, with up to 70% accuracy. There’s also the theory of John Crabbe from Oregon Health and Science University, that while we are born with a diverse range of genes, it’s the upbringing that determines which genes get better expressed - making a strong case for nurturing.

The question is – while most of science will agree with a healthy balance between nature and nurture, are these the only factors that determine the future path of a human being. What else allows for significant personal growth to happen– teachers, mentors, reformative relationships? I believe an inner journey of self-awareness can provide a powerful tool for fundamental transformations to take place. Looking deeply within ourselves can allow us to eventually transcend the psychic baggage of genes or upbringing and reach out to our true self – which is already and always, complete and whole. That’s where the idea of personal mastery comes in. To me, personal mastery is the journey of self-discovery leading to consistently living the purpose of one’s life. It requires a high emphasis on self-knowledge, clarity of one’s personal vision and its interconnectedness with the people and the world around.

Such a journey can allow a person to find a clearer purpose in life, build higher self-esteem, have greater balance and harmony in relationships and eventually, create a happier, peaceful and joyous life. Some are born with it, some get nurtured that way, but all of us can create it.

Leadership: the Needed Shift for Wisdom

2008-04-21T14:05:00.003+08:00

“Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”- T. S. Eliot

A number of contemporary thought leaders believe that some part of the 21st century would belong to the “wisdom” society as against the “knowledge” society that we are currently part of. I tend to agree and would welcome such a shift; in fact hope that it happens sooner rather than later.

While this shift is relevant for the entire society and its leaders in all spheres of life, in this post, let me focus on the need for such a shift in organizational leadership.

The business work place is under tremendous strain today. The pressure to succeed on a quarterly basis is high, with higher competition, fewer resources, and a more unpredictable environment. Leaders face huge challenges – with building a compelling and shared vision for the organization, motivating the team members towards that vision, and finally sustaining quality results in an ever changing and highly competitive market place. In one of the researches by Harris Interactive of over 20,000 employees, it was concluded that only 37% of the employees said they have a clear understanding of what their organization is trying to achieve and why and only 1 in 5 employees was enthusiastic about their organization’s goals. Regarding employee motivation, a recent research in the UK found that 42% of all workers surveyed felt “used up” by the end of the day; and the salaries they aspired for suddenly don't seem enough to them. Yet another disturbing research published in the Time magazine suggested that approximately 75-90% of all visits to the primary care doctors are for stress related problems, with job stress being by far the leading cause.

One of the key reasons for this entire scenario, to my mind, is the lack of clear purpose or a broader social context for which the organization exists. I reckon for the leaders to become architects of mission for their organizations, they need to first build high levels of self-awareness and clarity of their own life’s purpose; that’s where we need to see the shift towards wisdom.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines Wisdom in a multiple ways, including as “the ability to discern or judge what is true, right, or lasting”, as “insight”, as “the sum of learning through the ages”, and as “wise teachings of the ancient sages”. In the current business context, we can see it as creating deeper insights around questions like, who we are, what lasting practices or institutions do we truly want to build and why, what are the results of our daily actions, and how do we stay aware of, and in tune with, the basic laws of nature (not just of economic market forces). Such learning allows us to move from quantitative information to qualitative judgment and from short-term growth to sustainable quality results. The idea of sustainability here naturally captures the concept of business’ interdependence with other parts of society and the need to factor in community and environment aspects in all business planning. As John Whitmore, founder of the Institute of Human Excellence, expands on this – such shift for wisdom also captures moving from traditional structures of hierarchy to a more relevant concept of self-responsibility. It also envisages the shift from imposed values to inner values, where we are all guided more by our internal compass of what’s right or wrong than by the expectations of conformity.

Wisdom for leaders has indeed been the cornerstone of many a leadership models, old and new. To share some examples, consider the move in evolution of leadership quotients – from IQ (what I know and how I think) and then EQ (what I feel and how I relate to others) to the fairly recently building notion of SQ (spiritual quotient; who I am and how do I exist). The move to measuring leadership ability based on SQ is a reflection of the growing value being attached to “self-awareness and wisdom” in business management. Similarly, consider Jim Collins’ famous theory of 5 levels of leadership hierarchy (highly capable individual, contributing team member, competent manager, effective leader, and finally level 5 executive) – according to Collins, the key factor that differentiates a truly great leader (level 5) from an effective leader (level 4) is the paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will in a great leader. I believe this combination is a direct result of high self-awareness (leading to personal humility) and clarity of purpose (creating the powerful motivation for right action) – in a way, together capturing the idea of greater wisdom. Finally, there’s the powerful theory of leadership evolution based on contemporary psychology. This one talks about a leader’s evolution from being Egocentric (me; self-centered leadership), to being Ethnocentric (us; leadership focused towards benefiting a group of people, a division, or an organization) to being World-centric (all of us; focused on a broader world) to being Cosmo-centric (all there is; driven by all there is on this planet and in this universe). I find this theory quite relevant in the context for the leadership growth towards wisdom. Many a times leaders tend to operate from the ethnocentric level and as is evident there’s a much needed shift towards a broader and wiser perspective.

Finally, I would end by saying that business leadership has contributed enormously towards economic progress over the last century. However, as that leadership shifts towards greater wisdom, businesses and their leaders have an amazing opportunity to make a much more significant and meaningful impact towards creating a better, happier and more sustainable world.

Personal Mastery and Living our Lives Inside Out...

2008-04-13T07:54:00.018+08:00

In many of my recent posts, I have written about the principles behind personal mastery and its relevance to our lives and the world around us. In this post, I would like to highlight how this journey or outlook is so powerful in clarifying our own roles and their context in the world around us.

We all play multiple roles in our life – at work, with family, with friends, and in society and so on. How do we become clear of our purpose in life and its interconnectedness with our various roles? How do we prioritize among the numerous options of spending our time and energies – between personal goals, community work and building relationships…?

I am a life and executive coach and in my coaching practice, have the privilege of working with people often discovering answers to these very questions. These situations are not unique to coaching conversations but are common place occurrences in all our lives. Let me share some examples. A visionary leader of a voluntary organization I was working with, was deeply committed to making a substantial difference in the lives of the under-privileged. Driven by his ambition in his chosen field, he was often stressed and while in his early 40s, had become hypertensive. Now, given that we may often believe that people involved in the area of giving have greater meaning in life and are hence worry-free, the health situation of this leader may seem paradoxical. In another example, consider the case of a courageous single mother who was substantially stretched in her roles as a senior executive at work and as a mother. While she described her children as her clear top priority, she constantly felt torn between working late hours (supposedly to be able to earn more and thereof better take care of her children) and spending time with the children. She also expressed feeling a significant lack of fulfillment in her life. While I am simplifying these situations to bring out a point, I hope you can begin to see the contradictions.

Edmund Hillary, when asked about how he felt about conquering Mount Everest, responded, “It’s not the mountains we conquer, but ourselves”.

And, that’s where I am going with these dilemmas. I believe we need to begin working with ourselves first, before we can see true meaning in parenting, relationships, work, or community activities. We need to accept and learn to love ourselves before we can deeply love others; we need to have clarity about our own personal purpose in life, before we can start helping children be more effective in their lives...and so on. I see this as a journey that begins with ourselves and then slowly radiates out. I have attempted to capture these thoughts through the below visual of concentric ovals, each depicting different and important aspects of our life.

At the centre is the gray oval representing the self. The next one is the light green oval, representing the family, red one for friends, orange for community …and so on. As I mentioned earlier, I believe, one has to begin with relating to and mastering the self…that then allows us to be effective at deeper love and care for the immediate family. As those roots take ground, one is better equipped to build meaningful relationships with friends and neighbors, followed by feeling a genuine responsibility for the broader society. As this journey of living inside out carries on, we can look towards contributing towards a better nation, a better world and eventually the universe. Many a times, individual upbringing or circumstances dictate the area that a person maybe more inclined towards or skilled at – be it relationships, community work, entrepreneurship etc. However, unless the journey begins with, or at least at some stage captures, the pursuit of self-mastery, it is bound to leave certain vacuum in the person’s life; manifested in multiple possible ways – for example emotions of insecurity, fear, worry, jealousy, anger – which in turn may have impact on different aspects of the person’s life. So often, we tend to skip the building blocks of such a foundation and hurriedly hop across to other ovals (roles) in our lives. The leader of the voluntary organization in the above example realized that it was important to include a step around loving, accepting, and taking care of oneself, even if only to dedicate one’s life for others. He also felt that unless he focused on his own well-being, his dream of making a difference to the needy could be short-lived. Similarly, for the executive I mentioned earlier, the lack of clarity of personal purpose led her to continue on a certain treadmill of familiar patterns at work and at home. As she built clarity of her own values and purpose, she was comfortable in making the necessary adjustments in her life to feel fulfilled and be more effective in being a wonderful parent.

To me, personal mastery is the journey of self-discovery leading to consistently living the purpose of one’s life. It requires a high emphasis on self-knowledge, clarity of one’s personal vision and its interconnectedness with the people and the world around. I reckon it is self-evident as to why I see the idea of personal mastery so closely intertwined in the notion of focusing life’s journey inside out.

Our Preoccupied Minds and Living in the Now

2008-03-31T15:03:00.008+08:00

Alcoholics Anonymous has a saying - "People often expect different results from doing the same actions".

Does the scenario of a busy executive – attending a conference call, biting into his sandwich, intermittently checking e-mails, and browsing through the latest business magazine – and doing all this simultaneously – sound familiar to you? How about a parent at home playing a game of monopoly with one child, helping another child with her homework, finishing a phone conversation, and checking on the score of a football game on TV – all at the same time?

Welcome to the world of multi-tasking!

And what’s the rush about?

There never seems time enough to fit in all our priorities – the desire to gun for the next big job at work at any cost forces us out of the lives of our children; the ambition to succeed at work and be a model parent and spouse leaves us with no time for pursuing personal interests. The result is we are preoccupied all the time – juggling between multiple tasks at the same time and mentally planning about a few others to follow. The choices thrown at us – for career, investments, leisure, education, socializing etc. – are mind numbing. The advertisers would have everyone believe that their life is always short of perfect. How well prepared are we to make the choices?

As I have briefly discussed before, we need to step back and first build clarity about the purpose of our life. What are we aiming to accomplish and why? Are we looking for money or happiness? More success or greater contribution? What’s the role of family, friends in our life? Where does the awareness about community and environment fit in? Answering some of these and related issues most important to us may be a good start to gaining clarity about the purpose of our life. As we begin to make this the anchor of our decision making, making choices suddenly becomes so much simpler – releasing wonderful chunks of time to lead an enjoyable, purposeful life.

We have an additional related challenge and that’s of our preoccupied minds. The human mind, on average, has over 50,000 thoughts in a given day - even while busy with a certain task, our mind is forever racing ahead with numerous other thoughts - thoughts of potential rewards, of missed opportunities, of what needs to happen next and so on. At a deeper level, this constant rush, the mental preoccupation, the struggle for time, is also about our deep identification with our mind. The human mind loves problems, challenges, and the adrenalin rush. Based on our childhood experiences, the mind is often conditioned to be judgmental about oneself, others, and the environment. This has a significant impact on levels of our accepting ourselves as we are and/ or accepting others as they are. The mind then makes us believe that pursuing constant action towards enhancing our state – physical, financial, social and so on – will make things better and make us look better in our own and others’ eyes. The never ending belief that once we can accomplish abc in our career, and xyz in our personal life, we will be happy and feel fulfilled. As a result, the present never seems perfect. Accordingly, we stay stuck on the thoughts around missed opportunities and regrets of the “past” and anxieties of the “future”.

"Life is what happens to us when we are busy making plans". As we begin to disassociate ourselves from our minds, we initiate the process of living in the now; living every moment with wonder, happiness, joy and fulfillment. Try playing a witness to the wanderings of the mind - the thought patterns, the associated emotions, the physical reactions – and it starts to become clearer that we are not our minds; our true self is definitely removed from it. As we spend more moments remaining a witness, rather than being a party to the mind’s games, we begin to feel a fresh sense of internal empowerment…

Living in the now also requires surrendering to what is. As we become aware that the universe is evolving perfectly at all times, (and in the context of self-acceptance and accepting others) we need to learn to accept things the way they are. And suddenly, we can begin experiencing ourselves and the world around us to be perfect and wonderful. This acceptance requires moving our attention from living in the five senses of taste, sight, touch, smell and sound towards becoming more willing to let our lives unfold in harmony with nature and the universe. This undoubtedly is challenging and requires us to have faith in the ways of the universe – at some level, almost a suspension of disbelief in limitations of our own daily actions.

The new us is being created every moment and living in the now allows for new possibilities to emerge and be seen by us, making the present moment more joyful. Not only does living in the now allow us to automatically shape a happier future, but it also creates newer and comforting perspectives of the past.

Personal Mastery and World Consumption Levels

2008-03-19T14:02:00.002+08:00

In one of my initial posts (Personal mastery and the journey within), I had introduced the concept of personal mastery. In this piece, I would like to highlight the relevance of this concept to dealing with potential challenges and mismatches of world consumption levels.

Research on global differences of consumption levels done by Professor Jared Diamond of UCLA highlights that on average a person in the developed world consumes 32 times more than his counterpart in the developing world. The developed world represented by the US, Western Europe, Japan and Australia accounts for about 1 billion people, the rest of the world’s population being 5.5 billion. As developing countries, led by China and India, aspire to match the consumption levels and lifestyle of the developed nations, the world is likely to face a major resource crunch – for food, oil, metals and so forth. Now, just China’s catching up with the developed world would roughly double the global consumption rates; India and China together catching up would triple the same rates. If the whole developing world were to catch up with the developed world one day, Professor Diamond argues, it would be equivalent of feeding a world population of 72 billion people – something our world is not known to be equipped to provide for (at least not at the current time).

What can we do to meet this future challenge? As I had mentioned in my post on personal mastery and communities, the real challenge with some of the global issues like poverty is not that the world does not have enough to feed the poor, it’s the inability of the human race to share and distribute the existing wealth to raise the overall standards of living across the planet. Will we continue to have the chase of higher consumption levels and eventually run out of resources; in consequence, creating high inflation and a new band of poor population – in this case spread across developing and developed nations? Or, will we have the ability to find better and more sustainable ways to distribute wealth across societies? Will the latter option mean people in the US have to give up their current consumption levels? Probably not. Firstly, as Prof. Diamond highlights standard of living is not necessarily directly correlated to the level of consumption? Despite higher per capita consumption in the US, the standard of living in many parts of Western Europe are higher in terms of life expectancy, health, financial security, vacation time, quality of public schools and support for the arts. Maybe there’s a straight case for reducing wasteful consumption. Secondly, there’s the whole debate of living with what we need versus what we want. Do the top echelons of the American (or Chinese or Indian) society need all the luxuries they buy or aspire to acquire – a US$15,000 watch or a US$20million yacht and so on. And, that’s where the concept of personal mastery comes in.

To me, personal mastery is the journey of self-discovery leading to consistently living the purpose of one’s life. It requires a high emphasis on self-knowledge, clarity of one’s personal vision and its interconnectedness with the people and the world around.

As more people advance on this journey, it is easy to see the ability towards living with what we need rather than pursuing a never ending chase to acquire newer luxuries in the hope of finding that elusive happiness, joy and meaning in our lives. The inner peace arrives from knowing that we will be supported by the universe to meet our needs and that we don’t need to constantly hold on to what we don’t need. Also, as the above definition of personal mastery suggests, as more people pursue this goal, the sense of interconnectedness will grow tremendously; and empathy and compassion for others will support our ability to share and give. That’s why I do believe that as more people, leaders, and societies become motivated to undertake this inner journey, everything in the world will appear well balanced and the human race will have an unprecedented chance to minimize the mismatches that plague our society today.

Whatever Happens, Happens for the Best!

2008-03-13T11:44:00.006+08:00

I realize suggesting a topic like this in today’s world – governed by free will determinism and a belief system that relates every outcome to our own actions – is fraught with danger…but here I go.

Here’s a story of a King and his dear friend. The King always liked to have his friend around him and immensely trusted his advice. One of the things the friend always used to say and believe in was “whatever happens, happens for the best”. Once the King and his friend were out hunting in a jungle and had an encounter with a tiger. While the King managed to eventually kill the tiger, the King lost his left thumb in the duel. The King was deeply disturbed by this. His friend, however, kept reminding the King of his favorite saying, “whatever happens, happens for the best”. This bothered the King to no end and he got so upset with his friend’s “unkind behavior” that he asked for him to be locked up in the state prison. As life went on, in a few months’ time, the King went on another hunting trip. This seemed like an unfortunate one as he lost his way in the jungle and got captured by the local jungle tribe. The tribe was extremely excited with this auspicious catch and decided to sacrifice the King to the Gods. As part of the preparation for the ceremony, the tribesmen completed applying a special balm onto the King’s entire body. As they discovered the King’s missing left thumb, they rushed to their leader and asked for the King to be released – as per the tribe’s tradition, in order not to annoy the Gods, the sacrificial body had to be whole. For the first time, the King began to understand the thought behind his friend’s saying. As he went back, he asked for his friend’s immediate release. As they met and hugged each other, the King asked, “While I now understand why the loss of my thumb was eventually for my best, how do you explain the benefit of your struggling in the prison all these months?” The friend responded, “It is obvious, my highness. Since you and I always traveled together, after the tribe let you go, they would have inspected me and found my body whole”.

In one of my recent posts, The Ultimate Reality, I had talked about the concept of the universal life energy and its immense intelligence as exemplified by our own miraculous bodies and the wisdom of our cells. The universe is unfolding as it needs to. The sun rises and sets as it needs to, the winds move, and the water turns into rain as it needs to, the plants are born – some to become trees and some to die early – as they need to. The universe is also unfolding and manifesting in our lives as it needs to. It is we, who often don’t let it. Our overactive analytical minds make us believe we can and are controlling the future impact of all our actions. If we simply look at some of the biggest decisions of our lives, many of them may not have been made with a great deal of information and the ideal analysis that we may usually require. It could be decisions about our career, life partner, buying a house and many others. Many a times, they come from our intuition – an inner wisdom that exists for all of us. In a simplistic sense, this intuition is our connection to the universal energy. The more we trust it, the more it grows and guides us.

This faith in the universe should not in any way be confused with complacency or a fatalistic attitude. As the Bhagvad Gita elaborates at length, it is really about action with detachment – living out the purpose of our life without any expectations of results, as the best that needs to happen, will happen. It’s about living our “dharma”, in complete harmony with nature and the universe. It’s about understanding how several hundred thousand actions of the mind, body, and universe are happening involuntarily; yet, appreciating the need for voluntary actions - like the nervous system carrying out the brain's desires to eventually get the results. It’s about acknowledging both aspects of our reality – the decision to have a child is a voluntary act and yet depends immensely on the natural forces for the final result. Living in this awareness and wisdom can not only make our lives simpler, wonderful and joyous, but also allow us the opportunity to appreciate and create miracles in our own lives.

Personal Mastery and Communities

2008-03-05T10:58:00.002+08:00

In one of my first posts (Personal Mastery and the Journey Within), I had introduced the concept of personal mastery. In this blog, I would like to highlight the relevance of this concept to serving and building communities.

To me, personal mastery is the journey of self-discovery leading to consistently living the purpose of one’s life. It requires a high emphasis on self-knowledge, clarity of one’s personal vision and its interconnectedness with the people and the world around.

As the definition suggests, the person advanced in this journey is likely to have a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of herself with the people and the world around her. Such a person is likely to well appreciate the interconnectedness of the different pieces that make up her world – elements of nature (the air she breathes and the water she drinks), efforts of people in her life (their love and support), contributions of her ancestors (in bringing her to life) and numerous other people in the world (whose efforts allow her to live her daily life with ease and comfort). As he acknowledges the contribution of others in his life and develops gratitude towards the people and the world around him, he is likely to feel obliged and become keener to pay the society back in some way or another.

Most often when we are unhappy, we have a starved feeling – a feeling of lack, as if we are not getting enough. As Shakti Gawain talks about the concept of outflowing in her book on Creative Visualization, she describes how when we find the place within us that is giving, the flow reverses. True giving, she clarifies, happens not from sacrifice, or self-righteousness or something spiritual, but from the pure joy of it. As we begin the journey within, we realize that we have an infinite reservoir of love and happiness within us; however, we are conditioned to thinking that we have to get something from the outside to be happy. As we learn to connect with our inner source of happiness and contentment, it automatically starts to outflow and we just begin to share more of it with others around us. And the more we share of ourselves from this wonderful position, the more we seem to get from the world and the universe. She also highlights that we can’t continue giving unless we are also open to receiving – giving also means giving to ourselves!

I believe a person on the journey of personal mastery would witness this powerful circle of giving and receiving quite effectively. Interestingly, some of the recent neuroscience research reinforces these concepts. As captured by Daniel Goleman in his book “Social Intelligence”, Philip Shaver of University of California has been studying the behavior patterns and attachment styles of adults with differing childhood experiences, and has broadly categorized them as secure, anxious, and avoidant. Simply put, happy, loving and caring childhood experiences result in secure adults. Anxious adults may have had anxious and pre-occupied parents. Emotionally distant parents likely result in children expecting others to be aloof and distant and hence more comfortable avoiding emotional intimacy – avoidant style. Mario Mikulincer, an Israeli research colleague of Philip Shaver, through elaborate experiments has demonstrated that each of these attachment styles has a distinct impact on the ability to empathize. One of the specific elements of behaviors he has assessed is the level of altruistic tendencies of these three attachment styles and has concluded that secure adults were the most empathetic and compassionate towards the needs of others. Anxious ones were seen overwhelmed by their own troubled reactions to others’ challenging needs and the avoidant ones were neither upset nor inclined to help, tending to suppress their emotions…unless they can see something in it for themselves.

The problem in our world today is not the lack of wealth or resources; it’s our lack of willingness and commitment to share them more broadly. My outlook is that people who are secure with themselves – through childhood experiences, or through other loving relationships in their lives, or through personal efforts to follow the journey of personal mastery – are highly likely to find meaning in giving and sharing with the community and the society beyond their own loved ones.

Personal Mastery and Parenting

2008-02-18T15:02:00.009+08:00

In one of my first posts (Personal Mastery and the Journey Within), I had introduced the concept of personal mastery. In this post, I would like to highlight the relevance of this concept to parenting.

Parenting has probably always been a challenging job – across generations, whichever parents one talks to. However, the challenge seems to have gotten amplified in recent years – I reckon the growing prosperity, rise of individuality, decline of family and other social structures, and a decline in meaning in people’s lives are significantly contributing towards this.

There’s been a tremendous rise in the sense of individuality and need for personal success in recent years – particularly in developing nations. This has happened with growth of prosperity and the disproportionate rewards for individual success – creating a culture driven by desire to get ahead and win at any cost. The growing prosperity also brings with it a multitude of choices – for consumer goods, for gadgets, for leisure etc. As a result, parents are focused on maximizing their individual pleasure by chasing their careers and their personal pursuits – and they now have real choices to do so too. Alongside, the social structures are breaking down. The joint family system has come apart – in fact, in the race for financial success, a number of nuclear families maybe faced with a situation where one of the parents is working in one city and the rest of the family lives in another. All this puts tremendous pressure on parenting...

To complicate the situation further, children these days on the other hand, have enormous exposure during their childhood years. Because of television and the Internet, a 14 year old today has about the same exposure has her parents had in their lifetime. When the parents do not have time for their children, television, Internet, and the peer group take over as the biggest influencer for them.

Some of the results are disturbing. More than one-third of all murders in the US are committed by offenders under the age of 21 – the recent shoot out at Virginia Tech was a chilling reminder of the malaise. Over the decades, incidence of drug-abuse among the youth, of teenage pregnancies, and of depression at puberty have all grown substantially.

How can personal mastery be of use in this challenging situation. To me, personal mastery is the journey of self-discovery leading to consistently living the purpose of one’s life. It requires a high emphasis on self-knowledge, clarity of one’s personal vision and its interconnectedness with the people and the world around.

It captures the essence of a person being highly self-aware, having a deep sense of one’s purpose in life and its context with the people around. Firstly, clarity about one’s purpose would refocus such a person on her most important priorities in life. For a parent, this is bound to bring attention to making the time for his children. Further, a person skilled at personal mastery will have greater comfort in understanding others and developing a deeper connection with them; building an open communication with his children – possibly one of the most challenging goals, particularly for parents with teenage children. Also, the high degree of self-acceptance for such a person allows her to better accept the reality of her child’s world – resulting in a nurturing and facilitative approach rather than a directive and judgmental one. Lastly, children learn an awful lot from observing the behavior of their parents and a parent with high personal mastery would be a wonderful role model for them.

I would like to end my comments with a lovely poem by Kahlil Gibran on bringing up children. It’s very relevant to the concept of personal mastery and truly inspiring.

"Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you they belong not to you
You may give them love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bow from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrow may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable"

I am Whole, Complete and Perfect

2008-02-18T12:36:00.007+08:00

I talked in my last post about the ultimate reality that everything in the universe is made from Energy. This Energy has been called different names by different societies – Reiki (Japanese), Chi (Chinese), Ight (Christians), and Prana (Hindus). The same Energy manifests itself in different forms and all beings – the plants, animals and all of us are made from the same Energy. The Buddhist philosophy, well articulated in Thich Nhat Tanh’s various books, brings forth this idea with the example of how the whole universe exists in a leaf – something that Buddha saw during his awakening while meditating under the Pippala tree. The leaf would not exist without sunlight; it would also not exist without clouds as there would be no rain. It would also not exist if there was no tree. In the same way, the earth also existed in the leaf. The Buddha then had the realization that the leaf had always existed – in the sunlight, clouds and the tree; it just manifested itself in a new form, a new combination, originating in time. As one begins to comprehend this further, one realizes that the leaf was never born and could never die. When the leaf wilts and falls to the ground, it contains the knowledge of its own renewal. It knows it will decompose into the soil from which it came, awaiting its next manifestation. So the bud opening is not a birth (but only a new manifestation) and the wilting not a death (but an end of form). And, it’s the same for all of us.

Also, what comes through from this example is that all phenomena and all forms are interdependent and essentially one and the same. The self cannot exist in isolation, away from the rest of the universe.

Further, each one of us already has whatever we need to continue the journey of the universe. It already exists in the universe and as we are an integral part of that whole, in us as well. We just need to accept and it will manifest for us. It’s just that our conditioned minds often do not allow us to accept that reality. Interestingly, our own cells, the cells in our body, live this truth without hesitation. As Deepak Chopra explains in “The book of secrets”, our cells have a higher purpose of working for the whole and are even willing to die for the whole to live. Cells also always work in tandem with other cells, they are always willing to adapt and not get caught up in rigid habits. They recognize each other as equally important and realize their interdependence. The cells use the smallest energy possible and thrive on the trust that they would be provided for. All the same, they know of their sameness from their genetic inheritance – from the common DNA. Finally, their total commitment to giving as their primary activity also makes receiving automatic. Their legacy continues as they reproduce to pass their knowledge, experience, withholding nothing from their off springs.

As we undertake the journey within, we begin to realize how whole, complete, and perfect we are. How everything is working in harmony with nature and in full consciousness. As we begin to believe in our completeness and wholeness, love and joy begins to flood our lives. Once we are convinced about our own wholeness, we start to see everyone around us as whole, complete, and perfect as well. This leap in the area of accepting ourselves as we are and others as they are leads to inner happiness and wonderful relationships.

Several meditation and spiritual practices recommend making use of affirmations in this regard. Affirming “I am whole, complete, and perfect and everyone around me is whole, complete and perfect“, a few times every day, may be a great starting point.

The Ultimate Reality

2008-02-17T21:04:00.004+08:00

I have already talked a bit about the constant struggle of the human mind. Let me also share the vicious cycle of “have”, “do”, and “be”. I want to “have” (the next big car, better house, better relationships, financial freedom) so I must “do” (work hard, sacrifice balance in life) and once I have all that I want, I will “be” (happy). This is a never ending cycle and a perpetually losing proposition. Those who are happy and feel fulfilled are not so because of what they possess but that they have made a choice to “be” that way. What we need to do is to reverse the pattern – choose to “be” happy and fulfilled first and that state will create the platform for us to “do” the meaningful work most appropriate for us and that in turn will make us “have” everything we need.

While that may sound good, but how do we “be” in that state? For that, we need to look inwards – into ourselves and understand who we are. The ultimate truth is that everything in the universe is made from Energy. All beings – the plants, animals and all of us are manifestations of the same Energy. This Energy has been called different names by different societies – Reiki (Japanese), Chi (Chinese), Ight (Christians), and Prana (Hindus). Even science has begun to corroborate this thought process. Quantum field theory suggests that particles of matter are nothing but momentary interacting manifestations of an Energy field, which, intangible and insubstantial as it maybe, is the only real thing in the universe. Put another way, matter is not made of Energy; it is Energy. The same Energy just manifests itself in different forms.

In the human form, this presents tremendous opportunities and challenges - the most powerful opportunity is for humans to undertake the journey of self-realization and the greatest challenge is that of mastering the ever growing smarter brain. As humans continue to rely more and more on their minds for survival and growth, over millions of years of evolution, the prefrontal cortex (the thinking part of the brain) has actually grown in size and its abilities. In an odd way, that raises the potential risk to lead us away from the path of self-realization. The human mind grows up with the strong belief of a self and an individual identity and this sense of separation from the universe is the essential cause of the struggle in our entire lifetime. It makes us feel threatened, worried, anxious, fearful, doubtful as we struggle with the idea of needing to fend for ourselves in this challenging and “big bad” world. Somewhere losing the connection with the eternal source of all Energy and not realizing how it is helping us and will always be there for us to progress, create, build, have, and enjoy whatever we need to. This belief does not make us complacent or fatalistic in the faith of some bigger powers that will take care of us – instead, it makes us focus on what we need to do with the power of knowing that whatever happens, will happen for the best.

This Energy in its manifestation in the human form has all the intelligence it needs. How else does one explain that a single human cell measuring 1/1000 of an inch across contains instructions within its DNA that would fill 2,000 books of 300 pages each? The human brain has 10billion neurons, each with 10,000 dendrites for making different connections. Scientific studies using radio-isotope tracings convincingly show that 98% of ten trillion quadrillion (10 to the power of 28) atoms in a human body are replaced annually. Stomach lining recreates itself about every 5 days, skin is made anew every month, and the liver cells turn over every 6 weeks.

But do we let this universal life Energy flow freely through us and let it unfold the future for us? We are humans and “smart” – we want to control our destiny through our conditioned minds. This desire to control and its related emotions (anxiety, anger, jealousy, regrets) is what causes the disruption of the natural flow of the universal Energy through our bodies. Often, it also shows up in physical ailments – throat related (from the inability to freely communicate), heart related (from inability to freely give or receive love and compassion), lower back ache (from the insecurity of the future) and so on…

How do we embrace this Energy then? By letting our conditioned minds’ thinking dissolve in favor of our subconscious mind – the part of us that can truly connect us to the source of this Energy. It is believed that even the most successful people probably use up to a maximum of 5% of their brain in their lifetime. How do we tap in to the balance 95%? The ancient wisdom suggests many ways to embark on that journey…but more on that later…

All my Weaknesses and Personal Mastery

2008-02-13T21:05:00.006+08:00

In some of my recent posts, I have been talking about the principles behind personal mastery and its relevance to our lives and the world around us. In this blog, I would like to highlight how this journey or outlook is so powerful in dealing with all our weaknesses, negative thoughts and self-doubts.

Let me begin by sharing this parable from Chuang Tzu, an ancient Chinese philosopher…

“There was a man who was so disturbed by the sight of his own shadow and so displeased with his own footsteps that he determined to get rid of both. The method he hit upon was to run away from them, so he got up and ran, but every time he put his foot down, there was another step, and all this while his shadow kept up with him too without the slightest difficulty. He attributed his failure to the fact that he was not running fast enough. So he ran faster and faster, without stopping, until he finally dropped dead. He failed to realize that if he merely stepped into the shade, his shadow would vanish, and if he sat down and stayed still, there would be no more footsteps.”

This is an interesting way to capture the common reality of our lives. So many of our experiences, particularly during the impressionable years of childhood, are based on negative feedback on who we are – incompetent in so many things, incapable of brilliance on so many occasions, unable to forge the best relationships and so on and so forth. Its not difficult to imagine why so many of us grow up feeling incomplete and aiming to always fulfill this great urge to become perfect – when we can finally convince ourselves and others of how good and wonderful we are. It’s this insecurity and sense of incompleteness that drives so many of us to achieve higher goals…but because the inner meaningfulness of our actions, and conviction of our completeness, is still missing, each peak we climb seems like the bottom of the next peak. Also, since the reference for determining our greatness is always others, the reality that there is someone who’s always better or stronger or richer or more beautiful or knowledgeable than us is hard to swallow…"we are disturbed by the sight of our own shadow and weaknesses.” What do we do then, we try harder to win the race of career, parenting, entertainment, physical appearance…"but the shadow, the footsteps and our sense of lack won’t go away.” Till we make the paradigm shift.

It’s not by overcoming the weaknesses or negative emotions of self-doubt; it’s also not by escaping or ignoring them; it’s by realizing our true nature and the truth about our inner selves. It’s by developing a deeper understanding of who we are and how whole, complete and perfect we are...even if our conditioned minds would have us believe otherwise. Once we make that transition, we can begin to distance ourselves from our minds and can slowly become a witness to the games our minds play. As they say, the mind is a great servant but a terrible master. As we gain greater self-awareness and start becoming an observer of our thoughts and feelings, we can begin to see how all these negative emotions and sense of lack in ourselves are nothing but the perceptions created by our minds. This change can be transformational as it allows us to also leap frog from the world of duality (being judgmental, seeing everything as good versus bad, strong versus weak) to one that is absolute; an awareness of the only reality there is - a world where all of us are made of the same universal life energy and are part of same perfect whole. We also become open to the idea of peaceful coexistence of “good” and “bad” in the same perfect and well-balanced whole. This creates in us the ability to become aware of any negative thoughts that may arise in our minds, acknowledge them and put them aside without dwelling on them or letting them grow. The acceptance and reflection of these thoughts silently allows us to become more relaxed and that in turn allows our true positives to get strengthened…“if he merely stepped into the shade, his shadow would vanish, and if he sat down and stayed still, there would be no more footsteps.”

As I have written before, to me, personal mastery is the journey of self-discovery leading to consistently living the purpose of one’s life. It requires a high emphasis on self-knowledge, clarity of one’s personal vision and its interconnectedness with the people and the world around. Such a journey encapsulates traveling along the above-mentioned path of self-realization, getting really comfortable with oneself, and feeling truly liberated.

Personal Mastery and Relationships

2008-02-13T14:09:00.004+08:00

In one of my recent posts (Personal Mastery and the Journey Within), I had introduced the concept of personal mastery. In this blog, I would like to highlight the relevance of this concept to our most cherished relationships.

What’s happening to relationships in today’s society? The numbers of failed marriages are on the increase just about everywhere, and in most of the western world, the divorce rates have reached dramatic proportions – in many countries like the US and Australia, only 1 out of every 3 marriages survives. Over the years, the sense of individuality seems to have got heightened and the time and space for each other has declined. The emotional strength of individuals, growing up in a fast paced society that rewards its winners and looks down on the losers, is under enormous pressure as well. Individuals are seeking perfection in everything, including in themselves and their spouses. As the honeymoon period gets underway and each one finds the other to be less than perfect and different from their earlier expectations, the silent dissatisfaction begins to build already.

Where does personal mastery fit in to all this? As I mentioned earlier, personal mastery is the journey of self-discovery leading to consistently living the purpose of one’s life. It requires a high emphasis on self-knowledge, clarity of one’s personal vision and its interconnectedness with the people and the world around. This journey is all about becoming comfortable with yourself; accepting yourself as you are and not living in the constant pursuit of what you should be (the relentless pressure to be perfect). This begins to happen as you start to understand the truth about yourself and your existence.

As Jesus Christ said, “I am in this world but not of it”. We all are part of the same whole, the same universal life energy – just happen to be in seemingly different forms through different physical and mental manifestations. Even though we seem to primarily operate from our minds (as a result, over the past several million years, the prefrontal cortex part of the brain that deals with logic and rationale has grown dramatically), we need to realize that we are not our minds. Minds are only a manifestation of the human form, conditioned by our genes, childhood and other experiences, beliefs and expectations. As we begin to quieten the mind and go deeper into our real selves, we start to understand our true nature and how we are complete, whole and perfect. Our self acceptance creates the ability to accept and love others; as they are complete, whole and perfect too as they are. We can then also see how we are all part of the same whole and hence totally interconnected.

As this clarity dawns on us, we stop getting stuck in our childhood control dramas – the conditioned brain patterns of feeling the need to win every time or the need to feel a victim of others’ actions etc. We stop being judgmental and accept what is. As we free our minds of these burdening thoughts, we make room for love, joy and peace to flow. We become more forgiving. Accepting ourselves as we are also allows us to be ourselves in all conversations and relationships; further creating a natural and lovely interaction one not marred by superficial comments and masked behavior. Interestingly, Daniel Goleman’s scientific research on the concept of low road and high road corroborates the above theory from a neurological perspective as well. He describes the low road as the more emotional responses of the brain, driven by amygdale and the high road as the thought through and analyzed responses of the brain, driven by the prefrontal cortex. His research shows that as people quieten the high road and do not let multiple thoughts impact their responses, their ability to be in the present and respond to conversations with empathy grows (a healthy sign of personal mastery) – allowing for better relationships to be formed. This also creates the ability to get into I-You relationships, where one is totally engaged versus the I-It relationships where one is typically preoccupied with multiple inner thoughts.

Finally, as we see the Godliness in ourselves and in everyone around us, we can see the relationship with our significant other as one with God too. Marriage can then also become a wonderful relationship for ongoing spiritual practice and growth.