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AuthorCEO Coach |
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The book is a quick powerful inspirational read, perfect for in-flight reading or if you are in-between flights, only 100-pages short. Your trip will be memorable not because of the outcomes you created but because you read this little book. Deepak Chopra is a world-leading expert in the area of human potential, health and well-being. In this book he shares principles that have helped him and countless others (that includes me and my clients) to achieve both material success and joyous fulfilment. These principles will help you to live your highest potential, make a big impact in the world through your work or business, make a difference to the communities and country you are part of, become a key person of influence in your industry transforming the industry itself. If you are someone who is committed to lead your business from good to great from a state of grace, understand and implement these principles. The book begins with this beautiful quote from Upanishads, a part of Vedas which are the most ancient Hindu scriptures: You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny. Of course, the question is whether you will nourish, grow and evolve yourself physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually to allow your destiny to fully bloom. Here are few excerpts from the book to inspire you to read the book from cover to cover: 1. Success in life could be defined as the continued expansion of happiness and the progressive realization of worthy goals. Success is the ability to fulfil your desires with effortless ease. ... There are many aspects to success; material wealth is only one component. ... success also includes good health, energy and enthusiasm for life, fulfilling relationships, creative freedom, emotional and psychological stability, a sense of well-being and a peace of mind. 2. ... pure joy ... pure knowledge, infinite silence, perfect balance, invincibility, simplicity and bliss. This is our essential nature. When you discover your essential nature and know who you really are, in that knowing itself is the ability to fulfill any dream you have ... 3. The need for approval, the need to control things, and the need for external power are needs that are based on fear. 4. The ego ... is not who you really are. The ego is your self-image; it is a social mask; it is the role you are playing. Your social mask thrives on approval. It wants to control, and it is sustained by power, because it lives in fear. You true Self, which is your spirit, your soul, is completely free of those things. It is immune to criticism, it is unfearful of any challenge, and it feels beneath no one. And yet, it is also humble and feels superior to no one ... 5. ... if you want to make full use of the creativity which is inherent in pure consciousness, then you have to have access to it. One way to access the field is through the daily practise of silence, meditation and non-judgment. Spending time in nature will also give you access to the qualities inherent in the field: infinite creativity, freedom and bliss. 6. And then you create the possibility of dynamic activity while at the same time carrying the stillness of the eternal, unbounded, creative mind. ... This coexistence of opposites - stillness and dynamism at the same time - makes you independent of situations, circumstances, people and things. 7. ... if you want joy, give joy to others; if you want love, learn to give love; if you want attention and appreciation, learn to give attention and appreciation; if you want material affluence, help others to become materially affluent. In fact, the easiest way to get what you want is to help others get what they want. This principle works equally well for individuals, corporations, societies and nations. 8. Every action generates a force of energy that returns to us in like kind ... what we sow is what we reap. And when we choose actions that bring happiness and success to others, the fruits of our karma is happiness and success. 9. Whether you like it or not, everything that is happening at this moment is a result of the choices you've made in the past. Unfortunately, a lot of us make choices unconsciously, and therefore we don't think they are choices - and yet, they are. ... your future is generated by the choices you are making in every moment of your life. ... The more you bring your choices into the level of your conscious awareness, the more you will make those choices which are spontaneously correct - both for you and those around you. 10. ... when we harness the forces of harmony, joy and love, we create success and good fortune with effortless ease. 11. An integral being knows without going, sees without looking, and accomplishes without doing. - Lao Tzu. 12. Least effort is expended when your actions are motivated by love, because nature is held together by the energy of love. When you seek power and control over other people, you waste energy. ... When your actions are motivated by love, your energy multiplies and accumulates - and the surplus energy you gather and enjoy can be channeled to create anything that you want, including unlimited wealth. 13. ... most of our energy goes into upholding our importance ... if we were capable of losing some of that importance, two extraordinary things would happen to us. One, we would free our energy from trying to maintain the illusory idea of our grandeur; and two, we would provide ourselves enough energy to ... catch a glimpse of the actual grandeur of the Universe. - from The Art of Dreaming by Carlos Castaneda. 14. This moment - the one you are experiencing right now - is the culmination of all the moments you have experienced in the past. This moment is as it is because the entire Universe is as it is. When you struggle against this moment, you are actually struggling against the entire Universe. Instead, you can make the decision that today you will not struggle against the whole Universe by struggling against this moment. This means that your acceptance of this moment is total and complete. You accept things as they are, not as you wish they were in this moment. ... You can wish for things in the future to be different, but in this moment you have to accept things as they are. 15. When you feel frustrated or upset by a person or a situation, remember that you are not reacting to the person or the situation, but to your feelings about the person or the situation. These are your feelings, and your feelings are not someone else's fault. When you recognize and understand this completely, you are ready to take responsibility for how you feel and to change it. 16. Responsibility means not blaming anyone or anything for your situation, including yourself. Having accepted the circumstance, this event, this problem; responsibility then means the ability to have a creative response to the situation as it is now. 17. Whenever confronted by a tyrant, tormentor, teacher, friend, or foe (they all mean the same thing), remind yourself - "This moment is as it should be." Whatever relationships you have attracted in your life at this moment are precisely the ones you need in your life at this moment. There is a hidden meaning behind all events, and this hidden meaning is serving your evolution. 15. If you just relinquish the need to defend your point of view, you will in that relinquishment, gain access to enormous amounts of energy that have been previously wasted. When you become defensive, blame others, and do not accept and surrender to the moment, your life meets resistance. 16. ... if you stop fighting and resisting, ... if you embrace the present ..., joy will be born within you and you will drop the terrible burdens ... of defensiveness, resentment and hurtfulness. Only then will you become lighthearted, carefree, joyous and free. ... When you have the exquisite combination of acceptance, responsibility and defenselessness, you will experience life flowing with effortless ease. When you remain open to all points of views - not rigidly attached to only one - your dreams and desires will flow with nature's desires. 17. Attention energizes and intention transforms. Whenever you put your attention on will grow stronger in your life. Whatever you take your attention away from will wither, disintegrate, and disappear. Intention, on the other hand, triggers transformation of energy and information. Intention organizes its own fulfilment. ... Intention is the real power behind desire. Intent alone is very powerful, because intent is desire without attachment to the outcome. ... Intention combined with detachment leads to life-centered, present-moment awareness. And when action is performed in present moment awareness, it is most effective. Your intent is for the future, but your attention is in the present. ... The future is something you can always create through detached intention, but you should never struggle against the present. 18. One-pointed intention is that quality of attention that is unbending in its fixity of purpose. One-pointed intention means holding your attention to the intended outcome with such unbending purpose that you absolutely refuse to allow obstacles to consume and dissipate the focused quality of your attention. There is a total and complete exclusion of all obstacles from your consciousness. You are able to maintain an unshakable serenity while being committed to your goal with intense passion. This is the power of detached (present moment) awareness and one-pointed, focused intention simultaneously. 19. ... in order to acquire anything in the physical Universe, you have to relinquish your attachment to it. This doesn't mean you give up the intention to create your desire. You don't give up the intention, and you don't give up the desire. You give up your attachment to the result. ... Detachment is synonymous with wealth consciousness, because with detachment there is freedom to create. Only from detached involvement can one have joy and laughter. ... Without detachment, we are prisoners of helplessness, hopelessness, mundane needs, trivial concerns, quiet desperation and seriousness - the distinctive features of everyday mediocre existence and poverty consciousness. 20. Every single problem that you have in your life is the seed of an opportunity for some greater benefit. 21. Everyone has a purpose in life ... a unique gift or special talent to give to others. And when we blend this unique talent with service to others, we experience the ecstacy and exultation of our own spirit, which is the ultimate goal of all goals. Wishing you the clarity to march forth on your Hero's journey to fulfil the purpose of your life. Love, Jyoti.
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If you cut the roots of a tree, the tree will die not only because it will have no foundation to stand on but also because it no longer will receive any nourishment. Similarly, we human beings will die emotionally, intellectually / mentally, spiritually and as a result of that physically (much before we were meant to) if we deny our cultural heritage because it is the foundation, the roots of the tree of our very existence. Cultural Heritage is an expression of the ways of living developed by a community and passed on from generation to generation, including customs, practices, places, objects, artistic expressions, language, literature, values, scriptures and wisdom in all different forms. If I don't accept, love and revere who I am as a human being, I will not have the understanding and wisdom to accept, love and revere the cultural heritage I am born into. If I don't accept, love and revere my own heritage that I am born into, I will not have the understanding and wisdom to accept, love and revere other communities and their heritage. How can there be love, peace and joy in such a world? Macro does not create the micro. Micro creates the macro. Who I am and who you are, what I do and what you do, is all that is needed to start a quiet revolution in the world to transform a business, a nation and, ultimately, what it means to be a human being; leading humanity to its next level of evolution and consciousness. Try complaining about and fighting with the macro instead of working on the micro (the person you see in the mirror), all you will get is frustration, angst and a lot of wasted time & effort because you will find that nothing much has changed. Wait, the malaise doesn't end here. If I don't accept, love and revere who I am as a human being and the culture I am born into; it also impacts my self-esteem and as an outcome of that, my productivity, efficiency, creativity and innovation. I get stuck in the monotony of Life with no access to unleash my inner greatness to make that big impact in the world for joyous fulfilling success and prosperity. You want to lead your business from good to great and make a huge difference in the world? The first, unfortunately invisible, step is to embrace who you are and that includes your cultural heritage and identity. In your owning yourself fully and coming home to yourself, you free your people to own themselves and come home to themselves. As you and your people stand tall in the joy of who each one of you is, your customers will find the freedom to own themselves and come home to themselves. In that way, you not only create greater profitability because of increased productivity and innovation because of the courage found only in truly owning who you are, you start a ripple effect to make a difference to your people, your country and the world. You may say, there are religious and national fanatics who are causing destruction. They seem to have pride in their cultural heritage and use that as an excuse to create a havoc. The equation doesn't seem to fit in with the above logic. Let us dig deeper. The dictionary defines a fanatic as a person filled with excessive and single-minded zeal, especially for an extreme religious or political cause. I would add the following to this definition - "without excessive and single-minded zeal for one's own physical, emotional, intellectual / mental and spiritual growth". As long as the focus is changing the macro (the world outside) without transforming the micro (self); all we will get are fanatics and the mess that only the fanatics can cause. You may ask - Does that mean I need to follow all the customs, rituals and traditions that don't make sense to me? I will say understand the underlying science and if it doesn't connect with you, please don't do it because that spreads inauthenticity in the world. In the end, if what you are doing doesn't have you experience love, gratitude and reverence for yourself and for all beings, it is something that needs to be challenged. Not in others, but in your own self. Growth is an outcome of transforming who I am and not forcing others to change to fit into my world-view. Isaac Newton said that - If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulder of giants. Each generation progresses by standing on the achievements of the previous generation. How can India progress if we born in India don't own and embrace the achievements of Rabindranath Tagore, JRD Tata, Sri Aurobindo, Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi, Guru Nanak, Buddha, C V Raman, Homi J Bhabha, Ramanujan, Salim Ali, Deepak Chopra, Kiran Mazumdar, Sarojini Naidu, Amrita Sher-Gil, Kalpana Chawla, Robin Sharma, Deepak Parekh, Premchand and million others who have transformed our lives, in small or big measure? And, so it is for every other country in the world. In a country where there is love, gratitude and reverence for its cultural heritage instead of starry-eyed admiration for the glitter in other countries (without that for one's own), let my people awake. In a planet where there is love, gratitude and reverence for oneself and for all living beings, let my fellow beings awake. May you and I awaken to the inner Light that each one of us is born with to live the purpose of our journey this Lifetime through the businesses we run; families, communities and countries that we are a part of. Love, Jyoti. Vulnerability is the courage to be authentic about your inauthenticities. Vulnerability is calling yourself out when you catch yourself being inauthentic. Vulnerability is letting others know your fears and ugly truths instead of hiding them from not only others but from your own self. When we have the courage to be vulnerable, we will walk into joyous freedom. When others know our deep dark ugly secrets, the fear of others knowing we are not good enough no longer holds us hostage and can no longer blackmail us into living a small life. That's when we can break free from the chains of bondage, which are inside us rather than outside, to live our greatest life, to realise our biggest dreams in deepest communion with our highest self and fulfil 100% of our intentions in all areas of our lives. In this way, moving from fear into freedom is the purpose of our life so that we can fulfil on our destiny to be Heroes of our journey this lifetime. Here's the framework that I use for myself and for my clients: Gear 0 - At this stage, either we are a Victim of other people or circumstances or both, feeling trapped by Life. Or, we are a Fighter resisting Life, fighting to get what we want. The Universe gifts us with pain and loss to awaken us to our Hero's journey. If we are lucky, we learn the message the Universe is giving us from the gift of the pain and loss and grow bigger than who we are as human beings. This conscious inner growth is our only access to go beyond the pain and loss. And, yet, there's another way to grow. We choose to grow much before pain and loss is needed to awaken the giant within us. The second path is the path of Insights, which we access through someone mentoring / coaching us if we give ourselves the permission to receive that contribution. Gear 1 - Either through pain and loss or through insights, we evolve to the next level of who we are as human beings. The first step is to look within for deeper self-awareness, for discovering our fears and ugly truths which we have pushed to the basement of our psyche, for discovering our coping strategy to hide our fears and ugly truths from our own self. On discovery, go through the fire of vulnerable authenticity to acknowledge your fears and ugly truths to your own self and to others so that there is no need to hide behind a mask or an armour anymore. In doing that, the stress and heaviness falls away. There is a sense of relief and a lightness of being. By doing this, we have truly embraced ourselves - flaws and all. Now we are ready for the next stage of our Hero's Journey. During a session I was leading for entrepreneurs and business owners, I got present to a neediness to get one of the participants to renew his engagement with me as his coach. I called myself out and acknowledged that to the group. Before that acknowledgement, my stomach was in knots and my heart was burning with humiliation. On acknowledging my ugly truth, I freed myself, him and the group because 80% of communication happens non-verbally and the group energy would have been vitiated by my pretence of that neediness not being there. In that space of authentic vulnerability that got created, I was able to coach more effectively and powerfully making a much bigger difference than I would have been able to do otherwise because most of my energy would have been consumed in the hiding of the neediness. Not only that, the participants experienced the courage to be vulnerable. That single act of authentic vulnerability contributed massively not only to the participants but to me, their leader. Just by shifting to this first stage, so much locked up productivity, performance, creativity and innovation gets released because we become true collaborators, can give up competing with each other and the concomitant hideous pretence, to now connect authentically and deeply with each other. Gear 2 - After having forgiven ourselves for our flaws in the first stage, we are now ready to evolve to the next stage of leadership - to forgive others for their flaws and accept them the way they are and the way they are not, without any need to control them, to simply love them unconditionally without the need for them to change for us to love them, giving them the space to grow at their own pace and on their own path, experiencing joyous gratitude for being on our own journey and for all beings who share a bit of our journey with us. Gear 3 - At this stage, we begin to experience reverence for all beings and all things. There is childlike trust and faith in the Universe. We begin to receive with joyous gratitude whatever situations Life sends our way as gifts of the Universe. We no longer try to make things happen our way because there is an inner knowing that our way is already unfolding. We leap into exponential productivity, performance, creativity and innovation. We have the clarity on which 20% gives us 80% outcomes and courage to do only those 20%. From complexity, we move towards simplicity realizing that good solutions are complex but great solutions are simple. The power of clarity helps us go deeper within and create higher levels of success on the outside, unimaginable before. From 'so much to do, so little time' frenzy of Gear 0, we flow into abundance of time for all that we want to do. We begin to welcome and embrace whatever we resisted before, uncovering more fears and dropping more layers of the thick dark wall to finally connect to our inner Light, our innate Greatness. Gear 4 - Our power to create continues to expand and we find ourselves in the 4th stage, Gear 4. In this stage, we have the power to inspire people in our space to step into Gear 1. Gear 5 - This is when we step into mastery consciousness and experience the power to inspire people in our space to step into Gear 2. Our productivity, performance, effectiveness, creativity, innovation continues to expand exponentially from Gear 3 to Gear 4 to Gear 5 as we now have the ability to inspire other people to expand their productivity, performance, effectiveness, creativity and innovation. We now have the power to lead our businesses, our communities, our countries from good to great. The evolution from Gear 0 to Gear 5 is an outcome of a conscious decision to transform who we are as human beings. To progress on this path, we begin to drop bit-by-bit limiting habits and take on growth habits across all the 4 bodies of our Being (physical, mental / intellectual, emotional and spiritual). As we continue walking on this journey from fear to love and freedom, from scarcity to abundance, from a victim to a creator, from struggle to effortlessness and grace, from ignorance and unconsciousness to deep awareness and wisdom, from lethargy of the mind / body / soul to joyous energy of effective and powerful action; we realise our greatest dreams in deepest communion with our highest self and have it all - deeply fulfilling successful abundance-creating creatively self-expressed career, loving harmonious relationships, happy responsible kids with their genius joyfully expressed, nourishing nurturing our own self, while making a difference in the world through our work and life. Wishing you the joy of the journey to come home to yourself. Love, Jyoti. I had to prioritize to pick up one task to do out of three on the list. I chose the one which was the toughest because I have seen what I resist the most gives me my greatest growth. Review your top 20% to see if you have chosen those tasks on the list that are uncomfortable and difficult. Chances are if they are not, your 80% impact may not come about; irrespective of Pareto's promise If you are willing to have uncomfortable conversations, willing to be uncomfortable, willing to step out of your comfort zone, willing to go against your grain; the growth and freedom you will experience would be worth it. I travelled to USA for a training program to deepen my coaching skills. My usual style is to take copious notes, sit in the front row and ask the maximum questions. I took my coach's recommendation and dropped my usual style. In spite of having invested heavily for being at the program; I took no notes, managed to remain shut and sat somewhere in the middle. I came away with greater confidence in what I do instead of a notebook full of information, the secret joy of hearing my own voice and experiencing being significant. The self-awareness that I experienced as an outcome of choosing to act against my grain was the biggest gift of all, giving me 10 times the return on my investment. Growth happens only outside the comfort zone. In the comfort zone, we have been lulled to sleep by routines and habits that the brain creates to be energy efficient. That is surely a gift because we use less energy to go about our life, though it has a dark side to it. When we are reacting and responding to life in an automatic fashion because of energy efficient routines and habits, we lose self-awareness and opportunity to grow further. Awareness and present momentness is heightened when the environment (outside and inside us) is different from the usual. In response to the change in the environment, the 'biologically trained for survival' brain shifts into super-alert mode which brings about deep self-awareness and present momentness creating a space for INSIGHTS. Insights involves gaining sudden knowledge of a possible solution to a problem without trial and error. They are also called Aha or Eureka Moments. They can also be experienced as a reflective 'That's funny'. Access to insights accelerates learning, growth and evolution. We access insights by integrating new knowledge, acquired through continual learning, with what we already know and through inquiry & reflection. As I sat there in the program, forcing myself to sit in the middle and not distract myself from getting present to what was within by taking notes or asking questions, I got present to so many fears hiding inside and insights that had me go 'Hmmm / That's funny / Aha / That's interesting / OMG'. Fear of being looked down upon. Needing people to look up to me. Needing people to admire me and give me attention to have me experience I am loved and wanted. Fear of being ignored. Fear of being rejected for not being good enough. That is why the neediness to be the best in whatever I did, that is why the yearning to be unconditional Love. Those are my dark truths I discovered in those few days, as I left the crutch of losing myself on the outside to hide from myself what was inside. I crumbled when a mom, a local fellow participant, shouted at me as I stepped in closer to smile at her baby - Don't touch my baby! In that crumbling, I found my ugly truth. It wasn't racism in her but the racism in me that I got present to. I recognised how my nose-in-the-air and uber pride in my Indian heritage attracted the very thing to me that I was dumping on everything I saw in this foreign land. I remembered how I made everyone wash their hands before touching my first-born; stressfully paranoid about her well-being that made me insensitive about people around me, that I ended up hurting even people who loved me and I loved. The Universe always gives you back exactly what you give to the world. What you give is what you'll always receive. Newton did discover this secret when he declared his third law that every action has equal and opposite reaction. In our philosophy, we call it the law of the Karma. What you sow is exactly what you'll reap. And yet, in that instant, all I could experience was deep hurt and an almost unconscious reaction of making her wrong. I ran away from my AirBnB in Los Angeles, where I was attending the training, at 10:30 pm on tip-toes because I had a visceral experience of fear in my body as I opened the door to step in to find the owner with 3 other men partying loudly in the lounge upstairs. I experienced fear in my body, though my stand for the world is Love. Some years before, I wouldn't have had the wisdom to honour what my body felt. That day I honoured the fear coursing through my body, I didn't stuff it under the carpet and pretend to be strong and brave when I didn't really feel strong and brave. I swallowed my pride and walked back to the hotel where I was attending the seminar to stay the night there. I knew fear attracts what fear fears. In that moment, I didn't have the strength to be Love and Childlike Trust and Faith. I was ashamed of it and yet that was the truth. I knew that I had to have a conversation with the gentleman from whose AirBnB I ran away from and tell him the truth. The very thought of that conversation killed me with painful embarrassment. Though I knew I had done the right thing by honouring what I felt viscerally and yet I knew I had wronged the gentleman by not trusting and I needed to own that up. Finally, from the airport on the way to San Francisco, I called him and apologised for running away and for not trusting him. All he said was he was sorry he didn't create a safe space for me to be comfortable. I felt complete and I sensed he felt complete too. That is what I always find - freedom beyond every uncomfortable conversation I am willing to have, freedom beyond every action I take to do what I resist and fear. In that trip, the wall disconnecting me from other human beings crumbled a bit more because I had done everything that was uncomfortable - borrowed money from dad at 44 when I had sworn at 16 years old never to take support from dad or from anyone else, hibernated a business that wasn't going in the direction I was inspired to take it to focus on the new business that filled me with passion, joyous inspiration and deep connection to my purpose of life, travelled alone beyond the cosy comfort of my home country, stayed in an AirBnB when staying at the hotel felt more safe, sat quietly instead of asking the most intelligent questions and taking copious notes. Back home, saw the limiting patterns I was caught up with my spouse and challenged them. Good wasn't good enough anymore. I wanted an even deeper relationship, I wanted the relationship to live up to the original promise of physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual growth instead of the insipidness and monotony of daily existence. It took enormous courage to challenge the most fundamental of my relationships without knowing where this would land me. So much of unsaid hurt and upset had got collected under the carpet that I was scared of calling it out in the fear of upsetting the boat, in the paper-ghost fear of 'I am not good enough, I am not worthy' hiding in the basement of my psyche. In that standing up to embrace the truth of my being; the wall between me and myself finally sighed, crumbled and fell apart. The wheels of our relationship are beginning to turn a little differently. I have known the Universe to fulfil all our intentions and realise all our dreams only if we are willing to fully trust and accept with gratitude all that she gives us as her gifts for our growth because almost all the times, we have to become bigger than who we are to have the strength to fulfil our intentions and realise our greatest dreams in deepest communion with our highest self. I acknowledge the shame of all my fears, neediness and yearning; and in that acknowledgement, embrace all of them. The embrace has finally started to feel authentic. I am willing to hold the embrace for as long as I feel the resistance. I have driven at night number of times in Delhi and Gurgaon on account of volunteering my time to assist in various programs and seminars that have contributed to me. I was always present to the fear lurking inside of what may go wrong. I drove fighting that fear, gulping it down. The other day I drove at night to meet my sister who had flown on a last minute decision to Delhi from Calcutta to attend an Army conference. I drove in such freedom that I had never known before, with an experience of a deep connection with fellow human beings. I knew in that moment that the wall inside me had fully crumbled and vanished. And, it was my task to do all that it took to stop that wall from building ever again and in that create a space for fellow beings to walk the path to come home to themselves. A great business, personal mastery, a life that impacts all of humanity, loving harmonious relationships, happy responsible kids with their inner genius fully expressed are the outcomes built on the foundation of coming home to oneself. Have I reached? All I can say is that I am a work-in-progress, totally inspired by the ideals I talk and write about, hoping to live all of these ideals by the time my work is done this lifetime. Wishing you the joy, fulfilment and freedom of the journey. Love, Jyoti. My caddy said you are hitting the ball too hard, that is why it is not going far. The funny thing is that I couldn't get a sense of that in my body. I was merely swinging the club. I couldn't do any other way because I had no awareness of it. I had to keep looking at the caddy for feedback till I got a sense how it felt different when he said I was hitting the ball vs when he said I was swinging without applying force. Not only was the feeling different, the outcome was totally different. In the first case, I felt pressure and stress in the body and the ball just carried through a short distance. In the second case, the body flowed rhythmically for an effortless swing followed by a deeply satisfying sound of the club connecting with the ball and the ball going the distance as never before. Isn't that exactly how business is and every other area of our life? If we are working too hard, chances are we are using the wrong approach and we would not have results in alignment with our intention. Chances are also that we wouldn't even know our approach is not effective till somebody mirrors it back to us. Therefore, the critical importance of having mentors, coaches, advisors to not only show the mirror to us for us to know how we are unknowingly messing up but also for us to learn the right technique for maximum output with minimum effort. The other day on the golf course during our weekly family game, my 9-year old son told me candidly after a rather insipid shot from me - "You are not serious about your game. You don't even have a coach." I was amused in that moment, though the truth of what he said hit me hard that immediately after the game, I set myself up with a golf coach :-) The investment in golf coaching is a stretch beyond my budget at the moment when more basic needs have to be met, I am still going for it because I realised I wasn't going to progress much without it. I will keep spending hours in the range practising and yet see no improvement on the course because I would be practising the wrong swing without even knowing it. Golf is a priority, just as business and family is. For me, the progress in each is inter-related. I am a container and that container with the same content moves from golf to business to family relationships. If I give myself the permission for mediocrity in golf, I would not only lose interest after a point but I would also carry the mediocrity consciousness to other areas of my life. Therefore, golf is not only where I get to spend amazing time with my family in the greenest and freshest part of the city but also is a way for me to practise being a container for mastery consciousness. That is why excellence in my game is important for me. I may not be there as yet, but that is what keeps me going; otherwise I would have quit long back. That is why one of my strongest recommendations to my clients is to pick up a sport to play for excellence because it is a wonderful practise ground for essential leadership skills needed to grow the business which cannot be learnt even in the world's best universities - mastery consciousness, unlearning and relearning, being coachable, failing and yet getting up to play again with retired hurt not being an option, focus, agility of mind, practising and practising to master a new skill, learning to have fun, learning to have relationship of equals with fellow players, integrity, greater self-awareness of the mind, body, emotions and the spirit leading to greater intellectual, physical, emotional and spiritual intelligence. Since each one of us is a container, what we learn on the playground we carry to our businesses. Watch your business grow as you bring these leadership skills to your workplace. The inefficiency that most people create when they pick up a sport is that they pick up a sport in which their family is not engaged. Doing that ensures that playing adds to your list of stress-creators as your spouse becomes resentful of yet another activity that keeps you away from home. And if your spouse is not resentful, you will play with a sense of guilt that anyway adds to your stress. A sport is a beautiful way to hold the family together and coach your kids on leadership skills that cannot be effectively taught in schools nor in any afterschool program because it is the responsibility of parents and is not available for outsourcing. You wouldn't want to wait for them to go the best Universities to learn leadership skills either because it is too late by then. We humans learn best from our parents as we are growing and learning what it means to be a human being. In the age of shrinking time; eating food together as a family without the distraction of the device, praying together as a family, playing together as a family has to be consciously created by the leaders at home (parents). In eating, praying, playing together; kids learn to be centred in who they are as human beings and grounded in values which is what will ensure that they are leaders and lead themselves and people around them to joyous, deeply fulfilling success in the expression of their inner genius. Though easier said than done. To get the family together to play, pray, eat together without the device takes real leadership depth :-) It took me 5 years to finally get the four of us to play golf twice a week as a family ritual. On the course, the challenge of being a parent (a leader at home) is most evident because you cannot distract yourself away from what is not working. Each one of us has come a long way. Earlier, it would be me losing my centre and my temper at the kids for being so competitive with each other that instead of focussing on their own game, each would wilfully disrupt the other's game. I remember one of the kids remembering to hum only when the other kid was trying to focus on their swing. It sounds funny now but it was downright frustrating and irritating then. The anger and the upset that the kids displayed most visibly when their shots didn't go the way they wanted them to. My spouse threatening to stop playing the family games if the kids didn't start behaving on the course. He confessed later how many times he stopped himself from slapping them. Well, the truth is, at those angry moments, I would have loved to do that too though I always held back like him and true to my container self, showed up exactly how I was in life then - withdraw all communication seething with anger within. That was how our weekly games were. I was grateful for our weekly golf games even then because when I got my centre back, I recognised what a tremendously powerful training ground for leadership the weekly games were for all of us. Over the years, kids learnt that getting upset and angry only ruins their game, that it is more effective to focus on their own self than worry about what's happening with somebody else, that throwing the club on the ground after a bad swing only breaks the club and takes away the game from them, that there is a technique that they need to master, that it is better to sweat on the practise ground than bleed on the battle ground, that fitness is critical to play a great game, that eating healthy food besides regularly exercising was the way to be fit. Where else could I have coached them on these leadership skills? I am learning to enjoy the game instead of playing with deadpan seriousness, learning to accept kids the way they are and not expect them to behave a certain way, recognising the need to be coached ongoingly, learning to forgive myself and not make myself wrong for not playing well, understanding that I cannot progress without building my own fitness & stamina and putting in structures for that, learning to not bring my upsets with the family to the golf course, learning to not get upset and angry :-) And, most importantly, learning that if you hold on to your intention for long enough through thick and thin, it gets fulfilled. As for my spouse, he has learnt to love the kids unconditionally just as I have and comes back to play week on week at the cost of his games with his golf buddies. As a family, we have moved forward emotionally, physically, intellectually, spiritually over the last 5 years. And, yes, as a family we are going to graduate ourselves to 18-hole from 9-hole games :-) Wishing you, your family and your business the joy of the game and the growth that it brings for you in each area of your life. Love, Jyoti. There's an outrage whenever an injustice shows its head in the public domain. Media - print, television, social - add fuel to the fire and suddenly everywhere we have indignation, anger, upset, sadness, righteousness in all of us. Experiments have proven that when the body has negative emotions, then the brain shuts down. That means, we have no access to innovation, creativity and out-of-the-box thinking to solve something which is obviously a problem, at the time we need it the most. Let me define what a solution is - It is a construct which a. increases love, compassion and reverence in the environment b. starts the work to solve the issue at the source, not at the surface c. makes people more connected with each other Look at a social problem as a business problem and suddenly, we have access. When we have a business problem that reduces productivity, performance and effectiveness; what do we do. We put on our creative, thinking hats and do process innovation. Do we wait for the CEO to do the process innovation? Maybe that is where the problem is that we keep waiting for the government or someone else to solve the problem instead of experiencing any power within to solve the condition we spend hours complaining about or completely ignoring. If you are in a developing country, running away to a developed nation is not the solution as the problems of your mother country still remain in your consciousness. You heal the problems in your consciousness only by being a part of the solution. If you are in a developed country, putting your head in the sand as the proverbial ostrich doesn't serve you either because what ails your country ails you too, even though it may not seem to at the surface. Making ourselves unconscious of what limitations and negativity surrounds us, unconsciously limits us and drains our power to live at the highest level of who we are meant to be. Complaining about what is not working around us only increases what does not work within us; and can only lead to disharmony and lack of joyous fulfilment. I came across this poem that hit hard: ______________________________________________________________________________ My Dying Conscience by Rashmi Trivedi Sometimes in the dark of the night I visit my conscience To see if it is still breathing For its dying a slow death Every day. When I pay for a meal in a fancy place An amount which is perhaps the monthly income Of the guard who holds the door open And quickly I shrug away that thought It dies a little. When I buy vegetables from the vendor And his son "chhotu" smilingly weighs the potatoes Chhotu, a small child, who should be studying at school I look the other way It dies a little. When I am decked up in a designer dress A dress that cost a bomb And I see a woman at the crossing In tatters, trying unsuccessfully to save her dignity And I immediately roll up my window It dies a little. When I buy expensive gifts for my children On return, I see half clad children With empty stomach and hungry eyes Selling toys at red light I try to salve my conscience by buying some, yet It dies a little. When my sick maid sends her daughter to work Making her bunk school I know I should tell her to go back But I look at the loaded sink and dirty dishes And I tell myself that is just for a couple of days It dies a little. When I hear about a rape or a murder of a child, I feel sad, yet a little thankful that it's not my child I can not look at myself in the mirror It dies a little. When people fight over caste, creed and religion I feel hurt and helpless I tell myself that my country is going to the dogs I blame the corrupt politicians Absolving myself of all responsibilities It dies a little. When my city is choked Breathing is dangerous in the smog ridden metropolis I take my car to work daily Not taking the metro, not trying car pool One car won't make a difference, I think It dies a little. So when in the dark of the night I visit my conscience And find it still breathing I am surprised For, with my own hands Daily, bit by bit, I kill it, I bury it. ______________________________________________________________________________ Ignoring the problems around us kills us slowly from the inside. Complaining about the problems reduce our power to fulfil our intentions and realise our dreams. And, yet there's another way, the way of a Peaceful Warrior. Here's what you and I can do: 1. Shift our Energy State: Based on Dr Hawkins’ research of 29 years as published in The Power of Intention by Dr Wayne Dyer - a. One individual who lives and vibrates to the energy of optimism and a willingness to be non-judgmental of others will counter-balance the negativity of 90,000 individuals who calibrate at the lower weakening levels. b. One individual who lives and vibrates to the energy of pure love and reverence for all of life will counter-balance the negativity of 750,000 individuals who calibrate at the lower weakening levels. A negative energy state shuts down our creativity and innovativeness. In such a state, we cannot create powerful, effective solutions. Counter-intuitively, what helps in a limiting situation that upsets us is not to get upset and instead create tranquility, equanimity, love and reverence within. Yes, I hear you when you say easier said than done. It is easier said than done because this requires a massive shift in our consciousness by dropping limiting habits across the 4 bodies (physical, emotional, mental, spiritual) of our Being and adopting growth habits. I call this Leadership Depth. This is how you become a great leader, at work and at home. Funny thing is we all know what are the limiting habits that we allow to reside in us and what are the growth habits that will speed us forward to the fulfilment of our purpose of life. Though, we are not inspired to take action. Let the knowledge, that when we shift on the inside, the world outside will shift, give us the inspiration. The world outside begins with our children. What limiting habits we are not able to drop, our children will inherit in terms of lethargy of the body, limiting thoughts and emotions and the consequent diseases. Why would we want to pass that on to our children? The wealth that we are speeding to create for them will not stop the diseases, limiting thoughts and emotions from being transmitted to them. If we really love our children, let us leave a legacy of world class habits by inculcating them in ourselves that will transform the environment around us. Our kids will benefit not only by inheriting world class habits but also by a much more joyous environment around them. Here are some growth habits we can consider adopting: a. Stopping to give way to the pedestrians, accepting that the roads belong to them and not to the cars that are zooming past. I learnt this habit from Dubai, where to my happy surprise, a car stopped for me to cross the street though there was no traffic signal and it was the only car. The driver needn't have stopped for me but it did and warmed my heart as the driver smilingly waved at me to cross. b. Smile genuinely at everyone, even at strangers. It was scary, at first, because of the instinctual fear at the core of who we are. Though, this habit fills my heart like nothing else to see the face of another human being transform dramatically and light up with a beautiful giving and receiving of authentic human connection. I especially love wishing, looking into the eyes and smiling at those who are habituated to being ignored - waiters at the restaurants, guards at our condominiums and malls, helpers at cinema halls and airports, housekeeping staff. Having been a coach and a student of what creates greatness in a human being, my observation is that there is such a strong wall of resentment and fear between men and women in the world. Though, if you scratch the surface, all you will really find is fear of not being loved, not being worthy and a deep yearning to make a difference. c. Give away 10% of your salary or 1% of your income to charity. Even in the lean years of my business, I followed this principle. It left me with such a peaceful sense of abundance that I hardly felt the scarcity or lack. Yes, there are tons of more habits to make yourself beautiful and feel centred. Study the people who inspire you, people who contributed massively through their work and their lives and you will unearth a treasure trove of growth habits that will make your heart sing and feet dance all the way to what is the highest in you. 2. Find the Source Within For every ill outside, I find it effective to find the source within by looking in the mirror and working on that. Nobody follows traffic rules in the country. I ensure I wait at every red signal even if there is no traffic and it's pretty late in the night. I wear my seat belt. I don't use my mobile while driving. My children are watching me, even if nobody else is. I am watching myself even if kids are not in the car. There is so much poverty all around. I support my 12 hours home support staff to find a job as I need someone for 24 hours. I use my day off to help her get a bank account even though she will not be working with me anymore. There is so much pollution around. I get the children to walk back home instead of picking them up in the car. 3. Action on a Daily Basis I was unconscious before. I worked on myself to become conscious of the fact that I am responsible for all that happens in my space. I continue the work on myself to take one tiny action at a time. It may not cause a revolution in the world but I know it makes a difference. It makes a difference to me. I come home to myself with every tiny action that I take. It feels good, I feel rested and embraced in the love and joy that is all around me. Wishing you the joy of pulling the thick dark curtain down between you and your light. Love, Jyoti. Acknowledgements: Rashmi Trivedi, author from India and Chief Manager with Indian Oil Corporation. Thank you for beautifully capturing our collective conscience through your poem, Rashmi. More power to you to keep making a difference. Hat Tip to: Akash Gandhi who shared the poem with us in our college whatsapp group. Thank you, Akash for providing inspiration for this article. There are two boys - Ram and Shyam. Ram loves studying and learning, enjoys the understanding he experiences of the world around him, has a sense of wonderment and joyous curiosity about all that he is learning, an awe for new things he discovers through the process of studying all the different subjects at school, each subject a window into a whole new world. Studying and learning is the end in itself for him. His total attention is in the moment; his whole Being fills up with intent, focus, joy and passion while he is studying. Shyam loves studying and learning, he wants to come first so that he can get into the best college, get the best job for the best salary to take care of his aging parents and his kids when they are born, so that he can live the lifestyle he is used to living and even better it, so that he can give a break to his elder sister, who is supporting the household, to discover her passions. Who do you think is living with greater joy and grace? Who do you think will create greater success and wealth? Who do you think will make a bigger difference to his family, communities, country and the world? Who do you think will be more happy, at greater peace with himself and the world, and more deeply fulfilled. And, why? Shyam may get into a better college, get a better job, have more money in the short-term; though he will end up with an empty heart, if he finds time from his busy life to look into his eyes in the mirror. I know it because I lived with Shyam consciousness up until 2010, tons of money in the bank, designation to show-off to the world, shiny cars, large beautiful condominium and a job that had begun to have no meaning along with everything else; though I began working with so much passion and enthusiasm. I studied to come first to get appreciation and approval of my dad, became a Vice-President with speed to bask in my father's pride and external applause from my family, friends & colleagues. I speeded for 36 years like this doing something to get something else; and then, I could not live with Shyam consciousness anymore, could not bear the heavy thud of my hollow heart, could not understand though I had everything I wanted including my dream job; and yet why it didn't fulfil. I stepped out of the corporate world in search of myself; did massive amount of inner work to figure my purpose, my meaning, my raison d'être and ended up as a coach to journey with people to come home to themselves. I thought I did everything that I wanted. Now, I realise I did everything I wanted by clamping down and fighting the inner demon, the shameful secret fear in the basement of my psyche that kept telling me - I am not enough, I am not worthy, that something outside of me will make me enough, that something outside of me will make me worthy. I did everything that I wanted not from freedom; but from guilt, from the spirit of a Fighter, from the sense of rebelliousness, fighting the world outside instead of the demons inside. I drove on the roads of Delhi at night, dropped my corporate job, built my first business, over-functioned in my relationship with my spouse, emotionally cocooned myself in my relationship with my kids with an air of bravado, a pretence of being bigger and having more courage than what I really felt inside. What got me to where I am is because I kept walking the path of inner growth, seeking out books, coaches and programs for personal growth and development while I re-built my life, personally and professionally. Somewhere along the journey, the wall finally broke connecting me to the Peaceful Warrior within, turning inside to fight my fears instead of fighting their reflections in the world outside. Today I study even more massively than before, though no longer for any awards or recognition. I have studied and learnt more in the last 8 years and with so much more joy and passion than in the 36 years before; though the 36 years includes 12 years of school education, 4 years for an engineering degree, 2 years for an MBA and years of on-the-job studying & learning. The study that I do now is not even visible to others. It is for my own personal journey towards mastering my craft of coaching. I feel centred with Ram consciousness, experiencing the pure joy and deep fulfilment of learning, growing and evolving for the sake of the pure joy and deep fulfilment of learning, growing and evolving. Doing something for itself and not for anything else. Learning for the joy of learning, not because of the certificate you will get or a promotion that may follow. Working for the joy of working, not because you will get a salary or higher income for it. Connecting with another for the joy of a conversation and fulfilment of having made a difference, not because a sale may end up happening or another agenda may get fulfilled. Why? Because when you do something for the sake of getting something else, you don't really enjoy what you are doing. The impact of not enjoying what we do is that it reduces our creativity, innovativeness, productivity, performance and effectiveness. You may create a good outcome, though not a great one. You may create a good business, though not a great business. You may create a good life, though not a great life. Unfortunately, our rewards and incentive culture teaches us to do something for something else very early on in life. Drawing from hundreds of studies, Alfie Kohn demonstrates that people actually do inferior work when they are enticed with money, grades, or other incentives. Programs that use rewards to change people’s behavior are similarly ineffective over the long run. Promising goodies to children for good behavior can never produce anything more than temporary obedience. In fact, the more we use artificial inducements to motivate people, the more they lose interest in what we’re bribing them to do. Rewards turn play into work, and work into drudgery. That is why it is important to not let financial independence or wealth creation be the end goal for your business. It will soon turn what you are passionate about into drudgery. Run your business for the joy of craft mastery (learning to be the master of your craft for the sake of learning to be the master of your craft), business excellence (to be of service to your customer community for the sake of making a difference to them and contributing to their lives) and leadership depth (to rise from evolutionary fear to transcendent love) instead of for wealth creation. In shifting this focus, you will create not only more impact but more wealth than you could have ever imagined. Wishing you the joy of the journey to come home to yourself. Love, Jyoti. References: Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn After a point, getting your direct team to take action in alignment with your vision and in partnership with each other becomes the biggest bottleneck for business growth. One CEO I was talking to yesterday lamented how he had been driving home the point to his team during every Monday morning standing meeting on tough action to be taken and all he had received for the last few months is a yes from few who never took action and silent shuffling of feet from the rest. Another CEO felt his team never kept pace with the massive amount of creative ideas for business growth that he was generating. Yet another CEO experienced a silent mutiny from his most powerful direct report because the CEO had been hired from outside, ignoring the CFO's ambitions to sit in the corner office. Another client shared how he felt his team just wasn't scaling up with action and there was a lot to ask for as far as velocity to respond to market situations and customer demand was concerned. I am usually approached to transform the senior leadership team to become more agile, more open to new ideas, more quick to implement, more coachable, more receptive to feedback, more open to learning, have greater leadership depth, be more collaborative and more of a lot many other things to support business growth. It always turns out that I end up coaching the CEO to become more agile, more open to new ideas, more quick to implement, more coachable, more receptive to feedback, more open to learning, have greater leadership depth, be more collaborative and more of a lot many other things for business to grow. Here are few ideas to help you transform your direct team to become powerful allies for each other and for you that together you lead your business from good to great for deeply fulfilling, joyous, sustainable success: 1. Your team and your organisation is your mirror. If you find something missing out there, it would support you to look in the mirror for the source of that. Start there. 2. The only way to inspire others to support you to realise your dreams is to really understand what their dreams are and be committed to support them to realise theirs, even if it seems on the surface to be conflicting with yours. 3. Drop your masks and armours so that they can drop theirs. A great team is built when members can connect to each other with authenticity and vulnerability. 4. Do 10 times what you ask them to do. That is what leadership is and you are their leader. 5. Trust them so that they can trust you. 6. Become their coach. As their leader, it is your responsibility to be their coach to support them to reach their highest self and not outsource this responsibility. 7. Live your values, mission and vision instead of talking about it. Non-verbal communication has greater impact than the words you use. 8. Become coachable so that they become coachable. Being coachable means having the ability to look inside for the mess outside. 9. Give self-care the highest importance. Then only will you be authentically be able to care for others. 10. Be compassionate love and kindness so that they become compassionate love and kindness. This is the secret sauce of a company on the way to greatness. 11. Make personal mastery your mantra and grow physically, emotionally, mentally / intellectually and spiritually; so that your team and subsequently your organisation lives from mastery and excellence consciousness, making a dent in the Universe. 12. Lead with questions so that your team generates ideas and solutions, not you. 13. Constantly learn, unlearn and relearn so that your direct reports are eternal students and create a learning organisation. 14. Have the agility of mind to wrap your head 360 degree around any reality to have the ability to see the truth in every point of view, however contradictory. So that your team bring in understanding and reverence for their peers' views to collaborate with each other for business growth instead of running to you to solve their conflicts. 15. Learn to communicate in the world of others by using silence as your gift. Communication is 90% listening and 10% talking. In that 10%, only asking questions to allow for more listening to happen. 16. Be the world of integrity. What you say, you do at the time you said you would do it, the way you said you would do it; however much it hurts you, irrespective of to whom you may have given your word. Be like this and your team will never say yes and not do it. 17. Let humility and gratefulness be your essence that it powers others in your space to become stars; to have the strength and courage to remove the dark curtain of ignorance between them and their light. 18. Be the least interesting person in the room to give space to others to become leaders. Choose being interested instead of being interesting. Your leadership success will come from creating more leaders, not more followers because more leaders drives your business up and more followers only leads your business to a certain death in a future not so far away. Choose compassionate love and reverence over charisma, all the time. 19. Have the vision that brings tears to your eyes. Have a vision to make a dent in the Universe to give your team the invigorating, refreshing, exhilarating, rejuvenating energy of a crusade, of a revolution, of transformation, of building cathedrals overs cutting stones. Have a vision that has the power of giving you the purpose of your life so that it gives your team the purpose of their life. 20. Have relationship of equals. Have the same reverence for your office boy as for your biggest client. This is the energy you need to grow leaders. 21. Know you are here to be of service - to your direct team, to your employees, to your customers, to your family, to your community, to your country and ultimately to humanity. Being settled in this will centre you; with nowhere to go and nothing to prove. That will unleash productivity, performance, effectiveness, creativity, innovation at levels you have never experienced before in yourself and in your team. Keep making a difference. There is a reason why you are born, there's a reason why you are in the position that you are in. It is to come home to yourself through the work you do. Love, Jyoti. Are you in perfect health and at the greatest level of fitness? Why does it really matter? Why is good not good enough? Why work so hard to create the highest levels of fitness? One is sauntering along Life, why give up the easy life to take on the additional pressure of one more burdensome responsibility - to create perfect health? Valid questions. Let's journey together for the next few minutes to together inquire into all of these questions and many more that pop up as we move forward. Questions are like that, they have a tendency to simply pop up like jack-in-the-box. The power of questions is that they make us stop and step out of the speeding train of Life to reflect on what is our own truth. There's another word for that, it's called smelling the roses. Growth happens in those moments; such growth that we may change the direction of the train, even change the train itself. That change is deeply joyous and fulfilling because there's a visceral experience of coming closer to home. The first thing to understand is that we have not one but four bodies that we are born with - physical body, emotional body, mental / intellectual body and spiritual body. Our physical body is the only house that we truly have this lifetime which is home for our other 3 bodies. The 4 bodies together form the Being of the Human Being. The Being is the vehicle for the fulfilment of our highest purpose of being born on this planet. We absolutely have the choice to live a zombie-like existence and unconsciously spend all our breaths lost in the melodrama of life before the physical body disintegrates and a fresh new adventure starts. Yet, we can make another choice - to live consciously, with full awareness moment by moment, living purposefully, walking definitely with joyous certainty that this is the path, this is the journey. To have the ability to make this choice, we need all our 4 bodies to be in perfect health and well-being and at the highest levels of refreshing, rejuvenating, energising, exhilarating fitness. Let's look at how we can assess the health of each of these 4 bodies. Answer the questions below by rating yourself from 0 to 10 on a scale of 10, where 0 means totally unhealthy and 10 means perfect health, well-being and the highest level of fitness. 1. Physical Body: How healthy am I? How much joyous energy I have, to do all that I want to do? 2. Mental Body: How well can I focus? How well can I learn across a spectrum of subjects to integrate that understanding to what I already know to create a bigger impact through the work I do? How much clarity I have to know what my 20% is which will give me 80% of the outcomes I am committed to create so that I have an abundance of time to do all that I want to do? How centred am I? To what degree can I feel the soothing Stillness within me? How well can I hear my authentic inner voice in the tranquil Silence inside me? How well do I respond to everyone and everything with equanimity? 3. Emotional Body: How happy am I? How connected am I in vulnerable authenticity to my own self and to all beings around me? How much courage I have to acknowledge, to myself and to others, each emotion that arises within me? How much wisdom I have to know that the source of each emotion that arises within me is me; that the others and the circumstances are merely triggers to open up the box inside me which hold all these emotions? How much understanding I have to know that the only way to let the emotions leave me is by allowing their full expression by giving myself the permission to fully feel them instead of pushing them under the carpet and putting up a show of bravado for the world? 4. Spiritual Body: Why am I doing all that I am doing? What is my purpose? Are my actions and responses sourced in fear; or are they sourced in compassionate love for myself and for others? Am I compassionate love, kindness and reverence; moment by moment? Do all beings experience my compassionate love, kindness and reverence for them? How well can I see, that what all is happening in the world is only a reflection of who I am being inside of me? If you are less than 10 on any of the above questions, you have your task laid out for you. You would be less than 10 in any body because you are being held hostage to limiting habits in that body. You will be 10 in each body if you have with commitment, dedication, discipline, passion, will-power and with a powerful structure of success dropped your Limiting Habits and replaced them with Growth Habits. Lets dive deeper. We, as humans, are nothing but a sum total of our habits. They are our automatic ways of responding to what's happening in the environment. From The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, "Habits, scientists say, emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort. Left to its own devices, the brain will try to make almost any routine into a habit, because habits allow our minds to ramp down more often." So, over a period of time, all we become is a mass of habits which create similar outcomes. If we are looking at creating different outcomes in our life, professionally and personally; like higher productivity, efficiency and performance and greater innovation and creativity; we have to step back to become aware of our default habits and work towards replacing them with new habits that support us to fulfil our highest intentions and realise our greatest dreams. There are not only default limiting individual habits but also organisational habits (of a particular organization) and social habits (of a particular society). These need to be studied deliberately, consciously to bring them and their impact in full awareness. Only then, can we take action to re-create and assimilate growth habits to lead ourselves, our business and our society / country from good to great. What does all this mean in context to the 4 bodies? How do we turn up the health and fitness knob to 10 for each body? 1. Physical Body - If tiredness, exhaustion, loss of energy, discomfort, physical pain or dis-ease shows up (it usually does in that order); it is time to thank the Universe for the wake-up call. There are 2 ways of growth - through pain and loss, or through insights. Pain and loss is always a signal for personal growth that we have been turning a blind eye to. At this point, we can push the pain and loss under the carpet and bring out our swords to fight the world. Not a great idea though. There's another way - that of the Peaceful Warrior - who looks for the gift in the loss and pain. Note that the physical body is only a house for the other 3 bodies and if anything shows up on the physical body, it is because one of the three bodies it is housing is bleeding. So, to be in perfect health, well-being and at the highest level of fitness in the physical body, we need our other 3 bodies to be in perfect health, well-being and at the highest level of fitness. Here's how to bring the physical body to a 10 on 10: a. Learn the science of how food impacts your body through the ancient Indian science of Ayurved. I am struck by this question raised by a westerner - Why is the impact on our health of what we eat is not studied by modern medical science? As per Ayurveda, humans have 3 body types and the food that is best suited for you is determined by the type of body you have. Use the food you eat and how you eat it support you towards health and well-being. Is it at all exciting to be making the rounds of the inhospitable hospitals, smelling of despair and death? How about creating such fitness levels that going there is not a part of our schedule? Art of Living offers a 3-day Health through Ayurveda program. It just turns one's understanding of food and eating on its head. I loved the program. It would also be effective to study Naturopathy as well to bring in the learnings into our daily life. Infact, massive research has been done in the West as well to understand the relationship between food and health. Unfortunately, all the research outcomes have been shoved under the carpet because of the staggering economic impact on the food, pharmaceutical and healthcare industries if we start understanding and eating food that naturally maintains our health and well-being till our very last breath. Here are two books which make these research outcomes available to all of us. Click the links to read the summary and if that inspires you, read the books and implement the learnings in your life to elevate your health and vitality: i. The China Study by T. Colin Campbell ii. How Not to Die (prematurely) by Dr Michael Greger b. Yoga - This is an ancient science of asana (specific postures) and pranayam (breathing exercises). This is the only exercise regimen that I know that integrates work at all the 4 bodies - mind, body, emotions, spirit. We will discuss Martial Arts in a little while too. I have been practising Yoga for nearly 20 years though consistency of practise has only come about now. All that I can tell you is that it is such a beautiful experience to feel the stiffness of the body melt away as you move from asan to asan. The secret of the consistency in my practise is my Yoga Coach, who comes like a clockwork and leads me forward from easier to tougher asanas to support flexibility and agility of the physical body. As the physical body becomes more flexible and agile, the mental and emotional body becomes more flexible and agile. I have become wiser to no longer offer excuses of having slept late, sickness, tiredness as reasons for not doing my practise because I have come to realise that Yoga actually supports to ease away tiredness, sickness and lack of sleep. I do Yoga 6 times a week for an hour. Without it, it feels like I haven't brushed my teeth. I am contemplating yanking it up to daily which means for that one day (when my coach takes his weekly off), I would need raised energy levels and commitment to do it on my own. That's the next level of growth though I recognise my asanas wouldn't have progressed towards perfection (and the work continues) if it wasn't for my teacher showing me how I needed to improve. On my own, I wouldn't have figured. c. Martial Arts - While Yoga grows you through the slowness of the practise, martial arts grow you through speed. And, you need both kinds of growth. I recently started Karate along with my kids. We love jumping around, kicking and punching together. Thanks to Yoga, I have more flexibility than my kids at 44 which is supporting me in Karate. Where I lack is the enormous stamina that Karate needs and builds you up for. My Karate coach's super coach is a 73 years old Black Belt Dan 10 (the highest level). That gives me hope and inspiration :-) The increase in my strength and stamina that I experienced as an outcome of learning Karate is helping me enormously on the golf course. d. Sports - There are two ways of playing sports. The first is for fun and the second is playing for excellence. When you make the latter your intention, the first also gets covered. My recommendation is to make the 2nd your intention and involve your family in the whole process. In fact, what would create velocity and magic in your journey towards perfect health, well-being and highest levels of fitness is if you make your family and your organization partners in your adventure. When you make excellence the intention of the sports that you choose to take on, all the four bodies benefit and grow as an outcome. You not only then have to make physical fitness as your articulated intention but also have to bring in focus, attention, love, passion, purpose into the game. The game becomes the practise ground for leadership growth because when you learn to become a container for focus, attention, love, passion, purpose on the playground; that container stays with you and shows up in all areas of your life giving you outcomes you would have only dreamed of before. Leadership Depth is really an outcome of all your 4 bodies being in perfect health, well-being and at the greatest level of fitness. The Universe uses loss and pain to wake us up towards greater Leadership Depth; if we don't make the choice to wake ourselves to live with moment-by-moment awareness to grow consciously across all the 4 bodies our Being. e. Get yourself a family doctor who is preferably from AYUSH (Ayurved, Yog & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, Homeopathy): A family doctor has a relationship with your family, a commitment for your family's well-being & health and time to fully hear & understand you; unlike most doctors in spanking new hospitals who come in your life for a transaction and move out again. Don't get me wrong. I have deep respect for Modern Medical Science and its stupendous diagnostic power. Our family doctor (who is a homeopath) leverages the diagnostic reports to fine-tune his medication. A big challenge with modern medicine is that they come with huge side-effects, unlike its authentic AYUSH counter-parts. Though, have the wisdom to reach out to your allopathic doctor when the need arises. The idea is to integrate all the knowledge available for our health. My vision is that fundamentals of AYUSH are taught in medical colleges in the MBBS undergraduate program with each of the five ayush healing methodologies available as post-graduate programs alongside surgery, radiology, pathology etc. and hospitals become integrated centres for wellness to support people to stay healthy rather than step in only to cure once sickness has already taken root. If Indian Tobacco Company can become ITC and progressively reduce its dependency on cigarettes for its growth by successfully diversifying into food, fashion, hotels etc; the day is not far off when hospitals also awaken to the need to be integrated centres for health and healing. 2. Mental / Intellectual Body - Here's how you create health and fitness in your mental body: a. Read atleast one book a month, if not one book a week which I would recommend to anyone committed to massive growth. For maximum benefit, read books that you don't normally read, that are tough for you. Ensure you are reading across a wide cross-section of books related to personal mastery (leadership depth), business excellence, craft mastery, biographies of people who inspire you, fiction, literature. b. Work with a coach who will send you on regular inquiries through socratic discussions and mess up with your mind by getting right inside your thinking. That would support you to become hugely aware about your own human design, your blind spots and massive insights that will accelerate you forward by simply slowing you down. I love my conversations with my coach, Clarence Thomson. I love my Aha, Hmmm, That's funny, Gosh, OMG moments. I love that I get the space to really be authentically myself and can show up with all of me, without my armours and masks. I love that relaxing sigh of having totally emptied out. c. Get present to your limiting thought patterns and consciously work towards letting those thoughts to drop away. Your coach will work with you on this. My favourite books for growing the mental intellectual body are - i. Loving What Is (Four Questions that can Change Your Life) by Byron Katie ii. You can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay - a great book on limiting thought patterns and their impact on the physical body. iii. The Four Agreements (A Toltec Wisdom Book) by Don Miguel Ruiz A great system for uncovering your blind spots and defining your growth strategy is Enneagram. Here's an article for the details on this - Breaking Free from the Box d. Exercising, sports, yog, martial arts are all great ways to keep the lethargy away from the mind. e. Have your mastermind group to constantly challenge you to be bigger than who you are. Remember you are an average of 5 people you hang around the most. Judiciously decide on your mastermind group. 3. Emotional Body - The only work that I know of, that works exclusively for the health and well-being of the emotional body, is by Brandon Bays. She healed her basket-ball sized tumour naturally by accessing the hidden emotions at the source of it and releasing them by giving herself the permission to fully experience them instead of denying her emotions. Her guruji is from Lucknow, India from Ramana Maharishi's lineage. I did a one-year program called the Journey Practitioner with her and her team; through which she teaches the process that supported her to heal her tumour naturally. It was only towards the end of the year that I finally accessed my emotional body pushed so deep under the carpet by years of being a Vice-President, Director etc. It was interesting that I heard her say Namaste more times in 10 days than I had heard in the entire year before inspite of living in India. I, oftentimes, wonder at the loss that we have allowed ourselves in India to experience at not really claiming our vast, deep, rich heritage to humanity as our own and living from there. Here's her book to guide you further on this - The Journey by Brandon Bays. She brings her work to India in partnership with Dr Rangana Rupavi Choudhuri, who herself is based out of London. I integrate this process in my own work as a coach. It is always beautiful to see, feel, hear, experience, support people to access their pain of being a human being and letting it drop off to authentically connect with themselves. For more scientific understanding of the relationship of emotions and thoughts to physical health, read Molecules of Emotions (The Science behind Mind-Body Medicine) by Candace B. Pert. A book that finally pushed me to break the wall between me and myself is Real by Catherine and Duane O'Kane. Here's a quick overview of the book for you to inspire you to read the book for yourself - Real (The Power of Authentic Connection) 4. Spiritual Body - After exploring many meditation techniques, I finally came home to Vipassana. Vipassana, which means to see things as they really are, is one of India's most ancient techniques of meditation. It was re-discovered by Gautam Buddha more than 2500 years ago and was taught by him as a way to connect with your highest self. Vipassana is a way of self-transformation through self-observation. It focuses on the deep interconnection between mind and body. It is this observation-based, self-exploratory journey to the common root of mind and body that dissolves limiting emotions and thoughts, resulting in a balanced mind full of love and compassion. The technique was brought back to India from Myanmar by Shri S N Goenka, a wealthy businessman of Indian origin. He learned the technique to heal himself of physical ailments that modern medical science even from the western world could not give him relief from. It is taught in a 10-day Silence Retreat in monasteries, where you live like a monk for the duration of the program. What led me to it was zero hype about any Guru. When I landed at the rustic Rohtak monastery for my program, I was brimming over with curiosity about the Guruji who is teaching this meditation. There were no idols or pictures decorated with garland of flowers to satiate my curiosity. Only at the end of the first day, I found out about Shri Goenka though he didn't call himself a Guruji but merely a teacher of the technique. He has passed over. The program is run in numerous locations in India and around the world by assistant teachers through his video recordings. I was blown away by his simplicity, intellectual depth and deep understanding of Life; that totally connected with my own understanding so far. I love the total focus on self-transformation through self-observation without using any chant, image, mantra as a crutch. As recommended, I meditate twice a day for an hour each and I intend going back once a year for the 10-day program for re-immersion. The practise, more consistent now than a year ago, has had amazing results for me. The chattering monkey mind has slowed down, I experience greater equanimity than before, my anger has come down dramatically, and I have had breakthrough ideas during meditation that have resulted in huge business and personal growth I could not have created without those ideas. I also experience greater focus, the clarity to choose the 20% for 80% results, and a visceral experience of love and compassion for all beings. Though, what I have to share is that these results came in because of my work on the other 3 bodies that had me ready for Vipassana and give me the strength to plough through meditation everyday. I am certain even 2 years ago, I wasn't ready for Vipassana. In Conclusion If you are not in perfect health, well-being and at the highest levels of fitness; now you know what you need to do to reach there. I find that integrating work on all the 4 bodies as above helps me to support my clients grow professionally and personally, lead their businesses from good to great while having it all - deeply fulfilling career, loving harmonious relationships at work and at home, happy responsible kids with their genius joyfully expressed, nourishing nurturing me-time and making a difference in the world. Inviting you to start the journey to come home to yourself to live your purpose and experience joyous, equanimous fulfilment. With a deep Namaste (which means from the Light in me to the Light in you). Love, Jyoti. Further Recommended Reading: 1. How to Lead your Organization to Success 2. What has Spirituality got to do with Business 3. From High Performance to Super Performance 4. How to Build a Successful Business - An interview with a Gear 5 Leader 5. How to Lead your Organization from Good to Great An ex-client reached out for support in deciding between settling abroad or staying in the country. A client wanted to decide between a corporate job or starting out on her own. Another wanted to figure out between taking a break from work to explore his passions or continuing to work. We are inundated with choices throughout our lives and on a daily basis. It seems the choice we make determines what kind of life we'll have. That puts in an inordinately high amount of pressure on making the right choice that has us so confused that we are stuck in analysis paralysis and find ourselves with no energy to take the actions because all the energy has been spent figuring out what choice to make. Then we have no outcomes, there is no progress, no sense of fulfilment because there were no actions. In fact, even what seems like minor choices; like which book to read, choosing screen over reading, choosing to smoke over sitting in the anxiety and discomfort of not choosing etc; have significantly high impact on the direction our lives take. How do we choose wisely, how do we make choices that support us towards growth which, if we slow down and reflect, is the only doorway to sustainable happiness? Put this assertion to test right now. When did you last feel a sense of happiness? I am not talking about a general sense of 'life is good' but an authentic visceral experience of joyous happiness. In which body (physical / intellectual / emotional / spiritual) of your Being had you experienced growth that you can link that experience to? Taking the reflection a level deeper, we will realise that ultimately all that we are doing moment to moment is making a choice - choosing a specific thought, a specific emotion, a specific action over other thoughts, emotions and actions. Progress would be when we are able to choose consciously over choosing unconsciously. Most times, we are making choices giving ourselves very logical reasons for making the choice though the choice is actually an emotional one with our hidden fears and intentions as the driver. Progress would be to be aware of the emotional reasons and the hidden fears & intentions that are driving us to make the decisions that we are making. When there is self-awareness and the inner power to choose consciously, then we will find ourselves making choices that are wise because they are effective, make more time available to us to do things that really matter and support our growth towards our highest version of ourselves. Here is the structure that you can use to reach such a state and consciously make powerful choices: 1. Figure out your purpose of life, your personal inner commitment and your highest values as the place to start from. This is your Pole Star. Once you can clearly see your Pole Star, you will begin to make choices that are effective and have the wisdom to lead you forward in the direction that serves you and those you are responsible for the most. 2. Discover your hidden fears, and unconscious self-sabotaging beliefs & intentions. It is our human design to have them. Having the self-awareness to recognise what they are and the courage to acknowledge them to yourself and to others gives you the power to create your greatest life. 3. Once you discover what you fear, what you resist, what you know would serve you and yet you don't want to do that; do exactly what you fear, what you resist, what you know would serve you and yet you don't want to do that. This conscious battling with your inner demons removes the curtain between you and your inner wisdom, your intuition, your inner guide. As the inner demons lose power, you will have a visceral experience in your body as to which choice to make. You will pick up a book and you will know whether it is the right book to read. You will review a growth program and you will be able to feel it in your body if it will serve you. You will have an inner knowing whether staying in the country is what would support you or leaving the country. You will know whether it is the right moment to drop your job and start your own business. The funny thing is that most times you will find yourself making choices that seem counter-intuitive and will have people in your life question you. There will be such deep clarity and knowingness that doubt will find no place to rest in your body. 4. Your inner demons are really default limiting physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual habits. Be bigger than who you are right now to cultivate world-class growth habits across the four bodies (physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual) of your Being. Without that your inner demons will win the battle every time. 5. As you make any choice, be in the inquiry of its wisdom by asking yourself the following questions: i. How does this choice feel in my body? Do I feel a surge of energy or a sinking feeling in my stomach? ii. What is my emotion when I am considering making this choice? Does it fill me up with joy or with the emptiness of excitement? Learn to distinguish between authentic joyous happiness and excitement, which is nothing but fear in disguise. iii. Do I have clarity and focus while I am considering making this choice? Is my mind still or is it racing in 1000 different directions? iv. Is my choice sourced in love or is it sourced in fear? Will it serve my family, my organisation, my customer community, my country or will it just serve me? v. How will this choice support me to fulfil on my purpose of life? vi. How is my choice an expression of my personal inner commitment? vii. How will my choice support me to live my highest values? viii. What are my articulated intentions? Does this choice support or come in the way of my articulated intentions? ix. What will be the impact of making this choice? Will I end up breaking any word to myself or others if make this choice? x. Does this choice support my growth towards personal mastery or will it impede it? Somewhere during this inquiry, you will get an inner knowing of the perfect choice for you. Once you know the perfect choice, take immediate action to implement the choice for maximum benefit. If things don't turn out the way you envisioned and more often than not, it will be the case; guard yourself against regret and self-criticism because that comes in the way of actually benefiting from the choice you made. Sometimes, the pain associated with having made the specific choice is the gift that you need the most to move forward. Accept it with grace, learn from it and use the learnings to create an even greater life. Love, Jyoti. |
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