Meeting The Challenge Of Changing Patterns

Posted on October 27, 2007

Meeting The Challenge Of Changing Patterns
Janina Gomes for TIMES OF INDIA

“We once saw a man draw some black dots. We looked and could make nothing of them but an irregular assemblage of black dots. Then he drew a few lines, put in a few rests, then a clef at the beginning, and we saw these black dots were musical notes. On sounding them we were singing”. This observation set me thinking. There are many black dots and spots in our lives. We cannot understand why they come — unexpected bad news, sudden deaths, illnesses, unsavoury encounters, brushes with the uncouth… We wonder why God permitted them in the first place. Then, other experiences come flooding in, equally unexpected: good tidings, experiences of goodness, compassion and mercy.

Maybe God has been adjusting the dots. He has been drawing the lines he wants, separating the good from the bad, lifting us above what is low and unseemly. He puts in the rest in the proper places. The black dots no longer remain an irregular assemblage. They are drawn into a larger pattern, woven into a wider harmony.

When we look down a long avenue of trees, we are amazed to look from one end of the avenue to the other at the rich greenery, the large boughs, the arching leaves. Sometimes, the trees seem to groan under the burning heat of summer, yet they provide shade to the hapless who take shelter under their outstretched arms.

There are seasons, when the trees shed their leaves and remain brown and seemingly barren. Then once again, they suddenly turn green in spring. Fresh new leaves appear. All is verdant, green, inviting once again.

When we look back along the long avenues of our years, our experiences are quite similar. There are good times and bad. There were times for growing roots deep into the ground to withstand the winters of our lives. There were times to shed leaves, experiences, persons and situations that were poisoning our lives. There were times to shift our alliances and allegiances to bring them more in tune with God. There were times to go deeper in search of water and the source of life.

We all have to deal with change in our lives. Change is really an opportunity to grow. The unexpected always comes along. The unexpected could also come in the form of the beautiful and the inspiring. We all know what joy meeting an old friend by chance can bring us.

An unexpected phone or letter that encourages us can light our day. An experience of quiet joy and peace may come to us through a sudden shaft of light from the window. Affirmation from a friend or loved one could lift us, when the lowness of some around us is getting us down.

Change and difference are a part of life and the mystery of being unsure never leaves us. It is no secret that deer, squirrel and owl are not alike, that birds do not fly in lines and fish don’t all float at the same level. We choose the level at which we live our lives, the heights that we touch and the depths to which we stoop.

We cannot determine the times of sunshine and the times for cloud and rain. Our spiritual experiences may not always be pristine and un-diluted light. We all cannot escape the darkness and gloom. But the closer we move to God, the better we learn to handle change.

Management Of Change Brings Stability

Posted on October 27, 2007

Management Of Change Brings Stability
Discourse: Swami Sukhabodhananda

There are two sources of stress, internal and external. Internal stress involves thoughts, values, beliefs and opinions. External stress involves wrong exercises, faulty breathing habits, unhealthy eating habits, pollution and sleep problems.

Nobody can avoid stress in life. One has to minimise stress. That is possible if one can work on both internal and external stress. The most important factor is our mind and how it looks at life.

At the end of one of my programmes, a lady danced for three hours in sheer celebration. Then she came and sat next to me and told me how happy she was. As she was drinking coffee, the beverage spilt on her beautiful saree. Immediately, she screamed, saying her joy from the three-hour dance was gone.

Looking at this incident, i learnt that three hours of happiness was invalidated by a sorrow lasting for a few seconds. If our mind can work like this, the reverse is also possible. The three hours of sorrow can be invalidated by a few seconds of joy.

The secret of being happy is to recollect happy incidents in life. Weaken the effect of unhappiness by distancing yourself from its pictures. Can you undertake the following acts in your life? Understand the mind. Transform the mind. Transcend the mind.

Transforming the mind involves the understanding that there is no complete satisfaction in life; there is only a possibility to improve upon the existing state of affairs. We don’t have to win every time in order to be happy; happiness does not depend only on success. Learn to respond and not to react to events and incidents in life. If one continues reacting, reaction becomes a habit. Then an egoistic and reactive “I” emerges. It will have its own foolish logic.

A dog and a cat had an interesting conversation. The dog said, “I am so lucky that the owner of the house serves me and the children of the house adore me. So i feel they are God”.

The cat also said, “The owner of the house pets me, the children of the house adore me, and the servant maid serves me. So i feel i am God”.

Effective management of change is an art. For this, you need to cultivate leadership qualities. To be successful in life, one has to have the leadership quality to manage change.

In esoteric teaching there is an important law called the law of three. The positive effort you put in is called the first force. As you put in positive force there is a negative force that would affect the positive force.

This negative force is called the second force. If one conti-nuously puts in positive effort, there would be a third force that would descend and transform the negative force into a positive force. This is called the law of three.

If you do not continue exerting a positive force, the negative force will take over. So the law of three urges us to be open to the negative force, but to continue applying the positive.

Afraid? Not us!

Posted on October 27, 2007

Afraid? Not us!
Avinash Kalla,TNN

Is conquering fear the key to success? As Dhoni and his boys swept the T20 trophy, they demonstrated amazing teamwork and spirit. Avinash Kalla unravels the success formula

Say ‘fearless’ and the image of a beaming Mahendra Singh Dhoni, along with his young bunch of enthusiastic cricketers, proudly holding aloft the T20 World Cup strikes the mind.

Dhoni pulled off a victory even as few gave India an outside chance of making it to the finals. So, what did this Jharkhand lad do differently when catapulted to the hot seat that others before him did not? You guessed it. He and his team operated with a mindset of utter fearlessness. “We played without fear. If we play like this, with everyone supporting each other, we’re going to win more matches than we lose. We need to enjoy ourselves whenever we go out in the middle. Let euphoria take the place of fear,” is the newly-anointed skipper’s slogan.

Is losing fear, then, the key to success in both individual and team enterprises? And what is the role of a leader in inculcating this attribute? “There is a tremendous relationship between fear and success,” says motivational speaker Shiv Khera. “There are thoughts of fear and defeat and thoughts of victory and happiness. It’s these very thoughts that direct or misdirect us,” he asserts.

While negative thoughts create an aura of gloom around us, the energy emitted by the positive thoughts is reflected in our actions and body language. Powered by this positive energy, one plays to win in whichever field one chooses to. As Khera puts it, “There is a huge difference between playing to win and playing not to lose. In the former, you play with an inspiration, whereas in the latter, you play out of desperation. And the results are different in both cases.”

When you are fearless, you don’t hesitate to take on the mighty and powerful. The Indian team demonstrated that match after formidable match against countries ranked favourites to lift the prestigious trophy.

Sabeer Bhatia, then a young entrepreneur, set aside fear when he walked in to negotiate with Bill Gates and co. for a whopping $400 million for his venture Hotmail.com. Microsoft offered him a meagre $160 million; Bhatia didn’t give in. He had just one choice ‘take it or leave it’. Undeterred, Bhatia who acknowledges that being fearless is certainly one of the qualities required to be successful in business, played it cool. “I’ll get back to you,” is what he said.

All through the way to clinching the mega deal, he remained firm and fearless. However, he has a word of caution, “You cannot have a weak hand and continue to be fearless. It would be foolish to do so; your spirit has to be justified by a solid platform. In my opinion, being fearless means that one should trust her or his intellect, and not be afraid to go against the norm to try something new.”

And defying norms is no mere feat; it takes a lot out of leaders who are able to turn the tide in their favour. Capt. Gopinath, who revolutionised the way people fly today, says, “We had a class barrier to defy when we entered the aviation business. Nobody believed in my project; some went on and said ‘Tata-Singapore airline never got the licence; you don’t stand a chance to see it through.’ But in my mind there was never a question about will I be able to do it? It was always how I can do it, till I actually did it.”

Individuals like Dhoni, Bhatia, and Capt. Gopi possess what Khera terms as ‘practising mental toughness’ — the mantra he says is, “I play to win but I am not afraid to lose.”

His views are echoed by Dhoni who said, “It really didn’t matter to me if we didn’t win, because we’d given it our best.”

Think for a moment, what if Bachendri Pal had allowed herself to get intimidated by the imposing Everest. She would never have scaled the tall heights she did by becoming the first Indian woman to conquer the Everest. Climbing the mountain must have been a daunting task for her, but she exorcised her fears and went single-mindedly about her mission. Again it was the courage of her beliefs that made environmental scientist Sunita Narain lock horns with a Cola giant, and stick to her guns in the face of immense pressure and arm twisting.

It’s the leader’s attitude and speed that determine the pace with which any team moves and builds the tempo. In Khera’s opinion ‘a bunch of sheep led by a lion is better than a bunch of lions led by a sheep.’

So are leaders born or do they learn to lead? And what is it that the leader needs to do differently to come out tops? “Some are born leaders whereas others acquire leadership skills over time,” says Bhatia. Capt. Gopi adds, “Courage is the most important aspect of leadership; it comes from deep conviction and belief. Second, a leader needs the ability to judge people and manoeuver them ensuring their potential is optimised.”

A formula Dhoni practised to perfection. When Harbhajan Singh showed signs of buckling under pressure, Dhoni decided to give the ball to Joginder Sharma, a player who, the captain felt, had fire in his belly and ‘wanted to make a mark at the international level.’ It was a gamble that paid off.

A leader does not hesitate to take gambles. Capt. Gopi says, “If you can’t create more leaders within your team, you are not a leader worth your salt. Give your people challenges and they respond. They thrive on these challenges and you in turn create leaders who will carry the show on.”

But not everything is always hunky dory for these fearless souls; they too have their lows and face defeats. “In business, you are only as good as your last quarter. It’s not every time that your courage will lead to success. You lose some, but then you need to analyse various aspects and act fast,” says Capt. Gopi. In these defeats there is glory as you go down fighting.

With Chak De being our current war cry, it’s time you believed in yourself and went for your dreams. Remember, fear surrounds us like a cage, break it, and the world is your playground. Now that we are in the game, who are we playing next?

From sheets to pillow cases to dusters

Posted on October 27, 2007

From sheets to pillow cases to dusters
Uma Asher,TNN

Over the years, it has slowly dawned on me that I have learned many things from my parents in years past, without even noticing. They live in an apartment in the overcrowded clutter that is suburban Mumbai. Every day, they buy a handful of flowers and bel leaves for the household altar. The flower woman delivers them to our door, wrapped in a leaf and tied with a piece of string. My mother saves the string, and when it has grown to a fist-sized ball, she returns it to the flower-seller, who re-uses it.

My father would take cloth bags to the market every day, but somehow plastic bags crept into the house occasionally. My mother would collect them, and periodically hand them over to the vegetable vendor, so he could reuse them.

In the days of glass milk bottles, my mother saved the aluminum foil caps. A few caps made a new career as scrubbers for cast-iron cookware like a roti tawa; others were given to our domestic help, who sold them as metal scrap in the slum where she lived. That way she earned a spot of extra money, and the aluminium presumably got recycled somewhere. When the tough nylon fabric from folding deck chairs frayed at the edges, it was taken out and sewn into heavy-duty bags to buy our monthly supplies of grain.

Those bags lasted well over a decade. When I was a child, the fabric of my unfashionable but sturdy cotton school uniforms was ideal for making shopping bags. Our old clothes that were in wearable condition were bartered for steel pots and pans from an itinerant vendor.

My mother rescued old zippers and buttons, and stored them in an old candy box to sew on other clothes. Torn clothes were cut up and saved as wipes for kitchen spills, muddy shoes, and so on. Old cotton bedsheets got cut up, and the ends, less frayed than the centre, were sewn up into pillow cases or dishcloths. If a container broke, the lid was saved, and used when another container was missing a lid.

To this day, gifts are unwrapped very carefully, and the paper stored flat under a mattress for reuse. Resealable plastic bags are rinsed, dried, and reused when possible.

Even though my parents live in a flat, they don’t regard their hoard of old stuff as clutter; it’s well-organised so things are there when they need them. When they need string, a plastic bag, a clean jar or bottle, a lid or nail of any size, a rag to wipe a spill, they know exactly where to find it.

Only when I lived in the US did it even occur to me that stores could sell such items. I have come to recognise and be grateful for how my parents’ little habits continue to shape the way in which I use things. They never use the expression “reduce, reuse, recycle”. When they add some little item to their stash, they simply say, “This will be useful.”