Micro Enlightenment2: Overcoming FEAR

It is said that opposite of Love is Fear. Like love, fear also is a complex emotion. Where as Love is the emotional bridge connecting universal entities; fear creates separation and hurdles. Therefore, I treat Love as a propelling force to connect with someone or something; where as Fear being the obstacle our mind creates in the progress path. FEAR for me is an abbreviation i.e. "False Evidences Appear Real". Being an practitioner of positive attitude and positive thinking, I don't allow fear to paralyze me. One needs to be aware of one's fears and through acquiring skills and knowledge confront them. I am circumspect not fearful. The difference is that I do risk management but do not allow fear to stop me in my journey (in any dimension). To progress on the path of desired success, one has to be courageous. As the popular saying goes, "Courage is not the absence of fear but confidence that fear can be overcome". Developing a capability to handle fear has also helped me overcome many stresses of life.

For me, one of the techniques to fight fear is "Planning the response to the worst case scenario"; because once you have planned response to the worst case scenario, only better can happen to you. Once again, I am not suggesting that we should spend hours on thinking about worst case scenario, but just giving a thought "What is worst that can happen to me and how I am going to response if it does happen?". Also, I only use worst case scenario technique if my intuition suggests that even after positive thinking and positive attitude I need to be bit more circumspect.

What I have suggested here is working well for me a made my Quality of Life (QoL) much better. I wish that you also experience Joyful Living by experimenting and internalizing these thoughts.

Micro Enlightenment: A Journey Towards Enlightenment

As I sat through many spiritual discourses, I felt as if the path to happiness as described by many of the preachers is never going to cross my life's path. The concepts often sounded so complex and my capability so small that I was losing hope of every making any progress on my spiritual journey. Then like lightening this thought hit - Whiling travelling, I have always enjoyed smaller attractions along the way. When I think of any past journey I always remember the unexpected "took my breath away" views and "stole my heart" experiences of meeting wonderful people. And I realized that I get more pleasure because of the collection of happy moments experienced during the journey than reaching the destination. Of course, a destination is needed similar to a goal, to have a known course of move. I thought why not break that mystic phenomenon of enlightenment as well into collection of micro-enlightenments.

This paradigm works for me; and I invite you to ponder on it as well. Take anything in life that is of importance to you. Let me share my experience with my anger management. The path to micro-enlightenment was to know the root cause of what triggers anger in me; and what fundamental need it severs and how do I respond. I realized that anger in me gets triggered when I perceive I have been physically, socially, mentally or philosophically insulted. As a result, I wanted to give it back - i.e. a strong desire of insulting the cause of my insult to get equal. The word to focus is "perceived insult". The other person might not even be intending to inflict any insult; yet in my perception I was feeling insulted and hence reacting. Observation followed by reflection resulted in the "Awareness of the anger; its need / cause; and reason for my response". The next phase was to contemplate and find a way to respond instead of react (use intellect not mind - see my previous post for mind versus intellect definition). Whiling mulling over my anger; I realized that when I get angry, I put myself physically, mentally and intellectually at a serious disadvantage. On one hand - my heart rate goes up, blood pressure increases, I am not able to think straight and my intellect is in shutdown state. So in the rage to insult cause of my perceived insult; I am getting into a negative mind frame and negative physiological state. And what about the cause of my insult - I realized I have no control if my anger will make the other person feel hurt or not. If someone just laughs at my anger or politely says SORRY; my anger served no purpose except hurting me mentally, physically and emotionally. So now I am practicing to respond to an insult with a silence... I find it even more effective as the other person, if intending to insult me, is left surprised - expecting a reaction but receiving none.... I am still on the journey... yet I believe once I stop reacting to the perceived insult and respond with a silent smile... I will be Anger Micro-Enlightened. And I will have one less dimension of life left to conquer before attaining enlightenment :)

BMI: Body, Mind & Intellect Integration for Peak Performance

BMI: Body, Mind & Intellect Integration for Peak Performance

Before I share my thoughts on how to achieve Peak Performance with Body, Mind & Intellect integration; let me define these terms to set the right context. Body is the most obvious physical entity that is a finite manifestation of the infinite capabilities that we possess. This entity also represents all the organs including our brain. Mind is a dynamic concept that represents continuous flow of thoughts. Among other things, the thoughts originate out of our beliefs and attitude. Our thoughts are the basis of any action we do. So we interact with the universe through our actions which originates as a thought in our Mind. And finally, Intellect is the capability to govern the Mind so the actions taken are ethical and in accordance with our values. The process of ‘birth’ ensures that we have Body & Mind as well as basic intellect (instinct) to survive in the world; but to exploit complete human potential and to achieve Peak Performance; one needs to enhance Intellect by transforming observation & learning into wisdom through contemplation & internalization. In simple words, what we learn, we need to internalize and act in accordance with the new knowledge.

Our challenge is that we never live in NOW with Body, Mind and Intellect at the same place at the same time. We keep regretting about the past (our Body is in present but Mind in the past), which only erodes our energy and weakens our potential with no results as we cannot change past. If we are not dwelling in the past; we are anxious about the future. Once again, we keep worrying about what have not happened and may never happen. If not in past and future; we stay excited about the present (worrying about how many things we have to do etc.). The result is, we never live our present joyfully. We are never in our NOW, enjoying what we have to the fullest. Similarly, our Intellect is also mostly absent in these conversations. If Intellect was governing as it is supposed to be, it should bring mind and body in-synch NOW. We discuss our office problems and boss with our wife; we discuss our home challenges and wife with our friends. As a result the problems are not resolved and we are not doing our best.

The need is to be aware of Body, Mind and Intellect; and Intellect’s role to govern the mind so we can enjoy whatever we are doing. A very simple idea; when you eat your next meal, enjoy the texture, the taste, the aroma of food and whatever else you can; without thinking of anything other than the food and the process of eating – bringing your Body, Mind and Intellect together. When I did that, I had a meditational experience. Let me know your experience.

We just need to be In NOW to be In Joy. And when you do anything while in Joy; you are likely to perform at your peak capacity.

How I fell in Love with Davangere !!!

What a wonderful love story– a person born and brought up in the lap of Himalayas falls in love with the “Heart of Karnataka”. The charm of Davangere, an oasis in the center of Karnataka (India), is more than the natural beauty; she has people with big loving hearts with kind humble souls. A place which was never on my travel map, now feels like second home with an extended family. Oct 1, 2011 weekend was my fourth visit to Davangere and every visit left me with more profound memories than the previous trip. This time, I had great opportunity to interact with the students and the faculty of Bapuji (BIET) family of institutes. Rotaract Club invited me as their “Brand Ambassador” to support their efforts of inspiring young professionals to perform at their peak potential. It is a great honor for me to be part of such a noble cause. The purpose was to share ideas on “Bridging the gap between Industry and Academia”. We discussed career planning as well as I shared my view on “Unleashing Success Potential”. The discussions were a good blend of technology, business and spirituality. I was impressed with the proactive student participation. The quality of interactions and the questions students asked further strengthened my belief that we have enormous very high quality talent in the smaller cities of India. It has become a personal passion now to share what I know and what I learn with the students of second tier cities and / or second tier colleges; where talent is not a limiting factor but right awareness at the right time is. Growing up in a small town of Himachal, I very well know the agony of feeling shackled because of lack of information and avenues in spite of having success potential and big dreams. My wish is to mentor youngsters who have dreams and who are willing to put sincere efforts to transform their dreams to reality. My life’s purpose will come true if I can inspire and mentor youngsters to unleash their success potential (USP) so they put their best efforts towards achieving what they believe they are capable of.

We also initiated a new thought “Operation Brain Gain” or OBG. Students accepted my challenge of working on “creating jobs instead of looking for jobs” by promoting a culture of entrepreneurship in Davangere. The end goal would be to stop the brain drain that is happening as students after professional degrees rush to find jobs in metros. Why not create options in Davangere itself. Our dream will come true when the brain drain from this educational city to metros will reverse and folks will come back to find jobs in Davangere. The enthusiasm that I have experienced in Davangere, I have no doubt that this dream will become reality in the next few years.

And in the end, let me share an experience that shows how ‘one person’ can make significant contribute to any cause. I was invited to the ‘Dandiya Raas’ organized by the Rotract Club in the night where a large crowd was having a great time. Suddenly, the DJ stopped the music to make an announcement about someone finding a phone. I also heard that announcement and just as a reaction to the announcement patted my jeans pockets. It didn’t take me much time to realize that I have also lost my phone. When I reached out to the DJ to check; I found my phone in his hand. Other than the price of the phone, it had priceless contact information stored on it. It was very easy for anyone to just feel lucky about finding an expensive phone. But this one gentleman’s righteous gesture has left me with a very pleasant memory of Davangere being a city of “Honest Loving and Caring people”. What a wonder one person’s honest gesture can do!

p.s.: I will do injustice if did not mention names of a few friends because of whom this love story became a possibility. My dear friend Arunkumar RT, who is a personification of human super willpower, and the person who introduced me to Davangere; Rtr Roshan Devaramani and Rtr Anil Raiker, who were two unknown names for me just two months ago; and now they are like my younger brothers. I admire their sincere and selfless efforts to help the community – seeing them is experiencing inspirational leadership in action. And all my friends of Davangere Rotary, Rotaract and InnerWheel family – Your love and affection is the reason that I feel I have an extended family now and may be some past relation with Davangere :)

A small video clip of BIET talk now airing on arunbTV

Birth of ProJoy: Prosperity with Joy

Today my journey to further explore JoyMantras of "Prosperity with Joy" brought me to an exciting realization and I want to share it with everyone. I wanted to call this concept "Spiritual Materialism" but like any other term on the Internet, this term was also already utilized for a concept totally in contrast with my thoughts. So I though why not coin a new term "ProJoy" i.e. "Prosperity with Joy". Now let us dive into the details:

When I was getting my first introduction to Spirituality, either because of my biased listening or because of speaker's intentional communication, spirituality and materialism were polar concepts for me. I thought I had to choose one or the other. Mostly, spirituality was tied to talks about God and how desires are mother of all bad things that happen to us. So materialism was understood as quagmire that pulls you deep under - away from Joy.

Now coming to my recent realization - If you think about it, India was most prosperous when it had strong spiritual and cultural values. Even today, when discussion comes to what we have contributed to the world and what are we today known for - it comes to spirituality and culture. In all honesty we have to confess that most of the credit for India being spiritual and cultural goes to our golden past. That means, spiritualism and materialism did exist in harmony and no reason whey they can not coexist today.

In Dalai Lama's words in 'Art of Happiness', "The natural flow of life is towards Happiness". So we all are seeking Joy. We all want peace and also want materialistic wealth to fulfill our desires. None of that is bad. But do we want want a lot of money but no peace? In all honesty how many of us will be able to live in peace even if we have no materialistic wealth in the modern times? Therefore, for a Joyful Life we need to create a balance between our desires to obtain prosperity and our efforts to live a peaceful life. Our ancient wisdom (developed over hundreds of year) has some golden nuggets for us in the form of Dharam Shastra or Science of Desire Management. Its essence is to guide us to fulfill legitimate desires by legitimate means without getting enslaved by them and ultimately learning to outgrow them to attain total fulfillment. Most of us in the process of fulfilling desires either develop stronger of the same or new desires. So we never feel fulfilled. Having no desires will result in the whole world turning ascetic, which is also not practical. The middle path solution is "Desire Management".

All desires originate from desire to get happiness. So how to live in ProJoy state? Which desires should be fulfilled and when? I will sum up this blog with 7 Sutras of Desire Management to achieve ProJoy. Based on the readers' response, I will then further expand on them.

Sutra 1: Let go of illegitimate desires: Desires that result in adharma and sorrow

Sutra 2: Do not fulfill legitimate desires with illegitimate means

Sutra 3: Fulfill legitimate desires with legitimate means

Sutra 4: Cultivate desires for selfless action

Sutra 5: Let go attachment to the result

Sutra 6: Achieve ProJoy while being righteous

Sutra 7: Meditate on your desires & see if they shrink below your means - result ProJoy.

I wish you all a ProJoy Living !!!

Sept 11, 2011: WisdomXchange - A Spark with the power to illuminate humanity...

On Sept 11, 2011 when people were remembering how world changed for worse ten years ago in New York; a group of friends met in a warehouse in Bangalore to ignite a spark of a positive social change. The idea was simple yet profound - "WisdomXchange to Transform Our Lives".  It was not preaching, it was sharing. Everyone picked up something from others. And that is how the first session of "WisdomXchange" left us all enriched. For me personally, meeting new friends was exhilarating, and being able to touch their lives - pure joy. Our primary focus was not letting acquired knowledge ferment and evaporate but internalize it and use it for our own and societal good. 


It all beings with thought. An evil thought can cause destruction, where as a noble thought can create joyful wonders. We hope that "WisdomXchange" will help people connect with each other at human level by wisdom sharing, and compassion & caring. 


Looking forward to more such fantastic "WisdomXchange" sessions and to meet more such wonderful people. 

Emotional Intelligence 101

I was curious to know more about Emotional Intelligence and found it very interesting. So thought of sharing some key ideas with all...
Emotional Intelligence is being aware of your emotions as well as emotions of others you are interacting with; and using emotional awareness for making informed decisions or initiating actions. The emotional state you are in & what you are thinking at any time can affect your response to an unrelated event. Your response depends on your state of mind. So it does for others too. It is important to understand your own emotional state as well as emotional state of others to have a productive interaction with others. Non verbal cues may duplicate, underscore, match, oppose or replace verbal communication. It is not easy to read non-verbal cues, and therefore it is hard to gain absolute understanding of what a person is actually communicating. In my future posts, I will post some techniques to handle effective communications in the context of emotional intelligence.
Let me share a practical scenario that we all might have encountered in our professional life. Usually during any brainstorming session people get argumentative and emotions run high. It becomes difficult for the facilitator to keep discussions on track. What you can try is to pause discussions and ask people to share what kind of emotion they are feeling and why. Once people recognize their emotional state and get some time to reflect on it, they tend to think more rationally and emotionally charged arguments settle down. Give a small break and then continue with the discussion. Chances are that you will have much more fruitful brainstorming.
Let me know your experiences...