Innovation in Learning: Nurturing PEARL

I was invited to be part of a panel at Bangalore HR Summit. I chose the theme "Innovative Learning and Development Strategies". I always enjoy building a concept towards a talk in front of enthusiasts and experts. My audience were HR or L&D VPs, Directors, Senior Managers of the best companies in India. I presented a learning paradigm that was brewing inside me for a while and named it Nurturing PEARL.

Nurturing PEARL is a innovative learning methodology that helps human beings transforms information to knowledge; knowledge to wisdom; and wisdom to value. Therefore, Nurturing PEARL is a value creation paradigm (commercial, societal or individual value) to transform individual and collective human potential into an Excellence Zone. This is achieved by integrating modern research and ancient wisdom. The result is "Participative, Experiential, Associative, and Reflective Learning" methodology. This method is designed keeping in mind 'how human mind works'. Nurturing PEARL methods ensure that a candle of wisdom is ignited in the learner's intellect to find his / her way into theExcellence Zone. Target Audience: These strategies are effective for children, professionals and executives alike. With the context and examples changed a bit, people of all ages can get benefited by this blend of modern research and ancient wisdom.

Some folks asked a few questions that I could not answer at the venue, so I am including the Q&A here for everyone's benefit.

Q: oWhy there is resistance to innovation mindset in Indian organizations? Does taking risk play any role?

A: Your question on Innovation mindset and resistance reflect the situation I face in almost all organization I interact with during my creativity and innovation workshops. As I had mentioned, we acquire and evaluate information yet fail to convert it into knowledge or wisdom that becomes part of an individual or organizational attitude. As you have mentioned, risk aversion is another aspect of our culture. Additionally, how serious stakeholders are in creating an innovative environment is also a significant factor. Because of these primary factors, innovation stays as a workshop / motivation phenomenon in many organizations. To create a sustained innovation environment, a regular pep-and-use refresh has to happen i.e. keep championing innovation along with keep utilizing new methodologies to create value.

Q: How to Impress upon faculty and students about the need for L&D with increasing emphasis on placement / jobs?

A:This is a very serious issue and that is why I believe quality of modern education system in India is way behind some of the western countries in achieving its objectives. The gap between real world / industry and academia is growing as the criteria for success in the academia is very different than what is expected out of students once they enter professional life. That is why stress and depression is becoming our national disease. I myself feel that only less than 5% of what I studied in my engineering degree ever got utilized in my life directly. But when I did my MBA in the US, it was different. The focus was on learning and I totally enjoyed it (and continue to enjoy applying the knowledge in the real world now). As you have pointed out, to initiate and scale the change, we have to ensure the educators are communicating value of education in its true sense to the students. I have worked with some educational institutes and developed a new paradigm of "Academic Leadership". Our educators have to become leaders so we can bring transformation in the society. An inner transformation is required before we expect an outer transformation.

Q: How would you address an atheist employee on the Spiritual Quotient? What approach should be adopted?

A: First of all, the concept of spirituality has to redefined and clarified for the people. The word "spirituality" invokes conflicting emotions and the relevance to professionals or achieving excellence is not immediately visible. When I talk about spirituality, I am referring to the energy that is unleashed by tapping into one's deepest values and defining a strong sense of purpose - a capacity that helps us sustain in the face of adversities, and creates a power source of motivation, focus, determination, and resilience.

So there is no religion or sect philosophy in this definition of spirituality. The innovation is in the way we present our own experiences and ancient wisdom to achieve this purpose. As I had mentioned, this has become my life's purpose - uncovering wisdom and purpose from the rituals and religion and utilize the essence to unleash human potential to achieve organizational and personal excellence.

How critical is Work Life Balance...

Have you ever wondered how important it is to enjoy time at work for Joyful Living (read "iRecharge with Joyful Living" for Joyful Living context)?

Let us do some math - 24 hours in a day. We are in the office for at least 10 hours in everyday. Living in SF Bay Area and Bangalore, my experience is that we spend average 2hours daily in the traffic - that makes it 12hours out of home. Doctors suggest that we need at least 8 hours of sleep to be healthy - that is 20 hours of no interaction with our loved ones. We also spend at least 30min in the bathroom or other activities where there is no interaction with the loved ones. That is startling.....

Out of 24 hours in a day; you spend at least 20.5 hours away from your loved ones OR just 3.5 hours with your family. This is without even accounting for occasional business trips.

Nice realization, isn't it? On an average working day, you spend 3.5 hours with your family whereas you spend 10 hours with your office colleagues.

In a 5 day week you spend 50 hours in the office where as only 17.5 hours with your loved ones. Even if you spend every minute of your active weekend with your family, it would still mean 31 + 17.5 = 48.5 hours.

Look at that number in your own context. You spend more time with your office colleagues than with your loved ones. So when you go to office tomorrow, don't just think "Yet another day"; think of how to make every minute of the work day more enjoyable to realize Joyful Living.

If you have participated in my "iRecharge with Laughter Yoga" or "Stress Management with Laughter Yoga" session; you know what to do. Please share the Laughter Spirit with someone who is having a bad day. Please do greet the person with a warm, enthusiastic and smile and may be share a laugh. You may contribute a few Joyful moments in someone's life.

(To know more or to discuss, drop an email to arunb@arunb.com or visit www.arunb.com)

iRecharge with Joyful Living

Many friends who participated in my recent Joyful Living and Stress Management with Laughter Yoga sessions request me to blog and demystify these terms.

Joyful Living is the philosophy of leading a life of prosperity with joy. It is all about how living in the materialistic world, we lead a balanced life where our needs are met and we live every moment of life joyfully. By joyfully we mean not a conditional happiness, but a mindset of sustained happiness.

Laughter Yoga is a unique exercise routine, which combines unconditional laughter with yogic breathing (Pranayama). Here anyone can laugh without relying on humor, jokes or comedy. Laughter is initially induced as a physical exercise while maintaining eye contact with others in the group and promoting childlike playfulness. In most cases this soon leads to real and contagious fountain of laughter. Recent advances in science (especially monitoring of active regions of brain through fMRI) have proved that the body cannot differentiate between induced and real laughter. The benefits you get from real or induced laughter are the same. Laughter Yoga is a technique that allows adults to achieve sustained hearty laughter without involving cognitive thoughts. It bypasses the intellectual systems that normally act as a brake on natural laughter.

Many professionals after participating in laughter sessions tell me that if they smile and laugh at work, they fear to be tagged as non-serious at work. I have two thoughts – one, as professionals we have to do serious work but we need not be serious for it. Second, IT IS YOUR LIFE; you need to live your life joyfully. Ignore such comments. Let people think and do what they want. Life is not a sprint, it is a marathon. Running fast for first 100meters does not lead to success. In the marathon of life, I am confident that you will fare better with smiles and laughter all along the way.

Laughter Yoga sessions start with gentle warm-up techniques which include stretching, singing, clapping and body movements. These exercises help break down inhibitions and develop feelings of childlike playfulness. Then breathing exercises are used to prepare the lungs for laughter, followed by a series of ‘laughter exercises’ that combine the method of acting and visualization techniques with playfulness. These exercises, when combined with the strong social dynamics of group behavior, lead to prolong and hearty unconditional laughter. The laughter routines are interlaced with rhythmic breathing. Scientifically it has been proved that twenty minutes of laughter is sufficient to develop full physiological benefits. A Laughter Yoga session finishes with ‘laughter meditation’. This is a session that triggers natural laughter to flow from within us like a fountain.

We recharge our mobile phones, laptops, and other electronic gadgets when the battery runs low; yet we ignore our “Body-Mind-Soul” getting discharged - crying for a recharge. Now you can join monthly iRecharge sessions and enjoy Joyful Living lifestyle. These sessions are more than hearty laughter. These sessions are about learning to live every moment of life in joy. iRecharge is a powerful experience that often leads to a healthy emotional cleansing and a feeling of joyfulness that can last for days. For most of the participants, Laughter Meditation can be the first experience of zero thought (Zero-T) state. If you would like to participate in iRecharge Zero-T experience and if you are in Bangalore (India), please contact arunb@arunb.com to be included in the iRecharge mailing list and experience Joyful Living.

(You can find more about the author at www.arunb.com)

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