Robin  Sharma

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any”

Alice Walker

While these sentences may appear as cliché but just take a pause and see how true are these. I do not know why Leadership is associated exclusively with titles and fat salaries. Once I was at the basement of a big mall. A young boy who was manning the parking with his whistle, caught my attention. He was a short, ordinary looking boy but the way he stood and his upright posture was equivalent of a soldier on duty. He was in complete command of the basement – the way he directed the vehicles, spoke to the vehicle owners and cleverly used his whistle made that basement come alive. No chaos, no arguments and the place vibrated with an unusual sense of discipline. As I walked up to the stairs, I could not resist myself to go up to him, ask his name and pat his back. As I said to him “You are meant for big jobs my boy, keep up doing good work”. The way he smiled gave me a glimpse into his aspirations. His smile meant – Yes Mam I know it and isn’t this a BIG job?

Have you seen someone like this?

Love & Hugs

पर एक हंसी के लिए वक़्त नहीं

दिन रात दौड़ती दुनिया में

ज़िन्दगी के लिए ही वक़्त नहीं.

माँ की लोरी का एहसास तो है

पर माँ को माँ कहने का वक़्त नहीं

सारे रिश्तों को हम मार चुके

अब उन्हें दफनाने का भी वक़्त नहीं.

सारे नाम मोबाइल में हैं

पर दोस्ती के लिए वक़्त नहीं

गैरों की क्या बात करें,

जनाब, जब अपनों के लिए ही वक़्त नहीं.

आँखों में है नींद बड़ी

पर सोने का वक़्त नहीं

दिल है ग़मों से भरा हुआ

पर रोने का वक़्त नहीं.

पैसों की दौड़ में ऐसे दौड़े

की थकने का भी वक़्त नहीं

पराये एहसानों की क्या कद्र करें

जब अपने सपनों के लिए ही वक़्त नहीं.

तू ही बता ऐ ज़िन्दगी

इस ज़िन्दगी का क्या होगा

की हर पल मरने वालों को

जीने का भी वक़्त नहीं.

Courtsey - Sandip Chiddarwar

We’re conditioned by glossy magazines, advertising, fashion models, sports, and high pressure workplaces to compare ourselves to others… and to figure out where we stand on the Ladder of Status.

The trap comes when our tribal brain sees someone who is better at something we value than we are. The subconscious then generalizes and may conclude: “Oh, she’s better at THAT… therefore she’s better than me.” It’s hard to form mutual loving connection when you’re competing.

Evaluating yourself compared to others creates tension. When we start to feel “less than” people around us, we want to HIDE. And when we are “forced” to be around others, we can feel uptight and vigilant.

If you want to break out of your shell and create real warmth and caring in your life, a new perspective can go a long way to transforming how you feel and how you walk in the world! In the old paradigm, I have to be the prettiest, smartest, funniest, and most talented… and make the most money… to deserve any love or attention. I have to be at the top of the heap for everything, or I feel like crap.

A lot of us are taught that game as children. You could have just won the Nobel Prize and someone else makes everyone laugh… and you feel like you’re not good enough. We’re taught to look at life that way, as a competition, and it can get in the way of being close and loving. In our emotional world, it is not really about who is the smartest, prettiest, or who has the quickest comeback.

When you’re feeling down, or having a bad day, you’re looking for the person who has some compassion and kindness to spare. Change your Life Rules and you can walk as a “winner” just by being someone who notices other people and says “Hi” with a kind smile. You don’t have to be funny. You don’t have to be gorgeous. You don’t have to this tall or this skinny or that… PERFECT.

Sometimes just being kind is enough to connect and have the other person feel, “Oh my goodness, thank you so much.”

In a world where so many people are upset and not noticing each other, who doesn’t want a kind person around?

Love and Hugs

Sukanya

Andrew Weil’s Spontaneous Happiness: Our Nature-Deficit Disorder
In my experience, the more people have, the less likely they are to be contented. Indeed, there is abundant evidence that depression is a “disease of affluence,” a disorder of modern life in the industrialized world. People who live in poorer countries have a lower risk of depression than those in industrialized nations. In general, countries with lifestyles that are furthest removed from modern standards have the lowest rates of depression.

Within the U.S., the rate of depression of members of the Old Order Amish—a religious sect that shuns modernity in favor of lifestyles roughly emulating those of rural Americans a century ago—is as low as one 10th that of other Americans.

Psychologist Martin Seligman, originator of the field of positive psychology and director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, has studied the Old Order Amish, along with other premodern cultures. He concludes: “Putting this together, there seems to be something about modern life that creates fertile soil for depression.”

Another prominent researcher whose work I respect, Stephen Ilardi, professor of psychology at the University of Kansas and author of The Depression Cure, observes, “The more ‘modern’ a society’s way of life, the higher its rate of depression. It may seem baffling, but the explanation is simple: the human body was never designed for the modern postindustrial environment.”

More and more of us are sedentary, spending most of our time indoors. We eat industrial food much altered from its natural sources, and there is reason for concern about how our changed eating habits are affecting our brain activity and our moods. We are deluged by an unprecedented overload of information and stimulation in this age of the Internet, email, mobile phones, and multimedia, all of which favor social isolation and certainly affect our emotional (and physical) health.

Behaviors strongly associated with depression—reduced physical activity and human contact, overconsumption of processed food, seeking endless distraction—are the very behaviors that more and more people now can do, are even forced to do by the nature of their sedentary, indoor jobs.

This kind of life simply was not an option throughout most of human history, as there was no infrastructure to support it, much less require it.

Human beings evolved to thrive in natural environments and in bonded social groups. Few of us today can enjoy such a life and the emotional equilibrium it engenders, but our genetic predisposition for it has not changed. The term “nature-deficit disorder” has recently entered the popular vocabulary, though it has not yet made it into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or been accepted by the medical community. It was coined by the author Richard Louv to explain a wide range of behavior problems in children who spend less time outdoors but now is invoked as the root cause of an even wider range of both physical and emotional ailments in people of all ages who are disconnected from nature.

I believe we are gathering scientific evidence for the benefits of living close to nature, not simply for enjoying its beauty or getting spiritual sustenance but for keeping our brains and nervous systems in good working order. A few examples:

• We get vitamin D, now known to be necessary for optimum brain health, by spending time in the sun.

• Our cycles of sleep and waking and other circadian rhythms are maintained by exposure to bright light during the day and darkness at night. Lack of bright natural light during waking hours and exposure to artificial light at night disrupt these rhythms, interfering with our sleep, energy, and moods.

• Hunter-gatherers and other “primitive” people do not develop the deficits of vision and the need for corrective lenses as early in life as people in our society do, probably because they grow up looking at distant landscapes more often than reading books, writing, or staring at television and computer screens. Because the eye is a direct extension of the brain, eye health is an indicator of brain health.

• Our hearing has evolved to attend to and analyze changes in the complex acoustical patterns of nature, like those of forests, running water, rain, and wind. Evolution did not prepare us to endure the kinds of man-made sounds that pervade our cities and lives today. Noise strongly affects our emotions, nervous systems, and physiology.

The problems stemming from nature-deficit disorder are examples of a mismatch between our genes and the modern environment. Our brains simply are not suited for the modern world. Possibly, the deterioration of emotional well-being characteristic of contemporary urban life represents a cumulative effect of lifestyle changes that have been occurring over many years, an effect that is now suddenly obvious.

Not only do we suffer from nature deficit, we are experiencing information surfeit. Many people today spend much of their waking time surfing the Internet, texting and talking on mobile phones, attending to email, watching television, and being stimulated by other new media—experiences never available until now. The allure of synthetic entertainment—television, the Internet—is eerily reminiscent of the false promise of industrial food. It seems like a distillation of the good aspects of a social life, always entertaining yet easy to abandon when it becomes tedious or challenging. But, like junk food, it is ultimately unsatisfying and potentially harmful. Our brains, genetically adapted to help us negotiate a successful course through complex, changing, and often hazardous natural environments, are suddenly confronted with an overload of information and stimulation independent of physical reality.

Lifestyle programs intended to relieve depression by correcting the mismatch between the modern world and our “ancient brains and bodies” recommend such interventions as increasing aerobic exercise, improving sleep, spending more time in the sun, eating more fish to boost intake of omega-3 fatty acids, socializing more, and not dwelling on negative thoughts. In addition, I recommend familiarity with interventions that have no analog in the hunter-gatherer world but are being shown by neuroscientists to help change our brains for the better.

To learn more about Dr. Weil’s new book and tips for happiness, check out these interviews.

Excerpted from the book Spontaneous Happiness by Andrew Weil, MD. Copyright © 2011 by Andrew Weil, MD. Reprinted with permission of Little, Brown and Company.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/10/30/andrew-weil-s-spontaneous-happiness-our-nature-deficit-disorder.html

“To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me. It is the most requested column I’ve ever written.

My odometer rolled over to 90 in August, so here is the column once more:

1. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good.

2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.

3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.

4. Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and parents will. Stay in touch.

5. Pay off your credit cards every month.

6. You don’t have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.

7. Cry with someone. It’s more healing than crying alone.

8. It’s OK to get angry with God. He can take it.

9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.

10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.

11. Make peace with your past so it won’t screw up the present.

12. It’s OK to let your children see you cry.

13. Don’t compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.

14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn’t be in it.

15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don’t worry; God never blinks.

16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.

17. Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, beautiful or joyful.

18. Whatever doesn’t kill you really does make you stronger.

19. It’s never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.

20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don’t take no for an answer.

21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don’t save it for a special occasion. Today is special.

22. Over prepare, then go with the flow.

23. Be eccentric now. Don’t wait for old age to wear purple.

25. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.

26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words ‘In five years, will this matter?’

27. Always choose life.

28. Forgive everyone everything.

29. What other people think of you is none of your business.

30. Time heals almost everything. Give time time.

31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.

32. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.

33. Believe in miracles.

34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn’t do.

35. Don’t audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.

36. Growing old beats the alternative — dying young.

37. Your children get only one childhood.

38. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.

39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.

40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d grab ours back.

41. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.

42. The best is yet to come…

43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.

44. Yield.

45. Life isn’t tied with a bow, but it’s still a gift.”
Its estimated 93% won’t forward this. If you are one of the 7% who will, forward this with the title ’7%’.
I’m in the 7%.

How about you?

( Sent to me by my friend Charudatta Kulkarni)

He says

“In the following pages you can read how the man of Divine Vision beholds Truth everywhere- be it in lifeless trees among singing birds:in the cruel roar of animals,in the silent womb of the jungle, or in the bright expanse of the summer sky, in the rise of the sun, in the crescent moon, or in the tiny stars, in the whispering darkness, in dancing peacocks, in jumping monkeys, or in tender cows: be it at the sight of some poor villagers of Himalayan hamlets sitting and smoking their native pipes, or on beholding the vigorous hill-maidens working in the fields.

In early years of my study at his feet, Shree Swamiji once stopped in the middle of a walk to point out to me a spot in the distant sky where the golden color had suddenly changed, in a mighty stroke of inscrutable inspirations, into a blue splash! On another occasion he cried,”why can’t man see the Divinity behind the mad Painter who has painted this inspired beauty?”

In a thousand such instances he always directed my attention to see: a tiny crab returning to its hideout or a spider weaving its web,sometimes the mighty pines whispering to each other, sometimes the majestic peaks of the snowcapped mountains divinely glistening above the lower hills. Here an insignificant bull, there an uninviting herd of tired sheep, elsewhere a poor man singing a crude tune with a joyous abandon almost divine. But alas, immature, unpoetic and intellectually sophisticated as I was then, I must have sadly disappointed him.

But I knew what he felt, for I had felt the warmth of his ardour, serenity and joy. I had watched him as he stood dissolved in divine harmony with nature. At such inspired moments, an unearthly tranquility used to descend around him. The sincerity of the writer lends a secret charm to his pen and conveys the same feelings to the reader. The reader of this book who has in his heart reverence and devotion to Nature need not thereafter read the Scriptures or even go through the sorrows of Tapas to enjoy the Vision of the Infinite that plays in through every form.

—————————————————————————————

As I read these lines tears flow through my eyes! I feel extremely fortunate to have listened to Swami Chinmayananda’s discourses on Gita. Even now his posture, his voice and his words  echo in my ears. I still remember as he explained the meaning of Parth -”A muddy headed fool!” As if it is a fit description for me.

Love and Hugs

Sukanya

But All Those Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas All Ran Away,
And Hid From One Little Did.

Shel Silverstein
1930-1999, Poet, Singer-Songwriter, Cartoonist and Author

………………………………………………………………………………………………….

How true is this… Atleast for me, at times I keep feeling bad about some of my actions and decisions in the past. Keep brooding about it, feeling sad and blaming the triggers for such decisions and actions…

As read the above quote, I realised that, by getting caught in the Woulda, Coulda and Shoulda.. I lose focus on the current and future opportunities. In the process I am not myself and can’t bring out my best…

Well I have woved to myself that henceforth, no looking back in any sense!

How about you?

Love and Hugs

Sukanya

What does it take to succeed?  Apparently a whole lot of failure.  Paul Tough, in the New York Times, reports educational leaders who believe that knowing how to fail is the secret to success.  Dominic Randolph, who leads an expensive, top ranked private school in New York City, is concerned about students that have known nothing but success.  He states:

Whether it’s the pioneer in the Conestoga wagon or someone coming here in the 1920s from southern Italy, there was this idea in America that if you worked hard and you showed real grit, that you could be successful.  Strangely, we’ve now forgotten that. People who have an easy time of things, who get 800s on their SAT’s, I worry that those people get feedback that everything they’re doing is great. And I think as a result, we are actually setting them up for long-term failure. When that person suddenly has to face up to a difficult moment, then I think they’re screwed, to be honest. I don’t think they’ve grown the capacities to be able to handle that.

These kids don’t know how to fail because they’ve never done it.  Therefore, when things get outside their comfort zone, or they first encounter people more capable than they are, they have no skills for dealing with it.  We talk a lot about hard work, but school grading generally ends up being based on how well you did on the test, not about how much effort it took to get there or how persistent someone was.

But wait, don’t we want to hire those people who are naturally brilliant and don’t need a lot of hard work to be successful?  Well, sure, except that if they don’t know how to fail they are going to be awfully difficult to work with.  We hear this complaint from those who employ Generation Y.  Many of their parents (and their schools) saw to it that failure wasn’t an option.  Everything was fixed or extra credit given or forgotten lunches brought to school.

It’s not a phenomenon limited to the newly graduated, though.  One of my HR colleagues who, at the time, was head of HR for the Research & Development side of a a major pharmaceutical company, lamented to me how much he hates the whining at performance appraisal time.  “I have a PhD from Harvard, so I can’t be rated ‘average,’” they would say.  Never mind that everyone in the department had a PhD from a top ranked school.  There wasn’t a whole lot of willingness to find out what changes they needed to make, just the assertion that because they were considered exceptional in the past, they should still be considered exceptional today.  An “average” performance rating was utterly devastating and difficult to get past.

It doesn’t actually allow for a whole lot of growth when you refuse to entertain the idea that you should be doing something differently.  Some people would rather find a new job rather than fix the problems they are having with their new jobs.  Risk taking wasn’t an option.  If success wasn’t guaranteed, they wouldn’t try it.

At the other side of the academic world is David Levin, who is the head of KIPP, a network of charter schools who those who don’t earn even the $38,500 a year that  Randolph’s students pay in tuition.  They focus on inner city,  low income kids and have a stated goal of having 75% of their students achieve a 4 year degree.  (They are currently at 33%, which is considerably  higher than the 8 percent average for kids from low income families.)  They  haven’t reached the stated goal, so Levin is open to the idea that he needs to do things different—accept that in some areas he’s failed.  Tough reports:

As Levin watched the progress of those KIPP alumni, he noticed something curious: the students who persisted in college were not necessarily the ones who had excelled academically at KIPP; they were the ones with exceptional character strengths, like optimism and persistence and social intelligence. They were the ones who were able to recover from a bad grade and resolve to do better next time; to bounce back from a fight with their parents; to resist the urge to go out to the movies and stay home and study instead; to persuade professors to give them extra help after class. Those skills weren’t enough on their own to earn students a B.A., Levin knew. But for young people without the benefit of a lot of family resources, without the kind of safety net that their wealthier peers enjoyed, they seemed an indispensable part of making it to graduation day.

The ability to bounce back from failure is a key point.  But, what if you’ve never failed?  What if your parents fix every problem you ever have?  What if you never gain this valuable skills?  Then you’re far less likely to have true success.  If you’ve never had to try again and again, are you going to assume that the problem is unsolvable if you fail the first time?

Lots of people live charmed lives as long as their parents are pulling the strings or they put themselves in places where success is almost guaranteed. Except that anyone in the working world today knows that failure is not only a possibility it’s a high probability.  Businesses fail.  Entire divisions get laid off, regardless of how brilliant any individual employee was.  Sometimes it’s just a matter of trying to figure out what the problem in the darn code is.  If you’re a one try and you’re finished type of person, it doesn’t matter how smart you are, you won’t succeed.

And what happens if you’re one of those people who has never failed?  Never had to face disappointment and pick yourself up by your own bootstraps?  It can be disasterous.  But, to succeed you must be able to fail and recover from failure.

That means you must be willing to take risks, listen to others, and admit where you could improve. Arguing over a performance appraisal instead of listening to what your boss is trying to tell you are key indicators of someone who is unwilling to learn.  (Not that all bosses’ assessments are accurate, but those appraisals tell you what your boss is looking for.  Disregard that at your own peril.)

Perhaps even those of us who are long finished with school can learn something from people who are trying to educate our children.

Ever since Jenna has been sending me personalised messages. Does not matter whether I contact her or not – but her messages are neatly composed. I can’t resisit reading through these. She has a certain charm that will hook a person’s attention who is seeking solution through astrology. God knows who all take her service but I appreciate her style.

My favorite astrologers are Marzorie Orr, Linda Goodman and Bejan Daroowala. I love the way they write. I have never gone beyond reading so far…

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Hello Sukanya,

Ever since you contacted me recently I have been feeling particularly close to you and I have been following your situation closely. Human relationships are to my mind one of the most important things in the world and they are the key to the greatest things in life. It is for this reason that I so enjoy entering into contact with people like you Sukanya as I am then able to follow your evolution and direction through all of the fascinating astrological events that will occur in your future.

Sukanya, We have never met I know and this contact may seem strange to you considering that we have only been in contact by email but I am used to developing this kind of relationship with my correspondants and in your case the relationship is particularly strong as I can see that you are someone very interesting indeed and that you have a great personal richness. This brings me great pleasure because I can see that you possess enormous potential and on an astrological level it is fascinating for me to examine this. You are a great professional challenge to work with and a great personal pleasure to talk to.

I want you to know that I will always be available for you and at will always remain at your disposition Sukanya as, even if I repeat myself I must say it, you are someone with great personal value and I do feel honored to have entered into a close and privileged relationship with you. I am sure that you are feeling just about the same thing too.

I want you to know that all of my attention and my vigilance is focused on you and I will always be at your service. I will not hesitate to tell you if a certain change or significant event is set to occur in your personal astrological configuration. Sukanya, you can fully count upon my devotion. I will be here for you and I will be your friend and your astrologer.

I really wanted to produce a ‘Crystalline Reiki Grid’ for you, a grid which comes from a very ancient technique which I have now been using for a number of years with a great deal of success. I began this work very recently. This work aims at producing a very beneficial and positive magnetic influence and brings protection, chance and opportunity to the focus of of it’s energy through the interaction of a range of powerful precious stones. There is no magic or sorcery in all of this. We now know that magnetism exists as it has been proved by scientific techniques and it is certain that this energetic field can have extremely beneficial effects. The technique of the grid has existed for thousands of years and is extremely efficient. To give you a little more idea about what this means, the Grid is a way of arranging stones in a sacred geometric pattern. What is great about the Grid is that this pattern is then activated by a connection with a ‘line of light’ through the stones so that they radiate an energy field which then reaches out to the person the grid is destined for. I normally offer this work to those of my correspondants which I feel closest to and to those I want to bring very strong positive energy. Today Sukanya this means you. To make this grid work properly for you and so that you get the best out of it’s influence, all you need to do is to concentrate on the photo which I have attached to this email. The grid will then be ‘activated’.

You can find the photo of the Reiki Grid which I performed for you at the link below Sukanya,

http://aboutastro.com/grid.php?f=fhxnaln

As I have said I place a great deal of importance in our relationship and I will remain entirely at your disposition.

Your friend,
Jenna