The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker Some months back, my son was lying down and reading in his room with his light source behind him. As usual, I started to shout at him and said the light should always shine from your left. Then he looked sharply at my face and asked "Why?". I responded to him "Look, you have a long time to go and your eyesight should be good." He returned to his book "Appa, my eyes are fine. What are you worrying about?" I said "Sustainability. Can your eyes take this sort of abuse" He immediately dropped the book "What do you mean by Sustainability?" I wanted it to be simple, so I gave this explanation. Sustainability consists of fulfilling the need of current without compromising future requirements. "Yeah yeah, I know that" my son replied nonchalantly. "Why this cynicism?" "Look here" he showed the book to me. It was Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. "This book says that the move to become an agrarian community is not a good move" I started to nod while he continued "I know you will negate me". He paused for a while "But is there something about this issue in our ancient scriptures?"
1 Comment
The greatest wealth is to live content with little. -- Plato Every one who has passed 40 would be able to tell you that all of them have only one aim in life from now on - to have a simple and happy life. All of them would be frustrated with this current dog raced complex and fast paced world. There are many blogs that tell us how to be happy but not many are there when it comes to simplifying your life. First let us see why do we need to simplify our life? Just for a moment, try and think what would be the most happiest place for you to be and it would never turn out to be our metros or cities. It is always a far away hill station, a clam and quiet remote place or your ancestral village home. What do these place have that the ultra modern cities do not have? Simplicity. The modern day life has turned itself into a complex machine where each day there is an ounce of complexity being added into it and we only try to adjust with that. We have never resorted to see how to reduce this complexity and make things simpler. Making things simpler is not a simple task - but certainly we should start somewhere. Extravagance is often a picture of an unsatisfied life. It is often in the most simple things that we actually find true happiness. As a young boy (back in the 80s) it would have just been that small cricket bat or the colorful top - பம்பரம் or the free flying kite which we used to chase and get hold of it. When we look back at it, we find that it bought more happiness than the crazy 128GB iPADs and Bose stereo headphones. Why? The answer is still the same - it was uncomplicated and simple then than now. If we already knew the answer then where is the toughness in it? It takes courage to admit there is the need to simplify our lives. It cannot be achieved by all and very easily. There are efforts which needs to be put to get it but let me assure you that once you get there, you will never want to return back to the current complexities. Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive. George Bernard Shaw We all want to succeed and are also willing to put a lot of effort towards working for it, but certainly, struggle where to begin. I guess the first step is to actually identify those habits that make a person successful. In the world, TIME is a very limited resource and hence many of them do not wish to use that for all tasks. It's for this reason that I believe that Steven Covey had actually written the book "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People". He precisely wanted us to save our research time and use it for a better purpose. This book is a self-improvement book. It is written on Covey's belief that the way we see the world is entirely based on our own perceptions. In order to change a given situation, we must change ourselves (quote taken from MK.Gandhi), and in order to change ourselves, we must be able to change our perceptions. I know what you are feeling now - this blog author says most people do not have time and yet he is insisting that we read this massive book of 423 pages? He is certainly nuts. These days, people look for quick fixes. They see a successful person, team, or organization and ask, "How do you do it? Teach me your techniques!" But these "shortcuts" that we look for, hoping to save time and effort and still achieve the desired result, are simply band-aids that will yield short-term solutions. They don't address the underlying condition. "The way we see the problem is the problem," Covey writes. We must allow ourselves to undergo paradigm shifts -- to change ourselves fundamentally and not just alter our attitudes and behaviors on the surface level -- in order to achieve true change. Yes, I get it, most of us are either too lazy or work under the pretext that we do not have time. So I invested some of my time in trying to summarize the entire book into a short blog. When I started I found that it was really difficult for me to make into a short blog since each habit by itself was a blog. Then I went back to the drawing board and thought that the best way that someone can remember these things are only through humor. So I decided to make my explanations through comic videos. I thought which comedian should I try - but then who else than Tamil cinema's own Laurel and Hardy - Senthil & Goundamani. Firstly I have to be honest that none of the comedy clips were taken for this book and I had to spend a lot of time analyzing the entire gambit of comedy scenes by this duo to match the tips which I want to explain. They may not be a perfect match but I think I have done some justice to the topic. Without wasting much of your eye energy - let's go to the 7 habits. Are you ready? Don’t get too caught up in making money or having a job, get excited about the fact that you can design your life. - Darren L. Johnson (American Author) Everything in this world is there for a purpose. To find the purpose is the most difficult task. Once you find it, then your life is on overdrive on a smooth highway. So if PURPOSE is really such an important thing why are they not teaching it at school or college or work or during parenting? Why is this not thought anywhere is because the path and the curiosity are very customised to the person in question. It is the self who needs to ask and do the search, the coach or the acharya (in the Indian tradition) will only facilitate the search journey. They too do not have a readymade answer In the present age where failure is not an option, always seen as a weakness and everything is fast 'n' furious there is no pit stop for you to sit back and think. Many compare this with the life of an ant or a worker bee. Ants and bee do not have what we have - the thought power, I am not saying to abruptly stop what you are doing and just sit still and start pondering. When I said in the first line, everything in this universe has a purpose, then with thought power inside of us it is our prime duty to try and find it. Yes, finding the flower which has nectar is tough for the worker bee but it trains itself to find it. If it can then why not us? What's wrong with the way it is now, you may ask. Some of them live their entire lives trying to figure out the purpose of their existence. Some people fail, and some people succeed. And then there are those people who know their purpose, but still, they get diverted from them. So how does it matter to us on finding this purpose? When you know the purpose of your life, you tend to live a more meaningful existence than those who don’t. You tend to live each day to the fullest because you know who you are, where you’re coming from, and where you’re going. Imagine that Arjuna had to go through 18 chapters and 700 Shlokas just to find this answer that too in the middle of a historic war. Right, in contrast, this is available for you at the touch of a finger sitting on your favorite sofa. To find this rather elusive all important data (purpose in life) also we need to set a goal. So goal setting is actually the most important thing for your success. Goal setting is fundamental to any type of achievement. If you want to live a life of purpose, setting goals will increase your odds of reaching your desired outcome. Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one’s awareness of one’s ignorance Anthony de Mello Let me start by telling you a very rare story first. One fine day in September 1816 just outside the famous museum in Paris - The Louvre, just outside the courtyard there were a couple of young boys playing. On the other side of the courtyard, a young physician named René Laennec was pacing up and down deep in a thought. The morning sun was just starting to bask on the city and Laennec was supposed to meet a heart patient in the hospital. After pacing for sometime René Laennec started his journey towards the other side of the courtyard and was still tensed. On the way when he just crossed the two kids playing in the lawn something strange struck him. He stopped and was keenly looking at what the kids were upto. One of the kids was tapping the end of a long wooden plank with a pin. On the other end, his playmate was crouched down with his ear pressed against the edge of the plank. The first kid asked did you hear anything and the other guy nodded - a BIG no. Then he stroked the pin a little harder and the other raised his thumbs in a big affirmation. Laennec was immediately struck with a thought. “It is a well-known acoustic phenomenon that If you place your ear against one end of a wood beam the scratch of a pin at the other end is distinctly audible." It then occurred to him that this physical property might serve a useful purpose in the current case which he was dealing with. Immediately on reaching the hospital he immediately asked for a piece of paper. He rolled it up and placed the tube against his patient’s chest. He was stunned by what he heard next. He was able to hear the beating of her heart with far greater clearness than I ever had with direct application of my ear. René Laennec had just invented the stethoscope. Laennec's simple invention instantly changed the field of medicine. For the first time in history, physicians had a safe, unbiased way to understand what was going on inside a patient's body. They didn't have to rely solely on what the patient said or how the patient described their condition. Now, they could track and measure things for themselves. This brings us to the question which you are wondering - what has this story got to do with Self-awareness? This brings me to today's topic - We often tell a lot of lies to ourselves and to spot this we require a tool. Just like the stethoscope for a physician, we have a tool called SELF-AWARENESS. Want to know more? Let proceed |
AuthorVasudevan is a Leadership Mentor and an Executive coach. I run an online website geared towards helping creative entrepreneurs and future managers to build their dreams. Archives
June 2023
Categories
All
|