Field of Emotional Energy

Around every person there is a field of emotional energy. Some people always look radiant, and everything in their life flourishes and grows. They have a positive energy field around them. Some people, on the other hand, always have a morose or tense air about them, and everything in their life seems to fade and die. They have a negative energy field around them. A positive field is created by positive emotions and a negative field draws sustenance from negative emotions.

Energy causes all beings to act in this world. The higher the level of energy, the greater the accomplishments. All beings have within them the all-pervading life-force, the same one that creates and sustains life in the universe. It is the universal or cosmic energy that binds and connects all creatures in a single, networked web. That is why it is difficult to be completely happy while hurting others. 

Mechanisms of Yoga

1. Yama: Our attitude towards our environment.

2. Niyama: Our attitude towards ourselves.

3. Asana: The practice of body exercises.

4. Pranayama: The practice of breathing exercises.

5. Pratyahara: The restraint of our senses.

6. Dharana: The ability to direct our minds.

7. Dhyana: The ability to develop interactions with what we seek to understand.

8. Samadhi: Complete integration with the object to be understood.

Rejuvenate the physical system

Yoga rejuvenates the physical system and restores mental equilibrium. The word ‘yoga’ is derived from the Sanskrit word yuj which means to ‘yoke’, ‘unite’ or ‘join’. It implies the joining or uniting of the individual consciousness with the universal consciousness. This chapter deals with the most popular element of yoga—asanas or body exercises. Yogasana is the science of the beauty of form. It combines effortless postures and definite stances in the projection of a healthy and striking personality. Asanas mould every part of the body to its ideal contours.

Yogasanas, in conjunction with pranayama, bring harmony and balance to every part of the body, and are highly therapeutic for the body, mind and soul.

Sacred way of Eating

·         Sit down peacefully to eat. Close your eyes and allow your mind to leave all other subjects and return to the food before you.

·          Choose the fuel for rebuilding your body with care.

·          Thank the universe for creating the food that will give you the energy to accomplish your goals.

·          Focus on the sight, smell, feel, touch, and finally the taste of the food you are eating. As you chew, be completely assured that the food is gently repairing all the cells of your body.

The Basis for Life

Food brings people together, allows human beings to feel satisfied and comfortable, connects us with the earth and provides us with health. You are what you eat. Eating should be regarded as a sacred act. In an orthodox Hindu home, food is offered to the family deity first and is then consumed as prasad or offering with the diety’s blessing. There is a basic similarity between the rituals observed in offering food to the deity and those in eating oneself. In both cases, food is offered as an oblation to the five pranas which are regarded as five fires. Even if one does not follow this ritualistic concept, one should make eating a fully conscious and peaceful act. Hurry, worry, anger, distractions and chattering should be avoided while eating.

Live Happily and Healthily

Norman Cousins, editor of the Saturday Review in USA, published a convincing account of his dramatic recovery from a debilitating  and incurable disease of the connective tissue in the book, “Anatomy of an Illness”. ‘Many activities create the chemicals of happiness and tranquillity in the body.’

Wise gurus, and now modern research, both believe that meditation can contribute enormously to an individual’s psychological and physiological wellbeing. It reduces stress, hypertension, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, depression, improves cardiovascular health, memory and concentration, work efficiency, and immunological resistance to diseases. As a result, some form of meditation has become an essential part of most holistic health programmes. Your Happiness Quotient is directly affected by your physical condition. Health is the foundation for a feeling of wellbeing and joy. It is difficult to be full of energy and enthusiasm if you are not in a state of positive health.

A Holistic Approach to Health

Sushruta Samhita, the ancient Indian work by the physician Sushruta, describes perfect health as a state where all body parts function at their optimal level and wherein the body, mind and spirit are in perfect balance and in a state of bliss. This is the highest goal.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines health as a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing, not merely an absence of diseases or infirmity. Really speaking, health is not a state but a continuous adjustment to the changing demands of life and the environment. Positive health implies perfect functioning of body and mind in a given society.

Ayurveda defines health as: Svasthya—to be one’s own spiritual self. It is a state of balance between the three doshas (which are mind body energies: vata or wind; pitta or bile; and kapha or phlegm) that govern our external and internal environment, leading to a contented

state of the senses, mind and soul.

Focus on happiness

Focus on happiness, not the lack of it. I believe the focus on stress and unhappiness should be turned upside down. Instead of attracting unhappiness, we should plant a garden of happiness, by welcoming the positive emotions into our lives—love, compassion, wonder, courage, laughter and peace. Focusing on our unhappiness only helps to accrue more power and attention to the negative person, event or object that causes it. Focus on cultivating happy people and avoid toxic people. Build protective walls against toxic events that threaten your tranquillity.

The Seventh Radiant Action For Dharmic Living

You can fool everybody, but you cannot fool yourself. Not even for a single minute. Doing your dharma as you understand it, alone can make you happy. If you feel that what you are doing is adharma, you can never be happy. 

Think what we have done to chickens. Look at chickens in the yard. How happy they are flying around, pecking in the dust playing with their other fluffy chickens. Think how they feel in poultry farms, packed together, unable to move except to peck at their food. The poultry farms want to improve their profit, by keeping them fat and inactive.

The Sixth Radiant Action For Social Bonding

No man is an island, but a part of the Main, wrote the pensive poet John Donne. Man is a social animal and needs to live in harmony with fellow human beings. Interpersonal intelligence is the ability to understand other people, to communicate effectively with them, to identify what motivates them, and to work cooperatively with them. Intrapersonal intelligence is the inward ability to understand and form an accurate model of one’s self and to operate that model effectively to live life. Professor Howard Gardner of the Harvard School of Psychology says that the two aspects of personal intelligence, interpersonal and intrapersonal, form the most important foundation for a happy, fulfilling life. For those who define success as happiness, these two elements are essential to learn and practice.

The Fifth Radiant Action For Nurturing The Workplace

‘People can be very happy if they love their work,’ A national anthem celebrates nationhood, the blood, sweat and tears of creating a country. It aims to transcend logic and unleash the tigers of passion. The Americans stand there, hand on heart, before their flag and sing the Stars and Stripes. It creates a wave of national pride and primes people for leadership. The Japanese use this same force to create love for the company they work in. Vivekananda carried the message of India to the world with his matchless talk which starts, “Arise, Awake, stop not till the goal is reached”!

When you infuse a sense of pride and joy in what you do, it becomes a joyful experience, instead of a chore. To work at something you love, to be “self-actualised”, in Maslow’s terms, is to protect yourself against dying young.

The Fourth Radiant Action For Family Bonding

The family provides the love and nurturing required for the  survival of children. As we grow older, we crave nurturing, but are not adept at asking for it. We long for affirmation from the ‘significant other’ in our lives. Affirmation is when important people in our lives appreciate us and express it verbally, tonally, non-verbally. The opposite of an affirmation is a discount. You need at least ten affirmations for every discount for the maintenance of a healthy relationship. A home filled with discounts becomes a torture chamber instead of a sanctuary. It is important to make sure you give affirmations to all members of the family, particularly the ones to whom you usually send devastating Heat Seeking Missiles (HSMs) like, ‘Why is your room like a pig sty?’ ‘Why do you always forget anything I tell you?’ Make every day an occasion to show how important your family is to you.

The Third Radiant Action For Personal Wellness

Before you are a husband, a father, a son or a team mate, you are a person. Explore the self, the ‘you’ in your life. Most people go through life without being fully aware of their own identity. Everyone on earth is given only twenty-four hours. Use them wisely so that you have more life in your years. You cannot leave footprints on the sands of time just because you used your Blackberry better than anyone else! Music has the power to purify the emotional field like nothing else. Pranayama helps you sing without losing your breath. The mindspace becomes sweetly harmonious and no harsh words can be spoken there.

The Second Radiant Action For Emotional Wellness

Emotions pour into the blood stream like mountain streams on a parched desert.  A garden blooms, with the fountains of compassion, the flowers of friendship, the moon light of wonder, the arrowing birds of courage and the butterflies of laughter and humor.  Positive emotions create a garden around you.  Negative emotions create rocks and stones, thorns, snakes and scorpions in your mind space.  Meditation, practiced regularly, can help you develop the capacity to be analytical, positive, disciplined and eliminate negative fields. The positive field is created by a common prayer or “mantra”.  A mental process which draws a magic circle around all those who are participating.  A common exercise, a common company song, common goals, all enhance the power of the positive field.  A handshake, a friendly look, an encouraging word are key factors. When you think, believe and act in a positive manner, you create a positive field for yourself and others.

The First Radiant Action For Physical Wellness

Health is a state of physical, mental and social well-being, not merely an absence of diseases or infirmity.  Really speaking, health is not a state but a continuous adjustment to the changing demands of life and the environment.  Positive health implies perfect functioning of body and mind in a given society.

All the ancients believed that no attempt should be made to cure the body without treating the soul.  To be healthy is to have the ability, despite an occasional bout of illness, to live with full use of your faculties and to be vigorous, alert and happy to be alive, even in old age.  This concept of operational health has been termed ‘wellness’.  It is a sense of all-round well-being.

Happy Professions

•         Serve others. Look at your profession as a means to serve and make others happy.

•          Make a living causing the least amount of pain to living creatures.

•         Eliminate mad deadlines or emergency.

•         Ensure freedom to be self-dependent and take own decisions.

•         Make space for innovation

•         Believe in hi-touch along with hi-tech. Have a good level of contact with people and elicit positive responses from them

Towards Personal Happiness

The world is in your drawing room, it is clamouring to change your life with more and more sophisticated toys. As a popular saying goes, ‘What separates the men from the boys is just the price of their toys.’ Simplify and go home to what you really need.

The world is like a buffet counter at a five-star hotel. Let’s not grab everything on our plates. Let us be choosy, so that we may avoid spiritual indigestion and physical exhaustion.  

Shangri La

There is a place in the distant mountains which is always calm and peaceful, where the earth is laden with luscious fruit and wholesome grain, where people are vibrant, healthy and happy. Here the whole community is a family and smiles bind the hearts of all. You too can live in Shangri-La . . .

Seven Radiant of Happiness

      The First Radiant Action For Physical Wellness

       The Second Radiant Action For Emotional Wellness

       The Third Radiant Action For Personal Wellness

       The Fourth Radiant Action For Family Bonding

      The Fifth Radiant Action For Nurturing The Workplace

       The Sixth Radiant Action of Social Bonding

       The Seventh Radiant Action For Dharmic Living

Peace Through Happiness

Happiness is a state of mind. Think happy thoughts, be happy. Think unhappy thoughts, be unhappy. Peace of mind comes with the recognition that happiness is totally and unequivocally in your control.

The Four Pillars of Happy Communities

·         Economic Growth and Development

·         Preserving and promoting cultural heritage

·         Encouraging sustainable use of environment.

·         Establishing good governance.

Physical Wellness

Health is the foundation for a feeling of well being and joy. It is very difficult to be full of enthusiasm if you are not in a state of positive health. The absence of disease is no indication of this state of perfect health. It is only a hygiene factor for improving your Happiness Quotient.

Just as you would not tolerate a minor malfunctioning in your car, so too, you and your doctor should be vigilant for the slightest disturbance in your state of health. Minor problems, aches and pains should be dealt with immediately, rather than be endured with gritted teeth.

Listen to your body. If you are tried, rest. If you are hungry, eat. If you are lonely, communicate, ask for a hug.  If you are angry, deal with your anger constructively, resolve it.

The body is our vehicle for the journey of our soul in this world. You may be an immortal soul who happens to own a body, but the body-vehicle has to be maintained in good condition, so that we may achieve the goals for which we were created. 

Create a positive field

Ø  A mental process which draws a magic circle of love around all those who are participating.

Ø  A prayer or mantra said together.

Ø  A common exercise, a company song, common goals.

Ø  A handshake, a friendly look, an encouraging word.

Ø  Thinking, believing and acting in a positive manner.

Ø  Laughter and shared jokes.

Elevate everyday experiences to the level of sacredness!

When work is done with love, it fills the body and mind with bliss and transforms any place into a sacred space.  As Khalil Gibran writes in The Prophet, “What is it to work with love? It is to weave the cloth from the strings of your heart, as though your Beloved were to wear it.” What is required to fill your blood with the chemicals of bliss is an attitude transplant.  Soar on your positive attitude.

Decide to approach all events, all people, and all things with affection, reverence and ‘Sraddha.’ This reverence is due to all, because of the divine spark that dwells in everyone whether he is a legend or a failure.  Sometimes it is obvious. It is the silent flame of consciousness that reaches out to you from a flowering creeper or a healthy pet.  Sometimes this life force has lost its vitality and is dimmed by dirt, lethargy and lack of care. Clean the glass of your Life’s lamp.  Make the light shine through.

It is essential to look into our emotional, mental and psychological environment, as our thoughts and emotions directly contribute to our wellbeing or otherwise. Meditation can clean up the field and contribute enormously to an individual’s psychological and physiological wellbeing.

Action Plan to Enhance Positives

• Write a love letter to your parents
• Buy tickets to a music concert and give away some of it.
• Treat yourself to a full moon dinner with loved ones.
• Take your dog to the beach.
• Plant a tree and take care of it (a tree is an oxygen factory).
• Give away seeds. The monsoons are awaiting to make them grow
• Feed the birds. Do God’s work

Celebrate the Positives

Celebrate the positive in all interactions. Rest assured that God did not create you for the sole purpose of correcting others or making them unhappy. When we say namaste, we say ‘I bow to the Divine in you’. ‘Vasudeva Kutumbakam’ say, our holy book – the whole world is your family. Imagine the rich network of love you could create, where your children can be nurtured if you believed and practiced this.

The most inexpensive ticket to happiness is helping others and making others happy. So spread happiness like Amul butter on bread. It will stick to your fingers. Create a happiness committee in your street, which meets every month to create a happy street. Every month as you decide to install comfort touch, celebrate Diwali or have a painting competition for kids, neighbours become friends.

Action Plan to protect your legacy

·         Commit your dream to paper. Be clear about your legacy – give details.

·         Build ownership in those empowered to take it forward. Listen to divergent opinions and let go.

·         Start detaching yourself and don’t give too much advice and cramp the style and enthusiasm of those on the job.

·         Remember life is short.

Let not your legacy become ashes and dust when you die. You have responsibility to leave the world a better place. Start the task now!

Innovation Secrets of Indian CEOs

Review of Innovation Secrets of Indian CEOs in Rotary News in November 2013

Happiness Breaks: Take them everyday!

1. Take short relaxation breaks, at least thrice a day.

2. Eat fresh, energy-giving foods.

3. Take a walk outdoors during lunch break.

4. Stay away from politics and back-biting.

5. Involve your spouse and children in your work. Bring them to the office during lunch break or on a Saturday.

      6. Spend time reading and improving your mind.

7. Get involved in activities that will benefit others.

8. Develop an absorbing hobby or skill—driving, dancing, gardening, carpentry, painting, amateur radio, etc.

9. Keep in touch with your close friends and extended family; use the power of the internet.

10. Plan to cut off from work on weekends.

Steps to increase everyday happiness

·         Do the crossword as you age

·         Take up a course of study that will improve your work skills: may be computer literacy

·         Eat a piece of dark chocolate 4 times a week.

·         Have at least four interesting, intimate conversations with family and friends every day.

·         Spend at least two hours outdoors.

·         Participate in at least one group activity.

·         Have a good belly laugh.

·         Forgive and forget and what you cannot forgive, forget.

·         Find a meaningful job to do, even if unpaid.

·         Live in the present and enjoy it.

World Kindness Day

The world kindness movement began incorporating NGO’s on November 13^th 1988. The actions on this day make everyone feel that kindness is cool. Young, trendy people, caring adults, celebrities participate to make kindness so viral.

Corporates who participate in my year long Innovation Initiatives have a Make Things Better (MTB) Board in the front office. Anyone can post a note which says ‘You made things better by ………………, about a team member’. The person who gets the maximum MTB notes, is recognized, as also the person who posts the most MTBs.

Kindness, generosity and co-operation can spread faster than violence or hatred. A study conducted by San Diego and Harvard Universities provide laboratory evidence that co-operative behavior is contagious.  When the people benefit from kindness, they “pay it forward” by helping others who were not originally involved, and this creates a cascade of collaboration that influences dozens more in a social network.

Research and Shakespeare have both shown that kindness benefits both giver and the receiver, filling the blood stream with neurotransmitters of relaxation and contentment. Serotonin and endorphins elevate the mood. Doctors have to do less when people are kind and content. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote about the ‘most curative herbs and agents’ of gentleness and kindness is ensuring health and well being.

So on World Kindness Day, start a daily, lifelong habit of kindness.  Let’s start to:

1.       Hug all the loved ones in your life who rarely get a hug – your parents and grandparents.

2.       Write love letters to them recording how you feel, before it is too late!

3.       In Singapore, they gave away 45,000 yellow flowers last year.

4.       Canada had a Kindness Concert.

5.       Put out grains and water for birds to feed.

6.       Adopt a elder who has no visitors and cheer up that elder by visiting him once a week or fortnightly or monthly – whichever is feasible.

As the Dalai Lama said, “My religion is simple. My religion is kindness.” Send this to all your friends. Let’s go viral with this.

Children’s Day

Children’s day is celebrated in India on November 14^th, Jawaharlal Nehru’s birthday. It is a day to celebrate the child. Children are the family’s greatest wealth and asset. Without Santhana Lakshmi (the goddess who bestows happiness in children) there is no joy in the family. The laughter, the mischief and newness children bring into the world is irreplaceable. As the Japanese say, ‘Children bring the ‘Oh!’ into your life’. It is also a day to pledge support for children suffering from abuse, violence, discrimination and death –all avoidable.

One child dies every 90 seconds in India - this means 1.7 million children every year. Many children are motherless because women in India have only a 50/50 chance of skilled help during childbirth. A woman dies in childbirth every 10 minutes in our country. The Taj Mahal, the greatest monument to love, was built for Mumtaz Mahal by Shahjahan in Agra. She died at child birth, giving birth to her 14^th child. The ‘State of World’s Mothers’ places India 76th on a list which shows the best places to be a mother. We lose more women every week because of this cause, than they lose in Europe, in a whole year. This is the same as having 400 Jumbo Boeing 747 planes crash annually. What is shocking is that one third of child death and 1/5^th of the maternal death are caused by lack of nutrition. 153 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 are bonded into child labour.

So what can you do to celebrate children’s day:

1.       Write a beautiful letter to each of your children about how much you value them in your family

2.       Send a gift to their teachers with a letter thanking them for giving them the gift of knowledge

3.       Plan a special family outgoing, which they find interesting and exciting.

4.       Children are great imitators. Be a person worth imitating.

As Magic Johnson said, “All that kids need, is a little help, a little hope and somebody who believes in them”. On this day give some poor child some of these gifts.

Be Nature’s Friend

Learning about the magic of growth and the splendor of Life will become as natural as breathing for your children.  Each of us has a personal responsibility to Mother Earth. Let us use telephones and internet for life changing and life affirming activities. Because in the last analysis, all that we think or say or do fall under one of these two categories: Life affirming or Life destroying. 

Grow some of your own food, even if it is just a pot of coriander leaves or tulsi to welcome Laxmi into your house or cure a sore throat. Plant trees that will be cared for. Start using a reusable cloth bag to shop . Turn off the water while you shave and you can save more than 100 gallons of water a week. Turn off the water while you brush your teeth and save 4 gallons a minute. That’s 200 gallons a week for a family of four.

Think about it: why can’t each of us take responsibility of keeping our own street clean and beautiful. Just like we keep the toilets inside our house clean, we can make sure that our street is green and beautiful. Join hands with neighbours and go green today. In your journey through life,

“Take nothing but pictures

Kill nothing but time

Leave nothing but footprints”

Know Yourself

 “It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or demons, heaven or hell,” said Buddha. This is the season to clean up our lives, burn out all desires and conquer our evil habits. Control your tongue, for “The tongue like a sharp knife. It kills without drawing blood…. Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” Overcome the snakes of jealousy and the grasping fingers of greed. Wipe out lust. Start on a clean white canvas of purity. Paint the positive navarasas of love, compassion, wonder, laughter, courage and peace into your life.

As Buddha said the way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart. Do not look back or lose yourself in the daydreams of the future. Concentrate your mind and be a full participant in the present moment. Enjoy each moment!

Love yourself

Now turn inward and start a personal affirmation account for yourself.  Give yourself a big hug for being the most hard working, kind and special person in your life. Invest in a note book which will document your love affair with yourself.

v  Write a love letter to yourself. Recognize your unique beauty, your capacity to do your best and all the gifts that make you such a fabulous person. “Love yourself first and everything else falls into place,” said Lucille Ball.

v  Start a gratefulness dairy where you record all the things you are grateful for. Thank God for His blessings.

v  ‘I can,’ is a hundred times more important that IQ. Celebrate your smallest successes. Stop that nagging, critical voice in your head that keeps picking on you. Speak to yourself kindly and lovingly.

v  Stop worrying. The way to be happy is to stop worrying about things which cannot be changed.

v  Plug into the Source of all power, through prayer and meditation and acknowledge that you are a child of God, made in his own image.

v  Explore, dream, discover: at the end of your life do not regret all the dreams you have failed to pursue. 

Doctor’s Day

Perfect Health is not just an absence of illness. It is a state of total physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well being. That is why it is important to celebrate our partners in the quest for positive health – doctors.

India celebrates Doctor’s day on 1st July every year on the birthday of the freedom fighter, educationalist and physician Dr. B.C. Roy. Choose and make friends with a doctor younger than you for the sole purpose of helping you maintain and improve your state of positive well being. Most patients go to doctors when they are really ill, when it is too late to do anything. The Chinese were wise. They paid their doctors as long as they were well. They stopped paying when they became ill, since the doctor had failed in maintaining their health.

Women’s Day

Mothers, sisters, daughters and other women beloved to us make March 8th a special day of celebration, a day to show, respect, appreciation and love to women. This day cannot be dismissed like all the other days that make Archies cards such a successful business.

Even before women appeared on the corporate scene, women were the secret, hidden ingredient that made life worth living. So all of us, men and women, should use this day to write letters of appreciation to all the special women in our life, for the beauty they bring into our lives, for their delicate subtle strength and grace under pressure, for their tact and capacity to love, care and selflessly give, till there is nothing left to give. Thirty countries observe it as a National holiday. It is a day to celebrate beauty and motherhood! In Portugal a ‘Girls night out’ is customary.

Let us make this a happy day by honoring the women who work with us: our domestic staff and professional colleagues. One hundred and two years have passed, since the first celebration.  Remember seventy percent of those living in poverty are women. I like the UN theme of last year, “Empower women - end hunger and poverty”.  Choose a disadvantaged woman who works for you and change her life by helping her build a happy, educated family.

Everything Changes

Change is the only certainty in an uncertain world. This year you will change, merely because everything around you will change. What you can decide is, whether you will lead the change or become a victim of it.

Think about proactively changing things in the following areas of your life.

1.       Personal

2.       Family

3.       Professional

4.       Social

Personal: Create goals that will improve your skills and build on your strengths. Tap into the passion that you have kept tightly leashed because you had no time. Did you always want to learn to play the guitar? Sign up now. Was Bollywood dancing what lights your fire? Do it. Sign up for a distance learning programme.

Family: Ask your family members to suggest change each of them would like. Try to see if it can be done. Don’t be a casualty of the corporate rat race.

Professional: Have a chat with your team mates. Volunteer for a tough blue sky job. Create a daily ‘huddle’ in your workplace so that everyone can meet and talk for a few minutes every morning. Make sure everyone participates. Work on making it a fun place.

Social: Create a face book page for your family and friends. Keep in touch, share pictures, keep them informed and interested and involved in an interesting activity: a get-together for all your friends, an annual family reunion, a pot luck meet and eat for all your neighbours.

Things will change anyway. Make sure they change in the way you want. And remember a butterfly is not an improved caterpillar. Just as a sunflower is not an improved seed.

Action Plan to Protect Against Deadly Disease

1.         Make friends with a young doctor and visit him to ensure health maintenance and well being. Take steps to do live in a clean and unpolluted place.

2.         Ask for vaccines needed to immunize your family. Make a special visit when you are travelling to a new, vulnerable area.

3.         Follow a sensible happy life style and get your doctor to check key parameters that indicate health.

4.         Do not ignore minor symptoms. Talk to your doctor friend, with whom you develop a trusting lifetime relationship.

5.         Do not treat yourself. Do not get medical advice and prescribe medicine from the internet.

6.         Take care of your teeth: with increasing life span, you will need them for a long time. Invest in daily yoga, exercise and meditation.

7.         Build a warm, nurturing web of relationships.

Dedicated to Health

 It is not surprising that Ananda Shankar Ray’s Laboratory did the initial research to escape from mosquitoes. In India, with the emergence of highly resistant mosquito species that are unaffected by the most toxic bug killers, it has a kind of poetic justice that an Indian associate professor of entomology has found a way to make a human invisible to mosquitos’ most powerful hunting sense – smell. Featured in Nature, the scientist however lives in California!

This discovery was quickly turned into an innovative skin patch called the Kite mosquito patch an inexpensive sticker, which is non-toxic patch which is now produced by Olfactor labs. It disrupts the mosquitoes carbon di-oxide detection mechanism and protects against malaria, denque, filaria, West-Nile Virus and other deadly diseases.

The human body is a magical creation, whose continuing health, in spite of the dangers that assail, it is really a miracle. So keep this invaluable asset each of us in gifted with, at birth, protected against easily avoidance but deadly diseases. Health is your responsibility. Take care of your body temple. It is the only home you have.

Turn it Upside Down (T U D)

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” This is a quote from Mahatma Gandhi. When he suggested non-violence as a way to make India free. It was revolutionary thought because usually, most of us will meet violence with violence. He suggested the exact opposite of what most of us would do. And it worked. Because as he said, “An eye for an eye only ends up making whole world blind.”

As his birthday approaches let us use a thinking tool called Turn it Upside Down. I will help you consider a course of action that is the revolutionary opposite of what is usually done.

So look at your life and think about turning it upside down. Think mostly about giving and loving rather than wanting and taking stop complaining. Give thanks in gratitude for what you have. Don’t sell your ideas. Let your ideas be a magnet that will draw others to them. Focus on maintaining abundant positive physical, mental and spiritual health, instead of dealing with illness. Finally remember that as the Mahatma said, ‘The best way to find yourself is to love yourself in the service of others.’

Innovation Secrets of Indian CEOs

Celebrations to create network

The Navarathri celebrations are here. Navratri (nine nights) is a very important and major festival in the western states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Karnataka during which the traditional dance of Gujarat called "Garba" is widely performed. This festival is celebrated with great zeal in North India as well, including Bihar, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and the northern state of Punjab. In the old days, it was a time to meet with neighbours at the golu (the display of dolls in Tamil Nadu). Children went with their mothers and got lots of nice things to eat as well as show off their talents. The Puja festival in Bengal offers the same opportunity on a bigger scale. These traditions were meant to build social bonds and should be developed further. Let us reach back to our traditions and reach out to link others in a network of affection.

Network of Affection

Research shows that growing up with more siblings provides you with a chance to have a happier marriage. This may be because of the chance to learn the joy of sharing, caring, comforting others in trouble, adjusting with limited resources and an opportunity for fun, games and common amusements.

With the growing trend towards one child families, it is good idea to develop a method of providing a similar experience with children in a building, neighbourhood or circle of friends. The joint family provides a great opportunity for kids to build close relationships with other children and adults. Can we take steps to replace the lost joint family with intimate circles of neighbours and friends?

Just today, I was speaking to a friend a busy lawyer about getting together with his neighbours to deal with wet and dry garbage. He said “I don’t even know the 6 other families who live in my building.” A time has come in our own cities and towns, when a person can die next door and no one knows about it. Last week a newspaper article told  of a woman in a posh Bangalore suburb whose body was discovered 5 months after she died. Neighbours complained of a foul smell and authorities broke down the door to find her.

Action Plan to win tough times

·         Use this time to do more. Remember you will get good at something you keep doing. Most people better than you, have just spent more time doing, instead of complaining, dreaming or wishing. Do more.

·         Give yourself bigger and better goals whatever happens, keep a positive attitude. You probably talk more to yourself than anyone else on earth. Make sure your self talk is positive and nurturing

·         Encourage yourself, keep doing a little bit every day to realize your dreams. Every single day – like your exercises.  One day you will reach the top of the mountain.

·         Build your networks. Stretch out a helping hand to those who need it. Nothing like bad times to bring families and teams together.

·         Be encouraging and supportive to other people’s efforts. No discouraging word should pass your lips. Focus on your family.

·         Thinking during tough times forces us to think outside the box or even eliminate the box.

·         Create an environment that is replete with the positive emotions of love, courage, compassion, laughter, wonder and peace. This is the positive field that will nurture creativity and innovation.

·         Adapt and evolve. Remember nothing lasts. Especially not tough times!

Tough Times are the Best Times

We live in daunting times to those involved in the blood bath of the financial markets. This must be an impossible time. What are the mantras that can help us keep our equanimity in tough times?

I believe that tough times are the best times. The lack of resources forces us to innovate and come up with solutions that are optimally suited to our times. Tough times are good for the planet – there is less waste and more of the 3Rs –reduce, repair and recycle. These are times when you think about refusing things you don’t really need. And realize how much excess baggage you have been carrying. This is a time to reduce clutter of all kinds in your life and bring it to a Zen like perfection.

‘Tough times don’t last, but tough people do,’ said a wag. So this is time for tough love. Get everyone to adapt by processing on improving their skills, instead of complaining. Here are some actions for the tough times.

Action Plan to create a healing home

       

 •            Your home reflects how you are, and how well you are taking care of yourself.

•             Learn how to make mess and clutter disappear for good

•             Steadily raise the level of beauty in your home

•             Fill your home with a growing sense of ease and happiness.  Be nicer to yourself, your family and every day

•             Get what you want at home, more easily than you ever dared to hope!

•             Engage fully in life with love and kindness and you cannot go wrong.

•             Simple kindness to oneself and all that lives, is the most powerful transformational force of all.

•             Practice being kind to yourself. And go put fresh sheets on your bed.

A Healthy and Happy Home

A healthy home should be a healing space, a nurturing positive mind field. It can be a place where all wounds are healed. Alvin Toffler wrote ‘The family is the giant shock absorber of the family to which the bruised and battered individual returns after doing battle with the world!’ If your home is not a sanctuary but a battle-field do something about it. Get help, maybe professional help. Reserve time for laughter and happiness—schedule time for it, like you do for your work.

Have a rule to avoid difficult topics during meal times or bed time. Music, if is soothing, can be a powerful force for peace. The very walls absorb the vibrations of the music. Mantras can do the same for your home. I sometimes feel that if music can be infused into the mindspace so that it plays quietly in your mind, as the background to your day, it can have a really soothing affect. Avoid violent, depressing programmes. Just as you would not allow a terrorist into your home, do not allow such movies into the sacred space of your home. You surely are the protector of the field that exists in your home. Make your home fragrant with incense. Clean and sparkling and beautiful. Respectful of the sacred forces that can animate your home.

Be Compassionate to all

The key to developing compassion in your life is to make it a daily practice. Compassion is an emotion that is a sense of shared suffering, most often combined with a desire to alleviate or reduce the suffering of another.  The main benefit is that it helps you to be more happy, and brings others around you to be more happy. If we agree that it is a common aim of each of us to strive to be happy, then compassion is one of the main tools for achieving that happiness. It is therefore of utmost importance that we cultivate compassion in our lives and practice compassion every day. The first step in cultivating compassion is to develop empathy for your fellow human beings. Instead of recognizing the differences between yourself and others, try to recognize what you have in common. Practice the act of kindness practice. Even a smile, or a kind word, or doing an errand or chore, or just talking about a problem with another person. Practice doing something kind to help ease the suffering of others. When you are good at this, find a way to make it a daily practice, and eventually a throughout-the-day practice.

 These compassionate practices can be done anywhere, any time. At work, at home, on the road, while traveling, while at a store, while at the home of a friend or family member. 

Follow The Rules of Dharma

Hinduism describes dharma as the natural universal laws whose observance enables humans to be contented and happy, and to save him from degradation and suffering. ‘You can fool everybody, but you cannot fool yourself. Not even for a single minute. Doing your dharma as you understand it, alone can make you happy.

In order to achieve good karma it is important to live life according to dharma, what is right. This involves doing what is right for the individual, the family and also for the universe itself. Dharma is like a cosmic norm and if one goes against the norm it can result in bad karma. So, dharma affects the future according to the karma accumulated.

Anything that helps human being to reach god is dharma. The purpose of dharma is not only to attain a union of the soul with the supreme reality, it also suggests a code of conduct that is intended to secure both worldly joys and supreme happiness. The practice of dharma gives an experience of peace, joy, strength and tranquility within one's self and makes life disciplined.

Be Happy and Enjoy

Happiness is our birth right and responsibility. we can take proactive steps to welcome it into our lives. Celebrate the positive in all interactions. Rest assured that God did not create you for the sole purpose of correcting others or making them unhappy.  “It is isolation that causes crimes to happen”, says, a senior police official. Get grandparents to volunteer and mentor to share knowledge or teach football and chess. Let them create a ring of protection as they watch the street to keep it safe for kids to play. Let the grandmother teach young women to work and teach girls how to draw kolams.

It is up to each family to celebrate, to enjoy life on a regular basis. Maybe every day, with super celebrations on the weekend, like teenage kids do. A special movie on television can be celebrated with popcorn. One can dress up for dinner on Saturday night at home.

Work with love

People can be very happy if they love their work. To work at something you love, is to be “self-actualised”, in Maslow’s terms. This will ensure you die young when you are a100 years old. Serve others. Look at your profession as a means to serve and make others happy. Make a living causing the least amount of pain to living creatures. Eliminate mad deadlines. Ensure freedom to be self-dependent, take own decisions, be innovative. Believe in hi-touch along with hi-tech.

You can choose to enjoy any work. It is your choice to be happy at work.

·         Plan a happiness break at work

·         Create a route map of progress at work

·         Develop a network of caring

·         Make friends to enjoy, support, caring and sharing

·         If nothing works look for another job