Article in Business India - August 2014

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.’

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”

Innovation Sutra at Mumbai

Dr. Rekha Shetty's eighth book, "Innovation Sutra" on 12^th August 2014 at World Trade Center, Center 1 Building, WTC complex, Cuffe Parade, Mumbai along with the Bombay Management Association at 6.30pm. Here is the photo of the launch:

Caption -

 From L-R: Mr. Vijay Kalantri, Vice Chairman, MVIRDC World Trade Centre (WTC) & President, All India Association of Industries (AIAI), Ms. Rupa Naik, Director-Projects, Mrs. Rekha Shetty, Managing Director, Farstar Distribution Network Ltd, Mr. Y.R. Warerkar, Executive Director,  MVIRDC WTC, Mr. V. Sarangapani, Executive Director, Bombay Management Association during the book launch of Mrs. Shetty’s `Innovation Sutra’ jointly organized by MVIRDC WTC and AIAI.

Innovation Sutra at Pune

Dr. Rekha Shetty's eighth book 'Innovation Sutra' was launched at Landmark SGS Mall, Shop no.1, Ground floor, No 231 Moledina Road,pune Camp, Pune-411001 on Friday, 8th August 2014 at 6.00pm. Here are the photos of the launch:

 

Innovation Sutra at Chennai

Dr. Rekha Shetty's eighth book, "Innovation Sutra" launched at P S Dakshinamurthi Auditorium, P S Senior Secondary School, R K Mutt Road, Mylapore, Chennai-4 on Wednesday, 16^th July 2014 at 6.00pm. Here are the photos of the launch:

Innovation Sutra at Mangalore

Dr. Rekha Shetty's eighth book , “Innovation Sutra” on 4^th July 2014 at Sapna Store, Hampankatta, Mangalore at 5.30pm. Here are the photos of the launch

 

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 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.

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.

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.

Toward a Healing Workplace

1. Create meaningful personal relationship with co-workers.

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

3. Eat fresh, energy giving foods.

4. Take a walk outdoors during lunch break.

5. Stay away from politics and back-biting.

6. Bring your family to the office during lunch break or on a Saturday.

7. Cultivate a hobby.

8. If you have a toxic workplace, look for another job.

9. Celebrate achievements, even small ones.

10. Make your workspace clean and comfortable. Surround it with happy pictures.

11. Listen to music with headphones.

Learn to Deal with Others and their Feelings

A drug addict once explained the difference between sympathy and empathy. He said, ‘You can never feel anything but sympathy for me and what I need is empathy.’ The he said, ‘Empathy is the capacity to feel my pain in your heart.’ To be ‘socially tone deaf’ * can lead to a life littered with broken relationships. Develop the capacity to pick up subtle verbal, tonal and non-verbal signals from others. Learn also the ability to send out soothing, nurturing signals to others, thus creating a positive interpersonal field.

Unlike in a magnetic field, where positive attracts negative and vice versa, a positive, emotional and spiritual field, attracts positive people and events and, in addition, transforms even a normally negative person into a positive one.

‘How can I develop this skill?’ I ask. ‘Practice working with people and listening to them with the same attitude as you would a beloved child, or respected parent. Your word, tone, your very glance should be completely focused on the person. Don’t dilute the interaction by playing with your Blackberry, talking on your cellphone or fiddling with your laptop. When you are with someone, pay complete attention. Anything less will only elicit a lukewarm response. Those who can create positive fields around themselves attract and build lifetime relationships.’

Nurturing work place

Many of us spend most of our time at work. If we do not enjoy our work, if we feel overwhelmed by it, it will surely damage us. The constant pressure of negative emotions causes inescapable damage to our arteries and other delicate tissues. It also slows down the body’s capacity to repair this damage.

To work at something you love, to be ‘self-actualized’ in Maslow’s terms, is to protect yourself against dying young. As Khalil Gibran wrote, ‘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.’

Politics can make the blood boil with suppressed rage and unexpressed anxiety. ‘Fast tracking,’ being a corporate star, will extract the inevitable price of damage to arteries if you are not ‘mindful’, if you are not aware of the impact of everything you do on your system.

Reisman speaks of the ‘lonely crowd’. Loneliness, a sense of exclusion, is a poison that can cause illness as easily as a virus or bacteria. Loneliness is the most lethal of modern diseases. For example, newly widowed women have a higher rate of breast cancer than wives or single women.

Healthy Home nurturing Positive mindspace

A healthy home would 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.

Happy Professions

1.         To make a living causing least pain to living creatures.

2.         No mad deadline, no emergency.

3.         Self-dependent and can take their own decisions.

4.         Allows for innovation.

5.         Requires personal touch and get human responses, usually positive.

6.         Work with their hands and see their customers.