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

The Blank Slate

The year ahead is a blank slate. A white page. The events to come are offstage, waiting in the wings. You have an opportunity to reengineer, to reinvent, to restructure your life. So let’s start the makeover, the new you.

Remember your dreams, your aspirations, things you have always wanted to try, to learn. Listen carefully to yourself. Talk to a friend. Take notes. Look at the four quadrants of your life – family, work, social and personal.

Start with ‘personal’: Before you are a parent, a team member, an elder, you are a person. Usually, people give their own needs the lowest priority. Here are a few suggestions:

Personal goals

Improving health, eating healthy, exercising daily by going for a walk for atleast 45 minutes. Practicing yoga, meditation. Make friends with a young doctor. Find a new hobby or go back to an old one.

Family

Spending more time with family, doing more fun things together, having meals together at least once a day without the distraction of TV, cell phones or newspapers. When you can talk and listen to members of the family, even the small children.

Work

Expanding your sphere of influence, attending training programmes. Reading and trying to improve your wealth of knowledge, or learning by being attentive to other people.

Social

Keeping in touch with the extended family, Meeting old friends. Becoming involved in an NGO or neighbourhood organization to help others, while you spend your spare time usefully. Be decisive do not postpone taking decisions.

During the coming year, identity your new work life balance. Approach it like a menu. See what you want to add and what you want to remove

Study your life for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Pay attention to what is happening to the environment around you. Perhaps a new opportunity awaits in the wings. Be prepared to grab it as walks past!

Many may tell you money is not important. I disagree. You need to fuel your goals with the liquid stuff. What are the new skills you need to operate in the changed environment? Get the training required. Get organized. Get networked. You will need a lot of help to make things happen. Make a plan. Find a way to measure progress and readjust as you go along to reach the goals you have identified. Get set for the New Year!

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.

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.