Review the outcome

During implementation review the outcome. Be aware of the end before you take the first step. Unify your teams by hitching them to the ultimate goal. Top management should inspire and empower the teams to action. A team bonding exercise getting everyone to see a bird’s eye view of the exercise is critical. Review the Resource for every team. Consolidate the reviews if the resources being used are adequate. Study the impact on the expected outcome. Ensure that the process is moving towards the final outcome: reducing costs, increasing revenues, improving customer satisfaction and ensuring greater employee participation.

Children’s Day

Children’s day is celebrated in India on November 14th, 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 14th 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 1/5th 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.

Recharge Yourself Regularly

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.

Create a positive field around yourself, your home and office

• A mental process which draws a magic circle of love around all those who are participating. • A prayer or mantra said together. • A common exercise, a company song, common goals. • A handshake, a friendly look, an encouraging word. • Thinking, believing and acting in a positive manner. • Laughter and shared jokes.

Asanas for Healthy and Happy Life

Padmasana (Lotus Pose). This pose destroys all disease and brings peace of mind to those who suffer from anxiety, tension, anger and other negative emotions. Sarvangasana (Shoulderstand). Also known as the mother of asanas, this asana stimulates every part of the body and helps transport oxygen-rich blood to the heart. Matsyasana (Fish Pose). This asana expands the chest and tones the nerves of the neck and back. It also ensures maximum benefit to the thyroid and parathyroid glands. Dhanurasana (Bow Pose). An excellent asana for the spine, it strengthens the hips and takes care of spondylitis. The expansion of the chest increases blood circulation in the heart muscles. Savasana (Shanti Asana). This is a powerful practice for relaxing the body and releasing mental and physical tension. Techniques like self-hypnosis or kaya kriya can be applied here to provide relief from anxiety and insomnia. Persons who are sad and disturbed are greatly benefited by this asana. Yoga Nidra (Yogic Sleep). A state of conscious deep sleep for extreme relaxation and subtler spiritual exploration. Silence. Practice silence. Let thoughts pass like birds in the sky. Let the mind sink to its bedrock of silence. As the Zen Buddhists say, ‘The mind is a drunken monkey that is bitten by a scorpion.’ Allow it to relax into silence.

Creating Joy in Family Life

Today everyone has a chance to maintain links with the extended family through the internet. It is a nourishing and often supportive network. Today, however, the family, as the ‘shock absorber of society, to which the bruised and battered individual returns after doing battle with the world,’ in the words of Alvin Toffler in his landmark work Future Shock, is going through a transitional phase. The breakdown of the joint family has led to a loosening of extended family relationships. The powerful mother-in-law of the joint family is emerging as the subdued caretaker of children, helping the educated daughter-in-law augment the double income of all upwardly mobile young couples. The large, amorphous, supportive joint family that supported a wide variety of people and bestowed unconditional love for the crippled, the old and the helpless, has been reduced to the nuclear family where everyone is in sharp focus. Much like the modern corporation, there is no place to hide, no place for passengers, and everyone has to pull their own weight. It is our mission to restore to it its traditional role as a place of rest and healing, albeit in a new paradigm. There should be one person in the family who can cushion the blows of the outside world. Someone who is not too busy to listen, give support, and manage the daily tasks of living. This could even be a paid caregiver or cook. Networking with parents, in-laws, neighbours, domestic help and friends is the key for working mothers.

Happiness Mantras

Happiness Mantra 1: Prana enhances the positive field and the vital life force flows freely through it. It creates a powerful positive field—a field of all possibilities where any seed of an idea will develop rapidly. Happiness Mantra 2: Meditation is the broom that sweeps out the negative emotions and pours in the honey of tranquility into the mind. There are many forms of meditation Happiness Mantra 3: Often our senses are scrambled and numbed by the hurry of life. Each of the senses provides us with new adventures and helps us to live more fully. Happiness Mantra 4: Enjoy the skill of the great architect of the universe. Happiness Mantra 5: In the silence, become aware of yourself. Be aware of your body as full of health and energy. Happiness Mantra 6: Be aware of your breathing, the beating of your heart. Once you are aware of your body in silence, in peace and tranquility, then you begin to notice immediately, the destructive effects of stress. Happiness Mantra 7: Be completely aware of the shift of feelings from moment to moment. Knowing exactly how you feel can help you make better emotional decisions. Happiness Mantra 8: The springboard is a tool that can help generate a positive field around you. When someone offers you an idea, first as a discipline, look for those things about the idea that please you. Happiness Mantra 9: A negative field is toxic with distrust. In the negative field, individuals are afraid to think differently; new ideas wither before they are formulated. Happiness Mantra 10: In the negative field, only the most obvious ideas, which appear practical and sensible will be shared. All but the most obvious ideas will be rejected. These ideas will be of little use because they are probably centuries old.

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.

Happiness Mantras

Happiness Mantra 1: 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’. Happiness Mantra 2: Meditation produces beneficial effects such as reduction of tension, lowering of blood pressure, relaxation of muscles, increased concentration and work efficiency, and increase of immunological resistance to diseases. Happiness Mantra 3: Service to others, music, prayer—all are forms of meditation—make the blood flow with serotonins—the happiness chemical. Hindu scriptures enjoin five types of service known as pancha-mahayajna—service to gods; service to sages; service to ancestors; service to humans, guests and the poor; and service to animals. Happiness Mantra 4: Health is the foundation for a feeling of wellbeing and joy. It is very difficult to be full of enthusiasm if you are not in a state of positive health. Happiness Mantra 5: Listen to your body. If you are tired, 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. Happiness Mantra 6: 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. Happiness Mantra 7: Yogasanas in conjunction with pranayama bring harmony and balance to every part of the body, and are extremely therapeutic for the body, mind and soul. They mould every part of the body to its ideal contour through various postures. Happiness Mantra 8: Around every person there is a field of emotional energy. Some people always look and feel radiant and everything in their life flourishes and grows. They have a positive energy field around them. Happiness Mantra 9: Some people, always feel and look morose and tense, everything in their life seems to fade and die. They have a negative energy field around them. The positive field is created by positive emotions and the negative field draws sustenance from negative emotions. Happiness Mantra 10: Learning to create a positive field is an important part of the climate of wellbeing. The positive field is created by tools and behaviours that may be verbal, tonal and non-verbal. Happiness Mantra 11: Meditation, practiced regularly, helps develop the capacity to be analytical, positive and disciplined, and eliminate negative fields. Happiness Mantra 12: Affirmations are the most important constituent of the positive field. It is a verbal, tonal or non-verbal act of appreciation. If you have to say something unpleasant, do it as kindly as possible, while genuinely appreciating the good qualities of the person and the relationship.

Building A Happy Community Through Happy Streets

‘Happy Street’ explores a new economic paradigm, the economics of kindness and caring. It embraces in addition, social, environmental and governance quality. Sweeping changes are expected as the idea of a cleaner India has taken us by storm. Now what is needed is action, more action. This and other issues are handled in the Happy Street, just published by Penguin Japan was a winner in the World Cup, though they lost the first match they played. They caught the world’s attention, when all the Japanese fans and players cleaned up their part of the stadium after the match! They set a new gold standard for civility and educated cleanliness. Japanese teachers and students stay back half an hour after class to clean up the classroom and keep it ready for the next day. One of the airlines requests passengers to do the same to get the aircraft ready for the next flight. The idea of cleaning up should become the job description of every person in India. The feeling that ‘others’ will clean up after you is what creates all our hygiene problems. Gandhiji cleaned his own toilet. NRI’s clean their own toilets when they live abroad. But in India, since someone else is doing it, we are totally careless. Every toilet, every park, every vehicle should be cleaner when you leave it, than when you enter it. Let us start with our own homes and offices. Let us set an example by picking up pieces of paper or plastic strewn in front of our homes. Example is the most powerful motivator. Keep your own doorstep clean. For years in India, activists have used the pictures of Gods to prevent people using compound walls as street toilets. Let us involve religious leaders to get across the message that cleanliness is next to Godliness. Let us start with our religious places. Let religious leaders make people see cleaning up as seva. The Singapore Government achieved a clean Singapore by fining those who litter. The Japanese are doing it by making it a part of education and mindset. In India, let us use every possible method: psychological, social, economic and religious methods to make Swacch Bharat a reality! But cleanliness alone is not enough. We need an attitude transplant and positive happiness. Happiness is the key to the well being of countries and cities. It is the Gross National Happiness that Bhutan has measured for 30 years that speaks louder than the more familiar Gross National Product. Today, Los Angeles, Dubai, Seattle, Victoria, the state of Vermont and hundreds of local communities are measuring their levels of happiness. We can improve the well being of societies by increasing understanding and appreciation of the factors that lead to life satisfaction, resilience and sustainability. The Happy Street is the third in a series of books: The Happiness Quotient and Innovate Happily are the first two. The Happy Street is a grassroots endeavour to building happy communities street by street. Based on many years of study the happy street is a step by step guide to happier communities. Shangrila has been a mythical idea of a perfectly happy place. It has lived in the minds of thinkers as a kind of a Utopia: 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, where every edifice is artistic and beauty clothes every home in the loveliness of hand-made artifacts. Lush greenery carpets the land, dazzling your eyes with its colourful butterflies, exotic animals and birds. The air is fresh and the water is pure and the sound of holy mantras is carried on every gentle breeze. Here the whole community is a family and smiles bind the hearts of all. You too can live in Shangri-La . . . In every case, this dreamland imagined by writers is cut off from the real world protected from outside influences and the people there lead simple, natural, pastoral lives. The Garden of Eden, to which no one can return, is the earliest image. We lost our keys to Eden due to our loss of innocence, our knowledge of good and evil and the sin of disobedience. And there is Atlantis, the paradise which Plato describes, ‘which sank into the ocean in a single day and night of misfortune’. But we too can build a Shangrila on our own street. We don’t just have to dream about it. Once you begin to practice the principles of happiness and the innovative thinking tools in your own life, you can build a happy street. Your happiness will be infectious. Make many friends who can get together to laugh, work, read and share. Plant more trees, clean up the roads, start walking and playing together with your kids. Share knowledge, play, beauty and wisdom. Create your own village which is needed to raise a child in your little corner of Chennai or any other city. Everything will be bright and blooming. You can create your own Shangri-Las in the world. For Shangri-La is not a really a place. It is within everyone’s own heart. The dream city is only a reflection of our own peaceful, happy hearts. Realize that what the world needs today are small acts of kindness, gratitude and optimism, not some fantasy about returning to the lost Garden of Eden.

Webinar on Innovative Thinking

Madras Management Association and Mindspower have organized the inspiring talk series on Innovative Thinking. It is a wonderful opportunity to learn about Thinking Tools. Thinking tools helps to make decisions that will have a great impact on your quality of life. And if you want to ensure that you give your best for the most successful and happy life, to make conscious choices. That can be done with a simple thing by learning Thinking Tools. It is a 4 day online course in Innovative Thinking: 11th, 18th, 25th June and 2nd July 2021 at 10.00am to 1.00pm. For Registration, Mail us to mma@mmachennai.org with Your Name, Contact Number & E-Mail ID. Fee Details: MMA Member Fee: ₹2,360/- Including 18% GST Non - Member Fee: ₹3,360/- Including 18% GST (Please await our advice before making Payment) I am enclosing the brochure for your reference. Thanking you, Yours faithfully, Dr. Rekha Shetty Founder, Mindspower