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 have 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 44nourishing 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.

Cultivating Happiness

Focus on cultivating happy people and avoid toxic people. Build protective walls against toxic events that threaten your tranquillity. Too much television is tele-visham—tele-poison. Too much stimulation, a mindspace crowded by fantasy, people and events, distracts you from working on your own home and backyard to create a healthy self. Some days we seem to live a fantasy life dominated by daydreams while reality tugs at our heartstrings for attention, like a neglected child. There is no use focusing on Aishwarya Bacchan’s beauty while neglecting to do the most basic things to maintain yours. This is the only body, mind and soul you will be given. Take care of what is yours and enjoy it. Let the cells of your body be gently bathed in happiness, positive thoughts and healing energies. Run from, toxic people and build protective walls against toxic events that threaten your tranquility. The Vedas speak of the self as a beautiful lotus growing in the muddy waters of life. With its roots in the muck it rises above it, in perfect beauty and bliss.

Attitude decides altitude

As a famous saying goes, ‘Attitude decides the altitude.’ An attitude transplant is required to fill your blood with the chemicals of bliss. Soar on your positive attitude. A positive attitude takes you to higher altitudes. If the climate inside you is positive, it radiates all around you. To create positive actions • Pray together • Sing together • Listen with empathy • Exercise together • Practice yoga and meditation • Deal as an equal • Eliminate status and rank • Give up all rights to punish or discipline

A Great Time To Be Indian

A few years ago a top notch American Research Company came up with the finding that the next global economic powers will be the Indian Elephant and the Chinese Dragon. Energize your team with patriotism. Let them not forget that in the 1770’s we had 25% of the world trade. We plummeted to 5 per cent of world trade and now we are slowly climbing to 1.2 per cent. We need to conquer the world market with huge blow back innovations like sachet shampoos, the Nano, 20$ cataract surgeries or a computer with 3 mice. India is the largest laboratory for bottom of the pyramid innovations for the poor. Most countries cannot come up with such reverse innovations, created by the poor but used by the rich. This is because each of these innovations are good for a sustainable Earth. Our planet is being threatened by the greedy energy guzzling lifestyle of affluent nations. Our innovations, driven by economic inflations may really help us save planet earth.

Better way to reduce stress

One way to break the pattern of stressful living and strive for personal wellness is to change the responses to tough situations. There is, of course, no way to make the situations less tough. Meditation and pranayama provide a way of reducing the automatic and violent reactions to stress. You can actually control autonomous systems like heartbeat and pulse rate, which were thought to be outside the individual’s control. Knowing and practising meditation can provide you with a silent space where you can retreat into peace: slow breathing, steady heartbeat, low pulse. This space is always available within a person who has learnt to meditate.

Communication – Speaking for Easy Listening

In a supportive climate no one has to defend themselves when they present a wild idea. You can present it with all the flaws, quite confident that everyone is out to help you built it. You feel no need to trick them in to accepting it or bulldozing them into ‘buying’ it. Both methods will result in: Your audience ‘turning out’. Your losing their potential to give valuable inputs. A better alternative is to start by giving the headline as a newspaper would. Follow this by a brief description of the idea with no conclusions. Be truly open to inputs. Leave it loose and welcome suggestions. Participants then feel welcomed into problem solving. They respond to the regard and respect being shown for their ideas. The first method presents a heavily defended fait accomplishment. The second involves listeners in a mutually satisfying exchange of ideas. The first feels uncomfortable and controlling for participants. The second allows the bliss of participation and the joy of mutual regard, while resulting in the building of really new viable ideas. Action Practice speaking using the headline/background approach. Share the ideas flowing out of listening for value. Let each commando member practice and then discuss the resulting ideas.

Bring Adhutha or Wonder into the Organization

This is a very useful, feel-good emotion. Welcome wonder into you life. Celebrate the beauty of the stars, and enjoy the wonder of the mountains. Greet the dawn and say goodbye to the sunset. The moonlight has been created to heal your wounds. Sleep on the lap of Mother Nature and become a child again. Go on excursions with your team. Actions to bring Adbutha into your life: * Be alone in silence with nature at the beginning and end of every day. * Enjoy a walk among tall trees and green gardens. * Plant seeds and saplings. Distribute them. * Set apart time for prayer to praise God for His glorious creation. * Set apart time to enjoy beauty.

Be Happy To Get Relieved from Stress

The twenty-first century is the century of the Mind. The Mind is man’s last unconquered frontier. The Upanishads describe it as fast, fickle and uncontrollable, like a dozen swift horses travelling at breakneck speed. Mankind is paying a steep price for failing to learn more about the Mind before embarking on the race for success in the new millennium. Stress is the price we pay for success. Stress stalks the precarious climb up the corporate ladder. The fashionable corporate high of fast-track leaders—eyes shining, excess nervous energy, multi-tasking, dynamism personified—is achieved at the expense of a tissue-destroying ‘fight or flight’ response. These individuals do not manage to have ‘rest and repair’ periods between emotional hijacks. Constant pressure fuels the adrenaline rush and damages the arteries. It adds to the flow of chemicals like cortisone and adrenaline in your blood. No one can be n a constant ‘fight or flight’ high and not destroy themselves. Today, twenty-somethings are dropping dead from heart attacks. A bypass surgery in the thirties has become a status symbol. The personal cost of stress includes burnout, chronic, disabling illnesses, crippling tensions in family life, and a loss of personal fulfillment and joy. The casualties are often children who live in the high-tension, pressure-cooker climate created in the homes of corporate high fliers.

Attitude decides altitude

As a famous saying goes, ‘Attitude decides the altitude.’ An attitude transplant is required to fill your blood with the chemicals of bliss. Soar on your positive attitude. A positive attitude takes you to higher altitudes. If the climate inside you is positive, it radiates all around you. To create positive actions • Pray together • Sing together • Listen with empathy • Exercise together • Practice yoga and meditation • Deal as an equal • Eliminate status and rank • Give up all rights to punish or discipline

The Power of a Sacred Space

A sacred space is defined by the rules of conduct laid down for those who enter, as in a court room, a church, a temple or the parliament. Very few misbehave in such places as they are rarely able to cast away the weight of laws and customs built over centuries around them. A person who maintains dignity and decorum in such a place may behave totally different in a bar or when at a party. The Tibetians of the Shambala tradition believe in a concept called drala by which any space can be made sacred. Drala is created by the reverence, purity and faith within a space. When a person treats his offi ce space with reverence and keeps it clean and sparkling, he attracts drala into that space. Drala makes that space powerful and attractive. When he dresses carefully, speaks and acts mindfully, he attracts personal drala. Many are able to do this in their homes. Indian homes have beautiful white flower patterns drawn at the entrance to attract Lakshmi, the Goddess of Good Fortune. The atmosphere is further enhanced by the fragrance of incense and joss sticks. Certain sounds like that of mantras or the sound of bells, or wind chimes in a Chinese home, are said to purify the field.

Celebrate Work!

People can be very happy if they love their work. Inspire people to work to build a great nation. Words absorb and radiate power. 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, is to be “self-actualised”, in Maslow’s terms. This will ensure you die young when you are a100 years old. A recent Qualifications Authority of City and Guilds, London survey shows that hairdressers have the highest levels of happiness at work! The reason? They are in direct touch with their customers and can be creative. Happy Professions 1. Serve others. Look at your profession as a means to serve and make others happy. 2. Make a living causing the least amount of pain to living creatures. 3. Eliminate mad deadlines 4. Ensure freedom to be self-dependent, take own decisions, be innovative. 5. Believe in hi-touch along with hi-tech. Because of late office hours, the corporate jungle takes an unimaginable toll on health and happiness. The endless deadlines, the deadly competitiveness, negatively impact the body. Nature’s ultimate survival mechanism of fight or flight becomes a chronic, totally inappropriate response. Due to constant job hopping, many executives find themselves in threatening environments surrounded by potential enemies. They have had no time to develop friends. Nuclear families build up explosive pressure due to the revolution of rising expectations, fuelled by the media. If we do not enjoy our work and feel overwhelmed by it, it will surely damage us. ‘Fast tracking,’ being a corporate star, will extract the inevitable price of lost happiness, if you are not aware of the impact of everything you do, on your system. You can start by consciously breathing slowly and calmly. • Plan to cut off from work on weekends. • Meditate. Take care of yourself. • Look at your life-goals and evaluate your job to achieve them. • Learn to say ‘No’. • Remember people are more important than getting promotions. • If you have a toxic workplace change jobs. • Know that you are more important than all material things.

Happiness Bytes

The world is in your drawing room, it is clamouring to change your life with more and more sophisticated toys. As a popular jingle 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. Let us replace stress with positive emotions that engender joy. Let us increase our Happiness Quotient (HQ). ‘I felt like a waterfall,’ said Diane Roffe–Stainrotter, gold medallist skier in the 1994 winter Olympics. The joy of a job perfectly executed, fills the body with the chemicals of bliss. Professor Mihalyi Csikzent speaks about a state called the flow, which athletes, musicians, surgeons—in fact everyone experiences when they are at their best. It is the experience of doing your job with total immersion in it. So absorbed are you, that there is no place for anxiety or niggling worries. ·Finding a job you love is one of the ways you can immunise yourself against health problems. A good marriage is a protective shield against heart attacks. The capacity to enjoy the free gifts of Nature—sunlight, rain or flowers starts the flow of the chemicals of bliss. It is in this gentle chemical bath that the body is able to replace dying and dead tissues. Merely avoiding negative emotions is not enough; one should consistently cultivate the positive emotions: love, compassion, courage and peace. Stress is the epidemic of the new millennium. Protect yourself.