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.