The Chanakya's Chant

Greetings Folks !! I'm back ! Sorry for being out of action for long, as my hectic work schedules keep me from pursuing my love of writing. Its has been a breakup of sorts, with the pen. I'm sure the pen now feels let down that I haven't been able to touch it for long. 

I've always been a huge fan of  Chanakya's teachings and consider this puny Brahman from 340 BC as the most intelligent man ever born on this planet. I recently came across a book (please go through the video trailer below) at a store, while searching for a set of notes. What struck me was the word "chant". My faint remembrances of "Chanakya" date back to the 80's when Doordarshan was the only channel available and a TV Series named "Chanakya" was being aired at 11 AM every sunday. (That was of course after we've watched "Mahabharat" and "Chandrakaanta" ... phew .... good old days eh !). The word "chant" somehow struck my inquisitive chords and instinctively, I picked up this book.

On a casual Sunday afternoon, I decided to read a few pages to see what it was about. By the time I could realise, I had discovered an entirely new dimension about how powerful human thinking can be. This is a book which is a quick, gripping read and one that that spans epochs in time, going back in time to the age of the king maker Chanakya, who succeeded by intrigue, intellect and a drive for revenge to install Chandragupta Maurya in the throne of Magadh, and Pandit Gangasagar Misra, a humble Pandit from UP who emerges as a modern day king maker, rather queen maker, by harnessing the power of the Chanakyan chant to install his protegee, Chandini Gupta to the throne of modern day Bharat, namely the prime ministerial position in India. The narrative moves swiftly between the past and the present, with the minutae of the events that changed the course of history as compelling as the machinations of those who manipulate voter banks and broker political deals in the modern day political and business environment.

                       

 

On that Sunday, I lost track of time. When I finally thought to give a pause to the day's readings. After about 6 hours and 250 pages, I realised I've come across one of the most beautifully written books by an Indian author. Chanakya is one character which we can draw inspiration from. He was way ahead of his time. No wonder he is one of the most talked about person of the foregone Mauryan Era.

If you ever get a chance to lay your hands on this book, I would strongly suggest that read it. It will take you a day, but what you will learn will be with you for a lifetime. If you dont find this book, please let me know. You're always welcome to give me a call and borrow this one from me. 

Adios folks ... am off to sleep ..... will keep writing ! 

Smell of a place (Part 2)

Thank you for the wonderful response to the previous part .... for an instance, reading that article must have made you to associate yourself with the kind of routine that you face in your day to day life. The human mind, perhaps, is the most complicated network system. Its a network of ideas, a network of thoughts. Its is also an excellent simulator. Why do you think "Deja-Vu" happens ? 

If you observe carefully, you will find that it is your mind that simulates various scenarios and moods and when you encounter a situation you have encountered before. Your mind searches through the "mood database" to find a similar simulation. You immediately tend to associate the current situation to that simulation and you get the "I've been through this before" feeling, which we term as "Deja-vu".

What is "Smell of a place"

Its fairly simple concept. I would like to present before you, two distinct scenarios.

Scenario 1 : 

An evening walk through a beautiful forest.

My trip to Auli in 2009 was an enchanting one. I had got off an early morning train in Haridwar, after spending a sleepless night in Delhi. Then was a tiring bus ride from Haridwar to Joshimath ending with a cable car from Joshimath to Auli. By the time I reached Auli, I was exhausted, but the view was spectacular. Right in front of me, was the heart of Uttaranchal. It was like standing in a football field, guarded by majestic snow capped mountains all around you. Amidst the majestic Himalayas is Sanjeevini Forest (one of the prettiest forests you would see in India) overlooking Nanda Devi mountain. I was standing 20 kms away from the Tibet border and could feel the fresh fragrance of pine trees in the air and there was a purity about the place. Unlike most of the other hill stations in India, I chose Auli, for the mere fact that it was not commercialized and is a stone's throw away from the Nanda Devi Biosphere, also known as the "Lungs of India". Standing there, I wondered, why people spend a bomb to visit places in Europe, when the roof of the world resides here.

The crystal blue waters of the stream, the unadulterated air , the smell of the woods was so enchanting, that it made me forget the 20 hours of sleepless travel from Delhi to Auli. Suddenly , just by the feel of the place, my spirits were lifted from being a tired traveler to a rejuvenated soul. Every minute spent on reaching Auli was worth it. Time seemed to stand still and everything seemed perfect. Planet Earth was looking so beautiful and charming, that it left you bedazzled. Awestruck, I decided to take a walk from the cable car station to my hotel (Clifftop club, is the only place to stay in Auli. The entire area is a non residential zone, covered by rich forests all around).

Try taking a leisurely walk in the woods of Auli, and I bet you can't. You would either pick up a stone, or jump to catch a leaf, you will definately do more than taking a leisurely walk. And no matter how many km's you walk through the forest, you will feel this sudden  rush of energy and enthusiasm sweeping across you. It is almost the perfect way to spend a day and you wish you were living in this part of the world rather than a bustling metro like Mumbai.

Scenario 2 : 

A sultry hot summer afternoon in Mumbai.

Taking you through a completely different scenario, imagine spending a sultry hot summer afternoon in Mumbai. Its humid, its hot and every moment you spend outdoors saps away your energy. If you can help it, most of the time you would sit in the comfort of your home / office and avoid going out during the day time, and would prefer an afternoon nap. Evenings are equally hot, as the humid sea traps the heat from escaping. This makes you feel lazy and even the simplest of tasks seems a herculean effort. Tired and exhausted (even if didn't move a bone all day) you desperately wait for the monsoon to begin and the summer torture to end.

The Smell of the Place
Deep down inside our mindset, we create the sultry hot mumbai summer atmosphere within ourselves and associate that to the weekdays. We tend to take our job as an atlas stone. A load which you would like to avoid but you need to bear it, as you need the money at the end of the month to survive. When you start off your day with the mindset of summer, you immediately associate every step that you take, as a pain and be exasperated.

Your work and the people become a liability. Everything seems boring. You tend to neglect opportunities and look at your job from a different prospective. This makes you feel lethargic and makes you wonder why this is happening to you. The reality is , that, you yourself are responsible for treating your day as a routine and viewing things in a negative manner.

The Challenge
The Challenge is to re-create the "Walk in the woods" atmosphere within yourself. Take a completely neutral view of things and then try to imply what you can do to change your environment. Pick up the stone, jump to catch a leaf. Avoid prejudice. The moment you adapt yourself to that mindset, you will see that it is after all, not as bad as it seemed. You will start observing the surroundings in a different way, see opportunities you thought didn't exist. 

A positive mindset is a job half done. You don't need to change the people around you for the environment to change. No matter, how hard you try, you cant change the mindset of others. What you can change however, is your approach towards them and how you manage to extract the best out of them which will work towards your advantage. The moment you recreate the enthusiasm that you associate with your morning walk in the forest, you will reap the benefits of positive thinking.

So, how does your day smell today ?

Smell of a place (Part 1)

Scene # 1 

A typical weekday starts with a very boring routine. It starts with a trigger, and an angry look at the alarm clock. You try to snooze it for 5 mins and then end up setting 2 minute alarms. Every minute of the early morning sleep is priceless. And then, when finally you decide to wake up, you curse the world on why it created "weekdays".

The struggle from your bed to the washbasin to brush your teeth, is the most agonizing one. Once you have managed to conquer it, you then look at yourself in the mirror, and the look says it all. Suddenly find yourself wishing - "I wish I was a billionaire and didn't have to bother working" (and if it is a monday, the wish is even more desperate and you are as dejected with reality, as a cat who's been drenched with cold water on a winter morning).

By this time, somehow, you have managed to wake yourself up. You decide to make a cup of coffee, your daily stimulant and then with the "I wish it was a weekend" mindset, you step into the shower. The shower brings you to reality and gets you ready for the day (atleast).

You then endure the greatest struggle of the morning. Leaving home and reaching office. If you are a typical "Mumbai-kar", God bless your courage. By the time you manage to squash you way into the local train, you can seriously debate that the number of people in your compartment would be equal (if not more) than the population in  Greek Islands. Crushed, crumpled and wide awake, you reach your office building, an effort that would be unparalleled to a marathon runner, who has just finished a 40 km run.

You are all set and walk into your office. The room are gray, the people are gray, your work is boring and what you end up doing is monotonous. Something you've done over and over again, for every day, in the past few years. There's nothing exciting to achieve, nothing monumental to prove. With a fabulously fake smile you announce your arrival by greeting everybody - "Good Morning" (a smile worthy of you being nominated for the oscars).

You see your popular junior walk in and you suddenly feel like the ring-master at jumbo circus who works hard to train the lion and when the lion performs, it takes all the accolades and you can only stand helplessly and watch your hardwork being credited to someone else.

By the end of the day, you are exhausted , come home and in your mind, you mumble – “one day less for the weekend to arrive”.

Cut to Scene # 2

A weekend morning. You feel fresh and energetic and burst to the washbasin to get ready for an early morning stroll in the park. You are relaxed, charged up and enjoy every step of your morning walk.

You come back, enjoy a leisurely breakfast, watch the world going crazy on TV, in the comfort of your drawing room, and then call up a few friends and decide what’s the plan for the evening. If nothing, you spend the rest of the day relaxing at home. If you are single, you would make yourself a drink, rent a DVD, order a pizza and watch a movie (the married ones are entrusted the weekend groceries and the ones in a relationship, often have to spend their precious weekend time with their partners). No matter if you are single, married or in a relationship, you would certainly prefer this day, rather than slogging yourself to the office on a routine weekday.

By evening, you are in a great mood (completely satisfied with the day), pour yourself another drink and listen to some music, catch up with a few friends online and update your facebook status for the week, before finally heading back to the washbasin, brush your teeth and retire for the day.

Food for Thought :- 

Ever wondered why we go through a completely contrasting mood cycle throughout the week ? Why do we consider the weekends more precious than the weekdays ? If you are the kind of person who endures this routine week after week, year after year, give it a deep thought. Think about it.

What I am about to discuss in the Part 2 of this argument is the "Smell of the place". What might really makes you feel this way. Again, as I said, no guarantee that this might apply to you, but might help you see a different prospective of your routine life.

Give yourself a serious thought and we will discuss about this in the next part. 

to be continued .....  

Human Minds (Part 2)

Welcome Back !! 

Now its time to ponder your mind and digest the food for thought that you had been munching, after reading the last post. I hope you've created a list of things which you have on your wishlist, but due to some or the other reason, have not been able to achieve / accomplish the same. 

Statutory Warning : I do not "guarantee" that this will work for you, but what I can say, is that I have found the following set of ideas very effective in application. Of course , all this is a collection of thoughts and ideas gathered after reading a vast number of forums and books. 

Here it is .... 

• Step 1 : A definitive analysis of non action
  Try to analyse why you did not act upon the idea. List down the various circumstances that were stopping you from implementing the idea. Here's an example : 
  
  
  Idea I didn't act upon :  
  I wanted to buy a plot of land for myself, but couldn't. 
  
  
  Reasons / Justifications I gave myself :
  I would not be able to afford the loan EMI's.
  I didn't have enough cash to pay the down-payment.
  I have other financial priorities.
  Land dealings have a lot of legal headaches.
  
  
  
  
• Step 2 : Deep dive into the reasons / justifications
  Look upon the reasons and justifications. How real are they ? how reasonable is the reason / justification ?  Try to find out what you could have done differently which could have resulted in your reason / justification to be frivolous. Here's an answer to the above example.
  
  
  A Proactive approach towards the reasons / justifications
  I would not be able to afford the loan EMI's.
  I didn't have enough cash to pay the down-payment.
  I have other financial priorities. - 
  
  
  What is your driver which is holding you back from paying off your EMI's ? You guessed it right, its your current monthly / annual income. While most of us are tied to our jobs, we can definately explore an alternate income route. It can be either you switching to a higher paying job, or doing a part time business (not conflicting with your current job) and trying to earn the extra buck. Of course, this would mean that no more day long hangouts with friends, very few picnics and trips, and a lot of personal sacrifice. But what it would also mean, is that you are moving one step closer to your end objective.
  
  
   It also indicates a liquidity crunch. You would need to save more, cut down on un-necessary expenditure and save money to ensure you have a sufficient pool of money to pay the down payment. Chalk out a clear distinctive line between "necessities" and "luxuries". You would find that the workable solution was right there in front of you, while you were giving yourself the reasons.
  
  
  Land dealings have a lot of legal headaches - 
  Its obvious. Thats a lame reason you have given to justify the three reasons above it. As you cannot find a solution, its a human tendency to highlight a negative point in an idea and label it as a "reason". 

The Concept - Comfort Zone factor - 

This is something which we all go through. The "Comfort Zone" factor. This is where the human mindset comes into play. Ever since we were born, human instinct and learning always makes you react to a situation and choose the most comfortable way out of the situation. 

If its too cold, you would immediate put on a sweater, if its too hot, you would switch on the AC. If you fear you'd get hurt, you'll avoid doing certain things. We instinctively choose the path in which we will not have to go through the hardship, even if this involves loosing the very thing we are chasing.

People do not want to appear for a tough exam, as they feel they are not "capable" of it. What derives that reason is the fear of failure, as they lack the willingness to work hard, go out of their comfort zone and study for that exam. 

This is exactly what you do, when you come across an idea. You would weigh it down, if you feel that you might have to work out of the way to achieve that idea, no matter how beneficial the idea might be. Its natural. Its what we all have been taught, right from the time we were born. We are like caged lions, who seek their solace in the comfort of the cell in a zoo, and do not want to go to the forest and explore our ideas. There is a difference. The lion in the zoo does not have a choice. We do.

Look at people who have been very successful in life. More often or not, you will find that they have gone out of their so called "Comfort Zone" because they had the passion to chase the idea, which many ridiculed as "unreasonable" or "not worth taking the risk".

All in all .... if you have the will to win, you certainly will ! 

Human Minds (Part 1)

The Human Mind - a Receptacle of Ideas - Introduction 

The first thought that triggers your grey cells, when one speaks about the mind, is – a nerdy science teacher in school, pointing out to an awkward looking chart titled “The Human Brain”, scaring us that we need to memorize this diagram to pass in the exam and reading out the definition loud and clear - 

"a center of the nervous system, located in the head, protected by the skull and close to the primary sensory apparatus of vision, hearing, balance, taste, and smell."

Actually, it is much more than that. Scientifically, the above definition stands correct. However, what the science does not define is , that if used potently, the brain is the most powerful tool in the world. The difference between the people who succeed and fail in life, more often or not, depends on the usage of this organ of the human body.

We are masters of our own situations. Over the length of time, we learn and implement certain ideas which we feel will work to the best of our advantage and scrap those which we think are “unreasonable and impractical”.  These are the ideas that often, at the back of your mind, tend to reflect upon your traits and characteristics.

What we do harbour in our brains are ideas which we have not yet implemented. In the due course of time, when we look back upon certain ideas, we regret – “Why didn’t I do this …… This could have easily been possible”. And then you get answers like – “Maybe I didn’t have the courage” or “I didn’t have the resources” or “the timing wasn’t right”.

Whatever the reason is , how compelling it might sound, how reasonable it might be , whatever it is, I would like each one of you, to actually engage yourself in the question –

“Can you think of any instance , in the last 3 years, that you had a brilliant idea to do something, planned to implement it, but however, could simply not do it”.

I’m sure most of you will raise your hands on this. Clearly, what most people lack, is the power to execute. The power to convert ideas to reality. The power to take a risk. The power to dream and be able to achieve the dream. The power to write your own destiny. The power to look at the future with your eyes rather than borrowed spectacles.

As an introduction to the series of arguments and discussions I would like to raise, based on my limited knowledge and experience, I would like to give you a food for thought, a small exercise. And do not delay, just pick up a pen and paper, and start writing -

“Think of three things, in the last three years, which you always wanted to do, but somehow, could not do it.”

This is not a lecture on the human mind, nor a science class on neotics. These are ideas which I believe will really make a difference in the way you assess your ideas and your ability to execute them. I do not promise any magical transformations, but what I can definately share, are the things which I feel might help you in putting thoughts to actions.

Just as a clarification, I have not "stolen" these ideas from the so called "Life Enrichment" trainings or "Personal Development" programs. These are just simple ideas which have come across my mind, and would like to share for the benefit of all.

If you haven't yet put down your three unexecuted ideas on paper, please do it NOW.

Thank you for reading. Part 2 will follow soon !!