Life Purpose - Pathway to Highest Vision and Ecstasy

Here is a new post by Life Coach, Anil Bahl. His advice:

1. Simple, make a list of things you Love to do.
2. Look at, as how you can bring it in your everyday life – profession, service, creating awareness, contributing by sharing etc.

Two steps, and you are done!

When Nothing Works

There are moments in life, when nothing seems to be working. Things seem to be falling apart. Such moments in life, could be a great opportunities for big breakthroughs in one or more areas of your life. Here is a three-step and three-R formula to review and transform any situation in your life:

Reflect: What have you been postponing in your life? Is there something incomplete for long? If yes, this could be a perfect time to clean up your cupboard, financial matters and relationships.

Reform: Pick up a bigger problem, a larger goal, a grander vision. With a wider horizon, your current problems will either disappear or become too small to be 'classified' as a major setback.

Recreate: Who are you? If you are a magnet, then what do the current circumstances reveal about you? Where have been holding yourself back? Go beyond mundane issues of life, Identify your Highest Self, Declare your Highest Vision and work full-blast on your dreams!

Are these three steps enough? Or, do you have some 'Rs' to add?

The Productive Power of Siesta

I have always loved the concept of taking Siesta during working hours!

In fact, many Japansese offices have special rooms for employees to take a nap in the afternoon. Read more on Siesta in various cultures here. The Spanish Siesta is famous too.

ANI reports that "Google, Nike and Virgin Active are among some of the companies that already have facilities like dome-shaped, sci-fi-style sleep pods."

Recently, Tony Schwartz advocated "Why Companies Should Insist that Employees Take Naps". He identifies Naps as "powerful source of competitive advantage" and shares that afternoon naps are rejuvenating and "also improve perceptual skills, motor skills, reaction time and alertness."

Megan Hills lists "Ten tips for the perfect nap", the most important one being the advice to "Keep the nap to 20 minutes or less otherwise you wake in deep ‘slow-wave’ sleep which will make you feel sluggish and unfocused".

Back to my siesta pod!

BizVidya - Empowering Entrepreneurs in India

Recently, I have been involved with a new initiative - BizVidya - Empowering Entrepreneurs in India.

The latest post is on Ideas Worth Spreading from TEDxGurgaon:

After TEDIndia (held in November 2009 in Mysore), TED enthusiasts are showing up in various parts of India – a partial list is here: TEDxAhmedabad, TEDxBaroda, TEDxBengaluru, TEDxChennai, TEDxKonkan, TEDxMumbai, TEDxPilani, TEDxPune, TEDxShekhavati.

This list, at best, is a good start because the awareness about TED is still “poor”, to put it mildly. Many people who registered for TEDxGurgaon (held on Saturday, 27 February 2010 at Epicentre, Gurgaon), did not turn up (without communicating about their absence) and some attendees did not know about TED.

So, the task is cut out for us! Let us do our “two bits” in helping spread TED, a non-profit organization “devoted to giving millions of knowledge-seekers around the globe direct access to the world’s greatest thinkers and teachers”.

Read the full story »

Are you a Corporate Maniac?

Leadership Coach John M McKee talks about "Five warning signs of becoming a corporate maniac" in his latest blog post.

According to him, possible impacts of having a workaholic corporate maniac as a boss are:

• (S)he may become dysfunctional, making bad decisions and negatively impacting the entire organization.
• Additionally, the leader may create a sick culture.
• When you step into one of those environments, there’s a real flat feeling.
• Very little creativity occurs and workers don’t interact positively in many cases.

Are you on verge of becoming one these corporate maniacs? Checkout the warning signs here.

The Power of Ideas

Some bloggers (including yours truly) from Delhi have been invited for the coverage of the 2nd phase of “The Power of Ideas’ programme from The Economic Times.

This programme is an initiative to encourage anyone and everyone with an idea, to realize his or her entrepreneurial dream.

In the successful FIRST phase, an overwhelming 11, 000+ entries were received. Now, in phase 2, The Elevator Pitch, each short-listed candidate gets to pitch his idea directly to potential investors over the phone.

To prepare the candidates for this phase, a Mentoring Session has been scheduled where the participants are invited to meet experts and entrepreneurs.

The details for the event are as below:

* Date & time : April 21, 2009 4:30 PM onwards
* Venue : Kamani Auditorium No.1, Copernicus Marg, New Delhi 110001

Accelerated Urgency

Pleasures lull us.

Routines engulf us.

Crises consume us.

Sufferings suppress us.

Whether in comfort or in chaos, life of individuals and organizations run on an 'autopilot system' based of a series of HIDDEN assumptions (like characters in the movie - The Matrix).

Is there anything worse?

Well, yes! And, that is - Running on an 'autopilot system' based on a series of assumptions that you clearly KNOW to be false, BUT you do not have the time to TAKE NECESSARY ACTION.

You are so busy driving your car that you do not have time to stop for fuel. How long will that car run?

In the movie (The Matrix), the protagonist takes a RED PILL to know the truth (and abruptly wakes up in a pod, with his body connected by wires to a tower...).

You do not have that option.

So, how to break your zombie-like (self-)hypnotized state (in whichever aspect your life or work, you are stuck in undesirable patterns)?

The classic Time Management Grid tells us that we spend our time in four ways:

1. Firefighting (Crisis Management)
   
2. Creating Quality (Creation)
   
3. Getting Distracted (Interruptions)
   
4. Wasting (Trivia)
   

Most of the time is spent in Quadrants 1,3 & 4, which takes us away from our vision and mission.

Quadrant 2 times are rare. Where is the time for creating Quality of life?

How to break free from this bounded entity (which thrives in Quadrants 1,3 & 4 due to fear and short-sightedness)?

Heidegger says "any ontological interpretation which sets itself the goal of EXHIBITING the phenomena in their primordiality should CAPTURE the being of of this entity".

So, the BEING needs to be transformed.

How?

Heidegger continues "by doing violence [Gewaltsamkeit], whether to the claims of the everyday interpretation, or to its complacency and its tranquilized obviousness".

And, how do we continuously CAUSE this violence?

There are many ways, depending on what has lulled or suppressed or engulfed or consumed you.

One way is to bring in "Accelerated Urgency" every day.

John Kotter says:

The real solution to the complacency problem is a true sense of urgency. This set of thoughts, feelings, and actions is never associated with an endless list of exhausting activities. It has nothing to do with anxious running from meeting to meeting. It's not supported by an adrenalin rush that cannot be sustained over time.

True urgency focuses on critical issues, not agendas overstuffed with the important and the trivial. True urgency is driven by a deep determination to win, not anxiety about losing. With an attitude of true urgency, you try to accomplish something important each day, never leaving yourself with a heart-attack-producing task of running one thousand miles in the last week of the race.

He recommends:

• Use crises as potential opportunities
• Crises do not automatically reduce complacency
  
• To use a crisis to reduce complacency, make sure it is visible, unambiguous, related to real business problems... be exceptionally proactive in assessing how people will react, in developing specific plans for action, and in implementing the plans swiftly.
• Plans and actions should always focus on others' hearts as much or more than their minds. Behaving with passion, conviction, optimism, urgency, and a steely determination will trump an analytically brilliant memo every time.
• If urgency is low, never patiently wait for a crisis (which may never come) to solve your problems. Bring the outside in. Act with urgency every day.

This is very different from REACTING to urgent situations everyday. Take a simple quiz here to determine your "reactive" Urgency Index.

"Accelerated Urgency" expands your Quadrant 2 - Important but not urgent ACTIVITIES: Self-Development, Relationship building, Envisioning your future, Preparation/Planning/Organizing, Exercise/Recreation.

Ready to press the accelerator?