Think Happy, Practice Happy, Be Happy...

'जगी सर्व सूखी असा कोण आहे, विचारी मना तूच शोधुनी पाहे'

The meaning of above master piece is simple and it goes, 'Ask who is the happiest person on Earth, ask it to your heart/soul, and you will find, it is you'. Isn't is simple, do you believe it? Even if you might answer it yes, I know deep down withing you don't trust it. Why? Well, the main reason is, we don't want to be happy. We always keep on finding excuses for not being Happy at a moment. We always want our happyness to be dependent on something, something which is not under our control. We always believe that Happyness is external thing, if someone does something, and something special happens to us then only we can be happy, is it true?
If we do a root cause of the Happyness, we found it to be internal. What we think within, what we feel within is what happyness is all about. It has nothing to do with the external things. As for our physical health, healthier the food we eat, healthier we become, similar happier the thoughts we bring to our mind happier we become. As usual, it is easy to write and hard to practice, but give it a try.

Choose your own reaction!!!

"nirlajyam sada sukhi" in English it means "an ashamed person is always happy." Now, don't stop reading further, because I am not gonna tell you to be ashamed to be happy, rather my point is to be happy, is your choice and you sure can control it.

There are always two types of things which are happening around you, one what you do and rest what others do. You can control your behavior, and hence you control your reaction, rather many times it is this end result, how you want to feel, that influence your behavior.

The difficult part is our joy and sorrow are our reaction to others behavior. Should and can we control this? My answer to both the questions is YES!

The answer to 'should' part is very important, we do need to always remember that its our life and we should decide what makes us happy or unhappy,this is nothing but owning our life in true sense.
Once you believe in the the fact that it is your right, then the second part of the question is, can we really do it? Simple answer is yes, but remember this is a journey, and it is tough one, but be sure the destination is worth it so give it a try.

Now two things which we need to check for others behavior are can we control it and second thing is can we influence it. If we can control or even influence the behavior then we should give it a try and try to put it on the right track. If we can neither  control nor influence the behavior then we are left with just one option and that is to accept it.

You will see that many things that disturbs us falls in the category where we have to simply accept it and move on. It is really very difficult to acknowledge this fact that there are many things which we simply have to accept, without any choice. Does that mean we are weak? Yes, we are, should we get disturbed for this, no just accept it!

Also please remember that we are discussing about the behaviour of others, it has nothing to do with your capability. The 'weakness' which is referred in above paragraph can actually become our strength if we really start detaching our reaction from others behaviour.

Communication :)

Communication is one thing that all living creatures are doing routinely, and is also one thing that many human beings complained about! Why is communication so important and why is it also an issue???
I want to walk you through a typical life of a person from the birth to may be until he/she starts attending the college.There are three important phases of a life that I want to focus on -1
Phase-I: Birth until a child can talk.
Phase-II: From the moment child learns to talk but without judging.
Phase-II: From the moment child starts deciding what to tell and whom.

Phase-I: Birth until a child can talk. In this phase a child can not talk and I am sure you might know many parents who have children in this phase of life, so how often do they complain about their child's limitation of communication? Do they say, that the child doesn't clearly tells them what she wants, what she like, why is she crying? Parent don't complain in this phase about the communication of a child, even though in this phase the only mode of communication for the child are non-verbal. That funny face, smile, cry, and many more symbols are what used by the parents to learn about the child's likes, dislikes, comforts, discomforts and so on. Is it not a difficult phase for parents? Sure it is, but do they enjoy it? Sure they do! Why? I think the answer is in the fact that they are so much available for their kid, they want to pick each and every signal a kid is sending out and they want to analyse it and learn from it about their kid. So the main things are time, attention and willingness to learn from the kid.

Phase-II: This is also a enjoyable phase for parents, your loved ones now starts talking and it talks about everything to you, she repeats you, she talk on things that make no sense to you, she many times embarrasses you in front of others by asking some difficult questions. Do parents complaint about too much communication? Again the answer is, many cases no! Parents do enjoy this phase of the parenthood too, and again they spend lot of time listening to kids, pay attention to what they say, and now teach them about language.

Phase-III: This is a very crucial phase for any parents.Your son or daughter have grown up and now they decide what to tell and to whom. They are no more those innocent creatures who will spill out everything to you about every thing. This is the phase of kids where many parents complain about their kid, not telling them or may be more worried about their communication or lack of communication. This does not happen with all the parents, and lets create two groups of the parents now, lets say AL-type and PL-type.
AL parents don't have much complains about their kids communication in this Phase-III, while PL parents  are more worried and complains about the lack of communication with their grown ups.So, why this happen?
AL, are 'Active Listeners': This group gives enough time, and attention to the one who is talking, they don't form the opinion based on their experience or perception but rather try to learn from the next person what exactly is happening and then when asked play a role of mentor, without judgement or prior opinion.

PL, are 'Pretend Listeners': Instead of listening to next person what she is telling and then forming an opinion, this group create its own opinion based on what they perceive. They are not more interested in what next person is telling if it is not enforcing their views. This group quickly jump to the conclusion, and without the next person asking it start dictating the next moves.

As you can see, AL group gives enough time, attention and try to learn from the next person while PL group also gives enough time, but pay attention to where they want to and don't want to learn but wants to teach. Because of this different approach, AL keep on building the trust while PL keep on loosing the trust, and trust is the one major thing which is required if we need open communications. The moment we realise that there are some hidden agenda, and the next person is trying to using us to get what they want, we start to keep few things to our self and that creates a barriers between the communication. That's why I will also like to call PL a 'Police Listeneres', we don't want to tell everything but we try to be diplomatically right in our communication so we don't want to upset them, but also wants to protect us.

Now, forget about parenting and kids and all, don't you see this happening in your team, in corporate world or in school, or in casual groups.So the question to you is, are you AL, Active Listener or PL, Police Listeners? Becausee, it is based on this choice of yours the next person is going decide what type of communication he/she is going to have with you. So, take a wise decision and enjoy the communications!

being in present

Remember the college or even school classes and the vital part of class, attendance sheet. The name is called and prompt goes the reply from students - 'present'

Physical presence of an individual is what we can measure easily, hence we are so obsessed with it. But the question is how important is a physical presence? Instead of just a physical presence I think the present tense is very important and magic is to be in a present tense not only physically but mentally.

Everyone stays in present tense physically, but the real trouble lies in mentally being in present tense. I believe that the concentration is nothing but being in present state mentally.

Concentration is a very important factor for anyone's performance in school, in sport and even in office. When we read or interact or do anything and we don't concentrate or don't be there in the present tense mentally then we no doubt miss the learning of that moment. We become less efficient and actually waste that moment.

Why is it so difficult to be in the present tense mentally? I can't even attempt to answer this question but this is what happens when we try to concentrate -
1) Distractions: We pay more attention to the other non important factors in our surrounding than what is important to us at that moment.

2) Live in the past or day dream: While performing one act, instead of we being in that moment we pay more attention to may be a similar experience which we might have had or may be we start day dreaming, may be preparing for the success party before it is all over.

3) Prepare our story: While listening or learning instead of paying attention to what is new to us, we start correlation of the thing with our experience and many times with our merits or challenges. Instead of acquiring, we start building walls in our mind...'this is a piece of cake for me' or otherwise 'this is not my piece of cake'.

How do we prepare ourselves? That is a million dollar question, some tips though are -
1) Always be aware: Always be aware, check whether your brain is with you, whether it is in that moment with you. If not, then accept it and try to bring it back.

2) Engage yourself: One more way is to engage yourself in what is going on, is by asking relevant questions and setting a target for yourself.

3) Take a break: If these tricks of being in present are not working, take a break, and come back with full energy and try to master your brain. But don't run away from the situation.

Excuses...

Excuse is a one single thing that stop you from doing a good thing for youself and for the society.

If you don't want to do one good thing then you can come up with many excuses for not doing it, but you just need one good reason to do it.

By nature human brain seeks easier solution and excuse is the outcome of that nature. 'I am too busy to do it, have no time' is one common excuse. One more frequently used excuse is 'every one else is doing it, hence I will do it'. When it comes to actions, we don't want to do anything different and better than the others; but when it comes to end result we want better than anyone else.

We need to understand one thing, what we give is what we get. If we don't give 'outstanding' input (through our efforts), then we will never get 'outstanding' output. If we keep on finding excuses for not doing great work then system will also excuse us from its list of top achievers.

So its our choice, which side do we want to be on, and please don't try to find new excuse for not picking a correct choice.

Success in a team!

So what contributes to ones success in a team? My take on this will be 2D - Dedication and Discipline.
For me if a person is 100% dedicated towards what he/she is doing while following a set discipline or by setting a discipline then no one can stop you from being a star performer.
We actually can look at multiple examples which can prove this -
a) Sachin Tendulakar, highly talented player, but what separates him from other equally (or may be more) talented player is his dedication and discipline towards the game.
b) Rahul Dravid, highly successful player, but did he carried the talent from his birth, arguably NO. He nourished the talent by his well know dedication and rigid routine.

Both these Ds are so critical because these can only be measured over a long period of time, and so thus the success!

Change!

Change is the most integral part of all living beings, and is also the most difficult part too. Why is it so difficult? I guess there are two parts in this answer-
1) We are afraid of change.
2) We are upset with the change.

So, what is difference between being afraid and being upset? We are afraid because we are not confident of our ability to face the change. There is something within us which doubts our capability to face the unknown and succeed. Our past failures or other failure stories contributes to this. This thing is very internal, you can overcome this by preparing yourself in a better way for the change.

Being upset is something external, there are some elements outside your control that make you upset. You being not involved in the decision of change, some hidden things can contribute to make you upset.

After knowing this, as a leader how do you prepare your team for a change. As a leader you should be as transplant as possible with your team, don't keep any hidden agenda from your team, show your team what exactly is expected from them and what they can expect when the change occurs. Showing a realistic picture is very important, you should not frighten the team by showing pessimistic view neither should you be too optimistic and promise them what is not expected to happen. Being realistic is very important because it can help the team prepare for a change in better way, thus taking care of their fear of change. Also it doesn't left anything away from the team thus getting them involved in the change and removing that uncertainty and hence the upset feelings.
So, be open, and enjoy the change with your team and prepare for bright future!