Programming the Mind through Power of Beliefs

To understand the mind, we can divide it into two parts: conscious mind and sub-conscious mind. We use conscious mind when we knowingly think or do something. Some functions, like working of our heart, is not under the control of conscious mind. It is the power of the sub-conscious mind that makes our heart beat about 72 times per minute regularly for up to 100 years.

Psychologists have found that we can consciously be aware of only 7+ 2 items at a time. But our sub-conscious mind can be aware of a large number of items at any instant of time. For example, at any time, the sub-conscious is aware of many body functions including blood pressure, heart beats, body temperature, chemical balances, blood flow, taking care of emergencies, etc.

The subconscious mind is not under our conscious control. The sub-conscious mind functions on the basis of information stored in it. This is the basis of mind programming. Mind programming means that if we can put information in a person's subconscious mind, then we can modify the person's behavior.

The main difficulty is that the conscious mind does not let us put information in the sub-conscious mind. Actually the conscious mind analyses the information, and discards all that it considers false or non-useful. For example, someone who is not confident says to himself "I am confident". The conscious mind analyses this sentence and decides that this sentence is false and does not put this information into the sub-conscious mind.

Power of beliefs
A belief is an idea that we accept to be true. It can be a fact, a guiding principle, an opinion, or a faith in someone or something. We can have faith in our teacher or doctor, in the value of being honest or good, in the value of exercise for good health, in our ability to succeed, or in the value of reading newspapers, magazines, and books. A belief can be conscious or subconscious. Conscious beliefs mean that we know that we believe something. Subconscious belief means that we do not even know that we believe something. An example of subconscious belief is that we accept to be true what we see on the TV, what we hear on the radio, and what we read in the newspapers. Beliefs are powerful. Here are a few examples that illustrate how beliefs affect performance.

Elephant and rope
When an elephant is a small baby elephant, it is tied with a big strong chain. It tries hard to escape from the chain, but it can not escape. As the elephant grows, the trainers replace the big strong chain by small rope. Surprisingly, the elephant still remains tied to the rope. It probably thinks "There is no point trying ... I know ... I have tried before and failed ... I am tied with the rope ... I can not escape".

How some new world records were created
In the first half of this century, athletes and trainers believed that human body could not run a mile in 4 minutes. Then, in May 1954, one runner ran a mile in less than 4 minutes. In June of the same year, another person did it again. Since then, hundreds of people have run a mile in less than 4 minutes. It shows that the belief in impossibility was in the mind only.

In weight-lifting it was believed that 500 pounds was the limit for the human body. Many could lift 499, but none 500 or more. Then the trainers fooled a Soviet weight lifter Vasily Alexeev; the actual weight was 501.5 pounds, but they told it was only 499, and Vasily Alexeev lifted the weight. Once the belief was broken, many other weight-lifters were able to lift more than 500 pounds.

The magic of placebo
The magic of sugar tablets (also called the placebo effect) is well known to the medical science. In some placebo studies, patients were given sugar tablets that contained no medicine. But they were told that they were getting some powerful medicine. Many people got cured by sugar tablets. They got well just by believing that they were getting some real good medicines. The example shows how the mind affects the body.

In one study, educational researchers divided students of equal IQ into two groups. Teachers were told that one group had a high IQ and should get high marks. The other had a low IQ and should get low marks. What do you think was the result? The group which was told to fetch high marks really got higher marks than the other group.

In any sphere of life, realizing the power of belief is probably one of the most unknown and under-exploited human enterprise.

Does God select you for ...?

Arthur Ashe, the legendary Wimbledon player was dying of AIDS which he got due to infected blood he received during a heart surgery in 1983. From world over, he received letters from his fans, one of which conveyed: "Why does God have to select you for such a bad disease"? To this Arthur Ashe replied: "The world over --
50 million children start playing tennis,

5 million learn to play tennis,

500,000 learn professional tennis,

50,000 come to the circuit,

5000 reach the grand slam,

50 reach Wimbledon,

4 to semi final,

2 to the finals,

when I was holding a cup I never asked God 'Why me?'.

And today in pain I should not be asking God 'Why me?' "

Power of Failure

The following is the magical text of Commencement Address, "The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination,” by J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association in June 2008.

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.

The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I’ve experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world’s best-educated Harry Potter convention.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement. Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination. These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me. I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.

They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor. I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure. At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment. However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default. Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.

Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London. There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind. I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone. Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before. Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places. Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid. What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I’ve used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.I wish you all very good lives.

Thank you very much.

To access the original article, click
http://harvardmagazine.com/go/jkrowling.html

Lessons of Silence: What the deaf can teach us about listening and making ourselves heard.

During the last decade of my professional life, I have tried hard to improve my listening skills, and in the process got to read many articles on the subject. But the one reproduced below is just superb, may be God Sent. The article based on the results of an experiment on communication skills with deaf people is published in strategy+business by Bruno Kahne and can be accessed at www.strategy-business.com/media/file/leading_ideas-20080522.pdf

In December 2006, while developing a leadership program for Airbus, I met an executive whose youngest son was born without hearing. Through this man and www.WebSourd.org, a French-language Web site that he founded to offer online sign-language translation services, I became familiar with the silent culture of deaf people. As I immersed myself in their visual, intensely expressive language, I realized that through their “handicap,” deaf people had developed certain communication skills more thoroughly than most hearing people, which made them uncommonly effective at getting their point across.

Thus a radical experiment was born: to work with deaf people as communication consultants for our corporate clients. The idea was not to teach our clients sign language - although some of our deaf trainers remain convinced that such training would resolve many problems - but to help them adopt communication skills from the deaf world that would make them better colleagues and managers. When they interact with one another, deaf people act in ways that let them communicate more rapidly and accurately than hearing people. Some of these behaviors are simple and obvious, but it’s remarkable how often hearing people do the opposite. To improve your “hearing,” consider some of these lessons from our experiences and training sessions.

1. Look people in the eye. In my initial meetings with deaf people, I used an interpreter. That in itself was a strange situation: looking at one person while listening to another. During one conversation I was struck by something a young woman had “said,” so I started to write it down in my notebook. Suddenly the atmosphere changed. I looked up and saw the woman frowning angrily at me. I asked her, through the interpreter, what was wrong. “You are being very rude,” she replied. “Why?” I asked, totally lost. “Because you cut the conversation,” she responded, explaining that when I stopped looking her in the eye, I also stopped our communication. “I apologize,” I said. “But what you just said was interesting, and I didn’t want to forget it.” Her answer was quick and sharp: “No, Bruno. You don’t write to remember. You don’t remember because you write!” I was incredulous. “What are you saying? That because you didn’t take any notes during this meeting, you will be able to remember everything?” Calmly, she answered, “That’s correct. Since I don’t write, I’m more present in the interaction and I can concentrate more. And the more I do it, the better I remember.” Ten days later, when I met this young woman again, she was able to recall not just everything we covered in the original meeting, but also the color of my shirt, tie, and even how many chairs were in the room. From that day on, I stopped taking notes during meetings and interviews. And indeed, since then, my memory has improved.

2. Don’t interrupt. Deaf people follow a very strict protocol: Only one person signs at a time. If another person tries to interrupt, the others in the group shake their right hands to signify to the “interrupter” that he or she must wait until the “speaker” is finished. This approach to communication, which at first feels slow, is in fact extremely efficient because there is much less misunderstanding to explain or recover from. Consensus and agreement are arrived at more quickly than during a typical raucous overlapping conversation. By communicating sequentially, a deaf person ensures that he or she first understands the other speaker before trying to be understood. Try this the next time you’re in a business discussion, ideally one in which there’s some tension - let the other person finish what he or she has to say, then silently count to three before responding. You will find that, in the long term, slower is faster.

3. Say what you mean, as simply as possible. Deaf people are direct. This is why people with hearing sometimes perceive sign language as blunt to the point of rudeness. It’s not. It’s just explicit. The deaf tend not to hide behind soft language, struggling to find the most diplomatic wording and hoping that the listener will be able to discern what they “really” mean. And indeed, deaf people reveal not only their thoughts, but also their feelings, both positive and negative, more clearly than hearing people do, as they express them with their whole bodies. Similarly, the deaf are often far better than hearing people at finding the most economical way to convey their message. For example, I wanted to tell one of our deaf trainers about my last trip to India. I didn’t know the sign for India, so I was forced to improvise. I tried drawing maps with my finger, and then tried to come up with gestures for cultural symbols. Suddenly, I saw a light in his eyes. With a big smile, he took his index finger and placed it between his eyebrows - his sign for the familiar Bindi adornment - asking me to confirm. So simple! I later learned that the sign for Belgium, my native country, is to wipe imaginary beer froth from the lips with the right thumb.

4. When you don’t understand something, ask. Because sign language is a constantly evolving language - and because its evolution isn’t slowed down by the need to develop a written counterpart - new signs emerge all the time. Consequently, even if they use the same national sign language, two deaf people from different parts of the same country will use words unique to their region. Aware of this, deaf people feel completely at ease saying “I don’t know” or “I don’t understand.” Those of us with hearing aren’t nearly as willing to admit confusion or lack of comprehension.We often sit silently in meetings while our colleagues use acronyms or technical jargon we don’t grasp because we think asking for clarification is a sign of weakness. Ironically, we’d rather leave a meeting clueless than risk being perceived as stupid. Many meetings conclude with some version of “So, do we all agree?” which discourages anyone from saying no or asking questions. A better approach, which encourages people to speak up, is to ask each person, individually, whether he or she would like clarification about anything that has been discussed.

5. Stay focused. We all know how difficult it is to concentrate on only one thing when the phone is ringing, e-mail alerts are pouring in, and a colleague has just stopped by. The deaf cut themselves off from any distractions, they don’t multitask, and they focus their attention entirely on the conversation. In a recent meeting with some deaf people, I presented a new workflow chart. I gave them each a document outlining the program, planning to elaborate on it as they read the material. One of them stopped me and asked if they should first read, then discuss or first discuss, then read. Doing both at the same time was impossible to them - and of course, despite what we try to do, it is also impossible for us. These are just a few of the many communications behaviors we can learn from deaf people. But overall, the most inspiring thing about communication with deaf people - and the behavior most worth emulating - is their incredibly strong desire to exchange information efficiently and without adornment. This desire is so strong, in fact, that it often highlights how feeble, misguided, and wishy-washy our own attempts at dialogue are by comparison. It turns out that the people who are truly handicapped in communication are not necessarily those with a physical disability.

by Bruno Kahne
05/22/2008

A strategy+business exclusive

NB: Bruno Kahne is senior consultant at AirBusiness Academy, a training and research consultancy in Blagnac, France, serving the aeronautical industry.

Why should I increase my productivity?

This is a good question to think at all ages, especially when you are on the right side of life's bell-curve. What will I do with the time and effort I may have saved by becoming more productive or organized? Do I “spend these savings” and, if I do, what do I buy with them? There are many options:

1. I can go on working just as much, or more, and increase my monetary earnings. I will then have more cash, but still less time to enjoy it: the typical position of most “cash-rich and time-poor” people today.
2. I can keep my output (and probably my earnings) at the same level and devote the extra time to something else, whether that’s pleasure, voluntary societal activities, family time, or simply hanging out and enjoying life.
3. I can “bank” my extra time by investing it in learning and health, which will certainly bring me future “interest” in more learnings, yearnings and earnings, and ofcourse contribution and enjoyment.

I believe spending personal productivity gains on life's wrong “purchases” is foolish. Without any trace of hesitation I will settle for no. 3.

A letter from Abraham Lincoln to his son’s Head Master

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), the 16th president of the United States of America (1861-65) is one of the world’s great statesmen for all time. Lincoln rose from humble backwoods origins to become one of the great presidents of the United States. In his effort to preserve the Union during the Civil War, he assumed more power than any preceding president. If necessity made him almost a dictator, by fervent conviction he was always a democrat. A superb politician, he persuaded the people with thoughtful words and reasoned deeds to look to him for leadership. He had a lasting influence on American political institutions, most importantly in setting the precedent of vigorous executive action in time of national emergency.

Here is a letter written by Abraham Lincoln to the head master of the school in which his son was studying, a letter so typical of the man. It contains advice, which is still relevant today for executives, workers, teachers, parents and students.

"He will have to learn, I know, that all men are not just and are not true. But teach him if you can, the wonder of books.. but also give him quiet time to ponder the eternal mystery of birds in the sky, bees in the sun and flowers on a green hillside.

In school, teach him it is far more honorable to fall than to cheat.....

Teach to have faith in his own ideas, even if everyone tells him he is wrong.

Teach him to be gentle with gentlepeople and tough with the tough.

Try to give my son the strength not to follow the crowd when everyone getting on the bandwagon...

Teach him to listen to all men; but teach him also to filter all he hears on a screen of truth, and take only the good that comes through.

Teach him, if you can, how to laugh when he is sad... Teach him there is no shame in tears.

Teach him to scoff at cynics and to be beware of too much sweetness.. Teach him to sell his brawn and brain to highest bidders, but never to put a price on his heart and soul. Teach him to close his ears to a howling mob.. and stand and fight if thinks he is right.

Treat him gently, but do not cuddle him, because only the test of fire makes fine steel. Let him have the courage to be impatient.. Let him have the patience to be brave. Teach him always to have sublime faith in himself, because then he will have faith in humankind.

This is a big order, but see what you can do. . He is such a fine little fellow my son!

- Abraham Lincoln"

Why Crocodiles survived Dinosaurs by 65 million years?

• Crocodiles learn very quickly and adapt to changes in their environment. In particular, they quickly learn to avoid dangerous situations. In fact, it is tough to catch a crocodile twice using the same trick.
• Crocodiles learn by observing behavior. They recognize a pattern when animals come to the river to drink at the same time each day.
• Crocodiles cooperate in food gathering by forming their bodies into a dam to catch fish. They take turns with larger prey – one holds while the other eats.
• Crocodiles have community nurseries in which one mother watches over the hatchlings of many. They live and work as members of a group.
  
  The message is very clear to their recent (the last 100,000 years or 0.1 million year) fellow species, Homo sapiens, if they hope to survive at least few million years, if not 65.

A Bad Case for Good Health

• He commanded an army at the age of 16.
• He hated to listen to his father’s victories, because he thought there will be nothing left for him to conquer.
• He became a king at the age of 20.
• His empire was the largest in the world conquered by a single individual.
• He got 70 cities named after him.
• He had tenacity and determination to wander for four long years with his entire army in Hindu Kush mountain ranges (bordering present day Afganistan and Pakistan) to locate Khyber Pass to conquer India.
• He died at the age of 33, not in the battle field, but on sick bed.
• Bad health killed Alexander - the Great, at prime of his youth.

Change vs. Transformation

Most organizations (and of course individuals) today seek a Transformation in their business, yet most of them think of and talk about managing Change. The implications of this conflict will not be fully appreciated, until we learn to distinguish between Change and Transformation.

Change is characterized by ‘reactivity’. Most of us live in the domain of Change both as individuals and as organizations. Contrast this with the characteristics of Transformation. When a young, Cambridge-educated lawyer was pushed out of a train in South Africa because of his color even though he had a proper ticket, his first thoughts were in the domain of Change. “How could they? How dare they? And so on”. Yet he transcended the negativity of the moment because he was called forth by loftier aspirations to redress similar wrongs suffered by others.

Mahatma Gandhi in “The Story of my Experiments with Truth” narrates the shift from Change to Transformation so movingly. “I began to think of my duty. The hardship to which I was subjected was only a symptom of the deep disease of color prejudice. I should try to root out the disease and suffer hardships in the process”. Thus, we see that he first moved through the familiar signposts that signify Change. Suddenly when he discovered a higher sense of purpose, he began to discover the powerful ingredients of Transformation.

The characteristics of Transformation are positive and actually creative. They stem from a new found sense of purposefulness, once a higher purpose is discovered.

Clearly we all aspire to live in the domain of Transformation even if we presently are in the domain of Change. We now examine what is central to Transformation. Upon deeper probing, we discover that this sense of purposefulness has its source in what is called a Vision. Bernard Shaw once said, “You see things and you say “why?”, but I dream of things that never were and say “why not?”.

Thus, Vision becomes the highest sense of purpose. The infinite power inherent in Vision helps transcend from the domain of Change to Transformation.

Echo of Life

A son and his father were walking on the mountains. Suddenly, the son falls, hurts himself and screams: "AAAhhhhhhhhhhh!!!"

To his surprise, he hears the voice repeating, somewhere in the mountain: "AAAhhhhhhhhhhh!!!"

Curious, he yells: "Who are you?"

He receives the answer: "Who are you?"

Angered at the response, he screams: "Coward!"

He receives the answer: "Coward!"
He looks to his father and asks: "What's going on?"

The father smiles and says: "My son, pay attention." And then he screams to the mountain: "I admire you!" The voice answers: "I admire you!"

Again the man screams: "You are a champion!"
The voice answers: "You are a champion!"

The boy is surprised, but does not understand. Then the father explains: "People call this ECHO, but really this is LIFE. It gives you back everything you say or do. Our life is simply a reflection of our actions."

If you want more love in the world, create more love in your heart. If you want more competence in your team, improve your competence.

This relationship applies to everything, in all aspects of life; life will give you back everything you have given to it.

Youth

Youth is not a time of life - it is a state of mind, it is a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, vigor of the emotions, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over love of ease. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old only by deserting their ideals. Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear and despair - these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust.

Whether they are sixteen or seventy, there is in every being's heart the love of wonder, the sweet amazement at the stars and star like things and thoughts, the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing childlike appetite for what is to come next, and the joy and the game of life.

You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear, as young as your hope, as old as your despair. When the wires are all down and all the innermost core of your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then you are grown old indeed. But so long as your heart receives messages of beauty, cheer, courage, grandeur and power from the earth, from man and from the Infinite, so long you are young.

Secrets of Happiness

We are guaranteed the right to the pursuit of happiness, but most of us fall short of attaining this goal because we do not truly understand what we seek. If you want to be more successful in your quest, there are six secrets of happiness that you need to know.

First: You can't get happy and stay happy. Permanent happiness is an unrealistic goal because being in the same emotional state all the time is called "boredom." To experience happiness you need a point of comparison. Knowing that you are happy today means that you had to be unhappy yesterday. Happiness requires the ups and downs of life.

Second: The best way to experience happiness is to live in the present moment. This means to enjoy what you have while you have it. If you're in the midst of your long-awaited trip Paris, France, be in Paris. Don't be off in the future thinking about the next week's trip to Rome, or you will miss Paris. Also, don't dwell on unsolved problems you left back at home. Simply put, don't distract yourself away from the happiness of present experience, or you rob yourself of it.

Third: Know the difference between needs and wants. A "need" is for something essential that we could not do without. A "want," on the other hand, is an embellishment of a need. A want is something we desire but which is not critical to our physical and psychological well-being. We need food, but we may want a seven-course meal. We need shelter, but we may want a condo at the beach. It is important to satisfy our needs and some of our wants and not to get the two confused. Doing so only distracts from happiness.

Fourth: Be kind to other people. Doing something helpful for another person calls upon your inner strengths and virtues and generates a positive emotion. Kindness also focuses your attention away from yourself, and people are happier when they are not self-absorbed.

Fifth: Be forgiving. Forgiveness frees you to recapture the energy that you may be locking up in feelings of sadness and anger or with thoughts of revenge. Let go of the past, and forgiveness puts you back in charge of yourself and empowers you for the enjoyment of life.

Sixth: Practice gratitude. You probably have more to appreciate than you know. Intentionally look for the positive in your life, and you may find many small things to brighten your day, such as a friend's hug, a child's smile, or a stranger's kindness in a crowded checkout line. Learn to be grateful, and you will be happier. If you practice these "secrets" of happiness, the reward may be greater than happiness. You may experience joy. Joy is thought to be deeper and more abiding than happiness. The experience of joy gets us out of ourselves and in contact with something greater than we are. This deeper connection of joy includes but surpasses happiness and can stay with us and sustain us even through the hard times of life.

Defining Success

Let me share a personal incident from my school days. From class V to IX, I used to score poorly in mathematics, only occasionally the score crossing the 30% passing requirement. However, I used to get promoted to the next class based on aggregate percentage. On the contrary, the unchallenged regular topper in the class used to score more than 95%, hitting cent-percent many a times. No body knew the difference between two of us better than our math teacher. With some hard work under the guidance of my elder brother, I managed to score 45% in math for the first time in my life in class X half-yearly exam in the back-drop of a tough math paper. Incidentally the regular topper scored the highest score of 85%, which probably was one of his lowest scores in math.

On the day of the results, our math teacher openly congratulated me in the class with lots of kind and motivating words, but was conspicuously silent for the topper. Needless to say, this act of our teacher confused the topper as well as the entire class including me. After the class, the topper went to teacher’s chamber, sobbed and begged clarification for the differential treatment meted to him in the class in spite of he getting the highest marks and that too far ahead of the second-best. What the teacher told him in simple words has been my guiding principles of defining success for my entire life since then.

The teacher explained to him that he was a case of 95% plus and I was a case of 30% minus. Since performance-wise mine was better than him, I got the applause from him. One was a case of letting-him down and the other a case of pleasant surprise.

What’s the difference between success and failure, winning and losing? That depends on what software we have loaded in our mind. One idea about winning which is simply not true is that winning means excelling above all other humans in the world. Winning simply means ‘being better than you were yesterday’. It means improving and breaking your own records, not somebody else’s. Success consists of being, becoming and achieving the best you can – in every moment of your life.

Circumstances and environment play a major role in the success of a person. Everyone depends on other people and conducive environment to make their dreams a reality. Bill Gates would be nothing had he been born in Chad or Congo. One billion people of India would be even more successful than those living in Japan today, had our leaders not failed them to provide quality education after independence.

Circumstances must be taken into account if we are to make fair and unbiased assessment of a person’s achievements. Assessing in isolation of one’s environment creates serious distortions. It this distortion which in many people creates a feeling of inferiority, of being a loser and failure. Millions of people today are afflicted by such unfounded and illogical thoughts, fabricating their own distress and depression. We need to discard these unrealistic notions and decide to be happy with our own achievements. Be the best you can, possibly in the present circumstances, and you can legitimately consider yourself one of the most successful people in the world.

Application of Martial Arts Techniques in Public and Corporate Life

The following 10 attributes of Martial Arts techniques will help better personal and professional conduct in public as well as business life:

1. Concentration
2. Self defense
3. Respect for the enemy / problem
4. Continuous eye contact
5. Synchronization and timing
6. Mental and physical agility
7. Personal conduct in utmost humility, dignity & grace.
8. Low margins of error
9. Importance of training
10. Complete surrender to the teacher

Re-evaluation of personal belief

Before September 1994, I had never imagined the link between India's garbage disposal system and its export & tourism performance. The inter-relationship of poverty and garbage of Mumbai's slums with the occupancy levels of Hotel Taj and the passenger loads of both Indian & foreign flights to Mumbai never occured to me.

It all happened in 1994 immediately after the monsoon. Pleague, the dreaded disease of the past, broke out in Surat ( a filthy but super-rich diamond-processing town in Gujurat ) and started spreading to other parts of the country. There was red alert in India and in abroad for India. Suddenly the world was hesitant to accept Indian goods. The flights and even the people arriving from India were being fumigated. The tourists' arrival in India for the peak winter season plummeted and the tourism industry including the seemingly clean hotels and flights came almost to a dead-halt. The worst aspect of the ensuing disaster was its threatening vector property across provincial and national boundaries. And in the stake was my own and my family's lives, seemingly away from poverty and garbage.

We live in an extremely inter-related and inter-dependent world; whether it is poverty, pollution, garbage disposal, environmental degradation, education, illiteracy, health, commerce, investment, financial flows, terrorism, nuclear disarmament, governance, and you name it. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the fire & fog and currency crisis of SE Asia with all its global ripples and repercussions have confirmed the doubt, if any.

Those who create, manage and consume wealth need to have a vision broader than that of an accountant. Those who govern and make policies need to have vision of the planet, rather than their beloved self, company, community and even country. Let us not confuse the present crisis. Our future and fate is systemically inter-linked not only to ourselves but to our planet as well. Internationalism and globalization can not be reserved only for business, commerce and investment.