What I really observed today was that how powerful impact a
great orator can make on you, even when you are subconsciously trying to
counter a lot of arguments, because they are not that logical to your mind.
That’s what happened to me when Mr. Anil Sachdev gave an
inspiring and thought provocative lecture on Self Leadership. A train of
thoughts is coming to my mind as I write down my reflections in form of a blog.
Is it really my place to put together everything that he taught in a nutshell?
I don’t think so, but I can certainly try to provide my thoughts on today’s
proceedings.
Well, for me the day really started with what became the
day’s most difficult question for me. What is the most important question that
should be asked if we want to self lead? We all came up with various questions,
but what appealed to me most was the question asked by my colleague Mr.
Devendra, he asked : “Who am I and what is my purpose?” This question has
haunted me and I think most of us all of our lives. But I found it true that
without knowing answer to this question, nobody can self lead. In fact nearly
at the end of the day Mr. Anil also gave a powerful one liner which truly
supports this question.
“If you have a higher
purpose in life, you will be successful in everything you do.”
After this activity we were presented by a 6 layered model
for self-awareness. This model constitutes the following:
Now answering the question “Who am
I” can be easy when we know that my body, my instinct, my mind, my intellect
and my habits are not me , they are all the objects, rather my consciousness,
my soul, my life giving force is me.
- Body is just our outer appearance, and a self aware human being can not care less about how good he looks. But all the things that we do with our body, like seeing, hearing, sensing, acting are the things that shows how our inner self is.
- Instincts are our reactions towards external stimuli, hence the saying “I own my instincts, my instincts don’t own me” says it all.
- ‘The mind’ and ‘the heart’ can be interchangeably used. The mind is the one voice which comes in the head for reaction of anything, and as it is said numerous times “Follow your heart”, I think the first thought that comes to our mind is always the right thought.
- The brain is the part of our body which most of the times second our opinion about everything.But it’s also a necessary thing to rationalize every decision we take. That is why the saying goes, “Reaction is not the leadership, but the Response is.”
- Ego is an overall term for all our habits, our fears and all the things that we think about ourselves.
- The last thing that can be called as Me and I is The Soul, The Consciousness, the life giving force, that we can invariably call as The Mindfulness. This is real me.
After having an incredible discussion about the above model,
we were presented with various examples of self leadership, where we came to
know how greatness can be achieved not by being in great positions in our
professions, but by the virtue of our living no matter what we are doing.
After that we were presented with an exercise, which
concentrated on three of our senses, i.e the eyes, the gestures, and the lip
movements. During this exercise we came to know how eyes can be used as a tool
to really understand a person and have a peek into his/her soul. We also
learned that when we are trying to read the gestures of other people, we are
often clouded by our own judgments, previous experiences and tend to connect
those emotions with ours.
The next activity was listening. The motto of the exercise
was to know how a good leader should necessarily be a good listener. And here
the emphasis was given to “Listening” not just “Hearing”. The power of
listeners was really revealed with that exercise and we came to know that a
good Orator can never be good, if the listeners are not attentive. If only we
could tell what we really want to tell, and nothing should be “Lost in
translation”, the world would be a peaceful place to live in.
The power of touch was emphasized in next exercise and what
I learned was that even if it is not really making a big effect physically, it
always heals you emotionally. During all those “hugs”, I felt kind of peppy and
it was like a soothing and healing experience for me.
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