Prashant Nautiyal_BLP038_Happiness_September2012

Most of the people when thinking of the concept of happiness think of attaining some material things, things like a good job, cars, well home. In my opinion, happiness comes from within and if a person follows his religion like  the eightfold path of Buddhism as a reference, will find himself closer to happiness.

For example, Buddhist philosophy of Mindfulness is also practiced in SOIL as one of pillars and is one of the pre requisites for a happy life. Being mindful relates to being aware of the present moment, appreciating what’s in front and all the good things in life. When we are truly present in the moment and are free of thoughts of past and future, we are truly mindful which Buddhist monks practice.

Various texts are available which also suggest that a person’s long-term happiness depends on his ability to notice and appreciate the details. He should be able enjoy little things in life. In this way even if things go wrong you’ll feel unhappy instead of disappointed and will drive towards making best use of getting out of the situation.

Another suggestion various texts like “The Monk who sold his Ferrari” and Japanese Philosophy is of kaizen. Kaizen means constant and never ending improvement. When a person decides to live his life with the principles of kaizen he follows a path of self-mastery and improvement, which helps in giving him a sense of direction and deep satisfaction.

In my opinion, by following the above thoughts and philosophies one can charter his path of pursuit of happiness. Happiness may not be permanent for us beings involved in the rat race unlike monks, but we should strive to apply these in our life to reap maximum benefit.

Prashant Nautiyal_BLP038_Self Leadership_September 2012

At the starting of each semester in SOIL, we have been blessed by Anil Sir’s lectures in Business Leadership Program. Today, the lecture started dealing with what everyone had in his or her top of the mind. It was our first class of the semester and we spent first hour self-introspecting on the recent tragedy in which we two innocent lives were lost.

We were asked to share our learning’s from the tragedy in which the class with heavy heart participated. While remembering the innocent lives, we all realized that how short and full of ups and downs is our life, and every moment should be lived to the fullest.

After our share of remembrance and learning from the event, Anil Sir started the topic of Appreciative Inquiry and asked us to share in groups of two questions:

When were you at your best in SOIL

When was SOIL at its best and when were both aligned towards a common purpose?

After an hour of sharing in groups of two, Anil sir facilitated the procedure of AI by appreciating each and every person present in the class while the stories were being shared with rest of the class. We were really impressed by the way Anil sir identified the unique gifts and quality of individuals by their stories. After the round of each and every individual was done, everyone could feel the positivity in the room, and it was an example of how positive thoughts creates a positive atmosphere around us.

At the end of the session, we thanked Anil sir for letting us experience the positives of AI in his unique manner.

Prashant Nautiyal_BLP038_Self Leadership_May 2012

The first formal lecture of our BLP course started with lessons on Self-leadership. 

It started with Mr. Anil Sachdev making us aware on the understanding of Body, mind and soul. It helped us in introspecting and clearing out thoughts that should we approach life and be aware as a body or as if we are the mind, or should allow ourselves to connect with the soul, and through that, channel our mind and body. 

 We were made aware of the 6 layers of Self :

Body, Instinct, Mind, Brain, Ego and the Life Giving Force(The supreme self-our soul).

Then the session delved into the concept of thought,instinct and owner. The mood of the session continued touching on the layers of identifying yourself as the instinct or the owner of that instinct.That instinct may be formed on  your past experiences and our environment. 

The power of instinct and our perception was beautifully explained by the example by a scene where a person was shown a scene with a splash of red color after hearing a scream.

The we were introduced with different sources of communication in our life clubbed with amazing group experiments 

1. Beauty lies in the eye of beholder

Eyes are window to the soul and a very powerful source of communication and may project very subtle/ finer things about ourselves.

Eye experiment - We were asked to explain an important event in our life first through

1. Only through out eyes.
2. Only through gestures.
3. Only through eyes, gestures and Lip movement

We were amazed to find that our past experiences got in the way of interpreting the events being conveyed by the other person by going through above experiment.

2. Don’t Hear, Listen

Hearing experiment 1: 3 guys were asked to tell us an experience which had an profound effect in their life.

The audience was asked to respond differently to each orator.

The inference that ultimately speaker adjusts himself according to the listener and more importantly: if the listener is interested the chances of a great communication increases many folds.

Hearing experiment 2: We were asked state our views on a topic as an another person acted as our alter ego who had to rephrase the our statement in his own words. This process was repeated till the alter ego was able to rephrase the first person exactly.

From the above experiment we found that there was gap between statement and understanding even when the alter ego was sure he has got the point. Also, repeating the inference in front of the person made it clear to fill the gaps

3. Touch  

Touching experiment1 : A guy was selected and he was asked to close his eyes and guess the emotion conveyed by the other person just through the power of touch: 

From the above experiment we found out the guy was able to experience the emotion conveyed by the other person in most of the cases without the use of hearing and seeing sensation

Touching experiment 2: Started with a group meditating with awareness of the emotions and then trying to heal the problem of a person together by focussing on it in a group

I was amazed to experience a sense of harmony by awareness and the magic of touch in a group.

Touching experiment 3 : we were asked to hug everyone in our batch, even if we didn’t knew them before : 

I felt a sense of bond after hugging many of our batch mates, which would not have been made if communication was only through hearing and seeing.

I’ve started believing that touching is a very strong force of expressing yourself and can have a deep impact on receiver.I would be focusing and improving a lot on this medium of communication as i believe i can make my relation in professional and personal life by a lot better. 

The session ended with him stressing on and discussing following/ working for a cause as working for a cause transcends all the limits and we become a true and inspired leader.

With inspiring examples of Anna Hazare, Kiran Bedi we ended our first day’s session with me self introspecting on my way back to home.