Happiness - A State of Mind

I am a bit impatient when I drive. Those who know off Indian roads, know well that the rules of the road are seldom followed. This irritates drivers like me who follow rules.  When people break the rules, I would swear, "Son of a b$x!\@".  I would not wait to think as to who was with me in the car. One such day 7 years ago, when someone broke the rule, I was about to scream but my 4 year old beat me to it. She said, "Dad, son of a b$x!@" ???  I felt terrible and told her not to repeat that again and apologized to her for doing it myself.  When I got back home I was reminded of an old story of a New York Cabbie.

In New York, many don't follow the rules of the road. A person traveling in a cab saw how the cab driver was managing the traffic. He was driving with a huge smile and humming to himself despite many cars cutting him off on the road or plain just breaking every rule.  The person asked the cabbie, "Are you not upset with these guys who just don't follow the rules?"  The cabbie replied, "Sir, everyday, many people throw garbage at you. This could be in the form of abuses or just irritating you by not following rules or doing something that gets to you.  We need to remember that it is left to us whether to take this garbage on to us or not. If we decide not take the garbage, life is that much more peaceful."

The story taught me a very important lesson in life - People can do anything, but each of us can decide how to receive it and this is what results in how we react to the situation.  If we decide to remain positive and happy, no one can take that away from us.  If we decide to blame everyone else for the situation that we are in and behave like a victim, no one can bring happiness to an unhappy soul like us.

I have seen many people who are in a very good situation in life but are unhappy because something has not worked out in their lives.  I have heard of situations where people get tensed and remain unhappy because they did not have a new dress to wear for a party in the evening.  It would be great if such people just paused and thought of the millions of people who do not even have a proper dress to wear or more than one meal a day. As the great Indian Poet Kannadasan once wrote, "There are millions of people worse off than you. Think of them and the situations they are in and you will get peace of mind." (This is a poor translation of what he wrote in an Indian language called Tamil).

I have also seen so many people who live happily despite all the problems that they face in life. They overcome their difficulties and keep moving on cheerfully. These are the people who are the real heroes in life. Just imagine the world where everyone in the morning train that you take to work actually exchanges a smile with each other...a smile can go a long way and it is one commodity that gets returned by the other person with a very high rate of interest!!!  Yes, happiness is state of mind and you can decide to either be happy or not. If you decide to be happy, no one or nothing can make you unhappy.

Whatever happened to trust

I was watching the flight path on a flight. The screen changed and I could see the map of the country in to which we were landing...below the map I noticed the following words - "This map depicts the physical boundaries and should not be interpreted as the political boundaries."  guess the airline was being careful as any misrepresentation could ground them or cause a problem that would be expensive.

It is a real shame that every thing we say must have a qualification or some fine print as in the case above.  The legal consultants have a field day with this.

In every walk of life, we have got in to a bad habit of wondering what are the liabilities attached. Eg. The doctors ask for all tests to be done because they are worried that patients will take them to the cleaners if something went wrong later.  This has actually increased the cost of health care in all countries and getting health insurance has also become a problem.  The same goes with other professionals.  A large part of the fee that we pay professionals is today an overhead related to "Professional Indemnity Insurance".  Chartered Accounting firms pay millions of dollars of out of court settlements to manage this. The same goes to doctors.

I was driving in a taxi in London and chatting with the taxi driver. He was telling me that after dropping me off, he had to go to school to pick up his child. He went on to add that these schools call him or his wife if their child is suffering from a cold. They say that the school will not accept children with symptoms of flu because this will impact other children (absolutely correct stance to take) and it could lead to litigation later if parents feel that the child was neglected by the school.  He told me with a sad smile on his face, "This never happened when I was at school. The teacher would just take me to the sick room and ensure I was taken care off.  I would be asked to rest and then go home when someone came to pick me up at the time when school was over. The school would take a call if it was serious enough to take the child to a hospital and inform parents.  Today, parents are called if the child just sneezes."

Gone are the days when I would just cycle up to my friend's home hoping that he was there. I would turn up and his whole family would welcome me with a smile on their faces.  The same would happen when he came over to my home to play.  Today, we do not go over to someone's house without calling.  While in smaller towns and villages in India you do see people walk across few streets to visit one another, this is just not prevalent in larger cities. Even in cases of emergencies, we ask friends if we can come over. What is friendship if it needs permission at all times?  I do understand not taking someone for granted and for respecting privacy. But, are we forgetting how to live as a society?

The underlying tenet of most of what we do is trust. If there is a deficit of trust, it would become difficult to live.  We are now making it difficult for ourselves to live.  Our laws are enacted to punish the handful of people who live in this society. Yes, laws are needed to ensure we live in safety...but, I am not sure that it would be a great life if we were to live because laws exist. It would be a better place if we live because trust exists and laws are there only as a safeguard.

In pursuit of growth...

Someone said, "Today, we have larger houses but smaller hearts; more convenience, but less time; lesser children and even lesser time to play with them."  In countries like India and China we have seen unprecedented growth over the last 20 years.  While the countries have prospered and per capita incomes have gone up substantially, I can clearly see a deterioration in the quality of lives. And, as is stated in the poem Leisure, "What is this life if full of care; we don't have time to stand and stare?"

Those who suffer the most are children. They do not have the childhood that was there 40 to 50 years ago.... where we could spend time playing, going to someone's house un-announced, when we could have a great laugh, when playing meant on the field outdoors and not in front of your TV or Computer or Mobile, when condom advertisements did not have 11 year olds as models - when children were children - not adults.

Today, we spend hours in front of our television sets - even, this is not a social event in many houses - they have a TV in each room so that there is no fight for the remote control.  In many homes, families even do not have 1 meal together on the dining table.  There are many couples who just meet over the weekends as they work different shifts and each one is sleeping when the other leaves for office or returns from office.

I am reminded of a beautiful story...a very rich man ( lets call him Peter), was on a holiday and he was sitting on a pier and fishing. The lake in which he was fishing was quite beautiful and he was enjoying the scene when he saw another man (lets call him David) fishing. The difference was that David was actually catching more fish than Peter. So, Peter walked up and asked David, "What do you do for a living?" "Fishing" was the reply he got.  So, Peter said, "You are a great fisherman. Why don't you start a larger business in fishing?" David responded, "And do what?"  Peter said, "Oh, you can get more boats, more fish and actually sell your fish all over the country."  David responded with, "And then?"...and the story goes on with Peter explaining to him how he can catch so much fish and then set up a factory, export fish, etc.  Every time he got a response from David, "And then?"  So, finally Peter said, "Hey, you will become so rich that you will have enough money to come across to a beautiful lake like this and relax and fish.  Don't you want this?"  David said, "But, that is what I am doing now anyway!!!"

As in this story, many a time, we forget why we started or do things in life.  In pursuit of growth, we forget that all this growth, all this money, etc. is anyway to be happy with our loved ones. To enjoy a peaceful life with good health...to enjoy a life where you can sleep well...and, we forget all this. We give up everything to grow and at the end of the day, like, Peter, forget why we started this journey.

Pursuit of growth is necessary, but like everything in life, needs to be in moderation.  Growth at the exclusion of many will not help anyone in the long run.  All this social unrest, income disparities, difference in life styles, etc. that we see across the world is due to this lop-sided growth.  We, as leaders, must decide to make a difference to every society in which we live.  But, it would be great, if we can first start at our own house and make that a real home.

Speed

The car in front of me was not moving fast enough. I kept muttering under my breath, "Move, move..", but only I seemed to be hearing these words.  Similarly, in life, we find that we move at different speeds to each other. Every day we see a little child scurrying to keep pace with the parent, the man/woman struggling to keep up with the dog that s/he is taking out for a walk, the elderly man tyring to keep pace with the teenager and so on....some are faster than others and we all know that the pace at which someone moves, either physically or mentally, differs from person to person. 
As I listened to the person in the meeting, I knew that he had not got the point I was making. My first thought was, "Gosh, this person has just not got it!"  I reacted by cutting him off in the meeting and carrying on the discussion from where I left off as the others had understood what I had to say. How many times have each of us done this in our lives? I am pretty sure all of us do this in our daily lives, not just at work.

When we are slower than others, we always want the others to wait for us.  However, when we are faster, we seldom wait for others.  I struggle with this and am trying my best to slow down for those who need me to and catch up fervently with those who do not wait for me....I must admit that this has been a struggle for me all through my life. This impacts us significantly in our daily lives.

At work and at our home, we seem to get upset with each other when speeds differ.  This causes tremendous stress in our lives and seldom do we realise that if we are able to adjust speeds, we will do ourselves a lot of good.  At work, I have seen some of the best leaders fail because of this. They run at a speed that others are left gasping.  Further, they have little tolerance for those who are not able to run at their speed. They show this by rewarding only those who run at their speed or just ignoring few in conversations.  While it causes stress to those who are slower, these leaders also suffer from stress at the time when organizations collect feedback from employees on how satisfied they are with their leaders.  Typically, we would see the Employee Engagement Scores not being very good where, as individuals, we are not able to strike a balance between speed, agility and the emotional aspects of working.

This is so true at home too where our elders are not as fast as us.  More so if they are really old.  They want to be involved in conversations, hear only a part of a statement and ask questions.  This really irritates us and we end up saying something harsh that can upset them.  This not only upsets them but they feel cut off and lonely after that.  There is, therefore, a real need to stop, think and act in such situations - easier said, than done.

How do we then get around this?  I have, over the years, come to realise that we get better at managing speed differences as the Emotional Quotient (EQ) in each of us increases.  While, I believe, that most of us know this, we do not consciously try to train ourselves to see how to get more of EQ. We tend to be happy with the IQ bit.  Not that IQ is not important. A good balance really helps. As we grow as leaders, EQ is a must and without that, individuals and, the corporations in which they work, will struggle in the long run.  Most companies have realised this and are trying to get this woven in to their leadership skills matrix, training, work practices and rewards and recognition structures.

John Kotter of Harvard Business School: “Because of the furious pace of change in business today, difficult to manage relationships sabotage more business than anything else - it is not a question of strategy that gets us into trouble; it is a question of emotions.”  This is so true in our personal lives too.

There are rights and rights...

The Right to Information, the Right to Education, The Right to Employment, Right to Privacy...all these are rules and laws that the governments of the day are enacting.  As I was pondering this, I was thinking of the thousands of laws that we have, many of which seem ineffective and some archaic.  The Law I really like is the British Common Law - it is unwritten and is managed in Courts through applying precedents to the current context of society and the case that has come up for a judgement. It leaves it to the conscience of the judge to rule based on basic tenets of society.  I wish these Rights are also given through unwritten laws like the British Common Law so that they can change easily with time.

While hearing everyone scream from the rooftops on their Rights and all this noise around India Against Corruption, I was happy to see that people were ready to come to the streets to join hands to force the government to take some action.  What I have not heard in all this din is our duties and responsibilities as citizens.  Will we accept the government slapping us with huge penalties for say breaking a traffic rule - if it really does this, the government will not run any deficit financing - the daily collection will run the government itself. Will the same people not bribe but accept punishment for any infraction of law that they could have done?  It is good to shout for Rights but it is equally important to understand our duties and ensure that we are committed to them so that we can live peacefully as a society.

In our daily lives we see and do so many things that do not deliver to our duties - speeding, rash driving, cutting across lanes, disrespect of traffic lights, throwing trash all over the place, spitting everywhere, bribing to get our work done, etc.  These are all our duties and we don't deliver on them. If we do not do these, why should we expect anyone to give us our rights only?

This is a two-way street and we need to play ball and then expect everything else from the Government or anyone else.  We should also be ready to face the consequence of non-compliance. As a society, we are poor at dishing out consequences and also facing them.  Why is Singapore where it is today? It is the discipline that their Prime Minister drove through severe penalties for breaking the law and also ensured that these penalties were implemented ruthlessly when broken.  Neither do we have harsh consequences nor do we implement existing laws rigorously.  Only if we do all this, will the common man have a peaceful life.

I read an interview of a young politician on whom the future of India seems to ride quite a bit as of now.  He said that if we want to clean up politics, please don't just talk.  Come in, join politics and help us all clean the system.  He accepted that there is rot but said that all of us are to blame for this. I completely agree with him. If you want change, then, be the change.  Don't expect everyone else to do things for you while you spend your life only thinking of yourself and possibly your family and not bothering about what is happening around you.

I watched the traffic constable braving the 35 degree sun, trying to bring some sense of order in to the absolutely unruly and endless stream of vehicles.  He was doing this relentlessly right through the day, inhaling the dust and smoke. He did not have water to drink or the time to answer nature's calls.  Even if he wanted to visit the rest-room, there was none.  I walked up to him and offered him some fruit juice and water. I also told him that he could come over to my house just down the road and use my rest room when he felt like it.  When you put a person in to this situation, what would you get? Only anger, frustration and a behaviour where he will wait to take out his frustration on some hapless passerby.  What can you do to make his life easy?  You can...just follow the traffic rules!!!  Is this asking too much of you?  Would you like to be this traffic constable? 

Working out of our air-conditioned offices, we sermonize on what needs to be done by everyone else in life except ourselves.  Let us all pause for sometime, think of all the duties we have to ourselves, to our families, to our colleagues, to friends, to the society at large and then demand our rights.  We, then, actually have a right to demand for our rights!!!

Inclusivity

History has told us how countries dominated the world at different points in time.  During my time, I have seen UK and US dominate the world.  As the dominance of UK declined, US took over. Over the last few years, I notice that the US is on the decline.  Each country adapted their style and the methods used to dominate the world. While the UK used firepower (cannons), the industrial revolution and its inventions, language (making English as the only official language, medium of instruction, business and law), brazenly taking away wealth from colonies, the divide and rule policy, etc., the US used economic power, sanctions through International Organizations like UN, World Bank, IMF, etc. as well as military power (significantly better air power) and dominated the world.  Along the way, they have made the US Dollar as the global currency, created multi national corportions that edge out local companies in acquiring wealth and resources in different countries due to their superior economic prowess.

Most countries that try to dominate the globe for resources do so for a period of time but when the decline sets in, it is really difficult to recover.  Decline sets in because something else is more important to the world and this country has not spotted it early enough to dominate the trend.  Decline sets in because the country could have become arrogant about its position and wants to grow at the cost of other countries.  Decline sets in when the country does not want to share its knowledge with other countries in the world. Decline sets in when countries stop innovating.

What is needed is inclusivity.  India was the global power thousands of years ago. The knowledge that was available was not shared with anyone else in the world. This started the decline of India. The knowledge gained over thousands of years stands lost today.  The Nalanda and Takshila Universities (the best known universities in the world in those times) do not exist any more. India prides itself for having known many concepts thousands of years before these were touted as being invented. So much was lost because the knowledge was shared by word of mouth and in coded form only to few and the rest of the world was excluded.

I believe that no single country can survive at the cost of other countries.  Nature has given us enough and we need to know how to use these resources responsibly and to share it with everyone else.  Governments of the day can ill afford to ignore this aspect. They need to plan well to ensure equitable distribution of wealth.  Yet, we do not pay attention to this and over 50% of mankind lives in poverty.  The back office industry is a classic example of how companies can make a difference to different countries by putting their work across the globe rather than just one or two.

The social unrest, the naxalite movement in India, terrorism, civil strife, etc. are all as a result of economic issues that have come about because of inequitable distribution of wealth.  Just like no one country can survive at the cost of others, no individual or set of individuals can live at the cost of others.  We need to remember this and ensure we do something about this actively.

Yet, in our daily lives, we seem to be self-centred. There is so much happening in our own lives that we barely step back and think as to what we can do for others.  It need not always be giving money to help someone.  We can help by giving our time, our knowledge or what ever else that is needed by those around us.  The joy of giving can only be experienced and not explained.  I was at a home for the visually impaired. The children there wanted volunteers who could help read books out for them so that they could write that down in brail and be able to read it when they were studying for their exams. The home did not want my money. It wanted my time to help those who could not see this world as we do.  It was paradoxical.  The numbers who can see and read far outnumber those who cannot. Yet, they don't seem to be helping out their bretheren to come in to the mainstream of life.

I will repeat a story that I have told before. It is about a rich farmer who had bought few thousand acres of corn fields.  His neighbours were poor and were not making money out of their fields because they could not afford to spray their fields against pests and these pests had destroyed the fields.  He had the option of buying them out.  Instead, he decided to spray his field and theirs too.  He did this for 3 years in a row and from the 4th year onwards, the neighbouring farmers could afford their own spraying. However, each one of them then helped some other neighbour of theirs to ensure that those fields were also sprayed.  This helped a huge community to not just survive but also thrive.  And all this started because of a selfless act of one human being.

Each of us needs to work this through in our heads.  There is a need to bring many of us back in to main stream...be that economically or physically or mentally.  The task is on each one of us.  We need to be inclusive.  We may ask ourselves as to how to do it...it cannot be mandated. You cannot force inclusivity through law or mandate...it has to come from within. Each of us needs to be a little less self centred and look around us to see where we can be of use to someone else.  If we can make a difference to even one other person, we would have made a significant difference to mankind.

Let us hope that the next superpower of this world is a country that is much more inclusive in its thoughts and deeds.

A new beginning...

The forest fire ripped through thousands of hectares and destroyed everything that came in its way. As fire fighters fought gallantly, the fire raged on for weeks. As I watched the stories of various people who had escaped the fire, I also could not help notice the thousands of creatures that could not escape the fire. Then, someone said something that stuck to my head, "After every such disaster that looks like everything is lost, comes a new beginning."  The fires had created so much heat that it started raining.  The rains had resulted in a small sprout coming out of these burnt forests. Was this the new beginning for this forest?

The pride of lions (or should I say lioness) hunted down a zebra. While few other zebras initially tried to save the one that was killed, they quickly moved on. There was no time to save a life...they had to run for theirs...it was either to be hunted down or escape. They chose to live...they had to start a new journey in their lives without their friend...and their lives moved on.  The narrator in a famous TV Channel said, "And the cycle of life continues..after every such incident there is always a hope of new life. Nature has its own way of destroying and creating." This is what Indians call Shiva (the destroyer) and Brahma (the creator).

This is so true in our lives too....beyond every "end" as we experience it, there is always a new beginning. Those who have experienced death in their families, will definitely understand this.  As in many things in life, the learning is very much experiential.  When a tragedy occurs, we just get pulled in to it and it takes a lot of time to come out of it...in my life when I experienced death in the family, I was shattered...but, as I told myself, "Life has to go on". I had to take charge of few things in life. While the death caused havoc for me emotionally, there was a new beginning in my life as one chapter ended and a new one was beginning. I had to recognize this new chapter and start working on it and, in fact, scripting the chapter.

As we look back on 2011, there are many things that have happened to us.  Some, that we are happy about and some not so happy.  But, this is what life is all about...a mix of both what is good and what is not so good. What we call the sweet and the bitter. If you see most traditional societies, elders typically give us something to eat as the new year begins. The items given to eat would include something sweet and something bitter. They would tell us to take both in our stride.  Only if we experience the bitter will we really appreciate the sweet. Only when we experience an end is there a new beginning.   

So, while we talk of a glass being "half full" or "half empty", I would say that it is necessary to experience the drink in the glass and ask for the re-fill. 

As 2011 ends, a new year called 2012 has begun.  There is always a new beginning after every end.