Author Archives: Rashmi Dixit

My life journey began in a small village in Kanpur, U.P. I was raised by my grandparents for the first four years of my life. During the day I found myself running amidst the farms and the open sky, squinting at the sun. At nights I would sleep under the stars counting them and making weird patterns. The moon was my sleep partner then. My writing journey began at the age of thirteen, in Mumbai, when I bunked a class and found myself hiding from my maths teacher, amongst children, who were writing poetry for a competition. I wrote too, and to my surprise after a week, I was announced as the winner. Couple of months later I found myself battling lung tuberculosis, I was in complete isolation, but poetry gave me company. I wrote some really dark poetry around life and death and how beautiful death was. My writing and my imagination since then has been my greatest friend and confidant. After my Post graduation in Microbiology, I was hired as a Scientist by a Multinational organisation. However, my soul kept humming a different song, although I was considered to have high potential and was known to be highly competent. After my marriage and two children, and nine years of corporate career, I jumped into humanities. I started conducting leadership workshops and interventions for organizations and I still do. My work helps me connect with the various aspects of human behavior and thus takes me closer to experiencing more of who I am. As a life and executive coach to several people, I observe their brightness and beauty, in their language and actions, and help them to see what I see. This helps them unleash their own spontaneity and experience more of who they really are. My work is my passion and it helps me grow. It makes my writing become more mature and rooted. Both writing and painting are meditative processes for me and help me explore new worlds, while creating deeper presence for myself. I love to indulge in life, and I cheer for the same. I get excited and enthused about new ideas and great stories. I cry watching emotional scenes in movies and can easily get hooked on to some romantic drama. I love gardening and can be seen communicating with my plants in the mornings over green tea. Rest you will find in my posts here.

Love, Morality and Betrayal

Today I was interviewing a woman, whose husband had an extra marital affair and left her alone to find her means. Of course the experience has made her grow wiser and stronger but there was so much pain in the story, that I actually became aware of a part of me that holds insecurity in my marriage. This interview had triggered something important in me, something that makes me question the integrity and longevity of my marriage. It makes me ponder in the institution called marriage and its relevance in today’s society. The new generation looks at marriage as a unwanted responsibility. For me marriage is a companionship vow, and it is supposed to help us evolve into a more compassionate and wholesome being. However, due to patriarchy the norms of marriage have been flouted and there has been a power struggle between the man and the woman, where the masculine has mostly emerged as the victor. In my marriage we have always shared a space of equality and respect until now, but the deep seated trigger button of betrayal is untouched. I don’t know, what would happen if this button is pressed either by me or my husband. Hence I decided tonight to nudge my husband into a conversation about betrayal, he said something very interesting. He said , “I am not the type.” I wonder if I am the type, but mostly the answer that is alive for this question in me is “No, I am not the type, either.” Does this make me and my husband cowards, who are not able to express our needs and have the courage to go beyond social boundaries? Maybe, yes. And at present that is what is important for us.
Betraying is about letting somebody who loves you, down, somebody whom you have loved too at some point in time, but drifted away. Drifting is interesting, it creates a sense of lightness, a sense of freedom, a feeling of freshness. So for most marriages going through a mid- life crises, drifting could add a new flavor, new pleasure. However, I believe this pleasure could be short lived, and drifting may become a pattern. In some cases just to mask the pattern the individual may continue to live a compromised life, with the second lover after separation from the first. Always hoping to find what he or she couldn’t find in the previous relationship. I am not a religious fanatic, or a moralist, I believe I am a free thinker and am looking at this whole point from a very rational perspective. Here, I hold some beliefs, I believe that a person who has developed the capacity to handle bitter separations from parents, dear and loved ones, also has a capacity to create separation from a perfectly loving spouse. This is no judgement but a logical way of saying that once you have found a certain way of being, it is easy to access the same, until something has drastically shifted in your way of being. We start living in a pattern. There is no right or wrong way of being, and everyone has a choice of who and what they want to be. A person who values his or her freedom more than family or relationship might find a relationship to be a burden and may struggle to keep a relationship. Thus sets in a pattern of betrayal and pain, to break away from the pattern doesn’t need a different experience of sex and intimacy, it could just be an illusion that you might reason as personal freedom. This is a behavioral pattern, which needs deeper introspection and acceptance. Denying it and giving it exotic names won’t change the pattern, soon you will get bored again of the monotony and will be looking for something else, someone else. A deep nourishing marriage is the one, where there is a practice of mutual respect, admiration and connection. There are many ways in which you can escape from yourself and trying to find love outside is a exciting and thrilling adventure, which can create enough drama to keep you and your family occupied for a life time. Awareness of your patterns that you hold will bring you to a new consciousness and choices that you have. Looking for an external anchor to nourish your bored veins, is never going to be a solution. Communicating about your feelings, needs and connecting authentically to self and your spouse can give you and your family all the nourishment you need. Then of course, if there is no alignment and there is disconnection, then please pick up your part of the mess and move, don’t shove everything down your spouses throat and let him or her wallow in self doubt and rejection. Don’t run away, cutting all cords and leaving your once loved one to bleed. That is being coward and being irresponsible. Remember it is you who have found someone and moved on, but the person whom you are leaving behind is still living in the world that both of you had created together. You are an important part of that world. When you leave that world the person will be very lonely and wounded from the devastation that you initiated, to get more from life with another partner. Have grace and courage to express, accept and truly love.

A friend shared this really insightful talk on Ted

Relationship Consciousness for a new world

Relationships are precious, they are like the branch that holds the leaves together. We all have seen relationships die and new relationships emerge. We are social animals and need our pack of friends and family for connection, validation and growth. It is interesting to note how a relationship can actually die, I have a few perspectives on it, which I am sharing with my readers.

1. Purpose of relationships:
Emotional health, connection, validation and growth are the purpose of relationships. Our relationships with our friends, or relatives, whether good or bad can make us emotionally alive. Some of them bring us out of our comfort zone and hence leading to growth and self realizations. The questions, Who am I? What is it that I don’t like and what it is that I like? become more relevant in relationships. Any relationship, which does not fulfill any of the purposes, starts sapping the time and energy and more so in the current context, where people have less time. Relationship prioritizing becomes a important social skill, where we must connect with self and see beyond the layers of societal conditioning, and become aware of the intent, which keeps us in the relationship. Some relationships will make you feel good about yourself, they may create spaces of collaboration, fun, social activities, love, nurture, healthy criticism, mutual admiration and learning. These relationships have more awareness and usually have a very long life. I believe the most important ingredient in these relationships is equality, authenticity and vulnerability. Any relationship, which seems inauthentic or guarded is bound to fail. Another important piece is willingness to communicate at both ends. I have experienced long years of friendship, just by writing with authenticity and bringing more of myself, my daily life, my realizations into my letters. Some of these relationships either continue even today or have disintegrated slowly due to no communication. The stage of no communication is arrived when one or more people in the relationship are unable to see the value it creates. Also if in a relationship you feel you are holding a higher or lower hierarchy, either due to power, position or money, it will fail to nurture you.

2. Our view of relationships:
Sometimes we are in a relationship because in our world view, that is how it should be and there is no other way. Such relationships get tough to handle and require a lot of energy on both sides. You may feel that it is only you who is working on the relationship, because you feel obliged in some way. However, in reality the other person is also trying hard to maintain the integrity of his or her world view, breaking of a world view actually may mean invalidating someones thought process. These relationships stop being equal as, there is always a point to be proved by both the ends. It could be a entertaining mind game for some time but it defeats the whole purpose of a human relationship. Blood relationships are even more difficult to maintain and to nurture, as the society binds it into certain rules and people end up assuming a lot in the relationships. This is really sad as sometimes the people whom we spend our childhood and most of our growing up years, are the once whom we are most guarded against. They know our vulnerabilities, they have seen our shadows and scars, they have broken our trust as kids, can we still trust them? can we have heart to heart conversations with them? We hardly share our vulnerabilities and issues which are impacting our day to day lives with our brothers, sisters and parents. In some households one or two people may hold the role and would be expected to listen and resolve issues all the time. We take most of these relationships for granted and expect them to grow without water, without care, without food. Assumptions about people, their situation and the relationship itself can kill the relationship. Some of the relationships are actually dead even before declaration of their death, sometimes people may carry dead relationships for years without any realization. Acceptance plays a key role in this scenario, acceptance of what stage is your relationship in, accepting your expectations from the relationship and naming them, acceptance of existing issues and most importantly listening to yourself and those whom you love.

3. How we engage:
We have discovered the role of authenticity, vulnerability, acceptance and listening before. Here are my ideas to bring some simple tools of application into our day to day life. Letters or emails of gratitude to people who have helped you in your journey of life. These are much more than thank you notes. These letters are more graphical and have specific examples of how the intervention from this person impacted you.These letters have the essence of the relationship that you wish to nurture. Believe me, if you don’t remember instances, it is not worth writing a gratitude note. Hello letters or emails, just to stay in touch. They are not mere pokes but give an insight into ones daily life and emotions that are being experienced. Also these communications excite the other person to write about themselves and create a virtual healing space. There are times that you feel guilty of a mistake that you haven’t yet opened up and apologized for, so go ahead and say sorry, to get rid of the unnecessary luggage. No need to say sorry if you are not feeling it. Writing a sorry letter, may be a new beginning or a great closure to a relationship. Thought letters, are letters, which just talk about your current thoughts or imaginations with your friends or relatives, this sharing opens a door for relationships to enter a subconscious level and creates intimate bonds. These bonds don’t need constant nurturing and can survive for long as their roots are really deep. It is my faith, that through mutual respect and understanding of each others perspectives, relationships that we value can blossom and make our world more wholesome and creative.

Food confessions- self disclosure

I have always had a hot and cold relationship with food, I have chosen to be a vegetarian all my life, as I never had any exposure to non-vegetarian food when I was little. As a kid I used to love sweets and was very greedy for them. One night my dad got a box full of sweets and I ate a lot. I was sick and had to be hospitalized after that. I was on drips and kept vomiting. After that I started to hate sweets and would not eat anything sweet. I used to have strange cravings of eating grass and leaves and would fall sick pretty often. My mother was working so there was no one behind me to make me eat, so I used to be pretty much be on my own, and would eat when I wanted to and not when I didn’t. There was a time when my body started to reject food and I started to lose weight. Soon after I was diagnosed with Tuberculosis. The doctors advised a lot of fattening and healthy food to go with the strong drugs. I recovered in a year and became a plump teenager. I did not love food but I ate a lot because otherwise the Tuberculosis had chances of coming back, I needed to maintain a good body weight and immunity. As I grew up I was always on the plumper side. Any slide in my weight and my mom would go berserk, she just loved me plump, it was safe. I got married and had kids, my weight after my second one zoomed to 85 kilos and it was tough to reduce as I didn’t know how? My body resisted any reduction in weight. But after a lot of raised eyebrows at my weight, I followed a resolute exercise regime and became 56 kilos. I continued to be slim and fit for almost four years, but you see I love oily, deep fried, spicy, well made food. I not only like it but also crave for it sometimes, and after I am done with it I love my sweets, a nice bowl of ice-cream, creme brulee, or kheer sums up a happy and fulfilled me.

I have struggled to keep off so called “unhealthy” food for past three years but without any success. The minute it is in front of me I let down all barriers and indulge without guilt, until I see my waist size. I have expanded from 56 kilos to 65 kilos but I haven’t stopped loving myself and my food. I feel no issues around the way the look, I think i have judged my food and myself based on looks too long. It is just time to relax and indulge. Yesterday a friend called, she was very disturbed, she had been diagnosed with diabetes, that rang a alert bell for me. Thoughts of dieting and exercise overwhelmed me.

I have to walk, I have to exercise, may be I should start yoga. I should get on to a healthy diet. Thoughts, flooded me as I sat stuffing myself with Chinese manchurian and noodles. My god! I have to exercise from tomorrow, so let me relax enough. I have to diet from tomorrow, so let me eat today. The tomorrow that I am waiting for hasn’t come yet. But yes I am relishing my today. Am I spoiling my tomorrow by relishing my today? I am not sure and seriously I am really enjoying my pleasures with food and I am not judging.

How I Connected with Ram and Sita

Yesterday evening my dear friend Sukhwinder Sircar created a space with Devdutt Pattanaik and a few friends, where he spoke about his book ‘Sita’. The Talk and discussion opened up a plethora of thoughts and emotions inside of my mind and body. In this blog I am expressing some of those thoughts and revelations to self.

I have never looked at Sita as a concept. For me she has never been a role model, some how through the Ramayan that I heard, I ended up thinking of her as a husband follower. For me as a self proclaimed rebel that is something that I have never resonated with. But after listening to what Devdutt had to say my world underwent a shift.

In our family and friends everyone considers my husband to be like Ram. Those who know him can vouch for his righteousness and his passion for following rules. I, on the other hand am a rule breaker. So our marriage alliance for me was like a alliance between Ram and Surpanakha, or at least that is how I have looked at it. For me what Surpanakha did was natural, in fact I shudder at Lakshman’s reaction to her and the violence in it completely shocks me. So, previously I could never relate to the epic Ramayana and could never bring myself to completely relate with Ram or Sita.

In the conversation yesterday three new themes opened for me:

The liveliness that Death creates:

It is, but one fear of death that causes us to create more meaning in life. Knowing that this will all end in a moment is something that makes us charged and gets us moving, it makes us follow rules, create order and build civilized society after all there is a legacy to be left behind. Being in this civilized society will always ask for sacrifice of Natural freedom. Ram represents Maryada Purshottam, Lord of self-control, who had control over all his natural desires and reactions, his sacrifice were his wife and children. The legacy also becomes more than our lives and we are ready to lose our lives for our legacy.

Raghukul reeti sada chali aayi, praan jayen par vachan na jayee.

It is the rule of the Raghukul that you may let go of your life but you can’t let go of your word.

In today’s context we work hard to create money and more work in our lives, sometimes we try so hard that we have to pay with our joy and our life.

The idea that creating a legacy makes us immortal as our name stays behind even after we are dead is something we all apply at some level or the other either knowingly or unknowingly. We all look for our significance in life.

The Field and The Forest:

The human race would like control and feel safe and hence they create fields by cutting forests, where the judgement of what is a weed and what is a useful crop is done. The Forest on the other hand is this deep, dark, uncontrolled space, where there is survival of the fittest and this invokes fear. The Field represents civilization and the Forest represents Nature. How much ever we try to control, the Nature will take over. The Human life is spent in bringing control to Nature. When Devdutt said, Ram represents the farmer and Sita the field, My perspective of Ramayana underwent a complete transformation. So Ram follows the rules but Nature will do as it pleases. Representing Sita as field creates a new and meaningful identity for her, which I can relate to. There is always a conflict between the field and the forest, and it is the farmer’s journey to keep the forest off the field. The field has a boundary and when it comes out of the boundary it becomes part of the forest. Where there are no rules and it is survival of the fittest. Both the field and the forest serve a integral part in our life journeys. A field never gets contaminated by the forest until our judgement of what we would like to grow in the field comes in.

This philosophy is true in our daily lives where there is a daily tug between not wanting to follow the rules but having to do so. We have a field and a forest within us. Our Monday morning blues are a part of it…our spirit wants to be set free just like the forest, but we are scared of the forest. So even if we don’t want to go to office we do, just like Ram’s fourteen year vanvaas. There is a constant battle between our parts that are wild and those which are domesticated. Ramayana holds the mysterious wisdom of both Civilization and Forest.

In today’s world we have come far away from the real Forests and the Field, we have created safe havens for ourselves and we live in our own bubble. The Forests and Field are continuously battling outside and inside our haven.

The Mind and the World:

The world is the feminine and the mind masculine. The mind sees the world and the world sees the Mind, when there is a dialogue between the two and till the two are together there is peace. Mind is Ram and World is Sita. But when they are separated there is battle between the Wild parts and domesticated parts. The monkey mind (Hanuman) has to become the servant and become a role model of control to bring the two together. The Gossip in Ayodhaya about Sita’s purity was vicious and it created a disturbance in the Mind which impacted the world. The world is always pure and its purity can’t be doubted, but judgments can cause the rift between the world and the mind. Sita’s abandonment by Ram represents the mind abandoning the World. But with the world gone the mind loses its context.

I am not sure how this blog will serve you, but writing this has deepened my connect with Ram and Sita…:)

Image Courtesy: http://www.flickriver.com/photos/76104785@N00/tags/ramayana/

Can a Leader be Gullible?

In the past I used to sometimes think I am a very strange person…Sometimes I am calculative, Sometimes I am frivolous, Sometimes I am like a monk, Sometimes like a scared child, Sometimes like a warrior, sadist, funny, angry…the list goes on and on… these are all parts of myself, like healthy sub personalities. However it is only recently I realized that I am also Gullible…somebody said, Rashmi you are extremely Gullible…I have heard of that word and know that it is a word associated with being foolishly trusting and too optimistic about people. This is one feedback that I have received multiple times. I started wondering what does ‘Being Gullible’ mean in the Leadership context.

My search started off by checking the synonyms of Gullible…Innocent, Trusting, Accepting…it is also Naïve or Foolish. I did some introspection and realized yes I am all this. But somehow I wasn’t feeling bad, I sensed pride in that acceptance. Being Gullible allows me to try several things, take several risks. I am successful in many of them and I fail in many of them. Some people say, “It is suicidal…” I say “you can’t expect rebirthing without dying, and this is not dying it is just trying, everyone dies just once, so try before you die.”

The ideas in which I fail I have still learnt something new, about relationships, perspectives, and more about myself. I become aware of what I can deal with and what I can’t. Every failure creates a new breakdown a new energy just like every success does. I am a slow learner, I like it slow. I internalize my learning and integrate it into my new way of being. The learning’s that I don’t internalize I end up quickly making another mistake and then internalize them as well, slowly and steadily. Some big lessons have taken me more than a decade to internalize and integrate into my evolutionary journey.

This integration I realize has kept me at peace with myself on my journey and I have found it so valuable that I am ready again for being gullible. My real success at work as well as in my personal life has come from my being Naïve and open to Bizarre ideas. I also know that if I am successful it is called as an original and extremely innovative step and if it is a failure it is called a foolish step taken by a naïve woman. What matters to me at the end of the day is my resonance with self. At this age after integrating my ways of being, which I have encountered till date, ‘Being Gullible’ resonates deeply with me, It is the core of my being. That is who I am; I am not a head person. This doesn’t mean I am not intelligent; of course I am intelligent…I am brilliant…but most importantly I am Gullible… Being Gullible to me is not a part of me for me it is my ‘Self’. This helps me to be extremely optimistic about people, about situations and about me. Being Gullible means I am comfortable with my own vulnerability, this gives me courage to try different things without fear of failure. This also helps me establish deeper and more trust worthy relationships. I think for a leader being gullible is an important asset.

Are you Gullible?

Image Courtesy: http://whitecliffephoto.tumblr.com/page/2

10 Mysterious Photos That Cannot Be Explained

Description: A picture is said to be worth a thousand words, though fact versus fable can be difficult to determine when evidence is limited and theories run wild. Stories associated with these images are not easy to explain or even not at all probable. Since the beginning of time, man has bared witness to the strange and unexplainable. With no cameras or smartphones to capture these moments, the ancients would scribe what they saw on stone. Lucky for us, today we have the technology to see things that the human eye does not. For example… A father takes a photo of his daughter one afternoon while the two were together outside and no one else around. When the picture is developed, you can clearly see a man in a space suit standing a few feet behind the little girl. Where did he come from? What about the mysterious old lady seen calmly taking photographs of the chaos that proceeded the gunshots that fateful day in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, when John F. Kennedy was assassinated? There are pictures to prove her presence but no records of her existence…intrigued yet?

See mind boggling images that even the most skeptical of the skeptics may have a hard time disputing. Everything from the mysterious death of Elisa Lam, pyramids on the moon, sea monsters to unidentified flying objects hovering around our planets atmosphere, are all captured. Check out the video and see for yourself.

Video and Content Courtesy: The Richest

The Neurotic Me & The Wise Me

The Neurotic Me

Sometimes I feel my world is going to collapse. I will not be able to do anything in this life time, achieve anything in this life time. I would just sit gabbing and waste my life. There are times when I feel my time just passes away, without my control over it. A friend calls or a sudden work crops up, it is amazing to look back at the day and see nothing has been achieved during the day. In the earlier times my mother and my grand mother used to actively look into household matters. The spices were freshly ground, the food was well thought out, the family expectations were met etc. When I look at myself today I realize that, I am doing none of that and yet my day is filled with activities and I am tired at the end of the day. Tired at the end of the day literally doing nothing. This fills me with remorse for myself. This remorse transforms into creating excessive activities for myself and my children, where I am just engaged in dropping off or picking them up. At the end of the day I feel yes I am doing a lot and doing it all for my children. A feeling of gratification helps me get through the day.

However if this continues even for a week then I am again filled with a sense of ‘What am I doing with my life?”and I start looking for new work opportunities. And as if the universe is keenly listening to each word of my want, it opens up flood gates of work. Of course I am judicious about the work that I pick, so I take work as per my liking and appetite. As I start to work sometimes I realize, that it is getting too much and it requires me to be away from my family and friends for too long. Then I wonder what is it that I want…may be I just want a break. I would plan a break and in the break I wonder there are so many other things that I want to do. I sit and dream about my own enterprise, a school for children perhaps, or something that would make my life worthwhile on this planet. Writing a book or a series of books, creating a movie…so many thoughts crop up as possible options for a more purposeful life. But no, as soon as the break is over, my neurosis takes over and I am back to my daily grind and supper issues. However because I feel a little neurotic after a break I am ready to go on with life as it was earlier without any change until it is time for another break…

I have come to realize that the Neurotic me is just a part of me. She is a young mother and career woman around 30 years old and has a lot on her plate. Nothing she does is ever enough, she has no time for herself and lives in a constant struggle of achievement and purpose. She has difficulty resting and is scrambling from one place to another. After she has run around and complained about how tired she is, she sits down and rests her head on the study table. As she relaxes her breath becomes slower and rhythmic, a gentle snoring follows as she sleeps in peace for now.
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The Wise Me

As soon as the Neurotic me is off to sleep, the wise me wakes up and takes the mantle…

This constant struggle between the being and doing has manifested itself into the human world since time immemorial…animals don’t seem to go through this struggle…they can just be all the time. They act or do only when required. But humans have ‘higher consciousness’ and supposedly a ‘higher purpose’ so whatever they ‘be’ they can’t just ‘be’ for a long time….their neurosis would take over and they would push themselves to the brink of insanity to ‘do’. They would judge themselves, abuse themselves into ‘doing’…We judge our being all the time…even when we say we are celebrating our ‘being’. Celebrating our being is also ‘doing’ and neurosis is active here. We just keep getting better and better an conning ourselves into saying we are ‘being’ when we are actually waiting for finding out what do we ‘do’…

The real ‘being’ is devoid of explanation, it is devoid of illusion of any creation. Everything that had to be created has been created, nothing awaits your attention. The abundance is there, the life you want to live is there, everything that you wish for exists all ready….but we all are entangled in the illusion of our doing…our creation…our story…The lesson of our being is best learnt from the trees that surround us. They become a witness to our doing in their being.

There is and will be nothing truer than the being of a tree,
Knowing and experiencing that being will truly set you free.

Image Courtesy: http://www.magforwomen.com/

The Cynic in Me is Cynical about being Cynical

Sometimes I feel I write such rubbish, why do I write at all? No one will read what I write ever. Then what is the point in writing? Anyway, I think I write because writing is what I do. There are times when I look around the world and see everything wrong. At that moment I know the cynic in me is alive, like right now. When the cynic wakes up…the world seems like a strange place and I feel like a stranger to myself. My cynic is a tall man around seven feet high, he walks with a little hunch and has a scar on the left side of his face. He looks like a Red Indian. He has brown hair tied behind in a rough knot, and his soft eyes show remorse and regret. He has a loud hoarse voice, which needs to be heard, if you don’t hear him he will speak louder and louder, until he is sure you have heard him. He is in his mid fifties and has knowledge about everything happening around the world. He is angry and sad.

According to him, water that we drink is bad, the food we eat is ostentatious, the seasons are not the same they used to be, little children are being raped, the financial stability of countries and individuals is questionable, cholesterol and sugar are all time high…so on and so forth. The world is a horrible place to live in, he remarks. Nothing seems to be right. People are marketing themselves and their skills just like whores and sitting and judging the whores.

Everything that we know is up for sale including a crash course in soul cleansing. Organizations are milking their people dry for performance and numbers, they are making sure their get into the psyche and soul of each individual do a quick repair for greater performance. Everyone is conning everyone into believing their truth, when there is none. Media can be easily bought and the rich can create their own stories and their own history. The poor on the other hand are busy feeling victimized all the time, they seem to have only time for their sob stories. These sob stories also get bought to make some movies and documentaries, which the poor have no clue about. Rich nations are telling stories that they want to, about themselves and show the poor nations in the light they want to show. Everyone seems to be busy creating their own piece of illusion, sitting inside their own bubble. Sometimes they call this bubble, “Perspective”. Everything has been made so damn complicated, the money is complicated, relationships are complicated, work is complicated. Marriages don’t last. Love doesn’t last. People throw their garbage around. I don’t see a single clean mud ground. People with wolves make them shit all over the place and don’t bother picking up. This is the time a big tsunami should come and end this world, he states as a matter of fact.

When the cynic is alive the dark clouds emerge and a sunlit day has all shades of Grey. That day everything seems pointless and fake. He is like a bully, who stops everything that is happening and questions the purpose of it all, not wanting any answers but knowing that the answer is hopeless.

He rebukes the Gullible me and hurts her badly. She sits and sobs. He yells at the Neurotic me and she runs, scrambles to do something with her time. And after he has made his voice heard, the Cynic sits with his face covered in both his palms and turns into a scared little boy.

His little voice speaks between shivers, I am scared of you, I am scared of the world, I am scared of the future, what is happening to me…he shrieks as his shivers increase. I run to him and hold him in my arms…”shh…shh…all will be fine…I am there for you…I love you” I hold him tight and rock him through the night…

Image Courtesy: http://chiasuanchong.com/category/devils-advocate-da/

Creating a Container for Transformation

This blog has emerged through an intense discussion, over coffee, with my dear friend Sushma Sharma, who has an expertise in Complex Adaptive Systems. I am sharing my understanding of creating a container in the following essay. This essay, would be of interest to anyone, who would like to create high performance teams, either in work place or life in general.
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A container, is a space created through, intention. Clarity of intention, will help hold the container, so that it doesn’t fall and shatter. As soon as two people interact, a container is created, this container may either hold business interest or relationship interest. Whatever may be the interest of creating a container, it will always give you a choice to grow. Even if the experience in the container is not pleasant, it is our choice to grow and move up the spiral. From this experience we learn to create better containers, where relationships and people can thrive and grow.

An ideal container would be the one in, which everyones opinions can be voiced, and even when there are disagreements. The voicing is not easy. In a container people may have several opinions and thoughts, but if the creator/ leader of the container, doesn’t give enough space, there won’t be enough voices. This will retard the growth process, and the container will become dysfunctional. This is true for organizations, families, groups, friends etc. Wherever there is not enough space, for voicing opinions, people will say exactly, what you want to hear, until they move to another container. A container holds patterns, or fractals, observing the pattern and being able to appreciate the differences in the pattern, brings out the uniqueness of the container. It also makes the container more, meaningful.

In most of the teams, the need for approval, causes us to seek out people, who approve of our thought processes and ways, we then become a part of a formal or informal group, with like minded people. These ‘like minded’ people end up then creating a container, where conformity is rewarded, and conflicts are not welcome. This is generally in the air and unspoken. Most of these spaces will talk about, how, they are open to negative feedback, but may not have a clue, about how to handle them.

Creating a container, where people can openly speak about, there feelings and inhibitions, without fear of losing a relationship, has to be a part of the intention, with, which, the container is created. In such a container, both the leader and the team grow. Here team members, can freely talk about, what, “doesn’t resonate”, in the moment and create a constructive conflict, which, will then lead to growth. Such a conflict should be welcomed and heightened for maximum, transformation. This is possible only, when we feel, secure and confident, in handling our internal dilemmas, during this confrontation.

Only opening up, and being vulnerable in the moment, sharing our internal world, in that moment, creates equal membership, in spite of differences, in the container. Where both the leader and the team member feel and experience equality. Such a container is truly transformational for all, and this container itself keeps evolving.

Image Courtesy: http://continuumcs.com/wp-content/themes/continuum_cs/images/slideshow/transformation.jpg

The New Age Leadership: What We Must Do Now To Nurture It

I hear several people talking about the new generation wanting more, expecting more. In corporates this shows up when young and talented pool of employees, show more attrition rate, than the older more experienced ones.
So, what is this new generation about? why are they so unstable? If you talk to them they seem to be looking for something, some say it is balance, some say wholesomeness, connect, etc…

When they don’t get what they are looking for, either you see a decline in their performance or they just go and find another job. Some times they may also start on their own, and may find success or not.

What seems missing is good role model for these young leaders. These young kids are smart and see through most of the farce. So if there are only words and no action, they bluntly term it “Corporate bullshit”. Also you will find them challenging every leader and his/ her leadership behaviors. They question and slowly detach, when they realize they are up against a wall.
These new age leaders are not about frill and talk, they are about depth and connection. If they don’t find it in your organisation, you will not be able to retain them. They are about deep sensitive friendships and not leg pulling politics. They are about spontaneous creativity and freshness, not old production processes and conformity. These leaders are not about quantity they are about quality and congruence. They look for transparency and trust. Believe me you, even if the goals are not clear, these leaders through their adaptive powers can make any vision, any dream come true. Only they would test you, they would test your wisdom, your Leadership, to trust you and give you their 100%. If you do not pass their barometer they know how to defy you, how to negotiate and how to put your work into a loop.

These New age leaders are emotional and have a natural spiritual connect, to have them in your organisation means to inject huge amount of energy. This energy can grow your organisation multifold, in the area of innovation, technology, as well as happiness index. But to have these Leaders on board would entail a self growth process for the organisation itself.

Interventions on creating clarity around growth paths, goals, job roles, stakeholders for each goal will have to be implemented. Parallel to this work around building, trust, transparency, emotional connect will have to be done across the organisation. Understanding along with working around employee values and connecting them to organizational values, institutionalizing them is crucial. Creating awareness around silence and pause will become the key in the coming days in every organisation. And when that happens a new organizational structure will emerge, which will be empowering to the New age leadership and will integrate with it. This organizational structure will be a huge container, which will have intrinsic wisdom and spontaneous growth characteristics. This structure will be flexible and natural, it will allow emergence of several new containers within, and expand with their growth. Also this organizational structure would pollinate with other structures to create hybrid structures.

The Language would be of Nature, the language will have Union, Pregnancy, Birthing, Spontaneity, Cycles and Death. In every realm of the organizational structure, seasons would play an important part and with deeper awareness. Deeper connect with self and the planet. This would be the container for the New age leaders to perform and innovate from their depths and feel the sense of belonging. Not everything will look like bed of roses, pain will be a part of every piece but, it will have more meaning. That is what New age leadership will be all about…an ‘Empowering Meaning’.

If any organisation wants to be relevant after ten years from now…the work has to begin…the ground has to be ploughed for the seeds of New age leadership…

Image Courtesy: http://ecowatch.com/2014/04/10/teach-kids-about-sustainability/