The Personal ROI

Get sample chapters of my book The Personal ROI. Click on the link below and get started!

http://thepersonalroi.com/ 

Finding our Spiritual side

Judging to Appreciating!

Pattern Paralysis!

Perception and Reality!

Integrity and Emotional Honesty

-->

What you think, that you say; what you say, that you do; what you do, that you speak; and what you speak that you think.

What the above phrase is saying in short is: One thing in action, one thing in speech and one thing in thought. These form the true nature of conduct for any one of us. When thought, speech and deed are in sync; we can say that we are in integrity.

Change this a little: one thing in their action, one thing in their speech and one thing in their thought and the meaning changes completely of being totally out of integrity.

How many times everyday are we faced with having to choose from the space of Integrity or otherwise? That is the question.

Corporates and individuals pride themselves when setting vision and mission statements personally as well as for the organizations and very often words like honesty and integrity act as foundational pillars to define themselves.

These words trickle down to individuals as well as the teams that proclaim the values of Integrity in their day-to-day work. Change the scenario a little where the interests of bottom lines are involved, very many a time the same individual, boss or teams, put the foundations aside for the sake of business or personal interests.

When questioned, the answer is a typical ‘Get smart, we are in business’ answer.

This often leads to a perplexity in the minds of the individual/s involved and soon enough they find that their personal values seem to be drifting away from professional needs and disillusion sets in terms of right and wrong. The more often this discrepancy occurs the bigger the separation, and this becomes one of the major causes for high attrition.

Over a period of time, even the perpetrator/s of the get smart brigade also start to feel the disconnect.

The major pain point for individual/s in teams today is that when a compromise is asked for, a valid reason is not given.

Logic may say that these individuals who feel short changed should obey the order, as from the outside no major compromise on the part of the organization is being made and it is finally for the collective good.

This rarely works as these little compromises add up over a period of time and then there is a distinct departure that is established.

When the courage of establishing a need for the said change is developed, and the truth behind is revealed, it releases an enormous burden for both sides and this practiced over a period of time lead to an open environment where there is mutual trust and integrity is never questioned.

This power to reveal the truth is called ‘Emotional Honesty’ and it originates in the heart. Remember, when we are honest, we have nothing to remember.

When we are honest, we heal relationships and build trust.

When will we get the courage to develop this Emotional Honesty is a question individuals need to answer for themselves first before it can be scaled to a higher level.

In the current context, it’s a walk down a very lonely path!

Heart Leadership!

Right and Wrong!

Of Silence and Listening...

On Saturday evening we witnessed a magnificent spectacle in the sky: the lunar eclipse. What amazed me that evening was the absolute silence that prevailed all around, even the silence of nature. The complete silence that lasted the duration of the eclipse was indeed an amazing experience. I felt that we experience the glory and beauty of celestial grandeur only in moments of complete silence.

Today, if you look around you find that all we have around us is noise. It’s noisy in the streets, it’s noisy in the restaurants, it’s noisy on the television, it’s noisy everywhere. Even schools today teach the young to read, write and recite, but never to listen — not only to listen externally but also internally. We are in times when, even while working, walking, jogging or simply sitting, we have a constant companion called noise.

In fact we have reached a stage where silence is scary and hence there’s a need for noise as a constant companion.

When we are silent, the mind starts talking to us and it can be extremely difficult to listen to our own mind.

Ask yourself this question: “Will I be my best friend?”. The answer in all probability will be “no!” That is because we are constantly self-critical.

In order to escape this self-critical person in us we find various ways not to listen to the mind.

While the self-critique in us can make us quite uncomfortable, it is the storehouse of information. It can give us an insight into how we are currently thinking and feeling.

When we become aware of our thoughts and feelings, we can go about understanding and healing the inner critique. And one of the ways we can understand and heal the inner critique is by remaining silent, by listening and experiencing everything around us, accepting the views of others, listening to the thoughts of others.

We find difficulty in following it, because as soon as we are subjected to any feedback, our defense mechanisms, built up unconsciously since childhood, spring to our apparent rescue.

When we become defenseless and operate through silence we discover a new self, a self that is happy and in sync with its surroundings. In the self that has divinity within we can find the glory and beauty of celestial grandeur.

As Rachel Naomi Remen has said: “The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. “Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention.

“A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words”.

React and Respond!

Head and Heart!

ENABLING DIVINE EMOTIONS AND EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE TO DRIVE THE HAPPINESS QUOTIENT

Looking around us everyday, we get a sense of the emotional energy pervading all around of Fear, Anger, hostility, guilt, shame and depression, which Deepak Chopra calls as Diabolical Emotions.

Spin it around and we can look at the divine emotions of Love, Joy, Compassion, and Equanimity according to him.

Connecting the dots of the divine emotions to emotional intelligence, I have put forth my views how to arrive at the Happiness quotient that we all are seekers off.

Recent research in the field of EI calls happiness as an indicator of emotional health and well-being and the four factors of Happiness as per EQ-I 2.0, are Self Regard, Optimism, Interpersonal Relationships and Self actualization.

As an individual with high Self Regard, I respect myself as well as accept the strengths and limitations while remaining satisfied and self-secure. When we can do this to ourselves and can apply a similar structure to all around us, we become unconditional, which is the primary ingredient of the divine emotion called Love for me.

The second aspect of optimism where I see hope, the glass as half-full, can get energized by setbacks and obstacles and fuelled to overcome challenges in life, I express the second divine emotion of Joy showcasing itself in all its glory.

Wikipedia defines Compassion as that emotion that one feels in response to the sufferings of the others that motivates a desire to help, which sits exceedingly well for me with the Emotional Intelligence element of Inter-Personal Relationships where we look out not only for new relationships but also take care of the ones we already have, we have the courage to ask and give help and have mutually enriching exchanges in professional as well as personal lives.

Self-Actualization in the business world means finding the purpose and enjoying what you do while performing at the optimal level. When I operate from that space I can help others to self-actualize too because there is this inner stillness of peace and confidence, that the universe is conspiring for our greater purpose, which the divine emotion of Equanimity is all about.

When I am at peace, the other three divine emotions of Love, Joy and Compassion flow effortlessly and express themselves in their true glory.

To the emotional intelligence angle of measuring happiness, if divine emotions are added, I propose that I am an individual with a high happiness quotient.

Conversely, apply the divine emotions first in day-to-day life and automatically increase your emotional intelligence as well as your happiness quotient.  

Psychology takes time to express what spirituality already possesses!

Healing and Pain

Emotionally Intelligent Living.

Our Physical personality consists of the Perceiver and the actor. Our forms of perception, driven by the sense organs of Taste, Touch, Smell, Hear and See, help us understand the physical world. The actor executes the actions based on our perception. The Emotional personality has the Feeler in us, which involves handling our emotions, and the discriminatory personality has the Thinker in us that defines intellect, which further branches into the gross and the subtle. The gross is involved in worldly boundaries and worldly thoughts and the subtle is the contemplator in which lies the spiritual personality. We now live in the age of speed and instant gratification; we have everything instant starting from noodles, to messaging. The media today constantly exposes our minds on the need or speed. We have 15-second advertisements showing achievements, which might take a lifetime, and giving us a false sense of instant possibility. This has driven focus from what is fundamentally important to what is urgently important thereby causing anxiety when one discovers things do not work the way they want it to and it surely doesn’t work in 15 seconds. We begin to live on expectations from our actions, which causes internal stress, rather than on accepting the results of our actions. When the mind is racing with thoughts of expectations and encounters roadblocks anxiety increases and when anxiety increases it leads to stress. Stress is therefore the speed of the mind. To reduce stress we need to decrease the speed of the mind. This is the yogic definition of stress. So, the percolation of stress starts in the mind which affects our breathing (observe your breath in moments of anger or fear), which affects the way, we look (body language in times of anger and fear) and finally affects the individual organs leading to various ailments. When our intellect is inattentive due to external stressors the mind goes wandering, making the senses run helter skelter which causes the body to be under constant pressure and finally break. Therefore to control the speed of the mind we need to first control our intellect which means focusing on our contemplative intellect and seek to understand the greater purpose of our journey on this planet which is fundamentally important rather than get carried away by our gross intellect making us seek temporary accomplishments which are short lived and thereby carry the message of being urgently important to do. Being Emotionally Intelligent, for a start, helps focus on the contemplative you and start the journey of discovery within.