Year: 2015

A fascinating year is about to end. It is only another 2 days before 2016 starts. There are two things that you can do:

1. Make a powerful entry into 2016; or,

2. Float into 2016 and happen to simply show up in the New Year.

I am inviting you to make a powerful entry into the New Year and make 2016 the best year you’ve had till now. If that’s what you are interested in, read on.

So that you can make an authoritative and a commanding entry in the New Year, I invite you to do a review of the last year (2015) and take stock. Below, I recommend a set of questions that you ask yourself. I have broken these questions into 2 parts – one that reviews and completes 2015 and another set that helps you make new declarations for the New Year.

It is important to know ‘What is so’ about your life at the end of 2015; and then, as a matter of your creation, ‘where will you be this time next year’ so that you can make an unassailable entry into 2016 and achieve your promises for the New Year.

Here are the 6 essential questions for you. I am suggesting these questions to you after having completed this exercise for 4 consecutive years in a row, and I can state out of experience, once you have done so, you will be making a very powerful entry in to the New Year. Not only that, if you act inside of your commitments, you will make 2016 your best year yet. I have immensely benefited from this exercise in the last few years and I urge you to do so for the sake of your life too.

1. What have you achieved in 2015?

While answering this question, what I did was to look at different areas of my care, such as my personal life; my work; my health & well-being; and Gift Your Organ Foundation (the NGO that I co-founded 5 years ago), and in each of these cares, what did I achieve.

Just writing down my accomplishments in each of these areas gave me a great sense of achievement and a lot of power to declare audacious and bold goals for the New Year!

I suggest you identify the important areas of your life and list out your achievements in each of your areas of care.

2. What did you learn new in this year?

Learning has now a new meaning in my life. Earlier learning was only gaining new knowledge. At the Institute for Generative Leadership, learning is not only gaining new knowledge, but also incorporating new practices. I reflected on what new practices did I commit to in the last year. By learning new leadership practices, I have shifted my capacity for action (and hence, more importantly, my capacity to deliver results).

I am inviting you to review this too. This will help you get present to your new capacity to generate results. In the event, you did not commit to any new practices in the last year, then no problem – we have a chance to make commitments for the New Year, and we will do so below.

3. What is it that you want to acknowledge yourself for in this Year

We perpetually see the good in others and compare ourselves to others. No wonder then that most times we fall short. This is the time of the year to step back for a few moments and pat yourself on the back for all the good that you are and all the good that you have done. I made a detailed list of points that I wanted to acknowledge myself for.

4. What is it that you missed out on this year?

I missed out on a few promises and certain self-development goals. By simply distinguishing what I missed out in the last year, has helped me re-evaluate my promises and the ones that continue to hold its importance in my life have found a place in what are my promises for 2016 (the next question). Some promises I have chosen to revoke because they do not mean much to me anymore.

5. What are your promises for 2016?

There are two ways to approach any promise in your life – one is to first identify ‘what’ is your promise and then figure out the ‘how’. The other is to first look at the resources that you have, the effort that it will take, and then determine your promise.

A lot of people first look at the ‘how’ and based on the `how’, they decide the ‘what’, i.e., their promise.

I am firm believer that you need to figure out the ‘what’ first and the ‘how’ will start to reveal itself once you get into action. It’s pretty much like driving in dense fog. When you leave your home, you know where you want to go (your promise), but you cannot see the road. You commit to driving. You can see only a few feet ahead. However, when you travel the few feet, you see the next few feet.

Commit to action. Take the first step. Subsequent steps will automatically open up. Waiting to see the entire path before you take the first step will lead you to one of two things; inaction, or setting small goals.

Think of all the areas that you care for; in each area think of where you would like to be this time next year; make promises in these areas; make these promises specific, measurable and put a deadline. If you bring in intention and action, nothing can stop you from achieving your promises for 2016.

6. What new will you learn in the New Year?

And finally, I have identified what new I want to learn in the New Year. There is specific new knowledge that I have committed to knowing; and as importantly, some specific practices that I have committed to – my promise to myself is that my capacity this time next year would have enhanced significantly in areas that matter to me. I invite you to design your capacity, by identifying what new you will learn, through practice, in 2016.

Feel free to add more questions if you would like. The more you question yourself, the more you will seek answers from yourself.

Once you have done this, I invite you to share your promises with some one who can hold you accountable. If you have a learning team, share these promises with your learning team. Create a structure of people around you who continuously support you in fulfilling your promises.

I have created a solid structure of people around me that hold me to account. If you would like to create a similar structure, please feel free to contact me on sameer@sameerdua.com. I would be delighted to support you.

I can guarantee you, once you have done this, you will not only make a powerful entry in 2016, you will conquer the New Year!

Make 2016 count in your life!

Good luck and have a blast!

(This blog post is simply modified from similar blog posts posted at the end of 2012, 2013 and 2014. Given its relevance at the end of 2015, it is being reposted with modifications. However, I have re-done, in complete, the exercise of answering the questions mentioned above. I encourage you to do so too and see the value for yourself :))

Sameer Dua, Founder Director, Institute for Generative Leadership, India

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Irrespective of your designation, your industry, or your role, your presence must be an important area for you to look into, and develop if necessary. At IGL-India, we claim that your presence has a great deal to do with the trust people have in you, and also it has a great deal to do with your success.

If Presence is indeed so important, let’s first begin with what does Presence even mean?

Simply put, presence is how you land on others. In others words, presence is the assessment others make of your impact on them. Even before you open your mouth to speak the first word, people make assessments about you. This assessment is based on the body you show up in and the emotional energy you emit generally, and in particular moments. Of course, once you start to speak,what you speak, and how you speak also impacts the way others assess your presence.

To have presence is to be connected every moment with the

question: ‘for the sake of what am I doing what I am doing’. It

is being connected to your purpose, and acting in fulfilling

your purpose.

What I have stated above is the external aspect of Presence. There is another aspect to presence, which is the internal aspect of presence. To have presence is to live in this moment, in the here and now. Not in your past, and not in your future. To have presence is to be bodily alert in this moment. It is to be aware of your emotional state, its impact on how you see the world, and also its impact on others around you.

To have presence is to be connected every moment with the question: ‘for the sake of what am I doing what I am doing’. It is being connected to your purpose, and acting in fulfilling your purpose.

I have identified 3 C’s of Presence that can significantly elevate your leadership Presence.

First C: Choice

At the Institute for Generative Leadership, we claim ‘You always have a choice’. We understand that humans may have no choice in the matter of the facts of this world. For example, I have a coachee who runs a successful business, but is blind. In this moment, he has no choice in the matter of his eyesight, and he cannot state, ‘I always have choice, and I want my eyesight back.’ That is not what we mean by ‘You always have choice’.

My coachee may have no choice in the fact that he is blind – however, he always has a choice with how he approaches his blindness. He can be disempowered about it, he can blame God for it, he can blame his destiny for it; or he can simply accept it, and move on in his life to take care of what he cares about.

In every moment, irrespective of your external circumstance, you have a choice in how you interpret your external circumstance, and how you interpret your external circumstance will determine what action you take. To be in a state of choice is also known as being centered.

We are centered when our body, mind and emotions are in a state where we can choose our actions. When we are not in a state to choose our actions, we are “off-center”; our reactions and tendencies choose for us. Through centering we can attain complete balance and focus regardless of our situation.

Second C: Care

In this moment, what care are you taking care of?

Leaders are aware of their cares, and are moment-to-moment connected to what care they are taking care of. A program participant of a 6-month program at the Institute for Generative Leadership-India once shared, “My team and I had created together that we, as a team, care for the vision and the goals of this organisation, and that we, as a team, would meet our goals to enable the organisation in meeting theirs. One afternoon, I returned back early to the office because my client meeting got cancelled. My entire team was sitting together and cracking jokes and generally not working. This entire team always claimed to be very busy and did not have the time to complete all the tasks they had.

When I came back early, they were surprised to see me – they clearly were not expecting me back so soon to the office.

I asked them, ‘so, what care were you taking care of for the last hour or so in this office?”

This program participant claimed that this simple yet powerful question opened up a new world for his team. What was blind to the team a moment ago became obvious to them a moment later.

In my interactions with my program participants and coachees, I realize people are not even aware of what they care about. How can you take care of what you care about, if you do not even know what you care for?

Third C: Commitment

Bob Dunham, the Founder of the Institute for Generative Leadership, makes a claim that our actions are shaped by our commitment. This claim has been tested in different situations over 30 years, and not once has it been proved otherwise.

The question here is are you aware of your commitment, or are you blind to your commitment. For example, when you go to a colleague to make a request, and the colleague responds back angrily, do you clarify why you made the request you made, or do you jump to retort back to his angry comment?

You had a commitment when you went up to the colleague to make a request – your action of making the request was inside of some commitment. But when you received an angry response, you lost connection with your commitment of why you were making the request in the first place, and suddenly became committed to teaching the other person a lesson, or defending your position, or guarding your false self-esteem, or some thing else of the sort.

Being connected to your commitment, moment to moment, is having presence.

Finally, here are some questions that I’d like to leave you with to consider:

– How am I interpreting the current situation?
– Is there another way to interpret this same situation?
– For the sake of what am I doing what I am doing at this moment?.What am I committed to in this moment?

Reflect upon these questions. Chances are new actions will emerge for you. If you need assistance reach out to us*. We look forward to being touch with you.

* We run some very powerful programs at the Institute for Generative Leadership one of which is titled ‘Results Oriented Leadership’. This is a three day powerful program that helps you generate results that matter to you.

Sameer Dua, Founder Director, Institute for Generative Leadership, India

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Freedom is one of those intriguing distinctions. Everyone wants to be free, and yet, very few choose to be free. In this blog post, I try to distinguish what freedom really means. I also look at the different ways to access freedom. (In this blog post, I am not discussing freedom from the point of view of being free from slavery, detention or oppression. What I have stated here would apply even when there is physical detention and oppression)

What is Freedom?

In the world of generative leadership, we begin with the ‘what’ question. So, the question here is ‘what is freedom’. Freedom comes from two words – ‘free’ and ‘dom’. To be ‘free’ means ‘to not be affected or restricted by a given condition or circumstance’ and, ‘dom’ denotes a ‘state’ or ‘condition’.

So, if we take the literal meaning of freedom, it means, ‘being in a state that is not affected or restricted by a given condition or circumstance.’

After having reflected upon this question, I believe ‘Freedom is a felt experience of being free from restraints in a particular moment.’ You may experience freedom in one moment, and not experience freedom in another. And it could be the other way round too. You could experience restriction in one moment and then the next moment you can experience freedom too.

Freedom comes from exercising choice

You get freedom by most importantly being authentic about moments you do not experience freedom. Only when you get aware that in a particular moment you do not experience freedom, is when you have an opportunity, or an opening, to take the requisite action to start experiencing freedom. And with new awareness comes new choice. And when you have choice, is when you have access to experiencing freedom. When some people make statements like, ‘I cannot do this’, or ‘this is not possible’, it reveals that these people, in those particular moments, are not experiencing freedom.

Many people are blind to the fact that they always have a choice, irrespective of the external circumstances. For example, Helen Keller, a deaf and blind lady, jailed in the dark and soundless prison of her body worked for the American Foundation for the Blind for more than 40 years. She was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, on June 27, 1880, and became deaf and blind at 19 months. Few could have imagined the leading role she would go on to play in many of the significant political, social, and cultural movements of the 20th century. Until her passing in 1968, she worked unceasingly to improve the lives of people with disabilities[1].

Despite her disability, she exercised choice like many do not. My presumption is that she experienced freedom more often than many of the ‘physically abled’ do. For example, a lot of us get ‘jailed’ by our opinions and judgments that are sub-ordinates are inefficient and hence our job cannot be done / or done on time.

Freedom and Responsibility go hand in hand

Based on my interactions with thousands of program participants, my claim is that most people secretly do not choose freedom; because freedom and responsibility go hand in hand. When you choose freedom, you also choose responsibility. And that is what, I assess, most people are afraid of.

It is always easier to blame someone, rather than take responsibility. The moment you declare that ‘you are the cause’, or take responsibility, you experience freedom. When you make someone else the ‘cause’, you experience restriction.

You have to develop a capacity for freedom

My claim is that freedom is not only having the liberty to do what you like. It is also about having developed a capacity to do what you like.

For example, a 52-year old man experiences restriction in walking. He has a big belly, and is diagnosed with diabetes and hypertension. He has been advised by doctors to regularly exercise and keep himself fit – but he does not do so. In the matter of walking, and in the moments he has to walk up a flight of stairs, he does not experience freedom. That is because in the matter of walking, or in the matter of his body, he has not developed a capacity, and hence he does not experience freedom.

Similarly, there are several people I know who ‘live’ in disempowering emotions. They have not developed a capacity to recreate their emotions, or for that matter recreate their assessments about their environments.

The people that I am referring to here are ones who have not developed a capacity to experience freedom in the domain of their body and / or emotions.

Freedom comes from completion

When there is un-kept promise, or a commitment; when you want to speak to your colleague or spouse about something sensitive, and you avoid doing so; when there is some pending work that you have been ignoring for some time – when any of these, or other incompletions exist, there is an experience of restriction. A lot of times, you may even be blind to this experience of restriction.

Think of a time, when you kept a long outstanding promise; or when you spoke to your spouse or colleague on a matter that discomforted you, but you still spoke about it; or when you completed a pending job – what did you experience in that moment.

My driver’s license had expired, and I kept postponing applying for a new license. Finally, when I did apply and get a new license, I felt a great sense of relief and freedom from that gnawing feeling of something pending.

Freedom in the domain of Body, Emotions and Language

Real freedom is in the freedom of Body, Emotion and Language (BEL). Said in other words – in the domains of body, heart and mind. Here are some questions for you to consider.

1. Have you developed your capacity to be free in the area of your body? To develop this capacity, you have to take care of your body and have a fit body.

2. Have you developed your capacity to be free in the area of your emotions? To develop this capacity, you have to be in the practice of choosing to be in empowering emotions. The question for you is “do you choose your emotions, or do emotions choose you, and you have no choice in this matter?”

3. Have you developed your capacity in the area of your mind, or in the area of what you create in language? To develop this capacity, you need to be aware of what you are creating, moment to moment, and then offer yourself a choice – do I want to go with this creation, or create something else.

Finally, and most importantly, Freedom is to recognize that you are at the source of your truth. You have a choice in creating what is true for you.

[1] American Foundation for the Blind. https://www.afb.org/info/about-us/helen-keller/12

Sameer Dua, Founder Director, Institute for Generative Leadership, India

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I wonder if this is my story, or the truth
My heart tells me this is the truth
My head tells me this is my story
I don’t know which to believe!

I confront my participants,
Tell them to observe their stories,
Yes, these are stories I tell them
And here I am, confronted by my own talk.

The world is not what is out there
The world is what I create it to be
Every time, I create a powerful world
This very world lets me down!

I have a choice, I remind myself
A choice in creating my story
That the world has let me down
Is also a story – I remind myself.

Yet again today, I choose to create
To create a powerful story
To create who I am
To create my future

Because, whether I like it or not
Whether I agree with it or not
Whether I know it or not
I am creating

So, today, once again
I create myself as a force of nature
Someone who has intention
And one who backs intention with action

Once again today,
I choose design over drift
I choose responsibility over blame
Why? Because I really care!

Sameer Dua, Founder Director, Institute for Generative Leadership, India

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