Tag: Building The Leadership Muscle

“Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on Earth.” — Muhammad Ali.
After many years, over 12 – 15 years maybe, I boarded an Andheri-Churchgate fast train to get to Bombay Central. I had about 40 minutes before my meeting at the RTO office at Bombay Central to meet the RTO to discuss the organ donation option on the drivers license in Maharashtra. I thought the train would be the fastest way to get to my destination.

What followed soon after I boarded the fast train was nothing short of fascinating. I was catching up on news on the Times of India Blackberry Application and reading about Ajit Pawar’s resignation. I then noticed a ‘beggar’ who was well dressed and who introduced himself loudly in the first class compartment of the train in a deep, sure voice stating ‘I am Prof. Sandeep Desai’.

Just hearing the word ‘Professor’ caught my attention. A Professor? Begging? In a local train? – and someone who spoke such immaculate English? He could get a job anywhere, I thought.

I was now more interested in what he was saying than reading about Ajit Pawar’s resignation. The Professor continued saying that those who donated food to the poor, sort out their problem only for a day. But if the donations are made for their education, then it can resolve a poor man’s life. He added, ‘Education gives you the power to change your life. So I have decided to set up one English medium school in a year.’
What? You identify a problem and then make it so personal that you beg in the train for money? How crazy is that? Crazy it is, because Professor Sandeep Desai went on to add ‘So far, we have managed to start four schools in Maharashtra. The fifth school will be set up in rural Rajasthan. We have already bought land there and construction will start soon”. Four schools set up with money ‘begged’, and the fifth one in process!! UNBELIEVABLE!
He claimed to have won the Real Hero award by CNN IBN. Here was a ‘real hero’ begging in a train. I made a mental note to see if he indeed had won this award, and yes he did! I actually checked.

People choose their problems. Some choose their maids and drivers to be their problems; while others like Prof. Sandeep Desai make the country’s lack of education their own personal problem. How inspiring! Next time, remind me of Prof. Sandeep Desai when I complain about funding for the Gift Your Organ Foundation. Or maybe, I will not complain again? Maybe I will just get down to business – wonder if I have the courage that Prof. Sandeep Desai has?
Post Script:

I was so inspired with Prof. Sandeep Desai that I completed this blog (including checking whether or not he won the Real Heroes award before completing my journey home);
However, I had to speak to this man – I found his number and spoke to him – if there’s anyone who would like to support Prof. Desai’s efforts, I’ll be happy to forward his email Id and /or telephone number to you;
In case you are wondering – lots of people did put money in the donation box carried by Prof. Desai. And, he acknowledged, with the same grace, everyone who put a fiver, a tener or a hundred rupee note in his donation box. I also overhead a student volunteering to teach physics to the students of Prof. Desai’s school.

Such was this man’s impact!

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

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Right now as you are starting to read this blog, there is an internal conversation going on in your mind. Your mind is perpetually in a conversation. Without you even trying, your mind makes meanings out of everything. It is automatic and you don’t even stop and think about it. The meanings that you make significantly affect the way you be (your being). And the way you be determines the way you respond or react to situations and circumstances.

Consider the last time you made a call and that the person suggested that s/he would call you back. You waited and waited for that call but that call never came. What meaning did you make at that time – that you are not cared for; the person doesn’t respect you; that person is arrogant; the person is playing games with you; and so on and so forth. The job of the mind is to make a meaning out of everything. And it mechanically makes a meaning out of everything, without you even realizing it. The real reason why the person did not call you back could be far from the meaning you made of it. But you continue to act in sync with the meaning you made. The important thing about the meaning you have made is that it changes the way you feel (your being) and these feelings change the way you interact with the world.

Stop reading this for a moment and think, right now, what are your current internal conversations? For example, your spouse may have said to you that she will not come along for dinner with you at your friend’s residence – what have you made of that statement of your spouse?; or your junior colleague told you that he cannot wait back to complete the task you have given her; or a friend has refused to go for a movie with you; or maybe a young attractive boy / girl has called you to say hello to you. Or anything else for that matter. Stop now and be present to what you are making of clear statements or situations in your life. You are a machine that makes meaning out of everything and once you are done with making meaning, the meaning you have made becomes your truth, on the basis of which you act.

The bad news is that these internal conversations are a part of you and will never stop. The good news is that you have a control over these. Being present to these conversations first is your access to altering these conversations. Once you are present to these internal conversations – you then have a choice to allow that conversation to continue or to alter that conversation.

None of the meanings that you make are better than any others in an absolute way. These are all ‘your’ meanings and not the reality. However, now that you have no choice and your mind is going to make meanings, you have an opportunity to train your mind to make meanings that empower you; make you feel fine and allow you to go through your day with peace and contentment. Generally, your mind naturally produces negative meanings and you then react based on these meanings produced by your mind and considered by you as the reality. Instead of reacting, choose to respond. A reaction is always immediate and normally negative. A response is calm, collected and chosen by you.

Be in control of this and choose your internal conversations rather than be at the mercy of these conversations.

Once again remember, your internal conversation is a matter of your choice – for your own sake be wise in making this choice. It is a far more powerful way to lead your life!

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

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There are various quotations of George Bernard Shaw that I like, however, amongst the ones that I like more than the others is the one below:
‘This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.’

The reason that I really like this quotation is because he describes you and me as a Force of Nature.Potentially, each one of us has the power possessed by tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis or volcanoes, but we so undermine ourselves and behave like clods full of complaints and problems refusing to take accountability. I have a smart, intelligent and a very talented friend who blamed her family for not letting her have a life before her marriage because they were very conservative; and then she blamed her husband for everything that went wrong in her life. As I have mentioned above, she is smart, intelligent and very talented and if she sees herself through my eyes, she will see the potential that she has and how much she is wasting the inborn talent and gifts that she has. However, she insists on being a selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that her world, i.e., her husband and her parents will not devote themselves to making her happy.

The key is to see yourself as a Force of Nature. And once you do this, most of the battle is automatically won. Most people are just not able to see the bigness in themselves and are only seeing the bigness in others. Individually, each one of us can create an impact like that of any other force of nature, and that can happen only when we choose to be used for a purpose recognized by ourselves as a mighty one. There is no right or wrong purpose; it can be anything that lights us up. It has be something that one already doesn’t have, because if one has had it, it does not remain mighty any more. And, for it to also be a mighty purpose, one needn’t know how to achieve the purpose when starting out. Let me quote George Bernard Shaw again here: ‘The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.’

Forces of nature are not reasonable. We know that out of experience.

I have a friend, Jerry Martin, who in a short span of time has become very dear to me – I call him the Force of Nature, only because he truly epitomizes the phrase ‘Force of Nature’. In the midst of some office crises, he once said to me, ‘A force of nature does not play politics – a force of nature is only focused on what it wants to achieve – petty games are played by mediocre people who are consumed by pulling others down.’ Touché!

Every citizen in this country has a view on corruption and wants it to end, but it has taken the force of a 70 year old man to bring the mighty government led by the Congress on its knees; a young friend of mine who had a near fatal accident in November 2011, was celebrating my birthday with my friends and me in March 2012 at my house looking and being perfectly ‘normal’ after 6 or 7 surgeries were performed on her in the preceding months; a cousin, who was brought up only by his mother in a modest way, needed to leave his education and start earning at a young age to provide for his mother and two sisters. Today, 15 years hence, he is a Director of a large multinational IT company and owns 4 houses in prestigious locations. These are real life examples of people one can relate with who have risen above the circumstances and been the force.

You have a choice, either be mediocre or be a force – what would you like to be? If you want to be a force, find your mighty purpose, be unreasonable and remain focused to achieving this purpose. If you already are not seeing yourself as a force of nature, you will start to see the force of nature in you emerge.

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

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I felt a great sense of power when I uttered the words, “There will be no deaths in this country for the want of organs”. This is now the vision of the Gift Your Organ Foundation and what we as a Foundation are working towards. Not only the first time, every time I say these words, I still feel the same sense of power that I had felt at the time of first saying this. And this power then urges me to action to achieve what I have just declared. The question that I was left with is how do the words I speak leave me with a sense of power? What can I do to feel this power at all times?

It is the context that I create when I speak that determines what I feel and what action I take. ‘Context’ here means, ‘that which surrounds, and gives meaning to, something else’. I could have stated ‘I hope there will be no deaths in this country for the want of organs’ and the glaring difference between the statements right on the first line and the one above here is the decisiveness of the first statement. In the first statement, there is indisputability, there is definiteness, while in the statement which uses the word ‘hope’ there is an element of uncertainty, a sense of being out of control; a dependence on external factors – external to me and hence there is a loss of power in the second statement.

Context is your answer to the ‘why’. And this applies to everything you want to apply it to. The context you create determines what you do; how you do; and, how you feel when you do. When asked two different doctors why they chose medicine as their profession, one responded by saying to make money and the other responded by saying that he wanted to save lives. Both doctors do the same thing, however, each of them has created a different context for themselves. Nothing wrong with either. One gets empowered by the thought of making money and the other by the thought of saving lives. Both these doctors have chosen to give themselves empowering contexts that which makes them wake up every morning and get to work.

Let us look at this in a slightly differently example – A friend of ours was going through some marital difficulties in her life and one friend stated, ‘I will try to do whatever I can to support her’. Another friend stated, “Who I am is a stand for our friend”. Think of a friend who needs you right now and say these two statements keeping that friend in mind and see the difference you feel when you are saying each of the statements. There is a feeling of power in the second statement; a feeling of being the cause in the matter. Both friends are genuinely concerned about our common friend. One friend will ‘try’ and leave scope for failure and the other is a ‘stand’ – there is no failure is this space.

The good news is that context is created in your language and you have the power to create any context that you want. In a subsequent blog, I will take up creating powerful contexts through language in more detail.

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

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