Are you flowing with Life or are you fighting it?

When leading in a crisis, deploy the powers of Reflection, Resilience and Resourcefulness

A journalist reached out to me the other day. She is close to Vaani and me; and so she knows that we have been enduring our bankruptcy for 13 years now.

She asked me: “Dealing with a crisis for a prolonged period of time may have taught you invaluable lessons surely. If you are open to sharing AVIS, I am keen to understand if personal leadership in a crisis situation is any different from leading a team, an organization or a nation through a crisis?”

I liked that question. And this is what I told her.

Leadership is all about accepting your situation for what it is, the way it is, and doing what you need to do, to the best of your ability, in the given circumstances.

So, as we see it, leadership is leadership. It hardly matters what context you are having to lead in. Whether you are leading in a personal, professional, social, sports, political, national or global context, you are leading. Period. The act of leadership does not change even if the context is different.

For over a decade now, in the context of our own bankruptcy, Vaani and I have been leading through uncertainty. In this time, our leadership has been all about deploying the powers of Reflection, Resilience and Resourcefulness. Now, these are three dormant strengths that are inherent in all of us. They are key to not just surviving a crisis, but, as we have discovered, they help you thrive in one.

Reflection is the ability to pause and ask yourself deep, searching, questions: why am I here, what is my current reality and how can I possibly change it?

Resilience is your inner strength. It is the ability to withstand enormous pressure in a painful situation. To unlock your Resilience, you must ask yourself a simple question: what must I do to (and how can I) adapt to my current reality? Resilience, interestingly, is deployed the moment you ask this question and explore the myriad answers it throws up. Resilience, therefore, comes from the path of least resistance, it comes from total acceptance of your current reality.

Resourcefulness is all about making do with what you have. So, it answers another simple question: what is the best I can do in my given situation with whatever I have?

If you look closely, you will observe the beautiful interplay between these three qualities. Each one complements the other. And, important, they are already present in you. All you need to do is to summon them from within you and deploy them. When you do this, you are, miraculously, happy despite your circumstances! Truly, as we have discovered, it is Happiness that is the antidote to uncertainty and the catalyst to High-Performance, particularly in times of a crisis! This awakening in us has made our materially challenging and dark Life very meaningful; which is why Vaani and I are now the happynesswalas and believe our Life’s Purpose is “Inspiring ‘Happyness'”!

So, it doesn’t matter what context you are leading in. As long as you are accepting of your current reality and are deploying Reflection, Resilience and Resourcefulness in a crisis situation, you will always thrive in it. Surely, you may not be able to solve your problems overnight or, as is true in our case, you may not be able to solve them even over a prolonged span of time. Yet, you will be happy, you will be anchored and you will be in the game – no matter what you are going through.

And as long as you are in the game, and, as in cricket until the last ball is bowled, anything – actually everything – is possible! 

Note: AVIS and Vaani are the happynesswalas. They believe their Life’s Purpose is Inspiring ‘Happyness’! They are going through a fascinating, Life-changing experience – a crippling bankruptcy!! If you would like to invite them to inspire your team(s) or explore other opportunities, please look up: www.avisviswanathan.in and www.avinitiatives.co.in.

Don’t fight Life, face it!

Adulting is serious stuff! :)

You may not be entirely untouched, but you can be unmoved

Learn to live dangerously!

Life gives you problems so that you know who you truly are!

Don’t seek guarantees from Life

A worry controls you only when you feed it with your attention

Non-worrying delivers happiness!

“Is there a method or technique with which you can stop worries from arising in your mind,” asked a gentleman over a message to me on my App (“AVIS Viswanathan” – available for free download on Google Play and the App Store).

The simple answer is that you can’t stop worries from arising in your mind. You can only choose to be non-worrying.

Let me explain further what I have learnt about being non-worrying.

Non-worrying means that when a worry arises in your mind, you simply let it pass. Anything that you don’t attend to will not bother you.

Consider this: in some months of the year the population of flies in India usually multiplies – particularly in humid conditions in Chennai. Even the cleanest five-star properties in Chennai will not be spared by the flies in such times. So, if you walked into a swank coffee shop and found a couple of flies on the tables there, you will not make a hue and cry. You will simply ignore their presence thinking to yourself, “well, this is India, this is Chennai, this is common occurrence” and move on. Non-worrying means treating the worry that arises as you would treat a housefly in India. Accept that it exists, accept that you can’t do anything about it and move on.

A worry controls you only when you feed it with your attention. It controls you only when you allow it to control you. Just ignore it. Let it be. And you be too. When you make a worry powerless, it will simply recede – the same way it arose in the first place.

Of course, the human mind, like the human body, must be trained to practise non-worrying. And that requires 24 x 7, consistent, practice! When you master the art of non-worrying, you can only be happy!

When a picture teaches you about Life…

As Dr.Nupur Talwar and Dr.Rajesh Talwar walked free from Dasna jail last evening, this image emerged on my timeline, on the Internet and on TV.

Picture Credit: APNLIVE – Sourced from the internet

It told me so many stories about Life…it showcased…

• How inscrutable Life really is
• The unfairness and injustice meted out to this couple, their daughter Aarushi and their help Hemraj
• How to stay strong, find strength in a storm and go through Life with reflection, resilience and resourcefulness
• How to serve selflessly, how to be useful no matter how grave the circumstances are – the dentist couple refused fees for dental care that they had provided to inmates of Dasna
• The unflinching support that Rajesh’s older brother Dinesh Talwar provided the couple – he was the mainstay of the entire defense strategy, the chief-of-staff as the family soldiered on
• The focus and perseverance of defense attorney Tanveer Ahmed Mir – without whose leadership, the Talwars’ case may not have been made in the Allahabad High Court
• The brutally honest story-telling of Avirook Sen in his Book Aarushi and of Vishal Bharadwaj and Meghna Gulzar in their film Talvar
• The stoicism of the Chitnis couple, Nupur’s parents, as the family went through these harrowing 9 years
• That, no matter what, the truth ultimately prevails…and justice is always done
• How small, and petty, our own challenges are when we look beyond ourselves and around us
• Why we must always be grateful for what we have instead of complaining about what we don’t have
• The learning we must all take away: whatever happens, face Life!
• The Gulzar-RD Burman-Kishore-da genius: Musafir Hoon Yaroon…Bas Chalte Jaana Hai…