Feeling blessed and grateful as I notch up a unique century!

Even as my 100th Conversation comes up on Saturday, April 13th, I am marveling at the magic and beauty of Life.

 

These 100 Conversations are special for a few reasons:

• all of them have been non-commercial
• they represent the most consistent effort in Chennai to curate and host live, reflective, Conversations on Life and Happiness
• they have featured a whopping 164 guests in 4+ years and
• they have been curated and hosted through the darkest time of our Life – for Vaani and me!

To be sure, our 11-year-old bankruptcy endures; a phase that has often been marked by long spells of worklessness and pennilessness. Yet, each of these 100 Conversations has been therapeutic; each has helped us to learn, unlearn and share Life lessons.

When I hosted my first Conversation on January 22, 2015 with film critic Baradwaj Rangan (while starting the #BlissCatchers Series), Vaani and I never thought this effort would go on for 4+ years or that we would end up bringing so much consistency and focus to it. We loved the opportunity to do something in line with our Purpose of “Inspiring ‘Happyness'”! And we said, “Let’s go be useful”! Success was anyway eluding us – we did not have work or money. But we were learning a lot through this challenging phase in our Life. And all we wanted to do was to share our learnings. But what happens when you do something selflessly, when you do what you love doing, is always beautiful. That’s perhaps why we have come this far, ready with our 100th Conversation on April 13th!

Until our Conversation Series’ came up, there wasn’t any similar effort in Chennai. There were panel discussions and Talks, but there were no explorations of lived experiences and of Happiness through live, reflective, Conversations. Our initiative over these years has, we believe, helped whoever has been touched, realize that Life must be faced, no matter what, and that you can – and must – be happy despite the circumstances.

Statistically, our 100 Conversations have featured 164 guests in all, between Jan 2015 and April 2019, across 47 #BlissCatcher sessions, 4 #happynessconversations sessions, 22 #UncommonLeader sessions, 20 #ArtistsSoul sessions and 7 #HeartofMatter-HC sessions. All of these 100 Conversations have been curated by Vaani, alongside me, making the journey truly memorable for us.

None of what we have done may have been possible without the support of our venue partners and, of course, thanks to each of our 164 guests who agreed to be in conversation with us and share their lived experiences, to make our world a better, happier place!

So, as we host this 100th Conversation, Vaani and I are soaked in gratitude – we will remain eternally grateful to Life for this transformational experience; without the bankruptcy, we would not have understood that Happiness is really being non-worrying, non-frustrated and non-suffering, we would not have set out to share this learning with our immediate circle of influence: through my Blog, my book ‘Fall Like A Rose Petal’ and through our Conversation Series’. 

My 100th Conversation in the April Edition of #thehappynessconversations, features a beautiful couple, Manu & Karthik, and celebrates their love for each other and for Life!

When you can’t unentangle a mess…

Life is a function of time. Everything happens in its own time and at its own pace. So, as I share on this Podcast, when you can’t solve a problem, you just let go and let people and things just be.

Listen time: 4:58 minutes

Feeling isolated or unwanted? Simply move on…

You can’t control how people treat you.

“What are your thoughts on loneliness, on feeling isolated and unwanted,” a young reader asked me.

I want to share here, while hopefully answering that question, what I have learnt from two teachers.

The first teacher I would like to lean on is Swami Sathya Sai Baba. As I have often said here, I have never met Swami. But I have experienced him through a medium. On one occasion, just before the launch of my Book, Fall Like A Rose Petal, Swami told me this, through the medium, his messenger: “To be alone is a virtue, to feel lonely in a crowd is a learning and to have a crowd is a gift.” That message has stayed with me. It is a fascinating perspective. It has helped me value every member of the audience in events I curate or when I deliver my Talks and workshops. I treat it as a gift that people like Vaani and me, who are materially on the verge of extinction, broke to the bone, still have an audience that is willing to pause and reflect on what we have to share. So, I am eternally grateful to all those who read my Book or read what I have to share on my Blog or follow me on my various social media handles.

To be sure, in a way, with Vaani by my side for the past 30 years, I have never experienced loneliness. Yes, while in my mouna (silence) spells, daily, I have been alone. I like to sit quietly at times and reflect on Life. But I have never experienced loneliness. So I will not comment about it.

Both Vaani and I have, however, come across many situations when we have felt isolated or unwanted. But we have chosen to be unaffected by such attitude. Our companionship has helped us immensely – we always talk about what we feel and those conversations help us get rid of debilitating emotions. Over time, we have learnt that giving attention to what is not in your control is futile.

Think about it. When do you feel isolated or unwanted? Only when you are not included. Now, what can you do about a situation when someone else simply doesn’t want you, doesn’t want to think about you? You can pine for attention, you can feel hurt, you can feel isolated or unwanted – but whoever has chosen to ignore you has done what they have done; or they continue to be that way. How you feel is just not important to them. Clearly it is not. So, why give their action and attitude so much attention? Just move on. Drop that feeling of isolation and unwantedness, turn in the direction of where people are waiting to celebrate you and simply move on. And if you have no one, and you feel alone, celebrate that feeling too. After all, as Swami Sathya Sai Baba told me, being alone or feeling lonely is either a virtue or a learning. Both, in their own ways, are invaluable experiences.

The second teacher I have learnt from, in this context, is my young, super-talented, friend Sundari Sivasubbu. She has amazing energy even though, being wheel-chair bound, she has several physical limitations and challenges. I met her when she came to watch my Bliss Catchers show at the Odyssey Bookstore. Now The Bliss Catchers’ event happens on the first floor at the store where there is no elevator access. Despite coming to the store, Sundari could not attend the event that evening. She could have felt unwanted and isolated. But she was brimming with Life as she introduced herself to Vaani and me when we were leaving the store after the event.

Her positivity held us a mirror. Here we were doing so many events in public spaces but without being truly inclusive. Almost all of the venue partners we work with somehow have spaces that don’t have proper elevator access for making special people like Sundari feel wanted. We have tried to correct the situation at least in one of our Event Series, Heart of Matter – Happiness Conversations – at the InKo Centre, where host Rathi Jafer has opened up her gallery space on the ground floor with an effort to start being inclusive. Even so, every time I have apologized to Sundari when we have not been able to have her join our events (for reasons of those spaces being inaccessible for people on a wheelchair), I have never found in her a trace of anger or bitterness with the way we as a society treat people like her. She’s always said, “Oh! I understand. Things have to certainly change. And that change can’t happen overnight. So, please don’t feel bad or sorry for me.” And that’s the learning I want to showcase here. If you attach importance to people’s attitudes you are squandering precious time. People do what they do because they are that way. If they are not sensitive enough to think of whether you will feel unwanted or isolated, it is only because you are not priority for them. You can rave, rant, pine and grieve or like young Sundari does, you can just move on. The choice is yours.

What others do to you, how they treat you, is clearly not in your control. Thinking about how you have been treated and feeling isolated or unwanted is the greatest disservice you can do to yourself. Instead, try diverting your focus and attention in a different direction – you will not just feel liberated, you will be happy too!

 

There truly is nowhere to reach, nothing to prove and nothing to achieve in Life

If you think deeply, the journey is the only reward!

We met a friend over coffee yesterday. He was curious to know why we curated free public events across the city regularly. He was one of our guests at the Heart of Matter – Happiness Conversations event last Saturday and his question is justified. He asked: “You didn’t make a naya paisa out of such a high quality event you developed and delivered. Why do you do what you do?” To be sure, we are often asked this question. So, we are never surprised.

For Vaani and me, our Life’s Purpose is Inspiring Happiness. My Book Fall Like A Rose Petal, my Fall Like A Rose Petal Talk , the public events we curate, this Blog that I write daily, the value we create for our clients through our Workplace Happiness Firm A V Initiatives, are all part of this journey of living our Purpose. Yes, we do try and monetize whatever we can, whenever an opportunity arises. But we also recognize that not everything in Life is about making money or about being successful in a worldly sense. So, we immerse ourselves in qualitative opportunities, that come our way, where we can inspire people to be happy despite their circumstances. We consider ourselves blessed to be useful even when we are unable to be successful, for the moment, with starting to repay our creditors, climbing out of our bankruptcy and becoming debt-free.

This paradigm shift to being useful, even when there is no money involved, versus always wanting to be successful, has been very rewarding and truly liberating. There’s great joy in simply doing what we love doing, without any sense of wanting to achieve something, to earn something or to prove something. Life is very simple, very beautiful, when you realize that it is the journey that is the reward.

I learnt this lesson way back from a close friend.

My friend is much older than I am; he’s 76. I will call him ABB. He’s the consummate networker, yet he’s a very genteel person – someone who goes out of his way to help people. He has served the Indian Air Force and post his voluntary retirement, he has been a very active member of the corporate circuit in Hyderabad. He’s been an office bearer of many an industry body or management association. And has been a champion of several voluntary causes in South India. I have known him for over 2 decades now. And he has always left me inspired with his energy and enthusiasm. Even so, he’s extremely modest about his achievements and truly believes that he’s just an ordinary person – which is why I have chosen not to name him, but have just used his initials, so as not to embarrass him. Once when I asked him, why he did so much with often no evident returns, he told me : “I am not looking at name or fame. If some work or request comes my way and I feel like doing it, I do it. I have nothing to prove, nothing to achieve, nothing to grab!”

I took away a profound learning from his simple expression: “Nothing to prove. Nothing to achieve. Nothing to grab!” The way we are conditioned – both by our upbringing and through social demands and pressures – we are always doing just the opposite. It is almost as if, if you are not driven, you are wasting your Life. And the word “driven” itself is misunderstood. It has come to mean – prove yourself through your feats, your achievements, your assets, your wealth, your estates. Whereas, we should have been driven by an urge to live fully, to enjoy and celebrate the gift of this lifetime. But in order to prove ourselves, we are postponing living all the time. Osho, the Master, explains the fallacy of living this way and champions living enlightened: “Enlightenment is not an achievement, it is an understanding that there is nothing to achieve, nowhere to go.” Beautiful!

The key to intelligent living lies in internalizing ABB’s and Osho’s philosophy. It means to live Life fully, doing whatever you can with whatever you have in each moment, not really worrying about what you are achieving. When you begin walking, often, the road unfolds on its own. When you let go and live, driven by the urge to live fully, and not by material goals, always, Life takes care of all that it has created. And that includes you – and me! When you realize that Life is not about achieving anything, but is about experiencing everything that comes your way, you can say you are awake, aware and enlightened!

PS: If you liked this blogpost, please share it to help spread the learning it carries!

Place your inner joy over profits, make your living experience a prayer!

When happiness is your ROI, you are living a Life that matters!

Yesterday a guest, who I was inviting to be on my Bliss Catchers show, wanted to know why I curate this Event Series.

I said it makes me happy. “I love doing it,” I added.

But he persisted and was keen to know what I got “out of it” – as in what is my material “return on investment” (ROI)?

I clarified that, to me and Vaani, just being happy was the single-most important criteria for doing anything. Happiness is the only ROI we look! Yes, money is important. We all need money. And we particularly need all the money that can come our way because we need to climb out of our financial situation – our bankruptcy – and turn debt-free. But when you can’t get money (as is evident from our experience), you can still do what you love doing for just the joy of doing it. So, we curate Events such as The Bliss Catchers , The Uncommon Leader  and Heart of Matter – Happiness Conversations , I blog here daily and I deliver Talks even for organizations (NGOs and not-for-profit enterprises) that can’t afford to pay me a fee. Inspiring Happiness is now our raison d’etre, our Higher Purpose, for Vaani and me.

There are two parts to earning a living in Life as I have understood it. You can work for profits and you can work for joy. The ideal situation is when you can just work for joy. But you need to pay your bills, so the second most ideal situation is when you can work for both joy and profits – which is to make money while doing what you love doing. It is only when you forsake what you love, and go work only for profits, at the cost of your inner peace and joy, that you lose the plot.  You suffer and feel miserable earning all the money that you do. So, for Vaani and me, when our business failed, we decided to retain our focus and only do what gave us joy. Therefore, even when we do not always get the opportunity to monetize what we do, we go ahead and do them, because doing them makes us very, very, in fact deliriously, happy!

I have realized that if you immerse yourself in what you love doing, you lose yourself to Life; then your entire living experience is a prayer! When you immerse yourself in what you enjoy doing then it ceases to be work. It becomes your Life. Then no loss or challenge can pin you down for too long. Then your energy, the one within you, resonates with the Universe’s energy. In that beautiful communion, an inner peace, a rare joy, takes over. And your entire Life becomes a celebration, a prayer, an offering to this Universe!

 

The ageless, timeless, parenting tip – yet again: “Take a chill pill”!!!

Worrying about your children is pointless.

Vaani and I host a quarterly Event Series called Heart of Matter – Happiness Conversations along with the InKo Centre here in Chennai. At last weekend’s edition, we were in conversation with parents of special children. We talked about how parents coped with their new realities, and how they demonstrated grit and acceptance, to help their children pave inspirational paths. One of the parents, M.S.Ramesh, who is the father of entrepreneurs Sriram and Sunder Ram (both of whom were struck by cerebral palsy in their childhood) of Twin Twigs, had this to say: “When the doctors gave me this diagnosis about my children, my first reaction was ‘what next’….I didn’t ask ‘why’ or ‘why us’…I just moved on practically, to consider the next course of action.”

I find phenomenal value in embracing Ramesh’s approach and philosophy to parenting. Although we all know that worrying itself is futile, we still worry. Worse, we worry more about our children, than about ourselves, only because we feel protective towards and possessive about them.

As parents, all of us want our children to live comfortable and happily. We don’t wish that pain, in any form, touch them. Now, the truth is, what we wish for as parents is never going to happen. Our children are going to encounter pain, they are going to suffer if they don’t learn to be accepting of the Life that they get, they are going to be unhappy until they learn how to live in this world and yet be above it. Important, our children are possibly going to end up making the same mistakes that we made and what we don’t want them to make. They are more likely to reject our sage counsel than accept them. They are sure to stumble, fall down, grope in the dark, fight, resist, kick-about and then come around to discovering that their parents (aka us) were, after all, right. A young lady, in her late 20s now, we met last week said how much she could relate to what her parents had told her during her adolescent years and through young adulthood. “I feel they were sincere and profound with their perspectives. Every word rings true now,” she confessed.

So between two points of view – of the parent in Ramesh and the child in the young lady – I guess we have a pragmatic approach that’s worth considering. Keeping my focus on parenting and on parents’ tendency to get keyed up about their children, I would just say this: take a chill pill.

No amount of worrying about your children is going to make their Life journey simpler or easier. If you have children who are not taking your advice, please tell them what you have to say, and then let them go do what they want. If you have children who are dealing with a crisis that they can’t resolve or you can’t help them solve, pray for them if you believe in the power of prayer; if you don’t believe in prayer, just let them be and trust the process of Life. After all, you too have waged so many battles in and with Life to be where you are today. So simply trust that your children too will get past their crisis phases.

No matter how hard you try, you can’t live your children’s lives. No matter how much you wish, you can’t make their lives any more comfortable. No matter how much you want to, you can’t prevent them from going through their share of pain, unhappiness, suffering and catharsis. So, stop worrying about your children. As Khalil Gibran (1883~1931) has said, “…They are not your children…They are sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.”