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 fear death, celebrate it!

When you live a Life of Purpose, you live happily despite the circumstances

You are truly living when you are giving!

The Rs.1k Wedding Invite And The Man Who Gave Away Most Of His Wealth

A pompous friend and the modest billionaire Azim Premji help reinforce a key guiding principle in Vaani and me – that the essence of responsible citizenship lies in trusteeship.

This past week, a friend reached out wanting to visit us to invite us to his daughter’s wedding. We requested him to avoid the formality and support our initiative to save paper. So we asked him to send the Invite over WhatsApp. But the gentleman and his wife insisted on coming home. When they handed over the Invite, printed on hot pink paper with gold letters in a ‘custom-designed’ font, our friend said: “Each invitation card has cost us Rs.1000 and surely WhatsApp would not have done justice to our effort. So, we decided to come personally…that way you can see how elaborately we have planned this wedding…it will be the grandest in our family for a long, long time…!”

Even as he made that statement – both verbally and through physically handing over that expensive invitation card – Vaani and I wondered, if each card cost a whopping Rs.1000, then how big, how fat and how wasteful will the actual wedding itself be?

Although Vaani and I don’t see it that way anymore, I concede that weddings are regarded as a socially relevant and important occasion by most families. But do they really need to be pompous events where everything is about outdoing someone else, showing off how much you have and investing in a vulgar, reckless, display of ego, wealth and status?

Thankfully, some of the younger folks we know are leading a change among their families and peers. A few weddings we have been invited to in the last couple of years have been zero-waste affairs; they were bootstrapped and done tastefully with no pomp, with only very close family and friends in attendance.

We believe weddings, if they must be done at all, must focus on making the experience memorable for everyone present while keeping the event a responsible celebration that emphasizes companionship and Happiness. And when everyone wills it so, weddings can certainly be carefully, meaningfully, curated on lower budgets; the money saved can be put to better use – for the couple to travel and see the world or set up a new home or to support a social cause that is seriously starved of resources.

I know it will be a long way before this view is embraced by the majority. But clearly a Rs.1000-a-piece wedding invitation card is avoidable. Surely, you can create beautiful Invites that can be e-mailed or sent over WhatsApp.

Interestingly, again this past week, we were invited to an event where Azim Premji of Wipro was given the Madras Management Association – Amalgamations Group Business Leadership Award for 2019.

Why does the incredibly simple, modest, Premji even need to be feted with an award? This was the thought uppermost on our mind when we arrived at the event.

Image Copyright with Original Creator/MMA

But former ICICI Bank Chairman N.Vaghul nailed the reasoning. He said that in a society where values like integrity and trusteeship are almost extinct, where there is a steady decline in responsible conduct of citizenship, the spotlight on Premji’s principled Life can really help showcase the continued relevance of these values. Through telling the story of his Life, of the world-class institutions he has built (in manufacturing, IT and education) and of how much he is giving away (estimated at close to $ 21 billion) to his charity – the Azim Premji Foundation – we are inviting future generations to pause, reflect and, hopefully, embrace his philosophy of trusteeship (which he says is inspired by Mahatma Gandhi).

Vaani and I took away a key learning from Premji’s acceptance speech. He said that there is only so much that a family can consume. The inference clearly is that whatever is available to a family beyond what they require to meet their basic needs may ideally be given away to support someone else’s need to live a dignified Life.

I didn’t miss the irony from the past week as I sat down early this morning to write this Blogpost. The reality of the world – and the times – we live in struck me hard. Surely there are more people around us who believe that making money and showing it all off is the Purpose of Life. They are like our friend  who vainly insists that even the invitation card to his daughter’s wedding must announce his wealth and social status. And, sadly, there are fewer people like Premji, who despite all their wealth, remain grounded and are invested in social good. Which is why I agree with Vaghul. Every time a Premji is celebrated, the message of intelligent living, of compassion, of giving, is celebrated. And given the circus of greed and one-upmanship that we see incessantly playing around us, this celebration of responsible citizenship is critical to inspire people; to invite them to consider living fuller, more meaningful, lives.

The idea of responsible citizenship is not about doing charity when you are asked to do it. I am sure most people out there have enough goodness in them to stand up and be counted when they are asked to contribute. So, that’s not the kind of reactive behavior that I am talking about. Responsible citizenship is about trusteeship.

 

Think of trusteeship like this. You are a trustee of the Life that’s been given to you. And you are a trustee of the planet that you inhabit. So be responsible with how you live and how you use the planet’s resources. Recognize that you need only so much to live and to support your immediate family. Beyond food, clothing, shelter, education, a reasonable healthcare and retirement plan and hi-speed internet connectivity through a smart device, whatever you have, whatever comes your way, give it away. Give, not because you have to give, not because you are asked to give, but give because you want to give. Recognize that just as this human form, this Life, is a gift, every thing, every resource that you acquire in this lifetime, is also given to you. So, be responsible by employing all that you receive for human good, to make the world a better place.

I too will lean on Gandhi to suggest employing a simple principle to make informed, intelligent, decisions when it comes to practising trusteeship (I have tweaked Gandhi’s original thought to make it relatable to our times): “Recall the face of the poorest – economically, emotionally, spiritually – person you have come across and ask yourself if the step you are about to take will benefit this person? Will this person gain from your making this choice? Will it help restore them to a Life of dignity, love and Happiness? If it will, go do what you are planning to do. If it won’t, well, rethink your choice!”

Apply this principle to my friend’s choice to splurge Rs.1000 on that wedding invitation card. Apply it to Premji’s choice to give away $ 21 billion. And apply it to each of your Life choices – from the past, from the present and to those that may come up in the future. And see how beautifully this principle leads you – every single time – to distinguish between want and need; and to do what is right than what appears to be right!

Your Purpose finds you when you look beyond money circle of Life

The reason why you live

The key to staying purposeful, feeling alive and being happy!

Why my Blogposts may not appear daily anymore

I will continue to post whenever I have a learning to share – may not be daily, but I may post several times in a month.

It has been over 10 years since I have been writing this Blog. I have been writing it daily. Without missing a single day. It started as a Word file in 2007 – as notes to my two children, Aashirwad and Aanchal, in the form of a personal journal (these notes/letters in August 2014 came out as my first Book Fall Like A Rose Petal). Then, in end-2009, I started posting my daily learnings on a Yahoo Group where several of my school friends are members. Slowly, with the emergence of Facebook, I moved to posting there. And eventually, in 2010 or so, I set up my Blog – first on Blogspot and later on WordPress. It has been a fascinating journey over the past decade of sharing learnings continuously – for the past 3650+ days. My daily Blogposts, my sharing, have helped me find meaning in what may otherwise well be called a “dark, meaningless” phase of my Life! My inspiration for my consistency has been Amitabh Bachchan who, despite his superstardom and associated schedules, blogs unfailingly – daily. And my inspiration for my daily posts has been Life itself – I have been sharing here what I have learnt from Life and from people around me.

Going forward, however, I have decided to reduce the frequency of my Blogposts.

I am immersed with conceptualizing and writing two Books – one of them with Vaani. Besides, I would like to dedicate the hour, that I normally invest in writing my Blog daily, to my health – focusing on a walk and exercise regimen to manage my diabetic condition a lot more efficiently!

Today is an important day to make this decision I guess.

It marks the end, astrologically, of a tumultuous phase in our Life. As per my chart, I complete a decade-long phase of my Life today. This phase came close on the heels of another scorching 7-year phase.  In these 17 years my own views on God, religion, rituals, faith, astrology and the inscrutable Higher Energy have evolved. I have come to realize that Life (all Life) has a Purpose, everything happens for a reason and time plays a huge role in whatever we experience. I have now understood that Life is the greatest teacher of them all. She always gives you the test first and lesson later. Astrology to me is a science (like meteorology is) that tells you how the conditions are likely to be – I don’t see it (anymore) as capable of changing your Life’s course. In fact, no one, and nothing, can change it. I remain grateful to Life for all that I have experienced and learnt.

Even so, as I embark on a new phase in my Life, when I sincerely believe our business and financial situation will turn around, and we will be able to repay all the money that we owe people, I look forward to engaging even more purposefully with Life. With Vaani, I hope to be Inspiring Happiness among any audience that cares to pause and reflect – through my Books, my Talks, our Workshops and through this Blog. I may play around with the medium here – choosing to write a Blogpost or share a Vlog or Podcast. I will essentially continue to post whenever I have a learning to share – may not be daily, but I may post several times in a month. So, please stay tuned! Vaani and I wish you and your precious family, good health, abundance and “Happyness” – now and always!  

How I am feeling at my Point 50

When you are soaked in gratitude and love the Life you have, its beauty and fragrance are magical.

I turn 50 today.

In the normal course I would have been still been drunk – hung over – on alcohol from the previous night’s binge! But today I am drunk on the love that is pouring in from all around. I feel awed, humbled and grateful – all at the same time.

Way back in 2004, when we had met a Siddha yogi, on the advice of one of our friends, the yogi had told me, “AVIS, your Life will completely change after you turn 40!” I was 37 then. On my 40^th birthday, in 2007, when Vaani’s sister and her husband from Phoenix, Arizona, had called to wish me, I remember telling them both this: “Oh! This is one birthday that I have so eagerly looked forward to.” I was thinking then, keeping the yogi’s remark – which I considered to be a prophecy – in mind, that post-40 we would get all the money that we so badly needed through some quirk of destiny and we would be able to bounce back from our “tight” (back then) financial situation. But nothing of what I thought of and wished for has really happened. In fact, within a couple of months of me turning 40, on December 31, 2007, we realized that we were bankrupt. We were left with no money, no work, and we owed Rs.5 crore, US $ 1 million then, to 179 people. (Read more here: Fall Like A Rose Petal)

A decade on, we continue to be bankrupt. We still owe the 179 people the money we owed them then – Rs.5 crore! So, just reviewing the Siddha yogi’s remark may lead to the conclusion that my Life and Vaani’s has changed for the worse in the last 10 years, ever since I turned 40. But on a spiritual plane, at an evolutionary level, nothing’s the same about my Life. The Siddha yogi was indeed right. My Life has changed dramatically in the past decade.

I have learnt, in this time, the art of being non-worrying, non-frustrated and non-suffering. This essentially means that I have learnt to be happy despite our excruciating circumstances. I have recognized the value in being calm and stoic, and to trust the process of Life. This means, I cherish and practice faith and patience. I have learnt to live my Life meaningfully – choosing always to also be useful than just trying to only be successful. This means living Life with a Higher Purpose – Inspiring Happiness among all those who care to pause and reflect. I have learnt that there is no destination that you must strive to arrive at in Life – and that the journey is the reward. I have learnt to rise in love. This means Vaani and my companionship has thrived through this tumultuous decade only because we continue to be loving, in the present, continuous, sense. This has meant also that our children have seen our friendship evolve, grow and glow. So, they too now value companionship over a mere relationship. I have also learnt that everything happens for a reason and everyone’s a teacher. So, I don’t complain about anyone or anything anymore. I may have an opinion, a point of view on what people say or do, or on whatever happens to me, but I don’t resist anything, I don’t ask why or why me – and therefore I don’t suffer. And yes, I have learnt to say ‘thank you, thank you, thank you’ to Life for all that I have – I recognize that being eternally grateful is an incredible way to be soaked in peace!

These learnings make me feel so special, so blessed. I feel my Life, despite its attendant practical and physical challenges, is very liberating. It is filled with abundance and happiness. I am sure others my age – and older – feel this way too. But this is the first time I am turning 50! So please bear with my sharing these thoughts today. For this is what I am experiencing at this stage in Life, at my Point 50!!!

Life’s beautiful – as it is! And I am lovin’ each moment!