Talk at Mindful Leadership Summit, Gurgaon, September 28, 2017
Friends, I am happy to be sharing my mindfulness journey with you, how it has changed my life, and some thoughts on relevance of mindfulness for the corporate world.
My Mindfulness Journey
I have been practising Mindfulness or Meditation for over 30 years now. In my mindfulness journey, there have been three key factors – serendipity, failures creating opportunities and staying the course.
My initiation on this path was triggered by Serendipity. I think I was in class 3rd or 4th when my elder brother went on a college trip and brought a book on Swami Vivekananda. While I did not understand most of it but I felt a sense of energy reading it and it left a deep imprint on me. My second trigger on this path was one of my maternal uncles who was an ardent practitioner of Vipassana. I still vividly remember when I was in my early teens, he took me for a long walk and asked me some fundamental questions, “who am I?”, “why am I here?” and asked me to pen down my thoughts. I struggled to answer the questions but that certainly sparked a process of enquiry. In addition, whenever we would meet he would get me to sit down with him, close my eyes and I would drift into deep meditation. Since then I kept on practicing meditation on my own throughout my college life and early professional career.
The next step in my Mindfulness journey came when I did my venture ActiveKarma in 2000-02. The venture failed and it was a big setback for me as that was perhaps the first time I had seen a real failure in my life. At that stage I did what was then called the Basic Course (it is now called the Happiness Course) of Art of Living. The course and my teacher for it made a deep impression on me. I found the Pranayam and Meditation processes I learnt to be very powerful. At the same time, the logical side of me was cynical and kept on questioning. The process of dropping everything in meditation seemed contra to the high achievement process (set goals – make plans – execute – achieve and set more goals) that I was groomed in. Despite my doubts I kept my practice of Sudarshan Kriya and doing one “Advanced Course” of Art of Living every year. Over time I realized the power of faith. There is a power inside us that we don’t normally access. And it is by stilling ourselves and dropping our self that we gain a deeper awareness and a new strength.
Over past 6-7 years I got fascinated by The Bhagavad Gita and read 11-12 versions of it. If Art of Living gave me a practical framework for life, Bhagavad Gita gave a profound theoretical framework that beautifully answered my many questions of life. [Read, Central Messages of Bhagavad Gita ]. Most importantly it reinforced the value of doing your Karma in the present moment and dropping your expectations. That to me is the essence of Mindfulness.
The next stage in my Mindfulness journey was doing the 10-day Vipassana meditation course in Igatpuri in Maharashtra. Doing this course was again inspired by my maternal uncle. Vipassana is a very tough process, you have to be in complete silence for over 10 days and effectively live the life of monk. It was difficult but allowed me to go deeper within myself that ever before. If thoughts are things, then I could certainly see a stream of thoughts flowing out of me and I feeling lighter. [Read, My first Vipassana Meditation course].
I feel I am still in early stages of my journey towards Mindfulness. I have seen serendipity play out beautifully. There are moments when I feel I am struggling on the journey and then an intervention comes that lifts me to a next stage of awareness. Through this journey I have realised the value of disciplined practice and staying the course. You keep up the practice without expectations and your evolution ends up happening naturally.
How Mindfulness has changed my life
Mindfulness for me is going intoSilence within, being in thePresent Moment and very high levels ofAwareness. This journey has not just helped me become a more effective professional but more importantly kept growing me as a better human being. There are at least 6 ways Mindfulness has changed my life:
- Manage stress. I have had a very intense corporate career and I am also an intense person who wants to give 100% to every situation. This is a recipe for creating lot of stress. With regular practice of meditation, I have been able to be more centered, manage my stress and become a calmer person.
- Increase my work capacity. Consequence of managing stress and being able to focus in the present moment is that my work capacity has increased and I have been able to manage multiple initiatives and responsibilities at the same time.
- Decision making clarity. Many mistakes of our life whether these are accidents or bad decisions are caused by lack of awareness. Whenever I have to make a decision or I feel my mind is jumbled up, I close my eyes and sit in meditation for some time. I find that as I come out of meditation, my mind is centered, I can see the situation more clearly and the decisions appear more intuitive.
- Greater empathy. We live in an egocentric materialistic world which is driven by self-interest, competition and conflict. As you go within through meditation, ego goes down, you start feeling a sense of connectedness and greater empathy & compassion for the other person. With greater empathy, you start seeing things from the other person’s perspective and conflict and angst goes down.
- Higher self-awareness. Meditation has helped me get a better understanding of my own self, my motivations, thoughts and emotions, and also better understand the flows of life. As human beings we have a need to seek our unique purpose. I believe meditation and going deeper within yourself is the essential process of connecting the dots of your life and getting clarity on the unique purpose of your life.
- Greater balance in life. Life is about duality, there are many contradictions that your need to manage at the same time. For example, for a corporate it might be about Growth vs. Profitability, Short-term vs. Long-term. For me the big question in life has been about balancing spirituality and materialism, living with spiritual laws in a materialistic world. [Read,Spirituality and Materialism – finding the golden balance of life, My Success Beliefs – 11 Laws of Spirituality ]. Often these seem to be irreconcilable poles. Again meditation gives me the clarity to find a natural balance and consistency between these seemingly opposite values.
Relevance of Mindfulness in the Corporate World
Mindfulness is not just relevant, it is essential for the Corporate World. It has become even more critical given the unprecedented velocity of change we are seeing in the technology and business world. We are living in a VUCA world, which is Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous. In this VUCA world customer expectations are changing rapidly, established companies are finding it difficult to keep pace, industry structures are changing, and the business and product cycles are becoming shorter. [Read,Winning in the VUCA World – key principles and transformation priorities for enterprises].
Speed is king in the VUCA world and pressures of operating in this environment extreme. Only way to keep your sanity in such a frenzied environment is mindfulness practice. To deal with so much uncertainty and change, you need to be calm and centered within. Deep silence is necessary to make right decisions – both individually and as an organisation. That is where Mindfulness/Meditation is such an invaluable solution.There is an old Zen saying: You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day, unless you’re too busy. Then you should sit for an hour!!
While I now see many leaders increasingly turning towards meditation and spirituality, widespread adoption of mindfulness across corporates is still not pervasive. There are deep set perceptions and conditioning that needs to be reversed. It is a cultural change and has to start at the top. I have experimented with getting my leadership teams to go through mindfulness/meditation workshops. Mindfulness has to be experienced and cannot just be explained by logic. However, it might need multiple experiences for the concept to sink in.
I feel very excited that so much focus is coming on Mindfulness. It is sorely needed both at an individual and corporate level in the 21st century to find balance and quality in life. India is the home of meditation and it has been an intrinsic part of our culture and philosophy for thousands of years. Now is the time to spread the practice and adopt it pervasively. I firmly believe that rediscovering meditation and our spiritual heritage will be a key success factor for our country’s renaissance in the 21st century and also our great gift to rest of the world.
