Why the Happy Ending seems like an Unending Journey!!

Happy ending is the last and universal goal in general. We have been making all kinds of efforts to learn, grow and develop to arrive to state of happiness since time immemorial. And all these efforts and strides are to lead the life in a fashion of happily ever after, which is all fine, because this is the purpose of this life, a continuous betterment of essential life experience of humans. However, When we examine deeply, we find that the living has become very comfortable and well advanced ,credited to all the technological evolutions of last couple of centuries, but the essential life experience has been worsening only, and that is being substantiated by plethora of alarming trends and statistics globally.

So, what has been going wrong for all these years? Why after being so much trained by myriads of sources do we always meet to disappointment when it comes to the quality of life experience? Why do we keep on postponing our happiness? How do we reach to destination of ultimate joy?

Let's try to figure out the answer of all these questions through a systematic inquiry. Inquiry in itself is not just about analyzing and assimilating the available and handed over facts, but it does mean to question the status quo by digging deeply and not to accept at all till answer comes. Inquisitiveness is the tool towards blossoming of an individual..!!

So, let’s begin the journey by revisiting the life cycle since childhood. We all cherish our childhood for its innocence, blissed out joy, unconditional love, a deep sense of freedom, profound inquisitiveness, fastest speed of experiential and effortless learning, an honest relationship with everything and everybody and so on. But unfortunately, all these manifestations of really valuable proposition of life, is curbed when we grow from childhood. We curb a very organic and beautiful manifestation of life and start giving the methods, tricks and dogged dogmas to arrive to those real values of life as joy, love, freedom, understanding and success through other way around. How sad this whole process is, first we curb the effortless outflow the same traits, for that we aspire throughout our life and then start cribbing about our fate and luck when we don’t arrive to destination of these real values of life.

We have been just fooling ourselves by teaching  that by doing something in a certain fashion; somehow we’d arrive to the happy ending. Like they say, that get a degree first and after that life will be all good and happy, and we get ourselves enrolled in a course to feel that happiness, and what we later realize “that happiness” is all missing what we would had thought of three/four years back. Then after the self created disappointment, we again give a boost to ourselves that after getting a well paid job that happiness will come to me. And again, we feel cheated and screwed up by life when that J.O.B seems like Juice of Blood, which is being sucked out of me by my boss or company. So happiness is still missing, then we start searching that happiness in weekends parties and mindless shopping because advertisers and marketers are continuously telling that after having all these merchandises and products, you would feel a great value within your life, and story goes on in similar fashion, that emptiness still haunts us. And then, suddenly somebody would advise that get married now, your better half would definitely fulfill this emptiness, life will arrive to happy ending and what we realize after the "marriage of this kind", I don’t need to have any say on that.:)

 That vicious cycle is still there, that vacuum is still sucking us, marriage couldn’t fill that void, so we give a new booster to ourselves that after having our off springs and their giggles in our home that void will definitely be filled…and life again slaps us tightly by saying that, these foods of thought will never fill that void. These thoughts are not new, it has been practicing by generations, they have been suffering with the same stupidity and void, still due to default setting and conditioning of the mind, they have been transferring the same rubbish and suffering to coming generations unintentionally and unknowingly.

So, now we are in a position to figure out that, why this chase of happy ending seems unending and how come have we all been falling on the same track of similar kind of role plays which script has already been written. Role plays is all fine, but that should be played in complete awareness. And that awareness springs out innately from the source itself. Life is all about a complete immersion in the moment. This complete immersion facilitates a real connection with all these real values like love, joy, freedom, happiness and so on which is present by default within us. We need not do something to access them. We just need to be available for them. And this fact is well proven by the behavioral traits of a small untrained child. Its responses are spontaneous, effortless and with a full force of life. A child either cries or burst into laughter, both happens with the same intensity. Whatever we learn in childhood is very profound, very fast and has indelible imprints in our mind and this is all because of that complete immersion in life.

So, in order to end this seemingly unending journey, there is only one way-out. If the seed of my varied actions and role plays is rooted within our valued proposition of life like happiness, joy, love, freedom, peace; then I need not worry about the offshoots of those actions. Life is not a means to get an end. The moment we would start the efforts to shorten this gap of means and end, life automatically would start manifesting itself beautifully. Means and end must be embedded within each other implicitly, and then miracles are inevitable just like an accomplished singer or dancer, for whom, she and her performance are not separable, she and her craft are just embedded implicitly in complete harmony with the moment and then we are bound to say..Impeccable Performance!!

Image Credits: www.letthelittlechildren.com www.chezalpresents.com

Leadership is a Living Process; not a Position !!

There are 235,000,000 hits on the Google search term on definition of leadership. This is simply because the basic term or definition leadership implies a whole range of possible meanings and theories; consequently, they say that Leadership is not a Noun, It’s a Verb. So, in this article I am not going to discuss and deliberate over the different leadership styles and types of leaders but to investigate the leadership as a process and figure out the paradigm shifts in this journey.

#Whether a Leader is Born or Made?

This question comes every time in the scene whenever we discuss about leadership. Let’s try and figure out the answer. For a long time the Hollywood sponsored model of leadership has created for us the glamourous image of a leader as a hero on a horseback. We have confused leadership qualities with with height, weight and cover boy appearance. Leadership has nothing to do with the looks, it's not an object that one acquires or what can be thrust upon a person from outside. It is a set of subjective principles like awareness, vision, creativity, dynamism, courage, adaptability, decisiveness and so on and all these qualities emanates from within the self. So, leaders are born when people start sensing these subjective resources within themselves. So, by this viewpoint, everyone has the potential to be a leader as everyone has a Self, provided one could evolve upto the Self-Awareness to realize the abundance what he has been provided by default. Self-awareness is the key to all leadership qualities. Leader like Mandela is revered and recognized world-wide for the sake of his own self. His whole life stands for a cause-freedom, which is the innate value of every human being and therefore he became a symbol and brand of freedom which encompasses the aspirations of whole world looking for freedom.

#Self-Identification leads to the Greater-Identification

Leaders search very deep for their self- identity. A great identity conspires great possibilities in life which facilitates profound action choices. A search for our true identity is a kind of talent search within us by digging deep. There are latent talents that sleep within us as seed of possibilities which is having the blueprints to create a whole forest. When we discover these seeds, they grow and bloom. Imagine, Sir Isaac Newton who was asked by his mother to run the family farm saying that his identity was of a farmer! And if he would have identified himself with this provided borrowed identity then world would have lost one of its greatest revolutionary scientists who have changed the course of the human history. So, leaders are autonomous beings and they live in self-referral world. They like to assume responsibility for their own lives. The Greek philosopher Aristotle said, “Whether your talents and need of the world cross, there lies your vocation.” When our identity merges with the needs of the real world ,great thing happens.

#Integration from Compliance to Commitment

Compliance is the old paradigm of leadership. The industrial civilization taught us how to bind people through compliance. Compliance is a form of white-collar slavery. Compliance breeds fear, resistance and bureaucracy. A culture of compliance destroys creativity and disintegrates an organization.

 In today’s information and services dominated economy, the best talent always seeks those organizations which could reflect and resonates with their inner values and could provide a sense of fulfillment while discharging his duties. Bigger salaries and perks are not going to motivate them anymore and which is very evident from the alarming statistics of disengaged workforce worldwide. 

So, #21^st century’s leadership is bound to provide greater meaning and purpose to their people  that could inculcate a self sustained commitment toward their duties. Passion is the threshold of commitment. But don’t mistake passion as a momentary fling at something that fascinates our imagination. It is not like a matchstick that flares up and snuffs out in a moment. Passion is that spark which ignites possibilities of fire within. Passion is a sustained commitment to realize oneself.

 Andy Grove, the former CEO and Chairman of Intel, once said:

"No matter where you work, you are not an employee. You are in business with one employer-- Yourself….Nobody owes you a career-- You own it as a sole proprietor. And the key to survival is to learn to add more value every day."

Leaders recognize that the only commitment that a human being can make is a commitment to one’s own potential. We all are in this one business: to actualize our potential. Whether we are working for an organization or a community or a family, the only commitment we can make is to ourselves. This actualization of potential is a #living process like blooming of a flower from a bud, and so is the #Leadership.

                                             

                            Let’s Liberate the Potential Lies within Us!!