Nepal And Other Disasters: Making Sense Of Human Suffering

Photo by h.koppdelaney
Photo by h.koppdelaney

Over two million children have been impacted by the recent Nepal earthquake; over half a million people rendered homeless; and thousands dead.

Natural disasters routinely play havoc with our lives and their impact is staggering. Behind each of these statistics are untold heart-rending stories of individual human suffering – of orphaned children, destroyed marriages, parents who lost their child, and the innumerable others who face the prospect of a life full of agony and hardships.

These events shake us to the core – and our faith. For the religious amongst us, we wonder about the existence of God and his justice – why would he want millions of innocent people to suffer this way. For the spiritual, it’s baffling to come to terms with the extent of individual suffering and what caused it. I have been wrestling with these questions lately and here are my thoughts.

Three concepts worth reviewing

1. Nature and its laws

Natural disasters are not disasters in themselves. They are events that emanate from the natural working of the universe and follow its laws. However, as humans, we are conditioned by our bi-polar evaluation of every situation as good or bad based on how it affects us. Given the scale of physical, emotional and financial damage such events wreck on human life, we clearly take them personally and experience them as evil.

The universe is unfolding as it needs to. The sun rises and sets as it needs to, the clouds turn into rain as they need to, and the plants are born – some to become trees and some to die early – as they need to. Likewise, earthquakes, volcanoes and cyclones are a natural outcome of earth’s evolutionary process. 

2. Human will and individual karma

When impacted by these events, we do gravitate to wondering if it’s our personal fault or bad karma. Questions like, why is this happening to me, what have I done to deserve this, is this God or Universe’s way…

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Posted by Rajiv Vij | Global challenges, Personal mastery, Self-growth, Spiritual | Comments Off on Nepal And Other Disasters: Making Sense Of Human Suffering

If Buddha Were A Modern CEO


‘We are not here to merely earn a living and to create value for our shareholders. We are here to enrich the world and make it a finer place to live. We will impoverish ourselves if we fail to do so.’ ~ Woodrow Wilson

Buddha was an exceptional leader. He led not from authority, but from the quality of his ideas, actions and conduct. Despite being selfless in his ambitions, he had what majority of contemporary leaders can only dream to have – wide-ranging followership.

Five Principles

Adapting his eight-fold noble path for self-realization to the modern context, here are five key principles that I believe are instructive of his teachings and can be an apt source of inspiration for any contemporary business leader. This is how Buddha would be as a CEO.

1. Right livelihood

Buddha strongly advocated that we work in a field that is honest and ethical and is devoid of any pursuits that maybe detrimental to society in any way. Besides choosing to stick with businesses that are aligned to this ideology, in the modern context, Buddha would have surely expanded its scope to include the need for clarity of organizational purpose.

In the race for commercial success, there has been a significant decline in the clarity of purpose for a vast number of organizations – leading to increased stress and reduced fulfillment for workers at all levels. As a leader, he would question the core purpose of his organization’s existence – the fundamental social need it is trying to serve?

Is your business driven by creating lucrative apps or simplifying people’s lives; discovering the next wonder drug or healing the world; managing people’s wealth or making families financially independent. As leaders commit to such a meaningful purpose, they are better able to align with the deeper motivations of employees and other stakeholders.

2. Right view

Buddha suggested that for greater effectiveness, we need to establish a wholistic perspective towards life, people, nature, the world, and its interconnectedness.

As a modern leader, this means…

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Posted by Rajiv Vij | Leadership | 2 Comments

Reinventing Yourself In VUCA Times

Photo by h.koppdelaney
Photo by h.koppdelaney

We live in VUCA, short for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous, times. Irrespective of our profession or life-cycle stage, VUCA defines our environment. There’s persistent volatility in right from the financial markets to our personal relationships, increased uncertainty of policies, competition and employment in our profession, heightened complexity emanating from the onslaught of globalization and technology in our lives, and amplified ambiguity in the criteria for making numerous life choices.

However, how much we are impacted by VUCA is merely a reflection of our disconnect with our inner self. In our modern society, we have become addicted to looking outside of ourselves for visible measures of success, like the job title, size of the house, and the brand of our car. Additionally, we are caught up in the notion of relative success – obsessed not with how well we are doing, but how we are doing compared to our peers and our social network. Hence, any circumstances that create uncertainty or volatility on these external measures are a source of significant inner turmoil for us.

To better deal with external volatility, we need to build the anchor of greater inner stillness; to gain confidence in an uncertain world, we need to develop deeper self-awareness and strengthen our inner self; to cut through the complexity of our environment, we need to simplify our life by committing our life to a singular meaningful purpose; and to eliminate the ambiguity arising from competing life choices, we need to commit to living a life guided by our personal values and inner yardsticks. That is a real pathway for reinventing ourselves in VUCA times.

Here is a 4-step approach that can help us towards this.

1.  Learning to reconnect with our inner self

In our fast paced life, we need to pause by creating time for regular reflection. Creating such quiet moments allows us to connect with our inner values and raise self-awareness at all levels of our being – understanding our…

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Posted by Rajiv Vij | Leadership, Personal mastery, Self-growth | 2 Comments

Shifting From Transactional To Transformational Conversations

Photo by torbakhopper
Photo by torbakhopper

Our fast-paced modern lives dictate shorter conversations. In the age of 140-characters long messages and 60-second sound bites, our interactions are truncated to the bare essentials. With lack of time, our conversations have become transactional.

Our interactions at work revolve around discussing tasks for meeting deadlines for our daily and weekly goals. We spend much of our limited time with our children chasing them for routine matters like, eating their meals, finishing their homework, and sleeping in time. Our conversations with our life partner quickly deteriorate into merely managing our busy lives.

Limitations to the way we interact

This approach has serious implications for all our relationships, particularly as leaders and parents. Task-oriented conversations with our team-members don’t inspire them and instead, drain their energy. Such conversations fail to tap in to their deeper interest, aspirations, and sources of intrinsic motivation, resulting in lower levels of employee engagement.

Likewise, with children, supporting them merely in their daily pursuits diminishes the role we can play, as parents, to help them discover their potential, deepen their self-awareness or strengthen their value system. Between life partners, the transactional conversations dull the ability to deeply connect with each other and grow the shared love.

Transformational conversations

While we do need some of the transactional conversations to get by in our daily lives, there’s an opportunity for us to move many of our conversations to being transformational. Fewer transformational conversations maybe more powerful and effective than numerous transactional ones. Transformational conversations tend to be deeper, reflective, supportive, and insightful.

They invariably lead to newer insights, higher self-awareness, and move us forward in a meaningful way – we are usually no longer the same person we were before the conversation. Such conversations allow us to create inspired teams, thoughtful children, and reform our closest relationships.

Besides, transformational conversations are emotionally healing too – they result in a direct experience of compassion within us that in turn has psycho-physiological effects that restore the body’s natural healing and…

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Posted by Rajiv Vij | Leadership, Personal mastery, Relationships, Self-growth | Comments Off on Shifting From Transactional To Transformational Conversations

Reform This Belief, Transform Your Life

Photo by h. koppdelaney
Photo by h.koppdelaney

Our actions and behavior are a result of our thoughts and emotions; which in turn are dictated by our conditioned beliefs. In order to experience real change in our life, we need to start by examining our underlying beliefs. One of the most powerful subconscious beliefs, that powers our life, is that achieving certain goals in the future will somehow resolve most of our challenges of the present. It is our deep-rooted belief around ‘doing, having, and being’.

Doing, Having and Being

Consequently, we are possessed by the mental commentary that once I can do this (get promoted, expand my business, lose weight, get my kids to college), I will have that (more money, success, time, recognition, friends) and I will be there (happy, fulfilled, connected, proud, grateful). While there’s some truth to that, particularly in the short-term, in the broader sense, it is an illusory belief.

For example, when the much awaited promotion does come along, we quickly realize that we do not necessarily have the extra time we had longed for or the sense of fulfillment we had conveniently assumed. On the contrary, not only do we become busier, but also find ourselves setting sights on the future goal – the next promotion. In the process, we routinely put our life on hold and keep postponing our happiness to another day in the future.

From Doing to Being

To transform our life to be more meaningful and happy throughout its journey, we need to reform this belief. We need to alter the sequence of the above belief to ‘being, doing, and having’. We need to start with what we deeply want to be, and let that guide us on what we do and have trust that with that, we will have all that we need to have.

For example, ask yourself whether you would like to be more successful or happier. If you had to make a choice at work, who would you rather be…

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Posted by Rajiv Vij | Leadership, Personal mastery, Relationships, Self-growth | 8 Comments

One Super Resolution Worth Pursuing

Photo by h. koppdelaney
Photo by h.koppdelaney

Quizzing my children last week about their new year resolutions, I was somewhat stumped when they asked me mine. While I always have a bunch of different self-improvement ideas floating in my head, I decided to zero in on a few that are most topically relevant for me. However, as I reflected on my list, what struck me was that underneath each of them was one central theme – that of cultivating greater self-acceptance.

The super resolution

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that this has to be at the core of any personal growth agenda. Without deepening self-acceptance, our other efforts at being a better self would be muted.

Self-acceptance is the ability to have a healthy affirmation of oneself and our uniqueness. It entails becoming totally comfortable with our strengths and weak spots; an ability to unconditionally love ourselves for who we are. It’s not about having an unrealistic high opinion (or a low opinion) of oneself, but a healthy perspective of oneself. This does not mean that we become complacent with where we are; the difference is our striving to become better does not come from a sense of inadequacy then.

So many of our experiences, particularly during the impressionable years of childhood, are based on negative feedback on who we are – supposedly incompetent at many things and incapable of brilliance on numerous occasions. It’s not difficult then to imagine why we grow up feeling incomplete and constantly strive to become perfect – when we can finally convince ourselves, and others, of how good and wonderful we are.

Self-acceptance is about making peace with ourselves – with our smarts, looks, health, emotional turmoil, beliefs and leanings; being kinder towards our limitations and not blaming ourselves for the negative events of our life; not judge and criticize, but be forgiving and generous to ourselves. At a deeper level, it also requires recognizing our spiritual identity – how we…

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Posted by Rajiv Vij | Personal mastery, Relationships, Self-growth | 9 Comments

Passionate Detachment: The Sweet Spot of Life

Photo by h.koppdelaney
Photo by h.koppdelaney

If you are familiar with any ball sport – tennis, cricket, or golf, you would perhaps know what it takes to hit the ball on the sweet spot. Well, you’ve got to be focused and relaxed. Sounds odd, isn’t it? Ordinarily, we can either be focused or relaxed; how do you be both? But then bringing together these almost paradoxical opposites, in an optimal balance, is what the sweet spot of life is about.

The Sweet Spot

For example, this sweet spot is about finding a balance between success and meaning. On the one hand, if we are single-mindedly chasing success, without connecting to a deeper purpose, we start to lack meaning in our life; on the other, if we are pursuing our passion, but don’t experience sufficient success with it, we can feel frustrated.

It’s the same with our relationships. Being aggressive and always pushing our point of view makes us less lovable, but being submissive and not expressing ourselves fully results in our needs not being met. Instead, attaining a healthy midpoint, of being assertive and authentic, allows us to build deeper relationships. It’s a place where we are firm but polite, hold our ground but are respectful of others’ perspective, are sensitive to others’ feelings and yet authentic in expressing ourselves more fully.

Likewise, with parenting – loving our children, without setting healthy boundaries, spoils them; but then, enforcing limits, without offering unconditional love, suffocates them. Most of us tend to be either authoritarian (too strict) or permissive (too lenient) in our approach. A fine balance exists between these opposites, where we love the children unconditionally, without constantly judging them, and set up age-appropriate limits for them, through an open dialogue.

As I explain in my new book, Discovering Your Sweet Spot, the sweet spot is the place in life where we feel balanced in every way – between, work and family, physical and emotional well-being, mental and spiritual growth,…

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Posted by Rajiv Vij | Leadership, Relationships, Self-growth, Spiritual | 15 Comments

Turning Mid-Life Crisis Into An Opportunity

Photo by h.koppdelaney
Photo by h.koppdelaney

There comes a time in our life when a strong feeling of incompleteness gnaws at us. We feel stagnated or unfulfilled at work, sorely miss the romance in our marriage, are frustrated at the rejection from our children, and feel helpless at our receding hairline or expanding waistline. Termed as mid-life crisis and generally occurring sometime in our 40s or 50s, it’s a time of emotional turmoil and unanswered existential questions.

Losing a parent brings us face to face with our own mortality and the thought that we may have fewer years left than we have already lived makes us anxious. Injuries take longer to heal and every heartburn seems like an alarm for something more serious. The realization that there are some life goals we will never hit, contrary to the exuberance of our youthful days, adds to the fear of time running out. We wonder if this is all life has to offer.

The popular response: we add more color to our wardrobe, buy an expensive car or designer merchandise, and start preparing a ‘bucket list’. We seek out new ways to fill our emotional void – some change jobs, others fall out of relationships, we look to start a new hobby, and regroup with our college mates.

The opportunity

Although it’s a passing phase and research suggests that most of us adapt to the new reality and are happier in our 60s, particularly as empty nesters largely relieved of our parental responsibilities, this time of psychological turmoil can be a profound opportunity. If harnessed well, it can be a time of awakening from our blind chase of narrowly defined goals.

Most of us spend the first half of our life pursuing what appear to be the most sought after options – the courses we take, the careers we pursue, or the places to work or live we gravitate towards. Mid-life crisis has the potency to force us to stop, reflect and focus on shaping…

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Posted by Rajiv Vij | Personal mastery, Self-growth | 8 Comments

Taming Our Monkey Mind

Photo by h.koppdelaney
Photo by h.koppdelaney

When was the last time you observed your thoughts – the incessant stream of neural impulses? Our mind, on average, has over 50,000 thoughts in a given day – even while busy with a certain task, it is forever racing ahead with numerous other thoughts – of potential rewards, of missed opportunities, of future actions and so on; more often than not at a neurotic pace.

Besides, for many of us, a large proportion of these thoughts have a negative slant – thoughts like, “I wish I were healthier; I dislike myself for being so socially awkward; I doubt if I will ever be successful; My spouse or colleagues don’t really value me; What if I don’t get promoted or lose my job? I hate my colleague for being so successful, despite his/her incompetence; I wish my children were smarter or respected me more; If only I had taken that step”, are all too commonplace.

The monkey mind

This mental chatter is no passing cloud, but a permanent ‘noise’ in our background. Driven by our karmic imprint and our life experiences, particularly during the impressionable childhood years, the monkey mind is a result of our deep inner insecurity about our physical life form and a constant endeavor to somehow control our destiny.

While some of this noise goads us towards personal and social development, much of it is dysfunctional. It restricts us from fully enjoying the present, resulting in lower effectiveness and a diluted sense of fulfillment from our time and actions. Besides, the negative undertones of many of our thoughts generate heightened emotions of fear, anxiety, anger or envy, making us restless, confused and impulsive.

Moreover, this state of being impacts our health. Persistent mental preoccupation elevates levels of stress hormone, which in turn suppresses our immune and digestive system. They also lead to lower energy levels, disturbed sleep, and an inability to be watchful of what we eat, often gravitating towards processed, sugary options.

Five ideas…

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Posted by Rajiv Vij | Personal mastery, Self-growth, Spiritual | 10 Comments

I Am Okay, You Are Not

Photo by h.koppdelaney
Photo by h.koppdelaney

All our difficult relationships have a common underlying belief. As I hear myself describe a person I’m uncomfortable with, or listen to my clients portray a thorny relationship, with their colleague, spouse or someone else, the theme that I notice consistently present is, ‘I am okay, the other person is not’ – that somehow our perspective is more accurate than the other person’s.

Nilanjan, a technocrat, in his fifties, sounded disappointed while describing his relationship with his wife. He felt that she was whiling away her life; that she was not paying any attention to employing her talents towards engaging in something substantial; that she was neither focused on professional pursuits nor spiritual – the two things Nilanjan was most proud of in his own life.

Mild-mannered Gauri, considered a seriously high-potential talent by her bank, was frustrated with her boss. She found him aggressive and intimidating. According to her, he never fully listened to her ideas, had no respect for her time, and had no consideration for her family commitments. She was also quick to point how she treated her own team members so differently.

The challenge appears outside of us

Most of us tend to externalize our challenges, blaming them on someone else or the circumstances – ‘my boss is too aggressive’, ‘my spouse doesn’t care about me’, or ‘my teenage children don’t listen to me’ and so forth. It comes from the belief that our outlook and behavior are okay and theirs are not; and that if only they could change their ways, we would be in a better place.

The real change is within us

What we fail to recognize in these situations is that the real change is within us. The good news is that when we change, the world around us changes too – or at least the reality we start to experience changes.

We need to realize that our views of others are totally guided by our own limited mindset – our…

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Posted by Rajiv Vij | Relationships, Self-growth | 5 Comments