Category: Personal mastery

Nature, Nurture and Personal Mastery


In many of my recent posts, I have talked about the principles behind personal mastery and its relevance to our lives and the world around us. In this post, I would like to highlight how this journey can become an important source of change in our lives, particularly when seen in the context of the ever non-conclusive, biological, social, psychological, and neurological, debate about “nature versus nurture”.

The other day, my wife read out my supposed personality traits from a horoscope website and I was amazed at the quality of matches. While I am not one taken to reading the weekly forecasts or be fatalistic about the future, the accuracy of the assessment did leave me with a couple of questions – is the deepest part of my personality predetermined at birth or can it change? What could create the change? And, that’s what has led me to this article.

The genetic DNA imprint is probably the single most significant factor of the future destiny of a child at birth. The DNA comprising of three billion bases, tied up in one unique combination out of zillions of possible sequences, provides the first perspective of the predisposed personality traits, likes, dislikes, health patterns and inclinations of the child. If it weren’t for the power of genes (and nature), two siblings who have been provided largely the same upbringing, won’t turn out so different in their attitudes, preferences, and behavior – one is totally organized, very expressive, and loves art; the other forgetful, very analytical and crazy about sports. In a spiritual sense, each child is the product of that special circumstance of universe which brings together the ancestral history of several past generations in a unique manner. All medical examinations begin with checking the medical history of the parents and grand parents; sounds like nothing could be more important than the genes we are born with.

But then, decades of psychology research would have us believe in the power of…

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Personal Mastery and Living our Lives Inside Out…


In many of my recent posts, I have written about the principles behind personal mastery and its relevance to our lives and the world around us. In this post, I would like to highlight how this journey or outlook is so powerful in clarifying our own roles and their context in the world around us.

We all play multiple roles in our life – at work, with family, with friends, and in society and so on. How do we become clear of our purpose in life and its interconnectedness with our various roles? How do we prioritize among the numerous options of spending our time and energies – between personal goals, community work and building relationships…?

I am a life and executive coach and in my coaching practice, have the privilege of working with people often discovering answers to these very questions. These situations are not unique to coaching conversations but are common place occurrences in all our lives. Let me share some examples. A visionary leader of a voluntary organization I was working with, was deeply committed to making a substantial difference in the lives of the under-privileged. Driven by his ambition in his chosen field, he was often stressed and while in his early 40s, had become hypertensive. Now, given that we may often believe that people involved in the area of giving have greater meaning in life and are hence worry-free, the health situation of this leader may seem paradoxical. In another example, consider the case of a courageous single mother who was substantially stretched in her roles as a senior executive at work and as a mother. While she described her children as her clear top priority, she constantly felt torn between working late hours (supposedly to be able to earn more and thereof better take care of her children) and spending time with the children. She also expressed feeling a significant lack of fulfillment in her life. While I am simplifying these situations to bring out a point, I hope you can…

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Personal Mastery and World Consumption Levels


In one of my initial posts (Personal mastery and the journey within), I had introduced the concept of personal mastery. In this piece, I would like to highlight the relevance of this concept to dealing with potential challenges and mismatches of world consumption levels.

Research on global differences of consumption levels done by Professor Jared Diamond of UCLA highlights that on average a person in the developed world consumes 32 times more than his counterpart in the developing world. The developed world represented by the US, Western Europe, Japan and Australia accounts for about 1 billion people, the rest of the world’s population being 5.5 billion. As developing countries, led by China and India, aspire to match the consumption levels and lifestyle of the developed nations, the world is likely to face a major resource crunch – for food, oil, metals and so forth. Now, just China’s catching up with the developed world would roughly double the global consumption rates; India and China together catching up would triple the same rates. If the whole developing world were to catch up with the developed world one day, Professor Diamond argues, it would be equivalent of feeding a world population of 72 billion people – something our world is not known to be equipped to provide for (at least not at the current time).

What can we do to meet this future challenge? As I had mentioned in my post on personal mastery and communities, the real challenge with some of the global issues like poverty is not that the world does not have enough to feed the poor, it’s the inability of the human race to share and distribute the existing wealth to raise the overall standards of living across the planet. Will we continue to have the chase of higher consumption levels and eventually run out of resources; in consequence, creating high inflation and a new band of poor population – in this case spread across developing and developed…

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Personal Mastery and Communities


In one of my first posts (Personal Mastery and the Journey Within), I had introduced the concept of personal mastery. In this blog, I would like to highlight the relevance of this concept to serving and building communities.

To me, personal mastery is the journey of self-discovery leading to consistently living the purpose of one’s life. It requires a high emphasis on self-knowledge, clarity of one’s personal vision and its interconnectedness with the people and the world around.

As the definition suggests, the person advanced in this journey is likely to have a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of herself with the people and the world around her. Such a person is likely to well appreciate the interconnectedness of the different pieces that make up her world – elements of nature (the air she breathes and the water she drinks), efforts of people in her life (their love and support), contributions of her ancestors (in bringing her to life) and numerous other people in the world (whose efforts allow her to live her daily life with ease and comfort). As he acknowledges the contribution of others in his life and develops gratitude towards the people and the world around him, he is likely to feel obliged and become keener to pay the society back in some way or another.

Most often when we are unhappy, we have a starved feeling – a feeling of lack, as if we are not getting enough. As Shakti Gawain talks about the concept of outflowing in her book on Creative Visualization, she describes how when we find the place within us that is giving, the flow reverses. True giving, she clarifies, happens not from sacrifice, or self-righteousness or something spiritual, but from the pure joy of it. As we begin the journey within, we realize that we have an infinite reservoir of love and happiness within us; however, we are conditioned to thinking that we have to get something from the outside to be happy. As we learn to…

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Personal Mastery and Parenting


In one of my first posts (Personal Mastery and the Journey Within), I had introduced the concept of personal mastery. In this post, I would like to highlight the relevance of this concept to parenting.

Parenting has probably always been a challenging job – across generations, whichever parents one talks to. However, the challenge seems to have gotten amplified in recent years – I reckon the growing prosperity, rise of individuality, decline of family and other social structures, and a decline in meaning in people’s lives are significantly contributing towards this.

There’s been a tremendous rise in the sense of individuality and need for personal success in recent years – particularly in developing nations. This has happened with growth of prosperity and the disproportionate rewards for individual success – creating a culture driven by desire to get ahead and win at any cost. The growing prosperity also brings with it a multitude of choices – for consumer goods, for gadgets, for leisure etc. As a result, parents are focused on maximizing their individual pleasure by chasing their careers and their personal pursuits – and they now have real choices to do so too. Alongside, the social structures are breaking down. The joint family system has come apart – in fact, in the race for financial success, a number of nuclear families maybe faced with a situation where one of the parents is working in one city and the rest of the family lives in another. All this puts tremendous pressure on parenting…

To complicate the situation further, children these days on the other hand, have enormous exposure during their childhood years. Because of television and the Internet, a 14 year old today has about the same exposure has her parents had in their lifetime. When the parents do not have time for their children, television, Internet, and the peer group take over as the biggest influencer for them.

Some of the results are disturbing. More than one-third of all murders in the US are committed by…

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Personal Mastery and Relationships


In one of my recent posts (Personal Mastery and the Journey Within), I had introduced the concept of personal mastery. In this blog, I would like to highlight the relevance of this concept to our most cherished relationships.

What’s happening to relationships in today’s society? The numbers of failed marriages are on the increase just about everywhere, and in most of the western world, the divorce rates have reached dramatic proportions – in many countries like the US and Australia, only 1 out of every 3 marriages survives. Over the years, the sense of individuality seems to have got heightened and the time and space for each other has declined. The emotional strength of individuals, growing up in a fast paced society that rewards its winners and looks down on the losers, is under enormous pressure as well. Individuals are seeking perfection in everything, including in themselves and their spouses. As the honeymoon period gets underway and each one finds the other to be less than perfect and different from their earlier expectations, the silent dissatisfaction begins to build already.

Where does personal mastery fit in to all this? As I mentioned earlier, personal mastery is the journey of self-discovery leading to consistently living the purpose of one’s life. It requires a high emphasis on self-knowledge, clarity of one’s personal vision and its interconnectedness with the people and the world around. This journey is all about becoming comfortable with yourself; accepting yourself as you are and not living in the constant pursuit of what you should be (the relentless pressure to be perfect). This begins to happen as you start to understand the truth about yourself and your existence.

As Jesus Christ said, “I am in this world but not of it”. We all are part of the same whole, the same universal life energy – just happen to be in seemingly different forms through different physical and mental manifestations. Even though we seem to primarily operate from our minds (as a result, over the…

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Personal Mastery and Leadership


In my last post (Personal Mastery and the Journey Within), I had introduced the concept of personal mastery. In this blog, I would like to highlight the relevance of this concept to business leadership.

To me, personal mastery is the journey of self-discovery leading to consistently living the purpose of one’s life. It requires a high emphasis on self-knowledge, clarity of one’s personal vision and its interconnectedness with the people and the world around.

It captures the essence of a leader being highly self-aware and also having a deep sense of his own purpose in life and its relevance to the rest of the society. Leadership practice has come a long way from the days of emphasizing on IQ (how I think) to the notion of EQ (how I feel and relate to others). To me, the journey of personal mastery is the final leap of bringing out the relevance of the spiritual quotient, SQ (understanding what and who I am). Another perspective to look at this concept is to say, junior managers manage tasks, middle/ senior managers manage processes, leaders manage people and to me, the most outstanding leaders are the ones who know how to manage themselves. The thought behind this is to suggest that if the leader is high on personal mastery and self-management, he would not need to make a real effort in managing others – in fact, he will be such a role model for others that they would automatically be inspired to follow him.

Lets look at some of the biggest challenges a business leader faces today. I reckon they are – building a compelling and shared vision with the team, motivating the team members towards the vision, and delivering quality results in an ever changing and highly competitive market place. The issues with building and communicating a vision shared by the employees can be quite startling. In one of the researches by Harris Interactive of over 20,000 employees, it was concluded that only 37% of the employees had…

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Personal Mastery and the Journey Within


Most of us are so often driven by external evaluation and relative success. We tend to assess how we are doing based on external and visible parameters of evaluation – be it the career, job title, size of bank account or the car one drives. A lot of us also seem stuck in the idea of relative success – no matter how successful one is, there is an element of seeing it in relative terms to people around us – the guy driving the Mercedes c-class is watching the guy in e-class and the guy in e-class is thinking when’s he going to get the BMW 7-series and so on…as a result, we are living a poor man’s life because we are all the time thinking of what we don’t have rather than be thankful for all the wonderful blessings we do have.

It is this thought process that leaves a vacuum in people’s lives. No wonder the results on the happiness test for the very same “successful” individuals maybe substantially scattered**

Often, people are also consumed by the pursuit of money. However, does seeking money and other pleasures create sustainable happiness? There’s enough body of research to suggest that while there may be a positive correlation between annual income level and happiness until you reach a reasonable level of income (say, US$20,000), there is necessarily no correlation after the income level crosses that threshold. In 2002-2003, the New York Times reported that the real income in the US had risen over 16% during the previous 30 years, but the percentage of Americans who described themselves as “very happy” had actually fallen from 36% to 29% during the same period.

In a more spiritual sense, this constant struggle can be explained by the sense of duality and separation created by the human mind. Based on how the mind gets conditioned from all the past experiences, it forms perceptual maps to operate in the physical world. Over time, the mind’s identification with this map becomes so strong that it begins to see it…

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