Art of living

Between 31-Jan-2006 and 05-Feb-2006, I attended a 6 day course on "Art of Living". Below are some of my jottings from the messages talked about during these sessions.

1. Welcome and Greeting: Respect and love all. Do not advice or insult anyone publicly. 
2. Fools follow feelings: Your mood changes all the time. If you follow your mood, you are not being your true self. 
3. Personal commitment: To experience change and be open to receive it. 
4. Sangh Chatvam: Work together, team spirit. Have concern for every small person, animal, thing and plant. Be sensitive and observant.
5. Art of listening: There are three types of listening. a) Judgmental b) Emotional c) Prayerful - which is a blend of a and b. 
6. Art of questioning: There are three types of questionings. a) To show your knowledge b) Asking for the sake of asking c) Genuine interest. 
7. Questions: a) What do I want (my response - happiness) b) What are your botheration? c) What are you expecting from this course (my response - nothing). 
8. Expectation reduced joy. E.g. You invite your friend for your birthday and he travels 40 kms and comes with a large gift. Versus - your friend comes with a gift unannounced and says he is there just to meet you. So even if everything else is the same, guess what will make you happier? When you are not happy, check your premises - you will find you are expecting something.
9. 7 levels of existence: 1) Body - शारीर 2) Breath - सांस 3) Mann - मन 4) बुद्दी - buddhi 5) Smruti, यादाश  6) अहंकार - Ahankaar 7) आत्मा - Aatma
10. Four sources of energy: 1) Food 2) Rest 3) Breath 4) Thoughts, knowledge, meditation
11. Key message - व्यक्ति, वास्तु और घटना में आनंद नहीं है. आनंद मेरा स्वाभाव है. आज के बाद मै जीवन में जो भी करूँगा, वो ख़ुशी पाने के लिए नहीं, खुश होकर करूँगा. Happiness is not in person, thing or event. Happiness is my nature. Starting right now, whatever I do in my life, I will not do for happiness; I will do it with happiness. 
12. Opposite values are complimentary. Existence of one value can be perceived only because of existence of an opposing value. 
13. Do not go with the mentality "I will try". Just do it. 
14. What you resist will persist. Accept what is happening. Do not think - "But why me?"
15. वर्त्तमान क्षण अटल है; the present is inevitable. The present is as a result of the past. 
16. Question - What responsibility do you take? What responsibility do you not take? Regardless of the answer, you are responsible for everything. If you take responsibility, you feel powerful. If you do not, you only complain and feel powerless. 
17. Do not see negative intentions in other people's mistakes and comments. 
18. Enthusiasm and happiness is our nature - you only need to watch a small child to understand this. Offer a child chocolate OR happiness, and he will choose the former (because he already has happiness). 
19. Be 100% - whatever you do, do 100%
20. Question - When did you come? (I am timeless). When will you go? What do you want to do? (सेवा, service)
21. Live with an outlook of abundance, not scarcity!
22. Bowing down technique: Bow to the East and give up Attachment and Entanglement (मोह और माया). Bow to the South and give up Lust and Obsession (काम और वासना). Bow to the West and give up Greed and Jealousy (लोभ और ईर्षा). Bow to the North and give up Anger and Arrogance. Next, express gratitude by bowing down in the East to Mother Earth, South to Sun, West to the entire family tree and North to all the enlightened masters of past, present and future. 
23. Perform random acts of kindness. 
24. Accept people and situations as they are. Once you accept, मन शांत हो जाता है, the heart is calm and then you can think of options and take action. 
25. Difference between problem and adventure. A Problem attitude asks - "Why me!". An Adventure attitude asks - "Wow! So this is how it is!". Thus, convert all problems into adventures.
26. चिंता का स्वाभाव - The nature of worrying - चिंता का स्वाभाव है की it dwells on the future or the past. Make sure you are focused on the present.
27. Question - तुम कहाँ हो? Where are you? Everywhere and nowhere. तुम क्या हो? What are you? सब कुछ और कुछ नहीं. Everything and nothing. 
28. Do not be a football of other people's opinions. Do think think about what other people will think. Others usually do not have enough time to care! 
29. Stretch your hand first. Do not hold hatred to your heart. 
30. Listening to other people's life story makes you realize that everybody has had problems, challenges - often greater, much greater than yours. That makes you realize how privileged you are and how lucky you are.
31. Stay with your food while eating. It becomes you as soon as you eat it!

Contact number - Vyakti Vikas Kendra (व्यक्ति विकास केंद्र) - Sunday contact classes - 7 am to 9 am at Sailee International School in Borivali West, Mumbai. +91-22-2834 6960/ 2820 3557.

At wits end ... thinking where to classify?!

- Questions that can be interpreted in more than one way: 1) "I am feeling hot" (because I am standing in the sun) 2) Why don’t you use my lap-top? (Self, 2000)
- English cannot be spoken in Bengali (My comment to Dipankar Sen when he insisted that if you don’t pronounce Vulture as Bulture, then you are not a true Bengali, 2000)
- There are three rules of writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are! (Arundhati Roy)
- In politics as on a sickbed men toss from side to side in hope of lying more comfortably. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
- What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. (Christopher Hitchens) 

Geek Speak

- E or be Eaten (Motto for adapting your company to the internet. By NBC President Lawrence Grossman on "Democratization of Technology as quoted in "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" by Thomas L Friedman)
- Printing made us all readers. Xeroxing made us all publishers. Television made us all viewers. Digitization makes us all broadcasters (Quote by same person in same book as the above quote)
- Walking on water and developing software from requirements are both easy ... provided they are frozen! (Source unknown)
- New Term: Prosumers. In this e-nabled world, we are no longer only producers or consumers. I am a producer when I am writing this blog, and I am a consumer when I am reading one belonging to you! I like this term - Prosumers. (Jetwings)
- In the internet economy, a new adage for “better late than never” – BETTER FAST THAN SORRY (Self, 2000)
- Dell has three ways of serving customers – face to face, ear to ear and keyboard to server (Simply put, face to face is direct marketing and ear to ear is call center) (Unknown source)

Top 25 interview oddball questions

1. “How many people are using Facebook in San Francisco at 2:30pm on a Friday?”  Asked at Google
2. “Just entertain me for five minutes, I’m not going to talk.” Asked at Acosta
3. “If Germans were the tallest people in the world, how would you prove it?” Asked at Hewlett-Packard
4. “What do you think of garden gnomes?” Asked at Trader Joe’s
5. “Is your college GPA reflective of your potential?” Asked at the Advisory Board
6. “Would Mahatma Gandhi have made a good software engineer?” Asked at Deloitte
7. “If you could be #1 employee but have all your coworkers dislike you or you could be #15 employee and have all your coworkers like you, which would you choose?” Asked at ADP
8. “How would you cure world hunger?” Asked at Amazon.com
9. “Room, desk and car – which do you clean first?” Asked at Pinkberry
10. “Does life fascinate you?” Asked at Ernst & Young
11. “Given 20 ‘destructible’ light bulbs (which breaks at certain height), and a building with 100 floors, how do you determine the height that the light bulb breaks?” Asked at QUALCOMM
12. Please spell ‘diverticulitis’.” Asked at EMSI Engineering
13. “Name 5 uses of a stapler without staple pins.” Asked at EvaluServe
14. “How much money did residents of Dallas/Ft. Worth spend on gasoline in 2008?”Asked at American Airlines
15. “How would you get an elephant into a refrigerator?”Asked at Horizon Group Properties. 
16. “You have a bouquet of flowers. All but two are roses, all but two are daisies, and all but two are tulips. How many flowers do you have?” Asked at Epic Systems
17. “How many planes are currently flying over Kansas?” Asked at Best Buy
18. “How many different ways can you get water from a lake at the foot of a mountain, up to the top of the mountain?” Asked at Disney Parks & Resorts
19. “What is 37 times 37?” Asked at Jane Street Capital
20. “If you could be a superhero, what power would you possess?” Asked at Rain and Hail Insurance
21. “If you were a Microsoft Office program, which one would you be?” Asked at Summit Racing Equipment
22. “Pepsi or Coke?” Asked at United Health Group
23. “Are you exhaling warm air?” Asked at Walker Marketing
24. “You’re in a row boat, which is in a large tank filled with water. You have an anchor on board, which you throw overboard (the chain is long enough so the anchor rests completely on the bottom of the tank). Does the water level in the tank rise or fall?” Asked at Tesla Motors
25. “How do you feel about those jokers at Congress?” Asked at Consolidated Electrical

Sample responses:

1. All, only people use Facebook. OR - depends on the year. If it were 2005 or earlier, then none. OR - get into a logical deduction about number of people working in San Fransisco (SFO) and the fact that it is a tech valley, so a higher % of people use facebook in SFO. Also, since it is a Friday afternoon, the percentage is likely to be higher, since people would be planning for the weekend with friends.
2. You can choose not to talk either and play rock-scissor-paper or tic-tac-toe with interviewer
3. Take a random sample of Germans, and another random sample from around the world and try and prove statistically. You may also attempt to define what are "Germans" - people with German passports, or German origins or East Germany or West Germany, etc.
4. Funny response - they are more privileged than I am, because at least they do not need to face an interview with questions such as these!
5. No, it is only reflective of the kind of work that I put in to get my grades. And you can quote other examples from college or outside that reflect your true potential. 
6. Probably a good project manager? Or that for a good software developer, you need good communication, good logic (which Gandhi had since he was a lawyer)
7. Depends on size of company. If at ADP, which is a very large company, then you would rather be #15 and liked by larger team. Once team morale is affected, lots of time is wasted in just managing the friction. 
8. Reduce world population or increase food production or have more efficient systems of distribution. 
9. Depends on what is visible to the customers. If car is used as complimentary transport for customers, then car ... if desk is where customers visit, then desk. 
10. No, a job at E&Y does. OR yes, it does - and then you could describe about various experiences you have everyday to keep you interested in life. OR - life is not eternal, hence it does not fascinate me. Only death does. 
11. Start with throwing a bulb from first floor. If it does not break, then take that same bulb to second floor and so on until it breaks. This way, you will have to use only one light bulb. OR - if bulbs are not reusable, then use mathematical algorithm. 
12. Use spell check
13. Door stop, paper weight, ice scraper, staple remover, to hit someone, as a musical instrument, as collateral to buy staplers
14. More than last year, enough to buy them the gasoline that they needed. OR - go the logical way by estimating how much miles they traveled, fuel efficiency on an average and cost of a gallon of gasoline.
15. Open the refrigerator, put the elephant in, close the door (the elephant may as well be a chocolate elephant or a toy)
16. 3 flowers - 1 of each kind
17. All planes are flying over Kansas (none is flying underground!). Or go the logical way depending on number of airports in Kansas and how long does it take before the flight leaves Kansas airspace. 
18. Since this was asked at Disney, a more appropriate answer could be to either create an illusion of water being transported. OR - water can be transported in solid, liquid or gaseous form - out of which gaseous form is happening day in and day out through evaporation. And there are numerous ways to transport water in solid and liquid form! 
19. Regular arithmetic problem. Can be solved as (40-3) * (40-3)
20. Ability to remove hunger from the world - one possible answer. 
21. Microsoft Office - well organized, smart presentation. Or Excel, because I like to excel!
22. How about some water?
23. They say marketing is a lot of hot air. Anyway, warm or hot is relative to the outside temperature. If you are in Egypt, then the air that you exhale may be considered as cold air!
24. The water level in tank falls. When an object is floating on water, the water displaced is equal to the mass of the object. In this case, anchor is heavy, so the mass is more and more water gets displaced. But when anchor is at the bottom of the tank, water displaced is equal to the volume of the anchor - and volume of anchor is relatively low. So water level will actually fall.
25. I do not discuss politics at work. OR - but the congress does not make me laugh, so I wouldn't call them jokers!

What best performers do to outperform everyone!

From Balaji - who also ready each these points to me over a phone call!

1. Remember that the quality of your life is determined by the quality of your thoughts.
2. Keep the promises you make to others - and to yourself. 
3. The project that most scares you is the project you need to do first. 
4. Small daily improvements are the key to staggering long-term results. 
5. Stop being busy being busy. This New Year, clean out the distractions from your work+life and devote to a monomaniacal focus on the few things that matter.
6. Read "The War of Art". 
7. Watch "The Fighter". 
8. In a world where technology is causing some of us to forget how to act human, become the politest person you know. 
9. Remember that all great ideas were first ridiculed. 
10. Remember that critics are dreamers gone scared. 
11. Be "Apple-Like" in your obsession with getting the details right. 
12. Take 60 minutes every weekend to craft a blueprint for the coming seven days. As Saul Bellow once said: "A plan relieves you of the torment of choice."
13. Release your need to be liked this New Year. You can't be a visionary if you long to be liked. 
14. Disrupt or be disrupted. 
15. Hire a personal trainer to get you into the best shape of your life. Superstars focus on the value they receive versus the cost of the service.
16. Give your teammates, customers and family one of the greatest gifts of all: the gift of your attention (and presence).
17. Every morning ask yourself: "How may I best serve the most people?" 
18. Every night ask yourself: "What 5 good things happened to me this day?" 
19. Don't waste your most valuable hours (the morning) doing low value work. 
20. Leave every project you touch at work better than you found it. 
21. Your job is not just to work. Your job is to leave a trail of leaders behind you. 
22. A job is not "just a job". Every job is a gorgeous vehicle to express your gifts and talents - and to model exceptionalism for all around you.
23. Fears unfaced become your limits. 
24. Get up at 5 am and take 60 minutes to prepare your mind, body, emotions and spirit to be remarkable during the hours that follow. Being a superstar is not the domain of the gifted but the prepared.
25. Write love letters to your family. 
26. Smile at strangers. 
27. Drink more water. 
28. Keep a journal. Your life's story is worth recording. 
29. Do more than you're paid to do and do work that leaves your teammates breathless. 
30. Leave your ego at the door every morning. 
31. Set 5 daily goals every morning. These small wins will lead to nearly 2000 little victories by the end of the year.
32. Say "please" and "thank you". 
33. Remember the secret to happiness is doing work that matters and being an instrument of service. 
34. Don't be the richest person in the graveyard. Health is wealth. 
35. Life's short. The greatest risk is risk-less living. And settling for average.

The bottom line (from email circulated by Abhimanyu Hooda)

> Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and parents will. Stay in touch.
Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.
> No one is in charge of your happiness but you.
> Frame every so-called disaster with these words 'In five years, will this matter?'
> Forgive everyone everything.
> What other people think of you is none of your business.
> Time heals almost everything. Give time time.
> However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
> Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
> Your children get only one childhood.
> All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
> Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
> If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back.
> Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
> No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.

Living it up ... here and now

- You can’t get to the top of Everest by jumping up the mountain. You get to the top of the mountain by taking incremental steps. Step by step you get to the goal. Every step gets you closer to the dream.
- At the end of our lives, few of us regret not having made more money. Just doesn’t happen. What we truly regret are the places we didn’t visit, the friendships we didn’t nurture, the risks we didn’t take and the things we didn’t do with the people we love.
- Every one of us will die. But how many of us really live? (Mel Gibson in the movie Braveheart)
- To me, the only failure is the failure to try and dream and dare.
- Most people give up too early. Their fears are bigger than their faith.
- If you eat three times a day, you will be fed. But if you read three times a day, you will be wise (Israeli Prime Minister - Shimon Peres)
- Life without cause is life without effect (Paulo Coelho in Aleph)
- Don't think about what you will tell people afterwards. The time is here and now. Make the most of it.   - by Paulo Coelho in Aleph (while talking about living in here and now. I have myself seen many people looking at the world's greatest scenes through a video camera with the intent of later posting the videos on facebook.)
- The purpose of growing up is achieved when you have learned to live like a child. (Self, 2011)

- Today is special. When it is over, it will be gone forever. (Corporate Acumen)

- All guys are basically good. It is only that you may not understand them. (Self, 2001)

- The face of a person reveals a lot that his words do not. E.g. – while his tone may suggest that something his ‘really’ good, his eyes may not share the same excitement. (Self, 2001)

- “JMT” or “Jhoot muut ka timepass” is a very powerful concept for enjoying a boring party. Everybody “acts” very enthusiastic and proclaims that he is having fun, and in due course, people will actually start to have fun. (Sarabjit Singh Sodhi, 2000)

- It is not the strongest of the species that survives; nor the most intelligent; it is the one that is most adaptable to change. (Chinese Proverb).

- The certainty of misery is better than the misery of uncertainty. (Pogo, the great Oracle)

- There was a local bus service in rural England where drivers passed by long queues of would be passengers with a smile and a ware of hand. “It is impossible for drivers to keep their time tables if they must stop for passengers”, explained one of the company officials. The logic is certainly impeccable, but something seems to have been missed … you need to decide whether you will just keep running in life to achieve something elusive, or will you enjoy as you go ahead. (Swami Vivekananda)

- Your knowledge limits your memory … so read more! (Self, 2002)

- Although the tongue weighs very little, few people are able to hold it. (Anonymous)

- In real life, there are no silver medals. (Anonymous)
- Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid (Albert Einstein)
- The one who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The one who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been. (Source - unknown)