An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding— Robert Louis Stevenson.
Boom, flash and bang we are in the month of March, and the ninth Monday of 2015. The defense of the Cricket World Cup is underway. I love March! Every year, I tell everyone and anyone within earshot, "This March is Mine." Don’t know how and why it got started.
There is something about March that gets the adrenaline pumping, the blood through the veins, the lungs taking in the fresh spring air to strengthen the muscles, just like the Indian cricket team, in time to mount the defense of a title, against some formidable opponents, right in their own ground. I think India will retain the title, because this March is Mine!
What is it about March? Is it bidding of farewell to the cold winters in the first flush of summers? Is it the piousness of the month of Lent, or the ultra-energetic madness that is Holi?
Is it the excitement of running down the clock on Financial Year 2014-15, and the tingling anticipation of increments and bonuses? Is it the quiet energetic introspection that marks the end of the first eight Mondays of the year and the anticipation of the first quarter of the year getting over?
Soon it will be time for April, that time of the year when you will have fresh goals for the new financial year.
Some of you may have had a super year, and some not so nice.
I think its called March, because this is when you get your own March ready. As the famous Simon and Garfunkel track suggests, "April, and come she will" when the deep introspection begins. But before that, this March (which is Mine, in case you forgot), has five Sundays and five Mondays.
So for the next five Mondays, we are going to run a series called 'This March is Mine' where we will bring to life how positivity infused people, grabbed destiny with their own hands to create a future for themselves. The Agents of Positivity.
This March, we will also establish some new laws of nature or refurbish some outdate clichés. So here goes the first one.
Newton’s First Law of Motion: An object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by an external force.
First hope you get a lousy appraisal.
If you are really lucky, in April, you will have a major fight with your boss, and you will tell him or her to get lost. Akshay Hiremath, thinks he was a lucky man. He says, “I had had this idea at the back of my head for a long time, and I was giving it serious thought, but I took my own sweet time over it. I didn't want to leave the security of a well paying corporate job. The "pull" factor was there, but a "push" was required too, in order to shake me out of my inertia. That happened in the form of a serious disagreement with my boss, and voila, the decision was made in an instant!”
If you are miserable, do something, do not moan and groan.
Akshay wrote to me from Shenzen, China. In 2011, he founded Memory Marg. While travelling abroad, he found that a visitor to the smallest of churches in Europe could choose from a vast array of souvenirs after his visit, but in India, one could visit a place as important as say Humayun's Tomb and not be able to buy a souvenir at the end of the visit. His company offers quality souvenirs of historical monuments and landmarks. Being a sales and distribution expert, he wants to make these products accessible at airports, hotels and the monuments themselves. Obviously getting permissions from the custodians of the monuments was tough but is on the highway to success.
Why wait for you boss to make it happen, or even let them decide how you feel? Changing your job will help as much as feeding your parrot; a temporary reduction in noise.
The answer is in first finding the real compelling meaning in your life.
In 1991, Roy Baumeister said, “Meanings are interpretations you make of your current circumstances. You forge meanings all day long”. Meaning is not about one single statement. It is about how you link what you are going to do in the very next moment to bring a certain pattern to life.
Viktor Frankl, the philosopher and a concentration camp survivor, says, “Each person has a unique purpose or overarching aim in life, which are lived through their values and reflected in their actions.”
You need not be an entrepreneur to have a meaning and purpose in life.
Michael Steger developed a fantastic Meaning in Life Questionnaire with statements to be rated true or untrue on the scale of 1-7. The first two sentences on it are—
"I understand my life’s meaning.
I am looking for something that makes my life feel meaningful and I am looking for something that makes my life feel meaningful."
So that is the Newton’s First Law of Positivity: An object tends to rest unless acted upon by an external force. However, it continues to move at a constant velocity, when driven by an internal force, called meaning.
Newton’s second law states that the force (F) on an object is equal to the mass m of that object multiplied by the acceleration of the object: F = ma.
So if you are looking for that Force of life that gives you energy; then not only do you need, (M)eaning but also (A)ction.
How? It is about change. The caterpillar metamorphosing into a butterfly is 20th century thinking. Entrepreneurs today think of converting an ant of a project into an elephant. An ant carries ten times its body weight.
“A venture that started as a tiny ant, today in my eyes it grown to the level of an elephant”, then, Sonica Singh, who runs Healthy Bakers, modestly adds; “All by the grace of God, you never know what he has in store for us”.
It starts, with someone saying, "I have a solution for a problem. "
What was the problem that Sonica identified? Sonica loves desserts, (so do I), and she says, “I really wish people would become more aware of healthy baking and practiced better eating habits in terms of desserts. I wish to do that with my baking. I want people to know that something like ghiya (kaddu or bottle-gourd) that the kids run away from, can be made attractive to them when given in the form of a cupcake”.
Everyone has ideas, but only those who expend the effort of an elephant succeed.
Swedish psychologist, Anders Erricson, found out that the most gifted of geniuses became a genius after 10,000 hours of practice. This is nearly three hours a day, every day, for almost ten years, or six hours a day for five years.
A very dear colleague recently messaged me, that she could not believe that her salary was Rs. 60 lakhs. Just 10 years ago, she was a front office staff with a salary of Rs. 8000. Talk about turning ants into elephants. How do you go from being a front office staff to a hotshot corporate banker in 10 years and multiply your salary 60 times without an MBA degree? Hardwork. She loves her work.
This is not only for an entrepreneur or an ambitious person in the corporate sector. It cuts across fields.
When you are talking about years at work, Shalini Khanna, is way up there on my pedestal of positivity. Shalini has been running the NAB India Centre for Blind Women and Disability Studies since 2002. She helps young adult women with blindness build a sense of profound inner strength to elevate their lives and emerge from desolation and darkness by learning skills to build a life of self-dependence (my words not hers, in case you think it sounded boilerplate). It started when she witnessed how bright blind students, who went to schools, were treated when they returned from school to their hostel. She has enriched the lives of 650 girls by using her skills in Personnel Management to transform lives.
In a recently held conference on Applied Positive Psychology, a researcher quoted Ghaalib, “A man changes his clothes, his home and town, his friends, his job; but why does a man not consider changing himself?
Shalini, changed her career. She brought her strengths into play. She changed herself, her career, heard her calling and made that move.
Personally, for me, since I was never smart, I could never “work smart”. So I did the next best thing— worked harder than ever.
When you ask the truly smart people what the secret of their smartness is, they say they worked really hard at getting smart.
So that is Newton’s Second Law of Positivity: The force (F) on an object is equal to the meaning and the sheer quantum of action that you bring on it. mass m of that object multiplied by the acceleration of the object: F = (M)eaning x (A)ction. (This law is also known in some circles of the north as “Aane De Oye”.)
Now, Newton’s Third Law suggests that when one body exerts a force onto a second body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction on the first body.
The problem is that Newton thought about 2D, and the 21st century is about 3D.
If you are one of those who thinks that one idea is boring, then you belong to the tribe of Sheetal Rao. She says, “After working for 13 years, I could not ignore the inner calling any further. I quit because I wanted to do multiple things at the same time”. She runs a talent search consulting firm (Innoquest), an Art design studio (Tatva), and a Chocolate business (Crave F’Amour).
She is single handedly changed the cliché of 'Too many cooks...' into a new adage— Too many broths nourish the cook.
You can do this if you have the talent, immense amount of drive and a desire to make a huge change along multiple axes. Sheetal's world revolves around two axes. One is the axis of creativity in the field of art, craft, music and food. Her second axis is that of creating sustainability by generating employment for less privileged. I suspect, her third axis is her energy which is self-replenishing. She is a solar energy type of woman. All her businesses are on the growth trajectory. Her plan was to do stuff. She has risked her savings to live her dream.
Where did it start? Go back to Newton’s First Law of Positivity. An object tends to rest unless acted upon by an external force. However, it continues to move at a constant velocity, when driven by an internal force, called meaning. Life is fragile and really short. She realised this and says, “The chances that we push to tomorrow may never come. I could not risk it any more”.
For Sheetal, and many like her, not taking a risk is the biggest risk. How do you pursue a risk-laden goal? Robert Biswas-Diener, a renowned Positive Psychology coach and researcher par excellence, calls this the harnessing the constellation of your strengths. If you have multiple strengths, or if you have two strengths that work best together, then bring both of them into play.
Alternatively, if you have two interests which nourish you and leave you energised, and you are capable of driving over a period of time, then pursue them with vigour.
Sheetal seems to have taken 'This March is Mine' to heart. Her plan for March runs into 8 pages. She has five clients in the search business, and wants to add another five in March. Execute two exhibitions, hire people, build her website. Her Facebook statuses say, “I still believe in Magic, fairy tales and happy endings!” and “You build your life with bricks of logic. And I pelt it down with my heart of stone”.
I guess sometimes, you just have to listen to your heart. Why underline something with a neat pen or highlighter, when you can make a loud, vibrant, resplendent splash in this rather dull monochromatic world.
For that splash, you have Newton’s Third Law of Positivity. Every action has an exponential (stronger and meaningful) reaction, along multiple axes.
So on this ninth Monday of the year make a splash! The science of positivity is certainly on your side. Make it happen, because 'This March is Mine'.