MANIKARNICA

In one seminar, a woman read aloud her essay describing her ideal day. After relating many delicious experiences, she read, “and then in the evening my husband and I go into Toronto to see our favourite opera performed by world-renowned singers. We ride in a big limousine, which allows my husband to stretch out his arthritic legs.” When I heard her words, something struck me as out of tune. “Why,” I asked her, “would you include arthritis in your ideal day?”

“Well,” she answered, “I guess my husband has had arthritis for so long that I can’t imagine him without it.”

“Perhaps,” I suggested, “that is one of the reasons the condition has persisted.”

You must be in harmony with your dream before it can show up. If you were a sports team coach who discovered some players running the wrong way with the ball, you would not let them onto the field. In life, your best players are all the thoughts, words, feelings, and actions that match your ideal. Watch them score big time.

adapted

The growing economy has given birth to plenty of new-age entrepreneurs, those who are running small businesses to meet the needs of the corporate world – like training, event management, making of corporate films, caterers, graphic designiers, corporate gif providers, etc..

This new breed of entrepreneurs consists of people who gave up secure jobs or youngsters just out of college, wanting to carve their own destiny outside the box. The influx of this kind of entrepreneurs has never been seen before.

But being in business for yourself has its own pros and cons. Some of the good things about running your own business are that you get to create your own special world, something that is truly yours. You get to work as per your terms and requirements. You can choose how much and how long you want to work and therefore also choose how much you want to earn.

On the other hand, running your own business also means that you have your share of problems. For instance, the security of earning a monthly salary, assured assignments for your day-to-day activities, definite performance appraisals at the end of each year, perks of various kinds from your company, etc. all go away at one go. Plus the added issues of renting out a place, buying equipment, hiring and managing people, ensuring a continuous flow of business to sustain and the added risk of making losses.

Yet more often than not, people succeed in business because of their unlimited passion, hardwork and perseverance.  To top it all, the economy is doing so well that it is difficult for people to fail in business, provided their business model is sound. However, there is one issue, which is often not handled properly by most young entrepreneurs and that is “finance”. Let me illustrate some important aspects of finance where we as young professionals may go wrong.

The Profitability Issue

A new business normally fetches good profits in the initial stages. This is because your overheads are very few and you are personally involved in the execution of your work. However, as you continuously deliver quality results, your business begins to grow. Thanks to the feel-good factor you may expand too quickly. Hiring new people, investing in infrastructure, expanding facilities and diversifying your business become your top priorities. A careful analysis at this point in time will highlight that your turnover may be increasing but your profitability is not increasing proportionately.

As a result, you may land up working harder and longer but not getting enough returns. In such situations, you need to take quick action and control your costs. To do this you may hve to spend a few hours every day for about a week, but it’s worth spending this time. The sooner you do it the better it is for the future of your business.

Managing Customer Expectations

A customer is normally the happiest man when he gets to deal with a relatively new entrepreneur. That’s simply because it increases his bargaining strength. He is aware of the fact that you need business and thus you will go out of your way to get the deal. So, he makes the best use of this opportunity. He uses classic lines like ‘Give me the best price and I will give you continuous business’ or ‘I do not have great budgets now, but I will make up for it the next time’ or ‘Make me happy and see how I will promote you with other departments or companies’.

Generally however, nobody ever gives you repeat business or refers you to someone else on the strength of pricing alone. The world wants quality first and everything alse follows. So evaluate each business deal and figure out your profit margin. If you think it’s worth taking an assignment then take the next step forward. Otherwise, you are wasting your time, resources and energy. Learn to say ‘no’ to one-sided deals. The great strategist Chanakya said that it is not worth working on a project if your profits cannot match your efforts.

Payments on Time

Many young businessmen suffer from the ‘compliment syndrome’. Based on their performance, they get repeat business from their clients and also unlimited appreciation and compliments. But they get so caried away with these good words that they forget the real reason for being in business. Invariably, they begin to extend credit to their customers (note- a seven to ten day’s credit period is acceptable in today’s corporate world). Some do not raise their bills in time. As a result, they spend money from their pockets for most of the work done and find themselves in a difficult situation. Their working capital begins to reduce drastically, tax planning suffers, they are unable to make investments, they start to ask for credit from their own vendors and spoil their reputation and sometimes, even get into bad debts.

They reach such a point where they cannot even push their clients to get their money in time and if they do try, then they risk spoiling their relationship. All in all, there is only one loser in this entire deal and that is – You. Agreed that one needs to maintain friendly relationships with all one’s clients but do not mix business and friendship. Be professional in your approach and you will succeed in business.

Managing Growth

If you plan to stay in business for long, then the first thing you must do is to hire a very good auditor and a hardworking knowledgeable accountant. Good professionals cost good money, but do not hesitate to invest in these. They are the men who will guide you on maximising your wealth, they will help you plan your taxes, ensure that all legal aspects like income tax, services tax, TDS are handled well. All young businessmen should note that it is very important to get all your finance aspects right during the first year of setting up shop. It might take a lot of your effort and time, but it’s worth every bit and it is the only thing which can help you steady your business in the long run. Also, do not hire an auditor simply because he is a family friend or a neighbour. Take your time and source out an efficient professional, else be prepared for a lifelong mess.

The bottomline to running a successful business is that if you get the money aspect right then perhaps you will get the business right too. So, keep track of every penny you spend and account for it. Maintain a simple petty cash book as it will help you control your expenses. Have financial goals for each year and create an action plan to achieve them.

Happy business days!

Entrepreneurs are different in both behavior and thought than those who are content to live their life from 9-to-5. Entrepreneurs are often able to see the larger picture, and endeavor to find ways to pursue opportunity which seem to elude most of the general population. We’ve seen an extraordinary amount of job loss over the past year. Yet entrepreneurs, optimists, and opportunists alike all see this as a blessing. It is in the doldrums where true magic can sometimes happen. When dropped into a sink or swim situation, the entrepreneur will start instantly swimming for shore.

However there is a very thin line between the success and failure of a person as an entrepreneur. They are capable of all the hard work and they do it but some of them go through terrible failures if they forget to get into the shoes of the thinker and build a vision for their company. Without a vision it is difficult to say where their company is headed to in the future.

In order to build that ultimate vision they need to understand that a vision consists of mainly two parts: Core Values and Core Purpose. The Vision of a company is something that remains fixed while the business strategies and practices endlessly adapt to the changing world. The vision is something that should never change as the company progresses to higher and higher levels of success, whereas the strategies and practices are always open for change in order to survive the cut-throat competition.

                                                     Vision
                                                    /        \
                                                  /             \
                                   Core Ideology          Envisioned Future

The ‘Core Ideology’ is what the company stands for and the reason for it to exist. It is like the yin of the chinese, which remains forever unchanging. No matter what situation arises the core ideology remains as it is. The ‘Envisioned Future’ is something that a company or organization aspires to become, to achieve or to create. Just like the Yang of the Chinese Symbol, which means that there can be significant changes in this part of the vision.

Core ideology acts as a glue that holds an organization or a company together through time. It possesses an enduring character and a consistent identity. Core values, a part of the Core Ideology, is actually a system of guiding principles or tenets, while the Core Purpose is the company or organization’s most fundamental reason for existence. Core Values do not require any external justification for their formulation. They have an intrinsic value which are highly important to those who work in the company or organization, the people who are inside the company.

Core values of a company is not something that is theoretically manipulated or brought about as a conclusion to several vertical and horizontal company analysis. To discover core values one needs to look inside the company and answer a few honest self-analyzing questions. They are not formulated just for the sake of it, they are made to give the organization and its efforts a rock solid platform on which it will continue to stand irrespective of the circumstances and crisis, and the core values will be withheld even if they became a competitive disadvantage at times. And it really doesn’t matter what core values the company has since it is only important that it has them. Usually every organization has at least three to five of them. The most important ones for sure since they should not under any circumstance get mixed up or confused with the business strategies of the day.

Core purpose can be discovered on the oher hand through asking a few fundamental questions regarding the company’s activities. What is it that we are aiming for? So fine what is the ultimate result of all of our efforts? How does our service or product affect the end user? How does it bring about a change in either the ways of thinking or the ways of living of the people? Does what we achieve make us happy? Are we contented with what we are doing or are we trying to achieve something else? Lots of such fundamental questions will literally open up the eyes of the people who are the part of the group coming up with the core purpose for the company.

No matter what happens and what situations arise, the question of whether the company will survive for the coming 100 years will fundamentally be determined by the way the Core Ideology is formulated and adhered to by one and all in the company! It is the base and the foundation of a company’s existence and there need not be any more reasons to explain why we need to formulate them. An entrepreneur as the person who creatively and actively participates in the creation of a company it is important that he or she clearly understands the need to make them and stick to them as a rule. For when the foundation is strong it is certain that no storm can destroy the building!

For those of us especially the ones who are not much of a socially outgoing types this show was a boon. All they had to do was to switch on the TV and have their friends entertain them. We all lost ourselves in their world, didn’t we? We loved them do all the stupid things and pass the stupid comments. What a fun it was to watch them! We had no idea how time would pass us by!   

What is Self?

The Buddhist Teachings that enlighten its followers about the truth of the self and what it is actually composed of is the toughest one of all its teachings to understand and follow. It is at the core of the Buddhist Philosophy. It tries to analyse and fully perceive the nature of the self leading the follower to attain eventually pure and complete Enlightenment!

The Buddhist teachings of the self are known as the “Skandhas”. There are a total of five Skandhas. These Skandhas propogate the theory that an individual is actually a combination of a total of five aggregates of existences and they are as follows.

The Five Skandhas are…

1) Form

2) Sensation

3) Perception

4) Mental Formation

5) Consciousness

Each one of the above have their own significance…

1) The Form: It represents our physical form.

2) Sensation: This Skandha represents all our feelings, emotional and physical and our five senses of seeing, hearing, tasting, touching and smelling

3) Perception: This Skandha represents our thinking which includes conceptualization, cognition, reasoning, recognizing the touch. It represents a state of our self that identifies and which creates something physical or mental like an ‘idea’.

4) Mental Formation: This is the fourth Skandha which represents our habits, our prejudices and predispositions, our volition or willfulness. It also consists of our attention, faith, conscientiousness, pride, desire, vindictiveness, and all other virtuous and non-virtuous states of the mind. This Skandha also consists of the causes and the effects of our karma.

5) Consciousness: The fifth Skandha is our awarenes or sensitivity to an object, but without conceptualization, because conceptualization is the function of the third Skandha taken over by the analysis of the fourth Skandha. This is the most important of all the other Skandhas because it is the base which ties together all the experiences

Buddhism strongly believes that at the base of the Self there is No-Self. The Skandhas believes that the Self is actually emptiness. Skandhas are not some type of qualities that can be possessed by an individual. They are something that transcend all forms of material or psychological possession. The Skandhas believe that the Individual is not some integral and autonomous entity. In fact the byproduct of the Skandhas is the Ego or what we know as the Self.

The doctrine of No-Self is also known in Buddhism as the “Anatman” or the “Anatta”. This principle of No-Self or Anatman says that the actual realization of it can be achieved by seeing through the delusion of the small, individual self to experience something that is beyond the normal human cycle of Life and Death!

It is from here that Buddhism gets seperated into two different streams namely,

1) Theravada Buddhism and

2) Mahayana Buddhism

These two streams differ mainly in the way they interpret the theory of ‘Anatman’

Theravada Buddhism believes that the individual’s personality or ego is nothing but a mere delusion. The individual have to strive to come out of their delusion and this will lead them ultimately to the realization of Nirvana.

Mahayana Buddhism however believes in the principle of “Shoonyata” which means Emptiness. This stream believe that all individuals are devoid of an intrinsic self. It believes that all individuals are in the presence of a single unanimous divinity and that all of them have to be able to attain enlightenment together. It believes that nothing and no individual have a seperate existence and that they are a part of a universal existential force.

Buddhism might seem to some to be a very nihilistic sort of a belief or theory but actually it has its roots in that ancient age when Lord Buddha used to walk on the pious lands of Nepal and India. This religion is one of the oldest and most ancient religions of the world and millions of people follow its teachings since ages. Though this religion does not believe in the idol form of God it does tell us how we can discover God by ourselves. Its principles are like several beacons showing us the way to achieve enlightenment and self-realization.

Lets look at what is a supportive relationship. The word support is very important. It means that our interaction supports another. This means more than supporting others in their decisions or actions, rather through the act of supporting, we honour and validate who the other person is. In turn, this validates who we are. Both are supported, no one loses, no ego’s involved, and in so doing, we honour the relationship. This is what it means to have a supportive relationship. This is the desired goal. Now, how do we accomplish it?

There are several reasons why we may have problems relating to others. One primary reason is our behavioral patterns. These patterns are developed over a course of our lives. It starts when we are children, through to our adolescence, and by the time we are adults, we have established our bahavioral patterns for our relationships. These behavioral patterns either work or they don’t. It is how we interact or respond in our relationships that determine whether these patterns work. In addition, we can have both positive and negative behavioral patterns. Which is reflected in our lives? The positive or the negative?

What causes negative behavioral patterns? If we look at a person’s life, we can readily see which is negative or positive behaviour. But we may not easily see the cause of the negative. The cause usually resides in the past in which a trauma or an event occurred that affects how we behave in he future. If that event occurs again, or if something happens curently to cause us to experience that trauma again, that is when we respond to it. Situations can act as triggers, which may cause us to react to the person that is involved in the situation. This causes a negative behavioral pattern. Until we can identify the problem, we are powerless to do anything about it.

Whatever the situation was to trigger a reactionary response, the cause must be discovered in order to heal the original fracture. This is called a Soul Fracture. A fracture of the Self. Each self is part of the whole which comprises the soul.

Soul Fractures occur for a variety of reasons and may or may not relate to this current lifetime. Traumas have occurred in past lifetimes that may or may not have been addressed. The Soul holds the body of these life experiences. Further more, the life process itself can be very painful for some. Past experiences that have dishonoured, or invalidated who we are, cause us to close ourself off even more. These experiences build up over a matter of time and unless a clearing occurs, emotional or physical problems may develop. We can go through life accruing more and more garbage. And we can bring this into our relationships. These are just a few reasons why we can have problems in our relationships. Using this context, we can see the long road to having supportive and loving relationships.

If a problem has been identified, identify the cause. After we have identified the cause, moved through the experience, experienced the emotions associated with it, received closure or completion, then we let it go. We must let it go in order for the experience to clear. When we let it go, we release it. This does not mean to forgive or forget, that is not what it is to release. The act of releasing is our readiness to heal. Only after the experience has cleared can healing occur.

The healing process is a time when we must be very loving to ourself. We thus validate what we had experienced at that time and our emotions for it. Our emotions are always valid. So its important for us to do this self-validation in order to heal.

Love is the energy that helps us to heal, whether we give this love to ourselves, or we receive it from another. When we look at having supportive, loving relationships in our life, why not start with ourself? Because that is where love comes from. Its not about what we can receive from love but what we can contribute or give to love.

This is what transforms our relationships and our lives. We must love the self first. And we cannot do that until we have healed and become whole.

He was a very humble person. He strictly remained humble and led as simple a life as possible because these were all the foundations of his spiritual beliefs. People saw in him a savior, a great soul, and a person who could lead them all out of hundreds of years of captivation and slavery. They saw in him an eternal spirit that has come to save them from the unjust and cruel British rule. But deep inside the word ‘Mahtma’ pained him. He felt he did not deserve the title. 

Maybe it is LOVE

To want to make you smile,

To see your eyes shine,

To run and make you the best tea,

To make thy bed perfectly,

To want to know where you were,

To miss you in absence and ponder,

To sit by your bed and complain,

To curl by your side during the rain,

To kiss your forehead when you are sad,

To discover your lies and then go mad,

To regret my harsh words when you go away,

To apologise and hug your breath away,

To cook the most delicious meal for you,

To see you ill and go blue,

To boast about you to my friends,

To never let you to share the kitchen errands,

To give you that well deserved massage,

To sit in the garden with you during summer pondering a far away mirage,

To miss you so much sometimes that I cry,

To plan your birthday surprise and tell a lie,

To make fun of you and then realize,

To jump with joy when you win that prize,

To roam around to get your perfect shirt size,

To save money for your gifts and monetize,

To laugh with every joke you make,

To shout at you when you spill that cream over my cake,

To correct you when an ugly joke you pass,

To support your head over my shoulders when you suffer some loss,

To let you to take the lead sometimes,

To let you to protect me from criminals and their crimes,

To let you be rude,

To let you sometimes to conclude,

To let you be wrong,

To suffer for your mistakes and wrongs,

To go to the church and pray for your good,

To light that candle and pray over the bench of wood,

To splash all that water over you,

To run when you follow me through,

To laugh when you fall in the pond,

To run to help when I see you drown,

To forgive you when you pull me in,

To let go when you giggle within,

To bring the towel to make you dry,

To see you sick and hide myself and cry,

To sit by your bed all night,

To check your temperature in the middle of the night,

To suddenly wake up in fright,

To check to see if you are alright,

To call the doctor without a big reason,

To repeatedly ask him about your medicine,

To make you the soup,

To tie your scarf’s loop,

To clean you up,

To cheer you up,

To read out the papers for you,

To check if that crossword puzzle you solved was true,

To be by your side,

Under every weather and every tide!!

I know not the internal constitution of other men, nor even thine, whom I now address. I see that in some external attributes they resemble me, but when, misled by that appearance, I have thought to appeal to something in common, and unburthen my inmost soul to them, I have found my language misunderstood, like one in a distant and savage land. The more opportunities they have afforded me for experience, the wider has appeared the interval between us, and to a greater distance have the points of sympathy been withdrawn. With a spirit ill fitted to sustain such proof, trembling and feeble through its tenderness, I have everywhere sought sympathy, and have found only repulse and disappointment.

Thou demandest what is Love. It is that powerful attraction towards all we conceive, or fear, or hope beyond ourselves, when we find within our own thoughts the chasm of an insufficient void, and seek to awaken in all things that are, a community with what we experience within ourselves. If we reason, we would be understood; if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain were born anew within another’s; if we feel, we would that another’s nerves should vibrate to our own, that the beams of their eyes should kindle at once and mix and melt into our own; that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips quivering and burning with the heart’s best blood. This is Love. This is the bond and the sanction which connects not only man with man, but with every thing which exists.

We are born into the world, and there is something within us which, from the instant that we live, more and more thirsts after its likeness. It is probably in correspondence with this law that the infant drains milk from the bosom of its mother; this propensity developes itself with the developement of our nature. We dimly see within our intellectual nature a miniature as it were of our entire self, yet deprived of all that we condemn or despise, the ideal prototype of every thing excellent and lovely that we are capable of conceiving as belonging to the nature of man.

Not only the portrait of our external being, but an assemblage of the minutest particles of which our nature is composed; a mirror whose surface reflects only the forms of purity and brightness; a soul within our own soul that describes a circle around its proper Paradise, which pain and sorrow and evil dare not overleap. To this we eagerly refer all sensations, thirsting that they should resemble or correspond with it.

The discovery of its antitype; the meeting with an understanding capable of clearly estimating our own; an imagination which should enter into and seize upon the subtle and delicate peculiarities which we have delighted to cherish and unfold in secret; with a frame whose nerves, like the chords of two exquisite lyres, strung to the accompaniment of one delightful voice, vibrate with the vibrations of our own; and of a combination of all these in such proportion as the type within demands; this is the invisible and unattainable point to which Love tends; and to attain which, it urges forth the powers of man to arrest the faintest shadow of that, without the possession of which there is no rest nor respite to the heart over which it rules.

Hence in solitude, or in that deserted state when we are surrounded by human beings, and yet they sympathize not with us, we love the flowers, the grass, the waters, and the sky. In the motion of the very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found a secret correspondence with our heart. There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like the enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one beloved singing to you alone.