Personal experience
on attending a two day seminar on account of Swami Vivekananda’s 153rd Birth
Anniversary
Event : National Youth
Day……………..Discussion on Effective Life Management
Sessions topics-Day 1 : 1) India
of Swami Vivekananda’s dream and role of youth.
2) Mindset for Excellence.
3)
Personal Excellence.
-Day 2 : 4) Background of Success.
5)
Art of working and attaining success in life.
6)
Creativity and Innovation.
Venue : Ramakrishna Math, Mangaladevi, Mangaluru.
Resource Persons :1) Swami Shuddhidanandaji
2) Dr.Vivek Modi
3) Prof.K. Raghothama Rao
Content of sessions in a Jist
–
1)
India of
Swami Vivekananda’s dream and role of youth.
After attending this particular session, we
could learn how our Mother India was at different centuries. India used to be
very rich in cultural heritage and had possessed many treasuries. India was Diamond
abundant once upon a time and was rich in all terms. It is India who gave to
the world mathematical decimal and number zero and many other technological
inventions and discoveries. But as the quote goes “United we stand; Divided we
fall”, eventually with external control we became poor.
Now we are a
developing country and trend is seen that our treasuries which lied in Sanskrit,
yoga etc. are adopted by foreigners and we are following their trend of fashion
.There is no fault in respecting the goodness in other culture but we must not
forget our roots. Major issues confronted by India are Poverty,
Corruption,Population and Communal disharmony.
Swami
Vivekananda always believed in the Power of Youth.so let’s all “awake, arise
and stop not till the goal is reached”. Also it’s just not important for us to
be determined, we must take the action.
2)
Mindset
for Excellence.
Always we
need to keep in mind that true success is one which doesn’t cost happiness.
When we are given choice to be successful or happy, we must always chose
happiness. It’s vital to ask three basic questions as regards Excellence.
They are as follows
a) What is my idea of Excellence?
b) Why is this excellence relevant for me?
c) How can I achieve this Excellence?
-Now,problem is when we have a choice. What we need to
learn is to choose the choice. Once
we choose something in life,we must be confident about it and then work
sincerely on it.It is apt even in a
relationship .
-Also it is important for us to Accept the choice as a Package.Example:After choosing a Life
partner we need to even accept the person as a whole.It means even if he /she
is poor in cooking,we must accept this fact.
-we need to excel
in even small things we do. It can be a simple thing but we must be excellent
in it. Always this is to be remembered that when one is excellent, success follows him.
-Speaking ill about boss is not proper. It is us who
chose the job and once when we are into it,we must respect it and just not keep
taking faults.
- We need to list things we are good at. Rather those
activities by which we will be completely engrossed. And we do it with or
without monitory reward. It can be even basic things like watching a movie,
writing an article, cooking etc. Next step is that we need to ask ourselves
that which of these activity is adding
value to our existence. We learn to prioritise events like this.
Example- one may be passionate about watching daily
soaps in TV. If he/she pens down the same in a blog to give a reliable opinion
and review about which of the serials is watch worthy, it adds value as people
may rely on his/her review and hence even a simple activity can be channelized
into a value added activity.
-Repetition and
maintaining excellence level is need of time. People value us only if we
are worth of it.
-Multi tasking
is something to be avoided in order to attain excellence.
-we must know the art to accommodate to communicate.If it happens with us to speak something
which was not supposed to, then quickly we must rectify the same.
Example- when a speaker said ‘half of the audience are
fools’-this statement upsets the audience and quickly he apologizes and takes
back his statement and says ‘half of the audience are not fools’. And audience
was now happily settled. We can observe that the same matter is said in
different way.
3)
Personal
Excellence.
Always
in life we need to focus on these three aspects. They are as follows:
Lighter
side
Tighter side
Brighter side
-we need to be open minded and be present physically
and mentally in any task we do.
Tighter side-This covers
aspects of self-confidence, self-disciple, communication etc.
-we need to have a control on thought we are alone ;control of words when in a group;control of action when in a society.
-Always respond but not react.
Self
Imposed Compulsion
Self imposed restriction is always fruitful and long
lived.
Brighter side-This
embraces these aspects
-Unlearning
something which was not correct.learning the right thing.And relearning the the
right matter in proper way is what we must know to achieve personal
excellence.Accepting mistakes,trying to correct ourselves,keeping ego aside
makes us open to learn and lead a better life.
Lighter side-with
emerging technology and mobile phones, people do not have time to spend with
themselves. It’s in the social media where people have created their own
world.So somewhere we are going away from ourselves. Yoga,Medidation, is what
is mandatory to refresh our mind.Meditation is nothing but being in silence and
knowing self.
4)Background of success-
Success should be not at the cost of ones
Happiness.For success the background is categorized as follows:
Object oriented people are
ones who attribute their success or failure to an outside source.
Example-“I ‘m successful because I have lots of
money”-here outside element is money.
‘I didn’t win because luck didn’t favour me’-here luck
factor is outside attribute.
-For such people hard work doesn’t matter. It can be
any means.It can be ethical way or
not which doesn’t matter to object oriented ones.
-There always lies Fear element found in such people to protect their position failing
to realise that this is a False
Perception of Success.
-On the other hand they lose
Health,family,friends,relationship.
Self oriented persons
attribute the reason of their success or failure to themselves.
-Such person Invests in his own excellence.He creates
himself.
-We must always know the golden rule of life that Success runs after those who strive for
excellence”.
-Self oriented ones give time to their
family,friends,health and knows the fact that success is progressive.Being
happy is not an end but it is a part of journey.
Motto –“I’m a slow walker,but I don’t walk
back”-Abraham Lincoln
-Trust your
potential-A bird on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking,because her
trust is not in the branch but on its own wings.
-Most of us have more things to thank for ,than things
to be complained.Its always that we value more something when we don’t have
it.So let us express our gratitude to God for what He has given us.Because
there are some who are more disfortunate than we are.so let us not always be asking,begging and blaming God.Let us
thank Him for what we have.
-On the death bed the only regret what one face is the
things that we could do but we didn’t do.So let us not procrastinate our
desires expecting that one fine day we shall do and that day we will be happy.
Lets Stop preparing for life,rather start living.
-We tend to miss the present either for past or for
future.Its is true that ‘No pain,no Gain’ but one should know that ‘ Pain is inevitable ,but suffering is a
choice’.
5)Art of working and attaining
success in life-
- The biggest obstacle in the path of attaining
happiness is anticipation.
-Based on motives, we have three kind of workers:-
-Happiness is different from pleasure.Satisfaction of
sense organ is only pleasure.
-One need to read Bhagvad Gita to know effective and
scientific Life management.
-Restlessness cannot lead to happiness.Person without Self Control and Wisdom (life routed
discipline) will not have tendency to find happiness within.
-we need to have the spirit to serve society-i.e.
Giving back what we get
-Will means taking care of our mind.Having strong will
is necessary to attain success and also for facing difficult situation in
life.Absence of strong will leads to failure.
-We often have tendency to ignore small crack/mistakes.Finally
these leads to collapse of human life.Therefore then and there due
consideration need to be heeded.
-The causes that make one commit mistake are:-
(1) I know
certain thing is good
I ‘m
supposed to do it
Yet I have
no inclination to do it
And I don’t
do it.
(2)I know certain thing is bad
I ‘m not
supposed to do it
Yet I have
inclination to do it
And I do it.
-we do something wrong due to lack of will
-Education is not about stuffing things into brain.We
need to act rationally taking into account what is right and wrong thereby choosing
the right thing.
-The training by which the current and expression of
will are brought under control and become fruitful is education.-i.e. Education
means training of will.
-we finally become what we want to be.
6) Creativity and Innovation
-Creativity means doing things differently.
- we are
creative but we tend to be negative.So we need to manage these three aspects
which are-Time, Emotions and Relations.
-Stress free mind and presence of mind
is a requisite to be creative.
-Example of why to control emotions-David
Emberson created first Portable computer.With this first series,he was overwhelmed
by the positive response.So announced that ‘shortly second series portable
computer shall be introduced which is much cheaper and convenient’.Listening to
this announcement people who had booked for first series computer withdrew. As
a result he couldn’t proceed with the second series due to lack of fund which
was otherwise anticipated by success of earlier series.
-Example of Thinking out of the box-
Christiaan Neethling Barnard who gained prominence due to successful operatin
of Open Heart Surgery was called for to conduct seminar on the same in various
institutions.By now even his Driver was educated and could reproduce the same
content. Once on his request, Barnard allowed him to give the speech as Chritiaan
Barnard.And Barnard sat in the front row to hear the speech as his driver.As
expected the queries was posed except one question which was unique and driver couldn’t
handle.So he reacted “ This is such a simple question,even my driver can answer”and
barnard answered well.we can observe how ready wit and being creative can lead
to many success stories and both of them got a round of applauds .
-Old saying
is “what cannot be cured should be endured’-But the new one is “what cannot be
cured should be enjoyed”
So,This was my experience on the sessions I had these
two days.And I got immense happiness in the ashram environment and being the
part of this youth festival.
“Awake,Arise and stop not till the goal
is reached”-Swami
Vivekananda !!!
