Brahmakumari Sister Shivani, Spiritual & Motivational Teacher addressing AIMA’s 4th National Leadership Conclave 2018 on the theme ‘Leading Self to be Innovative, Inclusive & Invincible’. Read Excerpts:
Brahmakumari Sister Shivani addressing AIMA’s 4th National Leadership Conclave
Last week in the Times of India, There was a proposal by the Government of Delhi saying that they want to introduce a subject called ‘Happiness’ in every Government school in Delhi, and they had asked proposals from NGOs and spiritual organisations to submit a curriculum that they would like to execute for school children in a subject called ‘happiness’. Most of us must have seen that page, but did we pause to reflect where are we heading? Our children have to have a subject called happiness because what they’re experiencing today is something different from happiness.
Why are we talking about schools introducing a subject called Happiness at a leadership conference? Because every individual walking out of your organisation at 6’0 clock in evening is a parent and because they feel that stress, anger, fear, insecurity, comparison, competition is natural it becomes their energy field which they, in most cases both parents, carry to their home day after day. Now we have reached a situation where that energy field has become the energy field of their children. And now leave alone people in the age group of late 30s, these days we have little children talking about stress, depression and now we have a subject called happiness.
Important question is even if the government introduces a subject called happiness and the child is taught a lot of things about happiness in the school, when that child goes home in the evening and the parents come home with all the stress anxiety and fear, will the child be happy? Happiness cannot be taught to a child. We can teach them life skills, little tips. At Brahmakumaris, we are doing a deep study on what’s happening to a child inside a mother’s womb because that’s where a child’s destiny is being created. So the emotional health of a child, right from those 9 moths in the womb, is directly influenced by the emotional health of the parents. And each of those parents is working in your organisations. So bring a slight shift in the way you work, and connect with each other at work place, and make it your priority to send home in the evening, happy people. If you send home happy people, they will have happy families and next morning they will come happier and organisation’s productivity will be higher. And very soon you will be impacting not only emotional health of your employees but also of the whole country.
Several states today are saying a student is committing suicide every hour, depression has increased by so and so percent. We read all this in newspapers and it’s just a piece of news for us. I think together it’s our responsibility to change the news and we have the power to do that, so when I heard the words, that we’re ready to be innovative, so maybe innovative is not about what we’re doing outside but innovative will first begin with the being, who I am inside and how I work everyday.
Last year WHO announced “Depression let’s talk”, this year they’re announcing “Mental health at workplace”. What are we going to do? Do you really think it’s possible to send back happy people from work place? We have to do something about it.
You know everyone walking into office at 9 in the morning carries an emotional baggage. There is something or other happening in their personal life, it could be health related or relationship related, they are carrying a heavy emotional baggage and then they have huge targets to meet. That person is under a lot of pressure at workplace and goes back home even more tired. And this is happening day after day and it’s no more about emotional health now it has become an issue of mental health. If we still don’t introspect then we don’t know where we are headed and where are we taking lives of the people who are working for us or the country or the children who are now being born and growing up.
We are waiting for the world to change because when the world is the way I want them to be, when everyone is working as I want them to work, when everything is perfect, I will be perfect. So we are waiting for the things to happen from the outside in but Energy is not going to flow from outside in, it’s going to flow from inside out.
What is stress? Stress is pressure divided by resilience. That’s the formula. Pressure is external situation and resilience is inner strength. Stress is not of the situation, pressure is of the situation. Numerator could be anything at workplace or home. Denominator is my inner strength. Today we’ve removed the denominator and we say stress is equal to pressure, it is natural. We are not taking into account the denominator, we are not doing anything to increase the denominator. So when we were not doing anything to increase the denominator, we kept on creating so much of stress. The denominator started decreasing and numerator started increasing rapidly, as a result the stress factor has increased many folds.
Now what we need leaders to be is transformers of energy. A leader means I choose how to respond the right way irrespective of the situation. Situation has nothing to do with our state of mind. We have started living an automated way of life where we are not pausing to choose our response, we are just reacting to the situations. Since the situations are uncertain and our reaction is also uncertain, eventually life starts going out of control. Leader means, irrespective of the situation, I respond with stability, with royalty, with dignity, with my personality. I don’t reflect their energy, I don’t absorb their energy, I am a leader, I am a transformer, I am going to empower many peoples. If I get affected by one person’s behaviour how will I empower an entire organisation.
So innovative means pause every time and change the belief system that situations decide how will I respond and shift to I am a powerful being and I choose how to respond every time irrespective of situation and behaviour. And when we start choosing the right response in every situation it gives us happiness and good health every minute of the day. So when a person looks at me and turns away I don’t respond according to what’s right for him I respond according to what’s right for me. i.e. my mental well being, my energy, my physical health and so I will just walk upto him and say good morning despite him ignoring me. Happiness has to be earned every 30 seconds.
Leader means as you walk and make your every move, your every thought, word and karma is such which radiates happiness to people and makes you earn lots of blessings from people you interact with.
One change that we create in ourselves, trust me we have the power. WHO says by 2020 depression will become the second cause of death in our country after cardiac arrest. But if we bring this change by 2020 we can eradicate depression in our country. We have that power. So I’m successful if – I’m happy, I’m healthy, I have beautiful relationships and I’m doing great at work.
Spirituality teaches us that our first responsibility is a happy self, second responsibility is harmony in Family. And if with these two we go to work, magic is certain. Let’s start putting our own name in the responsibility list. Most of us carry diaries and most of us have a To-Do calendar. With your to-do calendar let’s add a to – be calendar, that while I am doing this task how am I going to be. And if I start taking care of how I am going to be, the doing will automatically flow on its own.
So just shift your focus from holding the situation responsible for how you feel your reactions and shift to I start feeling different way for the same situation. So every morning before you leave for work, instead of finding out what’s happening in the world today, and absorbing all information about terror, violence and pain in the world, when we absorb the information of the outer world, it becomes quality of our inner world and same I’ll radiate and make the outer world tomorrow. Just for 20 minutes, first thing in the morning, rather than absorbing information about the outer world and influencing your inner world, sit with your inner world for at least 20 min and take care of your inner world, nurture it and fill it with passion, compassion, empathy and respect.
Choose whatever you like to watch, read, listen something that has information full of compassion, respect, love, peace and happiness and you will start believing that happiness is natural and stress is a disease.
So anybody can experiment with this. Let media information not be your first food of the day for emotional health. All we need is a change of the emotional diet. For 30 minutes, meditate, yoga or do pranayam and that 30 minutes makes us a leader not just by position but also by the innate power that we have. When this powerful leader walks out of the house he/she will empower each soul who comes in there and that leader will send home powerful and happy people in the evening. This leader will not just create five lakh happy people but five lakh happy families.
Watch full video –
