The Hindu Business Line : All the secret of high energy

YOU ARE a busy person and you need more energy without diets or exercise. Bill Ford has just the book for you, High Energy Habits. The simple secrets are on the back cover: "Start by doing less of what drains your energy and more of what boosts your energy. Fix those little things you've been ignoring. Use your strengths more often. Create thinking time each week. Turn up for commitments slightly early. Clear the clutter — it matters more than it seems to. Spend more time with people who lift you. And make self-care a priority." Read on:

Sometimes we seem to keep ourselves busy, in order not to hear the `little voice', in case we hear something uncomfortable, awkward or inconvenient. This is usually just a delaying tactic. Stop using activity or busy-ness as an anaesthetic.

Transactional Analysis talks of `script backlash'. This means that if you have a strong internal message telling you that you are not a success and then you start to achieve a measure of it, then there is a risk that a part of you may sabotage progress to slow you down and to somehow keep you consistent to your old beliefs.

When you have a margin for comfort you attract better things into your life than when you are needy. The people who tend to get the most freebies (complimentary tickets, free gifts, hospitality) are those who can most afford to pay. Those who can obtain loans most easily are those who least need them.

This is contrary to conventional wisdom, which says that if you are good at something, then you can afford to neglect it, and if you are bad at something then you need to put more effort into getting better. Chances are that if you put a lot of effort into something you are not good at, then you might, after some struggle and energy loss, become average.

Over the longer term, the benefits of delegating are huge: We can contribute at a multiple of our individual capacity; we have more choices about what to do with our time and can do more of the things we enjoy; we grow our people; we get to watch them grow — an energy booster for many people.

Doubts seem to have more power when they are vague, quiet and ill-defined, when they give you a sense of being unsettled or unclear. Doubts seem to dislike the light; they are most powerful when they operate at the periphery of our minds, barely in our consciousness. One solution is to bring them, into focus, make them centre stage and face them directly, however unpalatable they seem.

Grab the book with all your energy.

Your time starts now

AN ELEGANT hall, invisible audience, disciplined candidates plus a sober quiz master. That's BBC's Mastermind India, a brainy show hosted by Siddhartha Basu. And if you didn't catch up with the episodes on the TV, here is Mastermind India 4, the latest in a series of quiz books, with over 1700 questions on areas ranging from Star Wars to Pondicherry. A few picks:

Which Pakistani spinner was the only bowler to claim a hat-trick in the 1999 World Cup?

Across which river is India's longest bridge, the Mahatma Gandhi Setu?

Who is the presiding deity of the Sankat Mochan temple in Varanasi?

Which cricketer captained India, despite losing an eye in a road accident as a student?

Which city was the capital of Egypt during Cleopatra's reign?

Which musical instrument did M. S. Subbulakshmi learn to play from her brother Saktivel?

Off which Indian bowler did Javed Miandad hit a last-ball six at Sharjah?

Which newspaper owns the domain name www.times.com?

What name is given to the light reflected from the upper portion of the atmosphere when the sun is below the horizon?

And one last question: Which book would you search for answers to the above questions?

Divine intervention

WHEN a group of scientists and philosophers sat down with the Dalai Lama what did they discuss? Daniel Goleman reports the proceedings in his book Destructive Emotions. In his foreword, the Dalai Lama writes: "A clear distinction should be made between what is not found by science and what is found to be nonexistent by science." More:

Perhaps the richest of `alternative' psychologies is to be found within Buddhism. Since the time of Gautama Buddha in the fifth century BC, an analysis of the mind and its workings has been central to the practices of his followers.

It is worthwhile, or at least there is no harm, in analysing what kinds of emotions are destructive, and which are constructive or beneficial. So then, with this awareness, let us try to minimise these destructive emotions, and let us try to increase these positive emotions, because we want a happier society.

Resentment is a long-standing feeling of being treated unfairly and unjustly. When we feel resentment we don't feel it all the time, but when an event occurs that brings it to mind, then the resentment recurs. Resentment can fester like a boil and occupy our mind all the time in the forefront, but it need not.

Neuroscientists believed until very recently — a year or two ago — that we are born with a certain number of neurons, and that's all we have for the rest of our life.

They believed that the changes that occur with development are changes only in the connections among those cells and the dying of the cells, but that new cells did not grow, no matter what.

Over the last two years we have discovered that to be false. New neurons do grow throughout the entire life span.

One study of people's sense of well-being found negligible differences in satisfaction with life between paraplegics, ordinary people and lottery winners.

The data on paraplegics was especially startling. While losing use of one's limbs is of course devastating, a surprising number of people start to feel positive moods only a few weeks after the accident that disabled them. Within a year most are back to feeling about as upbeat (or downbeat) about life as they had been before the accident. Likewise, most people who lose a loved one are back to their normal mood range a year or so later. And there is virtually no difference in daily moods between people who are extremely wealthy and people who have very modest incomes.

In short, there is amazingly little connection between one's life circumstances and our predominant moods.

Ruminate with the Lama.

(Books courtesy: Fountainhead, Chennai. E-mail: fhbooks@satyam.net.in)

Tailpiece

"2 = 2 is math."

"That's right."

"2 = 6 is budget."

"How?"

"4 is deficit."

hindubusinessline@hotmail.com

D. Murali

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