ENDOWMENT

What really is endowment? Can a girl with flair for dance be described as endowed with talent? Surely not until an audience applauds her act! When we speak about somebody’s endowment we are obviously talking about a proven performance, not about a covert value. And hence a positive attitude along with skill-development will determine what can be endorsed as endowment.

Among young children, it is easy to notice an inherent flair for singing, drawing, story-telling and dancing. With inspirational nurturing, natural flairs can be developed into skills. But competitive comparisons with the performances of other children often results in a lack of belief. And hence adults often declare that they cannot sing or draw or dance!

Endowment is often buried under the minefields of low self esteem and lack of belief in one’s own potential. Many of us give up on our own passion and the possibilities that lie aligned to the actualisation of that passion. Endowment is like a seed that germinates when nurtured as needed. It is pertinent to note that endowment is synonymous with self-confidence that comes from various factors that unite to impact promise and translate into performance.

Earlier 'endowment' referred to expertise or achievement of a pre-determined objective. Today 'endowment' denotes broader nuances of leadership potential, abilities to straddle varied functional areas, cultures and geographic boundaries - all in a seamless manner. Real endowment needs the development of soft skills, steadfast values, the ability to work in teams, to think out of the box, and importantly, the willingness to learn and share.

Endowment oft is distant from detection
 ‘unite to impact’ the nurturing actions!

                              

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Goa, India.

FAILURE

Thomas Edison tried thousand different materials in search of a filament for the light bulb. When none worked satisfactorily, his assistant complained, ‘All our work is in vain. We have learned nothing.’

Edison replied very confidently, ‘Oh, we have come a long way and we have learned a lot. We know that there are two thousand elements which we cannot use to make a good light bulb.’

The acumen of learning from failure is unassailable, yet it is extraordinarily rare. This gap is not due to a lack of commitment to learning. The real reason is thinking that failure is bad and that learning from it is pretty straightforward: reflect on what we did wrong and avoid similar mistakes in the future. These widely held beliefs are misguided.

First, failure is not always bad. It is sometimes inevitable, and sometimes even good. Second, learning from failures is anything but straightforward. Once we learn from failure, we can persist and come back stronger, more tolerant and disciplined, more successful, more flexible, more willing to take risks and be open-minded, and happier as a result of these experiences!

Rather than be a perfectionist, we must opt to be an optimalist. A perfectionist focuses on the outcome with goals that may be overly grand and unattainable. He is afraid of failure, less of a risk taker, assumes an all-or-nothing approach. The optimalist focuses on both journey and outcome, accepts failure. He sees it as feedback; tends to take risks and steps outside the comfort zone.

We must unite the experiences we learn from various failures and find value or a lesson and satisfaction in a less than perfect performance. It is said that ‘it is only a failure if we don’t learn something.’ We must forget the shame that comes with failure. It is the journey and not just the end result that matters.

The feedback, the challenge, the risk and the resolve
 ‘unite to impact’ lessons that from failure evolve!

                              

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Goa, India.

UBUNTU

The term appears in the epilogue of the Interim Constitution of South Africa (1993): ‘there is a need for understanding but not for vengeance, a need for reparation but not for retaliation, a need for ubuntu but not for victimization’.

Nelson Mandela would explain Ubuntu with an analogy: A traveller through a country would stop at a village and he didn't have to ask for food or for water. Once he stops, the people give him food and attend him. That is one aspect of Ubuntu, but it will have various aspects. Ubuntu does not mean that people should not enrich themselves. The question therefore is: Are you going to do so in order to enable the community around you to be able to improve?

Ubuntu is an idea from the Southern African region which literally means ‘humanness’ and is often used to mean ‘the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity’. Ubuntu induces an ideal of shared human subjectivity that promotes a community's good through an unconditional recognition and appreciation of individual uniqueness and difference.

We think of ourselves far too frequently as individuals separated from one another, whereas we are connected and what we do affects the whole World. When we do well, it spreads out. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that we can't exist as a human being in isolation. We can't be human all by yourself, and when we have Ubuntu, we are known for our generosity.

 A person with Ubuntu is open and does not feel threatened that others are able and good, based from a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed. When appropriated by many, Ubuntu will unite to impact attitudes and actions towards a responsive and responsible world where spontaneous communities will involve in collaboration for the common good.

Indeed, we are bound together in an interconnected way
let’s ‘unite to impact’ the attitude of Ubuntu, each day!

                              

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Goa, India.

DISTRACTIONS

A man was complaining to Pedro, ‘my child is perpetually distracted’.  Pedro queried, ‘positive distractions or negative distractions?’ The man stopped playing with his mobile and said, ‘what did you say?’

A distraction is something that takes your attention away from what you are supposed to be doing. If you cannot keep from checking your social networking forums every ten minutes, that's a distraction that's going to interfere with your other priorities – family, work, passions, people.

However a distraction can also be a refreshing change. If you are worried about your presentation tomorrow, watching a mindless show on TV may be a welcome distraction that helps you relax. Actually the word comes from the Latin dis(apart) and trahere(drag). So distraction is when you're dragged away from your task or from your worries.

Positive distractions divert you from negativity and help you emerge refreshed to take on priorities. These include choices like going on a trek, playing sports, attending dance or singing classes, watching entertainment, pursuing some hobby or even talking with friends and family. Social networking sites, television, gadgets can easily turn negative distractions when done in excess. However, when indulged in moderation, they can be refreshing too.

Each one is a multi-layered individual. We play many roles and cope with varied challenges and pied priorities. The key to happiness and success is to involve in multiple positive distractions. If we do not choose positive distractions, we will tend to be attracted to negative distractions and allow them to turn into bad habits that take focus off our task.

We must identify what makes us happy and at the same time it does not estrange us from the people we love or distance us from the things we really want to do. We must unite these positive distractions to impact our focus on our own chosen priorities. Then, we would not have time and space for worries or negative distractions to intrude, except moderated indulgences.

Hobby, leisure, relationships are positive distractions
‘unite to impact’ the focus on priorities sans tension!

                              

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Goa, India.

Passion

Every moment is a gift, when we stay open to what is appearing now

 – Janet and Chris Attwood

On Sunday, nearly 400 Goans attended Janet Attwood’s workshop on her simple yet profound – Passion Test. The event was organized by the GEMS Trust (Goa Entrepreneurial Mentoring Services Trust) to share valuable ways to empower passion amidst students and parents, educators and artists, entrepreneurs and youth.

Janet showed full evidence of her own passion in her animated expressive style. She got everyone to list ten passions and then used her successful template to help identify top five passions and evaluate them further as per the ‘Passion Test’. But the biggest learning was in her suggested power of three – intention, attention and no-tension – to define apt markers for each passion.

Janet explained that we are constantly creating the circumstances that surround us by the virtue of the beliefs we hold to be true. In fact our results always match our true intentions. But the intention will come to nought if we do not focus our attention on it. Often this attention will bring to fore fears and worries. Hence we need to acquire the simple, easy, effortless process of no-tension to align perfectly with our passion.

We can connect to true happiness when we connect to our passions. They reside in our mind alongside logic that seeks to dilute, defeat or demean them. Janet’s formula of uniting intention, attention and no-tension is the best way to impact our passion and happiness quotient. It is the effortless path to discovering our life purpose.

True intentions, focussed attention and no-tension
must ‘unite to impact’ each purposeful passion!

                              

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Goa, India.

Human Dignity

Due to Murlidhar’s fearless stand against a Britisher’s abuse of an Indian bride, Mahatma Gandhi had called him as ‘Abhay Sadhak’ (seeker of fearlessness). However one night, when he saw a leper - a mass of flesh with no trace of fingers and sores in place of eyes and nose - he fled! Later, feeling ashamed he returned, picked up the leper, gave him food and took care of him until he died.

Murlidhar went on to grow in his fearlessness as Baba Amte. He devoted his life to the care and rehabilitation of leprosy patients, even allowing his body to be used for experiments to grow leprosy germs. However, he would say, ‘I have cured the leprosy of the body, now I must cure the leprosy of the mind.’

The sad reality of prejudiced fear has been seen once again. In a school in South Goa, parents are insisting on the removal of HIV positive orphans. The reasons for such inhuman demands are many. Lack of proper information about the dreaded disease has been further damned by wrong information by a few who are supposed to allay fears. But most pertinent is the trepidation that we feel for the one who we identify as someone like us.

The late Baba Amte would have articulated the need ‘to cure the HIV of the mind’! We know that the HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) may or may not lead to AIDS (Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome) - a chronic, potentially life-threatening condition. However, the HIV of the mind will lead to the death of humanity itself.

We can overcome the fear by uniting many ways. The first is to have the right facts. Secondly, deliberated reason must challenge the notion of the afflicted person being condemned by fate. To empathise with the person and their family, all we need to ask is, ‘what if it was us?’ But most importantly we need to remind ourselves of our duty towards the survival of human dignity.

Facts, reason and empathy will ensure human dignity
when they ‘unite to impact’ our true sense of duty!

                              

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Goa, India.

Missing

Once, we went over to a relative’s place for a birthday dinner. We were three: my wife, my daughter and me. The hosts were three: husband, wife and daughter. The other guests were again a family of three. All in all, we were just nine persons for dinner. Imagine our shock, when we reached the dining room to see an over-laid dinner spread waiting for us.

There were two salads, at least five preparations of fish, two of chicken, one of mutton and three different preparations of vegetables; besides of course two types of rice and three varieties for dessert. While I was making a mental note of what to eat and what to skip, the other guest exclaimed, ‘Sol Kadi naa?’ (Konkani for a popular brew made from coconut milk and kokum). The poor hosts rushed to prepare the ‘missing’ item.

Indeed, I was bewildered at the ability of the person to note exactly what was missing. In fact, ‘sol kadi’ is my favourite too, but in the lavish spread, my choice was limited to pick a few preferences from within them. With so much around, I was least bothered about identifying what was missing.

It was unfair to the hosts to point out a flaw in their menu when they had far exceeded the requirement of a decent meal. But my sympathies were for the man who could only see what was missing. At the best of restaurants, he would be unhappy to find his ‘sol kadi’ missing. I could imagine his plight at his home dinners when he would consistently complain, ‘Sol Kadi naa?’

So often, we notice what is missing even when we are offered a plateful. Instead of being content with what we have, we crave for what we don’t have. That day, the host had given us their time, their space, their love and of course loads of food. It was pertinent to look at the many things we received and unite those receipts to impact our gratitude to what we got, rather than what we missed. How could we complain, ‘Sol Kadi naa?’

Look what lies on the plate, not what’s missing...

The receipts must ‘unite to impact’ thanksgiving!

                              

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Goa, India.