Warning: This is going to be a real long read!
This is about our experience at the Vivekananda Institute of Human Excellence, Hyderabad. Arasu and I had been to VIHE for the Residential Youth Camp, 2012 by the end of June. An intense 3-day workshop had been a place to be for us for a very long time now. This youth camp focuses on inducing in the young minds (in the age group of 16-25) a spirit and fire to strive for Excellence and lead life in a thoughtful manner.
We were amidst 160 youth full of energy and dreams. We also had experts coming from different fields of expertise; Science, Business, Governance to name a few. So what did we do? Arasu and I conducted sessions on Leadership and Excellence. I am not going to capture Arasu's experience here - this is completely my perspective.
It was fantastic getting ready for the workshop. I had to read up a lot and reflect how much I practice what I am going to share with the students. I did strongly believe that Excellence is something that every human being can achieve. However, I was not confident since I had to talk to group of youngsters and one of the key things I was worried is to not make the session too boring / preachy.
I always have been someone who uses Workshop as a method with group of students so that sessions become experiential and not a 'lesson'. But with Excellence - I was not very sure until a day before my session.
To be specific, my topic was "Towards Excellence - The Karma Yoga Way". Yeah, this topic felt real close to my heart for many reasons - a) I am a Career Counsellor by profession and Work is Worship for me! b) Excellence is something I truly aspire for c) Karma Yoga, to me, seems to be a practical, productive and logical way towards self-actualisation.
So I was super excited and at the same time wanted to keep it simple since I am no expert in Spiritual Matters. So I chose this one book 'Karma Yoga' - by Swami Vivekananda. Tried to study it, list down few strategies and insights that would be relevant to the group I was going to interact with, and make it very concise and intense! Thankfully, I had to take up this topic on the third day - so I knew about the group very well and we had some rapport built already. I gave up all the fancies of making this into a workshop and stuck to an intense lecture+interaction.
The following are some of the key take aways for me personally:
a) "If we are free people, we don’t want any pressure from any body, we know our value. We have sense of dignity and worth – that spirit has to come in all departments of life".
b) Even a fool can come onto stage and lecture on greatness. ™"In the little things that you do, un-observed by anybody else, if you are excellent, then you are truly excellent."
I wanted to quote more but I think this is the crux of it. These two quotes are more than enough for me to talk so much about my principles, opinions, beliefs and anger.
I said earlier that I truly believe that we have the potential to be Excellent Human Beings. Many come and crib to me that I am an idealist - I am rigid - I am too ambitious and that 'People are not perfect!'. What I fail to understand is that if we don't have worth in ourselves who else will?
I don't want anyone to be sitting on my head and ensure that the task they give to me is done. Come on! I feel so humiliated. To me, once you give a task, you should know I will get it done. I don't want external pressure to do what is meant for me to do, right? So when we have our managers call us to ensure we are on track or when we harp on our co-workers to ensure they have done everything right then we don't have self-worth and value our co-workers respectively. This is solely the reason, I believe that being Excellent is possible. More than that, that is who we truly are - Excellent People.
With respect to 'b)' - this was a tight slap on my face when I read this in the book. All the time I talk on stage. So I told my audience, that even a fool can do what I was then doing on stage! They all were shocked, just as I, when I read that in the book. But just think about it. Isn't it pretty easy to prepare and go on stage and give a lecture and walk down the aisle, heads high, smiling cheek to cheek? How difficult is it to share to people / teach people on what you do in your everyday lives? Very difficult.
But how difficult is it to do things in excellent fashion, just so you feel free - free of guilt, free of criticism, free of to-do lists. Not so difficult right? At least not as difficult as making versions of same things for a month!
All along, I had been feeling very guilty of not giving my best shot / felt very incompetent about stuff. But I can't explain the transformation I had when I was actually taking this session at the Ashram. I became a much more optimistic person in life. All I had to do is do my work, and in excellent fashion. I do not have to care of the end results, whether I will be rewarded or criticized. It is my duty to do. The rest is to follow on its own. It is also my duty to help others - since they give me opportunity to clear all my mis-doings. Gives me an opportunity to understand what I can give.
This sense of freedom, ownership, responsibility and passion to 'do' is inexplicable.
In order to take this into an actionable session, we all took a 'Sankalp'. Sorry I can't translate Sankalp - because no word sounds as perfect as this word.
All the 160 students took a Sankalp and decided they will honor it. We created a FB page for it and this movement is slowly moving on to other youth activities happening in the Ashram.
Now this is really a step towards Excellence, isn't it?
I am all excited and elated that we could do so much in a span of 3 days' time.
My Sankalp I decided from that day is this - in Swami Vivekananda's words - "Teach yourself, teach everyone his real nature, call upon the sleeping soul and see how it awakes. Power will come, glory will come, goodness will come, purity will come and everything that is excellence will come when this sleeping soul is roused to self-conscious activity."
Towards Excellence... :)
What is your Sankalp? Want to share?
This is about our experience at the Vivekananda Institute of Human Excellence, Hyderabad. Arasu and I had been to VIHE for the Residential Youth Camp, 2012 by the end of June. An intense 3-day workshop had been a place to be for us for a very long time now. This youth camp focuses on inducing in the young minds (in the age group of 16-25) a spirit and fire to strive for Excellence and lead life in a thoughtful manner.
We were amidst 160 youth full of energy and dreams. We also had experts coming from different fields of expertise; Science, Business, Governance to name a few. So what did we do? Arasu and I conducted sessions on Leadership and Excellence. I am not going to capture Arasu's experience here - this is completely my perspective.
It was fantastic getting ready for the workshop. I had to read up a lot and reflect how much I practice what I am going to share with the students. I did strongly believe that Excellence is something that every human being can achieve. However, I was not confident since I had to talk to group of youngsters and one of the key things I was worried is to not make the session too boring / preachy.
I always have been someone who uses Workshop as a method with group of students so that sessions become experiential and not a 'lesson'. But with Excellence - I was not very sure until a day before my session.
To be specific, my topic was "Towards Excellence - The Karma Yoga Way". Yeah, this topic felt real close to my heart for many reasons - a) I am a Career Counsellor by profession and Work is Worship for me! b) Excellence is something I truly aspire for c) Karma Yoga, to me, seems to be a practical, productive and logical way towards self-actualisation.
So I was super excited and at the same time wanted to keep it simple since I am no expert in Spiritual Matters. So I chose this one book 'Karma Yoga' - by Swami Vivekananda. Tried to study it, list down few strategies and insights that would be relevant to the group I was going to interact with, and make it very concise and intense! Thankfully, I had to take up this topic on the third day - so I knew about the group very well and we had some rapport built already. I gave up all the fancies of making this into a workshop and stuck to an intense lecture+interaction.
The following are some of the key take aways for me personally:
a) "If we are free people, we don’t want any pressure from any body, we know our value. We have sense of dignity and worth – that spirit has to come in all departments of life".
b) Even a fool can come onto stage and lecture on greatness. ™"In the little things that you do, un-observed by anybody else, if you are excellent, then you are truly excellent."
I wanted to quote more but I think this is the crux of it. These two quotes are more than enough for me to talk so much about my principles, opinions, beliefs and anger.
I said earlier that I truly believe that we have the potential to be Excellent Human Beings. Many come and crib to me that I am an idealist - I am rigid - I am too ambitious and that 'People are not perfect!'. What I fail to understand is that if we don't have worth in ourselves who else will?
I don't want anyone to be sitting on my head and ensure that the task they give to me is done. Come on! I feel so humiliated. To me, once you give a task, you should know I will get it done. I don't want external pressure to do what is meant for me to do, right? So when we have our managers call us to ensure we are on track or when we harp on our co-workers to ensure they have done everything right then we don't have self-worth and value our co-workers respectively. This is solely the reason, I believe that being Excellent is possible. More than that, that is who we truly are - Excellent People.
With respect to 'b)' - this was a tight slap on my face when I read this in the book. All the time I talk on stage. So I told my audience, that even a fool can do what I was then doing on stage! They all were shocked, just as I, when I read that in the book. But just think about it. Isn't it pretty easy to prepare and go on stage and give a lecture and walk down the aisle, heads high, smiling cheek to cheek? How difficult is it to share to people / teach people on what you do in your everyday lives? Very difficult.
But how difficult is it to do things in excellent fashion, just so you feel free - free of guilt, free of criticism, free of to-do lists. Not so difficult right? At least not as difficult as making versions of same things for a month!
All along, I had been feeling very guilty of not giving my best shot / felt very incompetent about stuff. But I can't explain the transformation I had when I was actually taking this session at the Ashram. I became a much more optimistic person in life. All I had to do is do my work, and in excellent fashion. I do not have to care of the end results, whether I will be rewarded or criticized. It is my duty to do. The rest is to follow on its own. It is also my duty to help others - since they give me opportunity to clear all my mis-doings. Gives me an opportunity to understand what I can give.
This sense of freedom, ownership, responsibility and passion to 'do' is inexplicable.
In order to take this into an actionable session, we all took a 'Sankalp'. Sorry I can't translate Sankalp - because no word sounds as perfect as this word.
All the 160 students took a Sankalp and decided they will honor it. We created a FB page for it and this movement is slowly moving on to other youth activities happening in the Ashram.
Now this is really a step towards Excellence, isn't it?
I am all excited and elated that we could do so much in a span of 3 days' time.
My Sankalp I decided from that day is this - in Swami Vivekananda's words - "Teach yourself, teach everyone his real nature, call upon the sleeping soul and see how it awakes. Power will come, glory will come, goodness will come, purity will come and everything that is excellence will come when this sleeping soul is roused to self-conscious activity."
Towards Excellence... :)
What is your Sankalp? Want to share?
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