Find the Purpose

A real action packed year. Completing ten projects on the basic manual of communication within one year period.Completing eight projects in a span of just eight months. Hopefully by the end of today’s programme I will be provisionally certified as a confident and competent communicator. Real good job but where do I go from here with that certificate?

Toastmaster of the evening, Mr President, fellow members and guests please accept my warm wishes for a very happy and prosperous new year and good wishes for this evening. Good evening.

Life is a never ending learning process and toastmasters is a learning organization. Here we learn by doing, by getting evaluated by others and by getting hands on experience. But for what we undertake this pain and pressure?  Without doubt it is a real educational exercise, but what we are going to do with the education?  All along we have been listening from our toastmasters’ friends on external success and let me today try to do an inward journey.

We are one of the few fortunate people who try to learn continuously. But what is the purpose of education – is it to answer the questions asked or question the answers given?

Is education is just transfer of information to our brains from others?   If mere transfer of information is the purpose of education, then computer servers with good net connectivity should be more intelligent than all of us put together.  Because we do depend upon Google for almost all our queries.

So the purpose of education cannot be just accumulation of information, because in today’s world we have it in plenty. What we do with that available information, which one to use and which is not relevant, which is not workable and useless – all we need to know that. The knowledge of separating wheat from chaff should be the purpose of education. Having a lot of information and not knowing how to use this information is of no use.  So the purpose of education is knowledge – the knowledge to know what it right and what is not.

Then we have the second question, what is the purpose of knowledge?  Knowledge is just a form of potential energy that shows that one has the capacity to do things. But how?   Potential energy has to be converted into kinetic energy, as the proof of putting is in eating. Having just a capacity is no wayuseful; we need to have the willingness to act upon. So the purpose of knowledge is not the capacity to act, but the real action.

When comes to the question of actions, we have multiple choices. Which road that we can travel ahead? We have seen the American government pumping in a lot of tax payer’s money to bail out banks and insurance companies of US and the top management shared that money as their golden parachute and simply moved out.  On a monthly basis we are seeing the increase of white collar crimes which have been done by highly educated people. What is the use of such knowledge? The purpose of knowledge has to character building.

So the purpose of education is knowledge and purpose of knowledge is action and that too action for betterment.  Then we need to find out betterment of whom? So where the action based on character building does plays a role in our life as an individual?

Friends, let me take the privilege of introducing a person called Bunker Roy. He was born in the state of West Bengal and his father was a mechanical engineer and his mother retired as India’s trade commissioner to Russia. He had his education in the Doon school and had his masters in English literature from the prestigious St Stephen’s College Delhi. His parents want him to try and get into Indian Administrative Services, but he decided to go against their wishes. He started the barefoot movement and barefoot college and using the traditional knowledge and made more than three million people from the underprivileged sections of the society job worthy.

I don’t preach something which is very hard to practice, I know for certain it is very difficult to leave our most comfortable situations and stress ourselves in the remotest corners of the world serving others, if we do not have that inner voice of our conscious. I am not suggesting that all we need to do is to resign our jobs and start public service.

But, we need to understand the gap between haves and have-nots is getting enlarged day by day. We all know that change is the only constant thing in this world. But change that originates from the top to bottom is reform and that the same change if start from bottom that goes to the top has a different name. We could not have forgotten what has happened in this part of the world for the last one year – the Arab Spring. Friends, change that start at the bottom is called revolution. If we are not a part of the reforms, we will become a part of revolution. Choice is absolutely ours.

We all have been blessed by Gods, we were able to get a good and proper education, by which we have improved and increased our knowledge and with that we were able to get a good jobs. UAE had faced the worst recession and still undergoing it for the last three years. The simple fact that we are all able to retain our jobs, some of us still able to get better jobs shows that without doubt, we are all very competent leaders and competent communicators.

What we are going to do with this kind of talents, do we just want to earn a good living, increase our bank balances, invest on property and leave it to our children and disappear from this world. Don’t we have a duty towards the society to be fulfilled?

It is not that we do a charity by helping the underprivileged sections of the society. For me it is not a favor we do, but a duty which we all need to fulfill. We have a duty to hand over this beautiful planet earth in a slightly better position to our younger generation than how it was when we arrived here. We need to make a difference and it is a tryst with our destiny. We need to redeem our pledge.

It is only through education, that poverty can be eliminated. Mankind has not found a better weapon so far to fight poverty. Let me tell you what we, a group of our friends doing in this regard. We have been educated in a government aided school where many of us had our education from class 6 to + 2 – a whole seven long years. And this year our alma matter is celebrating its one hundred and twenty fifth anniversary. As many of you might know governments are moving out of providing quality education to the masses and leaving the private players to handle it. We decided to swim against the tide. During a casual chat with many of my friends and classmates we thought of helping the institution financially. But when we checked up the infrastructure is in place but the morale of the students is very low. They come from such a poor background that even their parents are not concerned about their education. Now on a regular basis, some of us whenever we find time or whenever we go to our native place make it a point to go to the school and interact with the students. We are informing them about the opportunities available, try to find out their problems and guide and help them to realize their potential. A major role has been played by our friends who are still in the same town or in my homeland.

What has started as a small movement of around 30 of us, now really grown big. In our group now we have more than 700 old students. We even have people who are in their seventies. At least someone visits the school every week which has really making a change, albeit in a small way. We know that the task is huge, but we are confident that we can do it and realize our dreams. This is our way of saying thanks to our beloved school which has thought us how to face the challenges of the world.

Toastmasters, we seldom have money problem, many times we have only an idea problem. Just think and check you will find your purpose, the thing that is closer to your heart and start doing it. As communicators and leaders we need to put our expertise for the benefit of the people around us.

Greatness is not when we talk big things, but when we understand small things. However small your noble deeds are, don’t mind, and start doing it. Shall we take this as our new year resolutions? Shall we act up on this?

Over to you toastmaster! 

Toastmaster Project Speech - 6

Having heard my project speech no 5, hope by this time all toastmasters should be aware of my basic traits, isn’t it?  I am delivering this speech with all due respect to all madam toastmasters present here.

Toastmaster of the day, Mr President, fellow toastmasters and guests, a warm good evening to you all.

I was one of those unfortunate souls, who were not able to love a girl and get married, the same girl or someone else.  Mine was an arranged marriage. My father who was also a sales person like me, but he was more successful than me, used all his skills and tricks finally got a girl for me.

 I had 3 months between the engagement and the marriage and during those romancing days I told my would-be wife that I will take her out to a nice, calm place for an outing. I took her to the graveyard; you see generally it is always calm and quite. My would-be wife was highly disappointed and shouted at me for what and why I have taken her there? I told her “hey, what’s your problem, people are dying to come here “

Literally irritated she called my father and asked him to cancel the wedding. Then my father called both of us, myself and my would-be wife for a counseling session and advised me “Son, remember life is all about give and take”, and then I found out that it is always that we give and they take.

Remember friends, life is all about priorities and everyone has the right to choose their ways. To have a successful and happy married life, remember she goes her way and you go her way. It is simple.

Now let me give you some simple tips to keep your wife happy so that you can retain the music in your personal life.

Never try to outshine the mistress. This is the most important lesson you have to learn. Given all said and done, people will be delighted to note that they are intelligent, so give your partner that sense of accomplishment. Anyhow the male is kind is always dump and there is nothing wrong in accepting it too.

On a daily basis, tell your wife that she is beautiful, charming, intelligent, caring and never forget to tell her that you love her.  Generally, ladies tend to have this doubt, so we need to clarify it often. Anyhow we have been doing this kind of ego massage to our superiors and it is nothing wrong to practice it in the house also.

The next trick is sharing of decision making, who has the final say in things.  Together me and my wife clearly share the responsibilities. I decide what US should do to come out of the current financial crisis, what India has to do to curtail  corruption – big things like that. My wife decides on which school my daughters has to go, which dress they need to buy for this Diwali, what household appliance we need to by, small things like that.

Never be angry at the same time. Because when you are angry, you lose your mental balance. You have two choices, fight with your wife and get defeated or accept your defeat and never go for a fight. Choice is your gentlemen.

Remember, your wife is like a computer, can do multi tasking at a time, highly useful without whom you will find it very difficult to do your routine things, highly dependable but even your smallest mistakes are immediately committed to their memory for any future reference. So better be careful.

Simple all it seems maybe, but please remember only practice makes perfection. When I talk of perfection, I remained of an incident. Hope all you should know about the music academy in Chennai, where all south Indian top maestros use to present their concerts, dance etc. One day I asked an auto driver in Chennai “how could I make it to the music academy?” The driver immediately replied “practice, practice, practice”

But let me advice you with all this practice, never have over confidence in handling your wife. Confidence is fine, but over confidence is not. One of my friend who was doing his final year graduation mastering on agriculture, visited a farm for a field trip. After carefully studying the practice in the farm he told the old farmer “I will be highly astonished if you can able to get a yield of at least ten apples from this tree with the kind of your practice”. The farmer replied “yes sir, even I will be, because it is a mango tree”.  So be more careful with your activities.

Look out, life is all about priorities. Look at the great country UAE; you have a media city, festival city, internet city and a knowledge village. I suggest you to set your priorities right.

So friends practice this tit bits and enjoy a happy married life and you can proudly proclaim “I am the head of the family and I have my wife’s permission to say so”

Over to you Toastmaster!

Problem - No Problem

I have two daughters who always confirm Darwin’s theory of Evolution of Species by confirming our forefathers.  It was a Sunday and I was lying in the bed reading a book and my wife was doing some household activity. Both my daughters were missing in action. Suddenly we hear a loud noise, a big noise of a wooden stool falling down and a couple of vessels rolling. Both myself and my wife rush to the kitchen from where the sound originated with my wife shouting loudly “which monkey is that? “

My God, what I saw there? I saw my mother standing there with flour on all her body and a couple of vessels around. Suddenly my younger daughter appears there and yelled “Grandmother is that monkey”. Hopefully you all should know the very cordial relationship Indian daughter in law shares with her mother in law. All the trainings I have attended on situation handling, conflict management, and human relationship flashed on my mind. Nothing seems to work out. I did the one which I am capable of doing, just went out of the house, started my bike, ran and simply disappear into thin air.

Dear toastmasters, we all are facing many such problems in our daily life. Isn’t it?  Now I am going to tell you how to handle all this problems. But please keep it very secret, because not many common people are capable of handling these kinds of such complex issues.

Ok, now we have find out that there is a problem, what can we do? Just look around, if no one other than you have noticed it then just leave the problem. Why to get into a problem by spotting one.  Let someone else has the pleasure of handling it.

The second scenario is when one another person also noticed the problem, what can we do now? Many times he should also be confused without understanding what has happened actually.  Check whether we can push the blame on his head let him handle it. Or with his help try to push it to a third person and leave the place.

Many times in our official job, we need to handle a lot of problems, and then what can we do? Look at the problem deeply. Empower you subordinates that mean we are molding them for higher responsibility. They also need to learn how to handle complex situations. We are actually training them.

We can also make people in our same cadre to handle the problem. That means that we are delegating the jobs and help them achieving the goals. We need to be team workers, you see.

In the most unfortunate condition of we ended up having to deal with the problem, keep our boss in the loop and ask for his advice and suggestion. But we need to ensure that we keep the next level of superiors also in the loop. This is to ensure that we need to take the credit and if things go wrong our boss should be in the firing line and not us.

We need to understand that problems do not solve by themselves, only people get accustomed to it. After sometime this problem becomes a reality and there is no need for us to do anything on that. Just leave the problem, it will diffuse by itself.

But ensure that you are very active in the office. When you walk inside the office, walk very fast as if the entire office had been in fire. Or just keep looking the floor or the ceiling, with a grim face, let people think that you are very serious. 

When someone ask for your ask for some opinion or suggestion or information, it may be a very simple information like what is two added to two, do not answer immediately. Keep thinking for a long time, write something in your notebook or open up your computer and search, you may even hang on the face book, and then answer him after one hour. Let people think you are very serious when handling situations.

Always keep lot of papers and files in your desk.  The more papers in your table show that you go deep into many things. If your office is a new age hi-tech paperless office, then keep a lot of books, preferably big big books on different subjects like The Republic by Pluto, complete works of Tennyson, some book on management and something on your companies activities. Let people think that you always refer a lot of information. Then they will not trouble you with the problems.  You know, we need to like our work, it should fascinate us, we should love to sit and look at it for hours.

Look at all religious books, all say that God is most benevolent and most merciful. He is full of love and affection; He does not want us to get into troubles. Then why should face and handle problems, we are not created for that.  We have to be God fearing and should not go against His wishes.

Even all government declares as welfare state and wants to ensure that all their citizens should have a peace and comfort life. We need to be loyal to our countries and should not act against the rule of the land.

Thirdly, if we continue to handle lot of problems our health will get spoiled. What for we are working here – in the middle of a desert? Just to make money, what is the purpose in killing ourselves with high blood pressure and heart attack? No use. Remember don’t take life too seriously, you won’t get out alive.

Even doing a project in toastmasters is a big problem, a lot of preparation, coordinating with the mentor, repeated rehearsal and a tense performance. How to handle it? Then we need to do a mind tuning exercise. For seven minutes, we need to understand it is only the listener’s problem and not ours.

So friends, you have a problem, no problem – now I hope you all will follow this time tested principles, tested more than 35 years by me and believe it works.

Problem ……………………never ……………………………….. No problem

The Holy Trinity

It was just within two months of my marriage. I was visiting one of my relative’s home for a customary marriage feast along with my wife. When I pressed the calling bell, we were greeted by a Pomeranian dog, welcoming us with a high decibel barking. I was not a big fan of pets and my wife was really frightened. So I asked the lady of the house to tie up the dog. Promptly the lady replied not to me but to the dog “ Chup raho ! Yeh hai bhai aur bhabi. Hi shut up. Could you not recognize? This is brother and his wife.” Indeed a nice way of welcoming us. Coolly my wife whispered in my ears “Earlier I had a doubt, now  I got it clarified “.

Toast master of the day, madam president, and fellow toastmasters and guest a warm good evening to you all.

Remember, it was just two months of the marriage and the initial fantasy has not faded away and I decided to swallow the bitter pill of comment. How many of you come across such an ego shattering comments in your life. Most of us, I suppose. Have we ever looked into why people behave in a particular way?

This was the basis of research of the Canadian born US psychiatrist, Eric Berne, during the late 50s, which develop into what is now known as Transaction Analysis.

We do not have a single personality as we all think; in fact we have three types of different personalities within us –a kind of split personalities. We have a child, an adult and a parent within us. No, I am not referring to the age or the position; this is the ego status what I am referring to.

A parental ego is stage where a person wants to control the others as if he knows everything on the subject. This has two different types – one is a nurturing parent and the other is a critical parent. Just look at the way the seasoned toastmasters give their evaluation speeches. The first portion will be of the stage of a nurturing parent, giving positive stokes, praising the target speaker, list out all the right things the speaker has made in this speech. The second portion he assumes the role of a critical parent, where he points out the mistakes committed and the ways to improve.

An adult ego is a stage when one person is reacting to the situations without any emotional bias, just looking into the subject and gives his critical analysis in a logical and sequential order. In Our Toastmasters meetings most General Evaluators come under this category.  The basic idea of Transaction Analysis is to ensure that we all should try to strengthen adult ego stage.

Then we have the child ego stage. By nature a child is curious to know new things and many times it is also mischievous. Like a parental ego status, the child ego status is also divided in to a little professor stage and a mischievous child stage.

We do have a lot of mischievous child in this room itself. Just wait for the comments our toastmasters make after announcements and project speeches. Cracking jokes and making fun is the characteristics of the mischievous child.

Many times we do not know many things and we would be really interested to know some basis of the subject. This inquisitive behavior is the mark of the little professor.

In any communication if the sender and the receiver is in the same ego stage, there will be no problems. But in reality it is not so. If one person talks in a critical parent stage and the other responds in a mischievous child stage, the communication either breaks up or a heated argument follows which ends up in a strained relationship.   

So Dear Toastmasters the next time your wife demands a piece of jewellery ignore it because she is in a Child ego. Your boss bullies you with No work No increment statement ignore him because he is in a Parent Ego. But never ignore your Speech Evaluator’s suggestions because he is in Adult Ego as we are. Hope my evaluator is listening!!!

Over to you toastmaster. 

Toastmaster Project Speech - 3

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; so says Shakespeare. True and we all will agree on this. One of the often repeated part what we play is of the part of a sales person.

You may be in different streams of line of activities – doctors, consultants, finance people and may be amused when I say that all in the world is a sales person. No I am not here referring to the regular sales person, who carries a kit in his hand, a tie around his neck and always a lie on his lips.

If not anything, we always try to sell ourselves and that is why we are all sales people, knowingly or unknowingly. We sell ourselves as an employee, as an employer, as a spouse, as a parent, as a team member and what not. We sell ourselves because; we need the appreciation, the recognition, and the improvement in the ladder of success and material benefits. Hope you all agree with me.

Then how to sell ourselves effectively is the question we need to find the answer. For that we need to know how people buy, only then we can do an effective selling. Just think what you bought today, just look for the financial transaction you have made either by cash or by card.

First you recognize the need for the product and service. Then only we start look for the solutions. Nothing can be sold to a person who does not have a need for it. How many of us, ever looked for the price of a Jet plane? Not many, I suppose because you do not have a need for it.

When we are clear about our needs, then we start looking around for the options available. Anything that satisfies our need is available in various price points and is provided by many players. We carefully start evaluating the options. 

In the process of evaluation, we face many doubts and start doing the research – thro the net, asking the opinion with the people who use the products or services and try to eliminate the doubts. Once we are clear then we decide to buy the product.

This is the famous REED process, on which all buying in this world happens. For items with lesser value, we take the decision faster and for products at higher value, we take a longer time to settle. Hope trying a new cake of soap will always be faster than deciding to buy a new car.

Having understood the REED process, how to sell our self?

No one will buy us if they do not have a need for us. So we need to find out the need of the other person, and need to think from their angle, what is the value addition we can provide to them.

We need to understand the requirements of the other person and if we can ensure that we can do something more than what others can do, definitely we will be liked by others and can get what we aspire for.

We always need to give more than what we take and that is the secret of success.