For Goodness' Sake

My talk today had its genesis quite a few weeks back when I was on a journey. It was supposed to be for an hour and a half, so I settled back and let my thoughts wander. A couple of guys just behind me started talking quite loudly, and I couldn't help but overhear their conversation. It turned out to be a fascinating conversation between the younger guy who was probably in his early 20s and the older person who was probably in his late 50s. He asked the younger guy what he was doing who then replied that he had joined the army and was serving and had served in a couple of places. It turned out that the older gentleman also had served and he told him about where he had served and the two began to talk. It was fascinating because the older gentleman probed the younger guy to find out a little bit about his background. It transpired that the younger guy had been abandoned as a child, had a brother whom he talked about a lot and how both of them had navigated their early days in different foster homes. Finally he had joined the army and decided that he would serve and get an education as well. It would enable him to get a job when he left.

IF ONLY…

by Dr. Cecil Clements (18th December 2012)



As I’ve been looking at the year that’s running away from us, invariably one starts to think about the months that have gone by and along with that comes some amount of, “Oh, I wish I had done that.” Disappointments tend to creep in, resolutions begin to pop their heads up and say, “This is what you decided at the beginning of the year” and maybe it has or has not been kept.

I was reading an article by Daniel Gulati who says, ‘Disappointment Doesn’t Discriminate’. How true! Whether you are a CEO or just starting out in the corporate world, whether you are male or female, whether you are a graduate or not, rich or poor – it really doesn’t matter. Disappointment comes to all of us. And if we are just disappointed and are then able to move on, it’s fine. But what typically happens with disappointment is that it leads to regrets.

SHUT DOWN THOSE APPS!

by Dr. Cecil Clements (3rd January 2012)

Here’s a truth that I found out in my life. If you don’t take care of background stuff, one day they will take centre stage. This truth will come home to you very clearly in the way you treat your Smartphone. Smartphones are smart as long as you and I also remain smart and know how to handle a Smartphone. For example, Smartphones have a lot of apps and very often we open so many of them and then don’t close them down. And all of these apps are then working in the background. Unless they have been shut down, they will continue to keep working. It will surprise you, if you do a check after this call, to find out how often we forget to shut down these apps. It’s possible that you may have 15-20 apps running in the background and all of them are actually slowing down your Smartphone. They’re eating into your battery life and you are not optimizing the Smartphone that you have, all because there’s background stuff that hasn’t been dealt with.

PUNCTUATE YOUR LIFE

Reading the Bible today, I came across a passage where God asks this particular question (Haggai 1:4-7). He says, “Take a good, hard look at your life. Think it over. You have spent a lot of money, but you haven’t much to show for it. You keep filling your plates, but you never get filled up. You keep drinking and drinking and drinking, but you’re always thirsty. You put on layer after layer of clothes, but you can’t get warm. And the people who work for you; what are they getting out of it? Not much! A leaky, rusted-out bucket, that’s what. So take a good, hard look at your life. Think it over.”

UNWANTED

I came across an article by Freny Maneckshaw and it caught my attention. I was looking at stuff that would have a corporate or leadership or management leaning. The title of this article drew me: it was called 'Renaming Nakusa'. I'd like to read a bit verbatim to you.

"Narayan Wagle welcomes us inside the dim central room of his mud and stone house where family members nestle in companionable ease with clucking hens as the rain lashes down. He calls out loudly for 'Naku' and then smiles awkwardly. Old habits die hard, for he has forgotten that the seven year old little daughter he has just addressed was re-christened Aishwarya a week ago."

Needs vs. Wants

I was looking at an article ‘Overcoming Anxiety’ and being anxious seems to be almost par for the course for our lives these days. There’s a sense of anxiety in even safety these days, packed onto everything else that we can be anxious about. But going through this article, I found an interesting statistic. It had to do with ‘needs’ versus ‘wants’. The research by Miller is more pertinent to the US, but I thought that I could see how relevant it was for us here.

He says that at the beginning of this century, the average American had 72 wants and considered 18 of them important, that is, to be needs. By the end of the century, the average American had 496 wants and considered 96 of them as genuine necessities for happiness. That’s huge! We need to give some leeway for the way things have changed economically, new inventions coming in, etc. But it is still huge that early on, in the beginning of the century, there were just 18 things that were considered to be needs and 54 were wants. And at the end of the century, 96 were needs and 400 were wants.

Live Life To The Fullest

About 7-8 years ago, I got myself a new laptop. A friend, who was a whiz at computers, saw it and remarked, “Wow! Harmon Kardon speakers!” I hadn’t really noticed that and so looked at the laptop with renewed interest. I began to enjoy the sound that came out of the laptop because of the Harmon Kardon speakers.

Last week I was reading the Bloomberg Business Week and they had an obituary for Sidney Harmon (1918-2011). It said, “In an ideal life, one wouldn’t have to choose between the pursuit of wealth and the pursuit of knowledge. By that standard and many others, Sidney Harmon – the scientist, stereo mogul, Under Secretary of Commerce, professor, philanthropist and magazine publisher, who died on April 14 – lived ideally.”

To conform or not; should it be a question?

As I was thinking about what to speak to you this morning, one word leapt out at me – CONFORMITY. Conformity starts when we are really small. We are born into a world, find ourselves in a family and the culture of that family begins to mold us and shape us and the things that are within us get shaped by the things that are outside of us. Then we take that shaping and go to a school and we find that the school has a culture of its own – the people, the staff, the teachers. We find that there’s need to conform in that environment as well.

Big Rocks; Little Picture

If you’re a cricket enthusiast, tomorrow is the big game: India-Pakistan semi-final. Well, even if you’re not, you can’t ignore it because everyone and everything around you is talking cricket. It’s in your face. Open the newspaper and you don’t even have to turn to the sports page; the front page itself has something to say about the match that is coming up tomorrow. 

Being Socially Responsible

I live in Mumbai and am not sure where all of you on this call live. When I travel in Mumbai, especially coming to a busy signal, invariably there are beggars who come asking for help. I have found that I am able to spot them in my peripheral vision and then can make sure that I am looking in the opposite direction so that I don't need to engage with them. I see them but don't see them. I hear their cries for alms but I don't listen to them. I treat them as if they are not there. I realize how adept I have become at seeing only what I want to see and disregarding the rest of the sights that are out there in front of me.

Big Picture – Little Things

Today I want to share two things with you, one from my personal life and one story that touched my heart. I hope that through both these, it will leave you with something to think about through the week.

My youngest daughter is in the 10^th grade and studying hard for her exams which will be at the end of this month. A couple of days back she walked in and sat next to me and said, "I find history so difficult. It's full of names, some of which I have difficulty pronouncing and trying to remember." I thought back to my own time when I was studying history and the trouble that I had with it and how I had watched different events in my life and how they had helped me understand history. There was a 'Sound and Light' event in Delhi that brought forth all the historical facts that are part of our heritage; and the other was the movie 'Gandhi'.

Forgiveness - It’s All About You

I need to warn you this morning that you may find today’s topic and contents a bit difficult to take in. But I know that we all will be better people if we accept a couple of things that I am going to be talking about this morning.

I want to read to you a post by Terrance Seamon who said, “Name a word you almost never hear of in connection with the workplace. While there are probably many answers, the one that I name is forgiveness. Somebody drops the ball, fails to meet the expectations, somebody misses a due date? What do we do? Forgive them? What would be the consequences of forgiveness in the workplace? Can you see it happening? How difficult is forgiveness in the workplace setting? I’m sure that even as I started to talk, incidents come rushing to your mind, of times when you have been let down by somebody close to you.

Allocating your Resources

Dr. Cecil Clements
Duration: 12:29 (Compressed for the Internet)

Many of you know that I am travelling in the United States. I travelled from Omaha, Nebraska to Lincoln. I had a meeting which was supposed to be for 2 hours with a wonderful speaker, Dr. Warren Wiersbe. He’s a great teaches and a prolific writer who has written over 150 books and gifted wonderful material to people all around the world. This 2 hour luncheon meeting lasted for 4 hours. I had a great time listening to him, hearing him talk about the things that had molded and motivated him throughout his life. He is now about 81-82 years old and spends his time writing. I came away from that meeting so uplifted. I realized that I had been in the presence of a man who had put everything into life and was happy at the end of it.

Lessons from a good Buddy

Dr. Cecil Clements
Duration: 11:04 (Compressed for the Internet)

I want to share something that happened in my life about a month ago. I lost a friend, I lost a good buddy. Buddy was our pet boxer. I remember going to Jet Airways cargo 5 years ago and picking him up as he came off the flight from Bangalore. He was in a little basket and was the size of my palm. He grew from there into a solid 40 pounder boxer, all muscle. I remember through the 5 years, we just grew to love him. My morning ritual involved waking up, getting a cup of coffee and sitting by myself, being absorbed in my thoughts, slowly waking up. Buddy would crawl into my lap, all 40 lb of him, and insist that he got my attention before the coffee. This was the ritual every morning. I would have to pet him, pull his ears, till finally he would get up and go away. That was all he needed from me until I came back in the evening. Then he would run circles around me, go and pick up something and bring it back in his mouth to me; it was like he hadn’t seen me in a year. Those were endearing things that we cherished about him.

Holding 'em Loosely

Dr. Cecil Clements
Duration: 13:51 (Compressed for the Internet)

I was looking back over my life, reminiscing, something I do every now and then, looking back at things that have happened in my life and remember either significant things or memories or people. This time I was thinking about people who were instrumental in showing me how to go through life. Three people came to mind for a very particular purpose in my life and I want to share them with you, tell you how they shaped me.

Multiplex Living - Life in a balance

Some years ago I was in an Anthropology class where the professor talked about two kinds of relationships that we can have: simplex relationships and multiplex relationships. He said that the key between these two was that reciprocal relationship was something that happened at a single strand; it was between two people. Multiplex relationships were when you had relationships with multiple people. The strength of a society is when people have multiplex relationships because then they are connected into more people’s lives. Anthropology being the study of man and humanity in terms of society, this was the key for strong societies; they were all dependent on multiplex relationships.

Rising above the 'Daily Struggle'

A week or two back I was looking at a newspaper and it had a picture of our boxers coming home with medals. I thought to myself, ‘Life is sometimes like a boxing match; we seem to be the ones in the ring with people all around either willing us on or willing us down.’ If we look at a boxing match (it is definitely more glamorized in the movies) there are always two guys slugging it out in the ring. Then one guy goes down and the other guy who is up and walking around, held by the referee, waiting for the guy who is down to get up. Half the crowd is willing the downed guy to get up and the other half are willing him to stay down.

Don't quit

Every now and then, in our lives, we have days when we go through the valley. We have our mountain top experiences where we feel the wind in our faces. It’s a lovely feeling when we are on top and things are going well. But mountain tops wouldn’t be there if there weren’t valleys. Sometimes life takes us into those valleys and all of us respond in different ways to the valley. But valleys, by their very nature, can take the steam out of us. They have a way of draining us. We find that there’s less focus on the things that we are doing and find that the vision sometimes is challenged. We find that our energy levels are down and we have to just keep going through the motions.

Dealing with Stress

This is an unusual morning for me as for the first time, I’m doing this call from my home and not from my office. The reason is that for the past week, I’ve had a problem with my back. On Thursday, I pulled a muscle in my back and spent Friday at home. They say the only thing for a back problem is to reflect on what is on your ceiling. So there I was prone, lying down flat, letting it recover. Friday, I thought I was better, went to office towards the evening. Then Sunday morning the pain was back and walking was excruciating. Managed to get through what I do on a Sunday, but spent yesterday again on my back. Unable to go to office this morning, I said I would do the call from home. But what’s interesting is that, as I was dealing with the back pain, my wife Sheila who is a clinical psychologist asked me what was stressing me out. I replied in the negative. But she said that when you have these chronic back problems, it could be stress-related. Typical response from somebody who’s being told they can’t handle a situation is to say there’s no problem, I’m fine.

Living in the Now

We’ve been together for 3 weeks, this is our 4th week. We’ve talked about integrity, we’ve talked about attitude and last week we talked about anger and how to deal with it in our situations and circumstances.

Today I’d like to talk about living in the present, living in the now. I remember reading a little anecdote about a person who was transferred somewhere into a place that was entirely new to him, a new environment, a new culture a new language. He was having real difficulty trying to live in that present. And he met a lady who gave him good advice. She said, ‘Always bloom where you are planted.’ In other words, don’t just live for the future. Live for the present. Look at what is happening around you and make it count. Sometimes we ship out of the present, if I may use that term that is familiar to you all. But you know, it could be that it’s a bad day that has started. Maybe today you are thinking it’s not going the way it should be and I think I’ll just wait till today finishes. Or maybe you started yesterday, and yesterday was a bad day and you’re thinking, this week needs to get over. Or maybe this is just a part of your life in which you’re having difficulty and you’re saying, this will pass and I’ll just wait till something fresh comes my way.