One very simple way of time management, which by the way, is itself a wrong word since one cannot manage time. It is something u leave to the almighty to do. This grandiose term time management is actually just about managing yourself. And there are poeple who call themselves Time management experts. There is no such thing!

Trying to manage time is like trying to put a fence around the ocean or hold a cup full of air! So that be the case, my friends. So what are u managing when u say u are managing time? In the simplest essence you are managing yourselves.

A classic example – there was a  time I lived in the Philippines for close to 4 yrs. And Manila is very much like Bangkok, notorious for its long traffic jams. Arguably Manila is worse than Bangkok.  While I was there, I had to put up with these very long traffic jams and sometimes u can be caught for so long that it takes an hour to cover one mile. So making sense of schedules in Manila was totally nonsensical. However one attempted to make appointments and attempted to keep them and leave the rest to the forces of the traffic Gods.

So, during one of these tempestuous moments, I was seated in a taxi with a good friend of mine and  I was already about 45 mins late for an appointment and it didn’t look like I was going to get there anytime soon. Now even by Manila standards that particular jam was horrendous. As we were edging our way down the traffic, it appeared that I was going to have to cancel this appt or not make it at all. And in particular for me, this was the 3^rd time I was trying to meet this individual. So it was frustrating for me. I was venting my anger on anything and everything that moved. The birds in the sky to the people sitting in the cars around, to the seat I was sitting on. I was doing this for a good 30 mins before I realized that my friend was sitting there amiably with an almost beatific smile on his face and his hand in his jacket pocket and he seemed to be murmuring to himself. For a moment there I said to myself- maybe he haslost it! The traffic situation after all these yrs of living there had demented the poor chap. I tapped him on the shoulder and said- what in the blazes are u grinning about?  I don’t see anything to smile about! We are caught in the middle of the jam and we cant go back to where we came from. We can’t move forward. We can’t open the car doors and the AC is not working. And I can count on the drivels of sweat running down my spine.  Thence, he looked up to me with an almost saintly smile of his face – what’s the problem?

The problem is that we are wasting our time and our day! He said- why would u imagine that I would allow a silly traffic jam to waste my time!  If I had to leave my house everyday and allow the jam to affect my life which is a daily occurrence in Manila,  I might as well not leave my house.

Now that stuck me as strangely rational. Here I was raising my blood pressure and condemning anything and everything and feeling helpless, and he seem perfectly calm. So I asked him what he was doing sitting there staring at the window…that can’t be particularly delightful! Then it struck me – Are you on something? What are you on? Give me whatever you are on…give me 2 of it!   Right now I really feel like I could do with it.

He said no drugs my friend. This morning as I left my house, I got up too late to do my normal spiritual practices. I usually allot an hour to do my prayers and a round of my rosary beads. I missed it this morning and I was very upset because it throws off my day. And right now the good Lord has kind of balanced it out for me by giving me back my one hour. 

Then after I finish this I have at least 6 letters I need to send out and he brandished a pen and a letter pad and said, “I am ready to get to work!”

And at that moment in time. …This is a little bit before cell phones became the norm, I was blown off the wall….if I am in control of my life, then I wait for no one. The more I am out of control, the more I find myself waiting. And that is essentially what this practise of the Sphere of Silence is all about.

The topic by itself is a paradox! The mind at any given point of the day for most of us is inherently chaotic. Hence, the activity is not progressing in any particular direction, in essence its directionless. Like floatsam, or a  piece of driftwood…its picked up and thrown back, picked up and thrown back and the process continues repeatedly.

The ultimate result being that the driftwood is bent out of shape. The truth my dear friends is, that piece of driftwood is essentially us.  If we do not choose to exercise control over our life, that is what will happen to us.

Alternately,  what one has to do is pick a log off the beach, fix a mast and a sail and take off wherever u need to go. Hence, the process of contemplation in itself is a process of not stilling the mind but making the mind active in a productive manner, in a focused manner. Hence the term contemplation is not referring to introspection or retrospection. Although both of these are very common tools that are utilised. But they don’t define what contemplation is all about. The contemplation here is more of a self discipline process. Of bringing the mind and its entire array of strength into the direction that u choose.  The trick is to recognize that.

Unfortunately because of our exposure, to western philosophy we believe, the mind is out of our reach. That it is sacrosanct in a theosophical sense. An uncontrolled mind, a mind that cannot focus, a mind that is in essence in the reins of any force that flows through your life is your greatest obstacle and hindrance. It is in fact your enemy. It will resist you just as any body part would after you, having ignored it over a period of time, suddenly decided to exercise. If you pick up weights today, your muscles will resist. You body will spend the next 24 hours screaming in pain.

The mind is similar. It is going to rebel, scream and buck, as you try to use it and stretch it to its limit. The unfortunate thing is that you can be immensely intelligent and reasonably successful. Hence you could actually fool your self into thinking that u have your mind under control simply because you are able to get it to do what u want it to do under a specific parameter. The simple act of silence being done continuously everyday is harder for most people than climbing Mount Everest.  It’s a challenge that people who have supposedly attained spiritual elevation will find almost impossible to surpass. And for those of us who are in the midst of society per se it can be indeed our waterloo.

But not attempting it is worse. For, it leaves us at the mercy of the vagaries of nature. And our final recourse will be to resort to astrology, the stars the sun the moon or any other sign of inference out there to try and make sense of our lives. The answer is not in reading tarot cards. The answer lies within.  In the words of the eminent, beloved Mother Teresa- God’s Voice is clearest in Silence.

For those of you who choose not to believe in the lord, the voice of reason, conscience, and the voice of truth is clearer in silence.  It is in fact the greatest agony for most of us to be in silence for any length of time By silence here I am referring to a conscious silence, as opposed to an unconscious silence. Not when you are sleeping or watching a movie. Conscious silence is where one recognizes that you have nothing to do. Sitting outside the principal’s office waiting to be called in can be agonizing. It seems like every minute is drawn out painstakingly.  We find it so difficult to control the mind. We get restless and irritated and frustrated. We get annoyed that we are made to wait. We feel that somehow we are at the mercy of the waiting process.  Again the reality is if you are in control, then time is yours.  If you are not in control, you will always be seeking time, chasing time, trying to find time. Any definition you can choose.

In embracing rejection, you embrace yourself because ultimately there is no single person out there who has the power to move you or change you. Only you possess this. Hence, individuals or groups that reject you per se are themselves of no consequence. What is of consequence is the lesson learnt therein. The greater the rejection, the higher the mountain. If one were to look at oneself as a mountain climber, getting angry at the mountain is ludicrous. The greater the challenge, the more there is to clear.

So just as a mountain climber looks for the next mountain you will need to embrace your next rejection.  The only thing that you would not want to do is to repeat the mistake without correction. If the same mistake defeats you continuously then it is not the incidents, nor the mistakes that are at fault, but you are.  Embracing rejection without self analysis is defeatism. Self analysis makes a difference. Hence, it is about planning and preparing that makes a difference.  A rejection gone by unanalysed is a rejection lost in time. Which is why the post mortem of every rejection (through practise of Sphere of Silence) is crucial to your next stage. 

For me, my morning practise of the Sphere of Silence allows me this unique introspection where I can fit the pieces of the jigsaw of the person that I am and since I am continuously evolving, of the person that I am becoming.  Most people who have spoken to me about rejection, ask,” why me?” As if they have been handpicked for this pain! For this dismal experience they feel they have undergone was orchestrated by the lord himself.  But ultimately we are the architects of our own rejections. I do not mean that we are expecting or designing our own defeat but that we need to plan and prepare for both rejection and acceptance in the same manner.  And acceptance merely affirms a thought process and ability of a strategy. A rejection merely challenges you. So change it. And if pride has no role to play it becomes that much easier to deal it .

Rejection by Vijay Eswaran

Rejection is a central platform of all networking endeavour. Anyone who doesn’t understand why rejection is such a powerful and yet intricate tool of learning does not really understand networking. Take the word 'networking'. Ultimately it’s about working a net. If you see a spider building a cobweb, in essence that’s where the term net/web originated from. It’s a concept we have pulled from nature per se.

First the spider pulls one single thread from point A to Point B. And this is the most difficult most, strenuous, most daring, more imperilled venture by the staid spider. Because it is one thread and hanging by that single thread the spider tries to span an expanse of space. And generally it fails about 99 times before connecting the thread. And because its so tenuous, it breaks again about 99 times. The actual percentage of success is about 1%.

But the web itself upon completion can be an extremely powerful and extremely intricate construction. In nature, there is nothing that comes close. Man, despite all technological progress cannot match the intricacy and strength of a single cobweb even today. The strength of a single spider thread is still far stronger than the strongest steel cable known to man, if one were to measure it proportionately. Hence, it is the ideal example to use in this field of business/networking.

The first thread fails 99 times out of 100. But yet, this is the basis of the entire network that is yet to come and it will be the strongest thread that spans that space. Upon that single thread being achieved the spider goes back to its centre and then drops again to create another thread. Hence, you eventually see the entire cobweb over a period of time. Now how does this  affect the term rejection?

The spider has no ego, it has no pride. It has no intellect in terms of counting how many times it fails. It is focussed on the objective and keeps on striving and trying till it's objective is reached. It can only focus on one thread at a time. But this is how the most complex, intricate, dynamic networks are built.  The only thing that differentiates us from the spider is this concept of pride/ego/self awareness/social intelligence.

Hence, you would find that some of the most successful networkers per se, who have been able to completely build huge networks, i.e, 50,000/80,000/ 120,000 people, they have done so because they have never looked beyond the next thread/person that they are building upon. This so called simplistic approach is so powerful because there is no expectation, there is no pride in achievement, there is only the next step forward.  So why this fear of rejection? Rejection does not demean you. It does not deride you. It does not deny you. It certainly doesn’t defeat you.  It doesn’t even defy you.  So why let a single rejection or a 100 rejections stop you.

In the words of a good friend of mine, who is a great networker, "Rejection is just another gust of wind on my face. It cools my brow and is gone in the next instant. If I know it not, how can it affect me?"

Through rejection though, there is so much to be learnt. In every rejection there is a new lesson.  In every rejection, there is a different map of who you are internally, different part of a map internally being projected. If you can piece your rejections together, you will begin to see who you really are.

A rejection teaches you what you should not do next.  A rejection teaches you where you went wrong. And therefore teaches you if you care to learn from it, what you should do right.  It is an excellent opportunity that allows you to experiment just as a painter does with his canvas. If you can only remove your expectation out of the way; if you can only remove your ego out of the way, then rejection becomes a gift divine.  It becomes a true teaching tool and the master plan teaches.  There is so much more to be derived from rejection than there is from success.

Embrace it and it would guide you. Repel it and you will be forever entwined.

It is an absolute necessity. Sense of urgency says, “I do not have time”. Let me burn the candles at both ends. The sense of urgency is felt precisely like cutting off your air supply.

If someone comes up behind you right now and grabs your nose and shuts your mouth. First minute you will say someone is playing a game with me, who is this person…trying to figure it out etc. You hit your next 30 seconds and start wanting to breathe, the person grips harder. Now you start pushing harder, because you want to breathe, and if it continues for 30 more seconds, you are into desperation. You scratch, you bite, you claw, you don’t care who the hell it is holding you. At that moment in time, you will kill to breathe. And that is burning desire. It is a lot more than just survival. It is basically recognizing that nothing can hold you back. Nothing should get in your way. Survival would have been there in the first 10 seconds. But at the last 10 seconds, it was not even the issue of survival. It came down to the simple fact: “I WANT to breathe”.  Total focus becomes tinier and tinier until it reaches the point that “I want to breathe”.

 Look at Thomas Alva Edison. He is there, working away, continuously for 96 hours in his lab, not having gone home or out at all. He is so focused on his work. Literally, his housekeeper has to force-feed him. Nothing can irritate him, nothing can take him out of the lab if he is burning after an idea.

Tagore would look himself up in the middle of the night, when he was writing his masterpiece  Gitanjali. Nothing could touch him. Until it came out of him (Gitanjali), nothing could get in the way. What drives these people like that?

Picasso locked himself in the attic until he finished his painting. They all have that, where their focus boils down to that particular thing being achieved and nothing else. But you do have it too. Every single one of us does. Almost invariably, usually, when we fall in love. Be it puppy love at the childhood phase or more serious mature things in adulthood, it comes at a point where those that you love deeply, your parents, your best friends, who before this thing happened had the greatest influence over you, the people for whom you had great respect and admiration, all of them flushed down the toilet because of someone you don’t know, have not really understood, not got to know very well yet, and yet who took over your entire existence. So the capacity is there.

The sense of urgency is not something that one can seek, it cannot be contrived, it has to be derived. It comes from within us.