Its tough replacing ORs with ANDs

In my previous post I had mentioned my resolution of converting the ORs of my life to ANDs. I have been in action towards living that resolution, and by jove, its not easy. But it is real fun.

Take this for instance,

Right now I have 4 important things to do :-

1. Prepare for my play – “The Death of a Salesman”
2. Build/Test and publish the web app for my research on “Startup Pains” by 18th May.
3. Sell books and earn – involves giving presentations and all.
4. My SELP
5. Build Website for Mumma. (I just finished it today)

Each of the above 4 are very important to me and I can’t ditch any of them. The amount of work involved in doing all 4 together looked almost impossible due to the sheer lack of time and inflexibility. For instance, I have to rehearse for my play everyday in the evenings and that is the time that I gotta make presentations for my books as well. Similarly, the web app would have easily taken about 20 hours of my time. SELP would take the whole of 18th, all monday evenings and about 10-15 hours in the week. Whatever… basically, doing all of them together looked impossible to me.

But my possibility of replacing the ORs with ANDs was equally inspiring. So I did this, I sent a mail to the Bangalore Ruby Users Group and asked if any of them want to work with me on building the web app (point 2). It was a proactive step and I had never considered it. It helped a lot, I got 2 replys. I went and met Satish Kota, of Heurion Consulting and he gladly took the responsibility of the whole website! Amazing, isn’t it! I earned myself about 15 free hours. I woke up at 5 today and finished designing Mumma’s website. I again requested Aashish to host it! So I save some more time by making powerful requests.

I am still struggling with time, but what I have realized is that, everything is possible if you really want to make it happen.

I have given Gyanesh, my director a word that I will memorize my dialogs before going tomorrow. Looks tough, but I shall do it. A word is a word.

I am beginning to realize what Stephen Covey calls ‘being proactive’ and what SELP calls ‘making powerful requests’. I am beginning to live an extraordinarily powerful life!

A bit about my awesome Coachees at Landmark SELP

I am assisting in Landmark Education as a Self Expression and Leadership Program Coach. I am so inspired by my coachees! I have 5 coachees.

Its a big privilege to be an SELP coach. You’ve got to be responsible. You’ve got to honor what you say. And all this becomes all the more enjoyable when the people whom you coach play the same game as you are playing. When I did the program, I was full of reasons for not completing my homework, coming late etc etc. But my coachees aren’t. They DO honor their word. They are absolutely unreasonable with themselves.

Everything in life becomes very easy when we do what we say we would do at the time when we said we will do it. Each of these guys and gals, are pretty much in route to reaching that stage. For instance, today, each of them (barring Madhavi who is out of station), came on time and with their homework complete. This makes life just so easy. We can invest our time in growing rather than addressing why being out-integrity keeps us from growing.

Besides, they inspire me to take on living my life just as powerfully. To plan my work and work my plan. To generate my present and future free from the constraints of the past. To get a ‘yes’ from people, no matter what the situation.

I salute you guys.

Thanks for enriching my life with your presence.

Truckloads of Love,

Amit Singh

Cleaning Public Toilets!!! :)

Wow! I never imagined I would ever do this.

I went for production assisting in Tanaya’s SELP today (Landmark Education). Mr Iyer was my senior in the production team. So I go there and he tells me that the toilets are stinking and asks if we could do something about it. Now I know that the ILP (Introduction Leaders Program) participants do clean toilets and everything themselves. At landmark we create something called a space. A space in which everything is charged with positivity. Including the toilets! No joking, I have seen professors and doctors cleaning them! But I was clear that I am not doing ILP. So when Iyer uncle suggested that I clean them, I exclaimed in my mind (???). Now I clean my loo myself and have no inhibitions to the cleaning side of it. But somehow I was expecting Mr Iyer to make it sound more dramatic . All he did was got the stuff (anti-infectant and other cleaning stuff) and handed them to me!

Then I started my job. Started with cleaning the mirrors because I was not mentally ready yet! The place was stinking real bad actually and there were no naphthalene balls to be found. So I start with Harpic and a toilet brush and clean the stuff. Now came the mopping of the floor turn. I don’t know if the pipe was leaking or someone was playing a game of “My pee farthest” but there were substantial traces of some random dude’s piss on the floor beside the urinal. And it was my job to clean that! I am making it sound very melodramatic but in reality I didn’t feel disgusted . Yeah so coming back to the melodrama. To add on to my misery, the mopping broom was lost. So I had to mop it – the wretched place with my hand. And here comes the bomb. I liked doing it. I didn’t think it was gross. I didn’t think “whose piss am I wiping”. I just felt like, there are people to serve; its my duty that they have a good space and I don’t want their toilet to stink. I would go on to the extent of saying that I enjoyed the experience. It was like a privilege.

But then again, if anyone came inside, I’d throw down cloth and start looking at the mirror!!! And then there were dirty footprints all over the floor again, so I’d mop it again and then another guy came. This time it was my friend Nikhil. So after he was done I asked him to stand out and not let anyone in for the next few minutes.

Later on in the day, I observed the stink again or maybe it was Iyer uncle who told me about it. And there I go again into the war-zone. This time again I moped and someone came and I stopped then he dirtied it, and then I mopped and then someone else came and I stopped and the floor got dirtied again. And there was no Nikhil around to ask people to wait outside! So finally I got present to “why do I need to goddamn stop when someone just barges in”. I am not ashamed of it.

When I was just about to finish. I asked the only man standing in front of the mirror. “Is it stinking?”. He smiles and says no. He was an IL (Introduction Leader – An advance curriculum grad who takes public introductions to the Landmark Forum). He said “Good job Amit”. I smiled and said “My Pleasure”. He then said something about you needing to have a heart to do production or something. I wasn’t paying much attention. I was glad that I actually meant the -”My Pleasure” part of the conversation. I was glad that I got an opportunity to serve people in such a unique way.

DISCLAIMER: Landmark production assisting has got a lot of other things beside cleaning toilets too. Cleaning toilets is maybe only 7% of the job! In fact, as pointed out by Venkat in the first comment, cleaning toilets is NOT a part of assisting at all. (I think Mr Iyer doesn’t know about this either. It was a very unique experience none the less.) But none of the remaining things were as interesting as this. Maybe I’ll write a bit about assisting in some other post some other day.

Production assisting at Tanaya’s SELP. A day well spent.

For the benefit of a few of my random readers, I’ll go into a brief introduction to landmark education. Well, it is a training and development company that sells “Transformation“. Really. Its full of unbelievingly committed people. For the kind of value they provide, I believe their price is dirt cheap. Say in India its 6000 bucks for a 3 day 1 evening course. This 1 course is guaranteed to give you breakthroughs that you could not have imagined. (The guarantee is mine not theirs). They have something called a “Curriculum for Living” which aims at enabling participants to “Live life powerfully and Live a life they Love“. And when they say it, they mean it. Its happened for me and I know so many others. We get really authentic after doing the curriculum. We drop our masks and become our very pure selves. Man, initially this course is very confronting but later on (as you start being authentic) life gets amazing. All the work done in Landmark education is done by the curriculum graduates. Everything from introducing and leading sessions to (a handful of paid staff members) to cleaning the office to everything.

So the Self Expression and Leadership program or the SELP is the 3rd part of the 3 part “Curriculum for Living”. And Tanaya Kilara is the name of woman who took my SELP (which got completed in November 2007). Today I went to assist in the production team. It was a great experience about which I am gonna write a whole new post. I got the joy of serving. I got the motivation to build an existence system. I’ll choose outlook or thunderbird by 3 PM tomorrow. And I got yet again that “there is nothing wrong“. I have been resisting conversations that don’t go my way. Well there is nothing wrong with the other persons point of view. I don’t have to resist it. I can rather complement it! Thats what I got.

A worthwhile and productive day. I served people. I goofed up in so many things, but I won’t abuse myself. It was just my first day after all .

Analyzing handwritings in a Mall!

Today was fun. To me it was a big thing to go and do handwriting analysis in a populous place. But I went there confidently and did everything with confidence as usual. Quite an experience. A few people told me that they were very impressed. A couple were not satisfied 100%. The MC kept calling me a handwriting analysis expert! Incidentally she happened to be a junior from my college.

I thought I would be speaking on the mike and there would be a big crowd around me but I ended up doing 1 on 1 analysis. I had invested quite some amount to arrange for all the stationary expecting about 300 people to submit their handwriting. So I had reason to be upset but I dismantled it and got over it in 2 minutes (I am going through the lowest phase of the year so far and I must acknowledge myself for being really powerful in the circumstances). After the whole thing finished, my throat was hurting and I was dead tired. In fact I’ll hit the sack straight away after hitting ‘publish’. Whatever….

According to Spencer Johnson’s – “The Present”. One should focus on whats right, right now. So whats right right now for me is -

• I had fun
• A lot of people acknowledged me
• I have the emails of quite a few people who would like me to give a seminar at their offices.
• Some of them might have had major breakthroughs at understanding themselves and their spouses.

I have 2 options now.

1 is to stick with Handwriting Analysis persistently and go do seminars in all those offices and find some way of earning while doing that. Write blogs, build up my site, put adsense and chitika in it and expect returns.

OR

Move over to something else and earn some money to pay my bills. I don’t know why but I don’t like this idea of money getting the better of me. This is 1 area I want to transform. Money should not move me, I should be moving it.

Right now I am biased towards option 1. I have starting enjoying discipline. Talk about persistence!

Tomorrow I have to leave home by 7 to be on time for the “creation meeting” of Tanaya’s 2nd SELP workday. Man I am so tired. I really wish to sleep my whole tomorrow over. Ill have to hit the sack soon.

Nice habit. Writing your journal every night. Someday when I am really successful I can look back at these pages and amuse myself!

Good Night!

Bye the way, today I did my simpleology and exercise and no yoga.

Some tension creeping in!

I could not sustain the beautiful start in the morning. By mid day, I had a deal to do live handwriting analysis (using a mic) in a big mall on a busy day! Wow, quit a deal. I was excited and nervous. I spent the rest of the day preparing a survey and making a small writeup for the action tomorrow.

Now I have not done live analysis for the last 4 years. Doing it in front of so many people, in a big mall sounds a little overwhelming. I know that I know only a quarter of what I used to know earlier. And I don’t remember any of the catchy phrases that I used to conjure while analyzing earlier. Not to mention, I used to analyze only in front of a small crowd of 10-20 people on an average. But I guess I am not tensed about this as much as I am about not having any money to pay my bills. This live analysis session is not gonna pay me anything. The deal we have struck is like this. I guess I should not worry about money so much. I feel the universe/God wants me to use this opportunity to create money for myself. Something will happen. By 15th Ill pay all my bills, and of course without borrowing it. Thats a promise I make to myself.

Ok, no more negative thinking. “Bimbiglio” this is the word that I use to challenge any negative thought. When ever I get a negative thought I challenge it and replace it with a positive one. The thought that I am replacing this negative pattern with is – “I’ll read Ray Walker, the whole book. Do 2 dummy analysis tomorrow. Go to the mall and have fun.”. Wow! I am already feeling excited. Yes, all I am gonna do tomorrow is have fun. Have fun and nothing else.

Ok, so there I go studying my Handwriting Analysis book.

I am assisting in the ‘SELP production team’ on Sunday! After all the fun I have tomorrow, I’ll have even more fun and learning the day after.

How I overcame my inauthentic fear of failure?

I had a crunch time today financially. I gotta pay my bills and I don’t have the money. All the guys I had lent money to, are unable to pay me right now. In the background of these conversations I was glad that they couldn’t pay me back. This way I have an opportunity to utilize my dormant potential of creating money!

Then came idea no 4 – “Handwriting Analysis for free and for a fee”. Since I am already working with handwriting analysis, I thought I gotta make money with this only. It would be a good motivation for me to learn more on the subject. I decided to place “Drop your handwriting Here” boxes in some of the retail shops near my house (after talking to their owners of course) and place 100 posters all over my layout. But somehow I just kept hovering around the shops and didn’t speak to anyone. The shops were so congested that no one had any chance to write properly. Then I saw a big big mall. I thought of approaching the manager of the mall, but a weird feeling of fear gripped me. A fear of rejection I guess. So I didn’t go inside the mall and came home instead. After coming home I spoke to Mamta and she cleared my mind out. Then I went again. Man it took me a 5 minute talk to get a ‘yes’. I have so much of practice of getting a ‘yes’ with the registration conversations taught in SELP . This is one more added to the list.

So the point boils down to “how to overcome your fear?”. Well whatever fear we have is inauthentic 99% of the time. In my case I was afraid of the rejection that existed nowhere but in my imagination. How authentic is that??? So whenever you have a fear, ask your self.. “is my imagination playing the game or is it reality?”. If it is imagination then just chuck it off and go ahead and do whatever is needed. Chances are you might fail, but failing is much better than not trying. Its like playing a game and loosing rather than not turning in the field itself.

Overcoming this fear has been an important breakthrough for me! Thanks Mamta.

Had a nice week off at Mamta’s place.

After 3 failed attempts of making an extra buck, I chose to take a break and go and stay at Mamta’s place. Mamta, Nikhil and Oorja were going to Thailand and I offered to stay back and take care of Ginger.

I got really bored when they were not around. At one day I slept till 3pm . But life became twice as good once they returned.

Mamta and Nikhil bought me a super sexy pair of glasses. Nikhil can someday become a fashion guru. He can really carry himself well with Red, Yellow, Pink … anything.

They also got me a bag, a watch and dry fruits from Thailand.

In the meanwhile our Landmark Community had organized a meet up at Cubbon Park and I really enjoyed catching up with everyone.  I met Kiran, Pooja, Akash, Sudhamshu, Nikhil, Venkatesh, Revathi, Subhash and Aviral! It was awesome fun.