We hosted a powerful and moving call with Prof. DVR Seshadri. Here are some wisdom nuggets, quotes and couple moving stories of personal transformation.

• Happiness is an inside job --
  • We human beings keep looking for happiness here and there. And all the time we are running, running, running, and anytime we get some trace of happiness, it lasts for a while. Maybe I get a promotion, maybe I get an increment, maybe I marry and so on. And then it goes back to square one.
  • After a highly successful academic record and great start to my professional career, due to unforeseen tough events, after 17 years of working, I found myself on the street, no job. Nothing. And with huge liabilities. And you can imagine the type of pressure it put on the family.This saga continued from 1993 and by the time I could come out clean out of this, it was 2009.
  • All these experiences made me conclude that there is no happiness, zero happiness outside in the world. It might sound very, very drastic, but that's my firm conclusion. And all the happiness is within. So don't even look for happiness outside. This is my conclusion, if I may say.

• Why regret and overanalyse? I avoid over analysis about my past decisions and how I could have avoided it etc. because many of these moves are karmic. There's a lot of karmic forces and I'm a strong believer that there is this Karma force acting. Life is all about learning lessons from tough moments.

• On relationship with god - I was born in a god fearing family. Due to being highly successful in academics and early professional life, I became very proud and an atheist, because I thought I am achieving all these things due to my own intelligence. After 20 years of being an atheist, due to tough life circumstances I found myself at the doors of the higher powers, begging God for some solace from all the ramming that I was getting. slowly, my antenna opened up to that power. And it's work-in-progress. After many years of seeking, now I am coming to peace with myself.

• Maintaining integrity in tough times- If I'm alive and talking to you today, it is simply because nobody, not even God, can point a finger to me and say that one Paisa that was not mine I have usurped wrongly. This is a reality. And that is what has protected me. There were all sorts of inducements which came my mind to find an easy way out by being unethical, but I am glad I never fell to it. So my advice to everybody, youngsters is absolutely zero compromise on ethics, absolutely zero compromise.

• Being ethical vs being “practical” in business- So while I have not personally taken anything to run the business in those days, unfortunately I had to do some murky things. But even that in retrospect is avoidable. So my advice is absolutely no unethical taking, no unethical giving – zero. If it means that you have to delay the project, so be it. That is what will save you in long term as justice takes a full circle. Stay deep inside the ‘Lakshman rekha’ in the ethical side. (Also refer Clayton Christensen’s work “How will you measure your life” which includes sage advice “stay out of jail”.) Softest pillow is a clean conscience.

• Don’t look out for lying as a shortcut -
  • life is a marathon, not a hundred meter sprint. So focus on developing your skills, competencies, value frame. And that will take you in the marathon as a steady runner rather than to sprint hoodwinking somebody or the other, and getting a temporary gain. That's not going to last because those habits die hard. And once we are used to shortcuts, we keep doing it, and fall into a vicious cycle. We should refrain from taking anything which is not ours in the first place.

• You will not get one paisa before you are due to get it from the higher power. You will not get one paisa, one millisecond before you are due to get it. So why palpitate for it. Focus on building your skills, learnability, uprightness and values and so on. Bank balance is just one very small part of a holistically rich life.

• On ethical marketing
  • In the long run, whether you are in B2B or B2C you can succeed only by raising your level of consciousness as a sales guy.
  • David Hawkins, author of “Letting go: the pathway of surrender” brought SQ into the centre stage, 'Spiritual Quotient'. Till then people were saying that your success depends on your intelligence, IQ, EQ (Emotional Quotient) and so on. And he posits that success in life is squarely proportional to SQ. I am firm believer of that.
  • Human consciousness is divided into 3 stages -
    • Inertial- “having”,
    • energetic - “doing”;
    • Peaceful- “being”; peace, joy, love and enlightenment

• Voluntary simplicity -- is critical for Freedom. Keep your expenses low. If you commit yourself to expensive EMIs, you get habituated for expensive holidays, then your ability to take course corrections to thankless non fulfilling jobs is much lesser. And there is no problem in sending your kids to normal schools, lot of great personalities have emerged from normal schools only.

• On education - Learning life skills for how you keep sanity in a very, very turbulent world is the most important education needed. But, sadly, it's not happening, least of all in MBA types of institutions where these issues are pushed to the background and considered to be trivial.

• On inner investment and outer manifestation--
  • Once you start this journey and build some momentum, then you can be incredibly effective outside in your engagement with the world, because your mind is not getting wasted and dissipated with all sorts of nonsense thoughts.
  • Can you bring the mind to a screeching halt? Because the biggest enemy is not outside; it is within us, in the resistance between the two ears, the mind where all sorts of crazy thoughts come on: "I'm useless. I'm good for nothing. That guy messed up my life. I'm a victim. Why me?" So many thoughts.
  • Your ability to get maximum output for minimum input starts manifesting when you move to the higher planes of consciousness, when the mind is absolutely calm. You just have to think, and it happens, but you do need to have a vision, which is broader than "my bank balance".
• On service -
  • The primary purpose of life is your internal journey. Let's not fool around with that. The internal enhancement. But, complementary to that whole issue of: “How can I be of service to the larger society." Actually there is no conflict between the two.
  • Today there's a huge body of literature on servant leadership. The leader is first a servant. And then, you know, a Maalik (boss). "I am given this opportunity to lead. And therefore, it is a blessing to me from the people who are my so-called followers; and, therefore it is my beholden duty to be of service to them." Then the whole world changes.
  • "How do I, be of service to humanity?" Because my premise is, there is incredible suffering in humanity and animal life.

Here are some beautiful quotes from the call--


And two powerful moments of transformation from Professor's life as shared during the call --

Story one :

As a doctoral student of IIM-Ahmedabad, I used to run around the campus. Once I saw a beautiful flower in the garden of one of the faculty quarters. I plucked that flower - the instinct was “It is so good, let me pluck it.” And gently there was a voice from the balcony. I looked back and there was standing the founding Director of the Institute - the highly respected professor Dr Ravi J Matthai. And he just told me a soft voice, “Young man, dont you think the flower is more beautiful on the plant than on your hands?” I dropped the flower then and there, just muttered some sorry and then ran away. It was 1981 - my first year and he was long retired by then.

That was a very defining moment in my life - that nothing we are supposed to take that is not ours.

(And some more inside scoop: As we heard professor offline, the gentle lesson has such a deep impact on him that from that day over next 40+ years, he has always carried his own water bottle wherever he goes, to avoid causing harm to the environment through using plastic bottles)


Story two :

I got married in June 1982 - I was a student getting a stipend of Rs 500 in not a very good financial position. I was newly married then and time and again, I would pine to travel back to Chennai where my wife was based.

Around that time, there was an assignment in a course of Information Systems and I could just not put my brain to address that assignment. At the eleventh hour, I requested a friend for his assignment and I literally copied it. I thought it would go unnoticed. Unfortunately - or so I thought at that time - the teaching assistant noticed the almost 90-100% overlap and he raised this point internally. It got escalated to the Dean and he hauled me up saying “You are supposed to be a doctoral student and what are you doing? We can throw you out.” I was let off the hook with a warning.

This one too was a defining moment in my life. My pride about being a notch above the others was brought to ground. That was the first and last time that I crossed the lakshman rekha (dividing line) of pilfering someone else’s work.

My learning has been to have zero compromise on values - whether it is intellectual rights. Even if it means losing your job, so be it. May be you will discover something you are more passionate about instead of sticking to a thankless job which does not hold your interest.