A few weeks back I got an invite from TIE Chennai for an event called SPIR-IT Summit. The first thing that caught my attention was the venue, it was the Theosophical Society in Adyar (Chennai), famous as a green haven inside Chennai city. The event was for CXOs titled “Inner Resilience to Outer Agility”, claiming to be a conference on leadership, consciousness and technology. It is a half-day by-invitation event limited to 60 participants, organized by the Madras Management Association (MMA) and the IT Wing of Brahma Kumaris. The program explored strategies to become Resilient under pressure and learn techniques to restore personal well-being.
I practise Yoga for more than 15 years including meditation techniques which are both useful tools to destress our busy mind & body. At the same time, I am not a fan of self-improvement lectures or spirituality courses, as I feel these have to come from yourself rather than being something that you can learn from talks. Learning from a guru as an understudy is different. Anyways, I registered and attended the event today, as I was intrigued by what the SPIR-IT summit will talk about, that too for IT Professionals, plus the curiosity to visit the Theosophical Society which I haven’t been to before.
The first speaker was Bala Kishore (Co-Founder of SPIR-IT) who talked about WISDOM 2.0, and raised the question “Have we created technologies for well-ment, and well-being of humans and not only for amassing more wealth?“. The next speaker was supposed to be the popular author of Relaxation techniques Mike George, who fell sick suddenly and was substituted by Ken O’Donnell who is an organization consultant and an author who lives in Brazil.
Inner Resilience to Outer Agility
Ken O’Donnell spoke on the following:
- Only 3% of our mindfulness is present at the moment, and 97% of us think of the past or future. Happiness is a present activity, you can’t relive that you were happy in the past or anticipate being happy in the future.
- Resilience is the ability to respond to changing scenarios. We need to develop this. It’s the opposite of stress. Look at Green Bamboo that grows in Brazil, it bends and bends, and stays that way after it is dried. Motivate yourself and adapt to resilience.
- Agility – To be agile is that you understand chaos.
- What makes us Rigid and not Agile? They are Worry (90% of worries are unreal), Fear, Thoughts, Ego, Firm Belief & Conditioning.
- Think of only those that need to be thought of. We invest time in what holding us down, rather than what’s our natural position. Reduce clutter, be selective and at times be crazy too.
- Be More, Do Less; Get More Done.
To help in reducing stress (Tension) you can use the following formulae, which show that reducing Pressure (both real and unreal) and/or increasing resilience reduces Tension.
The formulae to handle Tension