The first session began with Snehal ma’am talking to us about the most common entity in everyone’s lives – STRESS!! We learnt the 4A’s of dealing with stress – alter, avoid, adjust and accept. After about 90 mins of gyaan on stress and the reasons behind stress, Susie ma’am took over with laughter yoga. While the ones who were not initiated to laughter yoga before had a ball of their lives, even the ones who had a session before enjoyed it equally. It is amazing how our body cannot differentiate between a fake and real laughter and the former eventually leads to the latter. By lunch break, we were bustling with energy and a light feeling as if stress never existed!!
Post lunch, we were looking forward to a session by Anil sir on Self Leadership. Anil sir began the class by mentioning few unintended but unethical behaviour by some of us on how such trivial issues become a hindrance to our larger goal of being inspired leaders. He listened to us patiently and immediately addressed to our concerns. Once the stage was set, he began the session on Self Leadership through the concept of Immunity to Change.
There are many things in our lives that have become a habit of convenience and we want to change them but we don’t or we can’t. Even if we begin the process of change, we find that we cannot stick till the end. Anil sir explained this is very common and we did some sort of a root cause analysis for the same. We then realized that the first and foremost thing here is to ask oneself if the change is needed and consciously answer the question.
The process of change is very deep rooted with the body, intellect and the heart involved. Only when the heart wants the change and the intellect needs the change, will the body actually change. The need to change is the result of peer pressure, expectations from family and friends, and essentially some sort of a stimulus from the external environment. The want to change results from realizing and accepting the need for change, and requires a voluntary willingness to change. The onus here is on the individual. The actual change comes through conscious practice and eventually becoming comfortable with the change. In this regard, Anil sir spoke of how forcing oneself to do something for 21 consecutive days makes it a habit.
The concept Immunity to Change is a very strong tool that brings about change in a person. We were exposed to this as an exercise. We dealt with 4 very powerful questions that made us introspect deep within and answer with complete mindfulness so as to facilitate the process of change within ourselves. We drew the below table with the questions and my answers to the same are as follows –
One thing that I wish to change, develop in myself | What do I do instead or not do? | Hidden competing commitments? | Reasons? Assumptions. |
I’m not giving my cent percent to my studies here at SOIL and my personal relationships. I want to change that as I believe my life will be better and more meaningful if I’m more mindful in this aspect. | Studies : Where studies are concerned, I’m becoming satisfied with just Competent and Accomplished grades. Relationships : Where personal relationships are concerned, I’m not there for those persons as much as I used to be. | Studies : I’m spending my time in other things I enjoy. Relationships : I’m spending all my time with new friends and new experiences that is putting old friends and even family into the backdrop. | Studies : I believe I’m smart and I’m good at multitasking, my scores are the result of minimum or no effort on my part. So I’m probably being complacent and even biting off more than I can chew where multitasking is concerned. Relationships : I’m not sure but I fear ego issues here and also that I’m taking them for granted, that they will be there for me no matter what. |
Once we were done with this matrix, we started viewing the issues in a different dimension altogether. The tabular form segregated the symptom and cause into separate cells and things were clearer.
I’m personally working on this change I want for myself, thanks to Anil sir for guiding us in the best possible way.
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