Living in the Internet world we know the value of connectivity. When we go to a restaurant, cafe, hotel, hospital, airport or any other public place we look for Wi-Fi connections. The theory of ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ originally set out by Frigyes Karinthy in 1929 and popularized by a 1990 play written by John Guare, is the theory that everyone and everything is six or fewer steps away from any other person or thing in the world. Therefore a chain of  “a friend of a friend”  statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps.

Surekha Ahgir Yadev in a recent blog mentions that the most important phrase for expats in Colombo, Sri Lanka is; ‘I Know a Guy’. She says Colombo has a surprisingly sophisticated corporate scene, excellent Internet connections, an array of professional advertising and digital marketing agencies – but it has hardly any human headhunters and nothing much in the way of talent-matching services. Finally she discovered that everyone knew everyone else and if you asked someone for the right person for a particular job, the common term she hears is ‘I know a guy …….’. This again shows the importance of connections.

When reflecting on my insights during the month of January 2015 for my monthly ‘Team Leadership Newsletter’, I realized that I had been working on many connections during the month. These are the connections that built us, the connections that will sustain us and the connections that we need to give back to. Focusing on these connections helps us to live a happy, fulfilled and successful life. Let me explain how I connected during the month to give you a practical illustration.

1. Connecting with ourselves: Connecting with ourselves includes understand our deeper hopes, aspirations and fears as well as our strengths and improvement areas. It includes connecting with our higher self, the sub-conscious mind. Over the last month I paid more attention to my subconscious communications such as gut feel, aha’s and dreams and responded to them and found my decisions were better and I was more peaceful and happy.

2. Connecting with our family: The family is our base, our foundation and our support network. We need to be in touch with our family so that we are reminded of our roots [values] and support each other. During the month I had quality family time starting the new year with the family, attended the holy mass celebrated by pope Francis with the family, spending time with my immediate family at home, communicating with my daughters studying in the UK on What’s App and Skype, spending time with my brother who was staying with us during a short visit to the country and connecting with some other relatives. I found this quality time really nourishing for my being.

3. Connecting with our higher purpose: While I reflect on my purpose and plan my day in line with my purpose everyday, I continued to do this more intensely this month. This helped me to take decisive actions in spiritual, mental, physical, relational, emotional and financial aspects everyday so that my life was balanced thereby feeling great in body and mind.

4. Connecting with our religion: Our respective religions help us to connect with the higher powers that govern the universe. Attending the holy mass conducted by Pope Francis, seeing him with my own eyes and being connected to the various activities related to his visit, specifically the inter-faith conference and other religious activities helped me to do the right thing and there by gained spiritual energy to live my purpose.

5. Connecting with our clients: Those who run businesses and engaged in selling can relate to this aspect easily. However this aspect is relevant to everyone. Those who do not belong to the above two categories need to connect with people who they serve within their work place (internal customers) and family members need to connect with those who take care of household duties full time. I gave extra care to prepare for the various training and coaching and assignments during the month. This helps me to learn more and add more value to my clients. I also spent time connecting with past and future clients with regular communications and responded to their needs. I see the more value I add to my clients, the better I get at achieving my business objective.

6. Connecting with our teams: The teams we work with is an important group to have high quality connections as it helps us to create synergy, to add better value to our clients and each other. During the month I had quality interactions with my teams in various countries and I feel we are better aligned as a team.

7. Connecting with our society: We need to find opportunities to give back to society as part of the success of our current life is due to what others in society have done for us directly or indirectly. Being a past president of my Rotary Club, I spent time this month attending meetings and guiding the club in planning for the future. While these are non-paid activities, the satisfaction I receive cannot be measured in money.

8. Connecting with our Alma Mater: Our Alma Mater moulded us to be who we are today. The clergy, teachers, coaches and other students are important connections in our life. I spent some time this month attending an important meeting of the Rugby Trust of my Alma Mater, St Anthony’s Collage Kandy, where I am a trustee and I spend some time watching the collage rugby team playing. These events helped anchor back to our school days, meet friends from school and give back something to the school that made us.

I wish you all the best in finding the time and energy to strengthen your connection and thereby find peace, success and happiness.