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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Ranjan De Silva 