Tag: giving

The Pandemic and Temporal Aspect of Purposefulness

On By Ranjan De SilvaIn Ecology, Environment, family, happiness, Health Care, hope, Life, Love, Personal Excellence, psychology, purpose, Purpose Quest, Relationships, societal, Spiritual, success, Values, World affairsLeave a comment
Image Credit: Nationalpost.com

In the last 8 blog posts in the ‘purpose quest series’, we explored how the pandemic impacted eight important pillars for purposeful living; spiritual, mental, emotional, relational, physical (health), financial, environmental and societal. Let’s explore the ninth pillar, the ‘temporal’ aspect in this blog post. As in the past eight blog posts let me attempt to describe my personal experience during the pandemic. 

The word ‘Temporal’ has two broad applications; relating to worldly as opposed to spiritual affairs (secular) and relating to time. I use the word in relation to the use of time. The temporal aspect of purposeful relates to the use of limited time. The purposeful person attempts to utilise most of the time for purposeful activity, which requires letting go of non-purposeful activity.

The last eight weekly blog posts in the ‘purposeful quest’ series illustrated how my time was allocated to purposeful activity in spiritual, mental, emotional, relational, physical (health), financial, ecological and temporal areas. These activities took most of my waking time and there was rarely any time remaining for non-purposeful activity during the approximately 16 hours of waking time.

The sense I make from this reflection is that the pandemic gave me so much opportunities to be purposeful, that it left me with almost no time for non-purposeful activities. This way of life has kept me occupied in meaningful and energising activity, giving me inner success, happiness and peace. My purpose is to inspire others to live a purposeful life and I hope this series of blog posts will inspire you too to live a purposeful life and find Success happiness and peace.

The Pandemic and Societal Aspect of Purposefulness

On By Ranjan De SilvaIn Ecology, family, Health Care, Life, Personal Excellence, psychology, purpose, Purpose Quest, societal, Spiritual, Values, World affairsLeave a comment
Image Credits: shethe people.tv

In the last 7 blog posts in the ‘purpose quest series’, we explored how the pandemic impacted six important pillars for purposeful living; spiritual, mental, emotional, relational, physical (health), financial and environmental. Let’s explore the eight pillar, the societal aspect in this blog post. As in the past seven blog posts let me attempt to describe my personal experience during the pandemic. 

With lockdowns being imposed, offices closed, and people starting to work from home, my clients either took the assigned transformational work online or postponed them. This gave me the illusion that there will be a lot of free time. Since I was in Dhaka, while engaging with the foreign ministry and the high commission to arrange repatriation flights, I joined my friend I was staying with to distribute dry rations to people who were financially affected due to lockdowns. In addition I arranged some help for some relatives and friends who were looking for financial assistance and guidance.

To help with the psychological challenges faced by many, my team in Dhaka helped me to produce some videos with mental tips to deal with challenges and anxiety releasing meditation. While using social media to get these to people who needed it we started conducting free webinars to help people deal with the present and gear up for the future. After returning to Sri Lanka I had the opportunity to join my team to conduct psychological first aid for the medical staff of the Infectious Diseases Hospital (IDH), the command center fighting the pandemic in Sri Lanka.

I believe most of the above opportunities were provided to me to help be purposeful during the pandemic. My purpose to inspire others to live a purposeful life and these opportunities helped me share the idea of ‘purposefulness’ and show how it can help to make sense of the pandemic, deal with anxiety & stress and adjust their way of life to respond positively. While all these were related to giving, my time without any financial benefit, I enjoyed the happiness of giving, learning & building relationships in the process. I feel purposeful.

Find Purpose & Let Money Find You

On By Ranjan De SilvaIn Cash Flow, Health Care, Life, purpose, Purpose Quest, Spiritual, ValuesLeave a comment

Relationships & moneyAfter having arrived in Dhaka with a packed schedule of coaching, facilitation and consulting assignments for multiple clients on the 14th of March, I suddenly found myself having to make some decisions on how best to respond to the universe who decided that we need to change the way we operate.

With some companies postponing  the scheduled sessions, free time was opening up. What do I do with this time? It takes time to sell the time and right now most of my clients were fire fighting, figuring out what they need to do. Therefore I decided to be available to them. Continue reading “Find Purpose & Let Money Find You” →

How Was Your Soul Tested?

On By Ranjan De SilvaIn family, Health Care, Knowing, Personal Excellence, psychology, purpose, Quoates for Reflection, Relationships, Spiritual, Values, World affairsLeave a comment

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Reflection guideline

Reflect on what you saw, heard and felt during the past few months of the pandemic. How was it different to what you experienced before. Did something from within urge you to reach out, help out, ask for help, leave your ego aside, reprioritise what was important in life. This reflection could help you understand how your soul was tested during these challenging times.

Quotes for Reflection

Abundance Magnet

On By Ranjan De SilvaIn Business, Cash Flow, Leadership, Personal Excellence, purpose, Releasing, Spiritual, Team Excellence, Values, World affairs1 Comment
Abundance Magnet
Image Credits: Brainhackers.com

Last week I started this series,’Purpose Quest’ to illustrate with narratives of how we search for purpose. We explored the question, Are we Searching for Purpose or is Purpose Searching for us?   Today let me focus on one aspect of the story that I wrote last week, attracting abundance.

Once the various social distancing norms were coming in to place and clients started postponing the various sessions that were planned, I was concerned about its impact on cash flow for my organisation and family. Therefore  while starting to engage with government authorities in getting myself home and ensuring that my family back home in Sri Lanka was safe and comfortable, I started reflecting on the situation related to my practice.

While there was some anxiety with regard to the situation, I was able to release such emotions using Releasing Techniques that I was learning and teaching since October last year. I will write about how releasing helped in an upcoming post. After having released the anxiety, my reflections reminded me of three principles and beliefs that could help; ‘God does not give challenges we cannot handle’, ‘focus on the process and let the outcome take care of itself’ (the 3rd principle of Mastery we teach during our Mastery of Self – NLP learning sessions) and ‘give and you shall receive’.

So what steps did I take and how did it turnout? 

Continue reading “Abundance Magnet” →

What can we learn from the Inn Keeper? – Purpose of Living – Part 34

On By Ranjan De SilvaIn Communications, Knowing, learning, Personal Excellence, purpose, SpiritualLeave a comment

nativity-scene
As I cherish the wonderful experiences on the day of love, peace, giving and forgiving, a profound message at the Christmas Mass last mid-night re-enters my mind. This message not only gave me a new perspective to the attitude and behaviour of the Inn keeper, it made me realise that peoples thinking and action can have a higher purpose that we may not understand, and therefore makes us misunderstand them.

We’ve grown up hearing the account that the “inn” in Bethlehem was full, with no “room” available, so Joseph and Mary ended up in a stable, with Jesus Christ born and laid in a manger there. This image has been used to promote the typical Christmas nativity scene for generations.

Continue reading “What can we learn from the Inn Keeper? – Purpose of Living – Part 34” →

Finding Purpose in giving – Purpose of Living – Part 23

On By Ranjan De SilvaIn Communications, Leadership, learning, Personal Excellence, psychology, purpose, Relationships, Spiritual2 Comments

purpose in giving - jan 19
Image credit: http://www.stapostle.org

It’s interesting that the month of January 2019 was a month where I did as much free work as paid work. The first free assignment was to provide a keynote address at the new year celebration of a leading organisation in the insurance industry to inspire the staff of over 1000, who were gathered for the celebration, on the 1st of January. The second free assignment was to continue to help the administrators, parents and past pupils of my alma mater, St Anthony’s Collage, to take forward the strategic plan that I facilitated in formulating one year ago. The third free assignment was to help an important arm of the government of Sri Lanka to develop the leadership of a very important category of officials in becoming better leaders and making a better contribution for the development of the country. Continue reading “Finding Purpose in giving – Purpose of Living – Part 23” →

Love is for giving, that’s why we should be forgiving! – my valentines day thoughts!

On By Ranjan De SilvaIn Leadership, Personal Excellence, Relationships, Spiritual, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Image
Image credits: http://www.timeanddate.com

It is great to have Valentines Day, the same way we have mother’s day, father’s day etc. While many commercial enterprises have used these days to make money, it at least reminds us to express our love to our loved ones, at least once a year.

But why celebrate such important days once a year? Why not every day? Why not make every day Valentines day, Mother day, fathers day and perhaps a few new important days such as reach out to enemy’s day, make up with fallen out friends day, get in touch with old friends day etc.

While Valentines Day is about celebrating love by giving surprises such as gifts & visits and special dinners & cruises it is will be great not only to ‘give’ but also to ‘forgive’. After all, love is for giving and that’s why we should be forgiving.

Forgiving is tough if we hold on to the past hurt and pain. Sometimes it is our ego that won’t allow us to forgive. Holding on to the bitterness only creates negative energy in us as we carry those negative feelings in us. Accepting that we are all human, we are not perfect and we all make mistakes helps us in the forgiving process.

Forgiving helps us to repair relationships and therefore it is beneficial to fostering quality relationships, or closure so that we can rejuvenate relationships or move on with confidence.

When the almighty god always forgives us, why not we take a cue and follow suit.

Christmas is for giving, that’s why we should be forgiving

On By Ranjan De SilvaIn Personal Excellence, Relationships, SpiritualLeave a comment

Image courtesy of lovingyourchild.com
Image courtesy of lovingyourchild.com

I had a packed 10 days of work in Dhaka and I was scheduled to take a flight back to Colombo on the 24th morning to be with my family for Christmas Eve onwards. I was looking at options to do confession before Christmas mass. I did not want to leave it to the 24th evening, as there was only a little window from my time of arrival, to get home in the traffic that is likely to be heavy given that large crowds will be on the roads doing their last-minute Christmas shopping.

As I was looking at the Christmas schedule issued at the beautiful church I pray at in Banani – Dhaka, I found that confession was scheduled for 10 am on the 24th. My flight was a t 12.45 and it could take up to 1 hour to get to the airport. It was a risky option to do confession at 10 am and try to get to the airport on time given the unpredictable traffic in Dhaka. I called Father Tom, the Parish priest who kindly agreed to come early to do my confession. It was a peaceful confession and I felt cleansed and peaceful as I walked out of the church.

Finally at the airport I was standing in the line to get my passport stamped at emigration. I had an urge to go to the washroom and I was the next person in line to go to the immigration officer. At that moment a gentleman, who was with his wife and little child asked me if they could go before me as they had just 45 minutes for their flight. Since I still had another 90 mts I agreed to let them go before me. As the family who went to the emigration officer was finishing, an official of the airport escorted 5 persons and went past the line to the emigration officer.

Continue reading “Christmas is for giving, that’s why we should be forgiving” →