Wisdom in fragments

There is a certain kind of X factor that is really hard to define, but it is the thing that makes a person stand out when they walk into a room or makes you magnetically drawn to walk towards them at a party or a gathering. It is often about authenticity and being true to themselves, because I think most people are very good at reading what is and what is not authentic.

I have always been attracted to creative people and been fascinated by what drives them and what they are made of; whether that be a recording artist, an author or a broadcaster. The most exciting thing about it is the fact that you can support somebody on a mission to create something unique, something that creates impact- and often at the level that we are operating at – something culturally relevant.

You are pure awareness. That's who the 'I' is. And awareness is energy. You are pure energy, which is the essence of awareness. Awareness is concentrated energy.

Hindu priest and mindfulness meditation teacher; former monk at Sri Mahamandir Temple

Either I'm in charge of where my awareness goes, therefore dictating what I'm experiencing and feeling, or I allow my environment to dictate where it goes. Most people become a slave to everyone and everything around them.

Hindu priest and mindfulness meditation teacher; former monk at Sri Mahamandir Temple

We've got the most powerful tool in the world sitting in our head, yet no manual of instructions on how to use it. Everything else comes with instructions, a blender, a point and shoot camera. Even to drive a car, you need a licence.

Hindu priest and mindfulness meditation teacher; former monk at Sri Mahamandir Temple

Happiness should never be pursued! Happiness is a by-product of living a lifestyle. How do I design a lifestyle where the by-product of the lifestyle results in happiness? You can't create something you don't know.

Hindu priest and mindfulness meditation teacher; former monk at Sri Mahamandir Temple

There's nothing more important in life than knowing who you are, the path that you are on and its final end. Who are you? What is your purpose in life? What is the path to living that purpose? Those three things are so critical to know.

Hindu priest and mindfulness meditation teacher; former monk at Sri Mahamandir Temple

The tendency is to avoid the need for more options because anything that's unfamiliar, as human beings we tend to flee uncertainty. We naturally go towards what we already know because we know how to deal with something we have done before.

Co-Author of "Ideaflow" & Design Thinking Expert at Stanford

We believe innovation should be a continuous activity. It should be a capability that you are developing and attending to regularly. It requires a kind of fodder of new problems all the time in order to be refining and developing.

Co-Author of "Ideaflow" & Design Thinking Expert at Stanford

Business problems are idea problems because like most other problems we face, they do not have one answer. The reality is, for any of the problems we face, there are a thousand possible answers.

Co-Author of "Ideaflow" & Design Thinking Expert at Stanford

Disruption is treated as an event, and it is a constant and that is the interesting sort of fallacy. As humans we want this state of consistency but if we are taking it as a hypothesis, we are constantly being disrupted, constantly changing and the groundwork we are standing on is shifting all the time.

The single best way to have a great idea is to produce lots of ideas. The number of new ideas your organization can produce is a metric for its ability to generate novel solutions to any given problem. Your ideaflow is the most crucial business metric that you've never considered.

Co-Author of "Ideaflow" & Design Thinking Expert at Stanford

You are unwittingly making your leadership and life harder and more painful than it needs to be. Even worse is individuals have no understanding or self-awareness that they are doing this.

Building mental fitness is akin to being an elite athlete. It's not enough for the athletes just to have great technical skills, they need to be equally mentally prepared also.

Unfortunately, by my definition, many leaders are mentally unfit, because they spend most of their day in negative emotional states and they're usually not consciously aware of it, because they're externally focused.

Most of the pain you feel, you create. Most of the pain stems from the conversations we are having with ourselves. It is not the actual event outside of us that affects us. That's the case 99% of the time.