Top of Mind

Thought of the Week – 15th August 2022 (3)

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Unhappiness is to the mind as sickness is to the body. It is a state of disharmony and imbalance. It is a signal that something is amiss and requires attention. However, in the absence of any understanding as to the real cause of unhappiness, our culture can only offer consolations and distractions.

We all feel that health is the natural state of the body. Why do we not feel that happiness is the natural state of the mind?

Rupert Spira

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Book of the Month – August 2022 : The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone’s Mind by Jonah Berger

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“Jonah Berger is one of those rare thinkers who blends research-based insights with immensely practical guidance. I am grateful to be one of the many who have learned from this master teacher.”—Jim Collins, author Good to Great, coauthor Built to Last

Jonah Berger is a marketing professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and internationally bestselling author of Contagious, Invisible Influence, and The Catalyst. He’s a world-renowned expert on social influence, word of mouth, and why products, ideas, and behaviors catch on and has published over 50 papers in top-tier academic journals. He has consulted for a range of Fortune 500 companies, keynoted hundreds of events, and popular accounts of his work often appear in places like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review. His research has also been featured in the New York Times Magazine’s “Year in Ideas.”
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Everyone has something they want to change. Marketers want to change their customers’ minds and leaders want to change organizations. Start-ups want to change industries and nonprofits want to change the world. But change is hard. Often, we persuade and pressure and push, but nothing moves. Could there be a better way?

This book takes a different approach. Successful change agents know it’s not about pushing harder, or providing more information, it’s about being a catalyst. Catalysts remove roadblocks and reduce the barriers to change. Instead of asking, “How could I change someone’s mind?” they ask a different question: “Why haven’t they changed already? What’s stopping them?”

The Catalyst identifies the key barriers to change and how to mitigate them. You’ll learn how catalysts change minds in the toughest of situations: how hostage negotiators get people to come out with their hands up and how marketers get new products to catch on, how leaders transform organizational culture and how activists ignite social movements, how substance abuse counselors get addicts to realize they have a problem, and how political canvassers change deeply rooted political beliefs.

This book is designed for anyone who wants to catalyze change. It provides a powerful way of thinking and a range of techniques that can lead to extraordinary results. Whether you’re trying to change one person, transform an organization, or shift the way an entire industry does business, this book will teach you how to become a catalyst. 

( Recommended by Ashok M)

Thought of the week – 25th July 2022 (3)

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Unless you are in your knowing, you will be supposing. And if you are supposing, you are entrenching yourself in the data that you assume you must need to act upon.
As you go to knowing, it becomes like breathing. You know what you need to know, you know where you stand, you know what will make you happy, and the agreements are made.
But you are still so busy listening to the small self’s voice that you ignore the True Self that is as available to you.

Paul Selig

Thought of the Week – 18th July 2022 (3)

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Pain cannot be escaped, yet even greater pain lies in the effort to get away from it. You will try to escape from pain or insecurity, so long as the ‘me’ keeps itself separate from experience.

The desire to achieve (which is also the fear of failure) is what makes the mind lose its fluidity through the rigidity induced by inhibition. This then gets translated into faulty execution of all our actions and compounds our inner conflict and neurotic tension.

– Ramesh Balsekar

(Contributed by Mr Balasunder)

Thought of the Week -18th July 2022(2)

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“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.” 

Alexander Fraser Tytler

( Contributed by Kerry R)

Thought of the Week – 11th July 2022

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For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.

Francis Scott Fitzgerald