The biggest challenge facing most of us are our habits; our sloth, lack of motivation or call it what you will. I have never met a person in my entire life and in all my travels, lectures and performances who did not want to succeed. Why then is success bestowed on so few? The answer to that is no secret; we

Sudden death is upon our public consciousness again with the bomb blasts in Mumbai. And sudden bereavement is among the hardest losses to cope with as there are both, an air of suddenness and a sense of finality to it. One accepts fate more easily if an aged relative who has been ailing for long has passed away.

What has India’s epic Mahabharat got to do with cutting edge research into the human brain? The link is how it is difficult to forget our early brain inputs!

Change may be a popular mantra, but we all have different responses to change. Even among men and women. Some view change as a learning experience and take it as a challenge; almost like learning a new hobby. Others feel threatened by it; as if it is a new technology which has to be harnessed. Yet others do not feel that they need to

Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you what you are, goes an old saying. Not without reason, as friendship is a relationship that has the strongest, and also the frailest, of bonds. If there many incredible stories of loyalty that are centred around this relationship, there are perhaps twice as many that end up in disappointment. If people

I have earlier touched briefly on the subject of coping with failure. This being the time of the year when results of the Boards, and examinations for entry to professional courses, are announced, I think it is time for a larger discussion. The basic point I wish to get across is that we ought to change our perceptions of failure. Do not view failure as

We all love to cling to people, things, places and associations. That is certainly an endearing trait and many nice terms are used to describe it, such as being sentimental. It is indeed nice to be even a sentimental fool, as the

The beauty of life is that we all feel that we are alike, yet we are so different from each other. While it may be a nice warm feeling to feel kinship with the rest of humankind, to feel that we are one, it is sometimes necessary to realise that we are all different in many ways. For example, the bane of many life-coaching programmes is to believe in the approach that one size fits all. Nothing can be further from the truth.

There are many misconceptions that many of us live by. One of them is that we are all very rational people. Another is that we can live independently of each other. The latter idea is especially gaining ground in these days of

We can either be inspired, or be despaired, by life around us. In the days I grew up in Shimla, the majority had a middle-class, or a lower middle-class existence. I am sure that growing-up experience is true for most of you as well. Wealth was only sensed, never openly seen. So it was not too difficult to follow the Gandhian life. Indeed, there was little option.