PERSONAL SPECIAL......................... By Any Stretch

By Any Stretch

Life happens at the level of action and not words and thoughts 

says Marko Saravanja

    Marko Saravanja has never had a problem making money. As a teenager in his native Croatia, he started a very successful distribution company for the local bakeries, which was enough to provide his parents with a regular income when he decided to leave the country for the spiritual life. He travelled to India to learn yoga and then to South Africa, where he lived in a commune and engaged in community work for seven years. Later, he went to the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, to obtain a Masters and a PhD in management. While studying there, he made $100 million on the stock market, with which he started Regensys, his own b-school. Somewhere along the way he became a coach and authored a book based on the insights gained from a life of radical change, very simply titled Secrets of Success. Saravanja, 48, was recently in Mumbai in connection with the on-line education being promoted by Regensys Business School. In an interview with CD, Saravanja talks about the increasing important of spiritual intelligence (SI) in the new economy.

Finding a purpose

Some would say SI is the highest form of intelligence and provides the foundation for other kinds of intelligence. SI is about understanding your purpose, how you’re helping other people and making the world a better place. Many organizations now want training in this area. SI can be developed. It’s a new trend. Some corporates now have a Chief Spiritual Officer, who looks after the organisation’s values. Since spiritual is a bit of a loaded word, they’re also called Chief Inspiration Officers or Chief Ethics Officers. Increasing SI can increase the orgainsation’s productivity. For example, if your sales people have high SI, they will truly care about customers. If they truly believe they are changing their customer’s lives for the better and not just making money for the company, they will perform better.

SI is also related to creativity and innovation. Creativity is a spiritual and emotional process rather than an intellectual one. It comes from the heart and we need to be at peace and happy before we can tap into it. Alas, SI can be used both for good and bad. For example, Hitler had a high SI quotient. They say he practiced Tibetian meditation. He believed in what he was doing and was very charismatic as a leader.

Knowing versus doing

Life happens at the level of action and not words and thoughts. For action to happen, there must be a hunger, a burning desire to do something. Only 10% of the population has this hunger and they are the leaders. The remaining 90% are followers. They have the knowledge as to what needs to be done but they still fail to implement. Unsuccessful people tend to be poor completers, unable to prioritise and easily distracted.

Giving and taking

Successful people are givers. They work from their heart and soul, they give all their energy. We begin by giving and we receive the benefits later. Education is all about giving. You sacrifice four years of your life in order to get a college degree. You work hard, bear humiliations, you suffer. Only afterwards do you receive returns, but they can be a million times more than what you gave. By giving, we conquer fear. In the financial world, when you buy shares or property, you are giving. Small children just take, take, take. But as we grow older, we want to give, give, give. The sooner we learn to give, the better. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet have understood this. Their consciousness has evolved. But then again, you and I cannot just copy Gates or Mandela. If we do that, we will fail. We have to be authentic and find out own paths.

Fear of failure

Resistance to change is on account of fear and success is about conquering your fears. In fact, fear of failure stems from the fear of pain, which in turn stems from the fear of death. People give up on their quest to succeed because they are not willing to tolerate pain. Lacking perseverance, they go and find something else, which isn’t so painful. But if you keep going, finding ways to go around the obstacles, then you will succeed, or die trying. It’s perseverance, not intelligence and talent, that distinguishes ordinary from extraordinary success.

The evolving world

Successful individuals create successful organizations, which create successful nations, which is turn create a better world. There is more consciousness in the world today. Better communication, information has led to us making better choices. Knowledge has become cheaper, there is more justice in the world. Technology has been driving change. India is a much better place today, so is South Africa. Organizations were once modeled largely on the military. Today, we cannot manage through authority and power. The skills required today are more feminine, so men have to change.

    Online education: Much of the unhappiness today is due to lack of education. Now, thanks to the internet, it is possible to provide free education to large numbers of people. My organization stands for giving knowledge for free. We have a partnership with Pearson and provide their e-books on our website for free. We also have a back office which manages the web-site and Centre in India. We have over 10,000 on-line students across 150 countries. Once we have one lakh students, we will be like the Facebook of online education. Then maybe we can make money from advertising. Right now, we do charge for assessment. 

B O O S T E R D O S E

1 Successful indivilduals create successful organizations, which create successful
nations, which is turn create a better world

2 Fear of failure stems from the fear of pain, which in turn stems from the fear of death

3 Spiritual intelligence is the highest form of intelligence and provides the foundation
for other kinds of intelligence

4 For action to happen , there must be a hunger, a burning desire to change, to acheive something

5 We have to be authentic and find out own paths. Trying to copy Bill Gates and Warren Buffet doesn't work

B y Dibeyendu Ganguly

CDET140214