beauty and the circle of influence..

Stepping into the corporate world, and going through the training process, as a preliminary requirement for being "industry-ready", I've had a handful of joyful experiences, joyful coz they helped me get a better insight of myself and gave me an idea of how I can use my capabilities to make a difference to this rather indifferent world.

In one of my ILI(Industrial Leadership Institute) training sessions, I was introduced to the concept of "The Circles of Concern and Influence". Quite self-explanatory in their names, the "Circle of Concern" binds inside its boundaries the things, or the people around us, who affect us & our action. The "Circle of Influence", on the other hand, is a relatively smaller circle inside the "Circle of Concern" which contains the people who can actually be affected by our action. And the "affect" here means changing the way the people think and thus changing the way people act.

Leaving aside the rest of the "gyan" associated with these circles, I started to think about the factors that would help people grow their "Circle of Influence" because that's the area that defines the boundaries of "Personal Effectiveness" (yet another session which is a part of my training ;)). Just into the thought I had a feeling that beauty or glamour may be one very important or, I would say, the most powerful tool for expanding the boundaries of this
"Circle of Influence".

Moving further in this thought process, I started finding the things i get attracted towards, apart from girls (who, again, have to be "BEAUTIFUL ;)"). A list of quite illogical, wierd, but true, things and activities came to my mind - acting (being a hero and all that bollywood stuff), getting fairer and (thus) smarter, to be a part of some hacking community (having chicks like Angelina Jolie), to earn money and party around, to visit places like Austria, Switzerland and on and on. All these things, and all this thinking, were somehow and somewhere driven by an influence of style or glamour and the excitement that is attributed to these things. Then began the analysis, why did these things come first to my mind and not the things like - doing something to provide a nice home to the family of a "javan"(soldier) guarding the Chandigarh airport standing under the scorching summer sun, teaching children in rural areas, telling them about banking and all to manage their money and other awarenesses. And even if these things are there in my mind, am I actually acting on them the same way I am acting on the stylish things that first came to my mind ? May be I would have converted the better part of my thoughts into action if I'd often seen some beautiful and very smart people (SRK or Katrina) doing the stuff like that on telvision, may be that would have associated more excitement and style with those, definitely better, ideas. Yes, I am capable of doing all these things and I am to some extent doing that, but that's not going to create a difference on a larger scale. What i need at the moment is to try and make people around me think in this direction. But can I do that? May Be. Can SRK do that, Yes?

Many people may question the appropriateness of this, but i would still like to put forward a question: Who do you think can bring about a positive change, in the way "COMMON" Indian population think, on a larger scale - Dr.Abdul Kalam or Mr.Amitabh Bachchan ? Both the above mentioned personalities have experience and capability, and are comparable, but what if we take the comparison to be between Dr.Amartya Sen, or say Arundhati Roy, and Hrithik Roshan. The answers, as obvious to me are, Mr.Amitabh Bachchan and Hrithik Roshan.

Taking the things into my domain, although the company I'm working for is a pool of around 1 lakh potentially great engineers and they all are being trained to be personally effective and "industry-ready", but still out of these 1 lakh engineers I can find a very less percentage to have a personality (which is not defined just by how beautiful you look) that can create an impact, that can bring about a positive change in the way the Indian society thinks. And whatever amount of training, to be personally effective, they may be given, their roots have already been grounded as such. I mean no company can train you to be fit and keep your body in shape, no company can train its female employees to vax the unwanted hair off their face, no company can, and
also should not, teach its men not to wear those "painter's" jeans or t-shirts, no company can teach its employees how to carry themselves in their own style and not look like a "WANNABE" and all. Its just that no emphasis is laid on these aspects in the earlier years of our education. And apart from not helping to bring about any positive change, such dismal personality of the intellectual working class of India gives the outside world an impression that India is a factory of "intellectual labourers" and no potential leaders or managers.

It may be theoretically wrong, but if you have the intellectual assets to bring about a positive change in the way people THINK, you can't do that until and unless you are able to draw the attention of people and make them listen to you, which can be done only if they see that "X-factor" in you. And again, ASSETS like PROSPERITY (ref my last post) has two constituents- Intellectual Assets and ;)...