Excellent Lectures I have heard – April edition

I have come across some exceptionally good lectures this month. Do hear them as soon as you get to. I have found that the best best BEST time to hear these lectuers is while driving or exercising. There’s an immense amount of education and mental stimulation you can get while dong either of the two. All the lectures are uploaded on the Arif and Ali Podcast Feed. Subscribe to the feed with itunes, sync it up with your ipod and you have all the below lectures and more.

How to Maximise your Energy by Tony Schwartz

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Tony has given a brilliant presentation as part of Leading @ Google series. Tony Schwartz is a co-author of the excellent book the Power of Full Engagement. The whole premise of his work is that we should stop focussing on Time is not the only resource that is available to us. Whenever we need to get something done what we tell ourselves is that alright all we need to do is give more time. But where is the Time? We are all maxed out on our Time Bank infact I presume many of us are under cutting on our sleep to catchup on our to-do lists.

So in addition to time, a critical resource is how much energy we have. Once we begin to see that, we begin managing our energy better, not only you get more stuff done, you feel great in the process.

Hear the Lecture to learn about:

– Have an Energy Audit conducted to know where you currently stand

– The Four Sources of Energy.

– How to better manage your Energy.

I had several Aha moments while hearing this lecture, the Aha moment that stayed with me most is Tony’s phrase, “Spiritual Energy comes from doing what you say is important.” Wow! That’s so simple yet profound isn’t it. You may be high on Physcial, Mental and Emotional Energy, but if you are doing isn’t important to you, how much energy you would have to move forward? Very little, indeed. But once you start standing up to the occasion and do what you say is important, boy, that will fuel your physical, Mental and Emotional Energies as well. Hear/Download the whole lecture on mp3 here or Watch it on YouTube here.

Change Anything – The New Science of personal Success

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I have been a fan of most of books by the Vital Smarts guys. Specially Crucial Conversations and Crucial Confrontations, which I have blogged about several times earlier.

Change Anything is their fourth book and terrific hit. Joseph Grenny speaks about this book at another Leadership at Google talk series.

He starts beautifully by asking the following series of questions:
– How many of you know more about wellness, relationships, parenting, financial planning than we currently do?

– Same for people, how many of us know people who know more about better living than they are currently practicing?

– Same for organisations, how many of us know of organisations that know more about better leadership, management than they are currently practicing?

So the challenge today is not so much about knowing but changing that knowledge into practices, into habits.

He goes on to then explode the myth that the reason why we don’t Change is not because of Lack of Will Power. It’s that we don’t have the sheer guts, the stamina, the will of iron, to change that we don’t make the change. But there are influences beyond our vision that steer us towards one path or the other. Once we awaken and are aware of such influnces, and then modify these influences, change for the better begins to happen.

A paradigm-shifting lecture after hearing which whenever I think of change in myself or others I stop thinking in terms of will but in terms of influences.

Hear/Download the whole lecture on mp3 here or Watch it on YouTube here.

Everyday benefits of Meditation by Sharon Salzberg

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Meditation. The word brings to our mind sitting on the floor for long hours, bored for no obvious benefits.

In this final Google Talk, Sharon explains Meditation practice is far simpler. It is fun, esoteric and relevant to the wide-ranging situations we encounter in everyday life. Rather than an ornate, arcane set of instructions, meditation consists of practical tools to help deepen concentration, mindfulness and compassion.

Over the last week I have been practicing Mindfulness and small bouts of meditation during the day and definitely experience the benefits of it.

Hear/Download the whole lecture on mp3 here or Watch it on YouTube here.

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