Harini Ramachandran

Inhale Depth

So much has been said about Geniuses. Already. You just know that a Genius is always a class apart. Most times, unreachable by the average. It’s a Zone. Quite a spiritual one, if you may. And by spiritual here, I mean – a certain way of living. One that allows for ‘creation’ to happen. Creation of all kinds. But of a superior, superior quality. And most times, these creations are surreal. Like one that can originate only from that particular person. In sleep and in walk, the DNA at the deepest level is thirsty for one thing. Depth.

Depth. Depth. Depth. Seeking depth. The more one digs in, the more depth there is. It’s like excavating into a mine of paradises, where with every step, newer, more queer, more exciting, more strange, more delightful, surprising doors open in all kinds of shapes and sizes and colors and hues. And it’s in the excavation that true joy lies. Where one find leads to another. And a space once touched, is never the same again. Suddenly, new habitation happens, new miracles take place, perhaps a new life form emerges, a new Eco system evolves. And it was all mooted by the tap of the Genius. And what drives it all? An unquenchable yearn and thirst for Depth.

Loathing mediocrity, embracing excellence, raising the bar of excellence, creating new ecosystems, engineering Midas touch, making way for life to thrive on superior levels, contriving creation of bliss for mankind – a way of life, for a Genius.

Einstein came uP! with the Theory of Relatively when he dreamed he was riding on a sled that seemed to approach faster than the speed of light.

All your life your unconscious works for you, in a variety of delightful ways. Give it space. Allow it to the enter the Zone. Embrace Depth. Inhale Depth. And the world will change for you.Tweet

April 23, 2015 0 Comments

The Paradox of ‘Like’

Someone put up a lame, lamenting post on Facebook on how depressed she is because her previous post (with pictures of all her cooking in glorious detail) on a largely popular food group went unnoticed whilst a lesser known, lesser awesome (in her perception) post of someone else went viral the same day. It’s funny when a fully grown human being complains like a 2 year old, literally! Perhaps, she was genuinely sad. Ironically, to this lamenting post, she received hundreds of ‘likes’. Some empathized, some cheered and several mocked in satire. The irony further is that the lady chose to spew her angst on the very same forum that ignored her previous post, in the first place! There was an outburst of satire and pun, as I read comments on this rather entertaining thread, one cannot help but laugh! Does she even realise what a fool she has made of herself, out here?! This post had the maximum number of ‘Likes’ and ‘Comments’. Should she now be happy?!

Often one goes all out to reach out for comfort – socially and a lot in the virtual world, these days. Some people say – “Negative publicity is better than no publicity”. Well, Negative publicity comes with a huge cost. Be it ‘Cadburys’ having worms in their chocolates or customers spotting worms in Kellogg’s Chocos, these giants spend twice as much in fixing the mess created.

If someone falls down and has a huge scar right on their face, you know that every time someone looks at them, their face doesn’t look the same anymore! They can let it be or do everything in their might to fix the mess. Time alone, won’t heal! Even if it does, it may be too late lest the brand drowns!

Flipkart recently had a debacle with their Billion sale day. There were thousands of hate posts all over. Whether the debacle was a carefully engineered social media campaign or not, is debatable. Assuming, if it was a genuine server outage issue like it is claimed, the email that the the Bansal’s sent each and every Flipkart customer made a big difference, owning up to a goof up, coming clean and opening up a positive frame for the future. People were willing to forgive the mishap and give flipkart another chance.

In today’s world, one can’t screw up and get away with it. There are hundreds of people that would hunt you down and kick your backside if you don’t own up and make up for whatever it is that you did!

Every word you speak, speaks about you. Every gesture you make, conveys something about you. Think for yourself – what message are you communicating to people around you at any given moment? Your presence or absence there, makes a difference. What you do when you’re around, makes a difference. Your states of mind, your thoughts, your gestures, your body language, your attitude, your every eye blink – is conveying a message. You can’t get away with “Oh, I didn’t mean that….” because at least outside of your conscious awareness, of course you mean it! If you don’t, then shift whatever it is that has to shift so you convey always, what you INTEND to convey and watch out for whether you are getting the response you desire. If not, change. Do something else. After all, isn’t that what makes us ‘Like’ people? When people mean what they say, they’re far more liked. All it takes is a look at someone’s eye and you know what lies beneath, most times.

My heart goes out sometimes to those who play villains in movies and soap operas. When they get spotted in real life, there are people that hurl insults and curses at them for doing what they did (in reel life!!!). Well, one better be aware of consequences. It’s a choice they made, after all. Your Face & your words and deeds aren’t always going to be separated by people! So what are some of the ways in which you can build Congruence, internally? In a way that people look at you and know they can just trust you! Have you met people like that? There’s something about them that allows you to create a perception that’s favorable to both of you. How does one Master the art of manipulating perceptions with deep internal congruence, genuinity and more?! It’s a journey Antano & I enjoy exploring and sharing at uP!

Let people ‘Like’ you for what value you bring in. Rather than mock ‘Like’ what you may or may not have intended to bring in!

Are your eyes, ears and other senses now open to the difference?Tweet

October 27, 2014 2 Comments

An original is an original!

I read recently, a Facebook post from one my designers who launched her very own designer label into the market, a really anguished expression of how every other designer is copying her styles! And true to her feelings, as I went through some of the competitors she mentioned, it looked deceivingly similar yet – there was ‘something’ missing in those ‘competitors’ work…

One line of thought goes – “Why reinvent the wheel when someone has figured it all out?” and there’s another line of thought that goes – “Do your own thing. Create your own stuff. Be great at your art.”
Which one is right?

Another home baker who runs baking classes for her living painstakingly expressed how her neighbor wanted all her recipes and persisted rather uncouthly because she didn’t want to ‘pay’ and attend her classes.

Giving away your Recipe or putting it out on the website doesn’t make you lose your signature. You know how two people can have the exact same recipe when one turns out to taste like a piece of heaven whilst the other tastes like it’s not even worth it!

The art is not in the recipe. It lies in the artist’s hands. Those hands are special. The states of mind. The wisdom. The intuition. The love. The passion. The skill. The real stuff.

When you look out to hire teachers, vendors – find out really how their skills are, what their values are…. Because the ones with comprised values will show in their work, their words – no matter how much they try to mask it.

Finesse. Depth. Artistry. May the obsession for the ‘Real’ stuff catch on you now even more… As you continue to grow in your life… uP in a variety of different ways!

May the pearls of Excellence find you, wherever you go! Tweet

July 7, 2014 7 Comments

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Hey Crow, Tell your Story

I’m not sure if this particular ‘kahaavat’ (saying/thought) has it’s translation in other languages but in tamil I’ve heard people say “Kaaka maadhiri parakaadhae”, which when literally translated reads ‘don’t fly like a crow’, but what they actually intend to say is don’t be in a hasty and jump at something… Take your time, be graceful and make good decisions!
Crows are a regular visitor to the balcony in my house where my mom generously feeds them in abundance…. Curd rice is their favourite! Infact, the crows are served food on their own special bowl even before I am allowed access to food at home

And over the days, we’ve been enjoying watching some of the behaviours of these crows… No matter how hungry they are, they always call their fraternity when they sight food… The crow could’ve been selfish and eaten all the food by itself! But they always call their near and dear ones… Two-three of them perch on the balcony one behind the other, waiting patiently… One eats and then makes way for the other to take the throne, eat their share and make way again…

And I was surprised that a squirrel can actually scare crows! It sort of does a stand up posture and moves it’s tiny hands around a lil and attempts to make scary faces that actually intimidates the crow…. The doves boss around the crows quite a bit as well! But the crow is never lonely! Because the crow always takes it’s peers along… Be it towards food or getting together to form an army… You don’t ever find a happy crow whilst others starve. They live together. Growing uP together as well… Always. They don’t always move together, but they’re always watching out on the other and care to involve the others when they spot an interesting opportunity…

Wonder what lessons they are trying to teach us!Tweet

June 25, 2014 0 Comments

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Sustained Excellence

Excellence, to me is not a one-off awesome performance. Excellence stands only when Excellence sustains.

Today, we see so many Celebrities making it big one moment and fall down all the way or just plain ebb away into thin air in such a short period of time.

I’ve been asked so many times, “There are people in the music industry who have delivered half the number of songs and hits as you have – yet, they’re more successful than you are, how come?”

And that brings me to the question – How do they Define Success?

If it is all about shooting to fame overnight, being flooded with praises from all and sundry that defines success (in the context of celebrities), then that’s fleeting, to me. It’s like having an over-dose of an extremely scrumptious buffet – for breakfast, lunch & dinner all in one day and having no food to eat all, the next day and the many days to come.

Real Success is one that sustains over time. That stands the test of time. Growing even through all the twists & bends and standing out each time as delightful surprises.

Success is when that spark of passion, vision, dreams sown several years ago takes delightful forms of varying magnitudes, each having an impact of it’s own – small or big. Success is when Artistry becomes the very epistemology of life! When Sustained Excellence is on auto-pilot in your life, you know you are breathing Meaningful, Long-standing Success & Life.Tweet

April 17, 2014 7 Comments

Using Emotional Enticing for Exquisite Branding, Sales & Influence

Some of the biggest Brands we know use Emotions, Relationships, Sentiments & Bonding as the Driving factors to associate the states elicited with their brand, after all!

Even when it comes to Sales & Influence, my simple 2 minute Training includes:

Elicit the most useful Emotional State of mind
Pitch your Product convincingly with full ‘Congruence‘

I’d like you watch the giant “Google” in it’s most recent ad for ‘Google Search’ eliciting Emotions whilst Baking in the product into all of the emotions:

Now, can you think of some more such examples?!

Unconventional ad for ‘Google Search’, ain’t it?! And it’s all viral all over social media! And for this to work, it had to be in the specific sequence as mentioned above – Eliciting the useful emotion from the buyer and then pitching the product and this sequence was presented in loops in this ad making such a strong impact.

Yet the greatest challenge Influencers face today: is The Ability to Elicit Emotions! To make that ‘moment of magic’ feeling happen in their potential customers!

There’s another recent example where Tanishq elicited powerful emotionsi in people and associated it so well with their brand… An effort which went viral and touched a chord breaking all social conventions:

A lot of us may think – “I’m the kind of person that goes by Logic… I’m the logical person and I don’t make emotional decisions!”

Well, whether you are an Engineer or Accountant, Home maker or a Minister, all of our decisions are influenced by emotion. Logic of course supports our emotions and it used to justify the decision we want to take – Emotion however, is the core ingredient – It’s the hero!

No Sale, No Brand, No Influence would work without Emotion! You’ve got “Like” something to take action. You’ve got Love it even more to Really Go for It. Whatever it is that Drives you to Really Do Something.

So if Two people ‘A’ and ‘B’ learn byheart all of the benefits of a “Product A” in and out, A does manage to sell all the way, whist B – not so happy because he was not able to influence anyone enough to Take Action. And this continued to happen until ‘B’ learned how to bring out the useful Emotions to do his job well – to make that connect – with everyone who he identified as potential customers for his business.

It’s been known for years that NLP has been used by the most powerful public personalities to reach out, ‘connect’ with people and Influence… We now even have Politician makers grooming the Next Gen in India using NLP all the way!

When you Master the Dance of Emotions in a way that you take charge and ofcourse, Eliciting powerful emotions in people you meet in a way that they don’t feel like they are ‘pushed’ to buy, but that “want” to buy, you know you have truly uP’d your game! And at uPwithNLP, that has been one of our main focuses – to help you make that ‘connect’ even better, as you use your body, your language and the full force of conversational hypnosis with all good intent to Build healthier relationships – personal and professional!

Antano Solar has been writing a series of Fabulous articles if you are curious more about How to use NLP for Sales & Influence

Enjoy as you Continue to allow your Curiosity to Convert into Knowledge gathering and Eventually skill building which you use in your Life for all things good!Tweet

December 1, 2013 2 Comments

When Knifes show up against Natural Instincts…

When we at SOE office heard the sound of the raindrops beating against the window sill and the AC, we quickly opened the windows, enjoying the smell of the earth abundantly blessed by the showers after a long, long time here…. The cool breeze swept in all the way stretching our lips on either side into a happy, curvy smile as we stood by the window for some time and just saw how the trees danced to the rhythm of rain….

It was the same rain and winds that gave two little tiny tots a taste of hell…. Two little new born sprarrow-like birds squealed to the best of it’s abilities… One was found near the Elevator in the building (I’m naming this lil one “Squiee”) and another one was untraceable…. My neighbors took Squiee and kept it indoors… She was meek, scared and quiet. They tried feeding her water…. She didn’t seem to take too well… She was rather restless and didn’t seem to happy to be put inside a see-through basket cage.

So they took Squiee bird and put it back on the branch of a tree… And it just stayed there quietly… Instantly feeling more familiar, still scared and abandoned. Hope-filled.

Meanwhile, the other birdie (let’s call this one Tweetie) started to make sounds again… And this time Squiee waited, waited, waited (perhaps calibrating to the sounds and checking if it’s the sound of it’s sibling/mom) and then began to respond! What followed was such a delight of nature! Our Squiee gave a distinct loud sound, the other one responded… and they kept making sounds – in different directions…. To us it was like a demo of natural surround sounds! They exchanged sounds of different lengths, different speed…. and then Tweetie came flying from nowhere and fell on the Air conditioner of one of the houses on the ground floor… With this we suspected Tweetie was just learning to fly and perhaps lil older than Squiee is.

My enthusiastic neighbors (one of whom seemed to have some experience rearing birds in the past) grabbed my scarf and tired to catch Tweetie – all with the good intention of placing Tweetie right next to Squiee on the branch. Tweetie freaked out and kept escaping the human hands with the mystery scarf – perhaps thinking it’s being attacked! And as destiny had it, Tweetie was now finally caught in the neighbor’s hands wrapped around the scarf, and the caring neighbor carefully tiptoed her way back to the tree and placed Tweetie next to Squiee with so much love and opened the scarf …. And Tweetie just flew away into some branch all scared as if it had just been released from prison. Not even knowing that she was placed right next to Squiee just a moment ago.

The neighbors were all disappointed, shouting, “Ayyo! Squiee is right here. Why are you flying? Now Go. Find her on your own”….

And I thought to myself – How little do we even know about Nature’s own instincts!

Tweetie and Squiee perhaps found each other again. Their way. Their natural way. Making sounds. And in other bird ways we may not even know of. And the very experience of being lost, withered and finding each other using all the gifts, character & wisdom that Nature has bestowed on them must’ve enhanced their map of the world oh so much more…. The disappointment however remains that of the loving, friendly, caring blunt & blind knife that tried to kneed it’s head into an unknown world of wisdom.

September 5, 2013 6 Comments

Niche Thyself

You may have heard of F W Woolworth?

He was a passionate man who was the first to use self-service display cases so customers could examine what they wanted to buy without the help of a salesman! He’s left behind a now Foot Locker – one of the leading American sportswear and footwear retailers.

When he opened his first store, a merchant on the same street tried to fight the new competition. The competitor put out a Big Sign: “Doing business in this same spot for over fifty years.”

It’s amazing how we humans create such complex connections between Years of Experience & Results!

Mark Zuckerberg, Founder of Facebook was all of 20 years old when he started Facebook! And around then, most of the world was on ‘Orkut’ – a new exciting hangout for most… Today, Orkut’s almost wiped out!

Yahoo may have been the first to revolutionize the Internet world but Google came over and pretty much took the web-world by storm making them the obvious leaders – as they Innovate, Bring in the Latest & Really create an experience that’s truly adds value to the customers they cater to…

I remember fondly a chapter I had in my Hindi lessons back in school that was titled “Akal badi yaa bhaiins?” [English translation: Is the Brain bigger or a Buffalo?!!

Guess what Woolsworth did the next day! He put out a sign just outside his shop that read: “Established a week ago: no old stock.”

Source of Inspiration: Art of the Start – Guy Kawasaki, The Book of Business Anecdotes – Peter HayTweet

April 16, 2013 1 Comment

Positive-Negative vs. Useful Choices

When we ask cold groups who want to learn more about NLP, one thing we always get from the group is – “NLP helps you become Positive and overcome the Negative”

With so many theories around Positivity, positive emotions and negative emotions – I can’t but wonder about this useless farce of labeling certain emotions ‘Positve’ and certain emotions ‘Negative’!

Most of you would easily classify Hard work, Happiness, Calmness etc. to be Positive emotions while Anger, Laziness, Procrastination to be Negative emotions.

Consider this:

A man who generally has trouble watching his wallet is out on a social evening and has got a couple of drinks down. Isn’t it useful for him to Procrastinate another drink or be just plain lazy to have one more?
Some of the Best Programmers in the world who’ve contributed majorly to the Open source world developing some amazing stuff on the computer attribute their success mainly to Laziness! One – they write programs for stuff that they’re lazy to do. And Two – It allows them to stay away from writing monotonous, repetitive code. Infact, I know an erstwhile Chief Technology Officer (Read Antano) who’d look at code his team would write and plain delete tons and tons of lines. Long repetitive code is any programmer’s nightmare!
There was a client came in for therapy to our NLP Clinic and said “My life is boring. I’m depressed. Everything is terrible. I don’t want to live anymore. I am going to kill myself and Die”. And to my surprise, I watched Antano get red-Angry and say – “then Get out of here and die. Don’t waste my time”. And instantly the client got angry too and said – “How can you say that to me? Do you know of things I can accomplish if I live? I have a family, I have a little daughter… I want them to be happy”. And at that moment, I noticed him quickly anchor this state.
Anger in this instance – negative or was it a useful state to provoke a client into a more useful state?!

The skill here is Antano can really get angry by choice just for a few seconds and instantly lead to any other emotion of happiness, joy, calmness and take the client with him. The art is the dance of states. The choice to move across what is useful without getting drenched in it!

The next few moments I noticed Antano and the client happily discussing how wonderful the gift of life is…

What would happen if Anger was taken away permanently from you? You’d be a boring machine that’d smile or be calm for everything!

I know some of us get overly angry!

Someone who gets overly angry and someone who never ever gets angry, in my opinion are not very different from each other. They both don’t have the choice of how angry or how calm they can be. It’s like someone else and not their brain controls these emotions for them.

What we’re after really is Choice!

Ask yourself - Do you have the flexibility to wear on any emotion and shift immediately into another one on-demand?
Do you have the Flexibility to be Angry and snap out of it and get into another state of your choice in split seconds?
Are you Driving your Brain or are you always saying stuff like “My boss makes me angry”, “She drives me mad”…?

Do you WANT to Master your own emotions?! Then What stops you from learning NLP – the art of flexibility and the dance of states!

November 12, 2012 1 Comment

Break free!

I was talking to a dear friend who mentioned how her beloved is trying hard to quit smoking. She asserts, “He’s been smoking for 20 years. He can’t quit soon. It is going to be a long, painful process for sure”…

While a mother and son who had similar interests, joined a course, I heard the mother exclaim to the teacher – “Oh he’s young. He’ll learn quickly!”

And the question that’s ringing loud in my head is – WHO said so? HOW do you know it’s going to be a long, painful process and that too, so surely, that! And oh how oh how do you know he’s going to learn quickly BECAUSE he’s young!

We so easily come up with justifications and draw such complex equivalences! Here are some we’ve heard:

As you grow old, your health begins to wear out
As you grow old, your eyesight tends to become weaker
You have to work very hard to be successful
You have to plan well in time to be successful
Whenever a cat crosses the road, something bad will happen
Very short people are not good people

There are tons and tons of such beliefs floating around and people who believe in such beliefs do so, with so much conviction, as if that’s how the Universe functions.

There was someone I knew that believed you have to work very very hard to do well in life. Hard work is everything. Without hard work & struggle, one can’t get anywhere. And truly that, if you look at his life, he had to indeed struggle, fall down, be frustrated and push himself to work even harder to taste even a droplet of success in anything he undertook.

When someone believes in something so strongly, unconsciously they make it such that their life revolves around that belief. Now there could be millions of exceptions who wouldn’t have to struggle or work extra hard to be successful. Simply because they don’t hold such a belief!
Yet, the believer of hardwork won’t even realize or accept the fact that there really are not just 1 or 2, but millions of people around the world who are exceptions to the lousy limiting belief that was just his/her own.

How many such limiting beliefs do you have? Don’t you want to Shoot them all down and live life with some Personal Freedom?

Who asked you to chain yourself with these beliefs? Yet – if we all knew how to breakfree, it would be a lot simpler!

A lot of people ask me – what do you really do? What in God’s name is NLP all about?

And I say to them – what I do with NLP is help people live life with Freedom! Freedom to change old behaviors, freedom to crumble and burn limiting assumptions & hallucinatory failure, freedom to learn, freedom to communicate effectively, freedom to program their own sub-conscious. Freedom from their own limiting beliefs. Freedom to unleash their real potential and live like they’ve never lived before.

Who says Excellence and Ingenuity is reserved for a select few?

There are tons and tons of people we’ve helped personally quit smoking over one session… and the maximum time so far it has taken them to quit forever has been over a month to be complete smoke free!

I personally know of 82 year olds who are fit as a fiddle and whose eye-sight is spot on, still. I know those who do stuff in the last minute and still are very successful – they don’t spend all their lives planning.

Several times, Cats have passed by just before I was about to do something important, and nothing “bad” happened! Things went just fine!
And they’re most likely to not go fine, if you believed something was not going to be fine!

Now – how many such superstitions, beliefs do you have? How many things are there that you consider “impossible”?

The most dangerous beliefs are the ones that you don’t even know exist!

The whole basis of NLP is that “if any human being can do anything, so can you”. We see so much mediocrity floating around in the world. Some strive to really get to the top. Others try, and give up mid way. Some others don’t even aspire. And a lot of us are bounded by the belief “That’s how much I can achieve. I’m not brilliant. I can’t be as good as him/her.” Or are not even aware of how much they can possibly do by tapping their real potential!

Are you going to wait all your life to Live Life the way you want? Or would you rather Hunt down and smash out those beliefs that could be limiting you from achieving your true potential?

There was this young, beautiful, attractive young girl. Blessed, beautiful face. Anyone would give her a second look. Yet – she was fat. Amidst all the flesh was still some unexplainable beauty and charm that attracted every passerby. All the Fat seemed like a complete misfit on her.
And she didn’t BELIEVE she could lose weight. No matter what she did, she would lose weight and put it all back on soon after.

A Simple NLP map-cross is now yielding results that her 3 hours of gym and crazy diets didn’t allow for her to achieve.

It all begins with your beliefs. Your conviction.

If your sub-conscious mind knew a lot of beliefs you have right now are not useful to you, it wouldn’t have it in the first place.

Sometimes – it’s important to Train your Intuition and teach your sub-conscious ways and methods to Constantly filter & flush out useless beliefs from your system.

It’s 2012. We’re on the verge of another ravishing 2013. I sincerely call all of you – to Breakfree. Discover yourself. And Achieve.

Glow. Like a Flower. Smile at world. Smile at the bees, smile at the sky and look into the mirror – Smile at yourself. Start Anew.

May the Force be with You!

October 31, 2012 1 Comment

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