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When I Lost My Sense Then I was a man I only went up the Hill As I had time to kill But kill I did all that was Me and Mine With Me and Mine gone  Lost all my will and skill  Here I am, an empty vessel Enslaved to the Divine Will and infinite skill In the city of Mysore, there is a tradition. If you have something to do, you go up Chamundi Hill. And if you have nothing to do, you go up Chamundi Hill. If you fall in love, you go up Chamundi Hill. And if you fall out of love, you have to go up Chamundi Hill.  One afternoon, I had nothing to do, and I had recently fallen out of love, so I went up Chamundi Hill.  I parked my motorcycle and sat on an outcrop of rock about two-thirds of the way uphill. This was my “contemplation rock.” It had been for some time now. A purple berry tree and a stunted banyan had put down tenacious roots into a deep fissure in the rock surface. A panoramic view of the city unfolded before me.  Until that moment, in my experience, my body and mind was “me” and t

Chapter- 7 SHINE Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough. For me, this is the fun part when helping people create the lives they most want to be living. You see, after a while you might find that while everything is going along nicely, suddenly you want to quit, you feel bored or you start sabotaging yourself in a whole new way. Why do we do this to ourselves? We’re hardwired with a tremendous capacity to adapt to nearly all the good and bad things that happen in our lives. Whether it’s a new relationship, a new job, improved health or newfound wealth, over time the shine starts to wear off and these hard-won changes in our lives start to deliver fewer and fewer rewards. Unfortunately, while the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat have been found to abate over time, it appears we adapt much faster to the things we most enjoy. In fact, scientists believe we’re prone to eventually take for granted pretty much every good thing that happens to us. It’s why our en

Chapter- 6   SABBATICAL Taking a pause is exciting, invigorating, life changing and possible. Taking time out to see life from a different perspective or country can give us the energy and creativity to live life optimally. Taking a ‘pause’ in life was something I had heard of, but didn’t think was possible. You can only do it when you are young and responsibility-free, right? When I was twenty-one years old, I travelled the world with a backpack for two years and I think that was the probably the time I learnt the most in life – a sense of freedom that came hand-in-hand with fear, excitement, opportunity, fun, loneliness, self-acceptance and incredible experiences, both good and bad, which I have always treasured. New York graphic designer and TED speaker Stefan Sagmeister takes a year off every seven years, saying he will retire five years later to balance it all out. Listen to his talk (www.ted.com/talks/stefan_sagmeister_the_power_of_time_off) and you will see that, with the right