Dear All,

New year is around the corner if we look at Time in traditional linear way. Many of us use this time to reconnect with family and loved ones, reflecting on the year that was and planning for the year ahead.

When I look back on 2006, the only regret which comes first to mind and hence also first on my new year resolution list is writing more regularly, to you all through this letter, loved ones with whom I do not keep in touch and all those creative ideas that have been bubbling within my head and heart.

However, sharing through forums like facilitating workshops, coaching and teaching sessions have in last year created great satisfaction. Life over period of time and variety of experiences has made me a very different person than who I was few years ago. All of us change with Time, yet when we do not interfere with life, we emerge more beautiful and holistic. The interference comes from our Ego or identification with our own self-concept. The moment I allow the stranger in me to manifest without being afraid of losing control or labeled negatively by others in my ecosystem, I flow with Life. This Flow somewhere seems scary to most people who want to and believe that they control their life. However, the irony is, when we ‘try controlling’ life, we’re compromising may be the heart’s intelligence and following limiting brain intellect which is still driven by the stone-age script. Most of our unhappiness, stress, state of world with increasing covert and overt terrorist activities, increasing ecological devaluation is may be our ‘brain’ driven script.

To share personal experience, I have felt more authentic as I’ve listened to my heart. ‘Trust’ has come as major discussion issue in all my sessions with corporate participants as well as students. I feel that our brain ticks with the childhood script of ‘do not trust strangers’. Result? As we grow up we do not connect with people on deeper level and may start with not just caution, but distrust. It may take too long to cross the barrier of childhood script of not trusting to allow the person in our comfort zone of sharing. The script also causes major internal conflict, as our heart wants to trust and connect while the brain resists. Our real connection with the other person comes only when we ‘trust’.

And what we do not realize is that as we do not trust strangers, isn’t life itself a stranger to all of us? I do not know what my life history stores in my cells and I also do not know what the coming moments unfold for me. And when I do not trust, my guards are on; I am in alert zone, tense without conscious awareness. I stop living fully, healthily and creatively. The inner splits and outer mask creates more fragmented living!

Haven’t we all lived like that? A wake up call or what we may call ‘tragedy’ makes us aware of how we’ve stopped trusting life, others & our own self! This tragedy opens our eyes to what all we’ve lost, or the price we’ve paid for being safe by not trusting. Fortunate are those who go through such tragedies and wake up on cross roads. I’ve gone through it and realized that it is a magical moment where either I trust life and live differently or I close my eyes once more again giving up my personal power to the social scripting of my animal evolved brain. I am happy that I chose to trust life. And my authenticity when I facilitate learning comes from this trust.

Friends, lets begin our new year with the resolve to trust- trust the heart’s voice, Life’s unfolding moments, people we meet for the first time at workplace who are still strangers. Let this New Year be a journey with a difference… More balance in this imbalanced world- balance between head and heart, trust and caution, social script and cultural creative script, living a second hand life to living with authenticity, male-female archetype to masculine –feminine Energy Balance…

Let 2007 be LIVED as Year of Balance for all of us…