My address at BK Gulf Headquarters on World FM Day 2017

Good Afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen,

It gives me great pleasure to be here again, addressing you all on the World FM day 2017. The theme chosen for last year’s celebration was ‘Empowering people for a productive world’. Accordingly, we discussed about various ways and means of empowering people. This year’s theme is ‘Enabling Positive Experiences’. So, let us now discuss on what are the positive experiences and how do we enable them.

Before we proceed further, I wish to thank for all your reviews and feedback on my last year’s address. Your positive feedback has motivated me further and also put more responsibility on me. Someone here told me that after my last year’s address, for next few days, people frequently used the terms ‘Positive strokes’ and ‘Negative strokes’. Good!

This year’s theme is ‘Enabling Positive Experiences’. So, let us discuss on what it means.

Let us focus for a while on the word ‘enabling’. Enabling means to facilitate, support, assist, aid in achieving something. However, to be in a position to enable others, first we must be satisfying that criteria. That means, first we should have a positive experience. How do we have a positive experience? What is positive experience?

Every person has a way of thinking. Nobody is right or wrong. It is just the way they are! Let me start my first story of two wolves here. 

An old Grandfather said to his grandson, who came to him with anger at a friend who had done Him an injustice, "Let me tell you a story.”

"I too, at times, have felt great hate for those who have taken so much, with no sorrow for what they do. But hate wears you down, and does not hurt your enemy. It's like taking poison and wishing your enemy would die. I have struggled with these feelings many times."
"It is as if there are two wolves inside me; one is good and does no harm. He lives in harmony with all around him and does not take offense when no offense was intended. He will only fight when it is right to do so, and in the right way."

"But the other wolf... Ah! The tiniest thing will send him into a fit of temper. He fights everyone, all the time, for no reason. He cannot think because his anger and hate are so great. It is helpless anger, for his anger will change nothing.”

"Sometimes it is hard to live with these two wolves inside me, for both of them try to dominate my spirit.”

The boy looked intently into his Grandfather's eyes and asked, "Which one wins, Grandfather?"
The Grandfather smiled and quietly said, "The one I feed."

So, if we feed the positive wolf within us, it will generate positivity and vice versa. We all were born as tiny babies with a clear history of any positive or negative attitude. We were all same. We developed our personality, bit by bit over the years and we continue to do so every minute. Start feeding the wolf that generates positivity within you and you will feel the difference.

One important thing is that positivity is highly contagious. If you are positive, you will send out positive vibes in the surroundings and people will actually feel those vibes. The positive wolves within them will wake up and take charge of his thoughts and actions. The best example is the top boss’s behavior in meetings. If he starts the meeting with a smiling face, making a gentle eye contact with everyone, the meeting would invoke maximum participation from all the attendees. On the other hand, if the boss comes in the meeting room with a frown on his face, it will immediately translate everyone into a nervous mode. Then, the meeting would be a tense affair with minimum participation. Which is better for the company?

Here is a good example about how positivity is highly contagious. The pilots of every flight make some mandatory announcements during the flight, one after taking off and reaching the altitude, and second just before arriving at the destination, thanking the passengers. Generally, when the pilots make these announcements, very few people actually listen to them. Most of the people are forced to listen, as they have no choice. Even the headphones connected to the videos switch off so that you hear the announcements. These announcements are standard and pretty boring. To make it worse, the pilots are trained to speak in a slightly stretched tone, giving more-than-usual pauses between two sentences.

This particular day, the pilot made an announcement, which made everyone to listen to him. Everyone looked up, and then at each other, wondering what was happening. The pilot said, “Good Morning Ladies, Gentlemen and Children, this is the 7.35am and you'll be pleased to know that we are right on time. This means that we will get you to where you are going in plenty of time. And what a lovely morning it is today. The sun is shining, temperature is about 21 degrees, birds are singing, and all's right with the world. I trust you have a great day wherever you are going. Thanks for choosing to fly with us this morning and I hope to see you again soon. Have a great day.”

Suddenly, the people started smiling, looking smilingly at each other. Many of them started conversing with their neighbors. The strangers became friends! Such is the contagious nature of positivity.

The next question is how do you feel positive? Actually, it is very simple. All you need to do is just not worry on two days in a week. Everything will be fine automatically. How you look at these two days determine how you spend your life.

One of these days is Yesterday with all its mistakes and scars, its faults and blunders, its aches and pains. Yesterday has passed forever beyond our control. No money in the world can bring back yesterday.

We cannot undo a single act we performed; we cannot erase a single word we said. Yesterday is gone forever.

The other day we should not worry about is Tomorrow with all its possible adversities, its burdens, its large promise and its poor performance; Tomorrow is also beyond our immediate control.
Tomorrow’s sun will rise, either in splendor or behind a mask of clouds, but it will rise. Until it does, we have no stake in tomorrow, for it is yet to be born.

This leaves only one day, Today. Any person can fight the battle of just one day. It is when you and I add the burdens of those two awful eternities, ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Tomorrow’ that we break down.

It is not the experience of today that drives a person mad. It is the remorse or bitterness of something, which happened yesterday, and the dread of what tomorrow may bring.
Let us, therefore, live but one day at a time.

Being Positive also means that you are optimistic about the future. How do you develop a mindset to be Positive?

Well, the story about Potato, Eggs and Coffee beans would reveal how to be positive.

Once upon a time a daughter complained to her father that her life was miserable and that she didn’t know how she was going to make it. She was tired of fighting and struggling all the time. It seemed just as one problem was solved, another one soon followed.

Her father, a chef, took her to the kitchen. He filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Once the three pots began to boil, he placed potatoes in one pot, eggs in the second pot, and ground coffee beans in the third pot.

He then let them sit and boil, without saying a word to his daughter. The daughter, moaned and impatiently waited, wondering what he was doing.

After twenty minutes, he turned off the burners. He took the potatoes out of the pot and placed them in a bowl. He pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl.

He then ladled the coffee out and placed it in a cup. Turning to her he asked. “Daughter, what do you see?”

“Potatoes, eggs, and coffee,” she hastily replied.

“Look closer,” he said, “and touch the potatoes.” She did and noted that they were soft. He then asked her to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg. Finally, he asked her to sip the coffee. Its rich aroma brought a smile to her face.

“Father, what does this mean?” she asked.

He then explained that the potatoes, the eggs and coffee beans had each faced the same adversity– the boiling water.

However, each one reacted differently.

The potato went in strong, hard, and unrelenting, but in boiling water, it became soft and weak.

The egg was fragile, with the thin outer shell protecting its liquid interior until it was put in the boiling water. Then the inside of the egg became hard.

However, the ground coffee beans were unique. After they were exposed to the boiling water, they changed the water and created something new.

“Which are you,” he asked his daughter. “When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a potato, an egg, or a coffee bean? “

Moral of the story is that in life, things happen around us, things happen to us, but the only thing that truly matters is what happens within us.

Which one are you?

There is another interesting story about developing a positive outlook even when you are in problems.

There once was a very wealthy and curious king. This king had a huge boulder placed in the middle of a road. Then he hid nearby to see if anyone would try to remove the gigantic rock from the road.

The first people to pass by were some of the king’s wealthiest merchants and courtiers. Rather than moving it, they simply walked around it. A few loudly blamed the King for not maintaining the roads. Not one of them tried to move the boulder.

Finally, a peasant came along. His arms were full of vegetables. When he got near the boulder, rather than simply walking around it as the others had, the peasant put down his load and tried to move the stone to the side of the road. It took a lot of effort but he finally succeeded.

The peasant gathered up his load and was ready to go on his way when he say a purse lying in the road where the boulder had been. The peasant opened the purse. The purse was stuffed full of gold coins and a note from the king. The king’s note said the purse’s gold was a reward for moving the boulder from the road.

The king showed the peasant what many of us never understand: every obstacle presents an opportunity to improve our condition.

Similarly, whenever you are faced with a problem in your work, look at it as an opportunity to do something good. It is an opportunity to correct a wrong or to enhance an inefficient process. Without problems, there would be little for us to show our capabilities. Just imagine, if none of the sites had any FM related issues, all contracts would be either heavily downsized or closed in no time. So, problems are good. But in pursuit of excellence, please do not create new problems. Deal with the existing ones.

Sometimes, the problems are too big to handle. We get tensed up, and the failure seems to be inevitable. Those are the times, when our real grit is tested. A person who can think with a cool head in the deepest of crisis can solve any problem. Many people weaken their chances of success by getting anxious, tense and nervous.

This story of Steven Callahan describes how you can surmount any problem.

In 1982 Steven Callahan was crossing the Atlantic alone in his sailboat when it struck something and sank. He was out of the shipping lanes and floating in a life raft, alone. His supplies were few. His chances were small. Yet when three fishermen found him seventy-six days later (the longest anyone has survived a shipwreck on a life raft alone), he was alive -- much skinnier than he was when he started, but alive.

His account of how he survived is fascinating. His survived on fish and sea water.

What is noteworthy is that he managed to keep himself going when all hope seemed lost, when there seemed no point in continuing the struggle, when he was suffering greatly, when his life raft was punctured and after more than a week struggling with his weak body to fix it, it was still leaking air and wearing him out to keep pumping it up. He was starved. He was desperately dehydrated. He was thoroughly exhausted. Giving up would have seemed the only sane option.

When people survive these kinds of circumstances, they do something with their minds that gives them the courage to keep going. Many people in similarly desperate circumstances give in or go mad. Something the survivors do with their thoughts helps them find the guts to carry on in spite of overwhelming odds.

"I tell myself I can handle it," wrote Callahan in his narrative. "Compared to what others have been through, I'm fortunate. I tell myself these things over and over, building up fortitude...."

The truth is, our circumstances are only bad compared to something better. But others have been through much worse. We are lucky to be where we are, no matter how bad it seems to us compared to our fantasies. It's a sane thought and worth thinking.

So here, coming to us from the extreme edge of survival, are words that can give us strength. Whatever you're going through, tell yourself you can handle it. Compared to what others have been through, you're fortunate. Tell this to yourself repeatedly, and it will help you get through the rough spots with a little more fortitude.

The last important point about the tricks to remain positive is to refuse to accept failure as an option. Never give up. There are countless stories of people who succeeded just when they were about to give up after their repeated failures to achieve something. Unfortunately, there are many more people, who gave up when they were just about to strike gold. The trick here is to stay on and not give up. 

No example is better suited for this positive attitude than that of Sir Edmund Hillary.

We all know that Sir Edmund Hillary was the first man to climb Mount Everest. On May 29, 1953 he scaled the highest mountain then known to man-29,000 feet straight up. He was knighted for his efforts. He even made American Express card commercials because of it! However, until we read his book, High Adventure, we don't understand that Hillary had to grow into this success. In 1952 he attempted to climb Mount Everest, but failed. A few weeks later a group in England asked him to address its members. Hillary walked on stage to a thunderous applause. The audience was recognizing an attempt at greatness, but Edmund Hillary saw himself as a failure. He moved away from the microphone and walked to the edge of the platform. He made a fist and pointed at a picture of the mountain. He said in a loud voice, "Mount Everest, you beat me the first time, but I'll beat you the next time because you've grown all you are going to grow... but I'm still growing!"

Such a positive spirit would definitely reflect in your professional and personal life. You would go on conquering one goal after another, raising the bar every time. The joy and satisfaction of success would give you the necessary motivation to take on more and more challenges in life.

So, next time someone says that there is a problem, sense an opportunity and jump into it. Every problem brings you unforeseen opportunities in disguise.

Some of you might say that your problems are far too serious in nature and cannot be easily solved. For them, here is my last story for the day.

Once upon a time, a saint came to a village and asked the villagers, if they had any problem. All of them thought for a while and said yes, they had some problem. He announced that he would organize a special ‘problem exchange event’ in which people can exchange their problems with one another in anonymity. What they had to do was to wrap all their problems in a bundle of cloth and keep it near a huge tree on the outskirts of the village with his nametag on it. Then, he can choose anyone’s problems wrapped similarly in a bundle of cloth and carry home.

Everyone was amused. The beggar in the village wanted to take the problems of the wealthiest man in the town, because he assumed that he had far too lesser problems. Similarly, the salaried people wanted to exchange their problems with the businessmen and vice versa. Everyone began dreaming about this ‘problem exchange’ mega event, in which they could get rid of their problems and borrow the ‘much lesser’ problems of rich people from their village.

The day arrived. Everyone carefully wrapped their problems and headed for the giant tree. The beggar went early with his bundle. He placed it near the tree and looked around for the wealthiest man’s bundle. To his surprise, he found that the wealthiest man’s bundle was much bigger than his bundle. He was surprised.

At that time, he heard someone coming with his bundle. So, he hid behind another tree and watched. To his surprise, this person was another one such person, who he thought was a very happy man, but his bundle was also heavier.

Soon, he realized that many people watched from behind the trees and were surprised to see that every person had more or less a similar, heavy bundle of worries.

Some of them wanted to exchange their bundle of same size. But then, they thought for a while. They had no idea what problems were wrapped in that bundle. It was suspense, a mystery. However, they were very well aware of what was in their bundle. Moreover, they were not sure, whether they would be able to tackle those unknown problems. At the same time, they were very familiar with their own problems, and were facing them and resolving them on a day-to-day basis. So, which was more preferable? Known problems or unknown problems?

They all took back their own bundles home. 

The message is very clear. You would not find a single person on this earth, who does not have a problem. Everyone has some problem or other. Only the type of the problem is different. So, start accepting your problems, resolving them one piece at a time and move forward.

I once again wish you all a very Happy ‘World FM day’. As per this year’s theme, ‘Enable positive experiences’ around you and experience the difference.

Thank you for hearing me patiently for so long.

I thank BK Gulf once again for having invited me here today.

Thank you…!