7 Effective Leadership Skills In Valmiki Ramayana – Ep 14

उत्साहः पौरुषं सत्त्वमानृशंस्यं कृतज्ञता।
विक्रमश्च प्रभावश्च सन्ति वानर राघवे।।
–Valmiki Ramayan 5.37.13।।

Maryadhapurush Ram exhibited seven effective leadership traits which are Enthusiasm, Fearlessness, Goodness, Kindness, Being Grateful, Commitment to work and Prowess as told by Sita Maa to Hanuman when Hanuman met her at Ashok Van.

Leadership Quality 4 – कृतज्ञता  – Being Grateful

#ContentmentOrAmbition

Ambition is critical for growth. Contentment is critical for peace. But is contentment mutually exclusive to ambition? Not necessarily. We can have contentment as well as ambition.

“Contentment for the past and present and Ambition for the future” is the trick.

‘Being grateful’ enhances contentment, gratefulness for the beautiful life we got.

‘Being Grateful’ reduces stress?

• Gratitude can distract worries and upsets.
• When you express gratitude, you recognize that people care about you and have done a lot for you. This can enhance your positive sense of self, reducing levels of negative thinking.
• Expressing gratitude to others can create and enhance relationships.
• Biggest benefit of ‘Being Grateful’ is that you will most likely receive thankful response of gratitude from the person to whom you express gratitude and that has huge potential to make your day. All your stress will wane instantly. Unlike scarce resources like money, ‘words of gratitude’ can be given in plenty and why not grow it multi-fold.

#GratitudeJournal

Keep a ‘gratitude journal’ and write 5 people to whom you would like to remain grateful every day. Add it to your ‘gratitude journal’ even people who have done small favours, long time back. That will help you to get rid of negative feelings about them. After some days, you would notice that ‘being grateful’ is not mutually exclusive to ambition. That small book of ‘gratitude journal’ will make you to grow big.

Great Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar wrote 10 verses on ‘Being Grateful’. I will take the most famous verse in this chapter called ‘Gratitude’ (Adhikaram 11)

செய்யாமல் செய்த உதவிக்கு வையகமும்
வானகமும் ஆற்றல் அரிது. 
— Thirukkural 101

(The gift of) heaven and the universe will not be sufficient for a help rendered to you without aniticipating anything in return.

A short story to explain the benefits of ‘being grateful’

#EveryDayABeauifulDay

A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with an aluminium plate by his feet. He held up a sign which read, “I am blind, please help.”

There were only a few coins in the hat after quite some time.

A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the plate. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words. Then he put the sign back in the boy’s hand so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.

Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy.

That afternoon, the man who had changed the sign returned to see how things were. The boy recognized his footsteps and asked, “Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?”

The man said, “I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way.”

I wrote, “Today is a beautiful day, but I cannot see it.”

Both signs spoke the truth. But the first sign simply said the boy was blind, while the second sign conveyed to everyone walking by how grateful they should be to see.

Simply put, gratitude is a habit. It’s a way of looking at the world and all the good things in it with a feeling of appreciation, regardless of whether or not your current situation is to your liking.

Gratitude is a heart-centered approach to being at peace with yourself and with all you have. When you practice this feeling of gratitude, it attracts even MORE things into your life for which to be grateful.

Go ahead, try it out right now.