Towards Greater Success in Business, Profession and Family Life

His Holiness Revered Swami Tejomayanandaji and my dear friends,

In our country, we are living in momentous times. We are living at a time when sweeping changes are taking place. Fifty years ago, when ,we attained Independence, there was before us the challenge of building a new nation--a nation of free citizens and a nation where there would be food, wealth, health and prosperity for everybody. Unfortunately after about forty-fifty years, we fumed that we have not succeeded in our efforts and wonder why this is so. Before listening to religious leaders like Swamiji, even if we listen to a Management expert like Peter Drucker, we come to know, that there are no underdeveloped countries in the world-only under-managed ones. That means we are poor because we are managing our country-s-our organizations, hospitals and educational institutions very ineffectively and inefficiently. Ultimately, at the root of all management is the human being. A nation is as great as its people. A nation is the summation of the efforts of the people. Thus, if all of us in the nation do good work, have positive thoughts and think of building our country, our families and ourselves, then the nation will have the fulfillment of its dreams.

About five years back, we realised that we must adopt a new model of growth--not the socialist model but a model based on free enterprise. So now we are walking on the twin planks of globalization and liberalization. Liberalization means everything is free for everybody. Any Indian can start any enterprise anywhere in India irrespective of his location, caste or creed. Globalization means that we are going to break down the walls we have built around our economy which in turn will help us to integrate with the rest of the world. So today therefore, these new winds are sweeping through the country. This is creating a lot of tension, worry and stress. People in business and various professions suffer this stress=the head of the family may bring home his tensions and create commotion in the family life. How do we tackle this and learn to cope with this? What is the inner strength we can draw from ourselves? If we do not know how to take control of our emotions and plan for ourselves, then we cannot gain any success in life.

Swamiji's talks in the next two days are very timely and useful and we are indeed fortunate to have Swamiji talk to us on this subject. I thank the organizers for this opportunity .