Lion Smiled at the Rabbit

And the Lion Smiled at the Rabbit

                       

I was searching through the internet for Panchatantra stories, because I was interested in them from childhood. My intention of search is to get a book to understand why those stories are written and how it has answers to most of the questions we ask our self. When I googled out, there was an article written by the author Rashmi Datt herself, once I read the title of the book “and the Lion Smiled at the Rabbit, Manage your emotions to win”, immediately I understood she know what she is talking about. This book uses the Panchatantra story for easy understanding of how emotions plays vital role in success of our life. How to have hold of emotions and manage them with fen ace, so we can use even the negative emotions to our strength

            Did a small background check about the author and came to know that, she is also a normal person who has dealt with lots of problems in office environment, coping up with people and she has tried, screwed and succeeded in lots of areas with people management and personal management. She is a post graduate from BITS Pilani, and she is the founder and Director of Dialog Services, with over two decades of rich industry experience in the domains of Organizational, learning development, content management and instructional design.

            The book has five different chapters which also includes the base of the book, Emotional intelligence by Daniel Goleman (book which has boggled my mind).

·        Self Regulation

·        Self Acceptance and self belief

·        Self Motivation

·        Building Rapport and Managing relationships

·        Handling conflicts and difficult situations

            She starts the book with why we have to manage emotions and what is the science behind all the emotions. She also talks about Triune brain and explained in layman terms about the three parts of brain, how still the older brain, the reptilian brain has more control over the logical brain, how we are hijacked every time and how our survival instincts takes full control. She narrates a story about a kid in Jakarta, who handled a tough situation very charmingly even after he is bullied by group of youngsters and the kid is none other than Barrack Obama.

            She moves to next level illustrating, how you can be powerful by just accepting who you are. She narrates the donkey and dead tiger skin story. It clearly tells us how we perceive about our self is always how others perceive us. She takes the book to next level by Quoting

“Don’t be Humble you are not that great” - Golda mien.

In Projecting Confidence Image chapter she justifies why you should always be ready with notes about your self, which will help you when you get a real opportunity to talk about yourself to an important person that will increase your success rates a ton. She narrates a story about how she met TATA in her final day in TATA Services, how his words of wisdom, helped her to take very confident and bold steps in her life. She talks about negative mental chatter that we do all day long which is the main reason for all our stress, she provides tool that she calls as ABCDE Method. I personally feel everyone should learn this tool. This one tool will help you to be more successful in personal and corporate relationships.

                        A – Activating event (Event that triggers Negative emotion)

                        B – Beliefs, which can be self limiting (What are you assuming)

                        C – Consequences, List of emotions that you feel that you may be encountering by the events, asking the questions, whether it is relevant to this particular situation

                        D – Disputing our self limiting beliefs by recalling past success and thoughts       

                        E – Energizing and Encouraging ourselves with effective new thoughts, best question, what did I learn from this event.

            Next the book picks up momentum by starting with story of Lion, Jackal and a donkey, where donkey was tricked to being a prey for lion by praise. Her explanation about the real praise or just praise to please people is outstanding. She talks about being very genuine in praise and how praise when used as a trick will work against us. She also gives some tricks to handle negative feedback gracefully, where you can completely listen to the person who gives you negative feedback and then respond, not react. Best thing I liked  is where she advises that it is up to us to take the negative feedback or not, but never take it personally.

            Book moves to next level, where the control moves to external world, where we have to influence others. She starts with the Indigo jackal story, where the jackal falls into a dye and becomes the king of Jungle because of it new skin color and how it dies because of bossing around too much with his new power. This chapter denotes she is highly influenced by Dale Carnegie’s “How to win friends and Influence People”.

            Final chapter, she talks about how to handle conflicts and difficult situation NOT like a Frog in the pond which takes the help of a snake to kill his enemy frog, which ends up being eaten by the snake. She has given lots of her own experience which are very interesting to read. I really like the last three pages of the book where she talks about having a clear purpose statement which exists as a frame of reference for every bit of one's life journey, where you can handle all your emotions through out your day. For example, if your purpose of life is to be charity worker or may be become CEO of company, and you penned them down, and when you are in a street fight due to a rash driver of car, you can ask yourself, will this fight gonna solve my life purpose, or I will avoid this fight completely without giving an eye contact to the person who wants to pick up a fight with me. This is my personal favorite of all thing that she has written in this book.This one concept has been emphasized by many thinkers and authors, especially Stephen covey as Principle based life in his book 7 Habits of Highly effective people.

            This book is must read for all those who already have experience in handling people or starting your career handling people. She has narrated both Panchatantra and also her personal stories which make us to connect with author, like she is a person who lives next door. This book has lots of tips and tricks which can be used every day in day to day life. If you want to become more emotionally intelligent, I highly recommend this book.

Go get yourself a copy of this book and start reading to have a better stable emotional life, where you don’t get stressed because other people are pressing your emotional button.

You can get the book @ lionSmiledatTheRabbit

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