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Setting the stage
This is the future we need to co-create, which has the culture of peace ingrained in the education of every human being.
JANE
I’m Jane McConnell and welcome to Imaginize World. Today we need to focus on the future for new generations. What kind of world do we want them to live in and how can we help them build it? Greetings. Today I’m with Mandar Apte and we’re going to talk about his journey in peace building and how he works to make a positive difference in people’s lives. He tells us about running the Game Changers Social Innovation Program at Shell, which he did for years.
He’ll talk about the influence of Martin Luther King on his work, and he’ll also talk about his film From India with Love, which you’ll want to see if you haven’t already. He’ll also describe his unusual workshops, bringing together gang leaders, police officers, community leaders, and victims of violence. But I’ll stop here so we can hear the details firsthand. Well, hello Mandar, and welcome to Imaginize World.
MANDAR
Thank you very much, Jane. Your work is inspiring and I’m honored to be in this conversation with you.
Mandar’s journey in peace building
Well, I’m very pleased to have you in this conversation. I’ve looked at a lot of your stuff and I’d be curious to ask you maybe a strange question to start off with. If you had to describe yourself in one sentence, what would you say? If I say I know Mandar what would you want me to say?
MANDAR
I’ve never been asked this question. Jane, I think I would like to be remembered as somebody who made a difference to people’s lives in a positive way, especially in the midst of all the turbulence and chaos that we have in the world and it’s growing and might even grow. I would like to be part of the solution to enabling more harmony, more peace, more well-being. And that is what I’ve held myself accountable for the last 20 years, and that’s the trend line that I would like people to remember about me.
JANE
In the work I’ve done preparing for this, I’ve been reading a number of websites, your website and other websites about you, and I would be interested in knowing what triggered your interest in peace building. I know you’re focused on peace building and how did that start?
MANDAR
Some people might say you are born with a karma that makes you come on this track of peace building because most of the world is not involved in this kind of bridge building work, although that’s our aspiration is wherever we go, we want harmony and peace and well-being. But what triggered me is I think there are a few triggers. So the first trigger was when I was in eighth grade, ninth grade, 10th grade, I used to read The Hardy Boys.
JANE
The Hardy Boys.
The Hardy Boys and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
In love with The Hardy Boys, Frank and Joe Hardy, and I swear to God, I really had the idea that I want to go to the United States and meet The Hardy Boys. I want to be like them. I want to solve crime. I want to be dynamic. I want to help people get over their trauma, bring justice. That was, I think, the most important trigger and it unknowingly happens. And then the next set of triggers were just going through the pain and misery of life. When I came as a graduate student to the United States, I realized that people don’t know much about India, but there is a lot of curiosity.
And I also don’t know much about India. So having born and brought up here, we are never taught about the culture and the civilization and the ancient wisdom. So that was the second trigger point that why are people curious to know more about Gandhi, more about peace, more about the spirituality? But I don’t know anything about it, so how can I be an ambassador of the, you can say, spiritual wealth of this country. So that was the second trigger that I don’t know anything. People want to know, but I don’t know anything.
The third trigger for me was meeting my current spiritual teacher, wisdom teacher. I met him 21 years ago in Houston, Texas. His name is Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. He’s a no-nonsense guru according to me, and he’s kind of a rebel in that guru land himself. Instead of waiting for people to come to him at the age of 20 or 21, he decided to travel and take the wisdom of India across the world. And so when I met him, I was touched by his innocence and intellectual capacity.
That combination, I found it a very deadly combination. Because when I met him, I was working at Shell and I had many people who were maybe intellectually 10 times smarter than me, but they had no humility, no empathy, no compassion. And so that is where I felt like, “Huh, there can be a way to have both intellect and innocence.”
JANE
Very nice.
MANDAR
And many triggers in life, went through a divorce, went through a crisis in my life. That again teaches you to be humble. And you have two choices. One, you can sit and cry. The other is don’t waste your time on this planet. Most of the time when there is a hurricane, people’s lives, even in the real sense, yes, people have lost a lot and they’re supposed to cry, but that’s where I think we can invoke that power within is what I was inspired. And that’s the role my guru played for my growth.
And that requires commitment because you cannot teach other people, “Hey, don’t sell drugs if you are selling drugs. Don’t be angry, if you are getting angry.” So that’s where you have to work on yourself a whole lot more if you want to be in this world of what they call peace building or harmony building that still is work in progress. And the best litmus is your parents because you cannot hide your true self from your parents.
JANE
I like that.
MANDAR
Especially your mom. So it’s a lifetime commitment and you can’t fake it.
JANE
I came across several different things in my reading the film of course, From India with Love, Cities for Peace, the Purpose Innovation Lab and you mentioned to me the working group at the UN. And I’d like to talk about those things with you. I’d like for you to talk about them with me. Would the film be a good starting point?
Running the Game Changers Social Innovation Program at Shell
The film was definitely a starting point for this trajectory of my life. I was living a very comfortable life in a small oil company called Shell, where I used to work. I worked at Shell in Houston for 18 years.
Started as a petroleum engineer, but then got inducted into Shell’s scenarios and innovation program called Game Changer. And that is where I felt innovation, anybody can do it, but nobody does it. We always think of Steve Jobs as the innovator or the iPhone as the innovation product, but it requires a mindset. It requires a mindset for being innovative and creative, and that is what was the boon in my life, is to be part of that ecosystem of innovation within the belly of the beast.
JANE
Does that underlie the reason that you did the film From India with Love? It’s a powerful film.
MANDAR
Thank you. I mean, everything we do is based on everything we have done. So it’s like things build up and at some point of time you end up becoming a filmmaker. That was never the plan if you go back and ask me 20 years ago. What happened, Jane, is in 2016 when I was at Shell Game Changer, one of my best friends was abused at a gas station in Texas and he was told at gunpoint to drive to the border. And that was the election year, the famous election year. And whatever we were seeing on television, that evening I felt had reached my home, my best friend.
Influence of Martin Luther King
And so I started thinking about how can I be part of the solution with my corporate innovation lens? And so I went to Barnes and Noble that evening. I picked up Dr. King’s autobiography and I was reading his autobiography and suddenly a whole chapter of 30 pages I saw, where he had written about a pilgrimage to India that he had made as a young man. And that was a pleasant shock. Nobody had told me when I was growing up in India that a young Martin Luther, King Jr. had actually come to study Gandhi’s teachings.
And that evening I had two insights. The first insight was Gandhi was dead. So when MLK goes to India, there is no physical Gandhi in India. Second insight was he travels for five weeks across the land of India, especially when his people were going through social injustices. So I felt like who goes anywhere for five weeks? I don’t go anywhere for five weeks unless there is a calling. And that I felt in the words that he was writing in his autobiography. For example, the first sentence of that chapter, Dr. King says, “If I would travel to any other country in the world, I would go as a tourist.
Here I had come as a pilgrim.” And he goes on and on and on in terms of how he was seeking. He was making some insights and discoveries. And then there is a speech. I went on Google and searched for Martin Luther King in India, and there is a speech, a three-minute extract of a speech that Dr. King gave 65 years ago on national radio in India. That touched my heart. So the book and this online research and an idea came in my head that something happened there for him. Something has happened in India for him because he became the torchbearer for non-violence in the civil rights movement.
JANE
He did, absolutely, that’s his symbol.
The film: From India with Love
That’s his symbol. And wherever he went, he spoke about this from Montgomery Prison, everywhere. He’s like a beacon of the Indian non-violence that he had studied in this trip. So that is where I created a hypothesis. The hypothesis at that time was it’s the culture of India. It’s the people of India. It’s the wisdom of India that made that change or that insightful experience for Dr. King, not a physical meeting with Gandhi the person.
So if that culture, if that people, if that wisdom is still alive and throbbing, can it show a North star to America today? That was the hypothesis that I created as a social scientist. The film was produced in one month since that day.
JANE
One month.
MANDAR
In one month.
JANE
How did you choose the people that were all victims of violence?
MANDAR
I did not choose them. They chose me. I would say I’m indebted to them. I wrote a small paragraph based on this hypothesis. I wrote a small paragraph that there’s violence in the United States. It has now come in my door. I want to be part of the solution. And my concept was I want to take people from both sides of the gun, the perpetrator and the survivor, so that my work is not about the gun. And I want people from all different backgrounds, all different skin color, all different races, et cetera, et cetera. And I spoke to about 35 individuals who were on these two domains, the perpetrators as well as the victims.
And within 10 days, these six people that you see in the film said yes, they would like to come. And so I paid for their trip. I paid for all their expenses, and I hosted them for 10 days. I didn’t know a filmmaker, I just again dropped the seed, and four or five junior film crew boys from Bollywood said they would love to do it. And so it was like a hustle. I took a one-month holiday. It’s a miracle. It’s a miracle. Many of the times people used… The film crew used to ask me, “What’s the shoot today?”
And I used to say, “I don’t know, just film from your heart. Whatever comes, we will use it.” So there are many scenes in the film that I wasn’t even there. I was arranging the hotel for the next day. I was arranging transport. So I played many roles in that trip, including their guide, their teacher, the production assistant, and something that I believe the universe supports or listens to you when you have a good idea is my experience from that trip. I could not have made this on my own in one month.
So there are many hands, invisible hands that have helped. When I came back from this India trip, I told my boss at Shell what I had done in this one month. He said, “I think it’s time for you to leave and get out of your shell and do something bigger.”
JANE
That’s what he said to you?
MANDAR
I mean, he’s my mentor, philosopher, guide. I have a beautiful relation with my ex-boss, and that’s a very rare thing, especially in the corporate world.
The film was a happening
Very rare. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, that explains part of the feeling I got in watching the film because it somehow didn’t seem like a film. It was like more of a happening,
MANDAR
JANE
Things were happening. And yes, they were strung together in a logical way that there’s the first part, there’s the second part and all that. But I never had the feeling that it was scripted or that there’d been a rehearsal or anything like that.
MANDAR
JANE
That’s part of the power of it.
MANDAR
These six people did not know each other. I did not know them. So we were all together as pilgrims. My editor, when she looked at the footage and she said, “Hey, where’s the footage about you?” I said, “Footage about me.” Because the only instruction I used to give my film crew is don’t film me. All my bit is in her living room. So she said, “No, without your story, there is no other story. It’s your story, why you are doing this. Who are these people? And that weaves everything together.”
Innovative workshops bringing together perpetrators and victims of violence
I’ve read a number of things about you, so my sources are not very well separated, but I understand there were people who saw the film and because of that, they brought you, or you were already in Los Angeles and you did some innovative workshops there. And you brought together law officials, policemen, and were they policemen that were on the street or executives and you brought them in with gang members or ex-gang members? Can you talk about that a little bit?
MANDAR
So two things happened when the film was produced. Number one, I could not work at Shell anymore. So I left my day job and I started thinking about the business of violence. So violence exists in the world in different forms. Could be girl trafficking, child trafficking, drugs, wars, all of these violence types have a business model. Somebody is making money, and that is why the business is growing. So I started thinking about can there be a business model to promoting peace and happiness and compassion because that’s the only way that business will also thrive if there is a business model.
I took my film for screenings in the gangs of Chicago, Southside of Chicago, in prisons, in juvenile halls, and in communities where you can say there is a lot of darkness. There’s a lot of darkness. When these film screenings happened, people used to ask me, “When is my next trip?” So I brought four trips to India before the pandemic, and this time I mindfully chose the pilgrims. So now it has to be a leader of some influence so that when they come back, they can do some implementation work.
So mayors of the United States came with me, police chiefs came with me, leaders of gangs came with me, school leaders came with me. So it was my way of looking at my country through the eyes of these pilgrims. So that was a very different experience for me as a tour guide, but holding the space for transformative leadership.
JANE
Mandar, you said leaders of gangs. Were they active gang members who came or were they-
MANDAR
We will never know that answer.
JANE
They’re not going to advertise that, I guess.
MANDAR
And what I have learned now by actively working with former gang members, incarcerated men and women is you can’t really leave a gang just because you want to leave a gang. Gang is a group of people that I would say love each other. The title is a gang, but they’re actually a good group of people, friends, I could say, that love each other, that care for each other. So one such trip that I took, Jane, I had 34 pilgrims, 17 police officers from different police departments and 17 Black and brown people from different communities across the United States.
It was a mind-blowing experience for me. The Los Angeles police chief, the chief of police, had also watched my film. And he called me one day and I got a call from the community relations division of the Los Angeles Police Department. He said to me, “Would you like to premiere your film in Hollywood?” And I said, “Yeah, sure.” He said, “I would like to know how you can help us because the way you brought these people together in India, we cannot send all the gang members to India with you.
Bringing India to Los Angeles
Can you bring India to Los Angeles?” That was his ask. That was the reason why we spoke.
JANE
Very interesting.
MANDAR
And that is where I feel… Because I had done that kind of change-making work inside Shell. You can do all kinds of change making, but finally you need an air cover. You need a leader that gets it and that allows you to play, right? That’s the-
JANE
You call it air cover.
Air cover
Air cover. You need that air cover so that you can play without being worried about your job. Because when you are playing, when you’re doing innovative work, because it’s bold, nobody has done it. There can be mistakes, right? There can be errors, sometimes even blunders. So if you don’t have that air cover, we will not put the risk in doing that experiment because at the end of the year, you don’t need a slap on your wrist and say, “Hey, you made a mistake.” So that’s what I call air cover.
We need that protection to go do something. So that is what I felt in this chief of police. And we went, we did this premiere screening, 450 people showed up in that screening at Paramount Studios. I made the cops and the community members hold hands and pray for each other at the end of the screening. I led a meditation, and it was just an amazing unfolding. It was just an unfolding. And the community members actually did not let me go back to Houston where I used to live. So I stayed back in LA for one week.
And they hosted another screening in the community of South Central Los Angeles. That is where the idea that you saw the work that I did was put a seed. I put a seed in that second screening is, “Guys, do you want to be the change or do you want to be in that traumatized environment for your life?” Somebody has to step out just like Dr. King did. And I can train you on how to say trauma stops with me. Because my understanding of violence, especially gang violence, is, “I murdered you because your brother murdered my uncle and whatever.
Trauma stops with me
Your sister looked at my sister and they had a fight.” Whatever, it’s a perpetuating impact of trauma, and somebody has to say, “Trauma stops with me. It doesn’t go beyond me.” So that is the program that I offered to the community members. And without their knowledge, I actually did the same pitch to the Los Angeles Police Department in the precinct. And I said to the officers that policing in these neighborhoods cannot be easy. It is involving a lot of trauma, secondary trauma maybe. It has many ripple effects on the life of an officer.
So would you like to join a workshop on healing yourself? And so I brought these two different groups, and then I brought the third group. I went to a local school, I went to the elementary school in South Central Los Angeles. And I told the principal of the school that your community has trauma. The kids that come to your school have to have trauma. Can you allow me to host this workshop in your school and allow six or seven parents and teachers to join? She said yes. So that is where this first unfolding happened.
It’s perhaps the first time in American history that gang members, police officers, victims of gang violence are coming together in the spirit of healing themselves through breath work, yoga, meditation practices. And the second step is, can I train you as an ambassador of peace?
JANE
That’s what I wanted to ask you about, what the next step would be.
Can you sell peace?
I created a eight-week program, and at the end of six weeks after doing a lot of this breath work, meditation work, mural paintings, discussions. At the end of six weeks, nobody had missed a class. Not a single person missed a class. So I asked them, “Was it a good use of your time?” And yes, everybody said it was a good use of their time. I said, “Who has sold drugs?” Many people raised their hand. So I said, “Guys, that means you know the art of selling. Can you help me sell peace? Whatever I’ve shared with you, if this was part of your elementary school knowledge, wisdom, teachings, life would’ve been different, wouldn’t it?
Can you now become a teacher? Can you become an ambassador?” So that was the next two weeks of training a certification where I trained… Again, everybody came to those two weeks, and that’s the video that we gave medals of honor to these people, certificates, the chief of police came. We got some prime time media coverage that day. I won’t forget that day. The day changed my life. I did not come to the United States for doing that. I came for graduate school as a petroleum engineer. But the universe takes you places where you are needed.
Many people now in India asked me, “Weren’t you scared of these gang members?” And I said, “Not even 1%. That thought even didn’t come to me.” I used to go with yoga mats at the middle of 9 P.M.-10 P.M. returning back, stopping at Taco Bells, and this neighborhood is not a very safe neighborhood. So while teaching this workshop, I have heard gunshots. I have seen many things, but I did not have any fear.
Sustainable peace means inner peace and personal transformation
Something you talk about that I wanted to ask you about. You’ve touched on it already a little bit because you talk about the two different sides, the perpetrators of violence and the victims of violence. And you have already answered my question about that, but that leads me to something that you either wrote or I read about you where the subject is sustainable peace. Because peace is not a question of, “Okay, everything is fine now. No more violence. Sounds good.”
But the idea of sustainable peace means that, well, what is said here in the article that I read is that it’s common to consider external factors as means of sustaining peace. Things like civic developments and education and things like that versus internal resolutions that can make peace sustainable.
MANDAR
I mean, it has been my experience that unless there is healing and transformation within an individual, that triggers are everywhere. That can trigger that trauma, that can trigger that behavior. So no matter how much people say that, “I will be good from tomorrow,” or “I won’t be rude tomorrow.” It can even apply to behaviors like, “Okay, I’m giving up smoking.” That there are triggers enough that provoke you to go back to your original place of preference.
So that’s where I was coming from in writing that blog is most of the western concepts of peace building, they are important that there should be no corruption, there should be systems in place, there should be access, there should be equity. But they ignore the human factor that we are all born different. We are different from each other. We are human, but we are different. By that, what I mean is if somebody comes and blames you, the way you will react to it or respond to it will be different from the way I would respond or react to it.
And that is because we have not paid enough attention to training our inner complex. And that is what I mean by inner peace is how do I bring peace on a daily basis? How do I invoke that peace system in our nervous system? There are two aspects, right? The flight or fight system where people, “Hey, there’s a tiger, there’s a rope, there’s a snake, wake up.” That is what we have trained ourselves is panic, fear. But there is also another part of the nervous system, you can call it the peace system that invokes from within and says, “Jane, relax. It’s okay.” That training is what is missing today in the world.
JANE
Do you find certain cultures or countries, do you find them quite different in the way they react and handle violence? I know it requires… I don’t want necessarily a very specific answer, but do you see differences? I mean, the United States, we all see the gun violence every day. Every day. It’s unbelievable. And I don’t live in the United States. I haven’t lived there now for 50 years. I’ve been in France, but I’m American French and I still identify with America very much, and I see certain things on the news that just astounded me that it continues to be allowed to happen.
And I personally think the gun policy in the United States has a lot to do with it. Gun policy in France is very different. That’s my only two cultural experiences. I have truly lived that I can talk from personal experience, but I saw somewhere that you wrote, it’s not a question. The gun violence, you don’t deny it, but you simply are saying that that’s not the real problem. Do you believe that?
Peace education is missing in schools
Yes, completely. I believe that completely. That the training that is missing in all kinds of educational programs, now I’m talking about engineering education, MBA education, police trainings. All different types of education. The missing link is how does one healthily deal with managing emotions? Let’s take an example of a police officer, and these are brave human beings. This is a brave job. It’s not an easy job. They come to the force to serve. They want to serve their community. They want better safety, better well-being for the neighborhoods.
That’s why they are serving. This first step itself is an act of bravery. They are brave individuals in this role because of whatever system of their own force, the city politics, or it could be violence outside or it could even be violence in their own home. Maybe they have a relationship crisis. Whatever these pressures are, there is a coping point for every individual. Up to a certain point people can say, “Okay, I can take it. It’s okay. It’ll pass.” When that pressure point is crossed, that is where the negative emotion makes a slave out of you.
You may speak some bad words, you may use your hands to do some action. And that is where we have not been trained on how to handle anger, how to handle frustration or depression or anxiety. That training is the missing link between a good police officer and an average police officer, a good nurse and an average nurse, a good leader and an average leader.
JANE
Do you think Mandar, can that start with children in school? Is there a way that education can be changed or it can include something, and I’m not thinking just meditation. I’m thinking something that is interpreted as a subject of study in schools with very young children.
Creating a culture of peace
It has to. I think that is where organizations, city governments, even the UNESCO need to think about, “Okay, how do you create a culture of peace, a mindset of peace from the very beginning?” If you ask a person in a school, whatever, eighth grade or 10th grade high school, “Hey, how many friends do you have?” We’ll count on our fingers. That’s horrible. If you are not able to give this child the tools and wisdom to be friendly with the whole class, how do we expect this person to go out there and be friendly with the whole world?
JANE
Very good point. What about younger children? What about six years old, seven years old, when they’re just sort of beginning to enter the society that we’ve created?
MANDAR
Actually, even younger, two, three year olds are in the world now with these gadgets. They know everything about the world. No, I think you bring up a good point. This is very important. Very important. And that is where the focus of the UN group that I’m privileged to be part of which is looking at how do you invite the private sector to invest in youth led peace building? How can we train the youth to solve conflict, to learn how to agree to disagree? When you become an elderly person, then you can say, “Come on, it’s okay. Life will teach you. Relax.”
Do you want to wait until you become this wise adult or does this maturity, this wisdom need to be taught in the classrooms? That peace building needs to be redefined? It’s not just peace building is valuable in conflict regions in the world, but perhaps in every home. I think that is where the rewiring needs to start off. Looking at violence that we create even in our own mind, thinking bad about somebody. So that is where I feel like as a futurist, which I put you in that bucket of the futurist. This is the future we need to co-create, which has the culture of peace ingrained in the education of every human being.
Doesn’t matter what study or field of study you are in.
Imagination allows freedom that starts in the mind
On the website, Imaginize World. I quote Chen Qiufan, the Chinese science fiction writer who was actually my first podcast guest about six or eight months ago, and he has a sentence, I haven’t got it exactly. But the idea is before you can create something and build it, you need to be able to imagine it. And in his podcast, he talks very much about imagination, and imagination is not a mental activity.
And he describes it much better than I can, how it comes from within the person. And in fact, I just finished doing a link to it. I’m going to put it on social networks because I think it’s a very, very powerful idea. If you cannot imagine something, you will not be able to build it and create it. I think that applies to the work that you’re doing.
MANDAR
I mean, see, imagination is a beautiful word by itself because it allows you freedom and that freedom starts in your mind, and it can be associated with two types of freedom. As the external world, allow me to think out of the box. But the second type of freedom is do I allow myself to think out of the box or do I judge myself every time and I judge myself because other people don’t get my idea, and I also have doubt that maybe they’re right. Maybe I’m thinking stupid things. So that is the permission you need to give yourself to be.
It’s okay to fail. It’s okay to think big even if you can’t achieve it. So that permission, checkbox, starts with you. And that is, again, where to imagine you need to have a mind that is more stress-free, more relaxed, more happy. Because if you are not happy, if you are not contented, because happiness doesn’t mean, “[inaudible 00:34 :53] I’m happy.” Contentment is a better word. Only when you are contented will you actually think and imagine about somebody else. A beautiful world.
So that is again, the link that I was referring to. It’s a missing link, is how do you become friendly with the whole world? People talk about sustainable development that, “Okay, oh, I’m going to take care of the nature, the rivers, the planets, the animals.” But if there is no sense of belonging from your heart, “I care for the world,” at that level of caring. Otherwise, it’s just a checkbox. And there are many leaders in this checkbox world.
A business case for peace
I was just going to say in the work that you have written about and talked about building business case for peace, one of my questions to you was how do you build a true business case for peace without it coming across as greenwashing? Do you understand what I mean? The organization, the big enterprise who conducts certain activities can be doing it just to talk about the fact that they’re doing it and not really making changes in their business activities, not changing the purpose of what they’re doing. I think you’ve worked on that topic.
MANDAR
It is my passion these days. The rewiring process needs to start at the level of the individual, at the level of the community, at the level of the organization, and that requires the recalibration of the inner purpose and the outer purpose. So in the purpose innovation lab that I facilitate. Unless as a leader, you are recalibrating the purpose of why you became a police officer or a nurse or a CEO every day on a daily basis, because that purpose should not come from the intellect. It should come from the heart, and that requires you to recalibrate it every day and not take it for granted.
For example, we brush our teeth every day. We don’t say, “Okay, I brushed it yesterday.” That’s where that same analogy is for our mental hygiene. What do we do on a daily basis that resets our clock, that resets our purpose on what I want to do? How do I want to live my life? That is the inner purpose recalibration. Once that is crystal clear at this level that I’m talking, individual level, community level, organizational level, then outer purpose. You can actually imagine big, you can make a difference, you can change the world, but it needs to start within.
JANE
What do you think in general about social media? Is social media helping or is social media making things worse or is it doing both?
MANDAR
Only time will tell the real answer. The true answer. For now, I think you can’t avoid it, but you can’t get too much into it and addicted and lose your social skills. So it is called social media, but it’s robbing you of your social skills.
JANE
Good point.
MANDAR
So that’s where, again, that recalibration that…
JANE
You were talking about the kid, you asked them how many friends they have, and they only have a few friends. Previous to social media, they would’ve had a lot more friends.
MANDAR
And the same is true with the… I started a habit during the pandemic. I speak to one new person every day because the pandemic was trying to rob me of my social skill, like, “Hey, I like to talk to people, but six feet apart. Okay, what will I do?” Knock on people’s online door and say, “Hey, I want to talk to you.” That was a habit. I used to keep myself sane. That in the pandemic, I couldn’t trust the politicians. I could not trust the media. So I felt, “Okay, let me go to the change makers that I find on LinkedIn.” That same habit we have to start inculcating in our daily life is not forgetting that we are social animals, social beings, I would say.
And more contentment, more happiness and more service is how we should judge our life, not by success, another million dollars or another big car that I bought, but can we reimagine our success metrics also in how many friends do I have that really care for me? And that pandemic was that beautiful sign of truly, who cares for you? And we should not forget the people who cared for us, like our parents, our kindergarten teachers. There are so many people that played a role in what Mandar is today.
And so that is where it’s very interesting that the social media world is connecting me with all my friends that I had 30 years ago. But the sad part is we have all these WhatsApp groups, Facebook groups. People are just putting messages, happy birthday, flower, flower, flower on WhatsApp. They’re not calling and saying, “Hey, how are you? Happy birthday. Let’s go for a cake.” That’s where we have to be careful that, we think we are connected but it’s a question mark.
Wonder: from a question mark to an exclamation point
Is there anything you’d like to say, Mandar, you just ended with question mark? Is that how you’d like to end or what you think might lead us to a better future?
MANDAR
Firstly, thank you for this beautiful flow. I enjoyed this a lot. Whoever watches this, if they have any interest in visiting India, I’m based in India now, so I have restarted my journeys to India. So you’re welcome to look into that aspect for your own leadership purpose, recalibration. Second is there is a lot of violence in the world, even in your community where you live. And so don’t ignore it. Don’t be numb or desensitized by the media that you are watching. Let’s not lose our humanity. Let’s find a way to be part of bringing peace on the planet, starting with your own community.
Don’t be immune. Be part of the world on promoting peace through whatever role you have, the influence you have, whether you are a nurse, a police officer, a business manager. Finally, to end, I will say that my teacher, my spiritual teacher, my guru, he told me once that question mark is often about the negative side of things, the negative things that happen to us. We ask, “Why is this happening to me? Why do I have to go through this turbulent phase?” Wisdom is to turn the question mark into an exclamation mark, and that requires you to have that raised consciousness to go into the space of wonder, W-O-N-D-E-R.
That is where questions go away and wonder comes, imagination is activated. When you smell a rose, why the hell is the rose smelling so good today? We don’t ask that. So that ability in a leader to turn a question mark into an exclamation mark shows the maturity of that leader, shows the maturity of that person because there are so many things that you can ask questions about. So I’ll leave you with this wonder mark.
JANE
That’s wonderful. Thank you so much Mandar. This has been a great conversation and thank you very much.
