Hyderabad: Integrate gratitude in life

Hyderabad: If you thought you were attending a rock concert, you could be forgiven. With the rah rah crowd, Prashant Jain entered the Karvy Kanopy at the Hyderabad Literary Festival to huge applause and tumult.

Prashant who?
For someone who was diagnosed as clinically depressed, for someone who tried to commit suicide not once but twice, Prashant Jain surely has come a long way.

Rewind back to 1999.  Prashant was on a high, having sold his first company to a JPMorgan-backed outfit.  Instantly, he was transformed to a millionaire. You would expect that the run of success would continue, wouldn’t you?  Not so.  Over the next eight years, Prashant was depressed, and tried to end his life.

What happened next is the stuff of legend.  He experimented with reading self-help books, attending workshops, tried all manner of psychometric tests, and eventually started on a path of spirituality.

Over the next few years, he worked it out. He replaced complaining and carping with a realisation that he was actually far better off than others - and he started to be grateful for it. Grateful for the opportunities, grateful for past success, and grateful for the people in his life. He replaced everything with an attitude of gratitude.  

The much maligned G word — gratitude — now directs almost everything in his life. So significant was the shift in his approach that it showed in everything he did - he was running four companies, with a turnover in millions, and had several friends.

Is this a unique story?  Not so, says Prashant. You too can do it.  And to assist you, he has developed a complete package - a book, wristbands and other paraphernalia to keep you on the path.  He wants to help you, indeed walk with you, hold your hand to take you from the selfie-focused-virtual-admiration world into a land of lasting peace and happiness.

So, what can you expect to learn from him and his book?  To begin, he says that one must stop complaining.  Not only does it shift the focus to someone, it rewires your brain for additional complaints!  But once you are past that, being grateful for what you have, who you are with, and what is open to you will bring you to a new dawn — a world of serene calm, prosperity and contentment.  

Prashant’s book is full of to-dos, for those who are checklist-focused. During his speech, he mentioned that there are 45 ways in which you can develop this attitude- some of them are very straightforward : at work, send thank you and appreciation notes; at home, rather than overindulge your child, hold back to create an appreciation for what they already have and so on.  

How does gratitude integrate with life?  With a deft visual, and an easy acronym, Prashant points to the 6-A formula:  the result is enhanced awareness, increased attention, more appreciation, a propensity for action, greater acceptance and a significant increase in actualisation. 

In an instant demonstration of his attitude of gratitude, Prashant asked two people to release his book — his teacher Nitya Shanthi and his daughter, Anamika.  He was grateful to these two for teaching him the many things he has learnt, and now chooses to pass on. 

The book is an easy read - but use it like a manual to work through it. At Rs 295, it won’t pinch. Who knows, you may be grateful for the opportunity to spend the money to buy it!  And then reap the bounty of gratitude!

Arvind Acharya is a management consultant in New York. He is working on a film on the life of Princess Niloufer. He can be reached at arvindach@ gmail.com.