From Change to Transformation and Beyond: Maintaining Balance on the Fast Track of Life

From Change to Transformation

&

Beyond

Maintaining Balance On The Fast Track

A Personal Guide for Aspiring Individuals

Om Prakash, PhD, PC

Corporate Performance Coach

Clinical Psychologist

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

From Change to Transformation & Beyond

Maintaining Balance On The Fast Track

Copyright © 2012 by Om Prakash, PhD, PC

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4697-4657-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4697-4658-6 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4697-4659-3 (dj)

iUniverse rev. date: 4/25/2012

Contents

Acknowledgments

About Om Prakash, PhD

Preface

Overview

I: Discover the Mind-set of Oneness

Chapter 1 Explore the Impact of Transformational Change

Chapter 2 Become One with Yourself

Chapter 3 Be in the Moment

II: Remove the Roadblocks

Chapter 4 Overcome the Mind Monsters: The Gremlins

Chapter 5 Manage the Demands of Daily Life

Chapter 6 Deal with Workplace Stress: Establish Work and Life Balance

III: Prepare to Transform Your Life

Chapter 7 Light the Spark of Innovation

Chapter 8 Explore Wisdom Beyond Experience: Sechel

Chapter 9 Evoke the Power of Mindfulness

Chapter 10 Acquire Transformational Skills

IV: Transform Your Vision into a Roadmap to Success

Chapter 11 Create an Extraordinary Life

Chapter 12 Empower Yourself

V: Journey Beyond

Chapter 13 Attain a Balanced Fulfilled Life

Chapter 14 Observe the Guideposts on the Pathway

Chapter 15 Rise to Meet the Challenge

Appendices

Appendix I Meditation as an Evolutionary Process: A Theoretical Formulation

Appendix II Sample Goal Plans

Appendix III Apprecation for Support

References

Endnotes

Synopsis

All of us have the potential to find balance within ourselves by synthesizing the diverse elements in our lives. We can generate this potential by making transformational changes that enable us to discipline our responses to challenges in our lives. Changes are adaptive, but in moments of reflection they can become transformative and serve as a source of motivation and inspiration.

The self-help approach outlined in this book is based on universal spiritual principles, which help create lifestyle changes that are based on the laws of nature. The book’s purpose is to empower readers to attain and maintain balance while racing on the fast track of life by making transformational changes.

Those who are motivated to succeed can use this book’s spiritual approach as a guide to tapping into their inner resources so that they can realize their dreams.

This is a remarkable book about practical steps for making transformative changes and made all the more remarkable by the amazing example of its author who, as I write, is 86, in superb health, meditating twice a day, doing yoga, carrying on both his coaching and psychology practices and...Writing books! I heartily recommend it.

Ben Dean, Ph.D., MCC,

Founder Mentor Coach

From his involvement in Gandhi’s freedom movement to his comments on contemporary issues of technology and balance Om Prakash shares his own journey of transformation. His approach will help the reader create positive life changes based on spiritual principles and the laws of nature.

Judy Feld Past President,

International Coach Federation

author of Smart Match Alliances CoachNet.com

The coaching process enables clients to experience profound transformation change. In his insightful book, From Change to Transformation & Beyond: A Personal Guide for Aspiring Individuals Dr. Prakash translates the powerful coaching experience into a helpful written guide that enables readers to discover their true life purpose and leverage universal spiritual principles for achieving their full potential and enjoying newfound levels of success, balance and connection.

Michelle Schubnel

President and Head Coach

CoachAndGrowRich.com

Inspiring, practical and applicable, Dr. Prakash has captured the key universal spiritual principles that will allow each of us make the changes necessary to live our lives to the fullest and to craft the future we long to create.

Ginger Cockerham, Master Certified Coach

Author and executive business coach

To all my patients and coaching

clients I have had the privilege of serving

throughout the thirty-five years of my practice.

List of Selected Interviews and Presentations

With photo displays that appear in the body of the book

Interviews

Presentations

Outdoor Presentations

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to my clients and patients for allowing me to share their stories of our work together and the impact the transformational changes they made had in their lives, and which enabled them to discover their maximum potential for success.

My inspiration to write this book originated ten years ago, growing from the knowledge and guidance I received from my life coaches, Ben Dean, PhD, founder of Mentor Coach, LLC, and his associate, Anne Durand. Later I received guidance from Judy Feld, the past president of International Coach Federation; and from a distinguished Stephen Covey coach, Wade Lindstorm, a remarkable individual who showed me, by his own example, the dynamic power of possibility thinking. I am grateful for his generosity in letting me share the story of his life as a source of inspiration to all of us.

I wish to extend a special note of gratitude to Megan Feldman, the former Dallas Observer staff writer and reporter, for helping me sow the seeds of this work through interviewing me. We met on a few different occasions over the course of several months, for a total of nine hours. Her article about my work as a life coach was published in a special edition, The Best of Dallas, on September 24, 2009. The link to this article appears in the reference section of the book. Megan is an award-winning writer and at present teaches journalism and public relations at Metropolitan State College of Denver. She began her career in Central America, writing for US newspapers such as the Miami Herald and the San Francisco Chronicle.

I am thankful to David Margulies, Barry Rogers, and Katherine Quintero of Margulies Communications Group in Dallas, for encouraging me to put down my thoughts relating to the experiences I have had, for the opportunity to learn from thirty-five years of practice, and for their continued support throughout the entire project.

My thanks go to John Gempel for his editing skills in giving this manuscript a presentable format, and iUniverse publishers for making this book an attractive presentation. I also wish to acknowledge the help I received from Carolyn Mauzy, the reference librarian at the University of Dallas in Irving. She was gracious in spending a considerable amount of time helping me put together the web references for this book.

I am thankful for the technical and computer expertise of Scot Power, one of my patients. Scot helped me to manage the information and organize it into a presentable book form. I am also grateful for the technical assistance I received from two of my coaching clients, Michael McGrath and David Fiegenschue, both design experts. My thanks go to another one my coaching clients, Jeremy Liebbe, detective sergeant of Dallas ISD, for sharing his life plan with us.

I am grateful to Dr. Ted Krejci, my friend, physical fitness trainer, and chiropractor, for putting together a muscle-toning exercise program for me and allowing me to share it with my readers.

I also appreciate the opportunities to interview some of the elite local journalists and thank the local institutions in giving me access to their facilities in making presentations and sharing my experiences with my audience. Appreciation for this support is listed in Appendix III.

I wish to acknowledge the generosity of the authors who kindly gave me permission to quote their work in this book. Contact information for these authors is presented in the footnotes.

I am delighted to acknowledge the support and unconditional regard I have always received from my younger brother, Shakti Walia. His encouragement and support have kept me going through the ups and downs of my life.

I am proud to acknowledge the feedback and encouragement I received from my son, Siddharth Prakash, MD, PhD, assistant professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and my daughter-in-law, Ignatia Van Den Veyver, MD, professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

The secret to my ability to keep this effort going until completion resides in the steady support of my wife, Georgia Prakash, throughout the forty-five years of our marriage. I shall always remain grateful to her for her loving care.

About Om Prakash, PhD

This book evolved out of Dr. Prakash’s extensive experience, knowledge, and understanding of human behavior, which he gained by helping his coaching clients and his patients create transformative changes in their lives, changes that helped them attain their maximum potential for success.

As a teenager, Dr. Prakash served as a community organizer in the freedom movement in India. The transformative moment he experienced then turned into a passion for service to others and continues to inspire him to this day.

In order to pursue his mission of serving others, he gave up his political aspirations and earned a masters degree in psychology from the National Muslim University in India. Later, he came to the United States for further education and earned another masters degree, this one in education and child development from the University of Minnesota. Subsequently, he received a doctoral degree in clinical psychology from the University of Montana.

Dr. Prakash has been in private practice of clinical psychology for the last thirty-five years. About ten years ago, after receiving extensive training in mentor coaching, he added life-coaching services to his practice.

At this time, Dr. Prakash, at age eighty-five, is in excellent health, maintains his psychology and coaching practices, and is actively involved in helping others, the ongoing mission of his life.

Currently, Dr. Prakash lives with his wife in Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. They have one son, who lives with his wife and two children in Houston, Texas.

Contact Information:

Om Prakash, PhD, PC

800 W Airport Freeway

Suite 1100

Irving, TX 75062

E-mail: prakash@airmail.net

Web: CoachPrakash.com

Voice: 972-445-4158

Cell: 469-360-3547

© Copyright 2012, Om Prakash, PhD, PC

Dr. Prakash on WFAA, Channel 8: Aging in America segment.

Shelly Slater,¹ reporter and anchor of ABC affiliate Channel 8, interviewed Dr. Prakash as a part of her series on aging in America, and asked about his views on graceful aging and how meditation can play a part in it. She also asked him how his work in Gandhi’s freedom movement influenced his decision to become a community organizer and, later, a health-care provider. She experienced meditation during this presentation.

Preface

All of us have the potential to find balance within ourselves by synthesizing the diverse elements in our lives. We can generate this potential by making transformational changes that enable us to discipline our responses to challenges in our lives. Changes are adaptive, but in moments of reflection they can become transformative and serve as a source of motivation and inspiration to attain and maintain balance in our lives.

A Personal Transformational Experience

I would like to share with you an experience I had in my quest for self-discovery, which led me to embark on the journey of transformation and generated momentum toward establishing balance in my life.

When I was a student at the University of Delhi, the capital city of India, I became involved in Mohandas Gandhi’s² Quit India Movement. The Quit India Movement mobilized citizens to get involved in the struggle for freedom using nonviolent agitation techniques. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.³ used similar strategies in this country to free his people from the bondage of discrimination. It is an obscure fact of history that before Dr. King started his movement, he traveled to India to learn about Gandhian techniques of nonviolent agitation.

As a community organizer, I helped to prepare communities for the mass migration of populations when freedom came. The movement lasted for four years, until India gained its freedom from the British. Toward the end of this time, I was imprisoned by the British for my activities as a freedom worker.

As the movement had picked up steam, I became increasingly involved and at times would not go home for days. This was partly because of the urgency of the situation, and partly because the police were looking for me as a troublemaker and agitator. In the early part of 1947, when my turn came to agitate openly, I was addressing a throng of five hundred people. The police raided the rally and whisked me away. I was imprisoned for six months and released only a few months before the dawn of freedom in India.

While in prison, I had the opportunity to think about my future. I had learned a simple meditation technique from my mentor, the leader of our group. After one of my meditation sessions, I developed an inner awareness of a new vision of my future. The outlines of this vision started to emerge as the time of my release from prison neared. I knew then that I was going to devote my life to helping others. This transformation had a life-changing impact on me and has served as a guidepost in my life ever since.

Uniqueness of Transformational Approach to Self-Help

I have written this book to share with you the experiences I have had in my journey toward transformation and the ultimate goal of attaining balance. The approach outlined in this book is unique because it is based on universal spiritual principles, which will help you create lifestyle changes based on the laws of nature.

Since changes are inevitable, they can be adaptive. In moments of reflection, they can transform into lifestyle changes that lead to balance in your life. In order to accomplish this goal, transformational approach enables you to:

• Bring spirituality into the day-by-day affairs of your life by incorporating belief in the unity of all living beings and that we are all connected with one another.

• Establish Oneness within yourself by bringing into alignment the internal capabilities of thoughts and feelings and the external capabilities of words and action, thereby starting the process of change.

• Learn to create present-moment inner awareness through the practice of mindfulness meditation, in order to capture the moment of reflection in making transformational changes.

• Develop an understanding of the process involved in the evolution of change into transformation, and how transformation produces lifelong changes.

• Enable you to tame your gremlins, the mind monsters that sabotage your creativity, and help you to learn techniques to overcome your personal and work-related stress.

• Develop a passion for creative expression through possibility thinking and explore the wisdom beyond experience to overcome the assumptions that stifle your creativity.

• Help to create a life-goal plan that incorporates transformative changes you would like to make in your journey toward self-discovery.

• Empower you to formulate and execute self-discipline strategies, and teach you to live by the compass rather than a clock.

• Enable you to incorporate Gandhi’s philosophy of detached action in your efforts to establish discipline in your life.

• Finally, help you to attain balance in your fast moving life by incorporating the concepts of wisdom beyond experience, connectedness, integration, centering, and self-fulfillment.

This outline of transformational self-help is a spiritually based approach and incorporates unique ideas drawn from the wisdom of all the major spiritual traditions of the world.

The Evolution of the Self-Help Movement in the United States

The uniqueness of this transformational approach to self-help is supported by a series of developments in the evolution of the self-help movement in the United States.

This evolution started with Benjamin Franklin⁴ who credited twelve virtues for turning his life around, from being an abject failure up until he was twenty-nine and then transforming his genius to become one of the Founding Fathers of a great nation.

During the early nineteen hundreds, as corporate America ushered in a surge of tremendous economic growth, a quickened lifestyle emerged. The pioneers of the evolving self-help movement rose to the occasion to meet this challenge:

• In his bestselling book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie⁵ advocated that by changing our reactions to others, we can influence their behavior. That meant that self-help involved learning personal, social, and management skills. This shift in the approach to self-help implied that Franklin’s value, or spiritual, orientation, was becoming secondary. It eventually faded away, as later developments suggest.

• As the engine of economic growth continued to produce more and more prosperity and life became fast and furious, the concept of time management emerged to help people deal with the challenges of day to day life. Charles Hobbs⁶ ushered in this shift in orientation with his excellent book, Time Power. To be productive, one must learn to manage time efficiently, as suggested by the epigram, Time is money.

• With the technology revolution in the twenty-first century, with its superfast computers and smart phones, task orientation emerged as a way of keeping up with the demands of this swiftly moving world. With task orientation came list making. David Allen⁷ provided the tools for dealing with this new trend in his book, Getting Things Done.

• A shift toward spirituality surfaced in the work of Rosamund and Benjamin Zander.⁸ In their widely acclaimed book, The Art of Possibility, they explored personal and professional transformation through innovation and possibility thinking.

• In his bestselling book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey also emphasized a shift toward spirituality. He wrote that a person must strive to live by the compass rather than by the clock; and he included in his task planning personal, social, and spiritual components, along with vision, values, and goals in his daily planning system.

• Mindful awareness and pre-sensing as crucial elements of the transformative experience began to appear in the work of young life coaches and corporate consultants, such as Griffiths (cited in chap. 7). She wrote her MBA thesis for the Sloan School of Management at MIT, ushering spirituality into the business world.

The theme of transformation as it relates to change is the next step in exploring the spirituality-based approach in the self-help movement. This book presents a spiritually-based approach to self-help, incorporating the concept of transformational change leading to Oneness.

Concluding Comment

Although the material in this book can be helpful in enhancing the large realm of personal development, it will be specifically helpful to those who are motivated to realize their dreams and who wish to discover their potential for success by tapping into their inner resources through this spiritual approach.

I stand at the crossroads of your life and ask, Where are you going? You may ignore me, frown at me, or tell me it’s none of my business, but it is time for you to seek the answer to this crucial