Great Storytelling Network Newsletter – 22 February 2017

I am sorry that I couldn’t send out the newsletter two weeks ago. I’d just returned from an overseas trip and needed sleep. Speaking of sleep, Rohi’s article this week is just about that and a morning ritual. We also have other stories, which I hope you’ll enjoy.

Happy storytelling.
Aneeta Sundararaj

• Storytelling for Sales: Learn effective storytelling techniques to succeed in your next sales meeting

On 27 February 2002, 59 people in a train returning from Ayodhya to Ahmedabad were burned to death in Gujarat. Subsequently, there were riots all over Gujarat. In all, close to 900 people died and more than 2,500 were injured. For the next 12 years, almost everyone lay the blame for these riots squarely at the feet of Gujarat’s Chief Minister, Narendra Modi. He has been neither formally charged nor convicted for any of these alleged offences.

More than that, since 2002, whatever success he achieved as Gujarat’s Chief Minister became secondary to a concerted effort by the media and public to demonise him. In fact, in a speech on 1 December 2007, Sonia Gandhi went so far as to suggest that Modi was ‘maut ke saudagar’ (the merchant of death); human rights activists like Shabnam Hashmi made parallels between Modi and Hitler; and, celebrated writers like Arundhati Roy criticised him in spite of evidence of false facts and obvious success.

All this information is available in a political biography called, ‘Narendra Modi: A Political Biography’ by Andy Marino. His research included studying voluminous documents and having interviews with Modi and those around him.

How did Modi react to all this ‘Modi-bashing’? Apparently, Modi decided early on to, ‘let the media do its work: there will be no confrontation.’ Nonetheless, the timing of the publication of this book (the eBook format was published just before Modi became Prime Minister of India last year) suggests that it’s Modi’s attempt, through Marino, to tell his side of the story.

To read more, please click here.

About 12 years ago, I was in the plush office of the legal firm that I worked for. In front of me was my client. With the passage of time, I cannot recall all his facial features. What I can remember is that he was Indian (probably Ceylonese) and since I can’t remember his name, let’s just call him Dr. Lingam. He was well dressed in a beige coloured suit with a yellow necktie. I think he had a moustache. We were discussing a medico-legal case where he was being sued. I only remember that he was a neurosurgeon because of the story I’m about to tell.

“Dr. Lingam,” I put my pen down and relaxed into my chair. We had just concluded discussing what his defence was to a claim for medical negligence. He had rejected my advice to settle the matter out of court and was determined to defend his actions. “Can I ask you about one of your patients?”

“Y-e-s?”

“No. Don’t worry. I’m not asking you to disclose her records. I just want to know if you know her.”

“OK?”

“Her name is Molly.” I scrunched up my nose and added, “Errr… I think Molly Khoo. I think that’s her surname.”

“I sort of recall the name.”….

To read more, please click here.

“If you keep on eating unhealthy food, then no matter how many weight loss tips you follow, you are likely to retain weight and become obese. If only you start eating healthy food, you will be pleasantly surprised how easy it is to lose weight.”
Subodh Gupta

In Ayurveda, a person is considered overweight or obese when there is an abnormal or excessive accumulation of fat in his body. In most cases, there is an imbalance of the Kapha and Pitha doshas. We also believe that obesity is not dependent on how much or how little food you eat. In fact, it is the result of improper digestion or problems with your metabolism, lack of exercise and lifestyle choices.

The following case history is that of Thomas Morgan who first came to see me five years ago. When he first walked into the room, I saw the right profile of his body; not his belly or face. This was because he was so wide that he could only come through the door sideways. By the time he waddled his way to the chair and sat down, he was breathless. Seated before me was a man sweating profusely. What little hair he had was fine and sparse.

While he continued to catch his breath, I observed that his joints, especially the phalanges, wrists and ankles were swollen. He seemed to have small deposits of fat over his knuckles, elbow and feet.

When he was ready, I took a deep breath, then asked, “How is your appetite?”….

To read more please click here.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” ~Aristotle

Hal Elrod was pronounced dead after a car accident. He made an amazing recovery but then he became bankrupt. Depressed and desperate, he listened to a podcast during a morning run. The following words by Jim Rohn electrified him: “Your level of success will rarely exceed your level of personal development because success is something you attract by the person you become.”

The next morning, Elrod spent 60 minutes in silence, reading, reciting affirmations, visualizing, journaling and exercising. These six simple activities changed Elrod’s morning and his life. He shared the “miracle morning” that had turned his life around with friends who immediately felt the benefits. The Miracle Morning movement was born…

Elrod discovered that your morning routine dramatically affects your levels of success in every area of your life. Focused and productive mornings generate focused and productive days just as unfocused, and unproductive mornings generate unfocused and unproductive days. You can transform any area of your life by changing the way you wake up in the morning, even if you’re not a morning person.

One of Elrod’s most important insights is that we need as much sleep as we believe that we need. How we feel in the morning when we wake up is not based on the number of hours of sleep we get. He writes, “What I found was that it did not matter whether I got nine, eight, seven, six, five, or even just four hours of sleep. As long as I consciously decided, before bed, that I was getting the perfect amount of sleep—that the hours were going to energize my body to feel wonderful in the morning—I consistently woke feeling better than I ever had before.”…

To read more please click here.

Half the Sky by Valentine Perera

Description: The little island of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) gave the world its first democratically elected female Prime Minister. Told in the voices of a largely female ensemble cast, Half the Sky is a fictionalised version of what followed that remarkable achievement. The novel shows, in a light-hearted, yet complex way, how women are just as clever and as capable as men but are still unfairly discriminated in all walks of life. The female narrators describe explicitly how their approach and attitude to sex is quite different too.

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