Despite a challenging upbringing in a village and being the first generation for getting schooled, I was a big dreamer, remained excited about such dreams, and kept adding or editing my wish list. Dreams in the form of visualization usually came when I was alone like walking that 16 km daily for my schooling or tilling my fields or selling our field’s vegetables in Delhi’s Old Subzi Mandi before attending Hansraj College. I remember that chilly night of December when I was in my wheat fields for canal irrigation and was visualizing my traveling across the world since I had read the story of Columbus in school that day. Despite the crisis or hardships faced like the collapse of our mud house in rain or destruction of our whole crop by floods, my belief in these dreams remained intact and such challenges only fuelled my determination to excel. I thank God and innumerous people for supporting me in my various endeavors and I am listing here some interesting aspects of my joyful journey of realizing such dreams that may be of use to readers.

 

Visualizations that became a Reality

• Wonderful Travelling across World: My dream of world travel started getting realized when I got a Multiple Entry Tourist Visa for USA for me and my family for 5 years and we traveled 12,800 KM by road in USA just in 15 days using Greyhound Bus Pass costing USD 199/person. Seeing USA from Coast to Coast covering New York, Niagara Falls, Chicago, Ohio, Denver, Los Angeles, Disneyland, Hollywood, San Diego, SeaWorld, Las Vegas, Pittsburg, Washington DC, and back to NY was great learning full of thrill and adventure. While I was entitled for SOL (Staff on Leave) facility from Air India for being an employee (HR Head) of Vayudoot which was a subsidiary of Air India and later on merged with it, it had many limiting conditions and the concession was only for air travel and not for any stay or local travel. SOL was so cumbersome and local travel and stay was so costly for a salaried PSU employee that hardly my colleagues used this facility and I had no relatives of mine to support local stay abroad, but I was so keen to realize my childhood dream. I opted for a travel time when my younger son was allowed free travel by Greyhound for being less than 5 years old and the elder son was eligible for half rates. Our next trip was an even greater adventure in Europe by using EuRail Pass costing us @250 Euro/per person. We enjoyed visiting and watching snow-covered mountains, beautiful lakes, famous Monuments, Art Galleries, etc in different European countries and made good friends. While I left the Airlines job for career growth in Private Sector, later on, we kept traveling on own cost and have traveled across various countries that inhabit almost 2/3^rd of World population. The experience has been so interesting and on a few occasions, we stayed with Indian Diaspora or locals to experience their culture. I can now guide on innovative ways of traveling in optimized cost.

 

• Becoming CXO in Blue Chip Companies: After my MBA, I initially worked in a small firm and qualifying an All India Test joined BHEL and worked in a few other PSUs and my volunteering for new learning and higher responsibilities helped me become HOD at a fairly young age. My mentor Dr. PN Singh who was my role model in career inspired me to shift to Private Sector for a bigger canvas. The opportunity came while I was in my mid-30s when I joined as General Manager in Aditya Birla Group as my achievement stories in PSUs and willingness to take up challenges helped me in this transition. Strategic Turnarounds and innovative experiments in ‘Mission Excellence Through People’ fuelled my further growth by becoming the youngest Vice President of Hero Honda, where I was part of the core team that led the historical turnaround of Hero Honda. Later on, while working in CXO positions in other Blue chip Organizations I led Award-Winning Organization Transformations and Asia CHRO listed me in the Top 100 Most Talented Global HR Leaders.

 

• CTC Rise by 4000 Times: I was rightly advised that instead of chasing CTC one should focus on learning, challenge, and contributions for seeking growth in career. One of my wish lists was to get financial freedom to realize my dreams in the form of a decent salary and this advice helped me realize that it one should surely aim for good CTC but it will not come in one day as a lucky break but by working on it. I was many times headhunted for jobs without my applying and there I discussed my performance stories and how the pain areas of the organization or challenges ahead are to be addressed and rather than negotiating the salary, I mostly left the salary aspect to the employer. I joyfully accepted whatever was offered to me as CTC as I respected the comfort level of the employer. During 30 years of working with different employers, the rise in my CTC has been 4000 times while working in India. Once I immigrated to Canada and realized that Indian companies paid me more than in Canada and returned back to serve our mother India.

• Authorship of Book – After reading many books on success, I was keen to write a book with examples of Indian Achievers so that people at varying levels can relate easily and for this endeavor, I interviewed 250 Indian achieves. The First edition of my book ‘Success & Beyond’ (Mantras for Peak Performance & Fulfillment) was published in 2002 and the second edition came in 2014 and is being sold globally by Amazon. I am now planning to write its next edition in Hindi.

 

• Entrepreneurship: After fulfillment from Corporate Career, I wanted to inspire people to realize their dreams and help organizations by contributing to larger scales through training and coaching and founded a Corporate Training & Consulting firm. My endeavor was to help my clients address their pain areas or opportunities through value addition and a word to mouth publicity helped in increasing my clientele. We have so far trained more than 200,000 persons from 500 organizations including many Fortune 500 Corporations in 300+ locations through in house training or public seminars. My joy from training or coaching comes when people rediscover themselves, breakthrough ideas become passionate actions, conflicts turns into collaboration and organizations attain bigger results. Training allows me my own freedom and use of creativity.

 

• Public Speaker in Global Forums. Through Commonwealth Sponsorship, I went to Malaysia in 1997 as a delegate in the 26^th Annual IFTDO World T&D Conference, which was attended by 2000 persons from across the world. While meeting dignitaries and speakers from across the world, I started visualizing me as “Speaker’ addressing such large international forums. Thankfully I got invited as ‘Speaker’ in 5 Global Forums in different countries. It was a pleasant coincidence that in 2006, I addressed as ‘High Profile Speaker’ in a similar IFTDO event with a larger audience at the same venue in Malaysia where I added this wish in 1997.

• Media Accolades: I always looked for a beyond box approach in addressing the challenges for organizations and in finding solutions to critical problems. Visionary CEOs with whom I worked encouraged me for experimentations by showing benchmarks, challenging to excel and strategize turnarounds. While my first TV interview appeared in 1996 from Singapore by a Global News Channel, media had featured Cover Page Stories on these experiments and transformations.

 

• Leading the Professional Bodies: Once I started networking in professional bodies, I was keen to make a difference in its working. In 1996, I was invited to lead National HRD Network-Delhi as its President and convener of 6^th NHRDN Conference. Using collaborative leadership we created many milestones in HR Networking and Conferencing in India. I later on also contributed in CII, DMA, ISTD and PHDCCI by being part of various apex level committees.

 

• Working for UN Cause. Reading about UN stories and the sufferings of people, I was keen to contribute to some UN cause. On behalf of a UN agency, I was invited in 2005 to train Senior & Middle Government officials of Afghanistan – a war destroyed nation under Capability Development Program by UNAMA. My stay and work for 2 months was a great experience to understand that country and I brought many sweet memories of friendships.

 

• Inspiring the Youth: A state university had invited a Renowned Author & Motivational Speaker who quoted Rs 5 Lacs for 90 minutes session and the university being a Govt organization had its own budget limitations and a norm of paying nominal honorarium. Being the ‘Son of the Soil’ the organizer approached me and I happily accepted the invitation as it was giving me an opportunity to connect with students and opening a new arena. Applauds by 2000 participants that day inspired me for a great cause and now I frequently visit schools and colleges, small towns, far flung and tribal areas to empower our youth and help them realize their dreams. The smile and spark by these participants and listening to their success stories is one of best reward, I frequently receive from such endeavors.

 

• CSR and Tribal Areas:  NCC gave me an opportunity to participate in various camps across the country and I got inspired to work for the welfare of underprivileged and tribal areas. When I was working as Sr. VP (HR) JSPL-Raigarh, I was once travelling with Mr. Naveen Jindal from Raigarh to Delhi in his private plane. He came to know about my passion for community work and soon added CSR to my existing responsibilities. Working for the poor people in states like Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa through CSR became a great life experience for me. Our initiatives in CSR and sustainable development at JSPL were recognized by AIMA-Best CSR Award. Later on as Jury Member in CSR Leadership Awards, I got wider opportunities to understand and encourage Best CSR Practices of Corporate India. Anybody would be touched by seeing the pathetic conditions of people if one visits these tribal areas. I now contribute in whatever way I can to support students and families from these tribal areas for their education. In my opinion students from cities/towns should be encouraged to visit the countryside of Real India through some internship to see its realities and develop empathy and compassion.

Don’t kill your dream but work upon your dreams. NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) is called Science of Achievement and starts with the ‘Power of Visualization’. Dreaming with a belief is the first stage of success and an affirmation creates willingness and opportunities to work on it. For any success, you need desire, talent, efforts, and luck. While first 3 can be developed, luck is an opportunity picked up by a prepared mind and rightly combined with desired efforts. You may usually find people thanking luck for success, but they also have a belief in the saying ‘You have to create circumstances to be lucky’. Dhirubhai Ambani – Founder of Reliance who was a Petrol Pump attendant started his business with 150 Rupees once said ‘our dream has to be bigger, our ambitions to be higher, our commitment to being deeper and our efforts to be stronger’.

 

The Magic of Thinking Big’ a book by David Schwartz says that our thought process is in the hands of two Foremen.  One is Mr. Success who is in charge of producing positive thoughts and will give you the belief and reasons of doing it and finding “why you will succeed” chain of thoughts. Mr. Defeat is the other Foremen in charge of producing negative thoughts and giving justification ‘why you can’t, why you are weak and inadequate’. His specialty is the “why you will fail” chain of thoughts. Both these Foremen are obedient to your command and follow your attention immediately. You have to give a signal in your mind. The more work you give to any of them, the stronger he becomes and takes charge of thoughts. Choice is truly yours!

 

About the Author:

Dr. RS Dabas is an International Corporate Trainer, Motivational Speaker, and Organization Transformation Coach who has trained 200,000 persons in 500 organizations. He has worked in positions like Vice President / CHRO/ Chief Executive in world-class Organizations, his award-winning transformations are featured by Media as Cover Page Story and Asia CHRO listed him among Top 100 Global HR Leaders. In addition to his MBA and Ph.D. (Executive Coaching), he is certified on MBTI, NLP, and Japanese Management and received training from 20 of the World’s Top Gurus. He authored the book ‘Success & Beyond’.

Email: rsdabas@gmail.com