My Life Lessons from a Trip to India

last year I had the amazing opportunity to spend 10 days with my friend and his family in his hometown of ichalkaranji which is four hours southeast of Pune my best friend from childhood said itso Karachi that doesn't sound like a real place but indeed it is in fact here it is on the map although I started this channel to share with other people the insights that I gleaned from my time in India it's taking me a year to really process what happened inside of me and to articulate that externally however I finally feel ready to make this video and so let me take you to the magical land they call India so the first big lesson that I learned from my time in India is be prepared my friend wanted to brace me for the culture shock now I thought like just push me into the deep end and I'll figure out how to swim but he knew that I didn't know what I didn't know after all I wasn't exactly going for a tourist experience to ride an elephant to the Taj Mahal and take a selfie no I I was going to the real bona fide middle of nowhere no English speaking no white people for days middle of India so my friends spent literally three years on and off preparing me for this trip when we both still lived in Houston he took me to Indian meditation groups we went to Indian temples and festivals and I had my first bites of delicious authentic Indian curry he also introduced me to some of my favorite Bollywood movies like three idiots and to the popular writer chitamba gut as well as more classical figures lag the poet tagore and the philosopher krishnamurthy now I still had a ton of culture shock but thank God my friend took the time to prepare me otherwise I may have just lost my mutt so the second big Insight I had from my time in India I'll call baby on board so the first night I was in India I actually stayed in a Swanky hotel inside of the Mumbai airport we decided that Patrick would get pampered and coddled in a really nice atmosphere before he hit the open road of the Indian Interstate the next morning and as my friend drove me from the Mumbai airport to his childhood home I got to see the real India I took in scenes of people doing back-breaking work in fields of children selling Fruit by the side of the road and of men being packed in sardines in the back of work trucks I was feeling humbled and to be frank a little overwhelmed by the hard work that everyone was doing just to put food on the table but then my eye call a beautiful young woman well dressed in a colorful sorry on the back of a motorcycle a discomfort turned to Joy and curiosity I realized that the woman's husband was driving the motorcycle she was sitting in the back they were helmet free and in between them in that beautiful sorry of hers was a baby my friend saw me freaking out and he smiled and just bobbed his head and said Patrick we're fine they're fine India is fun we don't need help they don't need saving and one day at a time ever since I've tried to remember that I don't need to save anyone that everything is fine that everyone is fine even if it doesn't make sense to me and I need to quit placing my judgments on other people and the way they live their life now at this point I still haven't arrived in ital karaji so we decided to stop at my friend's eldest sister home to have a delicious homemade meal and as we enjoyed this dinner with all sorts of curries and chutneys and doll and price and you name it we had it my friend's nephew asked Patrick if you're not married and you don't live with your parents then who cooks your food well I knew that in his family eating out in restaurants was taboo and that generally the women cook for their family so I mess around with his expectations and I said well you know actually my mom cooks food for me every day and she sends it first class from North Carolina to Norway my friend's nephew bobbed and said well my mom used to Courier me food from our home to my hostel every day so it's possible you just have to ask it was an example of warm playful ribbing at cultural differences with a family that truly loved and liked being around each other I liked what I saw and I liked what I tasted and I wanted more little did I know that my life was changing and that I was having a spiritual experience alongside that semolina based sweet dish with my friend and his family and I think that's how spiritual growth happens one conversation one meal one day at a time the next lesson I'll call the giraffe in the hotel lobby it's a nice day when you wake up in India and on that first morning I woke up to the sound of birds singing and saw women on the rooftop chanting their prayers as I went down to the hotel lobby to check my email all of a sudden one of the young Hotel cleaners was standing right over me and staring at me at first I was a little taken aback but then I realized that he was just being curious after all it's not every day that someone looking like me shows up in the middle of nowhere in India it's kind of like a polar bear all of a sudden dropping down into the tropics over the next hour he brought other members of the staff over to talk with me and take pictures and in exchange they cooked me the best breakfast I've ever had in my entire life I brought color into their world and they did the same for me we were all totally engaged in our childlike creativity and curiosity and we learn from each other and gave each other positive zestful energy and I think that's how people were meant to interact we weren't made to get angry over differences instead I think we were made to learn and even Delight in our differences okay the next story I have for you is about rongoli so that first morning as I left the hotel and went over to my friend's childhood home I saw all the women in the village doing something on their front doorstep and he explained to me that it's the ancient Indian art of rongoli as they carefully spread their colored powder onto the ground the particular pattern that they were making was the mandala which represents the human relationship to the infinite unknowable spiritual realm that's all around us yet it is so hard to remember and access on a daily basis their efforts would no doubt be swept away by the wins of the day however they were attending to their daily spiritual practice with the same tender loving care as an artist preparing a painting to be immortalized in a museum and each morning they began their Rangoli again just as diligently as the day before while Rangoli might be the most visually appealing way to have a daily spiritual practice seeing these women perform these beautiful acts of worship and devotion reminded me that I need to have my own daily practice so ever since coming back from India I have developed a very specific intentional daily routine for myself that is my Rangoli now perhaps one day I'll make a video video about that daily routine but for now let's move on to the next story I have gratitude not guilt so in my work and my life I often watch Poetic about becoming who you truly are which is the tagline of this channel but in India I saw people who were breaking their backs just to meet their daily needs for example as we traveled from my friend's hometown of ichalkaranji to assist us to ashram in Goa I was quite overwhelmed with what I perceived to be daily hardships of many people that I saw on the road I watched women line up at Community Wells to fill up clay pots and carry them back home on their heads for my comfortable car seat I saw low cast Untouchables living in tents while they were harvesting sugarcane for just a rupees a day and as we neared a toll booth I saw a sweat drenched man selling strawberries in the middle of eight Lanes of traffic my friend could tell that I was getting a bit emotionally riled up and he said Patrick guilt doesn't help anybody some of these people were way more happy than anyone you'd ever meet in America because they're grateful for what they have which is their family they have their values and their priorities in line so don't look at their lives through the interpretation of American Standards because it's a whole different system here I remember that I was a guest in a foreign land and so I should probably just listen to him and heed his advice but what was I supposed to do with my guilt how was I supposed to transform it well I quickly followed through my emotional Rolodex and I came to the one Hail Mary pass that never fails and as I started to make a silent list of what I was grateful for my mind shifted from a mindset of very closed emotionally intense guilt to a more expansive realm of curiosity and all of a sudden I was asking my friend a million questions about how he could see the same situation that I was seeing but in a different way you would have kept me locked into my existing frame of reference but gratitude on the other hand expanded my understanding of the situation so ever since my trip to India I've tried to remember this moment at any time I'm feeling intense emotions that are sort of blocking me down and Skilling me under my own mindset I try to practice gratitude and remember that when I can be grateful curiosity arises I expand and I learn and grow the next lesson for my time in India I'll call Monkey Business so on that same car trip that I just told you about just as my guild was replaced with gratitude by gratitude was later replaced with joy I absolutely squealed with the light like a little kid when all of a sudden out in the wild I saw monkeys now to many people in India monkeys are a nuisance so my friend his mom and the driver all laughed hysterically at my reaction to seeing monkeys out in the wild but they appeased me and we stopped by the side of the road by beautiful waterfall overlooking a valley and I got my fill of monkeys then all of a sudden a baby monkey came up to a neighboring car and that person made the grave error of feeding him a cracker and all of a sudden monkeys converge from everywhere to that guy but my point in telling the story is that experiencing things for the first time is powerful it Sparks creativity novelty and Inspirations as a result our eyes are open and our soul is open to all sorts of New Perspectives and new ideas about who we can be and what life can be so a regular part of my life since coming back from India is trying to in some small way recreate The Wonder of that monkey business so on the way from my friend some town to the ashram and Goa I went through guilt through gratitude and their Joy but once I got to the ashram I had my very own Eat Pray Love experience we just so happened to be at the ashram the one day of the year that it was open to the public for a very auspicious celebration and Festival the worship service was in Sanskrit which is an ancient Indian language so of course I didn't understand one single word that was said as someone came up to me after the service and asked me as such and my answer was very true in that moment which was I didn't understand it with my head but I understood it with my heart he bobbed his head as if to say okay Patrick good on you you got it and we went off to a special Hall to have the best lunch of my entire life during that lunch I was introduced to all sorts of different fruits and vegetables that I had never heard of much less tasted we sat on the floor we ate with our hands and our plates were banana Leafs once again it was a day full of sensory experiences that completely overwhelmed me in the best way possible and my favorite part of the launch actually was the two people that were sitting on either side of me my friend's niece and nephew they were both college aged and they had all sorts of questions to ask me about the US and they also wanted to ask me had I ever been to Domino's which is their favorite pizza parlor I absolutely loved the conversation and the food and I just felt such a sense of love and well-being and positive vibes that I have sought to replicate in my life ever since that day a few nights later we were back in my friend's hometown of ichalkaraji and we were walking around the town late one evening trying to find a juice bar that was open all of a sudden I saw two very interesting signs right next to each other one was a swastika and the next was a rainbow flag and all I could ask my friend was um are there gay Nazis in India he smiled at me and said Patrick once again not everything can be seen scene through a western perspective he told me that the swastika was in front of a school and for India it is a centuries-old symbol of prosperity well-being and good luck the rainbow flag on the other hand was in front of a Jain Temple and he said Patrick that probably means nothing in India we just really like colors as we laughed about my cultural staff who I realized that we humans often get incorrectly upset over what we interpret to be the meaning behind other people's words and actions but ever since that day I've tried to start living more generously with my assumptions and what I mean by that is this I started asking myself the question how would my life change if I started to assume that the underlying message behind what every single person did and said was fundamentally good now that might sound a little bit Pollyanna or naive but let me tell you it has been a powerful question that is radically altered my life and created a lot of Peace so I would encourage you to try it as well now on the the last day of my inaugural trip to India my friend gave me a Sly look and said that we needed a Capstone to the trip and that would be getting a proper haircut and shave at an Indian barber shop now let me tell you it was an experience and a half as I entered the barbershop you could hear a pin drop it was as though Patrick the giraffe had left the zoo and come into the barber shop for a haircut as I sat down in the chair the barber was fixed and asked my friend emirati what in the world am I supposed to do with hair this thin and trust me he was not the only person in that Barbershop who had questions it seemed as though every single guy in that Barbershop converged around our chair and started asking my friend questions at rapid fire about this giraffe that was sitting in this chair getting a haircut and as my friend played TV show host the barber finally struggled through cutting my hair and then he took out a razor blade and gave me a shave so close that I thought he was going to Nick my jugular then he massaged my head with the fury of a thousand Lions I thought thought that I was gonna die but afterward there was the most amazing sense of peace from that massage now as my friend had his turn in the barber's chair I headed off to a food truck nearby and got some samosas thankful that I still had my neck intact as I came back in the waiting room and sat down to eat my samosas I could see all the guys in the barbershop looking at me curiously the same way I look at a giraffe in the zoo eating banana leaves I could hear them thinking Hmm it's a draft one who somehow twist his arm and eat food from the side of his head and what exactly does he hide in those chubby cheeks and his the level of curiosity in that Barbershop was off the charts and I loved it I could tell that we were all becoming more Curious and open-minded as a result of this happy exchange and I left the barber shop with a fresh haircut and a fresh attitude and I've decided ever since that day that when a giraffe shows up in my barber shop that I'll be just as curious and inviting and welcoming to them as those guys were to me now a few days after I left India returned back to low I was invited to a very special Festival of holy holy celebrates the arrival of spring and the blossoming of love and people celebrate it by meeting with friends and family and laughing as they playfully throw powdered color on one another as an American living in Norway who was going to an Indian festival I was a little insecure that I might feel out of place but all of that was nonsense everyone welcomed me with open arms and we smiled laughed and danced to live music and somehow as the powder covered our clothes as though we were a collective Jackson Pollock painting the god in each of us emerged and once again the happiness and creativity and Novelty of this holy Festival opened me up to all sorts of Good Feelings that I've tried to replicate ever since that day now I know this video was a little bit different than my normal coaching videos but I wanted to share with you about my time in India because I personally believe that actually going out and having experiences is much more powerful than any obstep framework or how-to book or even trusted advisor or coach after all the spiritual realm that helps us become who we truly are can't really be understood with the head as much as it needs to be experienced with the heart and the way that my heart was transformed from my time in India is really impossible to put into words but I hope that I gave you at least one percent of this powerful amazing experience that I got to have

Channel: Patrick Parker

Views: 718,603

Keywords: becoming who you truly are, self actualization, psychology, coaching, leadership, public speaking, patrick parker, carl jung, oslo, norway, india, united states, houston, texas, executive coach, ichalkaranji, ichulkurunji, indian village, samosa, idli, semolina, indian barber shop, indian hotel, indian monkeys, ashram, hindu, festival of holi, indian airport, indian interstae, indian interstate

Id: QndgwMr9I7c

Length: 16min 50sec (1010 seconds)

Published: Wed May 31 2023