by Jaipal Anand

Short, stout, with a mop of unbrushed salt and pepper hair, twinkling eyes shining from behind a pair of square lensed spectacles, bushy moustache and an endearing way of deliberately lisping his words when he wants to drive home the point in a quintessential genteel and droll manner, Sukhdeepak Malvai immediately reminds you of your favorite uncle instead of one of the country's top corporate trainers. But ask him his opinions on people—his raw material—and he replies with a certain amount of impatience and wry humor: "Most people are contented with life. The capacity and the requirement to think has long since been buried under the umpteen levels of comfort that the brain provides for itself. As such, each one of us becomes a prisoner in our individual ways of thought. What we require for excellence and quality in our lives is a paradigm shift, an extrapolation of desire, a complete and radical shift in attitude. We also need a basic determination, a margin of commitment to achieve that."

Sounds simple? Down to earth? Anyone can do it? If it indeed was possible, corporate India would not be beating a path to this attitudinal trainer's doorstep. In his workshops, which deal with transformation, Malvai is one of the rare breed of trainers who sees possibilities for everyone's advancement through the structure of the human brain. He questions the legitimacy of conventional thought and wisdom if it ties you down to dissonance in your life. To go forward, in Malvai's book, is conversely, to stop. To stop and to think. To examine one's beliefs, values and actions. To strip one's psyche and examine oneself for happiness, quality and self-esteem. To examine the quality of resonance in your life. To gauge the driving forces of Your Life Inc. and to tune up your life engine with a healthy dose of commitments and more importantly, implementation.

As Ajai Kumar, AGM, Bank of Baroda, International Banking Branch, says: "Malvai gives a sense of development—perpetually forward, unstoppable." And as Sharad Talwar, Vice President (Relationships) GE puts it: "Malvai wrenches you from your established levels of comfort and goads you into accepting that life can be better. He's primarily responsible for my shift in thinking and attitudes—from the sometimes negative to the always positive."

Sukhdeepak Malvai was not always this gung ho. As a sales manager in Mico Bosch and later, Fenner V-Belts, a settled career in sales and marketing with the attendant perks and prestige that came with an MNC job in the early 1980s seemed certain. Until he bumped into somebody in Chandigarh, India, who had undergone an EST(Erhard Training Seminar) course. Malvai recalls: "I had known this person as a loner, as a person who had to be drawn out—and now here he was, breezing through life, talking about having a 'purpose', literally transformed from a zombie into dynamism personified."

This was sufficiently intriguing for Malvai to enroll for the course himself. The course was sufficient to rattle and provoke him and as he remembers, "even the water tasted a bit different the last day." The bug of 'making a difference' bit Malvai, deeply.

Malvai joined Khursheed Merchant (then Director, EST India, later Landmark India) as volunteer for two years and set himself the task of understanding, identifying and learning skills that would qualify him for his 'mission' in life—to be a Landmark corporate trainer.

He became the face of Landmark in India before quitting in 1995. Selected for a team conducting programs for the UNDP on Communication and Managing Change, Malvai visited and trained personnel in as many as 14 countries and discovered his second mission—that of transforming India into the next world superpower. Says Malvai: "When I compared India with the world, I observed that we never used our ancient knowledge. Fuse this knowledge with the latest advancements and we are the best in the world. I always preach this in my workshops. If a single participant goes back with commitment towards his community and the country at large, I hope in five years to have turned out a significant number of believers and to create a ripple effect that will catapult India to the top.

Malvai's workshops abound with insights, maxims and down-to-earth observations. It is the perfect potent cocktail that makes each workshop a pleasure to attend and yet delivers messages to the brain. Malvai stresses the fact that our desire for attitudinal transformation although hidden, is very much a part of our psyche. The results are a life, which is joyful, full of self-esteem and empowered.

Although Malvai conducts different corporate workshops, his forte is the 'Breakthrough in Effectiveness' seminar. "The key to the breakthrough lies in examining who we are. The workshop is to destructure ourselves as human beings. There is a map laid out in our brains implanted by society, our elders, our customs, traditions, understanding and experience. Destructuring ourselves means finding out what we believe in, why do we act the way we do, resolving our conflicts, exploring our expectations, marshalling our resources—something that almost no one does—since the brain establishes its own levels of comfort and is reluctant to shift. Destructuring and restructuring is the basic battle that one has to fight. Most people actually lose the battle before having begun the fight."

Through a series of games and introspection, Malvai underlines the theory that people are as powerful as they want to be. The framework for success lies in commitment and personal infrastructure. Malvai's stress on commitment is almost evangelical. He sprinkles examples with it, he garnishes anecdotes with it, liberally applies it to the most mundane of circumstances, based on the bedrock principle that with the right application and thought, success is a foregone conclusion.

"Resolves and commitment are the genesis of success," asserts Malvai. He explains that while 'The Big Game' (his euphemism for success) is hampered by circumstances, lack of time and resources, social perceptions, one's unwillingness to face reality and a host of 'becauses', 'The Big Game' is playable only if you've made up your mind to play it. Malvai urges you to think and seek possibilities instead of being stopped by circumstantial breakdowns. This is where the setting of goals comes in. Most people visualize goals and then work towards them—this is the typical case where 'we use our brains to condition ourselves not to think beyond our comfort levels'. Very few go beyond 'visible visualization', a zone where you continually set partial goals, each partial goal being part of 'The Big Game'—the complete picture going beyond the pale of visualization.

Malvai underlines the fact that "We never cross reference what we get as inputs. It is only when we understand the import of one's word that gravity comes in. It is then one thinks and plans for exigencies."

This is the second important word in the Malvai wordscape—THINK. Malvai reiterates the concept of thought time and again. "Think before committing anything. Your commitment and your thought will make you what you want to become." It is a classic paraphrase in the modern context of cogito ergo sum ('I think therefore I am').

Malvai talks disparagingly about the 'perpetual negative dialogue' in our brains. He stresses the purging of negativity, breaking existing mindsets, nurturing new ones: "The human brain should find new niches, reinvent circumstances, actively look for opportunities, use abilities, absorb the lessons of adaptability and actively engage itself in lateral thinking."

As these are functions of the right brain, a part hardly used in everyday work situations, a different tool had to be found to use this hitherto untapped powerhouse of knowledge and creativity.

Enter Intuita Training. Developed by Canadian Arupa Tesolin, a globally recognized expert in human dynamics. Malvai's thought process based training was instrumental in his selection as Intuita's sole representative in India. Accordingly, he underwent training required to be a top-notch performer. Landmark's basic training in ontology apart, Malvai has taken the MBIT course, extensive sessions of vipassana, Transactional Analysis, NLP and is an ardent reader of psychology and philosophy.

All roads lead to Rome. Similarly, Malvai's workshops use techniques culled from his own training and get distilled into the singular fact that you are the VIP in your own life. "How can anybody ever be more important than you?" questions Malvai. "Relationships are important, people are important but the most important person in your life, by a huge margin, will always be you. You have a right, in fact a duty, to keep yourself happy, to foster a sense of perpetual goodwill. Unless you are happy with yourself you cannot do justice to yourself, your lifestyle, your relationships, your work or your potential. A way out of self limiting beliefs and mindsets has to be inculcated."

Therefore, if Sukhdeepak Malvai firmly believes that each new mindset he manages to instill will be the single most powerful tool in his mission of transforming India into a superpower, believe him.

Contact:
Sukhdeepak Malvai,
c/o FITTI, 487, Sector 37,
Noida 201 303, India.
Tel: 91-9810078523,
Email: sukhdeepak@sukhdeepak.com