The last week of De­cem­ber is a source of in­spi­ra­tion for Sikhs. every year, each day of this week in­spires me to pon­der, ex­am­ine,  re­flect on what am I do­ing against what I ought to do such that I tran­sit from on or­di­nary trans­ac­tional in­di­vid­ual to a be­ing of sub­stance. This week urges me to re-es­tab­lish con­nect, re­dis­cover, my own self, to be with my in­di­vid­u­al­ity and shed away the per­son­al­ity, which I have deftly adorned for the so­ci­ety. Ka­mal Jit Singh Ahluwalia of­fers an­other bou­quet on the birth an­niver­sary of Guru Gob­ind Singh Ji.

LET’S TRAVEL 316 YEARS BACK -wherein dur­ing this week some­thing in­cred­i­ble hap­pened, some­thing awe-in­spir­ing man­i­fested, some­thing out of the or­di­nary was dis­played, some­thing un­be­liev­able yet fac­tual hap­pened- a se­ries of events that shook, re­de­fined, the ed­i­fice of a pur­pose­ful liv­ing, learn­ing to lead an ex­pan­sive, cel­e­bra­tive liv­ing, wherein an Ever­est of grief, hard­ships, was trans­formed into a dis­tilled, pure, un­bri­dled joy, In­ter­est­ingly more its in­ten­sity, bet­ter was the cel­e­bra­tions.

A week which was writ­ten in hu­man blood – mar­tyr­dom of young, ten­der lads aged 7 and 9 years, Baba Zo­rawar Singh and Baba Fateh Singh, younger sons of Tenth Sikh Guru – Gob­ind Singh, who were fam­ished, tor­tured to the hilt, sub­jected to an Ever­est of phys­i­cal atroc­i­ties, in­tre­pid with fear of death 24×7. Yet, these young lads re­fused to buckle down to give up, to blink- con­se­quently were bricked alive.

This did­n’t end here –their 80+ years of Grand­mother was sub­jected to same pain and hard­ships, of be­ing de­nied warm clothes, bed­ding, in the harsh­est tem­per­a­tures that were plum­met­ing down to 3 de­grees. Top­ping this was their im­pris­on­ment in an open minaret ad­join­ing a rivulet, such that the wind chill freezes their bones too.

And all this hap­pened cause they re­fused to let go their self –es­teem, their self-be­lief, their self-worth and the ideals of one hu­man race where free­dom to up­hold one’s virtues, val­ues, need to be re­spected, where hu­man­ity, not es­tab­lish­ment was to run the show, where free­dom from bondages and break free was the norm, where love, re­spect, car­ing and shar­ing were the dri­vers. And op­pos­ing this was a tyran­ni­cal Mughal es­tab­lish­ment -who had ruled In­dia for 300 years + with an iron first –cre­at­ing a so­ci­ety of classes, and had never taken a no or dis­sent for an an­swer, till date.

This is­n’t a mir­a­cle -it was sim­ply work in progress – in­cep­tion was just 4 days prior when a bat­tle weath­ered army of 46 Sikhs, fam­ished, who had a bare min­i­mum sup­ply of am­mu­ni­tion, were pitched against an army of 1 mil­lion, bat­tle-ready sol­diers com­bin­ing armies of Mughal and Ra­jput Kings -their only aim be­ing to an­ni­hi­late those who be­lieved in them­selves, and were crys­tal clear to lead a life of dig­ni­fied and ex­pan­sive liv­ing.

They met face to face- eye­ball to eye­ball at Chamkuar, Pun­jab –North­ern In­dia on a bit­terly cold night, with rains lash­ing over. And some­thing un­ex­pected hap­pened- some­thing un­be­liev­able man­i­fested, some­thing un­fath­omable got res­ur­rected.

In bands of five, these in­spired Sikhs took the bat­tle to the en­emy camp, cre­at­ing de­struc­tion and havoc. His­tory states that 10,000+ sol­diers of the en­emy camp were ex­ited from the earth by them – the great­est bat­tle ever man­i­fested be­tween the have-nots and the haves -re­sult­ing in panic in the op­po­nents camp that they re­tracted.

 Read Also As­pi­ra­tions and In­spi­ra­tions from Guru Gob­ind Singh's Life

Yes, a price was paid – 44 of them got mar­tyred – and cre­ated a new his­tory. Till date in the an­nals of the war­fare, this is the great­est un­equal bat­tle fought. Fur­ther­ing this was the mar­tyr­dom of two el­der sons aged 18 and 16- Baba Ajit Singh and Baba Ju­jhar Singh, of Guru Gob­ind Singh who wit­nessed the butcher­ing and slaugh­ter­ing hap­pen­ing in front of his eyes.

And if you and I can im­bibe the above, in our be­ings – thoughts and ac­tions, we are Sikhs –the cho­sen ones –the ones who have the tenac­ity and the au­dac­ity, to rewrite the his­tory, and not to a pass­ing ref­er­ence in it.

Un­moved, sans grief, sans re­morse was this Gen­eral who thanked the Lord for cre­at­ing an op­por­tu­nity in which his team could per­form well and bet­ter. For him ob­jec­tive ac­com­plish­ment with avail­able re­sources was the aim -hence he en­deav­oured to bring out the best in them, each time, every time.

As a stu­dent of lead­er­ship and strat­egy, the fol­low­ing are my key take-homes from this week:

• Get beaten or get bet­ter.
• Change be­fore it’s too late.
• Man­ag­ing less is man­ag­ing bet­ter.
• Look re­al­ity in the eye and don’t flinch. Con­se­quently, be ready and ea­ger to rewrite your agenda.
• Take a hard look at your over­all sce­nario, and de­cide as early as pos­si­ble what needs fix­ing, what needs to be nur­tured and what needs to be jet­ti­soned.
• Face re­al­ity- don’t pur­sue a cen­tral idea but rather set only a few clear spe­cific goals as strate­gies.
• Cre­ate a cul­ture and then spread it.
• Don’t get stuck in the past, be open to change. Thus re-ex­am­ine your agenda con­stantly and if nec­es­sary rewrite it.
• Trans­fer ideas and al­lo­cate re­sources and then get out of the way.
• En­sure that every­one in your team gets all the in­for­ma­tion re­quired to make crit­i­cal de­ci­sions for them­selves – em­power them to ac­tion off.
• Ex­press a vi­sion and let your team im­ple­ment it as their own.
• Go for a quan­tum leap- think and act be­yond the or­di­nary.
• Get faster, bet­ter- each time, every time. Be a ra­tio­nal­ist op­ti­mist.
• Find the melt­ing point of the op­po­nent and strike hard, very hard.
• Re­move the bound­aries- search for the syn­er­gies be­tween your team to strive for in­te­grated di­ver­sity. Need to die as in­di­vid­u­als to rise up as a team.
• Cre­ate an at­mos­phere where your team feels free to speak out and as­sumes au­thor­ity when needed. Lis­ten to the peo­ple who ac­tu­ally work.
• Go to your team and an­swer all their ques­tions with can­dour and au­then­tic­ity.
• Aim for speed, sim­plic­ity and self-con­fi­dence.
• Im­bibe the mir­a­cle of self-dis­ci­pline. There are a hun­dred thou­sand rea­sons jus­ti­fy­ing a fail­ure, re­gret­fully none is a good one. Suc­cess is its own re­ward.
• When you got to go, you have to go. Then let’s go in the now. Do your own thing. Re­mem­ber suc­cess is pre­dictable and dither not to pay a price for achiev­ing it.
• Be cen­tred- be an ag­ile think­ing be­ing – not a re­ac­tive or jus­ti­fy­ing one.
• It’s a war out there and you have to win it- that’s the only aim and ob­jec­tive. So just do it.
• Im­bib­ing self-dis­ci­pline is the crit­i­cal in­put for per­sonal suc­cess- The ul­ti­mate end of life is the de­vel­op­ment of char­ac­ter. The core virtue of a char­ac­ter is not re­al­iz­ing truth but truth­ful liv­ing.
• Do the right thing and not the thing right. Re­mem­ber what you dwell upon grows.
• Self-dis­ci­pline is re­spon­si­bil­ity – get out of the fa­tal fal­lacy. Dis­cover an an­tipode to neg­a­tive emo­tions. Never com­plain, never ex­plain- an­ti­dote is ac­tion in the now. Hence take con­trol of the sit­u­a­tion now.
• Self-dis­ci­pline is per­sonal ex­cel­lence- there is no limit to your po­ten­tial. Step out of the or­di­nary into the ex­tra­or­di­nary.
• Self-dis­ci­pline is courage – the art of liv­ing dan­ger­ously- do the op­po­site- change the goal­posts – pass the ball to oth­ers to ef­fect a goal. Shed to grow and suc­ceed bet­ter.
• Vi­su­al­ize your­self as un­afraid by not only con­fronting your fears but by mov­ing to­wards them, deal­ing with them di­rectly – head-on. Re­mem­ber death is the bride of a brave.

And if you and I can im­bibe the above, in our be­ings – thoughts and ac­tions, we are Sikhs –the cho­sen ones –the ones who have the tenac­ity and the au­dac­ity, to rewrite the his­tory, and not to a pass­ing ref­er­ence in it.

 Read Also Cel­e­brat­ing Guru Gob­ind Singh’s 42 years of a mean­ing­ful ex­is­tence

Re­mem­ber the birth and the death dates are de­cided by the Lord –na­ture -on which we have no con­trol. Yet the gap in be­tween them is un­der our con­trol. Let peo­ple re­mem­ber me for the gaps and not the dates. The choice is ours.

Ka­mal Jit Singh Ahluwalia, pop­u­larly known as K S Ahluwalia de­scribes him­self as a stu­dent of Sikhism, en­deav­our­ing to un­cover, un­der­stand bet­ter the Sikh ethos. For the past two decades and more, he has been shar­ing in­sight­ful thoughts in print, per­sonal in­ter­ac­tions, work­shops and talk shows on Sikh Inc. -man­age­ment prin­ci­ples from the House of Nanak and life-trans­form­ing lead­er­ship skills.  He is a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor to em­i­nent jour­nals and he has im­pacted the lives of thou­sands of youth with over 5.6 mil­lion man-hours across di­ver­si­fied au­di­ences at more than a hun­dred plus global lo­ca­tions.