Malaysian-born Vijay Eswaran is a well rounded personality who carries out his responsibilities as entrepreneur, philanthropist and author to a T.
The eloquent businessman is founder and executive chairman of the QI Group of Companies, a multinational conglomerate headquartered in Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur with operations in over 30 countries.
In 2005, he founded the Rythm and Vijayaratnam Foundations, with a focus on community development and children with special needs in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Among its many projects, the Vijayaratnam Foundation established Taarana, a Malaysian school for children with learning disabilities.
On this, the multi-talented personality is also an author. Eswaran has published three best-selling books on leadership and mindfulness, with In The Sphere Of Silence selling half a million copies to date. His latest book is Two Minutes From The Abyss.
The 58-year-old's books are a product of the rich experiences he has encountered throughout his life -- be it as a young university graduate in the UK or in his travels across the continents for both work and play.
In The Sphere Of Silence, his first and most successful book, was written largely as a series of answers. It took him a good seven years or so of training, public speaking, mentoring and talking to people to prepare him to pen this book. Basic recurring questions such as "How does one become successful?" formed the base of this book, which offers broad parameters on topics such as neutral points of reference as well as a burning sense of urgency and desire, loosely identified for readers to follow.
He remarked that one of the biggest challenges people face in life today is seeing themselves clearly. Using a mirror to make a point, he said that it wasn't until the turn of the century that mirrors gave people a precise depiction of their face.
"So how did they see their face back then? Well, they had to rely on basically frame of reference. The mirror today tells us exactly how we look. Likewise, in our mental framework, how does one see how one is to work? This is the point of reference from where people can begin to explore further the direction they need to take."
Adding to this he continued: "Not seeing yourself as who you really are is human nature, which doesn't necessarily go in our favour. It gives us the impression that we are better than we actually are. The outcome of this could lead to over-promise and under-delivery, and not recognise that. We look at the past with tainted glasses. Mutual points of reference at each point of our life are needed to keep us focused.
"To drive home my point, in the book Sphere Of Silence I refer to the 1% of humanity which are essentially lions -- leaders -- while the rest of us are sheep who prefer to follow. The 1% challenges humanity and in doing so challenge us.
"Being driven comes with having a sense of urgency. Such people have a charisma that sets them apart from the rest. They walk into the room and you will sense their energy. Even after their demise, their presence permeates because it converts itself into energy that one cannot replace.
"The 1% I mentioned earlier live in the moment, a great deal of us live yesterday, the rest of us live in the hopes of tomorrow. The realisation is critical. We realise it but not enough. We need to realise to live in the moment, which should become a daily reminder to us. In In The Sphere Of Silence, it is this reminder that the whole book leads to."
The last of the three components is burning desire, which he describes as something that envelops you to the point that you do something about it.
"Burning desire is to have your passion totally take over. Be it the fact that you want to build a hospital for the poor or you want to drive a Ferrari. The issue is that it must envelop you. It is not enough to be a participant. Most of us tend to be the audience. We want to sit back and watch people with burning desire make something of themselves, but we ourselves lack it."
The issue now, said Eswaran, is to practice the aforementioned daily. In In The Sphere Of Silence, he details how to meditate on these three concepts before starting one's day.
"When one steps into this sphere of silence each morning, that sphere follows you all day. It has to be a repetitious process because we need to reinforce it daily," remarked Eswaran.
"This process can take either an hour or 30 minutes and should [obviously] begin in silence. It should be a time when you examine the direction your life is taking. Think of yesterday in terms of what I achieved, today in what I am going to achieve, and tomorrow in what I am going to do.
"When you look at tomorrow, you identify what is important versus what is crucial. The majority of us chase urgent issues which are gone the minute they are accomplished. The 1% movers and shakers among us think the opposite, because they know what they are doing today will have significance for their future. The longer we can plan [in advance], the more we are addressing the important things in our life. The sphere of silence organises this for us."
