Showing the way to unlock the childhood genius within us
The author Dr. Asoka Jinadasa (right) presents the book to President of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management Ken Wijayakumar. Pix by M.A. Pushpa Kumara
“A magical blend of modern science and ancient wisdom” is how the latest self-help book by Dr. Asoka Nimal Jinadasa, Easy Ways to Change Your Life, is summed up rather intriguingly.
Launched in Sri Lanka last Tuesday prior to being published on Amazon, the book aims to uncover the genius that we all had as children, which he calls our “vast inborn intuitive human intelligence”.
A blend of concepts and methodologies drawn from diverse sources, including Chinese martial arts, Tibetan rites, and Himalayan wisdom combined with the latest research in behavioral psychology, neuroscience, genetics, nutrition, and healthcare come together to form a comprehensive self-coaching guide.
It aims to help you live better, “fly far beyond the limitations of your daily life” and reach goals beyond your wildest dreams, the author says.
Growing up under a disciplinarian father, the young Asoka made the most of his days at Peradeniya as an engineering student.
In the Peradeniya library he was to make the acquaintance of W. Somerset Maugham, whose novel, Of Human Bondage charmed him with its depiction of the freedom of Bohemian life in Paris and London. Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence of Gauguin giving up his lucrative career as a stockbroker to be an artist in Tahiti – at 40, was seminal in making him see change as vital to life at every stage.
Following his fictional heroes, he went to London then Paris, but finding there were few openings for engineers but computer programmers were much in demand, he followed a three-month course and became a programmer.
From then on, Asoka always aimed for creating changes in his life and with a mind open for change he accumulated a whole doctrine of steps to success.
Today, apart from having been featured on 10 US national talk shows on empowering individuals and business, Asoka is a UK chartered engineer, award-winning trainer and filmmaker and master of Chinese and Himalayan human energy techniques.
His film work is a case in point of embracing new disciplines. His first film was featured in five international film festivals and premiered at the Mill Valley Film Festival in California, further convincing him he was on the right track by courting change constantly.
Change, he realized, is the key to everything, his definition of survival being “to survive, the rate at which you change must be faster than the rate at which the world is changing”.
“If the world is changing faster than the rate at which you change you become extinct like a dinosaur.”
The three books he wrote, Flying Penguin, its second edition and now the new guide, were an attempt to infect everyone with his ‘virus’- what he calls his ‘movement’ of incorporating change into our lives.
Delving further into the idea of ‘preschool genius’ which is at the heart of his ‘movement’ Asoka says that in a study of the divergent thinking ability (which is the source of creativity) the average preschooler scored amazingly high – 98% of genius level. The study used 1600 American kindergarten kids, 3 to 5 years old.
When the same children were retested at 10 years of age, and again at 15, their scores plunged from 98% down to 30% and then to 12%.
By the time they were adults the score was 2%.
Asoka says this is due to ‘mental lockdown’.
While in your earliest years you were in ‘physical lockdown’ with little movement outside home you were mentally free to go anywhere your unbridled imagination took you. And to question everything adults said or asked you to do.
With schooling and education, however, physical lockdown vanishes and mental freedom gets restricted. ‘Questioning what the teachers said would have been a sure way to get rejected as a smartass’.
‘‘Based on their reactions to who you seem to be and what you said and did, you started forming many negative self-impressions, such as fat, thin, short, ugly, stupid, poor, etc.
“That was when you self-imposed a mental lockdown to avoid problems. You then stopped analyzing and questioning what you were told. And stopped exploring out-of-the-box ideas that would have gotten you kicked out of school.
“As you grew older, you gradually extended the borders of your mental lockdown. That was how you prevented conflicts with bosses, coworkers, and lovers.’’
Our preschool abilities were thus allowed to be dormant. The book, Dr. Asoka says, has the key to unlock and unleash that power. To quote him from the text for the uninitiated:
If a lion cub thinks it is a kitten, it would be catching mice all its life.
Easy Ways to Change Your Life, published by Samaranayake Publishers is available at Expographic Bookshops – order with credit card via https://tiny.one/SHBook1 or WhatsApp your cash order to 0775308708 for home delivery.
Searching for an ideal partner? Find your soul mate on Hitad.lk, Sri Lanka's favourite marriage proposals page. With Hitad.lk matrimonial advertisements you have access to thousands of ads from potential suitors who are looking for someone just like you.