“Every human being can make it big in life”

Santosh Nair, a self-help maestro, talks about his book, 'Eleven Commandments of Life Maximisation'

By Shevlin Sebastian

Motivational guru Santosh Nair is sitting in an office in Mumbai belonging to his friend Nikhil Naik. Suddenly a man, clad in a white juba and kurta walks in. Nikhil introduces him as his yoga teacher Manoj Padhye.

A sheepish Manoj tells Santosh, “I don't teach yoga much, except to one or two people like Nikhil. To earn a living I repair computers.”

Santosh says, “What is your passion?”

“Yoga,” is the reply.

“How much do you earn?” asked Santosh.

“Sir, I am earning Rs 10,000 a month,” replied Manoj.

Santosh then does something extraordinary. He takes out Rs. 1.5 lakh from his bag and says, “This is 15 months of your salary. At the end of 15 months, if you have not made Rs 1.5 lakh, I will give you double and a job.”

The end result: Today, Manoj is making Rs 1.5 lakh a month by running yoga centres in different parts of Mumbai.

“Every human being can make it big in life,” says Santosh. “He just needs a push, somebody to believe in him. If you can believe in people, they will be transformed.”

Santosh was speaking at a function in Kochi to celebrate the release of his book, by Jaico Publishers, called, 'Eleven Commandments of Life Maximisation'.

“The only life-transforming philosophy that I have believed in is that you should never be satisfied with any achievement in life,” he says. “You should always be in the pursuit of the next big thing, because dissatisfaction is the mother of progress. Dissatisfaction does not mean unhappiness. It means creative restlessness. You are restless to create the next product, or the next market.”

Among the eleven commandments are ‘Be a possibility thinker’, ‘Declare that you will be forever alive, ‘Be ready to be a loner’, ‘Live a life that is difficult to duplicate’ and ‘rock the boat in the middle of the sea’.

“This rocking means challenging the status quo, doing things differently, questioning the present, disrupting the apple cart, and changing the wheels of your car while driving it,” says Santosh. 

He gives the example of the Toyota car company. Their Qualis was selling 8000 units in a single month – the highest-ever sales recorded by a Sport Utility Vehicle. Toyota then decided to stop the production of Qualis and replaced it with the Innova. “And the gamble proved successful,” says Santosh. “The company has gone on to even bigger success.”

Another example is Sunil Kangane, who was General Manager in Siemens. “I told him he should quit his job immediately and try something different,” says Santosh. “Don’t listen to anybody. Just leave.”

Sunil followed up on the advice and set up a company called Invotec, which became a Rs 5 crore company in two years. “Rock the boat when you are at the peak,” says Santosh. “That will guarantee continued success.”

‘Eleven Commandments’ is a fluent, well-written and inspiring book, with pithy examples from the lives of the great like Steve Jobs of Apple, Ray Croc of McDonalds and our very own Narayana Murthy of Infosys as well as Dhirubhai Ambani from Reliance. 

“My book is all about how every human being can maximise and exploit his potential and achieve ten to hundred times more than what he is doing now,” he says.  

Santosh, a Malayali, grew up in Mumbai. At age 19, he joined Eureka Forbes and within months, he became their star salesman. Meanwhile, in this spare time, he was giving inspiring talks. He worked in other firms, but, in 2000, Santosh took the plunge and started his own company called ‘Smmart Training and Consultancy Services’. He has given talks all over the country and in Malaysia, Hongkong, Singapore and Dubai. 

“Today, I get paid Rs 3.5 lakh for three hours of work,” he says. “I aim to make Rs 1 crore for the same time.”  

(The New Indian Express, South India and Delhi)