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Certain pastimes and activities have the power to maintain our consciousness in the present – the here and now. Rock climbing is a dangerous sport – a potentially lethal one – rock climbers live with the threat of death or injury every time they climb. The difficulties they face are objective ones, first and foremost, and the risks they take are calculated ones – rock climbers are not reckless – not living ones at any rate.

Most of the time, we live in a sort of non-time – a remnant of the past moving us to do things based on our memory and its power to haunt the present, or the future, with its ability to confront ourselves and our limitations ahead of action – apprehension.

The rock climber on the face of a cliff or mountain knows only the present; if he removes himself from the here and now of his situation, if he allows himself to be distracted from the task in front of him, he risks falling to his death or certain injury – he cannot allow himself to stray from the present.

The writer, Eckhart Tolle (‘The Power of Now’ and others) tells us that, “Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.” And if you think about it, that is absolutely true – the things that you did in your youth, you did in the present – not the past; the things you will experience in the future, in ten minutes or ten years time, will be experienced in the present – the present of then!

Now I know that rock climbing is out for most of us, only the young, athletic and the daring may go that way. Other dangerous sports are out for similar reasons, but experiencing the present in the natural intensity of the moment is still very much open to us.

Tolle again tells us that, “To be free of time is to be free of the psychological need of past for your identity and future for your fulfillment.” As someone who writes regularly and often, I can tell you that in the very act of writing – composing sentences, paragraphs – connected paragraphs – essays, stories, novels – whatever, the act of writing frees up the mind, removes encumbrances from the past and the future, planting you and your mind firmly in the present – by the power of concentration needed to write well and write continually.

I find writing something metaphorically like crossing a river using stepping stones – the next stone and the next after that are only visible and reachable once you step on the one before that next stone. Three stones further back and you are unable to jump the distance to that next stone – you can only reach it from the one you are standing on at the moment.
So it is with writing – you create meaning and sense as you write, and as you move further into your writing you find what you want to say. The well known playwright and novelist, Willy Russell, who penned those famous stories made into the successful films, ‘Educating Rita’ and ‘Shirley Valentine’ when asked why he wrote about what he didn’t know, said, “How do I know what I know until I write about it?”

He was not being facetious for once; he was describing the process of discovering what you know whilst writing. The accumulated knowledge – even wisdom’ from a life lived is down there waiting to be tapped. Then, once words start to bring it out, it will flow like oil from a well, gushing with knowledge. For the fact is that Russell was correct; you don’t know what you know until you write – no other medium draws something out of you in quite the same way.

Worthwhile, coherent conversation comes close, but that dependency on your interlocutor deprives you of the personal discovery that comes with writing.

Like rock climbing, writing has one very clear resemblance – few people ever get round to trying it, which is a pity because both activities free the mind from our normal obsession with what has gone and what may come. Now is all there is, in reality; and both scaling precipices and writing confront you with that fact. And, for the brief time you are out there on the north face of the Eiger, or, in my case, in the middle of writing something to be read by others, that presence liberates you from what has a habit of enslaving all of us – worry – stress – regrets – you can’t be worried, stressed, or regretful when you are totally engaged in something that requires you to debunk that which you can well do without.

The presentation skills training program is a key component of Soft Skills Training and Development for any working professional. It is designed to help professionals achieve significant career growth by leaving a memorable impression with their audiences consistently. The focus of this program is on two aspects – how to create an impressive presentation and how to present this information powerfully.

Why Presentation Training?

There are numerous reasons, but the following two reasons are the most critical:

• Flawless presentation skills are the key to a career graph poised for constant upward growth, and
• As a presenter, you don’t just need to present facts and figures, you also need to be engaging, vibrant and capture your audience’s attention.

Clarity of diction and non-verbal skills are just as important as the grades you graduate with. While you might not like the idea of standing up in front of a crowd, as a professional, you’ll need to, sooner or later.

The idea is to project a confident and effervescent personality with the ability to connect with people at large. But it’s not a skill always inherent in people. It requires a blend of leadership skills and a conscious focus on progressing beyond limiting mindsets. This is the precise reason why most B-schools hire services of soft skill training companies to train their graduates.

The Need for Soft Skills Development

Very often, we see that unhealthy mindsets with a penchant for negative thinking have a direct bearing on a slew of life conditions, including job performance. However, what also gets in the way of success is a lack of awareness of our own reactions and learned behavior.

Let’s look at a simple question to which many don’t know the answer. The question is, “How is pop corn made?” The answer – in every kernel of corn there is a drop of water. When heat is applied to the corn, the water inside the corn starts to increase in temperature and vaporizes and expands in space. This causes the corn to burst open, thus forming popcorn. When we apply the same concept with regards to our mindsets when under pressure, what emerges is indicative of the mindsets that we nurse on the inside of us. The ability to handle challenges calmly and constructively cannot be developed if we harbor negative and limiting mindsets. The behaviors, which are a result of our mindsets, are what we call as soft skills. Hence working on specific types of soft skills has a direct impact on our mindset. For example, when you are conducting a presentation, the manifesting behavior of confidence or nervousness is what is referred to as ‘soft skills’ and our existing mindsets cause this behavior.

Most Soft Skills Training Programs focus on techniques that enable the participants to create empowering mindsets that help them to present with confidence and charisma as the Indian education system does not provide too many opportunities for public speaking in the curriculum.