I was blessed to conduct 3 workshops for 60 children ranging from age 5 till 18 for children who are residents of this beautiful place known as Heavenly Angels in the outer suburbs of the industrial city of Ludhiana, Punjab in North India, set in a small town called Doraha just 20 minutes away from the main city.

Heavenly Angles is within the ‘Heavenly Palace’ facility laid out in hundreds of acres as a luxury residence for the elderly with hard to digest low cost of residential care, with multitudes of permanent staff from doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and facilities such as 24/7 Medical rooms, Health Spas, gymnasiums, auditoriums and Canteen/Food Mess, all in the most beautiful campus, teeming with nature in its most pristine clean that you can find anywhere in India.

Notwithstanding the less than fortunate backgrounds that these children come from, their unique tragic circumstances seem to have transformed their lives into being cared for in a positive, spiritually infused environment of loving trained teachers and elders with life experience of having been international professors and teachers themselves. This cohort of students demonstrated being possibly one of the most intelligent and brightest set of kids I have ever come across. Their eyes beaming with the excitement of realising their dreams with every day passing, mornings starting with Yoga and meditation, then a rush to go to English medium schools in their uniforms with buses lining up, and then smiling faces coming back to this wonder of nature, known as Heavenly Angels, waiting to be welcomed with nourishing food with ingredients grown organically in their own backyards.

My opportunity was to engage them in integrating their daily school routine with a vision for their future – a combination of applying agile principles to get each student involved in responding to a variety of questions starting from expressing their dreams, to the efforts one can make to become highly focussed, persistent and unrelenting in their attitude to never give up.

The students were so aligned to understanding how their daily practice of chanting Aum’s 108 times, with the real class example of us all doing it together, the pervasive silence within each chant, and the silence at the end, showcasing their heightened focus to control the mind and its vagaries! It was clear, this bunch, from the tiny tots to the elders, have something coming as born leaders.

A combination of visual ideas came forth, some wanting to be global talent artists, others wanting to join the Military, become teachers, have their own businesses, and then a majority, wanting to Join India’s Civil Services to transform the country with their vision for a stronger, brighter, corruption free India.

As we delved deeper each day into how to plan for stages and phases which may prove daunting, they proved themselves deeply motivated with a never-say-die attitude of how they would embark on alternate paths and join back the mainstream to give life to their dreams.

Many of them were already pushing themselves ahead talking of how they progressed from getting only in the 70% percentile in Maths and English, to now easily achieving the 90th percentile. It was jaw dropping to hear of their daily efforts and how with so many responsibilities of managing the younger ones as mentors, the elder kids were learning responsible living within limited means, but with the dreams of their future, so visible in their eyes.

It was really a blessing for me to see this vision as reality, where the future certainly has hope with kids aware of global challenges of the environment, businesses as well as what made true leaders across the world with their 14 Golden Rules ranging from honesty, truth, discipline, perseverance to never giving up, single pointed focus and so many other adjectives that we only read of in books.

The heavenly Palace is certainly blessed with ANGELS who are here to show, there are never any limitations or constraints, only opportunities. It was truly as if, for my own learning, that I was placed amongst them, and with mentors who I will continue to find inspiration in and learn from.