An inspirational take on life

She is a management consultant but the books penned by her are devoid of  management jargons and techno-vocabulary intended to impress and confuse the readers. “It is for the common man, to inspire them and motivate them,” says Sara Thomas, a Kochiite settled in the US, about her two books - ‘Choices’ and ‘Our Daily Bread’.‘Choices’ was Sara’s first book which was released in December 2008. Now, after more than two years, she has released her second book, ‘Our Daily Bread,’ which is inspirational and at the same time, has spiritual connotations. “The book ‘Choices’ falls under the self-help/ motivational category and has been widely read by many professionals and is in the libraries of corporations like Adobe Systems and Perkin Elmer,” says this SAP CRM solution architect who has been working in the information technology sector for the last 13 years. “I have been with Intel Corporation most of my career. I have done projects for software companies and telecommunications industries like Intel, Microsoft, Genentech, Adobe and Perkin Elmer. Although my job kept me busy I loved to pen my thoughts and wished to inspire and motivate people through my writings one day,” says the author.Sara believes we are what our thoughts have made us and we set our own limitations by how we think. “We define our own horizons and boundaries,” she writes in the book.“Your attitude determines your altitude. Your attitude towards life, people and various experiences will determine how things will play out in the end for you,” she says.According to Sara, too often we give people more power over our lives. Elaborating on her statement, she says: “When we respond and react based on what someone else did or said to us, then we are giving them more power over our lives than what they actually have. Nobody can make us sad, angry or get us to react if we choose not to, for we have the power to choose.”So what was her inspiration behind the book? Sara says as a little girl she used to kneel down to pray every evening with the rest of the students in a boarding school run my Catholic nuns. “We used to recite ‘The Lord’s prayer’. And each time when I had to say, ‘Give us today our daily bread’, I would pause and ask myself whether it was right to ask God for bread (food) repeatedly when I was already getting more than enough food every day,” she recollects with a smile.It made no sense to her to ask God for the same thing over and again.  Later into adulthood, influences of other beliefs dampened the need to recite the Lord’s prayer and soon it was left in the backburner of Sara’s daily prayer routine. “Years later, one day as I was reciting the Lord’s prayer, the depth of those words began to sink into me.” It was her moment of truth, when the sacred truth and the meaning behind those words began to unveil, which eventually led to the authoring of the book - ‘Our Daily Bread.’ “You would find the purpose of your existence and that in itself should excite you to live and walk into each day with sheer joy and anticipation,” writes Sara about prayers in the book. She also talks about humility and love. “True humility is when we can walk in forgiveness; when we can walk away from bitterness, walk past pettiness and let go of our hurt and pain.” This is what the book says about love: “Love goes beyond the frontiers of our minds and invades unchartered territories to release its tremendous power to consume all differences and to find common grounds of unanimity and concordance where there is disparity and divergence.”The book, which was released in April this year, will soon be available in all the popular online stores like Amazon.com/Amazon.co.uk/Barnes and Nobles etc. Sara believes that we could all use our time, talent and resources to be a blessing to many. “A certain percentage of the proceeds from the sale of my books would go for Christian works through ‘johnthomasministries’ - a ministry that I have started in my son’s name that aims to enable, equip and empower the downtrodden and the destitute of India to create better lives and to expand their horizons.” Sara is the youngest daughter of C J George (Geo-tech). She is married to Thomas Jacob and is the mother of eight-year-old John Thomas.  “My goal is to use my talent to empower others. I hope many would benefit reading ‘Our Daily Bread’,” she says on a parting note.