Emotional intelligence

I recently attended a 2 day workshop on Emotional Intelligence by Satish Mandora. I could connect more with it since I had received a feedback in October 2015 that my mind, body and soul were not in sync. I was also asked to improve my communication skills and be more aggressive. I think they meant to make me more assertive as I can never become an aggressive person to show anger and fire people. In the past, I had received feedback on looking for role clarity and becoming a facilitator as next level of growth for me. I am thankful to all my senior colleagues for all the feedback I have received in last 1 year. This was much more than I received in my previous roles probably because my knowledge has taken me to places I have been. It’s now upto creating the right attitude, skills, habit and strategy to take me to the next level. Its also important for me to do a lot of self talk to help my cause.

1. The 5 areas of EI are: Self Awareness, Self-Management (Self Regulation), Self Motivation, Social Awareness (Empathy) and Social Skills.
2. The Ice berg model has 4 levels, from top to bottom they are: Results, Behaviour, Feelings and Belief
3. The 4 classifications of Emotions are: Intolerable, Tolerable, Pleasurable and Too Pleasurable
4. In the equation A*B=C; A is Activating Event, B is Belief and C is Consequences.’
5. The learning that we have is in 4 phases (Learning cycle) :-

a. Unconscious incompetence ( don’t know cycling)

b. Conscious incompetence (know parts of cycle i.e. brakes, handles, etc.)

c. Conscious competence ( know cycling but less confidence at turns)

d. Unconscious competence ( complete knowledge and think other things while cycling)

6. 4-box model of Skill Will Matrix and the leadership styles

Things that I intend to do in future with the learnings

1. I will have a face to face interaction with colleagues to understand their “Iceberg model” of (his beliefs, feelings and behaviours”) and explain the results I expect from him.
2. Have “Expectations “clearly defined with roles and responsibilities and objectives
3. Share “concern” ,demonstrate “Confidence” in Colleagues abilities ( be in Pleasurable and Tolerable zone) and bring more Optimism in his behaviour
4. Treat colleagues with empathy during the discussion. Listen to him empathetically, appreciate his achievements and try to understand reason for his shortcomings /complaints without preconceived notion.
5. Try to guide Colleagues and improve his will and skill by guiding him
6. Use the 5 golden pairs i.e. ( Goals to set priorities, Consequences with different alternatives, discuss problems instead of blaming, discuss the person instead of behavior demonstrated and not labelling and regulating self behavior)
7. Move from becoming the big “I”(know it all), dot(know nothing) , small “i” (know something) to bundle of I’s ( know emotions)

I have decided on 3 goals related to health (exercise, marathon, swimming), finance (home, car) and social (writing book) outcomes that I will try to work in the coming days. Will keep updating the blog as I progress.

Fighting D

This could be the most challenging time for anyone and always comes in everyone's life.There was some big article on fighting depression on Time's Life today.I just skimmed through it as it was more about celebrities and not normal people fighting it out.

But what made me think about it was couple of interviews I took today.

1. Interview 1 - The guy has just left his job 20 days back and is happily defending his decision on what his true calling could be.
2. Interview 2 - The guy tells he is a positive thinker and is still talking of some of things from past that he was not successful in.He will get into something and will still be unhappy about it.He has read "The Secret" by Rhonda Bryne 10 times.

I really don't know what could have happened to the 2nd person.Probably he has not ingrained some of the words of the book into his own sentences and is being quite honest.

All he needed was a positive attitude towards life and I would have definitely selected him.

To start with positivity, my takes are the following :-

1. Have a goal/ purpose of what you really want to do
2. Understand your strength and weaknesses.Avoid revealing everything to the third party in question.Be more pragmatic about it.
3. Assess where you are today
4. Find the direction of reaching the goal from where you are today
5. Always bring as much positive thoughts with people around you and to yourself
6. Avoid any kind of talks which takes you to the negative
7. Keep noting good things happening to you keep the +ve bank up and running.
8. Probably do some sorts of exercise to keep yourself fresh
9. Keep assessing yourself every now and then. 
10. Never compare yourself with others and the path that they had taken

Enough gyaan for now.I hope the 2nd guy will definitely find his true calling and be more positive the next time he goes for an interview.

Musings when you have nothing to do

Read this really good article on HBR
http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/09/how-philosophy-makes-you-a-better-leader/


"SANE” mnemonic, drawing on key questions posed by preeminent Western philosophers: Socrates, Aristotle, Nietzsche, and the Existentialists.

Socrates: What is the most challenging question someone could ask me about my current approach?
Aristotle: What character virtues are most important to me and how will I express them?
Nietzsche: How will I direct my “will to power,” manage my self-interest, and act in accordance with my chosen values?

Existentialists (e.g., Sartre): How will I take full responsibility for my choices and the outcomes to which they lead?


Took me to the most important definition of Existence precedes Essence :

A central proposition of Existentialism is that existence precedes essence, which means that the most important consideration for individuals is that they are individuals—independently acting and responsible, conscious beings ("existence")—rather than what labels, roles, stereotypes, definitions, or other preconceived categories the individuals fit ("essence"). The actual life of the individuals is what constitutes what could be called their "true essence" instead of there being an arbitrarily attributed essence others use to define them. Thus, human beings, through their own consciousness, create their own values and determine a meaning to their life.

On Freewill !!

2 years back, influenced by Dr. Himanshu Rai, I had posted that Freewill exists for human beings as we can plan suicide.However,me and Parankush had a heated debate for taking the statement for granted.He had argued that so many animals who are living socially (like ants) can also be construed as part of the Freewill theory and human beings are not different.

This discussion as well as the discovery of the "God Particle" this year led me to a journey of the different ideas that has been found to be present in Wikipedia.I was surprised to read that things are not as simple as we make them to be.Here is the graph and link to the Wiki page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will

So there is a theory that says that Free will is impossible and we are living a Deterministic paradigm of life ( Cause and effect is necessary and determined).The Incompatibilist go a step further and even say that we have no control of choices and results we have in life.

I am probably inclined to agree with the Compatibilist argument as a lot of phenomenon can be explained by them.However the thought that we can create something out of nothing like the "God particle" or "Bootstrapping of human body on waking up" is something that intrigues me.

So if the first particle came from nothing ,there had to be something external ( like the Large Hadron collider made in CERN labs) to initiate the process for all things in world to start. Or something in the brain cell to reprogram the state from which we had left our thoughts/memory before sleeping.Until these answers are not provided, I believe the incompatibilist have some arguments in their favour.

I will end the post with a thought in the same Wiki page from Swami Vivekananda :-

A quotation from Swami Vivekananda, a Vedantist, offers a good example of the worry about free will in the Hindu tradition.

Therefore we see at once that there cannot be any such thing as free-will; the very words are a contradiction, because will is what we know, and everything that we know is within our universe, and everything within our universe is moulded by conditions of time, space and causality. ... To acquire freedom we have to get beyond the limitations of this universe; it cannot be found here.

However, the preceding quote has often been misinterpreted as Vivekananda implying that everything is predetermined. What Vivekananda actually meant by lack of free will was that the will was not "free" because it was heavily influenced by the law of cause and effect—"The will is not free, it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect, but there is something behind the will which is free." Vivekananda never said things were absolutely determined and placed emphasis on the power of conscious choice to alter one's past karma: "It is the coward and the fool who says this is his fate. But it is the strong man who stands up and says I will make my own fate."

Being happy..

Thanks to Sunny Jindal for this awesome link on being happy.

http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/9-daily-habits-that-will-make-you-happier.html?goback=.gde_79568_member_198397241

My take :-

1. Starting with a purpose 
2. Planning
3. Gifting something to every one (smile included )
4. Deflect partisan conversations (Detachment)
5. Assume people have good intentions
6. Eat good food slowly
7. Not worrying about results but job at hand (Message from Gita)
8. Turn off the background noise ( Detachment )
9. End each day with gratitude

I liked the last line and from now on will just pen down one wonderful thing that happened to me.

So for today, it was giving gyaan on why LUCK is not important.
I realized that while the moment when LUCK could be attributed as a strong factor for me, it was also the fact that I was trying to achieve the goal really badly.And probably "The Alchemist" message helped in the process.

In the last 2 years, I have not been able to have a concrete set of goals and hence have been just wandering around for the omens to come.Probably its part of the journey called Life.The below link is quite motivational in that aspect :-
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/08/the_disciplined_pursuit_of_less.html

Reaching the highest point of contribution ( Talent ,Market and Passion) is what I was selling in Delhi in 09.Though the terms were (Aptitude,Interest and Personality). I had taken market forces as just a factor and not as a strong influencing factor during the sales and probably that's the root cause of the failure of the product.

Does winning matter ?

Was just thinking of the topic of the blog I have created 3 years ago.
For me the answer is yes and no.

Yes .. when I see the likes of the big consulting companies that look for excellence in your academics,work ex and extra curriculars as an indicator of your future performance.They are ruthless to punish you for any mediocre performance or lacuna in something.

No..when the likes of Australian army rejects people who have been throughout winners in life and never had a single failure.They argue that never seeing a failure, will not make a person strong enough to counter and take decisions when he has failed in his job in the army.He will not be able to give corrective actions and reactions.

Its important to fail in life and strive hard to reach excellence.
But what is more important is to  enjoy travelling  from failure to excellence.
As they say in 3 idiots , Strive for Excellence , Success will come to you any which way.

Imagination is more important than Knowledge

The caption was my Orkut fortune for the day.I could not comprehend if Imagination is related to creating any fortune or not.But when I checked Wikipedia, I found an interesting example on Imagination and Perception :-

From the work of Piaget it is known that perceptions depend on the world view of a person. The world view is the result of arranging perceptions into existing imagery by imagination. Piaget cites the example of a child saying that the moon is following her when she walks around the village at night. Like this perceptions are integrated into the world view to make sense. Imagination is needed to make sense of perceptions.

It clearly signifies that we form our perceptions based on imagination and hence when we are dealing with an object,imagination can take precedence over our existing knowledge of things.Perhaps this could be the reason of so many poets,writers and painters with more imaginative powers have been able to make sense of mundane and ordinary things surrounding us.

Its also well known that things normally happen twice,'Once in the mind and second time in reality'.So we create some images in the subconcious mind and then do those things consciously.Seems logical.

The greatest example in Imagination for me are the people who wrote the ancient texts in different religions.They have created such a document through scriptures and other texts that majority of us find it difficult to even question them and fight over them inspite of the strong scientific evolutions and marvels.

Infact ,research has also proved that some of the instances mentioned in those books seem to be true through rigorous experiments.For eg. astronomical calculations to prove that Mahabharata war did happen based on the eclipse timing and all.There is a simple explanation to this phenomenon :-

Apples used to fall since time immemorial.It was Newton who suddenly got this insight that all this is due to a force called 'Gravity' and explained its nature and behaviour.

So all these texts and body of knowledge could be mere imaginary creations but they form the very basis of the Knowledge that we all live upon.Perhaps Philosophy is nothing more than imagining a different or better world and Wisdom is something that we all gain through more imagination in our experiences.

A better imagination can overrule the existing knowledge as has happened in the case of  the crisis of 2008 where people created imaginary financial products,profits and what not for years together inspite of the knowledge that it was not sustainable.