What is Happiness? A plate of steaming hot Idli's with a cup full of Sambhar and a light drizzle on a Sunday morning with "The Hindu" crossword in hand Mast of us would have different answers for the above question - What is happiness? Yes I accept that the answers are subjective and also time conscious but most of us would not have a clear idea about happiness. We always look outside or the surroundings for the most important questions in life such as SUCCESS, HAPPINESS, GOALS, GROWTH. In contrast the answers for all these are actually inside of everyone. Then What is happiness? Actually we do not require any formal Webster's definition for this, it is already installed inside of us. We know it when we feel it and often we use big words to describe it such as joy, pride, contentment, and gratitude. Use any definition but what resonates with all of us is that feeling of wellness or goodness or positive emotion. So you want to spice up your life and make it more exciting and happy? Then you have come to the right place at the right time. Before I start - let me ask you a simple question - If your life was a movie - would anyone watch it till the end? Most of us get sucked into the auto-pilot mode - for example a south Indian TamBram. They go to school, get into an Engineering college then do an MBA head to work in a multinational Bank, commute, browse Instagram, watch Netflix, play video games, get married and search for happiness. Suddenly they find years have gone by and they cannot remember where they spent all their time. Do not live a robotic life and blame technology and current work-life balance for it. Everyone needs to learn the tricks of how to make their lives happy and exciting within the given constraints. It is much like rendering a Karnatic RTP (Ragam-Thanam-Pallavi) encore. Karnactic music has its own boundaries and constraints but yet gives the artist lots of freedom for innovation and creativity. To use that innovation and creativity we must understand the constraints clearly. So no use in complaining about the constraints and get moving. I have three simple tips that has helped me make my life more exciting and filled with happiness. Lets explore it - ready?
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People who wish to go into the future should have two skills to succeed – the ability to deal with people and the ability to sell. – Shiv Khera, author We are all currently living in a world that is moving fast and getting more and more complicated. In the name of AGILE, the scope changes at rapid speed and management wants the teams to be reactive to these changes. Business models are changing and is no longer possible for management to be dictatorial in nature. The management behaviour today needs to be shifted from Directional based to Social based. In this types of cauldrons, soft skills are the necessary tools for a manager to survive the storm. The more and more people who have succeeded in today's world, the only distinguishing factor is their SOFT SKILLS. It's importance is growing day by day as we speak and neither the corporate nor the education system seems to enhance these skills for the entrant leaders. Soft Skill Vs Hard Skill Soft skill as per the dictionary meaning is "personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people". Soft skills include the ability of a person to listen to others patiently, be positive, calm, handle conflicts with ease, handle team and personal pressures, manage time and risk factors and demonstrate good manners. Hard skill as per the dictionary meaning is "specific, trainable abilities necessary to carry out the professional or technical requirements of a job or occupation". Hard skill includes knowledge of the domain, operations, execution, technical analysis, administration, coordination etc. Unlike soft skills, hard skills are typically easy to observe, quantify, and measure. Let me give you an example of the two kinds of skills. If you watched the recently concluded Cricket world cup, you would have heard comments made about Kane Willams and the accolades that poured for him. He is not only known as the captain of New Zealand team, but he is also known for his kind, compassionate, and humorous character. “Softness” became Kane Williams’s nickname, and the announcers mentioned it on Sunday. In addition to his “hard” batting skills, his “soft” personality skills won him an enduring reputation. The way he carried himself in those last few overs of the game speaks volumes about his leadership skill. He was totally clam under pressure, clear inside the chaos of the over throw incidence, magnanimous in defeat even when his team was actually not defeated. They were knocked out on technicality. Soft Skill In Work Place More and more corporate are now understanding the need for soft skills as it is the only distinguishing factor in the noisy consumer centric market place. They need to make sure their people know how to handle themselves at work and how to relate with their customers and peers. How it has transpired in the current market is that the hard skills can only get you into an interview, it is the soft skill which can actually get you the job offer and also sustain in that job. Gone are the days where only technical skilled people flourished in the team, today's Gen next wants tech savy soft skilled persons only. The biggest challenge is to stay focused. It's to have the discipline when there are so many competing things - Alexa Hirschfeld The key thoughts of successful persons are staying focused and completing the task on hand. It displays lots of important benefits such as increased effectiveness, greater clarity, improved creativity, lowered lethargy, One final and important item is that it drastically improves your chances of achieving high lofty goals. With so many good benefits, why is it not an easy habit to acquire? In one word: Laziness. Going a little deeper, it is for the want of speed. Most of us tend to multi-task. What multitasking does is more likely to induce errors, struggles with creativity, reduces productivity. There are also studies that suggest that habitual multitasking may be impacting the physical structure of the brain in a negative way. Then why do all of us strive to multi-task? The only notional benefit of multitasking is in saving time. My simple question is why reduce so many parameters just to save one - TIME, rather put a bit more time and get greater productivity, quality and a sense of achievement. To do that we need to focus, Let us explore on why focusing is really hard? I believe it's a function of two things. Firstly it's the amount of information we now process, which our brain may not be used to. I read somewhere that The Hindu Sunday edition contains more information than the average 18th century Madras advocate learned in his lifetime. (Still trying to figure out where I read this ...) Secondly, we have all these new technologies which are very good at distracting us, which our human habits have not caught up to. Researchers are still trying to understand the true of cost of digital distraction. From the time apes descended to the ground, attention was a limited resource. Every time we focus our attention we use a measurable amount of glucose and other metabolic resources. The usage is specially huge for high-intensity tasks such as decision making or self-control tasks. Distractions are everywhere. Now what to do? The box is already full, so think outside of it - Anonymous You know the saying "Think outside the box"? This is the same except that I am telling you to think outside your current domain. Whenever someone tries to come and teach me pro-activeness with competition or asks me to come with the next strategy to lead the market, it always is very superficial at best. I get angry at my industry, I love it, yet am overwhelmed at times. But it is not my industries fault that I give much of my life and time! I think back at every industry or domain that I have been in - telecommunications, cosumer electronics, electronic payments, multimedia, automotive infotainment - I have always found annoying things. You too share the same feeling? It doesn't mean that we are haters of the domain, it just means that we have some unique way of transcending things that we do not like about our industries. I have becoming a slave to mechanical routine and have become totally uninspired lately.It is a direct result of consuming too much of contents from my own working domain. Instead of feeding on my creativity from my inspired ideas, I have been chasing other people's ideas and market strategies. Why should we not let consumption win over creativity? Consumption leads to comfort zone which leads to stagnation. That is why it is mostly imperative that we try to be creative, inspired and get back on top of the competition. So how do you get yourself ahead? I don't believe in elitism. I don't think the audience is this dumb person lower than me. I am the audience. This is a quote by Quentin Tarantino, the Italian born American director. What struck me the most with this quote was his definition of who the audience are. I liked the way of equating the audiences with himself. This is the first step that one needs to act if they are trying to draw audiences to their content.
According to HubSpot, more than 40% of the blog readers admit to just skimming through the blog posts and never care to finish the entire content. So what is the problem that we are facing? Everyone is aware that it is very difficult to write and in today's blog world it is extremely hard to find a tribe for your contents. In this harsh condition, it is imperative for the authors to keep his followers on the toes always. That's a task to do and the blogging community faces this problem without an idea of how to crack the audience attention code. This draws us to a more deeper question - Why is it necessary to keep their attention? You write a blog since you wish to communicate certain information that you have. If readers are least interested in the content, then you will loose interest in writing further. So in order to maintain the levels of your motivation, there is need for your audiences to be engaged. Now comes the difficult question - how engaging should the contents be? Every bit of your contents should be engaging. It should cause enjoyment to the reader while reading and once finished should evoke some feelings or thoughts in them. If you are struggling to do this, fear NO more. For I have some practical tips that have worked for me and a lot of others. Why not explore them now? |
AuthorVasudevan is a Leadership Mentor and an Executive coach. I run an online website geared towards helping creative entrepreneurs and future managers to build their dreams. Archives
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