Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shores -- Andre Gide, French Novelist Men have always been perceived as people who are uncomfortable or who don’t share their emotions. But they have always felt that sharing emotions is not masculine. Call them as egoistic, unwilling to share, inconsiderate or what not. It seen many a time, men have to console themselves all alone. I am not blaming the other sect, but the ecosystem has portrayed masculinity differently. Crying, compassion, emotional feelings etc as not masculine. Men have a large barrier to overcome to seek help for the problems. For men, sharing their personal issues with a friend or a family is a great hurdle. Leave the therapist for now out of the picture. Why go any further than this classic example. Imagine a male in a car and lost. By lost let me say he has a little direction orientation disability. I mean hopeless and utterly lost. Even in this situation, the person is incapable of stopping his car and asking for directions. Men always feel they should know how to get to their destination and get embarrassed when they don’t. Men have always felt guilty to accept problems. Even when they knew someone else is having a bigger problem than theirs. What rationale is this? Men use the rational that unhappiness is not comparative. The Old Arabic proverb which states “I complained that I had no shoes until I met a person who had no feet”. Even after knowing this, men still do not share. Is there hope? Men have always been termed as people without compassion or with very less. Might be the currency of compassion is a limited resource, with the woman as a finance minister. [Not talking about the current regime at all]. One of the main reasons men don’t share according to me is the pride. The pride will turn angels into devils and it is only humility which makes men as angels. Even after so many years of evolution, some men have misplaced their priorities. They have hung on pride and left humility at bay. The only provenance that I have is that I am also a male. So is there no way out?
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One the most important lesson that I learnt about productivity is: It’s less about managing TIME and more about managing ENERGY. I voluntarily took a month and a half of vacation from blogging and wanted to really understand what is productivity and how should I improve my productivity levels, increase energy levels, motivation and all other leadership jargons possible. In the end of it, my initial assumption that my time management skill was costing my productivity turned out to be completely wrong. Why? It’s because time is still relative or flexible but energy is always dissipating and is not flexible. Most of us always get this concept backwards. We try to cram our daily routine with tasks thinking that if we manage time we can get all the things done. Instead we end up totally dried at the end of day and still 80% of the task list is in pending state. This explains that more and more hours we use up, the lesser and lesser we are effective. According to a study done by NASSCOM, the average hours of an Indian software resource is close to 70 hours a week and sometime more. Another study done by Gallup in the US reveals the same data. Alexandra Michel is a former banker who teaches at University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. She conducted a twelve-year study of investment bankers who regularly worked between—get this—100 and 120 hours a week. You may know that there are only 168 hours in a week which leaves these people sleep deprived. The banks provided these people with round-the-clock services and help, along with meals, laundry services, domestic servants, body messages and everything which we think are great. Initially the bank found that the bankers were doing great – highly productive. This was for the first few years but the trend did not last long. Slowly the people started experiencing physical and psychological breakdown. The typical list of problems included chronic exhaustion, insomnia, back and body pain, autoimmune diseases, heart arrhythmias, addictions, and compulsions, such as eating disorders. [This is an edited list, it’s really huge] Not only that, this problem slowly started percolating to the other employees also. This process yielded to total financial ruin. So this will not only affect bankers – but everyone. What is then needed to solve this problem? Sattvic Guna helps form great habits, in the right place and at the right time - GITA -Chap14 I know that most of us would start the New Year with a resolution of acquiring one new habit at least. Then you set out with the goal with all vigour to internalise the new behaviour … only to find yourself not doing it at all two week later? I know I am guilty of this many a times. Then why is it so hard to form good habits? Why is it so difficult to make consistent change? How come we have the best intentions to become better, have full knowledge of the purpose and the possible effects and yet see so little progress? More importantly, is there anything we can do about it? So how long will it take to acquire a new habit? The Indian and Western philosophy of acquiring a new habit is vastly different even though both prescribe the same methodology for acquiring the habit. The initial idea of 21 days to get a new habit into your system was got by Maxwell Maltz's self-help book, Psycho Cybernetics. The reason why 21 days caught us by storm is that its easy and very feasible. Moving to the Indian side, it is prescribed that you need to at least practice the task for more than 41 days or one Mandala [Full moon to full moon + days to Ekadashi = 30+11]. Just as the embryo needs to spend enough time in the womb to become a fully formed child, a yogic practice needs it’s time to mature within our system. It takes some time for our food to digest and give us energy. Similarly, it will take some time for the practices to integrate with our system and start to offer us benefits.
So what does science says about forming a new habit? Habits are formed after a person has learned something new, like how to parallel park. This process engages the basal ganglia, or the part of the brain located in the prefrontal cortex that works to start and control movement and emotions. There’s a cue, or trigger, which signals to your brain to turn a behaviour into an automatic routine (parallel parking), followed by the actual routine of the behaviour, and then the reward. The reward is the brain’s own personal cue for when it should recall the automatic behaviour. Once that happens, the brain takes a break. In fact, the brain starts working less and less can almost completely shut down. Take driving a car for example we can talk to others while listening to the radio and still coordinate the break + clutch + accelerator pedal synchronisation. The real advantage of making things as a regular habits is that we can use the mental activity devoted to doing something else. So how come we acquire bad habits faster? “Happiness is not something which is readymade, it needs to come from the inside” – Dalai Lama There are lot of people around you who always seem to be happy even though there are not successful or perfect. So what do they do that you don’t? This was how I felt when I started to look at people around me and watch for things they do to keep themselves happy. What I found is the core plot of this blog. Everyone (I know that I’m generalising here) are tuned in today’s world to worship the golden rule that happiness is the by-product of success. If we can chase success then we will be happier. This was the first myth that got busted in my first day of observation. What I observed is that to become successful we adopt the commonly shared best habits of successful people, happiness also naturally happens when we are surrounded by happy people. The reverse is also true for unhappy people. Certainly not everything that a happy person does is relevant to his happiness. What makes them different is the fact that they are able to distinguish between happiness and unhappiness and how they treat both these emotions in a balanced and a proper way. Learning from them has been a revelation for me and I wanted to share those pitfalls which will help others to also be happier in their life. This post would have more points of what the happy people avoid or never do than what needs to be done. Are you ready to become happier? Let’s start What comes to your mind at the mention of THAI food is its light prepared dishes with aromatic contents and mostly coconut based. It is widely believed that Thai food is healthy since it is made with fresh ingredients (plants & non-frozen meat) with lots of spices, herbs and raw vegetables. I never had a chance to taste THAI cuisine until last Sunday night when I took my wife for a romantic candle light dinner. [Yes, the romantic part is made up] We had plans for more than 4 months to visit a Thai cuisine. Last Sunday evening I had a ferocious arguments with my wife on where to have dinner - she suggested THAI food and I suggested Continental and after an hour of complete pandemonium we agreed on THAI food and would continue to fight next for the next dinner outing. The venue was picked - Absolute Thai in Teynampet. The place was really good and had ample parking space and good ambient settings. It looked like we would have a good time provided I keep my controversial mouth shut during the important times when my wife is making her opinions. I was advised not to have too much of coconut by the dietitians around the world owing to my early symptoms of diabetes and my wife owing to my sweet tooth. So I had planned not to have those tempting dishes but I could hold on to this plan only till they served the dishes on our table. |
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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