Growing in Career Beyond Appreciation and Censure

In our childhood we remember the system of rewards and punishments, which our parents and / or teachers put in place to encourage us to do the right things and not do the wrong things. Rewards were pleasurable and punishments were to be feared. We grew up under the influence of this system.

However slowly and unknowingly we started becoming dependent on the pleasures which came to us by way of rewards, recognition, approvals, pats on the back. We also became dependent on avoiding actions that lead to the fearful consequences of censure , criticism, firing. Now we became easily controllable and unknowingly lost our independence

This loss of independence started showing up in our careers. Pleasing the boss became a pleasurable experience to many of us. We started working towards recognition and rewards. We lost track of our own career agendas even if we ever had such agendas in place. We got lost in the jungle of rewards and punishments.

Our bosses know this very well and did not hesitate to use this system to control our behavior. Performance appraisal ratings , increments, promotions stock options etc. ... right up to a nod of approval started driving our behavior. We became incapable of charting our own course. This led us to a general feeling of being lost and demotivated. We had to continually pay a price to get our regular fix of appreciation.

We need to understand our dependence on this system and grow out of it just the way we grew out of the need for candy and toys, Growing out of it will enable us to create our own course and progress along our chosen growth path. We need to make the system of rewards and punishments irrelevant in our work lives by growing out of it. Only then we can enjoy the freedom in our work lives and be the masters of our destiny.

The Art of Handling Unmet Expectations in Real-Time

This was a journey from Los Angeles to Pune. Nothing unusual about it. An Uber ride to the airport - congestion at the LAX airport, car taking time to pull in at the curb. A very long line at the airline checkin, a checkin bag getting wrongly labelled, long security check lines, over crowded carry-on baggage compartment ... and the list goes on till at the arrival in Pune a baggage claim belt that wouldn't start till it was eventually fixed.

During this time I watching my mind respond to the situations ( and there were several) which did not happen according to my expectations. No calamity here, just some minor sources of irritations. The point here however is that the rate at which they were happening was enough to cumulate the minor irritations in the mind. Cumulated irritations causing a noticeable mood shift and accompanied by a reduction in the energy levels.

I was able to catch the mischief at the root. I realized that ignoring this "minor" mischief is the root cause of major mind and life events which led me to think in terms of prevention.

Realized that I need a skill of actively responding to unmet expectations as they happen in real-time. Allowing them to pile-up is never a good idea. On an average day all of us are facing several such "minor" irritants in the form of mildly unmet expectations.

What if I am able to handle these events in real-time ? What if my ability to process these is such that, there is no residual effect of each such event ? Thought this would be a highly useful preventive capability to manage my mental health.

Unmet expectations are of many kinds, some of them many in number - minor and benign, some are significant ( like a cancelled flight, major traffic jam", or very major such as loss of a near one or a job-loss.

I need a single thought process to process every unmet expectation. What would it consist of ?

1. Recognizing at each time the inevitability of some unmet expectations in life.

2. Recognizing that there is not necessarily an evil intention behind the each unmet expectation.

3. Recognizing that there could be a possibility of recalibrating some expectations in the future.

4. Recognizing that a change of solution or an innovative approach in the future is a possibility to rectify some situations.

5. Recognizing that in some cases it might be possible to just gracefully accept expectations around some unmet expectations

If points 1-5 could be combined into a single thought process and consciously applied efficiently at each such event, we will not have a unprocessed backlog, making mental hygiene management a much simpler task.

In reality, I used this approach sit down briefly to handle a batch of unmet expectations during the journey , before heading out of the airport while reflecting on the possibility of improving my capability to process these in real-time. People who had come to pick me up did not suffer the experience of an irritated me.

Wanted to share this with my friends hoping that this would be useful for anyone in any situation. I welcome you to share this with your friends too.

The art of story telling.

Every culture carefully nurtures a set of stories in the form of mythological tales which are passed from generation to generation.  Stories serve several purposes like entertainment, recording historical incidents and inspiration.  We provide a special place for "true" stories.

We know that one of the characteristic of great leaders is the ability to tell stories very effectively.  I like to think of stories as very effective instruments to achieve a desired mindset.  Whether in a written or a spoken form or related in the form of a verse (ballad)  stories are indeed very powerful. 

People of all ages absolutely love stories and are held very spell bound.  I am curious to know - how does one become an effective story teller ?  Can it be an acquired ability ?  I would think of it as an essential part of any leadership training.  I have seen some people have a very natural ability to convert an incident into a story.  Some are able to create a story from nothing

What makes a story interesting ?  It is clear  that novelists, script writers and film makers are masters at  being able to create interesting stories or to simple narrate a story in an interesting way. 

Overall I have many questions and am really interested in learning from other readers - this subject and skills of effective story writing / telling.  I am very fascinated by this subject.

 

Sadhana for Self Understanding

All seekers of self understanding ask the question  - what should I be doing to make the self understanding happen faster ?  I will attempt to provide my own learnings

1.  Self understanding is a biological process.  You can only create favourable circumstances for it, but you cannot realy accelerate it.  The process is of transformation through maturity growth and evolution. 

Factors that create favourable circumstances are

1. Presence of a living Guru in your life ( one who is a master and also is skilled at guiding you)
2. Your state of complete surrender to your Guru
3. You being part of a study group.
4 Your silence practice - consistency and depth
5.  Your determination and priorities towards self understanding

Factors that create unfavourable circumstances are

1. Comparison shopping for a Guru, scripture or group
2. Excessive verbalization of the scripture
3. Thinking that it is not practical
4. Thinking that it is very hard and not for me mortal
5. Getting into arguments / defending your opinions with people who are not on the same path

Hope this puts a perspective around sadhana for your understanding



 

God is a Principle

I have been following endless debates between Atheists and Believers and have always wondered if there is any way to reconcile between the two. 

The difficulty I believe is in the person-centered view of God.  We have been conditioned to think of God as a person with some super-human qualities - usually sitting somewhere up there in the sky which really sounds like a fairy tale - however comforting it may be. 

As soon as we think of God as a person, we are defining a body / form and every form has limitations.  That concept does not reconcile with the other view of omnipotence / omniscience etc.

I think that the real breakthrough in the God understanding is possible if we apply the paradigm of principle to God instead of the paradigm of a person.  We are familiar with principles - which never change with time, are invisible, but always evident.  While we cannot see principles no one can argue that they don't exist. 

Thinking of God as a principle, can reconcile all differences, just the way science ( which is about discovery and understanding of principles) is universally accepted.  This can also reconcile the differences between science and religion.  This can be a hope for humanity to live together in harmony!

On Self-Worth

Introduction
All of us are occupied with the underlying thought of self-worth throughout our lives. All human pursuits can be traced to the primal objective of increasing one's self-worth. Be it our career, relationships, homes, wealth, recognition, fame or power - all what we constantly seek through such pursuits is an increase in our self -worth.

Why this constant occupation with self-worth ? The feeling of self-worth is very intimately connected to our feeling of well-being. More the self-worth, more is the feeling of joy , happiness and in general a positive state of mind.

In this article, I seek to establish that we have two clear choices in determining our self-worth - we can either determine our self-worth on the basis of our actions and the results of our actions - in which case our self-worth will be a constantly changing (up and down) aspect of our life
OR
We can determine our self-worth as an independent parameter which is infinite ( beyond measurement) all the time and in every situation, unrelated to our actions and the results of these actions and also independent of the opinions of people around us.

Our quality of life fully depends on which approach we take to determine our self-worth - the earlier approach guaranteeing us life-long struggle whereas the later approach guaranteeing us a highest quality of life all through.

What is self-worth ?
We have an innate understanding of our self-worth. It manifest through our thoughts, actions, attitudes and the choices we make in life as well as how we experience life itself.
Self-worth in simple terms is what we think of ourselves at any given time. Do I consider myself worthy of being respected ? Being loved ? Do I measure up to my own expectations of myself ? If I do, then I feel very worthy. If not, I feel as if my self-worth is zero , or possibly even negative. With negative self-worth, I experience life as a liability and a burden.
Some people have such high levels of negative self-worth that they feel like trashing their own lives though acts of life-destruction such as suicide or acts such as self-neglect or self-torture. They also subject themselves to a constant rant of self-abuse to such an extent that constantly they want to shut their minds off with the use of alcohol / drugs

On the other hand a person with a very high self-worth considers oneself worthy of love , care and attention and experiences life as a very enjoyable experience in all situations. For such a person there is never any blame to be given or taken.

In general, our experience with self-worth is that it keeps oscillating between high and low, based on external situations almost resulting in a bipolar state of mind. Sometimes I feel at the top of the world and at other times I feel at the bottom of a pit.

How do we determine our self-worth ?
We have some very commonly used parameters that are used to determine our self-worth. In our life-time, the earliest used parameter is parental approval. Other parameters are - academic success, social / peer approval, our possessions, location/size /market value of our home, car that we drive, assets that we own, shape, size and appearance of our bodies, characteristics of our spouses, income, children's achievements, our social connections, recognitions, professional standing, promotions, increments, and in general what others think of us.

The problem with determining self-worth with all the above parameters is that we are unable to predictably hold a high self-worth most of the times. We feel fully dependent on a complex set of volatile parameters , and our self-worth wildly changes with these - giving rise to significant stress, anxiety, insecurity and even depression and in some cases suicidal or violent behaviour

I have no control of what others may think of me, in spite of all my actions. The value of my assets is subject to the vagaries of market conditions over which I have no control

Thus my life becomes a race against the impossible, in which my pursuits of increasing self-worth is pitted against complex and unpredictable forces which for a significant portion of the time act towards reducing my self-worth.

An alternate approach towards determining self-worth - a clean break from the past

We can conclude that linking our self-worth to a host of external factors is perhaps not the best way of doing it. Is there another way ? Yes there is !

In reality our self-worth is infinite and independent of all worldly parameters such as health, beauty, wealth, power, possessions, achievements etc. We need to wake up to the fact that all of us in reality have unconditionally infinite self-worth which never changes with time, place or circumstances or with other's opinions. This is the Creator's covenant with us. We are all made with one unconditional and greatest gift ( you can call it as a start-up capital) of all - which is Infinite , never-reducing self-worth.

If we understand this very simple fact - all our struggles in our life are instantly over. We just need not do any thing in order to boost our self-worth , and conversely nothing that we do or don't do, will ever reduce our self-worth. We can just let go our pursuits in this area and really start enjoying life to the fullest extent as one life-long holiday !

Is there a R&D mindset ?

Having started my professional life in research and having spent a significant part of it in a R&D role , I have been dwelling on a question - Is there any thing like a R&D mindset ? Would like to share some thoughts around it.
First about the mindset of a researcher. The aim of a researcher is to discover. She wants to explore , and for that she needs a very open mind. A mind that is clean of all preconceived notions. A mind that a equally ready for any conclusion. The researcher uses all methods of science including hypothesizing, observation and inference to arrive at the discovery of facts / principles.
Next about the innovator. The aim of the innovator is to make use of the knowledge of principles in the problem domain to create a solution for a previously understood need. For this she needs a sensitivity to understand a given need combined with the audacity to tread on a path which presumably no one has so far.
Now talking about the R&D mindset . I would think about it as a combination of Researcher and Innovator. From what I know, nothing in an engineering / science curriculum prepares a person's mindset for R&D. They teach you the science / engineering principles and skills, but I believe that the predictor of success in a R&D role would be the R&D mindset.
Every engineer does not aspire a R&D role. For those who aspire such a role, I wonder if the educational psychologists could come up with any educational method to create / develop an R&D mindset for a budding engineer ?
Or is there a possibility of a finishing school to create a R&D professional from an engineering / medical major ? Some open questions !