The latest addition to the feline lineup

I felt my heart swell when I saw one of my cats walk in yesterday with her really little kitten held ever so gently in her mouth. I first thought it was a rat, it was so little. I'd religiously made sure she had the right food through her entire pregnancy, so I almost felt like she'd brought the little kitten just to show me. She then found herself a nice cozy spot in the garden, behind the vegetable patch. 

Ok, I know cats do that all the time, but lets just allow me my fantasy :)

I don't know if I can say as much about Kannada, but thanks to her, I'm surely making a lot of progress on cat communication. I understand there are like 38 different kinds of mews or something, and I think I now understand a fairly good percentage of them. I surely get the, 'hi.. morning', 'where's my food', 'I'm hungry', (there's a difference, with the latter being that notch more urgent than the first), 'I want to come in', 'I want a caress', and 'stay away from me'. It's beautiful how they communicate much more through body language than mews, but all in all, I'm progressing there.

These pictures are cropped and recropped, because I was too scared to go closer. How ever friendly, there's nothing more vicious than a mother cat under threat, and I know this one, I've been attacked once. 

Ain't they both just so cute !!

A problem well articulated is half solved...contd

The Personal example from the previous post:

It's a situation between two friends who are also colleagues, Nitya and Raj (names changed for obvious reasons). There's a difficult situation at work due to role changes and a lot of stress that's getting built up between the two. There's unpleasant situations and accusations getting thrown around. This is now stretched over four weeks. Negativity's getting built. It's reaching a stage of N saying, It's not working,  I didn't know he had these facets to him, I don't think I can handle this equation anymore, 

Typically, egos come into play, and so also the recency effect. Are we going to use these exchanges to gauge a person, as against a relationship built over years.

Can we have that honest and transparent conversation, the difficult conversation ?

Here it becomes critical to come to the table with atleast 3 to 4 problem statements at both ends. These would in themselves take some effort. It requires a fairly high level of self awareness to articulate what you're feeling and what the triggers might have been. Sieve through the emotions, the anger, the hurt.

The goal is to understand what went wrong......Are the feelings valid? Are the triggers real?  Or were they Interpretations? Perceptions?

Nitya: I feel sidelined, plus judged, like he's taken over my work and added insult to injury by changing systems I've created,  like they were all crap. I feel he is being arrogant in not even wanting to consult me in what he's changing. I feel rejected. 

Raj: She's not willing to give up control.  She's high handed. Is this some kind of a power struggle? Why can't she accept that she could be wrong? Why is she being defensive? She's not capable of listening.

All this from incidents and exchanges over four weeks.

In such a situation, if one stays with these feelings and presumptions ( and that's what they are) and lets things drift, and if things continue to be left untended, it could do lasting damage to the relationship.

It's time for that difficult conversation. Two prerequisites. One, the clearly stated problems. Second, a mindset of respect and trust, intent to listen. ( without that you might as well go opposite ways )

This is where you get to separate the chaff from the wheat. The clearly stated problem will in itself show you which one's just perception and which real. If real, what's the rationale and is it acceptable?And you'll see the resolution within this framework.

Sure, pushing under the carpet also works, but most often it can come back to bite you; simplest case with a recurrence in another form, deeper case, by building baggage. I personally prefer a deeper understanding that enables real acceptance, and this would work for those who also do. To better clarity and healthier relationships :)

A problem well articulated is half solved

A problem well stated is half solved

Sounds like an aphorism, a pretty statement, but I've seen from experience how much depth this has. We tend to underestimate the significance of the need, and the difficulty in clearly articulating the problem. And this can apply at an individual level or at a collaborative level, at work or in personal equations. 

At an individual level. When upset or angry for instance, we clearly know we're upset or angry with some event or behavior, ours or others, but only know the actual cause at a vague level.  So our normal reaction of the situation is to handle it at the symptom level.

A project is veering off course. Milestones are not being met. There's a sense of urgency and lots of meetings. Urgent takes precedence over Important. But until we spend the time identifying and understanding the root cause, there's not much real progress we're going to make with the solutions.

Articulating is to figure out the what of it down to a single or more, clear statement level. It in essence means digging deeper to understand the crux of the issue. Once there, getting to the how of it becomes so much more efficient.

Lets do this through examples, one from a work experience and one from a personal one:

Work:

This is a case of multiple stakeholders collaborating on a business need. 

To get real value from working together, we need the problem well articulated and clearly aligned to the interests of all parties.

                              

Here's a sanitized story of one such initiative at a company. 

Let's call it White Co, a parts supplier for the white goods industry (the durable consumer appliances that tend to have a white finish — air conditioners, refrigerators, and so on).

It had taken a long time to organize the workshop. White Co had put huge efforts in convincing a key customer to participate and had done its best to set up the event well. They had picked a location designed to spark people’s imagination, and both parties had sent representatives from multiple functions that included experts and key executives from both companies. Commitment and expectations were high.

But the workshop flopped. The issue, it turned out, was that the problem they were trying to solve through the exercise was relevant only to White Co and not its customer, so the customer’s people soon disengaged. In an attempt to salvage things, White Co switched to a problem that was important to its customer, but it soon became apparent that this didn't work either, because it really wasn't relevant to the White Co people. Both sides ended up disappointed and will be unlikely to want to repeat the experiment.

                                                

This happens more often than you might think. In businesses, managers all too often treat such ”co-creation” as an event rather than a process and therefore focus almost exclusively on the workshop. But the workshop is only a point in a process that starts with the careful, collaborative design of a problem statement. Here are some tips on how to write a winning problem statement:

Brainstorm and iterate: Analyze needs and priorities to identify problems that could be relevant for both sides.

Select several problem statements: Don’t go into the workshop with just one problem statement.

Rank-order the list: Agree with your customer on shared criteria and then score each of the listed problems accordingly. 

Such collaboration can be difficult, but focusing your initial effort on jointly defining a clear problem will make it more likely that you will achieve real, sustainable value in the long term.

The Personal example in a separate post..... to work around risk of tl..rl :)

Possessiveness - A Deep Dive

Emotions typically rise from instinct or conditioning, and the intellect is what we use to deal with it. After all that's our most powerful tool.

Possessiveness or Jealousy is a great example.

Jealousy and Possessiveness are extremely instinctive emotions. You know when you see it in little children in relation to their siblings, or between your pet and your child. Sociological institutions of rigid relationship structures have been built on the same instinct, and so directly feed into it. It gives you the moral authority to be possessive and jealous.

That's a multiplier effect through expectation and conditioning. And ironically, one that's done the most damage to relationships.

I wouldn't be far from the truth if I said that Possessiveness is one of the single biggest factors that breaks relationships. No brainer, right?

                                                 

The green eyes monster, as likely coined by Shakespeare in Merchant of Venice, 1596, is an ultimate exemplar of jealousy, where Othello is tormented by jealousy, thinking his wife, Desdemona would cheat on him; and we continue to see this in the millions who spend so much energy based off their genes rather than their own thinking. 

So many of could relate to these commonplace..... 'what's my wife (or husband) doing talking to that man; oh, my god, she's laughing with him, she never does with me, she's looking straight into his eyes, .... I think she just touched his arm'. 

It's also easy to see how it's the most rampant and the most self defeating of emotions, as its common experience that the tighter you hold, the more the need to escape and the higher the chances of your losing it. Sure, the person might stay on in the relationship for a multitude of other reasons.......habit, society, responsibility, respect, but aren't we losing out on that positive space it could have been.

When you feel a surge of sexual jealousy, you're responding to the possibility of being abandoned by your partner. Which comes from our own need and insecurity. Fear. Again base instinct.

Dr. Nando Pelusi, a psychologist, says:

Like many emotional adaptations, jealousy is an imperfect and often overzealous call to arms. That's because the human life span was, until not long ago, perilously short. Evolutionary psychologists and anthropologists believe that our ancestors rarely got a second chance to woo a mate. 

Today, you can round the corner into a new neighborhood and invent a new life. Your emotions, unfortunately, have not caught on to this. That makes most of your experiences of jealousy historically urgent but mismatched to modernity.

When jealousy simply alerts us, it is likely to result from a concern for the relationship. But when it is possessive, it gets destructive.

By accepting that life is dynamic, freedom is integral, perfect reassurance cannot really exist, and that you do not even absolutely need it..... in place of energy spent in seeking and ensuring a guarantee of fidelity it could be better spent, say, being the freedom loving, fun-loving person with who your partner would actually want to have an affair. Would surely be worthwhile.... more fun all the way round. All you need to do is think about it....use the intellect (too)....it's very doable !!

There's always scope...

I'm wondering if scope and hope actually have the same etymology.....well they so easily could, as its not just that they sound like they do, but how they also tie into each other.

It's this realization that ironically hits you (read 'me' here) almost when after years and years, you're just getting to a point in life where everything seems so right, when you think you've reached where you want to be. And there's a knock on the window.

A friend has this theory which goes something like this: the words you use tell you something about what you're struggling with at any point. Like for instance because I used the word 'struggle' as against any other, it could tell me something about my state of mind.

And so it would follow that if I pick to write on self awareness, it's something that I'm personally working on. And I guess it does have some truth in it.

Writing that actually made me step back and ask some questions of myself. At the same point as I was feeling like I'd peaked, it also struck me that nothing in life is ever static, (unless you stubbornly choose to make it so) and that peaks can actually be deceptive. They can be so beautiful that you could get carried away and just want to stay, but then it's an attitude. All one needs to do is ask if they can get better....and voila ! you find that they could.

CANI. Constant and Never Ending Improvement. There's always scope. The canvas can stretch, it can be repainted or it can be changed. It may appear like an effort, a struggle even, but it's all so worth it. It's to lead life and not just to live :)

                                    

I was always fascinated by kaleidoscopes. I used to make so many of them, as all it took was an empty shuttle box, pieces of mirror, a chunk of glass bangle pieces and...... the desire, and you had a pretty pretty world in your hands. Oh, just trying to say how a kaleidoscope represents the myriad beautiful dimensions of life that are always there for the picking!

Becoming Self Aware...A Continuation

                                   

Some more on the Why and How of it:

Why

Apart from the metaphysical or esoteric goal of knowing oneself, there’s also a very down to earth, here and now plus in being self aware. It lends itself to a greater degree of Authenticity, Focus, Growth and Peace.

‘Accept what you cannot change, Change what you cannot accept and have the Wisdom to know the difference’….…it’s what enables that needed Discernment or Wisdom.

Somehow, most of us kind of totally miss one big obvious facet of this. Acceptance does not mean putting up with crap. Accept that it is crap and deal with it as such. I've seen this happen, had it happen, in almost self flagellating.......martyrish manners .....by saying I've mastered acceptance. Where there is the Wisdom then? 

                                                  

How

We read 5 ways in an earlier post.  To get to a more practice-on-the-go way, an imbibed level, here's what has really worked, or rather continues to work for me;

Watch yourself. Step back from situations and actually watch yourself. And the best learning time is soon after extremes...... like when you’re really happy or really upset. Spend some time figuring out what enabled that shift into each of those modes.

With a little practice, you’ll soon be able to identify the exact trigger for the shift;  be aware that the trigger could be emanating from another, from within you or from the space in between. Once we become aware of those triggers, and the reactions they evoke, you know which ones you're happy to keep and which you don’t want. And by don't, it basically means dealing with it. Identify the emotion,........ rationalize with it and more importantly, do what needs to be done.

Here I have a small quirky tip; don't blindly throw out all that's upsetting you, sometimes your biggest and deepest learning's might come from first understanding why it's upsetting you. Be warned....this would directly be proportionate to your appetite for the abstract :)

Instinct and conditioning typically evoke the emotion; and its the intellect that can deal with it. Make this a practice, and as with anything acquired, practice makes perfect. Ok, you may never get to perfect, but you'll surely find that 'more often' and 'more quickly', you'll get out of those negative spaces.....it's a process, and soon it’s an automatic growth story. 

Li Lu, a co-leader of the Tiananmen Square student demonstration and today a highly respected investor, apparently had a practice he followed for years, inspired by Benjamin Franklin. Franklin kept a “balance sheet” of both the assets and liabilities of his personal traits. By diarizing any new strength he believed he could learn from someone else, and marking down any self-perceived weaknesses, he could better assess whether the “net worth” of his character was growing over time.

It’s actually simpler than it sounds.

The intellect which is rational, capable and efficient is also as easily irrational, neurotic, conditioned and illogical. This is where you use awareness to watch which one you’re using more of. Try it....... and the icing on the cake? It's actually a fun process !!

I just made a fool of myself

This one fit so perfectly into the 'make a fool of oneself' bit in the valentine days blog' that I had to put it in here as is :). It's again from Seth's blog:

"I just made a fool of myself"

Actually, it's far more likely that you made a human of yourself.

When you drop your guard, opt for transparency and make an honest connection with someone, you're right on the edge of foolishness, which is another word for not-corporate, not-aloof, not-safe. Another word for human.

Most of the time, we persuade ourselves not to make a fool and so instead, we shut down a connection that could have become precious for us and for them.

So much energy gets wasted in that effort of holding out..... be it at work, with friends, in relationships......wonder what happens to flow? to trust? to be?