No Monkey Business This !

On a busy city street....... 

To Find Yourself - Let Go

There's times in life which come as wake up calls. Moments to step back and ask yourself some of those deeper questions (that got mispelt as deerer, and I almost wanted to leave it like that......seemed to be as right a fit :).

I was reading this post from Seth: 'Anchoring Can Sink You' and the title really caught my attention, as it's like an antithesis of a lot that we hear. And it so resonated, as it right away took me back to those turning points in life when unanchoring becomes a pre-requisite. And it's such a struggle........ because you're wanting change and you're also holding on to your anchor. It's the mistaken belief that your identity at that point, is 'absolute'  that totally anchors you.

While sounding simple enough, anchoring is something we slip into by default, we have a 'being' zone, and most of our beliefs and thinking keeps us in that anchored zone. 

And worse, it not just holds us in, it also influences how we listen to others. Our anchor has decided what's right and what not, what's good and what's not, what's worth aspiring for and what not, what makes us happy and what not. 

Watch for those wake up calls....they are not normally the most pleasant of times, but they are your rites of passage to potentially connect to your core. Seth of course says it so much more beautifully...........

From Seth: Anchoring Can Sink You

Canny negotiators know that people respond to anchors. If you tell me that your baseball card is for sale for $18, I'm unlikely to offer you $3. Your offering price anchored the conversation.

The thing is, we do this outside of negotiation, whenever we ask for insight.

If someone says, "can you review this slide deck?" there are a bunch of anchors already built in. Anchor: there are slides. Anchor: there are six slides. Anchor: the slides have text on them.

Before we can even have a conversation about whether or not there should even be a presentation, or whether the content is worth presenting, we're already anchored into slides and text and length. The right feedback might be: Do a presentation, but no slides. It might be: Use 100 slides. But these things rarely come up because the entire discussion was anchored at the start.

Great editors, great strategy consultants, great friends--they're generous enough and bold enough to unanchor the conversation and get to the original why at the beginning of a string of decisions.

Once in a while, start with zero, not with what might be the standard right now.

Still Alice

Lisa Genova, author of Still Alice, is a neuroscientist. The director, Richard Glatzer, while making this movie was himself battling a neuro degenerative disease, and I guess it's that, with Juliana Moore's powerful and gripping portrayal, that gives us this deep and sensitive movie, one that moved me to the core.

Alice,  is a linguistic professor diagnosed with an early onset of Alzheimer's, at 50, at the peak of her career. She starts to notice little aberrations, like forgetting words in between lectures, losing her way on her daily walk..... and she slowly acknowledges there's a problem. She visits a neurosurgeon..... and then starts the process of diagnosis, her coming to terms with the disorder.....and the ensuing struggle of living with it.

As Alice says at one point, 'I am not suffering the disease, I'm struggling to live it....I'm trying to master the art of losing'. As a linguistics professor, her identity is so defined by her intellect, her love for language and her own articulation, that it makes it that much more dreaded. 

Her family a loving husband (Alec Baldwin) and three grown up children are understanding and supportive but you can see where the strain and patience starts to wear.......starts with her husband saying "whatever happens, I'll be there", but there's the stress from his need to focus on his career.  The movie pretty much stays focused on her perspective, her journey. It's an internal battle with her own identity and need to stay herself.

Lydia, her youngest daughter, (Kristen Stewart) the rebel of the family who has given up college for theater, has a strained relationship with her mother, yet, seems the one to ultimately connect. She asks her mother "how does it feel?"  And when Alice says "I have good days and bad, and in good days I can almost pass for a normal person, and in bad days, I'm searching for myself" ........ Lydia says, 'that's sounds like a horror story', you know that's the deepest level of empathy and understanding she can give her.  I loved the passion that Kristen brings to screen in her very presence.

There's some sequences which just stay with you: like how she's constantly playing scrabble on her phone and she goes from a 66-point score, with a well-placed 'hadj', to a shadow of the player she used to be, laying down 'tone' for a mere 6.

There's this sequence of Alice listening to her past self. Alice in the early stage of her illness is well aware of how it can progress, and she records a video to her future self, guiding suicide, should the situation arise. The earlier Alice, talking with love, patience and certainty as though to a child, and the Alice of now listening with trust and recognition....and effort to follow instructions. It's one of the most poignant and shattering sequences.

It's also interesting to what extent Alice uses technology in most innovative ways to keep her memory going, answering questions on daily basis, doing simple spellings, her children's names ......I also read that Richard Glatzer uses technology as much to battle his motor neurone condition, his own indomitable spirit matching that of the film's protagonist.

While the disease reaches it's inevitable conquer of the body, the movie is yet defiant, insightful and uplifting in spirit.

I chose this picture (photograph above) as it seems to epitomize her issue........

'I miss myself'

as can happen with a brain disorder, and as epitomized in the title...... Is she still Alice? And also to acknowledge the author..... I'm sure it's a book that has helped many understand the trauma and struggle of those inflicted by Alzheimer's. 

Listening - A Poem

A beautiful poem by an unknown author;

When I ask you to listen to me
and you start giving me advice,
you have not done what I asked.

When I ask you to listen to me
and you begin to tell me why
I shouldn’t feel that way,
you are trampling on my feelings.

When I ask you to listen to me
and you feel you have to do something
to solve my problem,
you have failed me,
strange as that may seem.

Listen! All I ask is that you listen.
Don’t talk or do – just hear me.

Advice is cheap; 20 cents will get
you both Dear Abby and Billy Graham
in the same newspaper.
And I can do for myself; I am not helpless.
Maybe discouraged and faltering,
but not helpless.

When you do something for me that I can
and need to do for myself,
you contribute to my fear and
inadequacy.

But when you accept as a simple fact
that I feel what I feel,
no matter how irrational,
then I can stop trying to convince
you and get about this business
of understanding what’s behind
this irrational feeling.

And when that’s clear, the answers are
obvious and I don’t need advice.
Irrational feelings make sense when
we understand what’s behind them.

So please listen, and just hear me.
And if you want to talk, wait a minute
for your turn – and I will listen to you.

Author Unknown

The Power of Introverts: Susan Cain

A worthwhile watch, especially for parents with children who are the quiet ones. It's a very deep level of conditioning which pushes us to say, outgoing and amiable and friendly are the way to be.... and it's so much unwarranted pressure on those who are really not, and don't want to be.

On the kids basically, as once you're adult, you're either changed by the pressure or you've atleast learnt to deal with it, with goodness knows how much suppressed guilt and angst.

Inside Out

A delightful and insightful journey inside the mind of an eleven year old, a coming to age movie of a different kind. It's been reviewed as Pixar's best to date, and I get why.

The entire movie happens inside Riley's head with the main characters being ones basic emotions......joy, sadness, fear, anger and disgust.

The conceptualization and animation is simply marvelous... crazy imagination and inventiveness in designing and visualizing the inside of the mind. I love the varied dimensions and depth;  all memories stacked away in layers and layers of subconscious mind, a dream production center, an abstract thought place, a central console which acts as filter and driver. Then there's the distinction between random memories and core memories and how the core memories build out your personality islands. They are visualized as the pillars on which you stand..... of things that really matter to you.... your value systems....almost like what defines you.

While Joy seems to take charge from the word go.........through the process of growth she realizes that all emotions have their place and need to be there. I particularly loved the scene when Bing Bong, Riley's imaginary friend is upset, then sadness gets close.....hugs him.....there's moments there and maybe a few tears.....and in a while he's up and about. Joy is so amazed, she's like...how did you do that?

This is not really kid stuff........I'm sure it would also have gone a long way in helping many a child (and many a parent too :), understand, articulate and label their emotions......... a huge step in self awareness. 

Yale Open Courses

The other day a friend asked what I think about  'Teaching', like what I would expect of a 'Teacher'

I'm sure we've all thought about it at some point or the other.  So, what would it be? Maybe a teacher who can create or rather bring out the natural curiosity of the child, someone who can grow that sense of wonder, the imagination, the yearning.......stuff like that, right?

Sadly, it would have been easier to answer what it should not be, as we see a lot more of that happen....... in terms of curriculum, system, teaching...all of that. Anyways, net net, all those amazing subjects we did in school, Physics and Geography and History, which were so boring now sound so so interesting. And of course there's Astronomy and Psychology and Anthropology and such which we never even did in school.

In this context, when I chanced upon the Yale Open Courses I was thrilled beyond words. It's the actual recorded Yale graduate courses which are available online.

From the Yale Website:

Open Yale Courses provides free and open access to a selection of introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University. The aim of the project is to expand access to educational materials for all who wish to learn.

We welcome you to explore Open Yale Courses where you can discover a wide range of timely and timeless topics taught by Yale professors, each with a unique perspective and an individual interpretation of a particular field of study. We hope the lectures and other course materials, which reflect the values of a Yale liberal arts education, inspire your own critical thinking and creative imagination. We greatly appreciate your enthusiastic response to this initiative and hope you will stay in touch!

It's quite incredible and I'm so enjoying them. Also, it's teaching at an altogether different level, guess Yale is not Yale for nothing. 

And that's also when I found that there are more such amazingly high quality courses available online (for free). 

HarvardX
Yale
Coursera

See if you can find something of interest to you. It's pretty amazing stuff..... a joy just to listen to.