Dear Zindagi Again.....

It's a new 'aha' kind of moment for me.

I love going to the theater, watching a movie on big screen....... the all enveloping experience, the larger than life feel.....but sadly, I'm so picky about the movies I watch, that I don't get to go as much as I'd like to.
                       

Over the last year, I've noticed I look for excuses to go a second time. Someone needs company, I want someone else to watch, I like that song....duh, duh, duh. And I find that each time I watch, I enjoy....in fact I see more.  Or atleast until I do, I go.

So when I suggested Dear Zindagi again, and Diksha was like, "are you sure ma..... you can watch online you know",  I was like "na, I've now decided, no more excuses, if I like a movie...I'll just go as many times as I enjoy it" So we both did a night show yesterday. And needless to say I loved it...and yes, I did see more too

Maybe this time round I also looked more from a therapist lens, so I thought I'd write from that perspective. Maybe like x number of learnings.

1) Self Respect above everything else, please: Our society tends to confuse self respect with selfish. You think of yourself and you're called selfish. And a fundamental truth like....'If you can't respect and love yourself, there's slim chance you can do an honest job of it with others' is entirely missed.

Sometimes, giving up on something, losing out on something might turn out to be the biggest turning point of our lives. It's important to know which battles are okay to give up or lose..... because they end up giving us our deepest lessons in life.

2) Don't self critique based on societal norms. Belief systems are mostly formed based on external opinion, and it's possible that our own belief systems can be dragging us down.

It's not about others opinion of you, you need to get totally comfortable with yourself, and other opinions will naturally cease to matter. It's about getting secure within yourself.

3) Grieving is completely okay; If you can't cry wholeheartedly, how can you laugh wholeheartedly.....it's in essence about the extent to which you use your 'expression scale'. Identify and express your emotions.......You will likely also experience life on a similar scale.

"बचपन में जब रोना आता है, थो  बड़े बोलते है आसूं पोंचो। जब गुस्सा आता है थो  बड़े कहते हैं smile ताकि घर की शान्ति बानी रहे, नफरत करना चाहे थो इजाज़त नहीं दी. And जब प्यार करना चाहे थो  पता चला ये साल emotional system ही गड़बड़ा गया, काम ही नहीं कर रहा, Cannot function."

When a relationship ends, you deserve to heal yourself. Don't rush into the whole process of 'being okay'. Sometimes not being okay for a while is very important for being really okay.

4) Sometimes it's fine to choose the easier way: It helps to keep this in mind in times of conflict, especially between emotional and practical, or emotional and professional as is the case with Kaira....especially when you know you are not ready to handle the tough path. In essence, you don't have to always be right. It's what works best for you.

5) Know what matters to you....who are the people who really matter, who you share an intimate relationship with

It's the five ( give or take some) who you share an intimate relationship with. Intimate as defined by 'people who you can be completely yourself with, they will accept you with not just your strengths and virtues, but also your weaknesses and vices..... who will understand your moods, your dreams, your spaces. It is their opinion that you could listen to, as they understand you, think for you, the rest of the worlds opinion really does not matter.

6) Take Ownership, don't let your past continue to determine your future. Allow your parents to be human... get them off the pedestal. Allow them their mistakes, allow them their human errors. This will enable and empower you to take ownership for your life in the present. No more excuses.

7) Most of the therapy happens in the very relationship between therapist and client...from the space to be themselves..discover themselves. So, build trust, however long that takes. 

8) Seeking help and sharing vulnerabilities comes from strength, not weakness: It's a common perception that when we seek help......when we seek counselling, it means we are not strong enough

With Kaira....is she seeking counselling because she's not strong enough? She cannot cope by herself?

Kaira is a more intelligent, bold and self determined piece of work than most people are......enough to know when she's in a dip...to know that you can stay there and struggle, alternatively to proactively seek help and grow out....and when you grow out, you grow out stronger....and happier.

So to know...It takes intelligence, awareness, confidence and courage to seek help. To accept that the best of us, at some point can be caught up in emotional spaces, that the rough and tumble of life can get to you, that life will throw those curved balls at you. Do we want to just stay there and fight the swamp ourselves, or can we hold that stick that's available.

And to know that when we get out of there, you're one up for the experience

It's like tending to a garden.....but then to remember, gardening is tough and continuous work. Also to note...the more love and care and weeding done, the healthier and prettier the garden. 

Abilene Paradox

I received this in my inbox last week, with a note 'You might have seen this earlier. Else it's definitely up your alley.'

I had seen a part of it, the instance in example, and that had set me thinking onto my own confrontation with a similar situation a few years back.

I'd traveled to Pune to visit Dhruva, and I'd done so with difficulty, as I was in the middle of a project with tight deadlines and had to really work overtime to make that trip happen. And the only reason I pushed myself is because I thought Dhruva would be disappointed if I didn't go. 

A day after I was there, we were having a chilled out breakfast and I asked him 'Dhruva, tell me.....this visit of mine, do you think I did this for you or for myself, or maybe both' and I got a no nonsense, categorical response "ma, that's a candid question, and my honest answer is, that you did it for yourself."

And that incident for me, was an eye opener; he had indulged me by saying okay come, thinking I wanted to see him......and I'd done exactly the same, gone thinking he wanted to see me.... And it was like so much effort based on a false premise. (I could have so easily gone a week or two later.)

Today I realize it even has a name; The Abilene Paradox. This is the mail I received:

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"A couple of years back, I wanted to take my family out for dinner. I asked my wife where we can go. Knowing that I like Indian food, she immediately said: “Let’s go to Rajdhani - The Thali Restaurant.”

My son and daughter both nodded in agreement. On return my son said: “I wish Pappa had taken us to Mainland China – he loves Chinese food.” “Or at least to Copper Chimney for the wonderful Punjabi food” added my daughter. “Yes, I too would have loved to go Mainland China”, I said. 

My wife looked surprised: “But didn’t we all unanimously agree to go to Rajdhani” she asked. 

I said sheepishly “I didn’t want you to feel bad.” And both my children nodded in agreement. Here were four people who of their own volition would not have gone to ‘Rajdhani - The Thali Restaurant', but collectively agreed to go there. 

This also happens in the corporate world. This is the Abilene Paradox. Prof. Jerry Harvey calls it “The Inability to Manage Agreement”. 

Abilene Paradox occurs when a group of people collectively decide on a course of action that is contrary to the preferences of many of the individuals in the group.

Prof. Harvey states in his paper ‘The Abilene Paradox’: “Organizations frequently take actions in contradiction to what they really want to do and therefore defeat the very purpose they are trying to achieve”. This is the inability to manage agreement. 

He adds: “The inability to manage agreement, not the inability to manage conflict, is the essential symptom that defines organizations caught in the web of the Abilene Paradox.”

In the corporate world, when the top boss throws an idea, the group immediately agrees. This is because everyone in the group thinks he would look stupid if he disagrees. Standing out as a lone voice is very embarrassing. This leads the group to decide on ‘yes’ when ‘no’ would have been the personal (and the correct) response of the majority. 

I love this from Ayn Rand: “If we have an endless number of individual minds who are weak, meek, and submissive – who renounce their creative supremacy for the sake of the “whole” and accept humbly the ‘whole’s verdict’ – we don’t get a collective super-brain. We get only the weak, meek and submissive mind."

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A reunion of sorts

When it's said that Travel widens horizons, it's not necessarily the vacation, work, adventure kinds......at times it can even be your good old visits back home. No visit to Hyd seems to go by without  atleast one special spark.

This one's very family, but happened so by chance, and was so fascinating that just for that it deserves mention. Out of nothing we suddenly had a cousin-get-together which we could not have planned better. For the simple reason that not even one of us lives in Hyderabad anymore.

Starting the U with Dhruva on the right, we have Ruchira, Michael, Rajeshwar, Praveen, Harshitha, me, Nandita, Mala, Tegen, Shilpika and Crockett . Samhitha, you're sadly missing in this pic :(

Started with one what's app message from Nandita (from Houston) to say...."hey, I happen to be in Hyd for two days, in case you also are, we could do coffee". And from there we discovered that a bunch of us happened to be here.....from Jodhpur, Detroit, Doha, Houston, and ofcourse Bangalore (add in a few spouses and kids) and we had a nice mix.

At one point way way back we were all really really close, and it was amazing how quickly we found that space again..... what started as an hour over coffee stretched onto over six hours of so much connect & fun.

And considering the varying directions we've gone in, it almost became yet another level of 'travel widening horizons' ..........sitting across the room. :)

Michael and Nandita, a huge thanks for initiating, and hosting this !!

Did I miss writing

And how....

Ever since I started to blog (which is over two years now) , I don't think I've ever been this low on writing. The gaps I used to allow myself were the travel gaps, so this made me wonder. I was very much in Bangalore, not in a full time job, the course gave me enough time.....yet I wasn't writing.

It made me step back and look deeper into the space. What's that relationship made off. ( the me with my writing one :)

And I got some startling answers.

It's pretty literally space to connect into oneself. 

Writing can be ( is) in essence such an internal process, like a space inside of you that you make connection with........it's space to feel, to process, to be. And when that space gets taken up by other stuff, be it the life of detail, the demands of relationships, the concerns on specific issues, deeper internal processing........poof, it takes away this space.

My clock might show me available hours, but the connect may not happen. The mind space is taken see.....

Guess I did yesterday's post on 'know thyself' for a reason (nothing happens without reason). Maybe actually used 'meta cognition' to see what's up....look to what's blocking....all that jazz.

Made me all over again understand what being in the flow is....and to watch for how we can unknowingly, in a default kind of way, slowly drift off. And then to make a conscious choice; let the drift be for a while, the reason makes sense.... alternatively, to reconnect.

Taking the choice makes you realize that 'writing happens not when one has time, but to enable that time'. Time is not a concept out there....it's the clarity inside the head........and that's what enables a lot of time, time to do all the things you want to do.

Know Thyself

Self Awareness is that huge first step (or rather process) to being in more centered and conscious space....living life from the pilots seat rather than letting others or even your own emotions drive you.

Like Carl Jung says "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate"

In this context, this particular chapter from 'Emotional Intelligence' by Daniel Goleman gives good context on how, the seemingly obvious ' I know what I'm feeling',  is not as simple as it seems.

He starts with a little story, and then I've put excerpts:

"A belligerent samurai, an old Japanese tale goes, once challenged a Zen master to explain the concept of heaven and hell. But the monk replied with scorn, "You're nothing but a lout—I can't waste my time with the likes of you!" 

His very honor attacked, the samurai flew into a rage and, pulling his sword from its scabbard, yelled, "I could kill you for your impertinence." 

"That," the monk calmly replied, "is hell." 

Startled at seeing the truth in what the master pointed out about the fury that had him in its grip, the samurai calmed down, sheathed his sword, and bowed, thanking the monk for the insight. 

"And that," said the monk, "is heaven." 

The sudden awakening of the samurai to his own agitated state illustrates the crucial difference between being caught up in a feeling and becoming aware that you are being swept away by it. 

It might seem at first glance that our feelings are obvious; more thoughtful reflection reminds us of times we have been all too oblivious to what we really felt about something, or awoke to these feelings late in the game. 

Such self-awareness would seem to require an activated neocortex, particularly the language areas, attuned to identify and name the emotions being aroused. 

At its best, self-observation allows just such an equanimous awareness of passionate or turbulent feelings. It manifests itself as a slight stepping-back from experience, a parallel stream of consciousness that is "meta": hovering above or beside the main flow, aware of what is happening rather than being immersed and lost in it. 

This awareness of emotion is the fundamental emotional competence on which others, such as emotional handling, build. Self-awareness, in short, means being "aware of both our mood and our thoughts about that mood," 

Self-awareness can be a nonreactive, nonjudgmental attention to inner states. But Mayer finds that this sensibility also can be less equanimous; typical thoughts bespeaking emotional self-awareness include "I shouldn't feel this way," "I'm thinking good things to cheer up," and, for a more restricted self-awareness, the fleeting thought "Don't think about it" in reaction to something highly upsetting. 

When we say "Stop that!" to a child whose anger has led him to hit a playmate, we may stop the hitting, but the anger still simmers. The child's thoughts are still fixated on the trigger for the anger, and the anger continues unabated. 

Much of emotional life is unconscious; feelings that stir within us do not always cross the threshold into awareness. Empirical verification of this comes, for instance, from experiments on unconscious emotions. 

Any emotion can be—and often is—unconscious. The physiological beginnings of an emotion typically occur before a person is consciously aware of the feeling itself. For example, when people who fear snakes are shown pictures of snakes, sensors on their skin will detect sweat breaking out, a sign of anxiety, though they say they do not feel any fear. The sweat shows up in such people even when the picture of a snake is presented so rapidly that they have no conscious idea of what, exactly, they just saw, let alone that they are beginning to get anxious.

As such preconscious emotional stirrings continue to build, they eventually become strong enough to break into awareness. Thus there are two levels of emotion, conscious and unconscious. Emotions that simmer beneath the threshold of awareness can have a powerful impact on how we perceive and react, even though we have no idea they are at work.

But once that reaction is brought into awareness, we can evaluate things anew.   In this way emotional self-awareness is the building block of the next fundamental of emotional intelligence: handling the emotion.

Making the unconscious conscious, identifying and labeling emotions, is that first critical step. 

An Owl Spotting

Walks to Lalbagh seem to have become a periodical feature on the blog, but then, goes to show what beauty they potentially contain.

And this one was extra exciting because we spotted an Owl, which for some reason has always been mysterious favorite bird....maybe from an attachment made in Bambi (it was diksha's growing up favorite)....or just those big big eyes which seem to see it all....

Chances are you won't see it here :)

so, here's a zoomed pic

Guess, this was a bird spotting day...there was a huge beautiful falcon up there in that tree....and while it's not visible clearly in the picture, I still thought the picture in itself was pretty enough

I can't seem to go out with Diksha, without at some point catching her talking to a  doggy on the street...I don't get how that happens, but it sure does. This was a real early morning walk, where even the street lights hadn't gone off.

As it seems bird themed, I can't not have one of the ducks, especially as they were all swimming towards me :)

This was just so pretty....these pink wild flowers blooming by the lake

Well, why leave the crows out. That's my meditation enclave, and they all just line up there waiting for the good souls who come and feed them everyday

If it's Lalbagh, I can't possibly leave out the Pelicans

Nor a sunrise :)

This is picture courtesy Diksha. I took three pictures of those trees, but her picture looks best

At this point, just feeling a great sense of gratitude for having Lalbagh within walking distance of home

Mindfulness In Challenging Conversations

A Mental Trick to Help with Challenging Conversations

Excerpts from a write up in the Harvard Business Review

Imagine the colleague with whom you have a very challenging relationship, the person who makes the most innocuous conversation tense and uncomfortable. 

Once you can visualize that person vividly and even viscerally, imagine the following scenario: You’re sitting at your desk working away when a message from that person pops up on your screen. You open the message and it reads: “I got the draft presentation you sent. I caught a couple of mistakes, and I have some ideas for how to make it better. I’ll drop by your office at 3 PM to discuss.”

How does that email make you feel: angry, defensive, or anxious? Are you suddenly looking for an excuse to be out of the office at 3 PM? All of those are very common reactions. Many people would think, “What a jerk, looking for mistakes in my presentation!” or “Yeah, I BET she has a few ideas — she thinks she’s so smart!”

Now, wipe that person out of your mind. Instead, conjure up the colleague with whom you get along really well, the person who always has your back. This is the person you go to when you want to calibrate on an important issue. Once you have that person in mind, imagine this scenario: You’re sitting at your desk working away when a message from the person pops up on your screen. You open the message and it reads: “I got the draft presentation you sent. I caught a couple of mistakes, and I have some ideas for how to make it better. I’ll drop by your office at 3 PM to discuss.”

Now how do you feel: Relieved? Grateful? you’re probably interested in and looking forward to the conversation. You may even fill up the candy dish on your desk in anticipation.

That’s how profoundly your assumptions and prejudices affect your perceptions. What’s worse is that if you consider how differently the meeting at 3 PM will go, the exact same message from two different people leads to radically different outcomes.

In the meeting with the supposed adversary, you assume the worst, and perhaps without even realizing it, your mindset, your response, and especially your body language become negative and resistant. Seeing your behavior, your colleague gets defensive and hostile in return, which begets (and justifies) more deeply adversarial behavior from you, and so on. The result is that you both shut down, trust erodes, and the organization loses a chance to get a better outcome.

In stark contrast, in the meeting with your perceived ally, you assume the best, and your words and actions demonstrate openness and even enthusiasm for the ideas. You share and learn, the quality of the work improves, and the trust between you grows.

The best antidote to this destructive dynamic is mindfulness. Being aware of the assumptions you’re making gives you an opportunity to reverse the ill effects of your prejudices.

Framing concerns as situational doesn’t preclude negative feelings about your colleague’s behavior, but the situational interpretation will feel much less adversarial and judgmental and will lead to a more productive interaction. If you master that approach, push yourself to the next step and search for a positive motive behind words and actions that you resent.

Still, to reap the full benefit of this mindful approach, you have one more step: Show outwardly the curiosity you’re modeling internally. Ask a question to demonstrate your openness to your colleague’s perspective: “You think I should take the presentation in a different direction. What is your vision for where to take the story?” 

See how the conversation is immediately transformed. Now it’s two people trying to solve a problem together instead of two people in a tug-of-war over who is more right. As soon as you change this framing for the conversation, you engage a different part of the brain, leading to a much more constructive discussion.

Only when you become mindful of your biases can you choose a more constructive path. Positive assumptions make you open to progress; negative assumptions mire you in the past. It’s time to get over your prejudices and start being mindful of how to get value from everyone on your team.