Alien or What??

Back from the hospital, and I find myself in this total dream like state. Morning, I'm actually wondering which one's more real.

Was the hospital episode a dream? Is my present state a dream?

And just so I'm more grounded, I decide to water the garden, and I'm hosing this plant...... and this green head slowly lifts.....

                                                        You see him right?

                                                                Closer picture

Can you even imagine.

I'm like so freaked out, I hear myself going...'now, who the hell are you? shrek's cousin or something? and who wears kinky glasses like that?'

I actually did all of that. Now wouldn't you? Don't you think he's crazy fancy, and pretty extreme???

A Different Kind of Visit

Real different.......I was in hospital four days…… admitted under emergency conditions, to what’s apparently been a close call.

What does an experience like that do to you? 

It could radically alter..... to up level and appreciate, or to whimper and shrivel. It’s really a choice. One thing it does enable is a whole different level of Mindfulness. It’s a sure knock on the door.

And the learning never seems to stop for sure. The experience itself has been as intense and interesting, as say the Bihar experience or the Coorg Drive. Not underplaying…….. just a defense mechanism to accept something as crazy or extreme as a situation, which the doc says could have gone either way.

The huge learning is that you don’t know as much as you think you do, even about pretty basic stuff, like your own body at first level needs.... one wake up call there.

The actual story: I’ve been having a slight wheeze for a while now, like a month, but only in Bangalore. It went away in Bihar and in Hyd, so I presumed it was the supposedly awful Bangalore weather (which I just love) or the cat kitten brood I have around (as I’m kind of allergic, but again love).

Sunday night it got bad and I had major breathing difficulty. It happened kind of real fast and kind of real slow.... a funny mix. I just couldn’t lay down all night, not for a second, and I just sat and watched myself getting worse….just kept waiting for it to be morning. One part of me said I would be fine in the morning and that I needed to reschedule work meetings to the afternoon. At 3 am I actually decided to watch a movie just to distract, as I needed to keep my mind off the pain that was growing by the minute. It was full dramatic, when I went to throw up, I banged against a wall piece ........it toppled over with the Ganesha and Shiva Thandava figurines…and I’m thinking…that’s why films are so dramatic and filmy. All this actually happens :)

Another part of me took the trouble of putting my diary back in, as the thought was that I wouldn’t want anyone picking it up and browsing through should I not be around anymore. Funny contrasts. You start to experience your mind, and you, as two separate entities at very distinct levels.

But in and through all that, while my body was going through distress because of oxygen depravation and my right side was hurting like mad, going numb, and I had parts of my body on fire, I didn’t think I needed to rush to the hospital. My mind thought only so far as to say….. left side is known alarm signals…right side…well, I didn’t know.  Inability to think or Stupid False Bravado....... I don’t know…..but big big mistake.

Take away? When things go wrong, do not rationalize, do not think….go get help.

PS: I'm back home and fine, and actually listing out even the smaller and subtler want-to-dos in life :)

Living in Mindful Space

We are what we Feel and Perceive

If we are Angry, we are the Anger

If we are in Love, we are the Love

If we look at a Snowy Mountain Peak,

we are the Snowy Mountain Peak

While Dreaming, we are the Dream

                                 -Thich Nhat Hanh

In Silence there is Clarity......It is Silence that enables the possibility of Clarity

Clarity brings with it responsibility, full responsibility for oneself. And he says most people are afraid to go there.

He speaks of a Smorgasbord of Stimuli.  Having plenty of stimuli makes it easy for us to distract ourselves from what we're feeling. But when there is silence, all these things present themselves clearly.

He talks of four kinds of stimuli: edible food; sense impressions; volition; and consciousness, individual and collective.

Edible food is the food we eat each day. 

Sense impressions are all the impressions we receive through our eyes, ears, tongue, body and mind.
Volition is your will, your concern, your desire. This is food because it 'feeds' your decisions, your actions and your movements. 

Consciousness is the way your mind feeds your thoughts and actions. It also includes collective consciousness and how it affects you.

All of these can be nourishing .....or toxic and that's where it's a choice, and choice comes out of clarity. Awareness is the key to our protection. We can be anything we want even without a magic wand.

With that little poem of four lines, he brings out so beautifully how all the sensory things we allow, are us. When we are enjoying a good book, it is us. When we watch a bad tv program, it is also us. 

The more things you do consciously, and the more you surround yourself with things, actions, people who are a positive influence on you, the more positive your space.

It's like eating sattvic food as against eating junk food. We know which is good for us and which not. Which can give us temporary highs, and which more damaging. We surely leave out the toxic foods.....so why not all the toxins in life. 

An example he gives: Conversation is also sensory food.... if you talk to a person who is full of need, envy or bitterness, it drains you of that much energy, because you absorb that persons energy of despair.

There are miracles in the world outside. Open your windows to those miracles, and while seeking them out, continue to be aware of yourself and your breathing. We rarely pay attention to our own desire. We act, but we don't have the space or quiet to act with intention. Without purpose, we are just drifting. 

We rarely offer ourselves the time and space to consider. Am I doing what I most want to be doing with my life? Do I even know what that is? The noise in our heads and all around us drowns out the 'still small voice' inside. We are too busy doing something, that we rarely take a moment to look deeply and check in with our deepest desires.

Volition is a tremendous source of energy.

Consciously choosing what and who you surround yourself with is among the keys to finding more space and joy.

The Sacred Cows of Marriage and Divorce

Astro and Danielle Teller | TEDxBoston

It's a fifteen minute talk from their own experience, and an added factor is that Astro is VP at Google

One reason I found this extra interesting, is how it also aligns with the thoughts in the recent post on  'how to optimize influence ' , from the perspective of how we all tend to look for that One Reason for anything, be it how kids shape up, or why a marriage breaks, or even why a child catches a cold......but there are always multiple reasons and factors that come together to make something occur or be. There's a lot of mistaking the trigger for the reason, and that's something we would all do good to watch for.

Sense of Wonder

Last week I was in Hyderabad to see off my parents, who were out on a trip to the US,  more significantly to Alaska. Apparently a college time dream of my dad's....... Geologist and all that, na. And while discussing Alaska, I'm like.........do you think you'll get to see the Aurora Borealis?

And he's like, yes, good thought, let's see....... and he brings out this book:

A Readers Digest Publication: The World Around Us 

Precious Precious Copy

One look at it, and I simply went cold. I'd forgotten it existed, but seeing it now brought back such an onslaught of memories. Each page I turned brought back a memory. I must have read it cover to cover a million times. And the brilliant pictures must have set fire to hours and hours of imagination, and that's why that impact.

And I was thinking how in those days of before Google, our sense of wonder came from such books. Those were far away lands, mysterious, never reachable...strong triggers to imagination and wonder. Lack of access seems to fire so much more imagination and desire. It's interesting. I don't know if today's kids have that sense of wonder to anything at all. It's like everything is a possibility. 

In principle that sounds like a good thing. That anything is a possibility. Their ability to just be........ live in the moment....is way higher, and at a more conscious level than we ever did.   I have a lot of faith in them........so, sense of Wonder aside, I'll stay with that belief  :)

For myself, seeing the Aurora Borealis is on my bucket list. For those not familiar, these are lights seen around the magnetic poles of the northern and southern hemispheres. Auroras that occur in the northern hemisphere are called 'Aurora Borealis' or 'northern lights' and auroras that occur in the southern hemisphere are called 'Aurora Australis' or 'southern lights'. They occur  due to the collision between gaseous particles in the Earth's atmosphere with charged particles released from the sun's atmosphere, with extreme variations in colour, ranging from mostly green and pink to  red, yellow, blue, and violet.

Want to experience this in real ...........insha allah :)

But above that, what I wanted to talk about is in itself...the sense of wonder. We don't need a book to enable it.......it can be anything, a sunrise, a blade of grass, a child laugh, a kitten mew....but lets be enough in the moment to see it......to recognize it.....to acknowledge it.

It adds an underlying layer of beauty to life.

How to Optimize Influence

A really fascinating write up on how multiple influences are 10x more effective in changing behavior patterns, than any one single source of influence, however efficient or powerful. The success rate is apparently a shift from 4% to 40% when four or more means of influence are used simultaneously.

                                  

This particular study talks of sources of influence, from the personal, social and structural perspectives. It talks of how our most serious problems are rooted in human behavior and how multiple sources of influence are required to create any kind of significant impact.

A short synopsis of the six sources of influence they talk about:

Personal  Motivation: Link to mission and values - They say you cannot motivate people to do what they are not motivated to do. So no level of external motivation can be as influencing as enabling a real motivation, by linking it to deeply held values. Carrots and sticks by themselves have limited reach; more powerful is to put meaning to the action.

Personal Ability: Over Invest in Skill Building - Its not all about motivation. It's also about taking the trouble to find out if there is the ability. That is somehow presumed. Elite performers aren't necessarily faster or smarter, they are though better trained. 

Social Motivation: Harness Peer Pressure - Apparently, whether people acknowledge it or not, there are few motivators as potent as the approval or disapproval of friends and coworkers.

Social Ability: Create Social Support - Identify not just the formal leaders but the opinion leaders and use these as intervention points. 

Structural Motivation:Align Rewards and Ensure Accountability - External rewards need to be real and valuable, and should be used as reinforcement to the personal and social sources of influence.

Structural Ability:Change the environment - A key to changing an organizations mental agenda was to change the data or information that flows down the hierarchy, make it more relevant and aligned to objectives.

Apparently, in organizations or at a personal level where behavioral changes are warranted, most think tanks come up with what they believe will be the best source of influence. Research has clearly shown that its not about which one, but about how many.

If this interests you and you want to read the whole article, which is really long, here it is How to 10x your Influence

Out of One Bowl

Who would think........ One bowl of food, and you'd have 5 different kinds eat out of it ? When I got here from Hyd, I missed my huge terrace...rather, I used to miss the different kinds of birds I used to feed. But now, I don't just have birds, but all of these. How sweet is that.

                                                      That's Cat 2 that adopted us

                                                         This is one gutsy mouse :)

                 That's a super smart crow. He comes and demands
                         and he even manages to drink the milk.

These red vented bulbuls were a nice surprise

                                              The latest entrants :)

And there's a squirrel, but he's been way too quick for me to get a picture.