New Year 2016

I just read a message in WhatsApp: “Don’t be too excited about this New Year stuff. Only the Calendar will change. Spouse, job and targets remains the same J”. Though January 1^st is yet another day, it is a logical beginning of a year. It helps as yardstick to measure how much we have travelled in our life towards our Goal.

I would say it is Appraisal time for our Personal goals J but the difference here is, we are our own Supervisor, we evaluate our progress and give a pat on our back for the success stories and note down our area of improvements, which gets added to our goal for next year.

In 2015, I was in a Roller Coaster Ride which had interesting twists and turns which kept me on my toes. Till Aug 2015, I was super busy with both professional and personal work. Post Aug 2015, it was like a slow cycle race, I didn’t like it that much. This period also taught me a lesson on how not to behave/talk when someone is in stress. May be, that period was a test for my patience, I passed in few instances and failed few other times.

Overall 2015 was a great year which gave many lessons, new friends, opportunities, problems to solve, critical situations to handle, excitements, challenges, moments to cherish etc. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who were part of my journey in 2015. Request you all to continue your support in the coming years as well.

Wishing you all a very happy New Year 2016. Hope this year will also give everyone courage and happiness. You know what, we all can achieve more in 2016 comparing to 2015. Guess why? We have got one extra day in 2016  J J J

Puppet Show....

I am proud mother of the Puppet show winner. Yes, Rohit won the competition conducted for making a puppet and telling a story with that. When he informed us about the competition, Kumaran immediately said, “Kavitha, this time you are not going to help Rohit. Let him do all these things alone”. I have the tendency to spoon-feed Rohit L Bad motherL. So it was decided that I will not help him in anything.

It was interesting to watch Rohit preparing for that. He had just one day to prepare. First he opened YouTube and searched for “How to make Puppet”. He got few video links. He started watching the first one, after watching for few minutes he stopped that and told that the items required for making puppet had few things which we didn’t have at home. (It was raining heavily, so he knows that he cannot go out and buy anything).

He moved on to next couple of videos, he carefully watched what are the materials required, based on that he skipped few of them. He got one Video which had the simple list of materials, so he saw that fully. Then he ran to collect all of them. He tried asking his dad whether he will help in cutting some color papers etc, the answer was a blunt NO. He got upset, but he became normal soon, he started making the puppet. The eyes (buttons) fell down couple of times, he had to redo the whole thing as he didn’t realize that the mouth should be exactly at the heel of the sock. (He had the eyes and nose pasted at the wrong side first).

Finally decent puppet was ready. He had 4 hours left to decide and prepare a story to tell. He asked for suggestion of story. I gave him “The habit of Winning” book by Prakash Iyer and said he can pick some winner story from that book to make his presentation. Again he was looking for help to pick a topic, after receiving a stern look from Kumaran, I kept my mouth shut (As you all may know, it was a tough task for me!!).

He picked the story of Karoly Takacs (Olympics Gold medal winner in Pistol Shooting from Hungary). He would have dreamt to become a pistol Shooter, but will lose his right hand in accident, so he will practice with his left hand and won two gold medals in Olympics. So back to our story, Rohit prepared a short write-up. Interestingly he made it little interactive by asking 2 questions to the audience etc. Once this was done, he had only the travel time to practice his presentation.

Around 10 kids participated and Rohit was announced as the winner. For the first time in the history of Rohit’s life, he has been on his own and succeeded. Thanks to Kumaran for stopping me from spoon-feeding Rohit. May be, I am little late in the game, but understood that my son has grown up and he can be on his own J. I think, he will not be a puppet in my hands anymore J

Hormones of Happiness...

Rohit’s exams are in progress and most of my time goes with him. I sit with him for preparing for all the subjects including French and Hindi!!! (Many of you know why I have highlighted those subjects J,  Google is my savior). He was so mischievous while preparing for Science exam, so my husband got angry and said “Rohit, you are troubling her so much. Next time I see you doing this, you will get nice beatings from me”. Rohit responded saying “Daddy, please remember Newton’s third law of motion”.  My husband could not hold his anger any more, he smiled and hugged him and I could sense that his Cortisol level reduced and his Oxytocin level went up.

Yes, I watched Simon Sinek’s talk in 99U on “Why leaders eat last” I really liked it very much and learnt few things about the Chemicals which get produced in our body.

Endorphin - the Pain masking Chemical

Dopamine - the joy of finding what you seek.

Serotonin - the security of social dominance

Oxytocin - the safety of social bonds - Love, Trust, Friend

These are called Hormones of Happiness or even Leadership Hormones. These are very essential hormones, absence or reduction of their levels will have major impact for us. Here are the possible impacts when the level goes down:

Endorphin – Increases anxiety and makes you more aware of pain

Dopamine - Procrastination, self-doubt, and lack of enthusiasm

Serotonin - chances of getting depression

Oxytocin – Stress and depression

OK, now we know that maintaining the levels of these Hormones are very important, is there a way to increase the level? Yes, there are few simple ways to increase these Happiness Hormones and keep our-self happy

Endorphin – Regular Exercise!! I know that is little tough. Other ways are: to have some sense of humor, sharing jokes and even dark chocolate will help

Dopamine – As this is related to accomplishing goals, ensure you have short term goals. Achieving the short term goals and celebrating (can be a simple pat on your back) will ensure continuous flow of Dopamine.

Serotonin – Reflect on the past successes. I do this a lot; I have a separate folder in my Inbox which contains few appreciation mails which I have received so far. On a stressful day, I will spend some 10 minutes to read few of them and feel fresh J

Oxytocin – This is also called as Cuddle Hormone. Simple act of Hand shake and hug can help. I read somewhere that kids require at least 8 hugs per day.

One last Hormone about which we should know is Cortisol, the stress hormone which helps us deal with stress. Whenever we are in a place where we don’t feel we belong to (For some it can be Office, for some in can be home, for someone else it can be party), we have high level of Cortisol all the time, which is not at all good for our body, it impacts our digestion. So keeping Cortisol in control is important.

If you have time, please watch this video of Simon Sinek. Good one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReRcHdeUG9Y

Master of Many...

The month August 2015 had many things in store for me. Few very positive things and few extremely negative things happened. One month, this had both extremes. Again I had to remind myself of this statement "Life is 10% of what happens and 90% of how you react to it". In few situations, I reacted well, if few I didn’t. I am slowly learning to practice this. I started this blog in the mid of August, finally completed it today only.
 

While returning home after Rohit gave a speech on CLEAN INDIA in his school Independence Day celebration, I was telling Rohit that his friend Joel did a very good job in playing some patriotic songs using Keyboard. Immediately I felt bad that Rohit stopped learning Keyboard after few attempts. I understood that I am becoming too greedy that my son should be in everything be it sports, academics, singing, speech, playing music instruments etc etc. Too much to ask for right? Even I felt so :-(
 

With that thought lingering in my mind, I started reading Infinithoughts August edition, to my surprise I found an article which spoke about A B de Villiers, the south African Cricketer. I, being so disconnected from Sports, have not even heard his name, I got curious to know what is so special about him, and here is the information which I found about him:

1. He was shortlisted for junior national hockey squad
2. He was shortlisted for junior national football squad
3. He was captain of South Africa Junior rugby
4. Holds six South Africa school swimming records
5. Was the fastest 100-meter time holder in South Africa junior athletics
6. Was a National Badminton U-19 champion
7. Has a golf handicap of scratch

Not only those, he was equally good in studies that he received a national medal from Late Nelson Mandela for a science project

 

When I read this, I wanted to double check whether this is valid information and found the same in Wikipedia also. I was just wondering how in this world he would have got time to allocate for these many activities, whereas we all complain that we don’t have enough time.

If you are concluding that I am going to trouble Rohit to try all these things, you are wrong ;-). This is absolutely for me. I am going to think how I am going to utilize my time in hand. What am I going to learn? What am I going to teach?

Today is Teacher’s day; I would like to thank all of you as you all have directly or indirectly taught me something in life

Bundle of Joy....

“Our bundle of Joy has arrived”, this is the common phrase which you see when a person announces the arrival of a new born. Though our parents didn’t have WhatsApp or Facebook those days to announce our arrival in a similar way, they still would have felt that we are their “bundle of joy” (Hopefully J). What happens to that bundle of Joy over a period of time? It slowly changes from “Bundle of Joy” to “Bundle of (Sorrow, Worry, Frustration, Resentment, etc)”

For some reason this change happens in our life. I won’t say that we are always unhappy, but I can surely say that our happiness is reducing a lot. Very recently, I met a person who is still a “Bundle of Joy”. I used to see him with a smile in his face always; one day I asked him whether he has never faced any problem in his life. With his trademark smile, he replied that everybody will have problems in life, but how you face them is what matters.

That is when I remembered this statement which I had read multiple times "Life is 10% of what happens and 90% of how you react to it". I learnt from my friend that he doesn’t worry about what happens to him; rather he chooses to face it with positive attitude.  One question from him made me think, “Will all your problems be solved if you are unhappy/upset/worried?”  Then I realized, whether I am upset or not, the problem is going to remain the same. What matters is what I do to resolve it or how I react. If that is the case, then what is the fun in being upset, I could rather be face it with a smile (if not a smile, at least I can avoid being upset)

This thought triggered me to search for content about positive attitude. And I found some interesting links about Tal Ben-Shahar who is a lecturer at Harvard University. He handles popular course in Harvard called Positive Psychology.

Few tips from Tal Ben-Shahar to be happy:

1.       Accept the painful Emotions

2.       Avoid Multi-Tasking

3.       Exercise (Surprised to know that this also contributes to Happiness)

4.       Express your gratitude on Daily basis

You can find few video on this topic by Tal which will help you to learn more. To conclude, even under pressurized situation, the smile in my friends’ face will never fade away. I wish I can also be like him and become a “Bundle of Joy” J

Loyalty cards...

Last weekend, in preparation for my Yelagiri trip with my wonderful team, I was cleaning my bag. I took out my purse; I could find more than 10+ cards in it. These are in addition to my Credit and Debit card. What are those cards? Loyalty cards J In Wipro, employee’s loyalty is shown by the color of the tag they wear (Blue, red and Green), similarly our retail stores also distributes Loyalty cards which is their way of attracting customers.

During your purchase, you will be asked for your membership card and if you have one, you will be getting few credit points which can be redeemed during your subsequent purchases. My purse had 10+ such cards: Big Bazaar, Titan, Pantaloons, Landmark, Naturals!!, Mega Mart, RMKV, Pothys etc. the list goes on like this.

I was just thinking why we can’t have one Loyalty card across all the retail stores and each retail store can tie up with that Loyalty card vendor. This will eliminate the need for manufacturing so many cards and having separate software to manage them. This will also benefit the customers to simply carry one card when they go for shopping.

This Loyalty card vendor can have software to track the points earned by the customer for each of the retail store separately. In the retail store when you swipe that card, they should be given access to data which is relevant to them alone, which means if I swipe my card in Titan, they can access my data related to purchases and points earned from Titan and no data related to Pantaloons will be visible to them. Software should also have feature to add a new retail store.

Gone are those days, when we used to carry money for shopping. Now each transaction is using card (credit or debit). The new problem is about carrying too many (Loyalty) cards. Will there be a solution to this also soon?

Learning from Fun City...

Last Sunday, I took Rohit to Phoenix mall. Kumaran was not in station, so it was time for me and my son alone J I wanted to make it special for him. Rohit wanted to visit Fun city in the mall. I had to purchase some grocery items, so I felt mall will be better option for both of us. Fun city taught me a good lesson.

We started at 10:30 AM, took an auto and started our fun day. We reached the mall and went to Fun City. We were told that we have to get a card for minimum of Rs.300 and plus tax. For each game we need to swipe the card and the amount to be charged for that game will be deducted from the card. I bought the card for him and handed over to him. He was all excited; first he went to some Road crash game and played that.

When he went and swiped the card for the second game he realized that the amount in the card is reducing considerably. He thought for a moment, he understood that he has to pick and choose the game based on what he likes and amount that is getting charged for that game. It was interesting to watch him after that. He went to every game station, checked the game rules, looked at the charges mentioned and then decided which one he should play.

That is exactly the case for us in life. Similar to Rs.300 which Rohit had for playing, we have got 365 days in a year for us to use. How are we using to use it? What is our priority? How effective and efficient we are going to spend the time in hand? When a kid spends some time to decide which game to pick and play, are we not supposed to spend quality time in deciding what we want to do in life?

If you think 365 days planning is a very long term, let’s look at the 24 hours which we get in a day. How are we going to use that time? How much time are we going to spend for family, office, exercise, fun, growth and self in a day? 

Snooze Button....

Rohit had few activities to be completed as part of his Holiday home work, one among them was to collect pictures of various kinds of Clocks. It should range from olden days Hourglass to modern day clocks. While helping him to collect them, I was explaining about those days Alarm clock what we used to have at home when I was studying in school. During my 10^th and 12^th standard, I used to hate the sound of the alarm, I used to request my mother whether I can sleep for extra 5-10 minutes, as a strict school teacher, her answer was always a clear NO. L So I had no other option than getting up at 4 AM and 5 AM in the morning and start my day so early which used to appear like midnight for me.

Even now I keep alarm for getting up early, but do I get up when the alarm goes ON? NEVER, so what do I do? Technology has improved so much, that I can comfortably press the SNOOZE button and go back to sleep again. Though that moment we all feel happy about having a SNOOZE button, if you really introspect, you will understand that SNOOZE button is a big setback for us.

I am not only talking about the SNOOZE button which we use in the alarm clock, it is used beyond that. Yes, how many of us know that daily exercises are very important for keeping our body fit, but how many of us do it. We always find reasons to procrastinate. We know very well that there are few very important tasks to be completed at work, which if we don’t attend today, they all will come and hit as escalations which we need to solve in fire fight mode. Had we not procrastinated those important (not so urgent) tasks then and there, we would not have to face escalations which takes double the time (or even more) than the actual task itself. In addition to the time wastage, it also contributes to stress.

As I always say, if delaying something to the eleventh hour gives us any benefit (in terms of time/effort/stress/money), then we can still continue to delay every task in our hand to the last minute. Otherwise, why don’t we do it that moment itself? Why procrastinate? I know it is easy to say but tough to follow, but I am going to try this? Will you??

How old are you?

I am not asking you this question. This is the title of a super hit in Malayalam movie. The same story was taken in Tamil (36 vayathinile), which I watched last week. I like watching movies, they are much better time pass comparing to the serials in TV. I am not saying all movies are good, but there are few movies which are really good, they at times teach us good lessons or make us think!!

Coming back to this movie, “Who decides the expiry date of a woman’s dream?” is one-liner of this movie. Yes, it talks about how her dreams are getting suppressed after she gets married and have kids. It also shows how a woman is treated by her family and society. In her college days, she was an inspiration to our friends and what happens later on. Though it is correct that society doesn’t treat the women properly, I have a little different thought.

Why should a woman allow her dream to expire? Yes, society won’t be always welcoming her to achieve her dreams, but she has to fight for it. No point in complaining that she was not allowed to achieve her dream/goal. According to me, she should value her dream/goal first of all. If she doesn’t value it, then how can she expect the society to value it. Few things which I feel everybody (not only for women) should try to follow

1.       First of all, value your own dream/own, then we can worry about whether society values it or not

2.       Spend some quality time every day for achieving the dream/goal

3.      Periodically measure the progress made and re-plan if required.

My answer to that question is, she is the one who decides the expiry date. Yes, she may be forced to do it, but again it is her decision to fight back or surrender her dream. Do you guys agree? I have many dreams. I am confident, if not all, I can achieve many of them, in spite of all the hindrance I get in life.

Is our Iceberg melting??

Today Rohit wanted to see some thriller movie. I am not comfortable watching movies in that genre, and so I skipped. While thinking what to do during those 3 hours, I saw “Our Iceberg is melting” book which Rohit bought for me as Mother’s day gift (he also bought a dress and “Emotional Intelligence” book, how lucky I am!!)

“Our Iceberg is melting” is an awesome book on change management is what I heard in one of the training program, in fact Navjot also suggested this book. Thank you Navjot, good suggestion, I really loved this book. J

I found the book is not only good in Change management; one can find the following areas also covered in a good deal: Art of Influencing, Convincing, and Team work, importance of Storytelling, Impact of Social pressure and above a very subtle sense of Humor is there throughout the book, which helps in keeping a constant smile in the readers’ face.

The author has chosen extremely powerful way of teaching a management lesson through a very simple story, which can be easily understood by anybody. In fact Rohit only read this book first, I am sure he wouldn’t have understood the depth of the lesson, but he has surely understood the purpose of the book.

The author talks about 8 step process of successful change:

1.       Create a sense of urgency

2.       Pull together the guiding team

3.       Develop the change vision and strategy

4.       Communicate for understanding and buy in

5.       Empower others to act

6.       Produce short-term wins

7.       Don’t Let-up

8.       Create a New Culture

Though there are lot of key learning from this book, for me the key message is: not to become complacent, which we all tend to do once we reach certain level in our life or organization. I too felt that I have reached the level what I can manage in my career, but two months back I had an external force to shake me up and made me realize that I can run further. I have just started my next race.  

Coming back to the topic, I feel our iceberg is always melting, so continuous improvement and change will always keep us alive.

 

Categories of people...

I watched a video of “Gretchen Rubin“ who is a famous writer on habits and happiness. Looks like she has written many books on these topics. The video which I saw was about the 4 category of people, these categorization is done based on how they react to a rule imposed on them. Every day we meet many people - in office, at home, on the way, etc. Knowing which category each one of them fall, might help us in handling them better.:

 

1.       The Upholder - Responds readily to outer rules and inner rules

 

Motivating factor - Motivated by Fulfillment (by achieving something)

 

Characteristics:

- Very much want to know the rules and what's expected of them

- Want to avoid making mistakes or letting people down (including themselves)

 

2.       The questioner - Questions all rules, but will follow rules if they make sense

 

Motivating factor –Motivated by Sound reason (They should get convinced)

 

Characteristics:

- Must decide for themselves that a course of action makes sense

- Won't follow rules with which they disagree, or which seem arbitrary

 

3.       The Rebel - Resists all rules, outer rules and inner rules alike

 

Motivating factor - Motivated by Present desire  (They do, what they want to do)

 

Characteristics:

- Resist control, even self-control

- Choose to act from a sense of freedom (plus they do love to flout)

- Can sometimes be goaded into action by the though

 

4.       The Obliger - Responds readily to outer rules, but struggles to keep inner rules

 

Motivating factor - Motivated by external accountability

 

Characteristics:

-          Find it difficult to fulfill obligations they impose on themselves

-          Dislike letting other people down

-          Respond well to – Deadlines, Coaches, partners, trainers, late fees, Responsibility as role model, Being monitored

 

Know that we know how different category people react to a rule imposed on them, their characteristics and their motivating factor, I think we can now find out the category of the person we are going to interact with and handle them based on the details provided above. Ok, now let me first of all find out which category I belong to J Feel free to drop a reply, if you know which category I belong to….

96 Minutes to Productivity

Couple of days back, I read an article in Times of India on this topic “96 minutes to productivity”. Felt like sharing what I read in that article.

First of all, why 96 minutes? Here goes the explanation – We have 8 hours per day which is 480 minutes. As per Pareto principle, 80% of productivity comes from 20% of work effort. So 20% of 480 minutes is 96 minutes. Which means, 80% of productivity will come from 96 minutes of our work per day.

Now what should we do in that 96 minutes?

-          Avoid Multitasking during this time

-          Avoid phone calls, email and instant messaging, web browsing

-          Very importantly, focus only on critical activities

-          Concentrate and avoid any kind of disturbance

This has proved to improve overall performance and increase focus throughout the work day. And I am happy to see that our team has started following that in the name of “Silent Hours”, eagerly waiting to see the outcome of this. Please do write to me if you have tried this and if you have any feedback.

Presentation Skills....

Summer vacation is flying so fast, keeping me and Rohit very busy. I didn’t read anything for past 3 weeks, but attended “High Impact Presentation (HIP)” session for 2 days. Felt like sharing my experience with you all.

HIP was an interesting session. Got a good instructor, who encouraged all the 14 participants to try and deliver presentations on various topics. He helped in understanding the standing posture, how to address pressure situation and how to handle Q&A etc. The best and the worst part of the session was, they did video recording of each participants’ presentations, replayed it to us. What a fun to watch our own presentation being replayed?!!!

The instructor asked us to name a person whom we consider as our role model for presentation skills. He also asked us to list the attributes because of which we think he/she is good in presentation. During my turn, I told him the name of the person whom I am considering as my Role model, while listing the attributes, I said “He is very crisp in communicating the message, his statements are unambiguous, the same message which I take 15 minutes to convey he can convey in just 5 minutes “. (No chocolates if you guess the person correctly J ). When I just finished this, the instructor asked me “you mean to say he knows how to kiss”. It took few seconds for me to really understand what he asked. The moment I understood, I replied “yes, he knows how to Keep it short and simple (KISS)”. My god, where do they find such crazy Abbreviations.

OK coming back to learnings from the session:

1.       It is quiet natural to have butterflies in the stomach before any presentation. Just that we need to relax and calm down a bit before going for the presentation

2.       Maintain eye contact with the audience

3.       If possible, get to know the audience before the presentation so that you can handle them well

4.       Don’t allow anybody to hijack the presentation

5.       Don’t put too much of content in the deck, then your presence will become meaningless.

6.       Don’t read from the slides. Give examples and ensure you are able to connect with the audience

7.       Always be ready with a small version of the deck which covers key points alone so that the presentation can be completed in less time, as many times we will get less time than what was planned.

I read somewhere that those butterflies in stomach are called Performance Anxiety. We get performance anxiety as we want to perform well. It is good to have performance anxiety as long as it is positive. It is not going to do any good to us, the moment it becomes negative. So we need to do positive self-talk to motivate us.

So next time if you have butterflies in stomach before any presentation, please remember it is natural and just that we need to think positive and keep our-self calm and relaxed.  

 

And friends from teaching profession, please share your comments and suggestions to help me in improving on this skill....

What burns a man besides the pyre?

Rohit was reading a book, suddenly he asked me “Amma, what is the meaning of Pyre?”. When I answered him, I got curious to know what he is reading, I found that it was Birbal stories. In that story, Akbar asked a question “What burns a man besides the pyre?”, you know what was the answer of Birbal. It is “Worry”.

What a coincidence? I was reading a book by Dale Carnegie “How to stop worrying and start living”. When we had Book fair in CDC5, this topic attracted me so much. I am very good in worrying !!! L A friend of mine used to say that if I continue to do like this, I might end up searching for reason to be worried about. At subconscious level, I might start enjoying being worried, which in turn will affect my physical and mental health. So I decided to pick this book and learn to stop worrying, let’s see how it goes….

Would like to share some key points which I read in the book. Author talks about a magic formula to stop worrying. This formula has 3 steps:

1. Ask yourself, “What is the worst that can possibly happen if I can’t solve my problem?”

2. Prepare yourself mentally to accept the worst, if necessary

3. Then calmly try to improve upon the worst, which you have already mentally agreed to accept.

You know what, all these steps are very much known to us, it is nothing new, but the problem is we have to implement and that too at the right time. That’s where many of us fail. The book also talks about so many health issues which might come and join us without any invitation if we are worried all the time. On a lighter note, when I read this statement, I was worried what disease I am going to get as I am very good in being worried J.

Friends, please share with me if you have any better techniques you know to stay away from “Worry”. And also feel free to catch me when I look or sound worried J

Roller Coaster Ride ....

My happy days are starting. Rohit exams are over. Next two months are going to be free from Maths, Science, Social science etc. Time for me and my new books J. Thanks to ISD for arranging a book fair at the right time in CDC5.

For a moment, let’s think about Roller coaster ride. How many of us like it? I think, except for very small kids and adult with some major health issues, others all like it. I had been in it few times. What actually happens in that ride? Once after we put on our seat beat and the ride starts, we start experiencing all possible twist and turns, everybody starts screaming out of fear and/or joy. At every unexpected moment, we get a turn or a deep fall etc. OK, now the ride is over, once after we step out, what do we see in each of our faces? Little fear and more happiness. We talk about how each one of us felt and even we joke about each other’s experience. Nowadays they have hidden cameras to capture our emotions during the ride. Whether we buy it or not, we take few minutes to see how we had reacted during that ride.

Why am I writing this? I am not going to take you all in any roller coaster ride, as we are all already in one. I read this line in some book "Life is like a Roller Coaster ride"` Yes, I hope we all agree to that. We experience every possible unexpected twist and turns in life. But do we enjoy life as we did in a Roller coaster ride. May be yes - when something good happens and No - when something bad happens. Is it because many times we are forced to come out of our comfort zone ?

Most of us are worried about Change. If you are also one among them, please read the book "Who moved my Cheese?". Very small book and good story line and above all it reveals profound truths about Change. It talks about the following

·         Anticipate Change

·         Adapt to change quickly

·         Enjoy change

·         Be ready to change quickly

After reading tell me which character you are? "Sniff and Scurry" or "Hem" or "Haw"?. Let’s try and enjoy the roller coaster ride “our LIFE”. J

Women's Day...

I know many of you used to tease me for being feminist. Yes, I get worked up whenever I hear people talking with disrespect towards Women. That doesn’t mean that I blindly support women. All I am saying is, please don’t generalize.

You will be surprised rather shocked to know that in formal meetings and discussions, people make very causal comments about working mother and her leaves and timing to office. We should not forget that there are committed souls in both the genders similarly there are people who are non-performers in both sides. Let’s talk about performance and not about person and their roles in personal life. Let’s avoid disrespect to women in common forum.

Working mothers go through a lot of struggle in their life which cannot be understood by others. We are not asking for motivation from you, we are capable of gaining motivation from internal and from external sources. Sincere request is not to use disrespectful language. Though such words might disturb us for a moment, I am confident that we will bounce back pretty soon.

Having said that, I would like to personally Thank many good souls who are very supportive to me by providing their help, support and guidance at work place. Without all such support it would be tough for me to manage both critical roles.

Happy Women’s Day J J J

Science of Emotions

Yesterday when I lifted a book, I was kind of sure that I cannot concentrate, then it struck me that I had few DVDs from T.T.Rangarajan who is the editor of Infinithoughts (formerly Frozen Thoughts). The one which I picked up is “Science of Emotions”. Just that I didn’t have complete focus to read a book, but I felt I can surely listen to his speech, yes I did that and here are few key points from what I learnt about Emotions.

 

1.        Two dominant emotions in all of us: Emotions of Pain and Pleasure. Whatever I perceive as Pain, I will avoid and whatever I perceive as Pleasure I will embrace. Eg. Kids generally associates pleasure to play and it embrace playing. And they associates pain to studies and that’s why it avoids studies. So knowing this what is the reason why we avoid or embrace something, we should start associating pleasure to what is right and pain to what is wrong. Even it comes to the example of kids reaction to studies, parent or the teacher should make every sincere effort to help the kid to associate pleasure to studies so that the kid will start embracing it.

2.        I am the creator of my own emotions. We always think that somebody make us angry, which is not true. Nobody is making us angry, instead we are becoming angry in response to something happening to you. Let’s take an example: Your kid spills some food in your favorite dress, you become angry and shout at her. The same scene if it happens in your boss house, you were invited to your boss’s house and there his daughter spills something in your favorite dress, now what is your reaction?!! Even if your boss scolds his daughter, you will support the little kid saying “please don’t scold her, it is not her fault”. Ultimately in both the scenarios, your favorite dress is getting spoiled, but you choose to respond differently, which makes it clear that you have the control on your emotion. Nobody is making you angry, it is you who becomes angry.  So you are the creator of your own emotions, nobody can change it.

3.        How do I control my emotions. When do we become angry? May be when something happens not the way we want? When we don’t feel in the control of the situation? Again a small example: When you ask your spouse to do something and if it is not done on time, you get angry. The same way if a Government employee says that he will finish some task for you on Monday, you also go there to get the document, but if he says it might take one more week, do you really think you can shout back at him, obvious answer is No. You politely say you will come back after a week. So the understanding is:

              Something + Acceptance => Tolerance

                           Something + Non Acceptance => Anger

Uncertainty + Acceptance => Adventure

Uncertainty + Non Acceptance => Fear

                           Someone possess something + We accept it => Inspiration

Someone possess something + We don't accept it => Jealously

Somebody hurts me + Acceptance => Forgive

Somebody hurts me + Non Acceptance => Hate them

To make it even more generic:

                           Something + Acceptance => Positive Emotion

Something + Non Acceptance => Negative Emotion

So answer the question: How to control emotion? If we start accepting what we have been rejecting knowing that we don’t have control on, we will start getting positive emotions. So when we have negative emotion, question our self “What is that I am not accepting?” Whom am I not accepting?”. This will help us to control our negative emotions.

4.        Emotional Maturity - Dynamic Acceptance: We will get emotions, we cannot control that. Just that we are going to control our negative emotions which has major bearing on our health and peace of mind. We are going to cut down the dream we make and do what has to be done. If a truck hits our car, we should accept that what happened cannot be erased by our negative emotion Anger, so cut down the drama of fighting on the road with the Truck driver. But proceed the next set of activities which has to be done to repair the car.

I am sure it is easy to write but very very tough to follow. I am planning to make a sincere effort to follow this, how about you? J

Run your own race

Few months back, we (My husband and self) went to Rohit’ s school for his Sports day. Rohit is little above average in sports (My husband was an athlete). By God’s grace, Rohit has picked up some good things from his dad J, otherwise he is just like me (my MIL says that he is a Xerox copy of me)

In the hot sun, we were sitting under a shamiyana and watching the running race which was conducted for various age groups. We noticed that in one of the senior student race, a boy who was running first with a very good lead, but kept turning his head to see where his competitors are. It was so visible that he is concerned more about others than focusing on his race. That moment Rohit came to us for drinking some water and his race was the next one to happen. My husband told Rohit about what he saw in the senior student race, and asked him to just focus on his race and not to worry about others position.

I didn’t realize that it is applicable for our life also, not only for a running race, until I happened to listen to this Podcast recently “Run your own race” (http://www.robinsharma.com/blog/robin-sharma-podcasts/). Those words were very strong and had so much of depth.

When I introspected, I realized how much I have been focusing on knowing where others are, whereas I could have focused that time and energy for my own growth. I liked this proverb “There is nothing noble in being superior to another person, true nobility lies in being superior to your former self”.

On a lighter note, we can let our managers worry about relative performance of ours Vs our peers, as an individual, we should only worry about our own performance and keep competing with our former self.

The Sword Crafter's Parable - Robin Sharma

I am big fan of Robin Sharma (Thanks to my friend who gave the first book “The Leader who had No title” to start my account). In this fast world, it is easy to catch up on the Vlog rather than reading blog or books, but I agree books can never be replaced by these. I came across one such Vlog on “The Sword Crafter's Parable” by Robin Sharma. Please watch this when you have time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP5SjstKYYs

What are the 5 things in our life that are the most important? Do we focus your time and energy on those 5 things? Simple questions, but we need to introspect a lot to find the real answer for our own self.

That Vlog was a small and crisp one, but this interview is little lengthier one, listen if you have some leisure time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGcQgZOKIM0

Time Management

For people who don’t know about me, I am so obsessed about scheduling my work. Be it office or personal, I always have a TO-DO list with me. In spite of all that I used to wonder why am I not having enough time for my critical activities. Please note that I also prioritize what I have in my schedule.

After reading about Time management in “The 7 Habits of highly effective People” by Stephen R Covey (For those who have already read the book, please ignore this mail or use it for refreshing what you have learnt J ), I understood that I should schedule my priorities rather than prioritizing what is in my schedule.

Please have a look at the Time management Matrix and focus on the Activities and its results in each of the Quadrants.

According to Stephen, Quadrant I is all about crisis management. Activities in Quadrant II are critical for effective personal management. III and IV are the distractions which we have on our way. Looking at the Activities and results, it is evident that we should focus on Quadrant II. And the only way to get more time for that is by reducing time spent on III and IV.  But focusing on II, we can reduce a good amount of crisis/fire fight mode, in simple words, focusing on Quadrant II will reduce the Quadrant I activities.

In our own language, Quadrant I is about the defects which we get in Testing phases. Quadrant II talks of the Quality assurance during Build phase. The more we focus on quality of the code, the less time and effort will be spent on defects J J J Wow!! How simple is that to say!!!

Now let us identify our priorities (ideally we should have Quadrant II activities also appearing in our list). Once that is done, we should schedule the priority. We should understand that daily schedule is too narrow to help us give big picture, so Stephen is suggesting us to prepare a weekly schedule based on the priorities which we have listed. I know some people in recipient list will have even bigggger picture to prepare quarterly schedule J J but I am going to move from daily schedule to Weekly schedule J