Power of Subconscious Instruction

I recommend you do this experiment that I did recently:

Let us say you want to get up at 4AM.
Don’t set the alarm clock to 4AM. Instead tell your mind, before you go to sleep to wake you up at 4AM. Also, calculate the number of hours that you need to sleep till it is 4AM!

Just by simply instructing your mind to wake you up at 4AM [after x hours of sleep], do you believe you can actually wake up?

You would be surprised with the results!
Without fail, I have always woken up at the desired time. No alarm clocks!

I shared this phenomena with my wife and a few friends. All of them concur that they have experienced the same. The mind is the most powerful, infallible alarm clock.

This is the power of subconscious instruction.
If the mind can wake you up at whatever time you desire, the mind can get you whatever you desire too.
All you need to do is to desire that and instruct your subconscious mind to help you!
Reinforcing regularly what you need will help your mind to rearrange the data it has and get the answer /solution you want.

Try it!

As usual, I look forward to your feedback

Tags: instruction, Mind, power of subconscious, subconscious

Don’t Ignore Your ‘A Ha’ Moments!

I had this ‘A Ha‘ moment today driving back from a meeting. Immediately I wrote this short blog piece. I hope you would benefit reading this.

Here is my ‘A Ha’ moment:

There is nothing anybody can teach you. There is nothing you need to learn. All the knowledge is within you. All you need to do is to ‘uncover’ it!

Now, this is something you would have read many times.

But here is the connection!

A Ha moments are those moments when something in you clicks with the information you are receiving. In my analysis, what is happening is as follows:

• Through our senses we get some new information
• There is already a body of knowledge within ourselves, codified as “intuition“
• The new information just uncovers some concepts that we don’t understand well [but we already know]
• This creates the ‘A Ha’ moment.

So, when we have our ‘A Ha’ moment, remember that your intuition is getting validated with new information. You can now express your intuition better.

Like they say in our scriptures, our soul is covered with many layers of ignorance – which we call it the “pancha kosha“. Body, breath, mind, emotions and the soul itself. We end up identifying ourselves with different layers of ignorance at different times – for example, we identify with our thoughts  and hold them so sacred that we don’t change them…..only to change sometime in future, when “something” clicks in the mind.

The soul does not need to learn anything. It knows everything because it is.

“A Ha” moments, reveal a part of the soul. It organizes our knowledge about ourselves.

Keep track of your ‘A Ha’ moments. That is your reality. That is what is defining you. Learning from books or through any other source is useless if you don’t get an ‘A Ha’ moment. You are only learning by rote – but not re-organizing information that you already know.

As usual, would love to hear your thoughts!

Harnessing the potential of your old books – An idea to save space in attics, create employment & going green

I have been nurturing an idea to reuse old books and create a chain of independently run libraries across the world for the last four years.

477px” id=”__ss_12857905″> Backyard library idea_in_a_nutshell

View more documents from Rajesh Sengamedu

Twice I paid money to get the portal developed, but I lost the money as the guys ran away with the money and did not deliver anything to me. I progressed quite far with one highly motivated engineer who did perhaps 80% of the work, but could not continue due to personal reasons.

Finally I decided that this idea should not be just with myself. Therefore I am opening up this idea to anyone who may be interested to implement. I am happy to be associated in any fashion to implement this idea and take it to fruition.

I have detailed specs [including web UI flows - the way I conceived it] and also the 80% code [in .NET & MySQL in the backend].

Anyone who is interested to take this forward can email me and I will share details.

Tags: backyardlibrary, greenlibrary, library

Experiencing with repetition

If you want to learn something, then repeat!

This is the mantra.

As children, we learnt by repeating the maths exercises, doing more sums and some more sums to learn about concepts in addition, subtraction, multiplication, division. Ditto when you go to college and learn about calculus, linear algebra! Ditto to learn music. Mastery in music is step-by-step, learning by repeating and internalising the notes.

The same is true not only for learning new subjects at school /college, but also in real life [I am not hinting that school /college is not 'real' life!].

Day in and day out, we are faced with situations. We resolve those situations by our learning. The learning happens only through repetition. Theoretical framework [aka learnt in MBA] is good to put together a structure and ‘box’ a problem to find a solution. However, it is not good enough to resolve the situation. The ability to resolve [or put in another way - the ability to decide] is not something that is taught in an MBA. That ability comes only through application of the concepts we learn.

The more often we apply the concepts, the deeper our learning is. The deeper our learning, we end up making more right decisions. Of course, it also means that we have to take up the opportunities and continuously apply our learning – keep making mistakes and iterate to arrive at the right decisions.

This is the value of ‘experience’ that cannot be learnt in college, but can only be applied through constant repetition.

Interestingly enough, even scriptures of any religion emphasize repetition of a mantra. For example, take ‘Gayatri Mantra‘. Scriptures prescribe that everybody should repeat this mantra 108 times, thrice daily! The meaning behind this ‘dictate’ is not any superstition. It is not humbug. It is plain science & psychology applied.  The more we repeat [or chant, initially rhetorically] we slowly understand the meaning of the mantra better – therefore it becomes our goal & natural state of mind. In this case, Gayatri Mantra simply is a neutral, non-religious mantra, that asks the ‘Supreme Consciousness’ to lead us from ignorance to knowledge! Basically, we are asking for knowledge.

When we do something repeatedly we learn about it more.

Put in another way, the more we are aware of our experiences [i.e understand, analyze why we did something right, something wrong], the more we learn about it and we become better persons – better managers, better husbands/wives, better parents!

As usual, eager to hear your thoughts!

EXCELLENCE MANTRA – LOVE, LEARN, IMPLEMENT, FOCUS, EXPAND

I am summarizing a spiritual lecture that I listened to where the speaker talks about applying the principles of our Hindu scriptures to our day-to-day life and achieving excellence. This is not my original article, but an interpretation of what I heard & understood.

1. Love What You Do

Love is a decision, it is not a feeling. Even if it is the most unsought after work, you can love it, because it is a decision.
First decide to love what you do. That decision gets you into a positive feeling about what you do!
Then you can do whatever, because there is no dissipation of your mental energy, thinking or fighting the negative feelings about not wanting to do a particular job!

2. Learn Thoroughly About The Job You Have To Do

Just by loving what you do you cannot do your job well. The job has some functions, activities, outcomes, processes. You need to learn about it thoroughly. For example, if you want to do the job of a ‘husband’ or ‘parent’, you need to learn it thoroughly. Good news is that you don’t have to learn it first to do it. You can learn on the job; but learn. Have an attitude of learning on the job everyday.

3. Implement What You Learn

Knowledge is useless if you don’t apply. What matters is the practical implementation of what you learn. If you learn that a particular methodology to elicit responses from customers works well, then you are better off to implement that day in and day out, till you learn a newer method!

4. Focus on Implementing Your Learning

Energy gets dissipated when we don’t focus. Our minds [with due respects to several people who consider themselves as master multi-taskers], can’t focus on more than one thing at a time. This is a fact! Therefore, focussing on one thing at a time helps you deliver results.

5. Expand Your Outlook To Benefit Many

Any job that you would chose to do, if it benefits many it is better. Therefore if you are facing a choice of choosing one task over the other, then if you choose the task that benefits a wider audience [especially if it is weighed against selfish interests] then we would excel at that work. This is a simple mantra, if implemented well in organisations can work wonders to build teamwork – Teams goals are bigger than individual goals.

 

Would love to hear your thoughts!

Book Review – Many Lives, Many Masters by Dr. Brian Weiss

If you want to read a book that is fast paced, and spans several historic periods (approximately 800 years), this is it.

Dr. Weiss, who claims himself as a rational psychiatrist is confounded by revelations made by one of his patients, Catherine. This is a true story of how a rational doctor came to believe in past life, reincarnations….

Catherine takes him on a journey of her life – recalling memories of the yore – from several births, under hypnosis. She also talks of the messages that the ‘Masters’ have given her – on the true purpose of life, the experiences that one needs to go through; the importance of not just gaining knowledge, but internalizing it.

The book has a strong connection & similarity to the Indian concept of reincarnation, karma, death, different planes of existence. Sometimes, I ended up wondering if Dr. Weiss was actually concocting this story of Catherine, to create a fiction work! If not for Dr. Weiss’ impeccable credentials as one of the leading psychiatrists in the US, I would have definitely doubted this work as real, and would have presumed that he got influenced to write a work of fiction after having read the Hindu scriptures !

Few things that struck in my mind about the book:

1.  It makes us believe in the theory of reincarnation. We have taken birth in this physical body to go through and live those experiences that we have chosen to experience. We take this birth to pay off our debts to other ‘souls’ in this lifetime. We take birth to learn and fill in the gaps in our puzzle of ‘life’.

2. Life is not something that ‘starts’ at birth and ‘ends’ at death. It is just a part of the overall continuum of ‘LIFE’ till such time all the impressions in the mind are exhausted and the ‘soul’ has no more ‘attachments’.

3. Meditation helps us to remove mental stress and perhaps even cures us of our psycho-somatic disorders without drugs. This validation, coming from an eminent doctor, is definitely something that needs to be noted and acted upon. The science of meditation is quite simply – cleaning up the clutter in the mind!

4. In between births and deaths, there is a space where we rest. This “in between” time rejuvenates the soul and connects us to the universal consciousness.

5. We keep meeting the same set of ‘souls’ in our several lives – to work out our debts to them and their debts to us. This also explains [although unscientifically] why we instantly feel [ even in the first meeting] a strong attraction towards some, repulsion towards others, feeling of protection towards some body, feeling of wanting to be protected by somebody else. Strangely enough, this is the reality. I would feel protected with a person because, he or she might have been my mentor /parent in my previous life or someone closely associated and whom I respect and feel safe with!

As a commentary to this book review, I wanted to share one concept in Hinduism, which is called ‘theory of Karma‘ and especially relate it to how it applies to our current life.

Karma while means ‘action’ at one level, it also means the ‘fruits of action’. Theory of Karma says that we will reap the fruits of all our actions. It is like a huge reservoir of results, awaiting to be fructified. When we take birth, we determine which of the fruits of our past life action we want to experience in this life; and once this is determined by us, the soul takes birth in the family it believes best serves the purpose, chooses the parents, chooses the surroundings….and goes through the experiences – good & bad.

This bunch of experience that we have determined to go through in our current life is called ‘Prarabdha’ karma and cannot be avoided at any cost. The reservoir is called the ‘Sanchita‘ karma. Every birth we go through some Prarabdha karma and then accumulate some new karmas which need to be worked upon in future births.

Meditation helps you to get rid of future karmas, although it probably does not help you much in the ‘Prarabdha’ karma! Meditation is the process by which you reduce the huge reservoir systematically while you go through your prarabdha karma experiences in this life!

All in all, an enjoyable read. I recommend you to read it and be amazed at what scientists are discovering today, which our Hindu scriptures have been saying since thousands of years!

What is your view?

Would love to hear your thoughts!

 

 

 

Kids & Their Decision Making Process – Learnings From My Daughter

I was going through my old notebooks and picked the following note from my book.

The date is 14 May 2010 (roughly two years ago), when my daughter was nine and half years old.

Here is what I wrote:

My mom made Mysore Pak [A sweet delicacy from Karnataka - for those who don't know this].

H loved it. I too!

She wanted to eat them before dinner but I was suggesting she eat after dinner. She kept on asking me if she can eat before dinner.

Finally I said – take your own decision. Do what’s right.

H hesitated a lot to eat the sweet before dinner.

 

It is so wonderful when we are observant. We learn a lot. This was a lesson for me in decision making. In empowerment. I believe this can be applied in real world situations too – at work definitely.

When you are the boss, if you push down the responsibility of taking a decision to your team members [ empower], most probably they will always rise up to the occasion. This is also a good way of figuring out who in your team is ready to take on the decision making role.

What do you say?

Would love to hear your comments,

 

 

Tags: Decision making, motivation

The Versatile Blogger Award

The Versatile Blogger Award.

via The Versatile Blogger Award.

 

Happy to let you know that this blog has been nominated for the Versatile Blogger Award by Dr. James Stratford (http://beyondthecall.wordpress.com)

Thanks to one and all for your encouragement.

 

Rajesh

Using A Simple Technique To Converge – Group Decision Making Process

As some of you may probably know, I have started consulting a non-profit organization, National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN), since the beginning of April 2012. As the “E Club Evangelist”, my role is to define a vision for Entrepreneurship Club at NEN.  NEN’s reach into Indian institutes and the kind of work they have done at grass roots level is amazing.

Here is one of the initiatives we took as part of Entrepreneurship Club. We decided to roll out a 52 weekly webinar calendar which is useful for the entrepreneurs. The idea is to create a set of webinars that can be delivered by experts over a period of one year. We listed the webinar topics (88 in all) and wanted to group them in functional bins, like funding, sales & marketing, founders etc.

Within an hour, the team of 5 people quickly converged to start binning the various topics to various themes as we decided. You could check out the post-it’s on the board binned to various categories in the above picture. The technique we used is called Nominal Group Technique. While you can read about the details of this technique on Wikipedia, I want to recommend using this technique in your organization too!

Organizations take a lot of time when faced with decision making criteria involving too many people. We waste a lot of time with to & fro emails, proposals, counter-proposals. This is unproductive & wastes everybody’s time.

If you want to get to fast group level decision making, use this technique. It cuts down the time, converges fast.

In short here is a technique for your organization to be more effective, more productive.

Like always, I would love to hear your thoughts.

 

Tags: Consensus decision-making, Decision making, Group decision making, NEN, NENOnline, Nominal Group Technique, productive

Learnings From Death

Most of us are scared of death; scared to death!

Arguing intellectually, we imagining what happens at the time of death seems more scary than the experience itself. Doesn’t it? The dead man seems to struggle an instant when his soul escapes the body it no longer needs. We end up imagining big time about this instant.

Many of us have seen death at close quarters. It is indeed tough to handle the situation, but when we develop a true understanding of what it means to die, then we would celebrate death – not only by bidding true farewell to the departed, but also observing our own emotions, changing our negativity towards people, circumstances and becoming a positive, happy person.

Death can bring about positive life changing transformations and mend your relationships; make you a better person.

I am summarizing few of my personal observations experiencing death in family & friends:

1. Managing our own emotions – When someone close to us is no more, it is very tough to manage our emotions. The mind keeps going back and forth between thoughts of “Can I continue without this person in my life now?” to “OK, she is gone. I need to move on”. This is not easy. We break down sometimes.

2. Stress shows up as physical illness: I have noticed that when death strikes, it also increases the stress levels in the close relatives /friends. Perhaps because we keep thinking more about the person who is no more. That translates into physical illnesses – a migraine, fever or even shingles (herpes). This is not easy either. We actually don’t attribute our physical sickness to the stress associated with death.

3.Sometimes transformations happen in our thought processes: We also end up thinking through that death is inevitable, therefore we need to do good as long as we live. We are also not sure how long we will live, so be good always – for you never know when it is your last breath! Sometimes, transformation happens in very many different ways too. We start relating to other people in totally different ways. If I have not liked a particular relative /friend of mine, I end up seeing him /her in an altogether different light – I start feeling that my like /dislike is too petty and there is no point wasting time over such petty issues. So, I extend the hand of warmth towards the person.

This observation no.3 is what I am most interested in and want to write about in this blog.

I recall a friend of ours died out of cancer several years ago. It affected many of us who were close friends. When I met one of my other friends, few years after, I could see the change of attitude in her. She was more happy to see me, have a chat and renew our friendship. She even mentioned that the death of our mutual friend has shown her how fragile life is and how important it is to cherish the relationships we have today – family, friends.

While I agree it is indeed tough to manage our emotions, stress levels, it is extremely important for us to be aware of our emotions. Just the simple awareness combined with keen sense of observation & participation in the whole process – the ceremonies, talking with our loved ones etc., will bring in us such a life changing transformation that we would start accepting death as a part of our life much more than what we would do today.

As Gita says, “Everything born must die. But death is only for the body. The Soul (Atman) is eternal – never born, never dies.”

We are just playing out a dream – a dream between the time of our birth & death. We continue to play out this dream, till we realize our true self!

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts.

Life is a Game – Enjoy Playing!

For some of you who watch Tamil channels, you may be aware of the program called ‘Kayil Oru Kodi, Are You Ready? on Sun TV.

This program is a Tamil version of  the popular ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” – twisted the other way around – participants are given initially one crore rupees (Approx 200K$) and they need to answer 7 questions correctly. They can bet on the answers with the money and the right bet stays with them for the next question and so on till the last question.

When you watch the emotions that the participants exhibit, as a ‘neutral’ observer, we end up wondering why they are going on such a roller coaster ride! Imagine the plight that you had a chance to win 200K$ just by answering 7 questions – you could be absolutely elated if you win, or perhaps even totally dejected if you make a few wrong choices and lose out the money!

On the show, you could see participants praying fervently, getting extremely nervous when the host delays communicating the decision and introduces a commercial break!

OK, my blog is less about their emotions but more about how people play!

Looking at their emotions, it seems to me that a few things are in the common denominator:

1. It is a game, and they want to win because there is a prize-money associated with it.

2. In the game, they want to win big (all of it) so, they feel they need the ‘assistance’ of the ‘higher-up’ to win it.

3. In the game, they don’t want to lose the money and perhaps would be heart broken if they ended up with 2000US$ instead of 200,000US$!

My eleven year old daughter made this interesting observation. She said, “ I can’t understand why these guys are so nervous. They started with nothing and if they don’t win anything, they have nothing to lose. They should just enjoy the play and not get so emotional!“

Startling to hear this from an eleven year old!

Meditating on what she said, I felt there was enough parallels we can draw upon a game called ‘Life’

1. Life is a game. There is no need to put too much emotions into it. Just play along!

We start with nothing and end up with nothing. In between we scale highs and lows in several dimensions – money, power, status, intelligence, knowledge…..

But what we don’t realize is that we end up nothing, so in the end it is all not worth it, and especially so, if we get those through unethical means (I am using the word unethical here to mean – “as commonly understood as by cheating, dishonest methods”).

2. Life is like a dream. We don’t know when it ends.

A dream is something that happens to us and ‘feels real’. It happens in the space of a few hours that we are asleep and can impact our physical & emotional state – all of us know this. But the moment, we wake up, it’s all gone. I tried hard to remember the dream I had last night – getting soaked in white paint, sprayed by helicopters and the paint pierces through the thick walls of the apartment I am staying in! I woke up with a start and a choked feeling in my throat (with paint!) only to realize that it was a dream – definitely no paint in my throat! The dream ended the moment I woke up.

Life is a dream that happens in the space of a few years that we are alive and can impact our physical & emotional state – let us realize that. A bit of thinking through shows clearly that life is possibly a dream, not a reality. Reality should not change, but life changes constantly, so how can it be real?

Let us learn to play this game called ‘Life’ in a different way:

Just enjoy it as long as it lasts. Enjoy every moment of it, so that there are no regrets. Enjoy every happy moment and enjoy every sad moment too! After all, it is a dream spanning a few years between your birth & death.

This is meditation. Being here, enjoying the moment. No regret for the past, no anxiety for the future and no agitation in the present. Just being in the present!

As usual, would love to hear your thoughts.

Tags: Dream, Emotion, kayil oru kodi - are you ready?, Life is a Dream, lose, losing, Personal life, play, psychology, Social Sciences, sun network, who wants to be a millionaire, win, winning

Inspiration – How Hritik Roshan Reduced From 36″ to 29.5″ in 6 Weeks!

 

Couple of weeks ago, Ireadin the papers about Hritik Roshan’s slip disc and how he fought back to get into shape. The one takeaway for me from his ‘agony to ecstasy’ journey was a single word.

Initiative

He took the initiative to come out of self-pity, gorging on pastries & cakes, smoking. In short, he says he was eating rubbish and couldn’t regroup himself and take charge of his life. He felt he ‘deserved’ to eat whatever, given that he was working so hard.

Then one day, all of it changed.

Being an actor, he realized he can’t afford to have a bloated waist size and still play a super-hero role! He had to look fit, look energetic to play the roles!

When this simple truth clicked in his mind, he took charge of his life. He took initiative to figure out how to kick the butt and get rid of the extra kgs, around his waist. You could read the link about and get more details about Hritik’s journey from flab to fab & fit.

We feel frustrated, angry and helpless when things don’t go the way we planned. Irrespective of the context, we are bound to face situations at work and at home, when things don’t go our way. This is the fact of life. What separates people who come out of such crises from those who wallow in it is – initiative.

Initiative means taking charge & deciding to act, and not being paralyzed.

A bit of reflection on his travails and how exactly he came out of that, prompted me to write a few observations relevant to all of us in business & in life:

1. Initiative is like planting a seed. Without taking any initiative, we cannot expect to grow a big tree.

2. At work, we end up having several pressures – pressure to deliver the next release with no bugs, pressure to make new sales pipeline, pressure to hire the right people and so on. Taking charge helps. Taking responsibility puts you in action.

3. When the sales pipeline needs to be built, all we need to do is to push ourselves to make that one extra call everyday to prospects. Perhaps that is all is required – taking that initiative and plodding along the right direction, rather than being worried about sagging pipeline.

4. When the biggest customer threatens to walk away from you, all you need to do is to take initiative. Change the way of working and it produces results and happy customers.

5. When you want to learn about your customers, you need to take initiative and ask questions. Else, your customer is not going to tell you about her needs.

6. When you want to build a relationship with your loved one, you need to take the initiative to ask her what she likes. She may never say it if you don’t ask!

7. When the economy is crumbling and your debts are mounting, all you need to to is to take initiative. Take stock of your assets and liabilities and make those changes to reduce your debt.

Initiative is the one single mantra to rid of mental and physical laziness. It is the silver bullet to cure our mental paralysis.

As the Gita says, “A little bit of action /practice is more important than reading a lot of scriptures and doing nothing”.

Action is essential. Action comes out of initiative. Action comes out of taking charge of the situation. Initiative helps us think through the situations and act. Initiative makes us proactive and not passive.

As always love to hear your thoughts!

Tags: Hrithik Roshan, Hritik Roshan, initiative, take charge

Art of Delegation – Learning From an Alarm Clock

Consider this quite trivial situation:

Its 10PM in the evening and you have a plane to catch at 4AM and you need to leave home at 2AM. Let us also assume that you want to catch up  few hours of sleep before you board the plane. Naturally, we fall back on the time tested principle of setting an alarm for, say 2AM!

Let us analyze our possible mindset or behaviors when we set the alarm and go off to bed. I came up with these options.

1. Mindset of trust

Here, we trust the alarm will ring exactly at 2AM. Then we can get off the bed and leave!

When we trust, and assuming the alarm clock (or your phone, if you prefer) is not faulty, it will definitely ring at the ‘agreed’ time to wake you up. So, we end up getting a good few hours of sleep before we catch the flight. It is peace for a few hours, atleast, right?

“Delegating” the responsibility and giving the “capable” alarm clock the “authority” to ring (i.e wake you up) gives us peace of mind & a good nap.

2. Mindset of distrust

Here, we “mis-trust” the alarm clock. We can doubt if it would ring at the time we want to be woken up. We can be concerned with “what if” scenarios like – “what if the battery is dead?”, “what if I knock it off the ground while asleep?”, “what if it stops due to some unforeseeable fault?”

When we start doubting, we not only go on and keep the alarm, we also wake up every half hour or so and check our “watch” – a sort of our “back up” for the alarm clock. We end up with red eyes and probably a throbbing headache from the stress we undergo to keep ourselves awake and check the clock once a while.

We don’t even trust our subconscious mind to wake us up at the stipulated time! So, our ‘conscious mind’ is trying hard to keep itself awake so that we don’t miss our flight. Remember the beauty of our subconscious mind: If you tell it to wake you up at 2AM – it will, irrespective of the alarm clock. All we need is trust, which we lack unfortunately.

 

I drew a lot of parallels with this example and our management styles.

Hire an able person, delegate, and TRUST he will deliver. He is not an inanimate object, but definitely will respond positively to trust.

Hire an able person, delegate and MISTRUST, then she will have difficulties delivering to the set goals. She is not an inanimate object, not to be affected by your moods, back up plans, lack of clarity on the authority she has to make decisions. She will in short, struggle to deliver – all because your managerial style does not permit her to take the responsibility with the authority. She would feel handicapped – responsibility with no authority and backup plans, difficulties in trust levels, emotional energy drains…
As a manager, our job is to hire an able person. Delegate. Give responsibility with authority. Once it is done, TRUST them to deliver.

They may not function the way you want them to function. They may not have the same “history” that you have to make decisions – and may take an entirely different path than yours to achieve the goals. So what? You need to trust them to deliver. You need to trust that you made a decision to hire an able person. You need to trust in your instincts that you are doing the right thing by delegating and giving them the responsibility with authority.

So, what is your management style?

Would love to hear your thoughts

Tags: authority, delegation, management style, mistrust, responsibility, trust

Manage Your Behavior……Complement Your Intelligence

We all know that several HR professionals use “behavioral” testing – Myers-Brigg and other similar kind of psychological profiling to understand a person before making a hiring decision. Several intelligent people are considered “unfit” for some roles, based on such profiling results.We all know of several cases, where “at the last round of interviews”, the person does not clear the HR interview and loses the chance to take up her coveted role!

So, does that mean that intelligence matters less but behavior matters more?

I believe it is true. Intelligence is secondary, but behavior is primary criteria to hire someone.

Consider these situations:

• Have we ever fell short of helping someone in need, albeit there was an intention to help?
• Have we struggled to get out of our bed in the morning, albeit there was an intention to get up early and exercise?
• Have we struggled to kick the butt, albeit there was a strong intention to quit smoking?
• Why do we flare up despite being told in several ways that we should not get angry?

In the above situations and several others similar ones, there is a lack of coherence between behavior and intelligence.

Our intelligence is theory – knowing what to do, but our behavior is practical intelligence – doing what we know.

Bhagawat Gita defines our behavior as our true nature. We are a bundle of likes /dislikes – that define how we behave. Gita further says that our likes (raga) & dislikes (dwesha) are a result of our desires. In other words, our desires /or its opposite (“hatred”) determines our likes /dislikes and in turn dictate our behavior.

Note that our likes /dislikes have nothing to do with our intelligence. It has to do with our desires.

Therefore, if you closely see, it is quite clear that there is lack of consistency between a person’s nature and his intelligence  – irrespective of whom you take as an example!

The question we need to ask is how does our desires control our behavior?

The Gita, Chapter 2 explains this as “The Ladder of Fall”.

Expressed in simple English, here are the steps that goes on:

1. Desires give rise to attachment.

2. Attachment causes craving for the objects of desire

3. We get angry when we don’t get what we crave for

4. Anger deludes the intellect

5. This delusion causes us to lose our memory & past knowledge

6. This temporary loss of memory causes our intelligence to fail!

Therefore, it is clear that desires & anger cover our intelligence.  Now, if we want to be consistent in our behavior & intelligence, either we can lower our moral /ethical values and or quite simply, control our anger & desires!

The question now is how does one control our desires & anger?

Gita proposes that we can live a life of “total congruence” between thought, words & deeds if we focus on managing our desires & anger.

This requires hard practice, over extended periods of time – and I am not for an instant saying that it would be achieved in one life time!

Gita proposes meditation as an excellent way of managing our anger & desires.

Meditation is quite simply “to be who you are”. While this blog is not about explaining the process of meditation, I propose you may want to consider these as part of your lifestyle:

1. Be aware – focus on one thing at a time

2. Observe – your thoughts, circumstances, environment, people

3. Don’t react – to situations, thoughts, people

When we do this, we are training ourselves to be “neutral” – or rather “intensely passive” – aware of everything, but aloof; without reacting to situations.

This breaks our mindset of “being attached” to a thought. Over a time, this reduces the desires & anger and achieves congruence in our thoughts, words & action.

So, if you are looking to get hired for your dream job, don’t focus on your intelligence or on skill-sets alone, consider managing your behavior too!

What are your thoughts?

Love to hear from you,

Tags: anger, behavior, Bhagavad Gita, desire, Gita, human nature, Intelligence, Krishna, ladder of fall, myers brigg, psychological profiling, Social Sciences

Effective Email Communication Techniques for tech leads & above

Here is a slide deck that I prepared and presented to about 17 tech leads & managers in my company. As the topic says, I presented a few effective email communication tips & techiques, taking some real emails within my organization.

You can view the presentation here,

Effective email skills v1_external

View more documents from Rajesh Sengamedu

As the webinar recording consists of company confidential information, I am not sharing the recording here. However, I would be happy to customize this to your organization.

Please share your thoughts

Tags: business communication, email, email communication, soft skills

Top Six Reasons That Hold Us Back And Not Seek Fun!

Many of us find it easy to do a few things, while many others find it difficult or impossible to do the same. Let us take a few examples to understand this.

(A) “I have two left feet”

OK, I have let the cat out of the bag! I can’t dance for nuts!

Last week, I took my daughter to a “flash mob” dance practice session. I was quite impressed to see at least 40 adults from both sexes – between 20 and 30 years learning dance steps for a very popular Indian song, “Jai Ho!” It was heartening to see that the enthusiasm to learn something and perform was running high in the air, albeit the fact that several of these participants did not have the “right body type” to gyrate to the music, compared to the slim and trim trainers! My daughter was quite excited and joined the practice immediately.  I stayed away in the sidelines, watching lovingly, how my daughter was doing. Couple of times, I was asked to join, but I politely declined saying that “this is not for me”

(B) “Will I get hurt?”

Couple of weeks back, we went out on a day trip as a team outing. One of the adventure exercises that we participated was called ‘Trust Fall’. Imagine a huge net tied between two big trees and a horizontal log placed two feet above it. You need to get on the log  jump off it to a mattress on the net – with your back facing the net. Sounds Simple? Indeed, it is. Our ‘guide’ even demonstrated a perfect fall on to the mat. Of course all of us noticed that he had no bruises, no broken neck, no injuries anywhere on his body. So, the proof was right in front of our eyes that we will not get hurt.

Each of us reacted in different ways to the same situation:

Some eagerly took up to the exercise, and were easily able to do it.

Some struggled to ‘let go’ standing on the log; perhaps worried that they will break their neck.

Some others, including me, tried it, but did not get a perfect landing, like the guide.

Some others just decided that they would not even attempt it – as they were afraid of getting hurt!

(C) “I have never done that in my life. How can I do it now?”

At work, we come across several situations when you need to go beyond your regular ‘circle of competence’ and do something else. Many of us balk at the thought of doing something different from what we believe is our core competence.  Ask an engineer to make a cool presentation and summarize the project status to the customer. He would give you facts, but it will take an eternity for the customer to understand! Ask someone who has never done a presentation to stand up and present, and (s)he will get cold feet. Sometimes, the answer we will get to such requests is – hey, I have not done this before. I am not sure if I can do it.

(D) “Oh! There has been an accident on the road…..”

How often we come across situations where we see an accident in front of our eyes but we continue to move on, without trying to help? What is the reason that we feign ignorance to a person’s need that is clearly visible?

If you are living in an apartment complex, you would understand this situation better: Sometimes, when there is a pre announced fire-drill in the complex, we hardly find the residents participating in the fire-drill (except the enthusiastic children, of course!). On the contrary, they complain that the lifts are switched off and they need to go and do their groceries. All the time, knowing well that the fire-drill is going to happen at that time.

Think about the few situations I describe here. There are million variations of the same themes.

I believe that the reasons we hold off doing something are several. Our reaction to the situation is different and most of the times ‘masks’ the true reason. I have summarized few reasons here. The reasons are usually a combination, and never one definite reason.

1. We do not like being embarrassed

Like in my case – I was embarrassed to dance in public!

2. We are scared of failure

Like in the case of people who chickened out and did not jump; Or like the people who are not comfortable to stand up and present to a crowd.

3. We are apathetic

We don’t understand seriousness of the situation till such time it occurs to us. How many of us stopped by and helped a person involved in an accident? Did we take part in the fire-drills?

4. We are smug; our ego prevents us from letting go

As we grow up, our ego takes over and the child in us ‘dies’. The enthusiasm to do something new gradually dies….and we settle into a pattern of doing things that we know. Perhaps some of the folks thought that ‘jumping & falling’ is too childish?!?

5. We don’t feel good about ourselves/ we don’t feel confident

I was not confident about my dancing skills….or the engineer at work is not confident of his English skills?

6. We are lazy to try anything

I think this is the strongest reason. Most of the time, we are lazy. We don’t do things because, an inner gremlin is asking us ‘why take the trouble?’.

In conclusion, I recommend us to ask ourselves a hard question – Are we lazy? Let us watch this keenly. If we take action and not be lazy, I am sure we will have more fun, learn more.

Perhaps there are more reasons why we don’t do something, albeit we should have at least tried.

Please write to me with your thoughts.

Tags: experiement, fun, have fun, trust fall, try something new

Find Your Cause!

“Dolphin Tale” is an inspiring tale, drawn from real-life of how a dolphin learns to swim after losing its tail.

You might ask – So what? This sounds totally simple & trivial.  Why should I watch the movie?

The movie is actually less about the dolphin, but more about an introvert school-kid. From being into his video games, he transforms himself into a maniac, driving a cause – to make the dolphin swim. He goes to all length, does not leave any stone unturned to find a solution to his cause. In the process, he transforms not only himself, but the lives of few people around him and of course, enables the dolphin swim with the artificial tale.

Rather than promote the movie, let me share my two feelings about the movie.

1. Having a ‘higher’ goal is a big motivator

The boy in the movie is inspired to take on the cause of making a tail-less dolphin swim. This unselfish cause motivates him to find creative solutions. First of all, he ends up spending time with the dolphin, learning and assessing it. Thinking about it all the time and figuring out how to make it swim.

By higher goals, I don’t mean ‘stretch target’ as we would define in business terms. I mean something that inspires us to get into the nook & corner of our mind and harness our resourcefulness to reach the goal. This helps us become more productive and is also deeply satisfying. Check out the movie to see the inner transformation the kid enjoys – all by getting the dolphin a tail to swim!

2. Unselfish causes motivate other people to give

Like what happens in the movie. The school-kid is able to motivate a leading doctor in the neighbourhood to design a special prosthetic tail to the dolphin. And the doctor does it for free! Not just that, he is able to figure out how to promote the ‘dolphin that has no tail but can swim’ in the main stream media (again by motivating the news anchor through his cousin) and gets enough publicity for the cause. He also raises enough money to support the cash strapped aquarium and wards off a ‘hostile takeover’ by a big businessman!

It is easy to be motivated by personal goals of enriching oneself. While that is good at one level, it makes sense to consider another possibility – how about having causes that we can take up in life which benefit others? This would garner resourcefulness not only from our own self, but also from others who share similar passion in the cause like us.

How to find your cause?

I recall the conversation I had over a cup of coffee with an HR consultant and a former colleague of mine. He asked me to do an exercise:

Everyday, jot down in a diary what activities makes you feel energetic and what saps energy. Do this for three weeks and find a pattern into what ‘gives you energy’.

I owe it to him for sharing this beautiful thought. I definitely think it is an interesting way at least, to start on a journey of self-discovery of those causes that we want to gun for.

I know a few people who want to earn more and more, not just to take care of their needs, but also to help the poor & needy. That’s their cause! I also know of a few entrepreneurs who want to make a big success of their business venture, not because they would become millionaire but they want to make the people working for them rich. Of course, we also know few high-profile people who take up a government job, because they want to make sweeping changes to a large section of people (think Nandan Nilekani of Infosys and the UIDAI project he is spear-heading for the Indian Government; think Azim Premji of Wipro and the Azim Premji Foundation to improve the education in India – for example)

Are you ready to discover your true cause?

Write to me with your opinion & thoughts.

ps: Whether you like this blog post or not, whether you would do the exercise to discover your cause or not, I recommend you to watch the movie. Thoroughly enjoyable family movie. Don’t miss it. Get that DVD now or download from Netflix.

Tags: azim premji, cause, dolphin tale, Florida, infosys, nandan nilekani, Tail, uidai, Winter, wipro

3 Lessons For B2B Marketers From Pizza Business

My kids are regular & die-hard customers at Pizza Hut. Rarely do we ‘change’ preference – albeit pizza is a very ‘standard’ and probably all pizzas taste the same irrespective of whether it is from Pizza Hut or Domino’s or Papa Johns.

However, recently we stepped outside the boundary and decided to give Pizza Hut a pass. We stepped into Domino’s Pizza.

I was trying to understand what made us change our preference. There were three important lessons for B2B marketers from this simple observation.

1. Advertising increases sales

My kids watched the ‘mouth-watering’ advert on TV for 3 Cheese Pizza and for Choco Lava Cake. You can check them out here. They just decided that they MUST try this. That was reason enough for us to land up at Domino’s.

As most B2B marketers would agree, advertising is considered more of an ‘expense’ than ‘an investment’ and has to be minimized. Advertising or promotion spend in the B2B context is usually allocated to trade shows, seminars, gifts, travel for sales people etc. While I am not generalizing this to all B2B sales, rarely we find B2B marketers exploiting the internet /web for their advertising. They don’t budget for this! My recommendation is that B2B marketers must start ‘advertising’ their wares – albeit they may be plain vanilla nuts & bolts or plain vanilla services. Right channel selection would ensure that reach cost-effectively.

2. Accessibility increases footprint

Domino’s was just right across the Pizza Hut that we frequent. So, it was no difficulty to park our car next to Pizza Hut at our usual parking place and walk across to Domino’s. I am not sure if I would have driven my children to Domino’s if they were not readily accessible like Pizza Hut.

B2B marketers must be very accessible as well. A simple change to their website – say, providing a 24×7 sales call number would increase the chances of prospects calling on them. Extending the definition of ‘accessibility’ a bit more loosely, I can recommend that B2B marketers should start participating in the same events /trade shows where your competitors are visible.

3. Branding is important for repeat sales

Pizza Hut promotes itself as a ‘dine-in’ restaurant. The plates are porcelain, cutlery is steel, glasses for water & drinks; service good and prompt, encourages you to relax and place your order while sitting at the table. Domino’s promote themselves as the ‘delivery experts’ (their tag line in Hindi being ‘Khushiyon Ki Home Delivery’). They expect you to order at the counter and wait for the pizza to be served in take-away cardboard boxes and plastic cutlery. If you needed a glass of water, you had to walk up yourself to the water fountain and fetch yourself a glass of water in a paper cup. This did not go well with my kids, who had experienced the Pizza Hut dine-in service. Neither we order pizza regularly for take away, as dine-in serves more like a family outing + dinner. So, we probably will not go back to Domino’s but will return to Pizza Hut for our next pizza. Note that I am not saying that Domino’s are not building a brand (on the contrary they are!), but I am stating that the brand promise of ‘delivery expertise’ is not suitable for me as a customer.

B2B marketers must not forget the power of branding. Many B2B marketers view their customers as ‘transactions’ while in reality, more than 75% business is repeat business. So, sticking to their commitments – in terms of service, quality to their customers, ensures that customers will stay with them…and probably even pay you a higher price for the same goods and services.

B2B marketers rarely understand the power of brand. The B2B culture does not think brand. Brand is nothing but commitments – a set of attributes that the brand is expected to provide the customer. The commitments are commitments made by the business.

Long and short, I recommend B2B marketers to re-look at their advertising plans, ensure that they are accessible and more importantly STATE & LIVE UP to the commitments. It requires a bit of soul-searching and coming up with few attributes that the company want to live up for (e.g 24hours customer response time, high quality software, lowest price, technically strong solution…………etc). Once we complete this part of the thinking, it requires the organization to re-jig their operations ensuring that everybody understands the value the business is offering to the customers.

As usual, I am eager to hear your thoughts.

Tags: Advertising, B2B, B2B marketing, Business-to-business, Customer, Domino, Marketing, Pizza, Pizza Hut

Imagine

Couple of days ago, my daughter read out a riddle from Tinkle, the magazine for children.

Let us see how many of you can solve this riddle:

“Imagine you are in a sinking boat, with man-eating sharks all around you. What would you do to survive?

Please spend a few minutes before you start reading the rest of the blog article… I can assure you it is well worth the time!

I answered to my daugher, ” It is man-eating sharks, so the man (i.e me in the boat) will eat the sharks and survive”

My daughter said, “Think differently Papa!”

Well, the answer to the riddle is “JUST STOP IMAGINING”

It’s as simple as that.

I drew a huge parallel with that riddle and real life.

Whether we like it or not, we imagine too many things about our world, with us in the center of the universe. When we get to work, we imagine a huge amount of challenge lying in front of us. When we start driving, we imagine that a huge traffic will pile up and delay us or perhaps even imagine that we may end up meeting in an accident in such a huge traffic.

We also imagine we have problems with money. We imagine that we have problems with relationships. We imagine we are incapable of doing something. We imagine we are inexperienced to offer a brilliant suggestion. We imagine that the other person will mock at us. We imagine that the girl we will propose to, will reject us….

It’s all in our imagination.

Imagination is great positive force. The energy is superb. If you have not read Harry Potter series, or even have not watched the movie, you are missing JK Rowling’s stupendous imagination. It’s simple amazing, how she has been able to create the characters, weave stories and make a billion $+ franchise….all out of her imagination. In the bargain, she has inspired several people to become authors, not to mention that she solved her own financial problems, for generations to come!

Imagination is also a great negative force. When we imagine that our world is crumbling apart, I am sure it will sooner or later. When we imagine that we are going to meet with an accident, I am sure we will. When we imagine that our life will suck big time because we will get into relationship troubles with our loved ones….we won’t take the next step and strengthen the relationship. When we imagine that we will lose money if we invest in stock market, we will not even take the first step.

I can give countless examples. But it is important for each one of us to pause and start thinking and sorting out our life riddle. We keep imagining too many things in our life. Perhaps three quarters of what we imagine does not come true.

Let us solve the life riddle.

Like Bhagawat Gita says, we are troubled by three mental energies – regret for the past, anxiety for the future and agitation in the present. If you meditate on this, it is clear that we are imagining things in the future and are anxious. This robs away our present, as we become agitated.

Stop Imagining.

Start living.

Enjoy Life. It is too short to imagine & weave too much negativity into our lives.

As always, I welcome your comments, feedback.

 

Tags: bhagawat Gita, Gita, Harry Potter, Imagination, start living, stop imagining

Attitude matters!

I am a reasonably ‘regular’ student for yoga classes in the neighbourhood. Our class starts at 0615AM. We have about 30 to 40 students on any day learning yoga. Most of these students in my batch are ‘regular’ too – I have seen them around for over a year…..enough to say that they are ‘motivated’ in some fashion or the other to learn yoga.  Enough motivated to get out of the bed early and be here for this class!

Here are two insights that I want to share with you from my yoga class. Let us also view how this is applicable in the context of our work life.

1. Motivation is not good enough

Everybody knows that our yoga teacher starts the class, on the dot at the scheduled time….and ends the class on the dot at the scheduled time. The tragedy is that there are many students who walk in late. It is quite surprising to see that some of the ‘regulars’ are ‘regularly’ late!

It makes me wonder – are they not motivated enough to be on time? I bet they are motivated enough to pull themselves out of bed to get to the class…..If so, then the question that bothers me is – why do they turn up late?

I concluded that they lack mental discipline, therefore have no control over their minds.

2. Disregard to ‘fellow’ students

Every yoga class, we have a tradition of starting our class with a prayer to Patanjali, the person who codified yoga principles in ‘Yoga Sutras’. The ‘regularly’ late students pick up the props – couple of blankets, a wood brick and a metal chair etc and try to join the class. In spite of several requests by the yoga teacher not to ‘disturb’ the prayer session by dragging the props – especially the metal chair, these regulars can’t do anything but create a racket – creaking of the metal chair, while the prayer is going on. This definitely disturbs the rest of us.

While someone sneezing or coughing loudly during the prayer time does NOT disturb us, yet a small ‘creak’ from the metal chair or a ‘thud’ sound while dropping the wood brick on to the ground, disturbs everyone.

Why do they follow this abhorring practice?

I concluded that this type is the ‘attention seeker’, the ‘egoist’.

I can think of several parallels in our work life too!

Just take the case of attending meetings at work.

Do we know a few colleagues who are ‘regularly’ late for meetings? And when they do come in, haven’t they told a story, or an excuse to gain attention of the rest of the crowd? These guys are seeking attention from the others and want to obviate the fact that they are late! These guys ‘disturb’ the flow of the well-begun meeting, with their stories….

Or take the case of quitting a bad habit, say smoking.

Do we know a few friends who are highly motivated to quit smoking? And they grow weak in their knees after a while, and give in to the temptation of a drag? These guys are motivated, no doubt, but don’t have a discipline towards quitting smoking.

Or take the case of a company who regularly slip up on delivering in time to customers.

Don’t we know such vendors? Here is the classic case of ‘institutionalizing’ bad attitude. This is worse. Everybody now has an excuse that their other colleagues are doing the same thing, therefore it is acceptable to slip up delivering on time! The organization ends up resetting the bar lower. Unfortunately, this creates a negative spiral and we end up losing customers. There is no more challenge, no opportunity for growth.

In all the examples above, I believe that attitude plays a significant role in the way people behave. Knowledge, Skills, Attitude are the three pillars against which we can measure a person’s worth. I believe that the ‘Attitude’ reveals more about the person than the knowledge he has or the skills he possesses.

Right attitude is simply the habit of checking our ego. It is in a feeling that you care for yourself, you care for others. It is in a feeling that serving others in small or big way is more productive than being self-serving. Right attitude is humility. It is also being disciplined. It is the mental power of bringing discipline into what you believe is important to do. It is sticking to our commitments.

Let the ‘late comer’ in us and the ‘egoist’ in us develop the right attitude to make a positive change. Let us have that personal commitment towards ourselves and to our friends, co-workers, family members.

As always, I welcome your thoughts.

Tags: attitude, commitment, discipline, ego, egoism, egoist, Meeting, positive attitude, right attitude, training