STRESS Unveiled

Stress continues to be an area of concern for many of us.  I thought of sharing my thoughts on how I deal with stress by unveiling each letter of the word STRESS.

S - Silly yourself.  The ability to laugh at yourself on your mistakes can be one of the biggest abilities to manage stress. We then no longer have to defend or justify our point of view especially in situations when we know in our heart that it is our mistake. So we can simply laugh at ourselves and say to others and ourselves "i am so silly...i messed it up...i goofed up...i am very sorry".  That very moment we become free of any further load of continuing with the mistake. There are also other medical benefits like endorphin's are released in our body which is very good for our health. So learn to not only laugh at yourself but LOL at yourself and you will gradually see the current stress going down and very less of new stress building up.

T - Trash the trash of the past. I am not talking about trashing the big baggage of the past but the day to day past. So if you have a difference of opinion with your colleague or your spouse or even your boss on Monday then don't carry that on Tuesday morning. I am not saying that you should not have your point of view and just agree to others views (except your boss) but the disagreement on a particular point should not percolate in subsequent conversations. All new conversation should start new, fresh and lively with no connect with the past.  If we apply this situation with the spouse then after a difference of opinion on a Saturday the conversation on Sunday  should start as fresh and lively as you had when you were dating each other. When we bring that liveliness back in our lives moment by moment there are no resentments, no burden of the past and thereby a stress free present. Don't show this blog to your spouse and ask him/her to implement trashing the past (as usually we are very good at externalizing the problem) but take the responsibility of implementing this yourself first. After few weeks when the spouse says that these days you have become so lively and lovely every moment, you can share this blog.

R - Restrict yourself in getting into a trap of doing things back to back but learn to intentionally keep blank spaces between activities. Jeff Reiner (CEO of Linked in) has beautifully talked about keeping blank spaces between meetings in one of his blogs. Most people take pride in having back to back meetings. When they do that they are not able to think / process what happened in the meeting and spend time on solving the issues. So if the meeting was on an escalation then after few days there is another escalation meeting called  to handle the previous escalation meeting. The vicious cycle of back to back meetings gives a sense of false pride that we are a great busy executive and the life of an busy executive has to be stress full. So try keeping spaces and see how gradually the stress almost disappears for you and people around you (especially your reportees who also keep attending those back to back meetings and join you in the stressful world).

E - Enlarge your heart. People around you at work and home will make mistakes and the ability to forgive and let go by enlarging your heart will help reduce stress. I am not saying that tolerate insincerity or incompetence but enlarge your heart to look at them as people who will learn to deliver. Spend time in training, coaching and mentoring people so that they also find a purpose in their being. Looking at people grow around you will help reduce your stress.

S - Standardize.  There are many repetitive tasks in our lives like buying grocery, paying electricity bills, monthly maintenance, car servicing etc. Try and see if you can standardize those by putting templates, creating a recurring reminder on your laptop, phone so that you don't have to remember them.   My wife has put a post it on our refrigerator and all of us at home write when any item gets over. We just pick the post it while going to the supermarket and don't have to think about what to buy as our short term memory cannot remember the butter that got over last Monday and with the traffic in Bangalore city it can create big stress to go back to buy butter. I also pay advance money when paying electricity bill and automatically the amount keeps getting deducted not needing me to pay electricity bill every month.  I know many people who are very particular about loosing bank interest from advance may not like this but try and look at this as an investment to make more time for yourself and help reduce stress. You can use this extra time to listen music or to nurture your hobbies which by the way can also help reduce stress.

S - Synergize. It is the ability to make 1 + 1 = 11 and not 1 + 1 = 2. It is about unleashing the potential of everybody around us.  When we synergize we get things done by everybody around us and not take the load of doing everything by ourselves.  It means my brain and your brain can create a better solution then only me thinking about an issue.  This also means celebrating differences. Finally it also means synergizing with yourself.  Meditation can be of great help in uniting yourself, creating peace within and dealing with stress. www.sahajayoga.org is a great school of mediation that I have been practicing for last 18 years and you can try that as well.

I am sure there may be many more ways of managing stress and I look forward to your sharing in helping each other deal with stress to lead a lively and loving life....Lets all learn, share and care.

Working with inmates of Tihar Jail

Many of you must have read the recent news that all the inmates of Tihar jail getting released in next 6 months have got 100% placement.  I was thinking, how will it be if I had to work with them as my colleague, reportee or even a boss. Let me be Share the first few thoughts that flashed my mind :

- First one was whether I would be able to have conversations with them the way I have currently with people at workplace

- Will I be able to confront them with an issue the way I do with people with no criminal background

- Will I be able to treat them with same respect or will their background constantly hover in my thinking

- Will I be able to invite them to get together's

- Will my family accept them during such get together's

After an hour or so I got over the above thoughts and said to myself that nobody in this world comes with a plan to do things they did and spend time in jail but it is the circumstances that made them do what they did. If I was born in the environment and circumstances that they were in, I possibly would have done the same.

Once I said this to myself I saw many new thoughts coming to my mind that actually can be of a great advantage to the corporate and let me share them :

- Ability to handle uncertainty.  The uncertainty about the future that they go thru during the trial period cannot be matched to any other uncertainty in this world.  I see many cribbing about uncertainty of jobs, career because the recession which to me now looks very minuscule when I see their uncertainty.

- Visualizing a positive future. After they get sentenced by the court what keeps them alive and ticking while serving the sentence is a visualization of what they will do once they come out of the jail.

- Living in a confined space. The inmates live in a small space that at times is shared by other inmates but in corporate people ask for bigger cabins, bigger cubicles, corner office, window seat and so on. For sure Facilities Management can have a great time with no complaints from them on this front.

- Live life without any variety. I keep hearing in corporate that the food court has only 7 types of cuisines whereas in the jail there may be only 1 type of cuisine with more or less the same gravy / masala (only occassional change of vegetables) both for lunch and dinner and possibly even for breakfast. We may not need any Food Committees any more in corporate who keep changing the cuisines every few months and still not able to satisfy the demands of employees.

- Adherence to time: There is a fix time in jail for each activity including lunch / dinner and the attendance call.  They learn to strictly adhere to time. This can be a great quality that corporate can learn from them as many people take adherence to time in corporate not as seriously.

- Patience: Nobody in the world can have the level of patience they have as all the above qualities cannot be demonstrated without patience.

At the end I would like to say that I look forward to working with a Tihar Jail Inmate and imbibe many of the above qualities from them.

Let me know what thoughts are you having after reading this blog ?

Inside Out or Outside In...

We quite often hear people saying my boss just does not understand where I am coming from, the policies of this company are horrible, it was not this way few years ago...this is “Outside in”. 

Then there are people who would say that I really need to work on myself to get my point across to my boss, the policies of the company needs to be re-looked as we have grown big, we need to change as per times…this is “Inside out”.

Outside in is bringing outside inside us and blaming the outside and inside out is fixing the outside by looking inside and bringing the inside out.

So when I was thinking about why some are outside in and some inside out I thought that 
outside in people look with their eyes and inside out with their hearts. It is said that eyes can see things that are there whereas heart can see what is not there. Sometimes what is there is actually not there and the outside in people pick up many things that is not there like there may not be any issue with the boss or the company policy because if that was the case then why did inside out people did not see that. In fact the outside in people continue to see things that are not there as they will have the same issue with all their earlier bosses and companies or for that matter in most areas of their life. One such outside in person said that I have changed 7 houses as every time I find a lousy neighbor.   

Inside out people become leaders very naturally.  

Some of the qualities of inside out people are :-

• They  don't blame the outside nor the inside (themselves).  They just focus on solving the problems.  
• They have a big heart. Since they always look thru their hearts their heart is always active, healthy and continues to become bigger and bigger. 
• Their eyes are facing inward, looking at the heart and not outside finding faults outside. 
• They imbibe many qualities of what our scriptures say that everything is inside us and all answers to outside can be found inside. 
• They carry the weather inside them so irrespective of whether the weather outside is gloomy or rainy; they always carry a nice sunny weather inside them.

While we all want to be inside out we may become outside in for various reasons and this article can be reminder to see inside us to become inside out.  Do share your thoughts from inside if you found this useful.

There is a limit to every thing...

"There is a limit to everything" is a common statement we hear from many people and even we say this many a times but how true is this and how does this help us or not help us in our lives. 

There are some things that I think should not have any limit like "Compassion" for example.  Just visualize for a second how the world will look like if we there was no limit to compassion.

Second one is "Forgiveness".  Most of us have put a limit on forgiveness and the sad part without we even knowing that it damages us more than the person whom we are not forgiving. So one should not put a  limit on forgiveness. 

Third one is "Knowledge". If one were to not limit age or any other constraint on acquiring knowledge one will continue to evolve and have less time for conflicts, jealousy and many other things that i think should fall under the category "there is a limit to..."

Fourth one is "Innovation". The comforts we enjoy today are because many innovators did not keep any limit on continuing to innovate and make the world a better place.

Fifth one is "Worship". There are many who say work is worship and for them there is no limit to work. However I am referring to the worship to the almighty in any form like meditation, singing, reciting shlokas etc. Those who do not keep a limit on this will see that this also brings in limitless compassion and forgiveness.  Also it opens up the doors for limitless knowledge of one self. 

So besides compassion, forgiveness, knowledge, innovation, worship what else comes to your mind that falls under the category of "there is no limit to..."

The obvious issue...

Many a times we say it is so obvious and why can't the other person see it. If you do some reflection and introspection on yourself you will see that you also have been like the other  person who could not see the obvious that some other person was seeing.

This obvious is not obvious has damaged relationships not only at professional front but also at personal front. While the damage at professional front can be managed by finding another role or job but how would one manage the damage on personal front.

So when i was thinking about why we become upset when obvious is not obvious i saw some of the reasons as below :

We at times become impatient as the obvious to us may take time to become obvious to the other and despite we knowing that it will take time we loose patience and the obvious then does not become obvious but many other things that were not obvious like fierce arguments or going into silence becomes obvious to the surprise of both the parties.

The obvious at times looks so real and permanent leaving no scope for any possibility of understanding what is obvious to us may not necessarily be obvious to the other person. In a Organisation setup the managers bulldoze their obvious on their reportees and contribute to the tradition of "people leave obvious managers and not organisation"

So how do we handle this obvious issue ?  I would like to suggest few obvious suggestions from my own experiences and would invite your obvious experiences as I am sure you will obviously want to contribute ;

- Watch out for situations where the tone of conversation heats up. That's the time you should challenge / understand your obvious more and see what could you do to help the other person see your obvious.

- When people just agree. This means that they are not even paying attention to your obvious. As a manager you may feel nice in short run but obviously in long run it will impact your managerial journey.

- When people don't do longer and deeper conversation with you because obviously they have given up on the idea that you will ever see anything that is beyond your obvious. This is the most dangerous situation and can lead to isolation over the period of time.

So a constant reflection on the above points, giving people opportunity to speak, spending time understanding each other will obviously help.  After reading this blog you may or may not get my obvious but I hope this obviously will help all of us in some way or the other in our personal and professional lives.

Rich Versus Reach...

Last week I had the opportunity to participate in a round table discussion organized by Harvard Business School Publishing on Holistic Leadership Development for Future.  

The discussion moved on to delivery of training on how effective is virtual classroom sessions at Harvard. The response from Harvard was that the instructor led sessions are always "Rich" compared to virtual classroom that have "Reach". So there will always be a trade off between "Rich" versus "Reach"

I was thinking about this and I saw that this issue of "Rich" versus "Reach" exists in many other areas like organisations are ok if employees are not very deep "Rich" in a particular domain, skill or technology and they prefer employees with variety "Reach" of domain, skill and technology..

Organisations are ok not doing deep training "Rich" to a small set of employees but may prefer to touch "Reach" a large set of employees.

The recent edition of India Today had a survey on today's youth not wanting to have a deeper "Rich" relationship and are ok to have many  shorter "Reach" relationships.

Would be keen to know where else do you think the "Rich" verses "Reach" exists and what do you think are its impact / consequences ?

The Safar and Suffer Connection...

After a long train journey you would have heard some people saying "safar kaise kat gaya pata hi nahin chala" (it was a long journey but it did not feel so) and then there are some who are really cranky from the beginning till end of the journey.  On both sides of the journey they argue with the porter till the last passenger has left the station and they have to reluctantly agree to the last porters rates. They then continue the fight with the cab driver on waiting charges even though they came out late and then it continues at the hotel because hotel at times cancel the booking on arriving later than the scheduled check in time and it goes on and on.

So what is the difference in these two passenger’s safar (journey).

I think the first passenger has done lot of sharing during the safar.  While railway authorities warn us on not sharing food or drinks but there is no warning on sharing the safar of our lives.  When they share they see many common suffer and makes their safar (life) not as bad a suffer as they had experienced before. 

They live life moment by moment.  I guess they have got inspired by the song "zindagi ek safar, hai suhana, yahan kal Kya ho, kisne jaana" (life is a pleasant safar who knows what will happen tomorrow).  So why suffer.

They continue to stay inspired by the next line of the song "aasmanon se badhna hai aage" (we have to go beyond the sky). They have bigger goals in their safar (of life) and hardly get bothered by day to day suffer like the other passenger.

They don't carry lot of baggage (of the past) with them so there is no need to argue with the porter, nor the cab driver as they don’t need to dump their past on others.

What else do you think is making the first passenger's safar less of suffer ?