Self-Acceptance

Humans have been living in groups since the time we have known to be existed on this planet. The importance of living in groups has been so much dominant in nature that all our older customs, traditions, rites and rituals have been governed around the fact of being accepted by a group of people who lived around us. But as human race progressed, the rituals and rites started getting challenged by few individuals who thought that these made no logical and human sense. Despite the efforts to abolish them have been successful, but I think the underlying reason of getting accepted by a group which caused those rituals to exist in the very first place is still there. It is just that the means of demonstrating that reason has changed today. Now, it has taken the form of being accepted in high-society parties, recognized by elite group of individuals etc.

I do not say that getting accepted by a group is not important; obviously it is. But, is that acceptance higher than self-acceptance? I do not think so.

What I have been observing since quite some time now is that getting accepted by a group is knowingly or unknowingly taking higher precedence over self-acceptance. Now, this as per me is not only wrong but also dangerous for the person exhibiting this behaviour. This is because a person who gives importance of getting accepted by others over self-acceptance often loses his/her self-identity. There are situations which often makes him/her stand in that grey area where his/her actual desire is not fulfilled because a group around expects something else.

Now, the situation worsens when there are 2 different groups present in the same situation with the person himself/herself and both the groups think in different directions, behave differently and expect different behaviour from the person under consideration. In fact, if we think to ourselves, how many times have we encountered in our lives that a group of friends expect something while our parents, relatives expect something else. And while we know our family comes first than friends, we still behave otherwise. Here, one would argue that this is a matter of just a wish and a generation gap, but then if we think more on this, we would realize that it is actually more than that. It is a matter of putting ourselves so very clear right from the start that the group around knows how are we going to behave in a given situation which would ultimately subside the expectations that people might have with us. And putting ourselves very clear from the right would mean to accept ourselves as we are, accept what we actually want and act on it. Obviously, there are certain wants which are not socially acceptable and hence in those cases we should choose to go by the social norms set. But, being human and considering completely rationale behaviour that we may demonstrate; self-acceptance is bound to make life much easier for all of us.

Self-acceptance by no means is an easy process as it requires breaking certain beliefs that we have built over the years, beliefs that success comes to us when a group around us believes it, beliefs that happiness is the one which makes majority of the people around us smile; but instead success can be realized even when our own heart thinks we are, happiness can be the one which brings smile even on one face. Likewise, there are many beliefs we have built over the years which are directly or indirectly governed by giving more importance to the group-acceptance philosophy rather than giving self-acceptance philosophy its due importance prior to group-acceptance philosophy.

Self-acceptance does not end by accepting self; it extends to accepting how others are as they are. At this moment what I can clearly remember is what one of my good friends PS, an active AOL student, said “Accepting others what they are and how they behave with you makes oneself free of all hatred and grudges which may sub-consciously get registered in our hearts. Often, when we have something in mind which we have not accepted, it leads to feeling of negativity and makes us non-receptive to other fresh ideas and positive things around us as the limited space inside us is still occupied by thoughts and feelings which are negative and doing no good to us”. What she meant to say, which I realize is that, we cannot change people how they are and the way they behave with us but what we can definitely change is our attitude towards people which should be of accepting them as they are rather than keeping in our minds about how they should not have behaved. And if I have to put my personal experience at play, I can cite an instance where I myself after having fallen prey to group-acceptance philosophy have recovered by going the self-acceptance philosophy way. And since then, my life has been much easier.

Don’t believe me? Just seat back and imagine for a moment, we are in a society where we have around us; the people against whom we have no grudges, no ill-feelings, no inhibition within ourselves as to how we should behave but instead what we are doing is just being ourselves. Would not be our life easier then?

A New Phase begins….

Life for all of us can be divided in phases with each phase having different things in store for us. With the end of every phase, there is a hope for a better new phase. We all set out to experience that with certain expectations and certain rules that we decide within ourselves to follow in this new phase. May it be going from school to Junior college, JC to Graduate, Graduate to Post-Graduate and finally from PG to Work Life.

Whatever mistakes we make in last phase, we learn from it so we don’t repeat it and all successes in last phase help us improve the strengths and this collective (a mixed bag of) experiences help us make our new phase a better one. Till the time we reach Post-Graduate phase, we always are in a secured environment, secured by our parents, our friends, our teachers and most importantly controls designed by the authorities that help us not to deviate from our limits.

But, then comes a phase of corporate life, which by almost every mean is a different and unique in regards to what it has to offer us. Though parents are always there, but they do not have that direct an influence over the behavior of external factors. Same is the case with our friends, here they are replaced by colleagues or work associates if I may use the sophisticated term who in an indirect manner are positive competitors. There are no teachers; there are seniors, managers, Directors and VPs. Though the role they play is similar to teachers; something that is very important to determine how you will perform in your corporate life.

But, very often there are not those controls on how will you deal with a business situation. Everything here is left to our capabilities and abilities to think & execute differently. We don’t know your limits and we come to know about them when we cross them. While in our earlier phases; there were KT exams or a chance to appear again, they are a rare case when it comes to corporate. In today’s competitive world, businesses can’t take chances with under-performers and there is no just passing marks scenario here. We are either average to top performer or a failure and fired.

Keeping this in mind, this phase brings in a lot of anxiety, some expectations that we have from ourselves because of successes in our past phases, some “look-out for potholes” that we get to hear as an advice from our well wishers all around. This anxiousness, expectation, emotions running across, thoughts in the mind and all that make us impulsive at times which may not be the best solution to the issues because what is more important is “Finding a solution to the problem and not just answering the question” and it is not about finding “Who is right?” but the real success is to find “What is right?” and in the search of this, we reach excellence which matters more than anything else.

So, what I am trying to say to myself and to all my fellow friends, classmates and colleagues is that Life is not going to be as rosy as it was till now and now is the time to be the “Hero”. Leading student councils and being a team player till now is obviously a learning experience in itself, but the real application of what we learned till now is NOW. Some of us may have never been a part of any councils or committees but still can be top leaders of future while some of us who may have been can never guarantee their success ahead. So, in this uncertain yet exciting phase what matters is how positive, calm and dynamic we are when a situation or an issue confronts us.

So, folks let us all stay positive, keep it cool and be as dynamic as we can as this new phase begins so that we can be the Hero/Heroine of our real lives.

Take care & Keep Smiling !!!

Experience It

When I was a kid, I used to be very choosy about vegetables I ate; My Mom then told me how can you not like a particular vegetable when you have not tried it even once? (I am sure many people reading this are able to somewhere link with either themselves or have seen someone doing this). I neither listened to her then nor do I follow that now when it comes to vegetables or food in general. But somehow deep within I knew, she was right and may be that is the reason I have developed this mentality to “Experience a thing to comment on anything that I encounter everyday in my life.”

One of things that I have been observing day in and day out with people is the critic approach they all try to take toward anything and everything; may it be lectures, professors, colleges, meetings, projects, companies, people etc.

A dialogue between me and one of my friends goes as follows:

Friend: Hey I am not going to attend that new sessions that college has arranged for us..

Me: Why not?

Friend: It will be the same old gyaan that they will give, and I don’t find much value in it..

Me: Have you sat for this session somewhere sometime before?

Friend: No, I have not sat but I just don’t want to attend it either.

Me: Why?

Friend: Chuck na..

From this dialogue I can make out that my friend with no solid logic feels (not thinks) it’s a waste of his/her 2 days of life attending something which he/she thinks is not going to help him/her get through placements but just another farce much like other initiatives which have failed or did not leave up to his/her expectations. The key thing I thought here was that my friend considered it was a waste of time whereas I consider it as an investment of time. (Folks lose their money in share market and call it investment went bad, they never say they wasted money so why is it different when it comes to time? Perhaps a question that we all need to ask ourselves). Secondly, if 99 initiatives fail, that does not mean 100^th one will also fail. The 100^th one might be that breakthrough event which you have been looking for all your life.

An example comes to my mind is:

A company in finance field came with a marketing profile for executive placements to our college, which many people thought would be same as offered by other companies that came on campus earlier and considered those profiles as not attractive. So, this time people did not bother to sit even for the Pre-Placement Talk (PPT) of this company where details of profiles are shared by the company with the candidates. It turned out to be a rocking profile having great things to offer to candidate who got through it. What happened here is exactly the same thing which I have been observing, forming opinions on the past failures but gone wrong in interpretation, which according to me is pessimistic view of life. Though failures help us learn from our mistakes but those lessons are from the mistakes done by us, something which is an internal factor. We just can’t form an opinion on external factors as they are out of our control. Our reactions to them are what we can control and something which we can opine about, so in this case if after attending PPT (External factor), people decide to move out or stay in (Internal Factor) is a fair call to take. So, not attending PPT (External factor) was the mistake people made and may be missed out on a decent opportunity. What I liked more about the candidate who got through is that he/she did not fall into the trap of a situation which I am talking about.

Leaving that aside, what happens in majority of the other cases is, people form opinions on the basis ofothers opinions. “I did not do a particular thing because my friend who did the same thing earlier did not like it, so I would also not like it.” This is the reason people give when I ask them about it. We all know that all humans are unique in the way we think, react, respond, judge, emote etc. Though opinions might come out to be same when you go through that particular thing, but how can we possibly form opinions without going through that experience? Often my friends ask me why you were silent when we were discussing that topic; I say “I can’t comment because I have not gone through that experience which gives me food for thought to comment on it.” My belief is that an experience of going through a particular thing gives you food for thought to comment on it, suggest improvements on it etc. (The main difference between a movie critic and normal public is, critic comments after he/she watches the movie while we normal public comment even before watching it and perhaps not even watching it ever).

The reason I think this mentality of commenting without experiencing is bad because tomorrow we all are going to work in an environment which is challenging, thought-provoking and would require our thought processes to have rationale behind each and every decision we make. If our opinions continue to be based on others or external factors of a situation, then there would be no innovation and no uniqueness which would set us apart from rest.

Currently, I am reading a book “The Execution” in which authors state that (Not a verbatim) “Having a strategy is not enough, it is successful when leaders suggesting strategy knows how that strategy will be executed because ultimately strategies are meant to be executed in real world. If strategy requires a company to have these many rupees, these many workers, these capabilities and if all these are not present, then how will the strategy be executed? The reason why we have Great companies and poor companies is the difference in execution-based thinking. In great companies, leaders suggesting strategy, know in details how a particular step would work in what conditions and what will be the competitive edge we will get by doing that step. Everything in details is fixed in leaders mind. The reason he/ she can do that is that he/she has gone through doing that himself/herself or observed on field how will that be done with the help of experts. So, while Strategy is important to have, executing-based thought process while designing that strategy is also important and this can happen only after strategist has an experience of how things get done.”

So what I am trying to say is that though the mentality of “commenting on something without experiencing it” has smaller implication now because it does not affect us that much, but after reading this book, I have strengthened my belief that it will definitely have larger than life impact when we go out there are in corporate. We are what we develop ourselves right from our birth. What we are today is because of our thoughts and actions in past. So, what will we be tomorrow is the result of what we think and do today.

The edge that we get by experiencing something and then commenting is that even if we are challenged on our opinions, our thoughts, our emotions, we can justify them through the thought process on the basis of which we have arrived at certain conclusions or formed opinions. Another analogy that comes to mind is the day to day presentations, projects and assignments that we present to professors. If we don’t experience it, our views will be challenged and most of the times, we are screwed by professors (or an expert in that field) or colleagues who are allowed to ask questions and raise an objection to the point we are making in the presentation. While those who have experienced a project, will always be happy to answer questions and handle objections positively (By Experiencing a project I mean Living with it and attaching yourself with it, speaking about it, singing it, dancing it, eating it, drinking it, sleeping with its thoughts in mind, feeling it). This is a differentiating factor.

Just as such experiences occur every day in a student’s life, it is just our attitude to observe and learn from it, which I think will take us to next level and prepare us for bigger and tougher challenges that come as we move ahead on our journey of success.

So, those who already are “Experiencing It before commenting”, kudos to you all and those who don’t have it; might agree or disagree with this, but to disagree, you will have to “Experience it” and those who agree, please start “Experiencing it”.

Take Care and Keep Smiling.