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.

Goals and Me

The other day I read in a book of Consumer Behaviour "Humans form a substitute Goal when they fail to achieve their primary goal and if they continously fail to achieve their desired primay goal then the substitute Goal takes the status of their primary goal and becomes a primary goal itself."

And if you ask me, I have experienced this behaviour since I was a child.

As a kid I was shy and wished to do what my friends did. But in order to do so I needed right set of perfect circumstances. Unfortunately or Fortunately, things did not happen the way I wished them to be. While my friends had an automatic compass box, I settled down with a normal one, while other friends went to hill stations with their families in vacations, I used to be at home getting bored, while my friends in school used to throw birthday party (parents organize it) at amusement parks or hotels every year, I used to celebrate my birthday once in 3-4 years by calling my friends at home. So, at every stage of Life, there had been a compromise on my primary goal, however small that goal may be. This led me to believe in the fact that I need to adjust and have expectations as per my potential & capacity.

As I grew up, I wished to become a Heart Surgeon and in pursuit of that dream I slogged, studied day in and day out but unfortunately when the moment came, I just had marks but no money due to circumstances around. Again a Goal was compromised and in hope of better tomorrow, I took up engineering as I had no other option in front of me then. This Goal compromise was a major setback in my life and it impacted my life at engineering too.

But then I realized that somethings thats gone cant be brought back and in regret of that I keep worrying on it, it will just make my life worst from worse. So, then deep within me an awakening took place which made me form a (Substitute) Goal; of being the best in what I do in Engineering. Knowing that what Goal Failure means, always helped me to get back my lost focus, lost concentration and lost energy in order to achieve the new goal that I set for myself. I never looked back since then on my academics. But again, Engineering ke bhi kuch apne hi funde hote hai, academics toh thik hai but to be unique from the crowd, U need to do something extra and that something extra was an opportunity with CSI and being a part of it. With the help of lovely friends, that happened too and gave my life a new meaning.

During the same time, a new Goal was born, I may call it a primary one in relation to my new life, to be an MBA from one of the IIMs. I did all that I could do to be there but I failed, took up a job to support a living and tried again, failed again. As pressures form environment increased, I succumbed to it and compromised on that primary Goal. This time the compromise was a less harsh as I had been a failure in 50% of it and that was no admit to IIMs, while I still managed to go to a B-School. Though I have no regrets for being in WE School, but an experience in IIMs would have been different altogether.

22nd September 2008, a new (Substitute) goal was born, to be recruited by A C Nielsen Bases. And again knowing what a failure means; my belief, my focus, my concentration and all my actions strengthened towards achieving that. And as life may have it in store, 14th October 2009, they came for campus recruitment, 28th October 2009 they interviewed me and 14th November 2009, I hear the news that I have achieved it. It was a dream come true experience.

Now, if I look at my life, I always failed to achieve my primary goals while the failures led me to achieve my substitute goals. And this has led me to think that what will happen to my next primary goal to become an Entrepreneur? Will it die like my other primary goals or will it be achieved? Will Life again decide what I should get or Will I be the one dictating terms this time?

I have these questions in mind but having gone through so much in last 20 years or so, I have realised one thing for sure that If I think it will happen, it will surely happen. So, today am erasing those questions from my mind by completely forgetting primary - substitute goal relationship in my life and focus all my efforts towards achieving my next primary goal of being an Entrepreneur.

It will now not depend on how life takes me, it will be other way round this time. I can & I will. Lets see !!!

Cool

I think thats cool...

Don't work, its all fun...

I read on a cover page of a book "I never did a day's work in my life, it was all fun" - Edison

Well, that quote definitely pushed me to think what it meant and this quote is so relevant today. I mean we all live in a fast paced life, work round the clock and still end up missing deadlines and miss our targets.

But while on the other hand we observe certain people who are right on time to complete all things on time and reach their targets. Why does that happen? The answer is in the quote.

We don't miss deadlines because we are not experts or skilled to do the work we are assigned, we all have the capabilities to do whatever is assigned to us (that is the reason its assigned to us), but what gets us into the trouble is our own lack of interest in that work. We tend to treat it as work and psychologically we start associating it to stress. For all of us, we have started taking that work means stress and meeting deadlines. But that is not the case, it means fun, learning and a sense of accomplishment that comes out of that work. And if we observe further, the people who win and actually meet deadlines are the ones that treat the work as it should be. I mean for them, the primary goal is fun, learning and a sense of accomplishment while the other materialistic result is a by-product by itself. Its like "Chase the excellence, success will follow" and for them Excellence is fun, learning and a sense of accomplishment.

We see many people who are at wrong places and at wrong times but then i can bet that if these people make this attitude change towards work, they will be the right people at the right time and in the right place. Struggle is a part and parcel of our life, take it as a step to success then to consider it as a hurdle.

So, as per me, what all of us should do is, to love the work we do. I know there are times where the work may not be as fun as the other things we do, but then the challenge lies in making that work also an exciting one as other things. As we all know "Winners don't do different things, they do things differently" and that makes them winners.

I have observed that this phenomenon works and believe me friends, when this works there is nothing stopping you to achieve what you want.

Friends, we all are at that phase of our where our entire life depends on what actions we take now and if we misunderstand or misinterpret it, we are royally screwed up. Remember one thing, don't think this decision of your life as just another thing that has come up with a deadline, treat it as the decision which you will take now to enjoy rest of your life. Treat it as the work that you will do now whose results will benefit you for all your life.

So, no need to work friends, its all fun....

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

The last book i read "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish" and believe me i was bowled over by the book not because of the way in which the stories are presented in the book but because of the stories themselves. Though all guys mentioned in the book had an IIM-A tag but then not everyone at IIMs becomes an entrepreneur. It definitely required all what it takes to be where they all are right now.

Initially, when i read few stories, i said to myself that these students from IIM-A have contacts, have relevant exposure as they get that kind of opportunities, so i did not think it is as a big deal for them to become an entrepreneur. But, i pondered over my conclusion and thought to read it all over again without any bias. And then was the time i realised that having contacts, having exposure is all fine, everyone at IIMs get it but the thing that these ppl set them apart from rest were all those intangible qualitites that human cultivates within as he grows, we may call it passion, dedication, determination etc, etc. I mean all these qualities will not be taught by anyone in the world, it has to be self-cultivated, self-driven.

So, this led me to think that if being passionate and being self-motivated is not driven by any institutional input, then even me a non-IIM-B-school student can have it. Even you who are reading this blog can have it. Anyone can have it. I do not say that the exposure and opportunities are not important, they are of help but they cant be determining factors for success. In fact with intangible qualities, an average person can get that relevant experience needed without being into IIMs. There are chances that an IIM Graduate can fail in life while a mediocre or an average B-School graduate can be a sucessful person in life.

So, i believe that all those intangibles required to make it to the top are within us and only we can search it and make use of it to the fullest. And when i look at the book cover again, i do not now relate it stories of 25 IIM-A grads but i relate it to them as stories of passionate individuals. Because that hunger did not come since they studied at IIM-A, that hunger was because of their passion for what they wanted to do and they transformed their wants into their needs through determination, dedication, sacrifice, hard-work etc. and thats what made them foolish.

So, i say to all budding entrepreneurs: We all will make it one day just keep that hunger alive within us, keep building up our plan ahead, work on it, implement it in right attitude and with right frame of mind and we shall also be one of those success stories.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish !!!