Bamboo In The Wind

Trust is a fundamental fabric that keeps us grounded in near reality. When there is an element of trust in us, we are self-aware, confident, measured, and rational. The opposite of trust is insecurity. We are self-unaware, underconfident, impulsive, and irrational. Trust has immense power to attract calm, understanding interaction from one end. Sending trust has a high probability that the other side with receive interaction without threat. The chance of touching someone's insecurities is lesser when someone initiates conversations by embedding trust. Trusting is a personality trait. It's inherent to who we are and how we view ourselves. Life experiences, our way of looking at our surroundings, and the way we apply ourselves to situations all go to develop a surplus in our trust account. We draw from trust accounts when we are challenged and need help. Others are likely to come to your rescue when you have a trust surplus because of how you acted in various situations in the pa...

Often we expect others to join the cause we are keen to pursue and have embarked on it.  We then look for help from someone who subscribes to our idea of journey and help us accomplish what we want to do and go where we want to go.  This kind of help is cooperative, compliant with our plan, and offers a sincere contribution. There is another kind of help available. A more useful one but the one that we hope will not disrupt the journey we are on. This kind of help is often confrontational, thought-provoking, and has the potential to add a contrarian view to the journey we are on. It makes us organize our plans better, offers a neutral perspective, and sincerely helps us find blind spots on our journey. Which kind of help are you on the lookout for?

In emerging economies, speed-breakers have a unique purpose. They have an important purpose. They work flawlessly to slow down the speeding vehicles and protect the pedestrian traffic or avoid a traffic jam at an awkward intersection on the road.  Speedy vehicles have a specific pattern. Speeding drivers tend to be in a rush, engrossed, agitated; in a state of anger or despair, and want to get over the emotion by driving quicker putting everyone else including themselves at risk. Speedy actions by an individual, on the other hand, have a no different fate. Impulsive decisions often are speedy thoughts followed by speedy decisions to do something. Such decisions are based on inadequate information and pose a risk of unfavorable outcomes.  We perhaps need to adopt speed breakers - in our ways to make decisions. Slowing down not to process our first thoughts would be an important part of such mental speed-breakers. Our thinking models need to utilize our thought generation engine...

Have you ever noticed that sometimes life takes a turn and we don’t even notice it? Oddly, somewhere down the line, we feel the changing winds and start noticing.  That awareness that we are noticing the change is the beginning of life's turning event. Events happen but we need to internally feel what they mean.  We get college admissions and move out for the first time, secure the first job, begin to pursue artistic interests and acquire new hobbies that we haven’t been able to pursue. It’s not until we see that the internal state of mind begins to resonate with the external state of change that we start valuing the events and changes that are taking place. We notice something is amiss first, then search for what has changed, spot the change that in the first place we began noticing, reason out whether change is good or bad, come to a state of equilibrium and internal convergence takes place. At this point in time, we start accepting the change as useful, beneficial hence goo...

Togetherness is magic! It generates happiness, shared experiences, differing perspectives, a sense of belonging, and collective wisdom. Togetherness often leads to the environment of being at our creative best. The reason for this is the fulfillment, encouragement, and collaborative advancement we experience by being together. This is why families often focus on get-togethers and family functions. They enhance our perspective about ways of living, conducting our life with rigor, and discharging our duties. These various facets bond us together.  Family get-togethers are a reflection of mindful culture building that yields introverts a safe place to express and extroverts have supportive audiences.  Make us create developmental experiences to learn from and share with others. Similarly, at work, the concept of teams is important. It's a reflection of togetherness that yields us productive advancement of our aspects of work, decision making, personal development, organizational ...

Fear. The singlemost biggest reason we don't want to commit is the fear of not delivering what we promised. Fear of falling short. In whose eyes though? Our own eyes. So fear falling short in our own eyes is a subtle reflection of hurting image we carry about ourselves; that of our behaviour, abilities and actions. When subconticously held image of ourselves does not match reality of our behaviour, does not demonstrate abilities or actions in real life , we suddenly spring a surprise on ourselves about the mismatch. The instantlt invoked reaction of surprise is a reflection of ego which tries to justify our behaviour, abilities and actions. We fall into denial knowingly. We absolve ourselves of any responsibility of such outcome. We hold someone else responsible for our view of the reality. What this means is that being committal has a cost of hurting our ego and going through denial and making someone else the reason for it. When we know that such mismatch is likely to be a routin...

Change is welcome. Beginnings bring their own charm and pleasantness. Importantly a new beginning is a chance for a fresh start. A chance to put all that is wrong behind and bring all that we want to be doing in front. It's a chance to take new steps and be in a strong position to succeed in future.  What did not work earlier, we have a chance to make it better. New beginnings fill us with brightness, freshness, enthusiasm. It also connects us to new people, experiences, habits and new future. New beginnings give us hope. Reboot and see for yourselves.

  Two means of organizing anything in life or work - Cathedral or centrally managed and Bazaar or chaotic yet inclusive. For the longest time in the history of mankind, the command and control method has been used to organize society. Societal structures were built around local habits, habitats, professions, support, and faith-based systems. Group behavior is only possible to bring about with someone looking in charge. Take, for example, the household. The concept of head-of-the-household stems from this command and control method, where one person is expected to be the final authority. Kings and Residents of kingdoms, Heads of states and Citizens, Spiritual gurus and Followers, Sports captains and players, Teachers and Students, Politicians and party members, we have numerous ways to organize how we live and work. Still, it is primarily driven by someone defined to be a command to control the behavior of a small/large group of people. This is reflected well in the Cathedral styl...

Is leadership synonymous with power? Is showing who is in charge and getting things "done" a way to say you are a leader? You might think so. More often, leadership is about enabling others by triggering a proactive internal concurrence to a cause and getting them to be on their feet to march in a beneficial, rightful direction and has desired positive outcome. Leadership is a way to get the best out of yourself, foster healthy teamwork, and, ultimately, feel harmony due to how you act. Leadership, thus, is never an explicit act. It's inherent to who we are, our upbringing, and our beliefs and fears. When leadership is at play, it shows what and who we care about and what decisions we make that will make to do things better. Leadership is reflected in one's habits and actions. It triggers enthusiasm, instills confidence in the environment, is reassuring, and gets one to move forward and act. Leadership is internal to one's core behavior and has tremendous benefits...

How often a group is seen to be behaving inexplicably efficiently and steadfastly towards a cause? They say good behaviour is contagious. Indeed, that is often the case. Take for example the joggers club, the running club, the bikers group, meditation group, the reading club, hikers club, volunteer to teach. What is common across this group is they lead to a an action. When we feel like doing something, what we need is an environment that provides impetus for action. So does a Group or a community based participation provide that we individually do not have? Communities provide opportunity to see and be seen. It has secure place to give and get; share and seek help, listen and offer help; create and learn. All in a manner where we have no fear that someone will judge you for your failures. Secure places give us the self-reassurance and more importantly an opportunity to to take risks and go do what we intended to do and get ourselves out of inaction. Action produce new interactions and...