Bamboo In The Wind

Sometimes we must change the way we do things. Routine can be during and monotonous. At work, conduct group meetings on a hilltop, take teams on a  hike, conduct focused 1-1s while taking strolls in a park, take time off from sessions and meet team members to know what's on their minds. And how about taking your parents for a drive in the mountains, taking your family on a refreshing cruise, or camping in the woods and discovering yourself? Change is an intrinsic desire. One that reconstitutes internal order by altering the frame of mind. Change is the aftermath of taking action. Positive change is a result of taking action that works for us.

Self-discovery at work is usually unheard of. That is because work presents a square peg in a round hole. What we enjoy doing rarely matches the work we are assigned. And that is fair from the organization's point of view. The workplace needs helping hands to pursue its own enjoyable journey. Usually, the story of the starting member resonates with a few others, and work takes off. But as more and more people join hands, it tends to be half-hearted participation. People choose organizations for economic reasons, progress reasons, or social reasons. But it is rarely the case that the growing organization gets people based on the core philosophy. No matter how much we talk about the culture and proliferating it organization-wide, that depends on how well they connect at various organizational layers. And when that alignment is at stake, people focus on compliance rather than fulfillment of what they like. It's a complex and delicate balance that every organization struggles with....

In industrial org structures, growth has been permission driven. It tended to be a function of how your bosses saw you and judged your potential. Of course, selfless superiors could hop over their insecurities, spot you, and give you a real chance. And getting an opportunity to present your work was an achievement in itself. If you ran into superiors who were entangled in their own insecurities... then well, good luck...! You can be sure that they will shred your work into pieces, look for signs in you that please them. Your opportunities depended on how they saw you given their own insecurities. You rarely had the skill to understand the psyche of your superiors lest know they had any misgivings. But they always did. And you. You were stumped by their decision to use you or not. Thankfully in the new age economy, that is not true anymore. You are attractive to everyone if you are interested. Interested and experienced in something you can catch others' attention on. If you have do...

Giving your best requires, among other things, being at your best. But the more interesting question is whether "being" comes first or "giving"? It is a tricky question that requires inspecting what each term means to us. On the one hand, the state of  Being represents acting in concert with concurrence with the self. With minimal resistance and maximal acceptance of who we are and what we are about to involve ourselves in.  We are perfectly ok with what we might do and how we do it and agree with the ramifications of how we might come across. Thus it represents an inside-and-out approach to everything we do. On the other hand, Giving is a state of acting proactively and deliberately. Working with awareness, care and attention needed; creating circumstances that allow positioning ourselves, minimizing blind spots, and increasing the odds of favorable outcomes.  It's thus outside and in approach to doing things. You may not always have the desired experience, bu...

There are little things that we turn into nagging issues. In hindsight, they look so trivial, yet we treat them as anything but trivial.  We make a big hue and cry. We begin to find the world around us is unfair to us. Most dissatisfaction stems from unreasonable thought-process. The resistance to making an effort to understand is at the root of it.  The question then is how do we know what we face... First, get out of the hideout! Shed the fear of storms.  It is just a storm in a teacup!

We think we have an idea of how to get work done. While it may be enough in some cases, in most other cases, it requires spelling out more. Instinctual decisions are significant for situations that warrant spontaneity, where a sense of urgency is paramount. We need more than one option to get work done for most other things. We need to identify places we might need to rethink if things don't go as planned. A plan is a mind map of what we need to do when things go right and how we need to respond if they don't. There is rarely room for surprise when we have mindmap in our back pockets. All we are doing is navigating the situation with a reasonable response. And that is usually enough to get past almost anything!

Unless we are open about our inhibitions, we are unlikely to make an effort to overcome them. We may not know the right way to do it despite knowing our inhibitions and even with the best intentions to get rid of them. Perhaps the best approach to adopt is to learn from the environment. What we discover is rarely new. Someone from a different walk of life has most likely encountered it. Accept their experience with an open arm. It might save you from turning the wheel all over again. It takes humility to respect what others already know, learn from it, and adopt it. 

Beware of disengagement! If we come down hard with a strong point of view, there is a chance that someone may decide to quietly walk away. Not because they don't like our viewpoint. But because they feel that they are not heard. Such forceful is our approach that others might feel constrained and contained when expressing themselves. Disengagements show signs of reluctance, disinterest,  disagreements, and silence. More importantly, such signs stem from the perceived lack of room for expression.  Why should that happen when we think we are well-intentioned? The quality of our intention is our perception. It becomes real through our words. Words make their way to others and convey a specific tone and meaning. That is the recipient's prerogative, not ours. How we are being heard determines how our intention is seen. If meaning expresses warmth and open participation, then whole-hearted reciprocation is imperative. However, if our approach turns out close-ended and unidirectional...

Declaring your intention to yourself proves to be a vital one. Intention comes out of mulling over what is on your mind. But those are just superfluous thoughts. Writing down what is in your mind helps you see your desires. However random it may seem, writing down refines thoughts. If something is unclear ask yourself a question. Write down the question and then write your answer. Do this iteratively until you get a solution that identifies a particular action. Usually such actions are the steps you can start with for fulfilling your actual intentions. This is the first dimension of the clarity of your thoughts. Because the actions are based on your clarifying intention, why you are thinking about them, and how they serve you or others. The other way to achieve the same effect is by opening up your thoughts with those you trust and get them to provide feedback.  Ask them how they see your line of thinking. Ask also how they would deal with it if they faced similar thoughts. Then as...

How often do we think we must get it right the first time? What if we don't? We put ourselves down. There is an unsaid rule that we must declare failure if we don't get it right. All systems around us are built with this industrial mindset. Built around finding faults in what we produce and then declaring it inadequate. Such systems affect how we measure our efforts. We tend to be hard and abandon our actions when we don't get desired outcomes. What if we rejected such systems that make us think of excellence in a narrow, instantaneous manner? After all, is there anything wrong with not getting it right on the first go? What if, instead, we allowed ourselves the grace to try again? This time, doing it differently, in a slightly different setting, with a change in the composition, by deploying new viewpoints?  Allowing us the grace to be iterative in our approach is not such a bad thing. In this world of instant gratification and a mad rush to succeed, it is easy to think th...