How Changing Environment leads to Emotional Resilience?

The cardinal rule of getting out of a difficult situation is to change your environment. Every now and then I hear people going through the same complaints, but fail to recognize the factors behind them. 

Yes you are stuck and yes you need to get out of situation and Yes, life hasn't been fair and Yes, things would have been a lot better if things change. 

It is often said,You are not a tree so move. 

The idea is make situations work for you, rather than getting entangled in the circumstances and feeling a sense of suffocation. The steps to do so are following- 

- Take a stock of your emotions. If you are feeling down, angry, frustrated, inadequate, inshort, a volley of negative emotion then its time to take a trip inside. 

- Find your triggers- This may be more than just physical space, but physical environment do mean a lot. Take that into cognisance. A picture, a thing, a piece of furniture, your neighbourhood, on one hand be the connect to your memories, on the other may also serve as a strong set off to unwarranted emotions. Identify and distance yourself. 

- Understand Your Attachments- One might be forced to think that getting rid of that photo frame is as easy as it gets, but No. It is all you have of that special someone, that someone who had always meant so much to you, and letting go of that memory would mean betraying them, or just unfair. If it is not coming from guilt sometimes attachments come from anger, desperation or hope. Once we understand where the genesis is we are in  much better situation to take care of the situation. 

- Start small- We recently visited a market that had most of the shutters shut. Pandemic had taken its toll and we could see the impact. It was not a happy sight and triggered lot of unpleasant thoughts, fear, anxiety, despair, etc. However we knew we couldn't afford to stay with those thoughts no matter how bleak the situation looks, so we decided to distant ourselves, not just from thoughts but from places which gave us these feelings. Our attempt to heal. 

-  Take a leap of Faith- Trusting yourself in this journey is very important and not easy. Distancing yourselves takes courage and faith. To let go requires a strong sense of faith that we will survive.

Our environment can make and break us. It facilitates us to become stronger, better and powerful. As much as our environment has the ability to change us, we have the ability to change our environment as well. 

Use it Positively.  

Learning Diary of a Woman!

What is better way to express the awe of being a woman than to write the experience of being one. Today I want to tell a truth. I think I did not like being a girl. Truth be told, I am not sure I still do. 

I don't feel like woman, except for the fact that yes, I am one and to prove the same I have two children but above and beyond, there is nothing is my demeanour that would quality 'lady like' or so I have been told. 

I am super passionate about the stuff I do and as a result I have been 'told' that I am emotional. My face expressed everything and as a result I never got away with emotional outbursts. 

I am bad in the looks departments, not because of how I look per se, but because, I don't care enough. Is this to say that had I been a  guy I would have gotten away with it. I can hope so, not sure though. 

Decision Making- I am supposed to take decisions but never ever ever be adamant about it and I have to take everyone's 'feelings' into cognizance. My sister who is single keeps asking me, how do you do it? My answer to her is we all do irrespective of gender. However with women the thought process is different, they think about others first and then try and work for a win win solution. With men, with it is a problem and solution approach. Win- win requires too much work

Is this a personality issue or a gender issue. Partly both because quiet a lot was expected in keeping with gender expectation. To say that opposite gender do not have their set of problems would be an understatement, but I suppose grass is always greener on the other side. Back to the writing. Today as I wish every one a Happy Woman's day, I ask myself, why especially since I am super complaining. 

Pandemic did a lot of things for us, for me, and one of things was it gave me perspective. I connected with a strong group of women, who made me feel appreciated and helped me believe in me in the most surprising way possible. That was just the beginning. To empower woman as a catalyst and to get into self empowerment are two different things. 

When women work together they form force which is impenetrable giving each other the much required support and love that they keep longing for. 

Today as a woman, I feel stronger not because a sudden epiphany, but because I have learnt that being woman is a strength that makes me stronger and knowing that I am not alone. I have  with me my sisters who will raise me, encourarage me, and won't leave me down. 

I also know that when one woman is unable to support she will send me ten different hands to pick me up but rest assured, women will not leave me alone. We will come up and grow together.  

Understanding Learning Challeges

The entrepreneurial journey is very lonely. After a point of time, the initial fire starts to die down and all you are left with some smoke. The days when you also start to really challenge yourself to judge and question yourself. This is also around the same time when others have started seeing some work which you are doing, so there is a definite sense of recognition there.     

When I started working on my working with Youth challenges one of the core challenges faced by youth today is isolation/loneliness. It wasn't until recently that I realized what it means. Here is how the realization came about. 

I had joined Leadership Program. The one-month program had all the participants on their toes. We were connected, drawing from each other. We felt motivated, inspired, there was a strong competitive spirit which also helped us focus more, encouraged us to better. The program ended sometime in February. .It is March today. Even though we struggled during the program, our biggest challenge was post it was to keep ourselves motivated. But in this journey I realized a couple of thing about why my son was having difficulty in studying-

• Being Self Motivated is Challenging
• There are more periods of lows in a journeys of learning than high 
• The constant pressure doesn't really help- from Parents, peers, friends, competitions.
• Getting distracted is natural and putting ourselves back on track is difficult.

 

Children, students, PHD scholars, are all facing the same dilemma. Not knowing, fear of missing out or being left behind, often leads to fear, anxiety and lack of self worth. It is natural at this time that students depend heavily on social media for connections and sometimes expect the same kind of connect that  they had been expecting from a personal connect only to be disappointed. 

Developing relationships at young change is already a challenge and to make it virtual, makes it risky and challenging at the same time. Some points to navigate this challenge smoothly is

1. Communication- Keep channels of communication open with children and young adults. Let them speak, even if you don't like what they are talking about. (easier said than done)
2. Let Go- Once in a while, it is okay to just let go of the sense of control we need to have in our children's life. We need to let go. 
3. Offer Support- No battle is won alone. Offer support or let them know that there is support available outside also if they are not comfortable coming to you, obviously you will need to be  okay with it. Incase you yourself are at loss, ask for support for yourself. No one can do it by themselves. 

We do have vaccines for COVID but for preventing ourselves against the emotional and psychological impact of the pandemic we will need to be more prepared emotionally and psychologically. Take a step back, take a deep breath and focus on what you can do today- your effort. The rest will take care of itself. All the best. 

Credibility- A tough ask?

While discussing the changing face of learning, I happen to stumble upon an interesting concept by Aristotle. This was a rhetorical triangle of persuasion. It talked about Ethos or credibility, Pathos or emotions and Logos meaning logic. The idea was to establish the credibility of the speaker to deliver a logical and rational message which appeals to the emotions of the receiver. I however went a step ahead and added Techos to contextualize the medium as well, in wake of the latest developments.

In this blog, though my focus will be on Ethos or the credibility factor. What makes someone credible. Credibility means the quality that someone has that makes it easier for someone to trust them. However, we often attach credibility to peripherals first and internals later. 

My obvious question was, what makes a person credible? The answers I got were based 

- Expertise- Expertise is a factor of education or experience. In fact, if you go by Malcolm Gladwell theory of 10000 hours rule, if we practice anything for 10000 hours we become an expert. Education institutions especially the few premier institutions rely on packaging the 10000 hours into 4 or 5 years to make a person adept in that subject. Thus seeking the credibility of the expertise. 

- Trustworthiness- Trustworthiness is a principle. A principle that a person develops again as a matter of practice or as a matter of education How one may ask? The process is simple. The principle and definition of trustworthiness may differ from person to person. Institutions or organizations help break it into structural expectation which makes it easy for people to understand and follow. 

However, there is another aspect of credibility. That aspect deals with understanding one's own expectation from themselves and then building credibility in that direction. It may require one to understand one's life purpose, what changes one want to bring and going in that direction. The medium could be any but direction is based on the changes one wants to see. 

The last aspect takes time but is a very powerful tool for convincing and building enough space for acceptance and appreciation. 

The Power of Emotional Camaraderie- My personal journey

If You want to go fast you go alone,

If You want to go far, go Together.

I love this quote especially because I have often seen myself as a lone warrior, not because I thought I wanted to go fast, but more because I believed my speed is too less and considered myself dead weight most of the time. 

Then in a recent training program I learnt I am not my belief, I have beliefs. Now this along with the number of times this quotes just appeared in front of me, made me revisit my belief structure. I wasn't walking alone because I wanted to run faster than others. I  was walking alone because I was sure I will be left behind, so much for my self-confidence. 

With this shift in thought process, a lot of things changed-

1. - I started to see patterns in my behaviour when I was shutting people out.
2. - I became more open to inputs and feedbacks.
3. - Emotionally, I was not as closed and defensive and not on edge all the time, anticipating, trying to read between lines. I let myself go. 

As I let people in, I slowly began to smile. I smile and I shined and when something held me back, I recognised it was my own frustration or inhibition in dealing with the situation. Then as part of the program, it was recommended that I read, The Art of Learning by Joshua Waitzkin. 

The book left me with some amazing lessons on learning but the most important lesson was to identify our 'soft zone'. Identifying my soft zone was important to achieving a calm state of mind. 

Another learning was the presence of a constant source of inspirations within and outside the author's circle who not only helped him learn but kept raising the bar. That is what a champion, support system or camaraderie does. They support you and keep raising the bar for you to catch up and grow together. 

Find your tribe.. and you will be surprised how bright you shine!

Emotional Vocabulary

 Life is made of a series of emotional moments. Moments which make us stronger and weaker in a matter of a few seconds. Emotions have this beautiful capability of taking away our ability to think in just a few seconds. 

Emotions cloud judgment, we have often heard this phrase. But can we really understand what this means? Let us today analyse the impact of words on emotions and thereby judgment. 

Look at this phrase

Big Hairy Audacious Goal - The term was coined by Jim Collins to facilitate an urgent, creative splurge, to focus on the big picture and drives us to full potential. Even though his book came out in 1994, I only heard the term some 27 years later as part of a training program and I kept reading it as bhag (as in the Hindi word for run ) instead of BHAG it is originally supposed to be. Just so you know the impact can be dramatically different. 

On one hand where BHAG is supposed to get you all motivated and geared for action; bhag had the opposite impact on me. 

I studied Neuro Linguistic Programing some 10 years back and realized how spoken words can make or break a deal based on how we connect with them. The interesting aspect to this also is that we do not have any realization as to how this can work for us. So here is a tip

- Talk Constructively- Positivity/negativity is an oversell and I cannot emphasise enough on the role of constructurve feedback and even dialogue, which include areas of learnings and most importantly value gain. 

- Clarity- Every conversation has an objective. Sounds rather  selfish but one needs to have clear expectations from every conversation to maximise time and value and decrease pain of misplaced expectation. 

- Be in Tune- We love expressing, however if your receiver is not in a mode to receive it then your time and effort both are ineffective. 

Be very intune with yourself, and most of the time the rest falls in place. 

Facilitating Excellence- Introduction!

 Goodmorning Friends, It is high time I introduce Facilitating Excellence to you. Facilitating Excellence is an organization aimed at bridging the gap between what is and what can be and now we are embarking upon a new journey. 

We wish to work with young champions and help them prepare for a path that facilitates their journey

How we plan to do that is?

We plan to tell a larger world they are supported and also help them find inner support mechanisms. 

Why are we doing this?

We have all lived a battle of our own and want the upcoming generation to benefit from what we did wrong. The idea is to let them make their own mistakes and not the one's we did.

What are we doing?

Training, Live sessions with Industry Stalwarts and Coaching session, Support groups. 

Who is doing it?

Facilitating Excellence was founded by me- 4 years back but wasn't able to continue the work then. Now we are re-launching ourselves. 

We have on board Senior Consultants and Advisors who play vital role in working with the organization and a research team which helps to build need based program. . 

Where are we doing the session?

We take both online and offline session, based on the need. Our ongoing sessions will be featured on soon to be launched website. Meanwhile right now we are present on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter.

We are bringing to you our second online session on Self Awareness on February  2, 2021 at 5:00 PM. For registration https://forms.gle/bW4Gura5FjPiZJJG7.