Tag: life

Chapter 2. REACTIVE Vs REFLECTIVE

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Good Morning from India. It is a bright pleasant morning here and people are moving to work. I wish all my readers a Happy day and hope everyone finds enough happiness to keep smiling.

Yesterday we were talking about understanding ME and MY STRENGTHS. Introspection will help us understand our personality better. We had also discussed how introspection will help us understand our strengths and help us with a better approach while responding to various stimuli received from the environment.

Today we shall discuss another important point which helps us build our personality. If we think deeply we would find that most of us are by default set into what can be called as the reactive mode. Let me explain what I mean…Whenever someone proposes something which is not in our comfort zone the default reaction is to say “NO”…”IT CANNOT BE DONE”…”IT IS IMPOSSIBLE”…”I GUARANTEE YOU THAT IT CANNOT BE DONE”…etc. We do not take a pause and promptly respond with a negative. Could you think of a reason why so?? It is because of the inertia of moving from a known environment to an unknown environment. We feel that the unknown may bring loads of problems to us and would cause additional burden. Hence the negative reaction. This is what I mean by REACTIVE mode.

Now for a change let us switch over from a REACTIVE to a REFLECTIVE mode. By reflective mode I mean accepting the suggestion from others and taking a pause to ponder upon the thought presented by the others. Maybe the pause will make us respect the thought given by the others and give us different perspective. Instead of a blatant “NO” now we are thinking that maybe there are valid reasons to the proposition. May be it could work? Maybe it is the need of the hour and we must change too?  Do you think bringing about a small change in our attitude could help us improve our relationship with others. Saying a blunt “NO” often hurts others. Whereas changing the approach would bring in more positivity and thought provocation.

Bringing about just a small change in our attitude from a reactive mode to a reflective mode would help us radically in improving not just our relationships with others but also help us understand the subject better. Most of the problems we face in this world are due to communication issues. We communicate something based on our understanding of the issue and our circumstances while the one who receives the communication does so based upon his understanding of the issue and his circumstances. He then reacts basis his understanding and circumstances and we receive it again basis our understanding and circumstances. In this entire 2-way journey communication changes itself 4 times and gives rise to a totally wrong interpretation of what we wanted to communicate in the first place. 80% of our problems arise due to problems in communication as mentioned above.

Let us try and bring about a small change in the way we speak and the way we hear. One of my bosses in my earlier working years used to give me a very beautiful example. He used to say God has given us One Mouth and Two Ears and not the other way round. Hence we should use them in the same proportion…meaning talk less and listen more. In my subsequent blogs, I shall be taking up the issues of listening vs hearing and a lot of other communication issues. But for now let us remember the golden words of my boss…’use them in proportion’.

Empathizing with others is probably the only way to sort out such communication issues as once we move from a reactive to reflective mode we are listening and willing to try and understand the other person.

Just think if we can get rid of 80% of our problems won’t life be much happier and easier? Wont we be filled with positive energy and look forward to communicating with others better. So I feel it is time that we stop saying the impromptu “NO” and switch over to taking the golden pause. Whether it is our work life where our boss gives us an instruction and we promptly say “NO” or it be our personal life where our super boss at Home…The WIFE gives us an instruction and we say “NO”, making about just a slight change from “NO” to “Maybe” can solve a majority of our problems. So Let’s just make a start…

I leave you all to ponder upon these thoughts with a funny photo of how communication of convenience changes the entire meaning of what is communicated.

Hope you all have enjoyed reading this article. Do write in your thoughts. Thank you for your time and do share it with others if you liked it. HAVE A POSITIVE WEEKEND AND KEEP SMILING ALWAYS…

Chapter 1. Do We REALLY Understand Ourselves??

~ anujbaroniagmailcom ~ 7 Comments

After my brief introduction, I begin this discussion, with some hard hitting thoughts. The question that I have often pondered is, whether we really understand ourselves? A question, the answer to which, I personally believe that every soul in this planet is searching for.

How do we undertake this journey to try and understand ourself is the most important point where most people come to a dead end and abandon the effort. These are the people who end up being one amongst the crowd not knowing why they exist. To begin with, lets ponder a bit about ourselves and think for the reasons what make us different from others? The whole world is full of billions of human beings. So let us first try and identify our unique differentiating trait which will be the starting point of this journey. Some may feel that we do not have any such trait but let me simplify it a bit further. I wish to make a statement that NO TWO HUMAN BEINGS ARE SAME. We may have similar looks (as in identical twins), similar builds, similar personalities but still we will find that no two persons react to the same situation in a similar manner. What is it that differentiates these reactions? Isn’t it the first testimonial that people are different?

Having said so let us now introspect and try to identify the few traits that we feel will make us different from others. They could be anything from physical appearance, physical parameters, intelligence, emotions etc. To make it a little bit simpler let us tabulate all our traits under different heads like Appearance, Parameters, Intelligence, Emotions and any other group head that you may think of. Example Under Heading Appearance, traits could be good looking, handsome, beautiful, petite, ordinary looks, pleasing etc. Similarly under Visual Parameters we could have traits like tall, short, fat, thin, muscular, beautiful eyes, curvy figure etc. etc. Like wise if we can make a table of various human traits we could identify our unique traits by combining a few of them. For example I could be a tall man with above average intelligence and a very soft heart which cannot hurt others. Having done so we could also see the number of permutations and combinations that could be had by combining all elements of our table which brings me back to the initial point that no two people are same.

Now that we have started making an attempt to understanding ourselves a bit. Having said so we are in the process of understanding ourself. And the first step in that direction is taken. Now we have some brief thought about what is our differentiating trait. One must never mistake the fact that what we perceive as our strength or most preferred trait may be seen as a negative trait by some one else. But that discussion is for now being parked, as we shall initially limit our discussion to self and not move to interpersonal relationships which is a much bigger gamut to discuss and I shall do so in course of time.

Now let us look back to our discussion. Why did I ask us to try and identify our traits. Some may say we have grown with it from our childhood and hence we know it. Here it is important to understand that despite we knowing everything about ourself there are some personality traits which get dominant basis certain circumstantial inputs. Lets take my personal example. My dominant trait is to care for people and not hurt anyone. Till a few years back if someone started criticizing my approach or accused me of wrong doing. the feeling of empathy would get diminished and was replaced by offensive arrogance which was obviously a defence mechanism for me. Now having complete knowledge of this behaviour, I have tried to control those negative emotions and be more balanced in my approach towards criticism or praise. This happens to be the primary reason as to why we should try and understand not just the self which is dominant in me under normal circumstances but also the self which dominates under adverse or favourable circumstances.

The short gist of this discussion is an attempt to sensitize the readers to the importance of trying and understanding the self as the first step to attaining peace of mind. In my subsequent blogs I shall dig deeper into the finer aspects of behavioural improvements that can be created in our personality if we take time and understand how we behave to the inputs from our environment. But for now let us take the first step to understand “Me and My Strengths”.

Do keep writing in your comments or arguments for further discussions if any. I can also be connected directly on anujbaronia@gmail.com.

So long then…Thank you for spending time on my blog. Be Positive and Keep Smiling…

Introduction to Understanding Self

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My name is Anuj Baronia. I am from a city called Pune which is in India. I started writing this first ever blog of mine and thought that let me take some time to just talk about who am I and why I feel I should be blogging.

It was my daughter who got this idea of blogging into my head. She said I had a nice way to communicate things using the writing or speaking mode and to have a bigger outreach I should try blogging. So here I am…with my first ever blog.

The story of my life has been a journey full of ups and downs and so is everybody’s I guess, but few come up with the thought to write about it and put it in the public domain. Most people prefer to hush hush everything about themselves because of the fear of being ridiculed or criticized…lets say, fear of the unknown. It is my opinion that the more we talk about it, people connect our issues with their own issues and in the ongoing discussions give their perspective to our issues based upon their understanding and circumstances. This not only gives us a wider scope of viewing things differently but also helps us to improve our own perspective too.

I am an engineer…a civil engineer…and that too a very good one…I am also holding a MBA-Marketing degree in post graduation…and currently also trying to pursue my PHD in the field of training. I am also a corporate trainer in behavioural techniques and do personal coaching to troubled individuals in helping them achieve work life balance. Ironically with all the degrees that I have amassed I have very rarely got an opportunity to work in those fields where I have specialized except now when I have got into coaching and training which is a very satisfying experience of my life.

I have started my blogging journey with the profound thought of exploring my self and writing and sharing my experiences to help people improve their journey of life and understand their life better. I hope this journey turns out to be as exciting as I feel now at the beginning. As I move on in this journey I will keep adding my posts giving them sequential numbering for various topics so that they would be easy for my readers to connect. My next post would be numbered 1. followed by the topic and so on. Hope it gives an ease of reading to everyone.

To end this short blog, I would like to give my thought for the day: “Life is to be lived every moment at a time and to me made fruitful. Let us all be positive despite all the happenings and events which try to pull us down. Keep smiling always”