How to take charge of your growth?

To grow, one needs to be a perennial student.

In Indian scriptures, Guru (i.e. teacher) is venerated. One needs to abide by the following principles to be the perfect shishya (i.e. disciple)
1. Questioning - not with the intent of tripping / trapping the teacher, but to gain insight
2. Humility - One can never fill a full cup. One who is puffed with pride of knowledge hardly gains anything. One needs to be open minded and humble while seeking knowledge
3. Service - One needs to be prepared to serve the teacher without any sense of expectation or ego

This is relevant to present times as well. Consider every opportunity, misfortune, acquaintance as your teacher and imbibe. In an Organization setting, while working with a team in a project, consider every opportunity, lost opportunity, team member as your teacher.

• Questioning the objective, goals, plan etc. should be to gain insight on the project and contribute, rather than tripping other team members or the project. This would help you arrive at deep and thoughtful questions that can help the team and project.

• When in a discussion, do not demean others' point of view. You have a lot to gain both personally and professionally from various perspectives that people of different culture, gender and age bring.

• Be prepared to go beyond your day job to extend help and your skills for different aspects of the project, however laborious, boring , or challenging it might be.

With these qualities, it would be hard not to reckon you as a leader, even if by nature of your role you might not be one. When one thinks and acts like a leader, growth is a natural consequence.

I have used the above principles in many situations at work and otherwise and have benefited from it. Though the true intent in those cases has been to learn and be of value to the team, I ended up being the "go to" person and finally promoted to a leader over course of time.

There have been cases where I have not been successful too. On introspection, it seems to me that I have been more successful when my role did not have the "leader" tag attached to it than when it was. This brings me back to where I started. One needs to be a perennial student to grow. One needs to remain a student even when bestowed the role of a Leader, and that is when one can really take charge and get set for boundless growth.

Healthy Competition !

 Is there anything called “Healthy Competition”? If competition was healthy why do we have warring nations, corporate politics, and unethical behavior? Competition has been studied to be having negative effect on people depending on the personality type, type of feedback provided etc. A highly competitive environment has also been studied to be stressful, and leading to conflicting, non-cooperative behavior among team members. Then why do we foster competition within organizations? What is the single largest benefit of fostering competition? Is it to improve quality? But it has been studied that competition distracts people from the actual task, and instead concentrate on the aspect of winning at all cost! In such a case, how can competition improve quality?

 In the early days of my career, I too had got carried away with competition. With all the relative assessment and rigmarole, I got into this never ending cycle of comparison and competition. Over a period of time, I realized that I was spending more time and effort understanding what the one sitting next to me is up to, rather than understanding what customers want. It did not stop with just that ! Comparison and competition increased my worry, jealousy, hatred, mistrust, ...and I could go on with the never ending list of vices. It slowly devoured me and when I was on the verge of giving up my career, I took stock of the situation. That is when the wastefulness of competition stared at me. From then on, I have focused my energy on understanding my own strengths and value that I can bring to the team, and the rest have followed suit. Not that it launched my trail blazing career, but I am happy and at peace with myself. Is that not what everyone yearns for? What is success in life after all? Would I have had a better career by competing?

 Most distressing is that competition and comparison start early on in a child's life. Children are judged and compared by laurels, medals etc. People fail to recognize that each child has different strengths and we should encourage children to understand their strengths and play it. When I look back at people whom I have known since childhood, laurels, medals, scores do not really matter in the long run. It does give the initial advantage. But what holds on till the end, is the character and strengths one has. Should we then encourage relative assessments in school?

 Not for a moment am I advocating mediocrity. People believe lack of competition leads to mediocrity. I will lean on spirituality to summarize. Our Indian scriptures say, do not covet others' property, what is one's is one's own. Coveting others' property only adds on to misery and detriment of our own cause. Think what good you can do unto others (in modern management terms, what value do you bring to the world at large) , and rest is taken care.

 Even for those incorrigible competitive ones, what I would ask is, which is better? Going after a larger cause of improving humanity or going after the one sitting next to you? I know there are questions in your minds on , but who gets the hike? who gets admitted into the best university? More on that later.

But for now everyone's thoughts, comments, questions, bouquet and brickbats are welcome :)

How to manage your fear?

 Fear is because of the unknown. How can it be overcome? There are many theories and tips. Modern belief is to list all possible outcomes and reason out ways to handle each outcome. And then there is the spirituality angle to it. How can spirituality help overcome fear?

I have from my experience, seen that prayer helps me overcome fear. Fear is all in the mind, and hence it has to be overcome by appeasing the mind. It also aligns with some of the modern thinking on the powers of the sub-conscious mind. It is said that auto-suggestion can help tap hidden powers of the mind. It is also believed that if the sub-conscious mind strongly believes in something, the whole universe will come together to bring it to fruition. And hence, if we fear something untoward will happen, we are only mooting the universe to bring in the mishap. Instead, if we believe in the strengths of our mind and the impact that it can have on the powers of the universe, and think positively, the universe will bring prosperity to our feet. This is not to undermine the efforts needed to bring prosperity. Due diligence is ofcourse needed. But one must not worry beyond performing duties. If one has performed duties adhering to principles of life (honesty, empathy etc.), one cannot but prosper.
It is important to conform to principles, since there is also the notion that it is not just the energy emanating from us, but also those of others, that affect the outcome of one's efforts. Hence, if during the course of discharging ones duties, if one has invited negative energy from others, it will be detrimental.
In a nutshell, discharge your duties with due diligence, conforming to principles, and believe in the force of the energy of your mind and the universe. One need not live in fear or doubt prosperity.

Any experiences anyone?