How our belief system affects people's skills?

 How our belief system affects people's skills?

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

As we discuss the topic of "People Skill at the workplace," let us discuss some insights on improving people's skill management techniques.
 
Before getting into the techniques, let us understand the cause and effect of our beliefs on people skills.

The ultimate purpose of people skills is to get things done and maintain a high quality of relationships.
 
Lesson 1: How our belief systems or assumptions affects the people skill?
 
The belief system is nothing but what we believe as truth or simply our assumptions. This belief or assumption plays a significant role in getting things done and maintaining relationships with others.

For example,

As a manager or the business head, you are supposed to send the quotation for an inquiry, and you are delegating the task to your junior colleague by stating that the task is URGENT.
 
Even after two days, you are not getting the tasks done by your colleague, and you call him/ her and get into an argument, and finally, somehow task is completed.

Here only your belief or assumptions and your junior colleagues’ beliefs or assumptions work against both.

When you refer URGENT, say, for example, you assume that TODAY is urgent, whereas your junior colleagues believe that TOMORROW is urgent. Why is there a difference in assumption? Because both are coming from different experiences and backgrounds and inturn the assumptions or beliefs are also different. Both look at things from their angle based on their BELIEF SYSTEM.
 
Naturally, when there is a difference in assumptions or beliefs, there is a high chance of not getting things done on time, or there may be a strain in the relationship.
 
When you understand this lesson, you may change your communication by stating when you want the quote, say by stating today evening at 4 pm.
 
The point is that we need to ensure the following when we assign the task to others.

• Clarify whether our assumptions and others' assumptions are the same or not?
• What questions do we need to ask others to ensure they are in the same assumptions as ours?
• What information do we need to give to avoid the conflict of assumptions or beliefs?

When we know the difference exists in ASSUMPTIONS OR BELIEFS in each individual, we can change our communication practices! That will help to improve our people skills.

Let us discuss other lessons next week.

Stay safe till then!

Winning Mindset to deal with challenges

 Winning Mindset to deal with challenges 

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)
 

As we conclude the topic “Achievement Orientation,” the last aspect is how an individual or effective leader deals with the challenges during the execution of any task.

 
Despite the planning process, clarity on values, purpose, being in conducive envelopment, self-commitment, and clarity on the roadmap, the reality is that the execution journey may not be rosy. The execution may not go as per plan.

Sometimes, we ended up with a different result than what we planned at the beginning of the journey. Dealing with reality needs a mindset that looks at everything as a winning opportunity in the journey. We can develop the mindset with awareness and practice.

Some of my observations from the effective leaders on dealing with the challenges
 
Embracing the challenges with excitement:

Effective leaders embrace the challenges when they initiate. I know one of the managing directors of an organization always starts with “I am excited to initiate some actions."Whenever he begins a difficult task, he began with that vocabulary. He demonstrated his energy and enthusiasm towards facing difficult task challenges, and he succeeded in most of the tasks. The key is how you look at the challenges at the beginning of the journey. That will give you the power to navigate.

Being adaptable during navigation

Effective people are good at being adaptive to the challenges or changes during the journey. Adaptability is the ability to accept the changes at the given moment and accordingly change the plan considering the task's holistic view. This emotional aspect is essential as, in reality, the plan may not go as expected. The person who has adaptability is happier than the person being rigid.
 
Learn from the experience

Another mindset the effective people demonstrate is that they take the outcome, whether favorable or unfavorable, as a learning experience. They always look at challenges in an optimistic way as "what I have learned from this experience." When you look at every outcome as a learning experience, you will not get much disappointment.

Taking a step back and self-introspect

Some people take a step back and reflect the things that went wrong from the planning. This mindset is the most effective way to deal with challenges and avoids mistakes in the future. The strong person can only admit the mistakes, and self-introspection makes the individual further emotionally stronger.
 
Our mindset in dealing with reality is essential than the celebration of the successful outcome as life is an experience than an event. The mindset to deal with each experience matters on emotional wellness!
 

Sense of achievement

 Sense of achievement  

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

Recently, in one of the management review forums, one manager narrated his daily work experience and asked the following question, which I felt is relevant for the topic "achievement orientation."
 
The question is, “I am working hard throughout the day in the office, doing many activities and being busy throughout the day, still at the end of the day, i do not get the satisfaction that I did achieve something.”Why don't i get the sense of fulfillment?
 
I am sure most of us relate ourselves as we might have experienced sometimes.
 
What could be the reason for not feeling the sense of achievement?
 
My view is that lack of FOCUS on the priorities …. In an organizational setup, each role is expected to meet some of the priorities. Else, at the end of the day or eventually, at some period, we will feel, or others will perceive us that we are not achieving as expected.
 
Let me give an example,
 
If you are a functional finance head, your core priority or expectation from others is managing the fund flow in the organization seamlessly and looking at the opportunities for cash generation. Only when you have the clarity on the same and focus your energy, effort, time in achieving the core priorities, then only you feel the sense of achievement.

Alternatively, suppose you concentrate more on other non-core activities or working on others' priorities and being busy always, at the end of the day, despite your hard work, you feel a sense of non-achievement only. Here the issue is a lack of clarity on the priorities/expectation and lack of focus on the priorities.
 
The point is for any professional, depending on the position or role, we need to have
 

• Clarity on what we want or what is expected out of us
• Ability to focus on the priority
• Working on the priority and get the desired result.
• Feeling the sense of achievement.

 
Clarity and Focus on priority are much essential for getting a sense of achievement.

Just relate to your life experience and let me know your views!

Have a great week ahead.
 

Why do we fail sometimes to achieve?

 Why do we fail sometimes to achieve?

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

Have you come across a situation where despite knowing the clarity on our values, purpose, being in a conducive environment, committed self, we still do not achieve what we intend in any new venture or assignment or delay the pace of achievement.

What is preventing us from achieving as per plan, or why is there slowness in progress?
 
It is due to the intensity of self-efficacy or, alternatively, lack of conviction.
 
Self-efficacy is the person’s belief that he/ she can complete the task. It refers to the individual conviction that he/ she can accomplish the task or mission. We know that to achieve something, we need to change some of the behaviors, but we have internal doubt that we can change our behavior. Given that self-doubt, we choose not to change the behavior. In that stage, we lose the conviction.
 
For example,

we are aware of the importance of physical fitness and knowhow of maintaining healthy practices. However, still, most of us never achieved the target of fitness, whatever we set ourselves. We have self-doubt about our ability to accomplish, say we need to get the early morning to do exercise. When we have doubt, we lose conviction.

The point is that the failure is not because of awareness, know-how, but at an individual level, lack of conviction.

In many organizations, the business heads set the business goals during the financial year beginning but ended up with a flat result or delaying the progress. It is mainly due to a lack of conviction of the result or lack of self-doubt in accomplishing it. Rarely external factors play a role in the achievement.

However, in some organizations, the business head sets the target and achieves the same. How they bring the conviction themselves on the result and process, and how do they convince the team to succeed?

Mainly two factors that determine the conviction. One is emotional, and another one is rational thinking.

Let us discuss more bringing the conviction through balancing emotional and rational aspects in next week!

Committing Self for Achievement

 Committing Self for Achievement 

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

As we have discussed the factors affecting an individual towards achievement orientation like clarifying personal values, knowing the purpose, being in a conducive environment, the next important factor is “ Committing self for achievement."

 
What is "committing self"?
 
Committing self is taking responsibility for the action and the consequence. In a business context, most of the time, the term responsibility is perceived as the external enforcement of commitment to some person. But at a personal or an individual level, responsibility is a feeling of owning some task or profession or, on a higher level, life itself. 

The only difference between achievers and non-achiever is “ commitment “ or “ taking responsibility.”

When you observe any achievement, apart from skill, knowledge, luck, environment, there would be one fundamental invisible ingredient, that is  "personal commitment of an individual or group of people". 
 
When you take responsibility for any task, you will get the following benefits.

• Intention to achievement will be relatively more.
• Person display solutions orientation in any challenges
• Despite failure or any setback, the person looks for the learning from the failure.
• Always look at the setback or failure from a 360 perspective rather than blaming or fixing someone.
• Always look for doing better in the given context as much as possible.
• When we take personal responsibility, it puts us on a highly energetic emotional level during the journey.
   

Quite contrary to the above behavior, if the person is not committed or not taking personal responsibility, he/ she displays the following behaviors.

• Less interest in actions and finding reasons or excuses for procrastination
• Look for the problems at any moment.
• Any failure or setback put the individual down.
• Momentarily blame someone or try to fix the external reason for failure or setbacks

when there is a commitment, eventually you win despite all challenges ...In the absence of commitment, nothing sustains.

One of the questions most of the Business heads / Managers look for answers is whether the commitment is inborn or built within the person. How to inculcate the feeling of responsibility in people's minds in an organizational setup?

Solicit your views/experiences on the above questions...
 

Identify your Strength

 Identify your Strength 

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

As we discussed some of the methods to lead a purposeful life, one of the methodologies is to know your current strength.
 
The strength could be your soft skills like communication, interpersonal talent, or management skills like problem-solving, looking at issues comprehensively, connecting the dots, or your domain knowledge and application skills like designing, marketing, engineering, etc.

The more we are aware of our strength, the better we can leverage it to lead a purposeful life. But most of us are concerning too much about the weakness and trying to fix it forever than being aware of our inherent strengths and leverage them for maximum benefits.

How can you find your strength?
 
1.First and robust process is through self-analysis, which is a lifelong exercise.
2.You can ask for feedback from others about your strength
3. Listen to what others appreciate you frequently, which you might have perceived as natural strength by you, and you might have taken it for granted.
4. Another approach is that you get an objective assessment of your strength by taking an online/ web-based assessment as conducted by Gallup. You can buy the strength finder book in which you have an access code to do the test. That will give a fair idea about your professional strength, which you can use as a base to start. (I have done this 15 year back, which gave me a reasonable level of  awareness) .

Given below the book front-page image.


 
To sum up,
you suppose to know your passion and strength to lead a purposeful life. When you are driven by purposeful activities, your emotional level, and achievement orientation would be on a higher level irrespective of any challenges during the journey.
 
Having discussed the purpose-driven by self, let us discuss how leaders can inculcate purpose to the organization's team next week.
 

How to identify your life purpose?

 How to identify your life purpose?

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

Having discussed the importance of knowing the purpose for being in a high energy state and achievement orientation, let us learn to identify the purpose by ourselves.
 
Through self-introspection, one can find his TRUE NORTH, and some people are fortunate enough to be aware of the purpose at a young age. Accordingly, they design their professions and life.

For others, it may take time to get clarity on the life purpose, and those need to explore it continuously if they want to make meaning out of life. That is a continuous evolution process.

Based on my experience, i have listed below some of the methods to find a purpose. 

1. Identify what you love most to do
2. Leverage your strength
3. Experimenting and exploring

Identify what you love most to do:
 
Not all people have the privilege of choosing a path that they like. Practically, we take what is given. Even in that living environment, we naturally love to do some of the activities most of the time.We will not feel losing energy even when we are doing those activities for a longer duration. That is called passionate tasks.

We need to find those passionate activities and design the significant part of life around it.

When we are doing passionate activities, our energy level would be towards achievement orientation than procrastination or excuses. 

For example,

If you find yourself enjoying more when solving technical issues through your observation, analytical, creative skills, that may be likely your passion. Ensure that most of your profession or in general life activities around that passion of solving technical challenges.

If you find yourself enjoying more when helping others solve their leadership-related problems, then teaching may be your passion and ensure the most of your life activities around teaching on life skills.

You can relate to some of the celebrities who found their passion (sports, music, journalism, entertainment) early and made a career out of it. 

The key point is when you find your real passion and design your life around the passion, you will find meaning in what you are doing. That will make you work towards achievement orientation.One of the methods is finding what you love most to do 

let us discuss other methodologies next week!

How to identify your core values?

 How to identify your core values?

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

Having discussed the importance of knowing our values and their influence on our behavior, actions, and decision-making speed, let us understand the step-by-step process of identifying our core values.

The identification process is iterative, and anyone can do it by themselves through analysis. It may be challenging for some people to identify by themselves, and for those, i recommend seeking help from the coaches.

Values are nothing but some of the principles we stand for or the importance or priority we give in life for most of the time. Those values will drive our behaviors, decisions, and actions on a personal and professional front.

Whether we realize it or not, each one of us has inherent values within us that are driving us every moment. We might have acquired from our parents, childhood experience, or even with current experiences. The more we are sure about our core values, it will help us make the right decisions during challenging times and emotionally healthy.
 
How to identify the values?:
 

1. Go through the list of values and identify the favorable values with which you are associating yourself frequently or the unfavorable values which you do not like to be associated with. Given below some of the lists of values, you may get more than 200 values when searching on the web. My suggestion would be not to get into the searching for a list, and you do the self-analysis, identify and label on your own as it would reflect you correctly without bias.

Favorable Values:

Growth /Love / Challenge / adventure / Pride in achievement / making difference / individuality / creativity / passion / honesty / integrity/stability / freedom / achievement / contribution / gratefulness/ courage/ expressive / fun / harmony/ power / peace/happiness/secured/ intimacy /sense of control/intelligence/ success/ sharing /giving / family/ career / money/ compassion/Loyalty/connections/commitments/Health / Nature/ relationship/ risk taking
 
Unfavorable Values:

Anger/ Guilty / Being control/ rejection / failure/ insecurity/ jealous/ sadness/ humiliation/ victimized/worry/ instability/ mediocre

2. First, choose the top 10 values you are associating with either favorable or unfavorable values, and further analyze and bring to the top 3. It would be challenging to prioritize the top 3 values. In that way only, you are clear about your values.

As said, this is an iterative process. The more you spend yourself, the more clarity on your preferences.

The awareness of your preferences, principles, or what you stand for gives more clarity to deal with life challenges. Internally, it will help you have a balanced emotional level. Also, it allows you to design your professions inline with your values.

Why is value alignment required?

 Why is value alignment required?

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

In continuation of last week's discussion, the quality of work depends on the emotions we are driven to work, either pleasure or pain. In simple terms, when we like the task, the quality of work will also be better.

Similarly, from a larger life perspective, when we align what we like to do and what we do, the quality of life will be relatively good. Here, what we want or prefer, or what is important to us, is called VALUE.

When there is VALUE CONFLICT between what you like to do and what you do most of the time, it will affect personal and professional performance. It leads to suboptimal performance compared to the potential.
 
For example,

you give more importance to CREATIVITY as your value, and your work environment is not conducive for demonstrating creativity. It will create value conflict inside of you that leads to low-level emotional experience.

You may prioritize making more money in life (who does not give priority?), that is one value of you, and at the same time, you would like to give importance to being in comfort without much effort, that is also one value of you. If you have both values internally, you will be undergoing guilt as basically, both values do not align or match together.

Knowing your dominant preference in life and resolving the conflict preference of values are essential for personal and professional achievement.
 
Let us learn the structured process of identifying the core values next week.

Why should you know your VALUES?

 Why should you know your VALUES?  

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 As we discussed the VALUES as a prime step towards achievement orientation, let us understand the need to realize the value by self.

We are driven by mostly two emotions, viz happiness (pleasure) and sadness (pain). Either we want to maximize the pleasure in any activities/circumstances or minimize the pain as much as possible. The outcome of the task depends on the emotional mix of pleasure and pain.

For example,

When your boss/ colleague asks you to prepare a presentation content, you may have two choices in executing the task. If you like preparing the presentation content, you want to maximize the pleasure of the preparation process. Hence you will be striving to give your best.

If you do not like the presentation preparation task and at the same time, you do not want to lose your boss/colleague's confidence or relationship, which you perceive as painful. To avoid the pain, somehow, you complete the preparation with a half-hearted effort.

In both choices, your presentation quality is based on the emotions you are undergoing in the task, maximizing the pleasure or minimizing the pain.

Now you can relate any task or circumstances in your professional context, you will realize you are driven by those two basic emotions only.

The key point is when you are driven by the emotion of pleasure, your quality of work is excellent, and when the emotion of pain guides you, your quality of work may be substandard.

The emotion comes from your like / dislike, which i term as your PREFERENCE or INTEREST or VALUES.


 

 
Life is a series of events or circumstances, and if we ensure most of them are inline with maximizing pleasure, our effectiveness would be high.
 
We need to learn how to identify our likes/dislikes or Interests or preferences or VALUE and align life inline with VALUES.

Let us learn the process of identifying the values and their significance in the coming weeks'.

Holistic Approach for Achievement Orientation

 Holistic Approach for Achievement Orientation 

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

As we are discussing Achievement Orientation both at self and through others, the process is a continuous and lifelong experience.

Why is a holistic approach required?

Instead of being content with any short-term benefits with an external motivation to get things done, if we understand the HOLISTIC approach of achievement orientation, that will help us be highly motivated to achieve something or make others achieve.

Also, In today’s world, there are ample opportunities and equally distractors. Staying in line with your purpose and orienting yourself towards achievement is a challenge. If we are not aligned with our purpose on a sustainable basis, any setbacks or any new distractions would derail us from achievement or tapping out potential.

For example, you might have come across some people who are changing jobs frequently, even switching careers, but not feeling fulfilled with the achievement. The reason could be the lack of clarity on the purpose and values. The earlier one gets the clarity, the more fortunate to make an impact in their chosen areas. 

Hence, we need to understand the holistic process of achievement orientation.

I had developed a holistic framework based on my experience when i embarked on a significant life transformation. I  believe more perspectives on the following framework will help you stay on course on achievement orientation.

Let us discuss the following queries
 

• What is the priority in my life? What do I like most? How to identify my values?
• How to identify the purpose of my life from a long-term perspective?
• How to design my life in line with the purpose
• How to develop the inner desire and how to stimulate the appetite of others in a professional environment?
• Why the environment matter and the process of creating a conducive environment to achieve at self and an organizational level?
• Need for self-commitment and developing ownership for self and at others?
• Developing the roadmap to achieve and focus on the result and the challenges
• How to be in a winning mindset when things go wrong or during the challenging time

Let us discuss in the coming weeks, and stay safe until then!

What drives people to achieve?

 What drives people to achieve?

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

As we discussed in the “Achievement Orientation  Introduction," the key challenge for every professional is motivating or keeping others in the same state?
 
You might have observed some people are always on a high energy level or highly self-motivated despite all the challenges like age, health factors. What does motivate them to be in that state?.. They are driven by their thoughts to achieve something in their profession or life.

Different schools of thought believe that people are motivated by external factors like money, a high positional status that comes from the title, and exposure. Some studies found that those external factors help to some extent to keep the person in a motivated state; eventually, the energy level is getting reduced. The pace may depend on the individual at what stage he/ she is in the lifecycle.

In one of the interviews, the interviewer asked Ratan Tata, " What drives you to do more even at this age as well? He said, " exactly i do not know, but it could be the fire inside." His rich experience reveals the truth.

Hence, what drives people is the inner desire to achieve something. That inner desire manifests externally in a different way.


How can you identify those people who are driven by inner desire?

1. They are passionate about what they are doing.
2. Eager to learn more in their passionate area
3. Most of the time restless and unhappy with the current state or status quo
4. Displaying a high level of energy in their passionate work despite any challenges

When an individual develops the inner desire or fire to achieve something, he/ she uplift self and make a positive impact on the team or in the working environment.
 
The question would be how to inculcate the inner desire? Whether it is inborn or can we develop?

In my experience, anyone can develop the achievement orientation within and with others and a structured process and practice.
 
Next week, let us discuss the holistic framework of achievement orientation, starting from creating the inner desire to achievement and dealing with the achievement challenges during the journey.

Achievement Orientation

 Achievement Orientation

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

One of the emotional intelligence competencies for aspiring managers or leaders should develop “Achievement orientation.”

What is Achievement orientation?

Achievement orientation is a combination of mindset and practices to accomplish the task or moving towards achievement. It ranges from small task completion to achieving something meaningful in life as a broad context.

You might have observed some people are continuously progressing in the life journey, and some people are stagnant at some point in time. In my opinion, regardless of the field of work, environment, and external  challenges, the clear  differentiation between a highly growth-oriented person and a mediocre person is “Orientation intensity towards achievement.”

You might have experienced some of the scenarios in the professional environment.

1. Some people can get things done amidst all the challenges.
2. When you assign some tasks to someone, he/she will finish it, and your intervention or follow-ups would be relatively less.
3. Some people would complete the task due to follow-up/reminders, or the quality of work may not be up to the expectation.
4. Even at your level, you may be finding joy to do some task and, in some task, you do not find yourself enjoying. You will be wondering how to keep your motivation high all the time.

One of the challenges for  most professionals is "How to be in highly motivated level at an individual level and keep others to accomplish more?"

In this new topic on “Achievement Orientation,” let us discuss the challenges and perspectives on 

1. What motivates us to progress continuously?
2. How to be highly motivated internally?
3. How to bring the ownership feeling on others in a professional environment
4. Steps in achievement orientation and insights 

Let us discuss in the coming weeks and solicit your views.

Power of Progress or Small wins

 Power of Progress or Small wins 

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

For the last 20 weeks, we have discussed the importance of channelizing the low-level emotion into a higher level and the different methods of channelizing the low-level emotions like anger, fear, frustration, sadness, and envy into productive emotions.

In all the methodologies, the common underlying factor is our awareness of the emotion and taking action to subsidize it.
 
One more effective way of being in high-level emotion at the workplace is to make small progress or small win in our core work area on a consistent basis.

Why small progress or small win is important?

Irrespective of any setbacks, everyone craves fulfillment or happiness at the end of the day. That is the emotional aspect everyone is looking forward to. One way of getting into that state is to make meaningful small progress in the work.

Generally, we can not achieve great success or milestones on all days, but we can make small steps toward milestones. In the absence of a small step or meaningful progress, we feel low.

For example, achieving a higher sales target may be the destination and that will happen only once, whereas the initiative or progress towards reaching the destination can happen every day. When you make a progress or small win every day in that direction, that improves your inner emotions.

One of the studies done by researchers indicates that when people make a little incremental progress in a meaningful way, that boosts the people's inner emotional positively. The researchers came out with the book “The progress principle”.
 
How can we achieve small progress?
 
To achieve little progress or small wins, you do not need any special occasions or reasons. You just need to be conscious about bringing incremental, progress through your effort.
 
For example, on a typical day and in your routine work, if you stimulate your team’s thought process, initiate new ideas or take a step for solving chronic issues, you may think that you have made some progress towards milestone success. That thinking will elevate your emotions. In routine work, you are making a small difference in your effort consciously.
 
The key point is the small progress or small win through your effort will offset any low-level emotions and keep you on elevated emotional level. Progress is progress, the quantum does not matter. The momentum makes you engaged and relieve you from low level emotions.
 
Just you need to be aware of making small progress or small win every day that makes you be in higher level of emotions.

Overcoming Envy (Contd..)

 Overcoming Envy

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

As we mentioned, some of the simple and powerful approaches to overcome envy last week. We discussed developing an abundance mindset by counting your blessings as one of the approaches. Let us discuss other approaches.
 
 

• Counting your blessings
• Setting your standard and compare
• Learn the nature of creation
• Appreciating the goodness frequently

Setting your standards and compare:
 
Envy as emotion disturbs us mainly due to comparing ourselves with others' success and scarcity mindset. To counter that state, we always need to set standards for us in terms of engagement. That could be learning new skills, taking new initiatives, or meeting new people. When we commit ourselves to many activities, our focus shifts to a new horizon rather than dwelling too much by comparing ourselves with others.

I know one of my managers cum mentors used to keep him always engaged with some activities even though his boss did not insist. He never indulged in comparing himself with any of his colleagues or even in any gossip or low-level activities. I learn from him to set a standard self and chasing the standard rather than giving yourself low-level emotions.

Also, when you have some priorities and comparing yourself against your standard, that boosts your self-worth.
 
Learn from nature:

As mentioned many times, the law of nature suggests that nothing is permanent in this world, and everything will go changes as cyclic. If you compare yourself with others, and feel about the shortcoming of the skills or the success of others, wait for your turn. When your intention is right and keeps raising your standard, you eventually get what you deserve.
 
Appreciating the goodness frequently:

When you observe any great people and their interviews, one typical pattern is the demonstration of appreciation. Recently I met a successful entrepreneur who ventured into many businesses and turned into a successful. During the discussion, someone mentioned their competitor in the conversation. The moment he heard about a particular competitor, he elaborated on their positives in some markets and appreciated them. Not even once, he said any negatives about the competitor. That is the mindset of highly successful people when they compare themselves with others.

Generally, we can appreciate others only when we operate at a higher emotional point. To counter envy emotions, we need to be conscious of our high-level emotions.
 
To sum up, envy is a most dangerous emotion than any other low-level emotion. We need to be conscious about that and choose any combination of approaches to be in a high emotional state for our own sake of well-being!

Overcoming Envy

 Overcoming Envy

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)
 

Having discussed the causes of envy and its effect on our workplace productivity, let us discuss the approaches to deal with jealousy as an emotion.

As mentioned, there is a thin line difference when we look at others for comparison or inspiration and get envy. The consciousness is always required not to get into the envy trap. I am sharing below some of the approaches as i experienced.
 

• Counting your blessings
• Setting your standard and comparing yourself.
• Learn the nature of creation
• Appreciating the goodness frequently

Counting your blessings always:
 

Envy comes in when we have a thinking that others have something which we do not have. It is an outcome of a scarcity mindset. To counter that thinking, we need to count our blessings and the positive things we have in our lives.

For example, you may observe a colleague who has extraordinary social skills, which you may lack. Eventually, you will compare yourself and feel envy about it. To counter that, you think of your blessing, say you may be having extraordinarily analytical and problem-solving skills which others may be lacking. That is a blessing or gift you got. Think about what you have, and feel grateful for that. When we count your blessings, we become less envious of others.

Just think and recognize what you got in this life in terms of skills, personal qualities, people you surround with, exposure, and opportunities you got. Most of the time, we take things for granted, and in reality, most of the privileges we got in life are not readily available to others.

The more you think of your blessings and make it part of your personality; eventually, the less you affect by other's possession or success.

Just list down your blessings and make it a habit.

When we have not associated ourselves with the blessings, any comparison of us with others results in envy as it emerges from scarcity.

Let us discuss other approaches next week.
 

Why do we envy others?

 Why do we envy others?

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

One more emotion or feeling that disrupts our well-being and productiveness in the workplace is envy.

Envy is a feeling of discontent or unhappiness about other's success, advantages, or possessions.

We develop envy when we see others have something we wish to have. It could be personal qualities, skills, success, positional status, materialistic advantages, and opportunities.

for example, 

We become sad, angry, or resentful, 
when someone is getting appreciation or being noticed in the workplace
when someone is having some skills or other qualities than us
 
How is envy getting developed?
 
 One of the habits that most of us have is to compare ourselves with others. Initially, it starts with inspiration or general reference; eventually, it becomes envy. The process of comparison goes like this. We start comparing with others on skill sets, competency, possession, etc., start amazing, and then eventually looking at self, finding the gap, start feeling as inferior, becoming self-pity and weak. When we repeat the comparison habit with many people, we eventually conclude that “I do not have much positive qualities or possession, and  I am not deserving of greatness.”The self-pity becomes envy.
 
 The strange thing in the comparison process is that we compare and envy only our known circle or at the same level. For example, a rich/poor person compares him/ herself against another rich/ poor person and envy it. Most of the time, we may compare ourselves with our colleagues or friends’ level only, not on a higher level, says boss or beyond our network.
 
How does envy affect us?

Unlike other emotions, envy is something more inward and harmful than other emotions.

1) Internally, we lose our self-esteem as we always feel a scarcity/shortage of something when we keep on comparing with others. Lack of self-esteem will invite all the troubles, as we have discussed in many articles.

2) Externally, we express our emotions into rude behavior, criticizing other’s success with our own opinions

3) We lose our identity and focus of our priorities
 
Even though getting envy is a universal emotion of all human beings, which may vary with the hierarchy, we need to control with a clear borderline of inspiration and envy.

Let us discuss the approaches next week!