Interpretation of experience matters

“Deep Experience is never peaceful.” --Henry James

       Our maturity and growth evolves to the extend to new experience. Even then, experience alone does not make much impact of growth. The way we  interpret  the experience makes a big difference.The experience  can be  good or bad feeling, but how we internalize the feeling with a right spirit  matters a lot.Otherwise the experience may be passing through as just an event in life.  

       For example, two friends are watching the same movie together, but both  may have different feelings about the movie, because  they interpret the experience in a different way.

       One more example from the history is that millions of people  had experienced  humiliation by the British rulers as same as Mahatma Gandhi. But he interpreted the experience in a different way that   made him to lead Ahimsa movement against  the British. The interpretation makes a difference.

        Similarly, in your professional or business environment, you may go through tough times or may get different feedback about your performance from your peers. It makes a positive impact on you only when you take the experience, interpret in a positive intention. That makes a beginning for the new person in you!!!

Past # Future

“Past does not equal to future.” –Anthony Robbins

      Everyone may experience  setbacks in life either in business or in professional endeavor or in financial aspects. But how quickly we learn from the setbacks and change the strategy is all about real growth.By nature of the design, no one  will be going through continuous success  or continuous failure throughout the life.

      Most of us have a tendency to get into  the hopelessness emotion  during setbacks  and  too much celebration or noisy  during success.  Remember the phrase “Past does not equal to future “ in both good and bad times.

If your past is painful:

Remember past does not equal to the future. Learn from the failures or pain, change the strategy  and approach the life with the new way. The new approach will give different results..

If your past is so successful :

Remember past does not equal to the future. Do not be too complacent about the past. Feel good about the past, be grateful and accelerate  the strategy for being more successful or sustain the success.

Since the law of nature is “ Change “ and it cannot be avoided, Hence, whatever happens, enjoy the experience, welcome the future with confidence and hope as past does not equal to the future!

Self-efficacy

“In order to succeed, people need a sense of self efficacy to struggle together with resilience to meet the inevitable obstacles of life.” —Albert Bandura

      Self-efficacy can be defined as one’s belief in his ability to succeed in specific situations. The success or failure in whatever situation is generally depends on individual‘s belief in his ability to face the situation. For example, if you are venturing into new business or new initiatives in your professional environment, more than environmental factors which alters the result, your belief about your capability gives you all strength to manage any challenges during execution.

      People with high self-efficacy are more willing to take action, especially on new activities. They stay longer in the face of challenging times. Now the question is whether this quality is inborn or can be developed by anyone. The answer is a high level of self-efficacy can be developed by anyone with little effort.

      One of the ways to develop self-efficacy is through observation. It is demonstrated through study about a person with phobia and the person’ self-efficacy about managing the phobia is improved when he observed fellow phobic struggled with and overcome their phobia.

       Similarly, if you observe your role model for any of his excellent qualities, you can also gain the belief about your capability. It is a simple proposition that “if it is possible by others, it is possible by me “. Who could be your role model to observe and learn? 

Gain strength from new experience

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.”-Eleanor Roosevelt

         Studies show that 85 % of the population struggle with confidence issue. Since the fear had passed into the  subconscious brain, it is hard to gain confidence only  through  outside  resources like  self help scripts. It can be improved through “ within”  development of  the individual.

          When you experiment  new actions in small day to day activities  and  continuously expanding  your horizons, the experience gained from such action will  improve the confidence.

For example,

If you have a habit of waking up at 6 am, practice waking up one hour early consistently which will improve your will power

If you use to walk for 5 km at a stretch, extend it to 8 km at a stretch as this will improve your strength

If you use to drive only in a city environment, go for long drive which you have not done so far as this will enhance  your courage

If you use to spend hours together on the net, cut into half and resist the temptation  as this improve your willpower

The intent of stating above examples is  to reinforce the thought that new experience will widen your perspective about yourself and this will enhance  your courage, will power or confidence level.Since the experience are fully experienced by you as  “within”, this will sustain your confidence level than anything comes from external..

Experiment and share your experience!!!

Counting your blessings

“When you focus on being blessed, God makes sure that you are always blessed in abundance.”—Joel Osteen

       Most of us are looking at life in terms of “what yet is not received or achieved." For example,  we use to hear the conversation from someone that “I would be happy if I get so and so asset or I would be happy if I get so and so status or I would be happy if i get so and so problems solved” and so on. Expecting something bigger or aspiring for great things is not sin and that is required for internal motivation. Still, for being happy, always keeping conditions with IF and BUT  leads us to miss the view of the present moment and the greatest blessings we have received in life.

       Instead of cribbing with future uncertainties, count the number of good things you have got in  life  like people surrounded with you, the educational and exposure privilege  you got and so on.

       When you count  our blessings, rationally you realize that no of blessings will be more than the problems you have. Also Internalizing the blessings  will give more mental strength to address whatever problems

        Hence count your blessings, be grateful, be happy for having those blessings, you can counter any problems and achieve more in life. 

Preserving Relationship

“To err is human; to forgive,divine.”--Alexander Pope

     Generally, we get hurt by close relationships with family  members  or with people in a professional environment. When we get hurt,our tendency would be  thinking too much about the incident  or the person cause it. Unconsciously, we start  recalling all unfavorable moments happened earlier  with the person and forming  negative emotions about the  person. When this repeats frequently, as they are closely associated with our life, gap is also widening over a period.

   When the gap is widening, even the other person does favor for us, we tend to look at with skepticism .In this process, the quality of relationship is strained .The one way of approaching this mindset is to value the relationship by recalling one best moment  or favor we experienced  with that person. Instead of rewinding one bad moment for many times and affecting the relationship, rewind the positive moments for many times and cherish  the relationship.

     So many people come across our life, only a few relationships happened with purpose, which we may not know the reason . Only in human beings, some relationships are  continuing  for a long time  and let us preserve it with patience and compassion!!

Decision Making

“When people are afraid, they make emotional decisions”.—John Mellencamp

           Even though , we learn structured methodologies, tools and techniques for arriving logical decision, still  decision making is being one of the difficult aspects of life management. There are two situations when we face a decision making dilemma. One is during crisis (urgent) moment and  another one for making (important ) personal life decisions like  a child's education, switching the profession, changing the job, relocation or even the investment decisions.

        Generally, our minds go as per the emotional urge during the moment of decision-making point. Even though emotions drive our behavior, most of the time, any decisions taken only based on emotional reason may not be the right solution. It is preferable to answer for both emotional and rational needs before taking an important life decision.

         For example, if you desire to  change your profession, look into the emotional need such as passion, pride, ego fulfilling, happiness, etc. as well as rationally evaluate  your Knowledge, Skill set, gap needs to be filled and  alternative plans, etc. This balanced evaluation of both emotional and rational need may give you the right  mindset  to take a decision which makes you peace and happiness.

        Be aware of your decision making pattern of all important life decisions, balance with emotional and rational approach  and you attract good things in life!

Stepback

“Take a step back, evaluate what is important and enjoy life.”—Teri Garr

          Most of us have the tendency of “being in busy"always. It can be in professional or business environment either chasing the success after success or managing the challenges with the same approach. In this process, over a period of time, either we become addicted to same methodology without evaluating its effectiveness or become so rigid in thinking process  leads to ignoring  other aspects of relationship, quality of execution, next level growth  etc.

           The study shows that one of the qualities  the successful people  possess is  “being reflective".Frequently , they use to take time for themselves and evaluate what is going on around their life, what is important, what needs to be changed  etc.. This will give them clarity on the behavior to be dropped or adopted, the strategy to be modified or tuned etc for improving the quality of life.

            It is beneficial for health, relationship, and efficiency perspective, take some time for yourself, and evaluate the proceedings. This will give you more clarity on what is right and good for you and your surroundings. 

What do you focus?

“There is no use talking about the problem unless you talk about the solutions”-Betty Williams

         When things are not happening as we expected  or  any problem happens  in professional or business or in a family environment, the most obvious tendency of us    is  “fixing who is responsible?”. For  any  problems, finding the cause is a good thing, but the moment we focus our searching the cause on “People” factor, it likely turns out as blaming, complaining ,justification, arguments and eventually into  personal vengeance .

          Instead, if we shift our focus of searching the cause  on “process “ factor, it likely turns out, what improvements needs to be done to fix the problem. Sometime fixing process  may prevent the issue permanently as well as take care of human errors .

          Shifting the focus on fixing “process” than  “people” is possible with a little bit of awareness on our intention and behavior.It is difficult but possible with practice. For any problem solution can be fixed through process, in turn process will take care people factor also.

Just be aware of your reaction to the problem, shift the focus and you attract good things in life!

Learned Helplessness

“A little more persistence, a little more effort and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success.”—Elbert Hubbard

     Some years back a research had been conducted  on a dog with repeated electric shocks in closed environment. Typically, we would expect any sensible dog to seek to avoid the pain of electric shock.What surprisingly observed was that, even there were opportunities to escape from the pain, they simply put  down and whined. This observation led psychologist to develop the concept of “learned helplessness”.

      At times, as human beings, we seem to give up any attempt to change the situation. We  accept the role as victims and  inability to do anything about to change the situation.

     When we are facing tough situations for long in professional or in a family environment, we start feeling that we have little control over it and start believing as such.Instead of taking even  small effort to change the situation we use all energy to cope with the situation. Over a period, we become victims of helplessness.

    You may have experienced helplessness feelings either in  career progression, business growth  or relationship quality.Over a period of time, you cope with that.In this process, your helplessness feeling pulls your confidence  and quality of life..

Hence aware of the areas, where you feel “helplessness” and take action to change it.