Saturday, April 18, 2020

CAUSE & EFFECT



AIM-AMBITION: As a child, we usually want to be whoever catches our imagination; our father or mother, a relative or cousin we fancy very much; toy maker and vendor, an ice cream vendor, our favourite animal, character from our favourite story, a superhero. As we grow older, we gradually want to become the professionals who appeal to us through their appearance and mannerisms viz. a friendly postman/courier boy, newspaper vendor or milkman, our favourite teacher, driver or pilot. We also avoid a profession we have had an unfavourable experience with a person from that profession, viz. a strict teacher, a stern nurse or doctor.
What is essential for every one of us, right from our childhood is not to lose sight of the simple truth, happiness. We all want to be at peace and be happy. It is equally important for us to know that true happiness is always based on #selfempathy(love, trust, respect) for #selflesshappiness #selflesslove.
This helps us to be curious enough to be aware of and understand our thoughts, and emotions and how to communicate them responsibly. This invariably helps to understand what our hobbies and interests are and how we can develop them into our skills, our profession to live a happy, purposeful and fulfilling life.
#integrity #beyourownvoice #beyourself
AIM-AMBITION 2: We often lose our childhood fantasy, dream and passion to become what we want to when we give in to parental and societal pressure to become someone who is a total stranger to us.children are expected to walk in parents' footsteps, get married and take up their parents' profession.
Current scenario has not changed much. often our parents tend to realise their dreams through us. They constantly remind us what is the purpose of our life; to fulfil our parents' dreams viz. study medicine, engineering, management, or government public service employment. In fact, there is no harm in becoming one, unless we too long to become so.
Parents and guardians often compare us to that of their friends, and relations. This becomes a societal pressure that parents give in to and expect us to plan and achieve a profession that the children of their friends, colleagues and relations are striving to achieve. Unwittingly they prevent us from being aware of our interest, potential and how we can happily achieve a career of our choice.
Parental and societal pressure invariably cause confusion, stress, anxiety, a frustration of failure, and unhappiness
AIM-AMBITION 3: When I remember a simple truth,
I am born alone with many other million beings.
I live alone with many other million beings.
I die alone with many other million beings.
I am alone in invisible unity with many other million beings.
In the true sense of empowerment, life's biggest thrill in the form of a challenge is in creating and defining my own life rather than living it as someone else's replica, clone or shadow. I achieve my unique existence when I fulfil all that I expect from myself. There is a paradigm shift in my definition of SUCCESS and FAILURE when I define my life as running errands to achieve what is expected of me. Then I even resort to unfair means in achieving them.

I AM TRUE TO MYSELF:
When I read the same message in the voice of a second person: "BE TRUE TO YOURSELF" I invariably transfer the responsibility of the message to the person, the one who has written the message.
When I read the message as a voice of the first person "I AM TRUE TO MYSELF" then it becomes a message for me:
I am responsible for myself
I am honest to myself
I love myself
I trust and respect myself
I care for myself
I understand myself
Hey, presto! then "BE TRUE TO YOURSELF" is synonymous to"I AM TRUE TO MYSELF".


INTEGRITY: #love #trust and #respect are the basis of #honesty or #integrity. Integrity with #selfempathy, #selflesslove and courage help us in understanding the difference in our perception and thoughts. The ability to look through and beyond the differences help us to communicate honestly with each other with the inherent ability to appreciate geographic, cultural and functional diversity as our strength.
#synergythrudiversity.
Often organisations experience communication breakdown along with frequent intra-department and inter-department conflicts. Usually, it is the lack of integrity and self-empathy in the organisation's work culture and ethos that cause such problems. When management resorts to authoritarian leadership it encourages micro-management and falls short of empowering their employees to be responsible for the decisions they make to function effectively for their and the organisation's benefit. Lack of honest communication encourages blame game, active grapevine, ego-clashes, back-stabbing, manipulation of data for personal gain and to hide individual weakness resulting in a toxic environment. Needless to say, employees indulge in office politics rather than in encouraging each other for innovative ideas to solve their problems.
#beyourownvoice #beyourself
SELFLESS LOVE: While experiencing and facing life's challenges we tend to say, "Why do I have to experience this! Had I been like that prosperous and influential person, even a honcho of the organisation I work for I would not have experienced all this! Had I been as rich as my neighbour I would have purchased a generator to beat rampant electric outage and beat the summer heat for my family at home and me!" While doing so, we overlook the fact, this negative comparison is the root cause of many of our life's adversities. Many of the problems we experience are common problems that we can solve through concerted and collaborative efforts with a positive attitude towards each other. This is the basis of #selfemapthy and #integrity that encourage us to be responsible for our actions and reaction/response thus creating a conducive environment for creative thinking and innovation. Can we say, this has resulted in the innovation and use of alternate sources of energy viz. solar, wind and even generating energy through waste and garbage?
#selfempathy is the ability to sense and understand all aspects of life. The spirit of any collaborative effort and synergy.
WIN THE OBJECTIVE WITH SELF-EMPATHY and HONESTY when the objective is CHANGE MANAGEMENT Through TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP:
While making payment for groceries at a grocer's store I paid in cash and the cashier offered me a lozenge along with the cash memo and it was instead of a one rupee coin change to complete the sale. I asked if he would accept the same lozenge for payment of any grocery I would purchase from him in the future. He quietly replaced the lozenge with a one rupee coin.
A lady at the grocery store queried, "Why all this fuss. I would have accepted the lozenge." I asked her, would she accept a packet of lozenge instead of the money I would have borrowed from her. She hummed while reflecting over the imaginary proposition.
Similarly, the leadership and management of any organisation should encourage #integrity#love#trust and #respect) along with #selfempathy in their functions and in relationship with their employees so that their employees will establish a similar relationship with their customer through honest communication based on self-empathy and integrity.
#beyourownvoice #beyourself #selfawareness #organisationawareness #socialawareness #socialimpact #leadership #malpractice #miscommunication #leadershipdevelopmentcoaching #transformationalleadership

APPROACH to SUCCESS and FAILURE in achieving a goal or a purpose vary from the perspective of an individual and a group based on personal and collective perception. For instance, individuals and a group's collective effort in gaining happiness may not be the same unless it is formulated on ethical norms to sustain everyone's integrity.
While reading a news update on Fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris I remembered a young hostel mate from Chandannagar, West Bengal
Way back in 1997, when I was working in Calcutta as a Business Executive with NIIT Limited I lived in a working women's hostel. My hostel mate Sharmistha Pal, a fresh graduate, in her early twenties, had just begun her career as a web designer. I am an alumnus of St, Joseph's Convent, Chandannagar. Sharmistha Pal would often sarcastically remark, "Sunipa di, there is no short cut to success!" One day, I asked why she said so. She merely smirked in response.to which I asked, "Then, is there a short cut to failure?" Henceforth, she refrained from making the same remark.
The inherent questions:
1. Are we born to fail when death is our inevitable result?
2. Is success more important than participation?
Live life with integrity
#skillsforlife #beyourownvoice #beyourself #integrity
We often unwittingly lie when someone asks us
"HOW ARE YOU?"
We are taught to respond to such a question as
"I AM OK, FINE, GREAT, GOOD...THANK YOU!"
Therefore, it has become mechanical civility to inquire about a person's well-being expecting an equally cordial reply.
Instead, we can #empathise to break the stereotype and encourage an animated and candid conversation with simple honest queries viz.
it's been a long time since we last met. Currently what the person is doing. To show you are genuinely concerned about the person's weil-being you can pick up a few of the salient points of your last communication making the person feel comfortable enough to share his joy and worries with you. Feel safe enough to discuss his problems, because, by simply #listening and trying to #understand the person we often help him unburden himself.
Through #compassionate #listening we become the means enabling the person to speak aloud and listen to himself, and while doing so, often the prson finds solutions to his problems.
Two different images with the same message appealed to me, coz, in terms of humanity, they enhance the spirit of the message:
#integrity = #love #trust #respect
#beyourownvoice #beyourself #mindfulness #ethics 


AMBIGUITY OF WORDS: We often read a requirement in a job description: Job applicant should have the ability to work in an environment of ambiguous communication. Ambiguity due to geo-cultural along with socio-economic diversity: "Can you ride/drive a team?"
We tend to enjoy such ambiguity in the form of memes, gossips, jokes, false news and even S.N.S. algorithms.
We develop our creative ability to design and develop products and services to such social ambiguity viz. Art of communicating with a certain sect, or community. The fashion statement of a community; unwritten dress code viz. colour and style of clothes.
Often, this ambiguity in the form of #miscommunication based on #assumption challenges us when it tends to tread over the boundaries of physical rationality of #integrity#love #trust #respect#ethics and #pragmatism causing #stress #aggression and #conflict.
When we don't take anyone or anything for granted; we seek & consent initiate any work, endeavour or enterprise; we practice free, responsible and clear communication at all functional levels; then we are #compassionately #curious #convinced #courageous to #know #understand & resolve challenges of BEING WITH A TEAM/THE WORLD.
#beyourownvoice #beyourself #culturalawareness #languagebarrier #socialimpact


APOLOGY: A word with a negative reaction for a simple reason, how we were introduced to the word: Our parents, teachers or elders asking, rather forcing us to apologise for our mistake, instead of helping us to reasonably realise the negative repercussions of a wilful mistake or otherwise. Why they did so? Simply because they too were introduced to the word in the same way.
We invariably practice the same method of seeking or thrusting apology upon each other: Wilfully wrong a person and apologise feigning innocence. We often find ourselves apologising for mistakes we did not commit or apologising just because of ourselves being a stickler to our principles and our respect for regulations; that invariably enables people to manipulate us in achieving their selfish gains leaving us to do the bit called "To Apologise".
Conflicts at the workplace, at home, often have the conflicting teams and people demand an apology from one another; or try to escape further confrontation by "falsely apologising". In doing so, we invariably misuse the word "apology". CURIOUS? https://sunipa.wordpress.com/…/…/15/i-want-you-to-apologize/

WHAT IS IT? YES OR NO? Yes, there is a difference between the two and a no, because apology qualifies the sense of regret one feels by being sorry.
Putting it in simple words, "I am sorry!" expresses a person's sense of regret to someone's hurt or painful condition. Someone's frustration of being underemployed and eventually unemployed for a long time. When the person realises he/she is the cause of someone's hurt and misery and wants to express it then uses the phrase "I apologise!"
AM I TRYING TO CONVINCE MYSELF?
When I write, sketch, doodle; dabble with musical notes, or spices of culinary art; model wood, clay or metal carvings; spin and weave patterns; make a video of or film a fact, an incidence or my own narrative.
When I imagine and creatively make it into a reality or I comprehend the relevance and magnanimity of reality to creatively document it to posterity...
am I doing all this to convince myself?
#skillsforlife #selfawareness #organisationawareness #socialawareness #organisationimpact #socialimpact #creativethinking #ethics #integrity #perception #skillsforlife #sustainability #mindfulness. So, #beyourself #beyourownvoice
#leadership #change #situationalawareness #transformationalleadership

We strive for peace and ironically our effort for peace often results in conflict not only with our own self but also with those we perceive to be the cause of our stress, anxiety and negativity. When we consider anyone to be the cause of our sorrow we need to introspect with empathy to truthfully analyse and understand the cause of our stress. This can help us to overlook our own fallacies and defy the truth by blaming someone, an external factor or entity to be the cause. We should not ignore the fact we are all directly or indirectly connected to one another. When we share each other's joy and sorrow we invariably achieve the peace and harmony.
DON'T ARGUE!
We often experience this form of one-way communication in autocratic/authoritarian leadership. A "task"(using this word in lieu of "work" or "assignment") is assigned from the boss to subordinate without any threadbare discussion on the execution of the task. The person executing the task avoids taking ownership of the task and expects his boss to take any blame to address any complaint on its execution.
This eventually results in a chain of blame game where everyone in the functional hierarchy blames each other for any failure in the proper execution of the task.
This spawns a toxic work environment and culture where people consider any mistake a sin. They do not miss any opportunity to point out to each other's mistake and use it for self-aggrandisement. People use negative comparison and manipulation of team opinion to gain recognition of their function than on the basis of their capabilities and attitude towards their functional responsibilities, organisation, its people, stakeholders and clients. #selfawareness #organisationawareness #socialawareness #organisationimpact #socialimpact #creativethinking #ethics #integrity #perception #sustainability #mindfulness#beyourself #beyourownvoice
#leadership #change #situationalawareness #transformationalleadership



Life