Category: Psychology

Categories
Psychology

The Compass

In my previous post I talked about the 3 principles which I believe will change the way you live life, hopefully for the better. The 3 principles are:

  • Be responsible (for your experiences)
  • Be present (in the now)
  • Let go (of expectations and attachment)

But the question that one must ask is, if I responsible for my own experiences than how do I control this responsibility. If I am to focus on the present, what exactly am I to focus on? What do I let go?

Know Thyself

It is my belief that if you are to chose your primary goal in life, it must be only one thing; understanding your true nature, everything else secondary. Two simple words “Know Thyself”, yet truly living by it can do wonders and neglecting it can be lead to a world of pain and suffering.

You can try to make logical choices when it comes to the three principles, but the effort it requires is monumental if you do not fundamentally know who you really are.

Define Yourself

Knowing yourself is as much an endeavour of discovery as it is an effort of creation.

I would prefer to call this concept, “Define Yourself” rather than Know Thyself”, as we are culturally programmed to think that knowing something is a matter of discovering something that already exists, but more dangerously, whatever that thing that exists is immutable, unchangeable.

Knowing your natural characteristics or characteristics that you may have acquired over the course of your life through experiences is a great place to start. And that is it, ‘a start’. If there are things about yourself that you do not like, you can make effort towards changing them.

Conversely, if there are things that you do like about yourself, you can work towards enhancing those specific characteristics.

Knowing yourself is difficult enough, how do you you even go about defining yourself?

Values

Your values define you are you. Knowingly or unknowingly we are making decisions based on your values.

Ask yourself what do you value most in life? Ask yourself about your values in different aspects of you life. What do you think is good, what do you think is bad. What do you want more in life, what do you want less in life? Are there things that you stand for? Are there things that you stand against?

If you do not know your values, you can define them. This is a start to defining who you are as a person. I will give you my own example. About a year ago, I started asking myself these questions and one of the values that I decided that I will stand for is non-violence. This led me to adopting a vegan lifestyle. Another thing that I value in life is environment friendliness and sustainability.

These values help me make decisions in life. Of course it is not always easy, but it does help you steer towards your values more than away from them once you choose to define your values.

I have either sold or recycled old laptops by turning them into routers and servers. I started wet shaving with either straight razors or safety razor and soap, instead of using refillable cartridges.

My values do not make them any better or worse than yours, because that is the whole point of defining your values. They help you define who you are as an individual and help you make decision by acting as your compass.

Blueprint of Your Compass

There are many times that we get stuck on making decisions in life. It could be as simple as what to have for lunch or as pivotal as changing or choose a career path.

Priority

The more you know and define your value the easier it can get when it comes time to making importantly decisions in life. It is simply not enough to decide or discover your values, but you must also prioritise them. You may value a lot of things in life, but how important is each of those values? That is a key question that will help you make decisions in life.

But even after you have spent ample amount of time defining and prioritising your values, you may still feel stuck in making certain decisions in life. Ever wondered why?

The reason is conflicting values. This happens when you have two values that are opposite in nature. What do I mean by that?

Say one of you values is non-violence and because of that you decide to adopt a vegan lifestyle. However, your other value is variety in food. You value different cuisines, and like to try and experiment different dishes, flavours, textures and tastes etc… These two are fundamentally different. Sure you can think of creative ways of making vegan food taste great and believe me it does. However, if you want to try and eat exotic animals, you will suffer much anguish because two of your values are in conflict. What you end up doing will depend on the priority of each individual value.

What is worse when you have clash of the titans. This is when you have two values that are either opposites or simply not compatible and both are of equal priority.

Crafting Your Compass

As you can see it is important to evaluate your values and weed out conflicts prior to facing them in life altering situations. The easiest way to start is to check whether your values are contradicting each other. If they are you must decide on which values will have a higher priority and which ones will have a lower priority.

Of course, you do not need to eliminate your values, it is fair to give them different priorities, and yes, you have the right to choose them as you wish.

Once you have spent ample amount of time defining and prioritizing your values, you must visit them often, ideally at regular intervals to evaluate and make changes if and where necessary. Do not fall into the trap of rigidity.

The best way to maintain integrity with yourself and your values is it to write as much of this down as possible. This gives you something concrete to look it. It will almost feel like your values have been giving life.

You can then refer to what you have written to remind yourself about your values and also to give you the opportunity to reevaluate them and make necessary tweaks.

Using your Compass

I want to reiterate, these 3 principles have mentioned here and in my previous post together with the concept of the compass is a tool, a mental tool just like the technology that surround you like your phones, tables and computers, and the Internet, the cars that you drive, or refrigerators for cooling and so on.

We are so dependent on technology, and I do believe that such technology makes our life easier and in many ways helps us making decisions better. But no technology is worth a dime if you do not know how to use it.

Likewise, with your values as a compass you can navigate decision making, become responsible for your experiences, draw yourself into the present and focus on what is important to you, and find balance by detaching from unwarranted expectations.

Categories
Philosophy Psychology

The Art of Not Failing

Success is a very relative term. Everyone views success differently. The most acceptable measure of success is wealth. The wealthier you are the more success you are. However what success means to the individual is not necessarily dependent on the perception of their state to the outside world. A person who earns 10 million dollars in a year in personal income may be a success person  for most people, but to that person, they may feel like a failure because their state does not conform to their rules of success. For someone else who earns minimum wage, works hard for a living, has no car and comes home to an empty apartment may not be “succesful” in the eyes of the general public, but to that person they may be successful because their rules of success are different – may be success for them is knowing that they are alive for another day.

Knowing that success is a very relative term and it is dependent on the person judging whether someone or even they themselves are successful or not.

But what about failure? Is failure a relative term too? Is it not true that there can be 2 people in the same situation where  there was some sort of failure or loss. One person may see that as failure, the other might see it as an opportunity or simply a setback. If that is true, would it not mean that success and failure are merely states dependent on your rules and perception. Ask yourself whether you are truly successful or  truly a failure.

Success may not be guaranteed, failure can also be not guaranteed. But there is a sure way to not fail. If you never want to fail, the surest way to do it is to never try.

Never Try, Never Fail

This is the motto of zombies. These zombies walk around around in fear or failing and in doing so never try new things, never follow their dreams or worse don’t have any dreams, have nothing that they are passionate about, or if they are they hide it, burry it deep within them so the urge to purse it never comes and thus making sure that they never try and consequently never fail.

But is not failing, really succeeding? If not losing, really winning? Is it even living? The inability to fail is also the inability to succeed. This is stagnation.

So if you want to master the art of not failing, you must master the art of not trying.

 

Categories
Philosophy Psychology Technology

5 Ways You Can Capture Moments In Your Life

Have you ever felt that your life is moving too fast? Or perhaps you are at the other side of the spectrum where you feel that life is moving too slow. Have you had those moments in life that you wish to remember over and over again? Are there moments in life that you could have forgotten, but you didn’t because there was a picture that captured that moment, or perhaps you wrote something on a piece of paper, kept a receipt or a souvenir that takes you back in time to experience some memorable part of that your life.

We live in a world of Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Pinterest, Instagram, Four Squares and much more that allows us to share every moment and every aspect of your lives, not to mention Twitter’s new app called Periscope which allows you to live-streaming video directly from your phone.

But I’m not going to be talking about sharing your moments. I want to give you some tools to help your record moments in life, you may of course chose to share them.

Phone Camera

Samsung Galaxy S6 review (20)-970-80Virtually every phone has a camera. Some of them take pictures better than some DSLR of yesteryears. You have your phone with you at all times so if something happens that you would want to remember just take your phone out and take a snap or take a video. We’re in such a photo snapping epidemic that Samsung has put a quick launch feature in their latest smart phone the Galaxy S6 – All you need to do is double press the home button and bam!

I know I really shouldn’t even be talking about all this since it is such a basic way of life now. But remember you don’t need record moments only for the purpose of sharing. When you start recording videos and photos to capture moments in life for yourself you will start to deviate from fluff and random acts of “importance” to moments that mean something to you, and sometimes only to you.

Action Camera

Gopro-Hero-3+-Compared-to-PalmThe action camera market has seen an astonishing boom mainly thanks to the GoPro brand. These camera’s(GoPro, Sony’s Action Cam and others) are small, light weight, most of them are waterproof and with a wide angle lens. You can mount these cameras on your chest, on your bike, hand, car, your head and the possibilities are endless. You might be thinking that this is just another camera. How is this different phone a phone camera? Phone cameras are mostly classed as point and shoot cameras where as action cameras are mostly POV(point of view cameras).

Evernote

186tgj38eph2cjpgEvernote is a tool designed for note taking and archiving. A  “note” can be a piece of formatted text, full webpage or webpage excerpt, photograph, voice memo, or a handwritten “ink” note. You can organize those notes into sets of notes called notebooks and organize them in different categories called tags. Once a note is saved, it is synced to the Evernote cloud and from there it is synced to all other devices that have Evernote installed. There are other tools out there that let you record notes the way Evernote does, however Evernote’s ease of use and search functionality is something that is yet to be beaten. 

Voice Recorder

If you are one of those types that retain memory better with audio instead of visually or kinaesthetically then you can carry with you a voice recorder. I know that some of you may be wondering: “…but does my phone not have a voice recorder?” . Yes phones do have voice recorder apps, but none of them so far are as good as an actual portable voice recorder machines. Dedicated voice recorders are faster with better quality and you can easily play back your recorder voice.

Old School Notebook

7986400732_4d90b1c2d1_zSometimes all the high tech gizmos just does not quite cut it. Some may feel that all these gadgets lack the feeling of authenticity. If you are one of those, you can carry a small notebook and pen with you. The feeling of hand written notes sometimes says more than a picture which is believed to speak a 1000 words, especially now that hand written notes are simply considered archaic by most.

samsung-galaxy-note-4-9024If you are someone who cannot or don’t want to keep a physical notebook and want to avoid the use of paper, not to mention the finite number of pages a notebook has to offer, but at the same time want the joy of keeping hand written notes, then the Samsung Galaxy Note is for you. Note 4 is by far the bsst phone with a stylus. In fact as far as gadgets go the Galaxy Note is the best single device you will need to record almost every moment of your life. It has a camera, Evernote and a pen that is surprisingly accurate(on the Note 4 at the time of this writing) to jot down notes.

In spite of what I have said in this article, I leave you with something that left me in awe when I first heard it. There is a scene where Sean O-Connell who has been waiting patiently to capture a photograph of the illusive “ghost cat”, the snow leopard has a conversation with Walter MItty in a scene from the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Walter Mitty: When are you going to take it?
Sean O’Connell: Sometimes I don’t. If I like a moment, for me, personally, I don’t like to have the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it.
Walter Mitty: Stay in it?
Sean O’Connell: Yeah. Right there. Right here.

— The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Categories
Psychology Uncategorized

What’s in a Name?

whats_in_a_name

“What’s in a name? that which we call a rose/ By any other name would smell as sweet”

Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare

I recently was put in a situation where the name might have played a role in the final outcome of that situation and then I reminded myself of this famous quote from Shakespeare. What’s in a name? Ideally, characteristics of a person is what really should matter right? Shakespeare puts it so deftly, so elegantly and as such would inspire people to put the name aside and look at who the person really is, what their abilities are, what sets them apart from others, how they think, how they work,..etc..

What’s in a name? It’s just a name,…right? But is it really?

Is Jose, the same as Joe? Watch this video!

For humour, here are some unfortunate names of people, and some very interesting names of products, and some even more bizarre product names.

And of course, Apple Watch!… I guess ‘iWatch’ would have been a bit creepy.

source: http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2014/09/10/first-look-at-the-new-apple-watch/
source: http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2014/09/10/first-look-at-the-new-apple-watch/

Categories
Enlightenment Philosophy Psychology Self Development

In Pursuit Of…

In-pursuit-of

If every action is performed in succession, then the consequence of those actions is inevitable. There is basically a formula to life. There is no mystery, it is simply mathematics. Action and result. Cause and effect.

This video is both funny and deep, if you really think about it. This is the conclusion to  the coyote and the road runner, the never ending chase. We have always been led to believe that the coyote is the bad guy and the road runner is the good guy who is smart, fast and funny.  But this video tells a different story. Yes, it is funny, but think about it again and you will see a different picture emerging behind the humour.

When the viewers who watch the cartoon think that the coyote is never going to catch the roadrunner, the coyote persists. Real dream chasers, the mad ones, the crazies, keep chasing their dream even when everyone around them begs them to stop and give up and pursue something else. When one thing does not work, they try something else, and then something else, they change their angle, their technique, beaten up, broken down they keep persevering. See they know a secret that most people don’t, or perhaps choose to ignore because of the pain it may cause.

If every action is performed in succession, then the consequence of those actions is inevitable. There is basically a formula to life. There is no mystery, it is simply mathematics. Action and result. Cause and effect.

If however, your actions do not get you your desired results, then it is not that you have failed, it is simply the result of your combined actions. Perhaps you have not performed an actions well or the timing was not right, perhaps there are some factors that you have not considered, maybe your approach is not optimal. Dream chasers, those mad ones know this and they change their approach, change their technique, change their angle, or whatever it takes to get them to where they want to be.

Eventually they do – they all do!

But we know that don’t know? We need only to look around us. But what happens after you get to where you wanted to be, what happens when you finally achieve ‘success’, what happens after you have made your dream into a reality?

Sometimes people keep chasing a dream and forget about everything else, their family, relationships, health, and instead they become obsessed about it, putting themselves on the line, risking everything and never giving up.

When they finally achieve their dream, they are sometimes left with a void and the question:

Is this all there is?

The chase is over, the task is complete, the chapter is closed, so now what? Sometimes people develop an identity crisis. The passion, the thrill of chasing their dreams leaves them hungry for more, but they don’t know what else there is to chase. Just like the coyote, they try different things, fall into a lousy state of mind, anger, depression, feelings of worthlessness. This happens a lot with very successful people. Even if people manage to maintain a healthy state of mind and do something else that brings meaning in their lives, they still miss the chase, they crave the process of converting raw power of their passions into their desired results.

We have seen many athletes, after achieving unimaginable level of success and retiring, return back to the game, or a businessman after retiring comes back, or a filmmaker keeps coming back because sometimes that is the only thing that brings meaning to their life.

But the question I ask is: Is it worth sacrificing everything you hold dear? Should you chase a dream at the expense of your health? Should you pursue success while sacrificing the love of your friends, family or your personal relationship?

I can’t speak for everyone, but perhaps they key is balance! But an even bigger solution is the answer to

WHY?

Why do you want what you want? The answer to that question is perhaps the starting point to brining balance. When you truly answer that question, either you will realize that it is not worth pursuing, or you will find that you can achieve the same ‘why’ by pursuing something else, something which you may not have to sacrifice the other things that are dear to you for, or you will realize that the WHY is what brings you joy and power in your life which you can directly inject into your work as fuel and move forward.

Take Stock

Another way to bring balance is taking stock of your accomplishments. Think about it! Many things that you now take for granted were once a dream, a goal, something that seemed so far fetched you couldn’t even comprehend what it would be like achieve it. Maybe it was graduating with a degree or a diploma, or owning your own car, getting a job, earning $X dollars in salary, owning a house, asking someone out, or getting married to someone that you love, travelling to a destination you always wanted to go to, starting a business, or getting that promotion. Just think about it?

Stay Thirsty…Keep pursuing…

If you’re not growing, you’re dying.

The human spirit needs growth, no amount of success brings as much meaning and joy as growth does and in fact that might even be one of the laws of nature. Companies need to grow, to invent, invest, innovate, people need to grow financially. One dollar 10 years ago is not worth one dollar today, and today’s dollar will not be worth that much in the future. Likewise with your dreams and goals. If you are in pursuit of something, keep at it, if you don’t have something to chase, go find something. Mind you, your dreams don’t have to be materialistic, it can be to better a relationship, it can be spiritual, it can be a health goal. Whatever it is, go get it.

I end with this video. It is one of my favourite scenes, a tear jerker, a real inspirational moment.

Categories
Business Marketting Psychology

The Failed Salesman

Two weeks ago I was at a mall rushing to the store that I wanted to go to in the last 7 minutes before the mall shuts down. While zooming past those stalls that are laid like little lego bricks between the two parallel rows of stores that usually sell smaller priced accessories like cell phone cases, purses, no name brand sun glasses etc…I heard a call from one of those vendors. I don’t remember what the man said, but it caught my attention.

He begun his above average, metering towards impressive sales act which I am sure he had rehearsed many times before, but one that hardly seemed like a script. It seemed more like a natural or a well crafted script that seemed to be a pretty good recipe of passion for the product and an understanding of a fairly good enough technique of persuasion.

He was selling a portable wireless speaker small enough to fit in one’s pocket and one that used bluetooth to pair with a device like a phone or an IPod to stream live music.

wireless speaker

He demonstrated the features and sound quality in the next 2 to 3 minutes. He then said, “since it’s closing time, I’m going to give you a great deal. This usually sells for $80, but I’m going to make this a final sale for tonight and because I really want you to have this great product, I’m going to make it $40 just for you!”

big-sale

That’s fine, right? We have all heard something like this at some point in our lives. In my mind I started searching for ways in which I could use this product. I told him “Okay, I’ll buy it”

He started to pack the speaker that he was holding in his hand. I stopped and asked him if there were any other colors. I could see a yellow one and a black one behind the glass of his merchandise cart. He said “Yes” and then moved on to show me different colors, but I happened to like the color of the one that he used to do the little demonstration for me. He started packing it again. I asked him to give me a new pack, I then asked him about the “store’s” return policy, which turned out to be “No Refunds – Exchange only”, which is still fair, right?

But I thought, if that is the case, I want to make sure the speaker is working properly. That is when things started going downhill. He’s attitude changed from a person who was passionate about the product(or passionate about selling that product) to an attitude of someone who was being overly defensive.

He said, “Oh I cannot open the box for you. It is company policy”. My obvious argument was, “What if the speaker is defective”, to which he replied “But I can’t open it for you”.

When he saw that I had started to put my wallet back into my pocket, he said, “Okay, I’ll open it on for you”. But being a reasonably smart shopper I persuaded him to turn it on.

He hesitantly hooked up the speaker to the power source and a red light appeared on the speaker.

“See, it’s working”, he said with an expression on his face which I could only describe as “relieved”.

At this point, I had already gone from “hmmm…Interesting ..” to “hmm… something’s fishy”.

fishy

I then asked him to play some music on that speaker. He refused!

“It is working! You see this red light. It means it is working”

“It’s a speaker, not a lamp. How can I tell if the speaker is working properly without listening to the sound it produces”

He did not budge, and insisted that I buy the product, and started to scan the item. I stopped him, and said, “In that case, I don’t want to buy this” and I started walking away while thinking I probably need to check this brand online to see what kind of reviews it has and if there were any other alternatives.

From behind me, I heard the man say, “Wow… what a waste of time!”

What did you say?
What did you say?

I turned around and said, “What did you say?”

What happened next can only be described as a knock-out combo move of words in angry ninja style.

Ninja_fighting_poses_by_lordeeas

I told him what he did was wrong. I tried to explain to him, this what he did there was not good salesmanship. I could have easily gone home and come back the next day and bought that very product from him. But do you think I did that? No!

That person seemed like this guy:

Business Handshake

And when the sale didn’t go through, turned into this guy:

polls_angry_man_3315_176592_answer_1_xlarge

Which just led me to conclude that he was this guy all along:

used-car-salesman

 

A truly remarkable salesman is not necessarily one who closes the most deals – that viewpoint can only get you to a B+, or maybe an A if they’re lucky, but never A+. I suggest you try this: If you are planning on buying a product or service that requires you to have a long term relationship with the person selling that product or service, test them. Ask the hard questions, get close to a deal, then back off, and tell them you need some time to think about it. Watch their reaction, because there is nothing worse for a salesperson then when the customer walks away just before closing the deal. Doing this will test their patience and their commitment towards you.

I'm back

I have had clients get so close to a deal and then walk away only to return after weeks or even months to start the project with a bang! The most memorable case was one in which the hiring manager of a company phoned me asking for another meeting to finally start a project that they were planning for a very long time. The strange thing was, I had forgotten all about this project. The client had come back to me after a year and a half! They were just not ready to take on the project when we had our first discussion. That client is still with my company and has even brought in numerous others!

 

Categories
Business Philosophy Psychology Self Development

The Power of Intro-Extro-verts

Just a few weeks ago someone commented that I was a bit shy. That came as a bit of a surprise to me as I do not consider myself as even a remotely shy person. After a bit of reflection I realized that at some point in my life that in fact may have been true from one perspective and even today to some this may hold true. I do not usually tend to speak unnecessarily. If I do not bother speaking up, it is mainly because the situation or topic at hand does not interest me or I do not have anything worthwhile to add to the conversation because it does not add any additional positive value.

Although I have a blog which may seem like an open expression of my personal thoughts, a twitter page which paints a picture of what goes in my mind and a Facebook account where it may seem that I share my intimate thoughts amongst my Facebook friends, it is only what one sees on the surface. I have learnt from experience that things are not always what they seem. I like to express myself freely when the time calls for it, but my biggest breakthroughs in thinking and understanding have come from seeking solace in solitude.

I like to deal with certain things like figuring personal and business solutions to problems I face on my own,. The bigger the problem the more silence it requires. But the fact is, this is not just true for me – this is true for everyone. Even the most extreme cases of extroverts need to at times find their inner voice in seclusion.

The key here is not to categorize oneself as either an introvert or an extrovert. There are different times that requires one to taken on introvert or an extrovert traits.

When making business deals, giving speeches in public, working in teams I have to take on an extrovert persona and during planning, projecting, writing or doing any kind of creative work I have to take on an introvert persona. The key is to realize one's natural state and then balancing it according to the situation that one is in.