Archives for June 2017

Job-Hunting While Still Employed

June 30, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Searching for a new job without revealing that you aren’t very pleased at your current job or getting fired can be a challenge. Here are four ways to job-hunt with caution.

Examine your motivations before job-hunting. Many people who jump ship in frustration run into the same problems that were an obstacle with previous employers. Try to ask for honest feedback about how you’re perceived by your managers and what’s holding you back from a promotion. You’ll find it easier to tackle career progression frustrations in a familiar environment at your current employer rather than at a new company where you’ll be under pressure to learn the ropes and produce results quickly.
Respect your employer’s time and resources. Don’t job-search on company time—your current job responsibilities are your priority. Looking for another position typically involves having to be away from your office for interviews; use your vacation days—not sick days—for job-searching and interviewing. Be careful about using your work computer to look up jobs, contact recruiters, or update your social-media presence.
Be tactful about whom you tell that you’re looking for another job. Even if you trust your coworkers, you can’t limit what they may share with others. Some of your coworkers may be ethically obligated to keep your boss and your company informed about any prospective changes in staffing or anything that might affect the organization’s goals. Be cautious about how you promote yourself on LinkedIn and job-search websites.
If you are offered a new job, be straight with everyone. Inform your boss immediately. Give as much notice as required, plan to tie up loose ends, and offer to help transition your responsibilities to a successor. Don’t be unreasonable in leveraging your new job offer to negotiate a counteroffer from your employer. Do your best to leave on the right note. Be consistent in what you tell different people about why you’re leaving. Do not burn bridges in the job-transition process.

Enabling the Highest Degrees of Understanding // Book Summary of Howard Gardner’s ‘The Unschooled Mind’

June 27, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Traditional Schooling Fails to Teach Kids to Ask the Right Questions

In The Unschooled Mind (1991,) Harvard developmental psychologist Howard Gardner makes a persuasive case for why even the brightest students often lack a deep understanding of what traditional schooling purports to teach them.

According to Gardner, students (in elementary schools to graduate colleges) may take exams and earn degrees, but their supposed knowledge turns out deficient in situations that are at variance from the “text-to-test” framework in which they learnt it. To some extent, this disconnect is an outcome of teachers’ settling for “correct-answer compromises” whereby students take the rote repetition of facts, formulas, concepts, and theories for a real understanding of fundamental concepts.

Robust Forms of Intuitive Knowledge

Overall, Gardner argues that children tend to acquire well-established models for perceptive learning and intuitive thinking by the time they are five years old. They develop wide-ranging beliefs about the physical world and distinctive models of events and people.

Subsequently, when children begin their schooling, they are launched into pedagogic methods that often sidestep—even interfere with—the children’s entrenched patterns of learning and understanding. That is to say, children have to put up with a disagreeable dichotomy between their intuitive learning patterns and the academic learning:

In its theoretical resourcefulness and intuitions, [a 5-year old’s mind] is powerful; in its artistic endeavors, it can be creative and imaginative; in its adventurousness, it is exemplary. … Education that takes seriously the ideas and intuitions of the young child is far more likely to achieve success than education that ignores these views, either considering them to be unimportant or assuming that they will disappear on their own.

Experiential Learning, Supplanted by Critical Analysis and Synthesis, Can Enhance Students’ Points of View

The Unschooled Mind contends that far-reaching knowledge and appreciation of education can occur only when students are allowed to integrate their “prescholastic” learning modes with the scholastic and the disciplinary ways of traditional school education. “The problem is less a difficulty in school learning per se and more a problem in integrating the notational and conceptual knowledge featured in school with the robust forms of intuitive knowledge that have evolved spontaneously during the opening years of life.”

Gardner’s solution to this problem is to situate students in educational environments that pique their curiosity about the subject matter and, at the higher levels of education, challenge their preexisting assumptions. Educating children for the utmost degrees of understanding involves designing educational systems that help students synthesize these several patterns of learning.

Real Education Opens the Way to Thinking, Knowing, and Deeper Understanding

For real learning to occur, Gardner argues, students must have an opportunity to realize their own ignorance, and then ask and explore their own questions. Teachers must regularly expose students to “Christopherian encounters”—compelling personal discoveries of the inconsistencies between their various frames of reference—by approaching any subject matter through at least five instructive channels:

through narratives and stories,
through logical and quantitative lines of attack,
through “foundational” or philosophical inquiries,
through aesthetic approaches (exploring the creative and artistic elements) and
through creating and drawing upon the students’ life-experiences.

Gardner claims that traditional schooling should incorporate more apprenticing—apprenticeship programs build most effectively on the ways children learn—and schools should become more like children’s museums.

Recommendation: Read The Unschooled Mind by Howard Gardner, especially if you have a child in school. The key takeaway: to enable the highest degrees of understanding, any skills instruction must be systematically reinforced by instruction in which the deployment of the skills makes holistic sense.

Inspirational Quotations #690

June 25, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The words of wicked people are totally different from their thoughts and their actions totally disagree with their words. On the other hand, great people are consistent in their thoughts, words and deeds.
—Hitopadesha

If a man offend a harmless, pure, and innocent person, the evil falls back upon that fool, like light dust thrown up against the wind.
—The Dhammapada (Buddhist Anthology of Verses)

Key to being liked: While retaining integrity, do more agreeing, amplifying, empathizing. do less arguing, one-upping, yes-butting.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach, Author)

Science is the systematic classification of experience.
—George Henry Lewes (English Philosopher)

Getting older is no problem. You just have to live long enough.
—Groucho Marx (American Actor)

Pain is a relatively objective, physical phenomenon; suffering is our psychological resistance to what happens. Events may create physical pain, but they do not in themselves create suffering. Resistance creates suffering. Stress happens when your mind resists what is…The only problem in your life is your mind’s resistance to life as it unfolds.
—Dan Millman (American Children’s Books Writer)

The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.
—Vince Lombardi (American Sportsperson)

The most important of life’s battles is the one we fight daily in the silent chambers of the soul.
—David O. McKay (American Mormon Religious Leader)

Everyone points to the other man, who, according to him, is happier. But the only one, who has the courage to declare that he is truly happy, is he who has relinquished all his passions and hungers from within.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Teacher)

True consistency, that of the prudent and the wise, is to act in conformity with circumstances, and not to act always the same way under a change of circumstances.
—John C. Calhoun (American Head of State)

Five Signs of Excessive Confidence

June 20, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Confidence is generally a respectable and necessary workplace trait.

However, there is a darker side to confidence.

People who display overconfidence, hubris, and narcissism engage in self-destructive behaviors at work because their self-aggrandizement blinds them from their personal judgment and their managerial and leadership performance.

If you believe you may be displaying any of the following signs of excessive confidence, you need some coaching and feedback. Ask a trusted friend, colleague, or mentor for some honest feedback. Work to change your attitude—promptly.

You tend to believe that your ideas are the only ones worth acting on. When others contribute ideas and suggestions, you tend to turn them off while promoting only the ideas that you come up with. You tend to get angry with others for their unwise and impractical suggestions. You are resistant to learning from others or from previous experiences.
You tend to act on solutions without input from others. You believe that it is up to only you to supply new ideas and solve problems. You are convinced that you are the only one who knows as much as necessary to do the right thing. When others summon up ideas and suggest watch-outs, you tend to brush them off with “I know that” statements.
You tend to express an opinion on everything—even when the topic of interest is outside your area of expertise. You act as if you’ve accepted the reality that you have to work with less-qualified people who just can’t get the right things the right way (i.e. your way.) If only your opinions were considered and if you had your way, your team and company would do “so much better.”
You tend to defend your mistakes and your failures. You don’t recognize your limitations and the mistakes of your ways. You can’t take help. You are closed off to others’ feedback and suggestions for change.
You tend to externalize blame. You’re often a victim of everyone else’s failures or a victim of external circumstances. You gripe that others just don’t understand you or they aren’t qualified enough to see the wisdom of your ways.

If you can’t recognize and accept the problems related to how your behavior comes across to other people, you may be derailing your managerial and leadership potential.

Idea for Impact: Greatness lies in balancing self-assurance with self-effacement. I recommend leadership coach extraordinaire Marshall Goldsmith’s outstanding What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. Addressing already-successful people, Goldsmith describes how personality traits that bring you initial career success could hold you back from going further!

Inspirational Quotations #689

June 18, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

This life is short, the vanities of the world are transient, but they alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive. If all of us think for the society and the country, all our problems will be solved.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time. It’s just that the others are behind the time.
—Martha Graham (American Choreographer)

Only the insane take themselves quite seriously.
—Max Beerbohm

Most of us serve our ideals by fits and starts. The person who makes a success of living is the one who sees his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly. That is dedication.
—Cecil B. DeMille (American Film Producer)

I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.
—John Cage (American Composer)

Nothing is so common as unsuccessful men with talent. They lack only determination.
—Chuck Swindoll (American Christian Pastor)

Sometimes the majority only means that all the fools are on the same side.
—Anonymous

There is strength in numbers and unity. That is the way you can kill an enemy. Just look at the collection of straws that make the roof of the hut. They protect us from even the heavy rains, alone none of those straws can do the same.
—Subhashita Manjari

Wisdom is the assimilated knowledge in us, gained from an intelligent estimation and close study of our own direct and indirect experience in the world.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Teacher)

You’re not a human being until you value something more than the life of your body. And the greater the thing you live and die for the greater you are.
—Orson Scott Card (American Author)

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength. True power if within, and it is available to you now.
—Eckhart Tolle (German Spiritual Writer)

A whipping never hurts so much as the thought that you are being whipped.
—E. W. Howe (American Novelist)

Rapoport’s Rules to Criticize Someone Constructively

June 16, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

In Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, philosopher Daniel Dennett lists Anatol Rapoport’s rules of constructive argument and debate:

Just how charitable are you supposed to be when criticizing the views of an opponent? If there are obvious contradictions in the opponent’s case, then you should point them out, forcefully. If there are somewhat hidden contradictions, you should carefully expose them to view—and then dump on them. But the search for hidden contradictions often crosses the line into nitpicking, sea-lawyering and outright parody. The thrill of the chase and the conviction that your opponent has to be harboring a confusion somewhere encourages uncharitable interpretation, which gives you an easy target to attack. But such easy targets are typically irrelevant to the real issues at stake and simply waste everybody’s time and patience, even if they give amusement to your supporters. The best antidote I know for this tendency to caricature one’s opponent is a list of rules promulgated many years ago by social psychologist and game theorist Anatol Rapoport (creator of the winning Tit-for-Tat strategy in Robert Axelrod’s legendary prisoner’s dilemma tournament).

How to compose a successful critical commentary:

You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”

You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).

You should mention anything you have learned from your target.

Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.

One immediate effect of following these rules is that your targets will be a receptive audience for your criticism: you have already shown that you understand their positions as well as they do, and have demonstrated good judgment (you agree with them on some important matters and have even been persuaded by something they said).

This comports with the following sage advice gentle art of criticizing people effectively:

“If you disagree with somebody, you want to be able to state their case better than they can. And at that point you’ve earned the right to disagree with them. Otherwise you should keep quiet.”
—Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s business partner (see this article)
“The man who can hold forth on every matter under debate in two contradictory ways of pleading, or can argue for and against every proposition that can be laid down—such a man is the true, the complete, and the only orator.”
—Roman Orator Cicero (see this article)
“I have yet to find a more efficient and reliable way to probe the depths of a person’s knowledge and seriousness about an issue than asking them to explain the other side’s perspective.”
—Entrepreneur Ben Casnocha (see this article)
“If you can’t imagine how anyone could hold the view you are attacking, you just don’t understand it yet.”
—Philosopher Anthony Weston in Rulebook for Arguments (see this article)
“When you think you can nail someone with your argument, take a breath & see if you can phrase it as a face-saving question.”
—Career Coach Marty Nemko

20 Reasons People Don’t Change

June 13, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

If you have trouble getting people to change, perhaps one—or more—of the following reasons are to blame:

They don’t want to change … they find reassurance in the status quo
Their environment is holding them back
They’ve tried to change in the past, failed, and have given up
Your coaching / feedback is garbled … the benefits of change are unclear
They don’t react well to criticism
They’re suspicious of your motives (i.e. fear of manipulation)
They see little incentive to change
They don’t know how to change
They have no role models
There’s no support (or resources) for change
Change threatens their self-image
They can’t tell what’s really important
They don’t feel courageous enough … i.e. they fear failure
They don’t feel enough pain yet
They’re overconfident or arrogant
They fear their weaknesses will be exposed
They’re too lazy and undisciplined
Change requires giving up something they presently value
They resist change that’s imposed from outside … i.e. they’re not intrinsically motivated for change
Change undermines their self-confidence

Idea for Impact: Temper your expectations of others. Old habits die hard. Even Einstein’s doctor couldn’t get the great physicist to quit smoking despite his deteriorating health.

Be realistic about changing others’ hearts and minds. If you can learn to accept them for who they are and let go of your conceptions of their perfection, your relationships become more richer.

Inspirational Quotations #688

June 11, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Excessive anger is a great harm, but greater still is the unmindfulness born of excessive pleasure. Just as perpetual poverty slowly slays one’s knowledge, so does frequent forgetfulness destroy one’s prestige.
—Thirukkural

Great minds think alike.
—Common Proverb

It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.
—E. E. Cummings (American Children’s Books Writer)

Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity.
—Colin Powell (American Military Leader)

Education commences at the mother’s knee, and every word spoken in the hearing of little children tends toward the formation of character.—Let parents always bear this in mind.
—Hosea Ballou (American Universalist Clergyman)

Courtesy is the oil that greases the wheels of life.
—Unknown

If frequency with which you cite an education credential does not decrease over the course of your life, you’re not accomplishing very much.
—Ben Casnocha (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

An honor is not diminished for being shared.
—Lois McMaster Bujold (American Novelist)

From tonight onwards, take complete control of your life. Decide, once and for all, to be the master of your fate. Run your own race. Discover your calling and you will start to experience the ecstasy of an inspired life.
—Robin Sharma (Canadian Writer, Motivational Speaker)

Don’t confuse tact with cowardice. Sometimes, it’s wise to speak up boldly.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach, Author)

A closed mind is a good thing to lose.
—Muriel Strode (American Author, Businesswoman)

We tell lies when we are afraid… afraid of what we don’t know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger.
—Ted Williams (American Sportsperson)

It is well for people who think to change their minds occasionally in order to keep them clean. For those who do not think, it is best at least to rearrange their prejudices once in a while.
—Luther Burbank (American Botanist)

Elegance does not consist in putting on a new dress.
—Coco Chanel (French Fashion Designer)

Release Your Cows … Be Happy

June 9, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Attachments are Commonly the Cause of Much Suffering

In response to my article on tempering our expectations and avoiding disappointments, a dear friend inquired,

I follow the idea that when one has no control over a situation, one should not have their desired outcome be their expectations or it will lead to disappointment. Ex: I want my favorite sports team to win, but I am not a player who can change the outcome.

But where does this leave someone with a grand vision or a 10-year plan? We all start out having to learn, having to grow, not having the answers, having to “figure it out”. Do you tell a young doctor “you can’t cure cancer”?

How do you bridge from this idea of expectations to one that explains how one can navigate through life and achieve great accomplishments, like finding a cure for cancer?

We Suffer—and Make Our Loved Ones Suffer—when We Try to Hold on to Things

Life is enjoyable, joyful, fascinating, and purposeful because of the attachments we form. Nevertheless, Buddhism teaches us, the loss of these very attachments is the root cause of the worst pains in life. Even the realization of the prospective loss of a cherished attachment—a person, pet, feeling, hope, ambition, or an inanimate object—can make us suffer.

The Buddha taught that all conditioned phenomena (everything we can know through our senses) are impermanent and transient. Everything we come across and all our “encounters” end in eventual separation. Expounding this foremost ingredient of the Buddhist thinking, the renowned Vietnamese-French Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh (b.1926) narrates a Buddhist parable in The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching:

One day, after the Buddha and a group of monks finished eating lunch mindfully together, a farmer, very agitated, came by and asked, “Monks, have you seen my cows? I don’t think I can survive so much misfortune.” The Buddha asked him, “What happened” and the man said, “Monks, this morning all twelve of my cows ran away. And this year my whole crop of sesame plants was eaten by insects!” The Buddha said, “Sir, we have not seen your cows. Perhaps they have gone in the other direction.” After the farmer went off in that direction, the Buddha turned to his Sangha and said, “Dear friends, do you know you are the happiest people on Earth? You have no cows or sesame plants to lose.” We always try to accumulate more and more, and we think these ‘cows’ are essential for our existence. In fact, they may be the obstacles that prevent us from being happy. Release your cows and become a free person. Release your cows so you can be truly happy.

In a Graceful State, There is No Clinging, No Expectation, and No Desire

Though somewhat pedestrian, there is a profound wisdom in developing a sense of nonattachment (Sanskrit: upādāna.) Take for example our personal relationships. They are always a challenge because we keep wanting others—family, friends, and colleagues, even pets—to be who we want them to be for us. But if we can learn to accept them for who they are and let go of our conceptions of their perfection for us, our relationships become more straightforward and richer.

Often, the Buddhist concept of nonattachment is misunderstood as “non-loving” and relinquishment. The “absence of craving” (alobha) is the opposite of “craving” or “greed” (lobha). Nonattachment is not to abandon our loved ones, but to dispose of tendencies of self-protective clinging that preclude us from treasuring our loved ones more unreservedly and unconditionally.

All conditioned phenomenon are subject to emerging and passing. The more we attach to things that will change and pass away, the more we will suffer. The more expectations we have—for material success, for comfort, for exclusively happy relationships—the greater our inevitable disappointments.

Idea for Impact: Let Go, Be Happy

Learn to let go of your metaphorical cows—those things you’re attached to. Only when you can get out of your own way, you can allow the world and its riches to work their magic. Embrace that prosperity.

Remember, nonattachment is neither indifference nor self-denial. Accepting the nature of our clinging and attachments in their true and transient nature eases our fears, opens our hearts, and benefits others and ourselves. Letting go of attachments is the secret to really enjoying life and loving others. It is freedom. It is nirvāṇa.

Archives for June 2017

Wondering what to read next?

Traditional Schooling Fails to Teach Kids to Ask the Right Questions

Robust Forms of Intuitive Knowledge

Experiential Learning, Supplanted by Critical Analysis and Synthesis, Can Enhance Students’ Points of View

Real Education Opens the Way to Thinking, Knowing, and Deeper Understanding

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Attachments are Commonly the Cause of Much Suffering

We Suffer—and Make Our Loved Ones Suffer—when We Try to Hold on to Things

In a Graceful State, There is No Clinging, No Expectation, and No Desire

Idea for Impact: Let Go, Be Happy

Wondering what to read next?