Emotions

Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself

February 20, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

It’s okay to be wrong about things. It’s okay to be upset. It’s okay if things don’t go the way you purposed. It’s okay if you say something embarrassing. It’s okay if you make a fool of yourself. It’s okay if you failed. It’s okay if you disappointed a loved one.

We’ve all made mistakes—rushed decisions, careless oversights, and lapses of judgment. Even after taking the thoughtful time and overanalyzing them, we’ve not been able to avoid faults.

And after their immediate effects come to pass, our minds are assaulted by those woulda-coulda-shoulda ruminations.

Mistakes are a natural part of your journey. They’re patches of rough and bumpy ground that will eventually help you get where you need to go. Life is a long game, and you’ll never know what your current experiences will mean over time.

Mistakes can offer a kind of insight and perspective that nothing else does. After all, you don’t learn quite as much from a right decision as you do from a wrong one.

Curb the idea that you have to be successful at everything you attempt. In the grand scheme of things, no one’s going to care about your failures, and neither should you.

Idea for Impact: Don’t be so hard on yourself. You are not your mistakes. Perhaps, when life rejects you from something good, it may be redirecting you to something better, whether or not you realize it at that time. Seek ways to move forward.

How Can You Contribute?

January 25, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The celebrated management guru Peter Drucker urged folks to replace the pursuit of success with the pursuit of contribution. To him, the existential question was not, “How can I achieve what’s been asked of me?” but “What can I contribute?”

Drucker wrote in his bestselling The Effective Executive (1967; my summary,)

The great majority of executives tend to focus downward. They are occupied with efforts rather than with results. They worry over what the organization and their superiors “owe” them and should do for them. And they are conscious above all of the authority they “should have.” As a result, they render themselves ineffectual. The effective executive focuses on contribution. He looks up from his work and outward toward goals. He asks: “What can I contribute that will significantly affect the performance and the results of the institution I serve?” His stress is on responsibility.

The focus on contribution is the key to effectiveness: in a person’s own work—its content, its level, its standards, and its impacts; in his relations with others—his superiors, his associates, his subordinates; in his use of the tools of the executive such as meetings or reports. The focus on contribution turns the executive’s attention away from his own specialty, his own narrow skills, his own department, and toward the performance of the whole. It turns his attention to the outside, the only place where there are results.

Peter Drucker: Focus on Contribution - How Can You Contribute? Focusing on contribution versus (or as well as) typical metrics of success pivots you away from self-focus and helps engage in meaningful relationships with your employees, peers, and managers.

In his celebrated article on “Managing Oneself” in the January 2005 issue of Harvard Business Review, Drucker clarified,

Throughout history, the great majority of people never had to ask the question, What should I contribute? They were told what to contribute, and their tasks were dictated either by the work itself—as it was for the peasant or artisan—or by a master or a mistress—as it was for domestic servants.

There is no return to the old answer of doing what you are told or assigned to do. Knowledge workers in particular have to learn to ask a question that has not been asked before: What should my contribution be? To answer it, they must address three distinct elements: What does the situation require? Given my strengths, my way of performing, and my values, how can I make the greatest contribution to what needs to be done? And finally, What results have to be achieved to make a difference?

Idea for Impact: Take Responsibility for Your Contribution

Focusing on contribution instead of efforts is empowering because it compels you to think through the results you need to deliver to make a difference and identify new skills to develop. “People in general, and knowledge workers in particular, grow according to the demands they make on themselves,” as Drucker remarked in The Effective Executive.

Why People Get Happier as They Age

January 23, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Studies have pointed out that most people get happier as they grow older. In fact, across any cultural, economic, and social spectrum, the most content cohort tends to be seniors.

Older people find happiness in “ordinary” things.

Older people start taking stock of their blessings. They’ve concluded that life is short. Amid the anxieties about ill health, income and savings, changes in social status, and bereavements, they tend to make the best of the time they have left.

People in later life learn to avoid situations that make them feel sad or stressed. They have relationships that are more meaningful. They’ve also had more time to learn and read others’ intentions, which helps them avoid stressful situations and develop better solutions to conflict. They’re less likely to experience persistent negative moods.

In short, older people have a better sense of perspective on life, and they take things in stride. Moreover, they’re better able to control their emotions.

Idea for Impact: Don’t wait until later life for a positive experience.

If there’s one thing the older folks can show us best, happiness is a function of expectations. Older people adjust their expectations of life. They have lower aspirations, and they learn to find satisfaction in tiny triumphs.

What elements of that mindset could you integrate into your life now? Could you live more in the present tense, not grasping at some future happiness jackpot?

Choose Pronoia, Not Paranoia

January 18, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Pronoia is a weird, incredible feeling that everyone out there is helping you and cheering you on. The world is showering you with blessings.

Yes, that’s the antithesis of paranoia.

Pronoia is the delusional sentiment that people are conspiring in favor of your well-being, speaking nice things behind your back, and rooting for your benefit. The American astrologer Rob Brezsny has written, “Pronoia is the understanding that the universe is fundamentally friendly. It’s a mode of training your senses and intellect, so you’re able to perceive the fact that life always gives you exactly what you need, exactly when you need it.”

Pronoia is a convivial orientation—one exemplified by feelings of hope, trust, confidence, and affection. Choosing to cultivate optimism thus opens up a new identity. You no longer harbor bitterness and misgivings towards others.

Idea for Impact: Embrace the mindset that life is happening for you instead of against you. It’s a fantastic way to experience life!

Don’t Cheat. Just Eat.

December 12, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

If you’re someone who likes to “cheat” over the holidays and indulge in calorie-rich festive treats, why think of food as yet another serving of shame?

Being out of shape isn’t a failure of character.

Guilt around food is not just pointless—it actually can be harmful. Distress can sabotage digestion. Research suggests that anxiety kicks your autonomic nervous system into high gear. The capacities of your digestive organs are subdued, and instead of metabolizing and assimilating your food, it’s processed less effectively. In other words, guilt—or any sort of negative self-judgment—can initiate stress signals and neurotransmitters. These hinder a healthy digestive response.

Eat whatever it is you want mindfully and let it make you happy. Indulging is part of what sets a holiday apart. As the Roman dramatist Terence counseled, “Everything in moderation” (to which the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde added, “… including moderation.”)

Also, stop “food policing” others.

Idea for Impact: Give Your Guilt a Holiday

Eat, drink, and be merry this holiday season. Yes, slackening up on your diet plan doesn’t feel great, but it doesn’t have to be a bad thing, either. However, labeling it “cheating” probably is. Your language matters!

Discover the Essence of Buddhism in 5 Minutes

October 1, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

“One thing I teach: suffering and the end of suffering. It is just Ill and the ceasing of Ill that I proclaim.” The historical Buddha is said to have announced at his first sermon (Dharmacakrapravarta) to a group of five former ascetic companions (the Pañcavargika.) Following his enlightenment, the Buddha was living at the Deer Park (Mṛgadāva) at the Resort of Seers (Ṛṣipatana) near the Bārāṇasī Forest, in the modern-day Sārnāth in India.

The Buddha’s teaching centered on the notion that all sentient beings seek happiness—and happiness is anchored in the freedom from suffering.

To discover the essence of Buddhism, then, is to become aware of what causes suffering and how you can cease suffering.

The truth of the nature of suffering is also the path to the end of suffering.

American psychotherapist and Buddhist teacher Sylvia Boorstein has argued (Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Winter 1991) that the answer to this question is the whole of Buddha’s teaching:

If you pay attention for just five minutes, you know some very fundamental dharma [of the Buddha]: things change, nothing stays comfortable, sensations come and go quite impersonally, according to conditions, but not because of anything you think or do. Changes come and go quite by themselves. In the first five minutes of paying attention, you learn that pleasant sensations lead to the desire that these sensations will stay and that unpleasant sensations lead to the hope that they will go away. And both the attraction and the aversion amount to tension in the mind. Both are uncomfortable. So in the first five minutes, you get a big lesson about suffering: wanting things to be other than they are. Such a tremendous amount of truth to be learned just closing your eyes and paying attention to bodily sensations.

While you must welcome pleasant, pleasurable feelings, you must bear in mind that pleasure is transient, like every other feeling. Clinging—wishing to hang on to those people, places, possessions, or experiences that bring about pleasant experiences—is hopeless. By the same token, being aversive to painful or unpleasant experiences is impossible.

Idea for Impact: The essence of Buddhism isn’t a dogma, but the very practical problem of suffering.

Buddhism teaches that you, too, can initiate into the dharma “spiritual” practice by learning to cease your attachment to pleasant experiences and your revulsion against unpleasant ones.

The essence of the Buddha’s teaching is … that you suffer because of your ignorance—because you don’t realize the real nature of reality.

The truth of the nature of suffering is also the path to the end of suffering. In other words, pleasure without pain is achievable only as you evolve toward higher states of mindfulness.

The Buddha’s teaching isn’t pessimistic. It doesn’t stress only the suffering, pain, and unhappiness at the heart of the human experience. In fact, it’s the opposite. The Buddha’s teaching summons joyful participation in a world of sorrows by clarifying what is unsatisfactory and suggesting how to overcome it.

How to Create Emotional Connections with Your Customers

September 21, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Consumers are shifting towards memorable experiences over material objects that bring happiness and well-being. Experiential consumption is increasing—the global spending on travel, leisure, and food service is estimated to grow from $5.8 trillion in 2016 to $8.0 trillion by 2030.

Businesses are responding by offering indulgences (think Apple products,) enhancing shopping experience (ordering and carrying-out Domino’s Pizza,) and creating more intimate experiences (Mastercard’s Priceless campaign) for consumers.

One particularly edifying case study is Unilever’s Persil brand of laundry detergents (Unilever licenses this brand from Henkel in many countries.) As part of the “Dirt is good” campaign, Persil’s sentimental adverts that remind “learn to be a kid” (clip,) “climb a tree, break a leg … that’s part of life” (clip,) and “dirt makes us equal” (clip) have attempted to connect with consumers emotionally.

Persil bucked the longstanding ritual of creating dull adverts for its dull products (cheery moms grabbing washing baskets and fragrant flowers and butterflies rising from the clean laundry.) Persil doesn’t focus on the detergent’s stain-busting attributes. Instead, Persil’s campaign signals that children must feel free to experience the world around them regardless of the impact on their clothes. One prominent advert (clip) presented a cheerless robot who slowly transforms into a child while playing in the open air and splashing around in a muddy pool during a rainstorm: “Every child has the right to be a child. Dirt is good.”

Even the UNICEF commended Unilever for “creating awareness of children’s right to play, the right to express themselves—in short, the right to be a child! It encourages parents to see the value of exploration, play, activity and exercise as critical to children’s development and important for full and healthy lives, even if it means that children get dirty in the process.”

Idea for Impact: Enhance how your customers see and feel the benefits of your products and services. Promote an emotional connection between products and customers.

Learn to Cope When You’re Stressed

September 14, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Stress is a normal part of life. On the whole, there’re two major forms of negative stress (“distress”): the stress concerned with loss (divorce, death of a loved one, failure) and the stress involved with threats to your sense of self, status, wellbeing, or security.

The actual physical symptoms—including faster heartbeat, elevated blood pressure, quickened breathing, upset stomach, muscle tension, chest pain, and increased perspiration—may be identical, regardless of the external stress factor. However, stress does manifest itself differently with everyone. If untreated, stress also brings on or worsens more than a few other symptoms or diseases.

Stress doesn’t just get better on its own. Here’re four things to do to gain control of your life’s stress before it can start controlling you.

Proactively reduce stress-causing events. Reduce exposure to people, situations, and triggers that initiate unjustifiable stress. Create rituals that can help you cope. Learn to confront those situations in manageable amounts—schedule your day, simplify your schedule, get more organized, and learn to say no to added commitments. Cut back on your obligations.
Improve your resiliency. Maintain good health and stamina. Eat a healthy diet, get adequate sleep, and exercise regularly. Take regular breaks and schedule vacations where you can totally disconnect. Sometimes, just being idle—even wasting time—can help you not only feel good but also recharge your mind and body.
Manage your reaction to stressful events. Learn how to relax, such as deep-breathing techniques, progressive muscle relaxation, meditation, and massage. Schedule time for calming exercises such as yoga, tai chi, and music or art therapy. Engage in a relaxing hobby or offer to volunteer in your community.
Reach out. Stress feeds on feelings and fears that we keep to ourselves. Stress causes you to lose objectivity about your situation. Often just talking to a trusted friend or relative—even a counselor—could help you look at things from a distance and work out coping mechanisms.

Idea for Impact: Integrate daily stress prevention.

You may not control all your stressors, but you can control how you react to those stressors. If your current stress management efforts aren’t effective enough, try something new.

Sometimes You Should Stop Believing // The Case Against Hope

July 6, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Hoping for outcomes that are almost unfeasible is misleading—for example, hoping that you’ll win the lottery or that the victims of some deadly accident have somehow survived.

There is something about giving up hope and accepting the reality that is comforting

Research has suggested that letting go of hope can often set you free. For example, folks who hope for a miraculous therapy for a terminal disease are less happy than those who accept the hopelessness of the situation.

The life of the Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl is particularly illustrative of the difference between false and realistic hope. When confronted by the reality of the Auschwitz and Kaufering concentration camps, Frankl did not wish to dig his way out of his prison. Instead, he acknowledged the bleak reality of the concentration camps, and hoped vaguely for something feasible and sensible—that the war could end and he may be set free. Frankl, who later established logotherapy, famously helped his fellow prisoners bear the horror around them by urging them to contemplate the lives they may lead after the war.

False Hope is Delusional, Realistic Hope is Worthwhile

Yes, hope can be life-affirming. It can give you the impetus to keep on in the face of struggle and disappointment. Hope—underpinned by hard work—is what made many a great achievement possible, from inventing life-changing drugs to dismantling racial segregation.

But false hope is deadly. It can shackle you to an outcome you long for but cannot achieve.

False hopes lead to disappointment. If you hope to become an eminent actor or a great chess player, your expectations are bound to be dashed. It’s much better to hope that you’ll enjoy acting or playing basketball and acknowledge the inadequacies you can’t overcome.

Don’t rehash false hope as optimism. Characterize it for what it is: the sweet illusion of denial. Don’t be fooled by the unbridled optimism espoused by our hope-obsessed culture.

False hope locks you into a concept—of people, situation, job, culture—that has little bearing on the reality. False hope will bind you to the idea of what could be, instead of what is.

Idea for Impact: Sometimes you should stop believing. Giving up hope and embracing reality can set you free. False hope is futile.

What Are You So Afraid Of? // Summary of Susan Jeffers’s ‘Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway’

June 1, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Title: Psychologist Susan Jeffers’s self-help classic, Feel the Fear … and Do It Anyway (1987, 2006.)

Idea for Impact: “You can drop an awful lot of excess baggage if you learn to play with life instead of fight it.”

Central Premise: You’re often held back by a “Grand Canyon” of fear. You’re wasting far too much time trying to perfect your mental state and seeking to feel happier, confident, and motivated.

Thought-Provoking Snippet: “It is reported that more than 90% of what we worry about never happens. That means that our negative worries have less than a 10% chance of being correct. If this is so, isn’t being positive more realistic than being negative? … If you think about it, the important issue is not which is more realistic, but rather, “Why be miserable when you can be happy?””

Mindset Change: Recognize the limited control you have over your emotions. Accept fear as a natural part of your mental development and learn how to live alongside your fears and self-doubts. Use positive affirmations—e.g., replace “It’s gonna be terrible!” with “I can handle it … it’ll be a learning experience!”

Caution: Don’t overdo affirmations. Cheery slogans such as “I Am Powerful and I Love it!” may lift your mood. But repeating them “at least twenty-five times each morning, noon, and night,” as Jeffers suggests, could make you feel worse by evoking the peevish internal counterargument that you’re not and you don’t.

Action Plan: Get on with the things you want to do. The momentum of positive emotions builds up as soon as you start taking action. “Every time you encounter something that forces you to “handle it,” your self-esteem is raised considerably. You learn to trust that you will survive, no matter what happens. And in this way your fears are diminished immeasurably.”

Why Read: An insightful prescription for why and how to get over your “urgh.”

« Previous Page

Emotions

Wondering what to read next?

Idea for Impact: Take Responsibility for Your Contribution

Wondering what to read next?

Older people find happiness in “ordinary” things.

Idea for Impact: Don’t wait until later life for a positive experience.

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Idea for Impact: Give Your Guilt a Holiday

Wondering what to read next?

The truth of the nature of suffering is also the path to the end of suffering.

Idea for Impact: The essence of Buddhism isn’t a dogma, but the very practical problem of suffering.

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Idea for Impact: Integrate daily stress prevention.

Wondering what to read next?

There is something about giving up hope and accepting the reality that is comforting

False Hope is Delusional, Realistic Hope is Worthwhile

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?