Mindfulness

Don’t Hide from Your Feelings, Accept Them

April 19, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

When you’re feeling upset, angry, stressed, or sad, don’t deny, withhold, or hide from your feelings. Think about what it is that’s making you feel this way.

Emotional Acceptance refers to the willingness and ability to accept and experience negative emotions—to acknowledge and absorb them. Jan Chozen Bays, a pediatrician-turned Zen teacher, writes in Mindfulness on the Go: Simple Meditation Practices You Can Do Anywhere (2014,) a practical guide for engaging the mind,

A very important way to work with discomfort is to stop avoiding it. You will walk right into it and feel from within the body what is true. You investigate the discomfort—its size, shape, surface texture and even its color and sound. Is it constant or intermittent? When you are this attentive, when your meditative absorption is deep, what we call discomfort or pain begins to shift and even disappear. It becomes a series of sensations just appearing and disappearing in empty space, twinkling on and off. It is most interesting.

Mindfulness practice needn’t be just for negative emotions, either. Are you feeling happy and joyful? Calm and content? Apprehensive or remorseful? No matter the case, taking stock of how you’re feeling can help you realize that your emotions do not represent you. They don’t have to define your thoughts.

Practicing this self-reflective process regularly will help you better understand yourself, break negative patterns in your life, and react to emotional situations in a wholesome, more productive way.

Idea for Impact: Practice Emotional Acceptance—Feeling Bad Can Be Good

Emotional avoidance appears to be a reasonable thing to do. Yes, it provides momentary relief in the here and now. But emotional avoidance often involves denying the truth—and that isn’t a good foundation for a healthy life.

Over time, it only makes things worse to avoid the thing that scares you. Create the awareness to feel your feelings, label them, accept them, and then let them fade.

Make Time to Do it

April 8, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Think about how these two declarations sound:

“Let me make time to do it.”
“Let me find time to do it.”

If you asked someone to do something, which response seems more convincing and persuasive?

When someone says they’ll make time to do something, you sense they’ll give the matter a feeling of priority. It implies that they’ll prioritize.

On the other hand, if someone says they’ll find time, it appears like they’ll hope to find a gap where they may fit you in—if they can remember what it is you asked them to do.

Often language—particularly self-talk—can have a way of revealing truths about values and priorities. The expression “I’ll make time” shows how the idea of time management only matters to how important the stuff is that’s competing for your time.

Idea for Impact: You know something is important when one makes time for it.

Think carefully about what you make time to do versus what you find time to do. The essence of time management is to prioritize.

Five Ways … You Could Be More Optimistic

March 19, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Manage negative emotions and yourself. People who lack the capacity to withstand psychological distress such as anger, fear, frustration, and sadness are at a marked disadvantage in life.
Let go of sunk costs. Don’t become stuck with poor decisions hoping that they will eventually work out in your favor. Cut your losses when something’s not working for you. Too much persistence can often be bad.
Stop thinking in absolutes. Shun blind optimism. Discard the myth of perfection. Even the most optimistic outlook may do little good without realism and flexibility. Learn to accept and forgive—there’s good and bad in all individuals and things.
Do without the word ‘should.’ Instead of telling yourself, “I should have finished that task last week,” substitute the word ‘could.’ Realize you have the option of exercising your own choice.
Practice gratitude. Make a list of all the people and things in your life for which you are grateful. Reflect on the richness of the events and relationships that have enhanced your life. Recognizing that you are deserving of all these good things will make you feel good about who you are and what you’ve done.

Bonus: Give yourself time to feel good. When you reach a goal, allow for a period of celebration before taking on the next goal. Treating yourself occasionally, but avoid escapism.

Leadership is Being Visible at Times of Crises

February 25, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

It’s terrible optics for an elected official to leave his constituency while it’s in the midst of a crisis.

In a grave slip-up for an ambitious politician, Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s giving a lame excuse initially for his Cancún joint made him look insensitive. He was expected to stay and endure alongside his constituents, who were suffering from Texas’s recent freezing temperatures and blackouts.

Of course, Cruz didn’t do anything that hurt anybody, apart from drawing police resources away to shepherd him through the airport. Cruz’s argument—sensible in its own way—was that all he could do was be in regular communication with state and local officials who’re spearheading the crisis response. After all, Cruz has no formal power in the state administration.

As a comparison, King George and the Queen Mother declined to leave London as bombs shattered their city during World War II. As an expression of concern, and commitment to the Allied cause, they even visited sites destroyed during The Blitz of 1940.

Idea for Impact: Leadership means serving as an anchor during crisis times and being available, connected, and accessible during a crisis. Leaders can’t do everything, and they need to delegate responsibilities. However, entrustment should not entail emotional detachment.

How to Avoid Magical Thinking

February 22, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Magical thinking remains a subtle impediment to making sound decisions. The more you examine yourself, the more you can reduce your tendency to indulge in it.

Discover the truth for yourself. Beware of the tendency to let others think for you. Don’t believe what your parents, teachers, counselors, mentors, priests, and authorities of all inclinations have taught you from an early age. (The best predictor of people’s spiritual beliefs is the religiosity of their parents.) Question others’ underlying premises and discover for yourself what’s reasonable. Force yourself to test for alternatives.

Don’t believe what you want to believe is true. Many people believe in UFOs and ghosts, even when there’s no credible verification for any visitation from outer space or dead souls haunting abandoned buildings. Often, misinformation is cunningly designed to evade careful analytical reasoning—it can easily slip under the radar of even the most well-informed people. Shun blind optimism.

Consciously identify your biases and adverse instincts. Psychologists have identified more than 100 cognitive biases that can get in the way of clear and rational thinking. Explore how those biases could come into play in your thinking. Try to determine their motive. Work to extricate yourself from them to the best of your ability.

Demand proof when the facts seem demonstrable. Remain intellectually agnostic toward what hasn’t been established scientifically or isn’t provable. If you can’t determine if something is true or it isn’t, suspend judgment. Beware of anecdotes—emotionally swaying stories in particular—they are the weakest form of evidence.

Don’t believe in something that isn’t true just because there’s a practical reason to. If you feel emotionally inclined to believe in something because it gives you hope, comfort, and the illusion of control, identify your belief as just that. Faith is often no more than an inclination that’s not withstood the tests of reason. The process of faith is an absence of doubt. There’ll always be people who reject evolution for reasons that have little to do with evolution. Don’t act with more confidence in unproven theories than is justifiable.

Idea for Impact: Be wary of the influences that can put you at risk for magical thinking.

Give critical thinking and systematic evidence the central role in how you understand the world. Improving the criteria you use to judge the truth of things is difficult—but it’s of the essence. Have an unvarying, well-balanced degree of skepticism about everything, especially your own postulations.

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.

Marie Kondo is No Cure for Our Wasteful and Over-consuming Culture

February 11, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

I recently watched Tidying Up with Marie Kondo (2019,) the popular Netflix series featuring the Japanese decluttering evangelist. The show is based on her bestselling manual, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (2011.)

In each episode, Kondo cheerfully proclaims, “I love mess!” With certain calm, she calls on various families and goes about clearing their tat-filled homes and bringing order to their chaos. Her trademark sense of minimalistic bliss is informed by Japanese aesthetic and a Zen-sense of orderliness.

Apparently, Marie Kondo isn’t attuned with Christianity.

Interestingly, Kondo has clients kneel on the floor and “ask” their dwelling for “permission” and “cooperation” before they get started. “I’d love for you to picture your vision for your home,” she pleads. “Communicate that to your home.” She encourages saying “thank you” to their piles of clothes as they sort and fold them. She daintily treats inanimate objects as living things and speaks to them. She encourages her show’s audiences to do the same.

That’s Buddhism/Shinto in force. Some flavors of native Japanese spirituality focus on inanimate objects’ sacredness. Several of Kondo’s critics in America have insisted that her methods aren’t compatible with Christianity. Kondo’s rituals of treating objects as if they have feelings, these critics have declared, is to be discouraged because her ways invoke animism, the religious notion that objects possess some sort of spiritual essence.

“Kondo-ing” Has Become a Verb.

With a translator in tow, Marie Kondo never treats her patrons as victims, and that’s exceptionally impressive.

By eschewing a victim mentality, Kondo encourages and empowers people in a way that actually brings about lasting change. Audiences particularly love her advice on organizing wardrobes and storage spaces and routinizing tasks into maintainable systems.

Kondo emphasizes prioritizing joy. She doggedly insists upon keeping only those objects that “spark joy” (she uses the Japanese intransitive verb “tokimeku,” roughly, “to flicker.”) Her “if in doubt, throw it out” commandment has helped millions of people ward off hoarding tendencies.

Kondo has become a cultural sensation, appealing to all sorts of homes bursting with cheap consumer goods. The “Marie Kondo Effect” is directly responsible for increasing donations to thrift stores and charity shops worldwide.

Keep what sparks joy. Own less stuff. Pursue what’s meaningful.

If you’d like to downsize or declutter without letting go of things you love, take the KonMari method to heart. But don’t go too far. Be careful about shedding items to which you have a deep sentimental connection. Put it into operation earnestly to get rid of clutter. Find joy, significance, and sacrament in simple everyday objects and tasks. Simplifying your priorities and refocus on things that you tend to overlook in the busyness of life.

Only Consume What You Need. Supplement the Konmari method of paring down your belongings with the ongoing strategy for minimizing additional purchases. Buy only those things that will “spark joy” and continue to do so for many years. Never mind that the economy depends upon endless undifferentiated consumption.
Reduce, but Don’t Refresh. If you have a bunch of empty space, be selective in how you fill it up. Cutting down your possessions isn’t an invitation to revert to a situation where decluttering again becomes necessary after a while. Restrain that impulse to acquire the new and the shiny—that’s what overwhelmed Kondo’s clients in the first place.

The real magic of Tidying Up with Marie Kondo is in shedding anxiety, living in the moment, and being your best self. Your happiest moments come when you’re lost to a conversation or an experience. You’ll avoid the helter-skelter of life has the power to deny and neglect what’s most important in your life.

Will the Marie Kondo Effect alleviate haywire consumerism?

The more profound significance of decluttering and minimalism is to help make better choices when making purchases in the future.

And beyond the individual convenience, it would be more productive to build up collective awareness and confront the modern consumption economy. It only presents overwhelming incentives to mass-produce and overconsume superficially appealing items.

Collectively, humanity needs to start questioning whether we should be pursuing growth at all. The economic system we have now can’t sustain forever. Our ecological systems can only sustain so much life. We’ve grown so much as a population, and we’ve started consuming so much that we’re straining the earth’s ability to support us. Hyperconsumerism needs to stop.

Idea for Impact: Negligent hyper-consumerism is shameful and embarrassing, even to this “card-carrying” capitalist.

Ironically, after making us get rid of everything, Marie Kondo has started peddling such things as therapeutic tuning fork and crystal ($75,) compost bin ($175,) and food storage container ($60) that are guaranteed to “spark joy.”

At any rate, I hope Marie Kondo and her ilk inspire a collective self-loathing at how much we consume. Utility should be the principal criterion for what we buy and keep.

I urge you to make strides towards more mindful consumption and consciously differentiate wants and needs.

Buy what you need. Buy the best quality stuff you can afford, and keep them for longer. Choose things that can be easily repaired—if possible, repurposed and recycled. Encourage businesses that peddle goods that are manufactured as responsibly and mindfully as possible.

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?

How to Banish Your Inner Perfectionist

January 21, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

You have an enemy: a feisty, malign force working against you. It’s the internalized perfectionist. It’s the stream of subversive self-talk urging indecision, doubt, and fear.

The #1 hack to overcoming you perfectionist tendency is to accept that whatever you need to work on just needs to be an outline, first attempt, rough copy, version 0. It needn’t be perfect. You just need to get it to a little bit better shape than before. You can then consider the next baby step.

Idea for Impact: Many things in your life need not be done perfectly. They’re to be done … just done … done to spur more done … not to dwell to perfection.

Your goal now is not to be like a Picasso, Mozart, Steven King, Lebron James, Warren Buffett, or some superstar. All you have to do now is create, edit, fix, or process and get whatever it is you’re working on to the next milestone. Make this a rule.

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Mindfulness

Idea for Impact: Practice Emotional Acceptance—Feeling Bad Can Be Good

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Idea for Impact: Be wary of the influences that can put you at risk for magical thinking.

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Apparently, Marie Kondo isn’t attuned with Christianity.

“Kondo-ing” Has Become a Verb.

Keep what sparks joy. Own less stuff. Pursue what’s meaningful.

Will the Marie Kondo Effect alleviate haywire consumerism?

Idea for Impact: Negligent hyper-consumerism is shameful and embarrassing, even to this “card-carrying” capitalist.

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?