Mindfulness

How to Clear Your Mental Horizon

June 8, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

This anecdote about a reclusive Nobel laureate is scarcely practical advice, but an excellent reminder of the importance of eliminating internal and external distractions.

Peter Higgs is not a fan of modern technology. The British theoretical physicist, 84, is so consumed with work that he has never sent an email, looked at the internet, or used a cellphone. He’s so cut off from modes of modern communication that he didn’t know he’d won this year’s Nobel Prize in physics—for his 1964 paper predicting the Higgs boson, which imbues other particles with mass—until a neighbor congratulated him on the street. “I resent being disturbed in this way,” says Higgs. “Why should people be able to interrupt me like that?” Because they want to keep in touch? “But I don’t want to be in touch,” he laughs. “It’s an intrusion into my way of life, and certainly on principle I don’t feel obliged to accept it.” He doesn’t own a TV, but not because he lacks interest in the outside world. “I don’t regard television as the outside world,” he offers dryly. “I regard it as an artifact.”

And, the Guardian notes that Higgs isn’t interested in being accessible:

Higgs struck upon his [Higgs boson] theory while walking in the Cairngorms one weekend in 1964. An unworldly and donnish academic, he was so immersed in particle physics research that when his first son was born he was miles away in a university library, and so remote from contemporary reality that to this day he owns neither a TV nor mobile phone, and only acquired his first computer on his 80th birthday.

Make Conditions as Favorable as Possible

Good jobs are overwhelming, and accomplishing important things is really, really hard. As the following anecdotes will illuminate, many of the greatest achievements in life are often accomplished by people who (1) have a particular desire that becomes the foundational building block for everything they do, (2) focus on what they want to achieve, and (3) divest themselves of internal and external distractions.

The physicist and 1965 Nobel laureate Richard Feynman famously invented the falsehood that he’s irresponsible so that he could avoid mundane tasks. He wrote, “I tell everybody. “I don’t do anything.” If anybody asks me to be on a committee to take care of admissions … “No! I’m irresponsible. … I don’t give a damn about the students!” Of course I give a damn about the students, but I know that somebody else’ll do it! … because I like to do physics, and I want to see if I can still do it. I am selfish, okay? I want to do my physics.”
The American crime writer James Ellroy said, “I’m interested in doing very few things. I don’t have a cell phone. Don’t have a computer. Don’t have a TV set. Don’t go to movies. Don’t read. I ignore the world so I might live obsessively.”
Asked about his vacations, the German filmmaker Werner Herzog once revealed that he has never taken vacation, “I work steadily and methodically, with great focus. There is never anything frantic about how I do my job; I’m no workaholic. A holiday is a necessity for someone whose work is an unchanged daily routine, but for me, everything is constantly fresh and always new. I love what I do, and my life feels like one long vacation.”

Idea for Impact: Find the Focus That’ll Take to Do Your Best

Success is a product of unremitting attention to purpose. Avoid, disconnect, eliminate, automate, delegate, reduce, or minimize mundane concerns and routine affairs that could dissuade you from focusing on what you want to achieve.

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.”

Pulling Off the Impossible Under Immense Pressure: Leadership Lessons from Captain Sully

May 25, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

I recently watched Sully (2016,) the overrated Clint Eastwood-directed drama about the US Airways Flight 1549 incident, aka the “Miracle on the Hudson.”

In summary, on 15-Jan-2009, Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger (played by Tom Hanks) heroically dead-sticked his Airbus A320 aircraft in New York City’s Hudson River after both the aircraft’s engines failed from a bird strike. He then helped get passengers and crew off uninjured.

Sully centers on Sullenberger’s post-decision dissonance. To spin the real-life six-minute flight and the 24-minute swift rescue into a 96-minute Holyrood extravaganza, the filmmakers devised an antagonist in the form of National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators who try hard to blame Sullenberger for the mishap.

Overdramatized Portrayal of the NTSB Investigators

On the screen, the smirking NTSB investigators use flight simulators and computer analysis to second-guess Sullenberger’s lightning-quick decisions. They would have rather he made it to an airport nearby—a possibility that he had instantly judged was not viable given his 40 years of flying experience.

Contrary to Sully‘s portrayal, the NTSB was unequivocal that landing the aircraft on the Hudson was the right call. In his memoir, Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters (2009,) Sullenberger mentions that he was “buoyed by the fact that investigators determined that [first officer] Jeff and I made appropriate choices at every step.”

In the course of the real-life 18-month investigation of Flight 1549, the NTSB did investigate the odds of landing the aircraft in a nearby airport. Exploring all possible flaws that contribute to a crash is part of the NTSB’s charter. The NTSB, like other accident-investigation agencies, concerns itself principally with preventing future accidents. It rarely seeks to assign blame, nor does it make the pilots justify their actions.

The Complex Leadership Requirements of Flying

Apart from the sensationalized portrayal of the NTSB investigators, Sully misses the opportunity to call attention to the complex leadership requirements of aviation. Flying a civil aircraft is characterized by a high level of standardization and automation, while still placing a strong emphasis on formal qualification and experience.

Today, highly trained pilots have to work with ever more complicated and autonomous technology. The routinization must be weighed up against deliberate action. On Flight 1549, the A320’s much-studied fly-by-wire system allowed the pilots to concentrate on trying to resurrect the engines, starting the auxiliary power unit (APU,) and deciding the flight path in the direction of the Hudson. Airbus’s legendary computer controls will not allow the pilots to override the computer-imposed limits even in an urgent situation. Sullenberger and others have commented that lesser human-machine interaction may perhaps have allowed him a more favorable landing flare and helped him temper the aircraft’s impact with the water.

Aircrews now consist of ad hoc teams working together typically only for a few flights. They build their team quickly and rely on the crew’s collective knowledge and experience to round out the high levels of standardization.

Due to the complex demands for leadership in aircrews, specialized training programs such as Crew Resource Management (CRM) are in place to improve crew communication, situational awareness, and impromptu decision-making. These systems were established to help crews when technical failures and unexpected events disrupt highly procedualized normal operations.

Furthermore, individual and organizational learning from accidents was institutionalized through mandatory reporting of incidents—not only within the airline involved but also across the aviation community.

Leadership Lessons on Acting Under Immense Pressure: The Context of Success

Owing to intuition, experience, and quick coordination, Sullenberger was able to “land” the aircraft on the Hudson within four minutes following the bird strike and have his passengers and crew quickly evacuated onto the aircraft’s wings and onto rafts.

The rapid and highly complex coordination required for this extraordinary achievement was only achievable because of exceptional leadership, exemplary decision-making under stress, and the technical skills of both the cockpit- and cabin-crew.

The pilots were highly experienced—Sullenberger even had experience as a glider pilot. Further contextual factors—the calm weather on that afternoon and the proximity of NY Waterway ferries—helped bring this accident to a good end. All this facilitated the almost immediate rescue of passengers and crew from the rapidly sinking aircraft and the frigid water.

On Another Note, Sullenberger’s memoir, Highest Duty (2009,) is passable. The most interesting part of the book is the last fourth, where he discusses Flight 1549 and what went through his mind. Interestingly, Sullenberger writes that even after he realized that the plane was in one piece after hitting the water, he worried about the difficulties that still lay ahead. The aircraft was sinking: everyone had to be evacuated quickly. The passengers could survive only for a few minutes in the frigid waters of the Hudson.

The Power of Negative Thinking

May 21, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Stoic philosophy recommends a practice called premeditatio malorum (“the premeditation of evils,”) i.e. intentionally visualizing the worst-case scenario in your mind’s eye.

The first point is to acknowledge that misfortunes and difficulties could, rather than certainly will, come about. The second is to envisage your most constructive response should the worst-case scenario transpire. For instance, if you’d lose your job due to coronavirus, what resources could you rely on, and how could you handle the consequences?

The direct benefit of premeditatio malorum is in taming your anxiety: when you soberly conjure up how bad things could go, you typically reckon that you could indeed cope. You’ll not dwell in the negative thoughts. Even the worst possible scenario couldn’t be so terrible after all.

Another surprising benefit of negative visualization is in raising your awareness that you could lose your relationships, possessions, routines, blessings, and everything else that you currently enjoy—but perhaps take for granted. This increases your gratitude for having them now.

This Stoic exercise has an equivalent in Buddhist meditation-based mindfulness practices that encourage nonjudgmental awareness of unpleasant sensations (the vedanā.)

Your emotions, sensations, and events are in flux. They arise and pass. You’re merely to regard yourself as the observer of these thoughts and feelings, but you’re not to identify with them. You are not your thoughts … you are not your feelings. The Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield writes in The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology (2015,)

Thoughts and opinions arise but they think themselves and disappear, “like bubbles on the Ganges,” says the Buddha. When we do not cling to them, they lose their hold on us. In the light of awareness, the constructed self of our identification relaxes. And what is seen is just the process of life, not self nor other, but life unfolding as part of the whole.

Idea for Impact: Could you benefit from reflecting on how you think of potential negative events?

An awareness of the possible—and the self-determining attitude—can be quite liberating. Premeditatio malorum is a surprisingly useful technique, if only with a scary name.

“What then should each of us say as each hardship befalls us? It was for this that I was exercising, It was for this that I was training,” as Epictetus philosophized in Discourses (3.10.7–8.)

The High Cost of Winning a Small Argument

May 14, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Winning a conflict with a colleague over who’s right may feel good at the moment. But you could lose a future battle when you may need her cooperation and support the most.

Insisting upon being right when disagreeing with your boss could be dearer.

It’s futile to win any argument by overpowering or silencing the other person. Even causal denigration and occasional microaggressions can eventually lead to feelings of alienation and anger.

Conflicts sometimes evolve quickly from simple disagreements into high-stakes battles. So, before it’s too late, consider if taking a step back is wiser. Take the initiative and concede a point—even if you may end up losing the argument.

Seeking small glory now may only spoil your chance of bigger success in the future. Focus on the outcome—often, it’s the result that matters, not your role in it.

Idea for Impact: When you think you can nail someone with a winning argument, take a deep breath, and check if you could control your ego and back down. You may actually lose something small, but avoid losing something bigger.

When One Person is More Interested in a Relationship

May 9, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The American sociologist Willard Waller coined the term “Principle of Least Interest” to describe how differences of commitment in a relationship can have a major effect on the relationship’s dynamics.

In The Family: A Dynamic Interpretation (1938,) Waller noted that, in any relationship (romantic, familial, business, buyer-seller, and so on) where one partner is far more emotionally invested than the other, the less-involved partner has more power in the relationship. In a one-sided romantic relationship, for example, the partner who loves less has more power.

Moreover, appearing indifferent or uninterested is a common way by which people try to raise their own standing in a relationship. Recall the well-known “walk away” negotiation tactic—tell a used car salesman, “this just isn’t the deal that I’m looking for,” and he may call you the next day with a better offer.

An imbalanced relationship can only last for a while.

A nourishing relationship shouldn’t involve a constant struggle for power.

Idea for Impact: Watch out for relationships where the other seems to care less about the relationship than you do. Such relationships can drain you dry.

Is Your Harried Mind Causing You to Underachieve?

April 20, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

American psychiatrist Edward Hallowell, author of Driven to Distraction (2011,) surveyed cognitive effects such as reduced attention instigated by the hyperkinetic environment that’s become an artifact of modern life.

A never-ending barrage of stimuli and sensations have instigated distractibility, mayhem, inner frenzy, and impatience. Consequently, people can’t stay organized, establish priorities, and manage time effectively—causing them to underachieve.

Hallowell described how “Attention Deficit Trait (ADT)” makes smart people underperform in this Harvard Business Review article.

ADT is brought on by the demands on our time and attention that have exploded over the past two decades. As our minds fill with noise, the brain gradually loses its capacity to attend fully and thoroughly to anything.

The symptoms of ADT come upon a person gradually. The sufferer doesn’t experience a single crisis but rather a series of minor emergencies while he or she tries harder and harder to keep up. Shouldering a responsibility to “suck it up” and not complain as the workload increases, executives with ADT do whatever they can to handle a load they simply cannot manage as well as they’d like. The ADT sufferer therefore feels a constant low level of panic and guilt. Facing a tidal wave of tasks, the executive becomes increasingly hurried, curt, peremptory, and unfocused, while pretending that everything is fine.

At a time when the modern corporate culture over-rewards folks who can multitask, deal with ever more responsibilities, and respond now, Hallowell offers the following solutions:

Promote positive emotions. Create a work positive, fear-free emotional work environment in which the brain can function at its best.
Take physical care of your brain. Adequate sleep, a proper diet (increase complex carbohydrates and protein intake,) exercise, and meditation are vital for staving off ADT.
Get organized. Take note of the times of day when you tend to perform at your best; do your most important work then, and save the routine work for other times. Reserve a part of the day to think, plan, and do “deep work.”
Regulate your emotions. To thwart an imminent overreaction to stress (“amygdala hijack” per Daniel Goleman‘s Emotional Intelligence (1995,)) distract yourself by stopping and doing something else. A self-soothing action calms you down until you can focus again.

Idea for Impact: Stress is a terrible ailment in today’s workforce. Learn to manage yourself actively instead of continually reacting to problems as they happen. Avoid overburdening yourself and squandering your willpower. Regulate your work environment, tweak your work habits, get organized, and manage your emotional and physical health.

An Appointment with April

April 16, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

From Bartlett’s Book of Anecdotes (2000,) a story about the Spanish-born philosopher and poet George Santayana:

When Santayana came into a sizable legacy, he was able to relinquish his post on the Harvard faculty. The classroom was packed for his final appearance, and Santayana did himself proud. He was about to conclude his remarks when he caught sight of a forsythia beginning to blossom in a patch of muddy snow outside the window. He stopped abruptly, picked up his hat, gloves, and walking stick, and made for the door. There he turned. “Gentlemen,” he said softly, “I shall not be able to finish that sentence. I have just discovered that I have an appointment with April.”

To complement, an extract from the Anglican clergyman and writer Charles Kingsley’s Letters and Memories of His Life (1877):

I am not fond, you know, of going into churches to pray. We must go up into the chase in the evenings, and pray there with nothing but God’s cloud temple between us and His heaven! And His choir of small birds and night crickets and booming beetles, and all happy things who praise Him all night long! And in the still summer noon, too, with the lazy-paced clouds above, and the distant sheep-bell, and the bee humming in the beds of thyme, and one bird making the hollies ring a moment, and then all still—hushed—awe-bound, as the great thunderclouds slide up from the far south! Then, there to praise God!”

Idea for Impact: Rekindle a Love Affair with Nature

Depending on where in the world you are, the glory of Spring has arrived.

And it has transformed the world in an outburst of renewal and regeneration.

Nature flaunts her bounty, and there’s life everywhere.

A miracle is unfolding—leaves erupting, flowers blossoming, trees budding, birds making nests, bees buzzing. Indeed, “the Earth is like a child that knows poems,” as the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke rejoiced in ushering Spring.

Beckon your fullest blossom this season by soaking up the atmosphere of the season.

Nature offers not just escape but reassurance during the current COVID-19 epidemic.

Unplug from your contraptions and get plugged into Nature.

A Quick Way to De-stress: The “Four Corners Breathing” Exercise

April 9, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Whenever you feel frenzied, i.e., your mind is restless and disturbed, a centering meditation can help you focus inward, pull together your scattered energies, and allow your mind to become calm.

Here’s a quick-and-easy deep breathing exercise called “Four Corners Breathing” suggested by psychologist Lucy Jo Palladino in Find Your Focus Zone (2007):

Find an object nearby that has four corners—a box, your monitor, or even this page.

Start at the upper-left-hand corner and inhale for four counts. Breathe in, filling your lungs with air.

Turn your gaze to the upper-right-hand corner and hold your breath for four counts.

Move to the lower-right-hand corner. Exhale for four counts.

Now shift your attention to the lower-left-hand corner. Tell yourself to relax and smile.

Repeat these steps 3 to 5 times, or as often as you like.

You can do this centering exercise practically anywhere without drawing attention to yourself. It can initiate an immediate shift in consciousness, enabling you to bring greater awareness into the world around you and maintain your calm.

According to ancient meditation practices, the breath can link the mind and the body. When the breathing is calm, the mind is calm, and the body is calm.

Deep breathing is an effective way to moderate the activation of your sympathetic nervous system, which controls the body’s response to a perceived threat.

Idea for Impact: Breathing exercises need not take much time out of your day. Set aside some time to pay attention to your breathing. Even a few minutes of slow, deep breathing can help you get a grip on your mind, manage your emotions, short-circuit the stress response, and keep your mind focused.

Personal Energy: How to Manage It and Get More Done // Summary of ‘The Power of Full Engagement’

March 23, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz’s best-selling The Power of Full Engagement (2003) is a persuasive reminder that matching your energy to a task is the key to excelling.

Personal energy, like willpower, is a “reservoir” that not only becomes depleted during a day but also can be filled up. “Energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance.”

Your Most Valuable Resource is Energy, Not Time

Even if you’re effective at time- and task-management, you may often find yourself with the available time to do something, but not the energy, focus, or passion needed. You can achieve so much with better time-management, but at some point, you can’t put in more hours because time is a finite resource. You can then pivot to another realm of self-management—your personal energy.

Identify the kinds of activities that drain and sustain you. If you know yourself well enough, you can make conscious, proactive choices that will help you feel more energetic throughout the day.
Understand your working pattern. Match your tasks to your energy levels throughout the day. If you are at your best first thing in the morning, work on something challenging at that time and defer the mundane and the routine until later in the day.
Start your day with a brief planning session to force yourself to be proactive. Planning is easier when your energy levels are highest, which, for most people, is first thing in the morning.

Manage Four Types of Personal Energy

The Power of Full Engagement characterizes four distinct but related sources of energy—physical, emotional, mental (ability to focus,) and spiritual (values and beliefs.) For peak performance, you must be physically energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused, and spiritually aligned.

Energy levels vary from person to person, and people are each energized or exhausted by different things.
If you feel wiped out, think about which of these four “reservoirs” of energy is depleted. Stimulate yourself by doing something else that can draw stamina from another reservoir of energy.

Create Positive Energy Rituals

The authors’ study of the performance of top-rated athletes revealed that they rely on rhythmic patterns of focused performance and convalescence. In other words, peak performers push themselves intensely for a time, recuperate, and then return to another round of focused performance. The higher the performance demand, the greater the need for recovery and energy renewal.

Human beings operate in rhythms. Every 90 to 120 minutes, we transit from a high state of arousal slowly down into a lull. Our physiological constitution is designed to balance energy expenditure with intermittent energy renewal to help sustain energy throughout the day.

Intersperse periods of intense work with rejuvenating breaks. Build a rhythm throughout the day so that when you’re working, you’re truly engaged. After a period of intense activity, take a break to renew your energy levels.
Develop intentional routines and rituals—habits that can become automatic over time. Habits are so much more potent because they can reduce the need to rely on your limited conscious will and your discipline to take action.

Idea for Impact: Energy, Like Time, is a Resource You Must Learn to Manage

The Power of Full Engagement (2003) is an essential read—it can help you operate “rhythmically between stress and recovery” and pace your day better.

For sustainable high performance, you need to find systematic ways to expend your energy positively and balance it with regular energy renewal.

Seek periods of good energy and favor them. Reconsider periods of reduced energy and manage them better.

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Mindfulness

Make Conditions as Favorable as Possible

Idea for Impact: Find the Focus That’ll Take to Do Your Best

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Overdramatized Portrayal of the NTSB Investigators

The Complex Leadership Requirements of Flying

Leadership Lessons on Acting Under Immense Pressure: The Context of Success

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Idea for Impact: Rekindle a Love Affair with Nature

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Your Most Valuable Resource is Energy, Not Time

Manage Four Types of Personal Energy

Create Positive Energy Rituals

Idea for Impact: Energy, Like Time, is a Resource You Must Learn to Manage

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