Category: travel

Is extremely important to develop empathy.

Only when you are at your weakest, most vulnerable of moments, do you get to “feel” humbled. You understand the pain of others in similar situation.

In an otherwise robotic world, especially for efficient rule-loving personalities like myself, it is not easy to understand what it feels like when things aren’t in your control. That’s usually the case when you are sick. Of course I am still disciplined and ticking all checkboxes: gargles, steam, soup, blah blah. But ultimately when you are sick, you just have to wait it out. There is not much to be done.

You have to let others run the show. You need to trust others and their judgements. The fact that our lives depend on others is so clear and blinding. The fact which is often overlooked when you are well and in control.

It really is a v humbling experience.

I hope with each of my sicknesses I am able to reshape my neural connections so that next time I am around a sick person, I can treat them with a lot more dignity and patience.

It’s not easy to develop such a loving caring personality but with consistent efforts even the rock turns into sand. :-)

Book suggestion: If you ever find yourself stumbling what to say in any situation to any one: client, employee, child, parent, partner, etc etc, this book is for you. I have got audiobook and it’s wonderful.

This was a Eureka moment for me.

I had always perceived myself as a rebel. The image I had of myself displayed me as a person who doesn’t care about image management.

Usually people like me, who find it difficult to please others, who believe in speaking their minds no matter of consequences, who are not emotionally evolved, often have this perception about themselves – “we don’t care what others think about us.”

What I learnt recently is that this is one of the biggest lies we live with.

There is no one in the entire world who doesn’t bother about image management and I have learnt this at neurological level through observing my breath, heart beat and mental contents. Hence, I have a sound proof (and not just a theory or an opinion) when I say that almost all the time our unconscious mind is occupied in “image management”.

Even writing this blog post comes under a task driven by “image management”. Even if no one reads or comments and I am okay with it, the post is related to image management. When I write this post I boost my image to myself that “I have learnt something”. See I am so smart, wise. This is my image getting better for myself. But now that I have accepted this, the chances that it will lead to an ego boost have reduced substantially. Then again, now that I have been successful in not boosting my ego and stay in equanimity, this could lead to another kind of ego boost – see I am so wise and developed in practice that I can avoid ego boost. And there we go, I get an ego boost. It is continuous, non-stop.

Every single moment, totally unobserved by conscious mind, our unconscious mind is working very very hard, day and night, non-stop to make us believe that we are amazing. The image we have of ourselves is that we are the best person in the whole world. There is lot of misery when we are proved otherwise. A lot of time is spent in proving our wrong actions right so that the image remains intact.

What is misery? At neuroscience level, it is easily understood by three things – breathe, heart beat, sensations which are unpleasant. Whenever we are in misery, these three things happen. It is easy to understand this using “anger” emotion. Whenever we are angry we are miserable. I hope everyone has experienced that and would agree with that. Now as an experiment try and observe your breathe and heartbeat next time you are angry. Although it’s difficult to do that because when one is angry it is difficult to think or remember anything else. But if you can, try and do this. You would realise this happens. The same is true for any miserable state of mind.

So what happens in case of image management?

The image we have about ourselves is “I am as flawless as possible and best in the world in every capacity. Everything related to me like my child, my mother etc is the best in the world”.

We want this image to be maintained at two places:

1. Inside – within ourselves. The mind work hards to establish this image and continue to grow it further just for ourselves to believe in it. Hence, mistakes are difficult to accept immediately. Sorry is a magic word we have to train ourselves to use.

2. Outside – everyone outside of our body should believe this too. This is the image we want to protect in minds of others. For example, my child should think I am the best mom in the world. This is usually the cause for guilt we feel. Not because of the action or result, but because of our image gets shattered and we want to rebuilt it. So guilt helps in rebuilding that image.

Whenever one or both of the two above points fail to met, we are in misery. Whenever our image gets destroyed inside or outside, we are extremely miserable.

So let’s say, I am very good at my work in office. I am a hard working person, meticulous and honest. When others end up missing deadlines, I am before time. So what image would I have about myself and what image I expect others to have about me? “She will get the job done and never misses a deadline” right?

Now let’s say, I allocate the work to my team. They might have different images of themselves not matching mine, right? So let’s say they don’t meet the deadlines and I go to the meeting where I have to take the responsibility of missing the deadline. Because I am the team lead and my team failed to get the job done, so the blame falls on me.

What misery.

Why so much misery for no mistake of mine?

I did everything correctly, right? I chunked the task well, did regular follow ups, motivated the team. But it was them doing the job and they failed to do it on time. The outcome is literally out of my hands, right? So why am I suffering?

Image management.

My image got shattered. Both for myself and others. Both points above got ticked. How can I who is always on time, meticulous, etc etc, be the one responsible for a delay in project? What will others think of me now? What did I do wrong? And so on…

And I would hate, (yes that strong an emotion), those who were responsible for this situation. The team who failed to do their job. They are responsible for my misery.

Please note, the pain and misery is not really about the project. No one cares that much if the project is delayed by a few days. The pain and misery is about the image which gets shattered and the efforts I have to make now to maintain the same image. To myself, I would say – I have a bad team, nothing I can do. I am still best and faultless. It’s the team which is bad. To others I would have to find ways to communicate the same message but without bad mouthing the team. Because if others get to know that I bad mouth, they will find out I am not the best. I have my flaws.

What is the end result of this entire episode: the job is to be continued until it’s done, I hate my team which is responsible for my misery, I have to spend more efforts in keeping same image. And now that I hate my team, they hate me back and getting things done is even harder.

What would have happened if there was no scenario of image management. I would not have taken the delay personally. I would have been kinder and stricter with my team next time without feeling of hatred towards them. I would have saved myself of a lot of anxiety at that time and efforts required later on to manage my image.

I can’t express the gratitude I have that I was able to “experience” this at the level of biological and neurological reactions. Accepting something at intellectual level and at level of reactions is very different. I consider myself extremely lucky.

By the way, in the last post I mentioned about my desire to meditate continuously all the time – I gave it a good shot but it was too difficult. It is nice to have difficult targets in life though. Keeps it going. :-)

In 2013 January, I did my first vipassana course in a brand new center which was conducting its first course. I had decided to go for the course on a whimsy. I was supposed to go to Singapore with husband on his business trip and instead I decided to go for vipassana. We canceled the flight tickets and booked a course in a center in Mumbai.

At that time, the center was a single building. The building structure was decent but it was all wild around us. Like having a building in the jungle. One of the nights I even dreamt of a snake on my window. Now I know, the snake was my fear perception, one of the consequences of deep meditation. I found the center and whole experience to be quite austere. Actually that experience deserves a post in itself. What I want to say here is when the course finished and we were allowed to go out, I was the first one to leave, run, vanish. I couldn’t have imagined coming back to this center again, under any circumstances.

10 years later, I am sitting in the same spot while guiding new meditators on their day 0, and chuckling inside. I am now giving service(seva) for smooth conduction of a 10 days course, exactly 10 years later in the same place where I sworn I could never come back. Funny how things turn out.

This is my second full (10 days) seva. The previous one was in one of biggest and oldest vipassana centers in the world, Igatpuri. Again, that experience deserves a post in itself. In short, it was probably one of the toughest and most enriching experiences of my life.

I am an edtech company owner and mostly my work happens on a desk, mostly in my mind actually, sometimes meetings too. The organ which I use mostly is prefrontal cortex in the brain. The part of the brain that I want to study deeply for the rest of my life.

Vipassana seva is mostly about using the rest of the body organs. A lot of muscle power. Last time in 2016, I had to walk some 6-7 kms in a day up and down the hill, sleep at 10 pm and wake at 3 am. Once I had broken my back while cooking a dish for 100 people in a camp in Singapore. Another time we had to clean all toilets in the camp. Today I had to arrange for and place dustbins, mops, and mats in 50+ rooms in the center. I had the housekeeping trolley and everything. It wasn’t as hard as cooking chickpeas without pressure cooker but it was a new experience. A wonderful break from the excessive use of prefrontal cortex.

Now I am sitting at the residential area guiding new comers to their rooms, answering their questions, witnessing their fears and anxieties. I can feel a lot of love, compassion, care for these strangers who I have never met and will never see again after 11 days. It’s a heart warming feeling. Whenever we wish for better of others, any other, related or unrelated to us, it fills us with love inside. That’s why a very popular form of meditation is “metta” or generating love and compassion for others. Honestly, I feel ultimately it benefits us. It may or may not benefit others, but it definitely benefits us.

Same thing happens in a unique and wonderful way in seva. It is a small escape from your personal petty issues. You have to work hard. You are physically involved. And most of all, you have to generate positivity. If you don’t spread positivity, how do you expect the learners to meditate, right?

It is to some sense similar to what they say about teaching. To learn something, teach it.

During seva, the server is required to always be in a positive state of mind. This is not difficult if you meditate regularly and a given if you meditate all the time. So when I was coming here, I told myself, I have to meditate all the time. This is the best environment to do the same.

However after trying for an hour, I ended up writing this blogpost. It is so much easier to use the parts of brain I have been using so far, rather than activate the dormant neurons. But after giving away my phone and rid of all distractions, I am hoping these 10 days I would be able to meditate continuously, like breathing. Hard work 🤞🏼

I couldn’t have imagined doing any of this, if it wasn’t for the support of a wonderful person, my husband. I hope everyone in the world gets the same support and love.

In 9th standard, we were required to select one of the two languages: Hindi or Sanskrit. While I disliked both of them (reason will follow next), Sanskrit was lesser of the two evils. There were a few chapters which I could appreciate in Sanskrit. On the other hand, Hindi teacher was the only teacher in the entire school system, who would still physically punish the students. He was brilliant in the subject, but failed miserably as a teacher.

English, although a foreign language, alien even until we were 10 years old, became a fascination at that time. With the knowledge of English, my universe grew multi-folds. Between the ages of 10 to 15, many things happened simultaneously which led me to fall in love with this alien language. By the end of this period, Hindi pretty much turned into the second language.

First of all, our English teacher, Mr Lewis, an Englishman, introduced the concept of open-book exams. And mind you, these books were not textbooks. We didn’t have state board or govt issued textbooks. We had big binder books which had lots and lots of stories and articles from famous books. Ivanhoe, Alice in wonderland, Beowulf, Mr Lewis made sure we got to sample all the classics. There were no tenses, no grammar rules, nothing to remember or memorise! It was the best thing that could happen to me in my pre-teens years.

I was new in the school with everyone else belonging there since their early childhood. Everyone knew everyone else, teachers knew all kids but me, and so on. It was almost impossible to penetrate such close network and make a connection there.

But with the revolution Mr Lewis bought in English teaching and my discovery of English books, I was saved. I could find all the friends and adventures I needed in these stories. Actually much beyond. There were sea travels, battles with monsters, revolutions and bravery, to say the least. On top of it, my brothers who loved buying books, would keep getting new and second hand books from Daryaganj market every week. It was as if with the ability to read in English, I was in a new world where I was the princess and plays were staged endlessly to keep me entertained.

While English reading was mostly entertaining and imaginative, Sanskrit textbooks were simply boring. Rules rules and more rules. You just got to memorise stuff for exam and forget it all immediately afterwards. “Time waste” if you ask me! There was one exception. The quotes from different ancient Hindu texts. Sanskrit being an ancient language is the original language for most of the textbooks written thousands of years ago. At that time, they would speak more using less words. Quite opposite to English books. In 10 words, Sanskrit quotes would convey all that can’t be expressed in 10 English pages. There is one such quote below.

कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन ।
मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भुर्मा ते संगोऽस्त्वकर्मणि ॥

Translation: You have the right to perform your actions, but you are not entitled to the fruits of the actions. Do not let the fruit be the purpose of your actions and therefore you won’t be attached to not doing your duty.

Now, this made absolutely no sense to the 14 year old me. Also, I had heard this quote numerous times before. It is something we all are brought up with, in a typical Hindu household. So we know it is something important which our ancestors believed in. But honestly, in the current scientific world, it made less or no sense. That was my limited understanding. But I was also curious to learn more about it. Why would we keep harping on the same concept if it had no value in the current world?

So I went to my elders. Parents, brother etc, for their point of view and understanding. They told me about the whole underlying story and the context wirhin these words were spoken in a battlefield. A great warrior was hesitant to go on the war because he didn’t want to fight with his own kin and kith. Then a god in human form spoke these words to encourage him to do his job, which was to fight in this case.

This story didn’t help and even worsen the concept for me. How can initiating a fight be legit?! It was good that warrior was questioning the whole concept of war. Looked like God was saying the wrong stuff! Then I was told how story gives details about the failed “peace” treaties leading to inevitable battle. Still, violence is bad as far as I am concerned.

I was given a closer-to-home example. Say, you study just to get marks in the exam, or to top the class. Should that be a good enough reason to study? Shouldn’t you study for the love of the subject? If you like a topic, why restrict your knowledge to textbooks? Read all the books you can lay your hands on. Hence, when you study (your duty), it’s not for marks (fruit).

Now this made a lot of sense to me. It also became a principal I would follow for a long time.

While this concept was very helpful to follow generally, later on I found many loop holes under which this moral would fail.

1. Interest is highly dependent on performance. As performance goes down, you don’t get rewards, which lowers the motivation. Given, performance is usually comparative, your interest becomes a factor of competition around. Hence, the expectations would eventually be linked to marks.

2. Result oriented action vs any action: If fruits/result is not to be sought then how do you know your actions were right, purposeful, in the right direction? Let’s say I am learning math. Then obviously my “expectations” (or results) would be to solve certain theorems or such stuff. Hence, all the hard work such as reading through theory, I “expect” myself to be able to solve the equation. If not, I would certainly feel disappointed, right? And if I work hard, I shall be able to solve that equation, which would be the fruit of my hard work. Hence, expectations are but normal.

Does this mean the quote is not really meaningful?

Well actually, after 2 decades, I understand the quote is pretty spot on. And in fact the secret to success.

It’s not a problem to have “expectations” or “disappointments”. Obviously we expect some result or fruit when we work. We are bound to be disappointed when we don’t get the reward post hard work.

The quote really means that, the disappointment or the expectation should not be strong enough to lead us to “not” working. If we fail to get the expected fruit, can we try again? Instead of daydreaming and taking pleasure in visualising the end result, can we learn to enjoy the hard work?

Instead of letting disappointment take control of us, can we shrug it off and continue to work towards the goal?

Logically it all makes sense, but anyone who recently tried learning a new language or subject can recall moments of giving up. Sometimes these moments become overwhelming and our logical mind starts procrastinating at the prospect of hard work, or disappointment.

At that time, a strong will might work. But in reality, it needs a strong training of mind to continue working on something new and difficult without getting distracted or disappointed. Without giving in to fears (of not getting results) or desires (day dreaming the success).

That’s exactly what that quote says: work, without worrying of the outcome. Maybe, get to enjoy it too :-)

If you don’t know about growth and fixed mindsets, please first read about it here:

https://www.mindsethealth.com/matter/growth-vs-fixed-mindset

Now, the thing is I have spent last 15 years of my life in the space of education. Actually more than those if you include volunteering years in college and first job.

As an educator, you can imagine, learner with a fixed mindset is as bad as banging your head on the wall. In fact as an educator I feel the most important job is to change the fixed mindset to growth mindset. If you achieve that, everything else will follow automatically.

The only thing I liked being an entrepreneur was the need to have a growth mindset.

https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/growth-mindset-vs-fixed-mindset

Since it is a must requirement in a small team setup, you are surrounded by people who all have growth mindset. Even after 11 years, I have managed to maintained (or blessed with) team who have high growth mindset.

But a downside to it is, I am unable to imagine life without such mindset. To me having a learning attitude towards life is similar to using oxygen to transport blood into cells. It’s just the way life exists and I am becoming intolerant towards those with fixed mindset.

I have spent a majority of my life asking the question why am I alive? I genuinely wanted to know. Being the third child in the family, clearly I wasn’t there to help someone experience parenthood. My brothers combined achieved all there was to it. Literally, there wasn’t much value add I could bring in such a crowded populated world. So I believe the question was very genuine. Though I did also spent much time regretting it. (Oh you rich girl, can’t even appreciate the gift of life!)

Thankfully the question was not only answered, it was answered perfectly. And the answer is related to having a growth mindset. Hence for me, the very existence depends on having such an attitude towards life.

So, then when I see those who simply sigh, and say, oh this and that happened to me in the past; or these are the reasons why I choose not to grow; or worst, I am not lucky or blessed like you which is why I am the way I am. I am unable to be empathetic towards them. I am unable to respect them. I am unable to connect with them.

And I am not okay with such behaviour from myself. Every human is at different stage in what I would like to call a journey. Truly blessed are those with growth mindset because it is the reality. Not said by wise men or scriptures. But proven by science. we are hard-wired to learn. It happens all the time. And so, having a fixed mindset is a lie which society forces upon many so that status-quo is maintained. So that institutions keep running. So that we don’t fall into chaos.

Where actually, if we could encourage growth mindset, the institutions will change, the world will be a friendlier, happier, inclusive place.