Can you recollect?-

The last time you had to struggle enormously?

 A time when you barely finished your project, assignment and were left with nothing but exhaustion, frustration and unhappiness.

A time when you thought, “This is it. I can’t do it anymore.”

I bet you can. In fact, I bet you can think of more than one such incident.

Why is this?

Even though we all want to run, or even gallop towards success, often when we think about some of the greatest moments in our lives, it’s not success that we recollect, it our failures, our weaknesses and our breakdowns.  Does this mean that we are a breed of thoroughly pessimistic and masochistic people who give more weightage to failures than accomplishments? Maybe… Maybe not!  But if we do, there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. Because these are the moments when we decided not to back down, to learn and to grow. Even though we might have struggled at one point of time, we overcame our hurdles and can now look back and feel satisfied, maybe even surprised at the way we conquered our impediments.

One of the greatest authors of our time and a personal favourite of mine, J.K Rowling gave the following words of wisdom at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association:

“You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.”

When one hears her name, one cannot possibly fathom her ever failing at something. After all she is United Kingdom's best-selling author, with sales in excess of £238m. But in her own words, she has experienced failure at a, ‘grand scale’. 

Before, Harry Potter became a household name, Rowling was penniless, recently divorced, and raising a child on her own, she wrote the first Harry Potter book on an old manual typewriter. Not one, or three or five but twelve publishers rejected her manuscript. Eventually, Barry Cunningham from Bloomsbury, agreed to publish the book but advised her to find another job as, ‘there was no money in children’s books’.  

Rowling’s success came after her various bouts with failure and she wasn’t the only one.

The King of Cartoons: Walt Disney’s first animation company went bankrupt. A newspaper editor fired him for, ‘lacking imagination’ and ‘having no original ideas’. His theme park idea was trashed 302 times. But he never gave up.

Vincent Van Gogh: He only sold one painting in his lifetime that too, to a friend. In spite of that he kept painting and finished over 800 pieces. Today, his most expensive painting is valued at $142.7 million.

Michael Jordan: One of the world’s greatest basketball players, Jordan’s name is synonymous with basketball. However, he was cut from his high school basketball team but he did not let this failure deter him.

Thomas Edison: This list would be incomplete without the man who gave us many inventions including the light bulb. He too, never ever gave up.

Ludwig van Beethoven: Young Beethoven wasn’t good at playing the violin and neglected to practice as he preferred to work on his own compositions. Despite his love of composing, his teachers felt he was hopeless and would never succeed with the violin or in composing. Beethoven kept plugging along, and composed some of the best symphonies of all time–five of them while he was completely deaf.

As is evident from the above list, failure hits us all. The more we try to avoid it, the more it latches onto us like a parasite draining us of our strength, enthusiasm and happiness. The fault however, may lie within us. We are always trying to dodge failure, elude and escape it. But for once, try and embrace it. When you stumble upon failure, or make a mistake, it’s imperative to accept it and understand that it is absolutely acceptable to fail. Don’t make your mistakes, ‘an end of my life tragic melodrama’. Acknowledge that you did not succeed this time and that it is perfectly alright. Do not let the people or the situation around you make you feel dejected and unhappy.

Part of accepting failure is also accepting that you may be at fault. Do not pin your failures on, ‘fate’, ‘circumstances’, other people or the almighty. He has enough things to take care of and does not have the time to ensure that you fail in every undertaking that you take. Instead of accusing and attributing your failure to any and everything else, take a step back. Try to analyse why you did not accomplish your goal and where you might have gone wrong.

Do not relinquish at this stage. You might feel desolate and depressed. After all it is not easy accepting one’s own faults or perhaps finding faults where there aren’t any, (as in the case of Rowling). But Do Not Give Up. Find the courage to move on. Find a reason to move on. What’s more, you don’t have to do this alone. Ask for help. It maybe for ideas, other’s views and opinions or simply for emotional support from friends and family. Don’t shun your helpers.

Once you find the reason to move ahead (and you will find it), re-evaluate your objectives. If they are still the same, great. If not, think clearly and deeply about what exactly you want. Easier said than done. However, if you stay true to yourself you will discover it.

After you find your goal, plan, and plan well. Your previous failures and mistakes have already cut your work short. They have taught you the right from the wrong, what exactly to avoid, helped you gain a deeper understanding and provided you with the knowledge that you seek. But most importantly, if you are at this step, your failures have taught you to be resilient and given you an opportunity to grow and learn some more. They have given you the power to be a fighter and a survivor. Use it well.

Follow through your plan, soar above all the obstacles because now you are ready to run and bolt towards your success.  Always remember that failure and success are two sides of the same coin.  In life’s toss you can never predict which side the coin will land on. Don’t let a series of successes fool you. Always be prepared to taste some disappointments and at the same time remember to not give up and face the challenges head on. It’s really one of those simple truths of life: To succeed, you must fail.

So next time when you find yourself on a cliff overlooking a sea of disasters, mistakes and failures, here’s what you should do.

Close your eyes, take a deep breath and JUMP.

ANALYSING ROOT EMOTIONS - By Shohrat Shankar

Emotional Intelligence is based on the principle of Emotional Awareness, along with others.

Being aware of one’s own emotions is critical for just about everything. From your Self Esteem to relations with others and your success and progress. In fact your happiness depends on how aware you are of your emotions. On how much you know and truly understand why you feel the way you feel.

In this article I plan to illustrate how Emotional Awareness impacts your Self Regard, Self-Actualization and thus everything else in your life.

Over the years I have conducted numerous workshops on “Relationship Management” where I have a short section on Emotional Awareness and many of my observations are from there.

Positive & Negative Emotions

I normally start the session with asking people to list some emotions. Before they start I ask for some examples and in 8 cases out of 10 I hear ‘Anger’ or ‘Fear’ being said first.

Most people are not able to list beyond 8 emotions. The most common ones are: Anger, Sadness, Fear, Happiness, Love, Joy, Frustration, irritation and Jealousy.

One thing I notice every time is that we tend to list more negative emotions than positive, sadly often “Love” comes in way down on the list. I often wonder why it is so and on delving further and asking people I found that people tend to register the negative emotions they feel while mostly ignoring the positive feelings in the day. 

You might have noticed, when you asked somebody how their day went you will either hear a neutral response “OK” or if somebody had a bad day then they will say it. The percentage of people who say they’ve had a ‘great day’ is relatively smaller, in fact it takes a major positive event for most people to say they had a “Great Day”, on the other hand, it doesn’t take much for people to label the day “Bad”. Is it true that most of our days are either “Bad” or “OK” and very few “Great”? Or is it more likely that we tend not to register the small positive emotions that we feel in a day?

So 2 important factors to remember are:

• “Am I focusing on enough positive things around me or only the negative emotions?”

• “Do I register the small-small nice things or positives that people do or do I fixate on the few things that they did not do?”

The answer to these questions tells me whether I look for Happiness and positivity in whatever I do. It tells me whether I am a happiness magnet or not.

Root Emotions

The second thought I drive is the need to understand and analyse the real reason or cause for my emotion. Similar to doing a root cause analysis in, it is often important to do the same for our behaviour and emotions. Let me try and illustrate with an example.

Let’s say that in a meeting with my colleagues and boss a task is assigned to me and immediately a colleague of mine asks if I need any help. Citing an example where I had failed in a situation when I had done it on my own.

Now many people here would be happy and graciously accept or decline the offer. However, some people would get upset and feel there was an underlying reason for the colleague to offer support in front of the boss.

Some might feel he was doing it to appear like a good team player in front of the boss and others might think he wanted to put me down in front of the others. 

The important thing for me to analyse is “Why” or “What” is making me feel that way? What is the real reason for the reaction?

In order to understand my root or real reason for reacting I need to look at the following A-B-C-C model.

A – Activating event (Colleague offers to help)

B – Belief (He’s trying to put me down, He’s trying to show his competence over mine in front of the boss)

C – Consequence (I react and get upset either in the meeting room or later start to distance myself from the colleague)

C – Challenge 

In order for me to change the Consequence I need to Challenge & Understand my beliefs and the cause for my belief.

When challenging I need to ask myself, Am I sure he is trying to put me down? Does he do this often? Does he also sometimes just willingly offer his hand in assistance? Have I seen him doing this with others?

The answers to these questions will help one rationalise the beliefs and one might realise that probably he could really want to help.

Then it is important to understand the reason for your beliefs. Is it that you really feel scared of doing this task alone? Do you doubt your own competency in fulfilling this task? Do you feel that the colleague is really more competent than you? 

Often we are unwilling to accept the reality of the answers to the above questions and unless we dig deep to understand and accept the reality we might never be able to understand our real emotions and will never be able to challenge the beliefs that cause us to react.

So understand the real reason for the Belief to know why you feel the way you feel and thus react the way you react.

The Close interaction of Human Psychology and Music- by Shruti Nair

“Music is a world within itself, with a Language we all understand”

-Stevie Wonder

Music is a language we all know of, some speak, and others listen. We all have a specific genre we can relate to and resort to from time-to-time. Music is found in every culture, past and present, varying widely between time and space. People from all over the world, even the most isolated tribals have a form of music as a part of their culture. Hence, it is safe to conclude that music has been a part of human history ever since it’s existence or maybe even before that. Music portrays sides of human psychology we all can relate to. Read the following fun facts of music and psychology.

1.)  What is the first musical instrument ever created?

Archaeologists suggest that the origin of music likely stems from naturally occurring sounds and rhythms and the first ever musical instrument was the human voice itself, which can make a vast array of sounds, from singing, humming and whistling through to clicking, coughing and yawning.


2.) Ever felt the chills down your spine after listening to a song?

A study by Nusbaum and Silvia(2010)  suggest that those who are high on the ‘Openness to Experience’ trait are likely to feel the most chills while listening to music. So, how powerful the effects of music are, depends on your personality and less on the music itself! People high in the ‘Openness to experience’ dimension also regard music as a very important part of their lives.


3.) Feeling down? Put on a good song and actively listen to it!

A research by Ferguson and Sheldon (2013) concluded that listening to upbeat music will lift your mood but only if you closely listen to the beats. Letting the music play in the background and wash over you will have no effects. Actively listening to a musical piece gives you the experience of emotional overwhelming because of the way the music is composed.


4.) Research conducted by psychologists Jason Rentfrow and Sam Gosling suggests that knowing the type of music you listen to can actually lead to surprisingly accurate predictions about your personality.

POP

Are your favourite sound tracks from Rhianna, Selena Gomez or Flo Rida?

Well, chances are you are extroverted, Honest and conventional. You are also hard working and have a high self-esteem. Research also suggests that coming up with out-of-the-box ideas aren’t your thing and you tend to be very restless.

Rap and Hip/Hop

Is Snoop Dog more of your style? People have a perception of Rap singers being high on aggressiveness when in reality there is no such thing. You are high on self esteem and almost always the life of the party.

Country

Do you listen to Bob Dylan or Taylor Swift? Country music listeners are typically hardworking, conventional and outgoing. While country songs are often centered on heartbreak, people who gravitate towards this genre tend to be emotionally very stable.

Rock/Heavy Metal

Are you worshipers of Iron Maiden or Lamb of God? Despite the sometimes aggressive image that rock music and heavy metal project, researchers found that fans of this style of music are usually quite gentle. They tend to be creative, but are often introverted and may suffer from low self-esteem.

Indie

Do you love seeking out obscure bands and indie artists? Fans of the indie genre are typically introverted, intellectual and creative. According to researchers, they also tend to be less hard-working and less gentle. Passivity, anxiousness and low self-esteem are other common personality characteristics.

Classical

Do you find yourself listening to more of Classical like Beatles? You are more introverted than the rest of them are at ease with the world around you. You also have a good sense of your own self esteem.

Jazz, Blues and Soul

Are the bands Weather Report or The Rolling Stones an integral part of your daily listening doses? People who enjoy jazz, blues or soul music were found to be more extraverted with high self-esteem. They also tend to be very creative, intelligent and at ease.


5.) What color do you see?


Across the world, people pair different types of colors with different genres of music.

In a research by Palmer et al. (2013) people across countries showed remarkable similarities in connecting duller, darker colors with sadder pieces of music and lighter, more vivid colors with happier music. Hence, you have the Blues!


6.) Did that song remind you of that person?

Music has a great impact on our visual memory. We associate music with the series of events that took place when we were most attentive to the song. Ever closed your eyes to a song and taken down memory lane? So, this effect of music is used as a tool in rehabilitation for stroke patients.

Next time you’re listening to your favourite song, think about what makes it your favourite one. You’re choice of music says a lot about you!

Scaling my Everest: Overcoming Stammering and Stage Fear

Though there are over 70 Million people who stammer and stutter and many million more who have stage fear, while growing up I felt I was the only one. Like so many others I felt lonely, ashamed, embarrassed, inferior and completely lacked Self-Esteem.

For as long as I can remember I stammered, sometimes slightly and at other times I would freeze and totally give up. I would want to hide and not speak to people at all. I avoided people in corridors and on the phone, because I was scared of stammering and stuttering when I spoke with them. In fact, I would walk the other way on seeing someone I need to wish. 

Saying “G..G…G…G…G…G…G..G….G…. good M..M..Morning” was no fun at all.

Never in my wildest dreams did I think, that one day, I would be a public speaker and make a living addressing many people.

Well, Let me tell you how I Scaled my Everest:

I was a shy, timid little kid who stammered whenever put in a spot or in the limelight. For years I wondered whether that shy, timid little kid who stammered, was shy and timid because he stammered or stammered because he was shy and timid??

Is it the problem that creates the mind-set or the mind-set that creates the problem?

While growing up I made myself believe the former and therein lay the problem; however, my life turned around the day I began to believe the latter.

 The 98-2% Principle

This is the Belief Principle that guides all the others. Without this belief no other holds ground. So what do I mean by this.

Well simply put….. 98% of all obstacles and problems are in the head, and the real problem is just 2%. 

It starts with your own belief in being able to overcome that mental obstacle in front of you. Once you truly believe, then 98% of the work is done and the rest remains in executing and following through on your belief.

Of course this is easier said than done, one needs to maintain the belief through all difficulties, failures and challenges one faces en route. 

Sometimes one can do everything right and still not see the light at the end of the tunnel, and here is where one needs to keep the faith and “bash on regardless”. 

Explore other ways of overcoming what’s in front, not because you have a ready-made solution to fix it, but as you believe it can be done.

Positive Self-Talk and Brainwashing

Once the first barrier of the mind is conquered one needs to build Self-confidence and belief in oneself. Many people say that confidence is the key to it all; however, very few talk about how to build it.

If I were to suddenly ask you the following questions:

• What makes you important

• What makes you competent

• What makes you likable

• What makes you successful

How long would it take you to answer these questions?

The trick is in making yourself aware of your strengths and also building on them by creating action plans to make oneself more Important, Competent, Likable & Successful.

Are they at the tip of your tongue? 

The fact is that most of us spend far too much time and energy focusing on the other end of the spectrum. 

We tend to ask ourselves 

“Why am I not important to them? 

Why am I not able to do……..? 

Why doesn’t he / she like me? 

Why don’t things go my way?”

The answers to these questions are normally de-motivating and demoralizing.

It is important for each one of us to remind ourselves and build on the following affirmation statements:

• I am important because……
• I am competent because…..
• I am likable because……..
• I am successful because…….

So how this work is, maintain a diary and every week write down what you did that made you more important, competent, likable or successful. If you don’t have anything to write, don’t lose hope instead create an action plan for how you will better answer these questions next week. Thus, building on strengths and finally confidence.

Now, whenever you are low on confidence or need a “Pick me up”, all you need to do is read your diary and I guarantee you will get a boost. 

This method of constantly reminding oneself of one’s strengths using affirmation statements is called Positive Self-talk and brainwashing yourself to look at the strengths in you.

Speaking slowly and pausing

The next step is to reduce your rate of speech and ensure that you have a slow and measured way of talking. 

• Start with some reading practice and bring your rate of speech down to at least 140 words per minute.

Some of the best orators like Narendra Modi, Barack Obama, Martin Luther King Jr, Adolf Hitler, Sushma Swaraj, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, etc are a perfect example of slow measured speech, using pausing and pace for effect.

While this helps with overall impact of the way a person speaks and sounds, it gives a person time to think ahead and plan what he or she is saying.

Most people who stammer and stutter are usually trying to say things in a hurry lest they forget. This way of speaking tends to become a habit and thus our words have a tendency to come out tumbling and stumbling over each other. 

Just imagine if all the students in a school decide to come charging out of a single door the moment the school bell rings. 

Can you envision a scenario where there are many kids stuck in a doorway? 

Well that’s exactly what happens to our speech when everything tries to come out at once.

The best ways to reduce the speed or Rate of Speech is 

• To practice reading children’s books. 
• Add the drama and expression in the story, as that reduces the speed even further
• Time yourself and be happy once you start reading consistently at about 120 words. 
• If you read at 120 you might bring speech down to about 140-150.
• To be able to effectively do this the last point plays a critical role.

Effective Breathing

The average person takes about 15-18 breaths in a minute. Try it without consciously slowing down.

• The aim is to be able to bring it down to 3-4 and average it out to about 7-8.
• Reducing your rate of speech is directly related with your breathing pattern. 
• Instead of trying to say all we can in a breath, we should use our pauses and punctuation for breathing; short breaths at comas and longer breaths at full stops.
• A stutter normally occurs when the vocal chords are stressed and stiff. Effective and regular breathing reduces stress in the body and vocal chords. 
• Whenever one gets stuck or feels a stammer or stutter coming, take a short pause, a deep breath and you will immediately feel the body and vocal chords relax, thus, freeing the voice.
• Good deep breaths also help in providing oxygen to the brain. When we are stiff and not breathing freely the mind tends to go blank due a lack of oxygen to the brain.
• Yoga breathing techniques are very helpful in creating a good breathing pattern and rhythm.

These points are not the only things that I did or feel are needed to overcome stammering and stage fear. 
However, I do feel these are the most important and critical, and were instrumental in me “Scaling my Everest”. In fact the first 2 points are universal to overcoming any obstacle or challenge in life.

So what is your Everest? What is holding you back? What do you want to achieve?

Do you need someone to talk you through it? 

Connect with me and I can share more insights on overcoming any challenges you might have.