Know your mind – How the context, perception and priorities define the Value perceived by you or your client?

I was thinking one day that how I should I measure my success earlier as a professional or now as a consultant, a writer, a trainer & an entrepreneur. Should it be on the money I make? Should it be on the revenues of the company? Should it be on the benefits delivered to the client? I struggled around the answer until I read about an experiment conducted by The Washington Post as a study in context, perception and priorities at a Metro subway station in Washington DC.

It was a cold, winter morning in Washington, DC, a solitary violinist played Bach and Schubert for about 45 minutes in the corner of a Metro subway station. About 1,000 people walked past him as he played. Every few minutes, a person might stop for a moment or toss in a dollar or two. Other than that, no one paid much attention to the violinist.

One young person stopped, very curious. He tried to stay, but his mother pulled him along. He was three years old.

The violinist played for 45 minutes before he packed up his instrument. There was no applause, no one spoke to him, and no one noticed his departure.

His take? $32 in all.

Let me share little bit more about this violinist.

He was Joshua Bell, one of the world’s most famous musicians. He played on his Stradivarius, one of the finest, rarest and most expensive violins in existence at that time.

The same Joshua Bell, a night before had played to a sold-out concert in Boston where the average price was $100.

What is interesting to note that the only person who was most interested in listening to Joshua was a child. As we mature, our brains learn to categorize an experience based on context. Children are less prone automatically to assign meaning to an experience based on context, and are able to perceive that some wonderful music was to be heard, despite the subway platform setting.

For the adults, in that context Joshua Bell playing in the Washington, DC subway was worth $32.

In contrast, in another context, Joshua Bell performing at Boston’s Symphony Hall was worth approximately $220,000.

The drum beats are important but where you play the drum is as important. Who you play in front of is also as important? The context setting for adults is very different.

I realized that rewards (money most of the time J) you get are not necessarily only for your attitude, knowledge & skills but for “the context” or the situation of the client (let’s call this situation as an opportunity or a threat - it may be perceived opportunity or threat as well).It also depends on “the priorities”-a company struggling with revenues may not appreciate your work on cutting cost or vice versa.  So you must be wondering if I finally got the answer on success J . I don't know if I got my answer because the person in me who had asked the question disappeared and the question disappeared with him.. 

                                                                                                                

The Last Place on Earth - A choice between being a Winner or a Loser

This title belongs to Roland Huntford’s for his superb book called "The Last Place on Earth", a massive, well-written comparative study of two men.I found about this interesting book while reading "Great by Choice" co-authored by Jim Collins who has as well co-authored two beautiful books and my favourite too called "Good to Great"(I write Blogs with the same name) and "Built to Last".

The book is about two expedition leaders called Roald Amundsen who was the winner, and Robert Falcon Scott, the loser.
But they were a near-perfect matched pair.They had almost similar ages-39 and 43.They as well had comparable experience.

I want to quote Roald Amundsen- “Victory awaits him who has everything in order—luck people call it.
Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck.”

It was in  October 1911 when two teams of adventurers made their final preparations in their quest to be the first people in modern history to reach the South Pole.

For one team, it would be a race to victory and a safe return home.

For members of the second team, it would be a devastating defeat, reaching the Pole only to find the wind-whipped flags of their rivals planted 34 days earlier, followed by a race for their lives—a race that they lost in the end, as the advancing winter swallowed them up. All five members of the second Pole team perished, staggering from exhaustion, suffering the dead-black pain of frostbite and then freezing to death as some wrote their final journal entries and notes to loved ones back home

Its sad that so many of us go through the same experiences in our own life.We love to blame someone for our failures and want to take credit for the success we got in life.I as well use to be the one till I met the man in the mirror.It was me who needs to change and not the man in the mirror or the mirror itself .

The world we built(or rather I will say get built )around us is the mirror of what we think and visualize (consciously & unconsciously) and we act upon (as a re/action to the situation which I say unconsciously or as a pro/active action to what I think consciously ).Mirror is the environment in which we operate.

Coming back to the comparable experiences of two adventurers -

In the year 1902 ,Amundsen led the first successful journey through the Northwest Passage and joined the first expedition to spend the winter in Antarctica.Scott led a South Pole expedition. Amundsen and Scott started their respective journeys for the Pole within days of each other, both facing a round trip of more than fourteen hundred miles (roughly equal to the distance from Delhi to Bangalore and back ).The environment was uncertain and unforgiving with temperatures reaching 20 degrees below zero F even during the summer and gale-force winds adding to the tough conditions.This was in 1911 when they had no means of modern communication to call back to base camp.There were no radio, no cell phones, no satellite links and a rescue would have been highly improbable at the South Pole if they screwed up.

One leader led his team to victory and safety. The other led his team to defeat and death

The reason I liked to blog about this real life story in the book were the principles being used by Amundsen and Scott and how we can learn from the same.We all can be one of the those two men.We all face crisis at times.It can induced by us or can be forced to us.The preparation helps as much as the approach to crisis.

We all may think and question -What separated these two men? Why did one achieve spectacular success in such an extreme set of conditions, while the other failed even to survive?

In real life situation which we all face The environment can be favorable or unfavorable. What helps to thrive and not just strive is our approach to the extreme conditions.

Here comes the clues to find out if you are Amundsen or Scott ?

In 1899  when Roald Amundsen was in late twenties ,he traveled nearly two thousand miles from Norway to Spain for a two-month sailing trip to earn a master’s certificate.
Ask yourself - How you would have traveled for your master's degree in case you would have similar personalty and dreams
So how did Amundsen make the journey? By carriage? By horse? By ship? By rail?
No none of them - "He bicycled"

Think of your current situation and suddenly everything turns upside-down .Everything which is important and dear to you is gone -not there anymore Amundsen used to experiment with eating raw dolphin meat to determine its usefulness as an energy supply.His logic was someday he might be shipwrecked, finding himself surrounded by dolphins, so he might as well know if he could eat one.

The point I am making is in his own mind Amundsen’s spend years of building a foundation for his quest, training his body and mind learning as much as possible from "real" practical experience about what actually worked rather then just reading & knowing about it .
Amundsen even made a pilgrimage to apprentice with Eskimos. What better way to learn what worked in polar conditions than to spend time with a people who have hundreds of years of accumulated experience in ice and cold and snow and wind? He learned how Eskimos used dogs to pull sleds. He observed how Eskimos never hurried, moving slowly and steadily, avoiding excessive sweat that could turn to ice in sub-zero temperatures. He adopted Eskimo clothing, loose fitting (to help sweat evaporate) and protective. He systematically practiced Eskimo methods and trained himself for every conceivable situation he might encounter en route to the Pole.
Amundsen’s philosophy as mentioned in the book was that You don’t wait until you’re in an unexpected storm to discover that you need more strength and endurance. You don’t wait until you’re shipwrecked to determine if you can eat raw dolphin. You don’t wait until you’re on the Antarctic journey to become a superb skier and dog handler.

Now coming to Robert Falcon Scott who presents quite a contrast to Amundsen.In the years leading up to the race for the South Pole, he could have trained like a maniac on cross-country skis and taken a thousand-mile bike ride. He did not.
He could have gone to live with Eskimos. He did not. He could have practiced more with dogs, making himself comfortable with choosing dogs over ponies. Ponies, unlike dogs, sweat on their hides so they become encased in ice sheets when tethered and struggle in snow, and don’t generally eat meat. (Amundsen planned to kill some of the weaker dogs along the way to fuel the stronger dogs.) Scott chose ponies. Scott also bet on “motor sledges” that hadn't been fully tested in the most extreme South Pole conditions. As it turned out, the motor-sledge engines cracked within the first few days, the ponies failed early, and his team slogged through most of the journey by “man-hauling,” harnessing themselves to sleds, trudging across the snow, and pulling the sleds behind them.

Unlike Scott, Amundsen systematically built enormous buffers for unforeseen events. When setting supply depots, Amundsen not only flagged a primary depot, he placed 20 black pennants (easy to see against the white snow) in precise increments for miles on either side, giving himself a target more than ten kilometers wide in case he got slightly off course coming back in a storm. To accelerate segments of his return journey, he marked his path every quarter of a mile with packing-case remnants and every eight miles with black flags hoisted upon bamboo poles.
Scott, in contrast, put a single flag on his primary depot and left no markings on his path, leaving him exposed to catastrophe if he went even a bit off course.Amundsen stored three tons of supplies for 5 men starting out versus Scott’s one ton for 17 men.
In his final push for the South Pole from 82 degrees, Amundsen carried enough extra supplies to miss every single depot and still have enough left over to go another hundred miles. Scott ran everything dangerously close to his calculations, so that missing even one supply depot would bring disaster. A single detail aptly highlights the difference in their approaches: Scott brought one thermometer for a key altitude-measurement device, and he exploded in “an outburst of wrath and consequence” when it broke; Amundsen brought four such thermometers to cover for accidents.
Amundsen didn't know precisely what lay ahead. He didn't know the exact terrain, the altitude of the mountain passes, or all the barriers he might encounter. He and his team might get pounded by a series of unfortunate events. Yet he designed the entire journey to systematically reduce the role of big forces and chance events by vigorously embracing the possibility of those very same big forces and chance events. He presumed bad events might strike his team somewhere along the journey and he prepared for them, even developing contingency plans so that the team could go on should something unfortunate happen to him along the way. Scott left himself unprepared and complained in his journal about his bad luck. “Our luck in weather is preposterous,” penned Scott in his journal, and wrote in another entry, “It is more than our share of ill-fortune…How great may be the element of luck!”

On December 15, 1911, in bright sunshine sparkling across the vast white plain, with a slight crosswind and a temperature of 10 degrees below zero F, Amundsen reached the South Pole. He and his teammates planted the Norwegian flag, which “unfurled itself with a sharp crack,” and dedicated the plateau to the Norwegian king. Then they went right back to work. They erected a tent and attached a letter to the Norwegian king describing their success; Amundsen addressed the envelope to Captain Scott (presuming Scott would be the next to reach the Pole) as an insurance policy in case his team met an unfortunate end on the journey home. He could not have known that Scott and his team were man-hauling their sleds, fully 360 miles behind.

More than a month later, at 6:30 p.m. on January 17, 1912, Scott found himself staring at Amundsen’s Norwegian flag at the South Pole. “We have had a horrible day,” Scott wrote in his diary. “Add to our disappointment a head wind 4 to 5, with a temperature–22°…Great God! this is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have labored to it without the reward of priority.”

On that very day, Amundsen had already traveled nearly five hundred miles back north, reaching his 82-degree supply depot with only eight easy days to go. Scott turned around and headed back north, more than seven hundred miles of man-hauling from home base, just as the season began to turn. The weather became more severe, with increasing winds and decreasing temperatures, while supplies dwindled and the men struggled through the snow.

Amundsen and his team reached home base in good shape on January 25, the precise day he’d penned into his plan. Running out of supplies, Scott stalled in mid-March, exhausted and depressed. Eight months later, a British reconnaissance party found the frozen bodies of Scott and two companions in a forlorn, snow-drifted little tent, just ten miles short of his supply depot

Amundsen and Scott achieved dramatically different outcomes not because they faced dramatically different circumstances. In the first 34 days of their respective expeditions, Amundsen and Scott had exactly the same ratio, 56 percent, of good days to bad days of weather.

If they faced the same environment in the same year with the same goal, the causes of their respective success and failure simply cannot be the environment. They had divergent outcomes principally because they displayed very different behaviors.

In summary what I learnt from this is that -

 "You prepare with intensity, all the time"

When conditions turn against you, you can draw from a deep reservoir of strength.
When conditions turn in your favor, you can strike hard

Keep working hard ....Hope for the Best,Prepare for the worst .... 

Are we still slaves - the freedom of human being

Human Being from ages -may be from the time when he would have started "thinking" .or may be when he would have realized that "he is" and he would have started questioning things around himself.

There must be few human beings one who were in power,the power which came from their control of other human beings -through his mind he controlled/influenced other people's mind and controlled their actions through controlling their lives.Human beings are always limited with their mind (its always limited -even now)

With their limited intelligence the powerful human beings would have established "rules" and "procedures" for the sake of his own power & comfort living.From these rules & procedures must have come choices -

"either" "or" / "materialist" or "spiritualist" /  "moral" or "immoral" / "sinner" or "saint" / " hell" and "heaven" 

If you would have noticed all these choices are based on some kind of differentiation or division.Whenever you have a "choice" and you want to exercise a choice,then the "split" is already there.

"A part" of you wants to do this but another part of you want to do something else.But you do one thing while you are thinking something else All the wars/genocides in the history have been fought of because of these differences of ideology of minds.One human being (or a a image/part of him)  fighting with another human being(or a image/part of him) 

Don't you think this is just stupid ? Why this has not been stopped yet ?

What has happened in the process ? We have divided human being .We have created misery and hell for him. Now he can never be complete or one He will never be able to realize a "complete" "emotional,intellectual and physical health".

When one part of him is "enjoying" ,the other part of him feels "guilty"or is planning to take "revenge".The part which is feeling "guilty" or "suppressed" will find innovative ways to take "revenge" or will do something to counter that "emotional state"-the one which has been more imposed on you.A constant battle is always going on inside you.

Your mind which continuously plays tricks with you..has not been allowed to be "whole".I am not sure if you have ever realized the feeling of wholeness.The feeling where there are no choices .This does not mean that the two views or worlds will disappear.What it means is that the two will merge into one...

You must be thinking how that is possible.How one can be both materialistic and spiritualistic ?The division you see which exists in the world is nothing but the division of the mind.Once you or human beings "accept themselves" -  "as they are" ..the inner division which exists today will end .Once this ends in our mind,the world will change .It will become a different place 

God and Devils will dine together.My morality will understand my immorality.There will be no conflict as there will be no opposition .We call this stae as transcending duality.No friends and No enemies.

This has a possibility of creating a new world  a choice less world,The choices man has now are man made and not natural.These choices have been created with time,society,religion,politics,nationality,economic divide etc etc.When human beings are born they are born with no choice.We start downloading our past inside him.We started cutting him from whole to parts i.e "What to do" and "What not to do " .He looses his wholeness soon & what you see is a robot a manufactured robot from the society itself.

The moment a human being wants to become a whole- the society,his own family does not like this and does not want to accept this.They will make him feel guilty about this. Sooner or later poor human beings starts believing this as well.He himself feels guilt about what he is.He denies himself ,his natural self, his wholeness.I used to wonder in past Why I am not creative ?The reason which I have realized now is "the divide ".I was denying myself -What I am .which was not letting me to be creative.

Every human being is born creative before he starts following the orders or rules and procedures from society.It perhaps is a necessary evil for the society at the cost of the freedom of a human being.If you have the courage to destroy all bondage-you can come out of the slavery or the prison of your mind.

Human being cannot achieve it's true potential until unless he does not have the ability to think as a individual.This may mean he has to be rebellious against the same society which he is a part of .There are others who are waiting for you to be rebellious.Once you become rebellious ,they too join you.

If you look at history,you will find few rebellious people who in their times in their country realized this.They break away from their society and before they could have realized they formed a new religion or a new society or a new country.People who are regarded or worshiped today were the ridiculed by their own family or society.

Human Beings are wired to connect

The latest discovery in neuroscience has proved what spiritual sciences were saying for ages. The latest studies have proved that brain design is such that during interpersonal interactions our brain inter-connects with other brains and hence makes human species sociable.So you effect the brain of the other person through interactions .This sounds like a wireless or a blue-tooth technology.Brain-Mind- Body connection we all are aware.So what it means we all are connected and influencing each other every day of our lives.This sounds like a worldwide web.

So going further into this ,each day we have various interactions.Some interactions are desirable and some undesirable..Each interaction triggers a emotion.Now the magnitude of these emotions will depend on our bonding with the person.The stronger the bond,or we say the closer a person is -the stronger will be the emotional response because of the bond between the two human beings.The more close a person is,more time you spend with him/her and more strong is the emotional bonding and hence the response.

So our life experiences decide how we feel ,which impacts our emotions around those feelings.Different emotions result in different body responses and secretion of hormones.Have you ever noticed when you see someone you don't like or I will say hate...notice how your breathing pattern changes.You will start breathing fast or a shorter interval like you need more oxygen.

Do we realize now how important human relationships are ? A stressful relationship is like a slow poison and impacts you in a long run.but opposite is true as well.A loving relationship may give you a lot of strength and energy to counter life struggles.
  

Triple Filter Test....by Socrates

One day an acquaintance met the great philosopher Socrates and said, "Do you know what I just heard from one of your friends?"

"Hold on a minute," Socrates replied. "Before telling me anything I'd like you to pass a little test. It's called the Triple Filter Test. " "Triple Filter?" asked the man. "That's right," Socrates continued. "Before you talk to me about my friend, it might be a good idea to take a moment and filter what you're going to say. That's why I called it the triple filter test."The first filter is Truth. "Have you made absolutely sure that what you're about to tell me is true?" "No," the man said, "actually I just heard about it and wanted to tell it to you." "Alright," said Socrates, "so you don't really know if it's true or not."
Now let's try the second filter, the filter of Goodness. "Is what you are going to tell me about my friend something good?" "No, on the contrary , it is bad." "So," Socrates replied, " you want to tell me something bad about him, but you're not certain if it's true."
"You may still pass the test though, because there's one filter left, the filter of Usefulness." " Is what you are going to tell me about my friend going to be useful to me?" "No, not really." replied the man. "Well," concluded Socrates , " if what you are going to tell me is neither true, nor good, and nor even useful to me, why telling me at all."

When death comes, it does not ask your permission;
it comes and takes you; it destroys you on the spot.

Have you ever in your experience in an instant ever totally dropped HATE,ENVY, PRIDE of ANY KIND OF POSSESSION, ATTACHMENT to BELIEFS or OPINIONS or IDEAS or a Particular way of THINKING  

To drop opinion, belief, attachment, greed, or envy is to die—to die every day, every moment
If there is the coming to an end of all ambition from moment to moment, then you will know the extraordinary state of being nothing
& in this nothingness is LIVING ...

Die every day..& you will truly live...

Fight or Flight or Neither - Our Social Intelligence

While reading a book, especially a book on psychological or philosophical aspects most of us have a tendency to relate the incidents, characters, philosophy with our own or others (people known to you) experiences. We do this perhaps because it helps us to understand and relate. This happened to me while I was reading a book called Social Intelligence (by Daniel Goleman of Emotional Intelligence) where he cites an example of a mob fearing from a group of soldiers gets united against them. The mob had a preconceived negative notion that the soldiers have come to arrest their leader or may harm their place of worship. The commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Hughes had to think fast. He took a loudspeaker –told his soldiers first to kneel on one knee, then second to point their rifles towards the ground and third to have a big smile on their faces. This had a dramatic effect on the situation there by breaking the cultural and language barriers. He was able to calm the whole crowd.

Daniel explains this further by calling this as brain’s social brilliance even in a tense and chaotic situation e.g. deciding instantly whether to run or engage when you encounter a stranger with the help of your mind neural circuits. 

I had an incident with a stranger on a Mehrauli Road between Gurgaon & Delhi last month where I behaved differently than my normal self .Honestly, I was surprised by my own behavior & felt that it was not me .The behavior did not came at least from my thinking mind. . It was afternoon time on a weekday with fair amount of traffic on the road. I was going for a client meeting when I heard a sound “hump” like something touched my car in the back. There was not much of traffic and I had plenty of time and was driving at a normal pace . I noticed a man on a bike driving next to me .I am known among my friends and family who drives safe. That day was not any different. I was pretty sure that there was no chance that I have done something wrong. I got a feeling that the man on the bike has actually deliberately come closer to my car and with his hand had slapped the car body which caused that sound. As I was confident and my intentions were clear, I stopped my car just to understand and find out what was the problem.

I still didn’t understand that this is the trap created by the man on the bike just to attract my attention and made me stopped. This is what he wanted .The moment I stopped my car just to find out what has happened, he aggressively took his helmet out. Now I can see his face and body built. He was more than 6 ft height and muscular built more like a wrestler. The commuters were not interested in what is happening on the road side. Everyone just passed by.

 When I asked him what had happened, out of a sudden he changed his tone. He was now sounding like someone who wants to extort money from you. He was very straight and said- You were driving wrong & you were about to hit me on my bike. Give me money and we will settle it here. I was astonished and now I could realise his intentions and why & how he created this trap. I got into his trap. 

I collected my little presence of mind still present there and just laughed as I am not scared from him and his threat .I told him that why he is doing this in broad day light ?I told him this and just sat in my car so that I can just get out of there. He understood that I am not going to shell out money so easily to him. May be he was looking for more. He now changed the tactics. He as well opened my car and sat in the front seat and asked me to give money or drive with him.

This was the moment that my sixth sense worked. I guess similar to what might have occurred to   Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Hughes as narrated by Daniel Goleman in Social Intelligence. I responded looking at the gravity of situation .I quickly took my phone and came out of my car. I had a feeling that he wanted to kidnap me. That guy came out of the car as well. I pretended to him that I know him and I as well stay nearby in the same area. He did not believe first .He asked me name & where I live. I told him whatever came to my mind just out of nowhere. Seeing that it has some impact but not that he can let me go. But I could see that he is now thinking about his next actions. I had to say something more which can deter him. A day before one of my friends had traveled from Mumbai with an ACP (Assistant Commissioner of Police) who was sitting next to him. When I was talking to him, he told me the name of that ACP. In the same breath I also told that guy- Do you know I am nephew of that ACP & I raised my tone Do you know what an ACP is? Seeing my reaction that guy again changed his tone and said since it was my fault, I should have said Sorry & matter would have been over. I told him if this is the case- I am sorry. The moment I said this like he was now trying to escape as well from the situation. He sat on has bike, kicked, started it & within seconds he had gone.

I was standing there, still not able to believe that I was able to avoid a difficult situation. There are many more incidents which I can collect now where I lied, behaved very differently or acted without thinking out of impulse to come out of a difficult situation or to give myself into a situation. I can now recall & relate to many such difficult situations in life and how our mind had behaved in those tricky situations. Funny isn't it?