Respond to a Situation

Being an engineering student, I prefer to define Situation as “a phenomenon that happens because something happens”. Well, engineering student always used to define anything in this format.
Leaving it apart, situation is what makes a man. One big question I have asked myself over the years is this “Does something happen in someway because it was meant to happen that way, or because we made it happen that way?”. (Even now, when I am phrasing this question, I do not know why I made it look like I am being biased). Alright, now suppose it has happened, then what? The way we act to it determines who we are. The way we act may be determined by our attitude towards life, our aim/goal/destiny/whatever-you-call-it, or what result we want to get from the situation, our purpose of life, and much more.

“You always have a choice”, people say. “Mine was taken”, people respond. That is all fine. But one person who dedicated his life towards this research is Dr.Viktor E. Frankl, authour of Man’s Search for Meaning and father of Logotherapy. He is my favorite philosopher. The main point of Frankl philosophy is “Life does not owe you happiness, it offers you meaning.”

Meaning is found by

1.creating a work or doing a deed

2.By experiencing something or encountering someone

3.By the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.

To find meaning is the purpose of life.

Situation is what triggers a thought inside us and thereby an emotion (Well, unless you are on drugs). Situation gives experience, teaches and makes a man. “Situation does not reveal a man. It makes a man” – this one sentence gives huge self-confidence. Deep inside us, enclosed in a thick shell, lies a thought of regret that we do not wish to reveal or rub on it. The regret may be due to something that we did wrong or said wrong, knowingly or unknowingly. One thing is for sure, you cannot go back and change what you have done. But you can change its course, you have control over it. When the next, time a situation occurs and you want to respond to it, you have a choice of how to act.

People might think of you in any way. You have no control over what people think of you. But you have control over how you make them to think of you, the next time. So ultimately you have a choice! There lies a path of optimism before us. (More about optimism later.) Whatever has gone wrong, you can make a difference by choosing the way you act.

(But sometimes, having a lot of choices, lessens your level of satisfaction. More later)

Finally, it zeroes up to this – “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.” – Friedrich Nietzsche.

Will you respond? If you do respond, how will it be?

Whatever you do, Have a great day!

ManoRanjan

Angryness and response

I am writing this post in a full mood of angryness. I am very very short tempered. I usually do not get angry when I am alone. If I do get angry when I am alone, the reason will be due to someone or something that I do not have control over.  Angryness is completely induced or observed by us. Situations and states of the world are right in front of us. It completely depends only upon ourselves to become angry or not. We do not have control over anything that happens around us. But we have complete control and freedom over what action we choose and how we respond. As, Victor Frankl says in his book Man’s Search for Meaning,

“Everything can be taken from a man but …the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the “why” for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any ‘how’! “

The whole point and philosophy of dealing situations, he describes here.

Anyway, when I get angry, by angry I mean real angry, as opposed to fake angry, where I do not really get angry, but the outer shell of myself thinks I am angry and acts accordingly, ok wait.

When I really get angry, I usually get more productive. (proof: this blog post ). I am at full concentration level, eyes wide open, heart beat slightly above normal, and at the same time planning very carefully each step I need to make to overcome the problem. I begin to analyse all holes in the solution and perfectly correct them. I become more alert. This somewhat adds to the “Oh, I am actually useful!” factor in me. Increases my self confidence.

I get idea sparks when I plan angryily. Some conclusions I arrive at, do stay in memory for a long time and come back to me when I meet a similar situation later.

Alright, I am a little okay now.

Well, I have seen a lot of people do weird things when they get angry. I think, they do things weird not because of angryness at that point, but due to all kinds of thoughts, ego, emotions about the people involved in the situation that made him or her angry. I never act weird or do public stunts when I get angry. Usually, no one can guess if I am angry because, I happen to have a grave look always. It is like someone is playing an “Attack Release” game with me.

After it fades away, I am able to sleep peacefully and if the angryness lasts till the morning (problem not solved), I am able to wake up with full concentration. Actually, angryness is useful in someway.

As they say, “Circumstances do not reveal a man, they make him”. I completely agree with it. They way we choose to respond and react, makes us who we are.

I have more to tell about circumstances. I will continue in the next post.

Have a great day!

ManoRanjan

Workshop on entrepreneurship and leadership

I happened to attended a one-day workshop on entrepreneurship and leadership by Mr.Srinivas, the successful personality development coach and trainer. He has a lot of experience with corporates and has trained a lot of people in the industry. My father told me that there was a worsop going on and told me the place. I was interested and started out in the morning. Finding the place of the workshop itself was too tiring. I walked around 3 kilometres under the hot sun to find the place. When I got there, I happened to meet him and was surprised by the kind of person he was and this opportunity to learn.

I will summarize what I learnt.

1. Self Esteem is everything. You can never stop a person from thinking anything about you. But you can think whatever you want to think about yourself. Self Esteem decides who you are at the end of the day. In the end, its the person standing in front of the mirror you have to answer and satisfy.

2. Improve a lot more on your strengths than your weaknesses. A lot of people advise us to improve on our weaknesses so that we can a good person overall. But what he says seems to strike truth. Improve a lot more on your strengths first. Then you’ll become an expert!.

3. Construct your Circle of Excellence. Identify areas that you are interested and become proficient in those circles.

4.There is no failure. Only Feedback. It all depends on how you take the result to be. If you take it as failure, then it becomes a failure. If you take it as feedback, then it gives you a goal and expectation to get the job done better next time.

5. Out-of-Box-Thinking. You need to think differently,identify opportunities in the society around you. And for that, you have to stay in the loop and think out-of-the-box. Basically, different from others. And be ready to be ridiculed by the other people.

6. Communication, Business writing and Presentation Skills are important and will be needed to take you wherever you want to go in life.

7. Interpersonal effectiveness – Analyse people how they think and present information in the way which they find easy to comprehend. There are basically three types how people process information.

1. The Visual type – process information largely through visual input like pictures. These kind of people are usually good in describing environment and the way things look. They have a photographic memory. They usually say “see you” at end of a conversation. They usually speak with a high pitched voice and sound seems to come from a reservoir of air in the high chest.

2. The Auditory type – process information largely through auditory input – hearing. They are good in recording the way things sound and speak with a rhythmic voice. Things need to explained by words to them for them to understand easily. They usually say “talk to you later” or “call once a while” at the end of a conversation.

3. The Kinesthetic type – process information largely through their feelings and their thoughts. They usually say “keep in touch” or “love you” at the end of a conversation. It is hard to convince people of these type. They will be convinced only if they are moved. The usually speak with a low voice. Sound seems to come from their lower abdomen.

So, you need to identify the way they process information and convince them accordingly to be successful in getting your ideas through.

8. Don’t make resolutions. Make commitments. Give the best you can. Be the best you can. Do the best you can. And keep doing it till the end.

9. Keep learning and Updating yourself. Stay ahead by knowing a lot and happenings in your industry or field. Its not merely enough if hold the pulse. You have to be the pulse.

10. Make a lot of connections and contacts wherever possible. Who you know is more important than what you know. You never know when or how opportunities come to you. Having a lot of connections helps spread information on your area of expertise and opportunities

11. Have fun! Enjoy your success. Try not to get burnt out easily.

12. Allocate time for everything and be a good human being.

Srinivasan blogs and gives ideas at

http://srini-thecoach.blogspot.com/

http://www.mpowerlimited.com/

At this point I would like to mention Hugh Macleod, a cartoonist entrepreneur. One of his drawings “Random thoughts on being an entrepreneur”

Entrepreneurship and Leadership by Hugh Macleod

Sweating is not a waste after all!

Have a great day!

ManoRanjan

An Industrial Visit to Infosys, Banglore and an enlightenment by SPARK

As part of our four year engineering curriculum, we are supposed to make industrial visits to software companies and gain insight on software engineering and stuff. The visit to Banglore, Mysore and Ooty (too!) was fantastic with our whole class going in two buses. And yes we of course went to Wonderla (a water theme park near Banglore) , KFC, experienced the bustling night life Banglore, much more and had fun.

There is a program in Infosys called SPARK – an initiative to enlighten students and prospective employees of the company. We were briefed by the SPARK team and given a tour of the campus.

There is a centre called PmCoe – Project Management Center of Excellence in Infosys, which has developed a technique called Project Think Approach. This approach involves taking every work as a a project and following certain steps to make it a succes. Basically it summarizes as follows.

PROJECT THINK APPROACH

1. Identify the objectives.

2. Identify assumptions and constraints.

3. Address those constraints that really count in the end.

4. Identify what needs to be done (the scope).

5. Determine the plan of action.

6. Identify the risks.

7. Anticipate the risks and reduce their effect on the goal.

These seven steps basically form the Project Think Approach. They say that, this approach can be followed anywhere – even in our daily tasks of life.

Overall, the SPARK program and Infosys visit was awesome!

Have a great day!

ManoRanjan

Belief in Astrology?

I strongly believe that elders have vast experience and knowledge which they had accumulated in their life. Even a small amount of information can be precious and can provoke us to think a lot about it. This particular incident stands to prove the point.

I had much belief in astrology. I used to read the astrology column of the newspaper whenever I had a chance. Once my grandfather happened to visit me one morning. He is around 65 years old. He was reading the newspaper. On the left side column of the newspaper was the astrology part. And as usual I wanted to read it and sat left to him and read it. And as usual, my sign was predicted to be bad that day.

On reading I got upset and I just asked my grandfather casually, “Do you believe in all these?” I asked.

“Why?”, he asked back.

“Well, today its written that its bad for me.”, I said.

“Well, then don’t believe!”, he said.

I was kind of struck.

I asked “But, what if it was written its good for me?”.

“Simple! Believe what is written good for you. Don’t believe if its bad!”.

Then I got it. I can believe whatever pleases me and reject all those that don’t! After all, they’re just predictions. They don’t have anything to do with my life. It’s my life and it’s my choice that day.

I choose to be whoever or whatever or however I want to be this day. Period. No questions asked.

Its my life and its my choice.

Anybody can say anything or predict anything of imagine anything. I cannot stop them from doing it. But I can choose the way I want do things and live my life. (As Victor Frankl says in ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’. Anything can be snatched from a man. Anything but the freedom to choose his way of action …)

And from that day, I never read astrological predictions!

Footnote: A lot of choices in life can lead to confusions. As Barry Schwartz says in his book “The Paradox of choice”. At a TED conference, he discusses the advantages of having a lot of choices in life and the disadvantages of it. He says having a lot of choices raises our level of expectations and proves it with a research study.
Have a great day!

ManoRanjan

A guest lecture by the co-founder of MindTree Ltd

It was a saturday morning.

All of us were burnt out after finishing our internal exams. As we are computer science engineering graduates and we are supposed to keep learning new things, our college CIR team had arranged for a guest lecture by Mr.N.S.Parthasarathy, co-founder of MindTree Ltd.

None of us were in the mood to sit there and listen to him talking. But we had to. And so it began. In the end I was completely surprised by the insight he gave us on the industry and what the IT industry expects from aspiring candidates. A short excerpt from his lecture:

He emphasized of three things: Knowledge, Skill and Attitude.

1.Knowledge

Knowledge is what we have learnt in our curriculum. Our syllabi. Our four year, eight semester engineering course.

2.Skill

Skill is what we acquire by ourselves when we do that “self-learning”. Our skill-sets show our self-;earning capability. And in the ever-changing field of computer science, self-learning is required to update ourselves.

3.Attitude

Attitude is what we show, when we have performed our best in everything we do – learning to gain knowledge and acquiring skills. He says, people who have the “GO GET IT” attitude will succeed.

Then we had a question-answer round. One of my friends asked him the story behind their company logo. The story was quite fascinating.

They started the company around 50 crores of venture capital fund. When they were designing a logo, the had their DNA in their mind – Imgination, Action and Joy. They went to a school for the challenged children in banglore and asked a group of around 10 children to design a logo. A 17 year old boy had designed their logo like this -

Blue color line growning up – Imagination

Red background – Action

Yellow bubbles – Joy

And thus their logo! They wanted to convey a message to the world from their logo – That we can learn a lot even from people like these children. A very noble message indeed. Quite fascinating too. With these, he emphasized more on “keeping ourselves updated” in the ever changing field of technology.

I realized – this saturday morning was fully worth being burnt out.

Blog Inspiration

I spend my free time fully on the internet. I hit upon some amazing blogs that inspire people to be creative, independent and confident. There are some blogs which are insanely inspiring. I am inspired to blog from the following blogs:

Chris Guillebeau - http://chrisguillebeau.com/3×5/

- Chris is a world changer with a mission to visit all countries in the world. I a big fan!

Location 180 – http://www.seanogle.com/

- Tips on bloggong and marketing.

Upgrade Reality – http://www.upgradereality.com/

- Upgrade your quality of life.

Why do I blog?

My First Post

I always wanted to blog. It has taken so long for me to get myself started. And now its happening.

Why do I want to blog?

1. To review and keep track of myself. I want to know how my actions , thoughts, and life change over the time.

2. To express my thoughts to many other people.

3. To establish a identity and have a history of my life.

4. To get contacts from people all around.

5. Help other people who inturn could help.

6. Travel – I love travelling and photography. I want to share my ideas and experiences to people who have a similar passion.

7. Technology and Software- Being a computer science graduate, sharing knowledge and knowledge would connect me with similar people.

8. To learn how to communicate effectively with people. To be clear and concise.

9. To share small tips and tweaks I can discover in everyday life that would make other people’s lives simple and stress-free.

I didn’t want to stop with these 9. I can think of only these at this moment.

I will add new reasons when they strike me.