A new beginning

A new year marks a fresh beginning - a moment to reflect on the year that has passed and eagerly anticipate the one ahead. It's a time for new plans, fresh To-Do lists, and exploring familiar tasks in different ways. A period to think on our goals and set targets for ourselves.

After a prolonged hiatus spanning several years, I intend to reignite this blog. Initially centered on cultivating workplace happiness, this platform remained stagnant while a decade ushered in significant changes in our work landscape. Personally, my evolution has been shaped by diverse experiences and perspectives. While I've written technical blogs at my technology blog site and showcased my photography on my photography website, this blog remained frozen in time.

Upon revisiting its content, I realized its enduring relevance today. I thought of bringing it back from slumber, albeit with a twist. This space will transform into an open notebook, a canvas for sharing musings across broader domains encompassing finance, art, life, and whatever else captures my imagination.

Wish you all a very happy, healthy and fulfilling new year!!

Are you stressed at work?

I was working on a challenging project with an aggressive timeline. I started my days early, woking late into the night and I could see the accomplishments.  When I realized it was time to take some rest and call it a day, I still had energy to continue. The hours of work did not matter. Yet, I was back to work early the next day. This continued for weeks without a fatigue.

I am sure most of you had the privilege of experiencing this very positive phase at work at some time or the other. Possibly these are also the best times in life when we think there is perfect 'work-life' balance even though possibly we are spending most of our waking hours just working.

For me the best work day is when, after a long day I still feel like continuing with the work!

Yet, life is a roller coaster and so is work. It is not so uncommon to feel stressed at work at times. What is needed though is to know how to deal with stress, that would help minimize the stress bouts significantly.

The Chief Happiness Officer at positivesharing.com shares the Top 5 Myths about workplace stress

photo credit: positivesharing.com

The Happiness Advantage

What makes us happy? Is it success that brings happiness or is it the other way round, that happiness increases the chances of success?

In an earlier post on Success and Happiness, I shared:

Does success give us happiness? I still believe, yes, though with a caveat that it could be for a span of time. After certain time a success no longer may make us feel elated and the benchmark of defining our success changes.

Shawn Achor, author of the book The Happiness Advantage, did extensive research on this topic at Harvard and his findings were, and I quote from his book,

".. More than a decade of groundbreaking research in the fields of positive psychology and neurosciences has proven in no uncertain terms that the relationship between success and happiness works the other way round."

".. we now know that the happiness is the precursor to success, not merely the result. And that happiness and optimism actually fuel performance and achievement ..."

Happiness is a choice we can make for ourselves. Why not choose to be happy and be successful?

The Calming Effect - essence of a successful leader

photo credit: bizior

I have the opportunity to work with few people, whom I consider to be very good leaders. One  charecteristic I have observed in each one of them is an ability to stay calm in challenging situations. There is never an expression of panic even at times when things have fallen apart. Most importantly, in situations where many others are gripped with panic and the circumstances are chaotic, these leaders seem to be commanding in a steady and calm manner.

I realized that calmness is a key attribute of a leader. Being able to control one's emotion and be focused to solve a problem is crucial. I am not really sure whether all these leaders are really calm or succeed in exhibiting calmness. Whatever be it, this calmness has a positive effect on the people around, which could be the team members or even the customer. I call this The Calming Effect.

In crisis or conflict The Calming Effect is so necessary and this is why:

• Being calm is contagious. In conflict it helps manage the 'other party' or even when you are helping others to sort a conflict. 
• Most crisis situations have a chaotic effect amongst many involved. Such situations demand decisions to be made, to steady the rocking boat. In crisis when it is important to steady the rocking boat (read team or an organization), undoubtedly a calm mind would be more rational in making the most appropriate decision.
• In today's organizational and economic crisis situations, one of the main requirement is to deal with information to cope up with the crisis and to be able to interpret the information to take decisions. Calmness is key to deal with and interpret informations, to ensure a focused analytical view.
• Being calm, helps to bring in a sense of order and calmness in others within a team. Lot can be achieved with team work, and it is necessary to help the team members be focused and be calm.
• I write this, as many of my IT friends read this blog. We sometimes have to deal with multiple challenging technical situations which is a crisis in a customer's IT environment. As an expert it is important to think calmly on the feet to find solutions and in quick time.
• I also see a relationship between trust and calmness of the leaders. The customers and the employees trust a person more who exhibits calmness and helps build a sense of confidence.

Easier said, than done. However, in my pursuit to learn, I have realized that it is not so difficult either to stay calm. What it takes is to teach your mind to be conscious of this fact and practice it in a demanding situation. I have often seen people to panic when the call of the hour is to stay focused to recover from a crisis. The first step to be focused is to stay calm.

Here are few thoughts that could be useful to stay calm in crisis:

• First, do not take it 'personal' (unless the situation really is). You possibly have been hired to deal with crisis like these and you should stand up to steady the rocking boat.
• Step out of the problem. Look at it from outside. See the big picture. If it is a conflict take a look from a third person's view. Take a look putting your self in other's shoes. You would be able to see more and be less biased in decisive thoughts.
• Keep focus on the desired outcome of the situation. There would be lot of noise around and lot of distractions. Keep them aside by being focused on the final outcome.
• Yet, keep listening; keep the mind open to capture useful conversation. Key is to listen more and communicate effectively, not emotionally.
• Progress in an orderly manner. As I say, many situations today need handling of information, which could be large spreadsheets with correlated figures to various subjective information from multiple sources which should pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle. A calm mind does a better analysis.

Are you able to stay calm in crisis? Do you bring The Calming Effect on your customers and colleagues?

The power of YOU

"If a man is called to be a streetsweeper,
he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted,
or Bethoven played music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.
He should sweep streets so well that
all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say,
here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well."

                                                  - Martin Luthar King Jr.

I am currently reading Robin Sharma's The Leader Who Had No Title and a key takeaway is

"...each one of us can lead without a title and in so doing influence everyone around us in the most positive of ways."

Success and Happiness

"Success is not the key to happiness.
Happiness is the key to success.
If you love what you are doing, you will be successful."
- Albert Schweitzer

I came across this quote few days back and it made me ponder.

Does success give us happiness? I still believe, yes, though with a caveat that it could be for a span of time. After certain time a success no longer may make us feel elated and the benchmark of defining our success changes. And rightly so, as this is the key to progress, the urge to do more, to research, innovate and create.

The chances of success in a pursuit is definitely very much higher if you love what you do and are passionate about it. The best part of being passionate about doing something is the enjoyment you would any way get just 'doing' it irrespective of the end result. The end result will also be a reflection of your passion. Like as I believe, the best recipes are always prepared by the most willing cooks or the best analysts are the ones who delve deep passionately into their subjects.

Tracy Moris writes "The key is to not confuse happiness with success. Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get. In other words, instead of waiting for your circumstances to make you happy, you have to decide to be happy no matter what your circumstances."

There is no eternal success and there is no eternal happiness, so the journey is the key and to decide to be happy irrespective of your circumstances is the first step to sustain happiness.

There is another perspective to success and hapiness. Everyone would have different benchmarks of success and happiness. So it is never appropriate to comapre ones success with another's. We may percieve a person to be more successful than another, however you never know, the 'less successful' person may be the happier one.

The key is to introspect and honestly answer:

"What makes me happy?"
"What am I passionate about?"
"What do I want to do?"

With this I will leave you with another thought: Can we dare to measure our success by the happiness we have?


photo credit: Bindaas Madhavi via Flickr

What Matters Now - is to read, think and take action

What Matters Now is an ebook which you must read. It talks about the Things to THINK about and most importantly TAKE ACTION.

72 great thought leaders have contributed to this book by sharing what they are thinking about.

This is a brilliant compilation of articles being shared by Seth Godin and available for free.

You can download it here: What Matters Now

One single word, one single page each is all that took the great thinkers to share their thoughts -enough to provoke you, to make you ponder and to "shake things up".

A sneek peak into few of the articles:

Seth Godin on Generosity: If you make a difference, people will gravitate to you. They want to engage, to interact and to get you more involved.

Jacqueline Novogratz on Dignity: Creating ways for people to solve their own problems isn’t just an opportunity in 2010. It is an obligation.

Howard Mann on Connected: We walk the streets with our heads down staring into 3-inch screens while the world whisks by doing the same. And yet we’re convinced we are more connected to each other than ever before.

Rajesh Setty on Enrichment: You are only as rich as the enrichment you bring to the world around you.

Mark Hurst on Speaking: Be honest, be authentic, and speak from your passion. Yes, it means taking a risk. But the results might surprise you.

Many great thoughts from the following authors:

Read it. Share it. Take ACTION.