Category: Psychology

Strengthening our mind for successful leadership in post corona VUCA environment

Jeevan Vaishampayan Psychology , , , , , , ,
Strengthening our mind for successful leadership in post corona VUCA environment

In this corporate world, we are always worried about not living up to our responsibilities. We are always busy with emails, meetings, performance, decision-making and many more expectations those are almost look impossible. Expectations are increasing day by day in this VUCA world. Have you heard this word ‘VUCA’ before? 

The VUCA concept  have been first introduced in the early 90s by the US Army War College to refer to the multilateral world that emerged after the end of the Cold War. In corporate context, VUCA concept became known after global financial crisis of 2008 & 2009. These words or this concept is characterised by

Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity 

After this CORONA pandemic, economic situations are going to be more and more Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA).  We are actually entering into a unpredictable zone. Economic world is going to change its pace and direction to a different level after this CORONA virus will be over. We will be surprised to see the economical, psychological, sociological, anthropological change in the business environment.  

After this corona effect; business leaders are expected to make decisions faster, process huge amount of data, explore new technological possibilities, set new revived milestones to become more successful in this coming more competitive market. But if we are expected to perform in a certain way, our minds need to be strengthened than before. So how to strengthen our mind?

Few can be the ways to strengthen our mind to be the best leader in this post pandemic VUCA environment. 

Change the thinking pattern:

We are going to see the positive changes in this pandemic environment. World-over we have seen that nature is more thriving in this lock down period. We have started contacting our old friends, colleagues, relatives, neighbours. We have initiated new conversations, strengthened our bonds with them, might have resolved buried conflicts.  We have started giving time to ourselves and started introspecting in a more deeper way. We have started understanding our colleagues, subordinates, society from different perspectives. Suddenly we have stopped through our routines and entered into an opportunity to  rest our mind to become more creative & productive. So if we can see the rational and positive perspective from any disaster, we would be getting the way out to change our thinking pattern. 

Accelerate in a change:

We are always looking for change in our entire lives but we are resistant to change ourselves within our mind. If we really wanted to happen some change in our habit, we do resist. We need to give a push to make that change happen. Same way we need to push ourselves to accelerate expected change in our strategies to become best leader after this pandemic. 

The mega disruption is happening in our connectivity and performance. Though our borders are closed, we are separated, sealed and quarantined at home but we are more connected to our colleagues, co-workers and subordinates than before. So how can we avail this opportunity? Accept environmental, technological and any type of dynamic change in our mind first and accelerate ourselves to make that change happen in real life. 

Re-invent the same with difference: 

More or less we are doing the same tasks in our daily routine life in this lock down period also, but we are experiencing the difference in our actions. As we are seeing the expanse of this corona virus & its preventive actions to control it, we are becoming more mindful in all of our actions at home. We are using the same props to do the same tasks but becoming more & more aware and present with our mind at time using those props and doing the tasks. If we can maintain the same awareness and mindfulness after this pandemic in all of our professional tasks, we would be enriching our creativity & overall productivity also. 

We are also seeing that people are helping each other to survive in this pandemic situation so we are learning the humanity again with the difference. We are becoming more responsible with our actions to control this viral impact in our society. If we continue to help each other and become more responsible in our teams, in our organisations, in our industry then definitely we can re-invent the success with the difference. 

Mind conditioning in strategising business performance 

Jeevan Vaishampayan Psychology , , , , , ,
Mind conditioning in strategising business performance 

What impact do you think that your mind conditioning have on your business decisions?

Everything we do, we do in our mind first then body follows the path as we have made in our mind. When we are planning, communicating, strategising & executing in our business, mind is our main hub responsible for our actions. Our mind performance will determine the quality of our plans, communications, actions, strategies & decisions. Business performance & decisions are entirely dependent on how we have conditioned our experiences in the mind. Now we are going to see usual experiences & problems in the leadership journey.

We as business leaders recognise various forces in the market working for or against us, which reveal valuable information about strategic opportunities or obstacles we may face. If we are not mindful or less attentive to the world around us or got busy with daily demands in the business then we are susceptible to attract unwelcome surprises or may miss window of opportunity. We get caught up in a chaos of thoughts & start loosing control over our present. So we miss to learn that ’Strategic Leadership’ is like our ‘mental radar’ that revolves continuously across the spectrum of our business life, which includes our team, organisation, functional area, our industry, the market, technology we use & so on.  If we can not tune with the signal receiving out our radar, we may miss some information that can have significant impact on our business decisions. So what exactly aware business leaders for making rational conditioning of mind to enhance business performance & develop strategic leadership skills?

Following are the action points that can help us in conditioning our mind 

Introspection: If we really want to do introspection, we need to be very mindful with ourselves. We usually have tendency to wander either in the past or in the future. We need to keep our mind in the present to portray the entire business surrounding, harsh realities, issues to be considered, keeping focus on goals & strategies. Without gathering this intelligence, it is difficult to introspect & to know where we are heading & what are we going to face. 

Detection: Being business leaders, there are very few people who ask us questions directly. So it is better to question ourselves in our mind. It becomes easy to detect obstacles, problems, gaps, loopholes. Questions can be catalyst for our strategic performance because it provokes deep insights. It allows us to see things from different perspective, which may explore new possibilities. 

Negation: After questioning ourselves & detecting gaps in our leadership journey, we have drilled down to choose options like collaborative approach or less – inclusive approach or some different combined approach. If we want to opt one way to walk then we need to negate ourselves from following other ways. Negating few things from our mind become slightly difficult which we are practicing in our daily life. But deducting unwanted things can make us more focused.

Substitution: When we make some space in our cupboard by removing some unwanted things, we fill that space with some important things. Similarly once we negate few strategies, tasks or ways from our mind, we need to create right strategies to fulfil that empty space. Thses newly aligned strategies can help us to achieve our business goals. 

Above action point is like mental exercise, which we should do regularly in our mind. Specially when we are stuck with any confusions, we should practice such exercise.

If you are facing similar kind of problems and looking for help, get in touch with us. 

Contact: +91-8459-886080 or jeevan@mindhealth.in

Breathing helps to come out of our emotional outburst

Jeevan Vaishampayan Psychology , , , , , , , , , , ,
Breathing helps to come out of our emotional outburst

“Consciously regulating your emotions transform the experience of your life”

Normally we are going through lot of emotions from situation to situation in our daily life. Few emotions do not get a chance to regulate themselves and its intensity goes up and above. We are going through lot of ups & downs within our emotions, which become routine for us. We are not so conscious about taking cognisance of extremely wavering graph of our emotions. Sometimes it feels good in a routine but give feeling of fatigued & exhausted at the end of the day. As our emotions change, our breathing pattern also changes. So it has a contribution to our physical exertion also. This emotional roller coaster pushes us to express reactions without thinking in any situations, which becomes emotional outburst. Emotional outburst start hampering our health and may detect problems like diabetes, hyper-tension, hyper-acidity.

Many people complain that they don’t be able recognise and control their emotional outburst in many situations. First we need to understand that you can not control your emotions whereas you can regulate your emotions. Many times we are hesitant to accept our own emotions. If someone asks us in a situation, why are you so angry? How we react to it? We say that I’m not angry. I am Okay. But are we really Okay within our mind? So it is better not to deny our real emotion. If we can accept our emotion at that moment, at least we can recognise our emotional outburst moment. 

Breathing is a vital part of our life process. It has an intersection with all of our body & mind processes. Accordingly our emotions & our breathing also goes hand in hand. When we are angry, our breath is short & fast. That is how we have specific breathing pattern in a specific emotion. If we start observing & listening our breathing, we can regulate our emotions too. Start inhaling very slowly and exhale it slowly more or double than inhaling time can really help to regulate our emotions. 

If you are facing the same problem and want to learn about this in detail, get in touch with us. We can have online Skype session in case of any geographical barrier.  

Contact: +91-98220-24674 or write to  jeevan@mindhealth.in 

Focus on process & not on target

Jeevan Vaishampayan Psychology
Focus on process & not on target

In our routinely life, we do have many targets to achieve in our personal & professional life. Many of these targets are set by us for ourselves. We used to achieve many of the targets from the list. But over the period, we become more obsessive & aggressive in achieving those targets. As a result, we become impatient & panic for not seeing the results. First we need to understand, why we start loosing on targets over the period of time?

As we start achieving success in set targets, we become used to it. We start setting up more complicated or difficult targets to achieve. But we do have little bit more mental pressure of being successful as we are habitual in completing the targets on regular basis. Here we start focusing on targets only. Achieving success is the best phenomenon happens in our life but what it takes to achieve it is important. Process involved in achieving success is more important than achieving actual success. We do have two types of satisfactions in our success. One is achievement satisfaction & second is process satisfaction. If you are not involved in the process, you won’t be satisfied in the achieved success for a longer time. Let’s take an example. 

If someone had given me a target to reach Mumbai or any city in a specific time & few amount of money. So I have target of time & money to reach Mumbai. If I start telling you about going to Mumbai again and again, I would not be reaching to Mumbai in any case. So what should I do? I need to make a list of possible options or mediums to reach Mumbai. Ship, Flight, Train, Bus, Taxi, Bike, Walk, Run these are the options to reach Mumbai. But now I need to shortlist based on time & money. I would prefer Train. I go to station, book a ticket. Sit in a train to go. Train had gone more than half of the distance, but unfortunately can’t go ahead. I came out of the station & start looking for bus. I start my travel by bus. Bus had taken me some of the distance. Now I start walking and after one cross road, I take a cab. Cab puts me down just before my targeted destination. Now I start running to reach the destination and I reached it in time. I have achieved success in my target. But Imagine for a second, If I call Spiderman or Superman to take me to Mumbai, he might have come & taken me to destination within my time & money. I would have achieved success but I would not have enjoyed it as I enjoy it after all of my efforts to achieve the success. 

So we have two types of satisfactions in our success. Process satisfaction is more important than achievement satisfaction. If you’re focused & involved in the process, achieving success in your targets is not away from you.  

If you are facing the same problem and want to learn about this in detail, get in touch with us here +91-98220-24674 or write to  jeevan@mindhealth.in 

Trying hard but not achieving desired results

Jeevan Vaishampayan Psychology , , , , ,
Trying hard but not achieving desired results

“Reaching to a success is keeping your mind awake and your desire is in asleep”

In our personal and professional lives, we do have many goals to achieve. Sometimes we achieve few goals very easily but few desired goals are just becoming a dream for us. Why don’t we achieve these desired results? 

We are expected to take actions for making a way to achieve the desired results but inside in our mind we spend more time defending these problem with ourselves. We start focusing on a problem and not on a process of solving it. It becomes unsolved and unachievable. Anyone is offering any help to solve, we tend to give them reasons and defend it. 

Sometimes we try to avoid taking actions because we are scared of something. We delay the process and trying to convince ourselves that how is it unsolvable or unachievable. We are trying to escape from the problem without solving it but it is not going to go away. We try to avoid the people involved in these results and it starts mis-communication and misunderstandings, which may lead to conflicts in our personal or professional life. 

When we start analysing the problem for not achieving the desired result, we come up with some half-baked strategy. We start implementing that again and again, even when we are not getting the expected results. We do not listen to ourselves and others that we should strategise to apply our strength more effectively. 

All of these problems are happening with us on regular basis. We do not give attention to it seriously. But if we start giving attention in whatever we are doing, we can make our mind awake and strategies for achieving results. We need to work out on our fear with a rational thinking and focus on a process of solving the problems. It would be little hard in a start but it would become a lifestyle after practising regularly. 

If you are facing the same problem and want to learn about this in detail, get in touch with us here +91-98220-24674 or write to  jeevan@mindhealth.in 

Difference in our reaction & response

Jeevan Vaishampayan Psychology , , , , ,
Difference in our reaction & response

“Our body can take a quantum leap but the transformation of our mind is always incremental.”

When we talk about differentiating in our reaction and response, we need to understand what do we mean by reaction and response independently. In any professional or personal situations in our life, when we are expected to express our thoughts and emotions, we tend to express without thinking much. This process becomes reaction. It comes out with our ego, which is self protective and shadowing with our varied emotions like fear, sadness and anger. We unknowing try to save our ass and create a defence mechanism around us. Reactions are normally emotional in nature so it comes out very suddenly, which may lead us to feel regretful. 

Response is exactly opposite to a reaction. When we are expected to express out thoughts and emotions, we tend express with right reasoning and rational thought process. Response comes out slowly but it can differ the space between our trigger in mind or event and our interpretation of that trigger or event. This space allows us to create right reasoning, channelise our thought process and balance our emotions. We can move ahead peacefully in our mind to take the right decisions. Practising of giving response helps us to differ between what happens in our life and who we are, which develops our understanding people around us and make our life process more profound and satisfactory. It is little difficult to shift from our normal nature of reacting to responding but continuity and persistent can lead us to give response in any situations. 

If you are facing the same problem and want to learn about this in detail, get in touch with us here +91-98220-24674 or write to  jeevan@mindhealth.in 

Are we really feeling like bored or giving up?

Jeevan Vaishampayan Psychology , , , ,
Are we really feeling like bored or giving up?

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. – Thomas A. Edison

We could not find the answer of one question that why do we feel like bored or giving up. We give many argumentative answers that I’m bored because of my physical tiredness , mental fatigue, organisational politics, disturbing behaviours of colleagues, superiors or family members. But we could not find the exact answer within ourselves that why am I feeling bored or giving up. We shall see a simple example

Frequently in a day, we might be feeling sad because we’re sitting around and life’s disappointments are coming in our mind or trying to find a reason why things aren’t going our way. This type of thinking about our negative mood or negative event just makes everything worse. Negative thoughts leads us to many other connected negative thoughts and predictions, which are not required at that moment. This type of thought process results into loss of perspectives, create more confusions and impacts on decision-making process. At the same time, our self-talk constantly judging and criticising to our critical and important tasks we do; especially when things don’t go our way. It keeps drawing our attention to the negatives and spoils our pleasure when something positive happens. This negative dialogue takes us out of the moment and makes us feel depressed.

When we really feel to work positively on the above problem, we should consider our every thought as a suggestion and not as order. When our mind is suggesting that I am physically tired then it is suggesting to give up or to take an easier path. Kindly pause for a moment and discover more new suggestions in the thought process. Try suggesting through our thoughts that I would be feeling happy and satisfied after completing the next expected tasks and I have an ability to finish these tasks even when I don’t feel like. One thing we should always remember that whatever we accidentally receive as a thought is a suggestion and not an order. We have a power to create more suggestions through our thoughts to channelise ourselves and decide on the right option. 

If you are facing the same problem and want to learn about this in detail, get in touch with us here +91-98220-24674 or write to  jeevan@mindhealth.in 

Can we say ‘No’ to being busy

Jeevan Vaishampayan 0 Comment Psychology , , , , , ,
Can we say ‘No’ to being busy

Nowadays we are getting really busy with our tight schedules. We are having number of tasks to do and number of responsibilities in our personal, family and professional life. Sometimes we really don’t realise that how day has started and how it has ended, it just flies away with tight busy schedules. Many times we feel very guilty that we could not give time to the things, which we love to do. What is the exact fact behind being busy? Are we really asking ourselves that ‘are we really busy’?

In our regular tight scheduled day with full of tasks to do, we are used to be busy within our mind too. It has become a habit to say ourselves in our mind that I’m ‘busy’. Practicing it day by day, it becomes prestige issue. We start believing that being busy is same as being important and feeling committed in our pursuits. If we could not keep ourselves busy, we start feeling insecure. So we start ourselves pushing and over-committing. Sometimes we create a perception that people would take me for granted as a dawdler, if I would not show being busy. So it has become a prestige issue and feather in hat with a pride. But the fact is that we are impacting badly on our physical and our mental health by just saying with ourselves that ‘I am busy’.

Once we start saying ourselves that I’m busy, we miss many of our opportunities. Let’s take an example. We have listed few tasks to be done, when we have free time.  In any of our average day, sometimes we may have a free time of an hour or two at our work-place or even at home. We spend that time with something which is not important for us or time just get passes away un-consciously. We do not recall those listed tasks to do, which we would have done in that free time. Unfortunately, we always realise these tasks to be done after spending this free time with unimportant things. Right? Do you experience this common scenario? Why don’t we remember those tasks to do in that particular free time?

Answer to the above question is very simple that we are always talking with ourselves that I’m busy. This so called ‘being busy-ness’ is recorded within our minds and creating a strong block of being busy.  So as we get free-time, we could not realise that we have time now and we would spend this time by doing our pending or listed tasks. Hence crux of the story that we should start talking one message to ourselves within our mind continuously that ‘I have time and I’m going to find that out’.

If you are facing the same problem and want to learn about this in detail, get in touch with us here +91-98220-24674 or write to  jeevan@mindhealth.in

 

Photo courtesy: http://lukemcelroy.com

Is multi-tasking making us more productive?

Jeevan Vaishampayan 0 Comment Psychology , , , , , ,
Is multi-tasking making us more productive?

Let us imagine we have entered into a Book shop. Book shop is located in a heart of the city so book shop is crowded with many customers like students, avid readers, researchers, window shoppers. Owner is the only person available in the shop to serve all of the customers. He thinks that he’s a multi-tasking person. He is showing some books to few customers, taking money from the customers who bought the books, keeping eye on window shoppers, suggesting genres and newly arrived books to few regular customers, keeping check on the current stock of the books, printing bills out of the purchases, keeping the book racks clean and tidy. He is aware about trend going in today’s environment about ‘Multi-tasking’ so he is patting his own back and praising himself.

What do we think after reading this example? “Why doesn’t he hire an assistant?”, “He could make more money by keeping few employees in a shop.” These might be obvious statements came in our mind, while reading this example. No? We are also doing the same with ourselves but not in this outside physical world but inside in our mind. Yes, shop-keeper would do more better, if he keeps an assistant or employees but he doesn’t think so. He is managing this book shop from last many years with this way and he is successful in becoming a profitable businessman. No-one can not deny his experience.

You might be thinking that I can do multi-tasking easily. I have my strategies to do. Definitely, we can do multi-tasking but now we will see what exactly happens in our mind at the time of multi-tasking. We can do two or three or more tasks together but we can not concentrate on two tasks at one point of time. So we switch ourselves from one task to another with more and more faster speed. This technique works smoothly and seamlessly upto our limits but we cross these limits without knowing ourselves. It has very thin line in between. Once we cross the limit, it takes few more seconds to focus on a task after switching ourselves from another task. It increases our performing time and we may loose few details of that task in a hurry. This results in hampering our productivity. This type of phenomenon may loose our patience level and we may become restless & anxious. This anxiety increases the time in between switching the task from one to another. It means, if we are taking 2 seconds to switch from one task to another in normal case then now we start taking 5 to 8 seconds in switching ourselves. It has cumulative effect by increasing our working time. Again it has chain reaction on hampering our performance. It may increase our tendency to have some so called relaxation like smoking limitless cigarettes or drinking glasses of beer or having some shots. Actually we are finding some relaxation in slowing the list of tasks and its switching speed.  Additionally, this habit results in addiction and hampers our health. So it is better to prioritise our tasks, understand our limits, focus on one task at time and give our best possible performance.

If you want to learn more about this in details, get in touch with us.

Email: jeevan@mindhealth.in

Getting out of our comfort zones

Jeevan Vaishampayan 0 Comment Psychology , , , , , ,
Getting out of our comfort zones

In our fast paced life, we are always in a search of stability. In other words, we always find a comfort zones in our mind. For example, our body set its own system to keep our blood pressure, glucose level, body temperature and many other processes to keep the particular ‘Stability’ of our body. These processes and a particular stability are functioning to make a specific ‘Balance’ in our body. It means our daily routines have specific ‘Balance’ in our home & working environment, tasks, thought process, our potentials, our patience and many more. As we continue with the same, this particular ‘Balance’ become so normal and un-noticed to us. Actually, this ‘Balance’ is creating specific comfort zones in our mind and shaping our behaviour with the same. It always continues to as we realise to make a change in it.

Now we will see the impact of this ‘Balance’ on our body and mind. This fast paced life has given us lot of impatience and habit of excess expectations in a lesser time. Even many self-made motivation experts are contributing by imposing us to set high goals for fast actions. But we fail to understand that our fast actions are going against our stabilising or balancing factor in our body. We are trying to change and coming out of our comfort zones but it is a un-natural way of doing it. Rapid change confuses our body and mind so our ‘Balance’ start restoring it. If you are going rapidly beyond limits of your normal performance, your body and mind ‘Balance’ blocks you from doing the change.

Let’s take a simple example.

Every year we make many resolutions at the start of the year. Getting up early in the morning, going for a walk or exercise in the morning, doing cycling or swimming or gymnasium, reading at least 10 pages a day from a favourite book and joining a music class are the examples of typical resolutions, which we do. We start to do such decided activities but end up doing these things after 3 or 4 days. We just start a walk in the morning but our work keeps us busy for next few late nights. We are about to go for a music class but guests walk in at the same time. We just start reading a book, our relative asks the same book to borrow from us. Day by day, these reasons become endless and we pull ourself back in our previous routine.

We definitely can make a change in our life and come out of our comfort zones. We have to set a smaller change, focus on small wins and lesser percent of improvement. As we get success in the decided small change, we can go further for next smaller change. This means we have to give enough time and patience to our body and mind to accommodate that change in our specific ‘Balance’

If you want learn more in details, get in touch here +91-98220-24674 or jeevan@mindhealth.in

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