Making it up as we go along

As you might be able to see already I'm one of those self improvement geeks, who used to buy loads of books. I read all the famous ones frm 'Emotional Intelligence' to '7 habits of effective people', to 'Men are form mars and women are frm venus' to 'Why men lie and women cry' to 'Blink' and the list is endless...

But now I think life the best teacher, and observing and learning from others teaches you much more that what you can read... most things have to be lived and experienced not just read about, It's like trying to learn to ride a bike or swim by reading a book, ofcourse books can help in getting you ready, but in the end you have to jump in and 'live life'.

Though I still consider myself a book worm I'm more careful when reading these ‘advice’ and ‘how to improve your life’ kind of books, yes they can be good in giving you ideas and for certain things, will give you expert advice which can be useful, but each person is different, and what makes each of us happy and successful is also different. I don’t think that there is a perfect formula that will work for everyone... We just have to make up as we go along...

Tech or no tech, that is the question...

Thesedays I've just been wondering if we are too dependant on technology and science. Don't get me wrong, I'm a techy who loves most of the gadgets and new technologies, especially related to communication... where would I be without msn and Skype, and miles away from my friends and family?

I just got thinking recently when there was a power cut in my appartment, and I got into a total panic as everything here works on electricity, from the cooker, to kettle to washing machine to heater to fridge, and ofcourse all entertainment, computer and lights! I was in pitch darkness in the cold and my phone was beaping cos it was low on charge, and i knew if i made a call at that moment it would die! So I finally went over to a friends place, and called the electicity emergency line and got it sorted, but till they came and fixed it I didn;t know what to do... I was so dependant on electricity, and I thought about home and how we used to have power cuts, but the effect was not as bad, as we had gas cookers, kettles, candles and entertainment was actually talking to my family...

So then I started to wonder about how we're becoming more and more dependant on technology and was just thinking if an Alien wanted to take over the earth the easiest way would be to cut the power and we'd all be helpless! (except for the natives in the forests who continue to live close to nature!)... Ofcourse I'm so glad for all these appliences, after all being on my own and working full time, it would have been practically impossible to survive without the microwave, and washing machine, and all the modern appliances, but are we letting them take over? And what do we do with all the extra time that we accumulate thanks to all our appliances?... I'm also finding tech is making us lose the human touch, as most of the time we can do everything from banking to shopping online... Though I myself am a part techy and like gadgets, I think we really need to make sure that we don't become slaves of tech, and also continue to keep those relationships alive with the human touch, it scares me that otherwise we also might turn into robots just going through life...

This is when I know I'm growing old, I'm already starting to write about 'in my day...' stories!

Learning to let go

Just a couple of days ago I attended a presentation skills workshop, where one of the things we were talking about was 'Learn to let go...' In this context the instructor was talking about how we have the tendency of trying to put everything we know into a presentation, and how we should learn to let go, and only include the most important information for maximum impact.

This got me thinking about other aspects of life as well, I think most of us have this tendency to hang on to things, whether it's while doing a presentation, or writing, or keeping old unused appliances in the house (this I noticed last year when we moved home looking at all the useless things that we had accumulated over the years) or things we do in our everyday lives... I think we do this out of fear that what we 'let go' of, might later prove to be critical or due to fear of change...the infomation that we didn't give might be the deal breaker; the old appliance that we threw away may become useful later on; or the daily practice that we didn't do might affect our lives.

I think this is one of the reasons we seem to be in this state of 'constant busyness'. We have all these new technological advances, and household appliances to save time, but somehow we still seem to be as busy as ever. At work we have the latest computers and softwares to make life easier and even when organisations grow, work never seems to become easier or less... maybe due to our habit of always doing everything and not deligating, not prioratising and due to the culture of 'if you work over time you must be working hard and if you leave on time, you're not doing a proper job (even though the person who stays till late might well be doing personal things!)... I think it's also due to this misconception that being busy makes you important, but chatting with friends, or reading, or taking longs walks are a waste of time... What we never seem to ask ourselves is 'what are we so busy with?' It's the famous Parkinsons Rule at play 'Work expands to fill the time available for its completion' So we can either be constantly busy or decide that we complete the work the best we can and get on with other things in life...

I think coming from a rather conformist society where everything usually is done a certain way and not sticking to that would deem that there's something wrong with you, I too had this 'rat race' always busy mentality... but then I've met many people who have successful careers, families and still manage to find time to read or write or travel and see the world.

Ofcourse I'm not saying that everyone who's busy is because they are creating work, we all go through times when we can be overwhelmed with work or life, but oftentimes we also create our own busyness...

Now little by little I'm analysing what I do, and try to reason, why it's important, and learning to let go of things that are not necessary, and finding myself with so much more time to read and go on long walks, and literally stop to smell the roses.

I am who I am

As I was going through our Judge Business School news I came across this article ‘these bodies are beautiful at every size’ regarding glamour magazine starting to work with all types of models in all shapes, sizes and colors. This link was in our JBS news as an alum who is studying for his phd on ‘how women in the US, Canada and the UK respond to advertising images’ was also quoted in the article. He also runs a modeling agency for women of all shapes and sizes. http://www.benbarry.com/ I really like the tag line ‘every woman is a real woman’.

I’m very glad to hear about all these initiatives, as I think one of the biggest issues almost all of us have is this body image issue… and only seeing perfect airbrushed women on magazines and TV doesn’t help in self confidence… so I think seeing more and more campaigns with real women would help boost the self image of everyone…

After all we all age, and beauty is a temporary thing, so I think its important not to base our whole self worth on it... This also reminded me of the famous book Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wild about the hansom youth who gets a portrait of himself painted and sells his soul in order to look like the picture forever, young and hansom, while the painting withered and aged… so as time went by and he lived a sinful life his picture got more and more disfigured, but his face remained perfect… In the end, Dorian decides to kill his sins and his past by destroying the portrait, but in doing so he kills himself instead.

Ofcourse I think we should all try to look our best, men and women both, and make the most of what we have and be healthy, but there are certain attributes that cannot be changed such as height, body shape, colour and so on… so we just have to learn to be happy with what we have and who we are… that’s true self confidence…. To be able to go out into the world saying ‘I am who I am’ with your head held high…