We all have heard about different facets of self realisation. One could argue that trying to know oneself is a tough process since we may not try to acknowledge our negatives even if we might acknowledge it internally. As always, corners can be cut and we can obviously find situations where we can still use the concept. I think, one way of self realisation is to be self-aware. For example, look at situations where we are prepared for a given interaction, like attending an interview, addressing a crowd, talking to a group, etc., In such situations, we are not only prepared to say what we have to say but are also prepared for the other person's response. When we are prepared for other's responses, we are not emotionally attached to "us" but rather the situation and that makes a big difference in keeping us more rational. Especially, in professional scenarios, as most of you might agree, EQ takes a person to greater heights than IQ.
One of the take-aways from a recent course that I took was this. There are a lot of soft-skills that one could master easily. Though skills such as leadership are perceived to be natural, studies have shown that following key set of characters can groom the leader in you. Though the initial bringup and socio-economic factors play a major role in influencing someone, practicing a skill consciously can get you to greater heights, much greater than what you might imagine. Easier said than done..But then, nothing is easier... Doing nothing is the easiest decision one could make to avoid getting into lot of troubles. But, is it what we do ? I think, we all leave a trail of legacy behind us. Even if we dont do anything, we will leave a legacy that we never did anything..:)... And, thinking about legacy at a ripe age is not going to make a difference to the way we live. So, I think living for what we truly believe in, living for what everyone wants us to be remembered for, living a life that makes a difference in other's lives is important and will leave a trail for who you really are. So, to grow a long distinct tail (of legacy), Self-Awareness is the key.
Monday, December 18, 2006
Time-Space Tail...
Posted by Suresh Sankaralingam at 2:57 PM
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7 comments:
I typed a long comment in - and thanks to Google and its upgrade to use your gmail account lost it all! Shall type it out again when I feel like it
Good post!
thanks saumya..
Thought provoking post.
This blog reminds me of "Seven habits of highly effective people". The first chapter starts with setting a mission for your life and he talks about finding it out by imagining your funeral and think about what you want others to talk about you and that sets your mission.
Yes, it is a bit contradictory because when we are alive, we try to reaffirm that we dont care about what others think, but I think that is a good start.
@ Mindframes: Interesting post..mebbe my comment here is becoz of my poor understanding of the message...but i think it is best to clarify..
I beg to differ on this part of the penultimate sentence... " living for what everyone wants us to be remembered for, living a life that makes a difference in other's lives is important and will leave a trail for who you really are" ...
do we really want to live for what every wants us to be remembered for and make a difference to the lives of people around you????...the fundamental problem is that this changes our focus on things that we do..basically i believe that we should do what makes us happy...forget about whether the people around us are happy with our decision or not...it is just not possible to appease everyone around you...similarly it is very hard to make sure that we do things which are remembered by people...Adolf Hitler and Mahatma Gandhi, both did deeds which cannot be forgotten...however can we justify all the actions taken by them??? Maybe and maybe not depending on who is looking at what and our own personal biases will play a significant role...
but the question then is did they basically do things for which they want to be remembered...I would rather think that they did what they believed in and it just turned out that whatever they believed in made a difference to the lives of people around them...
Therefore the only thing that really matters would be to live for what we truly believe in and practice it...do not live by what you "want" to be remembered for.. the "legacy" is a mechanical product of our life..one can never create legacy but it just happens (atleast in my way of thiking)..
a simple analogy would be that researchers never believe that they will win the nobel prize when they conduct research...they just did what they believed in and it so happened that their work won the nobel prize...hope this analogy is relevant (am presuming it is lol)..
@madmax: I think you got it the other way round. I agree that people should lead their life for what they believe in instead of trying to appease everyone around them. By being who you are and what you believe in, people around you recognize you for who you actually are and that is how legacy gets built (in my opinion). When you really work for what you believe in, you gain people's trust because they start getting to know the real you. By positive reinforcement, I think this will further the position of your belief as well.
My feeling is that, a lot of people try to believe in things that no one knows about, even the closer ones, and that, to me, is not good. I think of this blog forum to be a place where I would like to express what I believe in. Not necessarily things that I want others to follow/agree..:)
This is the comment I had typed in yesterday. There was a study conducted across multiple groups, wherein each member of the group had to fill in what they thought of every other person in the room. The facilitator would then consolidate the results, and let every person know what was thought of them. In 70% of the cases, people thought they had received the wrong person's feedback!
Everybody has an opinion of themselves, and to have that challenged is difficult. The key is to increase your self-awareness with a healthy attitude to acknowledging faults (by healthy I mean in ways to improve self without causing a dent to self-confidence) All this is easier said than done, but the change starts within you, when you want it to.
When you start living your life in a way that makes you feel good about yourself, it automatically reflects in your other aspects of personality (this way, you can be happy that people will remember you, in a way that makes you proud)
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