Intrapersonal

Pedro’s friend was feeling weighed down due to the situation of lockdown due to the pandemic. He said, ‘I feel lonely… it is getting scary… thoughts fill up my brain… I feel hopeless with what my mind tells me!’  

Pedro asked, ‘and what do you reply to those thoughts?’

In communication, every stimulus has a response… overt or covert, openly expressed or hidden. The response will decide whether the communication moves ahead or remains stagnant. To escape inertness, we must respond… and respond positively!

It is human tendency to think, analyse and interpret things. But, in a fast moving world, we forget the way to communicate within. We ignore our feelings and thoughts. Suddenly now, we have more time with self and we are overwhelmed by the intrapersonal.

Intra-personal skills include empowering self-esteem, positive attitude, open mindedness, ability to understand and manage emotions, self-discipline, self-motivation, overcoming boredom, being patient, taking initiative, being persistent and many more.

Intra-personal skills can be learned like we learn maths and language skills… by application. We must respond using awareness, thought and intentional strategy in order to gain positive outcomes. We must connect with the person in the mirror by responsive reflection. 

I get a chance to meet the real me…

Intrapersonal is a happy way to be!

~ Pravin K Sabnis

Duped

Many years back, I remember reading about a man from USA who put in an advertisement in the papers asking readers to send 10 dollars to his postal address. Hundreds send him the money and when they did not receive any returns, they complained to the Police and the case went to court.

In court, the scamster pleaded innocence as he had made no promises in the advertisements. People had wrongly presumed it was some sort of an investment or purchase scheme. There was no case of misleading anyone.

So often, we find that the seemingly smartest of persons are easy to dupe. They are easily lured into shortcuts to success. They are gullible to succumb to greed without realising that they are being taken for a ride. They swallow whatever is dished out to them.

Today the internet is hunting grounds for the scamsters as they can easily single out the gullible. These are persons who carelessly forward without putting the message to the test of thinking

A friend once told me that he does not endorse what he forwards. When I asked him what could be his reason, he said just for ‘discussion’ purpose. He had no answer when I asked him how one can discuss without thinking.

The story of the US scamster tells us how people who do not think are easily dupable. A person is easily deceived when he chooses to unquestioningly serve a cause or another person without thinking about what is in store. The dupable do not need to be duped… they are waiting to be fooled!

When we evade the test of thinking

To be duped is what we are asking!

~ Pravin K Sabnis

Farmer's Armour

During the lockdown due to the Covid19 pandemic, home deliveries have been a huge help. We are grateful to the doctors, nurses, police and others who are stepping out so that we can stay safe. We are also realising the true worth of the farmer who grows our food.

Goa has been noticing a coordinated effort to connect farm to home by consumers buying straight from the farmer. Interestingly, this practice is from the old days but then home was in the neighbourhood of a farm. Now it is necessary to bridge the gap between farmer and the buyer.

Over the last few years, Avertino Miranda and his team uses social media to sell organic brown rice and other local yield from the field. Proactive villagers of Saligao started local weekly markets to promote the small producers. Youth are helping farmers sell with the use of apps and technology.

The absence of middlemen ensures a win-win situation for both the farmer and the consumer. However for confirmed sustainability for the farmer, it is necessary for the people to buy from the farmer. So often, so many of us are focused only on what’s convenient for us. We must see the larger picture!

Eventually, our sentiment of gratitude must lead to a commitment to help the farmer sustain! We must choose to buy from the farmer and ensure farming remains viable. We must help save farmlands from being devoured in the name of development. We must be the protective armour of the farmer!

Food security comes from farmer

May our support be their armour!

~ Pravin K Sabnis

Dislike Hate

Pedro’s son came home from school and angrily declared. ‘I hate my Maths teacher!’ In the ensuing discussion, the boy gave various reasons for his statement. After listening patiently, Pedro commented, ‘I understand that you do not like your teacher. But surely, it does not mean you hate him!’

Hate is a strong emotion and a consuming one at that. It seizes and engulfs your thoughts literally and you find difficult to clear your mind of it. It interferes with your sense of fairness. Eventually hate drives you to do things you never imagined you would.

To dislike is less personal. It can be for any number of reasons, but it does not consume you. It is more like a preference or matter of choice that one makes and moves on. Just because you dislike bitter gourd, it does not consume your every thought.

Dislike may be discomfort, distaste, disgust, aversion, disapproval. It is often a very temporary thing. For instance, my aversion to bitter gourd gets reduced when I am told by my Doctor that its consumption is beneficial for my medical condition.

Dislike is survivable. Hate is unbearable. Dislike results in annoyance, frustration or tediousness. Hate leads to anger, despair or rage. Both can be caused by the same provocation from someone else but received by a person who may or may not be in a situation of control.

We must learn to cope with dislike without losing out to hate. Hate pushes us into a corner where we can get stuck. We must choose to be open minded and look at all sides of the situation. That will lead us to dislike Hate!

The reasons to dislike, surely we can cope

Hate engulfs and leaves no scope for hope!

~ Pravin K Sabnis

Strokes

While playing with my infant daughter, I would tickle her belly. As she grew, the physical touch was not required. Even if I held out my fingers at a distance, she would giggle uncontrollably and run away.

However, this stimulation would happen only in relation to her dear ones, not others. Obviously, the feeling was beyond real touch. It was linked to a person she recognised as someone she could associate the feeling with.

In Transactional Analysis (TA) such an occurrence is referred to as a ‘stroke’. According to Eric Berne, the founder of TA, ‘a stroke is a unit of recognition’. Woollams and Brown took to further to say: ‘A stroke is a unit of attention which provides stimulation to an individual’.

Every person needs physical and psychological stimulation. Berne chose the word ‘stroke’ based on the infant’s need for touching. Growing up, we learn to seek other forms of recognition to compensate for the lack of physical touch that was available to us during infancy.

Without getting into intricacies of TA, when we find distancing affecting relationships, we can choose to keep in touch through strokes. We can connect through the spoken or written word. We can convey through gestures of body language or gestures (actions) of responsiveness.

We must heed that strokes are positive or negative as well as they can be conditional or unconditional. Berne said unconditional strokes are related to what you are, while the conditional ones are about what you do. Let’s ensure that what we are and what we do is the same: positive strokes!

When distance deters from keeping-in-touch

Unconditional positive strokes can do much!

~ Pravin K Sabnis

Spit Not!

The world is seized with the challenge of the deadly pandemic caused by Covid19. Measures to cope with the killer virus include social distancing, isolation of the infected and disinfecting as a habit. Hopefully, the gravity of the situation will help create best practices in hygiene. One such concern is the habit of spitting in public spaces.

Besides the physical tendency of ejecting saliva and other substances from the mouth, we see the ‘spit out’ trend on social media as well as interpersonal communication. Such ‘spit’ is contaminating and endangering the community by creating clutter of confusion.

We are ejecting out negative, false or irrelevant information or interpretations. Some of these is that we received from others. Without bothering to ponder or confirm the veracity, we forward it… a case of swallowing someone else ‘spit’ and ‘spitting’ it on our friends and colleagues.

Often, it is the bile of prejudice that we spit out. There is the arrogance of being more knowledgeable than the experts. Also, we find the trigger-happy tendency of wanting to be the first to ‘spit’ it out. And of course, there is also the reflexive ‘spitting’ where we are not aware that we have cast out infected ‘spit’ on the one before us.

In all cases – physical, psychological or pathological – we need to ensure that we do not spit out. We must dispose of it in a safe way that contaminates none. We must use our discerning thinking. After all, when the ‘spit’ is out in the open, it endangers the safety of everyone!

Use the discretion of discerning thought

Never mind the surging urge… Spit Not!

~ Pravin K Sabnis

Train your Team

During workshops for entrepreneurs, managers or leaders; there is a session on developing the skill sets of your team members. The intent is to enhance efficiency and effectiveness by evolving their competencies. It requires the investment of time, money and effort.

With an eye on return on investment, some ask, ‘What if the team member leaves the team after training? It will be a waste!’ They are stunned by the counter argument: ‘worse than that would be if they are not trained and they don’t leave you!’

So often, so many of us do things only looking at return benefits in a very short-sighted, selfish way. We would do well to also look at implications of not doing something that is important and being burdened by those consequences.

In a competitive world, others will poach on your trained team members. We do not own the other person. However, there are many other methods to retain them. These include creating a sense of shared ownership, ensuring dignity and recognition, etc. Keeping them untrained is going to be detrimental for you and your enterprise.

They may not be with you forever, yet train your team

For while they are, they add value to a common dream!

~ Pravin K. Sabnis