Tag Archives: Biases

If you want to begin 2017 with a bang, put your faith on four fundamental equations

Dec 31,2016 / By

abcThere are 4 fundamental forces, which govern all what happens in our universe – gravity, electro-magnetism, strong and weak forces. Likewise, there are 4 basic equations that govern all what we do.

We spend days and decades doing our things; but most of us fail to see how things are interwoven or interconnected. There exist clear cut relationship between causes and consequences or events and effects.

Here below are 4 equations that are universally applicable from the strongest person to the weakest in our world and give you command on the results from what you do:

  1. You believe = What you perceive or conceive repetitively
    This equation is the mother of your ideas, beliefs, tendencies, traits or habits. It shows that beliefs do not come from blue; but you actually build them. Whatever you think or observe on a repetitive basis or you are made to do so, you would start to believe it, regardless it is right or wrong.
    This equation governs your learning in school, college or elsewhere. It builds your fantasies, fascinations, faith to fundamentalism or fanaticism.
    One of the far reaching repercussions of this equation can be observed across the world – humans are very prone to negativity; our attention is very quickly drawn by adverse scenarios or news. We tend to think, talk and see more of wrong or depressive things and in that process, we build up wrong beliefs or ideas resulting in our anger, anxiety, fear, frustration, doubts, depression or superstition.
    So, to develop good ideas or right beliefs, you have to perceive or conceive right things.
  2. You become = What you believe
    If you believe in dynamism, you are bound become dynamic. If you put your belief in leadership qualities, you can never be a laggard. You want to stand tall, nobody can make you small.
    If you believe that you can be a singer, engineer, professional or public icon, you would become that. All that you need is a belief, which is unquestionable and unshakable; which you would not doubt or dither, go back and forth. You would relinquish anything that comes as a roadblock; but not reverse that belief. Then, such powerful belief would automatically push you to pursue what you want to be, develop a passion and open door of opportunities to get there.
    This relationship works both way; so if you believe you cannot become someone you like, you would not.
  3. You get = What you give
    Often bosses complain that their sub-ordinates do not respect them; but then they are oblivious of the fact that they do not deal with them with respect. If you give smile, then it is not possible that people would not return it with smile. If you give trouble, you would necessarily get in trouble. You love someone sincerely; it is impossible that person would not fall in love with you.
    So, you get what you give. It is universally applied to all of your actions without exception.
    If we fail to notice such a simple cause and effect relationship, it is only because of our ego, biases or obsession, which blinds us to see what exactly we are doing or giving.
  4. You see = What you sow in your mind
    One morning, you wake up in great spirits and you find everything going great that day. But, another day, you get up with low energy and esteem, though nothing has changed externally.
    So, what has actually changed?
    It is ideas and images, which you have sown in your mind previous day, during dreaming or first few moments after waking up that have actually changed for good on 1st occasion and for worse, in case of 2nd.
    So, you would always see, what you have sown in your mind. Positive and negative aspects or angles of everything exist side by side. Depending upon what is in your mind, you start to focus on plus or minus or mix of the two and you fathom things accordingly.
    If you want to see things in order, you have to put your mind first in orderly state. If you like to witness happiness around, you have to be happy. But, if you have roped in miserable ideas in mind, you would only reap miseries.

So, these equations give you complete control on whatever you want to believe, become, get and see!

What else do you need in 2017 and beyond?

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Why best of partners part their ways in worst manners!

Dec 12,2016 / By

abcGeorge Clooney, famed Hollywood actor was adjudged as one of the most eligible bachelors in the world, until he decided to tie the knot with Amal Alamuddin, an international and human rights lawyer, in September 2014. Press has written lot of love stories and quotes for the couple; but, it has now reported that their marriage is on the rocks. A more than decade old fairy tale like relationship of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie has completely fractured few months back. All the fanfare behind courtship and marriage of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West seems to be in doldrums.

Stories of Bollywood or Indian celebrities are no different – break-up of industrialist Nes Wadia and actress Preity Zinta, tennis player Leander Paes and actress Mahima Chaudhary, Sarika and Kamal Hasaan – both from film industry, actor Hrithik Roshan and interior designer Sussanne and so on.

Forget the celebrities, look at common people as partners, whom you believe as best in your neighborhood and you may discover that their partnership is not easy.

It seems to a very common feature that what ensue on the best nod ends on a worst note. What was prominent to start with, equally or more painful is to end with a relationship. It appears as if it is an order arranged by nature.

Our notion or definition for what makes it best is much fractured

Two very attractive faces, two equally and highly qualified spouses, two strong or influential personalities or pair from two famous families are perceived as best partners. But, history shows that such pairs cease to live at ease sooner and eventually break up sordidly.

Do you believe that two equally intelligent spouses, two tall partners or two accomplished persons in same profession co-exist congenially? They don’t; they face more disagreements than agreements since each one has his/her own ideas, which he/she would like to prevail with. Arguments fly high and disenchantment grows. It is like two identical polarities repelling each other.

Two best together cannot make best-square or ideal pair. Only when two persons complement each other by their characters and attributes, they make ideal combination. It means that if one is strong headed, other should be mild; if first one is extrovert, other one be introvert. If one is bright; other should be dull. And you would soon realize that it is not very appealing!

So, what is ideal?

The best pair or combination is what is individually balanced!

This is true of any form of relationship. If you want your honeymoon with a customer to last long, you on your part have to be balanced in your dealing – neither too cozy nor too curt.

Popularity or prominence is prone to prejudices

Everyone wants to be popular and be in public eyes. You soon start to enjoy your image and prestige. And, greed goes in your head and you get addicted to have more and more of prominence. This is the starting point of driving a divide between the pair. In initial period, one or both would not even realize or acknowledge that anything wrong is developing; this is stage of denial. By the time one or both wake up, it is already too late normally to normalize back.

So, too much public glare could be gloomy; your high image can lower intimacy with your partner; lot of fanfare about your relationship can turn into source of frustration.

One thing is very clear – if your choice is to build a relationship, you have to choose to banish your biases at all costs!

Partnership is more a game of compromises and not gaining command over each other.

Therefore, your private as well as professional life is at its best if you are balanced and free from biases!

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World seems to promote random thinking and remembering; but that actually demotes you!

Apr 8,2016 / By

Random thinking! Source: http://www.flickr.com/

Pick up popular articles on personality development. One of the traits they encourage you to develop is to entertain random thoughts for innovativeness and creativity. Mentors or coaches would surmise that uncontrolled thoughts are pre-requisite to out-of-box thinking!

Godmen, gurus and preachers would exhort you to keep god’s name on your tongue and picturize him in your mind throughout the day.

We love to remember who are dear to us repeatedly, even when we are engaged in our work. Those, who hurt us or we are biased against, never go away from our mind. We feel compelled to recall images of our role models all the time. Things we are passionate about, are just hooked in our imagination. In the name of dedication and diligence, scientists, researchers or technocrats eat, drink and dream their work.

Do such random thoughts and remembrances help or hurt?

Implications of random thinking and remembering

  1. Thoughts for who you love
    It is most fascinating to keep thoughts in mind for who you love – your spouse, children or friend/s. You keep thinking repetitively how much you love them or how much they love you.
    What you don’t seem to notice is:
    1. Does repeat thinking of love enhances or endangers it?
      Studies have shown it slowly turns into obsession or revulsion!
    2. It builds up your expectations from who you love. When expectations are not met, you feel disenchanted.
    3. You tend to compare who you love more and who less, as also keep a watch on your loved ones, thereby encouraging a conflict in mind. 
    4. If your loved ones have committed mistake or misbehaved with you, your random thoughts exaggerate same.
    5. Your love could turn into lust.
    6. You tend to find flaws with loved one and that sows seed to grow your biases.
      This is how most relationships come on the rock!
  2. Thoughts for whom you respect
    There is a notion developed by most us albeit without noticing it that people we respect should be remembered frequently. Implications are:
    1. Your personality would be overshadowed by who you respect and develop a kind of blind faith in him/her.
      If he/she does good to you, you would be extra grateful; but, if he/she does wrong, you would gloss over. This is your big gaffe!
    2. Because of your respect, you would tend to suppress your feelings or dissent with the person.
    3. When your faith that the person is flawless fractures, you would be crest fallen and drift away from him/her furiously!
  3. Remembering god randomly
    We all believe that remembering god randomly and most time does good to us.
    1. What do you do by remembering god randomly – recall his image, offer prayers or gratefulness or ask for favors? You can either do it casually or seriously. If you are doing it casually, your faith is actually superficial and doing it seriously has always selfish motives attached.
    2. When you make god privy to your work, you set your expectations on him to give you results, regardless of qualitative aspect. Is not it hypocrisy?
    3. God is too great to get a credit from you; but you would conveniently discredit him for your distress or ills! 
  4. Remembering your bête noire!
    This is most easily done! Like it or not, your rivals or baiters occupy maximum space in your mind. You think randomly against whom you are biased and keep building your negative emotions. You would rarely think of them for a right purpose – align with or win over them!
  5. Random thoughts for creativity
    Common conviction is creativity needs random thoughts. But that is only partly true.
    If you think thousand different things, some are bound to be creative or off-beat. But, what we are not thinking is how much time, energy and efforts are required to think those thousand things. Is there is an easier and effective way?
    There is indeed one – your mind is most creative, when it is fully focused and has no conflict of thoughts! 

A careful thought on above would reveal that random thought/remembering promotes prejudices, pessimism, egotism, obsession or depression. It is also a huge distraction.

Thinking or remembering for a right or rational reason!

No doubt, everyone thinks or remember things for a reason; but what is regressive is mixing it with too much of random thoughts. Usual chore is – it is harmless! No, research has revealed that it is quite harmful and hurts your mental and even physical being, apart from maladies mentioned above!

When you evoke your thoughts and memories for love, respect, faith or beliefs for a right or rational reason, their value enhances and you actually take them to elevated level. If you do same randomly without purpose, you grope in past and goof in present. Your productivity, creativity and innovativeness are at peak, when you think and remember just for a rational reason!

Dropping random thinking is not easy; but practice and focused mind would minimize it. Reminding yourself regularly that random thinking creates huge problems over time would dissuade you from same. 

Thinking for a right reason means – when there is occasion to express your love to the loved one, you do it consciously and with no inhibition. Bring respect by heart when you deal with respected ones. When someone is in pains or trouble, don’t get mired in repeated thinking over his/her state. Think consciously how you can help alleviate his/her problems and provide that help; otherwise just have kind feelings for that person and stop. When it comes to work or developing innovative ideas, think and concentrate only when you are on it and not haphazardly. As regards god, be clear why and when you want to remember – want to offer prayers, do that but don’t couple that with random thoughts of ulterior motives. Expecting anything from god makes it a wrong reason to remember him!

So, thinking and remembering things for a right reason help you realize your true potential and save huge energy, which you spend unknowingly, on irrational, inefficient and inert thoughts!

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Baggage that you carry at the back of your mind is your biggest bottleneck!

Mar 22,2016 / By

Baggage at back of mind! Source: http://www.flickr.com/

One fine morning you get up with bad feelings and start to wonder what has happened to you today! You feel tired or lazy; things look hopeless and you witness lot of things going wrong. You are unable to figure out what has really gone wrong. Your health, blood pressure and everything around you are otherwise as good as previous days.

Some leaders are great communicators. However, you would notice that on some occasions, they are extra-ordinarily effective and inspiring; but there are instances when they do a lousy job. Why? Females are known to have mood swings. Medical sciences surmise that it is because of hormonal changes. Do the swings of what is at the back of their mind swing their hormone levels or hormones swing what is going on in their mind is really not known to science.

There are several star sportsmen like Roger Federer in tennis, Lionel Messi in soccer etc. Sometimes, they are in the best form and other times, they can’t keep with their track records. Why?

The reason behind each of above examples is “What is at the back of his/her mind”, which holds concerned person back; impairs his/her performance; does not allow to do what one attempts to do!

What we mean by “What is at the back of mind”

Though it is a very common term, people seldom know its complete meaning and colossal effect.

Thoughts, information and/or images from your past memory, which are passively present in your mind constitute what is at the back of your mind. Your mind might be actively witnessing an action or making you to perform an action; but these Thoughts, Information and/or Images (TII) constantly influence or rather get mixed up with what you are actively engage with – thoughts or tasks. Sometimes you are aware about it and sometimes you don’t even realize this!

Your beliefs, faith, habits, biases, ego, obsession, fear, anger, anxiety liking or disliking are always part of TII!

Now is the key information hitherto little known – what is at the back of our mind (passively present) has been termed for centuries as “Subconscious mind”! On other hand, what is being witnessed now (actively present) is our “Conscious mind”!!

“What is at the back of mind” is more a bane than blessing!

If you believe that having things at the back of your mind i.e. in subconscious mind do good to you, then start to rethink.

Things that can reside at the back of your mind are countless. Some of the significant ones are:

  1. Love or respect for someone
    If it is balanced, it is bound show up for a right reason and at a right time. Then, it works well. But if you are overwhelmed, then it resides at the back of your mind. You would tend to overdo and in that process, mess it up.
  2. Past performance or incidences
    When you are able to pull from your memory only lessons learnt, it would help. Instead, if you keep images of past incidences at the back of your mind, it would lead to over or under confidence and that would impair your performance, rather than improving it!
  3. Anger, anxiety, fear or stress
    These rampantly reside at the back of mind of everyone, cause most issues and mood swings. These lead to pessimism and hopelessness.
  4. Attention deficit and absent mindedness
    These are the prime causes of mistakes and mishaps.
  5. Prejudices and ego
    These are foundation stones for arrogance, split personality, irritation and tendency to blame or pass on buck to others!
  6. Multitasking
    Only when you keep several tasks or items at the back of your mind that you would multitask. Although most people defend merits of multitasking, it actually messes up their efficiency.
  7. Feeling pain in the body
    When feeling of body pain remains at back of your mind, it is frustrating and nagging. If you divert your mind i.e. take it away from back of your mind, then pain decreases or disappears. 
  8. Feeling lethargic or inertia
    There are days, when you feel withdrawn or lackluster; enthusiasm in you is missing and initiative lacking. You are at loss to understand, what has happened to you. These symptoms are because you are passively struggling with your thoughts at the back of your mind, leading to confusion and reaction and that alters levels of mainly 3 hormones in your body – Adrenaline, Cortisol and Norepinephrine.

What is at the back of mind is a burden, you must get rid of!

Right from childhood, mind gets so used to keeping thoughts, images and information (TII) at the back of mind that we start to believe that it is a necessity and we can’t live without same. This belief has been further reinforced by innumerable books and articles on importance of subconscious mind, which as a matter of fact promotes keeping things at the back of mind, albeit only positive ones. What one forgets – if you keep positive things at the back of mind, it is impossible to prevent negative things to also creep in! 

My research for years has revealed that whatever is at the back of your mind – good or bad – it does not do anything good to you! It is a burden worth dumping it away!! Some of you may then start to wonder what would happen to your knowledge, notions, traits or beliefs. 

It is too simple to believe what can work wonders:

  • Practice to keep knowledge/information, ideas and images in your memory but not at the back of your mind.
    Let it not be passively present in your mind; allow it to sleep in your memory. 
  • Do your things unmindful of your past; don’t prejudge or predefine; just witness whatever is happening.
  • Allow your conscious mind to take control and respond to what you witness.
    You would be amazed to see how your mind would automatically fetch knowledge or information from your memory right at nick of time or as needed.
    Most innovations, creativity, breakthroughs and successes have come to people, when their mind was functioning like this!!!

So, a mind without any baggage at its back is amazingly powerful, peaceful and progressive! Any elaboration further would only belittle its phenomenal effects; you need to experience it by doing it!!

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Simple but unique n universal rules no one can escape or evade!

Jan 14,2016 / By

When you don't resist the rules! Source: http://www.flickr.com/

Our day to day life is governed by very simple but strong rules, which apply to the most powerful – US President – to the poorest person on this planet! Very few have noticed these rules. These are as if framed by the creator of universe; but one thing is certain – these rules are apparently iron cut and do not alter a bit in any situation! If you ever conclude it otherwise, it is nothing but your illusion!!

Often you observe that despite your smart and sincere efforts, you don’t get desired results; you struggle to get peace of mind despite sustained prayers; you are doing what others have done – they got it but not you! What is behind these? The reason for more than 90% of time is that you are violating these rules, while still expecting that things would work out for you.

There seems to be no document, where such rules have been documented for benefit of all. Here below are top ten rules:

  1. You get what you give
    It is all pervading rule! You give respect, you would get respect; you hurt someone verbally or physically, you would be hurt. You give smile to someone, she/he would smile back. Someone is always smiling and hence you may wonder this rule does not work; no, it does! Your smile is bound to bring corresponding incremental smile on that smiling face; that incremental is what matters and is real!
  2. You become what you believe
    You can’t be other than what you choose to be! If you believe in dynamism, you would become a dynamic person; but if you don’t believe that you can be dynamic, you would then be docile. Note the key point – by not choosing one attribute, you automatically opt for its opposite or you can also choose the opposite consciously e.g. you want to be docile and you would then be so!
  3. What you share swells
    If you share love, it would soar; if you share grief, it would spread! Likewise, if your share wealth, it would multiply; if you share wisdom, you would master more!!
  4. Bad karmas can’t be offset by good karmas and vice versa
    We often think that having done something good, we can go easy and do what is not good. But we can’t escape paying a price. Good and bad karmas are like 2 separate accounts – there is no cross debit or credit – you get prize or penalty for each account respectively. 
  5. Very thought that you have reached a climax is onset of your climb down
    This is true from bed room to board room or community to country!
    Corollary of this rule is what we often say what goes up has to come down. Being up and down have relative positions; crucial is the thought where am I. Once you become conscious of your high position, you lose your hold on same. Try not to think sincerely how high you have reached, then height would never matter for you and you can keep going higher! 
  6. You are always be bitten and beaten by your own biases
    You develop your biases for a person to beat him/her through your dislike/s; but the fact is those biases would not bite him/her but you!
    You have no clue how much energy and time you lose courtesy your biases!!
  7. Sanctity of an act starts to fracture, when masses start following it
    We always feel comfortable being in a crowd and blindly put our belief in what masses do, forgetting that masses mostly make mistakes.
    Just take one burning example – mass hysteria worldwide against terror; can it be tackled like that? Instead, it has only helped it to mushroom!
  8. Regardless of how well you organize, things would go out of order
    This does not mean you should not organize yourself or your things. It means get your expectations right and take corrective measures in time!
    Nature does not allow sustained state of equilibrium. This is consistent with famous 2nd law of thermodynamics and hence also scientific.
  9. Cluttered space or schedule clutters your mind
    This is a key to your efficiency and elegance!
    Cluttered work place, home or your routine is what gives birth to lot of banes. You lose clarity and hence confidence.
  10. Realities are meant to be accepted, else you get rejected and dejected
    We expend too much of extraneous efforts in resisting or contesting the realities. Eventually, everyone comes to term; but lost time and opportunities don’t return!

So, how about flowing with above rules to make your life and career ever flourishing and frolic?

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