deepcontemplator

thinking deeply about things that matter

Tag: life

  • Narcissism, self promotion, personal branding.. vices or reality?

    This is not a psychology post on narcissism or anything (and I am not qualified for that! 🙂 )

    For a long time I believed that narcissism, self promotion and personal branding are negatives and must be avoided or at least not actively engaged with.

    Though these are disparate concepts, they do have some common thread. They kind of revolve around self importance and self marketing aspects.

    What I want to discuss here is the mixed signals one receives regarding these topics and how to make sense of it.

    Narcissism

    In recent times there is lot of awareness about narcissism and how it is a toxic trait which damages relationships.

    And that is true.

    But equally important is the other aspect of it, as described in the book The Attributes by Rich Diviney. He argues that a healthy amount of narcissism is actually required to succeed in the world.

    You need to consider yourself important and worthy enough.

    That you matter.

    These are the foundations of self esteem. But a healthy amount of narcissism maybe needed at times. When you push yourselves ahead of everyone and nominate yourself for a challenging task.

    Of course anything taken to the extreme can be damaging to you and potentially those around you. But instead of shunning it completely, we need to engage with it with awareness.

    Self promotion

    Self promotion does not mean being a phony or advertising falsehoods. But you don’t need not shy away from being vocal about your achievements and journey.

    Without self promotion many people who might actually benefit from knowing or working with you will not even know that you exist.

    It is another way of putting yourself out there in the world. Being an advocate for yourself and guiding people to have a better understanding about the real you.

    Personal branding

    Again branding gets a bad rap as trying too hard or outright manipulative. Whether we like it or not, all of us already have a personal brand.

    The way people perceive us, our presence and talk about us.

    So a healthier approach is to acknowledge its presence, and take conscious steps to build a brand which more authentically reflects you and your values.

    Conclusion

    Overall, instead of completely dismissing these topics, we need to engage with them more responsibly. We need to audit where we stand on each of these aspects, and make conscious and responsible changes.

  • On consuming content

    There is so much content available these days, and pressure associated to keep up with it. You need to be abreast of popular culture, that TV show everyone is talking about, or the social media trend which seems to have become a craze.

    Sometimes lending an ear to the popular culture can be entertaining and be an escape from the monotony or boredom of daily life.

    However it can also turn us into a passive consumer of content. It might make it more difficult for us to listen to our own viewpoints and get in touch with what we believe.

    Or how we think the world works based on our experience.

    There is no harm in consuming content, which can be entertaining and relaxing after a long day at work.

    However it is more important perhaps to make time in the week to exercising your thinking and creativity as well.

    It is important to assimilate and integrate our life experiences and learnings as we go through life.

    To develop your original thought and point of view so that you can look at the world from your unique lens.

  • On hope.

    (v) to want something to happen or be true

    In a world filled with definites, hope can seem like a remnant from the past. Pragmatists may say hope is only wishful thinking.

    But there is always space for hope, and we need to hope even.

    How much ever of a results oriented, task focused, real world person you are, hope has its place. It is a basic human emotion, which even helps to survive tough situations even.

    Hope is the element which keeps us going when we feel we are unable to cope up with the difficulties of life. Even on easier days, hope is a pleasant breeze signaling the possibility of an eternal sunshine.

    Hope helps us build a future narrative of our life in line with our desires and values. With hope, we can see how our life overall makes sense.

    So even as we work in challenging situations and learn and grow, we should not forget to hope. To hope for a better future, for it gives us the courage and energy to keep pursuing on our path.

  • What is your definition of enough?

    One of the things to think about in life is how much is enough for you?

    How many friends do you want? How many meaningful friendships you can really maintain? Or how big of a house you need? How many countries do you really want to visit and so on!

    You need to draw the line between hustling for more and being content with what you already have, or achieved. Modern culture wants us to believe we are always ‘incomplete’. We can keep getting better or acquire more things in a never ending quest,

    But at many things in life, being good enough, or even average will just do.

    It might be the best even.

    This is specially important if you have been constantly striving and achieving in one domain of your life. You might have started off on that path as you sorely lacked initially, but then you might lose sight of your rewards and never get to enjoy them.

    In this post The Art and Science of Spending Money, Morgan Housel mentions how, many people get into the mode of making more money and get stuck in it.

    Never having a chance to relax and spend the money, long after they have reached their goals.

    There is ample flex in pushing the goalpost further and further when you reach one.

    But it doesn’t have to be so.

    You don’t have to be a constant work in progress.

    You can be growing, yet valid and complete at the same time.

    So revel in the light when you reach your goals. Pat yourself for how far you have come.

    And maybe if you want, push for an even bigger goal.

    Or realize that its enough, and choose something new altogether.

  • Who do you disagree with?

    Its sometimes worthwhile to pause and spend some time reflecting on who you disagree with and why? It will better clarify to you, your own values and the way you want to lead your life.

    Of course disagreement does not have to mean an all out fight. In fact it can aid as a way to understand the world better and increase our empathy.

    As we go through the world, we are bound to face disagreements even if you actively avoid it. Hence a better strategy is to expect, embrace and maybe even invite healthy disagreements into your life.

    It is a sign of maturity to be able to hold conflicting ideas and see the merit in both. You need not side one way or the other but you can be empathetic and curious enough to understand opposing viewpoints.

    Real progress and breakthroughs happen when we are able to productively engage in conversations and sit with our disagreements.

    Disagreements and conflicts are bound to occur in any long standing relationship. Hence it becomes even more imperative to have a healthy relationship with disagreements and conflicts, and continually find ways to move ahead.

  • Living life linearly

    Many a times we fall into the trap of living life in a linear fashion. Tying up the outcome of one event to another and building up a long chain of dependency. The ‘If this, then only that’, leads to being stuck in the same place. You find it difficult to move through anything.

    Our life is made up of different domains.

    Self, family, friends, work.

    Even though its one life and we are one being, these domains can be quite independent as well.

    Hence, its important to maintain the boundaries between these different life domains. We need to not let setbacks in one bleed to another.

    You can independently, gently push your agendas in each of these domains.

    A personal setback does not have to mean you skip that important event of your friend. A family argument does not necessarily have to impact your work.

    This is an important skill of – compartmentalization.

    Of course there can be events which are so overwhelming and their impact can cut through all areas of life. It is important to help yourself get through such difficult life events without imposing additional burdens of achievement.

    You don’t need to turn into a cold individual who endlessly pushes through goals as if setbacks and failures don’t impact you.

    Having a sense of compartmentalization and clear separation between different life areas in fact makes life more palatable and ‘livable’.

    On the same lines, you do not have to strictly adhere to a linear life where one thing leads to another. There is no timeline or predestined order of events you need to follow.

    Be aware of the freedom life gives us and be courageous to follow your own life order. You do not have to live by anyone’s definition of life and how its supposed to be lived, linearly.

  • The importance of being able to articulate well

    The importance of being able to articulate well

    Being a frequent listener of podcasts, I am both amazed and in awe of how effortlessly articulate few people are. It is a greatly useful skill to be able to clearly and concisely convey your thoughts and ideas and effectively land them.

    You need to have good ideas, but the aspect of having a great delivery associated with it matters. It decides whether your idea will be heard and come to reality or not.

    I do want to build on my articulation skills and am working on it. It does take effort and practice. This post is not about how we can build the skill, but about why it matters, as seen from the outside.

    Firstly, being able to convey your ideas effectively saves a lot of energy. Incomplete and haphazard communication can result in back and forth. If your message is not clear, it can lead to unwanted deciphering and misconstruing of the message intended. Prevention is better than cure applies even in communication!

    Effective articulation, be it spoken or written word is an art in itself. Of course the greats novelists of the world of literature have honed this to the maximum. They can build entire layered inner and outer worlds of a character beautifully and masterfully. A lot of aspects are deliberately left out to make room for interpretation.

    Good communication or storytelling helps in building trust and cooperation. Of course the content matters, but just having good intentions and useful information is not enough. A lot rests on how well we are able to effectively articulate why the idea matters and how its relevant.

    Hence it is a worthwhile endeavor to constantly improve your articulation skills.

    And get your ideas heard, loud and clear! 🙂

  • Be generative

    Be generative

    In the current times, it can be so easy to passively live away your life consuming content. There is nothing wrong with this. However to achieve anything worthwhile, you need to assimilate and integrate your learning and lived experience and generate energy, ideas and work from it.

    Being generative and producing work performs many functions –

    You find your voice

    Actually going and doing something consistently helps you discover your voice. Constantly putting yourself out there signals to yourself that you matter and your ideas matter.

    You build the momentum of creation

    By forcing yourself to be generative, you are constantly looking for ideas which you can use and bring to fruition. This builds on itself and creates momentum to sustain and grow further.

    Its a way to teach yourself

    Its always said that the best way to learn something is to teach it to someone. By teaching someone, and in the process generating words, notes, conversations puts into test how much you have understood the topic.

    It might be one thing to abstractly understand algorithms, but actually writing it down and explaining it step by step to someone and convincing them why it works is totally different.

    So go ahead and weave in moments of being generative along with learning and growth.

  • Word of the month – advocate

    Word of the month – advocate

    advocate (v) – to speak in support of an idea or course of action

    The past month I was thinking of how advocating for what you believe in and stand for is so important. It might come naturally for a few of us, and for others it might be tough to build this skill.

    We might find it easier to advocate for someone or rally for a cause someone else starts fighting for. You might find it comfortable to hop on a bus which someone else is already steering.

    However, we get the most scared when it comes to advocating for ourselves.

    And we matter. Our ideas matter.

    At times, it might be us who needs an advocate the most.

    To be able to advocate for oneself, we firstly need to be clear on what matters to us. It takes reflection, questioning and self awareness to understand our own core values and beliefs.

    If you are prone to self doubt and low self esteem, it might be particularly hard to self advocate and drive results in the direction which best suits us.

    The journey of self advocating is bound to have failures, embarrassment and disappointments. Just accepting this can make us more resilient and realistic about the effort involved.

    We need to slowly and compassionately persist.

    Consistently stand up for ourselves and what we believe in, and how we view the world. Having allies and learning from people who are good at advocating for themselves will be helpful.

    In the end, we owe it to ourselves to make us and our ideas be heard and seen in the way we deem fit and right for us.

  • Modern life and its pulls

    Modern life and its pulls

    Modern urban life, combined with digital revolution and social media comes with some interesting predicaments.

    Whether you embrace it, or completely abhor it, the following pulls would have definitely touched you, just by the fact of being a person living in this world.

    Optimize

    Everything is up for optimization!

    What started as efficiency and scale improvements in the Industrial age has continued to keep its hold on the human imagination. Where we are unable to change the hard realities of physics or biology, we tend to optimize.

    Maximize

    Then comes the paranoia of maximization. We can now measure a multitude of variables, like the steps one takes in a day, or simply the number of followers.

    Its assumed that with these measures, more is better.

    We are looking on how to maximize every aspect of our life including how to get the maximum out of our relationships.

    Monetize

    Money gets a bad rap in modern times. But when you set out to do anything, the worth of an activity many times gets judged based on how much money it generates.

    Even free play, a fuel for creativity can be measured on its eventual monetization capacity.

    Of course money is a necessity to survive in this economic world. Paradoxically, having a sufficient amount can free your from the vagaries of economic world as well. We should not romanticize a life devoid of money even to cover basic human needs, which could be harsh and difficult.

    The takeaway

    None of the above aspects are inherently right or wrong.

    In fact at some point in our lives, or in some domain, it might be the best to focus on these. We might need to monetize some talent of ours or maximize the gains we get from an exercise regimen.

    However we need to be aware of how the modern world subtly pushes us in these directions in anything we do.

    Just by being aware of these qualities, you can hopefully, mindfully choose when to engage and when to continue in your ‘subpar’ activities in the eyes of modern world.