By Nishith Singhal

All of us are in middle of multiple things at any given point of time. Be it the weekdays when we are at work and struggling to balance between Growing expectation from Customer, Employer, and Teammates. Whether it is shrinking business and margin, stagnation in growth at work or our product or services becoming obsolete, or a loud argument with teenage child at home all of this makes our mind more cluttered, and us more stressed.

We start feeling if we are good enough for the people around. Are we good managers for the task at hand? Are we good enough parents for our children? Are we doing enough?

These thoughts come to each and every one of us but talking about these is a taboo as we feel that it will make people aware of our lack of confidence or our weakness will be exposed to the world. We keep harboring negative thoughts in our mind and stay with those all alone. We can not protect ourselves from these clouds of gloom as these are created by us and by our own mind. And the biggest problem is that we love these gloomy clouds. These gloomy clouds of negative thoughts are like morphine . Little quantity is fine as It helps you to relieve the pain though temporarily but does not heal the wound. If we allow ourselves to stay under the dark shadow of these clouds for far too long, there are three things that happen without fail.

–         We slowly but steadily start losing confidence in our abilities

–         We slowly but steadily start going into our shell

–         We start becoming afraid to take new challenges even though those may not be related to current context.

Like I said , we only created these clouds , we also need to understand that the power to remove these clouds also resides inside us only. Almost all of us look outside for solutions. I do not disagree on the value of a candid discussion with an understanding partner or a friend but it will never be helpful till we do not unclutter our mind and that can not be done by anyone but ourselves.

I have had a great , successful yet challenging life and based on my faults & mistakes , satisfying and haunting experiences , my own personal dark and gloomy clouds and learning from my own efforts to blow away those clouds, with help and support from my partner , friends and family, I have come to understand four basic yet extremely effective magic wands to fight off these dark clouds and come out of the vicious cycle of negativity.

1.      Resiliency to Stress

2.      Clarity of mind

3.      Connections with people

4.      Being one with your natural rhythm

Resiliency to Stress :

First of these Wands is to understand that Stress is a silent killer. Stress, like a hidden disease inside our mind makes our body and mind more and more sick and weak every day. The list of psychosomatic health problems, the health problems that are created due to stress, is endless. Last week when I was having some small problem in the vision of my right eye and I consulted doctor, I was surprised to be told that it is a temporary condition caused due to stress. I double checked with another doctor and same findings and diagnose came. Really the list of such psychosomatic problems is endless and the single most capability we can develop is the resiliency to stress. Our ability to be more resilient to stress is the most valuable ability in current times.

But if you think about it feels like vicious cycle. The more you think of not taking stress and the problems it may cause you, more stressed you are likely to be.

But that’s not correct, Quoting from famous Hindi film “Three Idiots” when Rancho tells his friends about a childhood story and concludes and saying “ All is well” actually makes you feel well and relaxed. Not literally but at some level, I believe in that. We can train our own mind not to take stress. Our mind needs to understand that there is more to life than what we are worrying about. It can be trained to look into our achievements instead of our failures.

Think of two scenarios.  

One: Where you keep learning from your failures and keep trying to improve yourself and excel in those areas.

Two: We park our weaknesses and focus on only few critical ones but largely focus on our strengths and try to capitalize on those.

Both scenarios are definitely possible and doable but I feel that if we focus on our current strengths, it will be far more effective in our own development than focusing on our weaknesses.

Many of us might be thinking that I am asking us not to learn from mistakes and look elsewhere instead. By no means am I saying that. What I mean is to balance the amount of effort and energy that we spend between our strengths and weaknesses. Augmenting and taking advantage of our strengths versus going deeper into our weaknesses and strive to come out of those. Both are important but we have limited time, energy and mind space so choose fast and choose wisely.

I will talk about the remaining Wands in subsequent chapters of this discussion.

Please read through and share your thoughts. 

GUEST BLOGGER

Nishith Singhal
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nishithsinghal/
Bio: Extensive experience in Delivery leadership, Digital & Analytics. Experienced Storyteller