Universe of Mind

Competence needs support of Trust

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Bansal) — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 22:17:00 +0000

We generally value competence of a person, but simultaneously care to find out whether the competence is put to good use or misused. Accordingly, we mark the person a hero or a villain. This depends on intentions of the competent person. We trust the right-intentioned person and are prepared to go by his/her words. Therefore, it is not the competence alone of a person that matters, but his/her intentions too. Intentions of the person make the essence of the person’s character composed of his/her values, norms, goals, priorities, etc that lead to his/her actions.

Trust need be Earned

In a recent episode, I marked some persons in my village as not trustworthy. They came forward with explanations about their conducts and insisted that my perception about them was wrong. I openly declared that I would go by my own perceptions, not by their views about themselves. This example is to highlight that it matters little what a person perceives about him/herself, what matters more is how others perceive him/her. Goodness of this perception is linked to intentions of the person, apart from his/her competence, to a higher degree.

Since intentions of a person may not be visible to others directly, particularly in the beginning, and the people would like to see the results before making their final evaluation. This often takes time, a person even with competence and good intentions may not get any followers or supporters, critical for the person’s success. To find followers and supporters, one has to earn trust of people, apart from competence and good intentions, to prove in advance that his declared intentions are his/her real intentions directed towards good results. Therefore, key factor for a leadership is trust of the people in the person.

Assumptions of a prospective leader that people would see positive attributes, like his/her competence and good intentions, for judging him/her don’t work that way. The leader is needed to make some conscious efforts to earn trust of the people concerned for the right image for following or supporting.

Talk about your Intentions Explicitly

Every action has a thought behind to prepare the person for the action. The thoughts make the intentions. Give a deep thinking to an issue to make-up your mind and have clear-cut intentions supported by moral and humane values. Once, you are clear, made these intentions clear to all those concerned, of course, with flexibility clauses to suit the changing circumstances and contingencies. Any preconditions must be spelled out in the intentions.

Be Precise and Explicit

Your words of expressing your intentions must mean a lot to you before they mean something for others. Don’t leave gaps for others to make presumptions that may be different from yours. The foundation of your trust begins with your expression of intentions and the way you put them in words. Be very specific yet very explicit.

Be Consistent in your Follow-up Actions

Second step of your earning trust is your consistency in actions about you declared your intentions. For example, oral declaration of intentions may be confirmed through written communications to affirm the trust of all concerned. These written notes may go up or down the line of your team mates for information and your affirmation of what you said.

From the day, you express your intentions, you must synchronize your actions with these to earn the trust you need to carry the team with you.

Pros and Cons of Being a Polymath

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Bansal) — Thu, 31 May 2012 02:25:00 +0000

A polymath is a person with knowledge and expertise in many fields of human endeavor. With the deeper developments in the fields of sciences and technologies and other fields of knowledge, number of polymaths has been dwindling for obvious reasons. To be a polymath today, one has to be a real genius of the modern computer age. Since, humanity has been moving towards achieving objective-oriented results fast, each one of us is required to focus on a single field of interests, leaving all other fields of knowledge untouched. This way, we produce the desired results but miss the overall development of the self.

Womanhood is Polymathism in Action

None of us can afford to be playing a single role but has to be a family member, a social element, a business associate, a family economist, an entertaining artist, etc. simultaneously to lead a wholesome life. This is achievable through being a polymath only. Else, we get results and have gains in one field while remain ignorant and get exploited in many other fields. Thus, our results and gains are eaten away by others fast. With a majority of us being limited to single fields of their respective interests, the polymaths are considered ‘jack of all, master of none’ by the modern societies.

A generic computer hardware expert may know little of software, hence remain ignorant of computer’s functioning and applications in-spite of being an expert of the field. It has both benefits and harms of being a master of one narrow field only. What is indeed required of us all is to be reasonably knowledgeable of all the fields related to one’s life. The test of ‘reasonability’ has no fixed or definable parameters for being highly subjective to the individual’s lifestyle. Even a person with reasonable knowledge in all the fields related to his/her lifestyle, may be called a polymath or a monomath subject to the perceiver.

We handle issues at three levels – information, knowledge and intellect. At information level, we accept the information received to be true. At knowledge level, we understand the information analytically to accept or reject it. At intellect level, we create more information on the issue and feed to the system. A layman operates at information level, a reasonably knowledgeable person operates at knowledge level, while an expert operates at intellect level in the subject field. A polymath operates with reasonable knowledge level in many fields while he/she may be an expert of a fewer fields. In the modern computing age, it is easy to be polymath with a desire to learn, computer and a modem.

Deep specialization is of great value and gets more money to the person but it should not be too narrow to make the person blind to other related matters with others exploiting his/her ignorance. Here goes the general formula – knowledge is rewarded while ignorance is penalized. Therefore polymathism too has its value to a wholesome life, as monomathism has value to earning wealth. Since, modern society attach a higher value to wealth than to that to life, polymathis is shrinking all over the globe. Still, it is never going to be forgotten by the humanity for its intrinsic value to life.

A monomath always has his/her view on a matter with respect to his/her particular angle of specialization while a polymath’s view would be more factored and hence more valuable on the issue. This assigns polymaths and monomaths in two different roles – a monomath may create a design or a thesis, but it need be evaluated by a polymath for its applicability. I know that Design Engineers of Tata Motors spends months on designing a new car but the Chairman Ratan Tata adds more value to the design through a few strokes of his mind.

Polymath and Monomath in Togetherness

I take an example for the comparison – an author and a writer. A writer is a specialist in crafting beautiful impressive words but has little idea of what to write about for which he/she is dependent on others. Conversely, an author is a generalist creating the script from the nascent idea stage to the final manuscript form through his polymathic abilities.

Another example that comes to my mind is that of a specialist and an expert, the former is a monomath due to his/her thorough studies of his/her subject while the latter is a polymath born out of vast experience in the field. The studies focus on narrow fields while the experience encompass the whole gamut of experiential knowledge.

With his/her specialization, a monomath may improve an existing product design, but can’t create a new product design for his/her lack of knowledge of related fields such as economy, applicability, etc. For creating a new product, services of a polymath become essential. This way, all innovations are creations by polymaths only.

For Creativity, Let the Mind Wander Freely

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Bansal) — Sat, 26 May 2012 02:22:00 +0000

Mind is naturally designed and evolved for wandering in accordance to its own algorithm, so far unknown to humanity, and this is its healthiest existence and functioning. Restricting natural wandering of the mind, through artificial means such as meditation and other so-called spiritual exercises, hampers health and working of the mind.

Concentration of mind is opposite to its wandering. This is also required when the mind needs to be applied on solving a problem, so is also a natural function of the mind. This does not hamper health of the mind but expands its scope through creation of new neuronal links in the brain. Another exception of mind’s natural wandering is a worrisome situation when some of the functions of the mind including wandering get blocked. The mind wanders maximum when it feels free from burdens of sensory inputs, like the idle states of resting, sleeping and dreaming. In waking and working states too, the mind keeps on wandering. Since an average person spends about two third time of an average person is spent in idle states, wandering is a major occupation of mind.

Wandering of the mind takes the person to unknown horizons of his/her normal working. If it doesn’t wander freely, the person’s thoughts and actions remain chained to his/her preoccupations with no possibility of any innovation in thoughts or actions. Therefore, freedom of mind to wander about is a must for innovative creativity by the person. Here I clarify that creativity is producing something non-existent then.

Mind-damaging exercise

Spiritualists and religious preachers often advocate controlling the mind from wandering. Some even preach making it thoughtless through exercises - the most damaging to the mind’s natural functioning. The purpose of spiritualists and religious preachers has always been to provide freedom of thoughts and actions to people with their vested interests of psychologically ruling the degraded humanity. One need to be on alert against these nasty anti-humanity creatures flourishing on human degradation.

Promoting wanderings of mind is the essence of creativity as is proved by eureka moments of greatest of scientists all over the globe from prehistoric time to this day. Every creative effort needs a seed of fantasy and then allowing this seed to grow to become a full-fledged tree. And the source of the fantastic drop of an idea is the picking of mind through its free wanderings. Thus, putting the mind to conscious use to work on some idea, though essential to let the idea grow, it blocks the free wandering for the time-being. This demands judicious use of mind along with enough margins for free wanderings. These two tasks of the mind are equally important.

Putting the mind to conscious use is essential for its productivity, but it hampers accessibility to newer ideas for creativity. Thus, productivity and creativity work against each other, still both are essential for keeping a balance of innovative ideas and routine productive efforts for onward movement of human civilization. All religious preachers and spiritualists work against human efforts of developing the civilization through anchoring the minds with chains of faith.

Individual Nature and Artificial Behaviour

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Bansal) — Tue, 22 May 2012 13:11:00 +0000

Every living-being has its own intrinsic nature resulted through evolutionary developments of the class, and genealogy of the individual. This nature normally determines his/her behaviour under a particular situation. This natural behaviour may be modified by the individual through use of his/her thinking capability. So, more a species of life thinks, higher becomes the possibility of difference in natural and actual behaviour of the individual. Thus, thinking species of life may have their natural and artificial behaviours different from each other. This is highly applicable to humans.

Humans are known to have the highest developed thinking faculty, making possible their natural and artificial behaviours highly diversified. This doesn’t mean that a person’s intrinsic nature remains suppressed for ever from affecting individual’s behaviour. If the suppression is for a long period, there may be an emotional explosion, provided the person continues to think in accordance to his/her natural character. This also matters particularly when the person -

is sticky to moral values,
maintains his/her integrity, or/and
tries to keep a good image in his/her society

These three factors decide behaviours of all individuals of both types – genuine as well as cunning. The former regulate their behaviours for good reasons, while the latter exhibit the same concerns with malicious intentions of serving their vested interests in their minds. Thus, intentions of a person too matter in determining and interpretation of his/her behaviour with others in the society. This makes study of human behaviour a ticklish matter and the subject of psychology to play a significant role in this study.

Humans often think before acting. When they don’t, their behaviours are governed by their respective intrinsic natures. Even such behaviours may be right or wrong, good or bad, etc. But such behaviours may be anticipated by those who understand the intrinsic nature of the person.

Thinking is a time-consuming process, hence, when a person thinks before acting, his/her reflexes are often slower than those when he/she acts without thinking. Thoughtful behaviours are difficult for anticipation by others for their being affected by the unanticipated intentions of the person concerned, which may again be good or bad, right or wrong.

Anticipation of behaviour of a person is essential for a good fruitful deal with the person by someone else. But this is possible for only those who are genuine in nature, care for maintaining their integrity and image in the society. For all others, including those cunning persons who only fake such concerns, the anticipation becomes the most difficult, if not impossible. For this reason, in the game of social interactions, the genuine persons suffer while those with malicious intentions thrive at the cost of the former.

Top Dating Sites » 10 Excuses People Give for Committing Adultery

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Bansal) — Mon, 21 May 2012 10:43:00 +0000

Top Dating Sites » 10 Excuses People Give for Committing Adultery:

'via Blog this'

How Love Evolved Out of Sex

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Bansal) — Tue, 15 May 2012 01:35:00 +0000

The most primitive instinct of life is sex limited to physical level just for procreation. When some forms of life realized that sex is a source of pleasure, sexuality - desire for sex-play, evolved in their minds. To satiate this desire, they needed permanence of male-female companionship and this evolved the phenomenon called 'love'. Here we examine the three phenomena - sex, sexuality and love.

Physical Sex

The basic need of sex is for procreation and probably the Nature designed it for this purpose only with the provision of procreative instinct in all forms of life. Being instinctive, it is a physical need of the female under physical condition of the body ready for a procreation and needing impregnation by a compatible male sperm. It is purely a physical activity with nothing in the mind or brain of the person except as controllers of the body. The female desires for this and the male complies.

Sex is not exclusive and it could be by and with any or many until the need of impregnation of the female body is satisfied, as may be watched in conducts of street dogs and bitches during their mating seasons. This animal instinct is still preserved in humans in-spite of their evolution to a much higher level than just being animals. For this instinct, ancient scriptures have stories of husbands arranging insemination of their wives by other men. Even today, insemination of women by semen of persons other than their husbands is practiced under the same influence of inclusiveness of physical sex for procreation. In fact, insemination for procreation is a woman's basic right and she must get it even being at animal level.

Sexuality of Mind

Story of physical sex did not remain limited to procreation only with the realization of physical sex being a source of great pleasure. This realization is limited to only a few species of life - including humans, and they get involved in sex-plays just for pleasure of it even when the female body is not ready for a procreation. This trend, I call, sexuality getting initiated in mind in the form of sexual desire. Here, I must clarify that mind and brain differ in their locations and functions.

Sexuality is more a mental process than physical as it seeks mental pleasure without natural needs of two bodies which need to be primed for it by the respective minds. It provide only a transient pleasure and never get fully satisfied. It is neither inclusive - many with many, nor exclusive - one for one, but somewhere in between - any with any. It is highly self-centered activity with both the partners seeking their own pleasures. It was not in beastly life but developed in human primates before the modern civilization evolved, but still exists in humanity.

Emotional Love

Need of any-time sexual pleasure evolved a need of permanence of male-female relationship with longing for each other. Body and mind of the person fail in such a relationship, but the brain's emotional center works for this emotional bondage between a male and a female. Such a bondage does not like any multiplicity of physical sex or any-to-any criteria of sexuality but is purely on one-to-one basis or purely exclusive. For this reason, adultery is considered as the greatest sin and poison for a love relationship.

Love is the result of logical derivation by the brains of the two persons through thorough judgments on their partner's suitability for the relationship. It is neither physical nor mental but purely emotional, even mutual smiles, touches and kisses are enough to sustain a loving relationship, therefore it is considered to be a matter of life times of the partners provided physical sex or mental sexuality of any of the partners does not interfere in their wild ways. For this reason, human civilizations evolved the institution of marriage as a humane phenomenon making the partners a husband-wife couple.

When a Mistake is Committed

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Bansal) — Fri, 11 May 2012 10:15:00 +0000

Successes and failures make spectrum of life however this spectrum may have different proportions of failures and successes for different persons. Since success and failure are dependent on social and natural circumstances also apart from on efforts of the person, ascertaining a success is beyond one’s control. Some people call this luck of the person for their ignorance about what factors determine the result.

On an average, personal efforts contribute to about 50 percent of achieving the desired result with the balance 50 percent being dependent on social and natural circumstances beyond one’s control. Therefore, both success and failure are a matter of chance too. When we succeed per chance, we think that our performance is great and we don’t even look into deficiencies in our performance. But when we fail, we first look into our own performance and reset it to suit prevailing social and natural circumstances, not to fail again. So, a failure provides a chance to review the performance while a success blocks such a review, even though it may be required badly.

Though not always, failures are generally caused by mistakes of the performer which may be of three types –

Mistakes due to lack of adequate knowledge or skill of the job,
Mistakes due to not understanding the prevailing circumstances,
Mistakes due to unintentional performance slips

When a mistake is committed due to lack of knowledge or skill required for a performance, it is a commission of the mistake by the performer which he/she should have avoided through acquiring adequate knowledge and skill before performing. Mistakes committed for not understanding prevailing circumstances are due to errors in judgment by the performer. These could also be avoided through acquiring adequate information on the circumstances of the performance and reorienting the performance to suit the circumstances. The third type of mistakes, due to performance slips, are unintentional and are classified as omissions of the performer. Even if the mistake is resulted by carelessness of the performer or is just a slip, the performer can’t absolve him/herself of responsibility of committing the mistake.

Admission of a Mistake

Whatever be the origin and effect of mistakes, these may be prevented from repetition through their respective admittances only. So faster the performer admits own mistakes, or is willing to admitting the mistake, he contributes to his/her better performance late, as a general rule. Remember, admission of a mistake is not a weakness of conduct of the person but is the strength of his/her character.

Once a person knows that he would be admitting his/her mistakes, he/she becomes psychologically cautious of not committing any mistakes while performing thus improving his/her chances of achieving success.

Secondly, admission of a mistake displays integrity of the person towards his/her job and his/her commitment not to repeat mistakes done in the past.

Supervisory Role

A performer seldom knows or admits his/her own mistakes, and even he/she reviews his/her performance after a failure and admits his/her mistakes, damage of the failure is already done, limiting the gain to future only. To avoid such damages, organizations employ supervisors to keep on checking on performances of the worker as they work, to avoid commissioning of mistakes by workers by observing them while being performing thus avoiding the damages.

Supervisors, through minutely observing performances, know the trend why and how workers commit mistakes and train them not to commit them. Thus, failures of the past help workers in avoiding mistakes through supervisors. The supervisors help in avoiding mistakes through accidental and performance slips of the workers also.

Power of an Individual

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Bansal) — Mon, 07 May 2012 08:08:00 +0000

Whole humanity is graded on basis of powers possessed by each individual and principally power of the mind of the person rules over his/her physical power and wealth. And the whole world – family, friends, society, employer, employees, social networks, etc evaluate every individual on the basis of this charge, the individual possesses, and treats accordingly.

To be powerful in the world, one must first know factors that contribute to one’s power and then try to build him/herself to be more and more powerful through selecting those power factors which have chances of improvements.

Background

Background of a person is principally his/her family’s reputation, because most of the persons want to maintain that if it has been worth taking a good note of. In case the person lives far away where his/her family roots are unknown, reputation of his/her root area replaces his/her family background. This power of the person is available to him/her without earning by him/herself, hence does not stay for long if it is misused by the person and is not supported by his/her own conduct on the expected lines.

A person from my village has recently joined me as a close associate because he had tarnished his father’s good image by his own bad conduct in the past. Since, I am trying my best to up keep my family’s good reputation, my new colleague wants to rebuild his image through me. Fathers of two of us had been close associates and earned good reputations.

Performance of Past 10 years

People, in general, have a short memory and history of long time back matters only if there is a continuity in it, else performance of about the last 10 years matters as an indication of what may be expected from a person. Expectation is one of the most important constituent of power of a person. For a young professional, his/her education is counted, but for a senior professional, education matters little as compared to his/her performance of the last 10 years or so.

Attitude

More than the aptitude of a person, what matters is his attitude whether one is mentally defeated or is ready to face the new challenges ahead or not. The attitude study too is carried out though its existence in the last 10 years or so. If a person has been having a good drive and initiative in the last 10 years, these are expected to continue in the near future. The logic behind preference to attitude over aptitude is that a good attitude may overcome a deficiency in aptitude but a deficiency in attitude ruins even a good aptitude of the person.

Character and Conduct

Ultimately, character of a person is considered to be his greatest power provided his conduct remains in accordance to it. Since, character is an intrinsic attribute with conduct as its outer projection, the latter comes more in notice of others than the former. Conduct has a very wide definition, sometimes more than the character, to cover the person’s presentation of him/herself to face others, his/her steadfastness on chosen path for progress, problem-solving aptitude, and his/her capability of taking timely and right decisions.

Character of a person mainly considers his/her morality and discipline particularly in adverse situations when the person’s stability of character is put to test.

Six States of Mind with respect to Consciousness (Chetana)

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Bansal) — Thu, 03 May 2012 21:15:00 +0000

If one can understand between seeing and watching, he/she is able to distinguish between an unconscious action and a conscious action. Anything done with attention for doing in a particular way, or a purposeful response to an external stimulus are conscious actions of a person. While passing on a road, one may be facing many scenes without paying any attention or may find something important or interesting to pay attention to. In the latter process, through which he/she tries to capture the scene in his/her memory, is the work of the person’s consciousness.

Conscious State

Consciousness of a person is not his/her breathing or just being alive, but beyond these – an active representation of being alive. This puts even living-beings in two different states of mind – unconscious and conscious. Unconsciousness is not inability to respond to an external stimulus, as is often considered, but an absence of active interest and attention of the person in the stimulus.

This makes two imperatives for consciousness of a person – an external stimulus or object of interest, and the person’s active involvement in the stimulus or the object. Since, an object of the external world is an imperative for the consciousness, involvement of a sensory organ of the person too becomes an imperative because the external world can’t be perceived without any of the five sensory organs of the person. Thus, consciousness of a person is basically an activity of any of his/her sensory organs. This definition of consciousness is limited to the person’s relationship to the external world.

Subconscious State

Apart from dealing the external world through sensory organs, each of us deals with his/her inner world to a great extent all the time of his/her living. This inner world is the person’s physiology – a highly complex system of many organisms and mechanisms within the person’s body. All these organisms and mechanisms are closely monitored and regulated by the person’s brain through a neural network spread all over the body up to cellular level of the body.

Since, no sensory organ of the person is involved in monitoring and regulating inner physiology of the body, these functions are not conscious actions of the person. Even his/hers being unconsciousness can’t support these functions. So, another state in between the unconscious and conscious states, called subconscious state of his mind, takes care of these vital functions of life. Thus, apart from an unconscious state of a person – disinterest of sensory organs, consciousness of a person has three levels – subconscious and conscious as discussed above and a new state of super-consciousness.

Super-consciousness State

Super-consciousness is not a reality but a façade the person chooses to wear on his/her mental state for bluffing others or for his misconceived notions. Thus, super-consciousness is only an assumption of the person about him/herself. Under this assumption, the person treats or displays him/herself as something other than his/her real self.

All so-called spiritual practices are based on such assumptions, misconceptions and false notions, hence, have no essence in them. These are mere psychological games cunning persons play on innocent persons to misguide them with ulterior motives. Technique of autosuggestion is often applied in such games wherein the subject person is made to suggest something to him/herself and then follows the suggestion.

Insensitive State and Death

In between two states of a person being dead and being unconscious, there is yet another possible state of his/her mind – insensitive. It is cause by some disease in the body wherein the person fails to remain sensitive to external stimuli but still clinically alive. This state is often misconceived as the person being unconscious state.

With respect to consciousness, a person may be in six states – dead, insensitive, unconscious, subconscious, conscious and super-conscious.

Which one needs more Care – Body, Mind or Brain

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Bansal) — Wed, 02 May 2012 01:28:00 +0000

Body represents the whole existence of a person, with his/her mind residing distributed in the whole body with its control center in the skull, called the brain of the individual. Thus, mind is a part of body and brain is a part of the mind. Conversely, the brain transmits and receives signals to and from the body through the mind spread all over the body to the cell level.

As far as care is concern, every person takes care of his/her body apparently and from external threats without any conscious effort to save the mind or the brain. Through protection of the body, mind and brain are automatically taken care of. But as far as internal functioning of the body is concerned, the individual is not required to do anything consciously, but the brain takes care of these incessantly through the mind. Does this mean that we can take better care of the body by caring for brain only and need not to bother much about the body, as is often preached by spiritualists? No, because the brain and mind function only if well-protected through protection and care of the body. Therefore, maintenance and protection of the body play important role in functionality of the brain and mind, and hence that of the body itself.

If the body is not taken care of properly or gets hurt, full attention of the brain and mind is focused on the problem of the body’s ailment, leaving little attention to body’s internal functionality which may make the latter to behave abnormally and thus getting more sick. So, it is the individual’s conscious approach to body’s maintenance and care that keeps the body, mind and the brain to be healthy and function normally. The person has no other way to keep the mind and brain in good health. Even nutrition to these is provided through the body itself.

Maintenance of body’s internal functionality in good form is regulated by mind at subconscious level of the person under subconscious instructions from the brain. Therefore, body’s health ultimately depends on the brain’s normal functioning which it performs well only when allowed without putting any other external burden on its subconscious level such as an ailment in the body. At conscious level, the person has no role in regulating health of the mind and the brain.

Restrains

Discipline or Regret

A person’s experiential information are stored in his/her memory and based on this information, his/her thinking faculty, also residing in his/her brain, normally performs intelligently to lead the person on the right path. But the mind of the person being driven by his/her body’s urges and desires may take him to wrong paths if not restrained by the brain. Of course, the mind refers the body’s urges and desires to the brain for moderation, but the brain may or may not restrain the mind from taking the body to fulfill its wrong urges and desires, depending on the conscious approach of the person. For this, there are three preconditions –

The brain’s memory and intellect are intuited rightly through the person’s education from parents and society, to understand what are right and wrong deeds.
The brain is allowed to think before an action is taken by the body, and
The person has enough conscious willpower to restrain the mind from going wrong

The last point of the above is within conscious range of the person, called his/her discretion which ultimately rules his/her actions. For this, the body must be trained to remain under control of the mind and the mind under control of the brain. These happen only when the three are in good health and functionality, which ultimately depends on the external care and protection of the body of the person.

If Resistance to Change is a Reality, what about Innovation

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Bansal) — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 18:44:00 +0000

People resist changes and every innovation is a matter of changes, therefore, people oppose innovations. Why people oppose a change because it forces a change at their individual lifestyle. Thus, you can’t enforce an innovation if you want to keep the people concerned happy. Secondly, my researches on social dynamics reveal that every good work is opposed in the beginning but is appreciated in the last, while a bad work is not opposed in the beginning but is assailed at the end.

A good work means a change that leads to improvement in quality of life of people concerned. Since, these people are accustomed to their particular lifestyle without feeling any pains, and they are not sure of the outcome of the planned change, they don’t want to take risk of changing their ways of living. This supports my another conclusion of social engineering that the society is generally composed of conformists and follows orthodoxy, hence, there is no place for innovations in the mind of common people of the world.

In the world of conformists and pursuers of customs and traditions blindly, an innovation could be done by a person crazy for the innovation, who is ready to displease the whole world for his/her craze. Therefore, an innovator is never considered to be a nice person by his/her society.

Incremental and Radical Innovations

Innovations may be of two types – incremental, those affecting slight changes and radical, those ushering a thorough overhaul of the subject system. Incremental innovations may attract some cooperation by co-workers or the affected people for their clearly visible gains out of the innovation. But results of radical innovations are almost impossible to be predicted except by the innovators him/herself, hence, such a path is often walked alone by the innovator only.

Since, people generally resist a change, more the number of persons involved in an innovation, more they dilute the radical provisions of the innovation, reducing that to an incremental change. So, a real radically tough innovation has to be pursued by a lone person.

Mere Tolerance, not Support

Unfortunately, people affected by an innovation at the most show their tolerance to the change to show their generosity for the change, while in reality, they must provide their support for the innovative work. Even this tolerance is shown only when the innovator works hard to nullify their resistance for the change. This working on the people takes about half of the energy of the innovator leaving only half for the innovation. This naturally weakens efforts for the innovative work. To avoid this drain of energy for earning tolerance of the people, real tough innovators leave the people untouched and put their whole energies to the innovation. For this, they are labelled autocrat, ruthless, unsocial, etc by the people for whom the innovation is meant. This makes an innovator a self-centered introvert person with no appreciable social contact.

Organizations lack Innovative Cult

Most of the organizations develop their respective work cultures of carrying employees with the changes they may think of to earn their active involvement in the process of change under slogans of team-spirit, collective working, etc. This collegiality dilutes the impact of change making just little differences in the situation. Therefore, organizations are never radical innovators, leaving this job for individuals only, though they may apparently be working within framework of an organization.

An organization may per chance be a radical innovator only if it gets a tough autocrat at its helm of affairs who is willing to take risk of being called a tough extremist for him/herself.

Introversion versus Extroversion

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Bansal) — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 11:16:00 +0000

An introvert is one who reflects on him/herself and enjoys his/her lone moments, while an extrovert enjoys company of others provided others are willing to listen to him. Thus, an introvert is a self-reliant person while an extrovert needs someone else for his/her fulfilled existence. Further, the introvert does not need an extrovert for getting satisfied, the extrovert needs some introverts to listen to him/her. Thus, introversion is a more satisfying and needed attribute of personality.

No person is an introvert or extrovert in absolute terms but everyone lies somewhere on the continuous scale from zero introversion to full introversion coinciding with full extroversion to zero extroversion, respectively.

A person on the left half of the above depicted scale is termed as an introvert and if he/she falls on the right half, he/she is categorized as an extrovert.

Introversion is a reservoir, the owner does not want to spend while extroversion is a buoyancy the owner does not want to conserve. This is resulted by the fact that introverts listen a lot but say little while extroverts say a lot but listen little. An introvert is at his/her best when he/she tries to play as an extrovert, and conversely, an extrovert is at his best when he/she behaves as an introvert. These behaviours of opposite nature are demanded by keeping a balance between input and output for the best possible performance.

For his/her listening others calmly, an introvert is liked by others and is easily accepted in a team, while an extrovert for his/her saying more imposes himself as a group leader but is not accepted by others which may lead to a conflict. Thus, conflicts grow through extroversion only while an introvert avoids a conflict.

Introverts as Better Innovators

Since, an introvert is contented by him/herself, he/she has more time and other resources to create and develop innovative ideas, and for his/her being easily accepted by others in a team, he/she is in a position to implement his/her innovative ideas with great ease. For this, he/she is required to bring out his/her extroversion before others. Thus, introverts prove to be better at innovations than extroverts provided the introvert does not fall very low on the extroversion scale.

An introvert won’t find any difficulty in behaving as an extrovert with introverts as his/her team members, but presence of an extrovert may spoil his/her game of being innovative.

Extroverts as Better Managers

Management is motivating people to give out their best performances. An extrovert can better manage people than an introvert, but to be acceptable to them he/she is required to behave as an introvert with them at least for the time-being. Else, he/she is needed to have draconian powers with him/her to deal strictly with the people as an administrator.

Treating a Person with Emotional Outburst

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Bansal) — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 07:11:00 +0000

About Newton's Law of motion that states, "Every action on a body is responded by an equal and opposite reaction by the body" is modified by me to state, "A body when subjected to an external action, it opposes it by an equal and opposite reaction up to a certain limit to remain in stable state. When the action exceeds limit of reaction by the body, the difference (Action - Reaction) causes the body to move in the direction of the action".

This law is not limited in application to motions only as propounded by Newton, but it is a principle of Nature applicable to every natural phenomenon including human behavior and emotional outbursts. This derives to the point that ‘a person resists his/her response to a provocation up to his/her capability of resisting. When the provocation exceeds beyond one’s capability of resisting, he/she moves often resulting into an emotional outburst. More a person has capability of resisting a provocation, more is needed provocation for his/her outburst and more is the power of the outburst. Therefore, a usually cool person outbursts rarely but when he does so, it becomes difficult to calm him/her down.

The outburst begins at emotional level when it is the easiest to calm it down. If more fuel reaches the fire, it may lead to physical violent actions by the person against himself or the cause of the outburst. Suicides and assassinations are often results of emotional outbursts not calmed down.

An outburst may be anywhere from closed family to open society to workplace and its first casualty is the trust of the person in others surrounding him/her. This mistrust spoils relationships and adversely affects performance of the person. Therefore, an outburst need be calmed down at the earliest stage of its inception.

An outburst needs another person for calming down, and this person must understand the psychology of the outburst and mental state of the person under spell of the outburst. An outburst is a flood of emotions that can’t be stopped all of a sudden by a stop valve. The stopper is required to move with the flood with emotional alignment for some time to win the oneness and trust of the person under outburst and then gradually bring a compassionate relationship in between them.

Logical reasoning does not work in calming down an outburst, but compassion works wonderfully well. The person’s viewpoint need be appreciated and physical sympathy must be shown to him like a mirror image to make the person feel safe in the company. The root cause of an outburst may not be apparent in the beginning and may be hidden deep in the mind of the person. The treatment begins with reaching the root cause through sympathetic conversation with the person. This is easy to say but difficult for anybody to execute for the own individuality of the person treating the outburst.

Treating other’s outbursts causes a lot of personal discomforts for going through feelings of the other person. In some cases, the person suffering an outburst may threaten who tries to pacify him/her. The person handling the outburst is required to keep on dealing with the person through listening to him/her and sympathizing with him/her without any judgment on the person to earn and retain the trust of the suffering person.

How Humans evolved their Intellect

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Bansal) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 19:27:00 +0000

Human intellect is the evolved to the highest level of all the species of life on the earth. This intellect has the following components –

Storage of Information – Memory in Brain,
Input/Output System spread in the whole body as a network of neuron – Mind
Analytic and logic function – Frontal cortex of Brain
Central control – Brain

All other species of life on earth neither have all these components nor these are so exhaustive. Why humans have such a highly evolved system and why and how it evolved is the question for which some answer is sought here.

The answer naturally lies in how humans have been conducting themselves differently from other species of life. On a minute scrutiny, following distinct conduct features of humans are noticed which are missing in other forms of life -

Social Interactions

Humans are more social than other animals in depth and width. We interact with others in precise terms for which we have developed languages for precision in communications. Languages provide more width to socializing temporally and spatially. We are able to read what earlier generations wrote in their books and can leave our imprints for the future generations. Through means of telecommunications, we may interact with persons on the opposite side of the globe.

All these widespread social interactions put more demand on intellect evolving it to higher levels over time. True – necessity is the mother of inventions. Our intellect invented itself because we have been having ever higher levels of necessities of intellect.

Emotional intensity in Interactions

Humans are not only more social, they are more emotional too than other animals on the earth. Emotions force each human-being to interact with him/herself in his/her lonely moments. In togetherness with other humans, emotions improve depth of interaction and relationships.

Storage and usage of experiential information

Humans not only learn from experiences and conduct themselves accordingly for the time-being only, they record their experiences in written works providing benefits of one generation to other later generations. This generates necessity of remembering more things, forcing evolution of memory to higher levels in content width and depth in terms of time.

All of these three counts as reasons for evolution of human intellect, thus, have their genesis in their being more social than other animals. Hence, human sociability is the principal reason for evolution to the highest level in intellectual terms.

This analysis also point out to a bright future of humanity with more dimensions of evolution for the modern multifarious global sociability of humanity through the facility of Internet connectivity. This creates necessity of evolving for having multidimensional skills in those interacting globally through internet.

Faster pace of humanity in scientific developments than ever before, will certainly to make evolutionary changes in humanity at a faster pace than ever before. As a result, during a lifetime itself, a human-being might be able to notice evolutionary changes in later generations, as we see today our children having multifarious skills and aptitudes which were rare about 50 years back.

Luck, Serendipity and Success

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Bansal) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 15:05:00 +0000

Each life is a weaving of two cross fibres – an inner or the self and an outer or the external world, without which life can’t exist. Derivatives of these two factors of life are essential for succeeding too – Attitude of the Self and Support of Social Network. Even in business world, persons succeed by their own attitudes towards life and work, and their supportive networks of family members, friends, employees, customers, suppliers, etc.

Not Luck, but Serendipity

I am shocked to know that many of the leading business persons ascribe their success to luck – a non-determinant beyond control factor. On minute scrutiny of such luck subscribers reveals that their successes have been created by their attitudes of being open to serendipity. Serendipity means a chance discovery of something while the person had been looking for something else. Some persons may call it luck but I strongly differ on this.

Many times, in my highly disorganized free life, I don’t find a thing, I need, in my home, knowing that it is there somewhere in the home itself. Then I give up searching that and divert myself to do something else. Later, I find the thing I had been looking for earlier. This is not luck but serendipity. I got the thing just because the thing was there in my sub-conscious mind. As time passes on, we keep on seeing a huge number of things incessantly, but our attention is drawn for a few things only. These are the things which we are conscious of finding out, then or earlier, have direct or indirect links to our mission of life. Things we pay attention to are finds of our serendipity, not of luck. Those who ascribe their success to luck factor, are not aware of serendipity, hence, misplace their ascriptions.

In matters, routine or important, life or business, serendipity works every moment we pay attention to a new find. Most of the scientific discoveries and inventions are results of serendipity. Same is the case with success of a person in business or any other endeavor of life. But serendipity works only when a person does not bind his/her mind to some particular thing only, but has a mind – open and investigative to his/her whole arena of interests. This is governed by attitude of the person.

Does this thesis of serendipity works against focus on some particular objective? It appears so, but is not really. I would like to explain this geometrically.

To meet our objective, we need to focus on that. For focusing, we need a media that may be a functional process, mission of life, environmental manipulation, etc. Like the human eye, human nature too is diverging while focusing needs convergence. The media translates the diverging nature to converge on the focal point. Even this process of convergence covers an area which is beyond focal point yet allied to it, as depicted in the figure below. The serendipity occurs in this divergence allied to focal point.

To conclude on serendipity, we may say that in the whole arena allied to focus of our investigation and attention, when we may come across a new happening different from the issue under focus, we pay attention to that because that is related to our field of interest. This new find may prove to be a new discovery. Such a discovery is the result of serendipity of the person’s attitude.

Success

As aforesaid, success has two principle ingredients – person’s attitude attuned to success including focus and serendipity, and his/her social network including family, friends, customers, suppliers, etc. The main contribution of social network in the person’s life and success is to keep on providing him/her an assurance that they are there to help if need be, thus encouraging him/her to move ahead with courage, determination and feeling of well-being. It is noteworthy here that only happy persons succeed. Concept of seeking happiness in success is outdated.

Dreams, Gambles and Aspirations

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Bansal) — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 13:03:00 +0000

day-dreaming

In my opinion, the most lovable thing for a person are his/her own dreams – not the dreams seen while sleeping but the day-dreams, which represent what the person desires to achieve. These day-dreams make the person to conduct him/herself in two ways – aspiring and gambling, putting the human population in two segments.

Gambles

In a gamble, the person invests his/her resources to materialize his/her dream, but with no control of him/herself on how the resources shall be made use of. This is a blind game for the person with someone else making use of the person’s resources. Putting money in buying lottery tickets, and investing money in shares are two popular gambles with the fate of the investment being decided by other persons or circumstances beyond control of the investor.

gambling

There are a great number of persons living on this earth who invest their resources and leave the result to a fictitious force, called God or their fate, to decide on the results. In fact, such persons leave their investment to natural and social circumstances to decide, without making any conscious efforts to turn the results in their favour. Such persons are psychologically weaker than even the buyers of lottery tickets and investors in shares.

People gamble not because they have resources not utilizable by themselves, but because it paves way to materialize their respective dreams. So, it is their own dreams which take them to gambling.

Aspirations

An aspiring person makes tactical efforts to fulfil his/her desires without leaving the outcome on God, fate or circumstances. If such a person fails in achieving his/her objective, he/she uses this experience of failing to learn some lesson and finds out where he/she erred in his/her efforts, and retries to achieve the objective with a new enthusiasm. This is how and aspiration differs from a gamble.

Why People Invest in their Aspirations

Aspiration

An aspiring person too is driven by his/her own dream to make efforts. It is often seen that persons avoid investing their resources in dreams of others. Many family-owned business enterprises collapse because the descendents don’t care for business dreams of their parents. A dream of a person is like his/her own child for being his/her brainchild. The person feels duty-bound to serve his/her dream to the best of his/her capabilities.

Investment of resources in a dream is higher if chances of favorable outcome are brighter for an aspiring person but not for a gambler. A gambler has a limit on his/her faith in God, fate or circumstances and hence limits his/her investment in the gamble. The attachment of a gambler to his/her dream is not like that of an aspiring person. The gambler does not treat the dream as his/her own brainchild but that of his/her God or fate.

Another consideration for investment in a dream is nobility of the aspiration in the investor’s opinion. If a task is considered noble by a person, he/she is willing to sacrifice even his/her monetary losses in the process.

Why to Confront an Offending Situation

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Bansal) — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 22:45:00 +0000

Homeopathy and immunization have one thing in common – both inject disease causing ingredient in the body for making the body to resist the disease, thus curing itself of the disease. So far, all experts of Homoeopathy and immunization have forwarded physiological reasons for this way of curing the body of ailments. But I see, behind this type of curing, a psychological reason playing a dominant role in the curing process.

When a disease attacks a person without an advance notice to him/her, the person is offended without any preparedness to counter the attack, hence falls sick. When a person is well aware of his sickness and approaches a homeopath or an immunity expert for the treatment, and injected with an ingredient that causes the disease, the person’s consciously accepts the ingredient with full preparedness to counter the disease. The person gets cured for this conscious readiness to counter the disease.

It has also been observed in many cases that a sick person cures him/herself through his/her willpower only without any drugs. In fact, body’s auto-immune system works on this conscious approach of treatment, as the sickness itself makes the person conscious of the disease and prepares the body to counter the disease.

Children of poor families often live healthy even in filthy conditions and dirty environment in which many sophisticated persons fell sick. This health is also for the conscious confrontation of the filthy conditions of the poor children. In this case too, instead of a disease offending the children, the children confront the diseasing condition through adopting these as their ways of life.

In studies of ants’ colonies, it has been found that if an ant is attacked by a deadly fungus making her sick, other ants of the colony eat the fungus to finish it and to cure the ailing ant through diluting the fungus effect. Here too, when the ants eat the fungus consciously, they are psychologically prepared to confront the sickening effect of the fungus, with the result that the fungus fails to make them sick.

All these cases prove that when a person is consciously prepared to confront a danger, the danger gets eliminated without any hurt to the person while the same dangerous situation would have proved fatal if the person were not consciously prepared.

A person falling from even a low height, often gets hurt, while in games and sports, many persons jump down from considerable heights and still remain safe. Again the conscious confrontation of the fall saves the person from getting hurt. It is not only strange but educative to lifestyle too, that perception and influence of a danger gets altered just by getting prepared to face the danger. And philosophy of a safer life seems to be remaining alert for understanding a dangerous situation and consciously confronting it instead of avoiding it.

Speed versus Accuracy in Expressions

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Bansal) — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 11:35:00 +0000

In all verbal expressions – oral and written, speed and accuracy damage each other. If a person is concerned for speed, he/she is likely to commit mistakes, and if he/she concentrates on accuracy, he/she is bound to limit his/her speed of expression. Therefore, the best course is to keep a balance between speed and accuracy of communication, so that the other person gets the message closest to what you intend to communicate in a reasonable time frame, because both of the parameters of expression – speed and accuracy, are important, yet both can’t be achieved in practice. A hurry in expression results in slips of tongue or writing.

Influence of speed on Accuracy

In my writings, I commit two types of mistakes while I speed up my writing work – missing words, and doubling of a letter gets delayed to the next letter. ‘Speed’ is written as ‘spedd’. These are indicative of how speed disfavors accuracy. In a hurry, when a series of things to be executed remain in mind, and in the hurry, a few things in between are assumed to be executed without actually doing that, resulting in missing of such things. Secondly, an operation proposed to be performed on a thing is shifted forward and is performed on the next thing. Therefore, the hurry causes two types of mistakes in expressions – missing words in the contents and delayed operations on words.

Some old psychologists have been of the opinion that slips of tongue or written expressions are indicative of real intentions of the person. But modern psycholinguists are of the opinion that such slips have no relationship to real intentions of the communicator.

If there is difference in a person’s views and expressions on an issue, the reality comes out as an expression if the person is made or charged to express all of a sudden without putting his/her mind on what to say on the issue. Not only this, but a sudden expression is in the person’s mother tongue for the translation being a time-consuming process for which the person does not find an opportunity.

Influence of Accuracy on Speed of Expression

An expression is composed of words and their assembly in a sentence. Finding a right word for a given sense out of many mean-alike words is not only difficult but time-consuming too. Similarly, accurate assembly of words into a sentence is a serial process with every step needing completion of the previous step, like that of an assembly line in a manufacturing process. Every mistake at each step has to be eliminated before the next step, thus, limiting speed of expression.

Accuracy of expression needs thinking before expressing and translation of thoughts into action of expression takes time, thus, reducing speed of expression.

Establishing the Balance of Accuracy and Speed

Objective of an expression is not technical accuracy but conveyance of an intention of one person to another. Therefore, desired degree of accuracy of an expression depends on ability of the other person to understand the sense of expression. Some expressions may not need any words if rapport on the subject matter between the two engaged in a communication is of high quality. Official meetings often use very few words for the persons well-tuned on the subject matter. Therefore, it is the mutual rapport that determines degree of accuracy of expression and the speed of communication. With a good rapport, high speed communication may be achieved sacrificing accuracy of the expressions.

In written communications, it is the accuracy that matters a lot, thus the speed of communication is slow. An author can’t afford to use inaccurate language for a great variety of readers of his/her works. Thus, authorship is a slow endeavor getting compensated for slow speed by many readers receiving the expressions simultaneously. Poetic creations are brief expressions through use of highly selective words having senses in bulk through few words. Here, few words speed up communication but their high selectivity slows down the expression.

Three Elements of Capability – Competence, Conduct and Creativity

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Bansal) — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 14:14:00 +0000

Word ‘capability’ is a composition of ‘capacity’ and ‘ability’. Out of these, the capacity of the person is in-built into his/her body and mind at the time of its assessment of capacity, while ‘ability’ is acquired by it for enabling itself for an assigned task. So, for acquiring a capability, the person has to be fit in body and mind and has ability to learn.

Before coming to the main topic of capability, there is one aspect of personality that needs a due consideration, and that aspect is ‘potential’ of the person. It is a prospective word related to what the person may become in future, if moves on a right path with focus on the objective, with the constraint that the objective be set to fall within boundary of the potential of the person. Thus, potential is the maximum a person may achieve.

Competence

Capability of a person is a mix of intellect, competence and skill. The intellect is an intrinsic capability of the person to sense a situation accurately and understand it, competence of the person is his/her capability to deal with a given problem, while the third component of capability – skill, is the person’s capability of physical handling the problem. In a broad way, competence includes both intellect and skill of the person to deal with a certain assignment. Therefore, competence is the first level of capability of a person subject to an assignment. It neither related to the person’s talent in general nor his delivering results for which still higher level capabilities are desirable.

Character and Conduct

Competence may only be used at work to deliver results if the person has a high level of character to understand his/her responsibilities and duties related to his/her position in the situation and conducts him/herself accordingly. An example of its elucidation may be working of administrative officials of governments in India. There is no doubt about competence of most of them to deal with their responsibilities effectively. But for want of morality in their characters and conducts, they remain negligent to what they are expected of and prove ineffective as far as people are concerned.

Therefore, competence without a good character of a person is of little value to his/her society. This makes me to put character as the second level of capability of the person. The character of the person makes him passionate about performance on the task in his/her hand. His/her passion for the job works as an intrinsic motivation for him/her to work.

Creativity

Third capability of a person is his/her creativity which arouses him/her to be innovative at work, solving problems or in new developments. It is a rare yet precious talent, working as the hub of developing human civilization. Yet, creative persons are less productive for their lack of interest in routine jobs while key to productivity are routine and repetitive operations on materials with application of pre-programmed mind but without application of the person’s brain.

Optimum Use of Mind and Brain

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Bansal) — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 10:33:00 +0000

Generally, two words ‘mind’ and ‘brain’ are considered synonyms of each other while these two are different entities residing in the human body. This need be understood clearly before making optimum use of mind. Human brain works at its best when left to work free from the person’s biases and prejudices, targets and objectives. For this reason, most of the scientific discoveries have been done when not aimed at. They just appear like bolts from the blue when they had been least expected.

Conversely, when a person targets some particular objective or concentrates on some particular topic, the brain area related to that objective or topic works with all the rest blocked. This, in turn, blocks all other related matters of the objective. For example, when a person concentrates on what he/she is watching, he/she inadvertently blocks what he/she may be smelling, hearing, feeling and tasting, while these information may be relevant to the thing under study.

Focus on the Object

Concentration

With every sensor we have, we may direct its usage or just keep it open for any incoming information - we may watch or see, listen or hear, feel or touch, etc. When we concentrate on action of a particular sensor, other sensors get blocked fully or partially. A person speaking on a phone fails to hear anything you tell him in between unless his/her attention is distracted from the conversation. So by concentrating, you block other subsidiary information of the topic of concentration. But concentration too is a must for extracting maximum information through the sensor.

A way to concentrate without blocking incoming information is to focus on the object of sensing, not on the particular act of sensing through a sensory organ. Let us say you are sensing a particular flower, one way is to watch it attentively and the other way is to sense the flower as a whole with all of your sensory organs. If you watch it attentively, you fail to sense its fragrance, feel its softness, etc. But if you focus your attention on the flower, you extract all the information from it through all your sensors.

Diversified Thinking

Diversified view

While deep thinking is highly effective in the narrowed-down field of the brain, diversified thinking, or thinking on subjects widely diversified from each other, empowers the brain through learning from varied experiences and thus evolving into a diversified neural network. Human brain has too widely networkability that even the greatest of intellectuals are able to use its less than 10 percent capabilities in their respective lifetimes. Jumping of the brain from one subject matter to another requires resetting through a relaxation in between that may extend from 5 minutes to about half an hour depending on the diversity of the subject matters. This way of diversified thinking may be termed as horizontal expansion of intellectual power of the person, and is quite opposed to vertical depth through focus and concentration on a particular subject matter.

Power of Analytics

Power of analytics is the ultimate purpose of existence of brain and mind of a person, through which the person studies continuous changes taking place in the natural, social and individual environment variables and through extrapolation of these, he/she predicts about things of the future. All exercises of planning are based on this power of analytics of the brain.

Power of analytics requires both – the depth of focus as well as the width of diversification of the person’s intellect. It is at this point, the two warring capabilities come to terms to aid each other to make optimum use of the mind.

Why to Do One Thing at a Time

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Bansal) — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 07:10:00 +0000

With the advent of computers in lives of individuals like their co-brains, multitasking has become a craze of busy persons. This is highly a misconception that either computers or human brain is capable of multitasking. Computers do so through fast shifting from one task to another, thus serving many users or applications in the same time frame giving them the impression that all are being served simultaneously. This is made many persons to think that they would be more efficient if they too adopt multitasking like computers. Such persons are grossly mistaken.

Human brain works differently from computers in three ways – it has retentivity, is affected by eddy currents generated from external sources nearby, and it has a time-limitation of continuous working, while computer microprocessor is free from these three effects.

Retentivity of Human Brain

Retentivity is a universally found natural phenomenon dictating that an effect of a cause is partially retained by the affected thing even after the cause gets eliminated. The human brain even after stopping work on a problem retains some influence on itself of the working, and this influence affects working of the brain on later problems. A person having quarreled with some person does not get to calmness even with persons unrelated from the quarreled person.

If a person quickly switches from one task to another, then his/her working on the previous task influences his/her working on the latter task, because of retentivity of his brain. Therefore, he/she fails to pay full attention to the latter task, messing up with his/her performance. For this reason, it is highly recommended to have a blank space in between working two important tasks. This washes off the brain from the influence of previous task to get ready to take up the new task afresh.

Influence of Eddy Currents on Human Brain

While at one task, each of us keeps on worrying about related persons, and such worries affect one’s performance. If a child is sick at home, father or mother fails to concentrate on work even at other place, even knowing very well that his//her worrying is not going to help the ailing child. So, the human brain remains involved and under influence of many things unrelated to task in hand. I call these other happenings eddy currents in the individual’s environment. Computer processor, on the other hand, works only at the task in hand without remaining concerned about what all is stored in its hard disk or other storage devices.

Limitation of Time

Human brain can’t continue to work with same efficiency, concentration and interest beyond a certain time limit depending on the individual. It has been found that this time limit is 90 minutes for an average person. The brain needs some rest after this to regain working. Computer processors are designed to work continuously with the same efficiency.

For these three reasons, trying to do more than one thing at a time proves counter-productive. The most important reason being that the human brain remaining naturally involved in many things related or unrelated to the task in hand.

Efforts of Impressing lead to Cognitive Impairment

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Bansal) — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 22:18:00 +0000

When I took up my first job in 1972 at Durgapur Steel Plant, meeting of young boys and girls in public view was not so common as is today. During an official journey from Durgapur to Kolkata, I was made to travel by train with a pretty girl whose father, a senior colleague of mine, wanted me to marry her. During journey in the train, I noticed that some co-travelers were watching us, so we didn't talk much. On boarding off the train at Kolkata, I took her to a cafeteria with a desire to talk to her and to impress her as my potential mate. I became so nervous during that meeting with her that I forgot to add sugar to cups of coffee, offered one to her and began sipping the coffee from the other. On tasting the coffee, she reminded me of adding sugar. This made me more nervous, and I could not utter even a single sweet word with her as I wanted to.

Now, when I read from modern psychological researches that men suffer cognitive impairment when they try to impress their potential mates, or even when watched by the latter, or even when they anticipate interacting with the latter, I am not surprised with a flashback of my first meeting with a potential mate. What surprises me is that such impairments do not take place in women when they interact with men.

This derives the point that men often fail in impressing women when they try to make conscious efforts to do so, while women are able to impress men even without any conscious effort in this direction. This happens so because the men have mating desires all the time and whenever they find compatible women, they take them as their respective potential mates, try to impress them and fail. Women are generally free from such feelings of potential mating, hence, they don’t try to impress and are able to behave coolly.

This failure of men in impressing is not limited to women only. Any one - male or female, on trying to impress another person, suffers a cognitive impairment and gets nervous.

What a Person must Do to Impress

Impression of a person on others plays more effective role in life than the person him/herself, therefore, making a good impression is a must for anybody to succeed in life. The only way left is to detach performances from making impressions and do one’s best in each performance without caring whether somebody would be impressed or not. This way, the good performance becomes an intrinsic attribute of one’s personality to create impressions on all others coming in contact. Targeting a particular person for impressing often meets a failure.

Ideology in functioning of Intellect and Wisdom

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Bansal) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 17:24:00 +0000

Intellect is function of logic unit of a person's brain and creates his/her ideology while his wisdom being function of his/her mind dictates him/her to be practical in the given circumstances subject to the ideology.

Ideology in functioning of Intellect and Wisdom:

'via Blog this'

Natural Beauty of Golden Ratio

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Bansal) — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 07:20:00 +0000

Golden ratio found in Nature was first observed, researched and written about by Pythagoreans in their quest for beauty and rationality in Nature. The essence of this study is that beauty and rationality are synonyms in many respects.
Natural Beauty of Golden Ratio:

'via Blog this'

Making Life Full of Fun

noreply@blogger.com (Ram Bansal) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 10:13:00 +0000

Enjoy yourself

When it comes to be serious at something, most of us outright think of eliminating fun in that thing. And that where, people need to have entertainment and recreation activities separate from their work for career progression, profession, business, etc and even at physical activities fir remaining fit. This way of living makes life a boredom driving out passion from most of the activities persons get involved in under compulsions of survival and livelihood. As a result, physical existence, family, society, work, etc become liabilities on the person, with the whole life becoming a chain of problems.

Another way of living may be finding or adding fun in everything a person does, and choosing activities for doing which have a good amount of fun in themselves. For activities that have a lot of fun or which are taken up with fun, the person could easily be passionate about these. While a serious activity could also be begun with passion, the passion often proves to be short-lived and the activity ultimately becoming a burden. The joy of doing may be realized only if the activity ends up with a grand success. In case of a failure, even that hope of a thrill is also gone. Conversely, if the performance itself is full of fun, the activity remains a source of joy whether it ends up in a success or a failure. It is also found that activities done with pleasure of doing extract better performances of the persons involved, and often leads to satisfactory results if not to a grand success.

Doing something with fun and hence passion also supports the age-old moralistic axiom ‘all ends well if means are good’, against the result-oriented axiom of ‘everything that ends well is good’. Both of these philosophies of life have their merits and demerits, and in my view, are highly subjective and situational. Therefore, my open-mind prefers a fun-filled path with the hope of getting good results. Even if the results are not exactly as desired, the performer has the fun of doing. Therefore, most critical decision for the life full of fun is the activity the person engages him/herself in. This selection must be full of wisdom.

Be watchful

How to choose your activity for life

There is a five-point strategy of finding out the best activity of all for a person for adoption for his/her life. Since the decision is very critical, one must go through checking through all the five steps.

1. Three activities you enjoyed most, so far in life

Many times, we are not sure what is the choicest thing to do but when we come to actually doing something, we may easily realize whether the work is what we love most or not. So, scan your experiences so far and enlist three experiences you enjoyed most in order of the enjoyment. Why three, because every activity of the past may not be feasible now or in future, but one out of the three would hopefully suit.

2. Three greatest obstacles, you faced in the life so far

Since, knowing one’s weaknesses is more important than knowing the strengths, the realized obstacles indicate towards one’s weaknesses. With this knowledge, either eliminate the possibility of engaging yourself in an activity for which undefeated obstacles shall be confronted again, or find in advance, how you would be dealing with the obstacles to overcome them.

3. Three gravest mistakes you committed in life so far

Whether one openly declares his/her mistakes or not, he/she very well knows them. These mistakes of the past may be frightening, discouraging and disappointing if the person does not learn lessons these may teach. If these lessons are learned, the person saves him/herself from committing such mistakes again.

4. Three Things and their quantities, which would provide you Contentment

Relax for a while

A person wanting more is in a miserable state of mind even though he/she may be possessing a huge wealth. Conversely, a person needing nothing is the wealthiest person even though he/she may be poor in material assets as compared to others. With this concept in mind, an active person must decide in advance what all and in what quantities, he wants to possess and then make efforts for these. At reaching the specified limit, he must treat him/herself as the wealthiest person, and stop aspiring for more.

5. Health is the superior-most possession

Whatever may be one’s aspirations, mistakes, or possessions of the past of a person or whatever be his/her lifestyle, one thing common to all is the fact of life that health is the superior-most possession for everybody. The whole world exists, perceived and enjoyed through good health only. Keep this in mind at every instant of your life.

With due consideration on all these issues, choose an activity which keeps a balance in enjoyments, work, health and happiness without felling prey to over-ambitions.