The Fake Fear of Loss

TV Game Shows involving huge sums of money are a phenomenon that is almost as intriguing as human behavior – leveraging on the fear of losing what never was yours.

A very popular such show being played is called ‘Deal or No Deal’ where with every win some money is offered to the player and she has a right to accept it and go home or refuse it and play more with a risk of decreasing the quantum of probable win. What is unbelievably witnessed is a play of raw emotions of the player, and to an extent of the audience with the fluctuating prize money as if the whole sum to start with belonged to you. In the loud excitement of the game, the player chooses to be oblivious to the fact that in reality she came to the show with nothing.

The success of such shows can be attributed to their design which is so close to our modus operandi in real life. The minute we perceive a gain in the probable future, it is translated in our minds as our possession and hence is anchored to a huge sense of loss in the event of the gain not materializing. Little do we realize that we were perfectly at peace with status quo before the carrot of the gain was dangled in front of us. Little do we also realize that the insatiable desire for the gain does not end with a simple win, the mind quickly shifts its focus to the next perceivable gain in the future into a continual cycle of ephemeral wins and stinging losses.

As if proactively seeking triggers for restlessness, we create our own world operating on a fear of loss of what actually was never there. So you decide today that you must reach a particular milestone in a particular time-frame, doing which you would add huge value to how the world perceives you. Before making this decision, you were devoid of the entropy involved with an expectation from yourself pivoted on the belief that the achievement of the milestone is what is required to make you more admired or wanted. But suddenly you are filled with this restless energy, which makes you extremely uncomfortable if you predict any deviation from the course you charted for yourself. Going back in time, nothing in your being has dramatically altered from the pre to post decision but out of the thin air there suddenly is this huge sense of failure that fills you with every perceived dither.

The chain of thoughts above is not expected to be interpreted as my validation of a life sans milestones and goals, on the contrary I am an advocate of what the psychologists call as ‘eustress’ or the ‘good’ stress in individuals for achieving their goals as opposed to ‘bad’ stress or distress. What I wish to send across is an awareness that sieves bubble-like gains from permanent ones and hence consequentially channelizing the energy into the pursuit of higher goals which by the nature of their being do not involve negative traits of fear and loss. Zeroing in on self-identified ‘higher’ goals also saves us from the wasteful spending of energy on attributing the losses to ‘outside’ of us and hence operating from a richer understanding. Gita is full of teachings aimed at making one understand the real wins and gains in life are generally not what we can touch, feel and smell nor do they sprout from our ego-center, instead the true gains are an absolute pleasure to pursue.

I recently read a paragraph that caught my eye and completes the ensemble of thoughts expressed:

"This is the true joy of life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.....the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."

Calculating Degrees of Freedom

The United States Declaration of Independence states one of the ‘unalienable rights of man’ as “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness”. Looking around though, granting liberty as a right to ourselves and others is a task that is more rare than frequent.

How much control is too much is a question that might sound like another one of bromides but has a ubiquitous debatable manifestation in real life. Most of the parents struggle with this dilemma, tuning their strategy of parenting with their maturity in the role. Most of the couples unknowingly indulge in the incessant tug-of-war of control most often than not paying huge prices for each ‘victory’. Most of the frameworks in society are structured with the skeleton of control, forcing parallel systems to sprout. And most often than not each one of us fight the ‘control war’ with our mind, playing hide and seek with temptations, ego-boosts and our basic instincts.

Organizations and society are the two institutions that can serve as striking examples of the pernicious but invisible consequences of control. Before I was swept off my feet by the beautiful ideas of SEMCO’s leader Ricardo Semler in his book ‘Maverick’, the innocent appearance of the shackles that most organizations bestow on their employees were conveniently ignored. Structures, schedules, guidelines of behavior seemed like an indispensable aspect of being employed. But as Semler succinctly puts “Executives must give up control and trust the power of talent. Only then will that person’s calling emerge”. Having experienced the stifling effects of ‘frameworks’ in organizations I hope one day all organizations can espouse SEMCO’s philosophy of gifting freedom of every kind to individuals so that real talent can multiply instead of dying a death in infancy.

The offsprings of pervasive control in society are plenty and unattractive. As if specially designed to kill merit in the bud, most of the structures force alternate systems and paths with dubious ethics to be born. I was recently watching ‘Guru’, a movie hinted to be based on the struggle and success of Dhiru Bhai Ambani. The fact that the justifications presented for a spirited entrepreneur to adopt grey means for smoothening the obstacles in his path to success seemed so acceptable was almost pitiful. His claims rested on the truth that the chains and handcuffs in guise of innumerable systems almost force a determined individual to explore ways of circumventing those systems. Reel and real life heroes analogous to Robin Hood and self-professed justice dispensing systems analogous to God Father are the illegitimate children of the indelectable acts of control.

Holding a core value that as long as one is not trespassing on the other’s circumference of freedom, each individual has the right to exercise liberty, I might have conveniently overlooked the costs that giving freedom brings with it. Similar to the cons of democracy and capitalism, we will have few who will overstep the line making the exotic dance of freedom seem like a cheap strip show, but we need to operate from the paradigm that views mature adults as adults and not negotiate their right to a life filled with freedom for that of bondage of thought and expression. Because the more we hold the sand tighter in our fist, the more it slips. There is no stopping for merit, spirit and essence – one way or the other it finds an outlet. My spin-class instructor often advices to never resist when you are in middle of an intense physical activity- translating into no clenching, frowning or pursing. If we learn to let go and relax into the moment when every fiber of our body is screaming, we can go a lot farther. In the same tone, we need to let go of the urge to control, whether it be our partner, children, peers or others. If we learn the art of gifting freedom and accepting it gracefully in return, we collectively can go a lot farther.

Leveraging the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Sociologist Robert K Merton coined the term self-fulfilling prophecy to the act of making a prediction that in being made actually causes itself to become true. Merton very profoundly stated that if men define situations as real, they are real in consequences.

The magnanimous impact of this philosophy like kudzu pervades all arenas of human interaction – from motivation at workplace to training in sports. Having understood the power of this thought, ignoring to leverage it for the self would undoubtedly be an act of the unwise.

Rearranging the pieces of the puzzle, I would imagine this maxim acting at three levels, that of words, thought and visualization.

The vocabulary we use for ourselves and for others has a huge power to actuate the essence of our words. I personally have faced the outcome of a similar subconscious act at work. Having been touted as a worker with a propensity toward ‘theory’, expected to provide solutions out of academics, and being constantly reminded that an ‘executionist’ is more practical and less inclined to theory, converted a very hands-on me to a confined-at-my-desk me, without realizing that my sense of urgency for taking tasks to completion is being sponged out by omnipresent comments on my great academic skills and mediocre practical abilities. Whether it is at work or anywhere else in life, what we speak to ourselves and to others is what we become – the public announcement of our personal goals at the end of any training program is a feat in same direction, where what we speak to a group brings a mental commitment to the task, bestowing a responsibility in us to take it to completion. Thus, without the fear of being self-serving, all those beautiful adjectives from our vocabulary must be attached to dear ourselves so that we start reflecting them.

Coming to thought. One of the moral principles in Christianity is ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’. As Neil Walsch puts it, if we love our neighbor as ourselves, he would get a sour deal because most of us are complete failures at falling in love with ourselves. Unfortunate but true, we are the worst critics of ourselves – so we perceive ourselves to be more selfish than we can be, fatter than we are and more afraid than we would like to be. We expect the worst and often label optimism as naivety. As my very wise sister puts it – whatever we think about gets attracted to us – she calls it the ‘law of attraction’- where the world is like our Genie, readily accepting our wish as her command. Thus, as my yoga teacher puts it – we need to seal in everything good and let go of everything bad.

The juggernaut phenomenon of visualization cannot be underscored enough. It is like writing a screenplay of our own life, with the VIP privilege to decide the twists and turns it would take. Since this post is inspired from a beautiful email that my sister had sent to me, I would take the liberty of quoting a paragraph from it on visualization – “I tried to put this theory to another test…. During the Christmas mass, there was lucky draw….. I thought let me see if I can ‘Attract the prize”. I took my coupon in my hand, closed my eyes, visualized my coupon number being called out, me getting up from my seat and collecting the prize. I know this sounds strange but I won the prize. By the time, prizes were called, I had already gone back home, my coupon was with mummy. She collected it on my behalf”. You can do a similar test – think of an event that you hope would happen and honestly imagine it being realized. The life-breathing capability of visualization would not disappoint you.

What we speak, think and visualize is what the cosmos conspires to concretize. This brings with it an opportunity to fulfill all our goals of learning, improvement and progress. I have been bowled over by a line from ‘Conversation with God’ that serves as a compass for me to chart my unique course. It says “The purpose of life is to recreate ourselves anew in the next grandest version of the greatest vision we ever held about who we are”. Let your vision of who you are be the epitome of grandeur.

Preserving the Shamrock in Us

Charles Handy in his profound work “Age of Unreason” writes about the next generation of organizations called “Shamrock Organizations”. The appellation has been derived from the Irish national emblem, a small clover like plant with three leaves. The author compares the gen-nex organizations with this shamrock, where the first leaf represents the core workers who are essential to the organization, the second leaf are the organizations to whom the non-core work is contracted and the third leaf is the flexible labor force consisting of part-time and temporary workers. Handy predicts that for the future organizations to be successful, they need to understand and espouse the shamrock.

The analogy to our individual selves with this thought stems from an article by the author of ‘Conversation with God’, Neil Donald Walsch. While expressing his thoughts on ‘compromise’ he quoted an incident where a woman once commented on the not-so-pleasant quality in his laugh and to his own surprise, he attempted to change the way he laughed so as not to irk the woman! Rattling our brains, am sure we can come up with innumerable such examples where we had done something similar in order to be accepted, liked, avoid conflict or simply because we are expected to do it. But how far we can go before it’s too far is something we need to pause and understand.

It is like the ubiquitous definition of ‘core values’ of organizations taught in business schools, its quintessence being its uncompromising character because that is the root or the spirit of the organization. Everything else might alter, die, get re-born or fade, but the values are the raison detre for the institution, which if negotiated can only profess demise. On the same note, each one of us has our unique core, developed over the years via incessant experience, learning and reflecting on the same. It is our personal set of beliefs, our reason for existence and hence it is our responsibility to protect and reinforce it.

The most important part here, needless to say, is understanding what is core and what can be compromised to evade the attached costs. Having understood that, it also is essential for us to respect what another has identified as her core, irrespective of our perception of the depth of the belief held by her. I remember a single mom being grilled on a talk show for her lack of commitment toward her eight year old because she chose to go out with friends four times a week, ignoring to spend time with her son. She was being attacked from all corners because social mores demand a pause in the personal life of a parent as they don that role. But this still leaves us with the question of how far is too far. If we accept the fact that everyone possesses their own individual core, providing the leeway to them to exercise their set of beliefs is a logical execution of that fact. The mnemonic I learnt while going through a word-list for the word ‘self-abnegation’ was ‘mother’. The analogy though true, thoroughly appalled me. What if the person chooses to be a mother but also opts to fix her own scope of so called sacrifices because she wants to hold on to her core. Teri Hatcher, the author of the book ‘Burnt Toast and other philosophies of life’ describes how women keep eating that burnt toast because they do not want to give it to anyone else in the family. Irrespective of our gender, each one of us should have the privilege to decide our periphery of self-abnegation.

My yoga instructor often describes the sixty minute session of yoga as a treat we give to our bodies, to restore, rejuvenate and recharge. Once we enter the class, the next hour is only for ourselves, sans cell-phones to attend to, chores to perform and roles to live up to. It is surprising how unknowingly we confine what should be the way of life to a limited defined time period. What is more surprising is that most of us do not even do that, what we believed in is shoved back to the farthest corner of the highest shelf, never to be brought out in the open again. If we understand the design of our shamrock, we owe it to ourselves to preserve it.

End or the Beginning

The advent of a new year brings in its wave an opportunity to reboot our lives by purging the toxic and imbibing the benign. But it also moots the question whether we really need an end for a beginning.

This brings to attention the importance of closure in situations that demand thus. How many times we observe great ideas generated but dying a death in infancy due to the absence of a sense to take them to closure via practical execution. Or closer home, how many times do we actually exhibit the strength and character to take our personal issues to closure. Overcoming the temptation to hide behind the comfort of denial and facing the indelectable head-on is a feat of great courage. In spite of their negative connotations confrontation of tacit problems, face to face break-up in relationships, assertion of unpopular ideas and aggression in attitude are examples of fearlessness of the end. The beginning requires an apt end, with its associated period of grief and letting go so that it does not hold us back from embarking on a new journey.

The end also brings with it the fear of the unknown – the essential evil called ‘change’. Without realizing most of us do become comfortable in the present to the extent that even a slight jolt that shakes us into the awareness of the need to restart is deemed unpleasant. I often give myself this little check where I count the times I experience discomfort in a particular day. Sometimes it’s almost a week before I can count one. My fitness instructor used to tell me that if I am not experiencing pain and discomfort in my muscles I am not doing things right – so every time the body gets used to the current level of intensity you need to increase the heat. The lack of a deliberate attempt to come out of our comfort zones is an indication of fatal stagnation. The beginning requires overcoming the intimidation of unventured territories and embracing the challenge of breaking out of the routine.

But is the end really the end or is it just the beginning seen upside down. I would like to believe that the end and the beginning are like the yin and the yang in Taoism – one metamorphoses into another in a beautiful and continual cycle of start and finish, so that we are able to remove the sadness from end and fear from the beginning. Richard Bach in his book illusions put it most aptly, “…what the caterpillar calls the end of the world the Master calls the butterfly”.

The Power of Metrics

Its in the air, New Year inundates us with a string of resolutions aimed at improvising the status quo. Like any theory of goal setting would profess, achieving a goal is impossible sans objective and quantifiable criteria to measure it – or what is christened in more formal terms as the ‘metrics’ to identify the gorge between the objective and the outcome.

The art and science of designing metrics is akin to wedlock between the outcome we are expecting and the actions we desire to reinforce in order to expand the boundaries of future objectives. This brings us to the classic trade-off between quality and quantity or what we refer to in the language of metrics as the ‘efficiency’ and the ‘effectiveness’. This implies that there are two separate angles offering different views of ostensibly similar outcomes, the difference lying in the behavior that these encourage. For example, the capabilities of the professors in American Universities are measured hugely by the feedback scores the students give them on parameters like punctuality, covering the scope of syllabus, resolving their doubts etc. Arguably, the professor who is less stringent on the students, handholding and spoon feeding to the extent of a handicap might get away with a better score as compared to a professor who drives her students very hard via setting and expecting challenging standards of performance from them. The behavior of the professor is thus actuated by the metric that measures her performance.

At the risk of gross generalization, I offer to categorize the efficiency metrics as the short-term approach to building high performance as opposed to the effectiveness metrics as the long-term sustainable approach. In an organization, probably the sales team would be measured by an efficiency metrics like number of orders booked while the research and development team would be measured by an effectiveness metrics like the novelty of ideas generated. Unfortunately, the balance is amiss in both approaches. In the absence of a propensity toward quality the performance of the sales team would be similar to fleecing the potential of the individuals because they are considered dispensable. In the same vein, effectiveness without efficiency would result in individuals with no sense of urgency and hence eventual demise.

Having established the importance of metrics brings us to the most important facet of the whole game – the vocabulary of the language of metrics. Wittgenstein once said “Think of the tools in a tool-box: there is hammer, pliers, screwdriver, a rule, a glue-pot, glue, nails and screws. The functions of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects”. Structuring the vocabulary in a way that encourages and reinforces the required behavior is the essence of designing metrics.

This impetus provided by powerful metrics can fortunately be extrapolated to our lives. But the onus of setting these metrics, unlike in organizations, rests on our shoulders, multiplying the complexity of the job manifolds. The basic reaction toward setting goals for self is of pure ‘quantity’ – so we want to lose x pounds in one month, read y books every fortnight, stay z hours in office, reach w salary bracket in one year and so on. Unfortunately this is an unsustainable short term approach to deceptive improvement. Putting on the effectiveness metrics glasses for a sustainable long term view we would rather build our stamina x times, comprehend and apply what we read in y situations, balance work and life z times more than before and reach w satisfaction level with the content of the work we do. A slight tug and the whole view of the kaleidoscope becomes more beautiful.

The back of my college sweatshirt sported the words ‘journey is the reward’, but a tryst with the corporate world and cogitating on the experience brings home the realization that it would be almost impossible to walk on the chosen track without the quintessential milestones – as they say if we do not know where we are going we have to be very lucky to get there.