Pause and Breathe

I was running incessantly not realizing the huffing, puffing and the heaviness in my stride brought on by the enervation of excess effort – fortunately before I could stumble or as they call in the business world ‘burn-out’, like always there was sent a message this time suggesting to take things easy.

As the schedule was overloaded with multiple tasks without an explicit affirmation I jumped head-on to take each task by the horn, deriving some warped delight out of ‘killing’ one chore after another everyday, sans the dawning of the fact that the joy and the experience of the completion of each activity had evaporated because of the overwhelming heat my excessive efforts generated.

The domino effect of the exhaustion from other activities was an unknowing increase in my physical activity routine in spite of my body urging me to do the contrary. As I entered the yoga studio expecting another hour of ‘required’ challenging efforts, my instructor told everyone to lie back and stretch the stress in our muscles out. It was an hour of rich discussion on the truth in the clichéd ‘are you too busy to stop and smell the flowers?’ Each word spelled out exactly what I was supposed to hear and at the end of it, it occurred to me that I might have filled up my score-sheet with quantity but sadly it had sponged out all the quality that I so cherished.

This brings us to the question demanding the reflection from all of us irrespective of the nature of our business, how much is actually too much – do we need a stroke, ulcers, stagnation of thoughts or even illogical mood swings to realize that we have come too far? Do we in every pose of physical challenge need to be told by our coach to not hold our breath?

Without an iota of doubt multi-tasking is a great and revered ability, but when we draw our inventory of items to be ticked off in the multiplicity of tasks does it also include taking ‘time-out’ to re-charge, re-fuel or simply do things that complete us.

A very popular book, with a semi-cheesy title in my opinion, ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’, by Stephen Covey delineates the difference between urgent and important. He wisely advices that we slot tasks into a two by two gird with high and low levels of urgency and importance and sequence the execution so that tasks high on urgency and high on importance get executed first and so on. But the sequence and timing of tasks has an effect on us that is far beyond the accomplishment of completion – what we do at which hour of the day has visible effects on our whole being. I might need to start my day with deep meditation; he might require to rejuvenate by a long jog, while you might need to be at your desk to produce your best results. We need to delve into ourselves to sequence the activities with the sole aim of absorbing the positive outcomes of each activity and flush out the negatives.

This whole reflection would probably be incomplete without a predictable emphasis on the necessity of rest. Akin to the deep stretches after a long spin class lubricating every single muscle, the scrumptious dessert after a long meal providing gastronomical pleasure, reading a good book that is not prescribed but produces an ‘aha effect’ by matching the wavelength of your thoughts or writing your thoughts out even in the absence of an overt aim or audience giving an outlet to your implicit understandings, stopping to catch your breath is a mandatory step to reach the finish line.

Observation Vs Judgment

The effortlessness of the quite creeping of judgment to cloud your thoughts dawned on me while watching a movie called “Legally Blonde” this weekend. The movie was based on a blonde girl struggling against the attached labels insinuating at the lack of grey matter and making a successful attempt to become a lawyer contrary to all expectations.

Irrespective of the logic being sucked out of the analogy of a blonde with a bimbo in today’s world of ubiquitous hair colors, the crux is that in the tug-of-war of ‘neutral observation’ and ‘colored judgment’, judgment always wins.

At the first trigger of any external stimuli, our mind instantly gets into action to categorize the object of the stimuli into one of the many boxes we have created unknowingly. The person being labeled is ‘expected’ to act according to the specifications of the category we have clubbed her into and any deviation is seen as an aberration and ignored. Most of us indulge in what Sigmund Freud called as ‘Projection’ where we attribute to others our own unacceptable or unwanted thoughts or emotions.

Fortunately individuals are much beyond their actions. As Osho says in his ‘Book of Understanding’, actions are trivial but a person is a tremendous reality. Thus, attempting to predict the being of an individual by classifying into pre-defined groups is an act in vain. If even the fingerprints of two individuals can never be alike, categorizing a person in totality is nothing less than ludicrous. In retrospect, each of us can come up with multiple occasions where a person to our judgmental surprise has behaved not even close to what we were expecting – so a beautiful, extremely modish girl in class would ‘surprisingly’ also be very bright and intellectual; a pierced, pony-tail donning twenty something would ‘surprisingly’ have deep thoughts borne out of propensity toward spirituality; a garishly dressed member of a supposed low intellect and low income race would ‘surprisingly’ be sophisticated and classy in her whole demeanor and a timid, shy and weak individual would ‘surprisingly’ exhibit huge assertion in her actions.

Every time we form a judgment we are proved wrong. Unfortunately, the times when we are right are the times when unknowingly we have provided the impetus to the person to behave in the way specified by our audacious judgments. The covert or overt signal that the majority sends to the person being classified becomes the road map for that person to act. The power thus being held by the crowd in shaping the persona of the individual is almost lethal.

This bestows the huge responsibility on all to shun judgments and make discolored observations a habit. Neil Donald Walsch in his book ‘Conversations with God’ delineates the difference between the two. He beautifully states that acknowledging the fact that if a driver had to go right but has taken a left turn he is going the wrong way is what a discolored observation is. We have not formed any judgment about the driver per se, but have made a neutral observation. Our thoughts must be discolored in similar hue, trying to look beyond the wall of opinions built by years of conditioning.

Flipping the coin on the other side, we must also do a periodic reality check to gauge if we are sending a signal that is actuating another to crystallize her opinion about us. I once saw a TV show where a group of very beautiful women were whining on their plight of always being mistreated by the members of the same gender. The conclusion after a thirty minute discussion was that at some level most of them were putting a tacit message across in each interaction that froze all the labels attached with being physically endowed. If we have subconsciously classified ourselves into a certain category, we need to break out of it first before we can hope that others would make a similar attempt.

Like all good things, neutral observation can only become a part of us with continual practice. But if we wish to understand and encourage the multiple facets of an individual, looking beyond the actions and acknowledging the diversity in her being is a worthy judgment-free start.

Be Present

The love in the air on Valentine’s Day and the warmth in the surroundings, irrespective of the chilliness of the winter outside, forces me to share the beautiful lesson I learnt by experiencing a perfect synergy of my love aka yoga and the world’s symbol of love aka chocolate.

The class was spelled out as “Yoga and Chocolate”; the hypothesis being put to test was whether yoga helps you enhance your senses by being in the present. Thus, devoid of any guilt since was doing this under the instructions of a fitness guru; we devoured a special bitter-sweet chocolate and practiced some yoga. The process was repeated to discover if the chocolate tasted better by performing the asanas that help us tune into the present. To everyone’s chocolaty delight it actually did!

The beauty of being in the present cannot be emphasized enough. If excellence had a punch line it would read as “Be Present”. The act of tuning in to even the simplest of activities metamorphoses the mundane caterpillar into a colorful butterfly – so on paying total attention to the activity our food tastes better, conversations are richer, work-outs are wholesome, learnings are permanent and life is fulfilling.

This is what the learned ones must have meant when they defined meditation - zoning into the act and fading out the rest. I often experienced the exact same sensations in the process of producing my best results at work that I felt in a state of deep meditation – musicians feel it while making music, painters do while producing art, lovers do while making love, writers do while materializing their thoughts – all of us taste that deep seat of meditation when we are one hundred percent in the present.

Tuning in also helps to listen to the cues and sounds a half-hearted ear would have missed – it enhances what Howard Gardner, the father of Multiple Intelligence, would call as interpersonal intelligence that is the capacity to understand others and intrapersonal intelligence that is the capacity to understand ourselves. Being in the present helps all our relationships become more meaningful, irrespective of the initial depth and most importantly make us self-aware so that we can understand what our body and intellect are signaling and act accordingly.

No better way to pause this chain of thoughts by a present of love on this day of love – Kalidasa summing the high of being in the present:

Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!

Beauty in the Amorphous

Quantifying qualitative data is a phenomenon that took the world of research by quite a storm. There have been theories and volumes written on how to attribute numbers to records of data collected in prose so that they can be treated similar to quantitative data. Though I am a doting adherent of the essence of quantification in data analysis, the approach throws a blinding light on our discomfort with vagueness.

For most of us ‘spelled’ is the way to go. Abstract leaves a sense of restlessness that can only be put to rest with a sedative dose of concrete. One of the required competencies for a successful manager based on a study I read in business school was eloquently called ‘tolerance of ambiguity’. This tolerance is surprisingly absent in most of us. Anything that is beyond regular is endured only as a transitional spell and ways are explored to turn it into known. ‘Normal’ brings the warmth of security with it, knowing what to expect brings the assurance of safety with it, but unfortunately the pay offs are in guise of boredom and unoriginality.

One of the most intriguing observations in individuals pursuing their fitness goals is an irrepressible necessity to follow the traditional path of movement aka cardio and resistance aka weights training which also is the sole reason for the phasing out of a fitness program which was impinged upon with much ado – because it gets mundane. The instinct to follow this routine stems from the publicized belief that this is the tried and tested way to go. The only way to prevent the engine from loosing its steam is to spice up the routine by giving membership to innovative techniques like Pilates, dancing, and yoga in the defined workout. But for this to be successful one needs to be comfortable with the ambiguity of the immediate visible results of these relatively newer techniques. If we learn to accept the quintessence that is nebulous here, the outcomes would far outweigh our goals.

Osho in his ‘Book of Understanding’ while talking of Science and Religion defines the rare quality of ‘doubt’ in individuals. He shuns the idea of ‘belief’ and declares that belief cannot take you into any form of inquiry, either internal as in spirituality or external as in science. Belief or disbelief, which is belief just standing on its head, is like the dead end making one accept that beyond this there is nowhere to go. Holding onto a belief, generally passed on by others is an exhibition of our instinct to grab onto the tangible. But if for a moment we let go of this anchor, imagine the vast possibilities that instantly unfurl. If the only thing we keep the faith in is ourselves, and hold back the urge to concretize everything that touches us, the no-bounds beauty of the amorphous would smitten us like nothing before.