Debunking All Connotations

I have been swept off my feet. Like the knee-wobbling feeling of first love, the understanding dawning on me totally overwhelms me. How beautiful a world would it be if we got rid of all connotations? Where there is no lens through which we are seeing things, because we have understood the most natural state of everything – the paradigm itself has evaporated erasing all differences between new and old, hot and cold, black and white, high and low and right and wrong. And most importantly where defying all connotations has lead to realization of feats perceived undoable before- making all limits limitless.

The vibrancy of the idea that I have encountered in my class for ‘Appreciative Inquiry’ has shaken all my old beliefs. The basic premise of this philosophy stems from focusing on the high, mighty and successful in all systems, instead of the deficiencies, and in turn amplifying what makes a system work. The idea is what we focus on grows. Let’s say we have an employee in an organization not performing as expected. The old approach would be to make him aware of his ‘deficiencies’ and chart a path for him to overcome that, but tap the kaleidoscope and a whole new beautiful picture emerges, where we do not know the word ‘deficiency’, where we are focusing on what he is great at doing and hence fueling his talents all the more. This might require concrete steps like re-fitting him in the organization, but the approach would produce results that are far superior than attempting to patch-up what he cannot do.

This demands that we shatter all our paradigms and embrace a single reference that solely focuses on strength and limitlessness. The idea is revolutionary if imbibed in its total spirit and not dismissed as wishy-washy. It requires a whole new vocabulary that has only positive, strength-laden words. Fitness training is a great example of this approach. Accomplished instructors more often than not point that there is nothing like a ‘wrong’ exercise. It might work to build a different body part than what you have aimed for, but as long as the exercise does not generate pain it is working to make you stronger.

I learnt this experientially when I broke out of the references I attached to eating and food. I shared a love-hate relationship with food, loving to eat good food and experiencing bouts of guilt for over-indulgence. Needless to say the results were disastrous. I kept struggling to lose weight and it kept finding me. Fortunately I was able to break this vicious circle by applying a positive vocabulary to my eating and removing all connotations. Specifically, I broke out of the rut of breakfast, lunch and dinner as the triggers of eating and tuned my mind to understand when my body needs re-fueling – translating three big meals to probably five smaller ones. I removed the shackles attached on the portion-size and content of my plate and replaced everything with healthier alternates, even if my old connotations instructed me to follow otherwise. The results have been to my liking and the success makes my belief in breaking out of paradigms all the more stronger.

Erasing boundaries and experiencing higher levels in ‘levellessness’ must be the tacit trigger behind so many individuals aiming for what can be christened as ‘ultimate goals’. Whether it is ultra-running where the runner traverses a distance in multiples of fifty miles, century or double century in biking where the cyclist cover 100 and 200 miles of terrain, whether it is a six month long trek or a 150 floors stair-climb – the goals that seem unattainable are only so till they are trapped in the boundaries of reference. Ask any marathon runner and they would vouch that if they intellectualized the distances they run, even their minds would not accept the possibility of completing so many miles – but as you dilute the logic of limitations, you would discover that you are running half a mile more than what you did yesterday and soon you would be touching the 26 mile finishing line of the marathon.

My yoga instructor organized a celebration of summer solstice where she invited a group of us to collectively perform 108 sun salutations welcoming the summer. When I first heard it I assumed she must be joking-108 is an intimidating number for physical exertion. But consciously removing the connotations of ‘difficult’, ‘impossible’ and ‘painful’ from the thought, and replacing it with ‘health’, ‘light’ and ‘joy’, I was able to be a part of he celebration, feeling engulfed by this mega sense of bliss and energy generated by the event.

Terry Olick, an author of the book ‘In pursuit of Excellence’ and a trainer of mental strength in sports puts it beautifully,

“The greatest barriers in our pursuit of excellence are the psychological barriers that we impose on ourselves, sometimes unknowingly. As your beliefs about limits change, the limits themselves change”.

To the Spirit of Enterprise!

What would it take for you to give up the warmth and security of an assured monthly pay check to embrace the uncertainty and topsy-turviness of the fruits of an idea that you can call your own? As most entrepreneurs would answer it’s the thrill of the ride!

Contrary to the obvious perception, most of the psychological studies done on entrepreneurship describe entrepreneurs as medium risk-takers – their risk-appetite evolving over time – then why is it that some of us still find working for someone more palatable than working for ourselves?

There was a panel discussion of three women entrepreneurs that I was fortunate to attend. In the course of sharing their experiences many inspiring thoughts surfaced like acquiring the mandatory skills in finance, building a team that complements your skills, leveraging your network etc. But if I were to cherry-pick a single thought that makes a difference between making it big and faltering it would be the uniqueness of the value your initiative is adding to the existing circumstances. This could be in terms of a never-before idea that almost creates a new industry, a more efficient processing of an old idea that saves time and money for the customer or a more effective version of an existing idea that adds value in terms of the quality that the customer is receiving – if any of this is the impetus behind the entrepreneurial initiative all that is left is to make sure the hygiene factors are in place and the ball gets rolling toward a more lucrative and satiating destination.

I still remember my father doing his meticulous ground work to start a data-processing initiative in a sleepy little town at a time where computers could easily be perceived to be from outer space – but his idea was unique given the circumstances, this combined with the adrenalin rush of seeing your brain-child grow undoubtedly provided him with big doses of satisfaction. All of us have some friends and near ones who could see the niche others could not and hence decided to replace their boss with themselves.

When I look around, few initiatives catch my fancy so much that it’s almost impossible to resist mentioning them here.

Most of us seek informal opinions of friends in various situations like gardening, buying appliances, issues in raising children, etc. A website called ‘Helium’ invites people to post their opinions on various topics, rate other’s articles and hence builds a knowledge repository that visitors can access while looking for every day answers. Another website that I recently visited connects people looking for others to ‘Car-Pool’ with them. Then there’s this whole revolution in beauty and fitness industry that is hard to miss – there are studios offering exclusive group workout techniques like ‘Pilates’, weight-loss techniques like body-wraps, spas offering strawberry and champagne massages for those willing to indulge, weight loss support groups like ‘weight watchers’ connecting people with similar goals of loosing weight and providing them external support in terms of healthier recipes and exercise ideas, endless gizmos at every price point to help you achieve your fitness goal and the list is endless. There are re-location consultants to help employees who have re-located to cope with the stress of the change; there are sports psychologists mentally training professional sportspersons, and financial advisors dedicated toward orienting and providing suggestions to an average retail investor – the innovation appears to be masquerading as the simplicity of the idea.

My deep belief in individual freedom makes me perceive “freelancing” as the finest example of flexibility without the investment of an initiative. Whether it is as a writer, fitness instructor or a consultant, if one has the appetite for ambiguity, there’s no better way to erase the differences in the adjectives attached to work and non-work part of our lives than freelancing.

I was reading an article on Apple’s iphone and how living up to his reputation Steve Jobs has done it again – by overcoming all the faults of the regular cell-phone like a difficult to use keyboard, compromised quality of video and audio etc. he has taken convergence one step further, and has created a beautiful device that just happens to have the functions of a cell-phone. The mantra seems to be in finding that gap, building a meticulous plan to fill it and then charging a premium for it – in turn discovering our natural selves in the whole experience. As one entrepreneur succinctly said:

The entrepreneur is our visionary, the creator in each of us. We're born with that quality and it defines our lives as we respond to what we see, hear, feel, and experience. It is developed, nurtured, and given space to flourish or is squelched, thwarted, without air or stimulation, and dies.