Learned Helplessness !

Today I am moved to write again after some time. The incidents or the triggers have not been positive though for this note.

Let me begin with, the way me and many of my friends and batch-mates grew up in 1970s. There were limited resources and even TV was considered a luxury and someone with a telephone at home was considered as privileged.

In our family, like most middle class families the regular talk was on studying hard to get admission in a good college so that we have a stable and good job. The focus for everyone was on hard-work.

So most of us worked very hard to achieve something good for us. Many of us became Engineers and then followed up with MBA and landed in good jobs. Now most of my friends earn salaries in 7 figures – more than $ 1 million in a year. Many moved to foreign countries and many decided to stay back for many reasons. Most of them have kids, whom my friends have been giving the best of everything for education and gadgets and much more.  Most of us wish for best of work and good life for our kids.

Over the years, the changes in social, economical, political and environmental sectors have been exponential – so much so that now getting fresh air in a large city is a luxury.

This note is not about my friends or their salaries or the success stories. Its beyond that for every so-called successful person who has fallen in the trap of “Learned Helplessness” (term defined by Martin Seligman, a psychologist). Its about inspite of so much hard work to achieve in life; why many of us fall into this sense of helplessness.

Over last many years the amount of pollution has reached such alarming levels that; this year a “very high level” pollution was considered as good by everyone this Diwali vs “Hazardous” level last year. The fact is that the level of pollution every day in Most cities is 10 times the normal healthy level. The dust level in all mega cities is already at hazardous levels.

A large percentage of my friends staying in these megacities expressed that living is quite challenging here and they have lots of stress. The way people behave in public, the way they drive on roads, lack of basic infrastructure, pressure of work, health ; education costs are very high and social interactions are largely based on benefits than feelings.

Over last few months, I asked many of my friends, professionals and some of my relatives of what are they planning to do to manage this in their life for themselves and their children. As the future of our next generation and generations to come is at serious risk. I was shocked by their response and that’s why I chose to right this note.

There was a serious feeling of helplessness among almost all of them that what can they do. My question was if you have everything like a great qualification and great job and lots of money then why can’t you take a decision to chose a “life” over the luxury of staying in a mega-city where the basics of life is at risk.

I was also amazed when they want their kids to be more successful and better than them – earning more money and probably with high quality education. But these kids will have to struggle for basic existence with no fresh air or human values and similar or more challenges.

What you will do with all the luxuries if you don’t have health; where you can’t breathe.

I found a strong sense of “Learned Helplessness”.  I am not suggesting that everyone run away from mega cities. But I feel that some action must be taken by all of us rather than feeling helpless. The question is to Act now or wait for inevitable.

Unfortunately, no government in India even talks about issues of first level of Maslow theory – Clean air, Clean water, Healthy food. There is no discussion whatsoever about community building and developing civic sense. They keep us busy in silly issues and to our surprise, even the best of the so called educated and talented people fall in trap of wasting time and energies over those issues. Its now the question of survival. We do not need smart cities. We need drastic and very strong actions to focus on basics rather than talking fancy things.

If you ask, do I have the exact solutions - answer is NO; but together we can find some and ACT rather than being just a helpless Spectator !

Its very important to DO something now - lets find together what and how!

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Psychology of Fear - kids to adult!

After publishing the book (Available at AMAZON now) , writing again blogs. The idea of this came while observing the chaos after the demonetization was announced.

Over the years, I have been noticing how fear has taken over all our life right from childhood. I think everyone will agree that when a child is born, he/she does not have any fears as they get comfort from the mother.

Now the real story starts soon as most parents (atleast in urban areas) start worrying about school admissions for their kids, as young as 18 months old. This fear of not getting admission is slowly passed on to the kid and the focus shifts on - "my infant should get into the best pre-school". The story starts from there.

Slowly this fear grows both in parents and unfortunately in kids – fear of learning fast, fear of losing a race, fear of getting good marks, fear of success, fear of doing good in sports and many extra-curricular activities. Unfortunately, this gets ingrained in the child. This goes in all the phases of school and college education and this is re-inforced by ur education system, which creates a fear of getting good marks than Loving the subjects and learning (though there are few exceptions to this – but its almost negligible percentage).

Then comes the struggle to get the best job which pays well. Again the fear is to get the best and get promoted better than others and Race with others goes on.

The foundation of all this is on Fear – Not on Love. Opposite of fear is love and that’s what is totally missing. This impacts not only the person, but their families, society and the nation.

This is evident in the way people are reacted during de-monetisation to get the money. Even the people who do not really need it were just running in a fear-psychosis that money will finish soon (so no-one truly is bothered about poor or people who are genuinely needing money for survival). This fear leads to chaos and that’s what is evident in current scenario.

Everyone exploits this fear and compounds it.

So in real sense – this fear psychology is exploited by everyone in society in India on a regular basis ; whether its education, its job, its insurance, its police or even religious organizations. No one truly emphasizes in Education the love of learning; no one talks about loving God, no one says that in job success comes if you love your job and work well (with a competition with you and no one else)

So we have to have a surgical strike of managing this fear psychosis – it make take million years by a true government to act on it. But this change can be started by parents in their homes for their families and for their kids ASAP.

Focus should be on LOVE than on FEAR !!

Humans are Perishable Commodity !

I believe humans are a perishable commodity – it may sound crazy or scary; but the reality is that all of us humans have a clearly defined expiry date.

Many people would continue to live in the myth that they are going to live and be there forever and keep many things and knowledge to themselves.

Hardly we plan for who will replace us – most of the times the planning is financial planning in terms of insurance and management of money.

In organizations – this is called as Succession Planning (which is hardly done in a systematic way in most organizations). Be it business organizations, political or educational or not-for-profit. It is needed for every one. It is needed at national level, regional, city/town, smaller organizations, families etc.

There are umpteen examples in recent times which has shown how nations, organizations and people have suffered because of lack of a long term view or a systematic succession planning. The situation in congress party in India is a good example; so is the political situation in so many countries like US. This has lead to large scale impact – not only on those organizations but also on nations and large number of citizens. There are many good educational institutions which has gone down the memory lanes as critical people are not there now.

There are many organizations, whose business suffers badly when key people leave them (because of any reason) – they never imagined that our loyal (critical) employees may leave or fall sick or even die. They lived in a myth that people are forever. Few companies like GE and Google have been able to manage this process of succession planning well and are still surviving decently and doing well.

The process is simple – 

• Identify Critical Positions in any organization through Critical Position Audit – 
• Define the competencies needed for these critical positions – 
• identify who could replace the current role holders – 
• conduct assessment of these people on defined competencies and 
• then groom the short-listed ones for the critical roles.

This process can be applied to any unit – companies, political parties, not-for-profit, educational institutes and even smaller local organizations. Its not a one-off activity – it has to be part of a culture and must be driven from the top (either by the Board or by the CEO). It has to be impartial and must be conducted in fair manner.

The large sudden changes happening across the world including India and creating surprises among all can be attributed to no long term planning in terms of Succession Plan. This will have quite a negative impact on people across globe.

Its better to start as early possible ; than thinking we wish, we could have !!

PS: Don’t try at home as Some relationships can’t be replaced through succession planning – like your parents J

Why people get into Whirlpool and remain on first levels of Maslow Pyramid!

Maslow presented the above Pyramid in 1940s and then did lots of research on it. The first four needs were identified as deficit needs: i.e if the needs are not met, they make us uncomfortable and we work towards fulfilling them.

The last four needs, were named as growth needs.

He also arranged them in a hierarchy such that we are motivated primarily by a need only if lower level needs have been met. Thus, before one is motivated by cognitive or self actualization needs, one should have taken care of basic deficit needs like physiological, security, belonging and esteem. The needs are defined as

1.    Physiological needs: These are the basic animal needs for such things as food, warmth, shelter, sex, water, and other body needs. If one’s basic biological needs are not met, he or she would continue in this level and will not try to move to next one.

2.    Safety needs: Once the physical needs relatively satisfied, the individual’s safety needs take over. These needs have to do with man’s yearning for a predictable, orderly world in which injustice and inconsistency are under control, the familiar frequent, and the unfamiliar rare. This need for consistency, if not satisfied leads to feelings of doubt and shame.

3.    Belonging & Love needs: After physiological and safety needs are fulfilled, the third layer of human needs is social. This psychological aspect of Maslow’s hierarchy involves emotionally-based relationships in general, such as friendship, sexual intimacy and having a supportive and communicative family. If one finds failure in having such close relationships, then they have problems of dealing with others.

4.    Esteem needs: All humans have a need to be respected, to have self-esteem, self-respect, and to respect others.

5.    Cognitive needs: Maslow believed that humans have the need to increase their intelligence and thereby chase knowledge. Cognitive needs is the expression of the natural human need to learn, explore, discover and create to get a better understanding of the world around them.

6.    Aesthetic needs: Based on Maslow’s beliefs, it is stated in the hierarchy that humans need beautiful imagery or something new and aesthetically pleasing to continue up towards Self-Actualization. Humans need to refresh themselves in the presence and beauty of nature while carefully absorbing and observing their surroundings to extract the beauty that the world has to offer.

7.    Self-actualization needs: Self-actualization is the instinctual need of humans to make the most of their abilities and to strive to be the best they can.

8.    Transcendence needs: Maslow later divided the top of the triangle to add self-transcendence which is also sometimes referred to as spiritual needs.

When we look around we find that many of us or for that matter most of us struggle to remain in the whirlpool of first 3 levels at best and rarely we see people who move to level of self-actualization or Transcendence.

Then who or what is to be blamed for this??

On exploration you will realize that the kind of issues and lifestyles we are facing in India; don’t let you move out of the Whirlpool of getting the basics of life – water, air, simple life requirements. Once you move out you face issues such as poor roads, poor traffic, lack of infrastructure, un-civic behavior of people, un-called politics at work-place etc. With this you are always struggling to manage these challenges and get stuck! To add to this is complicated governmental processes and systems of taxation, legal, police and basic life management – so you waste your time here too. In a day - the real productive time is vey less and we are consumed by that. 

So we can blame all factors external to us for our stucked-situation in first few levels of Maslow Pyramid – Answer is NO.

We are also to blame for this – as we are part of this system and society and get entangled in all and do not try to come out. There is fear and then there is a race to get more and not to fall behind in materialistic gains. We fall for greed of many houses, many cars, higher power and many gadgets and then we are stuck forever! Having aspirations and dreams is not bad; but falling in trap of materialistic world, could harm. 

Once you meet people who have moved to level 7 and 8 – you will realize that they are not saints who have given-up everything. They are the one’s who manage self ; rather than being managed by environment or system around us.

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Answers to all the issues is known to most of us – but we have a fear to act and during this time moves on and by the time we understand the realities of life – its too late. So its simple – Think and Act !!