Kenrick Vaz

What Freedom Means To Me

Today India celebrates it’s Independence Day. There are tons of reasons to love my country and I am proud to call myself an Indian! For some of us the thoughts come easily, dripping with patriotism or pure venom. For others, it needs hours of conversation for the words nation and feelings, usually buried deep or hardly ever considered, to surface. And while we have made great advances in various fields, there is still so much to be done.

The word freedom means different things to people at different stages in their life. Children might think of freedom as a license to do whatever they want to do without any restrictions. Teenagers might think of freedom as being able to go to college all by themselves, a license to skip lectures, to experiment and try out things.

Freedom is the ability to express myself the way I want to. There is no uniform on how my life should be. With freedom I can choose my own moral compass, make my own decisions. Being in a country with freedom means I can choose my own religion. With freedom I can say what I want. Freedom to me means no one rules my life. I choose my own future.

The Statue of Liberty on the east coast should be accompanied by the Statue of Responsibility on the west coast, because liberty and responsibility are two sides of the same coin.
Viktor Frankl

Freedom spent solely in the pursuit of your own lifestyle, marking wins on your personal scorecard, or making your life a little more comfortable is wasted. With freedom also comes our awareness of our duties and responsibilities along with respect to all we encounter. When our thoughts take the shape of words and action, we must respect the feeling and emotions of other people also. For example, I am free to express my thoughts in conversations. It may be one to one or in large groups. I show disagreement with others but never in heated arguments. Another one is with respect to cleanliness. We cannot throw the garbage in neighbors’ house or on the roads after cleaning our house.

Being free is a beautiful thing. I am thankful for everyone who fought or fights for my freedom. If we compare our level of mobility, financial discretion, and occupational freedom to all of humanity that has come before us, we will see that you and I sit at the peak of all that have come before. Even the ability to choose an occupation was unheard of until the last few hundred years of history. Will future generations judge us as the peak of freedom, after which everything went down hill, or will we choose to spend our freedom in the service of others?

As with everything else, freedom has good and bad effects. Your choices out of freedom can make you or break you. Your choice!

Let’s strive to use our freedom wisely, cherish it deeply and never take it for granted.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action –
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
~ Rabindranath Tagore

And we hit a century!

I got back to writing whilst I was recovering from Covid in the last week of April and first week of May. I set up this site and wrote my first article on May 6. And today I complete a 100 days of posting every single day! And coincidentally this 100th day falls on my birthday!

Today’s quote summarises a majority of my posts and is also something I strive to put into practice as much as possible. But here are some of the pointers I have for myself for each of these four lines

Live
without Pretending
Stop pretending to be someone you’re not.
Stop pretending to have things you don’t.
Stop pretending and start living.

Love
without Depending
Love with no strings attached.
Don’t love with a dependence on others loving us back.
Manipulation is not love.

Listen
without Defending
Listen with an open mind and heart
Listen with the goal of sharing, uplifting, and being loving and respectful–always.
Take into consideration the other person’s feelings, positions, fears, frustrations, and desires.
Don’t listen defensively or offensively. Just listen.

Speak
without Offending
Don’t be mean and spiteful
Don’t let your words slice and dice anyone
Stop listening defensively to stop speaking offensively

Living, Loving, Listening, and Speaking in a healthy manner requires lots of self-control, self-reflection, self-respect, self-worth, and self-esteem. When these are low or non-existent then all you have in your life is chaos and disruption, negativity and destruction.

I am a work in progress, better than what I used to be but far from where I need to be. Hoping I can get closer to where I need to be this year by living without pretending, loving without depending, listening without defending and speaking without offending! :)

How do you see yourself?

In today’s hyper-connected world, it becomes so easy to get swept away in the opinions of others. Who likes who, who wronged who, who is doing what and so on are all regular topics in our daily interactions. Caring about what others think of you is an arrow to the knee of your happiness.

Most people tend to judge a persons character within seconds of meeting them. We all generalise, form assumptions, create an opinion of people and most often these are inaccurate. Even though we get a sense of the lightening-quick opinion form, nobody knows you like you do. You know your own strengths and weaknesses, your likes and dislikes, where you are currently at this moment and why you are in your current state. And hence concerning yourself with other’s incorrect opinion of you is pointless.

Have you ever known someone who is really an amazing person, talented, beautiful, intelligent, but they don’t see it? No matter what you tell them, they don’t believe it about themselves so they go about their life believing they are not those things while everyone around them is baffled by the obvious. How you see yourself is more important than how others see you and it will determine your outcomes long before you even get to them.

The real problem with caring what others think of you comes when you are more concerned with their reactions than your own self-assessment; or even worse, you don’t know what you think because you are so eager to please others. In any given situation, it’s important for you to know your own mind. If you don’t, then it’s important to begin spending some time reflecting on your experiences, thoughts, feelings, wants, and needs.

If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.
Vincent Van Gogh

Another important aspect which we tend to do is start negative self-talk based on others’ reactions and opinions. Think back, how many times just today have you criticized, judged, scolded, mocked, or been unkind to yourself? Now think about the impact this has on your mood, self-esteem, curiosity, and willingness to take risks, be bold, be brave? And it doesn’t end there. The danger is not just that we start to believe this dialogue, it’s also that since most of the time we don’t even realize we are having it, we are even more susceptible to its power and fallacies.

Loving or hating the life you are living is solely all in your repeated self-talk.
Edward Mbiaka

One way which helped me improve my self-talk is to think of having the same dialogue with your close friend. Can you imagine telling them what you say to yourself? And now think of their reaction and the powerfully negative effect you could have on them. Now realize that this is you speaking to yourself. In this case, you may very well be your own worst enemy.

The ultimate truth is that is absolutely okay – even beneficial – to be aware of and care about others’ reactions to you …so long as you don’t lose sight of yourself. But if you think you do place too much value trying to please others, then it’s time to turn the focus on strengthening your sense of self.

Empathy

Pain, hardship, and disappointment are the seeds of empathy and understanding. When we are born, the world truly revolves around us. We cry and our parents feed us. We whimper and our soiled diapers get changed. We bellow and our parents comfort us. We become the center of the universe, at least in our parent’s world. We remain so until we reach the age when we realize that the world is greater than the small space in which we inhabit. As our world expands, we must interact with other people. We must understand life from their perspective. We must integrate our perspective of life with the perspectives of the people we meet throughout our lives. Integration is difficult because we only know the world through a singular perspective – our own.

Empathy is the means by which we understand life from another person’s perspective. Empathy is not possible unless we share the same or similar experiences as other people do. We cannot understand hurt until we hurt. We cannot understand disappointment until we are disappointed. We cannot understand sorrow until we feel sorrow.

The biggest deficit that we have in our society and in the world right now is an empathy deficit. We are in great need of people being able to stand in somebody else’s shoes and see the world through their eyes.
Barack Obama

If we see a person fall and scrape their knees, we can empathize with that person because we fell and scraped our knees in the past. We know the sorrow of death when others lose a relative or friend because we too have lost loved ones and know how we felt. Our personal experiences allow us to extend those feelings to the person who experienced or is experiencing the same or similar event.

Unfortunately, in order to develop true empathy, we must suffer the same pain and hardship as do the people we empathize with. If we do not suffer the same pain and hardship, we have nothing against which to judge other people’s pain and hardships. The older we get the more empathic we become because we have amassed a long list of pain, hardships, and disappointments.

Being empathetic can take a toll on you. While it may get overwhelming here are a few things that help me:

Take care of yourself first.
Focus on what you can control. Try not to dwell on the things you can’t.
You deserve to be taken care of as much as others.
Love yourself, value yourself, and give yourself credit for what you’ve achieved.
Taking care of one’s own emotional needs is not a selfish act.
When you’re struggling, others may not be suffering as much as you perceive.

Making Prayer Our First Resource

Too often we turn to God as a last resort. Too often have we heard “All we can do now is pray,”. We’ve tried everything else. We have run out of options. So we pray. The fact is, we often turn to prayer in desperation because we failed to pray as a first resort. When we neglect prayer, we are more likely to paint ourselves into corners, so to speak, and end up at our wits’ end.

One of the key aspects of prayer if deep faith and trust. Prayer will be our first resource only when we trust God and have deep faith that He always wants the best for us. Through every peak and valley of our lives, faith and perseverance will continue to be the two biggest keys that permit us to move forward.

Here is a list I came across of what prayer is not:

Prayer is not magic. We cannot summon God as though He were a genie, waiting to grant our wishes without regard for our circumstances or the consequences.
Prayer does not make demands. While we can make requests of God in prayer, we dare not make demands. God is the Creator of the universe and does not take orders from us.
Prayer is for our benefit, not God’s. We need a relationship with God because we were made to function best when we are in a proper relationship with our Creator.
Prayer is not a guarantee against suffering. Accepting the outcome trusting that He makes everything beautiful in His time
Prayer is not an opportunity for us to show off.

Prayer is a relationship, wherein we humbly communicate, worship, and sincerely seek God’s face, knowing that He hears us, loves us and will respond, though not always in a manner we may expect or desire. Prayer can encompass confession, praise, adoration, supplication, intercession and more. Our prayers must come often and regularly, not from legalistic duty, but from a humble heart, realizing our dependence on God in every aspect of our lives.

The thought to pray first doesn’t come naturally. It comes from cultivating a lifestyle of talking to God, not just in our devotional times, but throughout the day. Whether we are breathing silent prayers, praying out loud or uttering calls to God for help, talking to the Lord about everything should become as natural as breathing.

Prayer can make a profound difference in our world. But it is up to us to offer our prayers humbly and regularly, thus making it our first resource rather than a last resort!

If we first learn to commit to God in prayer everything that happens to us, we will save ourselves much wasted time and heartache. The hymn “What a Friend we have in Jesus” says it so well: “O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.”

Wants vs Needs – Understanding Ourselves Better

Wants and needs are two words whose meaning we clearly understand and also conveniently interchanged depending on how motivated we are to get something. Digging deeper into the interplay between these two words helps us to understand ourselves better.

Before we proceed, here is the definition of these two key words:

Want — have a desire to possess or do (something); wish for.

Need — require (something) because it is essential or very important rather than just desirable.

The distinction between the two centers on one quality — ‘essential’. How we define ‘essential’ is subjective!

There are various frameworks to help us prioritise or helps distinguish, in descending order, the ‘essential’ ’need from ‘desirable’ wants. Two popular ones are MoSCoW and the 50/30/20 budgeting rule.

The one that I really like is the 2×2 grid.

Low Want / Low Need
We start at the bottom left which I term the “worst option”. Whatever you put here can be safely ignored. We tend to waste a lot of time unconsciously pursuing things we don’t really want and definitely do not need. Once you put something here, the action is to completely AVOID!

Low Want / High Need
The next two are the mirror images of each other. This one is items we don’t really want but we definitely need. We may discard an option superficially not knowing its true worth. Or indeed we may arbitrarily put off an option, despite it being essential. A typical example is a task that is boring or laborious in itself, yet is a pre-requisite for an important higher goal e.g. procrastination for going to the gym or the push to invest in mutual funds or the stock market. Once something is identified in this quadrant, the key is to remind ourselves of the higher goal at hand and prioritize accordingly.

High Want / Low Need
We usually find ourselves in this quadrant a lot. Here will lie items that we really want but not need, items that are attractive and yet superfluous. We catch ourselves asking “do I really need this?”. Once something is identified in this quadrant, we need to decipher what we really value and what we don’t.

High Want / High Need
This is the ideal scenario quadrant. Our wants and needs match up, they are aligned. At times, we may tend to disguise our wants as needs to trick ourselves into justifying items here. Items that you put here really need a lot of thought to truly assess if our wants are truly our needs.

Once you become better at differentiating between wants and needs, you’ll probably see that you’ve been able to fulfill more of your desires over the years than you realized. At the end of the day, we need to be grateful for what we have and appreciate all that we have, even the small pleasures and treasures of life.

The 4 Cs

This is the first of 30 principles in Dale Carnegie’s classic How to Win Friends and Influence People. All of the other principles are positive: be a good listener; give honest appreciation; make the other person feel important; try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view — the list goes on. It’s interesting to note that the only principle that says, “DON’T,” also happens to be the first one.

To think of it from a different angle, if you break this first principle you’ve made it considerably more difficult to have any positive influence with the others. In other words, this is essential in building strong, enduring relationships.

Anyone can run their mouth to Criticize, Complain and Condemn. As Dale says, most fools just do that. Why foolish, you ask? What does any of those things accomplish? Does complaining get anything done? How well does the blame game work? Does blaming some one, even if rightly deserved, move anything forward? Or does it just lead to hard feelings and plotting for revenge? Does condemnation work any differently for you, or does it get about the same results?

How about criticism? How effective of a motivational tool is that? How well does it work in a meeting to have every plan torn to shreds?

The opposite of the three C’s is a fourth C, Cooperation. Instead of complaining, cooperate and help solve whatever is making you complain. Instead of condemning people for what they are doing or failing to do, offer to lend a hand to get the task completed. Instead of criticizing, offer up alternate solutions that overcome the flaws in the original plan.

Some people’s motto has often been “I don’t suffer fools, I make fools suffer!” But I have found that usually, when I follow that path, I’m the one who ends up looking like the fool, and nothing useful comes of my actions.

Treating someone badly can seriously damage a team spirit, and life is a team sport, or at least that’s how it appears to me. Yes, sometimes others will take the credit or pass the blame. Pointing it out might make you right, but it isn’t always the best play for the team.

Cooperation, without doubt, is the quickest and most efficient manner to move forward!

Some of you maybe wondering “What about constructive criticism?” Yes, there are times when it is important to let another person know that their behavior or way of doing things needs improvement. In conclusion, if the goal is build and maintain — not destroy — long-term personal and business relationships, it is probably a good idea to stay away from criticism, condemnation, and complaining.

AQ is more important than IQ?

I remember being confused what to do after my SSC board exams. That’s when my uncle and aunt from Bombay recommended meeting Fr. Terry at Xaviers where I took his IQ test which measures memory, analytical thinking and mathematical ability. This was thought of one of the best ways to predict our future job prospects.

Of late there has been a lot of attention on EQ – Emotional Quotient. This is broadly characterised as a set of interpersonal, self-regulation and communication skills and is now widely seen as a tool kit that plays an important role in helping us succeed in multiple aspects of life.

Both IQ and EQ are important, no doubt. However today as technology evolves at such a rapid pace and redefines how we work, the set of skills we need to survive in the job market are evolving too. Regardless of our career paths, technology is playing a big role in changing how we work. Technology has vastly improved how many jobs are done, and the disruption will continue. Hence we are now hearing out the Adaptability Quotient – the ability to pivot and flourish in an environment of fast and frequent change.

IQ is the minimum you need to get a job, but AQ is how you will be successful over time
Natalie Fratto

AQ is not just the capacity to absorb new information,but the ability to work out what is relevant, to unlearn obsolete knowledge, overcome challenges, and to make a conscious effort to change. AQ involves flexibility, curiosity, courage, resilience and problem-solving skills too.

Amy Edmondson, a professor of leadership and management at Harvard Business School, says it is the breakneck speed of workplace change that will make AQ more valuable than IQ. Every profession will require adaptability and flexibility, from banking to the arts. Say you are an accountant. Your IQ gets you through the examinations to become qualified, then your EQ helps you connect with an interviewer, land a job and develop relationships with clients and colleagues. Then, when systems change or aspects of work are automated, you need AQ to accommodate this innovation and adapt to new ways of performing your role. As we see, all three quotients are complementary, but no AQ would leave you struggling to embrace new ways of working using your existing skills – and low AQ makes it harder to acquire new ones.

One thing we do know is that the workplaces of the future will operate differently. We may not all be comfortable with the pace of change – but we can prepare. As Edmondson says: “Learning to learn is mission critical. The ability to learn, change, grow, experiment will become far more important than subject expertise.”

Mind over Medal

The last couple of months has seen two athletes, who at the peak of their careers, are redefining the narrative of mental health and showing us that it’s okay not to be okay. It started with Naomi Osaka chosing to skip her press conference at the French Open to take time to focus on her self-care and look after her mental health. Many saw this as an act of defiance breaking with a longstanding tradition. The other is Simone Biles who withdrew from several gymnastic events during the ongoing Tokyo Olympic Games to tend to her mental health challenges as well as grieve due to a recent family tragedy.

Simone Biles (left) withdrew from the women’s team gymnastics final on Tuesday, citing mental health concerns; Naomi Osaka said her mental health break contributed to her Olympics loss. Source: Guardian/Reuters/Getty Images

Highly trained athletes who can do amazing feats in their respective sports deal with the same vulnerability and fragility as the rest of us. They are just as human as us. We often tend to deify athletes and we hold them to a higher standard. When they rise to the occasion under difficult conditions, we say they are mentally tough — and we applaud them. But if they should fail to deliver an expected performance, we assume they have choked. None of us watching the Olympics or any other sport for that matter can ever truly know what other additional or personal problems an athlete may be facing. And that goes for everyone we encounter in our daily lives as well!

Back in the days, it was easy for us to shut out the world and go into our shells. In today’s world with social media, it is very challenging. And hence it is so important to take whatever steps we need to keep our peace of mind.

Let it go, Change the channel, Turn it off,
Unsubscribe, Unfriend, Unfollow,
Mute, Block, Walk away,
Breathe!

Be a Rhino

We all have dealt with procrastination at some point in our life, all too familiar with that feeling of knowing you need to get something done but somehow not being able to do it. It may be something important that pressurises you into completing it at the last minute or many a times we don’t get to finishing it. When we procrastinate, we squander away our free time and put off important tasks we should be doing until it’s too late. And when it is indeed too late, we panic and wish we got started earlier.

In his book “Rhinoceros Success”, Scott Alexander outlines the differences between being a cow and being a rhino. According to him we are one or the other. Our society encourages us to be cows, but if you really want to stand out and have a life of success you need to become a rhino! This book challenges me to get out of my comfort zone, and charge down the goals I have and the opportunities that I am presented with.

5 Characteristics of Living Like a Rhinoceros

Rhinos Charge Early. Rhinos don’t sleep in late, or hit the snooze button. They jump out of bed when their “opportunity clock” sounds and charge into their day with excitement.
Rhinos Charge Massively After One Thing. Rhinos know the importance of changing, it is what they were made for. And how do they charge? Massively! They charge down the big goals and opportunities. They also make sure that they are only charging down one opportunity at a time. You can’t effectively charge in 2 directions. They pick one and charge at it with everything they have, then they move on to the next.
Rhinos Believe in Themselves. Rhinos believe that success is theirs for the taking. They expect success, and therefore they create success.
Rhinos Put Themselves Through Training. To achieve rhinoceros levels of success you have to be prepared for it. Mentally and physically. Rhinos read good books, surround themselves with good people, get enough sleep, eat good foods, and workout.
Rhinos Plan For Success. Rhinos have goals. And more importantly they create plans for achieving those goals. Once they have a plan in place they charge down everything on that plan.
Rhinos Are Audacious. What is there to be afraid of as a six thousand pound animal with a horn on the front of your head? Nothing! Rhinos are daring, adventurous, and bold. They believe in the saying “go for it!”
Rhinos Never Give Up. No matter how tough the journey is, Rhinos keep charging. They may slip and fall, but they will get back up and charge even harder. Nothing will stop them from charging down their opportunity.
Rhinos Like But Don’t Love Money. Money is great and rhinos will chase down as much of it as they can. However, rhinos don’t love money. They approach gathering money as a hobby, rather than a job. They are also very generous with their money. But every rhino knows that to be successful with money they must pay themselves first.
Rhinos Balance Work and Family. Many even try to combine the two by involving their family in their work. After all, a rhino doesn’t do work that is boring, rhinos do work that is more like a hobby. They understand that you need to love what you do to be successful. There is no better way to love the work that you do than by involving those that you love in your work!
Rhinos Embrace Problems. In fact rhinos love problems. Problems are a sign that you are making progress. If you don’t have any problems it means that you are not taking any action on your goals.

What do you think? Can you picture yourself as a six thousand pound rhino? You have to choose if you want to be a rhinoceros, or a cow. You can’t waffle back and forth. Make the decision today!

Decide today to become a rhino, start where you are, use what you have, do what you can and make the rest of your life the best of your life!

Here’s a link to the book on Amazon: Rhinoceros Success: The Secret to Charging Full Speed Toward Every Opportunity