Are You Open-Minded or Close-Minded?

What if I told you someone took a hundred bucks from the cash register at the supermarket. How would you feel/think? Would you look down on them? Would you be mad that they just took the money while you go to work and earn your money? Would you feel sorry for them? Now what if I told you that person owns the store and was going to give the money to a family who was homeless? Would your opinion change about that person? Obviously yes!

When people are closed minded, they jump to conclusions. They only believe that there is only one answer or solutions. I used to be pretty close-minded when I was younger. I thought I was right when I wasn’t. Things changed as I grew older especially during my days at Xaviers college and with the Jesuits.

So the question we ask ourselves today is am I open-minded or close-minded?

According to the billionaire Ray Dalio’s book, Principles, a close minded person:

  • blocks others from speaking.
  • lacks a deep sense of humility.
  • doesn’t like their ideas challenged.
  • rarely asks questions, prefers statements.
  • has a focus on being understood rather than to understand.
  • holds closely to what he believes and isn’t willing to change.
  • has more interest in being proven right than hearing other perspectives.
  • has trouble having two conflicting thoughts in their head at the same time.
  • starts off by saying, “I could be wrong, but…” to convince himself and others he’s open-minded when he isn’t.

Whereas, an open -minded person:

  • genuinely believes he could be wrong.
  • is compelled to see through others’ eyes.
  • is more interested in listening than speaking.
  • approaches everything with the belief he may be wrong.
  • is curious and isn’t angry when there’s disagreement.
  • knows when to make statements and when to ask questions.
  • is capable of holding two conflicting thoughts in his head and assessing relative merits.

The key difference between open minded and close minded people is in their willingness to adopt new ideas and beliefs, ways of life, or practices. It can be as small as trying a new cuisine to as big as living in a new country.

One of Ray Dalio’s main principles is radical open mindedness and transparency. He explains that in order to achieve your goals, you need to set aside your ego and find the truth of how to get there. To do this, you have to get the perspective of different people with knowledge and ways of seeing the world that are different from you. That way, you can account for factors you didn’t even consider.

Being more open-minded is tough. When you’re in the moment, and swept up with emotion, you don’t want to even consider someone else’s perspective.

When the storms appear…
raining down on your parade
Be Open-minded

When hate fills the air
Snatching love’s sweet melody
Be Open-minded

When called a manqué
By life’s hurt and feckless souls
Be Open-minded

As you gain mastery
Untainted by flawed precepts
Stay Open-minded

How Giving Back Helps

Most philosophies and religions include a strong belief in giving back to the world. Not only does it have the obvious benefit of helping others, but it’s apparently one of the most therapeutic things we can do for ourselves. In the midst of striving to improve our own lives and earn as much as we can with our industry and talents, balance our work and family, and find time for our leisure and health, giving back may be an important but overlooked key to feeling better.

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

Mahatma Gandhi

Apart from making you happy, one of the biggest ways it helps me is by putting things in perspective. By interacting with others and hearing all that they are dealing with makes my problems and challenges seem so insignificant. We often get lost and down thinking the world is against us, but interacting with the less fortunate drastically changes our outlook on life and what matters.

We spend so much time trying to make more money and buy more things to feel more satisfied. Choosing to give back can actually have the effect of making you feel more satisfied. Rather than scrambling to get more, helping others through giving back can help you appreciate what you have. Seeing others struggling with less, and giving back, so they can have enough, can make you grateful for what you, and your family have.

At my workplace, we have this absolutely fantastic initiative “Bringing Smiles”. It provide hands-on STEM education to underserved communities. In 2015, Bringing Smiles began with just one school, and 50 students. Now, it has reached over 375 schools, and 50,000 students, with goals to impact over 100,000 young minds by 2022. Things are so much better every single time I am part of the various sessions that are held as part of this programme. I am filled with joy interacting with the kids who have such high aspirations and dreams, who work so hard to help their families see better days. Here is a short glimpse of Bringing Smiles

Being part of something larger might be one of the best things we can do, both for others and ourselves.

The Tortoise Mindset

I’m sure you’ve heard Aesop’s fable about the tortoise and the hare. These days, most people try to live like the hare. I don’t mean that they’re bragging and boasting and challenging random turtles to sprint races, but rather that they want things to go FAST. We are obsessed with instant gratification and immediate results. Everywhere we look there are promises of getting rich quick, lotteries that’ll make you an overnight millionaire, fad diets and training programs that’ll transform your appearance in weeks or days.

You can get fast food, one-hour glasses, thirty-minute photo processing, overnight mail, microwaved food, instant hot water, and emails and text messages delivered anywhere in the world on a seconds notice.

These things have made us expect instant results to the point that when we don’t get them, we get discouraged and immediately quit. But the truth is lasting change doesn’t happen overnight.

For the most part, the results we’re looking for will rarely come quickly. But they won’t take that long, either. In my experience, they tend to take just a little bit longer than we’re comfortable going for. Let’s look at a few examples

  • Exercising for one hour three times a week for a month will show very little, if any, results.
  • Reading one book in January won’t make much of an impact on your personal growth.
  • Meditating 10 minutes a day for a couple of weeks won’t show much of an affect on your mind.

But what if you decided right now to drop the quick-fix mentality of the Hare and instead adopt the mindset of the Tortoise?

What if, instead of obsessing over (and very likely getting discouraged by) the short-term results, you focused on just taking the next tiny step in the right direction?

Failure is a few errors in judgment, repeated every day
Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day.

Jim Rohn

If you took these principles to heart you could have the following results within a year:

  • By exercising for one hour three times a week, you would have 150+ hours of exercise under your belt. More than enough to have a huge impact on your health and appearance.
  • By reading one book a month, you would have read 12 books. This means tons of new insights, ideas, and concepts to enrich your life.
  • By meditating 10 minutes a day, you would have 60+ hours of meditation experience. This translates (among many other benefits) into improved focus, creativity, compassion, memory, less stress and anxiety.

It’s not your speed, but your consistency that makes all the difference

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.

Confucius

When you’re consistent, that creates momentum. That momentum creates progress. The progress creates self-confidence. The self-confidence starts shaping a new, more resourceful and empowering identity. And with this new identity comes the ability to create lasting change in your life.

In case you haven’t heard of the fable, it goes something like this

There once was a speedy hare who bragged about how fast he could run. Tired of hearing him boast, Slow and Steady, the tortoise, challenged him to a race. All the animals in the forest gathered to watch.

Hare ran down the road for a while and then and paused to rest. He looked back at Slow and Steady and cried out, “How do you expect to win this race when you are walking along at your slow, slow pace?”

Hare stretched himself out alongside the road and fell asleep, thinking, “There is plenty of time to relax.”

Slow and Steady walked and walked. He never, ever stopped until he came to the finish line.

The animals who were watching cheered so loudly for Tortoise, they woke up Hare.

Hare stretched and yawned and began to run again, but it was too late. Tortoise was over the line.

After that, Hare always reminded himself, “Don’t brag about your lightning pace, for Slow and Steady won the race!”

The Benefits of Laughing at Yourself

We all know that humor is a good thing. There is nothing better than a clever joke, a witty one liner, some slapstick comedy, or a moment in time sealed with a giggle, chuckle, or side-splitting-laughter. It is easy to laugh at others, which is why romantic comedies, stand-up comedians, and improv shows are where people run when times get hard. What can be hard in life is seeing your own comedic moments and laughing through embarrassment or self-consciousness.

The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.

Mark Twain

Laughter is one of life’s greatest gifts. It makes our complex and often confusing existence decidedly more tolerable. There’s nothing more satisfying than laughing until your stomach hurts, and there’s an inexplicable power in sharing laughter with others — even complete strangers.

Being able to laugh at yourself is a sign of resiliency and mental toughness. It’s one thing to find humor in particular situations, it’s another to be reflective and self-aware enough to laugh at oneself.

We all make mistakes in life, doing and saying things we wish we could take back. Many of us likely have certain personality traits we’d like to overcome.

But nobody is perfect. There’s no point in beating yourself up for being human. A big part of what makes life so beautiful and interesting is the fact we are all deeply flawed in our own ways.

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

Kurt Vonnegut

We shouldn’t take life or ourselves too seriously. We should laugh at the absurdity of it all and revel in both our positive and negative characteristics — they’re what make us unique.

Life is a series of ups and downs. We can’t allow negativity to take over; we have to fight against it, and laughter is one of our most powerful tools in this endeavor.

Listen to Learn

Ever been in a conversation where you felt like the person you were talking to wasn’t listening to a word you said because they were too busy trying to convince you of their opinion? We’ve all been in such situations. It’s a common phenomenon. So much so that there’s likely been times that you’ve left others feeling that way. I’m sure I have.

The reality is that we’re wired to think our view of the world (along with the problems and people in it) is the right one. If only everyone would see (think and act) as you do all would be well, right?! But consider this:

While your perspective may seem completely logical to you, other people think the same about theirs!

There is a lot of information online of successful people being great listeners. People who asked lots of questions and don’t assume they have all the answers. People like Richard Branson who carries a notebook with him everywhere he goes and Bill Marriott who shares why lousy listeners make even lousier leaders.

Here are 4 tips that have helped me:

  1. Maintain eye contact
  2. Let others complete their sentences/views, don’t interrupt!
  3. Offer minimal encouraging prompts
  4. Ask probing questions

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen

Winston Churchill

Given all the turmoil going on in our world right now, there’s never been a better time to start being more deliberate in trying to understand those who see the world differently to you.

Your ears will never get you into trouble and, who knows, you may just learn something that changes everything.

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.”