Nuggets On
self awareness
Insights around what it takes to build a better understanding of self. This includes perspectives around how we can deepen our picture of ourselves through a combination of inner work, mindfulness practices and by gathering meaningful feedback from the world around us.
Rejecting 3 jobs and painting in Goa
KV Sridhar (Pops) talks about how came to Mumbai to pursue commercial opportunities and cast his net beyond Hyderabad – where he grew up. He also talks about the fact that very quickly he got himself three offers (on the creative and commercial side) but decided to go to Goa to learn and reboot. He talks about how he led the life of a vagabond for a few months and how he landed the next role at Ulka.
The reflection habit - decoding signal from the noise
Vinay talks about Narasimha Rao’s habit of reflection and journaling which helped him deal with the ecosystem he was in. Vinay talks about how Rao used the habit of journaling to develop a nuanced understanding of the context he was in which helped him deal with situations of grey effectively. He also talks about how he managed to gather intelligence around what was happening around him despite his lonely nature.
Inner journey
Dr. Guha speaks about Gandhiji’s inner journey on multiple fronts – diet, medicine, celibacy and inter-faith harmony. He speaks about how he had a scientific approach in each of these and sometimes crafted experiments to test out a certain belief and based on the results, modified it as he moved forward. He also speaks about Gandhiji’s tolerance and open-ness to others’ views as he was shaping his world-view through his journey.
More from Dr. Ramachandra Guha
Going on an inner journey
Paddy speaks about how he went on an internal journey over a period of time that gave him a deeper understanding of himself. He speaks about how he tried a range of things including mindfulness techniques, meditation, breath work and Yoga. He also speaks about how he attended several 2-3 day sessions including the Landmark Forum that gave him an opportunity to explore himself.
Self-awareness: Meta-skill of 21st century
Tasha provides some context to why self-awareness is arguably the meta-skill of the 21st century. She discusses why it is possibly the foundational skill that helps us across various domains of life. She makes the distinction between internal and external self-awareness and goes onto say that they are not as closely correlated as one would assume.
Self-awareness Unicorns
Tasha speaks about the notion of Self-awareness Unicorns, the 50 people they shortlisted from 1000s of people to study them. She speaks about how she arrived at this shortlist and who is in it. She goes on to speak about some of their practices around how they cultivated internal and external self-awareness.
Self-delusion Vs Self-awareness
Tasha speaks about the distinction between being self-aware and being self-deluded. She mentions that her research suggests that 95% of the people believe they are self-aware only about 10-15% of people actually are. She speaks about some of the factors that might be contributing to this phenomenon.
Limitations of introspection
Tasha speaks about introspecting our way to self-awareness could be a red herring. She speaks about her research where she found that people that introspected often were more anxious, stressed and less satisfied. She makes the distinction between rumination and introspection and speaks about how one could conduct the enquiry when one goes on a journey of introspection.
Feedback as a prism vs a mirror
Tasha speaks about the limited correlation between internal and external self-awareness and speaks about the criticality of us seeing ourselves through a prism (with all the color) than through a mirror (which often can be limited in granularity). She also speaks about the need for people to be comfortable with varying views and urges us to embrace the diversity of views and grow through it.
Catch 22 of Self-awareness
Tasha speaks about the Catch-22 (paradox) of Self-Awareness. The really self-aware people often actually think that (rightly so) that they know only a little about themselves. The un-self-aware ones often think that they know themselves really well. Tasha goes on to speak about one of the unicorns that she had studied who uses the metaphor of space to describe the quest for self-awareness.
Discovering our distinctiveness
Whitney speaks about how we all need to tune into our “super-power” and discover our strengths and use that as a starting point to discover our next S curve. She speaks about the fact that we are often quite blind to what our strengths are and have the tendency to shrug off complements when we get them. She suggests some ideas on how we can discover our strengths.
Pursuing self-awareness
Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi makes the link between pursuing self-awareness and building non-transactional relationships. He also speaks about the need for all of us to have virtuous friends (we may not go to the movies with them but they might provide perspectives that might open up new vistas).
Engaging our senses
Jennifer refers to the legendary “I have a dream” speech from Martin Luther King and speak about the criticality of engaging our various senses in the way we see a situation. She urges us to imagine a future that we can describe with our various senses.
More from Dr. Jennifer Goldman Wetzler
Crowd-sourcing your highlights reel
Dan speaks about the notion of a “highlights reel” like in sports. He suggests that we reach out to people that we have interacted with across domains (not restricted to work) and get feedback on their memory of a time when we were exceptional. He suggests that we reflect on that and use that as a compass as we navigate our journey forward.
Eulogy delay
Dan speaks about why people find it extremely uncomfortable and awkward to talk about people strengths when they are around while when somebody passes away, we are generous with the eulogy. He speaks about why there should be a barrier in us having a “eulogy like” feedback conversation with a person when he/she is alive.
Highlights - Big bang vs Drip feed
Dan speaks about how the Highlights reel should ideally be consumed. He suggests a big-bang approach where we collect and accumulate a critical mass of content in the highlights before absorbing them. He suggests that we create the space for us to receive it and reflect on it. If we end up doing it as a drip feed, there is a risk of those drips getting drowned in the daily noise in our life.
Engaging different parts of our brain
Dan speaks about engaging different parts of our brain in expressing ourself. He speaks about how he uses LEGO Serious Play to have participants in his course express themselves in the context of their journeys and the future they are trying to create for themselves.
When strengths become derailers
Dan speaks about situations where we might get into trouble by overusing our strengths. He speaks about how we should watch out for those situations and ensure that our strengths don’t become derailers. He speaks about the combination of awareness and intelligence required to navigate these situations.
Managing work and life
Sukhinder speaks about how she has built her self-awareness along the way. She goes on to say that she spends time figuring out “who she is” because what she wants often evolves along the way. She also speaks about the criticality of negotiating and having conversations with people around us to solve for the future that we want to go after.
Inside out or Outside In
Sukhinder speaks about the scene from the movie where Nemo’s father catches the East Australian Current to get to Sydney quickly to rescue his son. She speaks about how we can look for some of the tailwinds that can turbocharge our career and how we can marry that with our understanding of ourselves as we think about our career.
Building the Spiritual Quotient
Rajiv speaks about IQ, EQ and SQ and expands on the notion of SQ (Spiritual Quotient). He goes on to talk about the criticality of building self-awareness, having a sense of purpose and taking greater self-responsibility.
Self-acceptance before Self Improvement
Rajiv speaks about why we need to be non-judgmental when it comes to reflection and journaling. He speaks about why self-acceptance is a prerequisite to self-improvement.
Being, not just doing
Rajiv speaks about what it takes to move from a paradigm of doing things to that of being somebody. He says that very often we end up making the being contingent on an outcome or a series of outcomes and says that this approach could be a mirage and a moving goal post.
Life Design vs Product Design
Ayse reflects on the distinction between Life Design and Product Design. She speaks about the fact that in the case of Life Design, there is no “3rd party consumer” which makes it a pure process. We connect the dots with what Stew Friedman says about getting other people into our world.
Being intentional about life
Ravi speaks about how it is very easy to drift through life and it is critical for us to be deliberate about the various choices we make. He urges to pay attention to what we are paying attention to.
Myth of the false binary
Thomas speaks about the myth of the False Binary and how that can lead us to choosing from a limited set of options. It is a very powerful concept which can have a profound implication on how we make choices especially during key phases of transitions.
More from Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg
Framing existential questions
Thomas speaks about the challenges in framing questions that are specific to our journeys. Philosopher Rene Descartes asked the question – Who am I? Is that the right question? Or is it something else? “What the Heck do I do with my life” is the title of a recent book by Ravi Venkatesan (who has also been on the podcast). Thomas sheds some light on how we can frame some of the fundamental questions we ask around our lives.
More from Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg
Balam and Shakti - External and Internal forces
Raghu spells out the distinction between Shakti (internal forces) and Balam (external forces). He expands on each and discusses them. He speaks about three types of Balam – Asana Balam (Position, Status, Resources), Yoga Balam (Political capability, Friends, Enemies), Kala Balam (Timing, Market readiness). He expands on the three types of Shakti – Icha shakti (conviction, intent), Gnana shakti (intelligence, competencies), Kriya shakti (taking action). He speaks about the criticality of aligning Shakti and Balam as we go through life.
More from Raghu Ananthanarayanan
Driving self-discovery with Next-gen
Tarun speaks about how enduring families think of dealing with the question of the next generation entering the business. He speaks about how the more evolved families give the next generation an opportunity to actualize their potential and go on a process of self-discovery.
Defining Chatter
Ethan defines the term Chatter. He uses Chatter as a term to capture the breadth of the different experiences all of which the common feature is looping over the negative thoughts, going down the rabbit hole, sucked into a vortex of negativity that won’t let you free.
Inner voice vs Inner chatter
Ethan speaks about the line between having negative thoughts (which can help us move forward) and Negative Chatter that get us into an unproductive never-ending loop that can prevent us from making progress.
Inner voice - Zooming feature of our minds
Ethan suggests that our Mind is often functions like a lens when it looks at a situation while our Inner Voice functions like a Zoom button. We have a choice of whether we want to stay Zoomed In our Out when we deal with a situation.
Building an emotional vocabulary
David speaks about how critical it is for us to tune into what we are feeling at various points in the day. Not just for the surges in emotions but the mild emotions that are often humming in us through our day that we may not be present to.
Higher Power and Poorer Signals
Jeffrey speaks about how, when people become more powerful, they stop getting meaningful feedback given the power dynamic. He also speaks about how we all need to get out of own way by reminding ourselves behind the “Why” behind accumulating greater Power.
Ladder of Self-Awareness
Michiel speaks about the different levels of Self-Awareness and speaks about how we can slowly move up the ladder. 1) Bliss or Ignorance 2) Delayed Awareness. 3) Perceptive 4) Resilient 5) Adaptive. He speaks about the timing of when things come to our attention and our ability to regulate ourselves.
Spotting and unlocking Potential
Stephen speaks about how we can tune into micro-moments where we get a glimpse of what somebody might be capable of. He says that if we don’t look for it, we will never find it. He goes on to talk about the four steps involved in unlocking the potential of the person - See, Communicate, Develop, Unleash.
