What do you do when your Emotions & Logic battle each other

Emotions flow effortlessly towards what we value. Emotions are strong and subtle signals that spring forth from an inner mechanism that we as human beings have within ourselves. This mechanism allows us to sense how we "feel" about something. Logic is when we use the information and data that we have gathered in our life so far and translate that knowledge into a set of principles to judge and decide what is right and what is not. For example, feeling sad while witnessing the plight of hard working labourers in a steel factory or loving that girl/guy with all your heart and soul despite of the fact she/he is not at all interested in you. These are examples of your behavioural responses being guided solely by emotions.
However, to understand logic let us consider this example, let's say a mediocre salaried salesperson gets a job opportunity from a company based in abroad with a far better salary and higher position, but the challenge is that he will have to migrate alone to that place and there will be no leaves for the first two years of employment, this would mean that he cannot come down to meet his old parents or his wife and children for a span of two years. Bang on starts a fight between emotions (that advocate staying near his family with the same job but with peace of mind of being with the family) and logic (that advocates taking that opportunity and working hard for a few years to improve his own career and raise the family's standard of living).
In conclusion, I have personally observed that emotions dominate over logic. But the only exception is when values come into picture. If career development is my priority and if I am emotionally strong enough to stay away from my family for 2 years, then I would definitely grab that opportunity without wasting any time.
My experiences have always been of emotions getting a strong dominion over logic. But in those scenarios where logic was more in alignment to my values I chose to scrap my emotions away. To quickly share my experience in this regard is when I was getting attached romantically with a woman who had different priorities. Later after looking at her from a non-emotional point of view I realized that I was traveling on the road towards a destination that wasn't meant for me. I then chose to free myself from those emotions.
So the one line answer is - Emotions rule logic. With exceptions being those situations where your emotions conflict with your values.

Is your social life increasing or limiting your Intelligence?

The quality of social upbringing one has had during all his childhood years as well as his teens, determines to a greater degree his/her intelligence as well as his/her ability to "learn and lead". Super Brain, a book written by Dr. Deepak Chopra along with Prof Rudolph Tanzi, gives us details of how our brain makes connections and how more & more neural connections directly or indirectly define the level of intelligence that one will reach. There is a point that one of its chapters make - The more variety of people we meet on a daily basis and the more we have healthy interactions with them regularly, the more neural pathways begin to take shape.

Using Death as a powerful tool to challenge all your Fears

Being aware of your mortality and understanding that every day is numbered and that your life has a bigger purpose that only you can fulfil, is the key to fearlessness.
Death creates urgency. When you realize that not defeating your fear can result in you growing old with a life unlived and die with regrets, you will summon up the mental & emotional energy required to conquer your fears and let go of them.
Freedom from fear only comes from inner-willingness to do so.

A quick hack for boosting your Productivity

According to a recent study done by the Acoustical Society of America confirms that employees can get more done and feel more positive if there are nature sounds playing in the background while they work.

During three sessions in the same room, the researchers asked 12 participants to complete a test requiring sustained attention. Each session featured a different soundscape in the background: office sounds muffled by white noise, office sounds masked with the sound of "flowing water in a mountain stream," and office sounds with no masking noise.

What did they find? When listening to the natural sounds, the workers not only performed better on the task, but also reported feeling more positive about their environment than they did in the other sessions.

You can get started by using YouTube, just type in the search bar 'Nature Sounds' and you will have a long list of nature sounds (some with still images and some with soothing videos). Another quick tip that will save your bandwidth is to visit TuneIn, a portal where you will find almost all worldwide radio shows being streamed online and through their App. TuneIn enables you can listen to any Nature Sound radio among millions of other genres.

Happy Productivity!!!

Do you know a lot but apply a little?

Yesterday, I met a wise man, who gave me a very intriguing piece of wisdom in less than 3 minutes.

Here's what he said -

What is knowledge? It is to know something. But is knowing enough? No, in fact it is a waste of time and energy to learn something that you are not going to act upon. Let's say there is a person who knows very little, let's say that on the scale of 1 to 100 he only knows 1% and he successfully applies that 1% of knowledge in 100% of his actions and then there is another individual who has gained around 99% knowledge on that scale, but has applied only 1% in practicality.

Who do you think is better?

Of course the former fellow, because his action was 100% in alignment with his knowledge. Even if one is to argue that he knew little as compared to the one who has 99% of knowledge.

But then the question is - What good is knowledge if it is not acted upon? In fact to act upon what one knows leads develops one's understanding, which can be taken to the level of Mastery which is done by being consistent in practices.

The Joy of Reading - A poem by Me

When I read,

I leave the world behind,

When I read,

I enter a place unseen,

Renewing my existence 

with the turn of every page

When I read,

I feel detached with all that surrounds me

When I read,

The sounds of people howling around,

turns into whispers

When I read,

I embark on a journey

Exploring new terrains of wisdom,

Formed on the landscape of crisp white pages

When I read,

I depart from all my worries and anxieties

When I read, 

I become the story 

As well as the storyteller,

I become the memoir as well as the experiencer

I become the guidance as well as the guide

I then close the book and return to the world I call mine

A world that no longer has any hold over me,

Looks like from the burden of ignorance,

I am now forever free

Although reading did not change, 

Even the smallest ant or the tallest tree

But, I write my heart out in the last line of this poetry, 

That reading indeed liberated me 

What happens when you get off from Whatsapp for 30 days

Being a 'passionate' Whatsapper since 2012 It was not less than a challenge for me to even think of getting off this messaging app that has today become like a parallel world we socialize and connect in. A world that allows you to message, talk and share your life's funny or not-so-funny moments with those who really matter to you and at the same time it also pushes you to entertain and reply just for the sake of replying, to those who matter the least and who just want to engage in a random purposeless chat. The 'blue tick' update made matters even more difficult, by empowering the sender to know whether his messages were being read or ignored. It made things much more interesting, because if you are online for quite some time and no blue ticks are seen, it clearly means that you are way too busy to check his messages. If on the other side the 'blue ticks' are seen and you still haven't received your much awaited reply then it is perceived that the 'iron hearted' recipient is not interested in chatting with you or that he may have many things on his to-do-list that seek immediate attention.


It was back then in August last year that I decided to deactivate my Whatsapp account for 30 days just for the sake of satisfying my curiosity about what changes will it bring to my life if any. 

Here is what this experiment revealed -

1. Those who really want to keep in touch with you on a regular basis will still message you those "How are you" and "Wazzup buddy" lines through SMS. This confirmed that I had a few friends among many for whom those regular conversations were more important than my 'online' presence on some messaging app.
2. Then there are those who keep on sending quotes and hilarious videos and they suddenly got disappeared from my life and remained invisible till l was back on Whatsapp.
3. I felt like I was getting more time for doing productive things and for some reason my productivity improved
4. I become more actively engaged in living my social life like the good old days where I use to directly call up my friends and tell them to meet me in that Cafe down tge road within 10 minutes.
5. Yes, I ended up paying slightly higher bills due to an increase in Calls and Text messages. But when you compare time with money, it will get clear to you that money makes a comeback but time melts away forever
6. As a not-so-pleasant surprise I realized that many of my friends existed just because I was active on Whatsapp (I no longer consider that as friendship anyway)
7. Finally It got clear to me as to how many people are worthy of my time, because not everyone is interested in knowing how you are once you are away from the platform that gives them the convenience of reaching you with least efforts, if you know what I mean

In conclusion I think the entire experience did make a positive difference to me so as to make me understand the volume of insignificant talks that I use to enage in with people. Today I am active on my Whatsapp account, but the difference is that I no longer engage in long chats involving an exchange of hundreds of messages along with a couple of pictures and videos or voice notes in between them. I simply call them, talk to them about things that are of importance or meet them over a coffee for a casual exchange of ideas and thoughts.

Note: These are purely my experiences and opinions and I am in no way against using Whastapp. I think it is one of the most useful apps there is. However, one needs to be careful not to over indulge himself/herself with it so that over a longer period of time it begins substituting real life interaction that we use to have so far for years.

Do you share a good news about yourself with someone who is depressed ?

I was with my friend who has been asked to leave from his position as a manager in a well known company. The same day I received a promotion at work. As we met for a coffee that same evening, I made it a point to be a good listener and did not share with him the news about my promotion. A few days later when he got a better job than the earlier one, I just texted him and shared about my promotion while congratulating him on getting his new job.

Although, I had the choice that day of casually talking to him about my new position at work, but then, what would that do to him? Would it make him really feel good or would that make him feel even worse than before?

If communication is a skill then, knowing when to talk about and when not to talk is wisdom.

Never outshine your Boss

One of the ways to get what you want from your boss is to make him feel as if he is the smartest person in the room, all the time, every time. However, be careful and make this as subtle as possible, stay away from making it appear obvious. It is a part of our nature as humans to seek direct or indirect appreciation of what we do from people. Even if we claim to be independent and totally free of what people think, we still desire them to react cooperatively to what we do. In conclusion if you want to win over your superior, you will need to let go of your habit of proving to him that your ideas and plans and better than his (which is quite a common mistake we make in order to prove that we are the best ones in the team). Instead, start making them feel special by making them feel safe, cheerful and appreciated. Remember this is one of the ways you can win him over and bring him to your side, once you have established your reputation firmly, there will be no need for you to continue making him feel that way, as by that time you will be on your way in creating a brand of your own within the organisation.

 Author Robert Greene explains this in the very first chapter (title being 'Never outshine your Master) of his book 48 Laws of Power.

To know more about 48 Laws of Power click here.

Jobseeker, how good are your good looks?

Like many of you I too use to think that good looks do help in a job interview until I came across a research that claims the opposite. A study done in April this year claims that attractive men are less likely to be given a job in a competitive workplace because they intimidate bosses. "It's not always an advantage to be pretty" said Professor Marko Pitesa, from the University of Maryland where this study was conducted.