Archive for the ‘Your other self’ Category

Seth Godin, in his book Unleashing the Ideavirus, says:

“Well, the future—the really big money—is in owning a farm. A small one, maybe 100 acres. I intend to invest in a tractor of course, and expect that in just a few years my husband and I can cash out and buy ourselves a nice little brownstone in the city.”

Ludicrous, no? While owning a farm may bring tremendous lifestyle benefits, it hasn’t been a ticket to wealth for, say, 200 years.

Look at that last statement. It says that a particular strategy, which might have been a good way to get rich once upon a time, has not been productive for almost two centuries. Everybody now talks about the changes that are occurring in the world, and how fast and unprecedented it is. If that is true, why do we have to follow the same formula a few of the older generations have followed to get wealthy and to lead a quality lifestyle? Books like Rich Dad, Poor Dad and The Adventures of Johnny Bunko all say that the staple advice of getting a good technical education and putting your shoulder to the industrial wheel to process things, although useful for a long time, is now becoming stale and does not guarantee a fulfilling life.

Books like Free Agent Nation, A Whole New Mind, The 4-hour Work-Week, Escape from Cubicle Nation and articles like The Case for Working with Your Hands and What makes Us Happy? all proclaim that there other options to do things now, in ways that are intellectually satisfying and meaningful.

“A good job requires a field of action where you can put your best capacities to work and see an effect in the world. Academic credentials do not guarantee this.” – Matthew B. Crawford

Check out the career advice given by Dan Pink in his new book, The Adventures of Jhonny Bunko. There are 6 Bunko lessons in there:

The 6 Bunko Lessons

1.  There is no plan.
2.  Think strengths, not weaknesses
3.  It’s not about you.
4.  Persistence trumps talent.
5.  Make excellent mistakes.
6.  Leave an imprint.

Well, we could potentially get very confused about our own career choices and the choices that society gives us, should we need to chose among them. We could look out for any contradictory advice dished out by successful, well-known people and attempt to graft it onto our own personality. “If they are doing something that is as much fun as they portray it to be, and if it gives them a good living and social value, I too should be able to duplicate it by following their path, but with a little bit of added personal flavor” is the attitude we typically have towards this.

So, must we accept the above “Bunko Lessons” with some skepticism, put them into practice, and see if what he tells us rings true?

After investing a lot of psychic energy into understanding the concepts that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi talks about in his marvelous books, Flow and Creativity, I have come to a point where I can think for myself and judge such lessons for their worth. I have made a lot of notes, and have put some thought into the motives of people and the recipe for a creative and fulfilling life, and believe that I can now accept or reject career advice armed with such knowledge.

So, below is my present take on the Bunko Lessons:

1.  There is no plan.

While this is true, it still does not mean that plans aren’t helpful or required. A meaningful life comes about as a result of striving to meet some ultimate goal towards which one feels intense emotional attraction. It usually involves some deep scar being carried around since childhood, and one strives to resolve it through various creative expressions. There might be several subgoals that lead to the ultimate goal, and to arrive at these subgoals requires the development of skills into which psychic, intellectual and emotional energy needs to be invested. The development of these skills and their usage to accomplish the sub-goals must lead to flow states consistently. These skills need to be challenging; its perfection and employment enjoyable. Such a happy circumstance leads us to enjoy the present while being busy in the task of creating meaning. Fulfillment on a daily basis naturally follows.

2.  Think strengths, not weaknesses.

Think whatever skills that are required to get to the ultimate goal. The skills that you are naturally or already good at, and those that need to be developed.

3.  It’s not about you.

It is very much about you. The attachment to your life’s work cannot be purely intellectual. It needs to be highly emotional as well.

4.  Persistence trumps talent.

Very true.

5.  Make excellent mistakes.

Yes. Mistakes do happen regularly. And, the results of making those mistakes aren’t failures if you learn lessons from them. As long as you know the skills you are after and the goals these skills will help you achieve and that you are on your way to your ultimate goal, you’re good.

6.  Leave an imprint.

A lasting legacy is a natural byproduct of a lifetime’s effort into resolving an emotional tension. As long the welfare of other people is factored into such strivings, leaving an imprint takes care of itself.

One cannot simply do an audit of the skills that one’s developed to a reasonably high degree and which consistently produce flow, and build a career around that. That’s just working your way backwards. You need to figure out the emotional tension that you would like to resolve, and work towards acquiring skills that would help you creatively express yourself in order to get to that ultimate goal. If your present skillset helps you do that, you already have a good start.

The genie in the Johnny Bunko books talks about the work of Marcus Buckingham and Martin Seligman and states that, according to them, the keys to success is to steer around weakness and focus on strengths. Well, I think they have really got it backward. The key is not just to be productive by focusing on your strengths and your flow producing activities, but to generate flow while picking up skills to accomplish sub-goals that would lead one to the ultimate goal.

I’m just back from a trip to England, and the above must be one of the most awe-inspiring sights in the world.

London offers plenty of spaces that nudge people into exploring the richness of human capacity. Its museums act as repositories of the historical, technological and artistic progress of the western world, while its buildings and monuments are a constant reminder of the city’s exalted political stature in much of modern history. Memorials that punctuate its open spaces immortalize many, for under the Union Jack have served some of the most able and industrious of men.

But, it was the art galleries that held my attention. Inside Tate Britain and the National Gallery are mesmerizing displays of original works of painters I’ve worshiped; the rustic landscapes by Constable, the almost-photographic representations of religious themes by van Eyck, the flamboyance of Millais’ Pre-Raphaelites, the street-settings of Hogarth, the self-portraits of Rembrandt and Seurat’s pixelated Bathers at Asnieres. How wonderful of these men to capture what moved them in such telling ways. How could I even begin to process the thrill of actually seeing these works that I’ve read about for 10 years?

These and other such museums are the Wikipedias of the physical world. The pinnacles of artistic achievement are open to any curious being with a little time to spare. Won’t repeated exposure to such works form freeways in our minds along which the senses could set rolling ideas that could give us a heightened experience of the world around us? Why allow them to morph into emotions that merely encourage consumption and competition?

The next time you find yourself in a bookstore, do yourself a favor. Turn off your cellphone, walk up to the art section, select a couple of books on the subject and flip through them. Allow yourself to be lead into the themes depicted, to empathize with the messages they convey and to be enchanted by the skill of the artist. You may probably connect with a sensitive side of yourself in a way you have never done before.

I challenge you to tell me the last time you have had yourself captured in a state of Positive Flow – that is, a state in which you were so completely absorbed in living through a pleasurable experience as to be unaware of anything else around you.

Need to think a while for the recall, eh?

I’ll bet that you do not have even a handful of photographs that faithfully record such an event in your life, apart from those wonderfully raw and nostalgic captures of you as a kid, bringing the house down with your antics.

Why? Because we got programmed into putting in 80 hour work weeks, with no spare attention to ration it for life’s true pleasures.

We were all once kids; curious about everything and delighting in the flow experiences that we would so easily get into. But, then we grew up and got an education.

We willingly participated in getting ourselves programmed into mastering skills that someone else, in most cases a large corporation, uses to make this world “a better place”. We now give it our loyalty, time and the bulk of our energies in exchange for security and social standing. The rest of the time is spent on living the “good life”: buying an impressive house, a car and and all other trappings that reminds us of our progress.

Programmed by world wide media to believe that sensory stimulation is the fountainhead of pleasure and meaning, we at the same time are being condemned to lives of hard work and toil just to gather a nice place to live, to take care of our health and to fend for our families. These tasks, the most basic needs of ours, consume the entire useful period of a man’s life – his youth and middle age. We humans have been programmed to be driven primarily by fear and greed.

And, all of our attention goes into just maintaining the status quo.

In Finding Flow, the author states that in the least technologically developed societies, people spend about 4 hours a day providing for their livelihood, and spend the rest of their time relaxing, chatting, singing and dancing.

Are we, light years ahead in our sophistication, any happier than they are?

One of the drawbacks of our society today is that it is driven by economics. And in such societies, the useful, functional side of man is being emphasized over all others, leading to plenty of repressed feelings in the masses. Society encourages only those moves which are socially acceptable and which generate something of value for others to consume. And, it offers a multitude of ways for man to achieve this narrow objective, while shutting off all other means of perception of life.

My intent is to capture people in states joy and abandon, and to make them aware of the gentle, co-operative and fun-loving facets of their personality they might possibly have missed out on while being too busy making a living.

My intent is to capture their Moments of Virtue.

And, what better stage than an Indian wedding to do that?