Tag Archives: life skills

Ikigai: Your Raison D’être in Life

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A couple of months back, I came across this Japanese term, ‘Ikigai’ which essentially means finding your passion in life and leading your life according to that, in other words, your ‘raison d’être’ and the term really intrigued me. In other words, Ikigai is what makes you get up each morning and jeep going even when the going gets tough.

When I read more about this term, I thought that perhaps this was the missing link in our lives. If we lived a life worth living, if we did something which makes us jump out of bed each morning and looked forward to each new day, then wouldn’t that be the best thing ever? We would never have to work a day in our lives and life will be so much smoother without the usual angst work generates within us.

Ikigai which is pronounced as it is spelt, is a Japanese concept which means, “a reason for being”. The word “Ikigai” is usually used to indicate the source of value in one’s life or the things that make one’s life worthwhile. The word translated to English roughly means “thing that you live for” or “the reason for which you wake up in the morning.”

Each individual’s Ikigai is personal to them and specific to their lives, values and beliefs. It reflects the inner self of an individual and expresses that faithfully, while simultaneously creating a mental state in which the individual feels at ease. Activities that allow one to feel Ikigai are never forced on an individual; they are often spontaneous, and always undertaken willingly, giving the individual satisfaction and a sense of meaning to life.

According to best seller author Dan Buettner, Ikigai lies at the cross section between your values, what you like to do and what you are good at. When you are able to figure that out, you have found your personal Ikigai.

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So how do you find out your own personal Ikigai? Make four lists – the first one being your passion in life or what you love doing, the second being your mission in this world or what you feel this world needs, the third list being the able to figure what you are good at or your vocation in life and the last list being what you can get paid for doing your vocation which is essentially your profession. The intersection of these four lists will allow you to figure your personal and unique Ikigai.

In their book Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life, Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles break down the ten rules that can help anyone find their own Ikigai:

  1. Stay active and don’t retire
  2. Leave urgency behind and adopt a slower pace of life
  3. Only eat until you are 80 per cent full
  4. Surround yourself with good friends
  5. Get in shape through daily, gentle exercise
  6. Smile and acknowledge people around you
  7. Reconnect with nature
  8. Give thanks to anything that brightens our day and makes us feel alive.
  9. Live in the moment
  10. Follow your Ikigai

While the concept has been around for centuries now (it originated in the Heian period, sometime during the period 794 to 1185 AD), the majority of us, including the Japanese people haven’t quite figured it out yet.

There have been studies which say that Ikigai promotes a sense of wellbeing which is probably why the Japanese and particularly Okinawians where this concept is said to have originated live the longest. It was statistically proven that presence of Ikigai is correlated with a lower level of stress and an overall feeling of being healthy. The feeling of Ikigai balances out the secretion of neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin and β-endorphin. Some studies demonstrate that a sense of purpose or goal in life or Ikigai is negatively correlated with a need for approval from others and anxiety and studies also found that Ikigai is associated with longevity among Japanese people.

Human beings are born curious. Our insatiable drive to learn, invent, explore, and study deserves to have the same status as every other drive in our lives. So go and channel that curiosity and maybe you will be able to find that sweet spot in your life which is your Ikigai. Once you do, use it every day. Find things to do, simple or complex in your day to day lives which would be an expression of your Ikigai and once you have found and pursued it, you will realise that anything else is just compromise.

I am going to leave you with a Youtube video where Dan Buettner speaks in a Ted-Ed video on how to live to more than a 100 where he also speaks about Ikigai.

Positive Self-Affirmations: Your Psychological Immune System

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Sometime last week, I randomly had a thought of putting together all the affirmations I had collected and written down in different places into one document. I truly didn’t know why I did what I did and decided to find out more about affirmations and see whether they have any impact on our lives and if they are beneficial in any way. I have used positive affirmations previously and also have read the book, The Secret, but to be honest, the affirmations did not work for me previously. So I decided to find out more about affirmations and maybe this time, I will be able to successfully use affirmations.

So let’s start at the very beginning – what exactly are positive affirmations? Affirmations which are a New Age terminology are said to be “the practice of positive thinking and self-empowerment—fostering a belief that “a positive mental attitude supported by affirmations will achieve success in anything.” More specifically, an affirmation is a carefully formatted statement that should be repeated to one’s self and written down frequently. For affirmations to be effective, it is said that they need to be present tense, positive, personal and specific.

These ideas grew in popularity after books like Rhonda Bryrne’s The Secret, Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich and Wallace D. Wattles’ 1910 book The Science of Getting Rich became popular in their times. Affirmations are also referred to in Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), Neuro Associative Conditioning “NAC” as popularized by Anthony Robbins, and hypnosis.

What it means is that when we think positively and have positive thoughts relating to a specific event or thing we want, we manage to turn things in our tide using the power of our mind and that specific event happens or we get hold of exactly what we want. In other words, they are positive phrases or statements used to challenge negative or unhelpful thoughts.

A 2009 study found that positive affirmation had a small, positive effect on people with high self-esteem, but a detrimental effect on those with low self-esteem. Individuals with low self-esteem who made positive affirmations felt worse than individuals who made positive statements but were allowed to consider ways in which the statements were false. There have also been some studies which show that when self-affirmation statements which involve writing about one’s core values rather than repeating a positive self-statement can improve performance under stress.

It is said that affirmations are not only for manifesting a specific goal, but they are also meant to encourage a life filled with positivity and gratitude.

We do speak with ourselves in different times during the day, something pepping us up and at other times cursing ourselves when we make a blunder. I tend to be more on the negative side as opposed to the positive side. Daily affirmations are like a psychological immune system. When you get bogged down or thinking negatively, your affirmations will allow you to pick you up and get you back on track.

While researching for this post, I read up a few articles on positive affirmations and saw that, in spite of my scepticism, there are benefits to this practice.

You perform better under stress – positive self-affirmations allow you to release your stress and help you perform better, whether at home, in school or at work.

You are better off psychologically – When someone uses positive affirmations regularly, they tend to feel happier, more optimistic, more hopeful, healthier, less sad and less angry.

Healthy habits – You can also use positive affirmations to change habits. Reminding yourself periodically can help promote a healthier way of living. Apparently a recent study showed that optimistic people have healthier hearts.

Self-Awareness – When you think, speak or write certain thoughts on a daily basis, you become more aware of them and then consciously work to reduce negativity in your life. This allows you to become a more positive person both inward and outwards.

Gratitude – Daily affirmations keep you in a constant state of gratitude. When you remember the small things that make you happy, you become aware of the little things in life that are important. This is especially true today when we live a fast paced life, one that is constantly on our smart phones.

Motivation – Affirmations allow you to motivate yourself into doing positive actions. When you tell yourself you will be successful in a particular activity, then the chances are that you will focus all your attention in making sure you do your best in this activity and be the best you are. Your thoughts point to the direction of your life’s actions.

So how do we go about making positive self-affirmations? You can think about them, repeat a sentence like a mantra while you practice meditation (in fact, I remember reading that meditating over a self-affirmation is a great way to do it), write it down some place or even whisper it under your breath at periodic points in your day. You could do one, more or even all of these during your day to affirm your thought for the day. There is no hard and fast rules about the timing or frequency when it comes to practicing positive self-affirmations.

According to psychotherapist Ronald Alexander of the Open Mind Training Institute, affirmations can be repeated up to three to five times daily to reinforce the positive belief. He suggests that writing your affirmations down in a journal and practicing them in the mirror is a good method for making them more powerful and effective.

You can create your own affirmation phrase which is generic like, “I am a successful person” or “I am confident and capable at what I do” or focus on a specific area of your life like, “I choose only to think good thoughts” or “I choose to eat healthily for all meals.

You can also create your own positive affirmation cards on small credit card sized paper where you write your chosen affirmation and pop it into your bag to read throughout the day. I prefer using an online diary like Google Docs and writing down my affirmations and I can view them while I am working or even during my commute as I whip out my phone and read it on the go.

There are loads of resouces online which have many affirmations you can use or you can create your own affirmations. What works for someone may not be the best affirmation for you, so you need to work around and see what works best for you. I personally feel this is more of a trial and error method.

Positive self-affirmations can be a refreshing way to use positive self-talk capable of reversing negative internal messages and motivating ourselves. Do you have your own affirmations you’d like to share? Or, even better, how do you come up with your own affirmations? Share in the comments, I’d love to hear them!

Meditation

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One of the habits I have decided to track this year is meditating daily. But this is one habit I am not able to sustain on a daily basis. I decided to see what could be the reason for this and thought this post could then help someone else with the same problem as me.

My usual meditation routine is at night – just before I nod off. This worked earlier, but these days, I find myself sleeping off before I am able to meditate for even five minutes. I wonder what I am doing wrong. I have tried the Calm app before but wanted to try free form meditation this time around and do a proper meditation as opposed to depending on an external source to ground me.

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There is plenty of evidence floating around, including scientific evidence, about how meditation is good for you. Some of the benefits include the reduction of stress, which in turn helps in the sleep cycle, dispels depression and anxiety, reduces blood pressure, helps in the alleviation of fatigue and cloudy thinking and controls anxiety.

You also become more self-aware with the help of meditation and that in turn helps you to develop a stronger understanding of yourself and how you relate to those around you, thus helping you grow into your best self. The infographic above is an excellent condensation of the benefits of meditation.

So now that we know why meditation is good, what’s the best time to meditate. Most studies show that meditating twice a day – once as soon as you wake up and once just before you sleep is the best. You can also try meditating in bits and pieces throughout the day (in tranches of one to five minutes each) if that’s what you prefer.

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To start meditating, choose a quiet place, one where you are sure not to be disturbed when you are doing your practice (however short it may be). Sit on the floor cross-legged or if you can’t do that, sit in a straight-backed chair. I usually just use the timer off my phone and set the time I want to meditate and start the timer when I am ready. Now close your eyes and start to concentrate on your breathing. Your mind will start wandering at this point and thoughts will start crowding your head, especially undone tasks. When this happens, and your mind starts to wander, just bring it back into the breath and start focusing on it again. As you improve your practice, you will find this interval between the times your mind starts wandering lengthening and after some time you may be able to go your whole session without the mind not wandering even once!

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I walk a lot. I try to get 10,000 steps in a day and this means I spend at least a couple of hours over the course of my day walking to clock in the steps. I had heard of walking meditation and this is something I am trying to see if I can do – it will allow me to incorporate my daily meditation when I am walking and as a bonus, help me alleviate the boredom that sometimes comes when you walk alone.

So what is walking meditation? It is simply meditation in action. It is being aware of yourself as you walk. Actually, when I read about it, I realised I was already practising it all along. So for those who want to do walking meditation, here’s how you do it.

Find a space where you can comfortably walk. This space can be either indoors or outdoors. Start at one point and before you start, anchor yourself. This means you take a deep breath and focus on your body. Feel the ground beneath your feet and feel it. Become aware of the different sensations and feelings in your body and also take note of your thoughts and feelings at that point.

Start by walking slower than usual with a relaxed and natural gait. Be mindful of every step you take and when you reach the end of the path, pause for a second to centre yourself before you start walking back. Increase your pace after a couple of rounds to a pace that you are comfortable with. Keep your mind focussed on your feet and the steps they take. As with the traditional meditation, when you feel your mind wandering (as it definitely will), gently guide it back. Walk for around ten to twenty minutes before you stop. When you are ready to end the session, pause for a moment and become aware of the world with a show of thanks ending the session.

As you become more adept at walking meditation, you can then start to utilise your senses to the world around you, especially if you are doing this outdoors. See, sense and feel the world, the wind, the air, the colours and smells around you as you become aware of what is around you.

I really see myself doing a fair bit of walking meditation now. What about you? For those on the fence, is meditation something you plan to take up soon? I have written about meditation earlier. You can read my previous articles here and here. Hopefully, this will allow me to come back and report that my meditation practice is going great guns!

Imposter Syndrome

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Impostor syndrome (also known as impostor phenomenon or fraud syndrome or the impostor experience) is a concept describing individuals who are marked by an inability to internalize their accomplishments and a persistent fear of being exposed as a “fraud”. The term was coined in 1978 by clinical psychologists Pauline R. Clance and Suzanne A. Imes. Despite external evidence of their competence, those exhibiting the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved. Proof of success is dismissed as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be. While early research focused on the prevalence among high-achieving women, impostor syndrome has been found to affect both men and women, in roughly equal numbers

impostor-syndrome-cartoon-823x1024We’ve all been there, done that – convinced we’ve gotten a job or a project because we’ve faked it or perhaps you are getting an award for something and all you can hear in your head is a voice telling you that you will soon be outed for being a fraud! This is nothing but classic imposter syndrome and today’s post is all about that. Why this particular syndrome you may ask? Well, it’s because I am convinced I am 100% guilty of perpetuating this on myself.

Initially, it was thought that more women than men suffered from imposter syndrome, but later it was found to affect both sexes equally. When you are afflicted, you very strongly internally believe that you are not intelligent and you got (insert activity here) by luck or fluke and so you are so incompetent and unworthy of the activity that you will soon be outed as a fraud. I strongly suspect that this is what happened to me in my last position and this is why we parted ways so soon.

screenshot2015-08-13at10_48_51The most common symptoms are negative self-talk; a need to constantly check and re-check work; shying away from attention in the workplace; and forms of overcompensation like staying late at work or not setting appropriate boundaries around workload. Internally, people struggling with the syndrome experience persistent feelings of self-doubt and fear being found out as phoney. They over-internalize and blame themselves for failures, even when other factors played a role.

I particularly feel more women than men, especially Asians, suffer from this syndrome as we are generally conditioned to not take credit for our work and also diminish it when we get complimented for anything we do. As I was researching this post, I realised a lot of famous people, both men and women also had moments when they felt they were a complete fraud and it was just time till people figured them out for what they thought they were!

So when you get these pangs, here are some of the things you can do to overcome it:

how-to-improve-confidenceAccept that you are in this position because you did something that caused people to put you there. Learn to internalise your success and own it. Be proud of your achievements.

Focus on what you bring to the table. When you are a perfectionist, the chances of you believing that you are a fraud is very high because you set such high standards for yourself. Loosen up a bit and learn to accept that sometimes you need not be the best in everything you do. Hyper-competitive people (me included) see every little thing in life as a competition and this is what causes you immense grief where when you can’t attain the lofty self-goal you have set for yourself, you fall down to the depths and think you are a complete failure. So learn to let go, it will make life easier for you in the long run.

Stop comparing yourself to others. This is probably the most important point in overcoming this syndrome. As author Iyanla Vanzant once said, “Comparison is an act of violence against the self”, when you compare and measure yourself against someone, usually more successful than yourself, you start to internalise all your failures (against the said person) and this, in turn, makes you less confident about your own abilities and does not let you celebrate successes.

Celebrate success. When you get complimented for anything, accept it gracefully and with a smile. Most of us, and especially those of us who have internalised this syndrome. The normal reaction to a compliment is to brush it aside as something inconsequential, but the truth is that when someone compliments you for something, it’s because they appreciate what you have done, so accept it and internalise it.

Journal regularly. As an addendum to the previous point, it may help to keep a success journal which highlights all your successes. You could also add in the compliments and kudos you receive, be it work or play and when you need affirmations, all you need to do is go to your journal and read it. Personally, I would prefer to have something online or in the cloud, like perhaps Google Docs so I can access it anywhere and anytime. But if you prefer a physical notebook to record successes, then go ahead and buy the prettiest book you can find!

I am going to practice what I have just preached and start doing all these points so that I sooner than later overcome my sense of being a fraud all the time. What about you? Do you have any more tips that I can use? Please comment below.

I am ending this post with some TED Talks on how we can overcome our sense of being imposters.

Life Lessons: How to deal with bullies at work and outside….

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I’ve mentioned before, in this new place I am now working, I have been having issues at work, but I’ve never really elaborated on it. Today I am going to talk about some of what I am going through and what I have learned from my research on how to deal with such issues. Maybe someone else can benefit from it.

 

 

I have a colleague on the same team, who is junior to me, both in the number of years of experience we have as well as in the hierarchy of the organisation. For some reason, from the day I joined the organisation, this person has been borderline rude with me. They would be careful to be sweet and nice when in the presence of others, it was only when they were with me and maybe an intern who was working with them, would the nastiness surface. I was new to the organisation and I didn’t know how things are run. This person had been here for around a year before I joined. Anytime I asked them anything, it would be met with a curt, “I am busy” but they were not busy to chit chat with others during the time they were supposed to be busy. This went for around a month, but till that time it was done very passively. After a month of this, I sent this person an email about something which was not in both our job scopes, but which we had to do to help out. My email to the person was that when they were away, I will step in and the very rude reply I got was it was not their job too and so I was not doing them any favours. I had copied the email to our manager and the reply was also sent to everyone.

 

At some point, I did bring up this person’s attitude to our manager, but till date, I have not seen a resolution of the issue. I am not sure if the manager has managed to speak to this person, but since I don’t really see any improvement in attitude, I am guessing no.

So what do I do in such a case? I decided to read up and am following these points. It may be useful to others who are recipients of workplace bullying which is why I decided to blog about it.

 

When faced with a bully at work, we can either leave that toxic environment, stay quiet in the hope that it will blow away or confront the bully. Since I was new, leaving was not an option, I did speak to our manager, who didn’t do much to mitigate the issue and I didn’t want to confront the bully, but wanted to make sure I was no longer bullied

 

I first stopped talking to the bully. I didn’t interact much with them unless it was work specific and even then, I made sure I always tried to email them with a copy to our manager. This way, any rude or bullying behaviour would be out in the open and also documented since my problem was that this bully was sweet in front of others and rude when it was just us interacting. You could also keep a record of all interactions with the bully and if possible document every interaction.

After you have gathered the information, try to make time with the bully and speak calmly and emotionlessly. I need to work on this as I tend to get emotional in such times, but take deep breaths if that helps and speak to the bully. This approach may or may not work, depending on how the bully rolls, so prepare to take a step back and come back with reinforcements (aka your manager).

 

Usually, the perpetrator in a bullying incident is mostly intimated by you, either by what you bring to the table in terms of experience or job knowledge or what they stand to lose in terms of how your work will affect their standing in the organisation. I suspect in my case this is what happened. The bully in my instance probably thought I was a threat to them, though how I don’t know and used rude and disrespectful tones and language to compensate for that.

 

Another thing that usually works is not to stoop down to the bully’s level. It’s very tempting (believe me, I know), to respond with rude behaviour when faced with such behaviour, but I now believe in this, as Michelle Obama famously said, “When they go low, we go high”! Respond to rude behaviour with extreme politeness. If the rude behaviour is via email, I go very formal and polite and when a senior person sees the email exchange, the contrast between the two tones cannot be more obvious!

Lastly, I’d say don’t take this rudeness and bullying personally and over analyse everything (I am guilty of this). It is possible that the bully might have felt slighted over something you said or did, which is why they are behaving the way they do. I suspect this could have happened in my case also. In the last month, maybe I said or did (or didn’t say or do) something which may have been important to this person. Maybe once you figure out the reason why the bully behaved that way, behaviours on both sides can change. I do plan to do exactly that and see if I can figure out why my bully is behaving in such a way and see if I can turn the situation around.

 

Do you have any other way to work around a bully? I’d love to hear your ideas!