And then there are the people who lie to your face. Right there, in person at the grocery store. You haven’t seen each other in awhile and she’s [let’s call her Dabny] missed every one of your book club meetings for the last two months. She tells you she’s been so busy but she thinks about you every day and oh, have you lost weight? After she rushes off for a ‘work event’ you find out that she left your book club for a much cooler one than yours. So, why is she lying? I’ll tell you why.

An easy way out

Dabny believes you can’t handle the truth. Also, she’s a spineless weasel. Frankly, I don’t understand why you’re friends with her.

Why couldn’t Dabny tell you the truth, instead of letting you waste all kinds of energy and time worrying about your friendship and following her around town and bugging her apartment? And sending her emails and texting her in case she didn’t get those emails, and calling her in case she didn’t get those texts, and messaging her on Facebook in case she didn’t get those voice mails?

Recent surveys show that 95 per cent of people lie at least once a day… and the other five per cent lied on the questionnaires. If one lie was a dollar, we’d all be millionaires. Of course, inflation would skyrocket and you wouldn’t be able to afford housing, food and your cell phone bill but you’d have loads of money.

Lying is all about controlling the behaviour of others. But mostly, people lie because they’re afraid. Like your spineless weasel friend, Dabny, who screens her calls.

Most liars are insecure and starved for attention. The truth is boring, but if you have a ‘filthy-rich’ love interest, or a celebrity who is a ‘good friend’ or worse, a ‘very good friend’, then everyone at the party wants to gather around you and hear about it. Your lies have instantly made you everyone’s ‘best friend’.

Lies that irk me

Like the fictional Dr Gregory House says, “Everybody lies”. I mean cheating Jack isn’t about to tell the doctor how he really hit his head [because he and the babysitter were goofing around], especially with his wife sitting right there in the doctor’s office with him.

Or if you’re standing for elections, tell the people what they want to hear because they will vote for you based on your unrealistic promises. They will scream at you later for not fulfilling your promise. But hey, you got elected and that’s what matters, right?

And don’t get me started on the scam artists who sell pills that will either shrink your whole body or enlarge a specific part of it.

The downside to lying

Here’s the thing—I’m a literal person who expects honesty. If I take Joe blow-things-out-of-proportion literally, I ride his emotional roller coaster with him, reacting to his near-death experiences of wrestling alligators and almost plane crashes as if what he’s telling me happened exactly the way he says it did. After he’s delivered his steaming pile of hyperboles, I’m emotionally exhausted. Later, I will feel like a duped fool for believing any of it. Eventually, I don’t trust him anymore and simply nod along instead of boarding that tiresome train.

If you have a secret, you can tell me or not, I don’t care. I’m not that kind of nosy and I’m not insulted if you keep it from me. I’d rather you say nothing about your closet skeletons than claim you’ve never “had any work done” on your face. Besides, I can tell that you’ve had work done on your face. Nobody’s cheekbones look like that naturally.

As a famous, cherry tree-chopping young lad once said, “I cannot tell a lie”. Though I am fully capable of distorting the truth, it’s too energy consuming for me. I speak from experience when I say that when one lies, one has to store that lie for later reference and I simply can’t be bothered.

I lied to my mother once when I was a teenager. I came home late one day and gave her some lame excuse about breaking my watch and brought in two watch-less witnesses to back me up. But her words indicated that she knew I was lying. In one moment, I’d been caught and punished without being humiliated in front of my friends. I felt horrible. My mother was indeed a clever woman.

When lying makes sense

On the other hand, there are times when lying is a fabulous idea. For example, it’s perfectly acceptable to lie to rude or judgmental people. So what if you have a penchant for squirrel-themed salt and pepper shakers or a late-night doughnut problem? That’s none of their dang business. They don’t deserve the truth for being meddlesome. These so-called friends of yours are emotional terrorists and you can’t let the terrorists win.

Don’t enable their behaviour by answering invasive questions. If you’re a materialistic Judgy McJudgerstein and you ask me where I got this puffy, lime green prom dress and how much it was, I’m not about to tell you I bought it at an 80 per cent discount from a roadside vendor. I’ll say I paid full price for it and had it custom tailored. However, if you’re my trusted friend, not only will I tell you where I bought it from, I will also show you the other cool stuff I bought from him—like an awesome pink chessboard-topped table.

You know, it’s frustrating for those of us who believe in a meritocracy, which doesn’t exist. We watch liars pass us by on their way to the bank because of all this silly integrity with which we are burdened. If only we could tell ourselves, “Well, at least I can sleep at night because I’m not an emotional terrorist,” but then, we’d be the liars.

Nevertheless, we have to keep fighting the good fight because someday, we will win. Someday, technology will advance to the point of reading our brains and everyone will have an app called Polly Graff installed on their smartphones, which flashes holographic emotional terrorist icons above people’s heads when they lie.

Look, I can understand if you don’t want to tell me that you’ve murdered someone or just paid an outrageous sum of money for an awkwardly located tattoo, or you crashed on the couch and binged-watched Spongebob Squarepants all weekend instead of going out with me. Don’t be Dabny, the spineless weasel. You can tell me what you really did, even if it was without me. Or tell me nothing. I won’t take it personally or judge you. If you tell me the truth, I will love you and respect you no matter what everyone else says about you.

And that’s no lie.

The post Truth be told appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

For one thing, you probably feel like you don’t have the right to defend yourself, yes? Most people feel that it’s wrong to express anger, especially against people they love or respect, so they swallow their feelings instead.

Yet, this reaction is neither helpful nor needed. Understand that you are not obliged to own the actions or feelings of other people, no matter who they are. Although tempting, stewing over such things only leads to angst and bitterness.

But how do you prevent other people’s insults, criticisms or downright rudeness from causing you pain? Do you really have what it takes to protect yourself from the emotional tyranny of others? Can you even do this without causing more trouble? I believe you can. So let’s talk about how this is done.

There are no bad emotions

When we are at odds with someone, it can be hard to tell who is right or wrong. But I promise you that you can never be wrong for having an emotional reaction. That’s like saying birds should be ashamed of flying. At no time should you feel guilty for simply feeling anger, shock or any other emotion. Put in another way, it’s okay to feel whichever way you like.

As children we are often taught to refrain from being too wild, too loud or too angry. And no matter how old you get, this message stays stuck in your head. This is why we often struggle with intense emotion. We let it riddle us with guilt, fear and a deep-seated urge to remain silently dissatisfied.

However, having strong feelings, especially after someone has emotionally crushed you, isn’t wrong; in fact it’s normal. The question isn’t whether or not your feelings are okay. The real question is how to find a beneficial way to express and protect your feelings without producing guilt or regret in yourself.

To be understood you must first understand yourself

Before you go around blaming people for how you feel, you must first examine yourself. This is uncomfortable. No one likes to see their own flaws or admit that they might have something to do with a negative situation. But self-reflection is crucial. For example, let’s say you believe that your boss hates you with passion. He doesn’t like how you dress, speak or work. And so, whenever he’s around you feel nervous and awkward.

But what’s really happening? Is it that your boss hates you or could it be that you hate your boss but don’t feel that it’s right to feel that way? Is your boss really a bad person, or does she remind you of someone else you don’t like? Is it really this single person that burns you up inside or could it be that she represents something larger that you despise? The sources of our feelings aren’t always clear-cut. Take the time to examine why you feel the way you do, for hurt feelings are nearly always softened by careful thought.

Realise that it may not be about you

Sometimes when people struggle in life they take it out on others. Usually this happens when people unconsciously express personal stress without knowing it. That doesn’t mean that it is okay for someone to be abusive simply because they are stressed; it just means that sometimes it is helpful to imagine yourself standing in their place before you judge their actions. It is important to remember that empathy and compassion toward others, including people we dislike, can change our feelings even in the most difficult situations.

Accept that you cannot read minds

When someone does something to upset you, you’ll often try to read his mind to decrease your own anxiety. It’s a primitive way of preventing a worst-case scenario from happening. This, of course, is preposterous. Not only is your mind reading in vain, but it also increases anxiety and misunderstanding. It even gets in the way of using more effective problem-solving skills. Things like silence, assumption and sloppy guess work will only serve to intensify a situation rather than resolve it.

The key to protecting your feelings

So far we’ve talked about what to do when someone does something to hurt you:

• Acknowledge how you feel
• Understand why you feel that way
• Try not to take it  personally
• Try not to guess why the person did what they did.

But that’s not all. Perhaps the most important thing you can do to protect your feelings is to set clear boundaries with people. While you’re obviously not going to go around providing people with a list of rules, when someone does offend you, it is critical that you speak up.

To be fair, people sometimes have moments of stupidity and unintentionally act badly; forgive those people. However, if you notice a harmful pattern in the way someone treats you, then you must act. Tell the offending party how and why you were offended, but most importantly, clearly state that you will not tolerate their bad behaviour.

If expressing your concern directly is not an option, then introduce some space. Limit the time you spend with people that emotionally drain you and fail to respect your boundaries. You can even be kind about it. Trying to feel compassion and empathy for them will help you to increase your tolerance and patience towards them. Your gentle reserve will send a clear message that will be heard with time.

Whenever you take personal responsibility for someone else’s behaviour, you’re setting yourself up for sorrow, rage and anxiety. When you fail to care about yourself and your needs as much as you care for others, you are also setting the expectation that you are okay with people treating you poorly.

My advice to you: be kind and firm with others and you will better protect your feelings from bad behaviour.

The post The feeling shield appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Published by: Rupa Publications

ISBN: 978-8129136824

Pages: 288

Price: INR 295

Almost the entire literature in the area of leadership and management tends to focus on the performance and the efficiency of managers. Sibichen Mathew is of the opinion that “true learning can take place not by looking at the right traits, but by analysing the wrong ones.”  Thus was born the premise for When the Boss is Wrong, which contains 50 different dimensions of bad leadership and their ramifications for people and organisations.

Sibichen’s aim with this “systematic inquiry” has been to create unique prescriptions for “wrong” bosses, and solutions for their “suffering” subordinates. Using researches and studies exemplify the findings that Sibichen himself gathered over years of experience—through interviewing well-known company heads, questionnaires about bosses and observing behaviours in his own workplace. What results is a study dotted with real life anecdotes and cutting across many kinds of workplaces.

When the boss is wrong is both informative as well as enjoyable at the same time.

In a chapter, “Mr Boss, you are petty!”, Sibichen lists out revealing responses of middle-level managers who were asked why their boss is petty. The answers ring a bell and make you want to try the prescriptions, instantly!

“Coping with a young boss” and “Coping with an old boss”—two chapters that emphasise on how a tectonic shift in working style [between generations] may wreck the boats of senior employees’ or bust the myth that seniority assures wisdom.

Perhaps, the most humorous idea in the book is the one that shows how stages similar to the “ashrams” can be seen in the professional lives of many people, often detrimental to the organisation. After all, how much good can a boss, who is in a state of nirvana after losing his young “fizz” over two decades, do? “Which animal are you and your boss?” will make you smile, before making you feel not-so-flattered.

While most of the book throws at you unique ideas and experiences of working professionals, some [though not any less significant] may not be unheard of. Sibichen begins with how you could have absorbed some of the personality traits of your boss and goes on to talk about “Runaway Bosses” and “Snoopervisors”, those low on EQ or high on “ditching ethics”. You will be encouraged to do a thorough self-examination!

The lessons at the end of each chapter are prescriptions for the bosses, precautions for the employees and precepts for the organisation. Some deserve heeding, like–to remember that “you leave a trail of whatever you do in the organisation”, “images that are bought, never match images which are gained through excellence” and “the courage and preparedness to unlearn is a necessary prerequisite for creativity”.

Mostly, the lessons are simplistic and commonsensical. The ones that contain interviews of top bosses of well-known organisations, tests to take [like the one that checks how much your present boss knows you] or boxes with questions to ponder upon are interesting.

When the Boss is Wrong is a long book. Some chapters overlap. Some ideas may confuse too. For instance, Narcissism and Authoritarianism are otherwise seen as negative traits but are “excused” in a chapter which discusses essential traits of “Messiah Bosses”. The “signs of recovery” of an organisation after suffering at the hands of any kind of a bad boss are the same across all chapters.

Underlying the narrative of the book appears a picture of a good boss—who telephones all the employees when a bomb blast occurs in a city, or who credits the team before his own managerial skills. And overarching this exercise is a question for all bosses—how many of you really care about what others think of you? While the bosses think it over, all you can do is “make your bosses smile with your smile”, especially if, in your organisation, “no good work goes unpunished”.

This was first published in the October 2015 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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We all love the sound of our children’s laughter and their squeals of excitement. Their giggles and chatter are like sweet music to our ears. But what happens when our little bundles of joy turn into little bundles of trouble. “If children won’t be naughty now, then when,” is what some well meaning people may say to you. But if your child’s mischief transgresses the line of innocence into annoyance, you have to step in and opt for some corrective measures. So how does one decide where to draw the line and how to address the issues that come up?

Simple mischief or unruly behaviour

A child can be said to be engaging in unruly behaviour if:

• The intensity of his behaviours repeatedly disrupts the environment [be it home or outside]
• He is unable to control his mischief even in situations where maintaining discipline is mandatory
• Repeated bad consequences have no impact on his behaviour.

Why your child might be a menace

• Personality: All of us are born with innate characteristics. Some of us are reserved, some of us more exuberant. This is part of our genetic makeup. Thus, while some children are inherently quieter, others are more energetic, some may be thoughtful, others impulsive. Needless to say, children who are impulsive, spontaneous and high on energy may tend to get into more scrapes and tussles compared to the quieter ones. As parents, we have to understand the personality of our child, and introduce disciplinary measures accordingly.
• Parental approach to discipline: Just like children, parents have varying personalities as well. Some of us may be strict disciplinarians, others might be fairly lenient, and still others might be completely permissive. Sometimes a child may also express his or her rebelliousness or displeasure over something by being extremely mischievous and disobedient.
• Health and nutrition: A healthy, well-fed, well-rested child is far less likely to engage in unruly behaviour compared to an ill-nourished child. The importance of ensuring that your child eats a healthy and nutritious diet, and gets his required amount of sleep cannot be undermined. Children often do not realise that they are hungry, sleepy, or tired and these conditions manifest in the form of disruptive or irritable behaviour.
• Unhappy home atmosphere: If a child is growing up in a home that is rife with conflict or unhappiness of any kind, he is far more likely to be notorious. This is because children find it difficult to articulate their fears, anxieties and insecurities. The only way they know how to communicate is through behaviours that will ensure the attention of the adults around them.
• Developmental disorders: At times children may display disruptive, destructive, or hyperactive behaviours because they may be suffering from a developmental or psychological condition. Autistic disorder, Asperger’s syndrome, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and conduct disorder are some childhood psychological conditions that may manifest in the form of defiant or disruptive behaviour. Childhood depression, which is far more common than it is believed to be, is also expressed by children through such behaviours, as is evident from the example that follows.

Six-year-old Dhriti was a happy child, who always got along well with her friends and did well in academics. When she started her third year in school, there was a marked change in her behaviour. At the slightest provocation she would hit other children in class, and when reprimanded by her teacher, would burst into a fit of tears. She no longer focussed on her studies and her grades began dropping. At home she had become very disobedient and untidy. On counselling her, it was discovered that her behaviour was triggered after the birth of her younger sister because all the attention was being showered on the newborn. Her parents had, unknowingly, not been giving her enough attention and hence she sought other ways to get them to look at her.

Dealing with disruptive kids

Unfortunately, there is no one formula that would fit all children and in different situations. We have to look at our child, his personality makeup, his specific triggers and issues, and figure out what works best for him. Here are some tips for you to begin with.

• Make sure your child has a set daily routine. Ensure that the child wakes up at more or less the same time every day, eats, naps, studies, plays in a routine that is comfortable and familiar to her. As parents, you have to be flexible with the schedule, especially with younger and more spontaneous children. However, children need the security of a structured environment to help them make sense of the world around them.
• Ensure proper rest and nutrition. Children will naturally gravitate towards junk food. Balance that with wholesome and healthy food as per your child’s preferences. Make sure your child gets enough sleep. Insist on a time by which your child has to be in bed daily; this is true for younger as well as older children!
• Provide moderate but consistent discipline. One does not need to become a dictator to ensure compliance. At the same time, being completely permissive will not teach the child the necessity to control his desires and impulses. And remember, the earlier you teach your child these lessons, the better he will be able to internalise this.
• Communicate. If your family is going through some crisis or trauma, please talk to your child about it. No matter what his age. We often make the mistake of shielding our child from reality. However, children are perceptive. They know when something is wrong. And when we don’t talk to them about it, they draw their own conclusions. So whatever it is that you as a family are going through—a divorce, an illness, a financial crisis, a house change—talk to your children about it. Share your feelings, and help them share theirs. This will enable them to express their worries through words rather than through inappropriate behaviours.
• Accept your child’s personality and work around it. Don’t push a shy child to perform in front of an audience. Don’t ridicule an imaginative child for his daydreaming. An impulsive child will need to be given advance preparation for a social function, given repeated reminders on expected behaviours, and perhaps even given an opportunity to rehearse those behaviours. You might want to give the child some quiet time or engage him in a quiet activity before getting into a social situation where he is likely to misbehave.
• When in doubt, evaluate: As parents, you will be the first one to sense if there is something wrong with the child. If you get the slightest doubt that your child’s misbehaviour is not due to any of the usual issues, and could be due to some underlying disturbance or disorder, do not hesitate to consult experts. You can talk to your school counsellor, a psychologist, a developmental paediatrician or a psychiatrist. Go for a complete psychological evaluation that will help pinpoint the exact profile of the child, so that corrective measures can be taken.

Lastly, keep perspective. It bears repeating that every child is his own little person, and his or her behaviour is an expression of a combination of things—the personality, the environment, people around them, challenges he or she faces. Our job as parents, at all times, is to ensure that we inculcate the right behavioural responses in the child, and when the child does not comply, rather than reacting, try to understand what are the triggers behind such behaviours and work towards alleviating those triggers.

This was first published in the February 2015 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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What is the subconscious?

In conventional parlance, the brain’s conscious mechanism associated with automated stimulus-response behaviours is referred to as the subconscious or unconscious mind. That is because its functions require neither observation nor attention from the self-conscious mind.

In fact, the functions of the subconscious mind evolved long before the prefrontal cortex [the neurological platform that enables us to realise our personal identity and experience the quality of ‘thinking’—responsible for our self-consciousness]. Consequently, it is able to successfully operate a body and its behaviour without any contribution from the more evolved self-conscious mind.

The subconscious v/s the self-conscious

The power of the subconscious mind lies in its ability to process massive amounts of data acquired from direct and indirect learning experiences at extraordinarily high rates of speed—it has the ability to interpret and respond to an estimated 40 million plus nerve impulses per second.

In contrast, the diminutive self-conscious mind’s prefrontal cortex can only process about 40 nerve impulses per second. As an information processor, the subconscious mind is one million times more powerful than the self-conscious mind. As a trade-off for its computational bravado, the subconscious mind expresses only a marginal creative ability—one that may be best compared to that of a precocious five-year-old.

In contrast to the freewill offered by the conscious mind, the subconscious mind primarily expresses pre-recorded stimulus-response ‘habits’, such as walking, getting dressed, or driving a car. Although the prefrontal cortex’s ability for multitasking is physically constrained, the self-conscious mind can focus upon and control any function in the human body.

In fact, it is now recognised that some bodily functions such as the regulation of heart-beat, blood pressure, and body temperature, which were thought to be beyond the control of the self-conscious mind, can be controlled by the conscious mind. Yogis and other practitioners have trained their conscious minds to control functions formerly defined as involuntary behaviours.

How both function

The subconscious and self-conscious components of the mind work in tandem, with the subconscious controlling every behaviour not attended to by the self-conscious mind. Most people’s self-conscious minds are rarely focussed upon the current moment, since their mental processing continuously flits from one thought to another.

The self-conscious mind is so preoccupied with thoughts about the future, the past, or resolving some imaginary problem, that most of our lives are actually controlled by programmes in the subconscious mind.

Cognitive neuroscientists conclude that the self-conscious mind contributes only about five per cent of our cognitive activity. Consequently, 95 per cent of our decisions, actions, emotions, and behaviours are derived from the unobserved processing of the subconscious mind. This data reveals that our lives are not controlled by our personal intentions and desires, as we may inherently believe.

Do the math! Our fate is actually under the control of the pre-programmed experiences managed by the subconscious mind.

The control mechanism

Now here’s the catch: Behaviour is automatically controlled by subconscious mind’s programmes when the self-conscious mind is not focused on the present moment. When the reflective self-conscious mind is preoccupied in thought and not paying attention, it does not observe the automatic behaviours derived from subconscious mind. Since 95 per cent or more of our behaviour is derived from the subconscious mind.then most of our own behaviour is invisible to us!

For example, consider you know someone intimately; you also know his or her parent. From your perspective you see that your friend’s behaviour closely resembles her parent. Then one day you make a casual remark to your friend. something like, “You know Mary, you’re just like your mom.”

Back away! In disbelief and perhaps shock, Mary is likely to respond with, “How can you say that!” The cosmic joke is that everyone else can see that Mary’s behaviour resembles her mom’s except Mary. Why? Simply because when Mary is engaging the subconscious behavioural programs she downloaded in her youth from observing her mom, her self-conscious mind is not paying attention. At those moments [when she’s behaving like her mom], her automatic subconscious programmes operate without observation.

Consequently, when life does not work out as planned, we rarely recognise that we were very likely contributing to our own disappointments. Since we are generally unaware of the influence of our own subconscious behaviours, we naturally perceive of ourselves as victims of outside forces.

Unfortunately, assuming the role of victim means that we assume we are powerless in manifesting our intentions. Nothing is further from the truth! The primary determinant in shaping the fate of our lives is the database of perceptions and beliefs programmed in our minds.

It’s up to you

We have all been shackled with emotional chains wrought by dysfunctional behaviours programmed by the stories of the past. However, the next time you are “talking to yourself” with the hope of changing sabotaging subconscious programmes, it is important to realise the following information.

Using reason to communicate with your subconscious in an effort to change its behaviour would essentially have the same influence as trying to change a programme on a cassette tape by talking to the tape player. In neither case is there an entity in the mechanism that will respond to your dialogue.

Subconscious programmes are not fixed, unchangeable behaviours. We have the ability to rewrite our limiting beliefs and in the process take control of our lives. However, to change subconscious programs requires the activation of a process other than just engaging in a running dialogue with the subconscious mind. There are a large variety of effective processes to reprogram limiting beliefs, which include clinical hypnotherapy, Buddhist mindfulness and a number of newly developed and very powerful modalities collectively referred to as energy psychology.

You can!

Learning how to harness our minds to promote growth is the secret of life, which is why I refer to the new science as The Biology of Belief. As we become more conscious and rely less on subconscious automated programs, we become the masters of our fates rather than the “victims” of our programs.

In this way, we can rewrite old, limiting perceptions and actively transform the character of our lives so that they are filled with the love, health, and prosperity that are our true birthrights.

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