Make it Large

A young man approached a Zen master to find solution to his unhappiness.  The sage told him to put a handful of salt in a glass of water and then drink it. The young man immediately spat it out. The sage then asked him to take another handful of salt and put it in a lake and told him to drink the water. The young man did not find it repulsive now.

The teacher shared a profound truth to the troubled learner: ‘the pain of life is akin to salt. But the intensity we taste as 'pain' depends on the container we put it into. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things... Stop being a small glass, become a large lake!’

So often, so many of us find ourselves in pain or hurt or failure. We feel let down by a person or the situation. We cast ourselves as victims as our unhappiness arises from a feeling of futility. And since we see the situation through a narrow cone, the intensity of the hurting gets magnified.

Now, imagine seeing that person or that situation from a perspective of a longer timeline. We may be playing blind to the larger picture and focussing only on the exception. It is pertinent to note that a timeline dilutes the intensity of pain. Similarly when we see a singular negative experience in context of a larger set of experiences, our interpretation tends to alter.

We must allow every emotion to move beyond victimhood reactions. We must see every person, every action and every situation from the larger perspective of a longer timeline. This is not to dilute the reality of the person or the action or the situation; but it will certainly dilute the intensity of pain and empower our response to cope with that person or that action or that situation.

Make it large... a perspective that’s sane...

The lake, not the glass, will ease the pain!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Goa, India.

Purpose

In the 1940s, an Austrian existential psychologist, Viktor Frankl was held captive in a Nazi concentration camp. His family, friends, and neighbours were captured too. Viktor lived the horror of losing everything to torture and terror. Despite the brutality, Viktor never gave up his relentless fight for his life.

He found meaning in his struggle, and that gave him the power to push ahead through unimaginable pain. After escaping, Viktor wrote a book called ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’, which chronicles his experiences. A quote by Nietzsche sums up his philosophy on how people were able to survive the camps, without losing the will to live: ‘He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.’

Our reactions are not solely the result of the conditions of our life. They arise also from the freedom of choice we always have even in severe suffering. Viktor wrote, ‘In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.’ But he cautioned ‘of getting stuck in suffering mode and mistaking it for nobility.’ He wrote, ‘Suffering unnecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic.’

Viktor underlined the power of purpose. Purpose is what gives us the strength to carry on, if not through dire conditions, then through difficult changes, transitions, relationships, and activities. Viktor concludes from his experience that the meaning of life is found in every moment of living; life never ceases to have meaning, even in suffering and death.

On this very day that Bhagat Singh died at the age of 23. Alexander died at the age of 32 years. Mozart died at the age of 35. Swami Vivekananda died at the age of 39. They were able to live worthwhile lives, despite dying young because they were able to find and fulfil their purpose in life. Robert Byrne has said it so well: ‘The purpose of life is a life of purpose’

Let’s find purpose in life and live it now

Live life with meaning before the bow!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Goa, India.

POUND OF BUTTER

We learnt a very important lesson through a story we were told in school. A farmer sold a pound of butter to a baker. One day the baker decided to weigh the butter to see if he was getting a pound and he found that he was not. This angered him and he dragged the farmer to court.

The judge asked the farmer if he was using any measure. The farmer replied, ‘I don't have a proper measure, but I do have a scale.’ The judge asked, ‘Then how do you weigh the butter?’ The farmer replied ‘long before the baker started buying butter from me, I have been buying a pound loaf of bread from him. Every day when the baker brings the bread, I put it on the scale and give him the same weight in butter. If anyone is to be blamed, it is the baker.’

We get back in life what we give to others. Whenever we take an action, we need to ask the pertinent question: Am I giving fair value for the wages or money I hope to make? Honesty and dishonesty become a habit. Some people practice dishonesty and can lie with a straight face. Others lie so much that they don't even know what the truth is anymore. But they deceive only themselves.

 Don’t ignore or don’t you forget

What we give is what we get!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Goa, India.

PRAVIN SABNIS conducts UNLEARNING UNLIMITED workshops for corporate & other teams. Since 2004, he has been writing MONDAY MUSE. He can be contacted on unlearning.unlimited@gmail.com and 91-9422640141 or 91-8698672080

Competency

 Last week, I got a call from senior trainer, Sagar Dalvi who is not just my friend and mentor... he is a muse who is restless until he can share his thinking. He was telling me what is quite common but not commonly known. Full of excitement, he said, ‘Success is not the guarantee of competency’!

What a simple yet lofty truth. While success can spur the process of empowering competency, it can also be a flash in the pan, with no assurance of competence building. On the other hand, lack of success does not confirm the lack of ability. It just means that performance did not match the potential.

It is pertinent to note that competence increases the probability of success. Hence, we must focus on capacity building rather than insist on success. Interestingly, one of the contributing factors in competence creation is the lessons that come with failure. And eventually success is about the journey and not a few milestones. And such journeys are stories of credible competence!

Focus on competence, instead of insisting on a win

Success means very little... if it’s a sometime spin!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Goa, India.

CENTIPEDE’S DILEMMA

A centipede was happy

Until a toad in fun

Said, ‘Pray, which leg moves after which?’

This raised her doubts to such a pitch,

She fell exhausted in the ditch

Not knowing how to run!

The poem underlines the psychological ‘centipede effect’ that occurs when an otherwise unconscious activity is disrupted by consciousness of it. When asked how he played a certain passage of Beethoven, violinist Adolf Busch replied that it was quite simple – and then found that he could no longer play the same passage.

George Humphrey identified the effect as hyper-reflection and said that ‘no man skilled at a trade needs to put his constant attention on routine work... If he does, the job is apt to be spoiled’. Humphrey's law states that once performance of a task has become habitual, conscious thought about the task, while performing it, impairs performance.  

Habit reduces and then removes the attention required for routine tasks. This automaticity is upset by attention to a regular unconscious competence. For example, someone thinking too much about how they knot their tie may find their performance of the task impaired. Hence, we must not allow the centipede’s dilemma to derail what has turned a habitual performance.

The centipede need not reflect on keeping feet in line,

But if it starts to ponder they get twisted all the time!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Goa, India.