A DIY guide to know thyself
Productivity levels down at work? Here’s your chance to bust that stress!

“Is this what you wanted to achieve in your career?” Jenny was probing into Ravi’s situation. “Not exactly,” said Ravi. Jenny immediately asked: “Do you feel that while in your current job; you will be able to achieve your career objectives?” “Well, no,” said Ravi, getting into a detailed explanation: “But that’s not it, there are a whole range of issues related to my career and life that I have to manage, and so I’m hanging on here,” a visibly harassed Ravi added. Ravi has been under tremendous stress personally, and it’s been affecting both, his work and personal life. Before he broke down, he found it necessary to seek professional help, and met Jenny, an executive coach, who finally managed to goad him out of his life career crisis. Like Ravi, most working professionals, at some point or the other, face similar situations, but very few acknowledge them. The problem raises a few valid questions about how aware are today’s professionals about themselves, and how much control do they have over their personal and professional lives.

Ask the magic question and pat comes the reply that absolutely nothing is wrong. But then, give it serious thought. Are you completely in control of all the goings-on within you? Worldwide, employees fall into this trap of leading monotonous lives. That’s because they’ve started working in a particular process or manner, and that becomes a way of their life. When they do try & question themselves about what is it that they are doing wrong in their career, the answers will certainly not be very pleasant. Even as thousands of executives globally continue to complain of stress at work and draining of productivity, experts suggest that the root cause to such stress is not just physical or mental exertion, but something much beyond that. It is related to one’s lifestyle, the emotional and spiritual connect. In plain terms, it is one’s understanding of self and control on one’s life, which paves the path to productivity. Agrees Gerard O’ Donovan, CEO, Noble Manhattan, who has coached thousands of executives: “I have interacted with thousands of executives, both fresh and experienced people who have no idea of what they want to be and do in life.” He adds that “it is good if you know your capabilities and set your career goals early in life. It is worse in the case of a working executive, as they’ve got adapted to a certain lifestyle and a mode of living. For them, making a fresh start, perhaps, would be the toughest thing to do,” It was not long back that Daniel Goleman, while propagating his theory on Emotional Intelligence had said that self-awareness is one of the prime personal competencies, which will enable an individual to understand his/her own goals, motivation, motives, responses and behaviour in totality.

Where self awareness is lacking, stress can dramatically increase and sabotage productivity levels. The situation worsens when an employee starts looking for the problems outside of him/her, instead of looking inside. So, what’s the solution? If you indeed want to find a solution, here’s how you go about it! First of all, get to know yourself. Know what you want to be and achieve in life, and compare that with what you are and what you’re doing. Gerard says, “This is not a therapy, and you may not think that something’s wrong with you. This is just a process of coaching, and you can coach yourself.” To begin with, perform a SWOT on yourself. SWOT is a personal strength, weakness, threat and opportunity (SWOT) analysis and that, according to Gerard “should clear the clouds of doubts and give you some clear indicators of what you’re best at and what you should pursue.” After the SWOT, if you think you’re on the right job, perhaps, you need to check if you’ve lost control on the pace of your life.

All you need to do is reclaim your life and take charge of it. Still thinking? Here’s how you do it. Gerard calls this, the ‘wheel of life’ exercise. Choose the critical aspects of your life, or the things that matter most to you. For instance, career, finances, health, family, personal time, spirituality, recreation & leisure, etc., and rank them or arrange them on a priority basis. On a 10-point scale, rate your performance on each of these parameters. This will help you to understand your failings and perhaps, also get a perspective on where things are going wrong. Next, you need to set goals for each of these short-comings and work toward eradicating the same. It is suggested that you create a plan of action for achieving these goals. Once you’ve decided and disciplined yourself to follow the procedures to achieve your goals, you will see how the stress vanishes, giving way to contentment and increased productivity. Moreover, maintain a distance between career and personal life. Chances are that there is no clear line of distinction between both, and often the personal, influences the professional; as much as your career influences your personal well-being and happiness. But, the wheel of life, will not only work for the career aspect of your life, but for your total personality. So, if are you feeling stressed or out of place at work, take the test and know yourself! Self awareness will not only put you on a productive track, but facilitate quick learning; adding competencies and motivation to perform and lead. So, how well do you know yourself? Umm... ready to pop the question to yourself?

Bedtime stories
No time for hanky panky? Ya right!

(column by Anu Gulmohar)

The typical wry comment on marriage, more often than not, concedes this oft-quoted remark from Oscar Wilde: “Bigamy is having one wife/husband too many. Monogamy is the same.” Then there’re also women who proclaim the joys of monogamy, while men sigh and look the other way. Even better are those researches which take upon their broad shoulders the weight of carrying out extensive surveys to re-present the same old wine in the same fungus ridden bottle. Read on... Feedback from 77,895 respondents (90% of which were in monogamous relationships) for an Elle/MSNBC. com poll unearthed that 67% of the lady respondents were completely content with their partners and their sizzling sex lives. Men, however, who were a few years into the relationship, were not having as much fun anymore! What’s new (sigh!)! But then there were also some more revelations, like lack of communication between the sexes: While only 38% of the women felt that their beaus would like to turn on the heat more often in the bedroom, 66% of poor ol’ men, in fact, were hopeful of more frequent action. Now take this: 41% of the guys wish their love-making sessions would last longer, and (perhaps the only place the survey hit on something new) 97% of men and women were absolutely satisfied with their partners and sex lives. Ahem... don’t agree with that one completely? Well at least allow the surveys to continue in the hope of a more monogamous world. We know better anyway...

(End of Anu Gulmohar column)

The highs & lows of love
A duo who could do without the dope

(column by Karan Karayi)

Have you felt lately that your life’s a roller-coaster of thrills and spills, soaring to the skies one moment and then careening towards the earth the next? If you are living in the same fiercely competitive, fast paced world that we are in, guess your answer to that would be in the affirmitive. This supposed joyride is even more pertinent for drug users (or abusers), who slip into the roles of Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde with consummate ease. If that’s not bad enough, here’s where it gets worse… what if your better half falls in that category? Dickens made light of it with fiction. He said: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” for couples where one partner stoops low to get his (or her) highs. Nothing could be further from the truth. Caught between the extremes of ecstasy and agony, it becomes increasingly cumbersome to hold close someone who sways like a pendulum from one mood to the next. This cataclysmic cesspool sucks in anyone who dares flirt with it, and even celebrities do not escape its clammy clutches. Take Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, where Whitney’s love of the ‘high’-flying life proved to be the beginning of the end for their teetering marriage (on the brink of collapse anyways). Their now-nixed nuptials have had to contend with deviant dosages of drug – apart from domestic abuse. Excruciating as it sounds, most drug devotees, well past the point of no return are beyond redemption. Trying to salvage shreds of a resultant relationship can be as painful as bailing water out of a sinking cruise liner with a beaker! Heed Brown, when he says ‘crack is wack’. He’s learnt it the hard way!

(End of Karan Karayi column)