The Gift Habit

One of the big realizations over the past 3 months on project in Oman is that I don’t give enough gifts.
I’ve been struck by the hospitality of the Omani’s I’ve been working with. Every time a colleague has left the team after finishing his/her stint on the project, they’ve showered them with gifts and I realized this myself when I was given a gift by a friend here for Christmas.
And when I gave it some thought, I realized that gifting wasn’t even on my agenda/mind. I also know that it is a result of 4 years of penny pinching in university where friends’ birthdays meant extracting treats rather than giving them gifts.
Time for change.

Tweaking the ‘why’ question

I have been a big proponent of the ‘why‘ question. I can be annoyingly curious and I’ve always taken pride in my attempts to understand why things are the way they are. And I’m always amazed at how the simple word ‘why‘ can redefine our thought process. I’ve experienced it many a time in a deep discussion where we find ourselves lost in details – just asking the ‘why‘ often clears our minds and results in progress.

It was at a dinner conversation the other day when an experienced (and inspirational) friend drew my attention to the ‘other side’.
He took me back to his first big consulting gig 20 years ago when he was a young man about to interview an important CEO. He was all prepared with tons of good questions and when the meeting began, he asked one question after another. And by the end of it, he was feeling very good as he was sure he had demonstrated his competence. At the end of the interview, his final question was to ask the CEO how he felt the interview had gone.
The CEO looked at him, smiled and said – ‘The questions were all really good. But, the experience was very intimidating’
This friend was completely taken aback. This was a 50 year old legend telling him he was intimidated!
‘All those questions – they made me feel like I should have known all the answers. And, not knowing them was pretty embarrassing and intimidating.’
At this point in his story, he said something that rung a bell – he said that often there is a component of our ‘ego‘ present when we are deep into asking questions. Our eagerness to find the answer, to ‘figure it out’ often gets the better of us and we tend to forget the real purpose – to understand where the other person is coming from, what the other person is feeling and why the other person is feeling so.
This question led to quite some reflection on my part. I know of times in the past when I’ve gotten carried away with my problem solving ‘genius’ (in my opinion, of course!) while solving a friend’s problem without much consideration of what the friend was probably feeling. The excitement takes over, and before you know it, you are all over the person’s private space.. And it is this tendency that has lead to me appearing intimidating to many a friend when the intention was far from it.
There are some discussions in life that lead to breakthroughs in our own thinking. This was a big one for me. There’s a lot I’m going to be doing differently from here on in, thanks to this.
—
To demonstrate how it could be intimidating –
Imagine you asked me – ‘Why did you choose that dress?’
I would most likely start with a passionate defence of the dress and my decision before moving onto anything logical or really answering your question. The response is purely emotional.
An alternate way to ask is –
‘What made you choose.. this shirt?’
This question accompanied by a politely curious look, a smile and lots of humility could help meet the original point of asking the ‘why‘ question – to actually understand the rationale behind a decision or an action.
In short, when asking the ‘why‘, it helps understanding why we ask the ‘why‘ question in the first place.

Looking back, and then looking ahead

I finally finished my review and realized looking back was a great way to start this year.

I realized that my big highlights from last year were –
1. Transitioning into work life via a-connect
2. Sparkz – at NUS
3. Building systems to manage myself
And 2 of my Personal Life goals for 2011 are the following –
1. Self publish my book
2. Travel to 3 new countries
3. Build Alearningaday.com by improving it’s design and quality of posts
2011 promises many new ideas, new people, new goals, new experiences and many many learnings. I can’t wait..
GREAT year ahead! Looking forward to sailing through this together.. :)

The Serenity Prayer

It’s been a great year. There were many achievements, many failures, many laughs and many tears – a combination all those things that makes life, and living special.

Looking ahead, I pray..

Oh Lord,
Grant me the serenity, to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage, to change the things I can;
and the wisdom, to know the difference.

Happy new year all! :)

If you are traveling with a child, please attend to yourself first, then the child.

Have you ever wondered why that line exists in the aircraft safety announcement?

I think of it in terms of 3 common life situations –

1. Only after we are on top of our tasks and targets can we be helpful to others (with colleagues)

2. Only after we bring our lives under control can we help others with theirs (with friends)

3. Only after we take care of ourselves and have ourselves in control can we love, be loved and be affectionate(with family)

Essentially, our first priority should always be to make sure we are okay. And that doesn’t necessitate a self centred approach to life. The whole point of taking care of ourselves (in my humble opinion) is so we can take good care of others around us, build great things and make a dent on this planet.

First step though, is taking care of ourselves.

Putting yourself on the holiday priority list

This holiday week has been exceptionally busy. After touching down here last Friday, I was off to Malaysia for a weekend trip and that, of course, was tiring in itself. Following that, I had more family coming in and of course, lots of family outings day in and day out to all the shopping hot spots, sight seeing hot spots etc – you know the drill.

The biggest difference was that this time, I consciously forked out time for myself. Unlike university days, I’ve got to be back at work on Monday morning in a different timezone, so there’s a fair amount of admin work needing completion these holidays. And given my introverted nature, I also need sufficient non-people time to recharge. I had to make tons of compromises of course – many items on the ‘to-do’ list were pushed to January thanks to lower priority and I had to cut down my ‘to-meet’ list of friends to a bare minimum as well and push the rest of the meetings to my next trip down here, and of course, I’m having to not think about football either.


All the trade offs aside, all the high priority admin work has been done, quality time has been spent with family, a couple of meet ups have been planned and I know there’s rest and relaxation waiting for me the entire weekend. It’s been a big learning in managing myself and my happiness – putting myself as the highest priority and ensuring the holiday season stays at the ‘enjoyable’ and not ‘stressful’. Fine line, as always..

Oh, and I also managed to catch a Man United game last night – sign of a healthy holiday!

If we don’t help ourselves, who will after all?

10 questions to sync with ‘me’ – A review tool

The holidays are here and there is no better better time for some good ol’ reflection! In the spirit of looking back, learning, growing, and then looking ahead – here is a self reflection form that I am using myself which I hope would be a useful thought starter.

Please feel free to use the same form, or make edits to design a customized one for yourself of course. And any feedback is always welcome so I can do a better job of it next year!

If you do choose to use this, I would suggest printing out and writing as writing is a neuromuscular activity and can potentially have deeper impact.

I hope you manage to find time to reflect, review and plan ahead for a great year. Do reach out if I can be of help in any way/answer any questions.

Once again, the file is available for download here . Just right click and save as on your computer.

Hope you find it useful!