Understanding Human Psychology

I have often heard people say to me, "How do you get it all right?" How do you manage a child and your career? How did you do your PhD while working? How do you study, work, write a book, keep learning, and still manage your family? How do you make your child study while managing your own work? Sometimes I smile because the question itself assumes that I have figured out some secret formula. I haven't. In fact, I don't think there is such a thing as a perfect work-life balance anymore. I think it is more about work-life integration. The boundaries are not always clear. While helping my child study, I may also have my laptop open. While working, I may take a call from home. While I'm at work, I may suddenly wonder whether my child has reached home or what she must be doing at school. And when I am finally in bed, supposedly in my "personal time", my mind may already be planning what needs to happen the next morning. That's life. We try so hard to sepa...

There was a time when, if someone had asked me to stand on a stage and speak, I would have wanted to disappear. Once upon a time, it was me. I too was a shy child, constantly wondering whether people accepted me. Whether I was good enough. Whether I belonged. It took me years to realize that not everyone's acceptance matters, and even among those who matter, only to a certain extent. Some lessons cannot be taught. They can only be experienced. This was one of them. For many years, I was just one among the many. Today, I know I am the one among the many. Not because I am better than anyone else, but because I have found my inner strength and my own reassurance. I still remember where it all began. I was standing on a stage for an elocution competition. A frightened little girl looking at a room full of teachers and students. I could feel the judging eyes on me. The expressionless faces made me even more nervous. I hated every second of that moment. My body gave up before my mind did...

I recently came across an article about AI "reading the room." The idea was fascinating. Imagine you're facilitating a workshop or leading a meeting, and AI is continuously analyzing the room. It tells you whether people are engaged, whether they are distracted, whether your energy has dropped, or whether you need to change your approach. As someone who has facilitated learning sessions for many years, I had mixed feelings. Facilitation has never been just about knowing the content. It is about being present. It is about noticing the person who suddenly sits back in their chair, the participant who leans forward because something sparked curiosity, the one who hesitates before speaking, or the smile that tells you an example has landed well. It is about sensing the energy in the room and adapting in real time. Can AI do that? Maybe, to some extent. It can probably detect facial expressions, body posture, eye contact, speaking patterns, or periods of silence. It may even t...

  Take your work seriously. Don't take yourself too seriously." I recently heard this thought in a podcast featuring Kunal Shah, and it stayed with me long after the podcast ended. He spoke about how there have been brilliant thinkers, inventors, and leaders who have done extraordinary work, and yet, over time, many of them have faded into history. He even mentioned how people working at the Bombay Stock Exchange didn't know who its founder was. It made me pause. We spend so much of our lives worrying about what people think of us, whether we are successful enough, whether this one meeting went well, whether someone appreciated our work, whether this week has been good or bad. We carry the weight of every little event as though it defines our entire life. But does it really? I don't think the message is to become careless. In fact, I think it's quite the opposite. Take your work seriously. Do it honestly. Do it sincerely. Give it your best. Learn from it. But don...

  Ive forever been pro learning from the times of my college days. Untill school I felt I did not have a choice of what I wanted to study about. But then in college, I had almost all the subjects of my choice. I loved to study for the fondness of knowing more about the topic, especially when the subject was psychology. I also noticed that the teachers one encounters are also responsible to bring out the interest of the student in that subject. And touchwood all my psychology teachers were those kind of teachers who developed our interests and engagement. After that time, I learnt and loved to study. I completed my graduation in entire psychology and then masters. While I was at work, there was a time when I was dealing with labour and thats when learning about labour laws was what I invested my time in, my second masters was the reason behind it. But curiosity kills the cat! So I went on to invest my everything to my PhD studies, it took years, money, effort and a lot lot of brain ...