Understanding Human Psychology

  I've been observing how pandemic has impacted children since a while now. When pandemic hit first, children were at a greater loss than adults. Adults were already living much of their work lives online, a long while ago prior to pandemic. But school and college children had not seen online lessons. The concept of online learning existed for working professionals and the pandemic enhanced it in full swing. Learning apps got a boost for schools and skill upgradation. What happened emotionally and psychologically with children is a lack of social space to interact and express themselves. We are social by nature and want to live in herd. It is our natural response to stick to our tribe to get the feeling of love, safety, security, belonging, recognition. I saw the same stress and fear, many kind of question marks on my daughter's face too, when I would take her to meet people or our for a walk. But another observation which I have made children who are in their teens are grea...

We should have perspective to life , about how people behave, how things around us should be organised, how our behaviour should be in a given situation. But our perspective is our map of the world. It is our idea of how to live and navigate. As stated in NLP, map is not the territory. So long as our perspectives result in a positive and resourceful state, it seems to work well for us. But do all our perspectives lead to positivity and resourcefulness? We hold biases, negative attitudes, self limiting beliefs, upsetting thoughts in our minds, which are unresourceful. Although perspectives guide our everyday behaviour, but do we want to be guided in the negative and harmful direction? Not really. So by seeking coaching and counseling we can alter our perspectives and be accepting of the maps of other people. We can be more realistic of the objective surroundings and situations. One way you can do it yourself, is to question your ideas when you feel upset, or you feel that the worl...

  Buddha said when the student is ready the teacher appears. This simplified, means that when the student wants to learn, the teacher must be able to transfer his knowledge. As a part of growth and personal development, I attend various events, programs and sessions related to my field. At times I have noticed that the students genuinely want to learn and are motivated to ask questions on the topic, but the speakers have an agenda which they want to follow and not deviate. So when posed with questions many speakers put the question in the parking lot or ignore it altogether, instead of answering it. It could be that it is a challenging question for the speaker to respond to. But still it is his duty to satisfy the curiosity of the audience by answering it. As a trainer myself, I relate to it that is a classroom if we go with an assumption that no person in the audience is smart and they are here to just listen and agree to the trainer, then please that thought is absolutely supp...

  We all have our own beliefs which guide in many aspects of life to take a certain course. Our beliefs also influence our thoughts and feelings towards others, be it family, friends or work colleagues. Whether what we believe is a fact is another debatable topic. But because we have beliefs, we choose certain behaviours and respond in peculiar ways. How are these beliefs formed and why do we live with them or rather do they stay with us throughout life? Can we change these beliefs? Should we? The answer to belief formation isn't simple. It is a process which is a part of personality development. It is formed as a part of experience as we interact with others. But beliefs make us categorise people as good or bad; once we feel that a person is good or bad, we take a firm stand in our minds and it tends to reduce our flexibility towards life. Let me get more specific here. Every behaviour elicits a reaction and that reaction usually is a definate or confirmed response which we giv...

  In a training session, I recently learnt about an inspiring story of a 13 year old Chennai based girl, M Nethra. The real life hero and inspiration did not know what her good deal would give her in return until it really did. The story goes, that when the first lockdown struck there were many people who were left stranded on the road, without food, without adequate supply of ration, and money to meet the daily expenses. These people, mostly the daily wage earners, at that point of time, thought that they should leave for their villages to survive or else they would have to perish in poverty. Due to the sudden announcement of lockdown and closure of state transport systems, they had only one choice, that is walk many many miles to reach their destination. They had extremely a little money to survive and they thought the best way to survive for long term is to go to their hometowns as there was no mode of earning left in the city. Their plight was all in the news and was known to...