After sharing some of these practices with many different people from myriad walks of life, I decided to put these down in the form of a small article. It would bring me joy to know if you found it useful and worthwhile to incorporate one or some of these in your own life. Its not a one way street and I would love to know what are yours.
1. 1:1 Conversations: I have moved to 1:1, more meaningful conversations instead of group participation on whatsapp. I dedicate strictly 5 mins in a day to skim through the messages to know whats up with everyone on groups. And then, I reach out to the folks individually to have a conversation and connect at a deeper level than the class participation of Whatsapp. It helps me connect better with the few I want to wish, speak to or just check on. It also helps me understand how they are doing much better than just a global level “Hi” or “Happy Birthday”. Occasionally if time & technology permits, I just call and speak to some – both friends & extended family.
2. Gratitude: Every single day, I write one thing that I’m thankful for. I haven’t repeated the reason for gratitude since almost 90 days now and every day I am able to find a reason to smile. It sometimes is as simple and mundane like a sunny weather, a perfectly made pav bhaji, getting the time to watch a good movie, having people around to talk about things that matter, receiving a heart touching testimonial from someone I coached and yeah I can go on and on. There are enough and more reasons to be thankful for than we often realize. We had started this tradition as a family of writing thank you notes every day before sleeping and we would put these in a jar. At the end of the month, we’ll take these out and read the things we all were grateful for. This brought immense joy and appreciation for the life we’re leading. I highly recommned doing it with your kids (if you have any) and you’ll know for yourself how it changes perspectives.
3. Flow & Energy: Outside of my office work, I consciously pick up activities that get me in a flow (where I’m so absorbed in the activity that I lose track of time) and energize me (get me in a state of high energy). Flow for me, comes from reading, my open space sessions with people and learning something new for a reason and a purpose. Energy on the other hand is from biking with my family, passionate discussions about certain topics, cooking (in general) and playing games with family/ friends. Long introspective walks for me are a bit of both, be it in the lap of nature or along the marina.
4. Choose to add value instead of jumping on bandwagon: This is both from a work and personal standpoint. There are too many things happening all around us. Black lives matter, COVID closures, deaths due to health and depression, not being able to get back to our families etc. We don’t have to react to everything that comes our way. There are places I can make a difference, and others where I don’t feel too strongly about or am not equipped to add value. I choose to focus on the former and be aware of the latter. At work, I try to focus on what value do I add to every work that I do. How having me in the role I’m in, will make a difference to the way things are done and decisions which are made. I’m open to ideas and implement ways to make decision making objective; and automate & streamline the ground work. I choose to either contribute or stay away. If I’m not adding value (by working or spreading the word or by any other means), I don’t want my time on it – thinking or working.
5. Efficiency: This is how I find solutions to optimize my time. Actively participating in social media never came naturally to me – whether it was Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram or anything. What I also realized was that there were some things worth sharing like what caught my attention when I visited a place, new things I learnt during my travels, food I tried that became a part of my life and memories that popped up every now and then which spread joy. Expecting myself to dutifully do it on a daily basis was too much for me, so I sought out scheduling applications where I could schedule my Instagram posts sharing these memories of travel – something I love, brought to a standstill by pandemic. This did two things. I could schedule many of them together which made it efficient as once I am in a flow it is easier to pick the choicest memories from a place and share what made it special. Second, it was automated so my bandwidth was free to focus on other things.
Most of us are aware of many of these things but may be we don’t consciously practise it. Gratitude and Flow are proven ways of more positive disposition from both a psychological and neuroscientific perspective. I have just added to this my lens of RoI for my time to ensure I’m making a difference somewhere, where it matters.