Self-Deception - Life's biggest hurdle !!

Recently read something interesting about Self-Deception in Leadership Wired newsletter written by Dr. John Maxwell. Self-Deception is the inability to see that one has a problem. It is resistance to the suggestion that one has a problem. According to Dr.Maxwell of all problems in organizations self-deception is the most common and most damaging.

Accepting one's own faults or mistakes is not easy. This is so true with majority of people including myself. Though I fail to understand why it is so. This of course differs from person to person. I have always had difficulty accepting my faults gracefully. I am working on this but I have a long way to go. I really wish there was some easy way to do this. But human feelings are very complicated and hard to understand. I am not giving up, I'll keep trying. I hear that Self-Esteem is an important factor that helps in being able to openly accept one's short-comings and learn from mistakes. Probably, building Self-Esteem would be a good place to start with.

NBA - The Finals 2006!!

Sports or watching different games on TV has never been my favorite activity. I happened to watch Game 1 of the NBA Finals on Thursday and to my surprise I quite enjoyed it. Of course, one of the big reason was Dallas Mavericks. What is amazing is this 2-3 hour basketball game is extremely fast-paced and totally kept me involved all the time. Just like movies, or plays, or any other TV show, it is amazing how these games can help us forget about everything else and just enjoy the moments. It actually is quite a relaxing activity.

I am now quite excited and want to watch the remaining games of the NBA finals as well with the hope that Mavericks win this years championship.

"What To Say When You Talk To Your Self" - by Shad Helmstetter!!

Recently I read the book "What to Say When You Talk to Your Self" by Shad Helmstetter. The author of this book says that whatever we say, think, or write has an effect on our sub-conscious mind. Our brain receives the messages that we give - silently, by speaking them out, or by writing. After some point of time, with repeated messages, our sub-conscious mind starts believing what ever we say, be it negative or positive. In this book, the author explains about a revolutionary technique called Self-Talk that can remove all the negative programming that is already in our mind and replace it with new, positive and vital energy.

The author says that our success or failure is controlled by the following key things.
- Behavior (what we do or do not do)
- Feelings (how we feel about something)
- Attitudes (perspectives with which we view life)
- Beliefs (what we believe about anything)
- Programming (our conditioning say from childhood)

He says that these five key factors play a great role in the kind of results we get, because programming creates our beliefs, beliefs create our attitudes, attitudes create our feelings, feelings determine our behavior/action, and actions create results. So it is very important for our minds to have the correct programming. He shows through various examples that many of us have a negative programming. He explains the Self-Talk techniques in great detail to achieve good and positive results in our day-to-day life starting with simple techniques such as phrases that we should use in life and ones that we should avoid.

This book is a good read especially for those who enjoy reading self-help books. Here are a few lines from this book that I liked the most.

" You are everything that is,
Your thoughts, your life, your dreams come true.
You are everything you choose to be.
You are as unlimited as the endless universe. "

"Ray" & "Walk the Line" - movie!!

I saw the movie 'Ray' a couple of weeks back. It was on my wishlist since a long time but kept getting pushed back in the list as it is not a thriller or a fast-paced movie. Only after watching this movie I realized how wrong I was. This is a movie about the life of 'Ray Charles' with Jamie Foxx playing the role of Ray. It is an excellent movie with very good performance by Jamie Foxx. I thoroughly enjoyed all the songs in the movie - no wonder Ray Charles was such a popular singer, pianist and song-writer. He came up with the concept of soul music. This movie shows how he struggled with his blindness, overcame all obstacles, and made an extraordinary career for himself. It is a very inspriring story. This movie also shows the negative side of his life, i.e., getting involved with drugs and women.

"Ray" has a quite some resemblance with "Walk the Line" which is another very good movie about the life of Johnny Cash, another very popular singer, guitarist and song-writer. The role of Johnny Cash is played by Joaquin Phoenix in this movie. This movie also has excellent songs and very good performance by Joaquin and Reese Withersppon. The lives of both Ray Charles and Johnny Cash have many similarities. Both of them faced a childhood tragedy which they could never forget. Both of them saw their dear brother die by accident during their childhood days and somehow held themselves responsible for it. Both of them got involved with drugs and women. Finally they get into rehabilitation. Through therapy they get away from drugs and also get rid of the guilt they have carried since childhood.

Both these movies are very enjoyable for those who enjoy music and like to watch inspiring movies about people who struggled to make an extraordinary career.

"Blink:The power of thinking without thinking" - by Malcolm Gladwell!!

Last month I read "Blink". This book mainly talks about the power of thoughts that happen in a blink, i.e., a couple of seconds. These thoughts are from the subconscious and can have positive as well as negative affects. The author gives many examples, tests, and statistics where such thoughts from the subconscious mind are involved.
This book is very informative and an interesting read. Though at the end, I felt incomplete. I didn't quite get the purpose. Probably it is just me who feels incomplete if there is no message at the end. Probably the purpose of this book was just to make ourselves aware that everyone has these kind of subconscious thoughts. Whenever we are trying to judge something, we use these thoughts. In many cases our thoughts are correct, but at the same time, we might be wrong sometimes. So it is good to be aware of that. I do recommend this book to you.

"Chariots of Fire" - movie!!

Finally I saw the movie "Chariots of Fire" this weekend. I wanted to watch it since a long time. It is a very good and inspirational one. The movie is slow-paced but I didn't get bored at all. It is about the life of two athletes who participated and won in the 1924 Olympics. The movie shows the contrasting characters of these two athletes.

- One of them is a missionary and runs because he believes God made him real fast. He fulfills his duty towards God by running. Whenever he runs, he feels he is serving God. The faster he runs, he experiences more pleasure and joy. 'Ian Charleson' played this role and did an awesome job. Whenever he runs, you actually see his facial expressions change, and the joy on his face. I thought the movie was worth watching just for that.

- The second athlete is a Jew and a student at Cambridge. He is full of frustration and anger because of the discrimination he faces and constantly wants to prove himself. He knows he is fast and wants to prove to the world that he is the fastest runner. He has a different kind of drive and motivation to win.'Ben Cross' played this role and you can see a different kind of emotion when he runs. He is serious and all he can think of are the prejudices and wants to prove himself to the upper class society of Britain.

This movie has very good background music. The music so aptly depicts the zeal in the athletes. The movie also has some very beautiful and scenic locations. On the whole an excellent movie with a good message - "We can perform our best in a job that we really like, enjoy, and feel passionate about. When we feel this kind of fire in our hearts, nothing can stop us from winning."

Jumping out of an airplane!!

In the last couple of weeks, I heard about skydiving experiences from three independent sources, totally out of the blue(probably some kind of a sign :-) ). All of them had only good things to say about it - awesome, memorable and enthralling. After hearing from them I got tempted and added this to my list of 'Things to do in my lifetime'. But I don't know if I will ever succeed at that for a number of reasons.
- Firstly, I have to overcome my fear of free-fall(worst of all fears).
- Jumping out of a plane at a 12000 feet altitude sounds crazy.
- What if the parachute fails to open-up?
- What if the winds carries me away and I don't land at the correct place?
- and so on... this list is quite long...
Inspite of all the buts, I know that once I take the plunge, it will be over in a few seconds. Those few seconds will be a lifetime experience - flying through the clouds, approaching land at a high speed and then suddenly being pulled back up by the parachute.

This weekend I heard a speech on 'The power of the word'. The speaker said that if one has a dream, they should tell people around them about it. For example, here I am telling you that I will 'jump out of an airplane' one day. It seems that 'the power of word' is such that I eventually will be able to do it, inspite of all fears. The reason being, there is always some person whom I told about my dream, coming back to me and asking, 'so what happened to that thing you said you would do, did you do it?' - duh.. I'll be ashamed to say 'no, not yet'. I will probably feel responsible for my words, get pushed into fulfilling this wonderful dream someday, and finally get rid of my fear forever! I will soon write on my skydiving experience :-).

Welcome!!

My friends introduced me to the concept of blogging. I enjoyed reading their blogs. I spent some time thinking if I should start mine as well. I kept thinking "why bother?". After spending quite some time reading others blogs, now I have realized that this is a great way of sharing thoughts, day-to-day experiences, interesting incidents in life, or just about anything. So here I am.

I am not exactly sure what I am going to be writing about. But I am sure this will be a learning experience.