Why we take "Poor Decisions"

I wrote a tiny post on good, bad and poor decisions (blunder).

Making a bad decision is understandable. But why do we make blunders. When we are in the capacity of making a good decisions, why are we converting them to poor decisions? Do we like shooting at our own foot? Of course, not.

Researchers say, we have two minds. Have you ever experienced the dilemma in your life? One of your minds say "i do not want eat another scoop of ice cream" and yet another mind finds excuses "i will take another scoop and compensate with additional workout". The next morning, one of the minds thinks that "i had ice cream yesterday and now i should get up from bed and go for a walk" and yet another mind says "it seems like it is cloudy out and it may rain". Another example is shopping. Buying things way more than our need and what we can afford. I am sure that each one of us would have took several poor decisions in life only to repent later.

Our brain has two minds. The truth is that one mind is rational and the another mind is emotional. Emotional brain is mighty and powerhouse. The Rational (animals don't have this) one is tiny and succumb when there is a tug of war with emotional. First we need to understand that emotional mind is capable of making "poor" decisions as the decisions are taken based on "what it likes" but not on "merit". But the rational part takes decisions as it names says "rationally".

Understanding that we have two minds and accepting that we take emotional decisions and constantly using "rational" side would help us make better decisions. Making better decisions is a habit. Unless anything forms as a habit, the results ought be inconsistent and unpredictable.

Bottom line: Practice to use rational side to make "right" decisions. It is a long term process.

Good, Bad and Poor Decisions

(Not a) Rocket Science: Good Decisions Vs Bad Decisions Vs Poor Decisions

Good decisions - Well thought out and the decision seems to be correct

Bad decisions (there are limitations) - Not well thought out and the outcome is not so great. There are some shortcomings that are outside of your control. You do not have expertise to decide but the situation is such that you need to take decisions. You learn something new. It is failure.

Poor decisions (limiting oneself) - Not well thought out again and the outcome is not so great. But there is a difference here. You had all information at your disposal or you have access to get those information with little to no effort. You screwed it. This is NOT a failure. This is a blunder.

There is a hell a lot of difference between a failure and blunder.

A failure gives you confidence that you will do it after learning and a blunder gives an impression that you lack commitment.

Don't Just Scream

Many times, we see people who just scream (aka articulations, speeches and anything that boils down to inaction). They scream at cockroaches, the politicians who never work in public interest, someone in traffic who just zipped across on to their way, their teammate who doesn't understand what is work, their managers who is root cause of all their problems, the wall they dashed at. They have all sort of things and whole a lot of time to scream, just scream (at different places, volumes and languages, like this one ;-) ).

Screams are not tools. Screams are just annoying thing and negativity. Actions are tools for correction, action is positive, action brings in change, action leads to transformation, action leads to evolution, action leads to natural growth. Scream can't just bring anything but high blood pressure. When you are acting on a problem, the scream is "ok" and people will bear with you or relate to you. For some people scream is natural when they focus. A star tennis player screams when she plays a difficult shot, when she stretches a lot and she screams because of pain and the pain gives her energy to focus. But not just screams. Screams are just shit. So, please show something in action when you scream. If you do that, you look lovely.

Have a Fantastic Saturday

Leadership 101 - Be Level Headed

Sometimes when I do extreme things or things that are extreme to my capabilities (like jogging for 10 kilometers continuously), I feel superior and bump people like a maniac. When I m faced with an athlete who knocks off 40 kilometers consistently, I fall down and I consider inferior to them. Factually, it is a absolute truth but generally we are more psychological than factual. We need a fact to either boost or ditch things. We never treat and behave based on the facts.

I have also written couple of posts on Emotional Intelligence and this is a overlap between this post and those. It is quite essential for leaders to stand on their legs. Because of the position they decorate and the number of decisions they take everyday, it is reasonable to say that the decisions they make create an impact (positive or negative) on every stakeholders. If you are a born jerk, it is quite true that all the decisions you are going to make will be bad decisions.

It is quite essential that one should start living a level headed life - not get carried away with successes and failures emotionally. Take them as a fact to add up your experience and move on.

How to Build Emotional Intelligence - Get Rid Of Psychological Memory

It is easier said than done. My journey towards building emotional intelligence is very painful. But I believe that I can endure the pain because at the end of the day it makes me a nice and pleasant guy. On the way, I tend to learn so many things about humanity, human relations, psychology, how to get away from "don't walk the talk people" and yet to unaffected or affect negligibly.

Human beings have excellent memory - many many billions of terabytes. The wonderful thing about human beings is that they forget even the biggest blunders when there have benefits and they tend to blow up small mistakes which goes to an extent of taking a revenge. We need to build the habit of selective amnesia - the ability to forget our psychological memory. This is the key aspect for building emotional intelligence.

There are two types of memory - factual and psychological memory. For example, when your close friend does some unpardonable mistake which you cannot digest, you feel so much pain - the real pain due to the wound and the psychological pain due to your friend's action. In reality, it is the psychological pain that causes so much wound and prevails beyond the physical wound. You tend to spoil your inner well being and your low emotional intelligence erupts in many forms but mostly yelling at others or at your friend. The yell causes more damage to you than to your friend. The first step towards building emotional intelligence is to forget psychological but retaining the factual memory (which adds to your knowledge base) to add the scenario as your learning. The second step towards better Emotional Intelligence is getting rid of psychological memory.

Other posts on Emotional Intelligence can be accessed via this link

How to Build Emotional Intelligence?

You might have seen how a short tempered and ill tempered behave with lot of emotions. Irrespective of whether your emotional intelligence is high or low, everyone's reaction to a situation will be spontaneous and natural. If you happen to possess low emotional intelligence you will certainly overdo things at an emotional level and hence you may be perceived as "immature" guy. If you look the scenario and how your brain processes these behaviors, you will agree that you cannot be look emotionally good if you aren't really emotionally good. If you do, then your action will not be natural and people will see that you are acting. This perception is quite dangerous than perceived as ill-tempered guy. For others, it is absolutely essential that you appear as authentic guy (again, it is not hard and fast rule that you should appear authentic. Anyway, the world is willing to deal only with authentic. You decide). So acting like a good tempered guy is not the way how you should improve your emotional intelligence. How can you improve? Here is my personal experience on how I am improving my emotional intelligence.

Our brain, which weight roughly three pounds has thousands of miles of cells and still the scientists are figuring out from where the decision is coming from exactly. For each thing that comes out of you, need to be approved by the gatekeeper – the brain. The scientists are moderately successful in studying brain cells and also as components. But the research is still on to study brain as neural circuitry. The study will reveal how, we, the human beings process the information. I am looking for some research results about emotional intelligence. However, I do not want to wait until the results are published and want to do the experiment on my own which is generally the hard way. For the first time, I want to be a monkey or rat in my own lab to improve my emotional intelligence.

One of the things that I found recently is that one cannot improve emotional intelligence by going opposite to your emotions. For example, when you are hungry you just need the food. When you are angry, you need to vent it out, when you are happy, you got to hug your friend. So, I do not believe in the concept of counting numbers or biting nails or whatever. When you do that, your emotions simply takes another form. But my point about emotional intelligence is ability to stand on your opinion and yet considering the perspective of others without taking any sidelines.

The emotions are building blocks of human relationship and certainly when you overdo certain emotions, it becomes an issue. As long as you are not stepping out and overdoing things, it is not a problem. But, in case, you are overdoing it, you need to be little careful in getting your thoughts across and check with others how you interacted with them. This can simply be done by making a third person (your friend or well wisher) to watch you when you react and give you feedback. In worst case, you can record your reaction in a video/audio and analyze yourself. This is the first step – capturing the data. This data should show you some evidence whether you need reconstruction.

The next step is to accept your current state and work on improving yourself. The first step, identifying your emotional intelligence, will be easier. But accepting it is very difficult as you have to convince your ego that you are not good and needs improvement. There is a difference between someone telling you that you are bad and you thinking that you are bad. If someone tells you that "you are bad", it is not end of world. But when you start to think that you are bad, you may end in getting inferiority complex and eaten up by low confidence. So, it is highly important that you do not lose "SELF" but yet work on it. So, always think about so many good things you have and work on those traits that need improvement. This is where your friend or well wisher can help you to sail through by giving those crucial feedbacks and also appreciate and cheer you up. If you can work on improving your emotions to other's emotions, it will be great not only in professional career but also at personal life.

If you are thinking that you can improve your emotional intelligence by not reacting to others, it is wrong. You cannot improve emotional intelligence by looking at others or by just reading books. It has to be an experience because you need train your brain and the neurons in the brain when you want the change to be ever lasting. It is like archery, swimming and life. You got to live and learn with it. But if you are satisfied with temporary solution, you can tell your brain to do “the acting” (which again is not good for you). It is the time and efforts that will help you to improve your emotional intelligence, not books, not case studies, not training. I have tried this approach and it works very slowly. I believe that this is the only way how one can build emotional intelligence and any other short cuts do not work at all. It might be slow, but it is effective and ever lasting.

So, sounds good? Have any thoughts?

Other posts on Emotional Intelligence can be accessed via this link

PS: If you want to here from a subject matter expert about Emotional Intelligence, refer the works of Daniel Goleman. He is authority in EI.