The first alphabet of understanding is ‘You’

I would call myself a careless person. I’d really find it easy to forget things rather than remember them. As obnoxious as that sounds, it’s true. Recently while packing my suitcase after a short trip at a friend’s place, I started gathering my things two nights prior to my departure date. He looked at me in astonishment and made a joke about how marriage had changed me. My very candid response to that was “in these many years, if I’ve done one thing right, it is of understanding myself”.  

My friend didn’t seem to pay attention to what I said and I continued packing my bag. And then this thought suddenly hit me. Do I really understand myself that much?

To answer this, I did a small social experiment with my group of friends and acquaintances, asking them to describe me in a single word, in 30 seconds. I also made a list of 10 words that I’d like people to think, well when they think of me. Now, after getting a meagre 50% success rate on the right words, I’m confident about writing on this subject that has intrigued me over the past few months.

 After being introduced to mindful living about 6 months ago, I started practicing this in my daily life through simple mediation. And while I’m far from being close to mindful living, my interactions with mindfulness enthusiasts across these months combined with my humble experience, led me to think about the impact this can have in understanding our behaviour and human behaviour in a general sense. And as we progress in this age of technology, under the cloud of complex relationships, a true understanding human behaviour or human emotion can help achieve harmony and prosperity in almost every area of life or business.

So, here’s what I think are the benefits of investing in understanding human behaviour:

 Think Better

I’ve generally been good at sales. Having lined up an awesome list of clients for my startup, I considered myself to be perceived as highly creative in my approach and my ability make beneficial deals. Yet, none in my feedback loop perceived me as creative. Creativity, in fact is quite the overrated term which one associates with radical innovations or unique conceptualisations. In reality, you can simply be creative by changing an ingredient of your favourite recipe, that makes it tastier! Being creative, means to simply and consciously apply your analytical mindset to problems you are presented with, without simply following your intuitions!

To put my mindfulness to test, I decided to be consciously aware of this philosophy when making any small or big decision. Meditation has helped me distinguish between decisions made by my intuitive and analytical minds! Recently, I had 2 minutes with senior members of a large institute, to pitch our product. I’d learnt that the most important criteria for them was authenticity of our product. So, without using any sales pitch or presentation, I opened up the alumni platform of our largest client and in 2 minutes, explained the things we’d done for them and the results we’d achieved. My two-minute meeting, lasted for over an hour!

Do Better

Many times, we come across people who’ve misplaced an important document. May be, a previous medical report or the receipt for an insurance premium. I bet many of you are thinking these people are ‘me’. More often than less, these documents are misplaced because of our inability to store them at an organised and easily accessible place, to begin with! If you spend a few seconds to think about, how you last handled such a piece of paper, you would realise, most probably, that were in a hurry or thinking about something else, wouldn’t you? It’s one thing to understand this and commit to not repeating the mistake. It’s another to actually implement this in our hurried lives J

As cute at this sounds, being actually able to do this, is probably the biggest benefits of practicing mindfulness!

 Feel better

The way I think, happiness is not always about overcoming the challenges in life. It’s also enjoying things that exist in your life, like a relationship or the ability to roam freely, that makes you feel better, daily. My social experiment gave me a 50% opportunity to improve my behaviours. But an equal 50% reason to enjoy my ability to reflect my perceptions through my behaviours. Being mindful is about enjoying these bright sides to your personality by simply being aware, not occupied by them!

Live Better

Humans are programmed to live in patterns, and spot the unusual. Marketers often try to come up with campaigns that can disrupt our natural thinking process, as we’re likely to pay attention to things that disrupt our regular environments by unconsciously perceiving them as risks or threats. And as such, we have the biggest tendency to think of people in our lives, behave or act in a specific way. Any small or big irregularities in this behaviour, is cause for distress and instability in most relationships. To live harmonious social lives, we must overcome our biological tendencies of not just spotting the unusual, but learning to accept and live with them. This is mindfulness!

 I’m no expert on mindful living, but these are some thoughts from my initial experiences. Mindfulness is something I’m very passionate about. It’s just such a simple solution to the many complicated challenges in our life. The solutions are right up here, in our head.

Learning to think is like unboxing a complete different perspective to life. I’ve begun my journey and would love to know your thoughts

 Present yourself a present by being present!

--Anonymous

I started this blog by calling myself careless. But, I forget things because of living in the next moment or thinking of the next thing without focusing on what’s present. Not because I’m careless. Hope you get the point!