Shadow Cat

The title may have you believe that I refer to the popular member of X-Men (who by the way is Shadowcat, one word), a new, sinister, back alley, comic villain set to disrupt life in New York City (or the monk life in Tibet if you prefer), or just a kitten roaming the ledges outside your bedroom window at night, at a distance from the street lamp that casts a feline shadow large enough to scare the bejesus out of you. If we let our imagination run wild, shadow cat could also mean an eclipse involving the sun, the moon, and Halle Berry. I have written a few blogs now and none of them have featured my customary ‘pj’ (poor jokes) so I had to put this in here. Anyway, let’s move on.

The term ‘shadow’ to me apart from the mute scary black thing that follows us around, has meant to learn a trade, task, or skill by observing someone else do it. It’s something that can be practiced in any conceivable profession or aspect of our personal lives. Usually, when a fresh recruit arrives at a company, she is asked to ‘shadow’ a more seasoned pro to learn the practical ropes of the trade. We learn not just physical skills like construction, engineering techniques, healthcare delivery, farming, cooking, stealing, tying one’s shoelaces, and stapling a bunch of papers, but also soft skills like negotiating, selling, coaching, manipulating, throwing tantrums, and snoring, by shadowing people that excel at these skills. I believe in learning by doing and observing. In fact, being a big advocate of sport and someone that has played a fair amount in my younger days, I believe shadow practice plays an important part in many sports, especially ones that involve a ball, like cricket, table tennis, and tennis. The idea is to practice one’s technique by observing one’s shadow, without the use of an actual ball. I wish they had this option available during school examinations as well, where we would imagine writing our answers and not have to actually pen them on paper.

Shadowing people through the course of my life has added tremendous impetus and growth to my being. Not only did I draw value by observing leaders at work, veterans on my sports team, seniors at the university, family members, and George W Bush, but also the unsuspecting mentors in my daily life that genuinely made me feel positive and empowered. And that for me has been the key to forming more holistic and sound attributes. A majority of us only look as far as the physical or verbal nature of an art form. We feel that as long as we learn how to build, or program, or repair, or present well by shadowing people, we will become perfect specimens in our professional and personal lives. We feel that mastering skills that appear on a typical job advertisement is what it takes to excel. Providing a big home, fast cars, regular exotic vacations, and material goods, makes us feel like irrefutable success stories in our personal and family lives. Sure, these skills are important but shouldn’t we learn more about the people we shadow, which is every one of essence around us? No matter what our profession is, where in the world we live, what our principles and cultural outlook are, there is one common tie to us all: relationships with other humans.

We pay attention to what our mentors do and how they do it but rarely dwell deep into why they do it. We spend little time understanding the man or woman behind the machine. We see everything our eyes show us but very little of the unseen that our mind is capable of perceiving. We want to learn a skill quickly and be one of the top dogs as soon as possible but we fail to grasp the essence of being a leader. We misconstrue a designation for the position of a leader. A leader is made not only on her superlative abilities to deliver results, fluent communication, great decision-making skills, commitment to the cause, brilliant creativity, or the ability to create irresistible strategies. A leader is also made on her abilities to gain the trust of others by being inspirational and not by power or authority. She flourishes by her facility to understand people and empathize with them. She is respected by being accountable for problems and sharing the credit for success. And she is an indomitable leader when she can stimulate those around her to act beyond their own needs. To be able to do this, it’s not only important to know what people can do, but also who they are.

When we observe to learn and grow it seems almost selfish in nature. As long as we derive whatever value we can to help ourselves, we don’t feel the need to look beyond. Almost every candidate I have interviewed for a job has spoken about how they would want to learn and grow, but rarely has one spoken about the contribution they would like to make. We learn as much from giving as we do from taking. By giving, we understand the true extent of our intent and abilities that take us beyond the threshold for success we create in our minds. So even if it’s for purely self-oriented reasons, understanding people and contributing to their growth will, in turn, promote ours to new heights. When we observe (and I don’t mean going around being the peeping tom in your locality) with empathy and the intent to understand people it becomes innate over time and we become better leaders and humans.

Shadowing fills us with knowledge but eventually stepping out of the shadows to make contributions beyond the self rewards us with wisdom, courage, and inspiration.

 

‘I’ Specialists

It’s amazing how often I come across people that seem to have all the answers. More accurately, they seem to think they have the answers to any question or situation they encounter, ranging from how to cook Baked Alaska (or even a Heston Blumenthal masterpiece) and which player would be the perfect signing for the New York Yankees (and also wonder why they never get called to serve as the rightful general manager), to what the next big financial investment should be (until it crashes, because the fund manager didn’t follow their strategy) and how to solve traffic problems in large metros (and yet they seem to be stuck in it all the time). My father calls them ‘I’ specialists.

More worryingly, how often do we fall prey to this ‘I know it all’ attitude? How often do we consciously and willingly adopt this mannerism? Whether we’re sitting in a conference and listening to experts in our fields (we seethe quietly at having to sit in the audience while someone with seemingly less knowledge speaks on the dais at that conference), helping our daughter with her studies (we truly believe that the people that designed the education system at her school didn’t have an education themselves), working on a team project at college (we emphasize that if our plan was accepted for the college presentation, our team would soar to success, and if it didn’t, despite our plan being implemented, it wasn’t done in all earnestness by our teammates), discussing maters on anything from movies to politics (we are certain that if we wore the director’s cap, we would produce Oscar winning movies every year, and also have the perfect response to all political matters, even if it was devoid of factual information or reason), and even in our daily demeanor (from how to arrange the crockery to how to deal with the housemaid), we tend to close our minds to suggestions because we feel we are equipped with more knowledge than others, are smarter, and therefore know best.

A know-it-all is a person who knows everything except for how annoying he is – Demetri Martin

We feel we know better than our kids, our parents, our spouse, our friends, our co-workers, our teachers, doctors, the prime minister, the national cricket selection committee, and even our building security personnel (about who is going in and out of the building daily).

Yet, somehow the bitter turn of events along the way seem to baffle us. Despite, having all the possible knowledge (at least the illusion of knowledge that we consider to be Gospel) at our disposal, we fall short on various fronts. Some of us barely notice and for those of us that do, we shirk it off as shortcomings of our environment and the people in it.

Those who think they know it all have no way of finding out they don’t – Leo Buscaglia

If indeed we did know it all, why is that we need external courses to improve our professional skills to meet the evolving nature of our work and industry? Why are we able to convert only a small percentage of prospects into clients? Why do we not always score well in examinations (Let alone obtaining a perfect score)? Why do we not win every sports fantasy tournament we participate in considering we have the best team selection process? Why do we need Google maps to help us get to locations in a city where we have lived our entire lives? How come we don’t know what our father does for a living? Why is it that we fail to understand our children (Although we tend to believe it’s them that fails to understand us, where in reality the failure to understand is likely on both sides)? Why do we often annoy or upset people (this isn’t our intention now, is it?) around us if we always know the right things to say? How come we don’t curtail our alcohol and cigarette consumption despite the health warnings on the packaging (What do the manufacturers know?)? Why is that our spouse wears a quiet forlorn look if we really know how to keep him/her happy?

We feel like scholars on every subject, but if we were to put ourselves to the test we would fail tasks we perform daily. Do we really know the correct way to hang toilet paper in the bathroom? Or how to brush our teeth with the right technique? Or how to change the gears in our car in the most optimum manner? Or even that Santa Claus isn’t real (If you’re under ten years of age, you didn’t read this here)? Do we even know ourselves well? We may be aware of trivial things like our choices in food, entertainment, technology, travel and so on, but do we understand ourselves well enough to know what drives our happiness? Do we truly understand how to use our gifts to fulfill our destiny and help others around us?

In our quest to massage our egos, and prove ourselves to be one up over others, we close ourselves to new information and lose out on the opportunity to actually assimilate knowledge. I believe we can learn from anyone and any situation. We must learn to be humble students our entire lives. It may be a clichéd statement, but it was born out of necessity, wasn’t it? An open mind leads to knowledge, knowledge leads to wisdom, and wisdom leads to common sense, benevolence, fulfillment, and happiness. Kaching!!

Keep Your Inner Child Alive And Kicking

“Why?” “Because this is the way it’s done” “Why?” “Because this is how it’s meant to be” “Why?” “Because it makes perfect sense” “Why?” And then you lose your shirt and say “Because I said so, and if you ask any more questions I will put you up for sale on eBay” And how does your child respond to that? Yes, you got it, “Why?” (They never seem to sense real danger when it’s staring them in the face).

That’s the beauty of being a child. They are as curious as the human genes allow them to be and will get their questions answered under any circumstances, without the slightest apprehension (I think it’s their lack of wisdom really. I mean they have no idea what it feels like to have their head bashed in with a sledgehammer, or being locked in with the rest of your collectible action figures in the display case, or when you come home after a tiring day at work and your sister-in-law is there to surprise you (even the toughest navy seals will go into cardiac arrest upon meeting mine), or to go sari shopping where the average purchase rate is zero saris for every twenty-three stores visited, and even when your wife asks “Who’s that?”).

I have been involved in more verbal jousting with my three-year-old daughter compared to anyone else in my life (Jousting is meant to be a fair competition and therefore debates with the wife don’t count). She asks what comes to mind, as soon as it pops into her head. She doesn’t care about what I or anyone else will think. She has no semblance of self-image to an extent that will prevent her from addressing her insatiable hunger to learn and grow, every minute of her life (They are not completely devoid of self-image. She most certainly expects a reaction from us after she has managed to embellish her face with the prohibited ‘mama’s lipstick’, that she has somehow managed to lay her hands on. And even when she manages to operate 5 applications at once, again on the prohibited mobile phone, while at age three, I was still trying to tell my right hand from my left). And this is the pattern I have seen with every child of her age that I have had the privilege (this association also deflates my ego, considering these children grasp things with precision, at the speed of light, while I’m still trying to tell the front of my daughter’s diapers from the back) of spending time with during playdates, which are specifically designed to allow parents to gossip and crib.

Somehow, when we get past single digits, we seem to become hypersensitive towards anything, anyone might think about us. And these need not be just our relatives, friends, or acquaintances, but also, strangers, we commute with while using public transportation, passers-by while we walk about our town or city (evidently some of us do not experience this dilemma when we decide to litter the streets), street dogs going about their business as usual, and even our mobile phone camera. We’re our innate bumbling and boisterous selves during childhood, and at some stage in early adolescence we lose our ability to speak openly, and instead choose to hide in the crowd. As many questions as we ask in our kindergarten years, the numbers dwindle towards negligible as we approach high school, before disappearing completely. Our fear of potentially making a fool of ourselves completely overpowers our instinctive curiosity. We rarely ask questions as students (I have had a couple of experiences where I was mocked for asking certain questions as a student and it did put me in my shell for some time. However, I figured that it may not have been a case of stupid questions as much a case of the teacher not knowing the answers, based on their reactions at the time), we refuse to put forth our thoughts at the workplace that might be contrary to what our seniors believe, we shy away from giving our opinion on fashion to the so-called ‘fashionista’ in our friend circle (fearing an open backlash and humiliation), and we even conceal our true feelings from the people that really matter.

The more we worry about what people might think, the more opportunities to learn, pass us by. We curb our inner child in the fear that we might be labeled as childish (Now I’m not saying that we throw a fit when a bar of chocolate is taken away from us, or that we walk around wearing diapers, or even pinch the neighbor lady to see how she reacts). However, what would you think of yourself if you spent years of your life worrying about others’ opinions about you? What if this obsession prevented you from doing the things that really mattered to you and you never allowed yourself to reach your potential?

No matter what we do, or don’t do, some people will always think well of us and some won’t. We can’t keep everyone happy and it is this quest that puts us on a downward spiral towards misery. Only when we question, learn, and grow, do we realize our true passions and our true potential. And upon obtaining both, we will be able to serve ourselves and the world to the best of our abilities. This is the mindset that has created word leaders (Mahatma Gandhi wasn’t worried about people commenting on his less than impressive physique as he walked around bare-chested with steel in his eyes and a fiery resolve. Steve Jobs didn’t care about public opinion on his dressing, as he wore a black sweatshirt and blue denims, tirelessly, day in and day out. Donald J. Duck cares a hoot about people’s opinions on his speeches, as long as he gets to open his mouth often and provide the world plenty of fodder for mockery).

I too have fallen victim to this ridiculous, self-created mind game of public opinion several times in my life. In my late thirties now, I’m playing catch up on a lot of things I could have, and should have done during the earlier stages of my life. However, I feel at peace that I have empowered myself to get out of this rigmarole. So for those of you in your teens and twenties, it’s a good time to reflect upon the choices you make (or don’t make) because of your concern about the public eye. And for my fellow oldies, it’s never too late to start.

Honor yourself by being true to your curiosity and growth. Else you’ll have to face tough situations like I do from some of my aunts who never cease to say “Oh my God, you’ve grown so much since the last time I saw you”. And I respond with “Only in the middle aunty, only in the middle”.