How to control emotions: anger, frustration, agony?

Anger is the base emotion. Frustration and Agony are the derived emotions from Anger. So I will talk about Anger and probably rest will be covered automatically. Question is why does one become angry? From my experience almost in all the situations one becomes angry only when we have expectations which are not met. These expectations can be from colleague, relative, friend, or even with oneself. So the simple way to control the Anger is not to have expectations.

Come on… it is impractical to not have expectations from anyone.

Well next best thing that can be done is FORGIVE. One has to understand that everyone is human and it is possible to make mistakes. So if we are able to forgive people for their mistakes then Anger can be avoided.

Forgiving others is important however it is even more important to forgive oneself, if an individual is not able to forgive himself then also he becomes angry, irritating.

How to deal with “I”?

Most important step to remove “I” is to become aware about it. Most people are not aware about it and hence are not able to work on it.

There is a difference between Ego and Self respect, usually people consider a attack on self respect while it may just be hitting individuals Ego. Best judge also is own self, as far as we are truthful to ourselves.

One of the ways to deal with “I” is to remove it and replace it with “we” or “us”. What it means is that keep one self away from emotions like ego and proud. I remember a small incident someone told. There was a person went to saint and asked “Sir, I want to be Happy. What should I do?” saint looked at him smiled and said remove “I” and “want” and the only thing remain will be happiness.

One important aspect to look at dealing with “I'” is that if you are hurt because of some else is using too much of “I” centric statements, then there are good chances that the reason you are hurt is because there is a strong “I” in you.

What if??

Very often we face this question under different context.

What if I invest in stock? What if project delivery does not go successful? What if my wife is not in a good mood? What if my daughter does not pass this year? What if I do not get salary raise? What if interview does not go good? on…. and on…. and on.

I wondered what is the best approach to deal with these what if’s and if there is a common approach to deal with so many fears or unknowns in the life.

Then I started questioning do one really need to worry about these what ifs. Can we anticipate things in advance? Is it really possible to perceive what is coming in future and work accordingly.

Answer I got from within for most of the questions is that we really do not know and can not anticipate future (unless one really has good connections with God). Then what do we do? Should we not plan at all? Again answer coming from within is balance.

I guess BALANCE is the keyword here. Again question comes in how do I know if I am striking the right balance?

Well there is no mathematical formula here and no one can tell upfront if the decision that is being made is right or wrong (in most of the complex situation).

I feel everyone makes a right decision given the context, information available, and a perception about the decision that is being made. 

To give an example an individual killing another individual on war front considered to be ok. Similarly judge sentencing someone to death considered (most of the time) ok. While same act performed in other conditions is considered as murder. 

Coming back to the point of how would one deal with different "What ifs" faced.

First of all I feel that every act/decision is pure and there is nothing right or wrong associated with it. We are humans and should accept that everyone of us can make decisions which may not be perceived correct with certain people.

Our conscious will most of the time tell us what should be done and what should not be, and in my little experience I have been satisfied with the whatever I have done as per conscious.

"What ifs" are important and would provide you a direction to move on, however we should be careful in not getting too much into "what ifs" and act faster. 

There is no rule to say we should deliberate “x” amount of time or answer “y” amount of “what if” questions before making a decision.

The moment you start getting a feel from within that it is getting too much deliberation or too much of question answer,  probably is the right time to make a decision and move on.

I would also like to highlight that when we re-evaluate decisions based on retrospective view, that particular point in time may not be the best time to evaluate the decision.

Let me take an example to explain, if you tell your child (one who does not like studying) to study and if that child starts evaluating the decision of education almost immediately after that class or grade, s/he may not realize the importance of education at point in time, but later in life s/he would realize the importance of education. 

Similarly if one starts evaluating a decision of leaving the job and starting on their own venture then  immediately after venture is unsuccessful (considering the worst case) probably is not the right time. Because the learning that one would carry from venture establishment would last life long would probably benefit much more that just continuing in the job. 

So bottom line is that be confident about yourself and trust your inner instinct. For me it has been 100% but for the sake of keeping buffer i would say 98% it would prove to be the the chosen (I intentionally avoided using “right” or “correct” as word and used “chosen” instead) way.

Comments are welcome.

Technical Vs Management (my perspective)

After certain amount of time in ones (computer science graduate) life there is a question:

Would you like to continue in Technical Ladder and become an Architect or would you rather like to get into project/people management?

This is a decision almost every Computer Science Graduate have to take in his life one or the other timeframe. As mentioned in profile I have about 15 yrs of Industry experience. Out of this I spent about 10 yrs in hard core technical coding and designing in various languages. I  worked right from FORTAN, DBASE till Java/J2EE including Pascal/c/c++.

Ok, enough of giving resume coming to the point, after spending so much time in technical activities and getting bit flavor of people management as well, I felt that for every technical problem there is always (well, almost) a definitive solution i.e. every problem would have definitive steps (1..n) to reach to a solution.

However when it comes to people management, every individual is unique (every child is special), so even though you face similar issues with different individuals probably approach that has be taken to resolve will be different.

At times even though you would face same situation with the same individual but you would have to deal with  it differently in different times. (imagine convincing wife in good mood Vs Bad mood).

So from my perspective I feel it becomes fun and challenging at the same time when one is into people management Vs technical ladder.

Thoughts/comments?

Nitin

Most difficult challenge in Life

I have had about 15 yrs of experience in the industry, during all thru my experience I have been deliberating with myself on what is it that is most difficult and I should focus on.

One thing that has troubled me most of the time is Attitude of an individual. I have been core technical person for about 10 yrs of my professional life however most of the technical problems would have a step wise definitive solution to solve them, however when working on individuals Attitude to make sure that it is positive and in alignment with his own and team growth, I find it difficult to take any single approach with everyone.

There are numerous discussion that are happening on this because attitude is such a vast work and encompasses so many things like empathy, listening, positivity, sharing, negotiating, handling conflict so on so forth.

My personal feeling is that Attitude is something which requires a long time and less age to work on. In ideal situation I would want to see basic education system addressing this issue so that every individual when gets older gets a good attitude to work.

Another thing that relates to this problem is that (it might be specific to country culture) very often (it is not a generic statement because exceptions are there so no offense to teacher who are good) people who have not done much in life or does not have very major experience in child psychology becomes teacher. This eventually results in getting less people in the right position to inculcate the right behavior.

Open for comments.

Nitin