Two Mindsets

Thanks to Sukumar for Mindset book recommendation, it is indeed a great book to read. I haven’t completed it yet but it created some stimulus to write this blog. Actually I chose my friendship with some very early and keep in contact as long as I can, meaning I still have friends from 1st grade and 5th grade and 6th grade etc. I keep on watching/contacting 2 of my old friends. One is positive thinker (A), other one is negative thinker (B). This blog is about the real time analysis of these 2 distinct mindsets.

The topic of our discussion was Sachin Tendulkar, a great Indian Cricketer of all time. Positive Thinker always thinks Sachin is going to score 50 runs in any match, Negative Thinker always thinks Sachin is going to duck out. But the reality would be something different. I always stay in between, I used to analysis some factors like who was opponent, who was going to start bowling for Sachin, what was the pitch condition, what was the weather, my recall abilities about Sachin’s performance on the same ground before. Based on my analysis I used to support A or B. If Sachin scores 50 A is happy and we both celebrates the Sachin’s victory, at same time B started dislike the moment and me. If Sachin scores 0 or very low score, me and B start tease A about his performance and A started dislike me and B.

One person’s swing of positive to negative depends on the situations and some intuition. There are several factors involved to change mindset from positive to negative. Since A was always positive thinkers, he is in better shape now, he started a business and quite well off among all of three. The B still not settled in and not that quite good. So I can declare here that positive thinkers always find a good life and career. It seems to me always positive is good and it always bringing good results.

But the disadvantage been always positive is,

• Sometimes they become arrogant after 3 - 4 succession of success. At same time broke after 3 - 4 succession of failure.
• Since they thinking always an outcome of an event should be success, they tend to loose money and money management may be very poor.
• Easy target for cheating and push over.
• They have to learn how to manage unexpected or surprises, other wise they will be in big trouble.

The disadvantage been always negative is,

• They see everything negatively and remember negative events only, for example, they try to forget everything about Bill Clinton did as president but try to remember only his sex scandal.
• Attract towards some ideology organizations, easily buy in something radical views.
• Ego driven and ego can be used to outgrow others.

Selfishness: A Psychological and Culture view

When I was young, i used to listen old stories from grandmother and a cousin of my grandfather. Most of the stories are from their flashbacks and their culture and some bad things happened in their generation. Many stories are how they suffered on the 1889 great Indian drought and followed by killer malaria, diarrhea. These two events created shock waves to their minds and the generation changed how they were before, they were lack of confidence about their next day’s food. They have to be very selfish to survive on those tough times. As per Indian culture, all the religious books and religious thoughts encouraged sharing and selfish less. But later on those sad events are main reason for selfishness. The main reason for India’s population growth is also selfishness, those olden times there were no advanced medicine available, so most of the kids dies less than their 1 year or with in hours of birth or before their teen age. Due to this that time Indians try to give more than 5-10 births, to save at least 1-2 but most of the time 1-2 only not survived.

After the green revolution and advancement in health care, now all are fine and nowadays most of us not try more than 1-2 kids and we have surplus food production also. But due to “old habit never dies”, we are stick with selfishness. Selfishness is a faded thing with generation, the young generation now not that selfishness like older one. The main reason is, they were not through any of “life and death” situation and the distance from 1889 sufferer generation and the level of confidence is higher. There is plenty available for them to share between them also. In other words, live and let live others are the mantra for current generation.

I used to observe now a conflict between generations about how selfishness should one have? Mom and Dad had heated conversation with younger like why you gave your food to XYZ? Why you helped an unknown senior citizen to cross the road and you missed your bus to school? First I thought when people gets older they tend to become selfishness but I was wrong it is the generation and lack of confidence. Kid is confident that she can survive without a one time food and catch up everything she missed the day of teaching. Psychologically who ever not have enough confidence and greedy are main for selfishness. Culturally almost all culture encourage selfish less through religious books and sermons etc.

What is exactly EQ?

It was a bitter cold winter night, the time was almost 3:00AM and we were setting up initial customers in our system but there was an issue with customer data. We had 2 choices A) Go to home sleep and come back morning and discuss with Sales/Marketing team and explain to boss about the delay, manage the outcomes B) Immediately call Marketing Analyst to fix the issue. The war room was filed with highly IQ, techie people, they decided to go with option B, and we called him early morning 3.00 AM to fix an issue. The good news is we fixed the issue and money started flowing but bad news is we about to going to lose a veteran marketing analyst because he was frustrated with late night calls and lost many future millions.

The reason why we choose the option B is, we were lacking Emotional Intelligence. Several researches suggested that “Einstein's superior intellectual ability may have been related to the region of his brain that supports psychological functions. In other words, according to Newsweek science reporter Steven Levy, "When it comes to appreciating the most famous brain of our century, it ain't the meat - it's the emotion."”.

EQ is nothing but using emotional side of brain to understand, sense other’s emotion and perspectives and using common sense to resolve human’s conflicts. In other words, learning how to see world in color is EQ. There are lot of successful products invented because of frustration by an individual and their desire to fix the issue for entire humanity.

Why most of us lacking emotional intelligence, actually left side of brain usually process “What” and right side of brain processes “How”. Our traditional educational system always concentrates on left side of brain since we are all left dominate. We all know “what” is going on but we don’t know “how” to fix/help it. The balance approach of left and right is important to increase EQ. In order to help others, first we need to understand “what” is the problem? And then suspend left brain and start right side “How” to fix it? So if we develop right side of the brain “How” comes quickly.

There are several research papers, books available regarding EQ but as usual what ever related to brain and our activity, we have to practice it a lot.

Source:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4422/is_9_16/ai_57786889/?tag=content;col1
http://tolearn.net/hypertext/brain.htm
http://www.viewzone.com/leftright.html

Jobless Recovery

Are we heading to a jobless recovery? From Krugman to Joe Biden everybody thinks the same. Actually the last job report was a scary and it overturned all the predictions and met all threshold. But a point to remember is, job market is a trailing economic indicator, it would take some time to stabilize the condition. Based on previous recessions 1981-82, 1991-92 and 2001-2002, when economy turning around it would start sending mixed signals.

The recovery may not be uniform as we like, because the medications prescribed for economy would start show it signs at different times from different places. For example, investors always positive thinkers since they buy in all from Fed reserve and treasury's assessments and start buying stocks hence sock markets going north but employers are causally optimistic about future business hence we are seeing a lousy unemployment report. It is pool of people thinking differently and some sees half empty and some sees half full. But the truth is, we are not going to live like this forever, people have to come out and start buying stuff, economy going to recover like the previous one. But timing is the matter now.

I think President Obama's stimulus plan going to be in full effect from September and gas price again easing and people come back from summer vacation, back to school, long term investment decisions all going to happen on late Summer. The first 6 months are not good for markets as well as any recovery since i think the 2nd half would be better for all of us. Good news is we already in 2nd half.

Source:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/02/AR2009070200354.html

http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/Politics/story?id=7966402&page=1

http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/07/biden-we-misread-the-economy-.html