Radical Honesty

Radical Honesty

            Are you feeling some kind of weird feeling in your stomach when your talk about yourself. Are you feeling stressed all the time? You feel bad when you are talking to anyone?  Are you feeling bad because people will not be interested in what you are talking? Then you are lying.

Lying kills people. Radical Honesty by Brad Blanton is a book to read to be happy in your life by just being honest, it tells How to transform your life by telling the truth. Check out the book @ Radical Honesty - Brad Blanton

Before picking up this book I thought I was an honest person, but once you read through the book, I cannot tell myself being honest anymore, because I was bull shiting to this world living with an outer persona for each and every individual.

This book tells how we are telling lies to ourselves and others about everything and lying to everyone and every moment. Lying is the one which creates stress and psycho semantic illness.

Author builds the book with four parts which helps you to get an understanding of yourself, your mind, separating yourself from your mind and finally the war between Mind and Yourself. The parts are

                                           i.            The Being

                                        ii.            The Mind

                                     iii.            Liberation of the Being from its Mind

                                      iv.            Things learned from the war between Being & Mind

Before reading this book we need to understand certain things.

·        Where the stress comes from - It comes from the individual minds.

·        How we need to live a life learning from our experience and also we must unlearn things that we have already learned (Mostly childhood programming).

·        Leave the habit of self righteousness

            Next you need to know the TRUTH ALWAYS CHANGES, this one is a big piece for me, and one time which was right was now wrong, which was wrong before became right.

When we were teenagers most of the thing we do were  considered wrong  now has become part of social life, so reality always changes with time, so never stuck with the idea of being right.  

Next big piece is moralism, which is a disease of living in the mind with our belief and it kills everyone. Moralism is expecting others to do what we think is right.

Self righteous moralism is huge evil in today’s society, it let people thing that they are superior and let them stuck to useless things that makes them more stressed and it eventually makes the people lying to themselves and to others about the moral behavior they have chosen to live.

Being free from being moralistic behavior can help to get freedom from lying

            BullShit is common term used in this book; it talks about how our mind is bullshit creating machine, where it justifies whatever we do in our life. We lie to our selves for all things we do.

 We might do a worst thing on universe that is universally not acceptable; still we create a justified reason that has the conclusion, that what we did was right.

This chapter also gives example how we interpret reality, most of things we interpret in this world are always imaginary. Like imaginary fear, imaginary loss, imaginary rejection.

           

1st Chapter: The Being

            In this Chapter, author talks about moralism and first truth, how we learn to abstract, generalize and evaluate experience in this world.

We start this in early part of our childhood; we treat our experience and try to evaluate pleasure and pain. From then on we try to seek for pleasure and avoid pain which stop us to try new things to come out of little bubble.

 Author also talks moralism is a disease and how we have to outlive our moralism which was programmed to us in our early child hood. There is no right or wrong and Truth always changes.

 He also talks about Field Independence and Field dependence.

Field Dependence means self reliance and Field Independence means moral hysteria.

He explains the first Truth where he talks about how we made up all our lesson on what we learned and start seeing the world from the lesson learned from previous experience

He commands us to stop listening to the all moral Bullshit spoken by the religious leaders to control the masses and start understanding ourselves, and become aware of our childhood programming.

 We have to first leave the sentimental idealistic romanticism of deeply felt religious belief which are responsible for the sufferings of millions which is harmful than the world threatening technologies.

      Blindly following the moralism is like rats behind the pied piper, we will follow our moral leaders off the cliff and back into the sea for ever.

2nd Chapter: The Mind

            In this chapter he talks about how we loose our innocence during childhood. How we are programmed and conditioned by our parents to be pretentious, manipulating beings.

We use our Mind to pretend a smile, try not to express how we feel, try to control our words rather than speak out. It has been programmed by our parents unconsciously because it was programmed to them the same way.

He reveals three level of telling truth where it cures most of insomnia (sleeping disorder), breathing problems and stress related diseases.

After reading lots about personality types about people I understand most of the insomnia to the people is mostly due to the fact that people need to reflect upon their actions.

 Most of the people don’t take time alone to think about their whole day, your brain needs to justify all your day’s action every day.

Only time the brain gets is when you go to bed where you will not disturbed in the dark, so it starts doing the day’s action’s justification process where u loose your sleep. So do spend time alone every day and do nothing.

 First is telling the truth that we are hiding from our parents, the things our teenage mischiefs or things we are pretending to be though we are not and the entire guilt trip we carry with us as a baggage.

When you start telling the truth about your life, you become naked, good thing is you can see other people nakedness too, so you will be able to confront your fear which you have been hiding and killing yourself for long time.

This is true with most of women who will live their life pretending every moment that kills every second. Most of their health problem is due to their emotional baggage they carry from their past and don’t want to share it with actual person, that needs to know, because they think it will hurt that person a lot.

 Second level of telling the truth is telling the truth about our current thoughts and feelings.

 Always express what u feel and express it to concerned people, rather than suppressing them thinking your words might hurt them.

In this chapter, author talks about how telling the truth about what we feel will release us from lots of pain because if you tell people they are wrong they only justify their actions, but if you tell people how you felt because of their action then they will surely try to improve the situation next time.

             Hindu religion quotes “If you speak the truth long enough, your word become universal law”.

Personally I don’t recommend the third stage because if you jump to third without living through first stage and second stage of telling truth, you will look like an idiot to everyone.

If you want to move to third stage then you need to fully submerge and come out of the above two stages.

 The third level of speaking the truth occurs when you admit that you are not who you have pretending to be.

This one will be life long quest, because we do lots of things to please or impress others, once you reach second level you become self righteous and you start bragging about your self righteous concept, but you have to surpass this level where you stop trying to impress people by being an hero.

 No body on earth want to be considered an average, we always want to be better than everyone, that’s why most of the big corporate fashion, electronics are becoming multi billionaire by exploiting this psychology, that they make you believe, what they provide is the extra elegant things on earth which makes you superior.

            Finally in the chapter, author accepts the fact why he wrote the book, which is because he wants to be considered as smart than everyone and perceived as smarter individual.

He wants his name should live even after he is dead. Because he want to live in the fantasy world where we gain lots of energy when we just fantasize about things.

           

           

Liberation of the Being from its Mind    

            This topic is worth a double you paid for the book. He is absolutely honest in most of the human problems. He talks taboo about excitement.

In this chapter he quotes Sigmund Freud’s quotation about primary psychological problem

            “The primary psychological problems of persons in his day were the result of sexual repression; that is, People are taught to deny that they had feelings in their genitals”

            Consequently, his theory concerned about sexuality, its repression and expression. Freud sought to cure in individual cases, the cultural sickness of guilt about being sexual.

Two things are considered in this topic

·        Sexual desire

·        Getting Angry and  how we express the emotions

             

For instance, a person who has put a lot of energy into denying his own sexuality and making sexual behavior an evil thing may become self appointed defender; he will protest all pornographic books and movies to protect youth from this filth. That is his way of dealing with his own lack of knowledge of sexuality.

Author says we all fall into the habit of giving all of our attention to thoughts, belief and fantasy. He asks us to stop feeling guilty about having attracted to opposite sex. It is absolutely normal.

 Repressing our sexual feeling, anger, guilt, jealous is cause for all our psychological problems.

Next is dealing with emotion ANGER: People tend to get angry but they cannot show it because they have a persona that they have been living up their whole life that they are sweet, so they try to repress it by eating more.

More of the eating problem is due to the fact of suppressing our anxiety to soothe our nerves with feel good dishes (all snacks).

Refocusing our awareness is the key to handle our emotions

·        Be aware of things happening in our immediate environment

·        Aware of feeling and sensation inside our body

·        Aware of strengths of our thoughts and fantasy

            Another common way, people handling emotions is try to look sad because society accept sad people rather than the angry person.

So people suppress their anger by looking sad. Because being sad is acceptable but being horny or angry is taboo for our society.

            He also talks about the passive aggressive ass-kissers who wish and hope that they will receive nice things in their life just because they are nice to people, actually they are boring burdensome and stressed out bunch of people.

Those people who talk to their managers how pissed they are or how angry they are on certain way gets mileage are ass kickers. The ass-Kickers always will be promoted because they express their emotions in right way because they cannot gossip about who was to blame for their unhappiness

Steps to show anger to another person

·        Be direct in communication don’t hold yourself giving shit to people when you are pissed on them.

·        Expressing your anger will make you forgive them

·        Express your resentment face to face, not in phone

·        Don’t blame people bluntly saying they are asshole, tell them precise situation where you felt them as asshole. Because people will tend to justify/prevent themselves from being blamed

·        Express how you felt when he/she was an asshole

To handle your guilt about getting attracted to opposite sex make sure you are open to your partner about your fantasy and share with your partner your sexual history.

            Finally he ends the topic with few key points. Take care of your physical health; taking care of yourself is part of growing up. People take care of others but forget to take care of themselves. He also talks about polarity therapy which is very good to read. Meditate is also his advise

Things learned from the war between Being & Mind

            In the last part he talk about how change starts to start when you accepts who you are and take responsibility of your own life and stop being perfect in all times

Perfectionists are people who would rather be the worst than be the second-best.

Everyone who ever successfully made a change that worked and served as platform for the next, did this first: they finally accepted themselves the way they are. They gave up the struggle to get better. Then finally, they were free to change.

Next important quote I like is

     “Truth always changes”

Consider our childhood days where there were many thing that was considered wrong but those thing have changed, may be we do it everyday and no body cares, so truth on that day is irrelevant now.

It is all our perception about things. Mind categories all the time, try to see the world through senses and not through your mind.

Don’t just categories and leave the details. Have a mind set that, love is just a journey; there is no scale or meter.

Try not to be right always it is more fun to be alive than to be right. Observe your ego.  If you accept that death is always possible, the complacency of egoism disappears.

One of the works and most resistant strains of anxiety neurosis are by the Catholic Churches because they teach young children that the most important things in life is being right.

           

            This is the very good book to read it has lots of insights about every day’s life. Following this pattern of life is always the best strategy to feel happy all the time. 

So start telling truth about your past to the one which concern the most.

Start telling truth about how you feel rather than trying to avoid confrontation about other person action. Stop pretending who you are.

Stop feeling guilt or bad about sexual feelings. Try to handle emotions and be aware of your body when you go through every emotion.

Learn the process to express anger in effective way which will lead to your success, because anger has lots of energy to it which can be changed to useful form

Resist being perfectionist, accept yourself that you and others have all rights to be wrong.

 Start telling the truth everywhere, which will reduce your stress and make your life happy.

 To know more about and have more insight about your own life, Check out the book @  Radical Honesty - Brad Blanton

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Lion Smiled at the Rabbit

And the Lion Smiled at the Rabbit

                       

I was searching through the internet for Panchatantra stories, because I was interested in them from childhood. My intention of search is to get a book to understand why those stories are written and how it has answers to most of the questions we ask our self. When I googled out, there was an article written by the author Rashmi Datt herself, once I read the title of the book “and the Lion Smiled at the Rabbit, Manage your emotions to win”, immediately I understood she know what she is talking about. This book uses the Panchatantra story for easy understanding of how emotions plays vital role in success of our life. How to have hold of emotions and manage them with fen ace, so we can use even the negative emotions to our strength

            Did a small background check about the author and came to know that, she is also a normal person who has dealt with lots of problems in office environment, coping up with people and she has tried, screwed and succeeded in lots of areas with people management and personal management. She is a post graduate from BITS Pilani, and she is the founder and Director of Dialog Services, with over two decades of rich industry experience in the domains of Organizational, learning development, content management and instructional design.

            The book has five different chapters which also includes the base of the book, Emotional intelligence by Daniel Goleman (book which has boggled my mind).

·        Self Regulation

·        Self Acceptance and self belief

·        Self Motivation

·        Building Rapport and Managing relationships

·        Handling conflicts and difficult situations

            She starts the book with why we have to manage emotions and what is the science behind all the emotions. She also talks about Triune brain and explained in layman terms about the three parts of brain, how still the older brain, the reptilian brain has more control over the logical brain, how we are hijacked every time and how our survival instincts takes full control. She narrates a story about a kid in Jakarta, who handled a tough situation very charmingly even after he is bullied by group of youngsters and the kid is none other than Barrack Obama.

            She moves to next level illustrating, how you can be powerful by just accepting who you are. She narrates the donkey and dead tiger skin story. It clearly tells us how we perceive about our self is always how others perceive us. She takes the book to next level by Quoting

“Don’t be Humble you are not that great” - Golda mien.

In Projecting Confidence Image chapter she justifies why you should always be ready with notes about your self, which will help you when you get a real opportunity to talk about yourself to an important person that will increase your success rates a ton. She narrates a story about how she met TATA in her final day in TATA Services, how his words of wisdom, helped her to take very confident and bold steps in her life. She talks about negative mental chatter that we do all day long which is the main reason for all our stress, she provides tool that she calls as ABCDE Method. I personally feel everyone should learn this tool. This one tool will help you to be more successful in personal and corporate relationships.

                        A – Activating event (Event that triggers Negative emotion)

                        B – Beliefs, which can be self limiting (What are you assuming)

                        C – Consequences, List of emotions that you feel that you may be encountering by the events, asking the questions, whether it is relevant to this particular situation

                        D – Disputing our self limiting beliefs by recalling past success and thoughts       

                        E – Energizing and Encouraging ourselves with effective new thoughts, best question, what did I learn from this event.

            Next the book picks up momentum by starting with story of Lion, Jackal and a donkey, where donkey was tricked to being a prey for lion by praise. Her explanation about the real praise or just praise to please people is outstanding. She talks about being very genuine in praise and how praise when used as a trick will work against us. She also gives some tricks to handle negative feedback gracefully, where you can completely listen to the person who gives you negative feedback and then respond, not react. Best thing I liked  is where she advises that it is up to us to take the negative feedback or not, but never take it personally.

            Book moves to next level, where the control moves to external world, where we have to influence others. She starts with the Indigo jackal story, where the jackal falls into a dye and becomes the king of Jungle because of it new skin color and how it dies because of bossing around too much with his new power. This chapter denotes she is highly influenced by Dale Carnegie’s “How to win friends and Influence People”.

            Final chapter, she talks about how to handle conflicts and difficult situation NOT like a Frog in the pond which takes the help of a snake to kill his enemy frog, which ends up being eaten by the snake. She has given lots of her own experience which are very interesting to read. I really like the last three pages of the book where she talks about having a clear purpose statement which exists as a frame of reference for every bit of one's life journey, where you can handle all your emotions through out your day. For example, if your purpose of life is to be charity worker or may be become CEO of company, and you penned them down, and when you are in a street fight due to a rash driver of car, you can ask yourself, will this fight gonna solve my life purpose, or I will avoid this fight completely without giving an eye contact to the person who wants to pick up a fight with me. This is my personal favorite of all thing that she has written in this book.This one concept has been emphasized by many thinkers and authors, especially Stephen covey as Principle based life in his book 7 Habits of Highly effective people.

            This book is must read for all those who already have experience in handling people or starting your career handling people. She has narrated both Panchatantra and also her personal stories which make us to connect with author, like she is a person who lives next door. This book has lots of tips and tricks which can be used every day in day to day life. If you want to become more emotionally intelligent, I highly recommend this book.

Go get yourself a copy of this book and start reading to have a better stable emotional life, where you don’t get stressed because other people are pressing your emotional button.

You can get the book @ lionSmiledatTheRabbit

IMPORTANT: Leave a comment to share what you learned, and hit the “like” button to let others know about it (make sure you’re logged into Facebook to like and comment). 

80% of coding is done in 20% of time before delivery.

 

                        I always had a feeling that successful people have a way of finding a highest leverage points in every work they do. 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch has answer for all the doubts which I had all this while.

         He gives lots of tips and tricks for us to think about getting high leverage in getting every part of our life. The one impressed me will sure will impress you too.

·         20% code is run 80% of time

·         20% of people earn 80% of wealth

·         80% of profit goes to 20% of people.

·         20% of clothes brought are worn 80% of time

He has quick answers to

·        How to find 20% of customer who gives 80% of order

·        What to do to get faster promotion

·        He also talks about which shares to invest and how long to invest to get highest leverage

·        Why our strategy about hard work yields results is always wrong

·        How to make ourselves happy by changing the people we see most.

·        How vital few gives success to you.

In Chapter 1: Corporate Success

           

            He talks about corporate success. One thing that impressed me most is when he talks about whom you work for

“It does not matter what or how much you work,

 it only matters whom you work for”

He was bang right on this. I always had the personal experience. In this he dealt with lots of simple and easy tricks to follow every day to have better corporate life

In Chapter 2: Work less, Earn & Enjoy More

                        He talks about finding the 20% of work that yields 80% of result. Such has finding right project, right services, right products to work with and eliminate that does not give us any result. He also points out how most people spend lots of time in things that adds less value to them and also to others.

Tendency of hardworking

            He tells everyone how to leave the guilt of getting success without hard work and find work which gives you highest leverage. He welcomes delegating everything and doing only things you are exceptionally good at it. He gives tons of tips to find the right people for right job.

Intelligent and Lazy

        He per mutates and combines people with Smart, intelligent, lazy and Hard working

Smart	Hardworking	Stupid	Lazy	What to do?
X	X			Keep those people with you. Near you
		X	X	Don’t even think about these guys.
	X	X		Fire these guys because they add work to every one.(My Personal favorite, because I realized after reading this, because they add lots of work for everyone around)
X			X	Make them as leads

He also gives seven steps happiness habits which are nice to think about doing atleast few

1. Exercise
2. Mental Stimulation
3. Artistic Stimulation
4. Doing a good turn
5. Take a pleasure break with a friend
6. Give yourself a treat
7. Congratulating yourself

If you want to take your CAREER SERIOUSLY and get HIGHEST LEVERAGE in every day’s activities this books is definitely a must read. Go GET a COPY in library, I personally opt for audio version because it is the best, because you can listen when you drive or travel or waiting in a line.

You can get the book @ 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch

IMPORTANT: Leave a comment to share what you learned, and hit the “like” button to let others know about it (make sure you’re logged into Facebook to like and comment).

About Me

I am a WHY person who wants to know why things work as it work. There are lots of questions that pops up in my head everyday that triggers all my crush on Information. I really like to understand every part of life which i know it is not possible, but strive to search as much as possible. Because searching for my own questions has made who i am right now.
          I love all water sports. Like to spent time in water as much as possible. Love scuba diving and surfing in beach.
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