How to Stop Taking Things Personally

Here is the complete transcript of the podcast

Welcome back, happy Sunday morning to you. Today’s podcast is definitely not going to be long. But then maybe this is going to be deep. This is coming from a conversation I had yesterday with a friend of mine about life and things that he is facing right now, his life. And he was telling me how it has become very hard for him, emotionally hard, situationally hard. And he has to make some choices about his life and all, that casual discussion over coffee. And that reminded me of several other conversations I had been having with people in different contexts. So I thought maybe I should highlight this on the podcast today.

I asked my friend yesterday, I said, knowing what you know now, can you tell me what is the biggest lesson you learned? So far? If I ask you, what is the biggest lesson you learned in your life? Depending on where you are, your answer is going to be different. If you ask me, I’ll tell you, my biggest lesson is, I got to have great health. I will say that if I have gone through a lot of hardship with my health, if I ask you, you may say your career, maybe business, maybe relationships. But then there is one big lesson at the end. When I say and that means as you grow, we start to realize, in fact, life had been teaching this for a long time, since the point we were born. But then we never had the mindset to see this. Now with all the time and all these experiences, we can now see it. Hopefully, some people never see it. That’s a whole different discussion. But with whoever is a little bit aware, they will see it, which is that life’s biggest lesson is detachment.

What is detachment? Detachment is detached from material stuff, detached from emotional stuff, detached from things that don’t make any sense. Now, if detachment is the biggest lesson that life is teaching us, why is that? That we become angry, frustrated, we become jealous, we become self-centered, all these questions come in. Why is that? Why is it that we take everything around us personally? So detachment is the game, then why take everything personally? Well, that tried to address why people take things personally. There are so many reasons. But I’ll tell you, deep within us, all of us, we are seeking approval. So by default, all of us humans, crave approval, some people crave it at a higher level, some minuscule level, but we all do. So we want people to like us, we want people to appreciate us all that is there.

Now as a part of that, naturally, we are attached. And we have to take things personally, when that sense of approval-seeking is there, and we don’t get that approval, then we have hurt means we are taking things personally. Some people also over-identify themselves with their thoughts and emotions, they lose their identity. They think their thoughts and their emotions are who they are. No negative thoughts are part of the mind. It’s one of the brain functions. So we are supposed to experience both the positive and the negative. So if you’re experiencing too many and only negative thoughts, then that is a problem. But then casual negative parts are a part of the human mind to be okay, no, I have negative thoughts. So maybe something is wrong with me. That’s the frame through which they talk to me about how to work Maldis if the goal is to detach, and the goal is to stop taking things personally, what can be done? What is a strategy or technique? Well, turns out there are two things that need to happen. First and foremost is that you need to start practicing internal compassion, that has to be an element of compassion by you for you, internally.

Some of that include, “I’m good”, “I’m complete”, and “I have what it takes.” This is my definition. This is my understanding. This is my life. This is who I am. These are my beliefs. These are my values. This is my identity. This is my purpose. This is my pursuit, internal compassion. And then some external boundaries. See, when you start doing things with others, for example, let’s say integrity is one of your values. But if you make friends with somebody who constantly lies, how can you stay loyal to your value and your value being integrity? How can you have fulfillment How can you wake up in the morning? Look yourself in the mirror and say yeah, this is where I am. See, it doesn’t go It doesn’t work that way. So I need to have boundaries when people tell me things that I am uncomfortable doing or those things that do not go along with my values and beliefs, I should say no. And say no is the boundary. Saying no is not an insult. Saying no is not an ego statement or any of that it is a boundary. That means you’re honoring the boundary.

So when you have external boundaries, when it comes down to things, because it is what happens, everything that’s happening around you, somebody is having issues detaching from things. Somebody who takes things personally, what’s happening is, things are happening around them. And they are put in a position to blame themselves, for everything that is going wrong around them, they blame themselves. So when you take things personally, everything that goes wrong around you, you blame yourself, when you blame yourself, what happens, you experience stress, or along with suffering, some level of stress, anxiety, overwhelm all that happens. But then, definitely, depending upon the quantity of that, or the intensity of the stress or anxiety, you will experience suffering. So suffering, and some kind of other psychosomatic disorder. If you keep on blaming yourself, which you will, because everything around you, you’re taking back personally, that is why we need external boundaries. And all this also leads to self-judgment and self-criticism and one of the most effective ways to deal with all this is mindfulness. And one specific technique that is very effective, is imagining yourself as if you’re standing on the side of a road, a busy road, on which you have numerous vehicles going, cars, trucks, buses, all that. Each bus, each truck, and each car on this busy freeway, or highway, could be an emotion that could be thought could be a feeling. You stay on the side of the road, and you see these vehicles crossing. That’s how the mind should operate. That’s the level of detachment, we are talking.

We are observing our thoughts, our emotions, and our feelings, pass in front of our eyes, without attaching ourselves to them. Because you can’t catch a bus on the freeway unless it stops. And these things are not stopping. They’re not meant for you. They’re moving. Why try to attach, imagine attaching yourself to every bus, every truck, every car on a freeway that could jump from one vehicle to the other, it impossible cannot be done. So every word expression, anybody saying anything to you, and anybody expressing anything to you, it’s not about you. Most of the time, when people express something to you, in anger in haste, criticizing you, it’s not about you as much it is about them, the words they use, not about you. It’s about them. They say that our emotions are caused by our judgment, not by events. So I was telling my friend, I said, events, they’re done, they happened. So your judgment of that event that happened 5, 10, or 15 years ago, is causing the feeling that you’re experiencing today. You need to detach from that. And you stop judging that event, this late in your life, at this point in your life, when you are approaching the last 10, 20, 30 years of your existence here. And the message on this podcast today’s podcast is that if detachment is the game, eventually we all will be detached. You will be detached from your job, you will be detached from your loved ones to be detached from, from the car, you’re driving today from the house that you’re living in today. All these things are going to go away, then “why not do that now?” is a question.

And I’ll leave you with that question. I want you to think over it, ponder over it. And then I’ll catch you tomorrow on the podcast and hope this is helpful. Okay, that’s all for now. Talk soon. Bye.

Why just Becoming an “Expert” is Not Enough

Here is the complete transcript of the podcast

Welcome, or welcome back to Success with Srini. Happy Saturday morning to you. Today’s podcast episode is based on a conversation that I had been having with my daughter for a while now, several months now. In fact, several years, but for sure, the last few months, she just completed her high school, she’s wrapping up, and she is going into college as a part of her college prep. For the last several months, she had been writing applications applying choosing programs applying to schools. And finally, now she has acceptance from multiple schools. And she made a choice now, she made a decision to go to a specific college. And throughout this time, I had been putting my thoughts in front of her. And the point that I took the line of thinking that I had is, I don’t care which program you choose, which college you choose. At the end of the day, you have to become the best in whatever you do, you have to become the only logical choice. That’s the level that you need to shoot for. No matter what you do, you will be the most credible professional, you will be the most reliable professional, and you will be trusted all these things add up for you to become the logical choice. So that was my point.

Let’s take that context for a second. And let me explain why I’m saying this. We are now in the year 2022. Specifically, today, May 21. As I’m recording this podcast, these are the times where maybe just becoming an expert is not enough. Just having the experience is not enough. Just having the know-how is not enough. For sure expertise, is not enough. There is a level beyond expertise. Malcolm Gladwell wrote the book, Outliers the Story of Success, a book I read multiple times. And in that book, the dominant point that he made is that if you spend 10,000 hours doing something, you will achieve a certain level of proficiency. And he quotes numerous people as a part of the book. And based on his observations based on some experiments. There are many reviews that challenge that observation, but it is an incredible book. Now, you can become an expert, by simply giving, putting in 10,000 hours. And that equates to about four years in college, 1600 hours a year, more or less, a few couples of more years of experience something like that for five years, you would become reasonably good. Whatever you’re trying to learn.

Prior to Malcolm Gladwell’s book, there was another book that I read, Mind over Machines, The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of Computer. This book is written by two brothers, two professors of UC Berkeley, Hubert Dreyfus, and Stuart Dreyfus. In my understanding for the first time, they put together a structure on how one could become an expert, and what is involved in becoming an expert. Now, again, today’s podcast has nothing to do with you achieving the level of an expert. Today’s podcast is going beyond the level of being an expert. But again, to give you an idea of what is involved in becoming an expert, there are five stages. You start from a novice stage, then, with a little bit of experience, you kind of reach the next stage, which is becoming an advanced beginner. And from there, with a little bit more time and experience, you become competent. And then from there, you will reach the stage of being proficient. And thereafter, with some more experience and time, you become an expert. So there are five stages to this.

Now, Hubert Dreyfus and Stuart Dreyfus clearly call this out. They articulate this whole process very clearly, they say, if you’re a novice, that means you’re operating without understanding the context, you’re functioning. But sometimes this functioning is painful because there is no experience there. They know how is invisible process sometimes has to be followed, but you miss out on following the process sometimes. And sometimes you miss out on following the rules, even though you’re supposed to follow rules. And then from there, as an advanced beginner, some level of experience in place now, some sophistication, in terms of following the rules, understanding situations, all that comes in. Yet you cannot set goals, and clearly or reasonably can’t set goals and clearly follow them. You’ll still be struggling with those you need help with that.

But one good thing as an advanced beginner is that you start asking questions, HOW. How does one do this? How can this be done? These are some of the questions as a novice, you may not be asking but now as an advanced beginner, you’ll be. And then thereafter, as you become more competent, that means more experience. That means more problem solving comes in, and slow and detached reasoning comes in. You are making decisions and understanding naturally understand the context and the situation. Now from that point, after a few more years, you become proficient. That means, now you’re using your intuition to make decisions, and you have a deep situational involvement and recognition of similarity. From that point on with some more experience. And with some more time, you become an expert.

At this point, you are completely functioning with a mature understanding and understanding of the practices, you’re using your intuition, and you have a whole different level of awareness when it comes to decision-making. At this point, as an expert, your performance becomes fluent. So this is what it takes to become an expert, it takes years. Now, I started the podcast by saying that just becoming an expert is not enough. Why? Well, turns out that we now have more information, more know-how, and a lot of things coming at us, thanks to technology. And there’s a lot of proliferation of information. So what is that next level, beyond just being an expert? Well, turns out that you need to become the subject. That means when people think about the topic, let’s say I do hypnosis, I teach success, and I do seminars on self-improvement.

Let’s take the word self-improvement for a second, when anybody thinks about self-improvement, they need to think about me. So my work, my years of experience, and my talent, whatever it is, all have to qualify. It has to make me almost identical to the word self-improvement. When people think about self-improvement, I am the only thought, my name should be the only noun that should cross their mind, we become the subject, and you become the subject in what you’re doing. So there is no differentiation. Some people have achieved that level of similarity. When you say freedom when you say peace. You look at Mahatma Gandhi, you look at Martin Luther King, Jr. You take names, you clearly know what they stand for. That’s the level of achievement, that’s the level to get to. How do you get to that level? How can you become a subject yourself?

Well, in order to do that, this kind of thinking is necessary. And again, these are my thoughts, and these are the points I was driving, I was telling my daughter, you need to keep on testing new ideas. even long after you achieved your expected level of success in your mind, you need to keep on testing new ideas, you need to study opposing views and ideas. When I say opposing views, if somebody is telling you something that’s completely contradicting your line of thinking and your area of work, they also have a similar level of experience and similar trajectory, they may not be in line with your value system. But they are also successful, they have a point, I need to be accommodating to their view, I need to be willing to sit at the same table that they are sitting at and have a conversation, let them put their point. And I need to be open. I don’t need to accommodate them just because I want to, I should be inviting when they are presenting their case, open to new ideas, and open to opposing views. And then one more pursuit. And that pursuit is an uncommon depth. In that area of work.

You see people with years and years of doing something they do achieve depth. But then when the pursuit becomes the uncommon depth, nobody knows what that uncommon depth is, only you know. Only you will pursue you will apply yourself. At that level. It’s very hard to describe this, in my understanding for any expert to become a subject topic themselves, when people will have difficulties differentiating between the area of work and their name. To attain that level one has to accommodate new ideas, and opposing views and pursue uncommon depth. And that’s the position once you achieve it. You become undeniable, users become a whole different, and you become the universe. It’s hard to get there. But then once you get there, it’s going to be amazing. This is the conversation I had with my daughter.

Hopefully, I was able to articulate all that on the podcast episode today. If I did, let me know write a review or read the podcast. If you think this is going to help someone please share it with somebody who you think will benefit from this. But that’s all for now. I’ll catch you tomorrow and we will pick up another topic and we’ll talk. That’s all for now, take care. Bye.

Train Your Brain to Stop Ruminating

Here is the complete transcript of the podcast

In yesterday’s podcast, we talked about forgiveness. And towards the end, I mentioned how hypnosis can be used effectively, to instill a forgiveness sequence into people who have been suffering from some trauma from an event that might have happened many many years ago. And the pain is there, the suffering is there and continues to be there long after the transgressor has gone or is no more. So I said, this also leads to some ruminative thinking and I said, I’m going to deal with ruminative thinking I’ll talk about a minute to thinking tomorrow. So here we are.

Welcome to Success with Srini or welcome back. Let’s talk about community thinking, what is community thinking? Why it happens and what can be done. ruminative thinking is a thought that you keep on repeating yourself, you find difficulty in getting out of that though there is a dominant thought. But there could be multiple sub thoughts. But then the main thought keeps on looping. And occasionally the sub thoughts also keep looping. But the main thought is where this whole attention is the lot of energy that goes into it. Usually, this thought leads you to sadness. And usually, this thought that dark thought there is darkness in thought. So what happens as a result of this is you start to lose your thinking abilities. And you stop to process emotions the right way. If there is depression, this kind of thinking intensifies depression, the significant outcome or the worst outcome, okay, is that you tend to push people away from you. You display anger, frustration, whatever it is, you push people away, and you start to isolate yourself.

Now, why do people do this, and why does this happen? Well, there are two sides to this. Some people deliberately do it. And there’s some level of them engaging in the process. And of course, people don’t want to do it. But because there is an existence of trauma, which I talked about yesterday, there is trauma that was inflicted. And as a result of that, this has happened. So trauma is one. The second thing, second part of this is a belief, a belief that if they keep on thinking like this, they will eventually get some insights. So if the process is taught for a long amount of time, they’ll get an insight. And there’s also proof that ongoing stress that cannot be controlled can also push people into remunerative thinking, but it’s also proof of that. But then the primary, two things are trauma and a belief. These are the two things. Now, how do you get out of this? How can one get out of this? Well, either you intervene, or you seek intervention, but only two ways. How do you intervene? You got to figure out the triggers that start this kind of thinking. So you got to understand what situations what events? What, are the stressors, that cause or that start that initiate this thought, every day on a daily basis. And this also means that you start learning how to question your thoughts. It’s the highest form of self-improvement is when you reach a point where you question every thought, and you do that, unconsciously, is the thought, right? Should I process this thought? Can I stop this thought? So sometimes people also adjust their goals.

They said this is what my life is, I’m going to change my goal, I’m going to go do something else now. And I can’t take this anymore. So they want to leave the field, the battlefield, you say, or the playfield, you can say, and they want to go away and take up something completely new, completely different, and won’t deal with this. That’s always there. But then what I have seen personally is this at a time when you are processing, some dark thoughts, some sad thoughts and you’re slowly drifting into sadness, deep sadness, then the only thing that you have to do to really pull yourself out and as an informed into a ritual.
And I’m hoping that all of us are professionals. That means there is something within us that defines us that is unique to us. We seek mastery, we pursue mastery in one area of our life, to let’s say you are in, in a very bad spot, and you’re going through this thought process, what can you develop mastery and pick one area, pick held, pick your profession, pick your relationships, whatever that one area is. And you say, Okay, I’m going to spend all my time developing mastery in this one area. Every day I wake up, and I’m going to spend all my time, I’ll read every book, I will learn to take classes, I and surrender myself to developing this one thing in me. Usually, that kind of approach is proven to help illuminate thinking. Now, those are all some interventions that you can do on your site. But then you can also seek an intervention. You can go to experts, who have the expertise to deal with this. people reach out to therapists. And we have seen that there are three things that will help CBT cognitive behavioral therapy helps. Hypnosis helps. And then meditation as a mindfulness approach helps. And you can do this on your own, you can approach therapists and all that is there. Then, obviously, clinical approach, you can also make a clinical approach in that we’re talking about the Pexels, the Prozac, the Celexa, us, and the blue boxes of the world. For that, you have to go through your doctor, your primary care physician, and all that.

So you go through the medical system, and there is help available there. Those are some interventions. But I suggest that you intervene. I suggest that you understand the triggers, I suggest that you adjust your goals, question your thoughts, pursue mastery, and there are more ways to intervene. You can shift your daily habits, you can shift the quality of your life by doing certain things. But the point is this, the point is the problem has to be addressed. And the point is that you can take personal responsibility for yourself to address the situation that you are going through, and there’s nobody else who can rescue you. There’s nobody else who can rescue you. I think I got it right the first time from the situation that you’re in. So yes, I’ve seen people see many people pull themselves out from the dark side of sad situations, open themselves up to new possibilities, started to see life in a whole different way, and have gotten back people into their lives and they have become aligned with everything happening. And they have started to find a new purpose a new meaning in their lives.

Okay, I want to stop yet hopefully this is helpful. If it is you know what you have to do write it, review it, share it with a friend, or a family member. And before you know it, I’ll be back here again tomorrow and talking about a new topic picking up or picking up a question from you and answering it on the podcast right here. That’s all for now. Wherever you are, be safe, and I’ll talk to you as early as tomorrow. Stay tuned.