Tag: #differences

A piece of mind

Photo by Miguel u00c1. Padriu00f1u00e1n on Pexels.com

Your mind is a garden, your thoughts are the seeds, the harvest can either be flowers or be weeds.

– William Wordsworth

Mind, as psychology defines is broadly, all intellectual and psychological phenomena of an organism, encompassing motivational, affective, behavioral, perceptual, and cognitive systems; that is, the organized totality of an organism’s mental and psychic processes and the structural and functional cognitive components on which they depend. In simple words, our mind is what we are and what we perceive. All of our actions and reactions are the result of what our mind thinks is the best to do being in a particular situation. Our mind is no doubt an indispensable part of our body and no human being on the face of earth can function properly without being in the “correct/ right state of mind”, as said by many.

Every single person present on the surface of the earth has a mind of his own. People think differently, talk differently, react to a same thing differently and so on. Everything we do differs from the other person. It is all because we have different minds. For example, some people like to listen slow songs whereas some prefer upbeat songs, some like to watch football whereas others watch cricket and the list goes on. Even while being in the midst of a discussion, we find many different opinions and ideas from the people present in the discussion. This is how different and varied our thoughts or our minds are. It is not that we are not aware of this fact that all people have a mind of their own and it is hard for any two people to be totally alike in their thoughts and perceptions, but still here we are fighting for the superiority of our thoughts and beliefs.

This blog is not about staying quiet even if you see something very wrong happening or someone with wrong beliefs imposing himself on you/ others. This blog is about what actually we should fight for. These days it is very clear from the ongoing scenarios that how fragile our minds have become and how we live in the constant fear that someone might come at us telling that our thoughts are wrong, because we all believe that our beliefs are free from any flaws. We get angered by small disruptions in our thoughts and vent in out on anyone who differs with our opinion. These all may seem very complicated to understand and anyone reading it must feel this to be some sort of rubbish. But all I ask of you is to take a moment and sit quietly for a moment, put our egos aside and retrospect what we are fighting for. Let’s put ourselves in the place of the other person and think why he/she feels that they are correct and what would we have done being in their place. It is very easy to point fingers at others and do our level best in proving someone wrong just to get the euphoria of being correct but it is very difficult to get to the mind of the other person and understand his thoughts and beliefs. I am not saying this justifies the crimes committed by a criminal or it justifies the actions of any violent protester burning the vehicles in road just to prove that what they believe in is true in all forms and there should be no debate about it. What I want to convey with this is know what you are fighting for, ask yourselves whether it is worth arguing others, ask yourselves what you will gain from proving yourselves correct and try to understand the other’s point of view before jumping into an argument. I know it I not easy to understand someone, but what I know is being patient will help a lot in this regard. It will take a lot of time to be able to actually put ourselves in someone’s shoes. But it is not impossible to do. Although it will take some time, I hope we all grow up from the constraints of our thoughts and be the one in command of our mind.

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Obesity and social life.

“People who lie to themselves about investing are the same as overweight people who blame their genes for their obesity.”

A change in the lifestyle of youngsters had not only to change their working habits but also brought a huge change in eating habits resulting in conditions like overweight and obesity. Engaging ourselves in works related to inactivity had worsened the situation.

Eating junk and spicy food instead of a regular balanced diet had contributed in disturbing our BMI index. It is a medical problem that increases your risk of other diseases and health problems, such as heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and certain cancers.

However, the terms overweight and obese differs from each other for adults, WHO define overweight and obesity as-

  • overweight is a BMI greater than or equal to 25; and
  • obesity is a BMI greater than or equal to 30.

Body mass index (BMI) is a simple index of weight-for-height that is commonly used to classify overweight, underweight, normal, and obesity in adults. It is defined as a person’s weight in kilograms divided by the square of his height in meters.

According to the studies of WHO, In 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults aged 18 years and older were overweight. Of these over 650 million adults were obese. The worldwide prevalence of obesity nearly tripled between 1975 and 2016.

Causes of obesity?

Intake of excess sugar and carbonated drinks, eating fried and unhealthy products, and eating after being full.

Smoking and drinking frequently.

Genetic and medications.

Lack of exercise and sleep.

Social issues.

How it affects one’s social life?

Obesity not only affects a person physically but also mentally. We live in a world where social media had become a crucial part of our lives. We tend to believe in ideal body shape and size and get more prone to body shame ourselves. Obese people are more inclined to get bullied and teased they are seen as a liability on the economy as obesirty contribute towards laziness and lack of interest. This leads to distress and anxiety situations making a person more disposed towards depression. They may also face social isolation making them feel lonely and losing their confidence. Guilt, lower work achievement, and sex problems are some of the major factors affecting the quality of life.

In undeveloped countries the ability to afford food, high energy expenditure with physical labor, and cultural values favored a larger body size are believed to contribute to the observed patterns.

How to prevent obesity?

Exercise on a daily bases maybe it is yoga or cardio. Stay consistent with what you do.

Try to eat a healthy diet enriched with proteins, vitamins, and minerals. Take salad and fruits on a regular bases. Eat-in small intervals.

Quit smoking

Everything takes time but the important thing is to never stop believing in youself and never stop trying

You are special and have a purpose, so take steps to fulfill it. It is never too late to start.

Unconscious Bias

Have you ever been in a situation where you were blamed even for doing nothing? I am sure most of you have been in that situation. I have been there too. I was working in a multinational organization, about four years back. In the beginning I was a good performer and I delivered on all my deliverable, and that too following the SMART strategy, barring a few. There were times when I could not deliver but I always tried my best, depending on the situation. Now one day, my manager got promoted and she was replaced by another another lady from our team. And then things began to go south. Problems crept up, she began to find faults in everything I do, and she always had this intention to reprimand me in the team meetings.

Things just got worsened one day. A priority 2 issue came up at about 9 PM at night, just at the moment when we were about to leave. I informed her, despite all the differences but to my utter surprise, she remarked, “It is your fault. You are responsible for this. Don’t expect anything from me and I expect this to be solved latest by tomorrow morning.” I knew something like this would happen but I never imagined the utter intensity of the remark. Moreover, when I analysed the situation, I found out that I was never responsible for the issue in the first place. One of my team mate, in fact a senior team member missed to pay attention to the issue a month back, due to which the client had to send it as a priority 2 issue. That was it. The next morning, when my manager came, I explained everything to her, but she was clouded in her own judgement to even listen to me and understand.

That was simply the case of unconscious bias. Because of past incidents and events, her judgement was clouded to let her think straight and logically. Unconscious bias was the main reason which affected her thinking and making the rightful decision. But what she failed to understand is that this little judgement of her can have profound effect on the hiring, motivation and retention decisions. In our day to day interaction, we might not be even aware of when such kind of bias creeps into our decisions and plays havoc in our mind. As per recent news, such unconscious bias can create a turnover impact of INR 22000 per associate. Surprising, isn’t it?

Unconscious Bias

Now when we talk about unconscious bias, there are multiple instances and multiple effects of such bias and each of it has its own term. A few of them are:

  1. Affinity Bias – When we come across a person who is similar to us, we tend to give positive response to him. It seems like we tend to identify ourselves with that person.
  2. Halo Bias – Because of some praiseworthy and commendable actions of the past, we tend to see that person in the positive light and admire all of his actions even though he might not have quite lived up to expectations in the present.
  3. Perception Bias – It is the tendency to form stereotypes and assumptions about certain groups which makes it difficult to form an objective opinion about individual members of that group.
  4. Horn Bias – Because of a negative incident in the past, all the present judgement gets clouded by that feeling.
  5. Confirmation Bias – Tendency to seek out evidence that confirms our initial perceptions and ignoring contradictory information.

These are some of the biases which creeps into our decisions without even our knowledge. Managers should always be neutral which looking at the present situation and not to base the eventuality of the decision based on some past incident. One way to do this is to critically evaluate all the options, put forward by everyone and also to engage a third-party to challenge those options. In this way, our decisions will not be clouded and will be a blessing for everyone.

Referring to the situation which I faced, it was Horn Bias and it could have been easily avoided if she had taken the high road to listen and to communicate with me. But nevertheless, there is always a scope for one to learn in one’s life.

Source: https://builtin.com/diversity-inclusion/unconscious-bias-examples