Revise and reduce paper to 6 pages
budsimpson
SoulPortrait.docx|
Soul Portrait |
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Write a 5 page paper. Depth is MUCH MORE important than a mere recounting of the activities we did in class. What I want to read is the 2-3 topics that moved you AND how you’re going to incorporate them into your life. Incorporate readings, lectures, videos you’re your experience. double space. 12 pt font, 1” margins
Question1: What have you learned from this class?
Question2: What are you planning to apply in your life?
Below is my soul Portrait:
If I am writing my soul portrait today, it’s an attempt to decipher stark truth of lessons of my journey called life. Childhood, Teenage & Adolescence - these phases of my journey are strings of memories which can be tied with being sorrow or happy. I will not critique my past rather ‘reflect’, so that I can peek into my past as someone else.
Infancy/Childhood
A kid is always innocent, one doesn’t understand expectations or materialism of money.
Born in a middle-class family, in one of the far most remote villages in India where one is always judged by other’s expectations, walk of everyday life is entwined with social expectations. Expectations of parents are influenced by “What if”; “what others will think if my son won’t get good grades or wouldn’t behave well in front of others” etc., etc.,
One of the happiest days is celebrating one’s birthday. As kid, birthday means new clothes, presents and goodies. There was this struggle always that triggered frustration why is that my birthday should be like.
There are moments at time, why is that having small things fulfilled was always a struggle. Going to a restaurant for nice meal or movie or a toy that I want to play. Things as an adult seem more trivial but as a child these are questions questioning me and had to endure at an early age.
Though there are other kids around me who didn’t have mere needs taken care – and I started to learn the reality of life.
Teenage
With a bit of maturity, I walked into teenage and I was presented with different challenges. First love or rather infatuation (learnt after few years) was more important than anything in life during that stage. Days – Months have spent thinking about a girl, where goose bumps and pounding heart made me yearn for someone who treated me as a friend. I was heartbroken when I learnt that she was interested in someone else. Sleepless nights and lack of appetite was the new norm. Learnt the hard way that time is the best medicine. I completed my 10th grade and diploma in electronics and communication engineering(DECE) in my teenage. This was one of my achievement in my teenage life.
Adulthood
Childhood and teenage phases taught me patience, eventually taught me to think in a mature way. Some cultures one is always judged by how much money one is earning and if at all one is married or not. And where I come from this isn’t an exception and I am a classic use case.
One important thing I want to share here is throughout my childhood my parents gave me this nice advice: Don’t talk to strangers, because they wanted to protect me. But I realized as we are going into adulthood we need to interact with strangers almost every single other day. I talk to the strangers in college, work place, and other events.
During my early adulthood stage, my father got heavy losses in Aqua (Shrimp farming) Business. He started this business with lots of hopes. Unfortunately, we got losses for 5 years continuously and financially became very weak and faced many problems.
I joined in a university for undergraduate degree in Electronics and communication engineering. It was a weekend degree program. I worked in many small companies for my college fee and food. I got paid very less compared to what my father gave salaries to his supervisors when he was doing Aqua business. I wasn’t sleep for many nights by seeing this situation during that time. I saw a big difference of my life in how I was lived in my teenage and early adulthood. Time flies and I completed my 4 years undergraduate degree with lots of tears and bad memories.
After my undergraduate, I got a job in a startup software company. I was not able to learn the Java programming very fast compared to other colleagues and not efficient in writing the Java code. I don’t have experience in Java programing and they treated me like a dump person, and not fit for programmer. I saw the first discrimination in my life. This is one of my life lesson. After 2 years 6 months, I got an opportunity to work in one of the biggest European software company (Atos Origin) in India. I learned many things there. After 1 year at Atos Origin, I got an opportunity from one of the top 4 Indian software company called Satyam computer services in India. I worked for this company for nearly two years. I was happy and enjoyed a lot during these 2 years in my adulthood. They send me to Germany, UK and Switzerland. I resigned this company in 2007 and came to USA in Dec 2007. I have been enjoying the success at work from my third company onwards. I learned this is because of experience and improvement in my sense of humor. Life can be truly fun and entertaining if we let it be. People who are the happiest have the great sense of humor. I don’t have inbuilt quality of sense of humor, but I learned it during my journey. Today, we are surrounded by stress, it can be stress at work place, stress at home, stress in relationship, stress of finance etc. I learned from my experience on how to overcome from these stresses.
Before coming to USA, I was engaged to a girl in Dec 2007. I cancelled this engagement within 4 weeks. Because of my decision, the girl’s family impacted a lot and the girl’s father was died due to heart attack. This incident changed me a lot in my personal life. I stopped going to social parties. I was self-imposed on my life not to marry in my life. When I am becoming older, I noticed that single life is very painful. Loneliness is the deepest problem I have. Sometimes, I didn’t have an opportunity to speak with another human-beings for 48-72 hours, mainly during long-weekends. I am not able to mingle with family or friends during any family events. I am always thinking that I too have a family if that incident didn’t happen in my life. Time flies and I am making myself very busy by taking more responsibilities at work. In addition to my busy work schedule, I did MS Computer science and now pursuing MBA to make myself busy and furthering my career. However, loneliness still holds me back.
Soul portrait
In the first class, we were required to present our soul portrait envelops. In this activity, I talked about my deepest fear, learning goals and holding me back.
My deepest fear is loneliness. I am single and not married yet. Since 2008, I am staying alone and the interaction with another human being in my personal life is very less. Apart from professional life, I see this loneliness being the biggest struggle in my personal life particularly on weekends and during holidays.
My learning goal for this class is to acquire proper communication skills in general. As good communication is essential in building a team that will make business success. Communication plays a key role if members of company are to work as a team towards the same goal. Good communication between employees and managers will increase the productivity, creativity and adoptability. Good communication builds strong confidence in their work and achieve the better results quickly and efficiently.
Currently, there are many factors that’s holding me back. Apart from busy professional life, emotional problems play a major role that’s holding me back in my personal life. I was engaged 12 years ago and I cancelled the engagement immediately. Because of this decision, the bride’s family impacted a lot. This is the biggest mistake I made in my life. Because of this past, I have decided not to get married. This is a self-impose on my life. However, I never carry personal problems in to professional life. Otherwise, I will lose focus on my professional career.
The river of life
Doing the river of life’s activity, was a chance for me to take a moment and appreciate my journey. Telling my story during the presentation allowed me to experience my journey in a new way by receiving feedback and inspiration from the listeners. One feedback I got on my presentation, was a compliment on my achievement as a successful software engineer, that feedback made me feel so proud of myself.
I have had times when I felt I cannot share my thoughts, fears with others, even my close friends, because I thought saying my fears loud will make it true. I was in denial; I did not want to admit my fears to anyone, so I kept pretending that everything is fine and that I am doing well. I did not surround myself with walls because I was afraid that other might disappoint me; I was afraid that they will not help me.
However, I had times when I could not open to anyone, I had times when I felt an insistent need for talking to someone about my fears. Sometimes, I felt relieved after talking even if talking did not solve my problem, the compassion and support from others were helpful in turning on my soothing system. Moreover, the encouragement of people who care about me was always a push forward for me; the more they believe in me, the more I believe in myself.
Every one suffers, it is a fact. But knowing this prevents me sometimes from sharing with others as I do not want to add more to their problems.
At other times, I feel that sharing my problem with a friend who might have the same problem is a relief for both of us, as we both realize we are not alone. Supporting each other and sharing experiences give us the strength to make it through the problem.
Doing the river of life activity, I found out it is impossible for me to talk about my life without mentioning my struggles and setbacks. So, I talked about my journey, struggles, ups and downs, and accomplishments. At the end of the activity, I did not regret that I opened and talked about my thoughts, fears, and hopes.
The last lecture video
What moved me in the video, was the enthusiasm of Randy in addressing and explaining the attainment of children dreams. Despite being diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer, Randy was strongly expressed how one would attain their dreams. The confidence and the strength he utilized to guide and explain on dream attainment were quite moving. On top of that, his high spirits despite being a cancer spirit were motivating and increasing once hopes in attaining one's dreams.
Active Listening skill
Active listening is a message that the listener cares about others’ needs and emotions. As, active listening is an act of care, people understand when you listen to them, they open to you, talk comfortably about their problems or needs. This class was a great opportunity for me to practice active listening as I have always had a problem with active listening, sometimes; I feel I know what the other person will say, so I interrupt and speak my mind.
Listening to other students during the class without interrupting was difficult at first, but as I am now mindful of my problem, I focused on listening, payed attention to what is they are saying.
I have been practicing active listening since the first lecture in the class and after almost ten weeks; I notice the difference in my personality. Now, listening to others without interrupting is easier, and the more I listen to others, the more I understand their needs and emotions. Practicing active listening has enhanced my emotional intelligence.
Leadership
Throughout the discussion about leadership and good leaders’ characteristics in the class, I found out that good and successful leaders have a lot in common. Successful leaders are supposed to be rationalistic, intellectual, and reasonable, they are also supposed to be motivating, cognitive, affective and compassionate, otherwise they would not make a difference or change things. As I worked with several leaders for over seven years, I developed a sense of how is it like to be a good, compassionate and effective leader and how it is like to be a self-centered leader.
Self-centered leaders are not effective team players, they use the team to generate ideas and then use the ideas for themselves without giving the credit for teamwork, also they do not care about their organization`s success, they are so obsessed with their personal success over anything else. Self-centered leaders lack compassion and emotional intelligence, as they are so focused on themselves, they do not understand others` feelings and perspectives; therefore, they cannot communicate with their employees, they are not flexible or Collaborative, and they consider compassion as a weakness.
In contrast, compassionate leaders can enhance their employees` engagement as they feel valued, appreciated and presumed. Enhancing the employees` engagement arises better outcomes and positively affects the work environment and improves the employee’s productivity. Compassionate leaders pass their knowledge to their employees, engage them in making decisions, trust them, and support them.
For example, I consider my manger a good example for being a compassionate and inspiring leader. He taught me how to build relationships with my coworkers and inspired me to follow his leadership model. My manager is so flexible as he has an ability to adapt to different environments.
I had a problem in the beginning, as I could not be transparent about my mistakes so I could not share it with my coworkers, but after a while and with my manager`s help, I could talk about my mistakes and discuss it to avoid making it again which made my relationship with my colleagues stronger. Finally, being a leader is not easy; it requires continuous work, self-improvement and acceptance, but only those who keep improving themselves, learn from other inspiring leaders and keep their compassion are potential successful leaders.
I learned in this class that a mindful leader will be more productive, have a positive attitude with staff/employees, more organized, more compassionate, able to influence others, understanding, motivating and self-aware, and able to create a positive work environment. Also, a leader with a growth mindset will embrace challenges instead of avoiding it, learn from criticism, get inspired by others, improve his/her skills instead of limiting his/her abilities, solve work and self-problems in a creative way, and will be compassionate with his/her employees.
Additional Notes that I learnt from class:
Would you believe it that around 85% of the world population is suffering lack of self-confidence?. Yes, it’s quiet astonishing because people around us suffering lack of self-confidence. This is one of the major problem. Self-confidence is not something which can be taught, it has to be felt from within. If we are suffering from lack of self-confidence, we will never ever be able to attract abundance in our life. If we want to be successful and want to achieve goals, be confident and it’s important to have self-confidence within ourselves. However, I am failing to build self-confidence when it comes to my personal life. That’s why I am not able to come out of loneliness fear.
Gratitude letter assignment increased my self-confidence. It is important to count your blessings, rather than only keep complaining about things which didn't happen in a right manner for you. So right now say a word of "Thanks" or give "Gratitude" to parents or to people who have made life easy to you, by showing gratitude you really built your self-confidence because the more good things you say to people around you, the more good things comes to your way.
Meditation activity in class taught me that meditation is one activity, which can beat the depression. Well there is a power in meditation. It helps you to focus on the positive rather than the negative thoughts. So channelize your energy, try and think, and balance only at the present moment rather than thinking about the past and future. Just close your eyes and meditate for a few minutes every single day and you will feel the difference definitely.
Exercising can also create wonders to remove or beat the depression. When you exercise, you releasing good hormones which will really help to beat the depression. So any kind of sport or any kind of exercise you like, it can be hitting the gym or going for a sport and playing with friends or anything else for that matter. Try and exercise at least 30 - 45 mins a day and you will be able to beat the depression.
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