Striving towards Excellence

-Karthik Gurumurthy

How we become aware of success, failure, happiness,friendships, and everything else is just a perception. It is how we perceive failure or defeat, and what we do with it, that  makes all the difference. Actually, perception is our personal opinion or our point of view about any particular event. Of course, the event is a fact, not imagination, but at the same time there is a very personal view coloring the event. We really need to accept the truth about our emotions and perceptions: our thoughts and attitudes create our emotions-not the external events!

Our own perception depends on many things. These include our attitude, which, in turn, includes self-acceptance, self confidence,self-respect and other things. Because your mental structure is different from my mental structure we see the same situation differently. The same pleasant or unpleasant episode is not the same for you and me. You choose your own perception and the consequences are yours, not mine.

Is it clear? If not, may I remind you about cognitive distortion? Cognitive distortion simply means that our thoughts and our way of thinking sometimes misrepresent the facts. Our own mental filter chooses how we feel. This filter will pick up any detail to prove that things are as we perceive them-negative or positive--but mostly negative! Sounds strange but any kind of behavior is a conscious choice. I didn't choose for my friend to be angry or upset. I am sorry if I am unkind but this is a reality that my friend doesn't want to see and understand. It was his attitude, his perception, of this "disturbing event" that led him to his behavior.

It is necessary to understand that sometimes the next day we will see the same event differently. How is it possible? The next day we are wearing a different "pair of eyeglasses." That is, a
different mental filter. Yes, we are very fashion-conscious in that respect--we change our mental filter every time we process our thoughts. Now you know why some days are "so bad, boring and disturbing" for you. Your emotions-fear, anger, anxiety and guilt are a direct result of your mental processing system that day. Don't blame the weather, the event, the company, the other person or the government.

To give you an example, I run a tutoring business and I have few people who help me out in this endeavor. I am the point of contact between the students/parents and the associates who help me in this opportunity. I always look forward to the feedback from students/parents to see how I can improve my service. Most of the times, the feedback has been good. But there are occasions where the parents/students give feedback which are not uplifting. For us to provide  consistent outstanding service, I am mature enough to understand that I need to work on improving our services to take it to the next level. Few weeks back, I had a similar experience where the student parents expressed dissatisfaction over a certain thing and I shared what the students parents  mentioned to my associate. However, my associate took it personally, got defensive and perceived that I am complaining , condemning the service. Actually that was not my intention. The feedback was meant to correct the approach so that we can aim for better service next time.

All of us have blind spots which we are oblivious too.  The four quadrants (below) relate to knowledge about you, in four categories:

• Open area (arena)- What you know about yourself and others also know.
• Blind area (Blind spot)- What you don't know about yyourself but others do know.
• Hidden area (Facade)- What you know about yourself but others don't know
• Unknown area- What neither you nor others know about you.

How does it work?

The quadrants expand or shrink in relation to each other as you gain more knowledge about yourself through experience, observation, feedback from others, communication, self reflection, and so on. To operate most effectively and productively, you need to develop your 'open area'. This is the space where communication is good, with no mistrust or misunderstanding- where there is openness. Learning more about yourself through a new situation, such as work experience, can shrink your 'unknown' area and expand your hidden area. If you demonstrate or communicate this self learning to other people, you expand your 'open' area, where people know you and you know yourself. If you ask for and take note of feedback, then things people know about you will become part of your self knowledge, moving from your blind area to your open area.

Getting feedback plays an important role in improving ourselves. If we take it personally, we lose out on that opportunity to improve and get better. Lot of times, we shoot down the messenger because they hurt our ego.  But that's exactly the feedback you need to move on further in life. We need to create an environment where we get honest feedbacks so that it opens up more possibilities.