February 2014

Personality myths in management

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Introverts and Extroverts

We are always told that:

To be happy is to be sociable
To be great is to be bold
If you are sitting alone in a social gathering, it means you are sad
If you are a part of group, means you are smart, happy and fun loving
If you are quiet, it means you are shy and not bold
If you are loud and speak a lot, mingle a lot, you are a leader

Talkative people are rated as smarter, better looking as more interesting and more desirable as friends. Velocity of speech also counts as well as volume. We rank fast talkers as more competent and likable than slow ones. Voluble are considered as smarter than reticent

We see ourselves as the nation of extroverts. If you are not an introvert, you are surely managing, raising, married to or coupled with one.

There are also a set of people who pretend to be extroverts. Extroverts with their loud voice, constant communication and interaction with people, leave an impression that they are smart and intelligent. Which may be true or may not be true.

We have been born and brought up in an environment or a value system called “Extrovert Ideal” – an ideal self is gregarious and comfortable being in spot light.

Parents feel they are not providing something when they see their child sitting with books and spending time alone instead of playing or interacting in a group or staying alone for most of the times. At times they may even be resentful when they see other kids.

Even in schools, desks are arranged in such a way that group learning can take place, there are various programs, events, functions, competitions in schools and colleges to foster group work. And the one who cant fit themselves in the group, start feeling inferior and go into a shell or thinking that there is something wrong with them.

Do you know, without introverts, world would have been devoid of theory of relativity, theory of gravity, the GOOGLE, satyagraha revolution, Harry potter, Charlie Brown, W.B Yeat’s the second coming, Proust’s in search of lost time, Orwell’ s 1984 and animal farm, the cat in the hat,etc.

We would have been devoid of geniuses like Einstein, Gandhi, Newton, Roosevelt, Abraham lincoln, speakers like robin sharma, etc.

Apple computers are a brain child of an introvert!

Worlds greatest ideas, art and inventions – from theory of evolution to Van Gogh’ sunflowers to the personal computers, came from quiet and cerebral people who knew how to tune into their inner worlds and treasures to be found there.

Introversion – along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness and shyness – is now a second class personality trait, somewhere between disappointment and a pathology. Not all introverts are shy. Do not mix up both. Shyness is fear of social gatherings and public speaking and fear or acceptance. Even extroverts can be shy.

Extroverts is an enormously appealing personality style, but we have turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us conform. Let their voice not over shadow the voice of introverts. Listen to them and you will be surprised to hear some treasures, something innovative that you would have ever come across.

If you are an introvert, reading this article, be proud to be so and know that you are equally powerful and equally important. Know that most of the world leaders are a part of you.

If you are an extrovert, know that you are missing on something from the geniuses around you. World needs you and introverts also.

Of course extroverts are also genius. Infact, Its not the extrovert or introvert that tells us who is genius, its the intellect. All we need is not judge genius in the scale of loudness, volume, social gatherings, clothings, talkativeness, loud body language, number of people surrounded by. All these factors do not co-relate in terms of being genius.

Connecting Heart and Brain

Few days back, i kept pondering over a word which is very common – Communication and Communion. These are not new words to any of us but, that day i really thought in depth about these 2 words.

Dictionary meaning of communication is: the imparting or exchanging of information or news.

Dictionary meaning of communion is: the sharing or exchanging of intimate thoughts and feelings, esp. when the exchange is on a mental or spiritual level.

Communion – union while communication, oneness while communicating is like heart and communication is like brain…

These 2 words give me wonderful thought about connecting heart and brain.

In communication there is a sharing of ideas through words, pleasant or unpleasant, through symbols, through gestures; and ideas can be translated ideologically, or interpreted according to one’s own peculiarities, idiosyncrasies and background.

But in communion I think there is something quite different taking place. In communion there is no sharing or interpretation of ideas. You may or may not be communicating through words, but you are directly in relationship with that which you are observing; and you are communing with your own mind, with your own heart. One may commune with a tree, for example, or with a mountain, or a river. I do not know if you have ever sat beneath a tree and really tried to commune with it. It is not sentimentality, it is not emotionalism: you are directly in contact with the tree. There is an extraordinary intimacy of relationship. In such communion there must be silence, there must be a deep sense of quietness; your nerves, your body are at rest; the heart itself almost comes to a stop. There is no interpretation, there is no communication, no sharing. The tree is not you, nor are you identified with the tree: there is only this sense of intimacy in a great depth of silence. I do not know if you have ever tried it. Try it sometime – when your mind is not chattering, not wandering all over the place, when you are not soliloquizing, when you are not remembering the things that have been done or that must be done. Forgetting all that, just try communing with a mountain, with a stream, with a person, with a tree, with the very movement of life. That demands an astonishing sense of stillness, and a peculiar attention – not concentration, but an attention which comes with ease, with pleasure

Communication is composed of language, which is composed of words. Yet those words are not the sensation themselves, but mere representations of them.

and we are so attached to words

Due to communication being lingual, it is a mind based faculty, because the mind is nothing more than words. Thus, communication is based on a sense of separation and division, which is the mark of mind centered consciousness. Here I am, and there you are and we are communicating. It is mind to mind. But because nature is not linear in quality, communication and language does not penetrate into the heart of things. It is peripheral, surface level. It is scientific and not poetic. It is rigid and not fluid. It relays information, but not transformation. This is not meant to devalue words or the mind itself. We have it for a reason and it serves a great purpose, which is to be in service to the heart.

Communion on the other hand, is a very different experience; it is worlds apart from communication. Communion is a very beautiful word, it is composed of two words: common and union. Common indicates a certain likeness of things, a commonality is a reflection, in that what is before you is similar to you; you are equals. But when union enters the picture, the division between you and the other dissolves. The two become one. Rather than seeing the other as being a mere reflection of yourself, you see it truly being yourself. Communion is intimacy.

So whereas in communication there is a division between oneself and what is being communicated with, in communion there is no division at all, one becomes that which is being perceived. It resides in the realm of the heart, where there is nothing but unity. And in order to enter into communion, one must become utterly feminine, so open, so receptive, that you allow the other to enter into you deeply, so that they touch your innermost core, your essence. Conversely, they too, must be in this state as well, thus, two purity s are interweaving together into one. It is an exchange of essences; unio mystica. In communion, there is a deep transformation, as opposed to mere exchange of information.

Communion reaches a place that is far beyond words. In fact, it touches to that place where words unfold, it is the invisible space from which the symbolism of words and language derive. So it is natural that once communion has occurred and is over, the separation of self and other occurs again, that a whole slew of words will arise within ones consciousness. But these words will be of a radically different quality than before because they are arising from the source of words, rather than generated from a previous surface level thought stream.

In order for these words to be able to touch the depth of what has occurred in the state of communion, it is important to have a natural language that can adequately express what has happened. This natural language is one of energetics. Because communion is a dissolving of boundaries, one enters into a realm of pure undifferentiated energy, it is a movement into the unmanifest, the mystery. The standard language of the mind will not do, science cannot touch this place. This is where the application of the universal cosmology comes into place, because it provides the framework or pattern from which these kinds of experiences can be best fit into. It allows for the communication to adequately and accurately reflect the communion. In other words, it enables the mind to be entrained with the heart, so that the words reflect the truth of the experience. In this way, we learn to truly speak from the heart.

 

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