On second of June I had the pleasure of observing a session on PERSONAL EFFECTIVENESS and it was so enlightening that I thought I should share it with all.
The best part of this session is, every time I sit through it, I have so many new things to learn. This was my fourth encounter with this one- Personal Effectiveness.
What does it mean to be Personally Effective?
For all I know I can write a few pages, at least, if not a complete chapter on what it means to be an effective person, but to pass the elevator’s test let me tell you in short. It all boils down to what you think of yourself. You are extremely effective (personally) if you are happy with the way you are.
The workshop led us through a different way of introspection. When we talk about introspection, knowingly or unknowingly we dwell with everything which is wrong with us. When we sit down to think what we did in the past, it can be a daily diary or a weekly routine, we think about what went well and what went wrong. We spent most of our time dwelling upon what went wrong than what was right.
In this workshop, we have a different approach. We start by discussing our past achievements and all the success we have had. After all it’s about feeling good about own self, isn’t it?
Three Principles all of us need to know-
1. STIMULUS – RESPONSE Its nature’s rule to have a response for every stimulus. The response varies from every organism to the other. We will keep our discussion to humans only. Psychologists have shown by research that 20% of our life is influenced by the stimulus, but 80% is influenced by the response we had/ gave to that stimulus. For us, humans, the first principle states that between every stimulus and response, there are CHOICES.
When we think about choices there are two very interesting aspects with it:
a. When we make a choice of responding to a stimulus in a certain way, we have made a commitment to the consequences that come attached with it. So, IF YOU OWN THE CHOICE, YOU ALSO OWN THE CONSEQUENCES.
b. Sometimes we have a different approach towards it. We try to look for the consequences and then make a choice accordingly. So, IF YOU ARE WILLING TO OWN THE CONSEQUENCES, YOU ALSO EMPOWER YOURSELF TO MAKE THE CHOICE.
Choices we make and consequences attached with it are like two ends of a stick. You can’t pick up one end of the stick and say, “I don’t want the other end.” Because when you picked up one end of the stick you made a choice to pick the other as well.
What does these two statement means?
Let me give you an example. How many people you know who are not happy with their current salary? Sounds familiar situation? The simplest of question is, if you are not happy with the salary, why are you in that job? Nobody is stopping you to go out and look for a job with a satisfactory package. You made a CHOICE for this current job, and you are going through the CONSEQUENCES, why are you blaming someone else?
We need to understand that being ambitious and being unhappy about present state are two different things. Though they may sound connected but people who are ambitious don’t spend time in negative thoughts because they know that it will slow them down, may be distracting them.
2. And it brings us to the second principle of COC/ COI. Another powerful theory which I realized I have been following even before I realized that it is a theory and it has a name.
COC – Circle of Concern and COI – Circle of Influence.
Let’s first define what these two terms mean.
Circle of CONCERN, consists of all the concerns which you have right now. It can be anything ranging from personal problems like career, family, girlfriends (may be you have one, is your concern, or you don’t have one), food or bigger problem of society like hunger, corruption or even world peace. The idea is, you should be able to decide what are the issues which concern you and make you devote some time to think about them. They all come under your CIRCLE of concern.
Circle of Influence, if you have noticed, among the list of your concerns there are some issues about which you can do something and there are some about which you cannot, at least at this moment you are not willing to do anything. For eg, if you don’t have a girlfriend may be you can do a thing or two about it, but if your current girlfriend is your concern, god bless you!
Through this principle, the idea is to understand that people who are REACTIVE in nature have their COI very small. They have a lot of concerns in life about which they are not willing to do anything, while their circle of influence is very small.
And then there are people who concentrate on their COI, and devote their energies to the things which they can influence. They don’t let things which are not in their control bother them in any way. Their COI is almost as big as their COC.
3. ROLE and APPROACH.
This one is interesting and helps you understand why your approach should be positive. The principle says that what you see in a situation is determined by the role you assume.
A very simple example would be, if you were to look at a millionaire’s drawing room.
Assuming that you are a burglar, how will you look at it? Your approach may be to look at it from the point of view as to scan from the most precious thing and in the order of cost, wipe them out first.
On the second occasion, what would be your approach if you were an interior decorator? Would you do the same, or would you look at the same situation from a different perspective?
This leads us to a very important realization that it is very important to have a goal in your life. When you have a goal in life, you know what role you are going to take, in order to achieve that goal. Once you get into the role, you know what should be your approach.
If we understand these three principles and follow them in our life, the first thing I learnt that I need a goal in life. Because when we have a goal, whatever we are doing, be it online, be it gossiping, be it training yourself, you know what are you supposed to do in order to be able to reach to the final destination.
There is one more aspect of the combination of KNOWLEDGE + SKILLS + ATTITUDE which when combined with ACTION make you personally effective.
Hope you were able to read it till the end. Please share your views on this and ask questions which we can discuss among us.
