ചങ്ങമ്പുഴ കൃഷ്ണപിള്ളയുടെ "ആ പൂമാല" എന്ന കാവ്യം |ആരുവാങ്ങുമിന്നാരുവാങ്ങുമ...

Come, conquer it

Panic, Embarrassed, Exposed

Those were the feeling I had when I walked on to the stage in from of an audience for the first time in my life. This was in the school days and I was acting as one of the lead characters in a play. Soon I stepped on to the stage I looked at the audience. There were too many people in that huge hall. I glanced only once. That was enough. A shiver passed through my body, tongue-tied, and I was frozen. The teacher who scripted and directed the play appeared at the corner of the stage and started whispering me the dialogue. 

(Teacher)“Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once”

(Me- hastily)” Cowradies many times before deaths; valiant never tastebuds”

A play supposed to be a serious one ended as a comedy show. Even after I finished the audience was trying to figure out the plethora of new words I invented on the stage.

Stage fear, Fear of Public speaking, Fear of facing an audience. I am not alone in this. The fear of public speaking always tops the list of fears. 46% of Americans fear that. This fear comes from Anxiety. Another study says that 85% feel anxiety in high stake speaking. I think the rest 15% may be lying. I don’t have to do much research on this. In the capacity of Vice President of Education of toastmaster club, I contact almost everyone for planning each meeting, just t fill 2 speaking slots and other 3 important roles. Many times I ended up in contacting other toastmaster clubs to fill up the roles.

Apart from leave and unavailability the reasons I hear mostly circles around the word anxiety.

                What people will think of me?   

                What if I fail?

                I need more time to prepare to prepare, so that I don’t forget my lines.

                What if I couldn’t connect with audience and communicate my idea

                What if I fail to convince audience?

Do you remember any other time these questions trouble you??

                In a meeting when your turn comes?

                When the speaker asks for questions after presentations

                Again when someone asks about your ideas

                Or when taking some critical decisions and you have a different thought?

                Or least in selecting a topic for a speech you wanted to give?

Isn’t so?

Because of the anxiety we hide our ideas and silence the pondering questions within us. Thus closing the doors to your unique ideas that no one else might have. Those ideas are yours, grown in you, just to stay within you, and die prematurely. That’s a miss, A miss for you, A miss for your friends and family, to the society.

One of my colleagues is passing through this same phase. His ideas are impressive and very much unique, which can change the way the developments and applications are maintained are done, and also give fantastic customer experience. If taken a step ahead, his idea can potentially become a startup with a big chance of success. But every time he presents his ideas, the Anxiety takes it over and rests you can imagine. He is still my colleague.

In 1889, one Indian lawyer went through the same traumatizing experience of anxiety. He was appearing for his first case in his career, but he couldn’t utter any word. He ran out of the courtroom in humiliation. Later in his age, he managed his anxiety by welcoming it with an open heart and it began to fade away. He communicated his ideas loud and clear and it starts resonating within the heart of millions of Indians. He was able to inspire them, unite them in the fight against colonial powers. The one we ran away from the court led the nation to independence and become the father of our nation.

There are many such men and women in the world, who overcame the fear of public speaking, let their idea flow through freely, which changed the course of their life and of the world. Abraham Lincon, Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Jefferson, Winston Churchill, Harisson Ford, Mr. Bean Rowa Atkin. The list is long. The toastmaster club is a small invitation to you to join that list. Come on to the stage, Say “Hello” to your anxiety, embrace it, and conquer it. A leader is made.    

“Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once”

Troubled Water

Oct 10 2015 It was an important day in my life. On that day at 5:30 IST, I had my first call with my client manager as a lead. My role in the organization I recently joined was to lead the IT operations team which works for an investment bank. I was excited about this role. It was the first in my life, I was asked to lead a team. Though bit tensed, I was all ready for the first meeting with the client manager.

Good Morning Toastmaster and Dear guest,

Here is a glimpse of my leadership journey

5:30 I dialed in..

“Hello, Don, Jaise here from RIM team”

“Someone from RIM team, that’s surprising. What made you to join this call Jaise. I never ever had any representation from your team in this weekly governance call.”

“Don I will represent team going forward”

“Let’s see. I come back to you”

After completing the review with other team Don called me

“Jaise”… “JaiSE” … “JAISE”

 “I know this, that’s the habit of this team. They just disappear, no accountability. I tried to reach out to this f** team many times but no response. I gave up Now I working to revoke the contract with this team.”

All this time was trying unmute, Re-plugging the code and trying everything I know to fix the faulty phone but all in vain

Devastated, At that moment I realized that my journey on this leaderSHIP  is in troubled water. To add, most of the team members doesn’t had much IT experience.

Much before I joined the organization, I was on a different journey through books to find the meaning of my life. The book, “Man’s search for the meaning of life” which I read in that expedition came for my rescue. The author emphasis having a purpose for what all you do and it will give a meaning. Why don’t apply the same, have a Purpose, and find meaning in what I do and what my team does. Being new to Banking domain terms like Credits, Rates, Forex, Equity were all Greek and Latin to me. Yes, that’s where I must start, learn what are these. Thanks to YouTube and Business analysts of the bank, I was able to understand it. A wonderful business. What if my team is also as motivated as I am? The next few weeks were a learning journey for them as well as to me. At the end, we were able to see the bigger picture and was able to identify what is the role we, as a team, play in this bigger scheme of things. How does what we do matter or impact the business.

Working closely with them and sitting along with them in calls pointed out that, Some are technically strong, some other are not so. And same was the case with non-technical especially on communication. I sat with each one of them to hear their concerns to identify what they are good at and in which area they need improvement. With the feedback, we arranged a few sessions technical and non-technical to cater to the needs of the team.

I thought I solved all problems, hmm.. no, One other  problem I faced was on the people front. There were not many takers for the nightshifts. Some just mark sick leave when asked to come on the night shift. I don’t want to escalate this behavior to higher management, instead, I called everyone to a meeting. We discussed the concerns, we listened, we list down the suggestions. Finally, we came up with a plan with the consent of all in the team. This was implemented form the very next week.  

Friends,

What I tried to do was when I put the hat of a leader can be put in three points.

Finding the Purpose

Emotional connect with the team.

Openness

For me the purpose was very much important, that aligned the team to a single goal, that helped the team members to come up with new ideas and solutions.

I was able to relate to my team members who don’t have much IT experience to handle a critical project and obviously of not handling tough clients. With frequent communication with the team and with individuals, specific needs of the team were identified and respond to it. With openness, I created a team as one cohesive unit.

And all those efforts paid off

2 quarters later I got a letter from Don

“Jaise, I wish I could have got you in the team much earlier”

Thank you

Right Choice

Steve is very shy and withdrawn invariably helpful but very little interest in people or in the world of reality. A meek and tidy soul, he has a need for order and structure and a passion for detail.

Which of the following do you find more likely;

Steve is a Librarian?

OR 

Steve is a Farmer?

This is a study conducted by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Trevesky. This work was very popular they won the Nobel prize it was on human judgment. With a focus when these judgments irrationally contradict with laws of probability.

Our example depicts one specific type of irrationality. According to Kahneman and Tversky, after people were given the description of Steve as “Meek and Tidy soul” most say he is more likely to be a Librarian. After all the description aligns with the stereotypical view of a librarian than a Farmer. According to Kahneman and Tversky, this is irrational. It’s not about stereotyping there is something else. Almost nobody incorporates the information you already have in the judgment. The ratio of Farmer to Librarian. Let say it is 1:20. That is  1 Librarian and 20 farmers. I am not expecting someone to have the exact same information but why at least a rough estimate was not considered. Let’s add that bit of information and reason about the question again. So Let’s say we have 10 farmers and 200 farmers.

How many of them are a meek and tidy soul. Some random number. Be it 40%. That is 4 out of 10 are a meek and tidy soul. And similarly, in farmers 10% fit the description. So for us out of 200, this comes to 20.

See this now, 4 Librarians and 20 farmers fit the description of Meek and Tidy soul. Do a small calculation now. What is the probability of a random person among those who fits the description is a librarian is 4/24 isn’t. that is 16.7%. Meaning Steve being a Farmer is 6 times probably than Steve being a Librarian

What does this mean?

Even if you think a librarian is four-time more as likely to fit the description “Meek and Tidy soul”  that is not enough to overcome the fact that there are way more Farmers.

Let pause and think back to what we did here. a bit of reverse engineering.

First we checked out of the population what is the ratio of Liberians to Farmer ie 1/20 or 5%. The prior knowledge we have.

Then we checked off all who fit the description meek and tidy soul how many are the librarian. That is 4/24 and we got the result 16.7%. So we combined 2 pieces of information, the number of Librarian and farmers and trait the meek and tidy soul being common among Librarian and update our prior belief about Steve from 5% confidence to 16.7% confidence

The description Meek and Tidy soul was an evidence a clue for us to know who Steve is?. Steve can be a librarian or Steve can be a Farmer. So we chose to check the hypothesis Steve is a Librarian given the evidence.

"New evidence does not determine your belief in a vacuum It should update your prior beliefs it's important because we collect evidence and use it to build our belief about the world."

This integrating thing is called, you might have heard, Bayesian theorem. Bayes' theorem, named after 18th-century British mathematician Thomas Bayes. The theorem provides a way to revise existing predictions or theories given new or additional evidence. It has a vast application, in Finance for risk assessment, Scientist uses this to validate or invalidate their models based on new data. Any coder here? You can code this and explicitly control a machine's belief. And you do this you become a machine learning expert.

 But more importantly

We should use this when we make a choice or judgment. Our judgment is strongly influenced, unconsciously, by which side we want to win. This shapes how we think about our health, our relationships, how we decide how to vote, what we consider fair or ethical. What's most is the fact that it is unconscious. We can think we're being objective and fair-minded and still wind up ruining the life of an innocent man. We need to cut through their own prejudices and biases and motivations to make good judgments. Whenever you want to make a choice or decision. Pause, step back, and remember the 3 rules of Bayes theorem.

1.        Remember your Priors.

2.        Imagine your theory is wrong

3.        Update your belief incrementally

Courtesy: 3blue and 1brown 

പ്രേമം

വിടർന്നുരുണ്ട  അവളുടെ കണ്ണുകളിൽ നിന്ന് പാറി വന്ന ആ നോട്ടം എൻ്റെ നേർക്കാരിരുന്നു. ഒരുമിച്ചുകൂടിയിരുന്ന്  വർത്തമാനം പറയുന്ന, തമാശകൾ പറയുന്ന ആ കൂട്ടത്തിൽ വഴിതെറ്റി വരുന്ന ഈ നോട്ടം ഉണ്ടാകാറുണ്ട്. എൻ്റെ നേരെ പാറി വരുന്ന നോട്ടങ്ങൾ അതിൻ്റെ ഉള്ളിൽ ഒളിഞ്ഞിരിക്കുന്ന പ്രേമത്തിൻ്റെ ചെറു സ്പന്ദനം...കണ്ണുകൾ ചുറ്റും പരതി നടക്കുന്ന സമയത്താണ് ഈ നോട്ടം ശ്രദ്ദയിൽ പെടുന്നത്. പിന്നെ കണ്ണുകൾ തമ്മിൽ തമ്മിൽ ഉടക്കുന്നതു പതിവായി തീർന്നു. തമ്മിൽ തമ്മിൽ സംസാരിക്കാതെ കാണുവാൻ മാത്രമായി ആ കൂട്ടത്തിലേക്കു ഞങ്ങൾ വന്നുകൊണ്ടേയിരുന്നു. കണ്ണുകൾ ഉടക്കി ഒന്നും പറയാതെ സംസാരിച്ചുകൊണ്ടു ....

പണികൾ എത്രയുണ്ടെങ്കിലും അതെല്ലാം മാറ്റിവച്ച് കൃത്യം അഞ്ചര മണിയാകുമ്പോൾ ഞാൻ ആ പടിക്കെട്ടിൽ ഹാജരുണ്ടായിരുന്നു. ആ വിടർന്ന കണ്ണുകൾ കാണുൻ... ആ ചുരുണ്ട മുടിയിഴകൾ കാണാൻ .. ആ മുഖം കാണാൻ.. ഓമനത്തം വിടരുന്ന ചിരി കാണാൻ... ആ നിഷ്കളങ്ക ഭാവം കാണാൻ.. ആ സൗന്ദര്യത്തോടു ചേർന്ന് അതിൽ ലയിച്ചിരിക്കാനായി...

കാണാതിരിക്കാൻ പറ്റില്ല എന്നായി... മുടക്കം വരാതെ, സ്ഥിരമായി കൃത്യം അഞ്ചരക്ക് ഏതോ ശക്തി എന്നെ ആ പടിക്കെട്ടിലേക്കു എത്തിച്ചുകൊണ്ടിരുന്നു..

ജോലി പ്രശ്നമല്ല ....ഉത്തരവാദിത്വം പ്രശ്നനമല്ല ... ആകെ മുന്നിലുള്ളത് ആയ സൗന്ദര്യധാമം മാത്രം...

അവിടെ ആയിരുന്നു തുടക്കം, കാണുവാൻ പോയി, കാണുവാൻ പോയി മനസ്സിൽ കഥകൾ മെനഞ്ഞു അതിൽ ആഗ്രഹങ്ങളും മോഹങ്ങളും ചാലിച്ച് ചേർത്ത് സ്വപ്നത്തിൽ അവളെ ഞാനെൻെ സ്വന്തമാക്കി..

ഒരിക്കിലും സംസാരിച്ചിട്ടില്ലാത്ത വിടർന്ന കണ്ണുള്ള സുന്ദരി , ഞാൻ നിന്നെ പ്രേമിക്കുന്നു....

Do you know me?

Do you know me?

I know that’s a naive question.

Most of you know me. I’m Jaise Joseph, I’m from Kerala, that to many know.

But what is special with that question. Do you know me?

Like many, who couldn’t go out for a haircut due to lockdown, I also tried to give me a hair cut. That’ haircut went so bad that I had to do this, shave my hairs. Unfortunately, that’s the fate of all first-time hairdressers.  When I came out after finishing it, my 1-year old kid looked at me, He was in fact staring at me as if he saw a stranger. He was not ready to come near me. For him his dad had hairs and this man don’t have any hairs! I don’t know you!

This incident made me think, think a bit deeper. Over the years we change a lot. It will be difficult for someone to find me from the group photos taken in school days. I am sure that will be the case with most of us. In this case is it right to think ourselves as the same person? Or do we turn around and say to our past that I don’t know you

The idea of personal identity is far trickier than what one think. What is it? Where exactly is it located. Here is a small though exercise

1.       If I loss my hair, would you still identity me as me?

2.       If I loss a finger

3.       Or in an unfortunate accident I loss my leg

I know definitely, you will say I know you

Okay here is one more. This one is interesting here choice is yours.

I am a demon with all superpower. And I am going to take all your body pasts, but you can keep one. What would you keep?

Most of us will keep our brain the seating place of memory consciousness intelligence. 

This also means there is something that is more me-ish. Which defines one’s personal identity. But what is that.

I stayed in Pune for four and half years in the initial part of my career. I was able to pick up Marathi apart from the language I knew that is English Malayalam and Tamil, a technical skill I accrued. But after I moved to Bangalore in the latter part of my career, the long 5 years took off whatever Marathi I learned. Forgetting speaking Marathi, doesn’t make someone I friended when I was Pune to say, I don’t know you!

Is it memory makes me. If I forget everything, like all travels and trekking I made, all the books I read. All my friends, The Wonderfull school days in my Village, and the college days, Does it take my personal identity away.

I would say No.

My kid who was not ready to come near me after I shaved my head start to play with me when I started speaking to him and started playing with me.

So,.. If I am responding to the situation and my sense of what is funny, wise or important remains the same. And, if I am still taking challenges as I was taking then no one will say, I don’t know you. But definitely, some should remind me, my past  

All the decisions we make are a reflection of our values and beliefs. The question of personal identity then boils down to the way we respond  . values and temperament. Value, that’s the key. Our values are important because they help us to grow and develop. The values like Truthfulness, Love, Compassion, Loyalty and many more defines a good person. The good part is these values complement each other. There is no Love without compassion and no compassion without Love.  Be it any religion, philosophy thought process one which teaches us values, one should aim in becoming manifestations of that values. When you hear the name Mahathma Gandhi, what values come to your mind. When Abraham Lincon.

Now The question is to you. Do you know me? Or More importantly, Do you know yourself?

Thank you.

Courtesy: School of Life 

കാഴ്ച

ഞാനെന്ന കണ്ണട വച്ചുകൊണ്ട്
കാണുന്നതെല്ലമെൻ കാഴ്ച മാത്രം
കണ്ണടയൂരി വലിച്ചെറിഞ്ഞാൽ
കാണുന്നു ലോകമതെന്തെന്നു നീ
ഞാനെന്ന ഭവാമാണാ കണ്ണടകൾ
ദേഹിയോടോട്ടി ചേർന്നിരിക്കുന്നു
യുദ്ധം തുടങ്ങണം നിന്നിൽ തന്നെ
ഞാനെന്ന ഭാവത്തെ കൊന്നിടുവാൻ
എന്നു നീ നിന്നെ തന്നെ കൊന്നിടുമോ
അന്നു നീ ജീവിക്കാൻ തുടങ്ങിടുന്നു
ഞാനെന്ന ഭാവമാഴിച്ചു വച്ച്
നഗ്നനായി സ്വതന്ത്രനായി തീർന്നിടുന്നു
അന്നു നീ കാണും സർവസമത്വം
എല്ലരുമൊന്നെന്ന ജഗത്സത്യം
ബുദ്ധനായി ക്രിസ്തുവായി തീരുമന്ന്
കാഴ്ച്ചകളെല്ലാം മാറുമാന്ന്, കാണും നീ
ഭിക്ഷയായി ഭക്ഷണം വാങ്ങുവാനായി
നീ തന്നെ നിൻ മുന്നിൽ നിൽക്കുന്നത്
എല്ലാരുമാ കണ്ണട വലിച്ചെറിയു
ഏവരുമൊന്നെന്നു തിരിച്ചറിയൂ..