That Demon called Fear!

This was not just an email, it looked like a SOS. Desperation was oozing out of it.

“ Please help me sir. I have my interview tomorrow and I am nervous like hell. I do not know what to do.”

Fear of the unknown is our biggest enemy. It creates uncertainty , loss of confidence and self belief.

Often we do not attempt because we are afraid of losing.

The saddest part is that it is not just the average or below average students but even some bright students feel the heat.

A little nervousness is common among all of us. But we are discussing about the chronic cases of anxiety disorders.  

Why do we feel nervous ?

 There can be many reasons.  It could be due to some past experiences, insecurities, low self esteem etc. But we shall limit ourselves to the nervousness during interviews.

   1.      Primarily our nervousness stems from the fear of the unknown.  We are afraid of the dark because we cannot see anything.  Our nervousness is akin to that.

   2.      We are nervous when we are ill prepared.

   3.      We are afraid to fail.

So how do we overcome such problems:

   1.      Acceptance that we are having a problem :  We must first of all accept that we have a problem on hand.  Once we accept it, we have overcome a major hurdle. Now it is time to act.

   2.      Understand the interview dynamics: Failing in an interview is not rejection. It is just that your profile doesn’t match with the company’s requirement .

   3.      Prepare well. Remember that there are no free lunches in life. The harder you prepare, the more confident you shall be.

   4.      Practice : Practice hard. Practice alone in front of a mirror. Practice in front of your friends. Take part in various competitions like debates, elocution contest etc. to overcome your fear of public speaking.

   5.      Realize that failure is as much a part of life as success. One cannot succeed all the time.

   6.      Learn techniques to overcome fear. Do deep breathing. Drink water. Practice Yoga and meditation.

Life  can be a great teacher. It brings the process of learning out of our class rooms. The beauty of this learning is that life throws problems at us and at the same time provides the solutions.

All we need is an open mind and a strong will to change ourselves. 

The Right time to study.

A couple once visited me asking me for advice on their son. “ My son is very lazy. He doesn’t get up in the morning. I want him to wake up at 4 am and study. How do I do that?” asked the distressed father.

Easy. I told him.  Let him sleep.

The father was confused. When would his son study then? I told him that there are 24 hrs in a day. Why do you insist on the time when he is at his lowest? He said that he had been doing it all his life.

His son was 15 years old. So my next question was that if he felt so strongly about it, why didn’t he inculcate that habit from childhood.

His wife sheepishly explained that he was their only son. Since the pressure was not much in the childhood, they allowed him to sleep longer.

I told them that now is not the time to experiment.  Let him follow his biological clock. Let him study whenever he is comfortable. If you now wake him up at 4 am, he will only sit there like a zombie and nothing would register in his mind.

The parents stood up grimly and went in search of a better advisor.  I forgot the incident until I met the father after six months.  He was a gentleman. He confessed that it happened exactly the way I had predicted. They woke Chetan every morning  at 4am and soon he was lagging in his studies.

When they went to the school, the class teacher too advised them to allow the child to study at the time he was comfortable.

Chetan was lucky. He had a very intelligent teacher.  Else a good student’s career would have been sacrificed on the altar of his parents’ obsession.

I have nothing against waking up in the morning. In fact, it is the best time to study because of the peace. But our habits are formed during the childhood.  Once we are in the College, it is hard to change them. Unlike our school days, time is limited. With so many social activities, games, watching movies, TV etc. which take away a lot of our time, we have to use our limited time intelligently.

Hence we should use the most productive time to study.  Ultimately what matters is the result.

So Folks, don’t spend too much time on mulling over the right time to study. 

Every time is the right time to study. It depends upon your comfort. 

Don't say Yes when you want to say NO.

How many times it has happened that we want to do something but are unable to do it because we cannot say no. Take an example. You come fresh from your game of cricket, shower and decide to sit down and study. Just then your friend pops in and suggests that you go for a movie with him. You don’t really want to go as you have already decided to sit down and study. But finally you succumb to his insistence. You go for a movie. Three precious hours are lost. Not only that, after the movie you guys decide to eat at the McDonalds. So it is good bye to studies. Only because you couldn’t say no.

Somewhere in the mid seventies, a book simply titled “ Don’t say yes when you want to say No” was published.” The book co-authored by Dr. Herbert Fensterheim and Jean. L . Baer was an instant best seller.  The book is now almost thirty years old. Yet it finds resonance even today.  The reason for its popularity was perhaps that it conveyed a very important message in a very simple way. 

Peer pressure has robbed us of our capacity to THINK for ourselves. We allow ourselves to go against our own wishes only because we do not know how to say no.

It is not even difficult. Try it once. You do not have to be rude. You could smile politely and still say a firm no. Often we assume that our friend will feel bad. Quite likely he may take it sportingly and go to some other friend who is willing.

Career building  demands  self discipline and plenty of sacrifices. I will talk more about self discipline in subsequent posts. But for this time make a firm resolution to say no when you want to say no.

It is your life and you should be the sole decider.

Your life is a precious gift from your parents. You could make it or mar it. It’s your call. 

Learn the SMART way of working!

Often in various trainings, I meet students who insist that they study hard yet are not able to get the desired results. The reason is simple.

They may be doing hard work instead of smart work.

Smart work is the ability to do a work systematically with planning.  It calls for a lot of preparation before beginning the actual work. That means spending more time on the drawing board. If one does that the actual time spent in studying would be far less and the results would be spectacular.

Prepare a plan. The plan should also be smart. Here I am using SMART as an acronym.

S- Specific.

-Since all of you are students, let us limit our discussion to studies. We must not be vague. We should be specific about what we are going to study. Quantify everything. For instance, instead of planning to study fluid mechanics, be specific about what are you going to study in fluid mechanics and when.

M- Measurable.

All our plans shall fail if we are unable to measure what we are doing. So always set goals which are measureable. Instead of planning to succeed in the corporate world, have a goal of say, becoming the Team Lead in an IT company in some specific time.

A – Achievable

See that your goals are achievable.  If you want to self study for ten hours a day, it is not possible as you have to attend college as well. So this plan is bound to fail.

R- Realistic

Keep realistic goals. You cannot become a Bill Gates overnight. So always plan in such a way that your goals are realistic.

T- Time bound.

Again we should never have goals that are open ended. Most of the plans fail because they are not time bound.  Your aims in life also should be time bound. Doesn’t matter if you fail to achieve them. You can always change the goal posts according to the situation. Having a time bound goal will help you achieve more than you had ever imagined.

If you have SMART GOALS , there is still no guarantee of success. Success is the sum total of many factors. But it certainly takes you closer to success.

Learn to work SMART-ly. 

Why a Blog?

The idea of writing a blog didn’t germinate instantly. It was hovering in the back of my mind for quite some time.

Last week I was conducting a training session in one of the prominent colleges when a young girl approached me. She said that she liked my FB Group. “However there is only so much that you can write in a post on Facebook. There are issues which need deeper discussion. For that you must write a blog.” It made perfect sense.

Each week, I receive scores of emails from students from all over the country. They have issues which confuse them. I make it a point to religiously reply them to the best of my understanding of that issue. However, these issues are not restricted to a single person. Every student in that age group may be facing such problems daily.  If these issues are addressed in a blog, they can reach a larger audience and benefit many of you.

I do not like to preach. Also I never consult any books. My lectures in colleges are centred around my own experiences. Life can be a great teacher. One must only be willing to observe and learn.

Also no one particular technique is fool proof. What may work for one may be an utter failure for another.

I remember during my college days, I was in my final year of Mechanical Engineering when a professor asked us what we wanted to be in life. I enthusiastically rose and informed the class that I would like to go in marketing. The Professor simply banished me with a shrug of his hand saying that I didn’t have the communication skills to be successful in marketing.

Offended and annoyed, I decided to prove that evil man wrong. I worked on my skills carefully observing good speakers. I noted their pauses, their intonations, their diction, their eye contact with the audience and their humour. Ironically, I spent most of my life in Marketing in the UK and USA.

But I was unable to forgive the teacher. As luck would have it, one day when I was on a vacation and was travelling from Bhopal to Gwalior, I met this man. The old anger surfaced. The professor now was in his sixties. I wondered if he would even recognise me. I went to him and introduced myself.  He appeared to be pleased and asked me what I was doing. I was waiting for that particular moment. I had lived that moment many times in my mind and dipping in sarcasm, told him what I was doing.

The good man chuckled happily and said that was his way of motivating . “I don’t remember you. But I must have seen that spark in you. I had to make that passion burn and there is no better motivation that humiliating a youngster.”

Since then, I have forgiven him. However I am not sure if I support his method.  But I must be eternally grateful. That was one lesson that I learnt.

Never make situational judgements.  There may be teachers who may want us to succeed and they may be having unorthodox ways.

Success doesn’t come overnight. It needs a lot of dedication and focus. To achieve that focus, one must be motivated. How one motivates himself/ herself is up to him/ her. Or to someone like that good Professor.

Please be generous with your comments. Your  suggestions will decide the direction of this blog. Do let me know the subject on which to write.

Till next week, when I come with a new topic.