Perceptions...!!!!

In more than 8 years of working, with people in business, work place and family settings, I have come in contact with many individuals who have achieved an incredible degree of outward success, but have found themselves struggling with an inner hunger, a deep need for personal congruency and effectiveness and for healthy, growing relationships with other people.

many of them has shared

(the most frustrated one)

"I've set and met my career goals and I'm having tremendous professional success. but it's cost me my personal and family life. I don't know my wife and children anymore. I'm not even sure I know myself and what's really important to me . I've had to ask myself --- is it worth it ..?

I've started a new diet - for the fifth time this year. I know I'm overweight, and I really want to change. I read all the new information, I set goals, I get myself all psyched up with the positive mental attitude and tell myself I can do it. But I don't. After few weeks, I fizzle. I just can't seem to keep a promise I make to myself.

I see my friends and relatives achieve some degree of success or receive some recognition , and I smile and congratulate them enthusiastically. But Inside, I'm eating my heart out Why do I feel this way...?

I've been working so hard, giving my 14 hours a day which includes intensive travelling for 4 hours a day. Always start my day with open frame of mind with positive thinking. by the time I reach office, my positive energy transforms into negative (probably) which leads to delay in work and failing meeting deadlines. once I reach back home, I'm unable to enjoy with my family as I always end up reaching late hours. Don't know how to transform things to get going for me....

My marriage has gone flat. We don't fight or anything; we just don't love each other anymore. we've gone to counseling; we've tried a number of things, but we just can't seem to rekindle the feeling we used to have.

To me, these are deep problems, painful problems - problems that quick fix approaches can help - in short, these can be cured over a period of time working with positive frame of mind with lots of thinking and knowledge to judge our actions and thought process which is causing these problems.

Few years ago, My friend Sunil ( sorry dear for disclosing your name ) and his better half was struggling with this kind of concern. Their son was having very difficult time in school. He was doing poorly academically: he didn't even know how to follow instructions on the tests. Socially he was immature, often embarrassing those closes to him and athletically, he was small, skinny, and uncoordinated. for example, He swings his cricket bat almost before the ball was even pitched and others would laughed at him...!!

My friend was consumed with a desire to help him. He approached me with the concerns and we started working on it (as playing cricket is my hobby so I thought, it will be good learning for me too). That time, he felt that if "success" were important in any area of life, it was supremely important in the role as parents. so we worked on our attitudes and behavior towards him and we tried to work on his son. we tried to psych him up using positive mental attitude techniques. "Come on, son..!! you can do it...!! we know you can. Put your hands little higher on the bat and keep your eyes on ball. Don't swing till it gets close to you." and if he did little better, we would go to great lengths to reinforce him "That's good son. Keep it up."

Whenever others standing use to laugh, we reprimanded them. " leave him alone. get off his back. He's just learning." and their son would cry and insist that had never be any good and that he didn't like cricket anyways..

nothing seems to be really helping us and my friend was really worried. we could see the effect this as having on the self-esteem. we tried to be encouraging and helpful and positive, but after repeated failure, we finally drew back ( on his wife's request) and tried to look at the situation on a different level.

At this time, I was reading a book on Leadership development work including subjects like Communication and Perception. As I researched more on the same subjects, I became particularly interested in how perceptions are formed, how they governs the way we see, and how the way we see governs how we behave. This led me to study of expectancy theory and self fulfillment prophecies, and to realization of how deeply imbedded our perceptions are. it taught me that we must loot at the lens through which we see the world, as well as at the world we see, and that the lens itself shapes how we interpret the world.

As Sunil and I talked about the concepts and our own situation, we began to realize that what we were doing to help the litter master in making was not harmony with the way we really saw him. when we honestly examined our deepest feelings, we realized that our perception was that he was basically inadequate, somehow "behind." no matter how much we worked on our attitude and behavior, our efforts were ineffective because, despite our actions and our words, what we really communicated to him was, "You aren't capable. You have to be protected."

We began to realize that if we wanted to change the situation, we first had to change ourselves. And to change ourselves effectively, We first have to change our perceptions..........right ????