House Hunt

Let me write a prose that most of you would identify with ...It's the search for a Home

I'm surely going to get exhausted one day,
Searching for a house, I will pass away

Worn out by day long search up and down the road,
Torn by the hunger-pangs my belly made uproar

Big was my belly what could I do ,my friends ?
How could I help it, I was short of funds.

Buying a watermelon I moved towards my destination,
A stumble on the road proved a lucky stroke.

All at once ,my night of sorrow changed to a sunny day,
As the melon fell and broke , a Jinn showed his face...

"I am your humble slave," with folded hands he spoke,
"Any tasks impossible I can undertake"

"I can change at your bidding the world's very shape "
 I can make you, if you like,the manager of the Mindscape.

"I can turn trivial joke into a poetic feast"
 Turn a poet into poetess with my clever sleight

 Even in the night of sin,you will bath in sunny rays,
 You will reap the harvest ,while the pujari prays.

 I am not a man to conspire with the foe,
 I can elevate a fool , make him rule the globe.

 Let the time wince and whine,seize the fleeting pleasure
 Here, clutch in your hand the keys of Kohinoor( not Bang Bang version) treasure...

"I don't want the earthly riches", humbly I replied,
"Get me,pray,a house to live,I shall be obliged "

 Hearing this the Jinn back into the melon slipped,
"Strange",he said,"Everyone is caught in a similar fix"

"Could I conjure up a house, I would not shiver in cold,
 Why should I have lived then in the melon hole...

hehehe

Sd/-
Roohul Haq


 

Knowing your Emotions –A guide to self awareness

One of the most intriguing facts of life is how much we are aware of ourselves. This led me to formulate some of the simple steps that can be implemented to understand our emotions and become more self aware…

A key aspect of Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is knowing your emotions, allowing yourself to feel them, and expressing them appropriately.

A second key area is knowing your values. Your values are the attitudes, beliefs, opinions and experiences that govern how you behave. Your values shape the choices you make every day, and you're either in or out of alignment with them. Your values are always a function of your life experiences, so another good activity is to write your life's history. Now I'm not talking a novel, but a couple of pages listing key experiences that have shaped who you are, professionally and personally. You might consider your family life, your education, your cultural heritage, major successes and failures, traumatic events, and your hopes and aspirations.

The third key component is assessing your skills. Your professional life requires you to tap into a wide variety of functional and technical skills. Skills are foundational such as, time management, building relationships, and communicating effectively. And many skills are specific to your job, function or industry like finance, design, or teaching.

A good way to determine which skills you need is to look at your job description and performance review. This will give you a list of major skill areas and perhaps even an assessment of your skill level. You want to identify where you're exceptional, acceptable and in need of improvement. Another great tool is to use the assessment affiliated with the Strengths Finder books. It provides and affordable and well-rounded view of various skills.

 A fourth key component is your communication style. We all have preferred ways of communicating that fall on a continuum ranging from indirect, or even passive, through to assertive and direct, and all the way over to aggressive. We also have communication patterns. Some people share information in a linear point by point fashion, where others use a circular style that weaves together information to arrive at the main point. 

The fifth theory to explore is your work style, knowing how you approach work, and how your approach affects, and is affected by your colleagues, is really valuable. One of my favorite tools is the DiSC Assessment. It's really helpful when members of a team take it together.

The sixth key component is your personality or temperament. This is not how nice or outgoing you are, but is based on research in psychology and measures how you view and approach the world. Again, there's some assessments for this. The two most prominent being the Myers Briggs Type Indicator and the Keirsey Temperament Sorter .Both will give you an understanding of how you process information, make decisions, work with others, and organize your life.

Seventh, we all have a conflict style, which is how we approach conflict that's a combination of our assertiveness and our commitment to cooperation. I recommend the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument to assess your conflict style. You'll learn how you score on the five styles of conflict and the best style to use in different situations.

The last major component is your leadership style. This is your philosophy and approach for how you lead others. There are lots of models out there, but my two favorites are The Leadership Practices Inventory, which is affiliated with the book The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner and the Situational Leadership model by Ken Blanchard that's affiliated with the book Leading at a Higher Level. There're other aspects of yourself to explore, but I consider these the core eight, as they relate to our professional work.

Building this knowledge of yourself is not something you can do overnight, so pace yourself. Pick a couple of things to explore first, and then go from there. You'll also change over time, so self-exploration is a life long journey, and a rather fun one at that.

Sd/-

Roohul Haq