The 40 bits

June 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment

It is said, scientifically that our brains are processing 4 billion bits of transactions per second. Out of these 4 billion we are consciously aware of only 40 bits at any time. Just 40 bits. The whole body working, the awareness of mind about it’s surroundings, everything is taken care without even us being aware about it.

It’s a very efficient design. Our mind gives us exact information we can process (if we mind gives us info to process – who is processing? That’s another blog post). But, as you can make a guess there is amazing amount of info that is being either discarded or filtered. And this is not always a good thing.

40 bits is our cognitive upper limit. 40 bits is metal awareness limitation. This in-place limitation affects our daily life. We tend to think that these 40 bits are “The Truth”. And over a period of time these Truth’s are turned into Beliefs and belief systems. All this happens even without our knowledge. These 40 bits are the thin veneer pulled tight over our eyes.

Just because we have a limitation, it doesn’t mean we can’t break it or over come it or at least use it smartly. Here is where the Creativity process comes into picture. There are 2 steps to over come this limitation.

  1. Becoming aware of it
  2. Replacing, reusing the 40 bits

1. Becoming aware of it: I have talked about this here, here and here. I don’t want to go into more details, but the gist of it is – you need to be aware of your own thoughts. The inner chatter that happens is where all the action lies. There are a bunch of ways to become aware of it.

  • Just being still
  • Being in the moment
  • Meditation
  • Being in Nature
  • Taking a stand whole day – Like “I will not judge anyone or anything all day today” and keep watching yourself over that stance.

Recently I have came across a great book which does this process but with Questions. It’s Byron Katie’s ‘The Work’. It’s a very simple 4 questions inquiry process which is tremendously powerful once you start to use it. I would highly recommend that to adopt a inquiry process if you don’t have time to meditate. Another thing you could do is to read ‘Bhagavad Gita’ every night. I know I sound so totally Hindu here. But, I am recommending Gita not from a standpoint of religion but from the point of view of Philosophy. It drums this whole thought system which, if used, is very powerful. I would recommend Jack Hawleys – Bhagavad Gita for Westerners (not much on mythology and a small book)

2. Replacing, reusing the 40 bits: Well this has been my day to day thing all my growing up years. I always thought that there exist some system out there by which we can be more creative. I have ready and used many many systems – but the whole idea behind it is – you need to stretch out your mind by opening yourself up with new information. In this age and day there is no dearth of information – but if you always seeking the same info- they you are always keeping the same info in that 40 bits you got.

So, 2 books come to mind. Any book by Edward De Bono – he might come out as dry and simple. But trust me try the tools. Another one is by author Dan Roam – He has a visual problem solving framework. His books are here and here. The advantage of using a visual model as compared to textual model is you can put those 40 bits to maximum use. Like if you draw a picture – you can refer to it probably using just 1 or 2 bits – like a pointer for all those computer guys.

I know it’s not easy being aware of our own 40 bits. Awareness is scary and processes are hard. But again it’s something you do on a long term learning basis. You can’t get this done faster. It doesn’t work that way.

Filed Under: Insight, Meditation, Observations, Thoughts

2 Absolutely Necessary Qualities in an Offshore Team/Member

October 26, 2009 By 1 Comment

After a recent event – where I ended up working all day Saturday, I have been thinking a lot about Offshore developer/teams and Onsite Clients’ requirements. Having worked on the other side where the Client looked down upon us for every little mistake – but couldn’t let us go because it doesn’t get any better – I have realized couple of things.

Here are 2 absolutely necessary qualities that I would expect in any Offshore development team or member.

1. Escalate: Offshore development kinda happens in future. I mean the timezone wise they are always ahead of us. This needs to be used as an advantage. Whenever something goes wrong or something doesn’t work – the Offshore team needs to escalate it to their Clients Onsite. This helps the Client to take necessary action even before this issue turns into a roadblock.

I am not sure of any other country, but of what I have seen mostly in India. So, these observations are based from my Indian work experience. It is such a strange medley of opposites and paradoxes. Indian developers are very smart to grasp technical ideas but their smartness fails them when it comes to communications. From the childhood, most Indian parents encourage their kids to become class toppers (Believe me, topper is a household word there, I was once a topper too.). There is no emphasis on clear communications. Parental authority in the initial stages and later work based hierarchy system actually supresses any communication abilities a person may have.

The end result is – a brilliant mind, but a numb tongue. So, if only the developers or the team members can learn to voice their opinions much more vocally – we would not have so many issues. Escalate problems as you see it. Raise red flags whenever you can. Your Onsite manager is not your Dad, he won’t be mad at you or judge you for bringing up a problem/issue.

2. Proactive: Most Indian developers I meet are reactive in their approach to development. If I give them a problem they will solve it based on their knowledge. But life doesn’t come in neat packets of problems. It’s a big mess that just overwhelms you.

Being Proactive means, anticipating delays, anticipating what might come up and prepare accordingly. It is said that only 300,000 years ago Humans developed – Pre-Frontal Cortex, the area under your forehead which gives us the ability to simulate any situation just by imagining it. Prior to that, we had no clue of any experience which we have NOT faced it physically. Just imagine how important this is. We got a whole extra add-on. We got a simulation laboratory right in our heads. This gives any human to use Imagination to try to simulate things, situations, actions, behaviors etc without even physically experiencing them.

So, developers – please put that to good use. Use that 1/4th of your brain to basically see the future. It’s something everyone does without being observant. It’s called day dreaming. When you are dreaming of that beautiful girl sitting in front of you in a Coffee shop or when you are dreaming of that vacation you have been wanting – all these things use your frontal brain. So, next time just use it in your projects to fore see what would happen if you did something and what possibly could be your response to it.

An example: We setup a stage server and I asked the developer to add some changes there and test them. He made his changes, but when he went to test them – the login didn’t work. So out of habit of his reactive mind – he assumed that he is powerless and basically sent out an email to me (from the future) telling me that the login doesn’t work. Well, you are the developer – if login doesn’t work then you gotta fix it. That’s what I did. When he said, the login didn’t work – I debugged it and figured out what was happening and I fixed it. The only difference between what he did and what I did – is not technical, but psychological.

That’s all. I don’t want any more features in my developer from India. I don’t care about your sex, about how you look, about your skills, about your coding powers etc. All I need from you is – A good red flag raising capacity and the ability to fore see them coming.

That would save the whole industry of Offshore development from using double the bandwidth in communications – back and forth.

Filed Under: India, Software, Technology, Thoughts, Work Tagged With:

Patterns of Dualism

May 26, 2009 By Leave a Comment

We all live in a dualistic world. The Philosophy of Dualism has been proposed long time back in Indian Vedanta Philosophy. It’s called Dvaita. The concept is very simple, but hard to remember and use to our advantage. In simple terms it just states that – we perceive (actually our sensory perceptions) our reality in the form of ‘subject’ and ‘object’. This is the basic logic behind it. Now everything is built on top of it and it can get very complex that we become un-aware of it.

Below are some patterns I have consistently come across in my perception. These things are nothing new. We all know these. Just like we have ‘Design Patterns’ in Computer Science, we also can find patterns in dualism. Here are some:

1. Rise and Fall

This pattern just states that whatever goes up, will come down and vice versa. You can try to observe this around you. The stock market, population growth patterns, traffic etc. Any data you take, you would see this pattern embedded within it.

Rise and Fall

Rise and Fall

What is important to note is in this rise and fall, everything is advancing towards the future or moving forward.

2. Big and Small

This is very easy to see. In any scenario or situation – there is someone who is big or with power and there is someone who is small or powerless. And and in most of the cases, there is always a tussle going on between these two entities.

Big and Small

Big and Small

We see this every where in our society. The middle east conflict, the Sri Lankan Sinhalese & Tamil conflict, the minorities in India, US. This is prevalent everywhere. The division may be based on power, money, population etc – but the pattern is same. One group is Big and another Small. We are so obsessed with this pattern that we make folklore & mythological stories based on that. Example: David and Goliath, Kauravas and Pandavas.  We love to root for the underdog.

3. The Choice Paradox

This one is a little complicated. These are the mental locks or physical situations we get into where there is no way out. This is ambivalence that results after two equally opposite values try to pull us in either directions. This is most powerfully experienced at the person level as compared to the previous two which play out much more at the society or group level.

Examples: The things that make us happy can also make us sick. Chocolate. Some morally questionable activities may give us more joy. We have a common name for this pattern called Catch-22

choiceparadoxThese are few which I see around me. As I said, there are many more patterns and I am pretty sure you may see them or come across them. Let me know if you have any and I will add them here.

Filed Under: life, Observations, Thoughts

The GOTO of Meditation

May 7, 2009 By 2 Comments

I try to meditate on a regular basis. There was a time when I meditated for an hour every day, but now a days if I get 15 mins I am very thankful for it. Anyhow, what I realized recently is an analogy to programming headache. A GOTO statement in computer language is an instruction to the compiler/processor to jump to a particular line of code. It was invented long time back (I am guessing in FORTRAN) to make the computation easy. As it’s easier to jump the control anywhere you want to. But, this turned out to be a nightmare at later stages of programming where some applications may have millions of lines of code. There rose a criticism of the GOTO statement and you can read about it online.

There are many kinds of meditations available. Especially with the globalization, all kinds of meditation practices has been transported to America’s latest YMCAs (checkout Kalidasa @ Berkeley YMCA). But the whole premise or principle of meditation stays very simple. It’s like whoever/whatever created us wanted to have some fun, so he/she/it installed a ‘mind’ between our ears and hence begun the struggle over the control of thoughts. Our thoughts are streamed at much higher rate than any twitter system imagined. They are always chained. One thought leads to another and to another. By the time you become aware (if at all you can become aware) you are far away from where you started.

lake yoga

So, the principle behind any meditation technique is to not to follow this crazy route taken by our thoughts. They ask you to close your eyes, to reduce one more sesory system mis-leading you into distraction. Almost all kinds of meditations involve following something and doing it repeteadly. It could be your breath, a lamp or the train of thoughts itself. Like the weight loss programs, a meditation methodology is unique to each person. You need to try a bunch of them before you stick to one. The one I use is to follow my breath. I watch myself inhaling and exhaling, it’s not easy but slowly I get into a flow and then I am able to feel whatever people usually feel when they meditate.

But the mind is so cunning or distracted that I keep forgetting that I need to keep my focus on my breath and lose myself in the stream of thoughts. But then when I remember, I gently come back to watching my breathing. This reminded me nothing but GOTO statement of meditation. It’s like when I am lost in my stream of thoughts I remind myself and issue a GOTO to go back to watching my breath. So, please be my guest and go ahead and use GOTO exhaustively in meditation. It’s not considered harmful in meditation. :-)

Filed Under: Thoughts

Growing Roots

December 1, 2008 By 1 Comment

If I may steal Mark Twain’s quote “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it”, I would like to say that same thing applies to “Depression” that we are going through too. Everyone I talk to, believe me that just very few people in this cold winter – at some level depressed or saddened or feeling hurt about something. It could be that their credit card is maxed out, it could be that they are not getting new jobs etc. Even my friends in India wonder how I am doing when the market is so down.

I am not closing my eyes to reality – I know we are in recession (now that it is official) but I am baffled by how much people get stuck with something like this. We as humans have immense potential within us – we survived all these years. We are the best survival machine when it comes to Darwinism. One credit card declined can’t put a frown upon our faces forever. We are better than this.

I do believe that this is a chance to look at ourselves deeply. Not just at our bank balances, but deep within our psyches. It’s time to regurgigate our beliefs, thinking and how we deal with this so called ‘reality’. It’s time to hibernate. It’s time to get lean with all the things in our lives. It a time to test how much are we slaves to our senses.

Recently I got an email which talked about how a tree grows. When a tree grows taller, even before it grows taller – the first thing it does is to spread it’s roots deeper. Otherwise the height won’t be stable and it will fall. I think similarly, this depression time is the time for us to grow our roots deeper. It’s the time to make our bases stronger and then there would be a time for us to grow taller.

These are the times that bring out the best in us. These are the times that make us think creatively. The theory already exists in Business – it’s called “Theory of Constraints“. Just treat it as a constraint and see how your mind cooks up new solutions. I keep wondering “What is that life demands from me?” in these times. I don’t have the answer yet, but I for sure know that it’s not something I have already done in the past.

Peace to all the people who are on this path of transformation.

Filed Under: Thoughts

Knowledge is Power

October 4, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I think that I get a lot of ideas to blog about when I am in India. It’s been frantic one week I have been here, now that I have internet connection I can get back to blogging. When I am in US, a lot of stuff that comes out of me is very personal which I usually journal. In India though it’s different. My mind is filled with ideas for blogging here. So, here is something I have come across recently.

Who ever said that “Knowledge is Power” wasn’t joking. It’s true and I think there is a flippant side to that quote too. In India, you will come across a lot of elder people who use their ‘Knowledge’ to yield ‘Power’. India is a smorgasbord of forgotten traditions and new consuming habits. In this variety of feelings – the person who ‘claims’ to know the answer is the king. You see, you don’t necessarily have to be right because you could use your ‘elderness’ to make it right.

Recently my sister had a baby. My nephew shares his birthday with me now. And I was excited to see him. But it was not going to be that easy. There was this Aunt. Let’s call her – Aunt Kia(Know It All). Aunt Kia used her knowledge and put forward a rule. She said, I can’t see my nephew without hearing him cry. And after I see him, I need to give him some money as a gift. So, when I entered my the room, I literally closed my eyes and they made the baby cry – which I think is CRAZY. Once I heard him cry, I saw him and gave him a gift of Rs.500.

Now, I don’t mind following this weird tradition because all the elders were happy I did that (they expected me not to respect any traditions after living in US and marrying a Hindu). But what boggles my mind is that there is no logical explanation to this. And ‘Aunt Kia’ wields her power only because she can blurt out these kinds of things in everything we do. I have seen her in action in the past too – she has a age old tradition for everything, from taking a shower to raising a baby. But, no one questions her. Because then it would be chaos as you would be pitting your heads against the tradition. In all this craziness, ‘Aunt Kia’ happily paddles her way by throwing around commands. I am pretty sure every Indian family has one such ‘Aunt Kia’.

I think this is one aspect of Indian family where this ‘hidden knowledge’ of tradition gives immense power to the elders. I am not sure when does tradition stops and manipulation starts. It’s kinda easy to trespass that line.

On the other hand, I see another kind of power being yielded by the young people. A lot of young people know a lot about technology in this country. SMS, Email etc are so easy for these young people, but very difficult to comprehend for the elders in the household. So, in this case the youth uses it’s knowledge to wield power. But, at least it’s not based on some superstitions.

The real clash of ages happen when the traditions’ superstitions clash with new ages’ arrogance. I am not sure who will win eventually but I do know that it’s going to be a long battle. In the mean time keep gathering that knowledge.

Filed Under: India, life, Thoughts

Life in 3rd person

July 31, 2008 By 3 Comments

This has been on my mind from the past 2 months. I have been wanting to blog about it for such a long time. I may not sound very clear as the topic I want to blog about is very complex and when I bring it from the level of thoughts to level of words, some stuff does slip out though. Not everything I think of can be translated into words easily.

I have wondered about religion, spirituality and meditation for a long time. First I tried to take my refuge in my religion. But being not able to speak or read the native language of my God’s literature (as it was Arabic) I couldn’t be very successful. This was like 20 years back. So I gave up on religion and kinda didn’t pay much attention to God as an organized form of following till I met with the concept of Spirituality. There was this one book which I believe completely changed my belief system and made me admire and love  ‘The God’ more and more.

It was ‘Conversations with God – Book 1‘. Even though it has a Christian twist I was able able to very successfully block it out as I did with my very own religion and just tune into what the Author was really saying. When you do that you really understand the book. Otherwise, you would end up judging the book by it’s Christian value connotations which could be good or bad based up on where you grow up in this country. Anyhow, that book introduced me to Spirituality. Mind you, I am not referring to ‘Secularism’ here. I was down that path after Islam didn’t work out for me. I adopted a formula where I treated all religions as one (being the Libran I am). So, Spirituality came after Secularism.

That’s there, we will get back to that part of the story shortly. I wanted to talk about another trait of me. From my childhood I have been verily fascinated by Brain/Mind/Cognitive studies (although the term Cognitive studies is something I learned couple of months back, I have been interested in that study for a long time). May be it was my Dad’s influence where he imprinted on my mind that mind is the most powerful thing in our lives, may be it’s the popular Hindu belief that says ‘Mind can either bond you or liberate you’. Not sure what it was, but I have been fascinated by mind studies and cool things you could do with it.

I guess the fact that it looked very interesting to me was I got one right with me (I mean my mind) and I can do all the cool thigs with it. This is when I started to learn Harry Lorayne‘s super memory tricks. This is where I trained myself in ‘Vedic Mathematics‘ where I could multiply multiple numbers simultaneously and quickly. It started out as a play thing for me. I would look for information around me and see how I can organize it in my mind. I would not hesitate to take any help from outside. Like eating ‘Okra’ or ‘Bhendi’ as we Indians call it – would enhance your mental prowess and guess what my favorite curry, growing up was? When I was 18 I read an amazing biography of ‘Ramanujam‘ – the greatest mathematician ever lived, called ‘The Man who knew Infinity‘. I was obsessed with Maths and Number Theory. I read that book back to back 3 times but still couldn’t control my obsession. I wanted to have a brain like Ramanujam. In that book the author mentions that Ramanujam’s favorite curry growing up was ‘Brinjal’ or the way Americans call it – ‘Egg Plant’. And I adopted it thoroughly. Eating Egg plant atleast 3-4 times a week. Even though I didn’t like it back then.

So, to make the story short. When you come across Spirituality you also come across a very important tool of which is widely employed by many – Meditation. It was about mind control and I was hooked. Looking back – every religion has some kind of ritual built in where people can get into ‘meditative state’. Muslims pray and count the ‘Tasbih‘. Hindu’s pray and sit in ‘Dhyanam’. Sufism followers get into whirling to get into that state. So, this organized religions have all some way of rituals instilled within them so that they will let us have that one moment of zen.

But at the Spirituality level this is employed very openly and encouraged. But again, Spirituality is like a nameless river. Religions are all like named rivers. No matter how cool Spirituality may sound like but still it has it’s boundaries or edges. It’s still organized and any organized system inherently incorporates things that someday will break. Because to be complete and whole we have to include or take into consideration EVERYTHING. (This is where you should consider my warning of not being able to translate my thoughts into words, again)

So I realized that even Spirituality has it’s short comings and I just focused on Meditation. This was interesting phase and it still is for me. Now, we come to the point I want to put across. I know there are many variations in meditation again. But I think no matter what path you take in Meditation, all the paths are always leading to one destination. And that is ‘Self-Awareness’. That word has been used in so many contexts by now, each of you reading that word ‘Self-Awareness’ has different interpretation. So, let me tell explain what I mean by that.

The state of Self-Awareness is a gradual one. For some lucky people it’s instant. Like 1% of the whole humanity gets to Self-Awareness instantaneously. But since this blog is for the rest 99% I am going ahead with the statement that Self-Awareness is a gradual achievement. When you reach complete Self-Awareness you are in nirvana state. Nothing bothers you. Nothing concerns you. You function in this world perfectly, but nothing in this world will affect you.

So, how does this Meditation lead one to Self-Awareness? If you take all meditative processes and traditions there is something very common in all of them. It’s called – “Watching”. Yep. Watching. Watching the inner watcher who is watching the world. You see within us lie a powerful force which is functioning in a perfect way. There is something that helps us to pump our blood, breaths automatically, make the whole body function in perfect harmony. This is the core. A lot of people call it with lot many names. Atma, Soul, Higher Self, God etc.

Self-Awareness is the state where there is no difference between you and this Core. Where you are ALWAYS AWARE that You are this Core. Meditation kick starts this awareness process. So, how do you know whether you have started it? By watching. Watching your thoughts, feelings, actions without prejudice or judgement. As you start to watch yourself you will start to see how things are moving in the 4 dimension of space and time. This watching is very difficult in the beginning but with enough practice you will get to used to it.

Here is the beauty of it. Once you get to used to this watching – you will start to live life in a 3rd person. It’s as if you have separated yourself from self and you are living life in 3rd person. That’s what I mean when I say living life in 3rd person. Like some people refer to themselves in 3rd person, people who are advancing in meditation are living life in 3rd person, not just referring their names. This is such a powerful idea. That’s what you reap after years and years of meditation. Nirvana doesn’t come in few days. First comes awareness and then Nirvana follows. And meditation enables it.

So now if you look back to religions – we said that they have rituals which basically give a glimpse of what Mediatation does. So to reach a 3rd person life – you have to spend a lot of time in religion. But you can do it with meditation in short period of time. It’s an ardous process. We really don’t want to know what goes through our heads. We are so good at being in denial with our own thoughts and feelings. But once we start to watch and once we gather courage to face our internal stuff, we emerge victorious and happy. It doesn’t end there.

Scientists seriously believe that there are about 11 dimensions in our world. Google “String Theory” or watch this video. But we are only aware of 3 all the time. So where are the rest of the 8? If you take time into consideration you still have 7 more. I believe that those 7 are not outside of us. They are within us. Those 7 remaining dimensions are the stages or persons we will have to go within us to reach that core.

Once you start to watch your thought process in 3 person, after some time you would go one level higher. 4th person. You would be watching the watcher who is watching the watcher. It’s hard. Just imagine it. Close your eyes and see yourself sitting or standing or whatever you are doing right now. Now as you observe yourself try to pay attention to the person/entity who is observing you. I know I sound crazy, but if you can’t never mind. This is what I have learned and this is something I believe. As I go on my own meditation path, it fills me with wondrous possibilities.

Believe me life in 3rd person is really fascinating.

Filed Under: spirituality, Thoughts

Role of Creativity in Consciousness

June 11, 2008 By 3 Comments

It’s been a long time I have blogged and I have been wanting to blog about this topic for a long time. Recently Lynn came up with an idea of having our own household TED talks. So, last Friday I did a TED talk on this topic and it gave me an opportunity to gather all my ideas in one place. I also uploaded a PDF of that talk in the end of this post.

To start with I have 3 basic theories that intertwine to form this grand picture.

  1. Quantum Physics, NLP Theory
  2. Thinking in genenral, Creativity Frameworks
  3. Creation Theory (Not the Church one)

Let’s look at each of them:

Theory # 1: Quantum Physics

It’s a very well known fact that once we break down and dig deep into physical things, there a whole new world out there. Take a strongest microscope and take a deep look, the world within things is totally different. It’s not like the way it has been described – a planetary system. That’s classical physics take on it. Quantum physics says that at a quantum level, things are made of something called “Quanta”. This Qauanta is not a thing, but it’s a energy packet.

In other words this ‘Energy Packet’ is also called ‘Possibility Packet’. Meaning, it’s a proven thing in Quantum physics that at any given time we can only measure one thing of a Quanta. Either ‘Location’ or ‘Speed’. It means that if I go out to find the speed of a Quanta that’s exactly I would find. If I seek location, that’s exactly what I would get. But say, I would want to know at a given time where quanta is at a given time and what is it’s speed – it’s not possible. Think about it. The cop need only find out your speed to check if your are speeding. You just need to find out where your car is parked in a parking lot. You cannot figure out both at the same time.

So this leads us to the fact that we are somehow getting what we are intending for. It means that at quantum level, these energy packets – quanta give us what we seek/intent. Meaning we pre-destine the possibility of what these quanta would be. Meaning we choose what these quanta would be. That is the reason why these are also called ‘Possibility Packets’.

Now, hold that thought and zoom out to regular physicality level. This draws us to conclude that our thoughts basically affect the possibility of certain thing we are seeking. Our thoughts are in turn tied up with our behaviors, habits etc. In other words, what we observe has direct relation to what we intend or looking for.

Remember that, we are going to recall that again later.

Matter Vs. Energy

Let’s talk about matter and energy for a short time. We are used to seeing matter around us all the time. We also see energy in various forms – electrical, chemical(batteries). Long time back Einstein proved with his very popular equation:

E = mc2

In other words energy could be equated with matter with something else. Basically telling us that energy and matter are same things in different forms.

Rehash – Top down approach:

Let’s rehash what we have learned and try to make a connection.

  1. We know that energy and matter are same
  2. If we dug deep into matter(or energy) we would find it filled with possibility packets
  3. These packets behave according to the intention of the Observer
  4. More importantly, the observer can totally change the possibility packets to change by changing the thoughts.

That’s good enough about Theory # 1. Let’s take a look at the next one.

Thoery # 2: Thinking and Creativity Tools

Our thinking consists of 2 components:

  1. Perception
  2. Logic

We all tend to equate logic with thinking. When we refer to thinking, we unanimously tend to think of logic. The logic would say that Obama got enough super delegates to become a democratic candidate. We are obsessed with logic. So much that we totally ignore the ‘Perception’ part and just straight out jump to logic. What we forget is ‘Perception’ is what gives fodder for ‘Logic’ to work on. Taking the Obama example, if we look at perceptions – it would mean that for the first time in history an African American could be a President of America. It’s a powerful thing. You cannot deduct that through logic. You need perception for that.

A lot of daily problems we come across are mostly to do with ‘Perception Errors’ rather than ‘Logical Errors’. We have mastered the logical part of our thinking. So much so that, we can either give it to the computer to figure it out or outsource it to figure it out. Perception is what makes us more humane.

So, how can I be more creative?

If you think about it – Creativity is nothing more than coming up with more options, choices, solutions. So, generally if you expand your perception –> you expand the input –> there by you give more choices to work on at logical level –> there by you get more outcomes, more options and more optimal solutions.

You can use many perception expanding tools. One of the popular one is Edward de Bono’s Six thinking hats.

Let’s check out next theory.

Theory # 3: Basic creation theory (not the one Church is proposing)

This involves all the new age gurus. This is more spiritual and involves a lot of teachers who have been talking and spreading knowledge about this. For example – The Secret.

We usually have 60,000 thoughts per day. And recall from Theory # 1 that our thoughts change possibilities. So, imagine each thought is altering some possibility. Meaning we have about 60,000 alterations going on in our one day at Quantum level.

How in the hell do I manage those 60,000 alterations?

Welcome Feelings.

One feeling is worth a thousand thoughts!

We can keep those 60,000 thoughts in check with the help of feelings.

Remember what we learned in Theory # 1. Our thoughts alter possibilities –> meaning, our thoughts alter or can also create possibilities –> meaning, our thoughts can create matter or energy (Thanks Einstein)

Let’s take a visual representation:

Here are our thoughts:

Thoughts

This is how Feelings Orchestrate thoughts:

Feelings Orchestrate Thoughts

It’s time to mix all these 3 theories and see what come up. Before we do that, let’s note the key points.

  1. Observer changes possibility
  2. Creativity enhances perception
  3. Perception is at a thought level
  4. Feelings affect multiple thoughts
  5. Observer have feelings

The Big Picture is:

Grand Big Picture

So, if you look at it – creativity plays a very important role in our lives. At a sub-conscious level it helps us to perceive more options and there by helps us create the life we want.

Here is the Role of Creativity in Consciousness slides in PDF format.

Filed Under: Creativity, Insight, spirituality, Thoughts

Movie themes I love

May 3, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I watched Iron Man yesterday. It was kinda cheesy, but it did satisfy the geek in me. As I was journaling today I realized I like movies for with mostly two themes(so far).

  1. I like movies where the protagonist does something ingeniously. Something he/she builds, or something original. Something new and creative.
  2. I like movies where the protagonist starts out to be an underdog and eventually wins it.

This itself is such a revelation to me. It speaks a lot about the inner me though. I love to create stuff ingeniously and I love to start off in anything as an underdog.

Filed Under: Thoughts

On becoming a freelancer

May 1, 2008 By Leave a Comment

You know there are sometimes in our lives that we have this inner voice telling us something but we ignore it for a long time and then go through all the ‘physical’ obstacles and then later realize that the inner voice was right in the first place. Something similar happened to me recently.

After I got back from India – I went on frantically looking for a job. I think I attended about 20-25 interviews. I got 3 offers which I didn’t take. While I was interviewing it was becoming very clear to me that the kind of work I am seeking – freelancing would do. But I was really too scared to do that. I was scared to become a freelancer because I was not sure what kind of life it would lead to. Sangita has already made her mind and she became one when she got here, but I was not sure whether it would work out if we both did freelancing.

One thing led to another and after 1 month of searching for a job I realized that the reason why I didn’t like most of the companies I interviewed is because I didn’t identify myself and my values with what the company is trying to accomplish. So, freelancing is one way where I can be very particular about my project selection and totally enjoy working on it.

Now I am a freelancer. How did it change my life? So, far it’s been very good. I am lucky to have some good friends who got me in touch with some really cool people. Slowly I am building up my network and I can totally see all my fears falling apart. Freelancing does made me realize a bunch of things:

  1. I need to be very self-disciplined. I cannot get up late and stay and work in my jammies all day. It kinda puts me in bad mood by the end of the day.
  2. I need to move for a change – I mean I cannot work from home every day. I need to go to nearby coffee shop or a park to work
  3. I need to be very organized with my time. Still working on this one. But my calendar has never been so busy
  4. I need to be very organized with money. As a process of basically trying to write off most of the work related stuff and in a world where your pay check is not a regular occurrence, I need to be very careful with how I manage money
  5. I need to enjoy the freedom which I have. No more stay till 5pm policy. If the work is done, I am out and I can utilize that time to go workout or just cook amazing dinner.

Not sure how future will roll out, but in this moment I am really excited to be a freelancer and I totally enjoy the freedom it gives me.

Filed Under: Thoughts
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