All Entries Tagged With: "Conquering fear"

Ambiguity is not a desirable state in most situations. It typically causes communication problems and has no place in certain circumstances. For instance, an infantry commander would not want to say, “Make sure you cross one of the bridges soon or else.” This could be a prescription for disaster. Rather, the infantry commander would say, [...]

Speaking from several experiences as a fighter pilot, I feel even on the ground, in normal life, when you get into a situation that demands calmness and you panic! Tell yourself…  “Do Not Panic.” When in distress this is the very first thought that should emerge from your brain. To you. So, go ahead…and train [...]

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize. – Robert Hughes A well known painter friend of mine once said that having an art show is like “pulling down your pants in public.” My favourite mystery quote about acting is, “acting is like [...]

Tummy trembles. Brain fuzz. That discombobulating feeling that you’re not quite sure what you should be doing but you should be something to keep your act together. Anxiety. Sometimes it slips away with a few deep breaths, other times you need to beat it off with a stick or some little white pills. Naturally, we [...]

Standing in front of a room full of people; some doodling, some texting, some on the verge of sleeping, not to mention the wretched few staring at me; but all expecting me to speak was never my idea of fun. I am painfully shy and a compulsive introvert. All through school and architecture college, I [...]

Well, I am not referring to the one that is being commonly used to express surprise, shock, anger, awe or all of it at the same time. I am talking about the other 4-letter F-word, which is about the emotion that we all experience at some time or the other: Fear! Why do we fear, [...]

While chatting with a friend about keeping one’s self alive and well, he mentioned the term “Wallenda Factor”. I had to look it up in Google as it was a new term to me and what I found triggered some interesting thoughts in my mind. Just in case there are others like me out there [...]

A little girl stood at the foot of the mountain. She looked up and wowed at the beauty around – the greenery, the open blue skies, the vastness of the land but what really caught her attention was the big, strong mountain. It stood there for years or maybe centuries.  Snow, thunderstorm, strong winds came [...]

Life promises to surprise. Just a while ago we were polishing our shining economy and patting the bloated belly of our envisaged future. Suddenly the winds of fortune turned out to be gas! A case of the economy suffering from grave dyspepsia with the indigestible servings of the high and swinging life of over-indulgence. A [...]

We are all faced with our challenges, whether it is a physical handicap like I talked about in my article “Yes I can”, people in our lives telling us we can’t do it or our own attitude preventing us from moving forward. I and my staff are fortunate that we get to watch students and [...]

Recession! Not quite what we expected huh! The dream run, the bull run, ball of a time… and countless other descriptions of the times gone by all sound distant now, a far cry! People losing jobs, inability to pay up the credit, no taxes, no revenue to the government, no money in the market, no [...]

Have you ever faced a situation when you had to choose between a place of work where you heart was and another which offered you status and money? It sure is a difficult choice and even though I chose the latter four months ago I know my heart is somewhere else. Like thousands of others [...]

Yeah, all our actions are driven by fear (or the absence of fear). While this statement can be generalized, I would restrict this discussion to corporate work place – CORPORATE FEAR! When your boss doesn’t approve your leave, you fume “Can’t I decide my leave? After all, it is my leave and I’m entitled to [...]

So sitting here at 8 pm on a Monday night winding down after having attended an all day meeting that explored using social media to reach out to people; i.e. blogging, twitter and such.  Also thinking about the recent elections and the power behind the “yes we can” verbiage used in the campaign for President.  [...]

A bully is a very commonplace person found everywhere from home to the kindergarten to the senior most executive’s office. Today in the working world there is no escaping the fact that bullies abound there too. Bullies are a fact of life. The physically or intellectually stronger will always attempt to overpower the weaker. In [...]

“No, it can’t be done,” said people to a man named Thomas, as he kept on failing at his experiment. Had he given up, today we would be still living in the dark. He failed for a thousand times until finally he made a bulb that could glow. And what did our hero Thomas Alva [...]

One of my professors in my management classes used to say, “Shape up or ship out.” In our world today, it seems that one thing that is fully certain is change.  The speed of transformation that our business world is seeing – the rapid growth of technology, the ever changing needs of consumers, the needs [...]

If I live to be a hundred, I’ll still remember Friday, January 28, 1983. It was a bright sunny day, and I blissfully sang “I’m on the top of the world!” off-key as I dressed for work.  The day before, the company physician had confirmed what I’d suspected for weeks–I was three months pregnant–and after [...]

If there is a singular thought you must equip you with, when faced with a pink-slip, it  is to reiterate to yourself that what happened is owing to extraneous factors – the event per se is no reflection of your own professional or personal capabilities. Embedding this deep down in your mind will keep you [...]