The personality development programmes should be more optimistic...

I had recently attended a personality development programme *accidentally*. Yes accidentally..., because i had stopped attending them after my college days when we had over dosage of too many personality development programmes. And therefore i was even little careless in taking the trainer seriously , and was rather spending my time observing others.

Two people in room, made an interesting case to me. They made me feel that these programs can do more harm to people than do good

There was one man, who when entered the room was very energetic, full of enthusiasm and very social but when the program was about to end, he became very hyperactive, tensed, wanting to prove something and restless. The reason was just one psychometric analysis paper which showed him that his energy levels and self motivation was low and he needs improvement there.
The psychometric paper also showed that he is very honest and sincere...but then went unattended.

There was another lady in the room who sounded very authoritative from the beginning of the class. The trainer had asked each of us, what do u think are the qualities you want to change. I seriously dont' remember what i said :$, ya but this lady said 'i am very short tempered, and i want to change that'.

Sometime in the break i asked that lady if she has attended such personality development programs before. And she said from many many years she has been attending these kind of programs, and her main motive is to reduce her short temperament.

Well...since so many years what didn't happen, will it happen today ??!?! Are these personality programs helped her in anyways.
I think it has done her more harm. These programs have indirectly and silently hypnotised her by making her believe that she is short tempered. And now she is already in love with her short temperament and thinks that's her identity.
No human being, likes to leave his identity, irrespective of its good or bad. And nor will this lady do it.

It would have been great if the program had stressed more on persons strengths and told them how to capitalise on one's strengths instead of thinking so much on weaknesses. Who doesn't have weaknesses? If you are fat, people will say become thin. If you are thin, people will say you were cute when you were fat. If you are dark in complexion, then you need to become fair. if you are fair, then black is beautiful. So there is no end to it.

The best thing would be to fall in love with your strengths and make it your identity, and just be aware of your weaknesses.

(personality img source :http://lifeskills-consultancy.com/db5/00451/lifeskills-consultancy.com/_uimages/personality1.bmp)

Marrying an elder women. Does it make sense?

It's been a tradition in india or rather across the globe (as per my observation) that a marriage usually happens between a younger woman and an elder man.
If we take a historic data of 7-8 decades then we would see that the women's age had been too less than her husband's age in olden days (around 15 yrs gap).And slowly with time the age gap starting decreasing and decreasing further . Now the average age gap of marriage would be 3 yrs with the woman still being younger than the man.

But then there are instances where we would also see some love marriages happening where a women is elder than the man (popular case is sachin tendulkar).
But then society doesn't welcome these marriages at all and people look at them as if it's a big sin created, as if it's a very nasty and a shameless act.

I recently came across two such cases in my close vicinity and have also closely observed how bad the near and dear feel about it. They feel as if the couple have commited an unpardonable sin of marrying an elder women.

But then if you really think seriously on this, i did not find anything very wrong in this.
In fact, if we look back to the aryan times (ramayana, mahabharata etc etc), we will find many couples in the mythology where the wifes were elder than the men.
Good example is Sita who is considered elder than Rama, according to one school of thoughts.
Another example is draupadi who should have been elder than atleast some of of her husbands.
Another example is Radha who was elder than Krishna

The people whom we worship or treat as path finders themselves have done this kind of marriage many years back.

If we talk about later years also, i am not sure how many couples really knew their age when they got married.
Even now i find many people in slums or people with very large families not remembering their children's age or date of birth.
Then how can they be so sure than their daughter is marrying an elder man only or son is marrying an younger women only?


When asked some people why they think a women should be younger than man, the first answer that i get is that 'science insists atleast two years gap be between then man and the women'.
Correct. Agreed. But what's missing here is... science only says that their should be age gap, but it never says if women should be younger by two years or a man can also be younger than two years.


Another good and sensible reason i get for this is ---women start looking old soon, as compared to men. So if a man marries an elderly women, then she starts looking much more older after marriage and that might affect their mutual physical interests.
This does make sense .
But then, is this reason of retaining physical interest much more important than the love between both the couples. I think it's not.

Though i do not specifically encourage these kind of marriages as i do not find any special benefits out of them , but i still do not find anything wrong in it as well.
I think they can be treated just as any other marriage.

I don't think there is anything in these kinds of marriages which needs to be treated as a sin or something very strange.

We should not be playing a double game by praying sita, drupadi or radha as an ideal women on one side, and on the other side curse the modern women for a similar act. Same thing holds good for men also.

After all it's we , the socienty, who are the makers of all kinds of rules and we must not accept any rule blindly unless it makes sense, just because some ancestor told it's a sin.

Deligation at work ..for prestige or power or responsibility or empowerment?

As people grow up in career and get into a managerial or leadership postions, its pretty common to see them delegate there work to others. The delegators are given different names at different times; while most of the times they are called leaders ormanagers ...but many a times they are also called as lazy bones, incompetent or beurocratic bosses.

To be a balanced and successful leader or a manager, it becomes very important to know when to delegate and when not to.

In my opinion, delegation is to be done in following situations

• Delegate when ur an expert and now its others turn to be.
• Delegate when there is someone who needs to know that particular job better than u.
• Delegate when you think someone else in the team can do it better than you.
• Delegate when u want to empower people and create the next generation of leaders
• Delegate when you want to focus on new role, and ur looking for ur replacement

Delegation should not be done for the below reasons

• Dont delegate when its ur job, and u as well are learning to do it (Else you will become dumb in due course)
• Dont delegate, because u think ur the boss (If u have competent people around u, flat culture works better than bossism)
• Dont delegate, because u have to keep others happy (U as well need to be happy)
• Dont delegate, because u think thats the right way to show the power (U may totally spoil the job my giving it in wrong hands).
• Dont delegate because your boss thinks you should delegate (Use your own brains when its ur job)