Managing Your Self: Management by Detached Involvement by Parikh Jagdish

Author:Parikh, Jagdish [Parikh, Jagdish]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Vakils, Feffer and Simons Pvt. Ltd.
Published: 2013-06-18T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 7.7 Gravities.

For example, at the individual or personal level there are several physical aspects, or features of your body, that cannot be changed during your entire life, and some, for example weight, which are not changeable for a specified period – of, say, one year, three months, one week, or even one day. Moreover, there are similar changeable or non-changeable “gravities” in other dimensions of your mental and emotional self, either for your entire lifetime or over a specific period of time.

The same applies at the organizational and societal levels. You frequently become agitated over things or situations that are unchangeable within a particular time frame. You fritter away your energies and resources trying to change such “gravities.” There are several other things and situations which you can influence and change, but if your attention and energies are engaged in such a dysfunctional way, the effectiveness of your efforts in other areas will be seriously and adversely affected. You need to identify explicitly at various levels – personal, organizational, and societal – what are “gravities” within a particular time frame and what are not. This will enable you to make more judicious use of your resources. Then, by setting proper priorities you can, over a period, maximize the desired change and minimize the “gravities” around you. This approach does not imply a passive or fatalistic acceptance of everything. Quite the contrary. It implies that if you want to be effective in your “change” strategies, you have to apply your limited resources in a pragmatic manner, rather than dissipating them on a more emotional or prejudiced basis. That is why the line in Figure 7.7 indicating gravities is a dotted one, not a solid one.

Managing expectations

The second frame of reference for preventing or minimizing negative emotions, is that of managing expectations. You saw earlier how negative stress results from the gap between your expectations and their achievement or fulfillment. There are two factors responsible then for your negative feelings, your level of expectation and the level of their fulfillment. On the basis of this realization, we can develop the following “happiness formula:”

H (Happiness) = A (Achievement) ÷ E (Expectations)

If our expectation (of results) is zero, even the slightest achievement or fulfillment will result in infinite happiness! (See Figure 7.8 .)

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