Developing ability to say ‘No’

Often times, we are scared to say ‘no’ even if we want to, even if we need to.

Suppose a friend asks you for ‘help’ to complete a project. You know that you are extremely busy and you don’t have the time for the ‘help’ requested. Being scared of offending a friend you just accept the request without proper thinking. This is lack of ‘assertiveness’. It will lead to a greater problem when the relevant time comes. If you help, you will consider in your mind that your friend is inconsiderate because your own work is suffering. If you don’t, your friend will be upset because you have gone back from your commitment and let him/her down.

So, what should you do?

Develop assertiveness. It’s developing your ability to say ‘no’ when you need to say ‘no’. But you have to say it in a manner that it does not offend your friend. You must use your language and articulate your inability in such words and such tone that your friend appreciates your position rather than feeling upset. The same holds good for your colleagues in office and others.

Act never React!

3 Magical Words that can change you life. What do these words mean? Simply stated these mean that your words must simply stated these mean that you must always remain composed – Never exceedingly happy, and never heavily sad.

Never react to a person, nor to any situation. It may so happen that someone has told you something which he or she should not have said. You may become angry and give it back in the same coin. But that will not solve the problem. It will aggravate it. Then what should you do? Should you take things lying down? No! Yet, you must practice to remain composed and ask your mind what you should do? You will mind will surely respond. You will be able to say  such words ‘cooly’ to your opponent that will work out to be a befitting response. The person will never dare to insult you again. Is it easy to acquire such strength in character? No it is not. But, it is quite possible by consistently reminding yourself that you must never ever react. You should ‘act’ instead. Asking your mind is in fact your ‘action’.

We must all remember that when we ‘act’, we use our mind. But when we ‘react’, we lose our mind. Using the mind is surely a better alternative. Your mind provides you with ample opportunities to overcome difficult, indeed very difficult situations. It is worth becoming adept in using your mind gainfully, always.

‘Voice Modulation’

We hear a lot about voice modulation in the age of public presentations.

What is modulation? And why is it so important?

Voice Modulation is your ability, rather, talent to bring in variance in pace, pause, pitch, emphasis on the key word and the tone. Unless you modulate your voice while speaking to a group or even a lone listener, the chances are that you speech will not be effective at all. We have often seen some members of the audience dozing away while the speaker continues his/her speech. Now, I will explain- pace, pause, pitch, emphasis on the key word and the tone.

Pace: if you speak very fast you will not be understood but, if you speak very slowly you tend to become dull and listeners will not like to listen to you. However, when you speak with a medium speech, though audience can understand you but the same pace of your words will render your speech monotonous. 

Pause: Just as in written text you have coma, full stop, paragraph and other punctuation marks, your speech too must reflect the same by means of pauses of different durations. This will make the speech effective.

Pitch: It is the note on which you speak. While attending a solemn meeting you cannot speak on higher pitch. But at the same time if the commentator of a football match speaks at a low pitch, nobody will like to listen to him.

Emphasis on the key word: Just as you get unwanted results if you Google a wrong key word, different meaning will be conveyed by the same sentence when you emphasis a wrong word.

Tone: Tone is most dicey. It is easy to control the words and the sentences. But it is very difficult to control the tone. Tone represents the emotions with which you speak. Often times, due to inappropriate tone the speaker lands into trouble.

Benevolent Badri

I had a friend who was always looking for people whom he could help. He could never see anyone suffering. He would get so involved in the problems of others that he would forget his own.

I had read in our scriptures that persons with ‘Devi Prakarti’ are the ones who are always concerned about the welfare of others. They would even find how the enemies after death could go to heaven and not the hell. Indeed it was the concept of ‘Ma Durga’ who would want to destroy the demons with her swords and/or other arms instead of destroying them with a just a fierce gaze. It had been further explained that the very touch of the arms of Mata Durga is enough for the salvation of these demons. Devi thus bestows salvation and not damnation even of demons

But, Badri was not an angel. He was a human being like all of us.

Due to his extreme concern for others, his own business invariable suffered. Most of the time he was in financial difficulties. His wife remained upset and the family life was disturbed. Poor benevolent Badri.

Mumbai's Lifeline

At a recent training program, we wanted to conduct a debate. There were about twenty participants- all executives of a medium size organization. There were nine ladies and eleven male executives. Most of them had been using Mumbai’s Lifeline- Local Trains.

The topic was defined as,

Commuters themselves are responsible for poor services of Mumbai’s Local Trains.

Two groups were formed. By consensus, it was decided that ladies would speak for the motion and men would oppose the motion and hold Government responsible for the malady.

Ladies group made out a strong case that commuters are either misusing the facilities provided by the railways or were not coming forward to notify their genuine complaints.

Male participants enumerated various issues like delays, shoddy  announcements, hawkers & beggars infesting the stations and the compartments, thefts, accidents etc, But, somehow they did not speak with conviction. So it seemed that the ladies had carried the day.

Then, the motion

“Commuters themselves are responsible for the poor service of railways”

was put to vote.

Contrary to the expectation - the motion failed. All the male and female participants voted against the motion and held the railway authorities squarely responsible for their mismanagement and all pervading corruption.