Friday, November 28, 2008

third party perspective, an essay

This phrase is used in the corporate world as a tool to resolve issues between individuals. An pretty effective tool to make sure emotional states of individuals do not effect the individual relationships in the company.

This is an effort to understand what this actually means. what is the practical significance of this? Is this a corporate jargon or does it have a significant psychological meaning? can we use this in our personal life?

There are 2 things come out of definition from the corporate world,

1) emotional states of individuals might create issues
2) usage of third party perspective to resolve the issue

Emotion and problems with that:

Emotion can be defined as below, (This is my vice to create my own definitions of terms)

"A mental state of High (Positive Feeling) or Low (Negative Feeling). The effect of the feeling might result in happiness, sorrow, crying, frustration, anger, etc. "

The reasons for emotions are varied and specific to each individual. Children get a high by eating a chocolate, whereas an adult might need alcohol to get an high :-)

When a individual is in a mental state of High, individual is driven by the inertia of positiveness and sees the world around with goggle of positiveness. Without explaining much, I request the reader to think of situations where they were extremely happy. And how they perceived the world during that time of high. Think of scenarios like, the first time you got a cricket bat, you got your dream job, you did something out of complete concentration, etc. These scenarios, took you towards an emotional high which due to its inertia stayed on for a period of time. During that period, everything you saw, make you see the positive side of things.

An Example: To take a simple scenario, In my job profile I had to provide an architecture diagram for a complex business solution. The architecture was for a end to end life cycle of business process which I was not fully aware of. To start with the assignment, I was confused on where to start and where to end. But using the process of breaking the problem to few and solving it piece by piece, I came up with an architecture diagram which was instantly accepted by everybody who saw it. More than anything, I was satisfied with the effort and the out put.
I generally have a good 45 minutes walk home for the sake of health improvement. That day when I delivered the output, I could feel a jump in my walk (this is literal not figurative), I was singing a song very loud without aware of my surroundings, I easily ignored the other irritations in the office. I was on a High!! Everything I saw that day was good!, everyone was good!.

When a individual is in a mental state of Low, individual is driven by the inertia of negativeness and sees the world around with goggle of negativeness. Again I request the reader to think of scenarios where they have gone through this phase. There is so much of negativeness in this world, unfortunately this is a easier scenario to understand. To take an example of an forward email, where an individual fights with his wife for spilling of food on his shirt in the morning, and how he feels bad about traffic, his spoilt car, his inability to buy new car, screwed up boss etc. etc. He completely fails to see the good side of life that day because of the negative inertia.

This inertia of the emotion is what causes problems in life for the individuals. A person seeing the world with goggle of negativeness, sees anything and everything as negative without giving a consideration to the factual nature of the matter. This inertia of negative energy makes the person shout at people while driving, get people depressed seeing the traffic, make people hurt another individual, feel everybody hates me etc. etc. etc.

This inertia of positive energy, brings in foolishness, make a person forgets the compassion towards another individual, etc. etc.

According to Indian philosophy, emotional high or low are not considered to be effective way of experiencing life. Indian philosophy subscribes to the idea of individual being in the mental state of consistency (stitha prgna) to enjoy the Joy of life. This is exactly the median between the High and Low of emotion. I guess, we can call it the opposite of emotion.

Solution:

Whenever an individual is on a emotional high or a low, it is typically a third party which will allow the individual to be pulled out of emotional inertia. There are various types of third party who help us come out of the inertia, The impact of each third party will differ on the proportion of inertia,

Sleep: Typically the lower proportions of inertia is lost over a very good sleep.

Movie/newspaper/life: There are times, when you see a thing, movie, hotel, office, and that provides a perspective which pulls us out of the emotional inertia.

Unknown individual: It so commonly happens that, when we are under emotional inertia. There is this person X, who gives a perspective with such conviction that it makes us think and helps us to get out of the emotional inertia. Wonderful thing is we might not even know that person.

Parents, Friends, Spouse - The people who are close to us are best equipped to give a perspective, which will pull us out of the inertia. The emotional bonding which we have with these individuals, helps us to see the light of the fact removing the negative elements. The Love, compassion, eagerness with which these relations deal with us, is what helps us think differently. It happens so often that, we do a certain mistake (however big the mistake is doesn't matter) and support of our loved ones, pulls us out of the negative inertia. Loads of bollywood movies are made on this subject :-)

Psychologists: Their are this breed of doctors/psychologists who have sessions with patients. Their main job is to listen to the patients thoughts on different subjects. They help the patient by giving a different perspective and help the patients see the light of the fact.

Doctor: Today's doctors have interesting medicine which plays around with the chemical composition of the brain to help us get out of the inertia of emotion. This is only used when the emotional inertia is in the advanced stages. Emotional attachment helps us to do different things, out of blind faith and trust, which typically kicks us out of emotional inertia.

Important fact to note here is, no individual can force another person out of the emotional inertia. Every individual comes out of the emotional inertia with his own efforts. It is just that design of the world, provides him/her opportunities to come out of the emotional inertia.

The best example is, all of us would have seen a fight in the streets because of some stupid problem. And I am sure most of us, would have gone through a similar type of a fight ourselves. But whenever we see it with the role of an observer, we invariably see the childishness and immaturity of the fight. But when we are ourselves involved in the fight, we are in such inertia of the negative mood that, we fail to see the obvious FACTS which we can see as an OBSERVER.

Typically for us to get out of this inertia, we get help from a third party. What third party provides us is, different perspective, which helps us to see the fact of the matter. But if we build this third-party-perspective in ourselves, we can always see the fact of the matter for ourselves without needing any help. This process will take us to "Stitha prgna" state and everlasting joy associated with that.

-- Madhukar Hebbar

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good one! very nicely concluded. reminds me of the song by mariah carey - "Hero". Probably the "hero" within us is our third-party perspective!

Madhukar Hebbar said...

I can draw a parallel with a concept in physics. Just like the body has a centre of gravity If this point moves up or down then we lose our balance.....i feel the mind also has a centre of gravity.....if we can concenterate and set our focus on this point the fluctuations (high and low) will not affect us and we stay balanced, the state of stithapragna (my fav :))!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

---- comment through email by one of my friend..

Keshava said...

Nice one Mate. True, the third party perspective is definitely required. In my case, when I'm either at an Emotional High or Low, I try to get back the Mental stability by: 1. Meeting my friends. 2. Listening to some good Melodious / Josh songs!!