Finding Me - Viola Davis

I remember Viola Davis from her performances - first in 'Help' and then in 'Fences' and realised at first sight that you cannot miss her presence. Way more powerful than most, a burning intensity in her eyes and her soul. 

Viola takes us down the road - her difficult childhood as a black in a school where there were mostly white kids, being bullied, attacked everyday on her way home. And homes were rat infested, hungry, no water kind of places where they would not have water to wash clothes which meant that with a bed wetter like her, she would show up at school smelling of urine. Teachers he felt close to would avoid her, a series of disappointments. But that's still the easy part - the tough part was when her father would beat her mother with anything he could find - until she was bleeding and they would all worry for her life. Or the childhood abuse.

Somehow Viola and her sisters survived all this. One turning point that she mentions is when her sister tells her - do you want to live like this? if you do not want to live like this decide what you want and work your ass off for it. Those words hit home and Viola dreams of a life of fame and works for it. She however does not reveal any details of how she worked at her craft but obviously she worked really hard at it. If that was the first nudge the second came from her drama teacher who told her and her sister that they were beautiful and could do something with their lives. Then she went to college, lived with almost no money, found a college that could get her an agent and worked her way up. All the time supporting her parents and family to the extent she can.

She distinguishes between actors who want fame and those who want to be artists and gives out numbers saying that less than four percent make upward of 50000 USD a year. Tough life. She gets into theatre, gets into TV and then finally movies. Her role opposite Meryl Streep in 'Doubt' got her an Oscar nomination and an Oscar for 'Fences'. She got the Cecil B DeMille award for outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment.

No boyfriend until very late, then a failed affair with a self absorbed man and then her firend tells her - 'you deserve what you want. Go home and pray for exactly what you want on your knees' - and she does that. Prays for the perfect black man, sensitive, caring etc etc and she finds Julius almost immediately and marries him. She calls herself a great manifester and that shows in her life, She speaks about therapy and how it helped her overcome many of her demons about colour, her past, trauma, herself. As she accepts herself, finds herself, she grows into the woman she has become - 9th on the list of great actors listed by NYT, 100 most influential people in the world as per TIME.

The scene where she writes about her father - who she forgives and who becomes a completely changed man in his later years - and his death is very moving. As is the last scene where a friend asks her where it changed for her and she says there was this time when her father was beating his mother to pulp and she screams and screams until her older sister tells her to go inside. Viola goes into the bathroom and prays to god and tells him - remove me from her by the time I count ten and she counts ten. Nothing happens physically but Viola says - God took me into his arms then. That he did.

I only wish she wrote a bit about how she went about developing her craft. That she would read and write scenes and improve them comes across but her own insights would have been nice. Overall, a powerful reminder that we only have to 'decide' what we want and go for it with single minded focus.     

Tomb of Sand - Geetanjali Shree

It won the 2022 International Booker Prize and the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation with Daisy Rockwell (Ret Samadhi is the title in Hindi). Geetanjali Shree has written four other novels 'Mai', 'Hamara Shehar Us Baras, Tirobit and Khali Jagah. Daisy Rockwell, an American artist, translates from Hindi to English and has translated many works from Indian Hindi authors like Krishna Sobti, Bhisham Sahni, Upendranath Ashk, Khadija Mastur etc.

The book is 739 pages long which is intimidating but the writing is breezy, playful and actually easy to read. It's a bit like James Joyce's 'Ulysses' in that sense that both are huge tomes and both went by without making much sense to me. The family has a Mai, Beti, Bade, Bahu, KK, Sid and such - a mother, a son, a daughter, a daughter-in-law, a grandson, and that's how we know them. They live in Delhi perhaps and its about the time when the mother's husband passed away and she is lying on a cot in her son's house hardly moving.

Over a period of time her old friend, a transgender who has a name Rosie-Raza, comes into her life and she, at eighty finds her spirit and dresses different and does things differently. She moves from her ultra conservative son's house to her liberal daughter's house and surprises the daughter with her clothes, her plans. At some point Rosie-Raza, the instigator of her change perhaps, dies. Mai decides to go to Pakistan to find her husband Anwar. It appears that she and her daughter go across without a valid visa and try to find Anwar. Somewhere then towards the end of the book we find that her name is Chanda. Anyway somewhere there the sand buries the tomb.

I breezed through it looking for points of the story where it turns - found a few, missed many - read the story up on the net and filled in the missing pieces. I am not a great follower of such books and need to be explained. I guess if one reads it patiently and lets the mind absorb it fully, it probably has a lot to offer.  Interesting premise, interesting tone and great conviction.

Atomic Habits - James Clear

The byline says it all - "Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results".  James Clear starts with the example of the British Cycling team that had never won anything major since 1908 (1 Olympic gold and no Tour de France in a century). The new coach Dave Brailsford brings in the concept of 'Aggregation of Marginal Gains'. They broke down everything that goes into riding a bike (the bike, equipment, clothes, mattresses, even the colour of bus etc) and improved it by 1%. When you put all these 1% gains together, you get a significant increase. By 2008 British cycling teams won 60% of the gold medals in the Olympics and later on went on to win 178 World Championships.

The maths behind this - 1% gain every day for a year results in a 37.78 times increase. 1% worse each day results in 0.03 times what you began with. The tiny gains end up making you 37 times better in a year.

James Clear says that to create this 1% change every day you need to focus on systems and not on goals. You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems he says which is absolutely true. He also mentions how a single goal can restrict your happiness, can be momentary while systems help you enjoy every part of the journey. So systems are what you focus on - after setting your goals

Change - At Identity, Systems and Outcome Levels

Change happens at three levels - identity, systems and outcome. If we look at change, in three concentric circles beginning with the outermost which is the what - "The Outcome" change, the second circle which is the how - "the Systems" change and the innermost which is the why - "the Identity change" we understand the wisdom of beginning with "why". If we start with the why - who we want to become - then we figure the 'how' in line with that and we achieve the results we want. True behaviour change is identity change he says. Be proud of who you are. Change the story you tell yourself. Think - who is the type of person you want to be? The ultimate form of motivation is when the habit becomes part of your identity. Once you get your pride involved, your identity will drive your habits. You become your habits. There's no more effort involved.

Why Humans Repeat or Avoid Behaviors 

Studies show that behaviours followed by satisfying consequences tend to be repeated and behaviours that produce unpleasant consequences are less likely to be repeated. Habits are mental shortcuts learned from experience.

Our Feedback Loop

Our behaviour feedback loop is this - Cue- Craving - Response - Reward. Cue (the hint that begins the behaviour) and Craving (intensifying the need for the behaviour) are the problem phase while Response (the action that we take) and Reward (the feeling that we feel after going through with the behaviour) are the solution phase. This is the feedback loop of habits.

James has a simple formula to build and break habits. To build habits - make the cue obvious, make the craving attractive, make the response easy to do and make the reward more satisfying. To break habits go the other way - make the cue invisible, make the craving unattractive, make the response difficult and make the reward unsatisfying. James gives some techniques to build on these.   

                                    To build new habits                            To break habits 

Cue                               Make it obvious                                    Make it invisible

Craving                        Make it attractive                                    Make it unattractive 

Response                    Make it easy                                               Make it difficult

Reward                        Make it satisfying                                    Make it unsatisfactory

Making the Cue Obvious

Have a habits scorecard - write down all the things you do habitually (habits are those you do almost unconsciously) and check them off as positive, neutral or negative. This makes the habit and the cue obvious so you can take action on which habit to keep and which to drop.

Point and call - Since most habits happen without awareness, point and call like the Japanese Railways employees do or airlines pilots do - so it helps you do things with more awareness.

Implementation Intention - To start a new habit the two main cues are time and location. So create an implementation intention - "I will (exercise) at (6 am) in (the gym)". When you clearly write what your intention is, chances are high you will stick to it. There's a study done between three groups which were told to start exercising, were given motivational inputs and were asked to write an implementation intention - the third group acted. 35 to 38% of the first two groups exercised once a week while 91% of the third group exercised once a week (which is almost double the first two groups). 

 Habit stacking - Stack two habits one after another. After (I journal) I will (meditate) for (5 minutes). You can increase the stack so you get good habits going on after another in the same momentum.  

Environment - You can change habits by changing the architecture and making things you need to do accessible and those you wish to avoid, inaccessible. We are guided by our vision so if you want to build a habit, make the thing obvious by and if you want to break a habit, make it invisible. There's a study where people's eating habits were changed simply by changing the position of where water was made available and where soda was made available in the canteen. Many people shifted to water. Make the cue BIG. James uses the principle of one space, one use to build good habits into the mind.

People with the best self-control are the ones who need to use it the least. Instead of will power, they optimise the environment.

Make the Craving Attractive

Temptation Bundling - Bundle your temptations together so it makes the craving attractive. Pair the ones you 'want' to build, with the ones you 'need' to build.

Remember, it's the anticipation - not fulfilment - that drives the action.

Our culture determines our behaviour - we imitate people close to us, the majority and powerful people. So if you wish to build habits, check if you are in the right environment, following the right social media groups, part of the right groups which have the same intention as you have.

Approval, respect and praise bring on repeat behaviour - so figure a way to get those after you perform an action.

Create a motivation ritual. This makes the craving more attractive. 

Make the Response Easy

The big insight here is that when it comes to response, repetition is more important than one large effort. Many small repetitions on a regular basis have a much larger effect than one big effort. Also, we must keep in mind that the human mind prefers to operate keeping the law of least effort in mind.

Quantity versus quality - Always go for more repetitions than less when it comes to behaviour. The study where one group of photography students were asked to click maximum photos without worrying about quality and another group was asked only to click the single big picture showed that quantity people outscored quality people with better pictures.  

Action vs motion - One must also be careful to understand that there is a difference between action and motion. Action produces results while motion is an activity that does not produce anything.

Addition by subtraction - This is a powerful concept - when we take out one point of friction every time, we have a very efficient system.

Keep things within reach (or out of reach) to reduce (or increase) friction 

2 Minute rule - This is a brilliant tool. When you start a new habit, it should take less than 2 minutes to do. Do it for 2 minutes and win the decisive moments tat decide between should you or not. A two minute - walk, talk, read - is easier to handle than big plans. 

Ritualise the process

Commitment Device - Like Victor Hugo who removed all formal clothes from his vicinity so he would not go out and thus committed to writing and finish his book or James himself who locks up his devices or social media account through the week to stay focused, commitment devices force you to work on your priorities.. take advantage of good intention before falling victim to temptation. You can make good habits inevitable and bad habits

Start one time actions for good habits - like starting SIPs so the effort of doing it continuously is reduced.

Make the Reward Satisfying

The basic principle is that what is rewarded is repeated and what is punished is avoided. also, immediate rewards get immediate actions and delayed rewards may not get repeated actions.

There are many actions we take but if the reward is not satisfying and immediate, we don't repeat it. There is the story of how handwashing as a practice was being promoted in Lahore but the problem was that people were aware and were washing but not properly. To make them take the action properly, they used an expensive handwash which gave a nice perfume and some 

To avoid something pay that amount to fund something nice for yourself - like if you avoided a creamy dessert, pay the amount you would have paid for that into your travel fund or buy-something-nice-for-yourself fund. 

To get a habit to stick - feel immediately successful. Celebrate small wins. Build that habit.

Visual measures help - ticks and pins after every success, or after every achievement in the process, keeps you sticking to the habit. The story of how a young banker became successful by starting the day with 120 marbles in a glass jar and after every sales call he would transfer one to the other jar. The visual in the jar prodded him to complete all calls.

Record and monitor each day - Recording and monitoring your progress each day helps keep track. If we make it visible on the board - even more. 

Don't miss twice - To stay on track, be clear not to miss twice. Once is ok, but not twice, or you'll soon fall off.

Find accountability partners - whatever be your work, having an accountability partner helps. Just to stay honest.

Habit contracts - Make Habit Contracts with people around you - make it a rule or the law and enforce it and the habit sticks.

Habit + deliberate practice = Mastery

Habits and Growth

The Growing Habit - James talks of how to grow to the next level we need to follow the Goldilocks rule - push ourselves beyond the current comfort zone and get into the next level. Here, the Goldilocks zone is the zone that is beyond your boredom zone and below your failure zone. The sweet spot comes on the edge of your comfort zone.

Another fine concept he shared is the one about Career Best Effort (CBE) used by a basketball team where every player was asked to improve on their career-best performance by 1%. This growth was tracked and ranked on both skill and performance as well as unsung hero acts where the person did something for the team.

James says we can also stay honest and review our progress by way of an Annual Review  and an Integrity review. But what I really liked was what he stressed at the end about how habits can become part of our identity and can make us rigid.

"In the beginning, repeating a habit is essential to build up your new identity. But those same beliefs can hold you back from the next level growth. Your pride encourages you to deny your weak spots and prevents your growth.

The more sacred an idea is to us, i.e. the more deeply it is tied to our identity - the more strongly we will defend it against criticism. The tighter we cling to an identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it.

Avoid making any single aspect of your identity an overwhelming portion of who you are. Keep your identity small. The more you let a single belief define you, the less adaptable you are when things need to change to grow to the next level. When you cling too tightly to one identity, ou become brittle. Lose that one thing and you lose yourself.'

Be flexible. Be like water. Let go of the old identity to embrace the new. And build a new story. 

The hard and stiff will be broken,

The soft and supple will prevail - Lao Tzu  

James says we need to check periodically if our old habits ad beliefs are still serving us. Lack of self-awareness is poison he says. Reflection and review is the antidote.  

...

I loved the book. The idea of 1% improvement every day is brilliant. Needs practice. I am going to do it from today on in my work area, my growth area. The idea of pinning change to identity and not change is superb, the two-minute rule is brilliant as is the one about accountability partners. And of course the one about the environment guiding your behaviours - keep things you want to do handy and hide things you don't want to access. 

Thought For The Day - The Link Between Giving, Leadership and Creativity

We can be a giver. Or we can be a taker.

The givers are ones who are the leaders, the creative ones and those whose lives are full, happy and vibrant. The takers are on the opposite side.

Giving - The Key To Ownership, Leadership and Creativity

The givers are usually the ones who have taken the initiative, the risk and want to give. Once they make up their mind, they look for ways to give, to contribute. This looking for new ways to give and contribute makes them creative. Taking the initiative, being action oriented and taking decisions come easily to them once they decide to be a 'giver'. Giving essentially is about adding life to a process, adding excitement and the you to every job, and getting far more in return.

Taking - The Key to Low Productivity, Resentment and Low Self-Esteem
The takers are the ones who are waiting. They ask sometimes and sometimes, do not even ask. They hope someone understands and gives them something. They remain in their place, waiting with their arms stretched out. There is no initiative, they are powerless, they are victimized, they cannot take any decision because they are scared about the consequences of upsetting the giver. There is also no creativity really. Just a feeling of helplessness. Of resentment. Taking essentially is about giving your power to someone else, feeling powerless about life and becoming smaller.

The question we need to ask ourselves in every walk of life, as long as we are alive is this - are we giving? Or are we taking? A small change in mindset can open up a new world. 

Anjali - The First Home Grown Tomato

After almost three months of caring for and watering the saplings gifted by the energetic Dr. Suryaprakash Rao garu and his band of merry men, Anjali and I, co-partners in this venture, saw the first of the many green tomatoes turn red. Her joy at seeing the heatlhy-looking tomato was immense and she quickly walked across and plucked it before I could utter a word.

The brinjals are still not showing any signs though there is some progress on the potato front. Exciting times ahead.