Footprints on the Mountainside

These days, more and more of my friends seem to turn to me for guidance and help with websites. Not just friends, even places I work for. For example, ihave recently joined Resonate Consulting on a parttime basis, and they are unhappy with their current web hosting providers and wish to move. They are some of the most talented Organization Development Consultants in India, and their site looks nice, but has little functionality and costs a bomb. We are still struggling to see how we can add simple things like a blog.

Now, at the risk of sounding really obvious, it is easier to take some time and research and choose a good hosting provider. Really, there IS no excuse. It is far more inconvenient after having a site somewhere to shift hosting providers.

There are plenty of service providers out there that are very good, and websites that can provide comparisons, tips and reviews on the different web hosting available. This site can prove a good resource in gaining information and reviews about the different hosting providers out there and the kind of services and budgets you can expect. For example, what is the best choice for blog hosting, or if you are on a budget, or for heavy traffic, and so on. You wouldn’t buy a dress without checking it out, would you? So do you really want to buy the platform for your image without research?

Many people attend programmes with shoes that slip, are tight, are too fancy to wreck in the mud…….

I thought a quick post to point people to would help me by removing the necessity of repeating this information all the time.

1. NEVER wear shoes for trekking for the first time when you are walking for hours at a time and can’t change them if they get uncomfortable. Break your shoes in gently (for your feet - shoes don’t feel). Use them for shorter trips before heading out for that week long extreme trek.
2. ALWAYS walk on a variety of surfaces - rough, smooth, marble, stony, wet, etc. to check for slipping.
3. Buy shoes in the evening when your feet are slightly bigger than in the morning from standing all day.
4. The shoes should fit comfortably. By this, I mean a soft cushioning around your feet so that they are neither gripped by the shoe, nor rattling from the extra space.
5. For treks and situations where you expect to do a lot of walking, thick soles work well.
6. Some people prefer hard soles, others don’t. You will need to find out from experience.
7. COTTON SOCKS and plenty of them, please! You don’t want to get those nice shoes smelly, and your companions unconscious.
8. Floaters or slippers to wear on the campsite. I mention these and the socks in this list, because they are an important part of a comfortable experience with trekking shoes.
9. Expensive or cheap is not always the most comfortable. Experiment with different brands and types of shoes to experience what makes you happiest.
10. Care for your shoes as you would care for a car. Checking condition, waterproofing, cleaning and other small bits of attention ensure that your shoes don’t end up surprising you in a way you don’t like when in action.

If you think this list is silly, try being in my shoes where every programme has a percentage of participants not happy about their footwear (or me not happy with theirs - in the case of high heeled sandals - because the climbing site was near a beach), or try getting embarrassed participants to talk about fungal infections on feet when they want first aid.

I am planning to conduct some outdoor experiential learning programmes specially for couples this year. I saw a need, when I caught an angry exchange between a husband and wife there the wife accused the husband of neglecting her in favour of his friends, and the husband claimed that she just wasn’t “on the same frequency”.

This is very similar to problems we see in corporate and other training programmes, yet, there is hardly anything that targets such an important intimate relationship in terms of facilitating harmony. The more i thought on this exchange, the more I was convinced that it is definitely worthwhile to invest time in ensuring quality relationships with our spouses.

To plan for the programme, which by now was inevitable (in my mind), I decided to focus on common areas of difficulty in husband-wife relationships, so that they could allow me a framework to plan my programmes around. Here is a list of what I see as the cheif hurdles to harmoniour co-existence in couples.

1. Great expectations of an ideal: These are actually stereotypes. Their chief problem is their unrealstic nature. Those ideals are not based on the person they are applied to and therefore are often seen as accusations when lack is expressed. This includes everyday things like “You should keep the house tidy” or exotic ones like “If you loved me, you would…..” The bottom line is that we can expect something from people, but expecting from concepts is always going to create fitting problems when we attempt to apply them to real people. It would be far better to expect from a person, and be willing to make an investment of personal effort to come half way. eg. “I think that if we work together, the house can be tidied quite easily” and then proceed to walk your talk.
2. Immersion in “roles”: When people start playing and seeing the role, more than the person. When Anna becomes “my wife” more often than Anna the person. This kind of brings a certain anonymity to feelings. You may feel anything about Anna, but as your wife, this is what you think of her. The problem with this is that if you do it often enough, poor Anna has no way of knowing if you even think of her any more, or is she only a wife now? How many of us honestly make continuing efforts to keep discovering new interests and experiences our spouses collect? Do we really love some person who is now obsolete and is replaced by someone with different interests and more experience than we think?
3. Taking for granted: Small things that attracted the couple together start becoming the background music, and the search is on, for a “spark of novelty”. The whimsical nature that once charmed, is now the usual when it does something outstanding, and the ultimate carelessness when it fails. The effort to find novel details in what we find charming is often replaced by an effort to find something altogether different. Well….. common sense tells me, if I have an apple, I can look forward to its taste, its smell, some apple cider, an apple tree….. and so on. There is a problem, if I hold an apple and search for the scent of citrus, while ignoring the apple smell, because its always there.
4. Lack of creative expression: This is when efforts to convey a point stop considering it worthwhile to explore ways of communicating that will lead to maximum acceptance or an effort to make them interesting. Facts stated, and to hell with how they are perceived. What happened to the time, when you even dressed to tempt, and paid attention to everything you did and said, to please and gain acceptance. Why expect the fascination the efforts earned for you, if those efforts are now absent? It was a result of what you did. You do it again, and you’ll see the results again.
5. Insufficient communication: Very often, small irritations are not addressed until they become big issues. Small things are easier to deal with, than greater things. It is far more easy to say “Please call if you’re going to be late” than reach a position where you need to say “You never care that there is someone waiting for you at home”. It is a worthwhile initiative in terms of hurt for both. I may not realise that I am doing something that hurts you, but if you point it out and I see that it hurts you, I am unlikely to want to do it regardless of what you feel. But if I am in the habit of doing something that turns out to be something that has been hurting you for a long time, I am likely to feel left out that you didn’t feel close enough to tell me so, until you were forced by circumstances.
6. Auto-pilot: The married life becomes the launch pad for “real life”, where the married life ceases to be a significant facet of life and is simply consigned to “situation”. Well…. situation it is. However, this simplification overlooks that it is a situation you want. Overlook it often enough, and it will cease to matter. If the home is consistently considered to be a “non-happening” place of stability, it does help by making us more stable and balanced in our interactions with the world. But this source of stability also needs updates, if it is to work as planned. You cannot take a snapshot and hide behind it until eternity. For the home to truly bring that balance into our lives, we need to be alert to the stuff happening inside it. To see what is not working, to figure it out, to keep relationships fresh and involved, so that they are close by us. It is not the walls that are the home, it is the people in it and you’re one of them.
7. Independent dreams: Well… dreams are always personal, but when we fail to communicate them with our spouses, until the first concrete action is taken, they suddenly leave the spouses out of the process, and turn them into spectators. In such a situation, i would feel completely left out and considered incapable of being trusted with dreams and plans or of constructive contribution. I would have felt that I was being considered irrelevant to the core wishes of my spouse and that would definitely have hurt me and made me feel unsure of what could turn up later.
8. Acceptance of failure: We wouldn’t dream of accepting that we failed at work and meekly resign. Yet, many couples accept that they failed as a couple and contemplate divorce/seperation. No relationship worth having comes easy. To a certain extent, maybe, but if one has to go beyond that, it takes considerable skill and efforts. Accepting failure is simply admitting that you cannot get along well with someone on a close level. I fail to see how “people change” is applicable to such a great extent in explaining away this failure. Where were you when the people were changing that you couldn’t adapt to it? Professional scenarios change far more frequently, and you don’t even get to live with them. Yet, it is interest that sustains this constant adaptation, and if you cannot sustain interest in a spouse you fell in love with, it is indeed a failure - a failure to take relationships beyond the initial levels. Divorce may seem an easy option, but it doesn’t teach you anything expect “running away worked” and you run the same risk, until you learn to be careful to keep a caring eye on the relationship.
9. Greener pastures: There is a certain ease and novelty in new relationships, that seems far more attainable than sustaining a relationship. The tempting “start with a clean slate” attitude fails to take into consideration, that every relationship will progress to deeper and more difficult levels. One can constantly keep making fresh beginnings that pose less risk, but these willl also bring less stability, until they can be enriched to a certain level. Most relationships I see failing are more out of personal shortcomings than incompatibility, and these problems will haunt the person until he or she learns to deal with them.
10. The evil of compromise: Compromise is an essential aspect of life. It is easy to compromise on smaller things than take hold of ourselves firmly and make the compromises that matter. A compromise that works as a temporary patch to a lasting problem is very tempting to make, but hardly helps in the long run, while a compromise that fixes an issue well is difficult to identify and commit to, because if often brings a sense of “losing” an argument. Quick fix compromises need regular patch ups, while the more difficult ones last longer, but are difficult to make in the first place. It takes a lot of courage to resolve a difficult situation through compromise.

Enough said, I think.

We have one life to do it all in. So many dreams to live. I believe that it is important that I give it my best. It doesn’t make sense to waste time on things I don’t care about, or to take things I care about too casually.

Dilip had once asked participants on a management training programme, “How would you be, if this was your last minute on earth?” To all those who said they’d be the best they could be to leave their imprint behind, his only question was, “How do you know it isn’t?” We don’t know the future and what it brings. What we have in hand, is what we can be sure of. Why not do it to the best of our abilities, while we have the chance?

Live life on full power. Half hearted unfocused attempts are not something we’d like to be known for, no matter how earnestly we claim that we will eventually get back and do it well. The time for that is right here, right now. The time we save in coming back to repeat what we did would be better spent in fulfilling one more dream.

I’m not normally into lists of any kind. But occassionally, I find something that fits in just right on my beliefs and sense of humour. This email list from a friend has a couple of lines I like. italics mine

1. Winning isn’t everything. But wanting to win is. bingo
2. You would achieve more, if you don’t mind who gets the credit. or paid?
3. When everything else is lost, the future still remains. as long as its not life that was lost
4. Don’t fight too much. Or the enemy would know your art of war. I’d prefer to say “Fight as much as you like. Makes my chances better ;-)”
5. The only job you start at the top is when you dig a grave. well… whatever. List filling material - me thinks
6. If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for everything. probably
7. If you do little things well, you’ll do big ones better. sometimes
8. Only thing that comes to you without effort is old age. and body fat
9. You won’t get a second chance to make the first impression. hmm. ok
10. Only those who do nothing do not make mistakes. Yes, absolutely. nothing is nothing.
11. Never take a problem to your boss unless you have a solution. sounds like someone’s” voice of experience” out here
12. If you are not failing you’re not taking enough risks. not really pushing limits would be more like it
13. Don’t try to get rid of bad temper by losing it. well said
14. If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you. my favourite
15. Those who don’t make mistakes usually don’t make anything list expanding material
16. There are two kinds of failures. Those who think and never do, and those who do and never think. too much
17. Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win. we’re entering “God zone”
18. All progress has resulted from unpopular decisions. running out of creativity
19. Change your thoughts and you change your world. frail attempt at recovery
20. Understanding proves intelligence, not the speed of the learning. and pray tell me how this matters?
21. There are two kinds of fools in this world. Those who give advice and those who don’t take it. and a third - one who doesn’t fall into temptation of expanding lists
22. The best way to kill an idea is to take it to a meeting its a corporate classic
23. Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right things. more theory
24. Friendship founded on business is always better than business founded on friendship. makes sense

ok. Looks like this is another of those lists I wonder if I should post this at all. I’ll keep it for now, for the sake of #1, 13, 14, 22, but there is no accounting for me changing my mind.