Can Your Dreams Shape Your Future?

Yes, they could. 
Especially if you consciously daydream

Dreams are the images, thoughts and feelings experienced while we sleep.

While psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung saw dreams as an interaction between the unconscious and the conscious, noted psychic Edgar Cayce believed that we dream in advance of anything of importance that will happen to us. He saw dreams as tools for transformation.

Dream researchers say dreams can offer inspiration, contribute to our creativity, offer direction at crossroads in our lives and even afford us glimpses of the divine.

Unfortunately, a daydream - which is a fantasy, usually of pleasant thoughts and hopes, experienced while awake - is looked upon negatively because it represents ‘non-doing’ in a society that emphasizes productivity. We are under constant pressure to do, achieve, produce, succeed. But daydreaming can be beneficial in many ways and, ironically, can actually boost productivity. Plus, it’s something almost everyone does naturally.

From the first time we play make-believe, we begin dreaming about our futures. Ask preschoolers what they want to be when they grow up, and you’ll hear answers ranging from policemen to firefighters to astronauts – and every one of those dreams is achievable!

We all have a wish, a star, or an idea that we hope for in the future. To dream is to live a vision, to embrace magic, to see the future and its possibilities.

There are numerous examples of composers, novelists, and filmmakers, developing new ideas through daydreaming. Similarly, research scientists, mathematicians, and physicists have also developed new ideas by daydreaming about their subject areas.

Your personal dreamlist sows the seeds for your future. Everything we want begins with us thinking of it first. When we dare to dream, we dare to find ourself.

Dreaming is a path and if you follow it with perseverance you will be greatly rewarded. Keeping a written dream journal is a must. What are your dreams? What would you like to achieve? How would you like to love? What would you like to learn?

As soon as we connect our dreams to specific goals, we have greater focus, a better job, more money, a new car, quality family time, a new outlook on life, or anything else we can imagine. We build an energy bridge between our desired goal and ourself.

Olympic athletes and performers use this kind of visualization, which has been shown to help their performance in the way that actual physical practice does.

Practice conscious daydreaming. Let your mind wander, and instead of thinking about things you have to do, simply imagine things, places, people. You will in a much better mood with a clearer mind.

When you consciously dream about scenarios in which you’re trying to convince someone of something you believe in strongly, you are also in a sense getting to know yourself and what you stand for better.   At their best, daydreams allow you a range of possibilities which, in the hard cold light of reality, aren’t possible. The beauty of dreams is that nothing is impossible.

I invite you to consciously daydream (without any limitations) and share your top five dreams through this column. I promise that no names will be divulged if we analyse these dreams.

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Thought for the Week

“The future belongs to those who believe
in the beauty of their dreams.”

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)
First Lady of USA (1933 to 1945)

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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times

Right V/s Popular

Making the right decision is not always the most popular option

Last week’s “Quick, decide!” was an eye-opener in more than one ways. The flood of so many interesting well-thought-out responses was overwhelming; so much so, that we had to refer them to a clinical psychologists to get a macro-view of them respondents. 

(See “Accept the guilt’ below)

Most people chose to divert the course of the train, and sacrifice only one child.  I thought the same way initially, because to save most of the children at the expense of only one child was a rational decision most people would make, morally & emotionally.

But, have you ever considered that the child on the disused track had, in fact, made the right decision to play at a safe place? Nevertheless, he had to be sacrificed because of his ignorant friends who chose to play where the danger was.

This kind of dilemma happens around us everyday. In the office, community, in politics and especially in a democratic society, the minority has often been sacrificed for the interest of the majority, no matter how foolish or ignorant the majority are, and how far sighted and knowledgeable the minority.

The great critic Leo Velski Julian, who originally posed this question, said he would not try to change the course of the train because he believed that the children on the operational track should have known very well that the track was still in use, and should have run away if they heard the train’s sirens. (An ideal alternative suggested was to grab the attention of these playing children while manning the track-changer)

Julian  pointed out that the other track was not in use probably because it was unsafe. If the train was diverted to this track, it could put the lives of all passengers on board at stake. And the attempt to save a few children by sacrificing one child, could end up sacrificing hundreds of people to save these few kids.

Next week we move further into the realm of decision-making.

The two ethical dilemmas posed in Open Mind last week...

DILEMMA 1
A group of children is playing near two railway tracks, one still in use, the other disused. Only one child is playing on the disused track, the rest on the used one.

Suddenly you see a train coming, and you are just beside the track interchange. You can make the train change its course to the disused track and save most of the kids. However, that would mean the one child playing by the disused track may die. Are you ready for that... or would you rather let the train go its way?

DILEMMA 2
This one was posed by Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987) a well-known theorist in the field of moral development.

Scenario 1
A woman is suffering from a unique kind of cancer. There is a drug that might save her but it costs $4,000 per dose. The sick woman’s husband, Heinz, goes to everyone he knows to borrow the money and tries every legal means to do so, but he can collect about $2,000. He asks the scientist who discovered the drug for a discount or let him pay later. But the scientist refuses.

Dilemma: Should Heinz break into the laboratory to steal the drug for his wife? Why or why not?

Scenario 2
Heinz breaks into the laboratory and steals the drug. The next day, the newspapers report the break-in and theft. Brown, a police officer and a friend of Heinz remembers seeing Heinz the earlier evening near the laboratory and later that night, running away from the laboratory.
Dilemma: Should Brown report what he saw? Why or why not?

Scenario 3
Officer Brown reports what he saw. Heinz is arrested and brought to court. If convicted, he faces up to two years in jail. Heinz is found guilty.

Dilemma:  Should the judge sentence Heinz to prison? Why or why not?
What kind decisions would you take in Dilemmas 1 and 2?

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Thought for the Week

“There is no dilemma compared with that of the deep-sea diver 
who hears the message from the ship above,
“Come up at once. We are sinking.”
Robert Cooper
(British Diplomat)
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Accept the guilt

(GUEST ARTICLE)

Clinical psychologist Sadia Raval 
analyses readers’ responses to the two dilemmas posed in last week’s Open Mind

A favourite line that I often say to my patients is, “A decision can never be wrong”. Any decision made by an individual in a given situation is a product of their intelligence, personality, past experience with a similar situation, their moral environment, socio-cultural influences and various other factors, at that point. Within their capacities then, they make the best decision available to him. It is only in hindsight that decisions appear wrong and inadequate, when initially unrevealed factors or undesired consequences come to the fore.

So none of your responses can be called ‘wrong’.

Hence, the attempt here is not to analyse the personalities of those who responded but to analyse the responses themselves and the important and broader factors leading to them.

One of the main factors, when making decisions, is identification. Broadly speaking, identification can be explained as ‘that aspect of the decision-making situation that an individual feels mostly deeply connected or concerned with’. This aspect, with which the individual identifies, will then shape his or her decision.

For instance, in Dilemma 1, responses like: ‘It is worse to have many children killed than to have one killed’, ‘the needs of many outweigh the needs of few’ clearly indicate that the aspect that concerns the person most is the loss of a larger number of children and more families suffering.

Responses like: ‘I would not like to punish the single kid for doing the right thing by playing on the unused track,’ involve identification with the single child who did no wrong. The situation is seen from his perspective.

Dilemma 2 saw three basic kinds of responses. In the first, the identification was with Heinz throughout the three scenarios. The story was seen from Heinz perspective and with feeling and concern for him. The responses were: he should steal; the police officer should not report the crime and the judge should not pass a strict sentence.

In the second kind, the identification was with the law — that it could not be manipulated for individual needs. Obviously the decisions were: Heinz shouldn’t steal, the officer should report him and the judge should pass the required sentence.

The third set was perhaps the most interesting; in each scenario they identified with the person then in control. In Scenario 1, the situation was viewed from Heinz’s perspective, in the second from the officer’s and the third, from the judge’s. So the most common response was: Heinz should steal since he had little option left; the officer should report him as he was duty bound to; and the judge should forgive Heinz or give him a minimum sentence on humanitarian grounds.

One important factor is the ‘locus of control’, which can be understood in terms of a continuum. At one end is an internal locus of control, where individuals believe they have the control to effect a change and are driven to action. At the other end is an external locus of control, where they believe they have little control over a situation and are, as a result, driven to less action. Most people do not have a completely external or internal locus of control but may tend towards one side or another.

In Dilemma 1, those choosing the option of changing of track are, generally speaking, displaying an internal locus of control — they believe their actions will make a difference and are disposed to act.
Those unwilling to change the track may be disposed to taking control in other situations but in this particular one, are functioning from an external locus of control. They would like to let fate take its course, or hope that the children on the used track will run off and be saved anyway.

So too, in Dilemma 2 those who believe Heinz should wait for destiny to unfold or supernatural powers to heal are functioning from an external locus of control. Here, other factors in the environment are seen as more capable of controlling the situation than oneself.

Upbringing and culture-specific factors play a role here and a strong belief in fate, destiny, or a supernatural power can clearly affect an individual’s locus of control.

Guilt, another important factor, is associated with the undesirable consequences of a decision; it is that uneasy feeling that makes one feel responsible for what has gone wrong and leads to regret — which as Kahlil Gibran says, is “the beclouding of the mind and not its chastisement”. Guilt is not an easy feeling to wriggle out of and what we often do to alleviate it is rationalise our decisions so strongly that there isn’t space for guilt to creep in.

For instance, in Dilemma 1 those who felt the single child on the unused track should not be punished alleviated the guilt of being responsible for the deaths of many children by putting the situation into a right vs wrong moral frame and supporting the right. In Dilemma 2 those who felt Heinz should steal, came up with reasons like, ‘He had no other option’ or that saving a life was superior to the law. This kind of rationalisation is often overused to justify a decision one has made and important aspects of the actual picture are overlooked, because they do not fit into this guilt-free decision.

A take-home here is that when taking decisions, if you deliberately attempt to identify with other aspects of the situation that concern you less, a clearer picture will emerge.

Ultimately, it is more important to make informed, clearer decisions, accepting the guilt that they bring along as inevitable, rather than making less informed, guilt-free ones.

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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times

Quick, Decide!

Why do you take the decisions you normally do?

Reasoning and decision making are two of the most important activities in which humans engage. But we don’t always do so in the best manner. When we don’t, the consequences can range from minor inconvenience to catastrophic loss.

How to be better decision-makers, resolve dilemmas and use logic in our day-to-day life will be the focus of the next few columns. This week’s column is designed to provoke you, make you think and respond with your solutions to dilemmas that I will present.

The word ‘dilemma’ (from the Greek “double proposition”) denotes a problem that offers at least two solutions or possibilities, both or all of which are equally unfavorable.

Dilemmas create conflict in practically all aspects of our personal lives - moral, ethical, professional, social, etc.

What is painful about a dilemma is that one has to make a choice one does not want to make.
For many years now, in my workshops, I have been sharing, what I call, Duryodhan’s Duvidha (Dilemma) from the Mahabharata:

Jaanami dharmam na chamee pravritii
Jaanami adharmam na chamee nivritii

I know what is right, But I have no attraction for it.
I know what is wrong, But I cannot give it up.

The Greek dramatist Euripides portrayed Medea’s state of mind before she kills her own children thus: “I know what evil I am about to do. My irrational self is stronger than my resolution.”

While St. Paul is perplexed with the thought “I cannot understand my own behaviour. I fail to carry out the things I want to do & I find myself doing the very things I hate.”

Do their words strike a chord? On a very simple level,  we know regular exercise is good for us but... we know smoking is bad for our health yet... Ofcourse there are far more complicated dilemmas that we have to deal with, especially when personal relationships or ethical issues are involved.  To help you think about how you can resolve them, let’s look at some classical dilemmas.
 
DILEMMA 1
A group of children is playing near two railway tracks, one still in use, the other disused. Only one child is playing on the disused track, the rest on the used one.

Suddenly you see a train coming, and you are just beside the track interchange. You can make the train change its course to the disused track and save most of the kids. However, that would mean the one child playing by the disused track may die. Are you ready for that... or would you rather let the train go its way?

DILEMMA 2
This one was posed by Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987) a well-known theorist in the field of moral development.
 
Scenario 1
A woman is suffering from a unique kind of cancer. There is a drug that might save her but it costs $4,000 per dose. The sick woman’s husband, Heinz, goes to everyone he knows to borrow the money and tries every legal means to do so, but he can collect about $2,000. He asks the scientist who discovered the drug for a discount or let him pay later. But the scientist refuses.

Dilemma: Should Heinz break into the laboratory to steal the drug for his wife? Why or why not?

Scenario 2
Heinz breaks into the laboratory and steals the drug. The next day, the newspapers report the break-in and theft. Brown, a police officer and a friend of Heinz remembers seeing Heinz the earlier evening near the laboratory and later that night, running away from the laboratory.

Dilemma: Should Brown report what he saw? Why or why not?

Scenario 3
Officer Brown reports what he saw. Heinz is arrested and brought to court. If convicted, he faces up to two years in jail. Heinz is found guilty.

Dilemma:  Should the judge sentence Heinz to prison? Why or why not?
What kind decisions would you take in Dilemmas 1 and 2?

Email me your specific responses at graymatter@hindustantimes.com. Your answers could reveal a lot to you about yourself. I will explain next week.

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Thought for the Week

“Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time;  
what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.”
Sydney J. Harris
(American Journalist and Author 1917-1986)
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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times

Is Teaching All About The Teacher?

The student has to open the windows

In Open Mind I have covered subjects like thoughts, awareness, meditation, perspectives, paradigms, memory and reading skills. The attempt has been to guide my readers into ‘thinking’. However does it really translate into learning at your end?

Who is more important? A good teacher or a good student? Ideally a combination of both! Besides, no teacher can meet every expectation of every student. And no teacher can be perfect.Though it may be important to know whether he or she is authorized to teach, credentials are not necessarily a measure of wisdom. Nor is charisma necessarily another parameter.

In this context, it is worth recounting the story of Eklavya in Mahabharata.The son of Hiranyadhanus (king of Nishadas), Eklavya wanted to become a famous warrior and in order to fulfill this ambition he approached the most qualified teacher of his time, Dronacharya. When Drona had become the teacher of the princes of the Kuru dynasty, his fame spread far and wide with that of his pupils. Kings from all over the country sent their young princes to get training from the famous Drona and Drona would graciously accept them as his students.

However Drona refused to accept Eklavya as a student explaining that he only accepted Kshatriya princes as his students. A much disappointed Eklavya returned but undaunted, he made an idol of Drona and began to practice very rigorously. He would also observe Drona instructing his disciples and would later practice the same moves. So fixed was he in his practice that soon he became extremely skillful.

When challenged in archery, Eklavya defeated every one including Arjuna, the Pandava prince who was an expert archer and Drona’s favourite student.

As the story goes, Drona then demanded his guru-dakshina or the traditional payment given by the student to his teacher as a token of gratitude. What he wanted the right thumb of Eklavya. Knowing Well that without his right thumb his prowess as an archer would be greatly diminished, Eklavya without hesitation sliced off his right thumb and presented it to Drona.

Drona returned to Hasthinapura content that he had disabled an opponent of Arjuna leaving behind Eklavya the most faithful disciple of all times.

What are our lessons to be learned from this? Superficially it seems that Drona, in order to preserve the supremacy of his favorite disciple Arjuna acted in selfish interest. However that is only the partial truth. The beauty of Mahabharata is that its characters are not entirely black or white, but very much like its readers, they have shades of gray.

A bona-fide teacher instructs a pupil according to the capability of the pupil to handle the knowledge. Drona did not consider Eklavya, a Nishada, qualified to handle the immense power he was imparting to his other students, and therefore he had refused to instruct him. He punished Eklavya because he considered Drona as his teacher without having been given permission to do so.

Eklavya is worthy of admiration because he persisted against the odds to become an exceptional archer via his own hard work, dedication and devotion to Drona - his “virtual teacher”. Unfortunately, Drona forsake him as a potential disciple, to protect the rights of his own favorite disciple Arjuna. Drona was great, as a teacher and a warrior, but Eklavya had undeterred determination and qualities that any teacher ought to be proud of.

I respect any student who is courageous enough to accept the fact that “I don’t know, so I am ready to learn. Then from wherever the light comes, I am open to it. I will not close my windows and doors. I will allow the wind and the sun and the rain to come in. I am ready to go on this voyage of the unknown, uncharted territory.” 

This is what Open Mind seeks to impart and imbibe.

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Thought for the Week

“A teacher is one who makes himself
progressively unnecessary”
Thomas Carruthers
(Scottish sprinting champion 1840-1924)
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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times

Hum A Tune To Avoid ‘Internal Speech’

Ankur Gupta answers readers’ queries on speed reading

Pradnya Jadhav (planning to appear for CAT 08) writes : “I noticed that my Reading Speed varies by quite a margin with different contexts. Is it acceptable?”

When you drive from Mumbai to Pune, there is a huge variation in your driving speed. While you cope with the snarling traffic within Mumbai you literally move at a snail’s pace. But on the Expressway you zoom ahead.  In some places you simply cannot drive fast because of the road conditions. This analogy is relevant to your reading speed. The answer to you question is that there is nothing to be concerned about.othing to be concerned about!

A nervous Nikhil Sasikumar is concerned about the huge pharmacy syllabus he has to study. He asks for tips to read fast and also understand things so that he can fare well in exams.

Speed reading certainly allows better comprehension since it becomes more focused. However, it is not a panacea for all study issues. Neither is it a substitute for regular studying. So please speed read your way through the entire year rather than at the last moment.

A.P. Rao, a better-than-average reader, glances over each line from left to right but is unable to read vertically down from top to bottom of the page. He asks : If I am not able to do this for a newspaper column, how do I go about doing this for say, a normal paperback?

Newspapers have a defined thin column width to help you actually speed read - line by line, instead of individual words. Practice with newspapers, masking out the adjoining columns with blank paper, if they disturb you during your practice. Then graduate to magazines with wider columns and then to paperbacks.

Chandru Badrinarayanan, a compulsive reader confesses that he started ‘speed reading’ to attain a speed of 644 wpm but his normal speed is around 300- 350 wpm. Despite reading for 4-5 hours per day, he still finds that time is short for all that he wants to read.

The trick Chandru for you would be to be selective in your reading and be crystal clear on the purpose of your reading.

Sidney D’Souza wants to know how to train his 5 year old to develop speed-reading.

The first step would be to familiarize your progeny with the sight words and encourage reading jointly as a read-along exercise. Parcel off a separate time when you read and the child listens and vice versa.
A worried Yasmin Inamdar gets affected adversely in studies because of forgetfulness, which has not happened earlier and wants to know what to do.

Such instances occur often in our lives. With sustained efforts (not worry) these can be conquered. Use creative visualisation and affirmations to help support you for the future, while you continue your efforts without getting pulled down by present forgetfulness.
 
Sachin Chaturvedi wants to know about a diet plan which can help creative and faster thinking as he is in the advertising industry, and always on the look out for newer and fresher ideas.

The principle of any diet plan to keep you alert would be to provide your brain with better nutrition including oxygenation. So deep breathing would rank first followed by brain foods like sprouts, a few walnuts, antioxidants like flaxseed, tonics like brahmi.

Prem Gulani seeks an explanation on how it is possible to read without “internal speech”.

A very useful technique you could try out is to simply hum (not sing) any familiar tune while you strive to read through the text.

Neha R. would like to know if speed reading will help when it comes to studying or where you have to remember things.

Rapid reading techniques allow you to read more in less time as well as enhance your comprehension.

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Thought for the Week

“If there’s a book you really want to read,
but it hasn’t been written yet,
then you must write it”
Toni Morrison
(Nobel Prize-winning American Author, Editor, and Professor)
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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times