Autotelic – Have you read about it before?

This is a new word I read about recently. It came about in the book The Art of Impossible by Steven Kotler. Today was the third time I read this word. The first two times also I read it in this book itself, but didn’t quite get it.

For those of you who read my blogs regularly, first of all thanks for doing so, you would have noticed that I like to see the nuances between words, the way they are used by different authors.

This word was however unique. Its kind of tongue twisting, but its a little scientific in nature so can be excused.

So coming back to the book where I read this word. This word has been used in context to getting into a “flow” state where the activity is its own reward. As Steven says – “the thing we are doing is so pleasurable and meaningful, that we will go to great lengths to do it……”

I have written earlier how just before I start to write I have a big lock on what I will write today. And then I put my hands to the keyboard on my tablet or computer and then just start typing. Soon I get into the flow and create something. Sometimes there are portions of topics, which may have been written by me earlier also but generally most of the content written everyday is fresh.

The key is that 1) when I start writing – I kind of forget about what’s happening outside, 2) after finishing my post I feel a deep sense of achievement. Now I am not an author – at least not yet. But writing helps me recover from the stresses of the day and feel rejuvenated.

So this word kind of resonated with me. I went and searched out for it on the internet. As per the “meriam-webster” “autotelic,” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/autotelic. Accessed 7/31/2021. dictionary it is an adjective – meaning having a purpose in and not apart form itself. with its first known use in 1900. Which means its not a very old word even though it has its oringins in the Greek language.

As per Steven, Autotelic is one of the six core psychological characteristics and if all six show up, we call the experience “flow”. In the flow state time just passes, without you thinking about it. While I don’t always reach flow state as the author talks about while writing, it does help me concentrate to what I am doing at the moment without thinking about the past or future , without getting judgemental about what I am writing, and helps me put thoughts in a matter of minutes.

Let me know in which situations you get into a flow state.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Human Evolution

Brain size, Evolution, Human Brain

If you want to see the evolution of humans, one of the best places to observe that is in Madhya Pradesh. Madhya Pradesh is a state in Central India. It is a less publicised state with a lot of unique places to visit. One of relatives was in Madhya Pradesh Tourism and he asked me to invest time to visit places since he knew my interest in seeing nature and historical places.

So I visited Madhya Pradesh 3 times and he used to make my itinerary such that I got a good view of both nature and history. The best time I found to visit the state was from October to March, but if you intend to visit the state its best to visit the website of Madhya Pradesh Tourism.

Now in Madhya Pradesh, near the capital Bhopal, there is a set of caves call the Bhim Betka caves. The uniqueness of these caves is that you can see carvings/paintings made by humans who lived 100000 years ago …yes that’s not a typo, some of these caves were inhabited then. And then there are caves which were also inhabited 10000 years ago. Its a large area, I think its a UNESCO site one of the few where you can see the actual evolution of human beings who lived in India.

If you see the carvings/paintings of the different time maps you can actually make out how the humans evolved in this part of the world. In the carvings which are about 10000 years old, you can see in the carvings that they are using tools. Which means they had learnt by then how to use tools. You also get to see horses and other animals meaning, they had domesticated these animals by then.

The other thing to note is that even a hundred thousand years ago, the humans who lived in those caves had a thought process of trying to depict something on rock even if it was just line figures.

In hundred thousand years, humans have changed so much. The evolution of the species is so amazing.

Which brings me to why have zebras or tigers or sharks or lizards not evolved so much. They still hunt for food and their daily routine is still based on instinct flight or fight responses. This is something which I tried to see even in the Smithsonian museums and other museums around the world.

Two things which I have been able to figure out and my search is still on, is that the motor functions in the fingers of the hand and the space that our brain has to expand in our head has been the two main causes of the rapid evolution of the human race. The space for the brain in animals is virtually non-existent.

Now as per Steven Kotler, the space that exists for our brain to expand has given us humans the ability to keep learning and keep growing further. Now the pertinent question that I keep having is, why did the apes and monkeys not have the space when supposedly we have evolved from the same common platform. I will keep you posted as I learn more because knowing where we came from can help us to know how to go forward.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Gratitude – Part 2

Fear, Financial Independence, Gratitude, Happiness, Human Brain, peak Performance

if you do a split of my posts, they can get equally split between Marketing, Financial independence, Human Mind & Performance, Charity / Karma / Gratitude.

I have mentioned multiple times that when I am feeling low, I decide to go and do charity. It gives me a high of a different kind. This is something which I seriously started doing when I heard Joe Polish on his podcast ilovemarketing.com. He had other ideas also about things which you can do when you are feeling low and don’t even have the money to do charity.

While continuing reading the book The Art of Impossible by Steven Kotler, I realised that the human performance is very strongly linked to the human mind – nothing new here, but what was surprise was the scientific reason behind why gratitude or doing good for others helps improve performance.

As per the research which Steven talks about – gratitude trains the brain on looking at the positive things, for which you are thankful. The brain is otherwise seasoned to look for things which can ham us, so that it can protect us. When you are in the state of gratitude , the negative things which can harm us, get filtered out by the brain automatically. When the negative things are filtered out, there is reduced fear. Once that happens you automatically get into a good mood and you feel happy.

When we are in a good mood, we feel safe and secure. When we feel safe and secure, our mind is willing to wander and think. Due to this your creativity also gets enhanced. To get into the more technical details of how the neurobiology and neurochemistry work I would highly recommend reading his book.

Coming back to where I started this post, while I was splitting the Human Mind & Performance , from Charity / Gratitude / Karma, it seems from the research that Steven has done that actually these help improve the performance of the human mind.

So actually my blog posts then, have a skew towards the human mind and performance compared to other areas of marketing and finance. This is interesting.

While I have always had an inclination to continuously find ways to improve myself, I had never actually taken the rigorous analysis that Steven has done on improving myself.

Tell me what do you enjoy more – my posts on marketing, financial independence or human performance.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Our human brain

Breathing, Health, Human Brain, messaging

As I have written in my post a couple of days back, these days I am reading the book The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer by Steven Cutler. Steven does a lot of research for the books he writes. Some of his earlier books which I have liked a lot, jointly written with Dr. Peter Diamandis, include Abundance, Bold.

While the television and newspapers throw so much negative news all around us, if you read these books, you realise that the world is a much better place to live in today than what it was say 300 years back. And a major reason for that according to the authors is the fact that technology is playing such a major role in making this place a better place to live in.

As I mentioned earlier, Steven does a lot of research for his books. If you have been reading my blogs, you will also notice that I am always trying to find ways to improve the performance of my brain and my body. Whether its reading faster or breathing techniques which help build stamina, I am always looking for queer facts about this complex machine called the human body.

One thing which caught my eye today was the fact that our brain can only process about 126 bits of incoming information per second. The key word is incoming i.e from various senses to the brain, which interrupt the processing function of the brain. These bits need not be equivalent to binary bits (0,1) that technology folks look at since the brain works in a more abstract fashion.

This does not include the processing capability which the brain has, which is enormous. And that’s why people talk about being focused so that you are interrupting your brain with less inputs and doing more processing.

I don’t know about you, I have always considered myself to be easily distracted and I am not able to comprehend things, if they come too fast at me. For example trying to find my gate number for the flight from 5 screens of arrival and departure information.

Or if someone gives me too many food options from which to choose very fast.

I have to deliberately slow down the intake of information. In meetings to avoid such situations when too many people are speaking, I have to ask people to just be quiet and answer only the questions which I ask.

Today I realised this is not a problem only with me. Its a problem for al human beings. If our brain can only process so much information at a time, then for us to be able to influence someone we need to be able to give information in such a way that is simple to process and can get analysed. That’s where I guess charts look are understood compared to reports.

For a practitioner of marketing it means that are messages should be small simple sentences with more pictures, images.

Can you think of what other implications can this have for us in marketing. Pls write in your comments below.

Till next time then

Carpe Diem!!!