I'm Evolving my Beliefs about Work and Fun - Are You?

I am a forever student - and the Universe keeps arranging customized learning curriculums and spectacular classroom settings for me.

I recently had the privilege of conducting a workshop for Epiroc at their national sales conference.?

Of course, it was my work, and yet it was a learning opportunity for me as well. In this post, I want to highlight a particular deep-rooted belief I had previously held which I had an opportunity to question and evolve during this engagement.?

“After all, the purpose of learning isn’t to affirm our beliefs; it’s to evolve our beliefs.”

― Adam Grant, Think Again

?

Previous Belief : I cannot have playful fun with the same people who are my clients or students.

Learning Experience: This conference was being held at a beautiful beach location at Mahabalipuram. Now I absolutely love the ocean and nothing can keep me away from playing in the water. However, on this occasion, I had pre-decided that I needed to maintain my ‘dignity’ and ‘distance’ as a professor in order to make sure I would command enough respect from the participants when I taught them.

So on the evening before the conference, I walked a fair distance away from the rest of the group and entered the water all by myself where I could not be noticed.?

On the morning of the conference I went to the beach again and I was sitting on the sand doing pranayama with my eyes closed. As I got closer to finishing my practice I heard joyful squeals of laughter mixed with the beautiful sound of the waves crashing on the beach. I opened my eyes to see a most delightful scene of about 25 or more people forming a beautiful human chain as they were jumping the ocean waves and supporting one another.?

It was a scene that took me straight back to my college days at IIT Madras, when after playing Holi, large groups of us would head straight to adayar beach and form long human chains to jump the waves.??

This was a moment of choice for me. I could either sit there and remain behaving the way I thought a dignified professor should behave OR I could go and join the people in the water who were having so much fun.

It was really difficult for me to resist the fun filled invitation that the scene presented. I closed my eyes and and wondered what my core self would do. I reconnected with my core values of joy and playfulness which the scene outside was reflecting back to me. I drew courage from there and decided to just authentically be myself for this morning. Who knew when I would come back to a beach again?

I left my ‘dignified professor' definition on the beach and waded right in to join the group.??

And what a fun, memorable, and inner-life-changing experience that morning turned out to be!

What made it even more special for me was that the first person to hold my hand and invite me to join the group in the water was Mandy Che herself - the MD of the group.??

Mandy probably sensed my hesitation as I waded in towards the group and she came to greet me and made sure that I joined the chain and stayed safe in the ocean.??

In fact, just observing the way Mandy interacted with her team throughout the conference was an ongoing leadership lesson for me by itself. She effortlessly broke several stereotypes related to leadership (age, gender etc) and presented an excellent example of how an intelligent, competent and empathetic woman can successfully lead a team - even one where the majority belonged to a different cultural and national background.?

We were all playful squealing buddies in the ocean between 7 and 8 am, and at 9 am I was now facing the same group in a different role as a professor.?

Here is what that day taught me - Not only did I sense absolutely no lack of respect as a professor, I actually felt that with the ice broken previous to our class engagement I could connect even better with the participants.

While teaching, I realized that I actually entered the flow state even sooner than I typically do during most programs.

In fact, I even brought in an analogy and reference to the ocean and waves to explain a certain point and when I did that I could feel the powerful connect in the shared experience that we had all just been through.

Keep learning Ramya.

Keep exploring how your own beliefs related to roles, stereotypes, and professional identities might be limiting the beautiful and expansive ways in which you can enjoy and savour your work and life experiences.

Who else is willing to expand the possibilities that work and life have to offer to us? Those possibilities that probably lie just beyond where our brain is currently allowing us to see.

I would definitely like to live in a world where Work and Fun are not on separate continents.

Would you?

Who is one person you know who seamlessly integrates fun and work? Please tag them so I can get to know them and their stories and eventually have more such people in my circle.

That is yet another way to break our mental stereotypes. Give our brain lots of examples of people who fall outside of it :-).