Listen Without Prejuidice

Prejuidice

“Preconcieved Notion that is not based on reason and actual experience”

When i was growing up, i was the die hard fan of English Musician and Pop Artist, George Michael and his second solo studio album “Listen without Prejuidice”

In the exhuberence of the youth , i never reflected on the meaning of that great Album but with age i was gradually overwhelmed by the sheer depth of these three words “Listen without Prejuidice” and their importance in today’s life of ours, Most of the world’s problem have been in existence due to our inability to listen properly while many corporate and Life Coaches around the world have spent fortunes to inculcate the “Importance of Listening skills”, however being prejuidiced in our lives is a great barrier in our self growth and we often find ourselves at the short end of the stick in life because we were prejuidiced to someone, some society, some community, some geography , some country, some rock song , some tribe, some political party, some political leader , some friend , some family member, to one of our kids, our parents and on and on...

Its a great commandment to modern civilization to “Listen without Prejuidice” , there could be many lookalikes like “Hear without prejuidice” or “See without Prejuidice”.

The ironical part is that we were not born with Prejuidice, we acquire it gradually as we grown from toddler to child to a teenager to an adult and we keep on adding layers after layers in our collective accumulation of “Prejuidice List” and what it does to us ?

During a recent trip to Bombay, I was forced to overhear a Corporate CXO looking Gentleman , dressed in all “Power Black” tuxedo , travelling to the Aircraft from the Terminal building in a Ferry Bus, he was visibily looking disturbed and very angry, his voice was quite loud, i guess the entire bus would have heard his ordeal, he was speaking to his colleague and was rampant about a particular region and its people for their lethargic work ethics, his diatribe was continuing till he got down from the bus and went inside the Aircraft, I heard him saying that he would never ever hire anybody in his team from that region and will also spread a word in his network to keep them at bay.

While i was finally settled down at my seat and reflected what just transpired, i was thinking that if a person at such senior level of management can possess such fierce prejuidice then every single dollar spent on Training and Motivational speaking in his organization had gone for a toss, if he cannot eliminate the prejuidice from his thought process then how come , it would be taken out from the collective thought process of that particular company.Prejuidice stays and grew with every passing second once it gets its ground.

Well thats what happens in our life exactly, history is filled with such grotesque examples of what men had done to other men by being prejuidiced , how some mighty civilisations at the peak of economic prosperity and being harbinger of knowledge had collapsed as they failed to stop the Prejuidice between various classes of society and the hegemony they had created.

In the legendary English Novel by Harper Lee’s “To Kill a MockingBird” Movie’s adaptation, The following screenplay dialogue by Gregory Peck, playing the role of the Lawyer Atticus is worth a billion dollar after so many decades :

“ You never really understand a person Untill you consider things from his point of view-Untill you climb in to his skin and walks around it”

The Classic example of Pre conceived Notion that we witness daily on the so called News Channel debates where there are 10-12 participants stuffed in to a single screen of our Television sets by splitting the screens, shouting at each other to prove their point or two without even a slightest inclincation to listen to the other’s point of view or theory and are hell bent to call names to the other participants , Yet still they call it “Debate” where the majority of the emphasis is to silence the voice of others and put your own perspective as the final truth with a Pre conceived Notion that they only have the access to Truth and what they are putting forth should be accepted by everyone , Alas!!

The notion of being Prejuidice prevents you from experiencing the beauty of life, visit far away lands filled with mystery , eat things that are a taboo to you until now, live life in a way that is prohibited in your existing societal belief, make friends with people who are outcasts as you have been told, running away from certain people who have all the qualities to be your best buddies, doing business where you can positively impact the world and people around you, against the established conventional belief of finding security of Job.

“No Son, nobody has done business in our family for seven generations, we are good in Professional services and that too with Goverment, You get paid well and don’t have to work either”, almost everybody have heard this in our Middle class families, slowly and gradually we become so prejuidiced with so many facets of life that we started living in a cramped box, where you can barely fit in.

How brutal is to understand the fact that Life has to offer so much to us and we are so consumed by our pre conceived theories that we do not want to experience anything yet forms a concrete opinion about it , we have been deprived off from many adventures , potential friends and business associates, we have to live with a false notion about our own family members, close friends, peers , colleagues and acquaintances as we chose Prejuidice over Enquiry or Experience, Isn’t it one of the most cruel things to happen to us in this age...

So you must have seen in our lives that how our set notions or Prejuidices can push us away from experiencing the finest treasures and rewards this beautiful life has to offer, What we only need to do is to take first step to verify ourselves, experience ourselves, take our own time, fabricate our own facts and theories and then subsequently take our decisions and not by the sheer fact of Imagining things the way your mind is suggesting as it will never happen, it does’nt happen , in above illustration i have tried to showcase how a common day to day prejuidice can actually turns out to be fascinating and enchanting moments of our life.

The immortal lines written by Jane Austen(Also in caption of this article) in her all time English Classic Fiction “ Pride and Prejuidice” pretty much sums up the pitfalls of Prejuidice in our lives and lays importance to overcome this habit for our growth and elevation in our lives

“There are few people whom i really love, and still fewer of whom i think well, The more i see of the world, the more i am disappointed with it; and everyday confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense- Jane Austen in Pride and Prejuidice.

The appearance ,mainly outer may be quite baffling and remain short of our perceived conclusion about people and the things that we see and witness in our everyday world, once free from Prejuidice , the infinite field of possibilities and achievements opens up for us.We enter in to a realm of positive vibrations where our mind is receptive and not judgemental, We take things as they are and not how we conceived it to be or have learnt to expect in certain ways, This opens the door to a life of abundance, nothing becomes a limit then, and in this limiltless state of being , we can achieve anything as we governed by two very important things here :

a.Our mind is not conditioned to expect any peculiar form of results from our actions, leaving us free from the turbulent baggage of What Will Happen?

b.And whatever action we choose to perform does not go through the habitual process of post-mortem and dissection of historic trends, patterns and forecast etc giving us much needed clarity to pursue it with astounding focus.

Lets see how our minds once reclaimed from the illusive impact of Prejuidice can greatly impact our personal growth and professional achievements:

a. We get a window of opportunity to see the real people, the one they are from inside, without any sense of judgement or impression, we can meet people around us who can contribute significantly to our development and society at large.

b. We have higher probability to find the True stars in our Team at work and can understand how their approach, ideation and thought process can benefit the organization and still can be in sync with the overall objectives of the Team.

c.We are not afraid to walk on the lesser traded paths and explore the treasures on it as we are neither petrified by the past results and neither the weight of expectations comes gruelling over our shoulders.

d.We love unconditionally and as a governing law of universe gets the same in return, We generate a sense of camaraderie with everyone and thus remain content.

e.We expand our reach and consciousness .

f.We don’t get swept away by the deluge of powerful emotions .

g. Our narrative becomes cohesive and widespread.

h.We unshackle the conservative chains of taboos and explore the world with child like inquisitiveness

I can go on and write many more examples of awesome results that are waiting to surprise us once we shun away the Prejuidice but i would request you to take a moment and relate it in your own context by taking a clue from above references.

Everytime we set sailing with the winds of Prejuidice, we block the innumerable possibilities travelling on opposite side, The moment you think that your Culture is finest and undisputably the best from others, you block any learning from some of the most other fascinating cultures , The moment you say that certain language is impossible to learn and boring, you close the get permanently to ever touch the wisdom of the scripts of that particular language, The moment you label a company as slow or lacks dynamism, you missed out on the opportunity to learn various operating process that company have developed that stand tall against the test of turbulent financial weathers.

There is a block and the worse part of the vicious cycle is that you are the one generating the blocks and only you have the power to cut the chains out, but do you have the will to swim beyond the hostile waters of Prejuidice and explore this beautiful world around as it is, exactly in the same manner this life has to offer, Isn’t it too much to ask for a rewarding life.

“A Enviormentalist shifted to a hillside town with her 3 year old young daughter on the advise of her daughter’s doctor , She was loosing weight and needed much needed pollution free atmosphere away from the conundrums of Urban life, The mother hired a cottage up near the small town’s cliff and gradually started settling in.

It was a small pristine hill town with very less people around , mainly from nearby Army Cantonment and the tribals of the place, She noticed third day since she came to the cottage that a frail looking tribal lady came to the wall of their cottage and stared at her daughter who was resting in her chair in the verandah of a colonial bunglow, Initially The mother thought her as an normal tribal onlooker with curiosity for the people from outside world, but soon it became a regular affair , the tribal lady used to come and sit under the pine tree in front of her bunglow , she appeared to be a mentally ill and all she used to stare at her beautiful little daughter.

The patience soon gave up to suspicion and The mother decided to confront her , She walked up to the tribal lady who was now sitting cross legged and up there in her front was a tower of stones that she has piled up, she was moving a drum stick up and down the tower and in between touching one of the stones, the suspicion turned in to rancour now as the Mother thought an imminent danger of some kind of black magic been worked upon on her kid.

She rushed back to the bunglow , called the police and get the lady packed in a jiffy, around evening she got a call from the police station , the officer on the line asked about health of her child and if there is a specific improvement in last 6 days, At first she got a bit flabbergasted but quickly regained her composure and answered back in affirmative, the office hung up saying that he would like to see her in evening.

The officer came in the evening and informed her that they had to let go of the tribal lady , the response was a kind of a shocker to the mother but she wanted to know the reason, The officer said “ Madam, the local tribals here practiced a very ancient form of medicine , they heal people by correcting their energy bodies, just like we have our physical body , as per the tribal beliefs , we have an energy body and they claim to cure any sort of ailments with their energy correction techniques that goes back centuries, these tribals are also kind of nomads and believe in selfless service without any kind of propaganda, the poor tribal lady noticed the falling health of your child as they have strong aura and decided to correct her energy positions by using their techniques, She has told us all this when we questioned her unwanted presence near your house, and when i confirmed with you on phone about the improvement of your child , i just got convinced and let her go.

The mother was awestruck, What she was thinking of a harm to her child proved to be a life saver , Now she wanted to meet the tribal lady and apologise for the troubles she has caused to her but the officer sternly informed her “Madam as i said that they are nomads, they roam around, they do not have a house and speak only when required, i might not be able to find her as they stay over at a place only for a purpose “.

The mother stood their in her verandah , watching the pine tree and feeling the silence around it..

#prejuidice #selfhelp #leadership #hrstrategy #learning #spiritualquotient