Ability to Interpret

R

eading is very important for providing food to our thought. But mere reading is useless without having the ability to interpret correctly. Wrong interpretation of the written content may convey wrong message to the readers which the author did not intend to convey.

2. Different readers interpret the content differently. Different interpretation by different readers may be due to the following reasons.

(i) Lack of concentration while reading is one of the main reasons for wrong interpretation of the written content. Lack of concentration is due to some thoughts coming in the back of the mind while reading. Most of the time thoughts in the back of the mind interfere with the content while reading which leads to different interpretation of the written content. Lack of concentration may be due to various other reasons i.e., doing something else while reading, unnecessary worries, etc.

 (ii) Preconceived thought about the content or its writer is also one of the reasons for wrong interpretation. Preconceived thought closes our mind and makes us to view the content through the lenses of preconceived mindset or ideas. This leads to wrong interpretation even after repeated reading of the content.

(iii) Not reading between the lines may lead to different interpretation of the written content by the reader which the author did not intend. Reading between the lines means reading with understanding of the underlying meaning in proper context.

(iv) Intermittent reading is also one the reason for wrong interpretation of the written content. Intermittent reading means reading part of the content on one day and remaining parts on other days. Intermittent reading cannot establish proper connectivity between the contents read during various time intervals which may lead to incomplete understanding of the subject matter. With incomplete understanding of the subject matter, one cannot make proper interpretation.

(v) Reading without understanding the central idea of the content may lead to wrong interpretation of the subject matter.

3. For interpretating the contents correctly, the following measures are suggested. One need to develop certain habits based on the measures suggested hereunder to increase the ability of correct interpretation of the written content.

(i) For proper interpretation of the written content, one should develop the habit of reading the content with the understanding of writer’s perspective. One should read the content by understanding the underlying meanings of each and every sentence of the content i.e. reading between the lines.

(ii) One should read the content with full concentration for which one should free his or her mind from all other thoughts before reading. Never do any other work while reading as our mind cannot concentrate on two different things at the same time. Never think on any other matter while reading. Many times, phone calls also divert our attention from reading. It’s better to keep our mobile on silent mode while reading unless you expect some emergency or important calls from someone.

(iii) To increase the concentration, one should develop the habit of fast reading. Slow reading diverts the attention of the reader from the content. By slow reading one fail to establish the link between the contents in various lines and paragraphs. One cannot read fast during the first reading. Spead of reading increases during second and subsequent readings.

(iv) Never read any line or paragraph of the whole content in isolation. Many times, reading a line or paragraph in isolation may convey meaning which may be different from that when you read it in the context of the whole content. Therefore, develop the habit of reading the whole content before reading any line or paragraph of the content.

(v) Always read the content in a serial order. Reading the content in a haphazard manner may lead to wrong interpretation of the whole content.

(vi) For proper interpretation of the whole content one has to read the content more than two times. One may not draw any conclusion of the whole content by a single reading as it may not be possible to develop understanding in a single reading. Read at least three to four times to develop the understanding of the whole content which will help in its proper interpretation.

4. Proper interpretation of content convey the appropriate message which the author intends to convey through his writing. Wrong interpretation may convey different message to the reader which frustrate the very purpose of writing the content by the author. Initially one can practice interpretating small content of few pages. If you can build your expertise in interpretating small content, then you can move towards building expertise in interpretating big contents and even books. Reading ‘acknowledgements by the author’ before starting reading a book will help you in understanding the perspective and context in which the author wrote the book. This will help you in proper interpretation of a book.

5. Let us hone our skill of proper interpretation of the written content whether it’s an article, a story or a book. This skill will make our reading meaningful and interesting.  

 

Promises to Self

In one of my articles ‘How to make post-retirement life happy and fruitful?’ I mentioned that the foremost reason for happiness during post-retirement life is not having any boss and all the 24 hours in a day are at our disposal. But the question is how many persons during their post- retirement life are utilizing their time in a fruitful manner to pursue their hobbies and to achieve their goals set during their post-retirement life. You will find that very few persons are utilizing their time in a fruitful manner.

2. The question is why many persons are not able to utilize their time in a fruitful manner? The answer lies in the second paragraph of my article ‘How to make post-retirement life happy and fruitful?’ in which there is a mention about the absence of boss during post-retirement life. Since we have spent 30-35 years of our life in working under the direction of boss, we could not develop the habit of working on our own. You will not be surprised to know that many persons could not set their goals during their post-retirement life. They do not have any objective for the rest of their life.

3. To make the post-retirement life purposeful and fruitful one need to find out the purpose and objectives for their rest of the life. In addition, one is required to set their goals with definite timeframe for its achievement. You know whenever we make promise to someone, we try to fulfil it. If one is making promise to spouse, then definitely all the efforts are made to fulfil that promise. It is therefore advisable to make a promise to spouse regarding achievement of your goal within the targeted date. You may also make a promise to yourself regarding achievement of your goal. Develop the habit of making promises to self for the achievement of your goals. After making a promise to self, ask yourself about the progress made in fulfilling your promise. Constant reminder to self about the promise made will help you in achieving your goal. Mere promise will not help in achieving your goal. It needs continuous follow up with the self.

4. Promise to self is important not only during the second innings of life but also during all the stages of our life. In paragraph 4 of my article ‘Talking to Self’, I have mentioned that the self-talk can be effectively used for the achievement of goals. Whenever you are making promises to self you are talking to self. During your working life you were accountable to your boss regarding your performance. Absence of boss during post-retirement life makes us unaccountable. Therefore, it is very much essential to make ourselves boss for our own performances i.e. to make ourselves our own boss. Therefore, it is advisable to be your own boss and make accountable to yourself by making promises to self.  

5. How to make your self-promises effective in achieving your goals? The success rate of fulfilment of your self-promise depends on the degree of emotional attachment to it. Therefore, after making promise to self, develop emotional attachment to it. More you make emotional attachment the chances of its fulfilment increases. Have a picture or rough sketch of your promise to make it concrete and place it in your bedroom or any other convenient place in your home to make it easily visible to you. If you are not able to picturize your promise, then you can write it in bold and big letters on a sheet of paper. See the picture or writing at least once in the morning and once before going to bed for sleep every day. Daily visualization of it day and night will make your subconscious mind to work for its fulfilment and automatically all your thoughts and actions will be channelized in the direction of achieving your goal. In addition, it is very much essential to formulate your action points for the fulfilment of your promise made to self. Initiate action and frequently monitor its progress. In this way you can make your self-promises effective in achieving your goals.

6. We are in this material world for a very limited time period. There should be some purpose in our life. Find out some purpose in your life which will drive and motivate you to lead the life happily. Make a promise to self to create happiness and positivity in your mind. Make a promise to spread positivity and happiness to your near and dear as well as to your neighborhoods and society. Make a promise to self to be helpful, caring and kind to others. Make a promise to self to make yourself a good human being and to have positive contribution to the society and mankind. Let us hope that by making the above promises to self we can make our society as well as this planet a better place to live.

Reference Links:

1. https://post-retirementlife.blogspot.com/2023/09/how-to-make-post-retirement-life-happy.html

2. https://post-retirementlife.blogspot.com/2023/12/talking-to-self.html

 Setting Goals in Life

Goal setting is very important not only for an organization but also for an individual. Setting goals in life helps in developing a roadmap to fulfil dreams during various stages of life. You may wonder why I am discussing about goal settings in life during various stages of life when we senior citizens are in the last phase of life. What is its utility to senior citizens? If any senior citizen is thinking like that, he is not wrong since at this stage we cannot set our goals retrospectively. During this phase of life, we have a lot of old memories related to both achievements and failures in life. No doubt, one feels pleasure in cherishing old memories of pleasant moments and experiences of successes in life, but it is very difficult to cherish memories of failures in life. Many senior citizens repent for their failures in past. But instead of repenting, it is better to learn lessons from past failures which will be helpful in giving proper guidance to the upcoming generation for achieving their goals and fulfilment of their dreams. 

2.  For achieving dream, one need to do the followings.

(i)             Setting Goals

(ii)           Developing Strategies to achieve Goals

(iii)         Taking initiatives and actions based on strategies

(iv)          Review of actions taken

2.1 Setting Goals: Setting Goal is the first and foremost step for the achievement of dream. Goals in life differ during various phases of life.  During student life a person is mostly having academic goal and near the end of student life one may have professional goal in addition to academic goal. During working life, a person is mostly having professional and financial goals. During initial stage of working life, one may have a goal to settle in life and to have a family. After the completion of working life when a person enters into post-retirement life, goals are totally different due to drastic change in lifestyle and priorities after retirement. During post-retirement life focus is more on stability and therefore a person’s financial goal is mostly to have consistent flow of passive income so as to take care of one’s daily needs, medical expenditure and leisure travels by making proper placement of retirement corpus in various financial instruments. Peace of mind with sound health become priority at this stage. I am not going into the details of goal settings for which I may have to write a separate article.  Goals should be SMART i.e., specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound.

2.2 Developing Strategies to achieve Goals: Once a goal is set there is a need to develop strategies to achieve the goal. Before developing strategies, one should set the timeline for the achievement of goal, and it should be achievable within the timeline. While developing strategies one should take the stock of available resources which includes available information, tools and other material resources required for the achievement of goal. Once you know the resources required for the achievement of goal, you can ascertain the resources gap to be fulfilled. Strategy includes the following steps.

(i) Identification of resources required for the achievement of goal.

(ii) Ascertaining the resources gap to be fulfilled.

(iii) Developing action points to fill the resources gap.

(iv) Developing various milestones in a chronological order for the achievement of goal.

(v) Creating action points for the achievement of each and every milestone with deadlines.

2.3 Taking initiatives and actions based on strategies

This is the most important steps without which the first two steps will become useless. Even after having a noble goal with robust strategies, one may not achieve any success if there is a lack of initiatives and actions. It is very important to take initiative i.e., the first step and subsequent actions based on strategies. Action should be appropriate for achieving each and every milestone within the deadline. After achieving the first milestone one need to initiate action for moving towards the next milestone.

2.4 Review of actions taken

It is very important to review the actions after reaching every milestone. If you are not able to reach the milestone before targeted date or sure that your action is not taking you near the targeted date, then you should review your actions and find out the most appropriate way to reach the targeted date. Even after reaching the first milestone within the targeted date, one should review the actions taken for reaching the first milestone. On similar way review of actions should be made for each and every milestone. Review of your actions helps in finding out the most appropriate way to reach the milestone and in achieving your goal. It also helps in identifying irrelevant steps which can be removed for facilitating achievement of goal in a smooth manner within the targeted date.

3. Types of Goals

Goals are of various types based on its importance and tenure of achievement. Strategies for achieving goals may not be the same for every goal and may differ for each goal based on its type and nature. One need to prioritize the goals to be achieved as it may not be possible to work on the strategies for all the goals simultaneously.

3.1 Types of Goals based on importance

Based on its importance, goals are of three types.

(i) The Most Important Goal

(ii) Important Goal

(iii) Least Important Goal

Based on the degree of importance one need to prioritize the goals. The most important goal should always be on one’s top priority. But it does not mean that one should not focus on the least important goal. One need to develop the strategies for the achievement of each and every goal, but action should be first initiated for the most important goal and more efforts should be made for its achievement. Not necessarily your lifetime goal may be the most important goal during each and every phase of your life. For example, at the age of 25 years one may have a dream to have a farmhouse and accordingly a goal has been set to have it within the next 15 years. But to have a job for livelihood is also a goal that gains importance over long term goal of having farmhouse because without livelihood it may not be possible to have a dream farmhouse. Accordingly, one need to prioritize one’s goal. Many times, achievement of one’s long- term goal depends on the achievement of short-term goal.  

3.2 Types of Goals based on tenure

Based on time required for the achievement of goals, we may categorize the goals into three types.

(i) Short Term Goals

(ii) Medium Term Goals

(iii) Long Term Goals

A short-term goal requires a time span of one to two years for its achievement. A medium-term goal requires three to five years whereas a long-term goal takes at least 10 years for its achievement. These time periods are flexible. Persons of young and middle age groups can have the scope for short term, medium term and long-term goals. Whereas persons in old age group have very little scope for long term goals.

4. Goal Setting during post-retirement life

Setting of goals in life is not only important during earlier phases of life but is also important during post-retirement life though there is a very little scope for setting long-term goals during this phase of life. One can have mostly short-term goals and rarely mid-term goals during this phase of life. Pursuing hobbies, planning for travel, having celebrations, planning events, etc., maybe one’s goal during this phase of life. Still there are possibilities of achieving unfulfilled dream during this phase of life.  

5. Evaluating reasons for failures in achieving goals during past

On recapitulation of old memories, one may have complete picture of both achievement and non-achievement of goals set during earlier phases of life. No doubt one will have pleasure in cherishing the memories related to goals successfully achieved in life but is equally important to analyze the reasons for failure in achieving certain goals in life.  On introspection, one may come to know the reasons for non-achievement of goals. Instead of blaming others it is better to own the responsibility for failures in past. In most cases the main reason for failure is lack of commitment and focus. Due to lack of commitment, a person fails to develop the strategies for achieving goal and many times lose focus on goal. In case of particularly long-term goal, tendency to lose focus is more due to intermittent distractions which may be due to events and incidents happening in between. Most of the events and incidents are not in our control, but the only thing that is in our control is our response and reactions towards such events and incidents. Incidents and events are momentary in our life, but our response and reaction are not momentary and carried for longer duration which leads to distraction from our main goal. It is our responsibility to have control over our reactions and not allowing it to be carried for longer period. Giving undue importance to the opinions of other persons regarding our goal also lead to distractions.

6. Conclusion

Senior Citizens have experiences of both successes and failures in life which may help them to prepare learning points which will be helpful in providing guidance to the upcoming generations for achievement of their goals successfully without repeating the mistakes already done in the pasts. 

Taking Personal Decision

 

Taking Personal Decision

1. Introduction   

Taking personal decision is not a very big deal but the question is why most of us fail to take our own personal decision. We generally do the mistake of discussing our personal decision with several persons before actually taking it and in the process, we fail to take decision because different persons give different suggestions based on their own perceptions, perspectives and circumstances. But it does not mean that we should not gather information required for taking right decision. But the question is how, when and from whom to gather information. We will discuss it later. Let us first discuss why people find it difficult to take one’s own personal decision.

  2. Why a person finds it difficult to take personal decision?

  During childhood all our decisions including daily routine activities were taken by our parents. Many Children are not even able to choose their dishes in buffet lunch or dinner in the absence of their parents. During school days all our activities were decided and planned by our teachers and for taking personal decisions we were dependent on our parents, teachers or pear groups. During service life our activities in the workplace are decided by our bosses. It means we are not in the habit of taking decisions from childhood to old age and therefore find it difficult to take personal decision.

3. What stops us in taking personal decision?    

Let us discuss the impediments or hurdles in taking decision. What stops us in taking our own personal decisions. It is our mindset which either enables us or prevent us in taking decision. Positive mindset, clarity in thoughts and unbiased point of views are required to take decision. One is not able to take decision with negative mindset. What are those elements which make our mindset negative? Fear, shakiness, lack of confidence make our mindset negative. Fear about uncertainty in getting desired outcome is the biggest impediment in taking decision. Fear comes from lack of confidence and lack of confidence comes from lack of proper knowledge. Shakiness comes from fear and lack of confidence. Lack of clarity in thought creates confusion which stops us in taking proper decision. Unbiased opinion, clear vision, good listening skill, independent thought, foresightedness and open mind are required for bringing clarity in thought. For unbiased opinion, mind should be free from all types of prejudice and biasness.

4. Gathering information for decision making  

Lack of information is another impediment in taking decision. Gathering information or feedback does not mean discussing decision with other before taking it. Four elements i.e., ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘from whom’ and ‘how’ are important while gathering information. One should know the type of information required for taking decision. One should also know when, from whom and how to gather information. For example, a young and energetic Civil Engineer has decided to leave job and to have his own construction company. For taking this decision he should know what are the information required for taking decision i.e., amount of capital, registration of company, legal and statutory requirements, sources of raw materials, labours and expertise, etc. Required information are to be gathered from proper and genuine sources well before taking decision.

  5. Implementing Decision

 Implementation of decision is as important as taking decision. Non-implementation or delayed implementation frustrates the very purpose of taking decision which is mainly due to procrastination. Procrastination makes the decision time barred for its implementation. Let us discuss one interesting example of getting decision time barred. Mr. Santanu got affectionate towards Jasmine during his college days. Jasmine was two years junior to Santanu and both were studying in the same college. Santanu decided to propose Jasmine but he was waiting for opportune moment which never came during his college days. Then he decided to propose her after completing his post-graduation, but he could not. Then he decided to propose her immediately after getting job. But it took another two years in proposing her when already her marriage was fixed. It is the fear of rejection which stopped him to propose Jasmine immediately after taking decision. Anyway, the possible outcome could have been either acceptance or rejection which he could have been known much earlier had he not delayed in proposing her. Acceptance could have removed his anxiety of choosing life partner whereas rejection could have saved his precious time which could have been utilized in finding another person as life partner. I hope you understood the importance of prompt implementation of decision.

6. Developing the habit of taking decision 

Friends, taking timely decision and its prompt implementation is the key to success. Every successful person takes decision and promptly implement it. They never bother about other person’s opinion about their decision. On the other hand, most of us bother about other person’s opinion and therefore fails to take decision.  Friends, develop the habit of taking decision whether small or big and implement it without any delay. If you are parent then inculcate this habit in yourself and in your children. The question is how to inculcate the habit of taking decision in children. Before this question there may be another question that may arise in your mind whether children are able to take decision. Yes, children are also able to take certain decisions. Encourage your child in developing the habit of taking small decision by giving them choice. For example, if you want to give egg to your child in breakfast, ask him whether he want to take boiled egg or omelette. Such little efforts will enable you to develop decision-making capability in your child which will not only enable him to take big decision in life but also make him independent.

 Friends, develop the habit of taking your own personal decisions no matter whether it is small or big and immediately take steps for its implementation. Never depend on any other person for taking your own personal decision. Develop belief and confidence on your ability to take decision and the decision per se. Taking decisions and its prompt implementation will give you confidence and will improve your personality and leadership quality. Taking decisions and ensuring its prompt implementation is one of the most important attributes of leadership quality. I have seen the persons depending on their nearest relatives or friends for taking own personal decision or any other decisions related to family matters. Such persons cannot emerge as leaders in their own family and also lose respect from their family members. Such persons knowingly or unknowingly are allowing other persons to interfere in their own personal and family matters and thereby losing independence by giving command of their life to somebody else. Please remember as such there is no right or wrong decision. It is important to take decision as and when necessity arises. Even if decision taken by you comes out to be incorrect, you are not owing to anybody else except yourself and in the process, you will learn to take correct decision.

7. Conclusion 

Whether it is a matter of choosing your profession, carrier or life partner you have to take your own decision.  Many persons depend on their parents or relatives to choose their life partners. But ultimately nobody else except yourself is going to take the responsibility of your life partner. You are the best judge for your own decision and that’s why believe in yourself, take your personal decision, implement it and own responsibility for your decision.