The Cyan Project

All of us, actively or passively, engage in behaviors or activities that prevent us from achieving our goals. Self-sabotage is any action that gets in the way of your intent. This behavior impacts every aspect of our life, in a more or less, covert manner.  Have you ever been in a situation where you are on a diet and then you see a tempting chocolate cake? What do you do? Do you stick to your diet or do you take a bite (eventually eating the entire thing)? If you take a bite or eat the entire thing, you are engaging in self-sabotage. Eating the chocolate cake (behavior) prevents you from losing weight (that is, your goal).  Let’s look at another example. You have to finish your official report. Your deadline is the day after tomorrow and there is a lot of work which needs to be done. You get an invitation to a party. You are aware that if you attend the party, you will miss the deadline. What do you do in such a situation? Do you attend the party or do you let it pass? If you go out f

In the recent past, how many times someone has tried to change your point of view or attitude towards something? If you sit down and think about it, you will realize that every day we are bombarded with such attempts. Let’s understand what persuasion is. Persuasion is an attempt to change people’s attitudes through various kinds of messages and information. Persuasion is a very powerful skill which plays an important role in our daily life.  What influences persuasion? Let’s look at some of the factors that impact persuasion. Factors that Impact Persuasion The credibility of the communicator Would you listen to someone who doesn’t know what they are talking about? Do you take advice from your peers when you are sick? Credibility is an important factor that influences persuasion. People usually listen to and follow those people who seem to know what they are talking about or people who are experts or are trained in the field. For example, you will follow the advice of a doctor instead o

Healthy, genuine, real relationships (both romantic relationships as well as other relationships) are built on trust, respect, and ability to talk about issues. In your relationships with others, have you ever felt that the other person is always blaming you or acting in extremely selfish ways? These might be the signs that the other person is emotionally immature. Emotionally mature people are often able to manage their emotions. They often talk about how they feel and take responsibility for their actions. These are some of the things with which an emotionally immature person struggle. We bring you five ways to identify an emotionally immature person. Emotionally immature people tend to blame others A client of mine used to blame her elder sister for all the failures in her life. If she scored low in her exams, she would blame her sister; if she had issues with her friends, she would blame her sister. This not only resulted in a lot of distress in the client but also led to a straine

All of us are part of some or the other kind of groups. Some of us may be part of formal groups such as office groups; some of us may be part of more informal groups such as college groups. Our interaction with members of the group varies from group to group; how we spend time in a group also varies. Professor Eric Berne gave six ways of time structuring. Time structuring can be understood as ways in which people spend their time when they are in a group. Berne believed that a person needs to structure his/her relationships and time spent with people. The six ways to structure time are withdrawal, rituals, pastimes, activities, games, and intimacy.  Withdrawal It happens when a person is physically present in the group but is mentally absent. The person might be there in the group but may not participate in group activities. So for example, you are attending an office meeting. You are physically present in the group but your mind is somewhere else. Your attention is diverted. Some peop

When you experience a setback in life two things can happen- either you defend yourself and blame the situation or you may blame yourself for not being good enough to work through it. In this particular situation you may realize neither of the reaction is helpful.  Now imagine if you friend went through a similar setback, what would you say to him/her? You would try to support them, provide unconditional love and kindness and probably try to work through the problem. Now why is it that you were kind and supportive to your friend and helped her/him with the difficult situation. Why were you not kind and loving towards yourself? You may come across many such situations where you may have been much harsher towards yourself. Self-compassion involves acting the same way towards yourself when you are having a difficult time, fail, or notice something you don’t like about yourself. Instead of just ignoring your pain you stop and tell yourself “this is really difficult right now,” how can I co

Communication is the act of transferring information from one person or group to another. Every communication involves a sender, message and receiver.  The 7Cs of communication is a checklist or you can consider this as a set of criteria to improve your communication style. According to the seven Cs, communication needs to be: clear, concise, concrete, correct, coherent, complete and courteous. Clarity/Clear The message should be clear i.e. the receiver should be able to understand the message received without any difficulty. Receiver shouldn’t have to “read between the lines” and make assumptions on their own to understand what the sender is trying to say. The message should emphasize on a single goal at a time Concise Keep the message short and brief The short and brief message is more comprehensive and helps in retaining the receiver’s attention Avoid lengthy messages Concrete The communication should be concrete, which means the message should be clear and particularly such that no

“Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it's less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you've lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that's good.” Elizabeth Edward How are you dealing with the new “normal”? How did you deal with the effects of the pandemic and lockdown? Most of us are now getting back to our routines, taking charge of our lives, and moving on. Resilience is an ability that helps us deal with adverse situations, adapt to the circumstances, and help us thrive in situations. Resilience is a skill that can be learned. We bring you five activities that can help you become more resilient. You can choose the one that suits you or you can use all five of them. Story Telling We all love reading, telling, or listening to stories. Stories, since our child

ALL OF US FEEL BORED!  We all know that feeling when time slows down, nothing is interesting anymore and there is this feeling of yearning (God knows for what!). Remember that class in school where you almost slept off because the topic wasn’t interesting or remember that workshop where you found yourself yawning because it didn’t make sense to you or remember that movie where you dozed off. When you are bored, things appear to be never-ending! Boredom is defined as “having nothing to do.” It is generally seen as an unpleasant state characterized by feelings of dissatisfaction, fatigue, and restlessness. It often leads to anger, restlessness, sadness, worry, and loneliness. Well, it is rightly said that boredom is the root cause of all evil! Boredom is universal; everyone experiences it. Research shows that 30 percent to 90 percent of adults experience boredom on an everyday basis. Almost 91 percent of youth experience boredom (there is a lot of scope for research on Boredom). Men ofte

What is your style? The ways we present ourselves says a lot about us. The way we dress, the way we speak, the way we behave with others affect our relationships not only with others but also with ourselves. We have patterns and habits of how we communicate with others. We adopt unique communication styles which reflect on our mood, personality as well the type of conversation we have with people. Each person has a unique communication style. These communication styles come under four broad categories: Passive, Aggressive, Passive-Aggressive, and Assertive. Understanding different communication styles can improve the quality of our relationships with others. Let’s understand 4 types of communication styles. Passive Have you noticed some people who constantly say, “It really doesn’t matter” or “I don’t like confrontation” or “I want to keep the peace?” These are some of the things people with passive communication style say. In the passive communication style, people usually don’t expre

Error in our decision making! Decision Making is part of life. We make decisions every day, every moment and sometimes every hour. These decisions vary from a simple decision like deciding what to eat or what to wear to more complex decisions like how to deal with problematic clients or what career to pursue! How do you make decisions? Do you take into account all the evidence and facts that are there? Do you make decisions based on your gut feeling or intuition? Do you let your emotions decide for you? Do you think through each decision? Do you rush through them? We often find ourselves making decisions based on our emotions or gut feeling. Sometimes our decisions are influenced by our peers. At times to make sense of the situation, we often just look at one side of the situation (usually the one that is congruent with our beliefs and values) and overlook the other part. Often, we find it difficult to make well-balanced, well-thought-of rational decisions. Think about an important dec

“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” -Abraham Maslow We encounter problems everyday and everybody can benefit from having a good plan to overcome them.   Some of these problems are obviously more severe or complex than others. Problem solving is the act of defining a problem; determining the cause of the problem; identifying, prioritizing, and selecting alternatives for a solution; and implementing a solution. Planning and structuring well makes process of problem solving more successful.  Here is a step by step breakdown of how you can easily solve a problem: 1. Identify the problem    "A problem well stated is a problem half solved." -John Dewey Define the problem i.e. what exactly is that you want to solve What are the causes What are the possible maintaining factor Is it situation specific? 2. Break it down into smaller steps and decide which part do you want to work on first Break down the problem in