Leadership Development

Individual Topic: I Am Therefor I Think

Submitted To

Prof. Arvind Shatdal

By

Rahul Sheoran

Roll No: 1410120026

10/24/2015

School of Management and Entrepreneurship

Gautam Budh Nagar, U.P., 201314

The perception of an individual about his surroundings and the situations, is dependent on his personality and his outlook on life. However, this notion is in contradiction to René Descartes popular theory ‘Cogito ergo sum’ which means, “I think therefore I am”.

An individual is aware of the knowledge he possess about himself and the world around him. It is the application of this knowledge to the challenges presented in the real life that directs his approach and thinking pattern. It is said that it is your attitude that determines your altitude but the question here is what determines this attitude?

An analysis of all high achieving people has revealed that they set a goal and a timeline for it to be achieved and then work towards achieving it. Once that is in place, all their energies and the chain of thought is directed in the realization of the set target.We have come across big names in the past those who have exhibited this attitude, like Muhammed Ali, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and many more. These people knew their purpose in this world and hence acted upon the call of duty in order to serve the community they belonged to.

In order to execute what they actually were, a lot of thought practice, experience, wisdom had to shed in to their work so that they could actually achieve what they always dreamt off.

There are techniques which helps in channelizing your thought process and one of them is Mindfulness. Mindfulness is a collection of skills that can be improved with practice. Mindful awareness is a way to pay attention to what is happening around you and within you. It involves three core skills, Concentration Power which talks about focussing on what we think is relevant at a given time, Sensory Clarity, it is keeping track of what we are experiencing at the moment and Equanimity, which is allowing the sensory experiences to come and go without push and pull.

As much logic is put into the thinking process, personality and self-awareness will always affect the way you make a choice. Combined with maturity and experience, individual personality is an inevitable factor, but proactive self-awareness can help you in understanding how much your decision-making process is influenced by your individuality. This self-awareness influences a person’s ability to think and act in a situation, which is analysed differently by different people.

For a person to be judgemental and decisive, he needs a lot of focus and the person should be a foreseer and predictive to act accordingly when the time arises. A terrorist for example, never wanted to be a terrorist at the first place. Instead, the situation in which he or she was born and brought up, his or her financial stability, need of the society and other factors determines him or her to live a life of a terrorist.It might seem very simple, but to undergo such change in one’s life is highly difficult which is determined by lot of activities. These activities stimulates your brain and generate a spark which decides whether you live like a normal human being or an intruder into the world of humans despite the fact that he or she was one amongst them.

Let’s talk about our childhood where our parents taught us that stealing is bad and we should never take any person’s thing without notifying him. As we grow, we apply the learning. Consider, If we don’t have something, and we need it, we don’t take it without informing people because at the back of mind we still thinking about what we learnt in our childhood.

There is a famous saying,” Eat to live not live to Eat”, in similar sense, people exist in world but in order to survive they have to think. Life is given to people, but not survival, the body is given to people but not sustenance. So, to remain alive, he should act and before he can act, he should know the nature and purpose of his action and he should think.

Like any organism, humans are self-regulating creatures engaged in a constant evolution process. As the human being evolves so does his way of thinking. This change of approach ultimately leads to the notion of I am therefore I think.