Author: tahmidchowdhury

Seeing sensitivity as a strength

Attitudes have progressed a lot in the last few years. We see more open discussions around burnout and mental wellbeing. Nevertheless, emotional sensitivity, particularly in ‘professional’ settings, is still seen as an unwanted, or bad trait.

But sensitivity is what makes us human, and in a world where we use terms like having ’emotional intelligence’, it’s something that is sorely lacking in the business world (not to mention in our personal lives too).

Ironically, my journey has been one of reconnecting with my emotions over the course of my adult life. It started with realising that not everything is about winning the argument. It then progressed to realising that the intuitive sense I had came from an ability to connect and understand people in a deeper way. I thought this was normal for everyone. Turns out its not.

The incredible power of saying ‘I don’t know’

There are so many questions that we answer every day. Some of these are straightforward – ‘what should I eat today?’ or ‘what TV channel should I put on?’ But we also quickly amass large, existential questions that are so overwhelming and complex that they become frightening. In our society, we’ve learnt that we must answer every question, as if it were a pop quiz. But what we have missed is that there are certain questions that go beyond the capabilities of the mind – the spiritual, emotional or philosophical. To me, the phrase ‘I don’t know’ is my own acceptance of surrendering to something bigger than me.

Releasing the mind through the form of movement

This week, I’ve started work with a new coach around body movement. I’ve been working a lot on myself, but an area I hadn’t really addressed was around my comfort in my own body.

I remember being in India in February and seeing people dancing. I felt absolutely paralysed by the idea of it. More broadly, the moment anyone suggested dancing I felt frozen to the spot.

Somewhere along the way I had created body movement to be such a complicated thing that I felt an anxiety cycle the moment a situation came up.

The stick-or-twist of whether to celebrate a birthday

I turned 30 this week. And I wasn’t sure how much I should celebrate or not.
I turned 30 this week. And I wasn’t sure how much I should celebrate or not.

I have a somewhat difficult relationship with birthdays. I found it hard to celebrate the occasion over the years because I felt it came at an inconvenient time. It was just after the school holidays, or just as the university term had started and everyone went home. Nobody was really around to do much for it.

On reflection, I think I learnt to dread my birthday. It was a day where I heard a lot about what I should experience, and how it was meant to be such a great day. I found that generally any such expectations were not met. Looking back on it I found the whole ordeal rather painful emotionally for many years.

In my adult years, my newest line has been to reject the notion of birthdays as a concept. ‘What’s in a day anyway?’. It made it a lot easier to just not engage with the idea of it, rather than deal with the expectations that came with it.

There is some truth to the fact that a single day does not make us nor break us. Yet If i’m honest with myself it’s also been a self defense mechanism I built up. It’s become so instilled in me I hadn’t even realised I had created it.

I’ve been travelling a bunch in the lead up to my birthday. I had a few social engagements dotted around before and after, so it got to the point where planning felt inconvenient. In the end, I didn’t really do a whole lot. And whilst I think ‘regret’ is too strong a word, a few days later I feel I probably missed an opportunity to mark the moment more vividly.

The beauty of personal development is that every opportunity is a moment where we can learn deep things about ourselves. This experience fits in with my journey of the last few weeks, notably realising how emotionally sensitive I am as a person.

I am reopening my heart to the world. Honestly, it’s a pretty painful experience. I am letting down guards that have been up for so long I didn’t even realise they were there. And opening up means both reexperiencing things I had shut away, but also coming into a deeper state of vulnerability. I’m having to reevaluate things like my ‘who cares’ attitude towards birthdays. I’ve also noticed that the bitterness towards my own experiences has been souring how I show up for others in their celebrations too.

All is not lost, birthdays are a great opportunity to reflect no matter how much or little we actively celebrate them. I’ve heard someone describe them as our own personal new year, which I’m quite fond of as a concept.

This last year has been a crazy journey for me. I’ve had many people talk about how much I have changed and evolved. I’ve had achievements like writing my book. But more profoundly, friends around me talk about the way I have shown up for them in a deeper, more powerful and loving way.

Life is opening up in ways that I didn’t think possible. I feel my 30s are going to be more fun and wild than my 20s, which is an exciting feeling. I am clearer in who I am choosing to be.

I’m on the path to self betterment and creating the life I want to live.
I have a somewhat difficult relationship with birthdays. I found it hard to celebrate the occasion over the years because I felt it came at an inconvenient time.

On reflection, I think I learnt to dread my birthday. It was a day where I heard a lot about what I should experience, and how it was meant to be such a great day. I found that generally any such expectations were not met. Looking back on it I found the whole ordeal rather painful emotionally for many years.

Constant ordinary action creates the extraordinary

This weekend I’m at another personal development intensive in London. Over this weekend, we have spoken about the way in which we create the different aspects of the things we want in life.

I continuously go to these learning experiences because I learn something new each time. I’ve found that hearing something the first time sometimes doesn’t mean too much for me, but revisiting it later can make a profound shift.

Yesterday, we spoke about how we create the extraordinary. The idea of running a marathon, getting a six-pack or writing a book may sound unfathomable because of the colossal nature of the goal.
But if we gave ourselves a few minutes to figure out ‘how to’ do these things, we could most likely figure out a way.

The ultimate freedom of seeing life as a game

This week, I took it relatively easy.
Well, that’s how I felt anyway, the reality was that I actually did rather a lot. It was the first time in a long time I’ve been into the office five days in a week (my own choice!). I also had evening activities on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

So why do I feel like this week was relatively relaxed?

Well it is relative. Essentially, it felt like tasks took far less effort this week than what they did last week.

The best way to learn is by getting into action

When we are looking for change, we can often get into the trap of constantly searching out more information. A new book or course can be helpful to learn more, but in of itself doesn’t really do anything until you do something with it.
We can get so addicted to learning that we actually learn to infantilize ourselves. Whenever we find a problem we search friends or the internet for guidance, rather than genuinely learning how to do things for ourselves.

For me, this looked like constantly looking for new personal development books and courses. I would finish one non-fiction book and move straight to the next one, without stopping to reflect what I had really learnt.

So if you want to genuinely learn something new or change something in your life, there is only one real choice: action.

The power of acknowledging our own greatness

This week I attended a coaching immersion down in Kent, UK. I was one of 12 in an awe-inspiring group of people doing incredible things in the world.

Whilst the experience was powerful, one thing we discussed is how gaining insights in of itself does not actually do really do anything unless we act upon them. (Actually, it was put in less eloquent terms: ‘f*** insights’).

It’s why during the immersion I committed to creating the Make Diversity Matter to You Programme. It’s a month long experience starting in July consisting of four 90 min weekly webinars and a community group with peer learning activities and resources.

If you’re interested in knowing more about the programme, drop me a message.

The importance of simplicity in our messaging

I’ve worked in technical fields throughout my career, using words that most people would simply not understand. A key skill has been to make these things understandable and relatable for anyone.

I could easily bamboozle the people around me through specialist language, acronyms and obscure terminology. But learning to explain things to people in simple, short sentences has greatly enhanced my ability to get people to actually care about the stuff I’m talking about. Unfortunately, many people are not doing this very basic step, even though it is available to all of us.