Daily Tiny Act

Our train of think-feel-say-do can be in habit mode as usual. Or one can shift one’s awareness and hold them in reflection, see-sense their relation across other things or concepts, tweak them a bit. Done over a period of time, they have potential to transform.

They have been transforming me, humbling me.

I intend to create #SearchDialogueAction with potential individuals and institutions

• for epistemic humility

• that guides us into co-sensing and co-discovery led co-experiments,

• in order to bring out a better self, better inter-personal spaces, better intergroup dynamics and overall impact on the civilization and the planet

• amidst the rising complexity and wicked problems

All you see on this website (1000+ different expressions) are expressions that have come from simple but repetitive practices over the years since 2012. Of drawing, writing, self-talk, meditating, conscious body movements. Of 1200+ really long interactions with fellow humans from all walks of life. These have become part of various initiatives undertaken since 2012.

I didn’t know any of this till 2012. But these have grown on me through series of meditations, contemplations and also following the works of 100+ thinkers from various disciplines. Many of these have roots in ancient wisdom and modern interdisciplinary science.

These practices enable one to develop better understanding of political, economic and social systems one is embedded in. For reimagining and nudging structure (rules, norms, incentives) and skills. We can do these with people around and or at level of nation or civilization.

I am on this journey to share and learn. You may view the work by clicking on the menu bar at the top. Hope some of the work displayed here appeals to you in some way.

Cutting Long Story Short 

7bn+ of us are constantly making choices, performing actions. Some are in sync, some are at loggerheads, some are unknown. 100 bn + humans have walked this planet before us. And we stand on the shoulders of toil, sweat, blood, failures and successes of all of them. Here we are. Sharing this planetary journey. 

I believe that our world has become exponentially complex. Many parts (people, interactions, things, etc) involved in a web of relationship with each other. A new paradigm is required to make sense, develop better understanding and act from it. Through this website I intend to share some of the efforts in that direction. 

Through #DailyTinyAct of meditation, scribbles, monologue, dialogues, conscious body movements, i have been meeting more of my own self or may i say my own selves. Some of them were hidden. Some of them were problematic and i didn't realize that i would see them in others and not in my own self. In some sense I kept meeting my own #ThinkFeelSayDo spectrum. 

And in so, i meet some of me in others. These enable the development of better understanding and better action with the #PoliticalEconomicSocial I am embedded in. These when expressed in forms of choices and action, have the potential for a better civilization. 
 
Since 2012, these #DailyTinyActs have found the following expressions. You may view each of them by clicking on the menu bar at the top:

• Simply putting pen to paper everyday has resulted into a segment called: Draw 

• Simply taking pause, looking at any experience and then the spectrum it belongs to. Then plotting them into 4 quadrants or grids like 2 By 2  

• Having a practice of self-talk but distilling it over time every day has resulted in thing called Monologue 

• Urge to not be trapped in my own biases and co-sense and co-discover has led to something called Dialogue  

• Every passing day, committing to the practice of Meditation

• Finally somethings that were Applied

Putting Short Story Long (18 min read)

Consciousness sleeps in minerals, dreams in plants, wakes up in animals and becomes self-aware in humans - Rumi 

What brings about self-awareness?
And what does this self-awareness bring about? 

The first one is very easy. I don't know. There is a certain kind of shift that happens. It comes in the wake of adversity or seeking or serendipity or awe or staring at the abyss. Sometimes it happens as a peaking of some accumulation. Sometimes it's like a lightning strike. And then there is the aspect of realizing-experiencing it and there is the other aspect of living-actualization it.

The second one needs a bit of explaining. One way in which humanity has progressed is by developing better understanding led better action. The word "better" here could be in service of self, family, tribe, ideology, geography, interest, cause or civilization.  So, how do we develop better understanding and better action?

THINK FEEL SAY DO

The answer lies inside us. 

We think. We feel. We say. We do. However, due to constant state of hyper-stimulations, urgencies, expectation mismatch, reactive strikes or pre-emptive strikes, we rob ourselves of deeper self-awareness based better understanding and better action. We are unable to see the alignment or misalignment of our own #ThinkFeelSayDo spectrum and its #Interdependencies with others' #ThinkFeelSayDo spectrum. 

Ok ! Then what???!!! 

What? Any Thought, Any Feeling, Any Word, Any Action then is a possibility to transform. By holding them in awareness. By seeing them. By showing them. By everso tweaking them. And in the process of doing so, understanding oneself better, understanding others better, and acting from it. See them as #DailyTinyAct

How? Sometimes just pausing and holding them in awareness. Sometimes putting them on paper. Sometimes putting them in form of poems. Sometimes just writing long articles to see the inner mesh of thoughts out in form of the outer chains in the article. Sometimes meditating and stilling the modification of one's mind and body. Sometimes slightly tweaking one's bodily movements while doing something.  

When? As #DailyTinyActs...meeting after meeting, call after call, email after email, meal after meal, awkwardness after awkwardness,...basically anytime.  

Where? Inside or Outside. Inside by seeing, sensing, tweaking, labeling, breathing, de-tense-ing, connecting-disconnecting-reconnecting concepts, questions as devices, working with one's thinking and feeling, etc. Outside on paper, in speech or in bodily movements or choices one makes.  

And moving towards representing them as visuals, 2 by 2 grids, monologues, dialogues, meditations or bodily movements. These! These! done over and over and over again has the potential to transcend our old selves and thus transform. Thus enabling us to see deeper, listen deeper, speak deeper, savor deeper, service deeper. And these result in being creative and productive too.  

So, how did I reach here?

The answer lies in the shift, the first few steps, the adventure  and three experiments that happened along the way.

THE SHIFT
First up, i believe that there is such thing as shift in consciousness. For whatever consciousness would stand. My understanding is that there is something extremely foundational and or pervading and or emergent that has a huge bearing on the quality of our being and becoming. And there are aspects of realizing-experiencing it and also actualizing-living it. And its a dynamic state.   

For the initial part of my life, I was fortunate to try 20+ kinds of roles: putting up political posters, going door-to-door for market research, doing english subtitle for hindi movies, selling credit cards, stopgap secretary, running a payroll management outfit, and then doing entire research reports on some sectors, working with a High Networth Individual for their portfolio investment, and then financial advisory and finally as Corporate Development Officer in a fast growing infrastructure company.

Something shifted in me in 2012. Inklings of which were there earlier.  Everything you see on this website is absolutely a revelation for me. 8 years back, i would never never scribble, or draw or write poems or articles or have the kind of monologues and dialogues. I wasn't able to get fundamental answers or answers beyond the second or third deeper question.

THE FIRST FEW STEPS
Thereafter, It began by walking upto 1200+ people over two years.Corporate Humans, Businessmen, Cobbler, Sweeper, Rickshaw-walah, Chai-walah, Policemen, Politician, Bureaucrat, Academician, Sportsman, Homemaker, humans in Prostitution, Beggars, Victims of sexual abuse, Criminals, Commando, and more. Had long conversations with them. Emergent. Spontaneous.

This coincided with trying to make sense by also following 100+ thinkers. From scriptures, behavioral science, mental conditioning, political science, economics, etc. 

And this was followed by doing 20+ online courses in systemic thinking, buddhism and modern psychology, science of happiness, social norms, moral foundations, political philosophy, introduction to justice, etc.  

THE VENTURE OR ADVENTURE

While all this was happening, i started a venture too. It was about mind-body-social fitness. We experimented with various models. Offline and Online...gamified social fitness. While we were at it, we stumbled upon the core insight...that our "in the now" or "in the moment" behavior or experience has many many factors inside of us and outside of us. There are some forms of salience in those factors that drive us in a certain way. And or we develop a certain steady state of our thinking-feeling-saying-acting in order to keep ourselves going.  And if one wants to make changes, then the desired change has to be enacted or done over and over and over again. 

Let me give you an example. Think about simple act of writing on a piece of paper. Now how will this simple act of writing on piece of paper change if you are in train, if you are crossing a busy street, if you have a dog running to scare you, if you have just received the best news of life and are writing, if its raining and you are standing in it and writing, and so on (there could be 100s of these factors/context).  If you see in the example, the sheer act of writing depends on so so so many factors outside of you and inside of you. 

But if you start the simple act of "setting an intention" to write on paper more and more, and then set out to do this (ahmm! i am not oversimplifying behavior science here...but that for another day or one of the post), then you will encounter all sorts of context (inner and outer), and the intention and the muscle of "writing on paper" will get tested in each context. This when done over a period of time, would yield you a wider comfort zone of being able to write in many more contexts.  

So, we took this insight and called it #DailyTinyAct. And we said "writing on paper" is the example for doing similar things with one's thinking-feeling-saying-doing. Taking any aspect of it and seeing it, questioning it, doing it differently, observing one's thoughts or feelings around it and so on. Any Time, Any Place, Any Thing. 

And then we built a gamified social fitness platform. Drawing from 100+ masters/thinkers. For developing better self-awareness led #ThinkFeelSayDo. In the hindsight, something more was needed.  

THE THREE EXPERIMENTS

By now, we had gone through a lot of tweaks in the model of implementation, looked at various masters, but something was missing. Hence, we decided to do things at two level. One at the grassroot on the street and other for leaders. Thus we embarked on two initiatives: 

THANK YOU, INDIA: a social experiment for daily tiny thankfulness. Sort of #DailyTinyAct of finding people or things to be grateful for. And we reached out to 190,000+ humans in Mumbai and Thane. 

SEARCH INSIDE YOURSELF INDIA PUBLIC PROGRAM: Search Inside Yourself began at Google. A mindfulness based program backed by neuroscience. We were fortunate to launch this in India with the help of Bombay Stock Exchange, India Today Group, FICCI Millennium Alliance, IIM-A Alumni Association Mumbai, See Sharp and C4E. 

While all the above shift, adventure, learning and the two experiments were happening, I had begun the third experiment...on my own self. 

THE THIRD EXPERIMENT (result of which is this website)

Of making my own self a laboratory of daily tiny acts. Applying #DailyTinyActs in my own life. 

Let me share some of it. 

I started random scribbling ... drawing, writing. Initially it used to be hopeless pen to paper interactions. However, there was some form of regularity. And it kept improving bit by bit. I guess there are several jumps one experiences in one's performance. And these come in form of insights of doing things or seeing them differently and it aids the next phase. And these jumps over time accumulate to produce something much better than the first ones.  

These ended up variants in drawing like 250+ scribbles in color, 200+ scribbles in B&W, 30+ visual lateral thinking, 40+ covid related depictions, 50+ GIF files. And ended up writing 50+ articles or blogpost, 20+ quotes, 20+ poems. 

And along the journey i also stumbled upon an insight...that the current conceptual architecture and the limitation of language actually creates malware in self and in interactions. I felt drawn into putting things in 2 BY 2 grids (2 by 2 are like the famous Johari Window you must have heard of; or the famous known-known, known-unknown, unknown-known and unknown-unknown). Before I knew, I made almost 150+ of 2 BY 2 to explain things better to myself first...to understand my #ThinkFeelSayDo spectrum and its interaction with #PoliticalEconomicSocial around me.  

While all of these were happening, I used to meditate regularly. And it has certainly aided in honing all of the above. Sometimes these meditations were in forms of simple voicenotes i would create which i call as monologues. And then these expanded into dialogues. Where i have been fortunate to have 40+ dialogues with various thinkers across the globe.  

Behind all these creations, there have been daily tiny acts. Some that persisted. Some that were dropped. Some that were modified. Some that backfired. But the core idea of doing #DailyTinyAct has stuck with me.  

DAILY TINY ACT AND CIVILIZATION?
There are few  layers to this. 

- Self-discovery led evolving being.
- Offering one's evolving being to people around and the civilization at large.
- Engage in search-dialogue-action for reimagining the political, economic social spectrum.
- Discovering Daily Tiny Acts that we could do together. Implement some of them as structures in our interactions across family, friends, neighborhood, boardroom, classroom, parliament, courtroom, police stations, civic bodies, corporate meetings, etc.. 
- Discovering Daily Tiny Acts for many more people to do and participate in the change. 


Our choices and actions have their span of impact (geography, persons, duration, opportunity distribution, rewards distributions). #DailyTinyAct done over a period of time enables a person to see them deeper. And it enables the development of poise amidst inner and outer disruptions. And this comes in service while taking "big decisions" with larger "#SpanOfImpact". 

I am not saying that big things are not required. Which might include forms of non-violent assertions or policy or taking to streets or courts. I remember reading somewhere that "when revolution becomes the state, it becomes my enemy again". This statement has many imports. One of them being that the current #PoliticalEconomicSocial systems are creaking and that they need reimagination, in absence of which the new powers-to-be or leaders-to-be would end up committing the same misadventures as the earlier. 

Each of us have interaction with people from various background and foregrounds. Through our actions, we can share and make an impact. Sometimes some changes require many actions by many people over many years. Sometimes some changes requires one or few changes in one or few persons. All of this is a function of #SpanOfImpact.  

In my journey, I realized that the least i could do for the civilization is to offer my reflected self as much as possible. So here i am.  

I dream of a Civilization where we make a twin move. Of Search-Dialogue-Action that lead to #DailyTinyAct. One to enable people in their skills (#ThinkFeelSayDo #MetaThinkFeelSayDo #MetaAwareness) and the other in terms of reimagining structures (#PoliticalEconomicSocial), all in service of our Civilization. Ensuring that the common minimum program could be to put energies and resources in identifying and mitigating existential threat to our civilization, and this coupled with basic dignity and living for all. And then working the way up for confronting the #PsychoSocialSavanna we find ourselves in, the #MaladaptiveCompetition we find ourselves in, and everything that can #SelfTerminate our Civilization.  

Hope some of the work resonates with you. 

Have a human day. Magical Regards. Hemant