Naive Realism

The Bias of Believing We See the World as It Truly Is

Foreword

A short video clip — “Why Everyone Else Is an Idiot,” an excerpt from an IAI TV conversation between cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky and physicist-philosopher Avshalom Elitzur, drawn from their fuller discussion, “Science and the Unknowable Universe.” was as a forward today. The clip's title alone is a small provocation — it names, almost accusingly, a conviction most of us carry without examining it: that we see things as they are, and that anyone who sees them differently is missing something we possess.

That conviction has a name in psychology — naive realism — and it is worth pausing on, because it sits quietly underneath a great many disagreements we have with colleagues, family, and friends. That clip was the trigger to explore the idea properly: what it is, how it shows up in ordinary life, why the mind is built this way, what it costs us, and — most usefully — what philosophical traditions, East and West, offer as an antidote. The links to the clip and full conversation are given below. The details thereafter are collected collated, comprehended, and paraphrased by one of the AI Assistant. I am sharing for your information and reflection, without claiming any expertise and ownership.

Video clip (the trigger): https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-EQHB5hqIQE

Full conversation: https://iai.tv/video/science-and-the-unknowable-universe

The Concept

Naive realism is the largely unconscious belief that we perceive the world directly and objectively — without distortion, interpretation, or filter — and that our view of any situation simply is the situation. Psychologists Lee Ross and Andrew Ward, building on earlier work by Kurt Lewin and Gustav Ichheiser, described it as resting on three linked assumptions:

—   Assumption one — we believe we see the world as it objectively is, without bias;

—   Assumption two — we expect that any reasonable person, exposed to the same information, will reach the same conclusion we did;

—   Assumption three — when someone doesn't reach our conclusion, we assume they must be uninformed, irrational, or biased — rather than simply working from a different, equally coherent vantage point.

It is worth distinguishing this from simple stubbornness. Naive realism is not the belief that we are always right — it is the much quieter and more pervasive belief that our perception is not itself a perspective at all, but a clear window onto reality. Boroditsky's own research on how language shapes cognition gives this an unusually literal edge: speakers of different languages have been shown to attend to, remember, and even assign blame for the same event differently, simply because of how their language frames it grammatically. Two honest people can genuinely see “the same” event differently — not because one is lying, but because perception itself is never unmediated.

How We Demonstrate It in Daily Life

—   At work — When a colleague reads a situation differently, we assume they are being unreasonable, rather than considering they may be working from different premises or information.

—   In conviction — We treat our political, religious, or family opinions as the obvious and default reading of the facts, and treat disagreement as proof of the other person's bias — never our own.

—   In self-justification — We explain our own conduct by circumstance (“I snapped because I was exhausted”) but explain the same conduct in someone else by character (“he is simply rude”).

—   In negotiation — Each side in a negotiation believes it alone sees the true merits of the matter, so compromise feels like conceding to the other side's bias rather than meeting a legitimate, different view.

—   In spectatorship — Fans of opposing teams, watching the identical replay, each see the other side committing more fouls — a finding confirmed in the well-known 1954 Dartmouth-Princeton football study.

—   On the road — Every driver going slower than us seems foolish, and every driver going faster seems reckless — the speed we ourselves have chosen quietly becomes, in our own mind, the correct one.

—   Across political ideologies — People holding different political ideologies each experience their own reading of events, policy, and history as simply the accurate one, and experience the other side's reading as propaganda, manipulation, or bad faith — rarely as a legitimate alternative shaped by different values, information, or lived experience.

A Difference of Scale

Most of the examples above are contained — their cost falls chiefly on the person holding the bias, or on those in their immediate vicinity: a strained friendship, a stalled negotiation, a tense family dinner. Political and ideological naive realism does not stay contained in the same way. When it takes hold in citizens generally, it hardens public discourse and narrows what each side is willing to hear. When it takes hold, untreated, in people who hold power — leaders, policymakers, institutions — its reach extends far beyond anyone's immediate circle: it can shape laws, allocate resources, and set the terms of conflict for entire societies and nations. A private citizen's naive realism costs a relationship; a head of state's or legislature's naive realism, left unexamined, can cost a country its cohesion, its fairness, or its peace.

Why This Happens

Naive realism is not a character flaw so much as a structural feature of how perception and cognition work.

—   Perception feels immediate — The brain does not present raw reality to us; it constructs a seamless, confident image from partial sensory data and fills in the gaps without telling us it has done so — much as it invisibly fills in the eye's blind spot. The construction feels like direct seeing, so we mistake it for reality itself.

—   Interpretation is invisible — Where language, culture, upbringing, and self-interest shape what we notice and how we frame it, we experience the shaping as the world's own structure — not as something added by us. The filter is invisible from the inside.

—   Certainty is easier than doubt — Believing our view is simply correct is far more comfortable than holding it as one perspective among several; certainty resolves the discomfort of ambiguity.

—   We cannot observe our own blind spot — If we cannot easily see our own bias, we generalise from that absence to assume there is none — the well-documented bias blind spot.

Consequences

—   Erosion of goodwill — Disagreement gets misread as a moral or intellectual failing in the other person, rather than as a difference in vantage point — souring relationships that could otherwise simply hold two views.

—   Stalled resolution — Negotiations and family discussions stall because each side experiences compromise as surrender to the other's bias, not as meeting a legitimate different truth.

—   Reduced curiosity — We become poor listeners — since we already believe we see clearly, we listen to rebut rather than to understand.

—   Polarization — Groups fracture into camps that each experience the other as uninformed or acting in bad faith, deepening polarization on matters that may have had room for shared ground.

—   Poorer decisions — Because we rarely test whether our reading of a situation is complete, decisions get made on a partial view mistaken for the whole one.

Ways and Means of Overcoming the Bias — Words of Wisdom

Different traditions converge on this problem from different directions. Together they offer both a diagnosis of why the bias is so hard to shake, and a practice for loosening its grip.

Know the Limits of Your Own Knowing

I know that I know nothing.

— Socrates

The first move is simply acknowledging the limits of one's own vantage point — treating one's own conviction as a hypothesis rather than a verdict.

Hold Every View as Partial

The Jain doctrine of anekāntavāda holds that reality is many-sided, and that any single viewpoint captures only part of the truth; its companion teaching, syādvāda, insists every statement about reality is true only “in a certain sense,” never absolutely. The classic image is of blind men touching different parts of an elephant, each certain his partial experience is the whole.

Recognise That All Perception Is Already Interpretation

Kant argued we never perceive the thing in itself, only the thing as filtered through our own cognitive categories of space, time, and causation. Nietzsche put the same insight more starkly in his notebooks:

There are no facts, only interpretations.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Neither meant that truth doesn't exist — only that all knowing happens from a perspective, never from nowhere. The honest response is not despair but candour about one's own vantage point.

Train the Seer, Not Just the Seeing

The Bhagavad Gītā describes the sthitaprajña, the person of steady wisdom, as one who sees a learned Brahmin, a cow, an elephant, and an outcaste with equal vision (samadarśinaḥ) — not because differences don't exist, but because the wise have trained themselves to see past their own conditioned reactions to something steadier underneath.

Listen Fully Before Judging

The Tirukkuṟaḷ repeatedly counsels listening and reflection before forming conclusions, treating hasty certainty as a moral failing, not merely an intellectual one.

Test Your View Against the Most Vulnerable Perspective

Where the earlier traditions train perception, Gandhi's talisman gives a concrete practice for testing any resolution once perceptions are in genuine conflict:

Recall the face of the poorest and the most helpless man you may have seen, and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny?

— M. K. Gandhi

Used alongside antyodaya (upliftment of the last person) and sarvodaya (welfare of all), this converts an abstract willingness to admit one's own bias into a concrete, repeatable test — and reframes resolution around the good of the whole rather than the victory of one perspective over another.

A Corollary: Resolving Political Bias at Scale

Because political and ideological naive realism affects societies and nations rather than only individuals, the antidote at this scale cannot rest on personal humility alone — it needs a shared standard that competing sides, and those in power, can be held to. The same three principles offer exactly that.

—   Antyodaya — upliftment of the last person — Any law, policy, or resolution can be tested by its effect on the person furthest from power, not on the majority or the loudest constituency. A leader's untreated bias is easiest to see, and easiest to correct, when the question asked is not “does my side benefit” but “what happens to the last person in the queue.”

—   Sarvodaya — welfare of all — A resolution that benefits the majority at real cost to a minority is not yet resolved. Applied to political conflict, sarvodaya insists that no group's welfare be treated as expendable for another's gain — an explicit check against the naive-realist habit of mistaking one's own side's good for the common good.

—   Bahujana hitāya, bahujana sukhāya — the good and happiness of the many — Public action should aim at reducing suffering and increasing well-being for the many, especially those least equipped to bear a bad decision. Where naive realism convinces each faction that it alone represents the public interest, bahujana hitāya, bahujana sukhāya reorients the test toward an outcome that can actually be measured in the welfare of the many, rather than argued about in the certainty of one side.

Together, these give political disagreement a shared external measure — the condition of the most vulnerable, the absence of anyone sacrificed for others' gain, the measurable welfare of the many — that does not depend on either side first admitting it was wrong. That is precisely what makes them usable where personal humility, however well-intentioned, is unlikely to be enough on its own.

In Practice

Western thought (Kant, Nietzsche, Ross) diagnoses why naive realism is structurally inevitable — cognition itself filters what we take to be direct sight. Eastern and Gandhian thought supply the practice: hold your own view more lightly, actively seek out the other's partial truth, train equanimity so you are less defended when your view is challenged, and test any resolution against its effect on those with the least power in it. The clip that opened this note asks, half-jokingly, why everyone else seems to be the idiot. The traditions gathered here answer, gently, that the question is better turned around.

The Visiting Relative or Friend

Sociological Perspectives on the Dilemmas of Hosting

Foreword

I have long believed that the visit of a relative or friend — however loved, however anticipated — is sustainable only within a bounded span. Both host and visitor tend, for the duration of a stay, to inhabit an idealised version of themselves: the host as endlessly generous and unhurried, the visitor as endlessly gracious and undemanding. These are performances worth giving, and worth receiving. But they are performances, and like all performances they carry a cost that accumulates with time. A visit planned to a length and rhythm that respects this — rather than one stretched by sentiment or obligation past what either party can comfortably sustain — is, I have believed, the difference between a visit remembered with warmth and one endured out of duty. I needed support of research and studies and took help of trusted Assistant.

The literature reviewed here corroborates this more precisely than I had expected. Hosts, across the studies surveyed, describe an obligation to "host very well" that persists even against their own financial or physical strain — a description of exactly the idealised role I have in mind, and of its cost. The elevated psychological stress reported by hosts of kin, as against hosts of strangers, points to the same mechanism: kinship raises the price of the performance because the relationship cannot simply absorb a lapse in it. And the finding that hosting is increasingly narrated through the expectation of sustained affective warmth — not merely food and shelter — is the clearest evidence that what is being asked of both parties is a role, not only a set of tasks, and that roles of this kind are inherently time-limited. What I had taken as a practical instinct about the length and shape of a visit turns out to be a fairly direct description of how the sociology characterises the hospitality performance itself.

1. Framing the Inquiry

Hosting a visiting relative or friend (VRF) — a parent, an elder, a peer, or a younger family member — is often treated as a purely logistical or affectionate matter: rooms to prepare, meals to plan, time to give. But a body of sociological and hospitality research treats the visit itself as a small, dense social institution, governed by obligations that predate any individual relationship and that both host and visitor carry into the encounter largely without naming them. This note draws on that literature — hospitality theory from anthropology and philosophy, and empirical studies of visiting-relatives travel from tourism and migration sociology — to lay out the structure of the dilemma shared by host and visitor alike, and how it shifts by the visitor's place in the family generation.

2. The Ancient Paradox: Hospitality and Hostility Share a Root

The philologist Émile Benveniste traced "host," "guest," "stranger," and "enemy" to shared roots across the Indo-European languages: welcome and threat were never fully separate categories, but two possible outcomes of the same encounter. Jacques Derrida built his philosophy of hospitality on this ambiguity, coining the term "hostipitality" to capture how the two conditions are never fully disentangled — one can shade into the other within a single visit. For Derrida, true ethical hospitality is inescapably a matter of discernment: a host who opens the door unconditionally accepts real risk, while a host who screens and conditions the welcome has already compromised the ideal. Neither position is comfortable, and most real hosting lives in the tension between them rather than resolving it.

This is a useful corrective to the sentimental view of family hosting. The obligation to receive a visiting relative warmly is real, but so is the host's need to discriminate — to decide what kind of welcome is sustainable, and for how long — and that discrimination is not a failure of hospitality but a precondition for it.

3. The Reciprocity Engine Beneath the Visit

Marcel Mauss's classical study of gift economies identified four linked obligations that structure hospitality across traditional societies: the obligation to give, the obligation to invite, the obligation to receive, and the obligation to reciprocate. A visit by a relative or friend activates all four at once — the visitor is, in effect, both a gift being given (of presence, of relationship) and a claim on future reciprocity. Failure at any one point in this cycle — a host who cannot give generously, a visitor who cannot reciprocate, either side declining the invitation or the reception — does not merely cause disappointment; in Mauss's framework it unsettles the standing of both parties within the relationship.

This is the deep structure beneath what feels, on the surface, like ordinary family friction over a visit: a sense that something is "owed," that a stay was too short or too long, that gifts were mismatched, or that a welcome felt thinner than expected. These are not personality frictions so much as the reciprocity ledger becoming visible.

4. What Empirical Research Shows

Where hospitality theory supplies the structure, empirical studies of Visiting-Friends-and-Relatives (VFR) travel — a well-established stream within tourism and migration sociology — supply the lived detail. Read across studies conducted in Western host societies among diaspora and immigrant communities, and set alongside broader hospitality-sector research, several consistent findings emerge. They are presented here in generalised form, since the underlying dynamic recurs across cultural settings rather than belonging to any one of them.

4.1 The Host's Obligation Frequently Overrides the Host's Capacity

Across multiple studies, hosts describe hosting as a moral obligation that persists even when it is a genuine financial or logistical strain — driven less by simple reciprocity calculation than by a desire to preserve standing, avoid shame, and honour tradition. This runs counter to what a simple cost-benefit model of social exchange would predict: hosts routinely over-extend themselves rather than decline or scale back a visit, because the visit is bound up with identity and face, not just resources.

4.2 Host and Visitor Rarely Define "Hospitality" the Same Way

A recurring finding is that hosts and visiting relatives carry different, unstated mental models of what the visit requires — how much should be planned versus left open, how much of the host's ordinary life should be paused, how directly needs should be voiced. These mismatched expectations generate what researchers describe as "unreal" demands each side places on the other, and produce a documented asymmetry of shame: hosts feel it when they cannot provide as much as they believe is expected of them; visitors feel it when they sense they are a burden, often to the point of being reluctant to ask for what they actually need.

4.3 The Relationship Outlasts the Visit

Studies of immigrant host families and their visiting relatives consistently frame hosting not as a bounded, evaluable event but as one instalment in an ongoing relation of mutual care that binds generations together across distance. This reframes the pressure to make each visit "go well": the stakes are not really about the seven or fourteen days in question, but about what the visit signals for the durability of the wider relationship.

4.4 Kinship Raises the Stakes Rather Than Lowering Them

Because a visiting relative already has a claim on the host through kinship, hosts report elevated psychological stress compared with hosting a stranger or acquaintance — precisely because the relationship cannot absorb a poor outcome the way a transactional one can. A dissatisfied stranger is simply lost; a dissatisfied relative remains, carrying the disappointment forward. Notably, this same research finds that for elderly parents in particular, and especially where family size has contracted, these visits carry disproportionate weight for the parent's emotional wellbeing — raising the cost of any friction well above what the visit's practical content would suggest.

4.5 The Expectation of Warmth Can Itself Become a Burden

Research on hosting under even more intensive conditions finds that private hospitality tends to be narrated through the language of love and family-likeness — which generates an expectation of genuine affective connection between host and visitor, over and above the provision of food and shelter. The parallel for ordinary family hosting is direct: the logistics of hosting a visiting relative are rarely the hardest part; the harder part is the unspoken expectation that the visit also produce warmth, closeness, or reconciliation on demand.

5. How the Dilemma Shifts by Relationship

The literature does not typically disaggregate its findings by generational role, but the mechanisms above combine differently depending on who is visiting whom. Three patterns are worth naming explicitly.

5.1 Elders and Parents as Visiting Relatives

The dilemma: obligation runs steepest here, reciprocity is understood as asymmetric by design (elders are not expected to "pay back" hosting the way peers are), and the finite-time premium — the awareness that opportunities to host a parent are numerically limited — intensifies the emotional stakes of even minor friction. The host's dilemma is less "can I afford this" and more "will I regret how I handled this." The visiting elder's dilemma is often the mirror image: reluctance to ask for accommodation, comfort, or attention for fear of being seen as a burden on children already stretched thin.

5.2 Peers as Visiting Relatives

The dilemma: this case sits closest to classical social-exchange theory — reciprocity is more explicit, more nearly bidirectional, and easier to negotiate through direct conversation ("stay with us next time you're in town"). Face-saving pressure is present but lower, and both sides typically tolerate more improvisation. The main risk here is drift into a transactional accounting of who hosted whom last, which can quietly corrode a relationship that was never meant to be tallied.

5.3 Younger Relatives as Visiting Relatives

The dilemma: the obligation vector partly inverts. The older host often feels obliged to give — wisdom, blessing, material support, an unhurried welcome — more than to receive service or deference from the younger visitor. Disappointment on the host's side more often centres on a perceived erosion of expected reciprocal respect or attentiveness; disappointment on the younger visitor's side more often centres on feeling over-managed, over-advised, or insufficiently met as an adult in their own right.

6. An Eastern Frame for the Same Structure

Indian tradition supplies its own, older articulation of this same paradox. Atithi Devo Bhava — "the guest is akin to God" — sets out an ideal of unconditional welcome strikingly close to what Derrida called unconditional hospitality: a welcome that precedes any assessment of the visitor's worth or any expectation of return. What the Western hospitality literature adds is the empirical honesty about how rarely that ideal survives contact with logistics, fatigue, and competing obligations — and about the reciprocity ledger (Mauss's obligations) that keeps running quietly underneath even the most generously intentioned welcome.

Read together, the Eastern and Western material are not in tension so much as addressing two ends of the same phenomenon: the aspiration on one side, and the mechanics of what actually happens under strain on the other. A family culture that only teaches the aspiration — host every visitor as if divine — without naming the mechanics beneath it leaves both hosts and visiting relatives without language for their own fatigue, resentment, or reluctance, and without permission to name it.

7. Synthesis: The Gap Is the Substance

The most useful single idea to carry forward from this literature is that the dilemma of hosting is not a defect to be engineered away — it is structural, and it is shared. The host's dilemma is the pull between the obligation to give generously and the reality of finite time, space, and energy. The visiting relative's dilemma is the pull between the wish to be fully received and the reluctance to be a burden. Both dilemmas are amplified, not caused, by love — because the relationship has too much history and too much future for either side to treat a single visit lightly.

The value of naming this explicitly, in a family, is that it converts an unspoken and often guilt-laden tension into a shared vocabulary — obligation, reciprocity, face, the asymmetry of shame, the burden of expected warmth — that hosts and visiting relatives across generations can use to negotiate real visits with less silent resentment on either side.

References

Benveniste, É. (1969/1973). Le Vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes [Indo-European Language and Society]. On the shared etymology of "host," "guest," "stranger," and "enemy."

Derrida, J. (1997–2000). Of Hospitality; Hospitality, Justice and Responsibility. On conditional and unconditional hospitality, and "hostipitality."

Mauss, M. (1923–24/1990). The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. On the four obligations of gift exchange: to give, to invite, to receive, to reciprocate.

Pitt-Rivers, J. (1968). "The Stranger, the Guest and the Hostile Host," in Contributions to Mediterranean Sociology.

Capistrano, R. C., & Weaver, A. (2017). "Host-guest interactions between first-generation immigrants and their visiting relatives: social exchange, relations of care and travel." International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, 11(3).

Wang, X., Cave, J., & Simpson, M. (2025). "Interdependencies in Visiting Relatives Travel: Uncovering the Nature, Meanings, and Dynamics of Host–Guest Interactions." Tourism-related journal (SAGE).

Studies of the socio-cultural impacts of Visiting Friends and Relatives (VFR) travel, on differing host/visitor expectations of hospitality and reciprocity, and the asymmetry of shame between hosts and visitors.

Studies on hospitality and hostility in intimate hosting relationships, on the affective expectations generated by hosting narrated through the language of family and love.

Developing Self To Develop Others: Journey And Tool

The Need

For a while now I have noticed a pattern: I offer development suggestions — to younger family members, to colleagues — with genuine care and, I believe, genuine relevance. And often, nothing happens. Not resistance, not disagreement. Just silence. My first instinct was to treat this as their shortcoming — a lack of receptivity. On reflection, I decided to treat it as mine: an area of my own development, worth understanding properly rather than working around.

I needed to develop the competency. A younger one drew my attention to a tool to help myself developing the competency which turned out to be a digital development companion — an AI-enabled tool built specifically to support a person's own growth journey, conversationally and at their own pace.

The Tool

It doesn't hand out generic advice; it works through a structured process: helping you name a specific competency worth developing, walking through an honest self-assessment of where you actually stand on it, curating resources — free and paid — to build the underlying knowledge, and helping translate that into a concrete, personalised plan tied to real people and real dates.

Two things about it stood out enough to shape how I engaged with it. First, it was consistently honest rather than agreeable — when I rated myself harshly, it asked for evidence rather than accepting or flattering the self-judgment. Second, it kept the choices mine throughout: what to focus on, which resources to read, whether to save a plan, adjust it, or set it aside.

I used it to work through a real, long-standing question of my own, and the reflection below is what came out of that process.

That tool sent me to two pieces of research I had long known of by reputation but not read closely with this specific problem in mind.

Two ideas that reframed the problem

Reading one — Carol Dweck, on how belief in one's ability to improve actually shifts

Dweck's growth-mindset research makes a point that is easy to state and much harder to act on: telling someone they have a fixed mindset rarely changes it. What actually shifts someone's orientation toward their own growth is a felt experience of improving — not an instruction, not even a well-argued case. People come to believe they can grow by experiencing what growth feels like, not by being told it's possible.

Reading two — Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan), on what actually motivates people to act

SDT names three needs that have to be met before a person genuinely invests in their own development: autonomy (the sense that the choice is theirs), competence (the sense that they are capable of it), and relatedness (the sense that someone is with them in it, not above them). Suggestions offered without attention to these three tend to be received as pressure — and pressure is something people quietly resist, even when they don't say so.

Read together, the two pieces point at the same gap from different directions. Dweck explains why telling doesn't work — the idea has to be felt, not delivered. SDT explains why: unless a suggestion respects someone's autonomy and sense of competence, it doesn't matter how sound it is, it won't be taken up as theirs.

What this clarified about my own problem

Unprompted input, however well-intentioned, cannot help someone if it arrives without first understanding their mindset and what actually motivates them.

That is the honest reframe. I have, for years, been generous with what I know — sharing it in writing, in notes, in links to material I thought would help. What I had not been doing consistently was finding out, before offering it, where the other person actually stood: whether they saw themselves as capable of the change, whether the suggestion felt like theirs or like mine, whether I understood what genuinely moved them.

This is not a failure of intention or of years of experience — both were always sound. It is a gap in method: offering the “what” without first doing the work of understanding the “who.”

What changes from here

●       Ask before I offer. Before suggesting a development step, understand what the person already believes about their own capacity to change, and what actually drives them — not what I assume drives them.

●       Create the experience, not just the argument. Where possible, let the person discover the value of an idea through a conversation or a small experiment, rather than receiving it fully formed from me.

●       Protect their ownership of it. Frame suggestions in terms of the other person's own goals, and let the idea become theirs to act on — not mine to have delivered.

●       Test this with real conversations, not just reflection. Understanding this is a start; the real evidence will be in whether the next few development conversations actually land differently.

Two short readings, one honest look at a long-standing habit, and a clearer sense of what to try differently next.

MAJJANI LIFE

Why your parents/ children keep quietly checking if you're okay — and what the research says about it

When I woke up, without opening eyes, the first thought was of ‘majjani life’, as Munna described in his MBBS version, to the Bawa, father of a Doctor. And the question, as usual came up. ‘What do studies say, as this applies to aging parents and as a corollary to growing children?’.

I went to my man Friday, the Jeeves, (I am denigrating self to Archie's dumbness as PG Woodhouse described).

And Claude asked me ‘Up late, Atul?’ Then I realized it was a bit too early. I initiated the conversation with him all the same, “Just woke up and as usual started finding meanings. I understand 'all generalizations are wrong, including this one'. I believe for aging parents who have legitimately lost direct control over the life of children/ family members of subsequent generations, and sometimes even on their own, 'majjani life', as referred in Parasi tongue, is when they find the life of the children is smooth, without hurdles, peaceful, harmonious, full of love and affection, cooperation and collaboration, and improving by the day. They would be surreptitiously looking for confirmation that children are happy, without even routine misunderstandings with cohabitants and enjoying life. I am aware not all parents would be equally affected.  Are there studies to substantiate these observations and conclusions?”

Claude drafted a note based on findings of research around the topic, on my behalf, addressed to readers, of course younger ones mainly.

“You know the moment. A call that starts with “just checking in” but is really a scan. A question about your week that's really a question about whether you're happy. A pause after you laugh a little too easily, like they're filing it away as evidence. It's not that they want you dependent on them. It's the opposite — they've lost the ability to fix things for you directly, and the not-knowing is the hard part.

Not every parent does this to the same degree — some are far more relaxed than others. But the underlying pattern shows up again and again in research on aging and family life, under names like “intergenerational ambivalence,” “filial anxiety,” and “linked lives.” Here's what's actually been found.

1. They worry more when things are good between you, not less

This one surprises people. You'd think a close, warm relationship would put a parent's mind at ease. Research on daily worry patterns found the opposite: parents worry more, not less, in relationships that are closer and more positive.

Hay, Fingerman & Lefkowitz, cited in research on parent–adult child relationships (2007)

The read: the more invested a parent is in your life, the more they have riding on it going well — so the antenna stays up even when there's nothing wrong. Their attention is the tax on their love, not a sign of distrust.

2. Your bad days measurably land in their body

A study tracking parents' daily stress hormone (cortisol) alongside their contact with adult children found that hearing about a rough patch in your life — a breakup, a job problem, any kind of trouble — showed up in their physiology, not just their mood.

Birditt et al., cited in “Daily Interactions with Aging Parents and Adult Children: Associations with Negative Affect and Diurnal Cortisol”

So when they ask “how are you, really?” one more time than feels necessary, it's not nosiness. Your stress is, in a small but literal way, their stress too.

3. Daily mood studies confirm the pattern directly

A study following midlife and older adults for a week found that on the specific days they worried about their adult child, they reported measurably more negative mood than on days they didn't — tracked in real time, not recalled afterward.

Cichy & Koumoutzis, “The Costs of Concern: Health Implications of Worries about Aging Parents and Adult Children” (2021)

Their day-to-day emotional weather is, to a real extent, downstream of yours.

4. It's not really about control — it's about the loss of it

Researchers describe adult children's transition to independence as the point where a parent's caregiving role structurally changes — they can no longer directly manage your outcomes, but they remain deeply tied to them.

Life-course research on “linked lives” and intergenerational relationships

The surreptitious checking-in, the reading between the lines of a two-word text — that's what care looks like when the hands-on version isn't available anymore. It's not a character trait. It's what's left of the job.

5. Even a positive relationship carries a current of unease

Qualitative interviews with adult children about their aging parents surfaced a mix of both closeness and low-grade worry existing side by side, even in relationships people described as good ones — concern about a parent's independence sitting right next to real affection.

Research on adult children's relationships with aging parents and perceptions of successful aging (2018)

Worth knowing: this cuts both ways. If you find yourself doing the same quiet scanning about them, that's the same wiring — not something's wrong with you either.

Addendum — the worry runs both directions

Everything above is about parents watching you. But there's an equally well-documented mirror version: adult children carry a rising, specific anxiety about their aging parents as the years go on. Researchers call it “filial anxiety” — worry driven less by a present crisis than by the awareness that health problems, decline, and eventually loss are somewhere ahead, along with the question of who will provide care when the time comes.

Cicirelli, foundational work on filial anxiety (1988), cited in later cortisol and daily-interaction research

So the quiet scanning goes both ways across the generations — parents checking whether your life is majjani, and you, increasingly, checking whether theirs still is. Same instinct, running in opposite directions, meeting somewhere in the middle of every family phone call.”

A word all of this earns, more than any theory does: the checking-in is not a lack of trust in you. It's the residue of love that no longer has anywhere direct to land.

A PORTRAIT OF MY SISTER - In Her Own Light

There are people who love us, and then there are people who make of their love a kind of shelter — one you can stand beneath in any weather and never once feel the rain. My sister has always been of this second, rarer kind. Her kindness toward me was never occasional or convenient; it was the ground she stood on, steady and unbroken, the quiet climate of every room she entered. I do not remember a version of her that was not, in some essential way, turned toward my good.

In her eyes I was, for as long as I can recall, something more than a brother. I was cast — gently, insistently, without my ever asking for the role — as a kind of hero. Not the hero of grand gestures or public triumphs, but the quieter sort: the one she trusted to be equal to whatever the day required. There is a particular tenderness in being seen this way by someone who has known you since childhood, who watched you stumble as often as you stood, and chose anyway to believe in the better version of you. Her faith was not naive; it was simply generous, and it asked nothing of me except to keep trying to deserve it.

Her affection came without conditions attached, without ledgers kept. It was not offered in exchange for anything, and it did not withdraw when I fell short of it. This is the meaning, I think, of love that is truly unfettered — love that has released itself from the ordinary human habit of counting what it is owed. Hers moved toward me the way light moves into a room: not asking permission, not expecting thanks, simply present because that was its nature.

And because that love ran so deep, her trust ran deeper still. When trouble found her — as it finds everyone — she turned to me first, and often only to me, certain in some unshakeable part of herself that I would know what to do. It was not that she doubted her own capability; it was that she had decided, long ago, that I was a kind of safe harbor, a place where her problems could be set down and made lighter simply by the act of sharing them. To be relied upon so completely is its own quiet honor, even when the weight of it is real.

Beneath all of this — the loyalty, the reverence, the boundless giving — was simply a kind heart, in the plainest and most old-fashioned sense of that phrase. She felt for others before she felt for herself. She noticed suffering before it announced itself and moved to ease it before being asked. It is easy, in a life, to be kind occasionally; it is much harder to be kind as a matter of character, in the small unwitnessed moments as much as the large visible ones. My sister managed this without apparent effort, as though gentleness were simply the shape her soul had taken.

If I try now to draw her whole, what emerges is not a list of virtues but a single, coherent light: a woman who loved without condition, who believed in me perhaps more than I ever earned, and who gave of herself so freely that I have spent years since trying to understand how a heart holds so much and empties so little. That, I have come to think, is simply who she is — and I count myself fortunate beyond measure to have been the one she loved that way.

Deliberate and Systematic Self-improvement, Practiced Together

An invitation — no pressure to decide today.

Why this approach

Growth doesn't stop just because life is stable. Left alone, most of us plateau — not from failure, but from comfort, and comfort quietly becomes a ceiling. Continuous improvement isn't about fixing something broken; it's a way of staying alive to your own potential, deliberately, instead of drifting.

If you've ever thought "I'm doing fine, but I know I could be more disciplined / more patient / more present / more skilled" — and then let that thought fade by the following week — this is built for exactly that pattern.

What makes this different from "just deciding to improve"

Most of us have tried the New Year's resolution version of this — high motivation, no structure, quietly abandoned by week three. This isn't that. It's built on two things that actually sustain change over time:

·        A system, not willpower. Motivation fades; a tracked, structured process doesn't need to be felt to keep working.

·        People, not solo effort. A small group creates accountability you can't easily give yourself, and lets you see other people's real, unfiltered progress — not the cleaned-up "success story" version.

What it actually involves

·        A shared 5-phase framework: self-diagnosis → designing your system → living it → consolidating what sticks → (eventually, optionally) helping someone else walk the same path.

·        You choose your own area of focus — discipline, relationships, health, patience, whatever matters to you. The framework and rhythm are shared; the goal is personal.

·        A 90-day first cycle. Short enough to commit to without dread, long enough to see if something real is changing.

·        Weekly check-ins, 30–45 minutes, small group.

·        Facilitation rotates each cycle — this isn't led by one person "ahead" of everyone else. Everyone's a participant.

A few honest things, upfront

·        Regression is expected. Backsliding isn't failure here — it's normal and part of the process. No one's tracking a perfect streak.

·        This takes real commitment, not a lot of willpower. Showing up weekly matters more than being impressive in any given week.

·        You don't need experience with self-development frameworks, journaling, or anything like that. You need honesty about where you are and a willingness to be seen mid-process, not just at the end.

If you're on the fence

That's completely fair — this is a real commitment, not a casual chat group. You're welcome to join the kickoff session as an observer first, hear how the group is thinking about it, and decide after that whether to commit to the 90-day cycle. No obligation either way.

Next step

Show your willingness to give yourself a chance to ‘continuously improve’ and join groups, in comments. We will create groups of individuals who know each other, want to help each other and make life more fulfilled, and get together to kickoff joint effort.

Two Hours: Twice

A young man I know spent two hours one evening lost in a side project — building something, fully absorbed, looking up startled when his phone buzzed because he'd forgotten it existed. The next evening, he spent two hours scrolling, and looked up just as startled — but this time, faintly worse than before he'd started. Same duration. Opposite aftertaste. He mentioned it to me almost as an aside, not realizing it was the more interesting part of his story.

I've lived both kinds of two hours myself, just with different tools — absorption in a piece of writing once, hollow distraction in idle television another time.

The feeling afterward is the tell: one kind of immersion leaves something behind; the other leaves only the time gone. Most people don't separate the two — both get filed simply as "I spent two hours on X."

What's missed is a real gap: not knowing how to recognize, on purpose, which conditions produce the first kind of two hours rather than the second. Left unexamined, the more depleting kind quietly becomes the default, because it requires no setup and gives an easy, low-grade hit regardless. 

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent much of his research career on exactly this distinction popularized in his foundational text, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.  Optimal experience, is the scientific term for what we colloquially call being "in the zone" or achieving flow. 

Flow depends on clear goals, a fitting challenge, and real feedback as you go; its absence is what scrolling reliably offers instead.

Optimal experiences are the primary engine behind personal growth. When you choose to invest your limited psychic energy (attention) into a challenging task, you actively train your brain to be more orderly and resilient. Every time you emerge from an optimal experience, you become a more complex individual with increased skills, higher self-esteem, and a greater capacity for joy.

The tool worth trying: once a day, name in advance one block of time meant for something with a goal, a slight challenge, and a way to tell if you're getting better at it. Not the whole day — one block.

The young man I mentioned, may not have noticed the asymmetry himself yet. But the two hours that left something behind are the ones worth protecting.

If this resonates: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience is the original, full account — dense in places, but the early chapters on the conditions for flow are very practical.

Length and Strength of Our Relations

❧

A note for the younger ones

❧

WHY I FEEL I CAN SAY THIS WITH SOME CERTAINTY

What I am about to share is not borrowed opinion or something I read once and found appealing. It comes from having lived long enough to watch relationships play out across decades — my own, and those of many others who have walked this road. We have seen relations begin, deepen, strain, break, mend, and in some cases quietly fade. When one lives long enough, patterns become visible that are invisible to someone in the middle of their twenties or thirties or for some even in their forties. That is the only authority I claim here — not expertise, but time served, and eyes kept open through it.

RELATIONS ARE GIVEN OR CHOSEN — BUT BOTH ARE MEANT TO BE KEPT

Some relations come to us by birth — parents, siblings, cousins. Others we choose — friends, spouses, the family we build around ourselves. The two are different in origin, but I would not want you to conclude that either can simply be let go. My own softer, and I believe truer, view is this: the strength of a relation may rise and fall over the years, but desire to maintain the same till last must not weaken.

With relations by birth, some distance or friction is only human. Not everyone in a family sees the world the same way, and not every bond will feel equally warm at every stage of life. That weakness can be understood — even expected — but it should never be promoted. We should not tell ourselves a story that makes it easier to walk away from a brother, a parent, a cousin. Blood did not ask our permission, and I don't believe we should ask its permission to end it either. Where warmth has faded, the door should still be left open.

With relations by choice, the standard I would hold everyone to is higher still. A friend, a spouse, a chosen family member entered our life because we let them in — nobody forced that door open. Precisely because it was our choosing, I believe it deserves to be maintained at almost any cost. It is easier to justify walking away from something we didn't choose than from something we did. So hold the relations we chose most carefully of all.

In both cases, the work is not a one-time declaration of love or loyalty; it is small, repeated acts of nurturing, nourishing, strengthening, and maintaining — the way a garden is tended, not once, but again and again, season after season. A relationship left alone does not stay the same. It does not merely pause — it quietly erodes, even if it never technically ends. This is true of a marriage, a friendship, and of the bond between a parent and a grown child, or between cousins who once shared a childhood and now share only a WhatsApp group.

WHAT EXPERIENCE TEACHES — AND WHAT RESEARCH CONFIRMS

Over the years, I — and I suspect most of us who have lived long — have been on every side of this. We have caused strain we didn't intend. We have absorbed strain we didn't deserve. We have faced situations that could have broken a relationship and somehow didn't; others where a small thing, left unattended, grew into a permanent distance. We have both damaged and repaired. We have both been forgiven and had to forgive.

It turns out this lived experience lines up closely with what relationship researchers have found. The psychologist John Gottman spent decades studying couples — watching how they argued, not just whether they argued — and could predict with striking accuracy which relationships would last and which would not. He found four behaviors that corrode a relationship over time if left unchecked: harsh criticism of the person rather than the issue, contempt (mockery, eye-rolling, superiority), defensiveness, and stonewalling — simply shutting down and withdrawing. He also found that the relationships that lasted weren't the ones without conflict — they were the ones where positive moments (affection, appreciation, humor, small kindnesses) outnumbered the negative ones by a wide margin, and where relatives kept a store of fondness and admiration they could draw on when times were hard.

What made the difference between people who fell into those corrosive patterns and people who didn't? Emotional intelligence — the capacity to notice what we are feeling, notice what the other person is feeling, and choose our response rather than simply react. This is the thread that connects a lifetime of family experience to serious research: the relationships that lasted were not the ones between people who never got hurt or never made mistakes. They were the ones between people who stayed emotionally aware enough to catch themselves, repair quickly, and keep choosing the relationship even in its harder seasons.

KNOWING OUR OWN PATTERN — AND STAYING WATCHFUL OF OTHERS'

There is another piece of this that took me years to understand, and that comes from what is called attachment theory. It suggests that very early in life — long before we have any memory of it — each of us develops a kind of template for how to be close to another person. Broadly, people tend to fall into one of a few patterns: some grow up secure, comfortable with both closeness and independence; some become anxious, craving closeness and fearing it will be taken away; some become avoidant, valuing independence to the point of keeping others at arm's length; and some become a mix of both — wanting closeness while distrusting it.

I share this not so we can diagnose ourself or anyone else, but so we stay watchful — of our own patterns, and of the patterns in people we love. If we notice we tend to pull away when someone gets close, or panic when someone goes quiet on us, that is worth knowing about our self — not as a flaw, but as a starting pattern we were handed, which we are free to work with and soften over time. The same goes for watching the people around us with compassion rather than judgment: a parent who struggles to say “I love you” may not lack love, only the template for expressing it easily. A sibling who withdraws during conflict may not be indifferent, only overwhelmed.

This is where emotional intelligence becomes the tool that lets us work with whatever pattern we were given rather than be ruled by it. Awareness of our own pattern, and gentleness toward others', is what allows old wounds to be mended and new closeness to be built — no matter what template either of us started with.

HOW TO ACTUALLY BUILD EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE — BECAUSE IT CAN BE BUILT

Here is the most hopeful part of everything I have shared: none of this is fixed. The research on this is consistent — emotional intelligence is trainable at any age, not just something you either have or don't. It grows the way a muscle does — through repetition, not through reading about it once. A few ways that genuinely help:

❧    Reflect after emotional moments, not just during them. A few minutes of honest review — what did I feel, what did they feel, what did I actually do — builds self-awareness faster than trying to be aware in the heat of the moment.

❧    Practice receptive listening. Let the other person finish. Reflect back what you heard before responding. This single habit resolves more conflict than any clever argument.

❧    Watch and learn from others' emotional stories — in books, in conversation, in family history like this one. Empathy grows by witnessing, not just by instruction.

❧    Rehearse the hard conversations, even in your head, before you have them. Real practice, even imagined, builds the skill.

❧    Keep at it over months, not days. A weekend of good intentions rarely changes a pattern. Small, repeated practice does.

I want you to understand what is at stake in this, beyond any single relationship. A life well-tended in its relations is, in my experience, a fulfilled life — regardless of what else it contains. Wealth, achievement, and recognition fade in importance as the years go on; the people who stayed close to us, and the people we stayed close to, do not. If there is one skill I would want you to carry from this note, it is this: notice your feelings, notice theirs, and let that noticing guide what you do next. Everything else in a relationship — its length, its strength, its capacity to survive hard seasons — tends to follow from that one habit, practiced patiently, for a lifetime.

❧

The Comment I Skipped Past

A young colleague once showed me a piece of feedback she'd received — specific, useful, slightly uncomfortable to read. She'd skimmed it once, said "noted," and moved on to the next task within a minute. I asked her, gently, what she planned to do with it. She didn't have an answer. I have done the same — skimmed past a sharp comment because the praise three lines above it felt nicer to sit with.

The feeling, in both cases, is a small flinch — barely noticeable, gone in seconds, filed away as "feedback received."

What the flinch reveals is a quiet avoidance: a preference for feedback that is comfortable over feedback that is useful. Left unexamined, this gap doesn't just slow skill-building — it trains a person to seek comfort and call it confirmation, while the actual gap in their skill stays exactly where it was.

The tool worth naming comes from Anders Ericsson's research on deliberate practice: feedback only builds skill when it is specific and immediate — not "good job," but "this exact thing, this exact moment." The practice is to ask for that kind of feedback on purpose, once a week, on one piece of work, and to sit with it for longer than the minute it takes to feel the flinch.

My colleague, I later learned, went back and reread that comment properly. I don't know if it changed anything yet. But I suspect rereading it was the actual beginning.

If this resonates: Anders Ericsson's Peak lays out the deliberate practice research in accessible terms — the chapters on feedback specifically are worth the read.

Developmental Openness: The Meta-Competency Behind Continuous Improvement

"Nobody improves by defending what they already know."

Consulting is a profession built on learning. Every assignment, every client interaction, every proposal, every presentation, and every difficult conversation presents an opportunity to learn something new. Yet learning does not occur simply because experiences accumulate. It occurs only when we are willing to examine our assumptions, accept feedback, challenge our own thinking, and consciously adapt.

This capability may be called Developmental Openness—the willingness and ability to seek, receive, evaluate, and act upon ideas, observations, feedback, evidence, and experiences that can improve one's effectiveness, even when they challenge existing beliefs or habits.

Unlike technical expertise or domain knowledge, Developmental Openness is a meta-competency. It enables the development of every other competency.

Why it matters in consulting

Professional service firms do not manufacture products; they create value through knowledge, judgment, collaboration, and client relationships. Consequently, the quality of consulting depends not only on what consultants know today, but on how effectively they continue learning everyday.

Consultants who remain developmentally open are more likely to:

• learn faster from assignments;
• improve client relationships;
• collaborate effectively across teams;
• innovate and solve complex problems;
• adapt to changing client expectations;
• become trusted advisors rather than merely subject matter experts.

Organizations that cultivate this capability develop stronger institutional knowledge and improve continuously.

What research consistently tells us

Research from organizational psychology and management has produced remarkably consistent findings.

·        People generally believe they are more receptive to feedback than others perceive them to be.

·        As responsibility and authority increase, candid feedback often decreases—not because leaders no longer need it, but because fewer people are willing to provide it.

·        High-performing organizations are distinguished not by the absence of mistakes but by their ability to learn from them quickly.

·        Teams perform better when members feel psychologically safe to question assumptions, express concerns, and respectfully disagree.

·        Learning-oriented individuals consistently outperform those whose primary concern is protecting their image or appearing competent.

These findings have been replicated across industries, including consulting, engineering, healthcare, technology, and other knowledge-intensive organizations.

Our blind spots

Ironically, consultants are especially susceptible to several developmental blind spots.

·        Experience becomes certainty. Years of successful practice can unconsciously reduce curiosity.

·        Expert identity. Being recognised as an expert may make it uncomfortable to acknowledge gaps or seek help.

·        Defending instead of discovering. Feedback is sometimes interpreted as criticism rather than an opportunity to improve.

·        Time pressure. Delivery deadlines leave little time for reflection and learning.

·        Confirmation bias. We naturally notice information that supports our existing views while overlooking contradictory evidence.

·        Hierarchical silence. Junior colleagues may hesitate to challenge senior professionals, depriving the organization of valuable perspectives.

These are human tendencies, not individual weaknesses. Awareness is the first step toward overcoming them.

Continuous improvement requires more than good intentions

Most organizations genuinely encourage learning. However, there is a significant difference between expressing support for development and creating conditions that make development inevitable.

Wishful thinking sounds like:

• "Please be open to feedback."
• "Learning is everyone's responsibility."
• "Keep improving."

A developmental ecosystem asks:

• How is meaningful feedback obtained?
• How frequently do people reflect on their work?
• Are mistakes analysed without blame?
• Do managers coach or merely evaluate?
• Are improvements documented and shared?
• Is experimentation encouraged?
• Is learning recognised and rewarded?

Without such systems, continuous improvement remains an aspiration rather than an organisational capability.

Building a developmental ecosystem

An effective consulting organization deliberately creates mechanisms that make learning part of everyday work.

These include:

• regular developmental conversations;
• structured peer reviews;
• client feedback beyond project closure;
• after-action reviews following important assignments;
• mentoring and reverse mentoring;
• reflective learning journals;
• communities of practice;
• knowledge sharing sessions;
• coaching by managers;
• individual development plans linked to observed behaviours.

Development then becomes part of the way work is performed—not an activity separate from work.

A personal commitment

Each of us can ask ourselves:

• When was the last time I actively sought critical feedback?
• What belief have I changed during the past year?
• Whose perspectives do I routinely ignore?
• What recurring feedback have I not acted upon?
• How often do I help others learn from my own mistakes?

Our answers may reveal more about our future potential than our current expertise.

Closing thought

Knowledge creates competence.

Experience creates wisdom only when accompanied by reflection.

Feedback creates improvement only when accompanied by openness.

Developmental Openness is therefore not simply another competency. It is the foundation upon which all continuous improvement, professional excellence, and consulting effectiveness are built.

In consulting, the most valuable professionals are not those who know everything. They are those who never stop learning.

Equation is simple:

Continuous Improvement = Developmental Openness × Deliberate Practice × Reflection × Feedback × Application

As Developmental Openness tends to zero, Improvement stops.

Every Role Asks Something Different of Us

Imagine meeting the same person in four different situations.

In one, they are comforting a worried child.

In another, they are leading an important meeting.

Later, they are caring for an elderly parent.

Finally, they are helping neighbours during a community emergency.

Would you expect exactly the same behaviour in every situation?

Probably not.

The person is the same, but the role is different. And every role asks something different of them.

We All Wear Many Hats

Life is like a stage on which each of us performs many roles.

Some roles come to us by birth. Others come through choice, education, work, relationships or experience.

At different times in our lives, we may be:

• a child
• a student
• a friend
• a spouse
• a parent
• a grandparent
• a colleague
• a professional
• a manager
• a leader
• a mentor
• a citizen.

Each of these roles carries responsibilities.

And every responsibility quietly asks,

"Are you ready?"

Success Means Different Things in Different Roles

Think for a moment.

What makes someone a good parent?

·        Patience.

·        Love.

·        Listening.

·        Guidance.

Now think about a good project manager.

·        Planning.

·        Decision making.

·        Communication.

·        Organisation.

Now think about a trusted friend.

·        Empathy.

·        Honesty.

·        Reliability.

·        Presence.

Notice something interesting.

The definition of success changes with the role.

No single quality is enough for every situation.

Instead, every role calls upon a different combination of competencies.

Competencies Are Not Random

Sometimes at work people believe competencies are simply long lists created by HR departments or management experts.

While at home, in family, community ‘competencies’ are hardly talked about. Individuals are evaluated in terms of success as defined by others.

In reality, competencies arise from life itself. Whenever life gives us a new responsibility, it quietly asks us to grow.

When we become students, we learn how to study.

When we begin working, we learn how to contribute.

When we supervise others, we learn how to guide.

When we become parents, we learn patience in new ways.

When we become leaders, we learn to think beyond ourselves.

Life itself is the greatest teacher.

Competencies simply describe the capabilities that life asks us to develop along the journey.

Growth Is Not About Becoming Someone Else

Many people worry that self-development means changing who they are.

It does not.

The purpose of development is not to replace your personality.

It is to strengthen your ability to fulfil the responsibilities that matter to you.

A thoughtful person can become a better communicator.

A quiet person can become an excellent leader.

An energetic person can become more disciplined.

We remain ourselves while becoming better versions of ourselves.

Why Organising Competencies Helps

If every role asks for different competencies, one question naturally follows.

How do we make sense of so many competencies?

Should we simply memorise long lists?

Or is there a better way?

Just as a library arranges books into meaningful sections, competencies too can be organised into groups.

Some help us manage ourselves.

Some help us work effectively.

Some help us build relationships.

Some help us lead people.

Others help us perform specialised professional work.

Organising competencies does not make life more complicated.

It makes learning simpler.

Instead of wondering "Where do I begin", we begin to see a clear path.

A quite Conversation With Yourself

I suggest spend a few quiet moments thinking about these questions:

• Which roles are most important in my life today?
• Which new roles am I likely to take on in the next five to ten years?
• Which role do I find most challenging?
• What qualities do I think that role is asking me to develop?

There are no right or wrong answers.

The purpose of these questions is not to judge yourself, but to become more aware of the journey ahead.

The Building Blocks of a Good Life

I was delighted to receive a call from a younger one. He had read my post “Continuous Development – A Development Journey”. He pointed out that I had started with often repeated advices “develop yourself”, “build Competencies”, and “improve your skills”. He was being inquisitive and asked more clarity on “competencies”. He said knowledge, skills, abilities are familiar concepts. Where does competency fit in the development process? I thought it will help me clarify my own concepts. I dived deeper to find answers to the younger one’s questions and could arrive at the brief that follows.

Opening Reflection

Think of someone you genuinely admire.

It could be a parent, a teacher, a colleague, a leader, or even a friend.

What is it about that person that earns your respect?

Is it merely their intelligence? Their qualifications? Their wealth? Or is it something deeper—the way they think, the way they treat people, the way they keep their word, the way they respond to difficulties?

We admire people not only for what they know, but for who they have become.

What Makes a Person Effective?

Every day we play different roles.

At home we may be a son or daughter, a sibling, a spouse, a parent or a grandparent.

At work we may be a learner, a team member, a professional, a manager or a leader.

Beyond our homes and workplaces, we are neighbours, friends and members of society.

Each of these roles comes with responsibilities. Some responsibilities are simple; others are demanding. Yet one thing is common to them all.

To fulfil any responsibility well, we need certain qualities, abilities and habits.

These are called competencies.

What Is a Competency?

A competency is the ability to perform a responsibility effectively and consistently.

It is not just knowledge.

It is not merely a skill.

It is not simply a personality trait.

Rather, it is a combination of what we know, what we can do, how we think, what we value and how we behave.

For example, good communication is a competency. It requires listening with attention, expressing ideas clearly, respecting others and choosing appropriate words. Knowing the rules of communication alone does not make someone a good communicator. The competency is demonstrated through consistent behaviour.

Likewise, integrity is a competency. It is reflected not in what we claim to believe but in the choices we make when no one is watching.

Competencies are therefore visible through our actions.

The Good News

Many people believe that successful people are simply born different.

Experience suggests otherwise.

Most competencies are learned, practised and strengthened over time.

Just as our muscles become stronger through regular exercise, competencies become stronger through repeated practice, reflection and experience.

Every expert was once a beginner.

Every confident speaker once felt nervous.

Every respected leader once had to learn how to lead.

Growth is not reserved for a gifted few; it is available to anyone willing to learn.

A Journey, Not a Race

When people first hear the word "competency," they sometimes imagine a long list of qualities they must somehow master.

That is not the purpose.

Life itself teaches us what we need, one responsibility at a time.

As our responsibilities grow, new competencies become important.

A student needs competencies that help in learning.

A young professional needs competencies that help in building a career.

A manager needs competencies that help others succeed.

A parent needs competencies that strengthen a family.

The journey never really ends because life continues to present us with new opportunities and new responsibilities.

The goal is not perfection.

The goal is steady growth.

Becoming a little more capable today than we were yesterday is enough.

A Thought to Carry Forward

Every responsibility in life asks something of us.

Competencies are the qualities that enable us to fulfil those responsibilities with confidence, effectiveness and integrity.

The more we develop these qualities, the better prepared we become—not only for success, but also for service, relationships and a meaningful life.

Reflection

It will help if you pause for a few moments and ask yourself:

• Which roles in my life matter most to me today?
• What qualities do I admire most in people who perform those roles well?
• Which of those qualities would I like to strengthen in myself?

You do not need all the answers today.

The willingness to ask these questions is the first step in the journey of growth.

Continuous Development - A Development Journey

Today while looking at documents related to an exercise undertaken by colleagues, I wondered how often do younger ones hear advice like "develop yourself," "build competencies," "improve your skills" from elders at home and bosses at work and how would younger ones be reacting? My conclusion based on objective observations over last 60 years is that such advises repeated over time become background noise.

I consider it is necessary we understand the topic objectively in detail for our selfish interests.  

What are they really saying?

Imagine that your career is like growing a tree.

• Your knowledge is the roots.
• Your skills are the trunk and branches.
• Your attitude and character are the strength of the wood.
• Your results are the fruits.

People who have lived longer or worked longer have seen that those who keep strengthening these parts continue to grow, and those who stop growing often get left behind.

So, when an elder says, "Develop yourself," they are usually saying:

"Invest in yourself today so that tomorrow brings you more opportunities, confidence, and freedom."

Why should young people listen?

Not because elders are always right. They are not.

But because they have usually seen patterns repeat over many years.

For example, they have seen people who:

• kept learning and became leaders,
• communicated well and built strong relationships,
• managed money wisely and enjoyed greater security,
• ignored feedback and remained stuck, despite talent.

Experience cannot predict everything, but it often recognizes patterns before younger people can.

How can a young person know whether they need to improve?

A simple test is to ask:

1. Am I learning something new every few months?
2. Have I been able to impress people so they can rely on me?
3. Do I complete what I promise?
4. Do I receive the same feedback repeatedly?
5. Am I more capable today than I was a year ago?
6. If I lost my job tomorrow, would someone else gladly hire me?

If the answer to several of these is "No," then growth deserves attention.

Which areas matter most?

Almost every successful person keeps improving in these areas:

1. Character – honesty, responsibility, discipline.
2. Learning – acquiring new knowledge and skills.
3. Communication – listening, speaking, writing clearly.
4. Relationships – working well with others.
5. Problem solving – finding solutions instead of only identifying problems.
6. Self-management – managing time, emotions, health, and money.
7. Professional excellence – becoming really good at one's chosen work.

How much effort is enough?

You do not have to become perfect.

Just ask yourself:

"Am I becoming a little better every month?"

Small, steady improvements over several years create extraordinary results.

A thought worth remembering

A young person's greatest asset is time. An elder's greatest asset is experience.

When the energy of youth combines with the wisdom of experience, growth becomes much faster than either alone.

One saying captures this well:

"Your future is shaped less by what you know today and more by your willingness to keep learning tomorrow."

That is why thoughtful elders and good managers encourage development—not to criticize young people, but because they want them to build a life with greater capability, opportunity, and resilience.

And if you need help, I am here to help you design your development journey.

Family Discovery: Naming a Practice We Rarely Name

I had finished my morning round of calls with people in office back home and was waiting for call from young developer. There were messages, delayed responses to a forward written covering compilation of notes shared with members of extended ‘family’. And that was the trigger. Question that arose was ‘have presumed that each one of us has same definition of ‘family’?’ One question led to the other and responses collected results in to notes which I am sharing in installments, hoping you will read, form your views and share.

There’s a strange gap in how we talk about families. We have family therapy for when something is broken. We have family history for when we look backward. We have team-building for workplaces, borrowed wholesale from the language of productivity. But we don’t have a common word for the ongoing, unforced practice of a family simply understanding itself — not fixing anything, not archiving anything, just knowing who its members actually are, right now, in their own words.

I’ve started calling this practice family discovery. It is easier for me to say what is is not that to precisely say what it is.

What it isn’t

It isn’t therapy — you don’t need a problem to justify it. It isn’t genealogy — it’s not about the past for its own sake. And it isn’t a bonding exercise borrowed from a corporate offsite — it doesn’t need games or forced positivity. Family discovery is closer to something researchers call narrative identity — the idea, from psychologist Dan McAdams, that people (and by extension, families) become coherent to themselves by telling and hearing their own stories. Most families never do this deliberately. They accumulate shared history by accident, through proximity, and assume that living near each other is the same as knowing each other. It usually isn’t.

Why it matters more now, not less

Three quiet shifts make this harder than it used to be, and more necessary:

Geographic dispersion. Extended families used to share physical space by default — meals, porches, Sunday visits did the work of “discovery” without anyone naming it. That default is gone for most families now.

Generational stake. Sociologist Vern Bengtson’s long-running family studies found something counterintuitive: parents consistently overestimate how close and aligned they are with their children, while children underestimate it. Each generation has its own emotional incentive to believe a particular story about the family — which means nobody’s unprompted account of “how close we are” is fully reliable. You have to actually ask, and ask separately.

Family as construct, not consensus. Family therapist David Reiss proposed that every individual carries their own implicit “family paradigm” — an internal model of who belongs, what the family is for, what it owes its members. These paradigms are rarely identical inside the same family, and almost never spoken aloud. Two siblings can grow up in the same house holding quietly different definitions of what “family” even means.

Put together: closeness is often assumed rather than verified, and the assumption is usually wrong in both directions.

What it draws on

I don’t think family discovery needs to be invented from nothing — it’s closer to a synthesis of practices that already have real track records, even though nobody has bundled them under one name.

Family discovery borrows from all four: the listening posture of StoryCorps, the oral history project, the legacy intent of ethical wills, a centuries-old Jewish tradition, the ritual structure Gottman found effective, and the narrative coherence goal from family systems work — applied not after a crisis, and not only to elders, but as an ordinary, ongoing practice across every generation in the family.

What it actually looks like, in practice

Not a single deep conversation. Not a survey. Closer to:

•             One-on-one conversations, not group discussions — because people tell the truth differently when they’re not performing for an audience.

•             Questions that ask for stories, not opinions — “tell me about a time…” surfaces more real information than “do you feel close to the family?”

•             Letting each person define “family” in their own terms first, before assuming a shared definition exists.

•             Small, repeatable rituals rather than one grand gesture — a habit, not an event.

•             Treating what’s said as data to understand, not a problem to immediately solve.

An honest caveat

I want to be careful not to oversell this. “Family discovery” isn’t a proven field with a stack of longitudinal studies behind the name — I’m the one trying to give it a name, borrowing credibility from traditions that do have real evidence behind them. What I can say is that each of the underlying pieces — narrative identity, generational perception gaps, family paradigms, ritual over intensity — has decades of research behind it independently. Whether stitching them together into a single deliberate practice works as well as I suspect is something I intend to actually test, starting with my own family, before I claim more than that.

The next post in this series will get concrete: the actual practices — how to run a discovery conversation, a glossary for telling a real problem apart from a values statement or a wish, and the small rituals that seem to matter more than people expect.

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This is Post 1 in a series on family discovery — a practice, not (yet) a proven field. Written as part of an ongoing habit of sharing what I find and think worth testing.