SPEAKER_03 0:00

We started having conversations with people for half an hour. They're standing and chatting with me. But then there was one incident. I went to a place covered with trees and all. And I knocked at the door and the guy said and said, get out. And I said, I just want to have a chat with you. And he came in and he had a c in his hand, like a two-barrel. He started swearing at me and he said, You guys come here, take our jobs, take our money, take our women, get away. I said to him that, don't you think if I was that kind of a person, then I wouldn't be having a pen and paper in my hand and standing here and chatting with you. I think I was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

He holds a PhD in organizational behaviour. Today we went deep on one of the ideas he teaches, the hindsight trap, and why most people get stuck in it. Welcome, Dr. A. Joining us from Adelaide, Australia. All right, we are here. And uh so so so the audience can understand exactly um our position. Because you're in Australia, I mean, I'm in Harvard, Connecticut. So I I would I'm curious to know what's happening next side in an Australian side of our house today. You're on the other side of the ocean from me. Is anything fun happening this weekend?

SPEAKER_03 1:24

Well, thanks, thanks, Hasha, for having me here. Well, it's uh Easter long weekend. So I'm sure people are celebrating very close with their family. Um and I think it's quite dark right now because I think we are very close to changing the clock. Um so yeah, a lot happening, but in the background. So in the foreground, things remain quite calm at this time at 7 a.m. in the morning.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

7 a.m. So it's evening for me, or so it's a Friday evening for me, and it's a Saturday morning for you.

SPEAKER_03 1:58

I I feel I feel it's like it's such a big world, you know. One person at the other side of the planet and have two different such time zones that we don't even share the same date.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

You know what I had never experienced? Being that low, like further down on the equator. And kind of see, I think somebody was showing me that on that, like I guess on the the lower side of the equator, other side of the equator, is that like the water in the toilet spins the opposite direction?

SPEAKER_03 2:26

And if I don't know if you notice that I haven't I haven't been there, but there is there is a there is a park where you can actually see it. Ah and it's it's fun though. Um even if you go to like I left India in 2003, February, but um there is a Ganges River and there is a place where three different rivers meet, and all three rivers have different colors, and all three are coming from so many different directions that when they come together, you can see all three of them individually hitting each other right in the middle of the sea. So it's something like this, but they don't mix ever. But they're all the same part of the water. So imagine that even uh water is segregated by colour, if if I can identify like that. So it will be quite fascinating to see how it goes in different directions while being at the same place.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

So the for the audience probably gonna not know who you are, not know who I am, because we're both coming up, coming uh fresh to the scene here. But if we had to anchor them into a little bit of background, um could you could you explain like what you specialize in, like all you had invited to the world and who you've been a hero to um in your side in your stage of life right now?

SPEAKER_03 3:45

Yeah, of course. Um, I don't think so I specialize in anything. I think I would I would never specialize in anything because there's so much more to learn, although I understand that um you know I can't I can't be jack of all trades, I don't want to be jack of all trades. So to give a background, um the only thing I wanted to play in my life was to play cricket for India team, like most of the kids right now, even in India right now. However, some things are not meant to be. So I left India in 2003, February to go to Dublin to pursue my diploma in business studies and then bachelor's in uh management information system in um you know management accounting on the side. And I did a lot of different jobs there, starting from security job. I still remember 4th of May 2003 was my first job. And 7th of February 2003, I landed in Dublin. So that's how my life outside India started. And uh then I went to uh I worked first different jobs there, and I went to UK in 2005 till 2008. I pursued my uh master's in computer system software engineering there, and then I was at US um working on and off on H1B visa um with different companies, and then I joined a few companies in India, started my own company of e-publishing, and um, but it just didn't give me that fulfillment of appetite. I don't know what I was looking at or looking for. But there is a little bit of the backstory to this. Um, most of the people in my family, elders from my mother's side were either doctors or engineers. So they always used to write DR or ER in front of my name. So as a five-year-old kid, I still remember I was fascinated by the titles, and I always wanted to have one. So when in around 2011, 12, I didn't see the fulfillment happening, I applied for um PR for Australia. And um in six months or probably nine months, I got my PR, and then I started uh writing email to one of the senior lecturers here in the University of Adelaide. Um, and um his name is Dr. Peter Sandyford, and uh I wanted to ask him that I want you to be my supervisor for PhD, nobody else, because his research was in organizational behavior, and he was the way I read about him, um, although he's he's from Britain, but he was living in Australia. So after sending a lot of emails for a year or over a year continuously, he replied to one of the emails saying, Come. So um I was sitting at the dining table and I told my parents, hey, I'm going to Australia. And they said, Why are you joking around like this? Who want to go to Australia from India, you know, back in 2014, uh, 13, 14. So I just packed my bags and I went. Um, went to Delhi, took the flight, came here, talked to my supervisor, convinced him, and he said, You have to do another master's and then PhD. And then I switched on my phone and I saw so many missed calls from my mother. And I called her and I said, What's wrong? Said, You didn't come home, you didn't come for dinner. I said, I'm in Australia, I told you. He said, Show, show where you are in Australia. So I showed in Australia. She said, What are you doing there? When are you coming back? No. So he said, You went for one day. I said, Yes, I had to convince that person to supervise my thesis, you know, it was important. So I went back, backed up all my stuff, uh, closed the company, and came to Australia on the 24th or 25th of April in 2015, finally. And um, while my um M MBR uh Masters of Disease Research thing was going on, uh, admission was going on, but I didn't really have a job then. And I had $500 in my pocket, and it's not very cinematic, like not like saying, hey, you know how this is like a part of the cinema. No, only $500 in my pocket. After, and I was living in the King William Street in Adelaide or in Blue Ghana, it's a hostel, but it's not it's not there now, it's constructed into a different uh building now. And after one month, I had a deal with them and I said, Look, I don't want to live on the street, I still haven't found a job. My master is still pending, um, and I don't have money. So they said, No problem, can you work for us? And I said, Yeah, I can work for you. What do I have to do? He said, Only nine hours a week. You have to clean toilets, you have to make beds. And I said, Oh, okay. So you won't charge me rent? Said no. And he said, We will give you a bowl of rice as well at the end. So I said, That's fine. And in this calls and rule's here where you can buy at that time uh 90 cent uh 400 gram tin of chickpeas and red kidney beans and black-eyed peas and all those. So I used to do that, and then I did it for close to over six months, I think, if not a year. And then I got admission in masters, and uh my um supervisor said that would you want to teach uh as a tutor in my course? And I said, Yeah, yeah, why not? Why not? And I started having this on the side and earning money, and students were there, and then um I applied close to 360 jobs and got four interviews, and one didn't like me at all, and they said, Sorry, and then the other one was uh said, Come here, like let's work for us. It was modern home improvements, it was for our sales job. They liked me and they said, Okay, so we will give you training, you have to go out, you have to go on the roofs, and uh you have to inspect the roofs and all that. Um, and I said, I don't have driving license. So they said, Come on, you can't do that. I said, Okay, I'll go apply. I I have driven like since I was 18, so many years, and I failed my driving license test. And I thought, my god.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

You say you failed it?

SPEAKER_03 9:59

I failed it. I failed it. And first attempt, I ended up, I ended up um moving my car from a straight stationary position way too quickly, failed. Anyways, I went back to the company and I said, I failed my test. And they said, Well, you can't get a job. So I was just sitting there, not wanting to leave. So Matthew Giles, who is the who's still my friend now, he came in as a state manager there. And he said that uh, Anke, um, why don't you do door-knocking job till the time you get your driving license sorted? And I said, Fine, what do I need to do? That you go with the team, you will go to a particular area, they will drop you at the side of the road, and you have to go and knock every door. So you see if the roofs are in some kind of deterioration position, you knock and you try to help them explain that we want to come here for a quote and all those the things that happen in home from an industry. I liked it so much because that was the time when I could be myself and I could talk to Australians. Imagine that was the time I can understand the people there and why getting paid for it. Uh so I started doing a enjoying conversations at the door. We started having conversations with people for half an hour. They're standing and chatting with me, and a person not from their country, and they're just chatting. I said, What cool people they are. But then there was one incident. I went to uh went to a place, it was like not a forest, but it was somewhere in in foothills and somewhere outside, covered with trees and all. And I knocked at the door, and the guy said the F word and said, Get out. And I said, Oh, I just want to have a chat with you. And he came in and he had a gun in his hand, like a two-barrel gun. And um, I think he was a hunter. And uh he started swearing at me and he said, You guys come here, take our jobs, take our money, take our women, you know, get away. And uh um I said, I said to him that, don't you think if I was that kind of a person, then I wouldn't be having a pen and paper in my hand and standing here and chatting with you. Uh, anyways, he felt bad. I thought, I think he were I was at the wrong place at the wrong time, and he just vomited everything on me like he was feeling. He ended up buying from us and apologizing later on. But then I realized that um how many people are suffering in their own silos at home, just wanting to take everything out so that they can be themselves again. And probably I was there and he was able to take everything out and be themselves, be himself again. And that made me realize that yes, doing nothing job is great, but I'm not really adding any value to anybody's life. So I thought that I'm gonna take my teaching career very seriously. And um I told my supervisor, once I finished my master's, I applied for my scholarship according to PhD, and I started full-filled all classes. Like I was taking seven classes a day while doing my PhD. I was teaching close to um thousand students a year, if not more. And in different subjects, management, organizational behavior, managing across cultures, my students between 17 age to 67 years of age in undergrad and postgrad, it was phenomenal. And I could see that they are able to see the nuance that goes on in their life, creating that psychological space, psychosocial space in the class, and people stay staying and sharing all that ideas, people crying. And I used to tell my students, this is not a therapy session. And everybody used to laugh. I said, you can share, and the idea is to use your family experiences, personal experiences to help you understand what businesses are doing, what these textbooks are saying. Because imagine 18-year-old students coming from you know any part of the world, don't have gap year, don't have work experience, and we in our academics, in our own righteous positions, stand in class and tell them, oh, you know why there is a problem with managers and employees? And they said, Huh? They don't know managers and employees, they haven't worked in that area. But I use, okay, tell me, do you have siblings? And they would say, Yeah. Do you have elder siblings? Yeah. Do you love them? No, I hate them. And I said, Why do you hate them? They said, Because parents take their side more, they don't listen to us, they boss us around. Now I have an opportunity to help them see organization through the lens of their relationships. So now I can put a perspective that how you feel about your uh elder siblings who are dominating, or parents, when they take their side and you feel singled out. That's what I'm talking about when we don't have proper teamwork in organizations. Because people take other sides, people try to be little other people, people like to dominate, and that's what toxicity comes across. Now we have opportunity to use different models of conflict resolutions and teamwork and all those. And now they are interested because they go back home, they apply it, they come back, they discuss it. So I have to arrange the assignments in that manner that they are able to write about those experiences and reflect and learn while they are learning. So the classrooms are just a hub for them to reflect, but the actual learning happens outside the classrooms when they are in their own. So this I thought is my calling. So all this story tell you how I landed here. So this was my calling. So after doing a diploma and four degrees, two masters, undergrad diploma, and a PhD and a Cisco certification, I realized the only thing I wanted to do was be in the class with my students. At any point they need me, I should be there. Thinking about that guy in the forest who asked me to go away and then ended up, you know, chatting with me for a long period of time and buying things from me. Maybe these people are suffering. These students at the age of 18 are suffering and they don't know where to have that outlet, and they end up going towards a different part of the world. Like, like some goes into very depressive state, some goes into druggie state, some goes into all those kinds of things that they should not be doing at all. And I feel that I'm responsible somehow. If I can't be there when they need me, then I shouldn't have a title of educator. So I started. All students have taught from so many different countries have my personal number. And I'm not a sad person, I have a life. I tell them the same thing. But when it comes to students, I'm 24-7 available. I tell my wife as well the same thing. So at night, when I because they're in Arab states, they are in the US, then Canada, they are in European countries, Asian countries, mostly from China. They call me, they text me because some people uh study at night, some people study in daytime, you know. So sometimes my phone will ring at 2 a.m. and I will I will pick up my phone and doing this. And I used to tell my wife, I'm not having an affair. Don't worry, I'm not affair. So I'm just I'm just replying to a student. So it was it was fun in that manner, and I think that defined, I shouldn't say defined, that described how I view uh my existence in the world. If I cannot create an environment for people to reflect on what they're doing and discuss it, then I think I'm wasting my life and everybody else's life around me. So that's what I feel I am.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

Here's something that that's very clear is that you know how you got here. You know, and and for the folks that listen, so same thing for me, you know. I I have a long journey, so we're gonna talk about that too. But so so because I I'm I'm assuming that you're not you're okay with us having a lot more of these conversations going forward. Because I like I like I already like talking with you already. So we can kind of give people a little bit of idea of who we are, we kind of build a conversation going forward. But one of the hardest questions when I'm running the people is is answering how do you get here? Like, you're here at this point, like how do you get here? Do you remember that? Do you remember the steps you've taken? Because sometimes we live a life that's random versus a life that's deliberate, and sometimes random is okay because you don't know what you want to do until you figure it out. Then somebody asks, how do you get here? I don't know. I just got lucky. I figured it out. But then it sounds like you know how you got here. That's what that's what makes you a great teacher. My perspective.

SPEAKER_03 18:37

I I think it's uh it's um it's a very fundamental view that you have stated behind who we are, anyone on the planet, whoever they are. And you made me remember of one of the theories. That's how my mind looks. I I see the world through the lens of theories. I've dived myself into it. I know 83 theories right now. If you tell me, if you ask me what those are, I don't know. But if you tell me keywords, teamwork, I'll tell you theories, leadership, I'll tell you theories. I've stored those theories in my head in matrix and gave them a key as a name. So coming back to your point, what you said just described um hindsight trap. Have you heard about this?

SPEAKER_00 19:18

No, excellent.

SPEAKER_03 19:20

We all, every single person, I think I'm not sure about sociopaths, but every single person goes through hindsight trap. For example, we do something yesterday, and today we regret it. Because we have more information today about what we did yesterday. And we said, ah, why did we do that? How could I do that? I should have done this. This makes us walk away from all the wealth. And when I say wealth, wealth is here. All the wealth that we have created ourselves, we walk away from it. This is the hindsight trap. I don't live a life of regret. At least I'm clear on that. If I did yesterday something and I found out today I could have done different, that's fine. It's whatever thing I did yesterday was according to the information I had yesterday. Of course, when I'm going to move in forward, and that's what I see development happening. I get more experiences, I get more ideas, and I thought, ah, I could have done better. So now I can do better. But this idea of falling into the hindsight trap creates this depressive state around us where we start self-loathing, where we start finding rationalization to our actions that we have taken, and we justify things while knowing that we could have done better. So it's like a cycle of um just reducing our intellect to the minimum because we get trapped in it. So, for example, if somebody has a relationship and somebody did something and they ended up at a verge where they want to break off the relationship, they start saying, Oh, I could have done this, I could have done that, starting more alcohol, more smoking, whatever things that they do. Can we change it? Can we go back and change it? If we cannot, what is the point? So I read somewhere this quote in our head that relates to what you said as well that we um we are in misery more here than in actual life outside of this.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

I agree.

SPEAKER_03 21:26

We create all kinds of struggles here. We are not struggling in our lives as much as we struggle here, and that projects to the struggle that what we are going through in our life. If we are able to understand that the struggle is here, not outside, then I think we can see it, we can come out of this hindsight trap. And I've tried and tried, and my students have helped me immensely. Imagine in class, standing in front, and some students saying, and I still get goosebumps, if you can see. Students in the class saying that we want to share uh a personal uh um challenges that we are going through, and that's how I do it in my class. And they said, Yeah, and um the the the rule is nobody comments on their experience, everybody tries to see through the lens of theories. So it was a conflict negotiation class, and a student said, Well, I love my wife, I'm sure she loves me, but we are on the verge of breakup. We have two kids and I don't know what to do. And he said, Okay, and we were discussing this Thomas and Kilman conflict resolution model where um they talk about assertiveness and cooperativeness. So look at this access as assertiveness, cooperativeness. And they said, when both people are assertive, you know, it means they're not listening to each other, they start competing. This is where the competing happens. And when you compete for a long period of time, like in as a couple, then one person will regress back down, they won't share, they won't ask questions, and they will end up avoiding you. So you imagine in your life, even if you, Asher, or anyone who's listening, when you walk in a hallway of a classroom, of a street, of anywhere, and you see somebody coming from the other side whom you dislike and don't want to talk, you will just change your side and go away. That's called avoidance. I don't want to talk and I don't want to listen. I don't want to ask questions and I avoid. So we remain in this quadrant competing, avoiding, competing, avoiding. Misery continues. And this idea of we want to win, competing, we want to win. Ah, this person doesn't understand and don't want to talk. We end up not having discussions. And that's what we were discussing in the class. So we said, if we can just shut up for a minute and ask questions instead. So tell me what I can do. Rather than I've done this for you, I've done all that for you, I've done this for you. And then the other person says, I have done this for you. You know, like, and anyways, we end up talking about this and how we can get up to collaboration stage if we get the other person some chance to talk, and then we can discuss it. At the day of the graduation, he tapped on my shoulder when we were taking pictures. He was a tall guy, and he said, Ankit, you saved my marriage. And I said, uh, sorry, he didn't say that. He said that class discussion saved that marriage. And I said, What class discussion? Because there were so many discussions happening, and he made me remember uh that conflict resolution class that we discussed about my marriage. And I said, So what happened? And he said, It's funny. And I said, Tell me. So he said, We were so much in love that we were coming from the position or predisposition of care for each other, and we were thinking that the other person is not understanding how much we care. So that was their competing. So over the period of one year, they started avoiding each other. He comes late from office, they don't talk much, you know, all those not go on holidays. And he said that we ended up just one thing that he shut up and he asked her a question. So, and that changed the whole perspective. I'm not saying it's easy, but he made that effort. So, which makes me feel coming back to the hindsight trap that you that led me to talk about this from your what you narrated, was if we end up not living in the past, we can understand how what we do now is going to be projected in the future. Because we continue the state of competitiveness and avoidance, we have fallen in the trap of hindsight. Because when we come up with another argument to talk to the same person, we are living the past discussions that have happened that we cannot let go. So we continue competing or we continue avoiding.

SPEAKER_00 25:52

I like this term hindsight trap. So if we are to make really clear, because I like this topic actually, like what's the upside and downside of that trap, the hindsight trap? Because you speak about it in relationship. I'm wondering how where does it show up that we we we have your student, I these students have such a difficult time with.

SPEAKER_03 26:12

It's an it's a very interesting question. And I think for some listeners, I have to be very uh caring when I say this, because I was having a conversation on WhatsApp with my extended family, and I ended up exiting that group because I don't want to, I don't want to really state my dominance, as I said, because I think it is right. Maybe they are saying right, but according to the people on that WhatsApp group, um, people who are in a state of depression are idiots. And I really took it personally because I thought you don't really understand. None of us can understand how uh people, whoever that person is, is in depression, we won't understand their state of mind. We can try. It's like you have you ever bought a new leather shoe, Asher? Have you heard this phrase ever that the shoe is biting me?

SPEAKER_00 27:11

We use squeezing, but okay.

SPEAKER_03 27:14

So when we say at the back of our back of our ankle, if the shoe is too tight or too new, it gives a rush. So some people say it's biting me. Now, if you have never experienced that, no matter how much I try to explain it to you, you won't understand. You can try to understand if I see a rush, so I can I can sort of relate it to other things, and I can uh but I won't be able to understand it. Same thing. If I have not been in a state of depression, I cannot understand that person's psyche. So this idea of um hindsight trap about I don't see it in binary, so I don't see it as too top or too less. Um, it's very challenging for me to make sense of these uh adjectives, if I can say. Love me more. I have no idea what more is either I love you or I don't love you. You have to do it a lot. I I have to do it. What what do you mean by a lot? Like, so I I think we humans are emotional beings. We end up emphasizing things a lot. It doesn't make sense, you know. In it's it it challenges a lot of things. So I don't see hindsight trap as in binary or anything in binary, because we have grown up like this left, right, black, white, up, down, uh, right, wrong. Imagine black and white are not opposites, they're shades of color. But if we say what is the opposite of white, you will say black or opposite of black, say white. Now tell me, Asher, if I ask you, what's the opposite of light, as in light?

SPEAKER_00 28:59

We say darkness.

SPEAKER_03 29:01

Would you say absence of light?

SPEAKER_00 29:04

Well, that would be the right term.

SPEAKER_03 29:06

So I'm I'm I'm unsure whether it would be right or wrong, but what I'm sure of that I understand absence of light. But if we say dark, we move away, we talk about completely different things without the context to the other thing. Light, absence of light. The term light is still used in there. So this idea of binary makes me feel that we are missing something somewhere. So when we talk about hindsight trap and it's sort of on a continuum, longer we stay in the past, deeper we go. It's like to me, it's like a quicksand. Now I have never been in a quick sand. I hope nobody goes everywhere in a quick sand, but I've seen it in movies and I've read about it. That if you go in it, more you struggle to come out, more you try to come out, deeper you deeper you fall. That's what hindsight trap is. So I don't know whether it is uptown or dog, but it's a quicksand. Longer you stay with it, deeper you drown yourself in it. And deeper you drown yourself in it, harder it is to pull yourself out. Because in a quicksand, you cannot really pull yourself out. There has to be somebody throwing a rope at you and pulling you out. So if I see hindsight and trap as a quicksand, you are stuck. You need to find a mechanism in a way somebody can pull you out. You cannot pull yourself out of the quicksand unless you have a tree branch that you can reach and you can pull yourself out, which is called, uh, which people say, talk to yourself. Think about it. Imagine if you're in a quicksand, how can you talk to yourself? The only thing you're thinking that I don't want to be somewhere in a quicksand. So you struggle, you struggle, and that's what happens in hindsight trap.

SPEAKER_00 30:49

You struggle. And when you're tired to like depression, it's starting it's starting to make sense to me even more. When you're tired to depression, because a person's depression is like they're in a room in a room, but the lock is on the other side of the door. So somebody gotta show up to open a door on the outside to let you out. Because sometimes you're in a place where you can't let yourself out without help. But the help is on the other side of the door.

SPEAKER_03 31:13

How do you know where the door is?

SPEAKER_00 31:17

So that's another question.

SPEAKER_03 31:18

This challenge, let's say, if I if I make this room completely dark, so I'll I'll do one piece. Now this room is completely dark, okay? Now let's say I know where the things are in my study, but the person who's coming here for the first time don't look. So I can move around, find my stuff, they can't. So when I come from a position of this idea that there is a door, I can see it, they can't see it. So if we go too quickly onto showing a door, rather than experiencing the room first and then understanding how many different doors are there, if we go there too quick, then they lose interest. And then say, ah, don't talk about all these things. You know, you talk about all these spiritual stuff and godly stuff, and you talk about all these experiences that you know everything, you know, how who are you to show me the door? And then it goes to a different tangent. You need more effort to pull them up from the quicksand, then. So I'm not saying that you jump in a quicksand, but you try to show them what's outside of the quicksand, but don't be quick enough to tell them the life is always greener on the other side of the Pyrenees, as Blaise Pascal has said. Um, I don't know what green is, I don't know what the other side is. You are telling me I haven't seen it, and I don't believe you.

SPEAKER_00 32:51

No, let me let me ask you this though, because you say you you you you teach, and I think one of the things I I see I struggle with when I teach too, is how do I take something that's abstract and make it action? Like go from abstraction to action. And I think sometimes it's very difficult to narrow down into the action portion of it so the person can walk away with it. So, how do you solve that problem when you teach?

SPEAKER_03 33:13

Give me an example of what you said.

SPEAKER_00 33:16

So, like we've we talk about the world, our society, right, or our quicksand, we talk about those things, but then if somebody's gonna trying to figure out their life, they're gonna figure out something I can take action on, right? I understand the theory, but now I gotta actionize it. Um so if I'm worried, if I'm struggling with my depression and I'm explaining to you the theory of how you get out of depression, but then how do I give it, make it actionable for the person to do it? Like find a door.

SPEAKER_03 33:45

It's it's interesting. Now, would a person in depression know that they are in depression?

SPEAKER_00 33:54

I think you can tell. If you if you if you can tell if you're not by yourself, if you're around other people, you can tell the difference, like, oh yeah, something's going on because I'm not connecting with other people. But if I'm by myself, I might think I'm okay.

SPEAKER_03 34:07

So, have you met ever uh a depressive person in your life?

SPEAKER_00 34:13

Um, I've been depressed, but I've met a depressive person, but I've been depressed myself. So how after retire from the military.

SPEAKER_03 34:20

So, how did you identify that you were in depression? What point led you to identify that you were in depression?

SPEAKER_00 34:28

After I was talking to other people.

SPEAKER_03 34:30

So the other people were that rope that pulled you out. Some people that have you age, they don't want to talk. They lock themselves in the room. And they blame themselves for the depression that they are going through. Imagine how painful it is. They are depressed, and then they are blaming themselves for their own depression. So they further get depressed. It becomes a chain reaction, it's like a nuclear fission. They're depressed, they blame, they're depressed, they blame, they depressed. That's it. It's they go in a spiral of quicksand, and very suddenly they are disappeared. They're not there anymore. That is why, coming back to my first point, I want to be there for the people who need. There is one person who they can reach. I don't want to know who they are. I don't want to know which country they belong to, which religion they belong to, which background they belong to. But if there is one person, there's one person whom you can talk to. So if you were able to reach to those people and they helped you out of that quicksand, which, for example, this discussion is a depression or that thing that led to depression, those people don't have, haven't found anybody because they don't have access to people, because of those WhatsApp groups that I was talking to, where people don't understand depression. And when people say I'm depressed, they end up saying, You are stupid. You are you blatantly deny on their face what depression is. So those people go log themselves in and they say these people won't understand, and they suffocate themselves as you suffocate yourself while going deeper into the quicksand. You can't breathe, and that's it. So this challenge of living in a binary is very problematic. I mean, I know we can't work outside the laws of mathematics, outside the natural laws, outside the laws of physics, but mathematics isn't two plus two equal to four. There's so much more that goes on behind. Why those mathematical signs, why those two numbers, why equal to how it came into existence? There's a whole lot of world behind it. So it's not binary, it is per process equal to output. So if I use maths to explain people, I'm not a mathematician. If I use to explain, if I explain people's behavior, hindsight trap or quicksand, let's say the four, two plus two equal to four. So four is your behavior, for example. Now, 1st of January 2026, everybody gets up like every year, say, we have this resolution today. We're gonna, we're gonna change. And after five days, they revert back to their own position. And they said, ah, we give it up already. We can't change. Why? Because we are focused on changing that four. You cannot work outside the laws of mathematics. You can't change four unless you make changes to two or plus. You cannot. So we forget if we want to change our behavior, the four, we don't need to worry about the behavior in itself. We need to find a way of changing what is going to lead to that behavior. That is a given outcome. And that's where last time when we talked, I talked about the ball of water, ball of ice. That analogy that if I give you a bowl of water and I ask you, Asher, I want to turn it into ice. The only thing you can do is to put it in a fridge or in an icy temperature. If I say I give you a ball of ice, can you turn it into water? You might put it in a microwave, or you want to put it at the room temperature. That's not the key. The key is how long the bowl of water and bowl of ice is going to be in that temperature that it changes its state. So when we talk about Lewin's Kart Lewin's change model of you know, unfreezing, freezing, refreezing sort of thing, it's not so much about that that you go from one state to another state to another state. It's not linear. Nothing is linear, everything is dynamic. Things happen. The temperature needs to be such the length of the time you need to be in there. The correct process must be followed in order to change the state you are currently in, your behavior. It is not difficult to change behavior, but the only way to change behavior is not to focus on the behavior. Imagine that.

SPEAKER_00 38:50

Environment.

SPEAKER_03 38:51

Environment. And you need to figure that out. That what is the environment conducive that will lead to that behavior. Don't worry about the behavior. So, for example, my brother started smoking. Uh, I was in school, and my mom didn't like some of his friends, and he he never smoked, but he started going out with some of his college mates who smoked. So he started smoking. Now that doesn't mean that is the only reason, could be other reason as well. But just to give an example, now he smoked, let's say, for 20 years or 25 years, now he's struggling to leave smoking. Because he's so deeper into it. He's trying, he's trying to change the smoking behavior by living with the same people who smoke.

SPEAKER_00 39:41

Very difficult.

SPEAKER_03 39:42

Very difficult. You may, you may not. But if you change an environment where there is no smoke at all to be purchased, what are you gonna do? Yeah, but it's gonna change, anyways, because you're not gonna smoke. There's no way to purchase a smoke. So you just need to find a right environment for a length of time. Length of time is very important. If my analogy of water and ice is true and correct, then the length of time is the key to changing the behavior. But that length of time, you must be inside that temperature throughout. You can't put a bowl of water in the fridge, take it out, put it back, take it out, put it back. Not gonna do that. So you keep running out of that environment, coming back in, running back, coming back in, not gonna change the behavior. So think the first January 2026, when people say, I want to change this, and this is my resolution, they're not gonna happen if they don't change the environment. As Einstein, this quote is for Einstein. I think I said that you cannot resolve a problem in the same environment the problem was created.

SPEAKER_02 40:45

You must find an environment outside.

SPEAKER_00 40:51

I want to go back to the binary conversation, the content itself. Because sometimes what we think about it too is we think in twos, meaning that the like, for example, like you look at a battery, right? The battery needs the positive charge and the negative charge, and then they two come together to create the spark. So these sparks will happen, the electricity won't happen without those two. So sometimes when people think about the battery, they might be thinking about those two sides that need to dance together to create the next thing that comes from it, the spark, the ideal. So, how do you how do you cycle that process?

SPEAKER_03 41:27

It's interesting. You use the analogy of a battery, for example. The negative charge and the positive charge in a battery are not opposites, they are intertwined. Without the negative charge, the battery is in the battery. They both are required for battery to function and to provide the electricity charge. They are not opposites, they both have their own value of existence. Without the one, the other don't exist. So you can make a battery completely positive without a negative charge, it ain't gonna work. So I I can't see things in opposites. So just because somebody's taller than me and I'm shorter, oh you are short, you're tall, it means we are comparing I on its own, 167 centimeters, fine. I am on its own is fine. But if you start comparing me to somebody one 180 centimeter, then you'll say unkiv your short. So now somebody comes at 140 centimeters, unkiv your tall. So I am tall as well, and I'm short as well. This is the challenge of binary. Because we are in a fluid state. We keep changing. As soon as we change the context and the comparison point, we change, which is problematic. So, what is truth? Am I tall or am I short? I can't be both until you compare. So I am 167 centimeter, that is it. That's a fact of my height. Now you can make me tall, you can make me small. You know, I can go in a gulliver's travel and I can be the taller person, or I can go and live with all Australians in the middle of the where the core Australians live, and they're all six and a half feet tall. I'm the most shortest person.

SPEAKER_00 43:15

So same thing. I think I think that I think they say in Africa you could find the tallest people and the shortest people on the planet is in Africa. And it's interesting.

SPEAKER_03 43:25

And again, as we say, as we say short, dark, light, we are comparing. We are not talking about the stuff. We are talking about the comparison, the movement, which is only true in a certain context. The context changes, that that thing changes. So it's fluid, it's made up, it's another mind. It's it's not there. If we want to see it, we see it. What is gonna remain the same is 167 centimeter.

SPEAKER_00 43:57

So so that is another trap, then you're saying the The so we got the hindsight trap, but I feel like the binaries are also another trap.

unknown 44:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:06

That is very hard to get out of.

SPEAKER_03 44:08

I I think this is just I'm thinking out loud in my head right now. It depends on the environment we are brought up in. So, for example, a child is born to an Indian parent in a Chinese family. They will end up speaking Chinese or Mandarin or Cantonese. The boy is still Indian parents. But they are there in China, in Chinese family, living with Chinese family. So this idea of who we are depends on how we are brought up. So if we live in a society where society sees it as binary, we will end up seeing it as binary. So if I've lived for 42 years of my life in a binary world, how on earth can I see anything else? I don't know if there's anything else. It's like unknown, unknown. So there were two guys, Joe and Harry, and they created Johari window. And they said they made four quadrants, and they said the left top quadrant is you know and I know. Means we talk, Asher and Anki talks, get along each other. Asher tells about his life, Anki tells about his life, and we sort of understand each other. So our arena is getting bigger. More Asher and Ankid spend time together, arena will become bigger because we will understand each other better. There is another segment that is called you know, I don't know. Means you know that I'm doing something I shouldn't be doing it, but you're not telling me this. You're not giving me feedback. So you are creating facade. You can stop me from doing that, but you're not. For example, if Asher doesn't like and keep moving hands a lot like this while talking, but Asher is not telling me. I don't know. So Asher is getting angry in his head. I don't know. And then somehow Asher gets angry and switches off the camera and walks away. And I get said, What's what was wrong? You didn't give me feedback. So at the same time, I know, you don't know, reverse it, which basically means my blind spot. I need to seek feedback from the other person actively if they're not giving. Asher, is it okay? Is it okay? I move my hands quite a lot. Asher says, Yeah, don't do it a lot. Okay, no problem. Arena bigger, facade, and blind spot spalana. And there is another spot which is called unknown unknown. Neither Asher knows nor I know. So we come together, discuss a few ideas, see where it leads us. Oh, something new has happened. And that's where richer research happens. That's where human curiosity is, that's where science is trying to figure it out the unknowns. So this idea of um things that I don't know, I can't act on it because I don't know anything different than binary. So when, unless somebody comes in and gives me different perspectives, and oh, I didn't think about this. Now I have another perspective. Now I can try comparing things because that's how my mind works, comparing. This is better, this is better. If I do not have another perspective, I don't know any better. That the only perspective that I have is the right perspective. So till the time science didn't go out and find some water on some other planet, the only thing we would know is the Earth is the only habitable planet in the solar system or outside the solar system. Because we don't know anything better. And that's where the research happens. That's where I personally want to talk to as many people as possible. Imagine that it in my PhD thesis, most of the things that came out came out from that discussion in class. Those 18-year-old students are full of energy. They ask you questions that somebody at the age of 50 years with 30 years of experience will say, Come on, that's common sense. That's hindsight trap. That's binary. There is no common sense. It's a contextual sense of what is common to me and the people whom I've lived with, not common to others. So when we say common sense is within a contextual boundary, people outside that don't have that common sense. They have their own common sense. So when there are two common senses doing, they both are telling each other, this is common, you don't understand, you are an idiot. And they end up going on a conflict resolution model of competing. So an 11-year-old person will say, I don't want to talk to my parents. They are generational gap and they start avoiding them. Their life, their life is completely different. We can't change it. We can understand each other's life, and that's where the door is. We open people to walk into our lives, they open people to walk into their lives. There is a door, and that happens when you get different perspective. When you change an environment, that's that analogy stands. Bowl of water, bowl of ice, the length of temperature will change it. There is no other way. It it is bound to change. That's natural law. So if you keep people in an environment of discussions, not directing them right, wrong, do this, don't do that, then they discover themselves more by talking. And that's what the journey of education should be. And I know my supervisor always used to say should is an evil word. I agree. But that's how I see it. If education becomes a mechanism to gain marks, I know a lot of people who have picture memory. They can get hundred out of 100 without knowing what they're doing because they just take pictures like this in their head. They can write down. Doesn't mean they have that knowledge. And there are some people who get past barely past marks, and you can have a really deep conversation with them. They can't articulate their thinking, but they understand what they're trying to say. So the grades do not really determine people's knowledge at all. So this idea of education isn't just a classroom system, it's the education in here of not falling in the hindsight trap. That is seeking more queries, asking more feedback, moving from facade and blind spot to increase the arena. You see, that's how I thought this idea of models are so clear in my head because that helps me, even if I'm sitting alone and I use different models, I get different perspectives. And that's what I'm trying to do in class with my students. So if you are shy, if you are coming from a place where you have been taught never to question others, never to question elders, always listen to them and you doubt it. Models will help you gain that new perspective that you can go and experiment and see what you get. And that's why I ask people to keep a reflexive journal, you know.

SPEAKER_00 51:00

So here's a here's a truth model I want to pose at you then. Because I feel like we're seeking truth here, and my feeling with truth is truth cannot be explained, right? You gotta be experienced. So for think about the moon, and so for example, I'm a blind person. Um I've never seen the moon before in my life, but you've seen the moon, and you was like, I'm like, tell me what the moon looks like. But I've seen a golf ball before. So you figure you're gonna use the golf ball to explain to me what the moon looks like. So you describe the golf ball to me. So in my mind, the moon is a golf ball, but I've never seen the moon. So I feel like a lot of people in life, right, we're carrying around golf ball and calling it the moon because that's all we know as far as a reference point. Because we've never seen the truth. Because I'm blind to it. So when I'm thinking about model, you say you pick yourself in model. I'm I'm wondering, how do you find a way to get people to experience the truth when all they have is the golf ball?

SPEAKER_03 52:01

It's it's a great analogy, to be honest, Asher. I have a story in my head, if you permit me. Very small one. Go ahead. There were two friends, and we will come back to this truth thing. There were two friends. One friend was in hospital bed, he has never seen the world. He was blind from since he was a child. So, using your analogy, you have never seen the moon. He was always blind. So this friend said, I want you to see the world, and they go went for the eye operation. And he sat there every day telling the telling the friend, um, ah, look, there's such a bright sun outside. Look outside the window. There are birds chirping, there are flowers, these are the different colors of the flowers. There's a bee sitting on the sunflower. He used to describe every single day. And one day that friend died. And the person whose operation happened was, you know, his bandage was removed, and he could see he is living, he was in a room with no windows, but he could see the world through the eyes of his friends. So the idea is that our mind is very perceptive. When we say something, we are bound to imagine it. We cannot not imagine. It's just, I don't think so. It's humanly possible. Anything that I say, our brain starts forming some pictures based on our experiences, you know, and that's how we start getting perspective of something which may or may not be true. That comes to this idea of truth and fact. Now, I don't know, I can never understand truth. I can understand facts. For example, there was a time, was it during um many decades back, or sorry, millennium back, where people thought that there is an edge of Earth and people will fall off. And then people went and saw from outside space station, oh, Earth is sphere. And then the magnetic pull is so much that you can walk around the earth and you will not fall. Till then, when people knew that the there is an edge and people will fall down, that's that was truth. It wasn't, it was a fact at that time, which according to science advancement keeps changing. Truth in its own exists somewhere. I may or may not be able to ever experience it, but we see the world from the lens of science, fact. We go back to history, we change somebody historians go, This is wrong, this is right, they change it, they come back, the facts are changed. It's a fluid thing. People say this is a fact, and it changes. Truth remains wherever it is. I don't know wherever it is. So, for example, if Asher can see a cupboard behind, I can't see. For Asher, it's there. For me, it's not there. Until Asher finds a way to help me see that cupboard, then it's there for me as well. So when we say this is true, then the other person hasn't seen it, they don't believe you. So when we too quickly tell the person, don't worry, the grass is greener on the other side of the pyrenees, they don't believe you. Don't worry, there is a door, you can cross it, they don't believe you. You can come out of your depressive state. I'm telling you, they don't believe you. It is not about the truth, it's about what is factual for them in that moment, what facts they have in their hands, until unless you open their views to another factual thing, which which may be a part of that truth that we are trying to figure it out in this life why I'm born, I don't know. So, this idea of moon in golf ball is great. I can see it. I understand there is an entity called moon. Now, when I go outside and I see moon, I said, Oh, okay, I I I can see why what you are trying to relate, for example, but now I have seen the moon. Now I will not see it as a golf ball. I'll see it as a moon, but I will always remember the golf ball that led me to see the moon. He will always remember the friend painting the picture of things outside which weren't there. But when we experience him, he will always think about his friend. So was that his friend knew that he's gonna die? Is that the memory he left in his friend's uh in head that every time you're gonna see nature, you will remember me? You cannot not remember me because I gave you those eyes, even before you experienced it. And that's what happens when I talked about societal things. Before even we can see, we are given eyes by society. So till the time we don't try to come out of it and see it, we will always live that blind man will always lie on the bed thinking that he's lying next to a window while he wasn't. So this idea of um us understanding binary or us understanding uh positive, negatives, us understanding hindsight, the traps that we go through, it is our own creation because it's like ecstasy, like it's it's go nirvana. It's like you go, oh, I have lived it now. No, you haven't. The picture is painted, you think it exists, but it doesn't. So that's why we sometimes we are afraid. No, I don't want to test it. It's okay, it's there. And when you try to take away that truth from somebody, they fight back.

SPEAKER_00 57:53

That's like I take a golf ball from you, it's like, no, that's mine.

SPEAKER_03 57:57

Yeah, because that's how you identify the world. So when you take religion from somebody away, if there is a person, atheist, talks about non-religious views, then you take away the religion of person. You believe in it or you don't believe it, it doesn't matter. That person does. When you talk about depression, depression, and you deny it blatantly on the face, you try to take away that experience that the person is having, you cannot talk to them. In order for you to understand for them to understand you, you need to understand them first. That's where the door is going to be open. That's where that student was having trouble in his married life. They all had their doors. We all have our own doors, and we are all banging on it. This is the door, no, this is the door, no, that is the door. All are in different directions. So whether we call it a generational gap, whether we call it you don't understand, whether you call it I understand more, doesn't matter. We are talking English, but we are not understanding what the words mean. And that's why I call my research phenomenological. I want to understand why people say what they say, and do they even know why they are saying what they're saying? So it's not the words that you say, it's the meaning you ascribe to the words.

SPEAKER_00 59:12

And I'll wrap this up with this thought here because you know, people say you cannot change your past, and that is true, but what you can change is the meaning of the past. That's all we do is change the meaning of things. Right? You can't change the fact, but you can change the meaning of what the facts means to you. So even though I've had an experience and it might seem bad, it seems bad in that moment. But when I look back at it, I can change what it means in the present when I look back at it. So those are my those are my closing thoughts. What are you what are what are your wrap-up thoughts here for this conversation?

SPEAKER_03 59:44

I I shall wrap up this thought with one question. Why change? What's change?

SPEAKER_00 59:52

What's change? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:53

Why? Why change?

SPEAKER_00 59:54

And I would uh uh why change? Because so you you I like that question. Why change? Because sometimes the change needs to happen because somebody's carrying their past feels like a big bowler. And they're carrying it and they feel it's too heavy, they want to bury it. But then you want to go back there and do something with it. So now how do I convert that bowler into a pebble so I can carry it? Because that's the challenge is carrying it. Because I want to carry this thing, but it's too heavy for me to carry it. So I have to change the meaning of it, I have to change the weight of it, I have to do something with it so I can carry it. And I think that's that's the reason why I say change.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:30

And how do we do that?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:33

We gotta transform what it is into something that's weight, that's that has that's a weight I can carry. So share it because the how do we do that? Well, go back into the experience of it.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:45

And how do we do that?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:49

How do you go back in the experience? You can imagine it, you can uh you can share, you can express it, or you can write it out. Those are some ways you can go back in there.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:00

There's one challenge with the in the interest of time as well, I know. Um our memories are vivid of the experiences that are far-fetched. They create the memories that may or may not be what our past experiences were.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:16

True.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:17

And those vivid memories might become a quick sand very quickly.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:22

Exactly. All right, Dr. A, make it an utterly, utterly fantastic Australian weekend.