I’m writing this because I was told that one of my rarely used websites uses a password that has been in a data breach.
Now I have actually taught lessons on how to keep oneself secure online. That I have been caught in a breach shows that I don’t always follow my own advice.
Nearly 18 million people were victims of identity theft in 2014, (I was writing my life skills guidelines in 2016) with the majority of crimes targeting credit cards and bank accounts. 2.6 million of those were ages 65 and older. Now, its time to wise up all over again.
Looking back for a moment, the guidance I gave as I recall, was to stop doing a set of things:
• I talked about the deliberate sharing of personal information by Facebook. In May 2010, the Wall Street Journal found that Facebook had been sharing user data with advertisers without their consent. What was worrying was that after this so-called ‘privacy loophole’ came to light, Facebook claimed that they did not consider the information involved to be personally identifiable – even though it included details such as a person’s name, age, and hometown.
At the time, Facebook said they closed this particular loophole. But it wasn’t closed – as the Cambridge Analytica case in 2018 made clear, it was one of many ways they shared user data with advertisers and other business partners without the clear consent of their users. Claims were settled this year, in August. Always use the privacy settings that suit you best. I took them through the steps on someone’s Facebook account.
• I also talked about how your new iPhone or Android Smartphone could be a toy through which you lose your secure data. In particular I covered what not to do on public Wi-Fi.
I still turn off automatic connectivity and my Bluetooth is rarely on. I never shop in public. Not even when all the variables are uploaded and I just have to press ‘buy it now’. I do those three things to this day. Online shopping security was a big part of the class discussion, as I recall.
•Then of course there was the standard theft of one’s credit or debit cards – I had lost mine, when I was speaking. People in my class had horror stories to tell, as well.
All of that still stands.
Pass phrases
And then there is the topic of how to set your passwords and how not to do it. I barely covered this at all. That is because I did not yet know about pass-phrases.
A data breach I thought – huh.
Advice on passwords
So, I looked up the current spiel on passwords, again. The advice has changed substantially from when I last looked.
It can be summed up in a three sentences –
The length of the password matters: the longer it is the harder it is to crack. Use a lower case, an upper case a number and a symbol as well – that makes it harder – I call it LUNS.
Don’t ever use the same password for several accounts is writ large in the advice. I can attest to the reality of that – I did and my password which was in a data breach, now has to be changed in all those six places.
Password keeper services of different kinds are also hacked – I’ve actually heard from a hacker’s blog that those are seen as goldmines to hack successfully.
And then I read about a pass-phrase
A pass-phrase is a memorable phrase, that only you have a cause to remember. It also incorporates LUNS – see below – for good measure.
When we were all very young, we were on a family holiday, and my brother declared in a piping note that the horse pulling our horse drawn carriage was a ‘tejaswi valabaan ashwa’ (it means a spirited, strong horse, in Sanskrit). What made it memorable was that the words are too long for a child of four to know – he had just learned them off by heart because I was reading the Mahabharata to him – he loved all that great fighting. Everyone laughed – and the phrase stuck. The story circulated into the extended family.
Now if anyone amongst our friends and family uses that as a passphrase for logging into a shop selling riding equipment, it would make sense. Nobody else would have a reason to recall that phrase, but with the memory attached, it’s the first thing that would come to mind for many of us.
So how can we incorporate LUNS in that passphrase?
Lower case letter – all the letters are lower case, EXCEPT
Upper case letter – make it as random as possible
Number – you could separate the phrase with a chosen number – choose 4, (brother’s age)
Symbol – use an exclamation mark, at the end or the beginning.
So, putting it into practice, and please don’t use this phrase as your passphrase, that would be written as follows:
!tejaswI4valabaaN4ashwA
What I have tried to avoid, are two things –
Using upper case as the first letter of my passphrase
Using a number or a symbol as last character of passphrase This is because I am told that hackers expect this.
It is in fact consistent with common usage – we start sentences with a capital letter. We can end it with an exclamation mark.
I had better go and change some passwords into passphrases, using my new-found method. I hope you will too. It takes a couple of minutes, but I am beginning to see that these are minutes well spent.
The way physical changes in the body occur in response to our thoughts, feelings and reactions is not fully understood.
However, here are some possible mechanisms. When we are stressed, we release hormones, which help us to cope. These cause problems if they are regularly released into our blood-stream.
Stress Hormones and their Effects
The body’s stress hormones, which include adrenaline and cortisol, are designed to have a short term effect, giving us enough physical energy and strength to get out of dangerous situations. This surge of ‘Fight-Flight’ hormones can have temporary effects such as a raised heart rate, sweating, shaking, shortness of breath etc. However, when these hormones are released frequently, they are thought to have a longer term effect on the body. They start to affect how the body as a whole works.
Researchers in this area seem to think that it may make it harder for the body to keep all of its organs and systems working as they should, for example:
The immune system may be less effective when stress hormones are released regularly. This is called chronic stress. This may be because the body focuses on the task it sees as most important, avoiding the threat, rather than doing ‘maintenance jobs’ like detecting infections and keeping them under control, for example.
Healing is slowed down. Like the immune system, when the body believes it is under attack it puts tasks that are not immediately essential, like repairing damaged cells, on the back-burner. While this doesn’t cause a problem in the short-term, in the long term it can slow down recovery, causing physical problems.
Digestion, like healing, is also put on the back burner during times of stress which can lead to digestive discomfort such as abdominal pain, nausea, constipation, diarrhoea and bloating, for example.
Psychological Factors
Thinking styles can affect how you feel emotionally and physically. Some common thinking styles make it seem very likely that something bad is going to happen. This can lead to feeling worried, sad or upset regardless of whether the thought is true or not. You may recognise some of the examples on the next page.
Thinking Styles – Your thoughts are not always true
How you think – your ‘thinking style’ – can affect how you feel emotionally and physically. Some common thinking styles make it seem very likely that something bad is going to happen. This can make you feel worried, sad or upset even though the thought is not true.
What you may think when you feel anxious or worried
Thinking the worst – Example, say you are feeling ill – you start thinking ‘These symptoms must be a sign of a very serious illness’
Mind reading – Example – You have told someone your symptoms, and then start thinking ‘They think I’m exaggerating. They probably think it is all in my head’
Predicting the future – Example – You have just got back home from the surgery, and sit down with a cup of tea. Then you think ‘These difficulties will get worse and worse so I won’t be able to return to work as I had hoped’
Overgeneralising – Example – Its later in the evening and you are looking back on the day. You start thinking : ‘I’ve had one bad flare-up so far since my diagnosis. That means I’ll get lots of flare-ups’
Jumping to conclusions – Example – You have collected a new medication for your diagnosis – before you take it you start thinking ‘This new dose of medication won’t work’.
Discounting the positive – Example – you have a good day, and feel quite upbeat for a minute or two. Then you start thinking ‘Today was a better day, but it’s bound to be a one-off.’
Self-criticism and labelling – Example – You make a small mistake, and something spills, or you drop something. You immediately start thinking ‘I can’t do anything right. I’m a failure’
Pressuring language – Example – you notice a job half done, somewhere in the house. You start saying to yourself ‘I should be able to cope with this better and I certainly ought to be doing more around the house’.
Do you recognise any of these thoughts in yourself? Only you can tell. None of these are actually helpful. More than most of them are unlikely to be true.
Next time we look at the bridge which links these thoughts to our lives – how we make sense of the changes in our lives, and what we do, feel and think – yes, in that order – to navigate through them.
When people go to hospital or visit their doctors it is often because of physical symptoms. For some physical problems the diagnosis and treatment is clear. For example, if you have a broken leg your doctor can take an x-ray to confirm the break and put your leg in a cast. However, some health conditions are more complex and are affected by many different factors.
For example, we know that the mind and body are closely linked and affect each other. Learning about how they are linked may help you to manage your day to day actions and reactions a bit better.
“The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
The objective of this note is to help you understand this link and look at different ways to manage your physical symptoms and emotional well-being.
These ideas are no longer new or unusual. But letting it all sink in is hard, and implies changes in how you live.
You may wish to read this series of articles in small sections – and if you want someone to read it alongside you, and discuss the content, that might help too. And if someone asks you to help them read this note, and you think you can spare them the time, then it will be very valuable indeed.
Is it ‘all in my head’?
It is important to point out that we are not suggesting your physical symptoms are all in your head. The reality of your physical symptoms is not in doubt when we talk about the mind and body being linked. It is important to make this clear because we know that some people, at one time or another, have felt that their difficulties were dismissed by others, including healthcare professionals, as “all in their head”.
There are experts on the brain and its functions, and they would tell you that thoughts and feelings are real things we can observe these days, with Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI).
What is the mind-body link?
You may already be familiar with phrases which describe the mind-body connection in day-to-day life such as something being a “pain in the neck”, making your “blood boil”, having a “gut feeling” or being “heart-broken”. These examples all describe the way that the mind can affect the body.
The internal world
When we talk about the ‘mind’ we mean the collection of thoughts, feelings, beliefs, attitudes, memories, past experiences and personality that make up a person’s internal world.
How does it work?
The brain and the body are constantly sending messages to each other. These messages tell the brain and body to make changes and adjustments to the way they are working.
For example, if your eyes told your brain a car was travelling towards you at speed, it would send a very fast message to the body to step back out of harm’s way.
And if your stomach was empty and your body needed fuel, your brain would listen to that message and send you in search of food.
So, the brain and the body are in constant communication to keep you alive and healthy.
Summary
The mind and the body are closely linked and affect each other. This is not the same as saying your physical symptoms are ‘all in your head’ or not real.
It means that your thoughts and feelings can affect your body and physical symptoms can have an effect on what you think, how you feel and what you do.
‘Fight-Flight’ mechanism
An example of this close relationship between the mind and body is the ‘Fight-Flight’ mechanism.
This alarm system developed to keep us safe from danger, like the threat of predators for example. It is triggered when you feel threatened and it makes your body get ready for a fight or for running away (e.g. by making your heart beat faster and your muscles tense up). These physical symptoms are the result of the release of stress hormones in the body, such as cortisol and adrenaline.
This worked really well when there were predators around. Unfortunately, it is less helpful for modern day threats. Things like money worries or fears about the future can trigger this ‘fight or flight’ response, even if it is not that helpful for solving the problem.
Chronic vs. acute stress
When the ‘Fight-Flight’ mechanism is activated occasionally the body can cope and recovers well after the surge of stress hormones. This is sometimes called ‘acute stress’ and as human beings we are designed to deal with this.
Eating
Doctors tell us to try and eat a well-balanced dietspread across the day. This may help your body fight off infections and when the ‘Fight-Flight’ mechanism is activated occasionally the body can cope and recovers well after the surge of stress hormones. (This is a core bit of self care. The NHS publishes a guide to a balanced diet and this link is where you will find it.)
This fight or flight response is sometimes called ‘acute stress’ and we are designed to deal with this.
However, when the ‘Fight-Flight’ mechanism is activated very often, the body has less chance to recover fully before the next stressful event. This is called ‘chronic stress’ and we are less well adapted to this kind of stress.
Sleeping
If you feel that improvements in sleep might help you to manage yourself better, or feel less tired, there is guidance on this too. Some of us take time to fall asleep, and others find that our sleep is interrupted. That does not help with difficult thoughts arising, particularly in the middle of the night. The importance of good sleep cannot be emphasised too much.
Summary:
Our fight-flight response helps us identify and respond to threats.
This has helped us over the course of evolution.
However, when it is switched on over and over again, rather than occasionally, it is less helpful and can even work against our health and well-being.
Eating well, spread across the day, lies at the core of managing ourselves around stress
Sleeping well helps a lot too
Next time, we will look at the powerful role of thoughts.
Where does the Artificial Intelligence machinery learn from? Is it the same as what I knew to be ‘machine learning’? There was a team of engineers outside my office in the London Stock Exchange in the late 1990s, in an open plan area, all engaged in teaching machines ‘how to learn’ from its own outputs and a range of new inputs to achieve specific goals.
I hadn’t thought of this ‘what’s the difference’ question before. More is explained by Google, which sells cloud services. Linked, if it interests you.
Here is a bit of news, which caught my eye. These thoughts below were triggered. I would be interested to know what you think.
In a nutshell – what Reddit will now do.
Reddit, a US public conversation platform, has decided that it will start charging for access to its data, via its API, to LLMs which are using this data to ‘teach themselves’ how humans talk to each other. This is how OpenAI and other large language models (LLMs) are learning how to sound like a human being, when answering questions asked of it.
What is an API?
It stands for ‘Application Programming Interface’. In the context of APIs, the word Application refers to any computer program with a distinct function. Here, ‘Interface is, if you like, a contract of service between two bits of computer program. This contract defines how the two communicate with each other using requests and responses.
[An LLM – large language model – is a way to enable a computer to process natural language, allowing for the machine to understand what is being said or typed, and respond in a way that a human being might have done. It learns by doing, and also analysing and classifying a massive amount of ordinary people’s communication. As new input is provided, it is factored into what the machine already knows of what used to be called ‘use of English’ – its unique attribute is its speed of assimilation.]
Reddit content, it turns out, has been one of the chief sources of the massive data sets that LLMs need, to improve what they learn about how people talk to each other.
So where does this input data come from?
It is what we write. All of that content is stuff Reddit’s users have created—not Reddit. But once it is up on the platform, that content is being called “data” – and now it can be bought and sold.
What I already knew
So far, I thought that our responses help the platforms indirectly.
In other words, we respond to content, and that indicates our preferences – this enables platforms to sort us into audiences.
This is the OCEAN analysis – they categorise what we say into our dominant traits: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. These five traits are supposed to account for differences in both personality and decision making – crucially, buying decisions.
Advertisers can then select those ‘audiences’ – and the platform sells them access to these segments of potential buyers. In other words what we say on platforms shows the platform a way to assess our susceptibility to particular kinds of advertising.
But then, what is new?
What Reddit has just done – saying that these Large Language Models can now access its data, for a fee, shows that there is value in the actual words we write.
This now is a direct sale of the content we create by responding to questions and commenting on stuff on any platform.
What is it being ‘bought’ for? The machines, it turns out, need to read our spontaneously written conversations, to learn how to interpret what we will ask the AI in applications like this ChatGPT that we keep hearing about. They need us, much more than we need them.
It proves that what we produce isn’t only valuable in terms of our susceptibility to advertising but as content – teaching material.
In summary:
Our time and energy produce the content on Reddit. Because it is real human conversation, it has exchange value to a machine trying to learn the language as it is used, and Reddit (and most other platforms, it seems) actually are (or soon will be) pocketing the money, for giving them access to our words.
This is being called ‘hidden labour’ – someone else profiting from the words we wrote down.
Thieving, more like – others are saying.
On reflection
The early web forums before Reddit – I was around then, (I am thinking about those used by my friend Phil Harper, Astro-physicist in the late 1980s) made me think that our posts are our Intellectual Property. So, when you hit ‘post’, you grant the platform a license to show it to others, edit it (they did have Terms of Service) – you could read them for yourself somewhere in the web archives.
I was newly at work when GDPR came out. In the electricity supply industry, we took a look at our rules and concluded that EU users did have rights that the Americans didn’t – but on the whole, it was easier for us to treat everyone as if they had the same GDPR rights – that kept our consciences clear.
But largely, posting an opinion on the internet doesn’t make it public domain, far from it. It makes it viewable by the public, that’s all.
If you have a big Shell sign on a billboard, we can all see it, but Shell still owns their logo, right? And if we steal it, or use their wording on our own advertisement, we are still infringing copyright.
Does this extend to comments we make on a public forum?
‘In the United Kingdom, the ‘Sweat of the brow’ doctrine is followed, which states that copyright protection is given to the work of an author in exchange for the labour, skill, or judgment put into it. The court ruled in the landmark judgment of University of London Press v. University Tutorial Press, that the expression of thought in writing or print need not be in a novel form but must originate from the author and his labour and skill must be put in’.
Labour and skill. Yup.
At first glance, it looks like straight-forward stealing to me. I am open to being told otherwise.
UK Government policy
If you want to know what the UK Government is doing towards becoming a key centre for AI development, I am happy to say, that it is proceeding cautiously.
Here isthe debatein the UK parliament, if you want to have a feel for the tone of these considerations.
Personally, I felt slightly reassured after I read this.
Hearing the news was accidental. I could easily have missed it – I don’t listen to the news much.
My son was sitting next to me – he got a message from a class friend to say that BBC newscasters were wearing black, and had done all morning. Something was up.
“London Bridge” I thought. That’s the project name, for the sequence of events which need to happen the moment the Queen dies.
We switched on the TV. Yes, they were all in black. “Papa will say ‘good’ can we move on now”. The next day was his cousin’s wedding. “Hope he doesn’t say it in public”, said my son.
We have a staunch republican amongst us. Anti-aristocracy, and anti- monarchy.
I, on the other hand, saw the other side as I was growing up in the army. Formality, yes. Protocol, yes. But also, some of the army boys felt a genuine admiration and love, for their monarch. And I had become fond of some of these people, who loved the Queen.
Had I come to love her? That would be too strong. But she was there, throughout.
Visible.
Through the Northern Ireland troubles. Through the 1980s, and the financial crash. Through Trump and the various wars in the Middle East . . .Through it all, she was there.
Charlie’s car crash came and went. Her Christmas message that year felt really poignant. I listened to it alone. It seemed that the Queen was praying for everyone in the nation. I was glad to be a member of her nation.
Three months ago, Boris Johnson was asked by the BBC to talk about the Queen in the past tense, in a documentary they were shooting. He told the commons that he was suddenly in tears at the thought that we were making programmes in anticipation of her death, and had to ask the BBC team to go away. He wasn’t ready to do that. That’s exactly how I felt. She’s not family, but she’s been a constant.
For no real reason, I feel bereft. I know exactly what Johnson felt – he wasn’t ready. Neither am I. I know this feeling will pass of course.
My father was her physician when she came to Germany. The first time he was to meet the queen, we were sent a briefing note about how to address her. The first time, you call her “your royal highness” and then ma’am (to rhyme with “ham”). We all smiled.
We were surprised that they had appointed a civilian, but other than that, it was business as usual. From then on, he was perfectly discreet – this was not a difficulty for my father, who was by nature a clam anyway. But once, he gave himself away – “to rhyme with ‘ham’ ” he muttered, giving his shoes an extra polish one morning. And his driver was not Jones, but someone we didn’t know. From then on, we noticed when someone came in a different, bigger car for the morning pick-up. There was no other indication that anything else was different, however.
He “rhymed with ham” quite a few times during his several years in Germany. Princess Ann was seeing her first husband Mark Phillips at the time.
Once I heard him say “she’s an experienced, well travelled woman – nothing phases her”.
Another time he had come back early, and was talking to my mother. He had just said “she gets the patience prize”. as I came in. I could see that it was about the queen. As soon as he saw me, the conversation stopped, and did a neat pivot. He had just been telling my mother about his day – had I had a good day at school? He believed in “jamais devant les enfants”.
The Queen was an unspoken constant in the camp. We lived next door to a Queens Dragoon Guards captain. We toasted her health before the end of dinners at the officer’s mess, as a matter of course. Her face was in every office, smiling down from the wall.
I never actually met her.
I met and spoke to her mother, twice. She was our University Chancellor, and partly because I lived in an inter-collegiate hall of residence, very close to Senate House, I was in the line up. We shook hands, and I bobbed a curtsey. Her hands were as soft as mine used to be, before I came to England.
She was a gracious old lady, in fabulous jewellery. And she exuded a kind of quiet power. The kind that I had come across before amongst the Rani class in India.
My mother once said “The Queen is her mother’s daughter. Hitler feared the Queen Mother more than anyone else in England, and quite rightly”.
What I came to understand about both mother and daughter was this common trait – Grit. Never wrong-headed about anything. Decisive, and essentially really good hearted.
And what a strong sense of duty the Queen had. Much of what she did was not something which she’d ever consider doing herself. But she unfailingly took an interest. Putting herself second was second nature to her. That in itself is a huge spiritual accomplishment.
And she stayed resolutely with her feet on the ground. Headscarf on, she went for brisk walks in Windsor Great Park – I have seen her – also driving herself, in her land rover. . . no body guards. Just by herself.
A hugely powerful and influential woman who wore it all lightly. And she put in a day’s work right up to the end.
Many people are suffering from grief just now. Personally, an uncle has passed away. My aunt is naturally sounding lost and bereft. Personal grief somehow brings into focus what might be felt by those in a war situation. Ukraine is in fear, and sometimes violently, that leads to personal loss.
I recall a book by Sasha Bates (Languages of Loss) in which appeared a quote:
In India, the Sanskrit alphabet is known as ‘matrika’ – mother – all we can aspire to is encompassed in the letters of the alphabet. If we can say it in words, then we have experienced it and overcome it in part.
In a world of names and forms, all we have is words. Words to express ourselves as we process what is happening – words not spoken, to give space to someone who is simply overwhelmed.
SILENCE IS A GIFT
The gift of silence is rare, because many of us can’t stop ourselves in time. Someone else in distress is so upsetting to us, that we immediately self-soothe by speaking. Just at first, in grief, the person might prefer not talking, and most importantly, not being talked to – this occurred to me only after I had started speaking to my mother, as she sat after crying on the phone. I stopped.
Just being alongside someone as they sit absorbed in their sense of loss, saying nothing, is giving them permission to do just that.
I had to try hard to refrain from offering advice; after a long silence, I ended up saying that she can do nothing about the mourning process on the ground, since she is not in India. But she can sit alongside her sister, as she grieves, which she will do, for a while. Her sister lives in Canada – and I have volunteered to take her there, when I can. The rest of my time with my mother was again, silent.
My presence said, ‘I can see your pain.’ I too was in pain though losing an uncle one saw infrequently, and who was mainly an email correspondent is very different from seeing one’s closest sibling in painful loss.
I sent up a prayer for calm. And I reminded myself that whatever I do to change this low mood, it will be done in small units –little by little. This is true of healing, as well as habit formation.
FINDING COMMON GROUND IN ART, MUSIC
We fell back into reviewing pieces of music, after a while. Finding common ground, in tunes we know and love, was a real comfort. I talked about the last song I had sung to my uncle, as a lantern containing a light had floated past his window, (Diwali, 2016).
Ms Bates talks about tapping into the creativity of others to help us express the pain we can’t yet form into thought ourselves.
Now that I am back from my mother’s I suspect I will spend time wandering around art galleries, responding viscerally to my sense of loss – feeling empty is so hard to grasp intellectually. I will sit quietly in my corner, and let it all just be.
If you are coaches, teaching life skills, helping clients through this kind of experience, you might encourage them to bring into the session any art, poetry, stories and music that they have turned to before. Or you could offer them something you may have yourself as a jumping off point – a box of postcards maybe.
During this last pandemic, I came across the work of Claire Dale, and her Physical Intelligence Institute. Apparently there is research to show how useful movement is for shifting stuck patterns and for addressing trauma, (Claire mentioned PTSD patients taking their fist to their fear, as we punched the air – I paraphrase, of course) but doing her exercises during this workshop, I too found it useful – for releasing my feelings of loss, lodged in the body, in a way that words can’t do.
IN AN UNCERTAIN WORLD, MANAGE YOUR OWN ANXIETY OR SENSE OF LOSS, TO SERVE YOUR CLIENTS MORE EFFECTIVELY
Most people ‘manage’. They respond to anxiety or a sense of loss and interpret their experience via other means: writing, walking around the fields, stretching, looking at art, listening to music, and spending time with friends…. all of it helps.
Get some formal therapy, if you need it, says Ms Bates. I would add, give yourself permission to be well, as others around you are plunged into anxiety and uncertainty.
The world looks to you to respond constructively to the chaos created by spiking energy prices, the uncertainty of war, and its economic consequences. Inflation outstripping interest rates – after a very long time – how are our savings doing? There is much to create anxiety.
Use whatever tools you need – extra coaching, therapy, physically intelligent movement or trips to an art gallery – to keep yourself on an even keel. Getting help when you could use it is a sign of great mental health.
I am planning to go myself to the Whistler at the RA., when I next go to my singing group, finally meeting again, in person, in a couple of weeks time. Meanwhile, daily movement. Quiet prayer, meditation.
If you can, open up your diaphragm, and sing out loud. Singing is a whole body experience, and leaves you with a high.
What you do, matters.
Everything positive you do defies those who are bombing civilians, pushing up the price of energy worldwide, disrupting our supply chains, and playing havoc with our budgets. It can also address personal loss.
More importantly, why would I be grateful to her too?
What Miss Margaret Noble did was to start a school for young women in Kolkata at the behest of Swami Vivekananda, a monk of the Ramakrishna Order. This involved begging the parents with female children to allow these girls to be taken to her schoolroom in 16A Bosepara Lane, Kolkata, accompanying them to and from school, and of course teaching them. This was in November 1898.
If it had not been for her, my mother would not be a graduate. I suspect that Birla, an Indian industrialist, would not have built Modern High School, which I attended for a couple of years before coming to the UK, and I would most likely not have received any formal education.
Miss Noble’s work changed a whole country’s attitude.
Now, it is an Indian middle class family’s aim that their male progeny should marry a woman with some formal education. Typically a graduate bride is a key objective of the educated family, for their sons.
This year the World Economic Forum reported that only 25% of women formally engage in India’s labour market. So 173 million women are participants in the economy. Miss Noble passes any modern impact analysis with glowing colours – she took women out of their home – in 120 years what she did by opening a school, and escorting a handful of girls to it, has changed the lives of 173 million women, and their husbands, children and wider families !!
We do still have a long way to go. India’s is one of the lowest workforce participation rates in the world for women, ranking India 145th out of 153 countries.
What is remarkable about Miss Noble is that she did not set out to look for this reverence. In fact, it was her own sense of reverence for learning and her incessant quest for spiritual truth, which led her to follow an inspiring monk, Vivekananda, to India.
Why isn’t she better known in the UK?
Her name was changed.
The reason for her obscurity in the UK is that Margaret Noble was initiated by her master, Vivekananda and given a new monastic name – Sister Nivedita. (Nivedan is a verb meaning ‘to offer’ – her given name means ‘the offered, or dedicated’). A very high accolade is inherent in that choice of name.
This naming did protect her to some extent, from the adverse attention of the Colonial authorities – it was seen as wrong to persecute a woman who had joined a monastic order, engaged only in education. Reports of such an arrest would not go down well in Whitehall.
The re-naming was also crucial for the furtherance of Vivekananda’s educational purpose I suspect. If I were a 19th century respectable Bengali family entrusting my daughter into the care of a woman called ‘Sister Nivedita’ I would do so with much greater ease of spirit, than if she were called Miss Margaret Noble, clearly an English name.
Margaret was not particularly famous in the UK, though she was personally a well connected woman: her work in India was seen as marginal. She was a school teacher in Wimbledon, London, when she met Vivekananda. There was nothing inconsistent in her actions when she reached India – she was starting a girls’ school with a handful of young women. Let her be, the authorities decided.
Those who delved deeper, could also see that it would not be prudent to have her written about. The extent of her devotion to her teacher Vivekananda might arouse interest in the philosophy which had led to her self-dedication. This philosophy points to the equal potential of all human beings – men and women – to attain spiritual enlightenment. This spirit of gender equality could not be spread in writing – suffragettes were already a thorn in the side of the UK government. (the link shows a women’s suffrage timeline)
More than gender equality
This spirit of equality extended beyond gender. Vivekananda derived his thinking from the personal experience of his master, Sri Ramakrishna, who said that all religions were equally capable of leading to personal spiritual enlightenment. No one religion was therefore ‘superior’ to any other.
For all imperialists, this is a threat. Think of the Taliban today, if this were the accepted world belief system – think of all the colonialists at the time. This idea constitutes a peculiar kind of heresy – because underpinning all imperialist action is the embedded belief in the moral superiority of one’s own religion.
The work Margaret Noble, started as a disciple and colleague of Vivekananda is far from finished.
Vivekananda’s modern colleagues continue to work quietly to bring these ideas into fruition. The Vedanta centre in London is located at Bourne End – and the head of that mission has been talking to Wimbledon Council to approve the erection of a bronze statue of Sister Nivedita in Wimbledon, to honour the work she did.
Heading up the Chicago mission is a senior monk, who is setting up a new divinity school, which aims to teach all religions, where no one religion will be allowed to call itself superior to any other. He announced this recently, to the joy of those of us who believe in the need for harmony amongst all peoples of the world. Two world wars, and several genocides have eroded the sense of unity amongst the inhabitants of this wonderful planet. We really can do better.
Miss Margaret Noble would have thoroughly approved of the spirit of egalitarianism across humanity, which is embraced by all these actions. She comes to mind afresh on the occasion of her birthday more than 150 years ago, which was widely celebrated two months ago. Her book, called ‘The Web of Indian Life’ shows a love for her students and their homes, which I cannot but think mattered.
An educated, effective and loving teacher is a true blessing, in anyone’s life. In this I speak from personal experience in two Indian schools, and one English one. A kind, devoted and loving educator started the story of my education.
She taught core life skills, and a university campus is being built in her memory, according to her wishes. A triumph of life skills education if ever there was one !!
Changing our behaviours always do feel like mountainous tasks. We set big goals – my son’s middle school tee-shirt said ‘run fast or be last’. The non sporting version is ‘go big or go home’.
These turn out to be recipes for disappointment.
What typically happens after that is the voice inside the head takes over – you know, that self-critical voice which says ‘see, you couldn’t do it’ or ‘you never did have the will-power’.
What people don’t tell us is that we should think small — as in baby steps – we do something which is in the direction of what we want to achieve. These baby steps will become a new habit.
It’s not that new. There are other books on habit changes.
Most of them talk about what our Aunt Bea used to call Baby Steps.
So, what is a Baby Step, exactly? Can you define it? How small do we mean?
As small as is a viable unit of the habit. Atomic, granular, call it what you will.
Its not a bad expression, ‘Baby Steps’, because there is a stepped sequence. And it has nothing to do with will power. (Our will power won’t always be high, and the way we get around that is to make the behaviour really, really easy to do.)
Here is an example – If you see your house in need of cleaning and say ‘ I’ve got to clean this whole house,’ you’re going to need lots of motivation. But if you say ‘I’ll just tidy three things away, and clean three small areas’ all you need is a small bit of motivation. It is the only way I start to do any housework – the three things formula- even if after that, I do a bit more than I thought I would.
So I looked into Fogg’s thesis.
Here is what he says:
First step – set the outcome, and break it down
You take any new habit you want, and you scale it back to its smallest viable unit.
What do I mean?
You want to get up an hour earlier every morning? Try setting your alarm for just ten minutes ahead of its normal time, for a week.
If you know you want to read more, just read one paragraph a day, for a week.
Best example for me, because I have done this – You want to meditate?
Start by taking a minute out of your day, and take one long, counted breath. Everyone can spare a minute. My friend Marlaine did this one minute breathing exercise for a while, before she moved along in the right direction.
So, at what level would you say to yourself ‘now, there is no excuse not to do it’ ?
Set your level, and imagine a bad day – you’re in a rush or you’re feeling off colour, or you’re simply absorbed in a whole lot of work, or distracted by children, or a problematic project – and then make it so small, that you can still do it.
Set aside 10 minutes to do this bit at least – it does involve a bit of visualisation. And it is up to you – nobody can do this for you.
Second Step – decide where you will fit it in
Do you have an existing routine for anything? You must do – cleaning teeth, travelling to work – things you do every day at a certain time.
Ask yourself, what does this little time slot of habit-making come after? For example, reading might come just after you sit in your train, or bus. That might be the perfect time for you to open that book and read a paragraph of it. You can, of course, read more if you like. That’s great. But the step is just a baby one — you only do a paragraph if that’s all you want to do that day.
Your meditation might come after you have cleaned your teeth – mine started at age 11 with that one minute, just after my mouth was fresh, for that one minty breath.
set an alarm for that first week – or maybe even a fortnight. Resolutions are not so easy to recall in the cold light of the everyday.
Third step – celebrate, to create the emotional impact on your brain.
The idea is to create a bigger brain impression than you would otherwise get, with a small action like this, by associating a positive emotion with what you did – in effect by celebrating. Whatever it is you do, that makes you feel ‘hurray’ is what will help your brain to ‘wire in’ the new small step towards your desired habit.
If you are young or maybe just American, a fist pump would be natural. My new found friends at Physical Intelligence, would have you raising both your arms, and smiling to yourself – a nice broad smile, in the mirror.
I have seen a friend imitate her child by doing a hop and a skip, or a little dance, at home, alone.
Or you can sing the chorus of “Feeling Good” in your head, like me. I sing with some blind friends – this one is often requested. But singing it in my head -imagining one of our singing sessions – also counts.
Think this is stupid or childish? I did too. There is science behind this, though. Your brain is being shaped, moulded and changed by your experiences every moment. This is referred to as brain plasticity, meaning ‘ability to be modified’. Just as any plastic object becomes pliable when heated, your brain is influenced and shaped by what happens in your life. If you make a gesture, or a statement, or sing a song, it will be ‘counted in’ and determine how your brain is moulded, ready for the next day.
‘You can’t teach an old dog new tricks’ is simply not true – we can learn, right up to when we are eighty or more.
That is how repeating a mantra works – it literally changes the brain.
Imagining, it turns out, is also ‘experience’. That is what the spiritual practice of ‘dhyana’ is in the beginning -a prolonged exercise in active imagination of one’s chosen deity.
But why would imagining a song work, in the case of celebrating?
Well, I asked the same thing – and got an answer which was astounding.
Susan Greenfield, neuroscientist, gave a talk, (this is a YouTube link) and in it, she talks about an experiment. If you have half an hour, listen to all of it – it is fascinating. But she said something at 8 minutes 39 seconds which gives you pause for thought.
Three groups sat interacting with pianos in this brain experiment – they had adult volunteers who could not play the piano.
Group one, the control group stared at a piano. (Never volunteer for this – it is beyond boring, said Professor Greenfield). 🙂
Group two (physical practice) actually did five finger piano exercises.
Group three simply imagined that they were doing those exact exercises, (mental practice) but did nothing physically. Here are the brain changes – the larger the blob, the bigger the brain change. Really?? The mental practice, or imagination, achieved almost the same effect on the brain? Yes, apparently.
That tells us what imagination is capable of achieving in our brain.
So what are the prerequisites for any behaviour to happen?
There’s got to be motivation to do the new behaviour. (You are letting yourself not give up, or sustain motivation by breaking your goal down to baby steps, but the original motivation has to be an intrinsic thing – something which you believe is right or good, and you actually want to do it.)
Second is the ability to do the behaviour, and your belief that you have that ability. (the baby step strategy has to be the best way to say – YES, even I have no excuse for not doing it.)
And the third is a prompt.
The prompt is anything that says, “Do this small thing now.” As I said, set an alarm, or fit it into an existing routine, to set up that prompt.
And when those three things come together there is the beginning of change.
But surely, everyone feels a bit ridiculous when they first start this celebrating nonsense.
Or do they?
The answer is ‘It depends on how negative the self talk in your head is, right now.’
If like me, you are habitually self critical, and you can hear your (insert name – parent, teacher, brother, boss) telling you that you’ve not got it right time and time again, then the expression ‘this celebrating nonsense’ comes to the fore.
To some people, however, celebration comes naturally. It was a part of the family they grew up in – their father always said ‘good job’ when they did something, or tried hard at mastering something new. Their mother managed to hug them, after something well done, however absent-mindedly.
But the ‘I don’t believe this brigade’ is bigger I suspect, and do have a hard time celebrating.
One of the ways to help them (and I include myself in this sceptics group) is to say:
Make a list – just take five minutes to do it – how many are the ways that you criticize yourself when you do a bad job? Now make a list for five minutes and jot down all the ways you tell yourself you did something well.
What happened with me? The self-critical list is long and rich, and the celebration list is very, very short. It took less than a minute. Writing it out makes the point visibly. There is a case for balancing it out a little bit, surely.
What really convinced me was the marketing professionals
How do video game makers go about achieving their sales targets, if the pre-requisite to achieving that target is to create habits in people who didn’t have that habit before?
A friend’s child was playing a video game, sitting at the foot of the sofa – what I noticed over his shoulder was how quickly, and frequently, and for what tiny things the game was giving feedback like “Good job’. and ‘Way to go’.
Well, why so often? Because they know that this approbation will constitute a dopamine hit, and that is what we love. So, the most financially successful video games are the ones that help you feel great, repeatedly.
This is what wires in the habit for the game player. They want to experience it more and more often.
And of course this ensures profitability for the game maker.
You could start a virtuous circle.
But I digress. Let us look ahead a bit, because this is a good road, says Fogg. As you absorb these small celebrations, while making these baby sized changes and feel like you are making progress, your basic mental building blocks are changing.
This changes the way you think about yourself and in a while, your idea of who you are, and what you can do, starts to change.
So you begin to think, “Ok, maybe I’m the kind of person who can read a 600 page tome” or “I’m the sort of person who has an exercise routine” or “I’m the kind of person who gets up earlier in the morning to study, or indeed meditate.”
Adding to the time, fortnight by fortnight.
You don’t stop at a minute of meditation, of course. You keep adding another five minutes every 2 weeks. That goes without saying. (In three months, that has become a half hour practice – in 6 months, an hour).
And you do need to keep committed. Do it with a buddy.
I would start by giving progress reports to family.
What Fogg is finding is that the habit does propagate to other parts of your life.
When you learn how to feel good about your baby steps towards your goal, then that changes how you think about yourself. Then, when a new opportunity comes up at work, this new brain, which now changes the inner mind chatter for a bit, is the one looking at it.
Who knows how it will respond to a new opportunity? I would guess better, with greater confidence.
That has to be the beginning of the road to personal transformation, whether it is a career goal, or a spiritual one that you are striving for.
Use the next opportunity
Use your brain’s plasticity to change your life’s direction. Be an encouraging voice for a friend – and get going. Two together is better than doing it alone.
Yes, I’m speaking from experience. 🙂 I wish you all the luck in the world.
I didn’t really know what to do with my life when I was 17. I talked to my father, who said – time enough for that yet, get a degree first, and then think about it; you will have seen a bit more of the world. There were ‘men’s jobs’ and ‘women’s jobs’ and I didn’t know anything about either. (There was no internet, so apart from a few turgid books in the school library, there was nothing to look up.) If I had read Peter’s career path, (see below) I would have believed my father more readily. These days, even a degree isn’t strictly necessary to do well – there are so many other pathways. Here is a website tour which hopefully will clarify what questions to ask:
This is a really unusual software company – with one person at least with a career which proves that degrees don’t have to tally with what you do next. (Read Peter’s career progression in their About us page. Clearly he could not have known he would end up owning a software company or two!!)
SACU is a careers website, which contains a visual online quiz to help you choose a higher education course and career.
It also creates your own personalised higher education cloud and career cloud.
But maybe this isn’t the right place to start. I am sitting in Gloucestershire, and so is this company, that is why it is here at the top – I don’t know quite why, but it really cheered me up to know that it exists.
But let me start where everyone else starts – and why not – it is a good place.
The UK National Careers Service
The government site has a list of job profiles and a skills health check. You can contact the service to arrange a face to face careers appointment if you are 19 years and older. There is a telephone advice service for anyone under 19. It is useful to just look at their Facebook page first. Website signposting is right there on their page.
What do you get ? First of all, definitions of who does what – that is a great advantage. When I was coming out of school, I didn’t know what people did with a degree in economics, I was thinking about, other than be an economist, although I could guess.
Nobody listed out job titles and what they do – here is a pagewhich I would have found really interesting, when I was 18 – what do different people do in the general area of business and finance? Too simplistic? Well yes, you might say that, but even this is better than the ‘sorry, who did you say you were?’ that I found. Not that I didn’t ask. I was offered many good secretarial options. Oh, I wanted to get a degree? Well, Graduate Girls (a secretarial agency for bright young personal assistants) was the new thing – I tried to look it up – it no longer exists, apparently.
This site is designed as a service provider to universities and colleges – they buy into these services, for their students. It has, however, more helpful job role descriptions including salary, types of employers and UK opportunities. As a student I would have tried doing the assessment ‘what job would suit me’. Interesting, and gives you options.
You are able to look under careers advice for degree subjects and what jobs they can progress to. Something might click with you, some insight that you would like to do this – or really this would never be your cup of tea. Even that is good information.
If you are short of inspiration you could go to a site called icould. This includes 1000 films of personal career stories across all occupations.
I looked at something which is really a long way from my own abilities and interests, because I wanted to see for myself if the video would give me real information which was new to me. So I looked at Optometry. Yes, it was a real person who had started recently and yes, it was very informative. Give it a try – look for what you think might interest you, and then, look at surrounding subjects as well. You will come out the richer.
If, like me, you wouldn’t know where to start, they have a short ‘Buzz Test’, which gets you thinking about your personality and how this may fit with different roles.
This is a regional service for the South West Region of the UK. I am including this, because this is a glimpse into what options there are for each age group.
Not everyone is academic in nature – they may have their own family or personal reasons for not studying, and starting to earn. So what is available, if you are looking into careers at different ages? This site gives you a set of choices, at 14, 16 and 18 years.
By the time you come out, you will most likely have a pathway in mind – you can see what options you have, and what time you will need for getting the qualifications you need to do the job well, and make good career progression.
Very good for exploring career paths/subjects, and how they link to different jobs, employer opportunities and general careers advice. They have 60-second interviews. Look in their advice section.
I thought that this site just opens your horizons. There are 172 interviews to read – not videos, which I liked, actually, because there is no moving picture – you can just stop and think, halfway through reading it. And it is not too long. This was the result of ‘60 seconds’ with the Imam of the Cambridge Mosque Trust. So what did he study to get to be Senior Imam?
Find Your Why
Finally, here is an article I found, which puts all of this into context. The Japanese got to it first with Ikigai. This article talks about finding your ‘why’. (At 17 I was very much asking the question ‘Why do I have to grow up at all?’ – it is not a useful question, sadly.) The site, incidentally, is run by Steve Scott, someone I discovered very early in 2008 – if you do develop a morning routine like he says you should, then you will only benefit. I haven’t tried yet, but I mean to, because I need one, urgently.
Thankfully, there is nothing new under the sun, and finding your ‘Why’ was not an invention by Simon Sinek, and neither does he claim it is. Before someone says that Sinek’s site is inappropriate, then they are right – it is all about leadership issues. No, you are not a leader yet. But there is no harm in having a look at what leaders from all kinds of companies have been reading in their droves. If you are going somewhere then it never did any harm in knowing what the people at the top of that ladder are thinking, feeling and doing.
See what you think.
And if you want to see something more about how to prepare for being in the workplace you might like to visit this secret page on this site.
The practice of calling the mind back, when it has wandered off somewhere is called ‘pratyahara’ in Patanjali’s yoga sutras, an ancient work on how to meditate for the purposes of spiritual advancement. We know now that there is neuroscience behind Yoga and Meditation: the ancient practices of Patanjali do impact our cognitive and behavioural functions, and there is proof in laboratories all over America and the UK for such claims.
The West is getting wise to this, using their own methodology – the scientific method of controlled trials. We know for example from Sara Lazar’s research at Harvard that meditating for a short time will cause structural alterations in the brain. Meditation has been shown to slow down atrophy – keeping us young. It should be part of the mainstream core skills, it is argued.
Business has clocked into these findings, and now at the click of a button, there is an app to download on our smartphones, for practising meditation. Millions are being made on the back of these apps.
What we know also from the Oxford Meditation Centre’s work that providing resources for practitioners is a huge part of making this practice enter the mainstream.
A medical interest in mindfulness practice
Their interest in this was originally discovering that practicing mindfulness has a major impact on recovery from depression, and avoiding future episodes of depression in those diagnosed with the condition.
Mindfulness research in Oxford shares a vision I am sure, with many doctors and psychologists who struggle with patients who are suffering from depression and related disorders: ‘A world without the devastating effects of depression where people live with understanding, compassion and responsiveness.’ They have also started to explore Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy’s acceptability and effectiveness in different settings, such as teachers working in schools and prisoners in the criminal justice system.
Helping young people of school age
In this they are working alongside the Mindfulness in Schools Project. Meditation is not just a medical remedy. It is actually a great aid to life in general and learning in particular. They are saying that ordinary people should learn to meditate from an early age, in order to learn better, to manage their emotions with a bit more confidence, and make more informed life choices.
They have a hub for teachers who are already qualified, supporting their work with papers and group work.
Should spiritual practitioners help this practice of pratyahara to become even more mainstream?
Patanjali sees meditation as the core skill for conducting a spiritual quest in a private capacity in any religion – a number of world religions have meditation as their core curriculum, but both Vivekananda (and Patanjali for all I know), are indifferent as to the exact religion of the person practising meditation. The composition of the human being is the same, and the rules of mastery remain the same too. Thakur was certainly here to demonstrate that the individual’s focus can be on any religion. He did not mind which one suited the practitioner best. He taught general principles.
Does the saffron robe get in the way of teaching core skills?
What a nineteenth century monastic order like the Ramakrishna Mission does not aim to do, is facilitate the entry of meditation into the modern skills base of every economy – without any reference to spiritual advancement. Spiritual advancement of the individual is actually its stated aim – self realisation or God realisation, which are known by the Order to be the same, is the ultimate goal of human life, and it is their mission to bring a sense of urgency into the spiritual lives of individuals seeking their personal spiritual goals. As I have seen them, these are highly educated people who have mastered the teaching of meditation to their own novices and monks. They have also taken every opportunity to teach their monks how to do their work in the self-less detached way which constitutes karma yoga.
Is spiritual practice an effective aim for a world movement for pratyahara?
In practical terms however, in a world where a very small percentage of people are interested in spiritual life, the way to make meditation (and in particular pratyahara) a widely practiced skill would be to say nothing about the spiritual work which one can do, but to emphasise the ‘quality of life’ issue.
This would be desirable social enhancement project for the benefit of all mankind. It is also the preparatory step for creating a pool of people in different walks of life who have this basic skill of pratyahara – the ability to notice where the mind has gone, and call it back to a desired place (during meditation, to the chosen focal point, and during work, to the task in hand).
Every employer, in whatever industry or service provision, should be keen to hire a young person who meditates – they will simply be more capable of concentrating on, and finishing whatever work they started.
It should be seen as way of ‘creating capacity’, not only for effective employees of large organisations, but also of effective searchers for individual salvation, while living to serve humanity.
This would be a good pool of people who would support the monastic order of Sri Ramakrishna, which sits on the common ground between all religions, (and holds pratyahara high in it’s toolbox of skills for all those who would wish to join the order).
Therein lies the possibility of an end to all religious wars. It might also turn out to be a good bit of long term planning for the Order. From such a pool of people would come the parents who would allow their boys and girls to become monks and nuns of this unique order, so this level of service to mankind can be maintained.