A light in the darkness

This book is the First of the Mihir thriller series set in India's beautiful and scenic northeast. An adrenaline spiker and an engaging thriller that keeps you hooked up till the end.  If you are an adult and an adrenaline junkie looking for some well-planned reconnaissance, daring hostage rescues, and unconventional warfare making your adrenaline gush out, then the Mihir series is the best one.  Summary The book starts with a prologue dated 12 January 2018, which paves the way for the story to unfold. It describes a heinous incident with a girl. The author uses an explicit literary skill to introduce characters in the advancing pages. With each lesson, a new character and a new suspense unfolds that keeps the reader engaged and guessing. In my experience, I started with Sneha, who met the fateful incident of rape and died. The opening chapter carried us to the far Northeast, where a very vigilant and sharp army officer Chris was on a mission to meet his source and was unfortunatel

Image credit:  Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke  on Pixabay Referring to my previous post "Roadblocks to decision making,"    I will elaborate on the WRAP method to take our step to success. Here,  W stands for widening our possible options.  I remember my teenage days when I was so stuck with "should and must" and "whether or not" business restricting.  Should I take this course or not? I remember my matriculation exam and senior secondary exam days when I felt the world was only engineering or medical. There was no other option, so I chose both maths and biology to widen my scope. I had to put much effort into them, but I could do both well. As I neared the end of my senior secondary school, I felt I could not go into the medical field. I approached one of the coaching centres for engineering preparation, but my anxiety and fear of asking for clarifications made me make mistakes. The consequence was that I was told that I could not manage the pressure of pr

                                                                Image credit:  Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke  on pixabay Having talked all this season on decision making, I have now arrived at a point where I landed up to this book, " Yes or No: The Guide to Better Decisions. " Hello readers, Here, I want to ask you, What can I do to make the best decision in my life? You all might say, consult, seek advice, and review your resources.  I too would have jumped into the same pond and responded the same way. This book taught me the other way around. The guide here said, "There is no best decision rather we make better decisions." He added, "To make a better decision I first stop proceeding with a poor decision." This sounded weird. How will I make a better decision by stopping because, if I stop here, how will I get the better portion?  Let me simplify this in this way: I want hot tea in my cup which is full.  There are two possible ways, one by pouring the h

                                                      Image credit:  Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke   on pixabay The four barricades to decision-making are 1) Narrow framing I always found myself in this trap. I have read and heard about flexibility but I never thought such narrow framings were actually taking me far away from flexibility and vast opportunities. As I reflect back and review my life I have put myself many a time in such approach-avoidance conflicts, or avoidance-avoidance conflicts and landed up with compromising negotiation style .  So, what is this narrow framing? I remember my days of selecting my stream for senior secondary schooling. Should I choose PCMB  (Physics, Chemistry, Maths, Biology)  or PCMC(Physics, Chemistry, Maths, Computer Science)? The same drill happened when I had to decide should I drop out and prepare for my job or join a college? We come across such limiting decisions now and then. Should I buy this car or not? Should I opt to join another compan

Continuing my discussion from my last post on "P's of decision-making"   Let us move forward to see what elements of pain and pleasure influence our decision-making behaviour.  To understand this we need to understand the following concepts(Based on B F Skinner's reinforcement theory / operational conditioning ): a) Reinforcement : We use reinforcement when we want to increase the frequency of the behaviour. This boosts the behaviour. There are two types of reinforcements     i) Positive reinforcement: Positive consequences that increase the probability of the behaviour I want                                                             to see.      ii) Negative reinforcement: Negative consequences are withheld, thus increasing the probability of the                                                                 behaviour I want to see.  b) Punishment: We use punishments when we want to reduce the frequency of behaviour.  In the course of decision-making, we actuall

                                                          Image credit:  Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke   on Pixabay Pondering over the concept of decision-making, I was compelled to think about what really makes us take a decision. Why do we ever choose to decide? When this question was thrown to me by the author Antony Robbins, I was like I never thought about it, it just happens. As I proceeded in my reading the discussion was becoming more interesting and the answer I came up with was really a shock to me. The author talked about why did Donald Trump do what he did and why Mother Teresa did what she liked? Both of them are making decisions to do things but in different ways. Even though it is about decision-making why are they different in all manners? Decision-making is a cognitive process, which means, it has something to do with thinking. But, this thinking process is led by our emotions (emotions associated with "pain or/and pleasure").  What our decisions are emotiona