A Meta – Skill called SPICE

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Pic Courtesy: Swaraa Lodha

Future of the world is changing.

Future of the families is changing.

The way leaders are deciding to take their countries forward, the way partners are deciding to raise their families has a new narrative.

Prime Minister of a developed nation like Canada talks about equality, empathy, globalism, and forgiveness as his philosophy. He apologizes with aplomb. He cries and puts his vulnerability out there.

Players like Serena Williams play their roles as a tennis player and a parent like a symphony.

Indian boxer Mary Kom continues to fight with her three children being an integral part of her daily vision of life.

Satya Nadella runs Microsoft with the energy of empathy fuelling the core businesses. He admits that the father in him has shaped the leader in him for the better.

Walls between the masculine and the feminine are breaking and they need to break to make it an ‘and’ game.

We need to put our cultural ‘learned helplessness’ behind us and embrace a more inclusive self-view. Our cultural trappings have built edifices of stereotypes which need to be toppled over and new bridge be built.

The stereotypes like “When husband earns enough money, why is the wife working?” or “A married couple must have children” or “A mother who holds on to her career alongside her children is selfish and aggressive” need not be a part of growing up of the next generation.

The way a man or a woman would etch their roles as per the script of the society is divisive and oppressive for a woman.

We need a social re-engineering of our thoughts about expectations from men & women within marriage and family.

We need to accept the learnings from ‘partnering’ and ‘parenting’ experiences as meta-skills. A meta-skill is a set of practical knowledge which can be applied to various circumstances including ones which we haven’t experienced yet.

Life should be a process of accumulating and applying meta-skills but we fail to optimize their use.

Their suboptimal use causes us to feel less happy as we age and feel less fulfilled. The cross-functional exchange of skills will refine and strengthen our competence as a professional as well as a partner and a parent. My ‘father pod’ can teach my ‘leader pod’ and the opposite is equally possible.

Use of meta-skills like parenting and leadership across many areas of life makes our life wholesome. Spice helps you develop a toolbox of meta-skills to make our passage through life-fulfilling.

 

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SPICE” helps us to dive deep into the reservoir of our meta-skills as a partner (with a sibling, co-founder or spouse) and as a parent (with a cause, a mentee, children or old parents).

The real-life experience that we face as a partner and parent, if journalled properly and the learnings sieved out, can give valuable life learnings. These are raw material for developing meta-skills but we fail to project them and process them as valuable.

The extract from juices of life, concentrated in our parenting and partnering pods needs to be highlighted as an elixir for staying happily human.

Travel experiences are valued while real-life experiences with real people at home are neither documented nor considered relevant. This is so because no one considers them worth synthesizing and worth applying in professional processes which is a dumb decision.

All people possess experiences, but most of them fail to process & integrate them into more usable form in various domains of our lives. Every partner knows about relationship conflicts, trust issues in not only their lives but in lives of their friends, friend’s relatives, families. This information can be processed into ‘wisdom’. Every parent knows about parenting dilemmas and solutions adopted by so many fellow parents that these real-life concerns can be a great value-add in the personal and professional arena. Various failures in handling children, handling relations can be processed and analyzed to be used in managing egos and team dynamics in offices. These experiences are a goldmine of wisdom if processed, analyzed and integrated into our learning for future use.

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Pic Courtesy: Swaraa Lodha

SPICE helps us to process the valuable insights from partnering and parenting and integrating them as a meta-skill in our professional and personal lives. Similarly, the professional skill sets can be used on the domestic front.

Author: Dr. Swati Lodha

Dr. Swati Lodha, is an author of Amazon Bestseller Book titled "Don't Raise Your Children, Raise Yourself" (2016) and other Bestselling Books like "Come On! Get Set Go" (2002) and "Why Women are What They Are" (2004) A Doctorate in Women Entrepreneurship, she is passionate about creativity and innovation. She has been Dean, Faculty of Management Studies, JNU and Director - AIMSR, Mumbai. She founded her first venture SWASH Pvt. Ltd 17 years ago which offers Training Courses to Youth, Professionals & Women. A recipient of many prestigious award "Suryadutta National Award" "Veer Durgadas Award" "Rashtriya Rajbhasha Puraskar", she has mentored more than 10,000 individuals from different walks of life. Her latest venture "LIFE LEMONADE" offers Corporate Training Workshops under four verticals: Life Transformation, Women Empowerment, Parenting, and Leadership & Motivation. She is married to noted Actor-Poet, Shailesh Lodha. She lives in Mumbai with her husband and daughter.

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