Monthly Archives: June 2017

Jun

Myth of Happiness: Why a little dissatisfaction is good

From when you’re very young you start getting the message — you should be happy. You are told that the purpose of life is to be happy! By the time you leave childhood, you start telling yourself that. In adulthood, you start worrying because you’re not happy and start finding ways to be happy. And are a whole lot of people to help you, that’s for sure. The trouble is — helping you helps them — not you.

We’ve been made to buy into the idea that happiness is something we achieve when everything in our life finally looks the way we’ve been thinking it should. When I buy that car I will be happy. When she says she loves me I will be happy. When I get that promotion I will be happy.

But it never does happen like that. Entire religions have been constructed from this idea of happiness. The lure of happiness is so great and so unfathomable that it goes into the ‘next life’. If you live good you will be happy forever in Swarga, in Heaven or in Jannat. It is a far off carrot dangling from a divine stick.

But here’s the rub — everlasting happiness is a myth that has been propagated on us for thousands of years. Because it is easy to sell and that’s because everyone wants to be happy. But the human state is not of some perpetual happiness even remotely. You can look at Gandhi, or Dr Martin Luther King and ask yourself — they should have been happy, but were they? If they had a life full of strife and stress with moments of happiness, why should you be better?

That is what I talk about here, that happiness is the opposite of what everyone has taught us. And the opposite of happiness is not necessarily unhappiness — it’s just trying harder. I want you to see why happiness is a state that exists only for a while and that is the nature of being human. First, let’s look at how humans perceive happiness. Then we’ll look at why they do. And last, what can make us happier without the mumbo jumbo.

The construction of happiness

The construct that religions, pseudo-religions and new age gurus give us is that happiness is an ‘existential state’ in which you live, or not. It is an either-or-state, so you are either happy or you are unhappy. But happiness is circumstantial.

Over a lifetime — the overachiever, the underachiever, and the failure — everyone is happy for about the same percentage of their lives. Comparing 99.9% of the life experience when you are not happy with that 0.01% when you are ‘happy’ may make it appear pointless and bleak.

However, it should not be so. This is the very nature of being human. It is not pointless because all human progress has really come from the point of being not happy. Even art, that one place that reflects self-expression more than ambition, has seen its pinnacle rising out of a deep state of being dissatisfied and unhappy.

Happiness in the future: The optimism bias

If you don’t agree with me that happiness is transient consider this: how many times have you said, “Won’t it be great when I get that promotion/ fall in love/ go for that vacation…” It is because our brains have an ‘optimistic bias’ — which is the tendency to think that our future will be better than our present. The brain overcomes the monotony of being unhappy by creating happiness in the future.

Happiness in the past: The Pollyanna principle

An older person is likely to say, “Wasn’t it great when… I got that promotion/ fell in love / went for that vacation…” It shows we remember pleasant information from the past more than unpleasant information. The reason that the good-old-days seem so good is because we focus on the pleasant stuff and tend to forget the day-to-day unpleasantness.

This modelling of both the past and the future is an adaptive part of the human psyche. These are delusions but this self-deception has a purpose — it enables us to keep striving. If our present is unpleasant but the past is great, and our future can be great, then we can work our way out of the present!

Competition between states of happiness

We all know something that makes us happy; being with a loved one could make you happy. Being successful at work could make you happy. However, happiness isn’t complementary and sometimes may actually be in conflict.

A satisfying life built on a successful career and a great relationship are built over a long period of time. But having too much time with your loved one may compromise your professional success or vice versa. Committing yourself to avoid momentary pleasures such as going for a party or a spur-of-the-moment trip — typically as happiness in one area of life increases, it’ll often decline in another. It’s impossible for us to simultaneously have all states of happiness!

Happiness creates dissonance

Everyone has their baseline happiness, everyone has triggers to go above it and to fall below it, but over a period of time, they fall back to this baseline. You think buying this bag, or shoes or that car will make you happy. In reality getting something like that is a happiness ‘hit’. It does feel happy for a few hours then you slide back to your natural state. Else everyone with a Louis Vuitton bag or a Porsche should be happy forever but they are not.

This is true not just for underachieving or distressed people. There is a lot of research that shows that making a lot of money or meeting a terrible accident actually does not significantly affect your long-term level of happiness. And there is a reason for it. The dissonance happiness creates (and the resulting unhappiness) is the way human brains start chasing the next thing. While we do not think of it like that, it is a survival skill. This ‘hit’ is what motivates us and gives us this quest of happiness.

The law of diminishing happiness

It is not only that we need a happiness ‘hit’, the same hit will not work again. If a car or a promotion made you happy for a day, the next time it will make you feel that for say half the time. This is the diminishing return on happiness, in which your attempts to have “more” will actually bring you less. But if it were not so, ambition and achievement would be a straight line and every year you would want to achieve the same as the year before. But no human system works like that. Each year you want to achieve more than the year before. As life progresses in terms of your own expectations you are going up the funnel not down it.

Unhappiness is an evolutionary trait

Unhappiness and some pessimism actually do us good and help us see the world more accurately. Evolutionary scientists believe that those of our ancestors who were very anxious, a little depressed and hypochondriac were the key to the success of human species. They were more alert for danger and disease, and more prepared for potential problems in life. We no longer value misery as a learning experience or seize on it as a time to re-evaluate. Instead, we try to mask it.

Humans did not evolve to be happy

Stress stresses people out! There is a reason we feel stress — no stress is technically called homoeostasis. This is when an organism is in balance, for instance, there is an ideal level of glucose in the bloodstream, enough oxygen supply and the body’s temperature is favourable. All systems are go. A stressor is anything in the outside world that knocks an animal out of homeostatic balance. For example in the case of an accident you are out of homeostatic balance and the stress response is what your body does to reestablish homoeostasis.

Except humans are more complex than other animals

For one, we can anticipate that something unfavourable is about to happen and can have a stress response prior to the event. This anticipation of unpleasant events is unhappiness, but unless it is chronic and it paralyses you, it helps you cope with the event. Distress, on the other hand, is when stress is so chronic you believe you are about to be knocked out of homeostatic balance, but actually, you are really not, but this belief continues paralysing you.
For another, this stress response is till homoeostasis can be achieved or the animal goes into shock or dies. So stress is about three minutes of screaming after which it’s either over with or you’re over with. That is why a deer panics when attacked by a tiger but if it escapes, in a few minutes will munch grass like nothing happened. Deer don’t have a very complex emotional life, despite being a social species. People are not like that. A human will see a tiger in every shadow the rest of his life. That’s what phobias are made of.

I will look at the happy hormones in a while, but for now, let’s look at stress hormones. Stress causes the release of adrenaline and cortisol. They prime us for a fight or flight response, they reach into our fat cells and liver and take out sugar and dump it in our blood streams. They simultaneously increase the heart rate, blood pressure and breathing rate. However, humans generate these responses in non-life threatening situations. We worry about our work, loans and loved ones and respond the same way. It allows us to achieve more, though at a physiological price.

A few decades ago psychologists started studying African Baboons to study stress. The reason baboons are such good models is that like people, they don’t have real stressors. Baboons work three hours a day for food and have no predators. They sleep 12 hours. So they have 9 waking hours every day to devote to generating psychological stress toward other baboons. Surprisingly all the behavioural and physiological data including blood samples, tissue biopsies and electrocardiograms show that physiologically baboons feel stress the same way we do. They have elevated stress hormones and their immune responses and reproductive systems are compromised. Baboons like people are not being done in by predators and famines; they’re getting done in by each other.

Can you think your way through with happy thoughts and success?

In his book ‘If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Happy?’ Prof. Raj Raghunathan of University of Texas McCombs School of Business writes that there doesn’t appear to be much correlation between academic success and career success, and there is an even smaller correlation between career success and what he calls life success or happiness.

You’d also expect that with superior IQs, greater drive, high critical thinking ability and a better work ethic the predominant thoughts of a person would be happy. His subjects expected 60-75 per cent their thoughts to be positive, but the result of 2 weeks of logged information was surprising — actually, 70 per cent thoughts were negative. These thoughts were predominantly (a) feeling inferior (b) lack of love and connectivity with others, and (c) lack of control over themselves and other people! Overall the greater the career success, the more unhappy, out of shape, harried and distracted the subjects were.

One of the regular paths to being happy frequently told to us as improving our self-image. Which should be true, because if our self-worth improves our happiness should too. Except that it’s not true. Not because happiness does not go up with self-worth, but for the most part self-worth does not change over a lifetime!

In his book ‘Self-esteem: The Costs and Causes of Low Self-worth’ Nicholas Emler examines what is self-esteem and what causes low self-esteem. His research studied ways to address low self-esteem since it is seen to be the cause of unhappiness, personal and social ills, crime, drug addiction, educational failure and suicide. His study concluded however that self-esteem is not only difficult to gauge it is almost impossible to be modified through interventions. Most notably, this study recognises high self-esteem does not necessarily have only positive outcomes professionally and personally.

A 1922 study in the UK of 1,200 children well into their adult life found that those who were most happy in childhood died earlier in adult life than those who were less cheerful. In adult life, the happy children turned out to be more likely to drink, smoke and take risks, possibly because their happy world view made the dangers of those choices appear smaller. The conclusion of the study was “The long-term effects of cheerfulness are complex, and seem not entirely positive.”

The biology of ‘happy’ hormones

We feel happy when our bodies release one of these hormones. The most interesting part is that their release is not routine. It is infrequent and precisely the reason why being happy is such a positive stroke that our body craves for it. But it is hard to come by and reinforces our survival behaviour but we want to feel good as much as we can.

Dopamine

Dopamine motivates us to take action toward goals and gives us a surge of reinforcing pleasure when achieving them. Procrastination, self-doubt, and lack of enthusiasm are linked with low levels of dopamine. Studies on rats showed those with low levels of dopamine always opted for an easy option and less food; those with higher levels exerted the effort needed to receive twice the amount of food.

Serotonin

Serotonin flows when you feel significant or important. When serotonin is absent you feel lonely and depressed. Unhealthy attention-seeking is another symptom of lack of serotonin. Most antidepressants focus on the production of serotonin.

Oxytocin

Oxytocin creates intimacy, trust, and builds bonds. It is released by men and women during orgasm, but much more in women than in men. It is released and by mothers during childbirth and breastfeeding. Most animals will reject their offspring when the release of oxytocin is low.

Endorphins

Endorphins are released in response to pain and stress and help to alleviate anxiety and depression. The “runners high” during and after a vigorous run are a result of endorphins. It is an analgesic and a sedative similar to morphine and diminishes our perception of pain.

You can’t be perpetually happy, but you can be happier!

So we can’t be happier? We can be, but not necessarily through the happiness industry. The whole industry is dedicated to teaching us how to be happy. It’s almost as though we must have a duty to be happy. The trouble is this — the happiness industry wants us to fixate neurotically on ourselves. It makes us want to be hypersensitive about our own emotional state. It tells us that just going through life without agonising over whether you are happy or not, means we’re not happy. A small low is a large emotional blow that needs immediate addressal.

The other trouble is this — it tells us attaining happiness is doing less and having less because that gets you to have satisfaction. It tells us that it leaves us more time for our family, our children and our friends. It asks you to look inward. But I have found, happiness can be found not by looking inside, but by doing for others. Very few people actually tell you that.

I can’t make you happy, but I can make you happier. No mumbo jumbo. And it does not require you to leave your family or give up your professional life. It’s just based on the understanding of what we know about the nature of happiness.

There is no state of perpetual happiness. First, you need to accept and appreciate that sometimes life will be good, and sometimes it is bad. You can’t have one and not the other. And that acceptance changed my perspective and life. The acceptance that dissatisfaction is a function of being human, and that happiness, when achieved, is a fleeting state should not be depressing. On the contrary recognising that happiness exists helps us appreciate it more when it arrives. We might want to take those short, sharp bursts of warmth and positivity and feel them constantly, but we can’t. It is the same with other emotions: boredom, dissatisfaction and sadness. None are constant.
Your sense of self-worth will not change over your life, but what you do with it can. The complicated ideas that happiness gurus give you — of losing ego and self and stuff like that — they are trying you change the wiring of your brain. Unless you are going to spend your life doing that there is no real use. There is ample research that shows that our personalities are set by the time we’re 25 and our self-esteem does not change over our lifetime no matter what the learning. However, there is an easy way of being happy. What we call happiness often occurs unselfconsciously, when we are so engrossed in a hobby or an afternoon of reading, painting, listening to music that we don’t notice time passing. Most of all give to others. Not as CSR — but your time. Pick up a sick child or a dog and care for it. It will change your life.
Get your Dopamine hit. Break big goals down into little pieces. Rather than only allowing your brains to celebrate when you’ve hit the finish line, create a series of little finish lines. Each time you do, you will get that dopamine hit. But don’t just feel good, reward yourself in a small way — watch a movie or get a great meal. Your brain starts telling you ‘Life’s good’. Create new goals before achieving the current one; that ensures a continual flow for experiencing dopamine.
SOT: Serotonin on Toast. A common antidote to feeling low is organised group activity — the culture brings experiences that facilitate serotonin release. Remember the bikers on Harleys – that’s what they’re doing. The same ride feels better when they do it in a group. Or a knitting group. The other remedy is reflecting on past significant achievements that allow the brain to re-live the experience. Our brain has trouble telling the difference between what’s real and imagined, so it produces serotonin in both cases. But remember to get off your chair and do something after that daydream.
Get your endorphins, like you get your vitamins. You do not have to be a distance runner or athlete or gym sort of guy to get them. Exercise in short bursts. Start with running 50mts all out. Then walking 50mts. Then running 50mts all out. 2 minutes — that’s it! There is ample research that shows it is intense interval workout that actually releases the endorphins, that otherwise comes after a 20-minute aerobic period. Short burst exercise has an added benefit — shorter telomeres — the ends of DNA’s that show the actual ageing repair in these short bursts. Other than exercise laughter is the easiest ways to induce endorphin release. Even the anticipation of laughter, e.g., attending a comedy show (come to Barking Mad the next time we have one), increases levels of endorphins.
Remember Oxytocin? It is good. Very good. But I don’t need to tell you how to get it.

Remember that the dissatisfaction with the present and dreams of the future are what keep us motivated. Warm memories reassure us that the feelings we seek can be had in the future. Perpetual bliss would completely undermine our will to accomplish anything at all. Among our earliest ancestors, those who were perfectly content were the 1st ones to die. Happiness is like chocolate cake. You can’t have it all the time.

Jun

The path to Shiva was paved with dogs

“What are you looking so far up the mountains. You are the only man this time of the day, 20km either way” the voice said. “I don’t know, but I haven’t found”, I replied. “You’re on the road for a month. And you’ve done this many times before” the voice said, “Do you not understand that I am here? You don’t have to look?”

I smiled. Alone in a small tent in the middle of a moonless night which itself was in the middle of a vast snowfield up at 13,050ft. No phones. Only a bicycle colder than the 6ft of snow it stood against. But I was home. I felt a warm glow down my throat. It couldn’t be the alcohol because I never violated the rule of not drinking on the road. It must be that I’d found what I wasn’t looking for.

10 years passed with many conversations, him and me, as friends. With no real meaning. One day I said “I want more. I’m not happy”. He said, “what do you want now?” “I don’t know,” I said, “but I want more love”. “OK”, he said, “you can have all of it, you can be my son, if you can be their father”, he pointed to a small dog looking at me from the corner of my house. Kavya looked at me waiting for an answer.

The Son of the Son of God is a Dog I rakeshshukla.com

I never again went to meet him at a temple or anywhere. The son of God. Now I was fearless, and it gets to your head. The situation turned, as it always does. I fell from a cliff, hit every rock on the way, and it was a long long way down. I lay bloodied and dying and I cried, bitterly but under my breath. “What do you cry about? The pain?” he appeared. “I’d never cry of pain”, it was a rebuke, “I’m your son”, I shouted back. He smiled, “Do you not understand I do not take care of any one thing. I can’t take care of you. I make the rules to run the

universe, and then I can only watch because touching it would violate the condition of having the rules in the first place”. I gasped, “so you didn’t leave me?”. “I’ll never love you less as long as you take care of your children”, he said.

I picked myself up and got to the first one that needed me. The son of the son of God was a Dog. Rakesh Shukla

(I wrote this on Shivaratri Feb 2017 and is an actual 1st person account. Through my darkest hour I could never stop nor forget that I do God’s work. And they are my children)

Jun

The experience of dying well, most of all teaches you, to live well.

A few weeks I discovered a growth/tumour on my lowest right rib. Painful to touch. I was having a haircut when I first felt it. I finished the haircut then called a Dr friend of mine. He put me onto an onco-surgeon friend of his. When I reached there they were surprised when I introduced myself as the patient. The test would return in a day and the damn thing is benign. That’s a good thing. It’s growing and hurting more which is not a good thing. But that one day & night forces you to think of many things. Of living with cancer. Surviving. Or not. Of death and dying. But for the longest time these are operational problems, not scary ones. For a little scared boy, how did I get here?

My childhood was spent in hospitals. I’ve had rheumatic heart disease very early in childhood. Survived a heart attack early in my life. Have suffered brain disease and arthritis for years. I live with 2 blocked carotids. I’ve broken my back and some days, it just gives way. None of those things is near dying though. That is when you know you have a few seconds, and only a few, and then the lights will be out.

I was not just sick, I was a very scared child. I was scared of pretty much everything. Including dogs. But I remember hating it. Wanting to be brave. My parents wanted to shelter me to the point that none of my ‘conditions’ would be spoken about. The constant living with needles and incisions gave me a tremendous capacity for pain. And to prove myself a man I’ve done some extreme things, but that’s a story for another time (you can see more here). The days and nights at home, in hospital wards, in ICUs, in ICCUs and neuro-surgery I remember thinking what would it be like to die. Not what happens after when you die, but the moments leading to when you do. Does your whole life flash in front of you? Are you scared shitless? Do you have regrets of unfinished business? Do you feel sorry for yourself that it was worthless? Are you brave and you smile because it was a good fight?

I have seen people die. Some I loved. I have seen the fear in some eyes, acceptance in others. I have retrieved bodies from autopsies. I’ve cremated them. I remember never feeling emotional about it but saw it with a detachment. I also know nothing in life is the same as till when it happens to you. If you live long enough and dangerously enough, and most of all if like Siddhartha/Herman Hesse said ‘find truth your own way’ you face the moment of dying, and knowing who you are.

The first time the moment I was about 5 or 6. In Simla we lived on the top of a hill called Craigdhu and there was a small play field. On the far side was a wall, and the other side of the wall a few hundred feet down there was a sliver of a road, beyond which the hillside continued. We all knew not to cross the wall. Each time someone hit the tennis-cricket ball went over the other side the side the game was over. Those times were not like today – you had a ball you made it last a year. This one day the ball went over and the game was over. But I decided to climb the wall and I could see the ball about 15-20 down. My friend Shekhar Kapoor aka Dimpu kept telling me not to, but I decided to cross the wall. It was the only time he left my side. After the first few feet, it was a steep downward slope covered with dry pine leaves. And I slipped. My head was clouded by panic the first few seconds then it became very quite. I remember not screaming because there was not one to help. And I remember seeing the road I was going to fall on and die rushing towards me. And I remember telling myself try and hold onto something. I spread my arms and caught the first clump I hit and held on for dear life. And I stay still for a while. But there was the job of climbing back up. When I finally reached the wall it was getting dark and there were people including my father calling my name. I never told anyone what happened. I developed the habit of standing at the end of heights. it helps control the fear and the thrill is still indescribable.

Rakesh Shukla & Shekhar Kapoor aka Dimpu, Simla 1977-78

You don’t think about it then but you know the feeling and impression it leaves with you with. I learnt that it is OK to be scared but it’s essential that you don’t panic and that most of all when chips are down you are left by yourself. And you can never give up. Because I was lucky I had not fallen but I still had to climb back up.

The second time came about 2o yrs later. I was about 15km upstream of Rishikesh on the Ganges and I fell off the raft just as it hit a rapid. As I got sucked in and the water closed over me it was sheer panic. When I came back up, it must’ve been a few seconds but it felt like minutes. Everything then is in ultra slo-mo. I realised my helmet was gone and my watch was going to come off! I clasped the watch with my other hand. And I screamed as much as I could – but you can’t – I took in more water and realised to survive this I need to focus, steer and not hit any rocks with my head. I saw the rafts recede in a distance as I raced ahead. I was picked up about a km downstream in an eddy. The next year I returned. And before we came to same rapid I jumped off the raft by myself. I had to learn to control the fear of drowning.

The third time was about 2 yrs after the second. I was on my bicycle cycling alone from Manali to Leh. The steep hairpin sections between Palchan and Marchi had been covered by a Star TV crew for a travel program because they couldn’t understand this loony man going up alone, when the few cycling crews were coming down. The anchor asked me why are you doing this – going there. I said I don’t know really, but because it’s there. And because I need to find myself. This was end April-early May & Rohtang was closed. When I reached the checkpoint past Marhi the army man allowed this loony man on a bike, a bunch of Isreali’s on Enfields and a lone American on foot. I got caught in a snowstorm as I was about to reach the top, and would not climb down to Koksar in the night so I had spent the night in a tent on a snow field on top of Rohtang La. After the uphill of the last few days, I was making great progress coming into Keylong from Koksar and I was just short of the confluence of Chandra & Bhaga and going steeply downhill when I saw the first stone fall in front of me. There was like a hailstorm of small grit size stones. I looked up – rock slide. I could turn back and go about 50 feet up to clear but it was a steep 50 feet and it may be too late. Or I could go downhill about 300ft, but and miss braking on the steep twisty and go down into the river before being hit by a boulder. Or both. I went downhill. By the time I cleared that section and stopped to turn back I could see the road covered with rocks the size of tennis balls and small cars. I had discovered Shiva. But that is also the story for another time.

Koksar to Keylong. The art of dying is in living well - Rakesh Shukla

Koksar to Keylong on a mountain bike. 1998.

The fourth time was 10 yrs later after that. I was in the boondocks in Kerala. It was late evening and Helen and I was the only guests in this ancient lakeside luxurious home. When a large ant bit my toe. First I started coughing a dry cough. A few minutes later I started being itchy and breathing heavily. I realised suddenly this is what an anaphylactic shock. I will die not from the allergy or anything, else but from chocking. The nearest hospital was in Allapuzha if we could make it. There was no Google Maps that time and I knew I did not have the 30-40 minutes. I told Helen to empty every antihistamine tablet on the bed (which I carry for my numerous allergies including to dog dander 🙂 ). Then I had to take them one at a time because I could hardly swallow by now. I must’ve taken 15 forcing one at a time. Then I lay down to force myself to breathe even as there was a melee around me. In a half hour, it was like it never happened but for the thick rash that covered my body.

Are there any lessons in facing death? One is, it’s nothing to be scared of. No matter how you look at it, it’s a change of state. I worry every day about my hundreds of children but I also know the hundreds that wait for me when I go across.

I have learnt that those qualities that that love the most in people character, valour, control of fear, being collected, I had none of them, to begin with. But they all can be acquired. I learnt that I do not have the fear of dying that I have seen in the eyes of so many and in the very last seconds, I do not have the dissonance of having been worthless. Unfortunately, it has shown me is the other side of me I am not proud of. The great impatience I feel for those who do not try to control fear or pain. It has caused me the loss of many folks I otherwise valued.

If you made a real contribution to the world you can smile when the lights go out. If you didn’t, now’s the right time to start. The experience of dying well, most of all teaches you, to live well. Rakesh Shukla

Jun

Fight like a Dog: TEDx talk by Rakesh Shukla

Read the unaltered text of the talk by Rakesh Shukla at TEDxICT, Mumbai 2017

(Edit note: 17 April ’17. This accompanying video is illustrative. The official TEDx video will be available here when released. There was no teleprompter so the actual spoken word will vary.)

Living with 750, I learnt to fight like a dog to survive

A few days ago, I received an invitation to speak at ICT Mumbai. After all, I am the dog-man (I like it much better than the unoriginal and ‘punny’ dog-father, and it reflects the reality of being half man, half dog better). 25 years ago I was very active on the circuit of technology and engineering. It may be surprising to those who don’t know me from then — but there was a (then) fairly niche space in mathematics called Fuzzy Set Theory. Reading it for years as a graduate student, I had found what I thought were some new insights and I wrote half a dozen papers on that — which led to many awards and talks around the country, and publication in an international peer-referenced journal.

I was always a proud man and never asked my father for money throughout my education. I’ve painted and sold custom t-shirts to dozens of hostel-mates, I’ve taught software engineering to my engineering batchmates, I’ve later taught fellow students in the B-school I went to. Anything that I could do that could earn me something. But it was never nearly enough.

It was also the first time I traveled across India myself — Chennai, Manipal, Delhi, and Mumbai. Since I couldn’t really afford the travel, I mostly traveled ticketless, sleeping on a newspaper between berths if I was lucky, and between toilet doors if I was not, on overnight trains.

Once I had a couple of such events in Mumbai. There was a week or so between them and it did not make sense to go all the way to Mumbai and come back. I decided to live on the then VT platform (the same place that was later the venue of the Mumbai attacks). It was the cheapest place to stay — I’d buy a platform ticket for two bucks for the day, and the toilets even then were relatively clean.

I haven’t left Bangalore in four years. I don’t leave Bangalore because of my babies, and turn down any travel plans. And ICT did not ring any bells… Till I looked it up. Matunga seemed familiar! I then realised this was the then UDCT (University Department of Chemical Technology), and a venue for an IEEE talk. The place along with VJTI that I had travelled to all that time ago.

And I smiled for it is indeed a small world. And here I am.

I’m Rakesh Shukla, and I founded a technology company called TWB that works with the world’s top names in technology the biggest companies from software to silicon, electronics, aerospace and defense. Microsoft, Intel, Lenovo, Harman Kardon, Beechcraft, Cessna are all TWB customers. But that isn’t why I’m standing here in front of you. In fact, the last hundred-odd interviews I’ve given to the national and international press are about something else entirely — about my first love for stray dogs. Four years ago, the first TV documentary said ‘The dog-father of 150 dogs’ now it is ‘The dog-father of 750 dogs’.

But what I am talking about is not the journey of starting VOSD and what VOSD does, but it is the story of love and inspiration. I have also lived to see that love that is noun has little meaning but the love that is a verb moves mountains.

I founded TWB 10 years ago, and I founded VOSD five years ago. I think of myself as highly intelligent but more than that I’m highly motivated and hardworking. I’ve worked at great places before becoming an entrepreneur. If I have a failing, it is my inability to take advice easily. In fact, it is my legendary impatience that led to the creation of VOSD in the first place. I had grown tired of begging NGOs to help dogs in need, and then following up with them for updates, and more often than not, losing the dog due to incompetence. So I built VOSD, ground up, to be very, very different. Because there’s no blueprint for this kind of system, we had to create our own:

So I built VOSD, ground up, to be very, very different. Because there’s no blueprint for this kind of system, we had to create our own:

We are both ‘No-kill’ AND ‘No-refusal’ — any rescue will tell you that these are opposite sides of the same problem. We keep the dog for life. We do not deny any dog any help or treatment, no matter how sophisticated, expensive or long term. We do not euthanise a dog due to lack of space, or money, or complication of treatment, or any restriction like that. Ever.
We made the world’s first large-scale management system to integrate GPS data, photo storage, digitise all tests and diagnostics, capture and track all prescriptions and match them against treatment. Essentially track a dog through every treatment through to its eventual release and report every step on mail, SMS and mobile app to the person who reported the dog.
We made the world’s first rescue app that allowed someone to just download this app and report the dog in sufficient detail. It integrates with the management system.
We set up the first blood bank for dogs.
We run the world’s largest legal, data and analysis website on stray dogs.

In the next two years, VOSD was already a one-of-a-kind rescue service, free to all who needed it. Dogs were picked up quickly and sensitively. No expense was spared, and no dog was put down due to costs or lack of space. A sophisticated CRM provided real-time updates to the person who reported the dog. We were rescuing 10 to 15 dogs a day, and fighting for every single dog. My dogs had artificial tendons, aggressive treatment of cancers, distemper, and parvovirus. We didn’t take a rupee from the government, and were privately funded. We had our own facilities, a trauma shelter in the middle of the city, and a 3.5-acre farm on the outskirts. 30 full time employees. A fleet of 10 vehicles. We were bristling with technology. We were managed as well as the best-run hospitals. Nothing like what India had ever seen.

But it not just the hard things that make us different, it is the small things that set us apart. One of the many things that make VOSD what it is, is that all dogs are rescued or caught by hand. I have never, and I never allow anyone to use anything — even a lasso or a net to catch a dog. They have to be picked up with bare hands. And with never anything more than a blanket or a towel. That one decision defines VOSD and me.

But did you know ‘stray dogs’ is a business and it is run by a mafia? The same organisations run the government-funded Animal Birth Control programs across cities. I know because I was a member of the AWBI, and the largest legal and investigative data on these organisations across India is on my website vosd.in. My investigations closed half a dozen rogue NGOs. I certainly have not been a popular ‘animal welfare’ person by any stretch of imagination. An NGO called AWS that had been the bane of Mumbai dogs and it could not be closed despite years of reporting of malpractice was closed in Bangalore.

Threats had been made many times in different ways. One of the ‘shelters’ run by Animal Rights Fund (ARF) closed by my investigation had threatened with doing bad things to ‘my children and family’. A scanned copy of that page is still there on our website. Sarvodaya Sevabhavi Sanstha lead by Vinay Moray was the other. It came to a point that I started keeping gunmen for my personal security carrying licensed weapons. But the threats were not empty and neither could they be averted with weapons.

The first attacks were on me. The second wave of attacks were on TWB and the third were on VOSD itself.

It began three years ago with a police complaint. Then another. And another. My dogs were poisoned in two different incidents both times we made FIRs both times we knew it was the same people connected with the same NGOs. A rescue vehicle and its crew were attacked in broad daylight. Civil cases started piling up in different courts also by the same NGOs led by Sarvodaya ARF and people propped up by them.

But the biggest one was yet to come and it was not aimed at VOSD — but at the foundation of VOSD — it was aimed at TWB and me. Three years ago, almost to the day, the first criminal complaint was registered against me. Then the same complaint in other police station. Not allowed by law especially because I had taken preventive bail. But you can’t fight people who will spend any amount of resources. The day that complaint was made our servers had a massive a Denial-of-Service attack so we could not ‘publish’ anything for a week.

On a Saturday I was arrested by plainclothes policemen who entered my home without a warrant. My wife had to throw my clothes out of the window to let me dress. The press was co-opted and it made front page news for the next two days. Copies of the FIR and these reports were sent to all our top clients — the world’s leading technology MNCs.

Three years ago, I was standing in a police station across the table from the complainant whom I had never met before in my life or spoken to. She had charged me with attempting to outrage her modesty and much else. She told the Inspector standing in the room, “Tell him to close down VOSD and I’ll take back the complaint.” I refused point blank. Even though the matter is sub judice, the said charge is not in the charge sheet so I can talk about it.

From the community of ‘dog lovers’ poring over newspapers and sitting on social media, there was not one tweet, not one post. And as I focused on the legal battle over the next three months, I had no idea of the storm to hit. For three months, no deliveries happened to my customers. The sales team did not bring home a single customer win. Marketing did not discover a single customer lead. Overnight, we went into not just negative cashflow but I was now liable for millions of dollars in breach of contracts. Like VOSD, TWB was also made on my own. It never had any debt and there was not one paisa of VC funding.

Even as I went to banks to fund these three months of negative cashflow, I realised I had nothing left to service any debt with. Essentially, in three months, a company that had the biggest technology brands as customers with several hundred employees was bled dry, and left with zero revenue and millions of dollars in debt and liability.

The VOSD and TWB Admin and Purchase were common, and together, they over-invoiced to the tune of Rs 5-10 lakh per month, for three months straight. A vet placed a single large order earning a 30% commission and left the day it arrived.

If you know the Indian business system, there is no real bankruptcy protection or a winding down procedure. 10 years ago, I was in a place where I could (and did) buy a Mercedes-Benz on a charge card on a whim — and 20 other cars. And watches. And other such stuff. Before the three months were out, banks had closed my accounts and suspended my credit cards. Now I didn’t have food but I still had 400 babies to care for.

I sold three houses, liquidated all three TWB offices, and sold all the cars and bikes including 4 VOSD ambulances but kept 6 of the largest VOSD vans and trucks. Sold the watches, jewellery, everything I could to keep my babies fed and healthy.

Throughout this time, if there’s one message that the lawyers and the cops and family have routinely delivered to me, it is this: “Close down VOSD, and this goes away.” But that would never happen. Ever.

We’ve all been told how success brings friends but you are alone in your adversity. There’s nothing truer. You are totally and truly alone. The friends from far and wide, the ones that knew never bothered even calling me – I know because I could ask for money, help, something. I remember when the Maggi controversy broke, it didn’t make a difference to me because Maggi was Rs 30 a packet and we’d already shifted to a Nepalese brand called Wai-Wai that was Rs 10 a packet. My wife and I would share sometimes.

At work, I was still fighting and put on my best suits for meetings, trying to salvage what I could, but one day, my last pair of shoes came apart at the sole, in a customer office. When the storm hit three years ago, I had to dig down deep just to stay alive. Everything I brought to the table, I learnt from not some great book of wisdom but from the dogs in front of me. And these are the lessons I share with you:

When the storm hit three years ago, I had to dig down deep just to stay alive. Everything I brought to the table, I learnt from not some great book of wisdom but from the dogs in front of me. And these are the lessons I share with you:

Leadership: There is little to do but to forge ahead. Just like dogs do. In packs they quickly develop a hierarchy. When driven out of a pack by a social, environment or a human challenge, they seek new territories to establish an order. But they are great judges of leadership as well. They look for that in their own and in people. I attribute my own success in managing even the dogs with the worst reputations to that. They know I am fair and that I get their allegiance not being harsh but being the provider.
Calmness in adversity: If you see a dog being hit or injured, it yelps and cries the second it happens. Then it becomes quiet. I see it dozens of times a day. They get a look in their eyes that has detachment, but hope.
Hunker down: What you can’t change and during the time you can’t change it, you hunker down and wait for the storm to pass. Dogs do that as they weigh their chances.
You keep fighting alone: It’s an important lesson from a dog. When they are hurt or grieving or in adverse circumstances, they do not have the type of help people have. There is no one coming with a cheque or with an ambulance. A dog knows that. And still preserves his incredible will to live. They are grateful for company and help, but their default status in injury and disease is being alone.
Tenacity: Most driven and successful people are tenacious, but look at my dogs. I have a dog who escaped from our Trauma Center, with one leg in a cast, by jumping a seven-foot-high fence and walking 15 kilometers through the middle of the city to reach its lane where we found him the next day. Still wagging his tail.
Courage: We have a dog that had been tied to a railway track with a metal chain and his legs got cut even as he tried to avoid the train. The chain got cut as well and he kept going without two front paws, with his companion who did not leave him through the ordeal.
No self-pity: Dogs don’t feel pity for themselves. They don’t blame others. Of course they don’t have the same sense of self as us but even then, living with them as I do, I’ve never seen the attitude that something has happened and they are in a corner that they don’t want to fight out of. You can’t just look inwards — you have to look out. Corners can only be fought out of, they don’t disappear.
Problem-solving: Dogs are ace problem solvers. I have dogs that can’t be kept in an enclosure because they want to leave — and go to the nearby village and kill chicken! They will test the fence meticulously. In that enclosure, the fence is to the ceiling and they will find any gap even at that height. When even that access was blocked they would test the ground and eventually found a weak area in the floor and eventually dug a tunnel under the fence to the other side!
Pain threshold: Dogs have a tremendous pain threshold even though studies clearly show that they feel pain, and on a scale same as we do. I’ve just given you a couple of examples. A dog will live with and through indescribable pain 5% of which is unbearable for a person. If a dog lives through the pain and does not catch an infection, he will not just survive but will thrive.
Trust: No matter how much a dog has been abused or is nervous, his wanting to trust never completely goes away. A person who has gone through similar circumstances would perhaps behave very differently. Eventually there were a few remarkable people who came through for me, whom I could trust. They were all new!
Delayed gratification: That’s the single biggest trait of achievers. They have the ability to go through years of toil without commensurate return because they can delay gratification. Funnily, dogs show the same traits. A healthy dog will share it is food with its family, especially offspring. In a non-competitive environment, a dog will eat the best pieces of food last. I have seen dogs when even nearly starving, they will eat only a small part of the meal and bury the rest for later. And that’s great advice to hold you through many years of uncertainty.
Playing the hand that you’re dealt: A dog doesn’t complain. If they are missing two legs or are completely blind and completely deaf they will adjust to it so well that unless I told you, you would never know. A lot of dogs are abandoned because the owners have not known for years that they were deaf or blind.
Grief does not paralyse them: Dogs have a capacity for love unlike any other but they know when to move on. I see that with mothers that have lost pups or pups that have lost mothers. Beyond a point, they move on.

Today, I still don’t have a credit card or a car, but VOSD is still standing. In the last two years of limited rescue, I’ve still added 350-odd dogs — aggressive dogs, handicapped dogs, military dogs… I only take dogs with no future. But I’ve kept working, developing on the lessons from these dogs.

We have a much-loved franchise of standup comedy called Barking Mad and for live music called Howling Mad that draws the best talent at the finest venues.
We run the largest and the most successful bake sales as Monster Bake in India.
I run VOSD for People, which provides medical and educational help for villagers around the Sanctuary. We’ve taught 2,500 children for free, and are in the process of establishing our own school. This month, we’re distributing 1,500 sarees for women on the Kannada New Year.
In the past few weeks, we launched a series of dog care products called VOSD Dog Care.
We’re in the middle of a crowdfunding campaign called #PatriotDogs that is being supported by the likes of Virat Kohli, Chris Gayle, Boman Irani, Rahul Dravid, Nana Patekar and Soha Ali Khan and many more. And as far as my company goes, the customers have started returning.
I have serviced direct debt to lenders in millions of dollars.
TWB opened an office in the US last quarter and we have a new US-based CEO.

But I believe the biggest success is that almost no one around me knows just how bad these three years have been except perhaps two people who stood with me in my life and work and home. I have firmly believed that winners have challenges and losers have alibis. Before today, I wouldn’t let anyone know the real depth of the problem because ultimately it is each dog to himself. I talk about it for the first time because I know I might have lost two legs like that dog on the train tracks but I survived.

Interestingly now, in the last three months BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, The Times of India, The Hindu and any number of publications in India, Asia, Europe, South America and the US have written of this miracle of having 750 dogs and the place I have created. But the real miracle is that I have done that with my back to the wall and with almost nothing in my hands. Or in my pocket. If I must measure my life by something, then that would be it.

To the few people who cared to ask me how I was in this time, and there were very few, I would always say, ‘I’m a dog, I’m licking my wounds, I’ll be back.’ While the media calls me the dog-father, I really am a Dog-Man. And for those who say I fought like a lion, I say no — it was like a dog.

About success, I know now it is not the multiple houses, and cars and watches and visas I though it did. It is having the means and the opportunity to spend each day doing what you love.

Thank you.

Stronger with RAKESH SHUKLA™ is a framework for developing unparalleled mental and physical toughness. It is based on Rakesh’s life, and has helped drive two ‘comebacks’.

Rakesh Shukla slept on railway platforms on his way to creating a world-leading technology company — TWB_, which is the choice of over 40 Fortune 500 tech customers worldwide including Microsoft, Boeing, Airbus, Intel, and others. However, at 43, he lost everything within a year. Alone and friendless, he spent the next five years repaying over INR 20 crore of debt and taxes, while building back his company and reputation, and creating and funding VOSD — world’s largest dog sanctuary and rescue.

Rakesh Shukla has suffered heart disease since he was seven years old, had had two heart attacks by the time he was 30, suffers from brain diseases, has broken his back and his kidneys are failing. Towards the end of this five-year period, Rakesh weighed 88 kg and very unfit. Today, at 48 years, he can lift well over 100 kg above his head, run a 10-minute mile, do 2,000 push-ups, and 250 pull-ups. He has never been to a gym, been on a diet, had a trainer, or taken any supplements.

Jun

Do Women handle Stress better than Men?

[Stress has been part of the recipe of human survival and growth. A ‘manageable’ level of stress acts as a motivator and while an ‘unmanageable’ level of stress is dysfunctional. And that is the relationship between stress and success or failure. Stress causes motivation to be high and higher performance, that generally will lead to more success or reward. Conversely distress will lower motivation and therefore lower performance and resulting success. Lower than expected success could be termed failure[1]. Also failure causes increase in stress till it become distress. For the purposes of this discussion we use the term failure to describe a professional or personal setback and use stress to describe debilitating stress or distress]

I have seen many ups and downs, I’ve been a successful entrepreneur creating a company with a worldwide footprint, and I lost several million dollars within a year. I went from being very successful to being bankrupt within months. And it has been a long haul back. The lessons and the journey has been a subject of my Rakesh Shukla TEDx talk ( Fighting like a dog: The TEDx talk of Rakesh Shukla). The company I founded TWB_ is largely made of women who have joined the workforce sometimes after taking a career break. TWB_ itself has been featured in the mainstream business press including Mint/WSJ for being a women focussed employer. However it was the period of the complete financial and personal meltdown that gave me a close view of how one handles professional setback and stress. As we went from a leading company into a 3-4 month free-fall and I lost hundreds of employees, and many of them friends who worked with me for many years, I had 2 people who stood with me and both were women. This made me see not only how I handled stress and failure but how they did too. One of them is my wife, Helen Shukla, co-founder of TWB_ and the other is , Sangeeta Velegar, VP of Marketing of TWB_ and the branding and marketing brain behind VOSD. And they handled it very differently. So what made it different?

Personally I have no doubt that if they are at an equal professional footing, women show more resilience in the face of professional stress, bounce back quicker and are mentally healthier. However ‘being’ at an equal footing is a loaded statement, since childhood and adult conditioning is a major difference on what men and women define as success (or failure), and what causes stress.

Professional failure hits men a lot harder than it does women. As a matter of fact there is a research that shows that there is causal relationship between unemployment (can be used as surrogate for professional failure) and early death in both genders! But the relationship is twice as strong for men[2]. The study, which is a survey of 20 millions cases worldwide shows that unemployment causing stress and negatively affects one’s socioeconomic status, which in turn leads to poorer health and higher mortality rates. Unemployment-especially when it occurs early or mid-career-increases the risk of premature mortality by 78% among men and 37% among women. The risk of death is particularly high for those who are under the age of 50. One way that sexism works is that men get paid more, but they’ll also die sooner if they lose their jobs!

As my and TWB_’s free fall started I realized that no one talks about failing while they are failing. The only time people can admit defeat is when they are back on top and it fits into a tidy narrative of having overcome the challenge. However it is not what it feels like when you’re unemployed or bankrupt, it doesn’t feel like a first act; it feels like it’s everything. While it was happening that failure did nothing but fill me with regret and self-loathing. However it was not me who realised that first, it was the 2 women. In Helen’s case she had much less of a view of the severity of the problem I faced, but once the contours of the problem were known she got busy doing what she could do to make it better. The other, Sangeeta, did the same but did not have the professional and emotional precedent and tried to understand not just the financial crises and how to handle it, but to understand the emotional state and factor in how I would respond to customers. While I veered from plunging headlong into a fight for survival and retreating back to lick my wounds. Soon I not only started recognising this pattern but realised it was the support system I had. And that peaked my curiosity.

Different people can see the same events in different ways, and it is particularly evident when it comes to failure. The same happened with the people around me. What an employee regards as satisfactory may be incompetence by his manager for instance. But as I found these reactions are often more problematic than the original event and the reason why and how people take negative feedback is a major determinant of career success. And there is also an inherent difference between men and woman.

Different behavioral responses

Men and women respond different to risk & rewards and consequently to failure & rejection. In a 2007 study Professors Muriel Niederle at Stanford and Lise Vesterlund at the University of Pittsburg[3] had groups of two men and two women perform simple addition problems. In the first round, participants were paid a 50 cents per right answer, in the second round they had a playoff and the winner would be awarded $2 per correct question, while the other participants get nothing. Later the participants were asked to choose the model they would choose to be paid on: the right answer or winner take all. 75% men chose the winner take all, while only 35% women chose it. Though the actual success rate was exactly the same for both.

Clearly, men and women tend to deal with success or lack of it, and stress in very different ways. Most men will respond to overwhelming stress and sense of failure by withdrawing and feeling lonely. This increased loneliness in turn causes the world to be seen as in an adversarial relationship. Most men would say ‘I don’t talk about my feelings when I’m stressed. It’s easier just to let it pass and move on.’ Women on the other hand are more likely to vent their feelings including ‘cry to feel better’, ‘talk to feel better’. But why?

Most driven men also have bizarre reactions to professional failure and have characteristically male methods of coping. It’s typical of ‘alpha male’ characters to have been so driven to succeed that failure cripples them more than most people. Even though the fear of failure is a massive unspoken truth in all professions it’s denial is even more common.

Here are some of the behavioral differences between men and women to failure:

● Deny vs Accept! Men often see the very acknowledgement of failure as a sign of weakness and react to that fear with stereo-typically male behaviour of avoiding the problem altogether. Or they behave in the way they think they’re supposed to, and those options are pretty limited. Women don’t have such aggressive denial and are more likely to process failure and to manage the feeling when they don’t reach their goals. Women are far more accepting of the situation and and far more honest about their concerns. Women are also far more likely and willing to tackle the problem and think out of the box.

● ‘Fight or Flight’ vs ‘Tend & Befriend’: Men have predominantly a fight or flight response but women are more likely to deal with stress by ‘tending and befriending’[4]. Tending involves nurturant activities designed to protect the self, offspring and family and promotes safety and reduce distress. Befriending is the creation and maintenance of social networks that may aid in this process. Why does that happen? Oxytocin the ‘love hormone’ combined with progesterone influence that behavior. Men lack with much lower quantities of these in their system and with higher testosterone will take the true fight or flight response, either bottling it up, or fighting back.

● Escape in activity vs Escape to a group. Women often seek support to talk out the emotional experience, to process what is happening and what might be done joining real of creating time based support groups to share their stories. Men often seek an escape activity to get relief from stress, to create a diversion. This can be hitting the gym or drinking more.

On the other hand women experience greater sadness and anxiety and are more susceptible to depression than men. While men show a greater reward motivation (craving) and emotional stress and have a greater risk for alcohol-use disorders than women.[5] These differences are not just individual differences, most are hardwired into us.

Cause 1: Genetics & Evolution

At the time of handling stress and failure, it turns out that my thinking was almost exactly how any man would think. Human brains and bodies are essentially identical to those of our ancestors living half a million years ago. Even though we now live in a time when our survival no longer depends on the position in a hierarchy, the male brains still operates like it does. For men it is the modern equivalent of moving down the hierarchy and it can evoke very powerful emotions.That’s why professional failure feels so much worse for men than the social failures which stress women.

Stress has been part of the recipe of human survival and growth. While it looks to have changed from running for our lives in the jungles, to succeeding at work, the single biggest change is how stress has evolved from dealing with a single short-term crisis to have become chronic-stress. Chronic stress is not what the body has evolved for. Is there a difference in how men and women feel and cope with it? It turns out there is.

The genotype for the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene which is involved in supporting the growth and differentiation of brain cells in men and women has found to be the influencer. So we indeed feel stress differently[6].

The BDNF gene is characterized by a variant that codes for either the valine (Val) or methionine (Met) amino acids. Individuals carry two copies of each gene, with the Val variant being more common. In the study, subjects carrying two copies of the VAL variant (Val/Val), were compared in their cortisol response to those carrying one copy of the Val and one of the Met (Val/Met).

When looking at the responses of the subjects researchers found that the Val/Met men and women carriers had nearly equal cortisol levels. However, the men with the Val/Val variant had a higher cortisol response (and therefore a higher reaction to stress) than the men carrying the Val/Met variant. For the women, surprisingly, the opposite was found: the Val/Val women had a lower cortisol response than the Val/Met women.

Why the Val/Val variant produces opposite stress reactions (raising it for the males and lowering it for the females) remains unclear. But because of the predominance of the Val/Val type for both sexes, the males showed overall greater stress in the testing than the females.

Cause 2: Conditioning as Adults

The social conditioning as adults for men and women are very different. From early adulthood male self-esteem is built around adequacy of performance, and female self-esteem is often built around adequacy of relationships.

Women are socialized to value the quality of their relationships. Consequently, when those relationships are not going well, it can be a cause of stress. When the people around them are stressed, women are more likely to take that on and feel stressed as well. Women are often at risk of letting other people’s needs determine hers, while her own needs are ignored.

Men, in general, are raised to value their autonomy and sense of achievement. As a result, they are more likely to become stressed when competition occurs in the workplace, or when experiencing problems on the job or financial pressures. Their job tells men not only where they fit in but also who they are. It goes to the heart of their identity, purpose and well-being. The sense of humiliation with the loss of identity and masculinity can lead to despair to the point of suicidality.

This mindset also leads men to live more dangerously. They are far more susceptible to turn to substances to regain a sense of control. Or may stop taking care of themselves entirely by not exercising, eating poorly or engaging in reckless sexual behaviour.

Relationship loss for women and performance failure for men, are the greatest stressors. How men and women enter stress is also different.

● Women let their social & familial relationships set the agenda. Social self-sacrifice in relationships is how most women enter stress.

● Men let rivalry and employments set the agenda. Achieving a winning performance at all costs is how most men enter stress.

Because of this conditioning their coping mechanisms differ as well. It is common for a woman to talk about her stress but she’s not necessarily looking for a solution, she’s only looking to engage. The problem is that her male counterpart will try to offer ways of solving the cause of the stress. This can leave the woman feeling like she’s not being heard or her experiences being valued.

Cause 3: Conditioning in Childhood

The other big difference is how men and women have been taught to process failure from childhood. Studies show that the psychological experience of bouncing back from failure isn’t universal: young girls, in particular, struggle more to recover from failures than their male counterparts. In a study fifth-grade students are given a deliberately confusing task, but girls were the most deterred by the experience, and the girls with the highest IQs had the hardest time[7]!

When young boys struggle to pay attention and follow directions early in life, they are told to put more effort or try harder. This translates into beliefs that poor performances can be overcome and don’t reflect inherent, irreversible flaws. Boys tend to attribute failure to controllable circumstances.

On the other hand young girls who are better able to follow instructions are often praised for being ‘good’ ‘ or ‘clever’. This implies that traits like smartness, cleverness, and goodness are qualities you either have or you don’t. So when girls make mistakes they interpret this as a sign as lack of ability. If they don’t initially succeed they prematurely conclude that they don’t have what it takes to succeed in a particular arena, and give up way too soon.

In observational studies girls are more likely to give up in the face of a stressful academic situation and this is directly connected to the stereotype that girls are ‘bad’ at math and science — and is linked to under performance in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). When girls buy into the stereotype that they’re bad at math, they don’t see this as a correctable issue. Instead, it confirms (wrongly) that they simply have less ability.

Another factor in early childhood conditioning is in intrinsic motivation. This is the quality that lets a person stick out the tough moments and autonomy is one of the core ingredients of intrinsic motivation. It turns out girls are more sensitive to someone interfering with autonomy than boys. From early childhood the behavioral stereotyping is for girls to please others and they have a greater sensitivity to control. Control can be with rewards, threatening punishment or offering certain kinds of praise. They care more about feedback from teachers and parents and are more sensitive to feeling controlled. In ‘control’ circumstances a girls motivation plummets while a boys rises.

Cause 4: Biological Response

One of the most important reasons why men and women react differently to stress is hormones. Three hormones that define stress are cortisol, epinephrine, and oxytocin. Under stress cortisol and epinephrine are released and together raise a person’s blood pressure and circulating blood sugar level. Cortisol by itself also lowers the effectiveness of the immune system.

It was thought that the amount of cortisol released during a stressful situation in women is lesser than in men and was the basis of theories why women are more emotional. The fact is there is no consistent difference in cortisol between men and women. But there is a large difference in oxytocin. In a women, when cortisol and epinephrine rush through the bloodstream in a stressful situation, oxytocin comes into play. It is released from the brain, countering the production of cortisol and epinephrine, and promoting nurturing and relaxing emotions. While men also secrete the hormone oxytocin when they’re stressed, it’s in much smaller amounts, leaving them on the short end of the stick when it comes to stress and hormones.

Conclusion

Stress can have devastating effects on our wellbeing and quality of life and have detrimental effect on our mental health. While we need to investigate more on how societal pressure, biology and other factors lead to differences in each gender’s experience of stress, we should be careful not to create another gender stereotype. Understanding how we are genetically and socially programmed to handle stress and failure can be a good starting point to avoid a life where migraines, frustration and depression are the order of the day.

References:

[1] Failure is being used as a generally accepted term. The author would use the term setback to describe his own experience(s)

[2] Eran Shor, Prof Sociology, McGill University (2011)

[3] Do Women Shy Away From Competition? Do Men Compete Too Much? Muriel Niederle And Lise Vesterlund (2007)

[4] Biobehavioral Responses to Stress in Females: Tend-and-Befriend, not Fight-or-Flight (Shelley E. Taylor, Laura Cousino Klein, Brian P. Lewis, Tara L. Gruenewald, Regan A. R. Gurung, and John A. Updegraff University of California, Los Angeles)

[5] Gender Differences in Response to Emotional Stress: An Assessment Across Subjective, Behavioral, and Physiological Domains and Relations to Alcohol Craving (Tara M. Chaplin, Kwangik Hong, Keri Bergquist, and Rajita Sinha)

[6] Raz Levin, Uriel Heresco-Levy, Rachel Bachner-Melman, Salomon Israel, Idan Shalev, Richard P. Ebstein. Association between arginine vasopressin 1a receptor (AVPR1a) promoter region polymorphisms and prepulse inhibition

[7] Why Failure Hits Girls So Hard, Rachel Simmons, Time, Aug 2015