Excessive praise can be dangerous

Praise is wonderful with warm glow inside and feel great. The quickest way to get round someone is to flatter them. You may have slightly uncomfortable experience of being praised for something you thought was just doing your job or for doing something ordinary. That discomfort points to some interesting aspects of praise.

• No one likes to be criticised all the time, and only told what they don’t do well. 
• Constant criticism can feel like bullying, and if you never get any positive feedback you can fall into self doubt and despondency.
• Excessive and constant praise can actually be damaging to self esteem and personal effectiveness.
• Praise and positive encouragement is something you can’t have too much of. 
• Like food or medicine what’s good in small or measured doses can be bad if taken too much of it.
• Constant praising can make someone addicted to praise. Like any other addiction, praise can be destructive. It can make you incapable of doing anything effectively. Constant praise in some ways backfires in a decidedly destructive manner.
• Too much praise can be really bad for children, for clients, for patients and for everyone.
• When children are rewarded for simply doing their own thing like drawing, playing etc, but when the rewards are discontinued, the children tend to lose interest in the activity. Contingent reward reduces the appeal of intrinsic reward. 
• Lavishing children with praise can create a very high self-esteem which in turn can lead to bullying behaviour.  Children become narcissists when their parents overvalue them i.e. when parents treat their children as more deserving than others. Such excessive praise can create narcissistic traits and narcissists are often bullies who totally lack empathy.
• Narcissism is not be good for them or for society. Narcissism is higher in Western countries and steadily increasing among Western youth over the past few decades.
• Rewarding with money or praise, for doing things one really should be doing anyway, can diminish genuine motivation. Excessive praise might be well intentioned, but it can work against people’s genuine best interests.
• Excessively praising someone could actually make them less happy in the long term because it can diminish their capacity to find intrinsic reward in anything. 
• Praising children for normal activities is poor preparation for a life of real excellence, because we are turning ‘normal’ into ‘excellent’ and genuine excellence thus loses its value.
• Praise children only for working things out for themselves, for showing compassion towards another person, for being empathetic, for their achievement that came from their effort and for coming through a tough time.
• Making a huge deal out of anything someone achieves may just be encouraging ‘praise addiction’. And being a praise junkie is an impediment to real success. 
• Children who were praised for ‘being smart’ stopped making an effort much earlier than children praised for ‘working hard’.
• Empty praise can make looking smart more important than being smart.
• Don’t over-praise people; Focus on the normality of the desirable behaviour; Don’t expect praise for everything and don’t always praise others; Focus on what is actually within a person’s control.
• The right kind of praise at the right time and in the right quantity can develop the habit of excellence, but a diet of uncontrolled praise won’t do any favours.

I learnt a lot from my critics and nothing from my admirers - Mahatma Gandhi

Why we bend rules?

Even most honest among us lie, cheat or push boundaries now and then. In everyday transgressions character isn’t the real driver; situational forces are. Powerful people break the rules; breaking rules makes one seem more powerful.

• Without the intelligence to create the rules, we would have no rules to break.
• Being able to create and  follow rules is one of the things that separates humans from the rest of the animals. Being able to create and follow your own rules is what makes you intelligent. Without the intelligence to create the rules, we would have no rules to break.
• Intelligent people generally don’t bend rules, as they are aware that the rules are made for good purpose.
• Breaking the rules all the time and getting away with out getting caught doesn't make any one intelligent or smart.
• Intelligent people are those who have mastered the rules, practiced the rules, and by overcoming laziness they have perfected their interpretation of the rules.
• At work, there are rules for a reason. The rules exist to keep things moving and to make sure everyone else can do their jobs too. Everyone knows that rules need to be broken sometimes. Flexibility allows for you to actually be a better manager.
• Rich are more likely to flout rules or cheat for making more money.
• Most entrepreneurs succeed by bending the rules. Where is the line between gall and fraud?
• The man driving powerful and expensive SUV is more likely to flout traffic rules than a driver of a compact sedan.
• In its modest form rule breaking might be healthy. The more one wins the greater the confidence boost, the bigger the risks and so on. But at a certain point, risk taking can become irrational, reckless & ruthless and could cause ethical numbing and results in self destruction.
• If your tribe downloads pirated music, sells dubious stocks or accept bribes, you are likely to go with the flow and cover up for the peers.
• Kids who cheat on the high school exams are three times as likely in adulthood to lie to a customer or inflate an insurance claim compared with non-cheaters.
• The real threat is the slippery slope that minor transgressions can snowball into cataclysmic ones. Imagine Bernie Madaoff  or Ramalinga Raju thinking, this just once. And eventually they just don't think about it. Rule breaking worsens over time. 
• It was like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten - Chairman of Satyam Computer Services B. Ramalinga Raju described his situation and referring to the widening gap between the real and artificial numbers in the company’s books.
• When people sign an ethics pledge at the beginning rather than at the end of job applications or tax forms - before there is an opportunity to cheat - they are significantly less likely to be dishonest.
• It is much easier to be a saint in theory than in practice. At the end of the day, you have to live with your conscience – and the law.

Every person learns at some point you don't know what you don't know.

If a million people do a wrong thing, it is still a wrong thing.

When you're the only sane person, you look like the only insane person.

Rules are framed for orderly behavior of society. Rule breakers, intentional or otherwise, must be penalized and punished to avoid chaos. Good people watch their actions continuously and regret any wrongdoings and avoid recurrences. Those who enjoy first violation of rules will commit bigger and end up as bad guys and when caught will face law, penalties & jail. Bending the rules seems to have heroism and fun but it ends up facing embarrassment sooner or later apart from character destruction. Never go with the flow of wrong doers who will get caught some day. People following rules all the times seldom ends up in wrongdoings. 

To be Smart or To be Nice!

• One tends to use big words, when insecure and to appear smarter! It is usually has opposite effect.
• Smart people have good vocabulary. Using thesaurus in emails, one may be guilty of boosting intelligence perception. But smart writing is usually simpler and easier to understand.
• Intelligence is associated with clarity of expression.
• Smart people use long words in their writing but their is aim is to write clearly.
• Any cue associated with wisdom - thick book, fluent speech, grey hair, wearing glasses - may give rise to impression of smartness.
• Persons having good sense of humor show really higher intelligence. So men can use humor as an easy and honest, hard to fake, cue of intelligence.
• If people find some one attractive and an authentic smile tends to enhance attractiveness, they are inclined to assign other good qualities to them, like intelligence.
• Most of our daily interactions with others are short and superficial. However, we are less easily fooled during prolonged or repeated interactions.
• Good eye contact means the other person is responsive to what you are doing or saying. If he is not responsive, either you are dull or he is dumb. Conservationists who maintain good eye contact are rated higher than those who avoided someone's gaze.
• Alcohol beverages lower perceived intelligence levels. People holding wine or beer are judged less intelligent than those holding soda or mineral water.
• People will like you not because of your smartness, but because of your warmth and kindness. Besides liking, there is also respecting which is based on intelligence. When you want other to like you, present yourself as a person who is nice rather than smart. But if you want others to respect you, present yourself intelligent rather than nice.

Be honest, be nice, be a flower not a weed ... Aaron Neville

It is nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice ... John Templeton

Treat others as you wish to be treated. Don't just be nice, but be kind to other people.
That can be so rewarding ... Mary Lambert

My View:

Usage of jargon usually goes over the head of listeners and is of no use. Using simple and effective words is the best way of verbal communicating. However written communications which has to be clear can be long and contain appropriate jargon. Smart people are viewed by other with suspicion. It is better to be nice rather than smart or intelligent. Smartness results in rat race, where the winner is still a rat. Smartness may make you successful & rich, but nicety will make you live a rich life.

Story: Would you call it smart?

A local Primary school was visited by the Government School Inspector who was there to check that teachers were performing well in their respective classes.

She was very impressed with one particular teacher. The Inspector noticed that each time the class teacher asked a question, every child in the class put up their hands enthusiastically to answer it. More surprisingly, whilst the teacher chose a different child to answer the questions each time, the answers were always correct.

The inspector was accompanied by the school Principal, who got struck by surprise. Because he knew that the class has average students whom he sure would not know the answers for all the questions.
But how did they answer every time? The puzzle Principal asked the teacher and got stunned by his smart thinking.

The children were instructed to ALL raise their hands whenever a question was asked. It did not matter whether they knew the answer or not.

If they did not know the answer, however, they would raise their LEFT hand.
If they knew the answer, they would raise their RIGHT hand.

The class teacher would choose a different child each time, but always the ones who had their RIGHT hand raised.

🙂 Moral: Would you call it Smart?