Day 124: Baishali Banerjee
“I build a warm interpersonal relationship with people around me, and an unconditional positive regard also helps me to explore and unfold the potential of others. … you cannot just treat or heal like doctors or teachers do by instructing or teaching. To explore their inner potential, I encourage everybody around me to be a deep thinker and simply get into the habit of asking deep questions about everything around you.”
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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Baishali, for coming to the table today for our interview, and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?
Baishali Banerjee: Toni, I am Baishali Banerjee. I am a child psychologist. I live in Peterborough, UK. Currently I volunteer in a local preschool, and I like to meet and interact with people. I believe in interaction, and understanding other people increases my own self awareness and helps me to understand who am I, what do I want, what opinions do people have about me, where do I stand in my social circle, what life experiences are significant for me and why they are. In short, I will shape and will build myself from the experiences I have every day.
Toni: Well thank you so much for that. When you think about the word inspiration, who do you inspire and how do you do that?
Baishali: Toni, the word inspiration itself has a positive vibe in it; to be high spirited, full of energy and life happiness. Lack of inspiration, I think, makes me feel defeated, insecure, and stressed which affects your own life as well as people around you. As I have said, understanding oneself is to understand others. I tell my children my real life stories and experiences I had in my childhood.
Let me tell you a real life experience which I had a year back. It was a very snowy day last February in the UK, and I was taking my son for a swimming class where I got a phone call on my mobile that said my father back home had expired. He had had a heart attack. He was very young, 64.
Toni: Oh, I’m sorry.
Baishali: So you can imagine the amount of stress I had then. I went numb. My emotions were everywhere. I was so completely distressed but you see, Toni, I never allowed my children to be a part of it. A sudden calmness came to my mind and then an inner strength forced me to overcome the crisis.
I think this inner strength is within every individual. What is needed is a push in the right direction. This push is what I call inspiration. You inspire people with active listening, sensitively responding, reflecting feelings, empathizing, and foremost, Toni, being very, very genuine.
So that’s the way in which I inspire my children. Me and my partner also inspire each other inasmuch as that inspiration has a lot to do with setting an example and mutual respect.
Toni: I am very sorry about your father. What I am hearing you say is that the inspiration for you is the way that you behave in those situations by setting that example, by showing and demonstrating the inner strength, and pushing people around you as well into a really good direction. By doing so, how do you then help explore the potential in others? Is it by doing that or are there other things that you do to help people explore their potential?
Baishali: Well, to explore the potential is like I build a warm interpersonal relationship with people around me, and an unconditional positive regard also helps me to explore and unfold the potential of others.
You see, Toni, you cannot just treat or heal like doctors or teachers do by instructing or teaching. To explore their inner potential, I encourage everybody around me to be a deep thinker and simply get into the habit of asking deep questions about everything around you.
Suppose someone lies to you and you simply explain it by saying “He’s a jerk.” Well, that may be true, but it is shallow thinking I guess. Instead, you might ask why he lied to you. A deeper question than that would be like why people lie in general or why it is wrong to lie? Once you reach down further, you unfold the truth and then you can accept yourself better and use your talents and find your strength and make the difference, I guess … yes?
Toni: No, I’m sorry … I just want to clarify for those who are reading and listening to this is that exploring potential, from your perspective, is to really try to understand why someone does what they do so that it provides that deeper understanding. And that once you get to the truth, it can help you understand them as well as understand yourself, is that what I’m hearing?
Baishali: Yes, that is true. That is very true, and I believe empathizing, showing proper respect, genuineness and the deep thinking works most. That’s what I think.
Toni: Well thank you for that. What inspires you? What do you need to be inspired?
Baishali: Peace and tranquility of mind, emotional security, strength. I think it comes down to the same principles. That’s one thing I believe you learn from every individual, Toni, don’t you?
Toni: Yes.
Baishali: Every person has something to gather to yourself and enrich your experience. I know a lot of ways of working with my own mind. We all do that in some places in our life. I try not to be judgmental and be rational and try to think why such things are happening around you. I ask myself “Do I really want to be here; if not, why? Where can I get this ‘need to’ when I get stuck?”
And second, Toni, I always try to be true to myself. At the end of the day when I’m in bed, I don’t want to be bitten by my conscience or feel guilty. I use the word positivity. That’s the way I encourage myself. I ask myself did I have just a dream in the morning; if yes, then why did I have that one? Did I do anything wrong, and if no, then life is a dream then it is a dream for me.
Toni: Are there any types of tools or methods that you reach for when you find yourself needing to be inspired?
Baishali: To need to be inspired, Toni, like if any stressful situation comes to me, my mind goes numb for a moment and then I start thinking, rethinking that why has that situation happened to me and what are the ways that I can overcome those things, because I don’t want to get panicked. Once I sit quietly and then I can find ways, because that’s the way I deal with my crisis situations and that helps me.
My inner self helps me to get out of that situation and I find inspiration within myself, that my inner voice tells me … my inner strength tells me that this is the way that you can get out of that situation and find peace and tranquility in mind and that inner strength helps me. That’s what it is.
Toni: And so really it’s very interesting, too, in this interview with you to hear that there aren’t things that you reach for to be inspired or tools that you look for or visuals that you might need to be inspired. But for you, what you need to be inspired is to be calm and to stay calm and to rely on your inner self for inspiration, to get through whatever it is you’re getting through, and that is your biggest sense of inspiration is that inner self.
Baishali: Yes. That is very, very right. Very, very right, Toni. You understand me quite well.
Toni: How did it then turn into or transcend into exploring your potential? How do you bottle that and use that to grow?
Baishali: You need to have a set of circumstances that allow you to do this. Exploring one’s potential to me means trying out one’s thoughts, convictions, and beliefs in the right scenario. For example, I’m a child psychologist, and I work in a preschool at the moment with very young children who are living for an extended period in the first time with their mom. This gives me a unique opportunity to work, interact, and inspire a feeling of security, comfort in these little children which, to me, is an ideal setting to explore my potential, I guess.
Toni: So really for you it’s using your gifts and again that inner self and those gifts to be around what motivates you and to be able to move into your own potential to help others. It’s been a very interesting interview with you, because the beautiful thing about the Get Inspired! Project is it is about everybody’s perspective.
Baishali: And everybody is so unique, Toni.
Toni: They are. Everyone is. And for you, there are going to be people that will listen and read this interview with you and will go “I understand that; I don’t need to reach out because I have everything within.” That was beautiful, and so for sharing that with us, I thank you so very much.
Baishali: Thank you, Toni. It’s my pleasure, too. You put my things in such beautiful words; it’s really nice to talk to you. It’s my pleasure again.
Toni: Thank you so much, and I hope that our paths cross someday. Good luck to you, and thank you for this time today.
Baishali: Okay. My pleasure, Toni. Thank you, bye.
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For more information about Baishali Banerjee: banerjee_baishali@yahoo.co.uk
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