Pausetive Model In Action → Young Working Professionals
Struggling with deadlines, burnout, or inconsistent motivation? Our model helps professionals manage stress,
communicate effectively, and build the focus needed to lead and grow.
Understanding Their World
Surprises is part of this world. It can be both challenging and distraughtly.
For many working women, the challenge isn’t about surviving chaos. It is about surviving gender bias too, as some women think.
A Story from the Mind Gym
Everything was going well. Priya, age 30, was meeting deadlines, leading meetings. But everything changed after the new boss came. He was a senior professional and seemed aggressive in his approach. If she prepared a monthly report, which she had done umpteen times before, she was told that the report’s language is ‘informal’. When she met the targets, then she was told that ‘targets are not everything’.
Priya booked a session because she wanted to find a new way to manage her boss.
Priya strongly believed that she is being discriminated against purposefully. We asked Priya to stop trying to fix the feeling of anger. Anger is an emotion that emerges when something seems unfair. We helped her ‘process’ anger.
We asked her if her boss behaved with other men and women in similar way? Is it possible that he has setup high standards for himself or he wants to make a mark during his first term in the company?
Step 2: Identifying the Mind Muscles
Several things became clear.
Her social muscle had absorbed a deep-rooted belief from her family — that “Men do not treat women fairly.” This shaped how she related to others, especially men in authority.
Her emotional muscle was influenced by this belief. While she appeared emotionally regulated, inside she carried a bias that made her react strongly toward her boss.
Her cognitive muscle was engaged in selective thinking. Though she had strong analytical skills, they were being used to confirm her belief, not question it.
Her motivational muscle shifted when she acknowledged this bias. With new awareness, she could move from reacting out of habit to choosing a more constructive response.
Step 3: Developing the Right Skills
Small shifts, not overhauls:
Every day, she wrote 10 minutes of journalling- recounting all the events with her father and mother at a specific time. If she could not write anything, she wrote nothing that day,
At work, she started seeing her boss with ‘unbiased’ lens. We helped her reinterpret her observations in a different way.
After a period, she could name some ‘men’ who were ‘normal’. She started recounting their experiences too.
Step 4: Reflect and Iterate
Three months later, Priya started seeing her father as Mr “So and So”, not as her father.
She hadn’t upended her life. But she stopped blaming her boss’s actions less. She started reinterpreting her boss differently.
She started having more choices to respond to her boss.
From Autopilot to Awake
Then…
Now…
Efficient but helpless in some situations
Present in her difficult moments
Strong for others
Strong for herself too
Growth is cognitive
Growth is growing in all dimensions
Quietly sulking
Quietly expanding
The environment didn’t change. She did.
Understanding Their World
Not all discomfort shows up as stress or struggle.
Sometimes, it looks like success. Like doing well enough. Like getting through the day with everything under control. No fires. No breakdowns. Just… a sense that something is missing.
For many professionals, especially those in stable roles, the problem sometimes is not the skills to do the work. It is the feeling of being misunderstood by his colleagues.
A Story from the Mind Gym
Rohan reached out to us during a routine check-in session at his company. He was working as a software developer for fashion retail shops in a team of 12 Engineers. He was calm, thoughtful, and doing well at work. He liked his team. He was respected. On most days, things ran smoothly.
And yet, there was a line in his voice that stood out.
“I’m always misunderstood” he said. “I help others. But when things do not happen as expected, I get blamed for the outcome.”
There was no big crisis. No drama. Just a subtle itch to check one’s bearing.
We asked Rohan to stop trying to solve the riddle. We simply asked him to recount the three incidents in the past where he was misunderstood. Not what the colleagues said, but the sequence of events that led to the blame that ‘he was not understanding them’. This is called ‘show-and-tell’ approach.
He wrote all the three incidents, because they were quite recent. We replayed the same film-like sequence with him.
And when we replayed the sequence of the events that unfolded in all three incidents, he himself ‘diagnosed’ his cause. He was trying to ‘do everything for others’, especially when the work was behind schedule. He was covering them. He was protecting them out of good intentions.
In the haste of doing their work, a small slipup typically happened. His colleagues had to take the blame, because they were supposed to have done the work. But in reality he had committed the mistake. He could not own it with manager. Owning it in front of colleagues did not help the matter. The colleagues felt disappointed because they were blamed for the mistake they never did. But they could not blame Rohan too. So the situation became difficult for everyone.
Step 2: Identifying the Mind Muscles
As we dug deeper, a few patterns emerged.
His social muscle needed attention. Whenever some responsibility was given to the team, he said “I will do it”. This helped him become a good ‘samaritan’ in the group. He was unwittingly drawing the boundaries with his colleagues in a wrong manner.
His cognitive muscle was overworked. Paradoxically, owning the work of others helped him. Because he became better in his work.
Emotionally, it exposed him. Due to his overwork, he always had less time, due to which he made mistakes. But he could not even own those mistakes due to the situation. This made him feel guilty.
Step 3: Developing the Right Skills
With Rohan, we didn’t push for change. We encouraged curiosity. We asked him to write about the benefits of ‘owning other’s work’. And then we asked him about the ‘cost’ of doing it.
We offered prompts to reconnect with how this is helping his personal growth. Not achievement. Just inner movement.
We went a bit more creative too. We asked him if he is following the same approach at his home in his new marriage too. For him that was a huge wakeup call.
Step 4: Reflect and Iterate
Over time, that subtle “habit” started to shift. Rohan didn’t do anything drastic. He simply first learned to say No to his colleagues, when they asked for help, without hurting them.
He learnt to draw boundaries with people, and remain comfortable with it.
He discovered that when he is seeking other’s approval, it is OK. His self-belief changed a bit.
From old dysfunctional habits to new empowering habits
Here’s how Rohan’s shift unfolded:
What he felt then…
What he started showing…
Gain others’ approval at any cost
Gain others’ approval
Always said ‘yes’ to request for help from his colleagues
Learn to say no without hurting others
Desperate to be liked by others
Gained the courage to be disliked
Understanding Their World
Being a working professional often looks fine from the outside. Deadlines are met. Meetings attended. Things are getting done.
But inside? It’s a different story.
There’s the constant pressure to perform. The blur between work and life. The weight of decisions, distractions, expectations. You tell yourself to push through. Be productive. Stay focused. And maybe you do. But somewhere along the way, something starts to feel off.
You lose motivation. Or clarity. Or that small spark that made the work meaningful. And you keep going anyway. Because what’s the alternative?
A Story from the Mind Gym
We met Vishal during one of our early sessions with a group of young professionals. He was 29. He was articulate, thoughtful, and in a good position at work. On paper, everything looked solid. But in conversation, you could feel the restlessness underneath.
“I get things done,” he said, “but I don’t feel connected to any of it.”
He wasn’t in crisis. He was just… flat. Worn out from trying to stay “on” all the time. So we asked him to pause. Not quit. Not plan. Just pause.
Vishal was running on autopilot. Meetings. Tasks. Deliverables. Everything checked off, yet none of it felt real. We asked him to sit with that discomfort, instead of pushing it aside.
He paused. And for the first time in a while, he let himself admit that he felt tired. Not just busy—mentally tired. He was feeling he was doing so much of work, but he never felt the exhalation of producing the ‘wow’ feeling, which he loved when he produced a drawing.
Step 2: Identifying the Mind Muscles
Once we slowed down, we could see what was happening beneath the surface.
His cognitive muscle was foggy. He was unable to appreciate ‘how his small output in electrical switchgear manufacturing is producing big result for customer’.
His motivational muscle was drained He wasn’t sure why he was doing what he was doing. The connection between his ‘output’ and ‘results’ was broken. He was unable to see this connection because he is unaware of the company’s value chain.
His social muscle? With no contribution to any meaningful result, the only interactions with other colleagues —upward, downward, sideways—were transactional. No feeling of teamwork was felt.
Step 3: Developing the Right Skills
He had to gain new ‘perspective’ of his work. Getting a new perspective is like stepping onto a balcony—you begin to see the flow, not just the footsteps.
It was about knowing the history of industrial work, and why the knowledge work is done in a value chain, where the result is seen only by the final ‘pin’ in the chain.
He began meeting the installation engineers, who installed the final switchgear at the customer premises. He began meeting the sales engineers who visited the customer site to design the switch gear.
And then he found the courage to ask his manager to go with a service engineer on a visit to a customer plant where company’s switchgear was installed.
Everything changed after the meeting.
Step 4: Reflect and Iterate
A couple of months in, Vishal said something that stuck with us.
“I’m still doing the same work. But it doesn’t feel the same anymore.”
He has started asking better questions. He has started relating to the colleagues in a different way. He has started finding different ways he can contribute to the result.
It wasn’t a dramatic transformation. The fog had cleared just enough to see what mattered again.
From Struggle to Strength
Here’s how Vishal’s inner world shifted:
When we met him…
Over time, he showed…
Constant mental fatigue with working on pieces
More clarity when he came to know how the pieces fit in the bigger puzzle
Disconnected from his work
A sense of purpose and presence
Transactional relationship with colleagues
Felt part of team that is doing meaningful work for a customer
Feel helpless and wayward
More control, more intention
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