Take a Break

Friends I would like to share my thoughts about my recent visit to my mom's home town and a village where we used to go during our summer holidays.

Now a days life became so fast, so busy, and so pressured that, for many, it became stressful depriving us of pleasure. Stress is becoming an assumption of modern life and can lead to anxiety and depression. Work communication became so rapid that there is too little time for thinking. Instant information transfer began to substitute for complex communication with others and with ourselves. Does it have to remain that way? Our answer CAN be “No”.

Whether you work outside the home or in it, chances are good that you could occasionally use a break from your schedule. Call it a personal day or a mental health day. Either way, it means that for one golden day, you let go of your usual responsibilities and embrace just being you. Take a break from your busy schedules.

Banish the Cell Phone and Don’t Check Email

Most people carry cell phones like they are another bodily appendage. For this one day, you’re not going to obsessively check your phone. You can keep it in your purse or a pocket just in case of emergency. However, try to resist the temptation to constantly check for emails, text messages, social networking sites, as these things can quickly take you out of your relaxed state of mind.

With a personal day, you can rediscover some of the things that make life worth living. You’ll take the time to notice how green the grass is or appreciate the beauty of the nature and relive the past memories.

Taking a break does not mean that you need to go to famous tourist spots or out of country , just visit your home town or the places where you were grown up, visit your school or just do what you like.

Last month when I went to home town I decided to take one day off and go to the villages where I grew up and used to have lot of fun during vacations.

Me along with my cousins decided to go on a bike. At first we went to a village where we used to spend our summer vacations. It was almost like I was visiting a old movie set

where all childhood innocent days came in to my mind. We visited farm land first, have seen Mirchi, Maize and Paddy fields. Spent almost an hour in those fields , even though it was so hot that day, we did not feel the heat at all as we were enjoying by discussing about our child hood incidents.

Had yummy Desi chicken in our relatives house and moved to one more village which is my mother's home town. On the way to that village we had Goli soda ( Which is seen very rarely now a days ) which we used to have almost daily during child hood days. We first went to a lake which is out side the village where during child hood we used to get scoldings and beatings from elders for entering into the lakes. Spent some time over there by playing in water with stones.

After that we went into the forest. During child hood days we used just go to just short distance as elders used to frighten us by saying wild animals will be there :) but this time we traveled more distance did trekking for almost an hour and spent some time in the Mango fields and near a small lake which is running in between the fields and hills. As it was getting dark in the evening we have started back :( and on the way back in outskirts of one village , we had seen Geetha ice cream ( which used to be very famous 15-20 years back. We used to have for 25paise and 50 paise now

it is of 5 Rs :) , best part is having it standing in front of fields where there was cool breeze during evening time. As there was no lights for my 2 wheeler have to head back as it was getting darker :(

These were only a few of the memories that I had on my visit to parents home town. There are so many more, and I cherish all of them, and I often wish that I could go back and do it all over again. And I will – on my next visit to my hometown.

Seeing the places we used to go invokes up bittersweet memories – sweet because the days that were, bitter because of the days that’ll never be again.

I bet most of you guys will be having similar type of experiences !!! Take a break an arrange a visit with family or friends , it will definitely rejuvenates us and be very active while we rejoin our busy hectic life.

Learn to Appreciate

Yes, you read it right – Did you ever appreciate others? How many times you give appreciation to others when people did good job or great things for you? How often you do it? Do you know that there are some people have never received any appreciation or reward in their lifetime for their good deeds? We are very quick in finding faults but at the same way are we very quick in finding good and appreciating???

Appreciation also means thanks and gratitude, recognition of the quality, value, significance of people and things. Learning to appreciate others can help us live a better life and become a better person.

By saying “I appreciate you” is not a rocket science, you never lost anything by saying it. Appreciating others helps you to enhance your skills;

To help you have a better understanding of appreciation, I want to share below this story with you. Hope you can learn something from it.

A man came home from work and found his 3 children outside, still in their pyjamas, playing in the mud, with empty food boxes and wrappers around garden, The door of his wife’s car was open, as was the front door to the house and no sign of the dog. Walking in the door, he found an even bigger mess. In the front room, the cartoon channel was going on on the TV with blasting speakers, the family room was full with toys and various items of clothing.

In the kitchen, dishes filled the sink, breakfast food was spilled on the counter, the fridge door was open wide, dog food was spilled on floor.

He quickly headed up the stairs, stepping over toys and more piles of clothes, looking for his wife.

He was worried she might be ill, or that something serious had happened. He was met with a small trickle of water as it made its way out the bathroom door. As he peered inside he found wet towels, scummy soap and more toys were scattered over the floor.

As he rushed to the bedroom, he found his wife still curled up in the bed in her pyjamas, reading a novel. She looked up at him, smiled and asked how his day went.

He looked at her bewildered and asked, “What happened here today?”

She again smiled and answered, “You know every day when you come home from work and you ask me what in the world do I do all day?”

“Yes,” was his incredulous reply.                       

She answered, “Well, today I didn’t do it.”

Moral of the story: We draw conclusions very easily without judging properly. He came to know the importance of the person once he is affected.

Seldom everyone in our day to day life both in professional and personal life do like this.

Have you recently appreciated a co-worker or your employee at work?

Is appreciating your employees part of your leadership plan and process?

How many managers are actually using appreciation to energize their workforce? And, why they should be doing it on a regular basis – appreciation and recognition are critical to talent retention.

Everyone has an invisible sign hanging from their neck saying, “Make me feel important.” Never forget this message when working with people.
– Mary Kay Ash

Compliment often and with Honesty

Just saying “Good job” might not be the best way to get the praise across. Display sincerity and be specific in praising your employees. Send an email to the employee and if you wish CC to the HR personnel or another senior manager in your division. On being specific, mention the specific task or the project you were impressed with for this particular employee, if the employee is a good team player, add that to the testimonial.
Don’t be a miser when showering words of praises towards your employees or coworkers, and neither should you present false praise; be honest and to the point.
Empathetic employers have happier employees; invest wisely in your people and your company shall retain best talents and render the best in performance.

• The basic idea is simple: People will work harder and more enthusiastically for an appreciative boss, and companies that praise topnotch performance are more profitable than those that don’t.

Therefore, Both in professional and personal life, before you can learn how to express appreciation toward others, you must first learn how to feel appreciative.

Take these steps to learn to feel appreciation:

1. Appreciate the world around you: Take a few moments in each day to notice useful or beautiful things around you and smile at them. Imagine what the world would be like without them. Take a deep breath and be thankful for their existence (and keep smiling!).
2. Express Your appreciation of world to others:Tell a friend how much you appreciate breezy spring days or hot tea in the morning. Learn to verbalize your appreciation.
3. Practice appreciating yourself:At the end of each day, ask yourself “What can I truly be proud of today?”. Say it aloud or write it down. Practice recognizing in yourself the type of things you want to appreciate in others.
4. Express appreciation to others: Tell people that you appreciate them and why. If it feels strange, start with people where you have few power dynamics or attachments, then move onto employees, colleagues and loved ones.

An interesting experiment is to try to say something nice to or about someone every day for a month. It encourages us to change our perspective so that we notice others' good qualities. Doing so also improves our relationships tremendously.

Try to praise the person whom you don't like very much.

We need to try to cultivate the habit of noticing what is beautiful, brave, struggling, hopeful, kind, and inspiring in others. If we pay attention to that, we won't be focusing on their faults. Our joyful attitude and speech that result from this will enrich those around us and will nourish happiness and love within ourselves. The quality of our own lives thus depends on whether we find fault with our experience or see what is beautiful in it.

Seeing the faults of others is about missing opportunities to love. When we are habituated with mentally picking out the faults of others, we tend to do this with ourselves as well. This can lead us to devalue our entire lives.

So friend's be happy , appreciate others, spread love and live to the fullest.

To err is human- Accept It

Hii friends, I am just pondering about what to write from past few days , few topics came to my mind like art of appreciation , art of accepting mistakes etc. I felt it is important to write on accepting mistakes learning from mistakes and going a head in life because in recent times have seen many people who when committed any mistake don't accept and few, they accept but be so depressed and spoil their future. Thought of just throwing some light on this topic.

As a human being, we all make mistakes. It is quite normal. But now a days instead of accepting mistake we try to argue and Justify.

Unfortunately, it is our natural instinct to try to justify our actions. When you make a mistake, the initial reaction is to blame someone else.

“Yes, I drove my car into the wall, but it was all my partners fault for distracting me with her gossiping…”

“ we could not complete the project in given time because they were not sincere in their efforts”

These type of statements we often hear in our daily life now a days

When mistakes are made, the boss is unlikely to be interested in justifications. We justify mistakes for the sake of our ego. Sometimes it is best to say, very simply — yes, I made a mistake instead of arguing.

Apologize with Dignity

If you’ve made mistakes that harm other people, it is important to offer a dignified apology. Be clear that it was an unfortunate incident that will not be repeated. A good apology can go along way to restoring trust.

If you don’t apologize, out of embarrassment or unwillingness, the offended person will hold it against you. If your apology is sincere, the other person is likely to forgive you.

It is more effective to apologize in person, rather than through email. However, once you have apologized, it is mistake to repeatedly say sorry for the same mistake. Some people keep apologizing over and over again. This becomes irritating. It is better to sincerely apologize once and then move on.

Generally the biggest mistake what people do is passing on the mistake or blaming others' for their mistakes. Don't show a finger on others, if you can do something to stop or reduce do it, otherwise don't comment at all.

Understand Why The Mistake Occurred

Mistakes occur for various reasons. To avoid repeating them, you need to understand the underlying reason.

For example, you may have spoken in anger and haste; the mistake here is to say unkind words. However, what led you to be angry in the first place? Try to find out the reason and try not to repeat.

If u feel that you have not done any mistake and u were made the culprit. Don't worry. Don't think much about past mistakes. Never use the story of your past as an excuse to reiterate the same outcomes as have always been , never nurture the habit of carrying your story with you all through your life. Never let any negative outcome of any past action get deep rooted in your memory.

Sometimes we make mistakes with our behavior. Considering about that mistake later on, we realize that we should have not to do it. But as i said we are all human being and we cannot help ourselves with making mistakes. When we make mistakes, we feel sad and we regret. There is only one way to beat it which is fix them.

Avoid Repeating Mistakes

You should avoid feeling guilty about making mistakes, but at the same time, you should make a resolution to learn from them. If you repeat the same mistakes, it shows you aren’t making progress and causes repeated suffering.

Mistakes are Opportunities to Learn

From your own mistakes you can gain wisdom and accelerate self-improvement. Mistakes, because of their relationship with risk taking, are essential to success. The important thing is to view mistakes as a useful stepping stone to a higher reality and better outlook on life.

One thing to remember, you should look on the bright side. You might think that there is no good thing in making mistakes. But , there is. When you make mistakes, you get closer to the success. Dealing with difficulties makes us more ambitious and strong. Also learning lesson form mistakes is the biggest assistant to reach the success. Because, if you know your mistake, you would not repeat them in the future.

So in short what I would like to say is accept the mistake with dignity,don't pass on the mistake on others, try to find out the reason, analyze, learn and try not to repeat.

Keep smiling guys...

 

THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING

“Our thoughts are always a lamp to our feet to guide us to successful living .” Life is full of challenges. Most people consider life a battle, but it is not a battle, it is a game. It is a game, however, which cannot be played successfully without the knowledge of inner talents, capabilities and vision. Whatsoever a man sow that shall he also reap. This means that whatever man thinks or sends out in word or deed, will return to him; “Your word is your wand” what he thinks, he will receive. We are taught also, that the imaging faculty plays a leading part in the game of life. So we see, to play successfully the game of life, we must train the imaging faculty. A person with an imaging faculty trained to image only good, brings into his life "every righteous desire of his heart" -health, wealth, love, friends, perfect self-expression, his highest ideals. The imagination has been called,"The Scissors of The Mind," and it is ever cutting, cutting, day by day, the pictures man sees there, and sooner or later he meets his own creations in his outer world. To train the imagination successfully, man must understand the workings of his mind.

We always act according to our thoughts, so the first thing which we need to do is to change our thinking attitude from negative to positive. Don’t ever permit negative thoughts to take over your heart. If you have low self esteem, you will act as if you are unworthy and on no account. Most of the time we waste our time by thinking about stupid things, if we can just divert at least 20-30% of time towards our aim definitely we can bring a change and achieve the goal.

Start thinking positively, the rest will follow but for that first the old needs to be cleared out before space for the new and better can arrive. Our life is bombarded with lot of thoughts. First we need to change our attitude and mindset. Important thing is we need to be patient during the process of change because change is always messy and we will be uncomfortable in the middle of the process. Refusing to change and grow is the most unsafe place you could be so its up to you to decide in which category you want to be.

There is no point in thinking about past and spoiling your future and you yourself becoming a hindrance for your growth.

You can’t craft a superb future by remaining stuck in your past. So it is vital that we renew our minds and think positively.

In Alchemist it’s written that when you want something, all the universe conspires to help you achieve it. Try to have the desire in your heart. There can be no growth or progress without the feeling the nervousness in the pit of your belly.

According to neurology, speech center in the brain has strong influences over all the nerves.

“If some one keeps on saying , I am going to become weak, then right away all the nerves receive that message and they say “Oh lets prepare for weakness, for we have received instructions from our central communication that we should become weak.” Then in natural sequence they adjust their physical attitude to weakness

People easily adapt themselves to speaking in a –ve way

So dream big and positive and let the dreams develop into a desire to do great exploits

First recognize a clear cut goal in your heart, draw a mental picture of that goal vivid and graphic, and strive fervently through out the process. Who so ever controls the tongue, controls the whole body, what you speak you are going to get. Never speak in a –ve way speak always positively

If you start thinking that you are the best and if it is deeply imbibed in your mind then definitely you will have improvement. Find ways to challenge yourself each day. Give nothing less than your very best. Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond. We should always go out each day with a positive attitude, full of hope and expectations.

Every problem has a life span, there is no permanent problem, we are the one to determine how long that situation will remain in our life, till then problem will keep staring at us in the face until we are ready to face and attack. Keep in mind that difficult days never last, but strong people always do. Hard conditions are nothing more than chances to become heroic.

Every problem has a solution, for the time being we may not have solution but that does not mean that there will never be one, we need to just try to find out the solution, the moment we get the answer, it’s no longer a problem for us. You will never know how high you can climb if you don’t even try. It is just the more time you spend outside of your comfort zone, the wider it grows. Start stretching yourselves. The problem is not beyond us. Most inspiring sentences from holy scriptures: God will not allow any situation that is beyond your ability to come your way. The reason why God has allowed that situation to confront you, is because, He knows that you have what it takes to solve it. You are the only one that is ignorant of your capabilities. God knows what he deposited in you when He created you. Your ignorance has kept you bound and rooted in that problem for so long, but through His word, God is going to impart your life with light, shattering every form of darkness around you. So there is no point in worrying about the problems.

Positive thoughts are not enough. There have to be positive feelings and positive actions.

Just dream big, be positive and let the dreams develop into a desire to do great exploits!!!! Keep Rocking!!

"Incredible India"

Freedom is everyone's right. Fight for it to enjoy it!!!
A very Happy Independence Day to All!!!
Would just like to share few facts which make every Indian PROUD

Q. Who is the creator of Pentium chip (needs no introduction as 90% of the
today's computers run on it)?
A. Vinod Dahm

Q. Who is the founder and creator of Hotmail (Hotmail is world's No.1 web
based email program)?
A. Sabeer Bhatia

Q. Who is the president of AT & T-Bell Labs (AT & T-Bell Labs is the creator
of program languages such as C, C++, Unix to name a few)?
A. Arun Netravalli

Q. Who is the new MTD (Microsoft Testing Director) of Windows 2000,
responsible to iron out all initial problems?
A. Sanjay Tejwrika

Q. We Indians are the wealthiest among all ethnic groups in America , even faring better than the whites and the natives.
There are 3.22 millions of Indians in USA (1.5% of population). YET,
38% of doctors in USA are Indians.
12% scientists in USA are Indians.
36% of NASA scientists are Indians.
34% of Microsoft employees are Indians.
28% of IBM employees are Indians.
17% of INTEL scientists are Indians.
13% of XEROX employees are! Indians.

Some of the following facts may be known to you. These facts were recently published in a German magazine, which deals with WORLD HISTORY FACTS ABOUT INDIA .
1. India never invaded any country in her last 1000 years of history.
2. India invented the Number system. Zero was invented by Aryabhatta.
3. The world's first University was established in Takshila in 700BC. More than 10,500 students from all over the world studied more than 60 subjects.
The University of Nalanda built in the 4 th century BC was one of the
greatest achievements of ancient India in the field of education.
4. According to the Forbes magazine, Sanskrit is the most suitable language for computer software.
5. Ayurveda is the earliest school of medicine known to humans.
6. Although western media portray modern images of India as poverty striken and underdeveloped through political corruption, India was once the richest empire on earth.
7. The art of navigation was born in the river Sindh 5000 years ago. The
very word "Navigation" is derived from the Sanskrit word NAVGATIH.
8. The value of pi was first calculated by Budhayana, and he explained the concept of what is now k! nown as the Pythagorean Theorem. British scholars have last year (1999) officially published that Budhayan's works dates to the 6 th Century which is long before the European mathematicians.

9. Algebra, trigonometry and calculus came from India . Quadratic equations were by Sridharacharya in the 11 th Century; the largest numbers the Greeks and the Romans used were 106 whereas Indians used numbers as big as 10 53.
10. According to the Gemmological Institute of America, up until 1896, India was the only source of diamonds to the world.

11. USA based IEEE has proved what has been a century-old suspicion amongst academics that the pioneer of wireless communication was Professor Jagdeesh Bose and not Marconi.
12. The earliest reservoir and dam for irrigation was built in Saurashtra.
13. Chess was invented in India .
14. Sushruta is the father of surgery. 2600 years ago he and health
scientists of his time conducted surgeries like cesareans, cataract,
fractures and urinary stones. Usage of anaesthesia was well known in ancient
India .

15. Histories mentioned that Kalaripayattu is the mother of all the martial
arts in the world
16. The place value system, the decimal system was developed in India in 100 BC.

Quotes about India .

We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no
worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.
Albert Einstein.

India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend and the great grand mother of tradition.
Mark Twain.

If there is one place on the face of earth where all dreams of living men
have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India .
French scholar Romain Rolland.

India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border.
Hu Shih
(former Chinese ambassador to USA )

ALL OF THE ABOVE IS JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG, THE LIST COULD BE ENDLESS.
BUT, if we don't see even a glimpse of that great India in the India that we
see today, it clearly means that we are not working up to our potential; and that if we do, we could once again be an ever shining and inspiring country setting a bright path for rest of the world to follow.
I hope you enjoyed it and work towards the welfare of INDIA .

Happy Independence Day.