Indisciplined Demons

 

If we don’t shape our kids, they will be shaped by outside forces that don’t care what shape our kids are in. ~ Dr. Louise Hart

This lead to me reading and working on understanding discipline and annotating it in a positive aspect. Authors, Psychologists,Researchers have shared their profound knowledge & experience with us. They have provided us with various ways for positive discipline. It is definitely insightful and empowering, gearing up with these useful tools.

Parents & educators feel ready & groomed to take the plunge. They, equipped with their new found understanding  start implementing these strategies to the tee but most of the time their skills & efforts go in vain. The real change in behaviour is a far cry from the expected guaranteed one. Often blame goes to the expert but the simple reason is our naivety in not being conscious of the relevant protocol.

Read books with a plethora of strategies and ways to positively discipline your kids or students but realized a major ingredient of a successful recipe missing from the best there. You expect individuals to implement the strategies but what happens to the flavors they are bringing with them. There can’t be a blank sheet as we are human beings with our individualities, our strengths & our challenges.

How do we expect to implement the strategies with our subjectivity?

Our life’s journey fill us up with resentments, anger, grief apart from tons of other emotions. We carry the baggage. If we aren’t able to identify and deal with the things in our baggage, our perspectives will be colored. We will deal with our children with these shaded emotions making the questionable behaviour worse if not better.

I feel the sharing on discipline and behaviour modifications are great but for doing so one needs to deal with one’s demons first. One has to think, if I have my own insecurities, how am I going to be non judgmental in my approach which is the biggest pillar of positive disciplining. 

I would say learn, imbibe, implement but be aware of your own challenges otherwise your education is futile. Your angels & demons live inside you, choose to excel or fail. When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.

“We like Batman – we understand him, we suffer with him. On the other hand, we want to be Superman. But they’re conflicting philosophies. Let’s bring them together in one movie and see how we, as an audience, wrestle with our inner demons.”-Wolfgang Petersen

 

Upgrade your self!

I’m beautiful in my way
‘Cause God makes no mistakes
I’m on the right track, baby
I was born this way                                       

I love this song. It sums it all. I am fine the way God has made me and should be proud of it.

Then why the world talks about changing? They say it’s never too late to change your life or your life doesn’t get better by chance, it gets better by change and so on.

When you think about it in this way it is confusing, you get entangled in your thoughts.

Actually it is quite simple. We all are born in a certain way ( which is beautiful & perfect) but we need up gradation.

Think of it as a software which is inbuilt in your system but needs constant update otherwise it will be obsolete. You need to imbibe change to stay away from spam and run antivirus regularly.

We are born perfect but in our journey of life we catch a lot of viruses. These corrupt the system, that is why the need of CHANGE is there.

As a child we are pure, perfect and that’s our true self. As we grow our values, beliefs & attitudes are altered through our life’s experiences. We keep on putting layers on our true selves to hide our insecurities & challenges.

It’s time to stop, reflect, get rid of the many layers ( viruses) and accept our true beautiful self.

Trust me nothing is going to be more EMPOWERING!

True Essence of Beauty

“There is nothing more rare, nor more beautiful, than a woman being unapologetically herself; comfortable in her perfect imperfection. To me, that is the true essence of beauty.”
Steve Maraboli

It’s not the men or society. Our insecurities, our need for approval & our struggle to fit in a certain type/model makes us vulnerable.

We starve ourselves to look exactly like the popular model all the boys talk about. It’s all over your daily newspaper supplement.

We show them we are helpless, to boost their egos, and make them feel superior. We are expected to behave and carry ourselves in a certain way and we oblige. We have forgotten who we really are; we have somehow perfectly fitted ourselves in the moulds we have been provided with.        

Let’s be honest, popular among boys are the girls who are dumb & beautiful. And why not so, smart women comfortable in their skin, makes Them uncomfortable… that’s competition right?

Sadly, we women are unable to understand this simple fact. Without using our brains, we jump in the rat race.

Some of you would say that the condition is not that grave and may be you are right too. But I definitely would like to share one of the random Facebook posts which made me think even more about the intensity of the condition.
The piece I am referring to talked about patriarchy.

It talked about how women silently are becoming an integral part of destructing their own stature. Patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate. It privileges, gives the interests of boys and men a so called approval over our bodily integrity and dignity.

This epidemic of us pulling down ourselves is subtle, gradual, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it.

Let them see what a woman looks like.

They may not have ever seen one before.
You are a woman.
Skin and bones.
Veins and nerves.
Hair and sweat.

And know this:

Know you are the type of woman who is searching for a place to call yours.
Let the statues crumble.
You have always been the place.
You are a woman who can build it yourself.
You were born to build.
– Sarah Kay

“Who to be and Who not to be”

Recently lost a colleague, who was struggling with cancer. A person who was disciplined, focused and always working for the future. He seldom enjoyed the present as that diverted him from his focus. After the feeling of sadness and loss, came the reiteration to my learning of cherishing the present.

Most of us know this very well, we have read & heard about it all the time. Then what makes it so difficult to follow.

I would say one major reason is the people we are with. I am a true believer of “the power lies within us” but at the same time totally appreciate the significance of Influencers.  These are the people who give direction to our thought processes, change our moods & can play with our feelings. These influencers can be easily categorized into the positive, neutral & negative.

Think of the people you stay with and you can see them fitting into one of these categories.  There are the ones who make you feel better, good about yourself as well as the situation you are in, consequently encouraging you to live in the moment. The second category is of those who are there but very rarely cross your path of thoughts and feelings, usually is in sync with almost everything you say or do. Then there are those who make you feel unsure, doubts yourself and everyone and fills you with negativity forcing you to leave the present. 

But the most integral part about these influencers are their dynamic state. It is interesting to observe that a single person is in different categories viz a viz various people. A single person could be the positive influencer for someone while can play the negative one for someone else.

Take our relationships as chemical reactions. Certain types of personality types with distinct personality traits when mixed with other kinds can yield different results. Which can or can’t be pleasant.

As two substances when mixed gives a totally rare output the same is true with us. When we interact with a certain person the whole experience is  typical to that  person only. From here it becomes simple to understand the chemical reaction which we have with some people yielding positive or negative results.

Be aware, start reflecting on your relationships & interactions. Start spending more time with people who help you live in the moment. Bring out the positives in you, love to laugh and can make you see the good part in all the situations.  Stay away from those who drain the energy out of you, make you run away from the present and make you doubt yourself.This means you need to start assessing the people around you.

I am not encouraging you to be selfish but just to start loving yourself!

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What to knit your life with?

Have you ever felt drained sitting next to a person while some just refreshes you?

Life is simple ; each individual is unique, no two can be the same . A logical question should be “Why are we called social animals then?”

It’s the connections we have with individuals at various levels. We humans have social needs which are fulfilled by these connections. But the million dollar question is could you fill all these places with any random person? To answer this  I have to ask you one thing, could you put any piece to a puzzle and make a sane picture?

There is a  click with some people and it has nothing to do with how similar you are . You connect  with someone and find that person fulfilling a certain social need of yours making you more contended and happy but that doesn’t mean he/she is the only one for all your needs. This person is just a part of a whole huge picture which is made of many such connections. You connect with someone as a friend, someone else on an intellectual level while someone looks after the call of your heart and so on. 

But there is also a major unsaid pressure from the society on us to form these connections. It is not necessary that at the beginning of our journey we would find the exact piece to fit in the puzzle of our life but when we see or assume these pieces fitting in other people’s life we force to fake these bonds. Our hunger for social satisfaction also forces us to make hurried decisions. We make friends with whom we aren’t comfortable, we become close to people with whom we have few/no things to celebrate about.

This pressure is on both introverts & extroverts. As an introvert, you are pushed to be with people, even if it drains you and you aren’t comfortable with them. You are refused to wait for beautiful connections to happen which makes you enjoy your solitude more and more. While an extrovert, due to his compulsion to be around people, finds lots of them but end up feeling still lonely most of the time.

This in place of making us more contended, takes away the zeal out of our life. The human threads which are supposed to support us actually burdens us. We forget our individuality and instead of growing start carrying baggages. Sometimes we find the bonds which make us stronger but lose them with time and in search of the same kind of support find people who are not our match.

If we are in such a kind of relationship, are we doing justice to it and the other person/s involved in it. I am sure he/she is tolerating us the same way, we are tolerating them in our lives. This whole arrangement is unhealthy. The beauty of relationships and human connection is lost. Wake up before it’s too late and you become responsible for either hurting someone or ruining your experience as a result. Wait for the right piece for your puzzle and trust me it is worth waiting!

Enjoy your solitude and grab opportunities to connect with people with similar thought processes or for that matter someone with whom you can just have FUN! Never rush yourself, everything has a time. When we are waiting we feel that it is never going to end, this makes us impatient resulting in bad choices. But, that doesn’t mean that when something/ somebody does make sense, you still wait for the perfect one ( we all know no one/ nothing is  perfect). 

Life is all about trials & errors. Start living and exploring new human connections, even if it is not going to be your life altering relationship, it sure will teach you some new things.

“We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness.”
― Albert Schweitzer

The simple choice of happiness- Part 2

While reading the spiritual section of my newspaper today, I came across this incredible concept of happiness/unhappiness genes. This was an article by Mr. Rajiv Vij. It made so much sense, forced me to revisit my approach in dealing with happiness.

Presenting my adaptation of happiness/unhappiness genes, which actually is a sequel of my earlier post; The simple choice of happiness!

According to this article, some people are born with the happiness gene. They do get affected by sad or unhappy incidents but that doesn’t mean they get stuck there. You must have met or know a person like that. It also makes you wonder, how does Mr. X remain so cheerful at all times? The reason is out now…Mr. X is one of the lucky few, who are born with the happiness gene.

But, what about the rest of us?

Mr. Vij has put our influences for happiness under five main categories, coined under the acronym of ‘ MOODS’.  Understanding these will definitely facilitate the concept of choosing happiness.

1. ME : ‘ ME’ is our self centered instincts to take things personally.

Remember the famous poster in almost every other room which used to state our basic attitude of ‘ WHY ME?’   

How many of us could actually say with full guarantee that we take criticism very positively? Leave alone criticism, even a casual remark brings millions of doubts in our mind. We question ourselves at every step of our life. It is also very difficult for us to take compliments genuinely. We are always doubtful. We are scared of our successes and failures.

In our strides we understate the successful or happy moments ( Trust me, we get ample of it)  but as soon as there are tough situations we exaggerate it, making our life look like a journey full of thorns. This leads to the next section of O.

Mr. Vij says that we are not unique in any situation, whatever happens to us is universal. I would also like to add that we need to accept the world of duality. Pleasant lies side by side with unpleasant moments.

2. OVERWHELMED: The tendency to get totally consumed by unpleasant events.

It’s interesting to observe how we separate our positives in life from the rest of the events while as soon as it is negative, it wraps our whole daily life. We become sad and insist to be counted as born unlucky. Even if something pleasant happens we stop ourselves from feeling the happiness.

I would say always remember that positive thoughts decreases in half, while negative thoughts increases in double fold. Try to isolate life events, don’t let them overlap. It is a conscious choice which requires everyday effort.

3. OBSESSIVE:  This is our strong need to be perfect.

As in one of my posts, what if…if only? I talked about having an imaginary perfect world. We keep on comparing our present  life with this imaginary world. Whatever we have got , we are not happy, as it is not perfect.

It’s simple, if you want to be happy and contented, stop looking for it. When you look for something, you always have set parameters, let go of your criteria.

4. DIY:  ‘Do It Yourself’ yourself. No one should know that we are dealing with a problem. This thought again emerges from thinking that we are unique in our experience. We take it as a personal defect if someone comes to know about our struggle. We like to indulge in our problem, maximizing it by not sharing it with anyone.

The best way to empower yourself is by accepting our problem and seeking help. This needs a lot of strength and courage.

5. Set in Stone: The innate belief that the effect of any negative event will last forever. It feels that the journey of our life will be stuck with the unpleasantness.

Our life is divided into phases. Change is the only constant, it is always the darkest before the dawn.

Nothing is permanent in this wicked world – not even our troubles.
Charlie Chaplin

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What if…If only?

What is the main thing which comes between us and our happiness? What is it, which stops us from living our life to its fullest?

A simple imaginative ever going comparison of  What if…If only?

Human Beings have this imaginative perfect world in which everything is great ( that is why it is perfect…Duh!). Now, in the real world, they tend to compare everything & everybody with their imaginative perfect world. Nothing real, obviously, couldn’t reach anywhere close to their perfect world counterpart and even if it does, the rating scale again goes higher.

This is true for all of us. How many of us can deny that they don’t have their perfect world in which everything is according to them, no one is there to stop them. We could have a villa full of servants, a beautiful partner without any conditions or could be the ruler of this whole world.  We also have perfect situations in which we win all the arguments and every time we open our mouth something witty or sharp comes out of it. No one can make a fool of us or disrespect us.         

Even though we very well know that its a fake world but in our real world, there is always an unconscious comparison going on. For everything, our mind whispers, what if….if only? This stops us from accepting the reality or being grateful for what we have but actually makes us unhappy, complaining and a cribber.

There is a very thin line between, when we dream of something and it is achievable and we aim for it and those situations which are beyond us. In these situations if we bring out what if…if only, it is only going to flood our lives with regret.  A very good way of judging whether you are crossing the boundary is checking with The Serenity Prayer. It’s the best tool to be as worldly spiritual as possible.

It’s simple, if you want to be happy and contented, stop looking for it. When you look for something, you always have set parameters, let go of your criteria.

You’ll find that happiness is right there, where you are!

“Happiness is making a bouquet of those flowers within reach.” – Unknown

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IT begins with YOU!

” We can only share, what we have”.

Whenever I try to make a person understand this concept, I always take the help of material stuff. You can only help a poor if you could afford it, which means if you have ample money to share, then only you will. Apart from a handful of saints, human beings tend to satisfy their own thirst first and then look into the outer world. If we want to be the source of something, first of all we need to have a reservoir of it.

Lets try to understand it a little better through relationships ;

So many times I have heard this, ” Even if I am unhappy, I will make my loved ones happy.”

My question is how?Your bank is empty as far as a certain emotion goes, but still you claim to lend it to others. Till now, in real life, I haven’t seen anyone making others really happy while they themselves are suffering.

Tina has a friend, whose kids are subject to her anger spats. She decided to talk to her about it. After the conversation, she realized that it is her friend who needs to first of all get her share of love and care, then only she can pass it to her kids. She has a lot of anger and frustration inside her and so she shares it.

I am sure you must have heard about energies. We carry our energy with us, it can be negative or positive. We influence others with our energy. Say, you have started your day on a very positive note but you end up spending a couple of hours with a person who is carrying negative energy. Trust me, that person has helped in bringing down a lot of your positivity. It’s similar to a conduction process. We rub our energies with each other but the strong one overpowers the group.

So, it’s a simple thing, whatever you want to have around you, start it from WITHIN you. If you want to take care of the people around you, first of all it needs to start with self-care.

Lets try to understand it by taking the feeling of happiness. I have taken this feeling because we all crave to achieve this state of mind.

Happiness within you→Happiness you share with your loved ones→And your extended social circle→which in turn is spread all around you.

If you are right now cribbing or complaining about something and is not happy with how things are going. Take some time out and start the change from within you. Come out of your ‘Self Pity’ and do something about it.The POWER is in our hands to make the world a better place to live.

 

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Ten things I`ve learnt from being a WordPress blogger

I bumped into this article by accident but really liked it. What clicked was the honesty and the fact that more or less we are on the same boat. I am a new blogger but loving every minute of it. I found some things in this article very true. The thing, I was able to relate the most was the happiness a blogger receives with each click he gets on his/her article. It is also the contentment of recognition & feeling of worth.So, if like me, you too are a blogger…read on!

Ten things I`ve learnt from being a WordPress blogger

The simple choice of happiness

There was this great man with a smile always on his face. Come any circumstance and this guy always dilute it with a smile. People were amazed as well intrigued by this man. They went after him for the GREAT SECRET OF HAPPINESS. This man gave them his secret.

” Every Morning, when I wake up, I have two choices in front of me: Either I can be happy or unhappy. I chose happiness.”

There goes the mantra:

Happiness is a choice which we make. The word sounds complicated and thanks to the sociologists & psychologists, it sure seems quite an unattainable thing. I would request you to do the exercise, get up in the morning and chose happiness. You’ll find your share of hurdles, deal with them as challenges coming between you and your choice. Trust me, you’ll find out what a simple way of life happiness is!

This topic came to my mind by a post started by a friend. She initiated a topic on how to uplift your mood and people from all over the world contributed in making it a list of some quick fixes.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/101432770709896418691/posts/HKZHfnXHTNL

Hats off in making the road much smoother to travel Tiffany.

I would love to hear from you’ll about the things which makes your choice of happiness easy 🙂