A kick is better than a pat

I remember reading this statement in one of the books of Mr.Shiv Khera. I have just edited it partially to fit into a decent title. I am myself a strong believer of appreciation. A pat on the back is a simple indication of appreciation. Unfortunately the same appreciation doesn't work all the time to increase the momentum of action. At such times it's the kick that does the magic. Fear is one of the strongest motivators for work to happen. Probably this explains the negative force required to initiate the positive action in life.

 

When everything's going fine the motivation to work may or may not reside but when one is pushed to the corner, he has no other option other than to fight back. Even a micro-organism like an amoeba has the inbuilt response to stimulus built into its CPU. Likewise people are no exception. Appreciation builds in confidence in a starter but it has a limit after which it just leads to complacency. However the kicks of life such as rejection, failure, defamation, financial crunch, exploitation, etc are the tough times that really trigger the fighting spirit in us. There are two outcomes of such scenarios. Few people get bogged down by such instances and give up on fighting back until the situation gets tougher to demand their fight. However people who have the better fighting back threshold get triggered immediately and start revolting against the challenge of life and this is where the real test of life begins.

 

Only when coal burns under the pressure of the earth for quite sometime does it convert into diamond. So pressure, force and thrust are the pumping factors that move us into action on a daily basis. Only difference is that such a pressure is external for normal people while it's self-generated and inflicted by the highly self-aware people. You can write your feedback on is.mohanbn@gmail.com

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Never give up until you finish

Unfinished work is an indication of winnerless attitude. When any work is started there is already a lot of work that would have initiated the start of the process. Once started additional time, energy, resources and efforts would have been invested in the work. No doubt that whenever any new work begins there is an initial excitement but later due to the repetition and routine kind of work, motivation subsides and people give up in between. The loss is just not in the incompletion of the present work, the loss is also undoing of some other better work that could have been completed. An incomplete work takes away time-space from this universe that could have been invested on some other work otherwise. The worst part is that it wastes the time-space after taking it away from a fruitful work. Hence mark your target towards completions always.

 

Whenever any work is started, definitely there is a picture of the target in the mind. Make sure that you pin this target really serious in your mind and tell yourself that you cannot stop until you finish it. Motivation will definitely subside due to the longtime involvement in the same kind of work. Repetition and routine type of work will take away the interest from continuing the work. At all such times, just remind yourself about the double disadvantages of an unfinished work. The third disadvantage is that it sets a frame of mind to leave work incomplete in future as well which is the worst that can happen to hamper the progress of any individual but an attitude of completing everything shall always build the repute of reliability in the eyes of others. A half-filled glass is always half-filled no matter how much ever optimistic one is.

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Accidents of life

Recently I read a line from Mrs. Sudha Murthy's book which said that we are proud about the nations we are born in and this pride is a mere accident. One would be proud of India because s/he was born in India. If the same person was born in some other country s/he would be proud of that country. Similar to this is our new year. People have a lot of craze for celebrating new year. It is after all a number at the end of the day. It is just a mathematical modulation of dates done ages back.

If we really dig into the names of the months in our calendar you can see that october has 'octo' which means '8' but is the tenth month, december has 'dec' which indicates '10' while it's the twelfth month. Some people sometime back, sorry, longtime back assigned some names for a set of days and called them months. When they found that the phase of the same month repeated after one revolution of the earth around the sun they repeated the same month names. Who knows at what point exactly on the earth's orbit did the earth start revolving to coin it as the start of the year. Since there had to be some start January 1st was coined as the start of the year and the day previous to that was coined as the last day of the year. If some other date would have been named as the start of the year, still the seasons or festivals wouldn't have changed. Year would function the same way. Probably coining a start of the year was itself a major accident that happened because of which companies started allotting holidays and people just got one more reason to party and celebrate without any logic.

Life is just filled with such irrelevant logical conclusions for unreasoned accidents. Every day is a fresh day, let's make the best use of it. There is no point of being proud about those for which one has not contributed at all apart from being at the right place at the right time. All pride would  have been there even if the person wouldn't have been there. So concentrate on those works which can be of pride for others once you have contributed your best for it. Your feedback shall be a worthy contribution on is.mohanbn@gmail.com

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God-fearing or good-fearing

'He was a very God-fearing man' is a sentence that I have read a couple of times in books. This aims to convey the message that the person was one who followed rituals for God very strictly and consistently. I personally haven't seen God live. I have seen the photos as many of you would have. I believe that, since God is the creator of the world, he shall protect as well. Then why should we be afraid of Him who is on our side to protect us?

 

Some of them may argue saying that one cannot do work that's against God. Well! I don't expect anyone would get ready to fight against God. I have observed that parents/elders warn children saying that if they don't perform the rituals or not perform rituals properly then God shall punish them. If they don't go to temples God shall punish them. These kinds of things breed in fear in children about God. Then they start going to temples and following rituals just out of fear rather than worship. It is as if people are paying bribes by visiting temples and performing rituals just to safeguard themselves from the anger of God. Can we call this real worship? Is God someone who will harm us just because we didn't follow the rituals? If someone says following rituals in spite of you not having your heart/mind/soul in it is real worship then I don't understand if this irritation-filled worship really reaches God. I believe that the relationship between God and man should be just like that between two best friends with no rules but just values. A person should not be afraid of God. S/He should be able to feel that God is with him/her all the time and listening.

 

People need not have to avoid doing things fearing God. People need to be afraid of doing things against good for others. If any act of a person harms or affects another human in a negative way and with the same negative intention then that is bad and such an act must be avoided by being good-fearing. Let's make friends with God and good. Please feel free to share your feedback on

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Cardinal rules of life

Life is a set of limited number of days blessed upon us by God without mentioning the upper limit. What we do out of this is completely left to us. As days pass on many of us look back at our past, some with grief, some with regret while a few with satisfaction. Some with grief because they couldn't do all that they wanted to, some with regret because they didn't do all that they wanted to and some with satisfaction because they could a bit of all that they decided to. All that you must do shall form the cardinal rules of life.

Time just escapes at its own pace and doesn't wait for us to take any action. It's left upon us to run along with it to make things fructify. The reason that many don't achieve all that they want is not that they didn't want to. Simple and the silliest reason is that people tend to forget what they wanted to do. People remember those work that is enforced by others and constantly reminded of or those work which can satisfy their immediate necessities. After about one or two decades they end up just regretting for having lost all the time to make any difference at all. So it's very important for us to divide the work towards our goals and dreams into daily activities. All such daily activities that shall take you towards what you want out of life shall be entitled with certain must-to-do rules and they shall be called as cardinal rules of life. "I must workout in the gym everyday for 90 minutes to have a healthy and fit body", "I must write a blog everyday to develop myself into an author". These are examples of some simple cardinal rules that I make for myself.

Make sure that your cardinal rules are a combination of both your work and target. The moment you read your cardinal rule, it must remind you about your goal as well as the work that you must do to attain the same. This is one of the practical ideas that I designed for myself for a better productive time usage. Do let me know if it helps you as well on is.mohanbn@gmail.com

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The triangle of life

Our life is balanced on three main factors. They are time, money and health. Humans wish to lead a very well-balanced life. It's difficult to
balance a see-saw which has two sides. Then you can imagine how difficult it is to balance something that has three sides. Our life is meant to be balanced on these three important factors. Let's see further as to how these 3 fulcrums of our lives control us.

 

If one wishes to have a very healthy life, s/he must be ready to invest good amount of money on good nutrition and proper medication alongwith sufficient amount of time for rest and recovery. On the other hand, if one wishes to have a lot of money in life then one should be ready to sacrifice health as long as s/he can manage to survive decently with medicinally controllable ailments and also will have to invest most of the time only in earning money rather than on family or friends or recreation or even self for that matter. On the third hand, if one wishes to just have sufficient time for his/her business or family then s/he must be ready to spend enough on quick transports and take risks of life to save enough time. Only those people who can find the best balance among all these 3 controlling factors of life can lead a happy successful life. Fortunately or unfortunately not every person seeming successful to your eyes is able to accomplish the best of the balance in life and is always in the pursuit of the same.

At any point in your life if you are feeling depressed or stressed out just ask yourself as to which of these three you are missing out on? Is it money or time or health. If you can point out anyone of these immediately try to lower the other two to regain the balance of life. Your opinions do matter to me on is.mohanbn@gmail.com
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The struggle continues

Darwin's theory of 'Origin of Species' states one of the postulates as 'struggle for existence'. As existence continues so does struggle. Animals struggle to find the right food and shelter for protection. On the higher hand, we, humans have to struggle for everything. We need to struggle to earn money and we need to struggle on even thinking as to how we spend money. Since money is the only measuring metric of how a person can survive to lead a well-organized life we shall consider only the struggle for money here.

I am not sure if you have been through such incidents when you are compromising between money and comfort. Some people are just lucky enough to have a well-established background courtesy ancestors and parents that they needn't worry to match the ends meet. There is a part of the human population that struggles to make the ends meet on a daily basis. No earning in a day shall only mean no food for the day. Unfortunately there is even a deprived section which is still struggling to find a way to meet the ends. In between these sections there is another set of people who have to meet the ends on a monthly basis. All source back to the lack of financial back-up. This struggle keeps continuing for a long time breeding the fear of taking risks as well. Even calculated risks can be taken sometimes only if it is well known that there is a solid support back home else the struggle just continues.

There is probably not one particular solution that can solve the struggle of life. Just have a brave heart to accept the given scenario, pin your hopes strongly to convert the situation into a better one. There is no escape from this struggle. As our expectations sore higher even the level of struggle climbs up but you needn't struggle to give your feedback on is.mohanbn@gmail.com

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