Experience to empathize

In one of my previous blogs I had spoken about empathy. Empathy is a very important quality that one should have to understand others emotions and feelings. You can check more about its importance in the following link http://mohanbn.blogspot.in/2012/12/empathy-art-to-learn.html. However here I would like to touch upon the topic about how to develop the power of empathising with people.

 

Experience shall form the core of empathy. Unless you have experienced the situation what the other person is narrating, you can never empathize with the other person. In fact no two people shall undergo exactly the same process. So complete empathy can ever be achieved at all. But it is definitely true that all of us undergo similar situations in life if not the same exactly where in the emotions and feelings felt by us would match at least if not the situation. This is the required experience of emotions and feelings that can help us develop empathising power. Unless you haven't even experienced the emotions same as the other person in a similar situation, it shall be highly difficult for you to empatize with the other person's situation.

 

Empathy is an art to learn if you want to network with large number of people and work towards grand success. Then it becomes essential for you to get into someone else's shoes day in and day out to empathize with the other person. Hence it's important for you to explore various experiences so that you can instantly remove your shoes and slip into another person's shoes the moment s/he is narrating their story to you so that you can empathise in the best possible manner. I really empathize with the difficulty of writing a feedback with my reader as I have also been asked for feedback by many other authors. Still, I would invite my dear reader to post a comment about the blog on is.mohanbn@gmail.com

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Break your fear and love yourself

On february 4th,2013, I was glad to have been invited by VVN degree college for an inspirational talk to address close to 200 young ladies pursuing their graduation. The main convener for the event was Smt.Prasanna Udupikar who is a English lecturer in the same college. The talk was scheduled at 3pm but was delayed by thirty minutes as all the students had to come from their classes to the auditorium. All I knew when I entered the hall was that I was trusted with next 120 minutes to bring about a positive change in all these people.

 

The event kicked off with a wonderful introduction about me by madam. It was one of the best introductions that I had ever heard. Once I was given the microphone I made it a point to thank the almighty God, parents, teacher, friends and made the audience appreciate themselves with a round of applause. Then I discussed about what's happening in the current scenario as to how studies and marks are failing to motivate us to work hard. I also spoke about how visual and internet media are distracting us apart from providing us the necessary information. The fear of taking action and the problem of inferiority complex were addressed as well. I narrated the example of Lizzie Velasquez and the audience learnt a great lesson about how they should come out of inferiority complex and face the world.

 

Finally I taught them the mantra of "BREAK YOUR FEAR AND LOVE YOURSELF" by which one should be able to break any fear and try out the task at hand. Also not to forget that one should appreciate and love oneself instead of depending on anyone else for moral support. Hitesh.G who is pursuing his BBM also shared about his journey and a wonderful message that "IF YOU ARE NOT A GOOD LEADER THEN BE A GREAT FOLLOWER" following which Bharath.G.C sir introduced the audience to various platforms by which they can grow and the response of the students was just stupendous. These students, especially girls had stayed back for 2 hours after college hours and mam had to struggle to make them leave the auditorium. I hope this suffices to prove the worth of the talk. If you want to know more about such talks, message me on is.mohanbn@gmail.com

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Public Speaking Club Exhibition

It was yet one more wonderful day on February 2nd, 2013 when I witnesssed young kids of KLE Society's International School participate in "IU Public Speaking Club Exhibition". Students starting from the age of 7.5 years to 12 years participated in this wonderful exhibition to entertain the audience with their linguistic and speaking abilities. The entire event that happend for three hours encompassed three different activities to showcase different strengths of the students. I am really excited to share with you about each of them here.

The first activity was a public speaking competition for students from 2nd and 3rd std and the topic was 'My Dreams'. The reason this topic was given because today's children need to be made aware of their dreams as early as possible so that they don't end up in confusions later. Primary school kids shared that they had dreams of becoming doctor, engineer, IAS officer, police officer, architect and many more. It was really heart-touching to see each of these small eyes carrying big dreams.

Second activity was a debate between two teams of two students each studying in 3rd std. The topic given to them was whether homework was good or bad. This debate was the highlight of the entire show. Each team started arguing as to why their perspective towards homework was correct and tried to convince the opposite team agree to their ideology. There were many funny moments which the audience enjoyed thoroughly throughout the entire show. Finally I had to stop them else they would have continued to debate the whole day.

Third activity was a cabinet meeting of the Karnataka government body which included students participating from 5th and 6th std. 7 students assigned themselves the roles of Chief minister, agricultural and irrigation minister, sports minister, health minister, education minister, transport minister and home minister. These young kids really showed the way a board meeting should be conducted with their wonderful respect to each other and discussed about the pertinent issues of the society. This was the final showdown that the audience were really impressed with.

All these wouldn't have been possible without the support of Sujit Lalwani sir, Geethika Kharola mam, Bharath.G.C sir and Bharathi mam. Thanks to all the parents who enjoyed the entire show and a big thanks to all my lovely kids who made the show a grand success.  To know more about such sessions from IU(Inspiration Unlimited) please contact 9916034862.

Collecting new experiences

Last few days I have been in a spree of meeting people and learning about what they have done and how's their past been. Due to the 

people from diverse backgrounds whom I have met, I have learned many lessons and also understood about the human psychology partially. As a reason of these meetings, I have got immeasurable understanding about how people of different age and belonging to different backgrounds think and act. I cannot definitely claim that I understand everything but surely I understand a bit better now than before.

 

We have got one single life and in that we have a very limited amount of time. It is definitely impossible for us to go through all the possible experiences in the world. So sharing the stories of our personal experiences and listening to others' experiences are the only ways through which we can assimilate variety of experiences which help our wisdom grow. This inturn shall help us to handle various challenges ahead in life. Not just an advantage for us, by collecting new experiences from others we gather sufficient knowledge that we can guide some other person who is undergoing a similar situation like one of the experiences that we have gathered from other people. More the amount of varied experiences, more the problems that can be solved because problems are limited in variety but are applicable to many people. So a single experience of one person who has solved a problem is sufficient to solve the same problem of thousand others.

 

The best way to make a collection of new experiences of many people is by meeting and talking to a large number of people. In today's busy world, people seldom find their close ones to be free to discuss in detail about all the experiences that they have undergone till now. As a result people are ready to share their experiences with someone who has the patience to listen to them. So just be a good listener and you can take away a baggage of experiences. You can share your experiences with me on is.mohanbn@gmail.com

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Awareness ~ route to fearlessness

27th of January, 2013 was just an awesome day. Early morning car driving followed by a fantastic activity of meals donation accompanied with brithday celebrations of one of my closest friends, Bharath.G.C alongwith a chance to listen to Sulibele Chakravarthy at JAGO BHARATH function. However this blog is dedicated to the most loyal and humble person whom I have met in my life, my dear friend Bharath.G.C who shared this awesome lesson with the entire team of IU, "Awareness~ route to fearlessness".

 

Generally, we are afraid of those things which we haven't faced yet in our lives. We are afraid of them because we lack awareness about them. We are unaware about how might that thing or situation be. A simple example is that of darkness or spirits. People are afraid of darkness because they don't know what might happen during darkness if they take any step, people are afraid of spirits because they don't know what to do if they ever come across them. All the fear is due to the earlier heard stories about how darkness or spirits have harmed someone. Basically without having experienced oneself or have given a chance to oneself to face the fear, unwareness itself creates a fear. If one knows very clearly that whenever there is darkness one just needs to light a lamp or move towards a source of light, all fears vanish. As we grow in life we expect things to be as we want them to be. What we want depends on what we have seen earlier in life. Anything new about which we are not aware instantly creates a fear in us stopping us from trying it out.

 

Hence, knowing and learning more will always help us take action to expand our horizons in those directions. The action taking step itself defines that one is fearless. Once you have learned about the consequences that your action might reap then you have a clear idea in mind as to how to take the first step. The route to take action is to be fearless and the best way to develop fearlessness is by getting more and more awareness. Thanks to Bharath.G.C sir for sharing this wonderful lesson. You can pour in your thoughts on

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Youngsters with 36meals.com

On a sunday morning when more than half of the city is still sleeping, we 25 youth of bangalore have joined hands with 36meals.com organization to walk an extra mile to bring a smile on someone's face. Today we have teamed up into teams of two and have moved to different localities of bangalore in search of poor and needy people so that we can serve them with our homemade food. I am really happy to let you know that 24 students from Vijaya degree college who are doing their graduation have volunteered to make this campaign a massive success. I am blogging live while the event is happening. Hence you might find most of the sentences in present continuous tense. Since I don't have any internet access right now, I will be posting this blog by tonight.

 

All these volunteers from Vijaya college gathered in the college premises at sharp 9:30am to know and understand the complete procedure to perform this fun-filled activity from 36meals.com. After getting the necessary instructions from me, all these 12 teams sped in different directions through different means of transport. Some took their 2-wheelers, while some boarded buses while the rest gave some work to their feet. It's a privilege to see youngsters involving in adventurous social activities. Top three teams will be selected based on the number of meals they donate, their reporting and the time taken to complete the task and these team members' names will be featured in the report of this entire activity.

 

All the teams have reached back within 2 hours and are sharing their fabulous experiences and learnings with others having donated close to 100 meals on a sunday morning. Some are satisified, some are proud, some are happy, some are inspired etc. Varied emotions is seen on these young faces. Really glad and happy to know that a routine monotonous activity like meal donation gave so much of learning and enjoyment to students. The winners of the competition will be announced soon. You can check out the photos on www.facebook.com/36meals

Are we really republic?

The word 'republic' means a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president. I know that all of us Indians had a wonderful time on 26th of Jan, celebrating our Republic day but on the same day I had an experience which actually questioned as to how much republic we really are. Probably not only w.r.t India, even some other countries might have the same issue.

 

I was walking on the pavement and I found this guy selling corn. He looked pretty young to me. Somewhat I felt that I needed to talk to him. I went near him and asked him as to how much of corn does he sell in one single day. He replied 6-7kg initially and then said that yesterday he was able to sell 10kg since it was a holiday because of republic day as well as a weekend. Then when I asked him as to how much he earns per day. His answer was a shocking "Rs.3000/month!" I went into bit of mathematics at that time. Even if he sells 100gm of corn for Rs.20, he is going to sell 1kg of corn at Rs.200 which effectively yields Rs.40000 for 200kg sold in one month assuming an average of 7kg sold per day. When I went back to him to ask as to how many hours a day he works, he replied "10 hours". A guy who works for 10 hours continuously each day of a month is earning just Rs.3000.

 

Even more disheartening fact was to know that he had just passed 8th std and didn't continue his education as he was disinterested in it and hence took up this job at Bangalore though his native place is Bihar. When the present generation which is suppose to be going to school is working on roads for such mean jobs, how can we expect this generation to be capable enough to elect a representative or President for our country as the word republic says. So my dear friends, it's very important for us to join hands to make sure that we pass on our nation to safe hands and that can happen only when such children are motivated and helped to continue their education. In this regard I would like to congratulate the campaign of "IUY2C" through which the college youth of our nation are taking initiative to go and talk to school children about the importance of education and helping them realise the value of it. Register yourself on www.iuy2c.org if you're interested to be a part of it.