“All is well, all is well, all is well”
Let me tell you a story…
It is said that a man is always led by his thought. A positive thinking leads to positive results. It anticipates happiness and favourable result from every situation. Hence, we should always be positive.
“ I can,” I am able to” “it is possible” – gives you strength to
complete a task successfully.
One fresh Monday morning, I logged into my work.
"Good morning! How was your weekend?". That was Ellen from the opposite desk, unpacking the bags to start work.
"It was good, relaxing and a lot of Netflix!". That is my usual response and this is the usual conversation every Monday.
"How is your week looking ahead? anything exciting?" this was the next question today.
New question.
Never asked before.
And this made me thinking.
What am I looking at this week, apart from lot of regular calls, regular activities, regular meetings and at the end wait for the next weekend.
Is just it? or Is there something that I can look forward to?
Is there anything that I can accomplish at a professional level or at a personal level?
I started asking these questions.
Do we have any idea how this going this day is going to end or how this week is going to end. There can be adhoc stuff coming your way, there can be lot of additional work or there can be not much work and I can end up doing lots of time pass. I have no idea about this, but still at the end of the week, can I give myself some satisfaction of completing something or accomplishing something extra to help my future self?
How do I get there, how do I get there!
The future breaks down to one week or even one day.
If your future is a palace, these days and weeks are the building blocks of it. Look at your past and how you spent your days earlier, do you have a palace now or are you still building it.
Mine is still work in progress with no proper structure.
That's okay.
Today is brick for my futur palace. I have now decided what I wanted to accomplish at the end of this week. I am going work on my bricks for a beautiful palace.
Do you have yours?!
On my way back home in my bike, after a tiring day at work, I was following this car. The car had one of the unusual signs in the back of the windows which says, “Learning, sorry for any delay.”
I was tired, but still I was very patient and following them with the same speed. To my surprise, they were doing very well for someone who is learning. I am sure everyone would have done this some time in our life.
I asked myself this question: Would I have been so patient if there was no such sign in the car? Maybe, No!
There are some signs like this to tell everyone that “I am learning” – but there are no signs which says, “Going through a depression” or “Lost a child” or “Striving hard to achieve what I want, but not getting any help” or “Going through tough times in life”.
We don’t know what the other person is going through. When we can be nicer and helpful (by at least not adding any additional pressure) to a stranger on the road, I am sure we can be nicer to people around you – who might be going through some tough phases in life – which you might never be aware of.
Let us give everyone an extra dose of love and kindness and help them in the journey of whatever they are going through. You cannot solve all their problems with this – you might not know your one act of kindness or a smile can make a big big difference in their life.
"Can you give me 2 mins please?" Dhivya answered the phone call
How often have we said this? And how often was this really 2 mins?
I am trying to give some insight on how words work in our brain - if you are someone who can't take any advise or criticism, please do stop here. Its not for light hearted people!
There is a whole branch of psychology known as NLP, Neurolingusitic program. This deals with the connection between how our brain works versus how words are used. Which inturn means, the choice of words you use has a great impact on how your brain works, how your emotions rally up and what do you actually mean when you say something to people.
For Dhivya, what she said just means give me some time or i am in the middle of something or i cant speak to u right now or give me some time or maybe she is not in a mood to speak now and she has decided to respond politely. She could have said these words directly, but she choose to use the "2mins", this is probably because she has not sorted out herself what she wants in her mind actually and what she says to others.
This at the very core means, what comes out of your mouth is never what you want actually - your caring words for others are probably not genuine care! It might sound rude, but sometimes it happens.
Why does this happen? What can we do to improve on this area if we want to communicate better?
"Ask yourself what do I actually want to say". The solution maybe simple, but it is difficult to follow as most of the time we do not what to say or we don't want to say what we think for various reasons.
But, why do we have to do this? why can't I continue saying "2mins"? ...We can do it, but we are allowing the disparity of what we think inside versus what comes out of mouth to increase and this is a very big hindrance in achieving what we want to get in life because we are not clear between what's going on in your mind versus what actually you do.
As mathematician says, the shortest distance between two points in a straight line, start vocalising what you think in your mind, at least to yourself and you would really know how far are we from what is happening in our life to how you want it to happen.
Easy said than done!...But it's never late to try. Who else would look at you so close if you can't face your internal self?
Ann had tough time reacting to what I was sharing to her. She was absolutely confused as to be happy or
sad on what I said. I was telling her
that my Cat passed away yesterday and she did not know if she need to say “Oh
No!” or “Oh Good!”
Tommy, my Cat was 4 years old and it was the pet of the
house. Providing an animal food and
shelter makes it a less animal, whose normal instinct is to hunt and safe guard
its life. It is not the best thing we
could do to them as we are robbing its natural way of existence in this world
to fight against anything coming its way, internal or external problems. We realized it when Tommy fell ill and it has
gone into its shell of not responding to anyone and just lying down in a corner
of the room, for hours, days and months together. That’s the Cats way of recovering and that
would be the best way of recovery for any “body” in this world as all the life
can cure themselves without any external intervention.
In this process, it starved and lost lots of weight. The family couldn’t take the suffering it
went through and it hurt more when it did not allow us to come closer to do any
help. Tommy’s battle was tough and we
could see it losing the battle day by day.
Life, as it always does, wins eventually! Everyone of us was sad.
Ann, knowing everything about Tommy and liking it very
much, for sure felt relieved that Tommy would suffer no more, but was also
under the pressure to console us as we were grieving about Tommy. She dint know if she needs to say “Oh No, you
lost Tommy! Or “Oh Good, at last Tommy will suffer no more!”
Emotions are sometimes such complicated to understand and
handle. We are mostly programmed to
react to the acceptance of the person to whom these emotions are expressed and
not what you feel actually. What we
express mostly would be for the society and what we feel inside is actually who
we are and how we would see the situation.
Either we make both of these similar or we understand and
accept that these can never be same because of the way in which we see the world. If not, we would get stuck as Ann, not sure
what to react and how to handle the situation/person.
Why is it important to stay calm and positive during
tough times?
Why?
About 10,000 years ago, men had his lives blend with nature. He placed events around his life based on the nature and things which he was able to track, like climate, weather, seasons – he relied on nature to track time and based on that, he decided on when to start a work – predominantly agriculture and when to complete it. Until the next suitable time for agriculture, he had designed ways to keep him occupied, focus his attention on other areas, or sometimes get prepared for the next agricultural season.
To pass on this information to his next generation, in an attempt to give them a “ready-made recipe” to work with nature, he started having festivals. Festivals are those “time-tags” in his life which either marks a beginning of something or marks an end of something. It is this time, where he decides to plough the ground or care for his cattle or use the harvested items or save himself from the weather change. Basically he designed this to safe-guard himself and prepare for future.
Do we really understand?
Even though we follow a lot of festivals, I am not sure if we understand the real reason as to why this was started in the first place. We are now trying to decode the reason as to why men at ancient times started doing something and in that attempt, we are trying to find the possible benefits of something that is already happening – but it may be unclear if this was the primary reason as to why something is being done.
The reason being, the way of life changed leaps and bounds. Our life is far more safe and sophisticated compared to how men lived 10,000 years ago, and it is impossible to try to track his mindset back to why he has started doing something, when you have no clue on what he was going to at that period.
Conclusion?
Do we then conclude that celebrating all these are “waste of time” – or are we doing something which are completely irrelevant to what we are now?
