Remember to Put Glass Down
Stress Management- Remember to Put Glass Down
A psychologist walked around a room while teaching stress management to an audience. As she raised a glass of water, everyone expected they’d be asked the “half empty or half full” question. Instead, with a smile on her face, she inquired: “How heavy is this glass of water?” Answers called out ranged from 8 oz. to 20 oz.
She replied, “The absolute weight doesn’t matter. It depends on how long I hold it. If I hold it for a minute, it’s not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I’ll have an ache in my arm. If I hold it for a day, my arm will feel numb and paralyzed. In each case, the weight of the glass doesn’t change, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes.” She continued, “The stresses and worries in life are like that glass of water. Think about them for a while and nothing happens. Think about them a bit longer and they begin to hurt. And if you think about them all day long, you will feel paralyzed – incapable of doing anything.”
It’s important to remember to let go of your stresses. As early in the evening as you can, put all your burdens down. Don’t carry them through the evening and into the night. Remember to put the glass down! —Author unknown
Making Possible the Possibilities
Yoga unites mind, body, intellect and soul to be me. Me the purer, me having control on my emotions, my thoughts become clearer and my instincts truer. Yoga lifts me to learn more, live more, love more and instill greater harmony with the higher self.
I can state that practicing yoga releases me from the race of false desires and imposed instincts from the external forces that makes me weaker and weaker and fall away entirely in time.
For me yoga brings suppleness in body, calmness in mind, kindness in heart and awareness in life — yoga prepares me to make possible the possibility.
मेरे पिता मेरे गुरु मेरे सर्वस्व
पिता स्वर्ग: पिता धर्म: पिता ही परमं तप:।
पितरीप्रतिमपनये प्रियन्ते सर्व देवता।।
पिता तो सभी अच्छे ही होते हैं हर संतान के लिए सबसे सदैब साये की तरह साथ रहने वाला आसमा से भी विस्तृत छाया।
मेरे पिता मेरे गुरु मेरे सर्वस्व। आज जो भी हूँ बस आपकी शिक्षा, आपके मूल्यों औऱ आपके द्वारा निर्धारित किये गए सांसारिक मापदंडों के पथ पर अग्रसर रहते रहने का फल ही तो है।
हर सुबह जब पूजा के आसन पर बैठकर “मातृ पितृ चारणकामलेभ्यो नाम:” कहता हूँ तो इस विश्वास को और बल मिलता है कि आज कल से बेहतर होगा।
मुश्किल कर पल में जब कोई राह नहीं दिखती तो नस यही सोचकर कि आप होते तो क्या सलाह देते यह सोचकर निर्णय ले लेता हूँ आउट सब ठीक ही होता है।
न जायते म्रियते वा कदाचि- न्नायं भूत्वा भविता वा न भूयः ।
अजो नित्यः शाश्वतोऽयं पुराणो- न हन्यते हन्यमाने शरीरे ॥
श्रीकृष्ण का यह कहना कि “: यह आत्मा किसी काल में भी न तो जन्मता है और न मरता ही है तथा न यह उत्पन्न होकर फिर होने वाला ही है क्योंकि यह अजन्मा, नित्य, सनातन और पुरातन है, शरीर के मारे जाने पर भी यह नहीं मारा जाता॥2/20।” अक्षरशः सत्य ही तो है।
मेरे मन मे मेरे तन मैं मेरे बातो मैं विचारों में आओहि तो हैं ओहिर क्या की नश्वर शरीर को चीर परिचित मुलाकात और व्यवहार का पर्याप्त सुखद अवसर नहीं मिला।
कामना को इस जगत में तुम्हारा सबसे बड़ा शत्रु जानो
श्रीकृष्ण कहते हैं:
“यह कामना रजोगुण में उत्पन्न हुई है यही क्रोध है इसकी भूख बहुत बड़ी है और यह महापापी है इसे ही तुम यहाँ (इस जगत् में) शत्रु जानो।”
अर्थशास्त्री कहते हैं कि आवश्यकता अविष्कार की जननी है और यह एक हद तक ठीक भी है लेकिन यह आवश्यकता हमारी कामना में बदल जाती है। कामना पूर्ति की इच्छा इतनी हावी हो जाती है कि हम उसे पूरा करने के लिए छल, कपट, क्रोध, बेमानी, इत्यादि करने में भी हिचक महसूस नहीं करते।
अक्सर हमारे दुखों का कारण वह वस्तु नहीं है जो हमारे पास है बल्कि वह है जो हमारे पास नहीं है। तो आज आप अपने कामनाओं की लिस्ट बनाइये और फिर उनमें से आवश्यकताएँ कौन सी है और कामनाएँ कौन सी उनका पहचान कीजिए। कामना रूपी सत्रु ने किसी को भी सुखी नहीं किया है तुलसीदास भी मानस में कहते हैं “काम अछत सुख सपनेहुँ नाहीं”।
My Take on Patanjali Yoga Sutra
I am glad that tomorrow is International Yoga Day and I am also grad that this most ancient and scientific approach towards living a holistic life is gaining the momentum. I thought of throwing some lights on the Patanjali yoga. It aims to delve one into the path of uniting the self with the supreme one.
Patanjali’s narratives in Yoga Sutras are fantastically arranged and brilliantly captured tools for us to attain consciousness through the unison of mind, body and soul. Consciousness is the state in which on does not get agitated facing the misery, free from material attachment, affection, fear and anger. Such person is also called as a “Sage of Steady Wisdom”
Sutra literally means a thread — or like a formula. To simplify, though you may possess beautiful flowers and desire to wear a garland, but you cannot make a garland without a thread. Also you cannot wear a thread alone and claim of wearing a garland. Our body is like flower and our mind is like thread. We need to unite it together to make our soul become like a beautiful garland.
The thread is instilled in us and we are given complete freedom to make our own garland. You can put flowers, or beads, or pearls, or diamonds. The goal of human life is to creating the bonding between thread and flowers to attain conscious.
The Yoga Sutras is not tied to any concept. It is open to the pursuers to read it, understand it and adopt it the way one finds it suitable. Only certain governing principles have been provided. The principles of Yoga Sutra have no meaning to the reader unless one practices it and experiences the benefits.
The first aphorism “Atha Yoganushasanam” means Yoga of Discipline. The right kind of discipline, schooling is required for us to develop unwavering mind control.
“Yoges chitta vritti nirodhah.” One needs to control totally the mind from thoughts, feelings, and emotions. These emotions creates the disturbances and these disturbances destabilises us every moment. Both body and mind are prone to these disturbances. Yoga Sutra provides the method of physical exercises for conditioning the body for unison and control techniques like Pranayama and Meditation for mind.
This is the broader understanding that I have gained reading, learning, and practicing it for over 3 decades. Let me know what you feel.
बूँद जो मोती बने
बारिस की एक बूँद समुद्र में गिर जाने के कारण रोने लगी। समुद्र ने मुस्कुराते हुए कहा: “यहाँ तुम अपने भाई बहनों के साथ हो।
एक विशाल परिवार का हिस्सा। अलग होने के लिए एक छलांग लगाने की देरी है उड़ तो जाओगे लेकिन भांप बनकर बिखड़ भी।
आना तो तुझे फिर भी है :- “किसी किसान के खेत में, या किसी नाले में, या किसी तालाब में या की गंगा में गंगाजल बनकर या फिर किसी प्यासे के लिए वरदान बनकर उसके लोटे में।”
As if, today isn’t my day
So whatever I do, I do it well. Yet, there are days when I feel disappointed, unable to let the factor of chaos stop affecting me.
I am reminded of my father telling me that when you face the chaos; if you allow it to affect you then you are a fly blowing along with the wind but, if you allow it to pass by then you’re the spider.
I am going to stay like a spider, and I know there will be more chances. I just have to go about like I knew it was going to happen.
That’s how I am going to become the greatest version of myself.
Having purposeful, engaging and trust driven relationships
We connect with people through social media. Like I have over 3500 connections on Facebook and LinkedIn, but I am not pretty sure why I am concerned with so many people except maybe 5% people with whom I would have engaged through real or virtual communication.
Especially when I receive a LinkedIn connection request with a standard invitation message, I start thinking, “Is it for a lead generation or just to get added into the friends list of the requester?”
I’m not sure if I have ever responded to anyone who’s pitched me through social media for sales.
I believe and advise all social networkers, instead of building connections focus on building relationships through purpose, engagement and trust. Treating algorithmic suggestions for sending connection requests may work for social media companies, but not for you for sure.
Maybe we can’t teach everyone how to just be nice, but we can definitely do a better job of building trust driven connections and relations with friends, employees, acquaintances and well strangers.
Welcome to a purposeful, engaging and trust driven relatio
Be prepared to be wrong to build something original
If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original
I love telling this story.
A six-year-old little girl was in her drawing lesson. The girl was so deeply engrossed in her drawing that she didn’t pay any attention to anything around. Watching her so much attentive, the teacher felt fascinated and approached her, and she said, what are you drawing?
The girl said, “I’m drawing a picture of God.”
The teacher quizzed further with her sense of affirmation, “But, nobody knows what God looks like”, and the girl said, “They will in a minute.”
Take a chance like kids. Kids don’t know about the success or the failure. They are not frightened of being wrong…
If you aim to grow, it’s only possible when you’re willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable… when you are prepared to try something new.
From the time you have become an adult, you have lost your kiddish capacity. Regain it back if you aim to stop being frightened of being wrong.
Thanks Goodness it’s Father’s Day!
The other day, I overheard Mahesh Bhatt on the radio saying, “Today’s generation is gone far ahead of us. What Alia has achieved at age 24, I’d not get there where I was 40.” It certainly made me feel proud about Alia and Mahesh Bhatt.
I have had the opportunity to interact with over 20000 young adults in the past two years through my program on entrepreneurship and employability. I have ended up being more convinced that though they have more ‘exposure’ about the life and the world around them than us(parents), but they are extremely confused, disoriented, disconnected and illusory about life’s realities.
I guess most parents are spending more money and much less time. I guess parents are into the race to provide material luxury rather than character building. I guess parents feel having a college degree alone solves most of the problem.
I guess fatherhood has become a societal obligation rather than the joyous endeavour.
I want to remind you of the fatherly responsibility of raising a well mannered, responsible, reliable and sociable child and not a mere existence.
I remember a friend saying, “Freedom is fine, but whom do you want to see entering your home – a drunk, spoilt, misbehaved, abusive and arrogant person?”
Happy Father’s Day! Tomorrow will be just an another day…
You complete me
I find it quite a cheesy to say or hear “You complete me or I complete you.” I feel everyone is a kind of perfectly fine on their own.
But, one thing that I completely believe that the people who come up in your life are like god send to fill in some empty spaces. Those empty spaces always exist in our life for reason, season or lifetime. And, I am deeply grateful for everyone who’s filled that empty spaces in and of my life.
To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves
Mahatma Gandhi said, “To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves.” Recently I along with my family went for an early morning Nature Trail at Lavasa and amid peace and silence we walked for several kilometres, watched plants and heard the sound of bird chirping.
After a few hours when we left the garden, it felt like we filled our bodies with the volume of oxygen which we might otherwise have breathed in a month.
What made this so soulful?
I remember my father used to say that farming is the most humble of tasks: “Your head is always bowed and sometimes you have to go down on your knees.”
While poised in this most humble of postures, we begin to work in parallel with God in the creation of the greater world and universe.
Although God’s dimension is infinite and eternal while ours is contained and immediate, we, nevertheless, enter into the same act of creation: to produce, to make life.
Just pull a little and it might work
Most task fails or left unaccomplished because either we don’t begin it the right way or we just leave it halfway realising either that we’re not getting the result as expected or we loose the conviction about the outcome.
I have personally experienced that leaving something halfway is more disastrous than fuelling your inner self to pull little harder to get there.
As a software developer I have experienced that building a great software requires coding line by line, module by module for building a product.
My mantra for accelerating yourself for hitting your goal is that step after step, little by little, keep pulling a little harder keep solving the part of puzzle until its solved.
सुन रहा है ना तू रो रहा हूँ मैं
सामान्यतः हमें दो राह दिखते हैं – एक जिसमें हम क्षणिक भोग विलास के वस्तुओं के उपलब्धता को श्रेस्ठ लक्ष्य समझते हैं और दूसरी जिसमें हमारी ज़िंदगी एक समग्र लक्ष्य की प्राप्ति के ऊपर केन्द्रित रहती है।
क्योंकि हम मार्केटिंग ड्रिवेन वातावरण में जीते है तो भोग विलास के वस्तुओं पर हमारी लालसा ज़्यादा रहती है और अक्सर हम सभी इसके चार दुस्परिणामों से ग्रसित रहते हैं।
१) अभाव – हमारे आस पास एक अभाव की भावना फैली हुई है। धन न होने का अभाव, अच्छी शिक्षा न होने का अभाव, भाग्यवान न होने का अभाव, सामाजिक और सांसारिक वातावरण के अनुकूल न होने का अभाव, आदि आदि।
२) ठहराव – हम भाग तो रहे है लेकिन एक तरह से ठहर से गए हुए हैं। हमें लगने लगा है की कुछ भी होने वाला नहीं है। संसार में सबकुछ गड़बड़ और हमारे विपरीत हो गया है।
३) पथराव – अभाव और ठहराव से ग्रसित हमारी मानसिकता पथराव के ऊपर झुकने लगी है। हम कीचड़ उछालने में ज़्यादा समय व्यतीत करने लगे हैं।आज आप सोशल मीडिया देखिए हरेक आदमी बुराई, दुर्वयबहार और अश्लील भाषा में बातें करने लगे है। सदाचार काम और दुराचार का बोलबाला सब ओर फैल रहा है।
४) प्रभाव – हम अपने आपको गाहे बेगाहे प्रभावित करने की होड़ में शामिल कर लिए है। हरेक मौक़े पर अपनी बड़प्पन और अपने औक़ात की तरफ़ करने लगते हैं। अंदर से एकदम से ख़ाली पर बाहर से ज़ोर का ढिंढोरा जैसे की “सुन रहा है ना तू रो रहा हूँ मैं ।“
Someone went first, so you could go fast
Question: “I have this brilliant idea which is 10X better than that of a similar product available in the market, but I am not first. What do you suggest?”
Answer: “Being first is not an advantage and it’s not that it can’t be overridden.
In my view, it’s a great opportunity for you to evaluate the state of early movers, find out the missing link and then create your product which is truly 10X better.
You should find a mentor and people who have been there, who have travelled the path, who have learning worth sharing and who have suggestions that might help you develop a better strategy.
Mentors and advisors don’t run your business — but they’re there to give you that guidance so you can avoid those critical challenges and mistakes that could take you out of the race.
You can certainly go fast and go farther than those who went first and still become a winner.”
Four things that cause empty fatigue and gratifying exhaustion
SCARCITY: We are always into this feeling that we don’t have the time, money, resources and intellect to do the things that can lead us to realize our dreams.
STANDSTILL: We spend most of our time indecisively standing at the crossroad contemplating where to go and what to do.
STONE-PELTING: We become emotionally bankrupt and start throwing up at others out of anger, desperation, frustration, and disappointment. But, to stay relevant, our dreams and to live for the purpose requires us to;
EFFECT: Applying our assets in a way that exceeds the market reality to make our aspirations real.
If not now, when?
Tips for designing a better life
You can design a better life, if you only remember these few things…
Remember that you are a designer of your life.
To be a designer of your life, you must think about your life plan as a designer – what is your desirability to reap tangible and strategic outcomes.
Listen to you, people and the environment to find the inspirations that will be like a dewdrop to invoke your own intuition, creativity and confidence.
Remember that Not knowing is just fine
Awaken your genius within to learn, experiment, risk and have the attitude to feel “alright” even when you fail. Trust that one day you’ll be a perfect, fine and profoundly expert in your act.
Remember that being optimistic is like being alive
Whatever is not in your reach today is your opportunity to get tomorrow.
When you self-doubt, it’s better to start with “What if?” instead of wondering about “What’s wrong?” Believe and burst yourself for a better future
Remember that you can beat by going out and getting done.
Don’t ponder over things. Don’t procrastinate. Pull yourself out of your comfort zone. Go out of the building and learn from the world.
Everywhere around the wisdom is awaiting for you to come and learn.
Welcome the new, always.
Either make meaning or move out
कुसुमस्तबकस्येव द्वयी वृत्तिर्मनस्विन:।
मूर्ध्नि वा सर्वलोकस्य विशीर्येत वनेऽथवा॥
Flower withers when it cannot scent so is the self-respecting man – they either make meaning or move out
You’d have heard of saying – “Man of Steel break but not bend”. That’s true with the man with high morale and self-respecting nature.
If you are not making your meaning in a particular situation rather than feeling humiliated, get relieved from it.
If you are not able to put your point across, get an amicable exit from the argument.
If you have to conduct yourself being compromised by your guiding principles and values, better move out.
Bless yourself everyday a soulful day!
How to take inventory of your strengths
No one is an expert at everything, and, in fact, employers won’t expect you to be, as today’s job market requires subject matter expertise.
Use the attached template and prepare the inventory list of your strengths and preferences to guide the direction of your future. Ask yourself the following questions to understand where you excel and what interests you most.
– What are you great at?
– What are you not-so-great at?
– What do you think you can do in excellently, but it does not excite you?
– What were your passions that drove you to excel in it?
If you need to discuss anything specific, drop me a message. I can help you clear any doubt.
क्या आप धार्मिक हैं?
यतो अभ्युदयनिःश्रेयससिद्धिः स धर्मः। (कणाद, वैशेषिकसूत्र, १.१.२)
धर्म वह मार्ग है जिस पर चलकर हमें लौकिक और पारलौकिक उन्नति एवं कल्याण की प्राप्ति होती है।
धर्म कोई उपासना पद्घति नहीं बल्कि जीवन-पद्घति है।
धर्म दिखावा नहीं, दर्शन है
यह प्रदर्शन नहीं, प्रयोग है।
यह मनुष्य को आधि, व्याधि, उपाधि से मुक्त कर सार्थक जीवन प्रदान करने वाली औषधि है।
धर्म वह विज्ञान है जिससे स्वयं द्वारा स्वयं की खोज कर सकते है।
धर्म, ज्ञान और आचरण की खिड़की खोलता है।
यह आपको को पशुता से मानवता की ओर प्रेरित करता है।
अनुशासन का अनुशरण ही धर्म है।
हृदय की पवित्रता ही धर्म का वास्तविक स्वरूप है।
धर्म का सार जीवन में संयम का होना है।