The male version ends with the male voice-over saying how the woman started to get too close and it was time to move on. The female version ends with the female voice-over claiming that the best way for her to move on is to start getting closer and closer to the man until he gets so claustrophobic that he flees. When he runs out, the girl closes the door, cries, “Whoopee!” She then takes off the man’s shirt and throws it into a bin, which has the Move On logo branded on it.

Essentially, these ads are supposed to showcase two sides of a same situation and how each one wanted to move on from a relationship and how they both think they have managed it. In fact, I would not even call it a relationship as it is portrayed more like a brief fling! Obviously it does reflect the shifting goal posts of the younger generation with regard to relationships and physical intimacy. The brand seems to be leveraging the orientation of the current generation. But, is it also endorsing and maybe even reinforcing such a value system?

This seems to be in line with the current trend of ‘instant everything.’ Which means one does not delve deeper and is content with grazing at the edges. Can relationships also be managed in a similar way? One gets into a relationship without adequate thought, enjoy the fun times and then, move on?

If everyone wanted to move on after the fun and games, who would be around for each other in moments of agony and pain? Is that why so many youngsters were lost and depressed in the downturn? And many even contemplated taking their lives?

The flip side to this argument is the conditioning of the older generations which prepared them to stand by each other through thick and thin. Many times this led to enduring an unfulfilling or dead relationship but they contemplated the bigger picture of family preservation and companionship in the long run. In today’s context of intense competition and high stress lives, is it really better to cultivate the ‘move on’ orientation with regard to relationships?

Most importantly, move on to what and where? The old adages of the grass being greener on the other side and a bird in hand being worth more than two in the bush, are still relevant, even today. It would be great if people were to contemplate the emotional and spiritual repercussions of disposable relationships and shallow commitments. Maybe such introspection might motivate them to start developing deeper and more meaningful relationships instead of moving on, all the while. After all, as another popular saying goes, a rolling stone gathers no moss!

Now marriage as an institution is an attempt by the human mind to bring some order in the chaos that sexuality brings. The average humanity goes through this mill and it is the only kind of evolutionary sadhana an average person goes through. Humanity has been brain-washed to find happiness in it – not just happiness but the ultimate happiness. Then religious factors have been drummed into us which are very contrary to real life. So marriage creates many dilemmas. Many of the dilemmas are so contrary to our own life’s path that a lot of pain is created.

Marriage until it goes beyond the hormonal level and social customs cannot give happiness. It was designed for regularity and social order. It can give a lot of happiness but until companionship develops between the two parties, there is no happiness.

I have known two marriages in the Ashram which were based on the necessity of the spirit and devotion to each other. Marriage vows were taken more for convenience of the society and its laws. The marriage in spirit was already made.

A very basic problem of marriage is that people outgrow themselves and both the partners do not grow equally and not in the same direction nor at the same speed. This creates even more self-centred pressures.

I could see the marriages around me and the lack of happiness in them. This was very discouraging. Most marriages were held together because of economic or legal hassles and sometimes because of the attachments to children.

I wanted to try out partnering with a woman but every time I made a friend or reached the embrace stage, the woman’s demands would begin and this was a big put-off.

Then I meditated and realised that I am reacting to the shape of woman automatically. This is something that is embedded in us since the beginning of time. If we focus sincerely within we soon see that it is not one person that we are attracted to but the basic characteristics of the opposite sex. Proximity plays a big part in these affairs of love. Leave two bodies together and they will find enough attractiveness in each other to want to mate.

When people marry they do just this, totally ignoring the person in the body. When the body’s needs are met the real person residing above the neck starts making his or her demands and thus the acrimony begins to enter the atmosphere.

Having realized this I concluded I wanted a love affair and not a marriage. Moreover I would wait till somebody found me attractive enough and love me for myself and then I would let myself go. I was very influenced by the book Mrs Craddock by Somerset Maugham. In this, he says, ‘Between two lovers there is always one who loves and the other who lets himself/herself be loved.’

And I could see this happening all around me and my own experiments with flirting proved that as long I was running after a person she would show interest but soon it would melt into nothingness.

Finally I had the experience of somebody who came into my life and gave herself without question at the age of 36. It was giving all the way. And it was a most beautiful experience. I had many elevating moments as I saw myself in all hues and learnt more about myself than I had until now. Suddenly my own self was laid out in front of me without any curtains.

Then circumstances changed and nothing came out of it.

I even discussed this with my teachers in the ashram where I had grown up. If I had to stay out in the world and not in the ashram, marriage was becoming a pragmatic necessity. But as a practitioner of numerology I had seen that marriage happened only with the diametrically opposite ‘number’. So if I wanted to get into marriage I should be ready for opposition, misunderstandings and turbulence.

Again as an experiment I started my love affairs. I would fall in love (so called) but every time I would propose marriage they told me that they did not feel needed and would leave me. I wondered what was wrong with me how these ladies could see through me.

Eventually I married for practical reasons and it was a terrible time of torment. But I decided not to run away. I learnt a lot about my own selfish attitudes because the feedback from the partner was immediate and honestly speaking true. So first I concentrated on my negative attributes and compromised with my partner at every stage. When the relationship began to stabilise and she started trusting me a bit, I stared discussing her attitudes and how some of her behaviour was hurting me. Slowly she also started to change her patterns but not as consciously as I had done.

Now I can say that marriage put me in a bind and forced me to look inward and gave me the final push towards enlightenment. When all is said and done, the best moments I have known in my life came through my child and I am enjoying my child like a person possessed. Because now my wife and I have found friendship we are having, generally speaking, a jolly good time, busy raising our kid. Her own insecurities do frighten her sometimes into quarrels with me but they are manageable.

Marriage is team-work and this is an acquired trait which has to be learnt and practised with serious intent. Of course, we complement each other but most of us would be equally happy living alone, content in our own selfish balloons. Modern life has made that dream a real possibility and all are aware of it but there is a big BUT.

Our genes and hormones have a potent force of their own. Destiny which is still running our lives – we may accept it or not – keeps us throwing into contact with attractive people of the opposite sex which gets the desire centres humming.

The yin and yang principle is at work in nature. Opposites coexist and attract each other. Observe closely and you will see that by some quirk of fate, every couple is a pairing of two people with opposite tendencies. The law of creation takes us to our next level of evolution by the effort we put in to live with each other. We are each other’s teachers.

Clashes will be but we have to learn to see both ends of the argument and learn to go beyond the obvious and mundane, for there are always some common points as well. The creator has used the sexual energy well. There is a lure here which serves a dynamic purpose. It keeps repopulating the mother earth and also helps in realizing the merger of the opposite sides of the same coin in the form of two individuals. It should be best seen as a spiritual discipline.

At the other end of the spectrum is the fact that we cannot all make our bread, tailor our clothes, make our shoes, construct our house and make our cars; so we need other people in our lives. In extension we therefore need a society and if we wish to live within this society, the word teaming-up again appears and we have to accept certain confinements. Therefore it is plain to all to see that life is a huge compromise after all. It’s so galling!

The BUT I was talking about makes its splash here. We are on our best behavior most of the time; continuously adjusting to the pressures of people and circumstances. BUT the moment we enter the threshold of our homes, we find it difficult to make the same compromises in our marriages willingly with a singing heart. Why? It is very well and facile to live when we make short contacts and all go home at the end of the day to our own watering holes, alone in our comfort zones; with the option to keep or break a relationship if we wish to. In marriage we have to be with the same person day in and day out for ever and ever with no respite. Readjustments are in order.

It seems as if the partners are forever saying “Be reasonable, do it my way”. This when coupled with a tendency to overbear is a formula for disaster. At the back of the mind there is always the dormant thought that we can always part which is no help at all. I belong to the old school. No divorce for me; so a mutually acceptable path has to be found and if there are children from the marriage, no possibility of exit at all. Something was started and it has to be finished. We made our bed and now we need to lie in it. Do we have a right to hurt the person we brought home or run away from the responsibility of raising our children? I wish lawmakers would go back to the old ways and put it into an act soon. The effort that has now gone out of relationships would reappear and so much frustration and pain needlessly imposed by humans on themselves could be avoided.

There are even impossible demands when the partners are taken for granted. We need to wake up from this dream. The obvious solution is to adjust but we are not prepared to do so. Very good reasons are cited and all very tangible and real. Everything is taken into consideration except the fact that the first point of law is that the marriage has to be maintained at all costs as a garden of joy. It is our marriage and our life. Everything else pales into insignificance.

Discord is inevitable unless we are prepared to let go a bit and cross over into the other’s camp and live for the other person. This is said for both men and women and has to be a concerted effort. Personally I find this idea so wonderful. My life is no more a closed box. I let somebody in and a close partnership begins with of course an absolute interdependence. This is the beginning of happiness. I do lose a bit of the “I” but win the world. Putting up one’s feet is such a pleasure. We did marry for the small comforts of married life, did we not?

We live much harried lives. What we think, feel and speak are never the same things. We are hiding so much. There is an accepted perverse insincerity practised at all moments and at every level of our existence. In the outer world where every man is for himself and wolf eat wolf is the situation, there is much to be said for a bit of charade but not so in a marriage. Marriage has to be seen in the light of the common man’s yogic/spiritual journey.

It is, whatever you may argue, an evolutionary process in which both the parties as well as children grow into more matured beings. When you see it in this light, you have to allow the barriers to fall and sincerity has to pervade in the home. Thoughts, feelings and the spoken word will need to be in harmony at all times otherwise chaos and clashes will erupt. Lording over is absolutely out. Cleverness is a no-no. At least aim to reach this level. There will be stumbling blocks, yet wherever this spirit of candidness exists, there will be laughter and rarely any quarrels. The human spirit is a forgiving one. Whenever honesty seeps through, joy prevails.

The other factor which I have seen taking a heavy toll of the quiet life in marriages is the poor quality of communication. Poor language use, bad speech habits and worse, inadvertent habits like speaking from distances or changing the place of things and forgetting to tell. We are also plagued by the sense of right and wrong and get irritated in righteous indignation. This indignation turns easily into a scream like a cracker going off without restraint. Always forgetting that how we deal with the everyday world and how we need to deal in our marriage world are two different things. In marriage it is the team not the individual who matters. We forget it to our pain. Let’s never forget if the other party is grating on our nerves, then we are no angels. Have we ever tried to find out how we are grating on other people’s nerves?

We are constantly giving out wrong signals. Utter confusion prevails at the best of times. So first we need to begin by listening a bit more and not reacting to every word that one hears. Not only to words bit those intangible sighs as well and those inconsistencies in behaviour patterns. Consider that the other person may be thinking aloud or just uttering the wrong words because of other extraneous circumstances and so many other fears and complexes that run amok in our lives.

Just think it over for a while. Forgive and forget if you have been mildly wronged. Show your appreciation often and learn to remain silent in as many languages as you can. Along with this attitude, ask for favours and when the other person asks for them, do respond positively. We do make the mistake of asking for favours and wanting instant gratification but when the other person asks for something, we are always busy in our own world and cannot grant any. This will not do. Gratitude needs to be cultivated and practised a bit more, especially in small inconsequential things, which are really the ones which swell into tidal waves.

All that is needed is a little shift in our own orientation to our life and partner. Give and give and take some. Rather you will notice you will get without asking and much more than you could have asked for.

PK is a teacher of languages/communication, counsellor and a businessman active in 6 countries. He combines his knowledge of life with his education in management, applied psychology and occult psychology from his time in The Ashram in Pondicherry and assists aspiring managers to reach their next level. Please visit http://sites.google.com/site/pkcentreforchange/Home

Blame is pinpointing to someone else, criticizing or holding someone or something other than self as responsible or indulge in a finger pointing exercise or harass with constant criticism.

I speak from a personal experience. I grew up as a child blaming and being blamed in equal measure. As a teenager, I was steeped in being blamed. As a young adult I decided in my subconscious that I was not going to take it any more and would retaliate strongly whenever I was blamed. So I played my part passing on blame whenever possible to whoever was willing to take it. I assumed it to be a logical way of living, blissfully ignorant of the pain I was causing to myself indirectly and to the others directly. I had absolved myself of any wrong doing and I thought that I had a right to be angry and aggressive.

At another level we had it reinforced in us in subtle ways that we had to be ashamed and repent or at least feel remorseful of all the wrong doings or we were most welcome to go on a guilt trip if you please.

So we excavated each little error, each little mistake and grew more and more self-righteous. Since we had confessed our sins now it was your turn. And if you did not, you were slotted as arrogant and headstrong. So the spiral escalated.

As I reach my middle age, I realize and look back with amusement and amazement at the sad designs we drew for ourselves and those we professed to love.

Why do we blame another?

It makes us feel good. It makes us feel that we are right and helps us place the responsibility on another person. It gives us licence to be aggressive on the one hand and feel like a victim on the other hand.

Our human mind works in myriad ways, seeking, coping, releasing or protecting this simple fragile self. As a result we behave in a manner in tune with this inner need.

What happens to the other person when we blame?

He probably gets a little disoriented if he is not in the wrong. He can withdraw, blame back or just cut off. Communication gets choked. To overcome this, one could have dialogue in a mature fashion. It calls for a humungous inner strength to speak the truth with candour and courage. One of the major fears of this action is the consequence that can happen.

Another perspective

As a non-violent communication (NVC) supporter, I see and experience that it is possible to communicate without negative feelings.

Imagine that all humans regardless of caste, colour or creed are here in this world for a purpose even if they are not aware of it. No life is complete when a person dies, merely a level is done and he has to move onto another level. He was here because he had to learn how to cope with issues that he created for himself, choosing lessons that he needed to learn. He could either sail through or make it worse or play it the way he chose at the beginning. That’s free will for you.

For instance let’s say that I need to learn lessons on how to cope with abandonment. I lost my dad when I was 8. Though I could not articulate the pain or loss, the fear and anxiety remain. Years later I subconsciously play it out with over-dependence on my close ones. This could irritate my daughter who needs to learn to cope with self-reliance. Surely there’s going to be blame, and fault-finding and the whole works.

If I could remember that she’s not here because of me or for me, she’s here to learn her lessons, and I can at best be there for her like the way I did when she was in her school, it would give me the distance and acceptance that there is nothing to blame anybody for. Everyone is who they are.

It has even given me an insight into the Gestalt Prayer.

I do my thing and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful.
If not, it can’t be helped.
(Fritz Perls, 1969)

More than anything else it gives me the perspective and freedom. It liberates me and makes me responsible for myself. And it gives new insights into detachment, opening myself, independent of reasoning ability, to meet others’ blame with skill, grace and ease.

So how can I live in harmony?

I need to let go of worn-out limited beliefs. I simply have to accept that everybody is in their rightful orbit. There are more possibilities than what I can comprehend. There is a guiding hand in everyone’s life.

And this too will pass.

Shyleswari Rao runs a training organization Ved Vyas Inner Space and conducts workshops on Personal Mastery which are highly interactive, experiential and insightful for organizations, NGOs and educational institutions. Please visit www.vedvyasinnerspace.com or contact her at shylahrd@gmail.com.

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

The operative word here is BELITTLE and SMALL PEOPLE. Following my trend of thought, I went to the next question – why do we feel the need to belittle anyone at all? This style of belittling others is a quaint little habit. You will notice it is a regular habit in some people. Their persona is wrapped around it. It is impossible to make a statement or ask these people anything and it becomes an opening for them to show their wit rather than answer the question in a down-to-earth way or give a plain unadorned answer. Every time they open their mouth some pearls of wisdom slip out which to me seem to be just witty sarcasm couched in the pronouncements of the-wiser-than thou.

The answer always carries 4 elements: 1) The actual answer, 2) the hidden emphasis on the stupidity of the question or statement, 3) the indication that the one making the answer/comment is from a higher realm of existence and 4) the invisible creation of a wall that you are never allowed to pierce. The beauty of the whole is that sometimes the comments and remarks come from total strangers who are not even privy to the exchange. In familiar gatherings, interrupting the conversations of others with witticisms of one own is often seen, but from strangers…? I find this a bit too much; especially when you are in public environment like the post office or a railway compartment. These people, who sometimes even go on to monopolize the conversation until they are forced to stop.

I have known some people for half my life time or more. They are part of the family or professional circle and cannot be totally ignored. Once in a while there is no avoiding them in a social way. Yet in all these years I have been unable to have a focused conversation of five lines with them. They never reply to the question directly. Even an innocuous question like “How is your health?” got me an answer like “Why, what is wrong with my health?” And this is the milder side of the coin. Quite often in the guise of a joke, they come down to downright ridicule; Ha, Ha, Ha. Why? What are they trying to prove? Or are they protecting themselves from exposure knowing fully well their own lack of depth and understanding?  They make it clear that we can be part of their entourage but never their equal.

All these write-ups that I pen, I wanted to put them into a collection and get them published in a book form for whatever they are worth. So I, requested a close friend of many years in the publishing line to see if he could find me an appropriate publisher. For two years I was given the royal lip service. Then one day I asked him point-blank if he would help or not. His answer came as advice that I should at least first read some other established writers and acquaint myself of how things should be written. Thereby clearly telling me what he thought of me. So I asked him if he had at least read any of my write-ups. The answer was NO. Well, I could not resist telling him off after that. He has been sulking all along since. So be it.

To me all this sounds very much like the childish behaviour of the immature snob who is inherently intelligent and successful in his field. It gets awfully bad when by some quirk of fate they have come into money. One has to then admit that in one’s own interest, not to spoil relations one allows them to get away with it. But the question is – what relations? They will never allow you to come that close anyway?

I for one have now decided enough is enough. I tick them off and enjoy seeing them sulk. If they can do without me so can I without them. Life is too short to worry of the consequences of falling into their bad books.

PK is a teacher of languages/communication, counsellor and a businessman active in 6 countries. He combines his knowledge of life with his education in management, applied psychology and occult psychology from his time in The Ashram in Pondicherry and assists aspiring managers to reach their next level. Please visit http://sites.google.com/site/pkcentreforchange/Home

I came back home with a great deal of food for thought. Until now I had not considered the possibility of a ‘special’ relationship between daughters and mothers. I always gave credit to an individual’s ‘heart’ skills more than their ‘gender’, for maintaining good relationships. I considered this ‘son or daughter’ fixation as more of a cultural phenomenon and the effect of our social conditioning. But now I gave some thought to my own role as a daughter, and the complexities of this beautiful relationship between a mother and a daughter.

When a baby girl is born, the mother feels an instant connection with her. As she grows into a toddler and a pre-schooler, her mother is her ‘hero’. As she enters school, some of the mother’s glory gets transferred to her class teacher. Of course, you, as mother, don’t resent that. You know that the bond between a mother and a daughter is indeed very unique, and nothing can ever break it. But once your daughter grows up and becomes her own person, this bond is often tested to its limits.

Yes, it remains the most complex of all relationships. Despite mothers and daughters sharing a special bond, there are some complex emotions that play a role in this sacred bond. These are emotions of resentment, competition (yes, sir, that too!), and of course, love. Mothers and daughters remain friends most of the times but they can be bitter enemies as well. What evokes such strong emotions in this simple relationship?

Most girls are labelled as ‘papa’s girls’ when they are growing up. I do not know why or how this belief got propagated. This label itself sows the seeds of dissent, and competition. Now the mother has to compete for her daughter’s father’s affection; not forgetting that ‘papa’s girl’ has the first claim on it. Why do you think this relationship gets so complicated?

Mothers and daughters definitely spend more time with each other than mothers do with their sons or for that matter, daughters with their fathers. They definitely talk more. They discuss personal topics. This presupposes that they must be close, but the fact remains that too much of interaction, that too of personal nature, breeds contempt. They also risk offending each other all the more.

Let us look at the flash points in a mother-daughter relationship.

Women are generally judged by how they look, and mothers are judged by how their daughters look; so appearance, clothes, weight, and hair-dos become an area of dissent between mothers and daughters.

Mothers always see their daughters as little girls and want to save them from all the bad wolves of this world. Daughters resent this protective behaviour. They consider their mothers as control freaks.

Whenever mothers offer any (motherly) advice, or suggest improvements in wardrobes, hairstyles, or looks, daughters smell a rat and see implied criticism in everything that is said (or left unsaid). Mothers think that they correct their daughters because they care for their daughters; daughters think that mothers just need an excuse to criticize. The resulting tension often spills over for days on end.

If daughters sense disapproval, they won’t hesitate in keeping secrets from their mother. They feel powerful by withholding information. This sows the seeds for further dissent, and the domino’s effect carries on.

Now, what is the magic formula to make a perfect mother-daughter bond? Seeing things from the other party’s point of view always works wonders. Using praise from time to time is another sure winner. Humour, of course, works each and every time, without fail. However, one important tool remains: role play. Teaching a daughter ‘how to mother’ is an important part of growing up. Dolls come handy here, but even younger siblings do as well. Because the mother-daughter relationship is a contextual background for how daughters learn to parent, this tool remains pretty important!
Telling your daughter (and vice versa) that you love her keeps you connected with her. Girls especially love to receive ‘I love you’ notes and cards from their parents. A written note is very special as it can be read again and again.

All mothers want their daughters to grow into loving, respectable, and independent adults and teach them good work ethics and family values. Mothering does not stop when your daughter becomes a young adult; it just changes form. You need to still love and guide your daughter but in an adult way. She needs encouragement and affirming to keep her self-confidence and self-esteem high. Let your daughter know that she is loved and respected.

Loving a daughter doesn’t mean that you have to give in to all her whims. To love her is to bring out the best in her. Your daughter will always remain inside of you, as she shares your genetics, but more important is the fact that you nurtured her heart (and vice versa), and provided the best model of what it is to be a woman in this world.

Only when your relationship with your daughter is friendly can you enjoy the precious treasure of being a mother. Parenting is a tough job. It is a continuous challenge. No parent is perfect and we all make mistakes. Mothers, fathers alike.

I love this quote by actress Bette Davies, ‘If you’ve never been hated by your daughter, you have never been a mother!’

Chitra Jha is a life skills coach and past life regresson therapist.

As simply as I could put it, I shared with him my personal belief…

Essentially…

That One is All and All is One. That one Intelligent Substance manifests itself as what appears to be many elements of the material world.

Simply put…

We’re all made from the same Stuff, a Thinking Stuff.

After I finished my simplified explanation of this concept, he sat there quietly for a moment or two, staring out the car window, then he looked at me and said…

“Daddy, that makes sense!”

And…

With “ah-ha” written all over his face…

He added…

“So that’s why you’re always telling me to love my neighbor as myself and to treat other people the way I want to be treated, because we’re all one, right Daddy?”

At age five…

He got it!

Not long after our “God talk”, as he likes to refer to it, impressed by his insight and “feeling my oats”, I guess, I decided to tackle a very simplified version of the concept of gratitude to the Formless (the one Intelligent Substance from which all things are made), the importance of expressing gratitude to the Formless, and the various ways in which we might express our gratitude to the Formless, with him.

As I was enthusiastically waning on and on (I guess I got a little carried away ) about how to express gratitude to the Formless, he sat there with a puzzled look on his face (okay, actually it was his “you idiot” look ).

Finally…

Obviously unable to take it anymore…

He piped up and said…

“Daddy…”

“Since we’re all made from the same stuff, isn’t saying thank you to someone else the same thing as saying thank you to the stuff?”

Hmmmmmm…

Hmmm…

Hmmm…

Hmmm…

Out of the mouths of babes.

You know what?

He was absolutely right!

I frequently see folks going to great lengths in their effort to develop and incorporate an “attitude of gratitude” into their lives, lugging around special gratitude crystals, rocks, or stones, keeping special gratitude journals, and/or resorting to all sorts of other “props and crutches” as I like to refer to them, when *all* that’s *really* required is developing the simple habit of saying “thank you”.

I believe it was Meister Eckhart, the influential fourteenth century German theologian, philosopher, and mystic, who once wrote:

“If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.”

No doubt about it!

And…

As I learned from my five-year-old…

We can continuously express that prayer of gratitude to the Supreme, for *all* we have and enjoy, by simply developing the habit of consistently saying “thank you” to one another.

Once again…

Thank you son!

————————

Tony Mase is a serious student of the works of Wallace D. Wattles and the creator of an amazing website that’ll take you by the hand and guide you step-by-step down Wallace D. Wattles’ proven path to wealth, health, success, happiness, love, and more… http://www.tonymasesinnercircle.com

Most of us take our role as a parent too seriously. We feel completely responsible for our offspring’s welfare. We consider it our duty to guide them in all aspects of their lives. After all we are the parents; we know what is best for our children. If we will not guide them, who will? All these arguments are well-intentioned and I have no issues with these. But in our desire to do the best for our children, we forget to give them ample doses of love, affection, and understanding. We think that too much love would spoil them. We believe in discipline more than understanding.

In my view, all that we parents ever need to do is to provide generous dollops of love and acceptance to our children. In the absence of a warm and loving atmosphere, no child can ever achieve her full potential. Even discipline does not really work in a hostile environment. In my practice as a life skills coach, I come across individuals with low self-esteem, which stems from their childhood. Unless the home atmosphere is warm, caring, safe, protective, and friendly, a child can not be self-confident. And as you well know, self-esteem is the most critical factor in achieving success in life.

When we like ourselves for what we are, we are more likely to work hard and achieve more. Observe your children. Your encouraging, loving words are their biggest motivators. The moment you put them down, their enthusiasm to do anything vanishes in thin air. If your children are not doing well at school, first look at your home environment. Be objective. Ask yourself; are you the cause of their poor self-esteem? Most of the times, we unfavourably compare our children to their friends. What do you think it does to their self-image? We think that by shaming them, we are motivating them to excel. We couldn’t be more wrong. Apply this rule to yourself. Do you strive to work harder if someone ridicules you? No. You would build up frustration, and anger towards that person. That is exactly what is happening in your home. Pay attention to it and take corrective measures.

My favorite line is a cry from a child, “Mum, love me the most, when I deserve it the least.” This line haunts me. Yes, when we think that our child does not deserve any love because he has been naughty, disobedient, destructive, or a failure; that is when she needs our love the most. Our job at these times is to trust our children and help them discover the talents, abilities, resources, and the personal best that is hidden behind their rough and unappealing exteriors.

We feel let down and disappointed by our children, if they do not tow our line. We label them as ‘difficult’ children. Have you ever wondered if the children feel the same way about us as well? Have we ever given unconditional love to our children? Why do we always have to be judgmental at every step? Our parenting years (and our children’s ears!) are full of ‘good boy’, ‘bad boy’, ‘good girl’, and ‘bad girl’ at each step and after each action. From praise to disgrace, such adjectives confuse children. Their self-worth fluctuates from minute to minute.

Our attention is more focused on the socks left on the floor, unmade beds, badly done homework, bad influence of friends, poor grades, and complaints from the teachers. We do not focus on their good qualities, assets, and strengths, especially when these do not meet with our pre-conceived notions of what is good and what is bad. If we are constantly reminded of our shortcomings, we start believing in them. Our children do the same. By telling them about their strengths, we help them believe in themselves. Their worth increases in their own eyes. They feel capable of making a difference in the world. This empowered attitude leads them to success in whatever field they choose.

So let us get out of our cocooned worlds of expectations and reasoning. Let us pay more attention to playing with our children and understanding them. The time spent together with them is something that we should treasure more than anything else. I believe that our children are our ‘gurus’. There is a lot that we can learn from them. Just observing them is an education by itself.

Are we ready for this new challenge?!?

The first step towards meeting this challenge is spending quality time with your children. Children love to do things with their parents. They feel most loved when their parents make time for them. Otherwise they feel disconnected and empty from inside. So play with your children, do activities like cooking and running errands together. Talk to them about ‘their’ day and ‘your’ day, and see them blossom.

Children also feel loved when you do things ‘for’ them. Make a special breakfast for your son, or help your daughter study for a test; teach your child how to ride her bike. But remember that there is a fine line between doing too much for your children, and doing things as an expression of love. Let them do for themselves what they are capable of doing. Just be flexible with help. Don’t make them entirely dependent upon you.

Some children love to hear words of praise or other affirming statements such as ‘I love you’. Sometimes the words you use can make or break your child’s spirit. Your kind and encouraging words can lift your child up, while harsh words spoken in anger can wound a child. Try sticking sweet notes in your child’s Tiffin box, highlight her/his talents and achievements, and create a special nickname for your little one. These gestures will boost the confidence of your child.

Some children are particularly cuddly. They like to be hugged, while some others do not wish to be held. Such children need physical contact to feel loved. Some parents find it extremely difficult to be physically affectionate with their children because they themselves were never loved that way by their parents. If your child keeps hanging on to you or constantly touches you, it is a sign that she needs to be hugged, kissed, and patted on the back. Even tousling their hair, or wrestling with them will satisfy them.

What is the role of gifts in bringing up your children? Most children appreciate receiving gifts. Their faces light up, they talk animatedly and cherish their gift for a long time. A gift need not be expensive to be special. But do not give gifts to substitute for your time, hugs, affirming words, and things done for your child. Then it becomes a bribe; let us not bribe our kids. A child whose emotional love tank is full will be more responsive, co-operative, and happier than the one whose tank is always devoid of love.

So, pay attention to your children. Listen to their requests. Pay attention to their complaints. Be patient with them, and understand what they might need from you. After all,  love is the foundation of every child’s happiness and sense of security.

Let us re-visit Kahlil Gibran’s famous poem in The Prophet.

Your children are not your children.
They are sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams!
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward, nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of infinite,
And He bends you with His might.
That His arrows may go swift and far!
Let your bending in the Archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
So He loves also the bow that is stable.

Chitra Jha is a healer, writer, corporate trainer and verbal ability instructor.

Do you know anyone who fits this description? Their opinions are final even if their arguments are full of holes. No one can dare oppose them or even try to put in a word edgewise.

They feel justified that the control of every moment of our lives should not only be in their hands but that their say must prevail in every matter. The result is we have Control Freaks. Look at life from any angle; they are everywhere. Give them a position of authority and they immediately take on a monstrous image. As parents, superiors and drivers the worst in them appears easily.

The rage levels in our midst are rising every day. This mindset of being so obviously superior and better, stuffed with self-importance is behind this rising phenomenon. New words like flight rage and shopper’s rage are making their entry into our lexicon because these are newly emerging tendencies for which our language was not equipped earlier. This goes to prove that these tendencies are all around us now. The other day I went into a shop looking for a new mobile phone. The owner is known to me but that day his son happened to be at the counter. The moment he saw me coming in he became busy with a drawer of his. Nevertheless I did mange to get to him by asking if he had new phones. He never looked up and simply replied “No” and continued to rummage in his drawer. I left without seeing his face. I suppose I am too old, out of date, economy minded and not really his kind of client. A wave of anger did rise but I controlled it.

The unfortunate part of this is that it is becoming part of the personae of capable and well-meaning people too. They judge themselves on the basis of some activity in which they are really better than many but they start assuming they are the best on all counts. So their self assessment is terribly slanted; they see themselves as superiors standing out from the lesser beings around them. Unfortunately, these people become awfully arrogant and intolerant and fly into rages just about everything and anything. They demand respect as a right. I saw this advertisement for a car in which the catch phrase is “demand respect”. So I must be right; even the publicity managers have caught on to this weakness in us.

These grand guys see others as totally incapable nincompoops and in their anger there is an element of disgust at the incompetent lowly oafs they have to live with. They are as far as I can see always at boiling point and when they interact, this view that they have of others is fully evident in their responses and reactions. They never correct, explain, advise or ask questions but berate and criticize. Their comments are scathing and designed to hurt like they would crush an insect under their feet for defiling their space. Every expression of theirs indicates their frustrations and saintly forbearance for their loutish brethrens and their own strength in comparison in tolerating it all.

Well they are what they are and what we need to bother about is how to deal with them. Arguing with them or trying to make them see our point of view will only enrage them more and it is well nigh impossible, not unlike trying to pass through a stone wall. They would see this act as insubordination or at least a case of pure and simple arguing back for argument’s sake. But then we can’t keep totally silent either. So a little manipulation is called for and for this we need to learn a bit of applied psychology. The first thing is to stay calm and not react. This takes out the wind from their sails. The second thing of importance is to go along but with an aim to divert them. This is not so easy but it can be done; it is done by primarily avoiding frontal tactics. For instance a boss I know gives very difficult-to-put-into-action orders far removed from ground realities and he refuses to listen to the field staff. His employees say “Yes, Sir” and go out to do it. This is their break of sorts and when they come back they put alternative suggestions logically and well-meaningly and this works.

Control freaks are always in a hurry and in their hurry end up destroying quite a lot of things around them that they themselves have built up. The trick is to let them rant but keep the control of the final action and pacing in one’s own hands. As long as these freaks are not contradicted, all is fine. It might even be a good idea to let them apparently interfere. Ask them for something. This will keep their egos quiet. Don’t get intimidated – just go about as if nothing troublesome is happening.

We have to be kind to them. They need to be humoured but if abuse creeps in, the only solution is separation. Sometimes it is not worth wasting ourselves out on these freaks as they may drain us out. No relationship is worth that!

Pradeep is an author, personal growth trainer and marketing consultant.

I have what can be called by ordinary world’s standards arrived at a ripish age. An age when people are planning retirements and wish for quiet and I went and had a child who is now three and a half years old. So I have a bouncing child on my hands. My job is to be with her all day and play with her and feed and clothe and look after her every other need. It is a full time, 24-hour job. I wonder if people around me can see the effort I have put in and the fatigue from sleep deprivation as my bouncy little girl is keeping on my toes and has completely annihilated my sleeping and every other schedule. But I have enjoyed every minute of the last three and a half years. I suppose there have been annoying moments when I lost my cool because my needs were pitted against that of the little imp and there is no discussing the matter with her. But her smile and embrace and joy at seeing me override everything.

So you get the picture? Now let me give you another one or two.

Picture one: I am out playing with my child in the neighborhood park. These are chilly winter days so many of the citizens are also present, sunning themselves. Here is a friend who sees us and the conversation goes like this.

Friend: Hullo. Playing with the child?

ME: Yes. (I would have thought that would be obvious but then we tend to clarify so often the obvious.)

Friend: Yes somebody has to take her out to play. (Again another obvious fact; don’t I know it! I don’t believe in servants raising up children. My philosophy is simple: either you should not go and have a child or go the whole hog and raise the child yourself properly.)

ME: It is a full time job. (I don’t want to hurt his feelings because he is trying to make conversation but I have nothing to say really.)

Friend: This is good you know. At least it keeps you engaged and occupied. (Now this bugs me. He has retired. He has no interests, no work to worry about and of course he sees the world through these conditioned lenses in his eyes and assumes that at my age I would be in the same boat. What he does not see is that I love my child and love being with her. It is the only joy I have known. Going out to play is not a chore but a definite pleasure. Anyway they all know that I have multiple interests and that with my small business and hobbies I am actually hard pressed for time and the energy to carry my objectives through. Yet I have been hearing the same comments very often from many many people over the past three years.)

ME: Yes. Ha, Ha…..( what else is there to say but to smile and move on)

Picture two: The other day one of my elder sister passed by and she is a “somebody”. She has a doctorate and has been a lecturer etc. She really takes herself rather seriously. We meet rarely. This time we met after four years. The truth is she did not come to see me; she thinks I am a wastrel. She had come to see my mother. But I had to keep the formalities alive so I came out for a moment from my cubbyhole to say hullo. And this is how the conversation unrolled:

Sister: So how are you and how do you keep yourself busy? (I know the question does not need an answer and even if I did there would a negative analysis following it. So I keep my cool.)

ME: Fine. I now have a full time job. (I try to keep my tone jocular and hope the conversation would end there. But no; these elderly sisters have always something more to say.)

Sister: This is good. It keeps your mind engaged. (The trigger has been pressed and I am annoyed but then I decide to play cool.)

ME: Was my mind disengaged till now?

Sister: (A little embarrassed) No I meant busy.

ME: Ha ,Ha.

What I wish to know is this need of everybody to explain everything to me. All I have to do is make a statement and the person will start analyzing my motives and reasons and let me know so. It could be that they themselves are thinking aloud but it is definitely annoying and conversation stopper to my way of thinking.

Do you have anything to say?

–
PK is a teacher of languages/communication, counsellor and a businessman active in 6 countries. He combines his knowledge of life with his education in management, applied psychology and occult psychology from his time in The Ashram in Pondicherry and assists aspiring managers to reach their next level. Please visit http://sites.google.com/site/pkcentreforchange/Home

I believe these are universal, so I have forgone with the usual candy-flavored bullet-list to share with you some of the things I learned from being a parent. Here they are:

HOPE AND DREAM UNSELFISHLY

It is intrinsic, “human nature,” to dream and aspire for wonderful things. As a child you wanted the best toys, you wanted the yummiest foods, or you want to be the best in class. As a teen, you wanted to be better looking, you wanted a bike, or you wanted to be the first to have a car. As an adult, you want to have the latest car model, you want to have freedom in everything, you want to have the best job, or want to work less for more.

When you fell in love, you relish how your loved one makes you feel; and you plan for things that would make the two of you happy TOGETHER, and FOREVER. So you dream of a nice home and a nice life with your spouse. However, if your toy, your job, or your girlfriend ceases to amuse you, you dump them.

Do you notice the pattern? From childhood, and until you marry, YOU are at the center of your plans. Your toys, your material possessions, your friends, your career—and to a certain level, even your wife, are YOUR desires, your sources of self-gratification. Isn’t it true that if your wife ceases to love you (or you cease to love her) divorce seems to be temptingly sitting just around the corner?

When I became a parent everything changed with the way I planed and dreamed. My baby is at the center of everything—and I wasn’t even thinking about it. All I cared for was how to give my baby the best in the world—unconditionally. My dreams and aspirations ended being centered on what I want, or what makes me happy. I started dreaming and planning for somebody else, and I didn’t care whether this somebody else is going to repay me back, or love me for it, or if I break my back fulfilling this dream. I just started dreaming for another human being’s sake and it was the most natural thing in the universe.

What makes your spouse happy makes you happy. But if he/she starts to make your life miserable, you want to start looking somewhere else. While the church teaches you to give unconditional love, with your spouse, sometimes, it is easier said than done. But with your child, nobody has to teach you unconditional love—it just comes out naturally, even to the most callous of souls.

RICH DAD, POOR DAD

No, I’m not going to talk to you about how to get rich as how Robert Kiyosaki did in his “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” superseller. This is all about “parenting”—the verb. It is easy to assume that being the “parent” (noun), takes care of everything. It is easy to assume that “parenthood” is a God-given status and no one should question this.

My parents are the most wonderful parents anyone could ask for, especially (or despite) that both have less in life but a lot to give. My father did not finish high school and works as a lowly labourer, and my mother barely reached college. However, it was all she needed to help me become a better student. She was a cleaning lady for a college university, and she drowned me with books borrowed from the library. Because of poverty I became the only “wealth” and happiness of my parents.

When you are raised by poor, deficiently-schooled parents, you grow with hard work on your back. I had to wake up early every school day to cook and do the laundry while others were still asleep. I had to walk to school while others rode in flashy cars. And most importantly, I had to study harder to keep a scholarship while others played.

I promised myself I am not going to let my children suffer the hardships I had when I was their age. I ended up working so hard that I became just the “parent” (noun) without doing the “parenting” (verb). I relegated “parenting” to “providing.” I became the “rich Dad” who was providing my kid everything except my time.

As opposed to how my “poor Dad” treated me, happiness centered on my success. The resulting material possession—and my son, just became a part of it. I was living under the notion that I am the “parent” regardless of whether I exercise my parental role or not. I could never be more wrong. Being a father and a provider are entirely different things.

NATURE VS. NURTURE

Parenting is more than that process of genetic transfer. Just like in any other relationship, you have to nurture it. I only came to realise this folly when I started working from home and I saw how my 15-year old son talks to his Mom and never to me. When I expected him to be glad seeing more of me around, it was the exact opposite.

Now, I’m trying to catch up on lost time. What is sad is, I can no longer take back the years I missed being with him. He is already 15 years old, and it won’t be long before he leaves us. I would feel empty. My being very close with my younger children does not makes my communication gap with the eldest any easier. But this is what I learned, and I learned it the hard way. I’m not gonna let the same happen with the younger ones.

To my fellow fathers, it is very easy to get caught in life’s rat race. Never forget why you are out there working in the first place. Stephen Covey, in his “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” hit the nail on its head when he said “Begin with the end in mind.” Nurture and love your children. Talk to them and hug them every chance you get. By the time they’re older, you won’t have that much chance anymore.

–

This article has been contributed by our friends at The Asian Parent. Visit them for more articles and resources on parenting at www.theasianparent.com.

Adolescence: The lush season between the spring and the summer!

Parenting is the most exhilarating, satisfying and challenging job, especially when we have to parent adolescent children.

Adolescence appears at a time when the urge of life reaches its highest peak. An adolescent’s life is, or ought to be, full of opportunities to enter into new life experiences, explore new relationships, and to feel the new resources of inner strength and ability. Adolescence is also a time when youthful dreams of love and power have not yet been disturbed by the realities of life. In many ways adolescents live in a lush season between the spring and the summer of life.

Adolescence is viewed as a period of transition between childhood and adulthood. As parents our challenge is to make sure that our children make this transition with ease. The problem with us parents is that we are all amateur parents. There are no professional parents because parenting is not taught in colleges or universities. We learn parenting by instinct, and develop our individual parenting styles. However, the basic ingredients of good parenting remain universal. These are love, time, and understanding. Give these in ample doses and you can never go wrong.

Adolescents challenge our nascent parenting skills by being rebellious and non- conformists. They display a ‘couldn’t care less’ attitude. We feel that our ‘sane, well meaning’ advice is falling on deaf ears. They laugh at our concerns and make fun of our ‘old, ancient’ values. To top it all, we need to handle the societal pressure as well. If our adolescent does not do well in board exams or does not clear any competitive exams, or we can’t proudly announce his or her admission in some prestigious professional college, we feel inadequate as parents. We take it as our personal failure, but to our chagrin our adolescents seem least bothered about all this.

Please do not get fooled by their outward behaviour. Inside them, they are as bothered about their future as we are, perhaps more so; after all it is their life. They have their hidden fears and anxieties, which they express in anger or by clamming up. They feel misunderstood by the very people who claim to love them the most: their parents.

The truth remains that adolescents deal with their own demons in their own way. To be accepted by their peers means a lot to them. They need to belong in their peer group. If they harbour a poor body image, or any other perceived inadequacy; it can play havoc with their mental peace. They encounter enough pressure in their own little worlds. All they need from us is complete acceptance. Accept them for what they are.

The Middle Path

There are three basic parenting styles that most of us follow:

Autocratic parents believe that they know what is best for their children. They tend to suppress their adolescents’ feelings and expression. Their children are less likely to be self-reliant.

Permissive parents can never say no to their children. They fail to provide the kind of discipline and support adolescents need. They allow their children to drift without offering them dependable models of responsible adult behaviour.

The third kind of parents follow the ‘middle’ path. They value both autonomy and discipline. They are more likely to foster the development of confidence, responsibility, and independence in their children.

Let us see how we, as parents of adolescent children can help our wards. But before we sit on our high horse, we must always remember that our children do what we do and not what we say:

•    Help them achieve general emotional maturity so that they learn to face and solve conflicts. The destructive expression of emotions must be channelled into constructive expressions.
•    Help them achieve general social maturity so that they develop social tolerance and freedom from slavish imitation of their peers.
•    Grant them freedom from home control so that they learn self-control and rely upon themselves for security. Our attitude towards them should be friendly.
•    Help them develop intellectual maturity so that they don’t accept anything blindly on the basis of authority. They should learn to desire for explanation of facts.
•    Help them develop a hobby so that they become multifaceted and creative.
•    Help them select an occupation after a careful self-assessment of their capabilities, interests, and aptitude. They should follow their heart and do the ‘labour of love’ instead of mindlessly following the herd. Don’t force your will upon them.
•    Help them in identification of self so that they understand their true selves; and their purpose of life.

The most important thing we parents need to understand is that we should be good role models for them; and as we all know too well, it is easier said than done. Confucius spoke for our youngsters when he said, “Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I will remember. Involve me and I will understand.”

I believe that if we love our role as parents and enjoy each stage of our children’s growth and development, these adolescent years will be a pleasure for both us and our wards.

Chitra Jha is a life skills coach and past life regression therapist.

The ‘relationship web’ that we weave around ourselves is predicated on five “T” triggers: tribe, talk, time, trust and taste.

The first set of relationships that we inherit at birth is our immediate family and relatives. Let us name them TRIBE relationships. “Family comes first” is an old adage that is still followed by many Indians. However in this fast-paced digital era, it is becoming more and more difficult to keep this ‘tribal web’ intact. There are too many troubled father-son, brother-brother/sister, father-mother, uncle-nephew, cousin-cousin, father-son-in-law etc relationships that are either suffocating us or no longer useful or healthy.

Some relationships are maintained because they are necessary for us to hold on to other more important relationships, while others are maintained for mutually selfish and ulterior motives. And there are still others that exist because tolerating them is little less harmful than leaving them. In these times when phone rates are almost equal to zero, the rate at which we call up family and say “kya haal hai” is also alarmingly close to zero.

I can also give you many examples of people in relationships who have not spoken a civil or sincere word to each other in years, even as they continue sharing their bathrooms, bedrooms and drawing rooms.

This brings me to the other trigger called TALK. Ideally speaking, your relationship with someone should reach such a stage where the communication happens without a word being spoken or there’s no need to overtalk as you develop a tacitly mutual understanding about each other’s habits and needs. Just look at a new born baby and the mother. To me that’s the ultimate relationship because the only communication that they have is the baby’s cry and they are both comfortable only when there’s absolute silence. If ever you want to test your relationship, test it on this parameter, I promise you will never be disappointed. But let me re-emphasize, talking has a role to play in any relationship, but your eventual aim should be develop a comfortable silence.

TIME and TRUST are the two axes of relationship graph. You might need time to develop trust, but once the trust is there, the relationship becomes timeless. There are people with whom you spent just a few moments (on a journey or at a function) and you trust them for a lifetime. And then there are people you have spent a life with but don’t trust them even for a moment. Who understands the dynamics that drive relationships – are they karmic or are they simply based on basic needs, hormones or shallow impulses?

And lastly, relationships are also made out of your personal choices, like personal interests say — TASTE. Most relationship problems occur because because partners are concentrating on what’s missing in the other person according to their taste. They fail to realize that however good or bad you feel about your relationship, the person you are with at this moment is the “right” person, because he or she is the mirror of who you are on the inside and the person you really need to look at is….yourself.

She has a tendency to panic. Makes it hard to trust her.
He is chronically greedy. Grew up dirt poor. Money is everything.
She is a channel of pure wisdom, a naturally gifted seer.
He is a genius, able to connect vast intellectual concepts.
She is fragile, new, and green to the concept of cause and affect.
He is angry, wounded, perpetually antagonistic.

People are where they are – despite our desire for them to be further along, more evolved, more fun, closer to our level, less intimidating, more relatable, easier to access, or simply more like us.

If you take the desire for someone to be different out of the equation – you can meet them where they are. You can meet them in the real moment. You can meet them in their despair or their magnificence.

And when you truly meet them, with no wishing for something different to wedge you apart, you’ll know what to do. You will have the compassion to be calming, the humility to be reverent, or the wisdom to walk away. The question becomes, how would you treat “wounded,” or “rage,” or “brilliance”? Not how would you help (or coerce, or plead with) someone be more healed, or less angry, or more down to earth.

They are where they are. Consider the facts, spare yourself the desire for change. Remove the friction of wanting to improve them. And engage. It’s the only way change happens.

In my youth there was some thrill, excitement about meeting up all sorts of people whom I had befriended along the way. I was single, available and purposeless – or you can say trying to figure out the purpose of it all. Everything else was secondary – career, partner, good food, good clothes, nice car, house, looks – all that mattered to me then was to change the world and to talk for hours about injustices in my home country.

But then as it happens, I too strayed from the dream path, owing to the necessity of making sure that I had some pennies on me, a roof over my head and some semblance of a career. It went on and on and here I am today – the same person with lot more experience of life, a roof over my head, food in my pantry and some work to keep me busy. But I have lost the thrill and anticipation that used to come with meeting friends, catching up over a cup of coffee, going for a drink or a walk in the park.

Now, I am back in my second home, Sydney after a gap of four years and I fondly remember the many connections I had made over nine years when I lived here. With my friends in India, I talked of my mates in Australia as members of my global family. I felt that a permanent kind of ‘invisible’ support, empathy and kinship existed for me and it kept me safe and protected. I thought that it really didn’t matter where I wandered or what brought me back – my mates here would still like to catch up as they would be as interested in me as I was in them.

I started looking for some mates with a lot of enthusiasm but more I tried to reconnect more I became aware that my efforts were futile. The connection was dead. There was nothing there but a shallow, polite interest on their part that dissipated once the phone call ended. That was that. A rolling stone gathers no moss, I have been told by many people across the continents. It seemed like when I left my mates in Australia I also exited their mental space. As a global villager I took their presence with me but they held on to nothing of me and their au revoirs were final goodbyes.

I was perhaps too unstable to have any permanent connection with…maybe they were tired of me — the friend always in need of advice, assistance, empathy, support by virtue of being a migrant. Not one who is busy digging gold but more akin to an Indian sadhu (ascetic) ceaselessly in motion searching for TRUTH.

It was their (my Aussie mates) collective conscience which manifested in the form of an invitation (visa) through their government to their country – an invited guest, vetted guest, processed guest thrown at the deep end of it all. They woke up one morning and found me amidst them looking for everything which sustains life. They did a great job but behold I inadvertently conveyed to them that I could do without them. In a way I ‘dumped’ my Aussie mates by packing up to wander again.

Now as I wandered back again in, logically meeting me would be a waste of time for all these stable mates. For me it would involve repeating my story to all the mates, telling them what I did in all the four years while away. I felt there was not much point in making efforts to catch a train, to make them pick me up and devour their precious time.

All this catching up could be done in the form of an email status report, which my mates could have read in their own time and come back with some or no feedback and it would have satisfied the little curiosity which we all have about each other – I wonder what she has been up to? Easier to catch up on email, the person is better in your inbox rather than in your face. In emails you just share bits of information but when you meet in person you have a bigger responsibility to engage with the person.

I often felt catching up was all about checking on each other, to ensure that the other person has not left me behind or vice versa; to see if there could be any synergy; to keep up with the social necessities; to make sure that when one has a party there are some people around to invite over.

Why catch up? Why meet up? I had carried these questions with me to India and found somebody I thought could answer this question. A very inspiring woman who lived by herself and whom I befriended. She was very young in her nineties and lived a queen size d life till last year when she left the physical realm. She told me, “You meet people to share”.

She explained that when you share, for example your pain – it gets distributed, dispersed among the people you with whom you talk. Your pain gets reduced in size. So it’s downsizing pain by sharing. Similarly when you share your joy, it becomes a bigger joy — so it’s upsizing by sharing.

I have faith in this explanation as given by one of my dearest mates so for now I shall continue making efforts to catch up with all connected, disconnected, disenchanted, disengaged mates of mine. I intend to hand over personally the status report of what I had been doing the last four years. It won’t deter me that I have grey hair (though I try to keep the grey bits coloured or hidden), that I have yet to properly tune into the colour of money, that they had four years of respite from me hassling them to catch up. I am still as insignificant as I used to be, just a speck of dust which can dust itself out of any space.

In the meanwhile I shall catch up personally – because I am a being, with legs to carry me around and many tales to share.

When my father thought that I should go to a boarding school (9th birthday), I had already made the best of friends at the neighborhood school. When Papa gifted me with a bicycle (14th birthday), I already had a learning license for the Hero Honda. When he suggested that, I should stop experimenting with my hairstyle every fortnight (18th birthday), I had already started shaving. When he wanted me to be a chartered accountant (21st birthday), I had already submitted the form for my advertising course. When he asked me to settle down (24th birthday), I was already bored with my advertising job. When Papa wanted me to get married (26th birthday), I had already had my second break-up.

There is one very popular phrase to describe this dynamic — Generation Gap. It has existed since the times of Lord Krishna and his father Nanda; Shehanshah Akbar and his son-turned-Romeo, Shehajada Saleem and even Gurubhai (Dhirubhai) and his schoolteacher father.

What creates this situation of conflict between a father and his son? This invariably happens because both parties are stuck in time. Sometimes in the present, at other times in their past and at some other times in a hazy future as envisioned by both. I mean, when the father is looking at his son’s future, the son is talking of his father’s past. Moreover, when the son talks about his present, the father tells him of his own past. Then, when they both talk about their present, the son is not impressed by his father’s past and the father is worried about his son’s future. Strangely, there is no talk of either the son’s past or the father’s future.

We need to understand the high price we end up paying for these generation gap conflicts. The first loss is that of mutual respect. When the silence between two individuals is uncomfortable, the relationship is in danger. The two pairs of eyes cannot meet even for the time it takes to say, “Papa” or “Beta”. Many dreams are withheld or allowed to wither away just because their experiences and expectations are different. Many emotions are repressed and concealed because of swollen egos (father) or irrational exuberance (son). What remains are many unexpressed feelings and unending arguments.

Let’s take a mango tree to represent the father. Firstly, it bears a mango (his son) only when it has grown strong and high enough to be able to nourish and sustain the mango. The mango tree makes itself dense and strong to protect the mango from the weather, animals and even greedy humans. It sheds all its leaves during autumn to retain the fruit. The tree initially gives the mango its own green colour. The first flavor of the young mango is also like the leaves. So, for an onlooker the young mango is not visibly distinct from the mango tree. Thus, the identity of the mango is the mango tree.

With time and the process of natural growth, the mango matures and it acquires its own sweet taste and a distinct vibrant yellow, saffron or red colour. Now the identity of the mango tree is the mango. The world knows the tree by the variety (identity) of the mango. Either the mango is plucked or the tree lets it fall because it has grown in weight and individuality. When they part ways there are no more expectations and promises. Just a simple and strong bonding of the soul called the “seed” (the mother). And of course of the name “mango”. The mango (son) gives back all he has received from his tree (father) by becoming the tree for another yet another mango.

And so the cycle of life continues continues along for another generation. Sons are born, fathers brim with pride and expectations abound. But with the years they grow apart and there are bruising conflicts along the way. But usually the relationship survives in one form or another. It’s been happening for thousands of years. Nothing much changes except the faces and places…..

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition. –Timothy Leary.

Mr/Mrs God created the universe in opposites. Presence and absence. So we have day and night. So what is absent in the day is present in the night and vice versa. The day offers you lots of energy and enterprise. This is what helps man make a good living. On the other hand, the night offers calmness and creativity. So this duality of day-night results is a complete, holistic life, that is, time to make a living and time to process the joy of living. Now who on the planet can tell me which is more important or less necessary and why?

Let us understand this in the light of the times and factors that contributed to building this pattern of behaviour among humans. When in the primitive shelters like caves, man because of his physical strength and ability had to fight it out with the weather and wild animals, while the woman was the one who had to be protected and to be supplied the food.

Also every time she had to carry their child for long nine months (without even the most basic medical facilities, she would become entirely dependent on her man). This was the norm even when she reared the child and he ventured out to do all that was needed for his family’s survival. He could not bear, feed and breed the child because of his anatomy and she could not run, hunt and fight the brutal wild animals because of her specialized anatomy. He brought the food and she prepared some semblance of a meal. Till this point, none of them thought of the other as being superior or more important. There was no comparison, just an appreciation for the mutually supportive roles of the man and the woman.

This was before man became a social animal. As soon as he became socialized and tribal living ended, things began to change as the roles of males and females were questioned by each other. The spectre of comparison began to rear its head with the thought that  between the ‘day’ (man) and ‘night’ (woman), man was better and more important, hence he became dominant and oppressive. And woman felt she was  less important so she felt dominated and oppressed.

In the times that we are living in, there’s no need for useless comparisons. How can you compare day and night? Can day exist without night and night without the day? One cannot exist without the other. Day and night, like man and woman, are nothing but two different software programmes that run on the same hardware and operating system. So you can compare them for example, only if you can compare Microsoft Office and Microsoft Media Player. We are at fault when we say, “Woman can do everything that man can do and more”. Why waste yourself in doing what man can already do for you? Why and how is earning a meal better than cooking a meal?

My message to all the differently talented, skilled, programmed but restless female half of the human race is: It’s about time you stop comparing yourself to and liberating yourself from men. Enjoy your power as a woman and your role as a nurturer as you complement and balance the human equation to make it whole.

Now my quest leads me to several points of reflection.
I could sit here and write for ages on how to plan and implement a scheme to multi-comply with several requests at the same time.
Meetings, phone calls, laundry, cleaning, cooking, answering the phone, driving, food shopping, choosing clothes, houses and haircuts, changing job, picking holidays…

But.

But then something happened.
A swift change in my daily life.
I chose to write this piece.

Dumped and multi-tasker. L-O/I-V-E, work and feed your soul.

How many people get dumped every day?
How many relationships crash in a matter of seconds everywhere in the world?
How many of those unions were really not meant to be?
How many of us manage to go to work the day after?
How many decide to stop feeding their souls?
How many lose their way?

How many questions would you like to answer, after a break-up?

I could tell you that the union I am talking about was meant to be. Which is as true as it could easily be false.
Magical encounter, two wise souls, desire to love someone akin.
Busy lives longing for a piece of calm land.
Where to hide when it is allowed.
Where to plan a future as we want it.

But.

Obstacles come from within.
And there is no worse enemy than our own fear.
To be. To believe. To behave.

Then reality – as it comes – hits you in the face.
Slap you with a yell.
Did you really think it was going to be this easy?
And it is over.
No more land. No more plan. No more.

Soul aching.
Duvet calling.
All you want is to sleep.
A sleep without dreams.
Heavy body swallowed by the mattress.
Let me be. Or – better said – let me not be.
I don’t feel like.

But.

This life I have chosen to live.
This path I am walking…
Its pace and rhythm.
Did I really think it would have allowed me to not be?

Practicality. Is what saved me from that dreamless sleep.
My job – an ambitious, complex project I am fully responsible for,
Could I leave it on hold?
Was I allowing myself to stop thinking, planning, managing…
Therefore not feeding my desire to achieve?
Turning down those who believe in me and my passion?

No. This is not me.

Multi-tasker me. Live again.
Waking up in the morning is the hardest part.
And I am switching to present tense because yes, the scar tissue is still recovering.
I find myself completely submersed under the duvet.
Wrapped into my cocoon where dreams take me to another land, another present, a parallel dimension.
The first few steps follow a confused route towards the coffee machine.
While my foggy brain recollects thoughts.
Personally I find that the hardest part of break-ups and sentimental delusions is the first half hour after waking up.
While opening my eyes, all I see and recognise are my cat asking for breakfast, my orchids smily blossoming and the purple light coming through the curtains.
The perfect balance of my beautiful life.
Then. I recall.
A rain-loaded cloud blurs my coloured scenario and there it comes.
I am not his. Anymore.
Coffee and shower do their part in bringing me back to normality.
That survivor state where all you have to do is get out of the house.
Get dressed, find your keys, lock the door, make it to the elevator, say “Hi” to the doorman, get in your car, wear your sunglasses, drive out of the parking, dive into London.
Life is Here and Now.
Once more, today.

Multi-tasker me. Drive, Sing and Cry.
I am driving while re-shuffling the cards of this past month memories.
Playing with them, the game of life is once more in my hands.
This is how it was.
This is what happened.
This is why it did happen.
And there you are, my dear myself, and you’d better cope with it.
Because I am not going to allow you to trash what you are, what you have, how far you’ve got…
Cry, sing, scream, fall. But remember.
You will have to stand up. And walk again.

Multi-tasker me. I get to work.
People ask me. How, Why, When.
Answers. Phone calls. Excel sheets.
Development. Plan. Strategy. Turnover.
Are you sure this is the best way to do it?
Focus and don’t rely solely on your energy.
Delegate… Organise… Schedule… Prioritise.

AndthenallofasuddenIlookatmyselfinthemirrorandrealiseIhaven’tbeenthinkingabouthimallday.

Smiling at my reflection. Food for my soul.

Multi-tasker me. I live my life.
I adore it and feed it.
Nurture it. While dealing.
With this life that is not….
Not easy.
But not as hard as we make it.
And it is ours.
No one else’s.
Are you still walking towards that uncertain destination we call happiness?
There is no wrong track.
You choose. Mistakes do not exists.
As long as you keep choosing.

Multi-tasker me. And my gadgets.
Yes. One tiny paragraph devoted to practicality.
Get connected. And remain connected.
Wire yourself to this magical yet virtually real dimension.
The World Wide Web.
Make yourself available.
Work when outside darkness reigns.
And smile at the stars during a 2 am meeting.
Toast at the freedom of doing it Your Way.

It does not matter How. You choose.

Multi-tasker me. Communicate.
Never stop communicating.
When silence calls. Talk to it.
Be precisely and exactly Yourself.
But be aware of it.
Recognise who you are.
Even when the fog is so thick it seems there is no way out.
Share. Write. Whisper. Cry.
Words need water to grow. Sometimes.

Multi-tasker me. Love.
Dumped and yet.
Able to love.
Be love. Eat love.
Walk love.
Walk the talk of love.
If you prefer.
But cling to your love.
Remember your love.
And your loved ones.
Those who are here.
And those who left.
Love them, now like yesterday.
Even when it is over.
Do not forget you loved.
And when dawn…
That mirror. Your eyes.
Swollen. Teary.
Love them too.

Multi-tasker. Play all the way.
What are we here for,
If not to play all the way down.
And up. When it hurts. As well.
Stop fighting. Just follow.
Yourself. And no one else.
No one will ever tell you how to.
Better than your inner voice.
The player – wise and courageous.
That You Are.

The power within is what kept me from falling.

Multi-tasker me. I do not forget.
Who I am.
And what I am here for.
Someone once told me…
Waste your life with joy.
Like all important things.

Okay…I warned you.

“What’s with everyone going on about the ‘hard work’ of marriage?” I used to think. “If it’s so hard it musn’t be true love. True love has a meant-to-be-ness about it that’s gotta make everything easier. Like, if it’s THAT hard, then it just ain’t right. Right?” Uh huh.

My relationship with my own self is complicated, how could I expect it to be simple with another? But I was single at the time. My panties matched my bras, my principles matched my big hair, and my astronomical phone bills matched my knack for getting involved with men who lived on the other side of the country. {The long distance fed my romantic longings. Longing. Always lonnnging.}

I’ve done some homework since then. Home. Work.

THE UGLY FACTS MY RELATIONSHIP RESEARCH HAVE SURFACED:

: I don’t know a single couple with an easy, let alone blissful, marriage. Okay. ONE couple: Donna and Brad. But they met when they were in their late forties. Brad’s wife had passed away. Donna was just out of a long termer. Within months of declaring their total and utter devotion, Brad discovered that he had cancer. They fought it with every alternative therapy known, and every dime and ounce of faith they had. They’re still going strong. It really is the stuff of love stories.

But back to the rest of us normal, non-Buddhist schmucks who got hitched earlier in life…

: Most of my married friends have seriously considered leaving their mates more than once. {Note to the hubby of my friend: I’m not talking about you. Really, you’re the total exception dude.}

: Within just the first year of marriage, at least half of my married friends and acquaintances thought to themselves, “What the hell have I done?”

: Of all the longtime wed folks I’ve surveyed, each reported long, hellish periods in their relationship where they were merely enduring each other to get by.

Bubbles burst. Dreams steamrolled. Imperfections and cruelties of life glaringly clear. Crap facts noted. Love stinks.

And love keeps going in spite of it all.

THE DELIGHTFUL, SWEET AND RADIANT FACTS MY RELATIONSHIP RESEARCH HAVE SURFACED:

: I have friends whose confessed infidelities cycloned through their lives. And they sorted through the wreckage to build something better than before. “The affair was the best thing that ever happened to us.”

: Couples who rallied to beat addictions, who sweat and toiled to over come them like farmers fight blight – tirelessly, without rest, because everything depends on victory.

: One of my wisest friends figures that it took about thirty years for him and his wife to simply be nice to each other. Now there is a euphoria in their familiarity. A grace has settled in. He says that sometimes it’s magical.

So if you’re out there thinking that the smoochy hot couple has got it easy, ha! Think again. If you’re down to a teaspoon of hope, envying the love stories on the other side of the fence, remember that while they were smiling for the cameras, Joanne Woodward was putting up with Paul Newman’s boozing in the early years. Fridah Kahlo’s beloved Diego chased skirts all through Mexico and New York. Cleopatra waited a long time for her man.

Love and doubt aren’t exclusive. In fact, they can be the most fantastic dance partners. Give and take. Trust and turn.

Bliss requires sweat.

But I’ve noticed that even shiny, sexy, wide-awake people don’t talk that much about sex. The general conversation starts and stops with whether you’re getting it or not. “It’s good.” “We need to make more time for it.” “Haven’t gotten around to it.”

If sex conversation is relegated to the cultural fringe, it’s likely reflecting where it lies on our personal list of priorities. And you don’t have to have a partner to have a sex life, BTW. Just ask Mama Gena who makes it, uh, pointedly clear that the clitoris has 8000 nerve endings of its very own.

You can be sure that your sex life is a microcosm of the macrosm of your entire life. Deep but quiet. Repressed. Rigorous. Loving but slightly aggressive. Playful and sweet. Dutiful. Whatever is going down in the sack is going ‘round in your life as a greater theme. So maybe we should talk about it more. At least to ourselves.

SEXY SHAKE UP
For the sake of shaking up mindsets, what if you gave your sexual well being the same weighty importance that we tend to give the other day-to-day stuff?:

What if we treated our sex lives with the same importance as our diet? Imagine counting orgasms like you counted calories. What if there was the same urgency to get funky with your lover or yourself as there was to get to yoga or spinning class?

What if we put as much effort into cultivating our sexuality as we did our intellect? Imagine a D-I-Y erotica degree based on the awareness of energy and breath and physiology and bliss. Where would you begin to look for knowledge? What would it take to earn and A++?

What if we talked about our sex lives like we talked about, say, our health, or our satisfaction with work? I’m not suggesting that you should chat up your hot night with Larry and Lucy at the water cooler. Because, yeah, sex is sacred, absolutely, positively, precious and typically private. BUT…what if, with the friend you trusted most, you let the conversation go deeper into the sensual part of your life. And you explored questions like, How do you feel in bed? What does womanly or manly really mean to you? Top, bottom, bunny, adventurer, priestess, kink-meister or athlete, what’s next in terms of being more fully you?

Don’t tell just anyone. But dare to tell yourself. The answer may have you grinning for days.

But we have one thing in common: we both believe that you should dress for your man. I’ve never met my guy at the door in something lacy (but it’s on my to-do list.) I don’t own a pair of foofoo slippers. And ever since my boobs went south after breastfeeding, I had to retire my glittery tube tops. But…I’m no slob either.

European women have us pinned to the mat in the “make an effort” category. They make North American women look like…slobs in Crocs and ponytails and sweatpants. I think that va-va-va-voom we mustered up to get the man, too often fades. And va-va-va-voom is good for the soul.

I vowed to myself when I got married that I would forever endeavor to be The Sexy Wife. I would not let myself go. It’s not easy. I gained about fifty pounds with my first baby. There were times when I was too broke to buy a pretty new bra, in which case, hi-lights and a bikini wax were also out of the question. I worked sixty-hour weeks for months and raised a toddler that didn’t really sleep. But no matter I remember my sexy wife vow and before the hunk came home, I’d whip some goop in my hair, dab on my amber oil, and get some lip-gloss on my kisser. I still looked exhausted, but I my devotion made up for the circles under my eyes.

Sparkle Determination ripples out. Your appearance tells the world how to treat you. When you take care of yourself, life tends to pitch in. When you aim to shine, life pays proper attention to you – and that includes your lover boy (or girl.)

And lest you think I’m taking the feminist movement back two decades, know that I expect that same Look Fine Commitment from my dude. He knows that his chances of getting lucky increase with spicy cologne, a pressed linen shirt, and by wearing the silver bracelet that I got him from India.

Even June Cleaver would swoon.

And the opportunities seem chosen,

The melodies from life seem stolen,

And the morality of people seems fallen….

But when I look into your eyes Dear

I see the world is still Shining.

When the compassion in people seems dried,

And their judgments seem all tried.

When the lips of truth have cried,

And the rights of humans denied….

And I am all helpless

To help my helplessness….

And then when I look into your eyes Dear,

I see the world is still Shining.

I was in Kauai in the fall and read Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth between beaches. And this question of his became my walking, rambling, meditation. “What is my relationship….to LIFE?!” Daunting. Spectacular. Galvanizing. Perhaps my favourite question of all time.

It opened the floodgates of inquiry for me. I spiraled it backwards to look at my relationship to my man, my child, my families of blood and soul – my portals of connectivity and on good days, communion. What was the majority experience of me showing up in the world? How is it that I am vulnerable? What feels pure and steadfast within my cells? One question led to another. What do I bring forth from the well of my essential self, and what do I keep in reserve, locked, frightened, greedy, proud, and practical? When I engage with people what is my motive? How do I greet strangers and friends with whom I have history? What is my most regular waking thought? What is my favourite feeling? Who am I trying to impress? How do I stand in crisis? Where does my generosity stop? What gets to the core of my core?

I actually didn’t need to delve into the deep recesses of my psyche. It turned out to be a remarkably basic exercise – one that I bet you could find your own answer to by the end of today. It all got down to this simple sub-plot question: How am I with people?

I saw the pattern of truth emerge, a through-line to ALL of my interactions with people – with everyone, every one. Whether it is my lover-companion of ten years with whom I can be amazing or pathetic, or it’s the dude sliding my tea across the counter, there is a consistent energy and attitude that I bring to them. I can see the rhythm of it in my mind. It goes like this: I give off a honey-golden love warmth, an “I love you, we’re in this together” declaration. It’s pure and it’s innocent and is graciously global.

Then out comes this acuity, a kind of “I get you, I see you, and I’m very serious about it.” I’m not sure if it’s a natural intensity or if it’s a protective reaction that roots in fear, but often, my next level of vibe is either something along the subtle lines of “don’t f*** with me,” or “you do your thing, I’ll do mine, and all is well.”

When I looked at my relationship to the humans (and my dog counts as a human) that I relate to, it became clear that I am a planet of love with a hair-trigger drawbridge that closes without much warning. I am, and this was somewhat heartbreaking for me to realize…I am somewhat reserved with my love.

And thus, my relationship to life is: Big Love. True Smile. Tricky Lock.

It’s a long term relationship. My vows are a work in progress.

Marriage is a beautiful bond, but it can have some not-so-beautiful consequences for some hapless middle class women. People will tell you this is your duty toward your in-laws and that is your duty toward your husband – in Hindi so called “patni dharm.” But who will dare talk openly and honestly about “pati dharm”?

I saw two little drops of tears on my friend’s face and tried to change the topic, but she wanted to talk. Two years have passed since she was first married and she has known her husband, Abhi, for three 3 years. Someone has rightly said, it feels blissfully good when falling in love, but staying in love is really the big challenge. Abhi was such a darling at first, taking special care with even the small matters. He looked after her when she was not well, often kissing her on forehead, just to show how much he cared. She could tell him anything, even about those little, silly matters that most people dismissed as trivial and he would listen for hours.

Then something happened to change her whole life. It was called marriage!

Now the two hour conversation is reduced to a two minute talk, which is usually about something related to work. She would wake up early in the morning to cook breakfast and lunch, stock up on drinking water, clean the house and do puja before rushing to the office. After a hard day at the office, she might come back home to see her husband entertaining friends and relatives in her absence. She would find the hall littered with beer bottles, wafer packets on the floor, sofa covers strewn about and a big bottle of whisky in front of the Durga murti. She even recalled seeing one of his friends sleeping, half naked on the sofa.

In the kitchen, the platform would be decorated with chicken bones, rice, and cold drinks or whatever was on their menu that day. Her bedroom is longer her private domain because, on more than one occasion, she has seen two half naked males sleeping off their drinks, while sprawled out on her clean linen. I guess that after two years of marriage she has earned herself the right to see her husband’s friends half-naked as well.

She laments that even after two years of marriage her husband is still enjoying his bachelor’s life. And, to compound matters, he is aided and abetted by none other than his big brother. What does the marriage manual have to say on this one?

Many times the ghreheni (home maker) is expected to be very shant, and samajahdar. But how long can she remain quiet about this violation of her privacy and her husband’s immaturity?

If she complains this he needs to respect the home and act more responsibly, he is quick to inform her that she is not one of the blood relations, and that blood is always thicker than water….blah, blah, blah. She realizes that she will always remain an outsider to the family and does not live up to their expectations. She is disillusioned as a wife and marriage has been a very rude awakening for my friend.

Let’s suppose that society in general and their village in particular had become very liberal, taking cue from their gods, and had agreed to tie Laila and Majnu into matrimonial bliss. Do you think we would have known who they were and how great their desire was to come close to each other? I am sure that after a few years, people would have spotted a stressed out Majnu with his four year old son on his shoulder filing a complaint with the village panchayat about the irreconcilable differences with Laila. Or else Laila would have been confiding in her friends that Majnu is having extra marital relationships and she is left to take care of the home by herself.

Today, married couples throng the temples and bow down to the pure love of the Radha and Krishna relationship. What is it that we admire about Radha and Krishna? Is it the fact that they loved and were able to sustain their love ? Or do we admire that all these famous couples were able to sustain their love because they did not cave in to society’s pressure to get married?

Maybe they knew that the first victim to go down in the matrimonial battlefield is love?

When today’s lovers, inspired by the divine intoxication of romance, are sitting in public places, holding hands and basking in love, it is a pity that they do not realize what easy bait they are for the eagle-eyed moral police. The self-appointed moral police — usually two repressed ladies reminding us of ’88′ in game of housie and 3 portly gentlemen, who have not seen their feet in years, are eager to pounce on them and then sentence them to a lifetime of…… matrimony!

It’s surprising that we respect and yearn for the pure, unending love of Radha and Krishna but when we encounter a similar kind of relationship around us, we leave no stone unturned to demonise it, crush it or distance ourselves from the lovers.

The unmarried lovers of legend and history are popular because our imagination makes them so. It’s the resistance they faced, the confrontations around them and the incompleteness in their relationships which allow us to create and colour the conclusions according to our own hopes and imagination. We can make their story our own without the constraints imposed by mundane matrimony.

Every day brings with it a new dream, a new path, a new goal. Then why not follow it? Years back, I had made a commitment to myself – to stay true to the mind, to the conscience. Life since has been so simple. No, not easy, definitely not, but refreshing yes!

I have never compromised my dreams. I won’t say I have lived them all. I am still working on quite a few but I have chased every one with all my passion. However, what’s a dream that has been lived? It’s too real, too mundane. I live for the journey; the plaque does not hold my interest. I conquer, I move on. They know when I am stuck in my own victory – the smile is plastered a bit too wide, the incurious eyes are glazed with monotony, the head sits heavy on the weary shoulders. They heave a sigh of relief.

Fresh dreams are calling out to my soul; the sweet smell of new hope is rousing my spirit. Life is blooming; I have spread my wings wide, ready to soar the sky. My steps are hurried, my eyes twinkle with the anticipation of unknown challenges, yet the heart is embracing the comfort of familiarity. Now I am intoxicated with ambition, the head is spinning and I am almost nauseous with greed. Those unknown faces are again dancing in front of my eyes. They are back to haunt me, shackle me and I can already feel myself slipping. I shut my eyes to not see them; I try to shout them away but my voice is strangled in my throat. And then HE comes….showering me with encouragement, emancipating me from self doubt.

I still don’t open my eyes; the fear is still lurking around. I feel his breath on me and his arms around. Now when my head has stopped hurting, my heart has settled down, I gradually open my eyes to see my goal much closer.

I turn around for HIM,

HE, who is now far, far away waving at me,

HE, who will wait for me always,

HE, whose one glimpse makes my heart skip a beat,

HE, who chases my demons away for me,

HE, who miles apart, is always with me,

HE, who taught me to live my dreams….

HE, whom the world calls my husband.

These include: Fighting Fairly; Healthy Communication; Similar Core Values/Desires; Willingness To Compromise; Expressing Your Love and Appreciating Each Other and most importantly Mutual Commitment.

Fighting Fairly

To begin, one must understand a basic rule of getting along with others. Every relationship has arguments; they are a natural part of all relationships. But how you choose to engage in those arguments is a key factor in whether your relationship will withstand the test of time. You and your relationships benefit tremendously if you learn how to “fight fairly”. What does it mean to fight fairly? If you are the type to pull punches below the belt, indulge in name calling, screaming or using a threatening tone, bringing in another person for their opinion, dredging up past history or slipping in that sarcastic comment just because you know it will hurt the other person then you are not fighting fairly.

Some behaviors or interpersonal patterns must be decidedly eliminated from your interactions if you wish to have a healthier relationship. Fighting fairly includes, taking ‘time out’ if you need to cool off before discussing issues with your significant other. It also entails healthy communication, willingness to compromise, and discussing matters of conflict without withdrawing physically or shutting down emotionally. Can you touch your significant other’s hand when your discussing something where you feel conflict? Or do you pull yourself away the minute a conflict arises?

Healthy Communication

Avoid absolute language like “always” and “never”. Try using “I” statements that describe your feelings instead of “you” statements that often make the other person feel attacked. For example, instead of saying to your significant other, “You always come home late, you never think about me.” You could say,“I feel worried (fill in your feeling) when you (fill in your significant other’s behavior as objectively as you can) come home late without calling and I would like you to (what do you want or need) call if you are going to be late.”

It is important to understand that we must express what we need and take a look at our expectations to see if they are reasonable and fair. If expectations are continually not met then something is not working in the area of compromise or your core values/desires are significantly different and outside help may be needed.

Similar Core Values/Desires

A critical component to a successful relationship is determining if you and your significant other have similar core values and desires. If you want kids and your honey doesn’t have the slightest interest in children, you want to find this out early. If one of you wants to live in the city and one of you wants to live in the country and neither partner is willing to compromise, this match may not be made in heaven. If you believe in undying honesty and your significant other thinks lying is acceptable behavior, you may be dealing with some of the more critical “deal breakers”. It is important to clarify the big issues and identify if there are any core values or desires that are vastly different and can’t be worked through. If you go into the relationship seeing these red flags and think “I’ll deal with it later” it is a recipe for disaster.

By definition a “deal breaker” is something you believe you must have in your relationship to be happy. Each person has to figure out what their deal breakers are before they can actively decide if a relationship will work or not. It is mostly about knowing what you want in life and in your relationships. Some other topics to consider when evaluating core values and desires are to look at how each of you view and feel about the following topics such as: money, raising children, sex or sexual issues, division of labor/chores, how you like to spend your off time, monogamy, friendship, commitment, trust, substance use or abuse, anger management and styles of handling anger, and most of all do you both believe in or want a long term relationship.

Willingness to Compromise

There are many times where compromise plays a significant role in a successful relationship. If you want one thing and your significant other wants something else, there are times when you both could benefit the relationship by meeting the need of your significant other. It is important to ask yourself: ” Is this something I can compromise on?” The way you choose to think about your chosen compromises can help or hinder the relationship. If you choose resignation: “Ugh, I have to go to this party because my significant other wants to!” versus acceptance: “I am choosing to go with my significant other to this party because it is important to him or her.” Just by virtue of choosing the way you frame the thought, you are influencing your feelings about the situation.

Many of the perceived deal breakers may not be deal breakers at all if you have good communication with your significant other and can talk things out throughout the relationship. You may find very amicable solutions to your differences.

One of the biggest questions you must ask yourself when you are in relationship is: “Is it more important to be right or to be happy?” Sometimes it can be as easy as letting go of the need to be the one in the relationship who is “right”. One question to consider when deciding if you are willing to compromise on an issue is: “Will this matter to me in five years?” If you find the answer is no, it maybe easier to find your way to compromising in that scenario.

Expressing Your Love and Appreciating Each Other

The research suggests that couples who demonstrate their affection and love toward one another are more successful. It is particularly appropriate when you can demonstrate affection and maintain a positive connection to your significant other when in the middle of conflict. This is much easier said than done, but it can be learned and it is definitely worth attempting as you work toward becoming a successful couple.

Focus on what you love about each other.

Catch your significant other doing things that you appreciate and let him/her know how much you appreciate those things. Find special moments in the day to share your love and appreciation with one another and you will continue to discover more to love and appreciate. It is important that you remember what qualities attracted you to each other and to talk about those things that you find loveable, kind, warm, fun, sexy and attractive. When you are feeling a momentary lack of love, do something kind for your significant other by getting out of your own head and into the mode of sharing. A little bit of gratitude goes a very long way. If you sneak a peek at your honey doing something you really love, tell them! Express gratitude in every way possible.

Mutual Commitment

This one is simple yet the most important – you both must be committed to the relationship and the work it takes to maintain a health, functional relationship. Relationships may only be ‘easy’ in the ‘honeymoon period’ when both parties are on their absolute best behavior, there is tons of mystery and you are still both really getting to know one another. When that period wears off, whether it takes two months or three years, you will begin to see if you both have what it takes to make this relationship work for the long term. You may trade the butterflies of the unknown for a shared, beautiful history when you are in a long term relationship. With mutual commitment however, the feelings ebb and flow and the hard work that is demanded to maintain the relationship makes it all worthwhile.

If one of these essential components is missing from your relationship but you have mutual commitment than there is still hope. Seek a qualified counsellor to assist you with the other areas covered above. It is often a great tool to have an objective, qualified therapist who can reflect back and assist both of you in the process of navigating the road to long term commitment. It is my experience in counselling couples that no situation is hopeless if both people are willing to do the work necessary to make changes and work through the issues that arise in the relationship, even some of the seemingly large ‘deal breakers’. It is my wish that you all have beautiful, fulfilling and love filled relationships in your lives.

He said he was in a hurry, as he had an appointment at 9:00 am.

I took his vital signs and had him take a seat, knowing it would be over an hour before someone would be able to see him.

I saw him looking at his watch, and decided, since I was not busy with another patient, I would evaluate his wound.

On exam, it was well healed, so I talked to one of the doctors, got the needed supplies to remove his sutures and redress his wound.

While taking care of his wound, I asked him if he had another doctor’s appointment that morning, as he was in such a hurry.

The gentleman told me no, but he needed to go to the nursing home to eat breakfast with his wife.

I inquired about her health; he told me that she had been there for a while and that she was a victim of Alzheimer’s Disease.

As we talked, I asked if she would be upset if he was a bit late.

He replied that she no longer knew who he was, that she had not recognized him in five years now.

I was surprised, and asked him, “And you still go every morning, even though she doesn’t know who you are?”

He smiled as he patted my hand and said, ”She doesn’t know me, but I still know who she is.”

I had to hold back tears as he left. I had goose bumps on my arms and thought, “That is the kind of love I want in my life.”

True love is neither physical nor romantic.
True love is an acceptance of all that is, has been, will be, and will not be.

The happiest people don’t necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the best of everything they have.

Now I am a self-proclaimed material woman. I can slip into the role of a maid as casually as I can into the role of an urban woman. Therefore when I read that Naomi Campbell is all set to celebrate her 36th birthday (awww…. she doesn’t look 36) by throwing a 3-day, million dollar bash in Dubai, I felt my interest perking up. But as I read more I was disgusted to learn that she plans to hire all 18 floors of the seven star BURJ AL ARAB hotel. Do people actually have that kind of money?

Ok, I can understand an entire floor, but 18 floors for a birthday bash in a hotel where a simple lunch costs about 30 grand – what a waste of money and to think it’s being hosted by her multi-millionaire Dubai boyfriend.

As I was carrying on about that colossal waste of money for a birthday bash, my husband who was on his way out tapped me on my shoulder, ruffled my hair and said, “Darling that’s exactly what you did for your birthday last year. We took a bunch of friends out for dinner at a five star hotel and spent a disgusting amount.”

He smiled, “The difference is you did it according to your pocket and she is doing according to hers. Our driver who dropped us at that hotel must have thought it a terrible waste of money for a birthday bash.”

My better half then walked out in his usual serene manner. I just sat there a little wiser, thinking…. hmmmmmm.

Now you know why he is my better half.

Another day – another incident.
We were at a traffic signal when a vendor knocked on our window selling cleaning cloths for cars. I had just gotten around to bargaining for a lower price when my husband took out 20 rupees and bought the two cleaning cloths for the asking price. I was really mad at him because they were clearly overpriced. As we passed the traffic signal, he apologized to me and offered to take me for coffee.

As he sipped his coffee he patiently explained, “How much you would have saved by bargaining with him – 5 rupees? Now let’s look at bigger picture. I know he was overcharging us but did you notice that at that traffic signal he was the only one selling and not begging? He could have easily knocked on our window and begged for alms but he didn’t.”

My better half continued to explain, “He is self employed and by paying him that extra 5 rupees, I tried to encourage him to keep on working and not resort to begging.”

I retorted, “But if I keep on encouraging people by paying them what they ask for, it will have financial implications on us right?”

He agreed with me but added, “But then let’s use our bargaining power and save money where we should. It is evening and as he said he had not even one item since morning so by bargaining for five dollars you were taking away his profit for the entire day.”

With his characteristic patient voice he continued, “It’s just 5 Rupees. You will throw that coin in some corner of your purse and forget about it, but think about the implications it will have for him.”

It set me thinking again. Hmmmm…. I was about to bargain away his profit for the entire day, which may or may not be true, but it sure made me think a little deeper about my over-zealous foray into frugality.

He ended the conversation by telling me, “I am not asking you to change your attitude, just to amend it bit. Don’t bargain for 10 or 20 or 50 bucks. People who earn that much profit operate at a small level and they need encouragement. How about you use your verbal skills for saving us hundreds or thousands of rupees ?”

Now here I am a wiser woman for having had that experience with him.

So again you know why he is my better 1/2.

What constitutes nagging and scornful exhibition has not been documented yet. From the comic strip, it would seem that everything said or hinted in contradiction constitutes a scornful act which is absolutely unacceptable. In this comic strip the sentence “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” was being elaborated. The fuming woman was serving dinner and telling her husband –“After a whole day at my job I come back and bake you these potatoes. Saying no thank you will NOT DO!” The news item was more specific. The man had become so fed up by the nagging of his wife that he put her up for sale; we are to believe that they were newly weds too. And wonder of wonders, there were buyers ready too. The wife on her side had a simple explanation: “I don’t think I nag him. He just doesn’t do what I want him to”.

What a quandary this is. We all know what others are going through in marriages and we have all made efforts to find mates. The best that can be said about it all is that the chase is more interesting than the catch. I don’t know about the others because arranged marriages cut out the chase and fun and the joint family dampens the spirit. Yet this very dampening keeps the joy of finding your girl alone for yourself for a moment is akin to the chase which goes on and on so I believe the charm lasts longer.

In my case I was living alone in a place like Delhi, leading a very unusual life of a teacher of French at the YWCA. So romantic escapades were no problem and I was spoilt for choice. It just happened that I found books more interesting with my music system softly playing Mozart or Bhimsen Joshi.  Many of my attempts at wooing were more in the nature of experiments to see if I had in me to turn on the lights in a woman’s eyes. With my mobike I suppose I was a very attractive proposal because once or twice I had to worry more of shaking of pursuers rather than the opposite. But one thing is sure; it was not long before the nagging would start. And usually they left me because as some of them said – “they did not feel needed” or as I translated it “they could not overpower or control me.”
 
I remember one of my aunts wanting to pair me off with a certain young lady. I avoided the subject for many months. It soon became clear that I would have to forego entry to my aunt’s if I did not pay heed so I agreed to meet the young lady hoping that I would put her off and that would be that. I promised to take the lady out on a summer evening. It was 42 degree C (around 110 F) and I was a little fatigued so I was a little quiet. I was hoping to sit in a garden restaurant, order a cold coffee and then get down to a conversation. It is not easy to have a conversation on a mobike anyway and I was wearing a helmet. By the time we reached the restaurant the lady had already taken to the notion that she had been scorned and the first sentence she uttered was “You are avoiding talking to me and I don’t like it.” I began wishing being home alone in my flat and with my usual company of books and music.

The next two tries were also absolute failures. In the first case this was an arranged meeting. I found the young lady quite nice and nearly said yes. But in the next 24 hours, I panicked and said no. In the second try it was a chase and win situation. I asked the question and she said yes but then in the next 24 hours she panicked and went back on her words. There were other meetings, agreements and more meetings. But somehow or other I always ended up irritating the young ladies and even after saying yes, they would go back on their answer later. Honestly I must say there were moments where I felt more relieved than sad.

Jokes apart, there is a kernel of truth in the above pleasantries. Women are designed to be appreciated; she is to be appreciated and be seen as the centre of your little universe and forget the rest as crap. She is never wrong or at fault. Get this in your puny head. Any time you fail to give signs of unfailing praise, you have legally and literally scorned her. And that brings down the axe with all its dangerous aftermath. In a pique they may really even leave you so beware. But normally they are more pragmatic than that. They stay and keep you grovelling and making it clear what position you enjoy in the equation. You can run away but where will you go?

Instead of trying to eradicate conflict all together (which would probably be impossible), you should instead focus on how to recognise its presence, and deal with it.

Here are some Vedantic Tips on how to deal with parent-child conflicts in the best way possible.

Keep Cool

In his book, Parenting, Swami Tejomayananda of the Chinmaya Mission writes, “the first thing that is required when you face any problems – not only related to parenting- is that you have to keep cool.”

Emotions tend to naturally blow things out of proportions during a fight, thus it’s important to be reasonable and logical by separating your emotions from the problem. Acting on emotions will only destroy rational thinking and cloud your logic. As the cliché goes, “Don’t go down with the dogs. Otherwise, you’ll get fleas”.

Not Unique

Once you are relaxed and have taken charge of your emotions, Swami Tejomayananda then advices parents to recognise that whatever problems they are facing, it’s probably not unique and definitely not new.

In the Puranas, it is written that the divine sage Narada Muni came down from the Heavens to Earth and realised that every one around him was unrighteousness. People were misbehaving, and kids were out of control. He was so worried that he went to Bhrama, the Hindu God of Creation, and asked, “What will happen to these people? Can you tell me something?”

This story just serves to highlight that whatever is happening to the youth and kids of today, happened years ago during the times of Narada too!

Remember your own Childhood

As parents it’s sometimes easy to forget the follies of our own youth. There’s probably no one in this world who wasn’t at least a tad rebellious growing up. It might have been at the mental level, or verbally or even physically. But all of us at some point have rebelled. Never forget that.

Know the Root Cause

As with an illness, knowing what caused the problem is better than just finding the cure for the symptoms. Find out what triggered the conflict to better address the problem. Otherwise, you may find yourself dealing with the same issue over and over again.

Positive Thoughts

The power of positive thinking can help you deal with conflicts too. Think happy thoughts and good things are bound to happen. Wallow in misery, and you’ll get just that.

A person’s attitude will actually rule his response to situations. Learn to find comedy in the situation. Hold on to your sense of humour, and you’ll soon realise that things weren’t that bad after all.

Eliminate your Ego

Instead of locking heads, swallow your pride and allow everyone to come up with the best solution to the conflict. If several people are working to end the problem, there will be more solutions available. Forget who’s to blame. Instead, initiate fixing the problem and accept ownership of the resolution.

Conflicts do not really have to give rise to a winner or a loser. Sometimes, a battle of wills is a good opportunity to air grievances and ultimately better a situation or relationship. Often, the right decision entails everyone to sacrifice a little.

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This article has been contributed by our friends at The Asian Parent. Visit them for more articles and resources on parenting at www.theasianparent.com.

This quote popped out to me like a shot. And it put into beautiful words something that I was trying to understand. Everything became clear in a flash. Edward R Murrow says: Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.

That doesn’t leave much doubt, does it? This is how I have been feeling and interpreting my experience; here is somebody who not only agrees with me but he has put the same into such lucid words. I can see my entire experiences reflected in this one sentence. The irony in this observation is that no one will agree that they are being difficult just to prove that they are also somebody. From an exterior angle most behaviours and utterances can easily be interpreted in many different hues.  Is there a deciding parameter to justify who is being difficult and who is being critical, diffident or nice? No and there is no point going into it.

The truth is always way above and out of the realm of arguments. If a state of argument exists then the first principle that it is not the truth is already at work. So instead of arguments many people use the vehicle of incrimination to keep the others offguard. There is not only an element of purposeful insincerity but also a malevolent intent. It is bullying in the most gentlemanly manner. They keep on throwing verbal stones of accusations and leave you only two options:  either you start a long diatribe of explanations which in turn get ripped and require more self-deprecating explanations thereby binding you in an unending jam or you show indignation and try to out shout/argue the other guy down. Either way you have lost because the oppressor has got you where he wanted you. If you try to hurt him back the bully then gets physically violent or threatens to and this sword is allowed to dangle over your head in practically a permanent state. Eventually as you are not made in the same insensitive mould your first instinct is to avoid all contacts and save yourself from irritating situations. But the sword is always dangling.

Talking theoretically may seem as if all is said and explained but my opinion is that until a point is illustrated, there is always a margin for impulsive and lax interpretations of a statement. As it is the words can convey only limited notions. The feeling and the 3D drama is fully lost in the telling. Still one thing can be said without much margin of error in interpretation that people do use a nose-up in the air style and keep others in perennial state of terror as to what barb is coming next. They are clever enough to translate every question or remark of yours into a perceived insult and then use it to pour invectives down on you; with a full bag of righteous justification for it.

This is a subject on which few can go one-up on me. I have a mother who is an expert at it. She has cultivated it to an art form. The regular show of this style can be seen on Indian TV Serials. My mother saw it in real life from her brothers as a lively young daughter of a rather important zamindar. She hasn’t forgotten it and lets no one else do so either. Her attitude has been steadily bolstered by the regular feed of this characterisation for the last 60 years in our movies. Then to add to my discomfort, now I have a first floor neighbour who along with his wife has made it into a duo act of some refinement.

I have an aunt who is a backbiter and congenital liar. Life forced me to go and live with her for a while. Even though it was a very long time ago I have still not gotten over it. In a few months my reputation as a rogue was making headlines in the family. Oh I admit I am a bit of a rascal and this is plainly shown by my irreverent attitude of arguing with my elders and questioning them at every command. Then I had this inspiration. In the midst of my whole family one day I used her own style of being offended and announced to the whole gathering that from that day onwards I was dead for her and there will be no further contact between us. That stumped her and since then I have known peace.

Falling back on my experience, I used the same trick on my neighbour. Now for two years I have refused to respond to him and I don’t say anything to him. I just do what I have to do. No discussions. He is now trapped in his own drama. If he cusses me, he will be seen as the attacker. And as far as possible I avoid him like the plague; even to the extent that I avoid “seeing” him so this does away for any need to even say good morning. Things are nice and cool for the time being.

For the whole of my life I have tried to come close to my mother but on my 60th birthday my patience snapped. I saw clearly that by showing her that I needed her, I have only allowed her to use my affections for her self-aggrandisement; I am a mere prop to her self-importance so I have let more than a little coolness & distance come between us. I never say anything to her so she cannot be offended and if what she is saying looks like fault-finding I don’t let her say it and stop her in mid-sentence. I have peace of mind and I am content. I do my thing; she does hers.

The trait of accusing and keeping a front of being offended is very common in the Indian character. But I can safely say even though it is generally the rule as all are in the same boat nobody has recognized it for the nagging negativity it brings into our way of thinking & behaviour. Without realizing it we are all unhappy, a little disturbed and irritated at any given times. How did this trait become so dominant in our ethos, I wonder?

I have today picked up some gems from a journal where the writer is trying to help his readers to enhance their potential. Every word he says is right but useless too.

See what a brainy young man, who has just joined the workforce, has to say in response to the advice/suggestion/feedback/exhortaion:

Suggestion: COMMUNICATE WELL.

Response: Well what makes you say I do not communicate well to begin with? In school and college I used to even be appreciated for my language and clarity of communication. I was winning debates. I am very confident that my language is good and my grammar correct. Everyone I know in my family and friends said so. What more is needed?  Then you say “Be persuasive”. What do you mean? Am I not good at getting things done? Very few people refuse me what I want. I have a string of happy clients to prove it. You say; try and adopt effective communication skills. Whatever are they and have I not explained my point already?

Suggestion: THINK THREE STEPS AHEAD.

Response: Do you think I am a seer? How do I see ahead? Everything in life is a team effort and most people just don’t put in their 100%. If things are not turning out well, am I solely to blame? OK I know that I must take this into calculations but that I already do. That is as much as I know about the game. Then, where is the problem? And if you feel I do not calculate the exigencies well then let me ask you, have you taught us what is what in this game?

Suggestion: KEEP IT SIMPLE AND SHORT.

Response: Have you tried the technique yourself? What interest do I have in talking on and on to explain my point? We are all at work, doing our jobs. The others are supposed to know what they are doing and they are equally responsible. The problem is that they never do. They know that after all it is my baby and the axe will not fall on their heads. Tell me of one person who would know how to get an ounce of seriousness into these guys. Even after crossing the Ts for them, they go and do the very thing they were told to guard against. I assume you have never tried to sell anything with a sales target quota dangling on your head?

Suggestion: STAY IN HIGH SPIRITS

Response: Frankly I miss the point entirely. With all these untrained lumber loaders around my neck putting spoke in my wheels at every stage of life it is easy to say. There is a saying: The advisors don’t have to pay for it. First I am needed to delegate, then supervise and finally end up redoing it all by myself again. At work it is a madhouse and home is no place to relax and you ask me to stay in high spirits. Have you ever worked in a team which was not of your choosing; where you have all the responsibility but no authority?

Suggestion: ADOPT A FRESH APPROACH.

Response: Shall I fire the team and get a new one? Change my job? Or do you mean I am incompetent? If I were not certain of my methods would I be following them? Why would anyone think this is purposeful advice? Where were these teachers when we were at school and they were appointed for shaping us for life? These people who now want us to change are the ones who taught us earlier or of the same ilk. Then they would not hear a word we had to say. Discussions were discouraged and insistence was taken as argument and opposition. Now when we have been certified as ready for managing our lives and the affairs of men, we are told to forget our old self and recreate into another image. For them it is mere words but have they tried to improve themselves?

Suggestion: BUILD A TEAM.

Response: I knew you would be coming to this eventually. How much choice do I have in life? Did I choose my parents, family, friends, schools, teachers then what makes you think I have any choice about the boss or the team I have? It is so easy to string a few words that mean nothing. It only shows that you have read a few books and become a trainer but with little experience of life. Get your nose to the grinding wheel and let’s meet again in a few years.

And so on and so forth.

I have yet to meet a person who would listen and admit that he has room for improvement. Just to impress the boss and the entourage they may often make a show of humility by saying yes they have faults with a lot of room for improvement. But it is all a sham. They know what they are. They are quite impressed by their selves. The world likes to find fault and criticize. That is the way of the world and best forgotten or ignored for the good of their mental health.

What sounds good and virtuous is left best alone as wonderful words on paper that will go nowhere and take nobody anywhere.

For years, unshaved, un-moisturised, grubbiness and such were sexy on a man. We all remember those famous booze or cigarette commercials that we would catch while on holiday in another country. Guy with a 5 o’clock shadow walks into bar, wearing dirty jeans and a leather jacket, moves stealthily to the barman and demands a drink but due to his ruggedness, by some strange equation, he deserves the best drink in the house. As he gulps down the beer and then wipes his mouth on his sleeve, we couldn’t help but crave for him. There was just something about the griminess that made him irresistible.

As we are reaching a decade into the 21st Century, more men are becoming self-conscious which to us women, can either work for us or against us. I mean, walking into a reception with a guy who takes pride in himself and has spent a barrel of cash to make himself look and smell good is certainly a delicious thought. However, this also means, you, my dear woman, are going to be spending time battling with him for bathroom time, slips on Saturdays to the salon and more! But then again, when you look at the final product, standing there with perfectly styled hair, the scent of Hugo Boss’s aftershave surrounding him like a shield, nails trimmed and cleaned…Salivating aren’t you?

TheAsianParent decided to go a little eye-candy hunting (with no complains!) and pick out our favourite famous metrosexual dads!

Nicholas Tse

Nick Tse, Hong Kong’s very own sweetheart, made hearts beat faster when he was single but now being the father of a one-year-old; he is equally as hot with his personal grooming skills beginning to look top notch. Giving most dads not only in Asia but almost globally, a run for their money, Tse is the epitome of hotness!

Brad Pitt

Brad Pitt may be in the middle of his fourth decade but he still sets tongues wagging. A father to 6 young ‘uns, Pitt and his ever changing hair colour keeps women, young and old, at the edge of their seat with the wonderful way he embraces his crisis-less midlife. Still the face of many endorsements, Pitt blends in fatherhood well with up keeping himself. Pitt shows that being metrosexual does not necessarily mean being effeminate but it means loving yourself and taking an interest in your appearance.

Hrithik Roshan

The world sat up and took notice of a bollywood hunk guy frolicking on the beach with the most romantic eyes back around 1999. Hrithik needs no introduction, having a famous father who directs and an uncle who does movie scores. Now a father of two, Hrithik still looks every inch the goodness he did when he first entered the big screen, almost a decade ago.

Keith Urban

The appearance of country music has certainly improved with Keith Urban popping up as the new age metrosexual cowboy. His rugged good looks combined with his own style, gives him the lead in winning over non-country music fans! His signature haircut, the long layered cut, has certainly been the talk of the town for a while now and though it gives him the unkempt look at times, it has certainly been a style that has been followed by men, worldwide!

David Beckham

How could an article on metrosexual dads be complete without the poster boy for the metrosexual guy? We decided to keep him last ‘cause by now you’re probably cursing for not reading his name! Anyway, Becks, famous for having his soccer skills, is probably even more popular for his ability to look good in any hairstyle, clothes – Becks even wore a sarong, at one point, for crying out loud, and still looked better than certain women I’ve seen parading in them. Never one to shy away from anything in the name of fashion, Becks is the essence of metrosexuality! The father of 3 active little boys under the age of 12 and a possessor of a physique that would put any single guy to shame, Becks has and will continue to dominate numero uno on the list for the top metrosexual guys!

The metrosexual guy is a fella who can walk bravely into the make-up department of any shopping centre and ask advice on a new cleanser. He can help to accessorise for his gal-pals while totally feeling secure as he talks to his girlfriend about it. The homosexual manual of looking good has been stolen by the metrosexual and he copies everything while remaining very much a heterosexual.

As gay guys begin to compete with the new urban metrosexual man, we women cannot sit back and relax ether. Ladies! If you’re with a guy who keeps himself up-to-date with fashion, etc. then it’s time you get out there and do something. In a world that is still coming to grips with gay men; spot a guy with black pants, black shirt, a brown belt, hair styled to the nines? You might just be looking at a straight guy who is a father to three moppets who just happens to take extremely good care in his personal grooming!

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This article has been contributed by our friends at The Asian Parent. Visit them for more articles and resources on parenting at www.theasianparent.com.

Here is a list of different types of disagreements and strategies to overcome them. I hope it will prove to be useful when next time you meet a disagreement.

1- Factual disagreement is caused by the lack of knowledge or wrong knowledge. With the presentation of facts, it is easily resolved.    

2- Referential disagreement is the one where disagreement emerges because of the different angles from which one approaches a fact. Both the parties agree with the fact but their different points of reference create the difference. To sort out such disagreements we need to acknowledge the fact and it’s different points of reference. If any one party is not ready to even acknowledge this, it is difficult to resolve.

3- Some disagreements occur because one party is seeing the whole picture and other is considering a part of it. Here the matter is not resolved until the party that sees a part of the truth realizes and accepts the comprehensive approach.
 
4- Disagreement which is caused by misunderstanding or misinterpretation of words or statements is easy to resolve but difficult to spot. This type of disagreement can be generated by both reader and writer. Either writer has not stated clearly or reader has not understood completely, but, in both conditions, it gives rise to dispute. To settle this kind of dispute we need to locate clearly which term or phrase is ambiguous and define it.

5- There are some differences which occur because of the difference in individual experiences. My experience of a relation might be very different from others’. The human reason is guided by rationality but it is mostly influenced by its own experiences. If I conceptualize a relation by my personal experience of it, it may result in different conception than yours. So, this kind of disagreement is not easy to resolve because there is no great evidence of a truth for us than our own experience. Here experience is not outer influences only but includes our inner experiences as well. The same phenomenon can be realized in different manners by different people. No arguments can resolve this kind of disagreement except either another realization which proves our experience otherwise or acknowledging and understanding the fact that it is one’s experience which has given birth to some particular conception.

6- Attitudinal disagreement is the one which appears by your attitude about a subject. One can indulge in an argument with a positive or negative attitude. One can initiate an argument with the purpose of more clarification and understanding of the truth. Healthy attitude leads to healthy discussion. But if one is already prejudiced negatively, anything even positively stated about it will appear as disagreeable only. With this negative approach no fruitful discussion ensues. This type of disagreement has deep roots in the attitude itself and without reaching to those depths there is no point in indulging oneself to sort out the matter of discussion.

7- Sentimental or emotional disagreement is about the way you feel regarding something. All arguments are useless if there is emotional disagreement. The most one can do is to approach the reason of particular emotion and talk about it.

8- Then there is disagreement which is deliberately created with intentions such as creating a fuss or bothering others or winning over etc. It has psychological reasons inherent in the person who shows disagreement. In this type, the discussion about subject itself is in vain. The strategy should be to attend the psychological cause which gave rise to hostile disposition if it is worth attended to.

Oh snap out of it, you’re not living in a 5 million dollars penthouse in Manhattan. This is a $400,000 four bedroom apartment you’re spending the rest of your boring married lives paying off, so you might as well be realistic. And that means a taboo subject among a section of Singaporeans who swear by this: no maids at home.

That’s right, save that money, deal with it, and watch as you work up a sweat. Stay fit, buy something nice with the extra money you’ve put aside and perhaps, just perhaps, tell yourself those morons in Manhattan don’t know what they’re doing.

I’ll be first to admit, I’m not the biggest fan of housework. Seriously, after busting my ass off for the entire week, subjecting my sanity to the boss’s whim and fancy and coming home to a tired wife who ate the last piece of chicken drumstick, there are better things to do in your weekends.

If I could have it my way, I’d change the sheets only twice a year and floor mopping would be an annual event. I love cooking, doing the dishes and the laundry, but when the ironing signal goes bright red I suffer a sudden case of rigor mortis. And just recently neighbours spied me being dragged kicking and screaming to dust and wipe windows. It wasn’t the most comfortable exchange of words when we ran into each other in the local park several days later.

Men are catching on to it

However, not all is doom and gloom. A recent study conducted by the University of Queensland found that men are slowly improving and the evidence is in the hours devoted to housework. While men were kicking it back and taking it easy in 1986, spending just 12 hours a week doing housework, men in 2005 were spending up to 16 hours helping the missus.

Plenty of fathers out there do a great job and love to do nothing but cook and clean. It’s strange to think that there aren’t more men out there who don’t have an ingrained hatred for domestic chore.

Sex life improves

But wait, there’s more! If men are still struggling with the concept of picking up the vacuum cleaner and following it up with a wet mop, here’s a kicker – doing dull chores improves your sex life!

Believe it or not, when men do more of the housework, women’s perceptions of fairness and marital satisfaction rise and the couple experience less marital conflict. For the thick ones out there, this effectively means the more chores men perform at home, the happier the women are.

Many women report greater feelings of sexual interest and affection for husbands who participate in housework, which correlates with how both parties feel when they make a successful effort to divide the chores evenly. Inequalities in housework and childcare have profound consequences for the marital satisfaction of women, which in turn affects the quality of the marriage for the man as well.

Health benefits

A study published recently in British Journal of Sports Medicine suggested as little as 20 minutes of physical activity a week improves mental and physical health, although the greater the activity, the more benefit.

Physical activity and exercise isn’t always the same thing, the study’s authors said. Physical activity includes cleaning, housework and walking up the stairs.

If putting on excess weight over this festive period continues to haunt you till Christmas 2009, you know you’re better off being more active. Well instead of strapping on your runners and having delusions of grandeur of running the four minute mile, why don’t you hook up your vacuum cleaner and go nuts with the floor?! An hour’s worth of vacuuming consumes 150 calories; now that’s as much as performing a slow jog for 20 minutes. I vouch for this myself, as I run 3km a day, four times a week and vacuum once a week. It’s nice to know I’m able to burn over 800 calories a week. Which means I can afford to pig out on that extra bag of potato crisps.

If you’re still not convinced, then I suggest you keep at what you’re doing while I admire my beautiful physique and sex life, marvelling at what I’ve accomplished with what little effort I’ve put in.
–
This article has been contributed by our friends at The Asian Parent. Visit them for more articles and resources on parenting at www.theasianparent.com.

But things went further. My wife was more than just vexed and showed it. She called me psychologically unhinged and rued the day she hitched her star to mine and so on so forth. This was not simply getting annoyed and angry. I felt there was something else behind it. Again for the umpteenth time I noticed that this became an excuse for my wife to assert her independence as an individual and separate entity.

This will require some preamble explaining as to what I am getting to. I have had this thought floating for many years that though we want closeness, hunt for affectionate relationships and love affairs yet do not really ever open the doors to our whole selves. My education in an ashram made me sensitive to this issue early on but I have begun to understand it only lately after marriage and having to live with my mother after my father’s death.

I recognize this fact because I could sense it in me. So I made it a point to study myself and others more closely. It is obvious that what we consider to be our ‘self’ is a very egocentric persona and not very stable at that. Every time closeness would develop in a relationship I would get a funny, not-so-comfortable apprehension that by merging my self in the relationship I would lose my entity as a person. It was like an undercurrent of unexplained discomfort and I would then do some thing stupid that would ensure that the relationship did not cross a fine point and most often would then fade away.

This experience is explained in many philosophical and meditative techniques. Just imagine letting ourselves go and becoming one with the universe; will our ‘self’ still exist? But it is a fact that when we let our selfish selves go we do feel a release and a friendlier atmosphere builds up around us. But this is not an easy thing to experience or bring into being by mere thinking and wanting. A certain amount of self-transformation is required. Even people who go for it consciously through meditative and yoga techniques tend to falter at the crucial moment. So if my wife gets scared whenever a “closeness” begins to develop, I am not surprised. This is a very unconscious happening. Few would agree to it and would never admit to going through it. But the subconscious has many tricks hidden at its core. The newer generation is showing it more openly; laced with gadgetry they feel secure in their aloneness, even a bit superior, fully confident that they can manage perfectly by their lone selves as if enclosed in a block of ice.

I have seen this happening mainly with mentally advanced, city bred people, especially if they have the good luck to have succeeded by the material world’s standards and their egos have had the pleasure of getting inordinately inflated. These people are difficult at the best of times but transform into veritable hissing anacondas if crossed. Every little irritation is magnified into a show of opposition as if attacked then logically merits an exemplary retort and retaliation. In this mood every word uttered or gesture is calculated to cause grievous hurt. Often pots and pans fly.

I have seen that whenever they feel that they have been wronged and this happens ever so often, scorned women will bring out the “cat-o-nine-tails” and thrash you nice and proper. It is a good exercise to make you grovel and remind you of your place in the equation. You can forget peace, quiet and affectionate hugs. It is a grace that they don’t run away with another man there and then. When my wife is in this mood, all I wish to do is pick up my ‘kamandal’ and run for a cave in the hills and embrace monkhood. Had it not been for my daughter, I would have even done it in a fit of pique.

When I started writing this my father was in the ICU, but has now passed away. I spent many hours alone with him inside that ICU and am putting down thoughts, more like realizations & questions that went inside my mind during that time.

Initially I felt uneasy as I had not spent so much time with him for a long time now even if he was mostly sedated in this state. I had come back to my hometown to be with my parents in their older age. If time permitted we used to talk about my children and other things pertaining to family and general issues. But a lot of time together was spent with me on my mobile or doing my work, i.e. without any proper interaction.

My memory took me back to my much younger days. I remembered once when I was about 6, my father had gone on an overnight tour and I just forgot all about it. I had sketched a picture of a car the way he had taught me and in the evening I started waiting for him outside home at his usual time of arrival from office. Then the wait grew longer as he wouldn’t show up, so I went in and asked ma why dad was not coming and she told me that he was on tour and would only come next day. And my world went totally blank and how I had hated him for not being there in one of my moments of triumph which was his very gift.

Another instance that is strongly etched was when he was dropping us at the railway station for graqndpa’s place to spend summer holidays. As we were saying our goodbyes I started to have this empty feeling about why pa was not accompanying us. My little mind got into its own mature thought process that dad does so much for us and when it came to holidaying he was not a part of it as he can’t get that long a leave. The situation just got to me and I just got into a sulky mood with tears filling my eyes as the train left the station.

I had wanted to share all good moments with dad while young. I wonder when and what happened that a free spirited communication was lost between us as I grew older. Was it his perspectives on what and how I wanted to do things that held me back or is it how I took it?

In the calm of ICU I could recall how he would race his ‘Lambretta’ scooter and later ‘Priya’ scooter to a high speed just for me with me standing in the front as the gushes of air hit me and moisten my eyes. The pride I feel in saying that I have been driving since I was in 4th standard was again instilled by him by letting me hold the steering wheel of his official jeep while I sat in his lap as he parked it inside the garage.

Why were these moments hitting me so hard now when they were inside me always? Isn’t this what all parents are supposed to do? Give their all to their children today in bringing them up and feeling the unsaid fulfilment with a complete detachment from tomorrow. Small things like dressing them up for school, being present at the important events, guiding and pulling them out of negativity in case of failures, being close, feeling and loving while in pain due to cuts and bruises from falling off the bicycle or a little fever are numerous such events that are forgotten so easily.

I still remember the way he would take me in his arms and keep me close to his heart. In ICU while supporting him to sit straight to take a burp or while sponging his body or while I held his hand during his wheezing, I wondered when and why did we get in to an unsaid agreement not to touch each other the way we used to. I felt a new thrill and completeness in being this close to him and didn’t want to miss a single opportunity of holding him.

I started getting perturbed and frustrated on losing so much time while he was well and taking him for granted. By my side was the man who had been my Hero in various ways and given me all his love and attention. I was not thinking about how I would ever repay him as I knew I have to pass it on to my children. But I was thinking if I’ll get a chance to thank him and will I ever be able to thank him enough for everything he’s done. I knew this is my chance to give back a small part of it and thank God for that.

Becoming a “real” dad was a combination of slow and natural process of “awakening” and conscious self-reminding, self-training, or self-conditioning that I am already a father and I have to change my ways. Not all of them are pleasant, or voluntary, I’m telling you.

Here are 5 of what I think were manifestations of my natural process of “awakening” and other changes:

I started to notice other people’s children.

Before, kids were nothing but pesky little critters that literally litter the grounds during family gatherings. In a way, I was annoyed by little children. They are rowdy, noisy, and uncontrollable; and they can even pester you with the most nonsensical questions. What’s worse is you are forced to answer them because their parents are looking, smiling proudly and are also waiting (encouraging) for you to answer their pesky little child’s silly questions.

Now that I’m a dad, I noticed that I no longer mind little kids running around and bumping me while I talk to someone. In fact, I am beginning to really “see” them that I even watch them while they play. I also get to be the one calling them and asking them “silly questions” like, “Hi. What’s your name?” and “How old are you?”
Before, my eyes would roll whenever I hear someone engage a kid in an insanely inane conversation like that.

I started to think about the future.

Before, I take pride in being a carefree devil-may-care person. I take this bravado as a sign of confidence and superiority. Before, I believed that being cautious and constantly thinking about the future are signs of insecurity and weakness. Before, whenever my friends and I would go on long weekend trips on our motorcycles, I drove the fastest, I raced against strangers on the highway by taunting them, and I chose the most difficult terrains in farms and mountains.

Now that I’m a dad, I noticed that my usual bravado has somewhat tamed. I just realized that I was irresponsible when I thought I was brave. My friends would tease me that I have gone soft, and I would just tell them I want to see my son grow.

The truth is, the scariest thought for me now is not being able to be there for my children whenever they would need me. I have learned to value my life and my health now.

I started to watch what I say and what I do.

Before, I was what you might call a selfish self-centered oaf who couldn’t care less if I would hurt or offend anyone as long as I get or say what I want. It’s not that I am insensitive or callous, it’s just that sometimes a man could be carried away by the moment he is in. I could be loud and I could curse whenever I’m watching my favourite ballgame on TV. I could be loud and I could curse whenever I’m mad with somebody.
Now, that I’m a dad, you better watch your mouth when you’re in my house, especially if my kids are around. Strictly no cursing! This is especially true if the wife is around. She’d kill us both before you know it.

Seriously speaking, I could be very expressive and I could blow my top whenever the wife and I have a disagreement. However, I noticed that since our small kids started sprouting inside the house, I find out that I hardly raise my voice anymore. It terrifies me to think that my kids will be terrified by loud quarrels.

In fact, the wife and I are thankful for the discovery that we haven’t been having shouting matches since our first child.

I started to become more money savvy.

Before our first child, my wife and I spent a lot on non-essentials. This seemed natural because it was just the two of us, and both of us are earning from our respective jobs. We spent a lot because we thought we could always earn again.
Now that I am a dad, the responsibility of parenthood is just too huge to risk winging it without any form of financial savings. The responsibility of parenthood made me and my wife cut back on unnecessary expenses.

Looking back to our childless days, I realised that no matter how big anyone earns, it would always be insufficient if one doesn’t save.

I started seenig life with a purpose 

It’s not that I haven’t been going around without a purpose. It’s just that I am seeing life now with a better purpose. I became more grounded. I came to realize the importance of values, the beauty of kindness, and the immeasurable joy of giving someone an unselfish, boundless, and unconditional love.

Now that I am a dad, i look at my parents differently: I love them more. Now that I am a dad, I see my fellowmen (particularly my fellow parents) differently. Having undergone what they have gone through or are still undergoing, I feel more empathy and a sense of oneness with them.

I have matured. Being a dad has made me a better person.

–

This article has been contributed by our friends at The Asian Parent. Visit them for more articles and resources on parenting.

If you have to demand it, is it really worth receiving? Forced apologies are kind of like nice plastic. Shiny, maybe even useful, but ultimately, just trash.

For a long time, I wanted an official kind of apology from my husband for some jerk-like tendencies he was trying out on me. It was pretty typical Mars/Venus stuff. I wanted a demonstration of groveling to make things all right and copacetic. Which, of course, made me the total jerk.

A friend said to me, “Is it really necessary that he says he’s sorry?” Hmmm…I had to think about that one. If my priority was groovy-hot-happy-love, then, well, I suppose lording the “you must apologize” flag over his head wasn’t going to get me what I really wanted. We were making strides, even without the fanfare of a big I’m sorry. I let it go. It was a big shifter for us.

How to apologize

1. Say it with your body: Arms uncrossed, looking someone in the eyes, leaning toward them. You are not there to protect yourself or get something in return. This is not about you. You are there to give – to give comfort, assurance, and some salve for the wound you may have inflicted. An apology is an offering.

2. Take full responsibility: Explain yourself very briefly, without being defensive or without taking up too much space: “I was under a lot of pressure and it screwed up my better judgment. Still, it’s no excuse.”

3. Express your remorse: It’s simple, “I feel awful.” “I didn’t sleep last night.”

4. Empathize: “I can only assume that you were hurt or confused. It must suck.”

5. Invite their response. This is where many apologies can go south, when the hurt person says, “Yah, you totally screwed up, you’re a goof, and your mother dresses you funny.” Naturally, you may want to sling it back or retract even your best laid mea culpa. But just take a deep breath. You may have to endure a few pot shots and some venting – that is part of reconciliation.

6. Commit to preventing it in the future. “From now on, I’ll include you in my decision making, I don’t want to have this happen again.”

7. Expect nothing in return. Apologizing and asking for forgiveness are two separate things. Apologizing is like leaving a gift on the doorstep and hoping it’s appreciated. Expecting to be forgiven is like asking someone to say thank you for the gift.

True apologies are freely given with no expectations of a return.

–

Danielle LaPorte founded www.whitehottruth.com, is lead author of the bestseller, Style Statement: Live By Your Own Design, and co-founder of www.carrieanddanielle.com. A former think tank exec, she helps entrepreneurs rock their careers with her signature Fire Starter Sessions. You can reach her at d@daniellelaporte.com.

This is a rich country but still we are required to call ourselves a developing nation. Our society has affluent culture and tradition. People are open & broad-minded. They are helpful and co-operative, yet we suffer from distress & miseries. It’s an unusual combination of contradictions.

Responsibilities, roles, duties, tasks at multiple places – all make this society a small world of involuntary actions and motorized living. Let us think for a while and count for how many relationships we give time genuinely. It is indeed sad to say that many of us have no time for most intimate relationships. We are too busy to talk and share.

Do reach out to people. Hug children around, get a gift for your spouse, meet parents to say you care…and blow horns to announce, “Let’s get together.” That’s sharing.

Truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience. Do reach out!

–

Dr. Pratima Jagadeesh is currently working as HR Manager at Orchesys IT Services, Bangalore. She handles personal and career counseling and runs workshops on personality development.  Her other interests are writing, poetry, music and painting.

My parents left for our native place on Thursday and we went to the airport to see them off. In fact, my father, who retired from Indian Government service, had never traveled by air before, so I just took this opportunity to make his experience wonderful. In spite of being asked to book tickets by train, I got them tickets on Jet Airways.

The moment I handed over the tickets to him, he was surprised to see that I had booked them by air. The excitement was very apparent on his face, waiting for the time of travel. Just like a schoolboy, he was preparing himself on that day. We all went to the airport together, right from using the trolley for his luggage, the baggage check-in and asking for a window seat and waiting restlessly for the security check-in to happen. He was thoroughly enjoying himself and I, too, was overcome with joy watching him experience all these things.

As they were about to go in for the security check-in, he walked up to me with tears in his eyes and thanked me. He became very emotional and it was not as if I had done something great, but the fact that this meant a great deal to him.

When he said thanks, I told him there was no need to thank me. But later, thinking about the entire incident, I looked back at my life.

As a child, how many dreams did our parents have that came true? Without understanding the financial situation, we, as children, asked for cricket bats, dresses, toys, outings, etc. Irrespective of their affordability, they catered to all our needs. Did we ever think about the sacrifices they had to make to accommodate many of our wishes? Did we ever say thanks for all that they have done for us? Same way today, when it comes to our children, we always think that we should put them in a good school. Regardless of the amount of donation, we will ensure that we will have to give the child the best: theme parks, toys, etc. But we tend to forget that our parents have sacrificed a lot for our sake to see us happy, so it is our responsibility to ensure that their dreams are realized and what they failed to see when they were young, it is our responsibility to ensure that they experience all those and their life is complete.

Many times, when my parents asked me some questions, I have actually answered back without patience. When my daughter asks me something, I have been very polite in answering. Now I realize how they must have felt at those moments. Let us realize that old age is a second childhood and just as we take care of our children, the same attention and same care needs to be given to our parents and elders.

Rather than my dad saying thank you to me, I would want to say I’m sorry for making him wait so long for this small dream. I do realize how much he has sacrificed for my sake and I will do my best to give the best possible attention to all their wishes. Just because they are old does not mean that they have to give up everything and keep sacrificing for their grandchildren also. They have wishes, too.

–

Venky is a delivery manager at MindTree Limited, having interests in team building, event management, employee engagement and training. An avid blogger too. “Riding the wave” best describes his approach towards life. Visit his website www.venkyb.com.

Janet assumes that Victor is angry with her or trying to avoid her. Janet feels neglected. So, in order to avoid feeling hurt or rejected, Janet decides to keep off from Victor. As a consequence of her decision, she does not invite Victor to her daughter’s birthday party. Victor now wonders why Janet, his favourite teammate, behaved aloof and invited everyone except him. So, Victor stops mailing her interesting forwards. And Janet is now convinced that Victor has her in his bad books.
 
Keith Clark, in his book, “The Skilled Participant – A Way to Effective Collaboration”, explains interpersonal hiccups in two stages, namely “first instance” and “second instance.”

Keith explains his interpersonal analysis with the help of a “Sometimes Useful Tool” as depicted in the diagram.

In the first instance something is perceived and interpreted on the basis of an assumption, which generates a feeling. Motivated by the feeling, one chooses a behaviour. Because of the mistake of assuming someone intended the perceiver to feel a certain way, the interaction moves to “second instance.”

In the “first instance” neither party meant what the other assumed or intended. In the “second instance” both parties wanted to do, what the other had assumed, he or she had intended in the first instance. A combination of incorrect assumptions and negative feelings leads to a wrong attitude.

A skilled participant, or an effective communicator, will identify his or her stage using the “Sometimes Useful Tool.” And a skilled participant solves problems at the “first instance” itself and does not move to “second instance”. So, the moment he/she reaches the feeling stage; they will ask questions, instead of moving to the decision phase.

So, in the example quoted, if Janet had been a skilled participant in the relationship, she would have asked Victor a few questions, the first time she felt hurt.

Janet: Victor, you seem to be avoiding me and chatting too much with your new team mate Kate. Old is gold. So, don’t you ignore me?

Victor: Hey Janet, Sorry. The whole of last week I was thinking about my son’s school admission and my mom’s illness. You are always my best friend. But why did madam not send invites for your family party?

Janet: Sorry Victor. I misunderstood you and was a bit angry with you. So I wanted to snub you. Please do come for my daughter’s birthday bash.

How pleasant the outcome is when we clarify our assumptions. So, be a skilled participant and use the tools of self-awareness, self-disclosure, and hearing or listening.

–

Anitha is an engineer with a masters in human resource management. She has conducted and been a part of syncronous and asynchronous training in technical and soft skills subjects. Her interests include reading, cooking, singing, and listening to music.

You single? Yes. It is a long story filled with suitcases and international travels, me moving Monday and no one able to follow my route, me longing for love but me refusing commitment without even realizing it. Until that spring day when I decided to start pondering about it, one of those inner mechanical reactions no one can predict nor stop.

While living in Brooklyn, in 2006, I was recommended by a friend to buy a highly inspirational book called Oneness. It was filled with concepts I have heard and thought about before but it was following a line I was scared to delve into at that precise moment…depth of ourselves. Who are you when you take off your skin and other layers? How can we love someone else and still remain who we are, without unrealistic or selfish expectations? Way too much for a person who was about to pack and leave the country – alone. Or better said – with my cat. No time nor willingness to take the risk of discovering that my bags of certainties were actually filled with doubts.

I finally left and flew all the way to Barcelona to find myself more miserable than ever. I was alone, job was anything but satisfying, my cat was giving signs of depression and my last fling was horribly gone before it even started. One night, early spring 2007, I was fixing some shelves in my bedroom and that big blue book fell on the floor face up.

I am Oneness, open me, it was whispering. And so I did.

Now I am not going to write an accurate review of the book and its content but there is one specific concept that deserves a special position among the lessons learnt I feel like sharing.

Detachment

Detachment is a state in which a person overcomes his or her attachment to desire for things, people or concepts of the world and thus attains a heightened perspective. (Wikipedia)

So far, so good. But what does it mean to put this state into practice for someone who is not Buddhist nor affiliated to Hinduism? How can a normal, average, western mind comprehend the real meaning of this concept and apply it to everyday life? That was a challenge, I must say. It took me almost two years to reach my partial goal and at once my perspective is plenty clear to be put into writing.

My lesson starts with what I learnt from Taoism that preaches the concept of “knowing when to stop and feel content.” The idea of it was so not in line with my personality that the real struggle was firstly represented by the search for a space within myself where that rule could fit. I had to learn when and where to stop and, in doubt, I stopped. Period.

I stood still and gave a profound look at things from the outside. Maybe meditation could help some to learn how to visualize themselves on emptiness. I chose a cloud to sit on while mind-mapping my life piece after piece. I recompiled a list of broken relationships, where my need for love was obfuscated by the – not so detached – right to own and claim. This is mine and if it is mine now, it must be forever. Forever is a word that applies to one part of ourselves and one only. Our soul, this is our only forever-friend and we’d better understand this first, in order to enable it to share part of its path with someone else.

Matter-of-chance loneliness was another key aspect of my journey. Due to my relocation to Spain, I found myself longing for Love and – funnily – abandoned several times in just a few months. Why? Is it me? What am I doing wrong? Unfortunately, it would take me much more than a ‘tickle’ to describe the bitter feelings I experienced, the constant disappointment I was going through. But I believe that one conclusion counts for all.

I was needy inside while seeking for help outside. Does it give the idea? The walk towards detachment and personal development was tough, I must admit. I had to recognize mistakes hard to swallow. I was the one who claimed without giving, said without listening, enjoyed without caring, planned without living….I think I received love without loving, sometimes, but this is still a hard one to be accepted.

And then Today comes. Today is that day when I wake up and go to the kitchen to make my bitter-sweet morning coffee, with one eye still closed, but I am on auto, stumbling into the supermarket calendar. One drop of hot coffee hits my naked foot and I almost curse: Valentine’s Day. All right. Fine.

For the first time in my life, I feel I have something to say about it beyond “Oh, how nice when people are happily in love…” or “Yes, I am single. Thank you.” On the contrary, 2009 is for me the year of true, unconditional, generous, pure love. So here we go with the positive outcome of my two-year exploration in the depth of loneliness and detachment.

One day, mid-June 2008, I woke up to find my eyes brighter than usual and my mind clearer than expected. There was a new me waiting along with dawn. What had happened? Was I finally ready to share? That magical day brought me to book a flight to Japan and that was an initial statement of freedom and true love towards myself. I deserved a reward and the pain was finally and unexpectedly gone.

It took me a long time to understand the power of the process I started and I had to fly several times across the planet to put things into perspective. Some might call it awakening and some others could point at me as a self-destructive person that seeks for non-justified pain through a series of never-ending questions. But the truth is that since that day in mid-June, things changed. I am still single, not completely able to relate in a committed way to others, but I have cured my heart and I now consider myself able to feel and live that detached love Oneness was talking about. It is the love I give to my friends daily, those tiny lines I send them to remind them I care and think and embrace them with an open soul. More time I devote to my family, learning to share with them my fears, opening my – and their – eyes on my weird truths and listening to theirs. It is the random encounter with strangers I might never see again, when my heart starts pulsing faster and I feel there is no room for rationality. It is the surprise when I am given the second chance to meet them. And it is the awareness. I am aware of the constructive power of positive thoughts (why not?), wishful and yet proactive. Those hints that come to you when you are not actually looking for them – and I am sure we have all experienced the “not looking, finally found” game. Like that one day, while you are sipping a fruity drink on the other side of the world and someone smiles at you and you wonder why. Maybe it is your soul that smiled at him in the first place, showing its beauty in the nakedness of purity. If you know what I am talking about, than maybe you can enjoy a ride on your cloud, see things as birds do. The map of yourself might not be too tragic, after all!

I have never felt this loved before. My surroundings are filled with people that care for me and I do feel it every single day, along with the first ray of sun hitting my face – and my cat asking for breakfast.

This is a short and positive message to all of you, on a day mostly seen as negative by those that are still exploring the field in search for their half apple. Love, just like every other feeling, is a state, but a state of soul. Learning how to treat and feed it while educating our mind to stick to the principles of simplicity and detachment will lead us to that field where half apples grow wild. That will be the day when you stop exploring the world and turn in to yourself.

And no apple has ever been juicier.

Manifest plainness,
Embrace simplicity,
Reduce selfishness,
Have few desires.

Lao-tzu (604 BC – 531 BC)

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Arianna lives with her cat, Nietzsche, and some friends in sunny Barcelona. She considers herself a wannabe writer in spite of her moody relationship with her unpublished novel. Life brought her to live in New York, Barcelona and who knows what is next.

In our society we seem to need an excuse to tell people how we feel about them, or show them with tokens of our affection. At Christmas, we exchange gifts and take time away from our busy schedules to be with the people who really matter in our lives. On Valentine’s day we are presented with yet another opportunity to open our hearts and share our souls. The marketplace makes it very easy for us to do that, presenting us with a cornucopia of delicacies and finery, from chocolates, to strawberries and whipped cream, to diamonds, singing teddy bear deliveries, and an abundance of greeting cards with just the right sentiment.

It matters not how you choose to serenade the ones you love on this auspicious occasion, what matters is that you do! Whether it be with a store bought treasure or a simple handmade delight, the form is not important, but the sentiment is! Valentine’s day gives you another opportunity to do something that comes naturally for you, as natural as breathing, and that is to BE love and to GIVE love. It is who you are and it is the only thing that really matters in the end.

I leave you with a Valentine Poem and my love…

A Table in a Restaurant on Valentine’s Day

I want to be a table, in a restaurant, on Valentine’s Day!

Think how glorious that would be, And how many people would spend that special day with me.

What will they talk about? What will they say? Will there be laughter and people at play? What are their stories? How far have they come? What will they tell me, the old and the young?

Will hearts open and tender souls touch? Will there be magic that moves me so much? Will there be secrets and sadness as well? How much will they venture to be and to tell?

Will they remember this day gone before? And where they were then, and now they want more?

And though they look different, with each changing place, As the food and the wine, they’re invited to taste.

Each one is trying to do the same thing, Whether in depth, or a casual fling.

Just for a moment to touch someone’s heart,

And feel loved by another before they do part.

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“Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door shall be opened unto you.” These words of Christ express a natural law; mainly, the world responds to those who ask. Why then are we afraid to ask, to use those words.

During my school days, I used to dread competition, “what if I lose?” The habit continued, till about a year ago, when I did an inspirational speech. The speech was delivered, and I could almost see the winner’s trophy, when they announced, and winner is…XYZ. They didn’t announce my name. Sure enough, I had lost, or so I thought then.

A little while later an old acquaintance walked up to me. He put an arm around me and said, “Ritu, was what you said about your father having a near death experience, true?”

I confirmed it was. “You see, I have a special child, and I face a challenging situation at home every day, your speech fills me with hope.” I could see his eyes were moist.

A couple of days later, a friend called up, “Ritu, that speech of yours, the one about your father, well it inspired me so much, I hope some day I shall be able to inspire people like that.”

Another acquaintance had quoted the same speech for his icebreaker.

Then it happened! I realized that if I said something and someone made it a part of his/her life, I had touched a life. I hadn’t lost that contest. I had discovered something that worked. WORDS.

My favorite song by Boyzone runs, “It’s only words, and words are all I have…to take your heart away.” 

It is indeed a pity to hear someone say, “If she really loved me, she would know how I feel.” Or worse, “We have so many arguments, maybe we aren’t meant for each other.”

My advice for such couples is that your better/bitter half is not a mind reader. Humans are capable of expressing through words, and experiencing infinite emotions. If you are arguing, congratulations, you are on way to getting to know the other person through the art of expression. Expecting someone to read your mind, is like putting a newspaper out in the sun and hoping it will burn. Use words as a magnifying glass, to direct the sun rays, and the paper will burn. Still suffering from the “read my mind” syndrome? My remedy is, marry a mind-reader, or better still date a brain scan.

My father used to say, “Words are like arrows, once out of the mouth, they can never be taken back, one needs to be careful with what one says!” Another powerful saying goes, “be careful, what you ask for may come true” What if you never asked for anything, you would never get what you could have got had you asked for it. You would never know what you missed. As a child I loved a pair of pink shoes that I saw once at a store. Every birthday, I would secretly hope that my parents or someone would gift me those shoes. Every birthday, you’ve guessed it, I didn’t get those shoes…because I didn’t ask for them. Last year, Christmas time I walked into the store with my mother, looked at the shoes and spoke out loud, “Ma, may I have these pink shoes, please?” Today, the shoes sit in my shoe-rack as a gift from mom.

Percy Ross has aid, “The world is full of genies waiting to grant your wishes.” You need to use those words, to marry the girl of your dreams, to influence someone, to get your emotions across to the person you love, or to get the shoes that you want. To learn what you can get you need to ask for what you want.

Often, when a person is gone, we give long eulogies, but how many of us bother to tell a person how wonderful he/she is while he is still with us. Use those magical words… be it “I love you” or “I am sorry” or “Will you be mine” or “This is what I meant” or “May I have this” or “You mean the world to me” or “You matter” or “You made a difference to my life”.

Use the power of words. Keep talking. Keep writing. Keep influencing!

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Dr. Arora is a freelance corporate trainer, Reiki master, feng shui consultant and aromatherapist. A periodontist by education, a Toastmaster by passion, she has been actively associated with radio, theatre and fine arts. Visit her websites www.mentalsparks.com and www.camelliastory.com.

According to her, the generation gap is a convenient excuse to say “NO” to just about anything she wants, or wants to do. She also thinks 50-year-olds can be light years away from teenage crushes and fond glances that find their way into greeting cards.

So, even before I can recover from the recessionary spiral of January, we’re headlong into month two, running smack into Valentine’s. The girls are like goggle-eyed teenagers surrounded by fireflies, and the jabber-jabber on the phone threatens to spike my phone bills once again.

Each girl in their group is profiled with the most attention she’s likely to receive from suitable boys. And their probability assessments could teach analysts of the presidential elections, a thing or two. This is when the applied mathematics they learn is put to the ultimate test – much to the discomfort of their teachers.
 
But there has been one aspect to Valentine’s Day that gets me tuned in. Unfailingly, every year, there’s one close friend of Radhika’s who patiently answers all my questions, and nudges my understanding of teenagers to a new level of enlightenment.

This year, Ritu had a new story. She told me about a friend in her neighborhood whose grandparents were separated for years – at least thirty years from what she gathered. I presumed Trevor and Edith were around seventy and wondered how tortuous it must be to remain decidedly distant – for years on end. I then learnt that for the last ten years Trevor sent a huge mush of roses and the biggest cards money could buy, for Valentine’s. He did that year after year after year, only to draw a blank.

Ritu then let me into another secret; the girls were planning to bring Trevor and Edith together for Valentine’s. First, they would design ten return-cards meant for Trevor – for each year he had so fondly wished that the tide would turn. Next, they worked on at least 20 ways to coax and convince Edith to relent – just that teeny, weenie bit.

This was so touching, I found myself numbing to the growing lump in my throat.

Their plans included a cozy candle-lit dinner at a restaurant nearby and a specially decorated car – arranged by one of the girls – to take the couple to an ice cream parlor they liked to visit when they were first married.

While their game plan was praiseworthy in terms of good intentions, a negative response could be devastating for Trevor. I had to play my own little role to ensure that all of this wasn’t merely child’s play.

I secretly obtained Edith’s address and went over on a surprise visit. She was a good math teacher and my excuse to go over was to ask her if she could help my daughter improve her equation with the subject, if not her grades. Half way through a discussion on the lack of concentration among teenagers, I guided the conversation to what the girls had planned and how they were innocently treading on thin ice.

I told Edith that I was obviously trespassing private space and was risking her wrath and what the girls had in store for me, if they knew I had let the cat out of the bag. I also explained to her that this was one concerned adult who wanted to prevent a rebound of emotions, if something went wrong.

For all that I said, there was a deathly silence. Edith had a pained expression on her face that seemed to look far into the distance. When she regained composure, Edith took me aside, to open a large brown box with a crisply ironed wedding dress that had retained its vintage pride.

 “I knew something like this would happen this year and have my answer ready,” she said. “NO. I won’t be a stick-in-the-mud, this Valentine’s.”

(That evening, I announced a special party for the girls on the 13th of February that was on the house. And the boys were welcome.)

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Sharath Bhat is a freelance advertising writer from Bangalore. He blogs at www.indianink.in.

1. Be kind. No matter what you say or how you say it, at bottom your communication will always reveal your true thoughts and attitudes. As such, you always have two choices. You can communicate from a standpoint of love or from one of fear. When your communication is laced with sarcasm, blame, threat, anger, anxiety, worry, and control, you are essentially communicating fear. When your communication is laced with respect, appreciation, acceptance, joy, delight, wonder, and acceptance, you are essentially communicating love. If you don’t quite understand the difference, there is an easy way to communicate love not fear: always be kind.

“Words are but pictures of our thoughts.” (John Dryden 1631 – 1700)

2. Be aware of your effect on others. We often use language to criticize and attack others. Some people are masters of doing this in disguise; others do it openly. For many, communication is a battle that they have to win and words are their chief weapons of war. Harsh words can cut people deep and leave their scars for days if not years. That’s why the mark of the true communicator is to know what effect their words have on others and to adjust them accordingly.

“Some words are like rays of sunshine, others like barbed arrows, or the bite of a serpent. And if hard words cut so deep, how much pleasure can kind ones give?” (Sir John Lubbock 1834 – 1913)

3. Emphasize the positive. Really masterful communication doesn’t just depend on getting your message across or even clarifying what someone else is trying to say to you. It goes much deeper. Great communicators leave people feeling better than they did. They said something of value to the other person. Or they appreciated what the other person was saying to them. This happens when the communication isn’t just about the words; it’s about the people.

“There is a subterranean emotional economy that passes amongst all of us. In every interaction, we can make people feel better or worse.” (Daniel Coleman)

4. Don’t assume you’ve been understood. The history of relationships is littered with the history of misunderstood communications. A word gone awry here, a meaning missed there: they all add up to distorting your message and being mis-received.

The story is told of the teacher who handed out a set of worksheets to the pupil at the front of her class with the words, “Please pass these around”. She then turned her attention to the next topic. A few minutes later, she looked up to see the pupil at the back of the room sitting with all the worksheets wondering what to do with them.

As Stephen Covey reminds us, “First, seek to be understood; then understand.”

5. Know when to shut up. If you’ve ever attended a workplace meeting, you’ll know how hard it is to say nothing. Many people attend business meetings with the sole intention of talking, even if it isn’t relevant, even if the point has already been made. Talking is a way to impress. As a result, many meetings waste time and are unproductive. The best communicators are those who are secure enough to admit when they have little to say or little to add. They know when to shut up.

“If A equals success, then the formula is: A = X + Y + Z, where X is work, Y is play and Z is keep your mouth shut.” (Albert Einstein 1879 – 1955)

6. Don’t interrupt. If you’ve ever eavesdropped on a conversation between two people, you’ll probably have noticed that, instead of there being a progression of ideas building one on top of the other, most people talk over one another. It resembles a contest more than a dialogue. It is rare to see people listening with openness and non-judgment until the other person has stopped speaking. And even rarer to hear people asking for clarification and help with understanding. But holding back while you listen to others is the mark of the real communications expert.

“There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that’s all.” (Rebecca West)

7. Don’t gossip. Gossip is a particularly pernicious form of communication. It is idle, often indulged in merely to pass the time, and serves no real purpose other than to make ourselves feel better at the expense of others. If you work with others who like to gossip, simply learn the trick of disengagement: don’t reply, don’t be drawn in, and never do it yourself.

“Great minds think and talk about ideas. Average minds think and talk about situations. Little minds think and talk about other people.”

Working on improving your communications is a broad-brush activity. You have to change your thoughts, your feelings, and your physical connections. That way you can break down the barriers that get in your way and start building relationships that really work. Communicate with others like rays of sunshine, not poisoned arrows.

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Eric Garner is one of the foremost leaders in management and personal development with a personal guarantee to make you a better manager, trainer, and learner. His company, ManageTrainLearn, runs corporate training programmes in the UK and since 2002 has published a website at www.managetrainlearn.com that provides a wide range of exclusive digital learning products.

More relationships break up because people don’t know how to validate each other than for any other reason.  Over time, their pent-up frustration turns into anger. This is truly a shame, because the skills for “fighting fair” are very easy to master with just a little practice and patience.

Getting rid of your partner does not get rid of the problem, because half of the problem is yours. You can walk out on your relationship, but you can’t run away from yourself! Rather than blaming each other, couples can learn how to work as a team and coach each other through difficulties and power struggles. To do this, you must create a safe relationship where you can express needs and fears, and learn skills to effectively resolve anger and conflict.

One of the biggest causes of unresolved anger between people is a lack of understanding. Men and women have different strengths and weaknesses, different ways of expressing themselves, and different childhood wounds that they’re trying to heal. And yet, when it comes to the need for love and intimacy, we are very much alike; we simply express it in different ways.

Too many people break up before they make up a solid couple. At the onset of a relationship or marriage, there’s infatuation and the thrill of the chase. But at some point things begin to change. One partner may begin to withdraw, leaving the once-pursued confused and insecure. At this point, many relationships break up, unless the partners wake up and learn how to navigate through the stalemate.

Every relationship holds the potential for sudden stalemates. These events can actually solidify your partnership if you know what to do. There is no perfect relationship or person out there, so stop looking for perfection and work with the partner you have — or the one you’re about to start a relationship with. Don’t wait for the right time, move now! Every relationship offers us opportunities to perfect our skills and further our personal growth!

The first step in beating the odds is to throw out misguided rules like “Don’t make the first move,” or “Wait at least one week before you call back.” Such rigid rules lead us further away from each other, instead of bringing us together.

To keep your love burning bright, you need to forget about obsolete rules that don’t work, and focus on tools that do, so you can nurture the relationship. Start by throwing out the rule that women should not make the first move!  Women are actually more prepared in some ways to make the first move because their socialization makes them comfortable with connection skills.

For single women, make the first move by giving a man your business card or phone number, or inviting him out for coffee or a hike. For married women, make the first move by inviting your husband to a romantic evening or calling him at work to tell him that you are thinking of him.

This Valentine’s Day, how about letting go of the old habits and rules that don’t work? Be creative, take the initiative to get things going, and then keep doing what works to keep your love going strong!

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Ada is an Arizona-based kinesiologist, vibrational healer/instructor and a life balance coach. Her work blends compassion and Higher wisdom with powerful intention to accomplish profound shifts of consciousness for clients. Visit her web site www.AdaPorat.com.

1. Be an old-shoe person. By an “old-shoe person”, Johnson meant that you should be as familiar and comfortable with others as their old shoes are. This means easy-going, not easily rattled (if at all), non-judgmental and non-critical. People will then feel safe with you and want to be around you more.

2. Get rid of your scratchy features. We all have features that irritate others. For some it can be a bad habit, like always being late for meetings; for others, it can be an occasional lapse caused perhaps by tiredness and stress when we simply take it out on the nearest person or thing available – what some call “kicking the dog”. To get rid of these features, you need to do two things: first, recognize what these features are; and secondly, set up a diversion sign when you are tempted to do them until the scratchiness is permanently removed.

3. Remember People’s Names. Our names are one of the sweetest sounds to our ears. A chat with someone that slips in their name just at the right moment has a totally different feel from one that doesn’t. If you find it hard to remember people’s names, use the “silly association” trick where you simply make up a silly association between the name and an image. So, someone called Lazenby could be lazing on the beach and someone called Packenham could be packing N letters into a bag. That way, you have an instant recall technique.

4.  Cultivate the quality of being interesting. Being interesting doesn’t mean that you have to be a mine of information. Quite the opposite. When you hog the conversation, people often get bored and avoid you. But when you hold back and let go of the need to impress, they’ll want to engage you more. And, of course, most people find you interesting if your main topic of conversation is the one they always find fascinating: themselves.

5. Practise liking people until you genuinely do. At a spiritual level, we may all be saints. But at a practical everyday level, it can truly be hard to like every person we have to work, or deal, with. How do you get round this and remain sincere? The solution lies in finding what psychologists call “the jewel in the crown”, ie the one or more features that others have that redeem them in our eyes. Once you break through that barrier, you can then find more jewels until you genuinely like the person.

6. Never miss a chance to praise. Goethe, the late 17th century philosopher, said that praise was like sunshine on a rainy day: it warms up any relationship. When you praise others, the key is to use the 3 S’s: simple, straightforward, and sincere. Be simple by telling the person what you like in as few words as necessary. Be straightforward by telling them why you liked it. One trick here is to tell someone how they changed you in some way – which is always more effective than simple praise which can sometimes sound like flattery. And be sincere by meaning every word of it.

7. Give spiritual strength to people and they’ll give genuine affection back. When your relationships with others are based on what you get out of them, then sooner or later you’ll be caught out and either used in turn or dumped. Nobody likes to feel used. However, when your relationships are based on the belief that we are all one, that we are brothers and sisters in this world, that we are all angels with one wing needing each other to fly, then you create a real spiritual bond. You cannot help but like them and they in turn will like you.

You cannot make people like you if they don’t want to. You can wield all the power in the world – as Lyndon Johnson did – and it won’t matter a jot if you treat people badly. But follow the 7 principles that Johnson himself followed, and you can get along with just about anyone.

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Eric Garner is one of the foremost leaders in management and personal development with a personal guarantee to make you a better manager, trainer, and learner. His company, ManageTrainLearn, runs corporate training programmes in the UK and since 2002 has published a website at www.managetrainlearn.com that provides a wide range of exclusive digital learning products.