Appearances Can Be Deceptive!

Analysis. The human mind is very simple. It zeros in on the obvious. The guy whose drawer is in a mess is seen as having a disorganized pattern of thinking too. This is as crude as it can get.

Living and Building Relationships Without Blame

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.

The Weapon Called Ridicule

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.

How to purposefully increase your natural creativity!

There are three different kinds of creative responses. Which is yours?

Stay Aloof. Be Depressed.

Most people think, work and live their life generally with the prejudices that they tend to pick up in their short lives. A good professional education gives them the wherewithal to make something of their lives. Most are really capable and in their chosen field do rise to the top but soon get stuck in their own success.

How to Deal with Rejection

Ouch – we all hate it when we’re rejected. Fear of rejection stops salespeople from asking for the sale. It stops us from reaching out to new friends and associates. It stops families from coming together. It even stops us from pursuing our dreams.
Rejection is a given – no matter how fabulous you are, you [...]

Super Manifesting

Research has found a connection between the power of the mind and what happens in our life and the results are speaking for themselves. The process to create what we want in our lives is called “manifesting” – the bringing of ideas and desires into physical form. Manifesting becomes a self empowerment tool when it is applied to realizing our desires. This is done through the law of attraction.

Time Management Methods for Daily Activities

There are several concepts and approaches that aim to improve your time management skills. However, most of them seem to rest on unrealistic concepts that actually achieve nothing. Effective time management entails the maximum use of whatever time that is available each day to enable you to accomplish designated tasks.

3 Steps to the Discovery of Anger

Most people accept anger as a part of life. We all feel justified when we get angry and we can point to all the people and reasons for it. Certainly no one in their right mind could disagree. We all shake our heads as we hear of yet another “idiot driver who almost killed me”, the boss “who set me up to take the fall”, the spouse “who knows just the right buttons to push to send me over the edge”.

Past Life Regression Therapy

As eternal beings, we carry all our thoughts, impressions, emotions, and feelings from time immemorial into our present being. Hence, most of our so-called ills have their roots in some of these thoughts, impressions, feelings, and emotions.

Life on a Platter

For most of us, childhood is when life is most enjoyable. Bereft of responsibility, we are taken care of, sheltered, fed, clothed, educated and kept in good health. All we have to do is savour every wonderful moment to the fullest.

Texting Too Loud to Hear

Don’t make the mistake of assuming your employees are good communicators. Just because you trained them on what to say doesn’t mean they know how to say it. There’s a mighty fine line between efficient and rude. Caring is what people want.

Manage the Boss!

Two  critical skills which the highest performing managers have in spades are the ability to influence and persuade. The most obvious targets for your powers of persuasion are your team, and sometimes your peers in different departments; but just as you need to manage down or sideways , it’s also critical you know how to [...]

A Dangerous Pitfall Called Comfort Zone

There is much talk of progress and success nowadays. Motivational programs are everywhere. In what sense of the word are we talking? For argument’s sake, let’s confine ourselves to the sense of advancement in career and money-making prospects. This then presupposes that everyone would always be striving to improve one’s earning capabilities and keep on [...]

Design the Life You Want!

There’s an old German saying that goes, “You have to take life as it happens, but you should try to make it happen the way you want to take it.” Are you planning to just let life “happen” to you or do you plan to play an active part in designing the life you want?

Tough Times: 6 Tips to Beat It!

It’s when events are overwhelmingly beyond your control, that you either find new ways to cope or are pulled down by the undertow. Your usual defenses are inadequate to protect from overwhelming long-term stress. Stress can build gradually beyond tolerance level, or a surprising turn of events like those recently reported in the news can create the kind of vulnerability that demands openness to change.

Manifest Your Own Miracles: 8 Steps

Some people seem to have it made, generating miracle after miracle with apparent ease, while the rest of us try time and time again, only to be left frustrated, exhausted and confused. But what makes some people abundant, while others are not? It all boils down to the eight success secrets listed.

Victor Or Victim – Your Choice

Right now it’s tough to not feel like a victim. So many events seem to be beyond our control, and so many consequences of the decisions of others appear to have cost so many so much. It’s an easy time to choose to blame others and let events just carry us along- the perfect example of a victim.

Staying Motivated

Sometimes when I try to explain my dream to my family and friends, I get blank stares. My enthusiasm does not find an eager audience. Most of the times, I try and avoid this situation by just keeping quiet about my dreams, but there are times when I can’t contain my excitement. I do understand that everyone operates from their belief system, just as I do. But how come the belief systems are different in the very same family in which we grow up?

Success through Personal Branding!

We all know that business is becoming more and more competitive. There are numerous others who seem to be offering the same stuff that you do. Whether you are a senior executive, the president of your own company, or a worker at a small organization, you need to stand out from myriad others so that you can be in control of your business or career.

What a 5-year-old taught me about gratitude

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”.

You are never too small to make an impact!

Even if you consider yourself of AVERAGE ability, you can be successful, independent, free of worry, and be your own master, from this point forward, if you can commit to do these four things. Of course, it will take diligent and persistent practice for you to make these permanent and long-lasting positive habits. However, the rewards will be manifold!

Success is just like riding a bicycle

Let’s take a look at success. For many people, success or being successful is just as scary as the first time they rode a bicycle. Naturally, many people want to be successful. However, there are few that truly have the motivation to put forward the needed effort and action, and make the necessary sacrifices to get what they want.

Life Tsunamis

During one of my visits to an isolated beach strip off Chennai, I had a chance interaction with a middle aged fisherman mending his nets. We were the only souls on the beach at that time.
Curious, I asked him about the killer tsunami that struck Chennai in December 2004. He vividly described how [...]

Living willfully in 2010

As responsible adults, we are encouraged to create both a Will and a Living Will. Wouldn’t it be great to also create a document that declares how we want to live! It could be called a “Living Willfully Declaration.” This document wouldn’t divide up what we have, or detail how we want to leave with dignity, but instead it would bear witness to the principles and values we want our lives to express. By Living Willfully, I mean living with intention and integrity, purpose and determination, mindfulness and just action. It means consciously choosing how we want to respond to life instead of simply reacting.

Serendipity is not an accident.

Let us first see what stops us from making happy discoveries. We have been conditioned to see what we expect. Our preconceptions creep into whatever we come across. We don’t see things as they are but as we expect them to be.

Secondly, we force our preconceptions into whatever we do and want a task to go along predetermined lines. Too obsessed with how things should be, we don’t recognize lucky turns of events and new possibilities.

Reframing a situation for creative ideas

A very old Chinese Taoist story describes a farmer in a poor country village. He owned a horse which he used for plowing and for transportation.

How to Handle Control Freaks

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

16 habits of highly creative people

Many people believe that creativity is inborn and only a chosen few are creative. While it is true that creativity is inborn, it is not true that only a chosen few are creative.

Let 2010 be the best year of your life!

It’s that time of the year again to reflect on how we have fared in the year which is about to draw to a close and to make New Year resolutions – promises to ourselves that something in our lives will get better, our finances, our relationships, our career.

Happy New Year, 2010?

I have been actively making new-year resolutions for the last 3 years with very little success. It is usually regular stuff like fitness, skills, jobs, money, etc. It usually lasts for a few weeks. The longest was last year when I started jogging regularly and kept at it for a few months.

Remedies For Discouragement

When do you feel like giving up? What discourages you, or tempts you to doubt that sweetness is on the way? Now, write down three remedies for discouragement….lunch with your best friend; a visit to church; dusting off your diplomas, re-reading a love letter, swimming twenty laps; warm soup eaten in silence.

15 elephant tethers that stop you from being creative!

As you grow up and gain experience, you absorb assumptions which then drive your life and limit your choices. You can break away from them with a simple tug if you want to but you don’t. As you acquire more and more experience, your repertoire of blind assumptions grows too, correspondingly limiting your choices. Your experience becomes a hindrance in your being creative.

4 Myths About Fat Loss

There are several common things that people believe when they want to understand how to lose weight and most of them are false. Here are some of the myths.

True Professional!!

(Thanks to Subroto Bagchi, for bringing “The Professional” to the world, and to my loving son Janardhan for getting me lay hands on “The Professional” last evening)
Mahadeva came to cosmopolitan Bangalore, as his dear mother walked out of her native village and her own family in a huff. Mother and the child Mahadeva took to [...]

Are Good Listeners Almost Extinct?

The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and to be understood.The best way to understand people is to listen to them. Listening is by far the simplest process a human body undergoes. But most of us have yet to learn the art of listening.
Good listeners are becoming extinct [...]

Every living moment should be one of gratitude

Many a times we have gone through situations in our lives when all seems lost. Shattered, broken and lost, we rise again to pick up the pieces and restart afresh – with someone’s help or a source of strength within.

The divinity of the suck factor

One of my best friends and I have a sick tradition. We get excited about each others’ hardship.

The Big Real

Do you know the story about the two stone cutters? When asked what he’s doing, the first man replies, “I’m cutting this stone into bricks.” When the second laborer is asked what he’s doing, he replies, “I’m building a temple.”
How much do we do in a day with our nose to the grindstone? Myopic, focused, [...]

This too shall pass….

In the midst of our pursuits in  life, we experience many simple happy moments as well as wonderful life affirming events like births, graduations and marriages. And at  other times, certain events frustrate and challenge us. We seem to have little or no control over them. Despite adopting a ‘positive thinking’ attitude, we are faced [...]

Here Is Your D-I-Y Kit For A Leading Edge Life

Here is a Do It Yourself Kit that each individual would find useful in the marathon race for survival and growth especially in these times of uncertainty.

The “as in the beginning” Buddha rule

There is a Buddhist saying:
As in the beginning, so in the middle, so in the end.
…and it’s one of my life compasses. It never fails me and it’s nearly always proven true. Things often continue how they start. The click, the comfort, the clarity – or the lack thereof, is there at the get-go and [...]

The Good Thing About Frustration Is….

Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending – Carl Bard
Frustration! It is a word which is commonly associated with feelings of helplessness and sometimes rage. So is there a way out? The answer is a big Yes!
Any human emotion [...]

Riding The Crest Of A Wave

Last week end I took a break at a sea side resort in Pondicherry (aka Puduchery, as it is called now). Much to the chagrin of my wife and kid, I anchored myself for a few hours in the comfortable pool side chairs placed alongside the beach and indulged in my favorite activity – [...]

Can You Manage Sea Change?

One of my visits to the beach left me thinking about the term, ‘sea change.’ What exactly is the connection between ‘sea’ and ‘change’? Delving into the dictionary for its meaning, I was able to figure out that it can mean: transformation, a u-turn, reversal, change of heart, etc.
Etymologically speaking, William Shakespeare used the [...]

We All Need Just This ONE Thing….

There are times in life when for no particular reason, you’re feeling lower than a snake’s belly you know, a little on the weepy side, kind of listless, thinking a big chunk of chocolate would lift your spirits right up. Sometimes, without much effort, the weather changes, the mood passes [...]

Here We Go Again….

Sometimes we make promises to ourselves about habits we know we need to change. With determination and firmness we say, “I will never be impatient again” and for a day or two we stick to our resolve. Some of us use the additional tools of reiki, affirmations or visualization to help us in our quest [...]

The Parent Trap

I am not a professional expert on perfect parenting, so this article is not about how to bring up a child. This is not advice on how to become good parents. I am simply describing a few experiences which my friends, relatives and I have had as parents over the years. If the [...]

Success Is Seeded In Failure

Napoleon Hill once said, “Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.”
Success comes with a price of failure. We were meant to grow and learn from our mistakes. How much we have paid for the lessons of failure determines our next step to success.
Generally we do not [...]

The Pesky Ones…. Just Scramble Them!

All of us happen to meet pesky people in our life. We find others stepping on our shoes and we step on others’ shoes many times.
An easy solution to handle such tricky scenarios or people is to look at them with wonder or amusement. Instead of getting upset by their worst or best habits, we [...]

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