Managing Relationship

Managing Relationships
Courtesy: Speaking Tree

People have more emotional problems than physical problems in their life. This is because we live more with our mind than our body. Our mind affects us in several ways. Hence, it is necessary to understand our mind.        
From the time we are born until our last breath, we are bound in a slew of relationships. If we put our lives under a scanner, we will realize that most of the times we face emotional turmoil in our close relationships. Relations are never devoid of reactions. Where there are no relations, there are hardly any reactions. What is the reason behind ‘reactions’ in ‘relations’? We may notice that problems with people who are not related to us, last for a very short period. However, if problem occurs with our near and dear ones, it lasts longer and we remain under its impact for a long time. Why is it so? When a stranger affects our senses, it is bearable. But, when someone close to us does something, our heart is affected, we are hurt! Relations are born out of affection, they are nurtured by love and warmth.But, What is this affection? Who is affected the most? People with more affection or less affection... most will agree that those who hold more affection for others, often ‘get hurt’ easily… whereas, those who are less affectionate towards others, do not get hurt so easily. Thus, ‘affection’ which should be a cause of happiness, often becomes the cause of sorrow.

What is the solution to this problem?

Parmatma Mahavir has given an apt solution – ‘Mittime sawwa bhuesu, Aegome Saasaoappa’Be Friends with all, with awareness that the soul is alone.

Suppose you are travelling in a train and when you arrive at the destination, someone asks you, “How many passengers were there with you?” – What will be your answer?  “Only Me”.  What about the other passengers in the train? Were they not with you? In the entire journey, you sat, ate, rested and talked together. When your station came, you alighted. Now, if someone asks you – ‘Are you alone or together’ Why do you say that I came alone?  This is because even though everyone was travelling together, you knew that they did not belong to you. You may have shown affection towards them, but knew that no one was related to you. Similarly, when the station of death arrives in our life, Parmatma will ask, “How many?” and you will say “Only me”. People and relatives around you are like the passengers of the train. Today, you may be in each others company, but when your destination arrives, the station of death, you will be alone. None of your relations will come by, even the people who are closest to you will move on after a while. This is because neither do you belong to anyone nor does anyone belong to you. So be friends with all, but remember that no one is yours. This preaching of our revered Parmatma should become our ‘Art of Living!’

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Of success and failure

It is better to play to win than to lose; it is better to wear out than to rust out. It is better to aim for excellence and not get lost in success. When one puts oneself on the track of excellence, it brings out inherent talents to light. It is said those who have never angered anyone is a failure in life. Similarly, a person who has never lost has never found the joy of winning.

No doubt there is a joy in winning and pain in losing and if one does not accept both then it is like expecting the river to have one bank, the river is contained by two sides of the bank, is it not?

Winning involves four important dimensions: Self-confidence, mental toughness, winning-oriented thinking and the ability to innovate. Self-confidence stands on three important pillars: feeling good, taking responsibility and developing skills. One has to learn the art of feeling good even in moments of pressure.

The quality of life is the quality of one's consistent emotion. One has to master the art of keeping emotion in a state of well-being; search for such a state of consciousness. At moments of pressure, the mind tends to validate itself unconsciously on incidents where one is in pressure.

In cricket, when wickets are falling, new players are under great pressure. Past failures will influence present situations. So we are not living in the present but we are living in our past. In my interactions with cricket players i tell them that when they are under pressure, they should consciously recreate their future and not their past. How can one do that? That is the responsibility and discipline one should have.

Create your future from the commitment to win and with the wisdom gained out of your past failure. Recollect in your mind incidents for example, in cricket when a particular player was under tremendous pressure and faced with failure and yet how the player has bounced back. You should have these references ready and alive in you even before the match. One has to train one's body to be in the peak state, one's emotions to be in peak state and one's spirit also to be in a peak state. In such a peak state, a different quality of energy emerges and will influence one's action.

Mind has to be tough for doing so. One has to teach and value a mind so as not to be disturbed. Once when you value it, action emerges from such an action. Your actions are an extension of your values. At the end, one also has to understand that failures are fertilisers to success. In fact, failures are postponed success. Don't fear failure but learn from failure.

In failure there are recipes for success. By worrying and fearing, you miss learning. But observe and be unaffected by failure. With such a self-esteem one's winning and losing will only enhance one's talent and value.

Cultivate interest in innovation for that is what will encourage and inspire you. Innovation will happen through focus, practice and inspiration. All that one can do is to put in consistent best efforts consciously. Success and failure are two sides of the same coin; irrespective of the best effort one puts in, you will have to face both success and failure at different times. There is no need to get discouraged by failure or unduly elated by success, for the time will come when the successful face failure and those who have failed will taste success.

http://www.prasannatrust.org/

Courtsey: Speaking Tree, Times of India

Author: Swami Sukhabodhananda

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Mind, body and self

There are three aspects to an individual. His persona as people think he is, as he himself thinks he is, and what he actually is.

People judge you mostly by your outward manifestation in terms of your personality, attire, the way you carry yourself and your status in society. You judge yourself by what you think you are capable of doing, while others judge you by what you have already done. An individual's perception about himself is mostly coloured by the twin conditions of self- importance and ego, albeit in varying degrees. Very few are keen to find out the real Self hidden within to ascertain one's true identity. Knowledge of the Self is one of the most important fundamentals of philosophy.

The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad states, "Whosoever departs from this world without having realized his own inner world, to him, life has been of no service. It remains unlived, like unrecited Vedas or any other undone deed.

"It seems to me ridiculous", said Socrates, "when I am not able to know myself, to investigate irrelevant things." Augustine puts across the importance of Self-Realisation a bit differently in his `Confessions' to convey the same meaning, "Men travel to gaze upon mountain heights and the waves of the sea, broad-flowing rivers and the expanse of the ocean, and pass by themselves."

In Self- awareness there is immense joy. The Self is chetana, supra- consciousness, the knowledge of pure existence. All the pain and misery is a result of not knowing the Self. The divine in us manifests itself only when we subject ourselves to certain disciplines. The divine operates in us, but it requires an effort to make it shine forth. The epistemological corollary is that man gets knowledge by looking inward, either at his own consciousness or at the revelations it receives from another superior consciousness.

What is the difference between man and animal? When we look at animals, with their perceptual and instinctive consciousness, we observe the inadequacy of the principle of life. As life outreaches matter, so does the mind outreach life. There are forms of life without consciousness but there can be no consciousness without life. The mind in an animal is of a rudimentary character. As humans, we have the play of intelligence. Intelligence frames concepts and ideals, plans means for realisation.

Conditioning of the mind is the most important theme of Indian philosphy and the first step towards Self-realisation.

The body is called kshetra, the field, and within it dwells the owner of the body and the Supreme Lord, who knows both the body and the owner of the body. Perfect knowledge of the constitution of the body, construction of individual soul, and the constitution of the Super-soul is known as jnana. To understand both the soul and the Super-soul as one, yet as being distinct, is knowledge. According to the Bhagavad Gita, one who studies the subject matter of the field of activity as well as the knower of the field can attain to knowledge.

The prayer of every heart is outlined in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad thus:

"Asato maa sadgamaya, / tamaso maa jyotirgamaya, / mrityorma amritamgamaya." -- "Lead me from the unreal to the real, /Lead me from darkness to the light, / Lead me from death to immortality."

Courtesy: Speaking Tree, TOI - Mar 12, 2011,

Article By: Prabhakar V Begde

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The flower and its fragrance

The most beautiful thing on earth is our gratitude to divinity. Children always see more beauty than grown-ups do; because of their tremendous inner purity they see beauty in everything. Therefore we have to appreciate and admire them because they are still in the world of the soul.

When the mind is "developed", it also goes through conditioning and so begins to find fault. We love to see ugliness and impurity even in things that are really beautiful and good. If an artist has created something, we look for anomalies. The child, however, regards everything as his very own, so he sees beauty in everyone and in everything. He feels that there is nothing in comparison with other things. In the inner world everything is beautiful.

Divine love and divine beauty are inseparable. Love is the flower, beauty is the fragrance. They go together. A flower is an object, God's creation. But the flower has to offer its quality, that is, its fragrance. Only when you come near a flower will you see and appreciate its beauty. But even when you are far away, its fragrance can permeate the air. If a flower does not have any fragrance, half its divinity is gone. Beauty comes forth from the flower which is love. Flower and fragrance are inseparably one.

When earth's cry and heaven's smile meet, beauty's perfection dawns. Joy is a bird that we all want to catch. It is the same bird that we all love to see flying. What is the difference between pleasure and joy? Pleasure is followed by frustration, whereas joy is always followed by peace and more joy. There are two kinds of joy, outer joy and inner joy - there's a subtle difference between them. We feel that the possessor of outer joy is somebody else, not ourselves. Very often we want to snatch this joy from others.

Inner joy is not like this. When we meditate or contemplate, at that time we feel that we are the soul of joy. This joy that we possess inside is like a fountain; it comes spontaneously. Inner joy has no fear. It can, if it wants, transform our human nature in the twinkling of an eye.

If we can experience true inner joy even for a second we will feel that the world is totally different. Now, we feel that we will have to change our attitude towards certain aspects of the creation if we want to have joy, because the world is constantly fighting and doing all undivine things. But if we can look at the world with our inner joy, we will see that the world has already changed?

How can we get this inner joy? If we really feel that inner joy is the breath of our life, if we feel that we cannot exist without joy and we will die at this very moment if we do not have it, then God showers his choicest blessing, which is joy, upon us.

Real joy comes from the feeling that we are constantly in the lap of the Supreme. Twenty-four hours a day we cannot meditate. But on the strength of our imagination we can feel that 24 hours a day we are in the lap of the Supreme.

Excerpt from Sri Chinmoy's The Spiritual Life.

Courtesy: SPEAKING TREE: The flower and its fragrance, Sri Chinmoy, Feb 2, 2011

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The great Indian social network

It's been weeks since i saw the amazing film " The Social Network" and it still hasn't left me. The movie tells a semi-fictional story about the creation of Facebook (based on the book " The Accidental Billionaires").

While the film is extraordinarily well made, the story it tells is even more amazing. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, at 26, is the youngest billionaire in the world. Six years ago, Mark started Facebook from his college dorm. Today, the privately held company could be worth $50 billion (Rs 220,000 crore). The movie is pathbreaking in that it is about talent, made by talented people and for a country that celebrates talent.

For, only in the USA, can a boy in his 20s, coming from nowhere, create a company worth billions in six years, and the country celebrates him by making a movie on him. Ironically, Mark never cared about making money when he founded Facebook. His main motivation was to do something innovative, entrepreneurial, and most importantly – cool. At one point, he states, "Money, or the ability to make money, doesn't impress anyone around here."

Compare this to India's celebrated businessmen. The corporate czars we celebrate (with some exceptions) are second or third-generation tycoons who run huge empires comprising dozens of unrelated businesses. Traditional management theory will wonder how a company can be in food, telecom, power, construction and finance, all at the same time. However, in India such conglomerates thrive. The promoters of these companies have the required skill, which is navigating the Indian government maze. Whether it is obtaining permission to open a power plant, or to convert agricultural land for commercial purposes, or to obtain licences to open a bank or sell liquor – our top business promoters can get all this done, something ordinary Indians would never be able to. This is why they are able to make billions. We load them with awards, rank them on lists and treat them as role models for the young.

In reality, they are hardly icons. They have milked an unfair system for their personal benefit, taking opportunities that belonged to the young on a level-playing field. Indian companies make money from rent-seeking behavior, creating artificial barriers of access to regulators; thereby depriving our startups of wealth-generating opportunities. None of the recent technologies that have changed the world and created wealth – telecom, computers, aviation - have risen out of India. Yet, our promoters have figured out a way to make money from them, by bulldozing their way into taking their share of the pie, rationing out the technology to Indians, and coming out as modern-day heroes. In reality, they are no heroes. They are the opposite of cool, and despite their billions, they are, in what is known in youthful parlance, as 'losers'.

For if they are not losers, why have they never raised their voice against government corruption? Our corporates don't think twice before creating a cartel to fleece customers. Yet, they never have a cartel to take a stand against corrupt politicians. They scream about the Radia tapes being leaked but do not reflect on their disgusting content. None of our blue chips have the capability to invent technology like the cell phone but being opportunists, they jumped at the chance of making money in spectrum allocation.

International investors already know this, and while they see India's potential, they understand that the Indian corporate-political nexus is actually keeping India poor, not making it rich.

This can be fixed. Quite frankly, it has to be fixed if we want India to be the great nation our forefathers dreamed of. The net effect of this nepotism is high – it's often debilitating for startups in India, vital to the broad-based growth of any economy. If we want to set this right, there is a role to be played by corporates, the government and individuals.

First, the few corporates who really care, have to form a cartel against corruption and nepotism. If promoters take a public stand that their business group will not bribe, it will send a strong message. Compete on innovation, not the ability to bribe. That's what is cool. Meanwhile, the existing billionaires should stop flaunting their money and consider the 57 richest billionaires of America who have pledged to give away more than half their wealth to charity (yes, Mark Zuckerberg included).

Second, our government has to understand the meaning of protecting Indian industry. It isn't to protect the established fat cats, who could frankly do with a dose of healthy competition. Protecting Indian industry means policies that help new Indian companies thrive, an environment where startups are glorified and inherited princes are not put on a pedestal. Innovation is considered cool, not inheritance.

Third, we as individuals have to stop admiring and glorifying the parasitic billionaires of India. They may not be technically doing anything illegal, but there is definitely nothing cool about using connections to get something that you couldn't have if there were fair competition. We should not be celebrating money, consumption and power. We should be celebrating innovation and entrepreneurship.

Yes, these businessmen employ some of us, and we have seen increased affluence amongst some Indians. Maybe we have a million rich Indians now. It isn't enough. With the right business environment, India can be a dramatically different place, offering a better life to not just a few, but all of us. After all, to modify a dialogue from the film, "You know what's cooler than a million rich Indians? A billion rich Indians."

Courtesy: Times of India, Dated: Dec. 19, 2010
Author : Chetan Bhagat
Link: (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-toi/all-that-matters/The-great-Indian-social-network/articleshow/7125893.cms)

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Proper Breathing Helps Control Emotions

This is a follow up article to the one in which I discussed breathing as a building block to physical and emotional health. In that, I explained the correct breathing the relaxed belly breathing, and incorrect which is chest breathing or tense belly breathing.

Let us talk about breathing and emotions. The connection between emotions and breathing generally goes unnoticed, though we "see" it in ourselves and in others every day.

When we are emotional, breathing is on the "automatic pilot." As we are focused on the object of our emotion, we hardly every consciously register the close relationship between emotions and breathing. When we are angry, fearful, or anxious, we over-breathe or as one would say in common parlance, we "huff and puff".

In case of sadness, suspense, conflict or depression, we under-breathe, "hold our breath," so to say. These changes in the breathing are automatic. Incidentally, there is a chain reaction of other physical changes, such as the release of chemicals, sympathetic, and parasympathetic nervous system activity which accompany the changes in the breathing.

Space does not allow me to go into the relationship between emotions and other chemical, glandular, and neurophysiological changes.

Why do I choose to talk about the relationship between emotions and breathing? Because breathing is a unique bodily function which can be "automatic," that is, it can function on its own, without our deliberate effort to breathe and it can also be a conscious, "self directed," and voluntary activity.

When we bring breathing under our direct and voluntary control, we can use it as a tool to control emotions. We can easily observe the changes in our breathing when we consciously attempt to do so. It is difficult, if not impossible to observe and control the chemical and neurophysiological changes that take place inside our body, but, with just a little training and steady awareness, we can easily influence and change our breathing.

Similarly, it is extremely difficult to directly influence the activity of heart, kidney, stomach, intestines, and other organs which are involved in the experiencing of emotions. Through breathing, we can influence the activity of these internal organs.

While the negative emotions cause over-breathing, under-breathing, and other irregular breathing activity, the positive emotions cause breathing to be deeper, easier, and effortless. By the same functional relationship, when we restore our breathing to a deep, smooth, and rhythmical pattern, we can reduce the strength of negative emotions and acquire a peaceful and relaxing mental state.

Nature has equipped us with a "fight of flight" emergency response for surviving against the enemy or danger. It has also provided us with a "calming" response, to restore peace and serenity, equally important for our survival. You can trigger a calming response whenever you like by pressing the 'button," i.e. your breathing. Take five or ten deep, smooth, rhythmical breathes. With each out breath, say the word "calm" or "relax," silently in your head and there you are! You have triggered a calming response. It is simple and effective, most of the times.

Other times, if there is a lot of muscular tension or 'heat" generated by the emotions, you may not be physically and mentally ready to go into a calm state unless you move your body a little bit. That is what the word, "E-motion" conveys. Emotion puts you in a state of motion, stirred up, excited or agitated.

So, if you find yourself in such a state, it might be good to first move your body a little bit. Do just a few push ups, jumping in place, or jog lightly to dissipate the tension and to extend the "energy" accumulated. It would then be more beneficial to do the deep, rhythmical, smooth breathing.

Dr. Normal Vincent Peale tells a story of a man, who in the midst of an argument with his colleagues, walks up to a couch and lies down. His arguing colleagues, curious of this strange behavior, ask him what he is doing and whether he is suddenly taken ill. The man tells them that he went to lie down because he was getting angry and it is difficult for him to get angry if he is lying down.

There is a great lesson in this story for all of us. Take a preventative action! Don't let ourselves get too stirred up by the emotion. When an emotion begins to get hold of you, take a mental note ho how you are breathing and right away go back to belly breathing. You will be in control of the situation and think clearly. It can prevent you from saying or doing things that you might regret later.

Courtesy: Vijai P. Sharma, Ph.D
Source: http://www.mindpub.com

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Little things do make a difference

There is a story of a little girl who was on the beach one day after the tide had rolled out. On this beach hundreds of fish washed up on the shore. The little girl was picking them up one at a time and throwing them back in, when a man approached her saying, little girl, you can’t make a difference for there are thousands on the beach. She looked at him as she threw another one in and said it made a difference to that one.

The Bible says: "Unless you are honest in small matters, you won’t be in large ones. If you cheat even a little, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities." Most of us tend to think it’s big things that make a big difference, but when we trace the sequence of events in our day-to-day life, we will find that eventually what leads to that big opportunity is the result of a lot of little things being done. If we look at all the little things that we did, we will see the invisible train that leads to our big breaks. A journey of thousand miles begins with one step, including downwards treks.

Sound mind in a sound body. We may earn good grades in our studies but at the same time if we do not take care of our health and our mental well-being, all is futile. We need to manage our time in such a way that we find time for exercise, that we eat at the right time and that we get sufficient sleep. All this daily routine looks small but if not followed, the consequences could be colossal.

Peter F Drucker, the management guru, says: "Man’s most perishable resource is time and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed. Each minute is a little thing and yet, with respect to our personal productivity to manage, the minute is the secret of success."

How do we maintain our relationship with our friends, our parents? Do we take time to remember some of the simple courtesies that are so important in our effort to build personal regard and graciousness in relationship with others? Do we remember the smile, the compliment, the positive note and the word of encouragement?

We should do these important little things without reserve. They should be a part of our everyday manner as we groom ourselves socially in the critical young-adult years. One quality of character most needed in this world is compassion for other people. One of the urgent lessons of life is to learn how to deal with imperfections in ourselves and in others. And if we are not altogether pleased with us, it should be easy to understand why we are not altogether pleased with others.

Courtesy: ET, 7 Oct 2009, 0451 hrs IST, L R Sabharwal, COSMIC UPLINK

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