Little Things That Matter

Learn From The Past, Live The Present and Have An Open Mind to Face Tomorrow

Colors : The Essence of A Happier Life

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Nature has her own hues & tints her own shades of colors during the day, day-to-day and season to season. Our days are controlled by our feelings, our thoughts, emotions and our behaviors as an action or reaction. Thus a day can go through a multitude of shades and intonations with each passing moment and can consist of different colors.

Colors form an essence of life. For me, colors can brighten my otherwise dull or sombre day, it can add spruce to my day or just make it more lively. Bright Colors definitely uplift my mood. Each color is an expression of the various emotions that you may go through in a day. Though most of us may not have the time to express ourselves in different colors during the day, you may want to try this exercise of wearing a bright color or brightening your room with a bunch of colorful flowers and making a note of how you feel.

With my love for colors I want to share some of my favorite colors with photographs of nature that I have clicked either during hikes, or a walk whilst in my home city or whilst I’m traveling. Hope you like it and brightens up your day

Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions – Pablo Picasso

Any ground subtracts its own hue from the colors which it carries and therefore influences – Josef Albers

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky – Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds

Music gives color to the air of the moment – Karl Lagerfeld

Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways – Oscar Wilde

The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love color the most -John Ruskin

Each day has a color, a smell – Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Mistress of Spices

White is not a mere absence of color; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black.  G.K. Chesterton

We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color – Maya Angelou

10 Reasons Not To Give Up

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Many of you who follow me on Twitter may know that I have the following statement on my Twitter bio “Don’t believe in giving up no matter what happens,not to shrink back but to move forward in life.”

Persistency is something I believe in and my friends and colleagues know me as a very tenacious person. I persist because I hope, I believe and I see potential.  While the path to achieve my final goal may change with experience that I gather during my journey, I believe in not giving up on anything that appeals to my within.

However, don’t each of us at some point in our journey of life, get to a part where we feel like just throwing it all away and walking away? Sometimes we stop trying even before start and other times we give up just before we are about to make that huge break-through. To keep trying be it at work or in a relationship does not necessarily mean allowing yourself to feel devalued or trampled.  But you need to evaluate options of achieving your end goal and change the course or methods to fulfill the same.

 10 Reasons Why You Should Not Give Up 

1. Choices – there are always possibilities and sometimes we get so frozen by what we choose to see that we block ourselves from looking at other alternatives.

2. Inspirers – every time you feel like giving up, be inspired by people who have achieved their dreams despite the odds – e.g. The man who lost his legs as a child scales Kilimanjaro with hands.

3. Failure – we allow failures and rejections during the course of our journey to become our self-limiting beliefs. However there is no one right path. What may have worked for me may not work for you and vice versa.  Success is not achieved in a day.

4. Mindset – we need to learn from our mistakes rather than just fold and walk away. Choose to walk away from the methods that have nor worked rather than away from your ultimate passion or goal.

5. Believe – we allow our surroundings to control us. We live in moments and many times allow that to dictate our beliefs and value systems. What has helped me in some of my vulnerable moments is to believe in myself, and be strong as difficult as it may be.

6. People who matter – accept critique to improve but don’t allow negative attitudes and haters to surround your life and dictate what you do. Learn to stay with people who challenge you but yet support you and care for you.

7. Evolve – always have a questioning mind. Ask yourself is that the best method, what are the options, if I started on a clean sheet of paper would I still look at the same options or choose something completely different.

8. Innovate – Our mind plays games and we need to control our mind rather than the other way around.  You may need to take the lead from someone else who has done it before. Listen to their success story and determine which of those you could apply to yourself.  Don’t reinvent the wheel but innovate on previous experiences where necessary.

9. Change – you should not be stuck by the alternatives that you have chosen.  Embrace change to the pathway to get to where you want to be.

10. Be your own friend – No one in the world is going to look at you if you are going to be miserable. Be your own best friend and be an optimist.

So Why You Should Not Give Up…

I’ve always been inspired by Pema Chodron and her thoughts…I quote.. “Every time we are willing to let go at the end of the out-breath, that’s fundamentally renunciation: learning how to let go of holding on and holding back”.

“The river flows rapidly down the mountain, and then all of a sudden it gets blocked with big boulders and lots of trees. The water can’t go any farther, even though it has tremendous force and forward energy. It just gets block there. That’s what happens with us too; we get blocked like that. Letting go at the end of the out-breath, letting the thoughts go, is like moving one of those boulders away so that the water can keep flowing, so that our energy and our life force can keep evolving and moving forward. We don’t, out of fear of the unknown, have to put up these blocks, these dams, that basically say no to life and to feeling life…Link

We hurt ourselves the most by giving up. We live but once and you and I have a calling in life… why give up?

For  Inspiration… Watch the Movie 127 Hours 

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10 Hurdles To Emotional Learning

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When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bustling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity ~ Dale Carnegie

When I say Emotions, you almost immediately associate ‘Anger’ and ‘Sad’ as the synonyms.  Emotion is the mental state and this could be positive or negative.

There are seven major positive emotions : desire, faith, sex, enthusiasm, hope, love, romance.  And the seven major negative emotions are : anger, fear, jealousy, hatred, revenge, greed, superstition.

Our brains harbor a lot of emotions and it is the negative emotions that is worrying.  The amygdala  is most commonly associated with fear and anxiety.  Each of us have a chronic or habitual emotional level that determines the overall well-being or satisfaction.  If a threat is perceived,  the amygdala tends to hijack the reasoned response process.  We have certain triggers-things that cause us to have an emotional reaction and elicit our innate ‘fight of flight’ response.  This limits our capacity to think clearly and causes us to move to default behaviors that may not be skillful or effective.

Emotional intelligence (EI) is the cognitive ability involving traits and social skills that facilitate interpersonal behavior.  The four main components of EI are : Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Management.

Our emotional level, thus is the manifested frequency level of everything and anything that is real (perceivable) to us in our world and actual life’s experiences.

Have you wondered as to Why are these negative emotions triggered?

1. Change  results in discomfort and stress – a lot of us expect life to be easy and when challenges and hurdles come along, it overwhelms us and may cause negative reactions.

2. Human Being rather than Human Doing – we forget many times that what really matters in each of our lives is what we are, what we build and what we share.  Living life with a passion and being your true self is the most important.

3. Relationships – many times we tend to chase people though they may have shown no interest in building and maintaining relationships. In our busy lives we ever so often forget to make time for those who matter the most.  We allow our pride and ego to be the mainstay of relationships and taking those, who have been with us through thick and thin,  for granted.  This leads to disappointments and triggers a lot of negative emotions.

4. Allowing our mind to control us – life is not perfect and sometimes we allow a bad moment, or a bad day to take control of our state of mind and the reactions to other unrelated events of the day.

5. Help – not asking for help when you need it desperately.  Each of us need help and cannot survive in isolation.

6. Know when to walk away and when not to give up – many times we hold onto things without asking ourselves the utility value in the same.

7. Surrounding ourselves with people who make us unhappy and drain our energy out – ignore those who hassle you, stalk you, embarrass you and step beyond the boundaries of decent behavior on social media and in real life.

8. Not being accountable & responsible – not walking the talk which leads to distrust and guilt. We loose our identity by not learning to say,  ‘No’ resulting in over committing and under delivery.

9. Not taking a break– many of us get into the rigmarole of  doing too much without pausing. In that we live without enjoying the simple pleasures that life has to offer. We are stressed out, irritable and a vicious circle ensues.

10. Focusing on past – allowing our past to continue to dominate us to such an extent that we become victims of it.  We focus on the negatives, loosing ourselves in the problem.  More often than not,  we repeatedly point to our unhappy circumstances to rationalize our negative feelings. This is the easy way out. It takes, after all, very little effort to feel victimized.   But the negative thinking and behavior hurts only one person the most and that is “You”.

So how do we deal with our Emotions especially those that trigger a negative response.

Adaptability is all about recovering from the anxiety  & adversity that change initially brings & then having the flexibility to move ahead vigorously.

I find that one way to practice this idea is to write or think about a good experience. Not only does this remind me that there’s life beyond bad feelings, but it also serves as an emotional anchor.   I find my memory can become a positive emotional reference point, to remind me of the range of possibilities when I am at my worst feeling down and out.

Refer my post on Twelve Ways to Inspire Yourself When You Are Feeling Down and Out

The role emotions play in shaping thinking accounts for a large part of why we see a failure of good thinking in most leaders.  You are free to choose behaviors that are truly in your own best interests.

We all have so much to give. We just need to consciously choose to access and share it.  When we give good vibes, good thoughts,  and a smile, we generally get it back.  Recognizing emotions is the basis of self-knowledge and interaction. An emotion comes up to the conscious level when we are ready to manage it.  I like to think emotions as colors, some simple, and yet others are blends.

Emotional memory management enables us to manage our emotions in a way that will produce more positive outcomes.  It is the “habits of mind” that reveal intellectual character.  Please watch my video on “Emotional Blindspots‘.

The 3 core development steps for all Leaders are:  Knowing Yourself, Choosing Yourself and Giving Yourself.  What do you think ?