Tag: dailysuccess

  • Who moved my Cheese?

    Who moved my cheese?

    “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart” ― Helen Keller

    Long ago, I read this book “Who moved my cheese” I learned something about human psychology that day but never understood the real meaning until quite some time, until someone moved my pack of cheese, until I found the real meaning of emotional resilience.

    There is something peculiar about us human beings, especially when dealing with emotions. Emotions are distinctive set of body sensations, which we experience under specific situations. These can range from subtle to very strong. There are only three primary colours – Red, Blue and Yellow but we can get spectrum of colours by mixing primary colours. Similarly, there are four types of emotions – Joy, Sadness, Anger and Fear. But we can generate a range of the emotions using combination of these. For example, jealousy is combination of anger and fear, pride is combination of joy and anger. We go through different emotions every moment based on situation to situation testing our psychological response to know if that is going to bring pain or pleasure?

    We rely on relations throughout our life. One of the prime areas of our existence that deal with this reaction response every day is relationships. I still remember one of my managers telling relationship is the most important part of your life, be it personal or professional. Relationship does not mean only relationship with people but it also means relationship with profession, relationship with sports, relationship with music and so on. Let’s focus on relationship with some activity such as profession.

    In relationships, we experience various primary and secondary emotions like love, pride, respect, envy, anger, frustration, sadness, and loss. I remember, when I was ready to move to Australia and resigned my job in India, I was having mix of emotions. I was having emotions of joy, excitement, curiosity to explore new country, meeting new people, gaining wider work experience. But somewhere inside me, I was sad leaving my current job, my friends and my country. To my surprise, I was grieving about the loss and it hit me real hard when I returned after my brother’s wedding back in 2005. Leaving a house full of joy, party, celebration and togetherness to a lonely apartment in Strathfield, it was like a punch in the guts as if a great loss, kind of death.  

    Coping with any loss always involves the same dynamics. In every case, whether it’s the loss of a friendship, a career, a limb, whatever, we are forced to admit the fact that we will never experience something or someone again. We are forced to feel an internal emptiness and to accept our pain. Every loss is losing part of us which needs to be rebuilt so that we can replace the loss with new job, new friends and colleagues.

    No one can help you unless you get up and start reconstructing the lost part of yourself. I started attending few seminars, going to temple, found a new job and got connected with new people, made new friends “my eagles group” to who I’ll be eternally grateful. I left my comfort zone behind and started taking life head on; I never imagined I would pursue passion for writing and public speaking. Eternal grateful for that change it made me rediscover myself. I had found new cheese, I embraced my new life.

    So if you are at the juncture where someone has moved your cheese then get excited because it’s time to do something you never thought you will do. It is time to look after your physical and emotional state. It is time for new adventures you never tried before. It is time to go for a run or fitness class or any other sports you like. Maybe try out meditation you might discover something that you’ve never experienced before. I remember my first meditation session back in 2002 I felt as light as a feather, a bird set free to roam the skies, it was pure and serene.

    It is time for New Year to begin, in essence that is what a new year is all about, who cares about earth spinning round the sun in 365 days? But if you look closer it can be real powerful only if you’ve found your cheese.

    “Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.” 

    Jalaluddin Mevlana Rumi.

    A copy of this article is also available on my Linkedin Page.

    Originally published on January 21, 2018

  • Unplug your mind

    Dump the phone and unplug your mind

    “Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small, A journey of thousand miles must begin with a single step.” – Lao Tzu

    ‘Constantly connected’ – if that seems to sum up your day then I have a word of caution for you and it is not coming from me alone, former vice president of Facebook Chamath Pali says “Social media is ripping apart the basic fabric of our society”and he feels “tremendous guilt” over his work on building Facebook’s social validation engine. Believe it or not, Facebook has an algorithm to assess your personality and creates so so-called “short term, dopamine feedback loop called social validation”. Which in simple words means the like buttons, high fives, happy go-lucky icons that it reads from your profile and feeds it into an algorithm to target advertisement and social traffic onto your Facebook page.

    In an interview with Harvard Business School, he says he has deactivated not only his but his family’s Facebook account and encourages his kids to call their friends over the phone rather checking in status on social media. All this has added another buzzword in our well-being dictionary called “Digital Detox”.

    While Technology addiction is not classified as a psychological disorder as of now but it is heading that way quicker than you can imagine. At the same time, there is no denying the fact about value technology delivers in today’s age. However, as the old saying goes “too much of anything is bad” it becomes our revered duty to let our next generation understand the risk that technology overdose brings. Believe it or not we are the last generation on this planet that spent their lives without any screens, apart from a Television.

    I still remember the good old black and white TV set in our living room back in 80’s and waiting for Giant Robot, He Man and Spider Man animation series to be aired every Sunday.I never imagined as a child something like tablet or smart phone would make it possible to deliver such content with mere touch of a button. Maybe it was good,since we had time rationed to watch this stuff vs. studies, playtime and family time.

    As they say “history repeats itself” number one advise digital detox experts give is rationing screen time in our daily life, so let’s look at how it works:

    Implement computer-free days – Take out at least one day per month or every fortnight when you

    dump your phone, tablet, laptops and TV’s to enjoy time with your family.

    Leave the screens out of sleep – Latent technology used in LED screens is a blue optical display which hampers our brainwave pattern, listen to some good old songs or read a book before going to bed instead of looking at a screen. Psychology experts suggest at least one hour gap between sleep and screen time.

    Carry your camera – Instead of phone take out your good old camera on holidays to restrict screen time.

    Disconnect to reconnect – The best part of living in Australia is the good old “Outback” culture, we are so fortunate to have the biggest backyards and lovely camp sites all over the country. If you haven’t tried camping ever it is a must do activity. Leave your phones and screens behind to rejoice reconnect and recuperate with your family and loved ones.

    Control your phone – If you are tempted to look at your phone with every ring, vibrate or notification then take it as a signal to control your phone time. It can be as simple as leaving your phone away and going on a walk with a mate or just by yourself. It is a good idea to switch off your phone at night or at least leave it on silent away from your bedroom.

    Schedule screen free nights – Once a week switch off Wi-Fi and turn off TV to spend some good old dinner table time with your loved ones.

    “Reward Yourself” – Especially kids for not using internet/ TV/ YouTube for once a week by scheduling screen free trip to park, zoo, aquarium or beach. There are digital detox retreats if you wish to take the pricey option.

    Given that our relationship with screen is still relatively new, there are warnings signs that we should look out for and pass on to the next generation the experience we have been raised with.

    Originally Posted On March 26, 2018