once upon a time...

Once upon  a time..........





A person who means most to me because of whom, I am who I am. He has been always a perfectionist all through his life. A systematic, organised way he led his life watching out for the smallest and finest details to everything in day to day life. 

When we were young,  we  were all not only impressed but also always nervous about him coming home to find either the table unclean or keys not kept exactly in the corner of the drawers. At that time Mikano erasers were costly by the standards of that age and they were kept in the lockers! They would have accidentally shifted a mm and he would know someone had touched them! He always kept his few things in order -spic and span. Not a pinch of dirt would be around his things. A handful of shirts and trousers with a watch and company id card adorned his wardrobe shelf. Just one shelf which comprised of all his belongings. The newspapers once read would be neatly folded exactly in the crease with not even a paper missing out of it. They would be arranged as per dates and none of it could be used for other purposes except to give it to the raddhiwala[the waste paper man].

As a person who had minimal needs and wants he also never indulged in the bad habits of alcohol or tobacco. When all around we could find many of his age group people having all the fun by indulging in other activities he was more happy saving for the family and their future.

As kids we could depend on him for improving our English essays to be written in school. Physics and  maths were his favourite subjects. His drawings were just too perfect.  He was what you called in those days "Hitler" to the core. Nowadays we do not find too many of those type of  persons, as if the new generation would listen and act on Hitler's orders! 

He gave his thirty years of hard work mentally and physically and put everything he had for the company he thought would give him what he deserved. A long long awaited promotion and designation. It never came. What came after that was just too bad for him and for the family.

What began with small incidents of heated arguments about someone telling him something or whispering in his ears to ask him to do various things like going to office, or not and maybe to visit the relatives out of station or go on a vacation, all built into  bigger and bigger meaningless statements which could not be argued upon by anyone in family. He was obsessed about the Voice he heard and no one could convince him on any matter whatsoever. The arguments turned bitter, and what began as a weekly issue piled on to a daily incidents. Everyday was becoming an ordeal to deal with. No one could pinpoint what was it that caused him to say such things which were never heard of from him before. Good manners, good behaviour all went out of the window as if it had never been a part of us. 

It took his better half two years, to find, research ( at a time when there were no internet facilities) information on this kind of state he had got into. Then visits to psychiatrists, neurologists  had to be done though with him but he had to be given medicines mixed with his food so he would not know he was under medication. This was to keep his thoughts under control and if he knew of it he would not take any of it.

Here I would like to explain when Voices are heard people start depending on them for their thinking and actions. Any person who says he hears Voices will not listen or even consider to think of others' thoughts or advice. He too was one of them. It was just disheartening to see and hear him speak the same things over and over again about his long awaited promotion and the company he worked for and the colleagues he had. No amount of reasoning would help him or his actions.

This process  continued through for almost fifteen years. There are certain incidents (both good and bad) which stay fresh in our minds. Most of them a part of this state of being he is in.  He still seemed to be in his own small world of office and colleagues, still awaited the office bus to pick him up, or drop, or probably today at this time, he yet hasn't received the call of the Voice as to what time he has to leave to work to receive the most awaited designation certificate. No amount of convincing seems to have effect on his thoughts.

Life went on like this for him as he turned 70  and he didn't recollect anyone else in the house with memory lapses in between except the son and his wife who stayed with him. It was a new day everyday with him, for his caretakers who have to rejuvenate oneself with meditation or  positive thoughts, any self help books they can lay their hands on, and try to learn the art of convincing him that it has been fifteen years since his VRS (as he is retired) from his services.

Hope stood still  in everyone's mind. Some day maybe ..... maybe.... he would return to his normal self .... and talk and do the right things.

The innocent soul passed on his journey of life beyond death leaving us with beautiful memories.





skmythoughts.blogspot.in

Yes ..we can do it ....

All of us go through this thought of achieving something some day ... our thought goes like this - wish I could do this or that.. with this thought in our mind we tend to set goals. We try to motivate ourselves to achieve that goal. But at some point of time too soon we lose connection with the same and tend to under work thereby not able to achieve the goal.

Read an article related to this ... lets see if it helps.. read on and find out!

"To achieve great things – to achieve anything – you need to understand how motivation works.

The thing is, our minds don’t work the way we often think they do. (It’s the Inigo Montoya effect: “You keep using that mind. I don’t think it works like you think it works.”)

Therefore, there are some very popular motivational techniques that sound plausible, but are actually counterproductive if you don’t know exactly how to use them. Here are five of these techniques. For each of them, I’ve given an alternative that does work to produce more motivation and more goal achievement.

1. Affirmations

Affirmations do work – but only if you’re affirming something you actually believe to be true.

If you keep telling yourself what you know to be lies about yourself, all it does is create dissonance and disillusionment. If you don’t believe you’re beautiful, standing in front of the mirror saying “I am beautiful” is an exercise in futility. Rather than improving your self-image, it will make it worse.

Your alternative: Find phrasings that reflect reality, that talk about progression rather than achievement, until you have achievements to point to. “I am taking steps towards my goal of…” is a better phrasing than “I am achieving my goal” if you actually aren’t achieving it yet.

2. Visualisation

According to a very popular teaching which rhymes with “Flaw of Distraction”, visualising your end goal is pretty much all you need to do in order to achieve it.

In fact, this is an excellent way to ensure that you never achieve your goal, no matter how many seminars you attend or products you buy in an attempt to find out why you haven’t “made it” yet.

Why you haven’t “made it” is that you’re not taking action. And one of the reasons you’re not taking action is that you’re spending your action-taking time convincing your mind that you already have what you want.

Your alternative: Visualising the process of reaching your goal, rather than the outcome, increases the likelihood that you’ll achieve it. This is because you’re practicing the steps that you will have to take in order to reach the goal. It lowers the barrier to taking those steps in reality, because they already feel familiar and achievable. What’s more, you’ll perform them with more skill, just from having mentally rehearsed.

3. Willpower

Willpower works to motivate you – up to a point. That’s the point at which you run out of willpower, because like energy or strength, it’s a finite resource.

Whenever you motivate yourself to do something that you don’t, emotionally, want to do, there are measurable changes in your body and brain. You use up blood sugar, for example. It’s an effort, just the same as running round the block is an effort. And just as you can’t run round the block forever, so you can’t keep making yourself do things that you feel negative about doing forever, however important they are to your long-term happiness.

Your alternative: You actually have several alternatives to willpower. One, of course, is finding ways to achieve your goals that you actually enjoy. Another is finding new goals. Yet a third is reducing other drains on your willpower so that you will have more to devote to your most important goal.

But if none of those are options, work on finding the enjoyment and worth in the process of working towards your goal – so that you don’t have to exert willpower all the time in order to keep doing the essential steps. At the very least, find ways to reduce your resistance.

4. Rewards

Rewards can be motivational – but only if they relate to what you’re actually doing.

Whether it’s bribing children with candy to get them to draw pictures or offering workers more money instead of more fulfilling work and more autonomy, “extrinsic” motivators tend to backfire and produce less motivation, not more.

Your alternative: “Intrinsic” motivation – rewards directly connected to doing the activity you are trying to motivate – is the way to go here. Again, it’s about making the process itself worthwhile, rewarding and enjoyable, and about celebrating milestones towards your goal, not putting off all the happiness for when you eventually achieve it.    "

hope i will be able to achieve something some day some time .... :)

c'mon you can do it!!!

paulo coelho's sayings

one of my favourites

prized companion

This incident shows how we all love them more than anything else… it comes first .. without which we may be missing something. The role they play in our lives is much more than anything that anyone can ever think of.

More often than not, even a morning doesn’t pass  without him chanting aloud an “Om Swamiye Sharanam Aiyappaa…..” or an “Anatha natha…naga rakshaka.. bhoooloka naaaathaa…..” which can be heard a few hundred yards around but today it was the loss of a beloved … that subdued his chants, his normally rationalized thinking .. as a matter of fact.

This is what happened. He had been out for his normal walk and returned with her  and entered the house, only to find that he had lost her …. His only companion  … it was just after a few minutes of entering the house he realized it but a wee bit too late.  What began as a normal search for the most loved companion at his age of 77 beginning from the house to the rooms and other places we would normally find his love lying around, enjoying the solitude, space, and peace, went on for the next ten minutes with the neighbours being woken up on a lazy winter Sunday today to enquire if the dhobi or the milkman had come in and at what time so he could understand where the companion could have gone!  As it didn’t yield results, it turned into an inquiry with all the watchmen at the front desk of our tower to understand the number of people coming in at that time of the day near our floor so if in case anyone could have seen his companion with someone maybe we could have back.

When he concluded that it could be the  dhobi“washer man” who could be the culprit who had picked her up without giving it a second thought or asking for permission it was too much to accept. He rang up his other son who lives nearby to inform him of his bad luck and sad news… the loss was too much to bear.

After bathing, lighting the lamp was always the normal ritual with chants of “anatha natha … bhoolokanatha..” and “ swamiye sharanam aiyappa” but somehow his thoughts were not able to accept the loss and thus it subdued his prayers just asking God to return his loss .. so it was a silent prayer that day just similar to mourning the dead. No one could hear chants and there were few words spoken.

The next day God answered his prayers by sending the “washer man” and also making him realize and accept his mistake who acknowledged the crime and promised to return his important companion.

That set his mood on track bringing his smile and happiness back after a whole day of mourning. He could not contain himself and kept calling up his sons and others who were with him during his hour of sadness.

 That’s what technology does nowadays … the craze and the addiction and not to mention the dependency on it..  He recovered his lost and prized possession THE MOBILE! GOD BLESS !!!

this post was an immediate write up after observing the incident happen in front of me...in 2012

life of pi

Had a chance to view the Life of Pi. Sometimes we try to find hidden meaning in it. 

It portrays the storms that come in your life. We all sail in our boats expecting our life jackets around us in times of troubles. Pi too sailed the seas weathering the thunder and storms that came in his life and even though he lost his close family to the seas he came around to living  his life and move on in his life. Sometimes life gives you so much of troubles that it looks like God is trying your patience and endurance so much that you lose faith in yourself. Its therefore necessary to take everything in one's stride and go ahead in life, facing pains and pleasures with a pinch of salt.

Even as Pi is marooned in an island with a tiger he finds himself working out solutions in life and trying to find modes of survival without eating into each other's space and yet help each other.  Its how the animals try to out do each other in the same way as we all do in our day to day lives eating up the other who tries to compete with us  in the process of standing first. As we all try to fight in order to survive we don't realize that we are all a part of the same orbit. In the end of the fights only the two survive but they decide to help each other by not eating into each others space but being with each other in troubled times. 

Most of all when the journey ends after many days of wandering in the sea, when they reach another island where they get enough to eat and drink pure water there is a difference. The water which they find is pure in day seems to turn acidic by night thereby rendering it useless for the animals nearby. They seem to run for shelter as it turns night. When Pi decides to leave the island back he calls out for his friend the tiger who is not keen and runs back to the jungle. Pi says he could not even tell a good bye properly to his friend what it means is that we always judge the  others and take people for granted. In the process we all become attached to small things which become a part of our routine and life such that suddenly when it or they leave us we feel lost. When we should be grateful to others for what we are today and also to the society to have made us, we should thank each one who has helped us and especially our dear ones who unknowingly or knowingly help us in many ways by grooming our personality and life. 

As he says he lost his family his mom, dad and brother in the storm he never got a chance to say a proper goodbye. We all have a chance.. It's upto us to take it or leave it.

day 2

Is it possible to retract statements once said .... no 

I'm sure most people would agree that we should think before we say.

I suppose I'm one such person who generally either doesn't speak or thinks too much.. that I lose the chance to speak at a certain time or place or probably talk bluntly without realising the consequences.

Very bad in fact very dangerous isn't it ?

I agree ..

Here again after saying something its the reaction , body language of the other person, my own thought process, which makes things go haywire even before I realise the damage is done.

Though people around have been more sympathetic with me and my 'blessed' nature I'm sure very soon I'll get the brickbats for people will get even with me. I hope I have the energy in me to bear that! 

I have yet to find a solution to this profound problem in my life.

day 1

Our thoughts create our destiny. I have heard about this and read this statement so many times. Does it really happen?

Maybe some would say yes.. some say no..

When certain thoughts are entertained it reflects and gives us immediate results .... almost always. But when we turn back and realise that most were negative thoughts which gave results. And then we keep agonising over the result just wondering why in the first place it did ever happen to us.

An example ... just the other day when i had to iron clothes as i connected the wire in the socket there was this funny thought that struck that this switch is short circuited. This thought kept coming on and on everyday for almost a week and in the process i never did realise that it actually happened and i had to repair it; and the thought recurred again the very next day after i bought it and connected it again and i just let it be .... As the thought came .. had I been more conscious of it maybe i could have stopped it but i didn't. Now after two more days the iron stopped heating. You may call it intuition or whatever.... ! The crux of the matter was i had to buy another iron in the end... little did i realise that i could have stopped the thought then and there .. thereby giving direction to my thoughts more positively .. maybe.

But i have and am still learning it the hard way that maybe i have to be consciously conscious in all my thoughts to achieve anything. Secondly I feel that when we think of someone badly or negatively the aura or vibes as we call it reaches them. Negative vibes reach faster than positive moreover leading us to believe as we all believe that always "hamare saath hi sab galat hota hai.. jitna bhi koshish karo sab bura hota hai" ... blah blah...

I suppose its a learning everyday for me and i have been trying to be conscious in my thoughts that lead to a certain body language and therefore to a positive or negative result.

Hope I get renewed energy to think positively and be able to create my destiny the way I want it to be. 

think

Certain points to ponder :

It is easy to criticize others! 
Before criticizing anyone who is directly or indirectly connected with us, we should evaluate ourselves and find out  what qualification we have for criticizing others. Also 
how we would feel if such critical comments are used against us.


We should try and teach our children as many techniques as possible
for preparing foods, cleaning the kitchen, bed, rooms, tables and so on.
Let those work  become part of their life and not a  burden for them in the
future.

 

vijay

Vijayadasami and Dusshera celebrations.


Vijayadasami is the day of celebrations and success ! It is the day for converting all the negatives into the positives. It is the day which reminds us that 
One percent inspiration and 99% perspiration 
is the rule of success. Hard work with sincerity, devotion and dedication are essential
to achieve the goal.  

Converting iccha sakti to jnaana sakti and then to
kriya sakti.


Also pray for health because if iccha sakti, jnaana sakti and kriya sakti has to take effect we need to be healthy too.