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Showing posts with label Psychology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Psychology. Show all posts

Yours So-Silly

Posted by KAHIHI - 0 comments

A bunch of good friends were talking being in touch few years down the line. I occupied a table next to theirs at a coffee shop, engrossed in reading Somerset Maugham’s “Of Human Bondage”, when a line by one of the youngster in the group befuddled me. It was a taunt to one their friend who probably was not a part of the latest social networking revolution, “this bugger doesn’t have a Facebook even, how to trace him and be in touch with him”
Why does one need to have an account on social networking site if you want to be in touch with your friend? I am in touch with so many of my friends, even over distances apart (saat samundar paar types), from the times when there were no mobile phones even, let alone Facebook or Orkut accounts. Writing letters on those blue coloured inland letters was fun; I still love writing letters.
I still don’t have a Facebook or Orkut account (Oh my my… what a sin! Errghh). Apologies, I am still a laggard soul in trying to be a part of this revolution, I may never be a part one – I am busy “enjoying” the Baba and Anna revolution.
I have phone numbers, email ids, residential address of all my friends with whom I want to be in touch with. I don’t understand what fun it is say “Hi”, “Whatsup” on those sites or poke, ping, buzz, like and scrap…ahh what the…..crap.
Wouldn’t it be nice instead to pick up the phone to ask your friend right away – “what’s up?”
I am still confused about what people do on these sites. The only people who have definitely benefited will be the one who created these sites. Ironically, though these sites boast of boosting connectivity with people, they actually are pushing individuals towards isolation and alienation of the self – it restricts yourself to just a table, chair, and your computer, whereas there are much better options to connect with your friends with a personal touch, perchance.
I have seen few amazingly surprising messages on these sites – “Took a refreshing shower”, “Saw the ‘most prettiest’ face in the mall today” et al. Why and where is the need to shout all this to the world? In a way you are getting infantalised by excessive usage of social networking sites. One analysis by a neuroscientist reported that usage of these social networking sites can cause attention deficit disorders, induce selfishness, hallucination of shaky virtual identity, etc.
Nothing can replace meeting friends over coffee or beer or perhaps even just like that. Real people, real conversations, real ideas should be the fascination and not passing over messages on the social networking sites, perhaps the dumbest thing to do. Social networking sites are just a media and a media is just a tool, it cannot replace real stuff.
Probably, ignoring it would be haven. I have stayed away from it for so many years and it is not difficult at all. Not being a part of this crazy revolution could also be revolutionary thing to do.

P.S. – Outside the campus of a reputed engineering college, I saw a banner – “One day seminar on Marketing Strategies using Facebook. Invited….blah blah blah…..Yours Socially”. Aaah, “You are So Silly,” I grunted. Engineering college should be motivating engineers to create something revolutionary (pun intended) like Facebook and not encouraging them to become a slave to that social conduit.


- P. K. Dastoor

Change Reactions

Posted by KAHIHI - 0 comments

Imagine how wonderful it will be to learn how people use their minds, their mental strategies, and act in a manner where the entire aura around everyone is filled with compassion and positive energies. It is truly an enticing experience to enrich the quality of other people’s lives. The enrichment is nothing but the change in one’s attitude and approach, necessarily in the positive direction. It leaves a magical effect on the people and also on the surroundings of those people.

Each one of us, at some point, have had felt a strong desire to bring about a change to this world, change in our surroundings, change in yourself or a person, all to make things better and have a conducive environment all around where things are un unison creating an overflow of pleasant positive things. This desire usually stems from vision, ‘our lives could be enriched and improved in some way’. Such visions provide guidance and directions for our lives and our work, furnishing the motivation and impetus for the change. Such visions when shared by number of people, form a foundation for effective team work and ultimately for progress of a civilization.

This process of change that causes human evolution, when accelerated with focused approach and objectives, give birth to revolutions. Chain of events takes place just like a rolling snowball from the top of a mountain that gathers more snow and momentum as it slides down. That small ball of stone eventually becomes mammoth like and unstoppable, engulfing anything and everything that comes in its way. These are the times when history is shaped.

Quite similarly, it is possible to bring about changes in us and revolutionise the way we behave, interact, communicate, and approach to situations, the only challenge being to take charge of the process and direct it with precision. With the changes taking place in small packets, you will one day find yourself gifted with a huge packet of solace and satisfaction. You will feel wonderful when you re-experience the most wonderful moments of life as it they are happening now, and you will become amnesiac to your problems, worries, frustrations, limitations.

The question is not whether you can be happy or successful. It is actually about how much happiness can you stand before you finally fall off? And realize this is just the beginning. There is a whole new world to be explored as saying says, “Anyone can count seeds in apple but no one can possibly count all the apples in the seed.”

- Hrishikesh Nabar
Coach consultant, NFNLP (USA) Certified Master Trainer in Neuro Linguistic Programming

Mind Your Mind: Mind Your Inner World

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A human mind is like a giant, almost impossible to tame. However, once tamed, our mind can obey us like a faithful slave, who will always serve us in our every conquest.
Entire life of every living human is invested in search of happiness everywhere – home, office, places of entertainment, et al. We all yearn for a meaningful life that will be an enjoyable experience. Every step we take is towards making possible everything that we want, and continually make changes to achieve the best possible result that we desire. And the process continues.
A human mind propels the missions that inspire us, the passion that drives us, and the execution that shapes our dreams into reality. There are many accomplished people around us and we admire them, make ideals out of them, and try to emulate their path to glory. This class of people is largely innovative and creative. These stunningly successful people, despite have achieved a position in the society – fame, money, power wise, despite having suppressed life, less privileges, financial instability, family hardships, social disgrace, and so on.
Yet they made it to where they had dreamt to be. Why?
Fluke? Luck? Rude, but it always gets us off the hook. Unfortunately, it sounds less convincing every time. Worse, creative people have an uncanny ability to stay increasingly creative. This flagrant violation of entropy and justice defy all previous explanations.
The answer lies in the ultimate technique that two young men in California (Richard Bandler – Mathematician and Computer Scientist and John Grinder – a linguist) devised, which helps shape up the human be shape human mind and change human behaviors accordingly.
The technique was named “Neuro Linguistic Programming” (NLP). This complex sounding name, however, simplifies the human mind’s most complex processes and has designed model that everyone can use today.
A single session of NLP can accelerate learning, neutralize phobias, boost creativity, improve relationships, obviate allergies, and among other miraculous achievements. Now we have ways to do what only a genius could have done two decades ago. NLP achieves the goal of its inception.
The next question that creeps in our minds is who can and how to use NLP. Surprisingly we all use NLP unknowingly. We all use our minds, albeit in a clustered mechanism. Thus we already know about using our and doing it with precision is nothing but NLP. NLP helps the human mind streamline thoughts and align our thought processes in a precise manner.
Without knowing about the techniques of yoga, we still use to breathe. After learning yoga, for example, only the technique of breathing changed, it became more organized and systematic. Like is NLP – yoga of the mind.
Wouldn’t it be a gratifying experience to have your thoughts channelized and let things happen the way you want them to happen? Imagine how wonderful it will be to get rid of all your fears and just be what you want to be. Wouldn’t getting used to be happy and enjoy every moment of life be an addiction worth clinging onto?
Now contemplate, think of the possibilities and meditate! Just go deep and do it quickly. It’s a lots of fun.. Enjoy !
That’s NLP
- Hrishikesh Nabar
Coach consultant, NFNLP (USA) Certified Master Trainer in Neuro Linguistic Programming

Infertile Seeds, Innocent Minds

Posted by KAHIHI - 0 comments

I was waiting for my cab. I was standing under a tree shade next to a small shop which was at the entry of a lane that led to my residential complex. It was a scorching afternoon with passing by vehicles puffing out black smoke. I dwell in a area that still has a tinge of rural setting. Old men manoeuvring their cattle across the road is a usual sight. Schools children were flocking across the roads, some with their mothers, some with their maids, and few with their school gangs. I was rejoicing this landscape.

A collision between a truck and a four wheeler interrupted my wallow. The drivers got into a brawl. Soon, people from neighbourhood joined the chaos. Later the truck driver fled and things were coming to a stand still when a gang of school children surrounded the truck, started the typical “maa-bhen” abuse and pelted stones at the truck, few of them even tried to run in search of the truck driver with stones in their hand. I was left awestruck.

Moments later my cab arrived and I was on my way to a venue where I had to deliver a speech on “Stress Management & Relaxation Techniques”.

All through the way, the act of those school children reflected upon me, the collision episode was slowly diminishing from my memory. I was still surprised at the way those children, still in their nascent age, reacted to the incident. They probably had no clue about what went wrong, whose mistake it was, or what the entire situation was about.

From where did this temperament of violence and abuse creep in? Weren’t they at an age to run bare feet into the sprawling fields or play cricket or do things that children of that age did?

My further pondering made a swarm of thoughts swirl in my mind. Foremost, the patience level has gone down generically across the entire generation, including the parents. With the kind of separations taking place increasingly it is inevitable that tolerance level of young couples has gone down. With the parents not able to manage their time and stress effectively, the frustration is passed on to the children. And in few cases children witness their parent’s agitation which gets engraved on their innocent minds, which is later practiced in the world outside, seldom noticed by their parents.

Other factor could possibly be technology; with arcade games gaining so much popularity, children today have forgotten playing strategy board games or outdoor games. These games actually help in channelizing mental thoughts and building up endurance which effectively aid individual’s physiological, physical, and psychological well-being/development. The computer games nowadays where killings, robberies, bomb blasts are primary themes teach children similar motives and have an adverse effect on children’s minds, and this is practised in the outer world again. Their minds become to prone to violent behaviour and their mindset takes a shape of thought – “eradication is the only solution”. In some parts of the country, access to weapons is easy, thus facilitating irrational killings or bloodshed where satisfaction of the ego is the only objective and impatience (inability to rationalise) the root cause.
Children are so much soaked in violence that it won’t be surprising to hear them talk about it or go ahead and do it.

It is the time to ask “WHY” such kind of behaviour has become so ubiquitous in our society and there is a strong need to devise techniques to alienate violence among children. While stringent rules and law regulations will not be the only solution to this problem, I am sure you will second me about the requisite veracity that mental well-being is a crucial facet of children’s young years.

   
Psychologists all over who have been practicing in schools and counselling about children’s mental health have stressed that it is just not necessary to impart academic and learning skills but it is also important to teach them thinking ability, coping up and communicating skills, and also few methods on behavioural aspects.

Every school, ideally, should have psychologists or behavioural therapists on their panels so counsel the children on timely basis and interface with the parents regularly to teach and seek feedback about mental wellness techniques.

Mental health services and counselling practices must be implemented in schools and our children rightly deserve it. Resources are available in plenty, they need to be tapped and there needs to be a change in our mentality too – “every individual referred to a psychologist does not necessarily equate to one being mad”. There needs to be strong measures for involvement and prevention at the earliest.

P.S. - Unfortunately, psychologists are projected as helpers, who are brought in only after the crisis has taken place, which regrettably is demeaning and certainly fruitless.

- Pragyan Jha
(Pragyan Jha is a qualified psychologist & practicing counsellor in Pune)

Life in the Time of Stress

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An individual’s stress is a response to a threatening or challenging environmental condition. To understand and explore more about the stress, it is important to know about the association of stress and fear. Both are correlated to each other. But in many cases we are responsible for our stress. We encounter both positive and negative stressors; circumstances from where the stress is originated.

Stress though largely associated with psychological patterns, impacts one’s well being physically and affects the physiological system. In long run it dampens physical alertness and makes our body a hatchery for various physical ailments such as high blood pressure, metabolic disorders (like diabetes, indigestion & impotency) and increased incidences of cold and flu. Prolonged stress can be observed in post traumatic stress disorders, major depression and in some cases aging, lack of appetite, severe hair loss etc. However, the significant brunt is on the mental health. It kills your zeal, the ability to do things you enjoy, and it creates a deep fissure in your positive thinking pattern which can really be hazardous, eventually leading to state of loneliness, addiction, violent behaviour etc seeping inside you like a slow poison.

   
There is good news though. There are ways to tackle stress. As is rightly said, “a stitch in time saves nine”, stress too can be handled effectively when curative actions are taken adequately and appropriately.

Our response to stress depends on many factors like genetic inheritance, family & childhood experiences, overall physical & mental health and our perception of stress. It has been medically proved that our thoughts and emotions influence our health – body is the state of mind. This is so because there is a strong physical link between brain and the immune system.

I wish to emphasize again that stress does not originate from air or water or plants or anything around us. Stress is seated within us and it entirely depends on us when and how much of it to liberate. So as stress originates from within us, we should make an attempt from within to eliminate it. And this is simple. Controlled behaviour and attitude can do the miracle. Our mind is the mirror of the self, and responds in the manner we think. An individual’s well being plays a crucial role in successful adjustment. Positive attitude and behavior are vital for mind and body. So it’s well said, heaven and hell reside in the person’s mind; it depends entirely on that person which side he/she wants to fall and lead a life.

However, let me also leave you with a perspective that stress is always not harmful. Anything in controlled manner and moderation is good, we all have been taught of this since our childhood and possibly many of us have practiced and experienced it too. Short term stress has its benefits. Little anxiety and work pressure enhances the performance of an individual. It has a positive impact as it leads to more dedicated effort from an individual who strives for higher achievement levels. Also, sometimes acute stress is good for gearing up body’s immune system.

Use “Stress” in another standpoint. Change the meaning of “stress” in your life to “being assertive”. Stress on the importance of living not just existing, stress on achieving success & excellence, stress on leading a life full of happiness & contentment.
Have a good life! It’s fun!

- Pragyan Jha
(Pragyan Jha is a qualified psychologist & practicing counsellor in Pune)