Orientation Matters in Life

People Crave for Results, but Want Them for Free

 

People crave for results, fruits, comfort, pleasant situations, power, fame, good health, fashion, glamour, and so many things. Surprisingly, many of them want it all for free, with no sacrifice.

 

The word "free" is very attractive and probably searched frequently on all search engines. In my 30 years of practice, I have experienced this closely with people of almost all age groups. The situation is so discouraging that if you advise someone to pursue something and take some pain, they feel offended.

 

What does this mean? It means that some people only want to take, collect, manage to have, and never give apart. They don't want to be bothered, and all this reflects their orientation as a person. In the age of technology, we find people believing more and more in "things will settle automatically" and the outcome will be as per their requirement.

 

Doing Nothing and Expecting All Good is a Big Theft

 

Please allow me to be rude to say that thieves are not just the people who steal something. Doing nothing and expecting all good is a big theft too. In fact, it hurts constantly if it has become a habit.

 

How to Overcome This Orientation or Mentality

 

Now, the question comes, how to overcome such orientation or mentality? There are two kinds of people:

 

Those who want change, but just lack motivation or some kind of backing.

Those who are by nature big thieves and always avoid taking efforts.

For the second kind of people, to be very frank, no outside motivation works. They will repeatedly go through a number of lessons in life until they really understand. By the time they understand, time would have gone for them to make a change. I know I am rude here in writing this truth, but it would be unjustified if I don't show the real picture.

 

For those who want to make a real change, I would like to go on writing.

 

Count Your Active Life Left, and Be Realistic

 

Count your active life left, and be realistic. See who are the people whom you never noticed, but helping you without expectations. I know many of you would answer, "I don't have time." But just think, if everyone says the same thing, no one will have time for others, and our tiny world would become more selfish, which is already happening.

 

It's your call, it's your priority or orientation, which will define your destiny too.

 

Don't Lose Hope

 

Don't lose hope. Initially, it will sound very odd because you are not attuned to "work-deserve-results" mode. Gradually, it will be your new normal. And, have my words, you will be proud of yourself with a wonderful feeling of good life with better orientation.

 

CA Ashok Madrecha

Programme the Brain

We are on or off is a question. While alive we can say we are on and on expiry we are off. There are other situations, while slipping or in unconscious state, can we say we are on or off. Till we are alive we are engaged so we are on and till the death there is constant programming and our brain too writes complex codes of our life software. One has to understand this programming. Take one example, a person travel overnight by bus and while taking breakfast in morning at his home he feels as if he is traveling and moving in a bus. Many of us had such experience. The point here is that to understand what is the reason behind such experience. The reason is that our brain stores data and if there is repeated situations it creates memory slots which gradually becomes in built programmes which if not checked forms habit and then the mind works in sync with such memory slots.

 The moot point here is that there are two type of brain programmes one which are known to us and the others which are not felt or known completely even when these run in our mind and command body. For instance while digesting food and while breathing, our attention is not sought by body in general.

Now let us think about why it is important to know about brain programming for achieving balancing in life. When we know that repeated instructions or situations leads our brain to react in that direction then it becomes very important how to stay positive and avoid negative thoughts and people both. If you are in company of extreme negative people than very high chance you too start behaving negatively and the reverse too is true. A vigilant person can train his own brain what kind of programming it should seek or not at all. Actually speaking reading about all this programming by the brain would be always little than the practical experience. If remain awakened about our actions and surrounding situations we can write our own program of blessed life and create divine realm around us truly.

Simplicity forgotten

Just think and find honest answers of these questions :

How many friends we have with whom we can really share our feelings ?
With the advancing age numbers of our friends are increasing or decreasing?
Do people feel that we are out of reach for them to meet or say something?
Do we too feel lonely all the time?

 If the answers are affirmative of these questions than we must be sure about the fact that we have lost our simplicity and due to this suffering to a lot.

A child remains happy because he is unaware of complexity of life but a man or woman remains happy "sometimes". Why sometime, why not most of the time? Things are made complicated by ourselves only. We walk but think of dress code, or even the type of shoes we should wear. We wish to move around but think often what type of company we should have. We wish to sing a song but afraid of what people will comment and so on. In reality nobody is much concerned about anyone but our fear makes everything much complicated and we get compelled to live lonely.

Be simple, smiling and the real one and it helps lot in maintaining good relationship too. If anyone close to us feels that we are unapproachable than it is not good sign for a nice relationship.

We have seen many times people plan a lot for a picnic but as soon as they reach to the spot their mind starts focusing only on how and when to move back and they simply forget to feel the place howsoever nice it is. In the garden they can't enjoy the blooming roses, even can't see the sky which is colorful at morning and full of stars in the night. They simply ignore to see the beauty of dew dropped on a flower. They simply forget to take a single deep breath in the fresh air and so on.

Simplicity does not mean we should not have ambition. Individual destiny may be different but living a simple life can be gift to ourselves and a big fun for those who really makes it. Simplicity expands our inner space so we can feel more, observe more. We may compare this with a computer wherein if multiple programs run it becomes slow or sometime hangs too. So be simple and enjoy the life.

-- CA Ashok Madrecha

Art of refusal

In general while maintaining our decency level of behavior we develop a tendency to accept everything which even we do not like to do and forget the concept of refusing. If refusing is not kept in mind we will land up at total mess at work or even in our social relations too. lets have a look at one example:

A professional lawyer having enough level of practice never said no to any assignment coming to him. The resulting scenario of his office is:
1. The boss is always busy
2. The employees too seem to be busy but reporting and execution level quite a week
3. Professional fee billing is increasing but net bottom-line almost stagnant
4. Office environment quite stressful
5. Always staff and boss both working beyond office hours  
5. Total system almost in a mess and so on.

Social side of the same Lawyer above:

Being in profession for a long time he has developed social and personal relations with the clients well but due to his ignorance about the art of refusal the scenario of his personal life is:
1. Can not spare enough time for family.
2. Shrewd people make use of him.
3. There seems to be no planning in life as such.
4. Financial independence is good but level of satisfaction is very low.
5. Developing health hazards.
6. Total absence of fun, joy, peace and so on.    

We can visualize what can be the impact of ignoring the concept of refusal by the example. Now lets think on "How to Say No and Refuse"

First we have to develop firmness about ourselves, decide what we require and what not. What are our resources and at what cost of time, energy and monetary level we can afford to do a particular task in a given time frame. if not, We must refuse it and avoid such mess which makes our life hell. Time is precious and it is allotted to all in terms of age and that too in the limited slot then why we should neglect it. Now lets have a look at different ways to say "No"

1. Say directly No where we have no personal bindings or relationship.
2. Develop our system (office norms, policy of working etc.) to handle the refusal.
3. We can put the burden of refusal on lack of resources. I mean we can simply say no due to non availability of some resource hence we won't be able to accomplish a task or assignment.
4. Sometime task itself does not require perfection, then do only what is required. this too is a kind of  limited refusal.
5. Delegation of task at different levels, in other words creating layers makes us easy to say No. 

The lawyer knew all this well and decided to change himself. He listed all the areas where he was just taking the assignments which were not remunerated enough and could be avoided. He seriously applied the concept of refusal and what happened just see here:

1. His stress level came down considerably.
2. At the beginning his professional fee billing came down by 20% but after a few months it increased with the addition of more new good clients and his profitability (bottom line) also improved in a positive direction.
3. He was far more confident person than earlier
4. Clarity about life emerged and he started enjoying quality time with family and friends.
5. His health too improved.
6. Ultimately he is more rich and knew well that what is really meaningful to him.
     
I hope knowing the art of refusal can help anyone to have the right balance in life. This article is based on my practical experience of more than 25 years and many interactive seminars I have addressed so far. If you like it , please share it for a nice cause of helping others.
Ashok Madrecha
  

Are We Original ?

Imbalance in life has set so deep in our life that we are completely modified and living in an artificial state of mind. Our originality is lost and we have become totally a different person.

Let's test our originality and ask ourselves some questions :

1. Can we smile in real ?
2. Can we laugh freely ?
3. Do we feel close to our family ?
4. Can we really define our own happiness ?
5. Do we enjoy being with our friends ?
6. Are we afraid of something all the time ?
7. Have art and hobbies completely evaporated from our life ?
8. Feeling fed up ?

Such honest questioning will open our heart and pave way to do really meaningful in life. We are not taking adequate pauses while remaining in the race. This causes our inner system highly stressed and prone to failure. What for we are in the race ? We must ensure that whether it is just for the sake of showing off or it is really needed. We don't have time to read or discuss such things as we are not original now.

There may be varied reasons for loosing originality like attaining prosperity, meeting some accident, bad health, reaching a powerful position, the disloyalty of some closed friend or relative, break up in any relationship and the list goes on.

Most negative part of loosing originality is that those who lost it, they simply don't agree to this and continue to suffer for a prolonged time or forever sometime.

Mute question is how to remain original. There are symptoms we must observe and knowing these would make it easier to remain original.

We must observe and find answers to these questions :

Does our friend visit or contact us less as compared to earlier ?
Do we feel isolated in our society?
Do people respect us from the heart or just for some compulsion ?
If working, Are we sought after or avoided by subordinates ?

Such introspection may bring some real changes if we are honest with ourselves. In fact an original person only can enjoy life and every moment of it. Being original makes us stress free always as we are not pretending anything and close to nature and ultimately more meaning to our life too.

Express Completely

Life provides us opportunities to express ourselves on varied fronts, be it social, academic, carrier wise, public forums or at personal level. Many of us not even recognise these opportunities and defer our decision to work on that and this all leads us to live without effectiveness. We as human being are most intellectual creature of the nature but our intelligence if not used properly can work against our own. 

Some questions we may ask to ourselves :

What debars us expressing completely in our deeds ?

Why hesitation takes prime place while working?

Why we do not create a sound image of ourselves?

Do we perform half heartedly?

Are we really interested in what we are doing ?

Do the outcome inspire us to  work towards it?

Is it a person , location or situation compelling to work ?

Are we so much compelled that we can not make the change we imagined ?

If we can find honest answers of all these questions from ourselves , a kind of clarity we can have towards the life we really wish to live.

whatever we do, barring very few exception of diplomacy , express yourself completely to the extent you can and it will culminate into a big success even you did not sought sometime. half way expressing brings monotony in life , be it job, carrier, education, society or even loving someone.

You Knew It ... Still...

 

1. We can not make everyone happy at a time :To become decisive,we must accept the fact that everyone wont be happy by your actions and we should be ready for that. Your boss may be happy but your subordinates may not, your parents would be happy but spouse may not .

2. Changes are inevitable : to lead a balanced life we should be well aware of that everything changes except the change itself.  I agree , you have read it many times , you know it but while behaving with one or more we forget it and put ourselves in trouble repeatedly. We take something so seriously as if without it sky would fall and our actions start finding wrong directions.

3. Be pragmatic, not dogmatic. : world over most of the successful people's history shows that they were pragmatic and this led them to more acceptance and thereby more success too. Here one should differentiate flexibility and compromise well as per time and situation. Being practical in our approach is very useful in business too.

4. More we are selfish, more unhappiness. :simple rule to happiness is to remain selfless and unattached as much possible as we can. Tonnes of research paper one may find on attaining happiness, I would like to summarize and state that living for self only is not life one should always strive to be good and useful to others too and this will first big step to happiness.  

5. Understand well what governs our life , money, name or something else : if we can understand what really we need at particular stage of life then our efforts would not make us tired early. I would like to mention here that it is better to allow qualities to govern your life instead of a particular person.

6. Measure your freedom from time to time : everyone likes freedom. may be it is financial, social or else. As life advances we should have clarity about it. are we serious about it or just passing time. freedom itself is a big source of happiness.

7. Relate every decision with the time factor: deciding something requires input of time factor. Every decision has to be taken after considering time factor. for example, Mr. John is curious about investing in good home at his native place which is very far from his working place. He thinks he would be staying there for 10 days in a year. This decision should be taken in light of the time factor. What is the age of Mr. John, How healthy he is to commute ?
whether he would be able to maintain the house without going there. This is mere an example to take right decision.

8. If health is wealth then why one should ignore it: commonly it is said that health is wealth but in our routine life we commonly ignore it too. Paying attention and sparing adequate time for health is must and there is no other option to this. adequate exercise, meditation, proper diet pattern has to be followed religiously.

9. Relationship is not just planting a tree , it requires water regularly: all relations are like plants and these requires water at regular intervals. Mostly we find that initially lot of enthusiasm is shown in any new relationship and after sometime maintaining it takes back seat resulting into break ups. Wise   people understands it and keep their relationship live and vibrant.

10. Confusion creates cowards so be sure about yourself: in my seminar, many time I find people are suffering just because they are confused.I suggest here we should always break questions and try to resolve them. Our approach of getting all answers at a time makes confusion more strong. a separate write up on confusion is written on this blog in article section.
    
11. Destiny , religion may be good to understand but taking efforts in right direction is must to achieve something: considerable part of time is spent on discussing what is destiny , where is god, What is religion etc. I would put it this way being spiritual is good but different than what is discussed academically. As an individual our thought process and actions should be focused on what is to be achieved specifically.
 
12. Accept good and bad both: We are happy if we are comfortable. This is human nature that we accept goodness, comfort, love, favor, service, different kind of gadgets but we don't like discomforts , orders, hate, etc. Point here is that everything carries good and bad elements both. If a person loves someone and hates his or her voice , can this work for long ? We have to accept bad and good both simultaneously more particularly in relationship.
     
13. If you don't have good relation with your neighbors, relatives, friends, family members simultaneously then introspect in deep: If you are facing such situation then something is wrong within you and it requires introspection. Just have a second thought about yourself and see what can be changed at your end first.

14. Never say anyone that you are wrong instead make them feel they are wrong if required. But this should not be the aim of life as it consumes lot of energy. Giving space is better than proving someone wrong.

15. Respect and love can not be attained by demanding : it is funny when we come across people seeking respect and love just by demanding. These people are desperate and feel like this is their right and all this leads them to no where.  life is an art of living where love blossoms and respect too showers on deserving and this can not be attained by demanding.

16. Take small steps first before you leap: any mission or goal can be accomplished on sound footing and for that one need to take small steps first. Any plan, team, resources and networking etc. requires grip on minute details hence taking leap is always advised after some small crucial steps.

17. Develop niche in some areas of your choice to make yourself valuable: Many people come with complaints of being not valued, not paid adequately in their job or else. I simply ask them do they update their knowledge  ? Do they have niche in some area where they can become unique or outstanding? if not then strive for this and these complaints will go away.  

18. Peace is the answer not the enmity: never say anybody enemy. Hostility destroys peace and without peace progress can not be achieved. Even due to some event or otherwise somebody is hostile try to overcome such hostility. Some liberal postures and actions can change whole life. I know well many diplomats would not agree to me.

19. Be Simple : living in your true being is relaxing so be simple. Complex life is very stressful. Even if you are wealthy, top achiever in any field , be polite , smiling .... may be you are a great leader of near future !  
   
20. Even after following all the above if you feel things are not as per your expectation , take pause, relax, life teaches you for better role and of course time too changes so don't worry at all, have courage .

Life may seems to be  battles
there are roses and patels
both are there cold and heat
heart is soft keep clean and neat
you may be fathers or mothers too
be happy and keep happy others too..

This article is written after deep study on many cases from different perspective. I wish every word of this write up will be useful not only to an individual but to organizations, societies, or even countries too. I personally dedicate this write up to entire humanity and those counselors who are putting serious efforts to bring happiness in others life selflessly. I appeal all my readers to share this article for spreading knowledge about living life in harmony .... thanks.. 

                                                                                   Ashok Madrecha 

Arrangements to enjoyment

From our childhood to old age we are constantly arranging something or another with an objective to make life more comfortable or enjoyable.Irony of this situation is that in the process of arrangement we lose our balance in life and the stage of enjoyment is always postponed repeatedly rendering us to live in humiliating and uncertain situation for prolonged time.

Initially everybody tries to be secure and earning is essential part of journey for creation of wealth but at certain stage many people whose living hood is secured get crazy for respect and recognition which they wish to buy but respect can not be bought and this lead them to follow unfair means. They spend money and time too to attain respect of the society but instead of respect they create some sort of commercial brand value which again may be useful for their business but recognition of hearts requires giving something without any expectation and very few person can dare to this. Most people having such hunger for recognition try every way to get noticed which in reality is sheer falsehood.funny part of this process is that more they are     

noticed more they are found to be running after it. On one hand they feel proud,on other hand they become slave of either some individual, thing, or some specific situation which essentially changes with passage of time not necessarily up to or with their expectations. The journey of arranging recognition originally sounded well suddenly puts them to no where and such people starts feeling vacuum and fair amount of distraction. Stunning fact of this aspect of life is more true about most learned, educated and people who are well to do. Such people always look after real friends but rarely it happens as they are sitting on heap of ego which prevents them to come down and share their real inner self with any one. These people then feel stuck up in

one way traffic with only option to move ahead with same mistake of only arranging and not managing.People known to them have mercy on them but they are even unable to feel all this. So what can be the lesson ? Can't we say while arranging, We should also keep managing and enjoy life bestowed upon us.

Thanks
Ashok Madrecha