Stressed ? Read it..

Commenting on others is easy and for many it's entertaining, but analyzing oneself is far difficult and pointing out this fact in a given situation is again more difficult. Unless we understand ourselves, happiness would be a distance dream always. We are governed by our brain and heart and I feel, both are programmed by our past actions and reactions. While on one side we tend to listen logic, on other side we are more comfortable with emotions. This is irony and simultaneously blessings in disguise too, I would say. Now there is a big question, why stress makes inroads in our life ?

Broadly, we can say there are two major stresses :
1. Temporary or Situational
2. Prolonged or self created

Let's talk about Temporary or situational stress. When some situation develops and it disturbs anyone's comfort, it's a stress for him. There are lots of examples like unemployment, ruined relationship, polluted environment, increased expenses, failed in an examination and so on.

What are prolonged or self adopted stresses? In clear and very plain words I would say, when we develop habits of self fighting, it leads to prolonged or self adopted stresses. In such cases, people are living in their own perceptions and among these perceptions they make hyper permutations and combinations. Many times you might have seen people, though listening, but not able to answer as their whole inner world is busy waging a war with themselves. These types of people often apprehend situations which are not real, most of the time. That's why I name it a self-created stress.

So how we brace up to overcome stress? We have to be realistic and pragmatic while dealing with both these stresses. On certain occasions, situation seems logical and sometime it is an outcome of

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
  

Mind or Dustbean ?

It is quite important that we remain constantly aware of how we use our mind ? Just an information collector, dumping ground of so many unwanted scattered pieces of information and making it a scrapyard ? We must justify, if something is available and adding some type of excitement we immediately start storing data as if we are programmed accordingly and eventually our brain hangs sometime. One may argue well by stating that mind is not developed if not used fully. On the same line we can say there should always be some space to play and develop. Amazingly our educational system too bombards with so many old data which are sometime totally useless and I would say it is severe damage to our mental health. So what to do ? Can we change the entire world ? Yes but I would like to correct myself , we can change our own world entirely. Just calm down and think upon what information and type of data you are really required in your carrier, family, society or the circle you are in. What interest and hobbies you posses? I am sure you are getting me. Suppose a person working in a factory, having only interest in cricket , why we should expect from him that he should also know who were the stars of Titanic but our system and society today likes those who are full of unrelated information. To live healthy and for balanced mental health one should be vigilant enough to see whether others are programming us or we are justified in storing so much information.

The problem of over storing unrelated data in our brain is more serious in case of highly educated people. The more we develop our brain, more intellectual level we reach and creates thrust of more data and information to process but at this point of time the main question to be asked is, What information should be allowed and processed through our brain ? just try, many of us will laugh at ourselves and find how much clutter we do precess through our mind and possess too for long ...... Why ?

Status or Stress ?

Journey of life comprises of so many achievements, wealth, respect, recognition, image, brand, skill, and so on. Collectively all this makes a person different and it creates status . As a human being we try to keep it up and up. We should ask ourselves at what level we are comfortable with this status or I would say it so called status in other way. The reality of life is that if we under unknown pressure try to keep on maintaining this status, it creates stress, so ideally it should be spontaneous and not an obligation on constant basis just to show off and impress others by engaging our positive energy.

Other side effects of  "So called Status" which I personally observed are:

1) Jump in level of attitude instead of gratitude
2) Lesser communication with friends and close relatives
3) Feeling loneliness even after crossing many milestones in life
4) absence of humour and increase of monotony
5) Constant irritation with self or others
6) Living artificial life
7) Chasing unwanted objects for more status
8) Developing health hazards

The list above is just illustrative, you can add more and more points at your end. Point to be noted is that achieving something in life is not wrong in itself  what we miss is we put ourselves in chasing something which is not that much required primarily though it may be necessary . We must draw a line in between the both to make life more easy, balanced,simple, and enjoyable.

तनाव ( Stress )

तनाव का सबसे ज्यादा असर हमारे शरीर में दो जगहों पर होता हे, एक मस्तिष्क और दूसरा हर्दय। जब यह नाड़ी संस्थान ( nerve system ) को ज्यादा प्रभावित करता हे तो मधुमेह नाम की बिमारी के रूप में प्रकट होती हे और यदि ये तनाव हर्दय की तरफ बढ़ता हे तो हर्दय घात ( heart attack ) का कारण बन जाता हे। इसीलिए आजकल ये दोनों बीमारियाँ बड़े पेमाने पर सामने आ रही हे। अब प्रश्न यह हे कि तनाव क्यों उत्पन्न होता हे ? सरल शब्दों में कहूँ तो अति व्यस्तता ( over scheduling ) ही इन दो बिमारियों का मूल हे जिसे हम सभी को अच्छी तरह से समझने की आवश्यकता हे। हमें कितने की जरुरत हे और कितना चाहते हे इन दोनों का अंतर समझ कर अपनी अपनी मर्यादा का निश्चय समय रहते कर लेना चाहिए ।....