Learning to walk away from people who hurt you, judge you, or underestimate you is a sign of maturity and strength
Tuesday, 30 May 2017
Learning to Walk Away
Learning to walk away from people who hurt you, judge you, or underestimate you is a sign of maturity and strength
अच्छे मित्रों का साथ
जाड्यं धियो हरति सिंचति वाचि
सत्यं,
मानोन्नतिं दिशति पापमपाकरोति |
चेतः प्रसादयति दिक्षु तनोति
कीर्तिं,
सत्संगतिः कथय किं न करोति
पुंसाम् ||
अच्छे मित्रों का साथ बुद्धि की
जड़ता को हर लेता है, वाणी में सत्य का संचार करता है, मान और उन्नति को बढ़ाता है और
पाप से मुक्त करता है | चित्त को
प्रसन्न करता है और (हमारी) कीर्ति को सभी दिशाओं में फैलाता है |
(आप ही)
कहें कि सत्संगति मनुष्यों का कौन सा भला नहीं करती |
Saturday, 27 May 2017
Inner Guru & Mentors
Remember you are the true Guru of yourself. You are therefore always with Guru - your Soul. However at various stages you meet Mentors. Mentors are like lighthouse who support navigation in a journey called Life. But it is the innocence, vision, and purity of yourself (Inner Guru) determine the degree of success you can achieve.
Vishwas Chavan
Friday, 26 May 2017
Don't be Afraid of Change
Don't be afraid of change. You may end up losing something good, but you will probably end up gaining something better.
HealingMB.net
Accept Pain and Difficult Emotions
Accepting pain and difficult emotions is more beneficial to our mental health than try to resist them,
Check HealingMB.net for inspiration.
Wednesday, 24 May 2017
Sunday, 21 May 2017
Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin - Book Review
Talent is
Overrated
Geoff
Colvin
Notable ideas of the Book
Geoff Colvin, in this book, describes how crucial great
performance in today’s fast paced world. It is important to know how improve
our skills in the smartest way possible. And the first step needed is to let go
of the belief that greatness is something people are born with.
As opposed to popular belief, extraordinary achievements are not
alone determined by inborn abilities or experiences.
Just because we spent our waking hours doing a particular job,
doesn’t mean we necessarily excel at it.
Research shows that, experience doesn’t always mean improvement;
on the contrary, it can worsen the performance too. A highly experienced person
doesn’t work any better than a relatively less experienced one.
In many fields, the correlation between intelligence and
performance is weak or nonexistent, as per Geoff.
But the question arises, who is an ‘intelligent’ person? A
popular method of measuring general intelligence is the IQ test. It is widely
believed that, the more the IQ, the higher are the chances of success in life.
One reason for this could be that as complexity of tasks increase, the IQ also
increases.
But, IQ doesn’t define success either. In chess, the
grandmasters often have less than average IQ. Most great innovators, before
their breakthroughs spent years in rigorous preparation.
It is a popular belief that most of the geniuses made their
breakthrough moments after having sudden stroke of creativity. However, it is
not true. These breakthroughs don’t come this naturally; they come to those who
are already the master of their fields. To produce noteworthy innovations, one
requires intension immersion in a field over a period of time.
Practicing is one way of achieving world class performance. The
link between practicing and improved performance is very strong. And it is only
not about practice, but deliberate practice which is done especially to improve
performance.
Deliberate practice means identifying specific parts of
performance that need improvement and then focusing on those areas, and getting
constant feedbacks about how to better them. Deliberate practice often makes
some acrobats or ballerinas to look like super humans with their extraordinary
performances to us. They indeed are great performers, but what makes them
greater is the deliberate practice.
Deliberate practice makes one different in many ways. For once,
it helps one to perceive relevant details in the field of their expertise. It
also helps them to absorb and remember more knowledge about their field.
Deliberate practice not only improves our mental skills, but
also they make us physically more competent.
It can drastically alter us physically.
Starting deliberate practice from a young age is very useful. It
has several advantages. Firstly, children and adolescents are free from
responsibility of adulthood. This way they can concentrate more on practicing.
Secondly, starting early in many cases, offers advantage of
support from family. Families help in providing and stimulating an environment
which is very important for improving and achieving.
Lastly, as we grow up our mental faculties slow down. As we grow
old, it takes more time to understand and solve problems as compared to when
we’re young.
Motivation and passion are chief forces which stimulate one to
practice deliberately. To understand their origin, we examine a mechanism by
the name of multiplier effect. The idea is that a small initiative advantage in
some field will multiply that advantage more.
The multiplier effect explains how being better at something can
provide sufficient motivation to practice and improve more, thus, multiplying
that advantage.
Though strong motivation is important, it is not an inborn
trait. Most of us have to be pushed in that direction. Many times lessons which
are forced upon children end up becoming their achievements.
To be a great performer, first we need to know exactly what our
goals are and second, we need to know what skills we actually need to improve
and achieve these goals. Deliberate practice is a great tool to achieve
success, given one knows how to practice and benefit from feedback of others.
Ruchika
Verma
If you like these ideas you ought to read the interesting book
which you can purchase from Amazon
Saturday, 20 May 2017
Build the Brain you Want
After watching this, your Brain will not
be the same
Lara Boyd
Lara Boyd discusses growing research regarding
neuroplasticity and the implication of it for stimulating learning.
How we Learn?
Why some learn easily as compared to
others
What we know about brain is changing at
a rapid rate
Misconceptions
Brain cannot change after puberty
You use only part of brain – in fact
most of the brain is always active even when you are relaxing and doing nothing
Neuroplasticity is a significant
discovery of recent times
Changes in the brain are happening all
the time
Brain can change in three ways to
stimulate learning
1. Chemical: Chemical signals called neuron
signify brain activity. Concentration of these chemicals can increase to
stimulate learning. It improves short term memory
2. Altering the Physical Structure:
Changing physical structure is a slow process. It improves long term memory.
3. Altering its Functions: As you use more
a particular region of the brain, it becomes excitable or activated making it
easier to use again
What
is that limits or facilitates neuroplasticity
Your Behavior is the primary driver of
neuroplasticity. Therefore all the limitations arise from it. You can remove
these by changing your behavior.
Neuroplasticity needs constant practice
of new behavior to make the change permanent or long lasting.
Neuroplasticity can be positive or
negative. Addiction to drugs or alcohol can bring about harmful changes in the
brain. It can be corrected by persistent change in the behavior.
There is no recipe for quick learning.
There are individual differences. Some quickly learn Mathematics; others may be
proficient in languages. Some pick up sports easily while others may master
various musical instruments quickly.
The common belief that 10,000 hours are
needed to master a skill is not quite true. Some may need considerably less
while others may need much more.
Studying the individual variations has
led to growth of personalized medicines and personalized therapies.
Study how and what you learn best.
Repeat those behaviors.
Break those habits that hamper learning
in your case.
Go out, build the brain you want.
Friday, 19 May 2017
Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning - Viktor E. Frankl - Book Review
Man’s
Search for Ultimate Meaning
Viktor E. Frankl
About the Book
Viktor E. Frankl, in his book, examined the
ways of thinking which thinking which helped him find and understand the
meaning of life, despite all its oddities. He has touched upon the concepts of
life and death, suffering and faith. He believes if one finds the ultimate meaning
of life, then the life has much more to offer than one can actually perceive.
Notable ideas of the Book
Frankl tells how we can deal with three inevitable
elements of life by using them: turn suffering into achievement, using guilt to
improve ourself and use the knowledge that life is short as a prompt to action.
Instead of teaching children to have high esteem,
children should be taught about strength of character to handle any setbacks in
life and to achieve success.
This brings us to the question, what should be the goal
of psychotherapy? The goal of psychotherapy no longer consists of making
something conscious at any price. Becoming conscious is only considered a
temporary stage in the psychotherapeutic process. It has to make conscious the unconscious—including
the spiritual unconsciousness —only in order to allow it finally to recede back
to unconsciousness.
What therapy seeks to achieve is to convert an unconscious potential
into a conscious action, but only to restore it eventually as an
unconscious habitus again.
It will be hard to believe that man is a sublimated animal once
it can be shown that within him there is a repressed angel.
The unconscious is not divine, and neither does it possess any
attribute of the divine and thus, lacks divine omniscience as well.
There is a “negative correlation between the collective neurosis
and responsibility” apparently. Thus, the search originally characterized by
“search for meaning” rather than “search for himself.” The more one forgets
oneself—giving oneself to a cause or another person—the more human one gets. The
more one is engrossed in something or someone other than oneself the more one
is likely to identify one’s own self.
To Abraham H. Maslow the will to meaning is more than “an
irreducible need”—he sees it as “Man’s primary concern.”
Viktor is reminded of a concept called crabbing. He describes it
as, ‘if there is a cross wind, say, from the north and the airport where he wishes
to land lies east and he flies east, he will miss his destination because his
plane will drift to the southeast; so to compensate for this drift, he have to
fly his plane in a direction north of his destination, and this is called
“crabbing.” But isn’t it the same with man? Don’t we, too, get wind up?’
He inferred, if he takes man as he is, he make him worse; if he
takes him as he is ought to be, he helps him become what he can be. But this is
not what his flight instructor told him, but, rather, a literal quotation from
Goethe.
Happiness is a pursuit. It should not be ensued. The more we
chase behind the aim, the more we miss it.
A man is not a literal animal and is not told by drives and
instincts about what he must do. And in contrast to an old man, he is no longer
told by traditions and values what he is supposed to do. Not knowing what he
must do or what he should do, he sometimes is clueless about what he really wishes
to do. So, instead, he falls prey to either conformism (starts wishing to do
what other people do) or totalitarianism (he starts doing what other people
wish for him to do).
The need to rehumanize psychotherapy is dire, unless we want to
reinforce the damage.
The meaning is always found and not given. But if it is to be
given, in this case, it can only be given by psychologists.
And if we have to find the ultimate meaning, we have to do it
ourselves.
If a man wants to go on search of the meaning, there are three
avenues that may lead him: First, to act or create a work; second, to
experience something or to encounter someone. Most important, however, is the
third path: Facing a fate we cannot change, we can do it by rising above and
growing beyond ourselves, simply, by changing ourselves. And this also holds
for the three components of the “tragic triad”—pain, guilt, and death.
It is impossible to know intellectually whether everything is
ultimately meaningless or whether there is some ultimate meaning behind
everything. But if we cannot answer the question using intellect, we may well
do so existentially. Where an intellectual perception fails an existential
decision may work. Thus the fact that everything is absolutely meaningful and
vice-versa is equally believable.
Ruchika
Verma
Thursday, 18 May 2017
5 Ways to Hack Your Brain into Awesomeness
Article Summary
Brain is interesting and the fact we are
using brain to find more about brain itself, more so. Joe DB, in this article
explains how we can hack our brain into awesomeness and make it do what we
want.
#5.
Think You Got a Good Night's Sleep (After Only Two Hours of Actual Sleep)
Because of internet and all other various
reasons, we barely get to sleep at night and the morning sadly doesn’t really
waits for us. But there is one way to sleep less and still look as fresh as a
daisy the next day.
It's called the Uberman Sleep Schedule, and it is not only the
name which looks interesting. Its working is fascinating too. It is a schedule
which consists of 20-30 minute power naps, every four hours during the day. It
certainly is not easy, but can very effectively increase your waking hours.
It works by providing brain, only the REM
sleep which is hour and half of our normal sleep, and is the most essential as
it is what actually keeps our brain active and sharp. However, by taking these
power naps we’re actually providing brain with two hours of REM sleep which is
half hour more than normal. It is definitely a tough but worth it schedule to
follow.
#4 Hallucinate
Like You Just Took LSD, Legally
How to get legally high? Joe explains, in
these simple five steps –
Step
1: Turn the radio to a station with just white noise (static), and put on your
headphones.
Step
2: Cut the ping-pong ball in half and tape each half over your eyes.
Step
3: Turn the red light so it's facing your eyes.
Step
4: Sit there for at least a half an hour.
Step
5: Follow Ben Franklin and your new friend, Harold the unicorn, into the
gumdrop forest, and live happily ever after.
It's called the
Ganzfeld effect, and it works by blocking out most of the
signals that go to your brain. The
sound of the white noise and the light from the outside of the ping pong ball
are ignored by our brain. With all those signals not reaching our brain, it has
to create its own, and this is where the hallucinations actually begin.
#3 Dream Whatever You Want to Dream
But
dreams are out of our control? Well, not really. It is where the Lucid
Dreaming comes in. It is an ability to control our dreams, once we
realize it is actually a dream and many of us are not unfamiliar with it. But
how do we do it on purpose? Joe narrows it down to the following point –
1.
Keep a Dream Journal. Joe says, that as soon as you wake up from a dream, write
down every little thing you can remember about it. Writing it down can help you
can recall them easily.
2.
Think about exactly what you want to dream right before you fall asleep.
3.
According to Joe, the best time to have a lucid dream is either right before
you regularly wake up, or right after.
It
works on the fact that in a dream state, our mind mostly loses the ability to
criticize because dreaming just doesn't involve the critical part of our brain.
But
if we try to change our mental state even if slightly, that critical part of
our brain can keep functioning even while dreaming. And it can actually make us
dream whatever we want to.
#2 Learn More While You Sleep
Minor
changes in sleeping pattern can actually benefit us. But how do we do it? The
way Joe suggests is to not study right up until the time for the exam. Study at
least 24 hours before, and sleep on it.
It
works on the fact that our brain can reform information in mainly three forms
namely, acquisition, consolidation and recall. The first and last occur while
we're awake, but the middle one is what happens during sleep. It is because our
brain often process information during sleep which it couldn’t during the day’s
chaos. Totally worth the try.
#1 Believe Something Happened (That Totally Didn't)
Our
memory more often than not is not exactly reliable, especially the one we used
to have as a child. Most things we remember from childhood are either
inaccurate or just plainly false. Our brain just makes up events, they’re just
elaborate constructions of our memory.
So
what if there’s a way to do this on purpose? To hack our brain into believing (and
actually "seeing") a completely made-up event that never actually
happened?
The
trick is to let somebody else do it for you. It is very easy to manipulate our
memories. Just talk about one instance and even if it didn’t happen, one will
certainly have some memory related to it.
It
works on the fact that our brain has no certain speed when it comes to
memorizing. It remembers what it wants to and creates memories whenever it
wants to. Our brain simply remembers more important stuff, and as for the less
important stuff we can simply manipulate them into becoming happy memories.
Ruchika
Verma
You
can read the original article here
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