Banish Cynicism And Bitterness From Life

Optimism And Cheer Wins Battles (And Elections!)
Blessed are those whose lives have been populated by positive people right from birth and childhood. For such people grow to be optimistic, are always hopeful, are always able to capitalize on opportunities that come their way, are fully resilient to not let defeat and failure ruin their poise or composure, are always willing to give happiness another chance to enter their life in times when it might have temporarily left them. These are the ones I would count amongst the truly blessed - not the ones who have cash and jewelry straining to burst from their bank lockers or who have multitudes of friends and relatives to mourn their passing away.



Otherwise, chances are that there is at least somebody in our life who is a nay-sayer. A diehard cynic. A person who, when others are looking at working towards success, will thump their chest, wag their fingers, and emphatically tell you why success is not possible. These are the people who will jump up and down and indulge in all sorts of theatrics and histrionics to make themselves heard, and at the very least plant the seed of doubt in our heart and mind. You get the picture? Does anybody come to your mind in your life who fits this picture? This is the one.



Not that such people are always wrong and we are always right. Not that anybody who holds a view or opinion contrary to ours must be stayed away from. Heavens, no. But what makes such people stand apart from the wise and the logical and the rationalists, is their tendency to play the role of nay-sayer consistently. These are the people who always see doom and gloom all around them. These are the people who always have the most acerbic comments up their sleeve, and whose words always seem to drip with the acid of cynicism and the corrosive of bitterness. Who are not able to hide their glee when they see us faltering in our path, who will rub their hands vigorously, grin from ear to ear, saliva drooling from the mouth, eyes wide open, and the expression plainly says - "See, I told you so, I told you so!" Now do you get the picture? Does anybody now come to your mind who fits the picture? This is the one.



Delve deep into their psyche and it is not difficult or time-consuming to discover the source of their cynicism and bitterness. Unless it is a gene-thing, that is. You will usually find that their life-story is strewn with a string of failures or heartbreaks, or that there was one big failure with a capital 'B' and where they had to face a lot of flak and which punctured their self-confidence and which they never recovered from, or that they somehow positioned themselves on a plane of low self-esteem and have been operating from there ever since.



If there is somebody in your life who keeps pulling you down while you are struggling on your way up, or who keeps putting obstacles in your path while you are striving hard to attain a success that you always dream about when you are asleep --- steer away from them!



Now this is the hardest part. We have, up until now, enjoyed visualizing such people in our lives. There is "somebody else", some "other person" who is being cynical and who is being bitter. Let's stand before the mirror now, shall we, and ask ourselves this: The person staring back at you in the mirror: is that the one we have been talking about up until now, by any chance? Do you recognize this person who is looking at you from the mirror, and who fits the picture we have been so graphically painting in the past few paragraphs?



Gee. Did it hurt? Sorry. In case it did hurt, in case you did recognize that it is you who has been cynical and bitter all along, go easy on yourself. Doesn't help, this self-flagellation. But let's now try to change our mindset and our outlook and perspective and shift from negativity to positivity. Let's be optimistic and hopeful and positive about our destiny and our life, for a change.



Good 'tis to have a wee bit dose of cynicism and bitterness in one's life. Some amount of poison never killed anyone. Prevents one from trying to plant one's feet firmly in the air and keeps one rooted to the ground. But beyond that wee bit dose, let's banish the rest of it.

Look Out! Is That An Opportunity Masquerading As Crisis?

Shed Your Cynicism, Discard Your Gloom, And Look Again
Come the morning, and like on autopilot we begin going through the rushed ritual of readying to go to the office. It is while searching through the hangers of clothes in the wardrobe, making up our mind whether it is going to be beige or navy blue today --- that it hits us. But we were handed over the final confirmation yesterday evening! That our contract-renewal request was finally, finally turned down! That yesterday was the last day in the office we have been going to for the past so many years! That today is the first day of the rest of our life, without any office to go to, without the usual banter and the bitching and the politicking and the oily food at the canteen or cafeteria and the water at the cooler and the meetings with the clients or vendors or the bosses or the colleagues and the...


Indeed, that we are facing deep crisis as a community is official and public news now; so it is okay to admit that, like the next-door Joneses, we too will have to scrape our way through the present times till the next upswing comes by. No use putting up pretenses that we are doing any better than the rest, is there? The long of the face and the drag in the shuffle and the droop of the shoulders say it all. The sympathy in their eyes and the nodding of their head and the understanding pat on the back say it all.


Sounds very good, and temporarily comforting, isn't it, when in such times somebody gives a very inspiring sermon on how there might be some very good opportunity lurking behind what superficially appears to be a crisis? In our cynicism and weariness, we know that, once the momentary euphoria wears off and the stark reality of having to re-heat yesterday's leftovers stares us in the face, we get back to the daily grind and the despair, and sprinkle all the words of inspiration over the crust of the stale pie. May be the food will taste better!


And yet, yet, behind the exhortation that there indeed could be an opportunity that is masquerading as crisis, is ancient wisdom. Not that whatever is ancient has to be good. But this wisdom has been tried and tested. We can neatly categorize the crises in our lives into two - one that we draw upon ourselves of our own accord, and the second that are thrust upon us by circumstances that take perverse pleasure in throwing those curve balls at us when we are least prepared.


The first set is something that we need to work upon, and ensure that we do not repeat again. If we are given another chance, that is. The second set is meant to be transformative in nature - the Universe has in Its Mind a special plan for us which we have to implement. It wants us to stop doing this, chuck away that, and instead, take up this and embrace that. And in general, we are expected to rethink our perspectives, rethink our value systems, and redefine who we are, what we stand for, who is important to us and who is no longer. Important to us, that is.


What does all this abstract painting translate into in practical terms, on the ground? Perhaps a change of vocation, for one. A change in the composition of what we call "family", for another. A relocation to another city or state or country, for a third. The problem is that we don't get the instruction in unequivocal terms often times - they don't dispatch the owl, HarryPotter-like, message in the beak, telling us what to do next. So we are left to our own devices as to what to do next.


We may decide to transform our life, or continue living it as it is. The key point is not transformation, the key point is to shift our perspective; to discard the doom and gloom from the heart and look at our situation with childlike wonder: so, what will happen now? The food is finished, the security coupons are over, what now? The foreclosure looms ahead, soon there won't be any shelter over the head, what now? The spouse of so many years is walking out the door, not to return, what now? How will the story pan out now? By shifting our perspective from playing a helpless character to becoming the director of the movie, our own movie called Life, we can think of alternatives to how our particular story unfolds. And make attempts to see how we can convert the challenge into an opportunity.



So, therefore, look out! There indeed is an opportunity masquerading as crisis! Catch it before it goes away.

Alleviate Stress Of These Trying Times Through Journaling

Putting Thoughts, Emotions To Paper / Screen Helps
In these times of layoffs and pink slips, with the wrinkles etching permanent lines on the forehead, worrying about where the next check is going to come from, worrying about how the EMI gets paid and the credit card bill settled, worrying about how the children's tuition fees are going to be met coming spring... quite easy it is to mope around, feeling anxious, stressed, and nervous about the future. In these times of troubled relationships, when the wear and tear seems to be grating through the delicate threads that bond, when we know not what is going on in the other person's mind, when we are just not confident of what the turn at the next corner holds for us in our life, whether somebody is continue to walk alongside or bid goodbye or simply vanish and no goodbye, just an SMS saying that it's all over... we can spend hours upon hours simply brooding and feeling sorry for ourselves.



Dont' we do it? Spending hours upon hours simply brooding and feeling sorry for ourselves? Or, alternatively, we can spend these hours journaling. Putting our thoughts, emotions and feelings to paper, or typing them out on the screen. Venting it all out. This act sounds very simplistic. It is. And at the same time, it is quite effective too.



One very good way is to carry a notebook around - the cellulose kind or the electronic kind, doesn't matter. And when the urge hits, simply open it up and begin writing. Give some appropriate heading before you begin, so your thoughts rally around that one theme. And then let the writing flow. Convert it into a daily habit.



Be as detailed as possible in writing down all that is going through your mind. It could be anything: from the huge showdown with your partner last night to that cute, toothless smile the tiny tot flashed at you when you handed him or her candy in return for their singing. Don't bother if the pages appear initially to be full of junk. Just keep going at this very simple task. And when the task is over, close the book and stash it away. For the next day.



Without your conscious knowledge, this simple (simplistic) act of writing begins to suck away the clouds of despair and brooding and anxiety from your mind. There is this feeling of lightheadedness, an immense release, which comes about when you confide in somebody who is very close to you. Somebody who cannot talk back or respond or proffer advice, but who is sympathetic and even empathetic in their silence. Somebody who is not passing any judgment about whether what you are feeling is good or bad, justified or unjustified, correct or incorrect, virtuous or blasphemous. There is a sense of catharsis that cannot be described in words! And you will experience it yourself, when you take up this hobby of journaling.



Don't worry about whether the output is good enough or not. We are not going to submit your writing for the Pulitzer competition, nor is it going to be checked by your language teacher. Of course, after some time, when you look back and review your literary work and determine that the world deserves to know you better, there's no harm in converting your rambling into book form and getting it published. Who knows, the next year's Pulitzer Prize just might have your name written on it? Miracles can and do happen, ya know.



May be you could use the format of blogging, like I am doing. Who knows, you might even get to monetize it! And begin to earn income out of blogging!

For another take on handling the sense of despair and despondency and bleakness, read up this article here: http://success-nirvana.blogspot.com/2008/10/when-despondency-and-bleakness-and.html.

Why Placebos Work

It Is Faith, That's Why

Online medical blogs and news journals are agog with the latest piece of news about a survey conducted by the NIH to measure physician behavior and attitude concerning the use of placebo treatments.



Conducted amongst practicing internists and rheumatologists across the USA, the survey sought to find out whether doctors would baulk at prescribing placebos in place of actual medicines. Of the 679 physicians who responded, more than half said they regularly prescribed placebo treatments. The medicines which would be passed off as genuine treatment could be as bland as analgesics, as plain-vanilla as vitamins, or as insipid as pure sugar, while the fees would be collected without blinking the eye. Most of them (62%) acknowledged having no qualms about doing so. No moral, ethical dilemma for me here, no.



This survey reinforces an earlier survey conducted in Jerusalem in 2004, where doctors from hospitals and family clinics participated. The outcome then too was roughly more or less the same: that doctors believe "benefits derive from positive patient expectations, and not from the physiological mechanism of the treatment itself." Ergo, the next time you go visit your doctor and buy the medicines they have prescribed, is quite possible that what you paid for and are swallowing with a gulp of water might be sugar that was already there in the jar in the kitchen.



Reactions from colleagues in the medical fraternity have ranged from downright disbelief ("the survey respondents must be practitioners of alternative medicine") to moral outrage ("it's a disturbing finding"). Both reactions are not justified, as is the largely incomplete survey: in the fitness of things, it would help to also find out the impact of placebo treatment on the patients - did they at all get well at the end of it? If their condition improved and they became well, then why not, what's wrong with the placebo treatment? Isn't that what the Hippocratic oath tells us we should do - make them well? Then why the fuss?

We all know it by experience. If somebody makes up their mind to get well and overcome any amount of adversity, then focusing on just that one single thought is enough to see them through. I have seen it with my own eyes, these otherwise very ordinary people coming out of the most debilitating disease. And I am sure you must have heard about them from your social network too, if not experienced it firsthand. We always tend to file such incidents under the heading of "miracle", but come to think of it, there is nothing miraculous or incredible about these incidents: it is the power of thought and the feeling of faith that is behind them all.

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* Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, Lourdes, France, wiki. Besides other religious material, this complex also houses a few taps that dispense "Lourdes water". Ask any scientist, and they will say it is plain water. But ask the person who has traveled for thousands of kilometers to drink the water flowing from these taps. They will say it has healing power. And very interestingly, the deeper and stronger the faith, the greater are the chances that they will return healed! So why do we pooh-pooh or undervalue the placebo effect?
And when somebody makes up their mind to be not well, then whatever be the quality of treatment given to them, you know as well as I do that they will not get well. We say that they have "lost the will" to live, and sure enough, the life is lost. It is the power of the thought in play: "thought" doesn't have a "mind" of its own. It does not judge what is "good" or "bad" - if you hold a particular thought in your mind and focus on it, its practical manifestation will occur in your life.

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* Nirguna Padukas at Ganagapur, Maharashtra, India, courtesy http://www.shreeswami.org/gangapur-sangam.htm. Thousands of devotees throng this temple every day, many of them return home with jarfuls of sacred ash they dispense here. The ashes are supposed to heal the most incurable diseases. The most rigorous of scientific analysis, the strongest rationalization surrenders before the placebo effect - the power of the thought.
This is why placebos work. It is the unshakeable faith in the doctor one is visiting when not well, and it is the blind faith in the elaborate medical system which does the trick. And doctors know this.

Just one word here. Go easy on this placebo treatment thing, folks. Don't use it as an excuse to spare yourself the intellectual effort required to search for the latest treatment available in the medical knowledgebase and which you have access to.

For more of these insights on the subject of the power of thought, visit: http://success-nirvana.blogspot.com.

Remain Alert Of Your Self-Worth Index At All Times

Let Circumstances Not Dictate Your Sense Of What You Are
It is a known fact of life - our own sense of self-worth moulds and shapes not only our body, but also our destiny and future path. If we feel good about ourselves and about the world around us, this feeling percolates to every sphere of our existence. Our health barometer shows a good reading, our relationship barometer shows a good reading, and everything appears achievable and attainable. Yes, even in such turbulent economic times that the world is going through, circa 2008, we know in our heart of hearts that we will pull through.



But the moment the self-worth index takes a dip, everything plunges. Something changes in our brain and body chemistry. An altogether different set of chemicals starts getting secreted. And the outcome is that we crave food - or we begin to hate food - and in general, start feeling depressed. A chain of events cascades, pulling further down the self-worth index. Things go out of control. The result? A host of diseases. And then we end up taking medicines that are aimed at neutralizing the chemicals, but not at solving the base, the core problem: Shoring up the self-worth.



As human beings, we naturally tend to equate our self-worth with our achievements. So when we get a promotion or buy a new vehicle, we feel worthy. Or if we fall in love and the other party says yes, we feel good for ourselves. Think of any of the nicest things that can happen, and just watch the sense of self-worth zoom! But when the reverse occurs? The blues take over.



This equating one's sense of self-worth with one's achievements is perhaps part-DNA, but definitely something that we imbibe from the environment as part of the growing-up process. The uncle who puts the gun to his temple because his business got wrecked, or the sister who goes and hangs herself to the ceiling fan because her lover ditched her, or the father who takes to drinking because he lost his long-held job, or the mother who becomes depressed and bed-ridden because she lost hers, ... are sad incidents, but are definitely not good role-models for the vulnerable psyche of a growing child. In the face of such crises in their life, instead of caving in, when they bravely endure and overcome their particular situation, then that would be a way of living that the child can take forth further.



The business got wrecked? Fine, work on it, build another one. The lover ditched? So what, he or she didn't deserve you in the first place! There is somebody else out there who is more deserving, go look. A long-held job got taken away? Oh, then this is the right time to rethink one's vocation and station in life. There is no dearth of what can be done in this world. The Universe is benign, and all we have to do is to be optimistic, hopeful, cheerful --- and persevere.



The message that the child would then learn, and this is something that we should be aware of at all times - is that our self-worth is not defined by our circumstances. Circumstances come, and circumstances go. This is the yo-yo of life. Nobody has escaped the yo-yo, neither the kings, nor the hermits. But what is in our control and in our hands is to remain alert and be always aware of our sense of self-worth. And not let some silly situation we might be going through dictate its value.

Keeping The Mind Healthy

As The Storm Of Gloom & Doom Swirls Around Us
As the WHO observes today (10 October) as World Mental Health Day, never before was the need so acutely felt for mechanisms that can be taken recourse to, to keep in good health the minds of the individual and the community.



Whether it is Los Angeles or Ludhiana, Boston or Bangalore, people from all walks of life are facing the flames of the economic recession that it is now officially confirmed we are going through. And world over, stress and anxiety levels are rising. If there were a stress -meter installed somewhere, it would show readings at a high perhaps never before experienced in this past decade!



The problem is, stress and anxiety are just the first step that otherwise perfectly okay individuals take towards descent to a full-blown mental health condition, and very surprisingly, we don't seem to realize this simple fact. The subsequent steps can be any of the myriad pathways that can lead to any of the manifestations of the condition.



Stress levels don't need any invitation to rise. We don't become stressed only when something happens to us personally. It is contagious, so when we read about a family-head shooting everybody in his household before turning the gun to his own temple, or when we read about some 90-year-old grandma shooting herself in the shoulder because the police came to serve her eviction notice on grounds of foreclosure --- we cannot help empathizing with the victims somewhere deep inside, and that is when stress walks in the front door and holding our hand in its hand, takes us gently towards the descent. The turbid thoughts begin to have a direct impact on our blood pressure, and from there on, manifests at the somatic, the body level. That vague feeling of fatigue? That irritability that doesn't seem to go away? The feeling of being on the edge? The loss in sleep? We gradually begin to be enveloped in the cocoon of some disorder that is ultimately our own creation. Happily, we can tear away this cocoon very easily, and all it takes is a gentle sweep.



In such times of doom and gloom, actually in especially such times, it is of utmost importance that we be aware and alert of the nature and quality of thoughts going through our mind. For our own sake, and for the sake of the people who depend on us, we have to keep our mind firmly rooted in the positive. Instead of dwelling on the worrisome and the hardship and the dreadful, let's dwell on the delightful reassurance that this is a passing phase that every generation has to go through at some time or the other and that we are no exception; let's focus cheerfully on ways to overcome the hardship -- when one door closes, others open, you just have to persevere and keep looking; let's have optimistic faith that there is a higher force that we never have and never will fathom, and which is guiding us through thick and thin.



This is not escapism. Not some wishy-washy namby-pamby mawkish sermon either. We are taking lessons in the science of happiness for our own benefit. For while there are certain things - lots of things actually - in this world that are beyond are our control, how we respond to them definitely is. Within our control, that is.

The Cost Of Anger

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* 'The Great Day Of His Wrath' - John Martin, wiki.
It Is A Heavy Price To Pay
It used to be not an uncommon sight in the office next door to mine. Employees would stop breathing, at the sight of the signs that clearly foretold that the volcano was about to erupt. And the signs never let anyone down; when the volcano erupted, the lava submerged the entire office. After it subsided, it would be my turn to wait. For the much-relieved-after-the-episode boss would walk into my office for a bite of sandwich washed with a cup of coffee. The eruption would create a void in the stomach which had to be filled urgently, you see.



Anger, and uncontrolled anger at that, has gone down in history as the one of the most damaging of all emotions. It is the 'dispositional' form of anger that one is talking about here, the one that has got nothing to do with self-preservation or reacting to perceived-injustice, but has everything to do with churlishness and instinctive-irritability.



The boss who is not mature enough to handle their anger and explodes when an employee does some mistake - grave or trivial - perhaps does more harm to the company than the mistake itself. For, while the boss may even forget the episode after the bout of anger has subsided - as would be the case with my next-door neighbor -, the episode creates a ball of negative emotions that does not dissipate into thin air. Swallowed by the employee, the ball triggers a counter-reaction in their mind. And they usually do not, cannot exercise the same freedom and privilege to explode back. This implies that the counter-reaction does not find an appropriate outlet for self-expression.



But find an outlet it has to. So the anger is taken out on the kids or the spouse at home - well, wherever there is a victim that is usually in subjugated mode in their relationship. Alternatively, the person slides into a passive-aggressive behavior that stems partly from self-hatred at one's powerlessness to break free from such oppressive condition - alternative jobs are not like fruit that somebody can go pluck from an overladen tree in somebody's orchard -, and partly from a slyness that wants to get even with the perpetrator, someday, somehow.



In the case of my neighboring office, I saw the anger being vented in both these ways. One employee in that office a colleague of mine personally knew would regularly bash his kids in the evening, without justification, whenever he became the butt of anger during the day time in the office. In fact, it became standard practice for this colleague to ring up the employee's wife and forewarn her, so that the wife could hide the kids out of sight well in time.



In another case, a once-top-performing employee of that office began making mistakes that would have been considered unthinkable coming from her. Eventually a time came when she quit, without notice. She was indispensable to the company's operations, so goes without saying that her absence degraded the outfit's business significantly. Later, everyone could pinpoint the exact occasion when the slide started: a sensitive soul, she was insulted in front of her peers and juniors by an insensitive boss who at the very least should have taken lessons in both anger and personnel management, before launching the business.



With time, I relocated my office premises, and after moving out of the city, I gradually got out of touch with my friend, the boss. Yesterday night, an ex-employee who was with me in that same office premises rang up to inform that the boss had died. Cardiac arrest. He was in one of his "volcano-eruption" sessions when it happened. One of his arteries must have most likely busted. The same set of employees who he was spewing the lava on, bundled him into an ambulance and took him to the hospital, in the hope that he recovered so that he could continue with the spewing. Uh, resume from where he had left. But that was not to happen. He was declared dead on arrival.



Otherwise a warm and generous human being and a good friend, one who would often go out of his way to help people in times of need, this man's inability to take control over his temper overshadowed all his good traits. To the extent that, in his lifetime, he inadvertently made more enemies than he consciously made friends.



Anger. You pay a heavy price when you come under its control.