The People Pleaser!

How difficult it is to please everyone! At many a time I thought I should try to be ‘nice’ to people around me. I try to do stuff so that I ‘look’ nice to them. However, not many times I am able to do it.

When I break away from my ‘looks’ I get dirty looks back! :( That is fine!

I have grown now to think a lot of about my life and my future plans. Accommodating all pals around is simply becoming impossible. At times it breaks their heart. But I am just not able to help it. I try not to cause it. It happened twice in a row, now. But yeah! I am in a phase where I should set my priorities right!

I also realise that if someone cannot understand the position I am in, and expect only me to be accommodative, it is really not gonna work!

From being a people pleaser, now I have started to stand up for my own needs. I speak that most difficult word, ‘No!’. I say no just because I am seriously not able to. It feels good, when I am able to say a No when I want to!

Stopped being a people pleaser. Lets check out how many people are pleased with this ME! :)

Outdoorsy...Me? Nah..!

This is what I found out in the recent trip I had! I went out for a one day trip with my colleagues. We visited Gaganachukki-Barachukki falls and Thalakkad! Though I was so hyped about the whole trip, towards the end of the day, I just said, Oh! God, when will I return home?!

I don't say the trip was bad. It was really good. Especially the boating that we did at Barachukki was simply awesome! The boat-rider took us as close to the falls as possible! We were enjoying the soft refreshing shower from the waterfall... below us was Cauvery, 70ft deep and four of us, entrusted our lives to the boat-rider!!

It was awesome, in its true sense! Get the glimpse of the falls here... We went to the tip of the waterfall and I captured this image on the way back! I enjoyed every moment of it!

Then we went to Thalakkad.. to explore Alamelamma's curse! I was fully prepared for the trip. I searched the whole of internet and learnt the story of Curse of Thalakkad. However exciting and masal(a)enious the story was, I could not really believe such thing. The skeptic inside me posed a question as to how this could happen and what is the science behind this? The question was kind of answered when I read this post on the internet. In this sense, you could see how well-prepared I was for the trip! Apparently, I missed out to learn that my fellow members were not as informed as I was!

Whatever I had learnt, I kept to myself and I expedited to uncover more tales and to see how much of what I read from various posts and the quoted article is true! While my colleagues were busy enjoying the nature's beauty and bathing forever(!), I was waiting, waiting and waiting to see the temples. My long wait came to an end when we visited the first temple.


While the local person has told us that we could cover 7 temples in the forest on foot, we were really running out of time! So we decided that we will see one temple and get back! So we went to this temple and came back. Many had said that the sand uncovers itself once a year for the pilgrims and pooja happens! Only later I discovered that people are in constant effort to dig the sand out of the temples. This is one such group who kept the temple premises free of sand!



I learnt that the temples have been built at a very low level and Cauvery while growing fatter, throws the sand onto the Thalakkad region. The wind plays its role to take the sand towards the living area and hence the whole of Thalakkad is filled with sand and sand and sand!

Ok! I had no intention to explain you people the (hi)story of Thalakkad.. But I hope you didn't mind reading it!

So, coming to the point, apart from the sadness of not visiting the other temples, I learnt that I am actually not an outdoorsy type! I am quite happy with my room, the bed assigned to me and my lappy!

Future trips, I have decided that I would take it provided I have the ONE person I want to roam with and not with a group! No Offense Meant! Just that it has become a revelation to me that I don't enjoy a crowd that much! I like to hang around with the one who is quite like me in many ways, for a shorter duration of time and living every moment of it together!

So I shall po st a happier post about my trip when I get a chance to go around the way I want to ;-)

Bore Bore and bore!

Life has never been so boring…damn boring as it is now. I am just running out of ideas and mind has become so idle. And as you know, an idle mind is devil’s workshop and I hate myself being a workshop for devil.

I have never written any stuff like this before. This is also another proof to the extent I am pissed off with stuff going around and in me!

I really want to do something that is exciting, rejuvenating, path breaking, creative. I am sure I can spice up the current life. But I just have no intention to!

The only thing I wanted to do now was to put these crap up on the blog and fret about it.

Relationships

"Hatred is love without facts. Can our minds be changed if we knew a few facts about the things we hate?"

I want to write about relationships today. How much value does a human being place on this thing called relationship! All of us want to be a part of one thing or the other. The sense of belongingness to a certain group, community and owning something or somebody... these I think are the reasons that we seek relationships.

Strangely for some of us relationship does not necessarily be with human beings... we also tend to make relationships with inanimate things. And we strive very hard to hold onto something and get the feeling of belongingness.

This stage of our life (for people of my age), usually is characterised by the establishment of family-especially the spouse. And not all of us have had good love relationships. It has always been a period of stress, sadness, pain and gloom.

While human beings are empowered to achieve things which never existed, love has been something that is still a mystery! Man finds it too difficult to understand it, possess it, and enjoy it. No matter what, a slip in love life makes a man feel deprived, powerless, incomplete, unhappy and lifeless! While lag in other relationships are made up for through perks, wealth, power or other things, love relationship leaves behind a deep scar which is irreversible, irrevocable, and irreplaceable. While these are the best part of love, they are also the sad part of it. Those who are able to conquer their love feel elated and the others are left with the scar as an accident.

While this has been something I get so upset about-the love failures-I attempt to understand what this love is all about. In a sense this can be extended to the concept of relationships as well. I see that every single thing that you and I do is for utmost selfishness – just and just for my (your) sake. It is just because I want to be happy, I want to be secure, I want to have support, I want to live, I want to be comforted, that I get into love and hence relationships. May be that is the reason ‘I’ get smashed when the person I love dump me! My hope, my dream, my sense of security, my wishes, everything that I have bestowed upon that ONE person, is destroyed in no time just because the ONE did not reciprocate.

Also, how difficult it becomes for each of us to accept the other person unconditionally, just as they are. Though at one level we all seek to belong to someone, there is internal discord which is difficult to set right and does not give the sense of belongingness. Establishing relationship is a challenge but more than that maintaining a relationship becomes yet more difficult.

I have read somewhere about spirituality where the different human forms are perceived as different manifestations of a Single Soul. So there in reality lives just one Being. A naive illustration to explain the point: While ‘I’ represent the exercise of will to experience Love, ‘you’ might represent the exercise of will to attain Success. All ‘forms’, work towards the goal of the Single being. This seems to be a comfortable Philosophy to follow for me: maintaining relationships become much easier when I see you as the manifestation of a different me!

It also gives me the ability to empathise with you. See it from your point of view. Stand in your shoes. Now I am holding onto Spirituality to support me!

Relationships: they define them all! What more to say?!

Love yourself!

It has been really a long time since I posted anything on the blog. Now, I make time to make blogging more regular.

Today's post is a bit interesting and close to my heart!

How happy do I become if I make or attempt to make someone else happy, someone else smile?!

Nothing else pleases me or delights me as much as making someone feel good about themselves. In this sense, I really appreciate my decision of shifting to a discipline where I have got to interact with people!

To further this expedition, towards a logical conclusion, I have decided that I would put all my ramblings about psychology in the blog. I intend to post learnings of psychological concepts in this blog. So any psychologist out there is going to visit my blog, kindly forgive the errors and correct my errands. My attempt is to assimilte my learnings and channelise my future efforts.

Hope I stick to this commitment.

Well to justify the headline of my post, Love yourself! is such a phrase which I love to share with people I know. It is when I started to love myself, that my outlook of the whole world changed.

I have learnt that when I start to love myself, I can easily empathise with anyone else. It is so important due to the following reasons. I know all my fallacies, dark secrets, positives, strengths, weakness, many unsaid, not-demonstrated, aspects of myself. When I develop the ability to love myself, inspite of all these minuses, nothing seems imperfect outside!

Everything looks lovelier, charming, better, in one way or the other. I am sure to find wrongs outside; but I have grown to see beyond those negatives, beyond appearances, more than what is explicit.

I bet it comes after a huge effort! Loving myself has empowered me to empathise with others easily. To get into the shoes of other person and view the situation from their point of view. It becomes much more easier to realise and accept that people are no all-perfect! It helps build relationships, keep them and appreciate them as well!

It helps me connect with other human being. While earlier it needed a lot of effort, the more I grew in touch with myself, the more natural it became to understand the other person.

I forgive myself when I wrong, so forgiving someone else is lot more easier!

I Love myself so that I can live love!

Happy! :)

Corruption exists! But, what do we do except complain?

Apart from the ramblings we make about corruption and all malpractices going on in our society and blaming the politicians for that, as citizens of India what plan have we devised to avoid corruption repeating itself in history? Do we have the courage to return our identity cards back to government expressing our distrust in the people taking up the power? Do we have the slightest intention of molding and dedicating one qualified politician per family? We choose one among the lot; the lot being filled with dirty-minded, -handed candidates! If we don’t like anyone in the nominees’ list, do we come back not-voting?

We always pour our words out when the election dates are out. From nowhere the media publicizes the corruption of all the politicians and their links with mafias. Where did we all go when these so called leaders were ruling us? How many of us have the patience to follow the frustrating formalities of the government offices and hold on to the conviction of not bribing? Why did we shut our mouths and pay the bribe? Why did not the media let out the corrupt practices into the light when these leaders are still on power? Why does it spring up in the light when these leaders have win-lose probability?

Frankly speaking none of us have the patience to fight the battle through every day practices; even if we have patience we are afraid of the political power these politicians have. Extensive hate words flowing across pages of newspapers about the ruling party and the opposition, blogs springing up during the election times are no near to the panacea.

It’s basically an inner discipline that every citizen of India needs to develop and pass onto his / her family members to curb malpractice from the society. May we have one or two convictions and hold on to it no matter how much it is tested by the times. Unless and until we develop such an inner courage, we cannot fight the battle against corruption. We will all be complaining and sulking over the pitiable state of Indian politics and let it penetrate deeper into our veins.

The land of culture seems to be deteriorating in its value system and everything is taken for granted. There is such a lack of commitment and integrity in today’s young people that they just do not care about their fellow beings. The so-called collectivist land of India is becoming very much individualistic in that even the family members become outsiders. It’s only I, Me and Myself that is ruling our minds. “Until the ditch touches my flat I do not mind!” – We have developed this tendency subconsciously. The only way to take our country forward is developing an inner discipline and integrity. Talk, preach and do what you would want others to do unto you! If the self fails to raise upto the cause, there won’t be a change! No more Gods will come as Saviours! We have got to be our own Saviours and mean what we say! Also, be an alert citizen in everyday life and question every injustice happening to us and our fellow beings. This is the only way to tell the politicians that we are monitoring them. Only this would ensure that they ought to perform their duties to hold onto their positions!

Be alert and awake, my fellow Indians! Stop complaining and rambling; ACT!