Building Self-confidence

Self-confidence is a way of life and there is nothing particular, you have to acquire for gaining it. It is simply a matter of posing to the outer world for which you have to simply make your mind. Try these five formulas to feel self-confident.

Be Decisive

A firm decision makes you to move ahead and a quick decision provides you enough time to correct yourself if you have gone wrong somewhere. A delay in being indecisive robs you of both these opportunities. Once you decide, commit yourself for the decision until you yourself make a change in it.

Be an Optimist

Optimism is a valuable weapon in your struggles in the world. There is nothing much important to be an optimist. Just having back-up support for contingencies converts you from a pessimist to an optimist.

No body is Perfect

Perfection is a word found only in dictionaries, not in real world. So, don't worry about being perfect because you are alright and like others. This does not mean that perfection is a useless concept. Perfection is to be aimed without worrying for achieving it today. With practice, everybody moves towards perfection and so you will also be doing that without worrying about it.

Failures are Universal

Every body fails at some times, so if you also fail, there is nothing to worry about it. Only thing important here is that don't accept defeat in a failure but continue your efforts to succeed, and you are going to succeed with certainty. Many failures teach us and tell us where we have gone wrong. Always be prepared to correct yourself at the sense of a mistake.

Accept Your Mistakes without Hesitation

Everybody commits mistakes, so you also do that. But not all accept their mistakes readily and they continue to commit mistakes after mistakes. Your mistakes confront you before coming to notice of others. Once you sense a mistake of yours, readily and gladly accept it and make a correction to your steps.

By these simple-to-do things, anybody can go ahead with self-confidence in himself/herself.

Relationships in Business Environment

Most formal of evolutionary relationships are found with colleagues at places of work. Here diplomacy overtakes reality of feelings towards others, because all management Gurus tell us to maintain harmonious relations with colleagues to get maximum out of their performances. All relationships at work are for commercial gains of enterprises for which people work, or for saving one's employment in the organization. This adds commercial angle to all such relationships.

At work, no body wants to displease any other person except for administrative reasons. In most of such pleasings of others, people sacrifice their true feelings or their own real pleasures of speaking truth. It is not conventionally allowed in business environments. Every feeling at a work place is covered with a heavy dose of fake smiles.

So at work, it is like be-fooling others, through hiding your real feelings and intentions, to get maximum benefits from them. Does it make a good business sense or a good human-sense? I think, the answer to first question is YES, and that to second is NO. This indicates that business and humanism are diametrically opposed to each other. Should it be like that? Any body's personal answer is NO to this question. Ask a management Guru, and his answer shall be business is not pure humanism, it is much more than that.

There are people, who can have a dual personality and adjust themselves in both the circumstances. Also, there are persons who remain the same under all circumstances - as their real-selves. And they prove to be misfits in a business environment. It is a bitter reality of the world. For these rare gems of humanity, there is an open sky of creativity where there are no commercial gains but there is a lot of personal satisfaction of creating something. Most of them have to be creative with their half-filled bellies. It becomes their habit, it becomes their craze.

Some creative talents find a way out of this malady. They turn their creativity towards commercialism and earn money as well as name and fame. This is an in-between path of surviving happily with creativity.

What is Inner Peace

Inner peace of a person is his/her state when his/her body organs and mind are not at variance with each other, or in other words, do not quarrel wit other. In this state, the whole body including the brain work in harmony with other.

Mind works at sub-conscious level to look after metabolic functions of the body, without even the subject knowing about this functioning of the mind. When a part of body or brain is at disease, the mind is required to to work at conscious level with the subject feeling the pinch. This is the state of conflict between the ailing part and the mind, resulting into losing inner peace of the subject. Thus, good health is the first and the foremost requirement of inner peace of the person.

When we have inner peace, we become more efficient in our routine activities, and a lack of it creates confusion in every step of ours. Inner peace means we are sure of our actions and confident of success. This confidence itself leads to a feeling of success even in instances of failures, because the struggle does not end there but continues with greater vigor.

Inner peace does not mean inactivity as spiritualists preach. They preach practices to calm down mind of the subject from its natural tendency of probing newer areas through thoughts and actions. Such practices make the mind habitual of idleness, which the practitioner confuses with attaining inner peace. This is a highly distorted meaning of inner peace. Inner peace results into more and better aggressive actions and certainly not the idleness or complacency of any kind.

First symptom of inner peace is lack of fears and worry about uncertainty of results of working of thoughts and actions. As a result, the person works to his/her best leading to his/her succeeding in working. Even failures are not taken as defeats but as lessons to improve upon the past performances. This results into ever-lasting pleasures in working leading to overall happiness.

A person full of joys has no interest in judging and criticizing others. he/she also does not provide unsolicited advices to others but is, through his/her actions, a source of inspirations for others. He/she is never a source of conflicts with anybody but confidently works to resolve them.

The most important feeling in a person with inner peace is his/her feeling of connectivity with the world and the nature, all aiding him/her in performing better. Because of this feeling, he/she never allows anything to happen but strives to make things work. Overall, he/she feels contented but never complacent. And finally, he/she is a seeker and provider of love.

Marriages and Divorces

I have a goat and have been observing her behavior very closely to learn something. One observation, I am using here, is about her grazing habit which provides me some clues about marriages and divorces.

When I leave the goat in my garden for grazing, she finds there a lot of edible greenery. She takes a bite on one and then in hope of something better, hops to something else. And this hopping goes on for hours and the goat remains hungry even with plenty of foods around her. Since, her time for grazing in the garden is limited for my own reasons, I tie the goat at one place and put some edible leaves before her from the same garden. She chews te leaves very fast and takes only half an hour to fill her belly, and goes to take rest. I link this behavior of the goat to marriages and divorces in human societies.

Human societies are of two types - liberal wherein friendly sex is conventionally accepted, and conservative having a lot of constraints on sexual behavior. Te liberal societies are analogous to my goat wandering freely in the garden to feed herself but fails to do so for her race to seek a better alternative. People in liberal societies, both men and women, keep on looking for better sex-partners and their search never ends. In this process, there are marriages, divorces and remarriages and re-divorces ... In such societies, divorces are legally convenient and sex is a luxury apart from being a human need.

In conservative societies, options available to persons are non-existent and they have to do with the only available options. There are no choices, and no possibilities of looking for better options. In such societies, even legal provisions of a divorce are tedious making te divorce almost impossible. So, the goats without looking for better options, have to satisfy their needs with whatever is available. Sex as a luxury is punished socially and legally.

Art of Communication : Brevity and Clarity

Communication means transmission of some sense by one person to the other. All species of life communicate genetically through body language and speech signals. Humans have developed languages for exacting their communications in addition to body language and speech signals. Apart from languages, arts such as paintings, crafts, etc. are also used for communication purposes. Dances, shake-hands and kisses are also used as body languages for communicating feelings.

Basically, a message is communicated through signals which may be visual (body language and written words), or/and audible (speech signals or words). Use of body language along with spoken words make a message more powerful and exact tan mere words. Although, written languages prescribe only words for communications, use of emoticons along with the words has come in practice to add spice to a written message. Word 'emoticon' is coined as a brief combination of 'emotion + icon', and some simple shapes, called icons, have been chosen to represent various human emotions. These icons are included along with words in a written message.

Whatever be the medium of communication, some noise is also included in the message inadvertently. This noise may be of redundant words in a written message, additional sounds while speech-delivering a message, or body's superfluous signals while communicating through body language. The noise makes a communication not only lengthy but also ambiguous.

Every message originates from the sender but it is not the real communication. It is what is sensed by the receiver of the message. Anything more than what is sensed is noise in the communication. For an exact communication, this noise must be eliminated by the sender which will make the communication briefer.

Although brevity of a message is desirable, it may make the message unclear to the receiver. So, the message must be designed with due regard to understandability of the receiver. This may need sacrificing brevity to different degrees to different receivers of the message. This also suggests that there exists no single ideal design of a message for communicating. Every design has to be tailor-made with respect to the receiver's understandability level.

In essence, a message has two essential parameters - brevity and clarity, often pulling in opposite directions. The communicator is required to keep a balance between these two parameters.

People to Government Relationship

People often ignore their relationships to the government of their respective countries. The biggest reason for this that they don't expect much from the governments except their exploitations. In fact, most of the governments have been grossly irresponsible to their people's needs and expectations.

Does the matter ends here? No, the matter starts from here, indeed. People of most parts of the world are self-governed now, at least on paper if not in its true sense. This paper coin has to be translated to reality. No ruler or an authority in the government is going to do that to hurt his/her own interests. They all are happy if the people don't want to have any concern with them except allowing them to continue with exploitations. It is in the interest of the people to question the government authorities what they had been doing for them.

Basic duties of a government is to see that the people are disciplined, happy and cooperative with each other. If the authorities fail in discharging these basic duties, and people don't demand an explanation, it is fault of the people, not of the authorities. For asking for explanations, people have to be educated about their rights and responsibilities. Even this education is not going to be imparted by the authorities, but the people have to educate themselves about these. This is a difficult task.

For being disciplined, happy and cooperative with each other, people need basic health, education and justice as their rights. These are the functions of the government. Governments fail in these functions because the authorities never intend to provide and the people don't demand these as their rights, just because they don't really know their rights. So, this becomes a vicious circle of ignorance of people's rights and functions of the government. Neither people know their rights and exert for these for want of health, education and justice nor the government perform their functions of imparting health, education and justice to people.

Solution to this is not self-generative. It has to be forced by some individuals in the society who need to impress on the people to be disciplined and cooperative with each other and on the government to impart health, education and justice to the people. This is a very thankless job, only a few volunteer to take up. It requires struggling on both sides involving a lot of risk and adventure. Neither the people want to be disciplined and cooperative nor the government want to perform its basic functions. So, nobody likes these volunteers. I call such volunteers as social catalysts. Without these catalysts. Some persons are social catalysts by birth and they are found in all societies and at all times. Without these, no government to people relationship is feasible.

Happiness

A very dear online friend of mine from Berlin has this to say with roses on happiness :

"The most important in life is happiness…
The secret of happiness is the innocent enjoyment of simple things
The secret of happiness is seeing one’s work as service
The secret of happiness is a pure heart, empty of malice and self-seeking
The secret of happiness is the reverence of all life
The secret of happiness is laughing with others, not at them
The secret of happiness is doing joyfully and willingly whatever needs to be done
The secret of happiness is the desire to learn, rather than to teach
The secret of happiness is having understandable friends
The secret of happiness is relinquishing the sense of “I” and “mine”
The secret of happiness is ability to know when to stop before to start
The secret of happiness is willing to stand up after falling down
The secret of happiness is Love!"

With gratitude I concur with her beautiful words, except the line 'The secret of happiness is relinquishing the sense of “I” and “mine”', just because I wish to remain a realist rather being an idealist to say that I have eliminated my identity. 'I' is the most important for me and all good things in the world, like her roses are 'mine'. I just can't ignore these basic facts.

The best of her words are 'The secret of happiness is ability to know when to stop before to start' for a lasting happiness. People consider money as the most important thing in this world and they keep on earning it without knowing where to stop. This leads them to be miserable for all times to come.

'The secret of happiness is Love' and I love my friend more than anything else in this world for her active graciousness to me in-spite of me not being a that great artist like her. I keep on working with pleasure like a worm and she keeps on reminding me of my real worth 'a human being'.

Individual to Society Relationship

Humans are elements of their respective societies and so everyone maintains a relationship with his/her society. This relationship is gradually kept on evolving from childhood until death of the person, the society being immortal.

Every individual has three faces - personal, family and social. The person interacts with the society with his/her social face only. The social face, in most of the cases and instances, is different from the person's personal and family face. Reason for this difference is that every person wants to project himself/herself to the society as a gentle, honest and sociable person while his/her reality may be different from this. For the person, it does not matter if his/her social contacts know his/her reality and treat him/her accordingly.

Agreeing with every opinion considered to be generally good without really subscribing to the idea, is a human weakness of the above-said projection. Goodness is a relative issue for most of the matters, meaning thereby that matters considered to be good on one occasion may be considered bad at others, and matters considered good by some individuals may be considered bad by others. To adjust to such situations, persons keep on compromising with their stands and viewpoints to look sociable in their current societies. From an idealistic point of view, this multiplicity of viewpoints is undesirable, and even this fact is agreed to by every one in his/her current social circles.

This makes a person's social face variable in different circumstances, on different occasions and even in different locations. Thus, an individual's social projection is rarely real, making the relationship a fake one in most of the cases and on most of the occasions. So, an individual in his/her society is not normally trust-worthy. In-spite of this well-established fact, such persons are generally liked by the society and rare idealist, having rigid viewpoints, are considered to be ridiculous by their societies.

Profiles of Honesty

'Honesty is the best policy' is an old proverb which appears only in reference books and nowhere found in characteristics of ordinary human-beings. Modern individuals have forgotten it in the race for more and more wealth, power and reputation. To be sure, honesty does not make a person rich overnight. An honest person has to work harder for a living and luxuries run far away from him/her. But still, some persons are found to be honest even in the present times of modernity.

There are two kinds of persons who are found to be honest - real ignorant and real intellectuals. For this reason, society treats them at par labeling them as fools, at least in their life times. Some intellectuals get recognition of the society but long after it was desirable for them or even after their deaths.

Real ignorant behave honestly because of their limited exposure to luxurious lifestyles and limited knowledge of playing tricks. These are mostly illiterate and living in remote villages or tribal areas. In my village too, there is only one person, now about 80, who has never played any tricks for personal gains. he had been a shepherd since his childhood and never gone for schooling. I know one more honest person. When I was at Panipat (Haryana, India) as Works Manager of a factory, there was one young-man very stoutly built and with an expression-less face. Once to test his mind, I asked him to carry a 4 metric ton of steel foundation platform to my office, and he started making efforts to do the job.

Honesty is the first requirement of being a real intellectual, just because intellect of a person makes him/her a real human before taking him/her on the path of intellectualism. He/she is carried far away from material gains of immediate nature. This does not mean that all intellectuals are poor, remain poor and die like that. Wealth and fame follow many intellectuals without their making any efforts for these. Mahatma Gandhi was a rare intellectual who re-molded minds of millions of Indians for making sacrifices for becoming independent of British rule. Subhash Chandra Bose, Aurobindo Ghosh were other Indian intellectuals of that time who sacrificed their lustrous career for the same cause.

An intellectual is basically a thinker, his/her thoughts may be expressed as writings or speeches in fields of social or material sciences to mold the future of humanity. No other field of human endeavor can boast of having an intellectual. The basic concept in the mind of an intellectual is that his/her presence must make difference to future generations and there must be real advancements in human civilization and lifestyles of people around the globe. For performing this duty of theirs they learn from the past human experiences.

Love and Lust

Desire of a subject for establishing a relationship with an object may be of two kinds – a love or a lust for the object Either of these desires are often encountered in all species of life.

Love is different from lust in the sense that love aims at providing while the lust aims at possessing. Thus, the two are diametrically opposed to each other, but are so closely intermixed that people often take one for another. Another great difference between the two is about their origin – the love originates in the mind of the person while the lust originates from the body. Third differentiation in the two is based on characteristic attribute of the person involved – the love is a reflection of person’s sensitivity while the lust is that of the person’s sensibility or practicability. In modern societies, majority of persons tend to become more practical and go for lust. Their sensitivities remain dormant.

Chemically speaking - in love, the person’s brain generates dopamine which lingers for a long time providing durability to the obsession of love. In lust, the brain produces testosterone and estrogen which remain active for a short duration. Thus, a love occupies memory cells for a much longer time than the lust.

Object of love is always some other person or thing of beauty while that of lust is an activity of the self directed towards different persons or things. So, love is objective to a great extent while the lust is always subjective. Thus, love is an object-centered feeling while the lust is always self-centered. In love, the subject is willing to sacrifice himself/herself while in lust, the subject gets crazy about acquisition of some person or thing.

In-spite these major contrasts of the two, there are some common ingredients. Appreciation of beauty of an object by the subject is the cause of the two. However, the appreciated beauty is a material object in case of the lust, but in case of love it may be an abstract value, like a good character, sweetness of voice, an expertise or specialty, etc. of the object.

Both, love and lust, are primarily mental expressions making the subject crazy about the object. The craze may have a physical expression of subject-object closeness and inter-activity. Thus, the two are relationship-oriented. In both, there exists an element of desire of the subject expecting a reciprocation by the object. If the object fails to reciprocate accordingly, the relationship fails. Failure of a love relationship may cause sacrifice of the lover, or a violent action by the person in lust.

In-spite of love and lust looking opposed to each other, every love has some traces of lust in it and every lust has some traces of love in that. Therefore, in most of the male-female relationships, love and lust coexist.

Pleasure : Full and Unbounded

Pleasure is obtained when a desire is fully satisfied and for a desire, there has to be a visual stimuli. Nature of such stimuli depends on pleasure-full experiences of the past. Once a desire is satisfied through some visual scene, recurrence of such a scene works as a stimulus for a fresh desire. This visual recurrence need not be factual always, it may even be imagined by the subject. For example, if a beautiful thing has provided pleasure to a person, whenever he/she visually imagines that thing, a desire is aroused in her/is mind for seeking the pleasure again. However, the visual imagination does not provide pleasure for which factual presence of the thing of pleasure has to be there.

Since, satisfaction of a desire is limited and measured in terms of the subject’s imagination of satisfaction, the pleasure is full when the imagined level of satisfaction is arrived. But the practice may go beyond that imagination due to circumstantial factors, this provides pleasure of unbounded excellence. For example, you have a mate for the night and have certain notions of getting pleasure from his/her company. In practice, you find that the mate is more artistic than you had imagined, this provides unbounded pleasure to you

Brain not only has a positive role in pleasure, its negative role is also involved in providing pleasure. The brain has a vigilance function for the body which keep on informing the person what not to do under given circumstances. While seeking pleasures, this vigilant function of mind is often blocked. For example, our mind inhibits us from eating anything having saliva of some other person. But while kissing during a sex-play, this inhibition is forgotten and the two intermix their saliva to the maximum possible extent.

In females, it has been found, that there is a widespread neural power failure while under influence of sexual arousal. In such a condition, they know no inhibitions. For this reason, once a desire is aroused in a woman, it is almost impossible to subsist without its full satisfaction.