Making the First Impression

'First impression is the last impression' may not be literally true, but the first impression carries a lot of weight for a long time to come. For this reason, making the first impression is an important feature of one's personality. Its significance is further enhanced if the face-to-face meetings are infrequent. Consider, for example, your presentation before an interview board for employment, your first impression itself decides your future career because the board member get no opportunity for later impressions and decide on the first impression itself.. 


Body Language

Body language plays the most important role in making the first impression. Keep your head raised, chest upfront and gaze peeping directly into eyes of the beholder present you as a self-confident person. I have often noticed persons offering to shake hands as if their hand is paralyzed, they just handover their hanging hand to your palm. This creates a very bad impression of your personality. What indeed is needed is to catch hand of the other person powerfully, purposefully and pleasure-fully to covey that you are indeed pleased to meet and eager for further meetings. 

Your face says a lot what you really intend. So keep up a bold and smiling face even if you don't feel so pleased to keep margins for future meetings. Your eyes also speak with feelings of love, hatred, etc.without words. These feelings get diffused if you focus your gaze directly into the eyes of the other person.  


Hello Effect 
A person may be in any of the three modes at a time - flaring, contracting, or neutral. When you feel full of energy and enthusiasm, it gets reflected on your face and in your body movements, and you are in flaring mode. These influence others around you even if you make no intentional efforts for it. This is called your hello effect and persons around you shall notice you and would like to say a hello to you. For this, you have to be dynamic and look alert. 
Hello effect get enhanced if you have some non-traditional distinctive feature on your person like dress, hair-style, but it should not be odd-looking or considered traditionally bad. Decide on it carefully and let it work for you as an ambassador. Here you have to distinguish between abnormal, ordinary, normal and extra-ordinary and avoid being abnormal and ordinary. Usually these attributes are determined through social traditions of a place.   


Language and Accent
Whatever language you speak, try to make it pure which means words of different languages should not be mixed when you speak out. This shows your mastery over te language and this mastery is perceived by others as a habit of yours enhancing your respectability.
When you speak, don't join consecutive words but speak them as different and isolated entities. Just notice the difference between -
Whatisyourname?, 
What-is-your-name?, 
What is your name? and 
What is  your name?

and try to differentiate through four ways of pronouncing these. I am sure, you would like the fourth one.


This requires some practice. Through this your communication quality gets better. Its sure test is that the other person need not to ask yo to repeat what you just said. Such a clear communication style makes others to feel that you are confident about what you are saying. 

Gaze is key to Initiate and Maintain a Relationship

The most important organ involved in a relationship are eyes of the persons. These not only invite the other party to the relationship but also initiate and maintain the relationship on a sound footing through their soundless expressions. Eyes express how much a person is passionate about the relationship and nobody can hide his/her reality from these expressions. 

Roots of visual expressions go deep to one's mind, often referred to heart, and dig equally deep in the other's mind. not only in love, gaze is important in all social contacts. A person is not trusted if he/she speaks without directing his/her gaze towards eyes of the other person. Mutual trust starts with meeting of the eyes of the persons. 

This puts a big question mark on distance relationships through social media wherein no direct confrontation of eyes is possible. This deficiency makes the relationship shallow unless it is compensated for through sincere hearty messages to each other and a future meeting of eyes is anticipated. Profile pictures of the two involved in a social networking work as the first and probably the last eye contact of the persons, so play vital role in such a relationship. Even in these pictures, eyes of the persons play the most significant role. The best of the pictures of this type are those which focus on eyes of the person.


In my experience of about 3 years on social media, I am of the opinion that persons using pictures other than their real face picture risk being considered untrustworthy by others. I still don't understand the psychology of hiding one's face and real name from others and trying to network socially. To me, this seems just impossible to build mutual trust for a relationship. Any tips from readers about their own experiences and impressions in this respect are welcome. 

Eyes are not only just another organ of a person, these are the most vital channel to one's mind for information on the external world. For others, these mean what is in your mind at that instant. A gaze may be feeble, sharp or somewhere in-between. It is the first direct measure of te person's intentions and make the first impression on the other person. First impression may always not be the last impression, but it matters a lot until the last moments. 

Eyes express sorrow and also smile a lot. In such expressions, their shape varies like that of lips of the person. Eyes get deeply involved in one's thought processing and carry depth as the thinking goes deeper. Thinking is an internal process which can not be viewed by others except through eyes of the person. No external meeting of eyes is necessary to express the ongoing process in the subject's mind.   

What is Metabolism and How to Boost it

Originally, metabolism is synonym to ‘metabolic rate’ that refers to number of calories burnt in maintaining body functions and fueling external activities by the body. But in practice, it is much more than that. It encompasses ‘catabolism’ and ‘anabolism’. Catabolism is breaking down of food into proteins, fats and carbohydrates to fuel body’s needs, and anabolism represents chemical and physical reactions in the body’s tissues for using proteins in muscle building. Excessive catabolism or breakdown of food into proteins, fats and carbohydrates more than the body can make use of busts metabolism. It is said to be building when body’s caloric burn is boosted encouraging use of fats as source of fuel after available proteins and carbohydrates get exhausted.

Thus, catabolism is supply channel while anabolism represents the demand channel of the body for proteins, carbohydrates and fats. To remain healthy, body needs balancing between these supply and demand channels. But an imbalance favoring anabolism to catabolism is a choice better than the converse.  .

These isms are required to build strength and stamina in the body and to immune it against aging and diseases. Since, whole of body functions are inter-related in multiple ways, one metabolic function influences all others.

Nutrition, physical activities and lifestyle factors such as work to rest ratio affect body’s metabolism positively and negatively. So, you have choices of these three factors to build or bust your metabolism.

Metabolism Building and Busting

1. Nutrition

Nutritional considerations of body are the most important to be healthy. Firstly, it is just the food for disease-free survival of the body and nothing more than that. There are many important considerations in this respect –

·         Balance : Balancing a diet in proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins and minerals through intake of well-cooked - preferably wholesome – cereals, mixture of legumes, small amounts of fatty oils, seasonal vegetables and fruits, and some chosen spices is desirable every time and every day.

·         Water : Dehydration of body is the most dangerous to metabolism which is prevented by intake of 1.5 to 2 liters of water for an average person with moderate activities. Water helps drainage of sludge from the body but more of it promotes drainage of useful minerals also. On an average, a cup of water is required by the body for every 15 minutes of an intense physical activity. Caffeine intake through tea and coffee, which are also needed particularly above 40 in moderate amounts, increases this requirement.

·         Sugars : Sugar is a refined carbohydrate and is not needed by the body at all. It is naturally supplied to the body through fruits, vegetables and dairy products. Apart from this, the body coverts many foods to sugar very quickly during normal digestion process. Intake of additional sugar leads to conditions of diabetes and metabolic syndrome. Its intake is recommended only with tea, coffee, etc. for quick replenishment of energy in case the body gets tired of vigorous activities..

·         Timing : Some nutrition specialists recommend grazing rather than meals at intervals which is highly disputed by others on the ground that human body digests food in batches and recommend a gap of minimum 4 hours between two consecutive meals. The author is of the second opinion.

·         Ratio of Meals : Human body is required to be fed with three principal meals a day – breakfast, lunch and dinner, apart from in-between snacks and beverages. The three principal meals must be in ratio of 3 : 2 : 1 respectively, for proper digestion and utilization of food by the body.  

2. Activity and Rest

Every part of body needs to be vigorously active either through some productive work or through some exercises, and after vigorous activity the body needs to take rest. This will make building sleek muscles in the body, which then make the body more energy efficient.

Here, it is particularly noteworthy that growth-producing and strength-enhancing changes that the activity stimulates occur during rest, not during exercise itself. Sleep is the best exercise for its recovery effect on both body and mind.

Sound sleep of 8 hours a day is highly recommended for an average adult which may be reduced to 6 hours a day with aged having lesser physical activities. A lack of sleep leads to impaired carbohydrate metabolism, depressed thyrotropin (thyroid-stimulating hormone) concentrations, higher cortisol (a catabolic stress hormone) and a nervous-system response resembling that seen under stress. Dreaming in sleep has no adverse affects on body as this only indicates that brain has already got it full quota of rest.

Western and prosperous people suffer from over-nutrition because of their dependence of packaged and fast foods, for them daily exercises are a must. Both these things are wastages and work against each other compensating the losses inflicted to body by each other, so it is no wisdom. Better alternative is to take fresh and simple foods and utilize the energy so produced in productive activities. No superfluous exercise is necessary for a productive person.   

3. Aging

Nobody can stop time and its impact on human body. It is a natural buster of metabolism. Even healthy seniors start losing muscle mass at a rate of 3 to 6 percent every decade after the age of 60 without any adverse impacts on the person’s healthy survival. Many metabolism-affecting hormonal activities decrease with age including growth hormone, the adrenal steroid dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), and, of course, estrogen and testosterone.

Proper nutrition, activities and rest can only slow down impacts of aging. Death is inevitable and nothing can be done about it. It is life which can be tackled properly for health and happiness.

4. Stress

Stresses are generated due to emotional, physical, environmental and hormonal reasons and they all have similar effect on metabolism in the long run indicating that our body is indifferent to the source of a stress. A stress is perceived at two levels – body and brain.

When the brain perceives a treat, it initiates fight or flight response releasing stress hormones andranaline and cortisol. A continued or frequent occurrence of these hormones depress metabolism and curtail vitality.

When the body perceives that it is under attack, it shuts down metabolism building functions of digestion and muscle building. As a safety measure, it starts storing fat for future uses. Decays in bones and muscles are resulted. An oncoming feeling of laziness reduces activities and becomes a cause of overeating resulting in more of fat storage in the body. Sleep pattern gets disturbed adding more to worries. 

A Warning

But in case of malnutrition from which majority of humanity in developing and under-developed world suffers has to be cured before taking up any exercises to boost body’s metabolism.

Further, keep in mind that many diseases, including thyroid disorders and diabetes, can interfere with metabolic processes. Talk to your doctor about ruling out such medical conditions if you suspect you might be affected by one, and do not significantly alter your exercise or nutrition program without consulting a health professional.

Build-up Yourself
Once, metabolism building is initiated, your body becomes getting more healthy and efficient making it easier to maintain the pace of building-up. It works like an inspiration from within.

Every Relationship Imposes some Restrains

Tying a goat to a column through a rope restricts the goat's movement and dictates how far she may go from the column. In this case, the goat is related to the column with the rope working as a relationship. Like this, every relationship dictates how far the related persons may go with respect to each other. Crossing this limit by any of them makes the relationship infeasible.

These restrains may be disciplinary making the related persons more disciplined, or disruptive making a person sick of the relationship.Most marital relationships are of disciplinary type, while a relationship created of a kidnapping is disruptive, but still is a relationship between te kidnapper and the kidnapped. Thus relationships are not only positive, these may be of negative type also.

In reference to a positive relationship, difference between freedom and liberty has to be understood. A freedom knows no restrains and so is fatal to a relationship, while liberty contains an element of discipline and so is essential for sustenance of the relationship. Liberty does no harm to the related persons but improve their sociability and other human attributes. Further, control on behavior of a related person must be affected by the person himself/herself out of his/her own will and not by anybody else. Otherwise, the controlled person feels in a prison of relationship and sooner or later flies away from the relationship, or, as the worst case, keeps the relationship as an unwanted burden on himself/herself.

As said above, even enmity is a natural relationship and there is nothing wrong in it. One need not to have any feeling of guilt in having enmity with some one. After all, human differences are natural and products of individual evolutions. All human beings are not evolved equally and in the same way. In races, where violence and cruelty are preached socially from the very childhood, evolution takes an altogether different route as compared to other societies in which violence and cruelty are considered insensible and undesirable. There can be no permanent positive relationship between persons of such differing communities.

Learning a Foreign Language

For making a friendship communicative, I need to learn Russian. The process gave me some new insights on how a foreign language is learned fast and easy way. I intend to share these here.

A language has three components - alphabet, vocabulary and grammar. An alphabet has letters, their names and their pronunciations in words. Vocabulary has spellings, pronunciations and meanings of words. And the grammar consists of rules for making sensible sentences using words.

We find that pronunciation is common in alphabet as well as in words, and word meanings are common to vocabulary and making sense out of sentences. The alphabet can not be learned unless we understand usage of letters in words, therefore, letters of an alphabet and words have to be learned simultaneously. This is te first step of learning a language in which forms, names, and pronunciations of all the alphabetic characters are learned through learning some words, their spellings and meanings.

On sufficient practice and understanding of all the letters and their usages, the learner is required to go to the second phase of leaning the usage of words to form sentences. Grammars are usually exhaustive and little bit difficult to learn so need concentrated attention of the learner. While practicing this, more and more of new words and their meanings are learned, thus building a good vocabulary of the language.

A foreign language learning essentially needs a basic language with which the learner already is fluent with. If the learner knows more than one language, the basic language chosen for learning the foreign language must have similarity in grammar with the foreign language. This makes learning much easier.

In language learning, 'practice makes a man perfect' is the axiom.            

Be and Love Yourself

For anybody in the world, nobody is more important than the self and the most important thing need be loved truly. For loving yourself, you have be yourself in full. Being yourself is no simple task because circumstances force us to be some thing else and so, we need to confront such adverse circumstances to be true ourselves. Circumstances are combinations of many individual factors, so to overcome circumstantial hindrances, it is easy to eliminate the factors individually. Let us count these factors here.

Society

Society, being an amalgamation for cooperation, wants everyone to be a conformist to avoid confrontations. But being oneself needs one to be an individualist irrespective of a social thrust for being just the opposite. Humans are called to be social animals. Even this hypothesis forces one to be a conformist. An individualist always goes by his/her own convictions without bothering for being a social animal, so he/she is often a misfit in society.

This provides one of choosing between society and the self. If he/she wants to love himself/herself, he/she must e prepared to be an outcast in the society. This can be done in two ways - with and without self-confidence. If you do it with self-confidence, you are going to be an extra-ordinary person, and if you do the opposite way, your are going to be treated as an abnormal person.

Pioneers of society are made out of those who keep their self-confidence in going by their own convictions and respect their individualities. So, be a pioneer and without any fear of being outcast in the society be yourself, love your self.

Short-term Benefits

Most of us have to work for benefits to earn our livelihoods and luxuries. It often happens that one seems to lose if he/she goes by his/her personal conviction irrespective of social norms. But this loss is of short-term and is paid back as self-esteem. Remember, essential needs can always be met through honest means, but luxuries, which have no limit, can always be sacrificed for self-esteem through going by one's own convictions.

So in this case also, one need not bother about some material benefits at the cost of going by personal convictions, and so being oneself and loving one-self is always beneficial.

Fear Within

A person can overcome huge hurdles but overcoming a fear within is the most difficult. Whenever you are going ahead with some ting unusual, you are confronted with a big question mark - what will people say? And this fear prevents you from being yourself and loving yourself. It is not a fear of the society but from within. It often happens that you anticipate a lot of bad reactions, but when you do it, nobody takes a notice of it, making your fear baseless. So, don't ave any fears and go by your own convictions howsoever unusual these may be. Be confident that ultimately people will accept and appreciate what you are going to do.

You are not born out of society and for the society, but the society is made of persons like you. It is not to buck you down you but a tool to boost you up.

Lastly, remember that pioneers are extra-ordinary persons are rare and they are there to lead the crowds. For this they have to move lonely.

Purpose is Essential for a Relationship

Like any other human endeavor, a relationship has to have a purpose for endurance. I had some online friends with whom I used to exchange messages almost on daily basis at one time, with lessening of frequency gradually and reaching zero now. I tried to find out the reason behind, and have come to conclude that the relationship ended because there was no purpose behind for any side. It was just like a casual hello.

Every relationship is a matter of give and take for both sides which make the purpose of the relationship. Some times, it may appear that a related persons have no purpose behind their relationship, but what is not visible are their expectations from each other. It may even be from one side and the other may be drawn to relationship for that purpose. In such a relationship, once a realization of expectation remaining unfulfilled, the relationship breaks down.

Except for business relationships, exchanges of love and affection are the most common purposes of relationships. These exchanges make the subjects attached to each other and these attachments become their weaknesses. The relationship is maintained to compensate for these weaknesses of each other. A relationship is not limited to friendliness only, even an enmity is also a relationship wherein revenges are the purpose of the relationship.

A relationship may look to be unilateral, just like love of a child to her doll. the doll seems to have no purpose but in reality, its need is care of the child. It remains unexpressed by the doll, but once the child fails to provide the expected care, the relationship goes on fading and ultimately gets terminated. Long back, I read somewhere about a sect preaching not to have attachment with anything and the children were instructed to throw their dolls and toys into fire to train their minds for non-attachment. Children did that for obedience and fear of elders but with tearful eyes. Preachers of Hinduism also ask for non-attachment but the preachers themselves are found to be deeply attached to their name, fame and other possessions. Such fakeness may be visible in some relationships also which comes to light sooner or later.