Self-Development Archives - Page 7 of 11

How beauty adds life to a home (and it doesn’t have to cost a lot)

Essential Beauty

We have been visiting several Architectural wonders of ancient India in the last few weeks. Temples made of soft rock with round pillars, intricate carvings in the ceilings and sculptures in every facade, churches where every wall, ceiling and glass said a story, tombs, minarets, beautiful wooden roofs without a single nail, palaces with wall murals in natural dye, furniture made with wooden carvings, stone railings with elephant and bull heads etc.

The buildings were built by different kings, often different kingdoms. Some where places of worship of different faith and some where houses. The theme of decoration changed, the materials used changed, the message conveyed changed, but there was one thing that did not change between these different types of buildings.

Continue reading How beauty adds life to a home (and it doesn’t have to cost a lot)

From masterpiece to mediocrity

We have seen this quite often. We love a certain brand of chocolate dearly. Let’s call it Toffee X. Over the years, the taste of the Toffee X changes gradually until one day we feel that the chocolate is tasteless. We try to reason it as a natural change of taste associated with growing up. But no! Your friends say the same thing. Well, they have grown up too. But no! The kids in your block say that Toffee X isn’t a tasty chocolate at all. They wonder why their parents were hyping it so much!

After poking around, you find that the makers of Toffee X did indeed change the taste. To cut costs, they kept cutting back on certain ingredients. The amount of cardamom was halved, butter was replaced with margarine, the size went down by a third and they used refined sugar instead of honey. From being the market #1, they are now just also-rans. This is a typical example of a work of masterpiece degrading over time and dying a slow death due to short-sightedness and lack of commitment and cutting corners as a result. Continue reading From masterpiece to mediocrity

A simple two-sided trick to get better at discipline

Travelling by bus through the Himalayas, we noticed a man attempting to throw three empty plastic water bottles out of the bus window. We immediately told him not to do that. The man looked at us, then withdrew the bottles, thankfully not converting the beautiful landscape into a landfill. After a while, he walked to us and asked if we ever planted trees. When we said no, he launched into a virtue-loaded story about how he planted a tree on his birthday every year from when he was a certain age and on special occasions like Diwali, children’s day, etc and now that he was 57, he must have planted more than 50 trees. Priya (my wife) and I did our best to listen and keep up with his bragging.

The man’s story was good. He had focused on what he should do to increase the earth’s green cover one tree at a time. However, what about garbage and their harmful effects? What about his non-biodegradable plastic bottles meddling with the Himalayan landscape and causing a hazard for the soil, the plants and the animals?

The man had focused only on what to DO and had ignored what NOT to DO. The man would have benefited from a DOs and DON’Ts list. You often need both to enforce discipline. Continue reading A simple two-sided trick to get better at discipline

The Other Side…

The Situation

I was standing with my friend Kalpana outside the office building. She had asked me to wait today so that I can meet her fiance. She was quite excited to meet him after a few days and was also equally excited to introduce him to me.

We had been waiting for 30 mins and I was running late. I was feeling bad for her. She was unable to reach him and we were unsure if we had to wait further or leave.

Continue reading The Other Side…

How do you react to failure?

You are driving through a busy street in a city and need to park your vehicle. You find a spot that’s perfect to parallel-park your car between two others. Finally, your tiring drive can end. But while backing your car into the spot, you graze your car’s rear into a light pole. This is the side of the car to which you are blind-sided, and can only use judgement. There are an ugly scratch and a dent. After a few more twists and turns, you finally park the car. But your parking attempt suffered a failure. You can take this failure either like a loser or as a person who looks at it as something learnt. Continue reading How do you react to failure?

You complain so much!

Whiners. You can always recognise one when you have a conversation with them. A tell-tale sign. When you are around them, you feel the shadow of negative energy as they start berating. How bad their day is, how this government should never have been chosen, how insensitive homo sapiens are. As if problems on just the planet of earth are not enough, they start complaining about how harsh the sun is these days and how the ozone layer is depleting and causing global warming! Choose any topic. Name it, and they have a complaint.

While not everyone is a serial whiner, I am sure that everyone can do with a little less complaining. I used to complain a lot, but I realised a few things about complaining that forced me to reduce my habit. I am not 100% successful, but I have significantly reduced the number of whines and complaints to 2 – 3 every week. In this post, you will read about why complaining is bad and what you can do instead. Continue reading You complain so much!

If I fail..

A friendly conversation,

B: ‘Exam is in a week, why don’t you put more efforts into study. You know this exam is difficult is to crack’
A: ‘Well, that’s exactly why. It’s difficult to crack and I probably won’t. If I put in as much efforts as you do, I’d feel terrible about having failed. Now that I’m cool about it, I wouldn’t feel as bad when I fail’
B: hmmm…

Continue reading If I fail..

Look, a shiny object!

After a particularly dull meal at my parents’ home, I went into the kitchen opening tins of chips and biscuits to look for something to excite my taste buds. One moment, my hands were busy, but the next moment, I froze. Something had just occured to me. I had found my main course boring, so I was looking for distracting tidbits. I wasn’t even hungry. What my mom had made was healthy and good for the long term. I was looking for short term gratification. I started reviewing. How often do I look for distractions that are gratifying for the short term, while I should be working on something that moves me towards my long term goals. In fact how often does everyone do it?

Continue reading Look, a shiny object!

What losing my smartphone in the Himalayas taught me

My wife, Priya, and I were on a 3-month trip in the Himalayas. 25 days into the trip, I lost my smartphone. I carelessly left it behind on a bus and realised the folly only an hour later in our hotel room. The word ‘smartphone’ seems like just one object. However, it is much more. It was my my phone, our Internet connection, our reference book, our compass, etc. We had 65 days to go until we would be back to Mumbai, where I could get a duplicate SIM card. SIM cards are only replaced in a phone number’s home zone. I could have got a new smartphone and used it without the SIM, for other purposes like camera. But it didn’t make monetary sense to buy a smartphone from a showroom in Uttarakhand, when an Internet purchase can be much cheaper. Being on a backpacking trip and staying in different lodges every two or three days, I couldn’t even furnish a postal delivery address. So I decided not to buy a new phone until reaching Mumbai. In this post, I will narrate my experience of life without a smartphone for a little more than 2 months. Continue reading What losing my smartphone in the Himalayas taught me

Why reading is a unique experience

At Amritsar, the Golden Temple looks magnificent inside a sparkling lake. The Harmandir Sahib Gurdwara is the most sacred place for the practitioners of Sikhism. Under its golden dome, in the centre of the sanctum sanctorum, lies an artefact that the Sikhs consider their Supreme Being. It is called the Guru Granth. It is a book. It is considered the ultimate Teacher to the Sikhs, prescribing how a Sikh should lead a life of honesty, respect and dignity. For the Sikhs, the Guru Granth is not just a book, it is a living being with a soul.

While other religions do not directly worship a book, they too revere books which teach them the way of life. Christianity swears by the Bible and Muslims look upto the Quran. Hindus do not hold any one book as their chief scripture. While modern Hinduism heaps a lot of praise on the Bhagawat Geeta, there are plenty more such as the Upanishad and the Vedas.

I am agnostic with no belief in religion. However I cannot help praising the fact that every religion revers the ‘written word’. Every religion I am aware of respects the experience of the people bygone and recommends that we read their ‘written word’ and try to make our life better by using that repository of knowledge. It is also what our parents told us during our childhood and what all successful people keep saying time after time. Let me make it short and sweet. “Read Books”! Continue reading Why reading is a unique experience