Find Calmness and Peace in middle of a chaotic day! How?

How can you bring calm and peace to the middle of a stress-ful,chaotic day? I am currently going through one in office and have gone through many such days in past too. When I sit back and think how do I manage it (or atleast try to manage it), it actually lands up to a very simple answer, though not always so easy to practise : learn to be present.

No matter how out-of-control your day is, no matter how stressful your job or life becomes, the act of being present can become an oasis. It can change your life, and it’s incredibly simple.

When you look at all the problems that you have, you will notice that actually all the problems are in your mind. Sure, there are external forces at work: an uncontrollable job, the stress of kids and chores and interruptions and digital distractions. But it’s how our mind handles those external forces that is the problem. If you are completely present, the external forces are no longer a problem, because there is only you and that external force, in this moment, and not a million other things you need to worry about. If your job demands that you focus on an urgent task, you can stress out because you have a million other things to do and not enough time to do them. Or you can be present, and focus completely on that task, and now there is only that one task and you. When you’re done, you can move on to the next task. Being present becomes, then, a way to handle any problem, any distraction, any stressor. It allows everything else to fade away, leaving only you and whatever you’re dealing with right now.

But to be present is a practise. Most people cannot be present because they do not practise to be present.This is how I do it: whatever you’re doing, right now, learn to focus completely on doing that one thing. Pay attention: to every aspect of what you’re doing, to your body, to the sensations, to your thoughts. (Like currently I am writing this blog and I am doing this in a middle of a very stressful day in office). You will notice your thoughts, if you’re paying attention, jump to other things. That’s OK - you are not trying to force all other thoughts from your mind. But by becoming aware of that jumping around in your thoughts, you have found the tool for gently bringing yourself back to your present task. Just notice the jumping thoughts, and lovingly come back. Do this once, then do it again. Don’t worry about how many times you must do it. Just do it now.

It can become tiring at first, if you’re not used to it. Don’t worry about that. Let yourself rest if you grow tired. Come back and practice again in a little while. It’s not meant to be exhausting - instead you should notice how your worries melt away and you enjoy your present task much more.

Be joyful in whatever you’re doing, grateful that you’re able to do that task, and fully appreciate every little movement and tactile sensation of the task. You’ll learn that anything can be an amazing experience, anything can be a miracle.

Meditation is a fantastic way to practice, only because it removes much of the complexity of the world and allows you to just learn to be aware of your mind, and to bring yourself back to the present moment. It’s not complicated: meditation can be done anywhere, anytime. A meditation teacher is useful if you can find one.

Siya and her Stories...

Siya and her stories....
Siya has a chapter called GRANDMA in her English book and she had her test. The question was:
1) What is your Grandma's name - Ruchi (because I do not know my Grandma's spelling)
2) What is her age - 24
3) What dish does she like - Water (The only spelling I know)

This girl is tooooooooo muchhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

Ignite your passion - How?

A lot of my friends always keep on asking me "what keeps you going on", "you are a power house", "how do you manage everything", etc etc etc. Trust me I am very much a normal human being, even I do get tired, frustrated, have a long list of things that I have not done and would be more than happy to do, however, I do put in special efforts to make sure things currently in hand are done full justice and I enjoy doing it. Just like the way a daily exercise leads to a more fit and healthy body, there are habits which can lead to "fire in the belly" everyday.

I make it a point to talk to a few people everyday. This was not a conscious decision at all. But when I tried to analyze why, I figured out that I like to talk to passionate people. By just talking to them, it merely transmits the passion. Most people don’t believe you can do work you love because they’re constantly around people who hate their jobs and don’t know what excites them. This has to change. Those around you have everything to do with your success and your belief of what’s possible. You’ll either rise up or sink down depending on who’s next to you.Passion is contagious. You must have an environment that embodies it. You need a support crew who believes what you believe. People who dream as big as you or bigger. Not only will they give you ideas but they’ll condition the belief that doing what you love is the norm. They fuel our passion and make the unthinkable possible, even normal. You’ll begin to expect the same of yourself.

I also give every idea a room to groom. Basically, create space. If you don’t give big ideas room, they’ll never show up. Purpose and passion are no different. Lack of space creates pressure – the ultimate killer of creativity. And nothing requires more creative juices than passion. Start small with five minutes each morning. Schedule downtime. Start walking to work instead of taking the bus. Give yourself permission to dream. Passion thrives in emptiness.

Help someone in a way only you can. We all have natural strengths and talents that can dramatically help those around us. What comes easy for you is no doubt challenging for others. We tend to take these for granted, often hardly noticing our own gifts, and rarely share them with others. Passion comes from using those on a routine basis. Ask yourself, What do people thank you for? What do people routinely ask for your help with? Most people’s passions help others in one way or another. Perhaps for you it’s knitting, teaching children math, cooking a good meal or leading a dance class. Devote time each day to sharing your talents.

Challenge the norm. Ask questions. Don’t take things as gospel just because that’s how they’ve always been done. Don’t aimlessly listen to those around you. Question everything you’ve been doing and are about to do, especially if you don’t enjoy it. Is it really what you want? Is it in line with who you are? Perhaps there’s a better way. There often is.

Scare yourself – Live outside your comfort zone. Passionate people thrive off uncertainty. If you aren’t doing things that give you a few goose bumps you’re either not learning, dying or bored out of your mind. None of which are good. Do something at least mildly uncomfortable daily. This could be as small as making a phone call or sharing your art with someone. Learn something new. Become obsessed with learning everything you can find – new skills, approaches, ideas, you name it. If it interests you then it’s important enough to get in your brain. We have to fuel what excites us. Grab a magazine or book that interests you and read a few pages on the way to work or before bed. Passionate people almost always have a book within reach. Ideas can be found anywhere. Start looking. Be a sponge.

Your life’s an experiment
Everything you do, everything you try, everything that does or doesn’t work out, whether you like it or not, it’s all an experiment. It’s up to you to decide to learn from it. That’s the ultimate daily practice. Test how you can help people. Test what excites you. Test what you like. Test what scares you. Realize that if you do what you’ve always done, your results are never going to change.Living a life of purpose and passion is just that, a way of life. Those who wake up excited aren’t just the lucky ones, they condition themselves to experience and deserve it.

Siya and het stories

Siya and her stories....
Purwa - Siya, why are you arguing with me. Don't you think it is happening too often now a days?
Siya - Agreed mom but don't know how to avoid it.
Purwa - Ask yourself the question "What do you find at the end of everything"
Siya - "g"... is that so difficult?

That's it ... Can't take more!

I curse the traffic of Mumbai, gulped it ...
I curse the filthy roads in rain of Mumbai, swallowed it ...
I spend more hours traveling than at home, accepted it ...
Waded through knee high water just just week, tolerated it ...
Seen shit corruption in the city, hated it ...
Had no example to explain my daughter the meaning of the word "adarsh", shrugged it ...
and many more...

But now that's it...can't take more!

Once more our great city is bleeding! Bleeding with yet another terrorist attack! On every attack, I happen to be on roads always, away from my family, away from Siya, away from Vipul! Have no choice at that point of time but to be numb, scared, helpless and just wish for "I hope I see my my dear ones just once".

I as a common man of Mumbai, is doing everything to help the city be better, I pay my taxes on time, I don't mess with government's rules, in short, everything that one good human being should do for their city! But what has the city given me. It has not even provided me the basic security. I shocking to see the regularity with which these blasts strike the city and then get statements like "we have avoided 90% of blasts". Innocent people on the streets are killed and they simply become counts in the newspapers for a date (I just saw today morning). Isn't security the basic necessity that the government should provide to us? Are we asking too much! If we are then I must say we are unfortunate to have such a government. A government that only demands but has no supply of even the basic. I so much hope that a few of these politicians would have been victims, only then we would have safety.

"We will meet again" is statement that I will never be able to use again in Mumbai. Yes, I will get back and run to work, uncomfortably numb. Not for its famed resilience, but simply to survive. as said by Sumit

Spellings for our children - right brain thinking!

By Dianne Craft
MA, CNHP


God has a wonderful sense of humor, I believe. He wants us to grow and stretch, and one of the ways He does this is to give us children who are very different from each other. Just as it is very likely that a right brain person will have a left brain spouse, so it is that if our first born is left brain dominant, the next child likely will be right brain dominant. This brain dominance affects both personality characteristics, and learning styles.

How do you determine if you are teaching a right brain child? Children tend to display these characteristics at an early age. All children are creative, but your right brain child will seem to be even more imaginative. The right brain learns things in wholes rather than parts, so that child will get math concepts well, but may struggle with the details like the math facts, or checking work. In thinking styles, the right-brainer often goes by “gut feel” whereas the left-brainer prefers multiple facts before coming to a conclusion. In test taking, the left-brainer prefers the black-and-white choices presented in multiple-choice questions, while the right-brainer may prefer essay questions, where the whole picture can be given.

Eighty percent of the struggling learners I see are right brain dominant. Does that mean that being right brain dominant is a weakness? Not at all! As you know, Einstein was a flaming right-brainer. Then why the discrepancy? It is that most curriculum is designed to teach in a more left brain style. Workbooks, worksheets, rote memorization (math facts), timed tests, lectures, learning facts from a test, learning vocabulary by looking up the meanings of the words in a dictionary and writing it out, are all left brain activities.

If you have a child at home who is balking at doing the schoolwork that fits the description above, you probably are working with a right brain dominant child. To help this child become successful doesn’t require an entire change in curriculum but rather a change in your teaching strategies for this child. It isn’t as hard as it sounds. In fact, it’s easy, fun, and inexpensive.
Spelling

Let’s look at the teaching of spelling words. We all want our children to be good spellers, and are very frustrated when our methods aren’t working. The most common complaint I receive is that the child learns the words for the test, but continues to misspell them in other writing tasks. This is one of the easiest problems to solve, and I have regularly seen two years spelling growth in one year, using a simple method.

Have you ever seen a picture in the newspaper of a spelling bee winner? If you have, you may have seen the student with his eyes in an upward position. In other words, it looks like he is looking at the ceiling for the word he is spelling. This makes sense in light of the recent brain research that tells us that we can cause our right brain (the hemisphere that houses our photographic memory) to become more responsive by looking up with our eyes. In other words, we use our eyes to help us think, as well as to see. When the student is looking up, he is “seeing” the word in his head. Because he is seeing the printed word, he can spell it backwards, as easily as forwards.

You can train your child at home to use this very efficient strategy. Not only will it be painless, but you will find the right brain is responsible for visual memory and long-term memory, so your child will remember how to spell his words long past the week of the spelling test.

This efficient right brain spelling strategy is simple.

1. Give your child a preliminary test from a short list of commonly used words.

2. Among the words that were spelled incorrectly, take the letters that were wrong, or left out, and color or mark them up.

For example: If your child spelled “Saturday” as “Saterday” put the “Sat-r-day” in black marker on a card, since he knew those letters. Put the “u” in blue, with wavy lines in it to represent water, and a stick figure diving into the water. You can add a story, like, “They all Sat around on Saturday and one of them got bored, so the brothers decided to go swimming.”

3. Hold the card straight up in front of your child so his eyes are looking up. (Make sure his chin isn’t up, but only his eyes). Have him glance at it, then bring it down while his eyes remain looking up, where the card had been. Flash this card in the air, five or six times until your child can “see” it in the air, and easily spell it forwards and backwards. If your child can't easily “see” it in the air, show it more times, or put more “velcro” on it by putting in more color, or a more detailed picture.

4. Review the card each day of the week for a few minutes.

5. Your child’s photographic memory will become stronger and stronger as you use this method.

Remember that your child’s visual memory is his greatest strength. As you help him develop that, using spelling words, math facts, or anything, you will see learning and memorizing become much easier. The success a child feels when he can “see it” is priceless.

Dianne Craft is president of Child Diagnostics, Inc., in Littleton, Colorado, and the author of Brain Integration Therapy for Children Manual, and “The Biology of Behavior” audio tape set.

Study stress

Siya is currently in the first standard and it is just a few days that the school has started. In the parents teachers meeting held last week, I could see anxiety, nervousness, tension and complete stress on all parents face. This is just so hard to believe right! A child in first standard and mom is all worried already about the progress of the child. So here is my interpretation of the whole thing.

Although most people think that 'studying' and 'learning' are synonyms, they are not. There is a very important distinction: 'studying' is the devoted time and activity which may or may not lead to learning, while 'learning' is the actual process of acquiring knowledge or insight.

Learning is good; studying is a necessary evil at best. While both can cause stress, study stress is a greater culprit. What's wrong with studying? The problem is 'study' is confused with 'memorization', which is energy intensive and generally not very efficient compared to an actual hands-on learning experience. Repetition is the mother of learning if we are talking about a physical activity or a complex mental simulation - but not memorization.

The key to reducing study stress is to get to know your own learning processes a bit better, and use your time and mental energy more efficiently. Can you study with a hands on approach? Do that. Make a game out of it. Understand, don't memorize.

Be clear about your goal and use the motivation it gives you. Study stress can easily be converted into a healthy tension from challenge - if you are clear about your goals.

Tomorrow - Right brain thinking inculcated in kids....