11 tearing elements of Negative attitude!

It is necessary to identify the negativity in your attitude. What is negative attitude? Negative attitude is when you start focusing on the problems that you might face during your efforts to achieve your goals. It is the lack of hope that things will happen to help you out in your mission. It is the feeling that people will not help you because on earlier occasions you met with rejections. Negative attitude is the lack of your conviction that you can overcome the hurdles that you might face during your journey. In a sense, negative attitude is also a lack of belief in you. Some more symptoms of negative attitude are enumerated below:

1. Laziness: When you think you don’t have the energy to get up and do the work. Sometimes you don’t even think and realize that laziness is simply whiling away the time. It is not even procrastination which will be described separately.
2. Low self esteem: It is an extremely harmful attribute in your personality. You start thinking that you are good for nothing. You accept the situations in which you are because your self esteem is so low that you think you can do nothing better.
3. Low productivity: Work has a strange tendency of expanding as per the time available. Even worse is when no time is allotted for the completion of a task. This gives you a feeling of solving certain important problems whereas in fact you are just being satisfied in remaining busy. This approach will never allow you to increase your productivity. For doing more in a given time, you have to stretch yourself. Therefore is it necessary that you allot specific time duration for a task. In the beginning, the allocation may seem difficult, but once you form a habit it will become much easier. Difficult or easy, it is necessary.
4. Lack of initiative: For any significant progress, initiative is necessary. What is initiative? Initiative is your first step for going ahead with a task. When it is something new, you have to creatively think and courageously take the first step, even if there is some risk. No risk is the biggest risk in life. Any significant initiative cannot be taken to move forward without accepting this reality. So don’t be afraid to take initiative.
5. Not listening to understand: In the course of conversations, sometimes we tend to focus so much on what we have to say, that we stop listening to the other person. This is particularly so when the speaker has said something for which we have a ready argument to negate what he has said. Unfortunately, such a habit does not allow us to listen and assimilate what the speaker says after that. Evidently it leads to miscommunication and problems. The solution is first understand and then be understood.
6. Faking: We feel envious of some people who are more successful in the material sense than we think that they deserve. Such a feeling leads us to a myth that it is their style which makes them successful and we try to imitate their conduct. This is a extremely bad situation. We lose belief in ourselves, and how can we expect that others will believe us.
7. Not trying to express: When we have certain ideas, but either we do not want to express, or we are afraid to express, is also indicative of our negative attitude. It is necessary to develop an ability to express without hesitation. The fear of rejection which takes away your ability to act is one of the serious handicaps.
8. Not learning lessons from mistakes: There is no one who does not commit mistakes. Whenever we undertake something new, mistakes may happen. This is normal. However, repeating the same mistake again and again, is neither normal, nor should be acceptable. Thus we must learn lessons from our past mistakes and use these lessons to direct our future efforts.
9. Ego: Ego happens to be another aspect of personality which does not allow us to grow. Ego comes in the way of our approaching people to help us. It makes us believe that it is below our dignity to seek help. A success Guru had said that there are eleven principles of achieving success. And what are these eleven principles? These are, ask, ask, ask….(eleven times).
10. Jealousy: Jealousy is a negative emotion which keeps sapping our creative energies. We gain nothing in the process. It makes us feel as victims of fate or poor destiny. Jealousy may even take away our sound sleep. The worst part is that sometimes it cannot be contained, it goes on swelling. Jealousy must be thwarted out of the personality.
11. Avoiding hard work: There is only one way to success, and that is the hard way. If we habitually seek short cuts it will be very difficult for us to work hard. What is working hard? When you are fully devoted to completing the job and you forget even your surroundings, you continue to work even when you are tired because you want to complete. That aspect of work may be termed as hard work. Initially it may be very difficult, but then one can form a habit. For any significant progress, hard work is necessary.

Thanks for reading.

Enemies of Happiness 6

Friends, I hope you must have reflected on the two Enemies of Happiness that originate and grow in the mind. After Anger and Fear, I proposed to talk about Jealousy in this post.

Jealousy: Jealousy is quite common in our competitive world. It’s important to recognize the reason for the jealousy. You must also identify how much time and attention it takes you to contemplate on this daemon. Jealousy can be really debilitating. It doesn’t allow you to reach your goals. Once you admit to yourself that this ugly dragon keeps creating problems in your mind, you must seek corrective measures.

 

Some suggestions:

1. Reflect on your achievements. Count your blessings. And then try to achieve more. When you are busy in making and implementing your plan to achieve your goals you will not have time to waste with this malady.             

 

2. You must accept yourself as you are. Assess your strengths. Try to leverage these strengths for your achievements. Meanwhile you must also assess your weaknesses. These can be overcome with conscious efforts. Consistent efforts with interest will definitely yield excellent results. You must also try to develop good verbal communications skills. This will enable you to improve your relations with others. Besides, you must choose your friends and social contacts with discretion. Remember that successful people around you will make you more successful. In this manner your jealousy will be tamed and will not interfere with your moments of happiness.                                

 

I would like to invite your comments.

Thanks for reading.

Enemies of Happiness

In my last posting I had mention that as a 1^st step we must identify enemies of our Happiness. These are broadly speaking of two types.

1. Enemies of happiness residing within ourselves.
2. Enemies outside. These could be people; this could be a tasks which you don’t like or environment.

In today’s posting I like to tell you about enemies of Happiness which are within are our own selves. I have listed eight. There could be more. Based on these 8 you can prepare your own list. Because Happiness is of prime importance to all of us, we must apply our mind deeply to correct the situation. Following is the list of enemies of Happiness residing in our own Body and Soul.

1. Anger                              5. Fear
2. Jealousy                         6. Indecision
3. Attachment                     7. Hesitation
4. Procrastination               8. Greed

Today I will talk about 1^st four i.e. Anger, Fear, Jealousy and Indecision.

 

 

 

My personal experience and those of my students who have shared with me reaffirm that these four enemies are big Happiness Spoilers in our lives. In order to have appropriate benefit of our discussion, I suggest that you may mentally go through the pages of the book of your life. Then identify which were the moments when these four villains have spoiled your happy moments.

I received a mail from one of my readers to shorten my blog. I ‘ll talk to you further on this tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.

Lessons of Life from Shakespeare.

 

Any great literary writer is invariably a great teacher. Writer will not sermonize. Life of the current time (normally) is beautifully portrayed. Yet, one could draw great inferences and learn very useful lessons that help humans to live life better. I don’t claim to have read much of Shakespeare, but I am one of his great admirers.

Works of Shakespeare transcend the limits of time and space. He is as relevant today as he was in his time. He is as relevant in India as in England. I have picked up 4 of his tragedies. According to me these are eye openers for common people like us. The four plays I have chosen to talk about are: Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and King Lear.

When we read these plays thoughtfully and contemplate, we are able to identify short comings of similar nature in our personalities. We may be quite surprised. How and why these did not receive our attention. We would like to remove these faults even though they may be in very small measure. The classified blemishes I am talking about are:

1. Suspicion, Jealousy (Othello)    

 

2. Greed that led to extinction (Macbeth)

 

3. Credulity Prone to flattery (Lear)    

 

4. Indecision that reaches tragic proportions (Hamlet)

 

As I said above reading these plays, we observe that all these weaknesses were foolishly repetitive in the tragic characters. We might find that similarly we too harbor some habits that make us do something which we don’t want, repetitively. It is here that we learn a lesson. One can purge one’s personality if so desire. Undoubtedly, the exercise will require a mentor or a guide.

Thanks for reading.

Life’s Lessons from Shakespeare.

Shakespeare was born in April 1564. Some people say he was born on 22^nd April others opine 23^rd April 1564. He died at the age of 52 years on 23^rd April 1660 that means almost 400 years ago.

 

How is it that his popularity as a dramatist has not faded out? The reason is his philosophy, the wisdom that we find in his plays and the energizing wit and humor of his comedy.   In fact, these transcend the limits of time and space. He has dealt with human emotions – anger, ambition, jealousy, credulity, indecision etc: these habits are found in the people even today.

In this post I propose to discuss his wisdom as is evident from the 3 pieces I have picked from 3 different plays.

HAMLET

 

Hamlet was a victim of indecision. Indecision was the bane of his life. Unfortunately today also we find many of us suffer from indecision. In the process we undergoavoidable mental agony. I give below the oft quoted words of Hamlet.

To be, or not to be: that is the question: whether’ it’s nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?

In sharp contrast are the following words taken from his play As You Like It.

As You Like It.

And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.

These words, I find, are even more relevant today than were in his own time. ‘Exempt from Public Haunt’- we are in dire need of getting a break and going to the nature from our daily hectic life. And the best place is back to the nature. We have lots of resorts by the sea side, on the scenic mountains, and similar places where we are away from ‘Public Haunt’. As Shakespeare says we can speak to the trees enjoy running brooks/trees and find all the goodness of the world in nature.

Finally I have picked up a very significant point from the tragedy- Macbeth. :

Macbeth 

 

When our actions do not, our fears do make us traitors.

The philosophy of this word is as true today as at any time. Often we do not want to act as Williams yet due to our fears we are motivated to indulge. In many other plays to I find Shakespeare’s massage to imbibe courage in ones personality, speaks louder than words.

Thank you for reading.