Posts Tagged ‘test’

I recently had a chance to go to two different events, although opposite in spectrum, at the end of the day they were really about the same thing, honoring and celebrating what you love and expressing how you feel about them. The first occasion I attended was a wedding; obviously, a day of celebration, a day to tell your new bride how much you love her, to tell your friends and family, and new family how much you love them, and a day to thank all of those who helped you get to this great day. All of the emotions were appropriate for a wedding, all of the emotions and love I am more than sure were sincere. All in all it was a great day filled with love and happiness as it should be. A few days later I unfortunately had to attend a funeral, a day that was not so happy, but in its own way a celebration none the less. It celebrated a life, and like the wedding there was an outpouring of emotion for this person, for all that he had done, for all that he had meant to his wife, children, nieces and nephews, friends and coworkers. And for all the differences in the emotions of these two days the similarities struck me even more. At the end of the day both events gave people a chance to express how they felt about someone or someone’s they loved.

After the funeral I started to wonder how often people really told the people they care about in their life how much they mean to them. I decided to run an experiment in my own life, I was going to show the people that mattered to me the most how much I cared. Now, I wasn’t going to run right home after the funeral and express to everyone my love for them, that is too obvious and too easy. Over the next few months I set a deliberate plan to let the people I care about know at the most inopportune times for me, how much I loved them. My first test was my wife, I had a day where I was particularly overwhelmed at work, made a huge mistake on a project I was working on, and felt that I had let all of my coworkers down. All I wanted to do was go home, have a drink, be left alone and sit and watch TV. Instead, I called my wife told her to get a babysitter, brought her flowers, made reservations at her favorite restaurant, and spent the entire evening letting her know I loved her, I appreciated the amazing job she was doing raising our children, admired the type of friend she was, and let her know just how lucky I felt. The evening was all about her, and for no particular reason.

Each time I felt down, for whatever reason, I repeated the same type of thing, with my children, my parents, my in laws and even coworkers. Whenever I felt overwhelmed or depressed about something I went out of my way to make someone I cared about feel special. The result? You can’t imagine the difference it made in my life. Not only did it take away my immediate unhappiness by giving to someone else, it made me a much happier person on a day to day basis. There is something incredibly freeing about letting the people you care about know it, and letting them know for no particular reason, no wedding, no funeral, no college graduation, just because. I am sure I made all of those people happy on the days I made the effort, I could see it in their eyes, I knew by the way they treated me afterward. But, however I made them feel, I promise I did not make them near as happy as I made myself by expressing my feelings. The old cliche it is better to give than to receive is never more true when expressing your feelings to the people you care about most.Give it a try, give to the people you care about when it seems the most difficult, and watch the difference in your own life.

Can you believe that too much success can be a bad thing? What if someone just succeeds all the time at everything they do without ever knowing one single failure? Then, one day when failure finally strikes, what will they do? How will they manage? Now imagine someone else who has known constant failures and setbacks throughout his life – constant rejections, bankruptcies and upheavals. Imagine this person coping with one more little failure. That’s right, person one, is a gibbering nervous wreck, unable to face the world. This one gigantic failure has completely bowed them and they do not know how to cope or what to do. While our constantly failing person two is just sitting and waiting for it to be over; just one more failure in his long list. Oh well, get up, move on.

A few failures in life happen to everyone. No matter what your scale of measurement or emotional pain threshold is, you will find something to test you and see if you are strong enough. Just like a plant that grows stronger after being pruned hard, a person who lives through several failures, or even just one big one is stronger and more able to cope with anything that life throws at him.

It is for this very reason that failure must not be feared. There is no point! If you do not succeed, it does not make you a failure, it just means that what you did at that point in your life did not work. Stop doing that and try something else.

The problem with failure is that it has so many emotions wrapped up in it that it becomes memorable. For some people, if they think back on their lives, all they can remember are just a string of dramatic failures one after the other, connected with a delicate, tentative life-thread. It is as if these people can not remember anything good or successful ever happening in their lives. And yet there must have been something – something in their youth, or childhood that did lead them to also have positive experiences.

And, if you examine the lives of highly successful people whom you admire and look up to, they will all have a gigantic flop at some point in their lives. Very few people hit the ground running. It is sometimes very helpful to read people’s biographies to see how they have made it to where they are. Very rarely do you find people who have just gone up and up. If there is someone like that, it is because they have inherited a family business or been given a leg up from the start.

In order to succeed from your failures you must stop associating negative emotions with them. A little bit of sadness and regret is absolutely normal, but after that, forget the emotion and move on completely. The only thing to take away from a failure is to learn how it happened and to make sure it won’t happen again. Remember the old saying: fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me!

Every minute; every second of our lives, we keep communicating with people, objects, places and all those physical and non-physical things that come in direct reference of our thought process. Surprisingly, we communicate with all our senses; through facial expressions; through unspoken silent gestures; through monologues and even through dialogues. Sometimes we even shout at the loudest of our pitches to communicate to people.

Just like food, Communication too has always been the most integral part of our everyday life. Try thinking of a day when we are not allowed to do so; and you would find that it almost seems as hard as not eating the whole day. Since communication is imperative with us human beings, therefore it is important that we practice the art of positive communication in our daily life. By following some basic rules of positive communication, we can indeed spread a lot of good vibes in the spaces that we move around everyday.

Don’t refuse, out rightly!
Negative answers often lead to triggering of negative thought processes, which can very easily result in negative energies flowing around your environment. These negativities creeping into your system can have an adverse impact on the performance levels at work or anywhere, where you might be. In order to minimize the damage caused by these negative answers; it is important that the phrase is replaced by an expression that’s more subtle; but does not even compromise the real meaning of what we actually intended to say. For example; a straight and blunt “No” could be replaced by a more subtle sounding unfeasible; or impractical; or even with phrases such as; I am afraid the cons weigh slightly higher than the pros here.

Don’t make unrealistic claims!
Making unrealistic claims might lure people towards you in the short run; but in the long run, they always inflict a heavy damage on your credibility among the people. And once the credibility factor starts going down; it would virtually take a life-long effort to restore it back again. That’s why it is always advisable to not loose it in the first place. Although it might seem a little difficult in the beginning, but once you get into the habit of saying things that you can keep, and doing things that you have promised, it really becomes more of a good habit that you always grow fond of keeping day after day.
Although, there might be times when some unforeseen situation might hamper your chances
of fulfilling that promise in totality. Then you must not hesitate in communicating the cause of delay to the concerned and also inform about the revised date, when the chances of the remaining job completion are almost 100%.

Don’t criticize people behind their back!
We all are human beings, and we all make errors in judgment at some point or the other. Being too critical about other’s mistakes opens unnecessary quarters of dissent around us, who try to give back the same criticism at the slightest of opportunities of flaw they might sense at our end. That’s why it is important that we leave room for the human element when taking stock of performances of people around us. It will not only help us in looking at their positive light, but also act as a positive vibe giving them ample fillip to look at our efforts more positively. On the other hand, if we indulge in criticism behind people’s back; they will definitely feel insinuated by us for tarnishing their public image. By speaking to them personally, and taking them into confidence about a certain situation, we can also help in minimizing any air of doubt that might be there in their minds.

Don’t be afraid of accepting your fault!
We should never feel shy of accepting responsibilities of outcomes from our actions. If for some funny reason, the outcome does not meet the criteria of success, then we should also not hesitate from accepting it as our fault. If we indulge in passing the buck on somebody else’s shoulders; it can really lead to unpleasant situations and consequences that might make us feel guilty in the end.

Don’t forget to thank, who matter!
Who does not want to be successful in life? In fact, we all strive day in and out to achieve recognition for our efforts, and we all desire to savor the financial rewards of a successful career in life. But life is indeed funny; it does not always go the way we have planned it to; and that can at times lead to difficult situations arising out of it. In these hours of crisis, there are people who walk alongside us, telling us not to loose faith in our abilities. These people are like those comforting lamps in a pitch dark street where our treading feels easy. No matter how bright a pedestal we may walk one day, we must never forget those people who stood by us in our hard times. We must always keep in touch with these guiding lights during our times of adversity; because it is actually these people, who help us in keeping our feet firmly rooted to the ground.

Don’t underestimate the power of forgiveness!
And lastly but most significantly, we must always try to forgive. There is no negative vibe bigger than holding a grudge in our hearts. It not only plagues us from the inside, but also makes us more self centered in outlook and approach. There is virtually no harm in forgiving; it makes room for improvement in the faulting person’s life.

There is a very famous quote from a very noble man; Mahatma Gandhi, who single handedly changed the destiny of an entire nation; and it says “Be the change that you wish to see in this world.” This quote almost perfectly sums up this entire discussion on communication here; because ultimately, we are (in people’s perception) what we communicate ourselves to others.

© Copyright Ririan Project. All Rights Reserved.