Mind

I’m Worthy of Love

July 1, 2020 by Dikshi Gupta

Self-esteem mirrors your opinion of yourself – how you perceive your abilities, shortcomings, and your own worth. In simple words, it reflects how much you appreciate and like being yourself. There is a reason why Self-esteem, Self-respect, Self-love start with the word ‘Self’, and this is because you cannot find them in someone else. The essence of self-esteem lies in- Feeling lovable and feeling capable. Self-esteem is the key contributor to success, i.e., Belief you can do it, belief you deserve it and belief you will get it.

Self-esteem develops when one can interpret the world in their own terms and decline to abide by the judgement of other people. When one has healthy self-esteem, they feel good about themselves, are motivated to achieve more, and feel a sense of satisfaction. They focus on the progress and enhancement of their skill set and are less vulnerable to anxiety. Possessing little self-regard can result in one feeling depressed, unwilling to work on ideas, and constantly worrying about not being good enough. They focus on being cautious about making mistakes and live in a state of fear.

However, you must have heard this common phrase- ‘Excess of everything is bad’. While low self-esteem can force people to make the wrong choices or decisions, fall into traps, and enter disturbing relationships. An excessive sense of Self-worth will also make you subdue others and can be destructive for your relationships. So it is important to strike a balance between the two and it is the biggest achievement to be yourself in a world full of people who constantly try to make you behave or act differently than what you are.

Signs of Healthy Self Esteem Vs Low Self Esteem:

Healthy Self Esteem	Low Self Esteem
Confidence	Self-doubt or weakness
Expression of thoughts/ needs	Difficult to express thoughts/ needs
Positive outlook of life	Negative outlook of life
Say No when the need be	Have trouble in saying No
Focus on gearing towards success	Focus on fear of failure
Easily makes friends	Difficulty in making friends
Feelings like Joy, Happiness, Worthy of Love	Feelings like Shame, Anxiety, Unwanted

Self-esteem can be – Global or Situational. Global self-esteem is a constant belief about who you are. Another is the situational self-esteem which fluctuates basis circumstances, events, and roles. It can be high when you are promoted at work or can be low if you are going through a break-up.

Causes of Low Self-Esteem:

Unsupportive Parents/ Friends
Stressful circumstances like divorce/ break up
Constant Bullying
Lack of motivation
Mood disorder or medical issues

While everyone at some point in their life lacks confidence, but people with low self-esteem do not realize their worth and are pulled down as they feel unhappy and unsatisfied the majority of the time. When you value yourself and have high self-esteem, you feel stable and worthy. It takes time to cultivate healthy self-esteem and following are the tips to work on the same:

Eradicate Self Criticism- Be Kind to yourself. Make an effort to quieten the voice of doubt created inside you. Focus on replacing criticism with care and concern.

Stop Comparing- Focus on being the best version of yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others and stop striving to become like them.

Accept yourself– Nobody is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes. So, accept what is not perfect for you. Focus on what you can change for the better. Let yourself feel good about that because beauty begins when you decide to be yourself.

Don’t judge yourself basis other’s opinion- The one who knows their worth does not get disturbed by what you think about them. So, do not degrade your value basis someone’s inability to understand your worth. Don’t let anyone dimmer your shine.

Exercise- Set goals for work out and achieve them. This motivates and helps in improving confidence.

Recognize your strengths– Find out your competencies and work to strengthen them. E.g., If you are good at organizing, help your friend in planning and organizing an event. What holds you back is not what you are, but what you think you are not.

Surround yourself with a positive support group– Having a safety net of loved ones to fall back on, from time to time helps in strengthening your belief about yourself.

Understand that it is unlikely to achieve high self-esteem overnight, but small steps matter as the journey of a thousand miles begins with a small step. You will find improvements over a period. So, do not rush and try to be normal, which others think, for you will never know how astonishing you can be. Lastly, remember that ‘No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. So, don’t bend your head, rather hold it high and tell them that you are Worthy of Love’.

Simple Ways To Handle Stress

June 29, 2020 by Bob Singhal

You are your best doctor when it comes to detecting and curing stress. It’s a kind of illness that is not visible.

Stress is an instinctive and natural character of the human cycle. One can go through stress from your surroundings, your physical structure, and your thinking.

The top 4 sources of stress are-

1. Money

2. Work

3. Family Responsibilities

4. Health Concerns

Nonetheless, you can experience severe chronic situations if you are not able to take measures to manage it. One can`t avoid stress but one can manage it so then we can move forward and lead a productive happy life. Five Ways to manage stress:

1. Program your day in advance. Contrive all activities especially when you are experiencing a hard phase in your life. Designing your day will make you feel more in command. You won`t have to recollect or opine about what needs to be done next. When you excel in your time management, your stress level will scale down will reduce your stress levels tremendously. This way you will be able to burst down all your tasks which at one point of time seem like a huge rock.

2. When you are going through stress, take into consideration only those tasks which are the most important for the betterment of your life. You will be at more ease if you are layout your precedence a day before you need to execute them. Condition yourself to protrude on the most important task and act upon it until it is concluded.

3. Get more rest than usual. Weariness and tiredness mount the stress levels to the peak for a much longer period. A body well taken care of will give you more accomplishments in the long run and diminish the stress naturally.

4. Speak out your situation with your kith and kin. Seek their advice. Sometimes, simply talking about the issue out loud will help scale down the anxiety and stress you are sensing.

5. Look for the moral. Question yourself as to what is this experience trying to teach you. One should be able to probe whether to do more or less of something in the future to avoid a situation like this which is giving you more stress.

For some stress is a familiar foe. At some point or another, we all feel stressed. If stress builds up, it can become a real problem, not only killing our motivation but also leading to some serious health consequences. Here are the tips to stay motivated even in stress:

1. Take a deep breath. Deep breaths work as a reset button whenever you get burdened up. If you feel that your stress is getting out of control, pause, close your eyes, breathe in, and out deeply a few times. A welcome wave of calm relaxation will follow soon.

2. Write down your worries. If your worries are because of some particular events or circumstances, write down those circumstances on a piece of paper and address them one by one. The greater clarity you have on what’s bothering you, the faster and easier it is to resolve them. The result will be that either you will be able to resolve it or come to grips with it that it’s futile to stress over that particular concern.

3. Take some time off. Being overworked is one of the main causes of stress. If you get burned out by being overworked, it’s hard to be productive no matter how much you try. Do an activity you enjoy. Connect with an old friend. Days spent doing things like going for a walk, going to a movie are great ways to de-stress and boost your motivation.

4. Do something that brings you Joy. Joy is an excellent stress reliever.

5. Go for a walk or a run. This improves your health otherwise also even if you are not stressed.

6. Be an early riser. If you start your day with ease and more relaxed, there are higher chances of your day going in the same manner. Put these minutes into meditating or reading a book which is another means to remain happy thus de-stress.

One can also feel motivated by Stress, and it can even be essential to pull through. The human body is always ready to give signals and responses to any kind of danger. In the short term, they can help you overcome a challenge or a dangerous situation. Even so, when the body becomes activated too easily, or there are too many stressors at one time, it can sabotage a person’s overall personality and create damage to a great extent.

Human nature is such that from time to time, one experiences stress and anxiety. Stress is any requirement placed on your mentality or physical body. When numerous requirements are posed on people, they report feeling stressed. Any issue or an event that makes you sense a defeat or creates anxiety will trigger a feeling of stress in you. With fear, worry and uneasiness comes anxiety. Either it can be a response to stress, or it can come about in people who are ineffective in identifying substantial stressors in their life.

But, there is a good side to Stress and anxiety also. However, if both begin to intervene in your daily routine, that could be hazardous. Under any circumstances, if you are avoiding situations due to fright, always being disturbed, or going through stern anxiety about a devastating occurrence weeks after it occurred, it may be time to seek professional help.

POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING

June 26, 2020 by Dikshi Gupta

The nature of people determines the quality of their life which indeed is a reflection of their mind and thoughts. To classify yourself as an Optimist or Pessimist, it is important to understand- Whether you see the glass as half empty or half full? How do you perceive things around you or contemplate any given task or respond to alleged words? Basis your experience, how do you respond to the challenges and opportunities? Inculcating positive thinking is essential to leading a happy life.

Positive thoughts not only aggregate to a happy and fulfilling life, but it has also been concluded in a research that optimists tend to have a longer life span. While thoughts imbued with negative emotions narrows down focus and diminishes life’s quality. Positive thinking and attitude are not only about anticipating the finest of things to happen all the time, but it is about making peace with whatever is happening, is for the good.

Benefits of being an Optimist-

Every individual’s way of thinking differs from one another. The difference in perception can lead to relationship troubles, botheration of financial decisions, snowballing into self-related doubts and inability to perform daily tasks well. It is often said “If you cannot change a thing, change the way you think about it.” Therefore, the key resolution is “Power of Positive Thinking” which will help you in the following ways:

Acknowledge opportunities– A positive attitude helps us in looking at the possibilities that exist instead of the problems/ obstacles and encourages us to work towards capitalizing them.

Better Health and Immunity– Optimist tend to have lower levels of cardiovascular diseases, less risk of depression and stronger immune system.

Better work Performance– A positive outlook helps one to accept the challenges, gives one less time to crib and therefore increases productivity and results in better work performance.

Situation Handling– It helps you uplift the state of mind and enables one to deal with stressful circumstances in life with more calmness.

Vicious circle of success- Positive thoughts translate into our actions. Actions decides whether we will achieve success in given task, also influences the relationships and our perception of the overall world.

Words Think Positive motivational slogan on wooden table with group of pencils. Top view

However, one cannot become an optimist overnight, rather one must practice positive attitude in their daily routine. Following are some of the tips that can help you in molding your thought process towards positivity:

Don’t Complain Often- A complaining nature can detach you from people and opportunities and will land you to more problems in life. “You can learn to surf if you cannot stop the waves”.

Look for good in others– No one in this world is perfect, not even You. So, look for the positive side and focus on their good qualities and try to adapt the same.

Don’t be influenced by negative surroundings- In a world where people believe in pulling down others by their negativity to achieve success, having optimistic and happy people around you will help you in taming a difficult situation.

Less use of negative words/ emotions– Try to be more focused about positive words like Yes, I can, Achievable. Negative words like Not possible, Never, Nothing and emotions like anger, fear have a wrong impact on our mind.

Don’t be judgmental– Do not judge a person by the way he or she looks/ talks/ handles a situation because it might be the best they could think of. Rather help the person with a better solution if you can.

Relax everyday- Spend time with yourself and try to relax by doing meditation which leads to a calm mind and can fetch better output in anything you do.

Help others- Help people with whatever you can as that makes you content and gives a sense of positivity.

Therefore, A positive attitude can be an anchor in your life. There is only one thing in the universe that you can be sure of revamping and that is your own thoughts. And remember that “Success does not come to those who avoid failures, but it surrenders itself to the ones who learn how to retaliate to the failure with positivity.”

BENEFITS OF MAKING A TO DO LIST EVERYDAY

June 25, 2020 by Bob Singhal

A human brain is not the most effective memory tool and it only agrees with the arrangements that it knows works. I as a person might forget stuff. It’s inevitable. The older and busier we get, the easier it is to forget important things. Sometimes we are surrounded by innumerable thoughts and tasks, that we may not be able to unleash some loose ends and draw a blank on the important things. The world is full of distractions, and it`s all too easy to fall into procrastination which may cause one to lose a good opportunity. Don’t let your memory get in the way of you being productive!

Time is the most important resource. It is imperative for the human race. Every day, there are millions of tasks to be executed, and we are not able to trace a simple yet productive path to get it all done. The tool that tops the time management is the indent list of everyday tasks that one needs to plan and execute within a stipulated time period everyday resulting in consolidating all your tasks in one place.

One tends to get more time and task organized when one religiously follows an every day to do list. Organizing your tasks with a list can make everything easy to manage and more focused. Having a handy list of all your tasks will allow you to think in a better direction than going around the bush. A recent study showed that 15 minutes spent planning could save an hour of execution time.

A to do list can be as bare or as complex as you necessitate. While preparing a to-do list, there are a couple of pointers to remember-

6 important Tips on making a to-do list

Start easy and make it simple
Stay specific
The list should be realistic
Break it down
Write down tasks, not goals or objectives
Assign due dates and revise daily.

A good daily to-do list for an average productive person has between 6-12 tasks on it. The length of your todo list has a huge impact on your productivity. Again, the to do lists are a highly individual thing.

The everyday to do list gets with it both pros and cons but in the last the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

Doing this list everyday can lead to stress and overwhelm, especially if the list is long. Lists without structure and prioritization can lead to confusion and inefficient use of time. Interruptions and sudden changes in the work can make your to do list vague and unclear.

There are a plethora of benefits that come from creating a to-do list, below 10 top the list.

The act of writing out forces us to set concrete goals which will be way more effective than thinking about vague objectives.
It helps us to remember important information .
Sets your top Priority resulting in focus on the most important tasks
Time and task Organized
Completion of more tasks helps you set higher goals.
Reduces anxiety resulting in Peace of mind, immense satisfaction.
Improves productivity by keeping an agenda
Prearranging your day
I as a human might forget the to-do list task but the to-do list won’t forget.
People who are in the habit of jotting down the to-do list and completing the task at the end of the day are able to reap the fruits even in the constrained time.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Hence, start working on your to-do list today. You`ll soon realize that you are less stressed out, more focused, and get yourself more leisure in the day than you ever realized you had! There will be no strenuous concern even if anything remains incomplete at the end of the day, it can be spilled over to the next day`s list. This is an easygoing way of preparing a to-do list for the following day, by analyzing the to-do list of today and swaying forward any task that is incomplete.

In a nutshell, maintaining a to-do list is like having GPS to reach a destination rather than wandering around unaware of your destination.

Keep the right perspective…keep it simple, one task at a time, if possible. To-Do Lists are merely guidelines, not rules…reminders, not LAW.

To be imbibed by everyone for life.

An Act of Kindness

June 24, 2020 by Dikshi Gupta

We often hear people saying- Be Kind. Kindness is nothing but a deed, no matter how big or small, that brings a difference in the life of others. It is all about being generous and considerate towards others irrespective of whether that person is known or a stranger.

Kindness involves choosing love over hate and light over darkness. They say that any act of Kindness never gets wasted as “The fragrance always stays in the hand who gives the Rose.” An act of Kindness might not cost you anything but can really help and change the lives of someone in need.

What can be the acts of Kindness:

Many of us are not born with a silver spoon and helping each other in such pressing times gives you a sense of satisfaction, joy and makes the world a better place to live in. Our small act of kindness can add value to someone’s life. We can also practice kindness in our daily routine by the following:

Gestures- Gestures are small random acts like-

Give someone a smile or hug,
Lend your ears to listen or Be someone’s confidant,
Help someone carry a heavy load,
Hold the door open for someone,
Call a friend/ family for no reason but to check their well-being,
Help a stranger in fixing a flat tyre,
Help a visually impaired cross the road,
Give up a parking space and park further,
Help someone in getting the billing done prior to you in a store,
Forgive someone,
Offer to babysit for someone,
Be polite to a sales representative on call,
Recommend someone for job opening
Teach someone for no fee/ favors

Donate to Reuse – With people switching to ‘Use and Throw’ policy, an act of kindness can simply be following ‘Re-use or Re-cycle’ policy. This form of donation does not necessarily mean spending money to donate, but it involves donating the things you bought for yourself and are no more relevant to you because for you it might be one of the stuff, but for them it might be the only stuff they have. It can be any item that they can use for a better lifestyle. These may be:

Old clothes,
Old pair of shoes (in a condition that someone can re-use),
Excess/ Leftover food,
Old Books,
Feed animals with water/ food,
Donate blood

Donation for Helping the Destitute- This form of kindness involves donation where you can afford to spare some money to help the ones in need and can be done by following ways:

Buy someone food/ a cup of coffee,
Tip someone more than you usually do,
Make monetary donation to NGOs who provide shelter,
Donate personal hygiene items,
Sponsor a child’s education

What are the benefits of being Kind?

Kindness is Contagious– It will come back to you some day in some form when you need it the most.
Releases feel-good hormones– When you do good for others, it makes you feel better and turns out to be a natural remedy that eases anxiety.
Sense of Satisfaction– It gives you Inner peace and Joy that improves your state of mind and makes you more productive.
Prevents stress– It equips you to handle stressful situations, helps you get a sound sleep, and lead a healthy and happier life.
Improves Relations– It is a language which Deaf can hear and Blind can see and therefore improves connections and relations between people and indirectly boosts your health.

To conclude this, Kindness is about being more compassionate than being judgmental and is fundamental to Human Existence. “In a World where we can be anything, Be Kind“ !!

Simple Tips to Self-Care during the COVID Lockdown

June 17, 2020 by Dikshi Gupta

Stressing out about what the future holds for you? Constantly worrying about whether things will ever go back to normal? Regularly doubting yourself on whether you are being productive enough in this lockdown? Making plans every day of doing something meaningful but ending up just scrolling through social media all day? If you are going through any of these situations in these testing times, then don’t worry. You are not alone.

In these strange times that we are living in today, it is normal to feel the pressure. Stress and anxiety can easily creep up on you. But it is important to not let it get to our heads. If all these things that are making noises in our heads go unchecked, there are chances of one slowly spiraling towards a mental breakdown. Not able to go outside and see your friends and family is piling up on that.

But, lying in bed all day with just your thoughts is also not a solution. Being stationary does not help anyone. You need to snap yourself out of it and get moving. There are some things that you can do in order to feel better about yourself which do not take much effort. Below is a list of things you should do in the increase the productivity in your life:

Get Creative – Now that everyone is sitting at home and scrolling their social media, this is the perfect opportunity to up your meme game. And who knows? You might even go viral.

Exercise – You have to shake that lethargy off of you and get your body moving. It’s great if you have some workout equipment at home. But even if you don’t, there are plenty of tutorials and fitness apps on the internet that will tell you simple ways to workout at home.

Cooking – Cooking is the ultimate stress buster. Success does not matter in this endeavour. Just making efforts and preparing food with your own hands can be a really fulfilling experience. And don’t forget, it can also make for good Instagram stories.

Reading – There cannot be a better time to read one of the many books that are sitting in your collection but you haven’t had a chance to read. A good book can enhance your perspective towards the world and that is exactly what is needed in this pandemic.

Meditation – Meditation helps in calming your nerves and is a great tool for stress management.

Learn Something New – Hasn’t there been one thing that you always want to learn but couldn’t for some reason? Well hopefully, you can do it now. From dancing to playing guitar to learning a new language, the options are endless.

Be in Touch with Your Therapist – Just because you cannot physically visit your therapist, does not mean that there are no other ways to communicate. Therapists are there to help you become better. Many of them will be more than willing to offer their advice on phone calls.

Clean Your Room – A dirty room can lead to the conjuring of negative thoughts. Live in a clean and cheerful environment.

Talk to Your Friends – Stay in touch with your friends, ask them how they are doing and keep checking up on them. Everyone is having their own issues right now and it is a really good thing to talk about. It lessens the burden on the heart and can also increase happiness in your life.

Sleep – A lot of people’s healthy sleep cycles are going out of the windows these days. For some, birds chirping outside the window is an indication that they should sleep now. This is unhealthy and can cause physical stress on the body. You should try to avoid watching another episode of that web series that you are binging on and go to sleep at an appropriate time.

We hope this article is of help to you and you come out a better person after this pandemic.