Srini's Space

Meditation!!! A word, which is ruling the world for a long time. One might have come across a situation when people suggest meditation as a remedy. Cure-all is a name for a medicine, which is supposed to cure all the problems. Anxiety, Stress, Anger, Personal Development, Concentration and finally living at the moment - for all these, meditation is a best remedy.

So what exactly is meditation? - A medicine? or a treatment method? or mind technique? or something related to spiritual teachings?

In this post, I have tried my best to explain about meditation and its benefits as simple as possible,

Definition of Meditation:

Many gurus already well defined the term meditation. Let's see some of them,

"Meditation is an unbroken flow of thoughts towards the object of concentration like pouring of oil from one vessel to another in a steady unbroken stream." - Patanjali Rishi

"Meditation means the mind is turned back upon itself. The mind stops all the thought-waves and the world stops. Your consciousness expands. Every time you meditate you will keep your growth." - Swamy Vivekananda

"Meditation is adventure, the greatest adventure the human mind can undertake. Meditation is just to be – no action, no thought, no emotion. You just are, and it is sheer delight." - Osho

"There is only one meditation - the rigorous refusal to harbor thoughts." - Nisargadatta Maharaj

I hope, while reading these quotes, you might have felt lighter. To retain that lightness for a lifetime, start meditating now.

How to do meditation?

"But these words are like puzzles and I still don't get what meditation is. How can I do it?" - If this is what you think now, Let me share my opinion.

All these definitions and what ever you find in google or in some page(including mine), they are just a tip of an iceberg. My opinion is, instead of reading those words, one must actually try.

Nisargadatta Maharaj nicely quoted about it saying "The talk is in your world. In mine - there is eternal silence. My silence sings, my emptiness is full. I lack nothing. You cannot know my world until you are there".

If you are happy, you can tell that you are happy. if the other person haven't experienced the happiness, all your words can't make him realize what happiness is. It needs experience, not explanation. I am not a Guru or enlightened one. All I can share is my own experience.

Start immediately - Tomorrow never comes. if you want to practice meditation, today is the good day to start. You don't need any expensive yoga mate or candles to start it. They are part of ritual only; not the ritual. Just sit down and start with 5 minutes time-frame.

Make it as a habit - Mind is tricky. If you start observing it, it will try to evade. It will search 100 reasons on the second day to not meditate. That is why Gurus always ask us to make it as a habit/ritual. If we have to sit at a particular time on particular place every day, then we have to. There are no excuses. Meditation should be part of your daily tasks. Even-though morning and evening are the idle time for meditation, If you have constraints, pick your own time. Once you mastered your mind, there is no time schedule and no restrictions.

Start with minimal time - Start with 5 minutes each day and increase the time interval gradually. This time interval is entirely depends on every individual.

Breathing or Mantra or Visualization? - It is a question where most of us stuck while starting meditation. There are so many methods and which one should I follow? Do I need to concentrate on my breathing? or have to chant any mantra or visualize anything?

It really depends on you. The ultimate aim is, we have to control our thoughts and concentrating on a  single object by observing the mind. If you are devotee of a god, go for mantra chanting or visualization of the god. If you want to visualize nature or concentrate on your breathing, do it. But observe the mind for any other thoughts.

if you still have doubts, Swamy Vivekananda stated it as "When the mind has been trained to remain fixed on a certain internal or external location, there comes to it the power of flowing in an unbroken current, as it were, towards that point. This state is called Dhyana. When one has so intensified the power of Dhyana as to be able to reject the external part of perception and remain meditating only on the internal part, the meaning, that state is called Samadhi."

I hope, I just gave a glimpse about meditation. 

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When it comes to being successful, habits plays a major role and one habit which is dominant in deciding that, is Procrastination. 

Procrastination plays a vital role in our life because there are two type of procrastination. One help us to achieve and other one makes people lose. Sounds funny right? Lets see about procrastination in detail.

What is Procrastination?

Piers Steel, one of the well recognized author on the topic of Procrastination defines it as "to voluntarily delay an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay." But some other authors think that procrastination is a combination of Postponement and Irrationality, So any task delayed without relational reason should be called procrastination.

In simple words, Procrastination is a habit of postponing an activity or a task for various non-rational reasons which may result in consequences such as stress, pressure or failure.

What causes us to procrastinate?

Some people even don't know they are procrastinators and it became part of their lifestyle. To remove this habit from our life style, first we have to know why we procrastinate. Until we find the cause and fix, we cannot avoid the effects.

There are multiple reasons for one to procrastinate, Lets see them one by one,

Coping responses (The worrier):

When some difficult task at hand, people tend to avoid them instead of trying to complete them. When the mind choose to have the immediate pleasure instead of the stressful environment of the task in hand. For example, A student has to prepare for a stressful exam which is due in a month. 

The exam is inevitable and the ideal plan is to study on daily basis to score good. If the student choose to play games instead of preparation just to avoid and escape from the pressure of exams, he/she is procrastinating. 

This kind of procrastination happens to avoid stressful tasks or problem solving situations and try to distract it with some instant pleasure activities. 

How to deal with it?

Before procrastinating, ask yourself, whether you are avoiding it to avoid stress? and is the pleasure activity really worth and  what will be the consequence of avoiding the important task? 

This type of procrastination can be dealt, if one understands the importance of the task and prepares the mind well.

Fear of Failure or Perfectionist:

The concept of perfectionism and The fear of failure drive people to procrastinate until they fail. People procrastinate, thinking that they are not prefect enough to start a task and they may fail with their current skillset. This waiting for perfect moment and fear, cause anxiety and stress in a long run when people miss the opportunity.

How to dealt with it?

One simple solution for this type of procrastination is to start right now. No need to worry about the results and don't wait for the perfect moments, Just start it.

Busy Bees:

Some people have multiple tasks at their hand and often think they have lot of time for all their tasks. These kind of people are poor at time management and often prioritize the easiest tasks first but procrastinate the important ones. Pareto rule states that our 20% of tasks results in 80% of results and the remaining 80% of tasks only contribute 20% of the results. People who thinks themselves as busy always tend to prioritize unwanted 20% of tasks and end up with fail to do the important tasks for their personal or professional goals. Often these important tasks are tough one so they plan to do it later.

How to deal with it?

To deal with it, A proper planning of tasks and time management is important. prioritizing tasks according to the importance of them is essential.

Desultory Person:

People fall in this category starts the tasks with much enthusiasm but through time, give up on the tasks and set eye on a different goal. They procrastinate the tasks of previous goals and move on to the next one. These people often starts multiple targets and have difficulties in completing them. So they leave them and go to the next one. 

How to deal with it?

There is only one solution for this procrastination is available, which is not to start a new goal or plan new tasks until the current one is finished.

Please feel free to give your feed-back and if you think this post is useful, please take a look on my previous posts. 

Positive Procrastination:

Sometimes procrastination is considered to have positive effect. As an effective Time Management rule, procrastination of unimportant tasks are considered as Positive procrastination. It gives us time to concentrate on things what is important to us and helps us to avoid stress on uncompleted unimportant tasks. It happens with proper planning and precise execution of tasks. 

Also in some extent, it is believed procrastination is needed for creative tasks. Some studies indicate procrastinators are more creative than the precrastinators.

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrastination

https://professional.dce.harvard.edu/blog/the-perks-of-procrastination/

Yesterday I learned about How and Where to start in Personal Development. As a continuation, today I learned the common 4 stages in developing our-self in any skill we need to improve.

What are those common 4 Stages?

These 4 stages are called "Four Stages of Competence" or "Conscious Competence learning model". Lets see the four stages

1. First Stage - Unconscious Incompetence

In this stage, we don't have an idea about the skill or we don't know where we stand. For example, If you want to learn and play football, at first you don't know your skill levels untill you try to play. This level is called Unconscious Incompetent. 

The person who wants to develop a skill, unaware about their level or unconsciously incompetent in that skill. Most people, due to fear of failure, reside in this stage without trying. To break it, all we need to do is, "DO IT NOW" attitude.

2. Second Stage - Conscious Incompetence

We have tried and we have some knowledge on where we stand. Once we tried to play foot ball, we can assess how we played - A rookie or an intermediate or a pro. In this level, people know they are incompetent and also they know where they stand, So this level is called Conscious Incompetence.

3. Third Stage - Conscious Competence

Now we know we are incompetent and also we know what is our strength and weakness. We create a goal, plot a plan and stick to it, to achieve the skill. Gradually we become good at it. We implement the daily tasks and prepare our-self to master the skill. We become competent in a skill but playing Consciously to be good at it. This stage is called Conscious Competence.

4. Fourth Stage - Unconscious Competence

The final stage. We became good at a skill and after consistent efforts and training, the skill becomes part of our behavior. We have mastered it very well that we don't even have to think and subconsciously we act. Also the person has the ability to teach it to others depending on the skill.

These are amazing steps to develop any skill. Through time and effort it becomes an art and we become the master of any skill set.

It is a pleasant day I have started by knowing these stages and trying to implement it to my life. 

Personal Development is a much needed for every human and it will help you to achieve your desires, let it be excelling at a skill, training your body or mind, becoming wealthy or anything which improves your life.

I hope this post is helpful. Feel free to give your feedback and please subscribe to get notification on future posts.

Also if you like this post, please take a look at what I learned Yesterday.

Most of us know, what is Personal Development and why personal development is important.

But how to start and where to start? There are so many books and blogs on Personal Development. 

I have started to read a few of them in the past week, and all of them tells us the same conclusion on where to start.

Personal Development may be defined in my own term  'Improving our personal self in a way either it can be in skills or in wealth or in knowing and increasing the potential'.

So basically it is a change, a change in behaviour, a change in habit or a change in lifestyle or a change we need to see in the world.

Where all it needs to be started? Does it need a push from environment? Most of the times, the push from our environment change us. 

But the best changes always happens from inside, same to the Personal Development. If it starts from within, it helps us to reach new heights.

Let it be learning a new skill, or changing a habit, or gaining wealth, all needs to start with a positive mindset. The mindset matters.

This is what I learned today. Personal Development always starts with training our mind. 

Focusing on our goal and eliminating the mental clutters free our thoughts and give a different perspective about our life.

There are many practices available to train our mind. Visualization, Affirmation, Prayer and so on.. The simple task is to pick a technique and stick to it throughout our journey.

Amazing results are obtained by training and programming the subconscious mind.  We will see the techniques and their methods in another post. 

Train your mind to think positive and you see positivity in your life.

Feel free to post your comments and subscribe if you think this post provides any value to your day.

If you like this post, take a look at what I learned previously.

As a recap, lets see the steps in the Path to Success,

1. Belief

2. Setting Goal

3. Targets

4. Time Management

In our last post, we saw how powerful 'A belief' is and how it can manipulate our future. Lets see the next step in this post.

Now we have a belief or a dream. I will be rich one day - it is a belief and I want to be rich - a dream.

But, is dream enough? If it is, then everyone has dream and why they are not achieving it. The one who drags the dream to next level achieves it.

What is the next level? Setting a Goal. 

What is the meaning of goal setting? A dream will always be a dream if there is no plan. Setting a time bounded goal will activate it.

How to set goals and achieve them? We have to first know the difference between a dream/belief and a goal.

A Dream may not be a specific one. But a goal should be specific.

An example of goal setting is, Want to become rich is a dream. Setting a goal of become a millionaire in a span of 10 years is a goal.

The importance of goal setting is, it gives life to our dream and triggers an activity based plan to achieve that goal.

How to set a goal?

Implement SMART Goals, which means the Goal should be,

• Specific - The Goal should be specific not ambiguous.
• Measurable - The Goal should be measurable.
• Achievable - The Goal should be achievable , else we eventually wont pursue it after sometime.
• Relevant - It should be relevant to our life. Irrelevant goals waste time.
• Time-Based - If the goal is not time-bound, it is just a dream.

Example smart goal for the above scenario is,

• Specific - Our Goal is to earn 1 million. It is specific and precise  
• Measurable - We can track the earning/savings and plan each year accordingly as we progress.
• Achievable - It is an achievable goal
• Relevant - Our goal is relevant to our life
• Time-Based - Our goal is time-based one and can be achieved.

The Goal setting step is important. Since it is the base for the all other steps, frequent changes in the goal will hinder your progress and keep you where you are. before setting a goal, think that your future is depends on this goal.

Once the goal setting is done, we are half done. We have done with the majority of designing part. Designing part is always fun but it is where we have to stay focused. 

We have seen smart goal setting. In the next post, we will see how to achieve the goal by setting targets.

Everyday is a new opportunity to learn. Yesterday it was Mindset and Today it is about the habits of successful people.

I was reading various articles about successful people's habits and the quite common one among all of them are 'Wake up Early everyday'. 

Infact waking up early is considered as a sign of hard work and believed as a virtue in many cultures. We may even come across varius lists of successful people who even start their day at 3 AM. 

But is it what makes the successful people successful?

We personally know a lot of people who are early risers but not successful(at least in the common point of view) and few of them, they even have low self-esteem. Then how this habit is associated with success?

Morgan Housal explains in "Psychology of Money" that trying to follow the same footprints of others may not be helpful since the circumstances differs. Instead we have to get the collective behavioural analysis of bunch of people and we can get an idea of what works and what not. 

If we apply the same, when it comes to successful people and waking up early, Every individual follows their own chart but what normal people miss but successful people do is, increasing their productivity with the time they got.

The misconception about productivity is, it is tied with work and people hate to think about it. But in reality, productivity doesn't mean increase in your work, it means increasing your efficiency(not only in your profession)

The people who think ahead of others/ do things ahead of others are constantly trying to achieve their personal productivity. They plan well and use all of their time for their own use. So when they wake up early and have extra time, they use it for their own good, instead of wasting it. That is the real little secret behind successful people and getting up early.

Habits may become helpful or useless depends on what other habits they are combined with. One can wake up early and play games for 3 hours before getting for work(Unless he/she finds a way to turn the passion of playing games into a profession) or he/she can improve his/her self by planning for the day, doing something for his/her goal. Here is how successful people differs with the rest of the crowd. They turn their extra time into their productive time and finds a way to achieve their goal faster when others waste the extras.

What I Learned Yesterday

Be Positive... Stay Positive... We have heard these words almost from every positivity blogs, videos and speeches. 

And whenever we read, watch those articles, we have a gush feeling but when we turn to reality that feeling fade.

While seeing a pile of papers at our desk or long meetings in our calendar or thinking about the repetitive work, we feel drained and wonder, how to be positive in a boring day life.

But what if someone tells you that you can be actually be positive and also change that boring life into an enthusiastic one, do you believe?

It is what I learned today. I have come across a tweet about getting a targeted amount of followers. 

What is new in it? Won't everyone in social media is thriving for the same? 

Everyone tries to become popular, but only few masters it. The tweet I have read is about how the person is planning to gain followers, an open strategy he tweeted. 

If you are in social media and started with zero (if you are not a popular person), you know the struggle of getting even first 100 followers. But his strategy is getting 20k followers in around 6 months time span. It is one of the boring task, without retweets, likes but continuously tweeting. It needs effort and consistency.

When I read his tweet, I thought how boring it would be at the starting. But what makes a person to attempt that boring task without any hesitation or procrastination? 

And I linked our daily boring life with that task. Why I have to do a boring task daily? How to get motivation out of a boring task? Results. 

If I do a task without a plan or goal, it becomes boring. If I link it with my passion or result, it becomes part of my goal. Am I not motivated to work for my goal? - An Entrepreneur way of seeing things.

Or we can have another perspective - a kid mentality. A better example will be of a school kid. A typical school day will be the most boring task. But have you ever seen a kid seeing tired at the end of school? The thought of 'Done for the day in school' and 'Evening play time or show time' gives much enthusiasm to a kid. 

Compare yourself to a kid or an entrepreneur.  

I can clear the pile of papers or attend the meetings with joy, If they are part of my goal and If I am going to achieve something for my passion out of them. - An Entrepreneur Mindset.

I can clear these pile of papers or complete these meetings as soon as possible , So I can have time on my own to pursue my interest or follow my dreams. - A School kid mindset. 

I know, again I am coming to the point that everything is in our mindset, but wouldn't it true? 

We are responsible for our mindset, and we can make it the way we want, either by entrepreneur mindset or school kid mindset. As long as we think positive and stay positive, our life will be awesome.

"If you can't change your situation, change your perspective" - Maya Angelou.

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What I Learned Yesterday

"Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, that means, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click and purchase from the links." 

There is a saying 'If you didn't learn anything new in a day, you have wasted the day'.

So I am planning to learn something new everyday and share it with you all. 

What I learned today?

I started reading the book 'The Psychology of Money'(Affiliate link) by Morgan Housel. In the beginning of the book, there is a comparison between two men. 

First one, 'Ronald Read' who was a Gas station attendant and Janitor for a long period of time but using tiny savings, made a fortune of $8 million.

On the other hand, 'Richard Fuscone' - a Harvard MBA, Vice Chairman of a finance institute, went broke in his late years.

I am always an avid reader of self development books. But this story changed something in my perception .

I am  not gonna dive into who's policy is right and who's is wrong. But I wonder how can a man have this simple mindset?

With around $8 million dollars as asset, he didn't boast about his wealthiness and didn't show off his money by having a luxurious life.

He had a contented life and had only what he needed. he is also a myth  breaker to a thought that 'Job doesn't make you wealthy'. He simply proved that being wealthy is a mindset and one who has it, will become wealthy whether it is a 9 to 5 job or entrepreneurship. 

All person's lives are lesson not only to them but to us. Learning from other's life is wise, since we don't have enough time to make all the mistakes by ourselves. 

Hoping these two stories gave us a life time of lessons and finishing the post with another saying,

'The Goal is to be Rich, not to look Rich' - Moosa Rahat.

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