Life and It’s Expectations

Life is full of expectations and disappointments, hopes and despair. It is said life takes a new turn for men and a women after their wedding. The newlyweds feel the sun shines for them; the stars in the sky are for them to reach out and touch. The only thing amongst them is love and admiration for each other. Life seems to be like a bed of roses, then kids come along and responsibilities are increased, which the new parents shoulder more than readily. Over the course of time, somewhere along the line, love evaporates between the parents and is sought by their kids, who reciprocate it fully.
The lives of parents revolve around the their children; teaching them the ways of life, inculcating morals and values, and then one fine day they grow up to be a fine human. By this time, parents are on the threshold of their old age. They expect the children to serve and make them an important part of their life, which creates problems.Why do parents feel the need to dictate terms? Bringing up kids is the most joyful experience. Is it so that we wish to be compensated for the time spent in bringing them up?

Once the child is an adult it has its own mind. Who are parents to interfere? The basic values that were inculcated in them as a child, by parents, help them in a long way. Why judge them? Let them explore life on their own. Don’t decide for them; be a part of their decision and not the part of their discussion.

As Geeta says:
“Until age 5, the child is the whole sole responsibility of mother.From 5 to 10, values are inculcated. From 10 to 15, watch over them with an eagle eye. 15 onwards, let go of them. They shall prove to be a better human than what we think them to be .”

Power of Appreciation

by Michael Murphy

One of the most amazing and essential personal development books of all times is the Dale Carnegie classic, ‘How To Win Friends and Influence People’. This book should be required reading for every high school graduate. It would transform the world.

After my first reading of this book over 30 years ago, I knew that this was one book I needed to adopt in my way of thinking and adapt to my ‘life habits’.

One illustration of ‘winning friends’ and having a positive influence over others is the chosen habit of showing gratitude and appreciation. I made it my practice (with effort at first) to express appreciation to waiters, waitresses and wait staff in restaurants. In business, I found myself eating out almost on a daily basis. It was the perfect training camp for developing this ‘life practice’.

Living here in the warm climate of Texas, one quickly learns to savor the exquisite refreshment we call, ‘ice tea’. (Actually the proper pronunciation should be ‘iced tea’, but again, this is the south . Through high school athletics and through almost any outdoor activity in the summer time, you learn quickly to have something cold to drink on hand most of the time.

So, in frequenting restaurants, I found myself consuming several glasses of ‘ice tea’ with every meal. The opportunity to have my glass constantly refilled, gave me the perfect laboratory for expressing and honing my skills of appreciation to others.

For some unknown reason, the temptation in a restaurant to almost ignore those who serve you, is greater than most other places you would go. However, after Mr. Carnegie’s lessons, I learned to say, ‘Thank you’ a lot. In fact, during one meal, I might express appreciation a half of a dozen or more times to those who serve me.

Moreover, appreciation is more than the habit of saying, ‘Thank you’. It is an attitude. It is an attitude that when one expresses genuinely, comes from the heart. It requires an awareness of people and your environment. It certainly makes you more ‘awake’ and aware, to the presence and needs of other people.

When you develop the habits and skills of showing true appreciation, you set yourself apart from what most people are used to. Just start being more aware of others and how they respond to restaurant wait staff, cashiers, bank tellers, parking attendants and others who serve you in your daily life.

About a week ago, I happened to be getting out of my car when the sanitation truck arrived at my home(in southern lingo, we call them, ‘garbage trucks’). After the driver engaged the robotic arms, picked my garbage containers up and emptied them into the storage bin on his truck, I waved at him and mouthed the words, ‘Thank You!’

When he saw that I was saying something to him, though he couldn’t hear me, he shifted his truck into park, opened his door and halfway stepped out of the cab to find out what I was saying. I repeated the words, ‘Thank You’ to him again and he looked a bit confused not knowing what to say. He simply got back into his truck and drove away.

A few days later, I was getting in to my car on my driveway and found a note attached to my car. The note read, ‘Sir, I don’t know what I did wrong, but please give me a call and I will take care of it. Please don’t call the city office and complain. John’ And then he left his phone number.

I immediately called him and this very deep, rough voice said ‘hello’. I asked, ‘Is this John?’ In his deep Texas drawl he said, ‘Yep, you got ‘im’. I said, ‘John, this is Michael Murphy. I’m the guy down on Sunset that waved at you the other day.’ He said, ‘Oh yeah. I remember. I left you a note. What did I do wrong?’

I said, ‘John, you didn’t do anything wrong. I was just saying thank you for all of your hard work and for doing your magic of making my garbage disappear each Monday.’ He was shocked. He said, ‘I’ve never had anyone tell me that before, sir.’ I said,
‘Well, John, as far as I am concerned, you’re the greatest magician in the world. I get to experience watching you do your magic every week.’ He laughed and said, ‘Well, sir, I never thought about it that way.’

The very next Monday morning, I was actually waiting for John when he drove up. After he had stopped in front of my garbage containers, he waved and held up a cardboard, home-made sign that said, ‘John, the magician’.

I told several of my neighbors about ‘John, the magician.’ They too are now ‘in on it’. Several have since shared stories with me about them being outside when John comes. They’ve also expressed their gratitude to him and told him that I had shared with them about, ‘John, the Magician’. John is loving all of the new attention.

One simple act of kindness and the show of appreciation can set off a chain of events. With John, he’s not ‘just the garbage man’ any more. He is a magician. My guess is, he feels better and at least certainly different about his job.

Begin practicing the habit of showing appreciation. You will gain friends and affect someone’s life. You will make the world a better place by something that costs you nothing except a little awareness and a simple act of gratitude.

A Balanced Life

by Brian Tracy

According to psychologist Sidney Jourard, fully 85 percent of your happiness in life will come from your personal relationships. Your interactions and the time that you spend with the people you care about will be the major source of the pleasure, enjoyment and satisfaction that you derive daily. The other 15 percent of your happiness will come from your accomplishments. Unfortunately, many people lose sight of what is truly important, and they allow the tail to wag the dog. They sacrifice their relationships, their major source of happiness, to accomplish more in their careers. But one’s career, at best, can be only a minor source and a temporary one, at that of the happiness and satisfaction that everyone wants.

There is no perfect answer to the key question of how to achieve balance in our lives, but there are a number of ideas that can help you to be and have and do more in the areas that are important to you. These ideas often require changes and modifications in the way you think and use your time, but the price is well worth it. You will find that by reorganizing your life in little ways, you can create an existence that gives you the highest quality and quantity of satisfaction overall. And this must be your guiding purpose. The ancient Greeks had two famous sayings: “Man, know thyself” and “Moderation in all things.” Taken together, those two ideas are a good starting point for achieving the balance that you desire. With regard to knowing thyself, it is very important to give some serious thought to what you really value in life. All trade-offs and choices are based on your values, and all stress and unhappiness come from believing and valuing one thing and, yet, finding yourself doing another. Only when your values and your activities are congruent do you feel happy and at peace with yourself.

So knowing yourself means knowing what you really value, knowing what is really important to you. The superior man or woman decides what is right before he or she decides what is possible. The advanced human being organizes his or her life to assure that everything that he or she is doing is consistent with his or her true values. It is essential for you to organize your life around yourself, rather than to organize yourself around the demands of your external world.

The second quote, “Moderation in all things,” is a wonderful and important dictate for successful living. But, at the same time, you know that you can’t really be successful in any area by being moderate in that area. Peter Drucker once wrote, “Wherever you find something getting done, you find a monomaniac with a mission.” You know that single-minded concentration on a goal or objective is absolutely necessary for achievement of any kind in a competitive society.

So what’s the solution? Over the years, I have worked with tens of thousands of men and women who have spent a lot of time and effort struggling to achieve balance in their lives. I have found that there is a simple formula; it is simple in that it is easy to explain, but you need tremendous self-discipline and persistence to implement it in your life.

The formula revolves around a concept of time management, or what you might want to call life management. Time management is really a form of personal management in which you organize your 24 hours a day in such a way that they give you the greatest possible return of happiness and contentment.

The key to time management, after you have determined your values and the goals that are in harmony with those values, is to set both priorities and posteriorities. The importance of setting priorities is obvious. You make a list of all the things that you can possibly do and then select from that list the things that are most important to you based on everything you know about yourself, about others and about your responsibilities. The setting of posteriorities is often overlooked. It is when you carefully decide which things you are going to stop doing so that you will have enough time to start doing something else.

The greatest single shortage we experience in America today is that of time. We suffer from what has been called “time poverty.” Men and women everywhere feel that their biggest single challenge is that they simply do not have enough time to do all the things that they have to do or want to do. People today feel pressured from all sides and are under an inordinate amount of stress. They feel overworked, fatigued and incapable of fulfilling all the responsibilities that they have taken on.

The starting point to alleviate this time poverty is to stop and think. Most people are so busy rushing back and forth that they seldom take the time to think seriously about who they are and why they are doing what they are doing. They engage in frantic activity, instead of thoughtful analysis. They get so busy climbing the ladder of success that they lose sight of the fact that the ladder may be leaning against the wrong building.

When my wife, Barbara, and I started our family, we were faced with a common dilemma: how can we balance the demands of work and home with the finite amount of time we are all given?

Here’s the answer I discovered: The key to success in a busy society is to devote your time to only two areas during the period of time when your family needs you, when your children are between the ages of birth to about 18 to 20 years. During this period of time, you need to curtail virtually all of your outside activities. You need to focus on two major areas your family and your career as I have done over the years. You need to place your family’s needs above all else and then organize your work schedule so that you can satisfy those needs on a regular basis. Then, when you work, you must concentrate single-mindedly on doing an excellent job.

Most people are time wasters. They waste their own time, and they waste your time as well. To be successful and happy, you must discipline yourself to work all the time you work. The average employee works at about 50 percent of capacity. Fully 80 percent of people working today are underemployed in that their jobs do not really demand their full capacities. Only 5 percent of workers surveyed recently felt that they were working at the outside limits of their potentials.

But this is not for you. You must resolve to work all the time you work. You must decide that from the time you start in the morning until the time you finish in the evening, you will work 100 percent of the time. Even if no one is watching you, you should be aware that everyone is watching you. Everybody knows everything. In every company, everyone knows who is working and who is not. Your job must be to work all the time you work. If people come by and want to chat, you simply smile at them and say, “Could we talk about this later?” Tell them that you have to get back to work.

Have a written list, and work on your list every day. Write down everything as it comes up, and add it to your list. Set priorities on your time, and be certain that you are working on the things that are most important to your boss and to your company. Refuse to get drawn into the time-wasting activities of the people around you. Work all the time you work.

Remember that to be successful, you must become a monomaniac with a mission. This is true today, and it has always been true in our competitive society. To be successful at your job, you must work fast and efficiently and nonstop all the time you are on the payroll. You must become an expert at time management. You must become so efficient and effective that you get twice as much done as anyone else. In this way, you will advance your career at the fastest rate possible, and you will also be on top of your job most of the time, and it will be unnecessary for you to take work home for the evenings and weekends.

Then, when you have finished your work, you can devote your full attention to your family and to the other important people in your life. The Bible says, “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” One of the meanings of this is that if you are thinking about your work while you are with your family, or if you are thinking about your family when you are at work, you end up accomplishing far less in each area. However, if you are on top of your work, when you come home you can devote yourself single-mindedly again, like a monomaniac to your relationships and to enhancing the quality of your interactions with the most important people in your life.

The key to a happy family life is communication. And it is not quality of time but quantity of time that counts. Quality moments those little moments that are precious and important come unbidden and, usually, unexpectedly. They arise during the process of spending a large quantity of uninterrupted time with one or more people. You cannot dictate those moments in advance. You cannot decide to have quality time. You do not go to it. It comes to you.

There are a variety of ways to extract the greatest amount of quality and happiness from your relationships with the members of your family. Perhaps the most important is to spend unbroken time with your spouse on a daily basis. Of course, you should spend time together talking after the children have gone to bed, but you should also seek out and utilize small segments of time during the morning and early evening during which you can communicate and interact. One of the most important things that couples can do is spend the first 30 to 60 minutes after work debriefing each other and discussing the day’s activities.

Your children also have a tremendous need to communicate with you. In fact, in my research on how to raise super kids, I found that the one factor that was more important than any other was the amount of one-on-one time that the parents spent with the children. When parents don’t spend a lot of time with their children individually, they send a message to their children that they are not very valuable or important. Children then react by experiencing feelings of inferiority, lowered self-esteem, and negative self-images, and this is expressed in poor grades and behavioral problems. But when the parents take the time to sit down with their children and ask questions and listen to what is going on in their minds, the children tend to feel a deep sense of value and importance that is manifested in self-confidence, happiness, and good relationships with others.

The key is learning to use your time better. You cannot get more hours out of each day, but you can put more of yourself into each of those hours. Turn off the television and spend time talking with the members of your family. Never read newspaper of books when a member of your family wants to communicate with you. Put the reading material aside. Concentrate single-mindedly on the most important people in your world. Everything else can wait.

In regard to your work and family, continually ask yourself, “What is the most valuable use of my time right now?” Consider if what you are doing today will matter a week or a year from today. Sometimes, we become preoccupied with small things that are not really important in the long run. But what is important in the long run is the quality of our home life.

You don’t have to be a superman or superwoman to properly balance the demands of your work and the needs of your family. You must, however, be more thoughtful, be a better planner, use your time more effectively, and continually think of ways to enhance the quality of your life in both areas. If you set this as a goal and resolve to work toward it every day, you will gradually become far more efficient, far more effective, and a far happier human being. And that’s the most important thing of all.

The Art of Communicating

by Robert Stuberg

It’s interesting how quickly we become accustomed to, and even take for granted, the amazing new developments in communications available in the world today. With the ability now to contact people on the other side of the world right at our finger tips, we tend to forget how recently and how rapidly this technology has come into our lives. Consider the fact that through most of human history, up to the time of Thomas Jefferson (who, incidentally, never saw a railroad train), communications were limited to the speed of horses. To say that we have come a long way since then, especially in the last 30 years, is an understatement. And we must keep in mind that the sudden emergence of such innovations in instantaneous communications as satellites, cell phones, email and the internet, to name a few, is simply the revolutionary beginning of what is likely to come.

What perhaps is less clear is how well we are succeeding with the human factor in communications. I think it’s fair to ask are we giving as much attention to the quality of our communications to one another as we do to the dazzling means of communicating at our disposal? Are we as adept today, for instance, in communicating ideas with a comparable level of civility as were the artful letter writers of Jefferson’s day? How well we communicate with one another on a person-to-person basis, writing, speaking and listening, is as important today as it was 200 years ago. The success of all human relationships depends on the quality of our interpersonal communications.

We can break down any communication into three parts: One is “The Sender,” two is “The Message,” and three is “The Receiver.” Each component is important and a failure in any one of them causes a breakdown in the communication. For example, the Sender’s sensitivity to the needs of the Receiver is critical. A garbled or mis-stated Message may be worse than no message at all. And of course, a Receiver who doesn’t listen might as well not be there at all.

We know, of course, how breakdowns in communications can have disastrous consequences. Money, friendships, jobs, even marriages are frequently lost because of poor communications between individuals. Some historians believe that World War I erupted essentially because of a failure in communications between the major European powers.

None of us, we hope, will ever be in a position to start a war, but we all can strive to keep our own communication channels open and free from the interference of insensitivity and rancor. If we constantly work at maintaining the integrity of those three components of communications, we’ll have a much better chance of getting our own thoughts across and understanding what the other person has to say whether it’s in emails, faxes or every day conversations.

Above all, our communications should be forthcoming, honest, and as clear as possible. When we combine these attributes with a genuine interest in those we are communicating with, we will truly achieve the key to effective communication and stronger interpersonal relations with or without the technology of the future.

Have a positive day!