The law of the seed

Take a look at an apple tree. There might be five hundred apples on the tree, each with ten seeds. That's a lot of seeds!

We might ask, "Why would you need so many seeds to grow just a few more trees?"

Nature has something to teach us here. It's telling us: "Most seeds never grow. So if you really want to make something happen, you better try more than once."

This might mean:

You'll attend twenty interviews to get one job.

You'll interview forty people to find one good employee.

You'll talk to fifty people to sell one house, car, vacuum cleaner, insurance policy, idea...

And you might meet a hundred acquaintances to find one special friend.

When we understand the "Law of the Seed", we don't get so disappointed.

We stop feeling like victims. Laws of nature are not things to take personally.

We just need to understand them - and work with them. 

Just One

One song can spark a moment,

One flower can wake the dream

One tree can start a forest,

One bird can herald spring.

One smile begins a friendship,

One handclasp lifts a soul.

One star can guide a ship at sea,

One word can frame the goal

One vote can change a nation,

One sunbeam lights a room

One candle wipes out darkness,

One laugh will conquer gloom.

One step must start each journey.

One word must start each prayer.

One hope will raise our spirits,

One touch can show you care.

One voice can speak with wisdom,

One heart can know what’s true,

One life can make a difference,

You see, it’s up to you!

cheers

Happy Independence day...........

Love your whole life

We often confuse emotional well-being with happiness. Being content and at peace with yourself goes beyond happiness, which may at times, be fleeting. On the other hand, in the annals of psychology, emotional well-being demands certain behavioural attributes: flexibility, coping skills, control over your life, a constructive direction and inter-personal skills. Here, experts identify how you can work towards achieving this.

1. HAVE A CLOSE FRIEND

Friendship is one among the foremost casualties of your stressful life as an adult. So go back and search for that close pal from your long list of  friends and get in touch.

HOW FRIENDSHIP HELPS 

A ing friendship rests on the foundation of intimacy, trust, security, equality and reciprocity-all of which foster satisfaction, an essential element of well-being. Friends help you evolve as a human being and assure you that there will be somebody to hold on to in the hour of need. This encourages you to take chances in life and achieve greater success. "A close friendship buffers you against crises and helps you bounce back," says Dr Seema Mehrotra, additional professor & in-charge, Positive Psychology Unit, Clinical Psychology Department, NIMHANS, Bengaluru. Psychiatrists associate friendship with happiness, because it meets our demand for affiliation. "Friends give you a sense of self-worth and boost your self-esteem," says Dr Bhavna Barmi, consultant, clinical psychology at Delhi's Fortis Escorts Heart Institute. Your close pals boost your health too. According to a study in PLoS Medicine, the benefit of friends, family and even colleagues is just as good for long-term survival as giving up a 15-cigarette-aday smoking habit.

INCREASE YOUR FRIENDSHIP QUOTIENT 

The first measure of your friendship quotient is your ability to accept human follies. Next comes loyalty and sustainability. Also, you need to develop certain social skills, like keeping in touch and sharing emotions to develop a close relationship. "Make sure that you listen to your friend patiently, respect boundaries and allow space," says Dr J Ram, consultant, clinical psychiatrist, Apollo Gleanagles, Kolkata.

2.- BE EMPATHETIC 

'Put yourself in the other person's shoes' is advice that all of us have come across at some point in our lives. To put it simply, this is what empathy is all about. In the language of psychology, empathy is the ability to recognise the thoughts and emotions of another conscious being. "Concern, sensitivity and care are in-built in the concept of empathy," says Delhi-based clinical psychiatrist Dr Sameer Malhotra. Empathy is actually rooted in our survival instinct from the times of hunter-gatherers when our survival, to a large extent, depended on our ability to empathise with and cater to others' needs. Hold on to your empathetic streak, it's an essential cognitive ability.

HOW EMPATHY HELPS 

We still operate in tribes in a larger and more complex sense of the term. So the role of empathy, not only for survival, but also for a sense of fulfillment is undeniable. "This is because we, as socialised creatures, crave for a sense of belonging and empathy helps us find it by promoting interpersonal bonding," explains Malhotra. According to empathy experts, at a higher level, empathy transcends from being aware of others' thoughts and feelings to actually experiencing their situation as if it were our own. This fosters a sense of intense connection and close ties, essential for emotional well-being. Moreover, research shows that people who show kindness and gratitude towards others are happier than those who don't. Being able to share another person's perspective can also lead to a deeper insight into life that would not have been possible if we remained confined to ourselves only.

INCREASE YOUR EMPATHY QUOTIENT 

Learn to observe quietly. This will give you a greater capability to peek into others' thought processes. Read fiction. A University of Buffalo study found that participants identified themselves with the characters in the fiction they read. Getting absorbed in another's life story strengthens the connections between your cognitive and emotional brain, thus boosting empathy.

3. BE CREATIVE

Remember those days when you painted handmade cards or wrote a small poem for the school magazine? How those acts of creativity filled you up with euphoria? Get in touch with that child in you.

HOW CREATIVITY HELPS 

"Creative activity that taps into your creative elements, helps you disengage from the monotony of daily life and fills you up with a sense of accomplishment," explains Dr Rajashekar Reddi, Prevention advisor and senior consultant, neurology, Max Healthcare, New Delhi. Not only does creativity boost emotional well-being, even viewing a creative piece yields positive emotions. According to a London University study, viewing a work of art raises the levels of dopamine-a neurotransmitter that controls the brain's reward and pleasure centres. "Creativity is the source of novel ideas, which give you easy solutions to many everyday problems. Thus you can lead a successful life," says Dr Pranjali Pradhan, cognitive neuropsychiatrist, KEM Hospital, Mumbai.

INCREASE YOUR CREATIVE QUOTIENT 

Albert Einstein said of the theory of relativity, "I thought of it while riding my bicycle." Various studies reveal that aerobic activities give you cognitive flexibility and help you access insights that might be out of your reach when you are sedentary. So slip on your walking shoes every day. "Keep your mind sharp by challenging your brain. Solve puzzles, keep a hobby and try to pick up new sets of skills," says Pradhan. And learn to think out of the box. Try to link unrelated subjects which will in turn spark a different thinking pattern.

4.- BE RESILIENT 

"Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it's less good than the one you had before."-Elizabeth Edwards, American author. Don't give in to failures, rise each time you fall.

HOW RESILIENCE HELPS 

"A strong resilient streak helps you bounce back from a crisis, which is a fundamental attribute of successful living," says Mehrotra. "Your emotional well-being, to a large extent, is determined by your capability to be in control of your own life and resilience helps you achive that," reiterates Dr Vivek Benegal, professor of psychology, NIMHANS, Bengaluru. Research also shows that resilience protects against (and reverses) depression, anxiety, fear and helplessness.


INCREASE YOUR RESILIENCE QUOTIENT 

Find some lesson in every adversity. Being hopeful is another way of combating a challenge. Resolve to be happy even in moments of utter despair. Train your brain to see half full, rather than half empty. Learn to accept changes.

5.- BALANCE YOUR EMOTIONS 

We've often heard that old adage about how too much or too little of anything is bad. It's no different when it comes to your emotions. Overwhelming emotions can be the root of problems in your functional life, affecting both your work and relationships. Though easier said than done, try and make special efforts to regulate your emotions better.

HOW BALANCE HELPS 

The best gift of balanced emotions is stability, an intrinsic property of your emotional well-being. The key to balanced emotions is your ability to regulate your emotions. A study named Anger in the Age of Entitlement Research reveals that selfregulation is necessary for emotional well-being. Your self-regulation skills will enable you to keep you calm in a stressful situation and boost your decision-making capacity.

INCREASE YOUR BALANCE QUOTIENT 

"The first step is to recognise and admit to yourself that your emotions need regulation," says Benegal. Practise mind-body techniques like yoga regularly. It is the sure-shot way to develop emotional equilibrium. Get seven to eight hours of sleep every night. According to a study in Current Biology, rapid eye movement sleep, a phase in your sleep cycle, facilitates emotional regulation. Work your willpower muscle if you really want to take stock of your emotions. Give positive autosuggestions to yourself every day, 'I can. I will never let my emotions take over my rationality.' Be flexible. Flexibility broadens your mind and and makes you more accepting of others' views, boosts your reasoning and sharpens your judgement skills. All these work together to give you better control over your emotions.

cheers to Yahoooooo

10 Natural Ways to Stop Feeling Depressed

• Life is a drag.
• What’s the point of anything?
• I’ll never be happy.

Do any of these gloomy thoughts sound familiar? It’s likely they do. The occasional case of the blues is perfectly normal, but that doesn’t make dealing with it any easier. If you allow them to, negative thoughts can fester and lead to serious depression. That’s why it’s important to take action early to bust yourself out of a slump.

While these suggestions won’t eliminate your problems, they can help you break a negative thought pattern and stop feeling depressed. If you think you might have a serious mental health problem, don’t hesitate to see a medical professional.

1. Understand the emotional cycle – Life is an emotional roller coaster. Some days you feel like nothing can stop you. Other days you feel utterly hopeless. Most of the time you’re somewhere in between. Understanding the pattern of positive and negative emotions will help you put your feelings in perspective. Next time you feel down, just remember that it’s a natural emotion that will inevitably pass. Knowing that a feeling of depression is only temporary makes it less dreadful.

2. Spend time with positive people – Nothing affects the way you think and feel more than the people you interact with. Thoughts (both positive and negative) are contagious. If you are surrounded by negative people, it’s only natural that you’ll start to think and feel the same way. To improve your outlook on life, spend time with positive people. Search them out and try to understand the way they see the world. Chances are their happiness will rub off.

3. Reflect on past success – In the wake of a colossal failure, it’s easy to forget everything you’ve ever done right. Take a few minutes to remember your past accomplishments and build yourself up. What made you successful before? What are your strengths? Frequently, this exercise will build self confidence, help you figure out what went wrong, and generate ideas for success in the future.

4. Focus on gratitude – It’s human nature to measure ourselves against those ahead of us on the social ladder. Studies have shown that people care more about being richer than their friends than actually making more money. When you consider everything good in your life and compare it to the problems of less fortunate people, the issue that’s making you depressed won’t seem as serious.

5. Change of scenery – One of the best ways to change the way you feel is to change your environment. When you get in a slump, you start to associate your problems with everything around you. It can get to the point where your environment is a constant reminder of your problems. This can be a dangerous cycle. The solution is to change things. Change doesn’t have to be radical. Cleaning up, adding more lights, or including pleasant decorations can completely change the mood of a room.

6. Break your routine - Going through the same routine, day after day, can be monotonous and depressing. It often leads to getting caught in a rut. To get out of it you need to temporarily change your routine. If you can, take a day off from work. Do something you don’t normally have time for or something you’ve never tried. In the long run, taking a day off every now and then to get out of slump will make you happier and more productive.

7. Interact with animals and nature – It’s funny when you consider how humans put so much importance on their own tiny problems. Animals don’t think this way. A little bird doesn’t mope around because it isn’t an eagle or because another bird beat it to a tasty seed. Animals live in the present moment and they show love unconditionally. Observing and interacting with them will help you get over your problems.

8. Get moving – As Johnny Cash famously suggested, “Get a rhythm, when you get the blues.” Moving to a beat makes everyone feel better. The same is true for movement in general. Hitting the gym or going for a walk will help you shed the lethargy that comes with feeling depressed. The more enthusiastic your moments, the better you will start to feel.

9. Think about the big picture – As Carl Sagan made evident with the Pale Blue Dot, we’re insignificant creatures living in a vast universe on a tiny planet. In the long run, everything we do will probably be forgotten. Some might find this depressing, but it shouldn’t be. It means that all our problems are illusory. In a million years no one will remember what you did or didn’t do. What matters is the present moment and enjoying every second of life that we’re blessed with.

10. Do something to help yourself – Above all, the best way to stop feeling depressed is to take action. What is your biggest problem? How can you alleviate it? Once you decide to stop moping and start moving forward you won’t have time to feel depressed. Action will occupy your mind and give you something to look forward to. Once you get some results, you’ll build momentum and positive thinking will keep getting easier.

Cheers............