THINK POSITIVE

One of the properties of water that makes it so easy to store is its liquid state. It takes the shape of wherever you put it in. Be it glass, bottle, tank, and so on. Water adapts its shape as per its surroundings. We don’t realize how difficult would it be to store water if not for its liquid state. That’s just the nature of all the elements in the liquid state.    Likewise, a human mind also adapts to its surroundings. Our mind is directly influenced by the people we interact with daily. It is our subconscious that slowly adopts our mind to our surroundings and before we know, we end up being a person we never thought you would be.   For instance, a person surrounded by people addicted to bad things gets addicted to such things before he even realizes. Similarly, if you are surrounded by people who are dishonest and unfaithful, it’s only a matter of time before you end up being one too. You start justifying all the wrong things you do.   Take a look at the people around y

We millennials often hear people say that things should happen at the right time. One should get a job before 25 and marry before 30 and so on. As if like somebody has laid down a time table of events in our lives, one is forced to follow the same.   Why is so much stress is laid out on these timelines? They are not the physical development of our body to happen in time but mere social things.   These timelines have put most of us under stress. What happens if you get a job or start a business after 30? Well, if you are determined to achieve what you desire nothing can stop you from doing it. So is buying your first home or car or getting married at a later age. These things should happen whenever you are ready and not because they have to happen at a certain age. But that doesn't mean you sit and just wait for the right time to come.    What is the right time you ask?   Well, it’s when you are ready. Let me tell you one thing here. It’s not that your mind will say

A friend of mine bought an expensive SUV last year. At the time, I had asked him whether it was really necessary for him to spend so much on a car that he wouldn’t use that often. For which he said that everybody would be so impressed by his expensive SUV. For a year or so, all his posts on social media were filled up the pictures of the car at different places.   A year later now, when   I asked him about his car, he said that the maintenance and running costs are very expensive and that he is regretting his decision of buying an SUV. It has become a liability in his life. He further said that he should have opted for a smaller car that would have been more suitable to his city lifestyle.   Similarly, another friend of mine bought a flat couple of years ago at an expensive location in Bangalore. Although not big enough for comfort, it was very expensive because of its locality. I had told him that he should buy a bigger home which was just a bit further from the newly bought f

The other day while I was randomly browsing the internet, I came across an interesting article on stress in life and I wanted to share it with you. So, take a glass and fill it up with water. Hold the glass for a minute or so. It’s not so heavy, is it? But, if you hold it for an hour, you will start developing pain in your hand. If you hold for 6 hours, your hand will be numb and if you hold it even longer, you will feel that your hand is paralyzed.   Here, the weight of the glass is irrelevant. What matters is how long you are holding it. The longer you hold it, the heavier you will feel.   The stress and painful memories in our life are also like the glass of water. When you think about them for a short time, you will feel nothing. They will begin to hurt if you think about them longer. And if you think about them all the time, you won’t be able to do anything else. You will feel like you are paralyzed.   So it is important for us to remember to let go of our stress and p

It was an early morning, as I was just entering home returning from out of town,   I heard the voice ‘Hey Manoj! How are you?’   When I turned around, I saw a senior colleague of mine who had just retired a couple of months ago.   We started talking and I asked him how is his life after retirement? He said it is relaxing and peaceful. Those were his words. He said he is looking forward to enjoying his retired life and received his first pension just a few days before. We chatted for a while and I wished him a happy retired life, then he left.   In my tenure of two years working with him, what I saw was that he used to spend most of his time at work. He would always show up an hour or so before office hours started and most of the time would be the last person to leave. He was a mentor for many newcomers including me. He was a very senior person who retired with 41 years of service.   Back in the 1970s, he was appointed under my grandfather who was a Staff Inspector in Railw

Today I completed my 8 years of service in the Indian Railways. Appointed at the age of 21 years on the 13 th of June 2012, the journey has been no less than wonderful and exciting. Of course, things were quite difficult at times, but they taught me to be a better version of myself.     Not many of my relatives and friends know that I qualified in the NTPC exam for the job. Many of them think that it was just bestowed upon me.   Presently, being a Chief Vigilance Inspector at such a young age makes me feel proud. Probably, one of the youngest ever in Indian Railways. It’s not the end though, got a long way to go from here and I am looking forward for it as well.   Looking back at my college days, what really surprises me is that I never wanted to join the Government services. As a matter of fact, I resisted my job offer at Railways for quite some time. Also, upon completion of my graduation, I had a job offer from Infosys which also had promised me to fulfill my desire for

It was an early summer hot noon and I was sitting after a hefty meal when I heard one of my friends shouting. His friend was making an apology for a small mistake that he had committed. He was trying to tell him about how it was not intentional and was just a mistake. But, my friend was going on and on shouting about his mistake and saying he should not have made one. Normally, I don’t interfere when two people are arguing but, this one was going on for quite some time. Seeing the pathetic condition of the other, I jumped in and tried to settle them down. It took quite a while before they settled down. Later in the evening when I was sipping a cup of tea, I remembered an incident wherein a friend of mine had made a serious mistake that had badly affected me. Although it was a big deal, he had me convinced that it was not intentional and I had forgiven him. It was none other than the same person who was not ready to forgive his friend. This made me think, Isn’t it in our n

As I was having a conversation with a friend of mine, a question popped into my head when he said that he is not happy doing his current job and is doing it only for the sake of money. Is money really that important? – was the question. Immediately I asked him, “What would you like to do if money was no object. How would you enjoy spending your life?” He quickly replied, “I wanted to be a school teacher.” I was surprised because I never expected it from a friend who is a tech-savvy, spent almost a decade in the leading IT firm and who always seemed to be happy with his job. At that moment, he imagined his life as a teacher. Mere thinking of his life as a teacher brought a different kind of smile on his face, something that I had never seen before. It was a smile of content which vanished soon after he came back to reality. Are we all doing the things that we don’t want to, just for the sake of money. Why does money matter so much? I scratched my head for a couple

We cannot deny that every one of us is now affected by the spread of COVID-19 in one way or the other. The whole country is under lockdown. As a matter of fact, most of the other nations are too. We, the social animals, cannot go social now, at least not physically. Our daily routines are disrupted. Everybody is scared because things are not under control. Rumors are spreading everywhere. This has caused fear in our minds too. No doubt the dense clouds of COVID-19 have surely put us in darkness. But you know what they say; every dark cloud has a silver lining. Our carbon emission is at an all-time low. The air is cleaner. Other animals are so relieved and are like; what is going on..!!. Did humans just vanish from the earth. For most of the kids, they are happy that their exams are canceled. I mean who would have thought of moving to the next grade without any exams. If I was a child now, then nothing else would have brought me more happiness. Kids, who wished to spend m

The biggest scare I faced last year was on my birthday which was a couple of months ago; when I realized that I will be entering my thirties next year. This gave me few sleepless nights. Never ever I was so worried about getting older. This was further influenced by my family who were pressurizing me to get married soon  One day, I took a pause from my routine to have self evaluation of the last decade of my life and how happy I am today. I compared my present with myself 10 years ago, the year 2010 where in I was in college for my graduation. Ah..! What wonderful days. Those were the days of empty pockets but with no responsibilities and pressure.   So where do I stand today? I asked myself. Well, today I have a great job, a bigger home, a car, a sports bike & all the gadgets I wished for (not that I need them). Do these things make me happy? Of course, they don’t. Not entirely though. So, why do I wish for even bigger materialistic things? What really gives me happine