OctoBorn

Challenges in planning one's career.
I would like to start by narrating a dialogue between student of Class 10th and the student's father.

Student: Father, I will clear my board exams in some months. Can you tell me what to do next?

Father : Child, I suppose you must do what you feel is helpful for you and your family but at the same time beneficial for your country.

Student : Yes, but I am not getting a clear idea. I wished to become an engineer but now I feel finance is a better side.

This is the plight of 90% of the students. There is a lot of confusion about what to do ahead in life. There are only 10% of students who have an ambition for choosing a certain career and they end up choosing the same. There are many factors that influence the choice of our career.

Current Obligations: People overlook certain careers because he /she decides it according to his or her needs. It is not the career option which we like. Your decision to select a career must depend on the criteria stated by the Rule of 'ICE'.

I- Interest.
Your interest and passion to work for whichever field you have chosen should be at the peak. It is a tool to measure your sustainability in that field.

C- Capability
Your interest must be hugely surrounded by a surge of potential to work on your interest areas.

E- Earnings
Your earnings are a result of your capability. It is closely related to the demand of that particular qualification at that particular period.

The Rule of ICE only works if it is powered by a feeling of self-belief. Self-Belief is an essential tool to ease the pressure and increase your confidence in order to select a right career.It is the bridge between your ambition and reality.

PARENTAL AND PEER PRESSURE
Since they are many careers, one easily gets confused in varieties available. When we choose from, there is a clash of ideas as our parents and some of our peers don't agree. We must convince them and tell them about the RULE OF ICE .

Broadly, you must select your career which has the 3 core ideas which lead to live a better life.

1.Believe in yourself.
2.Do not blame your parents or companions if you take a wrong decision .
Parents always tell us with reference to their experience of life. Parental-pressure is a challenge but it has emotional touch.
3.Always contribute for the country.

You must create employment opportunities. If you can't do that, then you must atleast be indirectly or directly associated with a company that contributes to the country and has a mindset or feeling to give back to the society.

These are certain challenges and the ways to tackle them. You can defeat all challenges .You must only focus on the path you have full faith in yourself.

Always keep in mind "Never Give Up".

Technology is improving every day and it enlightens human life making it easier, comfortable and speedy. Advancements in technology have enabled humans to do things that were previously impossible and it has certainly made tasks easier, especially in robotics sector of finance, retail, manufacturing, healthcare, education, hospitality and food industries. Currently we have the existence of best tab technology and information is available on the tab by different search engines. Sometimes it is difficult to draw a conclusion regarding whether humans are addicted to the tab or it is the need of hour!

Sometimes I feel, mobile hypnotises the youth and we just stick with this smart device throughout the day. It is creating a psychological behaviour problem in people once they get in contact with this magical palmtop device in their hand. They start staring on the screen and start living in the virtual life, forgetting their real existence in the world, that leads people becoming unhealthy, lonely, feeling irritable, unfocused and wasting their valuable time.

This addiction can be reduced by following some discipline in our life, firstly we need to make a daily timetable, fix time for each activity and religiously adhere to it. Introduce ourselves to outdoor sports with friends, switch off the television, mobile phones and sit together with family members, chat and discuss current affairs with them, invite and visit homes of your relative and friends.

God has gifted man with a sharp mind so we must take wise decisions for ourselves. It is up to each one of us, how we want to lead a life, but if someone is going wrong then it is a social responsibility of our elders to make us understand how to balance our life.

To end, I would like to quote B.F. Skinner, "The real problem is not whether machines think but weather men do."

"Always remember, your FOCUS determines your REALITY"

Focus? What is it? Well the ability of your brain to concentrate on a particular thing is termed as 'FOCUS'. To do any work at a constant speed in this world the foremost ability you need to have Is Focus. We commonly say that a person is doing great in a particular field because his focus levels are really high and I am not being able to do good as my focus level is low and by saying that we mean to say that something in their brain is better than ours! Their neutrons are in a straight line while mine is crooked? No, it isn't so! Let's take an example of 2 people learning to ride a bicycle, one of them scores less marks and one of them scores more marks but in the end they both learn to ride the bicycle at the same time. So how is that possible? Well it's possible because they both love to ride the bicycle and they probably focused on riding the cycle while learning it. So when someone differentiates 2 people on the basis of their grade or some skills, they are actually judging people on the amount of focus they have. Isn't this so interesting?

This reminds me of something called 'OverThinking'. This is something common in teenagers and adults and I have tried to find a solution to this. Why am I including this in this article is because OverThinking is something related to the way you focus or actually, the amount of focusing power you have. So let me explain this to you in a systematic way. For those who do not know what OverThinking is, it is a process of rapidly and constantly thinking about a particular incident that has impacted you in some way or the other in your life. OverThinking is a process that occurs in people who actually have high focussing powers! Why am I saying this is because if you think practically think, a person who is thinking about an incident for hours and hours that is he is focussing so much! Therefore, these people are actually classified as 'fast learners'. I also feel that Pressure is something related to Focus and OverThinking. Again when we OverThink it builds pressure in our minds and that is the actual reason of discomfort in our mind. We teenagers are tensed about our exams and we study for hours and hours before our exam, morning revisions and what we actually are doing is focusing on one thing for a long time which is OverThinking. I hope you are getting the connection.

There is 1 Solution which has 3 parts and I assure you that these would help you greatly because these solutions have helped me too-

~Solution Part 1-Reduce Screen Usage before you sleep. OverThinking is a irritating problem especially when you cannot get proper sleep. This leads to low energy levels throughout the day. Reducing screen usage before you sleep helps us to get rid of all types of thoughts related to topics which we encounter on Screens. Usually, you should not see the screen at least 1 hour prior you go to bed.

~Solution Part 2-Reflect. Taking out time daily for reflexion helps us greatly to get rid of the thoughts prevailing in your mind at that particular time. The process of reflection takes about 5-10 minutes and what do you need to do in this is that you need to reflect on the incidents that happened on that particular day. Some frequent questions that you can ask yourself are What, How and Why?

~Solution Part 3- This is one of the most integral and effective solution to minimise OverThinking. If you would have taken note, OverThinking is focussing on one thing for a long time so what we need to do is focus on different things not together but at different time intervals. You must have frequently heard people saying, "Study for 30 minutes but focus properly in those 30 minutes" and this is what you actually need to do. Do something for a particular time period, take a break and start something new or continue it. Here the key factors that are trying to break your process of OverThinking are the short intervals of work, breaks in between and the changing of your work.

Let's get onto the journey of building up focus.

Building up Focus is not such a difficult task but it involves a lot of obedience towards whatever you are trying to do to increase your focussing power.

You must have heard about the 3 R's but I have come up with the 3 E's and the 3 H's-

The 3 E's-
The 3 E's include Element, Environment and Energy. If you want to live you need all these in your personality.

Your Element includes your skill, your plus point, something you have within yourself that is way better in you than others. It is something that you are known for.

E.g. A fish knows to swim and no one else can swim better than the fish!(Here swimming is the element of the fish)

Your Environment is actually your inspiration to build up your Element.

E.g. The environment of a fish is water.(If the fish was on land it would walk but it is in the water therefore it swims, so your environment decides your element)

Your Energy is the amount of passion with which you do your work. Your Energy can be high or low. When it's low, it's probably because you have disinterest in doing that work and therefore that's the time when you should push yourself and turn your energies high and get on to work!

E.g. A fish survives from predators and finds food, a dolphins moves elegantly by jumping out of the water and this is actually called their energy.

The 3 H's-
The 3 H's are Head, Heart and Hand. Co-ordination in these 3 Parts of your body will decide your future!

Your Head decides your goal, the path to reach there.

E.g. I want to become an Entrepreneur.(Your goal)

Your Heart gives you the strength to move through all the difficulties coming in your path because the path that is paved by your Head is quite different from the path paved in reality!

E.g. The exams that you need to attempt to enter a good college/university.(The obstacles)

Your Hand does the hard-work or the smart-work.

E.g. Writing the exams that you need to attempt for getting into your dream college/university.(The work)

The answers to all the question are not to be figured out from someone else! You need to find some answers on your own too. Try and think about the 3 E's and follow the 3 H's while doing any work. This would increase your focus efficiently.

Social Media are interactive computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation or sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communication and networks.Nowadays with the increasing use of technology and social media it's very important to use them wisely. Social Media includes apps like a Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.

Social Media is something that connects people all over the world and so it connects people worldwide. Almost everyone in this world are connected to Social Media in one way or the other. But if you are using social media to chat with family or friends or upload pictures of yourself which are seen by those people then probably you are not using the gift of social media to its full potential. By doing this you are restricting your boundaries. It's almost like you have a big farm and you plant your crops in one corner. When you share your photos and information to your friends and family then you are sharing these pictures to the 0.001% of people on social media!

Think of it, if you share these photos and information to the whole world, it would make a difference! Your audience would increase and this would eventually lead to you yourself connecting with people, talking I guess to them and learning from them! Apart from this there is something called as digital marketing and you should go out there and research about it because it is a field in which we can earn money through social media! Go ahead and read about this on your phones and try and make best use of the technology you are entrusted with. To conclude I would like to say, "If you are always trying to be normal you would never know how amazing you could be!"

How many times have you thrown your Saturday morning plans out the window in favor of an extra two hours of sleep? How many New Year's resolutions do you carry throughout the year? How many brilliant ideas never stand a fighting chance because you're too absorbed by the online and flat-screen worlds?

The feeble cry, "I'll do this later" is something that our ancestors never uttered. Their focus was to survive here and now. Our focus is to make our here and now as comfortable as possible and because our basic need are relatively easily met we have all the time for dreaming, doing unproductive things on any screens and all this is being LAZY! We say that Laziness is our enemy and there must be a reason for it right? The reason is, it's our enemy because it stops us from doing something good, it's destroys our capability and challenges our mind to do wrong and we fall in that trap. We need to be energetic! With the growing technology, more and more luxuries are coming up, things are getting easier and they are reducing physical exercise. To much of Laziness can lead to obesity and too much delay in our work. These might me small issues to you but as you know "An Ocean is made up of many small droplets" and so when you think that nothing will happens if I do not do my work, it doesn't work that way! Laziness has adverse effects on ones family and friends and to every person he/she talks to. Let me take an example, you are a dealer of mangoes and you go to a farmer and ask him for 100 mangoes in good condition. The farmer gives you 100 mangoes out of which 99 were in good condition but the farmer thought nothing would happen if I put 1 mango which has insects in it that is, it's spoilt. Now when the mangoes where getting transported the insects spread to all other mangoes which were in the best of condition! Well you see how a habit which is laziness spreads at the right time. "People you meet everyday notice you everyday" and your habit spreads to the people you actually get inspired from you everyday. They can be your friends, siblings or even someone who doesn't know you! Let's come to the important part now, How Not To Be LAZY??

~Make a timetable for yourself and strictly adhere to your timetable.

~Don't try and change plans because of a silly excuse.

~Be determined.

~Be Focussed.

~Do things that you are actually interested because that would greatly reduce the chance of you avoiding to do that job.

Do you know Bill Gates and Steve Jobs or Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi? Do you know why are they successful? Let me tell you a personal story, once when I was in first standard I was told to recite a poem in front of my standard. I was young at that time and this was my first performance. That day, my parents encouraged me and I went on stage, looking at the audience smiling at me I started to recite the poem with a rhythm and because I had a harsh voice everybody started laughing. I was too young to handle that situation and I started crying and I ran back stage, and my parents told me, "If you run away now, you will always run later! Go on the stage and overcome your fear!" I went up the stage and recited the poem. As soon as I came down my mom and dad said, "Well, you just overcame your fear!" I didn't get that much when I was young but now when I am here, I do understand what did they meant. I was successful at that time! There is no difference between the method of gaining success of someone famous and me because we all gained success by overcoming our fears. What is fear? A feeling that stops us from doing something or a feeling that gives us inspiration to do something. Actually both equally lay right but you have to choose one!

Let's analyse and try to understand what happens when we choose the definition of fear as a feeling that stops us from doing something. There are two sub-types of fear in this definition, one is threat to one's life and the second is feeling nervous. There is a minute difference between both of them and that is the extent of fear we have. Fear of life can lead us to not to do something by feeling pressurised, breaking down and loosing of a lot of courage and hope! This type of fear is actually imposed on us by a third person. Fear of feeling nervous can lead us to not give our best towards something and this feeling is actually born in ourselves.

We all mostly experience the second type of fear. This fear is actually created when we are not confident about something or we are not prepared enough for that particular work! Here PREPARATION and CONFIDENCE plays an important role in the creation of fear in our minds. Now let's analyse the other definition that is a feeling that gives us inspiration to do something. This actually means we push ourselves to overcome our fear. You turn your fear towards the road that takes you to success. So to overcome our fear, first we need to get well-versed with the work we are doing so that we do not have any doubts because having doubts is the symbol of having low confidence. Overcoming your fears is something that you should start at a young age but none the less it's never too late to start.

Take small steps towards the things you fear. E.g. If you cannot give a speech in front of an audience. First try speaking in front of your parents, then your family and friends and slowly increase the number of people. Participate in programmes and grab any opportunity that comes your way! This would reduce your fear and weakness into confidence and strength. To overcome your fear you just need to be CONFIDENT. "Always remember there are two types of people in this world, astrologers and astronauts, Astrologers image the reality and Astronauts live in the reality." Learn and try to be an Astronaut instead of an Astrologer!

"One day Buddha's followers asked Buddha, What is the biggest mistake that man makes? Buddha replied, The biggest mistake that man makes is that he thinks he has a lot of time!" In this modern world, with a lot of work and no time to sit and reflect we miss on a lot of things that might be important. An average person lives for 78 years. We spend 28.3 years sleeping but almost 30% of us struggle while sleeping, we spend 10.5 years working but 50% of us want to leave our current jobs, we spend 9 years on TV and social media, we spend 6 years doing chores, we spend 4 years eating and drinking, 3.5 years in education, 2.5 years grooming, 2.5 years shopping, 1.5 years in child care, 1.3 years travelling and that leaves us with 9 years. 9 years of our own which are 108 months, 3285 days, 78840 hours, 4730400 minutes, 283824000 seconds and if you notice, as we dig in deeper and deeper we feel that we have more time but do we actually have more time?

No, we are just trying to use each second instead of using minutes/ hours / days / months / years. You might be thinking you have 9 years to live your life now, but by the time you are reading this you must have already used one fourth or half of your nine ye,ars. So what now? Is it time to start something? Yes it is! It's time to start living and not surviving. Time is more valuable than money, You can always earn more money but can never get more time. Just imagine that God gives you $86,400 each day and you can use it all on that particular day only. As soon as a new day starts it's all gone and you are given another $86,400 without you putting any efforts to earn it. I suppose you would use it all before the day ends! Now replace those $86,400 with 86,400 seconds. This is the most valuable gift you are ever given! Everyday 86,400 seconds credited to your account that is your life and we should use it wisely shouldn't we? For this you do not need to spend all your time but you need to learn to invest your time in whatever you do. Investing your time in things that have a positive impact on yourself or someone else but the only thing you need to keep in mind is that it should not harm anyone. Some examples of investing time in constructive things are reading, writing articles, learning, using technology in the right way, etc.

This reminds me the concept of R.O.T.I pronounced as ROTI is an abbreviation of Return On Time Invested(ROTI). Again whenever you use your time in something you are investing it and therefore you get something in return. A simple example would be that when you invest your time in studies you get knowledge and this knowledge would be increased when you share this knowledge with someone. Humans are the most intelligent species on this planet. They have found solutions to almost every problem of their life. So can we find a solution for these two words, 'TIME MANAGEMENT'. Well the answer lies within us and it is, whether we want to manage our time or not. Whenever we want to make a decision we have 2 voices in our soul. Both the voices are equal in loudness and amplitude and the first one always discourages to do a thing and the second one always encourages us to do it. And by choosing one you increase its loudness to such an extent that you cannot hear the other voice and the dominant voice suppresses the other voice and that is the moment when a decision is made. Both the voices are in our soul for a reason, none of them is good or bad but which choice we make depending upon the situation makes us a good or bad decision maker. So the biggest question that might be popping in your creative heads might be, HOW DOES ONE CHOOSE THE RIGHT VOICE? and HOW DOES HE SURELY KNOW THAT THE DECISION IS SURELY RIGHT?

To make the right decision keep the following pointers in your mind-

~Understand your situation or the state of condition you are in.

~Select the voice that you feel is correct and try and imagine the situation after that.

~Do check that no one gets hurt by your decision.

~If someone gets hurt by your decision, it's probably possible that the voice you chose is wrong and you should try the other voice.

~If the result of your decision is good for you then your decision was right!

~Sometimes there are instances that the decision you make might have a negative impact on your life at the first but gives you lot of pleasures later and vice versa.

Well, these tips might help you to choose your decision but in the end you have to make your decision ON YOUR OWN!

To manage your time one of the most important thing that you need to imbibe within yourself is ,'FOCUS' and I would like to talk about this in the next article.

Have you ever seen a cricket match? You might be going through a roller coaster of emotions. Anger, happiness, sadness, being excited, suspicious are the emotions that we often go through. If you are experiencing different emotions, then probably you are experiencing change. A teenagers mind goes through many emotions every second but do we actually know how to build our personality using these emotions? Well that's something new I suppose, Emotions=Personality Development, not so sure? Let's make it happen! So let's start from the very root of it. In any situation we face, we are placed in one of the three emotional zones.

The first emotional zone is the COMFORT ZONE. I hope that this is quite self-explaining to you guys. This is actually the zone in which you feel really comfortable. Being with my family and friends is my comfort zone!

The second emotional zone is the STRETCH ZONE. This is the zone where you apparently are less comfortable and kind of feel a little awkward.

The third emotional zone is the PANIC ZONE. This is the zone where you actually cannot think about anything, you panic a lot and you actually cannot make decisions. So let's talk a bit in detail about these zones. Please remember that a particular thing that is in the comfort zone for me might be in the panic zone for someone else. So this is something that differs from person to person.

The 'Comfort Zone' is the zone you are familiar with and because you are familiar with this zone, 'No Personality Development' takes place here! This is the zone where you can actually be yourself and express yourself to the fullest!

The 'Stretch Zone' is something that you know of but you are really not comfortable with it. E.g. Socialising can be something the Stretch Zone for introverts. This is the zone where your 'Personality' develops the most! I would tell you how this works. When you put yourself in the Stretch Zone for a long time your mind and body actually gets adapted to it and your Comfort Zone increases to the boundaries of the Stretch Zone that is actually transforming your Stretch Zone into your Comfort Zone. This is what we call Personality Development. As soon as your comfort Zone becomes bigger your Stretch Zone widens up more and so your Panic Zone.

Your Panic Zone is a place where 'Personality Development' does not effectively take place. This is the Zone where emotions like Anger and Fear are prominently seen! Here you actually do not think much and whatever you do is your reflex action or something you do due to panicking. Here we are like, Oh my gosh! What should I do now? You might have experienced these zones! And that's it! You have acquired almost all the information about these zones. Now it's up to, how do you use it in your daily lives. Well the last thing I would say to you is try to say in your Stretch Zone and everything will actually move on it's own! To conclude I would say, "Feelings are much like waves, we can't stop them from coming but we can choose which one to surf."

"Listening is an ART that requires ATTENTION over TALENT, SPIRIT over EGO, OTHERS over SELF." Teenagers always struggle to listen to someone because of the mind boggling thoughts in their minds. I am a teenager and I experience it almost everyday but one day because of an incident, I changed myself because it hit me hard. One day my friend and me were talking about the homework given in school and after clearing our doubts we started talking casually about a show, I spoke for a very long time, expressing all my views on it and when he started to speak, I ignored him. One minute after he was continuously speaking, I cut him off and went away. He came later and he said, "Hey, I didn't like the way you left me while I was speaking. Always remember listening is a two way process, if I listen to you then you also have to listen to me!" This statement struck me hard and I decided to change my way of interacting. There are two words which are actually related to this, one is 'hearing' and the second is 'listening'. What's the difference? Hearing is the ability to perceive the sounds and listening is to understand the sounds by hearing them. Finally coming to this conclusion that Hearing is the ABILITY and Listening is the PROCESS! In this case I heard him but he listened to me! This might have happened to you also. So the greatest question, How to develop Listening Skills? Is there a solution? Yes, there is a solution to every problem and there is a solution for this problem too! We need to build on 5 Things to overcome our problem of not listening to anybody.

Focus
Hearing and Not Thinking
Silence
Paraphrasing
Understanding Emotions

Focus- You always need to try and concentrate in the words that come out of the speakers mouth instead of concentrating on the other worldly things!

Hearing and Not Thinking- This is an extension of 'Focus', here it signifies that instead of JUDGING what the speaker and his words, we need to try and hear him. 'Judging' is human nature and we cannot avoid it but it can be controlled.

Silence- 'A PAUSE' at regular intervals is important for the speaker and the listener to rethink. It helps in paraphrasing.

Paraphrasing- Paraphrasing can be explained in simple words as summarising a paragraph. This is an activity that should go on in you heads now and then and it should be done during the 'PAUSE'.

Understanding Emotions- It is very necessary that the listener understands the speaker's emotions. The listener need to keep in mind that the speaker might get hurt due to any of his reactions that might be inappropriate for the prevailing time/ emotions of the speaker.

That's it! If you try and follow these things, you will definitely become a good 'LISTENER'!

Johan Vincent Galtung, the great sociologist said, "By PEACE we mean the capacity to transform conflicts with EMPATHY and CREATIVITY, WITHOUT VIOLENCE- a never ending process." This was his definition of PEACE and it is widely accepted all over the world but the definition of 'PEACE' differs from person to person. Today we will be looking into the two types of PEACE which are Positive Peace and Negative Peace.

Negative Peace-

This peace is mostly experienced by us and it is defined as the ABSENCE of WAR or VIOLENCE! Peace had often been thought of absence of war but it is more than that!

Positive Peace-

This peace inculcates the attitudes, institutions and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies! True Peace is something that is felt from within!

Well, you might be reading this article from your homes, relaxed and tension free or in quest for Peace but is it so simple to attain peace? Can we attain PEACE just by reading a few articles on Google and do those things and say we are peaceful? Definitely NO, it doesn't matter how much you read or how much you know, we can attain peace only when our Emotions are balanced, we take a moment and push our tensions on the footpath, remove all the cars honking around us that is sit in a peaceful place at think about nothing. Not your favourite thing or subject or even the yummy food that your Mom might be making.....all you think about is yourself. Avoiding all the questions on how you look, how intelligent are you? You just need to think of your your Soul and ask yourself from within, whether your soul, your heart is clean from within. If you hear Yes as an answer, you might probably be at peace or it might just be the untrue answer.

Some daily practices to be stable/control your emotions-

Meditation
Reflection
Silence
Take some Free Time For Yourself

The only thing you need to remember is that, "To Attain PEACE the only thing and person matters is YOU".