Got this as a forward and just had to store it with me.

*Written by a 90 year old*

This is something we should all read at least once a week!!!!! Make sure you read to the end!!!!!!
Written by Regina Brett, 90 years old, of the Plain Dealer, Cleveland , Ohio.

“To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me. It is the most requested column I’ve ever written.
My odometer rolled over to 90 in August, so here is the column once more:
1. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
4. Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and parents will. Stay in touch.
5. Pay off your credit cards every month.
6. You don’t have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
7. Cry with someone. It’s more healing than crying alone.
8. It’s OK to get angry with God. He can take it.
9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.
10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
11. Make peace with your past so it won’t screw up the present.
12. It’s OK to let your children see you cry.
13. Don’t compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn’t be in it.
15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don’t worry; God never blinks.
16. Take a deep breath It calms the mind.
17. Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, beautiful or joyful.
18. Whatever doesn’t kill you really does make you stronger.
19. It’s never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.
20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don’t take no for an answer.
21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don’t save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
22. Over prepare, then go with the flow.
23. Be eccentric now. Don’t wait for old age to wear purple.
24. The most important sex organ is the brain.
25. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.
26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words ‘In five years, will this matter?’
27. Always choose life.
28. Forgive everyone everything.
29. What other people think of you is none of your business.
30. Time heals almost everything. Give time time.
31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
32. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
33. Believe in miracles.
34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn’t do.
35. Don’t audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.
36. Growing old beats the alternative — dying young.
37. Your children get only one childhood.
38. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d grab ours back.
41. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
42. The best is yet to come…
43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
44. Yield.
45. Life isn’t tied with a bow, but it’s still a gift.”

Here are 16 things I wish they had taught me in school (or I just would like to have known about earlier).

1. The 80/20 rule.

This is one of the best ways to make better use of your time. The 80/20 rule – also known as The Pareto Principle – basically says that 80 percent of the value you will receive will come from 20 percent of your activities.

So a lot of what you do is probably not as useful or even necessary to do as you may think.

You can just drop – or vastly decrease the time you spend on – a whole bunch of things.

And if you do that you will have more time and energy to spend on those things that really brings your value, happiness, fulfilment and so on.

2. Parkinson’s Law.

You can do things quicker than you think. This law says that a task will expand in time and seeming complexity depending on the time you set aside for it. For instance, if you say to yourself that you’ll come up with a solution within a week then the problem will seem to grow more difficult and you’ll spend more and more time trying to come up with a solution.

So focus your time on finding solutions. Then just give yourself an hour (instead of the whole day) or the day (instead of the whole week) to solve the problem. This will force your mind to focus on solutions and action.

The result may not be exactly as perfect as if you had spent a week on the task, but as mentioned in the previous point, 80 percent of the value will come from 20 percent of the activities anyway. Or you may wind up with a better result because you haven’t overcomplicated or overpolished things. This will help you to get things done faster, to improve your ability to focus and give you more free time where you can totally focus on what’s in front of you instead of having some looming task creating stress in the back of your mind.

3. Batching.

Boring or routine tasks can create a lot of procrastination and low-level anxiety. One good way to get these things done quickly is to batch them. This means that you do them all in row. You will be able to do them quicker because there is less “start-up time” compared to if you spread them out. And when you are batching you become fully engaged in the tasks and more focused.

A batch of things to do in an hour today may look like this: Clean your desk / answer today’s emails / do the dishes / make three calls / write a grocery shopping list for tomorrow.

4. First, give value. Then, get value. Not the other way around.

This is a bit of a counter-intuitive thing. There is often an idea that someone should give us something or do something for us before we give back. The problem is just that a lot of people think that way. And so far less than possible is given either way.

If you want to increase the value you receive (money, love, kindness, opportunities etc.) you have to increase the value you give. Because over time you pretty much get what you give. It would perhaps be nice to get something for nothing. But that seldom happens.

5. Be proactive. Not reactive.

This one ties into the last point. If everyone is reactive then very little will get done. You could sit and wait and hope for someone else to do something. And that happens pretty often, but it can take a lot of time before it happens.

A more useful and beneficial way is to be proactive, to simply be the one to take the first practical action and get the ball rolling. This not only saves you a lot of waiting, but is also more pleasurable since you feel like you have the power over your life. Instead of feeling like you are run by a bunch of random outside forces.

6. Mistakes and failures are good.

When you are young you just try things and fail until you learn. As you grow a bit older, you learn from – for example – school to not make mistakes. And you try less and less things.

This may cause you to stop being proactive and to fall into a habit of being reactive, of waiting for someone else to do something. I mean, what if you actually tried something and failed? Perhaps people would laugh at you?

Perhaps they would. But when you experience that you soon realize that it is seldom the end of the world. And a lot of the time people don’t care that much. They have their own challenges and lives to worry about.

And success in life often comes from not giving up despite mistakes and failure. It comes from being persistent.

When you first learn to ride your bike you may fall over and over. Bruise a knee and cry a bit. But you get up, brush yourself off and get on the saddle again. And eventually you learn how to ride a bike. If you can just reconnect to your 5 year old self and do things that way – instead of giving up after a try/failure or two as grown-ups often do – you would probably experience a lot more interesting things, learn valuable lessons and have quite a bit more success.

7. Don’t beat yourself up.

Why do people give up after just few mistakes or failures? Well, I think one big reason is because they beat themselves up way too much. But it’s a kinda pointless habit. It only creates additional and unnecessary pain inside you and wastes your precious time. It’s best to try to drop this habit as much as you can.

8. Assume rapport.

Meeting new people is fun. But it can also induce nervousness. We all want to make a good first impression and not get stuck in an awkward conversation.

The best way to do this that I have found so far is to assume rapport. This means that you simply pretend that you are meeting one of your best friends. Then you start the interaction in that frame of mind instead of the nervous one.

This works surprisingly well. You can read more about it in How to Have Less Awkward Conversations: Assuming Rapport.

9. Use your reticular activation system to your advantage.

I learned about the organs and the inner workings of the body in class but nobody told me about the reticular activation system. And that’s a shame, because this is one of the most powerful things you can learn about. What this focus system, this R.A.S, in your mind does is to allow you to see in your surroundings what you focus your thoughts on. It pretty much always helps you to find what you are looking for.

So you really need to focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want. And keep that focus steady.

Setting goals and reviewing them frequently is one way to keep your focus on what’s important and to help you take action that will move your closer to toward where you want to go. Another way is just to use external reminders such as pieces of paper where you can, for instance, write down a few things from this post like “Give value” or “Assume rapport”. And then you can put those pieces of paper on your fridge, bathroom mirror etc.

10. Your attitude changes your reality.

We have all heard that you should keep a positive attitude or perhaps that “you need to change your attitude!”. That is a nice piece of advice I suppose, but without any more reasons to do it is very easy to just brush such suggestions off and continue using your old attitude.

But the thing that I’ve discovered the last few years is that if you change your attitude, you actually change your reality. When you for instance use a positive attitude instead of a negative one you start to see things and viewpoints that were invisible to you before. You may think to yourself “why haven’t I thought about things this way before?”.

When you change your attitude you change what you focus on. And all things in your world can now be seen in a different light.

This is of course very similar to the previous tip but I wanted to give this one some space. Because changing your attitude can create an insane change in your world. It might not look like it if you just think about it though. Pessimism might seem like realism. But that is mostly because your R.A.S is tuned into seeing all the negative things you want to see. And that makes you “right” a lot of the time. And perhaps that is what you want. On the other hand, there are more fun things than being right all the time.

If you try changing your attitude for real – instead of analysing such a concept in your mind – you’ll be surprised.

11. Gratitude is a simple way to make yourself feel happy.

Sure, I was probably told that I should be grateful. Perhaps because it was the right thing to do or just something I should do. But if someone had said that feeling grateful about things for minute or two is a great way to turn a negative mood into a happy one I would probably have practised gratitude more. It is also a good tool for keeping your attitude up and focusing on the right things. And to make other people happy. Which tends to make you even happier, since emotions are contagious.

12. Don’t compare yourself to others.

The ego wants to compare. It wants to find reasons for you to feel good about yourself (“I’ve got a new bike!”). But by doing that it also becomes very hard to not compare yourself to others who have more than you (“Oh no, Bill has bought an even nicer bike!”). And so you don’t feel so good about yourself once again. If you compare yourself to others you let the world around control how you feel about yourself. It always becomes a rollercoaster of emotions.

A more useful way is to compare yourself to yourself. To look at how far you have come, what you have accomplished and how you have grown. It may not sound like that much fun but in the long run it brings a lot more inner stillness, personal power and positive feelings.

13. 80-90% of what you fear will happen never really come into reality.

This is a big one. Most things you fear will happen never happen. They are just monsters in your own mind. And if they happen then they will most often not be as painful or bad as you expected. Worrying is most often just a waste of time.

This is of course easy to say. But if you remind yourself of how little of what you feared throughout your life that has actually happened you can start to release more and more of that worry from your thoughts.

14. Don’t take things too seriously.

It’s very easy to get wrapped up in things. But most of the things you worry about never come into reality. And what may seem like a big problem right now you may not even remember in three years.

Taking yourself, your thoughts and your emotions too seriously often just seems to lead to more unnecessary suffering. So relax a little more and lighten up a bit. It can do wonders for your mood and as an extension of that; your life.

15. Write everything down.

If your memory is anything like mine then it’s like a leaking bucket. Many of your good or great ideas may be lost forever if you don’t make a habit of writing things down. This is also a good way to keep your focus on what you want. Read more about it in Why You Should Write Things Down.

16. There are opportunities in just about every experience.

In pretty much any experience there are always things that you can learn from it and things within the experience that can help you to grow. Negative experiences, mistakes and failure can sometimes be even better than a success because it teaches you something totally new, something that another success could never teach you.

Whenever you have a “negative experience” ask yourself: where is the opportunity in this? What is good about this situation? One negative experience can – with time – help you create many very positive experiences.

What do you wish someone had told you in school or you had just learned earlier in life?

Source: http://www.positivityblog.com/index.php/2008/04/02/16-things-i-wish-they-had-taught-me-in-school/comment-page-4/

It’s been over 7 months since I last blogged. This isn’t the first time I have said that I’ll blog regularly… But I sure will try. Also, installed the wordpress app on my BB, hope that helps me blog more. Fingers crossed!!

I was reading this article on the discussion of strengths and weaknesses that happens in almost all interviews and it got me thinking. If I am asked what my weaknesses are, what would I say?

1. Chocolates
2. Procrastination (check my wardrobe / room out)
3. Lack of determination (you goota see me to believe it — i have been on a diet for about 4 yrs now and have gained 15+ kgs)
4. I do not finish the books I read
5. I am a romantic at heart

People who know me and are reading this, please comment. Let me know what your weakness(es) is and what you think mine is. Help me know me better!!

I watched Ghajani last night (finally) and while I was discussing it with a friend of mine (who has a technical eye out for most things around), he made a sensible point. How, a person who had stayed and studied in the West most of his life (I am guessing the charecter was around 25-30 years of age), wrote a Diary in Hindi as opposed to English – which would come more naturally to him? Of course it’s a Hindi movie so crap has to happen in Hindi only

This got me thinking, what language do I think in and what language will I choose shoule I maintain a diary (if I ever do)? My choice, most conveniently and naturally, was English. What’s your’s?

To know this, just think if you had a bundle of money to count, what language would you count it in? Me, I will do it in English, rarely in hindi (I get stuck after 25 )

Though being a Tamilian by birth, (I am ashamed to say this) I can not read or write in Tamil. Hindi and English have been the languages which come to my rescue at ALL times. So, I think in English, mostly, Hindi at times – may be 20-30% of the time. What about you?

The other night, I was watching this movie, “The curious case of Benjamin Button”; was an interesting movie. At the end of the movie, there was a fleeting glimpse of all the people who mattered to Benjamin Button and their purpose in life. This got me wondering….. what’s my purpose in life?

Some people live their life for the selfless purpose of serving people. Some are good spouses & friends.
Some find their peace in spirituality, others for the freedom / safety of the people of their country.
What am I here for? I am gonna give this some thought…..

There was a time, I would spend my entire day listening to some good songs on the radio and reading a novel. This was when I lived in a joint family with no TV to watch. Today, in the comfort of my own house and the privacy of my own room, I choose to watch TV, movies, anything other than reading interesting books that are waiting for me to pick them up.

Chatting on phone with my friend earlier yesterday, I wondered if I still liked reading. I considered reading to be my first hobby as compared to listening to music and dancing and watching TV/movies. Today, the order is pretty much reversed. I wonder what has caused it? The last fortnight has seen me looking at shit load of work spending over 12 hours at office everyday. I get home way past mid-night, mind absolutely screwed up and left with nothing much to do except eat and sleep once I am home.

I wonder what has gotten me to like reading less? I am a people person, I like to spend time with my mom, do some random household work; I love to shop…. then I spend some time checking stuff on the internet, watching TV for something interesting or funny. Then if I am already not asleep, I pick up something to read.

I don’t like not liking reading so much; I am gonna rekindle my interest in reading; there was a time I used to finish a 200+ page book overnight and now I can’t get past reading 10…. shame on me…. I know I can do better, I will do better… starting tonight. I shall read more of the funny book I have started reading, The Inscrutable Americans.. Wish me luck

I work as an officer in the Compliance Team of a domain name registrar. Several complaints reporting some form of internet abuse are reported to my team and we take action against such defaulting domain names. A couple of days back, no different from any other day, we received a bunch of complaints and processed it. Unfortunately, there was a case of false positive which got me into a small situation.

I was sitting at my desk looking at the email sent by this client who threatened to take his business away on account of this situation and I was getting ready to draft a reply explaining the instance of his order being a false positive. I knew exactly what needed to be conveyed to his gentleman, but I couldn’t come up with the right way of putting it across to him. I just froze! Couldn’t type, or scribble on the notepad, or say it out aloud what I needed to write!

I am not a writer, but my job requires me to write stuff to save my company’s and my own reputation at times. I never fall short of words or techniques to write the most horrific news in a tactful manner. But this was one scenario when words just refused to help me.

I make a big deal of this coz I never in my life thought that I would face the much discussed “writer’s block”. I thought this was a thing for professional writers, novelists, journalists.

I was ashamed of myself to be in this positon and have promised to do better. As a practise, I shall write atleast one original article a week. I hope this helps me improve my not so poor communication skills. Fingers crossed!!

11th May 11.15 am IST

It is another sunday morning and I am here in the hot hot very hot Hyderabad, bored to death. I am sleepy, dont know what to do of my sunday. I tried reading my feeds and adding some applications to my orkut profile, but guess what a 2 kbps connection doesnt help me much with any idle browsing.

I can watch a movie, cook (well cant coz my aunt is taken the responsibility of making lunch), read a book (but my eyes burn as a result of the excessive heat), look around stumble (but have a pathetically slow internet speed), sleep (yeah babay!!! now we are talking).

Lets c what i end up doing, but am surely gonna do something and not just sit around getting bored. Will keep ths post updated.

It’s a little past 7 in the morning, early by my general waking up habit. Am up coz I need to wash my oiled hair and get mom to the hospital for an MRI. While having my cup of tea without the morning newspaper, I sat down reading a few of my unread feeds from Zen Habits. The feed How to Make the Time for Your Personal Goals

Left me thinking… what are my personal goals. I started making a mental note and this is what I came up with

1. Loose oodles of weight (I am struggling to stay under a 100 kgs)
2. Read my unread books Not exactly a goal but more something I have been wanting to do since a while – silly but true
3. Make my job more interesting for myself and for my team.
4. Make plans in the long run for my team
5. Marry (I am surprised this one came so much later)
6. Become healthy and stay that way

Cant think of any more now…. Will add on to this list a little later. I shall surely make a plan of action to achieve these asap and more importantly do them effectively