Once there was a group of men – a young hot-blooded chap and a big number of old folks, doing timber job in a jungle.

This young chap is very hard working. He always continues to work through his break time and complains that those old folks were wasting time, having to break few times a day to drink and chat. As times goes by, this young chap noticed that even though he worked through break time and hardly took a rest those old folks are chopping the same amount of trees as he did and sometimes did more than he did. It was as if those old folks work through the break time as he did. So he decided to work harder the next day. Unfortunately the results were even worse.

One day, one of the old folk invited him for a drink during their break time. That young chap refused and said he has no extra time to spend! Then the old man smiled to him and said it was just a waste of effort to keep chopping trees without re-sharpening your Axe. Sooner or later you will give up or be so exhausted as you have spent too much energy.

Suddenly the young chap realized that actually during break times while those old folks were having a chat, they were also re-sharpening their Axe at the same time! And that’s how they can chop faster than him and yet spending lesser time!

The old folk said what we need is efficiency by making use of our skill and ability intelligently. Only then can we have more times to do other things.

Otherwise you will always keep saying…

I have no time!

Moral of the Story: By taking a short break during work, it would make you feel fresher, think well and work better after the break! (Or am I just finding excuse to take a break). But by taking a break, it is not to stop work but to rest and re-think our strategy to go about it from another angle.

Where do our kids get their values? Are you comfortable with the values they learn in public school? How about on MTV, cable or other television? Are reality shows actually reality? Do you think modern music teaches them about love and romance? Maybe going to the movies is better and seeing Academy Award winning movies like “Slumdog Millionaire,” or “Departed” will teach them right from wrong? How about the Internet where they can see their friends post naked pictures of themselves or, if their parents haven’t been smart and restricted access, they can go to any porn site in the privacy of their own rooms. You get the point. The values out there are certainly questionable.

When I grew up, my parents had little concern about what I’d see on television, what I’d be taught in school when politics and values were little discussed, and they felt comfortable that they could inculcate me in their own values and religion. It’s a different world now.

I attended a recent lecture by Dr. Bruce Powell, who is the Head of School at the New Community Jewish High School in West Hills, California and the father of three daughters and one son. The talk was about the challenges of raising teenagers. The room was full with parents looking for answers and struggling with the present day challenges we face raising our teens.

Dr. Powell offered a simple formula that could offer excellent guidance for parents. He gave it the acronym of P.A.V.E., which stands for Parental Actions, Values, and Expectations. While he didn’t address anything mentioned earlier in this column, about the differences our kids face from media and society today vs. previous times, I felt his idea was terrific. It seemed simple, yet it forced each of us if we were willing, to take a look at ourselves and the model we show our children, as well as how and what they learn from us.

Let’s start with Actions. Dr. Powell’s assertion is that our kids don’t miss anything. Our actions do indeed speak louder than our words. If dad comes home everyday after a difficult day at work, pours himself a drink or two, and plops down in front of the television, they notice. If mom is talking on the cell-phone while driving, and buys every designer handbag she can get her hands on, they notice. The language we speak, they hear. The things we eat, they observe, etc. etc. So, when Dr. Powell observed his oldest daughter, now a mom herself, driving somewhat fast and above the speed limit, and he asked her to slow down, he had to face her response “Dad, I’m just driving the way you always did.” So, our actions speak loudly to our kids, period, no excuse.

What Values are we teaching them? Do we teach them at all? Again, they observe how we treat the waiter or waitress, if we cheat on our taxes, try to take advantage of a salesperson, go to church or synagogue, or just drive them to religious school on Sundays while we go to brunch? Do we discuss our values; do we live them? Again, do we want present day primary school, with all its political correctness, to give them their values? On the likelihood that it may be too controversial, I won’t even go to what values our kids are taught and exposed to at most so-called elite universities and colleges. It’s abundantly clear that if they haven’t been solidly taught the values we, as parents, want them to learn, they will get thoroughly brainwashed at many such institutions.

And, finally, there’s Expectations. Do your kids know what you expect from them? Is it enough to expect good grades? Do they think we care more about their grades or how good a person they are? Expectations have become sort of taboo nowadays, in the same way that shame is a word that doesn’t seem to be touched on much anymore, yet both can and do have importance in shaping how we behave. Our kids need to know our expectations. They should be more affected by disappointing us than by losing a privilege and/or getting punished.

Dr. Powell said, in their family, the shame of disappointing their parents was far greater than any other punishment they might have devised and, in fact, there were no punishments other than their parent’s disapproval in their household. How many of us dole out punishment vs. teaching our kids our values and holding them to a standard of expectations and actions?

I like what he said. I’m going to work at really thinking about what comes out of my mouth in front of my kids. When my wife and I are stressed with one another, we’re going to strive to keep any bickering behind our closed bedroom door. The only thing I want my kids to see from us is a loving husband and wife. And, finally, I guess I’ll have to throw away the bong pipe, once and for all (okay, just joking on that one).

Please visit brucesallan.com to contact Bruce and to enjoy the various features his new Web site offers, including a unique Ask Bruce For Advice section, an archive of his columns, contact info, links to his published work, photo galleries, and reader comments, plus much more!

When faced with a new challenge, forget about acting fast. Instead start a three-step process to formulate the best solution

In these turbulent times, everyone wants you to act quickly.

Don’t. It’s a trap.

The strategic moves needed today depend on your ability to make smart decisions—not fast ones. Particularly in times of stress or emergency, the pressure to take quick action is enormous. That pressure plays into many people’s strengths and possibly yours as well. Doing something, and quickly, has been a mantra in the American working world, but look where it has led us. The insatiable desire for short-term returns has decimated Wall Street and the U.S. economy as a whole.

So many current challenges have no known solution because they stem from complex, new issues. These are what we would call adaptive challenges—issues whose solution is outside your repertoire. The most important thing to do when confronted with these challenges is to resist leaping into action. You cannot solve these complex challenges with mere technical solutions.

The challenges we now face will require us to grow into a new set of competencies. Pushing out the decision time line, taking a wider and longer view, and stepping back to clarify the nature of the problem itself—before you make enormous investments or roll out large-scale programs—can be the difference between strategic growth and wasted resources.

Three Steps To Cooler Interventions

We admire the head of a global professional services firm we have worked with who resisted the pressure from partners—and even some clients—to make big bets in international expansion. He chose to wait until some competitors had made their investments so he could learn from their mistakes and distinguish between the flavor of the month and serious opportunities for growth.

Resisting the impulse to act is the first step in responding to a challenge that has no easy technical fix. Slowing down the freight train is difficult, so here are the three steps to follow:

(1) Observe: Collect data and stand back to watch events and patterns around you.

(2) Interpret: Examine what you are seeing and hearing, then develop multiple hypotheses about what is really going on.

(3) Intervene: Act to address the challenge, test multiple hypotheses, and then monitor progress on each.

Read the rest of this entry »

What’s the best way to solve a problem?

I really don’t think there is one way to do it. And the ways you can use to solve a problem depends on the problem.

But I have found a few tips that have helped me solve problems more easily. I seldom use all of the tips for solving one problem and they aren’t arranged in any special order. However, I find doing some of these things early on can really help you solve the problem faster and with less struggle and pain.

1. Accept the problem. This is the one I try to do first when I run into a problem and I use it almost every time. When you accept that the problem already exists and stop resisting then you also stop putting more energy into the problem and “feeding it”. Now it just exists (well, more or less, you might still feel a bit down about it). And you can use the energy you previously fed the problem with – the energy that probably made the problem look bigger than it was – to find creative solutions to the challenge.
2. Ask yourself: what’s the worst that can happen? This is another one to do early on. You can easily to use your mind to blow problems all out of proportion. By asking this question you can restore the problem to it’s original size. And realize that the worst case scenario – if you actually define it – is perhaps not so pleasant but something you can handle and solve.
3. Gather some good knowledge. Information about your problem can often decrease that uncertain anxiety and fear we face when we are challenged with something. Knowledge wisps away the clouds of fear around a problem. And we often find that the problem might not be as bad as we thought.
4. Try to figure out possible problem along the way. This is something you can do before the problem even arises. Be prepared. When you research – as described in point # 3 – also try to find out what others in the same situation ran into, what kind of challenges they faced. Ask people what they did. If you don’t have anyone to ask then books, forums and blogs are good resources for gathering the personal experience of people. Also, be on the lookout for local groups and organizations. Google it and see what you find. If you keep your eyes and ears open you are sure to find something helpful.
5. Ask for help. You can ask people for advice on what to do and what they did in similar situations like yours. But you can also ask for more practical help. You don´t have to solve every problem on your own and sometimes it feels better to have someone by your side, even if it is just for emotional support.
6. Let go of the need to be right. Open your mind to a solution that may work and try it out instead of just making snap judgements based on little information and experience. The need to be right can make you disregard solutions that are just what you need for far too long.
7. Come up with more than one solution. You don´t know what will actually work before you try it. What may seem like a good solution in theory doesn´t always work in reality. So brain-storm and come up with at least a few solutions. If the first didn´t work, try the next one.
8. Redefine failure. This is important both to handle fear of failure for the whole problem and to get you start trying different solutions without too much hesitation. The definition of failure we are brought up with in society might not be the best and most useful to have. If you look at the most successful people you quickly notice that they have a different response to failure than the more common one. They don´t take failure or rejection that seriously. They know it´s not the end of the world if they fail. Instead they look at each failure and see the good part about: what they can learn from it and improve next time. They have an abundance-mentality. They know that if their first business-venture fails it feels like crap for a while but it´s ok in the long run. They learn from it and then they try again. Redefine failure as feedback and as a natural part of a successful life.
9. Break down the problem into smaller pieces. Completing a task or solving a problem can seem overwhelming and impossible if you take it all in at once. To decrease anxiety and think more clearly try to break the problem down. Try to identify the different things and people it consists of. Then figure out one practical solution you can take for each of those pieces. Try those solutions. They may not solve the whole problem immediately. But they might solve a few pieces of it. And then you can keep trying other solutions for the rest of the pieces until there are none left.
10. Use the 80/20 rule. Use 80 percent of your time to find solutions and only 20 percent to complain, worry and whine. It might not always be easy but focusing your energy, time and thoughts in this way is much more beneficial to you and others than doing the opposite.
11. Use Parkinson’s Law. 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. Combine this law with the 80/20 rule to find solutions quickly. 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.
12. Find the lesson or opportunity within the problem. There is almost always a good side of a problem. Perhaps it alerts us to a great way to improve our business. Or teaches us how our lives perhaps aren’t as bad as we thought. Finding this more positive part of the problem reduces its negative emotional impact and you may even start to see the situation as a great opportunity for you. When you are faced with a problem ask yourself: How can I use this? What is the good thing about this? What can I learn from this? What hidden opportunity can I find within this problem?
13. Actually talk about the problem and communicate clearly. Many problems arise because someone misinterpreted what someone else said. One way to make sure that you and everyone else have the same interpretation of for instance a project is to have people repeat back their view of the project and their part in it. See if your and their view matches. If a conflict arises then maybe you need to just talk it out, let go of a bit of steam, emotion and tension instead of everyone bottling it up. After that the discussion may be less emotionally charged. And it becomes easier to communicate clearly and reach a good solution for everyone involved.
14. Create fewer problems. A lot of our problems are created by ourselves. You save yourself a lot of trouble by being proactive, thinking before you speak and trying to avoid creating or complicating problems more than necessary. One way to decrease problems is to follow – as much as you can – Dale Carnegie´s wise words: “Never critize, complain or condemn”. Many problems are somehow connected to relationships with other people so a good way to create less problems is to improve your social skills. Check out Do You Make These 10 Mistakes in a Conversation? and 5 Mistakes That Can Make You Look Dumb for some tips in that area. And go down to your local library and borrow a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People.
15. Use the power of words to your advantage. Our minds respond more than one may think to what words that are used to describe something. A problem is a negatively charged word. To make it easier to handle the problem use the more neutral or positive word challenge instead. This may sound like some empty and in reality just useless advice. But, at least to me, I have found that doing this small change has some impact on how negatively/positively I view a situation.
16. Keep your motivation up. It’s easy to be discouraged, especially if you fear failure and your first and second solution to a problem didn´t work. You might feel like just giving up. Then it´s time to give yourself a boost of motivation. Try a few of the techniques described in 25 Simple Ways to Motivate Yourself and 5 More Ways to Motivate Yourself. Changing your mental state to a brighter, more positive and more motivated one can make all the difference in the world. It will keep you going. Even though you might just a few minutes earlier felt like all hope was gone.

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 you 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.

You may want to read more about this topic in Take the Positivity Challenge!

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?

The way to overcome negative thoughts and destructive emotions is to develop opposing, positive emotions that are stronger and more powerful. – Dalai Lama

Life could be so much better for many people, if they would just spot their negative thinking habits and replace them with positive ones.

Negative thinking, in all its many-splendored forms, has a way of creeping into conversations and our thinking without our noticing them. The key to success, in my humble opinion, is learning to spot these thoughts and squash them like little bugs. Then replace them with positive ones. You’ll notice a huge difference in everything you do.

Let’s take a look at 10 common ways that negative thinking emerges  get good at spotting these patterns, and practice replacing them with positive thinking patterns. It has made all the difference in the world for me.

1. I will be happy once I have _____ (or once I earn X).

Problem: If you think you can’t be happy until you reach a certain point, or until you reach a certain income, or have a certain type of house or car or computer setup, you’ll never be happy. That elusive goal is always just out of reach. Once we reach those goals, we are not satisfied  we want more.

Solution: Learn to be happy with what you have, where you are, and who you are, right at this moment. Happiness doesn’t have to be some state that we want to get to eventually  it can be found right now. Learn to count your blessings, and see the positive in your situation. This might sound simplistic, but it works.

2. I wish I were as ____ as (a celebrity, friend, co-worker).

Problem: We’ll never be as pretty, as talented, as rich, as sculpted, as cool, as everyone else. There will always be someone better, if you look hard enough. Therefore, if we compare ourselves to others like this, we will always pale, and will always fail, and will always feel bad about ourselves. This is no way to be happy.

Solution: Stop comparing yourself to others, and look instead at yourself  what are your strengths, your accomplishments, your successes, however small? What do you love about yourself? Learn to love who you are, right now, not who you want to become. There is good in each of us, love in each of us, and a wonderful human spirit in every one of us.

3. Seeing others becoming successful makes me jealous and resentful.

Problem: First, this assumes that only a small number of people can be successful. In truth, many, many people can be successful  in different ways.

Solution: Learn to admire the success of others, and learn from it, and be happy for them, by empathizing with them and understanding what it must be like to be them. And then turn away from them, and look at yourself  you can be successful too, in whatever you choose to do. And even more, you already are successful. Look not at those above you in the social ladder, but those below you  there are always millions of people worse off than you, people who couldn’t even read this article or afford a computer. In that light, you are a huge success.

4. I am a miserable failure  I can’t seem to do anything right.

Problem: Everyone is a failure, if you look at it in certain ways. Everyone has failed, many times, at different things. I have certainly failed so many times I cannot count them  and I continue to fail, daily. However, looking at your failures as failures only makes you feel bad about yourself. By thinking in this way, we will have a negative self-image and never move on from here.

Solution: See your successes and ignore your failures. Look back on your life, in the last month, or year, or 5 years. And try to remember your successes. If you have trouble with this, start documenting them  keep a success journal, either in a notebook or online. Document your success each day, or each week. When you look back at what you’ve accomplished, over a year, you will be amazed. It’s an incredibly positive feeling.

5. I’m going to beat so-and-so no matter what  I’m better than him. And there’s no way I’ll help him succeed  he might beat me.

Problem: Competitiveness assumes that there is a small amount of gold to be had, and I need to get it before he does. It makes us into greedy, back-stabbing, hurtful people. We try to claw our way over people to get to success, because of our competitive feelings. For example, if a blogger wants to have more subscribers than another blogger, he may never link to or mention that other blogger. However, who is to say that my subscribers can’t also be yours? People can read and subscribe to more than one blog.

Solution: Learn to see success as something that can be shared, and learn that if we help each other out, we can each have a better chance to be successful. Two people working towards a common goal are better than two people trying to beat each other up to get to that goal. There is more than enough success to go around. Learn to think in terms of abundance rather than scarcity.

6. Dammit! Why do these bad things always happen to me?

Problem: Bad things happen to everybody. If we dwell on them, they will frustrate us and bring us down.

Solution: See bad things as a part of the ebb and flow of life. Suffering is a part of the human condition  but it passes. All pain goes away, eventually. Meanwhile, don’t let it hold you back. Don’t dwell on bad things, but look forward towards something good in your future. And learn to take the bad things in stride, and learn from them. Bad things are actually opportunities to grow and learn and get stronger, in disguise.

7. You can’t do anything right! Why can’t you be like ____ ?

Problem: This can be said to your child or your subordinate or your sibling. The problem? Comparing two people, first of all, is always a fallacy. People are different, with different ways of doing things, different strengths and weaknesses, different human characteristics. If we were all the same, we’d be robots. Second, saying negative things like this to another person never helps the situation. It might make you feel better, and more powerful, but in truth, it hurts your relationship, it will actually make you feel negative, and it will certainly make the other person feel negative and more likely to continue negative behavior. Everyone loses.

Solution: Take the mistakes or bad behavior of others as an opportunity to teach. Show them how to do something. Second, praise them for their positive behavior, and encourage their success. Last, and most important, love them for who they are, and celebrate their differences.

8. Your work sucks. It’s super lame. You are a moron and I hope you never reproduce.

Problem: I’ve actually gotten this comment before. It feels wonderful. However, let’s look at it not from the perspective of the person receiving this kind of comment but from the perspective of the person giving it. How does saying something negative like this help you? I guess it might feel good to vent if you feel like your time has been wasted. But really, how much of your time has been wasted? A few minutes? And whose fault is that? The bloggers or yours? In truth, making negative comments just keeps you in a negative mindset. It’s also not a good way to make friends.

Solution: Learn to offer constructive solutions, first of all. Instead of telling someone their blog sucks, or that a post is lame, offer some specific suggestions for improvement. Help them get better. If you are going to take the time to make a comment, make it worth your time. Second, learn to interact with people in a more positive way  it makes others feel good and it makes you feel better about yourself. And you can make some great friends this way. That’s a good thing.

9. Insulting People Back

Problem: If someone insults you or angers you in some way, insulting them back and continuing your anger only transfers their problem to you. This person was probably having a bad day (or a bad year) and took it out on you for some reason. If you reciprocate, you are now having a bad day too. His problem has become yours. Not only that, but the cycle of insults can get worse and worse until it results in violence or other negative consequences  for both of you.

Solution: Let the insults or negative comments of others slide off you like Teflon. Don’t let their problem become yours. In fact, try to understand their problem more  why would someone say something like that? What problems are they going through? Having a little empathy for someone not only makes you understand that their comment is not about you, but it can make you feel and act in a positive manner towards them  and make you feel better about yourself in the process.

10. I don’t think I can do this  I don’t have enough discipline. Maybe some other time.

Problem: If you don’t think you can do something, you probably won’t. Especially for the big stuff. Discipline has nothing to do with it  motivation and focus has everything to do with it. And if you put stuff off for “some other time”, you’ll never get it done. Negative thinking like this inhibits us from accomplishing anything.

Solution: Turn your thinking around: you can do this! You don’t need discipline. Find ways to make yourself a success at your goal. If you fail, learn from your mistakes, and try again. Instead of putting a goal off for later, start now. And focus on one goal at a time, putting all of your energy into it, and getting as much help from others as you can. You can really move mountains if you start with positive thinking.

Once upon a time, there was a king who ruled a prosperous country. One day, he went for a trip to some distant areas of his country.

When he was back to his palace, he complained that his feet were very painful, because it was the first time that he went for such a long trip, and the road that he went through was very rough and stony. He then ordered his people to cover every road of the entire country with leather. Definitely, this would need thousands of cows’ skin, and would cost a huge amount of money.

Then one of his wise servant dared himself to tell the king, “Why do you have to spend that unnecessary amount of money ? Why don’t you just cut a little piece of leather to cover your feet?”

The king was surprised, but he later agreed to his suggestion, to make a “shoe” for himself.

There is actually a valuable lesson of life in this story: “To make this world a happy place to live, you better change yourself – your heart; and not the world.”

Some of us waste our time waiting for people to live up to our expectations. We are so concerned about what others are doing that we don’t do anything ourselves.

Its not so important what others are upto; compared to what you are doing. Focus on what you do, your work; Not on others.

How feminism has made men’s lives safer — and women’s more dangerous.

By Jennifer Foote Sweeney and Alisa Smith

Feminism, real or imagined, has long been praised and blamed for a whole pile of societal developments, crises and trends. But it has emerged recently in unlikely quarters: as a major factor in the “intimate” murders of women and as a saving grace in the lives of abusive men. In a devastating twist, feminism, while improving women’s lives in many obvious ways, may also have made their lives more dangerous. At the same time, by offering escape and support to battered women, it has saved the lives of abusive men.

Much has been made of the fact that, in the past 20 years, the number of homicides in the United States has sharply declined. That is good news, especially for abusive husbands, who, statistics show, are living longer because their wives and girlfriends are taking advantage of shelters, hotlines and other services for battered women. In other words, feminists have invested decades fighting domestic violence as part of the battle for women’s rights and their work has paid off — by keeping batterers alive.

But there is bad news too. Only one category of homicide has failed to decline at the same rate as the rest. In fact, in some regions, it has not declined at all. It is “intimate homicide,” in which a man kills his girlfriend or wife, often murdering the rest of the family too. In about one-quarter of the killings, the man then kills himself.

While psychologists, social scientists and historians have various explanations for the stubborn nature of this gruesome trend, most agree that feminism, or at the very least what it is seen to represent, plays a role in the motivation of men who commit intimate homicide or familicide. And when it is not a motivation, it is frequently an excuse.

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The results of recent Lok Sabha elections have driven home the very disturbing fact that politics in India is fast becoming a family business. If this trend continues, as indeed it will unless major changes are made, India will soon find itself being ruled “democratically” by just over a thousand families who will fight among themselves every five years to send 543 MPs to the Lok Sabha.

Given this development which will sound the death knell of democracy both at the Centre and in the states, it is indeed surprising that the real implications of the Women’s Reservations Bill that President Pratibha Patil has said will be passed within 100 days, are being overlooked completely. It may be recalled that the bill had been introduced thrice earlier but could not be pushed through because of staunch opposition from some political parties who wanted sub-reservations, within this 33% reservation, based on community and religion.

Is sending 183 women MPs to the Lok Sabha really going to empower women, as the nation is being made to believe, or is it only going to lead to further concentration of power in a few political families?

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