Learning Secret- The Biggest Of Them All



Learning Secret - The Biggest Of Them All

What is the biggest learning strategy among all other learning strategies you can use? Have you ever admired people who have learnt something to the point of near perfection? There is one major difference between people who learn things to perfection and the rest of the world.

 

The one thing they have and most of the other people don’t have is a trait called persistence. There are many learning strategies. However, persistence is the most important of them all. Most of the people give up easily as the learning curve becomes steeper.

 

The question you need to ask yourself is the following: How quickly do I give up before I attain near perfection? A good way to find out is to look back and check out how much stuff you pursued and gave up when the going got tough.

 

Some of the common pursuits people give up are given below:

 

1. Math
2. Photography
3. Dancing
4. Karate
5. Playing a musical instrument
6. Making a presentation
7. Public speaking
8. Clinching a sales deal
9. Composing a poem
10. Writing a book
11. Golf
12. Singing
13. Painting
14. Learning a software

 

The list can be endless. If you are learning something, and you give up you are missing a big opportunity to excel in something where you have talent. Among all learning strategies, not giving up is one of the most important one.

 

In fact, you may be surprised that if you pursue beyond a certain point, you will suddenly feel in control; your performance will improve exponentially, and you will be able to one day attain mastery.

Persistence will not only help you to learn faster, but it will also help all other learning strategies you may be using.

 

Problems For Teenagers-Handling Them Effectively!

Problems For Teenagers-Handling them effectively!

Problems for teenagers are many. Handling them effectively and guiding them is a skill every parent or teacher or guardian should learn. How do you guide a young boy or a girl to do the right things? This is a question, every parent, teacher or any well wisher faces when they have to guide children between the ages of 15 to 18 and perhaps even beyond.

You need to understand the dynamics of the situation regarding problems with teenagers before you attempt to do anything.



Problems for teenagers are brought about by forces acting on them today? There are external forces and internal ones.


External forces that bring about problems for teenagers:


1. TV-violent programs and programs with matured content
2. Video games-Violent games with matured content
3. Peer influence-both the good and the bad influence
4. Role models – the good ones and the bad ones
5. Internet-Heavy usage for both good and bad
6. Social networking-the invisible influence
7. Relatives-good influence and bad influence
8. Advertisements-the positive ones and the negative ones
9. News-All kinds of news, mostly negative
10. Tremendous pressure to study-especially in Asian
      countries
11. The pressure you put on them as a parent.
12. Competition with peers, cousins, relatives or anyone the
      child thinks he or she is competing with.


Internal forces that spur problems for teenagers:


1. Hormones
2. The need to belong, especially to a peer group
3. The need to be independent
4. The need to be considered grown up
5. The need to be respected for his or her own opinion
6. The need to excel and be a success
7. Fear of failure
8. Inappropriate self-esteem
9. The need to look good in the eyes of the peers
10. The need to look good in the eyes of the parents


This is not an exhaustive list. However, you can immediately see how powerful these influences can be to bring about problems with teenagers. Many of the external forces are invisible to you.


Here are some tips to make your child do things that will be beneficial to him or her:


1. Build trust
2. Communicate-Listen with empathy
3. Become his or her friend
4. Spend quality time with your child
5. Discuss the day to day events in your child’s life with him
    or her
6. Know that your child needs parental guidance not just for
    movies but for life too
7. Be aware of the peer group your child belongs to
8. Clarify expectations of behavior with your child
9. Have fun together
10. Help your child to deal with the pressure from the school
11. Be alert to mood changes, especially signs of feeling low
12. Set goals together, both in studies as well as sports
13. Encourage your child to have many hobbies
14. Encourage your child to try out new things to discover his
      or her talents
15. Discuss the future, especially of the career path your
      child wants to take
16. Get an aptitude test done
17. Teach your child that success is important and failure too
      from a learning perspective
18. Introduce your child to wholesome self-help books
19. Be alert of negative influence of others on your child
20. Dream together of a very successful future
21. Help your child to develop a “ can do” attitude
22. Role model wholesome behavior
23. Be kind
24. Discuss with your spouse about your child
25. Solve problems together with your spouse so that both of
      you have one voice regarding the solution.


Problems for teenagers are many. However, these are some of the things you can do to make your child do things that will be beneficial to him or her.

Real Friend-How To Get One?

Real Friend?

Real friend is rare. It is very difficult to get a real friend. In your day to day life, you may come across a lot of acquaintances, who you meet, interact with, and they go their way. With the advance of technology, people with whom you come in contact with are enormous compared to your parents or grandparents. You cannot live without a real friend and still enjoy life.


How do you spot a real friend?
Here are a few tips:
1. They are trustworthy.
2. They keep their promises.
3. They are kind.
4. They support you in times of trouble.
5. They help you without any thought of any gain for
    themselves.
6. They critique you when you are wrong.
7. They warn you of the consequences of your wrong actions.
8. They empathize with you.
9. They are willing to forgive you for your mistakes.
10. They keep in touch with you even if you have not talked
      to them for a long time.
11. They are open to ask you for a favor but do not hold you
     to it.
12. They are the first to be with you when you are sad.
13. They are the first to be with you when you are happy.
14. They are happy for your success.
15. They celebrate your success.
16. You have a great urge to share with them everything,
      especially your secrets.
17. They share their secrets with you.
18. They keep your secrets to themselves.
19. They support you when all others have abandoned you.
20. They know when you want to be alone and respect that.

Real friend will exhibit all these behaviors. If you don’t have friends with characteristics depicted in the above list, it is time to get them. The best way to attract them is for you to become a sincere friend first. If you do that people will treasure you and among the many people who flock you, you will find some real friends.

How To Prevent Accidents?



How To Prevent Accidents?

How to prevent accidents is an important skill you should learn. Can accidents be prevented at all? The answer is definitely yes. There are lots of advantages of preventing an accident. They range from prevention of loss of life to saving everyone, including yourself, from pain, both physical and mental.

How can you prevent accidents? Accidents can be prevented by eliminating the causes for accidents. You have to make it a state of mind, develop habits and preventing bad accidents a way of life. Accidents can happen anywhere. The common types are accidents that happen at home, road traffic accidents, and those at the workplace.

 

Fatal accidents can be prevented by following these tips:
Examine your paradigm regarding accidents

• Change your paradigm to adopt a new one that every accident can be prevented
• Brainstorm various situations in and around you where potential accidents are waiting to happen
• Develop the habit of scanning your environment for possibilities of accidents
• Brainstorm the common causes of accidents that you have been exposed to and take note of them
• Make it a habit to learn from accidents you come across day to day
• Be very alert to lurking dangers
• Keep track of your stress levels-higher your stress the more likely you will have an accident

Bad accidents can be easily prevented. The tips given above are not exhaustive. You make your own list.

 

How to prevent accidents is an important area you need to apply your mind on. Follow these tips and you will prevent a lot of pain for you and your loved ones.

Mood Change Through Music.

Mood change through music!

Mood change through music is the easiest way to tackle mood swings. Music can inspire you. It is something you can easily access, enjoy and use to change the mood when you feel low.

Change of mood is a common problem most of the people encounter. It may be because of accelerating changes people experience day in day out.
Change in mood can affect you negatively, if you don't deal with it and take active steps to feel good. Mood change can be tackled effectively by following the steps outlined below:

Mood change through music:
• Constantly scan the music albums and listen to all kinds of
  music
• Pay attention to music that makes you feel good
• Buy the music albums that inspire you
• Download these albums into your ipod
• Create a favourite list selecting all the music numbers that
   have great impact on your mood in your ipod
• Listen to your positive mood music as often as you want

Mood music compilation is an activity that can give you very high returns. Mood swing can be tackled easily if it is that of the garden variety. Serious mood swings that last for days and weeks will need, however, professional attention.

Mood change through music can not only lift your mood but can also help you to get inspired-try it out and do write your comments here.

Workplace conflict-managing it effectively.

Workplace conflict-managing it effectively.

Workplace conflict can arise suddenly. It may be with your co-worker or boss. Conflict can result in raising the stress levels of both, you and the person with whom you are having a difference of opinion.

Workplace conflict, if not managed, can lead you to build negative images about yourself and your colleague. If you leave it alone for a long time, it can result in a breakdown in the relationship.

Eventually, when you try to resolve it without prior preparation, you can end up with a win lose outcome or a lose win outcome.Managing conflict has several vital steps.

Given below are some key things you can do to emerge with a win win outcome and build relationship while at it:

• Get facts on the table
• Look at the problem from the other persons angle
• Look at the problem from your side
• Imagine both of you looking at the problem together
• Brainstorm different alternative approaches to solve it
• Choose the best approach
• Remember the rational for the chosen approach

These steps will prepare you thoroughly for the negotiation to resolve the conflict.

Once you set up the meeting you need to follow the steps given below:

• Vote for talking first
• Show a lot of respect
• Acknowledge the validity of others point of view
• State your own point of view
• State the solution with the benefits
• Openly talk about the pros and cons
• Invite the other person to comment on your solution
• Fine tune the solution based on the inputs given
• Be always prepared to consider alternative approaches
• Arrive at the final solution together

Once you do this you will feel the stress lifting and your relationship growing while both of you have arrived at the win win outcome.

Workplace conflict can be resolved promptly-act now and build relationships.

How to build trust?

How to build trust?

How to build trust? This is a question that you need to address day in day out. You may need to build trust in a variety of situations and with variety of people. Building rapport is the first step to build trust.



Creating confidence can be done using the following tips:


• Be punctual in your appointments


• Smile and smile genuinely


• Be kind and polite


• Show a lot of care sincerely


• Listen to understand


• Practice empathic listening


• Convey to the person that you have understood
   what he or she has said


• Clarify expectations


• Have a problem solving attitude


• Consider the other person’s win along with yours


• Promise only those things you can deliver


• Deliver what you have promised


• Always exceed your promises


It is amazing how often people violate these areas and still expect trust to grow.


“How to build trust?” is a question that you need to tackle, so follow these tips and win on a daily basis.

Good self esteem



Good self esteem

Good self-esteem is very important. One of the main barriers for you to maintain good self-esteem is the residual of regret that you carry with you every day. Constant regret will undermine your self-confidence.


Tips on self confidence you will find below is all about how to get rid of the regret and safeguard your esteem.

Feel good tips to counter and handle regret effectively:

• Acknowledge the mistake you made.
• Tell yourself that it is ok to make mistakes for you are only human.
• Substitute “if only I had done -“with “Now and next time I will do differently.”
• Pack all the regret in your imaginary suitcase and throw it into a nearby lake.
• Talk to a trusted friend who will encourage you to overcome the regret.
• Listen to feel good music.
• Watch feel good movies.
• Enjoy nature.
• Develop an action plan to do better.
• Pray deeply for guidance and leave the rest to God.

Feeling good tips given above can go a long way to get rid of your regrets and boost your personal confidence. Practice them one by one and see for yourself the amazing results.

Good self-esteem is precious, so protect it at all cost.

Decisions Making

Decisions Making

Decisions making is the key factor that will make you a success or a failure. In fact you can avoid a lot of pain and failure if you approach making decisions carefully and systematically. However most of the people neglect this very important part in their life and live with consequences of wrong decisions.

Making decisions can be greatly improved if you know the way to arrive at decisions that are well thought through. It is all about knowing and using appropriate decision making tools. Let me give you one such tool in this post.

Decisions making can be greatly improved by following a very simple but powerful technique called generating alternatives. Most people generate very few alternatives during their decision making process. What you should do is to generate at least five to seven alternatives before you choose a specific alternative. You can never know, your seventh alternative may be the best and you will lose out if you stop at your first or second idea.

Decisions making technique of generating alternatives to a quota of five or seven if used consistently will surprise and delight you.

Decisions making is the most important skill that you need to master. Use this technique right away.

Boredom fighting techniques




Boredom fighting techniques

 Boredom Fighting techniques are very important for you to learn because boredom is a problem that you will have to grapple with time and again. What are the main causes of boredom?

Let me give you a sample list:

• Getting stuck in a routine

• Getting too narrowly focused

• Not having variety of experience in life

• Hanging around with the same people

• Not taking risk

• Not going after the goals you want

• Pursuing goals set by someone else

These are just a few causes of the problem.

Boredom is problem that has been around for quite some times. Let me give you some interesting boredom quotes:

Boredom quotes:

Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom. -Arthur Schopenhauer

When people are bored, it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored. -Eric Hoffer

Perhaps the world's second worst crime is boredom. The first is being a bore. -Jean Baudrillard

In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice. - Richard Bach

The first step is however to be self-aware that you are bored. Here are some symptoms for you to watch out:

• Low energy

• Procrastination

• Irritability

• Loss of interest in stuff which you one enjoyed

• Increasing desire to run away from the person you

   are conversing with

• Admiring people on TV sitcoms and wishing you

   had a life like theirs

• Dragging yourself to work

Let me suggest an exercise to assess whether you are really bored of boredom. Keep track of how many times you have been bored in a week by reflecting every day before going to sleep.

Being aware is first of the combat techniques against boredom. I will give you further tips on fighting boredom in the subsequent posts.

Stay tuned to learn boredom fighting techniques.

Routines-How to handle them?

Routines have a huge influence on your success or failure. Daily routines are formed over a period of time and become cemented habits.

If you really examine yourself, you will find that many of the routines have built in schedules.

It is as if someone or something has programmed you to follow certain routes in life day in day out. These routes have been mapped into your brain.


Most of your programming has been done by yourself, and some of them have their roots in your childhood and the way you were raised.

Let me give you some sample routines most of the people follow:


• The time you wake up
• Eating habits
• Driving habits
• Things you do in the office
• Checking of email
• Surfing the net
• The way you organize the day
• Exercising or lack of it
• Watching TV
• Things you do after you come back home
• The time you go to bed
I have just given you a sample. One good exercise for you is to be aware of your routines. Map them for a week and then examine them. Are these routines useful for you?

How many of them are causing you trouble?
Once you finish this exercise, next you can create a routine that will be most beneficial to you and then start developing habits that will cement the routine.

My suggestion is to start slow. Once you do this exercise, and you will have the power of routines working for you.

How to deal with distractions?




Squirrels of distractions!

How do you deal with distractions? We are living in an attention economy, and attention is a very slippery commodity.

You can easily get distracted from your task at hand from an umpteen number of sources.

Let me give you a list of them below:



· Facebook


· Twitter

· Blogs


· Linked in


· YouTube

· Cell phone

· Phone calls


· Chats


· TV


· Internet

· Radio

· News Paper


· People


I have just mentioned a few of them.

I suggest you draw up your list of distractions. If you really want a very productive day then you need to have laser focus.

However, depending on your personality type and the training you have had, the amount of time you can stay focused will vary for you compared to other people.


One tip is to get rid of all the distractions on the list or put barriers to them and stay focused on a task for a pre determined length of time.

Experiment and you will get to understand how long you can stay focused.

Staying focused is like developing your muscles in a gym, the more you practice the better you will get at it.

You will be surprised at how easily you can get rid of distractions and stay focused with a little practice.

Is your decision making driven by others?



Are you a puppet while making decisions?

 Decision-making is an important activity you do every day. Many of your decisions are taken subconsciously by you without you even realizing it.

What most of the decision makers like you do not realize is that many of the decisions taken are heavily influenced by others.



The question you need to ask yourself is that are you allowing too much influence of others in your decision-making process?


Look at some past decisions and search for the ones you have blindly followed other's suggestions.

You may be surprised that some of the decisions you are living with, suggested by others are giving you sub optimal results.


Here are some tips that will prevent you from following others suggestions blindly:


• Be aware that others are giving you suggestions
   that will affect your decisions


• Pause and reflect on it briefly as soon as you
   receive a suggestion


• Fix a time in near future to reflect on the
   suggestion.


• Ponder over the positive and negative
   consequences of following that suggestion


• Check whether the person who gave you the
   suggestion has any vested interest in your decision


• Brainstorm and generate more alternatives


• Compare all the alternatives, including the
   suggestion


• Choose the best alternative for yourself


It is very easy to be led astray and reach decisions that may be detrimental to you. Many a times you may realize it only after a long period of time, maybe even years after.


Take charge of your decision making from this moment onwards.

What is motivation and how you can sustain it the entire day?



Take charge of your motivation

What is motivation? It is the drive you feel within yourself to get things done.

You may surround yourself with all kinds of motivations from people, motivational quotes, videos and any other means by which you may want to inspire yourself, however, if you do not set your motivational level first thing in the morning, it will soon dissipate.


What do you need to do to have high energy levels and drive throughout the day?

Here are a few tips:

• Set what you want to achieve for the day

• Get rid of all distractions

• Grasp your attention and hold a tight rein on it

• Channel your attention towards the tasks you want
   to accomplish

• Take periodic breaks

• Cut yourself off from the Internet whenever you
   don’t need it.

Attention is a priceless commodity. Your attention is held to ransom by zillions of distractions around you.

If you have set a game plan for the day and put your attention on it, you will have sustained motivation.

Motivating yourself is a very important task that will take care of all other tasks.

Attending to this task and staying motivated is what motivation is all about.

In a rut?

Choose a fun activity

I am in a rut! Is that the thought that is occurring to you lately? If so, then you need to take immediate action to feel good.

While there are many causes for this thought and its corresponding feeling that would require detailed analysis, you can, however, take action to get rid of the feeling of boredom you are facing right now.



Here is what you need to do.


List down all the activities that gave you lot of enjoyment in the past. A sample list is given below:


• Movies
• Drawing
• Math
• Public speaking
• Playing a sport
• Trekking
• Painting
• Singing
• Travel to a new place
• Visiting your aunt
• Going out with your friends


Here is how to get out of the rut. Make an exhaustive list. It will be a good idea to take inventory of all the fun activities you enjoyed right from your childhood.


The next step is to go through the list and choose an activity that you have not done in years.

Plan to do it. You will be surprised how such an activity can lift your mood to such a high level that people around you will ask you what it is that is making you so happy.

The more you do this the quicker it will be for the “in a rut” thought to recede and vanish altogether.