Thursday, August 30, 2018

Perks of developing the habit of reading

We’ve often heard that developing the habit of reading is the best thing a person can do. It’s benefits are uncountable. When it comes to reading there’s no better superfood than reading itself. You may already be familiar with recent findings that suggest children as young as six months who read books with their parents several times a week show stronger literacy skills four years later, score higher on intelligence tests, and land better jobs than nonreaders. 

When practiced over a lifetime, reading and language-acquisition skills can support healthy brain functioning in big ways. Moreover, reading books, especially fiction, has been shown to increase empathy and emotional intelligence which can further lead to more (positive) human interaction hence reducing stress levels. Reading helps your brain to be more active and it gives your brain a different kind of work out than watching TV listening to the radio. Reading helps you to find out the new real you, gives you a different perspective of life. That’s why it’s not so hard to digest the fact that most success people are immensely fond of reading.

Through reading your imagination and creativity increases, It gives you different ideas and understanding, good reader from the young age can become a good writer, reading sparks the imagination, When you read, you are taken into the new world, this thing nurtures your brain to develop ideas for new worlds and other possibilities, this sparks imagination. Reading helps you to understand differently. 

The benefits of reading are countless and unlike any other pass time it’s bound to benefit you in one way or the other even if it’s just as trivial as helping you fall asleep faster or as significant as making you aware of the cosmos, the perks are endless.

So keep reading

Wednesday, August 29, 2018

If you want to live your life to the fullest, travel

Travel is a bliss and if there was one piece of advice I have for people today to experience more joy in life, it is to travel more. Travelling is wonderful in many ways. It captures us with a sense of wanderlust and has us longing for more destinations to visit, cultures to experience, food to eat, and people to meet. As amazing as traveling is, most of us think we need to wait until our later years to really explore a lot of the world.

There are plenty of things one can gain from exploring different places such as new friends, new experiences and new stories. When you start exploring new places, you get a better understanding of the people living there including their culture, history and background. Studies show that travelling can improve your overall health and enhance your creativity. Therefore, you need to take time out from your daily tasks, office responsibilities, hectic schedule and everyday pressures at least once in a year. Plan a tour to a new city with an open schedule and let life present you with the numerous opportunities that are waiting for you. We all have stress and tension in our lives. Traveling forces us to temporarily disconnect from our normal routine and it helps us appreciate the people and things you have around.

While travelling, you will find yourself stuck in situations where things don’t always go as planned. Such situations will help you learn to cope with the uncertainties in life. While also teaching you about how significance change is in this world and how important it is for us to accept and embrace cultural and regional differences as it helps us broaden our horizons and our mindset in general.

Travelling renders us with a sense of thrill in our otherwise monotonous life. Life is a wonderful gift. It really is, and as we travel and experience more of the world and life, we often become overwhelmed with gratitude and appreciation for all the beautiful moments we enjoyed and people we’ve shared them with. 

India and it’s obsession with religion

Time and again we have witnessed major riots and wars amongst different religious groups in the tussle of proving their religion’s superiority over the others. Even though India is a religiously pluralistic and multiethnic country with rights to support other religions and give them equal opportunities, it’s cold attitude and hostility towards other religions cannot be neglected. Hate politics is a common phenomena. Communal tension between various Indian faiths and castes have plagued the society for a very long time.

It’s not that India is the only country with such hatred towards other religions but however, this is a very phenomena throughout the world from a very long time. From Hitler’s reign to terrorism, sadly this a pretty common phenomena. Somehow, hatred and compassion go hand in hand amongst individual of separate religions. Genuine piety can be a catalyst for compassion. But the shared rituals that create a cohesive congregation "may also produce hatred of others"—especially among those who lack deeply felt spiritual beliefs.

Religion was built on the principles of universal love and brotherhood. Manu, Mohammad, Jesus, Buddha, Nanak, Krishna all spoke about compassion and acceptance. But their followers, who accepted their words as holy gospels and developed religious boundaries out of them, focused more on preserving the respective domains and their names of their prophets than their teachings. Taking pride in being a Hindu and maintaining Hindu traditions has become more important that ‘being’ a Hindu. The same is true for all the other religions. Alas in the real world it turns out that when you choose one religion you automatically denounce the rest of them. Religion gives you the right and surprising the power to hate others who differ. 

Ultimately, to have a stable world we will have to learn to respect qualities and differences of every religion and to walk hand in hand with everyone irrespective of their caste, religion, nationality etc. Humanity should be our religion and love our most important asset. This does seem like a utopian concept right now but with proper implementation of knowledge and rationality, the word ‘hate’ in itself could be a thing of the past.

Do share your comments


Tuesday, August 28, 2018

Problems with reality TV shows

The genre of reality tv shows have been the point of major criticism since the genre first rose to fame back in the 1990s. Significantly, on it’s practice of using the word reality as a misnomer. The genre's title is often criticized as being inaccurate because of claims that the genre frequently includes—premeditated scripting; acting; urgings from behind-the-scenes crew to create specified situations of adversity and drama; misleading editing; etc. For these reasons and more, there has been controversy over the extent to which reality television truly reflects reality.

Other criticisms involve them creating celebrities out of people with no apparent talent whatsoever who don’t deserve fame, and that they glamorise vulgarity and materialism. Involvement of children in reality shows has reported to increase emotional distress and instability amongst children of such a tender age. Children are in a stage of emotional development where they are not emotionally equipped to handle rejection in a mature manner; and when they are not appreciated or fail to qualify, their mental state could affect the way they handle pressure situations for the rest of their life.

Reality television shows that focus on measuring a person’s talent can be entertaining to watch. However, as people are eliminated from the show, you may wonder if you’ll experience that type of rejection if you ever decide to pursue your dreams of acting, signing or designing. Reality TV can send the message that a person’s abilities and overall self-worth can be measured in the amount of votes they receive from the general public each week. 

If you’re a fan of reality TV, the spoiled and entitled behaviour that you see on your favourite shows can both disgust and intrigue you. Reality TV can make you think you can do things that you really shouldn’t do, because the results aren’t going to be favourable. There are a lot of loopholes with this genre of entertainment but there’s not much that can be done about that. Ultimately, it comes down to people’s rationality whether they should continue watching it and subconsciously change their lives according to it or cut it out and invest our times in some good entertainment. 

For more such insights of life. contact life coach Vivek Gupta

Generation gap and it’s effects

The problem of generation gap is universal and everybody across the globe faces the unchangeable problem. But this problem is experienced intensely in countries like India or Gulf countries where the families live united. Every single one of us has experienced some form of difficulty in understanding someone from a different generation. We’ve all felt that people older than you are hard to understand and younger generations just don’t get it. Certainly, it’s easier for us to connect with someone who is of the same age group as ours. 

One factor that has heavily influenced generation gaps is the accelerating rate of change in society. In the 1800s, developments in society were slow. As a result, two or three generations lived lifestyles that were very similar to each other. There weren't many differences across generations. However, given technological and social advances that have taken place in the 20th and 21st centuries, the lifestyles of individuals even one generation apart are drastically different from each other. Another factor has been the increase in mobility. In earlier generations, society was not very mobile. Most people stayed in the same area of country. There was little to no contact with people from distant geographical areas. Access to information from other cultures and their advancements in terms of development was restricted to their respective areas. However with advancements in technology, people began to be introduced to new things.

But at the end of the day, we should have to learn to appreciate everyone for their individualities. Everyone has their own particular view of life and we need to learn to appreciate that since, for the proper functioning of the society all of their mindsets are important.

For more such insights of life. contact life coach Vivek Gupta

Does GPA matter in the real world?

Are you looking for comfort, some kind of reassurance that your college GPA won’t mean anything, and won’t affect your employability? Would you like to relieve some guilt feelings, that you goofed off and lazied around and gave yourself excuses for not studying or doing homework, and so got mediocre or poor grades?

The actual fact is that your college GPA is in fact, extremely important, for the rest of your life. Not the actual digits but on a larger scale. Unless it is distinctively outstanding, then it will be immediately noted with approval by a major section of the interviewing panel. Your college GPA shows how intricately you have applied your knowledge. It shows your diligence, your seriousness of purpose, your willingness to fulfill a lengthy task on your own, and your commitment to excellence. 

The GPA is quite an accurate meter of all of that. People with a mediocre or low GPA demonstrate that they have a low level of intelligence, or else that they do not apply their intelligence well. They show that they have not learned very much, and did not learn basic material which was necessary to learn things that were more advanced and complex. The GPA quite accurately illustrates how diligent and persevering a person has been, over period of years in a fairly wide range of tasks and situations. And it certainly shows one’s dedication to achieving excellence in accomplishing the work at hand.

Your GPA says more than you can imagine about you as a person, and your potential and your appeal as an employee. More important, for your life, is what your GPA should tell you about yourself. If the number is and remains high from one term to the next, then you are doing and accomplishing what you should. If your GPA is unimpressive, then you have serious faults or deficiencies that need to be corrected. Otherwise, those flaws will either prevent you from getting a desirable job, or they will lead you to fail in that job — hence, limited or no salary advancement, and no promotions or progress in your career.

For more such insights of life. contact life coach Vivek Gupta

Golden rules for winning at life

Most people often think that living their best lives involve leaving their past selves behind and becoming a completely different person, coming out better than ever. But this is often not the case, thriving to become a better version of yourself every single day while embracing your true essence and individuality. Gracefully accepting your identity is also a great step towards living your best life, it requires throwing off the bowline and and setting a sail for what lies ahead.

To improve your life, focus on one key principle at a time until you embody the knowledge at a deeper level. Stop waiting for the destination to arrive soon but start enjoying the journey. We spend a large portion of our lives worrying about things we can’t change and it’s high time we finally learn to accept that and stop feeling powerless. Rather, we should learn to channelize this energy to things we can control and change and start giving our 100% in that, just doing that much is significantly going to improve our lives. Chaos is necessary in order to give birth to new beginnings , if you gauge on what is taking place based on first impressions , you are not seeing the entire picture. 

Stop taking life to seriously and realise life as a concept doesn’t owe you anything because you are the expression of life itself. Start working on yourself and improving yourself as much as you can as ultimately you are going to be with yourself throughout your lifetime. Learn to be kind and compassionate towards every other being. Start respecting everyone alike, make peace with your past, approve of your true self and you’ll have for yourself a “winner”. 

For more such insights of life. contact life coach Vivek Gupta