Walking With A Friend

People choose friends for different reasons; some choose them just to have fun, to unwind; some other do so because they need someone to speak their heart out & a great number of people choose them so that they get the required help. Being with your BFF gives you such a high that, at times, they even get priority over other family members. What are the reasons that make you get so close to a friend?

"A friend is one that knows as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow." - William Shakespeare.

You need someone you can be yourself with- and that place is always reserved for a friend as he doesn't demand you to be anything other than what you are. He has no conditions attached in accepting you as a whole. He knows you through & through because he has seen you at your best & worst. No doubt, he wants you to grow but not at the cost of your self-esteem which can be the case with most other relationships.

           "A friend is someone who knows all about you & still loves you." - Elbert Hubbard

Another reason that you want to be with your friend is that you feel a strange,unexplained connectivity with your pal. One of the scariest thought in life is being alone. But, if you have a friend to bank upon, you don't feel lonely. He might be miles away but just the fact that he would appear in case of need provides you much needed succor. Another important point is that if you have a reliable friend, you feel wanted; having a good friend automatically increases your self-esteem. An individual who has lost much of his self-worth needs a loyal company more than anyone else. One of the common factors found in people who committed suicide was that they lacked a close friend; they were lonely & introvert. In such a situation, the importance of a friend cannot be overstated; a true friend works as a life-support system.

Lastly, a true friend mitigates much of the fear that a person might have in doing something enterprising. Just by sharing, half of the fears vanish into thin air & the rest half take care of themselves. A true friend leads you to light. Many a time, without a friend you might have a false impression that you are standing in the light; the fact may be that you are staring in the dark & need the company of a reliable friend. Walking with a friend is the feeling that cannot be achieved by any other act. You trust him so much that you don't mind venturing in the dark; you know that the light is not far away when a true friend is so close!

Secret Of A Successful Marriage

Do you remember the man you married? Silly question? No, it isn't. Sometimes, it is really difficult to place the man you married a few years back. The person you are living with now might not even be a distant shadow of the original man. And that, for me, is the crux of the problem in married life. We don't remain same & let's be realistic, we can't. How can you expect a person to behave the same way all through his life? But sometimes, you wish so. You wish, your man shows the same eagerness to meet you that he showed few years back. You wish, he overlooks your weaknesses & talks about your strengths the same way he did before marriage. No doubt, a successful marriage requires a lot of commitment, efforts & genuine love. But more than anything else, it requires warmth & freshness to keep the marriage flame burning.

"The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life."
                                                                                                                               - Oscar Wilde

So, what are the few actions that help bring the warmth into a dull married life. First thing first, go down the memory lane & think about the time you were dating each other. Do not stop at  only thinking about these moments; share these with your spouse. Your collection of these reminiscences will serve you well to bring the freshness back in your life. The problem with most of the couples is that they have sharp memory for few bad incidents & poor memory for some wonderful moments in life. If all is not well with your married life, reverse the order to reverse the trend.

Treat your partner as your friend. Share your plans, successes & small happenings of daily life. Take time to sit together & engage in some good, light-hearted chat. Do you remember how you would long for meeting your friend after the school? Express the same desire when you return from office. You might have had a very bad day in office but carrying your pressure home will only worsen it.   

If you are married to a human being, he or she must be having a few weaknesses, accept these. There is no harm in complaining about a genuine issue but grumbling every now & then will not resolve the issue. In case you want to criticize, do it constructively. Seething silently & erupting all of a sudden will only make you a volcano that nobody desires to get close to. If you have an issue, say it gently & move on.

And lastly, remember that love is a verb, not just an emotion. Express it as frequently as possible, not only with your words but with the actions as well. Do something every day that pleases your spouse. Make a mental note of things that he or she loves. Admire even the small acts. This acts like an antidote to dislike. Changing the person is not a solution to a troubled marriage;changing the self is the only way out.

To Be Trusted Is To Be Loved

When we say to someone, "I love you", we convey our feelings towards him or her. We express our liking for the person; how we see the person as a whole. The world may not like him but he or she remains the most wonderful person for us. This is about loving & being loved.

On the other hand, when we tell someone,"I  trust you", we talk  about the whole character of the person. We talk about our faith in his behavior even in the most trying situations. 

So, how 'to be trusted' is better than 'to be loved'? While 'being loved' means about the way someone sees you, 'being trusted' means about how you see yourself. A person with a very high trust quotient will not only win the hearts of majority of people, but will also love himself for what he is. People who have low trust quotient strive hard to be loved but people who have high trust value are loved by all & sundry. Most importantly, they love themselves & that is why they shower it on others. In fact, the first requirement to love others is to love yourself & to be trust worthy. 

"I do not trust people who don't love themselves & yet tell me, "I love you". There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt." - Maya Angelou

This by means does not undermine the importance of love. Many a time, love gives rise to trust. Love at first sight is the prime example of this phenomenon. A voice inside you hints at someone & you respond to this voice by expressing your love for the person. The other person does the same because his intuition also suggests him to go ahead. This is the beginning of a long term relationship. In such cases, person trusts himself before trusting others. You are generally rewarded if you trust your intuition. 

When you trust someone, you stop questioning. You don't question the beauty of a flower; you just enjoy its beauty; you love it because you trust that it is beautiful. If you ask, "Is it really beautiful?", you can't love it because you lose the trust on its beauty by questioning it. Even if you get the answer, you won't love it any more. You will ask another question &, then another. Trust is like a mirror which can be fixed if broken, but leaves a crack for others to see only a distorted image. If trusting is the beginning of love; questioning is the end of it. 

Be My Friend

We get most of relationships as gifts which we can't choose- our parents, our siblings, and many other blood relationships. Thankfully, there are some gifts that we pick ourselves & enjoy these lifelong. Friendship is one such gift. Many a time, even this relationship starts without any intention to continue for a long period, but once our frequencies match we develop a strong and unbreakable bond with the person. Friendship, by far, is the most pious of relationships established outside blood relations.
We have our own upheavals in this relationship which many times seem to threaten the bond. And sometimes, it actually gets over on some trivial issue. But if someone moves away, don't regret; may be, he was never made for you. 
"If you love something, let it go free. If it doesn't come back, you never had it. If it comes back, love it forever." - Douglas Hortan
True friendship is a gift which one should treasure more than any other gift. A true friend is not a shoulder to cry on, but a heart to weave your life around. True friend doesn't lead & show you the way. The fact is he commits the same mistakes that you commit. He has same weaknesses & worries that you have.  He is also not the one who follows you. He may lend a helping hand or take one but he will do so by being beside you.
Another characteristic of this relationship is that this is devoid of any ego-tussle. Ego is missing because 'I' is missing & 'we' takes the center stage. It is not like two people being one; it is like someone finding another him outside himself- his alter-ego.
"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one."- C. S. Lewis
There is no rivalry, no competition; there is only sharing. Synergy is the hallmark of this bond. He is the one who doesn't give advice or solutions, but shares your pain by just being with you. He knows all about you & loves you as you are, not as you ought to be. He may remain silent in your hour of despair but his heart cries as loudly as does yours. 
                       "What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies."- Aristotle

Expect The Best, Prepare For The Worst

Life is a not a plain road; it's a bumpy ride & we all have to take the ride whether we like it or not. Like a roller coaster, the more you enjoy it, the better it gets for you; the more you dread it, the scarier it gets. But, you can't be a bystander, seeing the people screaming. You have to get onto it & take the ride.

Life comes in different colors & shades & that's why it is a rainbow, not a black & white picture. The problem occurs when we expect it to be hunky-dory all the time. Our job is to get ready for the worst & always expect the best. But, we do it other way round! We don't start something new because we expect the worst to happen- What if the business fails? What if I am not selected? Or many such fears stop us from living an adventurous life. You can see fear all around you. People who are living a routine life, struggling to earn a living are the people who get bogged down because of fear of the worst which never takes place. Many a time, fear is there not to scare us but to tell us that the thing we fear is worth a try. Don't think in terms of failures or the worst case scenario when you take on something new. Visualize the best outcome, experience it & sooner than later you will see it.

This is not to say that the worst never happens. It does; in fact, it repeats many times in the life of certain people, but these are the same people who keep trying & ultimately find a huge success. When they fail, they learn to prepare for the next failure & then next until they find success. They don't fear failure; they keep pushing failure to the brink and give it a one last push to emerge winners. 

Sometimes, you expect the best, prepare yourself for the best but when you give it a go, life delivers you something in between. What to do in such case? Accept it & capitalize what you have got. There is no use quibbling over what you have got. But, you can always think of making the best what you have been delivered. So, don't wait; start now! 

"First ask yourself: What is the worst that can happen? Then prepare to accept it. Then proceed to improve on the worst." - Dale Carnegie

Dream+Deadline= Goal

One important question that we need to answer on a daily basis is- What for am I living today? What is one idea, one goal that will occupy the major share of next 24 hours of my life? Many of us complain about life being monotonous & meaningless. One big flaw in this kind of thinking is that we give the command of our life to some known or unknown person or situation. If we rephrase the same statement & say that I couldn't add any meaning to my life, you take the ball in your court &, therefore, are ready to play.

If you have the same issue with your life, you need to first understand why you descended on earth & what the real purpose of your life is. According to Stephen Covey, we have only three purposes- To love, to live & to leave a legacy. (He also added laugh; but that is obvious because if you are not laughing, you are not living.) We will concentrate on the last purpose- to leave a legacy.

While first two purposes have a lot to do with your being, the last one is about your doing. Your doing of today will decide your being of tomorrow. Your doing is nothing but achieving important milestones in your professional & personal life. You achieve these milestones, not once, but twice in your life- first in your mind & then in the physical world. Everything that you see in your life today is the outcome of that you had already envisioned. You made certain choices in your life in past & these became the reasons that you find yourself where you are today. These choices are nothing but your dreams. You dreamed about getting a degree, a plush job, a happy life, a life partner and many other things & you achieved most of these. But, there are certain other things that you missed to achieve. What were the reasons of your failures in those fields? There can be many reasons of missing out on few things that you badly needed.

Three most important reasons for missing your goals might be- 

1) You did not write those dreams on a piece of paper. Many of us want to be this & achieve that but these wishes remain unknown to our subconscious mind until we put it on a piece of paper. Write your goals on a paper & view it every day. Otherwise, these will only remain few of the wishes that you had in your life but never achieved.

"If you have a goal, write it down.  If you don't write it, you don't have a goal. You have a wish." - Steve Maraboli

2) You did not add deadlines to your goals. Without deadlines, goals die a slow death. If you don't write deadline, you give it an eternity to be achieved & it takes exactly that- an eternity.

"I am one of those people who thrive on deadlines; nothing brings on inspiration more readily than desperation." - Harry Shearer

3) You did not take necessary & equivalent action. If goals are the fuel of our doing, action is the force that propels our life. Any goal or decision is recognized by the action that follows it. No action means no goal; small action means small goal & a huge action means a big goal.

"The universe doesn't give you what you ask for with your thoughts-it gives you what you demand with your actions." - Steve Maraboli.

If you do the above three things, you are bound to achieve the dreams of your life, doesn't matter how wild they might seem in the beginning!

But remember, our goals are not important because we get something by achieving those; they are important because we be something by achieving those.

Rich Guy, Poor Guy

We judge the richness of a man by the wealth he possesses; by the size of the car he drives & by the space that he gets in social circle. No doubt, wealth is an important criterion to know how successful a man is but it is not the only one. We can call a man wealthy only if he knows how to spend what he has earned. People spend half of their life earning wealth & rest half in learning how to spend it. It is primarily because they only earn knowledge, not wisdom in the initial years of their life. They collect knowledge because they think this is the only way to get a degree & a plush job. And most of the people land a job & start earning for a living. But that is only the beginning of the trouble they face all through their life. They don't enjoy life; they only pass it & the primary reason for not living the life is not understanding it. Their poor understanding of life has much to do with their habits in early childhood.

Few years back the first exposure of a child used to be the tales by granny or story books. It gradually changed to comics & since the last decade or so TV has become the only exposure that a child has in his formative years. There is no doubt that one of the major distractions for today's child is an idiot box & major challenge for parents is to control the TV watching habit of the child. Kids & teens 8 to 18 years spend almost 4 hours a day watching TV & nearly 2 additional hours on computer. First four years of a child's life are very crucial for his brain development. TV affects the development by interfering in the natural growth of the child as it siphons off the all-important interaction time of child with his siblings & parents. It also influences him negatively by exposing him to scenes not fit for his age. As he grows up, it interferes with his physical activity & his reading habits.    

                "A book commits suicide every time you watch a reality show."- Laini Taylor

On the contrary, a book moulds the child's life; it gives him direction & helps in the all-round development of the child. It makes him creative, imaginative & improves his cognitive skills. Major challenge parents face today is that a book is not as fascinating as an idiot box is. TV takes them to the land of fantasy & sells them false idea of living the life & they imitate what they see on it. It robs them of their innocence & they start living in penury. When they grow up they might sound & look rich & wealthy, but they are very poor creatively, culturally & philosophically.
                  "A room without books is like a body without a soul." - Marcus Cicero 
The ultimate richness of a person can be gauged only by the richness of his soul & one can always guess what forms a rich soul. While TV might groom our external appearance, books teach us how to dress-up our mind, body & soul.