With the most anticipated part of the week upon you, you’d be looking forward to curing yourselves,even temporarily, from what you’ve been putting yourself through the entire week.

If you follow passionate pursuits, then you’d understand that everyday is the same. You enjoy work and hence it gives you relaxation, so you wont be needing specific days for rejuvenation. You would have daily activities to refresh your thought process.

But social conditioning refrains you from treating your passions too seriously. Hence the weekly slog, wherein the weekends are specially designated for rewarding yourself for the self enforced toil.

You choose to do things that you otherwise never would, just because you are paid for it,  in order to afford an influenced lifestyle. Influenced, by society to go one up on the neighbor or fooled by marketing scams to buy things you don’t actually need. If you look around yourself, you will find at least 5 items that you can do without.

Caught in the web of self enforced slavery, it is difficult to do anything else than sleep or temporary lose sense of time and space through indulgences whenever you get free time. So the weekend signals respite, the degree of which depends upon your interest in the work you do. You can easily find an individuals love for their profession by simply checking their status messages on Monday morning and Friday evening.

 

The real relaxation

The idea of limiting your rejuvenation to a couple of days sabotages your chance of real relaxation. It would be better if you spend some time  everyday revitalizing your energies. But here are 6 ways by which you can maximize your weekend:

1. Sit still– Get rid of your laptop, your oversmart phones for as long as you can and just notice things that you don’t usually do. Your sub conscious will intimate you about important things that you have been avoiding. Make a list of these and strike them off one by one.

2. Don’t waste time connecting online, surprise a friend– The significance of driving by certain streets and houses is increased when we reminisce the funs we have had on them while growing up. Same is the case when you pass by an old friends house, too busy to and too shy to drop in and say hello. Then you post messages about how time changes everything. This weekend go surprise a friend. Don’t plan, don’t stop yourself thinking the other guy would be busy, just go.

3. Do this– You have been avoiding your health. The expensive gym membership is being wasted. You don’t find the time throughout your busy week. If you have 15 minutes to try this workout and if you think you can do it regularly for just 2 weeks. I can assure you that you will keep doing it till 2 months.At the end of which you will find yourself in the best shape of your life.

If this is too hectic, spend some more time researching on home exercises. Or just ask me, I will be happy to help if I am not exercising.

4. Read– Yes we stopped reading after college. But learning being a perpetual process, it is essential that we invest some of our time reading. Its not practical to read thick books with the limited time people have, but there are blogs aplenty. These are highly subjective and succinct. My favorite are Zen habits, Brain pickings and you can try reddit as well.

5. Don’t plan a trip, make it– THe more time you waste planning the less time you have for action. Although long journeys might necessitate action plans but don’t let planning get in the way of taking action. Take a short trip around town, you will surprise yourself by the beauty you will discover.

6. Cook your own master piece– The idea of indulging is at its peak on the weekend. You might think it is a just reward for the strenuous slog during the week. But although it might satisfy your taste buds, food outside is mostly not that healthy. Even when it is, its not worth what you pay for it. But you can waste your hard earned money if you want. Or you can create a delicious masterpiece at home. Constructively using technology will get you recipes and a little effort will help you procure the ingredients. The feeling of creating something new, even insignificantly small, is unparalleled. Cooking gives you the chance to make your own masterpiece. It is healthier and not as expensive.

The perpetual weekend

If you are lucky to live the perpetual weekend, either you were born lucky, or you love what you do or you don’t do anything at all. For the others maximizing the weekend is very important. You can either make room for everything essential in this limited time or let it slide for a better time which will never come. The above mentioned tips will be cumbersome if you are lazy and helpful if you are willing to make a change for the good.

The importance of constructive use of technology cannot be over emphasized. Rather than only being a medium to share emotions,at times ones that don’t exist, technology can be used to learn and inspire. Use your weekends to churn the most out of technology but only after you are done with the more humane part of life.

Have a good weekend.

Yes we have all failed at some points or other. I was just failing an hour ago, trying to choose a topic to write on. Failure is inevitable and if you’re not failing enough then you aren’t progressing.

But failure means temporarily surrendering to the intangible powers that govern our cosmos. Surrender is not easily accepted by the human psyche. It dents your ego. As a result your attempts are minimal. The first failure and the activity or task is struck of your list. At the max, you would do it thrice but then your ego will get in between.

If we allow ourselves to accept failure, not defeat, and retry with a renewed vigor, we stand a better probability of succeeding than the last attempt. Here are six ways in which you can satisfy your ego when you fail. This will help you persevere for longer, and enhance your digestion for failures.

1. Be grateful that you have the opportunity to try– When we fail, there are a very few things which escape our mass cursing. We overlook the fact that we are in good mental and physical health to be able to pursue the task we fail at. We fail to see the other worse consequences of our failure. We fail to respect the opportunity to have at least tried, and that, other than some mental resistance, we are blessed with an opportunity to retry.

The best way of finding gratitude in any situation is to go for a walk in your neighborhood. Once you see that you are better off than many others, people born with disabilities, the ones born in poverty, the ones working harder than you ever have, you will automatically feel fortunate and your disappointment would appear negligible.

2. Dream + Effort = Success + Lessons – We have dreams, we put in effort and we aim at achieving success but overlook the lessons we learn with each attempt. Dreaming and putting in some effort guarantees some success and lessons (these lessons are more in case of a failure). The fact that you are trying makes you more successful than all the people who are busy eating popcorns and watching TV. Both success and failure teach you lessons, you either learn to live like a champion(being humble, keep improving, help someone else) or you learn how to redirect your energy to become one.

3. Helping others learn– Some don’t try in fear of making mistakes, others repeat the same mistakes without learning from them, some do learn from their mistakes, but the smartest ones learn from other peoples mistakes. So when you fail, you not only learn about your own mistakes, you teach all the smart observes what not to do. Hence serving an altruistic cause.

4. Success becomes sweeter– The harder you have to struggle, the sweeter success will taste. Many a celebrity, artist, sportsperson were successful because of  genetic gifts. They dint try too hard but succeeded. As a result they dint value their success which led to a swift downfall, leading to addictions, depression and death. If you fail many times before achieving success, you not only value it more but know what it is worth. Sustaining the success becomes easier.

5. Not just bouncing back, pouncing back– Every time you fail, you learn something new. Repetitive, but yes it is so true. It is not only related to the current task that you do, but the lessons you learn increase your determination for everything you pursue.

If you get over failure just this one time, you will handle fear better in your next endeavor. The lesson is not limited to the current quest, but it will stay with you forever, make you resilient, aiding you in everything that you attempt to achieve.

Failure should not make you quit, it should make you attack with a renewed vigor.

6. Stories to tell– If it was very simply to succeed then we would have boring lives. Our failures make our lives interesting and at times comical. Here is an example.

So I wanted to do a handstand some days back, and…I did it.

How drab and boring is that . Compare that with.

I wanted to do the handstand some days back. I was so pathetic initially that I couldn’t get myself off the ground. I tried and tried and the day that I finally got my feet in the air, I fell so hard that I developed an extra knee on my bumm. Everyone laughed like they were Frank Medrano, and even Frank knows how it is to fail. The next time I dint realize I was next to the treadmill. I held on for 2 seconds but then tumbled over on the treadmill which had someone running on it. I tripped the poor guy and both of us were lying in a heap at the edge of the treadmill. I was banned from practicing near the treadmills. I dint give up. I researched and practiced and finally….

my treadmill ban was lifted.

Try,Try until you fail and then try again

Cowards never try, weak never finish, the rest are successful.

When you show strength in your own purpose by never accepting failure, you not only improve your own lives but also help in inspiring others, who are struggling to succeed. Try to enjoy failing, the destination is only as good as the path that leads to it. I prefer a path laced with failures than an empty road, you not only learn more lessons but also get more stories to tell.

When you fail, don’t complain, just gather your wits and try again,

and when you feel you cant handle the strain, just pop the smile pill to curb your pain.

 

You only really fail when you stop trying. Have a good day.

 

My eclectic cognizance urges me to learn from nature, lessons too vivid for words to express and books to withhold. As I attempt to verbalize a few of these lessons in my pursuit of inspiring some of you to break the shackles holding you from starting off with a new adventure or initiating positive change, I recommend you to spend some time in unlearning what the books teach you, so that you can know what is relevant.

Living in a valley, I have learnt how not to be afraid of the hugeness of mountains. Yes, many an aspiring hiker let go of their passion because the mountains seem to be too high. Some give up at the onset while others at the first signs of fatigue. These mountains represent  the change you are wanting to make in your life. You can either look at the extent of effort the entire task commands and put it off for a later time, which will never come, or start a journey in earnestness and adapt to the changes that follow to make your way to the peak.

Initiating change requires going against a normal pattern of thought, sustaining it requires you to shed your old beliefs for new ones. The difficulty lies in the reversibility of the process. If you manage to get over the hurdles of initiating change then sustaining it becomes a bigger challenge.

This generally forces you to choose stability over risk, normality over adventure, comforts over the unknown, stagnancy over changes. But at times, the mundaneness of normality will urge you to take flight into the realm of the unknown. Where all theoretical knowledge becomes irrelevant. You will understand that practicality outshines bookish wisdom and spontaneity overtakes logic when you enter uncharted territories of the unknown. Here are 6 steps which will not only help you initiate and sustain change:

1. Be comfortable with discomfort– You are too charmed with comforts, any variability from the obvious scares you. Hence making changes takes such a big effort. Social insecurities, fears, embarrassment, are all self imposed resistances. Once you manage to live in discomfort, adapting to the randomness of change and hence changing becomes easy.

2. Kick resistance where it hurts and then kick it again– Resistance comes in forms beyond our imaginations, It either doesn’t allow you to initiate change or forces you to quit too soon. Resistance has to be stomped repetitively, it has the uncanny knack of regenerating. You have to keep a strict vigil and not allow anything to come in between you and your pursuit of change.

3. The only thing the world does is opine, you chose who to listen to– Another form of resistance is lending to the views of the audience. Just because people cant fight their own demons they discourage you when you fight yours. Only keep an ear for compliments and constructive criticism. The rest can swallow a half boiled ostrich egg.

4. Choose spontaneity over excessive planning– If you over think you miss the bus. Initiating a change means stepping into the unknown. You cant make plans for randomness of the unknown, you have to adapt along the way. Practicing spontaneity consciously is a difficult task as you are conditioned to scrutinize every situation. But if you start living for the moment and trusting your instincts you would go a long way in initiating and sustaining changes. Good instincts empower you with the courage to face new situations that making a change will bring your way,

.5. Either win or learn a lesson, don’t give up– At times you face failure, no matter what you do. Don’t be taken aback by this failure. Don’t lose your confidence, learn your lesson and try again. Failure is inevitable, it is impossible to live a life where you don’t face failure at all, but failure doesn’t matter, your response to it does. While trying to initiate and sustain a change you will face many setbacks. But if you start taking these setbacks to heart, you will not try again. Thus, you will take away any chance that you might have of succeeding. If you don’t give up you will never lose. Every new attempt will be better than the previous one until the desired outcome is achieved.

6. Make it public– The fewer the number of people who know about a promise the easier it is to break. When you are trying to change a part of your life, it will be great if you make a public statement, Declaring what you are aiming at and setting yourself a timeline. This would help you initiate and sustain the change through the tough patches, where you would be most likely to give up, just because you want to live up to your declaration.

Take flight. If you keep planning, you never will

You only wish to relinquish your comfort zones if the rewards for the change are certain.Otherwise you prefer being stuck in your daily routine. But you should understand that if your routine was any good you would have achieved greatness by now, or at least wouldn’t have been complaining. Change is inevitable, instead of being the victims of change you should be the ones making it.

The most unavoidable distractions surface the exact moment when you initiate change. The first excuse is your ticket back to your comforts.

It is your responsibility to sustain the change once you have initiated it. If you only plant seeds and expect that you will have fruits in no time, then you are kidding yourself and wasting seeds. These seeds require patience, nurturing and protection. Just like your attempts of making any positive changes to your life. If you are willing to have patience, adapting to all obstacles and nurturing your aspirations with dedication and hard work then your changes you pursue bear fruits as well.