It’s been the season for holidays. 

Wrote this piece two weeks ago and it has gone to print for today’s edition of Living supplement of Deccan Herald

Chilling out sounds fun, but it is turning to be strenuous for many. Work is addictive, while holidays are exhausting, or so it seems. 

Long vacations seem a distant dream. And if that is possible, it is filled with planned activities that may leave one more burned out rather than rejuvenated.

There used to be a time when there was no pressure to utilize holidays in ‘learning something specific’. Earlier, vacations had no purpose. It was just a way of life, as slow paced and leisurely as it could get. Life was unplugged and most returned after a complete rejuvenating experience with minimal expenses. The motto was crystal clear – ‘having fun by doing sweet nothings’.

Holidays with an agenda

Modern day vacations for children are stacked up with learning schedules. Math classes, baking, cooking, gardening, learning a new language, shloka classes, camps to learn good-touch, bad-touch… You need only imagine it, google it, and wham! You will find innumerable such clubs for your kids.

Holidays with digital touch

If nothing else, there are enough fancy toys and video games that are getting kids and adults alike addicted to them. There is also the weird  itch to check work mails or put-up our pictures on the web! As though it needs to be done at that very moment… It’s hardly a holiday where one cherishes the experience for the sake of it.

Holidays for social status

Holidays are also taken to keep up with peer pressure. Children too want to showcase to their friends where they had been for vacations. Pity they have to bear insensitive comments if they have not been to a worthy location that can talk of social status and interests. Mountaineering, skiing, swimming, snorkeling, spending a holiday amidst wildlife, all display affordability and financial place.

Jam-packed holidays

It seems that the warm days of ‘doing nothing’ but lazing around are replaced by whole lot of activities to be done during a vacation. There are also quite a handful who have jumped into the bandwagon of choosing itinerary-packed holidays, with their sightseeing activities planned from sunrise to sunset. Some even plan in a minute-to-minute style to make sure every moment is utilized to its fullest. It is all “here today, there tomorrow”!

Holidays, every now and then 

Our lives have become so stressed-out that we constantly long for vacations. We look up travel destinations among glossy magazines, soak it up by watching travel shows, read it up on internet in the promise leisure and peace of mind. Interestingly, holidays have also become instantaneous in the sense they are taken at the spur of the moment- thanks to instant information available on the net and company of adventurous friends who are game for spontaneous trips.

Want to have a real holiday?

* Do not have expectations of a ‘perfect holiday’. It’s about forgetting your worries and trying to live each moment as it comes.

*Do not try to go for holidays only to talk about it to others. Instead try to go for those destinations that would actually make you feel blessed for being on a holiday. It need not be a fancy destination at a fancy price. Remember not all good things come at a price.

* Leave your gadgets behind if possible for a single trip at least in a year. This includes your laptop, and official mobile phones, and even the camera (if you can).

* Make sure you allow enough time for the quiet moments. The recuperative powers of ‘doing nothing’ while on holidays are underrated.

* Try to go for a solo trip. Be alone in a place that will make you feel good without the baggage of communication tools, or having to tend to the needs of others around you.

* Treasure your experiences in handwritten memoirs, blogs, pictures, and videos. But it need not be shared with others…not necessarily always.

Link to the article- (Wonder why the article (online edition) doesn’t show the author name. Thankfully it is seen in the print one!)

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/377068/do-not-burn-trying-chill.html

Are you yet to find yours or are you yet to take the plunge? Finding their calling in life can be quite a task for many. But for those who have it figured out, answering the call can turn their life around for the better, reckons Reshma Krishnamurthy Sharma.

“Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you
that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.”  – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Discouragement, fear of failure, criticism are bound to be showered on those who choose a varied and even unacceptable route. But those who have really found their calling, linger on… Regardless of whether they have a support system or not…

Perhaps it is the belief of being true to one’s conscience… 

Perhaps it is the idea of taking up challenges in a road less travelled… 
Perhaps it is the new age society accepting differences and radical decisions, as long as it does not harm others… 

Found it yet?

The hardest part for several people lies in finding out what their true calling is. Some are trapped in redundant careers and relationships without knowing what to do and how else they can choose a life or career of their choice. Even if they realize what to do, questions crop up continually in their minds like will they be successful or would it be the right decision or not. These thoughts continue to haunt them and force them to refrain from taking any other decision. It is very easy to get swayed by what others have to say. And this is in the least bit helpful for an indecisive person. But for those who have figured it out, life can take a beautiful turn if they choose to go ahead with it.

No ready-made recipe

There are plenty of people who chose the beaten track to play it safe. But there those few who have chosen the unknown path and stuck to their decision – no matter what came along.

Rajesh Rao had an opportunity to carry forward the responsibility of running inherited hotel business, but he chose another path. He says, “My dad was really not happy when he realized managing a restaurant was not my calling and I wanted to do theatre and films. I left the family business and my hometown, despite it being a great source of income. It was a ready-made-recipe for success and I had nothing to add to it.”

“It’s not been easy to say the least, to be a small-time actor. I have been, in fact, a survivor actor,” he laughs. “But I had to take the decision to be true to myself. After 40 years, post my youth, I did not want to regret feeling I never tried being an actor and someone who never went through struggles and had it all too easy!”

Captured by passion

Others may seem aghast if you give up popularity, fame, monetary security, status, or the favoured path to (what they think is) a shaky decision. But if you have truly found your passion, none of it matters anymore.

Says Kalyan Varma, a well known wildlife photographer, “When I gave up a plush job in a huge corporate to become a photographer, everyone around me was shocked. Most thought it was just a temporary craze and it would go away, but it did not. Sure, all of us need to earn money, but always chasing big bucks will not fulfill our deepest needs. With advent of technology and the million self-help books and CDs around, people are realizing that they can still make a decent living by doing what they love.”

All sorts of “leap”

But ‘taking the leap’ doesn’t necessarily have to do with choosing alternative careers. The phrase is very much applicable to thousands of people who have followed their heart and stuck to their decision in other circumstances too–like in love, or owning up your unusual personality, or standing up for what you believe is right.

Very few in the earlier generations dared to choose a different route or take a stance that is not acceptable to the societal norms. Today there are thousands of entrepreneurs because this generation believes in creating something new. Supporting a cause that is termed silly, suicidal in career, or balancing the rope over unknown waters don’t deter these people.

A young man or woman or man living alone in the city and declaring to the world s/he is a homosexual belongs to this category. In recent times we have seen people openly participating in gay marches! Women protesting or believing that it is nobody’s right to violate their bodies is a huge leap! They do not fear any kind of pressure and that is commendable. It’s about finding your passion or what your conscience asks you to believe in, and following it, irrespective of surrounding factors.

Some dos and don’ts

*  Don’t confuse others’ opinions with facts. It is wrong to assume the information shared by those around you are better.

*  Practice detachment. An opinion is someone else’s perspective. Don’t make it yours. Do not add more worries to it.

*  Trust and keep moving forward. Believe in your intuition and have faith in your abilities and choices.

*  Speak to a couple of people who have taken up the challenge of ‘doing their own thing’.

*  Make use of the million self-help tools available out there in the form of books, CDs, blogs, and websites.

*  Accept you are going to face a huge number of hardships and be prepared mentally for it.

Leap of courage

It’s always easier to follow the herd and not choose a route that is lesser known or followed by others. After all, there would be lesser challenges, minimal troubles and ample amount of advice when one seeks the common path treaded by others. So when you set your foot into unknown territories, you are bound to feel somewhat lonely. For not many around you would probably understand the passion you have for it, nor would they be knowledgeable about it. You are on your own. Obviously the lesser known path is no child’s play. But when you grit your teeth and do it, no matter what, the happiness you feel is incomparable to all else…

This article was published in the Living supplement of Deccan Herald on December 7th 2013- The link to the same article is herewith

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/373150/would-you-take-leap.html

Life’s goals make it an elusive journey. We long for something, and feel elated when we get it. But a little later, it may not seem that great anymore. Does it mean we are not happy anymore? No, it simply means our source of happiness keeps changing, observes Reshma Krishnamurthy Sharma.

A homemaker always dreamt of being in a full-time senior level job position. Once she actually started being in a hectic full-time professional responsibility, she admits she was craving to finish a year at work and go back to her old stress-free life and relish her quiet moments.

Doesn’t it sound familiar? If you analyze your reactions to life’s events, you will find that most of us are not sure as to what really makes us happy. It may be termed as “impact bias.” What does it mean? It refers to the errors we make in estimating the event that will make us happy and the duration for which we will be happy.

Psychology professor at Harvard University and author of Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert says the problem is when we think about what will make us happy. It is our expectations that actually throws us off. He says we make mistakes in predicting how we will feel about something in the future.

What Gilbert and others with him have found is that we overestimate the intensity and the duration of our emotional reactions to future events. The future is still an unknown phase and we conveniently forget that the future will always contain several other events we can’t predict, some positive and some negative.

Suppose you have always longed to own a Mercedes. You work hard for two years and finally buy your dream car. Your excitement is at its peak as you park your car on your driveway for the first time. A month later, the Mercedes becomes a part of your life. And now you look for something else that will make you happy. You thought owning a Mercedes was the happiest thing in your life and that the happiness would last for long. You were wrong.

This is the impact bias. It’s not hard to see the impact bias happening around you.  How many people have you met that mistakenly thought their career paths or new relationships would bring them happiness?

Lot of blogs have been written on some of the most common desires about people to be happy. Like winning a huge sum of money – maybe a lottery. Most people only think about the positives of winning and don’t consider everything else that might happen as a result of all that money. Avid spend thrifts may reason out saying every purchase adds to the bucket of happiness. Conversely, reducing your consumption, living more simply, and focusing on experiences can have a higher hand in making you happier.

The initial excitement may be too profound, but do remember that eventually that excitement is going to wear off. You’re left with a lot of money you can use to buy all new pleasures, but it decreases some pleasures you had before. Psychologists call this “hedonic adaptation”.

It is a phenomenon in which people quickly become used to changes, great or terrible, in order to maintain a stable level of happiness. Over time, the excitement is pushed towards the emotional norm and we stop getting any pleasure from it.

Despite what you might expect, events don’t really increase or decrease the amount of pleasure you receive in life. All they do is shift where your pleasure comes from. Once that shift has taken full effect, you go back to your previous level of happiness and start from where you left off. So the good thing about it is that even a negative event in life may not really affect our life as much as we initially thought it would.

While we are living in the present, how can we make ourselves happier? It’s not that you should not plan for long term goals or perceived happiness. It is certainly wise to plan for tomorrow. But it is wiser not to ignore the present and immediate future. After all life is about choices.

You cannot change yesterday’s events and really cannot predict future or even predict how happy you will be after a year. So hold on to your present.
We’ve heard this so many times before that it sounds cliche, but it really is a classic: life is a journey. Indeed.

We might have a certain goal to reach, but when that is reach, we find yet another one to pursue. That is the whole purpose in life.

Being happy, the balanced way:

* Spend on others, especially people you are close to.
*  Be time-aware, but don’t think of time in terms of money.
*  Be passionate, but don’t obsess.
*  Set goals that are reasonably challenging and reasonably achievable.
*  Go for variety and surprise. Don’t keep doing the same thing.
*  Prefer experiential purchases; avoid materialistic goals.
*  Associate with happy people.
*  The best way to predict how much we will enjoy an experience is to see how much someone else enjoyed it.
*  Savour anticipation. Delay consumption.
*  Treat your body like it deserves to be happy. Eat right and enjoy your sleep. Every single hour of sleep adds in making a person feel happy.
*  Find happiness in the job you have now. Many people expect the right job or career to dramatically change their level of happiness. This is not to say you shouldn’t aspire to get a job that will make you happier. Just don’t overestimate your happiness.
*  Think and implement easy, quick, and effective ways that you can make your community a better place by being compassionate.
*  Recycle happiness by reminiscing good experiences.
*  Have deep, meaningful conversations with different people.
*  Take a conscious decision to forgive people who have hurt you and smile more often.
*  Pray or practice meditation. It helps in elevating well-being attitude.

This article was published as the lead article in the Living supplement of Deccan Herald on November 23rd 2013.

The link to the article is –

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/370438/divining-elusive-elements-life.html