are anxious people taking over the world?

a lot of problems the world is seeing are due to the feeling of lack of time.  people who can relax and are satisfied with doing 10 things in a day are accused of being lazy and stupid/unsuccessful and people who run around and accomplish 25 things in a day are considered ideal role models and successful people. 

why are these people doing 25 things? because they are constantly dissatisfied, and want to achieve more, show to others that they have done so much, crave appreciation and limelight, want to record that they have done 100's of great things in their life and influenced history more than any other person, before they died.  basically anxious about their own self worth and their worth in the eyes of others, not just from present time, but from historical perspective.  these people would be craving to live not just 100 years, but 1000's of years and still not be satisfied. 

and how are these people destroying the world? - one simple example to start with.  the rate at which things degrade in our nature is slow.  bio-waste will decay and mix up with earth in about 1 month to 3 month time.  other things like wood etc will take more time.  but, these people, who want to live 3 lifetimes within their 1 lifetime, consume 10 times the products that they are supposed to consume in that time.  thus they try to do more in the limited time, and the nature cannot do that.  the nature is not supposed to speed up its processes that way.  (if nature did that, these people would be dead within 1/3rd of their life span as well). 

thus, there is a technological race, to do more, achieve more, and its never ending.  technology will never catch up with this human greed pace, because, its greed which is driving this race for technology. 

these people should be made aware and relaxation and going at the pace of nature should be encouraged.  but our school and educational systems and later the corporate world are doing the exact opposite.  they try to light up a fire on the backside of everyone and make everyone run faster in the rat race.  the media and especially advertisements propagate it to no end.  (of course, the slow TV is a different phenomena and is probably indicating a change in this fast, faster and fastest mentality). 

imagine, as far back as you can.  if you are 25, maybe you can think about 10 or 15 years back...  how were those days? how were things around you?  how was nature?  how many people were around those days? and most IMPORTANT...  what was the PACE of life in those days and the pace of life now? 

between the sun rise and sun set, how many things are you trying to accomplish now?  and where all does it end?  will any of it matter after a 1000 years?  or after 10,000 years?  this earth is more than 4.5 billion years old.  that is 4500 million years...  or 10,000 years happening for 45,000 times!!!  (its mind boggling to be short, and i am not a math expert).

so, is it worth all the stress you are now taking and sacrificing all the leisure that you are planning to take up after retirement?  maybe its time for anti-anxietyism to come up.  what would be a term for it - relaxism or peacefulism?  try to think up a term for it.  come on, you can take that thought break.

remember that, feminism took a long time to bring down masculinity and a more equal world...  so, it will be a long struggle for relaxism people, to make the world less competitive and have equal say in the way world is run from relaxed perspective.  but do spread this word for world peace ;)

What is your coaching style?

In psycho technical term, this can be phrased as, what is your most frequent behavior modification style?  Without worrying about jargon, let me get to the point. 

We all try to modify behavior, our own and others as well every day.  Certain behaviors we want to encourage /increase and some we want to discourage /decrease.

For example, related to self, I want to encourage daily workout and eating salad before every dinner.  And want to reduce delaying my night sleep time and reduce eating sweets.  How do I go about it? Very simply, reward and punishment (positive and negative) are 2 ways to go about it.  Reward behaviors to be encouraged and punish behaviors to be discouraged, and neglecting or ignoring would be another alternative way to modify. 

Based on the above simple premise, I will have a tendency to either use reward and neglect a wanted behavior and punish or neglect an unwanted behavior.  Very few would have a balanced approach.  So, becoming aware of my tendency will be the first step.  Tracking such a tendency will be tough as it would have become habitual by now to the point of instinctive reaction.  We can get help of an objective observer to track our tendencies, or you can take video of a simulation. 

One situation where these tendencies come out easily is during sports coaching sessions.  Take an informal coaching session, suppose you are giving ball catching practice to a kid / junior.  You are supposed to throw a ball and coach the other person to become a better catcher of the ball.  Take the first 20 throws and comments into account.  Generally your behavior modification style would become evident by then.  i.e. whether you focus on positive or negative comments and how much you use neglect / ignoring of either reward or punishment will become evident. 

 Similarly amount of praise or criticism is used to change self also can be found out.  Self coaching style might be more difficult to find out in an objective way, but it would be worth the effort. 

It would be best to check this all by ourselves first, but i can’t help jumping ahead with one point.  Generally human beings don’t like criticism and prefer encouragement.  It would be true for children anyway, if you think back to your own childhood experiences.  

Of course, identifying and segregating which specific behavior elements to be encouraged or discouraged is another challenge altogether.  But first one step, or one blog at a time... ;)

newspaper articles with focus on 2 topics...

While on travel from one place to another, to observe and learn about ecologically friendly life styles is a rewarding experience, but lack of internet connectivity and difficulty in getting English newspapers can be bothersome at times.  However, the change in daily routine of glancing through a national newspaper gets replaced by detailed reading of newspaper with great curiosity is an advantage. 

Recently I read through a newspaper on Sunday and found multiple articles related to 2 major topics.  Few articles focused on marriage as an institution and monogamy related to it.  Increasing divorce rates as an indicator of crumbling of culture was focus on one article.  Another one was on whether monogamy required in marriages have biological basis or not.  A third one stated the need for lifelong companionship as a human requirement, which was personal viewpoint of the writer and differed drastically in style with the scientific view of the other article. 

The second topic written about in more than one article was about banning of a book on Hinduism in India by Penguin publishers, with more arguments in support of the ban as it hurts religious sentiments of a large majority. 

What connected these 2 topics was the lack of balanced view and discrimination against minority groups, who would have contrasting beliefs / opinion or lifestyle. 

A minority population, who would be non-believers or atheists, might not agree with the ban.  What if these non-believers wanted a ban on all religious books, as they are an insult to their belief/opinion / lifestyle?

There was an interview of a starlet, which was not directly connected to the marriage articles, but she had stated that, she might not get married at all, as she had not seen in her life of about 30 years, even one single married couple, who inspire her to get married.  Which provoked a similar probe for me as well…  but let’s keep my opinion aside first, and as a reader, do a similar analysis yourself.  How many happy marriages have you observed in your life so far and how much have they inspired you to be pro-marriage as well?  What is the % of happy married couple v/s unhappily married couples from your analysis? 

The problem is that – discrimination against minorities gets neglected and majority as righteous seem to gather strength, as it’s the easy way out. 

And being part of any minority belief / opinion / lifestyle has more than one disadvantage.  Not only you are legally and socially enforced to follow the majority one, but also get mocked and given advice by self-righteous and un-aware majority at every turn.  A recent example would be, how LGBT supporters in India would be feeling after Supreme Court rule in 2013 against them.

Every one of us has minority beliefs / opinions / lifestyle…  How do we feel when they are opposed?

Largest democracy in the world, India goes to parliamentary polls in mid 2014

A corruption free India seems to be a major focus in India this year, as its going for Lok Sabha elections.  Would it be possible to have a corruption free government or system?  Corruption free politicians, government officials etc, is it possible?

We can’t expect one part of society to be corruption free, when its prevalent everywhere else. 

Why corruption is there?  Because there is greed, because there is insecurity – and these lead to hoarding behavior.  No amount of resources or wealth seems enough due to fear of future.

If a person buys 20,000 umbrellas or 50 thousand caps (not as a trader or for business), we will consider them crazy.  But if a person accumulates 50,000 crore of rupees, we hail them as successful, or consider such dreams as healthy or good.

We have to also clean up corruption from – various institutions, educational, financial, production, travel, construction & religious institutions etc.  and reduce hoarding behavior encouraged in all these places.

Why does gods require gold and cash?  Why do temples, mosques, church etc. hoard things, especially like gold & diamonds?  When will donations to such places become transparent and require legality to donate any resource?

Gods don’t gold / money – it’s the organizers who run these places who need it and hoard it.  (It’s funny to see in India, there is a gold shortage, but tons of gold remains locked up in temples, which artificially keep on increasing its price). 

When will a CA (chartered Accountant) refuse to illegally evade tax for their clients?  When will a parent refuse to use their resources / power to illegally get admission to their child? 

When these things happen, corruption from politics also will vanish. 

So are we ready to clean up ourselves first?