SELF-APPRAISAL AND A PROMISE TO ADD ZING TO LIFE.

                                                     

I think it is incumbent on us to conduct a silent appraisal of the year gone by in relation to ourselves. What it involves is a reality check, introspection, and some philosophizing. Self-analysis of our thoughts, actions, behavior, and relationships is a pathway to self-improvement. Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. Likewise looking within is a movement towards a greater understanding of self which is akin to acquiring wisdom. It is an effort at learning lessons and moving on. 

Lack of self-awareness is one of the painful absurdities of life. It means a static existence, which like driftwood has no will of its own and can be hauled at any point. Even the natural world follows the cyclic rhythm, which glorifies each seasonal change and its’ potential. Nature weaves positivity in all its avatars that teaches us to balance life’s polarities and make it more meaningful.

This going within, examining oneself in all aspects of one's life is a never-ending process for an insightful being. It takes us beyond the limited mundane part of life and sows the seeds of developing an aspirational outlook

To make the most of this wonderful and blessed journey, why not add some zing to make it more exciting. Here are some suggestions for the likes of me.

•   Follow a fixed routine for reading and writing to exercise your mental faculties. Solve something interesting like Scramble (locate the words in jumbled letters) or Spellathon, (to make as many words as possible from the given letters in the puzzle) which most of the newspapers carry these days. Think of playing some computer card games to challenge the gray cells.

• Remain busy in some activity or the other, as it would also ensure compulsive grooming in the morning.  I for one try to dig out something to do if I have free time after finishing the designated tasks. I may do more than my share of routine activities but if I don’t accomplish something extra I feel my day wasted.

•  Don’t brood ever or have self-pity. I left it long back.  It is the easiest way to self-destruct. Getting bored is the luxury, which our short stay on this planet doesn’t allow. The negativities only cause mental and physical draining. Rather exult in being alive with manifold elevating choices waiting to be explored.

•  Surf the net to find solutions to minor health issues in place of rushing to the doctors at the slightest indisposition. Google search engine is of great help in selecting the right websites.

•  Learn new things. Be a jack of all trades. Open up to nature and its beauties. Click photographs and share with your loved ones. Time is bristling with a variety of picks. The initiator is only you!

•  Love yourself. Eat well. Exercise daily. Let the travel bug take you here and there.

I think these ingredients are enough to earn a zestful ticket to life


Friends welcome here as always!                          

 Linking to:                                                                     

ABC Wednesday
Nature Notes 
.Our World   

NEW YEAR YEARNINGS

Y is for yearning

The New Year is approaching fast. We’re readying ourselves to extend it a spirited welcome. We yearn that it be a harbinger of peace, prosperity, wellness, equity, justice and happiness for all citizens of the world. We hope and wish that life, in general, would be better off in the coming year.

On a personal level, I’ve decided to issue an advisory to myself. In fact, it is very significant if I’m to keep my creative pursuits happen on an even keel. It is disturbing for me to realize that somehow I keep breaking my daily writing schedule for one reason or the other. I recognize it very well as it disappoints me afterward. The question arises, why can’t I stick to my daily calendar?

For one it is procrastination. It is like the satanic sweet deception. It is always waiting on the sidelines to weaken our resolves. Secondly, minor health issues crop up unexpectedly throwing life out of gear. Then it takes time to come back on track. Whatever the excuses, quintessentially it is more lassitude than anything else.

Friends I don’t have any bucket list this year. I just yearn to make myself take good care of my health and try to be more self-disciplined to carry on with activities which I love doing. I believe that if one can somehow manage to succeed in fulfilling the above two then all else would follow.

Let’s try to ensure a smooth run of the wheels of everyday life, to enable us to be more productive in achieving our goals.

Let us also promise to ourselves and to others that we endeavor to contribute something for the happiness and wellbeing of others.

Friends I’m curious to know if you also face occasional breaks in your artistic activities and how do you overcome that phase? Pl. do share.

***

Life is sprinting on the wings of time,

Make haste before the last bell chimes!

Friends welcome here as always!

Linking to:

ABC Wednesday
Nature Notes 

 

FOLLOW NEW YEAR PLEDGES WITH ZEST !

"What hunger is in relation to food, zest is in relation to life."

                                                         -Bertrand Russel                                      






 Z is for Zest:

One of my NEW YEAR pledges is to do with zest and gusto, whatever I take up to do. Must muster up courage to succeed. Set reminders to prevent slackness. Be focused. Foil the tendency to avoid difficult tasks by throwing common excuses. “I’ve to do this or that and have no time.”

Such an attitude often gives birth to the malady of procrastination. It weakens our resolve to prepare for  tough jobs and ends up ruining all schedules.

  

Writing Time

Take for example the craft of writing. It certainly is hard. None can help. It starts and ends with you. Unless you brace yourself with steely resolve and set time, you can achieve nothing. The soft option of postponing is ruinous. With single-minded approach, a lot one can accomplish!

google image

 Regular Exercise

Think of the New Year promise of exercising regularly. All conscious individuals are aware of its benefits for healthy mind and body. Yet we fail to chart a select exercise regimen. What we require is a wholehearted approach to make this a ‘must do activity’. For that, one has to develop zest and doggedness to achieve the set goals. Tremendous will power and enthusiasm do yield astonishing results.

Proper Diet

A very important part of our life is proper diet for better health. I believe most of us have some health issue or the other. Accordingly, certain foods are recommended for consumption. Certain foods we need to avoid for better health. Yet frequently we succumb to  the attraction of salt and sugar loaded eatables. The preservatives and coloring substances of processed foods harm our metabolism. We end up popping pills to neutralize the damage done to our system.

google image

 Meditation

The practice of daily meditation goes a long way in reducing tensions in our lives. Our stressed lives lead to many illnesses. In terms of person-hours, wastage is enormous. Our medicine cabinets are overflowing with bottles, pillboxes and strips of tablets. It amply illustrates the state of our physical well being. Even ten minutes of daily meditation can work wonders in calming your mind.

  Gratefulness

Make it a point of thanking God for all the blessings He has showered upon us. Look at the less privileged and note how happy they are in spite of certain deprivations. 

For a full and productive life, we must cultivate these and many more healthy habits.  Success is the  synthesis of mind, body and intellect.

.. .

Give yourself permission to enjoy life:It is unlikely anyone else will do so.
                                                                                         -Colin wright

Friends,welcome here as always!

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ABC Wednesday

RING IN THE NEW YEAR!!!

 'Y' is for New Year!

"Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow: 
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true."

Very soon we'll be ringing in the New Year. The often-quoted Lord Tennyson’s verses ring in the New Year on a practical and joyful note. In fact, 2015 has gone by in a flash. It seems as if it was only yesterday when we were welcoming it the usual festive way and now ‘2016’ is waiting at the threshold of time to enter  our lives so magnificently. Well, time has a speed post!

Truly, today is the right time to introspect about our good, bad days in the past year.  The best way is to recollect our successes and failures and draw some lessons there upon. The beginning of the New Year offers an opportunity to pledge ourselves upon the basis of stern convictions to make our lives more meaningful, enjoyable and happy. Everybody knows that in essence life is a challenge and a struggle. As  thinking beings, we instinctively aim to lead a worthy life by continuously endeavoring to make it more productive. For this to be possible, we need an attitudinal shift. We have to cultivate kindness, more inclusiveness as well as a helping attitude.

This apart, each morning presents a stepping-stone to plunge into something new to expand the existing state. I do believe that our life remains always in the process of becoming. It is never static. There are always possibilities galore to be explored and tried upon. The secret is to focus with mindfulness, whatever we take upon ourselves to do.

There is always a plethora of items on our wish list. Actually, it boils down to, how to achieve them.  Who needs to be told that the power to unleash our energies is within us and we are to inspire ourselves painstakingly. No doubt, there will be set backs because we are human and never would know the outcome of our choices. What we do recognize is that we’ve to put our heart and soul into any mission, which we are convinced about to be purposeful and worth pursuing.

Success will certainly match our efforts in the New Year beautifully. At least that is what we should hope for. I personally am resolving within myself to take positive steps to incorporate a healthy routine and stick to it religiously. This alone can enhance physical and mental wellness, which is the prerequisite for realizing one's dreams. 
 ..............
 "All of us every single year, we're a different person. I don't think we're the same person all our lives." — Steven Spielberg

 Friends,welcome here as always!

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HOW ABOUT GIVING NEW YEAR GIFTS TO MYSELF?

HAPPY NEW YEAR- 2015

Y IS FOR NEW YEAR GIFTS

Finally, it’s time to bid adieu to 2014 and extend our warmest wishes, and open armed welcome to 2015. Hope that the New Year would be harbinger of peace, joy and prosperity for all of us as global citizens. It’s also the right time, I suppose, to reflect and rethink about life in the year gone by, and learn lessons for future, to make life more fulfilling, creative and meaningful.

All along, I’d been spending a lot of energy, time and care in managing all types of presents for others, in my family and social set up.  This time, interestingly, I’m preparing to give myself some gifts and make a new beginning in a mindful way. I plan to give single-minded attention to promises, which I make to myself. It means convincing myself, that, come what may, I ought to follow, what I decide, with zeal and devotion. That is tough, indeed and requires time management and steely determination.

At this point, foggy ideas and doubts intrude the mind scape. Rueful questions such as: when would, we women, start giving precedence to what we need to do for ourselves over  unending chores? Or, are we just like our mothers, who, kind souls kept toiling, without even a nod of appreciation from children or spouse. Just because, their self-sacrificing nature, took upon themselves the backbreaking duties, as if ordained from above. And we took them for granted.

These introspective incursions are a part of my conversation with my inner self these days. In the New Year, I want to project a new me with lots of confidence and self-esteem. I’m rubbing it on my subconscious lest I should forget the promises and be mired in the self-defeating rut again. Of my own making of course!

Enough of the prologue friends, and let me talk about those newly structured gifts for self-improvement:

1. A regular exercise regimen: I need it more than ever now, if I wish to be self-reliant and remain active in body and mind in the coming years. Exercise is more than a tonic.  It energizes you, helps your cardiovascular system to work more efficiently, makes you more productive and boosts your spirits.

2. To be self-compassionate: Alternatively, to be less harsh on myself. We indulge in self-criticizing on many counts like when we fall short of our own expectations. We should learn to let go some times. Over exerting and getting stressed, over non-issues need to be given a go by. It entails learning the art of abandonment to ease the daily bumps of life.

3.To smile at my reflection in the mirror: That ironically will give me some me time to laugh at myself and some ‘do me good’ resolves. Like, time to take more care of myself to go on living a fruitful life, till Almighty's summons!

4. To be more social: I can’t help not to be choosy about my social contacts, because of the activities and interests I pursue. I’m sort of, one of a kind and hardly anybody to share what i do. However, to be acquainted with people in one’s community is also part of a healthy camaraderie.

  

5. To be more generous and kinder to others: It requires many self-reminders at the subconscious level to practice this in a system, where indifference and lies have become the rule rather than the exception. Sadly, you remain at the receiving end of people, you get services from even after  paying them handsomely.

6. Try to forgive those who in spite of doing hurtful wrongs, are too vain, small minded and mean to apologize.

  

7. Last but not the least, to spread love and goodwill and continue  to pursue my passions for friendly sharing with my cyber buddies and for sheer creative pleasure!

Friends, welcome here, with best wishes for 2015! :-) 

                                    
linked to ABC Wednesday