Pleasure of Cycling

Dear Friends,

Welcome to Anbusivam's Blog Page.

I came back from school, was depressed and sad about the way things are going on in life. We, a group of 6 have decided to start cycling to school from next month onwards. Now it's the first week of the new month and I am the only one don't have a bicycle yet. I've told my father and asked my mother too....but nothing seems to be happening. That night I resisted from eating dinner, went to bed without talking to anyone. I know that my parents are aware of the reason for my anger. To my great surprise next day when I come back from school there was as bicycle parked in front of our home, though it looked little older. My mom told me that it was from one of my dad's friends. His son was using this cycle for the past 2 years and now he is studying fin a boarding school. Dad had taken it from him for a little lower price.

I was so happy, hugged my parents for getting me a new cycle (new to me anyway). I wanted to run my friend in the next street to tell that I am going to join them tomorrow morning to school. I went to bed so happily, woke up early in the morning, took out an old cloth, cleaned it perfectly. I could make it shining like a new diamond, of course it is for me.

Started my first day ride to school and I will never forget that experience in my life. I think this happened almost more than 15 years ago, but I could never forget this experience in my life. I think Bicycle is one of the best inventions by the mankind. Simply by connecting two wheel, frame and pedal there comes a wonderful means of transportation. No emission of harmful gases, no pollution, no harm to the environment, no fuel needed, zero running cost and so on.

After so many years, I decided to cycle again. Now to my office. I was totally unaware of what had happened to bicycles all these years. When I started looking out for details, I found there are bicycles with gears nowadays. I wondered why do a cycle need 21 gears, while my yamaha is having only 4. I could get lots and lots of details and information for various bicycle enthusiasts and online biking communities like BikesZone, Bangalore-bikers Club, GogreenGocycling and Criticalmass. I could see that, bikers are more than happy to welcome any new biker into their group, provide lots of support and encouragement.

After lots of study and survey I bought Hercules Ryders ACT110, started cycling to office for the past 2 weeks and look forward to continue cycling for ever.


Go Green, Go Healthy, Go Happy, Go Cycle...!!!

The pleasure of pedaling a responsive, wonderful machine, while enjoying the roads, moving along effortlessly, is always awesome in cycling.

Thanks for Visiting my Page.

With Love,
Anbusivam

Being Right or Being Happy

Dear Friends,

Welcome to Anbusivam's Blog Page.

When I wrote about being right or happy in my previous post, many of my readers were keen to know more about it. Here comes my thoughts and understandings on one of the key learning’s from my counselling course.

"Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy...?"

Think for a moment when you were in an arugment and want to be right, don't you remember that you had to compromise on your happiness. I realised this when I was in an argument with one of my friends few weeks ago. I obviously wanted to make my point, knowing that he is not correct. But he was not in a mood to accept that he is wrong, which would be a blow to his big ego. After long arguments and counter arguments, I suddenly realised that the discussion had stuck into an endless circle, without any further progress. I started playing devil's advocate, carefully changing side to accept his point knowing very well that it's not right. I decided to do this only to stop those endless arguments just to prove a point. When we departed he was really happy that his point was accepted and finally he had won the argument. But I am sure that he himself had a doubt on the entire discussion and the point he was conveying and trying to convince me.

Later in the evening when he was little relaxed, I approached him with a clean reference supporting my argument stating that I was right in the morning. In no time he accepted the truth and apologised for being adamant during the morning discussion. I felt happy and he too was.

When I was thinking about the day that evening, it did strike to me that, though I was not right in the morning ultimately I was happy at end of the day. Many a times we tend to stick to our point in arguments and discussions with our loved ones, friends and colleagues without even thinking about the real purpose of the argument.

We should be courageous and courteous enough to give up something, though we know we are correct, while letting the other person win over us. This will be of utmost important especially with our family and loved ones, where the relationship and bonding is of highest priority than being right in a petty issue. Moreover these kinds of heated arguments and discussion always lead to fights shifting focus on the person instead of the real issue. When we are discussing an issue with another person, let's better put our focus on where it should be, on the real problem, not the other person.

When we choose being happiness over the need of being right, obviously a great relationship blossoms over there.

Whenever we are stuck in an argument with our loved ones, we should ask ourselves.

Do you want to be Happy or do you want to be Right...?

Thanks for visiting my page.

With Love,

Anbusivam

Power of deciding our happiness.

Hello Friends,

Welcome to Anbusivam's Blog Page.

"What is that, ultimately you want in life...???"

When I asked this question to people I know from all walks of life, starting from a grade 5 student to as elderly as 95 yrs old. The final answer always lead to someting like this,

"I want to be Happy in Life, Happiness is what I want."

I am sure each and every single action we perform in our lives is to seek happiness. Be the CEO of a million dollar corporate or a floor boy in a small office, irrespective of caste, creed, status and religion, happiness is what we all seek all the time. Unfortunately we seek something all over the world that is actually hidden within ourselves in abundance.

With few personal experiments in my own life, I am completely convinced that we can never find real happiness outside us. If we happen to find happiness from something or someone outside us, then its never going to be a permanent one. May be that will last for a second or a minute or a day or for few months. Never can one get a permanent happiness from the external things outside in this world. We human beings are creatures of choice. We have got the great boon of choosing to be happy irrespective of what happens outside. This may sound too philosophical on the first go, but actually this is the ultimate truth that we need to understand.

For example, you have a simple mobile phone with which you can make only phone calls, that being your basic requirement. You feel miserable, seeing yourself in the midst of your friends who are gadget geeks playing around with their high tech phones with which calls could also be made. Now, thinking that you will get happiness with a brand new phone, you buy a new phone with all possible features in it. You think that you are the happiest person in this world with your new gadget, only until you come across an another friend having a device better than yours. At that very moment your happiness ceases to exist and you start thinking you could have bought this one. You feel miserable again.

Here your happiness is fully based on a mobile phone. You the intelligent being had given out the power of deciding your happiness to a lifeless electronic instrument.

We all have made and heard the following statements in our lives:

"You make me unhappy"

"You are making me furious"

"I'll be happy, if you love me"

"I am always upset because of you"

"I don't like to see you"

"I hate this traffic"

The moment we start fixing things outside to make ourselves happy, its going to be a never ending process. Instead we should be fixing things within us. In the sametime, we shouldn't be neglecting the external things that will make our living comfortable and easy in this world. No doubt the world has become a better place to live with all the scientific and materialistic advancements. All those material stuff should be seen as something that will only make our physical existence little easier. They never can give us permanent happiness that we seek in our lives.

The ultimate point here is the moment we take charge of our happiness, nothing external can control it. Happiness will no longer be something that we pursue all through our life. Happiness will always blossom within us.

"Let's not give away the power of deciding our happiness to someone or something outside us"

With Love,

Anbusivam

Change is the only changeless

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Welcome to Anbusivam's Blog Page.

Every time I think about some change....I always remember 2 famous quotes I've come across. First one is "Everything changes, only change is changeless" don't know who said this and the second one from Mahatma Gandhiji "Be the change you want to be". Many a times we tend to bend and mend others into our own ways. Trying to change others always ends up in vain and leads to a lot of pain and displeasure. We are not comfortable in changing ourselves as there is a lot of risks involved in that, mainly stepping from the known to an unknown is always fearful, scary, and anxious.

Let's think for a moment how important is "change" in our lives. Neither sorrow, nor happiness is going to be permanent in life. Anything and everything in this world has to undergo the process of evolution and hence change is inevitable. If at all change has not happened, this world would have reached a state of stagnation and no progress would have happened all through these years. In spite of seeing so many changes every day in this world, we are still skeptical about change.

Change at first frightens us, as we have to come out of our comfort zone. and then the fear of uncertainties that would show up. Any change that has to happen outside is most of the times pretty easy, where as any change that has to happen within us is the most difficult thing to happen. But the beauty is when a moment had come for an internal change within ourselves, nothing can stop that. Once we are fully convinced about the change, our mind automatically lookout for ways and means for the change to happen rightaway. To reach that state is the most difficult task in life, as our mind will always put forth number of excuses in the name of valid reasons so as to oppose the change. Once we gain the ability to understand the trick that our mind would play, it will be lot easier to appreciate and embrace the change.


Some of the statements I hear when a change is imposed from outside are:

1. It's too difficult.
2. It's not gonna work.
3. We've tried this before or we've never tried something similar.
4. This too visionary or lacks vision.
5. We've always done it this way.
6. We already have a proven method in place.
7. I am not sure, if this will be good for us.
8. I don't think this is logical.
9. We don't have enough time and resources.
10. It just doesn't make sense to change.
11. ... and many more.

Some of the statements I hear when a change is embraced within are:

1. Wow....it's an excellent change.
2. I am sure its gonna to be good for us.
3. We are bored of doing it the same way.
4. We should try something new.
5. This is the right moment for change.
6. To change is for a greater vision.
7. We should take a chance.
8. Let's try it out.
9. We should explore new avenues.
10. It's challenging to experiment.
11. ... and many more.

As we noticed, it's all the mind's smart play. All these statements are more subjective to the individual and his/her perception towards the change. We come up with any of the first set of statements if we are forced to change and we bring forth the second set of statements in case we are fully convinced that the change is essential at that point of time. We always see these two different groups of people in this society and I am not here to say which is good or which is good to be in.

All I can say from my little experience, is if we are a person who would take some time to think with a larger perspective before jumping into conclusions we would always belong into the second group. It does not mean that we should happily accept and appreciate all the changes that's happening, instead we should have the ability to discriminate the good and bad, not based on our own personal likes and dislike, but purely from a holistic point of view.

Thanks for visiting my page.

With Love,
Anbusivam

Leadership through Physical Fitness

Hello Friends,

Welcome to Anbusivam's Blog Page.

When I was doing my regular weekend long-run this morning, the thought stuck in my mind was, "Is there a relationship between Leadership and Physical Fitness...?". From my few experiments and little experience I am fully convinced that, Yes there is a great relation between one's Leadership Qualities and his/her Physical Fitness.

It is also true that, children involved in rigorous physical activities like sports and games could concentrate better in their studies as compared to the children who spend most of their time with computer games or television.

Here is what physical fitness can bring in to our lives,

1. Keeps us healthy and fit.
2. Positively impacts our personality.
3. Increases our self confidence.
4. Certainly clears of all the stress and tension.
5. Brings in lots of clarity in thinking.
6. Provides more behavioral choices.
7. Increases our ability to handle stress.
8. Increases our endurance.
9. Makes us more flexible.
10. Gives better emotional stability.
11. ...
12. ... i am sure this list could go on and on.....!

Research have proved clearly that there is an obvious connection between the employee muscle and employee behavior. A study undertaken by Naval postgraduate school, gave organizations a better idea of what to expect from improved management and employee muscle. The results indicated the improved physical fitness can significantly affect the individual in terms of changes in personality and behavior. The changes also appear to have a significant positive effect on individual leadership traits.

Barack Obama, one of the very few fittest presidents usually starts his day in the gym. He says,

“I tend to be a healthy eater. So I probably could get away with cutting my workouts back a little bit. The main reason I do it is just to clear my head and relieve me of stress. It’s a great way to stay focused.”

One key thing to remember is, what ever we do, its all going to come back to us.

Thanks for visiting my page.

With Love,
Anbusivam

Congruent Living

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Welcome Anbusivam's Blog Page.

I am doing my DCS (Diploma in Counseling Skills) from Banjara Academy. Our teachers both Dr.Ali Khwaja and Raja Reddy are wonderful people. I really love and enjoy myself in this course with excellent classmates helping me to understand myself and others in a better way.

As a part of the course work we were out of Bangalore this weekend to Manthan, a six-acre farm located in Yelahanka (outskirts of Bangalore), belonging to the Banjara Academy serves as the venue for the many activities of the Academy. Manthan is an ideal weekend getaway in its wonderful serene surroundings. Two full days were all about "SelF AwarenesS".

I personally had a wonderful experience there, during the camp I could really get to know some of my unknown traits those are useful neither for me nor for anyone else. In fact those qualities in me were roadblocks to some extent in my interpersonal relations. So, having identified them I am gonna sincerely work on them to get rid of them to replace with some very useful qualities there in place. I did some soul searching there to identify few good qualities those will be certainly useful to me and in my interactions as well.

"Congruent Living" is the right phrase I would like to put in place for what I want in life. Carl Rogers originated the word the term congruence. For him congruence is only when our thoughts, feelings, emotions, values and behaviours are aligned in same direction. I always find meditation to be an excellent technique to strive towards congruence. I am sure this is helping me a lot in my never ending journey from the present real-self to the ideal-self.

Thanks for visiting my page.

With Love,
Anbusivam

Motivation from Special Children

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Welcome to Anbusivam's Blog Page.

Last Friday I had a great opportunity to visit Spastic Society of Karnataka, which is a special school for children with special needs. It was a part of my Counseling course and I was not even aware of the meaning of Spastics till I go there to see those wonderful children.

Yes, this school is mainly for children with Neuro-muscular disorders, Developmental and Learning Disabilities. All the teachers there are well trained special educators with lots and lots of care and empathy for those children. It was absolutely an amazing experience when we were taken to the classrooms. Those children seems to be enjoying and having a great time in their own world with their special school, special friends and special educators. Paradoxically I felt a huge pain and agony to see those innocent little ones in need of special care. Children were very happy to see us and they were well trained to handle thier basic physical needs and ettiquites by themselves. And the best part I observed is those children are highly helpful to eachother than the children we see in normal schools.

In spite of being differently-abled with special needs, I felt somehow the nature had given those little ones something more than what we all have and striving for. That something is Happiness. They are just laughing, giggling, smiling, talking, and playing all around with no big sorrow and worry on their disabilities. They also do some wonderful paintings, craft work, bakery products. We picked up some wonderful paintings and nice biscuits those were made by the children themselves.

The greatest Motivation I got from the visit is "When those children can be happy and enjoying life all the time, why can't we too...!!!"

Please, find out a special school near your place, do visit them, just spend some time with those little one's and help them as much as you can. I am sure you'll feel great and contented at the end of the day.

Thanks for Visiting My Page.

With Love,
Anbusivam

Power of Association and Dissociation.

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Welcome to Anbusivam's Blog Page.

Let's do a quick experiment before reading further. Think of two situations from your past, one pleasant and another unpleasant. Carefully notice when you recall those incidents, wether you relive them or just recall them as an observer. If you've relive them, experience the same emotions and feelings as if you are undergoing the same situation right now then you are fully associated with the incident. In case if you can objectively observe yourself going through the incident in the past then its clear that you are dissociated with the incident.

Now how does this association and dissociation helps us in our lives...???

Simple thumb rule I would prefer to follow is associate with positive or useful things in life and dissociate from the negative or not useful things in life. I think I've told this in one of my earlier posts as well. Few months ago I went to the hill station Ooty with few of my good friends. One of them had been to Ooty the previous year with her family,and they had a wonderful time spending there, enjoying with the nature. But, one unpleasant incident was, she had lost her gold ring in the lake. This time when we decided to go on a boat ride that particular friend was not at all ready to come with us, as she had closely associated that unpleasant memory of losing her ring in the same lake the previous year. Though she had so many other very pleasant memories from her previous visit, she has closely taken that incident to her heart and started reliving the same old incident right in front of us. We could see her literally going through the same experience she had when ring was lost. If she could have dissociated herself from that incident, she could have objectively thought about how to keep the valuables safe during such a boat ride and still enjoy and have fun in that beautiful lake and boat ride.

If you are seeing someone getting depressed, dejected very often, I am sure they dissociate from their positive experience and associate into the negative experience. Learning to choose when to associate and when to dissociate gives us a profound way of living our lives.

If we want to truly enjoy our lives, two basic principles to be followed:



1. Associate with the pleasant memories, so that we can relive that, relish the joy, enjoy all the happy and pleasant state of mind and use those positive attitudes for the success of our future.

2. Dissociate with the unpleasant memories. so that we can revisit that purely as an observer or onlooker, learn from it, correct our mistakes of the past and still use those learning for the success of future.


Thanks for visiting my page.

With Love,
Anbusivam

Leading Life in a Simple Way

Hello Friends,

Welcome to Anbusivam’s blog page.

These days, almost all my interactions and general talks ends up in the topics on increasing oil prices, rising commodity prices and rising inflation (This week's Indian inflation number is @ 11.36% hitting its 13year high). I am sure you too are hearing these talks everywhere in a bus, train, airport, mall, market and in all over the places.

Phew…!!! Companies are in to cost cutting mode. Finance managers are looking for reducing the operating costs in each and every corner, even to the extent of buying low cost toilet tissues.

Only way we individuals can cope with these kinds of situations is with “Voluntary Simplicity”. Voluntary simplicity comes from within. It is the only way of more sustainable human existence in this world. Voluntary simplicity is a matter of personal responsibility and conscious awareness of how we live on the planet. It means identifying the difference between our needs and our wants. Needs are those things that are necessary for our survival - food, clothing, and shelter. Wants are all the other things we desire and to a large extent are driven by media advertising. Simplicity as a life-style is the identifiable difference between needs and wants, and the awareness.

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. ~Hans Hofmann.

Practical Steps to Simplifying Our Life:

1. Get yourself with what you really need and not what you want.

2. Limit your buying habits. If we can escape materialism, we can easily get into the habit of buying less. And that will mean less stuff, less spending, less frustration.

3. Limit your media consumption, media advertisements dominates most of our buying decisions. Simplify your life and your information consumption by limiting it.

4. Learn to live frugally. Living frugally means buying less, wanting less, and leaving less of a footprint on the earth. It’s directly related to simplicity.

5. Before you buy something, write the item down on a note and if you still want it after a month, purchase it then.

6. Have a Buy Nothing Day.

7. Walk down or take out your bicycle to round the corner shopping.

8. Decide what is really working in your life and let go of that which no longer serves you.

9. Brew your own coffee at home instead of spending time and money in that posh café corner.

10. Find friends who know the glass is half-full or in other words, find friends who share the same value system as you do.

After all the above,

Always ask: Will this simplify my life? If the answer is no, reconsider.

Thanks for visiting my page.

With Love
Anbusivam

Choosing to be Happy :-)

Hello Friends.

Welcome to Anbusivam’s blog page.

Reading my previous post When I grow up! I want to be a little boy, one of friends was sharing his childhood days with me over a cup of coffee. I always feel great and wonderful seeing people talking their joyful days of young age.

(One of the best expressions I clicked recently)

Last night when I was pondering over various things, landed up there in that conversation I had with my friend. I deeply felt the joy and happiness of my early days, those blissful moments. But, when I look at my present life, I had a tough question, “Where is that happiness, which was there with me moment after moment???”

As grown ups, we wait for someone or something to make us happy. May be, easy going university teacher, no traffic jams way to work, always green stock market, never troubling children, ever understanding boss, pretty wife, rich mother-in-law, admiring friends, it goes on and on. The moment any of these is not coming the way we wish, then starts the trouble. We become the embodiment of all distressing emotions like hate, anger, and frustration.

As a child, what was our state of emotion? Is it not happiness always? I am sure we remember our young days, where in someone or something has to make us unhappy. Our siblings, friends, parents or teachers some one should make us unhappy, otherwise we are just happy jumping, running without any reason and playing always.

Now, I can hear you saying, Do you want me to be happy in spite of all the turmoil’s happening in my life..? Yes, life is never a bed of roses for any of us, and that’s why life is life. If we can understand that Happiness is nowhere else but it’s now here within us. When it is there with in, why wait for some to trigger it? We should takeover the control of turning it on ourselves. Something like an automatic water level controller in our homes, we’ve an enormous reserve of Happiness with in ourselves (Ground Sump), just by choosing to be Happy at any moment we want (Overhead Tank) we can automatically control our emotions (Electric Pump) to fill us with the Happiness.

A popular greeting card quote by Henry David Thoreau says:

“Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.”

Let’s Choose to be Happy and Yes, Being Happy is Our Birth Right.

Thanks for visiting my page.

With Love
Anbusivam

Standard of Life Vs Standard of Living

Hello Friends,

Welcome to Anbusivam’s blog page.

There are two most critical things in life, one is the “Standard of Life” and other is the “Standard of Living”. We human beings have done so many things to fix our external things so as to increase our standard of living and nothing has been done to understand the standard of life.

The irony to be noticed here is, as much as we do to increase our standard of living; so much is the trouble we create to our standard of life. I was happy when I had an old television without a remote control and now that tiny electronic hand held device goes below the couch or its batteries are exhausted or its keys are not working…..finally it brings in annoyance and makes me upset.

Oh...no, I am not advocating to stay with the old ones, the point I am want to make here is, we human beings should learn how to handle the external factors those were created only by us for our own external comfort. The very creation of these comfort facilities should not put us into a depressed and anxious state of mind.

Right at this moment our standard of our life does not depend on the house we’ve or the car we’ve parked outside or our bank balance. It’s solely based on “How Happy Are We…?” One could be a great millionaire but he may never be happy and one could be a homeless beggar but still he may feel delightful and absolutely happy in this world.

Let’s understand that, increasing out Standard of living makes our lives easier in this world, but it can never bring in happiness and joy forever. Increasing our Standard of Life is the only way we can be ultimately happy and blissful.

Swami Chinmayananda says:

“The material growth and prosperity raise the ‘standard of living,’ whereas the spiritual inner rehabilitation improves the ‘standard of life.’ Both the ‘standard of living’ and the ‘standard of life’ have to be equally developed and balanced in order that one may sail through life’s different challenges with ease, poise, comfort and cheer.

The ‘standard of living’ is like the mast of the ship. If it is to be high, the keel must be made deep and wide enough to prevent toppling and this depth of the keel measures the ‘standard of life.’

Thanks for visiting my page.

With Love
Anbusivam