Power of Aiming High

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Welcome to Anbusivam's Blog Page.

Few weeks back I got a mail on Bangalore Sunfeast Marathon and I decided to take part in that. When I had to choose between 2 options I went ahead with the second one. First was to run 5.7km Majja Run and second was to 10km in Open 10K Run. When couple of my friends insisted to join them on Majja Run, I was interested only in 10km run. At that time I was not very sure if I would be able to complete 10km with some of my irregular running experiences. I had my own apprehensions and self doubts, but something inside me pushed towards 10km.  I was also fully aware that its going to be a big task for me with the limited time available to train from then.

The important point to note here is, if I had taken up 5.7km run then I am sure all my trainings these days would not have crossed even 3km. Now with my enrollment into 10km run, all I see in front of me is "How am I gonna complete 10k...?". Obviously when my target is 10km, running more than 5km every day seems to be too less for me. I am pushing myself to reach atleast 8km this week and then to hit my target of 10km on the Race day i.e coming Sunday, 31st May 2009.

When I was thinking on this simple experience in my life, I realised that keeping a greater goal and aiming high will always make us reach greater heights than having some mediocre goals in life just for the sake of having it. I have a great hope on myself that I will be able to complete this 10km run. I don't have any timing targets, all I want is to complete 10km run successfully. That would surely give me lots and lots of confidence to take up much higher goals. 

I sincerely think this "Power of Aiming High" works pretty well in almost all areas of our lives. What's the worst thing than can happen in aiming high...? may be we will not meet our aim or target. But at the end what we have accompolished would be surely much more than what we could have otherwise.

Would you like to share some great acheivements in your life with this wonderful "Power of Aiming High".

Thanks for visiting my page.

With Love

Anbusivam

P.S: I'll let you know my run details this Sunday evening.

Attitude + Action = Achievement

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Welcome to Anbusivam's Page.

Attitude, with Action is everything……and that’s what I’ve learnt last week from a simple person at our office gym.

We had a trainer in our office gym form “FitnessOne”, a city based fitness centre till last month. This man whose name I don’t want to mention, no doubt was physically fit to be a gym trainer. But, his attitude I am sure was not very useful either to himself or to us the gym users. He used to come down to our office every evening at 4.00pm till 7.00pm. He was least bothered about who is coming in there and what people are doing inside. He just comes and will sit on the chair, would just relax watching people working out in the gym. When some of us voluntarily started talking to him, he only talked about the money he earns by training people individually in the city centre where he worked in mornings. He never used to help or guide us; instead he will not even answer properly when any of us ask about the way of doing some exercise. Once when I asked about the usage of cross ramps, he gave me some answer and added that he’ll charge so much of money for individual training in his centre. He also had an attitude of looking us at someone who is using our office gym facility free of cost as if he is running our office. Fortunately end of last month he just vanished off and we got a new trainer from FitnessOne in the interim only for a month.

This gentleman is Bala, from whom I learned attitude and action are two key things of achievements in life. Bala would quietly come in and would do nothing for first days except looking keenly on to the entry register, figuring out are coming regularly to the gym. Slowly he started voluntarily coming down to the users and correct their mistakes while exercising. He would tell this is not the way to this particular exercise, what would be the issues if done wrong, will also teach them what is the right way of doing that and benefits of that as well. Slowly people building trust on him, and he started concentrating personally on almost every one helping them to chalk out a weekly workout plan. Yesterday he called me to teach some specific abdomen exercises as his interim period of one month is coming to an end by next week. He wanted me to learn them properly before he leaves us. We’ve requested FitnessOne to post Bala as a permanent trainer in our office gym and waiting for their reply.

Bala could have taken his role as a trainer very lightly as done by our previous guy as he is going to be here only for a month. But he had chosen to take it seriously and sincerely. He was so simple, straight forward and down to earth with us. His wonderful positive attitude along with his committed action gained all our trust and support for him. I think this is his great achievement.

Attitude + Action = Achievement

Thanks for visiting my page.

With Love,
Anbusivam

Prolific Power of Anger

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Welcome to Anbusivam's Blog Page.

In most of my counselling sessions I find people, either unable to identify or totally unaware of their own feelings and emotions. I wonder how will they be able to relate themselves with their family and friends, being ignorant of one's own emotions. One of the key emotions that dominate us more than often is "Anger". People say "I shouldn't be getting angry at all", once a young boy told me "My parents should suddenly forget that there is an emotion called anger", one girl student said in a workshop "One thing I want to get rid off is, my anger". Most of us strongly believe that anger is a negative emotion and is to be suppressed. We tend to hide it from others and from ourselves too. I remember my childhood when I was clearly told not to get angry when elders are there around. I was even told getting angry is a worst thing a child can do and for many years I believed that, neither it is good get angry nor it is good to express my anger..

Do you think anger is such a dangerous and unwanted emotion that is to be totally get ridden off...? Remember last time when you were angry...?

I surely don't think so. Anger is one of the core emotions that is of most necessary to the man kind. All the problems we see around are not because of anger or getting angry, but only because of the way we express our anger.

Can you think of the ways you would choose to express your anger..? What do you do when you are really fired up...? what do say when you are fuming in anger on anyone or anything...? what would be the reaction of your friends and family around...?

Anger, not handled properly may lead to dangerous consequences like verbal/physical abuse, road rage, aggressive behaviours, threat to life, mental depression and so on. Yes, in some extreme cases anger could be totally destructive and irreversible, to the extent of murder. We all know that anger is such a powerful emotion that can reach its peak in spur of a moment within no time. Most often anger comes out with an outburst of enormous energy, which is generally expressed in a not very useful way either to us or others.

I think the best way to handle anger in a more efficient manner is to deeply understand the way it is triggered up in us and how do we express that. It's important to divert that outburst of energy in to a more productive and useful one.

Here are a few steps to make the best use of the Prolific Power of Anger.

1. First and foremost, accept and acknowledge that you are angry, when ever you are.


2. Learn the truth that, anger is a most common human emotion and indeed its good to get angry being a normal human being.


3. Introspect to identify you own anger spots (identifying everything that can trigger anger in you, by looking back into your own past when ever you were angry)


4. Think from an objective point of view, what are the ways you've been expressing anger in all these years from your childhood till now.


5. Evaluate them, are those ways of expressing anger is really useful or do you really feel sorry and regret for what you have done...?


6. Think of what could be the alternate ways and means that your anger could be expressed with out any harm to you or others around...?


7. Think of how can be the energy outburst diverted into a positive, more useful purpose of getting things done in a diplomatic way...?


8. Learn to express your anger in a very calm, yet aggressive manner without loosing your temper, while holding the ability to stay with your rationale thinking.

Anger, is an excellent emotion nature has given to the man kind. It sometimes protects us, helps us in making decisions, it gets things done, comes handy to make our point and many more.

Anger is always a good emotion to have, if we know how to express it and handle it effectively. Go ahead, Get Angry.

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

Mind and Its Training

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Welcome to Anbusivam's blog page.

Mind, is a product of the impressions we have gathered so far in our lives, from the beginning onwards to date. Goaded by these impressions, an irresistible mind, wild and surging, drives us endlessly crazy. Only with thorough knowledge of the strategies of the mind and a full control of ourselves, we can hold the mind back to the point of concentration.

In one sense training the mind is to train it to behave. It is like catching a wild horse and turning it into a circus horse to do feats to order. How is it done?

Swami Vivekananda teaches:

Before we control the mind we must study it. The easiest way to get hold of the mind is to sit quiet and let it drift where it will for a while. Make no effort to control the thoughts, but watch them as a calm lake stretched before you and the thoughts come and go as bubbles rising and breaking on its surface. This will gradually lessen the circle of thoughts. We shall be surprised to see, when we begin this practice, how many hideous thoughts will come to our mind. As the practice continues the turbulence of the mind may increase at times, but with our sincere efforts the mind will become a circus horse.

Buddha teaches:

Nothing is more exhausting than a wrestling mind. Meditation is the only way to calm down one’s mind. By training the mind “we can transform the way we think, speak and act”. Mind training is not mere calming the thoughts; it is a way of going beyond to experience one’s innate natural self and radiance.

Let’s identify a meditation technique that is best suitable for us, purse it earnestly to Let Mind Run The Body.

Thanks for visiting my page.

With Love
Anbusivam

Let Mind Run The Body

Hello Friends,

Welcome to Anbusivam's blog page.

This morning, I went out in the streets of Indiranagar. Yes, I haven’t run long-stretch for a fairly long time. When I started last weekend, I wasn’t able to complete my full target of 1hr on the roads, but today I could do it. Yes, I did.

When I sat back relaxed to give it a thought, I realised that, I could achieve that only because of the Mind Training I did last night about the morning’s long run.

Mind Training…??? What’s that…???

Simple, it is some thing like preparing little ones for school. Yes, indeed lots of preparation happen much before a child goes to school. Parents enthrall their children with interesting stories and create pleasant fantasies in the young minds about school, new friends, play ground, sing, dance and learn. When an impression that, “Going to school and learning is fun” is created, then the child’s self confidence and motivation level ascends and now, the child starts waiting eagerly for the first day at school.

Likewise, training our mind becomes essential when we are running towards greater dreams and goals in life.

When mind and body are not completely aligned into one single goal or mission, most of the time body takes control. This is what happened in my previous weekend; my body was running the mind. Body is least interested in stretch targets, it’s more comfortable in accepting something less than what it is capable of without any pain involved.

But, this weekend it’s the other way. Mind was running the body. Hence I was able to complete my stretch target. Surprisingly I noticed that, mind sincerely listens to the body as well and adjusts its pace accordingly without stretching the body too much.

All this is because of Mind Training I did the previous night.

The empires of the futures are the empires of the mind.

- Winston Churchill

Ok, let's talk about how to do "Mind Training" in my next post

Thanks for visiting my page.

With Love
Anbusivam