Patience versus Impatience – whose side are you on?

       

     With majority of my loved ones belonging to the team called ‘Patience’, and very few with me on the side of ‘Impatience’, exploring this topic and wondering about the thought appeared extremely exciting. A father who appears as the undisputed captain of this team for several years now and an elder sister who is following him closely, my immense love for impatience and absolute affection towards haste prevented me from joining their peaceful influence. 

     While entire childhood was spent in convincing them about the benefits of impatience and devising ways to avoid their part of the story, marital union with much larger fan of the ‘Patience’ team has brought life to a full circle! As I exhibit my impatience yet again, and deal with peaceful people all around, this thought deserved adequate attention.

     Though I believe in the strength of peace, calmness, silence and maturity, immense patience towards every aspect in life is certainly impossible. While staying patient showers its own set of fruitful aspects, eagerness to accomplish a task or haste to complete a job can drive one towards the path of impatience. As major decisions in this journey called ‘life’ demand patience, understanding, willingness and preparation, our attitude of impatience can influence the outcome. Though hard work, efforts, dedication and practice are necessary inputs from our end; patience and trust for its completion are extremely essential too. As circumstances or situations may change their color at any moment, patience is the only shade that never chooses to leave.

      Patience imparts maturity to our character, offering enough time to think, contemplate, analyze and decide. While patience resembles a slow track that experiences every bit of the journey, impatience is the express route with tendency to over-speed. Impatience can never yield any desirable outcome as it clashes with the need for analysis. Be it a domestic activity or a workplace role, be it a leisurely adventure or a significant task, every domain of our life can be influenced by this attitude of impatience. By offering more time, aspect of patience ensures careful judgement. Belief in inner self and trust in one’s efforts fuel the successful journey of a patient individual. By investing more resources towards completion of a project, players of the patient team ensure success, satisfaction, happiness and content.

   Though impatience may sound as the villain of this story, my affection towards it certainly demands some justification. While I will never encourage anyone to incorporate this element in their own conduct, I was prompted to look at its brighter side. Impatience demands planning, fast execution, quick responses and quicker actions. Not relying on silence and stability, impatient conduct forces one to be on the toes. While this attitude has forced me to always stay prepared for several hours in advance, haste towards accomplishment and impatience towards completion have certainly acted as my best friends throughout!

    Striking a perfect balance between both these teams may prove beneficial. While some big decisions in life demand all possible investment of patience, certain time-sensitive acts may prompt the involvement of impatience.

    So, while you are still pondering about which side you have chosen finally, let me introduce you to the highlights of each team (this can make your decision process simpler)

Team A: PATIENCE

Highlights:

·         Involve themselves in thinking, contemplating, analyzing before framing a final decision

·         Silent, cheerful, happy and peaceful conduct

·         Belief and trust in self, confidence to achieve success

·         Realize the value of time and wait for it to spread its charm

·         Prevent panic, chaos, last moment confusion and invest in silent thinking

·         Look forward to the final outcome, yet enjoy every moment of the long journey

·         Make priorities according to the significance of every task

Team B: IMPATIENCE

Highlights:

·         Believe in quick actions and fast responses

·         Hope for immediate answers towards every query

·         Respect time and prepare well in advance

·         Stay away from deep thinking and invest in practical execution

·         Always equipped for action, while planning and packing in haste

·         Consider analysis as waste of time, trust in the power of trials and retrials.

        While it is impossible to wear patience or impatience as the only outfit for every occasion, it is essential to adopt a flexible approach and an understanding attitude. Adopting essence of patience can benefit in the long run as every task in the future may appear as peaceful and satisfying.

  So whether you choose to advocate patience or promote impatience; enjoy their influence, after all life is about trials, errors, experiments and retrials, over and over again!

Loving yourself

      

      Right from the moment we take birth in our mother’s womb, a strong bond of connection begins. What starts off as the first experience of love, enters into various molds as we move along the journey called life. From parents’ love to siblings’ attachment, from equation with relatives to network of friends, the magnitude of love increases by multiple folds along the path. While new relations develop with passing time, newer titles get added into our plot, showering more doses of unconditional love. A never ending supply that continuous right till the end, several new relations of spouse, children and grandchildren bring their own unique stock of love.

    While we are taught to respect, nurture, retain and enrich love in the form of these relations, essential chapters about loving ourselves are often deleted from the curriculum. As the blogger in me hunts for inspiration, creativity, motivation and purpose, I realized the relevance of this aspect in every area of life. 

     In the crucial, challenging, adventurous and difficult course of our story, we tend to ignore the essential task of loving our own selves. While fulfilling responsibilities, performing duties, maintaining relationships and valuing our loved ones, we exhaust all our time, energy, resources and interest. With this, as we enter into the continuous cycle of life, we are not able to include the phase of loving ourselves.

    Though loving ourselves seems to be the easiest action on earth, it is the most commonly ignored, forgotten, misinterpreted and assumed activity by each one of us. While we invest numerous efforts and lace them with dedication, devotion, trust and care for our loved ones, we fail to replicate it for our side of the story. Loving ourselves is not a complicated project that demands preparation, skills, plans and analysis, all it needs is strong will towards execution.

     Misinterpreted as a selfish involvement, loving ourselves is often correlated with incorrect behavior. Spending quality time with self, engaging in enjoyable activities, nurturing hidden talent and introspecting our route towards destination are beneficial factors that deserve our attention. Though taking care of inner mind and strengthening it with desired elements demand contribution from our end, balancing it with our worldly affairs is the key to success. Excess weight-age to one relation alone or excessive involvement into ourselves always can perform more harm than good.

    So, whether I have convinced you to love yourself in a novel way or whether I have voiced your belief through the blogger’s way, let us look at some of the means to love ourselves. After all, ideas give rise to possibilities and suggestions give way to improvements.

1.       Engage in ‘me’ time

Dedicated session for our hobbies, creative tasks, leisure, relaxation, physical fitness or enjoyment, spending ‘me’ time every day is extremely essential. While it may last for couple of few minutes or few hours, designing activities for ourselves offer lot of advantages.

Do not compromise that 10 minutes meditation or prayer session for some commitment outside, after all ‘me’ time is the ‘most essential’ time.

2.       Introspect and inspect

Thoughts and ideas play an important role in our development. Thinking about our future while drawing lessons from past can work wonders, this makes it essential to engage in introspection as a means to understand ourselves.

Talk to your mind as your best friend for life.

3.       Work for your own happiness

Happiness is a choice to be made by ourselves. Involving into tasks of interest and passion can color the canvas of our future. Drawing happiness from our own efforts offer the pure taste of joy, depending on others for content and love can lead to disappointment.

Indulge into your favorite food or enjoy your most loved movie.

4.       Break conventions, think out of the box!

While loving ourselves, engaging in novel fun-filled activities that are not followed by others or not recommended by the so-called society is absolutely perfect. Practicing our passion for dance, music, arts or any form can nurture love for ourselves.

March towards progress from a bathroom singer to a stage performer or dance like no one is watching, after all thinking out of the box is the first step towards loving yourself.

5.       Appreciate and pamper yourself

Though self-pompous nature is absolutely incorrect by all means, appreciating ourselves for hard work and success can motivate us towards further course of action. Occasional pampering with our favorite activities can energize us for the journey ahead.

 Pat your back or clap for yourself, as you are your best possible critic ever.

        Hope these few suggestions can ignite your thoughts about loving yourself.  Love yourself and spread the love, after all you are the dearest member of your own club!

What is ‘ideal’ about ‘ideal’?

       Perfect, excellent, flawless, error-proof – while these terms point to the state of being ‘ideal’, achieving this position or reaching up to the mark demands great efforts and a determined attitude. Be it any field or any situation, an ideal outcome is the most desired aspect for every individual. An abstract idea that cannot be defined, an imaginative desire that cannot be specified, it is extremely difficult to frame the guidelines of the word ‘ideal’. With unique priorities that govern our lives and diverse opinions that decorate our personalities, it is certainly impossible to throw light on a universal aspect of an ‘ideal’ life.

  

    While looking at the diverse lifestyles of individuals around us, we often ponder about their experiences, feelings, thoughts and ambitions. Realization of the thought that the grass on the other side is always green fueled this post as an attempt to understand the reality of the ‘ideal’ term. As every aspect in life is laced with its own highlights and lowlights, it is difficult to confer it with the tag of ‘ideal’. 

    

     Be it a career choice or a city to settle down, be it an asset of high value or a long-term significant decision, every factor of our life forces us to think about its advantages and disadvantages. While declaring something as ‘ideal’ and enforcing it on ourselves or loves ones around us can never yield any positive outcome, weighing our options against the theme of possibilities turns out to be the most correct way in the long run.

     As uncertainties and changing circumstances choose to cast their spell at unexpected moments, deciding an ideal game plan for several years into the future may not be the most ‘ideal’ task in the present. With great diversities in our mindset, beliefs, desires and dreams, showering ‘ideal’ flavors on every aspect is certainly impossible. As no two individuals are alike, labeling one’s condition as ‘ideal’ while comparing it against that of the other is truly an incorrect way of declaring a winner. 

      While any race or competition demands judgement against equal parameters, this game called ‘ideal’ does not match any of those conditions. An ideal situation for one may turn out to be the most undesirable thought for the other or an unacceptable aspect for one may wear the hat of ‘ideal’ opportunity for the other. A plot dominated with different characters and following a novel storyline, equating our stories with those around us can never give any constructive feedback.

      Though motivation for magnified happiness and amplified satisfaction powers our efforts towards consistent hard work, it is necessary to realize that the controls of our joy and content lie within our own scope. Impossible hunt of an ‘ideal’ experience or impossible quest for an ‘ideal’ condition can prompt us to move away from our goal. While marching towards the unrealistic end point of ‘ideal’, we may sacrifice the enjoyment, fun, adventures and experiences of the moment. Resembling a mirage that disappears as we move closer to it, an ‘ideal’ factor does just the same!

      Though at the end, we all realize that what is ‘ideal’ about ‘ideal’ is an impossible question by all means, dreaming about an ‘ideal’ life in an ‘ideal’ location, with ‘ideal’ people and ‘ideal’ resources is nothing less than a wonderful task. While imagining the presence of ‘ideal’ aspects all around and hoping for their consistent magic, this word does seem to hold some significance in one way or the other.

 What are the most common ideal parameters we all can think about?

Let us look at them, not with aim to declare them as ‘ideal’, but to explore the fun behind our typical thought-process!

1.       ‘Ideal’ family – Cool parents, cooler grandparents, extremely peaceful siblings, spouse who always praises and kids who always listen!

(Come back to reality, do not forget it is ‘ideal’ not ‘real’!!)

2.       ‘Ideal’ stream of education – Easy curriculum, much easier exams, insignificant assignments, lenient teachers and no grades.

(Hope my teachers are not reading this!)

3.       ‘Ideal’ job – invisible deadlines, loads of salary, frequent vacations and boss who is ‘out-of-office’ forever.

(Kind attention to all the HR teams, kindly note the above requirements to sustain your employees!)

4.       ‘Ideal’ house – marginal

EMI of loan, no down-payment, large area with lawn, back yard, front yard and numerous rooms to hide into! 

(Even half of this is too good to be true)

5.       ‘Ideal’ vacations – minimum travel, maximum adventures, world-wide trips to greet every town, village, city and country on the globe for longer duration.  

(Dear Husband, these are some of the achievable assignments for you)

6.       ‘Ideal’ food – light on calories, delicious (oily, spicy, tasty, sugary) yet healthy, low on cost but high on satisfaction.

(Probably the most desired and common ‘ideal’ aspect for all)

 While these thoughts were framed with the sole purpose of taking us towards humor and lighter sides of life, how ‘ideal’ is ‘ideal’ is an abstract fodder for the mind.

Explore the various experiences, offerings, situations and adventures, while enjoying their imperfectness and uncertainties; after all the theme of ‘ideal’ runs in our imagination, but feel of ‘real’ materializes in our present. 

While somewhere between ‘developing’ and ‘developed’…..

       

        With roots in a home country that is marching aggressively towards the transition from ‘developing’ to ‘developed’; and branches in the current residence that wears the hat of a ‘developed’ nation; witnessing the conduct of each of these two diverse experiences has been truly educational and interesting at the same time. While the word ‘developing’ represents an on-going process, ‘developed’ status relates to its completion that depicts stability. Though the start of this post speaks about countries, their incorporation is purely symbolic. With an aim to ponder about the growing benefits of a ‘developing’ status and satisfaction of a ‘developed’ achievement, this blog was the end product of such a contemplation.

      Be it any sphere of life, developing mode prompts us to work hard every passing day. As an inspiration to reach the developed mark, this hard work motivates us to sow innumerable efforts. Transition from developing to developed assures us of correct movement in a correct direction. It acts as a torchlight that can provide guidelines for the correct route. ‘Developing’ to ‘developed’ is a process that demands consistent efforts, dedicated commitment and devoted approach. Faith towards completion of task in hand is the only fuel that can power this difficult transition. While developed status can invite laziness, developing mode cannot afford halts, stops or withdrawals.

     The move from ‘developing’ to ‘developed’ can relate to our education, profession, family and assets. In the continuous journey called life, every task demands our attention and presence. When one step of education is crossed, we find ourselves on the next step of career. When career and family appear to be in place, ‘assets’ call for our attention. As we move from the developing to developed phase in each of these acts of life, we realize the significance of persistence, patience, positivity and practice. As soon as one achievement changes the title of domain from developing to developed, the next domain waits for its turn. Continuous cycle of development towards the final destination is the factor that keeps one going.

     While somewhere between developing and developed, we experience several dynamic changes all around. Changes that offer diverse sights, changes that provide novel adventures - they pump energy and enthusiasm into our system. By adopting a different look each time, the path of progress appears interesting. As developing nations strive towards innovative ideas to gain a developed position, they are able to invite exciting changes and witness remarkable improvements. While developed nation celebrates the same pattern for several years from past to the future, developing nations are able to experiment, explore and execute. 

    

    Though the journey from developing to developed station seems interesting, new and exciting, it is necessary to alight at the correct destination. As we cannot spend all our lives along routes and paths, celebrating our successful arrival at the desired location is extremely satisfying.

      An on-going process that is filled with uncertainties, difficulties, challenges yet exciting experiences, this development is truly wonderful. No matter it relates to which particular sector of life, the development trail showers similar experiences throughout. Be it a professional skill that demands development or a hobby that requires involvement, be it a talent that requires improvement or a fun-filled activity that desires engagement, every part of our life is influenced by the stages of under-development to complete development. The journey offers gems of excitement, entertainment and fulfillment. 

     As the next step towards this thought, l was tempted to pen down the advantages of both the ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ mode, while we relate them with our own experiences.

Sugar coated highlights of the ‘developing’ stage:

·         It inspires us to work hard, show consistent efforts and possess the willingness to grow.

·         By channeling our thoughts towards progress, it takes us towards continuous improvement

·         While moving towards development, this mode encourages us to never give up. Though the path may appear difficult, the thought of bagging a ‘developed’ status inspires us to stay determined.

·         By lacing us with a humble attitude, down-to-earth conduct and considerate behavior, this stage prompts us to help each other, seek guidance from one another and benefit from experienced advice.

·         It offers the true taste of our efforts, while showing us the magic of determination, devotion and dedication.

 

Honey- flavored highlights of the ‘developed’ stage:

                           

·      Developed stage fills our heart with pride, satisfaction, content and happiness.

·      It acts as the wining trophy of our hard work and commitment.

·      It can pose as an example for those around us, displaying the significance of consistent work.

·      Developed mode can guide us to begin the next assignment with enhanced levels of vigor and preparation.

·      Successful encounter with the developed stage can boast our confidence and enable new experiments for the next experience.

       These are the sweet flavors of both the developing and developed modes as each one is essential in our version of the story.

      Focus at the start of the developing mode, enjoy the transition and rejoice at the developed achievement – after all life shows its true colors while somewhere between ‘developing’ and ‘developed’!