To become a loving, positive person
                                                from  anwesha.mittra@indiatimes.co.in

It's one thing to wax eloquent on positivity, but quite another to be a positive person at heart.

Despite believing to have a positive outlook, we invariably weigh the cons first, consider several times before sparing a compliment, and broadcast only the odds when someone counts on us for advice. What's more, we prefer needless sarcasm for humour, manage a wry smile when something is genuinely funny, and believe deep down that the glass is actually half empty.

We live in denial of our inherent negativity for the most part, and often wonder why the world around is so mean and reckless. At work, we never fail telling our juniors how meeting deadlines can be a tough proposition, and not to think too 'out of the box' to impress the boss. In short, we never tire telling all concerned how tough things can be! Unlike dogs we may not be born eternal optimists, but positivity is something that can be imbibed even if a tad forcibly; such as by trying to tweak our sense of humour, the way we react to a given situation, by being more pleasant and believing others too have a mind, and by smiling each time somebody says 'thank you'.

While positivity is a state of mind, the answer lies in our perspective. Clinical psychologist and lifestyle advisor Dr S.K Sharma shares his ideas on how to be a positive person everyday.

Have the desire: First thing first, to become a positive person one must have a strong desire to be positive. And the desire will come only if you are convinced that becoming a positive person will enhance the quality of life. Positivity is like an aura, and you know you are a positive person when people start trusting you, random people become polite with you, colleagues at work start patronising you, and you start building rapport easily.

Be realistic: Do not try to become a saint. Becoming a positive person does not mean you can never have any negative emotion or encounter any negative situation. It is the overall attitude that matters. Don't get bogged down by failure, and disappointed when your expectations are not met. Mentally, you should always be calculating a way out of difficult situations come what may.

Experiment: Be a keen observer. Use everyday life incidents to see how you can manage them in a more positive manner. These will serve as perfect instances to turn your outlook more positive. For starters, contemplate how you could have better handled a situation by being less hostile and more indulgent. Come up with five ways that could have saved the day, and learn to take things at face value sometimes. Remember, your ability to trust the other person also reflects your genuineness.

Speech and body language: Try and make positive words a part of your daily lingo, and work on your body language in way that you come across as friendly and approachable. Look amused when something is amusing, laugh when something is funny, congratulate when someone's bought something new, and give others a chance to narrate their side of the story. Never think you are the only interesting, knowing one around.

Company: One way to becoming positive is to seek positive company as both positivity and negativity are infectious. If the people you spend most of your time with are grumpy or have a pessimistic standpoint, you'll find yourself mirroring the same emotions before a different set of people inadvertently. In order to inculcate positivity it is imperative that your friend circle is a positive, energetic, and a happy bunch. You'll find yourself carrying the same positivity everywhere you go.

Activities: Do not remain idle and brood. Take up positive activities with others or in isolation. Share a joke, narrate a pleasant incident, take part in sporting activities, go for a run in the evening after work, have healthy sex, and you'll find yourself bubbling with positive energy.

Take it easy: Everyday life is bound to give you shocks. Be prepared to minimise impact and shrug it off. For instance, you may get too hassled everyday while driving to work or trying to park your car. When you accept the fact that certain things cannot be changed, you'll be more at ease with yourself and those around too.

Learn yoga: Says yoga teacher and nutritionist, Abhilasha Kale, "Do pranayam everyday as it lets you focus and meditate. Not only does it secrete happy hormones but also creates a sense of awareness within you." With the help of yogic asanas you control your breathing, and by way of it, control your mind from wandering. Every time you do yoga, you feel a surge of positive energythrough your body that calms your nerves, soothes your mind, elevates your mood, and not to mention enhances your level of tolerance.

Maintain a diary: Instead of recounting all events of the day, filter out only the positive ones and make a note of them. It could be anything trivial from your bus arriving on time, your mom cooking a delicious breakfast, to remembering to pay the bills on time. When we look for positivity in the little things that make our lives worthwhile, we leave no room for negativity. "Try consciously practising this for 10 days, and at the end of day ten when you read your diary back you'll only have memories of all the good things that happened to you," she asserts.

Say 'thank you': Thank god, thank your parents, friends, and thank yourself for all the hard work you did, for everything you achieved. Says Abhilasha, "Saying thank you frequently makes you humble, and a humble person is seldom cynical."

Try these methods, and you'll be surprised when others notice the change in you.

WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND. . .

                                                          AN ACTUAL EVENT

One day a man saw an old lady, stranded on the side of the road, but even In the dim light of day, he could see she needed help. So he pulled up in front of her Mercedes and got out. His Pontiac was still sputtering when he approached her.

Even with the smile on his face, she was worried. No one had stopped to help for the last hour or so. Was he going to hurt her? He didn't look safe; he looked poor and hungry.

He could see that she was frightened, standing out there in the cold. He knew how she felt. It was that chill which only fear can put in you.

He said, 'I'm here to help you, ma'am. Why don't you wait in the car where it's warm? By the way, my name is Bryan Anderson.'

Well, all she had was a flat tire, but for an old lady, that was bad enough. Bryan crawled under the car looking for a place to put the jack, skinning his knuckles a time or two. Soon he was able to change the tire. But he had to get dirty and his hands hurt. As he was tightening up the lug nuts, she rolled down the window and began To talk to him. She told him that she was from St. Louis and was only just passing  through. She couldn't thank him enough for coming to her aid.

Bryan just smiled as he closed her trunk. The lady asked how much she owed him. Any amount would have been all right with her. She already imagined all the awful things that could have happened had he not stopped. Bryan never thought twice about being paid. This was not a job to him. This was helping someone in need, and God knows there were plenty, who had given him a hand in the past.

He told her that if she really wanted to pay him back, the next time she saw someone who needed help, she could give that person the assistance they needed, and Bryan added, 'And think of me.'

He waited until she started her car and drove off. It had been a cold and depressing day, but he felt good as he headed for home, disappearing into the twilight.

A few miles down the road the lady saw a small cafe. She went in to grab a bite to eat, and take the chill off before she made the last leg of her trip home. It was a dingy looking restaurant. Outside were two old gas pumps. The waitress came over and brought a clean towel to wipe her wet hair. She had a sweet smile, one that even being on her feet for the whole day couldn't erase. The lady noticed that the waitress was nearly eight months pregnant, but she never let the strain and aches change her attitude. The old lady wondered how someone who had so little could be so giving to a stranger. Then she remembered Bryan ..

After the lady finished her meal, she paid with a hundred dollar bill. The waitress quickly went to get change for her hundred dollar bill, but the old lady had slipped right out the door. She was gone by the time the waitress came back. The waitress wondered where the lady could be. Then she noticed something written on the napkin.

There were tears in her eyes when she read what the lady wrote: 'You don't owe me anything. I have been there too. Somebody once helped me out, the way I'm helping you. If you really want to pay me back, here is what you do: Do not let this chain of love end with you.'

Under the napkin were 4 more $100 bills.

Well, there were tables to clear, sugar bowls to fill, and people to serve, but the waitress made it through another day. That night when she got home from work and climbed into bed, she was thinking about the money and what the lady had written. How could the lady have known how much she and her

Husband needed it? With the baby due next month, it was going to be hard....

She knew how worried her husband was, and as he lay sleeping next to her, she gave him a soft kiss and whispered soft and low, 'Everything's going to be all right. I love you, Bryan Anderson.'

What I was not taught at College”

“What I was not taught at College”

A talk by Dr. A. Didar Singh to the St Stephen’s College Assembly
on Thursday, 11th August 2011

 It is a singular honor for me to be invited second year running to address College Assembly.

I entered government service 35 years ago this summer and will retire as Secretary to Government of India in a few months. Just as you are beginning the next chapter in your lives, so will I be.

On being asked to deliver today’s lecture by Principal Thampu, my initial thoughts were to share with you some lessons arising out of my recent postings that I have had in Government. During the last 10 years, I have been fortunate to have had some interesting assignments whilst posted in Delhi. In early 2000, as Joint- Secretary in the Ministry of Heavy Industries, I had a stint looking after Public Sector Undertakings. Subsequent to this, I was the Finance Member, of the National Highways Development Authority (NHAI) - an autonomous body with a budget of over Rs 30,000 crores per year, assigned with the task of building Indian highways. Finally, today as Secretary, Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, I am involved with the Indian Diaspora which is 25 million strong and spread across 190 countries. Therefore based on the knowledge I gained in the above postings, the subject of my talk today could have possibly covered any of the following 3 topics:

No.1      Relevance of State-Owned Enterprises in the 21st Century.

Or     

No. 2     Is Public Private Partnership in Infrastructure projects workable?

Or

No.3      Some recent trends in reverse-migration: Is it a blip or the beginning of the next phase of the India growth story?

Talking to a diverse audience such as the one present today, the aforesaid specialized topics would not have generated great interest. So the choice was to select a subject, perhaps arcane, that would keep your interest alive for some 15 minutes irrespective of your academic background. I also wanted to dwell on a subject which is not usually a topic of discussion in a school of further education.

The reflections that I shall share with you today are based on my experiences as I trudged along through the trials and tribulations of my daily life. In all humility, it would not have been possible to make my observations without my five years of education at this great institution which went a long way in honing my analytical skills. The chosen topic of my talk today ladies and gentlemen is –“What I was not taught at College”. I am therefore going to share with you some lessons that I learnt which hopefully you may find interesting. Let me begin from across the road. During my time here at College, and probably it is still the same, the only thing Hindu College offered better than St Stephen’s was the view across the road! Interaction with Hinduites was also frowned upon. They were like our perpetual rivals, especially in Cricket. Today, I spend my weekends with a reprobate from across the road playing golf – mostly as his partner. As life moves ahead, one’s narrow sphere of activity grows as do friends and possibly enemies. That is Lesson#1: There are no permanent enemies, provided of course that you have a forgiving nature and can learn to accept the frailties of non-Stephanians!

Five years in college, and school before that, meant growing up together with loads of pals at the most impressionable time in life. Irrespective of what influence those relationships must have had on me as a person, with the passage of time, I lost contact with some friends with whom I was very close. We all know that end of college is like an explosion where friends and colleagues step out to pursue different career paths. With the graying of life this loss of contact does usually turn into a matter of regret. That is Lesson#2: As you pursue different careers, continually communicate through mails/phone calls/Facebook whatever, to close the distance with your close friends from school and college. These are the buddies who will be with you throughout your life. To me success came rather easily and almost naturally, early in life. Good grades opened the doors at St Stephen’s, good teachers and peer pressure here made me sufficiently competitive to pass the IAS exam and enter what I thought was a steady and assured career. Until graduation I had never really handled adversity, which came in ample measure later on and took me by complete surprise. Not everything happens as you plan or hope for. Handling failure and disappointment requires a different set of skills. Remember that learning comes naturally. So do mistakes. So learn from your mistakes also. Father of our nation, the great Mahatma Gandhi, advised us by with the following famous words: “Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes”. And that takes me to

Lesson #3: For character building, it is good to take a few knocks early in life and become hardened, so that failures later in life can be handled with composure and poise.

Upon reflection, I feel that I have been privileged - received top class education, have a happy family and successful career as a public servant. You too, like me, are fortunate and blessed by joining the student fraternity of such a great institution - you have received a great break early on in life. That isLesson#4:- Count your blessings- a bright future awaits you.

Dr. Charles Eliot, a renowned professor at Harvard University was once asked, “How had Harvard gained its reputation as the greatest storehouse of knowledge?” His clever reply was “It is because the freshmen bring in so much of it and that the seniors take away so little of it”. That is so true of St Stephen’s College. I used to teach here and in my very first year out of some 60 students in my class – 1st year British History - 58 got first division and 2 had high second! Believe me, I had very little to do with it. It was all about you being the brightest and the best! The story however doesn’t end there. As the years progressed the grades of some of the brightest students came down. Maybe that is normal, yet not always expected.

Lesson#5: Even Gold can rust!
And that brings me to the last of the lessons I want to share with you. I always remember that great number from Pink Floyd called “Time”

‘And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking Racing around to come up behind you again The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older Shorter of breath and one day closer to death”

That is unfortunately one lesson, I did not learn. It is important to extricate yourself from your present and ponder over the irrelevance of today’s pursuits. Getting into St Stephens and the competitive world that will follow, a lot of you will focus only on maintaining your academic record. Such single-minded pursuit could deprive you some of the finer things in life. What I want to say to you is that while you’re about the paper chase business, make sure you - Get a life. Get a life in which you are sensitive and generous. Make sure you also look around at the flowers in the neighborhood park where you grew up, smell the dirt after the first rain, get drenched in the monsoon. Pick up new hobbies, new books, new ideas. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. That is Lesson #6: Live a full life. In fact live many lives together. We all actually do. Our family life; our student or academic life; our careers and professional life; our fun, entertainment and party life! All these lives can only be lived in the full through optimizing priorities and time management.

So here is what I will end with:

Don't ever confuse your life and your work. The second is only part of the first. And don’t forget the famous words: "If you win the rat race, you're still a rat." Or what John Lennon wrote before he was gunned down in the driveway of the Dakota building in New York City in 1980. "Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans."

Cheers and have a good morning.