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15 Jul

Starting Afresh

We may face a terrifying experience at any time of our life. When the memory haunts you even though it has become a little dull, give yourself a week, and start afresh. Here are some practical tips on rebuilding and moving on…..

  • Doing familiar things: After a terrible experience, avoid learning something new for some time. You may not be able to cope with what happened, so just go back to an old hobby or habit and spend time with yourself.
  • Meeting people: While in the middle of the terrible experience, you have learnt who are empathetic and sympathetic to you. Thank people for their support and spend more time with them.
  • Dealing with haunting memories: Avoid retelling your sad story amongst those who have supported you- they already know it. Try out online support groups, but cautiously.
  • Visit your Inner Child: Let the innocent you blossom out. There are several Inner Child meditations on the internet. There may be so many things you wanted to do, do them now.
  • Take up short duration challenges: For example, 5 minutes of exercise or drawing or writing for 3 days. Take a break for 2 days. Make your challenge longer. Give yourself simple rewards that bring back sweet memories at the end of a challenge.

 

  • Journal your struggle: Going back to a journal of a week ago will help you realize that things have gotten better in some ways at least. Every month, use colored markers and choose which aspects you want to tell a specific person. Has that person already supported you? Does that person really need to do more for you?
  • Understand Thinking and Overthinking: The terrible experience is over for now. It may return. The future is uncertain. But, for the next few minutes, it is not happening. Do you want to take up a 5-minute challenge and journal? Every time the panic attack or the loop in the mind starts, go to the chart and see what else you can do today. Reassess your chart every month.
  • Internet Time: Monitor the amount of time you spend on the internet. Block and Unfollow people and topics that trigger your disequilibrium.
  • Spend time with Nature: Even the smallest apartment house has place for a methi plant to grow in a container. Stop to scratch a tree or look at the colors of flowers in a neighbor’s garden. Watch life grow in front of your eyes.
  • Sense of Humour: If it means that you have to dedicate 15 minutes daily to Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Tom and Jerry or Khushwant Singh jokes, do it. Relearn how to smile effortlessly.

Starting afresh is a journey of reconnecting with yourself. Enjoy it.

– Lathashree Ks

Banjara Academy

 

Every baby and small child has an innate desire and curiosity to explore, learn and acquire skills. 

Adults find it so difficult to hold back toddlers who wish to move around all over the place and investigate everything within their reach. They use all their senses to see, listen, touch, taste & smell whatever they come across.

As the child grows older, he is sent to school to get ‘educated’, but all his motivation and desire to learn reduces.  He then has to be forced to listen to the teacher, take notes, do calculations, complete his homework, and ‘mug up’ for exams. Is it the fault of the student, or is it the fault of all of us adults who kill the curiosity and the joy of learning?

Instead of blaming the system or authorities, each one of us can, and should, do our bit to rekindle the spark of learning in any child we interact with, and send him off on a path of growth to become a capable adult.

It’s not difficult.

We can be rightfully proud of ourselves

Patients treated in American hospitals have lower death rates if they are treated by doctors who were trained in foreign countries than at American universities – and these foreign doctors include many from India.  This was the result of a survey done by Harvard University, covering as many as 1.2 million elderly patients.

In the US, international medical graduates are mostly from India, the Philippines, and Pakistan.

The study questions the perception that some people may have that the quality of care provided by international graduates may not be on par with US- trained doctors. “America has a history of attracting the best and brightest from around the world and that appears to be true in medicine as well. We hope that we are able to maintain that openness because the biggest beneficiaries of these doctors coming to the US have been the American people” said senior author Ashish Jha, and I do hope Mr. Donald Trump is listening.

 

Bilingual Advantage

Those of you who feel burdened because you need to study two or more languages, let us see some advantages of being bilingual:

Overall, the bilingual outperformed the monolingual speakers on memory tests. Bilingual people were also on an average five years older than the monolingual participants.

Bilingual people tend to have better functional connectivity in frontal brain regions which helps them maintain better thinking skills and withstand the damages to the brain. Constantly switching between different languages causes structural brain changes creating a “neural reserve” that helps bilingual people resist mental deterioration.

Bilingual people also have better ‘neural compensation’—the brain looks for alternative pathways to help maintain thinking skills and compensate for the loss of brain structure that comes with aging.

Speaking 2 or more languages may slow down mental decline and eventually help you keep away from dementia, one of the worst things that can happen to you in old age, for which there is no cure.

 

Gratitude is a wonderful habit that can enrich your life significantly.

It is not the same as Thankfulness. We can be thankful for something that we wanted and received, and hence we desire to have more.

When we develop Gratitude, we are thankful for something we received without wanting, expecting or anticipating – and we feel a sense of fulfilment without desiring more.

It makes you feel happy, positive, and helps you overcome failures or disappointed.  You can even have gratitude towards those who treated you badly, because you became strengthened by their behaviour.  You can learn from failures. You feel connected to everyone around you – and you will never experience loneliness. Learn to look at only the good side of people around you.

Just start off with making a journal of all that you received as blessings or gestures or gifts every day…. And read the journal periodically.