Being Happy In Life III

 In my previous articles of Being Happy In Life I (https://chhayashinde.blogspot.com/2016/10/being-happy-in-life.html) and Being Happy In Life II (https://chhayashinde.blogspot.com/2025/02/being-happy-in-life-ii.html) I have discussed certain things about being happy in life as how the childhood brought up help us to make our nature, the habit of looking at the positive things in every negative situation help us to learn something new from the situation. 

In article Being Happy In Life II I have discussed some more things which really help us to create a happy life for us like Having Realistic Goals In life and Being Honest to Yourself. 

Now continuing to this i will discuss some more thing which help us to sustain happniess in human life:

1. Developing an Happy Temperament:

It is very important to have happy go lucky outlook towards life. In the previous times the general belief was the more serious the face the more intelligent and wise the person is. So in most of the photos we used to see those people were looking serious. But I believe the seriousness, intelligence and the wisdom doesn't have as such connection with it. Seriousness on face could be just a form of facial expression that some people born with serious face or some with happy face. Sometimes we find that some serious looking people are quite dumb and some happy looking people are extremely wise. Timely i understood that the more intelligent and truly wise the person is the more that person understands to stay happy in life. In short the importance of happniess in life. But it is not like this that the happiness task can be completed in one day only. One can't develop such  temperament in one day and retain the happy state of mind. We need to develop such temperament by working on us continuously for a longer time. Staying happy always doesn't mean you should be laughing everywhere but a pleasant and enthusiastic mind is important. 

The roots of such temperament is in childhood. A child is like an earthen ball. How the parents, teachers and the surrounding circumstances mould it, it becomes like that. A child should be loved a lot in the family. Children should be taught discipline till 6 years of their age because during that time they are still copying the habits, actions from elders and the people around them. The anti bodies get developed in the child till 12 years of their age. When the child grows up these anti bodies later protect that person from any external physical or emotional attack then the sternum bone vibrates and sends such signals to the body. A child who gets lot of love in the family when grows up becomes the sweet person in the society and become truly likeable in the society. A child who is brought up properly without any insecurity or lack of  love develops a secure heart in himself/herself. It means irrespective of the child is from poor or rich family it is expected to get love and good pampering from parents. Such child when grow up understands the difference between what is to fear and what is not to fear in life. It helps the child to develop a fearless heart too. It is important to teach the children the importance of ethics in life. Livingly ethical life is a way to true happiness in life. Which i see missing these days and out of this only the child when grows up in a man/woman compromises the ethics to 'What's wrong?' to pamper their ego. And then this What's wrong turns then into a horrible handling for that person, which leads to one type of continuous unhappiness in them. Constant communication of parents or parent with the children helps a lot in this process so teach them importance of ethics, morals and not to follow silly trends . It helps the child to develop an ethical life. Constant communication of parents or parent with children lead them to become sensitive to the other's problems as well as help it to become the responsible citizen of the country. I believe that - 

In this era to live a life with values and principles is an expensive hobby of a person and anybody like that can't afford that. The special ethical person only can have it.

A fearless heart living with ethics and morals is easy to stay happy in life in the long run. One should be childlike, but not childish. The innocence like a child really helps the person in the life's journey. From the wise elders it understands to count his/her blessings in life, tries to become kind towards the people in the society who are cursed by destiny, helps to become compassionate towards the other people. It is very important to become kind and compassionate towards others. But again there are limits to these good qualities also. Implementing these qualities in society make the person satisfied in life which help it to stay pleasant in mind. The child learns to embrace what God is given to him/her and it stays thankful to God for it. With this the children to be taught not to give too much importance to their ego. Teaching them to let go of some things. 

These days there is a new term is in picture that is 'Induced Poverty'. Some working parents can't allocate much time to their children and they may fill up that space by giving them whatever they demands. So the constant communication with the children may be missing. As well as the children are getting whatever they ask for so they are not able to understand how difficult it is to earn money and so they are not able to understand the financial crunch situation. So the induced poverty concept came. So those parents feel that they should make their children try to realize this thing by pretending in front of them that they lack money, this is called induced poverty. If they are successful later in this ; the children understands that there is something like this also, money is not easily available and so it helps them to control their demands as well as to empathize to their parents in this process. It may doesn't lead the children to feel disappointed as they could understand this concept, so they engage their mind in some other things also. But if they are not able to understand the induced poverty concept then if their demands are not fulfilled then they may timely get disappointed for their demands, become more aggressive and adamant to their demands and become nuisance to their parents.

2. Have Faith In God:

There would be different types of people in the world some who believe in God, some who doesn't believe in God. Some who believe in God and spiritual. Some who believe in God but not spiritual. Some who doesn't believe in God but practice some kind of meditation. Some who doesn't believe in God and not spiritual and believe in living the life without any values or principles. All the above types could be leading somewhere in life but i believe the last type is quite difficult because later in their life they don't understand where they are leading in life. I personally have very strong belief in God. I believe one should have trust in God and should not believe in superstitions. The entire human beings in the universe are the children of the Primordial Mother i.e. Shri AdiShakti. As i  have borne in Hindu culture and got the spiritual knowledge from Hindu culture itself so can give references from Hindu culture itself. It says to fear God. It means one should fear God for not doing any unethical or bad thing. Whatever or how much the highest academic knowledge any person gains the knowledge is incomplete without the spiritual knowledge. The earlier anybody understands the easier life's journey is for that person. I am talking about the true spiritual knowledge. Spiritual knowledge gives the person the peace of mind from the chores happening in the life of the person as it gives understanding to the person what the lifestyle the person should adapt to gain peace of mind while fulfilling his/her devoirs as an individual. But i believe that while fulfilling these devoirs it is not needed to leave the family life and do austerity. While staying in family life and being with your parents, siblings, husband, wife or children you can practice spirituality. Only the thing is that the detachment part is more difficult during this but not impossible. Somebody like to explore this then the example is Raja Janaka(Raja Janak was a king in Hindu culture and Hindu epic Ramayana and a significant figure in ancient Indian history. 

He was the father of Sita.)  Raja Janak who was Saint inside but outside he was a king and living a family life as well as ruling the Mithila Kingdom.

When the person has faith in God, it understands that there is some divine support system which can help it if it gets confused in life, or something bad is going on in it's life. Even a simple faith in God work wonders for the person and it understands that it has blessings of God. Money is very important part of human life. But except earning money and running behind materialistic things all the time there is something more valuable in life to put time into also. It helps the person to live life religiously (here religiously doesn't mean sticking to particular religion. Here religiously means by following the principles of a human being; i.e. Human religion). Since last 12 years i am practicing Sahaj Yoga meditation (Sahaja Yoga meditation can be practiced by anybody; a seeker after getting self realization from a Sahaja Yogi. The seeker could be of any age, male/female, from any religion or from any country (https://www.sahajayoga.org.in/)). and i understood that the spiritual knowledge is ocean itself and there is lot to learn from it. It makes the person enlighten. When Shri Krishna told Gita to Arjuna that time He understood that for spiritual understanding Arjuna himself is confused of what is dharma and adharma if it is the situation of Arjuna then what about the ordinary human being so he explained everything in Gita to Arjuna which is ultimately to the entire humankind.

Scientifically also it is proved that practicing meditation enhances the mood of the person, relieves stress, increase productivity and motivates the person to try different things in life. As well as the people who practices meditation are more happy then others who doesn't practice it. So those people who practice meditation they are easy to stay happy. Only it should be true meditation. Now the divine knowledge or true spiritual knowledge is always free. Because it is the knowledge you have with you from your birth. So nobody should charge you anything to teach you that knowledge. In India at present in many schools and colleges Sahaj Yoga meditation is practiced. And Sahaj Yoga which is originated in India is already  being practiced in 240 countries abroad. Recently i saw first time a new role opened in one IT company in Pune as Meditation Instructor. It's good that people are awakening to this trend of life. 

                                       

                                    

Being Happy In Life II

In my previous article of Being Happy In Life I (https://chhayashinde.blogspot.com/2016/10/being-happy-in-life.html) i have discussed certain things about being happy in life as how the childhood brought up help us to make our nature, the habit of looking at the positive things in every negative situation help us to learn something new from the situation.

Since a decade there is lot being discussed, communicated, published through books also on how to retain the happiness of mind. This is fast world and everybody is running in their own races. As time doesn't stop for anybody so the pressure to perform better and to complete certain goals in life is utmost important for a living. So this stress is not allowing us to pay much attention to ourselves rather our physical and emotional well being. We are juggling between lot of things in life. And if we pay less attention to any one of them then it is bouncing back to us. So it is important to know our priorities, as well as understanding our limitations is very important. I would rather say a constant happy feeling is very important because it is the sign of our healthy body and mind. It is the foundation for whatever goals we achieve in our life. 

Now in this article i will discuss some more things which really help us to create a happy life for us:

1. Having Realistic Goals In life:

We must have some goals in our life and in order to motivate ourselves in life we can break those goals into small actions and then should design a strategy and action plan in order to fulfill those goals. Only you should keep in mind that you should have realistic goals, not unrealistic goals. Means an ordinary man if keep a goal like he should have 10 Hummers 😄 then it looks unrealistic. If the guy could make the plan realistic then it is more of piece of luck connecting to his hard work. Anyway talking about realistic goals, we should timely track the progress on those actions. Completing small small actions during the goal completion also gives a direction to your life to work towards it ; as well as help you to retain happiness in your life. There should be some timeline defined for completion of those goals. If this foundation is good then only we can do great things in life. Understand that i don't mean by great things means; something phenomenal only. But a thing or a goal accomplished by you which could be great success for you though for others it may be an ordinary thing. But that great thing could be a phenomenal thing for you. Just think how much happiness such goal completion can give you. And so it improves your mood and your zeal to do something better day by day. So it increases your happiness in life.

When i was about to complete a decade in my IT career i used to take 2 days leave in a month after a interval of 15 days. I used to call those 2 days as Introspection days. On those days i was not using mobile phone, no laptop, no reading books, if possible no TV. But i used to write down answers of 2 questions that what i accomplished recently in personal or professional life and is it still in progress or completed and what i would be doing next to it. It helped me to create small goals for me and to track progress of it. Then it put me a habit of asking a question to me 'What Next?'. I understood that it helped me to learn new technical skills, improved my managerial skills, improved my leadership skills, improved my knowledge and helped me to continue this more joy giving activity for quite a longer time.

      

2. Being Honest to Yourself:

I believe that every individual is unique in this world and we definitely learn something new from each individual we meet in the life's journey. We meet different people eventually. There is nothing like time wasted, rather there is always time invested, may be less or more. Because Best people come in your life give you good memories, Good people give you good time spent with them and Bad people by their behavior with you teach you lessons in your life that at least you should never behave that way with others in you life. Now there would be some people who will say there is nothing like good and bad, false and truth. It is their perspective towards life. So if they deny thereafter it is there in this world as it is part of this world. When we grow we are taught certain things in our family, in our schools and we start becoming like that. We become with some values and principles and it teaches us to behave in a certain way in life. But some children always live with their parent's wishes though they become elder also. And some are more lucky who take their decisions themselves in their life and live entirely their life. They live life of they exactly want to do in their life. It is the right way actually but the disadvantage here could be that all the children may not be too clever to do this. So the less clever children's decision can be taken by parents. In general for the clever children's parents should not put their burden of wishes on them. As it is the children's life so they should let them take their decisions by their own. Parents can educate them to visualize certain directions but should let the children to take decisions for them. Nowadays i see children may not be letting their parents to put their wishes on them.

Since my 10th standard my parents encouraged me to take all my decisions by myself. In the starting like most of the children i also used to feel whether i could be able to take right decisions or not. But the confidence given by them and the trust shown by them in me helped me to take decisions by myself and luckily till now all my decisions became successful. In this process i understood that it is always better that the child take their decisions by their own. Likewise in this process they start introspecting unknowingly and then start understanding for certain decisions what it want in their life, how they want certain things in their life. They try to become honest with them. But it may not be easy process for the child to be a decision maker as it requires lot of study of inner self, improving certain traits in them, working on their weaker attributes, polishing their strongest attributes and raising their confidence. I believe that -

Confidence is the best ornament one should wear daily.

When somebody else take decisions on our behalf we live their life. And later after some years we understand we didn't want to do those things itself. And then we feel disappointed a lot. So it is always better you to take decisions of your life. You may be successful in those decisions, you may fail also. But when you are successful the success is completely yours and when you fail at least you don't repent that somebody else took decisions for you and so you failed. So you own both success and failure. Timely we should have self talk and we should honestly answer questions to yourself. You can not pretend to be happy for a longer time and so the fake happiness fades within some days. So better have self talk, take the decisions of life yourselves and honestly live the life you want. In human life time is very important. I believe that -

Money is very powerful but there is something which is more powerful than money and that is time. Time once lost can't be buy back with money also. So honor the time and make the right use of time.

So when we have time we must take action during that time. And the best we try to take the right action during the time. Only planning doesn't work. Otherwise we need to repent on the gone time if the action is not taken at the right time. Even i appreciate if the action taken is not fruitful and it fails because a person who makes mistakes is always better than the one who doesn't take any action and do nothing. Only the thing is that every mistake should be done once only. The same mistake shouldn't be repeated. A person who makes a new mistake every time is growing in life step by step rather than staying stagnant. 

So the person who is honest to himself/herself and do the things accordingly is always carry a contentment in mind so it helps it to stay happy in life.

Corporate Communication III

In Corporate Communication I and II we have seen the basics of corporate communication, E-mail writing skills and the general guidelines. In this article we will see some more guidelines in corporate communication. In this era, it is proven proof that if you want to excel in your career, you don’t require only good education but good communication skills too. I have seen many people till now who are good in education, good in their work ethics, hard and smart worker but not good in communication; the result is they lack growth in their career. And so, the dissatisfaction in their career.  Some who look for the kind of work they are getting; how challenging it is, work life balance culture, good compensation and technical growth in their career. Other are those who don’t care much about the work they are getting (don’t care about the challenges or technical growth) but they care about how much more money or excellent compensation they are getting in their career. And so they don’t care much about work culture or their career growth.

Anyway, in both of these types the communication plays a very crucial role. Here wherever I am mentioning communication I mean corporate communication. I believe that it is must have skills. So, I count it as one of the mandatory skills for every working individual. This communication has lot of facets in itself.  Out of this some we saw in previous articles like Corporate Communication I (https://chhayashinde.blogspot.com/2019/03/corporate-communication.html ) and Corporate Communication II (https://chhayashinde.blogspot.com/2024/07/corporate-communication-ii.html) like reading  habits, writing skills and respecting humanitarian values. I believe that technical skills can be taught but humanitarian values can’t be taught that one get from the family or the person develops in himself/herself and this is very crucial skill one must have.

One part of corporate communication is being noticed in meetings. Meetings in corporate is such a topic that can be discussed in a separate article also. But in this article, we’ll see a glimpse of it. Being a junior employee, you have different experiences of corporate meetings and being a senior employee, you have different experiences of corporate meeting. But we are only who contribute to good and healthy work culture. If we want to see the change in something we can bring the change by our professional etiquettes.

As far as you are attendee of any corporate meeting the prerequisites you have to take into account like:

1. As soon as you get meeting request first check from whom the meeting request is.
2. Check when the meeting is being held; the date and time.
3. Check what is the subject of the meeting.
4. Check what is the agenda of the meeting.
5. Check who all are attendees of the meeting.
6. Check who all are in cc of the meeting invite.
7. If you are able to understand the topics to discuss in the meeting then it’s ok. Otherwise ask more information to one of the other attendees in meeting.

8. If you have any doubt about the agenda talk to the host of the meeting, don’t assume anything.

After this at the time of actually attending the meeting as a guest:

1. Join the meeting at the correct time, may be 2-3 mins before the commenced time.
2. In case you are not able to join the meeting on time, inform the host accordingly.
3. When you joined the meeting let the host to conduct the meeting and listen everything carefully.
4. If you are being invited to the meeting means your physical and mental presence is important, understand this. Don’t stay absent minded.
5. If you get any questions regarding the topics discussed show active participation by asking the right questions. 

6. If you are allowed to ask questions in between, then ask in between or if you have been informed to ask questions after the end of discussion by the host then ask that time.
7. Don’t ask irrelevant questions. Stick to the topic and ask questions accordingly.
8. Don’t divert the topic of the discussion to some other topic as it will increase the meeting time unnecessarily. Don’t ask the questions just to highlight your presence.
9. If you want to interrupt somebody, ask for permission politely.
10. Put forward your inputs as they should be value adding to the discussion.
11. If your point is not getting accepted, put forward your point politely don’t get aggressive.
12. These things will show that you are active member in the meeting and not just attending the meeting for the sake of attending. 

Now when you are host of any meeting then prerequisites you have to take into account like:

1. Get a list of members who you want to invite for the meetings. Here after typing the list in your meeting invite, you can put a # mark so the empty mail by mistake doesn’t go to the attendees. I follow this trick 😊 since years in corporate while sending any meeting invite.
2. Type a cc list for the meeting.
3. If you want type a Bcc list for the meeting.
4. Form a subject line for the meeting.
5. Form an agenda for the meeting.
6. Schedule 15-20 mins grace time for the discussion of the topics in the meeting.
7. If you want to present something then do check the presentation, the projector or any other device.

8. Write the prerequisites for the attendees to attend the meeting like going through any documentation before attending the meeting.

After this at the time of actually hosting the meeting as a host:

1. Join the meeting 5 mins before the actual start of the meeting as you are the host.
2. After greeting to all the attendees read out the agenda of the meeting.
3. After starting the meeting inform all and if needed record the meeting if necessary.
4. After starting the meeting if you are completely driving the meeting then it’s ok otherwise hand over to other members to discuss the meeting topics.
5. If you are very good at remembering everything then its’ ok otherwise use notepad or use notebook and pen to jot down the minutes of the meeting        (MOM).
6. If you are fast talker then talk slowly and clearly. And make sure everybody understands what you are discussing.
7. When the meeting is over keeping separate time for questions and answers if any.
8. Ask about the input from other members or attendees.
9. Being a host you have to take care that the topic discussion should not be diverted to some other topic as it extends the meeting time.
10. In case if needed promise the attendees to conduct another meeting for the discussion for other topic.
11. If your point is not getting accepted, put forward your point politely don’t get aggressive.
12. Respect every attendee in the meeting by listening to their input carefully and not ignoring any attendees. Timely say thank you or appreciate their input.
13. As you are host to the meeting you should be thankful to them as they valued your invite and attended the meeting.
14. Discuss the action items further on you as well as on other attendees in the meeting.
15. Take care that all the points mentioned in the agenda are discussed in the meeting.

16. At the time of closing the meeting thank to all attendees for their attendance and active participation in the meeting.

After the meeting got over send the thanks mail with the MOM (minutes of meeting) to all the attendees including the action items on you and on other attendees.

For some who already know this; they will say it is so obvious as not to mention. But I have seen many freshers who are missing these things also, as they were seeing a meeting request. As nobody is perfect but it is what needed is attention of detail. One when get habit of focusing on the details one can get mastery with it. As well as professionally it is very important to respect your self-esteem and others also that can be seen how you conduct meetings as a host. This is quite a long discussion on meetings in corporates though I tried to give a glimpse of it.

Many times, generally at the starting of the career we find meetings are quite boring or not value adding to our productivity but if we try to look at it from other’s perspective or from a senior employee perspective then we understand the importance of discussing things in meetings with other fellow members. And then you understand that timely discussing topics and issues with your colleagues it utmost important and then you don’t find meetings are boring. But you find that there is really something productive comes which help you in your corporate career.