The Light at the End of the Funnel
Have you ever felt like being a football?
Well, as weird as it might seem, I’m feeling like one these days.
I feel as if I am a football and 22 players (11 from each side), are all running after me, trying to take hold of me, kicking me in all directions in their unrelenting effort to throw me into the goal area of the opposite team.
That is how life becomes sometimes, and with all your planning and all your efforts to live a controlled and planned life, you simply are unable to do just that.
I used the word “events”—like your father being extremely sick all of a sudden, your child having trouble with his health, your wife expecting another baby soon and needing your attention, your business going down the drain due to no fault of your own, and stuff like that—stuff that is simply none of your doing and totally beyond your direct control.
How do you deal with that? How do you stop being a football? How do you request the 22 players to stop kicking your ass around? How do you manage to bring sanity back into your life?
How to Ensure that Your Help Actually Reaches the Pakistan Flood Victims
I have received a number of emails, Twitter and Facebook messages from the readers worldwide, who read my post 21 Faces of The Pakistan Flood, and wanted to contribute for the Pakistan flood victims, asking me to either take their contributions personally from them, or tell them about the single most credible source where they can send their contributions in cash and kind.
In the original post I gave 3 credible sources, but it looks like that didn’t help. I have changed the sources from 3 to only 1 now—Aaj Relief—which I am sure will direct your help to the right people, in the most efficient manner, along with accountability and transparency.
It’s not that the remaining 2 sources (Edhi Foundation and Chippa Welfare Association) are any less credible, but given the demand of the donors, and the fact that those two organizations do not have regularly updated websites (that update every donor how his or her money is being spent and where it is being used), I have decided on the Aaj Relief only. I am myself contributing my money to Aaj Relief.
The Only Advice You Need to Deal with Negativity
Yesterday, I wrote a post 21 Faces of The Pakistan Flood as an effort to spread awareness about the continuing devastation that is happening all around me these days, due to the unprecedented floods that Pakistan is facing.
Luckily, the post hit the main page of Reddit, and it was read by more than 1500 people from 57 countries in less than 12 hours of it’s publication. People emailed me asking permission to use my post in their own efforts to spread the message, which of course, I was happy to give.
Along with the much needed and appreciated support, came a few comments on the post’s link on Reddit, that made me feel as if we are yet far away from being civilized.
21 Faces of The Pakistan Flood
UPDATE: How to Ensure that Your Help Actually Reaches the Pakistan Flood Victims.
This time I am not going to say much. I don’t feel like it.
I am sad, anxious, worried and hopeful at the same time.
I am sad for the devastation that happened. The sheer magnitude of which I have not seen in my life. Not even when Tsunami came in 2004. This time it is even bigger.
Imagine 3 Scotlands drowning and its population stranded among rising waters, which destroyed the houses, shops, bridges, roads, in short everything that those people had going for them.
Which is the First Personal Development Book that You Read?
Which is the first ever personal development book that you read?
For me it is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey [Affiliate Link]
Here in my city, Faisalabad, used books are sold on roadside stalls on Friday. I remember cycling past one such stall, sometime back in 1992 (two years after its publication in 1990), and seeing the book lying on top of a big pile of used book.
The title just spoke to me, and I went ahead and bought the the book, without even reading a few pages, as if I “knew” that I’d like this book.
And I liked it. Not only that, but it also kindled the dormant flames of a hunger for understanding of life and excellence inside me.
Reading this book was like opening my eyes for the first time and looking at life from a very different angle.
Do You Believe in God?
I have always wondered, why people usually look towards the sky, when they refer to God?
As if there is a sky, and there is a physical entity, living somewhere beyond the clouds, looking down at the mortals, watching them, and deciding what to do with them, and when.
Maybe it’s because we subconsciously believe that God is someone, who is far away from us, almost in another galaxy.
Maybe we borrowed it from the scriptures which so frequently mention “heaven”, as a place “in the sky”, where God resides.
I don’t know what makes us look at the sky to look for God, but I do find it strange, in spite of the fact, that I do it myself, by default. But now, I have started noticing this behavior of mine, consciously.
How to be Rich and Happy—Book Review
Have you ever read a book, and then wished you had read that book earlier in your life?
How to be Rich and Happy turned out to be that book for me, simply because I think, you should learn to be rich and happy, as early as possible, in your life. That can save you a lot of grief, stress and needless experimentation.
John P. Strelecky and Tim Brownson, the authors of the book—How to be Rich and Happy, have done a wonderful job writing this book.
I was introduced to one of the authors, Tim Brownson by Haider Al-Mosawi, a dear friend of mine, whose opinion I respect, and Tim later on, sent me his book for review.
I am an avid reader and in the course of the last 20 years I have read a number of books relating to personal development. Yet, there are few books that resonated with me, and made me change my behavior, for my own good. Read my post on 4 Most Overlooked Reasons Why Self-Help Material Doesn’t Change Your Life.
Life Lessons Learned
(This is a guest post by Nadia Ballas-Ruta of Happy Lotus)
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.
So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
—Steve Jobs
One of the many great things about the passage of time is that it provides us with enough experiences to be able to reflect upon, and in that reflection, it becomes obvious that every single event was part of a chain and/or puzzle which leads up to the present.
Unlike many people, there is nothing I would like to change in my past.
Million Acts of Kindness
Dr. Wayne Dyer, in an interview he gave to Ray Hemachandra, back in November 2005 said, “When I look at the news and all the things that are hostile out there, I remind myself that for every act of evil in the world, there are a million acts of kindness.”
That line of Dr. Wayne Dyer slid its way into my heart and mind. After that, every time I felt, that the news and acts of violence and injustice in the world are sucking away my energy, I recalled that line and deliberately chose to see the million acts of kindness people are doing around me.
They usually go unnoticed—the million acts of kindness. Media doesn’t highlight them, for they are hardly newsworthy, and we don’t notice them because we have somehow trained our minds to follow the camera—blindly.
It is no wonder then, that our minds look for the negativity around us more than the positivity, and we ignore the acts of kindness that are happening around us, all the time.
Well Done You!
Have you ever failed at something in your life?
I doubt that there is any person on this planet who will say NO to that.
You might have failed and failed often (by the way that is a great trait to have), but let me ask you, how do you deal with your failures?
Do you indulge yourself in self-pity, complain, hit yourself over the head, shout at your family and friends, get drunk or just sit there thinking about the whys and hows for days without end?
What does this word, failure, mean to you? What emotions does it bring forth?
Does this word frighten you and you avoid it like a plague, or do you invite failure instead, and think of it as an inevitable step on the ladder of success?
Never "Fall" in Love
I got a problem with the English phrase—to fall in love.
Whenever I see it in print or hear it, my mind gets stuck on the use of the word, “fall” alongside “love”.
To me these two words, fall and love, can not be used together, conceptually, to convey the feeling of being in love.
They make love seem like some kind of a booby trap that you’d rather avoid falling into.
If you are “falling” in love, then either you should stop falling or stop loving. You can not love if you are falling and you can not fall if you are loving.
How could you fall in love when love is supposed to be the grandest and the greatest of all human emotions?