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3 Simple Tools For Time Management

Post author By admin
Post date June 21, 2022
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Time Management is one of the key challenges for the working population. Even if you are a full-time parent, time management is crucial. In this blog, we will share few simple tips, based on the principles of Positive Psychology

The first tool is awareness of what you “should not do” every day. It is not an easy task, but you can use a journal to reflect on time wasters of a working day. If you write a journal for a month, you will know what those time wasters were. Accordingly, you may create a “not to do list”, which will make you aware consciously and subconsciously about what you should not necessarily do.

The second tool is to create your own personal purpose statement. For example, you are a supply chain manager with a courier company and your day-to-day job is to transport packages to different locations, what would your purpose statement look like? Let us assume that you write this purpose statement, “I am driven by my passion towards helping people and organizations get their packages on time as it helps my customers grow their businesses”. Now, you may take a print of it and stick at your home desk and at work. This would remind you every day about what were those important tasks which would add value to your customers. Accordingly, you will arrive at attending to what is urgent and important.

The third tool is to make small changes every day (a journal helps) and always asking this question to yourself – Can I be 5% better than yesterday? If this becomes a practice, your subconscious mind will drive you towards better time management.

These are some of the hacks you can follow. If you need coaching for better time management, you may call on +91 995 900 0967 (India mobile number)

Playful Love, Mindfully!

By Sandeep Kulshrestha

Being playful is the natural essence of life. Rather than rushing up the momentum of lovemaking, if it is preceded by a “Mindful foreplay” where each and every moment brings individuals a pleasurable acceptance, in all possibilities it would lead to a happier way to be. Sex, no doubt is not everything in life but it surely is a major part of the young adults’ lives. As the societies were driven by Men (even in majority of the Countries, the societies are still male-centric), the women’s pleasure was never an invested asset. But modern day couples do experiment and try to make even the physical more stimulating, resulting in better levels of happiness. Some of the ways in which the physical love can be more playful, may include the following (although in all its’ merits, the list is not exhaustive):

Having a long day only meant for leisure and relaxation
Healthy food before or after the lovemaking
No distraction of gadgets like Mobile phones etc
Playing an soothing instrumental music
Wearing a soft robe while sitting closer and having a loving discussion
Playfully touching each other’s forehead, massaging the hair
Spending time and being slow and mindful in undressing and experiencing each and every moment of Mindful play (like slowly kissing each other, while taking pauses and feeling moments of bliss)
Taking deeper breaths (in and out) in calculated breaks can make people settle in, get calm
It can all start with a gentle cuddle!

More playful moments increase the oxytocin levels, making people feel agile and happy. Mindfulness is not only about meditation but appreciating the moment as it is. Mindful foreplay makes people spend time leisurely without getting worried about next moments. Increase in Oxytocin also reduces the intensity of cortisol, the stress hormone. For well-being and holistic health, Mindful play is a wonderful therapy where couples can feel detoxed, joyful and happier in their day to day lives.

Sandeep is a wellbeing Coach, based at Hyderabad, India. He is reachable on sandeep@flourishinghappiness.com

Mindful Learning Mindfulness Positive Psychology

Mindful Learning

By Saira Nikhat Imam

We are all programmed to learn. This learning process starts right in the lap of a mother and reaches its climax once we inhale our last volumes of oxygen in this world. To put it simply, learning is the art of acquiring skills or knowhow about the things around us. Just take a peek around and see how babies around you learn different things at their different stages of lives. First they learn to crawl, learn to speak and then learn to walk. The skills babies learn keep on changing as per their growth. Do you remember how did you learn about different things in your school? You may join a college after school and move on to join a university later and the trajectory of learning doesn’t stop there as well.

You meet different people regularly and you communicate with them. You go to office. You run a business. You attend a wedding party. You buy groceries. The list goes on the trot. It means that every action you take involves some kind of learning. But different people learn things differently. That is the beauty of our world. However, one thing is common amongst all individuals, anywhere in the world and that is, to say that ‘learning is a continuous process’.

There are several different ways a person can learn about something. You can learn about a thing randomly. For instance, you can pick up a newspaper and learn about a thing or else you tune in to your favourite FM channel and learn about something or you can learn about something in a social gathering such as a wedding party. Other methods of learning such as teaching, coaching, mentoring, and training are different methods of learning because these methods involve some kind of structure, order and planned approach.

A learning process has to be effective so that the people involved in learning something learn about that thing completely. Such learning is possible only when the people involved in the learning have their best state of mind. That is what a Mindful Learning is all about.

A Mindful Learning method involves:

· Conducive environment of learning with no stress,

· People involved in a learning have a right frame of mind to learn,

· Individual/Groups enjoy the activity of learning,

· They are involved into the activity with so much focus that they are unaware of all the distractions around them (also termed as “Flow”),

· The information is presented to them in a well-organized and coherent manner.

· Awareness of the self and the environment

We live in a society. Society brings with it social pressures. We have emotions in us too. Both these social pressures and emotions play their major role in shaping us by influencing our learning. The aim of a learning method is more focused on ‘offering knowledge’ without ever considering the parameters (social and emotional) around you. You may acquire the required knowledge by a learning method but you may have to bear undue stress and many distractions in doing so. After acquiring the required knowledge you may not be able to take a sound decision because the knowledge provide to you would have been incoherent. Even if after acquiring required knowledge you are able to take a sound decision but you may not be happy after that. All these unhealthy constraints are addressed by Mindful Learning. For instance, it is an established fact that when our emotions vibrate in tune with us when we remain focused and pay attention to the things that matter to us. The result is that you can make better decisions. And it offers joy to you. Mindfulness is all about connecting with the present moment and Mindful learning involves sinking in the feeling of learning. If it is a book, the learner can start with appreciating the texture of the book and feeling happy with each paragraph, words or nuances etc as a learning experience. Similarly, the same approach of appreciative learning can be applied on a workshop, in college or elsewhere.

Acquiring right knowledge to achieve success and living happily can no more be dealt with separately? That is why Mindful Learning is the answer for teachers, educators, facilitators and everyone involved in the space of learning and development.

Saira Nikhat Imam, a Behavioral skills trainer by profession is an enthusiast to create a niche for her in the corporate landscape. She is a dreamer and wants women pursue their dreams in all areas of life. She conducts workshops in Mindful learning and can be contacted on saranikhat@gmail.com

Appreciation Mindfulness

Enjoying the relaxed day without work

Post author By admin
Post date September 21, 2017
No Comments on Enjoying the relaxed day without work

A friend, a passionate learning facilitator gets excited about the next assignment and would go an extra mile to make sure that she is up the curve and is able to sustain the passion to a high degree. Her benchmark is high and so is her expectations from herself. With the stretch, the stress takes over and the day she ends up doing nothing is the day full of agony and frustration. This is a natural feeling for a person who is totally engaged with the work. On the other hand, I have another friend who has hardly taken any vacation and when he did take few solitary vacations, he was restless and wanted the first opportunity he could, to go back to work

Such type of people don’t like an “unfulfilled day”. For many people in the contemporary world, rest is not a wonderful virtue. In fact people complain that when they rested and relaxed more, they felt bad that they could not focus on work, or on reading a new book or watching a movie. They are not wrong on their priorities but because of their conditioning they believe this way.

As a Well-being Coach, I ask my clients to maintain a reflection diary on hours spent on well-being (sleep, meditation, rest, mindful breaks, positive nutrition, jogging/running etc) and many a times they take a long while to write such reflections because it is surely challenging to have a well-being as a focus area.

So, what shall be ideally done? Can we feel grateful for a day where we just rested and didn’t really accomplish anything? If we felt that there was no way the day could be enjoyed, can we tell ourselves that whenever such occasion happens next time around, we could make it enjoyable, by meditating, by sipping the tea in the balcony which is seldom used, by wiping the dust of the book shelf, by talking to few friends, by being away from gadgets and technology and so on. A kind of a “minimalist” day but indeed a day of major accomplishments, of feeling good about ourselves!

Coaching Positive Psychology