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Are you just Aging or growing?

    The World is a Whirlpool of materialism, People think Money can bring them happiness.

But to me happiness is freedom, happiness is knowledge and happiness is science.        

This is one of the statement from a 97 year Old women Le thi from Vietnam who is a multitalented person  but learned most of the skills at later stages of her life.To know more about her click here.

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Le thi with her great granddaughter

 

Ruth Frith started doing shot put and javeline at the age 73, since then she had made six records. British Indian marathon runner Fauja singh kept running until he is 101.In the year 2004 he was choosen the face of Adidas (replacing David Beckham).Read here his sectet to ever youthfulness.

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Fauja singh as face of Adidas.

 

There are many people like Le thi or Ruth frith or Fauja singh, whose curiosity does not die before their death. Reading such stories you might think ‘ oh! these are exceptional people or god gifted people’. That’s ofcourse your choice , how you see the world.

As we grow older one common line most of the people use is’ If I could just get back my childhood one more time or If I could get back my adulthood’. Why they want to get back to their past?                                             

With age everyone wants to grow professionally, want to become succesfull materially but in that race very few people  grow personally as well (which i guess is more important).Most often we judge the maturity of a person based on his/her age, if he is an old person, he must be very mature and if he is just in his 20’s he don’t have that wisdom.But how is that logical  ‘maturity comes from experiences not age‘.

One can be mature enough in his/her 20’s, if he/she has that curiousity for knowledge and have experiences. Everyone has limited time to live in this world we all know that but then why as most people finish their formal education, get a job or enter in their 30’s stop learning, stop acquire any new skill, as if waiting for death.Everyone wants to be succesful  but everyone doesn’t want to learn from people who are already very succesfull, the main thing which keeps them succesfulis is, they never stop learning, never stop growing. One of my favourite quote is by Benjamin Franklin

  ‘Many People die at 25 and are not buried until they are 75′

Think about your 5 years before version, are you a more healthier, more knowledgeable, a better communicator today. Personal growth is the key to professional growth.

Science also shows exactly the same, If you want to be forever happy even at your 70’s 80’s or 90’s then you should not let your curiosity die, as you move towards your 50’s or 60’s learning new skill becomes little difficult but you can prevent it by keeping an habit of learning from early age.Just like your physical body your brain also needs exercise for being healthy forever. Read a research result of prof. Stephen McNair here

You cannot prevent the days from adding to your life , but you can surely prevent yourself from becoming old, he who is not up to date or doesn’t have knowledge of present time or who is not willing to learn any new skill is old. Above mentioned persons are not exceptions, they just don’t want to be old.                                                                            

 “Don’t just add days to your Life, add skills to your Life”

Have forever youthfulness

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Science behind Affirmations.

 If you have ever read a self help book, you must have found one common thing in almost every book and that is ‘positive affirmations’ . But most people get little excited just when they read about ‘positive affirmations’ in the books ,but in real world may be  it doesn’t sound as realistic as words like ‘hard work’, ‘persistence’,’Resilience’ etc.

So I always curious to know, wheather there is any scientific study behind affirmations, to my surprise I have found some really intresting stuff regarding affirmations or self talk.  Science says, Positive affirmations are not ony about feeling good or happy at a particular moment, it’s more than that, it can help anyone create real values in their life,  help building skillls that lasts much longer than a smile.

The effect of positive thoughts on your work, your life is being studied by scientists from last several decades. One of the studies I came across (which seems to me very intersting) is by Barbara Fredrickson, a psychologists from university of Michigan shows some surprising insights about positive thoughts and its impact on long term skills.

So what she had found in the study is ‘ feelings like anger,fear,stress in one word ‘negative emotions’ blocked your mind and limits your possibilities to see the world in other ways. Let’s take an example ‘ if a tiger suddenly crosses your path ,you will run, here the emotion fear will guide your mind and blocked it from thinking other ways.         You might have the options to climb a tree but your brain will ignore all those options as those seem irrevalent at that moment.This is called survival instinct. Human mind is programmed in this way.

This is useful if someone try to save his/her life but  now-a-days we don’t have to worry about ‘if tiger cross my path’, still our brain responds to the negative emotions in a similar manner. People  in anger, stress, depression never choose the best decisions.When you miss some deadline or feeling bad about not eating healthy or exercising, you feel how little willpower you have or how lazy you are.The reason here is same, as negative emotions shut off our mind ,we cannot see other possibilities.

                      But then how positive emotions can affect our life?                                                                       The benifits of positive emotions won’t stop after few minutes of good feeling, the biggest benifit it provide is to enhance the ability to build skills and develop resources for using later in life. For example-   ‘ A teenager (or anyone) who runs around outside (travels),play with friends,develop the ability to move athletically, communicate in a team (social skill) and the ability to explore and examine the world (creative skill).

In this way positive emotions like ‘joy’, ‘curiosity’ prompt anyone to build skills that are useful in everyday life.                                                                                                                                                                   Fredrickson refers to this as ‘ broaden and build‘ theory as positive emotions broaden your sense of possibilities and open your mind.Read the full paper .                                                                                                                                                                   This is one of the studies which I found quite attractive, a lot studies are been  done or going on on this topic- some scientific studies links are-

     1. Study  proving power of positive visualisation.                                                          

     2. Study shows happiness make you succesful rather than success make you happy.

     If you are a book lover, than the must book read in this category would be Dr.Martin Seligman’s (known as father of positive psychology) ‘Authentic Happiness’.

In 1990’s Dr.Masaru Emoto from Japan carried out an experiment where he exposed water to different positive sounds,images,thoughts, what he found was very surprising, the crystal of those water, which had been exposed to positive thought and sounds are more symmetrical hence beautiful compared to those crystals where water had been exposed to negative sounds or thoughts.According to Dr.Emoto human consciousness has effect on water.watch out this  video .

You know our body contain 60% of water right, now imagine the effects of your thoughts on your mind,body and soul.

Keep track of your thoughts (write them down if necessary), do things that make you feel happy, positive. Spend time with people who make you feel good.  You are the master of your thoughts, so choose your thoughts consciously. 

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