Stress is the shadow of wrong imagination February 6, 2012
Posted by aglakadam in Management.Tags: aglakadam, guidance, inspiration, lesson, life, Management, Motivation, stress, success, varwandkar
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Imagine this situation:
You are in a happy holiday mood. You plan to have a joyful day with your family as such you decide to go on a long drive. You start driving your car on a highway where there is almost no traffic. You are tempted to explore the odometer and you press hard on the accelerator. The madness of speed invariably brings obnoxious consequences. As you approach a traffic signal square, you do not stop at the ‘red traffic signal’ but zip past it since there is no other car on either side of the four-way. All of a sudden you get alerted by the sound of a police car siren. You see in the rear view mirror that the police car is approaching you at a still faster pace. You know that you have just committed a mistake and somehow the traffic police might have taken a note of it. The police car is at a distance where it would soon overtake you and ask you to stop. You feel stress mounting inside. You start imagining the consequences. What if you do not stop and rush at a still faster pace? Oh but the police might ask for more troops to stop me at the next turn! If they ask me to stop, I should obey them, says your inner voice. I am sure I will be fined for trespassing the traffic rule as well as for the rash driving. Oh God, please help me, they should not take me to the police station, I have no wrong intentions for sure. Your heart rate has increased and the effect seen as sweat drops on your forehead. You loose focus on the road and you’re only concentrated on the incoming harassment from behind. By now the police van is almost parallel to you. You have already started feeling very low, restless and insecure. Suddenly what happens is unbelievable for you. The police over took your car and went ahead, probably they were chasing a different target. Oops, all the while you were thinking that the police was running after you!
When there is ‘terror alert’ announced by the intelligence agencies, the overall administration & police is on its toes. What happened with you in the above illustration was something similar, your mental mechanism was all of a sudden put on high alert. There was a temporary phase of worry, stress and shock for you. Did you realize that all this was fictitious and hypothetical? Nothing of what you had imagined was actually true? You were not the target of the police van and they never intended to put you behind bars. However it was you who negatively extrapolated the imaginary consequences and started palpitating.
Can you get back to the first few words of the above imaginary situation. You were in a happy welcome mood which eventually translated into anxious and nervous state of affair for you. All this happened only because of you. It was you who instigated the negative thoughts in your mental backdrop. The world outside was the same even when you started the day in a happy mood and when you got into the stressful situation.
I share yet another situational example for you here. There was one family which was on to start a holiday tour. They had to board the train at a particular scheduled time known to them in much advance. Due to certain household chores they got delayed to start from home. Unfortunately for them, that day, the train was scheduled to arrive on time. Father – mother and their kids were tight-fisted and had their fingers crossed while they were rushing to the railway station in the car. The angry husband was all the way shouting at his wife & scolding her for being slow in arranging travel preparations. Although they intended to be on a holiday mood their journey started with stress. The poor children were close-lipped somehow wanting that they should be able to board the train. Finally, it was a touch and go situation and they somehow managed to get into the train. Friends, wasn’t it true that even if the gentleman had not behaved in a stressful manner they would have been able to board the train? What actually happened was the head of the family imagined all negative consequences and got stressed out.
We get exposed to similar situations many times in our daily life. In the process we sometimes unnecessarily invite a lot of stress and sadness into our life. The difference between stress and sorrow lies in the man’s perception. When you think bad, you feel bad. When you start feeling bad, it turns out to be worst for you personally. Stress is like friction, it is a necessary evil. Elementary level of stress is in-fact necessary for human being to survive. Stress is an energy & enthusiasm catalyst. It provokes a person to get into action mode and perform. Like you can store only a limited volume of fuel in your vehicle, human body is also designed to store a limited quantum of stress. As the stress grows more than the defined limit, it starts spilling and warns danger. It is our responsibility to disallow stress to walk along our life as soon as it becomes a liability. Finally it is our judgment to decide till what stage we would allow Mr. Stress to walk along with us in our journey of life!
LESSONS FOR EXCELLENCE :
- Never allow stress to be blown out of proportion because of unrealistic imaginations.
- Stress is like a small stone found under the shadow of a huge mountain.
- Invariably stress is created inside the human mind, it should be cured there itself.
- We should learn to be good to stress and in return stress will always be good to us.
- A basic amount of stress is must for us to excel in our ventures in life.
Ajit Varwandkar
Feedback : md@fsindia.in
Parents – be your child’s first career coach December 12, 2011
Posted by aglakadam in Uncategorized.Tags: career, children, counseling, examination, guidance, parenting, school
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Parents – be your child’s first career coach
My last week’s blog post “If your child is at the career cross road” evoked a sweet and sour response. I got many calls from readers telling why they intended to debate on some of the parenting views referred by me. Most of the responses came from the rich and the able. One gentleman said it’s about giving the best academic amenities to the child. One doctor opined that in today’s era parent’s cannot track the likes and personality of their child. One PSU employee could not digest my statement that “excess concern about child’s career borders paranoia”. A school teacher called me to thank for the write-up, she suggested me to elaborate on the subject and hence this sequel.
For those who might have missed the last week’s write-up I recapitulate the essence.
“When at career crossroads, a child is in an very sensitive stage of evolution because career decisions bear a significant impact on one’s life. Children ought to select the career which they are desperate for and not the one which gratifies parents unfulfilled ambitious. However in the process of guiding the child parents should ensure that they guard her individuality & self esteem. Irrelevant tinkering into their space will only display a lack of trust and surely backfire. Too much involvement as well as too less involvement in child’s career building process is harmful. Parents must play the role of a light house & a guide post. The light which they show should enable the child to take a career leap and also warn when there is danger. The student should be encouraged to take informed career decisions for a prosperous future.”
Parents are child’s first career coach and there are certain basic fundamental rules which a parent must adhere while career mentoring the child. The messages which a parent delivers can impact the educational and career choices of the student significantly. As per one survey, almost 80% of high school students stated that they look upon to their parents when it comes to career selection guidance. Children are very smart at observation and they learn a lot from the work behavior of their parents and other adult role models.
Children who are particularly gifted & super talented present unique set of challenges. We come across parent’s who boast of their child being much advanced in terms of technology. The frequently orated sentence by parents is: “My son is so smart, give him the latest model of mobile handset and he will not take more than a few minutes to explore all the features and apps tucked into it.” This brings a pseudo sense of overconfidence into the parents. Career selection is different to dissection of a technical device. It is important for parent’s to understand that their children might sound hi-tech & advanced but when it comes to career decisions, they might fail to take mature steps.
Parental involvement should neither be too high nor too low. Appropriate and inappropriate levels of involvement can either help or hinder the childs career takeoff. A balanced intervention can deliver positive attitude in the student which in turn will ensure better grades and effective decision-making skills. Decisions related to career swing around the fulcrum of family idiosyncrasies and students personality. In situations of dilemma, some parents offer unconditional support to whatever career choice the ward might opt for. This happens to be a well intentioned but a mal functioning strategy most of the time. A child might be capable of doing many type of jobs but in case she enters into a world irrelevant to her personality, there could be sinister consequences. Ideally at every such stage parent should offer two or three well researched choices and then leave it up to the ward to identify the most suitable out of those.
The key to a successful career is being happy and fulfilled at the end of the day. This can be achieved when there is a proper match between child’s interests, values, skills and abilities with the professional demands of chosen career. Being potentially influential in the career development process of their children, parents should know to explore and use career information properly. They should take interest to identify the potentials and abilities in their children and bridge it appropriately.
Lessons for Excellence :
- Always share closed ended solutions with your child, never leave them wondering in the wild when it comes to career decisions.
- Parents should encourage their children to day-dream more and more about their fancied job and develop an inventory of career dreams.
- Never forget to ask your child to have fun, in the zest to get a perfect student out of their child most of the parents forget the sports needs of their children.
- A successful parents is open to learn new things and accept the everchanging career scope around.
- Be open to discussions with your child, even if he has an eccentric career choice!
Ajit Varwandkar
Feedback : md@fsindia.in
Birth of an Unemployable Engineer July 16, 2011
Posted by aglakadam in career guidance and counselling, Children n Students.Tags: aglakadam, बच्चो, career, children, english, exam, examination, guidance, inspiration, win, win-win
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Admission session is back on cards. Various academic institutes across India are into the refilling mode. Recently we had the news from Shri Ram College of Commerce, New Delhi about the mind shattering 100% cut-off marks for admission. The demand supply imbalance of seats versus prospective students has surfaced yet again. Engineering has traditionally been the most preferred & “rest assured” choice of professional career for students and parent’s alike. Getting an Engineering degree is like a dream achieved. However the story post engineering is not all that encouraging these days. We have seen a large mass of unemployed engineering students struggling hard, unsuccessfully, to get into employment.
Time and again we get to see those enticing advertisements from various colleges imparting professional education. We also come to understand that India is on the path of exponential industrial growth & that industry would be requiring thousands and lacks of qualified manpower in years to come. A very important question which one thinks of is “In spite of seemingly win-win scenario for students and industry both, why is there a situation where thousands of unemployed engineers flock on the roads every year? There has to be some remarkably important phenomenon responsible to catalyze this situation. To my understanding the main reason behind this situation is that some of the institutions are giving birth to unemployable engineers. The obvious blame flame targets the mushrooming of engineering institutes, short sighted policies, lack of vision etc. On the contrary I think there is one more factor responsible for this imbalance. You would agree with me that it is the input which justifies the output. We need to take a serious look into the kind of students intake today’s institutes of excellence are forced to acquire. A few of real life experiences will elucidate my views in the next paragraph.
A parent visited us last week and wanted career counseling for their child. Father is a reputed builder and desperately wanted his son to join his business. Sir please guide my son to become a Civil Engineer. It was a close ended request. Father had not given any alternates to his son. On the first place I had doubts if the young lad even had an aptitude for engineering, leave aside civil engineering. The kid confessed, he wanted to become a stage artist. In spite of all the guidance and counseling efforts, the psychometric assessments et al, I know the boy will have to digest the qualification of Civil Engineering.
In yet another real life experience a girl child spoils her career because her parent’s are too liberal. They not only assured her to give her the financial support to visit a career counselor and get the most professional advise but also to arrange for the best education infrastructure for her. “Do what you want to & we shall support you financially” goes their words. The girl got all the more confused. All choices and no signboards from parent! Which way should I go?
Choices are the hinges of destiny, said Pythagorus. Surely so and very true also. More so when one is on cross roads of career and the decision taken today will decide the direction of the future life. With thousands and lacs of engineering seats available in India getting admission to an Engineering College is not much an issue. Any institute is as good or as bad as its faculty, campus placements and students provided the Institute is statutorily accredited and recognized.
Friends, students & parents let me share a secret with you. “Just like all medicines are helpful to cure some or the other illness but this happens only when the doctor reads the symptoms rightly and prescribe the right medicine, likewise all Engineering Branches lead to success – what is required is to have the right match.” To select the right branch is a very serious decision. This shall define the course of your career. In the process of making this decision students get strongly influenced by parents, peers and people in general. The opinion of every person you meet contributes in creating thought ripples. In the field of engineering there are immense opportunities for those with the right attitude, skills. The need is to choose the right branch as per the interest and aptitude parameter of ones personality. Opportunities will definitely follow those students who select the right academic slot for themselves. Even in times of recent recession, exciting opportunities were available for technically qualified & EMPLOYABLE manpower.
Making a BRANCH SELECTION is all the more tough when the choices are more. Before taking the right decision students should necessarily meet and discuss with at least two on job working engineers from every stream of engineering and get their opinions about the particular branch. Selecting a branch of engineering also depends on the students career planning. It is must that students should be able to evaluate their inherent personality traits and match it against those which may be the mandatory determinants for any particular branch of engineering. Not all branches of engineering may be suitable to every student. For example if you have a extremely introvert personality and you desire to become a civil engineer or get into construction activities in your life, it may not be really the right decision for you since civil engineering on field ( mostly) requires the traits of extrovert personality.
Every engineering field has its own set of challenges and opportunities. The student should first logically establish the best preferred stream of engineering by getting a. professional psychometric consultation. Having established the best branches the student should introspect and reflect about his/ her aptitude, interest and personality, the strength areas and match it with the career goal. A lot of material is available on the internet which can be surfed to get a glimpse into the engineering branch selection subject. Its however wise & fruitful to consult seniors in the industry, teachers & placement managers, counselors & education coaches before jumping on to the final decision.
LESSONS FOR EXCELLENCE :
1. All branches of engineering have the potential to deliver a great future to the student.
2. More than selection of the institute it is the selection of the right branch which is more critical.
3. Before finalizing on any institute a student should necessarily be satisfied with the institutes accreditation status. You have all the rights to ask for these details.
4. Understand & analyse your aptitude, interest & skills and use this report to select the right branch of engineering.
5. It pays to discuss with senior / just pass-out students & relevant working professionals in the industry to get more insight about the institute and the various streams of education in engineering.
Ajit Varwandkar
Email : info@fsindia.in
Be the “CEO of Happiness” June 25, 2011
Posted by aglakadam in Management.Tags: aglakadam, बच्चो, change, guidance, inspiration, lesson, parenting, stress, success, winner
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Be the “CEO of Happiness”
Everything in life is temporary in nature. Let’s look back to the days when we were kids. The house we lived in & the friends we lived with during those days would not be the same today. The life we lived in the past would have gone into the dark tunnels of dreams for most of us by now. In the process of growing up we come across various life situations and also learn to face them. There are surroundings we cannot change & hence we have to accept those as it is. All of us would have faced a situation when someone in the neighborhood died. We had no other option but to see the expressions of sorrow and pain demonstrated by the bereaved family. There was no choice but only compulsion to see them cry and in the process subconsciously we learned the fact of life. I also had seen one such family in my school days who were crying loads of tears when they lost a loved one in their family. Things were very difficult at that very moment for them to accept. But as we know “change” is the only permanent element in life.
………………….. Complete write-up in my forthcoming book…. for announcement on the book title and launch, pl keep visiting www.aglakadam.com ………………………………………
Change is nothing but a challenge, take it smartly. Be happy always.
Ajit Varwandkar
Email : info@fsindia.in
