I hate being an Adult..

As a teenager, I abhorred the idea of adulthood. I would approach each birthday with a sense of dread, like I was being marched towards a guillotine. I remember being particularly miserable on both my 18^th & 24^th birthday. The first one because it meant officially I was now a adult, and the second, because I it meant I was skipped on the other side of the twenties.

Not that my teenage years were any easy.

I was your regular spotty teenager, unsure of herself, lacking confidence and always nursing a secret crush or a broken heart. I never approached any of my crushes, I was so sure that they would rebuff my advances. And conversely I gained a reputation for being notoriously shy and as a result no boy ever approached me as well. I wasn’t sure where my career was headed.

Do I have your Attention?

Another fall-out of the immense number of people crowding every profession is Attention Seeking Behavior (ASB). You’ll see various versions of this ASB in your office itself. Look around, we all know that drama queen & the busy bee.

The urge is to set themselves apart, and at the same time have everyone applaud them.

Such behavior generally has roots in early childhood. Either the kid fails to develop a sense of self-worth & constantly seeks approval from others; at other times it may be an only child who never matures. Provided with undiluted attention from parents (authority) they seek the same everywhere. This is not to say that all single kids are mal-adjusted, I know some very selfless, caring people who are only kids.

There are different kinds of ASB. I can already identify a few types in the people I meet daily:

Can you keep a secret?

Image via Wikipedia

A lot of us are shocked at the sudden spate of suicides by housewives. We wonder why they didn’t share their sorrows with their friends. Why did they bottle up all that anger & grief, till it became too much for them to handle?

But is it really that easy to share secrets with people these days?

People share secrets to others to as a declaration of their trust, importance and that they recognize them as their close friends. Additionally, people share secrets to strengthen the bond, to make the relationship tighter and closer. Give & Take, I’ll tell you my secret, if you tell me yours.

Sometimes we just share secrets to unload the burden, to have someone to talk to.

The Pygmalion Effect - You get what you give

The Pygmalion Effect derives its name from a very famous play - Pygmalion: A Romance in Five Acts.

Doesn't ring a bell, ok, try this modern name for this old play: My Fair Lady.

This is a play about a Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador's garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of gentility, the most important element of which, he believes, is impeccable speech.

Sounds like fun, right! But this play holds a very important lesson for us all, that expectations become self-fulfilling. Since Prof. Higgins was sure he would be able to pass off Eliza as a dutchness he was able to do so, more importantly he recognised that Eliza's manner of speech was just a matter of correction. That she was capable of more. That she had an ability she herself had not noticed as yet.

Snake in a Suit? Workplace Bullying in India

While watching Rocket Singh (Ranbir Kapoor is emerging as one of the best actors of his generation) last night, I felt very sorry about the bullying he undergoes at his workplace. 

Reflecting upon that later I realized that work place bullying is actually very rampant in India. 

Countries abroad like US, Australia, Canada & UK have very stringent laws to curb this abuse and it is legally punishable. Not so in India. This bullying has been recently captured in movies like Rocket Singh and to some extent in Karthik calling Karthik. 

Appreciation - Do you like me? Say you like me..

Image by clevercupcakes via Flickr

It costs nothing - except maybe takes a minute of your time, but can pay you back in loyalty, devotion, respect and admiration.

Would you like to know the secret that can make people your staunchest allies, those who fight for you even when you have given up? the answer is simple and plain APPRECIATION.

What is appreciation? The simple act of recognizing the efforts someone else has put in to make your life better. I cannot think of a more simpler definition.

Finding your Harry Potter

J. K. Rowling has had an interesting career before she penned Harry Potter. She has been a teacher as well as worked at Amnesty International.
It seems to me she drifted from one thing to another untill she found the courage/conviction to sit and pen down Harry Potter.
J K Rowling says that she always knew that she wanted to write stories. She knew her "Harry Potter" (my use of "Harry Potter" is in a sense to imply that which is your deepest desire and your life's calling- work that you were meant to do)

What if you don't know what your "Harry Potter" is?