The 3 P's that changed my Life

Ever wondered that there might be a word which sounds so "perfect" (sorry for lack of a better word! :p) and positive that it might trick you into believing that it actually is what it sounds like when in reality it has more negative attached to it than anything positive?


Well, "PERFECTIONISM" is one such word.


Now, the first time when i heard this word i thought it had something to do with all the perfect things and those who practiced it were perfect. But then, one great day i came across an article on perfectionism (thanx to google!) and my "PERCEPTION" changed.


Perfectionism, according to psychologists, is a belief wherein the person ( i.e. the perfectionist) very strongly believes that perfection can and should be attained. A perfectionist's most often used phrases go somewhat this way..." I can't start my project until I know the 'right' way to do it ", " Oh! I can't believe I don't know how to go about solving that problem", " I'm unable to understand why I'm not doing my work in spite of knowing exactly how to do it perfectly well; It's driving me nuts; when will i ever stop PROCRASTINATING?"

The perfectionist is almost always obsessed with doing things in a perfect way that he/she almost always loses sight of the main purpose. In short, a perfectionist, like someone said, "cannot see the trees in a forest". In other words, this is an individual who becomes so focused on the tiny details that they forget that there is a purpose to what they are doing. That is why some perfectionists become procrastinators. The perfectionist is like the person who has a fully fueled car, has an international driving license, knows all the traffic rules and above all, knows how exactly to drive well but never gets around to driving. 

To some extent perfectionism has few positive traits like driving the person to achieve his/her's goals. But beyond that point, i.e, when the obsession crosses limits it leads to a number of negative effects such as low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive-disorders, lack of motivation, rigidity and immobilization. Because of all these reasons he/she never gets around to actually doing the things they want to do. They actually give up things altogether just because they believe they can never do that thing perfectly. So it's something like either do it perfectly or leave it for good.


Perfectionism did pay me a visit a couple of years ago but unfortunately i haven't realized it until about a month ago. In fact i didn't even know that i was actually having some psychological problem. All those times i was putting away things saying that i didn't have mood i was thinking i was just lazy. But then the obsession reached that point where i was actually noticing changes in my behavioral patterns...a few years ago for eg, i used to read a lot of new books every now and then, i used to do all those things that fancied me then at that point of time. 


For the past couple of years and more so in the last year I've seen myself crawl through all those days where i wanted to do many things i was interested in but wasn't able to get myself to start any of them. And trust me when i say that if there's an award for "googled the most number of times" it should be conferred upon me :p. Honestly, I guess I've googled for almost every minuscule thing that ever crossed my mind right from the most clichéd to the most bizarre of things. 


And it was one such googling that changed my PERCEPTION about PERFECTIONISM and helped me understand why I was the PROCRASTINATOR that I was. So I'm working to overcome all these negative effects now and i guess it's working coz i don't think this blog post would've ever surfaced on my blog if i were still procrastinating!!! :):p 




P.S: After a long time i spent my day really well today by doing all those things that i love...completed this sketch today...:):p

The Bliss of Innocence

I REMEMBER...


My first day at school at the age of 3…where I made myself comfy by hiding at my sis’s feet(she was in first class and there was a lot of room for me beneath her bench) playing, a top which I brought from home, till my class teacher came looking for me…

The days I used to run around like my daddy’s little girl, helping him clean his bike( though it wasn’t much really, I used to feel I was doing all the work…:p )

The days when my mom used to do all sorts of lovely things just to ensure that I ate.

The days when me n my sis used to play all the world’s most funniest games till we had no more energy left.

The days when my brother used to take me for joy rides, going down the lanes that I randomly pointed at.

The day my mother tried so hard just to bring back the smile on my crying face.

My first day at the new big school in my second class…where the mere strength of the class…a whopping 72 students was enough to make me get a fake stomach ache so I could sleep in the last bench :p

The days when I used to curl into my mom’s lap, feeling gloomy, on a Sunday night… ( had to go back to school on mon…:) )

How many of those kids forced to work at those hotels or construction sites REMEMBER such things?

I ask: How can something be remembered when it hasn’t even happened? ...

Every child is equally innocent and has got every right to enjoy that bliss of innocence. 

Sunscreen

These are parts of the song sunscreen by Baz Luhrmann which i liked...some simple facts of life:

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh nevermind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded.

But trust me, in 20 years you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked...

You're not as fat as you Imagine.

The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind.

Do one thing everyday that scares you.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts, don't put up with people who are reckless with yours

Don't waste your time on jealousy;

Sometimes you're ahead,

Sometimes You're behind.

The race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself.

Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults;

If you Succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your

Life.

The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don't.

Get to know your parents, you never know when they'll be gone for good.

Be nice to your siblings;

They are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on.

After a looong time...

Huh...finally after a looong time got myself to sketch a pic...good to see dat i haven't forgotten these things...

Just A Day for everythin n never a lifetime!

Thanks to all the "DAYS"...the friendship day, the mother's day, the father's day, the valentine's day... each one of these days was dedicated to specially honor the various good relationships a human makes throughout a lifetime...but now its a different case...coz if not for these days, most relationships don't seem to exist...as the modern man has wrongly assumed them to be the only days on which to express a love for a relationship.Can't imagine what wud've happened if not for these days...huh? maybe we shud have a "remembrance day" just so we don't forget the main purpose.

Being BUSY - a fact?...think again!

Too busy to talk...Too busy to walk...Too busy to eat...Too busy to snooze...

Sound like pretty familiar responses?

WATCH OUT...coz soon enough you might be Too BUSY to breathe

When people ask how you are, "I'm gud" and "I'm fine" have been replaced with "Too busy" ?

Then you ought to realize that Busy-ness is a state of mind not a fact. Today people distinguish the two states of being busy or being free by the amount of things they got before them. But you can have an endless to-do list and yet be free coz as against the popular demand, our brain can in no way multitask. No matter how many ever things you gotto do, the human brain processes things and performs tasks only one after the other as a lot of tasks involve the usage of the same portion of the brain.No matter how much or how little we are doing, we're only doing one thing : living the present one moment.

But in today's mechanized and tech-driven world being busy very wrongly sends out of a signal of being powerful or effective or tends to have a good impact. But there's no reason to fret with never ending agreements and pointless goals. Because life's like a prepaid mobile with limited talk'time' ; you never know when you might run out of talk'time'. So it makes sense to use every minute wisely. 

And what's time by the way?

Ever observed that a boring one-hour class seems longer when compared to a one-hour of time spent with friends? This alone is enough to stand as a matter of testimony that Time is how we live it, not what's measured by the clock. 

But the clock, which was invented by man, was supposed to be working for us not the other way round. If we feel too busy we have mistaken a feeling for an objective reality and are held captive to it.In the end, if you still persistently and unpleasantly feel too busy, then remember that it is a matter of choice after all : whether to be or not to be busy.

NEED FOR SPEED...

Ever envisaged that your probability of getting 'hit' or even worse, 'killed' is high for the mere fact that you were on a road (whether main road or a small by-lane) immaterial of  the fact whether you were in the middle of the road or on the pavement???...

WELCOME TO THE ROADS OF HYDERABAD...

"SPEED"...a word that goes very well with "a Hyderabadi" with the same ease as bread would go with butter.

Every hyderabadi is in a haste for something or the other. A chance encounter with a typically busy hyderabadi road will give you an insight into what i'm trying to say. A typical hyderabadi road looks something like a disoriented picture painted by a novice who has little or no sense of order. Be it a cycle speeding off in the narrow passage between two RTC buses or vehicles zooming past pedestrians in the wrong direction on a one way road...when it comes to the roads of hyderabad, you find it all...anything's possible anytime.

And then again....we have the legendary 'traffic-jams', where the situation stands true to its name...totally jam-packed...

and...the "fly-overs" oops!...the stop-overs i mean!

Kids rush for their cartoons, housewives for their soap operas, youngsters for their movies or exams, twenty-five somethings for their new found jobs, elders for their doctor's appointment...whatever may be the reason...rushing is important here. It doesn't even matter if you haven't got anything to do at your destinations...the rule of thumb goes "he's rushing. Let's rush too...".
And to abide by this rule, people do all sorts of weird stuff like honking their horns at a red signal, zooming past a cursing traffic police when the traffic light flashes red, squeeeezing into narrow places between vehicles just to get ahead of others. And there's always a very hilarious episode going on at the signal line. It's as if an Olympic race is about to begin. People keep raising their accelerators and inch forward crossing the line waiting for the signal to turn green and also at the same time not allowing their fellow travelers to get past their own vehicle. They'll easily be on the other end of the road if the traffic signal flashes red for more than a minute.

Then again traveling is the sole goal as far as the people are concerned no matter the road exists or not...It's quite common for the roads to be dug up for laying of various cables etc...and once such potholes are dug...the officials conveniently forget to cover them up as the people themselves do it for them....they just keep riding over such roads regularly and one day, the road is leveled out to perfection. Thanks to the poor road quality and heavy rains, the roads almost always have potholes and loose gravel even if not dug on purpose.

Surely, there's a need for speed but for the right things- like development of the traffic conditions and quality of road.   

  

WHY?...the echo doesn't seem to work in the mechano-world

Friends...
                                       are those who are alwayz round the corner whenever a thought crosses your mind...are those with whom you share everything from those crazy little thoughts to those endless scoops of ice-creams had over the world's most senseless discussions...are those that you'd love to tease the most, just to sit back and watch their funny expressions...are those with whom you've heated arguments for the most meager things and then laugh out as if nothing ever went awry...


Or is it?...


Thanks to the highly mechanized world, friends are just sweet past memories today...
No longer do they find time to hangout or have fun and interact with each other. They only stand up for us when we are in the most turbulent of times...but what about sharing precious moments of the present having the time of our lives together? Do we have to fore-go all the euphoria for the sake of the this highly mechanical lives that we 'live'...sorry 'lead' today?


Friends today grow apart too easily...not that they don't care for each other but that they're too 'busy' to show their caress...coz they reason out that their mechanical lifestyles have hardly left any time for themselves let alone their friends...This is the reason that we never seem to get a call from our friends most of the times...
So how are we supposed to feel when our call isn't returned?...or they don't echo the feelings that we have for them...?

       They say, "A Friend walks in when the rest of the World walks out of your life"...

So Do we have to wait for the whole world to walk out on us now?...to catch a precious moment with our friends?...coz they don't seem to respond otherwise...

BALA BANDHU DR.B.A.REDDY

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. 

                                          -Aristotle

.

It's not everyday that we come across eminent personalities like Dr.B.A.Reddy who are benevolent, successful, skilled at their art and above all have a great lot of immaterial achievements to their name...

And I happen to be one such lucky person who accidentally, but fortunately got an opportunity to spend a few of my childhood years with him. Born in 1940, at Pammuru, krishna district, he graduated from the Agra University and obtained a Diploma in Arts Course from the Government of Andhra Pradesh. He has won several awards for his paintings and graphics from places all over the World...A few of his paintings adorn the walls of the same room of the Salarjung Museum as those of Ravi Varma, M.F.Hussain and other eminent artists...

For him his art was an outright medium of expression- coarse and brutal. He used it as his tool to combat his helplessness and frustrations against the many social inequalities, atrocities against women and the social injustice everywhere.Most of his works depicted the human misery so unsettling and disturbing that they became his trademark and on many occasions his paintings were compared to that of Kathe Kollwitz...

                                                                       'Of Serfdom'

His painting 'Of Serfdom' and many others are characteristic of his involvement with children- the influence of their cheerfulness on one side and his limitations to move away from being a socially conscious individual,unable to come to terms with the social atrocities of life on the other...A major part of his life has been dedicated to the closest thing to his heart- the world of children and his passion to work with them.

    

Today, he's the President and Founder of the 25 year old art institution: "YOUNG ENVOYS INTERNATIONAL"; an institution which is recognized as one of the best institutions of the World at most of the Global Child Art events. Apart from this the establishment of "Sanskriti", the Rural Art Centre for Children     at Hyderguda village in the year 1993 was a major step which revolutionized the lives and ways of thinking of hundreds of children...thus putting India's name onto the World map in the field of art...

Dr.Reddy writes "Fifty two years have gone by working with children, of that 25 with the village kids"; and further adds that they are the most wonderful years of his life. It is at the "Sanskriti" that the children of potters, carpenters, labourers and masons come together every holiday and Sundays to explore their creativity, most often making a global mark;the children regularly win prizes from Japan, Korea, Finland, Hungary, Poland, Skopje, Slovakia, Russia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Rome and several other nations.

"In recognition of his work in the field of children's art, Reddy has been awarded the Soviet Land Nehru Award, `The Order of Smile', from Poland. The National Award for teachers, Diplomas of Honor from several countries and several heads of countries. A recipient of numerous awards as an artist and an art educator, including the Junior and Senior Fellowships of the Government of India, B. Appi Reddy who learnt painting, doing little jobs for his teacher in lieu of the fees he could not pay, is most happiest working with colours and in the company of his rural children at `Sanskriti' where art is not treated as a commodity but as the purest form of expression."

                                                                                           - The Hindu

Rama Krishna is a differently abled boy from "Sanskriti", who just wished to set up a telephone booth to earn a living, is now a student of National Institute of Design, an Internationally acclaimed institution and one of utmost priority for an artist...today Dr.Reddy says with a touch of utmost hapiness to his tone "...in a few months he'll get placed as a textile designer or something in a good company..."
Today most of his students have successfully chosen their paths in life and are working as artists, architects, designers, pedagogues and engineers...And if all this inexpressible happiness in watching his wards progress in life isn't the greatest achievement of the art pedagogue, then nothing else is...

THE SERIAL SAGA

"DON'T DISTURB!!!"

If you've got even the weeniest bit of sense you wouldn't disturb someone immersed in a television serial...TV serials have successfully managed to grab not only their viewer's attention but a major part of their lives too...

Though it sounds unbelievable and totally out from the blues, how many times have you asked a person glued to some TV serial, for something AAAND...how many times did you even manage to get what you've asked for?...forget about getting what you want...you'd be the luckiest person on this planet if you weren't at the receiving end of disgusting looks(this is a bit rare coz the eyes are too busy watching...) or much worse a burst of anger??! :-)

If it's a choice BETWEEN:
talkin to your dear one's,
having a merry chat with your family,
and for the record of it...havin lunch/dinner     AND the mighty Television Serial...
Surely, it's the latter that wins most of the times...and what could be the reason?...are...kya bhaath kar rahe ho yaar? hamne tho apne jeevan kaal ka kithna samay in serials ko dhekhne mein laga dhi...ab kya bhojhan khana bhi ithni badi cheez hai?...
    
Most people are still under the illusion that they are just passing their time watching these...when in reality they are giving up their precious time which could be spent to turn their present into a past full of lovely memories about their dear one's...so BEWARE!!