Embrace your emotions - P3

Don’t be sad always keep smile… Don’t get angry, be cool. Don’t be disappointed Stay strong, be positive.

Fellow toastmasters, Is it really possible to stay happy always, is it really possible to be positive and motivated every single day. Have anyone done that? No…   

Go to any books shop , you will find a array of self-help books promising – 7 secrets to stay happy , your inbox  is filled with emails of stress relief and anger control workshops and there an emerging professional who call themselves as life coaches.

Turns out this is an 11 billion dollar market in US. India is not left behind, 95 lakh self-help books are sold annually by the ecommerce giants. So what does this mean? Very simple staying happy , staying motivated , staying positive , controlling you anger .. all your emotions are made in to a commodity and sold in the market.

Before going further let us understand what is an emotion… Emotion comes from the word motion which means that something that changes continually. And the prefex “e” denotes the word out … the name itself suggests that emotion is something that keeps changes and has to be let out, expressed or experienced.

There are only 6 kinds of emotions Happy , sad, Anger , fear disgust and surprise and all others emotions are just a combination all these.

This moment you are sad that moment you are happy. Even the angriest man laughs sometimes. Even the saddest man smiles. Even one who laughs continuously sometimes cries and weeps and that is why they are called emotions.

Recently I saw, the movie inside out.  Though the movie is meant for kids, I would recommend it for all adults.

The movies shows the circus of emotions happening inside a 11 year old Riley who deals with moving to a new city, new home and new school. The movies  takes place mostly in the head of this gal, with Joy Sadness anger fear and disgust as the main characters. The emotions are led by joy. Same like our lives how we over rate happiness. Early in the film, Joy admits that she doesn’t understand what Sadness is for or why it’s in Riley’s head.

Joy always wants to keep Riley happy. Trying to force Riley to be happy actually does not help Riley deal with the stress and transitions in her life. And also made her feel isolated and angry with her parents , which ultimately factors her decision to run away from home.

Thus making happiness an explicit goal in life can actually make us miserable

But the moment she allows herself to feel sadness in addition to fear and anger. About her idea to run away from home, she decides not to go with her plan. This choice reunites Riley with her family, giving her a deeper sense of happiness and contentment in the comfort she gets from her parents, even though it’s mixed with sadness and fear.

At one time or another, many of us have probably wondered what purpose sadness serves in our lives.

At the end of the movie Sadness actually emerges as the hero of the movie. Because sadness help to connect with people – what we call as empathy , a critical component of happiness.

Thus even sadness can trigger happiness.

Emotions are neither good nor bad, stop judging them. Instead start being aware of your emotions. IF you become aware of certain emotion and by becoming aware the emotion dissolves , then it is a negative emotion. If by becoming aware of a certain emotion you become the emotion and if the emotion spreads, then its positive. By using the word aware , I mean to be watchful or become an witness. Next time you are angry or in a difficult situation ,just come out of yourself and just be a watcher. You will start to understand the whole purpose of that emotion itself

If you are rational , you become a scientist. But if you are emotional , you become a poet. 

The tears that were never shed - P2 - Toastmasters

Good afternoon Fellow Toastmasters!!!

This is the 1^st time a speech that will be dedicated  only to all men in the room.How many men in the hall have have heard these lines “ Don’t cry you need to be brave”  “Be a man , don’t cry like a girl”.   And when a girl cries she doesn’t hear the same.

Turns out humans are the only animals who can cry when they are emotional.. Research says that emotional tears contain stress hormones, our bodies own way to push out these hormones and thus can crying can stabilize your mood , by making you less angry or less sad.

How many of you believe that only women can cry and men cannot.  Turns out it is true. Only that our culture  does not give the freedom for men to cry.I am going to be 25 soon and I have seen my mom cry every quarter , that’s almost 100 times now, and I saw my dad cry only once in my 25 yrs. And that too he cried only theoretically.

Everyone has those moments in your life when you wanted to cry very badly, but, only left with a mass of lump in your throat and could not cry.I can remember two such instances when I wanted to cry but could not cry. One was when I broke up with my girlfriend, the second time was on the day of Holi in sumerpur when I was the only person in the whole colony to left alone.

There is one incident that actually made me write this whole speech, was an incident that happened 7 years ago. When my cousin brother was leaving to Scotland to pursue his masters. It was the 1^st time realized how difficult it is for men  to cry.

I accompanied my uncle and aunt to send off my brother to the airport as a coolie only to carry the luggage. My Aunt like my mom was very emotional , they both share the same genes.  But my uncle was like a big daddy. I have always found airports to be very emotional place, lets blame the Bollywood for it. So, when I brother came back to wave the final good bye with the boarding pass, my aunts tear tank started overflowing. I wanted to move away from that drama, as I started walking way I saw my uncle , the big daddy, with swollen red eyes. Tear drops were just hanging in the eyelids but not wanting to come out. Again theoretically he did cry but practically he did not cry. 

Very clearly he wanted to cry, but he was afraid if cries he would be branded as weak and emotional and clearly big daddy cant afford that right ? Masculinity is not something men are born with. The expectations are fixed by the society artificially. We have been conditioned to fit into gender roles for so long, resultantly we suppress our real feelings, needs as well as desires.  Due to the rules set by the society and fear of rejection, men and women often suppress the qualities inherent in them. No matter what the stereotypes say, the truth is men do get emotional often. Not all men can remain strong at all times. They do cry. They do feel scared.

Please don’t see men as men and see them as humans. And don’t ever utter that line to your child “be a man , don’t cry like a girl”. You are going to make his life stressful for the rest of his years.

We often relate emotions with gender but aren’t emotions universal ?  

"So next time life gives you lemons, squeeze your eyes and cry you  will feel better.  "

ICEBREAKER - Toastmasters - P1

Here is my 1st toastmaster's assignment - P1. The ice breaker session. 

Good afternoon fellow toastmasters. 

For all the north Indians setting here ... If you want to call someone mardasi here I am ..   a true south indian .. I can claim that I belong to 4 states in south India. A native of andhar pradesh Born in Mysore , brought up in chennai and graduated from Pondicherry. .  And this is the only thing I am probably proud about myself in my whole life. And intend to marry a keralite so that I can set my foot on Kerala also

I was this guy in school who never raised his hand to ask a question. But i was a Radio Jockey in my college. 

I was this guy in school who had always scored more  than  80%   , but had  3 backlogs in my graduation and each subject I had to write thrice. 

I was in such a school where the boys to girls ratio was 1:2 , but in my college I was in such a privileged department where its as  hard to find gal , like looking for an oasis in sahara desert. 

I am this guy who still finds its hard to talk to a gal.. Ok only beautiful girl. But still a beautiful gal proposed me. Sadly she is married and I am still single. 

one day, as an engineer , what i did was i drew a graph of my own life and which looked like this. The same graph which you can see when you watch NDTV profit or economic times. 

We will come back to this later. 

when someone asks me what you want to do in life I don't have an answer .bcoz .  I am confused. I find everything interesting. Sometimes I find this good and the other thing also good. 

A fulfilling life consists of three parts , asking the right questions, the quest for the answers and the answer itself. I am still searching for my question.

In this process of figuring out what to do , I luckily got selected for Jagriti Yatra. Its a 15 day train journey across India . Where you meet roles models in  12 destinations travelling 8000kms. With 450 people. Al in a single train. I thought this is it what I needed at this point of my life.  Probably figure out my right question  and I will figure out what to do my life . 

There on the first day , our group , a group of 25 people , we were asked to do this life line exercise. Nothing but the same graph I had showed you , just a fancy name .  And to our surprise all the graphs looked the same. 

 What I learnt from this graph is that...  one can never settle down in life. And parents always want you to settle down. And that will never happen.  You have to keep running all your life and I am not scaring you by saying it. Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around for a while, you could miss it. 

Though the yatra has been an amazing experience. Many life lessons learned. Now what ?  Definitely a life changing journey for me. Now I see life a lot differently than before .

Its been three months now after the yatra. And nothing has really changed. Except one thing ..  That now  "I am confidently confused". 

The hate mail - reply to my ex after she dumped me

hi,

Hope you are doing good.  

 

Probably this is would be your first time for you to get this kind of a mail. never mind its my 1st time to write the same. the thought i should never write this mail but then i could not stop myself.   

I am writing this mail out of frustration/disappointment/"the extreme state of being pissed off" /resentful....

2015 had been a great year... to be precise it has been a Roller Coaster ride . no normal life only Ups and downs , happiness and sadness , hope and disappointment , anger and peace,I had experienced all the emotions life can offer in a year itself.

I would like to thank you from my bottom of my heart to make me realize that life is more complex that i ever imagined.

I have learnt to be patient . now i wait very patiently in any traffic signal and you might have heard about bangalore traffic.  all this patience I developed waiting for your messages/calls when you started ignoring me.  

Thanks for teaching me patience.  

I have learnt that humans are made of emotions. emotions is what keeps humans alive. and if someone says men are not emotional now i look straight in their eyes and tell them you are wrong.  

Thanks for teaching me emotions

In way you have made me a better person.

Jealousy. Even this I am experiencing whenever one of my friend invites me to his/her marriage.  

 now i have learnt that nothing is permanent. when you are attaching to something we should make sure to detach from it also. Like for any startup company an exit strategy is necessary.

and having blind faith in something is stupidity you need to be very practical. Thanks for proving me wrong.  

the next important thing i learnt is not to judge anyone or anyone at any point of time. This is an important lesson which i learnt. People are very unpredictable.  

The next time I am going to trust someone I will take a step back and tell to myself that I don't do the second mistake. Trust has no relation with a person being good to you or bad to you.

These kind of valuable lessons no one else you teach me..  

thanks a lot for all these

I still very vividly remember the last day I spoke to you. On  27th June 2015 evening. After the last text I had sent you. I just had mass of lump in my throat, with my hands and legs shaking, loosing all my  senses and ability to think. Could not hear the anything except my own heartbeat and my lungs breathing. That moment I left I am a separated from whole entity and the whole world is against me.

That moment just took me 3 years back to my college days when my friend vasath told me " one day u will be in the same situation, you will then  understand my pain" ... Those lines just resonated in my head and they still do.

First time i understood the meaning of being lonely. Being alone is not physically staying alone. Its when you have people around you but you still can't share your pain with anyone. Thanks for making me understand the meaning of the word lonely.  

You can never try to forget something. You just need to keep yourself so busy in something else that you don't have time to even think about that something you want to forget.  

I thought I would never mail/message you again but then thought I just need to let out everything may be this is a way.  Let me not have any regrets of not doing something... I thought let me just let it out through this. No idea how far this will help. Bas kar liya.  

World is not a fair place for everyone. There are certain points in life where the only option left just sit and watch and get screwed. Simply you can't do anything or nobody gonna listen to you. What has to happen will happen and you can't control any of that. All you can do is shut the fuck up. go get screwed.  

There are few things in everyone's life which cannot be shared with anyone. Dark secrets. They just remain with you till the end. And thanks for giving me one such memory which I could not stop myself from revisiting everyday.  

Wishing you a happy married life.  

--  

Regards

Stranger  

(for god sake's don't reply to this email. Parents say “not to talk with strangers”)