Secret of Happy Life

Stress, tensions, depression, problems, these are common words and are very frequently used nowadays by every one of us in our routine life. But have we thought ever, what is stress? Road accident or severe disease or bomb blast … are these stress. NO. Stress is not an incident, situation or the object but one’s attitude and response towards these situations. Let’s take an example, sunny day in summer is curse for us in Pakistan but is considered as blessing in UK. This means that one’s attitude and response towards any incident make things good or worse for him/her. I strongly believe that unless you don’t allow, no situation or person could make bad things with you. God has given control in our hands; sometimes this control is on situation (when things are in our circle of influence), otherwise this control can be exercise on our response to that concerned situation. Situation of sunny day is the best example where hot weather could be in our circle of concern but not in the circle of influence. We can’t change the sunny day, however, how we respond to that weather, what we think and what we act like, it all is in our hands.

If we understand two facts; one that taking or handling stress is in our control and second that no one in this world lives without problems. The next question arises what leads to different problems in our lives. Some problems might be the result of natural disaster like the one we are facing now due to flood in Pakistan but there are many more which are created by ourselves. Gandhi said, “You can fulfill your need but you can’t fulfill your greed”. This is true; we have a long wish list in life which increases with the passage of time. Many times we disappoint when wishes are not fulfilled or we suffer due to our wrong decisions for the fulfillment of wishes. I would like to quote His Highness Aga Khan III, he said, “If your one fourth wishes in the life gets fulfilled you are lucky. Always look people who don’t have things that you have and thank God”. In this connection, I would like you to watch this video taken from Youtube and think that are we so deprive in life more than the person in the video. Shouldn’t we thank God to bless things which are so essential for life but we take them for granted. Reflect on these ideas which watching this video.

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When I watched this video of Nick Vojick, I realized that stress is not the issue, the real problem with us is stress management. I like to share my pattern of stress management with you which I am able to practice in many of my situations. This pattern consists of few action steps and few beliefs;

Step I: Analyzing the situation / issue: whether it is in my circle of influence (can I do something to change it) or circle of concern (I can’t do any thing to change it but it is bothering me).

Step 2: Control the situation, if it is in my circle of influence. For this, I jot down all possible ways and then try out each possibility based on the priority. But I believe that if all possibilities don’t work, there are other possibilities which will work, but I haven’t explored those yet. So I keep on thinking and trying.

Step 3: If the situation is not in my influence but only the concern, I try to adapt positive attitude towards it. Because if I would do otherwise, I will allow the situation to hurt me more.

Step 4: With all above steps, I always belief that I have one supreme authority who knows everything better than me and will do better for me. Trusting and praying to God gives me strength and feeling that I am not alone in this effort. God always supports in the positive decisions, decisions which are intended for betterment of everybody and are in accordance to natural ethics.

The above steps help me to cope up with the day to day issues I face in my life. Robert Schuler in his book “tough time never lasts but tough people do” gives many such examples where individuals overcome their crises and restarted their lives positively.

Considering the current situation in Pakistan where people face multiple problems including economic, security, social, financial, health etc. we need to educate people to manage stress successfully. Such soft skills should be the part of school curriculum and should be taught to the youth of country through variety of forums like youth clubs, schools, home etc. Nowadays people talk about revolution, I belief the first step is to bring change in oneself, in our attitude, thinking and approach towards problems. This can lead to collective effort as a nation to face the challenge positively and effectively for a better solution.

Art of Parenting

Parenting is an art and each one of us should know it before we become parents. Why is it so crucial? What is its significance in one's life? How can be I a good mother? These are some of the questions that continuously helping me to reflect my own practices and beliefs as mother. You can find number of parents around you who appreciate their child on their obedience and following instructions, but my question to them is, are we dealing with human beings or machines? Do we want to make our child as leader or the follower? Why are we so emphasizing on their obedience and in return killing their creativity and empowerment? And then when they grow old, we expect them to take major decisions of their lives intelligently and independently. It is like you don't educate a person and ask him / her to act like a renowned scientist. I intensely feel the importance of this topic for the development of nation in general and community in particular. This write-up is therefore to invite every reader for their critical reflection and thoughts on my sharing based on my learning through readings, observations and experiences.

There is no doubt that I love my daughter very much like all mothers but some times I reflect that my own principles and wishes dominate my love. This is when I impose things on her (definitely with good intension as per my view) rather than accepting her individuality. I as a parent want to see my child excelling in every field; she must be healthy, intelligent, social, morally developed etc etc besides realizing that being an adult I myself is even not so perfect. Due to this long wish list, I sometimes suppress her individuality through my rigid decisions and rules. Take an example, I ask my daughter to complete the meal that I cook for her. For this I use different weapons both emotional and psychological like bribing, praising, scolding. I neglect other conditions like her mood, liking / disliking of that particular food, state of hunger and digestion. On the other side MY RULE IS RULE that needs to be followed at any cost. This sometimes results in her vomiting that creates problem for both of us. This seems a small issue but it can serve as the best example of cruelty. No doubt I do that practice with good intentions to make her healthy and fit but the approach I used is very unhealthy and leads to worse decision and worst outcome. There are many other examples in daily routine where I feel that my praise and gifts make her dependent of getting social acceptance and material benefits rather than satisfaction on her own decisions and accomplishments.

I was reading a book "kids are worth it!" by Mrs. Barbara Coloroso who explained three different types of parenting. According to her, families have mini-cultures that develop language, attitude and behaviors of individuals. These three types of families are;

1. Brick-Wall Family: Very rigid parenting where rule is from parents and child has to abide it. Otherwise child gets punishment or humiliation. Parents enforce their rules rigidly and teach their child what to think and not how to think.

2. Jellyfish Family: These are very flexible family with no recognizable disciplines, rules and norms. Parents go with their children’s decisions all the time and do not contribute their roles. They are least bother what their children are doing as they give them complete freedom regardless of its implications

3. Backbone family: It lies between the above two extreme types where parents give necessary support and structure along with the democracy and authority to child. Children were taught how to think. They always get love, hugs and smiles from family members and feel that this love is not only subject to abiding the rules.

This book provides me several points to think and reflect on my perceptions and practices. I realized that besides controlling, there are other ways to make children disciplined. This is when you accept their ownership and authority to their lives as responsible citizen. Author says that other than life threatening situations where you need to be rigid in your decisions, otherwise child should feel ownership on their decision. There is no need to give them mini lectures but to model good practices by you, no need to tell them what is right or which colour should s/he wear but let them decide good for them. Let them take their decisions and learn through their mistakes. The impact of learning will be more when they think themselves rather than thinking through their parents' minds.

I believe, as a parent, self reflection is the first step but bringing this learning into practice is second and the challenging one. But I feel I, you and we all CAN do it because we all love our children VERY MUCH