5 Steps Toward Resilience By Therese Borchard

The opposite of depression is not happiness, according to Peter Kramer, author of "Against Depression" and "Listening to Prozac," it is resilience: the ability to cope with life’s frustrations without falling apart. Proper treatment doesn’t suppress emotions or dull a person’s ability to feel things deeply. It builds a protective layer -- an emotional resilience -- to safeguard a depressive from becoming overwhelmed and disabled by the difficulties of daily life. Here, then, are five steps toward resilience.

1. Sleep

Sleep is crucial to sanity because sleep disturbances can contribute to, aggravate, and even cause mood disorders and a host of other illnesses. The link between sleep deprivation and psychosis was documented in a 2007 study at Harvard Medical School and the University of California at Berkeley. Using MRI scans, they found that sleep deprivation causes a person to become irrational because the brain can’t put an emotional event in proper perspective and is incapable of making an appropriate response. Chronic sleep deprivation, especially, is bad news. It often affects memory and concentration. And, according to one recent study, it can cause a decline in cognitive performance similar to the intoxicated brain.

2. Diet
My mouth and brain are in constant negotiation with each other because while one loves white bread, pasta, and chocolate, the other throws a hissy fit whenever they enter my blood stream. My diet has always been an important part of my recovery from depression, but two years ago -- after working with the naturopath and reading Kathleen DesMaison’s "Potatoes Not Prozac" -- I could more competently trace the path from my stomach to my limbic system. Moreover, I recognized with new clarity how directly everything that I put in my mouth affects my mood.

Here are the bad boys: nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, sugar, white flour, and processed food -- you know, what you live on. Here are the good guys: protein; complex starches (whole grains, beans, potatoes); vegetables; vitamins (vitamin B-complex, vitamins C, D, and E, and a multivitamin); minerals (magnesium, calcium, and zinc); and omega-3 fatty acids. I’m religious about stocking up on Omega-3 capsules because leading physicians at Harvard Medical School confirmed the positive effects of this natural, anti-inflammatory molecule on emotional health.

3. Exercise
Dr. James A. Blumenthal, a professor of medical psychology at Duke University, led a recent study in which he and his team discovered that, among the 202 depressed people randomly assigned to various treatments, three sessions of vigorous aerobic exercise were approximately as effective at treating depression as daily doses of Zoloft, when the treatment effects were measured after four months. A separate study showed that the depressives who improved with exercise were less likely to relapse after 10 months than those treated successfully with antidepressants, and the participants who continued to exercise beyond four months were half as likely to relapse months later compared to those who did not exercise.

Even as little as 20 minutes a week of physical activity can boost mental health. In a new Scottish study, reported in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, 20,000 people were asked about their state of mind and how much physical activity they do in a week. The results showed that the more physical activity a person engaged in -- including housework, gardening, walking, and sports–the lower their risk of distress and anxiety.

Exercise relieves depression in several ways. First, cardiovascular workouts stimulate brain chemicals that foster growth of nerve cells. Second, exercise increases the activity of serotonin and/or norepinephrine. Third, a raised heart rate releases endorphins and a hormone known as ANP, which reduces pain, induces euphoria, and helps control the brain’s response to stress and anxiety. Other added benefits include improved sleep patterns, exposure to natural daylight (if you’re exercising outside), weight loss or maintenance, and psychological aids.

4. Relationships And Community
We are social creatures and are happiest when we are in relationship. One of the clearest findings among happiness research is that we need each other in order to thrive and be happy, that loving relationships are crucial to our well-being. Relationships create a space of safety where we can learn and explore. Belonging to a group or a community gives people a sense of identity. Studies indicate that social involvement can promote health, contribute toward faster recovery from trauma and illness, and lower risk of stress-related health problems and mental illness.

Plenty of evidence indicates that support groups aid the recovery of person struggling with depression and decrease rates of relapse. The New England Journal of Medicine published a study in December of 2001 in which 158 women with metastic breast cancer were assigned to a supportive-expressive therapy. These women showed greater improvement in psychological symptoms and reported less pain than the women with breast cancer who were assigned to the control group with no supportive therapy.

Another study in 2002, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, followed a group of more than 100 persons with severe depression who joined online depression support groups. More than 95 percent of them said that their participation in the online support groups helped their symptoms. The Depression Center here at Everyday Health are a great resource.

5. Purpose
The father of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, explains in his book, "Authentic Happiness," that a critical element to happiness exists in using your signature strengths in the service of something you believe is larger than you. After collecting exhaustive questionnaires he found that the most satisfied people were those that had found a way to use their unique combination of strengths and talents to make a difference. Dan Baker, Ph.D., director of the Life Enhancement Program at Canyon Ranch, believes that a sense of purpose -- committing oneself to a noble mission -- and acts of altruism are strong antidotes to depression. And then there’s Gandhi, who wrote: "the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."

source : huffington post

"Forgiveness" the song and the inspiration behind it

Matthew West - Forgiveness (Lyric Version) by MatthewWest-Official

                                                                    

It’s the hardest thing to give away
And the last thing on your mind today
It always goes to those that don’t deserve

It’s the opposite of how you feel
When the pain they caused is just too real
It takes everything you have just to say the word…

Forgiveness
Forgiveness

It flies in the face of all your pride
It moves away the mad inside
It’s always anger’s own worst enemy
Even when the jury and the judge
Say you gotta right to hold a grudge
It’s the whisper in your ear saying ‘Set It Free’

Forgiveness, Forgiveness
Forgiveness, Forgiveness

Show me how to love the unlovable
Show me how to reach the unreachable
Help me now to do the impossible

Forgiveness, Forgiveness

Help me now to do the impossible
Forgiveness

It’ll clear the bitterness away
It can even set a prisoner free
There is no end to what it’s power can do
So, let it go and be amazed
By what you see through eyes of grace
The prisoner that it really frees is you

Forgiveness, Forgiveness
Forgiveness, Forgiveness

Show me how to love the unlovable
Show me how to reach the unreachable
Help me now to do the impossible
Forgiveness

I want to finally set it free
So show me how to see what Your mercy sees
Help me now to give what You gave to me
Forgiveness, Forgiveness

Grammy-nominated musician Matthew West was so inspired by Renee Napier’s story and her ability to forgive her daughter's killer that he has included it in his new book "Forgiveness" and in his latest CD "Into The Light."

"Renee Napier lost her daughter because a drunk driver got behind the wheel of his car one night and crashed into her daughter's car," said West.

"That young man is the reason, she'll never see her daughter again. That young man was sentenced to 22 years in prison for the crime he committed. This woman Renee wrote to me about how she was the one who felt like a prisoner because she had all this bitterness, hatred and anger in her heart towards that young man," said West.

"So she wrote to me about how she just began to surrender that and she's like, I can't go on like this. And God began to lead her to a point where she could forgive that young man. I asked her when I met her for the first time. 'Renee, how did you manage to forgive him?' And she said, 'I didn't, I came to the end and I asked God to take me the rest of the way'," he explained.

West notes that he believes the book will resonate with readers because it "is driven by true stories, these are just real stories that we can find a bit of our own stories in there."

"In one way or another I think we can all find our way into these stories that people are gonna read and hopefully they can say 'hey, I'm not alone. I'm not the only one that struggles with this topic of forgiveness but I know that God's gonna take my hand He's gonna lead me the rest of the way. And there is a way to find true freedom in our lives," he added.

Unraveling the Messages Our Behaviors Send to Students By Maryellen Weimer, PhD

How we teach begins and ends with behaviors. It's good to remind ourselves of that every so often. Most of the ingredients identified as the components of effective instruction—things like clarity, organization, and enthusiasm—are abstractions. They're intangible, without physical form. Their presence or absence is conveyed by the behaviors that have come to be associated with them. 

What makes the focus on behaviors particularly powerful is that when it comes to changing your teaching, you don't have the more daunting task of changing what you are—in my case, not terribly well organized when presenting content—but you can work on changing what you do. You aren't trying to "be more organized," you're trying to use more internal summaries, skeleton outlines, and transitions identified with statements, emphasized with a pause, and underscored by moving to a different place. 

And yet as we consider our behaviors, we realize how dauntingly complex they are. What any behavior means is determined by the person who does it and by the person who observes it. But that behavior doesn't always mean the same thing to both of them. Although most users and observers equate gestures with enthusiasm, some people see gestures (especially repeated ones) and conclude the person is nervous. When the observer sees a different meaning in the behavior, then that behavior is not attached to the intended abstraction. 

Moreover, typically the presence of an abstraction, take clarity for example, is not the function of a single behavior, but the aggregate of multiple behaviors. So for students to conclude that you have clarity, regularly providing definitions might not be enough. You may also need to be able to say the same thing in different ways, offer examples, partition complex concepts, identify steps in a process, and so on. How many behaviors equated with clarity does it take before an observer determines that you are being clear? That depends on the observer and most observers aren't aware enough of the behavior-abstraction connection to tell you how many you need. When some students credit you with being clear and others do not, in addition to associating different behaviors with clarity, they are also disagreeing on the number needed. 

So, not only do we have to consider that behaviors are interpreted differently and that a varying constellation of behaviors indicate the presence of a given abstraction, but we must also add to that list the influences exerted by the context in which the behavior occurs. What are the circumstances that surround the use of a given behavior or collection of behaviors? You may walk over to a part of the room so that you can better hear what a student is saying, but if a student nearby is texting, your behavior may be threatening. Maybe that student deserves to feel a bit threatened, but the meaning he's attaching to your presence illustrates how context also shapes the meaning of a behavior, and most of these context variables aren't ones teachers can control. 

Finally, we can throw into the mix that fact that sometimes teachers (and people in general) do certain things without knowing that they're doing them. Say it's a repetitive behavior like pushing up sleeves, counting change in a pocket, or walking back and forth. Students can look at any of those actions and conclude that the teacher is nervous. And they're probably right. But it does engender modest amounts of anxiety to think that behaviors can communicate messages without any involvement on our part. 

You could read this and wonder how there's ever any successful communication in the classroom or elsewhere. Fortunately, most of time, the majority of students will see a behavior set and equate it with the intended abstraction. That's why it makes sense to think about teaching abstractions in terms of behaviors. Chances are good that if you start regularly using behaviors associated with clarity, students will decide that you are a teacher who explains things clearly. Chances are good, but not guaranteed.

source : faculty focus

Vodafone TVCs 'Made for Everything'

  

I really love the latest series of  Vodafone TVCs featuring the 'Network made for everything'.

Essentially the ads want to reiterate the network credentials of vodafone.

Ogilvy & Mather has created four ad films as part of the campaign.

The first of this series features a young boy speaking on the phone. It opens with him lying in bed and confirming the sun sign of the person on the other end of the line. He says, ‘Virgo and Taurus are a perfect match’, indicating that it’s a love interest he’s talking to. He continues the conversation through the day, discussing inconsequential things like the colour of clothes they’re wearing. He walks to the grocery store, changes, listens to music and even uses the wash room while still on the phone. The film ends at dawn, with the boy looking out the balcony and saying, ‘By the way, good morning’. Supers ‘Made for first love’ and ‘Network for never ending conversations’ precede the brand’s logo, even as the boy is heard continuing the conversation. The ad really captures a ‘slice of life’ if I may say so. The ad is shot so naturally that it stops being  an ad and starts  feeling like a peep into  the kids life. It brings a warm feeling into your heart.

The ‘Made for Moms’ TVC is one which most Moms with grown up children would truly identify with. That is the amazing thing about this and the other TVCs. Vodafone has ‘nailed it’  in terms of  the authenticity brought into the ads. So much so that it stops being an ad and  starts being a real life scenario playing out.

The ‘Made for the young’ is so hilarious, I cannot stop laughing even when I watch  it for the nth time. The actors have done such a good job, that it looks so natural and unpretentious.

Overall, the objective of the campaign was to establish network superiority and be the preferred brand choice.For any telecom consumer, network is one of the strongest reasons to choose the brand or to be loyal to the brand, and  the campaign is meant to enhance Vodafone’s network credentials with the propositions ‘Uninterrupted calls’, ‘Widest reach’, ‘Superior voice clarity’ and ‘High speed data experience’.

While the intentions are rational the theme appeals to the emotions in a way that is very watchable and endearing.

4 Marketing Tips for Start-ups

About this Video

Marketing is a crucial but challenging task for every start-up. A start-up lacks funds to create campaigns that can be matched with the big players. But at the same time it needs to communicate its story to the target audience. In this video Vinay Parameswarappa, Founder & CEO, Royal Mysore Walks, shares 4 practical tips that start-ups can use.

About Vinay

Vinay is the Founder and CEO of Royal Mysore Walks. 

source : www.nenonline.tv

My favourite songs

Na tum hame jaano... Woh Shaam Kuch Ajeeb Thi 1969 film Khamoshi - Rajesh Khanna, Lag Ja Gale : Ajeeb dastan hai ye Dil dhoondtha hai phir wahi Teri Duniya Se Hoke Majboor Chala... yeh duniya yeh mehfil: dil aisa kisi ne mera toda Kasme waade pyaar wafa sab baate hain Khilona Jan Kar Tum To - khush rahe tu sada Yeh Reshmi Zulfein - Rajesh Khanna - Mumtaz - Do Raaste

Words of Wisdom from Shahrukh Khan

I am going to say good evening again, because that's how I started the speech. First of all, it's really scary here. Some of the biggest managers of the biggest corporations in the biggest convention for management - AIMA.

It's very sad that in such an august company of people, big business houses and managers, all you could manage was to get a speaker fromBollywood to speak at the convention. Theeconomy must be really bad.

Well, who am I to speak about the economic downtrend across the globe etc, or anything, for that matter? Just reading the topics being discussed before I came on stage, I was frightened. And if I'm allowed to say so, shit scared. I couldn't understand a word. Let me tell you one of the discussions they had earlier on in the day - 'Could financialisation of commodities be used to incentivise supply growth without inflating prices?'

Okay, if you say so. Or no, if you guys are in a bad mood, whatever you say. The other one - 'Managing liquidity supply crunch risk of NPA CSR mandate CEOs COOs CFOs UFOs'... mind-boggling and numbing for a person like me who can just about say, k-k-k-k-corporation management. And the topic that my friend Shiv (D Shivakumar, president, AIMA) told me is, I have to speak about courage, in this scared state and ill-informed mindset. But here I am, and so are all of you wonderful people. I wish you a great convention and a happy economy, and I want to thank my friend Shiv for giving me this opportunity to speak in front of such an extraordinary amazement of grey matter - all of you highly successful, perhaps the most successful people in the world - and he chose me to give you a speech on success. Am I the only one seeing the irony here? Or are you all too busy holding back your laughter on what I'm going to say?

Apart from my lack of knowledge and fear, the only other thing is that I'm not good at giving discourses on how to succeed. I don't know what I'm going to say to you highly motivated people that you don't already know about life. So I'll bore you with a few details of my life. But let me warn you, this is a recycled speech. It's generic and it's simple.

Successful people are almost never able to pinpoint what it was that made them so. Take Warren Buffet. Here's a guy who must get asked five times a day how he became the most successful investor of his era. His answers? 'Reinvest your profits, limit what you borrow' - are no different from what any fool could tell you. But he's not being cagey - he simply doesn't know. Success is a wonderful thing, but it tends not to be the sort of experience that we learn from. We enjoy it, perhaps we even deserve it, but we don't acquire anything from it. And maybe that's why, it cannot be passed on either. Being successful does not mean my children will also be so, however much I teach them what all did in my life, and they follow it to the letter.

Success just happens, really. So, talking about how to become successful is a waste of time. So let me tell you, very honestly, whatever happened to me, happened because I'm really scared of failure. I don't want as much to succeed, as much I don't want to fail. I come from a very normal middle/lower middle-class family, and I saw a lot of failure. My father was a beautiful man, and the most successful failure in the world. My mom also failed to stay with me long enough to see me become a movie star. We were quite poor, actually - at certain junctures of our lives, I had even experienced what we call in Delhi a kudki - how many of you know about it? This is a thing that the government does when you don't pay the rent of your house, and they throw you and your stuff on the roads.

Let me tell you, poverty is not an ennobling experience at all. Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes, depression. I've seen my parents go through it many times - it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. At an early age after my parents died, I equated poverty with failure. I just didn't want to be poor. So when I got a chance to act in films, it wasn't out of any creative desire that I signed my films - it was just purely out of the fear of failure and poverty. Most of them were discards of other actors and the producers could not find anyone else to do them. Deewana, which was my first hit, was actually discarded by an actor called Arman Kohli. Baazigar was rejected by Mr Salman Khan, and Darr was negated by Mr Aamir Khan. I did them all just to make sure I was working. The timing or something was right, and that made it happen that I became a big star.

I asked Dilip Kumar sa'ab one day - we were watching Devdas together - and I said, 'Sir, yeh joh picture aapne ki hai, itni achhi acting...' I had made my own version of Devdas, and I was sitting next to him, and I said, 'Sir, yeh picture jo aapne ki hai, bahut achhi hai. Kyun ki aapne? Aapko yeh character kyun achha laga?' And he looked at me and he said, 'Pata nahin yaar, bas thoda sa... kya thaa woh... Bimalda ek lakh rupaye de rahe the mujhko...' That was the only reason he did Devdasat that point of time. Of course he's the greatest actor the world will ever see, but at that point of time, that's all he wanted. That sometimes, our success is not the direct result of our actions. It just happens on its own, and we take the credit for it, out of embarrassment sometimes.

So I believe the true road to success is not the desire for success, but the fear of failure. I tell everyone, if you don't enjoy and be afraid of your failure hard enough, you will never succeed. I'm not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun, but I will insist and hope that all of us will experience it in some measure. The extent of what each one of us perceives as failure must differ, as it should, but I believe that everyone should pass through some stages of failure before they succeed. So how does one fail?

I'm sorry, this is what I teach my kids, so if it sounds a little novice and silly, please excuse me. First and foremost, it's not the absence of failure that makes you a success, it is your response to failure that actually helps to buffer the reverses you experience. I myself have two responses to failure. First is pragmatism. I believe that if one approach does not work, another one might, as in business, too. The second response is fatalism. I fool myself that it was bound to happen, and that I need to move on, and not get caught up in the oft-repeated question - 'God, why does it happen to me?' It happened, move on.

Failure also gives me an incentive to greater exertion, harder work, which invariably leads to greater success in most cases. Failure is an amazing teacher. If you don't fail, you will never learn. And if you don't learn, you will never grow. There is a well-known story of a bank president who was asked the secret of his success, and he said, "Right decisions". How do you get to know how to make the right decisions, came the follow-up question. "Experience," was the answer. Well, how do you get experience, asked his interrogator. "Wrong decisions," he replied.

Sometimes, it has also taught me to stop pretending that I'm someone other than what I'm supposed to be. It gives me a clear-cut direction that 'Hey, maybe I'm not supposed to be doing this. Let me just concentrate on doing and finishing things that really matter to me that really define me, instead of following a particular course that's actually taking me away from what my core liking is'. KKR, my cricket team - and Shiv knows this - is one such example. Till friends like him gave me advice, I was doing everything. Then I got myself a COO, set up a whole new department, and the job I think has been handled much better than what I think I was (doing). And I'm willing to accept that.

Failure also gets you to find out who your real friends are. The true strength of your relationships only gets tested in the face of strong adversity. I lost a lot of friends post-Ra.One, apart from losing a lot of audience too. And post-Chennai Express, even though I've made no new friends, I have a whole new set of enemies, which is also interesting to know.

Regular failures have also taught me empathy towards others. Being a star, it is easy for me to be prone to the notion that I'm superior, self-sufficient and fantastic, instead of realising that I was just plain lucky or got some lucky breaks. Overcoming some of my failures has made me discover that I have a strong will, and (am) more disciplined than I suspected. It has helped me have confidence in my ability to survive. So, all in all, I think failure is a good thing.

I won't bore you with more details of how failure is a good thing because you won't call me back for a talk on success. But I'd like to tell you all that life is not just a checklist of acquisitions, attainments and fulfilments. Your qualifications and CVs don't matter, your jobs don't matter. Instead, life is difficult and complicated and beyond your control, and to know that with humility, respecting your failures will help you survive its vicissitudes.

There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures in life. I say making because I believe failure is not an exterior force. I believe it happens due to our own actions, our own reactions, in such convoluted ways sometimes that we may not understand, but we are the reason for it. So don't be weighed down by it - relish it, cherish it, the experience, and learn from it. By accepting it all and experiencing it will you experience success, not in isolation of life's full offerings.

Let me conclude by saying that my hope for you is a lifelong love of learning, exciting andinspiring projects, dreams, businesses, profits, power lunches or whatever turns you guys and girls on. But alongside, I wish you a fair number of moderate failures. By experiencing all, I hope that you will experience success. Success is never final, just like failure is never fatal. Courage is ill-defined if you think it means doing something macho, risky or chancy. If that happens at somebody else's cost, it's even less courageous. Courage is doing whatever you are afraid to do - personally scared to do - in whichever capacity you work. There can be no courage unless you are scared. So be scared to feel courage, be fearful.

I believe one has to have the fear of failure so much that you get the courage to succeed. And that, my friends, is my learned piece of courage in success or what I call the success of failure, and being scared enough to be courageous, to make it so. Or if I were to put it into words that surround me, when I entered here and I was scared of all this corporate jargon that I heard, 'This is my theory of the management of high-rising failure to convert it into success by growth index of 100%, while understanding the indices of fear and not compromising the syntax of our courage globally while keeping a holistic 360 degree view of our domestic market through rigorous system and processes.'

In simple terms or film language, which is what I do - 'If at first you don't succeed, reload and try again. Shoot fast, shoot first and be ready to take a bullet too. And remember what Don said - "Isscompany ke management ke dushman ki sabse badi galti yeh hai, ki woh is company ka dushman hai. Kyunki jab tak dushman apni pehli chaal chalta hai, yeh company apni agli chaal chaal chuki hoti hai."'