It was a cold December morning some 14-15 years back I was standing in the balcony of my house with my elder sister. I was in 6th class then and as like any vacation-loving student I was very excited for we had a long Christmas vacation, which means no school and all play and fun. As we were looking at the rising sun I was all busy sharing my vacation plans with my sister, she was not very much interested in my plans and I was not bothered with whether she was listening or not.
After a while she turned to me and said “ you know what, Christmas is not just about no school and all play, you get rewarded for your good behavior too.” I was surprised, “reward for good behavior!” and the came a lot of questions, “who gives the reward?” “Who gets the reward?” “When?” “Why?” “What?” “How?” all the endless questions.
My sister was just smiling and was looking at me, and then she said very softly, “If you behave properly, i.e. study well don’t trouble anybody do what aai, baba and I say be a nice girl and you will get reward from Santa Claus on 24th December. Hang your socks (clean socks) in the balcony at night and you will get gift from Santa Claus for your good behavior.” From that day to the Christmas Eve I was a very obedient daughter, polite sister, dutiful friend, very helpful, well-behaved girl, “Geeta turned Seeta”.
And finally it was 24th December, the day I was keenly waiting for finally arrived and at night I hung the socks in the balcony, but I was not able to sleep for a long time as obvious I was eager to meet Santa and get my reward for all the efforts I had put in for the past weeks, and every 5 minutes I was there in the balcony to check the socks. “Sleep or you will not get the gift”, my sister shouted, as she was irritated because of my impatient behavior. And I ran to the bed followed her order as I didn’t want to miss my gift for this reason. The next morning when I woke up the first thing that I did was obviously “check the socks” and …. “Yes I did it, I got my gift”, there were a lot of chocolates in the socks.
I was so happy, so happy that I was jumping like a kangaroo in the house. I shared my chocolates with my family, friends, and neighbors. Everyone was enjoying my story, as they knew that Santa Claus was none other than my elder sister.
It was not the first time when she had told me such a thing and I believed it and followed it too. When I was in 2nd or 3rd one day she told me that God is watching us and he gives us a right mark and a wrong mark on our behavior. If we behave properly he gives us right
And when we don’t behave properly he gives wrong and then one day he calculates how many right and wrong are on your record if you get maximum right you get rewarded but if you get maximum wrong marks you are punished. And whenever I did something wrong she said, do if you want to do but remember God will mark wrong in front of your name.
That got so fixed in my mind at that age that even today when I do something I first think for a while what will God give me, if it's right I go ahead, and if it’s a X mark I don’t do it.
One law that I learnt in science became my second lesson after these experiences is that every action has equal and opposite reaction.
Lesson 2: Every action has equal and opposite reaction.
Isn’t it similar to what we know, “As you sow so shall you reap.” A few lines that I like very much from a book, The Art of Living by S.N.Goenka are:
“Our difficulty, our ignorance is that we remain unheedful while planting seeds. We keep planting seeds of neem, but when the time comes for fruit we are suddenly alert, we want sweet mangoes. And we keep crying, praying, and hoping for mangoes. This doesn’t work.”
There is one more saying that I like (and again I don’t know who said it???) is:
If you want to know your past life
Look into your present condition
If you want to know your future
Look into your present action.
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Psychology I Learn Through My Life
Psychology I learn through my Life
The series of articles I propose to write under this heading are not any kind of Philosophical or theoretically psychological but it is clearly experiential. To explain this I will take help of a saying (I am not good at remembering who said what, anyways the saying is important than who said it.)
Life is a difficult teacher,
It tests you first and then gives you a lesson.
Now that’s what I would be writing. The lessons I learn after giving the tests of life. Again its not something very serious or unusual experiences of my life but very normal and usual situations and experiences that have some meaning behind their existence.
I have been learning psychology for almost seven to eight years. I love reading different books that deal with psychology and one of my favorite books is my diary that teaches me psychology better than anything else. I have the habit of writing about people I meet, experiences, situations etc. I come across everyday and then I wait for a while and try to seek the reasons for that particular situation and experience and I must tell you I learn wonderful lessons from it. Lessons that direct my future behavior.
One of the things I was very good at as a kid, most of the kids are, was “Give Reasons” well it’s not about something that is related to the academic syllabus but something related to my behavior. I was very good at giving reasons to anything that happened with me. I remember a very common incidence at my home every time I got my progress card (though there wasn’t any progress on the card every time it was given to me). The moment I reached home, I used to go to my room directly without saying anything to anybody and start completing my home work, reciting poems, tables, reading lessons loudly (loudly because I wanted to tell everyone that I am studying very sincerely). Then my father used to enter the room, knowing my drama very well, “Baba I got my progress card today, I am sorry, but the papers were very difficult, and our teacher didn’t teach us well, yes! I was not well before the exam, and nobody gave me their notes.” “That’s not my fault actually it happened because….”. I never took the responsibility of my actions or results and always reasoned it with some external faults. It was not just about giving reasons but it was also about not taking responsibility of my life and I always tried to give it to somebody else and thus never improved, developed and never changed the conditions nor my progress card.
Fortunately my Baba never listened to any reasons. His patent sentence to my reasons was, “Don’t give me any reason. Accept what you have done.” It took a lot of years for me to accept that, but I am happy I finally got that. Finally I took the responsibility whereby I became accountable to my success, failures, and decisions whether right or wrong, mistakes, etc. Now that I had been through both the experiences I know that taking responsibility of my life is so empowering which means once you take the responsibility you can even change the situation and giving that responsibility to others is limiting, where you cannot do anything unless others do it. I made a choice to take my responsibility and similarly the decision to give responsibility to somebody else was also my choice. In both the phases I made the choice and thus I was responsible for the condition of my life in both the phases.
Lesson 1: You are responsible for the condition of your Life.
Take responsibility to change the condition do not wait for any external miracle to happen. Accept the condition, take responsibility, and find out ways to change the condition. Situation is not in your control but your response to that situation is within your control, there is a choice for you: take the responsibility to change the condition or run away from the situation.
One very good example to explain Lesson 1 is the film, which released this year, which was appreciated by one and all, “Lage raho Munnabhai”. Gandhigiri that I understood through the film is taking responsibility to change the condition and therefore being responsible for the condition of our life.
The series of articles I propose to write under this heading are not any kind of Philosophical or theoretically psychological but it is clearly experiential. To explain this I will take help of a saying (I am not good at remembering who said what, anyways the saying is important than who said it.)
Life is a difficult teacher,
It tests you first and then gives you a lesson.
Now that’s what I would be writing. The lessons I learn after giving the tests of life. Again its not something very serious or unusual experiences of my life but very normal and usual situations and experiences that have some meaning behind their existence.
I have been learning psychology for almost seven to eight years. I love reading different books that deal with psychology and one of my favorite books is my diary that teaches me psychology better than anything else. I have the habit of writing about people I meet, experiences, situations etc. I come across everyday and then I wait for a while and try to seek the reasons for that particular situation and experience and I must tell you I learn wonderful lessons from it. Lessons that direct my future behavior.
One of the things I was very good at as a kid, most of the kids are, was “Give Reasons” well it’s not about something that is related to the academic syllabus but something related to my behavior. I was very good at giving reasons to anything that happened with me. I remember a very common incidence at my home every time I got my progress card (though there wasn’t any progress on the card every time it was given to me). The moment I reached home, I used to go to my room directly without saying anything to anybody and start completing my home work, reciting poems, tables, reading lessons loudly (loudly because I wanted to tell everyone that I am studying very sincerely). Then my father used to enter the room, knowing my drama very well, “Baba I got my progress card today, I am sorry, but the papers were very difficult, and our teacher didn’t teach us well, yes! I was not well before the exam, and nobody gave me their notes.” “That’s not my fault actually it happened because….”. I never took the responsibility of my actions or results and always reasoned it with some external faults. It was not just about giving reasons but it was also about not taking responsibility of my life and I always tried to give it to somebody else and thus never improved, developed and never changed the conditions nor my progress card.
Fortunately my Baba never listened to any reasons. His patent sentence to my reasons was, “Don’t give me any reason. Accept what you have done.” It took a lot of years for me to accept that, but I am happy I finally got that. Finally I took the responsibility whereby I became accountable to my success, failures, and decisions whether right or wrong, mistakes, etc. Now that I had been through both the experiences I know that taking responsibility of my life is so empowering which means once you take the responsibility you can even change the situation and giving that responsibility to others is limiting, where you cannot do anything unless others do it. I made a choice to take my responsibility and similarly the decision to give responsibility to somebody else was also my choice. In both the phases I made the choice and thus I was responsible for the condition of my life in both the phases.
Lesson 1: You are responsible for the condition of your Life.
Take responsibility to change the condition do not wait for any external miracle to happen. Accept the condition, take responsibility, and find out ways to change the condition. Situation is not in your control but your response to that situation is within your control, there is a choice for you: take the responsibility to change the condition or run away from the situation.
One very good example to explain Lesson 1 is the film, which released this year, which was appreciated by one and all, “Lage raho Munnabhai”. Gandhigiri that I understood through the film is taking responsibility to change the condition and therefore being responsible for the condition of our life.
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