Learnings from losing a high priced cell phone!

So once I was traveling in train - rush, people everywhere. I was wearing my headphones and listening to something, as I boarded the train the sound got cut off, and I realized that my cell phone had been stolen.

It was a high priced phone and I was heart broken at that time. Somehow I made it home. The incident made me angry and bitter for a couple of days. I tried convincing myself that it was fate, it was meant to happen and so on. But nothing quite seemed to work, I was still a bit upset about it.

Everything reminded me about that phone - google maps that I used to see on roads while traveling, its alarm clock, the every minute checking of whatsapp messages and email notifications and even the flashlight which used to accompany me every night in the dark!

But later this incident taught me really valuable and amazing life lesson - forgetting the past and dropping the weight of an incident that impacted you.

The past lives only in your head and nowhere else! So you have to learn to forget the past and that incident. Bad incidents happen all the time, but we have to learn to let go of the weight of negative emotions that we get by that bad incident. We just have to let that go because it is not going to serve your life.

I also have a pic of me and my cell phone. I am extremely thankful to Ankita (whose Samsung Note 2 was stolen, and I used to make fun of her, so much for karma...:) for purposely adding cake on my phone screen, and due to that I  HAVE a pic of me and my cell phone. (:

This pic was taken just 1 day before my phone got stolen this pic was actually clicked my fate lol

My teaching blog and a few points that make up a great teacher

Teaching in a way others cant, that's what will make students love you the most. Anyone can explain a few things directly from the text book, but only a few can actually create crazy similes or examples that make a student interested in a subject.

One of my favorite teachers used to say - Its the teachers fault when a student isn't listening to his/her lectures. And I completely agree with him, a teacher has to make a strategy for each and every lecture so that the students listen to the lecture. A lecture which has the main topic blended and camouflaged with jokes, a story or chalkboard art.

I feel sad when the I see many of the great students who have very good potential for teaching never teach. Some have that charisma that can attract a crowd when they speak but lack the knowledge. Some have the knowledge which needs to be shared but they have stage fear. Teaching is a tough job. I still remember my first lecture - I had stage fear, was scared if the students will like me or no and so on. And everyone has to over these obstacles to become a good teacher.

Here are a few autodidactic points which I believe makes someone a great teacher -

Knowledge - Self-explanatory, if you don't have the info you cant teach... Judge the students and interpret their questions before the lecture.

Humor - I am not implying that the students should laugh on your jokes here, but what I simply mean by humor is that you should have to skill to make the students smile with your one liners or clever comments or crazy examples.

Strictness - You need to have control over the students, over the class. If you have to punish someone to make others quiet, I would say do it. Show an angry face if you have to, throw someone out of the class if you have to but always keep them under control.

Expression strategy - Show the students how much of a passion you have for teaching; use props, use creative drawings, or mnemonics - to make them understand better. Your ways of expressing the subject should be amazing. Plan a good expression strategy.

Extra-knowledge giveaway - Always and always give them some topic-related extra knowledge, it can be a story of the past, or a real life application -  in short something the other teachers cant or wont give them. And I have noticed they always prepare  to listen with wide open eyes whenever I tell them I will now give them extra knowledge.

Motivational and inspirational book haters - Don't hate them!

Some people don't like fiction books, some don't like sci-fi books and some don't like books at all. But the most interesting thing I have come across in my life is that people don't like motivational/inspirational/life transformation books too....

And how do I know that? I read these kind of books all the time, and many people around me have literally asked me not to read it. (Shocker: including my mother, BUT she has told me not to read it just because I could invest my time in something else like prayer etc lol) And most others just tell me that its stupid, worthless, time-consuming, pointless to read a book on motivation or life transformation.

All of the books of this category rely on the basic moral science that we have already learned in school and is known by everyone else - here are a few examples

- Always be honest
- Do hard work
- Manage your time well
- Dream big
- Failing doesn't make you a failure

This is the basic reason why many people don't like these kind of books, because they already know most of this stuff and they feel its pointless reading it - and I agree with them. This stuff is repeated again and again BUT with different perspectives and different ways! And thats why I love reading them, I like picking a few quotes or lines from them so that I can tell someone the same when they are feeling low or need some kind of verbal help from me.

And most of my friends always message me on whatsapp to seek motivation or inspiration or  'I am sad, cheer me will you?' - and I love helping them. I always try to cheer them up with a quote/story from a book. ;)

I had also read an article which said that people who read these kind of books have low self-esteem and feel they are not using their full potential or something like that - But I think that's rubbish! And even if that is the case, they are trying to improve themselves so that's a good thing, right?

So if you are a Motivational and inspirational book hater, don't be!

I would like to end this blog with a few powerful motivational lines/quotes which I have read in many books.

• Learn to accept the apology, that you never received.
• Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for it to kill your enemy.
• Casual attitude leads to casualties. 
• The soil says, 'Don't bring me your need, bring me your seed.'
• Tough times don't last, tough people do! 
• Its not what you leave for your children, what what you leave in them.
• At the end of our lives we all ask, 'Did I live? Did I love? Did I matter?'
• Our days can be much happier when we give people a bit of our heart instead of a piece of our mind.
• If you learn from defeat, you haven't really lost.
• If you aim at nothing, you will hit every time.
• You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want. 

And my favorite one is -

People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing - that's why we recommend it daily.