Five ways to recognise a True Friend

Five ways to recognise a True Friend

Here is the upcoming Friendship Day, and we are all busy celebrating this wonderful occasion worldwide. Many of us are planning to have a nice and exciting hangout, many are busy choosing friendship cards and gifts, some are looking this as a new opportunity to make new friends and enhance their friend circle.
But in this occasion, we can also do something a little bit more meaningful, which will ease our life a bit and add up some more spice to this auspicious day. Let's ponder a bit, about what this friendship means in its real sense of the term. spending a little time on this issue can change our mind, can change our perspectives and finally change our lives for good.
What do we think, when we call this Day as Friendship Day? Does it mean only a day with some happy moments and eventful day out? does it only mean some giggles with buddies, gathering in coffee shops, buying gifts and sending cards? Does it have any more significance which can matter truly in our lives?
Yes, it means a lot more than fun and frolics.
Friendship is the basis of all relationships. be it individual to individual or among groups of people as small as a friend circle and as big as international relationships. Friendship can be glimpsed at a corner of a classroom, in a sit out, in a conference room and even in battle fields.
But coming down to individual thoughts, we can recognise a true friend in every relationship, if we get to see these few traits and components:

1. A true friend will never give excuse.
If two people are real friends, they will never give lame excuses for anything that didn't go well. They may forget important days, each other's birthdays, some small commitments, but they will tell the truth that they forgot about it.

2.A true friend can never insult each other.
There is no guarantee that true friends will always have sweet talks. They can fight like hell, but fighting and insulting are two different things. A true friend can fight but never insult his friend. He may oppose to some decisions, he may have difference of opinions, but he can never give a feeling that his friend is worthless.

3. A true friend will criticise on your face but never do back biting.
If two friends are truly friends and are not happy with each other over something they will criticize and oppose each other on the face but they can never do back biting in the absence of each other. They will point out the weaknesses being face to face, but will never ever let others know about it.

4. A true friend  cannot be jealous.
It is a very common phenomenon, that whom we know or call as friends give unexpectedly negative reactions to our story of success. In that case it is a clear indication, that the person concerned is not our true friend. A true friend will have a spontaneous reaction of happiness, when they come to know about our success or good news.

5. A true friend will not make you feel guilty.
A true friend will never unnecessarily confuse you or make you feel guilty for no good reason. Even if we commit some mistakes, they can point out, or make us aware of it, but they can never keep mentioning the weaknesses we have so that we feel embarrassed or guilty.

Apart from these friendliness is something which involves a warm heart and real affection, it is something to be felt through the heart, and through the joy we feel at their presence. In all types of relationship, what we actually look for is friendship. A father becomes the best, when he can become the best friend of his child, same with the mother, a teacher earns all the popularity through his or her friendly way of teaching and behaving with students. A colleague or a boss, a sibling or a cousin, among all of them we look for a friend.
Same with the relation between the nations and their people. In the name of spirituality, religion, ethics , laws and philosophy, people are killing each other, but the irony is, all their apostles of religion, spirituality, philosophy, law and order have asked them only to be friendly with each other and that is the ultimate human philosophy and religion.
If we are friendly, we create our Paradise, if we can't, we ourselves in our self-made Hell.
 

Five ways to overcome exam fear

Five ways to overcome exam fear

We all know how the fear of the word "exam" reverberates our heart. The entire family suffers from its seriousness and a span of three to nine months of each year passes with the dreadful feeling and with heights of anxiety.
Whether the student is a good performer, a moderate one or a poor, the fear factor doesn't change in its character. A poor student is afraid of his failure, a moderate student is torn between his ambition of scoring higher and the tension of securing his last rank. at thee same time a good performer will be on his toes to defeat his nearest competitor and list his name on the top of the names of qualified candidates.
News of committing suicide, from this exam phobia is not new to us. and in India the statistics rate is alarming.
To face this inevitable situation, all of us need to be united and elevate ourselves as well as assure our next generation not to fall prey in such traps.

1. First make a shortlist of important topics

In each subject there has to be gradients of important, most important and less important topics. First the most important ones should be shortlisted and studies, that will fetch the passing mark including a good impression on the reviewer of the paper. That particular topics should be studied with detailed information, without leaving out any valuable information. Because, even if one question fetches high marks, automatically, it will catch the reviewers attention, and will make a good impression on him, that will have a good effect on his markings of the other answers as well. at the same time, if one question could be answered well,  from the student's point of view, he will gain some confidence to study ahead.

2. Shed out the ambition factor

If ambition catches ones mind and preoccupy his thoughts with the expectation of rewards before the performance or even result, that will affect reversely on his study and his mind too. So, while studying, the ambition factor has to be side lined and forgotten. The focus should only be on gathering correct information and mastering on the subject and acquiring the skill to represent them properly.

3. I may not know all, but surely few.

Sometimes at exam hall, the question paper appears to be unexpectedly tough and unusual. That is the testing time for all. Many get a panic attack and even forget to reproduce what he knows well.
So, once such a paper arrives, one should not think, he should have been able to answer all of them but is unable to answer even one. He should calm down and think, among all of them, which of the questions can be partly answered, if not fully. He should think, I may not know all, but surely I know few of them. Once his pen starts writing, he will get the confidence of writing more than he expected.

4. Forget about the result in the hall.

Every student needs to forget about the result while sitting inside the exam hall. Otherwise the thought will unnecessarily burden the mind with too much pressure of performance. Once the mind is free from such obligations, it can do wonders.

5. Finally an exam is not the life itself

Everyone should remember including the parents that exams are not everything in life. If one exam is not written well, that doesn't mean, that life of that person has to come to an end. If we fail to realise that in the micro point of view, we will realise that in macro point of view, that we have failed the exam of life itself.

As a whole, examination of a particular subject stream is to evaluate a person's skill on that particular subject, and each individual has their own tendencies, of either doing well, good, better or best. Few may be bad, worse and worst in that subject, but they must be having the knack of shining in some other fields, which is awaiting to be explored.

Friendship and Expectations

"Friendship"- yes, that is the term we use in our everyday conversation, in our daily routine and want in our life at every moment. We make friends, we celebrate, we argue, share and contest each other. Still we remain friends, and still we want more in our list. All of us wait on our Birthdays when and who calls us up and congratulate us. We dream to become somebody great and see the known faces happy, appreciating and jealous reading our names in headlines.

Our Friends are near to us, they are sometimes far from us and we think of them when we are happy, keep their numbers update to share the achievements, without which everything seems incomplete.

But Friendship as a term covers a huge phenomena and it is not merely a term given to a particular relationship. It is not one of the names in the listing of relationships, that has a definite status. It goes far ahead, beyond individual interactions, gathering, contact lists and socialising.

We all are looking for friendship, from every corner of our life. We expect friendliness from our parents, spouses, relatives, colleagues, neighbours, children and who so ever we meet and interact with. and in that friendliness, we expect them to understand us, our point of view, our philosophy of life, our reactions to different situation, and finally the things we do with those respective people. Our heart breaks if they do not accept us, the way we are, if they take things differently from the way we wanted them to. And all our efforts in life finally aims to fulfil this expectation that we will be able to stand erect in the eyes of our fellow beings, and earn a friendly attitude.

The eternal search for happiness takes a fresh breath of air and suddenly finds its goal, when somebody in some sphere of our life gives us a hearty smile and nods to any of our actions, all of us feel that moment to be the one for which we are living for, our mind gets refreshed, we feel energised and motivated to walk a mile more towards our goal.

But why is this moment so rare? Why do we always need to hanker after such a moment from everybody and why do we come back disappointed in most of the times? People lose interest in life, they end up killing themselves, getting into self-humiliating actions, ruin themselves in the hands of addiction and finally the world becomes a place of animosity filled with anger, hatred and revengeful acts. We are terrorised by the neighbouring countries, by the law, by the police, by the government, by our bosses, colleagues and finally our family members too.
All these show lack of friendly attitude, we all have developed stacks and loads of unfriendly attitude with little understanding and tolerance to others. It is all ME and MINE and never US and OURS.

The reason probably is, we can't see how we look when we don't smile at people. There is no attempt from our side to understand what the other person is feeling. We have heaps of expectation from others that they behave this way and that way, but from our side we try very little to act according to other's expectations. Okay for the time being, if we take it this way, that "people behave the way they want to and they can never be the other person to make someone happy", then doesn't it apply the same for the person in front of us? The other person is also having the right to think in the same manner, so there we can't accept and start a fight.

So, here is where the shoe is pinching. We expect things from others and also expect that they don't expect the same from us. But just for the sake of imagining a logical possibility, can't we wait  a minute before judging the other person why must he be doing that thing? Can't we provide any scope to each other with an open mind to explain their point of view? Isn't that we are expecting everyday from everybody? Isn't that the actual definition of Friendship? But as we know, any relation is a communication and has to have a two way traffic. We cannot put obstacles on one way and expect our vehicle to move fast and smooth.

When we talk about spirituality, religion, ethics and philosophy, what I guess is, we are all tying to define that we need friendship, and living a way where others can come and play in our Garden. That is the best possible way to be Religious, Spiritual, Ethical and Philosophical. Remember, the story of the Selfish Giant? That is our own story, we sometimes become the giant, and we only become the little boy. When we are the "little boy", we can convert big selfish giants into selfless angels but when we ourselves become selfish, we smash the flowers of Friendship in our lives which could make a Paradise around us to live in , and continue to struggle in our self-created HELL.