Distress - A Limbo State

 

Distress - A Limbo State! - But!! This is when you realise your strength completely.

How often has there been times when you feel like you are in a limbo and your future looks bleak? Most often this happens when one gets to a moment of distress in life, be it a job failure, a love failure, loss of most beloved.  Whatever be the situation, the consequence is often a ‘Limbo’.  The obvious symptoms are,

• Loss of hope in life, as if there is no tomorrow;
• Hours of self-sympathy, and the constant question in the mind of, ‘why me?’;
• Disinterest in everything that you do; and
• Loss of sleep.

If you overdose yourself, you show it out and people start talking about you and also start advising you with their views. Advice would most often include a complete analysis from their perspective making you feel criticized, often making you worse given your situation. If you reach a point when your distress drives you off your limits, you retaliate in many ways including, anger, aggression and actions that hurt others or your own self. During such times, you really need someone beside you, but you also do not let anyone beside you, simply by your rude and confusing behaviors.

This my friend, is the time you can identify that you have breached your virtual tolerance limits.  But this is also the time you sit back and think what you really need in life. What you are ready to give up and what you cannot compromise. Make your choices wisely within the limitations of what is available as choices. You cannot always get all that you ask for since everyone need to have their share of choices. Always keep in mind you cannot make everyone happy and every situation cannot be to your favor.  

The golden principle here is, negative emotions, ego, aggression and revenge are no good deeds as it takes a lot more effort and causes misery that will soon reverse on you. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction and it is just a matter of time. It takes ten times more efforts to show anger as against showing a smile.  It is not easy to stay calm and positive during tough times, but that is the best you could do. 

Always, time is a best healer and it finds its own way of healing you and everyone around you.  Although it is easier said than done, this is the Law of Nature.  Do what you think is the right thing to do having the maturity to think wisely without anger, aggression or revenge being any of your motives. The Limbo state, is really when you realise your strength and ability completely. So be positive and spread positive attitude around you. Because, this is what makes you a complete human being, who is 'Human'.

Job Redundancies - Is Survival for the Fittest?

Jack of all Trades, Master of None!!
 Well said, but Jacks of old times did not see job crisis as todays' world - 'Lost my Job' is what is so often heard now.


It is a Tech-World which has increased our reach and exposure so much. Gadgets rule our life, starting from calories we eat to what we burn with each step.  'Ask Google' even becomes medial practitioner for most common diseases and home remedies.  A study says, in this new world of Apps and Gadgets one takes the mobile a minimum of 70 times in a day.  Information Technology has changed our lives but has also fast paced it.  It brought a paradigm shift to doing business.  While it brought new jobs it is changed the profile of many profession and further more has made many redundant. Internet brought us so close to do business that geographical distances does not really matter for most aspects of things.  Hence came BPOs and Call Centers and the boom of online shopping market, changing the whole dynamics to trade.  Shops have moved to online market, bank branches reduced to online banking system.

How many of us will remember calling Agents to carryout bank transactions, Brokers to buy or sell shares and Consultants to file Income Tax Returns.  In this online era, anything straightforward is in the Click of a button and we all have eventually become, 'Jack of All Trades'.  We look out only for experts who masters in what they do. While surfing the net, an interesting read caught my eye. The study was about future redundancies to some professions. One such profession that interested me was "Lawyers".  The study said, we will need far less number of lawyers since google will start giving legal advice upto 90% accuracy.  Does that mean, one needs to think twice before taking up a law course, absolutely not. All it tells us is that in every profession we are moving towards 'specialisation'.

The key is, Are you the expert in what you do? That is what matters.

While 'Lawyer' quoted here is one such example, the message today is, bid adieu to the old and most believed saying, 'Jack of all trades and Master of none'.  the new saying would be, 'Strive to be the Master because its just not enough to be just Jack'.   

Keep in mind, this 'Strive' will be a continuous process because your status as the 'Master' will be continuously challenged by frequently changing technology, dynamic economies and businesses including early redundancies to methods adopted and changing laws and regulations.

Today, we so often hear about organisation restructuring, job cuts and downsizing of business, across all fields, economies, countries.  Tomorrow it could come to you?  How prepared are you? Or are you the one who thinks you are at your best and it cannot happen to you?  Well, may be its time to think this way, 'What if it happens to me?' What are my dependencies and am I prepared for the worst?.

So, afterall it is Survival is for the Fittest and the fittest here is one who is savvy of the fact that change is constant and tomorrow the worst can happen and be prepared for the worst. Now, how can one be prepared, some key takeaways:

1. Never take your job for granted. Always thrive to find new and innovative ways of doing things and delivering your best. Afterall you are doing this for your own good to be the best always and not to benefit anyone else.  Your employer eventually gains and mutually you grow.  If you are not recognised, do not get dejected, because what you do is for your own learning and in your own strive to be the best.

2. Never take big financial commitments.  This does not mean you do not take any loans or take investment decisions.  It is just the word of caution here. Do make sure you can repay your financial commitments even if the worst happens. Example, is your end of services is good enough to bail you out of your financial commitment, if the worst happens.  Then go for it.

3. Simply because you need to keep your job, don't become a servant to your employer, then you stop learning.  Probably, when you feel that way, it is time to change your career or look for other opportunities.  Keep in mind, in this tough job market, you may fail many times, but do not stop trying.
 
4. In moments of frustration, never get impulsive to leave your job even when the time goes adverse.  During such times, try to diversify.  Probably its good to advance your professional qualifications, improve certifications and get your self prepared for newer opportunities.  Keep looking for the right one while you delivery your commitment to your current job.

5. When opportunity knocks at your door, grab it.  While you choose an opportunity, do not see how much it pays first. Salary is key but, that is not the first thing. The first thing to see is if it will let you strive to be your best and will you be getting the opportunity to learn and last but not least, do you like what you are doing.

Lastly, if unfortunately, the worst hits, never give up.  Survival is for the Fittest.    




 

Abusive Relationship - A Perspective

This blog is to just to share a few thoughts to be able to identify an abusive relationship with your partner or spouse and when you are in one how to recognize and console your emotional self. 

What is an abusive relationship? If you feel extensively controlled, exploited and the aspect of care or live is not unconditional but for a price of you fulfilling something and the relationship is often driven by fear or discomfort that you always give up your freedom to maintain harmony, most likely you are in an abusive relationship.  As we go along, this blog will elaborate more on abusive relationship, help you self-assess if you are in one and give some insights on what to expect from such relationship. 

But, before you read this blog, just take a moment to think how your relationship with your spouse/partner is?  If you are in a mediocre relationship, please stop reading from here-on to avoid confusing your mind trying to relate your real life experiences to this one and developing suspicion in your mind which will eventually lead to a strain to your relationship. 

If you have already identified yourself to be in an abusive relationship, my personal advice is to end that relationship and move-on.  However, it is easier said than done.  You may be forcing yourself to stay due to family reasons, financial reasons and/or emotional reasons.  So if you choose to stay on in an abusive relationship, keep in mind, you always have the right to change your mind even if you are not currently in a situation to quit.  Always, take your time to decide but one word of wisdom here.  Should you decide to stay in an abusive relationship do not stay in it believing that your partner will change. Change is unlikely, because an abuser is just a normal human being just like you.  He/she chooses to be abusive in the relationship with you but as an individual he/she is not an abnormal personality or inhuman.  If he/she is aggressive with you but justifies that you provoked or that they are short tempered, it is an invalid argument.  Anger and aggression are voluntary behavior and are controllable if they choose to.

To think more wisely on this, let us first talk some basics to assessing your relationship.  Signs of a healthy relationship is best defined by the freedom enjoyed in the company of the partner and whether such feeling is mutual.  The basic premise of a healthy relation lies on giving up ego mutually and the compromise done mutually.  It is all about making constant effort to keep the relationship strongly bonded by unconditional love and trust.  Never let ego or suspension takeover and cause damage to your relationship.  Words misused and actions that caused physical or emotional harm have lasting effect and makes the relationship struggle in blame games.  Keep in mind, prolonged discomfort or abuse has a lasting effect and extremely negative consequences to self and others around.      

It is often very complex to decide if a relationship is abusive.  In my view, if you feel extremely comfortable and have freedom of thought, action and mind and you are not treated like a child by your partner, then you are probably not in an abusive relationship.  And the health barometer to assess the relation is based on the experience that life and time had given you and your opinion on how the individual had reacted to situations that involves you.  Does the accumulated experience over time give you an overall satisfaction about being in that relationship and do you feel loved and cared? 

You are the best judge and do not let the current phase of life or state of mind prejudice your judgement.  Take time to think through your life and analyse your experiences as an independent person.  It is hard but not impossible.   Try to answer some questions to help you through your assessment,

·         Are you always blamed for everything that goes wrong?

·         Are you the one who apologies or lets go and when it’s the turn for your partner, he/she just ignores the aspect and over the period of time things fall into the day-to-day routine?

·         Are you often accused of provoking your partner but you are the one who ends up in the crying zone while your partner gets back to his/her normal state of mind and things get back into daily routines as if nothing really happened?

·         Are you often made to feel that all that you do is never enough and some fault is found and complained about that you reach a stage where you start doubting your own capabilities?

·         Are you made to feel guilty to situations as if you are only one responsible and as if it has caused misery in life for your partner that he/she doesn’t deserve, so you deserve misery?

·         Are you called by names or bad and abusive language and is that justified on the grounds that you provoked the anger in your partner or that your partner has short temper and it’s a uncontrollable disease that you need to accommodate?

·         Have you been physically harmed? Physical harm needn’t necessarily mean that you are beaten up or slapped.  It could also be in the form of pinching you, unknowingly tripping you while you can sense that it was intentional.  It can also be like, doing things in such a way that leaves a feeling of low self-esteem about yourself.  For example, throwing a pen or any other thing you asked for instead of giving in your hand and frequent instance were the gestures and/or body language leaves a feeling of ill-treatment and a sense of negative impact on your self-esteem.

·         Have you often tried to justify to yourself that there is nothing wrong in your relationship?

·         Have you  often tried to look at others in similar relationship and their issues to try and convince yourself that your relationships is normal simply because of what others tell you and simply because the situations are comparable to that of others?   While, drawing references from others experiences be it friends or relative is certainly a good way of being able to understand and deal with ongoing relationship, however, it doesn’t apply to an abusive relationship. 

If you can relate to most of the above, it is highly likely that you are in an abusive relationship. And if you have been in an abusive relationship for a prolonged period of time, you would have come across many occasions of breakage in the past and you can well recollect that attempts to reconnect only ended up in abusing you more.  There could have been occasions were the abusive partner claims that they love you, they need you and they cannot lead life without you.  Just because of the nature of relationship, you may have had to trust it. However it may happens that such claims were only to get you back in the relationship and once convinced of regaining control over you, they will again start their abusive behavior.  This way, every time you choose to end the relationship, they will find a way of getting you back into it and the demand will always put you in a helpless situation.

The basic trait of an abuser can be best explained as, the one who will never accept his/her abuse.  This is largely because they do not see it as an abuse.  They believe, you are born for them and get so possessive about you.  They force and control you intentionally although they will not be explicit about it and they will make the situations circumstantial so that you do not blame them of force or control.  They will always justify their act and it will look normal to the rest of the world and you may suddenly feel if something has gone wrong with your mind and you may feel helpless while it is your one voice that is challenging a crowd.  You are not alone if you feel this way and remember, it is you who feel abused and others have not experienced your pain to understand it.  So it will always be well beyond their capacity to think.  They will always try to convince you to stay in a relationship because nobody likes breakage.  They forget that, just like them you would not generally like breakage.  After all if someone known to you is in a similar situation, despite your state, you may still try to justify him/her to stay in their relationship by confronting that the situations are not similar and that the person should think twice before breaking a relationship.

Keep in mind, it is you who know what you have gone through and what you want and there is no need to justify your actions to everyone.  If you have already realized that you are in an abusive relationship but you are working hard to change it, a word of caution here, you may not be successful in bringing a change.  An abuser is a normal human being and he/she has chosen to be abusive in the relationship with you.  It implies, he/she will be normal to the rest of the world and most often the rest of the world will not even know that he/she is abusing you.  If you choose to discuss your personal life with others, your status will be generalized with their day-to-day life to say that such challenges happens in everyone’s life. You are the best judge of your state and your relationship. 

React before it is too late.  The longer you stay in an abusive relationship the consequences can be extremely damaging.  The consequences could extend to your family, children and beyond. 

If you have reached a situation where you have decided to exit the relationship, bear in mind, it may not be easy.  Actually, the time you decide to exit, the abuser will be more abusive on you.  But he/she would not agree to quit the relationship.  Most often they would build justification over why they do not want to break the relationship while none of such justifications would sound reasonable and they would never own up their abusive behavior. 

Such abusers shift the blame of failure on people and situations and say that both partners should mend their ways to make the relationship work.  While the intent of mutual efforts to keep a relationship is true in general, it doesn’t apply to an abusive relationship and you are the best judge to assess if you are being abused or not. 

Keeping generic readers in mind, a word of caution here.  When you trust the words of your partner, do not get suspicious and trust wholeheartedly.  However, you have every right to change your mind when you come across situations that contradicts this trust.  You have every right to reconnect or withdraw after reconnecting.  No one likes to end a relationship so quickly. They well know that most often such ending impacts families and has a lasting effect on individuals and children, if there are any.  However, when you reach a situation in life to make such a decision, do not regret the time you spent together.  Remember that the experience has prepared you for the future.

 

No one has the right to control another individual and more importantly to abuse the relationship with an individual.  Life is beautiful if you choose it rightly and even if you go wrong here and there, just mend your ways.  Allow the negative experiences that come along in the form of failure, desertion, deprived affection, betrayal, guilt and revenge to be compromised as a learning experience for your future.  All that matters is what makes you happy, whether staying in the relationship or exiting it.  It is not healthy to stay in an abusive relationship.  It is better to move on and once you have decided to do so and once decided, it is recommended that you don’t look back.  This will minimize complications for your future.  You might actually realise that life is after all not as bad as you might have concluded it to be.  Live and let live, live purposefully and blissfully.  Never accept abuse.