WHAT I KNOW, AND WHY

Let’s face it. We all were raised with parents that were basically off their rocker. If I had to write a self-help book, it’d basically say: “your parents messed you up, they messed me up too, let’s have a drink, and get the mother-loving over it.”

So, when I say I know what I know from my parents, I’m not entirely joking. My mom is from the south. Born and raised just 30 minutes from the Louisiana/Texas border, there’s very little she hasn’t seen or done. From owning her own firearm at the age of 12 to smoking pot with Carlos Santana, to moving across the country multiple times before the age of 20, her life experience was essentially mainlined into my childhood. My dad is from a very stable home in New Hampshire. The youngest of 4 children, he was always athletic and driven to succeed. This too was drilled into my head.

I had competed in soccer and basketball until injuries prevented me from continuing. I was involved in ballet from the age of four until I was about 14. I was involved with long distance endurance horseback riding. I would often be gone for a day and come home having rode 25-30 miles. I performed in a theater troupe as often as I could, which was about every four months or so. I had multiple pen pals, some of which I had only met once, and took upon myself to write once a week, faithfully, for years. I was homeschooled through all of this – so I was responsible for my own education. I spent hours … literally, hours … reading every day. Everything from books on ancient and modern codes, to how to perform basic medical needs in the field. I was determined to never ever be unprepared for a situation I could find myself in.

At the tender age of 17, I was shipped off to New Hampshire. I had just finished my high school career, and my Associates in Arts degree. Yeah, I didn’t think my high school was challenging enough, so my Mom enrolled me in the local junior college when I was barely 15. Mom thought it was time for me to ‘get over the wall’ and start a real life. Which was great, and one of the best decisions I had collaborated on.

I was just a month out of my 17th birthday when I arrived in New Hampshire and started working and living with some family-acquaintances as their PA. I also was the au pair to their three children. The mother was a professional jazz musician who was also starting her first non-profit for Southern New Hampshire. The two older children were all to be homeschooled. It was from the fat to the fire. Not only was I living with them, I was expected to have as good of a grip on their lives as they had. I wasn’t asked to simply “help” or assigned certain tasks, it was full throttle life management from the week I arrived to the very day that I left.

Tasks that I was most certainly asked to deal with during my four years with them were not limited to:

-       Organizing, formatting, hosting/managing music events of 200+ people

-       Cleaning up after said events

-       Meal planning and executing

-       International travel planning (flights, hotels, cars, assistants over there)

-       Household management (cleaners, maintenance people, etc)

-       Managing the children’s school, as well as extracurriculars

-       Being put on every piece of paper that required an emergency contact person for all of the children

Did I mention I was 17? And that I LIVED with them?

Now, I am very close with them. I love their children immensely, and I have developed a great personal relationship with each one of the family members. I learned a TON when being with them.

My point with all of this – judging a book by its cover would have been the worst thing possible for me during this time of my life.

I was incredibly young, but what I lacked in years, I made up in maturity and drive. I was incredibly young, but what I lacked in life experience, I made up for in being coachable. I was so young, but what I lacked in “world smarts,” I made up for in being incredibly committed to what I was doing.

In this process, you may find yourself scoffing at my suggestions, or even growing frustrated with a tone I may have taken up. You might even want to stop reading, claiming that I have no idea what I’m talking about.

The fact of the matter is, is that you would be taking the preconceived notion of what you think you know about me (obviously very limited), and throwing away an opportunity to learn, and to greatly enhance your life.

Don’t sell yourself short, because you are not willing to trust me. Little ol’ me, with just some words on a page… I’m pretty sure you can handle any ideas and suggestions I throw at you. If I could do it during my learning curve at 17, you can do it now. 

When we get angry with others, we need to realize what we give to others is what we get back - this is the kind of knowledge we need in order to understand the story of our life, so we do not look back on life in anger as one filled with injustice. And yet, even with all the knowledge in the world, the habit of becoming angry will likely remain, even in subtle (fine) forms. So it helps the healing process to keep forgiving, keep forgetting, keep understanding and moving on. But most off all keep visualizing. We need to keep visualizing ourselves being free of anger in situations and relationships where before anger was common. Self management is the need of the hour.

Impression

One thing we have to do in this direction is creation of a self impression. This works on people immediately they see you. This is impression is affected by the way we dress. Many will think that our dressing does not matter. However, when you appear before people, that is the first thing they see. You look a lady or gentleman, or a crook by your clothes. When looking for a loan to start a business, you must not appear wretched at the bank. They can’t trust you with their money. When looking for a job, you must go to the interview dressed for the job.

This does not mean excesses, or what I will call over dressing. Over dressing can be as negative to the impression people have about you as under dressing. When you are over dressed, people will see you as untrustworthy or unrealistic. Therefore in your bid to be well dressed, you must be moderate. Study the situation and appear just as it is required.

Time

Another aspect of self management is time management. We need time to do almost all things. But, the time available is so limited that you cannot do all you want at the same time. You have to apportion it properly to all that you need in order to have enough time for them. Simple things like schedulers, time tables, and diaries can help us in doing this. With the e-revolution, this is very easy now. Cell phones have features like this on them that help a lot. If you manage time well, you manage your life well.

Rest

You need rest and you must plan for it. In the previous paragraph I talked about how we need to do a lot of things within limited time. This does not mean, therefore, that rest is not important. We are most ineffective and therefore unproductive when tired. After enough rest, we are most active and full of ideas. The size and number of your task should not prevent you from taking rest. When planning, plan for rest and honour the time of rest when it comes, just as you will with your most important tasks.

Plan

You need to organize your tasks. Although we have a lot to do, some are more important than others. Some are more difficult than others. This demands that we organize all our tasks using several criteria. Some tasks may be easy but can wait. Others might be difficult yet important. Some tasks should be done in order to meet important deadlines. All this must be considered. Doing things just because they came to mind will not help us. It will be a disaster.

Self management will lead to more opportunities coming your way. It will increase your productivity and self fulfilment.

Preture is a new word made by the fusing the parts of two related words: “present” and “future”.

Preture is the connector between present and future, like the “morning” connects night with day and the “evening” immerses the day into night.

Day and night do not flip-flop instantaneously. The change is gradual, not sudden.

Nature’s other identical example is season change, from summer to winter passing through fall and winter journeying through spring into summer. Similarly preture is the joiner of present and the future.

People can call it near-future but still it is important to really identify, understand and utilize this important entity with a right name of its own.

What is the practical use of this concept or knowledge?

Most of the time we are worried about the future. Future is unknown. Future is vast, overwhelming and unfathomable. Anything which is immeasurable is extremely difficult and stressful to deal with. When we have the boundaries we can work very effectively. Preture breaks down the future into measurable, plan-able and action-able pieces. This creates an amazing opportunity to bring the constructive, meaningful and productive focus as we only have to worry about taking care of the preture not the whole future. Embracing the concept of preture can be a true permanent cure of our future worries.

Present is Now

We all know that actions can only be done in present.

But the question is what actions to be done now?

Preture is the finite time-interval in between some activity you do consistently at certain frequency.

The most natural preture could be a time interval from waking up to going to sleep.

For meditators it could be the time interval from one meditation to the other meditation.

If we could plan that well with the doable action-items, the accomplishments of those focused items can fill us up with contentment and fend off our frustrations, irritations and feeling of being-cluelessness.

We need to just take realistic right priority complete-able action-items for that duration. The only one condition is to complete the task we take in-hand.

How to apply this knowledge into use?

To be able to complete a thousand mile journey we need to take one step at a time. If we take that step in the right direction, we move closer to our destination. Preture is that Next-Step-In-The-Right-Direction. To be able to drive to any destination if we take a map, we need to just remember where to take the next turn. If we take that turn correctly, we are sure to reach where we are want to reach. If we miss out on that turn, rather than taking another wrong turn and being completely-lost-in-the-middle-of-nowhere we can come back to the previous step and take the next right step. Knowing and taking the next step correctly saves a lot of time, efforts and energies.

If we are driving in the night, we just need few feet of light on the road, because when we are closer to the end of that light, the light is further there to guide us. We don’t need the whole path to be lit all the time. Neither do we need to worry whether there is a light after few miles or not. We just need a few feet of light ahead of us. That few feet of light is “Preture”, guiding us further, enlightening our path.

Self-Management: You cannot control the time, but you can control yourself and utilize the time successfully and efficiently for yourself, so, that is the Self-Management.

Self-Management: It depends on two things: Mind & Habits.

Mind – You can control your mind with regular and time bound practice. This can also be controlled with the help of Meditation. Simple method of Meditation is as detailed below.

Inhale your breath slowly while uttering the word God or Ram or Sat Nam etc. It depends on your belief for the name of Almighty. Keep your body relaxed during this period.

Then exhale your breath slowly and repeating the same words slowly and keeping your body totally relaxed during this period.

Do this practice for ten minutes at least five times in a day, keeping the body totally relaxed.

Concentration of mind:

1. Burning desire to learn.
2. Becoming interested.
3. Being organized.

How to keep the mind:

1. Work in a quite, tidy place.
3. Being distracted.
4. Keep things on the table you need only.
5. Have concentration routine and stick.

Habits:

1. Good habits.
2. Bad habits.

Good habits and bad habits can be temporary or become permanent life partner.

It takes about three weeks to make temporary habits but it takes about six months to adopt the semi permanent habit, and it takes about one year to make it permanent but it depends on the individual.

Responsibilities in Self-Management: Your responsibility towards yourself, your profession, family and the society in which you live. But here we will consider the area of Self-management regarding your profession only.

Responsibilities towards your job/profession:

Take the example of HOD (Head of Deptt). Senior is the Principal – Principal has passed some orders to HOD, regarding the department/Instt, then he is to plan the activities in such a way, that he is to do some of the work himself and some is to be given to Senior Lecturer/Lecturer. He is to take the following steps to implement the orders.

1. Planning.
2. Prioritizing

3. Time scheduling.

4. Taking action.

Item No. 1 and 3 are to be decided on the following basis.

• Daily planning and scheduling.
• Weekly planning and scheduling.
• Monthly planning and scheduling.
• Six monthly planning and scheduling.
• Yearly planning and scheduling.

PLANNING

It is to arrange the task in small activities in a proper sequence to get the best results. Planning of any project should be given sufficient time and reviewed properly, because if the work is well planned then it will take less time and energy to complete. It is said that if the work is well planned, then half of the work is done.

PRIORITIZING

It plays very important function to be well organized. You are to learn the difference between important, the urgent and the unnecessary to make prioritize more effect in daily use. If you plan your daily activities properly, then urgent situation become less in use, than important and very important. Your first step to prioritizing is to select the activities you want to do tomorrow morning. The list of activities will be your To-Do-List and which should be prepared in the evening of every day.

TIME SCHEDULING

You are to schedule the time of the activity you are to perform at the time of planning. It is to be fixed that how much time should the task takes to complete with the importance of the task under consideration. Time scheduling will be for each activity of the Project and also for the completion of the Project. It will be better to schedule your routine, low-level tasks for the times of the day when you find it hard to concentrate. The best method is to pinpoint your hours of peak performance and schedule your work accordingly.

ACTION

Once you have planned and scheduled the task to be performed, so now this is the time for action on the activity. The best time to take action is the peak time of your performance, so that you can achieve the target well in time and in the right direction. The success of this action in your first attempt will give you encouragement for the next step. You will also come to know the problems you have to face in the first attempt of your action and also the time allotted to this activity of the task.