Expectations and Frustrations

We have to understand the link between our expectations and our frustration levels. Whenever we expect something to be a certain way and it isn’t we’re upset and we suffer.

On the other had, when we let go of our expectations, when you accept life as it is, we’re free. To hold on is to be serious and uptight. To let go is to lighten up.

A good exercise is to try to approach a single day without expectations. Don’t expect people to be friendly. When they’re not, you won’t be surprised or bothered. If they are, you’ll be delighted.

Don’t expect your day to be problem free. Instead, as problems come up, say to yourself, “Ah, another hurdle to overcome.” As you approach your day in this manner you’ll notice how graceful life can be.

Rather than fighting against life, pretty soon, with practice, you’ll lighten up your entire life.

The Broken Painting

Once upon a time, a wellknown painter was finishing his painting. It's an incredibly beautiful painting to be shown during Princess Diana's marriage.

The painter was consumed by and excited with his own painting that he unconsciously took a few step backward while admiring the 2 x 8 m painting. He didn't look back when he walked backward. He kept on walking backward until it was a step away from the edge of the tall building. Just one more step backward and he could get himself killed.

A man saw what the painter was doing and was about to shout at him to warn him when he realized that his shout might have surprised the painter and thus made him incidentally took one step backward and fell down. The man then took a brush and paint and began to paint on the beautiful painting until it was completely damaged.

Upon realizing what's happened to his painting the painter got very angry and moved forward to hit the man. However, some other people who were also present at the vicinity held him and showed him his last position which almost made him fall.

Sometimes we have painted our future with such beauty and dreamed of beautiful days we will spend with our loved one. But then God seemed to destroy our beautiful painting when He sees what danger lies ahead of us.

Sometimes we are angry and annoyed by what God has done to us, or we get angry to our superior in our workplace. But one thing we have to keep in our mind: God provides only the best for us, His children.

Are you still following ur new year Resolutions???

Most of us have defined some new year resolutions. Its just 10 days now & I think very few of us are still able to follow them religiously !!!
Some gave up due to lack of motivation & others because of scarcity of vision.

Ever given a thought, why its happening??? & how can we keep it intact???

Often we set our Goals, but forget to formulate a strict  guidelines to it. (Kind of routine (steps that we need to carry out daily to accomplish the final result).
On the other hand sometime we define some routine to follow, with out any time bound Goal attached to it.

How many of us have written the resolutions in a paper & periodically review them???

You must visualize the end result daily, as if you have achieved it. That vision will give you a lot of motivation to keep moving :-).

In both the case, the chances of successful continuation of process & achievement of substantial result is very less. Upon failure, we tend to say some vague  words like, "Rules or Resolutions are meant to broken or its really difficult to follow / stick to any routine till the Goal is achieved".

Its never late to start. Lets re-frame our resolution with proper procedure &  periodically examine whether we are heading towards the right direction or not...

Success is guaranteed for the disciplined persons,  who formulates it SMARTLY !!!

All the best to me & to all, who want to regularize the process yet again. 
Self satisfaction will follow, when we see things moving in the right direction & we are achieving something on daily basis (regardless of the size of achievement ) :-).

Any further ideas are welcome..........................
JSK.

SMS help for finding routes in Bangalore city : [9008890088]

9008890088

This is useful/Authentic information for people who travel by Auto and we will be able to know the rate, route and the distance too. (Free Service)

9008890088 is an SMS-based location search and direction finding service that provides directions to people with or without Smart phones to any location in Bangalore.
The SMS service is available free of charge and all you pay is the standard SMS rate according to your plan. It needs no subscription.
The service is reliable and involves very little waiting time.
The reply back time varies from 3 seconds to 1 minute depending on the mobile operator’s message traffic congestion and availability of signals.
Only you need to do is SMS to 9008890088.
The example usages are:

Example 1: FROM Mekri circle TO ESI Hospital
Example 2: INOX
Example 3: SBI atm NEAR M G Road

You will get a reply SMS with the exact location and shortest directions to reach place from a prominent landmark.
And also with total distance in Kilometers and approximate Auto fare.
Note: This really works and there are no message charges if you have free sms service (like 100 sms/day)

For other formats refer : http://www.mybangalore.com/article/0609/local-search-with-latlong.html

[C#] Correct way of throwing exception from a catch block

There are two ways to catch and re-throw an exception, below the two code snippets:
Snippet #1:

   1:  try

   2:  {

   3:   

   4:  }

   5:  catch(Exception ex)

   6:  {

   7:    throw ex;

   8:  }

Snippet #2:

   1:  try

   2:  {

   3:   

   4:  }

   5:  catch(Exception ex)

   6:  {

   7:    throw;

   8:  }

When you use snippet #1, you will re-throw the same exception object and as result of this the original stack trace will be lost. Snippet #2 will maintain the original stack trace, this is very useful for debugging.
One of the try/catch general exception handling guidelines says:
“Do not rethrow by throwing the same exception object. This causes the stack trace for the original exception to be lost--use a lone "throw;" statement (without an object following it) to "rethrow" a catch exception.”
The best way to see the difference is with a code example:

   1:  class Program

   2:  {

   3:    static void Main(string[] args)

   4:    {

   5:      try

   6:      {

   7:        Method1();

   8:      }

   9:      catch (Exception ex)

  10:      {

  11:        throw;

  12:      }

  13:    }

  14:   

  15:    public static void Method1()

  16:    {

  17:      Method2();

  18:    }

  19:   

  20:    public static void Method2()

  21:    {

  22:      throw new Exception();

  23:    }   

  24:  }

The following stack trace will be produced by the code example above:

   at ConsoleApplication2.Program.Method2()

   at ConsoleApplication2.Program.Method1()

   at ConsoleApplication2.Program.Main(String[] args)

   at System.AppDomain.ExecuteAssembly(Assembly assembly, String[] args)

   at System.AppDomain.ExecuteAssembly(String assemblyFile, Evidence assemblySecurity, String[] args)

   at Microsoft.VisualStudio.HostingProcess.HostProc.RunUsersAssembly()

   at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart_Context(Object state)

   at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state)

   at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart()

When you use throw ex; instead of throw; you will get:

   at ConsoleApplication2.Program.Main(String[] args)

   at System.AppDomain._nExecuteAssembly(Assembly assembly, String[] args)

   at System.AppDomain.ExecuteAssembly(String assemblyFile, Evidence assemblySecurity, String[] args)

   at Microsoft.VisualStudio.HostingProcess.HostProc.RunUsersAssembly()

   at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart_Context(Object state)

   at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state)

   at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart()

As you see the stack trace don’t have the calls to Method1 and Method2, so when you use throw ex; you will lose essential debug information.

All About Decisions Making

Confused? Lots of options to choose from? Here are some suggestions on how to calmly and rationally make decisions:

Never make decisions when you are under pressure or in a lot of stress. Your judgment can be clouded by emotions and prejudices. Even if you are forced to make a quick decision, ask if you can be allowed enough time to think about it. Step back even for a few minutes. Take deep breaths and clear your mind.

There is nothing wrong to paying attention to gut feeling. For some strange reason, even if they can’t be logically explained, they often turn out right. Listen to your instincts.

Some people like putting thoughts in writing. You can create two columns – pros or advantages, and cons or disadvantages. These can help you organize thoughts, making decision making much easier.

You can also consider the point of view of others. You don’t need to take their advice, just get different perspectives.

Own it. Whatever the outcome of your decision is, be prepared to take responsibility for the consequences. If you made a mistake, learn from it and use it when making future decisions.

How to Make Effective Decisions

Decisions… Decisions… Decisions can be swift or long-drawn. No matter how long it takes you to reach one, just make sure you try to make effective ones.

• No magic 8-balls
  Don’t ask others to decide for you. Effective decision making involves introspection. Besides, it’s always best to take responsibility for whatever you do.
• Settle for no less than the facts
  Sometimes personal biases and emotions may cloud your decisions. So get the facts straight. Look for possibly distorted ones and weed them out.
• Split the pros and cons
  Decisions will definitely have effects on things. It’s the spark that’d cause a chain reaction. So before you make one, be sure to know what may be the consequences of your action. Though you can only see as far
• Be calm
  If making a decision as a group, avoid hostilities. Clear thinking and not heated arguments is one of the best weapons in making a decision.
• Persuade not argue
  It’s better to come up with a decision with everyone on the same footing. So it’s much better to persuade people in seeing your point of view instead of simply debunking everyone else’s opinion.
Write things down
Seeing things in plain black and white helps you weed out things that needlessly affect your decision.
• If in doubt, don’t decide
  Take a break. Watch a movie. Sleep. Just don’t do anything if you still don’t know what to do.
• Simulate
  Try to run things through your head. Process things like a computer where you have and input, a process, then an output which translate to decision, a reaction, and then a result. If it helps, make a story out of it to help you visualize.
• Stick to what you believe
  Never compromise your ideals. Stand up for what you truly believe in especially if other would like to blackmail you emotionally or mentally.
  
  

  Decision-Making Mistakes that We Often Commit

  
  
  I’ve been making a lot of decisions lately and having been all too preachy on this blog has made me think hard about how I make these decisions. They’re not trivial decisions, mind you. They’re very concrete, very real, and itsconsequences are life-changing. While I wouldn’t go as far as enumerating them, I’m sure that we all face these kinds of decisions once every so often.Career decisions, marriage decisions, financial decisions – these things we can all lose sleep with.

  In the pursuit of something sensible to write, I decided to focus on the factors that often lead our decisions astray. While there are always probabilities to consider with these things, there are decision errors that almost always would really f*ck you up. Here are my picks.

  Hasty decisions. There are times when we need to make decisions in a jiffy but what we refer to as “haste” is a different thing. More liked in the context of “rushed.” This is often committed when one makes a decision without any facts or exploring alternatives.

  Deciding on the merits of the advantages… and only those. Sometimes, when we’re enthusiastic about something, we’re blinded by all the good things about it that we often lose sight of it cons.

  Tunnel vision. Deciding with very limited perspective is a dangerous thing. There are instances where you just try to apply the same framework in doing all of your decisions. Go seek expert advice. Talk to a friend. But don’t decide without getting any other perspective on the matter.

  Heuristics. While there are times when using rules-of-thumb do work, criticaldecisions shouldn’t be made based on a very narrow and very rough frameworks that these rules often are. Heuristics will only work if used in a coherent set.

  Taking into account irrelevant things. Worry warts and paranoid people suffer from this decision making mistake. Even if some things can actually be really negligible, the paranoid in us can force us to worry about these things. And when we do, we end up not focusing on things that do matter.

  Pride. Ah, to be swallowed by your own hubris. Many decision mistakes are made because of letting pride take over everything. This even leads one to commit all the other mistakes cited here. Sometimes, it would help not to think solely about yourself at times.

The Law of Time Perspective

The Law of Time Perspective
By Brian Tracy

The most successful people in any society are those who take the longest time period into consideration when making their day-to-day decisions. This insight comes from the pioneering work on upward financial mobility in America conducted by Dr. Edward Banfield of Harvard University in the late 1950's and early 1960's. After studying many of the factors that were thought to contribute to individual financial success over the course of a person's lifetime, he concluded that there was one primary factor that took precedence over all the others. He called it “time perspective.”

Plant Trees

What Banfield found was that the higher a person rises in any society, the longer the time perspective or time horizon of that person. People at the highest social and economic levels make decisions and sacrifices that may not pay off for many years, sometimes not even in their own lifetimes. They “plant trees under which they will never sit.”

Doctors

An obvious example of someone with a long time perspective is the man or women who spends ten or twelve years studying and interning to become a doctor. This person takes extraordinarily long time to lay down the foundation for a lifetime career. And partially because we know how long it takes to become a doctor, we hold doctors in the highest esteem of any professional group. We appreciate and admire the sacrifices that they have made in order to be able to practice a profession that is so important to so many of us. We recognize their long time perspectives.


Long Time Perspectives

People with long term perspectives are willing to pay the price of success for a long, long time before they achieve it. They think about the consequences of their choices and decisions in terms of what they might mean in five, ten, fifteen, and even twenty years from now.

Short Time Perspectives

People at the lowest levels of society have the shortest time perspectives. They focus primarily on immediate gratification and often engage in behaviors that are virtually guaranteed to lead to negative consequences in the long term. At the very bottom of the social ladder, you find hopeless alcoholics and drug addicts. These people think in terms of the next drink or the next fix. Their time perspective is often less than one hour.

Delayed Gratification is the Key to Success

Your ability to practice self-mastery, self-control, and self-denial, to sacrifice in the short term so you can enjoy greater rewards in the long term, is the starting point of developing a long time perspective. This attitude is essential to financial achievement of any kind.

Action Exercise

Practice a long term perspective in every area of your life, especially in your financial life but also with your family and your health. Think of where you would ideally like to be in five years and begin today to take steps in that direction.