If Money Doesn't Make You Happy, Consider Time

Time, Not Money, Is Your Most Precious Resource. Spend It Wisely.

Our search to understand what makes humans happy (or happier) goes back centuries. As does our enduring belief that if we just do the right thing, happiness will follow - that additional happiness will be doled out to us because we earned it, not due to the largess of a benevolent being. "Happiness is not a reward - it is a consequence," instructs Robert Green Ingersoll, a Civil War-era orator. Many notable others, from Aristotle to the Buddha to Ursula K. LeGuin, agree with this sentiment.

New research takes a fresh look at this topic. Jennifer Aaker and Melanie Rudd at Stanford University, and Cassie Mogilner at the University of Pennsylvania, published "If Money Doesn't Make You Happy, Consider Time,"in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2011. They discuss how happiness is indeed a consequence of the choices people make. So what can people do to increase their happiness? Their answer is surprisingly simple: spend your time wisely. Careful though. Some of the ways people should spend their time are, in fact, surprising.

Although happiness is clearly relevant for individuals, businesses should also pay attention. Building a workforce of highly qualified, hard-working, and loyal employees is an essential aspect of staying competitive in today's global markets. Therefore, being concerned about employee happiness is not just a moral thing to do, but it makes smart business sense as well.

"People often make career choices based on how much money they envision they can make now or in the future. Surprisingly little thought goes into how they will be using their time - whether they can control their time, who they will spend their time with, and what activities they will spend their time on," said Aaker, General Atlantic Professor of Marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

"We spend most of our time at work. So understanding how we should be spending our time at work is much more important than people think. It has been interesting to observe which companies are doing a good job of creating opportunities for employees to manage their own time. This goes beyond providing opportunities for flexible hours, telecommuting, and independent contractor relationships. Which companies are allowing opportunities for employees to fundamentally design how they spend their time both at work and outside of work - in ways that are creative and innovative? As Millennials enter the workforce, these types of demands will become even more common."

Over the years, there has been relatively little research on the relationship between the resource of time and happiness. Perhaps not surprisingly, it is another resource - money - that has been investigated much more thoroughly as a potential key to happiness. Yet, very little research corroborates the idea that more money leads to more happiness. Some research suggests that perhaps people just aren't spending it right. In fact, even the mere mention of money can result in individuals being less likely to engage in behaviors linked to personal happiness, such as helping others, donating to charity, or socializing with friends and family. After being prompted to think about wealth, individuals work more, and their ability to enjoy small moments becomes significantly compromised.

"We know that people with meaningful social connections are happier than those without them," said Mogilner. "The more time that individuals spend with their partners, best friends, and close friends, the happier they are. When they spend time with people who they dislike or when they spend time alone, their happiness levels drop. Loneliness is a relatively good predictor of unhappiness." Further,Mogilner has found that encouraging people to think about time (vs. money, for example) tends to foster those social connections. So thinking about time has a fundamental impact on how people behave.

Why might concentrating on time get us closer to our centuries-long search for happiness? One reason is because time spent doing something, especially when compared to owning something or spending money, is associated with personal meaning and evokes emotionally laden memories.

You might not recall how much money you had in your bank account when you were 20 years old, but most people remember their first kiss. Time also fosters interpersonal connections: the camaraderie that people get from attending a baseball game with friends, for example, would be more conducive to happiness than watching it alone in front of the television.

Drawing from their research and that of others, Aaker, Rudd, and Mogilner extracted five time-spending happiness principles:

Spend time with the right people. The greatest happiness levels are associated with spending time with people we like. Socially connecting activities - such as hanging out with friends and family - are responsible for the happiest parts of the day. However, work is also an essential element in the time-happiness relationship. Although spending time with bosses and coworkers tends to be associated with some of the lowest degrees of happiness, two of the biggest predictors of people's general happiness are whether they have a 'best friend' at work and whether they like their boss. Therefore, people should try to reframe relationships and workplace goals such that colleagues become friends so that time spent at work becomes happier.

Spend time on the right activities. Certain activities are energizing, and others make us feel drained and defeated. To increase happiness, people should avoid spending time on the latter activities in favor of the former whenever possible. Of course, the bills have to be paid, the bathroom cleaned, and it's sometimes a challenge to get through the day. But people need to reflect on how they are spending their time - the extent to which they mindlessly move from activity to activity without considering what they would really prefer to be doing. For instance, when deciding how to spend the next hour, simply asking yourself the question, 'Will what I do right now become more valuable over time?' could increase the likelihood that you behave in ways that are more in line with what will really make you happy.

Enjoy experiences without spending time actually doing them. Research in the field of neuroscience has shown that the part of the brain responsible for feeling pleasure - the mesolimbic dopamine system - can be activated when merely thinking about something pleasurable, such as drinking a favorite brand of beer or driving a favorite type of sports car. In fact, this research shows that people sometimes enjoys anticipating an activity more than actually doing it.

For example, reading guidebooks in advance of a big vacation and anticipating the food you'll eat and the activities you'll do while there could actually give you more pleasure than the vacation itself. In short, research suggests that we can be just as well - if not sometimes better - off if we imagine experiences without having them. So to increase happiness, spend plenty of time happily daydreaming.

Expand your time. Unlike money, time is inherently scarce. No one gets more than 24 hours per day. In fact, there is a bidirectional relationship between time's scarcity and its value: not only does having little time make it feel more valuable, but when time is more valuable, it is perceived as more scarce. To increase happiness, it can make sense to focus on the here and now -because thinking about the present moment (vs. the future) has been found to slow down the perceived passage of time. Simply breathing more deeply can have similar effects.

In one study, subjects who were instructed to take long and slow breaths (vs. short and quick ones) for five minutes not only felt there was more time available to get things done, but also perceived their day as longer. And even though feeling time-constrained makes people less likely to take the time to help someone else, doing so actually makes people feel as though they have more spare time and gives them a sense of a more expansive future. Therefore, if you can't afford to "buy" more discretionary time (e.g., by hiring a maid), focus on the present moment, breathe more slowly, and spend the little time that you have in helpful and meaningful ways.

Be aware that happiness changes over time. As we age, we experience different levels of happiness and how we experience happiness changes. Recent research found that younger people are more likely to experience happiness as excitement, whereas older individuals are more likely to experience happiness as feeling peaceful. Therefore, you should be aware that basing future decisions on your current perceptions of happiness may not lead to the maximum levels of happiness in the long run.

Finally, although the meaning of happiness may change, it does so in predictable patterns. Therefore, it is possible to anticipate such changes, and you should allow yourself to shift how you spend your time over the course of your life - as the meaning of happiness shifts.

Aaker points out that "the experiences people accumulate over the course of spending their limited time, quite literally makes up each person's life. So, if you take away anything from this research, it should be that spending time with the people you love doing the things you love is the best road to happiness."

--
Alice LaPlante

Biology Of Emotions

Knowing about your brain can help you appreciate all it does for you.

Why do we call certain emotions ‘bad’?

What we experience are different combinations of the six basic emotions: happiness, anger, fear, surprise, sadness and disgust. We call some positive and some negative but they are all there for a reason. They help us cope with everyday life, allowing us to communicate what we feel toward certain situations, people and things. But, emotions such as shame, pride, jealously and guilt are not considered part of the basic emotions set. There is no scientific evidence showing that there is a universal expression of shame that is recognised the world over as shame.

Does meditation change the brain pattern?

Brain waves do change during meditation. When you meditate, the balance of brain wave activity in your brain shifts — there is less Beta, the thinking and stress-related brain wave, and more Alpha, Theta and Gamma — the relaxation and meditation brain waves. Through meditation and altering your brain wave balance, you create more happiness. This feeling spills over into our daily activities. People who meditate daily have greater control over their negative emotions.

Can fear be a positive emotion?

Fear can be both positive and negative. A phobia or a debilitating fear that prevents you from doing everyday jobs is negative. Being afraid helps you protect yourself. Anger intensifies our defensive behaviour. Fear accelerates flight. From fear, you learn not to do things that can be harmful for you. And that’s a positive thing for your survival. Disgust tells you to avoid things that can cause illness. Happiness encourages behaviour that produces positive emotions.

Why is it important to control our emotions and not overreact?

Emotions involve the autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity. ANS has two parts: the sympathetic and para-sympathetic system. The sympathetic nervous system arousal is associated with strong emotions like fear, happiness and anger. It is responsible for the fight-or-flight response. When these nerves get active, heartbeat increases, BP goes up, pupils dilate, you start sweating, energy gets diverted to your muscles (so that you can run) and digestion becomes a low priority for your body. When people are exposed to long-term stress — when there is frequent arousal of the sympathetic nervous system — there can be serious consequences that impact your health. In order for the body to remain relaxed, we have the para-sympathetic nervous system that deals with the rest-and-digest system. This helps us calm down. The brain plays a role in these different emotions.

Is there a happiness centre or a fear centre in the brain?

There is no specific part of the brain that is responsible for any one given emotion. The limbic system is responsible for the different emotions we experience. Also called the primitive brain, it is common to humans and animals. But what separates humans and animals is the cerebral cortex, which empowers humans with cognitive skills that make us reason things out logically. The limbic system and the cerebral cortex complement each other. While the former evokes emotions like fear and anger, the latter helps us reason things out.

The limbic system is a complex set of structures that lies on both sides of the thalamus, just under the cerebrum. It includes the hypothalamus, the hippocampus and the amygdala. Crying and laughing activate the amygdala. Injury to these parts of the brain can affect emotions. For example, a person with a damaged amygdala cannot experience fear. A tumour in the hypothalamus can trigger excessive aggression.

Can our behaviour change brain structure?

Our brain is responsible for our behaviour and our behaviour has the capacity to change our brain. So what you do, how you live your life, whether you meditate or lead a stressful life can change your brain. Too much stress can shrink your hippocampus (that is why when you are stressed, you become forgetful). Our environment and experience determine our level of aggression. We often attribute a person’s behaviour to society and culture, but it can be biological also. We often ignore biology — genes, brain activity or structure.

What about spiritual experience?

Spiritual experience happens in the brain. Neuroscience now understands a great deal about how the brain works during a variety of spiritual experiences, ranging from near-death to mystical “oneness”. Many of our spiritual moments are linked to fight-or-flight survival responses. The brain structures underlying our survival impulses evolved long before other structures made the human brain capable of language and reasoning.

How does the brain deal with moral issues?

Most of us think that morality comes only from culture, society and religion. But damage to a particular structure in the brain can alter decision making. There is a specific brain abnormality associated with criminal psychopathy. Psychopaths have reduced connections between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for sentiments such as empathy and guilt, and the amygdala, which mediates fear and anxiety. A tumour in the pre-frontal cortex leads to poor-decision making. Severe damage to brain parts cannot be corrected, but increasing the activity of those parts of the brain that help in de-stressing and relaxing or that which stimulate the para-sympathetic nervous system is good for people with brain damage. Neuroplasticity helps in a limited way.

Does our mind tend to choose emotion over logic?

Though our mind does use the logical option, the first thought that comes is the emotional option. From the evolutionary standpoint, emotions are basic to animals, while logic is unique to humans. Emotion is more rooted in our minds than logic is because our species has been acquiring logic over time, according to the evolutionary clock. This concept is physically visible too; brain tissue related to emotion is closer to the centre of the brain while logic-pertaining tissue is generally in the outer layers, specifically in the caudal area.

वसुधा का नेता कौन हुआ

वसुधा का नेता कौन हुआ? (रश्मिरथी)
- रामधारी सिंह दिनकर (Ramdhari Singh Dinkar)

सच है, विपत्ति जब आती है,
कायर को ही दहलाती है,
शूरमा नहीं विचलित होते,
क्षण एक नहीं धीरज खोते,
विघ्नों को गले लगाते हैं,
काँटों में राह बनाते हैं।

मुख से न कभी उफ कहते हैं,
संकट का चरण न गहते हैं,
जो आ पड़ता सब सहते हैं,
उद्योग-निरत नित रहते हैं,
शूलों का मूल नसाने को,
बढ़ खुद विपत्ति पर छाने को।

है कौन विघ्न ऐसा जग में,
टिक सके वीर नर के मग में
खम ठोंक ठेलता है जब नर,
पर्वत के जाते पाँव उखड़।
मानव जब जोर लगाता है,
पत्थर पानी बन जाता है।

गुण बड़े एक से एक प्रखर,
हैं छिपे मानवों के भीतर,
मेंहदी में जैसे लाली हो,
वर्तिका-बीच उजियाली हो।
बत्ती जो नहीं जलाता है
रोशनी नहीं वह पाता है।

पीसा जाता जब इक्षु-दण्ड,
झरती रस की धारा अखण्ड,
मेंहदी जब सहती है प्रहार,
बनती ललनाओं का सिंगार।
जब फूल पिरोये जाते हैं,
हम उनको गले लगाते हैं।

वसुधा का नेता कौन हुआ?
भूखण्ड-विजेता कौन हुआ?
अतुलित यश क्रेता कौन हुआ?
नव-धर्म प्रणेता कौन हुआ?
जिसने न कभी आराम किया,
विघ्नों में रहकर नाम किया।

जब विघ्न सामने आते हैं,
सोते से हमें जगाते हैं,
मन को मरोड़ते हैं पल-पल,
तन को झँझोरते हैं पल-पल।
सत्पथ की ओर लगाकर ही,
जाते हैं हमें जगाकर ही।

वाटिका और वन एक नहीं,
आराम और रण एक नहीं।
वर्षा, अंधड़, आतप अखंड,
पौरुष के हैं साधन प्रचण्ड।
वन में प्रसून तो खिलते हैं,
बागों में शाल न मिलते हैं।

कङ्करियाँ जिनकी सेज सुघर,
छाया देता केवल अम्बर,
विपदाएँ दूध पिलाती हैं,
लोरी आँधियाँ सुनाती हैं।
जो लाक्षा-गृह में जलते हैं,
वे ही शूरमा निकलते हैं।

बढ़कर विपत्तियों पर छा जा,
मेरे किशोर! मेरे ताजा!
जीवन का रस छन जाने दे,
तन को पत्थर बन जाने दे।
तू स्वयं तेज भयकारी है,
क्या कर सकती चिनगारी है?

क्या करूँ संवेदना लेकर तुम्हारी?

क्या करूँ संवेदना लेकर तुम्हारी?
क्या करूँ?

मैं दुखी जब-जब हुआ
संवेदना तुमने दिखाई,
मैं कृतज्ञ हुआ हमेशा,
रीति दोनो ने निभाई,
किन्तु इस आभार का अब
हो उठा है बोझ भारी;
क्या करूँ संवेदना लेकर तुम्हारी?
क्या करूँ?

एक भी उच्छ्वास मेरा
हो सका किस दिन तुम्हारा?
उस नयन से बह सकी कब
इस नयन की अश्रु-धारा?
सत्य को मूंदे रहेगी
शब्द की कब तक पिटारी?
क्या करूँ संवेदना लेकर तुम्हारी?
क्या करूँ?

कौन है जो दूसरों को
दु:ख अपना दे सकेगा?
कौन है जो दूसरे से
दु:ख उसका ले सकेगा?
क्यों हमारे बीच धोखे
का रहे व्यापार जारी?
क्या करूँ संवेदना लेकर तुम्हारी?
क्या करूँ?

क्यों न हम लें मान, हम हैं
चल रहे ऐसी डगर पर,
हर पथिक जिस पर अकेला,
दुख नहीं बंटते परस्पर,
दूसरों की वेदना में
वेदना जो है दिखाता,
वेदना से मुक्ति का निज
हर्ष केवल वह छिपाता;
तुम दुखी हो तो सुखी मैं
विश्व का अभिशाप भारी!
क्या करूँ संवेदना लेकर तुम्हारी?
क्या करूँ?

Ten Quotes

1. An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. - Edwin Land

2. Life is filled with opportunities, not entitlements. - Jim Quigley, former CEO, Deloitte

3. Be a good listener. Your ears will never get you in trouble." - Frank Tyger

4. Enthusiasm is everything. It must be taut and vibrating like a guitar string. - Pelé

5. Keep thyself first in peace, and then thou wilt be able to bring others to peace. - Thomas a Kempis

6. If you are not big enough to lose, you are not big enough to win. - Walter Reuther

7. A good friend is someone who thinks you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked. - Bernard Meltzer

8. Faith sees the invisible, believes the unbelievable, and receives the impossible. - Corrie Ten Boom

9. Regret for wasted time is more wasted time" ~Mason Cooley

10."Everything you are Against - Weakens you. Everything you are For - Empowers you." ~Wayne Dyer

Signs it’s time to let go

1>  Someone expects you to be someone you’re not. – Don’t change who you are for anyone else. It’s wiser to lose someone over being who you are, than to keep them by being someone you’re not. Because it’s easier to mend a broken heart, than it is to piece together a shattered identity. It’s easier to fill an empty space in your life where someone else used to be, than it is to fill the empty space inside yourself where YOU used to be.
2>  A person’s actions don’t match their words. – Everybody deserves somebody who helps them look forward to tomorrow. If someone has the opposite effect on you, because they are consistently inconsistent and their actions don’t match up with their words, it’s time to let them go. It’s always better to be alone than to be in bad company. True friendship is a promise made in the heart – silent, unwritten, unbreakable by distance, and unchangeable by time. Don’t listen to what people say; watch what they do. Your true friends will slowly reveal themselves over time.
3>  You catch yourself forcing someone to love you. – Let us keep in mind that we can’t force anyone to love us. We shouldn’t beg someone to stay when they want to leave. That’s what love is all about – freedom. However, the end of love is not the end of life. It should be the beginning of an understanding that love sometimes leaves for a reason, but never leaves without a lesson. If someone truly loves you, they will never give you a reason to doubt it. Anyone can come into your life and say how much they love you, but it takes someone really special to stay in your life and prove how much they love you. Sometimes it takes awhile to find the right person, but the right person is always worth the wait.
4>  An intimate relationship is based strictly on physical attraction. – Being beautiful is more than how many people you can get to look at you, or how others perceive you at a single glance. It’s about what you live for. It’s about what defines you. It’s about the depth of your heart, and what makes you unique. It’s about being who you are and living out your life honestly. It’s about those little quirks that make you, you. People who are only attracted to you because of your pretty face or nice body won’t stay by your side forever. But the people who can see how beautiful your heart is will never leave you.
5>  Someone continuously breaks your trust. – Love means giving someone the chance to hurt you, but trusting them not to. When you completely trust a person, without any doubt, you’ll automatically get one of two results - a FRIEND for life or a LESSON for life. Either way there’s a positive outcome. Either you confirm the fact that this person cares about you, or you get the opportunity to weed them out of your life and make room for those who do. In the end you’ll discover who’s fake, who’s true, and who would risk it all for you. And trust me, some people will totally surprise you.
6>  Someone continuously overlooks your worth. – Know your worth! When you give yourself to someone who doesn’t respect you, you surrender pieces of your soul that you’ll never get back. There comes a point when you have to let go and stop chasing some people. If someone wants you in their life, they’ll find a way to put you there. Sometimes you just need to let go and accept the fact that they don’t care for you the way you care for them. Let them leave your life quietly. Letting go is oftentimes easier than holding on. We think it’s too hard to let go, until we actually do. Then we ask ourselves, “Why didn’t I do this sooner?”
7>  You are never given a chance to speak your mind. – Sometimes an argument saves a relationship, whereas silence breaks it. Speak up for your heart so that you won’t have regrets. Life is not about making others happy. Life is about being honest and sharing your happiness with others.
8>  You are frequently forced to sacrifice your happiness. – If you allow people to make more withdrawals than deposits in your life, you will be out of balance and in the negative before you know it. Know when to close the account. It’s always better to be alone with dignity than in a relationship that constantly requires you to sacrifice your happiness and self-respect.
9>  You truly dislike your current situation, routine, job, etc. – It’s better to be a failure at something you love than to succeed at doing something you hate. Don’t let someone who gave up on their dreams talk you out of going after yours. The best thing you can do in life is follow your heart. Take risks. Don’t just make the safe and easy choices because you’re afraid of what might happen. If you do, nothing will ever happen. Chances must be taken, mistakes must be made, and lessons must be learned. It might be an uphill climb, but when you reach that mountaintop it will be worth every ounce of blood, sweat and tears you put into it.
10>  You catch yourself obsessing over, and living in, the past. – Eventually you will overcome the heartache, and forget the reasons you cried, and who caused the pain. Eventually you will realize that the secret to happiness and freedom is not about control or revenge, but in letting things unfold naturally, and learning from your experiences over the course of time. After all, what matters most is not the first, but the final chapter of your life, which unveils the details of how well you wrote your story. So let go of the past, set yourself free, and open your mind to the possibility of new relationships and priceless experiences.

The Don't Quit

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest, if you must, but don't you quit.
Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about,
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don't give up though the pace seems slow--
You may succeed with another blow.
Often the goal is nearer than,
It seems to a faint and faltering man,
Often the struggler has given up,
When he might have captured the victor's cup,
And he learned too late when the night slipped down,
How close he was to the golden crown.
Success is failure turned inside out--
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far,
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit--
It's when things seem worst that you must not quit.

Effective growth of brain

1. Learn what is the “It” in “Use It or Lose It”. A basic understanding will serve you well to appreciate your brain’s beauty as a living and constantly developing dense forest with billions of neurons and synapses.
2. Take care of your nutrition. Did you know that the brain only weighs 2% of body mass but consumes over 20% of the oxygen and nutrients we intake? As a general rule, you don’t need expensive ultra sophisticated nutritional supplements; just make sure you don’t stuff yourself with the “bad stuff”.
3. Remember that the brain is part of the body. Things that exercise your body can also help sharpen your brain: physical exercise enhances neurogenesis.
4. Practice positive, future oriented thoughts until they become your default mindset and you look forward to every new day in a constructive way. Stress and anxiety, no matter whether induced by external events or by your own thoughts, actually kills neurons and prevent the creation of new ones. You can think of chronic stress as the opposite of exercise: it prevents the creation of new neurons.
5. Thrive on Learning and Mental Challenges. The point of having a brain is precisely to learn and to adapt to challenging new environments. Once new neurons appear in your brain, where they stay in your brain and how long they survive depends on how you use them. “Use It or Lose It” does not mean “do crossword puzzle number 1,234,567″. It means, “Challenge your brain often with fundamentally new activities”.
6. We are (as far as we know) the only self-directed organisms in this planet. Aim high. Once you graduate from college, keep learning. The brain keeps developing, no matter your age, and it reflects what you do with it.
7. Explore, travel. Adapting to new locations forces you to pay more attention to your environment. Make new decisions, use your brain.
8. Don’t Outsource Your Brain. Not to media personalities, not to politicians, not to your smart neighbor… Make your own decisions, and mistakes. And learn from them. That way, you are training your brain, not your neighbor’s.
9. Develop and maintain stimulating friendships. We are “social animals”, and need social interaction. Which, by the way, is why ‘Baby Einstein’ has been shown not to be the panacea for children development?
10. Laugh. Often. Especially to cognitively complex humor, full of twists and surprises

Attitude of gratitude

1. Grateful people don’t expect that life is going to give them everything they deserve. They realize that good things do not always happen to good people, and they have given up the notion that life “owes them” anything more than it can offer.
2. They do not have preconditions to their happiness. They do not think “If this happens” only then “I will be happy.” They understand happiness is not coming from the outside, but from within. They focus more on their adjustment to what happens rather than try to change what can not be changed
3. People who are grateful have realized that you can not have the rainbow without the rain. Furthermore, they know that you don’t have honey without the bee, and you can’t have the rose without the thorns. They see rainy days as a normal part of life rather than an aberration, and learn from the rain rather than just wait for it to go away. They admire the beauty of the rose even though it has its thorny side, and savor the sweet taste of honey even though the bee can sting. Realizing you can not have one without the other, they are grateful for both.
4. Grateful people have hope. No matter what happens, hope is not lost. They realize the future is uncertain, and while they plan for it, they do not try to micromanage outcomes that are beyond their sphere of influence. They take comfort in the fact that once the sun sets, it rises the next day.
5. Those who are steeped in bitterness and grudges have no space in their heart to be grateful. Forgiving your spouse for not being as understanding as you would have been, forgiving your children for making choices that would not have been your own, and giving up the grudge of a slight or injustice from a friend, are all parts of the gratitude equation. Forgive others for not acting or being like you had hoped. As Buddha said, “Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”
6. People who are grateful know that a grateful attitude takes work. Gratefulness does not always come naturally, especially in the most challenging times. In such times, grateful people work on keeping a good perspective. They might read affirmations, seek support form others, get help for their sadness or anxiety. Some will seek counseling and do not shy away from the effort it takes.
7. Grateful people have healthy thinking habits. They go by the motto, “Think Straight – Feel Great!” They can separate their perceptions from the facts and separate rational from victim-like irrational ways of thinking.
8. Grateful people are flexible in their thinking. People who think flexibly are at an advantage in life, as flexibility is the key to growth and wisdom. They don’t cling stubbornly with ways of thinking that do not work, and do not need to see a shift in attitude as meaning a personal defeat and referendum of how wrong they used to be. They realize they can choose their perceptions and have a right to change their minds. With this mentality, the doors that close yield others that  now become open.
9. People who love to learn tend to be grateful. Each setback or unforeseen life event offers us lessons, and grateful people focus more on the lessons they can get out of each situation rather than the disappointments. After all, life is a great teacher and teaches us things that no one ever could. Even mistakes and failures are seen as learning opportunities.
10. Grateful people define their self worth by their determination and their dreams, not their regrets and disappointments. A grateful mindset has no room for excessive self-recrimination and low self esteem. People who are stuck in past regrets and see themselves as losers in life or as having failed badly in even certain areas of their lives will not be able to be truly grateful. Positive self esteem sets the foundation for gratefulness. So if you are down on yourself, this is a time to get a mental health tune up!

Is India ready for e-commerce?

E- Commerce is the process of buying or selling products on the internet. The process of buying and selling products through the internet has become quite popular these days. E-commerce also involves activities like developing products, marketing them and also delivering them to the consumers. However, it was only in 1979 that Michael Aldrin invented online shopping. During the late 1980s and 1990s, the big companies and business houses entered the market of online shopping.

It was during the 1995-2000 that the world experienced a dot com bubble after which the face of e-commerce transformed completely. E-commerce is an amazing way of buying and selling products. E-commerce is also definitely a more comfortable way of shopping. Which is the better idea- if you have to go out to different shops and spend hours on buying things that you want? Or the idea of being able to shop for things that you need from within the comforts of your home and at prices lesser than what you would usually pay?

India is the second fastest growing economy in the world. In the last few years, Indian has developed radically. There has not only been economical development but the country has also become technologically advanced. In India, the year 1990 marked the year of science and technological advancement in the country. In the last two decades, the country has come a long way. Computer and internet have become available in almost every home. This has created a market for e-commerce in India. Also the consumers have become quite smart and are looking for ways which prove they can make profitable purchase. India is not only ready for e-commerce; e-commerce has already become quite popular in India too.

There are many reasons which make India a suitable market for e-commerce. Here are some of the reasons:

1.The mindset of consumer has changed: The consumers have become quite technological friendly these days. Earlier, consumers in India preferred going out and shopping in the markets. However, e-commerce does not only provide one with comfort but also gives them a chance to avail on various kinds of offers which helps the consumer to save money. Thus, consumers have now started developing a penchant for e-commerce rather than shopping in the markets.

2.Internet friendly users: In India, people have become quite internet friendly these days. The numbers of users have grown phenomenally over the years. According to a survey, there were only 7 million internet users in India in 2001. The number had grown to 100 million in 2010. Since people are becoming quite internet friendly these days, e-commerce is becoming a comfortable option for the people. It is believed that around 75 million household are ready for e-commerce in this nation.

3.Entry of big names in the Indian e-commerce market: Many big names have entered the market of e-commerce in India. Thus, the consumers get the best of the options while sitting at home only. These big names are investing in the e-commerce market from a long term perspective rather than small term. Thus, the e-commerce market is to grow even more bigger and better in times to come.

4.The success of the some of the sectors in the e-commerce market: Some of the sectors like travelling and retail have already proved to be quite successful in the field of e-commerce. These sectors have already made a lot of profit through the e-commerce market. The success of these sectors has incited other sectors to enter the market of e-commerce and this is precisely the reason why the e-commerce market has expanded so quickly in India.


Above mentioned are some of the reasons which make India a suitable market for e-commerce. However, there is still a slight bit of reluctance in the Indian Consumers regarding online shopping and e-commerce. Eventually this hesitation and reluctance will go with better services and offers and this is precisely the reason for believing that the market for e-commerce will only grow in India in times to come. According to a survey, it is believed that the number of e-commerce consumers will grow to 460 million individuals by 2024-2025.

Flipkart, Superbazaar.com, olx. Com, snapdeal are some of the e-commerce of online shopping websites that have already made it big in the Indian e-commerce market. With bigger and better online shopping sites like Amazon to enter the Indian e-commerce market in the near future, it would be right to say that the future of e-commerce is quite bright in India.