If I Become a Consultant

 I would make a good consultant in some areas. Can't compete with the McKinseys and BCGs in their areas of Core Competence, but I have my own.

1. How to tackle different kinds of bosses.

2. How to play Golf, and Why to Play Golf

3. How to Avoid Toxicity and Lead a Happy Life

4. How to Read Books and Forget the News Headlines

5. Why Life is Not a Four-letter Word

6. Careers That Give More Satisfaction Than Others, and Less Heartburn Too

7. Food Experiments You Should Try

8. Travel Tips for Oldies 

9. How to Avoid Stress

10. How to Make Friends- Listening Skills are paramount

11. How to be Funny and also be Liked!

Dealing with Stress

Disclaimer-this is not a serious post. Intended purely as a de-stresser.

Stress is a big, big, problem. Or is it? What is stress? What used to cause us stress-inability to spell correctly words like onomatopoeia-is no longer a cause of it to the generation which has auto-correct. It's another matter entirely that auto-correct causes its own stress by creating and inserting words that were unintended in messages and mails.

Let's see-what else caused stress? At teen age, maybe the eternal question - "Will she, Won't she?" was a cause for eternal stress. And pimples. A teen did not think beyond love and pimples. Clearasil solved the pimples issue. But the other one was quite a handful. And no solution in sight, too. Today's teen might get stressed if the net connection is off for two minutes or more.

In adult (read working) life, bosses are supposed to be the cause for stress. But there are easy solutions to this-change your job, or become a boss. In the former case, you change the stressor, not remove the root cause. The second solution is always the better one. But the best solution is to get adopted by a millionaire so you don't HAVE to work.

Having caused distress to you instead of helping you de-stress as promised, I shall stop here and leave you to meditate upon what you have read-or just meditate. That's supposed to relieve stress. You never know until you try it, do you? Good luck.

Stress- Then and Now

When I was a kid growing up, we had-

Only one brand of toothpaste- Colgate. Now you have 200.
Only the radio. Now kids have TV, Internet, Mobile, Ipad, Kindle, ..
Only white teeth. Now they come in Blue too.
Only home-made food. Now you have McD, Pizza Hut, Dosa, Vada Pav, and Indian Chinese, Indian Italian, Indian Mexican, American Balushahi (sorry, Donuts), Horrible airport sandwiches, even more horrible airline sandwiches,....
Only one superstar at a time. It was either Khanna or Bachchan. Now we have at least 5 Khans and twenty Kapoors..

Even after the TV came in, we had only one channel, Doordarshan. Now, there are 400.

Movies were only in theatres. Now, you have DVDs, downloads (as a Chief Minister recently told reminded us), file sharing, and so on, in addition to re-runs and dubbed movies) and OTTs.

Is it any surprise then, that stress levels were low then, and are high now?
Moral of the story- (having to make a) choice breeds stress.

Medicine for Stress

Actually, it is not a curative, but a preventive medicine. I hate to sound like a salesman on a TV promotional show for medicine, but don't worry. You don't have to go buy anything. Just hear me out. If you don't like what I am saying, you can leave nasty comments.

My new theory (2013, copyrighted but free for use)-

Stress comes from non-acceptance. Some comments, judgements, relationship break-ups, what have you, that we don't want to accept. That is the major cause of (undesirable levels of) stress.

Solution? Accept. Simple? Not really, but could be effective. Accept and move on. If you know yourself (that's a tough one, there), the acceptance of the adverse will result in the effect of the adverse stuff waning pretty quickly.

Try it. No, I am not into starting a cult, and I am NOT accepting disciples. Contrary to my advice, maybe.