Toxic or Healthy Relation?

Do you think this person has your back? Or can you never count on him?

Do you talk or are you afraid to?

Do you feel buoyed after a tough conversation or completely depleted, drained, exhausted? (Watch your energy levels around this person. They reveal a lot.)

Do you feel you trust despite difficulties, or are you full of suspicion even when things are going smoothly?

Do you feel safe or in danger, vulnerable, at risk?

Do you feel seen, loved, or diminished, belittled?

Is the relationship tough but fundamentally stable or volatile and full of constant drama?

Are you true to yourself or does the approval of the other person take precedence?

Are you clear on how far you are willing to go or is what you are willing to do a moving target you have maybe lost track of?

Remember when you said it would never be OK to be yelled at?

Does this person make you want to be better or bring out your worst possible side? Look. Look at who you have become.

The first is a healthy relationship. The second is a toxic one.

Bonus tip: the word "dependent" is a pretty solid indicator of a toxic relationship.

-Dushka Zapata

Set Boundaries......

Government Job Overhyped?

Indians have recently seen the hapless depositors of PMC Bank losing their own money for no fault of theirs. Many depositors even died after the virtual collapse of PMC bank.

We have seen Jet Airways, once the largest Airlines in India collapsing almost suddenly and thousands of employees losing their jobs. However, no one came to their rescue.

India had over a dozen telecom companies a few years ago. Now only 4 companies are left and rest have perished without a trace. Hundreds of thousand employees in the private companies lost their jobs.

The only exception is BSNL, whose employees are still not jobless and now they have been offered such an attractive VRS package that 40,000 BSNL employees availed VRS scheme in last 3 days. The jobs of the rest is also taken off by the Government of India.[1]

There has never been any collapse of Public Sector Bank in India despite frauds taking place in many banks like PNB as Government protect them.

No depositor ever lost money in PSU bank or lost job in Government.

As long as India survives as a nation, your money and job with government is secured.

However, if you go with private sector, you have no security and suddenly you may find yourself on the road.

This is the reason that government jobs and government organisations are still so much important in India.

Source of pictures: Google Images

 [1] 40,000 BSNL employees availed VRS scheme in last 3 days, says CMD

-Awdhesh Singh

UPSC CSE not for average student........?

Here I got the question I would love to answer. Please excuse me as I ll be taking my own example to answer the question.

I have always been an average student throughout my academic life, sometimes below average too

A glimpse at my marks

1 .10th- 66 percent UP board , Hindi Medium

2 .12th -51 percent UP board , Hindi Medium

3. BA - 59 percent Hindi Medium

4. MA- 48 percent Hindi Medium

It's not only bout my marks, I always studied in a Government school where , to be true, not much attention is paid on every student. I did not not even know which examination one has to qualify to be an engineer till my 12th class. I still remember, in those days, I used to wonder how people become doctors and engineers, which exams they qualify, what books they study so on and so forth. There was none in my family who was very well educated to guide me as well.

It was only after my graduation that I started studying hard and improved my english first. Then I prepared for banks and qualified SBI clerical exam, this motivated me further and I went on qualifying SSC for 3 times.

And finally I prepared for UPSC and qualified in 2017 and presently working in Indian Railway Traffic Service.

UPSC does require your hardwork and commitment. It makes you realise your mettle, tets your perseverance and grit.

What I have learnt from UPSC preparation is,

“ There are no great people in this world, only great challenges which ordinary people rise to meet.”

-Ratan Deep Gupta,IRTS

This is How you Comfort Someone Crying.....

“Comfort” means different things to different people.

If someone wants to comfort you, you get to define what it means.

If you want to comfort someone else, they get to tell you what that looks like to them.

-Dushka Zapata

This is How you parent your Children

The best parenting advice I ever got didn’t come from another parent. It wasn’t even about parenting. Nonetheless, I’ve used this advice every single day of my 10+ years of parenting, and it’s the most valuable tool in my toolkit.

When I was pregnant with my eldest son, I was reading through some old Reader’s Digest magazines, and came across one of those cute, funny stories used as place-fillers at the end of an article. It went something like this:

Our last pet had passed away, so we bought a new kitten. The first day we had her at home, she started sharpening her claws the side of the couch—as kittens do—so my dad picked her up and put her outside. Fifteen years later, she still claws the side of the couch every time she wants to go out.

This story is my guiding beacon as a parent.

Every moment of every day, you are teaching your children something. With every single thing you say, do, or don’t do, you are teaching your children what they should say, do, and not do. The trick, as a parent, is not to teach your children the right things; the trick is to know what you’re teaching them.

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If your children overhear you telling your friend how much you hate Susan’s new haircut, and then they hear you telling Susan you love her hair, you might think you’re teaching them the value of being kind to people, even if it involves a little white-lie.

But what you may actually be teaching your children is that:

1. It’s okay to talk about people behind their back.
2. It’s okay to insult people behind their back.
3. It’s okay to lie to people

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If you tell your child to clean up his room, and when he asks why you yell: “Because I’m your mother and I said to do it!”, you might think you’re teaching them both the importance of keeping their living space tidy, and of respecting their elders.

But what you may actually be teaching your children is that:

1. It’s okay to yell at people if they don’t do what you say.
2. Being older, bigger, and stronger than someone gives you the right to treat them however you want.
3. When you’re bigger than someone, you can control their environment and there’s nothing they can do about it.

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If you’re running late to get to an important event and you happen across a car that’s broken down, so you stop and help the driver, you might worry that you’re teaching your children that punctuality doesn’t matter. (You may also worry that you’re inadvertently teaching them a variety of swear words as you get on your way once more!)

But what you may actually be teaching your children is that:

1. The well-being of people is more important than any single event.
2. All people matter—even people you don’t personally know.
3. Helping people is the right thing to do.

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Often we don’t know what we’re teaching our kids until after they’ve learned it, but this “advice”, such as it is, helps me be more mindful in the moment of the lessons I’m teaching. And, most importantly, it allows me to reflect back on when and how I taught the behaviour I’m seeing in my children.

If your children—especially small children—are behaving in ways you don’t like, it’s not because they’re not good at learning, or they’re not paying attention, or you need to discipline them more; it’s because you’re accidentally teaching them the wrong things.

Stop trying to change them. Start changing yourself.

Otherwise, in fifteen years, they’ll still be clawing the side of the couch when they want to go outside.

-Jo Eberhardt

I cant do well in academics and they call me useless

My mother was a prodigy, graduating from high school at 15, having begun college classes while still in high school. She got her bachelor’s degree in teaching at age 19 and began teaching high school—kids barely younger than herself!

I, on the other hand had Asperger Syndrome, dyslexia and nerve deafness so I couldn’t do well in school to save my life. My mother was ashamed and embarrassed of me. She once told me that I had the lowest IQ in the family (based on testing administered in the ’60s).

My brothers were expected to do great things in life, whereas I was told daily that I was useless, I couldn’t do anything right and that I would never amount to anything. My mom’s favorite phrase was, “You’re not worth the powder it would take to blow you up.”

Just as she had predicted, I had never made much of myself as society judges it. However, her golden sons had not gone to college and never really shone as brightly as she expected either.

When my mother died, I was in my 50s. I spiraled into a deep depression, partially fueled by the fact that I had never proved my worth to her. I lost my job and became homeless. My best friend at the time encouraged me to go to college to improve my earning potential but I laughed in her face. With my Asperger’s and learning disabilities, I’d surely fail. She told me I didn’t have to do well, I just had to pass. She reminded me that they would give me financial aid. Since I was unable to hold a job at the time, I did as she advised—just for the money.

Once in school, I became obsessed with maintaining passing grades so I wouldn’t lose my financial aid. I arrived in the library as soon as it opened and stayed til it closed FIVE days a week, studying. My reasoning was that if I kept my grades as high as possible, when I inevitably failed my exams or papers, I would have a margin of error so I would still pass.

That first semester, I passed—with a 4.0 GPA! Then I began to be absolutely driven to maintain it—to prove to my mother and myself that I was not stupid. It took me FOUR years to graduate with my Associate’s degree because I took the minimum number of credits per semester so as not to become overwhelmed, plus I took one semester off to care for my brother and nephews after he had a stroke.

When I walked at my graduation, I was one of only SEVEN students in my graduating class of 2500 to have maintained a perfect 4.0. The school had sent me a letter asking me to speak at commencement but because I was homeless, I never received it until it was too late to respond. My only regret was that my mother would never know, never be proud of me.

Because of my performance I received offers of scholarships from many schools including Cornell. I didn’t consider it possible to go to a four-year college even with a scholarship because I was still homeless and had zero money. But my friends and family encouraged me, saying that I deserved to get my bachelor’s. I told them that I would start a GoFundMe and if I got enough money to finance my trip to Oregon to go to Pacific University, I’d go.

My loved ones came through and I raised $1500. So I packed up and drove a rickety, leaky, run-down motor home from Southern California to Portland, Oregon, and arrived, still homeless, to begin my journey to my bachelor’s degree.

Three and a half years later at age 59, I walked at my commencement as a Magna Cum Laude student. Again, I wished my mother could have been there.

Neither of my brothers ever went to college. They did OK without it though. However, they are both blown away that their “dumb little sister” did so well in college. My “embarrassingly low” IQ, by the way, is 145. My mother and brothers scored higher but there are plenty of valedictorians with scores much closer to average!

Honestly, IQ points are not an issue for someone who is dedicated and takes advantage of every possible help available. I spent endless hours in the math tutoring lab; I asked for a special testing environment because of my hearing and dyslexia; I sat at the front of every class, every day so I could read the instructor’s lips. I was not shy about asking questions and challenging every answer marked wrong that was actually right.

Anyway, I proved to my mother and myself that I am not stupid or useless. And I am worth AT LEAST the powder it would take to blow me up!

-Marcia Wilcox

You Cant Writeand Explain Algo and Code For QuickSort & Merge Sort?

I expect a software engineer candidate I’m interviewing to be able to code Quicksort and Mergesort if woken up in the middle of the night after a day of doing a triathlon. Not being able to do so is a serious gap in an engineer’s understanding of data structures and algorithms.

I don’t expect I’ll ever ask a candidate to do that on a whiteboard, exactly because I see it as a given. Something is wrong if I’m interviewing a candidate who may be unsure how to write down fifteen lines of code that implement Quicksort, just like something is wrong if I’m interviewing a candidate who’s fuzzy on for loops.

I’m familiar with the sentiment that says that real software engineers call library functions when they need to sort, so they don’t need to know how Quicksort works. I believe this sentiment is deeply misguided.

If you can’t implement a simple Quicksort algorithm you are unlikely to be a successful software engineer in the companies I tend to work at, and that’s not because I expect you’ll be asked to implement Quicksort by next Tue afternoon.

 It’s because Quicksort and Mergesort are two of the simplest, most fundamental algorithms which are part of an engineer’s basic knowledge. The core idea of those algorithms can be described in a sentence. If you can’t convert that sentence to code, you’re not ready to be an engineer in my company.

-Alon Amit

Invest time upon yourself

     Invest time upon yourself - Always invest a lot of time on your health, it’s important. Don’t ever feel guilty about spending time in grooming yourself, dressing up and carrying yourself well, it only makes you feel confident.

 -Saranya Ravichandran

Highest Form of Freedom

My grandmother, who is now 96, marched out of Auschwitz in broad daylight after taking off her striped uniform and changing into normal clothes.

A Polish friend who worked in the camp as a secretary and wasn’t corrupted by the racist propaganda had risked her own life to bring her the outfit.

Out she walked, past guards with rifles, attack dogs, and hatred so intense it would make your skin crawl with fear.

Her parents, and almost all living relatives, weren’t as fortunate.

The rest of the war, she spent in hiding.

“At that time,” she explained to me during a recent visit, “we couldn’t set goals, let alone pursue them. We were deprived of our agency, of freedom.”

That’s why she always encouraged me to go as far as possible in life.

Because the highest form of freedom— the ability to actualize your dreams, to create a life of meaning, purpose, and wellbeing—is not something to be taken lightly.

Whatever you choose to do with yours, never forget that it’s a gift of the greatest magnitude.

-Ben Wise

Overall, be independent

Overall, be independent - Be responsible of your own choices, whether they’re right or wrong. Take advice, consult people but make your own choices! 

  -Saranya Ravichandran

Hero Worship

The most interesting thing is that the followers of B R Ambedkar themselves don’t follow the sane advice given by Babasaheb and worship him not only as a hero, but almost like God.

I have seen many Ambedkarites who can’t hear a single word against their hero and treat each word spoken or written by Him as the Gospel Truth and any one criticizing him as devil or anti-national.

In many ways, there is nothing new in such hero worship.

Gautama Buddha preached people not to believe in God and seek to reach a state of nirvana, following the path of the Buddha by becoming Enlightened through your own effort. However, today Buddha is worshiped as God by Buddhist and He had been even declared as an Avatar of Lord Vishnu by Hindus.

Most people can’t avoid hero worshiping or idol worshiping because that is the easiest thing to do in life. All you have to do is to pray your hero/idol regularly and hope that all your problems shall be take care by them.

Hero worshiping can’t be avoided unless the people are willing to take the responsibility of their lives.

It is a hard reality that most people don’t want to take responsibility of their own life. They expect their parents to take care of them when they are young. However, when they grow older, they want their spouse, their company, their nation to take care of them. When they grow older, they want their children to take care of them.

Since all worldly people never meet to their expectation, they pose their faith in God for taking care of them.

When one God is not enough, they make some people (living or dead) as their God and then they hope that their followers shall take take care of them.

In this process, they become slave to the leaders who use them as fodder to fulfill their own aspirations to become the next God for the next generation.

And then they cry that their heroes have become dictators, without blaming themselves who have empowered them so by surrendering of all their powers, responsibilities.

-Awdhesh Singh