Month: November 2022

Posted on

Personality Development- Need Of The Hour

Oh! What a personality, I am sure you must have heard this n number of times from people around you or you must have said it yourself many a times. But what exactly does personality means? It’s a collection of traits, behaviors and attitudes that define a person. The word personality comes from the Latin word ‘persona’ which refers to a theatrical mask worn by performers for different roles. But today it means much more than that, attributes that can make a person more especial and unique.

In today’s competitive world, educational qualification is not enough if you want to leave a mark on people’s mind. Therefore, developing personality which is powerful and lead you to the success path is need of the hour.

There are no two individual that are same, they may look the same or have similar experiences but their environment, temperament and character makes them unique. There are different aspects that can develop one’s personality be it social, emotional, physical, spiritual, moral or mental. These various aspects provide us a different view into the process by which an individual’s personality is developed.

The first and the foremost criteria to develop personality is self-awareness. Only when you know who you are and what your capabilities are, you can work on it. According to psychological theory of self-awareness, we are not the sum of our emotions, reactions, and hormones, though these elements have a lot of influence over us. Rather, we are the level of consciousness that observes those things. Being self aware help us know more clearly about our own strengths and weaknesses, our values, our trigger points, our motivational level and our habits. Knowing about all these things helps you to stay positive, encourages growth mindset, boosts self confidences that leads to higher self belief and one can be higher at their emotional quotient.

Strategies to improve Self-Awareness

  • Meditation
  • Selective disclosure so that nothing can go against you
  • Taking feedback from people around you that can help in strengthening your core strengths
  • Journaling, a way of talking to your inner self

Ones a person is self aware and discovered the hidden aspects of themselves then comes working on making your personality distinguishable. Most of the time it’s our inner self that we need to work upon. Self-motivation is the key in developing ones personality.

How To Make Your Personality Vibrant- Tell Yourself

  • You are Unique: As I said earlier no two persons can be same. Do not compare yourself with others. When you compare you lower your self esteem and doesn’t allow yourself to blossom. The creator has created each one of us with a touch of uniqueness and originality. Then why we human waste our time and energy in comparing ourself with others. Accept the way you are.
  • Be Zealous: There will be a situation in life that will not be in our control. There will be times when your expectations will not be met. But despite all the adversities in life. one must never give up their enthusiasm.
  • Be a communicator: Effective communication is the key to success especially in today’s time. Words have a power to make or break relationships. A skillful communicator can win over people and adverse situations. Try to bring clarity in your communication.
  • Stay calm and composed: When a person stays calm and composed, it brings clarity and you can take better decisions. Being decisive is one of the top most quality of any successful person be it in personal or professional live.
  • Learn to let go things:  Letting go is empowering. In doing so, you demonstrate to yourself that you are competent, can make positive decisions, and have your own best interests at heart. Your Personal Productivity Will Skyrocket.
  • Be spontaneous: A person who is impulsive can ever take good decisions and that can lead to disaster. There try to be focused in the present moments as spontaneity is the key to success.
  • Embrace imperfection: People and situation do not always fit into your definition of perfection. Often that makes a person agitated, angry and frustrated, eventually diminishing the strength of their personality. So, learn to find peace amidst the world’s flaws even as you strive to make a change.
  • Stay Positive: Positive people not only happy but they spread happiness too. Tune into this part of yourself again and again with the help of meditation. When you develop a positive attitude, you will start feeling better about yourself. You will treat yourself with more respect and love, and this in turn will boost your confidence levels and inner strength. You will take on new challenges and come out of your self-limiting beliefs
  • Be Approachable: We all like people with whom we can easily get connected and with or whom we can easily talk to. One needs to be warm and friendly and be ready to share and help. Remember when your are helping other, indirectly you are helping yourself, and good deeds always pay off.
  • Develop your own style in work: Each one of us have a certain style in dressing as well the way we carry our tasks. Doing things with style adds zing to your personality and if people can relate to your style it’s like icing on a cake. Remember the secret of doing things with style lies in working with passion and a relaxed mind. So while working on something try not to get distracted.
  • Be assertive: Always speak your mind without hurting other person’s feelings. Don’t give into pressure and face every challenge confidently. Either you will overcome adversity of learn something valuable.

Work on all these factors as strong and attractive personality helps you gain recognition and acceptance from the society as well as people around. Will write about most important personality traits that will bring success in your life in my next post, so stay tuned…………

Posted on

Mind-Body Approach To Manage Chronic Pain #MentalHealth #CauseAChatter

Recently I have come across people who are suffering from chronic pain from decade and it is quite heartening to listen to their stories. And that’s when I have decided to understand what chronic pain is and how one can deal with it. And to my surprise the brain and central nervous system play a much more significant role in chronic pain than we once thought.

Let’s first understand what chronic pain is all about?

Pain that lasts beyond 6 months and negatively affects person’s well-being is what chronic pain is all about. So basically the pain that continuous when it should not be and leads to other health conditions like anxiety and depression, resulting in a low health-related quality of life.

I believe most of us will or would have been faced pain in our lives, be it physical or emotional, caused by illness or an unhappy moments. So what you would have done? Many of us must have avoided it which is good as when you experience pain your brain signals you to stop doing whatever is causing the pain, preventing further harm to your body. But remember pain is not meant to last for long but if it does it could be physically and emotionally stressful. Chronic pain changes the levels of stress hormones and neurochemicals within your brain and nervous system that can lead to change in mood, thinking and behavior.

Let’s talk about the impact of Chronic pain in people’s daily life.

People who are suffering from chronic pain are increasing at super sonic speed and so does the number of opioid prescriptions, surgeries, and the doctor’s visit. Economic cost of chronic pain is skyrocketing and the impact on the individual is just as severe. The study shows that, on an average, people suffering from chronic pain earn 37% less than the someone not and are more prone to severe mental health conditions. Chronic pain can disrupts people’s daily life to a great extent. It can affect their ability to function at home and work and that impact people around them in a large way. Participation in social activities and hobbies could be interrupted which could lead to decreased self esteem. There are lot of other problems like fatigue, sleep disruption, lack of focus, loss of appetite and mood fluctuations. All these negative changes in the lifestyle can lead to increase in pain and low confidence and all this can result in depression and anxiety.

What can be done?

There are many therapies that are available, but none of them work in isolation. There is always a combination of two or more therapies that can be adopted to achieve better results and can be more effective.

Talk Therapy: Talk therapy is basically psychological counselling, where you pour your emotions out and will be helped without having the fear of being judged.

Mindfulness: This helps you to calm down, in which ever way works for you. It could be music, smell, art etc.

Cognitive behavioral Therapy: Helps you in facing the fear instead of avoiding it and teaches you to cope up with the pain you are going through. CBT treatment usually involves efforts to change thinking and behavioral patterns. 

Occupational Therapy: This therapy teaches you how to do everyday task differently to reduce the pain which has indirect impact on your pain.

Physical Therapy: Physical therapy involves exercises that stretch and strengthen your body, which can help reduce your pain. Yoga is one of the best form of exercise which works wonderfully well in this scenario.

Medication: Depression affects your brain, so drugs that work in your brain may prove beneficial. Common antidepressants may help ease your symptoms.

Guided Meditation: Meditation is a relaxing techniques  that helps in achieving mental, emotional and physical healing and stress relief.

Touch Therapy: Touch therapy like Reiki uses touch to change energy fields in your body.

How to make sure these therapies really work?

In parallel to medications and therapies, it is highly imperative to make lifestyle changes. Things to avoid and adopt.

  • Avoid alcohol
  • Avoid smoking
  • Avoid unnecessary stress
  • Adopt healthy diet
  • Adopt regular exercising
  • Adopt support group to learn from other people with similar conditions
  • Adopt time management skills
  • Adopt good habits, like positive thinking and sleeping on time.

Lets discuss step by step strategy to come out of endless loop of chronic pain.

Step 1. Identify the clues that your body gives when you are in pain. For example sweaty palms, neck and shoulders tighten etc.

Step 2. Identify your trigger points and try to walk away from that. For example if you don’t like someone try to avoid their company. This step will give you time to move to your next step.

Step 3. Indulge in relaxing therapy that is mind body techniques like deep breathing, splashing cold water on your face or drinking water or do a guided meditation.

Step 4. Once your body and mind calms down identify your feelings and needs. What are you longing for. Is it love, support, compassion from others or it could be as simple as food or sleep.

Step 5. Now this is a crucial step as now it’s a time to take action. If you know what you need, satisfy them and if you know what you want to feel, fulfill those feelings. But do all these in writing so that you can keep yourself accountable.

These steps might work but as they are just steps and not rules you are free to make changes that suits you.

There are many people who are suffering from these chronic pains and not even aware about it. So as a healthy community we need to help each other in understanding this better and empathizing with the sufferers.

This Post is a part of Blogchatter’s #CauseAChatter Program.

This blog post is part of the blog challenge ‘Blogaberry Dazzle’ hosted by Cindy D’Silva and Noor Anand Chawla.

%d bloggers like this: