Lifes priorities

What Baggage are YOU Carrying around?

When you hear the word baggage, what comes to mind? “Luggage,” hand baggage” …” and maybe “emotional baggage” might be jumping up in your mind.

Emotional baggage? What feelings does the word bring up for you - For many people it’s a feeling of being burdened. Why is that? Because anything we carry with us has to be monitored, carried, maintained, and stored.

In this great journey of life, we are all carrying some physical baggage and are storing it in our homes. Do a mental scan of your physical baggage, your worldly possessions… in your lockers, storage cabinets, etc. As you picture it in your mind, does it feel like it’s serving you, or draining you?

What baggage do you want to carry around in life? Do you want to be that overburdened traveler unable to carry our own , or the free-spirited traveler with a simple suitcase or backpack and a smile?

Take some time to free yourself from some of that baggage. As the late George Carlin famously said,
“A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You can see that when you're taking off in an airplane. You look down, you see everybody's got a little pile of stuff. All the little piles of stuff. And when you leave your house, you gotta lock it up.

Wouldn't want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. They always take the good stuff. They never bother with that cr*p you're saving. All they want is the shiny stuff. That's what your house is, a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get...more stuff!”

Hmm….now, how does your mind look…are you carrying a big baggage or have you freed it from the big ones…on yourself or on others?
Emotional baggage is a word that speaks of roadblocks that never fail to appear and impede our own progress toward achieving personal happiness, even when we try our darnedest to avoid them.

Like ghosts, this baggage relentlessly rises from the past, no matter how hard we try to outrun it.

Often this tends to affect our judgment on things, people. We seem to wear some kind of coloured glasses, which may make us look only from a certain point of view and might often tend to make us miss the other side.

And we'll carry it with us until we either consciously confront it and successfully resolve it - or we die. So throw away the past – constantly by searching for the truth, self introspection…it helps us to see the bigger picture and may often given us a much different point of view.

Of course you feel much lighter and help you to think better…

Thought for the day B/f Joseph
“Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment.” - Dale Carnegie

Often fatigue at the end of a work day cannot be attributed simply to the hard work we've done. Our own negative reactions to the stressful, daily grind drain our energy and stifle our potential for success. Here are a few tips on how to relieve some personal frustrations so as to increase productivity without resentment:
- Fill your mind with thoughts of peace, courage, health and hope
- Count your blessings instead of your troubles
- Cooperate with that which is inevitable

Lessons of the Square Watermelon B/f
Japanese grocery stores had a problem. They are much smaller than their US counterparts and therefore don't have room to waste. Watermelons, big and round, wasted a lot of space.

Most people would simply tell the grocery stores that watermelons grow round and there is nothing that can be done about it.

But some Japanese farmers took a different approach. If the supermarkets wanted a square watermelon, they asked themselves, "How can we provide one?" It wasn't long before they invented the square watermelon.

The solution to the problem of round watermelons wasn't nearly as difficult to solve for those who didn't assume the problem was impossible to begin with and simply asked how it could be done. It turns out that all you need to do is place them into a square box when they are growing and the watermelon will take on the shape of the box.

This made the grocery stores happy and had the added benefit that it was much easier and cost effective to ship the watermelons. Consumers also loved them because they took less space in their refrigerators which are much smaller than those in the US meaning that the growers could charge a premium price for them.

What does this have do with anything besides square watermelons? There are a few lessons that can you can take away from this story which help you in all parts of your life. Here are a few of them:

Don't Assume: The major problem was that most people had always seen round watermelons so they automatically assumed that square watermelons were impossible before even thinking about the question.

Things that you have been doing a certain way your entire life have taken on the aura of the round watermelon and you likely don't even take the time to consider if there is another way to do it. Breaking yourself from assuming this way can greatly improve your overall life as you are constantly looking for new and better ways to do things. This is one of the most difficult things to do because people make assumptions without realizing it. They seem perfectly logical on the surface, so you have to constantly make an effort to question them.

Question habits: The best way to tackle these assumptions is to question your habits. If you can make an effort to question the way you do things on a consistent basis, you will find that you can continually improve the way that you live your life. Forming habits when they have been well thought out is usually a positive thing, but most of us have adopted our habits from various people and places without even thinking about them. It's a never ending process, but by doing this, you can consistently strive toward making all aspects of your life more enjoyable instead of defaulting to what you have now.

Be creative: When faced with a problem, be creative in looking for a solution. This often requires thinking outside the box. Most people who viewed this question likely thought they were being asked how they could genetically alter water melons to grow square which would be a much more difficult process to accomplish. By looking at the question from an alternative perspective, however, the solution was quite simple. Being creative and looking at things in different ways in all portions of your live will help you find solutions to many problems where others can't see them. It's a learned art and builds upon itself.

Look for a better way: The square watermelon question was simply seeking a better and more convenient way to do something. The stores had flagged a problem they were having and asked if a solution was possible. It's impossible to find a better way if you are never asking the question in the first place. Get into the habit of asking yourself, "Is there a better way I could be doing this?" and you will find there often is.

Impossibilities often aren't: If you begin with the notion that something is impossible, then it obviously will be for you. If, on the other hand, you decide to see if something is possible or not, you will find out through trial and error.

Funtoon..B/f Sam / Srikanth

Don't Stay Away from Home too long...

A motor bike parked in Kerala....(Owner is in the Gulf )....