statement by senator fraser anning on 15th march 2019 in response to the mosque shootings
It’s interesting how the senator starts with condemning the shooter for his actions and how such an event cannot be justified but it’s difficult to understand if he really does believe that at heart, why does he end his statement quoting a bible verse and saying “those who follow a violent religion that calls on them to murder us, cannot be too surprised when someone takes them at their word and responds in kind” clearly implying a justification for the shooting to have taken place further saying “…does not make [the victims] blameless.”
First and foremost, if there’s anyone who is believing in “cliched nonsense”, it is not the activists this ignorant senator addresses but the very senator himself for the beliefs that he portrays and seems to so proudly confide in. It can be commonly agreed upon, that the greatest fuel to the fire of Islamophobia are the words of such leaders. As long as leaders like these are still allowed to hold office, chances of peace will remain low for these people are not after constructive upliftment of the society but votes and holding office.
It’s disheartening how when leaders actually try to assess problems with good intentions and constructive methods, little to no coverage is given and somehow nor are they people interested. But when radical right wing, xenophobic and anti-immigrant ideas are put forward, the attention of majority of that society is captured. Perhaps that may be the reason the senator is shifting blame to so called Islamic terrorism elsewhere in the world and linking it to immigration.
“Muslims are killing people in the name of their faith on an industrial scale.” What characterizes the so-called Muslim terrorist groups as true Islam? Just their name? So does that mean I should base my ideologies about Christianity by the acts of the KKK and about Hinduism from the activities of Saffron Terror?
How hard is it to look into true Islam and people that actually represent the religion of peace accurately and not at politically motivated militants who have no clear knowledge of and/or choose to ignore the true essence of the religion?
“Whoever kills a soul it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one – it is as if he had saved mankind entirely.” [Quran 5:32]
One may wish to argue upon that Islam permits killing on the exception of others not believing in Islamic principles but again that too, is a senseless argument for it is mentioned in the Quran in 2:256- “There shall be no compulsion in religion.”
A funeral procession once passed in front of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and he stood up out of respect. When he was told the person in the coffin was Jewish and not Muslim, he said: “Was it not a living (soul)?”[Hadith Bukhari: 2:399]
I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit, suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion’ ~Muhammad Ali
Interesting quote, I must say. Used by many teachers, parents, and counselors who persuade you to start studying harder and score well.
However, the persuasion done is to a great extent- flawed. Teachers and parents will bombard you with statements that make you feel bad and keep nagging to you to study. But get this, you’re telling the academic low achiever why he should study when he clearly does try, but you don’t tell him what strategies he should adopt in order to achieve your expectations of improvement from him (how to study).
Personally, in my life, I was a mediocre before and I faced the same persuasion on why I should be studying, but the thing is, I know I should be studying, but I don’t as much as you expect cause I don’t understand how to effectively learn. When the persuasion was getting annoying, I spent a year of my life experimenting new ways and saw drastic improvement.
Before getting into the strategies, you must adopt and accept a few things with full determination and willpower.
1. Get out of your comfort zone!
You are a king, and the comfort zone is an empire, Just like how a king keeps expanding his empire, you must keep expanding your comfort zone. How? By simply getting out of it everytime you’re in it to try something new and when you get used to it, that becomes your new comfort zone, so you step out again and the process just keeps repeating and your empire keeps expanding. Ultimately, you must never stop conquering. Never.
2. Take up the task of improving upon yourself.
Push yourself, because no one else is going to do it for you.
Adopt the strategies yourself, look for proper time utilization yourself and follow your timetable with a true intention and willpower. Don’t let anyone remind you of what you have to do.
Exceptions- If you need help with concept clarity you should and must approach a teacher regarding the same. If you feel shy, shoot up youtube and look for an explanation there, if you don’t find any. Then you’ve got no choice but to approach a teacher, and trust me, they won’t mind you asking doubts. I’ve asked my teachers to explain long concepts again and they don’t deny. They do explain it.
3. Ask them “how?”
Now we all know that getting yelled at for not studying and/or scoring low is humiliating, then you get the usual “these years are your studying years”, “study hard now and enjoy later” lectures. If they really hurt you, just shoot back a question asking how should you study to improve. It’ll make you feel better for sure and that’s a logical question and no one can tell you that you’re back-answering them. And on the brighter side, they may actually know some wonderful ways and answer you with a helping attitude!
That’s basically it for the initial mindset you need, moving on to the “how-to”s.
1. Time management
Knowing how you should balance your day and all your work is vital in the process of improvement, working hard isn’t always the best thing to do. You must work smart. For that, you need to know how to properly spend your time.
Do not keep study sessions for more than 2 hours in a stretch, if you are an academically low scorer and don’t already have fixed hours, don’t study for more than 1.5 hours in a stretch in initial days of studying, later, develop your hours and sessions. Keep 10-30minutes breaks between each session of study (depending on how long it was).
Make sure in a whole day during exams you have all your hours defined, basically, don’t just write the lesson names under the date you have to study them in, write the time frame under which you will study them as well, choose multiple timeframes if they are large or difficult. eg: “6:30 to 8 AM- *insert lesson name* …. and so on”
An example of a section from one of my days-
2, Subject wise strategies
English and languages- Read the textbook, answer its questions, go online and look up interpretations and more questions, Value Based Questions etc. Practise comprehensions and writing skills, use quotes, idioms and popular phrases in your writing to have a unique style. Don’t exceed the word limits.
Maths- Practice; start with understanding and listing down all formulas, then start with the textbook exercises, once you’re done with them, use a guide or go online for more important questions. For geometry, make sure you know to derive theorems. Most importantly, pay attention in class and ask doubts if you don’t understand something. Go online for explanations and you should be good.
Science and Social Studies- Read through the textbook and write down notes of important points, maintain a separate register to write notes. Go online for important questions and try to understand the concepts, not memorize them. If maintaining a register for notes is boring and difficult, consider writing the important points on A4 sheets like a mind map along with drawings and colors to make learning fun!
3. Stay focused and know what you’re doing!
You should know what you are studying for and you should know what your goals are. Always have set targets that you need to achieve and go forth and improve yourself! Everytime you achieve on target, make another and run after it! Keep doing this to a point where you feel incomplete without having goals.
Keep all distractions during study hours away, turn off your phone and keep it in another room and any other mode of distraction must be kept away as well.
Make sure the environment you study in is clean, pleasant and favorable. Personally, I have my own little storeroom with a huge table where I do all my work at, including writing this post right now. A magnet board is available to me as well to stick my portions, study plans etc.
Keep yourself motivated! There are many ways in which you can do this. Don’t give up! Stick motivational quotes or phrases in your room, I have a self-designed home screen on my phone and my background has motivational phrases in a small font like “you can do it”, “don’t give up”.
Oh and my favorite one-
You run the day or the day runs you.
Ponder…
4. Keep an open and cool mind; don’t stress
Studying hard and smart doesn’t mean to keep studying the whole day, do have some time to calm yourself and go outside for fresh air and nice views. Really helps.
Stress will destroy all your progress and make you forget all that you have learned.
That’s enough for the basics of what you should be doing,
Believe you can! Don’t give up!
Now that you’ve developed a mindset of what you have to do, just don’t let it go! Ask your teachers and parents to keep you motivated and keep supporting your struggle to improvement! Don’t let any criticism get to you (analyze it first whether it makes sense and ignore or consider depending on its relevance).
Don’t limit your strategies to this blog, you might be able to come up with your own strategies and discuss with other high achievers on what they do.
Relation with neuroscience, how your brain works?
Neurons that fire together wire together!
Every experience, thought, feeling, and physical sensation triggers thousands of neurons, which form a neural network. When you repeat an experience over and over, the brain learns to trigger the same neurons each time.
It can be beneficial to have neurons wired together. The neural network helps us learn, store, and recall information in an effective way. For example, when you’re getting to know an acquaintance, the neural network helps you to remember the person’s name through many subtle triggers.
When a student has a poor classroom experience on a regular basis—perhaps they’re bored by the curriculum, or a teacher shames them repeatedly in class—the student begins to think of academics as something negative.
Over time, the negativity becomes embedded in the student’s neural networks, and they learn to respond to school on the basis of that negativity since their brain is wired to do so.
We must recognize that children are born wanting to learn, and for many years they love learning. Their learning in those early years is fueled by curiosity and joy. They’re eager to discover everything they can about their world, and they’re not afraid of making mistakes—that’s how they grow!
Teachers must adopt methods of teaching which are fun, relevant and practical. Teaching students in a simple, persuasive and forceful manner is just further going to strengthen such a neural connection of negativity.
When students make mistakes, don’t laugh at them, and to teachers- please don’t humiliate them, explain to them where they went wrong and what they need to do to improve. Being honest, in the student community, being publicly humiliated and pinpointed with insults devoid of solutions instills hate for that teacher or whoever it was.
Different way of thinking about why you’re studying
A lot of people (including myself) find the education system flawed and will refuse to study cause they find it impractical.
However, you must understand, not everyone can be like Bill Gates or any of the-ish, who can drop out and do well. Even those people didn’t just drop out cause they hated school, they had their own big plans and own ideas of innovation which most of us critics don’t.
Hence you can just convince yourself to go along the system and keep studying for marks, but keep working on side hobbies and other stuff that you can use in your portfolio! Like how I write posts for my blog, alongside studying. Balance all your interests.
Balancing Hobbies with study routine
This is something important for a good and developed portfolio, you must be doing other productive works alongside your study life. Colleges won’t accept you if you just have a 98% score but no other merits. Often, people who scored less than others have been selected in good colleges because of a volatile portfolio.
For this you must have good time management and know your priorities, don’t give everything its equal time, but give everything its required time. An example is how I wrote my blog during exams as well, I gave writing a very small proportion of time compared to studying but that’s cause that’s what’s required for it.
Moreover, I don’t see student-life as something only for studying. Explore and live to the fullest! If you have to, let your scores drop from 95 to 90, or 90 to 85 if you need to work hard on other hobbies, but prioritize trying a suitable balance to develop both things equally, I wouldn’t recommend letting a score-drop happen but if your side interests are that important and necessary. Go for it.
Again, don’t restrict yourself to these points. Go out, discuss and discover more methods and strategies! To improvement, there are no boundaries!
Do you have a success story that you want to share? How have you risen in your school life?
Background:
The declaration of the ‘year of giving’ in an imaginary kingdom; inspired by the declaration of 2017 as the ‘year of giving’ in the United Arab Emirates.
And in a distance, a child, sat woebegone. Many a people passed him, yet no one consoled. Though it was visible that the beauty of his attire was all gone.
In the quest of attaining happiness, peace, prosperity and delight- the paths are many and its boundaries are endless. The road does diverge in the middle, but at one point, somewhere, it does reconnect into one- the common goal.
(Google Provided)
How many of you souls out there, have tried more than one means of attaining peace and constantly tried various methods to discover more efficient ways?
With the increasing speeds of our mind, modern and industrial life- having a cool and calm mind has become an art of professionals and you now need a teacher to teach you how to keep calm.
But no, there are various ways you can keep calm and relax your self. One of them being, which is my main source of keeping calm, going out in the morning.
Praying the Fajr prayer (1/5 prayers Muslims pray daily) in the Masjid and having the contempt spiritual happiness and hearing the healing recitations of the Quranic verses and then cycling or walking around the area until sunrise and a little later really makes my day.
(My Click)
Moreover, having a hobby of photography just adds even more fun and enticement into the whole scheme! The photos that can be taken at such a time are marvellous and there are absolutely no limits to what you can take. All you need is a good camera, not a DSLR, a good phone camera is enough! (I use a phone..)
It’s not the quality of images that is the main highlight of me mentioning this but the fact that the views are so picture-worthy and tranquil that it does really calm a person down! Living in a place in front of a corniche, The morning hours invite a lot of chirping birds, cool and calm breezes, other happy faces walking, jogging or doing their morning exercises and the best? The tall buildings reflect upon the water completely and provide such an amazing view!
Don’t you think such surroundings would definitely calm you down?
(My Clicks)
This is how I like to start my day, and once I get home, I’ll be doing something else for a while before I start studying (because I absolutely hate studying immediately after finishing one happy task) like writing this post right now!
What method do you guys use to attain peace and happiness? share your ways in the comments below and let the author and many others benefit from it!
Understanding and Supporting victims, and recovery | How to?
The case of attention seeking | Ignore or to deal with?
Real life teenage recoveries and inference (of the friends of the writer)
What is depression?
Depression is a common and serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you think and how you act. Depression causes feelings of sadness and/or a loss of interest in activities once enjoyed etc. It can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems.
Relevant Statistics
Worldwide, over 300 million people suffer from depression. Being a cultivator of suicidal thoughts, over 800,000 people every year are subject to death by suicide, which is also the second leading cause of death in 15-29-year-olds.
Furthermore, it is estimated that less than 10% of depressed people actually receive effective treatment and one of three reasons being social stigma and lack of seriousness for mental disorders.
Symptoms and Diagnosis
Symptoms of depression are many, and can be seen in mixes that aren’t uniform.
Feeling sad or having a depressed mood
Loss of interest or pleasure in activities once enjoyed
Changes in appetite — weight loss or gain unrelated to dieting
Trouble sleeping or sleeping too much
Loss of energy or increased fatigue
Increase in purposeless physical activity (e.g., hand-wringing or pacing) or slowed movements and speech (actions observable by others)
Feeling worthless or guilty
Difficulty thinking, concentrating or making decisions
Thoughts of death or suicide
[World Health Organization (WHO)]
[Simple WHO 1 Page Depression Handout]
Depression is not a sign of weakness, and can happen to anyone.
~ World Health Organization
Depression can only be diagnosed if symptoms remain for around two weeks or more, otherwise it is mere sadness, Lypophrenia, or any other temporary (compared to depression) mood related factor.
A person must not go around crying about being depressed just because sadness hits them for a day or two. However, they must take caution to prevent depression in the near future and undertake activities to uplift them and vent out to someone.
Apart from societal-factors or events that inflict damage that lead to depression, it can also be biological.
Understanding and Supporting victims, and recovery | How to?
Depression can trigger in teenagers due to many reasons or events, whether or not these are events that teenagers should/shouldn’t be exposed to, undeniably, it does happen anyways.
Elaborating on the ‘Trigger Event’ mentioned in the cycle above, can be ‘n’ number of other numerous cycles that depict trigger events, a simple one being on the left, and a complicated and elaborate addiction cycle being below, which mostly develops in prolonged periods of depression, anxiety etc. Apart from cycles of sadness due to normal triggers, there are cycles caused due to triggers of inability to cope with depression and feel better, increased irritation and frustration against oneself for being depressed, for being how they are, further diminishing their self-esteem and dignity.
Being depressed, you must realize that whatever you are facing is temporary, it might be a phase longer than others, or a phase shorter than others, but it remains temporary. Another thing about depression is that, it lies to you. It keeps feeding you ill-thoughts that are half-truths, or completely false and exaggerated. While in reality, out of 10 events, 1-2 might’ve gone wrong. If you’re depressed, your mind is going to taint all 10 of them as depressing. While it is difficult to rationally think while being depressed, it can be noticed that many times when you actually ask yourself to rationally reason why a certain event or thought is toxic (while being depressed), you will find that you are unable to answer it, and your depression will then trick you into being frustrated and voila, there’s another problem now. Frustration over you being frustrated over an existing problem- or what you think is a problem.
Furthermore, certain events and details of the past appear normal and easy to ignore while not being depressed, however, when depression hits, it is likely that those events and details will suddenly turn into cons and fuel for further ill-thoughts, self-hate etc.
To people who are depressed, it is highly recommended that you talk to someone about what’s going on, be it anyone- family, friends, acquaintance or even a person on an online support group or social platform. Talking to them does not mean that you necessarily need to do it to seek advice, it’s totally fine if you just want to talk to someone to get something off your chest, or to be supported, reassured, and receive care. Don’t silent yourself, don’t suppress your needs, it’s absolutely okay for you to voice the do’s and dont’s to deal with you during your phase. In fact, that way, misunderstandings and possibilities of hurt would diminish.
Apart from this, make an effort to try and help yourself, no matter how hard, don’t give up. It’s again totally understandable if you get intense phases where you think you’ve given up, and don’t want to continue. It’s fine, don’t stress too much over it, accept that you feel like giving up, tell someone you feel that way, but do not actually harm yourself in a severe way that does make you give up.
(Recommended searches: Cognitive behavioral therapy, methods for Neurogenesis, etc.)
To people who are approached by victims, do not give up on them, if you feel you aren’t informed or trained enough to deal with such people, divert them to someone who is (not necessarily professionals). If you do not understand how to give advice, it’s okay- don’t. Just support them and give hope, don’t do/say anything that makes them hate themselves or intensify their insecurities. People don’t always need advice. Extending support and assistance, just being there, showing them they matter and that they’ll be alright too does wonders. They might shut you out, or want to isolate themselves, it’s fine, don’t insult or call them weak for it, give them some space and time if they need it, but check on them. Try ensuring they don’t use that space and time for harm.
The case of attention seeking | Ignore or to deal with?
It is noticed that people pretend to be depressed or publicly show out their depression which results in actual depression cases not being taken seriously, and many serious cases being doubted as ‘dramatic’ and ‘attention-seeking’ because they are prolonged and hard to deal with.
Depressed people face problems with being cared for and actually having people they can call as companions or friends. Such a case leads them to want to scream for help, or enrage at the society for being insensitive. Some control their urge to do this, while some don’t; and hence turn to social media platforms to express their feelings.
If you do come across people who do this, your first line of action must be to approach them and ask if they’re okay, try making them open to you and help them. If they refuse to open up, comfort them but do not force. (You do not necessarily HAVE to do this, it’s understandable if you choose to ignore, especially if you have a major social status exposed to many people as it would be time consuming in that case to cover EVERYONE).
We do not stand in a position to openly judge someone as an attention-seeker, especially in cases of depression. Either ways, whether a person is an attention seeker or not, must not be the center of concern in dealing with such people anyways.
If you refuse to help someone on the thought that they’re faking their illness. Two things can happen.
1. If they were faking it, it wouldn’t affect much but still hurt them to a small extent.
2. If they weren’t faking it, it would cause serious damage and further intensify their depression.
In case you do decide to help them and ignore your thought of whether or not they’re faking it, it’s a win-win situation, no one gets hurt.
However, the final discretion of what kind of victims (those that approach you or those that post about their feelings) you want to focus on is in your hand, one person alone is not obliged to take care of every kind of person.
In any case, people who do fake it and genuinely seek attention using ‘depression’ to do so. Ya’ll are really adding on to existing social stigma and problems that ultimately negatively affect those who are actually depressed.
Real life teenage recoveries and inference (of the friends of the writer)
Note: If you happen to recognize any of the people below, do NOT enter any name in the comments or make any mention. All names are censored and will not be revealed in any case.
Statement in first person addressed to the blog writer from the subject:
So it all began 10-15 days before our board exams, I was finding it hard to revise all that I learnt because of small issues but those I could control. My depression triggered due to financial issues and parental fights, and problems in paying my board fees. My mom asked her friends for help and somehow they managed to pay for the entrance ticket so I could write the exam. So I honestly thought I wasnt going to write my exams which obviously made me sad, and on top of that my dad had this “I dont care” attitude, he kept on saying “its not a problem he can do 10th again, i cant pay, go find someone to pay for you”. this affected me badly, I couldnt write the exams properly but somehow i managed to score marks.
Later, I didn’t get admission in my school to continue, and apparently that was due to inability to pay admission fees. My mom went to the head of senior school and she told my mom that my grades weren’t up to mark so I didn’t get a seat, Later on i got into Commerce, but i couldn’t continue as my fees were due. and my parents kept shouting and hitting me like it was my fault, I told them that if they didn’t fight all the time I would’ve performed better, but they weren’t ready to listen. My dad has temper issues and he takes out that temper on me and my mom. and my mom supports my dad always so basically I had no support. Couldn’t talk to anyone, everywhere I go they ask me why I’m not in school and all.
I was very depressed at this point, I didn’t speak to anyone, whether it was my parents or friends. I had a few close friends like ‘A’ and ‘B’ who helped me calm myself down because I would start crying off thoughts. Once my parents went out shopping and I was at home, the electricity got cut, once again, bills weren’t paid.
I was going to slit my wrist. A friend of mine who I just started to talk to at that time, ‘C’, stopped me from doing so. I explained her everything. and she told me how i can distract myself from cutting. through her I met ‘D’. and she was and is still supportive, any issues I go to her. She sent me one of your articles (vigilant mind content) where it was written on how one can avoid self harm through many ways like music, drawing.
I generally didn’t believe I could change myself, from your articles, I became my normal self, like not happy/not sad kind. A few days later my bestfriend, ‘E’ went through depression, same reason, his parents didn’t support him. I used to go behind him even though he used to cut himself almost everyday. and I managed to change him. because I knew what he went through. after he told me that he wasn’t as depressed as he was and I was the reason he became more happier, it just filled me with joy. and I stopped cutting, because I realized that there was no use and i’m only putting myself down, now i’m just here to help people that need it. my parents found out I was cutting, and they became more caring towards me. and that’s how i ended up here, depression-free, all thanks to you (everyone that helped and supported) guys.
Once, cutting used to give me joy. I used to do it all the time because I felt worthless, almost everyone used to say the same thing “just give it time, it will get better”. Back then when I accomplished something I wasn’t happy, like I didn’t feel satisfied, I was being sad because I couldn’t show other emotions, Everyone used to call me emo and it just became my personality. and after things got better I stopped cutting through many ways like drawing on my arm, and mostly art related like painting because i love art, also picked up on how to cook, doing it as a hobby. In ‘E’s case, he was my classmate, so whenever I had time, I used to go speak to him and make him feel better, he felt unwanted and I made him feel like he was wanted. Everyday he came with new scars and gave up on himself. I kept pushing him to become a better person, which eventually worked, and now hes happy too. I kept motivating him by telling him to see the positive side of things, spent time with him in class, and did everything I could to aid his recovery.
Apart from the above featured recovery story, there are many others I’ve seen while helping people and hearing them out. If there’s something that’s really helped people, it’s others being there for them. Even if they weren’t able to always extend advice, their help and support has always been good fuel for the engine of recovery.
Small acts of love and kindness have changed people’s thoughts, small positive triggers have brought hope to people, and when this kept on going, the person eventually exited the fold of depression, or at least improved significantly, or was kept away from suicide.
Aiding people and being there for them does sometimes appear difficult, it might look like there is no progress, and that the person is not recovering, which gives us the thought of calling them out for weakness, stubbornness, or any other negative trait, which actually makes them feel even worse, and they start hating themselves for being in that position which is not something we need to do.
Take the example of a farmer, when he sows seeds, he has to water them everyday, for weeks he does not see any progress because the growth is beneath the soil, but is there progress? Yes there is. Just that he can’t see it for a period of time, after which he will see it, but only if he does not give up in the period of no ‘visible’ progress.
The same way, being there for someone and not giving up follows the same logic. Even victims themselves often might feel they aren’t improving- but in reality, they are.
Hope this helped, and gave in-depth insight on depression and provided hope for recovery for any victims out there reading this. Feel free to vent out anonymously or with identity in the comments and do share your or someone you knows’ recovery story as well!
I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit, suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion’ ~Muhammad Ali
Interesting quote, I must say. Used by many teachers, parents, and counselors who persuade you to start studying harder and score well.
However, the persuasion done is to a great extent- flawed. Teachers and parents will bombard you with statements that make you feel bad and keep nagging to you to study. But get this, you’re telling the academic low achiever why he should study when he clearly does try, but you don’t tell him what strategies he should adopt in order to achieve your expectations of improvement from him (how to study).
Personally, in my life, I was a mediocre before and I faced the same persuasion on why I should be studying, but the thing is, I know I should be studying, but I don’t as much as you expect cause I don’t understand how to effectively learn. When the persuasion was getting annoying, I spent a year of my life experimenting new ways and saw drastic improvement.
Before getting into the strategies, you must adopt and accept a few things with full determination and willpower.
1. Get out of your comfort zone!
You are a king, and the comfort zone is an empire, Just like how a king keeps expanding his empire, you must keep expanding your comfort zone. How? By simply getting out of it everytime you’re in it to try something new and when you get used to it, that becomes your new comfort zone, so you step out again and the process just keeps repeating and your empire keeps expanding. Ultimately, you must never stop conquering. Never.
2. Take up the task of improving upon yourself.
Push yourself, because no one else is going to do it for you.
Adopt the strategies yourself, look for proper time utilization yourself and follow your timetable with a true intention and willpower. Don’t let anyone remind you of what you have to do.
Exceptions- If you need help with concept clarity you should and must approach a teacher regarding the same. If you feel shy, shoot up youtube and look for an explanation there, if you don’t find any. Then you’ve got no choice but to approach a teacher, and trust me, they won’t mind you asking doubts. I’ve asked my teachers to explain long concepts again and they don’t deny. They do explain it.
3. Ask them “how?”
Now we all know that getting yelled at for not studying and/or scoring low is humiliating, then you get the usual “these years are your studying years”, “study hard now and enjoy later” lectures. If they really hurt you, just shoot back a question asking how should you study to improve. It’ll make you feel better for sure and that’s a logical question and no one can tell you that you’re back-answering them. And on the brighter side, they may actually know some wonderful ways and answer you with a helping attitude!
That’s basically it for the initial mindset you need, moving on to the “how-to”s.
1. Time management
Knowing how you should balance your day and all your work is vital in the process of improvement, working hard isn’t always the best thing to do. You must work smart. For that, you need to know how to properly spend your time.
Do not keep study sessions for more than 2 hours in a stretch, if you are an academically low scorer and don’t already have fixed hours, don’t study for more than 1.5 hours in a stretch in initial days of studying, later, develop your hours and sessions. Keep 10-30minutes breaks between each session of study (depending on how long it was).
Make sure in a whole day during exams you have all your hours defined, basically, don’t just write the lesson names under the date you have to study them in, write the time frame under which you will study them as well, choose multiple timeframes if they are large or difficult. eg: “6:30 to 8 AM- *insert lesson name* …. and so on”
An example of a section from one of my days-
2, Subject wise strategies
English and languages- Read the textbook, answer its questions, go online and look up interpretations and more questions, Value Based Questions etc. Practise comprehensions and writing skills, use quotes, idioms and popular phrases in your writing to have a unique style. Don’t exceed the word limits.
Maths- Practice; start with understanding and listing down all formulas, then start with the textbook exercises, once you’re done with them, use a guide or go online for more important questions. For geometry, make sure you know to derive theorems. Most importantly, pay attention in class and ask doubts if you don’t understand something. Go online for explanations and you should be good.
Science and Social Studies- Read through the textbook and write down notes of important points, maintain a separate register to write notes. Go online for important questions and try to understand the concepts, not memorize them. If maintaining a register for notes is boring and difficult, consider writing the important points on A4 sheets like a mind map along with drawings and colors to make learning fun!
3. Stay focused and know what you’re doing!
You should know what you are studying for and you should know what your goals are. Always have set targets that you need to achieve and go forth and improve yourself! Everytime you achieve on target, make another and run after it! Keep doing this to a point where you feel incomplete without having goals.
Keep all distractions during study hours away, turn off your phone and keep it in another room and any other mode of distraction must be kept away as well.
Make sure the environment you study in is clean, pleasant and favorable. Personally, I have my own little storeroom with a huge table where I do all my work at, including writing this post right now. A magnet board is available to me as well to stick my portions, study plans etc.
Keep yourself motivated! There are many ways in which you can do this. Don’t give up! Stick motivational quotes or phrases in your room, I have a self-designed home screen on my phone and my background has motivational phrases in a small font like “you can do it”, “don’t give up”.
Oh and my favorite one-
You run the day or the day runs you.
Ponder…
4. Keep an open and cool mind; don’t stress
Studying hard and smart doesn’t mean to keep studying the whole day, do have some time to calm yourself and go outside for fresh air and nice views. Really helps.
Stress will destroy all your progress and make you forget all that you have learned.
That’s enough for the basics of what you should be doing,
Believe you can! Don’t give up!
Now that you’ve developed a mindset of what you have to do, just don’t let it go! Ask your teachers and parents to keep you motivated and keep supporting your struggle to improvement! Don’t let any criticism get to you (analyze it first whether it makes sense and ignore or consider depending on its relevance).
Don’t limit your strategies to this blog, you might be able to come up with your own strategies and discuss with other high achievers on what they do.
Relation with neuroscience, how your brain works?
Neurons that fire together wire together!
Every experience, thought, feeling, and physical sensation triggers thousands of neurons, which form a neural network. When you repeat an experience over and over, the brain learns to trigger the same neurons each time.
It can be beneficial to have neurons wired together. The neural network helps us learn, store, and recall information in an effective way. For example, when you’re getting to know an acquaintance, the neural network helps you to remember the person’s name through many subtle triggers.
When a student has a poor classroom experience on a regular basis—perhaps they’re bored by the curriculum, or a teacher shames them repeatedly in class—the student begins to think of academics as something negative.
Over time, the negativity becomes embedded in the student’s neural networks, and they learn to respond to school on the basis of that negativity since their brain is wired to do so.
We must recognize that children are born wanting to learn, and for many years they love learning. Their learning in those early years is fueled by curiosity and joy. They’re eager to discover everything they can about their world, and they’re not afraid of making mistakes—that’s how they grow!
Teachers must adopt methods of teaching which are fun, relevant and practical. Teaching students in a simple, persuasive and forceful manner is just further going to strengthen such a neural connection of negativity.
When students make mistakes, don’t laugh at them, and to teachers- please don’t humiliate them, explain to them where they went wrong and what they need to do to improve. Being honest, in the student community, being publicly humiliated and pinpointed with insults devoid of solutions instills hate for that teacher or whoever it was.
Different way of thinking about why you’re studying
A lot of people (including myself) find the education system flawed and will refuse to study cause they find it impractical.
However, you must understand, not everyone can be like Bill Gates or any of the-ish, who can drop out and do well. Even those people didn’t just drop out cause they hated school, they had their own big plans and own ideas of innovation which most of us critics don’t.
Hence you can just convince yourself to go along the system and keep studying for marks, but keep working on side hobbies and other stuff that you can use in your portfolio! Like how I write posts for my blog, alongside studying. Balance all your interests.
Balancing Hobbies with study routine
This is something important for a good and developed portfolio, you must be doing other productive works alongside your study life. Colleges won’t accept you if you just have a 98% score but no other merits. Often, people who scored less than others have been selected in good colleges because of a volatile portfolio.
For this you must have good time management and know your priorities, don’t give everything its equal time, but give everything its required time. An example is how I wrote my blog during exams as well, I gave writing a very small proportion of time compared to studying but that’s cause that’s what’s required for it.
Moreover, I don’t see student-life as something only for studying. Explore and live to the fullest! If you have to, let your scores drop from 95 to 90, or 90 to 85 if you need to work hard on other hobbies, but prioritize trying a suitable balance to develop both things equally, I wouldn’t recommend letting a score-drop happen but if your side interests are that important and necessary. Go for it.
Again, don’t restrict yourself to these points. Go out, discuss and discover more methods and strategies! To improvement, there are no boundaries!
Do you have a success story that you want to share? How have you risen in your school life?
I had the chance of attending the prestigious Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations from the 15th of January to the 19th of January (or, 15-18 January in Eastern Standard Time). The conference was wonderfully sprinkled with numerous world leaders and powerful voices with a lot of lessons to offer, in life and in industry. The lessons to take away were many, even in fields where I did not think I would have interest, like, being a social sciences student, Artificial Intelligence was a field that I did not think I would touch even with a 10-foot barge pole but the panel discussion made it interesting anyways.
1. Death of Distance
A period that was known to be the death of distance (increasing online connectivitiy) was hastened by the pandemic which acted as a catalyst. While many people shifted from office spaces to working from home, on-site workers suffered.
The proportion of people that actually have desk jobs and need office spaces is small and the bigger issues are posed to on-site workers. The CEO and Managing Partner of McKinsey & Company, Kevin Sneader, calls the worry about office spaces luxurious and implies a redirection of our focus onto greater social causes.
The death of distance was best reflected in HPAIR itself. The presidents cited that this was their largest conference. Plus, without the hassle of transport costs, an easily accessible online event did call for greater diversity and reach.
Kevin Sneader
2. Large Corporations and The Environment
Green and Sustainable Economic Growth
When we think of the concept of ‘green growth’, what is the image that comes to your mind? Most likely, apart from an environmentally secure world, you might be imagining the perils of slower economic growth and costlier goods and services.
The panel discussion on ‘US-Asian Climate Change Multilateralism: Feasibility, Best Practices, and Long Term Visions’ by Raekwon Chung, Daniel Bodansky, Dr. Robert Stowe, and Skyler Wu threw light on exactly that mindset. The speakers stated that for a more healthy outlook, a mindset shift is needed.
Janice Lao, Raekwon Chung, Daniel Bodansky, Dr. Robert Stowe, and Skyler Wu.
Valuing Start-Up and Innovation
The vice-chairman of Roche Pharmaceutical and a member of the Board of Trustees at the World Economic Forum, André Hoffmann, comments on the hindrance of innovation because of the multilayered and complex structure of large companies. On that note, he looks upon startup ideas as the scope for innovation in those is larger and startups create a new system that is not as environmentally damaging as the ones by many large corporations. Speaking of Start-Ups …
3. Self-Belief, Growth-Mindset, and Realism.
These were the ingredients that Xiaoyin Qu (Founder of Run The World) added to season the question of her valued values. Run The World is the online platform that HPAIR was held on. Recently founded, Xiaoyin was asked three values she would want to talk about.
The Stanford dropout, and budding tech-savvy entrepreneur listed those three values which can also apply for any other budding entrepreneurs who are looking forward to putting their business ideas into start-ups!
Self-Belief: A risky path calls for you to believe in yourself so you don’t give up. You also need to learn to filter what opinions you take in from others and which ones you don’t so you can avoid getting negatively affected.
Growth-Mindset: You will encounter many challenges, failures, dead-ends, and moments where you need to have back-up plans. A fixed mindset would fail your not even started up start-up.
Realism: Don’t think about the glass being half empty, think about what’s in the glass and how you can add to it.
4. Risk Taking Framework: When To Take Risk?
According to Xiaoyin Qu, As long as the worst-case scenario of taking a risk is tolerable (as in, you won’t starve yourself or suffer long-term setbacks), and the best case scenario is a jackpot, go for it.
5. Networking
We come across a lot of content on the social media platforms and contacts we have but as an individual, there’s only so much we can find. HPAIR has been a platform that has brought like-minded people (of course, the like-mindedness is not in industry as much as it is in initiative, leadership, and the strive to self-improvement and making the world a better place) together to connect and be able to share their knowledge, expertise, and opportunities.
When Xiaoyin Qu was asked about how she managed to arrange the funds needed to kick start Run The World, she talked about how it was her network of people she knew and the professors she had connected with at Stanford that helped her get those Angel funds (early stage start up funding).
Knowing how much networking has helped me get to where I was before HPAIR, the conference and the people I’ve come across through it has expanded my access to diverse opportunities. Take the lesson. When you come across valuable people, form bonds that remain with you for a long time.
One among many one-on-one networking events\
Networks and connections aside, making new friends is also a valuable takeaway that shouldn’t be ignored! Admittedly, the sudden exposure to hundreds of delegates through tens of group chats was overwhelming but eventually, I was eased in.
6. Be part of the RIGHT networks
While commenting on the gender pay gap and salary negotiation, the CEO of Candor, Niya Dragova, reminds us that it isn’t solely the college you join that decides how your pay and knowledge turns out but whether you join the right networks, clubs, connections, and take adequate initiative.
7. Not everyone who is in your field is competition
A Vogue-published professional photographer, Julian Tse, also emphasizes further on the lines of networking and making friends that collaboration and knowledge-sharing will save you time, and give you beneficial exposure which otherwise would not happen if you always treated others as competition.
8. “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” ~ Winston Churchill, after World War 2, forming the United Nations.
The biggest lesson 2020 taught us was resilience and adaptation. Thinking on a bigger level, it makes us realise that the current system is structured in a manner that is not resilient.
Therefore, it is important that we not just take these lessons but also act on it and build a more sustainable and resilient future. What is more important than failures and disasters is the lessons we take from it and what we do tomorrow.
9. Feminism and Equality
Many speakers cited the existence of gender biases. Political and corporate systems still have male-dominated spaces, and women face questioning for entering the field of STEM.
Yet, any fight for equality will last forever. The circumstances change and things may get better but different communities will always be fighting for some level of equality and what is important that we remain standing strong, says Janice Lao, the ESG Director.
In the age of roaring Tik Tok, Twitter, and social media culture of convenient activism and reposting, it was also notable that no speaker at HPAIR represented any value, belief, idea, or strategy even remotely close to misandry. Their focus on the cause looked at realistic solutions and a sustainable way forward.
10. Fashion, Activism, Cultural Appreciation, and Cultural Appropriation
The inspiring talk by Bandana Tewari, a sustainable fashion warrior brought out the essence of clothing. She reminds us that clothes are more than just styles but are important in the way we define our identity. Corporations need to move beyond using cultural clothing as gimmicks and profitable fads and acknowledge the contexts behind them and truly appreciate them.
Further speaking on the subject, she threw light on gender fluidity and how magazines cover that. If they want to truly support that social cause, their cover pages should represent a person that has made that choice and give due credit to the struggles of their lives instead of picking cishetero males and giving them skirts.
Corporations need to have a more diverse and inclusive workforce in order to be able to gain insights from different cultures to be better equipped for intercultural interactions.
Recommended Watch: What Gandhi Can Teach Us About Slow Fashion.
11. Artificial Intelligence for Social Good
“Sometimes, 5% of the narrative occupies 95% of the oxygen in the room,” said Amit Pradhan, the Co-Founder of the Silicon Valley Blockchain Society.
Often, statements made in sci-fi Hollywood and paranoid people clouds our thinking about A.I. We are still very far from being taken over by A.I. and there are a plethora of other fields where A.I. is being and can be employed to serve social causes. Our focus should be redirected from a Hollywood interpretation of A.I. to a realistic one that supports and empowers society rather than frightens it.
12. Critical Thinking and Avoiding Giving In To Misleading Narratives
Wonderfully, that quote also resonates in contexts beyond A.I. If you think about it, the structure upon which stereotypes and many forms of discrimination is built is the same idea where a small narrative ends up being blown out of proportion. With greater awareness, inquisition, and critical thinking, questioning, and independent research about tricky situations and questions, I believe we can avoid falling to the trap of misleading yet popular narratives. A talk on data science and data quality also adds to this learning.
13. Happiness isn’t about not having failures but living with it.
Yang Lan, one of the Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women, along with the other speakers (Anla Cheng and Lesly Goh) at the Gender Equality and Philanthropy Fireside Discussion backed that concept and offered advice for you if you’re finding your passions, remain patient and gentle to yourself while also taking care of yourself with enough sleep, food, and drink.
14. Media, Digital Literacy, And Activism
Debbie Stothard (Director of ALTSEAN) and Thiago P B Bessimo (Institutional Director, Observa China)’s talk on Progressivism and Activism in Asia shared the growth of activism and the need to identify false news in the current era. If you are unable to find a community in the physical space around you, you can always fall back on taking your cause to the online community. The same message was reinforced in the session “Navigating A More Polarized World: Division and Faction in International Politics” led by the Senior Editor of the South China Morning Post, Chow Chung. In the age of information, what excuse do you have for not voicing your thoughts when you’re in a position to do so?
15. When you participate in politics, hold on to your values, vision, and causes.
The former prime minister of Thailand, the Right Honourable Abhisit Vejjajiva also highlighted, apart from the message in the title, that it is possible to maintain your honesty and integrity while surviving in politics.
Being passionate about politics and knowing the levels of risks and corruption in Indian politics, I’ve always considered taking part but the fear of what might happen to me because of the atmosphere still floats around. Listening to the previous affirmation by him was truly comforting and is a call for all of us passionate young activists.
16. Embrace Change
Adam Cheyer, founder of Siri and Change.org tells us that life is like a book. Your life is divided into chapters and each chapters represents a different mini-journey in your life. Oftentimes, it may even represent a totally different you. Change is inevitable. Embrace the different parts of life and continue navigating through your rough and beautiful transitions.
17. There is no pride in selectivity
Being selected for a conference, actually participating in the conference, and taking great learnings away from the conference can be explained through the metaphor of a journey. You sit in your car, you start driving it, and you reach your destination.
A delegate from Philippines, Camille, shared her experience states two important lessons from events like HPAIR, where there is a selection process to participate: the journey and the destination is what matters most. Just sitting in your car isn’t that big of a deal. Take pride in what you take away from the conference and not mere selection.
We reached this realisation when one of the presidents of HPAIR, Zeel Patel, responded to the many queries about the acceptance rates with “there is no pride in selectivity.”
18. Your success is a culmination of not just your hard work but also privilege
Camille also mentioned that her selection was not only because she worked hard and developed a profile worthy of it but also a disparity between her social and economic standing compared to many others who never had the opportunity to afford opportunities or connections that would help them build a profile to be worthy of being selected for a conference like this let alone actually even finding out and applying to HPAIR. While this isn’t a lesson I learned from any of the keynote speakers, coming across her post was really impactful as recognising our privilege is a major step of working towards some of the most important social issues.
19. Book Recommendations*
By Hari Nair, Vice President, Procter & Gamble:
Carol Dweck – Mindset
David – Range – Why generalists triumph in a specialized world.
Prof Karim Lakhani — Competing in the age of AI
Michael Horn — Choosing College
By Janice Lao, ESG Director:
Capital in the Twenty-First Century Book by Thomas Piketty
Green Giants by Freya Williams
By Bandana Tewari, a Sustainable Fashion Warrior:
Sapiens
Big Ideas Simply Explained Series
By Lord Nat Wei
Restoring Democracy in an Age of Populists and Pestilence by Jonathan Manthorpe
By Lan Yang
A room of one’s own by Virginia Woolf
By Former Prime Minister of Thailand
Did not name anything in particular but recommended books that focus on new economic and market systems given the degree of inequality and the threat of market monopoly and domination.
By Adam Cheyer, Founder of Siri and Change.org
Deep Learning Course on Coursera
*Listed names might not be identical to the actual books.
If you attended HPAIR, what were some of your takeaways? Be sure to share them down in the comments below and share the post so others can benefit from it too!
Be sure to support the blog and sign up for email updates for future posts! Stay tuned as I’ll also be releasing a list of leadership development lessons I took away from HPAIR 2021 soon!
Anxiety, lack of confidence, stage fright and nervousness in people before speaking to a crowd are nothing out of the ordinary. The intensity of these phenomena however, differs. Some might be unable to control their nervousness while addressing their class of 20-40, Some might be unable to control their nervousness to a crowd of hundreds but can control it effectively if its their class, and so on.
Personally, I remember four years back I had to give a speaking test for second language in class and I completely forgot that even existed- till the day and the very moment I had to give it when my name was called. So voila, now I had an unplanned extempore. Now four years ago, I did not have the platforms, opportunities and interests that I have now, so my nervousness was visible by the class and was even pointed out actually. Nervousness hit me so hard, while speaking to an audience numbered just 20ish.
By time, I thought about moments when I was in the audience, what did I think of the speakers on stage? What did my friends think of the speakers on stage? Then I realized, no one really cares about you if you don’t land an impact on the audience. We’re going to sleep, no one’s going to have the energy to make fun of you there unless you start dancing or do something literally stupid but that’s a different case. If you’re gonna be “just another speaker in the line”, be nervous, boring and don’t have a spark. You’re going to be forgotten the moment you move away from the podium, or maybe even halfway through your speech. Whereas the ones who come up with confidence, land an impact that sends a shiver down ones spine. They aren’t forgotten. It’s like, they’re done speaking before we were done listening.
Nervous speakers often end up questioning, “What if I mess it up?”, “what will the crowd think of me?”, “Are they going to like me?”, “Oh no, is that top speaker of the school also in this?”, “Why am I even participating at this point, I stand no chance.” Well guess what, if you’re going to question all of this and give up to them compromising on the power you could have delivered, then yes, why are you even participating if you believe don’t believe you can make a comeback or grow further?
If you give in to these negative thoughts and feelings, it’s going to bring nothing but harm, and pull down the power you will have on the audience. Moreover, so what if the schools supposed best speaker is a part of it too? Not all battles are won and not all battles are lost, while it might be the first battle he’s going to lose, it might be your first win. Which honestly, I have exactly the same experience with in MUNs.
There are a lot of tips and recommendations out there relating to how to be that strong and influencing speaker that makes an impact and leaves a mark, but the basics of everything is to be confident and understand how the audience looks at you if you speak nervously, compared to with power. The art of managing subtle mess-ups, body language, voice modulation etc. comes later, and will be much easier to learn once the basics are established.
October 2017, My first MUN, on a topic that I never knew existed until I signed up for the MUN. My first debate, and a come back to public speaking to larger audiences in years. I was determined to win, first conference, determined to make it my first win as well, among people with multiple MUN experiences, multiple victories, sat a first timer, wanting to win.
With the mindset I had, I knew I had to be confident, I knew no one’s going to care about me if I don’t deliver my content with impact. So the mindset and determination provided the perfect nutrition for the roots of my content that would grow to victory. I strongly believed, even amidst the experienced, I stood a chance. It motivated me to work on my speech in a way that it could bring discussion and thought, and honestly it did. While all the speakers before me were allocated about 1-3 questions, once mine was done, I was allocated 5 (which was the highest in the whole general speakers list for that topic).
Furthermore, during crowd control, I had adequate research which also further motivated me to believe I can do this. I was confident in speaking informally to alliance crowds as well, bring out my ideas and lead our bloc.
Ultimately, the victory fell in my hands. And if there was something I was sure led me to it, was determination, and the fact that I convinced myself “No one cares about you if you’re not going to make an impact, and if no one cares, you’re not going to win”. That is what formed the base of everything else, research, voice modulation, eye contact etc. You can’t reap its fruits if you don’t nurture the roots.
While this is not the only way one can convince themselves to get over their anxiety, it sure did help for me and might help for a few others as well.
Do you have any similar experiences with getting over nervousness/anxiety/stage-fright and different approaches? Leave down your experiences in the comments!
In the quest of attaining happiness, peace, prosperity and delight- the paths are many and its boundaries are endless. The road does diverge in the middle, but at one point, somewhere, it does reconnect into one- the common goal.
(Google Provided)
How many of you souls out there, have tried more than one means of attaining peace and constantly tried various methods to discover more efficient ways?
With the increasing speeds of our mind, modern and industrial life- having a cool and calm mind has become an art of professionals and you now need a teacher to teach you how to keep calm.
But no, there are various ways you can keep calm and relax your self. One of them being, which is my main source of keeping calm, going out in the morning.
Praying the Fajr prayer (1/5 prayers Muslims pray daily) in the Masjid and having the contempt spiritual happiness and hearing the healing recitations of the Quranic verses and then cycling or walking around the area until sunrise and a little later really makes my day.
(My Click)
Moreover, having a hobby of photography just adds even more fun and enticement into the whole scheme! The photos that can be taken at such a time are marvellous and there are absolutely no limits to what you can take. All you need is a good camera, not a DSLR, a good phone camera is enough! (I use a phone..)
It’s not the quality of images that is the main highlight of me mentioning this but the fact that the views are so picture-worthy and tranquil that it does really calm a person down! Living in a place in front of a corniche, The morning hours invite a lot of chirping birds, cool and calm breezes, other happy faces walking, jogging or doing their morning exercises and the best? The tall buildings reflect upon the water completely and provide such an amazing view!
Don’t you think such surroundings would definitely calm you down?
(My Clicks)
This is how I like to start my day, and once I get home, I’ll be doing something else for a while before I start studying (because I absolutely hate studying immediately after finishing one happy task) like writing this post right now!
What method do you guys use to attain peace and happiness? share your ways in the comments below and let the author and many others benefit from it!
For decades and even centuries we have seen women struggle for rights that they deserved but weren’t granted, for safety, recognition, dignity, equality and empowerment in various fields etc.
Throughout these struggles, a united mass movement of majority women and men supporting ‘gender equality’ arose, what we called ‘feminism’.
However, giving ‘feminism’ a standardized definition would create numerous disagreements as people’s ideas and notions about the word feminism may vary greatly.
Ponder.
Nature of Modern Feminism
Most of the feminist movements professionally carried out by women in the past decades are of a fairly good cause, however, ‘feminism’ has taken a different turn in the last couple years now absorbing qualities which are repulsive to many who even though might support gender equality/justice will deny to call themselves a feminist simply because the general idea now has broken down to a certain extent and varies greatly among different people.
The best description that can be given to modern [apparent] feminism being carried out in majority (but not completely) can be ‘women dominance’ (feminazi; matriarchy), and not ‘gender equality’. A good example for such notions can be the assumption that every male has to get up to give their seat to women in a metro/bus even if she is in perfect health (the assumption is correct if pregnant, old age or any other relative cause).
Edit:: The definition of feminism is and still remains to this day as a movement whose aim is to achieve equality of the sexes. Some black sheep (Feminazis) have gone out of their way and want to establish a matriarchal societal structure, and they do not represent feminism.
Mutual Empowerment among the same gender
Anyways, you probably already know most of how bad and misguided things in this field have become, how much controversy and debate it has lead to everywhere between people of various ages, so skipping more details on this let’s get to the point of the title- “mutual empowerment…”.
Leaving aside the blame game on judging the other gender, it is essential to start involving ourselves in empowerment of each other in various fields and not just crying about it.
This can be done in many ways, and no this does not mean supporting each other even if they’re wrong and calling it ’empowerment’ and blaming the society for being ‘judgmental’.
However, this requires an attempt to become patient, compassionate and understanding people and the society so you don’t end up blaming the entirety of the opposite gender every time just one of them does something wrong. (“All men/women are…”), stuff like this provokes backlashes by the opposite gender on why they don’t like supporting gender-related movements etc.
Instead of doing the “all men/women are…” ritual every time one person does something wrong or judges you, why not establish the strength to ignore their sexist/racist comment and bring out numerous reasons why they’re wrong and empower each other and support each other in a good way to move ahead in life and be more productive, strong, independent and lead?
“Women supporting each other, instead of competing against each other, brings a unity and strength like no other” Julie Spira
Cross-Gender/Humanitarian Mutual Empowerment
That was a small outline on how empowerment in a different perspective and understanding can help, now coming to a different mode of mutual empowerment- one where gender is irrelevant.
This can come in handy to reduce sexual crimes, violence and sexist judgement. However, pulling this together would take a great deal of effort and the co-operation of every single human being that has stepped foot on the soil of Earth and is breathing.
Basically, both genders must start seeing each other as the same species with an equal value, obviously they are not ‘identical’ but the value remains the same.
How? Take the following mark sheet of two students in consideration in a test, they have scored differently in every question (i.e. student A may have got a question wrong which student B may have got correct etc.). However, the end total is the same value.
For sexual harassment and abuse to stop, people need to be trained to be disciplined (self control, focus, understanding), control their desires and look at others in a different way, realize their human value, recognize that they have feelings like you do (may be even more intense and sensitive; you never know).
The advantage of inculcating this in life is that it brings numerous other benefits as well, not just inhibiting harassment and abuse but even improving ones social life and its various aspects as a whole. Who knows, maybe that one day at school or work after the weekend might not seem that bad anymore!
Due to the length of this post I will not be expressing more examples, think for yourself, what are your suggestions for mutual empowerment to raise our safety, trust and collaboration standards cross-gender? Leave your answers down in the comments below!
(Google Provided)
(My Click)
(My Clicks)
Kevin Sneader
Janice Lao, Raekwon Chung, Daniel Bodansky, Dr. Robert Stowe, and Skyler Wu.
One among many one-on-one networking events\
