career guidance

With time closing in, building of pressure is inevitable. Please don’t get nervous. Nervousness will affect your performance. You have so far done your best, now is the time to calmly revise. At any perceptible sign of anxiety, breathe deeply ten to twelve times and feel relaxed. Ensure good sleep for at least 6 hours. Take a brisk walk for at least 20 to 30 minutes, preferably in the morning when you get good fresh air. Your brain cells need oxygen. Feed it

Last week planning:

Plan your study schedule and abide by it. Put down summary details and go through the same periodically. Make sure that concepts are clear to you. Trying to memorize something is much easier when concepts are clear then otherwise.

Keep on increasing your speed. Attempt seriously mock test regularly aiming to hit cent percent success.

Time management:

With the pressure that builds up for the brain to perform, it needs
rest as well to recuperate. So, do not neglect rest. Move around for a
few minutes after concentrating for an hour or two. Your body will
give signal for break when it needs. Stretch your arms and legs to
release tension. Then come back to studies refreshed. The time so
spent should not be deemed to be time wasted but time well utilized.
Your system needs it.

After having done whatever was possible for you, on exam day, leave
similarly for the exam centre stay relaxed. If you are even faintly
feeling stressed, take deep breaths. Do not get unnerved. Repeat with
yourself- I am out to ace the test. And you will. Auto-suggestion has
been known to have done wondered. Once in the exam hall smile with
cheerfulness and read the question paper attentively, with focus on
instructions. Begin attempting questions which are in your easy reach.
Then try others leaving the “difficult” once for last. The mantra is
to stay unruffled even when you come across questions you find tough.
. With calmness you may be able to tackle. But, once you are nervous,
you may not be able to solve those that are easy.

Career Guidance

Choosing the right career.

With social life turning increasingly complex and careers multiplying
exponentially, choice of a career is becoming more and more baffling.
Some old professions have gone extinct and quite a good numbers have
emerged, making the choice not only cumbersome but stressful. It
wouldn’t be futile to go through some difficulty, even if some what
strained, if one would land up on the right path. The problem arises
when, after all the trepidation, one gets into a wrong track. It is
thus crucial, when deciding about the career to exercise utmost
caution.

It is a bizarre paradox and a pathetic irony of an individual’s social
existence that he/she does not know much about himself /herself in
terms of choice of things that suit him/her in accordance with the
temperament but others pretend to know all such things about him/her.
And tragically enough, we too have come to rely on other’s judgment
for what suits us. To this extent, it would not be an exaggeration to
suggest that the person so relying on others for one’s career choice
and connected matters, is playing with his/her life and exposing some
degree of bankruptcy of self –knowledge. In accordance with the
incontrovertible logic of life, I should choose my career in
consonance with my disposition, propensity and taste. This is not to
indicate that other’s views should not be sought. An expert opinion
should be had and respected. But as Shakespeare said more than four
hundred years ago, “Take each man’s counsel, but reserve thy
judgment”, the final decision should be ours. How can there be someone
to know me better than I know myself. The million dollar question
arises, why does this happen?

The origin lies in our childhood when our mind-set was frozen into a
conditioned attitude to advice from all elders. Not encouraged to
exercise independent choice then, we are scared to do it even now.
Understanding this fact with deep feeling and the havoc it plays with
our lives, is the first step we need to take to be self-possessed and
self assured. A beginning should be made with small things. The effort
should be kept up until we catch up with bigger things. Wisely has it
been said, “Take care of little things, big things will take cared of
themselves”. The crying need is to embark on this path right here and
now.

career guidance

How to know what suits a person.

A self reliant person knows instinctively what suits him/her. He will
be driven aright by impulse. Others need greater circumspection. And
this is one of the methods to determine what one is made for:

Whatever you are doing or have chosen to do:-

a. Are you doing it reluctantly, even if with faint reluctance or with
alacrity? If former is the case you are made for something else.
Remember nobody is made for everything but everybody is made for
something.

b. Does it afford you pleasure and are you at a peace with it? Or do
you feel that you are doing it by way of a necessity /compulsion and
given a choice, you would opt for something else.

c. Do you find a satisfactory degree of fulfillment and self-expression?

d. Are you almost as relaxed in doing what you have chosen to do as
though you are pursuing a hobby? If so, you are ideally suited to do
it.

e. Do you get a feeling that you are fulfilling your life’s purpose in
what you are doing ? If so, stick to it. Today as perhaps before too,
the choice of a career is dictated often enough by:-

(i) Glamour.

(ii) Earning.

(iii) Power and

(iv) Social prestige.

career guidance

There is nothing wrong with all these collectively or each individually. Everybody has a material as well as psychological need for these. They have social approval and acceptability. Yet, if a career affords all these or anyone or a set thereof but, leaves a feeling of some inner dissatisfaction on account of non-expression of one’s natural tendency, hold yourself back and think for a while. The carrier opportunities are so huge that there must be, in the ordinary course of present day life, some calling which will be in accordance with your liking. Just go out and explore.

However, a word of caution, in case you take up a profession which
does not reflect your natural urge but gives you everything else or
much of it, you will be left with a feeling of discontent.

And when a career gives everything of social importance but induces a
morbid feeling of dissatisfaction, the following consequences, which
are not anticipated in the beginning, inevitably creep in:-

Such a profession will not receive the enthusiasm from the person adopting it.

Performance level will drop with the passage of time.

Commitment needed in such circumstances will decrease.

The person will only look to others as being happy but will be
fundamentally discontented.

Personality will not only cease to grow but may even stagnate at some stage.

On the contrary, if a career suits a person’s disposition, he/she will
shine and sparkle.

Here one would tend to suggest that it may not be advisable to wait
for an opportunity to arise and let the existing slip out of one’s
hand. It would be better to take up what is available and be watchful
when a suitable opportunity presents itself.

The Feature film 3 IDIOTS is an eye opener.