11 T’s of Successful Relationships…!!!

T1 for Taqwa- the foundation of a successful marriage. Faith in GOD allow both persons to live in Harmony.

T2 for Trust- Don't allow any room for your spouse to Doubt you and give them some Personal Space.

T3 is for Tongue - Control your tongue when speaking to your spouse. Don't speak rudely.

T4 is for Talk - Communicate with your spouse regularly. Let them know your feelings.

T5 is for Time - Make time to spend with your spouse, and realise that your life timetable has to change once you're married.

T6 is for Tea - Make sure you eat and drink together at the same time as this creates love between 2 people

T7 is for Tolerance - Nobody is perfect, but look at the good qualities in your spouse and tolerate the bad with patience

T8 is for Technology - Technology can make or break a relationship. Don't allow it to become the third person in the relationship.

T9 is for Trouble makers - Don't allow the rumours and comments of others spoil the harmony between you and your partner

T10 is for Temper - this is one of biggest reasons behind marriages breaking. Control your anger with your spouse.

T11 is for Tahajjud - Pray together, and encourage each other to do good deeds

(Excerpts from the speech from Dr. Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin)

Buy Experiences, Not Things...!!!

James Hablin

Forty-seven percent of the time, the average mind is wandering. It wanders about a third of the time while a person is reading, talking with other people, or taking care of children. It wanders 10 percent of the time, even, during sex. And that wandering, according to psychologist Matthew Killingsworth, is not good for well-being. A mind belongs in one place. During his training at Harvard, Killingsworth compiled those numbers and built a scientific case for every cliché about living in the moment. In a 2010 Science paper co-authored with psychology professor Daniel Gilbert, the two wrote that "a wandering mind is an unhappy mind."

For Killingsworth, happiness is in the content of moment-to-moment experiences. Nothing material is intrinsically valuable, except in whatever promise of happiness it carries. Satisfaction in owning a thing does not have to come during the moment it's acquired, of course. It can come as anticipation or nostalgic longing. Overall, though, the achievement of the human brain to contemplate events past and future at great, tedious length has, these psychologists believe, come at the expense of happiness. Minds tend to wander to dark, not whimsical, places. Unless that mind has something exciting to anticipate or sweet to remember.

Over the past decade, an abundance of psychology research has shown that experiences bring people more happiness than do possessions. The idea that experiential purchases are more satisfying than material purchases has long been the domain of Cornell psychology professor Thomas Gilovich. Since 2003, he has been trying to figure out exactly how and why experiential purchases are so much better than material purchases. In the journal Psychological Science last month, Gilovich and Killingsworth, along with Cornell doctoral candidate Amit Kumar, expanded on the current understanding that spending money on experiences "provide[s] more enduring happiness." They looked specifically at anticipation as a driver of that happiness; whether the benefit of spending money on an experience accrues before the purchase has been made, in addition to after. And, yes, it does.

Essentially, when you can't live in a moment, they say, it's best to live in anticipation of an experience. Experiential purchases like trips, concerts, movies, et cetera, tend to trump material purchases because the utility of buying anything really starts accruing before you buy it.

Waiting for an experience apparently elicits more happiness and excitement than waiting for a material good (and more "pleasantness" too—an eerie metric). By contrast, waiting for a possession is more likely fraught with impatience than anticipation. "You can think about waiting for a delicious meal at a nice restaurant or looking forward to a vacation," Kumar told me, "and how different that feels from waiting for, say, your pre-ordered iPhone to arrive. Or when the two-day shipping on Amazon Prime doesn’t seem fast enough."

Gilovich's prior work has shown that experiences tend to make people happier because they are less likely to measure the value of their experiences by comparing them to those of others. For example, Gilbert and company note in their new paper, many people are unsure if they would rather have a high salary that is lower than that of their peers, or a lower salary that is higher than that of their peers. With an experiential good like vacation, that dilemma doesn't hold. Would you rather have two weeks of vacation when your peers only get one? Or four weeks when your peers get eight? People choose four weeks with little hesitation.

Experiential purchases are also more associated with identity, connection, and social behavior. Looking back on purchases made, experiences make people happier than do possessions. It's kind of counter to the logic that if you pay for an experience, like a vacation, it will be over and gone; but if you buy a tangible thing, a couch, at least you'll have it for a long time. Actually most of us have a pretty intense capacity for tolerance, or hedonic adaptation, where we stop appreciating things to which we're constantly exposed. iPhones, clothes, couches, et cetera, just become background. They deteriorate or become obsolete. It's the fleetingness of experiential purchases that endears us to them. Either they're not around long enough to become imperfect, or they are imperfect, but our memories and stories of them get sweet with time. Even a bad experience becomes a good story.

When it rains through a beach vacation, as Kumar put it, "People will say, well, you know, we stayed in and we played board games and it was a great family bonding experience or something." Even if it was negative in the moment, it becomes positive after the fact. That's a lot harder to do with material purchases because they're right there in front of you. "When my Macbook has the colorful pinwheel show up," he said, "I can't say, well, at least my computer is malfunctioning!"

"At least my computer and I get to spend more time together because it's working so slowly," I offered.

"Yes, exactly."

"Maybe we should destroy our material possessions at their peak, so they will live on in an idealized state in our memories?"

"I don't know if I'd go that far," he said. "The possibility of making material purchases more experiential is sort of interesting."

That means making purchasing an experience, which is terrible marketing-speak, but in practical terms might mean buying something on a special occasion or on vacation or while wearing a truly unique hat. Or tying that purchase to subsequent social interaction. Buy this and you can talk about buying it, and people will talk about you because you have it.

"Turns out people don't like hearing about other people's possessions very much," Kumar said, "but they do like hearing about that time you saw Vampire Weekend."

I can't imagine ever wanting to hear about someone seeing Vampire Weekend, but I get the point. Reasonable people are just more likely to talk about their experiential purchases than their material purchases. It's a nidus for social connection. ("What did you do this weekend?" "Well! I'm so glad you asked ... ")

The most interesting part of the new research, to Kumar, was the part that "implies that there might be notable real-world consequences to this study." It involved analysis of news stories about people waiting in long lines to make a consumer transaction. Those waiting for experiences were in better moods than those waiting for material goods. "You read these stories about people rioting, pepper-spraying, treating each other badly when they have to wait," he said. It turns out, those sorts of stories are much more likely to occur when people are waiting to acquire a possession than an experience. When people are waiting to get concert tickets or in line at a new food truck, their moods tend to be much more positive.

Even a bad experience becomes a good story.

"There are actually instances of positivity when people are waiting for experiences," Kumar said, like talking to other people in the concert line about what songs Vampire Weekend might play. So there is opportunity to connect with other people. "We know that social interaction is one of the most important determinants of human happiness, so if people are talking with each other, being nice to one another in the line, it's going to be a lot more pleasant experience than if they're being mean to each other which is what's (more) likely to happen when people are waiting for material goods."

Research has also found that people tend to be more generous to others when they've just thought about an experiential purchase as opposed to a material purchase. They're also more likely to pursue social activities. So, buying those plane tickets is good for society. (Of course, maximal good to society and personal happiness comes from pursuing not happiness but meaning. All of this behavioral economics-happiness research probably assumes you've already given away 99 percent of your income to things bigger than yourself, and there's just a very modest amount left to maximally utilize.)

What is it about the nature of imagining experiential purchases that's different from thinking about future material purchases? The most interesting hypothesis is that you can imagine all sort of possibilities for what an experience is going to be. "That's what'sfun," Kumar said. "It could turn out a whole host of ways." With a material possession, you kind of know what you're going to get. Instead of whetting your appetite by imagining various outcomes, Kumar put it, people sort of think, Just give it to me now.

It could turn out that to get the maximum utility out of an experiential purchase, it's really best to plan far in advance. Savoring future consumption for days, weeks, years only makes the experience more valuable. It definitely trumps impulse buying, where that anticipation is completely squandered. (Never impulse-buy anything ever.)

That sort of benefit would likely be a lot stronger in an optimistic person as opposed to a pessimistic person. Some people hate surprises. Some people don't anticipate experiences because they dwell on what could—no, will—go wrong. But we needn't dwell in their heads. Everyone can decide on the right mix of material and experiential consumption to maximize their well-being. The broader implications, according to Gilovich in a press statement, are that "well-being can be advanced by providing infrastructure that affords experiences, such as parks, trails, and beaches, as much as it does material consumption." Or at least the promise of that infrastructure, so we can all look forward to using it. And when our minds wander, that's where they'll go.

APJ Kalam: The man whose mystique endured a myriad controversies...!!!

"I am completely indigenous," APJ Abdul Kalam told The New York Times in 1998.

 

 Nobody could have put it better. Kalam was the embodiment of every Indian ideal. His rags-to-success story made him an achiever against insurmountable odds; contribution to Indian defence and military gave him the aura of a nationalist; conduct in the Rashtrapati Bhawan turned him into a People's President-- a People's Prince type epithet that instantly gave the West a measure of his popularity; and his inspiring speeches and books made him a hero of the youth and children.

As a son, student, scientist, President, teacher, preacher, poet, writer, aficionado of classical Indian music, inspiration for a film (I am Kalam) and the new Chacha of children of India, Kalam lived an all Indian dream.
"In recent history, only a few had endeared themselves to the young and old, poor and the rich, and to people belonging to different faiths," former finance minister P Chidambaram rightly summed up Kalam's enormous popularity.

Kalam had many virtues that we hold close to our heart. Never give up, don't let failure destroy your dream, concentrate on your karma without thinking of the result, don't let success get to your head and put country above race and religion. Kalam practiced all of them.

As a student born in a humble family, he sold newspapers to support the family and finance his education. When Kalam was rejected for the job of a fighter pilot, a dream he had nourished since childhood, he took up an entry-level post at Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd.

And there was no looking back. A man, who was considered not good enough to fly a plane, became the architect of India's missile programme. From somebody who was rejected as a fighter, Kalam went on to become the face of India's nuclear programme. Kalam showed the world that he had wings of steel and determination of iron.

Kalam's karma brought him not just the deserved fruits of labour, but much more than that. "Kalam did not seek office; the office sought him," Natwar Singh memorably said after he was elected President. He remains a compelling example of how a karma yogi becomes destiny's favourite child.

Kalam was not the original choice for President in 2002. It was widely believed that PC Alexander, principal secretary to former PM Indira Gandhi, would get the job. Alexander, who was the governor of Maharashtra during Atal Bihari Vajpayee's government, was acceptable to most of the NDA constituents. And his past made him believe that even the Congress would back him. To his dismay, Sonia Gandhi refused to back Alexander's candidature.

For a very brief period, it seemed vice-president Krishna Kant would get the job. But he was also denied the opportunity after being tipped off to be ready for the election.

During this period, the BJP was trying to shed its rabid pro-Hindutva image -- a pursuit that ultimately ended with LK Advani's ill-fated paean to MA Jinnah. And Mulayam Singh, it is believed, offered a deal that the BJP couldn't resist. (Ironically, when Kalam became the front-runner for the President's post in 2012, it was Mulayam Singh who backed out at the last minute, paving the way for Pranab Mukherjee's election.)

When the Samajwadi Party agreed to support Kalam as the next President, a consensus soon developed even within the Congress to back his presidency. His election could have been unanimous, but for the Left's decision to prop up Captain Lakshmi Sehgal as token of resistance. Kalam's tenure had the potential of getting marred with controversies. But it is an ode to his personal integrity and administrative tact that he managed to steer India through a political storm.

His biggest challenge, of course, was the issue of Sonia Gandhi's eligibility to become PM. After the Congress emerged as the single-largest party in 2004, Sonia's expected ascent to the top job created a political furore. Unexpectedly, Sonia opted out of the race and named Manmohan Singh as the party's choice for PM.

There were rumours that Sonia had backed out because President Kalam raised the issue of her Italian citizenship. But Kalam maintained a dignified silence through the brouhaha. Years later, in his memoirs, Kalam revealed that if Sonia had staked claim to the post, he would have had no option but to appoint her.

Controversies, though, dogged Kalam for his role as a nuclear scientist. Some of his critics, like Homi Sethna, questioned Kalam's credentials saying he had received his masters degree in aerospace engineering, which is completely different from nuclear engineering. Kalam's entire cult as the face of India's nuclear programme also came under cloud when K Santhanam, the site director of Pokaran II, called the test a 'fizzle' and criticised Kalam for giving a false report.

And when Kalam became the President, Princeton scholar M V Ramana attributed it to Kalam's ability to "dress up even mediocre work with the tricolour to pass them off as great achievements." But, nothing could stop Kalam from becoming a legend.

When the history of post-Independence India is written, Kalam would rank right up there, in the company of legends like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Rabindranath Tagore. He will inspire India and Indians for years to come.

In his poignant goodbye to Kalam, his aide Srijan Pal Singh says, he once asked Kalam what would he like to be remembered as: "President, scientist, writer, Missile Man, Indian 2020, Target 3 billion..what?"

Kalam replied: "Teacher."

Yes, Kalam would be remembered for teaching us the value of both Karma and Raj dharma.