What am I going to do with the rest of my life?

I don’t know whether only I get such weird thoughts in my mind or is it the human mind which is designed in such a way to keep cropping such questions which I faced some time back. Assuming myself to be a very normal person I think it’s pretty normal for people to think on these lines. This one’s for all you normal(!) souls.
I may not answer this question on your behalf but you may at least find some path which might lead to making your life as meaningful and bright as your friends and professors wished you in your college farewell.
Help yourself draw a map
Too often, when faced with a major (or even not so major) life decision, we tend to either take the first decent choice that presents itself or we allow circumstances to choose for us by default - putting off the decision until the inexorable current of life sweeps us past the turning point. As you can imagine, this is not the best way to get what you want out of life. But the options we are faced with in life can be so wildly divergent, or so deceptively similar, that it is difficult to know which turning to take. Wouldn't it be great if we had some kind of road map that would help us know which paths to follow and which to pass by?
Below are five questions that everybody should ask himself or herself before starting out on any new path. The answers to these questions should then be used to guide decisions and to direct actions - when a choice comes up, simply compare the various options with your stated desires and choose the option that takes you closer to (or at least moves you the least farthest away from) your destination - your stated goals and desires.
1. What does success mean to me?
Be very specific. "I want to be rich," is not an answer - just what does "rich" mean, anyway? Are you thinking of a set number? And if so, why? Or is the term "rich" a substitute for certain freedoms and opportunities that you view as coming only with money - and by limiting them to being accessed only through money, are you missing out on other alternative pathways?
Some more specific alternatives to "I want to be rich," depending on the individual, might be: "I want to have enough net income to meet my current financial responsibilities without strain, plus have time and money left over for travel," or "I want to be able to comfortably afford a jet-setting lifestyle in New York City," or "I want to spend 4 days a week at home with my kids," etc.
You should try to come up with at least three answers to the question of what success really means to you personally, with each one reflecting a different facet of what you feel makes up a truly successful life. And keep the money issue to just one statement - after all, such things as personal fulfillment, spiritual meaning and other essential needs and values cannot be solved, acquired or even influenced by money
One of the biggest obstacles to success is that most of us have never consciously explored what that means to us, aside from some vague and nebulous idea of fame, fortune or other worldly success. Knowing what success really means to you - what you hope or imagine that these generic definitions of success would actually provide and how you want those things to physically look like in your life - allows you to weigh your choices more accurately.
2. What are my non-negotiable needs?
List all the things that you envision as inescapable parameters of a successful and enjoyable life. Family, travel, no debt, pleasant work environment, social status, contributions to society, spiritual involvement, public acclaim, love, excitement, comfort - any or all of these, and any others you can think of are legitimate needs that when not met create an environment of stress, want and disempowerment in your life. Knowing what you are not willing to do without makes the relative values of different options clearer.
3. What are my non-negotiable boundaries?
List all the things that you absolutely do not want present in your life. If the idea of working in a standard hierarchical office environment makes you ill, put that down. If you can't stand the thought of living in a cold climate, add that to the list. If being poked fun at about your physical condition or other attributes makes life unlivable, note that as well. By knowing what you will not tolerate, many choices become much easier to make. Plus, it allows you to set down rules and policies about who and what you will invite into your life and the standards of behavior you will, and will not, tolerate.
4. What are my key values?
Spend some time searching your soul to come up with a list of your basic values, creating a life around which would make you the person you want to be and allow you to live the life you want to live. Are you the type who values honesty, clean/green living and a deep love of nature above all things? Or are you more of a 'comforts of home', family and fun kind of person? Do you value charity over letting others find their way on their own, or is it the other way around? Knowing what you truly stand for is a vital component of good decision-making.
5. What do I want to be remembered for?
What legacy do you want to leave here when you pass on? What do you want people to say about your life and you as a person? What do you want to be known for? What would you like your obituary to say about you? Knowing where you want to end up makes choosing the path to get there, and keeping track of your progress, infinitely easier.

If you can find the answer of all these questions you’ll see that till now you were a stranger to the person living inside you. And will see many things still to be done which you’ve always wanted to do. So what’s stopping you.
Life is really not so complicated as we make it to be. What’s needed is to know what you want from your life. Explore it yourself and live it yourself..

We.. The Engineers

Recently I’ve been bombarded with some silly engineers joke. Well I’ll have to say them silly. After all I’m an engineer at heart. Sample this:

Take 1
Two engineering students were walking across campus when onesaid, "Where did you get such a great bike?"
The second engineer replied, "Well, I was walking along yesterday minding my own business when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike. She threw the bike to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, "Take what you want."
"The second engineer nodded approvingly, "Good choice; the clothes probably wouldn't have fit."
Take 2
An architect, an artist and an engineer were discussing whether it was better to spend time with the wife or a mistress.
The architect said he enjoyed time with his wife, building a solid foundation for an enduring relationship. The artist said he enjoyed time with his mistress, because of the passion and mystery he found there. The engineer said, "I like both." "Both?" Engineer: "Yeah.
If you have a wife and a mistress, they will each assume you are spending time with the other woman, and you can go to the lab and get some work done."
Take 3
A pastor, a doctor and an engineer were waiting one morning for a particularly slow group of golfers.
The engineer fumed, "What's with these guys? We must have been waiting for 15 minutes!"
The doctor chimed in, "I don't know, but I've never seen such ineptitude! "
The pastor said, "Hey, here comes the greens-keeper. Let's have a word with him." [dramatic pause]
"Hi George. Say, what's with that group ahead of us? They're rather slow, aren't they?"
The greens-keeper replied, "Oh, yes, that's a group of blind fire-fighters. They lost their sight saving our clubhouse from a fire last year, so we always let them play for free anytime." The group was silent for a moment.
The pastor said, "That's so sad. I think I will say a special prayer for them tonight."
The doctor said, "Good idea. And I'm going to contact my ophthalmologist buddy and see if there's anything he can do for them."
The engineer said, "Why can't these guys play at night?"

Ouch!!
Traditionally engineers have been viewed as geeks or nerds who do nothing but study strange kinds of things and manufacture big machines and buildings. Even nowadays when some coaching institute puts up an ad showing engineering aspirants they would put up posters of people with formal boring shirts and a metallic cap which the mechanics wear in garages. Whereas the doctors they’ll show are all smart and dashing with matching colourful shirts inside their white aprons.
I mean why such discrimination against engineers. They would make serials like sanjeevani and dhadkan for doctors. Do only doctors have the charm to woo girls. And engineers are all boring people found glued to their computer screens or buried inside a pile of machines.
Come on, engineers are not like that. At least not what I’ve seen and known.
Then who are engineers and what are engineers. Well understanding this species is extremely difficult. However the common characteristics are:
Extreme
Whatever they do has to be on an extreme. No study for the 4-5 months of the semester and no sleep for the 4-5 days before the exams. The same student who you’ll find with his torn jeans and the college t-shirt jumping out of the class(or rather bunking out of the class), impressing the panel of interviewers from the very best companies of the world.
The same stud whom you found half-conscious and fully drunk lying outside the hostel gate in the garden, can stun a gathering full of scholars while delivering a speech on consiousness.
Adaptive
Engineering students are supposed to be the most indisciplined and rude fellows on campus who are always clumsily dressed. But what happens to these guys/gals when they hit the corporate floor. They are the most smartly dressed people and present the face of India Inc.
They are as comfortable in the college-side khokha(dhaba) eating maggy sitting on the mat as they are while having lunch with their clients in a 5-star hotel.
Matter-of-factly
The 4 years of engineering teaches engineers how to learn. Learn different concepts, languages, techniques and anything else. Engineers are basically learners. Engineers doing well in CAT and other entrances are not because they are engineers but because they are good learners and can adapt to the changing situations.

To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

Are you a rat running a rat race

Do you curse your manager everytime he passes by you for earning more than you by working less? Do you keep on waiting for the calendar to change for the next month for your account to get incremented by a fixed number.. well almost fixed after that appraisal period too. Do you regret why you joined this damn company and while others of your batch have moved ahead and you are left behind. Do you close your eyes every night after a day full of reading emails and chatting and working for the 10% of the time you are paid for. And then again get up in the morning to rush against the snarling traffic towards your office. Well my dear you show every symptom of a rat running a rat race.
And the only way out is to move out of the race coz the tragedy of rat race is even if you win you still remain in the rat race. Sorry for using the cliché but that’s true.
Moving out of the rat race doesn’t necessarily mean quitting the job. Moving out means detachment from the web of the daily chores & excessive involvement in mundane tasks. But staying focused towards your duties and responsibilities. Very much like Krishna preaches in Bhagwad Gita- ‘Stay like a lotus petal in pond.. wet yet dry. Involved yet detached.’

I know it’s not as simple as it sounds but let’s first understand the problem.The problem arises when you start comparing yourself with others and succumb to peer pressure. You always like to reach to the other person’s position(obviously if he’s at a higher level) by just looking at the face value of his position and ignoring your strengths and weaknesses. You always want to be appreciated by others, approved by others. You have always believed that the better people feel about you, the better you can feel about yourself. However, you may have never really considered that the opposite of this belief must hold equally and unhappily true, and that is: The less you are approved by others, the more alone and uncertain you feel. This helps to explain why you think you have to please people as well as why you resent those you feel you must please. Being approved by others has become a strange kind of life-support system wherein, after a lifetime of depending on it, you unconsciously believe that there won't be life without someone there to approve you into existence. Just the opposite is true. The more you depend on others to confirm you to yourself, the less real life you have of your own.
It is our fear of being alone and in doubt, of wanting to feel certain that what we are doing is right, that compels us to seek the approval of others. So this tells us that the chief cause of why our lives so often wind up in the hands of others is not that they are superior or that the world is too strong for us, but that we don't want to face the uncertainty and aloneness that we think we are too weak to bear. This is the real cause of all of our wrong relationships in life: We have been betrayed by a belief in our own weakness. And unless we overcome ourselves we’ll continue to find ourselves in the rat race- running towards an unknown goal.

The conscious refusal to go along with your weakness is what invokes and finally delivers real inner-strength. This new kind of strength gradually becomes the cornerstone of a true individual existence -- the life you've always wanted. This may sound philosophical. The stakes are actually eternal -- but self-victory is as certain as the fact that light always triumphs over darkness. If you will stay in the middle of this struggle for true self-possession, not asserting your individuality but allowing it to flourish and to blossom -- bearing what you must bear by refusing to submit yourself to negative, self-betraying influences -- you will come to know the highest approval that Life can award. You won't be jealous of anyone coz you know you'll definitely get what you deserve. Reality itself will approve you. And when it does, all of your struggles (and races) will become a thing of the past. You will possess yourself. No one around you will suspect that you now live in a new kind of bright inner-world; a world that is always on your terms because your terms and the terms of this happy new inner-world are never in conflict. You have won the race. You have won your own life.

Why Can’t I Say what I believe?

Have you ever seen an old photo of yourself and been embarrassed at the way you looked? Did we actually dress like that? We did. And we had no idea how silly we looked. It's the nature of fashion to be invisible, in the same way the movement of the earth is invisible to all of us riding on it.What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They're just as arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people. But they're much more dangerous. Dressing oddly gets you laughed at. Violating moral fashions can get you fired, ostracized, imprisoned, or even killed.If you could travel back in a time machine, one thing would be true no matter where you went: you'd have to watch what you said. Opinions we consider harmless could have got you in big trouble. I've already said at least one thing that would have got me in big trouble in most of Europe in the seventeenth century, and did get Galileo in big trouble when he said it-- that the earth moves.

That was then. But are we free to say what we believe. Sorry, not even today.
Let’s see what are the things when uttered can get us in trouble.
No one gets in trouble for saying that 2 + 2 is 5, or that people in Nepal are ten feet tall. Such obviously false statements might be treated as jokes, or at worst as evidence of insanity, but they are not likely to make anyone mad. The statements that make people mad are the ones they worry might be believed. I suspect the statements that make people maddest are those they worry might be true.If Galileo had said that people in Greece were ten feet tall, he would have been regarded as a harmless eccentric. Saying the earth orbited the sun was another matter. The church knew this would set people thinking.

I’m no Galileo. I’m not as insane. But whenever I see myself not fitting into the situation my family, my religion, my caste, my country puts me in- I question most of the times to my mind and ask WHY? May be I don’t have the guts to sound a rebel or allow people to question my blasphemous attitude. I do not want to narrow down the scope by listing some of the questions that come to my mind. But I believe, and as I said I’m not as insane, So most of the questions which creep into my mind must also find a place in all of the billions ever thinking minds of the world.

Why?
Some would ask, why would one want to do this? Why deliberately go poking around among nasty, disreputable ideas? Why look under rocks?I do it, first of all, for the same reason I did look under rocks as a kid: plain curiosity. And I'm especially curious about anything that's forbidden. Let me see and decide for myself.Second, I do it because I don't like the idea of being mistaken. If, like other eras, we believe things that will later seem ridiculous, I want to know what they are so that I, at least, can avoid believing them.Third, I do it because it's good for the brain. To do good work you need a brain that can go anywhere. And you especially need a brain that's in the habit of going where it's not supposed to.

Training yourself to think unthinkable thoughts has advantages beyond the thoughts themselves. It's like stretching. When you stretch before running, you put your body into positions much more extreme than any it will assume during the run. If you can think things so outside the box that they'd make people's hair stand on end, you'll have no trouble with the small trips outside the box that people call innovative.

When you find something you can't say, what do you do with it? My advice is, don't say it. Or at least, pick your battles.
The most important thing is to be able to think what you want, not to say what you want. And if you feel you have to say everything you think, it may inhibit you from thinking improper thoughts. I think it's better to follow the opposite policy. Draw a sharp line between your thoughts and your speech. Inside your head, anything is allowed. Within my head I make a point of encouraging the most outrageous thoughts I can imagine. But, as in a secret society, nothing that happens within the building should be told to outsiders. The first rule of Fight Club is, you do not talk about Fight Club.

Especially if you hear yourself using them. It's not just the mob you need to learn to watch from a distance. How can you see the wave, when you're the water? You need to be able to watch your own thoughts from a distance. That's not a radical idea, by the way; it's the main difference between children and adults. When a child gets angry because he's tired, he doesn't know what's happening. An adult can distance himself enough from the situation to say "never mind, I'm just tired." I don't see why one couldn't, by a similar process, learn to recognize and discount the effects of moral fashions.
You have to take that extra step if you want to think clearly. But it's harder, because now you're working against social customs instead of with them. Everyone encourages you to grow up to the point where you can discount your own bad moods. Few encourage you to continue to the point where you can discount society's bad moods.
Always be questioning. That's the only defence. What can't you say? And why?

Flirt @ Office

You don’t flirt with anybody. Flirting is a way of life. The way you talk to the other sex, the way your eyes move, the words you choose to say... it’s all part of the the rocket science thing called flirt. We all do it but are unaware of it. And especially in office where we spend more than half of our lives and create a world of our own, you’ve got to utilize every bit of the chance you get to give yourself that playful indulgence.

A giggle here, an eye contact there. A playful punch or hands shake which continued just a little longer. The increasingly frequent cubicle visits. And soon it’s lunch for too or may be even drinks after work.
And that is where the story takes the turn. No I’m not talking about what happens after the drink. This is not a Sidney Sheldon’s novel piece.

The problem lies with the ever heavily-loaded emotional hearts which we Indians carry and soon the flirt no longer remains a flirt and becomes romance. Now don’t ask me what’s the difference?

But unlike the publicity-starved celebrities, you have to keep insisting that you're "just friends" to everyone around you, including yourselves. Still, you wonder, "What's the big deal, anyway? A little flirtation never hurts anyone."

Looking at it from a distance really doesn’t give any alarms. Or do they. Let’s see.

Office romance - the good
There are many issues -- both positive and negative -- to consider before engaging in office romances. One of the positive aspects is time efficiency, since you no longer need to search for a significant other in the evening. Why look around for potential dates when you have an office full of beautiful women (alas, that’s not true for most of the companies :)? You save both time and money.

A second advantage to dating someone in the workplace is that since you spend so many hours together at work, you already have an idea of what she's like. This can save you from lots of headaches down the road.

A final advantage, is that you can carpool. Not only do you get to spend the night together, you also save on petrol. Wow, what are the chances that you could date women that would save you money?

Office romance - the bad
Office romances also have their drawbacks. For example, no matter how well the relationship is going, the situation itself is a recipe for disaster. The fact that couples are in constant contact with one another day and night may cause friction within the relationship. Everyone needs "alone time" to pursue hobbies or hang out with friends, and the lack thereof may cause relationships to self-destruct.

Office romances may interfere with individuals' abilities to perform their professional duties. Imagine telling your girlfriend that she's fired? There is obvious potential for conflicts of interest between office situations and relationships. And there’s absolutely no way to avoid accusations of favoritism, not giving time to your colleagues, which may harm your relationship with your colleagues.


Office romance - the ugly
Before beginning a relationship consider its potential outcomes. If things don't work out, will things become awkward? Prepare yourself for the unwanted situations that might follow. In order to be prepared, evaluate who's date-worthy, their position and the consequences of a breakup:

Dating colleagues: Rivalry and competition may harm the relationship. Uncomfortable situations may arise after the breakup when career advancements issues come into play.

Dating Subordinates: False accusations of favoritism may arise, as well as accusations of sexual harassment after the breakup.

Dating Bosses: Might have to work late almost everyday. You may get FIRED after the breakup.

Guidelines for success
Always remember; while inter-office dating is not necessarily illegal, many companies have policies against it. The tricky part regarding such policies is what defines dating. Most companies encourage friendships, so where's the line between friendship and dating? If you start dating someone in the office, whom can you tell? Should you try to keep it a secret? What if someone finds out?
Here are a few preventative guidelines to help develop a successful office romance without falling into any pitfalls or lawsuits.
1. Adhere to the "one year" rule by only gradually letting a workplace or business acquaintance become a friend. Even then, try to keep it a casual, non-intimate friendship.
2. Don’t commit. (This is especially for the guys. Girls somehow are born with this tip) Keep people guessing including your partner!
3. Be an Aamir Khan of DCH than an SRK of DDLJ. Girls like emotional stuff only on screen.
4. Email communications should be avoided and no mushy gushy chats in office. There is something about email that makes men and women let down their guards, so before hitting the send button on your computer, re-read your message and make sure that you are not hitting the reply all/send all button!

So finally if you are so much in love and are ready to face the same woman who sits in the cubicle next to you again in the dining table sitting next to you at your home having dinner. Or the lady, for whom you bought that expensive deodorant for yourself to woe her, shopping for a deodorant for you and saying “Better use it. You stink like a pig in summer.” Ouch! Or still you are ready to face the same charming lady who greeted you every morning in office to shriek at you every morning from the kitchen to wake you up.
Or the dazzling beauty for whom you went to sleep each day early so that you catch her in sweet dreams to be well.. wherever you want! Different people have different styles. So I can’t comment.
If this is the case then go for it.
Office romances can be fun, and successful -- a growing number of newlyweds are coworkers. They should take the proper steps, however, to ensure that the relationship will last without interfering in the workplace.

P.S. Well you might think that I’m primarily addressing to the M sex. Yes, I’m nobody to teach the fairer sex the art of flirt!