Welcome Aboard..!

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Hey There!

 This blog is a collection of various stories, opinions on various aspects of life,  nostalgic anecdotes, lessons learnt in life and a bit of amateur primitive poetry!

 Scribbles : If you like poetry (amateur-primitive-simple-poetry)

 Guess: Who Am I? : If you like riddles, check out this collection of Riddle-Poetry

 Today In Short :  A series, that narrates some of the simplest yet inspiring and  thought provoking  incidences from daily life  

Story Time With A Difference : A collection of inspiring tales for the grown ups!

 Weekly Photo Challenge, A-Z Blogging , 31 Day Blog Challenge , Writing 201 are  some of the activities/challenges that are published on a regular basis..

If you like the blog click the follow/subscribe button and please feel free to leave your valuable  comments. 

Thank You For Stopping By..!

~ Yuvathi ❤ 🙂        .

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Crisps : Not All Actions Require A Reaction

If someone did something unfair, wrong, anything stupid, unjust, evil to you or your loved ones; take a deep breath, think about the following questions:

”Does this action require my reaction?”

If Yes, before reacting, analyze the reaction you intend to show

”Will my reaction hurt this person?”
”Will my reaction hurt the relationship I built with this person?”
”Will my reaction ruin my/their peace of mind?”

Don’t ruin all the hard work over a spur-of-a-moment reaction.

Remember, no matter how bad the situation/action is, it takes a lot of effort and time to build relationships and maintain peace in life. Don’t ruin all the hard work over a spur-of-a-moment reaction.

Life Of A Career Woman : The Probationary/Learning Period

Every company/organization has a certain probationary or training period. It comes with the job role. For complex work, it could be a year. It doesn’t matter if you are a fresh graduate at your first job or an experienced professional on a new role, there is a certain learning period for every job role.

One thing we all tend to do is rush the process. We want to create a great first impression as a quick learner/ great employee / team player / manager and so we end up trying to hurry and skim through the learning period. This does no good. So DON’T.

The first year at a new job role is crucial. It is time for you – not just to impress but to learn and adapt. Some jobs require less than a year. So work it out accordingly.

Life Of A Career Woman : The Probationary/Learning Period

The Learning Phase / Probationary Period – Dos & Don’ts :

• Take your time. Learn everything in detail as much as you can. Ask for tips and tricks that only seasoned seniors would know due to their vast experience in the job role.
• Be a sponge. Observe, absorb, assimilate.
• Keep notes. Maintain a learning journal or tracker. List the topics you want to learn more about and research.
• Make mistakes and learn from them. (Avoid blunders – remember you are still a temp, so a blunder could cost your job.)
• Don’t try to justify your mistakes. Admit your mistakes and let your boss/team know that you are willing to learn and improve.
• Don’t give excuses for your inefficiency or lack of knowledge. Work on it. Action speaks louder.
• Don’t exaggerate or show off your skills yet. Be humble. This a period for you to establish a good foundation and develop a rapport; your time to shine will come eventually.
• Be open & honest about what you know and don’t know. This will allow you to ask questions to your colleagues and learn more in detail.

This is not only time for your boss, team and the organization to determine if you are right for the job but it is also the time for you to figure out if this is the right job role for you.

So, make full use of it. Trust the process. Don’t rush it. Enjoy your learning phase as you will have a lot to prove for years to come!

Be Ambitious. Be Consistent. Be Brave.
~Yuvathi ❤ 🙂

–The Confused Young Adult 

Life Of A Career Woman : The First Argument

Arguments – an exchange of words that’s given a negative connotation because the result doesn’t always leave a good taste. A sort of conversation that I try my best to avoid and yet have had to get into one every now and then. It is quite nerve wracking to start a conversation at work knowing that it will lead to an argument. It is even more awfully scary when you know you will be against a lot of seasoned senior professionals. But sometimes, it is important that young professionals share their fresh ideas to bring a change, a tiny twist in the way of things at work.

Life Of A Career Woman : The First Argument

When I first raised my hand to disagree with my entire team over an existing system – a practice that deemed successful for decades.. I was scared-to-death.

My train of thoughts consisted of a 100 what-if questions:
“What if am wrong?”
“What if they all disagree?”
“What if I come out as an ignorant incompetent woman at work?”
“What if they think am arrogant?”
“What if am correct and become an outcast?”
“What if they all end up disliking me?”
“What if they agree and then I flop miserably during execution?”
“What if my disagreement turn out to be disrespectful to all the seniors?”
“What if my point is totally off-topic?”
The list is an endless infinite loop.

All these are common questions that pop in our head every time we deny to conform to the common expected behavior/outcome. This is when we leave our comfort zone and take a minor risk although they may seem like a life or death situation to our inexperienced humble little brain.

It is very easy to nod our head, say yes to everything and everyone. It is easy to live a life of no-conflict. It is comfortable but definitely not satisfying.

Here’s what I learnt as I took those risks and left my comfort zone to question existing practices, legacy systems and unnecessarily time consuming processes:

• Most of the questions that popped in my head turned out to be true every once in a while. Some times I failed miserably, sometimes I became an outcast because I was right, sometimes I was disliked by everyone because I looked arrogant/disrespectful.
• With time, I learnt the art of negotiation. I learnt to question without offending anyone although it does rarely happen and I can’t help it.
• Slowly, I was taken seriously by my team. Most people respected me for taking the risk and having the guts to state my points accurately.
• There will always be someone who says NO to everything I suggest purely because they just don’t want to agree with me.
• DATA & STATS – they are everything. It is always important to back a statement with facts and numbers as they can never be wrong.
• Unless questioned, nobody will know that there is a different approach.
• Most importantly : Comfort doesn’t always mean Satisfaction.

I know it is scary. I know it is tough but it is all worth it. Take small risks everyday. To argue your point you first need to know to ask the right questions in the right way. You will learn to ask right questions only if you try to raise your hand in the first place. Even if you fail miserably once, remember you are in this job because you earned it – which means you are capable of understanding and questioning the system. Next time, you will know a better approach to your team, a better choice of words and timing.

Few years down the lane, you will also be sitting in the same panel and a newbie would question your system with a better approach. What you do now and the skills you pick up as you grow will determine the path you pave for the future young professionals.

Be Bold. Be Courageous. Be Smart.
~Yuvathi ❤ 🙂

–The Confused Young Adult 

Life Of A Career Woman : An Intro

When I first started this blog, I had just turned twenty and I was a fresh college graduate. I had done some freelance jobs, but I hadn’t had any corporate experience. I stepped into the corporate world as an ambitious young girl – bubbling with excitement with a thirst to reach great heights in my career. I had no idea what this busy corporate world had in store for me.

Life Of A Career Woman

Every blog post on the Internet gave the common insights – be professional, be punctual, wear these outfits, go the extra mile, learn something new and have it up your sleeve ready to be disposed at the right time and right place, don’t be the lazy-freeloader living off of other team members’ hard-work , don’t be this, don’t be that, do this and that..

But there were many practical things I wished someone had told me beforehand – some sort of guidance, warning and alert signals here and there would have been helpful. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any.

Now, I would like to bring this blog back to life and start sharing some of the simplest of things that I wished someone had told me. Things I share here may not be relatable for everyone, as they could differ from industry to industry , and of course from culture & people of one region to another! I will try my best to keep it as common and relatable as possible. If you could relate to it, please leave a comment. If it varies, please feel free to share your experiences too and it would be helpful for every other striving ambitious career woman on the planet!

~Yuvathi ❤ 🙂

–The Confused Young Adult 

Internet Etiquette : Be Human.

I saw a video today, about a Brazilian homeless man and his dog. He was being taken to the hospital in an ambulance and the dog couldn’t let him go! As every other loving pet dog, he chased the ambulance all they way and went a step further. He didn’t stop at all! The ambulance staff couldn’t handle it anymore, they stopped the ambulance and let the dog in! 🙂 🙂 Such a beautiful scene caught on camera,. Don’t you think?

But what were the top comments for the video?

Mean ones!

Well, you may wonder what kind of mean comments they could come up with for such a lovely video.. they said ” Shame on them for letting the dog chase so long, they could have let him in instead of taking the video”.. this is just a starter, there were more!

Wow! All those hate comments, mean comments, captions, and what-not that are trending on the internet!!

What’s wrong with people and where are all the manners and politeness? What about positivity and being optimistic?

If a person is tone deaf we wouldn’t say ” Gosh, shut up, you suck,. Don’t kill us with your horrible sound”!! Never! Especially to a stranger? Never Ever!!

But people throw disrespectful, malicious comments and talk trash at strangers on the social media with no care whatsoever! They even belittle the ones who are not great, but good enough!

We can no longer call it cyber-bullying. People are rude, mean, vicious, heartless and ruthless on the internet, especially – on the social media.

It looks like humans are no longer human anymore!

Since everybody owns a smartphone, a laptop and an internet connection, they think they are entitled to write whatever that comes to their mind, have every right to hurt a person at ease and never feel guilty about it since they are not confronted in person. What about the recipient? Aren’t they humans too? Don’t they have a heart? What happened to being kind and considerate to fellow human beings??

People even take it as a chance to come up with the most ridiculously creative malicious mean comments to climb on the most tweeted/like/shared mean comments ladder. Ah, Disgusting!

So, here’s the thing :

The Internet Etiquette : Be Human.

Before you write a comment or a caption on the social media, answer the following questions :

1. Is this comment absolutely necessary?

2. Will this comment make the recipient happy/ make the world a better place to live?

3. Would I like it if someone said the same to me?

4. If I ever met this person, would I look into their eyes and say the same comment?

If the answer is “Yes” to all the 4 questions, go ahead and write the comments to your heart’s content. If not, please stay put, scroll down and go for the next update.

Be Kind. Be Human.

Please share this with your fellow commentators, tweeters, social media lovers, vloggers, and bloggers. Share this with your teenage kids, friends and family members. Let’s create a responsible society and create awareness about being kind and considerate – About being Human.

~Yuvathi ❤ 🙂

–The Confused Young Adult 

 

Looking For Daily Inspiration and Motivation? Try These 4 Tips..

Well, Travelling 4 to 5 hours everyday to go to work and then work diligently for 8.5 hours is manageable. But what if you have a horribly mean boss and superficial and super cunning colleagues who act so nice on the outside but wield their swords and sharpen them behind your back waiting for an opportunity to slowly and nonchalantly stab you, walk over your hard work and cease all your success and act as if nothing ever happened? Well…Well..Welcome to the corporate world. 😀

In this ugly cruel world, it is difficult to find motivation and inspiration on a daily basis. So what do I do to keep myself optimistic and pull myself up for a healthy day amidst all the evil and darkness every day?

Here are 4 of my habits, that I follow whenever I feel low, whenever I’m in need of some positive energy, to be inspired and motivated. If you like them, try them out. Who knows, it could not only cancel all the negativity but also bring more positivity in your life and inspire to aspire for more 🙂

1. TED Talks

Is there anything better than a TED Talk? It has huge collection of speeches from people from all around the globe from a variety of fields. These people who grew from the scratch, breaking beyond all impossibilities and hardships and built a castle for themselves with all the stones thrown at them..talk to you from their heart. Men, Women, Children, The abled, Differently-abled, Scientists, Scholars, Dumb-heads like you and me who turned trash into invaluable precious things…yes, you can listen to their stories, their adventures and get all psyched. Their speeches will make you feel special. They will make you feel like you can do “anything” in this world. They are available on YouTube and even they have their own Android App with a great collection of Ted Talks. Give it a try if you are into “Talks”. These are really good 🙂

2. Pinterest

If you are someone who is into picture-inspiration, you’d love this. Search for your favorite category.. and scroll through. You will find not only inspiring images, but also some really cool websites linked to those images. I found a large world of infinite knowledge and fun through Pinterest. There are many other sites like this such as Tumblr, Instagram, etc., but my personal favorite is Pinterest. Pin them, Save them, Read them or simply scroll over and Create your Own Inspiration Boards with a collection of all your favorite posts and pictures! If you like looking through images without actually reading a large content and get creatively psyched – give this a try!

3. The Greatness Guide By Robin Sharma

This is my all time favorite book! I think I have mentioned this book on some other post.. Every chapter is just one page long or even less. It doesn’t take more than 10 mins to read a chapter and assimilate it. It is the Maggie-Noodles for Instant Motivation. Simply Superb and Worth spending 10 minutes of your day. I still flip through the pages and re-read some chapters every now and then to get my inspiration-fluids flowing! If you love reading but do not have enough time to read an entire book, check this out. You will love it too! 😉

4. Take A Solitary Walk

If you don’t want to do anything and yet get inspired. Just take a walk. Don’t look into your phone, you don’t even need a companion. All you need is yourself. Yes, the world is full of motivation. Every living being on this earth is trying so hard to survive. The little bug is trying to save food for it’s young ones even though it wouldn’t live for another day, every homeless man is striving hard to survive against all odds, every bird, fish, the man living at the end of the street, the woman selling veggies along the pavement, the little boy delivering newspaper to pay for his tuition.. every one of them is striving hard. What other motivation do you need? Look around, go for a small walk and think, do you need anything more to motivate you??

5. Bonus Tip

If all else fails, don’t you worry, you can always visit The Confused Young Adult’s Blog !! Read a poetry or a riddle or anecdotes and other discussions here and get your mood hyped to pull out another exhausting day and make it even better. 😉

Hope you liked this post. Do you have any other habit that motivates you? Feel free to share your comments below!

Be Kind. Live and Let Live.

~Yuvathi ❤ 🙂

–The Confused Young Adult 

Why Should You Argue When You Can Have Discussion? Tips To Turn An Ugly Argument Into A Healthy Discussion.

Does anybody like to have an argument? Do you like arguing? What does winning an argument give you anyway? What is the prize of the achievement?

Food to feed your ego? Does that make you happy?

No!

How do you feel after making your loved ones feel hurt? How is it “winning” when your loved ones’ ego is destroyed and humiliated? What about the sense of resentment? The taste of bitterness left after the argument?

I once liked a guy who was really sweet, very smart, kind and loving. But the only thing that stopped me from falling in love with him was his terrible love for arguments. For everything, he had to argue. Starting from choice of food, books and music to major life decisions, he would argue about anything and everything!! He enjoyed them. Thoroughly. While I on the other hand loathed arguments.

God! I hate Arguments. Am not talking about ‘workplace-healthy arguments’. Am talking about those that happen between loved ones, friends and families.

Discussions are Healthy. They let both parties to speak and share their differences and understand each other. There is no winning or losing. You just understand different kinds of people from their perspective and empathize with them.

Whereas, Arguments are Unhealthy in a relationship. They destroy every tiny bit of empathy left in your heart, destroy love and relationships. It makes people selfish and ruthless in their words. It induces the need to feel worthy and to dominate the other. The loved ones become opponents. It spoils every beautiful aspect of a relationship.

So, How do you avoid an argument?

Turn it into a discussion! It is as simple as that!

Don’t Get Angry.

Instead of getting angry and saying, “No you’re wrong!“.

Say, “Okay, this is my opinion, what do you say? How do you like it? What is your point of view?”

Do Not Ever Raise Your Voice.

The very second you raise your voice, the discussion will turn ugly and it would no longer be a discussion.

Lose the urge to justify your point and be a good listener. 

It may be difficult to convince the other person to understand your opinion. But in a discussion, you have at least the opportunity to make them understand. In an argument, nobody will be willing to understand. Both parties only want to win and justify that their point is right and the other’s is wrong. There is no understanding whatsoever! So, don’t justify. Just Listen first.

Try and Learn to Empathize – The Common Ground

The moment you give the other person an opportunity to express themselves and give their opinions and listen to them is when you truly become a winner. You may not have an argument to win but you won’t lose anything either!  Instead, you win over your loved ones’ heart & respect and you also end up with a sweet taste after coming to a common ground. There may be compromises but it won’t be bitter! 🙂 

Enjoy Happy and Healthy Discussions with your loved ones.

Be Kind,

~Yuvathi

–The Confused Young Adult

The Freaking Invisible Creaking Door!

It was 11 p.m. I was exhausted after a really long day and yet I was so immersed in  re-watching the older episodes of my all time favorite television series – Sherlock, that I didn’t even notice the time. Soon, it was midnight and my eyelids were shutting down. Just as I was about to doze off to some faraway wonderland I heard a creak.

A short Creak.

I opened my eyes widely to pay attention. Nothing. My room was quiet and dark. So, I thought I was just imagining things and went back into my warm blanket. Not a minute had passed, once again I was about to catch some sleep and I heard another “Creeaakk”. A little longer but not long enough.

My room has several wooden cabinets on the top and along one entire side of the wall. The weather was quite cold so I had shut the door and windows with only the ventilation window open and all the cabinets were shut too.

Even if a door was opened in the first creak, it needs to shut in the next creek or open even more widely in the next creak. There was no logic in the noise. But I was so certain that it was a freaking invisible creaking door!!

I was too tired to handle anymore, I closed my eyes again, heard the creak again, longer than the previous one but I couldn’t care.. I was too tired…I slept through the creepiness…

The next day I cleaned and checked all the cabinets, closet, doors and windows. Shut them tight before going to bed and ensured that none of them creaked no matter how slowly I opened or closed them.

Yet, this happened for one whole week. Every time I opened my eyes, the creaking stopped. I thought I was hallucinating or may be I was just paranoid or may be I was turning insane.. Then a whole month went by and I couldn’t take it anymore.

The next night while I heard the first creak, I got up and went to my mom and woke her up. I brought her with me and requested her to sleep in my room for the night. She knows I don’t believe in such paranormal or supernatural things and so she was surprised but she trusted me and came along.

We waited for a long time and there was no noise!! We turned off the lights and waited. Still nothing. My mom was convinced that I was just imagining things and so she consoled me and went back to her room. The moment she left my room, the “Creak” came back.

Gosh! That’s it! I ran back and requested her to come again. Thankfully, she didn’t hesitate. She came. After 1 solid hour of silence, the invisible door creaked. It creaked and creaked and creaked even more. Louder and Longer. We kept our eyes wide open. turned on the lights, we couldn’t find a thing.

The more we tried the sneakier the creak became.

We turned off the lights, it creaked. We turned on the lights but closed our eyes for a second it creaked. We just couldn’t shut our eyes even for a fraction of a second!

Horrible. 

We couldn’t think of a solution other than logical reasoning or blind faith in prayers.

So we chose both. We decided to ignore. We just announced loudly “Well, let’s ignore it. It’s just nothing. Let’s turn off the lights and sleep peacefully because it doesn’t make any sense.” Then we chanted some prayers and went to bed. 😀 🙂

And ever since that day, thankfully there has been no creaking.

I honestly don’t know what it was.

I believe there is a scientific and logical explanation for everything.

But it was really spooky, creepy and very very scary. But thankfully, I feel safer and more peaceful now. May be I should have told my mom a little earlier. One month of craziness nearly ate my brain.

I don’t know what to make of it, but I just felt like sharing with you all.

Please feel free to share your thoughts. 🙂

~Yuvathi ❤ 🙂

–The Confused Young Adult

Sometimes You Need To Let Go..

Life is just a collection of memories made by the collaboration of people who cross paths with us during the journey. Of people who are total strangers, best friends, family and acquaintances. Some remain by our side through the crests and troughs, some are mere passing clouds while some are merciless invincible hurricanes, that uproot every last thing we have and take them along with them…leaving behind nothing.

The ones who stay by our side no matter what happens are our blessing. But what can we do about the rest of the people?

Should we run behind them, chase them and beg them to stay? Is it possible? Even if it were possible, is it worth?

What about those who misunderstand us? What about those who don’t care how we feel no matter how many times we try our best to explain ourselves?

Should we try to make them understand? Do we really need to explain ourselves? Is it worth all the pain and effort??

Last but not the least, what about those who deceive us? The ones we trusted blindly but left us shattered and heart broken? Should we be angry with them forever?

Does anger serve any purpose? Especially when the person has already left, does it impact anyone else other than ourselves? Or, should we go for a revenge?

Does revenge put the broken pieces of our heart back together and heal the scars?

It might be difficult to digest. It might be heavy on the chest, choking the throat, aching the heart and straining the eyes from breaking into a flood of tears… But the best thing we could do for ourselves is to let go..

Let go of the people who left and keep their memories,

While letting go of the bad memories and keeping the good ones.

Let go of all the pain and keep the joy.

Because you deserve happiness. You deserve to live a peaceful life. 

Let go.. Move on.

Be Kind to everyone. Be kind to yourself too.

~Yuvathi

–The Confused Young Adult

My Life In The 1900s!

Well.. I thought am going to be back to the blogging world with a bang and introduced a series called The 4-Line Motivation Series and then Mother Nature couldn’t take it anymore. She got so furious that she came back with a bang too and literally destroyed our city with a terribly huge cyclone and heavy rain!

And, that’s how I went back to the 1900s! 😀

• We didn’t have electricity for an entire week. So many trees had fallen down and many transformers were destroyed by the heavy winds and rain.

• No water because we couldn’t run the bore-well motor.

• No source of news/entertainment because obviously the TV didn’t work.

• No source of communication because all networks were down.

• Even if there was a weak signal, our phones’ batteries died.

• No lights, fans or air-conditioning as the UPS died down after few hours.

• We couldn’t inform our worried relatives and friends that we were safe.

Nothing with the latest technologies was functioning, it was like the darkest of times. The days were short, so there was not much sunlight and it was cold all the time. Had we had such experiences before, I think we would have handled it better. If you have read my earlier posts, you would know that I come from a place where 24°C is considered as winter! No Kidding! We hardly have winter and we always have bright sunlight all the time! 

So the cyclone was hard to handle as it was all so new for us.

It was like we were going back in time!

But it was really so much fun and awesome!

Time Travel – Here’s My Life In The 1900’s.. 😉

• We drew water from the well manually. Yes, we did!

• Everyone in our apartment came together to help each other! We made pulleys using ropes to pull up the water buckets to different floors in the apartment. One would draw the water, others would stand in line to pass the buckets and pull them over to various floors in the building through stairs!

• We had to clear the blocked roads and couldn’t wait for someone else to do it for us. We took our own equipment and cleared the fallen trees by cutting them down manually and moving them off the roads.

• Since we had no internet or TV, we all had great family time.

• In the meantime, apart from all the physical work; I read several books! I read at least one book a day, which is nearly 400 pages a day! (Awesome right?!)

• In order to save the candle light, we all sat in the same room all the time. We sat together for dinners and teas. We were seeing each other’s face while talking and not our phones for text messages.

• We washed clothes and dishes sitting next to the well in the backyard (just like the olden days!)

• We used Water like Liquid Gold!!!

• We helped people in our neighboring apartments by sharing the water from our well. We had so much social networking going on without internet!

• The news about the weather, power and network availability was shared from street to street through word of mouth just like the early 20th century!! 😀

• Most importantly, we all went to bed by 8 pm! (well there’s nothing much to do in the dark, and the peace and quiet makes you sleep like a newborn puppy!)

The list is endless!

Living in the 1900’s was not so bad. In fact I was very comfortable without phone, internet and electricity. Wish we had battery-run radio just for weather updates and news. We have become so dependent on our smartphones and laptops that we didn’t even think about a blackout and emergency equipment. It was a wake up call. 🙂

Well well.. everything is back to normal now. I literally had to fight with the network service provider to fix my phone and internet connection and finally all is well!

In 2015 December, we were struck by heavy floods and 2016 December we faced a terrible cyclone. Hope 2017 would be calmer and peaceful.

Wish you all a wonderful New Year’s Eve.

~Yuvathi ❤ 🙂

–The Confused Young Adult