The finance ministry has notified that from December 1 the rate of interest on Public Provident Fund (PPF) scheme in the current financial year ending March 2012 would be 8.6%, up from 8%. The government has also allowed higher limit in PPF investments, allowing one to put up to Rs 1 lakh per year in this instrument, from Rs 70,000 earlier.
The rate of interest on the 5-year national savings certificate (NSC) has also been hiked from 8% to 8.4% now, while small savings accounts holders in post offices will now get 4% interest, up from 3.5%. Interest on monthly investment schemes (MIS) has also been increased to 8.2% from 8%, and on national savings certificates (NSC) the hike has been to 8.4% from 8%. A new 10-year NSC will also be available soon.
There are some disappointments as well. The government is withdrawing Kisan Vikas Patra, on suspicion that this is being used for money laundering. It has also decided to do away with the 5% bonus that MIS customers got at the time of maturity. What is even more disappointing is that this withdrawal of bonus payout will be applicable even on old accounts that remain operational on or after December 1.
There is another important change that investors need to be mindful about. Earlier interest rates in all small savings schemes were fixed for the tenure of the investment. This is changing now: From December 1, the rates of interest on these instruments will be linked to what one can earn in the government bonds, also called Gilts, of equivalent maturity. What this means is returns from these much safer savings instruments will become market-linked and hence variable. On some year it will go up, while on some it will go down.
This variable rate also means that if you have invested in an NSC of 5 years, you rate of interest will be 25 basis points above the yield on 5-year Gilts. For example, if the yield on 5-year Gilts is 8.75%, you will get 9% on your investments. And as the corresponding yield changes, the rate of interest on your investment will also change each year. The good news for senior citizens is that the rate of interest they will get on the 5-year Savings Scheme for them will fetch 100 basis points more than the yield on 5-year Gilts. So in the above example, they will earn at the rate of 9.75%. And in 10-year NSC, one will get 50 basis points above the 10-year yield on Gilts.
Experts say that under the changed rate structure, PPFs will now give one an annual post-tax return of about 11.3% (provided full income tax benefits are availed by the investor), which is very good. And on top of this, remember, this is a very safe investment.
SOURCE: TIMES OF INDIA
Friday, 2 December 2011
Wednesday, 24 November 2010
Steve Jobs Speech to Stanford Graduates
Steve Jobs Speech to Stanford Graduates
Three stories
This is a copy of a speech that Steve Jobs delivered to the graduates of Stanford University.
-----------------------
"I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal.
Three stories:
1) The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the
ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5 cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.
Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
=========================================
2) My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky - I found what I loved to do early in life.
Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started?
Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me - I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being
successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith.
I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.
And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it.
And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.
So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
===============================================
3) My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like:
"If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right."
It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself:
"If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?"
And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means totry to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words:
"Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."
It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much." - Steve Jobs - June 2005
SOURCES: www.gakusen.ac.jp
Three stories
This is a copy of a speech that Steve Jobs delivered to the graduates of Stanford University.
-----------------------
"I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal.
Three stories:
1) The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the
ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5 cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.
Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
=========================================
2) My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky - I found what I loved to do early in life.
Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started?
Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me - I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being
successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith.
I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.
And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it.
And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.
So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
===============================================
3) My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like:
"If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right."
It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself:
"If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?"
And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means totry to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words:
"Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."
It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much." - Steve Jobs - June 2005
SOURCES: www.gakusen.ac.jp
Tuesday, 11 May 2010
Walking for fun and fitness Walking for good health
Walking for fun and fitness Walking for good health
How many times we have made resolutions to engage in some sort of physical activity to keep us fit and failed to keep our promises. Yes, Gyms are expensive, we do not have time, I am too old to go to a gym.
Today, I am going to recommend you a simple fitness solution. Which is walking.
Walking is an excellent exercise to improve and maintain our health. Just 30 minutes of regular walk can increase cardiovascular fitness, strengthen bones, reduce excess body fat and boost muscle power and endurance. Walking is free and doesn’t require any special equipment or training.
You can get out and walk without worrying about some of the risks associated with other more vigorous forms of exercise. It’s also a great form of physical activity for people who are overweight, elderly or those who haven’t exercised in a long time.
Walking pose little health risk but, if you have a medical condition, check with your doctor before you begin.
To get the health benefits, try to walk for at least 30 minutes as briskly as you can most days of the week. ‘Brisk’ means that you can still talk but not sing, and you may be puffing slightly.
Wear a pedometer
A pedometer measures the number of steps you take. You can use it to measure your movement throughout a day and compare it to other days or to recommended steps. This may motivate you to move more. The recommended number of steps accumulated per day to achieve health benefits is 10,000 steps or more.
Walking alone
There are various ways to make sure that your daily walk doesn’t become boring.
If you want to stick close to home and limit your walking to neighbourhood streets, pick different routes so you don’t get tired of seeing the same sights.
If you feel unsafe walking alone, find one or more friends or family members to walk with.
Walk at various times of the day. The sights you see early morning are bound to be different to those of the afternoon or early evening.
Drive to different reserves, park the car and enjoy the views while you walk.
A dog that needs regular exercise gives you the motivation to walk every day. You might like the companionship too. If you don’t have a dog, and aren’t planning on getting one, consider offering to walk a neighbour’s dog from time to time.
Walking with others
Walking with others can turn a bout of exercise into an enjoyable social occasion.
Schedule a regular family walk - this is a great way to pass on healthy habits to your children and spend time together, while getting fit at the same time
If walking with children, make sure the route and length of time spent walking is appropriate to their age.
Babies and young toddlers enjoy long walks in the pram. Take the opportunity to point out items of interest to them, such as vehicles, flowers and other pedestrians.
Look for the self-guided nature walks, which have been set up in many parks. Younger children enjoy looking for the next numbered post; older ones can learn about the plants and animals of the park, and perhaps take photos or record their experience in other ways.
Ask neighbours or friends if they would like to join you on your walks. You could have a regular ‘beat’ around the neighbourhood, or meet at various reserves.
Safety suggestions
Walking is generally a safe way to exercise, but look out for unexpected hazards.
Remember to warm up and cool down to reduce the risk of injuries.
Wear sunglasses, sunscreen, a long-sleeved shirt and a hat to avoid sunburn.
Carry a walking stick or umbrella to fend off unleashed, unfriendly dogs.
Wear appropriate footwear to reduce the risk of blisters.
Drink plenty of fluids before, during and after your walk.
Benefits of walking
To conclude, walking is an excellent exercise to maintain our health. Walking improves cardiovascular, heart and lung fitness, reduces risk of heart disease and stroke, improves management of hypertension, high cholesterol, joint and muscular pain or stiffness, and diabetes. It reduces body fat and increases muscle strength and endurance. Let us not have any more reasons not to keep our resolution of becoming fit.
Regards,
Pradeep John Farias
CPA Australia, ACMA (CIMA,UK)
Melbourne, Australia
How many times we have made resolutions to engage in some sort of physical activity to keep us fit and failed to keep our promises. Yes, Gyms are expensive, we do not have time, I am too old to go to a gym.
Today, I am going to recommend you a simple fitness solution. Which is walking.
Walking is an excellent exercise to improve and maintain our health. Just 30 minutes of regular walk can increase cardiovascular fitness, strengthen bones, reduce excess body fat and boost muscle power and endurance. Walking is free and doesn’t require any special equipment or training.
You can get out and walk without worrying about some of the risks associated with other more vigorous forms of exercise. It’s also a great form of physical activity for people who are overweight, elderly or those who haven’t exercised in a long time.
Walking pose little health risk but, if you have a medical condition, check with your doctor before you begin.
To get the health benefits, try to walk for at least 30 minutes as briskly as you can most days of the week. ‘Brisk’ means that you can still talk but not sing, and you may be puffing slightly.
Wear a pedometer
A pedometer measures the number of steps you take. You can use it to measure your movement throughout a day and compare it to other days or to recommended steps. This may motivate you to move more. The recommended number of steps accumulated per day to achieve health benefits is 10,000 steps or more.
Walking alone
There are various ways to make sure that your daily walk doesn’t become boring.
If you want to stick close to home and limit your walking to neighbourhood streets, pick different routes so you don’t get tired of seeing the same sights.
If you feel unsafe walking alone, find one or more friends or family members to walk with.
Walk at various times of the day. The sights you see early morning are bound to be different to those of the afternoon or early evening.
Drive to different reserves, park the car and enjoy the views while you walk.
A dog that needs regular exercise gives you the motivation to walk every day. You might like the companionship too. If you don’t have a dog, and aren’t planning on getting one, consider offering to walk a neighbour’s dog from time to time.
Walking with others
Walking with others can turn a bout of exercise into an enjoyable social occasion.
Schedule a regular family walk - this is a great way to pass on healthy habits to your children and spend time together, while getting fit at the same time
If walking with children, make sure the route and length of time spent walking is appropriate to their age.
Babies and young toddlers enjoy long walks in the pram. Take the opportunity to point out items of interest to them, such as vehicles, flowers and other pedestrians.
Look for the self-guided nature walks, which have been set up in many parks. Younger children enjoy looking for the next numbered post; older ones can learn about the plants and animals of the park, and perhaps take photos or record their experience in other ways.
Ask neighbours or friends if they would like to join you on your walks. You could have a regular ‘beat’ around the neighbourhood, or meet at various reserves.
Safety suggestions
Walking is generally a safe way to exercise, but look out for unexpected hazards.
Remember to warm up and cool down to reduce the risk of injuries.
Wear sunglasses, sunscreen, a long-sleeved shirt and a hat to avoid sunburn.
Carry a walking stick or umbrella to fend off unleashed, unfriendly dogs.
Wear appropriate footwear to reduce the risk of blisters.
Drink plenty of fluids before, during and after your walk.
Benefits of walking
To conclude, walking is an excellent exercise to maintain our health. Walking improves cardiovascular, heart and lung fitness, reduces risk of heart disease and stroke, improves management of hypertension, high cholesterol, joint and muscular pain or stiffness, and diabetes. It reduces body fat and increases muscle strength and endurance. Let us not have any more reasons not to keep our resolution of becoming fit.
Regards,
Pradeep John Farias
CPA Australia, ACMA (CIMA,UK)
Melbourne, Australia
Make happiness a habit
Make happiness a habit
JEMIMA MARGARET ELIOT Times New Network , May 11, 2010, 10.20am IST
For your heart’s sake, make happiness a habit.
They don’t call it a hearty laugh without reason. Substituting a fang-baring, expletive-spewing expression with a pleasant smile does a lot of good to your heart, says a recent research.
Researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston reported that positive moods and attitudes protected people, especially the elderly, against heart disease. Even incremental increases in happiness helped: For every step up on the researchers’ happiness scale, male participants’ stroke risk dropped 41 per cent and women’s risk dropped 18 per cent.
“It’s old hat that emotions do affect the heart,” says cardiologist Manoj Agarwal and adds that heart-related problems are “common in people who are prone to depression and are impatient, get angry easily, have difficulty expressing emotions, are too competitive, perfectionists and those who place an unhealthy dependence on external rewards such as wealth, status, or power.”
Also rage seems to be the new age disease — attitude sporting, multi-tasking Gen Y is clearly flirting with heart disease as psychologist Sujatha Raman points out that “with the emergence of MNCs there’s been a rise in referrals from cardiologists for anger management for the city’s young work force.”
Provoked
All of us are familiar with the pounding of the heart, when one’s angry. Rage results in hormonal secretions that cause a rise in the heart rate and can cause “a spasm in the arteries in normal people. Imagine the effect that it has on people already with a block in their arteries,” says Agarwal. Anger is an impulsive reaction over which the perpetuator has little control, but today there are techniques that help people deal with their outbursts.
Raman talks of a fun game where the patient is provoked to elicit an angry response and he wins points at every instance he does not succumb to the provocation. “We also ask patients to list anger-provoking incidents in the month, ask them to identify the trigger factor and give them a back-up plan on how to deal with a similar situation when it arises,” she explains.
Psychiatrist Dr Prabhakar Korada suggests deep-breathing techniques to avert a rage attack — “When we get angry our heart rate increases and a patient is taught to divert attention to the heartbeat and reduce it consciously with the help of breathing techniques.”
Even faking helps
Getting out of the vice-hold of anger and irritability is of course the first step and the second step is to “make happiness a habit,” says Korada, adding that “even faking it has its benefits as the prolonged practice is habit forming and you start eliciting positive vibes from people”. Though not many take kindly to the benefit of laughter groups, terming it as forced laughter, Korada says that “social grouping and sharing at these clubs reduces stress and laughter has its benefits — it’s infectious, has all the benefits of pranayama, is a good workout for the chest muscles and increases the venous and lymphatic circulation in the body.” Yoga therapist Rita Khanna reveals that laughter yoga is about “self-triggered laughter and is a powerful antidote to stress, pain and conflict”.
Get hitched
A Tel Aviv University study done on more than 10,000 Israeli men found that those who were married at midlife were 64 per cent less likely to die of a stroke during the next 34 years than single men. Agarwal agrees that “happy family relations with spouse and kids go a long way in de-stressing a person and shielding them from stress-related heart diseases.” Raman points out that “partners who have occasional squabbles are better off heart-wise that a single person.”
Don’t worry, be happy
The ‘no worries’ motto of Timon and Pumba in The Lion King is something Korada advises. “Learn to laugh at yourself when you make a mistake instead of whipping yourself emotionally. Humour is good for you, it reduces stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline like-substances and increases endorphins in the bloodstream which are responsible for the feel-good experience.”
So, what are you waiting for? It’s time to laugh your heart out.
SOURCES : THE TIMES OF INDIA jemima.margaret@timesgroup.com
JEMIMA MARGARET ELIOT Times New Network , May 11, 2010, 10.20am IST
For your heart’s sake, make happiness a habit.
They don’t call it a hearty laugh without reason. Substituting a fang-baring, expletive-spewing expression with a pleasant smile does a lot of good to your heart, says a recent research.
Researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston reported that positive moods and attitudes protected people, especially the elderly, against heart disease. Even incremental increases in happiness helped: For every step up on the researchers’ happiness scale, male participants’ stroke risk dropped 41 per cent and women’s risk dropped 18 per cent.
“It’s old hat that emotions do affect the heart,” says cardiologist Manoj Agarwal and adds that heart-related problems are “common in people who are prone to depression and are impatient, get angry easily, have difficulty expressing emotions, are too competitive, perfectionists and those who place an unhealthy dependence on external rewards such as wealth, status, or power.”
Also rage seems to be the new age disease — attitude sporting, multi-tasking Gen Y is clearly flirting with heart disease as psychologist Sujatha Raman points out that “with the emergence of MNCs there’s been a rise in referrals from cardiologists for anger management for the city’s young work force.”
Provoked
All of us are familiar with the pounding of the heart, when one’s angry. Rage results in hormonal secretions that cause a rise in the heart rate and can cause “a spasm in the arteries in normal people. Imagine the effect that it has on people already with a block in their arteries,” says Agarwal. Anger is an impulsive reaction over which the perpetuator has little control, but today there are techniques that help people deal with their outbursts.
Raman talks of a fun game where the patient is provoked to elicit an angry response and he wins points at every instance he does not succumb to the provocation. “We also ask patients to list anger-provoking incidents in the month, ask them to identify the trigger factor and give them a back-up plan on how to deal with a similar situation when it arises,” she explains.
Psychiatrist Dr Prabhakar Korada suggests deep-breathing techniques to avert a rage attack — “When we get angry our heart rate increases and a patient is taught to divert attention to the heartbeat and reduce it consciously with the help of breathing techniques.”
Even faking helps
Getting out of the vice-hold of anger and irritability is of course the first step and the second step is to “make happiness a habit,” says Korada, adding that “even faking it has its benefits as the prolonged practice is habit forming and you start eliciting positive vibes from people”. Though not many take kindly to the benefit of laughter groups, terming it as forced laughter, Korada says that “social grouping and sharing at these clubs reduces stress and laughter has its benefits — it’s infectious, has all the benefits of pranayama, is a good workout for the chest muscles and increases the venous and lymphatic circulation in the body.” Yoga therapist Rita Khanna reveals that laughter yoga is about “self-triggered laughter and is a powerful antidote to stress, pain and conflict”.
Get hitched
A Tel Aviv University study done on more than 10,000 Israeli men found that those who were married at midlife were 64 per cent less likely to die of a stroke during the next 34 years than single men. Agarwal agrees that “happy family relations with spouse and kids go a long way in de-stressing a person and shielding them from stress-related heart diseases.” Raman points out that “partners who have occasional squabbles are better off heart-wise that a single person.”
Don’t worry, be happy
The ‘no worries’ motto of Timon and Pumba in The Lion King is something Korada advises. “Learn to laugh at yourself when you make a mistake instead of whipping yourself emotionally. Humour is good for you, it reduces stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline like-substances and increases endorphins in the bloodstream which are responsible for the feel-good experience.”
So, what are you waiting for? It’s time to laugh your heart out.
SOURCES : THE TIMES OF INDIA jemima.margaret@timesgroup.com
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