Three big ideas to get unstuck today...

A lot of us, including myself, have been in tough life situations where we feel completely stuck. Just the idea of putting one foot in front of the other and getting on with each day becomes so painful. And yet, nothing lasts forever.

While getting myself out of such situations, I have learned some amazing insights about my own behavior. And my guess is that I am not so unique that the same ideas can't apply to you.

Here are my 3 big ideas to get 'unstuck'.

ONE: Move from emotion to reason
In a crisis, when hundreds of things are competing to get attention in your head, it is natural to feel emotionally overwhelmed. Ask yourself one simple rational question. For eg., how would my actions change if I spent five minutes to just calm myself down or what is the best thing to do in this bad situation or how bad is this situation, really? Asking a rational question blocks the emotional part of the brain and we begin to feel less emotionally disturbed. Try it, it works.

TWO: Use the crisis scale
On a scale of 1 - 10, how bad is this crisis? Could it have been worse (gen. there is always a much worse thing that could have happened!!) Thinking of the relative value of the current situation will give you a good perspective on the larger scheme of things. You might even remember dealing with tougher times in life and overcoming them.

THREE: Every night does have a morning
No matter how bad the situation, time takes care of many things that we cannot on our own. Allow time and days to come between you and the event that disturbs you. Also, it is so important to keep in mind that life is positively wired. That is why we feel so upset when we are negative. We are made in a way that we will naturally move towards good things and positive events. Hope is the ultimate healer.

This is really my personal experience and I use these strategies to quickly get out of bad situations or bad moods, because I know there is so much to do in life. It is really not worth wasting too much time on the sad parts of life.

Being happy and being at peace are not events, they are a choice and a decision.

The value of dumb ideas

There was an interesting phase in my life when I wanted to become a newscaster. These were the days when local/ city cable networks were all the rage. It's just that in my case, we are talking about a slightly dodgy and decidedly uninspiring cable network that had a weird name.

Back then this was a way out ambition, but Dad being the man he was rooted for his daughter to become the next big thing on TV. (Irrespective of what teenagers think, I always knew there was a higher purpose God gave us parents. Really.)

To my shock, the channel took me on. I had the world at my feet....that is, until I laid eyes on the news content. So we had cows creating a traffic jam on one of our arterial roads up against the amount of pot holes that were threatening to become craters. The animated debate was about which news was headline worthy. Mercifully, we hadn't been introduced to 'breaking news' back then - or I might have quit on day one.

I was disappointed that we didn't have a rotten scam or a sensational jail break to report - and that cows weren't quite my thing. I read some news anyway, while they showed random mucky footage of the city. Next day, Dad asked me to be better dressed if I wanted to enter the media industry and learn from our Door Darshan (India's beloved national channel) newscasters who were spiffy at all times. Hmm....he had a point. So, I got decked up the next day and read some more irrelevant stuff. My father's bravado lasted longer than me at the TV channel.

As I walked out on my short-lived media stint I realized something tremendous that has permanently stayed with me. I guess Dad always knew the fate of this particular idea. Yet he saw how much I believed in it, and supported me without a moment's hesitation. In his wisdom he knew it wasn't the idea that was important, but my passion was worth protecting.

So when someone tells me about an uninspiring brain wave, I choose to support their passion. Ideas come and go. Passion is rare.