Life Lessons learnt during my Ph.D days

Doing a PhD will make you an expert in your research topic, but, beyond that, it will also teach you a number of valuable lessons which are applicable to other jobs and to your personal life. Here are some of the most useful lessons that I've learnt from undertaking my own independent research project.

1.    Time management

One of the first skills that i have picked up in my PhD is the ability to manage my own time. Unless you have an unusually overbearing supervisor, you will have to be responsible for organizing your own working days and making sure that your work gets done on time. This is excellent training for other roles later in your career in which you will have to allocate time for various tasks to meet deadlines.

2.    Importance of prioritization

Related to time management, i have also learnt to assess the priorities of various tasks. What needs to be done right now, and what can wait? Is it better to get small tasks out of the way quickly, or should you tackle big, demanding projects first? There are different styles which work for different people, and being responsible for your own research project will teach you which prioritization techniques work for you.

3. How to work with others

Although doing a PhD is largely an independent undertaking, you will also need to work with others. Whether working as part of a research group or organizing an event with your fellow PhD students, you will learn to listen to others, to make your own suggestions to a group, and to find compromises. These are all invaluable skills for later in life.

4.   How to give an oral presentation

At some point in everyone's PhD you will be required to give an oral presentation, such as at a conference, workshop, or as part of your thesis defense. You will get in practice at putting together interesting slides, at speaking clearly to a group, and at conveying information in a comprehensible way.

5.    Self-motivation

One of the biggest challenges to overcome in your PhD is having to motivate yourself. It's unlikely that anyone else will push you to get your work done, so you have to find ways in which you can encourage yourself, even when you're tired or bored. Being able to push through negative emotions to meet your goals is one of the most broadly useful life skills you can acquire.

6.   Effective writing and editing

Whether you write up your thesis as one large document or as several shorter journal articles, you will learn a lot about making sure that your writing is not only accurate, but also concise and engaging. People who have done postgraduate study will have much more writing experience than most of the public, and this is advantageous for many career paths.

7.    Independent creative thought

An underrated skill that you will pick up from running your own research project is the ability to think about problems in creative ways and to come up with novel solutions and ideas. Because you will be working on a new and previously uninvestigated topic, you will not always be able to rely on the concepts of others, and will have to find your own approach to issues. The confidence that this gives you will help you when problem solving in future situations, both personal and professional.

8.   Learning how to learn

Possibly the most useful thing that you'll discover when doing a PhD is what learning methods are effective for you and how to make use of them. You may need to teach yourself skills such as data analysis, programming, or other technical skills. Beyond acquiring the skills themselves, you will also find out about how you learn, and what teaching methods work best for you. Do you like to read a lot of written information? To see someone knowledgeable working in practice? To test and experiment with new tools by yourself? Being able to identify the methods that work for you will mean that you are capable of teaching yourself any skills that you may require in the future, which is helpful whenever you come across a new or unfamiliar situation.

These lessons have helped me through my PhD and beyond! And I am sure these will help you too.......

Rules to a game of LOVE & IMPORTANCE

We all grow up with some healthy stories about love and some unhealthy ones too.

Some beautiful ones are: Loving people means believing their potential, loving means treating people with kindness and gentleness, loving the people in your life means celebrating their success and cheering them on.

Some stories about love that I came to see weren’t so helpful are those ideas which usually bred problems in one’s relationships. Some of them are: Loving someone means always being available to them, another myth about love is, if you love someone, you do what they are asking you to do, out of love, even if it feels difficult.

I’ve developed my own guidelines for loving the people in my life, guidelines that express how I want to relate to people around me. I am sure some of them are yours too…..

1.    Tell them about their brilliance: They likely can’t see it and they don’t know its immensity, but you can see it, and you can illuminate it for them.

2.    Be authentic, and give others the gift of the real you and a real relationship: Ask your real questions. Share your real beliefs. Go for your real dreams. Tell your truth.

3.    Listen, Listen and Listen: Don’t listen to determine if you agree or disagree. Listen to get to know what is true for the person in front of you. Remember that if, in any conversation, nothing piqued your curiosity and nothing surprised you, you weren’t really listening.

4.   Don’t waste your time and energy thinking about how they need to be different: Really. Chuck the whole thing. Their habits are their habits. Their personalities are their personalities. Let them be, and work on what you want to change about you – not what you think would be good to change about them.

5.    Give of yourself, but never sacrifice or compromise yourself: Stop if resentment is building and retool. Don’t do the martyr thing. It helps no one and nothing.

6.   See their value: Remember that everyone you encounter was created by the divine intelligence and has an important role to play in the universe. Treat them as such.

7.    Accept this as your mantra and try to live as if it were true: EVERYTHING THAT I EXPERIENCE FROM ANOTHER HUMAN BEING IS EITHER LOVE OR A CALL FOR LOVE.

At the same time I have learnt that when you give more importance to someone in life, you tend to lose your importance in their life……. I read a quote which cleared up a lot of confusion and hopefully it will help you too. “IF IT IS IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO YOU, YOU WILL FIND A WAY. IF NOT, YOU WILL FIND AN EXCUSE”.

Sometimes, you may not be successful in receiving back the kind and amount of importance you have given to someone. But worry not! Just believe in that it is OK, there will be times when you are in the same position as well. Don’t get hung up over it and don’t let it get you down or deter you from giving importance to other people in the future. The right people will always reciprocate, I can vouch for that. Hence I believe that sometimes the best way to get someone’s attention is to stop giving them yours.

At the end, I would just like to remind and assure that all the relationships are beautiful and made in heaven. All that we have to do is to choose accurately the relationship God has made for us and give our one hundred percent in that relation to reap us love, care, respect and support throughout our life.

The mantras are not the perfect ones but I am somewhat attached to them and believe in them.

Small tweaks to happiness

“Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
Abraham Lincoln

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.”
Helen Keller

“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
Marcel Proust

Living a happier life often seems to be about living your big dreams and putting in a lot of work over a long time.

I agree that it is one part. But another part of happiness is here in small ways today. Here are some small tweaks that can find the ways to feel happier everyday, in every way……

1.   Be kind in small ways. Let someone in into your lane while driving your car. Hold up the door or hold the elevator for a stranger. Not just because that you tend to get back what you give in some form. But for yourself too, these little things add up and make you feel better about yourself.

2.  Be appreciative of other people. Replace the habit of spotting the things that annoy you about people with one where you make small or big positive observations about them. And be sure to tell them that.

3.  Cut back on the time you spend with most negative person in your life. And spend more time with the most positive person(s).

4.  Be 5 or 10 minutes early. This will make travel time a time of relaxation and renewal rather than a time of stress and negativity added to your day. Plus, you’ll be on time.

5.  Do what is not “you”. Try a new dish for lunch. Read a book or watch a movie that is not in your usual genre. Learn a little about a topic that is not something you are usually into. This is a great and fun way to find new perspectives in life, to grow and to expand your comfort zone just a little on a daily or weekly basis. Cultivating this habit also makes it easier to get out of your comfort zone when larger and “scarier” opportunities present themselves.

6.  Let go of one thing from your past. Clinging on to an old conflict, argument or that you were wronged by someone can consume a lot of time, energy and space in your life. And as Jan Glidewell once said: “You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.”
So to stop hurting yourself you have to accept that what is in your mind is in the past now. By accepting that it is in the past that you need to let go to live your life fully now.

7.  Take the smarter and higher road. Don’t be someone the people can walk all over, set boundaries and say no when needed. But recognize that unnecessary conflicts just waste your time and energy. And that some people are so addicted to the drama and conflicts that you will never win or reach an understanding between the two of you. There are more fun and good things to spend time on in your life. So try to reach an understanding. But if it doesn’t work then remove yourself from getting drawn into their conflicts and make the day better for both you and possibly them.

8.  Be kind to yourself. The next time you make a mistake or fail don’t treat yourself like a jerk of a boss would. Instead, be kind, see what you can learn from what happened, gently nudge yourself in the right direction again and keep going.

9.  Appreciate yourself. It’s OK and something that a lot of people don’t do enough. Spend 5 minutes every day with thinking about or writing it down the things you can appreciate about yourself and how far you have come. Do this enough times – try 30 days – to change how you view yourself on a more permanent level.