Psychoblogical

Menos plástico : un mundo fantastico La contaminación plástica es un problema más grave de nuestros tiempos.   Actualmente, encontramos plástico en  casi todos los objetos de nuestra vida cotidiana. Sí es verdad, que e l uso del plástico es indispensable por ahora. Pero el uso correcto ayudará en reducir la contaminación plástica y salvar nosotros además de la Tierra. El uso correcto: ·    👉   Evita los plásticos de un solo uso ·   👉   Siempre llevas una bolsa de tela cuando vas a hacer la compra ·   👉 Recicla todo lo que sea posible ·   👉 Compra más alimentos a granel y menos productos empaquetados ·   👉 No olvides llevar tu propia botella de agua. Deja el uso del agua                            embotellado ·   👉 Recoge el plástico y dona a los centros del reciclaje y supraciclar ¡Y por último pero no menos importante…Conciencia a tu ent...

Hello there,  Today I am going to blog about a topic that occurred to me because of something that our maid did.  Those of who know me well, know that I bake. A lot. And I baked a cake today too. But the reason for today's baking session was a little bit different than usual. Today I baked for our maid's son's birthday :) She has been working at our house for years now and has seen me bake numerous times. Yesterday, she asked me whether I would bake a cake for her son's birthday.  This simple request of hers turned into a long chain of thoughts in my mind. I suddenly realized that we have been pretty lucky when it comes to having 'Help at Home.' We have had two maids till now, that have impacted my life.  The first one started working with us ever since ; or in fact even before my birth. Since both my parents were working, she used to care for me. As such, she was family. Later, due to her knee-problem, she was unable to continue work. But even after that, she a...

Those of who have read my blog  http://psycho-blogical.blogspot.com/2019/07/spain-spanish-and-spaniards.html  know that I am a big fan of everything Spanish.  Today, I was missing my Spain trip a bit too much. So I decided to bring a little bit of Spain into my home.  I took it upon myself to make Churros. For those who don't know, Churros are traditional Spanish snacks that look something like this and are mostly eaten with hot Chocolate Sauce. And trust me, they are D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U.S. Now I feel there is something mysterious between Churros and Me.  Every time I have eaten Churros, a story worth telling has unfolded. Let me take you back to the first time I ate Churros. We were in Spain at the time, for a 3-week trip. We had a 'Free Day' that day, meaning we had no fixed plans. We were free to do whatever we wanted to, go wherever we wanted and explore places on our own. We were instructed to come back at an allocated point at a particular time. As per pl...

March 20,2020 marks the beginning of my quarantine life. Now this is something we never expected to happen to us and on that account, we were totally unprepared for what was to come. The current situation is grave. But all we need to do to save lives is STAY AT HOME. Although this might seem easy at first, it definitely is not. Humans, primarily being social animals, are having great difficulties maintaining their sanity in this Lock-down Period.  I, for one, am the living evidence. Albeit I have the opportunity to work from home (which takes up most of my time), I too, have moments where I crave the 'Outside'.  To curb these cravings and to keep busy, I did a few things that I am really proud of (including washing dishes, sweeping and mopping the floor, hanging the clothes for drying and the rest...😏). I would like to share these with you and may be you can share a few with me; because frankly, I am now running out of ideas 😜 Lots and lots of cook...

Hello Readers, Today I am going to write about another topic that I am really passionate about. Since a number of days, I had been thinking about penning down my thoughts on this topic. But every time I sat down to write, I felt like I couldn't do justice to the vastness and importance of it. However, a few incidents in the past days gave me a final thrust to write. As we all know, this year, rains caused havoc in a number of cities throughout the country. Mother nature showed her wrath in the form of floods. Day before yesterday, she gave yet another word of warning when she caused whopping destruction in some parts of my very own city- Pune. To the best of my knowledge, there have hardly been any instances of destruction caused by heavy rains in a city like Pune, given its geographical advantage. But then what was different this year? Mother Nature has had enough of it! That's what's different. This year, she just won't digest all the trash we dump. She w...

Hello Readers,  Today, I would like to share with you all my experience of visiting the country of my dreams - SPAIN!  Let us start from the very beginning. I wanted to learn Spanish since I was 14. However, as the saying goes- 'Better late than never'- I started learning the said language last year and Oh My! I fell head over heels in love with it! Needless to say, I was besides myself with joy when an opportunity to travel to Spain presented itself.  I was lucky enough to travel with a group of students from my institute who were equally thrilled about going to Spain. And this crazy bunch of people with limitless energy and curiosity made my travel experience a 100 times better.  _______________________________________________________________ A fair warning: I love Spain, Spaniards and the Spanish language. So I might have biased opinions.  But Spain is unlike any other place I have ever visited. Like most European countries, Spain t...

We are living in an fast-paced age where it seems like we do not have enough time for others, nor for ourselves. We are running in circles from chore to chore, living "per diem". In such a situation, it is necessary to reinforce the practice of 'Mindfulness' into our routine so as to perpetuate mental health. I say 'reinforce', because our ancestors were hitherto reaping the benefits of Mindfulness through practices such as Yogasana, Praanayam, Yoga nidra, Meditation et cetera. . . WHAT IS MINDFULNESS? Cambridge dictionary defines Mindfulness as “The practice of being aware of your body, mind, and feelings in the present moment, thought to create a feeling of calm.” In plain terms, Mindfulness is the practice of focussing on your thoughts and on the information that you receive from all of your five senses at any given moment, Broadly speaking, it is the experience of the 'here and now'. For experiment purposes, monitor thoughts. Note down ...

Hello Readers, Its been a long time since I wrote my last blog. But I was unable to find anything inspiring enough to write about. Now I have finally found it. Today, I am going to write about the importance of NEGATIVE EMOTIONS by sharing my personal experience. So here it goes. For those of you who don't know: I had been preparing for banking exams the last year. I gave many, many exams resulting in failure. But I didn't mind, because my focus was clearing the IBPS clerk exams. My first victory came when I cleared the IBPS preliminary examination that happened in the month of December. After that, I rigorously started studying for the second round which took place at the end of January. And today, April 1,was the D-day! I failed the examination by less than a mark. I started asking myself, "Why couldn't I have scored just 1 more mark?" "Why does it always happen to me?" "What am I going to do in my life now?" Today, the whole day, I ...

Autism is a mental condition that affects around 23 in 10,000 people in India. The attitude of the society towards them, affects autistic people to a certain extent. In this blog, I will try to write about autism and society's view towards the autistic, on the suggestion of a cherished reader. Before I begin, I would like to make it clear that I have not specialized in Clinical Psychology and hence lack the in-depth knowledge about this mental condition. However, I will attempt to write based on some understanding that I have about it. So to begin with, let us understand what autism really is. Autism is a life-long, complex developmental condition. It includes impairments in social development, communication skills and some behavioral issues. Because of the varied range of symptoms, this condition is now also referred to as "Autism Spectrum Disorder". Let us look at a few symptoms: 1. Communication Problems:      Children or adults with autism may experience challen...

'Procrastination' is a really common term and all of you must have surely heard of it. Each of us, may have also procrastinated at some point in our lives.  For those who are unaware of what procrastination means, it is an act of delaying something that needs to be done, because it is either difficult, boring, or unpleasant. Examples of procrastination include putting off writing an assignment, delaying replying to an email, postponing the payment of bills, etc. But precrastination? Majority of the public doesn't know that such a term even exists. Even as I type this blog, the said word gets underlined in red, telling me that it doesn't exist in the dictionary. That is because 'Precrastination' is a relatively new term. It was coined by three Pennsylvania State psychologists: David Rosenbaum, Lanyun Gong and Cory Adam Potts. So what does precrastination actually mean? It could be said that precrastination is the opposite of procrastination. And like proc...

STRESS MANAGEMENT TIP: 2 As a student of counselling psychology, our teacher used to continually remind us, that ours is a 'helping profession', and that our work becomes worthwhile if we can help bring even a small positive change in a person's life. Writing this blog-series about stress management is very important to me for this very reason. Everyone faces stress in their lives at some point. And through this blog-series, I hope to help at least one person in dealing with their stress. In my last blog, I wrote about the first stress management tip: Keeping in mind that stress isn't always a bad thing.' Continuing with the series, today, I will write about the second tip.  Stress Management Tip 2 is 'Time Management'. Benjamin Franklin rightly said "Lost Time is never found again".  One of the most common concerns and complaints of people today is that they do not have enough time to do what they need/want to do. Be it a housewif...

What words come up in your mind when you hear the word 'Movie'?  Actors? Actresses? Directors? Those are exactly the words that we associate immediately with movies. But I recently came upon the realization that there is more than meets the eye, literally. There are thousands of people working behind a film, and only a handful of them appear on the screen. A close friend of mine is Sound Engineer by profession. Before meeting him, I wasn't even aware that such a profession exists. But a closer look into his professional life unveiled a lot of things that I, like most of us, was unaware of.  We can all agree on the fact that music is one of the biggest elements of the cinematic world. In my opinion, without the right music at the right place, even a brilliantly acted-out scene won't leave as much impact on the audience. I was recently roped into the fandom of Rajamouli's Magnum Opus- 'Bahubali', and I cannot deny the fact that the music in the film i...

'Stress' is a stranger to no one. Especially in today's fast paced life, stress has become an inseparable part of life. It then follows, that 'Stress Management' has also become imperative. By definition, stress is "any uncomfortable emotional experience accompanied by predictable biochemical, physical and behavioral changes". In everyday terms, it is a feeling that people have when they are overloaded and struggling to cope with certain demands or situations. These demands may be related to finances, relationships, work, education, etc. Words such as 'uncomfortable', 'overloaded' and 'struggling' tend to give stress negative connotation, and we generally use the term 'stress' to describe negative situations. This has given rise to one of the biggest myths about stress: Stress is always bad. Yes, you read that right. It is myth. Stress is not always a bad thing. It is simply our body's response to changes that cr...

I recently ran into an acquaintance of mine at the supermarket. We talked for a little while about what is going on in each of our lives. Upon hearing that I have a degree in Psychology, she instantly asked "Oh! So you treat mental patients?" This is just one instance. I am sure, students of Psychology often hear the following questions- "Oooo...so you can read minds?" or "Tell me what am I thinking?" or "I'll have to be careful around you, or you'll know all my secrets'. This just shows that people aren't really aware of what all Psychology as a subject encompasses.  First of all, sorry to disappoint you people, but we CANNOT read minds. Yes, after observing you for a little while, we might be able to form a hypothesis regarding what type of a personality you have; but we cannot really tell you what is going on in your minds.  Secondly, there's a difference between a psychiatrist and a psychologist. Psychiatrists ar...

Recently, I completed my Masters in Psychology. As a part of dissertation, I conducted a research on the topic "The Role of Knowledge of Foreign Language in Cultural Tolerance and Openness to Experience." The recent happenings in Syria, Korea, Iraq and Iran, the adversities faced by refugees in Germany and other topics of political and cultural strains made me ponder and led me to this research topic.  DEFINING LANGUAGE Noam Chomsky, one of the most well known linguists in the world, argues that all languages are dialects of one language, which is the human language. He says that even though they appear very different, they are in fact very similar. However, different cultures have different manners in which they use their language and these differences cannot and should not be underestimated. Language can be defined as a means of human communication, either spoken or written, and consisting of the use of words in a structured and conventional way (Merriam-Webs...