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  • 20 proven ways to improve yourself and being positive in life

    Everyone has negative and positive phases in life, its just that we think that positive time remains for a short period while negative time stays longer with us. There is nothing like negative or positive time. Its your attitude towards current time. Someone wisely said that life is 10% of what happens to us and 90% how we react to it. Life is all about journey with ups and downs. As in any journey there are always some pleasant moments and there are some non pleasant moments so this is what life is all about. But still if you think you are going with non pleasant time and it feels like you lost your positive energy and motivation to react, its not too late to get up and change non pleasant time to pleasant time. This article is about being positive in life and proven ways to improve your life. This is based on my personal experience and here is my attempt to summarise it in points (not in any order).

    • Read a book everyday: Reading a book everyday opens your mind and thoughts. Its a practical way to give some time for yourself and do think beyond your daily routine life work. A good read of 15-20 pages in a day changes your perception and your thinking. Start with a good positive and motivational books.
    • Pickup a new hobby: Pickup a new hobby which could be anything like cooking, art, writing, reading, teaching, public speaking, sports etc. This activity helps you in finding more ways to think, becoming creative and applying your brain. Experts say picking a new hobby boosts your brain by 30% and helps you becoming more productive in any work.
    • Meditate daily: Meditation helps you in removing negative thoughts from your mind. Daily mediation improves your brain power and thinking. Meditation is a continuous process, start slow with 10 mins daily routine and gradually increase it to 30 mins. Here is my personal experience with meditation and how it helped me in overcoming stress from my life.
    • Create an inspirational room: A good inspirational quotes & posters from your favourite authors, personalities, leaders or even from your parents can help you in becoming positive when you feel low. Create a room for this or a table/desk where you can sit calm and just read those quotes at times.
    • Wake up early: A good daily ritual helps you in becoming more productive. Start your day little early so that you have enough time to think about the day and plan your things accordingly. One hour less sleep from your routine can add huge benefits in your daily routine tasks. Great personalities and leaders around the world follow this practice. Few names include Barack Obama, Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Narendra Modi, Jack Ma, Jeff Bezos etc.
    • Exercise daily: Take out some time to do any sort of physical exercise daily. Physical exercise is not only important for your body but it also helps your brain stay sharp. It is scientifically proven than regular exercise increases brain functioning which eventually helps in generating positive thoughts.
    • Write a journal everyday: Make a habit of writing every day. It could be anything from your personal blog or public blog, personal thoughts or experience, any good moment of the day, your achievements or your learning at the end of the day. Writing helps in achieving positive way of thinking. Your brain starts functioning fast when you write.
    • Create a to-do list: This is my favourite. Make sticky notes your best buddy. Create a to-do list of things which you need to focus or complete. Divide things in buckets or different lists. Things or tasks which need to be completed immediately, an other list which consist long terms tasks planned in 1 week/month or year. A handy to-do list makes things easy to focus on. Keep visiting your to-do list time to time to make sure that you achieve tasks in assigned time frame. Everyday I create a to-do list of things which need to be completed today.
    • Identify things which are not in your control: This is result of creating a to-do list. While writing down your tasks or problems you will realize that there are lot of tasks or problems which are not in your control and you can not do anything to avoid or remove them so why to bother about them. Focus on those things which are in your control and finish them, once you do focus on things which are in your control and take right steps to finish it, you will realize that eventually you have finished those things as well which were not in your control. Its human tendency to focus 75% of their time to those things which are actually not in their hands.
    • Listen podcasts or watch inspirational videos: This is a good way to kill negative thoughts and boost your positive energy. Make a list of inspirational podcasts and videos. Listen those audio, learn from your favourite influencers.
    • Avoid negative people: Its always good to be social and surrounded by good and positive people. Negative people always pass on negative thoughts and energy. Identify those people and try to avoid them and their company. This is also one of the best way to reduce negative energy around you.
    • Spend less time on social networking sites: Social networking sites are good way to kill time and being non productive. These days social networking sites are flooded with junk information and sometime baseless & false information. Try to reduce time spent on these sites. These sites are good way to get connected with people virtually but limited usage of these sites save a lot of time and sometime reduces negative energy around you.
    • Build your network: Further adding to my above point, its good to build your own network offline. Instead connecting with people virtually try to get connect offline. Meet offline with positive people, discuss and exchange some good thoughts. Try to diversify your network, get connected with folks from other domain (you area of work), talk to them on various topics. This is a very good way to learn quick good habits and thoughts from your network.
    • Stop watching TV: Similar to social networking sites, TV is also one of the top most source to kill your precious time. TV serials, news, reality shows all are flodded with negative energy merely for the sake of TRP (Television Rating Point) every show on TV is flooded with junk content. No one is working on creating a value.
    • Start a 30 day challenge: This is the best way to start a new thing. If you want to adopt a new habit or a new hobby or want to remove a bad habit, take 30 days challenge with yourself. Make a list of dos and don’ts and work regularly without fail for 30 days, believe me you will see the difference. For example start with mediation (a new habit), just do it for straight 30 days without fail. You will feel a big difference inside.
    • Get a mentor: This is also one of the most important factor in grooming yourself and being positive in life. Imagine mentor as your personal gym trainer, who answers your questions, works with you to tone your body and advices you time to time. Similarly have a mentor in your personal, financial, educational, professional, spiritual domains.
    • Be kind to people and help often: Be kind to people around you, help them often. Help could be in any form.
    • Take a break: Take a break from your daily routine work to rejuvenate yourself. A good and well spent break with your family or friends helps to remove negative energy around you. A time away from technology, mobile, gadgets, social media and city life helps you getting back your peace.
    • Spend time with your loved ones: Your family needs you, they need your time. Speak to them regularly, a time well spent with family helps you getting away with negative thoughts around you. Play with your kids quite often. Talk to your parents often. Sit with your wife or your loved one.
    • Play a sport: Play any sort of sport regularly. Playing a sport not only gives your physical strength but also gives you sharp mind. Adopt a sport in your life based on your choice, some people love cycling, badminton, tennis, squash, football, basketball or even running. Be it any but do it on a regular basis.

  • Free & Paid Tools I use for my Startup

    Here is a list of free and paid tools I use in my startup. I am a open source person so my preference is always to find a tool or utility which does not need money initially and if I like the product or service, I always donate some amount to company or author/creator of the tool. Sometime paid tools are worth spending money as well. Tools play a very important role in running a successful business. It not only saves a lot of time but actually smoothen the process of running any business which eventually increases the productivity. So today I bring a list of product, services, tools or resources which I use in day to day life of running my own startup Rentomo.com * marked names in the list belong to paid subscription.

    Web Site Launch:

    • Instant Domain Search
    • Godaddy*
    • AWS hosting*
    • LaunchRock
    • ThemeForest
    • Unbounce*
    • WordPress
    • WooThemes

    Surveys

    • WebEngage Surveys*
    • SurveyMonkey survey builder
    • Connecto.io for web survey inside website

    Customer Support:

    • WebEngage.com – in-site feedback and targeted short surveys*
    • Connecto.io
    • Tawk.to
    • Chatra.io

    Mobile

    • CleverTap
    • PushChamp
    • AWS mobile farm

    Analytics:

    • Mixpanel – Real Time analysis of your users & metrics.
    • Google Analytics

    Payment:

    • PayTM Payments India
    • PayU
    • Instamojo

    File Sharing:

    • Dropbox
    • Shareit

    Task/Project Management

    • Asana
    • Google Task
    • Atlassian*
    • Google Docs
    • Zoho

    Video Conferencing & Desktop Sharing:

    • GoToMeeting
    • Skype
    • Google+ hangouts
    • Teamviewer

    Design

    • 99Designs
    • Canva
    • Adobe Photoshop

    Engineering

    • Bitbucket
    • JIRA
    • Linode/AWS (hosting)*
    • S3, CloudFront*
    • Postman
    • Bootstrap
    • Codeigniter
    • Eclipse
    • Android Studio
    • Robomongo
    • Sublime

    Email Delivery

    • MailChimp*
    • MandrillApp*
    • SES*

    SMS Delivery:

    • Msg91

    Marketing:

    • Hubspot. Inbound marketing.
    • HasOffers (create affiliate program).
    • Buffer

    Customer Referral Programs:

    • Social Twist (Tell-a-Friend button). http://tellafriend.socialtwist.com/
    • Referral Candy
    • InviteBox (referral marketing) http://invitebox.com

    SEO

    • SEOmoz SEO & Social monitoring.
    • Ahref
    • ScreamingFrog
    • Google Keyword Planner
    • Google Webmaster
    • SimilarWeb
    • GtMetrix
    • Neil Patel Blogs (QuickSprout, NeilPatel.com)
    • HubSpot Blogs
    • SEO Moz

    Productive Tools:

    • Pocket
    • Evernote
    • Sticky Notes

    Funding

    • AngelList
    • Tracxn
    • Letsventure
    • CrunchBase
    • LinkedIn

    Startup Blogs:

    • Techcrunch
    • YourStory
    • NextBigwhat
    • Quora Startup Forums
    • Linked Pulse
    • Medium Startup Bloggers

  • My Experience with Meditation

    In this busy and fast paced life where we are virtually connected with almost entire world, we forget to connect with ourself. Everybody is running some sort of a race knowingly or unknowingly; a race of money, fame, success, to do something different etc etc. This includes me as well. I am not denying the importance of race or some kind of motive in life which motivates you for the race but slowly we forget the purpose of race and the journey of that race. We forget the people around us, the beauty around us, the family, the nature and most important we forget the inner peace with us. This happened to me as well. I lost the inner peace, calmness, inner happiness and much more in the race of corporate life. And one day I decided to stop this, I wanted to get my inner peace back. I adopted meditation as the regular habit in my daily routine.

    I started practicing meditation each day. Initially it was very tough to sit quite for sometime and concentrate on your self. But eventually it was better with time. Though its not been a long time since I started but within 6 months of my start I can feel the difference inside me. People say meditation gets better with time and it takes good long years of practice to meditate and concentrate for long time at one stretch. I started as 5 mins regular sitting in the morning. In 5 mins I was able to concentrate hardly 30 seconds at a stretch when my brain in completely switched off. Believe it or not switching your brain off for your desired time is the hardest thing I think. I have played lot of sports and did long trails on cycles but I think that switching off your brain is the hardest thing for a normal person, much harder than any sport (at the beginning).

    5 mins start stretched to 15 mins slowly and than 30 mins. Though I still struggle sometime to concentrate for 5 mins at one stretch. But its getting better and better with time and practice. After the meditation I perform 2 mins of  “shirshasana” (standing on your head with legs straight). Combination of mediation and shirshasana have played a very important role in changing my attitude towards life. Now I am feel much happy from inside in whatever I do. I am more calm, have more patience and have a realisation of inner peace at times. With my experience I want to highlight few points here which can help you in meditating better specially if you are a beginner like me.

    Mediation tips for beginners –

    • Always start slow, do not think much while practicing. Keep it very calm and relax.
    • Meditation is a art of relaxation of your body which means your body should be very light, your mind should be calm, your environment should be peaceful around you.
    • Keep your phone, laptop, tablet away from you while practicing.
    • Find a very comfortable position. There is not hard and fast rule to sit on hard floor, you can use a cushion under your butt if you require. Do not make your body stiff. Keep the body relax and out of any sort of pain or discomfort.
    • Do not close your eyes immediately.
    • Keep a good body posture preferable straight if possible. your back should be straight ideally.
    • Avoid sitting in noisy place in the beginning, away from TV, music system or outside noise.
    • If possible do a little bit stretch after sitting so that your body is relaxed. There should not be any tightness or stiffness at any joint.
    • Better to avoid heavy meals before practice.
    • After sitting take a deep breath. Inhale form nose and exhale from mouth slowly.
    • In the beginning you can also count your breath to keep your concentration at the moment. Take a slow deep breath, fill the air in your stomach, feel the air and exhale from mouth slowly.
    • Its very important to feel the air going from your nostrils, travelling inside your body, reaching to your stomach and finally coming out from mouth.
    • In the beginning take 10 deep breaths with your eyes open.
    • Now gently close your eyes or it will close naturally without your realisation sometime. When you are in the moment and feeling the breath, your eyes will automatically close naturally.
    • Keep doing the same thing with your eyes closed. Sometime your mind starts thinking sometime else and you are out of the present moment. That is natural, nothing to worry about. The moment you realize that you are thinking something else, just come back to present moment and start feeling the air traversing inside your body.
    • If you feel like itching some where during the practice, just scratch it at that body part. Do not avoid that. Avoiding scratching will lead you to think more on that part which will disturb your practice. So its very natural to have some sort of itching or realisation of scratch in some body part. This happens only for few days initially.
    • Try to see a dark black spot when your eyes are closed. This will enhance your concentration in the present moment. The more concentration you will have in the present moment, the more deep you will go in your practice.
    • Meditation is all about being in your present moment. This is the art you have to practice which will help your brain to focus more on current moment instead of wandering around.
    • Slowly increase your time every day. You will realise the difference in few days.
    • Do not break your practice any day else you will break the momentum. In the start focus on practicing 10 days daily for 5-10 mins.
    • There is no good to bad time for meditation. Whenever you feel like doing, you can do. But just avoid full stomach. Perfect time is in the morning before your first tea or coffee with empty stomach.

    I hope these tips will help you in practicing meditation in the beginning and you will see and realise the difference within yourself in few days of practicing.