(Abridged version of SECRETS OF SUCCESS From the same author)
By
Yandamoori Veerendranath
Perform your duty
Whole-heartedly
Thy not expect the result.
Enjoy the work
Just by doing it
And the result is a bonus.
The word meditation sounds big, when you do not understand the real meaning. Meditation means enjoying the current experience both mentally and physically. Concentrate on hair while combing, relish the taste of the food while eating and enjoy the lesson while reading.
STARTING THE DAY
1. Early morning (called ‘Brahmasamayam’) is the best time to study, as the electro-magnetic waves are fresh at that time.
2. On waking up, go to the mirror and smile for 5 seconds. Appears funny but neurotransmitters like Dopamine (pleasure) and Serotonin (feel good) released when you smile, keep you energetic, active and enthusiastic throughout the day.
3. Ask your friend “Are you a bachelor or unmarried?” Instead of saying ‘both’, he says, “Bachelor..!” even though he is unmarried. Under tension, blood glucose level changes. To balance it, brain releases ‘cortisol’ that fumbles you. The chemical ‘Serotonin’ released when you smile… fights against the effects of cortisol. This is why psychologists advise ‘smile’ as the first step to come out of tension.
DISCIPLINE
4. As you tend to have lunch and dinner at predictable times, start your study every day exactly at the same time and according to a timetable. ‘Time controlled behaviour’ is fairly easy to start and adopt.
5. Concentration depends on discipline, time management and space administration. Do you keep everything at right place? Do you fold your bed-sheets on waking up? Are you tensed up unable to manage your time? Plan your day in advance.
6. Going out with friends is a thrill. Staying home and teaching your brother or sister is pleasurable. If both are enjoyable, why not the latter? Do you know that the best way to enhance your concentration is to stay home most of the time?
7. Ask your friends not to ring up after six in the evening. Request your parents not to invite guests during your study hours. Even if they chat in the next room, it is a disturbance. After completion of your night studies, don’t get tempted to call up your friends even for few minutes to know about their studies. Your intentions are good but it won’t stop there.
8. Be careful of what you do before your studies. Don’t get involved in pleasant gossip or heated arguments prior to your studies. This may launch you in daydreaming or disturb your mind.
9. When you feel that your concentration is deteriorating, or feeling lazier, analyse your life-style, study environment, sleeping and eating habits, and more particularly the influence of your friends on you. Achievers live in the company of achievers. Rogues stay with rogues and idiots like the company of stupid.
LAZINESS AND FOOD
Laziness is of two types, physical laziness (fatigue), and mental laziness (boredom). Don’t confuse between them. You feel tired, would like to take rest and watch TV. When you are tired, how can you watch TV? No. You are not tired. You are bored.
10. Normally you require 2500 calories per day. Note that hundred grams chips packet, one butter cookie and a chocolate bar gives you 450, 480 and 300 calories respectively. Idly is good with 50 calories but a tea spoon of coconut chutney adds up another 50 calories.
11. Soya bean is a highly recommended food for students. Add it to your chapattis. Mix Soya powder in water, fruit juices or buttermilk and drink twice a day.
12. Soon after lunch you feel sleepy, as the intestines drain more oxygen from the brain. Reduce your lunch, dinner and have good breakfast and evening snacks. Break-fast, Lunch, Evening snacks, Dinner and bed time milk along with a fruit in the ratio of
13. Normally people eat rice for lunch and chapattis for dinner. It is advised the other way round. Chapattis keep you fit and light for the entire day and rice is heavy on stomach though easily digestible.
14. Do you eat to live or live to eat? Eat to live for six days, and live to eat for a day. Keep one day per week for eating junk food. Mirchi bujji, Pav-bhazi, fast foods and Pani poori have a chemical called Capsocysin. Chocolates, sweets, ice-cream and coke have saccharine. Converting these negative foods into glucose requires more oxygen leading to sleepiness. Never eat the above items one hour before or while studying.
15. If you are a non-vegetarian, eat fish instead of mutton. The adrenaline that is released while the animal is slaughtered is harmful to your concentration and memory.
SLEEP
Sleeping is the best enjoyment… after completing the job.
16. ‘Sleeping and waking up at the same time’ is one of the best disciplinary habits that enhances your concentration and reduces laziness.
17. Early to bed and late to wake up, excessive daytime sleep and napping at inappropriate times is called ‘hypersomnia’, and to fight it, reduce oily food, perform some physical activity for ten minutes in the morning and walk ‘alone’ for ten minutes after dinner.
18. Saturday Night Fever: Never watch movies till late-nights on Saturdays and compensate it by sleeping on Sunday afternoons. The effect continues on Monday also, disturbing the biological clock.
19. Keep a timepiece far away from your bed and a glass of water near it. When you go there in the morning to switch alarm off, sprinkle your face with cold water, to avoid coming back to bed. This is the best sutra for students who cannot wake up early in the morning.
TIME MAPPING:
Once you are accustomed to time mapping, the word ‘busy’ withers away.
20. Divide your day into small compartments and plan your timetable at the beginning of the day. It should be meticulously planned even for a holiday. How are you going to spend your lunch break and with whom? How much time are you going to watch TV in the evening? It is called ‘Time Management’.
21. The main reasons for unsuccessful time management are: Incapability to arrange the tasks in preferential order, getting attracted by more powerful unbeneficial deeds like excessive sleeping, unnecessary gossiping and late night-outs.
Look at the above table. A student postpones his studies feeling that there is ample time to start. As the half-yearly examinations approach, he feels the urgency, but considers it as not important. Later as the final examination date advances, he settles down to study. He puts off studying difficult subjects. Suddenly, everything becomes ‘important and urgent’, creating tension and chaos.
22. ‘Time control’ depends on developing speed with which you read a lesson. Initial reading should be slow to understand the subject. With the help of key-noting, revision should be fast. It is not important how fast you complete reading, but how you retain it.
23. Spot people, who are your time killers. You have every right to politely say ‘no’ to any person who demands your time unnecessarily. (If you too like it, nobody can help it.)
24. Next when you talk to your friend on phone, ask somebody, to record it without your prior knowledge. How many urgent and important points you might have discussed with your friend whom you are anyway going to meet the next day. There will be none.
25. Instead of chatting while eating for one hour at lunch break avoid the former, save time and take rest in library, to conserve your energy for the next lecture session. Choosing your friend for lunch also matters. Listeners sit with chatters.
KEY NOTING
‘Key noting’ means, avoiding the pulp matter that unnecessarily occupies the brain space.
35. While studying (or listening to the lecture), note down the points in your own simple language, called ‘keynoting’. Suppose you are studying (or lecturer is explaining) Ramayana. Note down the key points like Ram–wife–kidnap–War and expand the entire Ramayana later in your own words with the help of key-noting. The whole syllabus thus can be condensed into a 100-page notebook for easy revision later.
26. Use diagrams and colour pens whenever necessary to reduce, visual exhaustion. You are not straining your eyes with the stereo-typed letters of printing. Studying own scriptt reduces the strain of your eye.
27. Brain is the only organ that does get tired by continuous exercises. Sharpen it by engaging in a productive way. In stead of sitting idle in the barber shop or beauty parlour, go on deducting 17 from 146 till you get a single digit number, and then verify it with a paper and pen. If the answer is correct, present a chocolate to yourself.
28. When you are working on maths, work out on various ways and methods to reach the correct answer. While travelling in a train or bus, try to find out which side the
READING HABITS
If you develop good reading habits, half the job is already done.
29. Stand for a few moments at your study table (or mat), close your eyes and try to think of nothing. It is like a karate player going into the mood before entering into the arena. This is called cleaning the mind-slate. In the beginning, you find it impracticable. It tests your patience. Many give up at this stage. After practicing for three to four weeks, you would begin to enjoy the results.
30. Arrange near your reading table all necessary items like books, water etc in the night. Don’t waste your precious early morning time searching for the above.
31. Lock the doors while studying. If you lose concentration, don’t sit at your desk staring into a book and mumbling about your poor self-control. Go away from books; take a breath of fresh air and wander in side the room till you feel that… studying is better than roaming.
32. It is a normal tendency for every student to have an inclination to avoid studies on some pretext. They are called ‘Road blocks’. Start with an interesting subject and proceed further with a dry subject. It’s like starting with a non-detailed story and later going for a tough subject. When you feel bored with reading, shift on to write or work on maths.
33. Paste the difficult chemistry formulas and physics principles to your wall, and within few days, you would be surprised to know that you are able to remember them by heart unknowingly. Hang a map of country / state / world. Watching ‘maps’ is one of the best relaxation techniques.
34. Maintain an aquarium. Or keep a plant in your reading room. Unknowingly you would identity its growth with your growing wisdom.
35. Present yourself with a gift when you complete your quota of study for the day, like ‘I will go to a movie tomorrow if I complete this work today’. Imagine how pleasant it would be to sleep with a feeling that you had finished your day without any pending work.
36. Glance through the lesson that is to be taught the next day. Even if you didn’t understand it fully, when your teacher is explaining it to you, you have the feeling that it is already known to you. And that gives you confidence.
37. Normally students devote much time reading their interesting subjects rather than the hard ones. Change your attitude. Devote much time for the tough subjects.
38. Set aside a fixed place for study and nothing but study. After a while, study becomes part of your behaviour and whenever you sit down in that particular place, you feel like going straight to the work.
39. Never change your place of study. At times, when you feel for a change, you may go to an open place like upstairs, balcony or garden, but never study in your bedroom while resting on the bed or in the kitchen.
40. Cultivate the habit of reading in libraries and reading alone. Combined study is normally not suggested, for it may promote unnecessary gossiping.
41. After completion of reading one subject, don’t jump to another. Give a gap of 5 minutes. It is called ‘Mind holiday’.
42. Keep discussing your subject with your parents and friends. Get your doubts clarified immediately. When you don’t understand a particular point, never hesitate to ask. A small doubt becomes a complication when you proceed with your subject at a higher level.
43. Read daily. Even if you are on a holiday... or at your grand pa’s village… read at least for half an hour. It makes ‘reading’ your hobby. Thus you need not read for hours before exams. In the examination hall, the first feeling would be, “Oh… the question paper is so simple.”
DEVELOPING CONCENTRATION
It is not the load that breaks you down, it is the way you carry it.
44. A student lacks concentration due to two reasons: Having no interest in subject or… more interest in other things. Coming out from magnetic fields like gossiping, phone conversation, TV etc is the first step to develop concentration.
45. Desire control is the best mantra to develop concentration. Suppose your friends invited you to your most favourite hero’s movie. Say ‘no’ to it or postpone it. Same way, control your curiosity to stay and watch an accident.
46. Place your favourite sweet on your reading table and read. After completing your studies, put it back without tasting it. Difficult, but when you practice it, and are able to win over ‘your desire’, the confidence gives you more satisfaction than yielding to your sensory organs.
47. Falling in love is the first enemy to concentration. Falling in love while studying is like paying for a car which you want to purchase after ten years. Simple to tell but you can keep away from it.
48. Keep a cap or tie a scarf while you study. It is embarrassing initially but has distinct advantages. Slowly you identify the cap with your studies. You have a psychological feeling that you are reading. You can not often go out of your study room. Others make out that you are studying and don’t disturb you,
CONCENTRATING WITH THE 5 SENSORY ORGANS
Developing concentration means avoiding disturbances. Hunger, noise, visuals, sound and odour are the five disturbances to our five sensory organs respectively. Control them in the following manner.
49. Eyes: Let your chair face the wall to avoid distraction. Never sit facing an ‘open’ window. Read under a table light preferably in a semi dark room, to avoid visual disturbance. Even in daytime it is advisable to close the curtains and read under table light.
50. Use tube light to avoid the unnoticeable flicker of a normal bulb. Arrange the light in such a way that the rays don’t fall directly on your eyes.
51. Place ‘yellow’ coloured cloth on your reading table or mat. Eyes are more comfortable when you read with a pleasant yellow backdrop.
52. A student’s attention deteriorates after an hour’s study. Take ten minutes rest after one hour study. Keep a wet cloth near study table. After reading for an hour, sit erect and raise your head slightly upwards. Cover your eyes with the wet cloth.
53. During this period, close your left nostril and breathe through your right... and later release it slowly from your left nostril. Continue the exercise in reverse for another five minutes. This exercise eliminates the residual carbon (dioxide) from your lungs and you feel fresh and energetic. Soon in about three weeks, you notice the freshness and newly generated energy.
54. Between second and third hours of study intervals, stand near your window, close your eyes and feel the fresh air. During this ten minutes interval, try to recollect what you have studied during the previous two hours.
55. If you feel sleepy and tired on a particular day, go to sleep. Don’t force yourself to stick to the schedule. If you feel eyes getting strained, place cucumber (keera) or wet cotton.
56. Mouth: Keep a clove in your cheek to avoid the urge to eat junk food in between studies. Whenever your concentration lapses… bite the clove..!
57. When you are bored in between study intervals, don’t go to the kitchen. Maintain a fixed time for ‘eating’. In case you cannot hold your hunger for two to three hours, keep some fruits or other eatables near your study table, but never eat there. Treat reading place as a holy temple.
58. Drink as much water as you can while studying. It constantly keeps you fresh. For ‘every’ one-hour have a glass of buttermilk, carrot or orange juice or water with Soya powder.
59. Nose: Sit in a cool and fairly fragrant room to study and you will find the difference in concentration levels.
60. Sinus is a big hurdle for concentration. Before preparing for your study, smell ‘mint’ (Pudhina) or camphor for a few seconds. The spicy smell increases your attentiveness.
61. Light an incense stick before you sit to study. Associate your studies with the smell of an incense stick.
62. Skin: Cultivate the habit of taking a bath or washing your face before starting your studies in the evening. It will make you feel fresh and new. For better results, steam your face with turmeric water. It revitalises, refreshes and keeps you young.
63. Kasturi, Punugu, Goroochanai, Javvadhi, Aragatha and Athar are available in any grocery market. Apply any one of them near your neck depending on your taste. The form a smell circle to stop other odours (from kitchen etc) that disturb your concentration.
64. Ears: To avoid external disturbances consider using earplugs or cotton. Some students read while the music is on. Try to get out of that habit or go for mono instrumental music but not songs with lyrics. Classical music is supposed to aid in some cases.
65. Tape while you read. Keep the tape recorder by your bed-side and go to sleep while listening to it.
66. Immediately on waking up from the bed, put on Suprabhata (or Bhoopala Raaga) and proceed with your daily chores. In the other sense, try to minimise your talking till you take your bath. It enables you to be in the meditation mood. This would enable your neuron bonds strengthen and what you studied the previous night becomes permanent.
Watch the above tips. Ringing the temple bells, lighting camphor, applying sandalwood paste influences and enhances our concentration while worshiping. In the same fashion, you have created a temple atmosphere in your study room, by taking bath, lighting an incense stick, applying ‘Gandham’ and the two minutes pray.
MEMORY:
Lack of memory and Forgetting are different. Unless you are suffering with Alzheimer’s disease, you cannot say that you have insufficient memory.
67. Memory is stored in neurons and you remember about 5,00,000 concepts during life time. When space is provided for unnecessary neurons, more valuable neurons pertaining to education go to the passive part and that is called ‘Mind Decay’.
68. Never talk when it is not necessary. Never be silent when it is required. While talking, the electro magnetic pathways vibrate ten times more than when you are in ‘silent mode’. During heated arguments they are up by fifty times, leading to loss of memory. When an issue is discussed, disputed and argued, (say... whether a particular movie is good or bad) you recall some points to strengthen your argument and stimulate the unnecessary neuron bonds, thus asking the brain to provide much ‘garbage space’.
69. Don’t discuss next day’s interesting programs like going for a movie or picnic, before your evening studies. That lingers in your mind while studying. In the same fashion, if you plan to go to a movie or see a favourite programme on TV ‘after’ your studies, you can never concentrate on your study, unconsciously looking forward to the event.
70. Complete chatting or watching TV before you begin your studies. Talking or watching TV in between or after night studies unsettles your neuron bonds. It is called ‘Memory overload’. Go to bed immediately, after completion of your studies.
71. Never gossip either in person or on phone at bedtime. Close your eyes and recollect what you read / taught during the day. The electro - magnetic pathways are calm and passive during sleep and this would help the memory bonds grow stronger.
72. Keep recollecting what you studied earlier, while brushing your teeth, taking bath etc. This is called ‘recalling’.
73. After an exciting discussion or heated argument, before or in between your studies, the over-riding neurons, with the support of already released adrenaline, dominate the reminiscences of the argument or discussion. This disturbs the study.
74. Friends fall into seven categories: 1. Intelligent who are selfish 2. Good, who work for the intelligent 3. Exploiters, who exploit the good 4. Bandits, who steal. 5. Crooks, who instigate their bad habits 6. Stupid, who spread rumours about you 7. Spiders, who talk more and 8. The best, who help you in need and criticise when you are bad. You are the best friend to you.
75. If you are spending most of your time gossiping, watching movies and without any productive work, consider that you are among spiders. Be good, but avoid being exploited.
THE PRE-EXAM REVISION
76. Never read till late nights. Never use tea or drugs to stay awake. Before sleeping, try to recall what your read. Better to wake up early to study rather than studying at late nights.
77. Concentration is high during early mornings. Hence create an artificial dawn during the preparatory holidays. Sleep for half an hour in the afternoon, take a bath, close the doors, have break-fast (!). Close the curtains and read before a table light though it is the evening time. This is called ‘one day-two dawn theory’.
78. As examinations approach, you start spending twelve hours on reviewing and still feel that there is a lot to study. Don’t get tensed up. No person in the world feels totally prepared for his exams.
79. Never try to revise one subject for too long at a time. One hour is just enough. But note that revision means not just reading a chapter and vaguely remembering a few sentences.
80. During revision, you may surprisingly find some of the subject matter missed your attention completely. Don’t panic. You might have some-how missed it. Glance through it and decide whether it is necessary to read it at the eleventh hour.
81. Don’t do last minute cramming, standing outside the exam room.
82. Some of your friends may be telling that they stay awake till the crack of dawn during exams. Don’t be depressed. It may work out to them. Stick on to your healthy habit of sleeping before midnight and ensure that you are fit physically and mentally.
83. Avoid sweets, oily foods and cool drinks a month before exams.
WRITING THE EXAM
Exams come and the exams go, you will be there, sane, smiling and ready to enjoy the summer. Cheer up.
84. Can we fight fear? Certainly yes if you know the Four Noble Truths sermonised by Buddha philosophy, the Reality (of the problem), Cause (for the problem), Effect (by the problem) and the Solution (to the problem). It is as simple as that. In physician’s terms, it would be like: Disease, the Cause of disease (Diagnosis), the Treatment (Prognosis) and the relief (solution).
85. There are various stages of tension before exams. Three months prior to the actual exams certain sense of unease, lonely feeling and insecurity catch you up. A week prior to the exams, it gradually turns into anxiety. Suddenly from nowhere the worry erupts. Anxiety causes troubled sleep, depression. The day before the exam you are almost panicky. Panic includes sweaty palms, shivering fingers. Slowly you cease to grin and smile. As you receive the question paper, your ‘tension’ peaks. Your memory fails you. Rapid heartbeats, loosing self-confidence are the indicators at this stage. Uneasiness continues for sometime even after exam. Apply point No. 3.
86. Before starting, close your eyes for 30 seconds, calm down, tighten your right fist, take a deep breath that gives you more oxygen and start answering with a pleasant smile.
87. Cricketers on the field chew bubble-gum to release their tension exhaustion. Chew condominium (elachi) while writing exam for the same reason.
88. Stay relaxed and confident before answering. Spend the first 2 minutes previewing the question paper. Allocate time in proportion to the marks. Just because you know the answer in detail, don’t write beyond the requirement.
89. Have the entire picture of the answer. Determine the length, time to be spent answering depending on the marks allotted to it. Focus on how to start an answer, elaborate, reach a climax and end it. The answers should be brief but should cover all the points.
90. Write your exam with a pen that you are used to write. Never write with a new pen.
91. Improve on your grammar and spellings. Think in English while writing in English. Don’t write ‘Rama Ravana killed’ which may be correct in your colloquial language. Say ‘Ram killed Ravana’.
92. Maintain silence one hour before exam. Don’t discuss about it after coming out from the examination hall.
93. Be careful with construction of sentences and particularly with pronouns. If you write, ‘Rama killed Ravana as his wife was kidnapped by him’, the examiner confuses to understand who kidnapped whose wife.
94. Last but not the least... Write to communicate. Not to electrify. Avoid repeating the same words in a sentence or paragraph. Know exactly when to use a simple or a compound sentence. Don’t use more commas. Divide paragraphs correctly.
95. Suppose you did not fare well in your exam. Instead of brooding over the matter, evaluate the reason for failure, may be you do not understand the lessons properly, your memory is poor, your language or hand writing fail to communicate. Once having known the correct reason, micro-analysis gives further accurate picture. Does it pertain to one subject or entire course? Does the problem arise now or in existence from the beginning? Is it due to your interest in other fields or complexity of the said course? After locating the reason, fight it out.
FIVE TECHNIQUES
96. Tranquillity: After completing your studies go to bed and turn a side and close your ears and eyes with a pillow. By closing your two important sensory organs, you are being engulfed into a stage of quietness. Feel that your mind is transforming into calmness. Just watch your breath for a minute. Now adjust your pillow and settle in your habituated comfortable position. Slip into sleep while recollecting what you studied that day. This is called ‘recall’.
97. The early morning proceedings: As you wake up, stay on bed for another few minutes to continue the following exercises: Think of the mistakes that you have done during last twenty-four hours! Have you quarrelled with your brother or sister over a particular TV channel of your choice? Have you thrown the food plate accusing your mother that it is not up to your liking? This daily evaluation and self-criticism helps you to develop your personality for betterment.
98. Positive thinking: “I am black, short, and ugly with pimples…” are a few examples reflecting one’s inferiority complex. Let those thoughts not enter your brain while studying. Imagine how people look at you once you top your university ranks. It is called positive thinking. Genes are nothing to do with intelligence and memory. Hence one need not feel depressed for having born to uneducated parents.
99. Exercise: After brushing the teeth, bend ten times touching your toes with your fingertips. The blood circulation to the brain converts the short time memory into semantic memory. If you have no neck problem, spend a minute staying topsy-turvy (Seershasana) by the side of wall for another two minutes.
100. Compare and consume: As you are resting with a blanket, over ten million children of your age in this country are already on their work. A ten-year-old boy is serving tea to lorry drivers on the roadside dhabas, a small girl of tender age is sweeping your house, and a twelve-year boy is climbing the up-hill on his cycle to give you the morning newspaper. Think how fortunate you are. God has given you wealth, health and above all, ‘parents’. The feel gives you a feeling of compassion and positive thinking towards life.
Never did you realise that life would not have been so cheerful for some people in this world including your parents, had you not been there and ‘you’ made that difference? Who knows? You may be the person who would change the world history. Implement at least 50 percent of the above, and nobody can stop you from getting a rank… I promise…I challenge.
It’s not a pressure, it’s a pleasure.
Saraswati Vidya Peetam is established to combine recreation and education. It is to reduce the psychological trauma of the students while tackling the challenges imposed by their parents and the educational institutions, loosing somewhere the childhood pleasures they deserve.
It is free training session for one-day. A Batch of 40 students, from any school (particularly Municipal and Tribal schools) is taught various ways and techniques to make study easy.
The day starts with a three hours coaching to develop concentration, personal hygiene and more particularly to eliminate tension before exams. After the class, they meditate before Goddess Saraswati and take oath to alter some of their hazardous habits like junk food, hypersomnia, TV etc.
Then the students are exposed to new world of experience to shrink their phobias and develop attentiveness. Boating and other sport activities unwind them, fishing enhances concentration reduces hyperactivity.
Then in the evening, under the shades of falling sun, sitting by the side of the lake near the temple, students are encouraged to narrate small stories, to develop the spirit of public speaking and communication. Finally they are awarded suitable gifts ranging from gold medal to a chocolate. The fun-filled memorable day ends.
i.“We do not have a play ground at our school. I was never allowed to step into water till now. This is the first time I had a wonderful experience. We never dreamt education would be so relaxing like this. We don’t feel like leaving this place. One of my classmate said… he ate a Cadbury’s chocolate for the first time in his life here” – a tenth class girl student’s interview to TV 9 on Saraswati Vidya peetam.
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