Curiosity..

Ideas for inventions strike at the most unlikely of moments.George de Mestral was walking through a meadow when prickly burdock seeds hooked themselves to his trousers,giving him the idea for Velcro.Here are some ways to be..be curious and help communities and your corner of the world.

1. The great thing about inventing is that it isn't some impenetrable form of magic.The answer to all our tomorrows could lie in your workshop,the workshop of curiosity,of being curious.Dredge your experiences for ideas.Get back into your childhood for inspirations.Ask.Seek.Knock..Go into tinkerville.

2. Lose yourself in a cause: The challenge for all of us is to find those causes that are peculiarly our own.Those to which we seem to be drawn to by instints and go full throttle.This will add purpose,pattern and a never giving up trait tp our lives. Wijaya Godacumbura,a doctor in Sri Lanka was horrified when a 19 year old pregnant woman was brought to his hospital in Ratnapura, Sri Lanka.She had third degree burns to 75% of her body and shortly later she died.Most Sri Lankan homes in ruralia depend on lamps for light.These kerosene lamps topple over easily,spill and start fires.There was no way to prevent this.In 1992 Dr Wijaya decided to do something himself since neither the government nor the authorities were doing anything about this.He designed a glass bottle thta had a screw on lid and a heavy base to prevent it from rolling."My work," he says,"will never stop until all of the three million unsafe lamps in homes are replaced with these bottle lamps."

You should be constantly looking for breakthrough ideas by going outside your field. Identify hot trends in other industries. Then think about how they might be adapted to yours.

But here's a suggestion you might want to take up on..

Real people build real business. Lives change.

Cally Rao

Migrant Labour, Immigrants And Jobs..

The cheap labour model that has driven the economies of most of South East Asia,China and other nations may be running out of breath.Twelve people jumped off buildings at a certain factory's facilities in Shenzen ( two survived however) exposing problems related to ill treatment, mismanagement of staff,military style training and a no nonsense corporate culture. Production line workers,including pregnant women were forced to stand for eight hours on their jobs while not having time to cmunicate with friends and support nests.Withholding of wages , locking away of personal document etc etc. are some of the abuses.Pay cuts and longer working hours are held out to these so as to reming them that their jobs are at the mercy of the Boss.

Nine million Filipinos work abroad as migrant workers.Another four million , mostly from India, work in the Gulf region.The recent global meltdown has driven sixty million people below the poverty line worldwide.Twenty million migrant workers have lost their jobs in China alone. It is estimated that about eighty million migrant workers have crossed borders in search of jobs between China and South East Asia alone.

One looming question over all this is what will happen if these millions lose their jobs,expelled or thrown out of work in another economic crunch? What about again about their remittances to their home countries which have become a big source of income for countries such as the Phillipines and Bangladesh besides propping up their families and households?A gnawing fear is, if and when another downsizing slits the throats of economies will these workers have jobs to hang on to ? Can they just stay afloat in the labour markets of their host countries? Will they be allowed to stay on , or will they turn to crime or become powder kegs of social unrest?

The story of both immigrants and migrant labour is :freedoms.Financial and personal freedoms.It's easy to feel snug and comfortable for the others who are citizens .But anyday ,anyone of us can be caught up like an antelope in a net as economies are battered.. Here's one preventive step, a preemptive strike if you care to call it.

To your future,

The e-business option

If You're A Small Business Owner..

Cally Rao

A Strategy For Passive Income

AdSense is just one of several income streams your business can produce.
AdSense primes your monetization pump like no other option...

* It's low maintenance -- no products to ship, no customer transactions to deal with,
etc. Google provides the ads and the guidance on how to easily insert them on your
site.
* Forget banners. Google outperforms them. Contextual ads rule!
* Ad networks? Not worth the bother.
* Blend in a few well-chosen affiliate programs and it's passive income at its best!

You provide the relevant "real" content and AdSense compensates your efforts.

What Else ?

Reap The Rewards

The Parent Show

If the home's a stage, kids are the audience. They see everything that happens or takes place on that stage.For better or for worse the day to day events taking place on that stage such as decision making, conflict and other displays, slowly construct the childrens' blueprints for their behaviour that will last and build or tear them throughout their lives.

In a problematic marriage, a child's perceptions and reactions go awry resulting in behaviour or health problems such as putting on weight, headaches and sullenness.Their performance falls and personalities change. And kids can carry the yoke and guilt feelings of their parents' failed marriages into their own adult relationships in the future.Like some unfinished business it continues to blight and tear apart the lives of the children.

Simply overhearing parents' conversations kids absorb several aspects of character or behaviour. A discussion about what to do over the weekend can illustrate planning, respect for everyone's views and purposeful talk.Every day life-managing discussions between parents are the show that kids get to see most.In their eyes parents are the prima donnas.How to face challenges, manage crisis,treat the opposite sex are learnt right at home in the in the innocent days of their lives.

How are we helping our children grow - physically,emotionally and in character?Our conduct is the rudder that in unseen,unseemly ways steers their lives.Should it be a matter of jesting, impunity and blind walking?Set the stage for well adjusted kids.Let the real parent show come on.

Build Character

Cally Rao

Make Yourself

Steve Case and his brother hawked magazine subscriptions and sold lemonade when they were kids.Later on when Steve discovered the computer he became passionate about building a connected society on line where people can buy,sell,communicate or to get news with and from friends,family and colleagues.In those days connecting to the Internet was slow,frustrating and fatiguing.Steve started AOL and though many pundits predicted it'd demise Steve focussed as he says it: 'We stayed focussed on what consumers not technologists want." Here are three small steps out of oblivion:

[1] See a need and fill it

Fauzia moved into a new housing estate. Shockingly none of her neighbours came out to greet them. Where she used to stay in Secunderabad neighbours spoke to each other everyday. Fauzia found this strange. So she decided to visit all 27 households on her street.Using information she had gathered during the visits,she rigged up a local directory listing names,phone numbers,house numbers and emergency contacts and delivered a copy to each home on the street.Following favourable response to the directory,Fauzia arranged a coffee party for women in the neighbourhood.At this get together they discovered that their children were in the same classes and decided to share the responsibility of sending the youngsters to and from school. Others who used to see each other almost daily discovered they lived next door.From then on the women stayed in touch. Next she and her husband organised a party for everybody in the neighbourhood.Thanks to Fauzia's iniative the people in her neighbourhood continue to share ideas to solve common problems and be there for each other in times of distress.

[2] Get Out Of The Box

Take everyday tasks and make them more EXCITING.Perhaps a new route to work?Or a complete change in routine for a day?Tinker with curiousity.Is there a better way to do something?Perhaps sit down with the kids or greet the hubby as he comes home drained by the wringers at work.

[3] Get out To Do Something New

For example browse in an old art shop.Study German architecture.Hang around others who are breathing breaking free from the chains of routine.Join an association of scrapbook keepers. These activities feed you in unexpected ways. Lighting the fires in your energies or spark you on to something new or to go in new directions.Many people come up with their best ideas while driving or cleaning house or shopping:be available to your intuitions!

Time spent in these snatches of minutes or parts of an hour in tinkhamtown is time well spent.If there's genius laid low in the woods within you,it may not surface suddenly or catapult you onto fame's court.But it's life altering,leading you to make changes in work and pursuits.Take a chance on something you've always wanted to do.We shouldn't get burnt by living and dying with that one wish unfulfilled.

So steal away to yourself. Find the person in you.

To your best,

Passion,Freedom,Prosperity

Cally Rao

Ways To Finding Yourself ...

Peggy will never forget the phone call she received one September morning.Her daughter,Diane, a student at a university had been killed in an automobile accident.The weeks and months that followed were a blur of grief for her.Until an old friend from secondary schools and a few bike rides together in the woods did she claw back to her usual gazelle self.

Stress and anxieties through whatever door they come in trigger the now familiar fight-or-flight response in all of us.But unless you tear loose from the gravity of old life, you are going to get boxed in and caged again from time to time.But there's a way to kick your heels up again and live life:Get Lost!

Yes!Lose yourself!Lose yourself on an operatic binge.Hide away in a rustic old hotel on a faraway beach.Sneak away on a moonlit canoe ride.

Why should you bother getting lost?Getting lost unhatches trails out from the prisons of your comfort zones, your locked-up situations, forcing you to adapt,change,challenge and overwhelm a situation.Getting lost forces you to abandon schedule,routine and rigidity.You should let your instincts lead you instead of you leading your instincts.

Every new day is a new leaf to the chapters of our life.Will today be as tomorrow was or the day before had been?We have a past but we are not our past.If we don't like what we are doing now, we have the choice to change.

Go get lost! Take a leap from well grazed turf and the couches to open vistas. But if work has you bottled in here's a trail to get lost on.

Finding Yourself..

Cally Rao

From "Do-It-For-Me" To "Do-It-Yourself"

Do You Know Something About Anything?
A Hobby? A Passion?
Any Interests? Experience?
Turn Your Knowledge Into Revenue!Life doesn't happen.
It comes from a willingness to get your feet wet..

Passion!

Cally Rao

Beating The Blues

Nobody knew Louise's secret.A bubbly journalist,she often had panic attacks,dry spells at work and was afraid of getting out of bed in the morning. She stopped eating well and slowly lost interest in assignments on the job.She began to spend more of her time lying in bed,smoking and drinking and getting overwhelmed by feelings of dying.Studies show several risk factors that can parachute us into depressiveness: poverty, numerous children, a sick baby, lack of a support system, low education, unemployment, marital problems and an unplanned pregnancy.In the Arab world, postpartum depression affects 18 percent to 21 percent of new mothers. In the Western world the figure is 10 percent to 15 percent.

Depression is bad for the heart.New studies bear out that patients with major depression were three times more likely to be struck down by heart disease.Even mild depressions can take the fatality rate 50% higher than normal.Depression causes stress and stress triggers an outpouring of hormones ( cortisol ) which can cause heart rate and blood pressure to surf.Depressed people are also less likely to exercise or eat right than those who don't suffer the malady.Depression is a huge cardiac risk factor, so it's really crucial to take care of your emotions.

If you are overwhelmed by feelings of isolation,hopelessness,inadequacy and failure it's time to be careful, to do a reality check.Too often someone feeling down over protracted periods of time doesn't feel anything abnormal with this but neither do they confide to friends or relatives.They march off into silence. Take it out of the closet or you could end up suffering in silence for life!Stigma,fear or just outright obliviousness can make sufferers lead a double life. Victims will tell their doctors about physical problems but reluctant to discuss their emotional problems.Cultural factors lead to misdiagnosis or no diagnosis at all in nearly half of all sufferers in Asia. Left to itself it becomes a self harming tool.Self harmers struggling with all their emotional problems may get to feel that they have no one to turn to or cry out to could end up harming themselves as a coping mechanism.Sufferers are in huge emotional pain and the only way they know how to release all that built up tension is through self harm.Some go into drinking binges or drug themselves while others flee into harmful eating disorders.It is a tragic reminder of how life can go terribly cruel.

But depression also has economic consequences.Workers suffering from depression take more sick time,use health services more and are less productive.But a job can be the road to recovery.Being on the job gets you away from drowning in yourself and keep the mind busy.Confidence and a sense of purpose follow in.Being on a job, doing things, TRYING out new ways add a pattern of purpose to your life and transform your days into time worth living.

Beating The Blues

Cally Rao