How to Make SOC Writing Provide Real Gold

If you are an aspiring writer, you would have tried SOC (stream of consciousness) writing to mine out rich ideas for your literary creations. As for me, the results were often disappointing. What was your experience with SOC?

Rarely do we see something of remarkable value appear in this way.

Entrepreneurs also try to mine their subconscious with SOC writing to get million dollar ideas and frequently get the same result. 

The reason is that the minds of most people are already given to a million odd things, scattered all over. So the mind is not able to produce anything of exemplary value.

The solution is to cultivate laser focus on a few select topics, reducing our personal interests and wants to the extent possible. Success is a bitch goddess, the saying goes. Great works were produced when their creators secluded themselves up for extended periods and contemplated on their focus topic. They gave up energy frittering trivial pursuits at least temporarily.

Do this regularly and you will see the quality of your output improve everyday.

Do you use SOC writing to improve the quality of your work? How was your experience? Do let me know your take on it in the comments here.

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Turning Garbage into Gold: How to Write Well with Stream of Consciousness

You probably know the benefits of free writing or stream of consciousness writing. It helps to relax ourselves, brings out repressed emotions, and helps us confront hidden issues in our personality.

However this is about therapeutic benefits. Can we use soc writing to mine ideas from our subconscious? After all, popular texts celebrate the subconscious mind as a treasure house of knowledge. It is the silent partner who mulls over the inputs from your conscious mind and provides insights and solutions.

When you try to use soc writing in your literary pursuits, you may be disappointed that it does not provide much help other than to clear up your mind.

As one might surmise from Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, does transferring your thoughts to paper work magic and make you an expert if you keep at it for 10,000 hours? I doubted it. I did not think it would make me an expert. (Read about the benefits of free writing here). However, as the process goes on, I have had some inspiring insights:

In the beginning, all that comes out may appear to be garbage-incoherent, meaningless babbles that resemble a one-year-old’s scrawling. Very disappointing.

Hold on, don’t lose hope yet. This does not mean there is a scarcity of idea gems in your mind. You do have the occasional brainwave, right? But all of us hesitate or procrastinate putting those thoughts down, and they are lost forever. Thoughts are hard to grab, like Mercury.

While starting to free write, it is like learning to speak to a crowd: we are tongue tied; we don’t have confidence in ourselves. We are not relaxed, are not our natural selves, and do not enjoy the process.
Most writers will give up at this stage when they see the scrambled mumbo-jumbo of words on the screen. It is here that you must keep on writing.

Your subconscious is like a child—it will be happy that you have accepted it in spite of shortcomings, that you have faith in it. Self-acceptance relaxes. You become more relaxed while free writing and become your natural self, so that your thoughts and insights start to flow freely when you sit down to write. It is here that you will see garbage turning to gold.

Wait a minute, it isn't pure gold yet. But it definitely is gold ore that you can smelt through editing and refining to present something of remarkable value.

Note: If you already have some ore, you can turn it into pure gold with this guide from acclaimed author Bruce Ross-Larson : Edit Yourself: A Manual for Everyone Who Works with Words

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The Mark of Great Writing

Each new day, when they come out from the far side of the barn, it is like the next act, or the start of an entirely new play.

This is the opening of Booker prize awardee Lydia Davis's new chapbook, The Cows. The book grew out of her musings as she observed three cows on a meadow next to her house. She watched and photographed them, perhaps for several years. The apparently random movements of the bovines intrigued her:

One thinks there is a reason to walk briskly to the far corner of the field, but the other thinks there is no reason, and stands where she is.  At first she stands still where she is, while the other walks away briskly, but then changes her mind, and follows.

She follows, but stops halfway there.  Is it that she has forgotten why she was going there, or that she has lost interest?  She and the other are standing in parallel positions.  She is looking straight ahead.

Great writing hooks you from the word go and sucks you up into the worlds of the characters.

Ms. Davis attempts to decipher the mind of the quadrupeds in fascinating paragraphs, often revealing insights into the human mind. Her musings completely absorb the reader into the scenario, making them a part of it.

Isn't that the mark of great writing ? Find out for yourself.

You can see a preview of the kindle edition here: 

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Simplicity of The Profound

    Play, child, grow

Try, bird, fly

   Know, be joy.

Do you think the above poem by Ramana Maharshi summarizes the evolution of the human mind into the Divine?

Ramana Maharshi was an enlightened sage who lived in South India. He attained final Samadhi in 1950.

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How to Have Fun Teaching, Studying, or Just Anything

Would you like to have fun in studying, writing, working at your day job, teaching your child, or doing house hold chores? How enjoyable would life be, if we had fun doing all our must-do tasks!

You would definitely be having some activities in which you have fun : it could be shopping, socializing, playing games, watching movies, reading comics, meditating, or anything else. Is your favorite activity not in this list? Excuse me then.

I started thinking on these lines when I ran into obstacles while trying to improve my writing. All fresh writers need to observe quite a lot of rules, if not born with the talent or if lacking a natural love for the craft. With all the constraints, I found writing was not fun anymore. And if you do not have fun doing something, it becomes a chore, something to be got out of the way. Any stuff written that way will not be palatable.

If you have fun doing something, others will also feel the same way about it. So wouldn't it be great if we learnt how to have fun doing anything, including performing our mandatory tasks?

Why do we enjoy our favorite activities?

We enjoy activities in which we are not criticized or judged, and those without too many don'ts.

Do you like Football and Tennis? I do, though I have no claims to be a player. If the Football coach keeps repeating, do not send the ball outside the ground and such other don'ts, would you like the game? It'd be difficult-because you are constantly thinking about what not to do. You become worried whether you'd be criticized for doing something wrong. Your mind does not stay on the game and you lose the fun of it.

Instead, beginners in any game are repeatedly given instructions on the rules. If some one breaks the rules, others tell them it is a foul. That is all. There is no endless drumming of not-to-do lists.

While playing football, there are a set of rules: don't touch the ball with the hand, play inside a designated rectangle, and such others. Still we enjoy the game. This is because we are absorbed in the ball. We participate fully, as there is a single target.

We will not be able to participate fully in a game if we do not exert ourselves fully, if we get angry, or if someone criticizes us constantly and runs us down.

Alright, so what should I do to make life exciting?

We can draw lessons from our fun activities and apply them to our must-do tasks, so that they are also fun to do. Just keep these points in mind:

• Keep a positive outlook, take every event positively.
  
  
• Focus on what needs to be done, rather than what should not be done.
  
  
• Give your everything and get fully into it
  
  
• Keep it continuous for a period of time. Go at it in 15,30,45, or 60 minute sessions. That is to say, avoid all other activities-browsing, social media, phone calls, etc in between.
  
  
• Breakdown large goals into smaller sub-goals. The smaller, the better. You will have the gratification of finishing each one. As you grow accustomed to the task, you can increase the size of the sub-goals.
  
  
• Take just one sub-goal at a time and focus on it.

Turn your day-to-day tasks into enjoyable, absorbing activities just by following these simple rules, and have fun in everything!

What is your favorite activity? Do you use it to unwind or to improve productivity? Let me know in the comments below.
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Curing Homosexuality from the Karma Vantage

At college, I had a bench mate who had a 'queer' sexual orientation. There wasn't much awareness of homosexual behavior and characteristics and most of the class found his advances irritating. They often made him the butt of cruel jokes.


The 21st century hasn't changed situations sufficiently for homosexuals. People who consider themselves a minority feel isolated and fearful. When there is the added stigma of social disapproval, they are desperate to convert others to their belief systems. So this is an area where some homosexual people desperately try to spread this "cause" by all means.


Even though sexuality is an individual choice, the tremendous stigma in this area traumatizes many homosexuals.

Karma offers a view point that can clear the discomfort in this area, for both straight and gay people.

Nobody is eternally male or female

According to the theory of Karma, we continue to take birth until we reach enlightenment or complete freedom. We can have different genders in different births. A person who is a man now, might not necessarily have been of the same gender, in his previous births. The same fact applies to women.

As we pass through each birth, we pick up impressions based on life experiences and our reactions to them. We also identify with our personality and character in each birth. These impressions, reactions, personalities, and character lie dormant in the psyche. They are not permanent (eternal). When we die and later acquire a new birth, we get a new gender, personality and character according to our aggregate karma at that stage.

Sometimes, our latent personalities and characters surface, under suitable circumstances. Thus, sexual preferences from past births may surface now. A man can have the remembrance of a past birth when 'he' was a 'she' and feel attraction towards his same sex now. Today, this would be immediately labelled "homosexuality."

Gender is not an achievement to be proud of. Sexual orientation, neither!

None of us demanded and got their particular gender. 

The intolerance which surrounds homosexuals is the result of the mistaken idea of 'masculine' superiority.

Many people are troubled by homosexual thoughts that they have, and they wonder/worry: am I a homosexual? And they go on a frenzied search on how to cure homosexuality.

Studies have revealed that most people experience homosexual thoughts at some point in their lives. Dr.James W Pennebaker in his "Opening up: The healing power of expressing emotions" reveals the case of a young woman who occasionally felt homosexual impulses. She was alarmed and struggled to suppress them. Dr. Pennebaker explained to her that these are just passing thoughts. It does not necessarily mean that she is a homosexual.

It is not a catastrophe to be one either. There have been many such gifted people.

Many men are troubled by similar thoughts and struggle against them. This is a tremendous expense of energy. The more you struggle against a thought, the more it acquires power. As "The Secret" says: Energy goes where attention goes.

C.G.Jung: "What we resist, persists."

The best way to take the power out of these thoughts is to witness the thought, just as you would watch traffic from the top of a building. We would just watch the vehicles moving by. Some of them are beautiful and some are otherwise. We wouldn't try to jump on to them, or force them away. One could approach obsessive compulsive thoughts in much the same way,

Do not try to fight or struggle against an unwanted thought. Acknowledge it, and breathe. That will relax you.

While witnessing thoughts, it would be ideal to have something to center ourselves on. Watching the breath, or just being aware of the bodily sensations, gives that center.

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Dealing with Violent Thoughts

Have you ever struggled with violent anger so much that you imagined yourself hurting people? Or yourself? This happens when you are not able to articulate your feelings and emotions healthily, without fear. Learning to express our feelings and emotions without fear is a part of Assertive behavior. However obsession with violent thoughts is an internal thing, and can spiral. The more a person tries to control these thoughts, the more they multiply.

I became aware of how many people suffer from this situation when a friend told me he was feeling impulses to strangulate his children. He was scared. I recalled a period in my life when I used to lay down to sleep every night, wanting not to wake up the next morning, to sleep forever--the easy way out.

The emotional energies in us seek expression. However, if you have been forbidden the freedom of expressing emotions such as anger and fear in childhood, later it can give a hard time understanding and resolving these emotions.

Ideally, emotions need to pass through our system freely. It is best not to obstruct them or to go along with them. To witness them like an outsider without judgment or criticism is very healing. Watching the breath or counting breaths helps to be an impartial witness.

If you regularly dip into the calming experience of meditation, it will be easy for you to divert yourself when these obsessive violent thoughts come. Knowing the psychologist's view is also helpful. This article contains useful information and techniques on dealing with violent obsessive thoughts:
http://www.ocfoundation.org/eo_violent.aspx
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How a Four-Year-Old Motivates Herself

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Where the Rot Starts

A recent corruption scam in the Indian Railways exposes how corruption at the top trashes the entire system. When all the departments malfunction from corruption, the standards of life fall hopelessly. The government, if it aims to enforce correction at the grass roots level, will only evoke resentment and ill will among the people. The surgery has to begin from the top down.

The nephew of the Union Railway Minister of India has been arrested for receiving bribes of just under ten million INR (170,000 USD) for a top level appointment in the Indian Railways, the eighth largest employer in the world.

Let's look at how this scam can affect the quality of Indian Railways and life in general in India.

The appointed candidate holds a top level job. He has to make up this money and turn this investment into a profit as much times higher as possible. He will in turn demand and receive bribes for candidates that he recruits during his tenure. If a post can be had for money, then naturally the highest bidder becomes the most eligible. Qualifications and skills required take a back seat. Thus ineligible persons come to occupy the positions from top down. These people will be lax in discharging their duties, bringing down the efficiency of the Railways. The people subordinate to them whom they recruit-these recruitments will also be made based on money. Thus more ineligible candidates fill in the ranks of the Railways. The higher up the rung the occurrence of corruption, the faster and more thoroughly the rot spreads. In no time, the majority of the Railways posts are manned by inept employees.

The consequences will be constant delays in train services, frequent cancellation of services, frequent accidents, scams in purchase of machinery, ....

Dacoities and robberies on trains will be wide spread as nobody cares any more and any authority can be bought to help culprits.

The volume of passengers steadily goes down. The organization plummets into loss after loss.

Looking at the news, the railways has been suffering all of the above calamities for quite some time. Robberies are common. Trains slow down at designated points  ( Look at this story: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100121/jsp/northeast/story_12007249.jsp).

One wonders whether this is just one scam that has been exposed-whether it has been going on for some time?

Air India, the national carrier, has been suffering a similar fate with tales of rampant corruption.

When many of the state departments have been rendered inefficient because of corruption, it emboldens  neighbouring countries to make incursions into Indian territory with impunity. China probably seized the opportunity.

One wishes the Government, instead of trying to muffle anti-corruption movements by Anna Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal, had taken on the corruption challenge and tried to mitigate it.
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Can Bail-Outs Rescue Economies?

"A bottle of drinking water costs INR 50 (0.92 USD) in Dubai, and a liter of Petrol, INR 10 (0.18 USD)" When my wife mentioned this in a conversation, I was surprised, as she had expected.

Drinking water in Delhi costs hardly INR 12 ( 0.22 USD), but Petrol costs nearly INR 70 (1.28 USD) a liter.

This sparked a discussion on how bail-outs can help falling economies.

It always intrigued me how wads of notes drove the modern man's life, when in ancient times, the barter system had prevailed.

A million for a bottle of water

Suppose, I had a million dollars with me; I should be able to buy as much water as I want. However, if there is no water available, what value does my money have?

The value of currency undergoes drastic or total change with a change of location or life situation.

For people trapped in a desert or forest or sea, money is no big help. It can be a hindrance. So also when trapped in a hostage crisis or other calamity.

If you think about it, money does not have value by itself. There are a lot of things that lend value to money:

• labour
• infrastructure: power, transport, housing...
• availability of resources

Labour: If there is no one to sell the water, or to perform the myriad processes prior to it, money cannot buy water indeed.

On another level, the value of money is enhanced also by:

• people
• love
• moral values: honesty, sterling service,...
• good manners

People: If one has a lot of money but nobody to share it with, it would be a lonely life indeed.

Love: Love gives us the zest to go forward in life. Give love to get love.

The real reason for an economy's fall: consumerism

When business aims solely at increasing profits, values suffer. When values deteriorate, business and business products also lose value. It is the sad way for man to realize that matter is subordinate to spirit. Spirit is supreme. Values originate from the spirit.

A life of pleasure-orientedness leads us further and further away from the Spirit.

The way out: bring back the values

It is time for us to place moral values higher than profit making. It is the quality of service that needs to have the top priority, profits will follow naturally.
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Are You a Door Mat? Not Any More!

When shy or timid people try to be assertive, they may come across too strongly, looking aggressive. Assertiveness is welcome, aggressiveness drives people away; and being passive-timid will have people walk all over you.

A simple combination of assertive body language signals, positive thoughts, and relaxation can set you towards being an assertive individual in control of his/her destiny.

In this video, Dr.Drew McAdam describes the fine line between being assertive and being aggressive. Click this link to watch this video and read the transcript: http://programmes.stv.tv/the-hour/home/real-lives/238582-drew-mcadam-stop-letting-people-walk-all-over-you/#
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We vs. Them: How A Skewed Vision Ensures Failure

A company's shareholders are the gods of the management. The employees and the customers are just a means to an end: more profits.

• As a customer, I feel used that the company does not take into account my needs.
• As an employee, I am resentful that the company does not consider me as important in its scheme of things-my ideas are not listened to, my working needs are not attended to.
• Disgruntled customers go looking for other companies.
• Dissatisfied employees quit and seek other opportunities.

Employee satisfaction does not always mean better salaries. Treating me as a person and appreciating my contribution works wonders for my spirit and output. I sincerely believe absence of spirituality is a huge deficit in modern management practices. Take one example: Jesus's dictum "Behave unto others as you would like to be behaved unto" is a universally applicable principle. All other cultures echo this sentiment. Who wouldn't respond to when treated with respect?

Yet, pathetically, it is confined to the books and sermons. When it comes to real life, it is always We vs. Them or I vs. You.

True happiness can only be experienced when our circles of concern expand - when we care not just for us, but for our family, society, country, the world- in an ever-widening circle. The joy that you experience then is oceanic-you give up/transcend your narrow personal likes and dislikes and embrace the common good of humanity. It is immensely rewarding-more than any drug or toy.
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Improving Software Usability with Technical Documentation - A Case Study

As you might be aware, Recallplus is a mind-mapping software that can do flash card testing as well. The vendor says it is the only mind-mapping software which can do both.

I bought the Essentials version a few years back, and it seems to fit in my expectations. There are a number of functionalities which you will find convenient in mind-mapping for studying

The only hitch is that the program is a bit unwieldy at times. Using a tablet can solve this problem.

Many of the nice features of this application lie obscure because there is no clear documentation. I took the short cuts portion from the online help and applied some technical writing principles. I hope it is effective now. What do you think?

You can download the Free Shortcuts Guide for Recallplus by clicking .

To download the Recallplus software for free, click here. It allows unlimited mind-mapping forever. You need to upgrade for testing and other functionalities.

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