According to World Health Organisation (WHO), approximately 800,000 people commit suicide every year, which is one person every 40 seconds. The person who kills him/herself shatters and affects the lives of at least six people directly or indirectly. According to experts’ findings, depression that is untreated, undiagnosed, or ineffectively treated is the number one cause of suicide. Worldwide, suicide rates have increased by 60 percent over the last 50 years, and the increase has been particularly marked in developing countries. It is among the three leading global causes of death among young people aged 15-34 years, and the majority of suicides are reported in adults and older adults due to personal, social, psychological, cultural and environmental factors. In addition, more teenagers and young adults die from suicide than from cancer, heart disease, AIDS, congenital disabilities, stroke, pneumonia, influenza, and chronic lung diseases combined.
Pakistan is one of the vulnerable countries where stress, anxiety and depression are at highest level. With over 200 million population, one out of three persons is suffering from these curable diseases. The annual suicide rate in the country is between 15,000 to 18,000. According to reports, 50 million people are suffering from common mental disorders in Pakistan and depression affects 44 percent of the entire population in Pakistan. Its prevalence is higher in women at 57.5 percent and 25 percent in men.
Gilgit-Baltistan in the north of Pakistan, with a population of estimated 2 million, has been facing a challenge of a dramatic increase in suicides among youth. According to HRCP Gilgit-Baltistan, 300 young boys and girls committed suicide since 2000 and 340 women killed themselves from 2005 to 2011 across the region. There are so many cases which went unreported due to so-called family reputation, honour killing, police negligence and above all, the collective consciousness of the community. Experts argue that suicides in GB are usually the result of poverty, academic pressures, bullying, relationship problems, forced marriage and parental conflict plus certain mental disorders like depression, anxiety, personality disorders, and schizophrenia.
We need to revive attitudes that foster our connection with nature, develop inclusiveness and cosmic consciousness, and invest some time to the inner dimension of our lives
Globalisation made the world like a global hut. The development of science and technology has made entire universe accessible at the doorstep. Out of many side effects of modernity and scientism, one is the alienation of an individual from ‘self’. Modernity and scientism have severely affected non-physical dimension of lives of people across the globe and Gilgit-Baltistan is no exception.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr in his book ‘Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis in Modern Man’ says, “Humanity turned towards outwardness by the very processes of modernisation, it is not so easy to see that the blight wrought upon the environment is, in reality, an externalisation of the destitution of the inner state…”
Nature loving people of Gilgit-Baltistan have been living in these mountainous valleys for thousands of years. Lofty mountains not only protect innocent people of the region but have also been a source of their happiness and survival. Naturally, people were identified with mountains, plants and animals, surrounding nature and entire universe since childhood. Void of love with nature was tantamount to collective suicide and hobbies of young people were planting trees, grazing sheep and goats in the mountains, listening folk stories from their elders in the night and above all, self-help was their basic principle. People preferred to live in joint families, and everyone shared their joys and miseries. Eventually, this inclusiveness and love was a path to turn inward, happiness and joyful life. But today’s generation prefers to spend most of their time on indoor video games, mobile phones and watching television over spending time in nature, which is why they start to face anxiety and depression at a very young age.
The American writer Richard Louv in his book ‘Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder’ has defined the phenomenon as “nature deficit disorder”. Recent studies have exposed that kids who play outside are smarter, happier, responsible, more attentive, and less anxious than kids who spend more time indoors. There is a famous Indian saying: “The further we move away from nature, the further we move away from our own nature”.
In last few decades, much has been done by the NGOs in some regions of GB for the advancement of the education but nothing has been done for the inner dimension of life. Family structure has changed dramatically over the last 30-40 years generally in GB and particularly in Hunza and Ghizar districts. The large extended family structure used to be more inclusive, which has been replaced by the nuclear family. Inclusiveness, self-help and collective consciousness have been replaced with the Western ideas of individuality and exclusive development.
Today people are suffering because of their limited identification — which is a consequence of Descartes idea and fundamental principle of western education: “I think; therefore I am”. People identify themselves with their limited intellect and try to dissect every dimension of life and understand through reason and logic. How can one understand the love of mother or beauty of a sunset or mesmerising music through logic? One cannot understand the beauty of life in totality through logic. Human intellect has built numerous cocoons around human being — breaking the cocoons and becoming one with entire cosmos is the ultimate goal of life.
As Albert Einstein said: “A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Only a life lived for others is worth living”.
Great mystic and poet Maulana Rumi described the similar idea in his beautiful poem:
“I am your lover, come to my side, I will open the gate to your love.
Come settle with me, let us be neighbours to the stars.
You have been hiding so long, endlessly drifting in the sea of my love.
Even so, you have always been connected to me.
Concealed, revealed, in the unknown, in the un-manifest.
I am life itself. You have been a prisoner of a little pond,
I am the ocean and its turbulent flood. Come merge with me,
Leave this world of ignorance. Be with me, I will open the gate to your love.”
Likewise, many other true spiritual masters such as Osho, Bullay Shah, Sachal Sarmast, Chinese Laozi and Nasreddin from Turkey gave the same message of being one with it,and they guided people to turn inward and look within. They knew that life explores from inside out and happiness is an inside job and life experience what is happening within. Human thoughts and emotions are the consequence of what we have perceived through five sense organs. The world will never happen in our way and as we want but our emotions, feeling and thoughts must be in our way. As Rumi said: “Yesterday, I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” The problem of human being is we always try to transform the situation where we do not exist ourselves. We should understand that the situation is the consequence of the kind of people we are. What should be done internally, we are trying to fix it externally. A great Sufi mystic Nasreddin Hodja had a unique way of teaching. Once he was searching for his key in the street, someone enquired: “What are you searching for, Master? “I’ve lost my key,” replied the Master. “Where exactly, the key was lost?”I lost the key in the house,” replied the Master. “Then why are you searching for it on the street?” “Because there is light here.” replied the Master.
The moral of the story is: no matter how difficult it is, we must search in the right place. All five senses of human being are outward bound. That’s the reason it is easy to search outside, in other words, a “wrong place” than inside ourselves.
Osho beautifully said, “You have everything, but you don’t have yourself”. Healing the broken bond between nature, spirituality and self is becoming difficult and easy at the same time. We need to revive attitudes that foster our connection with nature, develop inclusiveness and cosmic consciousness and invest some time on inner dimension of our lives and learn to turn inward and search within ourselves who we are.
Parh Parh Ilm Hazaar Kitaaban,
Qaddi Apnay Aap Nou Parhiya Naee,
Jaan Jaan Warhday Mandir Maseedi,
Qaddi Mann Apnay Wich Warhiya Naee,
Aa-Vain Larda Aye Shaitan De Naal Bandeaa,
Qaddi Nafss Apnay Naal Lariya Naee.
Translation:
Yes, Yes, You Have Read Thousands Of Books,
But You Have Never Tried To Read Your Own Self,
You Rush In, Into Your Temples, Into Your Mosques,
But You Have Never Tried To Enter Your Own Heart,
Futile Are All Your Battles with Satan,
For You Have Never Tried To Fight Your Own Desires — Baba Bulley Shah
The writer is a former Daily Times correspondent from Gilgit-Baltistan. He is currently pursuing his doctorate studies at Jilin University, in the northeast of China. He can be reached at k4karimformanite@gmail.com
These 8 amazing athletes will inspire you with their stories of adversity. See how they didn’t let anything stand in their way of success!
1) Nate Loomis was paralyzed below the waist in a 1998 body surfing accident. After his injury Nate, who played lacrosse in high school, worried he would never have another opportunity to play a contact sport. Once Nate was introduced to wheelchair rugby, often called quad rugby, he immediately became hooked and joined a team. Described by his teammates as a warrior on the court, Nate says he’s more confident than ever and lives for the challenge and camaraderie the sport provides him.
2) The Long Island Bombers are a dedicated group of baseball enthusiasts and athletes from Long Island, NY. They just happen to be blind and visually impaired. The Bombers play beep baseball, a modified version of traditional baseball that uses a beeping ball and buzzing bases to guide the players to score a run. The team shows us that no matter what obstacles are ahead, the ability to succeed lies within all of us.
3) One day in 1995, David Wagner broke his neck in a freak accident at the beach. His life was forever changed — paralyzed from the mid-chest down and with limited feeling in his hands, David started a rehab program which included playing table tennis. Realizing he had a special talent with a racquet, David began playing competitive tennis in 1999. David became the number 1-ranked quad wheelchair tennis player in the world, won 6 medals at the Paralympic Games (2 of them gold), and his first Grand Slam US Open win in 2010. Off the court, Wagner is a speaker to provide inspiration to other athletes and the disabled.
4) Athletes With Disabilities (AWD) Synchronized Swim is the first of its kind in the United States. The sport is more than mesmerizing, it is helping people with disabilities take their lives back. 15-year-old Raquel Boales was born with a birth injury which resulted in a disability called Erbs Palsy, she also struggles with ADHD. Raquel uses aquatics therapy which includes synchronized swimming for healing.
5) To NBA fans, Chris Herren looked like he had it all. Money, fame, and a gorgeous family. However, his life away from the bright lights of the NBA court was ridden with addiction to drugs and alcohol. In his efforts to prevent others from following the same tumultuous path he did, Chris created “The Herren Project“ a mission to increase awareness and addiction prevention.
6) Anthony Ianni was diagnosed with autism (PDD) at age 4. Anthony defied all odds by not only graduating high school, but going on to graduate MSU with a degree in Sociology. While he was there, he was not only the first autistic person to play college basketball, but he was part of TWO Big Ten Championships and a Final Four. As if these successes weren’t enough, he now helps others live their dreams. On ‘The Relentless Tour with Anthony Ianni‘ he shares his story and helps stop bullying across the state of Michigan. He also helps and mentors the children at Kids On The Go, a camp for special needs kids.
7) Arianna Tanghe is the youngest sibling of two athletes and longed to experience the rush of crossing the finish line just like her brother and sister before her. There is just one complication... Arianna has Cerebral Palsy. This determined teen has never let her disability stop her despite blindness and her wheel chair restrictions. In 2012, Team Ariwas formed, when Arianna’s mother, Kelli pushed Arianna in her first 5k race. By her 13th birthday, the power mother-daughter duo completed 13 half marathons! Today, the sky is the limit for Team Ari as they continue training for their first triathlon!
8) These servicemen may have lost limbs overseas, but on the field, they don’t need special treatment. Once the competitive juices get flowing, that becomes very clear as these wounded warriors go head to head with seasoned NFL veterans and Washington Redskins Alumni. But even greater than the rush of competition is the sense of camaraderie the guys gain for one another on the field.
Source: Hufftington Post
The greatest mistake you can make in life is to continually be afraid you will make one. - Elbert Hubbard
Beauty is about living your life & being happy with yourself inside & out.
- Anonymous
What is motivation? What motivates us, me, and you? And I don’t just mean the basic definitions, but the science of how motivation works and the psychology behind motivation. In this article, we will go into what motivates us in life and in sports.
Motivation is broadly defined as all factors that cause humans and other animals to behave the way they do. Scientists believe the hypothalamus provides the physical basis for pleasure in humans, which plays a large part in motivation.
Hypothalamus means “below the thalamus.” The hypothalamus is involved in controlling certain body states including hunger, thirst, circadian rhythms, fluctuation of hormone releasethroughout the day, aspects of sexual activity, and body temperature. The hypothalamus is part of the limbic system.
The limbic system has connections to what motivates us based off memories and other stimuli. The system consists of the following structures: amygdala, fornix, hippocampus, thalamus, hypothalamus, and cingulate gyrus. Experience of emotions and the interpretation of emotionally laden events or stimuli appear as a result of these areas being stimulated and their communications with one another. In addition, the limbic system may be important in our overall consciousness.
Achieving goals can become a powerful motivator in a person’s life. Some people live for reaching their goals. The need for achievement is their motivation to accomplish a challenging task quickly and effectively.
David McClelland, his students, and colleagues spent forty years studying this type of motivation. They analyzed the personalities of those who demonstrated this need for achievement in entire societies. Those with a high need of achievement tend to work harder than those without it, are more future oriented, and will delay gratification longer.
An example of achievement-based motivation comes from research done on medical students. A study using focus group discussions with ten male and nine female students who scored higher than an 85% on all their tests was used on this study. The results established that the students were dedicated to going to lectures, prioritization, self-learning, learning in groups, mind-mapping, learning in skill labs, learning from mistakes, time management, and having family support. Non-academic factors such as sleep deprivation and homesickness also played a role in academic success. Achievement-based people tend to make sacrifices and make their goal their “life,” so they work around the things that may not be related to their sport, academia, or whatever they are motivated to do. They spend their time learning how to get better and be effective.
Achievement makes some people content and happy. On the other hand, failure can produce pain, sadness, and unhappiness, which can lead to avoidance behaviors. In athletes we typically find two types of successful motivations:
The understanding and utilization of different types of reinforcement and punishment will help coaches motivate their athletes. As far as which type of motivation is used, that depends on the coach’s ability to understand the athlete, his or her emotions, and his or her personality.
Coaches will use both forms of motivation, but the positive approach is arguably better because it focuses on what athletes should do and what they are doing right. Reinforcement increases task-relevant focus rather than worry focus. A task-relevant focus facilitates reaction time and decision time. A successful experience colors the athlete’s view as positive, which can lead to approach behaviors. Approach behaviors or approach motivation indicates the propensity to move towards a desired stimulus.
Prior research has already shown that positive affect (or positive motivation/reinforcement) promotes cognitive flexibility. In a study published in Psychological Science, they extended motivational dimensional model to the domain of cognitive control by examining both low- and high-motivated positive affect on the balance between cognitive flexibility (our ability to adjust to behavior in response to a changing environment) and cognitive stability (our ability to change behavior in the face of distraction). Low and high approach-motivated positive affect would indicate the intensity of the positive affect on a selected individual in regard to approach motivation. Results concluded low approach-motivated positive affect promoted cognitive flexibility but also caused higher distractibility, whereas high approach-motivated positive affect enhanced perseverance but simultaneously reduced distractibility.
There are many things that motivate us. Are you trying to find a reason to workout in the morning? Goal setting is usually the best way to do it. Having a goal you want to reach, such as “I want to increase my snatch weight by ten pounds in eight weeks” or “I want to lose ten pounds of weight in two months,” is an example of an achievement-based reason to be motivated. For those who are finding it difficult to find a reason to start fitness, go sign up for an event. Someone newer to CrossFit can easily sign up for a novice event. Those who want to get into adventure racing can go ahead and sign up for a race. The point is, find a reason to do something or you may not be motivated to do it. And don’t do something for someone else or you will likely not keep up with it. Be motivated to do it for you.
It's important to learn to laugh at ourselves, don't take life too seriously.
- Geri Halliwell
Mindfulness — the practice of staying attuned to what’s happening in the present moment — is a bonafide health trend right now, and for good reason. Research suggests it can reduce stress, help with problem drinking, lower blood sugar levels and help people succeed at work. Now, according to a new study, it may even help you become a nicer person.
The research, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, found that mindfulness training inspired people to be kinder and more empathetic to a stranger who had been ostracized during a simulated online scenario.
“When people witness someone being victimized, it’s really common for us to get distressed by it,” says study author Daniel Berry, an assistant professor of psychology at California State University San Marcos. But that distress doesn’t always translate into empathy. “Sometimes that upset is displaced so that we’re not feeling upset for the other person; we’re just feeling negatively,” Berry explains. “When that happens, people actually tend to turn away from the person in need.”
In the study, “the folks who received mindfulness instruction seem to be better at regulating their emotions…allowing them to be present for the strangers they were witnessing being victimized.”
The study consisted of four experiments, each with roughly 100-150 people enrolled. In most experiments, about half of the group was led through an audio-recorded guided meditation meant to help them stay present, while the others either received no training or an attention-focused audio training. Next, people played a computer game in which four characters, including one controlled by the person in the study, tossed balls back and forth. Study participants were told that each character was controlled by a person — but in reality, all of the other characters were automated.
In the first phase of the game, the computer was programmed to exclude one player after they received two tosses, leaving them to stand by and watch as the others played out the rest of the round. The goal of the study, Berry explains, was to see how people responded to the exclusion of a stranger, and to determine whether mindfulness changed their reactions in any way.
The researchers observed marked increases in empathetic behavior among players who did mindfulness training before beginning the game, compared to people who did attention training or no training at all, Berry says. While everyone in the study was able to identify the ostracized character, players who had undergone mindfulness training showed more concern for that person and were more likely to compensate for their exclusion with extra tosses during the next round, or with kind words in a post-game follow-up email.
“All four studies seemed to converge to suggest that they felt concern for the person in need, rather than feeling outraged at the people who were perpetrating the victimization,” Berry says. “They weren’t feeling negatively for themselves. They were specifically concerned for the other person, and this was specific to the mindfulness condition.”
While the findings can’t be extrapolated beyond online scenarios, Berry says past research has shown that mindfulness can increase kindness during in-person interactions as well. Why the practice is so powerful isn’t totally clear, but Berry says it may have something to do with how it “starkly contrasts our everyday ways of thinking, feeling and behaving.”
“Most of the time, we operate on automatic pilot without much awareness of what we are doing, why we are doing it or how our thoughts, feelings and other external stimuli are influencing our behavior,” Berry says. “I think training in mindfulness can break us from this automatic way of thinking about others and widen our circles for whom we show kindness.”
Some people don’t quite “get” sport and that’s not a problem, but it is a shame when you consider the dedication and commitment the top athletes make to their craft, which result in hugely entertaining battles for their fans throughout the world.
Indeed, it’s the top sporting arenas where many of us discover our heroes and inspiration; those who affect our lives for the better in more ways than any politician or employer could ever imagine.
It’s not about the sporting successes of each of the athletes mentioned above, it’s the back-stories behind many of them, with the likes of Mo Farah and Serena Williams overcoming adversity and training in challenging conditions to reach the pinnacle of their profession.
As the reverence with which Swedish zoologist Carl Linnaeus is held symbolises, classification is central to human psychology. Now, new research coming from the lab of Earl Miller at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory sheds light on how mysterious “brainwaves” may help us to understand the way the brain puts things into categories.
Brainwaves, also known as neural oscillations, are the rhythmic electrical activation of large groups of neurons. These oscillations are labelled according to the frequency with which they occur, and different frequencies are loosely correlated with certain kinds of cognitive function.
The alpha brainwave, for example, was first discovered by the Hans Berger, the German psychiatrist who invented the electroencephalograph (EEG) in 1924. It operates in the frequency range of 7.5 to12.5 hertz and is associated with mindful relaxation.
There are many others and, for the most part, science has yet to truly understand them. Nonetheless, the team from Miller’s lab has noted some fascinating correlations between gamma and beta waves and classification.
“Categorisation is a fundamental cognitive mechanism,” says Miller. “It's the way the brain learns to generalise. If your brain didn't have this ability, you'd be overwhelmed by details of the sensory world. Every time you experienced something, if it was in different lighting or at a different angle, your brain would treat it as a brand new thing.”
The new research, published in the journal Neuron, and led by Andreas Wutz and Roman Loomis, sought to investigate the connection between different types of classification with brainwaves and the different locations from which they emanate.
The scientists measured the brainwaves of animals as they completed different kinds of classification tasks and noticed something remarkable: when the test subjects were putting together objects that looked similar, such as apples, their brains exhibited strong gamma waves at the front of the prefrontal cortex.
This part of the brain is strongly associated with decision-making and complex cognition, among other things. When they were putting together objects that were more abstractly related, such as a screwdriver and a drill, there was a peak of beta waves in the back of prefrontal cortex. Different parts of the brain, then, seem to be associated with different kinds of classification.
The power of these waves also seemed to peak when the animal subjects were making correct category judgments and could often be detected before the judgment itself was made.
If these findings hold true in humans, say the researchers, then they could help in understanding aspects of some autism spectrum disorders, which are often associated with impaired ability to classify objects.
Forty million American adults live with anxiety disorders, and it’s not uncommon for depression to accompany anxiety. Nearly half of the people diagnosed with depression also have a diagnosis of an anxiety disorder.
Even if you don’t have an anxiety disorder or depression, it’s normal to get stressed out from time to time. Anxiety is a normal part of life, and everyone experiences it at least occasionally. It’s also natural to feel depressed now and again.
Social media would have you believe the only way to drink your way to happiness is through beer, wine or liquor, but that’s just not the case. There are several ways you can help keep anxiety and depression at bay, and you don’t have to go further than your kitchen to do it.
A University of Pennsylvania study found that chamomile extract was associated with improved mood in people with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). The mildly sweet flavor of this tea makes it an enjoyable comfort drink for most people. It may even help you get to sleep at night.
Foods that are rich in folic acid can help combat depression. Dark, leafy greens like kale contain folates that can help prevent mood disorders and disorders of the central nervous system, according to Dr. Edward Reynolds at the Institute of Epileptology at King’s College in London. Just be sure to limit the amount of sugar in your smoothie by sticking to low-glycemic vegetables for ingredients. Sugar can increase anxiety in some people.
Dairy products contain a substantial amount of vitamin D, and deficiency in this vitamin has been linked to depression. According to the CDC, about a fourth of the population is at risk for vitamin D deficiency. You might need more vitamin D in your diet and not even know it. Greek yogurt can provide a solid foundation for a vitamin D-packed, healthy smoothie, assuming you don’t load it up with sugar. Vegans can get a similar vitamin D boost from tofu smoothies.
Believe it or not, coffee can be an antidepressant. It stimulates the central nervous system and elevates levels of dopamine and serotonin in the body. While too much coffee can lead you to feel anxious, a few cups a day might help keep the blues at bay.
Flax milk
Omega-3 fatty acids have been shown to help treat depression in people who do not have anxiety disorders. It makes sense that drinks like flax milk can help you when you’re feeling down. Substitute flax milk for cream in your morning coffee or tea, or use it instead of yogurt in a smoothie for a boost of omega-3s and happiness.
Regular consumption of tart cherry juice can help you relax and reduce insomnia — a common problem for people living with anxiety. Tart cherries pack a big punch of melatonin, the substance that naturally regulates our sleep-wake cycles. It takes a little time before tart cherry juice starts to influence your cycles, but it’s worth the wait.
Two substances, EGCG and L-theanine, are found almost exclusively in green tea. EGCG has been shown to have a positive effect on cardiovascular health. L-theanine is an amino acid that has been shown to have calming effects on the brain. In a study published in Trends in Food Science & Technology, researchers found that people who drank green tea produced more alpha brainwaves, indicating increased levels of relaxation.
Dehydration can lead to anxiety or increase anxiety symptoms. When your body is in a state of dehydration, it can’t function properly. Even just a 1.5-percent loss of water in the body can alter your mood and leave you feeling blue. It’s just one more reason to make sure you drink enough water throughout the day.
