Family Enrichment 101
Family life can be fun & exciting and need not be a boulder on your shoulder!
Thursday, July 2, 2020
Thursday, July 2, 2015
Monday, April 27, 2015
Learn Something Together With Your Family
In India, school summer holidays have started for some while others it
is just a few days away...
Many families would have already planned their summer holidays while
others are still in the process of finalizing a place or things to do this
summer vacation. Something new or different that you could consider this year
during this vacation is to learn something new together with your family.
Rather than sending your kids off to summer camp why don’t you attend
some interesting course along with your kids? I am not talking just the kids
and the homemakers… but I am talking about the kids, the homemakers and the
breadwinners (if you have assumed that by breadwinners I mean just the dads
then you could be wrong, today it is both mom and the dad). All the cities
offer wide range of exciting short-term courses and classes. You could even
find weekend classes…Pottery classes…Baking classes…chocolate making
classes…the options are countless, pick something that appeals to everyone in
the family. If you are too tight with your budget, you could divert the funds
that you have set aside for your vacation trip this year.
I am not against family
tours…they too have their place and value in family enrichment…but learning
something new together as a family will bring in unlimited hours of fun and
excitement…it will create a common platform for families that complain we do
not have any common area of interests where we could converge…in some families
common interests ‘naturally happen’ and in some we can sow the seeds of such
common interests and we need to sow such seeds…learning a new skill together as
a family could be one such seed...here you will not only learn a new skill...
but you will also be able to spend some quality time together with your family
now and in future practising the new skill…baking your cakes or moulding your
pots…it is not the pots and cakes that matter but the platform it creates for
the entire family together is what matters…of course if you get too good at
your cakes and pots…you could sell them and make some money for your next
summer vacation…if it does not sound interesting to you…I would still say force
yourself into it if required and you will certainly not regret… Let us make and
spread happy families...it won't hurt to share this. :)
- Antony Innocent
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
The Love Guage
Oh My! I
have been avoiding this all along...
The Love Gauge
-by Antony Innocent
Family
Enrichment 101 - http://familyenrichment101.blogspot.com
Assess
yourself…
and
You
deserve an honest response to yourself...
|
|
My
Love For My Spouse…
|
What
Do I Make Out Of It…
|
Has grown in the past years since our marriage.
I still have that burning love for my spouse.
|
Great Going! Just make sure that you are
honest with your response.
|
Has been the same since day one until this
moment.
|
Qualify your answer.
It could mean…
-
you don’t love your
spouse and it has been the same.
-
you have been madly in
love with your spouse and it has been the same.
-
you don’t really love
your spouse but at the same time you don’t really hate him either, you can
co-exist without any problem under the same roof and it has been the same all
these years.
So what do you really mean here?
|
Has reduced…we don’t fight but that burning
love is not there anymore…
|
Probably, you need to kindle the fire a bit
to get the flames up…a bit of open talk with your spouse will help and is
required here. Both of you really deserve the best, then why should you
settle for a mediocre life when the quality of your life could be much
better.
|
I don’t really know whether I love my
spouse or not, we just live under the same roof.
|
This is not a good sign but you are not
alone here thousands of couples merely exist under the same roof without
really living their marriage. Check whether your spouse too feels the same. Don’t
postpone this discussion… the sooner you talk the better it is for your
family.
|
I don’t love my spouse…I hate to admit it.
|
Oops! You both need to talk… you need to
talk immediately. It is possible to rediscover your love for each
other…talking will help you trace back where and why you have lost your love
for your spouse so that you could find it back. Often, it is not a ‘specific’
or ‘single’ moment… but it is usually a gradual phase, which you probably
kept ignoring.
|
There
are no problems in our marriage life and this is what most of us say…but here
we are not looking for problems in marriage life but we are trying to ask
ourselves whether we are happy with the quality of our marriage life and
don’t we deserve better??? There is nothing extraordinary about this quick
assessment but it does help us come to our senses…it is just a wakeup call
and we probably have a long day ahead of us...
Signing
off for now… -Antony Innocent.
Family
Enrichment 101 - http://familyenrichment101.blogspot.com
|
Sunday, April 19, 2015
Seconds count but do you make them count?
365
Days in a year
24
Hours in a day
60
Minutes in an hour
60
Seconds in a minute
8760
hours in a year
5,25,600
minutes in a year and
3,153,6000
seconds in a year!
Life
may churn out millions of seconds into your life but one thing it never releases
into your life is “second chances.” We wish that life came fitted with that
fancy “Undo” button… unfortunately it does not…we need to sweat our way to undo
our follies of the past, some take hours, some take days, others take months
and yet others do take years. Things are never undone in life with just few
clicks or few quick swipes like our smart gadgets.
The
trick is to make every second count!
Seconds…
as long as you make them count have the power to make a difference in your own
life and in others…regardless of whether you make an effort to make them count
or not to count, they are going to count…
Heraclitus
says “You cannot step into the same river twice” and so true it is, a second
that has passed by has passed by, I will never be able to relive a second that
has passed by…I would like to cherish every second of my life and I have
started making significant changes to my life to achieve this end and how about
you?
But
a lot could be done in a second to make or break others and in the process do
the same to ourselves.
It
just takes a second to compliment someone…just try right away looking at the
mirror or your smart phone cam saying, “you look beautiful”, “that was a good
job”, “liked your coffee”, “a nice shirt”.
It
just takes a second to utter a consoling word…
It
just takes a second to hug your child that comes running to you with its arms
flung open as enter your home after a tiring day or for some after a tiring
week…
Making
every second count, for some it means attracting more money each second, for
others becoming more popular. There could be nothing wrong with these goals as
long as no damage is caused to the others and as long as you know that your
freedom ends where your nose ends, as long as you never barge into others’
space to usurp your “more money” and your “more popularity”.
We
have heard several times, time is a great healer, time is a great master and
one more thing that we need to know about time is that it is absolutely
“unbiased”… 60 seconds is 60 seconds for everyone!
Every
second counts. You would never be able to step back to relive a second that has
just passed by!
Lately,
the increasing awareness for me is that I make my seconds count when I spend
more quality time with my family – my wife and my kid and when I am actually
cherishing the moment that I am living and not being in 9 am and longing for 5
pm.
Saturday, April 18, 2015
We find it hilarious Do you?
This video was taken in 2009 and I happened to bump onto it after five years, it used to be one of our favourite videos of Aadith. He knew how to amuse himself ... :)
we
we
Tuesday, April 7, 2015
India Needs Innovation To Fight Illiteracy - Varanasi Boat School A Laudable Start
The Challenge Of Illiteracy And Its Impact On India
As Indians, we would like to project or see our country as a developed nation but in the World Map painfully though we are categorized under “developing nation.” For how long will be considered a developing nation? Probably until we weed out all the underlying causes and one among them being high rate of illiteracy. Statistics have that India has the largest illiterate adult population in the world. Around 37% of the India’s adult population does not know to read or write. If you want to compare how other nations are doing, you could try this link https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/print_2103.html.
With such a high rate of illiteracy, we could barely lug ourselves to the finishing line in the rat race. The immediate temptation here is to switch to “blaming” mode and start blaming the government, politicians, the political systems in the country and the list is unending. We have tried this all along and it does not seem to take us anywhere. Probably, we should try to amuse ourselves with a different question and ask, “How do we deal with it?” which could lead us somewhere. This is not to mean that there aren’t any welfare programs from the government or that no one is working on this issue. We know for ourselves that hundreds of national as well as international NGOs are already at it traveling the paths that are less travelled even just as you are reading this, they are making progress but not effective enough to make a noticeable difference. We need more hands, fresh thinking and new strategies. Innovation could be the ‘lifeline’ that we are looking for, which could breathe a new lease of life into the nation when it comes to fighting illiteracy and thereby poverty.
Varanasi’s Unique Boat School That Keeps The Children Off The Streets Of Varanasi
Varanasi’s boat school is an intriguingly innovative idea and the best part is that it did not stop being an interesting idea. Already hundreds of children have benefited through this journey of doing right! The Varanasi boat school was started by the NGO Guria and the key person to lead this project was Ajeet Singh.
The Magical Transformation That Will Give The Children An Enhanced Learning Environment
While the school is still operational, it is certainly in need of a magical transformation to provide ideal learning environment to the children. The idea of Varanasi boat school is not to institutionalize this project but to increase the awareness among the locals on the importance of education. What this project has done is, if the kids won’t come to the school then bring the school to the kids! This school has prepared many children to get admission into regular schools.
Your Contribution And Support Can Give The Children Of The Ganga The Learning Environment That They Deserve
Varanasi boat school is certainly in need of support and with better funding, they could extend scholarship to the children, renovate the boat school and better equip it to make it an interesting place for the children. You too can do your part to Do Right! Visit http://www.doright.in for the whole story and to lend a helping hand.
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