JOYS OF WOMANHOOD

THE JOYS OF WOMANHOOD

Understanding the rising divorce rate in the Sub-Continent

Today the divorce rate in the Sub-Continent is rising and the number of divorcee women is rising! 

Every one find their convenient reason to blame and absolve themselves of being the root cause but the inevitable truth often ignored is that it takes two hands to clap.

Being a female that has survived childhood and continues to live in the Sub-Continent as an adult is something that is quite an achievement from my perspective.  

From the minute you are born it is instilled into your brain by your relatives that your sole purpose in life is to say yes to anything the family elders tell you and that you must attain an incredibly high education and look like a Holly Wood star.  But after that prepare yourself to say yes to an arranged marriage to a man who will dominate you for the rest of your life. 

Should you decide for a career or your independence it will always down played and your self confidence will purposely be shattered making you an emotional slave to the mother in law to whom you are "actually" married to. 

Right from the start of being a girl child one realizes that life can become quite unfair.  It does not matter whether you live in a village and walk to your fields or you live in the big cities and have a chauffeur driven vehicle that takes you to the office because irrespective of what your social status is society and your family will always have an inconvenient reality check there to suppress you somehow!

Females have always been at the receiving end of criticism somehow and from someone from the minute they are born and society wants to inconveniently liberate them.  Irrespective of the generation the Sub-Continent’s younger females have an immense amount of enemies hidden in their friends that are a catalyst to them having more problems even before they enter into the saas bahu relationship stage of their lives.  - By the way every Bitter saas was a warm, kind, loving soul until society made her into a monster saas. 

The way I see it most women from the Sub-Continent are trophies to men who parade them in society trying to depict a lifestyle publicly that simply does not exist.  Women might not admit it but they are constantly under societies critical eye waiting for them to mess up. It’s exactly like having a pedigreed show dog with papers on a very tight leash.

In the past fifteen years more women in the Sub-Continent have divorced their spouses and decided to live on their own and the reason for that is very simple.  “The men they were involved with were simply not good enough for them when they got married helplessly or the women chose to evolve and break free from the shackles and hand cuffs they had self imposed!”

People think that a woman is being emotional or erratic when she decides to divorce a man but little do they ever try to listen to her with an open understanding mind.  Divorce be it in in any setting personal or professional only happens when a woman has had enough and simply refuses to compromise on the core values she stands for within herself and has defined her own boundaries and cares more for her self respect and herself over everyone else.

If one asks any man who is divorced what exactly happened – seldom will you get a befitting answer that is close to the truth.  Most men will often give shoddy reasons for the split which one can expect to be that the spouse was cheating and or anything except for the reality of the here and the now.

Men find women to be extremely complicated creatures and feel comfortable that in a countries in the Sub-Continent a woman’s identity is linked to the man she is hitched to.  Therefore, I feel that most husbands take their wives for granted quite a lot think that the women will crumble if the relationship were to end.  Sometimes it is a setback for the women but an opportunity look at it like the best thing to have ever happened to them.

If you look at another paradigm I think that women are quite simple creatures because they base their entire existence on two principles which are honesty and respect.  With any one element missing in the picture any relationship in life cannot exist.  

Further to that I feel that women are more resilient to handling pain and have the ability to inwardly digest and ignore social stigmas and agony that is created all around them because they have been raised to be perfect. 

Today women are armed and in the work force and women know their rights which is an awesome and amazing thing.  If one looks at society today one will notice the balance of power has shifted because women have the unique ability to be a stabilizing force for the people in their lives and their partners. 

Another thing that the Sub-Continent society has come to realize is that with education being the driving force now men actually have to work hard to keep up with their spouses because most families now NEED a dual income to survive.  

So with the wife also being forced to become a bread earner no longer does it make business sense to try to bully the other source of income into a situation that will be stressful for all.... and taht is where the saas and family politics come into play to down play her and ensure that "enough time is given to the home"! - The in-laws are really out-laws that will do any and everything to add to the problems and in the normal joint family only complain.

As time goes on and more and more western influence seems to infiltrate our lives the only thing left for men to do would be to start listening to their spouses.  If men can listen to their partners in the Sub-Continent with the intent to understand where they come from and just be honest to themselves.

As long as a man can come to grips with the reality that he would not do as well as he is if their spouse  left them and that he too needs to step up all will work out.  

Today no longer does a woman have to be good enough and come with a massive dowry to be accepted by her in laws.  Men need to be very different cowboys worthy enough to be suitors for any woman.

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If you suffer from depression and you need someone to understand you write to me.

If you would like to contact me for a free consultation, please directly email me at - amyn@ghulamalis.com 

OVERCOMING DEPRESSION

OVERCOMING DEPRESSION 

& FINDING NIRVANA

Here is some advice on how you can find internal happiness & overcome depression!

I have lived with depression for many years and was treated by the worst and the best of them in many countries and eventually I got over it so here’s how I overcame it!  In this blog I would like to tell you what depression is and how to overcome it!

Today’s humans are just bodies that wake up every day and then eventually fall asleep to wake up another day until the time has come to answer to a higher calling.  Almost all of us are trapped in a world where we just exist terrified of the inevitable death that will befall us at one time or another.  If you look around you or even within you a harsh epiphany will happen and you will notice that a lot of people are unhappy for some reason or the other maybe even yourself?  

Every decade is known for something or another and this decade is known for bringing out a lot of depression related issues out into the open which were a taboo to discuss in public to avoid being stigmatized.  Today depression is a more comfortable issue to discuss and running wild and whilst your go to therapist gets rich or your psychiatrist dopes you up with every chemical he gets a kick back for prescribing there are many other solutions to overcoming depression.

Other than chemical solutions people have turned to religion and whatnot to try to cure this phenomenon classified as a disease (which I believe it is not) but rather a state of mind.  Depression when it hits you can manifest its self in many forms or ways unknown to the person it affects.  The first responders or the first people to get affected or notice this is in the persona behavior change.  People affected by depression can take on many behavior traits that often might get your relatives to think you need a shrink and the shrink going on what everyone else will tell them will juice or dope you up accordingly. 

On a completely different plateau people suffering from depression also resort to alcohol and drug abuse to try to get away from the situation and eventually fall victim to addictions and other issues to add to the main problem.  So in short depression I believe that depression cannot be categorized as there are many variances of it and how it will evolve in a person and neither can it be cured by taking a pill or speaking to a therapist alone.

What qualifies me to make such statements are a few facts about me that I chose to accept!  I was born in Pakistan and I suffered the wrath of society's ability to judge a human being before it accepted it into the social wolf pack.  I had problems with the world and myself and I spent the better half of my youth being taken from doctor to soothsayer to be cured.  Eventually in 2012 I ended my depression and broke free from all the chains around me as I discovered that only I could liberate myself from these invisible chains.

First, you need to understand that depression is something that affects every human being today.  The reason is that time is of the essence and whilst we try to do the most in the minimum amount of time what humors social media today is someone else being ridiculed more than our selves.  The world is a brutal child’s playground where one finds more enemies hidden within their friends and then a whole lot of people in their homes who listen with the intent to rebuttal rather than understand.  So most people feel extremely lonely and to be honest in this civilization that is a forest of people swaying where the social tide goes nobody really has time to understand other people’s issues yet get really upset when they don’t get the attention they want,

Some of us have auto response mechanisms within our minds to deal with it.  Those that don’t allow this state of mind to overtake their true personas and portray its self in way unimaginable to the human mind or conscience.  To defeat depression, you need to know that the only person who can do it is “yourself”.

When you are looking to defeat “depression” basically what you are looking for is freedom from the person you are and have a need to evolve into a better human being.  To do that you need to change your lifestyle completely and you need to surround yourself with positivity. 

Toxic relationships are also a root cause for depression because we rely on societies approval to simply fit in.  I know so many people out there who go to work and do fancy jobs yet are the most miserable people inside.  Sometimes you need to distance yourself in a healthy way that is not offensive from maybe a parent or a sibling or a spouse to get that emotional freedom you need.  As it takes two hands to clap one needs to be honest with themselves and get a firm grip on the reality of why they are depressed.  Since you are self-evaluating yourself you also need to discover what makes you happy!

Overcoming depression is not an easy task because one of the main ingredients you need to change in life is who you truly love?  You need to be completely selfish when it comes to “love” as the most honest relationship you will ever have in your existence will be with yourself.  Loving yourself means ensuring you are comfortable with the person you are or want to be and that is emotionally and internally.  Once you have decided that only then should you focus on your exterior. 

Your exterior development or re-designing will depict how secure you are as a human being.  You might want to change the job you do and rather than going to work to pay the bills and then coming home to hit the bottle you might just want to change what you do by making a structured plan on how to do something you would love to do every day!   Curing depression also about how you spend your time so one of the skills you need to develop is self-time management. 

A huge part of curing depression or overcoming it is to train your most powerful weapon against it which is your mind.  You need to train your mind to ignore and block out anything that affects you as a human being.  So basically, think with your brains and not your hearts when it comes to this and define boundaries in all your relationships.  This is easy to do at work and everywhere else but almost next to impossible to do with your family.  Your family has their own set personalities and whilst you know they will not accept any form of criticism and expect you to change you need to change this balance of emotional control in a way that will leave you happy.

Most depression related problems occur when person is in their adolescence.  Family structures, especially from countries like China, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka that are used to be extremely close knitted have a hierarchy system that they believe is right and extremely narrow minded when it comes to change.  Eventually the young, frustrated for not being understood as an individual might act out and then automatically written off permanently as a problem child!  

When a parent takes a child to be cured for depression or any psychological problems little do they realize that they too need to bring about a change within them.  If a flower does not bloom in a certain environment, then one needs to change the environment and not the flower.  So, if you have a child who might be suffering from God knows what your medical practitioner tells you just sit down and think everything out about the environment your child lives in before you decide to label the child.

Only you can cure depression and only you can decide how to take control of your life.  To me anyone who is in depression is allowing it to happen.  There is no fixed cure to handle depression because there are so many different types of it.  Maybe changing your environment might help you and maybe.  Depression is not hard to cure if you can discipline your life.  Also, self-help books never helped me only common sense did.  I found a purpose for myself, I set some big goals and then many small ones to help me attain that big goal (I still have not attained it yet) and then life suddenly became worth living!

Material possessions do not help you overcoming depression.  They only distract you away for a brief momentary lapse of reason and shift your focus from the core issues.  I spent years trying to buy my emotional freedom only to realize that it left me lonelier than ever and feeling empty inside.  When I started working on myself and making sure that everything I did was centered around my emotional and personal happiness my journey to recovery started. 

If you choose to liberate yourself from depression, then please understand that it will be extremely difficult and you need to stay strong to yourself as you are to your religion.  Once you fall in love with yourself and want to better yourself you need to know that there will be hurdles, obstacles and hiccups from within your own family and friends but you should never compromise your happiness and the commitment you have made to being a happier person by reverting to your old “normal” self the way people liked you to be or wanted you to be.

Depression is easily cured by living in a self-structured positive environment, believing in self-motivation and having ambition as well as having a purpose in life and then surrounding yourself with people who can emotionally appreciate your life with positivity.  The hardest thing in overcoming depression is to emotionally disconnect with those who will constantly trigger your negativity.  Only you can be the change that you want to be so why not try.  If you are suffering from depression, please know that you are in control and only you can make it stop. Unless you have a child suffering from depression then you need to know that you are also in control and you need to be the change you want to see in your child!

If you like this post – please share it!  If you suffer from depression and you need someone to understand you write to me – If you would like to contact me for a free consultation, please directly email me at - amyn@ghulamalis.com 

The Evolution of Education

The Evolution of Education

Life was extremely simple when I was growing up because education was quite easy compared to today.  We had real paper books and we had real friends and life was quite simple as we came in doors when the streetlights came on.  In the 80’s you went to school and then you played sports it was that easy.  Ever since mobile phones came along and the internet revolution happened in the 90’s it seems that the entire world became information age junkies. 

Today we have two-year-old babies who know how to switch on televisions, set the temperature on the AC and we have toddlers teaching parents how to load applications onto their mobile devices.  It seems that no matter how much information you throw at today’s youth they just cannot seem to be enough.  If you look at the ripple down effect onto the corporate world, then you will notice that no longer does one need to work hard and slave over long hours if one has access to technology because they only need to manage their time and allow technology to have them work smart.  

As time moves on and we keep evolving so do the age limits of your CEO’s.  If you contemplate your childhood and you are a sixties or seventies child you will agree that CEO’s and business owners were in their early fifties.  Today a young college dropout buck with a hoodie, a laptop and a mobile phone is probably the richest man on earth as well as the CEO of the largest social media network ever created by working smart.

Education over the years has been evolving at a rate so fast that it is beyond one’s comprehension as to what the latest new fad will be as far as a standard system goes.  No longer do you need to be in a brand name school to get into an IVY league college or university.  No longer does your child need to get twenty million A stars or ten million lightning bolts to prove to the world that you are a good parent and your child is not an idiot!  

Today colleges look at well-rounded individuals who can do good with what they will learn (basically people with souls).  Having a great report card is one thing but being a good human being comes from the stuff that you are made of and what values you were raised with.  I work in the not for profit sector for education and I have seen how children these days applying for further education are either robots who repeat what they have read in textbooks like parrots or simply those who just want to achieve the highest grades without a purpose.

When I was growing up your choices for a career were quite easy, either you wanted to be a cop, a fireman or be a soldier and if not any of those then by default you wanted to fill in daddy’s shoes.  By the time you reached college all you wanted to do was decide from your three main choices which were law, medicine or if your daddy was rich then you went abroad to buy your economics degree.

Today one of the biggest problems that the youth face is deciding on what career they want to follow.  Their choices are so diverse with specializations that promise you a wealthy lifestyle that when a college applicant fills out a form they usually fill in “undecided” as a major.  

The youth of today has become aware that they do not want the hard working lifestyle that their parents had and if given a choice they would rather get a degree doing something they enjoy and really be motivated to go to work rather than get a degree for a career that they will simply not wind up wanting to emotionally invest in and just punch in the hours to earn a paycheck.  

My question to all of you parents who today rely upon a dual income to run your homes is that are we educating and raising our children right?  I mean we throw all our children into an education hamster wheel or a rat race to get the highest grades but for what?  The youth today is so aware of what is going on in this world that they can inwardly digest far larger quantities of information than you or I did when we were growing up.

Are we raising an army of soulless robots and doing right by our children by forcing information into them when we should also spend more time allowing them to reason logic and discover mistakes for themselves in a controlled environment?  I mean is the type of education we are providing to our children for our inner satisfaction that we did our jobs as parents or is for the children? 

A common problem that a lot of parents have with their children today is that they feel totally disconnected.  This disconnection which parents feel to be emotional is intellectual if you look at it from the eyes of a child.  Parents want to be close to their children yet the fact is that the generation gap for this generation has widened due to many factors and one of those being that rather than spend time with your children throughout the year parents squeeze in a holiday one a year to make up for time lost earning a living to keep it all going!

My point is that we never stop learning and we need to ensure we as parents also continue to do so and keep up with this youth that is evolving at a much faster rate than anyone of us ever will!  I guess one of the fail-safe measures is to change our own lifestyles and ensure that we as invest more time in our homes and know when to stop living in the bubbles we all do!  If you have any ideas or comments they would be deeply appreciated…

If you have thoughts then please do leave a comment, if you liked what you read please do share this on social media... If you would like to contact me for a free consultation, please directly email me at - amyn@ghulamalis.com