Learn from defeats & get on
Neasa Macerlean

EVERYONE loses at some time in their life, but how do you recover from loss and bounce back? The following are seven tips on how to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start over:

• Understand that losing out plays a major part in everyone’s life. If you see each loss as a personal blow and bitter rejection, you make yourself a permanent victim and are on the road to unhappiness. Far better to see each loss as a lesson which you should master before leaving it behind. British tennis star Tim Henman is a first-rate loser — able to process his disappointment very quickly, recognise his technical failings, revise his game plan and emerge smiling.
• Don’t be tempted to wallow in your grief, or feel isolated. “It helps if you are in touch with other people who are understanding or who have been through it too,” says Gill Hankey of the UK-based Bankruptcy Advisory Service. “Lots of people feel they are alone but bankruptcy happens to 30,000 people a year.”
• Vent your frustration (in private) so you have allowed your negative feelings to express themselves before moving on. The jailed Lord JeffreyArcher, who has survived many setbacks, advises people to “cry in the morning” but to get back on course by the end of the day.
• Get the viewpoints of other people. “Get some advice from third parties you can trust,” says Rob Yeung of business psychologist Kiddy & Partner. “Often we turn to friends, but they tell us what we want to hear.” If you have just been publicly demoted or made redundant, they may have views on why this happened — how, despite your brilliance perhaps, you rub people up the wrong way. They may also have ideas on what you can do next.
• Leave with the best grace possible. Conservative Member of Parliament Michael Portillo is widely admired for the honest way he has accepted defeat, while Labour MP Peter Mandelson is seen as volatile and difficult. Don’t tell people you are devastated by what has happened to you: they will see you as unable to recover.
• Avoid blaming others. The fast route to misery starts with holding grudges against the bank manager who pulled the plug on you, the manager who fired you or the colleague who succeeded you. Even if someone has been vicious, you will lead a much more enjoyable life if you can move away from the episode and accept you will sometimes lose out. Always expecting justice and fairness will make you unhappy — because it is unrealistic.
• Recognise that great achievements often follow enormous blows. Drug smuggler Sandra Gregory who spent five years in jail in Bangkok begins a geography degree at Britain’s Oxford University this year — after deciding to make the most of her life again. “Sometimes when you suffer a major setback, it’s a great opportunity to re-evaluate your career,” says Yeung.

Observer News Service

Daydream yourself to sound sleep
Amar Jit

MOST of us day-dream secretly because we think that it is a waste of time and energy, an exercise to get away from the harsh realities of life. We try hard to overcome this habit.

But the truth is that day-dreaming is one of the well-known ways to plan for the future. Many persons who succeeded in life in their chosen fields had day-dreamed scores of times about what they intended to do.

Another advantage of day-dreaming is that it can be used constructively to overcome insomnia.

Problems and anxieties hindersleep. They prevent our minds from being relaxed.

To sleep, we need something peaceful to relax our minds. Our favourite day-dreams can help us achieve this. That is because a satisfying day-dream is packed with emotional power to throw out anxieties. Mulling over a problem in bed at night does no good to anyone.

At night what we need most is rest and relaxation. Day-dreaming can help us sleep. And by repeating the experiment every night, it can help re-establish our pattern of sleep. This can wipe out insomnia if there is no known physical cause for it.

Try the following experiment to fall asleep through day-dreaming:

• Follow the usual hints to fall asleep.
• Go to bed at the same time each night.
• Do only soothing things immediately before bedtime.

It is a lot better to go to sleep this way than to pop sleeping pills. Rather it is a healthy way to drift into a pleasant dream world and wake up next morning fresh and surging with energy.

Tips on sleep
R.K. Verma

SLEEP is the most important for maintenance of health and longevity of human beings. It is appropriately called jagaddhatri because of its mechanism of overcoming wear and tear of the body due to physical work and mental stress and tissue loss. The following tips will help you sleep well:

• One should sleep with head to the east or north.
• The bedroom should be absolutely clean, well ventilated and away from noise and disturbance.
• The bedroom should be draught free.
• One should avoid sleep when the brain is excited e.g. after reading, thinking, drinking etc.
• The mind must be absolutely free from worldly affairs and worries while going to bed. This may be achieved by praying to God at the time of going to bed.
• Sleeping late at night leads to ill health.
• A minimum of seven hours’ sleep is required in 24 hours to repair the wear and tear of the body.
• Sleep during the day should be avoided as far as possible. However, if you keep awake at night, take some sleep in the daytime. Day sleep is not harmful in summer, but in winter, it increases kapha, thereby causing respiratory and digestive troubles.
• It is advisable to massage the head, soles and palms with oil before going to bed. By massage, dreams can be controlled.