Why is being honest so difficult?

We always believe that lying is easy, and being honest is not. Well lying is never a good idea to start with, maybe if you only think about the consequences of the moment – lying is great! But in the long-run, it will only lead to more lying and lots and lots of heartache.

It is absolutely impossible to enjoy life and the moment if you’re a liar. You always have to think about what have said, and make sure you lie more to cover up your old lies. Trust me… I know!

Lying is definitely the road to unhappiness and frustration!

At the same time, being honest means that you have to be proud of the things you have done before it bears any fruit. If you live a life of unconditional love and respect for those around you and feel proud of your achievements, then it truly feels great to be honest!

Just learn to say everything exactly as it is, without purposely hurting anyone.

Telling some fat guy that he is fat is not going to save the world. And please, don’t do that. He needs to realize it himself. You can help him with that, though. But be very tactful and respectful of his feelings.

How do we start being honest?

It’s very simple!

Listen before you start handing out advice, give without taking, and most of all – respect the emotions of others no matter how cruel they might seem. Remember that you don’t have anything to lose; the human capacity to love is never ending.

Open up your heart to family & friends, trust me when I say that being honest with everyone, you also find out who your real friends are.

Most importantly, you get to know yourself. You don’t have to carry all this baggage inside you. Being honest is a perfect good excuse for cleaning up inside.

So lets try it and see how it goes!

So with this post, I thought of sharing some hard-learned lessons so that you can re-evaluate yourself:

How to Live more and Worry less…

1. Learn to relax at work.
2. Do the very best you can.
3. Put a genuine enthusiasm into your work.
4. Remember that unfair criticism is often a compliment in disguise.
5. Keep a uncluttered table, except those relating to the immediate problem. Remember: “A clear table is a clear mind”
6. When a problem arises, solve it then and there if you have all the facts necessary to make a sound decision.
7. Whenever needed, organize, supervise, and deputize.
8. Prioritize and do things in the order of their importance.
9. Find who you are and be yourself. Remember, there is no one else on earth like you.
10. Count your blessings – not your troubles.
11. Reach for the stars! If you fail at this, then at least you can fallback on the clouds.

How to Win Friends and Influence People

1. Try your very best not to criticize, condemn, or complain.
2. Whenever deserved give, honest and sincere appreciation.
3. Arouse in the other person an eager want.
4. Take a genuine interest in other people.
5. Make the other person feel important – sincerely.
6. Show respect for the other person’s opinions by first listening to what they have to say. Never say, “You’re wrong.”
7. Be friendly in all your communications.
8. Let the other person feel that the idea is theirs.
9. Submit to the nobler motives.
10. Never point out people’s mistakes in a crowd, do it indirectly or privately. They will admire you for it.
11. Admit and talk about your mistakes before criticizing the other person.
12. Ask instead of giving orders.
13. Let the other person save face.

Some of the bands playing at Preliminary Round 1 this weekend are Alchemy, Heavens, Gravity, Helter Skelter and Corrosive Blue.

Who are your favourites?

More details visit: http://www.tnlonstage.com/

“If there was ever anything I wanted to change in my life, what would it be?”

I thought about it for a moment and undoubtedly the first few things that ran through my mind were the bad times in my life…

Then again, when I took the time to visualize my life at a glimpse, what I realized was that my entire life has been exactly the way I wanted it to be… sure a few things might have been unexpected or unwanted but they were precisely because of the choices I made at the time.

Sometimes we make choices in our lives that may seem significant (or not) at the time but I strongly believe that by some strange inner force within ourselves we are unconsciously guiding ourselves to do exactly what we are meant to do.

So the next time you feel like regretting anything you have done in your life, DON’T! You did exactly what you were meant to do and precisely what you wanted to do. Just know that life is way too short to be worrying about what you could have done and could have said. So stop worrying and start living!!!

This happens to be one of the leading causes of unemployment, as people are worried about what others think about what they do for living than getting employed and doing something useful with their lives rather than remaining idle. Its mostly evident in developing countries (such as ours) were people either have too much self-pride or fear of what their family, friends and relatives think about what they do for a living.

In some countries, someone who works two or more jobs (just so he/she could make some more money) is considered perfectly fine and no one bothers about it. But sadly, if someone who holds a decent position in a company does after hours part-time in a place like McDonalds serving food… it is looked down upon by society.

Judging the social status by what they do for a living still existent where we live. It is a common known fact that tillers of land, barbers, potters, leatherworkers, dhobis, carpenters, weavers, and cattle-rearers are looked down upon by society. As pathetic as this sounds, its the evolution of the community and how their status in society are traced; for all these occupations are confined to the lower grades of human dignity.

What people don’t realize is that most don’t do what they do because they have to, but because it is what they chosen career choice. Without each one of them contributing to society in their own way, we would be filled with a lot people doing the same thing everyday; all our lives!

Consider this for a moment, what if our fore-fathers gave up on rock-carving, farming, planting and making furniture, we would not be having a culture, traditions or history.

Another thing that should be brought to light is the fact that men work hard to obtain money; and having gained wealth, they suppose that their money will make their children worthy in the eyes of society. But many such men fail to train their children, as they themselves were trained, to hard, useful labour. Their children spend the money earned by the labour of others, without understanding its true value. Thus misusing the talent that was born in them that should be used to accomplish much good.

Not so long ago, it was considered by many that any sport would be worthless to pursue. But once it became a profession that was paying considerably, it started to climb the social ladder.

Sadly this is the society we live in today!

Well as much as I would love to say that I was abducted by aliens and had probes stuck in places that I would find hard to explain about…

But I was actually busy with getting a job! A job you ask? Yes! A Job! I am employed now. It was always in my long-term plan to have a steady income and this is most definitely the conventional way to make money… although getting employed was least likely choice for me, I figured earning money doing what you love to do is fair enough.

Getting a job is a funny business. Most people prepare for it with all the possible resources they can muster, whereas others just walk-in without a worry on their minds. With both the above cases the chance of landing the job completely depends on the way you approach the situation. In my case, I walked in and got the job simply because I followed a few basic guidelines:

* Did a background check of the company, the kind of business they are into (IT, HR, Training, etc)
* Spoke to a few friends within the company to understand their work culture
* Prepared a few Q&A scenarios of the most likely questions they would ask
* Made a mental note of a range of how much I would be expecting in terms of a payment package
* Finally, got a good nights sleep before the big day!

I hope that this may help anyone else that is looking to get a job or change their jobs.

On another note, I made a few changes to this blog today by adding an “Advertising Zone” on the right bar. I don’t expect it to kick in for another 24 hours since that’s how long it takes to get activated and populate with relevant ads.

Hoping to post a new review soon, so stay tuned for that… I promise it would be a real treat for the creative souls out there.

Here’s how it will work:
1) Must be the original works of the author
2) You can submit as many as you like
3) Can be about anything at all (except for stuff that I can’t publish like porn and all)
4) Leave a comment here and send your entries to asela at crystalaxis dot com
5) Closing date is on 31st of May 2008

Since this is less of a competition and more of a way to get your ideas out there, there will not be any prizes given out. But you never know… I might just change my mind as and when I feel like it!

So start sending in your entries soon…

After my 6-month probation period was over, the Webmaster who was there left the company for a better position and I was promoted to the post of Webmaster and put in-charge of the day-to-day web development activities . Over the next few months, I was tasked with training the 4 university interns with the inner workings of building a website, where to host the files and the standards to follow in the process.

During this time we worked on a lot of websites and portals for various clients. One of the stars of the time was when we made a one-stop portal called “LankaWorld”. Although its no longer active today, it was making headlines in months where we hoped it would take years.

After serving at MegadynamiX for over 3 and half years, I left the company to join Confifi Management Services on the 12th of August 2003 as their Group Webmaster, taking with me some good lessons and whole lot of experience. Confifi Group was a hotels and resorts management organisation based in Sri Lanka. Although most would think of this switch as career suicide, I thought of it more like a challenge. As expected, I was faced with a lot of challenges, frustration and reluctance by my fellow employees to embrace the ever evolving web technology since most of them had little or no exposure to Information Technology back then.

I worked my way through each problem, eventually leaving Confifi on 25th of April 2005 to join OpenWorld after having served for 1 year and 7 months, during which time I learned a lot about the inner workings of hotel chains, customer management and public relations.

OpenWorld was one of the best places to work, I was given a pre-warning though that I would not learn anything new but the pay was extremely good so I took up the challenge to try something different since now I had the best of both world under my belt.

A UK-based IT solutions provider for the global travel and hospitality industry, with branches worldwide. OpenWorld served the likes of InterContinentals, Raffles, Dorchester’s and many more hotel chains. I was recruited to service the Raffles and Swissotel Hotel chains for a greater part of my time and it proved rewarding for everyone, since my contact at Raffles was very impressed with the way things were being handled.

After serving at OpenWorld for over 2 years, one fine day the CEO of OpenWorld dropped a bomb on everyone saying that the company was running at a loss and that he had no choice but to close down the company on a global scale. Although we knew that this was not possible since the company was making millions, we all started to look for jobs.

At the peak of my career I was frustrated and angry, I promised myself that I would never let this happen to be again. Now I was in financial trouble as well since I had got married only 3 months back. So I looked around for another job but in fact my skills were now out-dated and out of style. Eventually, I found a job through some good recommendations of my ex-colleagues at OpenWorld. TravelByte Technologies also proved to be a short career when they closed down 3 months later.

By this time, another friend of mine who had gone to Dubai over a year back mentioned that there was a position with the company that she was working for, as a Web Developer to build a tourism, business and recruitment consultancy portal. After a few months of negotiating, I was on my way to Dubai to start my life fresh without making the same mistakes all over again. With the help of some of the best people I ever had the privilege of working with, including my ex-colleague from OpenWorld; we launched the portal.

Six months later, I was dragged into the same pit all over again. I was once more tricked into believing that I could come back to Dubai in two weeks when I came to Sri Lanka in November 2007 for a short holiday.

Although it was inevitable that they would not need us once we had completed the portal, giving people the benefit of the doubt is what we should always do. Anyways, I am now in Sri Lanka trying my best to overcome my past mistakes and get my life and my web development career back on track with an outlook to a prosperous future.

Lessons Learned:

1) Never ever trust people that offer you the world
2) Always trust your instincts
3) Make as much money as you can when you are young (never tell your boss that you are NOT interested in money)
4) Save as much money as you can, because you never know when you will need it next
5) Never give up on yourself or your dreams
6) Always Think Positive!
7) Be aggressive about what you want in life and never settle for anything less than your worth

Do you have a story that you would like to share? Please feel free to drop me a line…

When we apply this theory to a website, what do we get? Traffic from a number of curious, interested and sometimes aimlessly browsing surfers.

To spice up a situation, if there was some kind of a scandal then the traffic that starts to generate becomes so huge that sometimes the server that is hosting that site becomes clogged up or goes down unless of-course it has a lot of bandwidth to support this traffic.

The Scandal
Anything juicy, noisy and irresistible will definitely have an effect. Most times even if you talk about your neighbor sleeping with your other neighbor will have this effect. The best results are achieved if these neighbors are singers, movie stars or just plain old famous.

Traffic magic!
Provided you have a decent number of readers and those readers you are bound to get some very good results.