Kitchen Action Plan: Fill & Download for Free

Oh a sack full of them ! Time to bring out my never ending list.That getting an engineering degree doesn't mean you're gonna work as an engineer. Get ready for some serious clerical show.That getting placed in multiple MNCs isn't something to be proud about. You're digging your own grave. Multiple graves.That being a topper doesn't guarantee success in life. Experience talks.That working for the government and bringing about a change needs shit loads of patience and tolerance. It's never easy.That no matter how good you are at your work, there are always leeches waiting to suck your blood. Everyone wears a mask.That your marks till 9th Grade doesn't matter and nobody gives a flying monkey about it.That bad assery beats honesty most of the times. Think about it.That everything your parents say doesn't have to be true or logical.That you don't have to respect people just because they're elder to you. Most of them are stupid.That it's OK not to have numerous friends. One or two is more than enough for a lifetime, others are just Whatsapp contacts.That getting into a relationship and staying in it isn't as easy as it sounds.That Facebook​ would ruin half your life and WhatsApp, the other half.That your crush is planning to make you the scapegoat on Rakshabandhan.That hitting coaching classes doesn't mean you're gonna shine in life. You're screwed unless you work your ass off.That being a jack of all trades and master of none does more harm than good. Seriously.That your best friend is in a relationship and it's time to embrace solitude.That your neighbour is stealing all the water during summer and you're the dumbest in the vicinity.That living alone and away from your parents isn't as great as it sounds. Get ready for some serious kitchen action. It's totally worth it though.That motivation is just like a shower. It doesn't last forever. You'll have to find a reason to be great.That you're not gonna follow everything that you read on Quora. This is just another colourful​ addiction. Beware.That's my 20 cents for today. Taps out.I’ll meet you again ! Until then..Sayonara!

EDIT: I want to say first, this, before I tell the story of how my mother stopped bullying by doctors in an entire state mental hospital: I am hoping that people who feel helpless to stop a bully will stand next to a victim in silent support when they see it going on. Even one person standing, as a silent witness, next to the victim, can stop a bully. I know. I have done it. I learned it from my mother.It is called “Silent Witnessing.”Now, the story of how my mother stopped doctors who were bullying nurses, in an entire state mental hospital:The “Spectator Effect” (Silent Witnessing) was in force in something I credit my mother, a nurse at the state mental hospital, for inventing in the 1970′s, when doctors were known to openly berate and bully nurses right on the wards, in front of mentally ill patients and staff who were working.In the state mental hospital, alerts were coded by color. A Purple Alert was a patient who was getting violent, and it brought the orderlies, all large and male, running, to restrain the patient to prevent them from hurting themselves, staff or another patient. A Blue Alert was a medical emergency.My mother invented a new one: “Pink Alert.”One particular doctor on the ward was the worst bully of the doctors who bullied. He was especially vicious when he was caught in a mistake. Then he would find a nurse to blame and bully.The patients on this ward were geriatric (elderly) mentally ill patients.These doctor tantrums would agitate those poor old patients, who were mostly schizophrenic, paranoid, and suffering from dementia as well. This was before the invention of drugs that controlled or stopped the inner voices and hallucinations.Every time a doctor pulled this, the patients would be agitated all day, and my mother and other nurses often ended up getting hit by patients, who could be very strong during a psychotic break, even as old as they were. I remember her bruises, and how they upset me.Orderlies would be busy all day wrestling patients who had to be sedated with Thorazine, a powerful sedative that would immobilize them. Often these frail patients would get hurt as they struggled.The experienced nurses corrected “Doctor Bully’s” mistakes quietly. Newer nurses didn't always get warned in the hectic pace and the many staff turnovers.State mental hospital work for nurses was brutal in the 1970′s. The hospitals were understaffed, the staff were underpaid, and the state mental hospital was often the last refuge for doctors who couldn't make it in “real" hospitals. Newer drugs that stopped the inner voices and hallucinations were not invented yet.It was a common saying among the nurses that some of these doctors were “on the wrong side of the keys.”I will describe it to you as my mother described it to me:“Dr. Bully" would shout, call the nurse a “dumb bitch,” incompetent, ugly, fat, whatever vile things he could. This could go on for quite a long time, according to mom and the nurses who worked with her.But my mother had been thinking about it, and inspired by the color code alerts, she made a plan, and shared it with her fellow nurses in one of their after-work get-togethers. They named it “Pink Alert.” The majority of these nurses were women, thus the color pink.The nurses talked over my mother’s plan, agreed on the action plan, and waited.It wasn't long.About a week later, “Dr. Bully” started unloading on a nurse, at the top of his voice, in the middle of the ward, center stage in the dayroom where patients were watching TV or muttering to themselves, or rocking back and forth under heavy Thorazine medication. And in front the staff working behind Plexiglass windows who were preparing medications.There were eight or nine nurses working most days on this huge ward, attending patients in their rooms and supervising the day room.As Dr. Bully started in on this young nurse, the “Pink Alert" was sounded, whispered from nurse to nurse, up and down the halls.One by one, they stopped what they were doing, and came and stood silently next to Dr. Bully's victim, until nearly all the nurses on the ward were standing by her, facing Dr. Bully.Silently witnessing the bellowing and top-of-the-voice abuse.Like waking up from a dream, Dr. Bully slowly became aware of the “audience” of nurses, lined up shoulder-to-shoulder next to his victim. All watching him. Silently.In fact, everyone on the ward was watching him. He saw himself through their eyes, and it dawned on him what he must look like, out of control, his vile tirade the only sound on the open ward, echoing off the concrete walls.He trailed off, and then, stopped.And walked away.I don't know how many “Pink Alerts" it took to get that bully in line, and the other doctors who bullied nurses in the same way.But stop they did. None of those doctors, once they experienced Pink Alert wanted to experience it again.Peace was restored to the ward.And the practice of Pink Alert spread from ward to ward, throughout the hospital.I remember my mom talking about it with her shift buddies, who often came to our house for an after-work beer and decompression session.Doctor Bully had gone to the administration to complain that the nurses had “organized against him,” and he wanted the administration to write them warnings for “insubordination.”Oh, my mom’s gang had fun with that. Of course “Pink Alert” was big news on the hospital grapevine, and it relieved the administration of a huge problem. They couldn't afford to lose doctors, who were the only ones outside of the overworked psychiatrists who could write prescriptions or order medical treatment. They hadn't been able to find an effective way to stop doctors from bullying the nurses, or stop the constant turnover of nurses that resulted from this bullying.The administration had even started training nurses in pharmaceutical skills and teaching psychology courses to gain them special licenses, the beginnings of the ARNP licenced medical workers you often visit today (instead of a doctor) to empower these skilled nurses who worked day-to-day with the patients and knew their issues.Of course, the hospital grapevine had picked up the attempt to sanction the nurses with “insubordination.” I still remember the talk and laughter around mom's kitchen table.“Can you imagine THAT conversation?”They acted out the encounter as they imagined it:“So, I was screaming at Nurse Jones…”Laughter.“And what did she say?”“Nothing, but then all the nurses came over…”“And what did they do?”“Nothing, well, they STOOD there, and...”“And what did they say?”“Well, nothing, but they STOOD there…”“What did YOU say?”“I, uh, well, I told them to go back to work.”“Did they?”“Well, yeah, but…”…The bottom line is, “Silently Witnessing” -gathering people to silently stand next to a victim who is being verbally abused or threatened -is a very effective tool.It should be taught in schools.EDIT: if you have ever been bullied, please share.

I know your pain. I wrote about this topic in my blog, so here is my insight on becoming a morning person.In the past, I really hated morning, I had a really hard time coping with the waking up procedure and would usually wake up around 5 minutes before I had to run out of the door. Oh, and I loved the snooze button as well, for countless times on the same morning. Back then I didn't care about mornings at all. I think I did love to wake up in the morning, hitting the snooze button just to get to fall back to sleep again rather than waking up bright and shining.Ever since that little change in me about 4 years ago, I have wanted to be a morning person. I have wanted to wake up with the sun and go running while other people are still sleeping. I would treasure the morning, which still sleeps and listen to the sound of silence. As you can read, this has been a sort of an obsession for me. Nevertheless, it hasn't been easy, completely reinventing myself never is, not that I would be an expert on this, but I have had to do it many times, call in experience.I started to read blogs and articles about waking up early and every time I was so pumped, when I learned a new possible way to wake up early. I was so set to be a morning person, I could not wait to go to sleep. For example, I tried leaving my running shoes and gear next to my bed, so I would see it first thing in the morning and would go running. It did work, for exactly 1 day, the next morning, my subconscious mind made me come up with all kinds of excuses for not getting up: "You are too sore from running yesterday, you deserve a day off", "You can sleep a bit more and go then", "You can sleep later, if you would go running in the evening", I can go on like this for minutes. I am not quite sure, how many people are doing this method, but this is sure not working out for me. In fact, many other methods didn't work on me, because there is no universal way to becoming a morning person, that is why this post is "Experiences of..." not "How to...".Moving on.Changing the course to what has worked for me. As you have read, I want to become a morning person, that would require a 180 degree change for me, so I knew from the start it would be painful. I read a lot about habits, the good habits and the bad habits. It turns out, that people are more acceptable to bad habits than good habits, which makes me think that sleeping late is a bad habit, just like my smoking is and my gaming addiction was. So I started to focus on waking up early as a habit to be developed.Everybody probably knows that, if you make an effort to do something for 20 day or 14 days or 30 day, whatever, you get the point of longer period of time, it will become a habit. In order to start this good habit of waking up early in the morning, I had to wake up early, at the same time for 20 days straight. I will skip at the end of this method and will tell you it did not work, well, to be accurate, it did not work alone. What happened was, I woke up and stumbled into the kitchen and made coffee, then I made breakfast, got dressed and went for a smoke. Came back, dizzy as hell, tried to eat and checked Facebook and read the news. The point was, I did not prepare for anything in the morning, I did some random activities that were not productive nor interesting, I figured that out later, when I analyzed why this method had failed.I knew I would still not give up, so I researched further. I started reading a book in the morning, so when I went to bed, I concentrated on the fact that, if I would wake up early, I would be able to read the book. I can honestly say that it was an improvement, because at some period, it did work out fine until I skipped a morning of reading. This is the nature of a good habit, it is damn hard to develop, damn hard to keep, but skip one day for this good habit and it is so easy to lose it. It is vice versa for the bad habits, trust me, I'm a smoker.So, I needed to go even further, I needed a clear goal or an action plan to tackle my mornings, otherwise I would have given up. I figured this out for myself, because without a good plan or a goal, there will be nothing to achieve and a simple "I want to wake up early" was not the most strongest argument. I started thinking about the action plan part of the habit reforming and I came upon an article which contained a simple action plan for the power mornings, which I modified a bit to suit my own needs. Feel free to take this simple, yet powerful, action plan and try it, then modify it to suit Your needs. There will be no pressure, do it or don't, I don't mind either, but if you decide to do it, make sure to let me know, how it works out for you.The action plan is the following:1) Turning off my alarm and going to wash my face and teeth2) Drinking 1-2 glasses of water3) Meditating for 5 minutes (focusing on breathing alone, not a pro yet)4) Focusing and scheduling in the most important tasks for the day for 5 minutes5) Doing yoga for about 5-10 minutes6) Push-ups, sit-ups etc for another 10 minutes, then stretching7) Eating and reading a book for about 20 minutesI have committed to this schedule for about a month now waking up at 06:30 and this works for me, because what I learned was that I needed a clear schedule to follow in the morning. When you are feeling still sleepy, your brain can't function to the highest capacity, thus without a written out plan, your brain is empty and the whole act of waking up early is pointless. I also learned that the goal that I had was not strong at all, I didn't have a "why" in place. Now my goal or goals to be exact are to hydrate my body and exercise to keep my body healthy, meditate to get my mind clear and running, focusing to know the tasks I need to perform and reading a book to get my knowledge fix and all this from waking up about an hour earlier. Can you see the lure of this, I can do so much and can be energetic all day with my mind clearly focusing on the goal. This is the greatest gain from being a morning person. It is known that the first 2 hours of the day are the most productive and I believe it, I saw it when I didn't wake up early and I see it now.I hope my insight helps you on the way to becoming a wonderful morning person.Reference to my blog on this topic: Experiences on Becoming a Morning Person