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Pursuit of Happiness

**Happiness is your own individual decision**

Everyone in his/her life pursues various objectives and goals with the ultimate objective of achieving happiness. ‘Pursuit of the happiness’, these words initial used by US president Jeffereson Devis. Subsequently they were made popular by Martin Luther king in his famous speech ‘I have a dream’. No doubt, everyone has a right to pursue happiness in whichever way the person likes. However, very often we are so much involved in daily routine that we are carried away by the string of events. In the process, we lose focus on what we are trying to achieve. It will be a good exercise for each one of us to reflect on these words and work out and define what is how you plan to pursue your happiness.
Firstly, we must understand that happiness is not just momentary pleasures of life. I do not say that pleasures of life should not be there. But that these should be only a part of our larger plan, which should addresses some or all of the related features of happiness. The following aspects are of immense importance in an individual’s life.
Your attitude to life. One must have a positive attitude. Life is full of ups and downs. There could be challenges, successes and failures. Positive attitude means just to accept these as a part of life. You become a witness or an observer of what is going. At the same time, use your discretion to take decisions. It’s only then that we understand that we can remain composed and maintain our poise in turbulent times. In fact, it is necessary to maintain our poise even in the happiest time. None of the two situations last forever. Like every night is followed by the day. Every day is followed by night. But in life it may not be in the same order and the duration may also vastly differ.

Importance of your Goals: In order that you pursue happiness, you must define your goals: in all of the following aspects.

Health goals. Good mental and physical health is extremely important if you want to lead a happy life. Doing what is necessary to keep good health is everyone’s duty. Regular exercise, following proper food routine and maintaining positive attitude can ensure that you are moving towards your health goals from day to day. Yet, it is a continuous process to pursue throughout the life.
Career/ financial goals. If you are successful in your career it expected that you will also do your financial and remain comfortable but you have to find tune of your objectives and follow the plan as devised.
Your family is undoubtedly equally important and should feature in your pursuit of happiness, according to our own Indian tradition. The importance of finance and family are critical in your pursuit.
Then comes to your social goals. What do want to contribute to the society and what you actually do, determines how successful you are in following social goals. Here again, you need to define and then follow your plan of action. The amount of success you achieve in your social goals will add up in your happiness. It will also determine how the society perceives and respects you. In other words, it means your reputation is reflected by what and how you contribute to the society.
For leading a fuller, complete life you must pursue some hobbies. At least one. It could be music. It could be painting .It could be some sport. It could also be travelling, writing etc. But the important thing is that you have atlaest one hobby on which you able to spend some time. It must not only for name sake.
Last but not the least your spiritual goals are also important. We all know that no one has to stay here forever. Sooner or later we must depart. We don’t know where. This uncertainty needs your spiritual pursuit. Whichever religion you may follow, you must define your spiritual goals. These will eventually define how you are remembered after your departure.

Thank you for your reading.

BEAUTY IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER:

Everyone loves to enjoy beauty. The beauty of nature is captivating. but, what is beauty when it comes to human beings? Beauty is not something that comes from physical appearance. Physical attractiveness are deception; what matters really is the nature of a person. It is true that beautiful or handsome people are more appealing. But we can have a reliable relationship and long lasting trust only on the personalities of people. Physical appearance of a person might fade as years pass on; but their characters do not. So, we should nit judge anyone or anything by the appearance. It is a great wisdom to realize that “Beauty Is In the Eye of The Beholder”

If we all are familiar about the proverb “All that Glitters is Not Gold”, then we would be aware that we cannot believe someone by their appearance. When we are in the light of wisdom outer beauty of a person will not drive us. What makes a person attractive is the inner beauty.

People with inner beauty are those that love to make peace with everyone, take care of fellow beings and try to follow the path of justice.

How many of us remember the significance of physical beauty when we talk about King Maker Kamarajar? (Late Chief Minister Tamil Nadu).

Do we think physical appearance is important even after we hold Sports personalities like Sachin Tendulkar, Mary Kom, Maria Sharapova and many others as our role models? We do not see the appearance of these people to keep them high as our inspiration. Their talents and achievements are incomparable and that is what has made them world famous. If we think they have become famous by their beauty then it is our foolishness

The legends who have lived and made us realize the importances of inner beauty are: Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa. Nelson Mandela is a great man known for his sacrifice Mandela was willing to sacrifice in order bring equality and get equal rights for the Blacks in South Africa. He is definitely a legend with inner beauty. Mahatma Gandhi, who fought till death for Free India is a man of inner beauty. If we learn the sacrifice Mother Teresa made in her life to serve the poor, we will agree that Beauty lies inside not outside.

Only when we know what real beauty is, we will understand what we see in the outside is just a projection. What matters is the character inside. Like how we see a jack-fruit as a hard and rough fruits outside, but a sweet and yummy piece of delight inside, it is true that “Beauty Lies in the Eye of The Beholder”.

Contributed by Pravin More, a student of our Public Speaking Course.

Social media

By Invitation. Author Abdul Kalam.

Social media is a phrase that we throw around a lot these days, often to describe what we post on sites and apps like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and others.

But if we use the term to describe a site like Facebook, and also a site like Digg, plus a site like Wikipedia, and even a site like I Can Has Cheezburger, then it starts to get more confusing. Just what is social media anyway?

The term is used so vague that it can basically be used to describe almost any website on the internet today.

Or maybe not. Some people have more of a restricted view of social media, often equating it to mean the same as social networking (a.k.a. Facebook, Twitter, etc.). Other people don’t consider blogs to fall under the social media category.

So, What Is Social Media?

Rather than define the term using a bunch of boring jargon that would probably only complicate things further, perhaps the best way to get a clearer understanding of it is to break it down into simpler terms. To start, let’s look at each word individually.

The “social” part:

refers to interacting with other people by sharing information with them and receiving information from them.
The “media” part:

refers to an instrument of communication, like the internet (while TV, radio, and newspapers are examples of more traditional forms of media).
Okay, so from these two separate terms, we can pull a basic definition together:

Social media are web-based communication tools that enable people to interact with each other by both sharing and consuming information.

Yes, it’s a broad definition – but keep in mind that social media is a very broad term. This is likely as specific as we can get without zeroing in too much on a more specific subcategory of social media.

2. Common Social Media Features

The following list of common features are dead giveaways of a social media site.

If you’re questioning whether a particular site could be classified as social or not, try looking for at least one of these features.

User accounts:

If a site allows visitors to create their own accounts that they can log into, then that’s a good sign there’s going to be social interaction. You can’t really share information or interact with others online without doing it through a user account.
Profile pages:

Since social media is all about communication, a profile page is often necessary to represent an individual. It often includes information about the individual user, like a profile photo, bio, website, feed of recent posts, recommendations, recent activity and more.
Friends, followers, groups, hashtags and so on:

Individuals use their accounts to connect with other users. They can also use them to subscribe to certain forms of information.
News feeds:

When users connect with other users on social media, they’re basically saying, “I want to get information from these people.” That information is updated for them in real-time via their news feed.
Personalization:

Social media sites usually give users the flexibility to configure their user settings, customize their profiles to look a specific way, organize their friends or followers, manage the information they see in their news feeds and even give feedback on what they do or don’t want to see.
Notifications:

Any site or app that notifies users about specific information is definitely playing the social media game. Users have total control over these notifications and can choose to receive the types of notifications that they want.
Information updating, saving or posting:

If a site or an app allows you to post absolutely anything, with or without a user account, then it’s social! It could be a simple text-based message, a photo upload, a YouTube video, a link to an article or anything else.
Like buttons and comment sections:

Two of the most common ways we interact on social media are via buttons that represent a “like” plus comment sections where we can share our thoughts.
Review, rating or voting systems:

Besides liking and commenting, lots of social media sites and apps rely on the collective effort of the community to review, rate and vote on information that they know about or have used. Think of your favorite shopping sites or movie review sites that use this social media feature.

3. What’s the Difference Between Social Media and Social Networking?

As mentioned earlier, a lot of people user the terms social media and social networking interchangeably as if they mean the exact same thing. Although the difference is subtle, they’re not the same. Social networking is really a subcategory of social media.

The easiest way to understand the difference between social media and social networking is by thinking about the terms “media” and “networking” separately. Media refers to the information you’re actually sharing–whether it’s a link to an article, a video, an animated GIF, a PDF document, a simple status update or anything else.

Networking, on the other hand, has to do with who your audience is and the relationships you have with them. Your network can include people like friends, relatives, colleagues, anyone from your past, current customers, mentors and even complete strangers.

They certainly overlap, which is why it gets confusing. For example, you can share media with your social network to gather likes and comments–a form of social networking. But you can also just upvote a link on Reddit, which is a social media platform, to help out the community and give your say in the matter without any intention of building relationships with other users.

Still confused? Try to think of social media like fruit. Apples, bananas, oranges, grapes, berries, melons and pineapples are all part of the broader fruit category the same way that social networking, social news, social bookmarking, wikis, blogs and private web messaging are part of the broader social media category.

4. Are Traditional Media Also Social Media?

Traditional media was mentioned earlier on in this article just to demonstrate broader examples of media, but don’t be fooled into thinking that TV, radio, and newspapers are a part of social media. At least not quite yet entirely. The line drawn between the two is slowly thinning as each continues to evolve.

Social media doesn’t just give you information but interacts with you while giving you that information. This interaction can be as simple as asking for your comments or letting you vote on an article, or it can be as complex as Flixster recommending movies to you based on the ratings of other people with similar interests.

Think of regular media as a one-way street where you can read a newspaper or listen to a report on television, but you have very limited ability to give your thoughts on the matter. Social media, on the other hand, is a two-way street that gives you the ability to communicate too.

5. What Are Some of the Known Issues With Social Media?

Social media isn’t all just fun and games with your friends, celebrities you admire, and brands you follow. There are lots of common problems that most major social media platforms haven’t totally solved, despite their effort to do so.

Spam:

Social media makes it easy for spammers – both real people and bots – to bombard other people with content. If you have a Twitter account, you’ve probably experienced a few spambot follows or interactions. Likewise, if you run a WordPress blog, you may have gotten a spam comment or two caught by your spam filter.
Cyberbullying/Cyberstalking:

Children and teenagers are especially susceptible to cyberbullying because they take more risks when it comes to posting on social media. And now that we all interact on social media via our mobile devices, most major platforms make it possible to share our locations, opening up the doors for cyberstalkers to target us.
Self-image manipulation:

What a user posts about themselves on social media only represents a small portion of their life. While followers may see someone who’s happy and living it up via their posts on social media in such a way that makes them feel boring or inadequate by comparison, the truth is that users have the power to completely control what parts they do and don’t want to broadcast on social media to manipulate their own self-image.
Information overload:

It’s not unusual to have over 200 Facebook friends or follow over 1,000 Twitter accounts. With so many accounts to follow and so many people posting new content, it’s almost impossible to keep up.
Fake news:

Fakes new websites promote links to their own totally false news stories on social media in order to drive traffic to them. Many users have no idea that they’re fake in the first place.
Privacy/Security:

Many social media platforms still get hacked from time to time despite having good security measures in place. Some also don’t offer all the privacy options that users need to keep their information as private as they want them to be.

6. What Does the Future Hold for Social Media?

It’s difficult to predict anything exactly, but if one thing can be said about the future of social media, it will probably be more personalized and less noisy. Over-sharing will be less of a problem and filtering out irrelevant information will become a stronger trend.

Snapchat is a social media platform that’s really at the forefront of social media evolution. Rather than blasting out updates for all our friends and followers to see, we use Snapchat more like we communicate in real life – with specific people only at specific times.

If anything, social media is probably about to move more toward ephemeral sharing for quicker, more intimate sharing without the stress of having to blast something out to hundreds or thousands of followers that stays up there unless it’s manually deleted. Instagram has already made the move toward ephemeral content sharing with its Snapchat-like stories feature, so maybe more platforms will be soon to follow.

Thank for reading,

By Invitation. Author Abdul Kalam.

Social media is a phrase that we throw around a lot these days, often to describe what we post on sites and apps like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and others.

But if we use the term to describe a site like Facebook, and also a site like Digg, plus a site like Wikipedia, and even a site like I Can Has Cheezburger, then it starts to get more confusing. Just what is social media anyway?

The term is used so vague that it can basically be used to describe almost any website on the internet today.

Or maybe not. Some people have more of a restricted view of social media, often equating it to mean the same as social networking (a.k.a. Facebook, Twitter, etc.). Other people don’t consider blogs to fall under the social media category.

So, What Is Social Media?

Rather than define the term using a bunch of boring jargon that would probably only complicate things further, perhaps the best way to get a clearer understanding of it is to break it down into simpler terms. To start, let’s look at each word individually.

The “social” part:

refers to interacting with other people by sharing information with them and receiving information from them.

The “media” part:

refers to an instrument of communication, like the internet (while TV, radio, and newspapers are examples of more traditional forms of media).

Okay, so from these two separate terms, we can pull a basic definition together:

Social media are web-based communication tools that enable people to interact with each other by both sharing and consuming information.

Yes, it’s a broad definition – but keep in mind that social media is a very broad term. This is likely as specific as we can get without zeroing in too much on a more specific subcategory of social media.

2. Common Social Media Features

The following list of common features are dead giveaways of a social media site.

If you’re questioning whether a particular site could be classified as social or not, try looking for at least one of these features.

User accounts:

If a site allows visitors to create their own accounts that they can log into, then that’s a good sign there’s going to be social interaction. You can’t really share information or interact with others online without doing it through a user account.

Profile pages:

Since social media is all about communication, a profile page is often necessary to represent an individual. It often includes information about the individual user, like a profile photo, bio, website, feed of recent posts, recommendations, recent activity and more.

Friends, followers, groups, hashtags and so on:

Individuals use their accounts to connect with other users. They can also use them to subscribe to certain forms of information.

News feeds:

When users connect with other users on social media, they’re basically saying, “I want to get information from these people.” That information is updated for them in real-time via their news feed.

Personalization:

Social media sites usually give users the flexibility to configure their user settings, customize their profiles to look a specific way, organize their friends or followers, manage the information they see in their news feeds and even give feedback on what they do or don’t want to see.

Notifications:

Any site or app that notifies users about specific information is definitely playing the social media game. Users have total control over these notifications and can choose to receive the types of notifications that they want.

Information updating, saving or posting:

If a site or an app allows you to post absolutely anything, with or without a user account, then it’s social! It could be a simple text-based message, a photo upload, a YouTube video, a link to an article or anything else.

Like buttons and comment sections:

Two of the most common ways we interact on social media are via buttons that represent a “like” plus comment sections where we can share our thoughts.

Review, rating or voting systems:

Besides liking and commenting, lots of social media sites and apps rely on the collective effort of the community to review, rate and vote on information that they know about or have used. Think of your favorite shopping sites or movie review sites that use this social media feature.

3. What’s the Difference Between Social Media and Social Networking?

As mentioned earlier, a lot of people user the terms social media and social networking interchangeably as if they mean the exact same thing. Although the difference is subtle, they’re not the same. Social networking is really a subcategory of social media.

Networking, on the other hand, has to do with who your audience is and the relationships you have with them. Your network can include people like friends, relatives, colleagues, anyone from your past, current customers, mentors and even complete strangers.

4. Are Traditional Media Also Social Media?

Think of regular media as a one-way street where you can read a newspaper or listen to a report on television, but you have very limited ability to give your thoughts on the matter. Social media, on the other hand, is a two-way street that gives you the ability to communicate too.

5. What Are Some of the Known Issues With Social Media?

Social media isn’t all just fun and games with your friends, celebrities you admire, and brands you follow. There are lots of common problems that most major social media platforms haven’t totally solved, despite their effort to do so.

Spam:

Cyberbullying/Cyberstalking:

Self-image manipulation:

Information overload:

It’s not unusual to have over 200 Facebook friends or follow over 1,000 Twitter accounts. With so many accounts to follow and so many people posting new content, it’s almost impossible to keep up.

Fake news:

Fakes new websites promote links to their own totally false news stories on social media in order to drive traffic to them. Many users have no idea that they’re fake in the first place.

Privacy/Security:

Many social media platforms still get hacked from time to time despite having good security measures in place. Some also don’t offer all the privacy options that users need to keep their information as private as they want them to be.

6. What Does the Future Hold for Social Media?

It’s difficult to predict anything exactly, but if one thing can be said about the future of social media, it will probably be more personalized and less noisy. Over-sharing will be less of a problem and filtering out irrelevant information will become a stronger trend.

Snapchat is a social media platform that’s really at the forefront of social media evolution. Rather than blasting out updates for all our friends and followers to see, we use Snapchat more like we communicate in real life – with specific people only at specific times.