Thursday, December 16, 2010

Hidden Meanings of gestures

Hidden Meanings

Watch what you say!

A simple hand gesture could land you in a world of trouble. Here the thumbs up sign means "good going! " But in Bangladesh it's a taunt, and in other Islamic countries, it's the equivalent of an upraised middle finger.


Finger Beckoning.

Here we sometimes hail a waiter with index finger slightly raised and thumb loosely extended. In Japan it's rude to beckon a waiter if you motion with the index finger. And in Germany the waiter might well respond by bringing you two more drinks.


"V" for Victory.


It can mean "victory" or "peace," but in Britain if the palm faces inward, it's a taunt, especially if executed with an upward jerk of the fingers. As the story goes, over 650 years ago, the French disabled the English archers they captured in battle by cutting off their middle and index fingers. After the battles of Agincourt and Crecy, where the French were heavily defeated, the triumphant English gloated over their French prisoners by holding up their hands, first two fingers upright, palm inward, to show both fingers fully intact.

Hands in Pockets.

Think you can save yourself a load of trouble by shoving your hands in your pockets? Think again. Keeping one's hands in one's pockets while conversing is impolite in Indonesia, France and Japan. 


Tapping Forehead With Fore-finger.

It may mean "smart," but in Holland, tapping the centre of the forehead means "he's crazy."
In Argentina our sign for "he's crazy" (circling a forefinger next to the ear) could be confused with their signal for "You have a telephone call."

The A-Okay.

Joining the thumb and index finger in a circle is an insult in many Latin American countries. When Richard Nixon was vice president, he is reported to have greeted a crowd south of the U.S. border with a double A-Okay sign. Imagine the reaction!
A Frenchman reads the A-Okay gesture as meaning "zero" or "worthless."


Stop Sign.
Extending one hand, palm forward, means "stop!" right?
In Greece it's the moutza, or hand push, which is a common sign of confrontation.
And in West Africa the gesture is even more insulting than the upraised middle finger.

Hook 'Em Horns.


The pinkie and index finger raised up and the two middle fingers folded down is beloved of fans of the University of Texas Longhorns, but in parts of Africa this is a curse. And for millions of Italians it is the cornuto, signalling "Your spouse is being unfaithful." Yet in Hawaii raising the pinkie and thumb means "hang loose."

DIFFERENT MEANINGS
  • In Japan, you nod your head in agreement; your host smiles and thinks you're paying attention.
  • In Egypt, you shake your head in disagreement; your host frowns and wonders why you don't understand.
  • In Mexico, don't call her senora, which can imply aging; call her senorita.
  • In Zimbabwe, don't ask, "Is it far?"; out of courtesy people will answer, "Not far." (Be specific and ask, "How long does it take by foot?") <>
  • Beware what you offer your host. Pass up chrysanthemums in Argentina and Balkan (they denote funerals), clocks in China (the written characters resemble those for death) and red pens in South Korea (red ink conveys unfriendliness). 
  • In Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries, eat and drink with your right hand; the left is considered unclean.
  • Your mother was right. Don't point. But if in Singapore you must, use your thumb, not your forefinger, lest it be taken as an insult or obscenity.
  • In Malaysia, curling the index finger is considered very rude. Scratching the air would be preferable for calling over a waiter.
  • In Russia, don't shake hands across a threshold; it might invite bad luck.
  • In Buddhist lands like Burma, don't pat a child on the head; it's the spiritually highest part of the body.

Monday, December 13, 2010

Have you hugged anyone lately?

You may laugh off the predilection of the psychiatry community in the USA for coining names such as dance or walk therapies, which are based, on pure common sense or on practices that have always been around in various cultures. But then you may feel like giving them a hug. For by calling it a therapy, giving it a name, and ardently promoting it, they often manage to create awareness about a healthy and wholesome habit that is endangered by the bustle of modern life. Hug therapy is a typical example.

Big deal, you say, when you hear the term for the first time. But try to recollect the last time you hugged somebody or somebody hugged you. In all likelihood, it was too long ago. Worse, the answer may be 'never' if you are the kind who flinches from physical contact.

So what are we missing out on?

Reaching out and touching someone, and holding him tight—is a way of saying you care. Its effects are immediate: for both, the hugger and the person being hugged, feel good. Touch is an important component of attachment as it creates bonds between two individuals. Hugging is simply a natural expression of showing that you love and care.

"Cuddling and caressing make the growing child feel secure and is known to aid in self-esteem," agrees Dr Bhagat, a psychiatrist. The tactile sense is all-important in infants. A baby recognizes its parents initially by touch. Malkani points out cultural variations pertaining to hugging: in the West, hugging a friend of the opposite sex is common, while in the East you see more physical contact between friends of the same sex.

Hugging comes naturally to Kajal Basu,a journalist. "It loosens you up and breaks the bonds of body as well as of society. The more ritualistic ways of greeting people, handshakes and namastes, are designed to keep us apart rather than bring us together," he argues.



R. Chandran, a reiki master based in Mumbai, India, says that hugging is a tool of transformation. "Hugging brings people closer to each other. If your relationship with somebody is not working, try hugging him 20 times a day and there will be a significant difference," he guarantees. Comparing hugging to reiki , the currently popular touch therapy based on the transfer of energy, he says the area of touch is much larger in the case of hugging and the contact is much more intimate, so the effects are subtler.


Touch has come full circle in the West this century. Time was when parents and hospitals were advised to leave a crying baby alone. Today the pediatricians and psychologists tell us to pick up and cuddle our children. Toys, even teddy bears, whose use has been increasing in the recent decades, are a poor substitute for the human contact needed by children.


Hugging is being used even as an aid in treating some physical illnesses, following research that it leads to certain positive physiological changes. For example, touch stimulates nerve endings, thereby helping in relieving pain . It is thus not uncommon for a chronic pain patient to be prescribed "Therapeutic touch" which involves placing the hands on or just above the troubled area in the patient's body for half-an-hour (shades of reiki). This pushes up the hemoglobin levels in the blood, increasing the delivery of blood to tissues, a study at the nursing department of New York University showed. Some nurses' associations in the USA have since endorsed therapeutic touch.

Any health problem makes the sufferer feel vulnerable, frightened, angry, frustrated and helpless. The patient usually needs to educate himself to make certain life changes. Hugging can give him the positive emotional state necessary to make these changes. In one study, pet ownership was seen to contribute to the survival of heart patients. The inference: the cuddling of pets has a soothing effect that reduces the stress levels in heart attack victims. 
 START HUGGING SOMEONE TODAY! =)

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Who can you trust? Who do you believe in?

Are the people around you Unreliable? He/she can be your friend, staff or boss.
With these tips, you will never look at people the same way again. 

 

Stay away from people who have the following characteristics:
  1. Continually touching his/her mouth unintentionally = liar. 
  2. When he/she smiles, his/her mouth becomes uneven = cannot keep promise.
  3. Sharp ear like Peter Pan = wicked hearted.
  4. Sharp pointed nose = calculative and immoral person.
  5. No eyebrow = Man is the only living thing that has eyebrows. If the person is without any eyebrow, he/she is clever but cunning.
  6. Exposed jaw bone underneath the ear = no sense of gratitude.
  7. Normally, people without pearl earlobes are ruthless people. They are unable to agree to you easily.
  8. Protruding bones above the eyebrows = very demanding of themselves and they are very strong opinionated. If the bones are too protruding, the person is very short tempered.
  9. Crooked nose = cunning and dishonest man.
  10. If lips are too thin, he/she loves to tell lie.
  11. Triangular eyes = want to take advantages from others. A lot of criminals have these eyes.
  12. When he/she talks, the movement of his/her hands is significant = short tempered.
  13. When he/she talks, he/she likes to hold his/her hands together and move about = cunning.
  14. Upper part of the body is longer than the bottom part = lazy.
  15. Eyebrows are too thick and too black = arrogant and short tempered.
  16. If the cheeks of your staff are very high, be careful. He/she will overrule you one day. Cheek represents will-power.
  17. Big mouth and cannot close firmly when he/she is not talking = liar.
  18. Small mouth with thin lips = irresponsible man.
  19. Bony face without much meat = immoral.
  20. When he/she talks, you can only see his/her teeth at the bottom = liar. A lot of politicians have this type of mouth.
  21. A lot of gaps in between the teeth = liar. Also, this type of people cannot save much money.
  22. He/she cannot see eye to eye with you when you talk to him/her = liar.
  23. Uneven teeth = liar.
*It may not be always right, it's just for your reference.

    Wednesday, December 1, 2010

    Go for Change! Go for Social Entrepreneurship!


    Social entrepreneurship is, fundamentally, about using a market-driven business model to address key social and environmental issues. It is an emerging field with diverse and shifting interpretations.

    Today, nonprofits are increasingly finding that social entrepreneurship offers the tools and
    techniques needed to build capacity and to achieve and maintain long-term financial stability
    during times where there are changes in the economic environment. Social entrepreneurship
    is a strategic approach that encourages nonprofit corporations to both diversify revenue sources and develop new revenue-generating activities. Through social entrepreneurship, nonprofits across the country are developing new, innovative strategies for meeting their missions by adopting effective business practices that are the backbone of traditional business principles. Foundations that recognize the value of the trend are offering specialized grant and loan funds targeted at enterprise-oriented activities. Nonprofits practicing social entrepreneurship use business-sector disciplines and models within the core mission or program of the organization. For today’s nonprofit executive, the management challenge is to allocate resources strategically and make those resources as productive as possible. Executives find they are able to meet their missions through many different strategies—often using new financial and marketing models—than in the past. Social entrepreneurship can mean starting new endeavors or bringing new fiscal or managerial disciplines to old endeavors.

    Social entrepreneurship helps nonprofits to:
    ● Increase efficiency in all areas
    ● Conduct rigorous financial planning as a core activity— combining resource development with financial planning strategies
    ● Develop creative organizational structures and alliances
    ● Think strategically about competition and collaboration
    ● Evaluate the need for changes in the nature and skills of internal staff
    ● Review the need for changes in the nature and skills of the board of directors
    ● Identify new earned income opportunities that are aligned with mission
    ● Redefine mission in the context of market research

    Why Social Enterprise matters? 
    • Social enterprise matters because it is focused on making positive change at a time when we desperately need it. Social enterprise is one important tool, among many, that is actively and directly making our world a better place.
    • Social enterprise is more responsive. Social enterprise doesn't rely on the shifting priorities of government and major foundations; it gets on with making the change that is needed within a community and (sometimes) grows to affect whole cities, countries, and regions.
    • Social enterprise is scalable. Like all businesses, social enterprise has, with investment and sales revenue, the ability to grow to meet needs and priorities of the communities it serves, as opposed to traditional nonprofit programs, which are often limited to the funds available from government and philanthropic funders.
    • Social enterprise actively engages stakeholders. Social enterprise gives the people it helps a direct voice in the operation of the business - as owners, employees and paying customers.


    Language of Social Entrepreneurship



    If corporate leaders and their acolytes are
    not slaves to some meritorious social 
    purpose, they run the risk of being 
    enslaved by their own ignoble appetites.


    That's not some radical preacher or ranting Marxist, that's not even Bob Dylan in his early electric phase -- it's Gary Hamel, business consultant and author of "The Future of Management,"

    Hamel titled his post The Hole in the Soul of Business --and proposed that "humanizing the language and practice of management is a business imperative (as well as a moral duty)".
    What was that all about? I'd say them's fightin' words!
    Apparently, polls Hamel had read suggested that "only 20% of employees are truly engaged in their work -- heart and soul", and that depressed him. It depressed him to the point where he thought about it creatively, and came up with a simple experiment.
    He took a look at corporate annual reports, mission statements, and CEOs blog posts, and found plenty of talk about "superiority, advantage, leadership, differentiation, value, focus, discipline, accountability, and efficiency" – but not much mention of "beauty, truth, wisdom, justice, charity, fidelity, joy, courage and honor". Which he guessed were the values that people like MichelangeloGalileoJefferson, and Gandhi were passionate about.


    So, he thought, no wonder so many people in the workplace aren't terribly enthused about their work… Here are some more of his thoughts on the subject:


    There was a time when Disney was in the joy business. … Apple is in the beauty business. … There are many within Google who believe their company is in the wisdom business.


    John Mackey, the co-founder of Whole Foods Markets, once remarked that he wanted to build a company based on love instead of fear.


    A gut-level commitment to building an organization infused with the spirit of charity is far more radical and weird than it might appear.


    Given all this, why is the language of business so sterile, so uninspiring and so relentlessly banal? Is it because business is the province of engineers and economists rather than artists and theologians? 


    Is it because the emphasis on rationality and pragmatism squashes idealism? I’m not sure. But I know this -- customers, investors, taxpayers and policymakers believe there’s a hole in the soul of 
    business.

    If Gary Hamel is right – and reading his piece, I have to say I found myself nodding and grinning a lot – there are really three things we can do.
    We can model ourselves on Galileo or Gandhi and get out of the business of business altogether, we can find a business with heart, or we can build one. Social entrepreneurs, I imagine, will mostly favor the third option.
    But let's think about this business of language, too. Let's ask some questions. Here are some that Hamel himself proposes:
    • Why are words like "love", "devotion" and "honor" so seldom heard within the halls of corporate-dom?
    • What values are in the driver’s seat?
    • Why are the ideals that matter most to human beings the ones that are most notably absent in managerial discourse?
    • Why do you believe the language of beauty, love, justice and service is so notably absent in the corporate realm? And what would you do to remedy that fact?
    And here are some questions of my own, that Hamel's piece sparked in me:
    • What about our own language, as social entrepreneurs?
    • Does social enterprise already offer a business language that's expressive of care and concern?
    • Come to that, does the word "social" really say what we want it to say?
    Words matter – I think that's part of the issue that Hamel is trying to bring to our attention. But there are even bigger questions lurking behind those ones, I think -- and I'm inviting you to think about them out loud with me over the course of this event…
    • Why and when did work get so bland, so detached from our more profound values?
    • As social entrepreneurs, are we still a minority interest swimming against the tide – or the new tide just coming in, bringing those values back? ..hmm..