Habits are the secret sauce to a healthy life – or the recipe for an unhealthy one, depending on what’s in question. Habits are tricky little creatures in that they’re easy to build when they immediately reward us, but feel near impossible to start when the benefits aren’t instantly obvious. 

Nearly everyone has a bad habit that needs breaking. Sometimes these habits are relatively harmless (say, biting your nails) but others, when broken, stand to greatly improve your quality of life.

1.Understand the difference between your good habits and bad habits

In exact definition, a habit is a repetitive action or behavior, a routine. The difference between a good habit and a bad habit is whether or not it enhances or diminishes your life. A good habit promotes a healthy goal that betters your life. A bad habit leads you further and further from your goals and what you want out of life.

To distinguish between a good habit or a bad habit, ask yourself the question, “If I do this every day for the next ten years, what will my life look like?”

2. Anticipate your distractions

Get your notebook, think about a habit you’re trying to form, and write down everything you can think of—screwing around on Twitter, suddenly making a lasagna, brushing the dog—that might block your ability to participate. Please also make a list of the people in your life who may be too partylicious to be around while you give up drinking, too pessimistic to hang out with while you do your part to help end world hunger, too chatty to talk with while you quit gossiping—and make a point to limit your time with them.

3. Choose what you want to change

The first step in building a good, healthy habit is choosing what you want to change. Considering your goals for your physical and mental health or your personal values is a great place to start. What habit, if done every day, will bring you closer to your desired outcomes?

4. Write it down (in all caps)

Write down the habit you’re going to work on in a notebook. Once you focus on and embody it, it’ll become just a part of who you are, and nothing special. And then, because we’re all creatures in a constant state of transformation, you’ll shift your attention to some newer, fresher habit, and you’ll have the confidence, know-how, and tools to make it yours as well.

5. Mark each day that you show up

You know what’s immediately satisfying? Tracking your habits. While you may not see the actual results of the actions you take every day, you will see how many days you’ve stayed on course with the new habit, which is a huge accomplishment in itself. Each time you successfully participate in your habit—walk three miles, say not one snarky thing to your mother—mark that day on a calendar.

6. Reward and celebrate your success as you go

Building a new practice or a new routine takes time and patience, so don’t forget to reward your success! When you remember to practice your habit, congratulate yourself by adding in a little something nice for yourself as a reward.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

The Reserve Bank of India is likely to soon kick off pilot projects to assess the viability of using digital currency to make wholesale and retail payments to help calibrate its strategy for introducing a full-scale central bank digital currency (CBDC).

India is already a leader in digital payments, but cash remains dominant for small-value transactions, he said, stressing that an official digital currency would reduce the cost of currency management while enabling real-time payments without any inter-bank settlement.

“Every idea has to wait for its time, perhaps the time for a CBDC is here,” RBI Deputy Governor T. Rabi Sankar said on Thursday. “Like other central banks, we have also been exploring the pros and cons of this since quite some time,” he added. A high-level inter-ministerial committee set up by the Finance Ministry had recommended the introduction of a CBDC with changes in the legal framework including the RBI Act, which currently empowers the RBI to regulate issuance of bank notes.

Transacting with CBDC would be an instantaneous process as the need for inter-bank settlement would disappear as it would be a central bank liability handed over from one person to another, Mr. Sankar pointed out. Moreover, foreign trade transactions could be speeded up between countries adopting a CBDC. “India’s fairly high currency-to-GDP ratio holds out another benefit of CBDC — to the extent large cash usage can be replaced by CBDC, the cost of printing, transporting and storing paper currency can be substantially reduced,” Mr. Sankar said at a discussion hosted by Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. CBDC will be India’s sovereign currency in an electronic form.

According to the RBI deputy Governor, since CBDC is a currency that does not pay interest, its impact on bank deposits may “actually” be limited.“Depositors that require CBDCs for transactional purposes are likely to sweep day end balances to interest-earning deposit accounts,” he said.

However, he said that CBDC is not comparable to the private virtual currencies that have mushroomed over the last decade. He said, “Private virtual currencies sit at substantial odds to the historical concept of money. They are not commodities or claims on commodities as they have no intrinsic value; some claims that they are akin to gold clearly seem opportunistic.”

Complements fiat currency?

Sajai Singh, Partner at J Sagar Associates, said, “RBI is moving in the right direction with regard to digital currencies. Any RBI backed digital currency will come with a promise of less volatility and greater security for the bearer of the same. This will be very different from cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, which are rather popular, but carry innumerable risks. Also, RBI’s support to a digital currency will ensure its financial stability. It will be similar to say a potential digital Euro and digital Yuan.”

FaTE of crypto’s

According to Patel, CBDC’s might have a negligible direct impact on private digital currencies such as Bitcoin, Matic, Doge, etc. These private cryptocurrencies are based on ‘decentralization’. “The sovereign digital currencies are in stark contrast to decentralization, as the central banks govern and control them. However, as and when CBDCs start gaining more adoption, people would get to learn more about private cryptocurrencies as well. It would indirectly act as a catalyst to creating awareness of the practical usage of cryptocurrencies. That is when the crypto markets would start getting increased retail participation as well,” he told FE Online.

Outsourced is one of the few movies that have always remained my favourite.  Being an Indian English literature enthusiast, seeing a decent representation of India in the silver screen has always been a matter of interest. Outsourced is one such film without any exaggeration whatsoever about the Indian culture. It is a modern-day comedy of cross-culture conflicts and romance.

 The movie revolves around Todd Anderson who is outsourced to India to work at a call centre who was sent with a mission of reducing the call time there. He finds the Indian work culture quite unprofessional. He believes that the calls are not duly answered or customers are often ‘hit-on’ by the agents. He goes on demanding more from his workers without actually knowing them. He starts teaching them American English, as the customers would prefer talking to a native English speaker. Here we see how the westerners keep their culture and language as the primary point of judging other cultures, just like Americans inherited the language from the brits, Indians too have acquired the language. But the accented pronunciation is somehow off-putting for them. One of his coworkers, Asha, points out this fact and even goes on to say unlike American English speakers who makes unnecessary reductions, Indians have a better pronunciation of the language. Todd goes on to reduce the call time to the required limit with the help of Asha and flies back to the USA, leaving behind a strong connection.

The most commendable part of the movie is the raw representation of India, Holi not being about filmy songs, not all Indians have an accented pronunciation, and everyone you see is not thieves, being some of them. It shows how acclimated Indians are to the western culture while still retaining their innate culture.

End of life care includes Palliative care . If you have an illness that cannot be cured, Palliative care makes you as comfortable as possible , By managing your pain and other distressing symptoms . It also involves psychological , social and spiritual support for you and your family or careers . End of life care provides proactive palliative care services at home , symptom management to individuals in advanced stages of illness. End-of-life care addresses the medical, physical, social, emotional and spiritual needs of the patient . It helps patients enjoy the comforts of home and family, draw on social and emotional support, and manage symptoms such as pain, shortness of breath, nausea, extreme fatigue, loss of appetite and inability to sleep. Many patients and their families find that the emotional support and management of physical symptoms provided by end-of-life care, can make a huge difference in the equality of life of a patient in his last days of life. End-of-life care is available for patients with advanced life -limiting conditions of any type, including end-stage demetia , AIDS, heart disease or emphysema- as well as cancer. Our Ends-of-life care teams work together with the patient, family and the patients physician to: improve quality of life; relieve physical, emotional and spiritual distress; provide an individual plan of care ; and give support to family members. It includes full-time physicians who has experience in palliative care. Nurses with special training in palliative care. Social workers with understanding of understanding of special conditions of palliative care. Dietitians, home health aides and therapists who specialize in complementary medicine. Spiritual care counselors.