Unwritten social rules everyone must follow

1. Don’t call someone more than twice continuously. If they don’t pick up your call that mean they have something more important to attend to.

2. When someone drops something on the floor by mistake or drops food from the plate or doesn’t know how to use a knife/fork don’t stare at them. The same goes to people sneezing, coughing or even an uncontrollable fart. It’s an involuntary reaction.

3. Always skip using the washroom beside the occupied one. It makes it uneasy for the person in the occupied washroom as well as yourself if you occupy the one right next to theirs.

4. Return money that you have borrowed even before the other person remembers lending it to you. Be it 1Rs or 100Rs. It shows your integrity and character. Same goes with umbrellas, pen, lunch boxes, books.

5. Never order the expensive dish on the menu when someone is treating you for lunch/dinner. If possible ask them to order their choice of food for you.

6. Don’t ask awkward questions like ‘Oh so you aren’t married yet?’ Or ‘Don’t you have kids’ or ‘Why didn’t you buy a house?’ For god’s sake it isn’t your problem.

7. Always open the door for the person coming behind you. Doesn’t matter if it is a guy or a girl. You don’t grow small by treating someone well in public.

8. If you take a taxi with a friend, and he/she pays now, you pay next time.

9. Respect different political opinions.

10. Don’t call people on the phone very late if it’s not really important.

11. Never interrupt people talking.

12. If you tease someone, and they don’t seem to enjoy it, stop it and never do it again.

13. Say “thank you” when someone is helping you.

14. Praise publicly. Criticize privately.

15. If you’re talking to someone and notice any of the following, they’re trying to end the conversation: Their eyes keep darting away. They angle their body away from you. They give you rapid one-word answers.

16. There’s almost never a reason to comment on someone’s weight. Just say, “You look fantastic.” If they want to talk about losing weight, they will.

17. If you’re getting a long flight or train, shower before. The person next to you will appreciate it.

18. When someone shows you a photo on their phone, don’t swipe left or right. You never know what’s next.

19. If a colleague tells you they have a doctors appointment, don’t ask what it’s for, just say hope you’re ok. If they want to talk about it they will and you don’t put them in the uncomfortable position of having to tell you their personal illness.

20. Treat the cleaner with the same respect as the CEO. Nobody is impressed at how rudely you can treat someone below you but people will notice if you treat them with respect.

21. If a person is speaking directly to you, staring at your phone is rude.

22. Never give advice until you’re asked

23. Do not make plans in front of those you are not involving.

24. Don’t talk to someone if they are wearing headphones.

25. When meeting someone after a long time, unless they want to talk about it, don’t ask them their age and salary.

26. When a friend/colleague offers you some food, you can politely say No. But, don’t do this after tasting or smelling it. It’s an insult to the one who has offered it to you

27. When someone starts talking about their ailments, don’t start talking about yours.

28. When someone you know has an obvious change in appearance, e.g., weight gain/loss, bald spot, acne. never comment on it until they talk about it to you, they already know what is happened to them.

29. Never kiss a baby that’s not yours.

30. Mind your own business unless anything involves you directly — just stay out of it.

31. Do not view every post on Facebook as an opportunity to argue/debate, even if does not conform to your views or beliefs.

*Credits to the content writers. Not my original content, uploaded as received ;-)

Phone Detox: 5 Ways to go back to good old days!

People are on the right track.

Turning off notifications is a good idea as a way to avoid constant reminders that someone, somewhere, has said something that may require our attention and remove it from the people who are in front of us.

Limiting use of phones at dinner is another simple way to take a small break from social media availability and focus on the people you are with in real life.

This can also be a way to practice limiting use at other times, as you become more used to having your phone turned off or in another room.

Here are some additional strategies that can work:

•Go Offline at Certain Times of Day: If you create windows when you are not available (like dinnertime, after a certain time of night, or even every other hour), you begin to teach yourself how to limit your availability. You also teach others not to expect you to be constantly available. This small boundary may make it easier to disconnect at other times and in other ways.

•Become Comfortable with "Sleep Mode": Putting your phone on "sleep mode" and only checking it once an hour is a good way to keep notifications functional but silent, so you can choose when to let them interrupt your day. This puts you in greater control.

•Ask People to Call You On It: Enlist help by announcing that you’d like to check your phone less when you are with people. You can even make a pact with others that none of you will be on your phones when you are together, as in "olden times" (like 2005). This can help you to stay connected with those you’re with, and make it into a game of sorts, rather than something you try to do alone.

•Delete Your Apps: If you delete social media apps on your phone, you’ll be forced to only use them when you are at your computer or tablet. This makes it more challenging to maintain a mindless habit of checking your phone, but it doesn’t cut you off entirely. The idea is to make yourself think about it more, and to make social media less available—but not completely inaccessible.

•Try Meditation: Because checking your phone can be such an insidious habit, it’s easy to do it without thinking. Getting into a new habit like meditation can help you to become more conscious of the present moment, the here and now. That can also help you to get into the practice of being here, now, rather than wondering who else is saying something online. Practice being fully present and it will become easier to keep your phone in your pocket.

by Rituparna Malini at https://www.speakingtree.in/blog/phone-detox-5-ways-to-go-back-to-good-old-days/m-lite

Be Smart With Your Smartphone

The Smartphone addiction has got all hooked. With millions of apps catering to your different needs, smileys, emoticons and memes instead of relying on words to express what you feel and getting to know the whole world at one tap, you feel severely addicted to your Smartphone. But, is that a healthy sign? On introspection, you will probably find that you spend more time over the virtual domain through the social networking sites rather than having a heart-to-heart with your family and friends.

Of late, smartphones are being held responsible for causing depression as a result of increased isolation.

Let’s find out whether the theory is well propounded or not.

1. One of the major signs of depression is lack of adequate sleep. Sticking to your smartphone till the wee hours of the morning affects your level of concentration, resulting in anxiety and a bad temper.

2. When you spend a lot of time on the gadgets, you slowly compromise on your thinking capacity. You take everything internet serves you as granted without clarifying. With every piece of information available on the internet, there is nothing left for you to imagine or create.

3. Addiction to social networking sites is taking away all your creative potentials; and on one fine day, when you discover this, you might feel increasingly disillusioned, resulting in depression.

4. One of the worst causes of depression is cyber bullying. The virtual world might welcome you with all kinds of threats and humiliation and this happens majorly on the social networking sites. As a result, you feel your self-confidence is at stake, resulting in severely low self-esteem and subsequent depression.

5. Abandoning your smartphone completely is utopian, because they serve needful purposes as well. But, what you can do is limit the time you spend on the device and replace it with something creative. Otherwise, it might not be too late before you start silently sliding into depression.

by Dr. Vasavi Samyukta Sunki, Psychologist

Originally at

https://www.practo.com/healthfeed/be-smart-with-your-smartphone-25188/post