by Betsy de Cruz

When was the last time you had a bad day? I bet it wasn't long ago.

Maybe you had an argument with your spouse first thing in the morning and spilled your coffee on your way out the door. Or you stopped at the grocery store after work and mysteriously lost your cart after you filled it with the items you needed for dinner. You got another cart and filled it again, only to wait 15 minutes in the checkout line with the most problems.

Have you ever wondered how to turn those days around?

Recently, a bad travel day almost undid me. My family and I were moving abroad, so we hauled eight suitcases to the airport. After we stood in line two hours, an unhappy airline agent rejected four of our bags for being overweight. We dragged the offending suitcases to one side and threw away 15 pounds of our belongings. (Believe me, rifling through your underwear in front of strangers makes for a bad day!) Then we waited in line another hour to pass through security before finally grabbing lunch at 4:00 p.m.

You don't have to travel to have a bad day. Flat tire days, sick kid days, and tense work days happen to all of us.

Bad days happen, but they don't have to undo us.

No matter how difficult our day, we can always end it on a better note with God. The Examen is a powerful prayer tool to help you find glimmers of God even on your worst days. You might be surprised to learn that it comes from Ignatius of Loyola, who taught his Jesuit followers to look back over each day using five steps.

You don't have to be a monk to pray like this. Amazingly, this 500-year-old spiritual practice remains relevant today for business executives, housewives, engineers, and students.

5 steps to make a bad day better by ending it on a positive note:

1. Remember God's presence.

"My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest."
 (Exodus 33:14)

Even after a trying day, God will quiet your soul as you remember His presence and intentionally seek to enter into it. Remember He's with you. Invite Him to make Himself present to you.

2. Respond to Him with thanks.

"Those who sacrifice thank offerings honor me."
(Psalm 50:23)

Giving thanks gives God glory and helps us look on the bright side of a bad day. What small blessings can you thank God for?

3. Reflect on how God showed Himself to you.

"For God does speak--now one way, now another-- though no one perceives it…"
(Job 33:14)

God reveals himself through scripture, but we also see glimpses of him in nature, events, and people. Sometimes He shows up loudly through miraculous, divine intervention. Other times He shows Himself quietly through the beauty of a flower or an earnest conversation. During my bad travel day, God showed me His mercy through the kindness of an airline attendant. As you look back over your day, can you identify moments where you sensed God's revelation or intervention?

4. Repent of your failings.

"Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord."
(Acts 3:19)

I don't like recognizing my own sin, but repentance is key to continual renewal in our relationship with God. We fail God every day, but bad days have a way of making sin spew out of us. We vent our frustrations. We fret and worry instead of trusting. We open the door to addiction. In the heat of a difficult moment, we react in anger. (You should have heard my husband and I bickering as we went through our suitcases at the airport.)

As you reflect on your day, remember specific points where you failed. Bring your shortcomings before God and ask Him to forgive you.

5. Resolve to grow.

"He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."
(Philippians 1:6)

God is in the business of changing us, so don't let your failings discourage or define you. His mercies are always new. Accept His forgiveness. Ask Him for grace to change. Is there anything you need to make right or anyone you need to apologize to? What can you do differently tomorrow?

Bad days don't have to undo us.

We can make even a bad day better when we look for glimpses of God and ways to grow.

The prayer of Examen gives us five steps to process our day. I like praying through these before bedtime to prepare for a good night's rest, but you don't have to wait until then. A few minutes of prayer at lunch can press a reset button on your day. Prayer on the way home from work might help you get in a better frame of mind to spend the evening with your family.

Find a time that works for you, but don't wait for a bad day to try this. The prayer of Examen will also make a good day even better. Practicing this now will equip you to better deal with a difficult day the next time one comes around.

About The Author:

Betsy de Cruz enjoys God, life with teenagers, and dark roast coffee. Betsy's passion is to encourage women to get God's Word in, so their faith can spill out, even during life's bumpy moments. Betsy writes about real life faith on her blog, faithspillingover.com, on Facebook. and on Twitter.

Barclays, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan – it seems every time we turn around, another financial giant is accused of lying, cheating and stealing.

It's not your imagination, says Rakesh Malhotra, a longtime COO who has worked in Asia, East Europe and United States and led cross-cultural diverse teams.

"White-collar crime convictions in the United States alone have increased 17.8 percent in the last five years alone," he says. "Last year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed a record 735 enforcement actions."

And it's not just hedge fund operators and money traders. White-collar crimes include identity theft, cheating on taxes, health-care fraud – crimes as readily committed by employees at the local big-box store as suits in penthouse offices.

"The problem is one of values," says Malhotra, author of Adventures of Tornado Kid: Whirling Back Home Towards Timeless Values (www.FiveGlobalValues.com). "I have worked in several countries, recruiting, hiring, training and retaining employees. I found that in every culture, the same core values play a key role in the success of both employees and the corporation.

"Unfortunately, they are not taught in school – not in grade school or in most business schools. While we would benefit from having values taught at all age levels, for now they are learned mostly from parents, mentors, inspiring teachers and others who shape young lives."

It's as important for the business to have what Malhotra has identified as five essential global values as it is for the employees, he says.

"The business has to show that these ethics are implemented and acted upon. Otherwise, the employee with values, the one instructed to, say, lie about a product, will feel secure about reporting such conduct without being fired."

What are these values and how can they be taught?

• Responsibility: There is nothing more fundamental to being an adult in our society than accountability. Parents can create cause-and-effect circumstances, such as letting a teen borrow the car provided they put gas in it. Breaking such a pact though, because of a bad grade in school, creates a mixed message. When children learn responsibility, they know that happiness comes from doing the right thing.

• Compassion: It's not just a term for being nice; compassion is a form of intelligence – an empathetic ability to see a situation through another's eyes and to feel what another person feels. When adults are compassionate, they reach out to help others because they can feel others' pain – and the relief and gratitude of help, sympathy or encouragement.

• Integrity: Integrity is the glue that holds together all of the values. When given an option to stray from our values, such as lying for the sake of convenience, integrity is there to hold us accountable.

• Peace: Our ability to manage conflicts amicably is a direct result of a peaceful mind and attitude. Those who value peace view anger, jealousy and hostility as the barriers to communication that they are. In all settings, business and domestic, conflicts will arise – it is inevitable. We must work through these peacefully if we are to move forward.

• Love: You must love what you do, passionately. Do your work and your organization in some way contribute to the welfare of people? That is the reason for your passion. With love, you contribute to the greater good and feel gratified.

About Rakesh Malhotra

by Amitabh Thakur

I had read the story "Haar ki jeet" (Victory of defeat) where the great story-teller Sudarshan had tried to establish the importance of faith in human beings and humanity per se. The story presented how there is no offence more serious than throttling the faith a human being reposes on his fellow beings. Somehow, this story has always remained one of the guiding principles of life, possibly because my own temperament is also molded in the same way. While many occasions came when I doubts erupted as regards one or two or many other human beings, but never for once did I lose my faith in humanity per se.

It is not that I always remained a living or burning example of magnanimity and generosity. On the contrary, there were many occasions when I came as being an extremely ordinary person or even a very stingy and uncharitable one, who was completely self-centered. Hence when I refer to the story Haar ki jeet, the purpose is not for once to glorify myself in any manner, but only to present the larger format of my thought process.

I had read something along the same lines in my school book where Swami Vivekanand had said that even if he is cheated by human beings a thousand times, he is not going to lose his faith in humanity even by an iota. This sentence remained the basis of my thinking and shall remain so for ever.

Yet while it is true that my faith will remain undivided but the kind of episode I present here are the ones that often act as the catalyst for people getting susceptible of each other and disbelieve spreading among human beings.

I was SP in Gonda district in the year 2003-04. There among many people, I also came in contact with one Manoj Tiwari who was associated with one of the political parties at that time. He use to come to me with some public issues now or then.

Even after getting transferred from Gonda, we remained in contact because he used to visit me at my Lucknow residence as courtesy visits. He used to tell me that he lives in Lucknow and is a contractor. I also had a mobile number of his in my possession.

On 04 June 2013, he phoned me in the morning at my mobile number saying that his mother is critically ill and she is admitted in Lohia Hospital, Lucknow, for which he is in immediate need of money. He has been able to collect the rest of money and in case I could give him Rs. 6000, it would be a great service to him. He pledged that he would return the money in a few days.

Since I had known him for long and he talked about his mother's illness, I thought that not helping him would be improper and inhuman. My wife Nutan had her doubts about this but I even ignored her voice in the name of this person's illness, leading to slight skirmish between us.

After some time, Tiwari came to my house and I myself gave him Rs. 6000. I also saved the new phone number from which he had called me. I had given Rs. 5000 as loan to my newspaper-vendor only a few days ago for his daughter's marriage and hence I noted the details of the two loans in a copy for my remembrance.

Newspaper vendor's loan gets deducted every month in his bills but Tiwari was never heard after he took my money. I also did not phone him for days thinking of some untoward happening where asking for money would not look appropriate.

Yesterday on 31/08/2013, after many days I remembered the matter and phoned him on both his numbers at around 19.09. While phone number xxx27 was found switched off, as is it presently, some other person picked phone number xxx67 who told he is from a place called Itwa. He said he was fed up with this number where many calls came, often asking for money from Manoj Tiwari.

I immediately understood this was again a case of cheating where Tiwari had used his mother's name to cheat me. I contacted my known people in Gonda and from there I came to know that Manoj, son of Mathura Prasad Tiwari was from Katra Bazar though his family now lived in Azad Nagar colony, near CMS school Gonda city. It was also told that he has been living in Lucknow for long and other such complaints of cheating people and swindling money in like manner are also there where he later changes his mobile number after cheating a person.

Hence this prima-facie seems to be a matter of cheating where Tiwari cheats people like me and others by taking such humane and sensitive pretext and later evaporates in thin air by changing place of residence etc.

For me these 6000 rupees are not important as is the murder of my faith and cheating in mother's name. Hence I got an FIR registered at Gomti nagar police station. Being a police officer, my FIR was registered much easily, though what will happen in the case is known only to the God almighty.

But I know for sure that such kind of Manoj Tiewaris not only harm themselves, they simultaneously harm the interests of thousands of other Manoj Tiwaris by creating a sense of disbelief and lack of mutual trust in each other. To cheat others in the name of one's mother - nothing could be more abhorrent than this.

1. Though you may not publicly own to this, at the age of 12-17 years, you were very proud of your first "Bellbottom" or your first "Maxi" .

2. Phantom & Mandrake were your only true heroes. The brainy ones read "Competition Success Review".

3. Your "Camlin" geometry box & Natraj/Flora pencil were your prized possessions.

4. The only "Holidays" you took were to go to your grandparents' or your cousins' houses.

5. Ice-cream meant only - either an orange stick, a vanilla stick – or a Choco Bar if you were better off than most.

6. You gave your neighbour's phone number to others with a 'PP' written against it because you had booked yours only 7 years ago and were still waiting for your number to come.

7. Your parents were proud owners of HMT watches. You "earned" yours after SSC exams.

8. You have been to "Jumbo Circus"; have held your breath while the pretty young thing in the glittery skirt did acrobatics, quite enjoyed the elephants hitting football, the motorcyclist vrooming in the "Maut - ka - Gola" and it was politically okay to laugh your guts out at dwarfs hitting each others bottoms!

9.. You have at least once heard "Hawa Mahal" and "Binaca Geetmala" on the radio.

10. If you had a TV, it was normal to expect the neighbourhood to gather around to watch the Chitrahaar or the Sunday movie. If you didn't have a TV, you just went to a house that did. It mattered little if you knew the owners or not.

11. Sometimes the owners of these TVs got very creative and got a bi or even a tri-coloured anti-glare screen which they attached with two side clips onto their Weston TVs. That confused the hell out of you!

12. Black & White TVs weren't so bad after all because cricket was played in whites.

13. You thought your Dad rocked because you got your own (the family's; not your own own!) colour TV when the Asian Games started. Everyone else got the same idea as well and ever since, no one came over to your house and you didn't go to anyone else's to watch TV.

14. You dreaded the death of any political leader because of the mourning they would announce on the TV. After all how much " Shashtriya Sangeet " can a kid take? Salma Sultana also didn't smile during the mourning.

15. You knew that " Indira Gandhi " was somebody really powerful and terribly important. And that's all you needed to know.

16. The only "Gadgets" in the house were the TV, the Fridge and possibly a mixer.

17. Movies meant Rajesh Khanna or Amitabh Bachchan. Before the start of the movie you always had to watch the obligatory "Newsreel".

18. You thought you were so rocking because you knew almost all the songs of Abba and Boney M.

19. Your hormones went crazy when you heard "Aap Jaisa Koi Meri Jindagi Mein Aaye" by Nazia Hassan .

20. Photograph taking was a big thing. You were lucky if your family owned a camera. A reel of 36 exposures was valuable hence it justified the half hour preparation & "setting" & the "posing" for each picture. Therefore, you have at least one family picture where everyone is holding their breath and standing in attention!

Cheers to good old friends & times.