Feeling overwhelmed by life? Mr. Akhilesh Jain from Ken Consulting lists down these 20 steps by which you can make yourself mentally stronger and take life head on.

• When you encounter adversity, remember, the best don’t just face adversity; they embrace it, knowing it’s not a dead end but a detour to something greater and better.
• When you face negative people, know that the key to life is to stay positive in the face of negativity, not in the absence of it. After all, everyone will have to overcome negativity to define them and create their success.
• When you face the naysayer, remember the people who believed in you and spoke positive words to you.
• When you face critics, remember to tune them out and focus only on being the best you can be.
• When you wake up in the morning, take a morning walk of gratitude and prayer. It will create a fertile mind ready for success.
• When you fear, trust. Let your faith be greater than your doubt.
• When you fail, find the lesson in it, and then recall a time when you have succeeded.
• When you head into battle, visualize success.
• When you are thinking about the past or worrying about the future, instead focus your energy on the present moment. The now is where your power is the greatest.
• When you want to complain, instead identify a solution.
• When your own self-doubt crowds your mind, weed it and replace it with positive thoughts and positive self-talk.
• When you feel distracted, focus on your breathing, observe your surroundings, clear your mind, and get into the Zone. The Zone is not a random event. It can be created.
• When you feel all is impossible, know that with God all things are possible.
• When you feel alone, think of all the people who have helped you along the way and who love and support you now.
• When you feel lost, pray for guidance.
• When you are tired and drained, remember to never give up. Finish strong in everything you do.
• When you feel like you can’t do it, know that you can do all things through Him who gives you strength.
• When you feel like your situation is beyond your control, pray and surrender. Focus on what you can control and let go of what you can’t.
• When you’re in a high-pressure situation and the game is on the line, and everyone is watching you, remember to smile, have fun, and enjoy it. Life is short; you only live once. You have nothing to lose. Seize the moment.

In what ways will you choose to be mentally tough?

It is almost like we can’t live without and is a part & parcel of every activity that we do. The computer has become so much a part of our life that we take it for granted. And yet how much do we know about how it originated? Here’s a quick look at its history.

So who invented the computer? It is difficult to answer the question, as many people have contributed in different ways to a system of calculation and computing that we today know as computers.

The ancients as usual knew it all…

Some kind of calculating devices were invented during the ancient times. Some of these were simple crude devices likes a tally stick and later record keeping aids like Phoenician clay shapes which represented counts of items like livestock or grains, in containers.

But one of the most important earliest forms of calculating device was the abacus. The abacus had been used in Babylonia as early as 2400 BC. Since then, many other forms of counting tables have been invented, for example in a medieval counting house, a checkered cloth would be placed on a table, and markers moved around on it according to certain rules, as an aid to calculating sums of money.

There were also a number of devices constructed in ancient and medieval times to perform astronomical calculations. These include the Antikythera mechanism and the astrolabe from ancient Greece (c. 150-100 BC). These devices are usually regarded as the first non-digital or analog computers. An analog computer is a form of computer that uses electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic models to solve problems.

The Antikythera mechanism, used for registering and predicting the motion of the stars and planets, is dated to the first century B.C. It was discovered off the coast of Greece in 1901. Further the Arabic system introduced the fixed places for tens, hundreds, thousand, etc and it simplified mathematical calculations.

The early modern inventions

Wilhelm Schickard is believed to have built the first mechanical calculator in 1623. It could work with six digits, and carry digits across columns. It worked but never progressed beyond the prototype stage. It was Blaise Pascal who is credited with building the first digital computer in 1642. It added numbers entered with dials and was made to help his father, a tax collector. And in 1671, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz is believed to have invented a computer that was built in 1694. It could add and after changing some things around, multiply.  The prototypes made by Pascal and Leibniz were not used in many places, and considered weird until a little more than a century later, when Thomas of Colmar (A.K.A. Charles Xavier Thomas) created the first successful mechanical calculator that could add, subtract, multiply, and divide. A lot of improved desktop calculators by many inventors followed.

Later a series of very interesting developments in computers was started in Cambridge, England, by Charles Babbage, a mathematics professor. In 1812, Babbage realized that many long calculations, especially those needed to make mathematical tables, were really a series of predictable actions that were constantly repeated. From this he suspected that it should be possible to do these automatically. He began to design an automatic mechanical calculating machine, which he called a difference engine. In 1833, Charles Babbage moved on from developing his difference engine to developing a more complete design, the analytical engine.

Another important step towards automated computing was the development of punched cards, which were first successfully used with computers in 1890 by Herman Hollerith and James Powers, who worked for the US Census Bureau. They developed devices that could read the information that had been punched into the cards automatically, without human help. Because of this, reading errors were reduced dramatically, work flow increased, and, most importantly, stacks of punched cards could be used as easily accessible memory of almost unlimited size.

Punched cards were used until the end of the 1970s in many institutions like universities Punched cards are still used and manufactured to this day, and their distinctive dimensions (and 80-column capacity) can still be recognized in forms, records, and programs around the world.

By the 1900s, earlier mechanical calculators, cash registers, accounting machines, and so on were redesigned to use electric motors. Many companies made desktop mechanical calculators from the 1930s that could add, subtract, multiply and divide.

By this time the word "computer" was a job title assigned to people who used calculators to perform mathematical calculations.

World war and the need for computer capacity

World War II produced a large need for computer capacity, especially for the military and new weapons. In 1942, John P. Eckert, John W. Mauchly and their associates at the Moore school of Electrical Engineering of University of Pennsylvania decided to build a high - speed electronic computer to do the job. This machine became known as ENIAC (Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator) ENIAC was about 1,000 times faster then the previous generation of relay computers.

During the 1960s there was considerable overlap between second and third generation technologies. As late as 1975, Sperry Univac continued the manufacture of second-generation machines such as the UNIVAC 494.

The microprocessor led to the development of the microcomputer, small, low-cost computers that could be owned by individuals and small businesses. Microcomputers, the first of which appeared in the 1970s, became ubiquitous in the 1980s and beyond. Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer, is credited with developing the first mass-market home computers. However, his first computer, the Apple I, came out some time after the KIM-1 and Altair 8800, and the first Apple computer with graphic and sound capabilities came out well after the Commodore PET. Computing has evolved with microcomputer architectures, with features added from their larger brethren, now dominant in most market segments.

Well, the developments in computers continued. But now you know how it all started.

front of my dad. I remember waiting to see if anyone noticed! Yet all my dad did was reach for his toast, smile at my mom, and ask me how my day was at school. I don't remember what I told him that night, but I do remember watching him smear butter and jelly on that toast and eat every bite!

When I got up from the table, I remember hearing my mom apologize to my dad for burning the toast. And I'll never forget what he said: 'Baby, I love burned toast.'

Later that night, I went to kiss Daddy good night and I asked him if he really liked his toast burned. He wrapped me in his arms and said, 'Debbie, your Mommy put in a hard day at work today and she's really tired. And besides, a little burnt toast never hurt anyone!' You know, life is full of imperfect things.....and imperfect people. I'm not the best housekeeper or cook.

What I've learned over the years is that learning to accept each other's faults - and choosing to celebrate each other's differences - is the one of the most important keys to creating a healthy, growing, and lasting marriage relationship.

And that's my prayer for you today. That you will learn to take the good, the bad and the ugly parts of your married life and lay them at the feet of GOD. Because in the end, He's the only one who will be able to give you a marriage where burnt toast isn't a deal-breaker! We could extend this to any relationship in fact - as understanding is the base of any relationship, be it a husband-wife or parent-child or friendship!!

Thought to chew on: "Don't put the key to your happiness in someone else's pocket"

Moral of the story: We are all ‘up lines’ to our ‘down lines’ and ‘down lines’ to our ‘up lines’. Even if the toast is burnt, let us not let our Ego worsen the relationship.