Nothing is Permanent
Category: Life Gyan
There is Always, Always, Always Something To Be Thankful For…
A famous writer was in his study room. He picked up his pen and started writing: **Last year, I had a surgery and my gall bladder was removed. I had to stay stuck to the bed due to this surgery for a long time.
**The same year I reached the age of 60 years and had to give up my favourite job. I had spent 30 years of my life in this publishing company.
**The same year I experienced the sorrow of the death of my father.
**And in the same year my son failed in his medical exam because he had a car accident. He had to stay in bed at hospital with the cast on for several days. The destruction of car was another loss.
At the end he wrote: Alas! It was such bad year!!
When the writer’s wife entered the room, she found her husband looking sad, lost in his thoughts. From behind his back she read what was written on the paper. She left the room silently and came back with another paper and placed it on the side of her husband’s writing.
When the writer saw the paper, he found this written on it:
**Last year, I finally got rid of my gall bladder for which I had spent years in pain.
**I turned 60 with sound health and got retired from my job. Now I can utilize my time to write something better with more focus and peace.
**The same year my father, at the age of 95, without depending on anyone or without any critical condition, met his Creator.
**The same year, my son was blessed with a new life. My car was destroyed but my son stayed alive without getting any disability.
At the end she wrote:
This year was an immense blessing and it passed well!
See! The same incidents but different viewpoints. If we ponder with this viewpoint that what could have happened was more detrimental, we would truly become thankful.
Moral: In our daily lives, we must see that it’s not happiness that makes us grateful but gratefulness that makes us happy. There is always, always, always something to be thankful for!
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How to Take Control of Your Fast Paced Life
The days are long but the year seems to pass very fast. You may be slogging thru the day but when you look back the year seems to have gone by rather quickly. With every passing year we feel that the pace of life is getting faster and faster. Sometimes you may feel overwhelmed. However consider this, if this gives you any solace, today is the slowest day of the rest of your life. Which means that there are crazier times ahead and the rate of change is only going to head north. So it is better we learn to deal with it rather than play catch-up.
The biggest reason behind always feeling busy and not having time for anything is our desire to stay “connected” always, on multiple channels mobile, WhatsApp, Twitter, email and various other social media platforms. A few years ago you had to wait for weeks before you got a response to your handwritten letter sent to parents or friends or even for any official communication. For urgent stuff only people used Telegram. Even when phones arrived, only a few had it and again it was used for important communication only. For all other stuff one had to use hand written communication.
As communication channels multiplied and became faster and cheaper, things that took weeks now take a few seconds or even less. Also all communication whether urgent or trivial happens at the same pace via the same channels. So you have to look at all the hundreds of messages, whether you like it or not, before you can get to the message that you are looking for.
Also every event, small or big, happening across the world is being reported without filters. In the name of having choice you have to decide which news or information is relevant and important for you. The various channels keep pushing you all that they have. If you really want to get a handle on your time and quality of life here are a few things to consider –
- It is OK to not read or respond to all the social media posts shared by your friends or family members. Value your own time and use it wisely.
- Mute all message notifications on your mobile except any critical ones. This will help you reduce the distraction throughout the day and as a side benefit also improve the battery life of your mobile.
- The real life is happening NOW all around you not on your mobile screen. Take a break from technology every once in a while. Learn to keep the mobile aside when interacting with people. If it is very important excuse yourself from the conversation but do not multitask.
- Resist the urge to post every trivial update about yourself on social media unless you are a celebrity or a public figure.
With our current levels of addiction, this is surely not an easy ask but if you really want to reclaim your life, you have to control the amount, quality and pace of information you assimilate and consciously use your energy towards your life’s objectives. In other words, we need to go back to the basics –
- Practice mindfulness
- Spend some time alone
- Reconnect with nature
- Nurture your relationships
- Spend time on pursuing your hobbies
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The Mirror of Life !
A person once approached his Guru and asked “My workers are not true to me. My children, wife and the entire world is very selfish. Nobody is truthful.”
Guru looked at him and smiled. He said, “Let me tell you a story.”
There was once a village which had a room with 1000 mirrors. One small girl used to go inside and play. Seeing thousands of children around her she was joyful.She would clap her hands and all the 1000 children would clap back. She considered this place as the world’s happiest place and visited often.
This same place was visited by a sad person. He saw around him thousands of sad and angry men. He got scared and raised his hands to hit them and in return 1000 hands lifted to hit him back. This is the worst place in the world he thought and left that place.
This world is also similar to the room with 1000 mirrors. What we let out of us is what the society gives back to us. Keep your heart like a child and assume positive intent and good will come back to you in more ways than you thought possible.
Now here is a question for the reader – What are you seeing in your mirror? What are you learning about your inner self from this mirror?
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Life is Like a Journey on a Train
Life is like a journey on a train…with its stations…with changes of routes…and with accidents ! We board this train when we are born and our parents are the ones who get our ticket. We believe they will always travel on this train with us. However, at some station our parents will get off the train, leaving us alone on this journey.
As time goes by, other passengers will board the train, many of whom will be significant – our siblings, friends, children, and even the love of our life.
Many will get off during the journey and leave a permanent vacuum in our lives.
Many will go so unnoticed that we won’t even know when they vacated their seats and got off the train ! This train ride will be full of joy, sorrow, fantasy, expectations, hellos, good-byes, and farewells.
A good journey is helping, loving, having a good relationship with all co-passengers…and making sure that we give our best to make their journey comfortable.
The mystery of this fabulous journey is – We do not know at which station we ourselves are going to get off. So, we must live in the best way – adjust, forget, forgive, and offer the best of what we have.
It is important to do this because when the time comes for us to leave our seat… we should leave behind beautiful memories for those who will continue to travel on the train of life.
Thank you for being one of the passengers on my train !
Have a very pleasant journey of life………!
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No One Can Hurt You Without Your Consent
On the first day as President… Abraham Lincoln entered to give his inaugural address, while just on the set, one man stood up. He was a rich Aristocrat….
He said, “Mr. Lincoln, you should not forget that your father used to make shoes for my family” And the whole Senate burst out laughing; for they thought they had made a fool of Abraham Lincoln.
But Lincoln was a man of totally different mettle than them, as he just looked at the man, and said humbly, ” Sir, I know my father used to make shoes for you and your family, and there are many others here too I am sure, for whom he has made shoes….But I must say one thing, the way he made shoes….; nobody else could match. He was a genuine artisan; His shoes were not just shoes; he poured his whole heart and soul in it….and hence, I would like to humbly ask you sir….do you have any complaint? because I also know how to make shoes myself….and if you are in any way dissatisfied, I can make another pair for you as a service for my late father. But as far as I know”, Lincoln added confidently, “nobody has ever complained about my father’s shoes. He was a real genius in his line of work, a great creator….and I must indeed thank you, for reminding me of him on this day, for I am very fondly proud of my father.”
The whole Senate was dumb struck. They could not understand, as to what kind of a man Abraham Lincoln was. The humility about himself and the pride for his father, through quality of his work…..to say that not a single complaint had ever been heard….he also defined his own character, as well as his personal mettle.
Moral of the story :
No one can hurt you without your consent.
It is not what happens to us, that hurts us.
It’s how we react to what happens, hurts…….if we allow it to…..!!!
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Nurture The Child
- If your child lies to you often, it is because you over-react too harshly to their inappropriate behaviour.
- If your child is not taught to confide in you about their mistakes, you’ve lost them.
- If your child had poor self-esteem, it is because you advice them more than you encourage them.
- If your child does not stand up for themselves, it is because from a young age you have disciplined them regularly in public.
- If your child takes things that do not belong to them, it is because when you buy them things, you don’t let them chose what they want.
- If your child is cowardly, it is because you help them too quickly.
- If your child does not respect other people’s feelings, it is because instead of speaking to your child, you order and command them.
- If your child is too quick to anger, it is because you give too much attention to misbehaviour and you give little attention to good behaviour.
- If your child is excessively jealous, it is because you only congratulate them when they successfully complete something and not when they improve at something even if they don’t successfully complete it.
- If your child intentionally disturbs you, it is because you are not physically affectionate enough.
- If your child is openly defied, it is because you openly threaten to do something but don’t follow through.
- If your child is secretive, it is because they don’t trust that you won’t blow things out of proportion.
- If your child talks back to you, it is because they watch you do it to others and think its normal behaviour.
- If your child doesn’t listen to you but listens to others, it is because you are too quick to make decisions.
- If your child rebels it is because they know you care more about what others think than what is right or wrong.
Change starts at home. Try a few if not all and see the sea change in the relations. Can you?
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Assume Positive Intent
Once a person was traveling across the countryside in his car and unfortunately somewhere on the outskirts of a village his car get a flat Tyre. When he gets down to replace the tyre he realizes that he forgot the jack in his own garage. He gets very upset at his own stupidity and kicks the flat tyre in disappointment. He looks around for help but there is no one to be seen. He looks around once more pondering at the alternatives when he notices a car parked in the courtyard of one of the houses in the distance across the fields. He chuckled at the sight of the car and decides to ask the owner of the car, probably a farmer, if he could borrow his jack.
So he starts walking towards the farmer’s house. While walking he starts to mentally prepare his narration that he would tell the farmer which would convince him to lend the jack in the easiest and quickest possible manner. He thinks if I say this the farmer may respond like this and then this is what I am going to tell him. If he offers me tea/coffee I am going to say this and so on. During his mental dialogues he also thinks what if the farmer makes an excuse and refuses to lend the jack. Then he prepares his reasons to convince the farmer but what if the farmer does not relent – he tries harder but what if the farmer does not trust strangers.
The dialogues in his head continue to get more and more intense as he keeps walking towards the farmer’s house. By the time he knocks on the farmer’s door he is completely agitated and enraged with the arguments going on in his head. And the moment the farmer opens the door the person is so angry that he punches the farmer…
This story may not be very different from what we too face in our day to day lives. Wherever the favorable outcome of a situation is extremely important to us, our emotions get attached to the outcome. Doubt, anxiety and negative thoughts then start creeping into our mind. And the mental conversations begins. As these situations play out in our head, we start looking suspiciously at all the other characters in the play as if everyone has just one motto – how to jeopardize the outcome we desire so badly. Just like the person with the flat tyre in the story, we start mixing our mental conversations with the real world interactions and start “punching” (read behaving rudely, sulking, stop responding, deliberately avoid helping, using sarcastic language) the various characters who are none other than our family members, friends and colleagues.
To prevent ourselves from getting trapped into such behaviors and to make our own lives and that of others around us blissful, here is a simple, powerful and very effective concept. All you need to do is to repeat this phrase to yourself whenever you are faced with doubt, anxiety or negative thoughts about a person or a situation and your faith starts to falter.
“ASSUME POSITIVE INTENT“
The beauty of this simple thought is that it applies equally well to all situations whether you are at home, at work or with friends. Whenever you are tempted to think negatively of a situation or the person causing it – pause a moment and remember the phrase “Assume Positive Intent“. These three simple words will direct your mind to look at the same situation by assuming positive intentions of the people involved. Rather than looking at the negative reasons for someone’s behavior you start to think of positive intentions behind people’s behavior. By doing this you are willing to give the benefit of doubt to your friends or family, even if it is for that moment.
The moment you change your point of view, everything related to it changes, including how you respond to it. It takes the stress out of the entire event and preserves the health of your relationship as you start visualizing people having positive intentions towards you. By adopting a positive view, you not only make your life stress free but also start influencing the others around you with your positive attitude.
Once you start practicing this in your day to day interactions, you will be tempted to take a print out of these three words and stick it to your desk. These simple words, if practiced consistently can take the heartburn out of so many situations and save many relationships from going stale.
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The Price of Anything “Free”
There is nothing called Free Lunch.
“When anything is free, your freedom is the price!! “
Desmond Tutu once said, “When the Missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, “let us pray”. We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.
Like wise, when social networking came, they had the WhatsApp and Facebook, and we had the freedom. They said it’s free. We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had WhatsApp and Facebook, and they had our freedom.
When anything is “free”, your freedom is the Price.
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How to Find “What I Really Want?”
If you haven’t read the first part of this post “What Do We Want From Life?” I would recommend you go through it first before reading this post any further.
Finding what you want from life is a very personal journey which will require a lot of honesty and a little bit of courage to accept yourself the way you really are and the involvement of your heart and mind – all at the same time. Once you pose the question (What do I want from my life?) to yourself with the serious intent of finding the answer, your mind (both conscious and sub-conscious) will get engaged.
Our mind is a big storehouse of all our desires, emotions, things that our parents, friends, family members, teachers etc may have told us over the years. All these hidden emotions below the surface keep playing with our mind when we want to take any decision. And you will notice that at time we experience a lot of chatter in the mind pulling us into different directions. That is because of lack of clarity of what we want.
At the outset, the mind will start giving you many options of what you want from life. These options may be based on what others may have told you or expect from you. So how to find out if the options that your mind is throwing at you are the real answers? There may be different ways to ascertain that but the one that works for most is writing down the answer and then writing down the “Why?” – the reasons why you want it? Just keep writing all the big and small reasons that come to your mind till you have emptied all your thoughts about this answer.
Repeat this process with the other answers that come to your mind.
This may not happen in one sitting. The time taken will vary from one person to another depending on your desire, the fire in your belly to really uncover the answer. But the key is to remain persistent and determined to take it to conclusion. And I assure you it will be worth the effort. And remember the journey is as important as the destination as that is where the transformation is actually happening.
Review the answers you have written and the reasons – some of them will start resonating with you while you will be able to discard the others. It is ok to filter out more than one answer to “what you want from life” as you may want to express yourself, your talents in multiple fields. For example, on one hand you may want to be successful in your career and on the other hand you may want to do something meaningful for the under-privileged. On one side you may strive to be the best parent and at the same time you may want to give wings to your own creative pursuits. I have come across many talented people who are achievers in more than one field in life.
Eventually by this process of looking at the various desires and options and reviewing them by being true to your own self, you will arrive at the answers in a few iterations.
