Swim Out To Meet Your Ship

There are three kinds of people in this world. 
First kind of people are those who don't react when opportunity knocks their door. In fact, many a time they are not able to even recognize the opportunity. Most often than not, opportunity comes wrapped in problems & an ordinary man looks at problem only as a problem & starts looking for the solution. When any adversity strikes you, the first question you should ask is- "What is in it for me?" Yes, every opportunity, big or small, carries fruits of equal proportion to be had. Your job is to identify & welcome the opportunity. So, these people don't respond because they don't identify opportunity. Opportunity knocks their door but most of the time they are not home. They don't see the ship even when it is at shore waiting for them to board it. 
Second kind of people are the ones who identify these opportunities & respond to these. They know that opportunity will come in different forms & shapes & they are always waiting for it. They grab it with both the hands once they identify it. Not only that, they also keep themselves well prepared to make best use of all the opportunities. So, they are waiting for the ship to arrive & once it does, their  job is to board it & start their journey to success. 
But, third kind of people are those who don't wait for opportunity; they make opportunity even when it is not there. They are the real winners as they never complain about lack of opportunity. They have it in plenty & they also have the ways & means to overcome any challenge & convert it into a huge opportunity. They invite challenges if they are short of the same. Not that they become successful in all their efforts but even when they fail, they make best use of these failures. They become stronger with every failure & every failure becomes the stepping stone to their success. These kinds of people never wait for the ship to arrive;they swim out to meet it !
          "No great man ever complains of want of opportunity." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Walk Beside Me & Be My Friend

We get most of relationships as gifts which we can't choose- our parents, our siblings, and many other blood relationships. Thankfully, there are some gifts that we pick ourselves & enjoy these lifelong. Friendship is one such gift. Many a time, even this relationship starts without any intention to continue for a long period, but once our frequencies match we develop a strong and unbreakable bond with the person. Friendship, by far, is the most pious of relationships established outside blood relations.
We have our own upheavals in this relationship which many times seem to threaten the bond. And sometimes, it actually gets over on some trivial issue. But if someone moves away, don't regret; may be, he was never made for you. 
"If you love something, let it go free. If it doesn't come back, you never had it. If it comes back, love it forever." - Douglas Hortan
True friendship is a gift which one should treasure more than any other gift. A true friend is not a shoulder to cry on, but a heart to weave your life around. True friend doesn't lead & show you the way. The fact is he commits the same mistakes that you commit. He has same weaknesses & worries that you have.  He is also not the one who follows you. He may lend a helping hand or take one but he will do so by being beside you.
Another characteristic of this relationship is that this is devoid of any ego-tussle. Ego is missing because 'I' is missing & 'we' takes the center stage. It is not like two people being one; it is like someone finding another him outside himself- his alter-ego.
"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one."- C. S. Lewis
There is no rivalry, no competition; there is only sharing. Synergy is the hallmark of this bond. He is the one who doesn't give advice or solutions, but shares your pain by just being with you. He knows all about you & loves you as you are, not as you ought to be. He may remain silent in your hour of despair but his heart cries as loudly as does yours. 
                       "What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies."- Aristotle

Dream To Live

No one wants to get old and ironically no one wants to die young as well. Age of a person has nothing to do with the number of years he has lived. It has a lot to do with how his thought patterns are taking shape. As long as you are capable of dreaming, you are young. But then, some people never learn to dream. The fact is they never live. They just pass through this planet for a very short duration; so short that they are not even noticed. Even if such people live for hundred years, they would not matter. And on the other hand, we  have people like Anne Frank, Keats, Shelley who died young but left some indelible prints on the surface of time. So, age is irrelevant and an unnecessary topic of discussion. 

What we do when we live is of utmost importance. And our actions have a lot to do with our dreams. A child is a born dreamer & he wants to get whatever he dreams. Initially, he gets everything he dreams & demands but, by & by, we convince him that in life you don't get whatever you dream & this is the moment when a child is killed & an adult is born. This new-born adult starts aging fast as many of his dreams soon convert into regrets. He grows old when all his dreams are no more than a bundle of regrets. So, we may have an old man of 26 or a young lad of 70 depending upon his state of mind.

Life will be a difficult assignment without dreams. We will only see frustration, anger & loss around us. It is in our dreams that we find real life. Many a time, it is while living that we go through the motions & wake up to the reality in our dreams. 

Even if we consider that all our dreams are not going to turn into reality, we shouldn't stop dreaming. In fact, this should be a good reason to dream more & dream big. To most of the successful people dreaming was as natural as breathing. They could achieve anything because they could dream anything. One way to know the age of a person is to know the size of his dreams.So, if you want to keep fit & want to die young at the age of 90 or 100, dream big & dream more. 

We Are Our Thoughts

It has been said time and again that thoughts make a man. I'll go a step further & state they do more than merely making a man; they make him & the whole world around him. 

Thoughts are much bigger in size than they originally appear. The important question to be asked is, if we have a large number of thoughts travelling through our mind every day, why only a few seem to make an impact? Why all thoughts don't affect us & shape our destiny?

A thought alone is not powerful but when it is combined with emotions, it gains strength. It is like if you see someone on the road & think about him it won't affect you but if he does something that makes you happy, it will leave an impact. So, it is not thought about a person that influenced your perception about that person; it was his behavior & your emotions towards that behavior that did it. And once that happens, it has a ripple effect. Remember, your thoughts & emotions don't add, they multiply. So, it can be 'good thoughts plus good emotions' or 'bad thoughts plus bad emotions' that decides your opinion about someone. The important thing to learn is that since thoughts are huge in number, you can't do much about all your thoughts. Comparatively, emotions are lesser & can be easily controlled.

"I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them & to dominate them." - Oscar Wilde

So, how do thoughts make a man? It is because dwelling upon a thought also makes it stronger & drives traffic of emotions towards it. If you are thinking about someone negatively & if you keep thinking about him in the same light, it will only attract negative emotions. On the contrary, if there is a person who has harmed you but you forgive him & move on with other activities, it won't affect you anymore. Since you cannot control all your thoughts, it will be important to choose thoughts that affect you positively & reject thoughts that leave a negative influence. Even if we control five or six negative or positive thoughts, rest won't matter much. If you consciously practice it for some time, it will become your second nature & you won't need to make any effort to control your thoughts.   

It Goes On

Life is a funny business. The more we try to understand it, the more mysterious it gets. It being mysterious doesn't mean that it is a problem. Far from it, life is a wonderful experience. It has no beginning & no end. As the birth of a child cannot be the beginning of a life, the death can also not be the end point. It comes from a point & merges into it. The only thing definite about life is that it goes on.........

We try to understand life from a subjective point of view. For us, the life revolves around us, some people related to us and that is all. And for this reason when we lose someone, we are pained. We complain about the departure of the person. This happens because of our linear view about life. When we mourn the departure of the person we presume the departed soul to be a human being. While the fact is that all of us come to this earth as a spiritual being to have a human experience. The length of this experience cannot be measured in terms of years; it can only be measured in terms of moments. But the irony is that we ignore the moments & worry about years. Years remind us about death while moments remind us about life. 

All that you get to live is the dash between the year of your birth & the year of your death. Length of the dash is of least importance;beauty of that dash is all that matters. Anyway, you cannot do much about its length but you can add a lot of value to its depth.

"You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width & depth."   - H. L. Mencken 

The other secret of living a healthy life is to live it in now. But most of us either live in past or in future while now is all that we have got. Past is too heavy a burden to carry & future is as unpredictable as death. We don't live in now because it demands abnegation of all possessions. But we are so attached to our possessions that we don't want to shed it at any cost. We know that these possessions are stopping us to fly but still we want to carry it. We forget that we were the lightest at birth and will again be the lightest at death. We make our dash too heavy to float.

The only truth about life is that it has no beginning & no end; that it can only be lived in now; and that it goes on.........

Live Forever, Die Today

Living is an art & unfortunately many are not experts in same. We live as if we have come here to exist forever & try to be the richest or the most powerful. We want to have all that we can in terms of material possessions. We reject the concept of body being transient & soul eternal. But when the D-day arrives, we wish we could have lived a little longer to do tasks that were left unattended. We dream too late & too little.

Man is a born dreamer. A child has got billion dreams in his eyes & for that reason he thinks more in terms of possibilities than in terms of impossibilities. He thinks he can do anything & achieve anything. He doesn't hesitate asking for a moon, literally; & cries if he doesn't get it. But as he grows up, he listens to the noise outside which largely suggests impossibilities of things & discourages him to be a dreamer. The noise outside subdues his natural instinct of being a dreamer. It also suggests him to dream when he grows up & indicates towards futility of dreaming as a child. He is told time & again that he has many years to live & when he will grow up he will have power to make all his wishes come true. We not only kill many dreams but also tell him that he has an eternity to pass on this earth. Very soon he gets into a mindset that encourages material pursuits of things & discourages spiritual living.

He starts living for the future. He studies well so that he lands a plush job; gets a job so that he has all the comforts of life; and buys comfort at the cost of happiness. Soon he gets caught in the rut and finds hard to get out of it. Not that he doesn't want happiness or satisfaction in his life but he doesn't set his priority right. For him security comes before happiness; so job always gets preference over family. And by the time he realizes, it's already too late. 

            "Shop for security over happiness, and you buy it at that price." - Richard Bach

We dream as if we are running out of time & live as if we will live for hundred years. We think that we can afford to commit all sins in order to make our dreams come true & will have a long life to make amends later. If only we could learn to reverse the process. Live each moment as if this is the only moment you have. Dream as if you have an eternity to pass.  

Choose Your Company

A man is not only known by the company he keeps; he is also shaped by it. There are few things in life that you cannot choose e.g. you can't choose your parents or your siblings; but you can always make a choice about your friends. We spend a lion's share of our time with our friends & they influence our thinking, our behavior & ultimately our life. 

"Choose with whom to be accompanied; it's your free choice,

  Choose with whom not to be accompanied; it's your right."   - Angel Gutierrez

Though it is important that we choose people that we spend our time with, more pertinent is to choose people that we should keep the distance from. Both are choices; but of different kinds. The former one is to help & support you in your cause; the later one is to save you from people who take you away from your purpose. The former choice is an easy deal as you only have to select a group of people from a large pool who not only are your type but also share the same purpose or at least, second the cause that you are living for & are ready to die for. Keeping away from people who play a spoil-sport is a real task. Sometime, you do it quietly but some time you need to look them in their eyes & tell them to their face," I don't need any of your crap & perhaps don't need you as well."

In case, you don't find anyone who shares your vision, your calling, not to worry. There is someone inside you who is always ready to talk to you. Have frequent conversation with him. In fact, he is the best pal that one has got but irony is he is one of the most ignored one also. He suggests & shouts but his voice is muffled by the outside noise. Despite our continuous ignoring him, he doesn't keep quiet & wants to continue the conversation. The only problem is that we are busy talking to someone else. Sometimes, solitude can be a real gift; something to treasure. It is when you are alone that you can have a dialogue with your inner self. Keep aside thirty minutes for this pal inside you & the best time to spend time with him is in the morning. This is the time when you have no other disturbance to muffle this voice.

            "I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude."

                                                                                                               -Henry David Thoreau

Changing Outlook, Changing Life

Most of the time we curse situations, people & their behavior towards us. We spoil our day just because of one odd unsavoury incidence that was not in our control.

For example, you are driving at a normal speed & a young boy overtakes giving you a wry smile as if mocking your slow driving. You take the challenge head on & press the gas. After some distance you are stopped by the traffic police & handed a ticket. You reach office late & are summoned by the boss in his cabin. You get the dressing-down from him & you decide to skip the lunch. You give vent to your anger by shouting at your secretary & have a tiff with your friend on your way home. On reaching home, you see kids watching TV as usual. You admonish them for their TV watching habit & hold your wife responsible for their behavior. She gets cross with you & shuts & goes into room banging the door on you. You have a real bad day.

Rewind the scene; you are driving at a normal speed & a car overtakes you with driver giving you a wry smile as if mocking your slow driving. You ignore him taking him to be a young boy unable to control adrenaline rush & wave at him wishing him good luck. You see a traffic police handing him a ticket for speeding. You reach office on time & get absorbed in your work. Your boss calls you in his cabin to give you a new responsibility. You thank him for showing trust on you. You are complemented by your colleagues & hugged by your friend.  You have a nice drive with your friend reminiscing about the past. You reach home and decide to  celebrate your day with your family outside. You take them to a nearby restaurant & have dinner. Your wife tells you that you are the best husband of the world. You have a real good day.

Look how your day changed with the change in your outlook. This incidence may be imaginary but something like this happens in our life day in & day out. A small innocuous trigger spoils our day & funnily most of the time the incidence is caused by others & is not in our control. The other person might have not meant what we perceived or he might have not meant the same degree that we perceived. The young boy quoted above might have only smiled but two different outlooks created two diagonally opposite scenarios. Spoiling a day is understandable but people spoil their whole life because they attach so much importance to one incidence & refuse to change their outlook. They don't realize that the person who caused the incidence might not even remember it. Who is at loss?  

Same goes true for circumstances. One man sees these as hurdles while other looks at the same as opportunities. It will be puerile to conclude that outlook changes circumstances; it doesn't. But it does change the way you react to circumstances & that makes all the difference. Whether you are standing at the beginning of a road or at the end of it depends a lot on which way you are facing.

Making 24 hours A Day

Ever observed people on a red light? You will see most of the people waiting anxiously for the red light to turn green. So much so that they keep their vehicles on, so that they don't waste a single moment when the light turns green. Some are furious & cursing the futility of these unnecessary stoppages as they like life to be smooth & non-stop. And as soon as the light turns green, they press the gas and zoom pass the crossing. Their joy is short-lived as they meet another traffic signal and find almost same vehicles around them that they zoomed past on last crossing. They start cursing again & the journey continues. 

We are a generation with red-light mentality. Our life has a lot of similarity with traffic signal. We want to reach our destination too fast but have too little time. So, time management is a hot issue. In fact, it is not the time management but life management that needs to be addressed. Once life is managed, time will manage itself. After all, we all have 24 hours a day; you minus 8 hours of sleep & are left with 16 hours of active time to manage, or manage your life so that you make best use of these 16 hours. 

Stephen Covey, in his monumental work on time management, 'First things First', categorized people based on the way they approach life vis-a-vis time. First category is of people who are largely dependent on reminder-tools like clocks & watches. These tools are not very effective as these only work to alert the person about the job in hand; but is of not much help to perform the job efficiently. 

Second generation is of people who manage their time according to calendars and appointment books. Their goals are also set based on these and hence, never have long term goals in their life. Third generation includes people who plan, prioritize & control activities on daily basis. This method implies spending some time in clarifying values & other priorities. This method can be used to achieve daily goals. But to achieve long term life-goals one should adopt the fourth method which is being efficient & proactive in using any of the above tools. It places importance to goals & roles and plans time accordingly. 

The important thing is not to have 24 hours a day but to 'make' 24 hours a day. It is of utmost importance for all to understand four quadrant that Covey offered to plan your life. First quadrant is the quadrant of necessity which includes tasks that are important & urgent. It includes crises & dead-line driven projects. Try to manage this quadrant the best you can as you cannot afford to ignore this quadrant. Second quadrant is the quadrant of quality & personal leadership which includes tasks that are important but not urgent. This is the most important quadrant as it teaches one to be efficient & proactive but ironically, is also the most ignored quadrant. It covers areas like preparation, planning, prevention, relationships etc. We must spend most of our time in this quadrant.  It might not show immediate result but is very effective to plan life on a long term basis. Third quadrant is the quadrant of deception which is not important but looks very urgent. It includes many interruptions like unnecessary phone calls & other pressing activities. Be careful about this quadrant. These activities may appear urgent in relation to your goals but actually are not, & they consume a lot of your important time. And the fourth & last quadrant is the quadrant of waste. As the name suggests it includes tasks that are neither important nor urgent. It has a lot of trivia, gossips & other time wasters. Avoid this quadrant as much as possible. The more time you spend here, the lesser goals you achieve.

You see, it is again not managing your time but  managing the life which is important. Once we manage our life according to these quadrants, we will not only achieve our goals but will also live a relaxed life. Special thanks to Covey for bringing this to our notice; now it's our turn to implement these & enjoy the life.     

Trusting Self

Man is a reservoir of a huge untapped potential. He can do some unthinkable things if he realizes his real power. The challenge lies in knowing that you know. Most of the people fail to attempt something new because of a low self-esteem. Man is not born with a low self-esteem; on the contrary a child is a super human being. He achieves remarkable feats in his childhood; starting with using his hands to hold things, crawling, walking, speaking and many other similar acts. By the time he turns four, he becomes independent in terms of his daily activities. As he grows up he learns to read, write, paint & many such activities that require use of his brain. Later on he learns skills like cycling, swimming, working on a computer etc. These may seem ordinary or routine learning from the point of view of a grown up person. But if you look it from a child's point of view, these would look astonishing. It is when he thinks that he has achieved all that he could, he stops learning. Now he wants to settle down & 'enjoy life'.

There are two crucial moments in the life of a man- First, when he thinks that he has known enough & secondly, when he thinks he doesn't know much. When a person thinks that he has known enough to pass a happy life, he starts doing exactly the same- he starts passing life instead of living it. He thinks he has learnt enough & there is not much left to learn or even if he learns more, it won't be of much use. This fallacy becomes his undoing & then on, he leads an ordinary life.

Second crucial moment comes in his life when he thinks he doesn't know much & therefore is capable to perform only few things which most of the 'normal' people perform. This is much bigger a tragedy than the first one. This stops all his development despite having a lot of potential to grow exponentially. He alone is not responsible for this state. Environment around him plays a huge role in making him think so. He doesn't listen to the outside world as a child & therefore achieves a lot. But, he is constantly advised, guided & instructed by people around him to behave like a normal person and he becomes one. What a loss! He doesn't attempt anything which might be branded outrageous for the fear of rejection. He stops accepting challenges for the fear of failure. Ultimately, he stops trusting himself.

Trust in one's abilities is the biggest attribute of a person & when it is gone, the person ceases to exist. He only breathes air, consumes food but fails to lead a meaningful life. On the contrary, if he could preserve attributes of trusting himself, his capabilities & his instinct, he would live a life of real bliss & would see miracles happening in his life every day. Trusting self is akin to trusting God & doubting self is no less a sin than doubting intention of Almighty who sent you on earth as a human being to live a life of bliss.

Into The Wonderland

One of the side-effects of gaining knowledge is losing our sense of looking at things from a different perspective. At times, knowledge tends to imply, though mistakenly, that we have known all that is needed to be known. The fact is we don't know even 1% of our own being, leave apart the rest of the world. The vision of some people gets narrower & narrower as they gain more & more knowledge. The world looks a dreary place to them simply because they lose their sense of wonder which, by far, is the greatest of all human attributes. We miss the grand spectacle of nature around us & lead a monotonous life. 

When we miss to observe as simple a thing as a raindrop, we don't miss only a raindrop; we miss a universe in the raindrop. With the help of a very powerful microscope, scientists have documented that there are hundreds of life-forms in each raindrop. They are of different colors, shapes & sizes & each one of these has unique characteristics. This is not to say that when we observe a raindrop, we are able to see these life-forms; this is to carry home the point that when we miss a raindrop, we miss a whole universe. Same way we miss the miracles happening around us every day. And then we complain about life being boring.
"If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life will change.
                                                                                                                      -Buddha
 If we could observe the miracle of a flower blooming or a blade of grass coming out slowly; life would be a wonderland every moment.  We don't see the same things again & again every day; we miss different things every moment. There is so much to see & appreciate around us if we open our eyes to this beauty. This will happen when we attain the real wisdom; when we accept nature as the center of universe & human-being as the most wonderful creation of God. 

"Mystery creates wonder & wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand."

                                                                                                               -Neil Armstrong

All the great inventors, scientists, explorers had one thing common in them & that was their sense of mystery for the unknown. They went for the unknown because they believed that there existed something they were not able to see but that didn't deterred them to believe it. In fact, this sense of wonder became the basis for most of their research. What we see today is only 1% of the universe; what we miss is more than 99%. 

The Magic Of Thinking Big

We find two kinds of people in this world- People who are ordinary, lead a struggled life, and have a limited existence & people who are extraordinary, super-achievers & lead a blessed life. What separates one category of people from another? You guessed it right- it is the thinking part that makes all the difference. But the big question is if this is such a big factor that separates super-achievers from ordinary folks, why people ignore it? The answer is simple- It is because people don't understand how big a difference this one factor makes in over-all result.

Actually the quantum of result of any endeavor is decided at the very outset by the way the whole idea is perceived. If it is conceived with a lot of optimism & with the will to succeed, it has no reason to fail. On the contrary, if the person who conceived it is not sure about its success, chances are his doubts will be proved right. Thinking success conditions our mind to plan only for success; on the contrary thinking failure directs our mind to find ways & means to fail.

It is a wrong notion that people who have high intellect & resources, generally succeed & people with limited resources lead an ordinary life. Remember, knowledge is only potential power. A very high intellect is inconsequential for success if we don't make good use of the same. We have a lot of examples when a highly intelligent man led an ordinary life & a person with ordinary or no schooling ruled over so called super-brains. What makes those ordinary looking people so extraordinary? It is their desire to succeed & their power of thinking big. They can't see failure; they only visualize success, & that too big size! While ordinary people always think of what can't be done, extra-ordinary people think in terms of how an impossible task can be converted into a possible one. Ordinary people search for impossibilities in the possible; extra-ordinary look for possibilities in the impossible.

The size of your achievement is directly proportional to the size of your dreams. You are much bigger than your thoughts. So, instead of undermining your size, you should learn to increase the size of your thoughts. Merely by increasing the size of your thoughts, you can take your success to a new level. Your today's existence is the result of your past thought; similarly, what and how big you are going to be after few years will depend upon the size of your thoughts today. Choose the size of your thoughts carefully. Don't adjust your life to your thoughts; adjust your thoughts to the life you are meant to be living- A really BIG one!  

Perfect Future

The only thing certain about future is that it is not certain. We cannot predict how we are going to live our tomorrow. If we can't do it for ourselves, how can we be sure about the future of our kids? In a way, we can be. The best way to be sure about their future is to take care of their present & prepare them for the future. 

One big challenge before us is the speed of change that we are witnessing today & it is not going to get any slower. The world that we witness today was not imagined by any of us. No one had predicted that a phenomenon like Google will be born & will so fast become a verb or we will play with concepts like iphone & You Tube. So, our parents were preparing us for a different future;in fact a much obsolete future than we are into today. But most of us got ready for this future before it arrived. How come? The genesis of this adaptation lies in our upbringing. 

The best way to train our children for future is to give them some attributes that will not change under any circumstances. Instead of giving them road map or a clock, give them a compass as it will always head North. While the clock tells us what to do in a given time frame, compass represents basic values & principles. If we can teach these basic principles to our children in order to have following endowments, we would secure their future.

First endowment is self-awareness. A child should be made aware about his present so that he is clear about his future. He should be taught to be responsible for his own environment. It can be done by giving him responsibilities that he carries out on his own. It will develop his self-esteem which will work as a support system in challenging situations.

Second endowment is a pure conscience. The fact is that a child has the purest of conscience & we cannot add anything to it. If we can protect his conscience & not pollute it, we would have done a great favor to him.

Third endowment is an independent will. If we can give the child a will do be independent; to take his decisions in most trying situations, we would succeed in our endeavor to give him a safe future.

"The mother child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother's side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent." - Erich Fromm

And the last attribute that we can gift our children is creative imagination. He should know how to create his own world & how to build his own future. He should learn that imagination is more important than knowledge. The knowledge that he gathers may not be useful in his future but the imagination that he will build will create his own world.

If we could gift these attributes to our children, we would definitely prepare them for a bright future. 

God Consciousness

There have been many theories of how human life came into being. But the best one is which suggests that we came from an energy field known by different people & sects by different names. Some call it God; some other name it soul or pure consciousness. A child is the best example of this pure consciousness as he is bereft of any humanly characteristics like greed, want, anger, resentment etc. He is not from God; he is God. He is in harmony with nature's law & his frequency matches with that of divinity. If we are in harmony with this source, we will have all the attributes that a soul has. This source is infinite & eternal. 

The trouble begins when we move from pure consciousness to ego consciousness. Pure consciousness encompasses all while ego consciousness is limited to self. When we hang out to those false ideas of ego, we reject everyone, become judgmental about others & get misaligned. Now, we start working with a different frequency which is aligned to more worldly pursuits. We start our human experience & start thinking in terms of materialistic goals. Ego consciousness keeps us away from everyone else & tries to create a false world which is self-centered & is all excluding. We want to have more, win more & be more. 

On the contrary when we stay connected to God consciousness, we become formless, changeless & deathless. We are limitless & our soul wants us to achieve more than we can dream. We don't walk; we fly because we are light. While ego consciousness is about having, wanting & collecting, God consciousness is about giving, abnegating & sharing. Ego consciousness thinks in terms of attaining power; God consciousness thinks in terms of giving power to others. God consciousness is about serving, loving & getting detached from outcome.

The best part is that this human experience is only a small dot in the eternity of our spiritual journey. And if we can merge this dot into eternity by making this experience also a spiritual one, we would serve our cause of coming to this planet. 

Change It

How often do we find people cribbing about bad habits, circumstances or people around them? But hardly do we find them taking action to bring about a change. They like to maintain the status quo because they find it difficult to change. There are three basic reasons why people avoid change- 

1) They strongly believe they cannot change.

2) They don't find a strong enough reason to change.

3) They don't have discipline to bring the change.

First reason is the commonest of all for people not to change. Most of the people very strongly believe in being the same person year after year. They think old habits are the result of years of actions & it will take same number of years to get rid of these. This is a wrong notion. We don't form habits intentionally; they just happen. And because we don't have power of intention behind formation of those habits, they take a long time to form. On the contrary, when you want to change something, you have an intention which propels you to a jet-paced change in the desired direction. As long as you believe you cannot change; you don't change. So, change in the mindset is necessary for any change to take place. 

The power of intention comes only when someone has a powerful reason to change. Quite often, people don't change because they don't find a strong internal reason to change. It has been seen time & again that the moment someone finds a reason to change, even the most obstinate habits give way to new ones. It doesn't take much time. At times, it happens in a moment. So many times we see in a family that despite our best efforts a child doesn't get up early in the morning. You give him all kinds of reasons to get up with the lark & study, all in vain. But the day you have to go for a picnic early morning, he is the guy who wakes you up! How did this change take place?  It all happened because he got a strong reason to change his old & obstinate habit, albeit for a day. So, if you want to change something in you, find a strong & rational reason to do so & the rest will take care of itself. Also attach a lot of pleasure to the benefits of change that will take place. This will work as a big motivating factor to go in the direction of change.

Third reason for change not taking place is lack of discipline. How often it happens that we start something new with much fanfare but it goes up in smoke? Quite often! And the reason for not sustaining the new habit is that we don't have the required discipline to go the distance. We operate most of our life by desire, by impulse. Discipline teaches us to operate it by principles. Discipline, therefore, is the most important cog in the wheel of change. 

If we strongly believe that we can do something repeatedly, knowingly, for a strong reason & for a certain period which is long enough to develop a new habit that is based on principle rather than on desire, we would bring a meaningful change in our life. 

The Happy Vitamin

Whole life people chase happiness but only few blessed souls are able to find it. And they find it at the most unexpected place- under their own feet. It is strange that we chase happiness all over the place and find it in a small corner of our big heart. Most of the people don't realize that happiness is an inside job; it is not connected to anything external. And this happens because we don't understand happiness; we mistake it for temporary pleasure that we derive from material things. Most of the time, our happiness is dependent on people, things & circumstances. All these factors are outside our control. In short, we give control of our happiness to factors not controlled by us & rue the fact that we are not happy & become what people or circumstances make us.

First step that a person should take to be happy is to stop chasing it. When you chase happiness, you look for it in the outside world. Do the opposite. Forget about getting happy; just be happy. Yes, be happy! I know it is easier said than done but I also know there is no other way to be happy. When we live our routine life, we encounter situations which give us a lot of pain, make us gloomy & hit hard. The more we try to forget these, the deeper we get into this mess. We cannot wish the bitter situation away but we can definitely move ourselves away from people or situations that make us sad. On the contrary, we think only about the people who pained us or cheated us. When someone tells us to forget the bad chapter of our life & move ahead, our response is, "Forget? Someone ruined my life & you are asking me to forget it!" The fact is he is yet not over with you or, to rephrase it more logically, you are yet not over with him. He might have gone away from you but you are still carrying him on your back. Now, you are carrying him even longer & he is getting heavier & heavier. What about him? May be he has moved on with his life or he is enjoying the ride! Whatever the case, it doesn't affect him much but your life is a virtual hell. If you can't reject the situation, accept it. And the first step of accepting any bitter situation is to forgive the person who caused the bad situation. The moment you do it, you will feel lighter as the monkey you were carrying is now off your back. Now enjoy your life and realize that you are responsible for all the happy & painful moments in your life. This one thought will give you a lot of happiness.    

    "The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance. The wise grows it under his feet." 

                                                                                                                  - James Openheim

Secondly, try to understand happiness. It is not a thing but an emotion. And emotions cannot be bought, borrowed or stolen. Emotions have to be felt & spread. Sometimes, we confuse happiness with pleasure. Happiness is a long-term emotion while pleasure comes & goes. When you watch a movie, you experience whole range of emotions but you generally get over these as soon as movie ends. You know it is not for real. Similarly, the pleasure we derive from materialistic pursuits doesn't last long. On the contrary, happiness that you derive by achieving some personal goal or by spending quality time with your family is long-term & you cherish those moments whole of your life. This is the reason that life is not lived in years but in moments.

Remember, happiness is optional & it starts with you. If you are happy, the world around you becomes happy but not the other way round. So, start from self. Be happy to make others happy.

De-Generation Gap

We are living in the age of conflicts, most of which originate from misunderstanding. We have conflicts between two nations, between different communities, between states & provinces. Conflicts don't add anything to our life but they give us a lot of pain. And when the conflict is in the family, it pains us the most. When we live together, there is bound to be difference of thoughts & opinions & the difference is more when people belong to different age group. This difference is not because of difference in age but because of different mind-set. One generation is risk-friendly, wants to achieve its goals at any cost, believes in YOLO (You Only Live Once) philosophy. The other generation is risk-averse, lives an easy-paced life & thinks they know more because they have passed more years than their counterparts. The cause of conflict is that both are looking at the world from different platforms. Their views clash because their perspective differs.

This can be resolved if both the generation meet somewhere in the middle & try to change their own perspective rather than trying to change other's. Parents need to understand that they too were young only a few years back & they had same weaknesses & challenges that the younger generation is now putting up with. If you can't be in their shoes, try to be in your own old shoes. 

"Parents often talk about the younger generation as if they didn't have anything to do with it."  - Dr Haim Ginott

Their argument is, since they have committed the mistakes in their youth & have experienced the pains, they don't want the generation next to go through the same. But they forget that in the process of safeguarding them from the pain, they are giving heartaches to themselves. Moreover, forcing the issue will be more harmful than letting them fail & learn. 

"People never learn anything by being told; they have to find out for themselves." 

                                                                                                                  - Paulo Coelho

Sometimes, children complain that their parents behave like children. In fact, as they grow old, they do behave so. They are also going through a transition phase & need compassion & understanding. They pampered you a lot in your childhood; what about returning the favor? If they are talking about discipline, it is because they want you to achieve your goals. Remember, the banks of the river ultimately help the river to flow towards ocean. An overflowing river is not only bad for others, but also self-destructive. Many a time we do things that our parents warn us against & pay a heavy price. 

"Every generation thinks that it has the answers, and every generation is humbled by nature." - Phillip Lubin  

Once both the generations make a paradigm shift, their worlds will change & most of the ideas which seemed out-dated or outrageous would appear quite logical. Remember, it is always easier to change one's own vision than changing the whole world of the other person.

True Abundance

One of the many lies that is making the rounds is that there is not enough for everyone; that if I part with some of my possessions, others will grow at the cost of my abundance; that there is not enough good to make every one satisfied. The fact of the matter is there is enough in the world to make every soul happy & contented. 

          "There is enough for everybody's need, but not enough for anybody's greed." 

                                                                                                                 -Mahatma Gandhi.

We don't enjoy abundance because we don't understand it. Abundance is not to have something enough but to enjoy something enough. We spend large part of our life collecting toys. We want to have best of cars, best of houses & best of everything. Once we achieve these, we want more. Our hunger for more is never satiated. When we have collected enough, we compete to have the most. We presume we have abundance mentality; on the contrary, this is scarcity mentality. You want more only when you think you have less. You compete with others when you assume you got the smaller share. Competing means thinking of less; sharing means thinking of more. 

Have a look at the people around you; you will see many people having enough to pass their life comfortably. But, are they comfortable? Not at all! They might be going through the worst period of their life. They have a big car; but they don't have a big heart. They have a palatial house; but they don't have a happy family. They have number of profit making companies & many trusts; but they don't have a single friend to trust. What are they experiencing? Abundance or scarcity? They are living in utter poverty. 

Humanity is in the grip of scarcity virus. We want more not because we want abundance but because we dread scarcity. Initially, we want just enough to meet our daily needs, and then we need some more so that we can lead our life comfortably. Then we need a little more to make our future secure. After this, rat-race begins & now we don't want just because we need it but because someone else has it. So, if he has it, I should have it too. The problem with this mentality is that we have enough to enjoy our life but are not left with enough life to enjoy all that we have.

      "Abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into." - Wayne Dyer.

Making The Best Of The Worst

Life would be a boring story if we had same situations every time. It is a beautiful adventure because it offers a mix bag of success & failure, loyalty & betrayal, hopes & disappointments. Though we cannot remain stoic all the time, yet we should learn to control our responses to what life offers us. Sometimes, things do not go as per our plans or it may seem so. Just bide your time. Things always happen for a reason. The best way to respond in such a situation is to accept the situation & make the best out of whatever it offers. Every incidence that is taking shape in your life has a reason. It is happening to prepare you for the moment that is yet to come. Your job is to be ready for the moment as it comes. Don't try to understand the reason as you will not fully comprehend it now. Rest assured, when you reach the climax of this story, everything will make perfect sense to you.

Enjoy the good moments of your life as they add meaning to it & treasure the challenging moments of your life as they teach you the meaning of life. At the end of life you should remember these challenging moments not because these gave you a lot of pain but because these moments taught you a lot. When we complain about bad time in our life we prepare ourselves for more such time. On the contrary, when we remain steadfast in our approach to achieve our goal despite challenging time, things start taking shape. Challenges in our life are not to bog us down; they are there to give us strength.

Some people enjoy challenges; these become part of their routine life. Many times we complain that we get major share of pain & others are blessed with all the good things in life. The fact is that we only see their smiling faces during victory lap; we are never able to see the tough time that they experienced. They are the winners simply because they chose to make the best of what they were offered by life instead of complaining about the circumstances. If we have a way to find the average of total number of challenges or hard time of the world & distribute this average among all, each would get almost the same share of challenges that he has now. And if you think you got a little more, thank God for he considered you a worthy soul who would be able to take some load of his fellow human being. 

Why Not?

The most important faculty of a man is his imaginative faculty. As a child it is at its best but decays as he grows up. During his formative years the child tends to question the absence of anything that he can imagine but does not find around him. But, when he grows up, two vital changes take place- one, his power of imagination takes a back seat & secondly, he becomes skeptic even about things that he sees around himself. He questions every new idea that is mooted to solve any old problem and downplays anything that seems out of the box.

The root cause of all the trouble is not the man but men- men around him. Man is not a skeptic by birth. But every time he floats a new idea it is taken as a breach of the pattern & thus not accepted by people. But he keeps imagining his way into the unknown. And the world keeps throwing its tantrums, rejecting the idea on one pretext or another. By and by, he starts thinking that the world is all fine; he is an aberration. And this is the beginning of the end of his imaginative prowess.

The all important question is how some gifted souls manage to counter the onslaught of skeptics and refuse to get adjusted to the easy way of thinking ‘simple & straight.’ The answer is that they consider themselves to be gifted & not an ordinary soul & they remain so till the end.

The early sign of a man getting into the trap of ‘easy & plain’ thinking is that he moves from ‘why not’ mode to ‘why’ mode. Initially, he finds it difficult to adjust to the newly-found world of skeptics but once he gets there he finds it very comforting & snuggles up to it for whole life to lead a limited existence. So, the secret to a blessed & meaningful life is to question what is not around & enjoy what is present. Then only, we will truly be living in the present & preparing for the future. 

A Different Perspective

There are many ways to live life but two very good ones to live life to the fullest are-

1- From the perspective of time it should be lived in moments not in years.

2-From the perspective of things it should be lived observing the minute details of things of beauty around you.

Many people don't even realize that they pass their lifetime without even knowing what they are doing. They are always complaining about paucity of time. Actually, they are right to some extent because time really moves fast if the life is lived in days & years. On the other hand when life is lived in moments, the time stands still & waits for the person until he has enjoyed that moment to the fullest. The moment only cares for the person who cares for it. The fact is that for most of the people moment is the least important unit of time & that is why moments fly past them & so do days, years & a lifetime. The important thing to remember is that life can only be lived in moments; in years it can only be passed. And by the time we realize that, it is  already too late. The common regret of people at the end of their life is that they could not enjoy life the way they were supposed to. If asked to replay the best part of their life, they would surely replay some wonderful moments; not years. We don't remember years; we remember only moments- isn't it a big enough proof to justify this point?

Another way of living the life is by observing the fine details of the creations of God. The blade of grass holds the whole universe on its tip, only if we stand & stare. The magic is in the obvious not in the hidden. But we pass our whole life collecting the toys & ignoring the art of the Supreme Painter. One reason why we miss the obvious is that we think there is something which is beyond our purview. We forget that we are the best creation of God & are entitled to admire all His creations. 

 The life has no meaning if we don't have moments to stand & stare this abundant supply of beauty spread all around us. Observe the minutest of details of things of beauty & enjoy the vastness of universe, or else, regret  not doing so at the end of your life.