Make Your Own World

This world is not a good place to live in. People are quite selfish. I am one one soul against the whole world. We live in the brother-kill-brother kind of world. I am being discriminated against. I always come across cheats in my life. I have no money, no relationship and no house. It is a one long torturous journey where one dies many times before one's physical death. Why have I come to this world? To suffer? 

Wow! What a gift! This life is the most beautiful gift I have got from God. People are so supportive. I have everything that a man can think of- a perfect body, a good education, a loving family. What more can I ask for? Right people appear in my life at the right time as if they came to this earth only for me. I am having the best period of my life. I am living every moment of my life. Thank God for this beautiful gift.

These are two versions of two different individuals living in similar conditions. While one calls it a painful journey, the other a beautiful gift of God. If conditions are similar, what makes these appear different to them? It is their vision. The trouble is not with the circumstances; it is with their perception of these circumstances. The world is not different; it only appears different to different individuals. One says it is nothing but one 'verse' i.e. one song; the other calls it 'worse' than any other possibility.

"Two people look out through the same window- one sees the mud, the other sees the stars." 

                                                                                                                           - Gunnel Sward 

Two brothers, one a police officer & the other a criminal, were interviewed separately by a reporter & were asked the reason for achieving diagonally opposite social status. 

The criminal replied,"If you have a drunkard as a father, what else do you expect me to become." 

The police officer replied," If you have a drunkard as a father, what else can you become if not a police officer."

And you cannot reject it as one-off example. Look around you; you will find many families where two siblings have achieved different social status & check their attitude towards life. You will find a strong co-relation. Remember, your perception affects your life in a big way. Your perception is one of the most important human behaviors to influence your life. It not only determines the situations around you but also how you handle these situations. And the way you deal with these situations, makes your world. In short, you make your world beautiful or ugly. No doubt, some of the perceptions you get from outer environment but a large part of it is made up by your inner world. Your inner world is much more powerful than your outer world. Take control of it now; it will take you to the most beautiful journey that you can dream of. Clean your vision by cleaning your mind; the world will automatically become beautiful. Don't try to change things; try to change the way you look at things & see the magic happening before your eyes!

Attitude Decides Altitude

As a human being we want to reach the peak of our life. We don't want to settle with the average or ordinary. We acquire best of skills in the best of institutes & get ready to win the world. We have the power of knowledge, cutting-edge technology & the latest gadgets as the weapons to win the battle of life. But despite being successful in our respective fields, we realize that we have faltered somewhere. We wonder what is that we missed down the road to success. 

As a child we learn a lot of skills & put these to good use. As we grow up we are instructed to gather knowledge to be well-placed in society. We devote major portion of our prime age in acquiring general & specialized knowledge & implementing this to be successful. We do so because we are taught if we do these things right, the rest will take care of itself. But this is only half true. If this was true, why would people commit suicide or lead a depressed life despite being leaders in their fields? It is because we missed something & that something is attitude & it is more important than all the things that we acquired to be successful. 

It is a pity that the most important of all the traits to get successful is ignored by majority of the people. It is neither given to us by our parents nor taught in any university. There is no degree or certificate that proves that I got 'A' grade in attitude or I passed with flying colors in the test of attitude. There might be some cursory reference made about your attitude in your report card but by & large it goes unmentioned & unnoticed. With this much of attention given to attitude, what do you expect from a child? He never bothers about it and laughs it away if someone makes a mention of it.

So far so good; but the problem is that you can't wish it away from your life. You acquire a certain attitude from the people around you, willy-nilly. And you live with it for whole of your life harming your interests through your bad attitude or winning the hearts by your positive attitudes. If you pay just a little attention to people around you & your attitude, you will find a strong co-relation. 

So, what is the way out? It is quite simple; you don't need rocket science to have a positive mental attitude. Merely by controlling what you get from people around you, a lot of damage can be averted. You cannot control what people speak, but you can always control what you hear. If you place filter in your mind that rejects anything that harms your positive mental attitude, you will save yourself from a big damage. Stand guard at the door of your mind and don't let any negative thought enter your mind. Remember, it all starts with thought; then comes feeling & next action. If you nip those negative thoughts in the bud, you will safe-guard your attitude to a great extent. Keep distance from the people who think or talk negative, even if they are your family members or close friends. It is the question of your life & the same people will question your ability when you won't get desired results. 

Remember what Churchill said?

                   "Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference." - Winston Churchill  

Your Best Is Yet To Come

The joy of life is in its unpredictability. We plan for years not knowing whether we will get to live the next moment. It would be a boring affair if we get to know what is going to happen the next moment, tomorrow or next week. Though we don't have full control on the events happening in our life, yet we can plan the way these events will turn up in our life. 

How many times it has happened in your life that the events that you dreaded most cropped up when you wanted these least? Some people say that events are already planned; they only need a signal from your side. They are right; some events need just a hint to materialize in your life. You call it law of attraction or whatever, one thing is sure, if you are scared of something or some event, you increase the possibility of its taking shape every time you say, " I don't want this to happen now." 

On the contrary, you attract some wonderful things into your life merely by thinking these. Isn't it magical that we think about things or events & they start taking shape exactly the way we had imagined? So, in a way all things in our life happen twice; first in our mind & then in the material world. All things, events & even the people in our life came to our mind before they happened in our life. 

If this be the case, why do we think negative & attract negative things into our life instead of thinking positive all the time & pulling positive things towards us? There are two reasons; first, we don't understand this concept & secondly, we don't trust it. We don't understand it as we don't understand magic. We don't understand magic simply because we don't know the process. We know that there is some trick that the magician is playing but we are not able to see through. The important thing to learn is that in spite of our ignorance we enjoy the magic & trust the magician. But we don't adopt the same approach towards our life. We doubt every action of ours & expect negative results more than the positive outcomes & most of the time we prove ourselves right & justify our point. How silly!

The joy of living is in expecting the best from every moment of our life. It is not foolish if we believe that the best of my life is yet to come. The comic act would be to believe that I have lived the best of my life & it can't get any better from here. And the chances are, it won't.

Choose Your Attitude, Choose Your Life

We don't inherit a particular life; we only inherit circumstances. Our life is nothing but a series of decisions & actions that we take in certain circumstances. So, whatever the situations, the brush of our life is in our hand & we paint the picture of our life. So, what makes us take those decisions? That is attitude or your thought pattern in a particular situation. 

We may react differently in different situations but by & large, our attitude remains the same. It is because attitude is the result of a long & complex process that takes place during our life time. This doesn't mean that attitude can't be changed. It can be changed as easily as a brush can be changed. But you need to realize whether you are holding the right brush in your hand or not & that realization, unfortunately, doesn't come easily.

Attitude is not given, it is always chosen. Attitude is a matter of choice; it cannot be forced upon anyone. If this be the case, why many people choose negative attitude over positive & show up negative results? The reason is that they don't understand attitude. They think it to be some imaginary thing & can't link it to the results that they produce in their lives. If we can understand attitude, we can make our life much simpler.

When we hear a bad news we can take either of the two responses; the first & the most common one is that we have negative thoughts swarming into our mind. The first question that we ask from ourselves usually is,"What will happen now?" The fact of the matter is what was to happen has already happened. You can't do much about it. You could take action before the result & could have got different result. You chose that action based on how you felt at that moment & the feeling was largely based on your thought pattern at that moment. Asking this question now will no way change the feeling that you had before taking the action that produced the result. It will only change your current feeling which in turn will decide your current behavior & will give you next result. So, one wrong question can change your attitude. Instead, questions like, "Why did I take the action that produced this result?" or "What can I learn from the result that I got?", will surely trigger positive vibes & will lead you to some positive action & you are bound to get a positive result. This is the second, & more constructive of the two responses that we can take. So, attitude is nothing but a combination of your thoughts, feelings & actions. If you can control these three, you can control your attitude.

So, in this game what role do circumstances play? Virtually, no role. Your present circumstances are the result of your past actions which are the result of your past feelings & thoughts. Your future circumstances will be the result of your current thoughts, feelings & actions. Choose your current attitude to choose your current & future life. Your past & current circumstances play no role in deciding your future. They only reveal your present state of mind & it is up to you to give them the right direction.  

     "Circumstances don't make the man; they only reveal him to himself." - Epictetus

Find Your Corner

There is no doubt that this universe is a beautiful place to live in; but more beautiful is the universe that lives within us. Sometimes we forget the universe within us & become more outer-centric. We start looking for the reason of every problem outside us instead of looking within. And after a continuous ignorance of many years the universe within us starts decaying slowly. The day it dies, we experience our first near-death experience.

We also pollute the universe within like we do with the universe outside. Outside universe is polluted by hatred, power-struggle, war-cries & many such ideas. The universe within is polluted by selfishness, greed, ego and connected ideas. When we think in terms of cleaning the universe outside and making it a better place to live in, we get scared by the enormity of the task. We argue that we cannot mend the whole world as it is a task beyond our control. We leave it as it is & continue with our struggle for survival. But the universe doesn't stay that way; the decay continues & we reach to a situation that we are facing now. 

This happens because we forget an important fact about ourselves or are never made aware of it. This fact is expressed succinctly in following quote-

"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

If we understand the fact that we are spiritual beings, these ideas that pollute our mind won't enter us. These will be nipped before they take shape. But, because we accept that we are limited, small & transient, we try to achieve maximum in this 'minimum' life. We struggle to get everything & in doing so we compromise with our ethics, character, soul & everything that forms the universe within us. The light that forms our being starts dimming & once the light within us dies down we cease to become human beings- we become human doings. Then on, we exist not to be, but to do. This transition from spiritual being to human being to human doing to nothing is smooth & we don't even realize it. 

It might be an enormous task to clean the universe outside & might seem beyond our control, but cleaning the universe within us is in our control. And once we do it, we will certainly make the universe outside a better place to live in. Your emphasis should not be to clean the whole universe but to clean only one corner of the universe- and that corner is 'you'.  

The Gift Of Present

One thing that is associated with the advent of any new year is making New Year resolutions. We resolve to quit some obstinate habit or to start a new one in current year. We resolve to try our hands at something that we couldn't accomplish last year. But most of the resolutions are forgotten as the year passes by & we get busy with the same old routine. Have you ever paused & pondered why most of the resolutions fail to bring positive results? And if this be the case, why do we make resolutions?

The basic problem with the New Year resolutions is that these are made for future; not for now. They have their base in some moment in future; not in the present moment. And the fact is that 'now' is the only moment that we have. Rest all is a mirage. Resolutions only reinforce our notion of living in the future & life is not in future; it is now. So, the most important resolution that you can take is to live in 'now'.

Another mistake that we make is that we carry our luggage of past into future & what we miss most in this journey is our present. As a result, we live either in past or in future & living in past or future is like killing our present. Yesterday is something that we can do nothing about today;and tomorrow is not something that can be lived today. Today is the day that I have full control on; today is the day that can be altered. Regretting our past mistakes will only instigate us commit some more mistakes & spoil our future.

 The only resolution that one should make is to ask daily,"How am I going to live today so that my tomorrow is better than today?" When you live in present you see the changes taking place immediately & that gives you more strength to move into your future with confidence. Remember, anyone can do anything for one day & if he can do it for a day, he can do it again.

If you still want to travel back to your past, go there only to live some extraordinary moments when you did something remarkable; recalling any past moment should give you strength not rob you of it. Similarly, if you want to think about future, imagine something that you want to achieve. Don't think of future as something that scares you or stops you from achieving your objective. The best gift that you can give yourself this new year is the gift of present.  

Be The First Class You

Most of our life we try to achieve hard what others have achieved, to be what others look like & to copy what most others do. In the process we lose our own identity which by far is our most precious possession. We live in a world full of copy-cats & also-rans. But there are few who don't belong to this category. They are different in their approach & that is the reason they are different in their achievements. 

There is nothing wrong in modeling your life after someone who has been a success in some field. In fact, this is one of the secrets of a successful life. Following someone is not bad as long as we don't lose our own style. Choosing someone as a role-model is altogether a different proposition. A role model inspires you while someone you copy kills you. We start valuing the person more than we value ourselves. If we don't value self, we don't value anything that belongs to us-our time, our relationship, our uniqueness & most importantly our self-esteem. The other problem with this kind of life is that we become what others want us to be. In short, we give control of our life to others. The world is continuously trying to make us someone else & the real achievement is to resist the pressure of the external world & listen to the voice of the world inside you. Emerson said it quite succinctly when he declared, 

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

When we try to copy someone, we kill all our creative & intellectual resources. We start seeing the world from the eyes of someone else. And after a prolonged exposure to someone else's vision, we start living his life. We think & act on the commands of others. We become the genie in the lamp that has immense powers but can't do anything for himself as he is always busy pleasing others. The only original words that you hear from him is, "Your wish is my command." And when we live this kind of life we waste the most beautiful gift given by God- our life.

         "Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are."- Marilyn Monroe