Are you stuck at any point in your life?
Is your business going down?
Do you see your relationship with your spouse fading away, daily, a little more , inch by inch?
Did you plan and think to start working out or take a walk every morning?
Do you feel a coldness between you and your teenage son ?
Did you just watch a colleague of yours getting promoted over you?
There are thousands of such situations….
Do not just watch. Take action. Begin with a very small action.
Learn a new language or enroll in a management course.
Talk with some one you trust about your situation in life.
Go to a good business colleague for an advice.
Decide to talk about your growing gap with your spouse and listen to him or her.
Just work out for ten minutes or even seven.
Decide to trust your teenage son and start investing in the relationship.
Just take a small action. Lay the first brick and build brick by brick.
Do not just watch.
Just watching does not take any genuine love. Getting disciplined to lay down the bricks daily, does.
Do not just
I had been looking for some short phrases and sentences that can and actually do mean a lot. Such words that we have ignored or which are simple, yet have a profound impact, if we really choose to follow. Here are a few :
- Choose happiness
- Listen to your heart
- Apologize
- Answer your calling
- Laugh often
- Dare to change
- Live, love, laugh
- Follow your dream
- Live passionately
- Say thank you
- Be genuinely grateful
- When forgive, forget also and finally
- Today Matters
I have met people numbering to literally tens of hundreds saying, quoting, referring, uttering, mumbling and in all manners of vocal expression commenting: we don’t believe if real love exists ? I have observed them, asked more questions from such people. Or they avoid love because they know it would end in some thing unwanted, painful or sorrowful.
We need to talk. We need to be heard. And we are frustrated, angry, unhappy, full of resentment. And we go to an old friend, whom we meet not very often but for some unknown reason consider him an old friend.
And he sits us in. Closes the door. Asks his wife to attend his calls for him. Turns off his cell phone. Makes us some tea. Holds our hand n says: now, what is it ?
The best gift we ever receive from some one is pure time.
Some years back, I completely lost some thing that greatly helped me transform into some one, which later inspired me to start another blog: happiest man on earth.
I lost my will to convince others of my opinion. I stopped going into discussions. I stopped asking questions that were intended to bring the other person to my desired conclusion. I stopped engaging into meaning less talks on politics, sports and movies. I would only want to hear what the other person had to say about a particular event, cause, niche or a social issue.
When I stopped all that mental hassle, I began to see people as they were. Not what I would have tagged them with before my internal transformation, nor what they appeared to be. I began to see people as some thing they could have become.
It wasn’t that I had nothing to say. In fact, with this stopping myself of convincing others, what I had to say grew manifold inside of me. Things began to form links. Events became meaningful. Every new day a certain understanding began to grow.
It was truly hard in the beginning. We are not used to this. We are used to certain neurological responses and behaviors.
We have been raised that way. One such response is immediate comparison and judgment. Our mind takes the following steps, perhaps in a friction of a second.
1. Whenever we hear an opinion about an issue, our mind begins to search whether we have some thing to say about it or not. If its a yes, then second step begins.
2. The next step our mind takes is to compare our existing opinion with what we hear.
3. The next step is to decide whether the “new” opinion goes with our existing one or it goes against it.
4. Since our brain virtually hates creating new neural path ways, it chooses the comfort zone, here in this case: sticking to an existing opinion.
5. Doing the contrary involves very hard and difficult steps. What if the other person is right? Then we would have to mold or reform or re-design our opinion ( all mental hard work for brain circuitry cells again). What if accepting that the other person is right leads us to face another situation, which is more grave for us? Most of people simply do not discuss religion because of this fear that they might be proven wrong and then they would have to accept the truth.
Keeping in mind the hard work in step 5, our brain chooses to stick to existing neural path way associated to already established thought patterns.
The next behaviour is to tell two people that we are right. The first one: our own self. The second person is the one whom we are speaking to.
We want to tell others we are right because our ego has linked being right with a sudden greatness. We think because of our belief systems that to be great, some one has to be always right.
We want to tell ourselves that we are right because then we won’t have to do hard work or re-designing mental patterns and thoughts.
We begin to defend or convince our opinions.
I lost it all. I disallowed my ego of the luxury of wanting to be always right to apparently look great. It involved a lot of mental hard work. Hours of thinking. Tens of hours of mind game practices, but it all was worth it.
Today I have lost it all. I do not want any one to get convinced of my view. I do not even want some one to follow the path I am on. I have now understood that every one is not meant for the difficult walks.
With that losing of will to convince others, I became free. I got rid of comparing myself with others. I did not compare my ideas with others. I read and read and tried to learn, but it was not because of wanting myself to compare, but it was because of pure curiosity.
I lost all unwanted stress. I began appreciating people truly and from my heart. I became highly comfortable with my own self.
I began to breathe !
In our lives, the frequent problem isn’t not loving. It is loving not enough!
We love ourselves enough to appear in a party well dressed and perfumed, yet we do not love ourselves enough to work out.
We love ourselves enough to see and find out if some one loves us, we do not love ourselves enough to reach out to some one who is waiting for love.
We love ourselves enough to perhaps spend a few last days before exams to avoid pain of embarrassment among our peers and class mates. We love ourselves enough to get a degree and do things that some how get us a pass. We do not love ourselves enough to become truly knowledgeable.
We love our kids enough to see if they do get everything they wish for. We do not love them enough to stop them from having something which is harmful for their spirit and soul.
We love our spouses enough to enjoy a movie or a dinner. We do not love them enough to deeply listen to them.
We love our selves to watch out that the document we are sending out is really impressive. We do not love our selves enough to be thorough.
We love some one to wait for him, but we do not love him enough to wait till he is back.
We love ourselves enough to forgive people who have done wrong to us. We do not love ourselves enough to forget them.
The difference is not much. The difference between enough and not enough …is not huge. It is a small difference ignored consistently. A thirty minute exercise missed for years. A habit of book reading missed for years. A habit of not being in the present for a life time. A habit of not being mindful when with some one you love.
Love is small acts done consistently to avoid missing the gap. Love is loving enough!