Loving some one is considering him or her of value.
Any thing that we consider of value, we spend time with it.
Any thing that we spend time with, we start to know it more.
The more we know it more, the more we begin to accept it.
If you say I love my children, only ask how much time I do spend with them.
Do not let it drop to less than full 5 hours of quality time with your kids and that is for working fathers and mothers.
Others can spend more…..but do not forget to ignore the balance, coz balance is another act of love !
Being able to truly love ourselves involves delaying gratification.
This can be best explained by the experiment conducted with children aged 4 to 6 at Stanford University in 1972. They were offered marshmallows on a condition. Those children who would eat it right now, would get only one. Those who would chose to eat 30 minutes later would get two. Those who would choose to eat after an hour would get three.
Majority of the children chose to eat now. A little less opted for half an hour wait and further less number of children opted to wait for a full hour.
Years later studying the careers of the children, was discovered that those who were able to delay or defer the gratification had achieved a significantly higher level of success in their career.
Delaying gratification would thus mean postponing instant relief and joy for a much higher cause.
He was known as the Maestro and is still known as the same. I have met people from seven nations and in each, people knew him, adored him, loved him and even worshipped him. He spent his whole life into what he loved. He did it so marvelously that he became his work. He became his music. Today, internationally people know Qawali through one name: Ustaad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
Delaying gratification means to delay the pleasure for a higher reward or a higher destiny we believe in. For that we have to have a higher cause; a direction or a destiny which we want to achieve.
It is a fact that people with aimless lives are not able to exercise delaying gratifications and they can fall for any thing that brings instant joy to their five senses. We face countless situations in our daily life, where we have to delay our gratification. There always exists a deferred achievement and an instant gratification for every emotion we feel.
The gratification for anger for example is to take it out, immediately, instantly, with all the frustration on the person whom you think is responsible. Yet there is a higher achievement reward if we chose to delay our bursting out. It is a high mutual trust, respect and strengthened bond between us and the person involved. The gratification for a news paper reading is that no one disturbs us but if our 4 year old kid comes to us with a drawing book, we have to delay our gratification and attend to the child. For a higher reward of bond, love and value
Have you ever thought what does the word discipline exactly mean? Though most common meanings associated or linked with this word are those linked to a concept of military life style characterized by every thing or activity strictly set in routines, schedules and the dogma like: place for every thing and every thing for a place etc.
When we think we don’t need to learn further, we have become complacent. To handle complacency is to handle internal inertia.
There is only one way out from complacency i.e. to become more loving ! Love is the act of taking action when you do not want to or is defined as a will to grow. Complacency is the end of growth, considering that we have grown enough or learnt enough or had enough of knowledge or experience.
Love is a will to grow and a will to grow asks for a will to take action. Nothing happens unless we take action. To end complacency we have to act, first in our thoughts and later in the physical world outside our minds.
And the greatest of laziness is not physical, it is mental. When we refuse to think any thing against what we have always been thinking.
That is also called in texts of spirituality what we commonly know as death i.e. when we refuse to transform!
I have experienced and observed tremendous volumes of energy going to waste. This energy is expensed by parents, teachers, guides, coaches, tutors, mentors, instructors and seniors in trying to teach and train some one. This energy is expensed when we think that having told some thing to some one automatically makes him or her learn it.
We only learn by doing some thing ! Make them do it and make them think to do it. They would learn and perhaps never forget.
I have a dream that I dream all day. And I work to chase my dream.
I visualize.
I repeat that to myself.
I tell myself who I am ( working on my ID)
Human brain tends to forget in 48 hours unless it is made a conditioned response.That is perhaps the reason 90% of the goals set on January 1st each year are obsolete by January 20th the same year. We have to keep on repeating to ourselves.
Another technique I use is to attach massive pain to a state of not being motivated and immense pleasure to the fruits I get what if I stay motivated.
An important point is for what? Motivation for the sake of motivation means desperation and frustration.
I don’t forget to reward myself on some thing that I believe I have done good. People are not always good at appreciations. Rewarding oneself is often great. That reminds me that I shall have my fruit, no matter what other people say.
Every single day I go out to work and meet people. A majority of them are quite contended in what they have been doing, not in terms of results, but in terms of emotional gratification they are getting out from the fixed routines.
I see people who are OK with in their comfort zones, not happy or too happy at all, but they are OK because they feel secure that they cannot further lose or risk themselves, thus they feel safe and thus they feel OK.
In their security and in their fixed routines of day and fixed routines of mental thought processes, they have found a way to feel OK. They are so stuck in their self-created mental inertia, they refuse to think any thing else than what they have been previously thinking. They refuse to think against their habitual thoughts.
They perhaps even listen, but they have made up their minds for what they already believe in. Some times they agree to a new idea superficially. Some times they do not even agree and resist.
Or if some times they genuinely feel unhappy about the OK situation, and want to change, but still lack the love to do it.
Many of the people are suffering from a phenomenon known as spirtual death, when they refuse to transform to a higher level of mental growth.
I meet dead people every day, because dead people do not grow, more mentally than they do physically!
I have always followed my heart. Most of us have read about that or want to but cannot exactly find out how to?