Move Forward

People become victims of their circumstances and life challenges all the time.  When life gets tough or depressing, most will adopt a negative perspective and think to themselves about how unfair life is: how they should have been born into better circumstances with more money; or how they should have been given better opportunities; or how things should have happened differently. 

Well, the truth of the matter is that life is going to happen anyways – sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.  The one thing that you will always have 100% control over is your response to these events.  When you adopt a positive attitude and always look for the good in any given circumstance – how could you not move forward…...

Remember - in order to best handle the challenges that you are facing in your life, you will need to be updated to your latest version.  What does that mean?  It means, if you never spend time on yourself growing mentally, physically, and spiritually – you will slowly start to become less and less capable of handling the challenges life presents.  It is the equivalent of trying to use an ordinary Apple-1 (the first computer released by Apple in 1976) instead of an iMac in todays crazy world.

If you genuinely want to help and influence others to the best of your ability, you need to start by helping and influencing yourself to the best of your ability first.  Otherwise, not only will you be limiting yourself in achieving and becoming all that you are capable of, but you’ll be limiting what influence and impact you are capable of having on the lives of others too.

Intentions don’t make a difference in the world – actions definitely do.  You can have the best intentions of growing the most beautiful flowers, but if you forget to water them, don’t plant them in the right soil, and keep them out of the sun – your flowers won’t stand a chance. Actions are everything when it comes to growth.  To know and not to do is the same as not to know!  Life is not a spectator sport – it’s a full contact, get your clothes dirty, and leave it all on the field – kind of sport.
Staying consistent with a lifestyle change or healthy habit over the long run can be very difficult.  How many times have you started a new workout routine that you said you would be 100% committed to no matter what – only to find yourself quitting it a few months later?
…Or jumped on the latest dieting trend and decided you were going to follow it ‘to the tee‘ so that you could get maximum results?  …Or set a new goal of reading for a half hour every day which never lasted?  Too many to count?  Yup, me too.  With simple hacks and determination you will start to understand how habits work and you’ll start to build the life you’ve always wanted.  Will it be easy?  Most certainly not.  Will it be worth it?  Absolutely so.

Regardless of what problems or challenges you are facing in life – the reason that they are there and affecting you the way they are, is because you haven’t expanded your consciousness enough to the point where they can be resolved.  No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.

Therefore, the mastery mindset here is, if you keep learning and growing – you’ll keep solving more and more of your problems!  Remain the same and you’ll keep facing the same issues.  All problems or challenges are solved twice – first in the mind and second in reality.  So if you get your mind right first, your life will follow.  Brace yourself..........

Life is really about cultivating happiness and creating meaning. And meaning does not come from what you get, it comes from what you give.  When we master the art of happiness and learn how to unleash the best version of ourselves every day – touching lives and changing our world becomes inevitable.

Transformation is possible

How a mix of acceptance, humility, and strength powers the transformation.  They also aren’t aware of how common this is in history, how many figures took seemingly terrible situations – a prison sentence, an exile, a bear market or depression, military conscription, even being sent to a concentration camp – and through their attitude and approach, turned those circumstances into fuel for their unique greatness.

Francis Scott Key wrote the poem that became the national anthem of the United States while trapped on a ship during a prisoner exchange in the War of 1812.  Viktor Frank - l refined his psychologies of meaning and suffering during his ordeal in three Nazi concentration camps.

Not that these opportunities always come in such serious situations.  The author Ian Fleming was on bed rest and, per doctors’ orders, forbidden from using a typewriter.  They were worried he’d exert himself by writing another Bond novel.  So he created Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by hand instead.  Walt Disney made his decision to become a cartoonist while laid up after stepping on a rusty nail.

Yes, it would feel much better in the moment to be angry, to be aggrieved, to be depressed or heartbroken.  When injustice or the capriciousness of fate are inflicted on someone, the normal reaction is to yell, to fight back, to resist.  You know the feeling: I don’t want this.  I want ______.  I want it my way.  This is short-sighted.

Think of what you have been putting off.  Issues you declined to deal with.  Systemic problems that felt too overwhelming to address.  Dead time is revived when we use it as an opportunity to do what we’ve long needed to do.
As they say, this moment is not your life.  But it is a moment in your life.  How will you use it?

A hardened criminal could have doubled down on the life that brought him to prison.  Dead time isn’t only dead because of sloth or complacency.  He could have spent those years becoming a better criminal, strengthening his contacts, or planning his next score, but it still would have been dead time.  He might have felt alive doing it, even as he was slowly killing himself.

“Many a serious thinker has been produced in prisons,” as Robert Greene put it, “where we have nothing to do but think.” Yet sadly, prisons – in their literal and figurative forms – have produced far more degenerates, losers, and never-do wells.  Inmates might have had nothing to do but think; it’s just that what they chose to think about made them worse and not better.

That’s what so many of us do when we fail or get ourselves into trouble.  Lacking the ability to examine ourselves, we reinvest our energy into exactly the patterns of behaviour that caused our problems to begin with.

It comes in many forms.  Idly dreaming about the future.  Plotting our revenge.  Finding refuge in distraction.  Refusing to consider that our choices are a reflection of our character.  We’d rather do basically anything else.

But what if we said: This is an opportunity for me.  I am using it for my purposes.  I will not let this be dead time for me. The dead time was when we were controlled by ego.  Now – now we can live.

Who knows what you’re currently doing. Hopefully it’s not a prison term, even if it might feel like it. Maybe you’re sitting in a remedial high school class, maybe you’re on hold, maybe it’s a trial separation, maybe you’re making smoothies while you save up money, maybe you’re stuck waiting out a contract or a tour of duty. Maybe this situation is one totally of your own making, or perhaps it’s just bad luck.

In life, we all get stuck with dead time.  Its occurrence isn’t in our control.  Its use, on the other hand, is.

As Booker T. Washington most famously put it, “Cast down your bucket where you are.”  Make use of what’s around you.  Don’t let stuborness make a bad situation worse.

Be what you are....You are precious

If a rose smells better than cabbage, It doesn't mean the rose can make a better stew.

Don't try to compare yourself to others.  You also have your own strength, look for it and build on it. 

All animals that exist, were in Noah's ark. A snail is one of those animals. If God could wait long enough for snails to enter Noah's ark; His door of grace won't close till you reach your expected position in life. Never look down on yourself, keep looking up. 

Remember that Broken crayons still color.
 
"YOU are PRECIOUS".

SELF SACRIFICE - Not a balanced way.

A long long time ago, my husband, our two sons and I had gone out for an ice-cream treat. It was sometime when I was always thinking of curbing unnecessary expenditure.

As a selfless person, who was too much in love with her family to deny them of any pleasure, I always chose to sacrifice my own excesses. And it didn’t even feel like a sacrifice ever, because I was a woman of very few needs/ wants/ desires...
So, when my husband asked each one of us to choose our favorite flavor of ice-cream, I responded as usual, “I won’t have any.”

The boys enjoyed one round and ordered another; my response remained the same, “I don’t want any.”

I was happy in my family’s happiness. I was happy that my not indulging in pleasure was perhaps ensuring some more goodies in the future for my dear ones. .

But my husband looked at me and said, “Please don’t do this to yourself and to us. I want a happy wife; not a sacrificial lamb. I have seen that too much sacrifice eventually leads to bitterness and victim-mentality. And I sure as hell do not want you to develop that. 

You see, after a period of time, the boys and I will stop asking you for your choice, because we will assume that you don’t want it; we will take you for granted and subconsciously start treating you as a doormat... It will then hurt you.. and you will feel miserable and unimportant. You will think that we don’t care about you.

While in truth we would be behaving naturally, knowing from experience that you don’t care for yourself.. That your wishes are not important... .

So, I suggest that you always take your share and then if you really don’t like it, share it with someone who does. That will be good for all of us. You will learn how to claim your importance in your own and our eyes and we will always ask you. There will be happiness all around.”

His talk made sense to me and I couldn’t help but think about many older women who always complained, “I did so much for so and so but today they don’t even think/ care for me.”

I also remembered many instances where children would turn back and say, “But why did you do so much? Did we ask you for it? You did it because it made you happy. Who asked you to be so self-sacrificing?”

This train of thought made me take a re-look at the word 'self-less', equating it with self-sacrifice. That day the meaning of these words opened up for me!

Self-sacrifice ......... is not the balanced way!!!

True Love - My perspective

Love - the tingling sensation and the jittery feeling when someone special comes in person or in your thoughts. I am talking about that deep down, life changing, earth shaking, always-and-forever kind of love—the stuff of poetry and legend.

Many people are skeptical, and for good reason. Today’s culture isn’t very fertile ground for romance.  With social media, text messaging and online dating, we’ve revolutionized communication but we’ve lost the art of relationships. There are very few success stories. Most of the time it seems like there are very few people having real, face-to-face conversations anymore.

But I believe and I know that - True love is Real, Deep, Unconditional & Everlasting. The reason it is so rare is because it is so misunderstood.

Most people’s idea of TRUE LOVE looks something like this: Mr. or Mrs. Right is waiting out there somewhere, THE ONE they are destined to be with. And that special someone is looking for them too, and it’s only a matter of time before they meet each other—and of course, they’ll both live happily ever after.

NONSENSE it is.

Happily ever after never exists. And God never hand picks one special person just for you. In fact, the whole idea of finding fulfillment in someone else is an illusion.

The truth is, love can only be found within.

Most people who are looking for love OUT THERE are actually just running away from loneliness. They constantly settle for less than what they want, and less than what they deserve, because their greatest fear is to be alone, grow old alone and die alone.

The fear of loneliness prevents us from experiencing the real intimacy.
True love lies beyond that fear. We have to face that  FOREVER EMPTY the unquenchable sadness deep within us; the ever present knowledge of our own mortality, that in the end we all face death all alone.

The truth is that real love requires real inner work that most people just aren’t interested in. It requires that we first be happy in our solitude; that we come to know ourselves, accept ourselves and love ourselves. We have to find our peace of mind, find our purpose, our passion. We lay down the ego’s defenses and be naked and vulnerable; that we give up our planning and fantasizing about the future and live in the NOW. Only then are we really ready to love. When you fully grasp that tomorrow is not guaranteed—that this moment is truly all that we have—there is nothing to do but give everything you’ve got, expecting nothing in return.

In fact, you know in advance that your heart will be broken. You will be lied to, you will be taken for granted; you will be hurt and disappointed. Sooner or later, between here and your deathbed, you will have to say goodbye.
You know it, you accept it, and you love anyway.

Real love is divine. It comes from a relationship with God, a dance with emptiness which takes us beyond the human self, beyond the ego’s petty games to know a timeless love; to taste the fullness of joy.

What we call TRUE LOVE is that rare and sacred union that happens when two people join in this dance together.

It is a friendship, a love affair and an act of worship. passion, lust, affection, caring, trust, respect and devotion all become part of the exquisite surrender. Lovers merge with each other and with the vast, wild universe. Neither knows for sure if it will last a weekend or a lifetime. It doesn’t matter.

All that matters is this moment of oneness—holy and beautiful.

It contains eternity.

Don't get me wrong

I am not saying that relationships are bad and that you should avoid getting in them. 

In fact, getting into meaningful relationships is one of the most important and significant things that can happen to a person throughout their lifetime.

Finding a person that genuinely connects with you and the entirety of who you are can be unmatched by anything else that happens to you throughout your lifetime.

But sadly most of the times in life this does not happen. Fairy tales are not always real. Even in the most beautiful relationships there are discords, misjudgements, fights etc. but how soon we get out of these and how much efforts we apply to resolve the differences makes all the difference.

Life itself is not beautiful it is all about how beautiful we want it to be.

Don't get me wrong.......

Be Yourself

You are special, and there is no need to want to be special.

You are special, you are unique—existence never creates anything less than that. 

Everyone is unique, utterly unique. There has been no person like you before, and there will never be a person like you again.

Consciousness has taken this form for the first time and the last time, so there is no need to try to become special: you already are.

If you are trying to be special, you will become ordinary. Your very effort is rooted in misunderstanding. It will create confusion because when you try to become special, you have taken one thing for grated—that you are not special. 

You have become ordinary already. You have missed the point