Quotes Tagged "life-lessons"
I have often seen this about Life…that when a door closes on you, when people reject you, when what you desperately want does not come to you despite your best efforts and prayers…all this happens only because you are meant to be walking through a different door, you are meant to be meeting other people and only because it is ordained that you receive something else, which you have not even imagined…that which is truly meant for you. So, don’t grieve when you don’t get what you want; what you want is immaterial…What Life believes you need is what you eventually, always, get!
Laser-sharp focus, discipline, deciding what not to do and what you will never do, besides choosing to do what you love doing, these are the tenets of intelligent living and hold the key to your being stress-free and happy!
When you follow your Bliss, magic happens. Life speaks through you and everything you do is art, everything you do touches people, and every offering of yours makes the world a better place.
Intelligent living is not about applying your human intelligence, your cleverness, to your Life. It is about living intelligently, it is about choosing wisely on what, how, where, and why to invest your time and energy! You know you are going to die some day, so, do only what is worth it, what is worth your time and effort, and what gives you unadulterated, unparalleled, indescribable joy, a.k.a your Bliss!!!
The untrained human mind is like an untrained dog. It is constantly pulling at the leash. It will run amok. And the dog's master is only reacting; they are never in control. Similarly, when your mind is untrained, you are never in control. The untrained mind will constantly pull you in a zillion directions. It will mix up unrelated issues/contexts/situations and paint horrible worst-case scenarios that are yet to/may never happen. Thoughts of worthlessness, what-if, anger, grief, guilt, cluelessness, fear, stress, anxiety...all of these are a function of the untrained mind. Your untrained mind is the only villain in your Life – not people, not events, not destiny, not fate...the truth is the mind cannot thrive in the now, it becomes powerless; so, it runs back into the dead past or races forward into the unborn future. Which is why you must use your Life experiences, such as the one you are going through right now, and train your mind to be in the present, in the moment. In the now, you are in control. When you are in control, you simply are. You are happy!
We are all a product of our experiences, of what happens to us, of what we go through. We make choices, we stumble, we fall, we endure pain, we go through intense strife, suffering and yet, eventually, we do awaken to what we believe is a greater understanding of Life. Each of us is a miracle in that sense – it is indeed a miracle that we have survived what we have been through! Clearly, I wouldn't be able to do what I am doing, or even say this with so much conviction, without going through what I have gone through. This is so true for you too. Isn't it a miracle that Life curates such unique experiences to help us be who we are, to do what we do, so people may learn and benefit from each of us, one way or the other?
A year can really, truly, be filled with Happiness! No matter what you are faced with, if you don’t complicate your Life with human ideas – if you don’t bring up your expectations, if you don’t analyze what you want and what you deserve and instead humbly accept what you are given – you will be happy!
Everything that's happening to you, to me, to us, is part of an inscrutable Master Plan. And that grand design is not flawed! Everything is the way it should be and is going exactly per that Plan! And today is always better than yesterday. At least your ability to deal with what you are faced with has improved with one more day's effort of dealing with it.
If you must really change yourself, if you must really transform personally, you must feel that urge from within you. Any attempt at “merely wanting to change”, will be yet another resolution that will soon be broken and discarded, forgotten. And for the need to change to arise from within you, please spend quality time looking at the futility of clinging on to all those factors, those excuses you give yourself, that hold you back from changing. Once you understand the futility of clinging on to your self-limiting beliefs, you will change – your current realities and your Life – in ways in which you can’t even fathom just now!
The truth is that this Life is a miracle, every moment you are alive is a miracle…the sunrise, the sunset, the dew drop, the moon, the stars, the birds chirping…every thing, and everyone, around you is a miracle. But you miss these everyday miracles because you are steeped in grief, in pining for what is over, what is dead and isn’t there or you are gripped by anxiety and fear, worrying about the unborn future, about what is still to arrive. You are so consumed by imagining that your Life is one endless saga of problems that you don’t see the magic and beauty of your Life, of your miracles. In fact, this human form you have is a miracle; despite your frailties, your circumstances and your vulnerabilities, “you are the miracle you seek”!
To be sure, there is no method, no single way, to anchor in Faith and employ Patience. Letting go, trusting the process of Life and living with Faith and Patience, is the way. Living through our crippling bankruptcy for over 12 years now, Vaani and I have realized that Faith does not always solve our problems immediately. But having Faith in the process of Life – that what goes around, comes around; that what goes up will come down some day, only to go back up another day – certainly helps us to cope with our problems better. Keeping the Faith also teaches us Patience. Unless you embrace these twin philosophies, and live practising them together, you will not see the miracles in your everyday Life.
You have to believe in what you do surely. And you must not compromise on how you express yourself through what you are doing, what you are sharing. Most definitely, you must not compromise for any gain, material gain particularly! This is the key to Happiness.
Undoubtedly, you will be subject to the pulls and pressures of everyday living. You will feel angry, left out, let down, jealous, disturbed, fearful and insecure. Events, people, things – any of these can trigger off these debilitating emotions. Don’t resist any of these feelings. Hold them up. And examine them closely. What do they make you feel? Don’t they make you intensely unhappy? If they do, let them go. Anything, or anyone, that makes you unhappy does not have a place in your Life. Know that you have a choice to walk away from them or throw them out. Exercise that choice. This is personal leadership. This is why happiness is an intensely personal choice.
When someone lets you down or chooses to disagree with you, your anger, your grief, arises from their behavior. Or so you believe. But if you observe your thoughts closely, you will find that it is your mind that rushes off immediately to demand: “How dare they treat me like this?” So, essentially, it is your expectation of that person, that they must behave in certain way that is causing you agony. Just drop that expectation. And you will not have any suffering on account of anyone or their actions anymore. Herein lies the secret to remaining unmoved, detached and dispassionate about what others are saying or doing to you. This is the way you protect your inner peace and happiness.
You are unlikely to find the perfect Life that you want. Even so, you can live fully with what you have, with what you have been given. And you do that by looking Life squarely in the eye, by facing it and by accepting what is, by learning to be happy despite the circumstances.
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