Editor: The author presents nine short and insightful thoughts.
1. Is lack of focus a disease or a choice?
Have you found yourself unable to focus on your work or study for as much as you could before? Do you find yourself getting bored of relationships too soon? Do you find yourself actively searching for newer ways to spend your free time?
If all this is true, don’t look for a solution – look for the problem. Only when you manage to identify the problem, will you be able to solve it.
The problem you will discover is not with your restless mind, but is with your lifestyles. Mind’s behavior is a helpless by-product of your impatient lifestyle.
With this understanding look at your lifestyle. You will be amazed to find that, you are surrounded by things, people and an environment that demands constant change, constant reprioritization and constant movement.
Patience is the key. Spending time in an environment that encourages patience is helpful. A farmer cannot be as impatient as a geek who complains of his 4G Internet being slow. An artist or a writer cannot demand ideas to be served to him at the speed of a fast food center. A mother cannot expect the baby in her womb to be delivered at speed of an email. Observe the lifestyle of those that have to be patient to get the right results.
Focus on those aspects of life that foster patience. Spend some time every day doing those activities that cultivates patience. Remember that multi-tasking should be your strength and not your weakness.
2. An idea to prevent hacking of ideas
Could you really hack ideas from another’s brains?
The history of this universe starts with Madhu and Kaitaba hacking the Vedas from Brahma’s brain and dashing away. If it weren’t for the first cyber police Vishnu, the original hackers might have got away and history would have been written differently.
Water when stored in one place stinks if unused. Flowing water retains its ever-freshness.
Vishnu rectified this by incarnating as Vyas and freely distributing the same knowledge through his disciples and books. How many brains would the Madhu’s and Kaitaba’s of this world hack now?
Whether it is Vyas or Tukaram or Purandar das or Tulsi das, each tried not to just store knowledge, but to distribute knowledge. In allowing their knowledge to flow, they remain ever fresh in millions of hearts.
One cannot claim proprietorship over ideas. Inspirational ideas are never conceived by force, they are received by grace. Rather than trying to store knowledge or ideas for personal aggrandizement, one should distribute them for communal enhancement.
3. Is a broad chest and slim waist, the right figure?
Getting into the right shape takes so much effort. Probably, the only thing tougher than getting into the right shape is staying in right shape.
While one would agree that a broad chest and slim waistline is the right shape for the body, one remains clueless of what would be the best shape of the mind.
Saubari Muni’s mistake gives us a hint of the right shape for the mind. Deciding to stay away from the distracting world, he decided to sit at the bottom of a lake and take charge of his senses. His mind had a broad chest pumped up with pride of being the controller. But the waistline of his mind was slim owing to a lack of loving relationship with friends and peers.
His mind tricked him by being drawn towards the fishes who took shelter under him. The result was that out of pride, he offended his superior Garuda by banning him from the lake in which he was meditating. Soon he deviated from focusing on the goal of his life. All because of a disfigured mind!
The right figure for the mind is to have a slim chest with no egoistic vanity and a broad waist filled with loads of love.
The workout for the body is to push against heavy weights. Similarly the work-in for the mind is to push against the weight of thinking that “I don’t need anyone” and pull in positive love.
4. Are you scared to be offline?
The more responsive you are, the more connected you are. Isn't this today's motto? With so much going on every nano second online through instagram, Facebook, twitter and whatsapp, one would feel almost extinct if he weren't active for a few hours. The insecurity of being forgotten drives one to be hysterically active.
Every word you say, gives so many an opportunity to judge you. That being the case, are we not eligible to be called mini-celebs?
Lord Rama would sometimes go offline. He would just disappear without telling anyone. Invariably in many such instances, He would be found sitting with a simple sage and hearing from him.
Every celebrity needs privacy to upgrade himself. The insecurity of being offline has to be replaced by the security of the need to personally grow to enable one to offer others something of substance.
So the motto has to change now.
Get offline – grow and get online – give.
5. Can I change without changing?
The inspiration to look forward to change comes from the hopes of positive pleasure that it brings along. The monotony of one’s present situation and the discontent that it triggers is often replaced by the prospect of exhilaration that new change heralds.
The grass is always greener on the other side. The bug of discontent has spread like an epidemic to destroy the healthy mind. Just like metal detectors detect presence of extra metal in a person, if we could have mental detectors that could detect the metallic presence of discontent, the buzzer would probably be perpetually on.
Currently, change is welcomed at every level, even at the level of a gender change. The discontent of the present gender is sort to be dissipated and replaced with a new role that herald’s pleasure. The Srimad Bhagvatam heralds the story of a king named Syudyumna who prayed for a sex change and was blessed with change of gender every month. The change made him realize that any change though promises newer pleasure actually gives rise to newer pains also. Satisfaction he realized is the only way to deal with change.
Have you ever wondered why Krsna always wears a yellow dhoti and a peacock feather without any exception? Have you ever wondered why Rama took a vow of being loyal to one word, one arrow and one wife?
Just like one tree takes simple water and returns sweet fruits in gratitude, but yet another returns bitter ones. Similarly, when one cultivates the tree of gratitude for whatever simple things one has, sweet fruits of satisfaction will grow.
Rather than changing external situations, if one changes ones mental framework from discontent to satisfaction, every situation in life will be rewarding.
6. The investment that returns hearts
Winning relationships is not like winning medals. Winning medals is about outdoing others deeds. Winning relationships is about outdoing your wrong attitudes.
People often look for returns from a relationship even before proper investments have been made.
Whether it is about investing money or investing in a relationship, choosing the right plan is the key. Here is a risk free, easily doable, double guaranteed and triply verified plan for investment in relationships, which pledges multi-fold and long-term returns.
Do something for the others that which they cannot do for themselves!
Why did the Pandavas love Krsna so much? He did for them, what they couldn’t do for themselves. He not only helped them get their kingdoms back, but he helped them handle emotional trauma, sabotage, disunity and insult, with confidence and grace. He never gave them a penny during their years of struggle, though He owned the most fascinating kingdom. Rather than facilitating their discomfort, He chose to facilitate their growth. He tutored them to become self-dependent, rather than depend on circumstances.
The creation is orchestrated in such a way that every individual has some lacunae which he can’t fill. Actively look for opportunities to do something for others that which they cannot do for themselves.
Invest in this plan and you will be assured of returns in the form of grateful hearts that will in turn be desperate to invest in a plan that returns your heart.
7. A tip to become infamous
Who wants to be friends with Mr. Perfect or Ms. Seamless? No one! That’s true as much today as it was in the past.
When a person spins around himself, he perceives the whole world to be rotating. Like a spinning top, a person with a strong self-centeredness, swivels around driven by his own needs, interests and concerns. He dreams that the stationary world is eagerly rotating to fulfill them.
A practical tip to become infamous is to always show that you are right. Try it! It won’t fail you!
Ravana could never accept a ‘no’ for his proposals, Hiranyakashipu could never accept that anyone can be better than him, Duryodhana couldn’t even tolerate an umbrella over his head, Shishupala could not stop himself from finding fault in others and Karna could never take good advice from anyone. If they could become infamous, so can you!
When you show that you are flawless, you say that you are needless. And when you say that you are needless, people become heedless towards you.
8. Crossing the LOC in relationships
When two countries fight, a LOC (Line of Control) is created to restrict entry. When two people fight, is there a LOC? Yes! It is called a LOR, Line of Respect. When the LOR is crossed, the fight begins.
Have you ever travelled with a cake box? To the degree you handle it with care and respect, to that degree the impressive shape of the cake is retained till the destination. Time and familiarity makes one careless and inattentive. Relationships are like that cake. The moment you lose respect and care and rather breed familiarity and contempt, you may find a perfect box but a mashed cake.
Krsna excused Sishupala, His cousin a 100 times for crossing the LOR, because that was His promise to His aunt. But as soon that number was crossed, He severed the relationship with His disc.
Important relationship should be preserved judiciously like a priceless jewel. When one mistakes priceless relationships to be artificial jewels and treats them like artificial jewels, one crosses the LOR.
Crossing the LOR harbingers the disc of time to sever the relationship forever.
9. The inside story of road rage
At the drop of the hat do you blast? What triggers your blasts? Do you feel remote controlled? Does it seem that a hidden tout has taken the contract to trigger the time and magnitude of your blasts?
Anger is called Kamanuja or younger brother of desire. Whenever you find the younger brother sneak picking, look for the dissatisfied older brother who must be pacing around. Anger is the result of some unsatisfied need.
When the need of absolute autocracy of Ravana was not met, he blasted on his own brother Vibhishan. In simply trying to help Ravana see his mistake, Vibhishan unwittingly stepped on his brother’s oxygen tube named absolutism.
A tired king named Muchukunda sought the benediction of uninterrupted sleep. Mistaking this king to be sleeping Krsna, the reckless Kalayavana kicked him awake. When his need to sleep was broken, Muchukunda blasted on Kalayavana and burnt him to ashes.
Getting angry is easy, but identifying our need is difficult. Sometimes our anger may be directed at one place, but our need may be at a completely different place. One’s need may be to reach office on time, but one may express his unmet need due to being stuck in a traffic jam, on a driver who is honking behind. The boss may disrespect one, but he blasts on his wife who is showering her love on him.
By identifying your unmet need, you identify the trigger point of anger. Dealing with an enemy becomes easy when you know why he is your enemy.
Those who live on slopes have to ensure that the hand-brake of their car is pulled up sturdily. Similarly before your car rolls down the steep slope of anger get a grip of the hand-brake of your unmet needs. Pull it up on time and avoid the roller coaster.
This article is written by Motivational Speaker and Spiritual Lifestyle Coach Shubha Vilas. He is author of Ramayana - The Game of Life (Book 1). Shubha Vilas conducts corporate training programs on Relationship Management, Work Life Balance, etc for leading companies like Aditya Birla, HUL, Edelweiss, IOCL, MTNL, Blue Cross Laboratories etc.