Not by knowledge alone

IT IS IMPORTANT TO GAIN KNOWLEDGE, BUT IT IS MORE IMPORTANT TO ACT UPON IT, OTHERWISE SUCH KNOWLEDGE REMAINS MERE THEORY

Even though we do possess knowledge about certain things, we don’t practise them. That is mainly because we lack the realisation that knowledge can be useful.

Starting with the example of being truthful, how many of us are truthful? Unfortunately, the number maybe very small. Why is that so? Don’t we know that being untruthful may give advantages in the short run but, ultimately, the truth comes out and we are necessarily punished.

The worst part is that some of us teach our young impressionable children the habit of lying. When they see us lying, they do the same. Not only are we hurting ourselves by lying, we condemn our children too to the habit of lying.

Let us have another example. From our childhood days, we are taught to be disciplined. Fortunately, many learn to get disciplined and they succeed in life.

The ones who are not, don’t have to look very far. One of the main reasons for their failure is the lack of discipline in their lives.

Let us take the example of bad habits like drinking, smoking and gambling. Don’t we all know that these are extremely harmful? But the worst part is that we are helplessly attracted towards these, and we don’t seriously try to stop ourselves.

Someone offers us a drink and knowing fully well what this could lead to, we don’t refuse. The same goes for smoking and gambling. We just do not wish to think of their long-term consequences. This is like an insect getting helplessly attracted to fire.

What should we do? Yes, it is important to gain knowledge, but it is more important to act upon it, otherwise such knowledge remains mere theoretical. We should make sincere efforts to inculcate good habits.

It is not going to be easy but can be done with some effort.

The advantages of doing so are enormous. Not only you lead a happy, peaceful and pious life on this planet, you can hope to have good times beyond this life as well.

Key to a balanced life

Whatever field you are in, it will be good to sit down periodically to take stock of your goals. It is always helpful to ask yourself, “Am I on the right track?” We may find that we spend too much time and attention on the financial aspects of our life or on our careers at the cost of neglecting our families, our personal and spiritual growth.

There is a story about a young boy who was walking when he found a penny. He found no one to return it to; so he kept it as his own. He was so excited about finding the penny that wherever he went, he looked down to see if he could find more. As he grew up, he continued to walk looking down to see if he could find more. As he neared old age, he calculated all the money he had found. It was about $15. When he told his children, his daughter said, “You spent your whole life looking down and only made only $ 15, but in the process you missed out on seeing thousands of sunrises and sunsets, hundreds of rainbows, beautifully coloured trees, the beautiful blue skies and the smiles of passing people. You have missed out on so many beauties of life.”

We may not only miss out on the beauties of nature and the joys of relationships with other people, we may also be missing out on the greatest treasure of all — our spiritual riches.

There is nothing wrong with earning a livelihood. However, when earning money becomes all consuming at the cost of our health, our family, or our spiritual growth, then we may be leading an imbalanced life. We need to set priorities in life. In doing so, we can devote some time daily to meditation, some time to selfless service, some to our family, and some time to our jobs. We will find that we will excel in all these areas and will attain our goals in a fully satisfied life.

Change your circle of friends

Fall in Love

Fall in love with someone who wants you and cherishes you. Someone who understands you even in the madness; someone who helps you, and guides you. Someone who is your support, your hope. Fall in love with someone who forgives you after an argument. Fall in love with someone who misses you and wants to be with you. Do not fall in love only with a body or with a face; fall in love with a heart and soul.
~Unknown

Luck chases hard work

YOUR LUCK DEPENDS ON HOW SENSIBLY, INTELLIGENTLY AND WITH HOW MUCH AWARENESS YOU LOOK AT LIFE

Those who depend on luck are always looking for places, things, stones, beads, lucky shoes, lucky numbers and the like. In this process of looking for luck and waiting for things to happen, things that they could have easily created themselves go beyond their control.

At every turn of life, it is you who has to make it happen. Your peace and your turmoil is your business. Your sanity and insanity is your business. Your joy and misery is your business. The devil and the god within you is your business.

We don’t know whether you can become the richest man on this planet; but if you wish, you can become blissful and joyful. All of us have this capability; we don’t need any luck. It is not even a question of capability. It is just a question of being willing and sensible and every one of us has that much sense.

We may not have the intelligence to build a nuclear reactor, but all of us have enough sense to live joyfully within ourselves. And, whatever other capabilities we have in terms of external action can also find full expression only if you are peaceful and joyful. Otherwise, even your most fundamental capabilities will not find expression in the world outside.

Instead of allowing our energies to express themselves to their fullest capability, we are always looking for something else which could make that happen for us. Today, from morning to evening, how it happened for you within, is definitely yours. Today, how much friction you had with people around you simply depends on how insensible you have been in understanding the situations and the people around you, their limitations and possibilities within themselves.

Your luck is definitely not decided by where the planets are standing on this day or what lucky charms you may be wearing. It simply depends on how sensibly, intelligently and with how much awareness you walk and look at life around you.

Learn to listen and win

We are all caught in a chaotic world. To maintain our sanity, we must learn to listen and use effective self-management methods. Self-management is controlling one’s activities in order to make it productive and not let life go haywire for the lack of a roadmap. In other words, self-management requires discipline, honesty and clarity of purpose. Discipline has a way of cultivating the rest of the qualities needed for self-management.

According to HA Dorfman, author of The Mental ABCs of Pitching: A Handbook for Performance, “Self-discipline is a form of freedom – from laziness and lethargy, from weakness and fears and doubts”. It allows you to feel your inner strength. And you become the master of yourself as well as of the things/ persons you are dealing with.

Self-management can be perfected by being a keen listener. Listening gives you a complete picture and understanding of the situation you are struggling with. Listening ability helps one in the management of day-to-day work and keeps us away from chaos and failure.

Listening gives one the capacity and ability to see through an issue and gives a proper perspective while dealing with it in any form. Thus, the chances of one’s meeting with success will be a great deal higher if one listens to all around and take a decision accordingly.

One must realise that selfmanagement is the only way to managing things/others. Don’t we say one should put one’s own house in order first? Once that is done, one has to have the vision to view the end while carrying out a task. And then one has to be a hard task master on one’s self; the harder you are on yourself, the greater the chances of your following the winning track. Being a hard task master of the self leaves very little chances for self-pitying and getting lost in the messy world of a loser.

True, at times, circumstances do play hard on you, but there is never a perfect chance; you have to grapple with the problems and make them your vehicle of success.


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Flow with nature

 

Flowers do not struggle to bloom

Water does not struggle to flow

Sun does not struggle to shine

Grass does not struggle to grow

Struggle is UN-natural.

Be like nature.

Go with flow.

A good father is the most valuable asset

 

A good father is one of the most unsung, unpraised, unnoticed, and yet one of the most valuable assets in our society.

I am an Entrepreneur

 

I believe anything is possible.

I see opportunity when others see impossibility.

I take risks.

I am focused.

I hustle.

I know that nothing is unrealistic.

I feel overwhelming love.

I embrace my child like wonder and curiosity.

I take flying leaps into the unknown.

I contribute to something bigger than myself.

I create.

I learn. 

I grow. 

I do. 

I believe it's never too late to start living a dream. 

I am an Entrepreneur. 

Kill ego for a new beginning

 

The death of the ego will be the beginning of your real life.

Problems will disappear if ...

 

A lot of problems in the world would disappear,

if we talk to each other instead of about each other.

 

Spend more time in discomfort zone for ...

 

The more time you spend in your discomfort zone,

the more your comfort zone will expand. - Robin Sharma

Keep moving in life

 

Life is like riding a bicycle.

To keep your balance, you must keep moving

Emotionally reasonable

If I say I am emotional, does it mean I have no good use for reason? And, if someone is said to be a reasoning-type, is she/he devoid of emotion? Normally, we advise people, while taking decisions, not to be emotional but rational and practical. And that may partly answer the question.

We also say as a matter of fact that what comes from your heart is emotion; and what comes from your mind is rational. Sure, there should be no contention. But what I want to raise is that emotion has its root in logic and logic too is based on emotion. They are complementary and one becomes the ‘background’ of the other, depending on whichever happens to be surfacing at a particular moment.

Helen Keller says, “The best and the most beautiful things in the world can’t be seen or even touched, they must be felt with the heart.” That means we are an incomplete lot without full use of emotion; and that reasoning too has its role in life. Just as one can’t do full justice to life with emotion alone, we will be living half a life with reasoning alone. Pure reason sans emotion has the power to lead one to insanity in a dry, logical life. After all, life is not all reasoning, all work and all success; its best aspects are hidden in the layers of emotion that we fail to uncover.

As youngsters, we were told by our elders to be emotional when must and rational when necessary. And that if you give in life a free run to emotion, you will lose control of your head too.

It is also true that persons who are emotional are their true selves without any “covering”. A rational person, on the other hand, could be, in most situations, selfish and devoid of love and compassion. That is why David Hume called for emotion to rule your reason to remain happier and contented. “Reason is, and ought to be the slave of the passion,” he reasoned. And I add, reason is nothing but tainted emotion.

I am the Peaceful ....

“I am neither male nor female, nor am I sexless. I am the Peaceful One, whose form is self-effulgent, powerful radiance.”

- From a religious Guru

Take pride in how far you have come and have faith in how far you can go

Take pride in how far you have come and have faith in how far you can go.

Discard fear for change

WE DON’T TAKE CHANCES, WE STICK TO THE OLD, KILL OURSELVES WITH BOREDOM BECAUSE WE ARE SCARED OF CHANGE

We all have faced fear, some of us have overcome and some of us have been controlled by it. At times, when we are about to take a decision, we are held back by an unknown string, which has ifs and buts attached to it, and that string is called fear.

Here is a story of my own which transformed my perspective. I was in a mall with friends and they proposed the idea of ice-skating, and they all were eager to go ahead. I was the one who turned pale, because the truth is I didn’t know normal skating and ice-skating was beyond question.

So I refused, but the tickets had been already bought. For the first time, I went beyond my fear and gave a yes. Then, it was show-time. I braved somehow to go ahead. Soon I saw myself battling. And, yes I fell not once or twice but four times. Every time I fell, I got up and then after the fourth time I took a perfect round without falling. It’s all about perspective. When I changed my mind and asked myself, “What if I fail?”, everything changed then and there. It’s not I didn’t have a choice to hold back, but this time I wanted to give power to “the new”.

Life is all about going beyond the fears, experiencing the new and being dazzled by the beauty of change. We don’t take chances out of fear, we stick to the old, kill ourselves with boredom, live a stagnant life because we are too scared of change.

Cut that string out of your life, shed all the old, and accept the new. New is good, challenging and something different.

The art of life is living with an art. Fears should not hold us back. Remember, every time you give power to fear, you have taken power away from a change, a new growth and a new beginning. And you have given your life a dead-end.

The great ordinary way

These days everyone wants to get noticed and stand out from the crowd. Everyone craves for his few seconds of fame and will go to any extent to achieve it. We all want to be different and extraordinary. Parents constantly urge their children to do something out of the ordinary; and in our own jobs and careers, we don’t want to settle for the routine.

Why this mad rush to be extraordinary? Is being ordinary really to be looked down upon? Can we imagine life without the ordinary joys like the lovely fragrance of flowers, the sound of the gentle lapping of waves against the sea shore, the spontaneous gurgles of joy of toddlers, the warm hug of your loved ones . All this are ordinary gifts of daily life which makes living such an extraordinary and joyful process. And let none of us underestimate the incomparable power of an ordinary smile to a person in trouble or a simple kind encouraging word to a person in despair.

When we do ordinary things mindfully and with full sincerity, it becomes magical. Each one of us is unique and exceptional and should dance to our own rhythm , be it in the role of a housewife, doctor or sportsman. The main thing is not to strain to be different but allowing yourself to be, and your essential goodness to shine through.

As Osho says, “Everybody is after being extraordinary and incomparable. And the paradox is that the more you try to be exceptional, the more ordinary you look, because everybody is after extraordinariness. It is such an ordinary desire.”

Instead of evaluating and comparing ourselves against others and envying others’ good fortunes or talents and moaning our lack of it, we should be grateful for the umpteenth sources of joy in our daily life. We don’t need to strive to be different or recognized. Nature does not strain but grows effortlessly and gracefully. So can we.


 

God has his own plans

On my way to Delhi recently, a young girl was sitting next to me in a bus. We were expected to reach Delhi around 9.30 am; but as the bus entered Panipat, we were caught in a massive traffic jam because of a rally.

The girl looked quite panicky: “Oh God, now I can’t make it to the interview.” As the clock ticked, her fears became more pronounced.

I asked her why she was so much worried? “Aunty, I have a test for a job at 11 am. This traffic jam has botched up my plans.”

I tried to make her comfortable by saying: “Maybe, God has some better plans for you. You should calm down.” “Aunty, nowadays, job is very important for girls. Even for matrimonial alliances, employed girls are preferred. Being the eldest, I want a job at the earliest.”

By the time we were at the ISBT in Delhi, it was already 11 am. And she was to return by 3 pm. So, I asked her to accompany me and relax for some time.

In fact, I was going to visit an elderly ailing person in our family. She spent some time with me in that house. By sheer chance, another visitor from Delhi offered to drop her at the bus station.

And then, after a week, I received a call from the family I had visited, “My sisterin-law who had dropped that girl at the station looks interested in her, for her son. Do you have some idea about the family?”

I told them that it was a chance meeting but then I had saved her cell phone number, which I passed on to them. After a month when I received a wedding invite, I was pleasantly surprised to note that things materialised so fast.

This incident helped me believe firmly that God has better plans for us when we apparently seem to be failing in life.

What is needed is to have absolute faith in God who will never fail us.

Walk away from what hurts you

 

Walk away from what hurt your soul

Better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all

 

Better to have loved and lost than to have never 

loved at all

Feelings

Magic of sweet words

Sweet words act like honey. Just as honey has medicinal value and cures a lot of simple ailments, sweet words too solve a host of problems if used in our daily communication.

Recently, I engaged two carpenters to get the doors of my house repaired. One was an old fellow and the other a very young one. The old carpenter had a very rough tongue. He talked to his younger colleague in a very foul language, always. But the young carpenter was the exact opposite with a sweet tongue.

To resolve a problem that took place between the two over the alignment of doors, the younger one used his extra-ordinary sweet language to bring the old fellow around his viewpoint. He addressed his colleague as “father-like- figure”, “an experienced fellow” and “a skilled carpenter”. These words cooled down the temper of the old carpenter.

Sweet words can resolve even the worst of disputes. On the contrary, the use of harsh and foul language can even tur n a friend into a foe. Our epics bear a clear testimony to this fact. Had Draupadi not taunted Duryodhana as “blindman’s son as blind”, there would have been no battle of Mahabharta. Similarly, Shishupal’s head had not been chopped off by the disc of Lord Krishna had he stopped a stream of abuse that he hurled at the Lord.

Lord Krishna had cautioned Shishupal to restrict his “unruly behaviour”. But, Shishupal did not pay heed to Lord Krishna’s advice and crossed all the limits of decency. This finally led to his fall. The LaxmanSarupnaka episode too has its genesis in bad language. When Sarupnaka’s overtures to win over the heart of Laxman failed, she resorted to uncivilised language which provoked Laxman to chop off the latter’s ears and nose.

Foul language is like poison as it kills both mind and body. It provokes anger and finally leads to an aggressive conflict. Sweet words open closed doors. They are like the magical ‘Seam-seam’ of the great Arabian tale — Ali Baba and Forty Thieves.