Happiness is found in the darkest places

Have you ever been trapped inside a dark tunnel and you don't know which way to go. Have you struggled to find the light at the end of the tunnel, but mistaken it for an oncoming train?

The three P's. Persistence, Perseverance and Patience coupled with good intent and selflessness showed me the way to happiness in my darkest days.

Niceness Overlooked

Kindness is seen as weakness and generosity is something to be exploited. Being nice is considered a weakness in today's world. People stomp all over you and leave. It is a quality that is slowly disappearing in people and one day it might actually become extinct.

Don't open your box of niceness for everyone. Make sure the person on the receiving end deserves every bit of it.

Depression

Depression - It starts with a conflict of aspirations and reality. We are taught to keep our aspirations high, but when we don't see results, when we see ourselves different from the socially optimum, or when we feel  like we are missing something in our life that we deserve; our mind tries to understand the reasons and if it fails to do so, the mind turns to self pity. This self pity grows on you over a period of time and it lowers your confidence.

Your mind quickly turns into 'ego save' mode. It looks for external factors to prove to you that you are worth something. You hunt for the smallest appreciation for your existence. If in this desperate state, you do not get that dose of appreciation to keep you afloat; you drown. You drown into this deep state of mental illness where it seems like you are living in a different reality. You look at things and they don't seem real. You try to work on something and it feels like a waste of time. Life seems so dark, sorrow surrounds you and nothing around you interests you anymore.

Broken Expectations

Is it fair to have expectations from people? Everyone has a different mentality, some match with ours and some are so confusing for us to understand that we call them "retarded". These retarded people have their own justification process which blinds them from the right and wrong the way we see it. While we may consider their actions offensive, they are being completely rational (in their minds).

Many things cause this difference in thinking and after a certain point in life these habits are engraved into our mental conscious so deep that they can't be removed. As you move forward in life you will meet many people who think different than you. If you choose to change the way they think because it is different than yours, you are entering a world of conflict and pain. Unless you are sure about your love for him/her and you are willing to dedicate a major part of your life to change them for the better, don't go down that road, and if you do, do not expect any short term results.

Better Than Everybody Else

Its not about striving to be better than everybody else. You get lost in the competition and forget who you really are, what you really want and what makes you happy. In the end, if you do get a sense of achievement of being better than everybody else, you will have no one to share it with.

Change Yourself, Not Your World

The key is to change yourself. You are the only person you can change. The world will change at its own pace. If you put all the effort in changing whats around you, you will eventually give up because you can't. The only person you can change is yourself and when that change happens, things around you change to make space for the new you.

Change does not happen all of a sudden. It is hard to change the direction of a flowing river with a small rock, but you keep adding a rock everyday you can one day make a wall that is strong enough to make the change. 

If Life was a Countdown

"If I'm Pessimistic, I die 20 years sooner than if I'm optimistic!" Death Clock

We think like we are going to live forever, but we live like we are already dead. If life was a countdown, would you live it differently? If you could see the seconds ticking away in front of your eyes, would you live your day differently, would you behave differently, would you show more compassion towards your loved ones, live happier, and be more productive? Or would you just go crazy and do whatever the **** you want.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. Life is the most precious thing we have and we almost always take it for granted. Keeping this thought in my unconscious mind has helped me to overcome symptoms of depression, wash away the painful past to a great extent, be more courageous to face the future, practice living in the present and be more kind and generous to my loved ones.

So as Bob Marley said, "Don't worry, be happy" and you might actually slow down your death clock by having an optimistic attitude.

Does Acceptance Kill Motivation?

Acceptance is the key to find forgiveness for the painful past. But, in its process of removing the pain, does it also kill the motivation inside us to be better, to do better to avoid similar situations in the future?

Experiencing a painful situation triggers all kinds of emotional responses inside us. It may be sadness, depression, anger, guilt, fear, hate or a mix of all of them. Accepting the past for what it was and moving on to concentrate on the present brings peace and tranquility in our life, but at the same time, I personally feel that the fire that the pain brings in us should not be extinguished with acceptance. That fire, if channeled properly can motivate us to grow spiritually, physically and mentally.

If you have experienced a recent event in your life that has brought with it an immense amount of pain, be thankful for the experience and use the energy inside you to grow yourself instead of trying to make sense of the past. Accept the past, but don't forget it. Use it to propel yourself further in life.

Uplifting Talk

How to pick yourself up after you have fallen down.

Self Esteem

Do you link your confidence to external factors? It is the issue of low self esteem.

It gets harmful when you are craving to be accepted by people around you and you are willing to change yourself to who they want you to be, and not who you really are.

You need to learn to love yourself for who you are, right at this moment. A lot of people say, I will love myself if *blank* happens. If I get thinner, if I get a good job, if I find a partner... and the list goes on. But only if you are willing to accept yourself for who you are right at this moment and show compassion and love to your own self, you will be much better at handling the issue of low self esteem.

It is not an easy thing to practice. Or is it?

A lot of things that we do or achieve, we take for granted. We stress on the things that we did not do right. It might be time for you to look at yourself from a different perspective and appreciate your strength, courage and resilience that has made you who you are today. 

Mind Over Body

I read some articles today about self healing with your mind. Many common problems have been linked to thoughts, emotions, stress and anxiety. For instance, stress, low self esteem, depression are all causes of acne. Myopia (short sightedness) has been linked to fearing what the future holds.

The most common recommendations are meditation, yoga, and breathing excerises but the funny thing is that I started getting so caught up in the fact that I don't do either of these enough that I started to stress on this instead!

I'm in the search for a balanced lifestyle without feeling the stress associated with maintaining that balance. I am looking for a natural way to bring that balance in my daily routine. 

A Talk on Vulnerability

The 24 Hour Goals

Focus on ahievement of short term goals leading to your bigger dream, and you might have the key to success.

Thinking too much about dreams gives the false perception to the brain that you have already achieved them. You are already dreaming about the happiness that you hope success is going to bring you, you already feel that you are there, that you have what you wish for without actually having it. 

Wanting to be somewhere else

Live in the present. Aspire for better days and work towards it, but don't let this consume your present that you forget you are still breathing. Almost always, dreams are an escalated perception of reality and when you finally reach that 'somewhere else' you were eagerly waiting for, you will soon want to be in another place. How can you find contentment with  the present? Appreciate the little things that life has to offer, it is a limited resource. 

Forgive and Forget

The motto of "Forgive and Forget" is much easier said than done, but if exercised, it can bring you a lot of peace. When someone has hurt you mentally or physically, you can choose to hurt them back or forgive them. Hurting them back will only bring you satisfaction that will last for a short duration, but forgiving them will give you a mental satisfaction and peace in the long run. Not all situations can be forgiven, but one thing is for sure.. the 'tit for tat' behavior just causes more damage to you.

Theory of Relativity

Einstein had published the Theory of Relativity several years ago which in essence states that measurements of various quantities are relative to the velocities of observers. Who knew this theory applies to happiness as well! In simple words, if you don't experience pain, you won't be able to appreciate happiness.

Everything in nature is balanced. So that means all the good things in life are shared, and the same way all the bad things are too. We share wealth, health, happiness, popularity, recognition and peace. Which means that when we are enjoying our state of happiness, or our state of great wealth and well being someone else in the world is going through a tough time. So to keep it fair to everyone, there are ups and downs in everyone's life. 

When times are tough, it is important not to run away from the pain. It is important to understand what you are feeling to be better equipped for it the next time it decides to enter your life. If you don't feel the pain, you will never be able to appreciate the happiness that follows it. Also, you won't be able to sympathize with other people going through similar situations. 

The feeling of self accomplishment that you get for getting over the turmoil in your life gives a lot of confidence and strength to move forward or start over once again. 

Zooming Out of Change

I'm not referring to the change you find in your pockets sometimes or under the car seat, but change as it comes about in your life. In life when we need start something new, something old usually ends to make space for the new beginning. This is change, whether you like it or not, it happens and it is usually for the better even if it might not seem so at first.

Change can be anything, we all experience it. It could be the start of college life, a new job, relationships and so much more. It can be scary, exciting, emotional and sometimes unwanted but we all go through it. Here is one tool that helps me deal with change especially when times look dark and your life appears out of control:

Zooming out - In your mind, imagine the zooming out tool you use for picture editing. Now scroll your mental mouse and zoom out of your life. Feel yourself floating away from your body and looking at yourself from the sky. You are surrounded by circles of time, each a year in diameter. Now try to find the situation you are currently facing. It is probably a small dot somewhere in the circle of your present. A dot that you can stretch into a line and make it cross several of your circles of life if you continue to repent on the unfavorable situation, or a dot that you can ignore and move on to the limitless boundaries that you have yet to cross.

Soon enough you will realize that your mind is what creates the problems and only your mind has the power to fix them.