Are You Learning?

 

We have an opportunity to learn at every moment, in every situation and from everyone around us. Thomas A. Harris, an American author & screenwriter in his bestselling book “I’m OK, You're OK”has narrated 4 situations of human interactions as follows:

 

1. I am not OK, You are OK. Normally a child interacts in this way with parent. 

2. I am OK, You are not OK. Normally parent communicates with a child in this way. 

3. I am OK, You are OK. Normally an adult interact with another adult in this way. 

4. I am not OK, You are not OK. A child may interact with another child in this way. 

 

One learns best when he/she behaves like a child or student. Whenyou behave like a parent, you stop learning. Learning is possible only when you think that your pot is still empty. When you have an ego that you know all and you need not learn anything, you start sliding down in knowledge and wisdom. 

 

There are 2 ways to learn:

1. To learn from others failures and successes. 

2. To learn from own failures and successes. 

 

Wise person will use 1st option more than 2nd option because 1st option is the most easy and economical. However, when we learn through 2nd option, it may be time consuming and expensive but it is ever-lasting. In 2nd option one has to go through lot of pain andbut that makes learning more effective. 

 

Learning is not enough if it is not applied. Application of knowledge is wisdom. Learning lies between ignorance and wisdom. Learning can be about professional skill or personal attitude but important is that one continues learning till his/her last breath. 

 

5 signs of a lifelong learner:

 

1. Learners are good listeners. They talk less & listen more. 

2. Learners are inquisitive and question more. 

3. Mostly the good readers are good learners also. 

4. Learners are open to criticism. They have fewer egos. 

5. Learners are adventurous. 

 

 

Are you Fearless?

 

In India, CA (Chartered Accountant) is the only profession where students cannot predict their result and score with certainty. I recallmy exam days during late 1970’s, when our exam used to start at 10 am and I used to stop studying at 9am and listen local radio Vividh Bharati. My most of the friends studied till last minute. When they asked how come I used to be so relaxed, my reply would be “Institute of CA at the most will fail me.” If today I analyze my thought process, the reason for that calmness was that I used to think what worse can happen and accept the worst without much of the pain. 

 

Top 10 most strong fears in order of their intensity are as follows:

1. Fear of Failure

2. Fear of Death

3. Fear of Rejection

4. Fear of Criticism

5. Fear of Loneliness

6. Fear of Misery

7. Fear of Disappointment

8. Fear of Illness

9. Fear of Unknown

10. Fear of Losing Freedom

 

Since fear is always about the future outcome, most of the time it is imaginary and psychological rather than logical. Fear leads to worry. Few fears may be genetic but most of the fears we learn during our nurturing, from parents, teachers, fellow students and surroundings. For example, Indian mothers may not allow their children to go nearwater and learn swimming whereas western mothers teach & put their 1 year old child in sea water for swimming. 

 

5 tips to become fearless:

 

1. Actions are in our control. Result gets affected by lot of unforeseen forces so focus on action but do not worry about results. 

2. Imagine what worst can happen and plan for that situation accordingly.

3. The best way to overcome fear is to “FACE IT” with confidence in mind and smile on the face. Fear will evaporate. 

4. Align your thoughts, words and actions. That will make your character strong. People who never do any wrong to others are most fearless. 

5. Ultimate fearless situation is when neither pleasure nor pain affects you. Such type of state is achieved by people like Lord Mahavira and Lord Buddha.

Control Your Senses

Once a motivational speaker placed one dot on a blank chart and asked everyone, what they can see. Everyone answered - a dot. Amusingly, you can see the small dot but not the emptiness on paper, he said. It's like few people see half glass as half full and some view it as half empty. Our 5 senses - eyes, ears, nose, tongue and touch are always at work. What you see, hear, smell, taste and touch gets converted into feelings and they are transmitted to mind.  When they are analyzed by our conscious mind they stay in our sub-conscious mind. 

 

When two people see the same thing, there is a difference in their perception level. Different people perceive the same situation differently based on their education, background, experience, upbringing, knowledge etc.  At this point it is relevant to recall the story of blind students and elephant as narrated in ancient Buddhist literature. Few blind students who had never seen and heard about elephant went into forest and found an elephant. Every blind person touched the different body parts of elephant and described elephant in their own way. Jainism also described it as ANEKANTAVAD doctrine of pluralism which explains that even the truth is perceived differently by different people based on their view points. 

 

Our view point lies on the scale of highly negative thought at one end and highly positive thought on the other end. Here it is important to keep your needle towards the side of positive thoughts. As a human being it is quite natural that our thoughts may drift to negativity but we need to monitor & control our mind continuously to bring all senses and feelings towards positivity. Till we attainenlightenment, it is a continuous process to keep the horses of senses under control. 

 

Someone has said, “What you sense, it becomes your feelings, feelings get converted into thoughts, thoughts becomes words, words get converted into action, action becomes habits, habit forms character and your character becomes your destiny.  So control your senses, they make your destiny. 

 

5 tips how to control senses: 

 

1. Always be very conscious of your senses. Either your mind will control your senses or senses will start controlling your mind. 

2. It is a natural tendency of senses to drift. Not to worry, you can get back towards positive side. 

3. Reading good books or listening to motivational speeches helps in enhancing wisdom. In-turn they control senses effectively. 

4. Do not feel guilty about negative thoughts, words or action. Past is not important, future is critical.

5. It is easy to control action, difficult to control words and very difficult to control thoughts. Deal accordingly. 

 

 

 

You Can Win!

Given a chance, would you attempt a task where the chance of success is 1 out of 300 million? Only insane will say YES. But, do you know that all of us have already attempted and succeeded too. Even after release of 300 sperms, probability of single sperm reaching an egg is exceptional and so the birth of a Human Life.

 50 years ago people lived in joint families and there used to be a line of children living under one roof and struggling for limited resources. During last 2-3 decades, scenario has changed drastically. Mostly there are nuclear families with 1 or 2 children, raised in most possible comfortable situation. Hence the realization of need to struggle for survival is very low. Science & Technology is making life as easy and comfortable as possible. The effect of this is - we are reducing our strengths (physical and mental both) to deal with unexpected/ out-of-the-blue situations. The stress level is increasing and we are developing all sorts of stress related diseases.

 Barring few, everyone is facing tough situation at some point of time in our life. The problems may be related to health, money or relationships. Due to weak immune power, small problems also appear as big as mountain and we lose happiness & peace of mind very quickly. So, make yourself physically and emotionally strong to face any situation and do not live in the illusion that your good time will last forever. If it lasts, treat yourself lucky. If you can win among 300 million, you have immense potential to win any battle of life! It’s just that you have to realize your true potential.

 5 tips to realize your potential: 

1. Remember you born as one among 300 million. Your genes have capability to survive & win.

2. Your own negative thoughts reduce your potential than anyone else. 

3. You cannot change your genes but you have infinite capability to change your environment and circumstances. 

4. Do not compare and compete with others. Competition limits your capabilities. 

5. Continuously think and act for growth. It is our basic nature to grow. 

Dilute Poison Within

Dilute Poison Within

As per Hindu Mythology, Gods and Demons once churned the ocean of milk to obtain nectar. While extracting nectar, lot of poison surfaced up. To save the world from the effect of poison, Lord Shiva consumed the poison & hence he is also called as Neelkantha. In this contemporary world, lot of poison is being created around us. This poison may be in the form of greed, jealousy, anger, ego etc. 

There can be 2 causes of this evil spread. One that people have against us and another that we have against others. There can be 2 reasons for people having spite against us. First is that they do not support our words and actions and second is they are jealous of our prosperity. For second reason you are helpless but you can control your words and actions in such a manner that people have minimum grudges against you. What people think about usis not in our control. But what we give them to think about us is in our control. When you cannot change thoughts of people just ignore and do not pollute your thoughts otherwise you will be accumulating unnecessary toxins in your mind and body.

The worst toxin is the one we gather against others without any awareness about other person. This happens mainly due to our ego, greed and jealousy. It gets accumulating and one day with little trigger it comes out as ugly vomit which spoils our relationship as well as our peace of mind. Our all efforts should aim towards zero accumulation of such malevolence in our mind. However, being a human being it may not be possible to have nil ego, greed and jealousy. But the key is to keep on diluting such thoughts regularly so they never get concentrated so as to avoid their venomous outburst. 

 

5 tips to handle poison within:

1. At the end of the day, recall your thoughts/feelings and try to find what negatives you think about others.

2. Put yourself in other person's shoes and try to understand from his point of view. Chances are that your negative thoughts will dilute considerably.

3. In case you have developed greed or jealousy towards someone, analyze the reasons for the same and try to replace with positive thoughts.

4. If someone had hurt you without your fault, rather than developing ill feeling for the same person, plan to have one to one interaction to clarify the matter.

5. Forget and forgive is the best mantra to deal with negative feelings towards others.

 

बिना विचारे मत रखो, जहर किसी के नाम।

जहर जमा करना नहीं, मन-उपवन का काम।।

http://www.hemantlodha.com/dilute-poison-within/

Share Feelings Selectively

Share Feelings Selectively. 

 

I read somewhere that one should not share his/her pain or problemwith the people always. Because 50% people are not interested in your problems and the rest are happy to see you in pain/problem. This compels me to think whether one should share his/herpleasures or not. Because 50% people may not be interested in your pleasures and rest may get jealous with you. 

 

In the era of social media this question has become more pertinent whether one should share his/her pains/pleasure or not. Many a times we accept totally unknown persons as our friends on Facebook and other networking sites. And sometimes we even share insignificant matters in public. And people who have never seen you hit like buttons or comment on it, which seems that it is just an artificial show of happiness or concern. 

 

Research shows that in-general men are hesitant to share their pain as compared to women but are liberal to show off their pleasure. The reason is probably men are more target oriented and as soon as they achieve their goal they like to disclose to entire world. And they prefer to hide their pain because that would expose their weakness. Whereas women are more emotion oriented and empathetic which makes them share pain or pleasure irrespective of differences of opinion. 

 

In olden days, they believed that if you share your sorrow it becomes half and if you share your pleasure it gets doubled. But is it still relevant in a world where people are jealous with your progress and secretly happy for your pains? It’s really difficult to conclude!However, I would like to give my personal views about sharing of pain and pleasure in following tips.

 

5 tips about sharing of pain and pleasure:

 

1. Share the pain with genuinely closed people. Share with those who really care for you or have capability to reduce the same. 

2. Share the pleasure in as humble manner as possible. 

3. Remember that pain and pleasure both have short duration. With the passing of time, either it becomes irrelevant or pain may get converted into pleasure or pleasure may get converted into pain. Too much demonstration of both is not good. 

4. Use your emotional intelligence while sharing pain or pleasure. Time, person and circumstance should be taken into considerationbefore sharing. 

5. Public demonstration of both should be minimized. 

 

Nothing is Ugly

Human is the only creature on earth that uses his mind and intellect to judge & experience the things, plants, animals and other human beings. If you believe in the God and trust everything that is created by him then judging anyone/anything ugly is blaming the God. He has created everything unique but our ignorance makes decision on the basis of an outer beauty. If we like, we appreciate. If we do not like, we hate. 

 

It is our senses that decide our likes and dislikes. Our senses are slave of our genes, upbringing, education and experiences. So the ugliness is not in the things or beings but ugliness lies within. When someone asked Dalai Lama, What is love? he said “Love is absence of judgment”. Judgment leads to liking and disliking, love and hate. Stop judging and start accepting the things and beings as they are and not as you like them to be. 

 

5 Tips how to stop judging:

 

1. Be conscious about your senses, mind and intellect. As soon as you start judging, control it. 

2. Try to look beyond looks. You will see usefulness in everything. 

3. Everything is unique. Nothing is bad and ugly. 

4. Being a human being sometimes it will not be possible to control your mind and intellect but at least control your words and actions to express your bad opinions. 

5. Keep enhancing your knowledge and wisdom by reading and listening to wise people.

Nurture Natural Talent

Once upon a time God decided to conduct competition among all the things he created so far. Various things, plants, animals and human being came forward to participate. The first competition was for the Best Smell. Sandal-wood won the competition because it didn’t lose its amazing smell inspite of rubbing till end. The second competition was for the Best Taste. Sugarcane won the competition because it didn’t lose its sweet taste inspite of all twist and turns. Last competition was for the Best Appearance. Gold won the competition because it didn’t lose its shine inspite of continuous heating.

When God called all the three objects to give away the prize, he found that all of them were sad. He asked all of them for their reason of sadness. Sandal wood said, “God you gave me the best smell of universe, but didn’t bestow me any taste or beautiful appearance.” Sugar cane said, “God you gave me best taste, but neither smell nor good appearance.” Gold said, “God you gave me best appearance but neither gave any taste nor any smell.” God smiled and said, “I have all the 3 qualities, what you individually have. I have given one of my best qualities to you. You are supposed to maintain what is bestowed upon you and be happy.”

 The man was standing and witnessing the entire event. He asked the God, “Sir you have given one specific quality to every creature. What about me? What is my inherent quality?” God said, “My son, you are unique! Objects, plants and animals of same type are similar in nature but every human being is unique. I have given you the mind and intellect to find that unique quality and continuously explore and flourish the same. However, humanity is the common quality I have granted to every human.” Humanity is defined as compassion, fellow feeling, brotherly love, empathy, benevolence, generosity, magnanimity etc.

5 tips to flourish your uniqueness. 

1.  Find out what you are best at. If not able to, take help of experts.

2. Parents and teachers have a greater responsibility to find out uniqueness of child. Flourish/ grow and refine it. 

3. Focus on that unique quality and invest your time and energy to make it continuously better. 

4. Whatever you do and wherever you reach, never leave humanity. 

5. People may criticize you for the qualities or abilities you are not good at, just ignore them.