The people pleasers

- Are you the type of person whose worth of self is neatly tied to how others perceive you? 

- Are you constantly troubled by questions such as whether you are the perfect son or daughter or mother or sister or the perfect employee?

- Do you frequently see yourself going overboard in planning for actions/events to prevent their outcome from being discomforting to others?

- Do you prefer to always work extra to prevent a situation where people might be unhappy with you?

- Are you willing to let go of personal comforts if you get to learn that it might inconvenience others (even people unrelated to you) ?

- Are you filled in with a sense of guilt/regret if others are bothered/troubled by your actions?

If the answer to all these questions is a resounding "yes" then welcome aboard, people pleaser :). If the answer to most (and not all) is a "yes", then you still are a people pleaser although at a lower scale.Trust me, it feels good to be doing good for others but it should not always be that way. Compared to normal people, people pleasers have a greater degree of empathy. Hence their actions are largely driven with consideration for others first. It is an excellent quality to have. Certainly the world would be a much better place if every one spent the additional second evaluating what impact his/her action might have on other people. Imagine if the person driving on the wrong side of the road understood what great incovenience it is to others.

People Pleasers are, of course, not the kind that would ever drive on the wrong side of the road. That would be sacrilegious; not to mention hugely embarassing for the lofty standards of morality they have set themselves against. It is all very good to be empathetic, compassionate and considerate. Jesus, Buddha and Shri Ram would be proud of  such qualities. The problem with most people pleaser is that they comfort others at great personal inconvenience because of the high moral fiber ingrained in them through a puritanical unbringing and their notion that doing wrong to others should be met with punitive repercussions. Being unpleasant to others is unaccetable to them. As a result, they often end up being the victim as their mangnanimity is not always commensurately reciprocated with through appreciation - an important parameter for them to evaluate their self worth. They end up being unfair to their own self and it is here that they lose the plot. A lack of strong value of self prevents them from evaluating a strong life goal. Instead they become scattered all over the place.

It is critical for people pleaser to infuse a strong element of self worth. It is important for them to realize that it is okay to say "No" once in a while if it is not possible to be super human. It also helps others to value their help more than to take them as individuals who are forever willing to help. 

I know people pleasers find it hard to change. It has forever been their nature to be helping and it fills them with some degree of guilt to turn down others. In an ideal world (and I do hope we reach a stage) where everyone becomes happy thinking about  and acting towards the well being of others, people pleasers will lead the charge and others will learn from them but till that happens, people pleasers stand to offer greater help to the world by treating themselves at par with the beneficiary of their magnanimity

And for others who did not identify with being a people pleaser, take it easy - it takes a lot to be classified as one !

Being Cheerful

Hello Everyone,

If you are reading this, chances are that you might very well have come across the more trending concepts of “Mindfulness” and “Heartfulness”. I am not export to delve too deep into these ideas ( this blog is meant for another idea), but they emphasise on that advantages of applying your mind and heart, respectively, to whatever it is that you are doing at a particular moment. Mind and Heart are two entirely different entities when it comes to spirituality so , may be, we will go through this in another blog at a different time

I want to write about an idea which we manifested as kids so often and which hasn’t just evolved in recent times - “Cheerfulness”. Even for those with difficult childhoods, there were large swathes of time for laughter and play, for those cheers of joy and excitement when with friends your age. It came to us so naturally and rightly so.

As we aged, the world led us into believing that there were responsibilities that would first need to be completed before one could afford to be cheerful. It was almost as if cheerfulness needed to be earned and not spent as was the case in our younger days. The pressures of responsibilities, the need to deliver on worldly expectations weighed on and cheerfulness receded to the background

Dark clouds of worry and tension due to fear for the future surfaced requiring more and more of men’s attention to “pay attention” to these worrying signs lest the future may turn dark. Alas, the cruel irony went unnoticed ; that the more you focussed on your worries the more they expanded and before you knew you were surrounded by worries which you feel were insurmountable. Depression followed for many and nothing seemed to offer redemption from this gloomy worrisome life

This is where one needs to beckon cheerfulness. It is like the sun peeking through the cloudy weather offering the glimmer of hope that there is a way out of the darkness one has attracted. Cheerfulness is not a war you wage against worry, it is much like an understanding granny that tells the neurotic grandchild, “worry”, “look beta take it easy; there is nothing that you can achieve by being a narcissist and fixating on yourself. Allow me to play with you for just that little bit”

Worrying takes the vitality out of your life. The little things you enjoyed such as spending time with your son, going for the morning jog, listening to your mother narrating stories of yesteryear’s seem to offer much less happiness at times of worry than at other times. Cheerfulness is NOT to deliberately force a laughter when you are tensed but to let you know what you don’t have to keep worrying about an issue 24/7 that there are are other equally important things to make you happy. After all, life is about being happy, isn’t it? You have to allow for the first rays of cheerfulness to shine through from behind the dark clouded of worry. You will then begin the see worries receding ever so slightly and as you keep loving your life giving equal importance to things that make you happy, the rays of cheerfulness become stronger dispelling the mythical clouds of worry. The external situation did not change, you changed something within you, something that told you that fixating on the worry was like offering it an open invitation to sit on the couch at your living room messing up your life.

Cheerfulness was your true nature. That’s what you were blessed with when born, why trade it for something the less informed world has forced upon you. As Guruji said, “stop worrying, hop, skip and dance”- that will help !

My Journey on the spiritual path - How it started!

It has been quite some time since I have penned down my thoughts in this blog. It is not that I have not been spiritually connected all this while. The last few years have taken me evermore into the deep jungles of the discovery of one’s self. As I reflect on this journey, I am inclined to think what really started it. I remember I used to be quite religious when I was much younger. I always used to pray to God for good grades in school and apologize to him for when I thought I had committed a mistake. Years rolled on and I had started to get more entrenched in worldly affairs learning incorrect life principles and moving far and far away from the source, so much so that for a good length of bout three years I had doubted the existence of anything supernatural (a directing force).

Then while working at my first job after MBA back in 2014, a colleague of mine (spiritually inclined himself) had predicted that I would someday walk the path of spirituality and progress on it quite satisfactorily. He had asked me to read the book “Many masters many lives” by Brian L. Weiss who many people believe was the premier authority on past life regression therapy continuing up to this day. For starters, past life regression in like hypnosis therapy albeit more intense in which you are put into a deep state of relaxation which helps you access your deep states of consciousness, several instances of which are from lives before this present life of yours. The fact that the writer was himself a non-believer in past lives but through clinically designed methods was able to help his patients undergo these deep states revealing information which led to their healing led me into believing into the super natural once again. How else would you make sense of lives beyond your present material self? There has got to be something “non-material” to carry consciousness from one life into another. I would encourage all to buy a copy of this book. It is quite a read. Enthralling and making you question your deep seated believes about materialism.

I am a slow reader so it took me some time to finish the book (a few weeks, I think) but it really helped open my mind up to possibilities other than what we experience in our day to day live. I wanted to read more books of this kind. A few from the same author such as “Only Love is real” and “Same Soul many bodies”. As I read these, I became more and more disenchanted with the belief I held that the life we live presently is the only one and that everything comes to an end after death. More so, it resurrected by belief that Love is the essence of life and is the only reality. Since then I joined Maitribodh (a socio-spiritual organization) (www.maitribodh.org)  under the guidance of Guruji “Dadashreeji” and it has been a lovely journey. I will write more about this journey of mine in another post. For those that have tumbled upon this post accidentally or because I sent you the link for it 😊, I would like to share the names of a few more books that have been excellent reads while starting or reinforcing your belief in spirituality. Note my words “reinforcing”; the material world and our set patterns of living will always make you question the spiritual path that you plan to take

-          “Three waves of volunteers and the new Earth” by Dolores Cannon

-          “The laws of the spirit world” by Khorshed Bhavnagri

-          “An autobiography of a Yogi” by Swami Paramhansa Yogananda

-          “Love is not an emotion” by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

-          “Silence” by Thich Naht Hanh

-          “The Holy Science” by Sri Yukteswar Giri

-          “Dying to  be me” by Anita Moorjani

-          “Coming home to Lemuria” by Charmian Redwood

-          “Memories of heaven” by Dr. Wayne W Dyer

Miracles are the norm

Miracles are the norm

It wasn't long ago that I looked at life as a burden. It was as if i was living in a pressure cooker and the entire world conspired to make my life miserable. I would often compare myself with other more successful (whatever that means to you) and rue the thought that I have never been as lucky as they have been. An unchecked ambition made it worse. I was aiming for the sky and set backs weren't acceptable.

It was a life that lacked love. I was considerate, though. I would not naturally hurt people to move ahead. But I would complaint about things that didn't go well and began to believe that I was born unlucky and desperately wished my problems to go away without confronting them. I was turning into a big ball of negativity of anger, frustration and disappointment

Things changed in October 2015 and the few months before it. Events happened which made me realize that what I have, needs to be valued and it isn't meant to be taken for granted. That there were others far less fortunate and yet more happy and that something inside me would need to change

It was in October 2015 where I, seated, among a host of other devotees seeking the true meaning of life at Premgiri Ashram, was told "kamiyan hum mein hain aur hum saari duniya ko dosh dete rehte hain" (the fault may lie within us, we should stop blaming the world and circumstances for our situation) The message was simple, yet powerful. It was not like I had not heard this before. But it was for the first time that I listened and had great faith that these words had the key for internal transformation. Why should anything have to change externally? My perception can and with it I can find inner peace in what could externally be seen as pressing circumstances

I have begun to see more reason in certain happenings. That there are things beyond my control and that I could still be happy and thankful for what I have. I do not have to be very rich and that inner contentment made me wealthy enough. That I do not have to blame myself every time things go wrong and the realization and I am an inseparable part of this loving universe, that it cared for me and didn't conspire to make me sad

This change in perception has made life easier. There is more acceptance in me and I have begun to see "miracles" happen in simple things. A miracle is not when you are able to walk on water but when you are sure of missing the last metro train and the doors remain open for those 5 extra seconds so you can board the train, when you find support from unexpected quarters in a difficult work situation, when you check a whats-app message from a long forgotten friend mentioning that he/she misses you, when you rather surprisingly do not scream at a person driving on the wrong side of the road  and yes, it is when you accidentally discover a 100 rupee note in your trousers after a while. The universe always conspires to make these miracles possible. You need to keep your hearts open to be able to realize these are indeed playing out

Miracles are regular laws working out in the astral plain. They are very much within the laws of this word. I see these miracles happening every day in my life and I wonder when the next one is due. They are the norm - not the exception

Dadasharnam

Love is Nature's true Nature

A lovely Sunday morning I and woke up feeling nice and calm. A couple of ours later, my friend sent me this picture which he claims he clicked while out on walk at Mehsana, Gujarat. A puppy (slightly grown up I would think) in the lap a semi grown calf with its head wrapped around it. Their eyes are closed as they lie around each other in calm embrace - in a state of perfect acceptance - just the way nature would want it.

They belong to completely different species and yet it did not stop them from expressing their love for one another. It is a rare sight indeed. I am hopeful this become a norm!

I am sure we as humans can rise above our differences and extend our warm embraces since Love is the true nature of Nature

Living in the "Now"

     How often have you been troubled by thoughts of events in the past or worries about what shall happen in the future? Chances are all the time. Now, I am no expert on why it should happen but if you were to read the book "The Mindful reader", Michael Bunting states that man in genetically or evolution-based predisposed to worry about his own safety since in the early stages of evolution the threat to survival was significant. The reason for this could be more spiritual as in its quest to remain happy, man has devised many new forms of "entertainment" and has therefore lost the ability to remain at peace with himself - something which perhaps the past generations were able to do.

     I have read many a book and heard gurus including my own (who I hold in great reverence) about the necessity and the benefits of living in the present. Living in the presence is the essence of living life as it gives one the opportunity of living in the way it is meant to be - through the heart without over complicating it. It gives us the opportunity for us to respond to situations in the most natural ways. Above all, it frees us from incessant thoughts about the past and present and makes us relaxed and judge a situation for what it is and not what it has been thought to be based on preconceived notions 

     I have always been a constant worrier (Read "worrier" and not "Warrier" :)) I have always been inclined to worry, think and plan things so as not to be in for a surprise any time. Turns out this has always left my mind filled with thoughts (not always negative) almost all the time. I am mentally fatigued with these thoughts. With my mind pre-occupied I feel I am busy and with no time for some of the good work which I might want to do (writing this blog, reading a book, talk to family, read up on developments in the tech world, Meditate, etc). Very little gets done as I live in my fictitious world of past and future without living in the moment. In the earthly sphere my productively goes down and I end up as a man living his life through worried rather than ability to react in the most natural way

     Now here is something people reading this need to understand well. Living in the present does not mean you do not plan at all. It certainly does not mean not preparing for the exam a few days ahead or a presentation which you may have in your office. It means to stop worrying about events in the past which have already happened or events in the future, since the outcome of those you do not have a control over. For instance with an office presentation a few days ahead, living in the present helps me to give my 100% into making the presentation without worrying about a disappointing presentation in the past or how my manager is going to frame an opinion of it in the future. It also does not mean being unduly excited about the presentation you are making now based on successful past presentations or living in the happiness of you manager saying "Good Job, buddy" in the future without the event having even happened.
It means remaining objective, balanced and happy in the present - thinking about the now, reacting to the situation in the most natural fashion unadulterated by worries of the past and present. WOW! Just as I am writing it, I feel so relaxed - Living in the moment is awesome.

    Is there a way we can be pratice living in the present? To be honest, it is not always easy since our mind keeps pushing us to the past an future. You may keep telling yourself to live in the present but sometimes this voluntary push may not be strong enough to convinve your worried mind to just live in the moment. That is where breath watching/meditation helps. "Pranayama" is key to all meditation techniques and it should be practised on a daily basis. Watch your breath go in and out at a measured pace. Watching the essential lifeforce go in and out and living through it helps you live in the present. I have heard a number of people say that they have not been able to concentrate hence they do not meditate. Well, it is meant to be just the opposite. You meditate to be able to train your mind to be able to concentrate. Your controls are sharpened by constant attempts to meditate. It is somewhat like working out in the gym. You keep at it - till you are able to enter the state of silent splendour. Your mind then begins to fall in line. It begins to stop itself from taking frequent flights to unwarranted territories :).

Don't allow your past or future to unreasonably affect your present!!

Being Grateful

    Have we been grateful enough in our lives? This is one question not many of us ask ourselves? Our external surroundings have made our disposition so ambitious that we are always left wanting for 'More'. Never quite satisfied with what we have or what we have 'achieved'. Dissatisfaction leads to us complaining about things that we don't have without being grateful for what we already have.

    I belonged to the breed of people who were forever dissatisfied with all that I was blessed with. I have a wonderful family (a big one - so there is always something to do :)). I had great education, landed up with a fairly good job, was able to mould myself to the environment which required me to have a certain type of living and just so much more. All of this I took for granted. I was always left comparing myself with others who I perceived were luckier than I was. Never quite content. Never quite happy.

    As it happens with many of us, we don't tend to realize the value of things till they happen to leave us. I had some such sort of realization in the middle of 2015 when the things I took for granted began to leave me for a while. I complained again thinking how unfortunate I have been and that nature has been particularly unfair to me as it had been all along. This went on for a while till realization began to dawn on me. Have I been grateful to nature, to God for all the things I have had? Never really.

My past just threw at me images of constant complaints and great dissatisfaction. Anger and frustration towards why I have not been luckier. There are so may less fortunate and they seem happier - simply because they are so thankful for what they have. And why shouldn't one be? It isn't in nature's nature to see one of its part (which is you) sad. So it will bless you will all that you 'Need' (may not be with all that you 'Want'). There will be a few course corrections where your mind may make you think you have been left alone but hey - it is for you to get better.

    The path to this realization was abrupt. But I am glad I had it. I have been happier on account of this. Less whining. Less frustrated. More willing to help than being subsumed under my perceived lack of fortune and yes - more willing to pass on the message that others should be thankful as well

    Now here is another question - Who should we be grateful to? Well - just about everybody and everything. To mother nature - first of all or to that everlasting force who you think is the provider.

   I am a firm believer in the idea that get what we make of ourselves and the world around. Discontent begets more discontent. And satisfaction attracts more satisfaction. Just willing to be grateful and agreeing to be satisfied makes you feel more and more content. It may or may not make you have things you 'Want' to be satisfied but for sure you will be provided with things that you 'Need' to be satisfied. Satisfaction cannot be conditioned upon. It automatically comes when we accept things and are grateful for what we have

    Many might thing that it is just that ran into a bunch of troubles which has led me to becoming a "defeatist" in giving in to nature rather than fight for more. My surrender to nature has been a victory for me. It has helped made me calmer and more clear as to the way I should progress. I do not have to fight for more. With a clearer mind I am able to walk the path which will help me continue getting what I need. It never is a war against circumstances - but a willingness to accept them and then walk the right path

    The world will be a better place if people are more content than desiring for more. There has been no magic wand for me to be content. The mind keeps wanting for more - it continues to challenge me to keep thinking about the 'More' than being happy with the present. More often than not I realize that I am not able to achieve the 'More' because I am just too troubled thinking about the 'More'. Being content and grateful just allows me to see things more clearly. It isn't an epiphany but a constant attempt to keep understanding that your present is beautiful. Happiness then begins to dawn naturally - that is the nature of nature

- Dadasharnam