Category: Self-growth

So, what are you addicted to?


“People often expect different results from doing the same   actions” – Alcoholics Anonymous

When we think about addiction, the first image that crosses our mind is that of someone addicted to alcohol, tobacco, gambling or drugs. However, addiction includes any form of fixation, obsession or habitual indulgence in an activity. So much so that when addicted, we cannot resist this indulgence despite being aware of its injurious impact. While in some cases this dependence on a substance or an activity is apparently physical, in most situations it’s essentially a psychological one.

Addiction starts with our initially flirting with the substance or the activity, mainly to enhance our mood at that moment or seek some momentary pleasure. However, with frequent flirtation, this indulgence becomes a habit – one that we find difficult to live without. All the same, overtime, once we get addicted, engaging in this fixation merely serves to make us feel normal.

Many more of us are addicted than we know.
Addiction then includes any uncontrolled obsession that we have – for example, for food, sweets, watching television, work, shopping, buying latest gadgets, facebook, or loveless sex. It refers to any deeper emotional dependency that we develop to feel good. While some of these may be less harmful than the others, they all have  a significant negative impact on us. Defined this way, I feel we all are perhaps guilty of multiple addictions. Furthermore, while many of us escape the more visible addictions, we do get caught up with our own set of inner demons. Our recurring stream of thoughts and feelings about stuff- routinely getting anxious about situations, our persistent desire to control outcomes and the volatility of our temperament that we find challenging to moderate- are all examples of a compulsive behavior.

To my mind, all these are addictive patterns we live with, but are ignorant of, for the most part. These instinctive responses get so ingrained in our state of being that we…

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Posted by Rajiv Vij | Personal mastery, Self-growth | 1 Comment

Are You Following Your Calling?


I have written in previous posts about the issue of a growing lack of meaning in our life. Specifically, I would like to highlight in this post the role our choice of work and professional pursuits play in contributing to the level of fulfillment we experience in life.

How do we choose our profession? We decide it based on whatever offers the best mix of career prospects, financial rewards, status, security and challenge in the overall context of our skills. Why are so many people not that happy with their work then?

A variety of research reveals the lurking sense of dissatisfaction among a large proportion of the employee workforce. A leading indicator of this is the level of employee engagement in the workplace. Towers Perrin, a leading employee research and consulting firm, found only 17% of 35,000 employees surveyed as ‘highly engaged’; studying over 20,000 diverse employees, Harris Interactive concluded that only 37% of the employees had a clear understanding of what their organization was trying to achieve and why and only one in five was enthusiastic about their team’s and organization’s goals.

While the leaders of the organizations have a role to play in correcting this dismal situation, through greater empowerment, creating opportunities for greater learning and growth, better matching employees’ skills and jobs, and employing a more of a coaching style to leadership, this state is a reflection of the prevailing confusion at the individual employee level. Either we are in a job that doesn’t match our skills or we are pursuing it for the wrong reasons. Lacking clarity about the core purpose of our professional life, we are easily swayed by what seems like a popular ladder to climb. For example, with disregard to their real interest or aptitude, we have hordes of MBAs chasing investment banking or consulting jobs. Looking out for quick success, individuals are then disappointed at any pace of personal growth that’s slower than expectation.Besides, attuned to…

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Posted by Rajiv Vij | Leadership, Self-growth | 5 Comments

Did You Love Enough?


The last couple of months have been a real trying time for my family and me. However, they have also been a source of receiving a wonderful lesson in life. During these weeks, I lost my mum-in-law, who I dearly loved. As she received treatment in Singapore, she spent the last five weeks of her life with us. The initial shock of her sudden diagnosis of a lethal cancer, and later, losing her within weeks of diagnosis, despite our best efforts to get her treated, have left my wife, her family and me distraught. Strangely enough, despite the emotional turmoil, there’s been a certain amount of peace and strength within all of us. As we reconcile to this irreparable loss, we have been reflecting on the entire crisis and searching for the lessons it offered us. While there are many lessons to be learnt from this experience, I would like to share what I felt was the most important one for me.

As her serious illness engulfed our lives, numerous questions flooded our minds. Besides wondering about why after leading such a loving and meaningful life, she has to experience this early and difficult end, what disturbed us most was the coming face to face with the meaning of life and questions around what remains of a person and their life’s actions in the end. The consistent answer we received was what sustains life, and what sustains after life, is purely love. Despite the challenges of the situation, somehow we were all quite calm, positive and strong all through. Besides our meditation practice, I believe it was really the strength of our love that gave us this special strength during this troubled time. The tender moments all of us had the privilege to spend with her in her last days were truly special. It was the depth of our love that held the family together and made those short five weeks so precious. It is also the anchor of love and compassion that is now slowly beginning to provide the…

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Posted by Rajiv Vij | Relationships, Self-growth | 6 Comments

Meditation III: Joy of Mindfulness


In continuation of my last two posts on meditation, here’s the final one focused on mindfulness. Mindfulness meditations relate to the practice of being present and becoming aware of true nature of things – our own real identity and that of the world around us. While there are any number of specific approaches connected with mindfulness, they can largely be categorized as Concentration meditation and Mindfulness meditation.

The Concentration meditation techniques require focusing single-mindedly on an object, a mantra, or often the breath. Concentrating in this way stills the mind and sharpens its focus, facilitating a deeper clarity and fresh awareness to emerge. Further, staying close with the rhythmic nature of the breathing process has a calming effect on the mind. Breath is always in the present, we are only breathing the current breath never the last or the next one. Thus, focusing our attention on the breath helps us be in the present, without getting caught up in the drama of the past or the future. This not only relaxes our body and mind, it also creates space for new awareness to appear. As we recognize the depth and potential of the present moment, the empowering nature of that feeling enhances our inner strength. Breath is also the connection between our body, mind and the universe and observing it provides us new insights into the connection between our mental and physical states. The moment to moment profile of the breath can be a great reflection of our shifting mental states – when we are angry, anxious, or agitated, the breath becomes quicker, shallower and inconsistent; when we are calm and relaxed, the breath becomes slower, deeper and more consistent. Observing the breath thus automatically brings us in closer touch with our inner states of mind. Lastly, practicing this technique over time can significantly raise the level of our concentration in any given moment, resulting in greater focus and…

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Posted by Rajiv Vij | Self-growth, Spiritual | 2 Comments

Meditation II: Power of Visualization


“The greatest discovery of the 19th century was not in the realm of the physical sciences, but the power of the subconscious mind touched by faith. Any individual can tap into an eternal reservoir of power that will enable them to overcome any problem that may arise. All weaknesses can be overcome, bodily healing, financial independence, spiritual awakening, and prosperity beyond your wildest dreams. This is the superstructure of happiness.” – William James, Harvard Psychologist, the Father of American Psychology

In the last post, I had attempted to highlight the salient aspects of meditation as well as briefly introduced two broad techniques, namely visualization and mindfulness. In this post, I would like to expand on the visualization techniques – specifically, the theory behind them, examples of their successes, and some practical approaches.

Visualization techniques have been used to great results by many. Tiger Woods uses visualization to picture the exact trajectory of the shot he wants to make and then lets his mind relax (in a manner, get the mind out of the way) and let his body automatically perform the actions to imitate the picture. It is believed that Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel with a similar approach. Einstein, who supposedly demonstrated limited potential at school, suggested that his theory of relativity came less so from a deep knowledge of physics and mathematics and more so from his ability to imagine and conduct ‘thought experiments’. In an interesting research, Soviet sports scientists studied the impact of mental training, particularly including visualization, on four different groups of elite athletes before the 1980 Olympics – group 1 doing 100% physical training, group 2 – 75% physical and 25% mental training, group 3 – 50% physical and 50% mental, and group 4 – 25% physical and 75% mental training. The results were truly amazing – group 4 that did the most mental training, fared the best, while group 3 did better than 2 and so forth. Louise Hay, famous for her books on healing, rid herself of cervical cancer…

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Posted by Rajiv Vij | Self-growth, Spiritual | 3 Comments

Meditation: An Introduction


Photo by h.koppdelaney

I have been writing about the relevance of the journey of self-awareness and personal mastery – a journey that requires us to better understand and work with our personal emotional, mental and spiritual make-up. Among the various psychological and spiritual growth tools that can support us in this journey, many people find meditation to be one of the most effective ones. In that context, I thought of writing this blog piece to briefly introduce some key facets of meditation, its benefits, and share some thoughts based on my learning and experiences in this space.

Meditation is defined as engaging in a mental exercise towards reaching a deeper state of relaxation or awareness. It originated from the Latin word meditatio, meaning contemplation. People engage in meditation for a whole host of varied psychological and spiritual reasons – higher mental peace and relaxation, reducing anxiety or stress, boosting self-esteem, strengthening the mind, sharpening focus, enhancing creativity, and achieving higher states of self-awareness. While it has some definite background in religious upbringing, meditation can easily be a non-religious and purely spiritual exercise. However, in all situations, it tends to lay emphasis on direct experience rather than on any dogmas or beliefs.

Benefits
Significant quantum of research is now available on the benefits of meditation. Starting with studies on the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique in the late 1960s, various research findings have shown that meditation practice can noticeably improve all aspects of an individual’s life – health, relationships, work productivity, creativity and even academic performance of children. Independent studies at the National Institute of Health, and at Harvard, reported that regular meditation reduces chronic pain, anxiety, high blood pressure, cholesterol and cortisol (the stress hormone). Research has demonstrated that during meditation, the metabolic rate and oxygen intake drops significantly. Also, the meditators’ levels of anxiety and tension, as measured by their skin resistance to an electrical current, have been found to decline. Meditation is also proven to increase serotonin…

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Posted by Rajiv Vij | Personal mastery, Self-growth, Spiritual | 2 Comments

Of Well-being and Healing…


A healthy sense of well-being is really important to all of us. Well-being is often one of the top wishes (possibly along with happiness and wealth) that people have for themselves and their loved ones. As people age, other than financial security, well-being and longevity are what they long for. Despite that yearning, how much attention do we pay to our overall sense of well-being on a regular basis? Even if we do, it’s often directed primarily towards our physical health – centered on the exercise routine and possibly some watchful eating. That is hardly sufficient attention, as our more complete sense of well-being emanates not just from improving our physical but also mental, emotional, and spiritual health. According to a Harvard Medical School publication, “Recurrence of cardiovascular events, including heart attacks and strokes, is more closely linked to depression than to high cholesterol, smoking, high blood pressure, or diabetes.” – reinforcing the importance of mental/ emotional health. Similarly, highlighting the need to nurture our soul, Roman philosopher Cicero said, “Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than those of the body.” Taking a cue from the above, in this post, I would like to highlight the relevance of a more integrated approach to well-being, one that encapsulates healing and growth on all these four levels.

What are these different levels of healing and well-being? Physical well-being relates to our ability to effectively conduct various physical activities, including recreational ones, without any pain. It entails being physically healthy and inculcating healthy habits – taking care of our body through physical exercise, eating habits, hygiene, and maintaining effective balance between work and rest. Mental well-being is related to our intellect – our ability to think, our thoughts, understanding, values and beliefs. It facilitates our ability to create suitable mental maps to effectively navigate the world. Emotional well-being talks to our emotional health. As Mother Teresa said, “There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.” It’s the ability to understand our emotions, connect…

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Posted by Rajiv Vij | Personal mastery, Self-growth | 1 Comment

Being Myself


“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.” Marcel Proust

Have you ever caught yourself saying, “I love catching up with my old school buddies, it’s so easy to be myself in their company”? Or, “Felt so miserable at that party, making polite conversation with bunch of superficial people.” It transpires that we are often not our true selves in the company of others – subconsciously and repeatedly wearing masks that project a certain image of us to the world. We seem to have a collection of these masks that habitually surface, intending to best serve our self-interest, based on the need of our immediate environment. These masks come in varied shapes and colors like, the aggressor, the conformist, the nice guy, the shy one, etc. Only when we are able to bring these masks into our active awareness and deal with them, can we be ourselves and experience the freedom that brings.

We acquire these masks from various experiences through life – those gained during our childhood being the most notable and lasting ones. It’s our primal instinct and desire to be loved. This is such a deep longing that right from our childhood, we are constantly adapting to our environment and building different strategies, so we can better fulfill this need. Depending upon what seems to work, meaning specifically what helps gain our parents’ love during our early years, we subliminally begin to cement those strategies into our psyche. Some of these become so deep rooted that as adults, we see them as an integral part of our personality – acknowledging it with comments like, “this is the way I am and it’s hard for me to be any other way”. As bestselling author, John Gray explains in “What you feel, you can heal”, this is how it works. If we were recognized for exceeding our parents’ expectations, say at school, we can grow up believing that being a high performer is the real ticket to be loved. As a result,…

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Posted by Rajiv Vij | Self-growth | 3 Comments

Happy For No reason!


When Buddha professed, “Life is suffering”, he was likely referring not to a gloomy picture of our lives of sadness and suffering but to the constant inner struggle we have with our thoughts and emotions. Thoughts are ceaselessly traveling to the past or to the future – what I did well, what could have been better for me, what I would love to happen and so on. These thoughts are not an occasional occurrence but are a human preoccupation. A human mind typically has over fifty thousand thoughts in a day – and, all these thoughts are accompanied by corresponding emotions. Thoughts of things going are accompanied by feelings of satisfaction and happiness; thoughts of things potentially going wrong lead to emotions of fear and anxiety. As a result, our moods and state of happiness is always at the mercy of our thoughts and emotions. Is there an alternate to this existence? Can one have greater equanimity, irrespective of the direction of thoughts? Can these thoughts be minimized?

As we attempt to answer these questions, we need to first recognize what causes these thoughts in the first place. It’s our ego. It’s the notions of ‘I’, ‘me’, and ‘mine’ that we grow up with, which develop a deep sense of independent personality and separateness of our identity. We then begin working towards our own survival and growth and can end up leading an entire life focused on pursuit of personal pleasures. This sense of duality (I am different from others) is the genesis of our thoughts. As long as we see ourselves disjointed from the whole, we will continue to feel incomplete and have thoughts driven by our craving for more (money, success, knowledge, happiness etc.) or fear of losing something that we already possess (money, power, reputation, happiness…).

While there are numerous methods out there to deal with this unending train of thoughts, one powerful approach is related to connecting with ‘awareness’ or ‘consciousness’. Awareness is not the mind, or our thoughts; it’s the consciousness which allows us to observe…

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Posted by Rajiv Vij | Self-growth, Spiritual | 3 Comments

My Never Ending Things To Do List…


“People often expect different results from doing the same actions” – Alcoholics Anonymous

Today’s world has a definite bias towards action – the numerous management practices around building a broad vision and then breaking it down to long-term objectives and short-term goals guide us into that direction; the modern society’s value for individualism and the connected belief that we alone create our destiny based on our actions, propels us towards a busier life; and, the mindset towards success and achievement driven by deep-seated attitudes of more is better, winner takes all, and perfectionism make us restless without constant activity. As an outcome, we find it hard to take our hands off the blackberry and wouldn’t mind being caught dead with our things to do checklist.

Behind this constant urge to make something happen and engage in action is an underlying inner sense of incompleteness about ourselves. Driven by the external stimulus of our social context, we never seem to notice it. As a result, we are easily caught into the vicious cycle of “doing, having, and being” – once I DO this (work hard, get my promotion…), I will HAVE that (more money, success, time…) and I will then BE there (happy, satisfied…). However, every hill we climb then appears to be bottom of the next peak. When we do get the much awaited promotion, we do not necessarily have the extra time we had longed for or the sense of fulfillment we had conveniently assumed; and in any case, we maybe already eyeing the next promotion, the next milestone, the next activity to move forward. This eventually leads to a never ending list of unfulfilled goals, burn-out, poor work-life balance and so forth.

As someone said, “Life is what happens to us when we are busy making plans.” The only way to break this cycle is to alter the above sequence to “being, doing, having” – first choose to BE what we want to…

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Posted by Rajiv Vij | Self-growth | 4 Comments