Category: Self-growth

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When was the last time you observed your thoughts – the incessant stream of neural impulses? Our mind, on average, has over 50,000 thoughts in a given day – even while busy with a certain task, it is forever racing ahead with numerous other thoughts – of potential rewards, of missed opportunities, of future actions and so on; more often than not at a neurotic pace.

Besides, for many of us, a large proportion of these thoughts have a negative slant – thoughts like, “I wish I were healthier; I dislike myself for being so socially awkward; I doubt if I will ever be successful; My spouse or colleagues don’t really value me; What if I don’t get promoted or lose my job? I hate my colleague for being so successful, despite his/her incompetence; I wish my children were smarter or respected me more; If only I had taken that step”, are all too commonplace.

The monkey mind

This mental chatter is no passing cloud, but a permanent ‘noise’ in our background. Driven by our karmic imprint and our life experiences, particularly during the impressionable childhood years, the monkey mind is a result of our deep inner insecurity about our physical life form and a constant endeavor to somehow control our destiny.

While some of this noise goads us towards personal and social development, much of it is dysfunctional. It restricts us from fully enjoying the present, resulting in lower effectiveness and a diluted sense of fulfillment from our time and actions. Besides, the negative undertones of many of our thoughts generate heightened emotions of fear, anxiety, anger or envy, making us restless, confused and impulsive.

Moreover, this state of being impacts our health. Persistent mental preoccupation elevates levels of stress hormone, which in turn suppresses our immune and digestive system. They also lead to lower energy levels, disturbed sleep, and an inability to be watchful of what we eat, often gravitating towards processed, sugary options.

Five ideas…

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While self-realization and spiritual growth is a profound goal to pursue, it is important to be mindful of the fact that spirituality is not a panacea for all our challenges. While spiritual progress offers pathways to heal our varied wounds, we also need to work at resolving our emotional and mental baggage. Unless we simultaneously focus on that, some of our emotional issues keep surfacing, even during the journey of spiritual growth.

For example, if we have grown up with a reserved personality, we are likely to remain aloof in our spiritual practice; if our competitive streak has been our psychological copout for feeling inadequate, we will probably be drawn to constant comparison of our spiritual progress with others; and if chasing success was our defense mechanism for not feeling loved, we may pursue spirituality with the same obsession.

Similarly, if spirituality offers possibilities of leading a more meaningful life, we can readily develop aversion for other lifestyles and judge others based on that. If we increasingly value a life of austerity, we run the risk of looking down on extravagant spenders. If we have begun experiencing greater peace, we can easily find accepting anger of people around us challenging.

Moreover, spiritual practice can become an escape from our emotional demons – issues of anger, loneliness, envy, aversion and judgmental nature; instead, it needs to be a path to face them. Working out our emotional past and conditioned mental patterns, alongside pursuing spiritual insights, paves the way for a more wholesome growth. For example, consciously working with our judgmental nature and limiting mental beliefs, acquired during childhood, can be very supportive in our journey.

Each of us desires to be loved – it’s our primal instinct. However, during our formative years, we subconsciously develop personality traits that seemingly best fulfill this need. Depending upon what helps us gain our parents’ love during childhood, be it conformity, winning, diplomacy, aggression, perfectionism, playing a…

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‘The wound is the place where the Light enters you.’ ~ Sufi mystic, Rumi

Buddha professed, ‘Life is a suffering’ and at least at some stage in life, most of us do experience it that way. In some situations, particularly those related to a significant loss – of a loved one, a precious relationship, or a job – our suffering seems irreparable.

However, suffering and peace are two sides of the same coin and there’s merely a thin line separating the two. With greater awareness, understanding, and compassion, it is indeed possible to transform our agony into solace; our restlessness into stillness; and our adversity into a blessing. Suffering provides an exceptional gateway for deeper learning and growth to occur…towards discovering enduring happiness in our life.

In this post, I would like to share three key elements towards transforming our suffering into peacefulness. To better appreciate these, it maybe useful to first identify the central cause of our suffering.

The underlying cause

The single biggest cause of our suffering in life is our attachments. Whenever we feel any kind of emotional pain, we are invariably attached to something that makes the experience stressful. Pain is physical, but suffering is mental – it’s often not the event by itself, but our inner relationship with it that causes the suffering.

Disappointment with any setbacks at work is a result of our attachment to the expectations of specific gains from our efforts; the constant anxiety about our children’s future is an outcome of our attachment with an idealized version of ourselves that we wish our children to grow up into; fear of illness emanates from our attachment with our physical body.

We get attached to pleasurable experiences and worry about the risk of experiencing unpleasant ones; attached to material possessions, we spend inordinate emotional energy either craving for more or being fearful of losing any; our subconscious attempts to honor our attachment to our…

“Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the present moment.”
– Alan Watts, British-born philosopher

Hope you have had a great start to the New Year. Wish you and your loved ones a very Happy, Healthy and Meaningful year ahead!

This is that time of the year when we tend to reflect on the year gone by and make new personal resolutions for the year ahead. However, if there’s one idea I would love for you to consider this year, it would be to include a few minutes of daily meditation practice in your life.

Our modern lives are so stressful – driven by both, the innumerable opportunities and our insatiable ambition, we lead very fast-paced lives, juggling multiple balls. Unfortunately, despite the significant economic progress around us, as a society, we are not necessarily any happier. Notwithstanding individual successes, many of us experience incompleteness within.

Why meditate

If you can’t eliminate or even reduce stress in your life, maybe you should consider learning ways to better manage it. Meditation is a proven method to achieve exactly that. Besides helping you find greater calm, content and peace, meditation has numerous other benefits.

Significant quantum of research demonstrates that meditation practice can noticeably improve all aspects of an individual’s life – health, relationships, emotional well-being, work productivity and creativity. 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.

Meditation is also proven to increase serotonin production, which influences mood and behavior. Low levels of serotonin are normally associated with depression, obesity, insomnia and headaches. Meditation supports an individual’s growth of self-confidence, calmness, and tolerance. Peaceful thoughts, speech and actions, developed by meditating individuals, lead to greater harmony in their immediate relationships.

How to meditate

Many of my coaching clients are interested in exploring the idea of meditation, but either feel overwhelmed by the available choices…

The survival and evolution of human beings rests on their unparalleled ability to think. Descartes’ reflection, ‘I think, therefore I am’, has forever reinforced thought to be the very foundation of human existence. As humans increasingly rely on their minds, the prefrontal cortex, the thinking part of the brain, has actually grown in size and its capability.

Yet, this powerful gift does not automatically lead to gaining insights or acquiring wisdom – in fact, usually, it comes in the way. It is not the ability to think, but to consciously stop thinking, that’s most valuable. That alone paves the way for self-realization and singularly makes the human form precious.

Limitations of our thoughts

Our thinking capability is severely limited. Our thoughts are a result of our conditioned beliefs and are thus significantly restricted by our personality orientation, environment and experiences. As author Anais Nin noted, ‘We don’t see things as they are, but as we are’.

Goaded by our success with thinking through life’s mundane problems, we misconstrue that to be the most effective process of arriving at solutions. Consequently, we tend to over-think things – overlooking the fact that this approach employs merely a fraction of our mental capacity.

Besides, living in the head keeps us away from listening to our heart and engaging deeply in our relationships; the emotional noise created by our incessant mental chatter restricts us from performing at our peak potential.

The power of the subconscious

Far more powerful than our active mind is our subconscious mind. A deep reservoir of knowledge, spanning many lifetimes, it is a powerful gateway to the collective wisdom of the universe. Creating conscious moments of empty spaces between thoughts allows us to switch off from our active mind and access the subconscious. That’s what leads to new insights, peak performance and spiritual growth.

Creative people vouch for getting their most inspirational ideas in those moments. Mozart and Michelangelo have described it such. Scientists are…

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“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher

Have you ever experienced the aching emotions of feeling wronged by life? When you feel you have to suffer for unjustifiable reasons? When others around you seem to be living a perfectly normal life? And you wonder ‘why is this happening to me alone?’

We invariably experience setbacks that make us question the fairness of life – from being overlooked for a promotion to losing a job, from a persistent discord in a close relationship to a separation or divorce, from a chronic illness to losing a loved one.

With any kind of recurring disappointment in life, the agonizing feeling of being singled out in having to deal with that haunts us continually. Besides, these situations bring out our inner demons – we wonder if we are good (or lovable or balanced) enough, we accuse ourselves, and we accumulate regrets, anger and frustration. From self-doubt to self-blame and self-pity, we are overcome by crippling thoughts.

Four keys to overcoming feeling like a victim

1. Developing gratitude

Arthur Ashe, the legendary tennis player, was dying of AIDS that he contracted from the infected blood he had received during a heart surgery. When one of his fans questioned him on why God had to select him for such a nasty disease, he responded that of the millions of children who start playing tennis, only a few fortunate ones get to Wimbledon and that when he was holding the champion’s trophy, he never asked God ‘Why me?’ While we are quick to blame our circumstances whenever we are in pain – physical or emotional – we take many of our blessings for granted.

Making a long list of reasons you are grateful for in life would, in most cases, help you appreciate how fortunate you are. Reminding yourself of the key points in the list on a daily basis can help temper…