Make Life Better - The Conscious Way!

Life is fun every day during our school and college days, enjoying with our friends in different ways possible. But one fine day things start changing – We get into a job for our living. We get married and have children. The challenges around handling the people in our life start popping up!

The people we interact with daily in our professional life do not treat us the way we want them to. They start hurting us knowingly or unknowingly. Our Managers do not treat us fair. Our peers try different ways to show that they are better than us. Our relationships that are to last all our life doesn’t work out as per our expectations. Our spouse is not understanding us. Our parents keep complaining on silly matters. We are struggling day and night to understand how we can satisfy the people around us, how we can change the people around, and live the life of our dreams! This was definitely not the life we were looking forward to, during our younger ages.
Below are some of the truths that we can imbibe into our essence to help us out of the misery and sufferings:

Truth 1: We cannot change other people or their behavior – If we are not ready to change ourselves for someone else, we surely cannot expect them to do so. So accept the fact that the other person will not change just because we want them to. Relaxing the expectations tremendously improves the peace of our mind, especially in case of our children.

Truth 2: We have the choice to not let other people’s behavior affect us. When someone behaves or tells us something that is meant to hurt us, imagine that we have a mirror in front of us to just deflect the remark/behavior away, before it even touches us. Once we start practicing the Imaginary Mirror technique, the hurt and suffering we have to go through because of other people’s acts, words etc will slowly start vanishing! We should never be dependent on others to define our state of happiness. The feedback from others should only be taken positively, helping us to improve ourselves.

Truth 3: The only thing we have control on, is our thoughts and our behavior – Once we learn to shield ourselves from the negativity around us, we can start changing the pattern of our thoughts to make us happier

i)Be grateful about the countless good things and blessings in your life – List them down on a paper whenever we feel down. To make it even more challenging, don’t repeat the entries. We will be surprised that we never run out of items when we start counting our blessings. Spend time once in a while to look around and appreciate the beauty and wonder of the trees, hills, clouds and the wind…

ii)Whenever we feel someone is trying to let us down, understand the reason why they are doing so. Most of the time, a person’s behavior is transaction based, limited to that situation alone, and doesn’t define who the person actually is! So, be willing to forgive and forget. This takes out a lot of burden from our shoulders!

iii)Respect the person who we are – When we start loving and respecting ourselves, other people will also follow. Do not live to please others, being a door-mat to others. God made us in his own image, and a part of God lives in us. I am important, so are my needs. Treat ourselves once in a while – maybe a special spa, a special gift that you have wanted for long.. and feel good about it.

iv)The present moment offers us many choices, and we are free to make our choice. Prioritize and take informed decisions that we will not regret ever, any time in the future.

v)Gain control over our mind – Many a times, we will find our mind wandering in many if’s and but’s, past and future, which never materializes in reality. These thoughts only add on to our worries, and we start to solve the problems before even they arise in our life. Live in the present. Practice monitoring our thoughts on a frequent basis and redirect our mind to focus on more productive thoughts. Regular Meditation can be of additional help here. The worries we have are directly proportional to the probability of illness and diseases in our life – so let us consciously reduce them!

vi)Relax and take a deep breath – Allow the good things to come to our life. Do we know that God (or the Universe or the Consciousness or whatever our belief is…) is always trying to push all the perfect things to us? We are almost always in a state of fear and resistance, that we unknowingly push all the good things away from us! Relax and open up our minds to receive!

This life is the only one we are consciously aware of. Let us live it to the fullest, be grateful for each and every blessing we already are in possession.