by Shikha Rastogi | Jan 6, 2017 | Beliefs, Perspective
Hi everyone, Happy New Year and welcome back! Three weeks ago, since it was the holiday time of the year and because people exchange a lot of gifts around this time; I examined beliefs around ‘gifting’ and what it is that people want to achieve through this process of ‘gifting’! This week, since the holidays gave me time to read and reflect, I happened to read about how human beings are so judgmental. Therefore, this week, I would like to examine the human need to judge everyone and everything.
Belief: Its not good to be judgmental and therefore I should try to control my ability to judge!
‘Judgement’ is an in-built ability that every human has no matter what color, nationality, religion, community you belong to. And I believe humans have this ability so that we can discriminate between opposites like good and bad, fair and unfair, love and hate etc. And without the capability to judge, we will not know the difference and therefore won’t be able to live our lives on Earth! However, in the many articles that I have read so far about ‘judgement’, it’s treated as one of the biggest blocks to living our best lives here on Earth. And as a result, one of the spiritual teachings may sometimes come across as ‘humans should control their ability to judge’. And I agree to this teaching to some extent in that if we are able to judge less, we have the ability to create more – more positive thoughts, more creative thoughts and as a result more positive and creative experiences; however, the part that I don’t agree with is that there is no way you can eliminate judgement from your life as long as you are alive because that’s what makes you human! And you certainly can’t ‘judge less’ by controlling your ability to judge!! It would be like asking someone to breathe less air if they are in a city full of pollution!
Folks, an interesting thing about trying to judge less is that in trying to judge less, you are already judging yourself and your judgements! I know this may sound confusing so let’s take an example and find out how trying to control our ability to judge actually makes things worse and you end up judging even more instead! Let’s imagine you have invited friends over for dinner and you are trying very hard to give them a perfect dinner party which they will remember for a long time, however, in the middle of the party, your 4 year old ends up in a massive tantrum. And since your nice dinner got interrupted, you may already be judging your party to be a failure but on top of that if your beliefs around judging tell you that judging is bad since it causes stress and as a result you ‘should not’ be judging at this time of crisis, your mind will go into a never-ending battle of thoughts some of which will be judging your party as a failure whereas on the other hand, the other thoughts will tell you to kill the judgement thoughts!! And this will NOT help you to get calmer but instead raise your stress levels so much that you may end up lashing out at your own kid in front of all your friends!!
Now let’s look at this same example from a different perspective – a perspective of love and compassion and understanding about human ability to judge. So, lets imagine you are someone who understands and accepts the human ability to judge as normal part of living and don’t create a big deal about it; so, when you are in a situation as in the above example, as soon as you start to judge your dinner party as a failure and realize that you are actually judging, since you now know that judging is part of being human, you will not take your thoughts regarding judgement very seriously. You will instead be compassionate and loving towards your own self for thinking judgmental thoughts. And when you are compassionate and loving towards yourself, two things will happen. One, you will not try to push or control your judgmental thoughts away and second, because you will not be trying very hard to push or control your thinking; the thoughts that were judgmental before will transform into loving and compassionate thoughts. And on top of this, since you are now thinking all these loving and compassionate thoughts for yourself, you will be able to better handle your kid’s meltdown in front of so many eyes!!
Folks, it is very sad that this world does not understand and accept that all these negative thoughts and judgmental thoughts and negative feelings as a result of these thoughts are ALL PART OF BEING HUMAN!! We are not bad people if every now and then we think such thoughts and as a result feel such negative feelings of anger, jealousy, resentment, fear, sadness etc. But because as a society we have created such a big deal about these negative thoughts and emotions, and on top of that emphasize that human beings don’t think and feel such negative thoughts and emotions is why most humans try to fight them away instead of embracing them just like they do with the positive thoughts and emotions. I am not sure about you guys but fighting with my negative thoughts and emotions has never worked for me – ever!! And do you know, that’s exactly what you try to do, control your kids’ emotions when you tell them to stop crying when they are in the middle of tantrums and meltdowns. But does telling your kids to stop crying work or do they spiral down and their tantrum gets worse?
Believe me, I tried fighting my negative thoughts and emotions for several years before I began to really understand the concept of accepting them and feeling them. I know it’s very uncomfortable but the only way through them is to allow them to be thought and felt. There is no other way! And I would like to repeat – you are NOT A BAD PERSON if you think such negative thoughts and feel such negative emotions every now and then. You are simply human! The real problem is not allowing them into your mind and heart. That’s where chronic stress and depression and anxiety begin!
And as always feel free to leave a comment if you feel like leaving one. And until next week, live life, love people 🙂
by Shikha Rastogi | Dec 16, 2016 | Beliefs, Perspective
Hi everyone, welcome back! Last week I examined the thought process that leads us to judge ourselves and our lives if we think we are not able to handle something or someone in a better or more spiritual way. This week, since it will be that time of the year again when people exchange a lot of gifts, I would like to examine the beliefs around ‘gifting’ and what is that people want to achieve through this process of ‘gifting’!
Belief: Its very important that I buy the perfect gift for my friends and family members!
Well you may have already guessed the answer to ‘what it is that people want to achieve through the process of gifting’ – happiness!! Everything that a human mind thinks can be traced back to one single thing, the human heart and the heart’s desire to be happy! And the holiday season is no different, rather more important when all these desires of the heart bubble up along with the variety of emotions! But have you ever noticed that beneath the layer of happiness, which obviously is the ultimate goal, there is something more that the human heart desires – and that is acceptance. To be accepted and loved and valued and heard is the deepest desire of any human heart and it is this very path that leads the heart to happiness! And when it’s the time of the holidays, because you are around family and close friends, these desires of your heart, which you try to bury very well throughout the year just bubble up to the surface. And this is when ‘gifting’ comes into picture. So, if you are someone who feels accepted and loved and valued by the family and friends who will surround you during holidays, ‘gifting’ will have a very different meaning for you than someone else who doesn’t feel accepted, loved and valued. Let’s explore further.
Let’s imagine that you are someone who feels loved, valued and accepted by the people who you will be surrounded with during this holiday time; so, when you think about buying gifts for these people, you will not worry about whether they would like the gift or not or if the gift is expensive enough or not etc. The bottom line is that you won’t be trying to please them so that you can get what you want in return – their love and acceptance. Therefore, you will end up choosing and buying a gift from your heart instead of your mind. But on the other hand, if you are someone who doesn’t feel loved, valued and accepted, you will try very hard to think of things this person would like or maybe try to scan through the best and the most expensive things out there and in the process will buy something that you ‘think’ will please these people so that in return they can give you the much elusive acceptance and love that you so deeply desire. And just for this very reason, this entire process of ‘gifting’ will become so stressful for you. And no wonder so many people report that their stress levels go way up during holidays. Hence, the ‘holiday stress or at least a part of it’! But I also know that so many of us, maybe out of arrogance or hurt or embarrassment or guilt, think or say that they don’t need acceptance from anyone or they don’t care if others value them or not. This is far from the truth. If you are human, you desire all these things deeply. And so if you are this person, believe me, this is just a lie that your mind is trying to convince you of. It’s trying to simply protect you so that you don’t get hurt when you don’t get that feeling of acceptance, being valued and being heard especially when you are in the midst of family and close friends again.
But folks, I would like to bring your attention to the bigger question that you need to ask yourself during this holiday time which is whether you accept your family members and close friends and love and value them? What do you see when you look at them? Do you see someone who is flawed and needs work or do you see someone who is awesome despite all their imperfections? Do you get a view into their soul when you look into their eyes? Do you feel there is a very important reason why you ended up in their family at this time on earth? Do you feel that they are valuable members of this society? Do you feel they have something that they can offer to make this world a better place? Do you shower them with praise when they look nice or do something amazing for you?
You know folks, there has never been a gift made that can ever replace the gift of love and acceptance no matter how pricey that gift is. But the most important thing to realize is that you can NEVER receive something that you don’t give out first! So, if love and acceptance is what your heart desires, you have to start giving it out first. Once you initiate, watch how it comes back to you. Have you ever noticed the difference in how your kid who may just be 3 or 4 years old responds based on your own response? For e.g., your 4 year old is doing something they are not supposed to do and if you yell at her to point out what she is doing wrong, she will most definitely yell back or throw a tantrum. However, on the other hand if you are able to control your own anger and calmly let her know that what she just did is not right, she may still not like it but at least she will not yell back or start a tantrum. So, just imagine if your 3 or 4 year old’s mind and heart work this way, how can the adults’ minds and hearts be any different?
And as always feel free to leave a comment if you feel like leaving one. And until next week, live life, love people 🙂
by Shikha Rastogi | Dec 9, 2016 | Beliefs, Perspective
Hi everyone, welcome back! Since it was Thanksgiving in U.S. last week, I examined ‘gratitude’ and why it is more important to really practice it during the tough times in our lives. This week, I would like to examine the thought process that a lot of us may have from time to time especially when we read literature or listen to lectures on how to live a better life or be more spiritual because we may end up judging ourselves way more than the next person around who gives a crap about learning anything in life!
This post of mine is going to especially touch those people who are highly sensitive in personalities. So, if you are not completely sure whether or not you are that person, keep an eye on how you feel after reading this post because it may just confirm what you may have known deep down in your heart for a long time!!
Folks, when I was going through tough times and during those times when this amazing Universe introduced me to the concept of viewing life and living through a ‘different lens’ or a ‘different perspective’; all the books and articles that I used to read on how to live a better life and all the lectures and seminars that I used to listen to would sometimes make me think so less of myself. At that time, I would sometimes feel so badly about the fact that I didn’t already know all this stuff and therefore how to live a more peaceful life!! And this judgement would surface especially when I would try to put into practice this new way of living but would fail miserably because apparently it’s not that easy to unlearn your old ways of living!! And this is the reason why I wanted to write this post today which is for each and every one of you who has in the past or may in the future feel any reason to judge yourself, to not love yourself, to feel guilty about what you did or didn’t do. This judgement, to me, is the only downside of trying to be more spiritual or learning to live a more conscious life. And on top of that, if you are a Highly Sensitive Person (like me), chances are you much better aligned to understanding all this spiritual stuff and therefore may end up judging your spiritual abilities much more than anyone else who is on similar path as you are but is not an HSP – which is why this post of mine is dedicated to all of you out there who have such beautiful hearts which can feel the pain and suffering of other people as well! I know very well that it’s not easy being a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) but you are that hope which this world full of conflict and chaos needs to help bring yourself as well as the rest of humanity to the next level of consciousness.
So many of us who always strive to learn to live a better life, to try to face a situation in a better way next time, to deal with a challenging person in a more positive way next time, to live life focusing more on gratitude instead of being grumpy most of the time etc.; even though our intentions are very good, yet, we fail so many times in trying to put everything we have learned into practice. And part of the reason why we fail is because we don’t like where we are today. We don’t like how we react today. We don’t like the unhappiness that surrounds us today. We don’t like the lack of faith we have in the Universe today. And the reason we don’t like where we are today is because we never, not even in our wildest dreams expected to encounter situations that we have encountered in life so far. We never expected to be in personal or professional relationships with such challenging people. We never expected that life can throw surprises at us that we would barely know how to handle. We never expected life to take us into the darkest places of our hearts where lots of sadness and despair and loneliness resides. We never expected any of this and that’s why when we listen to all these lectures and seminars and read all these books, it gives us hope and in the name of hope we try but we end up trying so hard that we end up failing! And we try so hard because we are so desperate! So desperate to heal our sadness, our anxiety, our depression, ourselves and our life!! We are so desperate because we don’t like where we are. We don’t like to feel the sadness in our hearts all the time, we don’t like to think anxious thoughts all the time, we don’t like to live in fear all the time, we don’t like to deal with all that we are dealing with in our life anymore!! But folks, what I have come to understand is that there is a reason why you feel the way you feel, why you are where you are in your life today, why you are facing whatever you are facing in your life today. Whatever or whoever you are dealing with has messages for you, the lessons that you need to learn in this lifetime. It’s your job to figure out what it is that you need to learn and once you get the lesson, the Universe will graduate you to the next lesson and the next and the next…this is what life and living is all about!! But before you can even begin to understand all the messages and lessons this amazing Universe is sending along your way; you have to first learn to accept that this is who you are and how your life is no matter how different it is from what you had imagined growing up! There are always reasons why it is the way it is and I know this is the most challenging thing to do – to be able to allow yourself to accept your life the way it is today, no matter how broken it is today!
Personally for me, I had to accept the fact that I am a highly sensitive person who is affected greatly by negativity in any form, by sadness of my own heart or anybody else’s heart , by fear in my own mind or anybody else’s mind. And once I accepted that, I got my messages and one of those was to write it all down and that’s when I started to write this blog! And it doesn’t matter if 5 people read my blog or 50, I feel so alive writing it that I will keep writing until I don’t feel the aliveness anymore!
Lots of love and peace to everyone out there who needs it at this time! Until next time, live life 🙂
by Shikha Rastogi | Dec 2, 2016 | Beliefs, Perspective
Hi everyone, welcome back! I couldn’t publish a new post last Friday as I was traveling but a couple of weeks ago I examined how a human mind is always on the hunt to find reasons to be fearful and used last month’s presidential election to show how the mind is capable of creating all the fear and fearful thoughts even though your own life is not directly impacted by outside events (yet). This week, since it was Thanksgiving in U.S. last week, I would like to examine ‘gratitude’ and why it is even more important to practice it during the tough times in our lives.
Belief: I am facing so many challenging situations and people in my life; I don’t see anything that I can be grateful for!
Most human beings don’t think about the good things or people they have in their lives and are grateful for them even during good times, let alone during hard times. A lot of times, people are so busy moving on from one thing in their to-do list or goals to another that once they have accomplished one of their wish-list items, they don’t take the time to pause and be grateful for what the Universe just made possible for them. Other times, they think that just because they worked hard, they deserved what just became possible for them and therefore out of arrogance, don’t think it is important to thank the Universe. Whatever your reason may be to not be able to focus more on being grateful, what I have understood so far in life is that whether or not you are grateful during good times in your life, it’s the challenging times which need us to focus more on gratitude. Gratitude for the things or people we have in our lives today despite whatever or whoever you are dealing with in that moment. Let’s explore further how gratitude can help shift your perspective and actually help you deal with your challenging situation or person.
So let’s take an example of how a human life looks like if you only see it from the perspective of challenges. Let’s imagine that this is your life where after you were born, you had a childhood which was limited in means because of your parents limited income. So, when you went to school and interacted with your friends, you felt less than because your parents were not as rich. This probably was the first challenge you thought you had in life – not having well-off parents!
Then when you grew up and were ready for college, you had to struggle to acquire the best possible education because your parents didn’t have the right connections and money to get you into the prestigious colleges in your country. Hence, this you thought of this as another challenge that you had to face in life.
Then you graduated from college only to find out that a good job is not that easy to find and hence you settled for any job just so you can get your foot in the door. Your mind defined this as another challenge!
Then when you finally found a decent job, you got married but to your horror, you found out very soon that staying married requires adjustments from you that you never imagined even in your wildest dreams 🙂
Then when you finally sort out your marital issues, you decide it’s time to add to your family and so you start trying for a baby which to your amazement takes years and as a result takes you through emotional pain that you never knew existed. Hence another challenge!
Finally, you had a baby and you were on top of the world until you discovered it’s no joke to raise a kid which requires your non-stop emotional and physical presence! So, this became another challenge that you had to face in your life!
I think you got the point folks :-)! We humans think of everything from a perspective of challenges; however, if we can try to instead shift our perspective and think about each challenging situation or person from a perspective of ‘what is it trying to teach me’, our entire lives will look completely different. Our lives will look different because now we will be try to welcome and accept whatever life is giving us and think of it as a gift instead of fearing everything and everyone when we think of them as challenging! Let me explain using the same examples that I just used above to help you understand how you can focus on the lessons and stay in gratitude even when a situation appears to be challenging.
If you had a childhood which was limited in means because of your parents limited income and you had to struggle to acquire the best possible education, maybe the Universe was trying to teach you ‘to have faith in yourself and something bigger than you’ to achieve your dreams!
When you graduated from college and struggled to find a good job, maybe the Universe was conspiring ‘to match you with that awesome boss’ who you need to be able to guide you towards success!
When you got married and had a rough start with your partner, maybe the Universe was trying to teach you ‘how to give and receive love’ because the basis of any relationship is love!
When you had a hard time becoming a parent, maybe the Universe was trying to teach you ‘how to be patient’ because apparently that’s the one trait that makes you an amazing parent 🙂
When you had a baby and discovered it’s no joke to raise a kid, maybe the Universe was trying to teach you ‘how to make mistakes and still love unconditionally’ because that’s what being a parent is all about 🙂
So, do you see the shift? If you do, based on my learning in life, when you shift your perspective, the very first thing that will happen is you will stop fighting with all the challenging situations or people and when you stop fighting is when you find peace and love and gratitude! So, be grateful for your challenges as much as you are for your successes and when you are grateful is when you will live your best life!
And as always feel free to leave a comment if you feel like leaving one. And until next week, try to make the shift 🙂
by Shikha Rastogi | Nov 18, 2016 | Beliefs, Perspective
Hi everyone, welcome back! Even though I had promised I would be back last Friday, I skipped last week because of the kind of reaction the U.S. election results received. And since then, I have spent a lot of time thinking about why is it that people voted the way they did and the fact that the rest of the nation and may be even the world re-acted the way it did. And on top of that, I have also been trying to understand if the electing of this new president is this really a huge problem, the way a lot of people in this world think it is. But before you read on, just a disclaimer that this is not a political post if that’s what you are here to read. In the process of trying to make sense of everything that just happened, I understood something very interesting about a human mind. So, if you are interested in learning/remembering something more about how a human mind works, read on.
Belief: Other people and outside situations are responsible for my happiness and peace!
In one of my previous posts, I have talked about how a human mind defines problems – anything that doesn’t align with an individual’s belief system is called a ‘problem’ which needs to be solved. And this recent U.S. election just confirmed that mindset once again. The mindset of fear and disappointment and frustration and pain and sadness. All of it! But if you look very closely and reflect upon your own re-action to this election, you will notice a trend. A trend which has nothing to do with just an election and its outcome. This is a trend where so many people stay in a perpetual state of anger and frustration and sadness and all the other emotions that I just mentioned above. And all these negative emotions ooze out as soon as people encounter an event, even an insignificant one at that. Some people are angry because they think their neighbor is a racist. Some people are frustrated because they think their spouse doesn’t behave the way they think he should. Some people are sad because their kids don’t do what they think the kids should do. Some people are angry because they think their bosses are jerks. Some people are angry because they think they live in a country that is not run by the right politicians etc. etc. And as always, I can just go on and on and on here. So folks, there are 2 things that I would like to point your attention towards. The first is that a human being wants to control everything and everyone around them and the second is that because they want to control everything and everyone around them, they are always focused on everything and everyone outside of them! And this is what keeps people so far away from experiencing peace within. Let me explain further.
Let’s take this recent election as an example because it is still fresh in our minds. Since this was a historic election not only because a non-politician was one of the contenders; on top of that, to the entire world’s amazement, this non-politician who has his peculiar ways ended up winning the election! And the people who didn’t vote for him and didn’t want him to be the president of this country, started to feel a lot of fear. And people feel a lot of fear because their minds started to imagine all the really bad things this new president can do in the 4 years he will be in office and how these really bad things can hurt their families and their lives. Hence this fear has come forth as a lot of anger and frustration from various people all over the world. However, to the people who are reacting with anger and frustration (and I was one of them until I caught myself reacting this way), I have a few questions which I would like you to answer honestly. Has anything bad happened to you or your family since the new president was elected? Do you think this anger and frustration you have could also be because of all the fear that you had already inside of you and the election is just another event that triggered all that fear in you? Don’t you agree that since you voted in this election, you already did whatever you could possibly do and you didn’t have any more control over the election and its results? If you answered yes to these questions, don’t you think it’s not the election results rather your own fearful thinking and imagination about everything bad that could happen in the future which is causing you so much misery? Don’t you think you tried to control what the outcome of this election by expecting that the results would align with your own beliefs and how you voted? How do you know the candidate you had voted for would have brought you peace and happiness – because your mind told you so?
Folks, human beings think that the quality of their lives and the happiness and peace that they can feel in their own lives is completely dependent upon what happens in the outside world and how people around them behave. And if whatever happens is in agreement with an individual’s belief, they think they will be happy and peaceful. But have you ever tested this theory to understand if it is actually true or not? I have and each time I have tested, I have confirmed my new belief that I am responsible for my own happiness and peace regardless of who gets elected, how my spouse and kids behave, how big of a jerk my boss may be, how crazy my next door neighbor is works!! However, it’s not an easy approach to live life because we were not raised with this understanding and trying to unlearn old beliefs takes a lot of practice. But this is where it begins – if I want to be peaceful and happy, I have to make a decision to be happy and peaceful. Then when faced with any situation and event, I have a choice – I can choose to believe my fearful thinking which tells me how all these people and events are making my life miserable and I can become all stressed and angry or I can choose to not believe in my own thinking and instead remember that it’s my own fearful thinking which is causing me so much stress and misery and I can choose to let go of such thoughts. More on how I have been choosing to let go of my own negative thinking next time.
And if you feel like leaving a comment, you are more than welcome, else, live life and I will be back next Friday 🙂
