by Shikha Rastogi | Apr 8, 2016 | Beliefs, Perspective
Hi everyone, welcome back! So far I have re-examined beliefs that encourage you to focus on what’s good in your lives. However today, I would like to re-examine what is it that we all want to have in our lives – the future! And I don’t think I am going out on a limb when I say that ‘happiness’ is really the goal that each and every single one of us seems to be striving to achieve. And in trying to achieve that happiness, a lot of us think that money and material success are the most important factors. So, here is my belief for this week.
Belief – If I can acquire X amount or lots of money and as a result all the nice brands and other material stuff, I will automatically be very happy and all set for retirement.
We all know that money IS a very important factor in living our lives while we are here on Earth. I am not even going to argue about that. However, how much money do we really need to live a comfortable life? May be you have a number in mind or maybe you don’t. Are there other things like spending time with your family and friends or spending time doing what makes you really happy is also on your list. Maybe you are one of those people who is already living a balanced life and you are somehow being able to make time for all of the above. Or even better, maybe you are one of those people who actually does what you love to do and make a living out of it. And in that case, I would love to congratulate you because you cannot be not courageous if you are doing exactly that. However, if you are one of us who is still stuck trying to live a life based on what the entire society places value on, read on.
Are you one of those people who thinks (like so many others) that being able to earn lots of money, ability to buy the fanciest car, wear the costliest brands, live in the biggest house etc. etc. is what will give you happiness as you go through the journey that is your life. You know, as I look back upon my early years in life, especially the ones where I was approaching college and it appeared at the time that my whole life depended upon which branch of study I chose; amazingly, it’s only now that I am beginning to realize that it wouldn’t have mattered at all what I chose back then because even if I had chosen differently, I would have still chosen based on how everybody else defined success. I would have chosen based on what everyone else valued which essentially is money and brands and nice homes and nice cars. And I am in no way saying that any of these things are bad to acquire. All of these things make our lives so very comfortable but my point is where do you stop? And the reason I ask you this is because when you are able to earn more money, own a nicer home, a nicer car etc. etc., there is always hunger for more and more because there is always someone else that you know who has more, is making more, doing more etc. etc. And we all know deep down inside that the reason we want to achieve more is to prove to the world and ourselves that we are better than others because we compare ourselves with others all the time. As a result, we get so caught up in working so hard in meaningless and stressful jobs just so we are able to achieve things that fit society’s definition of success and in the process we can’t find time to really live our lives and do things that really make us happy from inside. We can’t find time to pause and take a moment to appreciate the beauty of nature, listen to the waves of the ocean, spend a few moments in a day playing with our own kids, listen to their stories about the day they had, hold our partner’s hand or give them a hug…we can’t even find time for ourselves! And yet, somehow we convince ourselves that by working so hard, we are not just making ourselves happy but our loved ones happy too. But do you really think your loved ones will be happy when you are absent from their lives? Do you really think that this beautiful kid that you brought into this world will wait to grow older just so you can retire and then make time for them? That’s the funny thing about time, it waits for no one! And even though we all know that very well, we realize it until much later in life or maybe never.
Are you feeling a little guilty after reading this? If you are, let me tell you that it’s completely okay that you feel guilty because that means you have been thinking about this already. It’s just that you needed another perspective, another reason or a nudge to wake up and start implementing this in your life. So, where do you begin would probably be the first question that may come to your mind. I would say, wherever you think you need it the most because you know your life best. If you think you have been missing out on spending time with your partner, go home and just be with each other. If you think you have missed spending time with your kids, just go home today and put that phone/laptop away (after of course you have finished reading my blog :)) and just follow your kids lead. Your kids can teach you so much about what you have forgotten in life – how to have fun! If you think you have not been paying attention to yourselves, have a date with yourselves. Do what you love to do most. Don’t think too much about it though; just do it! Just do it because a lot of us tend to over-think and over-plan. The key here is to just be PRESENT..that’s all! I read somewhere a long time ago that PRESENT (to live in the moment) is called just that because it’s really a GIFT. A gift to ourselves, to our families and friends. So, even though we have 10,000 thoughts running through our minds most of the time, even though we have a long list of things/chores that we need to get done by the end of the day, what you really have to do is to prioritize. You have to prioritize whether cooking fresh food, if you are a woman who works outside the home a priority over spending time with your kids since you may only have a few hours or just a few minutes left in the day before your kids go to bed. You have to prioritize whether staying stuck to that company emails, even though you are officially back from work more important to you than catching up with your partner about what’s going on with them. You have to prioritize whether spending time watching mindless TV is more important to you than listening to your kids tell their own stories of how their day was and what was good about it or bad about it. You really have to learn to prioritize!! However, make sure that YOU are the one who is prioritizing and deciding what’s more important to YOU and NOT your family members, your well-wishers or anybody else for that matter whose opinions affect you! Because if you go by the opinions of others and prioritize based on those opinions, chances are you will be back living in your head again because you will be frustrated that you are still not doing what you want to do! So be very honest and listen to your heart. It always tells you the truth 🙂
Like always, feel free to leave a comment if you feel like leaving one. Until next Friday, live life 🙂
by Shikha Rastogi | Apr 1, 2016 | Beliefs, Perspective
Hello Everyone! Welcome again! Last week I talked about how humans mostly focus on what’s lacking from their lives instead of being thankful for what they have in their lives. This week I would like to take last week’s old belief a step further and examine it from another perspective.
Belief – I don’t want to say out loud that I am thankful or I am lucky for all the goodness in my life because it could be jinxed the next moment!
A lot of us irrespective of our cultural backgrounds believe in this belief which is filled with fear. Fear of losing what you think is good in your life if you pay attention to it, acknowledge it, be grateful for it. And why do we believe in this belief which has been passed on from generations, because maybe back in the day, not necessarily in our own experiences, someone said out loud about how lucky they were or how grateful they were and whatever that thing that they were feeling lucky for or grateful for disappeared. And that would have created this belief which a lot of people still to this day keep believing and living their lives based on.
However, if you pay very close attention to this kind of fearful thinking, it reveals another aspect. The aspect of lack of trust in the Universe or God or whatever else that you believe in or have faith in. Or do you actually have ANY faith in whatever God or Universe you believe in? At least from the perspective of this thinking, it appears that you don’t. You don’t have faith that everything that has happened in your life so far happened for the best or whatever it is that you are going through today is happening for your best or whatever else that will happen in the future will happen for your best. It will not just be the very best thing for you but also that you will always be okay no matter what the situation or life event. I know this personally very well because like I mentioned in my very first post, we humans create a life plan for ourselves probably when we are very young and when anything doesn’t go according to our plan, we start to question whether there is God or if there is God then why does it seem to be acting against me and my desires. And I honestly think almost everyone, unless you are a saint, will have this kind of thinking at some point in your life when you are at your lowest. And I think it’s very easy to have this thinking because when we are in the middle of a challenging situation, we get caught up in our negative thinking and lose perspective. And we lose perspective because our foundation is weak. And our foundation is weak because we were not brought up to trust the Universe or have faith in God. And this is not a blame on anyone including our parents because chances are they were not raised this way either.
So, let’s re-examine this belief and introduce a new way of thinking and living life. Is it at all possible to open your minds and hearts enough to believe that everything that happens in life happens for the best! It happens so that we can learn and grow and live more fulfilling lives. I know we try to say that ‘whatever happens, happens for the best’ all the time as we are going through challenging situations, however, I don’t think we actually believe it. However, whenever we do repeat this statement and because we don’t believe in it completely, in our minds we are sort of desperately trying to stop thinking and feeling the way we feeling with regard to that challenging situation we are in. And on top of that what we really hope for when we do repeat this statement over and over again is that things will actually change and the situation we are in will go away! But that seldom happens. The challenging situation does go away, eventually, but not because we repeat a statement that we don’t believe in. It goes away when we shift our perspective and look at it from another angle.
Since humans learn best from examples, I want you to imagine a situation where at your current job you have had an amazing boss for several years, however, this amazing boss decides to leave. And now you have been assigned a new boss who is the exact opposite of what your previous boss was. S/he has very high expectations of you but doesn’t really help you to achieve those expectations. Instead insults you and makes you feel very bad that you are unable to meet her/his expectations. So, there are 2 ways of looking at this situation. The first way is that you get very upset and stressed thinking that even though everything was so wonderful for you at work just a few months back, however, now all of a sudden God has brought along this change of boss which is causing you a lot of stress and anxiety. And sometimes when you are very frustrated, you would also think why did this happen to me and why is God being so unfair to me and why does this happen to me all the time etc. etc. On the other hand, another way to look at this situation is to first acknowledge and accept that you have this new situation and understand what is it that you need to do to get yourself out of it. And to get you out of it, there could be two ways of dealing with this change of boss. You can either start to look for another job and/or you can stand up to your boss and let him/her know that you don’t like being insulted and that you deserve more respect even though s/he doesn’t think you are doing a good enough job because that’s what you deserve for being a human.
Having said that, I am not in any way suggesting that you force yourself to NOT feel stressed or frustrated or maybe even hopeless sometimes. Whatever you are feeling is very important to acknowledge and accept and feel, however, once that feeling has passed, try to think from this different perspective. You can implement this with any situation you may be in currently and try it out. In trying out a different perspective, even if you don’t yet believe in it, you still could gain something because even if you are not successful in turning the situation around immediately, you could gain so much confidence in just trying and this could further allow you to try a different perspective more effortlessly and successfully at the next one you face.
One thing that I have learned from one situation after another after another is that we are very quick to tag something as ‘bad’ if we didn’t expect it, or like it or are comfortable with it or if it brings about changes or for a variety of other reasons. However, the one thing that I have also learned from facing these situations is that there is ALWAYS a very important reason for it. On a very deep level, every situation that you face is there to raise your level of consciousness. And that’s all we are here on earth to do…to raise our levels of consciousness so that we can live amazing lives while we are here. More on this another time.
And finally, as always, you are more than welcome to leave comments if you feel like leaving one. Until next Friday, live life 🙂
by Shikha Rastogi | Mar 25, 2016 | Beliefs, Perspective
Happy Friday Everyone! So let me reiterate the reason I am writing this blog in case you didn’t read my first post last Friday. I have started to write this blog to re-examine a lot of old beliefs that are largely responsible for the way we think. I have been doing this personally in my mind or through writing for several years now, however, this time around, I created this blog in case someone else may be interested in looking at things from a different perspective along with me.
So, here is the first belief that I am going to re-examine. By the way, I have come across this belief not just in my own life but have noticed this with a lot of other people from a variety of cultural backgrounds.
Belief – Yeah, it’s great that I have this, this and this; however, I still don’t have that, that and that and so how is it that I can still be happy and peaceful if I don’t yet have that!
We all know what I am talking about if we have ever paid attention to our thinking. This is a belief that focuses on lack. Lack of anything that we think we should have today or didn’t have yesterday or don’t think we can have in the future. When our thinking is based on this belief, it feels like there is nothing to be grateful for in our lives and all around us in the world today. But isn’t this is a very painful way to live life especially because there is always something that you are going to be striving for in your life. There will always be something that you will want to achieve. And if you do not accept yourself and your life today and are not happy today, chances are you will never be happy! You will never be happy because in your mind you are attaching happiness with achieving something or may be being a certain way. But what I have understood from trying and achieving is that yes you will be happy once you have achieved, however, that achievement will bring along new challenges, new goals, new beginnings and you will be back where you started and will go through this process of waiting to be happy once again and again and again until you realize the Truth. And the truth is – unless you accept yourself and your life today and be grateful for it today, you may never be able to accept yourself and your life and be happy.
So, here is a different way to look at this belief which actually has two aspects. One is accepting who and where you are today and second is being thankful for it today. And if you are able to believe in one of the two aspects, you will automatically believe in the other because there is no way you can accept and not be grateful or be grateful and not accept. There is something that most spiritual teachers talk about which is – what you focus your attention on grows! So by that token, if you are thinking based on this old belief, and you are only focused on what’s lacking in your life, chances are that’s what will end up being the truth for your life. On the other hand, a belief of Acceptance and Gratitude for everything and everyone that you have in your life today, gratitude for all the situations, even the ones that you tagged as bad and painful, that you have faced in life so far because all of these situations, each and every single one of them has taught you something if you were open enough to learn from them. Gratitude for all the relationships that you have been in so far, gratitude for all the career success that you have had thus far. Gratitude for all the nice cars that you are driving today, the beautiful homes that you live in today, the amazing kids that you have today. Just be grateful because GRATITUDE CHANGES YOUR ATTITUDE! When we are grateful, we are focusing on love rather than fear. Love for all that we are and all that we have. And the feeling of being grateful is awesome! And just because we feel so awesome inside, we attract more of that awesomeness in our lives.
Here is an exercise that I came across a few years ago which has really helped me. When you wake up in the morning, simply count 5 things that you are most grateful for. And repeat that same exercise before going to bed at night and see the shift happen in front of your own eyes. For those of you who love to write, you can choose to write or you can also just count them mentally. Even though I try to practice this exercise every day, some days I just forget or just don’t feel like doing it other days. But that’s ok as long as you believe in the power of it and keep coming back to it!
Here is a little prayer that I wrote for myself and I say it whenever I feel very low. Hope it gives you a reason to write your own :)…And as always, you are more than welcome to leave a comment if you feel like leaving one. And until next Friday, live life 🙂
Dear God, Please give me the courage to accept myself fully, love myself unconditionally, trust myself completely and be myself fearlessly every single moment of my life…
by Shikha Rastogi | Mar 18, 2016 | Beliefs, Perspective
Hello Everyone! Something has brought you to my blog, so, welcome! That something may be that you are at that point in your own life where you would like to find peace within yourself; or you just want to know what this blog is all about because the title caught your attention; or may be because you know me personally and you just want to check out what it is that I am writing about. Whatever that reason may be, I am glad and thankful that you are here and reading this. For those of you who know me personally and for those who don’t, I would like to give you some insight into who I am and why I created this blog. I am not a guru or a spiritual teacher. I am someone like you who just got very interested in learning to live a more peaceful life almost a decade back because the life I was living wasn’t working for me. Growing up, I was someone who wanted to have an amazing career, who wanted to be different than others, who was very hard working and believed that if you worked very hard to achieve something, that something will be yours no matter what! However, the Universe proved my belief wrong every single time I tried to achieve something. It proved me wrong because in my mind I had a plan for my life, whereas, the plan that Universe had for my life was radically different than what I had for myself. And instead of going with the flow and trusting the plan Universe had for me, I fought. I fought with all my strength until I was empty from within. And that created a lot of stress and unrest in my life. But isn’t that really true for so many of us who are alive on earth today or have ever been in the past. We try so hard to pursue and achieve and strive and gain that we don’t even realize until much later in life that we are not really living, we are just chasing. We are chasing after a dream which we think will give us happiness which is really what every human being is after. Yet, so many of us, even though we have achieved so much aren’t still happy. And you know why? Because so many of us grow up creating beliefs about how we should live our lives, what we should pursue as careers while we are here on earth, what should our life’s path be, how we should behave, how everyone else we interact with should behave etc. etc. But what I have found out again and again is that all these ‘shoulds’ that we create as part of our belief system are a creation of our minds and they hold us back. They hold us back because our thinking is based on all these beliefs and our thinking becomes so limited as a result of them. We are unable to look beyond what we should do and how we should be and create a life for ourselves based on solely our minds. We never really pay attention to how we feel about things, situations, and people in our lives. We ignore paying attention and listening to our hearts even though when we were babies and young kids, our heart is exactly where all our attention was – all the time and we loved being that way because just by following our hearts, we were living in the present! So my attempt in creating this blog is to re-examine those old beliefs and try to look at each one of them from another perspective – a perspective of Love rather than Fear because fear is the reason we have all the ‘shoulds’ in our lives in the first place. We are fearful that if we don’t have all that we think we should have, we won’t called be successful enough. We are fearful that if we don’t behave the way we think people want us to behave, we won’t be liked by those people. And the list goes on and on…Here is a short poem I wrote for myself a few months ago which comes straight from my heart..enjoy and until next time..live life 🙂
I know now what I am is simply magnificent;
I know now what I have is absolutely enough;
My mind, my body, my ego, my intellect;
I love you all no matter what;
I know some days I will be more loving towards you and other days no so much;
But be assured I have my own best interest at heart;
I promise will come back around, it’s just an art that I continue to learn;
Each moment, each day;
I came into this world knowing this truth;
But forgot somewhere along the way;
But I am not angry that I forgot this truth;
Because all that I did unconsciously over the years has brought me here;
Everything was perfect, now that I look back from here;
I just didn’t realize it back then;
As I was busy trying to achieve things that fit society’s definition of success;
I didn’t know I was supposed to allow and accept whatever and however it wanted to come to me;
I didn’t know I was supposed to love myself and just let myself be me;
But now that I know what I know;
I continue to learn to live each day with greater appreciation of where I was and where I am today;
I continue to learn to be full of gratitude towards all that I am and all that I have;
I continue to learn to trust who I am and why I am here;
And because of all this learning and knowing;
I have more time to focus on LOVE today.
