These are the things I need to have or do or become in order to get entry into the ‘successful club’ :-)

by Shikha Rastogi | Jun 23, 2017 | Beliefs, Perspective

Hi everyone, welcome back! Last week I examined why is it that a lot of people, although they may have enough of what the entire human race is after; yet, they still feel very sad and lonely inside. This Friday, I would like to examine a very popular belief “there are only very few ways that you can live your life or few things that you can buy or few professions you can choose etc. to get admitted to the successful club” which I believe creates a mindset of lack and competition!

Belief: These are the things I need to have or do or become in order to get entry into the ‘successful club’ 🙂

Have you ever noticed how the promotion system in corporations reflects the mindset of lack? Or the Ivy League universities that choose only a handful of students from a pot of many very bright students? Or the really good restaurants that make you wait in line for months so that you can grab a bite? Although these are just a handful of examples of how making something out of reach of people can make that something very desirable and sought after and exclusive; however, if you look closely, these are just a few classic examples of how businesses have successfully exploited a very common belief that humans have about lack. According to this mindset or belief of lack, since only very limited things can be classified as awesome or amazing or fall in the category of success, marketing agencies and businesses around the world have used this belief to trick humans into believing that there is always something lacking in their lives and in order to solve this ‘problem’ of something lacking from their lives, these companies point us to the exclusive products or services they offer that can help fill this gap! And this gap could be about anything ranging from not having enough money because you don’t have a great job; or not having a good enough job because you don’t have a great degree; or not having a great physique because you don’t yet spend dollars on eating right or exercising right; or not having the skin color and texture because you don’t yet buy those freaking expensive creams; or not having enough cool factor because you don’t yet possess those cool hi-tech gadgets; or not having enough oomph factor because the clothes you wear today are not branded enough to make an impression on this society…and the list goes on and on and on.

As a result of the very limited criteria that has been created over centuries on how and who is considered beautiful or successful or rich or happy or content or lucky or crazy for that matter; we judge the entire human race of 7 plus billion people by a handful of standards which mostly have been created by the people working for these corporations or their marketing agencies! It seems to me like these are the people who are creating all these rules about who and what is beautiful or successful to improve their companies’ bottom lines and the rest of the humans just blindly follow their message and set out on becoming beautiful or rich or successful based on these companies definitions. And in trying to become what we have been told we should become; we forget to pay attention to all the beauty that we already have inside and outside of us. We forget to pay attention to all the success that we have already achieved. We forget to recognize how much we already have in our lives that we could be thankful for right now, this very moment! We forget to pay attention to what our own heart desires!! We forget to use our own damn head to decide and choose for ourselves!! And the funny thing about being human is that even if you have or gain a little wisdom to recognize and be grateful for all that you already have and follow your own path, however, the moment you come across that someone who has more than you, your so called wisdom evaporates 🙂 and you are back in that cycle of thinking about all the things that you lack in yourself or your life!!

So, let’s understand this belief through a classic example which will hopefully shed some light on how twisted our beliefs really are. So growing up in India, I used to hear all the time about these ‘fairness creams’ available in the market to make someone’s dark skin a little light. And since light skin is what the Indian society has been after for centuries, the companies selling these creams have created a multi-billion dollar industry by exploiting this insecurity and literally telling women what their skin color ought to be :-). But when I came to US, to my amazement, I personally came across people who wanted to have the skin color which was being tagged as lacking in the other part of the world!! And in this country, people risk their health and get into those tanning beds to get that perfect tan so that they can show it off and be called beautiful!! And just like the ‘fairness cream’ industry, the tanning industry here in the US is a multi-billion dollar industry which is again telling women what and who is considered beautiful.

Isn’t that ironical, folks? Even though I completely understand a human beings’ need and desire to look their best and have the best and do their best but what I don’t understand is that why is it that we can’t decide for ourselves if white, brown, black or whichever other color is beautiful for us. Why is it that we need other people or companies or marketing agencies to dictate for us how we should live our lives and what we should buy or not buy to be considered beautiful and successful! Why is it that we always need some kind of approval or validation from others to make us feel good about ourselves and our lives although we are completely capable of feeling that on our own? I have a theory about this need for validation and approval :-). It will be my topic for next time and until then, love yourself and your life now!

Yes, we are all unique human beings but we still must compare ourselves with others and compete with them to get ahead in life!!

by Shikha Rastogi | Jun 23, 2017 | Beliefs, Perspective

Hi everyone, welcome back! Last week, I examined a very common belief which creates our thinking when we are at the lowest point in our lives and that is to compare ourselves and our life with someone else out there who is even less fortunate than us. This week, I would like to examine beliefs around a human being’s uniqueness and what happens to this uniqueness as we go through our lives!

Belief: Yes, we are all unique human beings but we still must compare ourselves with others and compete with them to get ahead in life!!

Haven’t we all heard this so many times before – celebrate your uniqueness; that we are all unique human beings and we should not only focus on our uniqueness but also celebrate it! And even though, at least some of us may understand this statement on an intellectual level; however, as a society, we don’t quite live our lives according to the truths behind this statement. But to better understand, what it is that we could be doing or not doing to celebrate ourselves and our lives, let’s first examine what does celebrating one’s uniqueness and life means. To me, celebrating your uniqueness and life means loving the person you are; the personality you have; the physical features you have; the color of your skin; the family you are born into; the parents you have; the siblings you have; the money you have; the cars you have; the houses you have; the kids you have; the spouses you have; the religion you follow; the nationality you have; the education you have; the accomplishments you have; the titles you have etc. etc. On top of loving these things about yourself, you own them and never apologize for being them and embody them!!

So, now that we understand a bit more about what ‘celebrating our uniqueness and life’ means; I would invite you to try to answer this very simple question with absolute honesty – are you someone who celebrates your uniqueness and life? Are you that person who celebrates yourself? Are you that person that celebrates your life? if you answered yes, you probably don’t need to continue to read this article. But for the rest of us, have you ever wondered why is it that you don’t? Why is that you don’t feel enough? Why is that that you always feel there is something missing from your life? Why is it that even when you achieve that ‘something missing’, you still feel like your life is lacking something? Here is what I have come to understand.

What I have come to understand why we don’t celebrate ourselves and our life and the gifts we are born with is because from the very beginning of our lives, we are compared! We are compared because as part of this society’s belief system, there is a very deep rooted belief about what a ‘successful human being’ looks like and thus growing up, our parents rely on that belief or ‘idea’ to create a perfect child who will transform into a ‘successful adult’ over time. And so, as kids, when we are learning how to walk and talk and ABCs and 123s, reading and writing, we are compared with other kids and sometimes our own siblings who may be closer to this ‘idea’ of a perfect child than us. Then we get enrolled into school education, where we get trapped into grading systems and test results, compliant behavior versus non-compliant behavior and the teachers compare us with other kids in their class or maybe even previous classes; again, comparing us based on the ‘idea’ that they have in their minds of what a perfect student looks like! Then we land into jobs with dreams of making it big ‘our own way’, only to find out that ‘our own way’ is hardly even understood by our colleagues and bosses who again compare us based on their ‘idea’ of a perfect employee! Then we get into relationships hoping they will give us the much-needed space to spread our wings and allow us to express who we truly are only to find ourselves adjusting and hiding our true selves to keep the relationship alive because we are being compared again based on our partner’s ‘idea’ of a perfect spouse!!

This getting compared all our lives by others as well as ourselves never allows us an opportunity to even figure out ourselves. It never allows us to focus our attention on our strengths and desires; our talents and gifts! Instead, what this comparing does is divert our attention to other people’s strengths and desires; their gifts and talents. And because the ultimate purpose of all this comparison is to get ahead of that ‘someone else’; so many times, we fail miserably! And we fail because we didn’t allow ourselves to use our talents that we came on this Earth with and instead tried to create talents that others have. We didn’t allow ourselves to shine the gifts that we were born with and instead tried to create gifts that others have! We didn’t allow ourselves the liberty of serving the purpose this Universe placed into our hearts and instead just kept chasing someone else’s reasons for being here! We didn’t allow ourselves to be – just ourselves and instead kept trying very hard to become someone else!

Folks, I have said this before but it bears repeating that we all come to Earth for a reason and that reason is placed into our hearts in the form of desire by this Universe. On top of that, each one of us is given a talent or gift which we need to use to execute or carry out that desire. But because of our very limited beliefs and thus mindset, we just keep chasing success the way its defined by our beliefs. And all the while, we miss out on not only figuring out our gifts and talents but also using them. And I know that even though this world is not full of those who have dared to be themselves and carried out their desires; but if you pay close attention, you can still find some who have transformed lives and built companies just by knowing their worth and their reason for being here…And if they can, so can we, they are not different from us – we are all the same yet unique human beings worthy of knowing and living and loving and carrying out all our beautiful desires :-)…all you need is courage and a broader perspective on life – that’s all!!

And as always, feel free to leave a comment if you feel like leaving one. And until next time, celebrate yourself and your life 🙂

To get humans to do the right thing, we need to create and enforce a lot of rules!

by Shikha Rastogi | Jun 23, 2017 | Beliefs, Perspective

Hi everyone, welcome back! A couple of weeks ago, I examined beliefs around ‘our responsibility to donate to the poor and needy” and tried to understand whether those of us who have some money or lots of it, should have a responsibility to donate or give away at least some of that money to humans who don’t have enough! This week, I want to examine ‘rules’, what they are and whether they help or hinder our lives here on Earth!

Belief: To get humans to do the right thing, we need to create and enforce a lot of rules.

Practically every family on this planet and everyone in that family knows about the rules of their families. Not only that, people are also aware of the numerous rules with regards to living life as part of this society. Through these rules, we know what is acceptable behavior and what is not. What is being kind and what is not. What is being nice and what is not. What is being selfish and what is not. We know to respect all humans regardless of their skin color or religion or sexual orientation or nationality etc. So, basically, we know what is right and what is not! And every person learns these rules as part of the growing up process and while being out there living their lives and interacting with the rest of this world.  And this is how these rules keep getting passed on from one generation to the next.

But here is what I have difficulty understanding – if all these humans, who have been taught all these rules from the very beginning of their lives; who know what is right and what is wrong based on hundreds of these rules, why is it that this entire human race is still at each others throats and always ready to fight at the drop of a hat? Why do you think we continue to mistreat other people and disrespect them; especially people who don’t look like us, who don’t pray like us, who don’t wear clothes like us, who don’t like what we like, who don’t believe what we believe etc.? Wasn’t one of the rules in your family to be kind and respectful to others regardless of who that another person is? So, have we just forgotten all the rules or did we not learn them well in the first place? Here is my perspective on rules.

Folks, in the process of living this life, somewhere along the way, humans created a belief that the only way to make sure that people act as good human beings; a human who respects others, is compassionate and kind to others, does not harm others etc.; is by creating and enforcing certain rules around how humans should behave and what they should do and not do. And one of the reasons humans could have decided to create and enforce these rules is because maybe a handful of humans did something which was considered outside the category of a ‘good human being’, and so, these rules were created to force or guilt people into doing the right thing!  But folks, although I agree that some rules like traffic rules are necessary to prevent chaos on the streets; however, for most part, rules are NOT what forces or guilts a person into doing the right thing – it’s the common sense of that person. The common sense which is like a GPS which guides this person throughout his life. But apparently, not too many people rely on this common sense or GPS these days. And I believe they don’t rely on this GPS because of the fact that there are way too many rules and these rules override our common sense! These rules override our common sense because we are very fearful about not following them and thus we don’t even allow ourselves the liberty to use our own heads to think for ourselves because God forbid by using our own head, we may end up offending someone and doing or saying the wrong thing. Right? But folks, if these rules were working, then the entire human race wouldn’t be such a mess, the way it is today and nobody would be getting hurt or offended! But look around you – it seems like these days, people could get offended just because you looked at them!! It feels like people are just one tiny reason away from getting offended.

So, in my attempt to try to understand rules and the reason why we create and enforce them, let’s look at rules through an example. And let’s look at this through a parenting example – one of my favorite topics :-). Every parent wants to raise kids who grow up to become good human beings and learn right from wrong. And to raise such kids, through our parenting, we communicate certain rules to our kids about what is acceptable or good behavior and what is not. And the way we enforce and encourage this good behavior is by giving out ‘reward stickers’ or ‘treats’ or ‘good job’ praises when the behavior of our kid falls into the ‘good behavior’ category. However, when our kids don’t behave per these rules, and their behavior is considered ‘bad behavior’, we yell at them or punish them and the latest trend in punishment these days seems to be time-out or sending kids to their rooms. So, as parents, although we do all this hard work in coming up with rules and making sure our kids follow them, however, so often, our kids continue to demonstrate the so called ‘bad behavior’. And baffled, we turn to parenting coaches for help who ‘listen to and work with the kids’ and guide them towards this ‘good behavior’. But here is the thing – you, as a parent could have done that yourself!! And you could have done that yourself by following your own rule about treating everyone with kindness including your own kid :-). By being kind and compassionate towards your kid especially when they are not getting it and when they are not behaving nicely! By listening to them instead of punishing them and sending them to their rooms. By hugging them and kissing them into behaving nicely! But you thought you already did your job because you created all these rules and expected your kid to follow them ‘just because you created them’. Right? Folks, even kids as young as 3-year-old know right from wrong and these kids don’t need an army of rules and punishments to guide them and turn them into people who do the right things. They just need their kind and compassionate parents who remind them that they are good kids and guide them towards their own GPS or common sense which already knows what the right thing to do is!! And those days when parents can’t reach for that kindness and compassion in the face of their kids’ bad behavior, apologizing to your kid for being human is always available!! I can imagine people falling to the floor on reading this – apologize to my kid :-)…but isn’t this what one of your rules is – apologizing to someone you have just hurt! You will just be practicing what you are preaching 🙂 and if you cannot, you shouldn’t be creating all these rules 🙂

Folks,  as I have mentioned several times before, I really believe ALL human beings are good people when they come to this life on Earth; however, in the process of growing up, they somehow stop believing in all the goodness which is already in their hearts and start to believe in all these twisted beliefs which tell them that they are not perfect yet and need to ‘work on becoming perfect’ by following hundreds of these rules! Can you imagine how life would be so much easier and happier and peaceful and simpler, even if its only for one moment that we allow ourselves to believe that we were all absolutely perfect when we arrived here!! Can you imagine how amazingly beautiful our lives would have been and the kind of world we would be living in right now? The kind of world all of us have always desired to live in :-). But if we really want to live in this kind of world, we need to make the shift in perspective because without that, we will continue to create more rules in the hope that it will make this world a better place!!

And as always, feel free to leave a comment if you feel like leaving one. And until next time, follow your own rules or maybe just stop creating them 🙂

The rich have a responsibility to donate at least some of their wealth to the people/charities!

by Shikha Rastogi | Jun 2, 2017 | Beliefs, Perspective

Hi everyone, welcome back! Last week, I examined beliefs around a human being’s uniqueness and in the process understood the reasons why the light of this uniqueness gets dimmed as we go through our lives! This week, I would like to examine whether those of us who have some money or lots of it, have a responsibility to donate or give away at least some of that money to our fellow humans who don’t have enough!

Belief: The rich have a responsibility to donate at least some of their wealth to the people/charities!

Last weekend, as my family was driving back home from a trip to Costco; while we were stopped at a traffic light; my 4-and-a-half-year-old daughter, who sat in the back seat, noticed an old woman who was standing on the divider. My daughter curiously asked us about this old woman. She wanted to know who this woman was and what was she doing standing there. I explained to my daughter that this old woman was asking people for money because she didn’t have any. And in response, my daughter said ‘oh’ and soon the light turned green, so, we started to make the left turn. However, as soon as we made the left turn, my daughter declared that we were ‘mean’ because we didn’t give that old woman some money. And because I wasn’t expecting that kind of response from my daughter; without giving it much thought, I tried to explain to her how we were not mean people just because we chose to not give the old woman some money. I explained that even though that woman needed money, it wasn’t our responsibility to give her money. If we wanted to, we could have, but in this case, we didn’t want to, therefore, chose not to! And that doesn’t make us mean or bad people!! And although, as soon as I was done explaining, my daughter probably was satisfied with my answer because she didn’t say anything afterwards or maybe she was trying to understand the meaning of the word ‘responsibility’; however, as I sat there thinking about what I just said and although I completely agreed with what I had just said, in my own mind, my explanation still felt a little too harsh.

Thus, since this incident, I have been thinking a lot about all the reasons why people who have a little more or maybe a lot more than others would even think about donating their money. Do people donate because they want to help the needy? Do people donate because they think their list of wrongdoings could be balanced by doing something good and therefore choose to donate their money? Do people feel the pain of the needy and that’s why they donate their money? Do people choose to donate based on their religious or spiritual teachings? Do people donate for tax breaks? Do people donate because they care about the plight of humans and want to create a better community. Folks, there could be a variety of reasons including all the reasons that I just mentioned above as to why any human being would donate their money. And honestly, it is a very noble thing to donate your own money to help someone else but what I have been trying to understand is this – are we mean and bad people if we choose not to help others and/or donate our money? As human beings, are we responsible to help people by donating not just our money but our time? And since the biggest question in my mind is about responsibility, lets first explore what responsibility is and how is it that humans behave when they feel they are responsible for something.

So, one of the meanings of the word responsibility is ‘obligation’ and I think we all know how it feels when we are obligated to do something – anything! When we are obligated, we feel like we are being forced to do something against our wishes. We feel like we could be doing something else – something better. We feel like life is unfair when we are doing something out of obligation. We feel like we are trapped under this obligation. We feel like we didn’t want to be where we are today. We feel like other people are having so much fun unlike us. We feel cheated in life, by life itself!! So, now that you know how ‘being responsible for something’ makes us feel about that thing and our life in general, would you still want humans to be responsible for donating their money and/or time? Don’t you think if we just took away the aspect of responsibility, more people would actually want to donate? And they would want to donate because believe it or not folks, most people are good people regardless of what you hear in the media most of the time. Most people want to do the right thing. But if you are still doubtful about the human race and don’t quite trust their generosity until they are backed into a corner, think about this. Think back to all the tragedies that we have faced as a nation. Think back to all the tragedies that your own communities have faced. Do you remember what had happened in the face of those unspeakable moments? Nobody spoke – quite literally; they just hugged and cried together! They just loved and hurt together! They just raised money for the needy together! And it didn’t quite matter who was who but they just prayed together! And I don’t think in those moments of utter desperation, anyone felt obligated or responsible! I don’t think anyone felt like they had to cry or hug or love or pray together. They just did because they wanted to – because they were good people!

Folks, so many times, we expect the rich to chip in because they have so much and because they simply should! But I think we should examine why is it that we expect so much from the people who have made a lot of money. I think it’s because at some very deep level, we are jealous. We are jealous because we wanted to be them but we could not, so, by making them responsible for footing the bills and doing the good deeds, what we are doing is somehow getting rid of that responsibility ourselves. But here is a thought – what if it’s nobody’s responsibility. What if, it’s just a choice. A choice to feel good about yourself and your life by donating instead of feeling responsible or obligated to donate! Can you feel the difference?

And as always, feel free to leave a comment if you feel like leaving one. And until next time, donate, if you feel like donating 🙂

I should feel better about myself, my life and what God has given me because there are so many out there who don’t have anything!

by Shikha Rastogi | May 18, 2017 | Beliefs, Perspective