by Shikha Rastogi | Apr 1, 2022 | Beliefs, Perspective
Many years ago, when I started down the spiritual path it was because I needed a way out of my own suffering. I was desperately trying to find answers and meaning in everything that was happening in my life. Although I had been suffering for a long time because of all the losses I kept experiencing in my life, however, it wasn’t until that day in 2007 when I finally realized that if I didn’t change something in my life, I wouldn’t be able to continue living in suffering for much longer!
Today when I look back on all those years of suffering, I know that I was tightly holding on to the idea of how a life should be and because the life I was living at that time didn’t fit those expectations, my mind created all that suffering, and I just got caught up in a vicious cycle of losses which led to failed expectations, and which led to suffering.
Since then, I have understood a few very important aspects of being human. First, in the last few decades it appears that most people started living their lives by following the ‘societal script’ of what a successful life is. This script lays the path forward for your life and one of the key aspects of this path is getting the best possible education to get the highest paying job. The belief behind getting the highest paying job is twofold – one, you are somehow better than others and more worthy because you have a great title and a high paying job and second, this high paying job is the key to your future happiness and fulfilment.
Second aspect of being human are those people who follow this ‘societal script’ like the Holy Grail and somewhere down the road either in their thirties, forties, or fifties when they seem to have achieved and acquired all those material possessions that used to take an entire lifetime to acquire, these people are hit with the feeling of emptiness. So, they embark upon this journey and try to do something meaningful this time around hoping it could give their lives the missing meaning and fill the vacuum left behind by “having it all”. The hope is that they may be able to get back on the happiness road by doing meaningful work.
Third aspect of being human are those people who although are severely burned out by working longer hours and hate their jobs, however, the idea of leaving such jobs or careers does not seem to be an option for them because of their belief that if they opt out of this race to success, they will be left behind and their friends and co-workers will win this ‘life competition’ where having more in every aspect of life is the only measure of a successfully lived life. Such people convince themselves that this is how modern-day life and living is and they somehow try to find moments of meaning, happiness, and peace within their hectic lifestyle.
No matter which category you belong to, the key is to let go of this societal script and have the courage to update and upgrade your definition of success. But in order to define success for yourself, you first need to be able to connect with yourself. You need to understand who you are what it is that makes your heart sing. Because what makes your heart sing is what connects you with your soul and if you choose to do what connects you with your soul, you will automatically find the meaning you are looking for.
But leaving jobs or switching careers in pursuit of meaning may not be the solution for everyone for a variety of reasons. And if you are one of those who can’t make this switch, I would like to let you know that the way we approach a meaningful life is all backwards in our society! The truth is we cannot go in search of meaning and somehow find a meaningful life. Meaning isn’t something that’s out there that needs to be found. Meaning is within you, close to your heart and all you have to learn to do is find a way back to yourself, to get connected with yourself and that’s when you will uncover exactly what meaning and a meaningful life is to you. And once you have understood that the next step is to act.
Many years ago, as a teenager I used to love writing poems but as I started to grow up, I bought into the good education, high paying job script and left the thing which made my heart sing behind until the deep suffering brought me back to writing again more than two decades later. It felt like a full circle moment when I wrote again and started my blog back in 2016. I haven’t looked back since and have also started a podcast called Loving Our Fears where I share lessons from my own experiences of living a life of deep suffering. I however do all my writing and podcasting while working a full-time job where I have created strict boundaries around my work hours and only put in the 40 hours necessary. That’s how I have created meaning in my own life for now until I choose to travel in a different direction.
Fast forward to today, the last year and a half of living through a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic has presented exactly that opportunity – to get connected with yourself. Many months of isolation during this pandemic forced us to get disconnected from the outside world and its noise and gave us the space to re-think, re-assess, and re-evaluate our lives. If viewed from a spiritual perspective this is exactly the kind of collective suffering and the scale and magnitude of such suffering that carries the potential to force people to re-think, re-evaluate and re-assess the meaning of their lives. And that’s exactly what has been happening and why some people have been leaving their jobs to try something new and different in hopes that this change would re-connect them with the lost meaning in their lives while others continue to find that meaning in their existing jobs and lives. But this trend is only getting started!
So, no matter who and where you are in your own journey to find meaning, know that your meaning is exactly where my meaning was – close to my own heart!
by Shikha Rastogi | Nov 9, 2018 | Beliefs, Perspective
Have you ever wondered, why is it that human beings wait for a tragedy to strike before they come together to listen, help and hug each other? That’s because unlike daily life where we live our lives through our minds; a tragedy cracks open our hearts and forces us to feel all those feelings that we would have never ever allowed ourselves to feel before! And because all human beings’ hearts’ regardless of where they come from and how they were raised, beat to the rhythm of love, our tragedies lead us out of our minds into the goodness of our hearts where we all become one! But the bigger question is, why do we have to wait for a tragedy to strike to feel another human’s sadness, to feel called to help them, to feel like giving them a hug, to feel like they just need someone to listen to? Why can’t we move into our heart space and live from there each day, every day? I invite you to close your eyes for one moment and imagine what your life and especially your relationships would look like if you are able to live from the beauty and goodness of your heart instead of all the fear in your head 💜❤
by Shikha Rastogi | Mar 31, 2018 | Beliefs, Perspective
Hi everyone, welcome back! A few weeks ago, I examined how our parenting style and expectations from our kids are making them “Career-Ready” instead of “Life-Ready”! This week, since I am completing 2 years of writing my blog; instead of examining a belief, I wanted to talk about the three things that are on my mind – Gratitude, Hope and Meditation!
As I write today’s post, my heart is filled with deep gratitude and hope. I am grateful to every single one of you who take the time to read my post and special thank you to those of you who take the time to also let me know that you enjoy reading it! Although I have thoroughly enjoyed writing each post especially because I pour my heart out into words; yet, I still can’t believe that I continue to write after 2 years. When I started, I didn’t really know much about what I wanted to do with my blog except write about the fear filled beliefs which were responsible for all the anxiety that I ever experienced in my life. And the reason I wanted to write about these beliefs and wanted to share my writing with the rest of the world was because I had started to get a glimpse into the kind of internal peace my shift in perspective was leading me to. And that peace, although fleeting, felt absolutely AMAZING – something that I had not felt in a very long time and I hoped it will do something similar for whoever was reading or at the very least give them something to think about!
Folks, I believe, there are three common threads which run through entire humanity – our need to be loved, our instinct to push fear away and our desire to be happy. And these are the very threads which not only make us human but connect us to each other. They make us more alike than different as humans. So, the issue never is that this human being does not have the need to be loved or does not push fear away or doesn’t want to be happy. The real issue is that we hide that we all feel these things and have these needs, just like any other human being!! We try to pretend that we are perfect but those who portray perfection are more broken from the inside. They just don’t have the courage to accept it!
But there is hope! A lot of hope, actually!! And the way you get to that hope is through writing and reading/listening, being thankful and meditating. Although it doesn’t matter what you write about but maintaining a journal where you just put your thoughts down has incredible healing power. Another way to bring hope into your life is through reading/listening to articles/talks that resonate with you. And you will know what resonates with you as soon as you read or hear it. You will feel at ease and feel so much peace inside! And what you like to read or listen to will be different for different people based on where you are in your level of consciousness and what it is that you need to learn to continue to grow as a human being.
Another way to invite hope into your life is by being thankful for the things and people you have in your life today. Gratitude has amazing power to shift your perspective from despair to hope. Gratitude shifts your perspective because instead of focusing on the things that you can’t achieve or the people who you don’t like or the health that you don’t want; you start focusing on the things or people or anything else that you already love in your life and when you focus on something, you are able to find more and more of those things. So, try counting in your mind or maybe even writing down the 5 things you are grateful for today in your life. If you are going through something challenging in your life today, you may find it difficult to find things you are grateful for but there is always something, so dig deeper!
The last thing through which you can invite hope into your life is through meditation! And I am not kidding when I say that meditation has saved my life and my sanity! I know meditation seems very intimidating to most people and a lot of us may have tried it and already given up on it – maybe after a couple of times; however, what I know now after 8 years of meditation is that there is no right or wrong way or a technique to meditation. Because we all focus so much on others and their expectations; meditation, to me, is simply getting to know myself again. Getting connected to my own heart which hides all my answers about life and my reason for being here at this time on Earth!! And your heart holds your answers…are you ready to explore?
by Shikha Rastogi | Feb 16, 2018 | Beliefs, Perspective
Hi everyone, welcome back! A few weeks ago, I examined beliefs which give rise to very common feelings of ‘not being enough or not having enough’ in this world!! This week, as I have been reading so much about the stresses of being a kid in this world; I would like to examine how our parenting style and expectations from our kids are making them “Career-Ready” instead of “Life-Ready”!
Belief: The only pathway to leading a successful and happy life for my kids is to have a successful career at any cost!!!
You heart overflowed with joy. You couldn’t hold your tears in. You felt love which you had never experienced before in your entire life. Your tiny bundle of joy just arrived!! After you brought her home, in those moments when your mind still worked despite the sleep deprivation and mind-numbing exhaustion; you started to make plans. Plans about your life with her; plans about her life; plans about how you want to raise her; where you want to raise her. Regardless of what the plan was, all your plans had one and only one theme – somehow you wanted her to be the happiest person on this planet!! And even though all you ever wanted was for her to be happy, your definition of where that happiness will come from started to shift. Your definition started to shift because as she started to get older, you came across other parents with kids, who, although just like you, wanted their kids to be happy; however, their ideas of how to achieve that happiness were very different from your own! So, you shifted your focus from listening to your heart which was screaming to allow your kid to just play and have fun but instead you started listening to your head which was very busy trying to copy others who it thought knew ‘more’ than you did! And thus, your kid’s childhood and their innocence just got lost and buried in the schedules and ABCs and numbers and the race to have a kid who knows the most at the youngest age!
If you are someone who believes (even if you have been influenced by others) that the pathway to a highly successful and happy life is to push your kid to the get perfect grades and perfect test scores and entry into perfect colleges; your intentions although pure are highly misplaced! And your intentions are misplaced because of your belief in what creates a happy and successful life. Although different people, if asked about what creates a happy and successful life will answer differently; however, regardless of who you ask, if they have been there and already done this success thing, they will tell you that life is not just about perfect grades and test scores and getting entry into the best colleges. Life is also not about being better than others or being the best in the crowd. Life is so much more….
Life is about being the best version of your own self!! And being the best version of your own self simply means, knowing yourself and what your gifts and talents are and then focusing on them and cultivating them to create companies or publish books or create art or build robots or anything else that your heart is set on! Life is about failing and falling, getting up and trying again! Life is about loving someone and allowing yourself to be loved and getting hurt, feeling the immense pain but believing in love again! Life is about watching the sky and counting the stars and waiting to see just one more star on a cloudy night! Life is about grieving the loss of a loved one and feeling the emptiness in your heart when they are gone! Life is about allowing those tears to come out and letting yourself to feel overwhelmed and sad every once in a while! Life is about showing kindness to the ones who you think don’t deserve any! Life is about allowing yourself to be vulnerable because that’s when you give most and receive most! Life is about holding hands and giving tight hugs because you never know when would be the last hug you share with your near and dear ones! Life is about listening to the stories of your tiny humans which although make no sense to you, are so very interesting from their point of views! Life is about saying sorry even to your kids for something that you did wrong and teaching them that we all make mistakes sometimes! Life is about forgiving the ones who have hurt you the most because forgiving gives you permission to let go of that hurt! Life is about putting your ego aside and using your heart to view your partners perspective! Life is about finding that silver lining even when nothing is going your way! Life is about LOVE and FUN and JOY!!! Life is so much more than just a successful career or a six-figure salary!! Life is about living and listening and feeling your own breath! Life is about living from your heart instead of your mind! Life is about feeling alive!!!!
Folks, I agree that building a successful career is important in life but be mindful that it’s only a part of life and not the entire life itself! And having a successful career does not guarantee a happy and successful life! We have got the formula all wrong 😊. Therefore, I think it’s time to review and renew our beliefs about happiness and where it comes from. And it is especially important to do it NOW because the lives of our kids are at stake! Their happiness, mental health and wellbeing is at stake!
And always, leave a comment if you feel like leaving one. And until next time, live life!!!
by Shikha Rastogi | Jan 22, 2018 | Beliefs, Perspective
Hi everyone, welcome back! A couple of weeks ago I examined our beliefs around addictions and addicts and in the process uncovered that the root cause of all these addictions could be traced back to the feeling of not being ‘enough’! Therefore, this week, I am examining beliefs which give rise to this feeling of ‘not being enough or not having enough’ in this world!
Belief: Although I have been achieving everything that I am supposed to achieve, acquire, gain and attain; however, I still don’t feel accomplished enough or beautiful enough or smart enough or rich enough etc.
When I came to this country several years ago, I came across a term which I had never heard before in my life. That term was ‘social anxiety’. At that time, upon reading a few articles about this term, what I could understand about social anxiety was that it had something to do with a person being shy and an introvert. However, over the years, as I came face to face with one failure after another; I could feel this ‘social anxiety’ in my own self especially when I was among other people. In feeling this kind of anxiety, myself, I was convinced that it had nothing to do with a person being shy or introvert but had everything to do with this person not feeling good enough or beautiful enough or accomplished enough or creative enough etc. And this revelation was so profound for me that it changed the way I viewed my own self and my own mind! Let me explain further.
Our entire lives, humans learn about the importance of being ‘successful in life’. And the way we learn about being successful is by being better than everyone else. As young kids and teens, we are taught in schools and colleges and by parents to compete, to become better than someone else, to get better grades than someone else, to learn how to write before and better than someone else, to learn how to read before and better than someone else, to learn how to do anything before and better than this someone else. And we are taught and expected to do all this before and better than someone else so that we can be tagged as more intelligent and more competent than someone else. And we think that by being more intelligent and more competent than someone else, we will ensure a better job than this someone else, better pay than someone else, better home than someone else, better opportunity for our kids than someone else’s kids etc. etc. And the end goal in being more successful than someone else is always to attain more happiness than someone else. However, the one very important aspect of living our lives based on this strategy where we always strive to be better than someone else is a strategy which is doomed for failure from the very beginning because in trying to use others as benchmarks for the success that we want in our lives, we are limiting ourselves and our definition of success. Not only that, chances are, there will always be that someone else who is ‘more’ than us – ALWAYS, so, by living our lives based on this strategy, which is how most people live their lives; we are setting ourselves up for a lifetime of pain and suffering and unhappiness.
So, are you left wondering how this knowing of trying to be more than others ties into our feelings of not being enough? Well, every time you come across that someone who you think is more successful than you are, you will feel that you are not successful enough no matter how successful you already are. Every time you come across that someone who you think is more intelligent than you are, you will feel that you are not intelligent enough no matter how intelligent you already are. Every time you come across that someone who you think is richer than you are, you will feel that you are not rich enough no matter how many millions you have in your bank accounts. Every time you come across that someone who you think is more beautiful than you are, you will not feel beautiful enough no matter how beautiful you already are. So, you see folks, this is the very reason why anyone including myself would ever feel this ‘social anxiety’ especially when we are gathered with people who we think are more than us because in their presence, we will feel not enough. And to those of you who think that its these others who make you feel not enough, let me tell you another very basic truth of life – no one, literally no one can make you feel anything unless you are already thinking and feeling that thing. More on this another time.
Folks, how on Earth as a collective society of humans did we allow this to happen to ourselves and our kids! Why do we not realize the damage this kind of belief system is already doing to our and our kids psyche and thus taking us so far away from the very happiness that we are always chasing after? Why is it that we can’t just create our own definition of success, whatever that definition maybe? Why is it that we need others as benchmarks to make us feel us good about ourselves and our lives? Why is it that instead of focusing on others, their successes and their achievements, we can’t just focus on what we want to accomplish and how we want to accomplish it? Folks, we have got this life and living thing all wrong. Otherwise, what else could explain our depressions and anxieties; heartaches and heart breaks; pain and suffering; angst and despair? Why do we allow ourselves to go through this? Maybe it’s time to wake up and look at this thing which we call life from a different perspective – a perspective of collaboration rather than competition! A perspective of every single one of us being special in our own unique ways and not just a handful of us! A perspective of love for our achievements and accomplishments and not fear for what others have achieved and accomplished! I really think it’s time to wake up…what do you think?
And as always, feel free to leave a comment if you feel like leaving one. And until next time, collaborate more and compete less 😊…
