by: Harish Nagpal
To find the ways to manage our lives, we have to
first understand what life is and what management is?
The difference between a dead and live person: Our body consists of innumerable number of
live cells. Each cell is an independent unit. Numbers of cells keep on changing
all the time. The dead cells are replaced by the new cells. A person is live
till the time this process of change in number of cells in his body is taking
place. If this process stops the person is dead. Throughout the life span of a
person this process keeps on taking place. Therefore, if one wishes to increase
his life span, he has to make sure that this process of change in number of
live cells remains active. Moment this process stops he is declared dead.
Now Life (age) of a person
in years is the time span between his birth and death. When we say
`management of life; we mean `to manage activity in this time
span'. In my opinion, we keep on changing our life span (or remaining-age
period) all the time. This happens because of our activities. We can't survive
without activity. Even while sleeping (either relaxing or otherwise) our life
span keep on changing. All our activities – god or bad – will have effect on
our life span. In other words, our remaining life span is in our hand.
Management is broadly defined as `efficient
utilisation of all available resources to achieve the desired objective in
predefined time frame.'
Now to manage life we have to
define its objectives, available resources and
the time period available - to achieve those objectives.
Now let us first understand that time
period available (remaining-age) to one is not specified. One can live
for a long period or one can die at any moment. So we can't define time period
available. This increases our difficulty to manage life.
Next we have to define objectives of our
life. Now each individual may set different objectives for his life. This
also makes it impossible to make a fixed formula, which can be universally
applied to all persons, for managing life.
Next, resources available also
vary from person to person. Resources available may
be time, energy, will power, intelligence level, money, manpower,
material help, responsibilities etc.
Thus it becomes more difficult to define a universal
formula for life management. In short, laying down a plan for life
management, which can be applied to all, is not an easy task.
However, we should not leave hope and try to do it.
Firstly let us set an objective that
is universally applicable to all living beings, irrespective of time period
(remaining-age) and resources available to an individual.
We know-one of the main requirements of good
management is efficient utilisation of available
resources. Efficient means optimum utilisation of resources to
achieve optimum results.
Now it is a well-known fact that our
efficiency is optimum when we are happy (i.e. we are in the best mood
and our mind is at rest). When we are sad our efficiency is the least.
Therefore, our aim in life should be `to
remain happy all the time' so that our efficiency is optimum; and
thereby whatever we do we do it to the perfection. Now this objective can be
universal, as it is independent of available time or resources.
Now we will try to find ways to achieve this `objective
of life' i.e. TO REMAIN HAPPY ALL THE TIME.
In other words, Management of life means
– `to manage our life in such a way that we are happy all the time'. In
other words, we have to control our activities in the present,
so that they have good effect on us and we remain happy all the time.
To remain happy all the time we have to
understand what happiness is and what are the factors affecting our
happiness?
One of the paths to achieve happiness is self-empowerment.
And this is the most important path, as anyone who is dependent on any one else
for anything can't remain happy. Can you remain happy in your old age, when you
have to depend on others (including doctors or medicines or conveyance etc)?
So, we have to depend or rely more on us for our daily requirement. How we can
do it?
As we have realised that life can be
managed well if one can live it efficiently; and one is most efficient when
he is happy.
As the life span of an individual is uncertain one
has to live happily all the time. One cannot postpone his living
happily otherwise his efficiency will go down, and his life span
(remaining-age when he can do some activity as per his wish) will reduce.
Living happily all the time means we have to live our life
(consciously) in the present, as we can't live in past or future.
Living in the present means we have to live every moment of
our life consciously so that we make sure that we utilise that moment
efficiently. The moment not utilised will not come back to us. Our
future depends upon our activity in the present. We will reap in future
what we sow in the present.
Therefore, we have to empower ourselves so
that we live all the time happily. Therefore, one should not
waste any moment without efficiently utilising it.
Self-empowerment can be achieved by self-awareness and self-actualisation.
The other important point in life management is
– how to increase our life span so that our problem of life
management becomes little bit easy. Less the time, more is the difficulty in
managing it.
Therefore, we should find methods of increasing our
life span – period available to us till our death. This period should be such
that we can use it for some creative work – not to feed the
body only and curing it with medicines.
This leads us to next important point of living
healthy all the time. Unless we are healthy we can't be happy. We will
also see how to remain healthy without having any medicine –
whether allopathic, ayurvedic, homeopathy or of any other pathy.
Self-Awareness
By knowing and accepting our weaknesses and
sharing our strengths and aspirations (self-awareness),
we can get the support of others on our journey to self-empowerment.
Knowing what is right and what is wrong in our own
inner consciousness is insufficient. It is not the knowing of truth that
transforms a person; it is the doing of truth that has an
impact on you and on the other people that you interact with.
You may know that it is inappropriate to think
selfishly and look out for your own best interests first, but your
inner emotions may drive you to be blinded to the needs of others.
You may know that it is against your basic
truth to judge another individual, but your inner emotions may
cause you to look at that person and make a judgment because of the effect you
are allowing them to have on your life.
You may understand that all of God's
creatures were created equal, but that doesn't stop you, on an emotional
level, from feeling that the human race is the most important life form on the
planet.
The discrepancy lies not in a lack of information,
for the information is available on a world-wide basis for those who would seek
it, evaluate it, and accept it as their own; the discrepancy lies in
the ability to integrate Universal Law into your lifestyle.
Awareness of the self does not just focus into the positive aspects
of a personality, or the positive aspects of skills and talents that you
brought with you into this lifetime, but into the negative as well; it is only
when the positive is weighed against the negative, and thebalanced
perspective is used as a guidepost in integrating higher consciousness
into the self that the influence becomes apparent inyour relationships and
in your lifestyle.
Thus, self-awareness means –
`to understand one's strength and weaknesses so that one can empower himself by
minimising or eliminating his weaknesses with the proper utilisation of his
strengths'.
Self-Actualisation
Self-actualisation can be translated to - making
the self actual.
Self-actualisation means there is no difference
between what you think and what you do.
There is no contradiction between what you tell others and how you respond
yourself. It is manifesting who you are and what you believe in on a day-to-day
consistent basis.
The path is a long and solitary one, and many
individuals give up:
· It
is difficult to accept what our `conscious choices' in the
course of a specific existence have driven us to do to other people.
· It
is hard for us to accept that we have been selfish, or resentful, or
spiteful.
· It
is hard for us to see where we have deliberately manipulated our lives so
that we have control over the people and the situations and the events within
it.
· It
is not easy to admit that we are not the positive, smiling, loving
person that we prefer to see ourselves as; when, in the course of personal
growth, it becomes necessary for an individual to truly, honestly evaluate how
they have interacted with their fellow human beings.
This is unfortunate, because personal growth cannot
proceed — self-awareness and self-actualisation cannot be
accomplished — without a true and open acknowledgement of - who we
used to be and how we used to live our lives, no matter how unpleasant that
panorama may be.
This does not mean that we need to spend years of our lives
suffering regret and remorse for the wrong we have done in their lives to other
people.
It does mean that
we need to take a reasonable amount of time to look back and to evaluate
honestly what was really at play in any particular situation, where the two
parties were really coming from, and where each conducted themselves with less
than universal love.
We cannot change the past; we cannot undo the
influence that we have upon other people by our thoughts and our feelings and
our reactions, but we can learn from that experience and make
a personal commitment never to treat anyone with that lack of respect again.
If that person is still in our life, we can have
the grace to apologise, and share our learning experience, and say, "I'm
sorry that I used to be like that. I want to be like this, now, and I hope that
you will help."
It is only by acknowledging our past weaknesses,
and sharing our future aspirations, that we can experience the support and
encouragement of others on our journey to self-actualisation leading us to
self-empowerment.
If we are not willing to admit that we have ever
made a mistake, ever reacted inappropriately, ever deliberately hurt someone,
then we cannot admit that we need to change, or that we need other
people's help in doing so.
It is, from a soul evolution perspective,
self-defeating behaviour to remain in situations made from the lower consciousness
that create less than fulfilling situations and relationships in our lives.
Self-Empowerment
When you learn the art of self-awareness and
self-actualisation, you are empowered to live a useful and meaningful life. You
start to live a life consciously. You start enjoying life. Life is no more a
burden.
"When you are empowered, you are
bigger than a problem rather than a victim to a problem, and living in such a
space makes you a winner".
Understand the following aspects to empower your
self for such a life:
1. Attitude:
Your attitude is more important than facts - for
the right attitude can empower you. An easy
task becomes difficult when you have a poor attitude. A difficult
task becomes challenging when you have a good attitude.
2. Happiness:
Learn this art to operate from happiness and not
for happiness. Happiness is an attitude. To be a winner in life is also an
attitude. One has to know how to take it easy and float in life
and not fight with life. You can't fight with the waves but you can learn
to float. Go with the flow and you will glow.
3. Change Your Body Posture:
A trainer talking to students on the subject of
public speaking told them: "When you talk of heaven your face must be
glowing and radiating joy. Your eyes must shine and lips should reflect
heaven." "What about talking of hell" asked the student? "Your
normal face is enough," replied the trainer.
4. Always Entertain Healthy Thoughts:
Positive thoughts are a great asset. A pessimist
sees difficulty in an opportunity and an optimist sees opportunity in a
difficulty. Understand that when one door closes another opens. The quality
of your life is the quality of your consistent emotion. When
your emotion is low, just change it; think of a happy
incident. Have values that connect to goodness and connect to people.
5. Insecurity:
Insecurity invites you to be alert and not worried.
It tells you to be creative and not complain. You feel insecure because you
have a concept of what is security and from that concept
you are seeing life. Anything that does not fit that concept makes you
insecure. If you have the spirit of adventure in you then insecurity is
a great adventure for you to explore. You will have fun with that
insecurity. Learn to trust that insecurity is inviting you to be creative.
6. Fear:
Also understand that fear is a movement of
thought; Thought is nothing but a movement of the mental
word. If you get identified with a fear which is actually just a
thought, which again is just a word, then this identification makes you a prisoner
of fear. Also, this thought-fear unconsciously pulls in the
previous memories of fear and with the past fears, a snowballing effect
happens. So when fear happens, just become totally aware and
don't get identified with that thought. With wordless awareness, just watch.
This watching will not allow the previous fears to have a snowballing
effect. This is called objective watching. Lots of
people fear failure, death, insecurity and rejection. Come
from a commitment that failure is only postponed success. Failure is the
fertiliser for success. If you bring this energy into your life, it will give
you methods of handling fear of failure. Are you now ready to face the life
with new concept of EMPOWER YOURSELF TO LIVE AND LOVE YOUR LIFE. If
interested, you can join the yahoo group Inner Engineering and Being
Yourself, moderated by me; do write to me at
Lt Col Harish Nagpal"
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