Enjoy the ride!

Sometimes we complain of our difficulty in keeping life together. You are actually not surprised by this comment, are you?

Most of us struggle to deal with all the things we have on our plate on a daily basis. So whether it’s the daily onslaught of world news, the endless to do list, or wondering how we could have misplaced the hot cup of tea we just poured, sometimes so many things are going on at once, that it can be overwhelming.

My parent’s piece of advice when I am feeling a little swamped is the idea that a state of chaos often precedes a new order of things. It’s sort of like the calm after the storm: the rainstorm with the whipping winds and thunder, followed by a period of a calm blue skies with birds chirping and nature looking clean and refreshed. It’s only when we actually come out on the other side of the chaos that we can gain insight, understanding, or a new perspective.

Chores and tasks can seem too hard if we think about them all at once. We could look at small pieces of the job and doing them with a smile . Mental tasks can be pleasant when shared with others who are interested in doing a good job. Why not put our head together with a creative friend who knows our style?

But there is no doubt that the actual process of living the chaos can be difficult. That said, there are things that can help to move us through the confusion or conflict faster and easier. First, it’s important to accept when are we feeling overwhelmed. Being confused or conflicted happens to almost everyone countless times throughout life. By accepting our negative emotions or anxiety, we can actually liberate ourselves so that we can begin to change whatever it is that is making us uncomfortable.

Once we can accept conflict or confusion in things or events, we can begin to let go of them. Hanging on to old baggage, just because it feels familiar or because we are afraid to let it go keeps us in a state of discomfort. If we are having trouble letting go of things that aren’t good for us, we may need to consider seeking some help – by simply talking to a trusted family member or a friend. Sharing and asking for assistance is not a sign of weakness, but rather a step in a positive direction, and it is surprising how helpful it can be.

Feelings of chaos and confusion will come and go like the tides. It is realizing this that actually allows us to move through the ups and downs more easily and to go with the flow.

A Blank Page…

There is a story about a time the Buddha was out walking and Angulimala, a notorious serial killer, came upon him. Angulimala shouted for the Buddha to stop, but the Buddha kept walking slowly and calmly. Angulimala caught up with him and demanded to know why he hadn’t stopped. The Buddha replied, “Angulimala, I stopped a long time ago. It is you who have not stopped.” He went on to explain, “I stopped committing acts that cause suffering to other living beings. All living beings want to live. All fear death. We must nurture a heart of compassion and protect the lives of all beings.” Startled, Angulimala asked to know more. By the end of the conversation, Angulimala vowed never again to commit violent acts and decided to become a monk.

How could the Buddha remain so calm and relaxed when faced with a murderer? This is an extreme example, but each of us faces our fears in one way or another every day. Buddha was a human being, and he also knew fear. But because he spent each day practicing mindfulness and looking closely at his fear, when confronted with the unknown, he was able to face it calmly and peacefully. Ofcourse, I can practice mindfulness when asleep but I surely have learnt to acknowledge it now.

Most of us experience a life full of wonderful moments and difficult moments. But for many of us, even when we are most joyful, there is fear behind our joy. We fear that this moment will end, that we won’t get what we need, that we will lose what we love, or that we will not be safe. So even when we are surrounded by all the conditions for happiness, our joy is not complete.

We may think that if we ignore our fears, they’ll go away. But if we bury worries and anxieties in our consciousness, they continue to affect us and bring us more sorrow. We are very afraid of being powerless. But we have the power to look deeply at our fears, and then fear cannot control us. We can transform our fear. Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive, and our bodies are working marvelously. Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can still hear the voices of our loved ones.

The first part of looking at our fear is just inviting it into our awareness without judgment. We should acknowledge gently that it is there. This brings a lot of relief already. Then, once our fear has calmed down, we can embrace it tenderly and look deeply into its roots, its sources. Understanding the origins of our anxieties and fears will help us let go of them.

Is our fear coming from something that is happening right now or is it an old fear, a fear from when we were small that we’ve kept inside? When we practice inviting all our fears up, we become aware that we are still alive, that we still have many things to treasure and enjoy. If we are not pushing down and managing our fear, we can enjoy the sunshine, the fog, the air, and the water. If we can look deep into our fear and have a clear vision of it, then we really can live a life that is worthwhile.

When things are tough, we tend to get discouraged and do less than we’ve done before. Wrong! This is the worst time to slow down. The best cure for discouragement is to double our effort, so as to calm our fears and motivate us to keep going.

Fearlessness is not only possible, it is the ultimate joy. When we touch non-fear, we are free. But we should not wait for the critical moment to arrive before we start to transform our fear and live mindfully. Nobody can give us fearlessness. Even if the Buddha sat next to us, he couldn’t give it to us. We have to practice it and realize it ourself. If we make a habit of mindfulness practice, when difficulties arise, we will already know what to do.

It takes a lot of hard work to succeed. It’s sad to see people today constantly chasing the next quick fix, the next scheme that promises them a million bucks in 30 days. Because it won’t happen. As the wise said, nothing worthwhile comes easy. If we want success in our life, we have got to work hard at it…we have got to be positive no matter what hits the fan, we have got to believe in ourself and what we are doing.

Few years ago, I  waited for opportunity to knock (like a chrysalis in a cocoon). I did not realize that I needed to hear “No” to get opportunity to open the door. We need to get sufficiently accustomed to hearing “No” so that we can move on to the next conversation with ease and enough curiosity to make necessary changes to get to “Yes”.

We spend a lot of time worried about what is happening to us. We focus a lot of attention on when things might happen. We ask a lot of questions about where we will end up. Often in life, the what, when and where are not going to turn out the way we want them to turn out. We don’t always get to choose those things, but we do get to choose the why. We may not get to choose what our future is going to be, but at any given time we do get to choose why we are living the way we do.

I am not saying that I make impossible possible but sometimes I feel like I can walk into the lion’s den with a string of raw meat hanging from my neck and come out a winner. But as we are warned, life is not easy. It’s not for people who give up, who listen to their fears, or who will not give their all.

Remember life from this moment is still a blank page…

Letting go..

Not long ago but a few months back, I was struggling with a frustrating situation involving my workplace, and I felt helpless to do anything about it.  Unfortunately, I was having panic attacks because I was so anxious and fearful about the situation (Being in an organization for 6.5 years can cut you off from the outer world). I was unable to see my options, and as a result was trapped in an uncomfortable and unfortunate position.

Feeling trapped in a situation is a very common challenge we all face at various times. After all, we are creatures of habit, and even though we may claim we like change, when something threatens our status quo, it can feel more like the rug has been pulled out from under us rather than an opportunity for us to move ahead. I spent time thinking about what was most important to me in my current work position.

I considered how much joy and comfort I was actually getting from my job in light of the current situation. Was it so important to me to remain in a situation that was causing me so much frustration?  Was it the only option I had? In asking these questions to myself, I had a specific intention. I wanted to look at what my job meant to me and to see if I should consider other options. Sometimes, when we examine our motivations, we begin to realize that they aren’t what we thought they were.

I am happy to report that a couple of weeks later, I had a new perspective. I concluded that my job wasn’t really the best thing for me, and started exploring other options that I wouldn’t have considered previously. I decided to look for another job doing something to challenge my capabilities. And interestingly enough, my panic attacks had disappeared and now I get “good” goosebumps when I face new challenges and learning new things.

As you can probably guess, I am now glad that the circumstances at my old job forced me to take stock of what I really wanted in life and to let go of a situation that was unhealthy for me. 

I look at my own life to see if there are aspects of it that are no longer serving me as I need them to. Then I would see how to alter them to suit my best interests. Now that’s a worthwhile goal for the this year!

Letting go isn’t always easy, but choosing to let go when you realize it is time can change your life for the better.

It’s often fun to look in the mirror!!!

During initial years of my career, like any young people, I desperately wanted to carve my own niche and acquire competence. In the course of doing that, I fell into stalled thinking about living up to others’ expectations and achieving perfection. What a misconception!! Success is not that easy to come by and success is never a freebee.

I am a real person with fears, hopes and dreams, and have experienced set-backs, failures and successes just as you have. I have realized that I needed to change, in order to be the kind of person I want to be – one who didn’t succeed by running down my competitors. I like healthy competition and despite my managers telling  me that corporate culture functions in a certain way and has a pre-defined protocol (which I fail to understand till date), I believe that there are consequences for behaviors, that those who behave in an unethical manner, don’t last long in their careers. It’s about personal integrity in environments that practically beg you to bend your principles. Life is a compromise and we must make choices and take the responsibilities that come with choices.

Most of us learn the hard way, which is sometimes the best way to learn, as wisdom is gained and we work towards bettering ourselves, and enriching others. I have been down certain roads but was willing in being true to myself. I was inspired to let go of the past and getting on with what’s present in my life as trying to fix myself kept me stuck in the places I wanted to be free of, but getting into the moment set me free. Being in the moment and becoming aware of my own mechanical behaviours held the possibility to transform my life. I learnt that transformation allowed for different possibilities in my life that I thought were never possible before.

We should appreciate ourselves and not allow others to beat us down. Humility is about having a realistic self-image — not beating ourselves up for not being good enough and not settling for mediocrity. We should decide what areas are most important to us and make realistic goals to strive for and what areas can wait until a different phase in life.

We should be ready and be able to handle different situations – by accepting what’s happening and following our own feelings and intuition. At times, I have tried to do the perfect thing – and the results it had and the mixed feelings and failures it produced later had me laughing about myself sometimes – to love parts of my life I didn’t accept before and to search for my own way. The fact, that taking myself not too seriously but to focus on what I was doing, was one aspect that shifted my point of view to begin to see my own life in a different light.

We need to be ready to take a long, hard look at themselves and be honest about the choices we have made in our lives. Afterall, we DON’T have to be perfect,we learn from mistakes and grow from them,we learn our strengths and weaknesses because NO ONE is good at everything and is that EVER true! We don’t have to be a clone of the next person – we can be ourselves and benefit our lives and society. We need to keep trying and not give up because we WILL find our place in the world.

Reality check: I will soon be moving to a new city for a new job – I am still scared and unsure about the future, but I am not afraid to start at the bottom.

“I don’t  believe in taking right decisions. I take decisions and then make them right” ~ Mr. Ratan Tata

Your Boss is Insane!!

Source: LearnStuff.com

Moment of Silence

Most of us are too crunched for time and money to devote enough of either to attaining our fitness goals. In this age of information we are bombarded with incorrect advice, useless gadgets and pills, and pure hype. The health and fitness industry makes billions of dollars a year selling stuff to people that is beyond necessary (and often is not even used.)

I used to be super fit, running 10 miles a day, going to a gym and swimming on weekends. I have since grown up, got busy and become a lot less fit until I started cross-fit style. I don’t care so much about the shape of my butt as the shape of my health. I care less about the numbers of the circumference of my butt than the numbers of my blood pressure. The fact that these exercises make me look good is just a wonderful side effect!

This Is It…Shake It Up!!

I have noticed that the people whose lives are heavily weighted with responsibility tend to smile and laugh a lot less than those who have fewer concerns. While that observation isn’t particularly surprising, I am convinced that it doesn’t have to be that way. I am very fond of a saying attributed to Abraham Lincoln: People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. I am a firm believer that if you want to have fun and happiness in your life, you have to choose it and then take steps to make it happen.

Sometimes we find ourself pretty much in same routine, continuously doing the same old thing, eating the same food regularly, following the same familiar route to work each day, we are probably in a rut. One way to combat this monotony is to shake things up a bit. Take a different route to work, try out a new restaurant for lunch, try to vary your work tasks, even if it’s just switching around the order you do them. Little shifts like this can change our perspective and pull us out of an unpleasant rut we may find ourself in.

Laughing more also helps, definitely. Even if I haven’t felt much like laughing lately I know what to do to bring laughter back. One of my favorite ways is to watch a funny show or to read funny books or my favorite blogs (Ah! too many). It is surprising how calming that is. Studies show that laughing helps boost our immune system and lower our stress levels. Those are great reasons to laugh as much as possible.

Few months back I spent Sunday afternoons at a golf course. This was another idea to bring fun back into my life – to try something new and challenging. The key was to find something I hadn’t done before and then approach it with the goal to have fun. And although I initially found it boring, I soon realized that by choosing an activity where nothing is riding on the outcome, I could focus on enjoying the experience rather than worrying about how well I do things.

Find ways to help shake up our routine while having a little fun in the process…

And while we are at it, let’s take time to notice all the wonder around us. Pay attention to how many things we enjoy doing each day, such as things we may do automatically or take for granted…be mindful of them and see how our experience changes. It makes a big difference when we count our blessings and work on creating an attitude of gratitude. We experience a lot more fun and joy in the process. Ain’t it?

Life with horns!!

We can come to is that when we begin to enjoy great success in some area of our lives, we tend to create problems in that or another area of our lives. We do this because we hit our “upper limit” of happiness, financial success, joy in a relationship, or any of a number of other things, and this upper limit causes us to unconsciously sabotage ourselves or even make ourselves ill.

We often wonder how to remain calm and centered while things around us seem crazy and frustrating.  This isn’t surprising, as today’s lifestyle has become quite hectic and our fight-or-flight mechanisms are constantly being triggered by events in our lives.  The problem is that our bodies react to things like a sudden attack from a coworker in the same way they might have responded many millennia ago at being attacked by an animal—with a sudden burst of adrenaline and the confused thinking that comes from it.

There will always be periods when life is chaotic. Certainly at times things come at us from out of the blue and throw us off-course. However, regardless of the situation, there are things we can do to stay centered, calm and able to make better choices and decisions. Learning to be present in our body even while chaos is going on around us is the key to staying centered, and that is what we need to learn.

When we get an adrenaline rush from extreme stressors, we have a physical reaction that can muddle our thinking and cause us to be more likely to react in a way in which we have less control. When we hear the word meditation, we throw our hands up and say, “I can’t spend hours sitting on a pillow like a yogi.” My yoga instructor once told me – Stop for a moment, breathe slow and deep, and feel our body. Notice the feelings in our hands and feet, and as we continue to breathe, notice the feelings and sensations in our torso and head.  Connecting to our body in this way helps ground us and helps to attain a calmer, clearer state of mind.

Once we have grounded our body and have begun to calm our mind, we should try to stay in the present moment. I avoid scenarios that can run rampant in my head. This allows me to take stock of our situation and calmly decide if it is an issue I can control and/or do something about, or if it is something I need to accept as it is and let go of it. Either way, being present in my body and clear in my mind gives me a more solid feeing than just reacting from a fight-or-flight response.

The next time you find yourself feeling an adrenaline rush from an unexpected turn of events. breathe, be present in your body and try to stay in the moment in your mind. In spite of our flight-or-fight response, it will help you stay centered and respond to a situation rather than just react to it. You might be surprised that just three to five minutes of this per day is enough to make a big difference. And it is a handy tool for emergency use when sudden stress arises. Excusing yourself to the bathroom for three minutes is a way to sneak in some mind calming breathing without anyone ever being the wiser, and it can help you cope and make better decisions under pressure.

Trust your Hunch!

One of my friends called me the other day to tell me she had an interesting experience using her intuition after her mum lost her wedding ring. She said, “It was so strange. I just closed my eyes and pictured the ring in my mind’s eye, and then I opened my eyes and walked right to the place she’d dropped the ring behind a little table. My mum was flabbergasted.”  I was very pleased for my friend, and glad to hear that she could trust her intuition and take action on it!

But do all of us trust our intuition??

We all have access to our intuition even though we may not exactly understand it. For some, intuition comes through a tiny inner voice, for others it may be a sudden thought popping into our head, or a physical sensation. We have all had a gut feeling or hunch about something at some point, and we all can probably remember what happened if we ignored what our intuition was trying to tell us. I am a big believer in the value of intuition and when I have ignored a strong hunch, I always also knew what happens next.

We may be surprised at how easily we can access our intuition. One doesn’t have to practice for hours at a time. Building intuition for the most part involves paying attention to signals from our body and mind. It is not important that we are not always right.  What is important is that we free our mind to allow it to make those wild guesses and then train our mind to pay attention. Now it is not that easy, I know.

Meditation can go a long way towards developing our intuition, as well. And we don’t have to spend hours on the floor in the lotus position listening to soft music, unless one wants to, of course.  Just a few minutes of quiet daily introspection will help to free our mind to receive information. Journaling, doodling, brainstorming, and memory games also help open us to our own intuitive messages. I have one friend who “anchors” her awareness of intuitive thoughts by pressing her index finger to her knee every time she feels her intuition is speaking. She says that now, if she really needs to access her intuition, all she has to do is press her index finger to her knee. I think this technique is quite clever.

No matter how we choose to go about building our intuitive abilities, we should let ourself try this exercise. I think we will be pleased with the results when we find ourself following our intuition and enjoying a better life.

CrossFit-style!

Over the years, I have lived in apartment buildings that have gyms for our free use. It is amazing how easy it is not to go. It is amazing how many of us hire trainers as much to “encourage” us to teach and push. Of course, mine is just the threshold thought!

Now that the “Spartan Warrior” fad has mostly died, CrossFit (X-Fit) Revolution is catching on.

What makes CrossFit so special is the fact that it is very scientific. It is not something where you just go to the gym, lift some weights a few reps, then hope that you stimulated muscle growth. CrossFit Revolution takes a good look at a lot of the different forms of workout, from weightlifting, to medicine balls, to cardio. Of course, it does not look at weightlifting as one big thing, it goes through all of the different workouts you can do for each muscle group. Examples include, squatting, shoulder presses, working out with a medicine ball, deadlifting etc. One of the main beliefs in CrossFit is to do and use what’s available to get your full training. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to join an expensive gym either. You can even create a CrossFit gym in your own backyard.

One thing I really enjoy about this fitness regime is that it leads me through the actual planning before the real workouts even start. It is nice to know how to plan out your diet according to your needs before you even break a sweat. I also really like the incorporation of combat techniques into the workouts…really cool!!

I have learnt through CrossFit the formula for camaraderie, and I can now duplicate it anywhere. It’s agony coupled with laughter. You will get crazy fit, stronger than you ever imagined and able to do things physically you had not dreamed possible. I have only been doing this for couple of weeks or so, and so far it is great. I can definitely feel it. It lets the rock ‘n’ roll live inside me, in a healthy way. Maybe I am biased, maybe I have drank too much of the crossfit coconut water

Cross Fit is so much more than a fitness program…rather, is an empowering community. Considering that social media is quickly absorbing the world, the simple fact that people can physically share their struggles and victories through a community like CrossFit, has made an enormous difference in how several people continue to push through adversity and enhance their own lives. I have met people from all walks of life and become great friends through our connection of making it through the workout of the day. But nonetheless, it’s a powerful stuff.

Related articles

• CrossFit Common Sense (crossfitovercome.wordpress.com)
• The Return to The Dark Side: CrossFit (notadietstory.wordpress.com)