Today I begin a new life. Yes, sometimes it becomes hard to delete few emotional moments and move on upward, forward and in a positive direction. A dead fish in the stream of water flows down with the water, but for a fish to swim upstream, it has to be alive with a lot of confidence, courage and strength.
Habits make all the difference in the world: positive or negative. All successful people in any vocations, are successful as they are slave to their ‘good habits’, created one day at a time and people who are failures in life, are slave to their ‘bad habits’ or ‘destructive habits.’ I have noticed that many people spend days and nights on the internet and their brain is fried up because of the internet and other passive media like watching soap operas on TV, reading newspapers and chatting with friends for hours and days. Instead of living a life in the moment, people live life in foreign lands and have no desire or enthusiasm to perform the task at hand.
Reading biographies of successful human beings in the history, teaches us one very important lesson: they succeeded because of their good habits and were focused in their goals and dreams. It doesn’t matter if somebody is a street sweeper or the CEO of a corporation, they all have the same responsibilities in their life to fulfill: take care of yourself first, your health, family, children, and then comes the community and the world. My own experience in this lifetime has been such that ‘no matter what you do or say, people out there are going to make comments on your achievement: positive or negative’. Since gossiping, back biting, putting people down, are so common attributes, people always seem to do that more often than encourage and inspire others to be the best. You can count in your one hand, the number of people who truly care you, love you and want your best all the time.
Wasting time, doing unproductive things: being online for too many hours, talking to a friend for a long time, waiting for some replies of the previous emails, gossiping, watching unproductive movies, TV shows and the list is endless and other people have some more destructive habits like smoking, drinking, drugs, excessive sex etc. Once the brain becomes numb, with so many unproductive behaviors, one can’t focus on a particular task at hand and always seems to procrastinate which makes it more hard to accomplish task on time.
Few months ago, I came to know this individual who would spend countless hours on the internet, especially on facebook, yahoo messenger, and watching many shows on the internet and he became almost internet addict. He would not talk to his loved ones, friends and family members and always seemed to be lost somewhere. One day, I collected enough courage to ask him the reason ‘why’ he was like that and his answer was simple: ‘I can’t focus on any work at hand as my mind is going in the past and am digging from the past negativity and is busy playing the movies from the past.’ How many people do we know who either dwell in the past or in the uncertain future ? Yes, it is a wise idea to go back in the past, evaluate our life and learn from it as well as it is a good idea to make plans for future and work accordingly towards achieving worthwhile goals so that future generations will get benefit out of it but spending too many hours dwelling on past or future, steals the precious present moment.
I like to remind myself this always: AND THIS TOO SHALL PASS AWAY. This one sentence has so much wisdom in it and if we just focus on the deep meaning it carries, almost 95% or more of our daily frustrations, headaches, negativity, dissatisfaction, jealousy, hatred, back biting etc. will all be gone in no time as this sentence carries ancient wisdom which reminds people: to focus on the moment in hand as it is so precious (and hence call PRESENT, i.e. GIFT). When we realize that “This too shall pass” either good experience or a bad experience, why get carried away with that experience and not realize that ‘I can remain neutral, content, blissful and enlightened being at the moment now’.
I was with my friend having breakfast last week and as we were eating, I had this idea: I didn’t see so many people out there as separate but they always seemed to be one to me as my own consciousness expanding out there and everybody was just ONE for me, as I was practicing ‘Being in the moment NOW’. Since this friend of mine knows me for many years and knows about my spiritual growth, I was happy to explain him what I was going through mentally. He suggested me to let that thought flow ‘being one with everyone, with consciousness expanding’ and as I did that, keeping his idea : to be present in this world but thinking about everybody else as being ‘just one big bundle of super conscious being’, I was very happy and felt very peaceful and happy at that moment. When I enjoy those moments as being ‘in the present moment NOW’, many great ideas appear on the mind and at that moment, I like to pick up a pen and start writing my feelings on the piece of paper or start typing in the computer.
We never know when a single idea can change the course of our life or the lives of others. Many wise people in the human history, have impacted the humanity in a positive way because they said something or wrote something from their own life experience or intuition.
Let’s be aware of our daily activities and promise to ourselves, “Today I develop good habits and become their slaves.”
Wish you all a Happy New Year, 2011.
~ Prem Guragain, Los Angeles, CA
Monday, January 3, 2011
