Reset

Reset, reset and reset.

Your personal life, your creative life, your professional life at the beginning of every day.

Every day, we are given twenty four hours to better yourself, to move closer to your goals, to make a difference to the people around you. Every day is a new beginning. It’s upto us whether we want to live in the hangover of yesterday and mope and moan over losses or pull our socks, jump out of our quilts and do/continue to continue to do what matters most to us.

So forgive people, forget bad experience but learn your lessons, free up your mind, take a deep breath and just do that thing that you always wanted to do.

Once you’ve done that, move onto the next.

Looking upto success

When you embark on a new project, you are bound to hit roadblocks, bound to bump over road humps, bound to meet challenges. What helps you achieve success is your attitude – your attitude to carry on inspite of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. For a determined mind can plough a hole through the hardest of rocks and toughest of mountains.

In the words of Earl Nightingale, motivational speaker, success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal. Success is not just the act of reaching your final goal but also comprises the small incremental steps that one takes on the journey towards achievement of the goal.

If your goal is to be a writer, you may not have written anything on a particular day, but if you have read a story that struck a chord, if you have flipped through the pages of a ‘how-to-write’ book, you still are making progress, for you have not wasted the day. You are one step closer to your goal and you are successful.

'Flow'

When you don’t realize how time has flown, immersed in work, when breaks to feed a rumbling stomach do not trouble you, when you come up for air only when somebody reminds that you have not taken a breath, you know you have found your calling, you have found your ‘flow state’.

When you have found your calling, you have found a life of joy.

Breaks

I ponder over what to discuss in today’s post, when a fly buzzes in front my eyes. It’s one of those tiny flies, one that the eye can barely perceive.  I can only feel and hear it.  I cannot see it.  I hit and clap randomly in the air but to no avail. It continues to irritate me. So I decide to take a break and walk around in my room.

I come back ten minutes later and pull out my swivel chair. It seems to have disappeared and I can once again get on with my work in peace.

So many things in life seem to work this way. Give it a rest and we feel better after a while. We get new perspective and the problem seems to have cleared itself out.

Let us learn to give ourselves breaks when we feel like it, so we can be more efficient when we really ned to be.

A thing of beauty

‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever’

Keats began his poem ‘from Endymion’ with these great lines.

If we want to hold joy in the cup of our palm and the cockles of our heart, we have to find that thing which defines beauty in our eyes - anything that you find beautiful and connect to it, so you can be joyful, however fleeting the ‘forever’ part is.

It could be a quiet evening in silence, a session of meditation or a great book.

Personally, I find the power of words, very beautiful. To immerse yourself in the craft of weaving words – whether you are writing or appreciating what has been written is, for me, finding joy at a personal level.

What do you find beautiful? Do share your thoughts in the comments below.

Pause

Great is a mind that, in the middle of the rush to get nowhere, stops, pauses, breathes, looks around to savor the beauty of surroundings and learnings that a mundane everyday life brings with it.  

Blessed is a mind that feels the pulse of what is really important in the challenges that one is bombarded with.

It is when the mind stops, breathes and pauses that great things, the really beautiful things are manifested.

Routines

Life changes. One day cannot be exactly similar to the previous day. A person cannot be exactly same as he was the previous day. He has to undergo changes – some cells die, while new cells take their place, new thoughts take the place of old thoughts, new ideas take root in his mind. Change is the only constant in life, on Earth.

But what helps us remain grounded through the changes and what helps us deal with changes – minor or drastic is a routine. Routines keep us tethered to our moorings while our boat is rocked by a tempest. Routines are what power us to move forward and chart the choppy waters of uncertainty. Routines form our sheet-anchors when the world around seems to be changing colours a tad too fast for our liking.

Find a routine that is uplifting and stick to it. So you will be uplifted a little each day, no matter what changes are thrown your way.