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Inspiration for a happier world

Happiness

Happiness is one of the main topics I write about. This is because of its importance to us as individuals, and also because of the impact it has on humanity as a whole.

As I point out in my writing, happiness is not just about ‘feeling good’. It’s also a vibrational state that helps us to create and attract the most fulfilling life experience possible. When applied collectively, in adequate numbers, happiness can transform our world.

  • How to Be Consistent

    By

    Indika

    on

    How to Be Consistent

    We’ve all heard famous sayings and aphorisms such as: ‘Consistency beats talent,’ and ‘Consistency beats motivation.’

    And so, we come to understand that consistency is key to changing our habits and creating more of what we want in life.

    But most people get stuck in creating positive change because they can’t be consistent.

    I know, because I was one of those people.

    And although I still struggle with some things, I’ve done so much better at many things since I learned this secret:

    Being consistent is a mind thing.

    And so, we have to focus our efforts on training the mind at first. Only then should we shift our focus onto ramping up the intensity of the activity involved.

    So, if I wanted to become a runner, it’s more important in the beginning for me to just get out and run regularly, than it is to try and run as far as possible, in the shortest possible time.

    All of that can come later, once I’ve been running regulalry for some time. (This is why smart people say, ‘Consistency over intensity.’)

    But most often, we get far too involved in the thing we’re trying to do or change, and we totally miss out on training the mind.

    And so we fail, and get caught in a cycle of repeatedly starting out but not being able to sustain any positive changes.

    The Self-Image Rules Our Behaviour and Our Results

    As Dr. Maxwell Maltz so beautifully points out in his amazing book, Psychocybernetics:

    ‘The self-image is the key to human personality and human behaviour. Change the self image and you change the personality and the behaviour.’

    Dr. Maltz explains that we’re all working with a self-image that’s rooted in our subconscious mind.

    And try as we might, we will not succeed in doing anything that is inconsistent with our self-image.

    So, we have to change our self-image before we can move any closer towards our goals.

    Changing the Self-Image

    Dr. Maltz’s prescription for changing the self-image involves numerous techniques that aim to re-program the subconscious mind.

    More or less all of these are aimed at letting the mind experience success in whatever it is that we want to accomplish. It includes techniques such as visualising ourselves living the end result, while in a state of deep relaxation (self-hypnosis).

    I won’t go into too much detail here, but I would encourage anyone to pick up his book as it is full of useful ideas and information.

    But going back to my own experience, I use these simple techniques to help myself:

    First Train the Mind

    Although there’s usually some action or goal that involves action or effort, I minimise how hard I go on that.

    I focus on just building the (mental) habit first.

    I train myself to show up regularly and consistently and make that the main goal, at first.

    This helps me to shift my self-identity.

    It helps me to go from seeing myself as someone who ‘doesn’t do’, ‘can’t do’ and ‘struggles to do,’ to someone who ‘does.’

    The rule of thumb I use to help myself is ‘little but often.’

    So for example, when it came to exercising consistently, I would run very short distances at first. But I would run daily.

    Preparation Creates Success

    Knowing what I now know, I do everything I can to help myself do the thing when it’s time by doing everything I can do ahead of time to prepare.

    When it came to running, I would have my clothes ready the night before.

    I would even have my food ready for when I completed my run, so I didn’t have to prepare meals when I was tired. I could just relax and enjoy healthy food as a reward for my run.

    Same Time, Every Day

    Being consistent with timing helps in two ways: it helps to train the mind through repetition, and also it helps by taking any uncertainty and guesswork out of when and whether you’re going to take the necessary action.

    Summary

    To summarise:

    Consistency is the key to making positive changes in our lives.

    In order to be consistent, we have to train our minds and shift our self-image.

    The easiest way to do this is to repeatedly show ourselves that we can do whatever it is we want to do.

    We do that by taking small, baby steps, regularly.

    And preparing everything we need ahead of time, plus getting into a routine will help us do this easily.

    Related Posts

  • Personal Responsibility

    By

    Indika

    on

    Personal Responsibility

    I had the privilege of experiencing the worst period of my life, starting 2020.

    This privilege lasted for the better part of five years.

    I got to experience issues in my personal relationships, work, finances and even my health.

    I thought my worst days had been behind me, so this came a huge shock to my system.

    Plus, because I was so much older and wiser than I was since I last experienced such difficult times, I thought I knew what I had to do and could bounce back fast. But this was not the case.

    Things got so bad that I briefly thought about ending my life.

    And even though I was able to leave that idea behind, my life still felt to me like it wasn’t worth living because of all the things that had gone wrong, and because of everything I thought I’d lost.

    This feeling lasted until very recently.

    Personal Responsibility

    Looking back on it all, I realise that I had played a part in everything that went wrong. I was personally responsible for much of it.

    But this is not how I chose to see it at the time. I wanted to play victim and blame everyone else except myself.

    Though I had held lofty ambitions in terms of how I wanted to think and operate in life, when it came down to it, I took the easy way out. I chose victimhood and blame.

    I thought I believed that I created my own reality and preached this to the world. But I was quick to say that it was someone else’s fault that I was experiencing a reality that I did not want.

    I believe the term psychologists use to describe this (holding two conflicting beliefs at the same time) is ‘cognitive dissonance.’ Well, that was me.

    Moving Forward

    Even though I didn’t want to accept responsibility for creating the issues that were weighing me down, I was lucky enough that I was able to understand that it was my responsibility to work towards changing things for the better.

    I was willing to accept personal responsibility for fixing my life. And this helped a lot.

    And so, very slowly, and with a lot of resistance within, I stepped up and started.

    As is always the case with taking personal responsibility (and actively creating a different reality), I had to change my thoughts and my behaviour.

    I had the hard conversations. I made the tough decisions. And I did the things that were hard for me to do–but were the things I needed to do to make things better.

    And so, very slowly, life began to get better.

    Now, five years into it, I can finally talk about it publicly and write about it.

    And I can accept that for everything that happened, I had played a part in making it happen.

    Even if it wasn’t all my fault, it was at least partly my fault.

    This is personal responsibility. And I’m finally at the point where I can own what happened with a sense of personal responsibility.

    Bitter Pill or Magic Pill?

    What does personal responsibility mean? And why is it important?

    Yes, it’s a bitter pill to swallow: to say that you somehow created something that you never wanted to experience.

    Blaming God or someone else is so much easier.

    But blame equals disempowerment, and disempowerment steals our life force. More importantly, it keeps us trapped in painful situations.

    Personal responsibility is the antidote to this.

    When we take personal responsibility for something, we declare that we had the power to create it. When we do this, we’re also declaring that we have the power to undo it, or change things for the better.

    So taking personal responsibility equals taking our power back.
    It is empowering. And empowerment is life giving.

    Taking personal responsibility frees us to create and enjoy a life of happiness and meaning, no matter the heartache and the obstacles we may have to face along the way.

    So, I wish you freedom. I wish you happiness. And most of all, I wish you personal responsibility.

  • An Open Letter to Parents

    By

    Indika

    on

    An Open Letter to Parents

    Dear Parent,

    I don’t profess to know how you should bring up your child.

    To the best of my understanding, your child chose you, even before incarnating, because they believed you would be the perfect parent for them in this lifetime.

    But from being a child and a parent myself, and having been close to other human beings who have shared their experiences of being children and parents, one thing has become clear to me: children need our love and acceptance, more than anything else in life.

    You may have been led to believe that studies, sports, careers, money, legacies and teaching them ‘how behave’ are the most important things, and I don’t blame you. These things can be immensely helpful to smoothening their path through life.

    But they are a poor substitute for the love and acceptance of a parent.

    And all those worldly things, if imposed on them at the expense of their self-worth and self-acceptance, will harm them more than you can ever imagine.

    Forget the rhyme about sticks and stones. The truth is that even words can and do hurt. They have the power to scar children for life.

    A child who is told that they are ‘not right’, ‘not normal’ or ‘not good enough’ will go through life believing this to be true. As a consequence, they will create a life experience that mirrors these ideas.

    The irony will be that they will feel unworthy and undeserving of the very things that you want them to have and enjoy in life.

    They will have relationships in which they are made to feel not good enough. And they will meet failure and poverty at every turn.

    And so, in your eagerness to do good by them, you will have unwittingly become the cause of their greatest suffering.

    And although you might work, strive and sacrifice on their behalf to the point of exhaustion, it is likely that the thing they will remember most clearly about you, whenever they think of you, will be the hurt and pain you caused them.

    Please don’t let it be this way.

    As the American abolitionist and statesman Frederick Douglass famously said:

    ‘It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.’

    So teach and guide your child by all means, but don’t hurt or attack them.

    It is up to you, as the grown adult, to regulate your feelings and deal with these in an appropriate way.

    Your child is not your punching bag.

    Let your love and acceptance of them as individuals be what shines through all your words and actions, and not your anger or frustration.

    In the words of the Sufi poet Rumi:

    ‘Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.

    And above all else, let your child know on a daily basis how much you love them, and how much they mean to you.

    Let them know that you love and accept them, no matter what.

    Some call this ‘unconditional love.’ Psychologists call it ‘unconditional positive regard.’

    But whatever you call it, it works!

    And don’t just think it. Tell them and show them. Spell it out to them.

    Let it be the one thing they know without a doubt about you and their relationship with you.

    And if, by some chance, you’ve gone about it any other way, don’t lose heart. You’re not alone. And you can fix it and make things better.

    Love, and time, heals all wounds. So it’s never too late.

    But you have to take the first step. You have to apologise.

    And you might have to be a little patient and give them time to process things.

    There is a world of children and grown people who used to be children that are hurting and suffering. And they may very well end up doing to their children what their parents did to them.

    And there is a world of parents who are hurting because their children are rejecting them and distancing themselves in adulthood.

    So much unnecessary suffering…

    But you have the power to change this. And you can do something about it right now.

    Please accept my sincere apologies if anything I have said offends you. That was never my aim.

    I am not a saint, or perfect in any way, and I don’t pretend to be. I make mistakes every single day, though I’d love not to.

    But I can’t stand by and not share what I know to be true, when it can help to prevent unnecessary suffering. And this is my only reason for writing.

    I wish you love, peace and happiness, and the close and loving relationship with your child that you want and deserve,

    Indika

  • The Key to Peace: Seeing Others with Compassion, Not Judgment

    By

    Indika

    on

    The Key to Peace: Seeing Others with Compassion, Not Judgment

    ‘When you finally learn that a person’s behaviour has more to do with their own internal struggle than you, you learn grace.’
    ––Allison Ars

    Much of the conflict and suffering in our lives has to do with other people.

    Often, we hold grievances and resentment against others for something they did that we perceive as hurtful, unfair or dishonest.

    We continue to suffer long after the actual event because we cannot let go of what they did, or forgive them.

    On the one hand, this is entirely fair, because we have a duty to love and care for ourselves. In fact, some would argue that this (being an aspect of self-preservation) is our primary duty.

    Yet on the other hand, unwanted suffering does not serve us, or aid in our self-preservation.

    So, being able to understand other people’s motivations, forgive them, and release them (and ourselves) from any further negative feelings is helpful to creating happiness and attracting good things into our lives.

    This is not always easy to do, but there is something that can help us make it so.

    But first, let’s look at what usually happens in these situations and how we usually start off on the wrong foot.

    The ‘Wrong Perception’ Trap

    One of the biggest barriers to forgiveness is our perception of the situation, and the actions and motivations of the other person.

    When facing a situation that we find distressing, we might often perceive the situation as one where:

    1. The other person knew what they were doing and how it would affect us;
    2. They intended to do what they did and to have that effect on us; and
    3. They did so for no other reason other than to cause that hurt and to have that intended effect.

    We default to the understanding that their intentions are malicious.

    But this is often very far from the truth!

    And so, our wrong perception of their actions and the situation; and all the pain, anger and resentment tied up in it, is therefore unnecessary.

    For example, they may not have been aware of how they were behaving, if they were in a state of great panic or stress.

    They might not know how we might perceive their actions or how it might affect us.

    For example, we might be more sensitive than they are and things they consider ‘small’ might affect us deeply. But they have no way of knowing this until we find a way to let them know.

    There could even be a situation where we were already wary of them because of something that happened before. And so, we interpret their present action in light of our negative view of them.

    Again, our perception would be very different (and negative) as a result.

    Perception leads to judgment and judgment leads to a lack of love or compassion for the other person, so the wrong perception is often harmful and damaging to us and others.

    Awareness Leads to Compassion

    But what if we knew that the other person was going through something difficult? What if we knew and understood how this was affecting them?

    Our perception would change instantly.

    We might sympathise; make allowance, or even reach out and try to help them.

    And what follows the situation would also change drastically.

    Instead of disliking each other, we might actually become closer as people, or even become good friends.

    The Story of the Drunk Man on the Train

    There was a story in the original ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul‘ book that illustrates this point clearly.

    It went something like this:

    The man narrating the story was an American living in Japan. He was a trained martial artist.

    When he was on the train one day, a drunken man got on and was behaving badly.

    The drunken man’s behaviour disturbed the peace within the carriage and made the other passengers feel uncomfortable.

    The narrator was thinking about tackling the drunken man, using his martial arts skills.

    But just before he could do this, an older man who was also on the train, intervened. He spoke to the drunken man kindly and diffused the situation.

    Eventually, they all learned that the drunken man’s wife had died, and that he had no job and was homeless.

    When the narrator left the train, the drunken man was on the floor, sobbing, with his head on the older man’s lap.

    This completely changed the narrator’s perception of the drunken man, and the situation, and he was glad that the older man’s kindness had saved the day.

    This story holds a powerful lesson for all of us, which is that whenever we’re faced with the hurtful behaviour of others, we should default to assuming that they’re going through something difficult in their own lives and that this behaviour is the result of their struggle.

    With this new awareness, we are better equipped to resolve the situation amicably and secure lasting peace and happiness for all concerned.

    I would like to end this post with this quote by Ian Maclaren:

    ‘Be pitiful, for every man is fighting a hard battle.’

  • How We Grow

    By

    Indika

    on

    How We Grow

    ‘If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?’
    ––Rumi

    Growing is a part of being alive.

    If we’re not growing, we’re dying.

    Usually, much of growing happens automatically, without any effort on our part.

    But sometimes, growth demands that we put in effort.

    And that’s when we truly grow.

    This sort of growth affects us physically, mentally and spiritually. It changes us at a deep level.

    It is often uncomfortable–painful, even.

    But the level of growth we can achieve, usually matches the level of pain we experience.

    The ego doesn’t want change. And the ego doesn’t want pain.

    So, we have to put in lots of effort in order to overcome the resistance that the ego is experiencing in the situation.

    Yes, we need the ‘hard’ qualities like determination and grittiness to handle these situations.

    But because we have to overcome the ego (which only understands control and domination), we also need the ‘soft’ qualities like patience, humility and surrender to get the job done.

    And that’s how we grow.

    We grow when we keep trying, even though everything inside us wants us to give up.

    We grow when we choose to stay, when we want so much to run away.

    And we grow when we learn to handle the pain of the situation and stay with it, trusting that it will end at some point, and that something good will come out of it.

    As the saying goes, it’s the pressure that creates the diamond.

    What makes all of this possible (and is interestingly, also the thing that helps us to grow the most) is when we learn to see the uncomfortable situation as an opportunity for our growth and evolution––to see it as something ‘good’ and not as something ‘bad’.

    This is mental and spiritual alchemy.

    We’re taking something difficult and painful, and through our effort, we’re transmuting it into something good, and birthing the new and better version of ourselves that we’re meant to become.

    As lofty an idea as this might be, I can’t in all sincerity say that I wish this for myself or another.

    But life can and does still send these opportunities our way from time to time.

    So what I can, and do wish, is that whenever this happens, we can recognise the opportunity and rise to the occasion; that we can go through the difficult times with grace and humility and come out the other side as victors.

    And remember, as the spiritual teacher Bashar says, some situations and life lessons are pre-determined by our Higher Self.

    And we may have to endure passing through a dark tunnel from time to time, as a result.

    But even then, we still get to choose whether we crawl our way through, or skip and dance instead.

    So, happy dancing!