Life goes on...II

Today I've completed a decade of blogging, quite excited about the fact that I've continued the journey to make this world a better place and quite humbled by all the messages and appreciation I've received along the way. I started on this journey of self help and development quite early in my life for two reasons: firstly, I had no choice :-) like turtle, snake and many other species I was too challenged by life to look for survival of the fittest with so many challenges thrown my way at quite early stage in my life. Still managed to get to where I'm. If it was not for self help and strive to thrive frankly speaking I wouldn't have made it. 

Secondly, it is something that no one can steal from you. What I mean is, money and materialistic comforts are good but hold no value unless you have built a purpose around your life. If you have purpose no one can steal that from you come what may. It is something that inspires you to keep going. No matter if someone likes what you say or hates. You just do it for the heck of doing it because it makes you so much happy in return. Life of fulfilment is life worth lived. 

To continue the honour of development, growth and improvement I have decided that this will be my last blog today. Don't worry I'm not taking retirement as yet :-)... All I'm saying is this is would be my last blog as a blogger since I've decided to morph this blog into a brand new podcast starting next month.

Embracing change is one thing that interests me the most, so here it is folks.. Live it as you want would be a brand new podcast starting next month. I'll recast all my existing blogs into podcasts and will keep on adding one podcast every week.

I will repost all my podcast here as well to keep the scoreboard ticking... So folks, fasten your seatbelts and stow your tea tables as this is going to be a heck of a ride! Woop! Woop!

Life goes on

 

Life goes on...

Lately one of the saying stuck in my head is "Nothing changes, if nothing changes". There are two ways to look at it. Nothing will change if you do nothing or nothing will change if nothing happens. The later is more subjective and former is more objective. Example: Covid-19 changed everything around us, the way we work, the way we travel and the way we make lifestyle choices. 

Nothing would have changed (hopefully) if Corona virus didn't bring this change into force. We saw millions of lives affected by it. Just because a teeny-weeny thing decided to change the world. Corona virus (SARS) has been around since 2003, why did it only decide to take this form in 2019? We may say it is China's fault, meat eating people's fault, greedy economy's fault, political fault etc. However the end result is massive scale change in everyones lifestyle world wide!

I'm not sure if we would ever go back 5 day work in office week anytime soon (specially in office jobs). This was a subjective change, life wanted to find it own course and it did. If we don't bring an objective change in our lifestyle or thinking it will be brought in anyway. So why wait? Before it is too late? Why should we wait for Corona virus to change the world? Why can't we decide and change it ourselves? 

Reason being, we are afraid of change. As humans we like to stay in the comfort zone, our brains are hardwired for keeping us safe like rest of the mammals. However, we are gifted with human intelligence to make things smarter unlike birds, reptiles and other mammals we can perceive things. This is a great gift, but how wisely are we using this gift?

Even if half of the people on this planet start to use our human intelligence wisely our world would become a better place within a decade. But the fear of change keeps us away from seeking out new avenues. Let's take this as wake up call from the mother earth and start working towards change for better. Let's reach out and make this world a better place!

"There are amazingly wonderful people in all walks of life; some familiar to us and others not. Stretch yourself and really get to know people. People are in many ways one of our greatest treasures". -
Bryant H. McGill  

Life is beautiful

Eliseo Orefice: "You're serving. You're not a servant. Serving is a supreme art. God is the first servant. God serves men but he's not a servant to men."

The above excerpt is from one of my must watch films "Life is beautiful". It is story of a man and his son surviving through the holocaust. I always thought how hard it would have been seeing the dance of death in front of your eyes. Until Covid-19 happened, I personally lost two members of my family. It is at such testing times we seek the meaning, it is during storm we hope for the sun.  

Once a friend of mine asked explain me what's life? Why are we here? I said, I'm no guru or preacher but in last 40 years I have learnt that everyone has a purpose. It is not clear to some, some even don't care about it but some of us wallow in it. It is only through the experience we learn and find out what's our purpose. It is only through experience we learn. 

Even this experience of global pandemic is here to make us realise that life is a gift. It is given to us, some of would learn from that experience and use it wisely. Some of us will forget it once it is over. The truth may not always be pretty but is always available to the seeker. Only if we learn to seek, only if we learn to serve then we learn to rise.

To rise above the pain, agony, trauma and inability we must learn to serve the experience and understand the message it is offering.

"You have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have. -J. R. R. Tolkien"

Humility

You realise how precious life is at different moments, we won't always be here. Yet some of us stride as if they'll be here forever. Life is all about enjoying the journey, let's not waste our precious time. Smell a rose, watch the sunset, tell the people in your life that you love them, live life with humility, love and as fully as humanly possible.

During this time of pandemic so many of us have lost our near and dear ones, it is a reminder that current moment is a gift that's why its called "The present". So much time we waste, so many ours we sleep, so long we rest but never realise our heart never stops beating, mind never stops thinking and lungs never stop breathing. Let's take a moment to not only thank our creator and people around us but also to our bodies that keeps us alive 24/7.

You may call it spiritual thinking, holistic words or metaphysics however in short it is nothing but living a life of gratitude, helping and loving each other including ourselves. 

Once a good friend of mine was travelling over the public transport and a man with three kids boarded the train. The kids caused so much havoc on the train, fidgeting around rampantly. Finally my friend said to the man "You may want to do something about those kids?" to this the man replied "Yeah, I reckon so. We are coming back from the hospital they just lost their mother to cancer and they don't know how to deal with it and frankly speaking neither do I" my friend felt like absolute garbage. 

Then on he decided whatever is going on in people's lives there must be a good reason for it. So next time, if you see someone brush past you, or overtake on the road, or being rude for no reason, remember there must be a good reason for it. All we need to do is show some humility, love and kindness.

Live a life full of humility, gratitude, intellectual curiosity, and never stop learning. -Gza

Let's share the gift of life over campaign organised by Bollywood Central: Yes, let's help!

The visitor

The Visitor

The middle earth was as beautiful as heaven in autumn. The people, the cattle and the hobbits all were glee, happy go lucky. One fine day a visitor knocked on the door of Frodo the hobbit. Frodo answered, no one was there. Knock again! Frodo got annoyed thinking it was another prank, he rushed to the door fearing he will have to scream at one of the kids. He hated to be rude to littler inhabitants of the wonderland.

He wouldn't want to yell at them but it was becoming a menace. Knock again! There was no one at the door. Frodo got annoyed but happy at the same time since he didn't have to yell at any kids. Fourth time he bursted into anger and hurled towards to door almost fuming "reveal yourself at once". He was flabbergasted to see the unwelcome guest. It didn't have any persona or shape or appearance of any kind.

Frodo froze for a bit just staring into horizon firmly holding the door he was about to slam. The visitor said "aren't you going to invite me in?" it was unreal. Usually the visitor just got into people's lives uninvited not sure why he thought of making an exception this time? Maybe he didn't want to be rude on his first visit to hobbit land. Maybe the hobbits weren't ready for this? Maybe the visitor thought why do I need to be the bad guy always? Why not just try knocking this time? After all that's what visitors usually do, they knock. But he is not used to of knocking? It was not his nature to be hesitant. 

Usually he would assume the demeanour of the inhabitants plain and blunt, without asking for permission, without thinking, without caring about repercussions for the host. He was a visitor of his own kind, unique and almost devilish. Meant to hoard, disrupt, hurt and disdain the host. He didn't care, he just did what he pleased. But this time he decided to knock, why? Maybe the host chose to answer the door? Maybe it was a smarter host after all.  The host who chose to ask him the question! Why? Why me? Anxiety didn't know what to do? It was unreal for anyone to not entertain him. Anxiety thought let me just leave middle earth as it is. Yes you heard it right, without Anxiety! Just peaceful, happy and serene as it was. 

Morel of the story: About the time we became Frodos of our own lives and choose not to entertain this unwelcome guest when it knocks on the door. Anxiety.

Live, learn, work and play!

 

Imagine, create, touch, move, inspire, love, listen, be good… the list goes on and on and on.

Cultivating values we learnt during school into our daily lives is a daunting challenge, especially when you have been locked out of the world due to a global pandemic that only hits this planet once every 100 years. Only when we thought it is over, there are news around the media saying this is going to be new normal. I was reading a report from an ex-tech honcho turned philanthropist Bill Gates, saying pandemics are going to be more frequent now unless we adapt. But how do we adapt? What went wrong?

Now here is an interesting thought, where did we go wrong? Why on earth are we going to be hit by pandemics more frequently? The answer isn’t in a vaccine. It lies in our consciousness! Corona is one tough nut to crack however, normal flu shots makes millions of dollars in revenue to the pharma companies. We are seeing the race to corona’s vaccine has already begun not to cure dying people, but to make additional millions in revenue. Curing people could be a good outcome for such company’s press image. I personally feel the state owned healthcare system in Australia is world class but if you go to US, UK, India and other economies. Medical and Pharma companies are making huge profits out of public health. Why?

How do we stop such madness? The onus is on us. How? Let’s stop the economy of greed. Let’s value learning to live, work and play more often than making millions. We have one life, one planet and one future and let’s make it a good one. So tomorrow when our kids grow up they don’t see another pandemic after pandemic hitting the world. They see more of kindness, courage, determination, empathy and generosity around them. They don’t see economy of greed, they live and play in one world family.

Let’s switch our focus on creating a world full of health, freedom and equality and it begins at home.

Positive Parenting

 Super food of the month: Avocado       

Book of the month: If I have to tell you one more time

Movie of the month: To Sir with love

I hope everyone had a great school holidays season (I know what you thinking, tell me more about it ☺), as much as kids holidays could be pain for the parents. On the flip side, it is an opportunity to build some solid kids-parents bonding. Psychology today says, Just as it is important for both parents to play with the child for the child’s sake, both parents receive benefits from doing so. 

The hormone oxytocin plays a major role in parent-infant bonding and other social and emotional behaviours. Oxytocin levels increase when mothers engage in affectionate play with their infant and when fathers engage in stimulatory play with their infants. Here’s some even greater news: when parents play with children, oxytocin is release in them. Think of it as a relaxing massage for your mind that you don’t have to pay extra for!

Thankfully, we (me and wifey) have gone past the nappy change stage soon to realise Oxytocin has left us completely high and dry. Although we love our 6 year old, but it is quite bizarre to see how quickly sh**t hits the fan and you are yelling on your child over some mundane stuff. I know, I know… life is a hard thing and we all need to teach our kids how to survive in this ruthless world. So we teach them these rules and stuff they get to do before they are loved aka discipline. I remember, when I was a 13 year old and my mum use to lecture me over discipline I use to hum the song (we are in the army now! by status quo ☺).

Fast forward 25 years, I’m the on the other side of the fence lol… It got me thinking, why we (parents) do what we do (yelling)? Law of attraction was at work, and I saw this book (mentioned above in book of the month section). 

So folks the answer is (drum roll)… positive parenting!

Read the book it is self explanatory or for the internet savvy souls here is the website: https://www.positiveparentingsolutions.com/ until next blog adios! 

"To be in your children's memory tomorrow, you have to be in their lives today" - Barbara Johson.