Anecdote about my slip-ons

Attachment is dangerous to your life.

I understood this law(if you may) with a really stupid incident.

I used to have this comfortable pair of slip-ons which I loved a lot. They went through a lot of wear and tear and yet I cannot see a way to throw them. I used to get them repaired at the cobbler’s shop. And not just once but 4 times in the past one year. This was not because of the money. It was plain because of the reason that I was attached to it. It was comfortable but not even that comfortable that I should have persisted with it for a year with the wear and tear it had. I was too afraid that I will never get the comfort in any other slip-ons. I was ready to sacrifice a bit of comfort to never confront my fear and never try on new slip-ons.But this one day, last week, my father thought enough is enough. He actually went into my room to get the slippers and threw them in the dustbin and bought me another pair of slippers. I was so upset of knowing this whole incident that I didn’t talk to my father and was angry with him. But now I am realising that this new pair of slip-ons is so much better and so comfortable that I feel idiotic in not buying them earlier.

And it has taught me a big lesson –

You have to stop taking the piss when it is over your head. There is one thing call sticking through the tough times, but the times should change. It should become better. But if you cannot see things improving anytime sooner then you need to stop persisting with it.
You might fail in your next relationship(s), but it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try something new.

As in my case, my new slippers could have been horrible, but I shouldn’t have let it become a reason to not try.
It was an irrational fear. We need to try something new in order to get a meaningful experience, job, relationship, and even slippers.

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These are my new slippers.❤️

Comment down or DM me if you love your slippers.

Identity Crisis

The more you cement your identity, the harder it is to get away from it.

If you always tell people how lazy you are, then it will be really hard for you to be proactive when the situation demands. That is how our brain works.

It works the same way for the positive notions too.

For ex – I always talk about and take pride in how important it is going on the right path following the rules is for me. So when I am in traffic and there are fewer people, I still follow the rules. I won’t skip a red light. My brain wouldn’t let me. Because it isn’t me.

It works with honesty too. I tend to tell people and myself too that I like being honest with people about anything and everything as it is much easier and a much fruitful path in the long run. It helps me to get real connections as they accept me for who I am.

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I am glad you read this blog. It will mean a lot to me if you take a few seconds to comment or DM me about how you felt after it. I am open to suggestions to improve my content.

I wish you have a really happy week!

Cheers

Meditation

Since I am practising Meditation for about last ten days with regularity and for the past ten months with super irregularity, I can tell you that I have read a lot of articles and seen a lot of videos talking about Meditation.

I was always looking for ways to find out how it can be fun. Turns out, there isn’t. There is a sense of satisfaction, but definitely no “regular” fun.

Certain questions which arise are-

1. What does meditation even mean?
2. Why meditate
3. How to meditate?

And my favourite one-

4. Why is it so hard?

We shall take on one at a time-

• What does meditation even mean?

You might have mistaken meditation for sitting still in one position and breathing like most others assume. But it is not exactly what meditation means.

Meditation is a practice to improve your power to live in the present.

You can be showering and enjoying your bath by not thinking about your love life or office pressure. You can be watering plants and loving the process. You can be cleaning your place and enjoying the routine.

So, why do people sit in silence and breath?

Basically, when you meditate, you have to focus on the things which you do very naturally otherwise, like cleaning, bathing, and even breathing. As we live in the world of digital distractions, our minds are being trained to get away from the present and think about the past or future as an escape from our present.

So sitting still and concentrating on the breathe just make us live the present more completely

Why meditate?

To help ourselves in living fully and being in present more often than not and thereby detaching ourselves from the fear and anxiety we get from the future and the pain we get from the past.

Scientifically, it thickens our pre-frontal cortex (part of the brain), which is right behind our forehead, which is the part responsible for our happiness.

• How to meditate?

Just sit on the ground or a chair as per your convenience. Keep your back straight (at all times, if possible) and not curved inwards or outwards. Close your eyes to limit your distractions and ease the process. Breathe in for 4 counts as it harder for a new person to take more air, then hold the air for 2 counts, breathe out in 4 counts and again hold for 2 counts. Repeat the cycle.

Set a timer before starting, as time tends to pass really slowly and it is hard to not look at the clock. The timer can be set for as less as 30 seconds- that way you can even do it with less will power. And don’t do it for more than 10 minutes at one sitting, when doing it for the first few times as you will not do it regularly for long. Your will power might exhaust.

Why is it hard?

When you start doing it for the first few times, a lot of thoughts creep in and it is hard to concentrate on your breaths, for sometimes as less as 5 seconds.

Where are these thoughts coming from?

You must have felt this when you go to sleep right after a dose of social media, you are not being able to sleep, with horrible thoughts occupying your mind.

But when you are shopping, talking to your friend or doing any other thing which requires a reasonable amount of focus, these thoughts don’t come.

The reality is that these thoughts were there when you were doing all those things, it is just that they were in the passenger’s seat. Now that, in the night, when you don’t have any other thing to focus on, these horrible thoughts of the fear of future and the pain of the past takes the driver’s seat.

A monk under which Jay Shetty trained has a really good example to give the reason for why meditation is hard for the first few sessions. It goes like-

When you haven’t cleaned your place for a while and you start sweeping the floor, the dust gets to your face and you feel uncomfortable. Consider this accumulated dust as your thoughts.

But when you start to regularly sweep the floor, this dust tends to not accumulate and cleaning becomes easy and comfortable.

You really need to stick to the process and it will become easy with time and focus. It will not take less than a few months or even years to sit for 10 minutes with your only focus as your breaths. It is tough but now, you know the benefits and shall start to implement it daily.

Just 30 seconds if not 10 minutes.

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Thank you for making it till here and supporting me, just like always. I wish you all, an astonishing life ahead with unprecedented success even in the places you lack faith in.

My Instagram- @haldhar.daksh

It is my microblogging account.

Art of journaling

I actually have many friends asking me what I journal and what should they write in theirs. I thought of sharing about what I do. Though there were many different questions, all of them fit well in these 3 basic questions-

What is journaling?
Why journal?
When to journal?

1.)What is journaling?

It is super simple and super effective. It can mean anything. Literally anything

Robin Sharma taught me to decide my intentions before meeting someone or doing something, by writing about it.

Radhi Devlukia Shetty taught me to built integrity by making two columns- one for what I said/thought and one for what I should have thought.

PatrickGrove taught me to write about ‘How to’ in my journal.
Examples being-

• How to improve my relationships with friends, family, any person?
• How to create a better business?
• How to help someone?
• How to create a 100 million dollar company in 12 months? (He did it. It was sounding scary to him too, but after 4-5 sessions of how to, he actually figured it out)
• How to have a better physique?

From bitching about someone to writing about your fears, horrible experiences, life-changing moments, breakup, trauma, learnings or any small or big thing can and should be there. There are no boundaries to what you can write. There, also, isn’t any limitation to how you can write. Be it a copy, a diary or just notes on your mobile, just write it.

2.)Why journal?

I will talk about how it has helped me. When I started writing a journal, I was already in a positive mindset, or that was what I thought. But journaling gave me a realisation and reflection to the problems and challenges before me to conquer. I actually started to write about people and problems happening in my life. For some time, I wrote about what is happening to me.

Later, I was exhausted from writing about what is happening as new things were coming up every day.

So, for a change I started writing about ‘why they are happening’ and ‘what can I do about it?’. It changed the game. I didn’t get the answers in the first go, but I did get them eventually.

3.)When to journal?

I personally journal every day. If possible, multiple times a day. All the geniuses in this world spend time with themselves. You can’t really make an excuse as to ‘you don’t have time for yourself’ when you are watching a tv series or scrolling aimlessly through social media for 4 hours a day. Write about thoughts, quotes, ideas, fears, GOALS.

Aim for stars. Actually, have such goals which will sound stupid and crazy to you. You don’t have to figure it out in an hour. Give it some time every day. You will get there. And if you do, DM @pratickgrove .

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I am utterly grateful that you made it through this blog. I wish all the unexpected glories for you.

If you like this blog. DM me. Leave a comment below. Share it with someone you love. It will mean a lot to me.

Happy Journaling.

-Daksh

Failing and being a disappointment.

Patrick Grove, at 24, when the .com bubble burst, was in a 4 million dollar debt. His company went broke. He wasn’t getting any answers. It was so hard that, every night, when he went to sleep, he wished that the whole building would catch fire so that he will not have to wake up again to deal with shit. But he read a book by Tony Robbins that changed his life. Now at 44, Patrick is the chairman of 5 companies, is extremely happy, travel a lot, all because he regained faith in himself. That failure wasn’t the last of his failures, it was just a big failure. Now he fails every day and learns every day.

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• Steve Jobs was fired from Apple, his own finding.
• Thomas Edison, arguably the greatest scientist of all times, failed thousands of time to invent the bulb.
• Abraham Lincoln, former US president, was one of the biggest disgraces according to many people when he was young. He went on to become, one of the finest President and a great humanitarian.
• J.K. Rowling, the author of Harry Potter, went to 12 publishers before she got her book published.

I can go on and on, as failures are a big part of anyone living their life lavishly in terms of happiness.

Failing is cool. Fail a lot. Fail every day. Try different shit. Be cool about other people’s failures.

Let’s make failing as cool as it is meant to be.

Failing is super positive. It all depends on your mindset. If you are more influenced by people’s opinion of failing, then you are going nowhere. Failing needs doing shit. When you go out of your comfort zone or as I say ‘zone-of-stagnation’ you tend to fail till you learn to rise.

Think of it as a video game. You will not get to the next level until you pass this one. You will keep on failing. But, when you get to the next level, you will get stronger and deal with better problems.

Failing will never leave you. The same is with learning. They always go hand in hand.

-Daksh

People are insecure about their abilities and that why, when someone tries to leave the tribe, they tend to protect him by pulling him down. They have seen people fail and never rise up. But the real failure lies not in falling but in ‘not getting up again’.

As long as you are in the arena, you are winning.

I know, it feels seemingly impossible, right now, to get what you want, but ask yourself, “How can I do it?”. You will get the answers. The human brain works towards what we really think.

If I ask you that we are to remove the jails from this world, what advice are you going to give to me?
If you are telling me that it isn’t possible, all the murderers and rapist are going to roam freely, crime rates are going to rise, people will be insecure on the roads, then you might be right but you are being negative.

Don’t let the society hypnotise you into being one of the conventions. You can come up with better ideas as soon as you think of it being a necessity. What if we ‘have’ to remove the jail system at any cost?
Now the great thinking begins.
Social centres, counselling groups, employment opportunities, raising the standard of living, better health and sanitation services, equality of opportunity in every sector, etc.

You understand, what I mean to say?
You need to think constructively.

Failures in life are the stepping stones to a brighter future. You have to take a step forward and grow. There is no alternative.

In this era, the amount of people who are worrying about other people’s opinions over their action is so much, that it is the easiest era to become great. Most people aren’t working on their dreams, so they will work on yours. I feel a bit sad about the current situation. But since it is easier, many people should try new things. They don’t, but they should. If you are trying to do something towards your future, you are already ahead in the game by a big margin.

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If you have made it through this blog post, I am really thankful to you.

Share it with someone you care about. Like. Subscribe. One blog a week it is. Usually, I post on Sundays.

I hope you fail a lot and get the light which inspires you to rise up again. Human life is just a series of experiments.

You are a winner. It is a fact.

Follow me on Instagram for more such content. I post daily.

@haldhar.daksh

Forgiveness

Nelson Mandela was confined to an enormously tiny prison cell on Robben Island (a barren, not-so-huge, shark surrounded island near the coast of cape town) for 18 of his 27 years in imprisonment. He was treated very poorly. Faced degradation and humiliation to the level that once he was ordered by the prison personnel to dig his own grave in the prison yard and lie in it. The guards unzipped their pants and urinated over him. Though it was freezing in South Africa, he was only given a thin shirt and flimsy shorts. When he showered, the guards stood and watched this elderly man standing naked, an attempt to humiliate and break him. He was given food unfit for an animal. It was all very carefully planned to crush Mr Mandela’s spirit.

After he was released he became the president of South Africa.
He invited the prosecutor who demanded the death penalty for him to dinner. And he asked one of the jailers who watched over him in Robben Island to attend his inauguration as the president of South Africa.

He, in his autobiography,‘ Long Walk To Freedom’, wrote, “As I walked out the door towards the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in a prison.”

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I have been thinking about this term-Forgive. There are many questions around the term and the process of forgiving.

First being- what does it really mean to forgive? To which I think, forgiveness is about healing a wound of your soul.

As an unknown to the concept of forgiveness, I was very harsh on people and more on myself about the misdeeds which affected my life.

I never tried to forgive people. I always thought they are losing me and not the other way round. I thought of being angry with them for what they did. In a way, I was right. ‘How could they have hurt me, a perfectly good person?’

How this works is that people try for a while, which is like a short-term high for us. We seem to get their attention, but when we don’t forgive them, they eventually move on. And this very fact hurts the heck out of us. ‘How could they just move on?’

But when I came to know about why people do what they do, it was a life-changing moment.

What someone does is done in the best of his understanding.

Anytime. Anywhere. He just reflects his relationship with himself. The thing is almost never about you.
It is easier to take everything personally, as that is how we have seen people around us do. For an average person, it is easier to say that society is full of morons but the reality says, that we are the society.

When you see things from this point of view, it is easier to forgive someone.

And when I am saying about forgiving someone for doing something, the deeds could be as bad as raping you, killing your family and any other extreme.
Now, don’t hate on me just now. Just keep reading on. If you don’t like my perspective, drop your piece of mind in my comment section. But please do read on.

What does it mean to forgive someone, be it yourself? When someone has done something really bad to you, you forgive them(even yourself for doing something bad) is necessary for you, not them. You will always have a feeling in your heart and soul that someone has done something really bad to you. You won’t be able to face the world until that wound is healed and the only way to heal a wound is to feel it. You can’t just ignore and distract yourself away from the fact that someone has done something really bad. It will keep on pilling up on your soul. It will become a burden to live with.

It is easier to forgive and live freely.

To forgive doesn’t mean to accept the person and their traumas back in your life. It just means that you understand what someone has done is the reflection of their love for themselves. And you shall just hope that they get some wisdom soon that their deeds aren’t the wisest. You cannot just hold on to that misdeed. It will ruin your future. The law, be it state governed or the law of the universe shall take care of his deeds. You can only do one wise thing, that is to forgive.

People talk about moving on from wounds by trying to forget it. But, this is just a myth. You never forget such things. They live with you. They become a part of you. You can distract yourself from it for now, but you won’t be able to be with yourself for one whole minute with that wound unhealed.

So, rather think about forgiveness and healing the wound of your soul. Thinking about their degree of knowledge and wisdom when they did that thing, eases the process of forgiveness.

You will come out as a better, happier and healthier person, being able to give your trust to people and will be able to live a more fulfilling life.

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Writing a journal gives the clarity of my thoughts. Write about the things, instances and people hurting you. It will help your soul to heal.

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Since you made it this far, I am really thankful to you for trying to understand my perspective. I hope it helps you with living a better life. If you liked it, share it with someone you love. It will mean a lot to me.

Self Love.

Disclaimer: This one is going to be very informal.

This topic is so hot lately. Everyone is talking about it. People ask you if you love yourself or not. Somehow, most of you answer it affirmatively.

We are so confused about what self-love is. I was on a quest to find out what self-love is. For the past 5 months, I was looking for its definition and ways to execute it.

Initially, in this journey to find the meaning of self-love, I used to ask myself, “Don’t we all, already, love ourselves?“.
If not, isn’t it funny that we are the only person who we are going to spend all our time with, so if we don’t love ourselves already, what is wrong with us?

So, one day, I was watching a video by Goalcast on YouTube, in which the speaker, Adam Roa, was talking about self-love. He said, “Treat yourself like how you would treat someone you love.”

This kind of stuck with me.

• We all want the best things to happen to the people we love. When they find flaws in themselves, we overlook them and tell them how good they are in themselves and what all great things they have and do which are unique to them.

We don’t do that to ourselves.

• When they worry about things, we tell them how superficial and delusional those thoughts are. We motivate them and inspire them.

We never do that to ourselves.

• As quick as we are in celebrating others’ victories and remarkable feats, we forget, what an epic and masterful piece of art we are.
• We criticise ourselves. Put pressure on ourselves of others’ insecurities and expectations when we are the ones who hold hands of our loved ones in their toughest period.

We need to have positive self talk with ourselves. We need to accept our flaws and seek the best for ourselves because nobody in this world will care about you as much as you can do. And if you already aren’t caring about yourself, you need to change that processing.

Pat yourself on the back for doing so good till now and surviving 100% of your days.

Love yourself enough to dare on achieving your goals.
We want our loved ones to achieve their goals. We help them in doing so, motivating them towards it.
We need to do that to ourselves.

‘I’ should be your first priority.

Because without serving yourself first, you can’t ever be enough for the world.

Look after your health. See what you eat. Look after the data you consume because that is going to transform you into the ‘You’ of the future. Think, if you will be able to love the future ‘You’. Your current habits decide your future.

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Even after knowing so much, I was feeling as if something was missing.

So, about a week ago, I was listening to ‘Under The Skin‘ by Russell Brand which featured Jay Shetty. I have always admired Jay. Tbh, I listened to it for Jay. His thoughts are moving.

So, getting back to the podcast, they were talking about SELF-LOVE. Jay took us through his beautiful philosophy.

He asked, how do we fall in love with people? Don’t worry. He answered it himself.

‘By asking themselves questions about them, by spending time with them, talking about their biggest goals, deepest fears and concerns, pet peeves, achievements, glories, favourite food, books, movies, characters, and then get to know their friends and family’

Self-love is directly related to self-awareness.

We need to ask ourselves important questions. What we want to do, what we love to do, who do we like, what is right for our mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health, what do we value and leave everything behind.

We need to back our goals and ourselves.
Work towards your best health, mindset, spiritual growth, financial growth and enjoy the journey.

When we align with what we truly are and what we truly want, we tend to leave behind everything which cannot help us to achieve our dreams and find on our journey the best of people and stories thereon. Be it thoughts, people, materialistic goals or any other, when they don’t align, they are out of view. And believe me, it will make you happier than ever.

All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

–Blaise Pascal (French Mathematician)

You have to invest in yourself the money, the resources and most importantly the TIME.

If we don’t work enough on the sculpture called ‘ourselves’, nobody is going to look at us.
–Daksh

Give yourself some alone time every day. Get comfortable with your thoughts. Sit and write a journal about your thoughts and accept them, even if they are not the most positive. Yes, write about your failures and how hard it is for you to move on from incidents and people and thoughts. Write them. Give them clarity. You need to acknowledge it as these are also a part of you.

Robin Sharma says it in the best possible way: “The way to heal a wound is to feel a wound”

We are trying to escape our emotions with screens at our disposal. That’s why, this era is the most distracted era, ever. People have forgotten about self-love and its results.

“Tranquility is the new luxury”

-Robin Sharma

You will be most productive when you are alone.

Block time for yourself. If possible, do it the first thing in the morning. Work for your best health-physical, mental, emotional, financial and spiritual. Make a journal dedicated to yourself.

It will transform all of your relationships.

What you are within reflects without.