A small recipe for calm mind

Some practice for calm mind. Basically we have to arrange our habits in certain way.

1. Allocate separate time for yourself everyday.

2. Do activities like yoga which involves mind, body and spirit which brings balance. You can do some pranayama and do meditation. One very important technique is watching the gaps in the breath. I.e when your inhale finishes, there is a slight gap before exhale and also when your exhale finishes, there is a slight gap before inhale. To start with, we can watch those gaps for 15min.

3. Any activity that you do, do it with full involvement. Don't leave the unfinished tasks/wishes/desires hang around in your mind. That creates agony.

4. Devotion/Love . Everyday whenever you have time,listen to nice devotional songs or carnatic songs. Visit temple once in a week. Love everybody if we dont like somebody.

5. Sometimes take kids, go out and play with them rather than staying indoors.

6. Read/listen to spiritually inclining scriptures like Geeta, Vedanta or epics like Ramayana n Mahabharata if possible. Values need to be constantly instilled/strengthened within us. Without values, there is no peace.

7. Pay attention to which emotions/thoughts cost your energy. 

8. If possible, watch really good movies or read good stories periodically. In our fast lifestyle, we miss lot of life. This will be a filler and refresher.

Life with different possibilities but there is a way...

There are plenty of possibilities to live life differently in this world. There are all kinds of people out there living differently.  Different cultures, different lifestyles, different way of thinking, different jobs etc. I think it is not fair to compare one way of life against the other.  But one thing that we have to be careful about is how much of the activities that we do is taking away from our self.  Meaning we have to check how much peaceful and satisfied are we in our everyday living?  Because all the endeavors that we pursue is try to find completion within us. Honestly if we ask ourselves why we do about what we do?, we will know the answer. It might be building up a family, aspiring for big career, going for big adventure, doing social service etc. If we forget that purpose, we will get lost in that chase/pursuit and might end up in place where we don’t know where we are and what to do in life. It is very essential to put ourselves forefront. Every day we can live with warm, peaceful, loving, safe and secured feeling within us. I think that’s the beautiful way of living and things will fall in place in its own time. We don’t need millions of money for that. We don’t need to rush to achieve something.  Just appreciate the very life that we have been gifted and be responsible for all the choices that we make. Life will bring challenges every now and then. We have to be open for them and learn lessons and move forward.  We don’t need to beat ourselves if we fail in something but we have to make sure that we learn something from it. We just have to relax into who we are.  We have to pay attention from small things to big things that we do and also people that we associate with. If anything is costing us more, we have to rearrange that. We don’t owe our life to anybody and neither anybody to us. Live good, love good and someday leave good. Life can be a beautiful journey between birth and death at different phases of life amidst of different challenges. 

Self preservation

We have to learn to preserve ourselves amidst the different life challenges and stay on top of it. It's never going to serve us well if we lose ourselves for the sake of something(be it a marriage, job, friends etc). We have to put ourselves first and this is not selfish. There is no respect if we lose ourselves.  If we allow, our own close family members might give emotional hits because we are more vulnerable to them. We have to stand up for ourselves especially if our life/health/mental peace are getting affected. This doesn't mean that we have to be arrogant or angry and indulge in emotional fight. We have to use our intellect and deal with situations. We should never accept fear or anger for ourselves. We have to do what is needed for the situation and should not worry about how we feel about them. We are good human beings, we deserve better life and we have to trust that.

My night with myself