Start with Inner Joy

Being present and joyful is within conscious control. We can choose where to focus our attention and how. Over the long run this choice of attention becomes our emotional habit and life.

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” – Mahatma Gandhi

You’ve control over what kind of conscious thoughts you focus on. You can decide what you say and do. Therefore your happiness is in your control.

All the good start with being happy with yourself: the inner joy. Joy attracts joy and people are happy to work with you. Nobody wants more unhappiness to their lives.

Start taking responsibility of your happiness.

I am not saying you will achieve eternal state of bliss, however once you learn to focus your attention to the right things, it’s not that far from it. You do not need any artificial or outer sources for your happiness, instead you can discover it internally.

Next you’ll start to understand that through your own happiness, you can make other people happy too!

Mental Preparation: How Everything Can Go as Planned

I remember reading a few years back War and Peace, there was a scene, where the battle didn’t go probably go as anticipated. Yet the Russian army officer in charge looked at the result and said “everything gone as planned.”

Life is full of uncertainty. Ability to build the mental preparation and flexibility to be ready for whatever happens and think of everything that happens going as planned is a quality which I admire and strive to.

One of my favorite phrases in the recent times is that the hurry is just lack of preparation. We need to be preparing the right things at all times. What kind of preparation this is then that allows us to have the peace of mind under pressure?

In Buddhist terms this could be called “right action” and “right knowledge.” Right knowledge, knowing that you’ve thought of all the possible scenarios, sought help and a different perspective and right action because you know you’ve done everything in power to prevent this outcome. You have done everything, so therefore everything is as it should be.

In the game of Go, the side that has more liberties usually ends up winning. Same in life, where liberties mean more plans. More freedom to execute these plans and choose the best from all the possible options.

Mental preparation is anticipation for future scenarios. Do not attach too much to a plan or a result. Let your mind seek more opportunities with less attachment. Be mindful and present. Only thing we can really lose is the present. The future nor the past cannot be taken away from us, only present can.

Everything you need is in the moment, you do not need more. Let everything that appears in your present to be part of your plan and everything goes to your plan 😉

Breakthroughs

Learning happens in breakthroughs, not linearly like might be expected.

In life in order to get to the new level, you must bear the emotional cost of the frustration. Frustration is the emotional cost and price for the breakthrough. If you are willing to do the right work and, keep building the belief of success, you will succeed.

After a breakthrough and upon reaching a new level, there will be plateau, a time of rather stagnant period where the changes are not that dramatic. Stagnation follows action. If there is not action, even regression might follow soon, this is why the “use it or lose it” is very accurate phrase.

Breakthroughs are fun, they are what makes life worth living for.

There are perhaps there qualities that lead to breakthrough:

• Persistence
• Right action
• Belief that this can be done (helps with persistence ;))

Breakthroughs happen especially when all you’ve learned is crystallized in action such way that it brings results.

Two Types of Hope

The essence of human life, seems to be the hope of a better life. When we lose that hope of things getting better, we depress and stop working towards the better life.

Sometimes the fantasy of better life can be found outside i.e. good example would be when the Gold rushes, or the Spanish who looked for Eldorado…

In modern day world, refugees escaping warzones with all they have to the places they know very little: Europe.

I just finished watching three hour documentary series called Exodus: Our Journey to Europe. It showcases very well on how little information and so much belief we people operate. Especially the refugees escaping war, oppression and famine do have my sympathies. I think these people should be helped directly as soon as possible. Preferably I would prefer diplomatic solution that stabilizes the areas. Fighting is never the solution.

“There are causes worth dying for, but none worth killing for” – Albert Camus

Stability is the beginning, we need to feel safe. We also require some sort of social structure, because without it people are not feeling safe to invest the time there and they are instead spending the time to escape the poverty to somewhere else.

From the documentary I also understand that the Europe or some countries in the Europe are talked as very mythical fantasies. Which is probably right in that sense.

Question I want to ask here is thought, why are families willing to put their hard earned money and their sons life to the hands of smugglers in order to get a better life? The whole family could do a lot with that kind of money (thousands of euros) to study, work etc. in their own country. But they do not want to invest to that, instead they see the son getting to Europe as a fatter chance, even despite the big risks.

That is the thing I want to point out: if the country is safe, and the structures are in place, there is hope and willingness to keep investing into it, instead of gambling the money and lives to smugglers, who are then being greedy and taking even greater risks at the cost of human lives.

For us humans, there are two strong forces: hope and depression. While the refugees coming to Europe to seek asylum is hope based, which is good and which I think they should be helped for sure. However, the most lasting form of hope is that which allows us to build cities nations and human kind, and to that I believe we should be first and foremost invest into.

In our nature it should be to do the right thing. Right thing is the path of courage, love and forgiveness. Those are the virtues and qualities we need to cultivate in ourselves.

What’s the cure, when you do not get the wanted results?

 

Suddenly I realized, that often the cure the leadership offers to the problems at hand is to work harder and do more.

Hard work does bring results, I’ll sign that belief for sure.

Now I want to consider for a moment: are there any other ways to go about this? What kind of action would bring the results? What are the conditions under which the results would fall in place? Is there anything we can do to improve the odds of results today to have them tomorrow?

Right kind of action will bring the results in time, so consistency is important. However, even more important is to identify right action, without knowing if this is a right action we might be just as well wasting our precious energy.

So same answer does not apply every time. When you do not know if it’s the right action, you should find the answer first, work to answer that first or very at least ask different questions like, what are alternative ways to get results?

It may just as well be worth it to get some extra rest today. It won’t be getting the results you need today, but it just might tomorrow. Be in it for the long game.