Confidence

 

I guess many of us have had the experience of our friendliness being misinterpreted as “over familiarity”. It stops you in your tracks for a minute! And you begin to wonder where that came from! Very often after that, you start closing yourself up to new entrants in your life because you don’t want to be misunderstood yet again.

But honestly! Aren’t we blocking our natural flow in the bargain? At the end of the day, it is our intentions which are important, aren’t they? If these are ok, I guess we are ok as well, and we don’t really need to become guilt ridden at every reaction of people to us, people who probably are insecure and or uncomfortable in their own skin.

I find that our biggest bug bear can be social relationships. We find it so difficult to honestly say,” this is the way I am. Take it or leave it”. Learning from experiences is one thing and criticizing yourself unnecessarily for what you need not, is another. And this confidence makes a huge difference. For then, you are steady in one place. People will go around you and those who want to stop because they know your worth, will stop, just as you will do the same for others. It is that simple! We need to know who we are.

Surekha Kothari

www.BodyMindSoulCentre.com

surekhakothari.wordpress.com

Speakingtree Blog: www.speakingtree.in/public/surekhakothari

Quote of the day

 

Circumstance

 

Everyone has difficult circumstances to tackle in life. But, it is disturbing to see so many people developing a victim mentality. Worse still, making their victim card a weapon and playing it to their advantage to gain sympathy.

Today, we need more courage than ever before. Life is fast and no one has the time. We need to do things for ourselves because the support systems of families and elders is crumbling. To blame life is completely futile. Nothing just “happens”. The fatalistic card of “woe is me” can only mean defeat /lack of motivation to get up and walk again.

There will always be supporters around you in strange ways though you may never see them as such out of wallowing in self-pity and confused feelings. I have seen many an olive branch by well-meaning people, rejected again and again.

Actually, you can beat yourself up all your life, with comparisons, maybe for bad decisions made or a karmic onslaught, branding yourself as “unlucky” or whatever.  But you know what? It only makes it worse. Only you can turn your life around.

Again and again, I come back to the courage needed to transform a negative pattern of thought to an “I can do it” mode. It is hard work and sometimes, many tears before you smile again.  But that one smile is worth the tears preceding it.

Surekha Kothari

www.BodyMindSoulCentre.com

surekhakothari.wordpress.com

Speakingtree Blog: www.speakingtree.in/public/surekhakothari

Quote of the day

 

Perspective

 

The mantra for life, I have discovered, is “that was THEN, this is NOW”.

If we reflect on our thoughts, how much of our thinking patterns come from past experiences? A maximum percentage, I would imagine.

We judge people from past experiences.

Our relationships, more often than not, are dictated by the past experiences too.

Our trust factor also comes with time, again only from the past.

Our behavior stems from early conditioning.

Our guilt comes from what we did wrong earlier.

Our lack of forgiveness is because someone has hurt us and that becomes a negative past memory.

So, the past, which is really a ghost, rules over us even though it has passed.

It is incredible that we still won’t let go. Irrational that we won’t give our present a chance. The more we read about living in the NOW, the less we actually do. The past has occupied so much space within us. It actually lives there; like the cobwebs we have no time to clean. We are so busy planting pretty fences and flowers in a garden which is full of weeds.

Popularly said, “nowhere” can be changed with a new perspective, “NOW HERE”. But our mind is here and there all the time. Never in the NOW.

Awaken, people, to what we are doing to ourselves during our life here! Improving every moment in the present, trying to clean each such moment is the only thing we can do.

As we clean, and declutter, we create new spaces to attract the energy which can change our lives and bring in what we call miracles”.

Surekha Kothari

www.BodyMindSoulCentre.com

surekhakothari.wordpress.com

Speakingtree Blog: www.speakingtree.in/public/surekhakothari

Quote of the day

 

Quote of the day

 

Meditation

 Many people think meditation is something you do in an isolated place with closed eyes. But a meditative state is one of “no thoughts”. Anytime, within any activity, done with deep concentration, one can reach a state of “ no thought”.

The mind exists only as long as there is thought. If you think you have a mind, you do. If there is no thought at all, there is no mind and that state is the ultimate state when the true self shines.

Surekha Kothari

www.BodyMindSoulCentre.com

surekhakothari.wordpress.com

Speakingtree Blog: www.speakingtree.in/public/surekhakothari

Comparison

 I have found “c’est la vie” to be a wonderful way to live. “So be it!” Imagine, if we could use this in our daily lives! How much stress and strife we could avoid in matters which are really beyond our control!

But, oh no! We will fight every inch of the way to turn the circumstances and people in our favor and kill ourselves in the bargain, while God has the last laugh at our silly egos!

We always get “enough” for our sustenance. There is a reason for everything. Cursing is not going to help. Comparisons are going to help even less. A raging battle within us will kill our positivity and our initiatives.

Sometimes, life is as clear as the sun shining brightly. And sometimes, it is a cloudy sky. C’est la vie. Unnatural circumstances like Covid forced us indoors. Did grumbling / crying help? Ultimately, we had to buckle down to the lifestyle demanded by those times. Something will happen against your wishes often. These are challenges to see how we respond / react. The aura is our space and to keep a clean aura, without letting negativity in, is the sanest thing we can do for ourselves.

So, let go! Let it be! So be it! These are miracle phrases if we can practice them. We all have a rightful place in this world, just not necessarily where WE want to be.

Surekha Kothari

www.BodyMindSoulCentre.com

surekhakothari.wordpress.com

Speakingtree Blog: www.speakingtree.in/public/surekhakothari

Quote of the day

 

Dharma by Design

 

Self-improvement

 

“Your path to success starts with a single step towards self-improvement. “A profound quote by Dale Carnegie! Simple and hard hitting, the key word being “self-improvement”. To open our inner eye that sees us as we are and to close our external eyes that only see where others should improve. The latter doesn’t help in our journey, does it?

The other struggle is how to define success. If you build an awareness of where you need to change for the better AND work on it, that is success. If you can turn the negative within to positive, that too is success. If you learn to cleanse yourself of the need for conflict and so on.

Peace descends where we learn to live within our own space and learn to plant a garden within the space, instead of encroaching on other spaces.

The problem with the few materialistic success stories is that those who earn it are more often more balanced than those around them who bask in reflected glory and take their glory to a narcissistic level, never having worked for it for a minute. The quest for an illusory supremacy! This is diametrically opposite to the concept of self-improvement.

And so we exist somewhere between two extremes that polarize humanity so much so that the wrong majority forms the “ right” and the right minority learns to survive as best as they can.

Surekha Kothari

www.BodyMindSoulCentre.com

surekhakothari.wordpress.com

Speakingtree Blog: www.speakingtree.in/public/surekhakothari

Quote of the day

 

Relationships

 

A line once again caught my attention. “Those who feel lonely with age, have not strengthened their relationships when they were younger”. I have this habit of tearing apart every saying in terms of, not words but actual experiences. And I find many sayings a little on the superficial side.

I have seen karma at work. For some, it is heavy. Relationships are all karmic. If your lot is in learning through being isolated, that’s what your lot will be. Despite being loving and caring, relationships will mostly go wrong. No one to blame! It is just what it is. Sometimes, building relationships can be like pulling teeth. You can get more misunderstood than understood! No answers come forth despite one hundred “why’s. It is just meant to be so.

People will counsel you left, right and centre, that you don’t have “the art” of sustaining relationships. Maybe, everyone is not need based. Maybe, love runs deeper than superficial demonstrations to make others feel good so that they may like you….

The one sustaining relationship I have discovered, is with myself. Until I have that, I will feel a void, a loneliness and try to make others complete me. A futile exercise! No one can complete anyone else.

So, let’s try and isolate, if required, to become our own friends. That will work like a miracle has happened! You have to experience that state. But you have to reach it first.

Surekha Kothari

www.BodyMindSoulCentre.com

surekhakothari.wordpress.com

Speakingtree Blog: www.speakingtree.in/public/surekhakothari

Quote of the day