Why Self Help Books/Instructions do not work?

What is self help?  Do you remember when you approached a mentor, a book, or google to find out how to deal with a situation or your own feelings.  I have done this for the last 25 years and finally it dawned to me that no self book or mentor is going to be of any help unless something what they say connects with your feelings.

The only way to learn something is to experience it and make a conclusion based on your own experience and findings.  This is the lesson or understanding that will stick to you life long whereas the others may feel that they are relieving but not for too long.  The reason being, it is somebody else's experience or finding based on their own perception and characteristics of their mind.



Everything that happens to us is a unique experience by experiencing our own being or creation.  Use self instructions and help as a vehicle's rear view mirror but you and only you can steer the vehicle based on your understanding from what you see in the mirror.

My Companion - "The Fly"

I am back to blogging after a certain turmoil in my career path and I feel I have reached the place which I dreamt about 20 years ago. It is a nice feeling and I believe in dreams coming true. Ok, I am not here to rant and rave about my career path. I will straight away get into the thought that provoked me to pen down this blog.

 A couple of weeks back I realized that there was this fly(insect) in my home. I am very sensitive to insects and shoo them away the moment I spot them. If anybody has done this you know how crazy it could be to get a fly out. I opened all the windows and doors and thinking it was gone, settled down for a bit. There it comes again buzzing near my ears which made me jump up and crush it to death. But it kept sneaking away, finally I gave up and convinced myself to get used with the fly being around.

It has been a few weeks ever since and now I have started liking the fly being around. In fact, I don't feel lonely anymore when I am at home. I see the fly buzzing happily around which makes me realize there is another soul around. Today I was thinking that I should start feeding it but not sure about that. 

In my opinion great thoughts and philosophies should have been born during one of those solitude moments.....

People – A REASON, a SEASON or a LIFETIME

I was talking to one of my colleague John and we were sharing each other’s life perspectives and then he shared something that invoked a new understanding about the people that come into our life. These were the exact same words from him:

“People come into our life for a REASON, a SEASON or a LIFETIME”

There were some people that I know and have no contact at all now whatsoever but have made an impact in my life with a day of chatting. And then there were people who were in my life for a specific period of time but have lost contacts now, even though there was nothing wrong with the relationship we had. And I know I still hold some good old relations strongly to my heart which is going to be there for a lifetime. Of course there has been hurdles along the way in maintaining these releations but even then I have held on to it strongly and now I realize that it was meant to be that way.

How I wonder I was aware of this perspective in those early years of my struggle to understand people and relationships. So many times we tend to understand other people and often fail miserably and worry about losing their mere physical presence.

Now since I know this fact I can let go off some of the past which was causing me pain. Letting go off the past is really an art by itself.

The topic I discussed above does not include the relationship between parents, siblings or spouse. It is purely based on those relations you tend to gain on a day to day basis.

Charity - Does it help the giver or receiver?

We often say by helping others we make the person being helped happy. I don't deny that fact, however it also helps the person who performs the act of giving. It gives a deep sense of satisfaction deep down one's soul. I have experienced it myself by doing this act. I am not talking about things that are being done for publicity or fame. It can be simple such as, when you drive across and at a traffic signal you see a person reaching out for alms and you reach out to your purse to drop a Dollar. This is what I am talking about and there could be so many emotional reasons that trigerred your act. But if you really gave it a thought, the act really makes you feel better and to appreciate life more.

I am not implying everyone to drive around traffic signals and help a poor person to make you feel better :-). Or maybe try it out, when you are really dragged down with life's uncertainities, it may help. This makes me to think that, is there any act that is selfless? Hmm....not sure...aah!! If performing some action makes you feel good, how can that be selfless. The root cause for the action was to make us feel better even if it is done unconsciously. A person who has renunciated this world can also be categorized on this aspect. Even though they claim the renunciation the truth is they like renunciation.

In my opinion, I would say a charitable act helps both the giver and receiver.

Battling Unconscious Thought Forces

It has been a while since I made a post and the reason was that I was trying to focus on kicking my habit of drinking and smoking. Guess what? I did it and I am sober for five and half months as I am writing this blog. Just wanted to appreciate myself a bit and a small pat for achieving something that I thought, I would never achieve in this life time.

Let’s get down to the topic of this blog. I have been observing myself to understand why I do certain things even though my intention was not to do those things. After deep analysis, I came to understand that there are some underlying forces within the root of us dictating our behavior. These forces may have taken deep root within us during our childhood or in situations where the environment handed over these beliefs and perceptions in the process of our growing up. Now, that I understood this, the real struggle was to dismantle these clinging beliefs within me.

How easy it would really be, to just tell the brain to do the right thing when we know that, what we were doing is wrong. This is not the way our brain or mind works. They have been trained in a certain way for a long time and it would take some time to untrain those beliefs and retrain with new perceptions or beliefs. I can give a good example of how our unconscious forces get us off track. If by nature we delve on negative things in life, nobody else is to be blamed except for our own selves.

Here is a good example... I started the day with good thoughts and with a happy perspective just like a cool breeze on a sea shore. In the middle of the day at work, my mind suddenly was drifting away on some negative circumstances that had occurred in my life. Immediately, I could sense the negative emotions taking toll on my body, there was a tensed feeling in my gut and my calf muscles were feeling the pressure. Finally, I was above to get mad and the next thought was to get up and go for a smoke. Did I go for a smoke, no way!!! I just said wait a minute and asked myself this question, "I was in peace all this time and what happened?” The answer was the "thought", so I just focussed on re-adjusting my thought pattern and went out for a walk and it was gone. Tracing back to what happened, a bad thought provoked a bad emotion and in turn a bad feeling and finally a bad reaction or negative act of angst. Wow! Did I just invent that? No, people have been doing this kind of stuff for years, but I can say it was my own inner awakening. People do have moments of their own when they realize certain things.. Huh!

Another good example of the unconscious thought pattern is...., I was in total distress one day and I was driving to a Cafe to have breakfast. The specific route I was driving is the same route I go to the Gym. There is one place where you turn left to the Gym and right to the Cafe. When I started from home, my intention was to go for breakfast with a mental cloud of distress. When I reached the point where I had to take right to the Cafe, I took the left towards the Gym. Suddenly, I recovered from my unconscious state of mind with a silly smile.

Brain is a muscle and just like any other part of the body, it needs to be trained and exercised. Researches have shown that the more active our brains are, it can prevent Alzheimer's and Schizophrenia diseases. When we start living more consciously focusing on the present moment, there is more probability to live a peaceful and contended life. But it is the nature of the mind to always focus on the past or the future. Trying to balance the thoughts and stay focused on the present moment is a real challenge.

Power of Affirmations

I was reading this book "The Success Principles" by the best selling author Jack Canfield and the chapter of positive affirmations did relate to me in a way and thought I would write a quick blog on that. The Chapter was all about how you create an affirmation, visualize and achieve your goals.

How many of us can claim that we can think flawlessly? Have we ever wondered why we do certain things and did we take time to examine the root cause for it or what initiated the action? It is cognition or the thought process which is performing its job. Most of us are unaware of this important process which is happening within us day in and day out. When we do realize this and bring it to our consciousness we can achieve the way our life will be or adapt ourselves to accept the way things are. It is when you retaliate with reality do you face difficulties in facing the reality.

Law of attraction states that you get what you want. Atleast this is true in my life, things did not happen just like that. I took an inventory of my thoughts and the position where I am now and it did really make a lot of sense in both positive as well as negative perspective. If we just take time out and think why are you in whatever position you are, somewhere within you long time back you had this feeling of becoming what you are now.

So it is all about attitude and practicing and preaching what we want. It will just not happen immediately and the reason is our subconscious mind is trained in a way for a long period and to break this barrier, it requires time and with persistence, we can difinitely do it.

Relationship - Why is it So Hard???

I have been observing these couple who live diagonally opposite to my apartment in the basement. When I said couple they were really old hitting their late sixties. Whenever I come over to my balcony I can catch a glimpse of them either lying down on the grass tanning themselves or just taking out trash. To my surprise both were somewhat handicapped due to the age factor. The old man had a right leg wrapped with some bandage and can use only wheel chair. The old lady will be limping around and pushing the wheel chair of her better half... Did I say better half, hmm may be better end!!!

On occasions I have seen the old lady gliding the wheel chair of her husband to Giant which is 3/4 of a mile and again carrying back groceries and guiding the wheel chair of her husband. I have never seen anybody visiting them nor these couple going anywhere.(Nature of American Compassion). My imagination started flashing out, that their whole world was revolving around that apartment and between them. Do you think they care about the recession or for a matter of fact the hooliganism in Iran or the mysterious death of Michael Jackson? I don't think so and occasionally whenever I brush past them, I tend to observe their face and it is neither sad nor happy. There is some kind of harmony on those faces with a calm and peaceful posture.

Reiterating the above scenario, I was just wondering if they would argue or pick up a fight for petty things. I was even picturing a young couple alongside those old couple as to how each couple would react to a given circumstance. Obviously, the younger couple would be driven by their ego, feelings and emotions to judge the situation. On the other hand I am sure that the older couple will handle these situations in a more immaculate way.

Very few have understood the repercussion's of marriage. Suddenly it dawned on me that marriage is not to have sex, get kids, dine out, shopping or travel but just to have a partner with whom you would love to grow old and in the process enjoy the outcomes that our daily lives deliver to us. This made me to think what happens when we get married or enter into a relationship.

Two persons with different nature and priorities get together to make a successful life. Rather than saying two persons a better term for this would be two personalities with different traits get together. If both personalities are well balanced there should be a smooth sailing. Both people bring different dreams into the relationship and there prevails a bit of an anxiety. It is like taking a new job trying to understand the environment and getting accustomed to that environment. By nature humans tend to resist change and persons with a strong ego have difficulty to make this paradigm shift.

If the relationship is considered on a long term basis the core value of it changes. The little things we do on a daily basis really matter on building a strong trust based relationship. A part of every human yearns for a bit of appreciation for whatever they do. The most important thing is to allow the other person to be who they are in your presence. This gives them the cozy feeling of independence and not being criticized for who they are not. It is more feasible to change ourselves which we have control or influence over with rather than trying to change the other person. "You are not in a right or wrong relationship. Your partner is the mirror of who you are inside"- Deepak Chopra.

Lets hope everyone ends up with a harmonious relationship like the old couple who live in their own world.