The Significance of Self-Love

The concept of self-love is a broad subject to consider but I wish to put a light on it as we lack to love ourselves amidst our imperfections. For many of us, the subject has been over-blown and we have cornered ourselves searching it in self-help books, or just to hug a tree or treat ourselves with devilishly delicious food or going on solo-dates! We have been always trying to be perfect and work towards perfection in a way that, after a long time we end up being hard on ourselves all too often without even realising it. Love is the one that keeps us going in this fast-pacing world. But do we have enough love to give for ourselves? We all would have gone through a phase when we have all the things required in life but still we lack happiness, still incomplete with confusion and hatred for no reason. Have we thought of why? We have been conventionally seeking love from others, expecting a validation we never get, but in this journey, we lose ourselves, our respect, and our own happiness. We forget to appreciate ourselves but we expect the same from others. This does not seem logical because we solicit the validation from others which we can obtain from ourselves. It is like we are seeking an answer from the world when we know it all by ourselves. The coercing nature of society pushes us to satisfy everyone's desires, but it is paramount to look after ourselves in this journey of satisfying others. We have been destined to achieve something that nature has manifested in us, but we try to build and confine ourselves to something that the society expects. At the same time, we forget ourselves and our actual purpose. Self-love is not about being selfish, but it is about putting ourselves first over anything. But how do we know that for which all things we need to put ourselves first? It is our soul that answers to every activity or every transaction we perform. When the inner 'I' say that we are not good enough in doing a specific thing then we need to reconsider the decision of proceeding further. As the saying goes, we have answers within ourselves but we often ignore them because we always get carried away with the flow which is a peccadillo we do to ourselves. We often forgive the mistakes committed by our loved ones, but we punish ourselves with guilt and regret for the mistakes we do. That's bizarre!! Our perception of ourselves affects our vibe. If we could forgive our loved ones, then why we carry the pain, regret, and guilt with us when we can forgive and accept us amidst all the imperfections? This is how we have been created and we need to accept for the way we are. We always compare our lives with that of others but comparing would only slow us down in a longer run. We do not give ourselves enough credit for overcoming things and getting better. We pretermit to celebrate our strength. We should always know our own worth before setting an expectation from others. Once we achieve it, we will know what to and what not to permit in our inner circle. Self-love is the key to happiness, once we are happy, we are in a far better position to achieve success in every aspect of life. We need to love ourselves, but also analyse and be critical of how we think, act, and behave because self-love without self-awareness is futile. Always be accountable!

Survival of the Fittest

I voluntarily feel it is inevitably a very important subject to throw a light upon. There have been multiple times where I have witnessed that we often discriminate people based on the talents they possess. At one way, we feel dejected as we think that we are left out among others who possess talents that the world wants. This is insane! Only the flamboyant ones get the credit while the person with the same talents gets neglected by the society.. Where are we heading to? Due to this biased mentality of the society, a buoyant person tends to become pessimistic and in the meanwhile, loses the self-confidence of his/her abilities. That's how we have been seeing this brain-drain in our country. Talent, as we call it, is also a manifestation of nature, but we tend to forget or not recognize the same because we have been going in the same pace as that of the ostentatious ones.

Talents are supposed to be displayed at the right place but not at the cost of suppressing the skilled ones who don't dare to be showy. The society has some set of predefined ideologies about the abilities which are permissible to exist in this survival-of-the-fittest world. Do you know how this term called “survival-of-the-fittest” originated? Did this term originate right from the stone-age period when humans stepped in? Not at all! As time proceeded, we created some set of rules as a constitution for people to sustain in this competent world. But we tend to forget that every human has the right to live their own life. We, as a society never let them thrive because we make them compare themselves with the flamboyant talents and conspicuously consuming people.

We would have been aware of the Solomon Islands, a country in Oceania. This particular place is well known for its biodiversity. The tribal who reside there generally do not cut trees, instead, they gather around and curse the trees for several hours. As the days pass, the trees eventually dry and fall themselves. This story may seem unreal, but they are authentic and true. This is not a miracle but the infinite power of our mind. Whatever pessimistic comments we pass to others for their incredible talent and effort, we directly play with their subconscious mind, eventually witnessing their downfall. Think and act for the sake of modest people!!! It is not that they are untalented, instead we fail to see the beauty of their soul and their efforts due to our lack of exposure.

Calmness and Breath go hand-in-hand

Life is so uncertain that we always end up agonizing about our future. What is it like to stay calm in all the circumstances? Is there a way out of the typical human behavior? Nature teaches us the cycle of good and bad in our lives but we have not got the maturity to trust the flow of nature. We have always endeavored certain things in our lives- fame, love, respect, material gains, etc., but at the same time, we do not understand the uncertainties of such gains. Happiness as well as sadness have the tendency to repeat itself from time to time. This impermanency teaches us to remain calm in any situation that we are put in. Such impermanency is the beauty of life, isn't it? When there is happiness, we all strive hard to keep it with us, and at the same time, when there is sorrow, we try all possible ways to make each day better than the previous day. That's the law of nature.

But have we ever made an attempt to remain calm in all the situations amidst the complexity? To remain calm and composed in all the demanding situations has become more complex than the situation itself, isn't it? The beauty and the power of any human being lie in how better we respond to such petrifying moments in life. Calmness can be termed as elementary, but it takes a very strong human mind to understand the nectar of the term to implement. The root of being calm starts from our panicking and our overreaction to the alarming circumstances. How well can this be introspected and handled? Whenever we are in the midst of alarming situations, our panicking starts with uneven breath count. The breath count of a person in a normal situation ranges from 12-16 breaths per minute. During a spooky situation, the breath count shoots up to 25-30 breaths per minute. In one way, this harms our health but at the same time, this panicking triggers us to overreact or underreact to the petrifying situation. Every time, we need to check our breath count whenever we start to panic because the breath alone remains with us till our death amidst all the impermanent things. You may be amused to see how this excellently works in problem-solving. I am not giving a tip here to solve the problem. We all better know to solve anything more than the approach. I just want to throw light upon the approach to better problem-solving. This understanding of the breath change during a demanding moment regularizes our breath, allows us to accept the reality and intricacies of the situation, and also to find suitable solutions. Why don't we all try once and see the difference?