My latest book, Modern Wisdom, Ancient Roots, was a finalist selection for the The Next Big Idea Club.
If you have not yet obtained it, could I persuade you to buy a copy from Amazon and leave a review as well?
Pretty please with sugar and cream!!
Here are two takeaways from the NBIC newsletter:
1. Change can happen rapidly, even overnight.
Many believe that, by the time we reach adulthood, we have been fundamentally shaped and will not change much for the rest of our lives. This notion has been enshrined in our language and popular culture. We all know that “You cannot teach an old dog new tricks.”
I profoundly disagree. You can change. This change can happen dramatically and overnight. It can also be lasting. Sri Ramakrishna, the nineteenth-century Indian sage, is believed to have asked, “Imagine a cave sealed in a mountain for thousands of years. Then you remove the rocks that have blocked its entrance. Does the darkness dissipate little by little? Or does it vanish instantly?” No matter how many centuries blackness has lingered, it disappears when exposed to light. No matter how many decades your behavior has persisted, it can change in an instant.
The trick is to learn how to engineer this change. You cannot do it by force of will. The way you can do it is by changing the mental models you use to view the world. These models cumulatively determine who you are. As you make changes in them, you literally become a different person, and then everything changes.
It is not always easy to recognize the mental models you hold, so there is hard work required to identify them. Once you have done so, you can make changes in them. You’ll find that a small tweak in a mental model can make a huge difference in your experience of life.
2. Where you live matters.
Every real estate agent learns early that the most important thing is location, location, location. It matters hugely where you live. Where you live determines how happy you are and whether there is meaning and joy in your life.
And yet, most of us choose to live in hovels and surround ourselves with garbage, even excrement. We don’t live in a bungalow, duplex, mansion, or apartment. We live in our minds. That is our permanent residence—a place where there are no constraints of square footage. It’s a vast space with unlimited area. We have the power to draw and redraw our boundaries as we see fit in order to create our ideal surroundings.
No matter how grand our rooms, balconies, garages, and verandas are, our life is good only when things are clean and sorted in our mind. Yet that is where we keep things messy. Regrets piled up in one corner. Expectations stuffed in a closet. Secrets under the carpet. Worries littered everywhere. Comparisons spilled on the table. Complexes leaking from bottles. Grudges stinking in a box. And anxieties in every room.
“Start observing your mental chatter and note how it takes you to places and then triggers the emotions you feel.”
Be aware. This is our real home, and we cannot outsource the housekeeping. We have to do it ourselves. You feel stressed and are painfully conscious of where you could have been, and should have been, as well as where others are and you are not. This is because your mental chatter is running your life. It is designing the house you live in.
There is a simple solution for this. Start observing your mental chatter and note how it takes you to places and then triggers the emotions you feel. When you observe your mental chatter, you quickly see that it takes you to places you would rather not visit.
It is actually quite easy to turn it around, much as you would a horse you are riding. When envy raises its green head, direct your thoughts to how much you have to be grateful for. From that place of gratitude, try to do better.
Peace!
