Few weeks back we all decided to go on a family trip for the weekend. We hired a driver as it was going to be a long drive and none of us was willing to drive for that long. The driver came early morning around 6 AM so that we could make an early start. We all packed, and put our luggage out. My mother was the last person to come out and as soon as she was out she saw that the driver was smoking. My mother cares for everyone and considers it her duty to correct lives of everyone around her. So, being a good person, she told the driver, “Son, you are too young. Listen to my advice and stop smoking as it can kill you”. The driver probably got scared fearing that he might not get his pay and threw the cigarette away.

Seeing this I realized that there are many such occasions in all of our lives when we meet people who will give timeless advices which they have applied in their lives and are according to them the only way to live life. No matter how grown or successful you become, you will keep encountering such people in the form of your parents, friends, relatives, office colleagues and even strangers.

Parents – Whether to Listen to them or not?

One of the most common categories of people who would give you advice is your parents. My mother always wants things to happen her way and God forbid if you try to do anything different. I agree all she wants is to protect her kids and not let them make the mistakes she did. But in reality she wouldn’t give suggestions but absolute decisions and if you don’t follow, she would not talk to you for weeks, behave as if she is the victim in the house and will keep a sad face. This will go on till you go to her and admit that she was right and that you will do as she says.

I agree she has lived her life for so long and learned her lessons as life moved on. But that was a complete different era, one cannot expect everyone to behave the same way and follow the same old principles in the changing times. There are no timeless lessons, life teaches you your own lessons. Everyone wants to make their own mistakes and learn from them, not to be spoon fed.

I always try to ensure that I do not give any advice unless I’m asked. If someone thinks that my opinion is going to help them, they would come and ask and if they don’t follow it then also I will not be offended. Now this has earned me the honour and respect and my opinions are valued as well. I prefer not to interfere and let people learn their own lessons. Most important, I always try to stay diplomatic, never tell people they are wrong, appreciate what they think and add-on to it.

Learn your own lessons!

Now that I have grown up, I like to do things on my own. I prefer to take my own decisions and let people around me also do the same. In fact when I look back in the childhood and see the advices my parents gave, some of them were so absurd that I ponder, “What the hell were they thinking?” Those lessons and advices sure would not work now.

That’s just one part, I have met many friends and relatives also who would want to impose their life lessons on me. But I have now realized one important lesson of my own, there are no timeless lessons, life moves on, situations changes, generation changes and everyone should learn their own lessons. Listen to people brag about how great they are and how they have come up in life coz of those principles, but make your own decisions and learn in life as you go ahead.

“These Pancakes just tastes horrible, has no taste at all”, commented my mother as soon as she put one bite in her mouth. I tasted it then, yes it was not that great, kind of OK for me. But the comment was hurtful. It was not that I deliberately made bad food. I put in the same amount of effort, same amount of time, just my sheer back luck this time. Plus I’m not in Master Chef Competition that I’m cooking to be judged, so yes I don’t handle criticism well when I sweat in the kitchen and my efforts are not appreciated. I know the comment was not a deliberate attempt to hurt me, but oh well when we all know that the taste is bad, then why say it out loud. 

We all do cooking, sometimes out of passion and sometimes out of force. Even if we are experienced in cooking and have been doing this for past many years, the end product is not always the same. Sometimes it’s burnt, sometime tasteless and sometimes just finger licking delicious. But the effort to make that food nevertheless most of the time remains the same. You take out time from work, cook something for your loved ones, only to see them making faces and passing comments that the food is bad. It’s not a good moment for anyone who has spent the past 1 hour sweating in the heat trying to come up with something nice.

I guess it is an inherent nature of most of us to comment openly. But some people like me are lucky enough to have that someone special who will always appreciate your effort and not say anything to hurt you. They know that you also know that food is not good, so why say it out loud to make you feel bad. That’s true love, when you support your partner no matter what, see the hard work he/she has put in and not judge based on the outcome.

Cooking is just one scenario, but this theory applies to all of us in our day to day activities, when we shout, fight or abuse our loved ones on small activities that ended up as failures. In fact we ourselves are the failures coz we fail to see the efforts they have put in, and just see results. Always remember to not hurt someone just because they are not good cooks, open your eyes and see that they are making an attempt to keep your plate full.

If there is one word that connects all of us together is “Worry”. We all worry, some a lot, some not so much, but during my life span so far I have met few people who clearly top the list. They would always visualize the worst case scenario and even have a strong belief that it could happen. A hurricane of “what-ifs” would spin in their heads as they plan their routine. What if I can’t pay the loan in 1 year? What if I become critically ill? What if my daughter does not get married? What if I become broke?

The stream of these questions is non-stop. If you think about it, all these what-ifs revolve around negativity. Our fears and worries keep us thinking about the time if any of those become a reality. Is it because we suffer from lack of self-confidence and we do not trust our skills and abilities?

Why Not Make Space for Positive What-Ifs?

Let’s try an experiment and brush aside the negative what-ifs to make way for some positive ones. What if I win a lottery worth million dollars? What if I become a successful surgeon? What if I get promoted as a manager? What if my kids grow independent and rich? What if I find true happiness? What if I eat healthy and stay healthy?

How do we feel now? Better, happy and positive? I often try this and smile at myself imagining all those good things. It all seems too good, we know it’s the right thing to do and yet we still keep thinking about those negative “what-ifs”.

Why Is It So Hard To Leave Negativity Behind?

It’s not a surprise that almost 9 out of 10 people suffer from what-if syndrome. First of all those who have this syndrome tend to be a control freak too. They want to know what’s going on, what will happen in future. They will always keep going to all those astrologers who claim to be able to predict future. The truth is none of us can. No matter how much you worry, future will be based on your actions and hard work alone. This uncertainty about future is something which makes most of us worry and have those negative what-ifs clobbering our minds non-stop.

One more trait of such people is lack in self confidence in themselves and trust on others. Do I have the skills to be successful? Am I the right one for him? Will I be able to make this report? Do I have the capabilities to payback my loan? This is all crap, we are all lot more capable of doing things that we think. We just lack behind in self-confidence.

There is one more important factor forcing us to think negative and that is fear of change. When you have lived in the same place, same way, same routine with same people for a very long time, you tend to develop a fear of change. You grow so comfortable with the way things are that a slightest change makes you worry. In order to make sure things stay the same, we even go to great lengths. If we find something that can threaten our routine, we go into protective mode and feel stressed. The stress wears us out and makes us worry a lot with negative “what-ifs” about the consequences of the change. It’s nice to be comfortable, isn’t it? But that’s not what life is all about, life is about changes and new things.

Any Remedies?

No, I don’t have any. Even I struggle with these negative questions everyday. I can be superfluous and say, “Don’t be scared, develop more confidence and step out of your comfort zone”. But it’s not easy and I know that. But maybe once a while when these what-ifs bother you, try to convert the negatives ones into positive ones. Instead of asking yourself “What if I become a broke?”, ask “What if I become rich?”. “What if I don’t get a visa?” becomes “What if I get a visa?” “What if I don’t finish the project on time? turns into “What if the project is completed on time?”

Just few words here and there and you can change the meaning of your life and bring some positivity into things you do.

“You are doing it again”, I told my friend last night while we were dining out with a bunch of college friends.

“Doing what?” she asked.

“Crib about past”, I told her. “You just keep iterating about your suffering and hurt in front of everyone whenever you meet him because you just cannot grow past it.”

She was dating a guy from our group and he broke her heart by having an affair. She never could come out of it and whenever we met, she would mention about that incident and how much she suffered. Initially it was ok, we empathized with her, but after sometime when it became a routine story, we just couldn’t take it anymore. I was her friend and I cared about her, so last night when she started, I interrupted her and asked her to stop. She realized that I was right.

Holding grudges is very common. We stop talking to our neighbours, friends, family members over disputes which have left a dent in our hearts. Years and years go by, the memories of what caused the argument fades but still we cannot grow big enough to forgive and let go of the grudge. Whenever we will get an opportunity, we will cry and crib about the past.

It’s hard to leave the past behind. Worst, thinking about it in present makes the bad memory stronger and stronger making it even impossible to forget and move on. Often we hold on to the grudges so tightly that it shapes the way we look at our present.

I met a couple who had been together for the past 15 years. They loved each other a lot but they also had their share of bumps. As time passed, the bumps became huge roadblocks and every argument they had ended up with a mention of those bad incidents. The grudges were so huge that smallest of the issues reminded them of the past and eventually widened the gap between their relationship. A constant reminder of the sufferings never let them move beyond the past.

Nearly each one of us has been hurt by the actions or words of someone. Perhaps your mother criticized your work, your colleague undermined you in front of the boss or your partner had an affair. The wounds such as these can leave you with deep rooted feelings of anger, bitterness and sometimes even vengeance.

I have met many people in my life who were terribly abused either in their childhood or young adulthood. Some of these people remained stuck in their anger and hurt. The anger was not just a mere grudge, but in some cases their lives revolved completely around how they were wronged and mistreated by others. They never could really come above it.

What happens to us in past is not something which we can change but we can overcome and get past the hurt. I personally feel that this is where forgiveness comes into picture. But when I asked my friend why she cannot just forget it, she simply rolled her eyes in dismay, “If I forget and forgive, it would mean that I’m accepting what happened to me was right and I would be considered as weak”. I assured her, “Forgiveness is not an act of cowards; in fact it takes a lot of courage to get past the anger and resentment”.

Forgiveness doesn’t come easy, you need to make a constant effort to overcome the negative feelings. The start could be by trying to see other person’s perspective or speaking to them openly about it. Sometimes a frank discussion or a sincere apology is what one needs for closure.

I once had a bad experience with one of my friends. We did not speak with each other for almost 10 years after that. One day out of blue, he sent me a friend request on Facebook. I immediately replied back, “Do you think this is some kind of a joke? If you tell me that how sorry you are for being a jerk and for hurting your feelings, then probably we can be friends again”. He replied back with a true heartfelt apology and it became easy to forgive him. We are now close friends and we often joke about the incident of past.

When someone you care about hurts you, you can hold on to anger, resentment and thoughts of revenge — or embrace forgiveness and move forward. The choice is yours!

We are all on Facebook and we are even addicted to it. But it was about time I put down this article out of sheer frustration watching my close friends and relatives turn into full-fledged religion spammers on Internet. It would have been ok if they were selling some products, but this time they are selling religion which in my opinion is simply Bull Shit. I’m talking about people on my friend list wasting my time posting photographs of God and verses from various holy books and trying to convince me to “Like” their status or comment coz if I didn’t share or like, I would be hit by God’s wrath.

And while I’m writing about Facebook here, this is true for all other social networking sites as well such as Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc.

I thought only common man was foolish enough to popularize their belief on God like this, but looks like the so-called religious leaders are also getting insecure these days. May ministries, priests, religious NGO’s and worship houses are regularly maintaining their Facebook pages and there are individuals like us who have established presence on religion-oriented sites. One such mockery of all this is that prayers and verses are being tweeted on Twitter in 140-character format. Imagine shortening the actual verses to fit into Tweet box, it’s ridiculous.

Some die-hard religious people could argue over this and say that these social media sites bring together like minded people and help in attracting new followers of religion. If this was the way to spread religion, then God would have made Facebook himself and religion wars would never have happened. The two sides could simply create their Facebook pages and one which had most fans would be the winner and everyone would follow him.

I’m not here to hurt anyone’s religious sentiments. All of my friends who like posting holy verses and images, I get it, you are all about God, but why do you have to bombard us with those posts on daily basis. How about simply practicing the religious values on your own and leave social media sites alone? GOD is not on Facebook, he is not reading your posts and he doesn’t know how much you are posting about him. Today I saw a post on my timeline, “I need 9,999,999 fans of “QURAN PAK” to prove our love to QURAN’s photo.” Is this what religion has come down to now? Share and Like and your love for God will be proved.

Please people open your eyes and just practice the religion by heart. No need for this social hype. God is super intelligent, he will not bless me coz I liked his photo nor will he ostracize me coz I didn’t share it with others. God is in our hearts, just keep them clean and you will find him.

One very interesting photo I came across on, if God was on Facebook. Check it out below.

Today when I opened the newspaper, I was shocked. A 62 year old woman was raped. I always assumed that men lusted for young girls to satisfy their sexual desires and raped them in the process. But when I read about this poor old woman, I was left to thinking that why did men feel it right to rape a female?

Is rape purely defined by Lust?

If it was only about sex then a man can have sex with his wife, with hookers, or with his girlfriends. You don’t need to force yourself on a stranger for this. So why is the number of rape victims rising? This question made me think that it sure couldn’t be a crime of lust, but about violence and power. It is relates to the increasing violence in today’s world rather than just sex. I attribute this to the criminal population who is becoming bolder and more adventurous.

What impels a guy to rape?

Basic anger, ego and hostility towards women are a prime reason for this act, especially if there is a group of people.  Hence, you see an increase in number of gang rapes lately.

Most of the rapists are not typical criminals. They are just looking to take revenge or prove their male power. As they go ahead with the act they gather courage which is why women should fight and resist strongly. But usually women are terrorized at the start and simply accept the fact that they are being victimized. This encourages the assaulter more and he gathers more and more courage to finish his crime. That is why you would see that not all rape victims are murdered. As soon as his purpose is over he will simply walk away leaving the victim lying there. The laws are also so weak that either the assaulter is left on a bail or never even caught to be proven guilty.  This loophole in the legal system is also one of the reasons this crime is being committed so easily as they have no fear whatsoever. The worst part is that the guys don’t even feel guilty also which is the most saddening part.

What can you do as a woman to avoid being a victim?

Just by saying that there is nothing I can do, men are just lusting criminals is not going to help. You need to learn to see the warning signs. Resist the unwelcome advances and do not put yourself into situations that can turn dangerous. Walking alone on the road in dark, opening doors for strangers when you are alone, taking lift from someone who seems polite, handing over phone number and addresses to someone you just met at the airport, adding unknown people to your friend list on social networking sites, these are just some of the wise acts that you need to undertake for your own good.

One needs to become strong not only through training in self-defence but also emotionally. A lot of victims are a consequence of being emotionally weak and leaning to a stranger in times of loneliness.

We cannot change the mindset of men and have them to respect a woman’s body. Thus, it is the necessity for more and more women to start occupying places in occupations which were purely considered for men such as police forces, military, pilots, etc. Women in today’s world need to stand up to men and prove that we are not weak, submissive creatures which men can pounce upon anytime to satisfy their sexual aggression. With power comes the respect and when women will become powerful, men will no longer treat them as low level objects of use and throw.

We call ourselves to be part of a democratic society, a liberal society where individuals are sovereign and no one is forced to sacrifice his or her values for others.

I will live my life my way. When I was young I had a strong belief that when I become an adult I will get to live my life the way I want.

But I was wrong. Family, bosses, friends, government, neighbors, society began to force themselves into my life and control it the way they wanted. As I kept growing, the freedom to live my way became lessor and lessor. Come to think about it, it was much better when I was a kid. As years passed by, situation just kept becoming worse as more and more people starting getting involved.

The more I wanted to break free, the more I was being caught. More laws, more regulations, more bans, more prohibitions, all the possible things that could take away my freedom were being enforced on me. I have been a strong believer of the theory “Live and Let Live” and since many years I have been a tried to explain it to the people around me. But it looks like many people have resorted to these external forces and given up the will to live in freedom, live their own life the way they want.

When I think of this, I’m reminded of few lines from the famous song by BioHazard

No one can stop me from living my life my way

my beliefs are all I’ve got and I’ll

take them to my grave

Don’t try and help me, just stay the fuck outta my way

I live for myself and I’ll die by what I say

Friends change, neighbors change, government changes, but the new ones also want to do the same thing, control you, force you to bind yourself by their rules and make you let go of your own freedom.

We got the freedom from Kings and Queens (except England) but we never will get the freedom in real sense unless we are allowed to live life the way we want. It does not mean no rules, no regulations, no discipline, but it means getting freedom of speech and freedom of rights. If today I want to go against the hypocrite religious authorities, I should be allowed to do so. I should be allowed to select any career I want for myself. I should be allowed to marry any person I select for myself. I should be allowed to work wherever I want to. Is it too hard for people to understand that they are not owners of anyone’s life? Whether I do right or wrong, it is my call and I’m willing to face the consequences, but please people backoff, I don’t need someone to direct the movie of my life.

So far I have not been able to succeed in this. But the fight to get my freedom is going on and hope so one day I will also say, I’m free and I’m living my life my way.

We as humans live to worry and not just simple worry, a lot of worry which in no time turn into an obsession. Think about it, when you go for a routine physical examination, you constantly keep worrying of what will happen. You anxiously keep waiting for the whole day till the reports comes only to see everything was all right. 

I remember the times when I used to sometimes work late nights in office, my Mom always kept worrying about me. She would stay awake till I didn’t come home and as soon as I open the door, first thing she would say, “I was so worried about you, I didn’t even sleep”. She worried so much that she started thinking that her not sleeping is going to keep me safe.  With an obsession of worry, we become controlling and start believing that because we worry, we are able to control the outcome.

There are times in everyone’s lives when we feel the burden on injustice. If you worry about money, the economy seems to take forever to recover. If you are worrying about love, everyone around you seems to have heart troubles and true love seems to cease. If you worry about health, suddenly the whole world seems to be sick and you start feeling frailer with each passing day.

Is there a good and bad worry?

There is no harm in worrying about something, it induces a healthy level of fear and we are able to evaluate problems and reach best solutions. A good constructive worry engages our imagination to identify issues, brainstorm solutions and take corrective actions to get positive results and let go of things which are out of control. In my opinion this type of worry is very important for our survival.

But if this worry becomes an obsessions, it constantly makes our brains go round and round, reaching to no conclusion and solving no issue. You just get addicted to it and waste your time thinking that you are trying to find a solution whereas all you are doing is going over and over the same matter without any outcome.

An obsession like this is not going to be helpful and yet almost all of us live in an illusion of obsessive worry. To me it feels like an excuse for not doing something practical. People say, “I’m really worried about it and I keep thinking of what to do”. In reality those people are not thinking about what to do, they are spinning round and round about the matter to just stay in fear and make their own life miserable.

Worrying obsessively is easy, it is what we all do most of the time as we do not have the courage to do what it takes to come out of the situation. Taking a chance, saying the truth, quitting the job, breaking up, it’s all scary, because it’s different. It is called as moving forward and trying to break free from unnecessary worry. It is easy to just sit back and say, “there is nothing we can do”. There is always something that can be done, something which might be risky, something which might be different and something which might be right.

When we worry so much we start getting an illusion of control over a situation. But we need to realize, worry is not going to change the situation in fact it is destructive enough to not let us think of what is needed.

What you should do is instead of just thinking about worries, just write them down together, keep adding to the list. Take out few minutes every day for doing this. In that time you would be able to worry and then use your rest of the day for doing something better. Once you make the list, make a point of doing things which you were not doing coz you were worrying too much about them. Life is always about living on the edge, we all need to come out of the shell of worries and start living for a change. How about we all start doing things and then looking back and thinking to yourself, “why the hell was I worried in the first place?”

Your destiny is shaped according to the combination of conditions pre-determined at birth and other factors that you are able to change through your own efforts. ~ From: “The Essence of Buddha”. 

People say that we are born with our own destiny and even before being born our fate is sealed.

Be it Fate or Destiny both define what we will end up getting in our life. But is Fate and Destiny same?

We read religious books, we pray to God and we believe that he writes in his books what happens to us and we accept it no matter what. Whatever happens, we always say “that’s how God intended it to happen and it is for our best”. Since our birth we are forced to acknowledge the fact that we are all driven by fate that God planned for us and there is nothing we can do about it. Our birth stars, planets, and God, together form a strong force driving our lives and we as mere puppets simply go in direction which the strings pull us to go.

To summary, if we believe in fate then we believe in something in which man’s free will is missing. Many people including myself believe in the signs of universe and feel that the universe is speaking to us in its own way. We feel that universe throws signals in our path guiding us to the right or the wrong direction. But in reality universe is our deep rooted soul, it simply echoes our inner turmoil. Just ask yourself how far you are able to go in the path of your wishes. When you can answer this question then only you will be able to move forward.

Believe in Yourself to Conquer Fate

It is very easy to blame the others or our environment for our unhappiness or mistakes. That in my opinion is just a cowardly attitude which has to go away if you wish to shape your own fate. Everything is our own responsibility.

Those of us who can observe ourselves and other with an enquiring mind, who can evaluate habits, strengths and weaknesses and who strive to continually learn from the mistakes and change are the people whose fate can change.

Remember what Einstein said, “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction”. That’s the law of Karma of life too. There is no fierce God sitting in the clouds keeping track of everything you do so that it can zap you when you don’t expect. Karmic reactions in our life come from our own deeds and our memories of past actions.

Our decisions, our actions and our goals are all based on our past. For e.g. If a person goes for an interview for a job and he gives some wrong answers, he is rejected. Next time when he goes again, he does not make the same mistake and gets a job. Does that mean that fate wanted him to get the second job? No, he made his own fate and destiny by learning from his mistakes and being more prepared for the second interview.

Can there be free will with Fate?

Suppose you are traveling on a road, you reach a cross road and you are confused about which path to select. You scratch your head for a bit and decide to go left. Now once you decide which road you take, your fate is decided, that road will take you where it goes but it was your free decision to take that fate.

For me fate or destiny is same and both define a decided outcome of the decisions you take with your free will. It is possible that the road you took earlier was wrong and you realize after going half way and then turn back to take the correct one. It is all about reaching our goal with our own decisions. Once the decision is taken, we can define our fate, but our free will alone can affect the outcomes of actions in our life.

The common belief that nothing can be done about our fate as it is decided by God is untrue. No matter how bad things look, there is always something we can do about it, it’s just how best you deal with the situation with patience and smile. There will come a time when the bad stretch will be over and there will be sweetness around. But always remember, no person, no situation has done this to you, it is you and your own self who chose to get on this bitter path of hardship.

Among all of us is a small quite place which gives us the peace and strength to make things better. If we can learn to reach this place, we will be able to make better decisions and cope up with any difficult situation with a smile.

Destiny is all about a personal mission, an ambition, a desire and fire to do something.

We all have to do what we have to do! We are born with responsibilities and we simply need to fulfill them no matter what, there is no running away. We crib, we hurt, we cry with what life brings for us, but we do those things anyways. A friend of mine doesn’t like his job and dreads going every morning, but he has to go in order to feed his family. My colleague was recently offered a lucrative job in a far off city but was thinking about whether success was worth leaving his old parents alone.

Sacrifices! We all need to make them at some crucial times in our lives. While some of us have to do them regularly, some not so often, nevertheless each and every sacrifice is not ordinary.

Sacrifice is not an easy thing to do. A true sacrifice is to give up something which means a lot to you. If giving up something is easy and not painful then it is not sacrifice, it’s more like getting rid of it. For e.g., you clean up your closet and take out 10 old clothes to give away and feel happy that you did sacrifice then I’m sorry to say it is not, it is simply clearing up the junk to make space for new clothes. Now if you took out a brand new dress which you have never worn and give it to charity that would be sacrifice.

If we look back in history, one of the greatest sacrifices is when Abraham on being asked by God took his own son Isaac as an offering to him. That is sacrifice in the purest form where his love for God was above anything else.

Why we do what we do?

To do or not to do a sacrifice comes from heart. The reason could be any, feeling of love, money, family or even God. Every sacrifice is measured by the end result, what we are looking to achieve by doing it. How big is our sacrifice is weighed down by our priorities and principles filtered through our perspective, the same factors that define the path of success. The depth and gravity of our deeds define how much we value things and people in our lives and what lengths we are willing to go to do what we need to do.

Our end goal needs to have a strong conviction, we cannot have deviating feelings or else we will be torn in different directions by our own emotions and we will let other people make our decision. If you are in doubt then always prefer to say a NO rather than making a needless sacrifice which your heart is not fully into.

Life is not always about being successful as per the standards defined by this materialistic world, life is about leading an eternally significant life where you do things that are not just for yourself but for people around you. Are you willing to pay the price for it?