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Sunday, December 21, 2008

10 simple ways to save yourself from messing up your life

1. Stop taking so much notice of how you feel.
How you feel is how you feel. It’ll pass soon. What you’re thinking is what you’re thinking. It’ll go too. Tell yourself that whatever you feel, you feel; whatever you think, you think. Since you can’t stop yourself thinking, or prevent emotions from arising in your mind, it makes no sense to be proud or ashamed of either. You didn’t cause them. Only your actions are directly under your control. They’re the only proper cause of pleasure or shame.

2. Let go of worrying. It often makes things worse.
The more you think about something bad, the more likely it is to happen. When you’re hair-trigger primed to notice the first sign of trouble, you’ll surely find something close enough to convince yourself it’s come.

3. Ease up on the internal life commentary.
If you want to be happy, stop telling yourself you’re miserable. People are always telling themselves how they feel, what they’re thinking, what others feel about them, what this or that event really means. Most of it’s imagination. The rest is equal parts lies and misunderstandings. You have only the most limited understanding of what others feel about you. Usually they’re no better informed on the subject; and they care about it far less than you do. You have no way of knowing what this or that event really means. Whatever you tell yourself will be make-believe.

4. Take no notice of your inner critic.
Judging yourself is pointless. Judging others is half-witted. Whatever you achieve, someone else will always do better. However bad you are, others are worse. Since you can tell neither what’s best nor what’s worst, how can you place yourself correctly between them? Judging others is foolish since you cannot know all the facts, cannot create a reliable or objective scale, have no means of knowing whether your criteria match anyone else’s, and cannot have more than a limited and extremely partial view of the other person. Who cares about your opinion anyway?

5. Give up on feeling guilty.
Guilt changes nothing. It may make you feel you’re accepting responsibility, but it can’t produce anything new in your life. If you feel guilty about something you’ve done, either do something to put it right or accept you screwed up and try not to do so again. Then let it go. If you’re feeling guilty about what someone else did, see a psychiatrist. That’s insane.

6. Stop being concerned what the rest of the world says about you.
Nasty people can’t make you mad. Nice people can’t make you happy. Events or people are simply events or people. They can’t make you anything. You have to do that for yourself. Whatever emotions arise in you as a result of external events, they’re powerless until you pick them up and decide to act on them. Besides, most people are far too busy thinking about themselves (and worry what you are are thinking and saying about them) to be concerned about you.

7. Stop keeping score.
Numbers are just numbers. They don’t have mystical powers. Because something is expressed as a number, a ratio or any other numerical pattern doesn’t mean it’s true. Plenty of lovingly calculated business indicators are irrelevant, gibberish, nonsensical, or just plain wrong. If you don’t understand it, or it’s telling you something bizarre, ignore it. There’s nothing scientific about relying on false data. Nor anything useful about charting your life by numbers that were silly in the first place.

8. Don’t be concerned that your life and career aren’t working out the way you planned.
The closer you stick to any plan, the quicker you’ll go wrong. The world changes constantly. However carefully you analyzed the situation when you made the plan, if it’s more than a few days old, things will already be different. After a month, they’ll be very different. After a year, virtually nothing will be the same as it was when you started. Planning is only useful as a discipline to force people to think carefully about what they know and what they don’t. Once you start, throw the plan away and keep your eyes on reality.

9. Don’t let others use you to avoid being responsible for their own decisions.
To hold yourself responsible for someone else’s success and happiness demeans them and proves you’ve lost the plot. It’s their life. They have to live it. You can’t do it for them; nor can you stop them from messing it up if they’re determined to do so. The job of a supervisor is to help and supervise. Only control-freaks and some others with a less serious mental disability fail to understand this.

10. Don’t worry about about your personality. You don’t really have one.
Personality, like ego, is a concept invented by your mind. It doesn’t exist in the real world. Personality is a word for the general impression that you give through your words and actions. If your personality isn’t likable today, don’t worry. You can always change it, so long as you allow yourself to do so. What fixes someone’s personality in one place is a determined effort on their part—usually through continually telling themselves they’re this or that kind of person and acting on what they say. If you don’t like the way you are, make yourself different. You’re the only person who’s standing in your way.

Got this as a forward sometime back. Wanted to share it with you
Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year in advance :)

15 comments:

Santosh said...

first comment!!! yippee... :)

agree on some, disagree on few...

wish you merry christmas & happy new year!!!

Ashika said...

Thats what I call a forward with an attitude! Very nice, especially the last (first? ok, the one about the personality) one, totally relate with it! Thanks for posting!

Anonymous said...

Reminds me of a favourite passage.. ;)

She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but herself. To all humankind besides herself she was only a passing thought. Even to friends she was no more than a frequently passing thought.

Anonymous said...

New to ur blog :)
Agreeing to most of the things u said, as i myself do sort of things that way..... by the way u write very well, full emotions..

Bindhu Unny said...

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
:-)

Usha said...

Very sane and sensible - I could use many of those right now.
Wish you a merry Christmas and a happy 2009.

Anonymous said...

Hmmm ... I am waiting for ur self help book - Dhanya's 100 tips to improve ur life situation :) When r u publishing it!

On a serious note, I disagree with some, say #9. I believe, taking responsibility of ones action is the best way to change the situation. Even if u r 100% sure that the other person is wrong, there is nothing u can do about it, other than seeing what we can do from our side. May be u were mentioning more about not allowing people to make u feel miserable. Yes .... its finally abt understanding that thin line between taking action and feeling miserable!

Dhanya said...

@ Santosh : he he thanks :) Hope you had a wonderful x-mas and wishing you a great year ahead :)

@ !! Oxymoron !! : Yeh and thanks for coming by gal :)

@ Sini : Philosophy! enthu patti? ;)

@ Devil Incarnate : Welcome here gal and thank you for the kind words :)

@ Bindhu Unny : Yeh wishing you the same.. Have a fantastic year ahead :)

@ Usha : Thank you Thank you :) And wishing you a wonderful 2009 :)

@ sandeep : he he I don't mind publishing it now itself if you don't mind compilation of all the forwards like this :P
And read #9 again. It's not about you being responsible for your decisions but about letting others use you for for their mishaps. Otherwise I would fully agree that we and we alone are responsible for all our actions..

Nitin said...

woooho...! Man ,I think you should start a religion! or thank god you did nt.

I disagree with just a word on the entire post., but that is on the title.

Maybe you should edit out the word 'simple' from your title .

Anyways .. isay i am zonked,buzzed,yanked..
My response is,as sini said a'structure of (amplified)sensations'.

Well,fantastic post. I ve been knocked out cold by it.

Dhanya said...

@ Nitin : ha ha yeh I will start one provided you be my follower :) pinne taan always knocked out alle.. athinu pakaram nalla boodam/velivu vannu nnu keettirunnengil njaan onnu njettiyeeneettoo.. ;)

Sadhana said...

7 Do's and 3 Dont's hmm.. I agree with few and disagree with few.. :-) All together a nice post make everyone think abt this.. :)

Nitin said...

LOL...Dhanyam sharam gachaaami ! Well i am still awaiting enlightenment , till then , bodham is boring :)

Vidya said...

Stumbled upon your blog.
Nice post.
I sure can use some of those pointers.

Dhanya said...

@ Sadhana : he he anyway nothing devised by me..Got it as a forward.. Purpose of posting it was to make everyone think :)

@ nonme : try sitting under the 'bodi vriksham'.. might help in the enlightenment front :P

@ Vidya : Thank you Vidya.. Hope you will come here more often :)

mallugirl said...

came here blog hopping and just paused to take a fresh breath of air..nice work.