The Art of Silent Response

Smile and Silence are two powerful tools to live a joyful life. Smiling can help us solve many problems, and silence can help us avoid many problems.

A genuine smile represents a state of inner peace and positivity that helps us respond to even difficult situations in life with progressive alternatives to create stepping stones to a joyful life.   

It is not necessary to react to every situation in life, silence can be a good alternative. And there are circumstances in life when silence is not only a good alternative for a joyful life but a necessary, most effective, and potent response. Since many of us do not know the art of not responding and staying silent, let us reflect on situations when silence can be a wiser option. 

First, in a mental state when your power of thinking is clouded by anger, exhaustion, biasing, or any other reason, anything you say can add to the bitterness in life. In such a situation silence may be a better option to live a joyful life. 

Second, when your views are not relevant, persuasive, or impactful because you are not an expert or you are not well prepared; in such cases before speaking you have to think if your input will be valuable or not. You may find that silence is the best option. 

Third, when you are unsure what you want to say is true and you have no evidence to prove it, you may be challenged and that may stress you out. In such situations, staying silent may be a good option. 

Fourth, is what you want to say pleasant and helpful that will create value for someone? If not, you will only feed negativity. In such situations, silence may be a better option. 

Finally, when someone is requesting you to remain silent but your ego is coercing you to say something, in such situations for your inner peace and joyful life - silence may be a better option. 

Let us reflect on these five ideas and utilize our power of speech only when we can inspire creativity, value creation, and joy in the world. Otherwise, we should learn to make silence our happiness shield to preserve inner peace and bliss to live a joyful life. 

Defining Happiness

Let us reflect on a couple of questions to start the conversation on an introspective note today. My first question is - Are you happy today? Give it a thought. My second question is - Why? If you are feeling happy - Why, and if you are feeling unhappy - Why? Have you given it a thought? Most of us want to be happy, but many of us have never introspected the definition and causes of happiness in our life. Let us dedicate today's JoyMantra to start demystifying happiness. Because, until we have clarity on what happiness means to us and our happiness influencers, our happiness will be at the mercy of fate. 

Happiness is such a profound and subjective experience that it is not possible to contain it in a single definition. I am sharing not THE point of view but A point of view based on my experiences and research. I will be keen to hear your thoughts on what happiness means to you. My only request is to share your personal understanding as original thoughts, not a forwarded social media post or lines picked as it is from a book. 

In my experience, Happiness is an inner feeling of elation that liberates me from the bondage of time, space, situation, and desires. The fountain of inner joy pauses time and makes me feel complete, with nothing more to be desired. The experience is that of extended FLOW. Happiness for me is an inner compass that keeps me on the path of morality and goodness. Whenever I violate any of my core values the inner compass of happiness triggers a discomforting feeling immediately to inspire a course correction. 

Let us now also introspect on the causes of happiness in life. 

To begin with, the fulfillment of small desires itself gives a feeling of pleasure and we consider that as happiness until we realize that the feeling of elation caused by the fulfillment of a short-term desire is temporary. I call this as "pursuit of pleasure" phase of life. With experience, we realize that achieving personal, social, and professional goals gives us a bit of sustained feeling of elation and timelessness as we have better engagement with whatever we are doing. But after achieving one goal, we start pursuing another higher goal and this cycle limits our experience of elation. I call this as "pursuit of happiness" phase. 

In my experience, when we are engaged in a cause beyond our selfish interests, when the end goal, as well as means to achieve the end goal, are ethical, and the actions are not pleasure or materialistic gain driven but inspired by a higher purpose; we no longer work for joy, we work in joy. We move from the 'pursuit of happiness' to 'happiness in pursuit'. We are enjoying whatever we are doing with the intent of doing our best. This is when we are able to utilize our full creative potential. We are happy and we are at our best. The cycle of peaks and valleys may appear in our lives, but with a happy mindset, we have a better chance of bouncing back much faster. We realize that the way to happiness is - happiness on the way. 

Let us do what we love, and love what we do. 

These are my thoughts. Please do share your understanding of What Happiness Is... 

The Art of Winning Hearts

There is a popular saying, "Some people brighten the room when they enter, and some by exiting the room." I am sure after listening to me, some names have popped up in your mind and you started visualizing some faces mapping to both categories. 

But today I invite you to reflect on when people are thinking about you, which list are they assigning you to? Are you perceived as the source of positive energy and vibrancy or the energy drain? 

I think it all depends on if we are able to touch human hearts and create an experience of enhanced positive energy during our interaction with people. I feel most of us have an invisible message written on our hearts in bold letters - "Delight Me" or "Make Me Feel Special". And hidden in this invisible thought is the secret of winning human hearts as well as enhancing the joy quotient of a room with your presence. 

Let us analyze one sutra that is often stated about improving the quality of interaction with others - "Treat others how you would like to be treated". I think there is a need to upgrade this sutra to enhance its effect in the modern world - "Treat others not how you would like to get treated but how they would like to get treated". I am not promoting flattery, I am suggesting the inculcation of sincere appreciation as a virtue while interacting with others. This will happen more spontaneously if we become less judgemental and more curious to know about others. 

If I have made you curious to nurture "The Art of Winning Hearts" then ask yourself one simple question, "How can I make anyone interacting with me or in my presence feel like a million bucks?"

Let me know what do you think? 

 

Engaging with Thoughts

Buddha said, "All that we are is a result of all that we have thought." Our thoughts might not singularly decide our destiny, but they definitely influence our future. That is why we always aspire to nurture productive and positive thoughts in our minds. But mostly this is not the case. Without our willingness, unwanted thoughts enter our minds and echo there to strengthen negative mindsets and weaken the joyfulness of our lives. 

Let us reflect on how to regulate and manage unwanted thoughts. 

What do you do when you are sitting at home, doing some important work and someone knocks at the door? You have a choice of not opening the door but that also can mean missing a potentially good opportunity. The person can also be persistent and may keep knocking at the door, and finally, you will open the door. 

If the visitor is unknown and unimportant to you, you may finish your interaction at the door only and close the door to move on with your important work. Now, if the visitor is a person of importance, you will invite him inside to find out the purpose of the visit. If the purpose is of interest and benefit to you, you may engage with the visitor for a while; but if it is a social visit without any important purpose, you will not engage in deep conversation to keep the engagement short. 

We don't control who knocks at our door, but we have the choice of opening or not opening the door, inviting the visitor into our home or saying bye at the door, and engaging with them in a long conversation or not. 

Similarly, the origin and nature of thought are not fully in our control. But if we are aware of thoughts appearing in our mind and we are consciously evaluating their nature, we have the opportunity to manage them the way we manage visitors knocking at our door.  When a thought crosses your mind, it is important to acknowledge it and evaluate its nature. Then it is up to your wisdom to decide if the thought knocking at your mind's door needs to be entertained further and reflected upon or if you should be saying goodbye to it at the door itself. Some thoughts are also like false friends. They appear important but after evaluating you figure out that they will cause harm in the long run. We should disengage immediately from such thoughts and friends. 

We human beings have been blessed with the power of self-consciousness, introspection, and free choice. We should use this power to allow only positive, progressive, and inspiring thoughts into our mental engagement arena. 

In the coming weeks, when you become aware of a thought knocking at your mind's door, allow only the beneficial ones to enter into your heart. 

Wishing you a joyful life ! 

Handling Difficulties in Life

You might have noticed many times that people including yourself complain: "I didn't have a good day". Often the root cause of this feeling and our other complaints from life is not getting the desired experiences in the course of the day. When our desires are not fulfilled, the unwanted experiences of unfavorable circumstances make us feel as if our lives are joyless and we are unlucky. 

I believe that a happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes. I read a thought recently that connected with me well, "We don't get what we desire, we get what we deserve." And to deserve desired results, we have to make an important change in our way of thinking. Instead of living the effects of our unwanted life experiences, we will have to become the cause of the desired experiences. 

Unfortunately, we are often only interested in favorable results and not concerned about required efforts. And the irony is that we only have effort in our control, not the desired result. I invite you to reflect on this thought. Let us not just live with the desire for a happy life, but also put our best effort to become the cause of joyful experiences in life. 

A happy person is one who has the least number of complaints in life. 

Let us light a lamp of positive efforts to drive away the darkness of unwanted experiences from our life. 

Building Confidence - Monday Motivation by arunb

There are two important foundational pillars of achieving success in any field of life- Competence and Confidence. These two complement each other and both are required to achieve anything of significance. In our educational and sports institutions, a lot of focus is given to building competence but the onus of knowing and following the process to build confidence is left to individuals. Everyone says and knows that confidence is important, but how to gain, enhance and sustain it is not clearly communicated. 

Confidence means having the awareness that we know something so well and that we have practiced enough to be able to provide an appropriate response under any circumstance without conscious effort. 

The question is what process do we need to follow to build such confidence in any of our abilities?  

Confidence is not something you can gain once and be done with it. It is a continuous process of creative and positive thinking, which largely depends on two factors: 

The first factor is to learn from our successes and register that in our memory, and the second factor is to restructure experiences of failures in such a way that we can extract learning from them without getting entrapped into the vicious cycle of regrets. 

Confidence is a fragile thing. Therefore, it is important to give constant attention to enhancing it and put consistent efforts to prevent any erosion. Just experiencing success does not enhance confidence. We have to extract relevant learning and consciously commit that to our memory to enhance our confidence. Similarly, failure does not necessarily reduces confidence. We have to observe failures with a detachment to learn from them without getting sucked into the quagmire of negative thoughts. 

In summary, the growth of confidence does not depend on our experiences of life but on how we interpret them and what we choose to retain in our memory. Our confidence then is the net result of the positive and negative deposits we make in our psychological bank. 

The Science of Motivation - MM Feb 13

 

Many times in our personal, social, and professional life we have to play a role to motivate others. The research suggests that with the most popularly used carrot and stick model we may be able to instill fear or exploit greed to force people to act in the short run, but we can not kindle a flame of inspiration in their hearts to perform at their best in the long run.

I believe after survival is taken care of, ultimately the root cause of motivation is the same for all human beings: A desire and hope to live a purposeful life; a life towards experiences of happiness and away from sufferings of sorrows.    

There is no need to plant the seeds of inspiration from outside, we all have seeds for being our best. When those seeds of great capabilities are nourished by the hope of a meaningful life, fueled by the sap of passion, they sprout in the form of positive progressive ideas. These purpose-driven ideas are inspired by the laws of nature to follow the rays of hope for progress and joyful life. 

Therefore, in summary, motivation is not an external force but an inner drive that can be activated by the hope of a meaningful life in the presence of a favorable environment. We do our best when we want to do something willingly, and not when we are forced to do something against our will. 

An inspiring vision and a desire to achieve something meaningful in life nurture commitment, accountability, and ownership - the virtues that form the foundation of peak performance in individuals and in teams. But the human mind seeks a few empowerments to translate inspirations into outcomes. 

- We want to have a say in the decision-making process and have the freedom to choose our actions

- We all want to have the right to be treated with respect, trust, and fair treatment   

- We want our efforts to be appreciated and good work to be recognized.

When we experience such a favorable environment in our personal, social, or professional life; the seeds of unlimited potential that are inside all of us transform and manifest as the fruit of greatness to make this world a better place. 

The question is -  Is the environment in your personal, social, and professional life favorable to inspire peak performance? If not, what are you going to do about it? 

More importantly, if you are in a position of power and influence, are you mindful of what you say and what you do to nurture a favorable environment that inspires people to be their best to perform their best. Because when people are propelled by an inner drive, everything they do becomes the expression of joy. 

When we are happy, we are at our best, and everyone wins.