Take charge of your life

Managing your mind is the way to master the world. Establish control using this spiritual formula, says Neerja Birla




Everyone constantly faces challenges — at home with our spouse, children or other family members; at work with our peers and bosses. Sometimes life itself seems a challenge because it throws up so many relationship-based and situational challenges.
But the biggest challenge of them all is one’s mind. Often, it is possible to control everything else but one’s mind. Being master of the mind is no less than mastery of the world. Chapter 6 of the Bhagavad Gita says “our mind is our best friend and our worst enemy. If we know how to manage our mind, we can manage our time, our relationships, our life, everything.”
This is where spirituality comes in. Swami Chinmayanand said, “spirituality is not a way to look at certain things, it is a certain way to look at all things.” It is the path to a mentally decluttered value-based life. It is also about managing relationships in different sorts of challenging situations. Spirituality teaches us control of our thoughts, emotions and desires. It is actually the science of managing one’s mind.
The result: A sense of well being, tranquillity and inner peace. It also creates the feeling that one is on top of the situation and in control of it, rather than the other way round. Spirituality is not bound by the confines of religion because it’s not about chanting prayers, undertaking pilgrimages or charitable work. It’s about much more than that. Contrary to what we all believe, spirituality is not just for mystics or old people. It is meant for everyone.
Life is beautiful but only if you really want it to be that way. This needs you to make a conscious decision to achieve your full potential and give your life greater meaning. Many of us are not aware of our potential. One must never let life slide by. Inspiration, curiosity, love, knowledge and enthusiasm give life its true meaning. We are said to be “living” life only when we experience happiness, love and fearlessness, not stress, anxiety, boredom and a sense of aimlessness.
It is possible to illustrate this from personal experience. Nearly 10 years ago, our family started to perform satsang. I was increasingly drawn to it after my interest was kindled by self-help books. The knowledge we acquire from scripture helps us grow as individuals. The beauty of scripture is that it imparts universal knowledge, which is relevant to each of us and possible to apply to our daily lives.
The truth is we need sincerely to try to enjoy every step of this journey called life. One is always waiting for something to happen to be happy. Alternatively, we wait to complete the job at hand and then enjoy the fruits of it. But that means we are always postponing happiness. Happiness is in the journey, not the destination.
It is important to do things we value because only then can we give 100% of ourselves to it. Chapter Three of the Bhagavad Gita explains that this is about the concept of swadharma, or finding one’s true calling and following it sincerely. Once we value what we do, we start feeling good about ourselves. The self-esteem goes up. It also gives a sense of purpose and meaning to our lives.
Once we start to have some control over our actions and become more positive in our outlook, we may also find the law of attraction coming into play. Inexplicable events occur and we find things falling into place for us. They seem to be coincidence but that’s the law of attraction working for you. You attract what you think. We can align our inner world with the strong belief that whatever we wish for will happen. When you think positive, you get positive results. Let the power of positive affirmation take over. It was well said that what you visualize is that you realize.
That brings me to another interesting thought. The capacity to sacrifice is something we must all reckon with. It is sacrifice that enables one to appreciate the real worth of what one does because it takes a great deal of effort, introspection and prioritization to give away something. Sacrifice always brings joy and growth. An important aspect of sacrifice is that it requires you to go beyond your comfort zone, which creates a physical, emotional and intellectual blanket around us and prevents us thinking new thoughts.
We become prisoners of our self-created comfort zones. We don’t open up to new people and become averse to criticism. We cling to the emotional crutches we have created. At the intellectual level also, we become stubborn. “It’s either my way or no way” is the constantly nagging feeling.
On the other hand, when we sacrifice something, seek something else and transcend our comfort zone, we are no longer scared of change and grow as individuals.
In real terms, most of us are averse to change and resist it. We fail to realize that everything is changing anyway, whatever comes has to go and it is pointless to cling to it. That’s when one can start to come to terms with life’s ultimate truth, ie that change is the only constant.
The Bhagavad Gita says “when we live in this world, we experience the pairs of opposites — hot and cold, joy and sorrow, success and failure. They come and they go. And even while they are here, they are temporary.”
Most of the times, it is resistance to a changing situation, rather than the situation itself that creates conflict. Instead, one should face a situation as it is and refrain from colouring it with biases. Lapsing into “why me” or “why did it have to happen” makes for mental turmoil.
Through acceptance of a situation as it is, one automatically starts focusing on finding a solution rather than on the problem itself. And sure enough, one does come up with a sensible solution. As Harivansh Rai Bachchan said, “Apne man ka ho to achha. Na ho to aur bhi achha. (If we get what we want, it’s good. If we don’t get it, it’s even better).”
(Neerja Birla is vice chairperson, Education
Projects of the Aditya Birla Group)
Courtsey: Times Of India. 15 November 2009. page # 14

Hindi Medium Education System

In my past, i did my schooling ( class nursery to class 12 ) with a hindi medium education and currently I am working in a top Indian MNC with a good 5.5 years of professional work experience. Though at this point of time, after 12 years, i realize I did a mistake to choose a hindi medium school as I could have avoided a kind of rework in upgrading my communication skills if I would have undergone an english medium schooling.
The reasons for this repentance are quite obvious and many of the hindi medium ( OR Non english medium) educated people would agree with it.

Let me narrate a small incident which can support my views.

It is an incident when I was in class 11. Our teacher asked a question to the class in the middle of an ongoing english period . " Can any one tell me a one word substitute for a person who don't take alcohol" ?

One boy raised his hand and replied, Sir!, it's "Teetotaler".

In response, teacher did not say anything and requested the boy to sit down.

I had no clue about the answer but the sort of humble order to my classmate to be seated, and his confident reply, compelled me to guess he was right. and in an envy for my classmate's quick reply i muttered to myself, "what a damn intello, studious person. he must be getting up at 5 am to remember all these tough words."

To be precise the reply from my classmate was: Teeto - taler. ( really damn tough to remember all these english words. isn't it? )

Few days later, i myself searched the meaning of "Teeto-taler" in dictionary( not worth to mention i had english to hindi dictionary, as i never had confidence to use a eng-to eng dictionary). What did surprize me was that the word actually was not "Teeto-taler" rather it was "Tee-Totaler". and really not tough to remember. as it says if a person who doesn't drink alcohol is called as teetolater; tee- totaler. so simple to memorise and making sense as well. In my lucid way of understanding, if one dont drink alcohol, one must be fond of totally of Tea ( Prounced similar to tee)- a non alcoholic drink.
But for sure it made me to chuckle the way my classmate replied that day. How easily he misunderstood Tee-totaler to be Teeto-taler and how much tough he made the word to remember in general. Simultaneously, it really scared me the way we, hindi medium students, were putting our sincere efforts in a wrong way and that too without having any idea about this wrong way. May be because we were completely relying on the education system and were grasping with full concentration what ever was coming our way.

The point i want to highlight here is that most( if not all) of the hindi medium educated students in spite of doing a hard work in geting a command over english,suffer to develop a flavor for it. Their efforts are less effective to enhance their english communications. Though one can do mastery in the topic thru regular practice, reading english news paper/books etc, the LOSS (of missing the english grip) incurred in those basic years of schooling is hard to get back over years. I have witnessed many example where such people though had been profound knowledge of their subjects, could not get thru a interview because of their lack of confidance in english speaking.

One can't deny the need of effective communication in english in today's scenario. Now a days any high paid job require atleast an MBA (for e.g.). And MBA is another synonyms of commanding english. Without going in much detailed argument that why India cant develop its own language driven technology (though Japan or China had been successful in this regard), I feel no hesitation to say, our education system should be changed. And the most feasible solution can be to improve education system of Non english medium schools in a manner where they should create a plateform for students to enhance their english skills. 10-12 years of strong foundation is required to mastery english. No doubt, once again, english is more important than any other subject today.

And believe me, I am not prosecuting or canvassing for english. I am just putting my views over a basic flaw in hindi medium education system. With due regard, i still love my mother tongue, but do support to acknowledge the importance of english to get a better life style. Had I have any other alternative in my views, i would have discussed that before putting a direct support for a foreign language.

Regards,
saurabh