Kindle Life: Work-Life Management – Episode:6 (Part-1)

One of the grievances all urban population has is the insufficient time available to spend with their family. The modern men and women are torn between the two priorities “Work” and “Family” and often feel they are either doing injustice to one of them. Work-life balance has become one of the HR agenda and often the reason for divorces and poor relationships in families these days. We reach home late evening almost tired enough to skip dinner and ready to hit the bed. The loved ones are waiting to share their day’s experiences and we are almost a volcano waiting to erupt! Obviously their story is not going to be as interesting as Alexander’s next strategic moves to win a war. We are more comfortable to stare at the stupid programme in the TV rather than play with our two year old child or grandchild. It ends up in poor quality and quantity of time spent with the family and waiting to start yet another day.

In this episode I wish to share few perspectives that will enable you to manage better work-life balance and be effective in both the departments.

Civilization – A Problem or an Opportunity?

This planet was an un-adulterated place till human race came into existence! If you visit Himalayas or Alaska you will appreciate how this planet will look like if human beings are not present here. Civilization distinguished human beings from rest of the species in this planet. Probably the creator had an agenda in putting this gadget called “Human being” in order to differentiate with His earlier versions. The Vedic hymns say that God created all species out of Him and gave higher intelligence to human beings to help them to figure out the source of their being which is God himself! That is why the other name for Nirvana is “self-realization” – realizing oneself of the Godhood; the ultimate purpose of human existence. But the so called civilization created an ever ending pursuit for material acquisition and the resulting misery. Today the modern man believes that material acquisition will make him happy and endlessly chases them!

The transition from Stone Age, agricultural age, metal age, industrial age to internet age has dramatically changed the lifestyle of human beings posing different challenges. One of those challenges is work-life balance. In the Stone Age the only issue haunting human beings were food as hunting for survival kept them busy. There were hardly any difference in life style between animals and human beings. Probably this must have been the happiest part of human evolution as they were living closest to the Mother Nature and had no great ambition for material prosperity! There were no religions, language, cast and creed which have divided people later into groups and created animosity. There is no “Russian dog and American dog”! Dog is a dog is dog even today!

Why we chase Wealth? - Research Findings!

Reference: From the book “CEO DAD” by Tom Stern - Davies-Black Publishing page 25-30

One of the startling conclusions of a scientific Swedish study carried out was the discovery that human beings devote main thinking to achievement and material gains. The anatomy of the human brain studied by this team of scientist reveals that the brain is divided into two major segments; one chasing power, status & success and other wishes to focus on the basic human instinct for seeking companionship and nurturing loved ones. The study shows that over the civilization, the tiny area of the brain reserved for home and family has been squeezed out of the skull completely, now resting in nasal passages. The study also shows that those people who are too ambitious often suffer a bout of colds and flu due to high level of stress. Stern jokingly says that “the area of the brain in charge of love and nurturing would be sneezed out of our evolution in less than quarter of a century”

Another groundbreaking study by the National society in the US reinforced the Swedish research. Its finding was the human brain is divided into 4 lobes of equal size having different paradigms. Bottom one fourth of the lobe called “Truth Lobe” which constantly murmurs that “we are nothing compared to the wonders of nature and can never equal its miracles” and drives the feeling of perennial inadequacy.

The upper half of this lobe is called “Denial Lobe” which challenges the truth lobe saying “what do you mean that we are nothing? What about Shakespeare, Helen of Troy etc? I will try to get there by striving for status!

The third quarter of the lobe is called “Deepest need lobe” which raises the alarm saying “Why am I wasting my life time with so called achievement? It does not get any better than experiencing the simple beautiful pleasures of human warmth and affection – A HAAPY HOME!”

While the third lobe was diverting you from the madness of status & power through material acquisition, the fourth lobe rightly called “Stupid Lobe” takes you back where you started the mad game by saying “Hang on a minute. We need more stuff!” It is hard to believe this fourth section can be so stupid yet so powerful.

The author Stern asks the question “If your brain insists on repeating such behaviour, how will you ever know what your real needs are? The thing you really don’t need always seem so important.

Try this simple morning affirmation as you awaken:

 “Getting by with less will bring me more”.

You may find the meaning of what Stern says very hard at this stage. Hang on few minutes and read further and it will dawn on you before you finish this article. If the bell rings, it will transform your life; if not it does not matter as you will carry on missing the beauty of Life!

Before I share few tips for improving work-life balance, we need to get the perspective of what is “Work” and “Life”; if not we may be shooting at dark on this topic.

What is Work? - A new Insight

Let us examine the difference between “Work” and “Play”. In essence both are activities with one difference between them. Play is wilfully chosen and work is imposed as inevitable! On a week end when you play tennis in the hot sun for hours and feel refreshed. On the other hand when you reach office even before starting your work you are tired! This leads to the premise that, work per say does not make us tired! The mind set with which work is undertaken makes us tired.

Swami Chimayananda in one of his books sights the life style of an innocent farmer in a village who goes to his paddy field at 5 am and starts ploughing the land in the hot sun till late evening. After coming back home he takes a nice bath in the cold water, sits in the cot and starts singing a folk song! He has no concept of tiredness and if at all anyone is justified to be tired, it must be this poor farmer has the rights to say that he is tired! In the urban scenario, an employee reaches office with all comforts and even before he starts his work he is tired. Chimayananda raises the question “Is the activity makes us tired or the attitude with which we do makes us tired?”

An anecdote from my own experience:

I pursued my education while employed till I finished my MS (Research) at IIT when I was 38 years old! I never complained that I could not have family life as this pursuit was chosen by me (and my wife) and not imposed by anyone! The adult education which was playful for me although it is very stressful to ride three horses viz Job, family and education. I finished with “S” grade (Supreme) in Finite Element Analysis. The same education imposed for a youngster is a pain for him.

From the above two anecdotes you may appreciate it is not the activity makes you tired; but the mentality with which you undertake makes you tired. These days an employee has no emotional bondage with his/her work and constantly in a search of a better package. When the work is done without a passion it becomes merely a motion without life in it.  

What is Life for a modern man?

This is an ocean of a question. For someone Life means “Indulgence” – eating, drinking and making love. For someone else it includes all that happiness comes out of spending with their loved ones. For spiritual aspirants it may be progressing in his/her spiritual journey to reach Nirvana some day. We see a strange difference in goal setting between men and women. Let us examine through the great thinker Rajneesh:

Men in general are focused on lofty goals – Alexander wanted to win over all kingdoms across the World and prove as a great warrior. Women are down to earth – baring few exceptions they are satisfied with small achievements. When you find men meet together their topics are generally capturing a great kingdom; while women meet they discuss what they cooked the previous day and the like! Men are very time conscious where as women wear wrist watches more as an ornament. If you have accompanied with your wife to a sari shop you will appreciate what I am taking about!  

 All of us got married without asking a question “why do we need to get married?” as we have done many other things in life like going to a university. We did it as everyone else has done it. As Swami Parthasarathy says we never used our intellect in many such decisions in life and marriage is one among them! We produced children as a natural follow on after marriage as everyone else has done it! We ended up in a unit called family and we don’t know what to do with it in the middle of our lofty pursuit to gain power and money through our career!

All these paraphernalia are created by our forefathers to create a sense of bondage to fulfil the deep human need of being together without which we will become insane within 6 weeks. Psychology says that we can remain sane only for 8 weeks without the presence of any human beings around us! If you have seen the movie “Cast Away” you will appreciate what I am talking about.

In essence life is not only achievement, it is also seemingly meaningless activities of playing with your children, gossiping with your wife while assisting her in the kitchen by cutting vegetables for her or occasionally cooking food for everyone and so on! For goal oriented men of modern days, it will look like Greek and Latin for him and may also seem it is waste of time. For those to whom it appears spending time with family is waste of time, please examine why you got married and do the needful!!

We will explore work-life balancing tips in Part-2

God bless you.

Love

NC

Kindle Life – Food Management – Episode:5

Why Food Management?

Ever since we have born, the body is with us and hence we find extremely difficult to identify this entity, taking it for granted and often neglect it. There is a famous saying “The Fish finds the water the last”. The fish is born in water, lives in water and dies in water. This means that only when the fish is out of water, it realizes how important water for its existence. Extending this wisdom, I wish to quote “Human beings find health last when it is Lost!”

We are healthy by default which means that in a life span of 70 years, we are healthy almost 99.99% of the time leaving certain exceptions. The data shows that the nature’s plan is to keep us healthy unless we chose to be un-healthy. My presumption is reinforced by looking at all the species except human being who are healthy all the time. If that is the nature’s plan then why we see so many diseases in the modern world? All those killer diseases like stroke, heart attack, diabetics etc not seen a century ago. As the so called civilization progresses, we see more and more health issues while the animal kingdom is free from all those we experience as they are not yet “Civilized”.

Once Rajneesh said “We recognize our head only when we get headache” and all other circumstances we don’t even recognize that we have something called “Head”. Similarly we recognize our body only when it starts giving trouble. It is not prudent to recognize something when it is lost! There is a proverb in Tamil which says “You need the wall to draw a picture” which is said in the context of the human body which is needed to achieve anything in life, whether material or spiritual.

I wish to refer an incidence reported in the life of Lord Buddha:

“Lord Buddha left his princely abode at the age of twenty nine in search of an answer for his quest; why human beings suffer? He went in search of several masters one after the other hoping someone will show him the way. At last someone suggested to him to go without food for several days as the body denied of food will transcend the mind and hence he can get enlightened. After staying away from food for nearly 80 days Lord Buddha became nearly a skeleton and could not even walk across a shallow river. The thought came to his mind that when he cannot even cross this shallow river, how he is going to cross the Samsara Samudra (Ocean of life). That is the moment Lord recognized that this body is needed to support a healthy mind to attain spiritual abode.

There is a famous saying that “We destroy our health to amaze wealth and spend them all over again to recover the health”; whether material or spiritual pursuit we need the temple-the body where the divine soul resides.

     

The Body – the miracle!

The nature created this whole universe as a “spontaneous organization” which means that it is a self-sustaining mechanism like a rain forest. No one manages a rain forest since it manages itself; the food chain ensures that all animals are under control including the Lion which is the highest rung of the food chain. The unbounded universe with millions of galaxies, creation and destruction of stars are all happening without anyone orchestrating it. In this self-sustaining wonderful universe, human body is also a wonder with millions of sub-systems working in a complex manner without we are not even knowing about it.

For example, are we breathing? No – It is happening! Are we digesting? No – It is happening! Are we beating our heart? No- It is happening! If you go deep into all functions of the body, all are “happening” and none is “doing”. If you see deep into all “happenings”, it is all miracles as we don’t know how? It appears that if these systems are left to the nature they will function in harmony as per the creator’s plan. If that is true why do we see so many diseases in the mankind these days?

What is Disease? – A new Insight:

If you examine the word “disease”, it has two parts “Dis & ease”; which means not in ease with something - It means “non-alignment” with the nature. Disease is the outcome of non-alignment with the nature. The non-alignment could be in the basic instinct of the species – hunger, procreation, relaxation and self-preservation. I wish to cover few tips about this precious gadget called body under this topic of “Food management?”

TIPS:

Tips-1: Food for survival & not indulgence:  

In the ancient days people ate food for survival only but in the modern world, food is in the top of the list of indulgence. In the early Roman Empire, the aristocratic people used to eat full stomach and stimulate vomiting using peacock feather in their throat and get back once again to fill their stomach! This is the pinnacle of human greed for indulgence and food is used to abuse human body. Let us examine how this “dis - ease” leads to disease. In the modern world we don’t eat for survival, but for fulfilling our mind and not body. Obesity is one of the modern killers, the result of over eating. Often, we overeat due to stress and there is no dearth of stress in life and most of them are created by ourselves. It is important to recognize that abusing our body in the name of over eating is foolishness. Let not food become the means for filling our empty feeling of the mind.

Tips-2: Eat only conducive Foods:  

The ancient Pathanchali sastra says that the food we eat either enhances or suppresses our pranik energy – the life energy in our constitution. If you develop an ability to listen to your stomach, it will tell you the moment you eat a samosa or potato wada which are killers of our pranik energy. The stomach will tell you “Oh Gosh why have you sent this down?” On the other hand, if you eat a fruit or salad and listen to your stomach, it will tell you its pleasant experience! The simple measure – what is tasty to your tongue is bad for your pranik energy and vice versa.  

Tips-3: Vegetarian vs non-vegetarian Food:

I am not covering this topic on religious angle but only on scientific angle. The nature created food for different species which are generally not interchangeable; tiger cannot eat grass and what a crow can eat will be poison for other species. In essence, the nature had created conducive food for all living species in a very well balanced way. One simple fact is all creations except human beings eat the food assigned for them irrespective of taste; the snake eats the rodents, the cow eats the grass and so on. The famous adage “One’s food is another’s poison”  fits well with the plan of the nature.

The creations are classified as carnivores and herbivores based on their food either meat or vegetables and very few are Omnivores which eat both. The carnivores which eat meat are found to have canine teeth, intestine less than 16 feet and stomach acids which are capable of melting raw meat. The herbivores which are grass eaters found to have long intestines more than 40 feet and stomach acids which are not capable of melting meat. Human beings belong to herbivores by design and we have found many ways to make the tasteless meat as palatable. When we eat meat it rots in the longer intestine causing health issues.

“I was eating non-vegetarian food for many years from childhood till late thirties and switched over to vegetarian food. I am able to see the difference in my texture of thoughts and actions with both types of food habits. In addition to quality of thoughts, I am able to see a vast difference in my health while I switched over to vegetarian food. Few years back I suddenly started eating non-vegetarian food to quench my professional stress. My whole constitution started rebelling, forcing me back to vegetarian food once again. I recognized the fact that food cannot quench my stress – only the mind can!”

Tips-4: Right quantity at right time:

The corporate lifestyle has totally screwed up our healthy eating habits namely to ignore the breakfast & lunch and “eat like a pig at night”. How petrol for a motor car, food is for our body. I like the suggestions by Rijuta Diwekar in her popular book “Don’t lose the mind – lose your weight”. I have been following her tips since last 2 years; here are her tips for healthy eating:

·         Meal-1: Immediately after brushing teeth – one plantain fruit and a cup of milk.

·         Meal-2: simple breakfast – no tea or coffee

·         Meal-3: 11.30 – a fruit or dry fruits or chenna

·         Meal-4: 1.00pm – simple vegetarian lunch

·         Meal-5: 4.00pm – same as 11.30 snacks

·         Meal-6: 8.00pm (2 hours before sleep) – simple vegetarian meal

The underlying principle in the above formula, never make your body to feel deep hunger which is one of the causes of over eating.

Tips-5: Learn to listen to your Hunger:

My pet Maximus (we affectionately call him Max) refuses to eat a gram more than what his constitution needs. Animals have the ability to sense when their hunger ends and stop eating immediately. This faculty of sensing our hunger is lost by human beings and many time our mind eats and not stomach. When Max has stomach trouble it refuses to eat till it is back to normal and feels the hunger. In Sanskrit there is a famous saying “Langanam Parama Oushadam”. This means “fasting is the best medicine for stomach upset”. There is a merit in observing the animals in eating habits as they have no “Dis – Ease” with the nature and hence have least disease.

Tips-6: Follow Pathanchali Sastra:

Benjamin Franklin followed eleven principles in his life and tallied a checklist everyday to remind him to follow them till it becomes his second nature. One of them is “Eat not to fullness and drink not to elevation”. This was told by Pathanchali Muni (Muni is the name given to seers) 5000 years ago. He said that you must half fill your stomach with food, quarter with water leaving the balance with air. This space is needed for when the stomach squeezes the food for digestion so that it does not hit your throat!

In summary,

1.    Food is the fuel for our survival only and not a means to indulge and alleviate our stress – It is not a stress buster.

2.    Figure out the food which enhances your pranik energy – rest of them are junk food.

3.    You are designed as a herbivore – Vegetarian food is your nature’s plan

4.    Eat small meals more frequently and keep your stomach empty while you sleep

5.    Learn to listen to your hunger and don’t eat a gram more than fulfilling your hunger.

6.    Eat not to fullness and drink not to elevation. 

        

            God Bless you with a long healthy life

            NC

Kindle Life – Greed Management – Episode:5

In our series Kindle Life we have been examining various negative emotions and their influence in our quality of life. It is easier to define “Quality” in a tangible product like a motor car, but it is extremely difficult to define quality in Life. One simple way we can define Quality in life by taking clue from the nature is “Being in a state of happiness” irrespective of the situation. We go through several miseries in life and half of them are self-inflicted and avoidable. If we carefully examine the nature around us namely the flora and fauna, we find they are in perfect harmony with the creator as they align with the plan of the nature unlike human beings who are always in conflict.

We don’t find blood pressure and diabetes in the animal kingdom as they are prevalent in the human beings who are perennially in a state of incompleteness. I am of the view that the higher intelligence bestowed in human beings namely “Intellect” has been grossly misused to create a web around us which unconsciously shackled the modern race. Happiness is a state of a being and highly independent of our material possession. Let us examine how Greed robs our sense of happiness.

Anatomy of Greed:

Greed, also known as avarice or covetousness, is a sin of excess. However, greed is applied to a very excessive or rapacious desire and pursuit of wealth, status and power. The few other words which have the connotation of GREED are “insatiability”, “self-indulgence”, “desire”, “Craving” and so on. We have a strange expectation that material possessions are only the purpose of our existence. If we examine our own thoughts, we always crave for something which we don’t possess and long for the same, thinking that the moment we possess them we will reach a state of happiness. Very strangely, we don’t see this syndrome in the creations in the lower rung of the evolution namely the plants and animals.

Please don’t misunderstand me that I am saying material pursuit is “Greed”. The excessive desire to possess those leads to the disruption of social balance is often referred as Greed. This planet has witnessed many tyrants like Hitler who managed to kill 7 million people within his life time in pursuit of an unknown and unreasonable desire. This planet also witnessed prophets like Lord Buddha who relinquished all ephemeral indulgences in pursuit of his quest to find an answer for the reasons for our misery. In any stretch of imagination, no modern man will be willing to relinquish the pleasures Gautama was bestowed by his father. May be if Gautama would have lived only for those carnal desires, we may not even remembering him now as we don’t remember our own great grand-father who lived few centuries ago!! People are remembered not for their greed but for the absence of it.

 Effect of Greed:

There must be a merit in learning about Greed management before we discuss how to do it. All of us pursue our dream right from our formative years. The desire to become somebody was instilled by our parents by asking us the mundane question, ”what do you want to become?”. Most of us responded to this question very innocently “I want to become a pilot or a doctor or an engineer” and so on. We did not know what these positions are when we answered their question; only we knew was that we should become “somebody” when we grow. After we passed that innocent childhood, our journey of chasing the material wealth has started which is like holding the “tiger’s tail”. Once you hold the tiger’s tail, you have to hold it till you die or the tiger dies! If you leave it in between, the tiger can kill you!

Initially all of us felt that few alphabets after our name will make us look better in the eyes of our society and chased our degree. I grew up in the Tamilnadu where number of degree is directly proportional to you are looking good in the eyes of the people! We have started living not for ourselves but for the “non-existent entity” called “society”. People around us are busy in looking themselves in the mirror and have no time to see us; but still they exist as an important entity in our life influencing many of our decisions. The anecdote happened in my own life will illustrate this point:

“I pursued my education finishing my degree in engineering and post-graduation at IIT till I was 38 years of age and my daughter was 10 years old. My dream was to add “Doctor” at the beginning of my name although Swami Shukhabodananda calls “PhD” as “Permanent Head Damage”. I approached my classmate in M.Tech who became a professor in Bombay IIT to admit me as his doctoral student. He asked me a simple question “Whom are you trying to prove by this pursuit?” This question hit me hard for me to introspect, am I trying to do something for myself or for proving to the society? – I chose to stop my educational pursuits and focused on my career and family and I am happy about my decision!”

We don’t know when the desire to possess becomes greed; all that it does is put us in a perennial vicious circle of indefinite postponement of happiness. We have started believing that “if I get a good job, I will be happy”; “I will marry a beautiful girl, I will be happy”, If I have house of my own, I will be happy”; “once I retire, I will be happy” and so on. In essence, we found a recipe for postponing our happiness linking with our material possessions. It is like hanging a bunch of grass in front of the horse in the cart; the horse will keep moving to eat the grass and will never reach the same!

Am I advocating not having ambitions? No way! I am only suggesting let not ambition lead to greed and postponement of your happiness. All that happiness needs is your decision to be happy wherever you are and whatever you possess. Please don’t link happiness with material progress as there is no cause and effect relationship exist between them.

   

Greed & Performance:  

All of us know that if we don’t perform our “personal equity” will not improve which decides our market value. Our performance is a function of our “attitude-knowledge & skills”. As companies performance improves their share value of the enterprise also improves, our personal equity is a function of our engagement and contribution to the company we are working for. Greed plays an important role in our “Equity” – let us see how?

“I have been recruiting people for our consulting firm in the recent past where I see the first information in the CV is how many jobs the guy has changed? I consider this as a dip stick to measure his “GQ – the Greed Quotient”. If he has not stayed in a job more than one year, he/she is unlikely to make any difference to the organization as his first question is “what is the package?”

Thanks to the software industry which has significantly improved the GQ of the modern youth particularly in India. I hear from the companies I consult that “we have no guarantee of a guy gone for lunch in the food court to come back as he might have been offered 10% raise by our competitors!”   

The popular psychological test carried on children known as “Marshmallow test” revealed the relationship between performances of any individuals with their Greed Quotient. The test conducted by the scientists follows:

“25 children chosen for this test were 3 years of age were assembled in a room where Marshmallow ice cream was kept in many cups. The children were told that the facilitator will go out and come back after half an hour. Any children who can wait till then will get two cups of ice cream and those who cannot wait will get only one! As expected very few children waited till the facilitator came back. They could control their craving for eating and were found well balanced and centered. The children’s performance in school and later in employment were tracked and correlated with their GQ. The research shown that those who have control on their greed are the star performers.”

This is an illustration that our GQ has a bearing on our performance and in turn with our personal Equity.

How do we manage our Greed Instinct?   

 Shri. Ramakrishna Paramahansa has explained the mechanism of happiness through a beautiful story:

“A dog was running around for food in the forest looking for a dead animal carcase left over by the Lions & tigers. Normally it used to find one and strangely one day it could not find any. It continued its search for several days and was in vain. It was almost in a state of dying  found a bone dried off and did not have any flesh in it. But the hungry dog in its state closer to death, hurriedly went and bit the bone greedily. Suddenly the blood was flowing from the bone! The dog was extremely happy to lick the blood thanking God for His kindness. In fact the blood came from the tearing of the mouth of the dog and not from the bone! Still the dog did not know the source but felt happy thinking that the blood is from the external source.

Similarly, our anxiety to possess material objects creates a vibration in our mind and stays till we possess them! The moment we possess them, the vibration or source of disturbance settles down in our mind creating a temporary sense of happiness. Like the dog we conclude that the happiness is due to the object while it is the result of temporary settlement of disturbance in our mind. The moment one gratification is satisfied the mind immediately ignites the next one and the chase starts.

As Chimayananda often questions “If the colour television gave you the happiness on the day of its possession has the ability to make you happy, it must do even after one year? Why it has a diminishing balance of happiness?”

Intellectual appreciation or understanding of the genesis of greed is not enough; it has to be an existential experience of guarding ourselves from the onslaught of greed is needed.

In summary:

• Your happiness is independent of your material possessions. There is no cause and effect relationship between them.
• If you think material possessions can make you happy, you are heading towards a disaster! They can give you “comfort” but no “happiness”
• If name, fame and possessions can make someone happy then Elvis Presley, Michel Jackson and Marlin Monroe have no reasons to commit suicide.
• Don’t get mixed up with comfort and happiness. Water bed can improve your comfort but cannot make you happy! On water bed you may be comfortably miserable!
• Happiness is a state of your being. Don’t chase it. It is like butterfly which will fly away when you chase it; but sit on your shoulder gently when you ignore it!
• Greed is a killer of your happiness; try and distinguish ambition and greed! Ambition beyond the border line becomes greed. You don’t know where the border is!
• For happiness you don’t need any stimuli; only thing needed is your decision to be happy now and here!
• When you are greedy it affects your performance as you always think “what is there in it for me?” Those who made a difference to this planet like Benjamin Franklin, Mary Curie and Helen Keller were indifferent about their personal agenda.
• People who have grown to the pinnacle of corporate ladder or created institutions are those whose GQ is the lowest. They always came out of their circle of concern and operated in their circle of influence.

More to follow on the same topic.

Love

NC  

Kindle Life – Worry Management – Episode:4

Nature has classified food as conducive and non-conducive for every living organism. For example, if human beings consume a certain variety of cactus plant, they will die; whereas the same plant is consumed by camels for their survival. This fits into the famous adage “One’s poison is another’s food”.  Anything in nature which is accepted by your constitution (body) is referred to as “conducive” and which is not, is termed as “non-conducive”. This concept of conduciveness and non-conduciveness will help me present to you the contents I wish to, here.

The term “conducive” and “non-conducive” is not only applicable to food, but to emotions as well, which we will discuss in this article and other forthcoming topics. The next question is who decided this and why? It is a difficult question to answer as these are the “Laws of nature” which cannot be questioned; Can we question why all living organisms die? We cannot, because “we don’t know the overall plan of the nature”. I am not using the term “God” and in its place using “Nature” as some atheists may not believe in God but will accept Nature which is the cosmic intelligence that runs this universe.

Anatomy of Emotions:

Let me try to clarify what are emotions before I deal with “Worry management” as it is very important to understand the anatomy of emotions. Ever since we are born till we die, a stream of thoughts run in our mind all the time both during waking and sleeping hours. Among various other things in life, we also do not have any control over the thought current in our mind. As Swami Chimayananda once said we can keep our limbs at rest for a while but not our mind, although both are part of our being! The “Dharma” of mind is to keep itself busy with thought current like “Dharma” of river is to keep the water current.

The emotions are the automatic response of the mind whenever an external stimulus reaches its bosom. If you frown at me, it forms a stimuli captured by my eyes and reaches my mind as an input and the response of the mind is “anger” which is one of the emotions. To sight an analogy, if you type a letter “A” in the keyboard of a computer, it forms an input which is converted as a digital signal, read by the computer and responded by the operating system. Here the input of keyboard is stimuli and the operating system is the mind which processes the stimuli. What is the big deal about learning this? 

  

As we have defined “conducive and non-conducive foods”, we also have “conducive and non-conducive emotions”. For example “Love” and “compassion” are conducive (positive) emotions where as “Worry”, “Anger” etc are non-conducive (negative) emotions. The conducive emotions generate a healthy response from our body’s metabolism whereas the negative emotions lead to decaying effects of our body. Anger for example increases our heart beats and blood pressure and worry leads to stomach ulcer and tooth decay. Over and above destruction of our physical body, the negative emotions also destroy our relationships and hence need to be managed. I wish to discuss one of the negative emotions namely “Worry” in this article and continue with others in the forthcoming articles.

What is Worry?

What is worry? Let me attempt defining “worry” before proceeding with the investigation of its effects on the quality of our life. “Worry is an anxious thought we entertain anticipating a trouble in the future or regretting about an incident of the past”. If we agree with this definition, worry is connected with the unborn future or buried past!

Anatomy of Worry:

It appears that this concept of worry does not exist in the animal kingdom and it is an exclusive right of human beings! I would say it is a unique feature of human evolution as it requires higher intelligence to worry – namely the rationale! Like the feeling of upset, one cannot be productive when they are busy with the worrying thought. In order to appreciate why we are caught up with the habit of worry, we need to understand the anatomy of human personality.

The moment we are born, it is certain that  we will die one day! Whether anything else is certain or not, death is certain. Due to the higher intelligence and fear of death, people live with a feeling of insecurity. Due to fear of unborn future, we go around aggrandizing wealth thinking that money will save us future calamities.  All these have created a phobia of an un-born future making us to worry about our health, future of our children and so on. 

Effect of Worry:

One of the modern day killers is the worry which has many destructive effects on human beings such as tooth decay, hypertension, stomach ulcer etc. How can a thought impact physical health? The physical body reacts according to the mental state. If you are anxious, you breathe faster and if you are cool or meditate, you breathe softly! The body and mind are so interconnected that one influences the other. William James, the greatest psycho-analyst of this century has demonstrated several experiments to show how body and mind respond to each other. Many of us succumb to this silent killer “Worry” without knowing what is happening within us.

Tips to master worry habit:

Live in a “Day tight Compartment”

Scientists have studied about the composition of our thoughts and found that we process an average of sixty thousand thoughts in our waking hours and out of which 80 percent are about our un-born future! Invariably they are anxious thoughts about future. In other words we spend 80% of our time in imagining worst things which might/might not happen in the future. This anxiety may be of bad health, safety of our children gone to school and so on. Invariably we find that 99% of the worst we visualized have never happened in reality! Even then we continue to entertain the worry thoughts helplessly.

We need to learn many things from the animal kingdom to improve our quality of life. In the animal kingdom there is no concept of past and future and the only reality is “present”. The animals are believed to be governed by their instincts; hunger, procreation, self-preservation and rest. As they don’t have the concept of self-awareness as we have, they do not know that they exist! As they do not recognize that they exist, they do not have an idea of death either. In other words, they have no fear of death as we human beings have. This fact leads to the conclusion that they have no desire to aggrandize wealth for securing their future like we do! If there is no concept of future, obviously there is no question of worrying about the same!

If the scientists could find an instrument which can study the pattern of thinking of an animal, we will find that they have no worry thoughts. Even when we examine their behaviour we find that they have no anxiety about their next meal as they are never denied of it as the nature has planned to provide them when they need it! It may not be an exaggeration if I say that they are more confident about the love and compassion of the creator than human beings . The tips is “Learn to live one day at a time”

Trust and surrender to the Nature (God):

In one of the discourses, Sukabodananda refers to the kindness of the creator by referring to the formation of the milk in the mother’s breast when the child is just delivered. We notice that the food nature creates is just-in-time and ideal for the infant to consume and survive. There cannot be a better example than this to re-assure us that nature provides what we need than what we want! A true surrender to the almighty (Nature or God) is the best way to come out of the worry habit. I am of the view “we should not worry about that which cannot be understood and controlled – example “death”. Tips: Surrender to the Lord, he knows the best for you! Whenever you start a worry thought, tell your mind that you have taken the role of the Lord!

Develop a “Habit”

To start with, we need to understand that worrying is a habit like smoking or drinking. In order to manage anything in life, we need to know more about the subject we are trying to manage. If you wish to come out of the habit of worrying, you need to know more about “Worry”. As Stephen Covey said, formation of habits needs three ingredients; Desire, knowledge and skill. Most important ingredient is “Desire” to form a new habit and once it is taken care, the next is “Knowledge” about worry. One of the great thinkers has said that “Worry is interest paid on trouble before it is due”. What a great statement it is? Worry is like paying interest on the money which we have never borrowed! This implies that majority of the worst outcomes that we imagined have never happened in reality, but we have already paid the interest by draining our precious time and energy worrying about it! Another great quote I remember is “Worry is like a rocking chair; it keeps you busy but takes you nowhere!”

Beware of “Thought Attack”

Having mastered the Desire and knowledge, the next in habit formation is “skill”. To develop a habit of eliminating the worry thoughts is to know when they attack you. As we have heart attack, we have to be aware of “Thought attack”. Whenever we get busy to encourage the worry thoughts about the future, we have to stop entertaining our mind by substituting with a positive assertion saying that the present moments are more valuable for you rather than anxiety of the un-born future!

Allocate a “Worry Hour”

Dr. Richard Carlson in his famous book “Don’t sweat the small stuff; it is all the small stuff” suggests an allotment of “worrying hour in a week”. Tell your mind when the worrying thought hits you that you will take it up in the worrying hour and not now! If you really look at, all these suggestions are nothing but re-education of the mind imitating the animals. If you like, you can surrender all your anxiety to the divine which has brought you here providing the ambience for you to survive in your mother’s womb and created the food you needed when you were just born!

Wish you a worry less life ahead.

In Summary:

·  Worry is one of those negative states of a being which ruins your present moment making you ineffective.

·  All negative thoughts including worry affect your heath leading to disease. Disease is “Dis” “Ease” with the nature – non-alignment with the plan of the nature.

·  Learn to live in the present moment like an animal. Don’t underestimate animals as they have better quality of life as they obey law of nature better than us.

·  Worry is a habit like smoking and drinking which can be changed at your will if you desire.

·  Don’t wait for the doctor to say that you are terminally ill to change your habits! The will-power what you get that time is already there within you even now.

·  New habits can be made if you have desire, knowledge and develop skills.

·  By re-education of mind, you can eliminate the worrying habits over a period of time.

·  Don’t throw away your invaluable present moment by worrying about an un-born future.

·  Remember 99% of the worst future you imagined have never happened! Why continue this wrong habit of worrying?

I Surrender to my Lord for flowing through me to write this article.

NC