Who is behind the mask?
The Practice:
See the person behind the eyes.
Why?
Most of us wear a kind of mask, a persona that hides our deepest thoughts and feelings, and presents a polished, controlled face to the world.
As the passage mentioned: “Like a passenger riding a train, you have the choice to get on and off, find new routes, pick new places to visit, or just stop and enjoy the view for a while. Perhaps, you like to move quickly through life as if you were an express train. Or maybe, like a commuter passenger, you like taking the same routes over and over again. You may even stop just riding along and choose a different direction you’d like your life to take.”
Sometimes there are so many choices on our plates that we get caught up in the chaos and let stress and anxiety take over. Which route is best for me? Which way do I turn? How far do I go? Which stop will get me to where I want to be? Will I be satisfied going this way or that? Before we know it, we get stuck in one spot and we’re afraid to move forward. It’s like watching the confusing timetable of endless trains or planes coming and going here, there and everywhere, and we’d rather sit in the terminal and hide our heads!
Do you know what sets highly successful people apart from the people who never achieve their goals in life?
Successful people are clear on what they want and take unstoppable action toward their dreams. They don’t let setbacks, distractions, or challenges derail their progress. When an obstacle appears on their path, they figure out a way to dissolve it, get around it, and never give up until they reach their intended destination.
And that, my friend, takes self-discipline.
Today I’m going to share my top tips on how to build self-discipline and cultivate the unstoppable persistence and resilience you need to achieve ambitious goals.
No one said life would be easy. We all go through difficult times, and how we handle these challenging situations determines our character and, ultimately, our happiness. Having a positive attitude during difficult times is essential because things can only get worse if we don't. With a positive attitude, you can find the silver lining in every cloud and stay hopeful through even the roughest patches of your life.
The messages that society sends about change are two-edged. On one side is the marketing strategy that uses new and improved to spark sales. On the other hand are life insurance companies selling financial security in old age. You can divide almost anything between those two messages, the allure of change and the anxiety it arouses.
Everyone feels the pull of these two forces, and in anxious times, what looms larger is fear of change. But human beings are designed to embrace change, because we are the only creatures who can choose a creative life. A cat is content to eat, sleep, and lie in the sun. It was designed to be a creature of instinct, and very little free choice is allowed.
In today’s guest blog, my dear friend and holy woman, Sadhviji, simply and elegantly explains a simple way to change your destiny.
A Stanford graduate who was raised in Los Angeles and moved to India 25 years ago, Sadhviji is recognized as one of the world’s leading female spiritual leaders.
Rationality is the most ingenious invention ever devised by the human mind for extracting order out of chaos. As raw experience, the physical world is chaos soup. We are bombarded by billons of perceptual bits every minute—the retina at the back of your eye alone receives trillions of photons a minute. Chaos is totally disorderly and disorganized. It makes no sense; therefore, the world makes no sense unless something steps in to organize things so that everyday life doesn’t feel like a storm-tossed ship.
Reason did the trick. You can gaze out your window and see trees, sky, buildings, and other people, giving each a name. You can hone your reason, go to graduate school, and become an expert in botany so that you know everything about trees or architecture so that you can build a house or skyscraper. The modern world has been engineered by the rational mind. So what could go wrong?
When you die, the infinite takes whatever form you need it to take for you, a form you can accept and embrace. In my book Discovering Your Soul Signature, I said that if God is infinite, then everybody is right because the Infinite, the formless, takes the form that you love in order to greet you, meet you and welcome you back into infinity.
This is also true with people who are alive. For example, the infinite takes the form of a person or maybe the infinite has taken the form of all of us for the same reason. The form makes the potential accessible. Everything that is unfolding has to unfold through everyone of us. We are here to hold the space for humanity.
All of us are born connected with our spiritual guidance. Young children whose parents value them as individuals and foster their inner knowing, grow up trusting their inner authority. But many of us grew up with parents who, in their desire to have control over us, consistently undermined our inner knowing.
When we were young, our parents were naturally the authorities on what was good or bad, right or wrong. They were big and we were little, so we naturally assumed that they knew much more than we did. When they discounted our inner knowing, we may have learned to discount it as well.
When I was going through my Dark Night of the Soul, I met with many professionals. My intention in meeting with them was twofold:
(1) Establish a support structure
(2) Gather perspective and guidance beyond my own perception
I recall meeting with one very highly specialized psychologist, and he asked me:
“How do you see what’s happening to you? What’s the story you tell yourself?”
Are some things getting better?
The Practice:
See progress.
Why?
There are always things that are getting worse. For example, over the past year, you probably know someone who has become unemployed or ill or both, and there’s more carbon in the atmosphere inexorably heating up the planet.
“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.” —Dalai Lama
I've Been Thinking...
I didn’t finish writing this column until the end of the week. I found myself struggling to put into words everything I’ve been hearing, noticing, thinking, and feeling lately. I’m sure you’ve found yourself in the same position.
Everywhere I look, I see grief. I see pain, heartbreak, confusion, and disbelief. In fact, almost every interaction I had this week involved someone saying, “Wow, the world is really crazy right now, isn’t it? I mean, what the hell do you think is going on?”
Good question.
I’ve thought a lot about what’s going on. I’ve also thought a lot about what the possible solutions might be to address what’s going on. But every time I speak about possible solutions or ideas, someone tells me that they won’t work. They immediately jump to blaming and to othering. Things get heated really fast.
Have you ever heard the statement,” My life is falling apart so it can come together in a new way”? There are times right before we give up that things fall into place. Steven Covey emphasizes that in order to achieve success, you must keep the end in mind. Ask yourself where you would like the end result to be, then come back to today and integrate little steps towards the goal.
Peace has become more and more compelling. Within the experience of peace is a rising bliss. It’s like an intoxication. Even though life might be turbulent, no matter how absurd it gets, for some strange reason it just doesn’t matter.
We are realizing more and more that it’s not worth leaving the peace that we are feeling for anything.
A choice to live in alignment with your soul.
A choice to live in alignment with what's true and what's right.
It's not about doing right for someone else.
Every moment and every experience gives you the opportunity to demonstrate to live more of who you are. Not for someone else but for yourself.
We all go through those moments when we feel like giving up.
Life can be challenging at times…
Perhaps you feel like you should be further along in life, or facing repeatedly failures in the pursuit of your dream and feeling like your goals aren’t manifesting quickly enough.
When you are peaceful, you start to live a new version of your life.
The identity is the domain of the familiar. Your personality is the domain of the familiar. You are going to get what capacity you receive in accordance with your mind, your programming, and your conditioning.
Life certainly comes with its challenges and when you know that something needs to change, it isn’t always easy to take full action on that. Sometimes we might even desperately want change - whether that’s reaching a breaking point in our jobs, in a relationship or with our health. However, when it comes to actually taking action on what we want to create or do differently, on a subconscious level, there can be an overwhelming resistance to change.
Weekday Personal Support
Join Panache Desai each weekday morning for support in reconnecting to the wellspring of calm and peace that lives within you and that has the power to counterbalance all of the fear, panic, and uncertainty that currently engulfs the world.
Designed To Move You From Survival and Fear to Safety and Peace. Available Monday - Friday. Meditation begins at 9 AM. Access early to hear Panache's monologue - around 8:30 AM.
Join Soulspring for conscious insights...
...on all things life, wellness, love, transformation and spirituality...
PLUS! Get your FREE Guide: 12 Mindfulness Practices to a Peaceful Mind