Humility - An Introspection

I felt it was very important to jot down for myself and incidentally share with others a deep realization on Humility that I gained based on introspecting my own feelings.

Because it is penned on 12^th December it is also an uncanny tribute to my beloved Superstar who is however an anti-thesis of my concept but then it is the tributes that are overflowing for him today that set me thinking on this subject...

I have often wondered why humility is associated only with great achievers. 

After all, not everyone is an achiever and not every achiever ends up embracing humility.

If that be the route to be humble then it automatically seems a far fetched trait to possess. 

Our mind automatically post pones being humble to a much later stage of life and makes us focused on show casing ourselves as achievers of something great first.

I think this notion needs to be totally turned on its head for  a more constructive co-existence with others in a society.

When we think of humility, great achievers like Shri APJ Kalam, Rajini, A R Rahman, MS Dhoni, Jonty Rhodes etc only come to mind. 

Simultaneously one starts believing that humility is therefore a successor of achievement.

Today while introspecting on my own life, I started thinking do I want to chase achievements or humility. 

After all being an achiever is not in everyone’s destiny but being humble ought to be in everyone’s control to choose to be.

At the top of my recall, resonated a comment by some famous personality who is supposed to have said about an adversary (I am unfortunately unable to recollect both of them), 

“He is surely humble but then he has a lot to be humble about”.

While this is a tongue in cheek tribute, I felt that this was closest to the notion of humility I was searching for.  

It automatically meant that humility is accessible to everyone whether they have something to boast about themselves or not.

So I dug a bit more into my mind to find out what is the best possible way to express humility even when there is nothing to boast of in the first place. 

That is when I realized that being judgmental is the biggest hurdle in not being able to treat the impostors of success and failure as one and the same.

Invariably we are all judgmental.

Either we judge others or worse we judge our own selves and that too constantly and funnily with or without our own knowledge. 

Even as we exchange pleasantries with others, a little voice in the head keeps saying something like “hey, I thought I am as good as him or her, how come he/she has achieved this much while I have not”, or “I have not achieved anything in my life so far. I have worked for 15 to 20 years and still have not saved enough to consider an early retirement”.

To stop being judgmental of others, we need to first of all understand that everyone’s journey is unique and more importantly a very lonely one.

Someone is your peer at work or a classmate in school by sheer co-incidence or by a concept of time-boxing your life into various buckets.

You need to train your mind into un-boxing your life from these buckets and make it a larger expanse.

What if you had never worked in that company or studied in that school. You would then be running the race with an entirely different set of individuals whom you never knew existed from Adam right?

Perhaps they are even lesser mortals than the ones you compared with and also tasting bigger achievements than them. How would you then feel?. Where will you stop?. 

Isn’t it high time then to realize that life is all about your lonely journey and what you did with your life is all that matters to yourself.

Now after that comes avoidance of being judgmental on yourself.

Consider this. Would you want to be an achiever or Would you want to be known as an achiever.

If you just want to be an achiever it means you can make the attempt without having to fear failure and also there is no limit on the number of attempts you would need. 

The moment you want to be known as an achiever you invite a whole set of pressure variables that make you judge yourself very critically.

If you are able to avoid being judgmental of others (success or failure) and if you are further able to avoid judging yourself, then you automatically become humble for I truly believe by now that the purest form of humility is being non judgmental.   

It makes us someone who radiates positive energy to anyone we come in contact with

1. If we come across a less privileged person, it helps us to empathize with him more
2. If we come across a more privileged person, it helps our stress levels by not adding kilo calories to false notions of measuring the size of our own achievements.

Happiness always appears elusive for it is more of an end point of an arduous journey. The ability to persevere that arduous journey comes from being humble.

The more our spoken word reflects or matches with the inner voice in the head the more the signs of progression in the journey to be humble.

The best way to live is by helping others. 

That is not an easy life to live for many of us chasing personal commitments (so in the spirit of this write up nothing judgmental about it), but at least we should live a life that is not an hindrance to one another.

Even if we radiate a thought of envy at other people’s status or position or achievement in life, we end up being a negative energy in their lives while simultaneously being wretched ourselves.

I personally realized through this self conversation that humility is therefore a starting point that is within the reach of everyone.  

No one needs a role model to get inspired into radiating humility. 

And it is this realization that made me create a blog after many years.

I just wanted to share this in the hope of inspiring others to think "If a guy next door can, so can I. Let me not wait to be an achiever to radiate this state of mind.".

Cheers,

Mahesh

Happiness - A result or An Experience? Ask yourself

Happiness is one thing everyone craves for either explicitly or implicitly.

In fact one would give anything in return for always having a happy emotion.

I strongly feel that everyone approaches happiness as a goal rather than as an experience. Which is why probably people miss the whole thing.

The whole point is that happiness does not exist outside of us and it is totally within ourselves. It is there in that deep reserve of emotions that we possess and is concealed in layers and layers of other emotions and tends to be at the bottom most layer waiting for an outward stimuli to pull it out of its depths onto our face or mind.

Which is why happiness is experienced only together with ecstasy since a mega event is required to prise it out from the depths of consciousness.

This happiness tends to last temporarily for its nature is more physical than emotional.

True happiness is achieved only when the emotion of Happiness pervades all our other emotions.

Wait a minute I am not advocating that one should try to be happy overcoming or suppressing all other emotions. It is not only impossible but also pretty trite to show a wrong emotion at the wrong place.

What I mean is that the emotion of Happiness should act more like a traffic cop in regulating the other emotions in our mind and ensure that each of these emotions exist with a finite shelf life or expiry timestamp.

This kind of happiness is more to do with being contended with what results one gets for any effort and all that should matter at the end of it is a honesty of purpose and intention that backs the effort.

I have seen, and still see, so many close people suffer in life owing to comparison of their lot with that of others as to how theirs is bad or those of others is better.

I was not an exception when it comes to being trapped with these emotions. But a serious introspection of these emotions while being trapped opened my eyes to the fact that the mind is in a trap.

This trap simply stops you from thinking positively and makes you to try and showcase yourself as a success in areas that your heart actually does not want you to be successful at.

You stop chasing your heart and end up chasing your newly established goals thinking that will bring you out of this trap. It unfortunately leads you only to a maze of more stronger emotions that take you farther away from the real person that you are.

I stopped comparing myself with anyone after a few incidents made me realize the total emptiness of the approach of comparison.

Just think for a minute, the same mind that craves for a good result to happen to oneself when you see someone known to you experiencing the same, silently prays to God wanting him not to make you a victim of a mishap that happens to another person.

Why is it that we suffer in comparison only by wanting all the good things that happen to others to happen to us also.

It is only because (a) We are hardwired to chase happiness at the subconscious level and (b) We also have an externalized concept of happiness etched on our mind that it is a sum total of all the positive results that happen to us in life.

And the reason why happiness is therefore elusive to us is that most of the time results are totally an outcome of factors beyond our immediate control, which is why we all still pray to God.

So what then is the secret of all time happiness...Simple, look no further, look inside you and dig really deep.

Detach yourself from results and attach yourself to your inner reserves and strengths that give you the fortitude and maturity to face any situation be it positive or negative.

The more you are aligned to enjoying the efforts you put in rather than saving the enjoyment for later once a positive result is achieved for your effort, the more you will get close to experiencing happiness in a majority portion of your lifetime.

Of course results do matter and they can cause a negative emotion to flow out.

But the detachment from results will ensure that happiness will persist in your mind and ensure that the negative emotions are packed off after a normal expiry period. And gradually but surely you will find that life moves on and most importantly in a direction aligned to goals that are more closer to your heart.

I am an Accountant by core competence (although not by profession) and my version of Karma is the theory that everyone's life is a balance sheet. 

In other words we all have an equal amount of positive and negative things that will occur to offset one another.

I do not mean that all of us will get the same amount of positive and negative things. 

Instead everybody will get as much positive results as they got negative results at an individual level.

This thought process helps me look forward to positive things when I am on a trough of life and stay grounded when I am on a high, both of which are important to break the mind to face the cycle.

I was able to achieve a lot of stability in my emotions, thanks to this approach and today I can look back and feel proud to realize that I have faced quite a lot of emotional challenges with fortitude and the resulting release of tension ensured that my life goes on in a direction aligned to my heart than my ego.

Most importantly this changed the way I prayed. I greatly reduced asking for favorable outcomes and instead prayed for the divine presence within me to ensure that I continue to have the maturity to implement this thought process irrespective of outcomes.

Good luck in implementing this thought framework as suitable to events in your life.

Cheers,

Mahesh