Thank You, Ade! I shall Always Cherish Your Gift!

In the year 1982, my father was a member of a team of paper technologists from India assigned to commission a paper-making factory in Nigeria's Kwara State. The Nigerian Government provided residential quarters to the Indian team and their families. 

Twice I visited my parents during college vacations. During such a visit, I met a tall, slim Nigerian teenager, and high school student, Adekunle Omodele; who, during his free time would help my mother with household chores. Initially, he was apprehensive to try Indian cuisine, but soon became a fan of my mother's cooking. 

Often I would walk down with him to visit a neighbour listening to him narrate his experience of school and life with his mother, a single parent. He once said, "Sister, In the Atlas book Nigeria is bigger than India!" I smiled and asked him what else he learnt about the two countries. He promptly asked, "Nigerian soccer team participates in the Soccer World Cup, but India does not, Why, sister?" I quietly replied, 'We are not as good as you are in the game of soccer." I smirked thinking, Indians excel in the colonial game of Cricket.

One day Ade handed me his school lesson sheet and asked me to read it aloud. When I finished reading it, Ade's face beamed with pride and happiness, "Sister, you can read Yuroba language!" It is a language spoken in the western regions of Nigeria and it uses Latin alphabets. Amused by his elation I replied, "Ade, it is written in English. I could not understand a single word I have read." His optimism touch my soul, "Sister, if you can read, then in no time you will be able to learn and use the language too! People will call you a brown complexioned person who can speak in Yuroba!" I then realised the value of a language as a bridge to diverse geographies and myriad cultures. Little did I know it was my last visit to the beautiful country of a large continent called Africa. I shall always cherish fond memories of my visit to the country and its people.

According to Ade, education was free and compulsory for all Nigerian children up to the age of fourteen years. Students of all the Nigerian schools and colleges were responsible for their cleanliness, Everyday the students used to clean and maintain the school and college premises. Can we imagine the students of elite Indian schools and of the educational institutions from Ivy League doing so? Would the corporate honchos, Judiciary, Administrative and Executive/Legislative big wigs regularly clean and maintain their office space?

True, when we compare ourselves with someone else we tend to compete and become bitter if not better. It is equally true when you compare with love and empathy for the betterment then you do not become bitter. 

After successfully commissioning the paper-making factory the team from India returned home. It was then Ade gave a book to my mother asking her to present it me, to his sister. He used to address my mother as "Mamma". He said, "Mamma, I used to save some of the money you used to give me. I have got this book from my savings. When you reach home, please give this to my sister." The book is "Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary'. ('Junu' is my informal or nickname.)

For the benefit of those who enjoy and would like to learn a language: https://www.humanrightscareers.com/magazine/how-to-learn-the-un-languages-for-free/

Ade, my dear brother, I shall always cherish your gift!

 Image Source: https://in.pinterest.com/pin/410883165990672820/?lp=true

I Want You to Apologize!

Sphiti was leading a team of content writers working on a project to develop academic content for a government-aided educational institution. A content developer, under the supervision of the project leader and content team leader, would get the client as well as the subject expert to verify the draft content. Then the content developer would revise the content based on the client’s feedback. Nita, a member of the content development team, sent her draft to the client for review. The client marked few major changes in the content to which she immediately replied highlighting the suggestions in red that she could not make the changes because those points were from the subject expert their team was referring to. Sphiti, immediately replied to Nita’s email, marking it to the Project Manager and the Project Leader. In her email, she explained to Nita that it was impolite to highlight the client’s comments in red and that, she had overlooked the fact, the client had provided the raw content and was subject-expert too. She requested Nita to directly discuss the matter with the client in the presence of the Project Leader. No sooner had Nita read Sphiti’s email, she approached her desk along with Parvesh, the Project Leader. Nita, openly accused Sphiti of deliberately marking the email to the Project Manager, for she intended to accuse Nita of any lapse in the process. Sphiti pointed out to the two of them that all project-related email communication was marked to the Project Manager. Spurred by Sphiti’s response Parvesh retorted, asking Sphiti why she had not removed the Project Manager from the list of addressees. Sphiti replied that she had kept the internal customers of the project in the loop while she had removed the external customers, the clients from her email. Nita and Parvesh were not satisfied with her reply and insisted she apologises to Nita in public. Sphiti, without a moment’s hesitation, apologised to the duo. Then she wrote an email addressing the two of them and the Project Manager on the incidence and sought them to acknowledge both the email communication that she had addressed to Nita and the one she was addressing to them now. She then met with The Project Manager, in a lackadaisical manner, asked her whether she really had apologised to Nita and asked her to forget about the incident.
While reading the case study you must have tried to recall when, how and why and to whom you have apologised. You may or may not have felt good about it. Often you must have had people asking you and supporting your act of apology, or you must have had people insisting you refrain from apologising, citing the reason: if you do, you will accede to people wrongfully demanding an apology from you. Often, we find ourselves in a dilemma, whether we should apologise or not. In fact, the act of apology, how we apologise, defines our character: Whether we apologise habitually or it is really genuine. It shows how much we are aware of ourselves #selfawareness.
What do we mean by habitual acts of apology?
1.      Apology as a formality: When we teach a child right from wrong and to apologise to anyone we have wronged, we often ignore explaining to the child why it is necessary to apologise. Therefore, it merely becomes a dead habit; the child begins to believe a mere word or note of apology is enough to make amends for our mistake. We ignore to make the child aware of the fact, rectification of mistake is essential for self-development. Often we hear a girl or woman complain about a man or a woman touch her inappropriately or make offensive remark in public, when she gathers the courage to object to such action, the eve teaser merely utters the word “SORRY” or defies her objection with the intimidating presence of his or her friends.
2.      Apology as an act of vengeance: When a person thinks he has been willfully wronged and asked to apologise, then he will look for an opportunity to make the person concede to any mistake he makes and apologise to him too. As in Sphiti’s case, she could have retaliated in the same way, stalking for an opportunity to catch her colleagues, Nita and Parvesh on the wrong foot and could have coerced them to apologize to her in public.
3.      Apology as a duty: Many of you, while reading the point, ‘Apology as a formality’ must have mused, ‘As a kid, I used to apologise to my parents for any small mistake I committed. It has now become second nature to me.’ When parents, guardians, mentors, and educators insist their child or learner apologise for any small mistake he commits. They miss out on encouraging the child to understand the fallacy and amend it, invariably making the act of apology habitually more important than comprehending and valuing the lesson learnt from the mistake. 
4.      Apology as a clash of ego: When our experience, circumstances, religious, cultural and social association, economic status influence us to value and believe in our prejudice and bias as an integral part of our identity; then we also fall prey to our misconceived self-awareness. We begin to discriminate against who we should and should not apologize to. We refrain from apologising for any act that we commit based on our bias and prejudice, or any mental block.
Pushpesh was a Senior Sales Executive. Deepak was his colleague, who was more aggressive and outspoken than Pushpesh, who was a middle-aged man, in need of employment to support him and his parents. Deepak was half his colleague’s age and his wife was a Senior Officer in the same organisation. With a more stable socio-economic background, Deepak was more confident and assertive, at times aggressive worker than Pushpesh. Deepak had a positive influence over their reporting head. One day, when Pushpesh asked Deepak for access code to certain official files, the latter hollered it at him. Pushpesh requested Deepak to write or approach his desk and share the information, which made Deepak lose his cool and accuse Pushpesh of being a weakling, who could not stand up for himself and always was compromising for wrong reasons. Pushpesh, conscious of the attentive eyes of all his colleagues on him, quietly approached Deepak, apologized to him in what he thought, was the right way to make peace with his colleague bristling with anger. Their reporting head approached the duo and commented, “Pushpesh, to me, you are the twenty-five-year-old youngster and Deepak is the fifty-year-old senior member of the team!”
5.      Apology as part of a blame game: Intra-team and inter-team conflicts arise when the team members and teams lack collective responsibility and shared service vision and mission of the organisation. The leadership does not encourage open discussion, sharing of thoughts, ideas and team spirit based on compassion, appreciation for every member’s unique potential and how all the team members complement one another to make a strong and efficient team. On the contrary, the leadership encourages negative comparison, deliberately cause a rift between team members, teams and departments to gain favour and functional power. This gives rise to the toxic environment of office politics. The teams and their members resort to blaming one another for any failure rather than compassionately understand each other’s challenges and problems to make a collaborative effort in solving them. Such blame games in a negative environment result in a clash of ego with teams demanding an apology from one another instead of appreciating the diversity and uniting for the common objective: collective responsibility towards the organisation’s vision and mission.

6. Trickster's Apology:

At times friends, family members, relations, colleagues and even adversaries play a practical joke on one another. When a trick or a practical joke is derogatorily played upon a person, then the target of the joke may not respond amicably to it, for, it hurts the person's integrity and self-respect.  In fact, people maliciously play tricks and practical jokes on a person who is from an adversary group, faction, or community and is a soft target whom the people can trick or easily play a practical joke on to annoy the community or social-religious, socio-political or socio-economic segment he or she is from. This becomes a chain of action and reaction. Tricksters and players of a derogatory practical joke invariably insult and humiliate themselves through such an act. 

You may ask, what is apology and why should I apologize? Now let’s answer your questions:
What is apology? When I say, ‘I apologise…’ for any speech, expression, writing or action that may have hurt or had a derogatory impact on someone; I acknowledge the negative effect of my action. I may not or may be aware of the wrong I do to someone. The truth is, through apology I accept the negative influence of my act. I may unknowingly or deliberately physically hurt someone, harm someone’s dignity, disrespect someone, and damage someone’s asset deviate from certain norms or rules.
The most important question is, whether I am a habitual apologiser? Do I apologise to pacify ruffled emotions, or I genuinely reason out my act of apology before committing to it. This leads to your next question, “Why should I apologise?”
Why should I apologize? Sphiti had apologised not with the intention of pacifying Nita and Parvesh. She apologised because she was aware of her colleagues’ perception that made them misunderstand her intention. She apologised because she wanted to make it clear to them that she had no such intentions that they had accused her of. She did not indulge in acts of apology as part of any blame game that is usually an inherent part of a negative culture.
In the case of Pushpesh, he habitually apologised to Deepak to pacify his irate colleague. Such a habitual act of apology shows that the person lacks self awareness (#selfawareness). He unconsciously contributes to the pessimist work environment. He should be assertive and confident enough to think of a solution to resolve the cause of his conflict with Deepak. He could have involved their reporting head in resolving the issue, instead of relenting to his pessimist thought, ‘Boss, will not listen to me, because he favours Deepak.’ When employees relent to such untold bias and prejudice in the workplace, they unconsciously encourage the negative work environment and hesitate to even approach the organisation’s Human Resource personnel, with the firm belief, they too will not ‘listen’ to them and ‘redress’ their problem. This may make you ask, ‘Why should not Pushpesh apologise to Deepak?’ May I ask you ‘Why Deepak should not apologise to Pushpesh?’ Pushpesh had explained to Deepak the reason why he requested him to approach his desk to share official information that was confidential.
When a person genuinely apologises, he proves he is aware of himself. To offer genuine apology he:
1.      Checks on the facts, his action, whether he has broken any rule, hurt someone.
2.      Checks whether he is giving in to someone’s bias, prejudice and relenting to habitual apology that he does not believe in. On doing so, he will fall prey to the habit and always give in to it under duress. Such compromise, if not sacrifice causes stress, anxiety and frustration resulting in ill physical and mental well-being.
3.      Checks any rule or regulation that he has unknowingly violated in rule or regulation, then we apologise with due diligence and gives the authority the scope and support to analyse whether the rule is helping the people or is causing any problem for the people, who are invariably ignoring or violating it. He is aware of the fact, rules and regulations are to help the people to easily avail their rights and benefits. Rules and regulations are not meant to stalk and prey on the mistakes people make. Such a negative thought then makes him willfully break the rules. That results in Apology as an act of vengeance.
4.      He considers the act of apology as a chance to assure the concerned person or people his positive emotions towards them. To him, it is a scope to understand the people and harmonise with them. Believes in resolving conflicts for sustenance rather than indulging in them.
5.      He considers the act of apology as a chance for him to know himself better, a scope for self-improvement by making amends and evolve both intellectually and emotionally instead of falling prey to negative emotions that may disrupt his growth and development.
When a person genuinely apologizes, he exhibits these traits of his character that he certainly is aware of:
1.      Be true to oneself
2.      Honesty
3.      Integrity
4.      Conviction
5.      Courage
6.      Compassion
7.      Resilience
8.      Clarity of thoughts of an open mind (sans bias, prejudice or any mental blocks)
9.      Mindfulness
10.  Humility
11.  Dignity
12. Self-worth
13.  Self respect
14.  Assertively positive attitude
15.  Compatibility (Flexibility)
16.  Emotionally intelligent
17.  Social awareness and intelligence
18. Focus
19. Confidence
20. Ingenious to innovate solutions
21. Ethical
It is equally true, though it is a cliché, “To Forgive and Forget”. It becomes relevant when it is a genuine cause for a genuine apology. Then this thought becomes relevant: “Forgive, not because you have to, but to prove your strength to heal your wound without allowing it to hold you down and obstruct your growth, progress, development, peace and sanctity.”

How "I" Represents "You" (Self Awareness)

How responsible is the word “I” for you?

The word “I” represents you as a person.  Therefore, it is responsible for:

Your mind the nervous system: responsible for generating thoughts that makes you aware “I”.

Your five senses: responsible for your sensory perception.

Your lungs: responsible for you’re the life giving breath you breathe.

Your heart: responsibly pulsates life in you pumping up or down your emotions.

Your digestive system: responsible source of energy through metabolic assimilation and synthesis.

 Your reproduction system: your ability to procreate and deliver your progeny to continue your life through her or him.

Your excretory system: responsibly segregates all that no longer is worth the while for you.  

“I” represents who you are. Hence, it is responsible for how true you are to yourself.

“I” is responsible for all your knowledge, ignorance, perceptions, faith, beliefs, bias, prejudice, emotions, thoughts and actions.

“I” represents you, an organisation. It is responsible for how effectively you balance your personal and professional existence.  

“I” represents your life’s path like that of the Milky Way. It also makes you the replica of the cosmos- the creation.

“I” represents the purpose of your life you have identified yourself with, unlike the life of an automaton. It responsibly represents your independent existence.  

Therefore, “I” is responsible for your well-being, for it represents your harmony as “a responsible citizen” of the Earth.  

"I", the self, is the microcosm of the universe, the macrocosm. When we become aware of this truth, we then persevere to realise our true self. We succeed in our endeavour when we are able to identify our complementary existence with our fellow beings and appreciate our existence as an integral part of the Creation, the Earth and its Environment. This is how it engenders the traits of love, compassion, focus, courage, integrity, simplicity, honesty, patience and resilience. Of course, it enhances our sense of humour. This does not make us challenge the Creation to satisfy our curious mind and the avarice of our emotions; that makes us pollute the Earth causing ecological imbalance.

Therefore, self awareness does not make us selfish, on the contrary, it enables us to realise self actualisation through the harmony of our ego, our senses, our conscious and subconscious mind with the environment. We should not restrict the use of the word environment to the climate and the atmosphere of the Earth.
Also refer to: Meditation and Mindfulness: http://ourworld-sunips.blogspot.com/2017/10/meditation-for-mindfulness.html
#selfawareness #empathy #mindfulness

 

BROKEN HEART

Cherish the child, man and woman in you to love, appreciate and empathise with every being around you.

I remember reading this message on the packet of QuickFix glue tube “Joins Everything Except Broken Hearts.”  Now, when I recall the message, it fills me with many questions. What can cause my heart to break? What will happen if it breaks? How will I mend it? True, these questions are direct from my mind; if my brain is dead then I am merely declared ‘brain dead’, but if my heart stops beating, then I am clinically pronounced dead. Yes, this is again from my mind, which is trying to reason out why, what, when and how my heart can metaphorically and clinically break down. My mind is my rationality with respect to the conscious and subconscious state of my mind. My heart denotes my emotions and feelings. My wisdom is to maintain a harmonious balance between the two.

When I try to answer the questions, I realise that both biological and emotional factors together affect the heart. When I am overpowered by negative emotions such as sorrow, stress, anxiety, depression, anger and resentment due to various reasons, it affects the clinical health of my heart. This, to certain extent, answers my questions of when and why heart breaks.

 

My mind does not stop here; it wants me to find out how can I know my heart is broken?  This again makes me ask myself what are the causes of negative emotions that affect me mentally and my heart’s health too? The most popular reasons I am aware of are: losing a loved one, marriage or a loving relationship that does not work out; setback in professional and personal life; when someone betrays me or breaks my trust; when I don’t achieve what I am aspiring for; when I am unable to fulfill the expectations of not only myself but also of my family, friends, colleagues, organisation or community; when my self-worth (dignity) is hurt.   When I narrate the causes to my mind then it makes me think of the biological symptoms like respiratory and gastric problem, heartburn, hypertension, high blood pressure, various heart ailments that indicate heart break and can be fatal enough to be a clinical ‘heart break’. Needless to say, strong negative emotions apart from snapping the heart strings (tendons) can also cause severe mental depression results in addiction or suicide: a heart break of its kind.

Now, my mind asks me what I should do when I suffer from an emotional heart break that can affect my health and happiness. If possible, can I avoid such heart break? This question makes me delve deep into my heart and mind and find this: I have to be true (honest) to myself, have faith in myself, believe in myself that is my true strength. This will help me see through lies, deceit, manipulation, discrimination, exploitation and aggression resulting in jealousy, resentment, sorrow, anxiety, helplessness, depression, anger and vengeance. How can I avoid negative emotions by being true to myself; in fact, what does being true to me really mean?

Being true to self is to be aware of my strengths in the form of my potential and capabilities; my fear and apprehension in the form of my weakness and dislikes (the mental blocks) that can make me biased or prejudiced that invariably affect my thoughts and decisions.  To love myself means to accept my weakness and not be ashamed of it; if I don't, then I will try to hide it giving in to negative emotions, thoughts and actions. When I am aware of my strength and weakness, then I can constantly make every effort to improve on them to meet the challenges that come my way to achieve my objectives or goals, such as to harmonise with the environment - the surroundings.

 

Believing in self (being true to self) means being aware of my potential, and accordingly should reason and develop the strategy to achieve my objective. For instance, my objective is to be happy. Then I will reason out the cause of my sorrow and use my potential to deter the cause of unhappiness. This I can achieve only when I believe in myself. If I don’t believe in myself then I deceive myself and succumb to failure.

Let me take the example of being happy. At the moment I am tired and I ask myself how can I be happy? My heart replies that a refreshing cup of tea or coffee would do.  I do not heed to the answer and fix myself a cuppa. Instead, I lie down and let negative thoughts crowd my mind only to take me farther away from being happy.

Another example is: my heart urges me for an alcoholic drink to feel happy. I give in to its wish and continued heeding to it for more drink and drink until it affects my mind and body to the extent that I fall into an intoxicated stupor. Why did this happen, when I was merely heeding to my heart’s demand?

The answer is simple I did not listen to my mind too that was trying to reason with me to the beneficial limit of the alcoholic drink. To believe in myself I have to constantly strike a balance between my mind and heart. This will prevent me from harming myself, or from getting overpowered by negativity.

Why should I believe in myself? Having faith in or believing in self is the hope that keeps me moving on to achieve my day to day objectives and even bigger objectives of life. It is hope that keeps me alive.

Let’s try to understand it through an example. I want to become an artist so that I can paint and sketch beautiful pictures and even take beautiful photographs of natural surroundings, animals, birds and people around me. I need to believe in myself so that I can fulfill my dream: My mind confers with my heart about my interest with respect to my strength and weakness (my true potential) to realise my dream of becoming an artist. When I listen to my heart and mind together, then I can devise a realistic plan and take necessary steps to develop my talent and fulfill my objective: paint and sketch beautiful pictures. 

While trying to develop my talent I may take a famous artist as my role model and his works as the standard I aspire to achieve to become an artist. This is where I again make the mistake of listening to my heart more than I do to my mind:

A role model is a person I intend to emulate and not imitate. To emulate means to imbibe his principles, his good habits and his way of developing himself and the way he addresses the challenges he faces in his life. I do not blindly copy his favourite colour, clothes, food, his handwriting, his hairstyle. Such a fallacious imitation will evidently frustrate me as I will invariably experience an identity crisis because I ignored my true self and blindly copied someone I consider to be my role model. This also means, I should not constantly compare my work of art to that of my role model, then that will make me doubt my ability to achieve my objective. Again, if I enroll into a course with this objective in mind: to become a painter as good as my role model and paint exactly like him, then the I am confirming my failure to achieve my objective through formal training too, as I have already explained it: I will constantly compare my ability with that of the famous painter: my role model. I begin to ignore my true potential, work on them to develop my talent. This results in frustration and self doubt. I become sensitive to explicit and implicit remarks and comments of my friends, family and the community and that reinforces self doubt and slackens my effort in achieving my aspiration. Therefore, I should emulate the qualities of the people I admire, I should not imitate them. I again miss out on striking a balance between my heart and mind. Unfortunately, self doubt evokes negative emotions of frustration and I miss out on rationally striking a balance between my heart and mind and develop my unique potential with or without professional help. I miss out in believing in myself.

Then the need of the hour is to strike the balance through proper introspection or reflection that I can achieve through mindful meditation to effectively strike a balance between my heart and mind. The objective of mindful meditation and introspection is to regain dignity-self worth (self confidence), while valuing and respecting all that is around me.

Let’s try to understand it with the help of an example: My parents want me to become a doctor, they constantly remind me of the tacit commitment I have made to them to become a doctor. I give in to their wish; or I want to become a chartered accountant because it is a lucrative profession, I ignore the fact, I may not have the aptitude to be a chartered accountant and I may not be interested in becoming a doctor as my parents desire me to. My heart tells me that I have the potential to become a Teacher Learner, but I ignore it. I reason out ways and means, both fair and unfair, such as bribing or intimidating the authorities to get necessary academic scores or marks to become a doctor, if I have acceded to my parents wish or to become a chartered accountant that my heart desires and ignore my mind’s reminder of my true potential. Have I really achieved the objective? Have I been true to myself? Have I really believed in myself to realise my parents’ or my dreams? What will happen then?

In fact, I have succumbed to negativity at the very instance of trying to ignore and falsify my potential. I will give in to negative attitude. I will become arrogant to defy the truth. I will try to avoid any introspection to address the cause of my sorrow and frustration. I will get into a vicious circle of being attentive to the failures and misgivings of other people in order to ignore and cover up my own weakness. I will indulge in gossip, libel, discrimination and even give in to aggression and vengeance to hide from my own truth. Intense negativity will take its toll on my health and above all, on my heart and mind. The cause of all this is anyone’s guess, I refused to trust myself, love myself, believe in myself and have faith in myself. The resultant negativity can also make me a timid and submissive person without a mind of my own, when I constantly give in to undue expectations my parents, well wishers and invariably I will set skewed expectation from myself. I fail to be assertive enough to reason with self and my well wishers. I avoid being a skeptic rationalist and helplessly give in to blind faith: I give in to the "herd instinct".

I cannot ignore the fact: “hurt people, hurt people”. When there is negative emotion in me, I will share negative thoughts and emotions with those around me. I become a victim of my own negative emotions and I display it through my negative thoughts and actions. 

Let’s take a simple and mundane example: I go to a public place where I have to remove my hat before entering the premises. When I return to the place I had kept my hat, I find someone has stolen it. Instead of informing the administration of my loss, I wear someone else’s hat on my way out. When I discuss this with my family and friends, I do it with an implicit expectation that they will endorse my action, which people often do by sharing their similar experience and unknowingly transforming such act into an unwarranted norm.

In the future, if I revisit the place and remove my hat only to find it has been nipped yet again, and I this time I report the incidence to the administration. They may assure me of corrective action. When I share the experience yet again with my peer group and friends, the same people who had validated my action of taking someone else’s hat and not reporting the incidence to the authority will ask me, why I did not use my ‘common sense’ and wear someone else hat. This will make me question my belief (in my integrity) and invariably shake up my self confidence.

My mind says, survival is more important than integrity. My heart responds integrity(humanity) is the very basis of my survival. Constant subtle and severe backlashes of this kind will affect the balance of my heart and mind resulting in negative impact on my emotional and clinical health...

 Now, my heart and mind together ask me, it is easy to deceive self than to be true to self. Why is it so? 

They want me to explain it:

When I am exposed to gossip, slander, aggression, vengeance, discrimination, rejection, animosity, deception, connivance, derogatory practical jokes, black humour, negative competition, when social validation is more important than to be true to self (Believe in self). 

I reiterate, ‘hurt people hurt people’. To be true to self, love self, and believe in self and have faith in self culminates into my dignity in the form of deep sense of self respect, self worth, and this result in the courage to be compassionate. To be able to understand the person’s hurt that has caused him/her to hurt me and respond to him/her accordingly instead of reacting negatively to their negative action. Such response is a sign of wise use of mind and heart. It’s easy to become vengeful and retaliate when hurt, but it takes real courage to comprehend the hurt caused by a hurt person. The ability to be compassionate is a mark of true faith in self.  

Negative intentions in the form of thoughts transform into action can be negative and I am responsible for them. My ability to take responsibility of my thoughts and actions is the basis of my integrity and self respect.

My heart and mind are not satisfied with my response, they want me to explain how I can overcome the continuous onslaught of negative emotions that may distort my perception affecting my dignity and self confidence, causing stress and anxiety the precursor of both emotional and clinical heart break?

 My instinctive response to the question is, if I am true to myself, then I will respect my personal space and also that of those I interact with. I will give time to myself to relax both physically and mentally through reflection in the form of prayer, meditation, yoga, physical exercise, creative pursuits: pursuing in leisure my hobbies using my creative abilities to transform my negative emotions like sorrow, anger, resentment in creating a aesthetically beautiful art, craft or a delicious dish. I may tend to the plants in the garden; spend time with children, elderly and animals. In this way, I am able to take care of my emotional and physical well being. I pursue only the creative activities I like and not indulge in activities with the intention of gaining social recognition or social validation. Often people decide to go to the gym to gain community/social recognition or social validation. 

There are people who vacation in specific tourist places that have been endorsed or recommended by their friends or by the professional circle or social community they are striving to establish themselves in. Such actions only prevent them from being true to themselves and genuinely enjoy and are truly happy and relaxed during the vacation without being self conscious. When I am true to myself, I value my individuality and that does not make feel lonely, value myself enough to value my surroundings and the environment within and without.

I reiterate, the need for self development is not to feel emotionally weak- to need someone's shoulder to lean on. Self development is to improve my emotional intelligence and my ability to emapthise.

 My mind laughs at my heart and says, ‘without me, you cannot identify sorrow and anger, you cannot control your anger from becoming self and object destructive. Are you aware of it? I scratch my head as I really wonder what will be heart's reply.

It gently put a smile on my lips and I hear it reply, “the sorrow melts into tears and wells out of the eyes. It is always better to cry and lighten the weight of fear, sorrow and resentment to weigh down the heart and transform into destructive anger. True, I do feel much better when I cry away my sorrow. My mind echoes the smile and says, “I cherish the positive sense of humour that does not belittle or hurt anyone's heart. It is a universal truth, if I hurt anyone, I hurt myself. Therefore, I am true to myself, love myself, believe in myself and have faith in myself, and all this I am able to do with you, heart. You help me to avoid emotional or clinical heart break.”

 

References:

Meditation for Mindfulness:

 http://ourworld-sunips.blogspot.in/2017/10/meditation-for-mindfulness.html

Selfie Mode of Self Development:

http://sunipslearning.blogspot.in/2016/11/the-selfie-mode.html

Acknowledgement:

Picture Source: Google Images