Bless everyone (from the heart) who criticises you, or hurts you in the biggest form.
If they are being they, what stops you from being you?
Tag: blessings
Last weekend, I was having a casual chat with a writer friend.
After exchanging pleasantries, I thanked him for helping me bag a wonderful client, to which he responded, “Thanks to YOU, it’s your hard work.” And thus, we continued being humble.
As the conversation proceeded, he told me he had also applied for a writing engagement, which was finally bagged by me.
Those words of him just moved me. Here I was, getting envious of the number of clients and interesting assignments he has, and here he was, perhaps having the same emotion as me.
Too often, we take the most important things in life for granted.
The work that brings food on our plate.
The parents (no matter how weird they are) that make us fight for our existence 🙂
The friends who make us realise we aren’t alone.
The colleagues and clients who understand us when we had expected to be fired.
And most importantly, counting the endless blessings in our life when the Life we have today was the life we had dreamt of years ago.
How will we get more and be more if we aren’t grateful for what we have already been blessed with?
Thank you, my dear friend, your humility was always an inspiration for me. Now you are an inspiration to be grateful for my blessings. You rock! Like always 🙂
Yesterday my father turned 66. While his life has innumerable lessons, here are some that inspire me today:
1. Picked up exercise during lockdown. Still continues it for an hour daily.
2. Loves to go to his work daily. A trait missing in a lot of millennials.
3. Is always there to listen to my problems, without judgement. Ever.
4. Will give up anything but never honesty. That, in turn, brings him tons of blessings.
5. Most importantly, understands the space I am in. Thus, never forces me or even brings up the topic of marriage. Being a boomer and raised by parents who witnessed WW2 and partition of the country, this mindset shift from him is the best gift he could give to me.
Here’s a closing note: Him and I have different points of view on almost everything. Yet, you will miss your father when he is gone. Love him despite the differences. No one would love you like him, and this comes from someone who is the biggest rebel to her father. 🤗
The most important person in a relationship is You.
We build trust by doing what we do for them when they are not around. That builds respect.
Respect is what we do for them when what they do is not what we want to do, yet we do it because we love and respect them.
Read the above line twice. It is important because this is why most relationships falter.
The role of your work is to make someone else’s work easier.
If your work is built on letting others make their efforts, have we really made some good efforts?
Make an effort to reduce someone else’s efforts and their ease will serve as a blessing for you.
Some of the things we all must be grateful for, especially in these times:
1. That we have salt to add in our food.
2. We can call our parents and tell them “I love you.”
3. You are aware enough to be indoors, and not being stubborn and behaving like nothing has happened.
4. You have a peaceful night sleep.
5. There are doctors who work with patients who are infected, and still continue to serve.
6. Sun is rising daily.
7. You have a roof over your head.
8. You have a blanket.
9. Oxygen isn’t contaminated.
10. The selfless spirit of delivery boys, trash pickers, house maids, car cleaners, vegetables and fruit vendors, public transport drivers, etc., is way beyond we could ever imagine. Huge gratitude to them, for working when their families also want them to be home.
These are small, and hugely important things. If we would miss out on any of these, life would become very difficult or perhaps impossible in some cases.
Spend your free (and busy) time being grateful.
You want to be like no one else.
On the top.
To be someone who is revered by others.
Do this then: Think about people before thinking about your own selfish interests.
Why, you may think.
Because, the best way to a great life to live beyond your capacity is to have a great stock of blessings.
So few people provide blessings for anything bad inflicted by us to them.
How can we wrap up 2019 without sharing the wonderful life lessons this year brought along? Here we go, hope you enjoy reading them, as much as I did, writing:
- If you sit and eat (without phone), and chew well, your quantity of food reduces to less than half.
- Walk up to random people you see daily (in the gym, in your workspace, in the park) and give them a word of appreciation. You don’t know how what problem they might be going through.
- Everything you enjoy and every single person you enjoy with are going to come to an end. This is not negativity, rather a reason, to be internally fulfilled.
- Working out with a personal trainer will give you rewards no self-gymming could give. You will learn the specifics of working with a pro only when you treat your body like a pro-temple, to run your life.
- Listen to the stories people tell, even if you aren’t interested. You giving away your five or fifteen minutes may reduce their burden they’ve been carrying for perhaps fifteen years.
- Badmouthing never helps. No matter how truthful it is.
- Your parents don’t post an IG story on your birthday. Most likely, they aren’t even there on Instagram. Yet no one loves you like they do. Don’t equate social media validation with love.
- The sure shot way to failure is to mimic influencers, versus learning from them.
- There are going to be times when you’re going to lose faith in some relationships that matter the most to you. In such times, just remember: “your heart is a place for God to reside in. How can God’s home hold dirt against someone whom you love so much?” When you start operating from this consciousness, you automatically start having empathy for that loved one versus expecting them to have sympathy for you.
- You always know the answer in your heart. Be clear and polite enough to say a no when you don’t mean otherwise.
- When you push yourself, you get results you thought were out of reach. In the start of the year I forced myself to think I don’t have time for 10K steps a day, and guess what, didn’t achieve that target on most days. In December 2019 when I started getting serious about taking in at least 10K steps, it somehow started happening automatically. Daily!
- It’s okay to fail. At least you weren’t focused on checking in what others were doing wrong.
- “Speak your truth, even when your voice shakes,” says Robin Sharma. 200% true.
- If your intentions are pure, you can melt stones to water. Intentions are the real power.
- You are always meditating. Even when you’re thinking “nothing good happens with me, I’m no good, why am I being treated like this, etc.,” those are also the times you are reiterating a pattern to yourself. What gets repeated, gets reprogrammed.
- Content creation is the king. I never felt this way ever before than 2019, and when you are strategic in creating contextual content and distributing it, your brand grows 100X over a period of time you won’t even realise. (PS: Even if you are in a job with no intentions of getting famous, having a brand presence for yourself is like the swoosh of Nike – the brand itself gets everything else done.)
- Your parents love you, even if their words say otherwise. Tell them, you do them, too.
- If you have the ability to enjoy a family lunch without bringing in the phone, you are one of the richest people on the planet.
- Don’t think your problems are too hard. Everyone else’s problems are hard as well. Learn to dance with them versus via them.
- Working on yourself, and being the “lit” lighthouse, lights up 100s of people. People are already carrying a storehouse of dull lull with them. If your presence lights people up even for the three second stride on the corridor, you are creating miracles beyond trillions!
Those were some of mine, easy yet the ones that will make 2020 better.
Want to know some of the business and career lessons 2019 brought along? Check them out here.
Before you forward Diwali messages today, just remember to do one thing: sit back for a moment to actually bless all those people whom you are sending those messages to.
It would light them up more!
Happy Diwali! 😃🌈