Tough Times are the Best Times

We live in daunting times to those involved in the blood bath of the financial markets. This must be an impossible time. What are the mantras that can help us keep our equanimity in tough times?

I believe that tough times are the best times. The lack of resources forces us to innovate and come up with solutions that are optimally suited to our times. Tough times are good for the planet – there is less waste and more of the 3Rs –reduce, repair and recycle. These are times when you think about refusing things you don’t really need. And realize how much excess baggage you have been carrying. This is a time to reduce clutter of all kinds in your life and bring it to a Zen like perfection.

‘Tough times don’t last, but tough people do,’ said a wag. So this is time for tough love. Get everyone to adapt by processing on improving their skills, instead of complaining. Here are some actions for the tough times.

Action Plan to create a healing home

       

 •            Your home reflects how you are, and how well you are taking care of yourself.

•             Learn how to make mess and clutter disappear for good

•             Steadily raise the level of beauty in your home

•             Fill your home with a growing sense of ease and happiness.  Be nicer to yourself, your family and every day

•             Get what you want at home, more easily than you ever dared to hope!

•             Engage fully in life with love and kindness and you cannot go wrong.

•             Simple kindness to oneself and all that lives, is the most powerful transformational force of all.

•             Practice being kind to yourself. And go put fresh sheets on your bed.

A Healthy and Happy Home

A healthy home should be a healing space, a nurturing positive mind field. It can be a place where all wounds are healed. Alvin Toffler wrote ‘The family is the giant shock absorber of the family to which the bruised and battered individual returns after doing battle with the world!’ If your home is not a sanctuary but a battle-field do something about it. Get help, maybe professional help. Reserve time for laughter and happiness—schedule time for it, like you do for your work.

Have a rule to avoid difficult topics during meal times or bed time. Music, if is soothing, can be a powerful force for peace. The very walls absorb the vibrations of the music. Mantras can do the same for your home. I sometimes feel that if music can be infused into the mindspace so that it plays quietly in your mind, as the background to your day, it can have a really soothing affect. Avoid violent, depressing programmes. Just as you would not allow a terrorist into your home, do not allow such movies into the sacred space of your home. You surely are the protector of the field that exists in your home. Make your home fragrant with incense. Clean and sparkling and beautiful. Respectful of the sacred forces that can animate your home.

Be Compassionate to all

The key to developing compassion in your life is to make it a daily practice. Compassion is an emotion that is a sense of shared suffering, most often combined with a desire to alleviate or reduce the suffering of another.  The main benefit is that it helps you to be more happy, and brings others around you to be more happy. If we agree that it is a common aim of each of us to strive to be happy, then compassion is one of the main tools for achieving that happiness. It is therefore of utmost importance that we cultivate compassion in our lives and practice compassion every day. The first step in cultivating compassion is to develop empathy for your fellow human beings. Instead of recognizing the differences between yourself and others, try to recognize what you have in common. Practice the act of kindness practice. Even a smile, or a kind word, or doing an errand or chore, or just talking about a problem with another person. Practice doing something kind to help ease the suffering of others. When you are good at this, find a way to make it a daily practice, and eventually a throughout-the-day practice.

 These compassionate practices can be done anywhere, any time. At work, at home, on the road, while traveling, while at a store, while at the home of a friend or family member. 

Follow The Rules of Dharma

Hinduism describes dharma as the natural universal laws whose observance enables humans to be contented and happy, and to save him from degradation and suffering. ‘You can fool everybody, but you cannot fool yourself. Not even for a single minute. Doing your dharma as you understand it, alone can make you happy.

In order to achieve good karma it is important to live life according to dharma, what is right. This involves doing what is right for the individual, the family and also for the universe itself. Dharma is like a cosmic norm and if one goes against the norm it can result in bad karma. So, dharma affects the future according to the karma accumulated.

Anything that helps human being to reach god is dharma. The purpose of dharma is not only to attain a union of the soul with the supreme reality, it also suggests a code of conduct that is intended to secure both worldly joys and supreme happiness. The practice of dharma gives an experience of peace, joy, strength and tranquility within one's self and makes life disciplined.

Be Happy and Enjoy

Happiness is our birth right and responsibility. we can take proactive steps to welcome it into our lives. Celebrate the positive in all interactions. Rest assured that God did not create you for the sole purpose of correcting others or making them unhappy.  “It is isolation that causes crimes to happen”, says, a senior police official. Get grandparents to volunteer and mentor to share knowledge or teach football and chess. Let them create a ring of protection as they watch the street to keep it safe for kids to play. Let the grandmother teach young women to work and teach girls how to draw kolams.

It is up to each family to celebrate, to enjoy life on a regular basis. Maybe every day, with super celebrations on the weekend, like teenage kids do. A special movie on television can be celebrated with popcorn. One can dress up for dinner on Saturday night at home.

Work with love

People can be very happy if they love their work. To work at something you love, is to be “self-actualised”, in Maslow’s terms. This will ensure you die young when you are a100 years old. Serve others. Look at your profession as a means to serve and make others happy. Make a living causing the least amount of pain to living creatures. Eliminate mad deadlines. Ensure freedom to be self-dependent, take own decisions, be innovative. Believe in hi-touch along with hi-tech.

You can choose to enjoy any work. It is your choice to be happy at work.

·         Plan a happiness break at work

·         Create a route map of progress at work

·         Develop a network of caring

·         Make friends to enjoy, support, caring and sharing

·         If nothing works look for another job