The gratefulness for 2013

Today, in the last day of 2013, I look back at the year that seems to have passed at the speed of light. The first word that comes to my mind is gratefulness.

I’d like to thank to all the wonderful people who have inspired me to keep on writing on my blog. Your emails, comments and post likes fuelled my mental energy and creativity during days when I mostly needed them.

Having a healthy body and mind is of outmost importance for a happy life and this year has offered a few experiences which proved just that! So, cheers to a healthy life!

I’d like to express gratitude for the dear ones in my life. More than in the previous years, I have lived through frustrations and disappointments in close relationships. Despite the temporary emotional pain, in the end, I have felt how my love for them helped to become a better person, with broader view on the mystery of life.

I feel thankful for carrying in me a new life and for experiencing for the second time how a tiny fetus grows inside. The second pregnancy reminded that maternal love and sacrifice go hand in hand.

In the last day of 2013, it is time to stop for a while, contemplate on our experiences over the year and look with confidence, positive thinking and excitement towards the new year! To many new life experiences that will make us feel closer to God or the Life Source from where we all come!

Let’s start 2014 with love!

 

How about you? What thoughts of gratefulness do you have today?

Report on two weeks of trying a complaint-free life

I think I liked complaining for the sake of it until some months ago when I felt I don’t like myself when I complain. After struggling to avoid complaining for two weeks, I concluded that after all, complaining is not harmful as long as you are careful how you complain and as long as you do something about the subject of complaint. In addition, if you feel the need to complain about something you can’t change, then take a deep look inside yourself and see what you can change there.  

Complaining, the statement that you are unhappy or not satisfied with something, is deeply rooted in every human being. Jane Wagner, American writer, director and producer, said “I personally believe we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain.”

For a while, I had been noticing that I complain so many times a day about other people or daily minutiae that it started to bother me. I realised it didn’t help me in any way, not even to let some steam off. On the contrary, I felt even more negativity in me after expressing the reasons that brought dissatisfaction.

In mid-November, I happened to read a call on joining the initiative coming from author and radical career change coach Farnoosh Brock. She invited everyone who reads her blog to pledge to spend a complaint-free November.

I instantly loved the challenge, which seemed like the perfect orchestration of the Universe (through Farnoosh) to make me experience how my inner life be without complaining. Therefore, I enthusiastically joined the community of approximately 300 people who pledged to avoid complaining for the whole November! Except that I got an easier job than the rest by joining the common effort when half of the month had passed already.

The rules of the challenge were:

“1. No getting mad or frustrated or annoyed with YOURSELF.

2. No gripping at your pet, children, spouse, friends, parents, strangers.

3.No judging others even if they are incompetent or at fault.

4.No expressing displeasure about the weather.

5.No getting annoyed about the news.

6.No agreeing to another person’s complaint. That’s like being accessory to complaining.

7.No fussing about electronics or wifi or online apps misbehaving.

8.No feeling sorry for yourself or swearing even if you stub your toe or jam your finger.
9.No complaining about your work, the stupid co-workers or the horrid boss.

10.No criticizing anything, anywhere, anytime, in any capacity.” 

After publicly declaring on Farnoosh’s blog that I accept the rules, the personal awareness about what I am feeling, thinking and saying increased. In the first two days, whenever I detected the urge to speak out any criticism, I swallowed the words and remained silent. The third day, I broke the commitment by pointing fingers about how bad drivers some people can be.

As days passed by, there was a small change in the well-rooted need to complain. I did manage to avoid speaking about what made me unhappy to friends and acquaintances. If someone complained, I would either be quiet or emphasise the positive aspect.

The one who got to hear about all the things that made me unhappy was my husband. But there was a tiny bit of change even in the discussions with him. The tiny bit of change was based on changing first how I look upon the life situations which normally make me angry and irritated.

For example, one grey afternoon, busy bus travellers kept passing by while I was trying to get off the bus too. My son was crying and fighting to escape from my grip. With the other hand, I was pulling the pram loaded with bags. Despite the noise coming from my direction and the space I was taking, fellow passengers seemed not to notice that I was there as well, waiting for someone to let me pass.

One man stepped on my foot while he forced his way out of the bus. Another man hit me with his big shoulder bag, which made me lose my balance. Without apologising, he jumped off. Needless to say that I was the last one to get off the bus. I was on the verge of anger, about to shout, “What’s wrong with you people?”.

Then, I remembered my pledge to avoid complaining. I took deep breaths thinking, “They were complete assholes but I can’t teach them manners by shouting at them”. I made it for home feeling grateful that we made it safely out of the bus crowded with ignorant people.

I started thinking about the two men who in my opinion behaved rudely. What kind of life they might have – are they single, are they happy with their job, are they mentally stable, how were their parents showing the love for them, etc?

When I met my husband and told him how my day had been, I preferred to skip the negatively charged story and simply state to him that “The bus was full and it was difficult to get off the bus because no one helped me.”

There were other life situations in the last week of November when I couldn’t help complaining. I couldn’t lift up to the promise I had made on Farnoosh’s blog. Yet, I did experience moments when I refrained from complaining about things I can’t change. And I also enjoyed the feeling of peace that followed.

Actually, I find this experiment so useful for personal happiness that I want to turn it into a habit of carefully scrutinising how I complain, about what and what actions I take after complaining.

Summing up, here is a list of positive changes that I started experiencing during two weeks of attempt to refrain from complaining:

  1. Awareness – I detected thoughts of complaint and the emotions behind those thoughts. With every thought of dissatisfaction, bitterness spread in my heart and got hungry for more things to complain about. Becoming aware of this vicious cycle, I managed to stop it in its early stage. Instead, I redirected my thoughts to something more positive that was happening around me.
  2. Expectations – complaints are based on expectations, such as expectations about how people should behave or how the day should progress. Therefore, I started paying more attention to my expectations. I wondered why I have such expectations. I was fascinated to feel that I had opened a door to a secret world inside myself where dreams, desires, and fears live. Inquiring into those feelings is an opportunity to self-discovery.
  3. Create space for creativity – instead of spending time on negative emotions raised by useless complaints, I focused on how to take care of the daily to-do list in a more efficient and pleasant manner. For example, while at playground with my toddler, one of the parents behaved unfriendly with my little man. After getting angry for a few seconds, I chose to think of other fun activities I could do with him at the playground.
  4. Just go ahead with the complaint – last but not least, I indulged myself in complaining when it’s about things that matter the most, such as aspects of the relationships with the dear ones. The trick is to let the complaint out of my system, and then come with solutions. As a matter of fact, researchers in psychology explain that the problem is not the act of complaining but how we can efficiently express our frustrations and anger. Irrespective if we complain about big or minor stuff, if we complain just for venting thoughts and not for actually finding a solution, we can be affected emotionally, physically and mentally.

Now, about you, what is it that you are complaining about? Do you feel that complaining helps you? If yes, can you please describe how does it help you?

The Importance Of Teaching My Child About The Two Sides Of Comparing Yourself To Others

Comparing yourself to others is a pest. I’ve been fighting it for more than ten years. “Make the best out of who you are!”, I used to tell to myself. Yet, my mind kept on assessing the life of other women. Before I could be able to stop assessing, I found myself sad or even depressed that other women are much better in every single aspect of their lives or physically more appealing. In 2008, during one of my meditations, something miraculous happened to me. I started crying and my soul was overwhelmed with kindness as if I had been embraced by the divine grace. Happiness and self-content stepped into my life. After that moment, this automatic mental assessment still happened but I was able to stop it and replace it with the thought, “Each person is different.”

I was able to control my tendency to compare myself to others until the day I became a mother. My mind became more fragile than before. Comparing myself to other mothers became daily routine. I felt I did nothing right – my baby hardly touched the food, he did not sleep for an entire night. Other mothers seemed to have everything under control. I desperately started talking with my mother-in-law who very wisely pointed out to me that my baby has me as his mother and whatever I do, that is the best thing for him.

We are all wired to compare ourselves to others. Some of us enjoy measuring their results against other person’s results. And there are others whose benchmark is themselves one year ago or five years ago (http://tinybuddha.com/blog/stop-comparing-yourself-to-others/). Even for the latter group of individuals, comparison with others is a mental mechanism which has been built in us ever since the beginning of human kind and it springs from the competition between individuals.

Parents raise their children in the spirit of competition (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-creative-imperative/201108/killing-yourself-comparison). When you hear your parent bragging, “My kid is the best in class.”, you grow up fighting to stay on top. Or when you keep on hearing the disappointment of your parent, “Why can’t you get an A as Julie does?”, your self-esteem becomes flimsy.

Now when I am a mother myself, I have a double challenge: to stop comparing myself to other mothers and to raise my baby in the “find inspiration around you” spirit. Comparison may not be entirely erased since it’s so well printed in our genes. However, I do believe that it can be turned into the positive habit of getting inspired by the persons with whom we interact. This is what I want to teach my baby – to look for inspiration around him.

Staying on the negative side of comparing ourselves means living under the rule of jealousy, envy and anxiety. They can stifle all the creativity, like the creativity which comes from hearing stories of success. I am talking about stories which are not making headlines. They are stories of people very close to us – of our childhood friend, our room mate or why not, our grandmother. We have so many lessons of life to learn from one another, though we need to be careful to be authentic and not to imitate. For example, I find inspiring Michael Nobb’s story about how he stopped trying to follow in the footsteps of the artists he admired (http://www.sustainablycreative.com/dont-compare-yourself-to-others-just-get-on-with-your-important-work/).

Parents want the best for their children, they want their children to be happy and successful in life. If comparison has negative effects on our inner lives, why do parents raise their kids in a competitive/comparison state of mind in our modern society? Are the end results more important than the state of mind of our children?

The main culprit I could come up with is the educational system. I remember the feeling of victory when I used to get an A. There were only two or three other classmates who took the same grade. The rest were others who were not as good as us. The performance measured in grades resulted into an automatic comparison between myself and the others. Later on, when I competed for the study right at the university, it turned out that the grades from the previous years were one of the criteria for admittance. I can only conclude that the design of the educational system supports the negative side of comparison with others. How can I help my child not get brainwashed by this kind of performance measurement of pupils/students?

Focusing on your talents and desires is a possible mission in life. We come into this world endowed with one or more talents and it would be a shame not exploiting them. The subjective experience of cultivating your talents is more important than the objective measurement of the results. In addition, if we can learn the lesson of cooperation, we may reach amazing results – both subjective and objective. Cooperating on projects of similar interests is the best way to personal and professional development. Great ideas come from talking and working with people. If you find your true calling, you’ll find your place in the competitive society more naturally.

Last but not least, I’ll be talking to my child about the importance of being humble, which is the prerequisite for staying on the positive side of comparison with others. At the end of this life, we are all going to die. The least we can do is to make it our own way through life.