Learning to Walk Away

Learning to walk away from people who hurt you, judge you, or underestimate you is a sign of maturity and strength

www.HealingMB.net

Forget the Hurt not the Lesson

Forget what hurt you
but never forget
what it taught you

Good Exercise for Heart

A Good Exercise for Heart is to 

Bend Down and Help another Up

अच्छे मित्रों का साथ

जाड्यं धियो हरति सिंचति वाचि सत्यं,

मानोन्नतिं दिशति पापमपाकरोति |

चेतः प्रसादयति दिक्षु तनोति कीर्तिं,

सत्संगतिः कथय किं न करोति पुंसाम् ||

अच्छे मित्रों का साथ बुद्धि की जड़ता को हर लेता है, वाणी में सत्य का संचार करता है, मान और उन्नति को बढ़ाता है और पाप से मुक्त करता है | चित्त को प्रसन्न करता है और (हमारी) कीर्ति को सभी दिशाओं में फैलाता है | (आप ही) कहें कि सत्संगति मनुष्यों का कौन सा भला नहीं करती |

कबीर संगी साधु का

कबीर संगी साधु का, दल आया भरपूर।

इंद्रिन को तब बाँधिया, या तन कीया घूर॥

कबीर कहते हैं, जब मन में दया, क्षमा, त्याग, सत्य-ज्ञान आदि गुणों की उत्पत्ति होती है और मोह-आसक्ति आदि विकारों का नाश होता है तो सभी इंद्रियाँ स्वतः वश में आ जाती हैं और यह शरीर हमारे इशारों पर चलने लगता है।

कबीर

Inner Guru & Mentors

Remember you are the true Guru of yourself. You are therefore always with Guru - your Soul. However at various stages you meet Mentors. Mentors are like lighthouse who support navigation in a journey called Life. But it is the innocence, vision, and purity of yourself (Inner Guru) determine the degree of success you can achieve.

Vishwas Chavan

कर्तव्य का पालन ही धर्म है

बलवानप्यशक्तोऽसौ धनवानपि निर्धनः |

श्रुतवानपि मूर्खोऽसौ यो धर्मविमुखो जनः ||

जो व्यक्ति धर्म (कर्तव्य) से विमुख होता है वह (व्यक्ति) बलवान् हो कर भी असमर्थ, धनवान् हो कर भी निर्धन तथा ज्ञानी हो कर भी मूर्ख होता है |

प्रेम बिना भक्ति निरर्थक

प्रेम बिना जो भक्ति है, सो निज दंभ विचार।

उदर भरन के कारन, जन्म गँवाए सार॥

प्रेम के बिना की गई भक्ति पाखंड के सिवा कुछ नहीं है। यह तो पेट भरने के लिए की गई स्वार्थपरक भक्ति है, जो जीवन को सारहीन करने के समान है।

कबीर

Don't be Afraid of Change

Don't be afraid of change. You may end up losing something good, but you will probably end up gaining something better.

HealingMB.net

Do Stuff

Do Stuff.
Be clecnched, curious. 
Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead.
Pay Attention. It's all about paying attention. It makes you Eager.
Stay Eager

Susan Sontag

@wordables

Accept Pain and Difficult Emotions

Accepting pain and difficult emotions is more beneficial to our mental health than try to resist them,

Check HealingMB.net for inspiration.

पुरुषार्थ के बिना भाग्य सिद्ध नहीं होता

यथा ह्येकेन चक्रेण न रथस्य गतिर्भवेत् |

एवं परुषकारेण विना दैवं न सिद्ध्यति ||

जैसे एक पहिये से रथ नहीं चल सकता है उसी प्रकार बिना पुरुषार्थ के भाग्य सिद्ध नहीं हो सकता है |

कबीर आप ठगाइए

कबीर आप ठगाइए, और न ठगिए कोय।

आप ठगे सुख ऊपजै, और ठगे दुख होय॥

कबीर कहते हैं कि आप स्वयं ठग जाएँ तो कोई अहित नहीं, लेकिन औरों को न ठगें। भविष्य में इससे आपको सुख मिलेगा; लेकिन औरों को ठगने पर आपको इसके गंभीर परिणाम भुगतने के लिए तैयार रहना चाहिए।

प्रतिष्ठा

Power of One

Power of Mind

What you think, you become

What you feel, you attract

What you imagine, you create

Buddha

Potential

Your Friends will Believe in your Potential

Your Enemies will make you live up to it

Tim Fargo

Separate the Man from Teachings

आलस छोडो, परिश्रम करो

सहज समाधि का उपाय

Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin - Book Review

Talent is Overrated

Geoff Colvin

Notable ideas of the Book

Geoff Colvin, in this book, describes how crucial great performance in today’s fast paced world. It is important to know how improve our skills in the smartest way possible. And the first step needed is to let go of the belief that greatness is something people are born with.

As opposed to popular belief, extraordinary achievements are not alone determined by inborn abilities or experiences.

Just because we spent our waking hours doing a particular job, doesn’t mean we necessarily excel at it.

Research shows that, experience doesn’t always mean improvement; on the contrary, it can worsen the performance too. A highly experienced person doesn’t work any better than a relatively less experienced one.

In many fields, the correlation between intelligence and performance is weak or nonexistent, as per Geoff.

But the question arises, who is an ‘intelligent’ person? A popular method of measuring general intelligence is the IQ test. It is widely believed that, the more the IQ, the higher are the chances of success in life. One reason for this could be that as complexity of tasks increase, the IQ also increases.

But, IQ doesn’t define success either. In chess, the grandmasters often have less than average IQ. Most great innovators, before their breakthroughs spent years in rigorous preparation.

It is a popular belief that most of the geniuses made their breakthrough moments after having sudden stroke of creativity. However, it is not true. These breakthroughs don’t come this naturally; they come to those who are already the master of their fields. To produce noteworthy innovations, one requires intension immersion in a field over a period of time.

Practicing is one way of achieving world class performance. The link between practicing and improved performance is very strong. And it is only not about practice, but deliberate practice which is done especially to improve performance.

Deliberate practice means identifying specific parts of performance that need improvement and then focusing on those areas, and getting constant feedbacks about how to better them. Deliberate practice often makes some acrobats or ballerinas to look like super humans with their extraordinary performances to us. They indeed are great performers, but what makes them greater is the deliberate practice.

Deliberate practice makes one different in many ways. For once, it helps one to perceive relevant details in the field of their expertise. It also helps them to absorb and remember more knowledge about their field.

Deliberate practice not only improves our mental skills, but also they make us physically more competent.  It can drastically alter us physically.

Starting deliberate practice from a young age is very useful. It has several advantages. Firstly, children and adolescents are free from responsibility of adulthood. This way they can concentrate more on practicing.

Secondly, starting early in many cases, offers advantage of support from family. Families help in providing and stimulating an environment which is very important for improving and achieving.

Lastly, as we grow up our mental faculties slow down. As we grow old, it takes more time to understand and solve problems as compared to when we’re young.

Motivation and passion are chief forces which stimulate one to practice deliberately. To understand their origin, we examine a mechanism by the name of multiplier effect. The idea is that a small initiative advantage in some field will multiply that advantage more.

The multiplier effect explains how being better at something can provide sufficient motivation to practice and improve more, thus, multiplying that advantage.

Though strong motivation is important, it is not an inborn trait. Most of us have to be pushed in that direction. Many times lessons which are forced upon children end up becoming their achievements.

To be a great performer, first we need to know exactly what our goals are and second, we need to know what skills we actually need to improve and achieve these goals. Deliberate practice is a great tool to achieve success, given one knows how to practice and benefit from feedback of others.

Ruchika Verma

If you like these ideas you ought to read the interesting book which you can purchase from Amazon

Push your Boundaries

Pure Heart is the Best Mirror

Protect Your Space & Energy

Build the Brain you Want

After watching this, your Brain will not be the same

Lara Boyd

Lara Boyd discusses growing research regarding neuroplasticity and the implication of it for stimulating learning.

How we Learn?

Why some learn easily as compared to others

What we know about brain is changing at a rapid rate

Misconceptions

Brain cannot change after puberty

You use only part of brain – in fact most of the brain is always active even when you are relaxing and doing nothing

Neuroplasticity is a significant discovery of recent times

Changes in the brain are happening all the time

Brain can change in three ways to stimulate learning

1.  Chemical: Chemical signals called neuron signify brain activity. Concentration of these chemicals can increase to stimulate learning. It improves short term memory

2.  Altering the Physical Structure: Changing physical structure is a slow process. It improves long term memory.

3.  Altering its Functions: As you use more a particular region of the brain, it becomes excitable or activated making it easier to use again

 What is that limits or facilitates neuroplasticity

Your Behavior is the primary driver of neuroplasticity. Therefore all the limitations arise from it. You can remove these by changing your behavior.

Neuroplasticity needs constant practice of new behavior to make the change permanent or long lasting.

Neuroplasticity can be positive or negative. Addiction to drugs or alcohol can bring about harmful changes in the brain. It can be corrected by persistent change in the behavior.

There is no recipe for quick learning. There are individual differences. Some quickly learn Mathematics; others may be proficient in languages. Some pick up sports easily while others may master various musical instruments quickly.

The common belief that 10,000 hours are needed to master a skill is not quite true. Some may need considerably less while others may need much more.

Studying the individual variations has led to growth of personalized medicines and personalized therapies.

Study how and what you learn best. Repeat those behaviors.

Break those habits that hamper learning in your case.

Go out, build the brain you want.

Escaping Prison of Mind

Set Priorities for Your Goals

True Prayer

साधुओं के लक्षण

सच्चे ज्ञानी की पहचान

Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning - Viktor E. Frankl - Book Review

Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning

Viktor E. Frankl

About the Book

Viktor E. Frankl, in his book, examined the ways of thinking which thinking which helped him find and understand the meaning of life, despite all its oddities. He has touched upon the concepts of life and death, suffering and faith. He believes if one finds the ultimate meaning of life, then the life has much more to offer than one can actually perceive.

Notable ideas of the Book

Frankl tells how we can deal with three inevitable elements of life by using them: turn suffering into achievement, using guilt to improve ourself and use the knowledge that life is short as a prompt to action.

Instead of teaching children to have high esteem, children should be taught about strength of character to handle any setbacks in life and to achieve success.

This brings us to the question, what should be the goal of psychotherapy? The goal of psychotherapy no longer consists of making something conscious at any price. Becoming conscious is only considered a temporary stage in the psychotherapeutic process. It has to make conscious the unconscious—including the spiritual unconsciousness —only in order to allow it finally to recede back to unconsciousness.

What therapy seeks to achieve is to convert an unconscious potential into a conscious action, but only to restore it eventually as an unconscious habitus again.

It will be hard to believe that man is a sublimated animal once it can be shown that within him there is a repressed angel.

The unconscious is not divine, and neither does it possess any attribute of the divine and thus, lacks divine omniscience as well.

There is a “negative correlation between the collective neurosis and responsibility” apparently. Thus, the search originally characterized by “search for meaning” rather than “search for himself.” The more one forgets oneself—giving oneself to a cause or another person—the more human one gets. The more one is engrossed in something or someone other than oneself the more one is likely to identify one’s own self.

To Abraham H. Maslow the will to meaning is more than “an irreducible need”—he sees it as “Man’s primary concern.”

Viktor is reminded of a concept called crabbing. He describes it as, ‘if there is a cross wind, say, from the north and the airport where he wishes to land lies east and he flies east, he will miss his destination because his plane will drift to the southeast; so to compensate for this drift, he have to fly his plane in a direction north of his destination, and this is called “crabbing.” But isn’t it the same with man? Don’t we, too, get wind up?’

He inferred, if he takes man as he is, he make him worse; if he takes him as he is ought to be, he helps him become what he can be. But this is not what his flight instructor told him, but, rather, a literal quotation from Goethe.

Happiness is a pursuit. It should not be ensued. The more we chase behind the aim, the more we miss it.

A man is not a literal animal and is not told by drives and instincts about what he must do. And in contrast to an old man, he is no longer told by traditions and values what he is supposed to do. Not knowing what he must do or what he should do, he sometimes is clueless about what he really wishes to do. So, instead, he falls prey to either conformism (starts wishing to do what other people do) or totalitarianism (he starts doing what other people wish for him to do).

The need to rehumanize psychotherapy is dire, unless we want to reinforce the damage.

The meaning is always found and not given. But if it is to be given, in this case, it can only be given by psychologists.

And if we have to find the ultimate meaning, we have to do it ourselves.

If a man wants to go on search of the meaning, there are three avenues that may lead him: First, to act or create a work; second, to experience something or to encounter someone. Most important, however, is the third path: Facing a fate we cannot change, we can do it by rising above and growing beyond ourselves, simply, by changing ourselves. And this also holds for the three components of the “tragic triad”—pain, guilt, and death.

It is impossible to know intellectually whether everything is ultimately meaningless or whether there is some ultimate meaning behind everything. But if we cannot answer the question using intellect, we may well do so existentially. Where an intellectual perception fails an existential decision may work. Thus the fact that everything is absolutely meaningful and vice-versa is equally believable.

Ruchika Verma

If you wish to read this wonderful book, you can purchase it from Amazon

Power of Belief

Positive Deposits in your Life Account

Giving without Expectation

Perfection does not exist

Be Your Own Saviour

5 Ways to Hack Your Brain into Awesomeness

Article Summary

Brain is interesting and the fact we are using brain to find more about brain itself, more so. Joe DB, in this article explains how we can hack our brain into awesomeness and make it do what we want.

#5. Think You Got a Good Night's Sleep (After Only Two Hours of Actual Sleep)

Because of internet and all other various reasons, we barely get to sleep at night and the morning sadly doesn’t really waits for us. But there is one way to sleep less and still look as fresh as a daisy the next day.

It's called the Uberman Sleep Schedule, and it is not only the name which looks interesting. Its working is fascinating too. It is a schedule which consists of 20-30 minute power naps, every four hours during the day. It certainly is not easy, but can very effectively increase your waking hours.

It works by providing brain, only the REM sleep which is hour and half of our normal sleep, and is the most essential as it is what actually keeps our brain active and sharp. However, by taking these power naps we’re actually providing brain with two hours of REM sleep which is half hour more than normal. It is definitely a tough but worth it schedule to follow.

#4 Hallucinate Like You Just Took LSD, Legally

How to get legally high? Joe explains, in these simple five steps –

Step 1: Turn the radio to a station with just white noise (static), and put on your headphones.

Step 2: Cut the ping-pong ball in half and tape each half over your eyes.

Step 3: Turn the red light so it's facing your eyes.

Step 4: Sit there for at least a half an hour.

Step 5: Follow Ben Franklin and your new friend, Harold the unicorn, into the gumdrop forest, and live happily ever after.

It's called the Ganzfeld effect, and it works by blocking out most of the signals that go to your brain. The sound of the white noise and the light from the outside of the ping pong ball are ignored by our brain. With all those signals not reaching our brain, it has to create its own, and this is where the hallucinations actually begin.

#3 Dream Whatever You Want to Dream

But dreams are out of our control? Well, not really. It is where the Lucid Dreaming comes in. It is an ability to control our dreams, once we realize it is actually a dream and many of us are not unfamiliar with it. But how do we do it on purpose? Joe narrows it down to the following point –

1. Keep a Dream Journal. Joe says, that as soon as you wake up from a dream, write down every little thing you can remember about it. Writing it down can help you can recall them easily.

2. Think about exactly what you want to dream right before you fall asleep.

3. According to Joe, the best time to have a lucid dream is either right before you regularly wake up, or right after.

It works on the fact that in a dream state, our mind mostly loses the ability to criticize because dreaming just doesn't involve the critical part of our brain.

But if we try to change our mental state even if slightly, that critical part of our brain can keep functioning even while dreaming. And it can actually make us dream whatever we want to.

#2 Learn More While You Sleep

Minor changes in sleeping pattern can actually benefit us. But how do we do it? The way Joe suggests is to not study right up until the time for the exam. Study at least 24 hours before, and sleep on it.

It works on the fact that our brain can reform information in mainly three forms namely, acquisition, consolidation and recall. The first and last occur while we're awake, but the middle one is what happens during sleep. It is because our brain often process information during sleep which it couldn’t during the day’s chaos. Totally worth the try.

#1 Believe Something Happened (That Totally Didn't)

Our memory more often than not is not exactly reliable, especially the one we used to have as a child. Most things we remember from childhood are either inaccurate or just plainly false. Our brain just makes up events, they’re just elaborate constructions of our memory.

So what if there’s a way to do this on purpose? To hack our brain into believing (and actually "seeing") a completely made-up event that never actually happened?

The trick is to let somebody else do it for you. It is very easy to manipulate our memories. Just talk about one instance and even if it didn’t happen, one will certainly have some memory related to it.

It works on the fact that our brain has no certain speed when it comes to memorizing. It remembers what it wants to and creates memories whenever it wants to. Our brain simply remembers more important stuff, and as for the less important stuff we can simply manipulate them into becoming happy memories.

Ruchika Verma

You can read the original article here 

Listen to a Person

Forget Past, Improve Future

Define Yourself

Embracing Your Dark Side

Article Summary

Everyone strives to be a good person, by doing various deeds from helping out others to donating to charities. We all want to be good and we all want our actions to be a proof of it. But the question Dallas Jeffs asking us here is, if we have to perform good deeds to be good, what is our default state?

We all have a dark side, the side which is not always politically correct. The side which we don’t want to acknowledge because the pressure to be good is really strong. But avoidance is rarely a solution.

Carl Jung and the Shadow

A 20^th century psychologist Carl Jung theorized that we all have a dark side, called ‘The Shadow’ which is the unconscious part of our mind. It is the part of our mind which we try to downplay because it is the negative aspect of our personality which we always try to hide.

This shadow is that negative force which hides most of our negative traits. Jung infers that shadow can grow more in people with low-self esteem, to an extent where it starts shadowing the positive traits. The fear of being judged for negative aspects can lead a person to bury more parts in their shadow, whether or not they’re negative.

Jung says, that to become a fully realized person it is important for one to embrace their negative or dark side. Ignoring our shadow is like ignoring a part of our body. We need to fully embrace and understand it in order to become self-aware.

Everyone strives for achievements and perfections, however when one fails it is often accompanied not by just failure but also anger and resentment. The more self aware we are and the more we embrace ourselves, the less likely it is to occur. Once we start to embrace our dark sides, it becomes easier to identify other’s.

What is “Good”?

Just like it is easier to identify darkness when there is light against it, to identify our shadow we have to first realize what is actually good. But what is this good?

For most people, ‘good’ is good morals, but morality in itself is a relative concept. Good morality depends on several factors like our religion, upbringing, education, etc. This always creates a situation of conflict, we don’t always know what is good and we also don’t know what is good for the others and what actually makes it good for them.

For many people, being selfless is being good. To give away their possessions, to help and take care of everyone and everything. But there’s as such thing as being too good. If you’re too good to others and not good to yourself it ultimately turns the darkness inwards. Being too selfless often burns you out internally.

It is difficult to take care of others when we don’t take care of ourselves. We need to fulfil our own needs before trying to fulfil other’s. And the best way to do it is ‘self-honesty’ especially in aspects of our life which we don’t like. Sometimes, it is better to acknowledge that we are not that good instead of always acting like it. Our morals can be flawed and we need to learn that it is nothing wrong and completely okay. It not only help us to accept ourselves, but also others.

Embracing Your Own Dark Side

As Dallas put it, just because we can identify darkness in others, it doesn’t mean we’re accepting it also. Although, we should not tolerate wrong actions or ideas, we should at least, tolerate the individual themselves – enough to help them.

Acceptance is very hard to come by today, and if we don’t get it from our surroundings, we’re bound to seek it from questionable sources. People with low-self esteem often give into darkness because they don’t feel accepted.

We are often too quick to accuse and too quick to judge. And we need to stop to look at the whole story. We all need to embrace our dark sides, because without darkness there is no light.

How to Embrace Your Dark Side

The first step is to become self-aware. We often know about negative traits but we fail to acknowledge them. The key to success is to harness our negative emotions in such a way which ultimately benefit us.

Jealousy and Anger are two negative emotions which can be used to our benefit. Jealousy often comes from our desire to achieve. If we channel our inner jealousy, it’s energy can actually motivate us to achieve our goals.

Same is the case with Anger, which if used constructively can help us achieve things we think are out of our reach. The source of anger can often serve as a motivation to do better and rectify that source or situation.

A dark side is very complex. We think we should suppress it, but it is certainly more compound. We don’t need to suppress our dark side, instead we should embrace it from time to time. It is one way to become more self aware and successful in life.

Ruchika Verma