Life is like making tea…

This is an apt simile that offers so many possibilities to make life interesting, joyful and fulfilling. By following it, one can distill the best that life has to offer and it would make for a refreshing perspective to life.

Here is the way, to make that brew called life, perfect.

Boil your ego. Our ego is what gives us our pride, our individuality and our self respect. Unfortunately, far too often we have a bloated ego, a false sense of pride and quite often mistake unpleasant feedback got from others as an affront to our self respect. A more objective look and a realistic assessment of ourselves can help us boil our ego such that the best in us is distilled out as our unique flavor and the residue can be safely discarded.

Evaporate your worries Man is perhaps the only creature in the animal kingdom that carry’s the heavy load of worry on our backs, minds and life.If we are poor we worry about our livelihood, if we are middle class we worry about being rich and these who are rich are worried about increasing their wealth and protecting what they have. Parental worries about the children future is another never ending soap opera that rewinds itself constantly. Children worry about coping with parental expectations, academic performance and exploring their own individuality.

Dilute your sorrows Death is a certainty and obviously therefore sorrow is a natural corollary of it. However we take every niggle and every trouble to be an unfortunate and sorrowful happening and with rare exceptions tend to focus mostly on our troubles. Rather than make life a permanent mourning one must make life one big celebration and cope with sorrow by using the antidote of rationalization, acceptance, pragmatism and laughter.

Filter your mistakes When in a reflective mood many of us pensively wish we could change the script of our life, erasing the mistakes and the glitches that mar our personality. How we also wish we could redo things of the past and perhaps also do some things that we didn’t do in the past. The problem starts when we use this pensive thoughts as a crutch to lean on for all our inefficiencies, mistakes, failures instead of learning from it. Filtering your mistakes involves accepting the mistake, analyzing the root problem that caused it and taking some tough, bold and firm decisions to ensure it won’t be repeated.

Get that taste of happiness. The essence of life is happiness and that is an emotion that comes naturally to us. Alas, the harsh realities of life, our own complex thinking and our beliefs and attitudes influence and shape our perception of happiness. However, having used the analogy of brewing a good cup of tea, it is for us to finally strain out the cup of tea while discarding the residue. In the process we have got rid of our false ego, our persistent worries, left behind our sorrows and got over our mistakes. What is left is the real you. Some pointers to enjoying happiness include indulging one’s self, letting down one’s hair, enjoying the adulation and feeling light in body and spirit.

Try this:

Every day attempt any one or more of the following

• Smile with warmth at an acquaintance or stranger or colleague
• Share a word of encouragement/ appreciation with 2 at least 2 people
• Forgive someone who has wronged you/ hurt you / been rude/ been disrespectful to you
• Read one joke or cartoon strip or share a joke with someone
• Every night think of 3 things that happened in the day that you are grateful for.

Think of the following and the possible erroneous ideas you have about it.

• Three things that you believe are your strengths. – Do you have sense of false pride / ego about it??
• Think of one sorrow that you find hard to overcome. Do you feel sad and despondent about any other aspects of your life so far? – By merely feeling sad and/ or worrying about it are you able to achieve anything?
• Think of 3 mistakes made by you that you wished you could go back in time and correct. Have you overcome the anxiety cause by those mistakes or do they still negatively impact your life?
• Think of 3 occasions when you are completely stress free, happy and at peace with yourself. Do you enjoy those moments often enough and can you find/ create other such moments to make your life very fulfilling.

This post is courtesy www.actspot.com

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