Nails may go, Holes will remain!

 

A father wanted to inculcate a sense of responsibility in his careless son. So he told his son to hammer a nail into a wooden pillar in their house for his every careless act and to pull out a nail for his every positive act. The boy did as his father instructed. After some period of time the boy noticed that the pillar was getting crowded with nails. The boy resolved to change his behaviour and began to do more positive acts. The nails started to coming out, till there were none left.

He father was very proud of his son’s change in behaviour. He said, “Son you have done a great job. There are no more nails left on the pillar”.

But the boy saw the holes on the pillar and started crying. He said, “Father, the nails are gone but the holes remain”. 

Actions always produce results. If we do not want certain results to happen, we must avoid doing the actions that produce such results. There is no other way.

It is true that we learn by mistakes. We may be wiser after committing the mistakes. But the lessons we learn may turn out to be very costly. Sometimes the damage done may be irreversible. So the wisest man learns a lot from others’ mistakes and avoids careless and thoughtless actions that cause misery to him or others.

- N.Ganeshan

Begin. And Finish!

George Washington Goethals, Chief engineer of Panama Canal Construction Project, advised a young man who lacked initiative, “My friend, you never will get anywhere unless you launch out, take chances, unless you are willing to run the risk of failure. If procrastination runs in your blood, if you have formed the habit of putting off, endlessly deliberating, waiting for better conditions, you will never get anywhere in the world”.

It is a great advice. The first thing is to begin. The world is full of people who are failures because they didn’t dare to begin. “Didn’t Dare To Begin” would make a fitting epitaph for millions of nobodies and millions of failures.

Begin on little things. Do them voluntarily without being told. Take the initiative repeatedly on little things and gradually you will get more self confidence and courage to take initiative on bigger things.

Every big accomplishment is made up of a lot of little acts, each requiring initiative to start. Divide a big job into manly little parts. Take initiative to do one by one. Give all your thought and energy to each part. Before you know it, the big job will be done. 

And remember – it is more important to do, than to do well. Usually you do badly in the beginning. So stop playing perfectionist. Do not go through life starting some thing, getting it nearly completed, seeing that it is not a masterpiece and then throwing it away. If you give up your goals when you do not like what is happening and if you back away simply because you are experiencing discomfort, you can never achieve any good thing in your life.

On the contrary finish what you are doing with your full present capacity. Gradually you will get better and better. Do not define success as perfection. Think of success as a slight bit of improvement over what you were able to do before.

Men who achieve great things are the ones who have the initiative to attempt great things and discipline to stay with the tasks till the end. 

- N.GANESHAN

LEARN TO LAUGH

Laughter is infectious. The sight of hearty laughter is far more contagious than any cough, sniffle, or sneeze. When laughter is shared, it binds people together and increases happiness and intimacy. Laughter is a powerful antidote to stress, pain, and conflict. Nothing works faster or more dependably to bring your mind and body back into balance than a good laugh. Laughter lightens your burdens, inspires hopes, connects you to others, and keeps you grounded.

In addition to the feelings of joy and amusement, laughter also triggers healthy physical changes in the body. Humor and laughter strengthen your immune system, boost your energy, diminish pain, and protect you from the damaging effects of stress. Best of all, this priceless medicine is fun, free, and easy to use.

Health experts say that “Happy hormones” like immunoglobulin and cytokines fight bacteria and viruses and destroy tumors. William Fry, M.D., psychiatrist and professor emeritus at Stanford University, documented physiological changes from laughter similar to intense aerobic exercise. He stated that... “One hundred laughs is equal to ten minutes of aerobic exercise.”

Laughter can also help the immune system. Research at the Department of Clinical Immunology at Loma Linda University School of Medicine has demonstrated that the experience of laughter lowers the level of certain stress hormones and stimulates the immune systems by increasing the number of activated T cells and activated T helper cells. In addition, mirthful laughter enhances the activity of natural killer cells that play a crucial role in preventing disease.

Laughter stimulates blood circulation and oxygenation and promotes clear thinking. It increases natural disease fighter white blood cells, according to researchers Lee Berk and Arthur Stone. Their studies suggest healing is accelerated in people who laugh.

Other research shows that even the act of smiling when you don’t feel like it can reduce stress and improve your mood. Not only does it elicit positive responses from others, but it also promotes a sense of well-being. According to psychologist Paul Ekman of the Human Interaction Lab at the University of California in San Francisco, real smiles and fake smiles produce identical changes in brain activity, skin temperature, heart rate and respiration.

Laughter dissolves distressing emotions. You can’t feel anxious, angry, or sad when you’re laughing. It reduces stress and increases energy, enabling you to stay focused and accomplish more. Above all, sense of humour shifts perspective, allowing you to see situations in a more realistic, less threatening light. A humorous perspective creates psychological distance, which can help you avoid feeling overwhelmed. Laughter enables the processing of information in a new way. New perceptions can lead to different and healthier solutions to all difficult problems.

Sometimes, one irritation follows another, and before you know it, our day is ruined. An interesting account is given in the “The Encyclopedia Britannica’s 1982 Yearbook”, under the heading “Strange and Unusual Events.” It tells about a man named Brian Heise who had what you might call a “very irritating day”:

Brian Heise had more than his share of luck in July of that year, and most of it was bad. When his apartment in Provo, Utah, became flooded from a broken pipe in the upstairs apartment, the manager told him to go out and rent a water vacuum. That’s when he discovered his car had a flat tire. He changed it, then went inside again to phone a friend for help. The electric shock he got from the phone so startled him that he inadvertently ripped the instrument off the wall. Before he could leave the apartment a second time, a neighbor had to kick down the apartment door because water damage had jammed it tight. While all of this was going on, someone stole Heise’s car, but it was almost out of gas. He found it a few blocks away but had to push it to the gas station, where he filled up the tank. That evening Heise attended a military ceremony at Brigham Young University. He injured himself severely when he somehow sat on his bayonet, which had been tossed onto the front seat of his car. Doctors were able to stitch up the wound, but no one was able to resuscitate four of Heise’s canaries that were crushed to death by falling plaster. After Heise slipped on the wet carpet and badly injured his tailbone, he said he began to wonder if “God wanted me dead, but just kept missing.”

Many things in life are beyond your control. While you might think taking the weight of the world on your shoulders is admirable, in the long run it’s unrealistic, unproductive, unhealthy, and even egotistical. So, learn to laugh. Cultivate a humourous attitude. Find humour in daily life and difficult situations. Learn to laugh at yourself. Learn to belly laugh and tell jokes. Hang out with people who are fun to be with who make you laugh. Eventually you will find your health and life change positively.


- N.GANESHAN

Some Wise Quotes – 1

Do not wish to be anything but what you are, and try to be that perfectly.                                                                             -         St Francis De Sales                                                          

A man must not swallow more beliefs than he can digest.                                                                                                -    Havelock Ellis

The great are only great, because we are on our knees. Let us rise.-         P.J.Proudhen        

To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.

-         A.B.Alcott

Laugh and the world laughs with you

Weep and you weep alone;

For the sad earth must borrow its mirth

But has troubles enough of its own.                       
                                                        - Ella Wheeler Wilcox

It is sure to be dark if you shut your eyes.                            –   John Ray

Ill company is like a dog who dirts those most whom he loves best.

                       -         Swift

O don’t be sorrowful darling!

And don’t be sorrowful pray;

Taking the year together my dear

There isn’t more night than day.                                  
                                                           – Rembrandt Peale

A clever man commits no minor blunders.                             – Goethe

Do not be inquisitive. He who asks what has been said about him, who digs malicious talk, even if it has been private, disturbs his own peace.        

                                                                                                   – Seneca                                                                    

                                             

DARING TO BE DIFFERENT

The book contained fewer than 10,000 words. It tells the story of a seagull called Jonathan Livingston Seagull. The manuscript written by Richard Bach was turned down by many publishers. At last it was accepted and published by Macmillan Publishers in 1970. Surprisingly it broke all hardcover sales records since "Gone with the Wind". It sold more than 1,000,000 copies in 1972 alone. 

The story is about Jonathan Livingston Seagull who flew for the love of flying rather than merely to catch food. Young Jonathan Livingston is frustrated with the meaningless materialism and conformity and limitation of the seagull life. Seized by a passion for flight, he pushes himself, learning everything he can about flying. For him flying isn’t something to get food, he tries to break the ‘speed limits’ because every limit is a restriction of freedom. Eventually, his lack of conformity to the limited seagull life leads him into conflict with his flock, and they cast him out of their flock. An outcast, he continues to learn, becoming increasingly pleased with his abilities as he leads a free life.

One day, Jonathan is met by two radiant, loving seagulls who take him to a “higher plane of existence” in that there is no heaven but a better world found through perfection of knowledge, where he meets other gulls who love to fly. He discovers that his sheer tenacity and desire to learn make him “pretty well a one-in-a-million bird.” Jonathan befriends the wisest gull in this new place, named Chiang, who takes him beyond his previous learning, teaching him how to move instantaneously to anywhere else in the Universe. He realizes that one has to be true to his self: “You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way.”

Jonathan returns to his former flock to share his newly discovered ideals and the recent tremendous experience, ready for the difficult fight against the current rules of that society. He wants to find others like him, to bring them his learning and to spread his love for flight. He soon found several good flight students. Fletcher Gull was one of them, he has a desire to learn to fly. Jonathan teaches Fletcher to fly like Chiang has told him.

His mission is successful, gathering around him others who have been outlawed for not conforming. Ultimately, the very first of his students, Fletcher Lynd Seagull, becomes a teacher in his own right and Jonathan leaves to teach other flocks.

Actually the story is about people, not birds. It teaches men and women about the meaning of life, that we are put on earth to strive and to reach for perfection in whatever we choose to do. Flight is a symbol of any human activity that enlarges the personality. Eating is a symbol of activities which only gratify the senses. It is important, but it is not the goal itself. One has to go beyond and strive more to attain perfection.

We learn from Jonathan the price which must be paid for excellence. Excellence requires leaving the flock, being alone, and practising. And the practice requires “fierce concentration.”

The book is dedicated to “the real Jonathan Seagull who lives within us all”.  Every one of us could learn something from this book because there are a lot of principles and eye openers in it. Here are some beautiful quotes in the book.

“You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way".”

“We choose our next world through what we learn in this one. Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as this one, all the same limitations and lead weights to overcome.”

“Do you have any idea how many lives we must have gone through before we even got the first idea that there is more to life than eating, or fighting, or power in the Flock? A thousand lives, Jon, ten thousand!”

“Whatever stands against that freedom must be set aside, be it ritual or superstition or limitation in any form.”

“Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you’ll see the way to fly.”

“[Perfect speed] isn’t flying a thousand miles, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit and perfection doesn’t have limits.”

“Keep working on love.” 


- N.GANESHAN

Ego - the enemy within

Whenever you suffer mentally try to analyze it. You will find somewhere the ego is the real cause of it. The ego goes on finding causes to suffer. Ego lives on others’ attention. If nobody pays attention to you, if nobody thinks that you are somebody important, significant, then the ego feels hurt. Ego is always depending on others, always in search of food, that somebody should appreciate it. As Osho calls aptly, this is a deep begging. It is a deep slavery.

We want to have more to draw others’ attention. The ego always wants more. It has an addictive need for more. But it can never be satisfied. The Buddhists calls this egoist structure as the hungry ghost with an enormous belly and a mouth the size of the eye of a needle.

It is “the enemy within”. It is the enemy of a genuine happy or spiritual life. It is what gets in the way of experiencing real happiness or real love.

Comparing, complaining and resentment are common egoist activities.

Comparing yourself to others is the ego in one of its most vicious forms. “I have more than him. My ___ is better or worse than yours”. It’s a perpetual losing battle because there will always be somebody better and always somebody worse than you are. Even if you are the best in the world at what you do somebody will always be right on your tail. If you keep seeing your life as a competition with those around you, then you will continually be dissatisfied and the ego will drive your life.

Ego has the great need to always be right and to have the last word. This is another one of the ego’s most destructive functions. People who have a need to continually be right are headed for the ultimate downfall. These kinds of people will often get far in life because of their persistence and aggressiveness. But these people mostly will fail when they are on the brink of great success. Their need to be right will be their downfall and years of hard work can be destroyed in minutes when this portion of the ego takes over. Leaders with this attitude ultimately lose touch with reality and eventually stop perceiving truth that can rectify themselves because they are so adamant about being right.

Be very clear – your ego is not the real you! Through the ego the society is controlling you. You have to behave in a certain way, because only then does the society appreciate you.

Some people live their whole lives fighting for the sake of satisfying their inflated egos. Each one of us feels worthy in a way or another, even those who feel inferior. But it becomes a problem when this sense of self worth becomes exaggerated to the extent that it leads the person to a life full of suffering and pain.

Here are the views of two great thinkers -

Zen Master Phillip Kapleau says, “Ego, that shadowy, phantomlike figure with insatiable desires and a lust for dominance, sits astride the senses like some oriental potentate. Or, to change the simile, ego is like a magician carrying up his sleeve the deadly tricks of greed, anger, and wrong thinking. Worse, he is quite capable of rationalizing his actions with an air of sweet reasonableness. This wily and slippery conjurer deludes us into believing we can enjoy the delights of the senses without pain only by delivering ourselves into his hands ..”

Eckhart Tolle says, “On the psychological level, the sense of lack and incompleteness is, if anything, even greater than on the physical level. As long as you are identified with the mind, you have an externally derived sense of self. That is to say, you get your sense of who you are from things that ultimately have nothing to do with who you are: your social role, possessions, externl appearance, successes and failures, belief systems, and so on. This false, mind-made self, the ego, feels vulnerable, insecure, and is always seeking new things to identify with to give it a feeling that it exists. But nothing is ever enough to give it lasting fulfillment. Its fear remains; its sense of lack and neediness remains.”

Whenever your mind is in turmoil, start looking for the ego - not in others, but in yourself. Whenever you feel miserable, immediately close you eyes and try to find out from where the misery is coming and you will always find it is the ego that has clashed with someone.

When you can learn to let go of the ego, the level of success and fulfillment you will achieve will be dramatic. Only with your ego in check will you have the ability to reach your full potential and real peace.

• N.Ganeshan

..

We are all made to fly

Once upon a time there was a king who received a gift of two magnificent peregrine falcons from Arabia. They were the most beautiful falcons he had ever seen. He gave the precious birds to his head falconer to be trained.

Many days later the head falconer informed the king that though one of the falcons was flying majestically soaring high in the sky, the other bird had not moved from its branch since the day it had arrived.

The king summoned people with knowledge of birds and requested them to do something to make the bird fly. But no one could succeed. The bird refused to move from its perch. Having tried everything else, the king announced a big prize to any person who makes the falcon to fly.

In the morning the king was thrilled to see the falcon soaring high above the palace garden. He said to his personal servant “Bring me the doer of this miracle.”

The man who won the prize was a farmer. He came and stood before the king. The king asked him, “How did you make the falcon fly?”

The farmer said to the king, “It was very easy your majesty. I simply cut the branch where the bird was sitting”

We are all made to fly – to realize our incredible potential as human beings. But instead of flying high we sit on our branches, clinging to the things that are familiar to us. The possibilities are endless. But they remain undiscovered for most of us. We cling to the familiar, the comfortable and the mundane. So, most of our lives are mediocre instead of exciting, thrilling and fulfilling.

Sometimes God is kind enough to cut the branch we are sitting comfortably, so that we could soar high. By changing nothing, nothing changes. We cannot discover new oceans unless we have the courage to lose sight of the shore. Let us remember this truth whenever our routine and comfortable life shatters by unforeseen circumstances. God may be helping us to soar high in his subtle ways.

- N.Ganeshan