New to my blog? New to my writings? New to love redefined? I welcome you on a journey that you would start with in yourself !
Those wonderful eleven years:
Before I started to write here at this blog, I had eleven very painful years of my life. What did I go through in those years has not very much to do here at this point, I may some day share that in one of my writings, but during those years I did not love myself.
But this blog has every thing to do with, how I dealt with myself and transformed after those eleven years. Today I call those extremely painful years as those eleven wonderful years, because I realize that without them, I could not have become, what I am today!
I learnt that most of us do not love ourselves:
The lack of knowing about genuine love, the lack of genuine love, the lack of genuine love towards ourselves and others is the biggest source of pain that we go through and this pain is not even necessary. It is kind of self-inflicted.
Hey……..from this side :
Today, I meet tens of dozen of people inflicting the same pain to themselves and those dear to them, and going through the same misery that I had gone through for quite a period of my life. I started to write this all to allow every one who reads these words, to understand genuine love and to not go through an unnecessary pain in life.
I would think is this necessary for every one else to go through the same pain, that I had gone through? If I have bruised myself carving out a path in a thick forest, can I not shout out to others ….. Hey from this side !
What is love re-defined about?
Love redefined is about loving oneself. It’s about developing the capacity to love ourselves, before we start or claim to love others.
To love is to take action and to allow oneself grow mentally and by spirit. Redefining love thus is about teaching ourselves to take action and to grow.
Love redefined is about making people see love different from the myths of holly wood and romance literature. It is to see love from the works of fiction authors to what nature wanted us to do with love: transformation !
Real love has huge power. It transforms. I know it because it has transformed me. We tend to focus only one aspect of love, the one related to the gender difference and the sensual and the sexual attraction caused by it. Love is beyond what we normally think, that’s why God chose it to be his first expression !
Why Love Redefined
Love is to extend our hand and wipe out a frosty windscreen for a driving friend, instead of just thinking that it should be wiped out or wondering why the screen defogger isn’t working?
We do not love ourselves , generally and under most of the situations, although we have an in built, natural capacity to do so.
We plan for weeks to start exercising, we don’t.
We plan to start reading good reading material for months, we don’t.
We plan to enroll in a management course, that can really support our careers in future, we don’t.
If in business, we think we should make 5 appointments per day, we don’t.
In homes and among families, we promise ourselves to spend a real good pure time week end with our kids, we don’t.
The list of excuses is unending. We don’t have much time, audit work is in progress at the office, we are too tired for a new commitment etc etc.
Whatever the reason, we did not take action. And we feel guilty about that. Our feeling guilty is the proof that we were at fault because deep down inside of ourselves, we know we could have done that. We could have managed that, just with a little more effort, a little more of love.
Loving others is only possible, if we love ourselves. And to love is a verb first, a noun later. To love is to act as loving. We miss this fact and suffer because of inaction. In itself love is too immense to be understood entirely.
Since love is related to our spirits, love can best be explained in terms of what it does to our spirit.Though the feelings of romance, sex, liking some one, or of butterflies in our stomach upon catching some one’s eye are but tiny facets of love, but these all emotions exist without love as well, some times only for a few weeks. Love is beyond these.
Love is the will to grow ourselves mentally and spiritually. Love is a will to act, rather to act. This will can be extended towards others as well. We cannot contribute in the growth of others, without growing ourselves. It is as if a diamond cutter is polishing and making tiny cuts on the diamond with an intention to transform the stone into a gem. With each move of his hand, his own skill as a gemologist is growing. It is thus impossible to work on the mental and spiritual growth of others and keeping ourselves stagnant. Eventually, we grow in the process.Whenever I have used the word love in my entire writings, I have meant the same: an energy that let’s us work on the spiritual and mental growth of ours as well as of others.
For Most Of Us:
For most of us love is just a feeling of exhilaration and ecstasy and of joy and high moments. Or if it takes an unwanted turn, it becomes a feeling of sadness, tears, depression and deep sorrow. We are so caught up in the mythology created by holly wood movies and romance literature that we can not see what love has to genuinely offer to us. It is as if we are so caught up in the glitter of the wrapping paper around the gift that we all together do not bother to see what the gift actually was.
This blog is an effort to let us all see the amazing gift and real purpose this gift is endowed to us. We shall be answering many questions like these below:
What is it after all? What is it that we call or know as love? Why does this happen to us? Are there any exact reasons? Why did God create this emotion and let us feel that? What is the purpose, the real purpose behind love?
Do our parents really love us and do we really love our kids?
What role does love shall play in my career? How can I love my work?
Do I really love the woman I am recently engaged to? Does she really love me? What are the chances that our relationship can become a success?
How can I start accepting my life without my loved ones? Is there a connection between love and death?
Why do we die? Why do the people whom we love die?
I never asked of God any thing in my whole life. I only asked of him and God did not allow me to have him in my life? And the most important question of all
Do we love ourselves? Do we love our God?
And most of all, this blog is about asking people to take actions: no matter how small. It asks every one to just begin. It’s an effort to push its readers from their inside to take action. And if one person does this, my work shall be considered to have made a difference.
Perhaps it is the time to redefine ourselves, to redefine our destinies, to redefine our joys and sorrows, to redefine what life has to offer… to redefine love !
THINKING TO CHANGE? HERE ARE THE TOOLS
The tools of change are in fact the tools of love. We can not bring about any change, with in ourselves or around us, unless it is genuinely backed up by love.
Love is the will to grow ourselves spiritually and mentally. Thus to start loving some one begins with loving ourselves first.
Through out my writings, when ever I have used the word love, I have used it with the four senses and meanings or tools which it contains. I therefore am not referring to the love from romance literature or Holly Wood movies when I speak of love.
We grow ourselves through the four tools of love. Love is the energy with which we use the following four tools in our lives.
Thus if any of the four tools is absent, we can question the genuineness of love. In a sense, these can also be called the 4 test signs of love!
Thus to change your self to a higher level, follow the four simple themes. They are not new. They are perhaps as old as the humanity. The key, however is to follow them in total and absolute commitment to yourself to change.
I promise you would change because I have.
The First Tool:
To love ourselves first we have to be willing to assume and accept one hundred percent responsibility. We have to accept that what ever we are, what ever we are getting in life and how so ever we are spending our lives is determined by us and us alone. i.e. we are responsible.
There are two signs of not accepting the responsibility: blaming and complaining. If we are either blaming others or full of complaints about life and whatever life has to offer to us, we are in fact not being very responsible.
Accepting responsibility means, we created our results in life and only we can re-create them. In re-creating we have to face the pain and go through an effort.
Going through this effort nurtures our spirit and grows us mentally. By not accepting our responsibility, we refuse to grow. We show ourselves that we do not think ourselves worthy of growth and nurturing.
We act non-lovingly. We act non-responsibly.
Step to do: Just repeat this to yourself 5 times: No blames, No complaints. And commit to yourself to never blame or complain again in life. Ever!
The Second Tool:
Being able to truly love ourselves involves delaying gratification.
This can be best explained by the experiment conducted with children aged 4 to 6 at Stanford University in 1972. They were offered marshmallows on a condition. Those children who would eat it right now, would get only one. Those who would chose to eat 30 minutes later would get two. Those who would choose to eat after an hour would get three.
Majority of the children chose to eat now. A little less opted for half an hour wait and further less number of children opted for wait for a full hour.
Years later studying the careers of the children, was discovered that those who were able to delay or defer the gratification had achieved a significantly higher level of success in their career.
Delaying gratification would thus mean postponing instant relief and joy for a much higher cause.
For that first, we have to have a higher cause; a direction or a destiny which we want to achieve. It is a fact that people with aimless lives are not able to exercise delaying gratifications and they can fall for any thing that brings instant joy to their five senses.
We face countless situations in our daily life, where we have to delay our gratification.
There always exists a deferred achievement and an instant gratification for every emotion we feel. The gratification for anger for example is to take it out, immediately, instantly, with all the frustration on the person whom you think is responsible. Yet there is a higher achievement reward if we chose to delay our bursting out. It is a high mutual trust, respect and strengthened bond between us and the person involved.
The gratification for a news paper reading is that no one disturbs us but if our 4 year old kid comes to us with a drawing book, we have to delay our gratification and attend to the child. For a higher reward of bond, love and value.
Step to do: Despite all the lazy day and a dull mood and a grey sullen sky, chose to do the difficult task first. Choose the hard nut to crack first. Begin with the hardest problem. Begin by taking a small step towards the hardest problem. Begin!
The Third Tool:
is observing and succumbing ourselves to truth.
We have to be determined in its purest sense to bow our heads down before the truth, no matter what it is or how much does it go against our benefits or previous beliefs or against how we have been handling things previously.
We may have been believing some thing for years and suddenly find out that we were wrong; if we truly love ourselves, we have to accept the truth.
Truth some times is like a tree outside our house, but we often do not know what tree is it or how many branches its’ stem spreads into? Or in many cases, we do not know if a tree is there or not?
If we are not able to do that, we clearly do not love ourselves. We love our egos. We love to keep our head high and believe and make others believe that we were right, but in side deep down of ourselves, we would know that our size has shrunk.
Step to do: Every single night before retiring to bed. Think about the tasks that you did not do out of laziness. Think about all day that you spent. Think about every important task you did or you could not do. Think about the time that you let go waste. Think that you could have been wrong. Think that you could have accepted a fact, which you did not.
Just keep on doing that. Even if this exercise does not make you take an immediate action, gradually it shall pull you up for taking an action. Taking an action against mental laziness or sticking to your past or to things.
Do not take this exercise as light. Just keep on doing it. It would sow the seeds of transformation, that would germinate into seedlings when the right time comes.
The Fourth Tool:
Keeping a balance. We tend to lose balance at times. We cannot judge how much time we are supposed to give to our work and to our kids. We lose how much important people are some times as compared to the new promises made to keep a routine and that routine is broken by an unannounced guest.
We have to know how to keep the balance. We have to be a good athelete, a good learner / teacher, a good monk and a good farmer at the same time.
We have to keep a balance between work and personal life.
We have to keep a balance between physical fitness, mental and spiritual growth, contribution and financial activities or professional / business life.
Keeping the balance involves wise judgment, which at times becomes quite painful.
Balancing also means to discipline ourselves before we try to discipline our children, subordinates or our spouse. We find our child misbehaving in front of our guests and we feel threatened at our up bringing. So we try to discipline her /him through scolding, lure or threat of being left alone. The act of disciplining has to be disciplined itself. That is called balancing.
Keeping a balance when to allow your son a toy and when not involves a great deal of wisdom. This is often painful. Our willingness to go through this pain is a sign of true love. Keeping a balance is the fourth tool, through which we exercise love !
Step to do:
Stop considering your life into separate compartments of home, office, social or sport activity.
Rather decide to give equal time to each activity, daily. Though no matter how small the time slot may be.
Decide to take care of your health, walk back home if possible or get off the car 2 miles away and walk the distance. Decide to spend half an hour with your kids, just you and your kids. Spend time to read. Spend time in silence. Daily for ten minutes or fifteen.
Decide to be representing balance and do that. Balance out life and your roles through time. Write your roles and time spent against each role per week and balance that.
Yesss ! that’s hard work. All this is effortful, but who said it wasn’t ? But it is worth the effort.
(This article has been inspired by the work of Dr. Scott Peck )
START LOVING YOURSELF HERE
Loving yourself is way different from loving your esteem or loving your ego. Loving yourself is much much higher.
Love is will to take action. Love is a will to grow spiritually and mentally. We do all the things in our lives but to love ourselves. We waste years in finding the easy route to success. We deny facts and realities assuming they are not there or simply by telling ourselves that we do not want to discuss. We procrastinate things. We blame others. We complain about our lives and about every thing. We keep on going to the same job we hate every single day, but we do not take action to send our CV to a few more openings. We do things we do not like but do nothing to change them. We suffer from the opposite of love: laziness. We simply do not learn to love ourselves.
I did not love myself for a long long time. I suffered unnecessarily. I wasted my talent and my genius and I kept on wasting myself for years. Till I began to love myself !
Loving others means nothing, if we have not mastered to love ourself. Here is the key to start loving oneself. Take the following simple steps.
1. First understand that we love only some thing that we think is of some value. Make it a firm belief in your heart. Whatever we value, we do not let go waste. We spend time to nurture it. We take action to protect it, to grow it, to see it develop. We cherish its beauty, that has evolved through our efforts. We find that although its hard to take care of it, and some times it becomes uneasy and difficult, but we keep on taking time and efforts.
Decide to yourself, in your deepest of heart, that you would love yourself. Do it today, because I cannot see a single soul any more to let itself go waste.
2. Take action. Start with some thing very very small and manageable. Do not try to find an escape route. Do not try to waste your time looking for some thing easy. Start an action that proves that you are valuable. That tells you that your body, your time, your health, your relationships , your emotions, your self , your hygiene, your every thing is valuable.
Start with exercise to prove your body and health is valuable.
Start to talk with your siblings and parents to tell that they are valuable.
Reduce TV watching hours to tell yourself that your time is valuable.
Start eating healthy and refuse junk food to prove yourself that you value your health.
Start praying or whatever ritual you do to tell you value your beliefs.
Start reading , even if its a page a day to tell yourself that you value mental growth. Start… please start. Take action. You are too valuable to let yourself fall victim for inaction or laziness.
3. Keep a journal of your success. Build small. Take action. Note it. Take more action. Note it. Get results. Note them. Get no results. Note them. Get better results. Note them. Read. Write. Learn. Do. Start. Remember it takes action. And taking action is always uneasy. It throws us out from our comfort zones. But remind yourself also, who you are?
Do not keep on thinking. Do not leave the place where you are reading those words, without taking an action about what you have decided.
4. Redefine your identity. Redefine who you are? Are you the one who would be another waste of universe’s efforts? Are you the one who has decided to remain unmoved? Are you the one who has decided to let him or herself rust? Or you the one who has a capacity to love? Or you the one who has a will and courage to take action. Or you are the one who takes action. Decide and redefine your self. Redefine your identity. Note it. Write it down on your journal.
5. Involve me in your commitment. I am a perfect stranger to you. You can tell me that you cannot tell anyone. I wont discourage you. I wont disown you. I wont demotivate you. Because I have been through the same journey. Its only that I started a few steps earlier. And you are going to reach soon here, where I am today. I promise we would celebrate the success together.
6. Involve others in the process. Spread the light. Guide them to this point. At least to the point where you started. Spread the word. Make them grow. Clear their wind screens and glasses so that they start seeing clearly. Clean your glasses as well. Wipe theirs. Ask them to take action.
7. Keep on reminding yourself. Human mind tends to forget with in 48 hours, that which is not reminded. You would have to condition yourself. Repeat to yourself who you are. Write that to yourself. Rewrite. Write your goals. Write your ambitions. Write to tell yourself that you are not going to let go efforts of the universe and god go waste on you.
Write to tell yourself. Tell yourself to write. Repeat with belief. Believe with repetition. Take action. Tell me about your success. Tell all.
Remember to celebrate and remember to be thankful. Start by taking a small action: Write a comment about how you feel?
From the collections of Hassan Bukhari. Read the opening pages of The Happiness Manual — free, or explore the coaching programs.