When you look back at life, what do you judge your life by? Or what will you judge your life by?
To me, knowing this one thing is the secret of happiness.
To some people it's their financial success, and to some it’s family. To others it is recognition, while some would say it is spiritual connection. Know yours, and make it your North Star; your guiding source. Or we will end up climbing the ladder on the wrong wall.
Only we know what is important to us…every time we are not aligned to it, we feel most uncomfortable. Never allow someone else to decide what should be important in your life.
We've been culturally conditioned to measure happiness/success a certain way, yet we keep meeting people who are happy and successful in their journey without having those possessions or reasons that we’ve been made to believe are the source of happiness.
I love helping people find the golden Buddha that lives inside of them because someone once helped me when I doubted all of myself. All I can say is that it's not overnight!
It took years of uncovering stuff I so strongly believed.
I believed:
I can't write.
I have nothing to share.
How can my story help anyone?
Who am I to say anything?
Now I say, “Who are you not to?”
Why doubt that pure soul that lives inside each one of us, waiting to be discovered? The soul that should be respected and loved for the difference it knows it can make.
Find out:
What are you willing to fight for?
What makes you uncomfortable?
What are your core values?
For this is the foundation of your life. Base all your decisions keeping this in harmony and you will always remain at peace with yourself. And never give advice to people keeping your guiding light as a universal light; for what may be important to you may not be to someone else.
Instead, find out what's important to them and allow them to base their decisions on that. For Puneet, it's stability and discipline. For me, it's risk taking and happy go lucky! Can you see the contrast? Can you see how unhappy he or I would be if we tried to guide one another on our values? Can you see how beautiful and complete it can be if we respect each other's values?
Our marriage changed forever when I decided to stop trying to make him ambitious, and rather encouraged him in being the backbone and provider which he's brilliant at. He will not stake everything to grow and thank god for that.
The same went for him when he stopped getting irritated with my “What's the big deal?” attitude which is my reaction to mostly everything, and realised it's great to have a person who does not panic or overreact to circumstances.
We connected at a much deeper level, for both of us felt ACCEPTED. I can give you many such examples but if you patiently read all of the above and reached here, you definitely get the point!
Same for our kids or parents: to create a better relationship, find out the core values of the people you love and always guide them based on their values, not yours.
This is dedicated to a lot of marriages, a lot of fathers and sons, many mother-in-laws and daughter-in-laws. Also inspired by friends and family who understand there is no wrong vs right, and are willing to evolve to "Respect the difference" and yet work on improving the relationship slowly but surely!
God bless you and make you fall in love with your uniqueness…that’s what makes you “YOU”!
And only then can you respect others’ uniquenesses too!