Being rejected does not mean you are worthless!

When the world closes its doors on you, keep the faith, be patient.

A young man, who we have been coaching (through our ‘Let’s Talk Happyness’ Program), called up yesterday. He was excited. His boss had awarded him a spot bonus. And had felicitated him at a town hall with the whole team. The young chap, an engineer in his late 20s, said, “I am amazed. Just four months ago nobody wanted to even look at my resume. For months on end interviewer after interviewer kept on rejecting me. They made me feel worthless. And now, suddenly, my talent is recognized and I am being celebrated. I don’t get this. Even when I was going through a trial by fire, through that spate of rejections, I was still talented. Then why does my talent get recognized only now. Why was it not valued then, when I so badly needed a break?”

 

Well, such is Life. Vaani and I have learnt from own experience (Read more here: Fall Like A Rose Petal.) that we are put through a trying phase in Life only so that we evolve through it. Clearly, Life’s experiences do not erode our talent. Even when one department, one door, in Life shuts on us, another opens. Always. The truth also is that talent and trial are totally unrelated. Being talented does not guarantee you a Life free of challenges. Talent is what you are endowed with. And trial is what you have to face, what you must go through, per your Life’s inscrutable, and unique, design. It is important to remember that just because you are being rejected by the world, just because people don’t recognize your talent, it does not mean you are worthless. This is when you must keep the faith – in yourself, your abilities and what you have to offer the world – and be patient. This is when you must trust the process of Life. Life is very compassionate, very beautiful. Every experience you go through unfailingly enriches you from within – making you stronger, wiser and happy!

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How faith helped us live through pennilessness and worklessness

What do you do when you don’t know what to do in Life?

A young lady reached out to Vaani and me recently. She said her 2-year-old marriage was breaking up. Her parents were both diagnosed with cancer. Their family property, which had been under litigation for years, was decreed in favor of her uncles. And she had been laid off at her job. “Where do I begin to fix my problems? I have nowhere to go with my ailing parents and my one-year-old child. I don’t know what to do,” she confessed, breaking down inconsolably.

Vaani and I have been in her situation. We too have felt clueless and lost. What do you do when you don’t know what to do in Life?

I remember Thursday, April 29^th 2014 vividly. On that day, we went ‘zero-cash’. We spent the last eighty rupees with us on an auto ride and lived in Chennai, in spells of pennilessness, for months on end after that. Our bankruptcy had blown up into an incomprehensible phase of prolonged worklessness and pennilessness. At one time, we endured 30 months, between 2012 and 2014 when we had no work, no income. (Read more here: Fall Like A Rose Petal and watch this Fall Like A Rose Petal Talk.) This, despite, our best efforts to work our network of contacts, pound the pavement, restructure our delivery model, and put our business back on track. It’s a phase that we are still enduring at varied levels of intensity and challenge from time to time.

The last Eighty Rupees left with us on 29th April 2014 that we spent on an auto ride

It is through this darkest phase of our Life that Vaani and I have understood the true meaning of faith.

We have understood that faith is not quite about trusting an external resource or agency, also popularly known as God. Faith truly means trusting the process of Life – and being happy despite the circumstances; which means, being non-worrying, non-frustrated and non-suffering. We realized that despite our excruciating circumstances, Life was providing us all that we needed. Nothing went according to our plans. Nothing still does. But we have survived a decade of bankruptcy and its attendant, often imponderable, challenges. In this time, our children graduated – our son from an overseas University in 2012. Our daughter too is doing her Master’s abroad. Miraculously, every time we came to the brink, a helping hand appeared from nowhere and hoisted us up or ‘someone’ opened our wings and taught us to fly. That’s what faith has come to mean to us – to know that since you have been created without your asking for it, you will also be, unfailingly, looked after, provided for and cared for. We have learnt that just because we find the going tough, we must not conclude that Life is cruel. In fact, as we have discovered from our experience, Life is most compassionate – always giving you a situation only so that you grow better from dealing with it.

This is what we told the young lady too who sought us out through our Let’s Talk Happyness Program. When you don’t know what to do in Life, you simply let go and you let Life take over. To be sure, you never were in control of anything. Life was always, Life is, and Life will always be in control. Or simply, the Master Plan has no flaws. All that you have to do when you are clueless is to trust the process of Life, keep the faith, and take each day as it comes.

If you wish to seek our perspectives on a Life challenge you are faced with, please reach out here – Let’s Talk Happyness! If you have a personal story of faith, please share. Or tag someone for whom this Post is likely to be useful.

Family matters most in a crisis

In today’s Podcast, I talk about why families must bond and come together in times of crisis. I share from my own experience, while relating to a Malayalam film “#JSR” I watched recently. If there ever is a “Kingdom of Heaven”, then your family holds the key to it!

Listen time: 6:52 minutes

How you too can be a Bliss Catcher

In today’s Vlog I answer a question that I am often asked: “How can one follow their bliss?”

View time: 3:54 minutes

Anchoring an edition of The Bliss Catchers at Odyssey, Adyar, Chennai – Photo Credit: Vinodh Velayudhan

 

 

Feeling isolated or unwanted? Simply move on…

You can’t control how people treat you.

“What are your thoughts on loneliness, on feeling isolated and unwanted,” a young reader asked me.

I want to share here, while hopefully answering that question, what I have learnt from two teachers.

The first teacher I would like to lean on is Swami Sathya Sai Baba. As I have often said here, I have never met Swami. But I have experienced him through a medium. On one occasion, just before the launch of my Book, Fall Like A Rose Petal, Swami told me this, through the medium, his messenger: “To be alone is a virtue, to feel lonely in a crowd is a learning and to have a crowd is a gift.” That message has stayed with me. It is a fascinating perspective. It has helped me value every member of the audience in events I curate or when I deliver my Talks and workshops. I treat it as a gift that people like Vaani and me, who are materially on the verge of extinction, broke to the bone, still have an audience that is willing to pause and reflect on what we have to share. So, I am eternally grateful to all those who read my Book or read what I have to share on my Blog or follow me on my various social media handles.

To be sure, in a way, with Vaani by my side for the past 30 years, I have never experienced loneliness. Yes, while in my mouna (silence) spells, daily, I have been alone. I like to sit quietly at times and reflect on Life. But I have never experienced loneliness. So I will not comment about it.

Both Vaani and I have, however, come across many situations when we have felt isolated or unwanted. But we have chosen to be unaffected by such attitude. Our companionship has helped us immensely – we always talk about what we feel and those conversations help us get rid of debilitating emotions. Over time, we have learnt that giving attention to what is not in your control is futile.

Think about it. When do you feel isolated or unwanted? Only when you are not included. Now, what can you do about a situation when someone else simply doesn’t want you, doesn’t want to think about you? You can pine for attention, you can feel hurt, you can feel isolated or unwanted – but whoever has chosen to ignore you has done what they have done; or they continue to be that way. How you feel is just not important to them. Clearly it is not. So, why give their action and attitude so much attention? Just move on. Drop that feeling of isolation and unwantedness, turn in the direction of where people are waiting to celebrate you and simply move on. And if you have no one, and you feel alone, celebrate that feeling too. After all, as Swami Sathya Sai Baba told me, being alone or feeling lonely is either a virtue or a learning. Both, in their own ways, are invaluable experiences.

The second teacher I have learnt from, in this context, is my young, super-talented, friend Sundari Sivasubbu. She has amazing energy even though, being wheel-chair bound, she has several physical limitations and challenges. I met her when she came to watch my Bliss Catchers show at the Odyssey Bookstore. Now The Bliss Catchers’ event happens on the first floor at the store where there is no elevator access. Despite coming to the store, Sundari could not attend the event that evening. She could have felt unwanted and isolated. But she was brimming with Life as she introduced herself to Vaani and me when we were leaving the store after the event.

Her positivity held us a mirror. Here we were doing so many events in public spaces but without being truly inclusive. Almost all of the venue partners we work with somehow have spaces that don’t have proper elevator access for making special people like Sundari feel wanted. We have tried to correct the situation at least in one of our Event Series, Heart of Matter – Happiness Conversations – at the InKo Centre, where host Rathi Jafer has opened up her gallery space on the ground floor with an effort to start being inclusive. Even so, every time I have apologized to Sundari when we have not been able to have her join our events (for reasons of those spaces being inaccessible for people on a wheelchair), I have never found in her a trace of anger or bitterness with the way we as a society treat people like her. She’s always said, “Oh! I understand. Things have to certainly change. And that change can’t happen overnight. So, please don’t feel bad or sorry for me.” And that’s the learning I want to showcase here. If you attach importance to people’s attitudes you are squandering precious time. People do what they do because they are that way. If they are not sensitive enough to think of whether you will feel unwanted or isolated, it is only because you are not priority for them. You can rave, rant, pine and grieve or like young Sundari does, you can just move on. The choice is yours.

What others do to you, how they treat you, is clearly not in your control. Thinking about how you have been treated and feeling isolated or unwanted is the greatest disservice you can do to yourself. Instead, try diverting your focus and attention in a different direction – you will not just feel liberated, you will be happy too!

 

The American Presidency holds out a great lesson in detachment

Why suffer holding on to anything?

Watching the inauguration of the US President on Friday last, I could not but help reflect on the beauty of the American democratic system. Every 4~8 years it promotes the effective practice of detachment – not just for those administratively connected with the Presidency but for all American people. As Michelle and Barack Obama’s Executive One helicopter took off from Capitol Hill, I felt, the moment was poignant. “That’s it. The Barack Obama Presidency can never be back. America has to let him go. No choice,” I remarked to Vaani. I felt a lump in my throat, as did Vaani, as did perhaps so many millions of people across the world. But such is Life when it comes to the American Presidency. Which is why I feel it holds out a great lesson in detachment to all of us.

We often think of detachment as something which is beyond the reach of common folks like us. We think of it as the exclusive prevail of more evolved, spiritually-inclined people. But I think different. Each of us is capable of understanding and practicing detachment. All we need to do is to celebrate the impermanence of Life itself. If you are born, death is certain. So, when Life is impermanent, transient, why cling on to anything? In a way, one of the most powerful positions in the world – purely going by the worldly definition of power – has a limited-period tenure, between 4~8 years. So, why suffer wanting to hold on to anything – least of all material?

I believe that the key to happiness is to be detached – from what you possess, from what you want, from what haunts you, from what possesses you, from what worries you and from all who you love or dislike. If you can immerse yourself in whatever you love doing – painting, cooking, gardening, reading, singing, cleaning, whatever – without regard to either space or time, then you can call yourself detached. Then you can only be happy!

In a way, I guess guided detachment helps. Like in the case of the US Presidency. During the early months of our bankruptcy (read more here: Fall Like A Rose Petal), I found it very difficult to stop worrying. It seemed such a natural, normal, thing to do. When you don’t know what to do, you end up first worrying that you are clueless. Then you start being fearful. And you are soon pinned down and held hostage by your fears and your worries. It’s an ugly state to be in. I hated being that way. Then through my daily practice of mouna (silence periods), I learnt to postpone worrying. The more engaged I was in the beauty of the present moment – however imperfect it was, it was always beautiful – the more I was able to detach myself from my worries and fears. I told myself that we were waging a war. And to fight that war, Vaani and I needed to be in top gear – physically, emotionally, spiritually. So, every evening we came home battle-scarred, but we refused to let the pressure get to us once we sat down for dinner. This is how I trained myself in the art of detachment.

Detachment doesn’t mean you are irresponsible. Nor does it mean inaction. It simply means you are smart enough, intelligent enough, not to take Life so seriously that you stop enjoying the journey because you are obsessed with the reward – a reward that you cannot anyway take with you!  

 

Only the presence of what matters to you can make you happy

Your Life’s Purpose is not to earn a living alone and to keep thinking you deserve more!

A FB post by a friend raises this very interesting, fundamental question: “Do uncertain times call for a certainty of Purpose?”

My answer: “Of course it does!”

Though we don’t normally see it, recognize it or realize it, all creation has a Purpose. If you look around you, every aspect of Nature serves a Purpose. The sun, the trees, the animals, the birds, the insects, the rivers, the oceans – each of these forms of creation is there with a reason. The human species too has been created with and for a reason. But somewhere along the way, we humans have forgotten a. that we have been created b. that the Purpose of our creation is not to merely earn a living or to plunder the planet and cannibalize other species that we co-habit this space with.

Let us first appreciate that the human form is a blessing we receive from creation. Think about it: we could have been created in any other form – why are we created human? Therefore, we must then understand that if we have been created human, there must a reason for it. And that reason cannot be to amass wealth, to stress over material accumulations and to suffer when our wants are unfulfilled. Very simply, the Purpose of being created human is to serve, and through serving other forms of creation, being happy. But what do we do instead? We are continuously seeking deservance, and when we don’t get what we want, we are ending up being unhappy! Isn’t this a complete waste of our being human?

Now, to go back to my friend’s FB post, we all know, without a doubt, that all Life is uncertain. And inscrutable. When you have clarity on why you are here, why you are going through this human experience, you can live Life better. It is when you are confused that you are confounded. That’s how you end up suffering. Let me explain. When you think of your Life’s Purpose as only making money or as being successful or famous, and when these things don’t happen or if they happen but also don’t stay with you permanently, then you are unhappy, then you suffer. But if you realize that, despite your having money or not, despite being successful or not, despite being famous or not, your Life’s Purpose is only to serve, only to make this world a better place, then you can only be happy. Simple.

So, clarity of Purpose is crucial to help us along the journey of Life. When there is an awareness of the why of your creation, when there is Purpose, your Life matters. And only the presence of what matters to you can make you happy!