Just Be And You Are

Understanding that people are driven by innumerable motivations can help you learn to see their actions as a product of their inner selves rather than taking their behavior personally. Not taking people’s words and actions personally frees you from the need to react to them. You no longer have to perceive any negativity on their part as ill treatment, nor do you have to see their responses to you as a reflection of whether or not you said or did something wrong. Other people’s behavior and reactions cease to be a benchmark of your worth. When you choose not to take the words and actions of others personally, you can feel positive today even when surrounded by negativity.

- DailyOM: Impersonal Understanding

To be simple in the whole, total process of our consciousness is extremely arduous; because there must be no inward reservation, there must be an eagerness to find out, to inquire into the process of our being, which means to be awake to every intimation, to every hint; to be aware of our fears, of our hopes, and to investigate and to be free of them more and more and more. Only then, when the mind and the heart are really simple, not encrusted, are we able to solve the many problems that confront us.

Knowledge is not going to solve our problems. You may know, for example, that there is reincarnation, that there is a continuity after death. You may know, I don’t say you do; or you may be convinced of it. But that does not solve the problem. Death cannot be shelved by your theory, or by information, or by conviction. It is much more mysterious, much deeper, much more creative than that.

- J. Krishnamurti from The First and Last Freedom

1. Patience is required. And yet patience is also a byproduct. Bottomline, this isn’t a miracle cure you’ll see results from the next day. Not like lifting or running. The most rewarding results are internal.

2. It’s healthy for you. I’m not sure if I believe a single asana – yoga position – can directly have heart or back benefits. I am sure that the combination of multiple asanas can dramatically help those with back or heart problems. Mind you I have no medical experience and I note this only from personal experience.

3. Personalized growth. Unlike any other form of exercise, yoga rewards you for what you are already good at without having to work against your body’s inclinations. For example, I hated running in the beginning and my body fought it for the longest time. Same thing with lifting. If you’re good at a specific asana, then you do it more and it makes your strengths even stronger. You do what works for you.

4. The easiest is actually the hardest. Savasana, for example, is simply a “death pose” where you lie on your back with eyes closed, disassociate from your body and methodically relax each portion of your body from toe to head. Many fall asleep (I did) when they first do this. As you practice it, your focus and concentration become so much stronger. I’m up to 10 minutes now and the first two are still a jumble of thoughts I have to calm down.

5. It trickles into every part of your life. Just like building your physique can help build self-esteem, yoga affects your internal capacity for being in the moment at all times. Seems simple, but you’re more there in conversation, at work, reading, writing, playing and even doing nothing.

I’m very phasic and that’s allowed me to venture into all sorts of experiences. Yoga has stuck for a while and I hope it continues to. The benefits have been amazing.

Just being lets me listen to my body and mind and shift away from the things that aren’t beneficial anymore. I can’t imagine a reason why I’d let my daily yoga practice go, but I guess that’s the point of life. I’ll find out when I get there.

As I sit here typing away on a computer in India, I think of all the alternate ways people are living right now. Just thinking of the endless traffic, I’m awestruck at the constant, continuous nature of everyday life all over the world.

As Robert Frost said, “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.”

Rather than getting me down, it gives me the freedom to know that the life I’m living is one of an endless number of possibilities. All I have to do to change it is change my context.

Fort Minor’s “Right Now” describes this all too well. So does one of my favorite movies of all time, Run Lola Run.

Some songs you wake up with and just can’t let go. Funny thing is I don’t recall ever hearing this song. Reminiscent memories from childhood and staying at my grandparent’s house lifted it from somewhere in my subconscious.

The remarkable thing about Indian music is that the melody resonates with you emotionally first and the lyrics connect with you mentally second. This may seem like it’s true of music in general, but I personally don’t know the lyrics of most Indian songs. I can hum the tune though, and simply through that describe to you at length the message the artist is trying to convey. I can feel it. As this youtube commenter does below:

Whenever I listen to this song, I feel like forgetting all about worldly ties – planning, finance, career, in-laws, etc., and just wish I can LIVE this song. It spells a serene magic on me and I just forget everything. Truly magical and out of the world feeling. Just like true love… you can just feel … can never describe to the fullest..

It’s a classic from the 60’s sung by Lata Mangeshkar, one of the most talented, prolific and longstanding singers ever to make music. She’s been singing since 1942 and at 80 years old, her voice still sounds the same.

While the song is very much about the euphoria of love, the refrain – along with its wistful tonality – has such a strong sense of the in-the-present mentality. Like you’re about to lose the moment and want to make the most of it.

Society tends to place men into two “opposing” camps; the nice guys and the assholes. Bipartisanship is impossible. By not being a nice guy, you’re all of a sudden an asshole? It doesn’t click.

So-called nice guys are a myth. They have two things in common; their need of acceptance and their avoidance of accountability.

Nice guys are commonly seen trying to please everybody, an inherently flawed undertaking. The implication is a dire need for approval from external sources. The ability to say no or express one’s opinion in a social context requires internal validation. By being overtly pleasing, some men are sacrificing their sense of self to gain acceptance and taking on the “nice” label to cover it up.

I’ve also heard many nice guys say they’re not accepted for who they are. They then turn around and adopt a generic do-everything-right-by-everyone persona. You can spot these guys a mile away. Instead of being themselves, they buy into a societal meme of what a man should be and ironically become one of many.

Whenever I hear that nice guys don’t get this or nice guys don’t get that, it sounds like a copout from owning up to one’s actions. Rather than going through a brief process of self-evaluation, some men use the misnomer as a scapegoat. It’s more manly to be accountable for your behavior and learn from it than to shirk responsibility.

If your current strategy for achieving your goals isn’t working, adopt a new one. Just because the term “nice” is used doesn’t necessarily make you a nice guy. Men, women, whomever are only pigeonholed by these kinds of labels. Finding out who you are is much more challenging. Expressing it freely much more rewarding.

I’m really catching onto a certain style of blogging that’s not theme-based and reads like free streaming thought. Examples include Seth Godin, Ben Casnocha and Jay Parkinson.

I’ve decided to use this approach blogging here. Pulse of Care is my business site about health care, which for reasons I don’t even understand, has always been a strong passion of mine. I’m all over the place though and health care need only define me to the degree I let it. If you’re interested in what I have to say about health care, check out http://pulseofcare.com

I’m just going to be here.

I’ve found myself drifting in and out of conversation lately. Kinda like JD does frequently in Scrubs:

It’s very natural; an unforced shifting towards a memory that I flash back to without thinking. And that’s the key, “without thinking”. I’m not thinking about forcing myself to concentrate on the conversation. There’s no disrespect to the person I’m having a conversation with either. In fact, I’m following the gist of it very well and if I were to force myself to maintain eye contact or keep listening attentively to portions that don’t add to the gist, the split second it takes to think about paying attention would take away from me listening and I would have to recover anyway. This may sound ludicrously detailed, but when you’re the person talking, you notice that split second when the other person’s eyes blink a little differently. Maybe it’s the pupils, but there’s a change and you notice it! There’s no hiding a break in flow.

There’s a rhythmic cadence to conversation and it changes from person to person. I feel I lose the rhythm less now because I’m drifting as opposed to when I’m forcing myself not to drift. In fact, I believe most of us are terrible listeners because of the latter. Would the world be full of lost daydreamers and drifters if we all flowed in and out of the ebbs in rhythm? I don’t think so. We might be that much more efficient/effective at conversing.

This is most apparent at the end of meetings or in the middle of a class lecture. In either setting, by that time we all have a clue of what’s going on and start looking out the window, at the clock, people watching, tapping our feet, feeling restless and so on. Again, I don’t view this as disrespectful behavior, but rather as cues that the one-way conversation a lecturer or meeting head is having is becoming redundant, losing value, or going through a natural ebb. If these cues were acknowledged appropriately, maybe the person talking would shift gears or end the meeting/lecture, or start involving the people present. Instead, authority is often used as a mechanism to force value, not to create value.

The just be and you are mentality jives well with this for obvious reasons. Forcing ourselves to be something we’re not only creates false impressions of what we care about. When talking or listening, we don’t have to be conscious of drifting because it happens very naturally, but make ourselves think about it because we feel like it’s disrespectful. In the context of social norms, it may in fact be, but is that logical? If both parties recognized the quality or casualness or the silence within conversation fully, disrespect would play no part. We would simply be.

July 10, 2009
Exercising Flexibility
Mind Stretching
Flexibility is the capacity to bend without breaking, as well as a continual willingness to change or be changed in order to accommodate new circumstances. People with flexible minds are open to shifting their course when necessary or useful; they are not overly attached to things going the way they had planned. This enables them to take advantage of opportunities that a more rigid person would miss out on. It can also make life a lot more fun. When we are flexible, we allow for situations we could not have planned, and so the world continues to surprise and delight us.

Since reality is in a constant state of flux, it doesn’t make sense to be rigid or to cling to any one idea of what is happening or what is going to happen. We are more in tune with reality when we are flexible. Being in tune enables us to adjust to the external environment and other people as they change and grow. When we are rigid or stuck in our ways, instead of adjusting to the world around us we hunker down, clinging to a concept of reality rather than reality itself. When we do this, we cut ourselves off from life, and we miss out on valuable opportunities, as well as a lot of joy.

Just as we create flexibility in our bodies by stretching physically, we can create limberness in our minds by stretching mentally. Every day we have the opportunity to exercise our flexibility. We can do this in small ways such as taking a different route home from work or changing our exercise routine. On a larger scale, we can rearrange the furniture or redo a room in our house. If these are things we already do regularly, we can stretch our minds by imagining several different possibilities for how the next year will unfold. As we do this, our minds become more supple and open, and when changes come our way, we are able to accommodate and flow with the new reality.