SITAGITA PRESENTS
‘52 ways to enrich your life in 52 weeks’
Every Monday
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52 Simple and Effective ways to tune into your life one week at a time.
I celebrate myself, and sing myself
I loafe and invite my soul…
- Walt Whitman
There is only one journey. Going inside yourself.
Vani’s day has been hectic (as usual), shunting between one business meeting to the other.
She is washing her face, and suddenly does not recognise the woman staring back at her. “Who are you?” she asks the mirror on the wall. No reply. She looks vaguely familiar but bears little resemblance to the woman she was expecting to see.
Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever felt disconnected from yourself? A feeling that something’s missing in your life?
Psychologists call this “a displacement of self”.
It is a reaction to great stress that can occur to the best of us at the worst of times.
It can hit you while you are knee deep in housework or juggling around with unpaid bills.
This dissatisfaction, this feeling of not knowing ‘who you are’ is because you are not in touch with your inner wisdom.
Recognise your power
Turn your vision inward. Realise the potential within you.
Don’t allow your source of unlimited personal power to be buried beneath deadlines, dirty laundry or business trips.
Happiness and fulfilment do not come only from external events.
It comes from your relationship to your self.
Every aspect of your life – family, friends, health, work etc must take its direction from within – from your inner self.
Connecting to your self
Your life takes its shape from your desires, needs and values.
They in turn, derive their meaning from your inner self.
The more you link yourself with your core of inner wisdom, the more enriching life becomes.
How do you make that important connection?
- A powerful way to reconnect yourself to your core is to talk to yourself.
- Pour out your innermost thoughts, start a dialogue with yourself.
- Confide in your diary. Pay a tribute to yourself by investing some time to capture some important moments of your life in your journal.
Build bonds of friendship
Gita’s heart is heavy. She feels weighed down with guilt, as she cannot leave her office to attend her daughter’s dance performance at school.
Torn by conflicting emotions, she picks up the phone and confides her feelings to her friend Sushma. Her friend’s sympathy and understanding are like a balm to Gita's soul. She feels better.
Sharing your feelings with trusted friends, and building a network based on companionship, is a sure-fire way of discovering who you are, and gaining a better perspective on what you must do.
Keep in touch with your friends. Make it a point to meet regularly. Help each other search for that elusive ‘self’.
Give voice to your dreams
Dreams are a very important expression of our subconscious minds. They express our deepest longings and desires.
- Make dreams your gateway to knowing the real you.
- Start recording your dreams in your diary, however fragmented and disjointed they are.
- For those of you who feel that you don’t dream or don’t remember your dreams, there is no cause for concern.
- Once you start the process of writing down even the smallest scrap of a dream, you will start getting better at this, and your subconscious mind will reward you with better memories.
- Know yourself through your dreams.
The greatest key to self-discovery is to give time to your self
Turning your gaze inward is a tough proposition surrounded as you are by forces that propel you to look outward. But don’t compromise.
Spend some time alone with yourself. Learn to be official about it.
Fix meetings with yourself at regular intervals and don’t be slack about it.
Initially, you may feel awkward and uncomfortable, but hang in there. Soon, spending time with ‘you’ will become a source of pleasure.
Re-align with your spiritual self
- You will hear your soul more clearly if you spend some time each day attuning to your spiritual thoughts.
- Derive solace and comfort from inspirational thoughts in great religious treatises.
- Take strength from some rituals and customs that are unique to your family and have survived the test of time.
- Pray daily. Have faith that someone up there is listening and paying heed.
Response to challenge:
Schedule appointments with yourself for the next twenty weeks, sometime every week.
As you get comfortable, gradually increase the amount of time, week by week.
Treat these meetings as sacred. They are as important as your children’s homework or your business appointments.
Don’t allow something or someone else to encroach on that time. Be firm.
Begin a committed relationship with your inner self and watch your life move in a wonderful rhythm, in harmony with a loving and sensitive ‘you’.
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