25 Ways to Improve Your Life. SRI PUBLICATIONS SRI

coming home tired, eating, going to bed. The same routine the next day. Weekends have become another routine. If you’re awake, then you see there is so much foolishness! Just watch when four or five people get together and have a gossip session. In a gossip session, you can immediately change the topic of conversation. This is the thing with a crowd. If ten people are talking about the weather and you change the topic to stock markets, everybody will immediately talk stock markets, whether they know about them or not. It is great fun.

      Being aware of this impermanent nature of our life, you find that there is something in you that has not changed. There is a reference point by which you can say things are changing. That reference point is the source of life. That is wisdom. With wisdom, your life improves.

      3. Make your smile cheaper

      A research done in England found that a baby smiles 400 times a day, an adolescent 17 times and an adult doesn’t smile at all! The More successful people keep a very stiff face. Is roughness a sign of success? Is being stressed a sign of prosperity, growth or dignity?

      You should smile more. Every day, every morning, look at the mirror and give a good smile to yourself. You know what happens when you smile? All the muscles in your face get relaxed. The nerves in your brain get relaxation, and you get the confidence, courage and energy to move on in life.

      You know, your smile is so fragile! Just one telephone call is enough to take it away! But what is the big deal about your feelings? Bundle them up and throw them into the ocean!

      Once you are rid of your ‘feelings’, you can be happy. Just see why your spirits go down? Because somebody said something stupid to you. And why did they say a stupid thing? Because they had some garbage they needed to throw out and you were there, ready to catch it! And once you have caught it, you hold on to it so passionately! Come on! Wake up! Don’t let your smile be snatched away by anybody!

      Usually, you give your anger freely and smile rarely as though a smile is costly. In ignorance, anger is cheaper and smile costly. In knowledge, a smile is free like sun, air, and water; and anger is extremely expensive, like a diamond. Make your smile cheaper and anger expensive! You are here for a greater cause. Just remember that. Take a challenge: “Come what may, I am going to smile today and be happy!” Smile more.

      4. Be enthusiastic and praise others

      Enthusiasm is the nature of life. We often have a tendency to put cold water on other’s enthusiasm.

      Reverse this tendency. Take every opportunity to praise others and support their enthusiasm. If you put down other’s enthusiasm, the same may happen to you. As you sow, so shall you reap. Recollect how much enthusiasm and joy you had when you went to the primary school. Someone without enthusiasm is like a corpse. But as you mature, the enthusiasm curve declines. As enthusiasm declines, we stop communicating.

      How would you like to see yourself ? Happy and bubbling with enthusiasm or dull and difficult to please? Often, you like to be pleased, appeased and cajoled. So you put up a tough, upset face and act difficult to please. If a person has to appease and please ten people all the time, it will be so tiring. People who keep a long face and expect others to cajole and appease them make others run away. Lovers often do this. They expend a lot of energy in cajoling, and this brings down the joy and celebration of the moment.

      If you feel down, appease and please yourself. Your need to be appeased by someone else is the sign of grossness. If you want attention, all you get is tension. It is not possible to attain Divine Love with a complaining face. Become one whose enthusiasm never dies.

      5. Make meditation a part of your life

      The higher goals in life can only be realised through a few minutes of meditation and introspection.

      What is meditation?

      Mind without agitation is meditation.

      Mind in the present moment is meditation.

      Mind that has no hesitation, no anticipation is meditation.

      Mind that has come back home, to the source, is meditation.

      Mind that becomes “no mind” is meditation.

      Deeper you are able to rest, dynamic you will be in activity. Even though deep rest and dynamic activity are opposite values, they are complementary. Before the body leaves you, you learn to leave everything. That is freedom. What are you looking for? Are you looking for some great joy? YOU ARE JOY!

      I will give you an example. Have you seen dogs biting bones? You know why they bite bones?

      Biting creates wounds in their mouth. Its own blood comes out and the dog feels that the bone is very tasty! Poor dog spends the whole time chewing the bone but getting nothing out of it! Any joy you experience in life is from the depth of your Self, when you let go all that you hold on to and settle down being centered in that space. That is called meditation. Actually, meditation is not an act; it is the art of doing nothing! The rest in meditation is deeper than the deepest sleep that you can ever have, because in meditation you transcend all desires.

      Meditation is letting go of anger from the past and all the planning for the future.

      Meditation is accepting this moment and living every moment totally with depth. Just this understanding, and a few days of continuous practice of meditation can change the quality of our life. The best comparison of the three states of consciousness-waking, sleeping and dreaming is with nature. Nature sleeps, awakens and dreams! It happens in a magnificent scale in existence, and it is happening in a different scale in the human body. Wakefulness and sleep are like sunrise and darkness. Dream is like the twilight in between.