Does God know our pain?
God knows our pain, and He understands what we stand to gain by persevering through the pain. When we are suffering, we might question whether [...]
How to see failure positively
When we strive to do anything in life, we naturally want to be successful. It is delightful when we succeed, and our capacity to persevere [...]
Gita 5.20 explained
But how will one practically do this? So now Sri Krishna will describe a process, so set of verses from here are both descriptive and [...]
How can we situate ourselves in our spiritual identity?
Suppose we are in an ocean characterized by huge waves. How can we protect ourselves from being swept away by those waves? By having an [...]
When life seems to say ‘no’ to us
Suppose we invest a lot of effort in actualizing a particular aspiration — be it a career or a relationship or a calling — but [...]
Becoming emotionally sober
Becoming emotionally sober - People who get intoxicated frequently act in ways that are short-sighted, stupid or even self-sabotaging. Consequently, we readily recognize the need [...]
How can we redefine our relationship with failure
How can we redefine our relationship with failure - Suppose a bully has been terrorizing us for a long time. Suppose further that they are [...]
How to stop struggling with our feelings?
How to stop struggling with our feelings? - We often find ourselves obstructed by our feelings, as when we feel bored, annoyed, perplexed, frustrated, enraged, [...]
Go beyond both negative thinking and positive thinking
Go beyond both negative thinking and positive thinking - Life is filled with binaries of ups and downs. In the world outside, we encounter binaries [...]
How to cultivate equanimity?
In today’s fast-paced world characterized by sudden and massive changes, we often appreciate people who stay cool-headed. How can we too develop such equanimity? Do [...]
There is a purpose for everything we experience, even the things we don’t want to experience
Suppose we are forced to go through certain experiences that we just didn’t want to go through. When such things happen, it’s natural to feel [...]
Pleasure and pain are both life’s ringtones – don’t keep hearing the tone, start picking up the phone
Suppose our phone rings. Some ringtones are soothing; some, jarring. However, how the ringtone sounds is not as important as what it indicates: that someone [...]
Chemical highs can’t cure life’s lows, we need to go spiritually high
When life’s adversities push people down, they often feel so dejected that they desperately seek something to lift themselves. And often they turn to chemicals [...]
Comparing is unavoidable, but comparing mentality is undesirable
In our competitive world, comparing is almost universal. In schools with any kind of assessment, who gets higher grades and who lower will be inevitably [...]
Don’t run from pain or rush towards pleasure – refocus on your purpose
Suppose we are driving on a road to a destination. If the road is filled with traffic moving at a snail’s pace, we may find [...]
Failure is a bump on the road, not the end of the road
When we fail at anything, we feel disheartened. Some people, however, become so disheartened as to become chronically depressed. Some youths, on failing in an [...]
See failure as a practical problem, not as an existential problem
During life, we all fail sometime or the other. How we respond to a failure depends on how we see that failure. Suppose a student [...]
Focus not on the pain of failing – focus on the pleasure of learning
When we fail in something important for us, we naturally feel disheartened. If we don’t process this feeling intelligently, we may quit. Failure is an [...]
Animals choose how to fulfill their bodily drives; we humans can choose whether to fulfill our bodily drives
A cow, after eating all the grass in one row in a uniformly green pasture, can choose whether to eat the grass on the left or the right. Animals are driven largely by their bodily drives. Yet, within the scope of those drives, they do have the free will to choose how to fulfill those drives.
Even if we can’t change the content of our experience, we can change its context
Sometimes people ask spiritualists, “What do you gain in this life by your spiritual practices? You too face the same problems as we do – [...]
Failure is not catastrophic – to see failure as catastrophic is catastrophic
Our mind often makes problems seem worse than what they actually are. Suppose someone fails in an exam. Their mind may tell them that their [...]