Gita 17.16 explained
Link to purport by A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada Transcript of Bhakti-Shastri class on this verse by Chaitanya Charan Bg 17.16 manaḥ-prasādaḥ saumyatvaṁ maunam [...]
Facing losses but not feeling lost — the reorienting power of gratitude
Suppose we are driving through a remote area guided by GPS and suddenly the GPS connectivity gets lost due to a heavy storm. Not knowing [...]
Is gratitude a state or a trait?
Gratitude can be both, and it is best when manifested as both. Let’s see how. State: Gratitude as a state refers to the emotions of [...]
What we do with our blessings
In our life, we all have both blessings and problems. Unfortunately, we often tend to fixate on our problems, which may arise due to our [...]
Does gratitude decrease our motivation to make things better?
Some people fear, “If I keep feeling good about the present, won’t it take away my motivation for seeking a better future?” Not necessarily; just [...]
How to feel grateful when we don’t feel grateful
To cultivate gratitude, we need to expand our conception of what it is. Gratitude as an emotion: While gratitude is certainly an emotion, it is [...]
How not to cultivate gratitude
We all know the importance of cultivating gratitude. And we all have in our life at least some good things that we should feel grateful [...]
Why counting our blessings is so transformational
Count your blessings – this oft-repeated exhortation can seem cliched. To appreciate its potency, let’s consider two significant benefits of counting our blessings. Feeling enriched: [...]
Why is it so difficult to feel grateful?
If asked specifically to list things we are grateful for, we all can easily list several things. Yet during our daily life, we don’t so [...]
Grateful even when we don’t feel full?
Even if we want to feel grateful, that feeling is often elusive. Why? Because we may feel that what we have isn’t enough. And such [...]
How to deal with feelings of inferiority
Our media often shows us glamorized images whereby we worry about how slim, smart or fluent we are. Naturally, we often feel deficient and become [...]
Two ways to deal with dissatisfaction
When we see some things we don’t have — a bigger house, a faster car, a newer phone — we often feel dissatisfied. And we [...]
When the mind complains about the shortage of enjoyable sense objects, contemplate the shortage of enjoyment in the supposedly enjoyable sense objects
Suppose we go to a hotel to eat a full meal and find that the delicacy we wanted is provided only in limited quantity. Our [...]
Even if we are feeling miserable, that doesn’t give us the right to make others miserable Gita 17.16
When something goes wrong in our lives, we may feel hurt, irritated, dejected. If we give in to bouts of self-pity and start repeating our [...]
The images of prosperous people that make us burn with envy are just our mind’s illusions
Suppose we see someone driving a Porsche and looking prosperous. That sight may make us burn with envy and resentment: “Why do they get to [...]
The mind overvalues things it doesn’t have and undervalues things it does have
Suppose we are selling something to buy something in exchange. If we undervalued what we had and overvalued what we didn’t have, we would end [...]
To be happy is possible, to be happier than others is impossible
We all want to be happy, but we often tie our happiness to certain conceptions. One such common conception is that we will become happy [...]
No matter how bad things are, we can always make them worse – we are never powerless
Sometimes, life puts us in so many difficulties that we feel utterly powerless. That feeling can drown us in despair, self-pity, resentment and even suicidal [...]
Cultivation of satisfaction requires not the rejection of desire, but the selection of desire
Some people feel, “Dissatisfaction is the spur for performance. If we simply become satisfied and give up the desire to excel, how will we achieve [...]
Purity reverses our mental gravity
Gravity refers to the force by which objects fall to the earth. Our mental gravity can refer to the force by which our thoughts naturally [...]
Mental silence is more defining than verbal silence
Some people, especially those seeking to grow inwards, take a vow of silence, known in Sanskrit as mauna-vrata. The rationale for such a vow is [...]