2.41 The power of healthy tension
When under pressure, a cricketer might miss an easy catch— or pull off an incredible one. Why the difference? It's not the absence of fear; [...]
3.24 Choose which fear you face
We may fear public speaking. "I might freeze—or be mocked on stage." But if we let that fear stop us we’ll meet another fear: that [...]
1.28 How fear can be an educator
Have you ever met someone who had no tension in a situation you were tense about? Maybe you were coaching them for a critical interview, [...]
15.7 Fear: unavoidable, not unmanageable
Because life is full of uncertainties, we’ll all sometimes feel anxious, insecure, or worried. We can’t remove fear from life— but we can refuse to [...]
5.25 You don’t have to be fear-free to be courageous
Whenever we try to change ourselves for the better, fear whispers, “If you fail, they’ll laugh at you.” Such fear will hold us back, till [...]
How the mind and the intelligence are to work together
The mind is meant to be the complement to the intelligence, let it not become the replacement of the intelligence We live in an age [...]
How to prevent life’s daily ups and downs from becoming dramas and traumas
Life is filled with ups and downs. These fluctuations, when seen with exaggerated importance, can turn routine events into massive dramas, escalating into emotional traumas. [...]
3.37 Self-discipline: the war within you, not the war with you
Discipline often feels like a fight with ourselves, like we are being robbed of pleasures that seem rightfully ours. But the Bhagavad Gita (3.37) flips [...]
4 ways the mind is like a child (RUST acronym)
The mind often behaves like a child, and our responsibility is to act as a vigilant parent. Just as parents must care for children who [...]
How to avoid pessimism in our attempts at self-improvement
When we strive to improve ourselves, we often encounter internal resistance—our mind obstructs and even sabotages our progress. When such resistance happens repeatedly and relentlessly, [...]
Three ways to deal with the mind’s unpredictability
Stop worrying about the mind's unpredictability; start working on your RAP—readiness, alertness, purposefulness In dealing with our mind, we often feel confused or even confounded [...]
We may be constrained by our past, but we don’t have to be contained in our past
All of us are affected by our past to varying degrees. Some of us may have incurred wounds so deep that we feel permanently damaged, [...]
The inner weak link in our battle against temptation
As long as our mind remains unpersuaded about the dangers of temptation, we remain unprotected from it. We are all engaged in a war with [...]
How we might defeat ourselves in our inner war
Suppose an army is defending itself against invaders. Suppose the invaders have been allowed in by a prominent general who has turned traitor. If the [...]
The things that hurt us = the things we think hurt us?
Suppose we are bitten by a snake. We may get panicky, dreading that the snake bite will kill us. Actually, the snake-bite can't kill us; [...]
Is hurt = harm?
We often equate hurt, the sensation of pain, with harm: injury or damage. And they do frequently correlate. If our hand goes too close to [...]
Begin each day by putting on our armor
If we were fighting a war, we would begin each day by putting on our armor. Actually, we all are at war internally against negative [...]
How can we defend ourselves from our mind?
Our mind often speaks as the nasty, discouraging inner voice which says that we are nothing; we count for nothing; whatever we do will eventually [...]
How to deal with fear of the future
How to deal with fear of the future Whenever we face situations wherein our future seems dark and dangerous, our mind starts becoming paranoid. The [...]
Why bad habits don’t go away easily
If we leave our house empty while we go elsewhere, some squatters may occupy it. When we return, they refuse to go or even let [...]
If your mind says you are a quitter …
We all start more things than we complete. When something becomes too demanding or boring or unproductive, or when it seems to require more self-mastery [...]