My journey towards a better life
I would like to think my journey towards a better life as 3 distinct phases -
Self help books & Introduction to Vipassana meditation
Meditation becomes a daily practice. Going deeper to find answers.
Practicing awareness & acceptance at every moment
Self help books & Introduction to Vipassana meditation
Somewhere in my mid-20s, a good colleague gifted me a variety of self help books (7 habits of highly effective people, The power of now, Search inside yourself) which helped me to see life in very different ways than what I was living.
Notice the word seeing and living - seeing helped me gain knowledge of what is possible & what I can do. Living is the actual reality.
Not much changed in my living. I could (and did) boast of my new knowledge or my new actions, but fundamentally nothing changed within me.
Nevertheless, seeing was very important. It led me to realise that life can be lived differently and opened me up to try Vipassana (a 10 day silent meditation training with no contact to the outside world).
At this point, I couldn’t even meditate for 10 minutes. But with the new knowledge seen, I had some hope of what can become possible in my life if I could meditate.
I didn’t really know what I was getting into. My new seeing was still very narrow. So narrow in fact that my Vipassana goals were to just improve my focus and manage my emotions.
Vipassana showed me many many things which changed my way of seeing.
The initial part of the training confronted me with my inner reality. For the first time I could see that I am many things I believed I am not like hateful, angry, jealous, greedy, fearful etc. I could see the insane depth of these emotions. I could see that the root cause of my external actions were my inner feelings.
I wasn’t comfortable with this self-discovery (I was comfortable blaming the world rather than myself). Fortunately, I somehow mustered enough will power to continue with the program.
The latter part of the training taught me the power of acceptance. If I could accept my feelings as they are without any judgement towards them, the feelings go away and this is the path to inner peace.
I practiced acceptance, and true to its claim I achieved inner peace during the retreat.
I felt reborn. I felt I found the silver bullet to all of my problems. I was ready to step back into the world with a new way of living.
Little did I realise, like all things, the inner peace was temporary.
Although we were advised to practice daily, I didn’t maintain my practice.
I chose the easy way of being content with myself with the new wisdom I had gained without putting effort into regular practice.
Nevertheless, I was at a much better baseline of emotions inside me which helped me to a good degree.
Externally,
From a professional front, I collaborated much better with my colleagues than before. There were much fewer emotional outbursts.
From a personal front, I don’t think I changed significantly. The root cause of fear and anxiety dominated my sense of calmness.
I was able to take a few conscious decisions to prioritize my time like choosing to build relationships over other fluffy commitments
Meditation becomes a daily practice. Going deeper to find answers.
I wanted similar benefits in personal relationships as I was having in my professional relationships.
I attended a couple of more Vipassana retreats. I also became aware that I shouldn’t expect much benefits without putting in effort for regular practice.
I made time for meditating. I targeted to make an hour every day for meditation.
I realised that it’s not important to meditate perfectly. It’s more important to just meditate. I wasn’t able to practice the correct Vipassana technique. So I just practiced breadth awareness. And even for something so simple as breadth awareness, I struggled. I was unable to focus for more than 30 seconds continuously. I lost focus for many many minutes at a stretch. There were many frustrating sessions when I felt what’s the point if I am not able to improve my focus.
I slowly realised the outcome of a meditation session is not important. The important point is I meditated daily for an hour. I have been doing this regularly now since July 2022.
When I meditated to just meditate, without any expectations or attachment to an outcome, I still struggled. But experiencing and overcoming that struggle over the years showcased me what is the root cause of the struggle and what I need to do to overcome it.
Books like Mindfulness, The Untethered Soul, Siddhartha helped me during the struggle by showing me it's a part of the journey and helped me to understand the process.
Regular meditation showed me continuously the reality of the emotions inside me that I continued to deny. Daily practice showed me the truth multiple times until I accepted it. It showed me what I needed to do to handle these emotions.
The root cause of the struggles were things I didn’t let go of inside me (eg: my mistake or someone else’s mistake), things that bothered me internally but I wasn’t paying required attention to, things I was attached to and expected outcomes from, etc
I realised that I need to let go of the past and forgive myself and others, that I need to put my efforts into the really important things, that I need to be de-attached from many things, etc
Gradually I was able to do these things and move to a better state of living life.
I started to enjoy life significantly at this stage. There were still periods of frustration, stress, etc but their weight and dominance had reduced significantly.
Externally
From a professional front, I became less attached to titles, my opinions, other peoples perception, etc. I started focusing on the things that really mattered - relationships and communication and identifying and doing the work that is really required.
From a personal front, I greatly improved my relationships by accepting mine & other's mistakes and moving on from the inside. There were fewer emotional outbursts but some nonetheless because of me losing to my emotions sometimes
I was able to achieve a much healthier work life balance and able to do almost everything that’s actually important for me to do.
Practicing awareness & acceptance at every moment
Daily practice has benefits to clear your emotions and prepare your mind and body for the day. With this, I was prepared to handle things I was aware of would come my way.
But life can throw surprises regularly. And my mind or body couldn’t handle some surprises appropriately. Thus, sometimes I would lose my cool.
I definitely wanted more control of myself during such moments
Apart from my continuous practice, a bunch of external circumstances led me to this stage.
I stumbled upon a book - How to find the work you love which piqued my interest.
It helped to push me over the boundary of doing work as I know. I decided to try to become a coach so that I can help others live a life I have learnt to live.
Similar to my entry to Vipassana, I didn’t fully know what I was getting into. What I thought of as a tool to helping people, became a tool to grow myself.
Being a good coach requires fundamental skills like integrity, presence, self-awareness, self-management, self-lessness, being open & curious, de-attached, etc. And it requires these skills while you’re interacting with another human being.
Being a good coach requires me to internally understand that there is no global right or wrong. With this, I am able to fully accept my relationships with people and the world as it is without judgement. That alone has improved my relationships significantly.
Meditation had helped me practice these skills but only during my meditation practice. So, while I had some of these skills to some degree, in my practice of being a coach, I became more conscious of living these same skills during conversations.
Practicing these skills as a coach helped me to live the same skills regularly throughout the day.
Co-incidentally, another book that I stumbled upon, Freedom from the known, made me see what it means to live moment by moment with acceptance.
I also started practicising Yoga. Initially, Yoga was supposed to be just a means to improve physically. But with Yoga, I am starting to understand what it means to have a fully calm mind while doing physical work. With such a mind state, any physical activity becomes effortless and enjoyable.
I am still relatively new to this stage and am gradually increasing my depth and duration of my moment to moment awareness in my daily life.
I am aware of my thoughts and feelings more regularly. I am able to manage / disengage from my thoughts and feelings and connect with the inner and outer reality more often. Through this, I am able to wholly focus my energy on what needs to be done at the moment. I am able to listen to my intuition and information to guide my actions. I am able to remain calm in very stressful personal situations too.
I am aware when I am able to accept the situation and when I am not. I am aware that I can be unaware at times too.
I am aware that I need to continue to practice awareness & acceptance to continue living this life. I make time for 2-3 hours of Yoga and meditation every day. This effort enables me to live each moment fully so that I can live the same way outside meditation.
It’s been a real joy to experience life like this.