[www.keralites.net] Face your Fear

 

FACE YOUR FEAR  A Vedanta teacher tells you how to manage negative emotions at work Afew weeks ago, a survey published by the Associated Chambers of Commerce Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) suggested, four out of every 10 Indian professionals surveyed across the metropolitan cities suffered from general anxiety disorder or depression. But corporate India is a booming section of the society.Everyone wants to belong there.Everyone envisages growth there.It is the new royalty of our time.But the taste of modern success is embroiled in a stressed and insecure mind. JRD Tata once said, `I don't want India to be a superpower. I want India to be a happy country.' I have rarely read a more visionary statement from any businessman. While chasing deadlines and targets, juggling pressures and egos, battling stress and satisfaction, swapping coffee and computers, weighing health and prosperity, we carry deep insecurities and frustrations. And nobody seems to have an issue here. These conditions are all rooted in intricate insecurities and repressed resentments the average Indian corporate personnel hold in their innovative and industrious minds. Our fears and anger grow in us and on us, like parasitic tendencies, and silently make us an ugly caricature of our own dream-self. But Vedanta -the ancient Indian science of life-management -believes firmly that work should make us peaceful. Peace, and not prosperity, is the primary objective of work.Peace is what the organically meditative mind seeks. Prosperity is a by-product of an inspired and peaceful mind. But we need to think if the chase of the corporate prosperity has left us with mixed up priorities.While we may justify our fears and anger with welldesigned excuses like market-volatility, high-attrition, trust-deficiency, unrealistic targets, unrealistic targets, general inefficiency, and inadequate pay-scales, spirituality refuses to agree. Any reason is not good enough to allow us to live with stress as an essential or inevitable element of life. YOU ALONE ARE RESPONSIBLE Spirituality, thus, ruthlessly places the entire onus of our emotions on ourselves. In the Geeta, for instance, Arjuna is a qualified professional of his field. He is confident and successful. But when emotions play havoc, Arjuna succumbs to stress, anxiety, tension, insecurity, jealousy and frustration. It affects his own performance adversely and he cannot even get himself to work anymore. He almost gives up. But Krishna, his spiritual companion and mentor, does not extend even an iota of sympathy to his overly-stressed friend, who is bogged down by the many worries and pressures of his current challenges at his workplace. Krishna does not even approve of this utterly fallible stand of Arjuna. He just says, `Drop the weakness and get up'. And this forms the core of the quintessen tial Geeta approach to life. Geeta believes that the problem lies within, and so does the solution. And hence, `Lift yourself by yourself' declares this ancient manual of life. AWAKEN FROM WITHIN Spirituality is all about training the mind to practise selfempowerment. Spirituality eliminates fear and anger at its root level. Most of us take our negativities as a part of life. It may be a part, but is not essential. It is important to question what we usually take to be obvious. Answers often lie hidden in challenges. Truly overcoming fear or anger or any negativity, is a journey that twirls around on the path of right thinking. There is nothing more to it. Think, raise yourself. That is true spirituality. It is not necessarily about rituals or practices. It is about thinking.Spirituality analyses our fears and makes us realise how terribly meaningless our negativities really are -not because the book says so, but because it is logically and experientially proved. The irrationality of anger, once established, alters our entire conviction. Spiritual awakening helps individuals and teams to handle fear and anger effectively by completely snatching away the reality of these negativities. Think about how you would work if you had no anger and fear at all. The very attitude towards work is altered by spirituality to enable every working person to know that work is done out of happiness, and not for happiness.Yes, the job brings joy, but joy is a much vaster field of awareness than just a job. UNDERSTAND YOUR AGITATION Emotional transformation is difficult, because it is largely dependent on the person itself. But ancient Indian philosophers, who were called Rishis, shared mind-boggling insights about the emotional behaviours of mankind, and designed lifestylesolutions for healthier emotional lives. For instance, the second chapter of the Geeta minutely analyses the process of inneragitation. A complete step-by-step ladder of fall is depicted, which starts with brooding on the perceived and experienced, and goes on to become a dependency which in turn leads to agitation. Agitation causes wrong thinking and that causes unintelligent living.That, it is said, is true destruction of a person. This entire process happens in our head in a fraction of a second, and we remain thoughtlessly engaged in this destructive mental-pattern repeatedly all through our lifetimes.But the intricate analysis of the mechanism of agitation can help us understand where we can put a stop to this whole `ladder of fall'. Peace is not the absence of war or conflict outside, but a state of inner-calm in spite of the outer-chaos. (Nidhi Chaitanya is a Vedanta teacher with the Chinmaya Mission. She'll be conducting a workshop on managing emotions at work on October 1) 11 WAYS TO HANDLE FEAR AND ANGER 1. Face your fears: No matter how scary they seem, just face them. Do whatever it is that scares you the most, till it can no longer does 2. Don't be ashamed to be afraid: Our insecurities fuel our ego and our ego fuels our insecurity. Break the bondage. Accept your fears 3. Stop using the word `can't': Most of our barriers are self-cre ated. We induce our fears out of our own false imagination 4. Operate out of a sense of abundance: Know that you have Infinite strength and positivity in you. Assert it to yourself often. Believe in it. Whatever you be lieve, you are 5. Remember anger is a tool, not a master: Anger should not en slave us. If anything enslaves us, it takes away our freedom. Anger comes and goes. We can choose to let it pass or go along with it. Getting impulsively angry, is thus, not as wrong as behaving angry. Don't allow anger to determine your behaviour. And being angry is worse than even behaving angry. So, definitely don't allow anger to dictate your being 6. Delay the gratification of anger: Often anger arises as an im pulse. If you delay the reaction till you are absolutely calm, in most of the cases, you may no longer find it to be relevant to even react 7. Pray for the welfare of the people you are angry with: Think of their wellbeing and wish them well. It won't be easy to do this, but it will help tremendously 8. Apologise where needed: And mean it. Apologies may not al ways invoke forgiveness in the other person. But it surely cleanses our heart 9. Express gratitude: Use gratitude as a daily weapon to slash away negativities. If you feel grateful, then you feel good 10. Drop your dependencies: You could do this by doing things you don't like but which are right for you or for a larger Cause. Remem ber dependencies are at the root of all negativities 11. Meditate: It really works

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Posted by: Cool Kis <cooolkis@gmail.com>

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