School bags and Problems

How to face our Problems? In this fast paced modern world problems are plenty and our inability to understand and manage them is causing hardship to many people. We don’t know how to face our problems.

I can give few solutions with school bag analogy.

One day you are seeing your children going to school. you notice that they are struggling to carry them. Now what will you do? Will you ask then to go to school without school bag? That’s not possible right. so what will you do?

1- Removing unnecessary books. Isn’t this elementary? but are we doing this for our problem’s? Do we contemplate on our problems. If your child carries books of previous academic year what will you say?  Foolish isn’t it? Same way sometimes we think too much about problems of past and future. I am not going to say live in the Present. We need to think about our past and future. Thinking about past is called Learning and thinking about future is called Planning. So again these are survival skills. Even The all powerful nature doesn’t know the best way. it keeps trying in all directions. some animals swim, some fly and some walk. successful species carry on and they too need to keep evolving. So Failure isn’t bad, it is part of victory. So thinking about past and future is not bad. The trick here is thinking about past without Guilt and thinking about future without Fear. When you are able to think sans these emotions the weight of your bag will be less. I meant the burden of your thoughts 🙂

2-Well designed bag. You get your children well designed bag with features like padded back wall. So well designed bags gives less stress to the body. Now where do we carry our problem? In our mind, now the question is how do we strengthen our mind? To know that first we need to know status of our mind. Most of the time we are in auto mode and all our thoughts are driven by emotions. on any given day we get around 50,000 – 60000 thoughts many of which are repetitive and negative. The problem with us is we don’t know what is happening with our mind? we know we are stressed but how much? we never know that? This is why we hear about sudden deaths. Deaths doesnt happen suddenly. We have gone far from our body. We lost the ability to listen to the subtle signals that our body keeps giving us. This why Meditating or living mindfully helps. Even Swami Vivekananda once said he understood how bad a person he was only after doing meditation. there are lots of ways to do meditation and ones goal also differs. According to me the biggest gain would be the insight about your mind and body. you become more aware of your thoughts and sensations of your body. You become more receptive to your body’s signal. If this happens I believe there will not be sudden death. Also The moment you become aware of your thoughts you automatically will take corrective actions. Over a period of time you will become more resilient to negative thoughts and you will have a strong bag, I meant strong Mind 🙂

3-Strengthening body. Next thing you will do is to tell your child about strengthening his body. If he is physically strong he can carry the heavy bag. you will encourage him to have more physical activity, Yoga Asanas and so on. Many people think stress is all about mind, it is not. I will give you a example. Your gut has good bacteria and these bacteria secretes a hormone called Serotonin. So if you eat food which is rich in pre biotics and pro biotics these bacteria will flourish and you will be happy. lack of these will make you sad. not just these, Nutrition, Physical activity and Disease plays a very important role in secretion of  hormones that keep you happy. If you are not physically healthy you will not be mentally healthy also. Remember if you are physically and mentally fit. You will not need any thing, any person, any thought or event for you to be happy. Without any efforts you will be blissful. That is the sign of a strong bag, I meant a strong Body 🙂

4-Temporary help. Ask others to carry your Problems for some time. When we accompany our children to school, we carry the heavy bags till we reach the school. We carry the burden temporarily. Inside the school still the child is going to carry. Like wise sometimes we need our well wishers to carry our burden. Don’t hesitate to ask for help. You will never know who will help and in which way. Keep asking. It will come. Everyone will try to help you in different ways, elders with their wisdom, parents with their presence, friends with their shoulder for you to lean on and cry, spouse with their love.

5 – Pain relief- Being compassionate. There will be days where nothing worked, your children comes home tired of carrying the burden. So you decide to relieve them of some pain by giving them some remedies. You massage their body or apply pain relief balm. Same way when your mind is tired of carrying the negative thoughts, try healing it with compassion. Help others. When you give help don’t forget to say Thanks. Yes, by helping them you are getting benefited. By lifting weights in gym the equipment is not benefitted, it is you who will be benefited. So heal your mind by developing Compassion, empathy, humility, forgiveness and love.

6-Take a break. Our children don’t carry their bags on Holidays right? Imagine them carrying their bags at home. Similarly we too need to learn to take a break. It could be in many ways. We already do many things like, going to hotels, Visiting our favourite places, parties and many more, but along with this we need to spend few hours everyday. preferably early mornings. Spend this time to do your Excercise routine, Meditation, Temple visit, hobby and other things. When a negative thought comes during these times tell your mind, this thought can wait. Consciously be happy. The healing that you get during these hours will give you the energy for the whole day.  Soon these few hours in the day will become your “Happy Hour”

If we follow these techniques we will be able to carry the heavy bag. We can live our life to the fullest extent possible. As I always say I am only trying to give you a perspective. Contemplate on these ideas.

Blessed is the one , Who smiles and cries for no reason.