"Self" im-prisons or im-proves...

I am looking back at my journey of life from July 2018 and I am wondering whether our "Past" imprisons us or we learn from our past and improve ourselves. Aah, I not only love the word "Self" but I adore too and that's why I am back on my own blog. (word called "laziness" stopped me coming back on this lovely space called "connecting souls"😌😌

Let us put a pause and wonder how far we have loved ourselves in true sense. Do we actually move ahead putting our past - (Disclaimer: Past certainly means ONLY breakups, failures, setbacks.. of course the loss of our loved ones from this world is inconsolable but we gain joy by remembering them in best possible way)   and live in our present moment.? Do we actually "accept" our present by putting our past aside? Do we actually cherish the good moments and bad moments of our life and learn from the said phases? Do we sit with our self and appreciate our self. Yes, believe me, it makes wonders if you sit with yourself for ten minutes or you walk with yourself for thirty-forty-fifty minutes or even if you laugh with yourself for five minutes or doing nothing and simply sitting for a while with self,  it makes wonders. 

Whenever I observe nearby relationships in the form of family, friends, distant friends, and mere acquaintances, I feel that the community called "human beings" don't spend time with self "consciously". How many of us are conscious enough to feel our laughter and joy in our hearts or even we are sad. Generally, we don't allow self to accept the moment of sadness. We keep on putting a veil on our own emotions to keep others happy. We don't have the courage to tell our own people during our low moments: Do not disturb me for a while, I am not happy. What we do, we simply ignore our own emotions and we imprison ourselves in those moments. Human beings are the most hyper creatures if that human being is born in India. We keep on the "hyper mode" switch on and keep running - even if we are going to the picnic, we run and we create chaos to get ready, to lock the doors,  to start the car, to reach to the venue and we also end up running even "to enjoy the moment of "picnic". Same we do for all our chores. Why? Why can't we go into "non-hyper zone" and enjoy each moment from planning to execution of the said task? Generally, I have observed this. (I will wait if any of you want me to correct on this)

Since last July (my birthday), I started living consciously and started slowing down on my own pace of thoughts and believe me, it has helped me a lot. Also, I started taking one moment at a time and it helped me to improve. The imprisoned thoughts started moving away and fresh thoughts started coming in, life suddenly started becoming more meaningful and mindful. But I chose to slow down my pace, I chose to put a pause and wonder about the life and its beauty, I chose to slow down and enjoy the life's moments in the true sense by being conscious about the "now" moment. People around me still is not convinced with this slow pace of mine, but I am enjoying each moment. The work I do is consciously chosen. I know everyone is differently wired and that's why it is the beauty to share how we improve ourselves.

Then what is imprisoning us? The dictionary meaning of imprisonment "is the state of being imprisoned or being captived" - yes. we imprison ourselves in the state of mind called "prejudices", "guilt", "past experiences", "societal conditioning", "what others will think attitude", "why this happens with me attitude", and for being judgmental every now and then, either for ourself or for others. We tend to imprison ourselves by thinking that others should behave same way like we want or even how we think they should behave. Why we cant accept the fact that different people have different perspectives.. We as a human being should certainly achieve higher heights of the success and should work on and should rule the world, but then in this whole process, we tend to forget ourself, we tend to forget our hobbies, we tend to forget our passion and then life suddenly becomes so busy and stressful. At times, this word "Stress" kills our inner self and imprisons us..Why we cant put our foot down from our busy schedules and think for our own hobbies ? hy we imprison ourself by saying "now at this age, we cannot do a particular thing?Who stops us? there is no society who is going to push us and say lets go and do together - we ourselves have to take the charge of us. Ofcourse, We are "so many" by way of relations - spouse, mother, daughter, daughter in law, brother, father, father in law etc....but then we are first "we" - a soul who is on this earth for some lovely purpose - identify that purpose and start living it. (many of us have already identified, many of us must be in the process of identifying, or many of us are waiting to be identified...)

Happy to share what I am doing to improve myself rather than getting imprisoned with my own thoughts : 

1. Reading Books and listening to music (and practicing mindfulness)

2. Sitting with self every day

3. Actually saying "STOP" to my monkey mind and the blame-game thoughts (voice can be managed looking to the situations)

4. Challenging my self to achieve some new skill (already that skill is getting developed and will wait to share a separate post on this) with joy and not fear

5. Sitting and Speaking to the concerned people on the issues that bothers me (this has helped to regain confidence that two-way conversations always help rather than assumptions and presumptions by our mind and actually our mind creates the whole drama and story based on these assumptions and presumptions and it never becomes reality)so better talk, talk and talk. There is not a single relationship which you cannot communicate freely. 

6. Leave the Past (Prejudices and Fear)

7. Enjoy the Present (Feel the emotions and accept it)

8. Don't stress with future which is yet to come (remove insecurities)

(Please add your self-improvement ways to this list )

 Life is very beautiful, joyful and hilarious 

•  if we can lower our expectations from our own self and from other to a little extent,
• if we speak to self or others rather than assume 
• if we keep little satisfaction with our achievements of today and then work for a better tomorrow rather than cribbing and then seeking progress
• and most importantly,if we become mindful of each and every moment.

Take two minutes and think -is your self imprisoned or on verge of improvement?

Happy Self -improving-emotional health 

Happy (Self-i-e) :)