Spirituality: A Mantra for Stress Management

A mother has killed her child, or the farmer has committed a suicide, or a student has committed a suicide or a professional has committed a suicide are the frequent news lines today. I believe that the root cause for such actions is sheer mismanagement of human stresses which puts him or her in an uncontrolled life situation.

“Be Spiritual” is the best approach of successfully handling these complex stresses. More than 100 years ago Swami Vivekananda proclaimed “When the life - blood is strong and pure, no disease germ can live in that body. Our life - blood is spirituality. If it flows clear, if it flows strong and pure and vigorous, everything is right; political, social, any other material defects, even the poverty of the land, will all be cured if that blood is pure…. That is the national mind, that is the national life - current. Follow it and it leads to glory. Give it up and you die; death will be the only result, annihilation the only effect, the moment you step beyond that life - current.”

We need to understand this quickly and have to translate it in our day to day actions to relieve our stresses.

Our Vedanta confirms that Spirituality is a science and it is the most practical thing which can be verified globally. If one performs spiritual disciplines, the result is bound to come.

To train the mind to obey you is the ideal of spiritual discipline. After practicing certain spiritual disciplines our mind will become pure and steady. This will help in bringing the mind under our control and thereby we can manage the mental stresses under different situations of our life. The experts say that if you practice meditation continuously for seven or eight years you will find peace and bliss, and enjoy the fruits of your practices. Even after one year steady practise you will find some result.

In brief, what are the spiritual disciplines? Always be truthful. Be self-controlled. Watch your speech. Envy no one. Hate no one (including yourselves). Be jealous of no one. Practise chastity. We must practice spirituality when we are young. As we grow older the mind looses its vigour. Therefore, be up and doing, Be Spiritual !!

Truths of Appreciation!!

My friend, Bob Danzig, has an amazing story. Simple words of appreciation and encouragement changed his life. Bob was in five foster homes during his youth, and said he spent his childhood trying to find someone to love and appreciate him.

When he was nine years old, he had a new social worker. He said after she had done all the paperwork to move him to yet another foster home, she sat him down, looked him directly in the eyes, and said, "Bobby, I want you to always remember these words: YOU ARE WORTHWHILE!"

Bob says that no one had ever said anything like that to him, and each time they met, she repeated those words. They became an affirmation of appreciation that he heard over and over again in his head.

Bob graduated at sixteen, not because he was smart, he says, but because he got mixed up in the system! He soon took a job at the Albany New York Times as a copy boy, and his very first boss was a woman named Margaret.

After he had worked there about six months, Margaret called him into her office one day and asked him to sit down. He thought for sure he was going to be fired! She looked him right in the eyes and said to him, "I have been the office manager for 15 years – I have been observing you – and I believe YOU ARE FULL OF PROMISE."

Those words, on that day, gave him permission to aspire.

Those two positive messages of appreciation played over and over again in his head and ultimately gave him the courage to be the very best he could be. Sixteen years later he became the Publisher of the Albany New York Times, and seven years after that, he became CEO of Hearst Newspapers, one of the largest newspaper companies in the world-and he credits it all to those simple words of appreciation and love.

What a wonderful example of how little gifts of appreciation can make such a difference in a life!

Zig Ziglar had this to say: "You never know when a moment and a few sincere words can have an impact on a life."
--Barbara Glanz

The Power of Words & Friends

There once was a little boy who had a bad temper. His father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, he must hammer a nail into the back of the fence. The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. Over the next few weeks, as he learned to control his anger, the number of nails hammered daily gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence.
Finally the day came when the boy didn't lose his temper at all. He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper. The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone.
The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. He said, "You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out. It won't matter how many times you say I'm sorry, the wound is still there. A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one."
Friends are a very rare jewel, indeed. They make you smile and encourage you to succeed. They lend an ear, they share a word of praise, and they always want to open their hearts to us.
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"Friends are angels who lift us to our feet when our wings have trouble
remembering how to fly"-Anonymous