Fascinated, I began to read more and more wisdom and self-help literature. And as I did, I discovered the profound impact and importance of the words we use in our daily communications (both with others and with ourselves) on the quality of our lives. This knowledge also caused me to become aware of the personal dialogue that each of us has going on within us every minute of every hour of every day and to vow to improve the content of what I was saying to myself. To achieve this, I began to apply a strategy developed by the ancient sages over five thousand years ago. And, in many ways, it changed my life.
The technique is a simple one and involves nothing more than selecting a phrase that you will train your mind to focus on at different times throughout the day until it begins to dominate your awareness and reshape the person you are. If it is inner peace and calm you seek, the phrase, known as a mantra, might be, ‘I am so grateful that I am a serene and tranquil person.’ If it is more confidence that you want, your mantra could be, ‘I am delighted that I am full of confidence and boundless courage.’ If it is material prosperity you are after, your saying might be, ‘I am so grateful that money and opportunity is flowing into my life.’
Repeat your mantras softly under your breath as you walk to work, as you wait in line or as you wash the dishes to fill otherwise unproductive times of your day with a powerful life improvement force. Try to say your personal phrase at least two hundred times a day for at least four weeks. The results will be profound as you take one giant step to finding the peace, prosperity and purpose your life requires. As Hazrat Inayat Khan said, ‘The words that enlighten the soul are more precious than jewels.’
12.
After I wroteThe Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, I was flooded with letters from readers who saw their lives change from the lessons they discovered on becoming happier, more fulfilled and more peaceful in these stress-crazed times. Many of the letters came from people whose work lives had grown so busy that they spent most of their free time worrying about things that should have been left at the office. They had lost the ability to laugh, love and share joy with their families because challenges at work were consuming them.
Too many people are spending the best years of their lives stuck in a state of constant worry. They worry about their jobs, the bills, the environment and their kids. And yet we all know deep in our hearts that most of the things we worry about never happen. It’s like that great saying of Mark Twain’s, ‘I’ve had a lot of trouble in my life, some of which actually happened.’ My father, a particularly wise man who has had a deep influence on my own life, once told me that the Sanskrit character for funeral pyre is strikingly similar to the Sanskrit character for worry. ‘I’m surprised,’ I replied. ‘You shouldn’t be, son,’ he gently offered. ‘One burns the dead while the other burns the living.’
I know how dramatically the worry habit can reduce one’s quality of life from personal experience. While in my late twenties, I was on the so-called fast track to success. I had received two law degrees from one of the country’s most prestigious law schools, served as the law clerk for a Chief Justice and was handling highly complex cases as a litigation lawyer. But I was often working too hard and worrying too much. I was waking up on Monday morning with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and a deep sense that I was wasting my talents on work that was not aligned with the person I was. So I began to search for ways to improve my life, turning first to the self-help and life leadership literature, where I found a wealth of lessons for a more balanced, peace-filled and meaningful existence.
One of the simple strategies I learned to conquer the worry habit was to schedule specific times to worry – what I now call ‘worry breaks’. If we are facing a difficulty, it is easy to spend all our waking hours focusing on it. Instead, I recommend that you schedule fixed times to worry, say, thirty minutes every evening. During this worry session, you may wallow in your problems and brood over your difficulties. But after that period ends, you must train yourself to leave your troubles behind and do something more productive, such as going for a walk in natural surroundings or reading an inspirational book or having a heart-to-heart conversation with someone you love. If during other times of the day you feel the need to worry, jot down what you want to worry about in a notebook which you can then bring to your next worry break. This simple but powerful technique will help you gradually reduce the amount of time you spend worrying and eventually serve to eliminate this habit forever.
13.
A while ago, I took my four-year-old son Colby to an Italian restaurant for lunch. It was a beautiful autumn day and, as usual, my young son was full of energy and joy. We both ordered pasta for our main course and then started to enjoy the freshly baked bread our waiter had brought. Little did I know that Colby was about to teach his father yet another lesson in the art of living.
Rather than eating the bread whole as most adults do, Colby took a different, far more creative approach. He began to scoop out the warm, soft part of the bread and left the crust intact. In other words, he had the wisdom to focus on the best part of the bread and leave the rest. Someone once said to me at a seminar, ‘Children come to us more highly evolved than adults to teach us the lessons we need to learn.’ And on that fine day, my little boy reminded me that as so-called grown-ups, we spend too much time focusing on the ‘crust of life’ rather than on all the good things that flow in and out of our days. We focus on our challenges at work, the pile of bills we have to pay and the lack of time to do all those things we need to do. But our thoughts do form our world and what we think about does grow in our lives. What we focus on will determine our destiny and so we must start focusing on the good stuff.
In the weeks ahead, make the time to connect to your more playful side, the child within you. Take the time to study the positive qualities of children and model their ability to stay energized, imaginative and completely in the moment no matter what might be going on around them. And as you do, remember the powerful words of Leo Rosten, who observed:
You can understand and relate to most people better if you look at them – no matter how impressive they may be – as if they are children. For most of us never really grow up or mature all that much – we simply grow taller. Oh, to be sure, we laugh less and play less and wear uncomfortable disguises like adults, but beneath the costume is the child we always are, whose needs are simple, whose daily life is still best described by fairy tales.
14.
Remember, Genius Is 99 Percent Inspiration
The celebrated inventor Thomas Edison is well known for his statement: ‘Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.’ While I believe that hard work is essential to a life of real success and fulfillment, I think that being filled with a deep sense of inspiration and commitment to making a difference in the world is an even more important attribute.
All of the great geniuses of the world were inspired and driven by their desire to enrich the lives of others. When you study their lives, you will discover that this desire became almost an obsession for most of them. It consumed them and occupied every cell of
