Motivation is freely available these days. Self help industry is booming. You can get on the net and find million ways to make your life better, make yourself better than you currently are. You can read and get inspired. You can listen to stories about other people and get inspired. It is all good and it has the definite potential to change lives.
But, the biggest source of inspiration, motivation, life lesson or whatever you want to call it — comes from the people around you, your family members, friends and colleagues. The people you spend most of your time with. They can teach you a lot and those teachings stay with you forever unlike the quote you read on Facebook that can inspire you in the moment but may have a very short life in your mind to make an impact in your life. Relationship is the biggest teacher. People around you are the greatest teachers. Someone told me once-
People teach you either way. Either you want to become like them or you don’t.
I find this to be true to a large extent.
Let me come back to the point. So I recently became a father. We welcomed a beautiful girl in our lives. Its been just a few weeks and she has already taught me some great things in life.
How to pay complete attention to anything you do
In this age of constant distractions, our attention span is becoming shorter and shorter! She just amazes me when she looks into my eyes! Completely into the act of seeing! Nobody has looked into my eyes that way before. Pure attention and love!
We hardly interact with people with our complete attention. I catch myself often looking at my phone while talking to others. I am guilty of it. The other day she was in my lap looking at me and my phone popped up a notification. Unconsciously, I immediately picked up my phone to check it out and while I was doing it, she started crying for no reason. She was fed so she wasn’t hungry. Before I picked up my phone, she was smiling and happy. I can never guess the absolute reason why she cried but it makes me think that she wanted my attention. She was craving for it. She gave me her complete attention and thats what she wanted in return. The moment I put down my phone and looked at her, she was back to being happy and smiling!
And its not just the act of seeing. Anything that she does has 100% of herself in it. She has mastered single tasking. When she cries, she just cries! She puts her 100% into crying. When she is being fed, she is totally into it. If you try to touch her while she is being fed, she will kick you back and tell you to stay away. When she sleeps, she just sleeps. No amount of noise can wither her sleep.
Giving your complete attention to anything you do is the first lesson she has taught me and I am long way away from mastering it.
How to breathe
I know what you are thinking! We all know how to breathe, right? Maybe not. We all have become shallow breathers. How many times in a day you feel your breath in your belly? We have become mind breathers. I don’t know if that makes any sense. We need to become body breathers rather than mind breathers. In most of the adults, breath has a very short travel span. It begins its journey through nostrils and gets lost somewhere in the head. You hardly feel it below the neck. This happens because the mind makes too much noise and interrupts the correct way of breathing.
I was in utter amazement when I saw her breathing! With every inhale, her belly expanded like a balloon and with every exhale, I saw her belly slowly going back to its starting point. This is what I call body breathing. She was feeling every breath through her body. I could literally visualize her lungs getting filled with each inhale and getting emptied with every out breathe. This is the correct way of breathing and possible reason that she could do this is because her mind is not yet fully developed. It hasn’t started making noise with unnecessary thoughts. This allows her to feel a lot more than any adult can.
I am not saying you go all day doing belly breathing. It is not possible. You cant breathe, breathing happens to you, automatically. But even if I can watch few breaths through belly during the day, I will consider it success. It shuts your mind for a moment and gives you instant relaxation.
No judgments
Innocence is what I am talking about here. I talked earlier about how she looks into my eyes. That look has such purity and is without any judgement. When she goes from one lap to the other, from one person to the other, the quality of looking remains the same. It doesn’t change. When I look in her eyes, there are no opinions, no judgments, no labels, no mental abstractions whatsoever! And this inability to judge others may be the underlying reason she is so happy and innocent. This is really hard to achieve for us adults. Especially, if someone is rude to you, did wrong to you or situations where you can clearly see other people’s actions as offensive.
The lessons made me realise how we are already born with these great zen like qualities but starting to forget and lose these essential qualities as we grow older. As we grow older, our egos develop and we totally become mind based entities.
Be childlike.
