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When you are here and now, sitting totally, not jumping ahead, the miracle has happened. To be in the moment is the miracle – Osho
Plan your work, and work your plan – Napoleon Hill
Sounds contradictory, don’t they? Live in the moment? Yes do. Plan for tomorrow? Yes, of course. So what do we do? Both.
Is that possible? When you are in the moment, your breath and your mindfulness is focused on what you are doing now. If you are watching TV, that is the only thing you are doing – not planning for the next day’s meeting or worried about your kid coming late. On the other hand, planning for the morrow means taking a long term view of your objectives and life goals, working them backwards with timelines and to-do lists, and executing them based on the schedule. Are both possible? Let’s see.
Introducing You to Yourself: The body, the mind, the intellect and the soul. These four together is what I refer to as MYSELF. Each of these have a role to play in managing, executing, living, working, sleeping, playing and being productive, happy, content and successful. You have to maximize each component (for want of a better word) and its efficiency to achieve complete success. Here’s how.
Let’s start with the mind. It doesn’t matter –
My mind not only wanders, sometimes it leaves completely!
It is very difficult to control the ever moving mind, O Arjuna – Lord Krishna, Bhagavad Gita, Ch. 6, Sh. 35
The mind is a monkey. It goes all over the place. It is a scary mixed bag of emotions, experiences, thoughts, memories – sometimes of every thing that has gone wrong with our life! And extremely tough to control. It takes immense practice and dispassion (as the Lord continues in the above verse) to wield control over the fickle mind.
Here are some absolute truths you need to know about the mind:
- What the mind thinks or says to you internally, is of no matter.
- We spend more time worrying and fearing, based on what the mind keeps prattling to us
- The easiest way to quieten the mind was mentioned by Aamir Khan in the 3 Idiots movie – don’t worry. Our mind is like a small child. It needs to be constantly told to keep quiet, to focus on just breathing and to leave the actual work to the other 3 components.
Planning tip for the Mind? None. Just focus on the breath.
Now for our second component – the body
Take care of your body. It is the only place you have to live in!
There is no need to delve deeply into this component. No matter what your exercise and fitness and eating beliefs are, this body has to be absolutely cared for. It is up to you to figure out how to do it.
Here are some absolute truths you need to know about the body:
- At some point, the body will die
- No matter how well you take care of the body, four things will happen to it. It will be born, it will undergo aging, it will get diseased, and it will die.
Planning tip for the Body? Plan for the next 24 hours – how you plan to move, where you need to go, how much and what kind of food to eat, and when you will sleep. And then just do it.
Presenting the master planner – the intellect
The measure of intelligence is the ability to change – Albert Einstein
The intellect is the only part that really needs to think for you and plan for you and work out our schedule. The intellect needs to plan for both the short-term and the long-term.
