My life didn't start until I stopped..

Bedridden, at a young age of 30, with stiff back and excruciating knee pain, I could not even move my limbs, off the charts vital stats, blood pressure reading at peaks, sugar levels way above normal, the doctors called for numerous blood reports, XRAYs and MRI. They declare that I'm suffering from Diabetes, High Blood Pressure, and Arthritis (both Ankylosing Spondylitis and Rheumatoid Arthritis!), prescribed me Steroids, painkillers and other harmful medicines and advised that I'll have to take those for life! and there will be limitations to what I can do physically! What? Only a month ago I returned from the Himalayas successfully ascending 15600 feet completing a onemonthlongmountaineeringcourse from one of the most prestigious institutes in the world! But as they say that it only takes a disaster to strike (in my case few chronic conditions) for one to realize how precious life is. A reality check! It just works like an electric switch! Snaps one out of illusion and to reality about one's Immortality. Life is Suffering! On the scale of 1 to 10, how much pain do I feel? Ten! and How much disturbed do I feel about my state? Ten! What is going in my mind? What am I thinking about my condition that is making me disturbed? "How can this happen to me at this age? Such disability cannot be inflicted on me, I MUST not have such chronic conditions, life MUST be a smooth ride for me, it's HORRIBLE and I CANNOT tolerate the pain and the unfair situation that life has put me in. Now there is no meaning of my life, it SUCKS!" But one finally finds meaning in Buddha's enlightened words "Life is suffering!" 10 years ago, I started as an ambitious executive in a company but soon I could relate to the classic adage "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", my life revolved around only three things work, work and WORK (as Medical Doctors now rightly point out that my condition 'may be' related to Stress! and 'of course' Lifestyle). Contemplating, reflecting and wondering about life and its meaning in the modern context and about what I wanted to do with it either sit and work in cubicles for major waking hours or taste the illusive fleeting life? The answers were not so simple. I wondered about the concept of enlightenment and what it meant. I read western philosophers and eastern scriptures and many modern enlightened masters and psychologists. What did the enlightened masters say? Some 2500 years ago enlightened King Gautama the Buddha, who went in deep meditation to find the root cause of suffering, pronounced "We are what we think!" immediately after he attained enlightenment. He even went ahead and stated a prescription to get rid of suffering! Four Noble Truths namely (1) The truth of dukkha (suffering, anxiety, unsatisfactoriness) (2) The truth of the origin of dukkha

(3) The truth of the cessation of dukkha and (4) The truth of the path leading to the cessation of dukkha. Over the centuries, enlightened sages have tried to spread the same wisdom but in different contexts. When Valmiki penned down Ramayana, during 5th to 4th century BCE, depicting the victory of Lord Rama over TenheadedKing Raavana, metaphorically what Valmiki depicted as the victory of the good over the evil, is to tell us to win over our inner battles, our inner conflicts between the good and the evil. DashaHara in Sanskrit means defeat of Raavana, a demon with 10 heads (das 10, hara defeat), defeat of ten unhealthy qualities within you : Kama Vasana (Lust), Krodha (Anger), Moha (Attachment), Lobha (Greed), Mada (Over Pride), Matsara (Jealousy), Swartha (Selfishness), Anyaaya (Injustice), Amanavta (Cruelty), Ahankara (Ego). In 450 BC, Veda Vyasa beautifully expounded in the Bhagvad Gita, a metaphorical story representing the mind as the holy battlefield and the war between the positive and the negative, between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, where Krishna teaches Arjuna that, you only have control over your actions (karma) but not over the fruits of the actions, the results. In 1st century, the stoic philosopher Epictetus said, "all external events are determined by fate, and are thus beyond our control; we should accept whatever happens calmly and dispassionately. However, individuals are responsible for their own actions". He went further and said, "What disturbs people is not events but their judgments of these events." In 1941, the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote a "Serenity Prayer" which talks about accepting the things that you cannot change and only change the things you can change. It teaches you to accept yourself, others and life unconditionally and try not to change situations outside your control, doing so may lead to emotional disturbances. In mid1950s, the great American psychologist Dr. Albert Ellis, after reading extensively about the teachings and applying these teachings of philosophers, psychologists, and ancient scriptures discovered that there is a magical element to our thoughts which leads us to make ourselves disturbed by feeling disturbingly and then behaving self deafeatingly. He expounded that all humans make themselves emotionally disturbed by what he called, "MUSTurbating" i.e., converting our healthy wants or desires into dogmatic needs and when we don't get what we believe we MUST get. We do not merely get disturbed by the events or situations. Rather, we make overselves needlessly neurotic. We do so by taking our healthy wishes (preferences) for approval, success, comfort, appearance and physical fitness all of which tend to encourage feelings of happiness and which we like to pursue and we convert these healthy flexible wishes into grandiose dogmatic demands, musts, shoulds, have to, need to and ought to. He propounded that as long as we have flexible thinking and nondogmatic desires and don't transform these desires into dogmatic musts we will constructively adjust to situations when we don't get what we want. So in order to change our feelings and behaviors, we need to change our irrational thoughts to rational ones.

Do we have control over our suffering? So, it is legitimate and sane to wish and desire for an icecream but it would be unhealthy and neurotic to demand one just because one wants to have it. Hence, the disturbed feelings and selfdefeating behaviors are the results of converting these healthy wishes into rigid demands. "Demandingness" will almost always get us less! To counteract demandingness, we can change the attitude that we hold, from a demanding attitude to a preferring attitude. The first step in counteracting musturbation or shoulding is to learn to recognize the difference between the language of preferring and the language of demanding. So, we might change "I MUST do well" to "I PREFER to do well but it is not a MUST...!!" Often, this new way of thinking helps us to loosen up and perform better! How I successfully undisturbed myself? Ellis and I share a view that when I'm disturbing myself I'm holding some rigid irrational thoughts about self, others and life, let's take my thoughts one by one and see how they are irrational and how they are responsible for my getting disturbed. The first one is "How can this happen to me at this age? Such disability cannot be inflicted on me, I MUST not have such chronic conditions, life MUST be a smooth ride for me" Is this thought logical? Why can't something like that happen to me? Am I a special human with supernatural powers making me immune to diseases? I wish that I would not be afflicted with such conditions but does it logically follow that just because I wish therefore I MUST not get afflicted with such conditions? Human beings are prone to be afflicted with conditions, hence it can easily happen to me as well. A more logical belief would be "I wish that I would not be afflicted with such conditions but it is not a MUST, as a human being I'm prone to different ailments." My second irrational belief is, "It's HORRIBLE" Is this thought rational? When do we say that something is horrible or awful? When it is beyond 100% bad, but is my condition really horrible? can there be no other event or thing more awful than my condition? There are many other things or events that can be badder than my condition, hence my thinking that it's horrible is illogical! A more logical belief would be "It is bad that I got struck with such a condition, but it is not horrible, it only limits me in certain ways but not completely". My third irrational belief, "I CANNOT tolerate the pain and the unfair situation that life has put me in". Am I not tolerating the pain until now? How can I then say that I cannot tolerate the pain! Is life all fair? Am I not again making an irrational statement that life MUST be fair at all times? and what is the evidence that I cannot tolerate such unfairness? Am I not tolerating it until now? A more rational belief to hold would be "It is difficult to bear the pain and the life's unfairness towards me but I can tolerate it!"

My fourth irrational belief is, "Now there is no meaning of my life, it SUCKS!" Is this a logical statement? What is the meaning of life? It is what I make of it, so if I give a meaning that "there is no meaning", and put myself down, then that is the meaning I'm assigning. There is no inherent meaning to life. As Ellis states, "the goal of life is to have a ball!". Life is not only one thing, life consist of many things and processes, hence I cannot give it one complete label and say that "it sucks!". A more logical belief would be "Life is a complicated process of many things, it cannot be rated as a whole, to accept life only if it is a smooth ride is to accept it only with certain condition, which is irrational and not helpful, therefore I accept life unconditionally with its imperfections." After disputing my irrational beliefs and drawing out the logical rational ones, now, on the scale of 1 to 10, how much pain do I feel? Nine! and How disturbed do I feel about my state? Two! What did Buddha mean by "dukkha"? I can still feel the excruciating pain, but the extra baggage that I was carrying along with the pain has now been loaded off! This is what the greatest scientist Buddha meant by "dukkha", when he proclaimed Life is Suffering, what he meant to say is life as we know is suffering! Buddha figured out that our mind is a meaning making machine. He went ahead and even imparted the teachings about the source of our sufferings and how to overcome it, he asks us to see those meanings as just thoughts without reacting to them, his way is different than Ellis' but both have the same purpose, Buddha's way is to be equanimous, without indulging with those thoughts, to be mindful of them, be only a witness to them without giving meaning to those transient thoughts! Instead of saying "It's horrible and I cannot tolerate it" I can recognize and purge the thought, without giving any meaning to the external events and thereby not getting disturbed about those events, by saying "I'm having a though that.. 'it's horrible and I cannot tolerate it'. This is just a thought and it does not mean anything!" Buddha's prescription is meditation! Be in a meditative state, be mindful, so simple and beautiful! What is our ultimate goal? The Ultimate Goal of a human being is Survival and Happiness. We attribute our happiness to attainment of our desires, wishes and needs. Our happiness is then conditional, based on the fulfillment of these external factors, "the fruits of the actions" as Krishna rightly put it, rather than, the Karma, the process, the efforts. The problem arises when we are not able to attain these goals, this is when we feel and behave dysfunctionally. So when Valmiki depicted the victory of Lord Rama over Tenheaded King Raavana, the 'good' over the 'evil', let us take 'good' in this context as helpful thoughts, feelings and behaviors to attain our goals and take 'evil' as unhelpful thoughts, feelings and behaviors that prevent us from achieving our goals. When Valmiki tells us to win over the above ten unhealthy qualities, he is telling us from his wisdom to

overcome these vices, the unhelpful thoughts, feelings and behaviors, to attain our ultimate goal, blissful happiness i.e. unconditional joy. How to achieve Blissful Happiness and a Healthy Mind-Body? As we saw that our happiness is conditional, it is far better to seek blissful happiness i.e. unconditional joy. Joy though related to happiness is a much deeper experience. Unlike happiness, joy is your unconditional commitment to have fun from within, regardless of outside conditions, regardless of "the fruits". Where one gives up the search for happiness, one may find joy. It connects one with the source of life within. It is an emotion that can be created by indulging in joyful activities like singing, dancing, playing and laughing, the process rather than the result. During periods of joyfulness, physiological and biochemical changes take place that afford a sense of wellbeing, completely altering negative outlooks on life and its challenges. Happiness requires effort shaping the surroundings according to our tastes whereas joy is effortless. Joyfulness leads to a positive state of mind that has the power to mitigate stress and pain and diffuse negative emotions thereby enabling a person to perform better in every sphere of life. Valmiki, Gautama the Buddha, Sage Veda Vyasa, Reinhold, Epictetus and Dr. Ellis, all of them wants us to understand, "The Secret" to remain undisturbed through life's challenges, and to harbor the inner courage to sail through these challenges, it is not the events that disturb us but what disturbs us is our beliefs about these events, we label the events, situations or people as good or evil according to the view that we take about them. Hence, as the metaphorical poem, the Bhagavad Gita, depicts that the real battle takes place is on the holybattlefield, the "dharmakshetre kurukshetre", the Mind. My life didn't start until I stopped...MUSTurbating! We, at Leadership Academy, believe in leading with empathy, empowering people and transforming lives. We conduct programs, workshops and provide individual life coaching to cultivate Radical Acceptance, practice Blissful Happiness and to inspire a Healthy MindBody Lifestyle.

TejasShah,MSc.(Psy),
Founder,CEOatLeadershipAcademy The author is a Chief Psychotherapist and a Wellness Coach at Leadership Academy (www.LeadershipAcademy.in). He not only recovered but reversedhisDiabetes,ArthritisandHighBlood PressurethroughaHealthy MindBodyLifestyle.