I am the captain of my soul

“I am the captain of my soul”. You might have heard this many times. I think it was said by the late Nelson Mandela. It is a very good quote. What does this quote mean for you? How to become the captain of the soul?

To become the captain means to lead the soul. You need to know what the soul is, only then you can lead the soul. What is soul? Soul is you, the living being in your body. The soul is not the body, but the spirit living in the body. It is in your head. Someone said to me that the soul is in the middle of the forehead. We can not see our soul because it is not physical. Our physical eyes can only see what is physical. Soul is a form of energy. Some say that a soul is a point of light. Very subtle but you can feel its existence. You can feel your existence, do you?

What is in the soul? Mind, intellect and heart. Know your mind and know how it works. It creates thoughts. Know your intellect. Intellect is said to be the eye of the soul. Some call it as the third eye. The eye is for seeing. What does this third eye see? The true and the untrue. It is the intellect that can discern between truth and falsehood. The wisdom is created by this intellect through churning the thought. To churn is to think deeply, then it becomes an experience. It then creates feeling accordingly. You keep that feeling or that experience in your heart. The three (mind, intellect and heart) are in fact in one. It is one with 3 different functions.

So how to become the leader of the soul? Understand the process of creating, churning and experiencing – thought, feeling and wisdom. Take a lead in each process. To take a lead means to be aware. This is internal awareness. This is self-awareness. How much do you need to develop this self-awareness? You have your own answer. I leave it to each one of you.

Have a nice weekend!

New Year Resolution 2020

This is still January. Let me write about new year resolution. I hope it is not too late. Do you have a new year resolution? Do you write it down? Do you revisit your resolution? A resolution is basically a goal to achieve, a target. It is ussually a personal one. How much did you achieve your last year resolution? Did you evaluate as the year ended? Or did you forget your resolution as months were passing by.

I made a review on my last year resolution. I was fortunate that I wrote them in a quite detailed way, so it was doable enough, though I was too optimistic for some resolutions. I put them into several categories – career, health, finance, spirituality. I broke down each category into a list of smaller goals and what I wanted to do to achieve. Last year, I got myself introduced to the idea of living as a minimalist. And I set myself for less spending as my goal, for this I set a maximum shopping for clothes into 5 pieces only. Later I thought that it was too optimistic. I didn’t have to wait till mid year, that I had missed my target. When I shared that I had failed for this one resolution to a friend, she laughed at me and I became a little bit discouraged. Did I give up and drop my resolution? No. I knew that I had failed (gloriously), but I still kept on with the resolution, 5 new clothes only! Every time I bought a new cloth, I noted down and put it on a list with the price I paid for and also the date of the purchase. I kept that list. And I wanted to know how much I would have failed. And at the end of December 2019, do you know how many new clothes I bought in 2019? 16. A lot more than the target.

So this year I made the same categories. I learnt from last year. Now I feel I know myself better, I have a sense on how much I can keep on with my resolution of 2020. How about you?

An Honest Journaling

In every workshop on journaling, I always encourage people to start writing with an honest heart. Open the heart and start writing the feelings out, because this is how the heart will get healed. Be honest with the self by writing the feeling out.

Some people find it so hard to do it. They said that they have fear that others might read their journal, that other might know their feelings. Is it really harmful if others know what you feel? Fear is definitely unhealthy. It doesn’t make the soul free. Someone shared that when she was a teenager, someone read her diary and told everyone about what she wrote in the diary. This made her really ashamed and since then she stopped writing it.

For me, journaling is the best way to deal with any negative feeling and finish it quickly. I agree that some emotions might be so strong and it takes more time to finish. You might need to journal it several times. But it will definitely become weaker and weaker if you keep journaling it. Finally it will finish completely. When it finishes, you don’t feel it anymore. You still remember the situation, but the feeling is no longer there. Then if others know what you felt, it will be okay with you. I remembered I shared my journal with a friend. I read it for her. She knew what I was writing about. She knew my situation, what I felt and also how I was dealing with that. We laughed together.

This journaling is primarily for the self, not for anyone else. In fact this is a good practice to know the self better, and understand the self better. It is a practice to develop self-awareness. In the long run, it will build a healthy relationship with the self. When you have a good relationship with the self, you will find it very easy to relate to anyone. It is just not possible to have a good relationship with others when the relationship with the self is not healthy.

Self-Discovery

Where does the self get lost? It is lost in our own head (mind). The mind creates thousands of thoughts everyday. It keeps busy and also noisy. The mind is always occupied with thoughts, ideas, plans and dreams. It is like a jungle, full of thoughts. You might find it very difficult to make it silent for just a moment. The self gets lost in this jungle. You might have heard a story of a queen who lost her necklace. She searched for her necklace around. She kept searching the necklace that she did not realize that it is in fact around her own neck. This story refers to our self-discovery journey. We might have searched for the self “outside” which in fact it is lost “inside”.

Journaling is a way to discover the self which has been hidden behind the thoughts, ideas, plans and dreams. This is an inward-journey. By writing them down one by one, you will experience more clarity in seeing the self. You are removing the veils. You will be able see your true self.

How to control your mind

When you have negative thought about a situation, usually it is followed by negative feelings like worry, fear, stress, impatience etc. Or the other way around, when you notice that you have worry, fear, stress or impatience….it is the sign that you have negative thought. You might have nurtured this negative thought for quite sometime. When you suffer this, your mind is not relaxed. You might experience the thoughts are spinning so fast in the mind. You might soon also notice that your heart beat is increasing. That is what happens when we are stressful. Have you experienced this in your day to day life?

You might have an appointment with someone and you are trapped in a traffic on your way to meet that person. You might arrive late. What do you feel? Stressed. When you feel stressed your thought tends to be faster. You need to control the speed. To control means to slow it down. How? Control the mind. The mind is inside our head, we can not touch it. It is to control the awareness. Be aware that you are the one who is sitting in the control room inside your head. You are holding the switch of your awarness. Keep this awareness.

It is when you forget this, the situation controls you. It controls your mind and also your heart beat.

How to start writing

When someone asked me how to start writing, I said : “Just write what you see, what you hear and what you feel.” You don’t need to be very creative to start writing. And you don’t need to have a talent to do it either. You only need an intention. Because writing is a skill, so everyone can develop this skill through practice. Just like speaking. Each one of us learned to speak when we were very small and we can speak now, we can express our thought and feeling through speaking. In the same way, writing is also a skill, it is also expressing thoughts and feelings. Everybody can express one’s thought and one’s feeling through writing.

You do not need to worry when you express your thought and feeling. Remember that you are writing for yourself. You are not writing for someone else to read. Liberate yourself from any worry or fear of being commented by anyone, being judged by anyone. In fact no one can criticize what you express, because your thoughts and feelings are always personal and nothing is wrong. To write them down is to be honest to the self. When you are honest to yourself, you will feel very comfortable with yourself. Start writing and start expressing what is inside you.

The mind keeps thinking all the time. It never stops. When you express it in writing, the mind slows down its speed. It becomes much lighter, not heavy.

Heart and Soul

A Japanese friend asked me: “what is heart? and what is soul?” If you got this question, what would be your answer? There are only two aspects of Human Being. The human and the being, the body and the soul, the physic and the spirit, physical and spiritual. Human refers to the body which is physical and Being refers to the soul which is spiritual. We can see the body, but we can not see the soul. We can not see our heart, our mind and our intellect.

Heart, mind, intellect…..all are in one, in the Being, in the soul. The 3 are in the soul, these are the faculties of the soul. Each one has different function. Mind creates thoughts. Mind works like a mirror, it reflects thoughts, it projects thoughts. The second faculty of the soul is intellect. It is called the eye of the soul, it has the ability to “see and understand”. It can see what is right and what is wrong. It has the ability to churn the thought deeply. It experiences the thought. It changes knowledge into wisdom. When the thought is transformed into an experience (a deeper understanding), then the heart does its work – it creates a feeling based on the experience. The stronger you hold one particular thought with your intellect, you think it deeply…..then your heart will create a feeling accordingly.

You can’t copy an experience

I remember when I started sharing some thoughts through short journals via WhatsApp to friends and contacts, very soon I started hearing from them a question why I did not start writing a book or creating a blog. This blog was not created at that time. Some said “Someone may copy your idea (story) if you just share it freely.” I thought what I had been writing and sharing to people were more about my personal experience. How could people copy a personal experience? I think it is not possible. In the beginning very often some people asked me if they could share it to their families and contacts or not. And I always said “Sure, you can.” I let them share it in whatever way the wanted to share it. My mission was to share it to as many people as possible. And my mission stays the same until this very day.

I have no worry if someone copies my thoughts. I believe that no one can ever copy an experience. Because an experience is always individual. It is never the same. In this way I free myself from any fear or worry.

A heart-to-heart sharing

Someone asked me to moderate a panel discussion last year. I don’t remember the topic of the discussion specifically anymore. I think it was about having self respect and maintaining humility at the same time. There would be two speakers. I prepared a list of questions the night before for the discussion.

In the next morning I thought I would like to talk to each speaker and share the list of the questions. The first speaker said : ”You can ask me anything.” She didn’t want to see the list. I thought it was good for me, so I could ask any question. Then I talked to the second speaker. He wanted to read the list. He went through the questions one by one and he asked me to take out one question from the list. It was a very personal question. I asked them to share their personal stories on maintaining their humility while dealing with difficult people. Whether they succeeded or not, it wouldn’t matter. I realized that not everyone found it easy and comfortable to share an honest story about themselves.

We always could learn from other’s story. I believe that we can learn more from someone’s experience than just from information. Infomation is a theory and experience is a practice. Because experience is coming from the heart so it will inspire people more. Sharing an experience is always much better than sharing an information. It is a heart-to-heart sharing.

Do you drink coffee?

I know many people are really coffee lovers. I should say some of them are experts at coffee. I also remember one of my colleague is really addicted to coffee so he always has a cup of coffee to start the day. It becomes his moodbooster for the day. I don’t drink coffee much, only occasionally and it would be a decaf one.

Very recently I met someone who never drinks coffee nor tea in her life. Not even once! She said that when she was small, her parents used to say that coffee and tea were not for children and when she grew up she chose not even to have a try. She gave me a very interesting reason and I really like it. She said that she decided not to have a try because she didn’t want to develop it as a habit. She doesn’t want to create a mental attachment to a particular drink or food. For this, I would agree. When something has become a habit, it is not easy to break it. The mind is craving.

If you have the habit of having a particular drink, definitely you put your heart into it because you enjoy it. You invest your heart in it. And what happens if for some reasons you don’t have one or you can’t have one? My colleague once said to me that he would get a headache without having a cup of coffee in the morning. When we were on a trip together, I saw him restless. He couldn’t concentrate.