5 Quotes of Swami Vivekanandha that Makes Your Body, Mind, and Soul Healthier

If you start reflecting, you will realize how profound these quotes are.

Swami Vivekanand was an Indian Hindu monk who acted as a key figure in introducing philosophical-religious texts of Hinduism and yoga to the Western world. He was influenced by his guru, Ramakrishna, from whom he learned that all living beings were an embodiment of the divine self.

He was a spiritual genius who taught how becoming selfless in life and inclining towards spirituality makes one attain a successful life.

His teachings and philosophies can be applied to various aspects of life, education, faith, character building as well as social issues and these philosophies can lead one to be a wise man.

1. “Like me or hate me, both are in my favor. If you like me I am in your Heart. If you hate me I am in your mind”

Everyone on this planet might have different opinions about you. Some might like you, some might hate you, some might even disrespect you but it should not bother you anytime because it is just an opinion of others about you.

You know what works or doesn’t work for you, you know yourself better than anyone else. Don’t let someone else’s opinions cause you to doubt yourself.

The river that starts from its source will flow through different places. In some places, people will worship the river with lamps, and in some places, they welcome it with flowers and in other places, they throw stones. But the river always continues to flow towards its destination, regardless of it all.

Be like a river and keep moving towards your destination without bothering about other’s opinions.

2. “Strength, strength it is that we want so much in this life, for what we call sin and sorrow have all one cause, and that is our weakness. With weakness comes ignorance, and with ignorance comes misery”

In this world, every bad thing happens because of weakness. People concentrating on their own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others, feeling jealous because of other’s success, feeling resentment against someone because of other’s advantages, excessive desire to dominate others, separation in a relationship due to fear of unfaithfulness, is all because of the weakness they possess.

Weakness is what brings ignorance, cheapness, racism, discrimination, desperation, cruelty, brutality, all these things will keep you to be forced to stay in an unpleasant situation.

How to eliminate weakness from your life?

A simple answer to this question is to be strong always. All strength that you need is right there inside you but you have to bring them outside. Moral excellence is the best way to bring your strength outside and eliminate weakness from your life. Five virtue to morally excel in your life are

1. Wisdom: If you are able to use your knowledge and experience to make good decisions and judgments then you are a wise person. Curiosity to learn things, open-mindedness(Open to other ideas and perspectives), critical thinking from different perspectives, and inventiveness will make you a wise person.
2. Courage: It is the willingness to confront agony, pain, danger, uncertainty, or intimidation. Trying new things, stretching yourself out from your comfort zone, taking action in spite of feeling fear, being genuine and enthusiastic, will bring you the courage.
3. Humanity: Lack of humanity turns a human being to animal pretending to be a human. Kindness, love, and the ability to know oneself and to know others are the ways to inject humanity in humans.
4. Justice: Justice is the quality of being impartial. Always act in accordance with socially accepted conventions and treat everyone equally without any partiality.
5. Self-regulation: Controlling your behavior, emotions, and thoughts in any circumstances is called self-regulation. It improves your self-confidence and self-esteem and eliminates stress caused by anger or anxiety.

By practicing these powerful virtues in real life you can build strength to eliminate weakness.

3. “Whatever you think, that you will be. If you think yourselves weak, weak you will be; if you think yourselves strong, strong you will be”

The healthy soil will grow anything that you plant. It is only you who have to decide what you are going to plant either beautiful flowers or weeds. Our mind is like healthy soil if you feed it with good thoughts then you will be attracted to it otherwise you will be attracted to bad or negative ideas.

If your head feels full of thoughts, to an extent where you feel highly overwhelmed by them, it’s simply because you have been feeding attention to these thoughts unconsciously and have ended up strengthening them tremendously. Now, these thoughts have the capacity to attract reality.

The more you feed positive thoughts like love, goal, wisdom, passion, success, etc you will be more conscious of the ways that you can elevate your life and find new opportunities for improvement.

There are many personalities who have beautifully transformed their thoughts into reality.

1. Bill Gates’s thought of making an operating system for computers created a multi-billion dollar software company called Microsoft.
2. Jeff Bezos’s thought of selling books online made Amazon world’s largest e-commerce platform to buy any products online.
3. Elon Musk’s crazy thought to send people to Mars made him construct an aerospace manufacturing and space transportation services company.

So the thoughts that pass through your mind are responsible for almost everything that happens in your life.

How to create a reality with thoughts?

1. Write your thoughts or ideas on a note pad and read it daily once you wake up in the morning.
2. Spend hours daily to work on the idea that you fed in your mind.
3. Work really hard.
4. Make mistakes and learn from those mistakes.
5. Repeat these four steps daily until it influences your behavior and attitude, affect your actions and reactions.

Once your behavior and attitude change, your life will also change. You will have a better life. Your better life can be your best life ever - the life of your dream.

4. “Arise, awake, and stop not until the goal is achieved”

Everyone in this world has a unique potential that is inherent within them. In other words, there’s one specific job which you do exceptionally better than most of the people, there lies your inner potential.

Even though you don’t know what is your inner potential is, strongly believe the truth that you have inner potential to do something. Therefore, the true significance of the term ‘Arise’ is to awaken to this truth and rise to make sense of your potential.

You don’t know what you’re capable of until you try something and fail multiple times. So arise, arise every time when you fall down and arise, arise until you succeed.

Colonel Sanders was rejected by more than 1000 people when he tried to sell his franchise-model chicken restaurant. But he arises above all the rejection and eventually found success with a restaurant that became the first KFC. Today there are more than 24,000 KFC restaurants in over 145 countries and territories around the world.

Michael Jordan himself said in an interview that he had missed more than 9,000 shots in his career. He had lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions he has been entrusted to take the game-winning shot, and he missed. He has failed over and over and over again in his life. And that is why he succeeds.

How to make it out?

Be committed to your goal: Commitment is a critical trait that helps you move ahead in life faster and get closer to your goals. Being committed will help you remain focused on your targets.

Stick with “try, fail, and arise” strategy: Always try something new, it really doesn’t matter if you fail. Try, when you fail, rise up and try again. When you fail again, rise up again and try again. Again and again and again and don’t stop this “try, fail, and arise” strategy until your goal is achieved.

Make note of your failures: When you fail at something note it down in your note pad. Divide the page into two columns. Jot down the failure in the left column and write down the main takeaway lessons from the failure in the right column. By doing this you can put your best foot forward in the future.

5. “Anything that makes you weak physically, intellectually and spiritually, reject as poison”

Body, Mind, and Soul are the three faculties of humans that are linked together. In this world, it is recognized that to achieve a truly rewarding and fulfilling life one must gain a balance between soul, mind, and body.

Physical Weakness:

We become physically weak when our bones, muscles, blood, and organs fail to function properly. Physical weakness is mostly caused due to improper diet, sleep deprivation, addicted to drugs, and not involved in any of the physical exercise.

How to avoid physical weakness?

1. Give more preference to the food items that makes your tummy happy than that makes your tongue happy.
2. Accept the fact that the basic need for earning money is to satisfy your tummy. So whenever you skip your normal meal due to your busy work schedule just realize the fact that satisfying your tummy is more important than satisfying the client of your business or work.
3. There is a misconception that eating a bit at a time makes your body slim. Just because you’re slim, doesn’t mean you’re healthy. So instead of taking very little food better take more nutritious foods.
4. You should sleep at least 7 hours at night. So have a routine for sleeping hours and try to stick to it.
5. Instead of consuming drugs to elevate your mood for a shorter period, you can try other natural ways like doing a good deed, walking along the seashore, feeding birds, playing with children, gently hugging you're loved ones, to elevate your mood. These activities will not only boost your mood but also makes you more relaxed and content.
6. Just promise yourself that in any situation, no matter how you feel, you will show up daily with 10 minutes of morning exercise and you will never give up. Commute to work in cycle, instead of using the elevator better use staircase, walk for 10 mins post-lunch. So every little bit of exercise is beneficial to your health.

Intellectual Weakness:

A person who is unable to think and understand ideas at a high level is intellectually weak. This is because most people today are addicted to social media, web series, games, and other activities that add no value to their life. These activities will make you stay within your comfort zone that reduces the capacity to focus, think, and acquire knowledge.

A simple analogy is we can’t expect the latest mobile phone to perform at its best with outdated software running in it. In the same way, we can’t expect anyone to be Intellectual with outdated knowledge. Moreover, the comfort mindset can deprive people of motivation, therefore, lead to dissatisfaction and melancholy.

How to eliminate Intellectual weakness?

The only way to eliminate intellectual weakness is to try concentrating on the activities that make you intellectual.

Morning Meditation: Researches have found that 10 minutes of daily morning meditation can increase focus and learning concentration, and also can improve memory and attention span.

Reading Books: This is the one quality you can see in most of the intellectual people. The reason why intellectual people read more books is that they know how knowledge actually works. Yes, reading books can strengthen your knowledge, increase focus, and shift your entire life perspective on the world. So step away from the digital world, open a book, and replenish your mind for a little while.

Learn new things daily: I love one of the simple but powerful quotes written by Michelangelo, the great Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet at the age of 87.

I am still learning - Michelangelo

This simple quote has a hidden meaning that learning never ends and it is a lifetime process. So live every day to learn something new to gain new experiences and train your brain to handle a wide range of challenges.

Your learning process will be incomplete until you record and share your learnings with others. So always document your learnings for future reference and share your learnings with others.

Pay attention to details: If you pay attention to details, you can clearly see the hidden hints behind any concept that improves thoroughness and accuracy in you.

Tease your brain with puzzles: The most important skill that everyone has to possess in life is problem-solving because a lack of problem-solving skills can lead to failures in relationships, work, and business. This is often due to either problem not being recognized or being recognized but not being dealt with appropriately.

If you train your brain by solving puzzles you can improve your problem-solving skills. This skill will push your brain to think of several solutions, evaluate those solutions, and select the right one.

Always keep a note pad with you so that whenever you find time then you can try to solve a puzzle or a problem. You can invest a few minutes in the morning, or in between your work schedules, or post-lunch, or even before you sleep.

Planning: Planning is the fundamental management function, which involves deciding beforehand, what is to be done, when is it to be done, how it is to be done, and who is going to do it.

There is a famous saying “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail” this is true because people without any plan to achieve their goal, will set up to encounter errors, waste time, and fails to achieve their goal.

Setting up action plans will develop management skills in you and improves your ability to think futuristic.

Spiritual Weakness:

It is difficult to delineate spirituality as a concept in words because there is no single meaning for spirituality, different people have different perspectives on spirituality.

Spirituality is something that is close to the heart, can be described as encountering limitless love, experiencing a feeling of exceeding your usual limit, and moving toward personal wholeness.

Abusing others, showing no care or consideration for the harm done to others, gossiping about others, greed, overindulge in alcohol, dishonest, bending the rules, cheating, using your charm for you own selfish gain, alienate, transgressing against the law, doubting your own capability, not letting off the thoughts of resentment, bitterness, anger, and the need for vengeance and retribution toward someone. These activities are against the systems of faith, beliefs, values, ethics, principles, and morals that will make you spiritually weak.

How to get rid of spiritual weakness?

A healthy spiritual practice like selfless prayer for others, volunteer doing good for others and the community, social contributions, optimism, forgiveness, and expressions of compassion will pull out the spiritual weakness from you.

Final Thoughts

1. Don’t buy the opinions of others which leave you mentally broke.
2. Realize the strength inside you to eliminate weakness that causes every bad thing in your life.
3. Your life is a reflection of your thoughts. If you change your thinking, you can change your life.
4. Arise again and again until you succeed.
5. Be good at the body, new in mind, and natural at heart.