How to Join the Small Group of Genuinely Joyful People
A much-needed courageous step will make your life fulfilled.
Can you imagine the most common regret people have on their deathbed? Is it about money, lack of power and position, or relationships?
Brownie Ware, an international bestseller author, was a palliative caregiver. She wrote a memoir in her best-selling book, The Top 5 Regrets of Dying. The most common regret was:
“I wish I dared to live a life that I wanted, not what others wanted.”
Death is one of the most profound moments—the ultimate moment where there is no choice left. One has to let go of everything.
But this moment of truth can inspire you to live profoundly.
No doubt, money is essential. But is it not foolish to spend a majority of life running behind it?
Experience is almost always a better teacher than words. Death is the most prominent teacher that can teach many things. But you can not wait until the moment of death to realize what life is.
Learn from others. Turn back and see what your life has been like till now. Take a moment to reflect on where you are and where you genuinely want to be.
You Are the Roadblock to Your Joyful Living
For most, life is running on autopilot mode. Living unconsciously, life becomes an unintentional accident. Like a car without its driver, your life runs without your full involvement.
Yesterday, in anger, my cousin hit her child. It was a sudden reaction. Everybody was taken aback. She could not even remember why she did it and what exactly happened when I talked to her.
Such is the unconscious behavior of humans.
Society is engineering mechanical robotics. Nobody knows what they are doing and why they are doing it. You keep doing the same thing until you fall steeply and are jolted from the deep sleepwalking of life.
No doubt, society inculcates fear of insecurities. To be secure, you see everybody is following specific unsaid rules — getting an education, job, marriage, children, money, old age security, etc.
Personal, professional, and monetary security become crucial that one lose oneself in the race. Drinking a slow poison of the rat race, thinking life is somewhere ahead in time.
Life gives you success, but not without an equal share of failures. Some people are sensitive enough to understand. If the cost of success is more than their sacrifices, some may retreat from it.
But when someone’s heart hardens, their needs become the only requirement for an individual. They operate from deep insecurities. The need for more never ends. They are always on vigil to protect what they have built. Stress is all they know, and they spend their entire life like a fierce warrior.
The ditch of fake securities becomes an endless abyss. Those are the people who are most afraid of the ultimate truth. Death scares them. So, they love to live in a bubble. But time and fact are equal for everyone.
Learn from life and move on with grace.
The only thing that matters is ‘You.’ Not your securities or vulnerabilities, but you as a being. Break the bubble of fake protection.
Nobody can do that for you. Only you can step out from the limited safety zone of life into the unknown, vast, beautiful life. Open your heart to the beauty of life that surrounds you.
If you have lived rightly, if you have lived moment to moment totally, if you have squeezed out the whole juice of life, your death will be the ultimate orgasm. — Osho
Take Power Back by Taking Full Responsibility for Your Life
Remember the happiest and most content person you have ever met. Remember your desire to be like them. Their life also has struggles. But they still seem so joyful.
Have you ever imagined why?
Because they know the secret of taking responsibility for their life, life gives many opportunities to stand up for yourself and take the onus of your life.
Your life and situations can be miserable. But when you take the harness in your hands, you take power back from the situations and people. Then you can change the course of your life. Be the driver of your life’s car. By Stopping the blame game, you inevitably take responsibility for your life.
When outside circumstances improve, your inner growth also increases.
Your life is always your responsibility. Stop blaming other persons for your insecurities and unhappiness. Stop pointing the finger outside of you. Stop expecting people to do it for you if you cannot change it. Stop the excuses.
‘My life is woeful because of my uncaring spouse? I act like this as I was raised like this? My short-tempered reactions come from my father. Money is always a problem because my expenses are sky high.’ The list can be endless.
Taking a U-turn is not for faint-hearted.
That is the main reason most people stay in the comforts of their miseries. Lacking the courage to step into the unknown world continues to make them miserable.
Your life is a sum of your choices. Someone may influence your decisions. Something may scare you to make certain choices. But remember, you can never blame the other.
Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else. — Les Brown
One Exercise to Realize What Is Most Important to You Right Now
Priorities shift as you grow. Desires change with time. What was crucial for you five years back does not hold much importance right now.
Follow this exercise to realize your evolving preferences. Remember to do it with utmost sincerity. Only then will it yield the most beneficial results.
There is no right or wrong. Do it sincerely. Stop the judgment for 2 minutes and enter this beautiful, imaginative exercise.
- Close your eyes and sit comfortably.
- Imagine it is the last moment of your last day.
- Imagine you are going to leave everything behind you: your career, family, friends, money, possessions, everything.
- Now is the time to leave. And nothing can stop it.
- What is the most significant thing holding you back from leaving the body? What is it you are missing terribly at this last moment?
Now, that is your priority.
Before time is too late, enjoy them thoroughly. Dedicate some time to do it. Appreciate the time and yourself while you do it. Life is about living totally in this ‘now.’
Realizing the present moment is all you ever have will allow you to live life in much richer detail. Presence brings power. — Eckhart Tolle
Don’t Fear Pain; Open Your Heart — It Will Heal Your Life Magically
Everybody has a limited time allotted to them. But most waste time in the race of proving themselves. When death comes, they want one more chance to live. But for most, life passes by unnoticed, and many people die unfulfilled.
Right now is the perfect time to take a pause.
Reflect on what you want to do in life. Where are you going? Are you spending your time according to your heart? Or are you remote-controlled by situations and others’ reactions?
When you focus on yourself, you unravel the biggest mysteries of life. When you focus on the outside world, the voice of your heart gets lost.
Like you take a loved one on a date, take your best buddy, your heart on a date. Listen to it intently. Take time out to dance with it, sing with it, allow it to laugh and cry.
If the heart was not crucial to humans, why would we still have it? It must have gone rudimentary, like an appendix. But emotions and feelings make us humans.
Don’t deny yourself that privilege. Most people close their hearts because of the fear of pain. Indeed, pain is inevitable. Suffering comes from attachment and possessiveness.
But pure love heals.
Opening your heart opens the possibility of transcending that pain. Only a receptive heart can understand and empathize with others. Connection forms deeply. In those depths of love, you become free from the other.
Freedom from impulsiveness of emotions. Freedom to possess the other. Freedom to just be as you are.
It is the greatest gift of love. It makes you open to the infinite life and ultimately becomes one with it.
Before the repression becomes too much, relax, move into life. It is your life! Don’t feel guilty. It is your life to live and love and to know and be. And whatsoever instincts God has given to you, they are just indications of where you have to move, where you have to seek, where you have to find your fulfillment. — Osho
Takeaways
Only you can shape your life as you wish to. In unconscious living, suffering happens. But when you act consciously and take responsibility for your life, it transforms magically.
Fear and insecurities have always bound you. Break free from the chains of it and open your loving heart. In this receptivity and sensitivity, life opens its bliss to you. Pain may come, but so does fulfillment and joy.
You can laugh hard when you have cried hard. Life is not about protection. It is about living totally. Life has always been present. It is you who have been missing all the time.
Explore your authentic being by unlocking your heart. It is the key to peaceful and blissful living.
Life is nothing but an opportunity for love to blossom. If you are alive, the opportunity is there — even to the last breath. You may have missed your whole life: just the last breath, the last moment on the earth, if you can be love, you have not missed anything — because a single moment of love is equal to the whole eternity of love. — Osho
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