No one can make you unhappy or
disturb your inner peace unless you allow them to!
We often end up blaming others for the way
we feel about the situations we are in. For instance, you order a coffee at a
café and it arrives lukewarm. You tell the waiter to replace the coffee. He
refuses. And you get angry. Till you arrived at the café and ordered that
coffee you were in fine spirits. But that experience leaves you fuming. A
friend who sees you stomping out of the café seeks to know the reason for your
lousy mood. And you blame the café and the waiter. Now, while they may have
served you bad coffee, the truth is you served yourself the lousy mood. Think
about it – did the coffee or the waiter cause your unhappiness and anger or was
it your expectation that the coffee be hot and the waiter be polite that caused
you to lose your cool? The coffee arrived the way it did. The waiter behaved
the way he did. You had an expectation that was different from reality. And so
you were upset. In all situations in Life, if you choose to remain unruffled,
no one can make you upset or angry, and no one can make you unhappy.
Happiness is always accepting, and loving,
what is. In the example above, happiness meant accepting the coffee the way it
came and accepting the waiter for the idiot that he is. This does not mean that
you should not object to the poor service. Of course you can and you must. But don’t
lose your equilibrium, your sense of happiness and inner peace, over someone
else’s behavior. In fact, on a daily basis you can use the hundreds of
provocations that Life throws at you, to train yourself to accept what is, the
way it is and to be peaceful and happy. Someone cutting across the road as you
drive, an irksome fellow passenger on a plane, a nasty auto-rickshaw or taxi
driver, a shopper who elbows past you at the check-out late in a store, your
rebellious teenager at home – each of these interactions offers you an
opportunity to learn to be happy despite the circumstance, despite the
provocation. Currently, you are succumbing to the provocation. You are
responding with anger because you are questioning why someone is behaving the
way he or she is. But if you let them be and if you agree that you are not
going to lose your balance, your cool, you will find that you can be both
peaceful and happy – all the time!
Responding to Life peacefully is a lot more
sensible than reacting to Life. Reacting comes with impulse. Responding
requires reflection. When you reflect over every event in your Life, even if it’s
just for a moment, and then respond, you are giving yourself the chance to first
accept your reality and then frame your action. And
wherever there’s acceptance, instead of resistance, there can only be inner peace
and happiness.
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