“You
must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops
of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”
“The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problem.”
“If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.”
Mahatma
Gandhi needs no long introduction. Everyone knows about the man who
lead the Indian people to independence from British rule in 1947.
So let’s just move on to some of my favourite tips from Mahatma Gandhi.
1. Change yourself.
“You must be the change you want to see in the world.”
“As
human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake
the world – that is the myth of the atomic age – as in being able to
remake ourselves.”
If
you change yourself you will change your world. If you change how you
think then you will change how you feel and what actions you take. And
so the world around you will change. Not only because you are now
viewing your environment through new lenses of thoughts and emotions but
also because the change within can allow you to take action in ways you
wouldn’t have – or maybe even have thought about – while stuck in your
old thought patterns.
And the problem with changing your outer world without changing yourself is that you will still be you
when you reach that change you have strived for. You will still have
your flaws, anger, negativity, self-sabotaging tendencies etc. intact.
And
so in this new situation you will still not find what you hoped for
since your mind is still seeping with that negative stuff. And if you
get more without having some insight into and distance from your ego it
may grow more powerful. Since your ego loves to divide things, to find
enemies and to create separation it may start to try to create even more
problems and conflicts in your life and world.
2. You are in control.
“Nobody can hurt me without my permission.”
What
you feel and how you react to something is always up to you. There may
be a “normal” or a common way to react to different things. But that’s
mostly just all it is.
You
can choose your own thoughts, reactions and emotions to pretty much
everything. You don’t have to freak out, overreact of even react in a
negative way. Perhaps not every time or instantly. Sometimes a knee-jerk
reaction just goes off. Or an old thought habit kicks in.
And
as you realize that no-one outside of yourself can actually control how
you feel you can start to incorporate this thinking into your daily
life and develop it as a thought habit. A habit that you can grow
stronger and stronger over time. Doing this makes life a whole lot easier and more pleasurable.
3. Forgive and let it go.
“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
“An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”
Fighting
evil with evil won’t help anyone. And as said in the previous tip, you
always choose how to react to something. When you can incorporate such a
thought habit more and more into your life then you can react in a way
that is more useful to you and others.
You
realize that forgiving and letting go of the past will do you and the
people in your world a great service. And spending your time in some
negative memory won’t help you after you have learned the lessons you
can learn from that experience. You’ll probably just cause yourself more
suffering and paralyze yourself from taking action in this present
moment.
If
you don’t forgive then you let the past and another person to control
how you feel. By forgiving you release yourself from those bonds. And
then you can focus totally on, for instance, the next point.
4. Without action you aren’t going anywhere.
“An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.”
Without
taking action very little will be done. However, taking action can be
hard and difficult. There can be much inner resistance.
And
so you may resort to preaching, as Gandhi says. Or reading and studying
endlessly. And feeling like you are moving forward. But getting little
or no practical results in real life.
So,
to really get where you want to go and to really understand yourself
and your world you need to practice. Books can mostly just bring you
knowledge. You have to take action and translate that knowledge into
results and understanding.
You can check out a few effective tips to overcome this problem in How to Take More Action: 9 Powerful Tips. Or you can move on to the next point for more on the best tip for taking more action that I have found so far.
5. Take care of this moment.
“I
do not want to foresee the future. I am concerned with taking care of
the present. God has given me no control over the moment following.”
The
best way that I have found to overcome the inner resistance that often
stops us from taking action is to stay in the present as much as
possible and to be accepting.
Why?
Well, when you are in the present moment you don’t worry about the next
moment that you can’t control anyway. And the resistance to action that
comes from you imagining negative future consequences – or reflecting
on past failures – of your actions loses its power. And so it becomes
easier to both take action and to keep your focus on this moment and
perform better.
Have a look at 8 Ways to Return to the Present Moment
for tips on how quickly step into the now. And remember that
reconnecting with and staying in the now is a mental habit – a sort of
muscle – that you grow. Over time it becomes more powerful and makes it
easier to slip into the present moment.
Read More Here
