There are two sources of stress, internal and external. Internal stress involves thoughts, values, beliefs and opinions. External stress involves wrong exercises, faulty breathing habits, unhealthy eating habits, pollution and sleep problems.
Nobody can avoid stress in life. One has to minimise stress. That is possible if one can work on both internal and external stress. The most important factor is our mind and how it looks at life.
At the end of one of my programmes, a lady danced for three hours in sheer celebration. Then she came and sat next to me and told me how happy she was. As she was drinking coffee, the beverage spilt on her beautiful saree. Immediately, she screamed, saying her joy from the three-hour dance was gone.
Looking at this incident, i learnt that three hours of happiness was invalidated by a sorrow lasting for a few seconds. If our mind can work like this, the reverse is also possible. The three hours of sorrow can be invalidated by a few seconds of joy.
The secret of being happy is to recollect happy incidents in life. Weaken the effect of unhappiness by distancing yourself from its pictures. Can you undertake the following acts in your life? Understand the mind. Transform the mind. Transcend the mind.
Transforming the mind involves the understanding that there is no complete satisfaction in life; there is only a possibility to improve upon the existing state of affairs. We don’t have to win every time in order to be happy; happiness does not depend only on success. Learn to respond and not to react to events and incidents in life. If one continues reacting, reaction becomes a habit. Then an egoistic and reactive "I" emerges. It will have its own foolish logic.
A dog and a cat had an interesting conversation. The dog said, "I am so lucky that the owner of the house serves me and the children of the house adore me. So i feel they are God".
The cat also said, "The owner of the house pets me, the children of the house adore me, and the servant maid serves me. So i feel i am God".
Effective management of change is an art. For this, you need to cultivate leadership qualities. To be successful in life, one has to have the leadership quality to manage change.
In esoteric teaching there is an important law called the law of three. The positive effort you put in is called the first force. As you put in positive force there is a negative force that would affect the positive force.
This negative force is called the second force. If one conti-nuously puts in positive effort, there would be a third force that would descend and transform the negative force into a positive force. This is called the law of three.
If you do not continue exerting a positive force, the negative force will take over. So the law of three urges us to be open to the negative force, but to continue applying the positive.