A light in the darkness

As I started writing about this topic, many things poured in. When my sister and I fight and she does not want to listen, she will cut the call. This is the easiest and first technique : remove yourself or the cause of distress. I remember my school days when I used to get stuck in a problem, and I tried again and again only to make the same mistakes. In those times, I used to stop doing math, go for a stroll or have some food, or watch a scene on TV and then come back to solve it again, and this time, I succeeded. This is because a temporary break from stress freshens up, and we can take the problem from a new perspective.  I still remember my early professional life when taking leaves was all in the hands of my manager. I often found myself in situations where I was forced to take annual leaves at one go and work the rest of the year. I always felt I had no leave when I actually needed them the most. On the other hand, planning for vacations and visiting new places had been super...

After executing the magical wand of control, the second tool for letting go is psychological distancing, often referred to as self-distancing. I always fall into this trap, and I have to take help from psychological distancing or else I might go destructive.  I remember when my sister was very angry and just wanted to bash things as she was pouring. I will give her this analogy: When I am in the marshy pit, I keep flapping my hands and legs in the hope of coming out, but nothing happens. The more I try, the more I get stuck in the marsh. On the other hand, a man standing outside can see my pathetic condition. He is the only one who can search for ropes and throw them to me so that I can be pulled out.  When I am damn angry, I just want to execute all crooked plans to win and only win. In this quest, I hurt many people, cheat many, and, above all, did not care about others' feelings. My fights could be so bad that we can never restore our relationships. Since I know myself, I h...

Having explored the faculty of desire, we are now ready to examine the faculty of will. Before we dive into this, let us understand a little bit more about desire.  Three terms are vital in economics : need, want, and desire. Are they the same? Na..na..na, they look similar, but they are not the same.  Need means something essential for our survival. For example, food. Can we survive without it? No, so it is our need to have food to survive.  As our needs are satisfied now, our eyes try to grab bigger things. These things are not essential, but we strive to have them to make our lives better. Without want, we can live, but without need, we perish.  Now, in between this want-and-need continuum lies the stop of desire. There is a very small difference between want and desire. Wants include everything that comes to my mind. This uncontrolled horse of want is checked by the element of affordability that turns want into desire. In simple terms, we can have many wants, bu...

The second field where we can execute our wand of control is the arena of desires. This arena is responsible for our desires and fears. It gives us the freedom to dream of anything and everything. Life without dreams is like the dust on the earth, which is led by the wind. It has no direction of its own but goes where the wind takes it. The same is true with our lives. We fail to have an address for our destination if we fail to desire and dream.      The other side of it is also true. If we choose to desire and dream uncontrollably, this will lead to frequent failures, and failures will instil fear in us, which completely ruins our self-esteem and self-confidence. This is also not good.      Epictetus guides our way here. He says that we should use this faculty of desire to wisely explore and evaluate our desires and choose rational ones as our final desires. This process of evaluating our every desire will visualise our hidden fears and crippling desires....

In my last post, I talked about understanding where to execute the wand of control and where to let go of this wand of control. Now the question arises: how to understand what to let go of or what to hold on to. This introduced me to the understanding of Epictetus, where he says that for well-being, we need to execute our wand of control in these three faculties of mind.  1) The faculty of Judgement Our judgments are based on our thoughts, emotions, and beliefs. They help us to judge what is right or wrong, true or false, and good or bad. This is the first faculty that we should use to develop accurate and rational beliefs and thoughts about the world we live in. When we were children, we had the tendency to see only one side of the situation, but as we grow, we should develop an attitude to explore various perspectives before reaching a conclusion. We all come across situations when our emotions are loud, and we just want to go with it. That is not good. We need to stop here and u...

The first lesson that calmed me when I felt the situation was getting out of control was to understand who owned the wand of power. Nick called this a "dichotomy of control." Let's explore this concept. We all know this truth, but we always forget it. I also forgot this in the face of making things happen my way and landed in a situation where it was not happening my way. This was the time when I came across the Philosopher Epictetus's quote " Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our actions. The things in our control are by nature free, unrestrained, unhindered; but those not in our control are weak, slavish, restrained, belonging to others." Epictetus,  Enchiridion and Selections from the Discourses When I read that some things are under ou...

     This season, I started well, but as usual, roadblockers are always there in various disguises. Balancing myself at this stage was essential, but that was not happening. I tried ignoring them and dragging away my thoughts to calm myself, but I was smoldering. This turned into a fire, as usual, stealing my peace. I was looking for ways to regain my peace. At this point in time, I found the book " The Art of Letting Go " by Nick Trenton.      The first page of this book introduced me to three concepts that made a big difference in my life. I will discuss those topics in my subsequent blog posts.  1. The principle of dichotomy of control 2. Nonjudgemental thinking 3. The concept of self-distancing.      Before discussing these three topics, I would like to discuss a few more versions of letting go, which I found very interesting. As I was exploring what letting go really means, I came across the book " Letting Go: Th...