Life has a better plan..

Have you ever wanted something so badly in life and then didn’t have it your way.. only to realize at a later point that not getting what you wanted was exactly the right thing to happen at that point in time. You realize that you’re a much better and wiser person because of that one incident of deprivation you went through. (And hey, I am not talking about a ‘grapes are sour’ like feeling here!)

And after the suffering you endured, it feels better, much better to have passed that test and you realize you’re a changed person.

It almost seems surreal after everything is in the past, as you think of yourself ‘a crazy, insane lunatic’ to have wanted that thing in first place. It has happened with me many a  times. I keep obsessing and fantasizing, and wanting things the way they are in my head.. but life knocks my plans down all the time. When things don’t go my way, I think of it as cruel to have happened to me but then sometime in the future (after weeks or months or an year), the universe reveals it’s rationale to me. That’s when I say to myself, “Oh yeah right! What was I thinking in the first place?”.

Steve Jobs said, “Customers don’t know what they want”.

That’s true for us in real life, too. The truth is, we don’t know what we actually need and what is good for us.  Hence, we cling to things or circumstances or people that seem good to us at the moment. But we are meant for more, much more.. and that precisely, is the reason that life drives us to a different direction that’s better for us.

It doesn’t get any better..

The truth is, it doesn’t get any better! May be life will get worse still, at some point.

 

But there will be enough moments with your loved ones, or doing what you love all alone, or simply moments when you’re having a good time among people that will make you get through all of it. And may be you’ll even feel it’s all worth it after all.. so suck it up!!

 

Don’t bother about others opinion of you.

Do something new, go places you’ve never gone, talk to strangers and life will seem beautiful all over again. Because hey, it’s not like anyone has any better formula to life!!

 

Life is not just about that one moment, thing, person that matters (mattered) to you! Life is much more than that..life has a better plan for us than we could plan for ourselves. And as long as one believes in that, we can get thro’ no matter what.

 

Love this song by Eels! (The video is hilarious too.)

 

Do you know what it’s like to fall on the floor
And cry your guts out ’til you got no more
Hey man now you’re really living

Have you ever made love to a beautiful girl
Made you feel like it’s not such a bad world
Hey man now you’re really living

Now you’re really giving everything
And you’re really getting all you gave
Now you’re really living what
This life is all about

 

Trust love, one more time. ~ Maya Angelou

Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time. ― Maya Angelou (April 4 1928 – May 28 2014) 

Today marks a sad day in the global literary field as a prominent author and a huge inspiration to readers like me passed away. Yes, I’m talking about Maya Angelou, the famous American writer. I have always been inspired by her writings and her optimism.

 

The lines quoted above are among my personal favorite. I first came across these lines as a marketing student studying about how customer experiences register with customers, and why it is important to create memorable moments for them. But these are true for life in general as well — for when you remember a person, most of the times its is because of the way they made you feel though you hardly ever remember the exact things they said!

Maya Angelou – Rest in peace, power to you and your words! Here’s another one. Source – Mashable.

Believe in you..

Belief is a loaded word! Belief or faith carries a huge weight in our lives.

The whole world revolves around belief, the belief in the greater goodness and the hope that good times would embrace us in future. As much as we talk about living in the moment and enjoying each day to the fullest, the truth is – the strong belief of a better tomorrow drives that strength to carry on and face each day with a smile knowing that failure or bad news may just be a day away. It won’t be wrong to say that our believes pretty much guide our lives.

I may be a hardcore and shameless optimist, self-proclaimed philosopher and the queen of wishful thinking! But everyone has those grey moments of self-doubt, when you question your own existence and the rationale behind your beliefs. When every single development around you tells you that it was all wrong in the first place. (yeah, you can definitely tell I am having those self-doubts again 😛 )

Learning not to believe once your belief fails you, is not a sign of strength. To believe again knowing the risks, therein lies the thrill. Never stop believing!!

And till your belief comes true, you can pretend that your ship’s not sinking.. love this song from Pretty Woman soundtrack.

Happiness knows no bounds..

Real happiness doesn’t know any boundaries of reasons and it needs no explanation. It lies within oneself and finally, all comes down to the “glass half full or half empty” attitude in life.

More often than not, in life all of us have reasons to smile, more than one or two or three reasons. It’s incredible though how conveniently we choose to ignore these reasons, even forget them and focus on what we don’t have. The “have nots” in life will always outweigh the “haves”. It’s the simple ‘law of scarcity’ in economics!!

In the movie Confessions of a Shopaholic, the main character justifies her impulsive buying behavior saying, “When I shop, the world gets better, and the world is better, but then it’s not, and I need to do it again.”  Anything that seems out of our bounds and limits is desirable. Amazing as it is.. the jubilation of attaining that – what is desired – is short lived and fizzles out, evaporates in thin air. Now you know why I always say, Life is “funny” all the time. 🙂

The traditional mindset that happiness always inter-relates with a reason is not false, but it is definitely not for the long run. We don’t realize the amount of time, effort, energy we give up on waiting for happiness to knock on our door – that car I never had, the branded shoe I couldn’t buy, the job I am planning to take up, and the list is endless. Real happiness lies in smiling at simplest joys of nature and life, not worrying about how tomorrow’s gonna look like. If one can do that everyday of their life.. then you have lived fully, each and every moment of everyday. Some wishful thinking that is, huh!!

But hey, we all are work in progress! And most of us even in our busy schedules find out a reason to smile at something completely irrelevant to us, or simply appreciate nature. It’s not too hard! Agreed that happiness without a reason, is easier said than done – an idealistic scenario. Even as I write this, one part of my brain simply can’t stop thinking about the current impending concerns of my life. The demons inside us come back to haunt us sooner or later.

“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.” – George Bernard Shaw

I find a lot of debate going on about this particular quote by GB Shaw and whom he considered or portrayed as superior in this statement. The ‘drunken man’ is ‘happy’ because he knows no tomorrow and ‘believes’, but is illogical and irrational at the same time considering his inebriated state. While, the ‘skeptic’ is more ‘sober’ and rational. This is the general belief. I have a different take on this! A ‘believer’ is ‘happy’ as he is an optimist and refuses to acknowledge that his belief would fail him. (Simply, discarding the believer because it equates with the drunken state of mind is not acceptable to me.)

More often that not, that belief is what would make everything fall in place – however, the means to achieve may differ. I am not propagating here that we start believing life is a fairy tale. But we can definitely believe that we can make it to be one, in our own way. Reality is far more interesting than a fairy tale.