Do you think you are a good person? What does that even mean? How did you come to the conclusion that you are so good? After all, “good” is a very relative term. The whole dualistic mindset of GOOD vs BAD is very bipolar and is completely man made. The dualistic mindset is based on competition and division. If you are good, then something else has to be bad. It implies that you are “better” than whatever you are comparing yourself to. If you are “bad” than it is because of how much better you think other people are than you.
The moment you define something as good or bad, you’re just dividing the world.
-Sadhguru
Who suffers more, good people or the so called “bad people?” Really think about it. Too many “good people” always seem to be suffering more while they look on at the bad people living it up and enjoying themselves. How do you even become good? You head outside for a stroll where there are lots of other people and say, “he’s no good, she’s not ok, he’s not ok, he’s not ok, he’s not ok, she’s bad, she’s DEFINITELY not ok… compared to all of these people I am GOOD.” Once you have labeled a sufficient number of people as BAD, then you feel good. The more good you think you are, the harder it is for you to find somebody else that is OK in your mind. Meanwhile, some people sit around being such “goodie goodies” that nobody can stand even being around them!
We think that we are good, because we are trying so hard to avoid all of these bad things. It doesn’t even matter what these things are. They’re different for each of us depending on our own personal views. We develop a sort of superficial happiness and satisfaction by successfully avoiding these “bad” things. These situations and vises that appear to be causing other people to be unhappy. But… have you ever noticed that when you are trying really hard to avoid something you just can’t stop thinking about it? Why is it that when you are trying to avoid a certain person that really pisses you off you just cant stop thinking about them all day and how much you can’t stand them. You are so afraid of the unpleasant situation that might ensue if you run into them, that you spend your whole day anxious and unhappy.
You are not free from it… You are just avoiding it…
Avoiding something is not freedom from it.
-Sadhguru
Too much of our mental process around these concepts of “goodness” and “happiness” is based on feeling good and/or happy because we don’t have something undesirable in our life that somebody else does have. Along the same lines we have this same happy/good feeling when we DO have something desirable that somebody else doesn’t have. All of these aspects of our self image that completely come from comparing ourselves to other people are completely unhealthy. Putting somebody down or excluding them to make yourself feel bigger and better in an outward way is frowned upon. 
This is referred to as bullying and bigotry. Why then do we think it is OK to do the same thing within the confines of your own thoughts? Just because nobody else can hear or see you doing it doesn’t make it acceptable. The door swings the other way too. Constantly putting yourself down by comparing yourself to other people is like cutting and other forms of self harm, only you’re doing it to your mind and emotions.
We all have to stop this constant judging and comparing. Get rid of the old dualistic way of thinking based on good vs bad and right vs wrong. These are all man made concepts that don’t have any existence outside of our mind. Why is it so hard to just be ourselves? Why can’t we just be genuine and do what feels natural without worrying about what anybody else is going to think or say? Why can’t we just let other people be themselves without judging them or pointing at them or whispering about them?
The easiest way to live in a more balanced and authentic mindset is to simply STOP judging other people. Try it for the rest of the day today. Really. I am challenging you. Whatever time it is that you are reading this, see if you can make it until you fall asleep without attributing any form of judgement an another person. It might be hard, especially since other people are constantly talking other people TO US (these other people really are a pain in the ass aren’t they… or is that a judgement too). You can listen, just don’t join in. When you feel the urge to get out your gavel, give yourself the reminder that every single person on this planet is doing the best they can with what they’ve got. If they knew better, they would do better and we need to be compassionate. A wise man once said we should treat other people the way we want to be treated. 
This GOLDEN RULE extends into the mental realm. Don’t think about others the way you wouldn’t want them to think about you.
Do this for the rest of the day. Then all day tomorrow. Then the next day, and the one after. You’ve got nothing to lose except a bad attitude towards other people! It will only make it easier to stop judging yourself! Do the future a solid and teach your kids the same habit!
This is just another way we can keep evolving a little every day in every way.
Purity comes from INCLUSION, goodness comes from exclusion.
-Sadhguru
Just about every “normal” person you know is probably just an acquaintance. Once you get inside their hula hoop and break through their defenses, the jig is up and BINGO there’s that insecure, weirdo you knew was there all along.
These are people that you are always scanning and analyzing for clues and subtle signals; hints on whether or not they might be considered good candidates for access into the next level.
This is where you can even get to know somebody better than they even know themselves and they can know you better than you even know yourself. It can be an incredibly beautiful thing when you know what each other is thinking and know what they’re going to say before they say it. Closeness and connection are immensely rewarding to the spirit but we still do an excellent job at hiding our flaws out of the fear of rejection and abandonment but you can’t hide everything and definitely not forever. Sometimes the truth of what was being held back comes out in heated arguments and it’s too hard for the relationship (no matter what kind) to bear. When trust in this inner circle is betrayed lives get tossed into total upheaval. Long term couples break up, best friends go separate ways, whole branches of family stop speaking.
The innermost shell of your being is the story you tell yourself in your own head. It is the thoughts you think to yourself, about yourself when you are sitting awake at night. A history of perceived negative reinforcement from the outside world will program your subconscious mind to beat you up. You can be your strongest ally or your absolute worst nightmare. You can sit in a room full of people that love you, that accept you and it won’t matter because you can completely lay waste to your self from every angle. We’ve all been in the state of mind where you get to thinking “damn I’m such a loser, nobody really likes me, they’re all just pretending to like me, how could anybody love me after what I did, I’m so fat, I’m such a failure, I’m too skinny, I’m so fucking ugly, I’m too short, I’m too tall, I’m such a whore” and on and on.
It’s a scary mental state to be in and it causes a vicious cycle. Shitty thought patterns cause low awareness and shitty choices that result in shitty life experiences which… you guessed it… cause more shitty thoughts. Rinse and repeat. This is a process that has to be derailed and reprogrammed manually. It has to happen on purpose and doesn’t have to follow hitting the proverbial “rock bottom.” Rock bottom happens to be a funeral for too many amazing people on this planet so don’t let that be you or your loved one.
Why would you want to spend your time doing anything other than being yourself, and helping others become their own greatest version? You don’t have to quit your job or run away to do this. It starts right now. The world we live in is pretty damn accepting of just about anything, as long as you can get over your own fear and self doubt about it. You can be a gay, transgender, biker, vegan, who teaches Pilates and have all the true friends you can handle.
Years back I remember watching a documentary about the Hopi elders. The main idea that they were trying to get across to their own people and the world at large was the resounding message, “We are the ones that we’ve been waiting for.” They knew that great change was coming over the world there was nothing we could do to stop it. They also knew that nobody was coming to save us. They were absolutely right on both the global cultural scale but also down to the daily personal level. It is truly up to each and every one of us to determine the trajectory of our own lives.
In a world where knowledge is power it is extremely important to be at your own helm. While it is easy for a person to be dis-empowered by a lack of information, now it is just as easy to stand in front of so much information and so many choices that they are frozen stiff like a deer in headlights. Indecisiveness and procrastination are the new plagues of our generation. Everyone says they hate being bossed around by leaders, but the truth is nobody does anything until push comes to shove. Nobody can make up their damn mind. Then if they do happen to make their mind up, they still don’t get off their ass and DO anything about making a change in their life. THIS MEANS YOU! And ME. This is a WE problem. We all need to get off our asses and start putting effort into making the changes we know we need to make to increase our quality of life as a species.
Get real with yourself. Stop making excuses for why you aren’t the way you need to be in order to feel self confident. Telling yourself these stories in your head is the perfect recipe for depression. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that things like depression, alcoholism, drug addiction, and most chronic illness like obesity and diabetes are afflictions that you are just so unlucky to have fallen victim to. These are symptoms of a poor physical and mental habits that become ingrained into your damn soul. The consequence for inaction is suicide whether it be instant or in slow-motion. You have to put persistent effort into changing otherwise YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO GET ANY RESULTS and you are NEVER GOING TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT YOURSELF when you are alone with your thoughts.
You get the picture. Start telling yourself these power statements when you wake up in the morning. Work like Arnold Schwarzenegger says with reps and sets of the desired behavior until you get the results you want. YOU WILL GET RESULTS WITH THE PROPER EFFORT. It is a damn law of the universe. You can overcome any obstacle in your life no matter how deep your depression or how bad of an alcoholic you are. $50K rehab programs and years of counseling are only as good as they are at making YOU help yourself. Retrain your body, mind, and spirit for balance and upward mobility. Don’t put bandaids on bullet wounds. Keep a daily journal that you fill with things you are thankful for, people you love and want to make proud of you, plans for how you are going to achieve goals. You can do it. From baby steps to big leaps.
I read a lot of books. Most people don’t read these days which is a damn shame. OK, I’ll admit I went through a dry spell for a good block of time where I didn’t read anything that wasn’t force fed to me in Junior High and High School, but luckily for me I got back on the horse in college. I love to read books about psychology and thinking. I am a deep diver when I get into a topic of interest and this is both a blessing and a curse. I get fixated on whatever is in my cross-hairs. Always have, and this has pushed me into some pretty negative thought patterns in my day. I have inadvertently set a handful of bad habits this way which had to be undone later on. Most (close to all) of the unhappiness in my life, both past and present, has come from me not maintaining control of the voice in my head and allowing it to set bad habits in my way of thinking.
No two people share the same exact reality. Quantum physics even tells us that there isn’t even such a thing as a solid matter “Reality” with a capital R. There are only billions of “realities” (lower case r) rendered to each of us as we observe what is going on in our environment. Five honest people could witness the same car crash and give five completely different accounts to the police of how it played out. Each of them would believe their own account enough to pass a polygraph. So who’s right? We have to let the judge and jury decide. But wait, even their views are completely subjective.
by frequent repetition or physiological exposure.” Our subconscious mind functions totally on habit.
When something eloquently put rings true and resonates with your soul the source doesn’t really matter. All that matters is the value you gain from it.
Everybody is a different person behind closed doors. You would be shocked to see what some of your closest friends are doing behind closed doors right now as you read this. I’ll bet your grandmother would be completely shocked to see that thing you did just the other day. Don’t lie! Pretty much every person you have ever seen in your entire life is a complete weirdo. The whole idea that there exists these “normal” people that we need to stifle out our uniqueness to impress is complete bullshit. Owning your weirdness is wonderful and freeing.
expressing your authentic uniqueness the more of your inner weirdo exposed to others with no fear.
in your involvement they go right back to the condition you found them in. If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. The only way to truly lead and inspire real change is to lead by example. BE that change you want to see in the world and stop leading horses to water.
choices in their own life. We get very insecure around people who we feel are “better off” than we are. We break ourselves down in our own mind and tell ourselves that we are “less than” and not “equal to.” We literally and subconsciously hand our power over to anybody our mind has identified as “superior” to us. This isn’t fair because of how aggressively our subconscious concepts of who we should be idolizing are molded by the media. This is followed by accusing said person of “thinking they are better than us” when the only problem exists within the story we’re telling ourselves in our own heads.
settle for the ordinary.” Don’t be afraid to be yourself. Don’t be afraid to start making changes in the way you think and set some new goals. There is literally nothing stopping you from doing anything you want if you are confident enough withstand the criticism until you get there.
I don’t even have to have ever met you and I am certain that you are guilty. I certainly am. Although we may technically be right, at least from our point of view, how much thought have you actually put behind it? Have you ever really contemplated what it truly means to grow up?
to the gulf. After you’re a bonafide adult its on you. Because we all know of both 70 year old whiners and toddlers with the wisdom of an old soul.
Lets say I help an old lady cross a busy street. There are several possible intents that I could have while I was acting out the seemingly good deed. From a higher point of view, whether or not it was actually a good deed has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I helped anybody cross any street. It has to do with my “intent” and what I was thinking to myself at the time of the occurrence.
soul you want to make her feel safe and it makes your heart warm to add value to other people’s lives. Not just your friends and family, but everybody you come into contact with is worthy of experiencing the best version of you. Life should be an art form where we leave every person we interact with in a better emotional state than they were in beforehand.
Think about it, who are you anyways? Who are you really? You have a body, and a brain, and a mind, and your thoughts… but YOU are not any of those things. You are not your body any more than you are your Toyota. You are the consciousness that possesses and observes all of these things. We and our children accumulate these experiences through lifetimes here and there and everywhere gleaning the meaning and lessons taken to heart from each of these experiences over eons. Lets face it, wise men and women have been trying to WAKE US UP on this planet alone for thousands of years. Now it’s our responsibility to encourage each other to keep growing up with a genuine compassion, because we are all powerful beings waiting to be activated.
I love listening to different perspectives on topics that pertain to struggles I am having in my own life. I recently listened to a recording of an Indian yogi and mystic by the name of 
known what the best way to parent their children was. Even if you have 12 children you are still learning. You may raise your first 11 properly and the 12th one can really put you through the ringer.
little habit that my girls pick up coming from my lovely wife… and she sure as hell picks up every little annoying habit that I contribute to the pot. It’s quite funny how it’s so much harder to see one of your own habits manifest in your child’s mannerisms than it is to spot those from others.
That is a must, but that will only create the necessary ambiance. It still doesn’t make you necessarily a good parent, but it creates the necessary ambiance. Creating the necessary ambiance is absolutely a large part of parenting. A large part. If you create the right kind of atmosphere of a certain sense of joy and love and care and discipline for yourself AND your home atmosphere, generally they grow up peacefully.
beings or brats you raise. For that, what kind of being YOU are is an extremely important part of raising children. So if your wife became pregnant, it’s time for YOU to start your transformation. Now because another life is coming in and YOU YOURSELF might not conducting yourself in such a way that is suitable to be emulated. Becoming conscious of what we are doing and what is rubbing off on even our babies is extremely important.
their intelligence. That will not insure whether he or she is gong to become, a doctor, an engineer, so on and so forth, but one thing is clear. The curious higher intelligence is active when you do not stifle the innate curiosity. Of course you want to put him or her through the necessary physical activity to give a healthy body, but it is just as important to foster an active intelligence.
control. Right? However we do have control over some circumstances. You CAN create an atmosphere of love, thoughtfulness, and openness. When you do not (knowingly or unwittingly) train your child to be exclusively identified with any particular social institution, naturally there is no sense of prejudice and no grounds for being offended. When you bring up a child free of prejudice, in a loving very open atmosphere, GENERALLY they do well. Buuuuuuuut, there is no guarantee because there are other influences in the society. There is no insurance or guarantee. That is a risk that you are taking. Always.
This website is a product of my own continuous evolution. I have come to a point in my life where I need to begin sharing what I have learned (a lot of times the hard way) in my personal experience that have brought me to greater awareness of my self and the world around me. This website is my attempt at cutting that learning curve for both the people I know and love very much, and everyone else who resonates with the message I’m bringing across.
the way, but mostly I want to share a perspective that allows you an easy path toward your own optimization of self. Think of it as a free, 3-phase online crash course that will give you the opportunity to feel some of the good I feel.