Learnings from the Art of Living Course

Note: The way organisers conduct this course is 100 times better than just reading. Still, let me try my best to bequeath what I learnt from the course.

Opposites are complimentary

Happiness * Sadness
Light * Darkness
Everything in the world compliments one another. Because of sadness we understand the value of happiness and because of darkness we understand light.

Just like this, everything happens in our life good or bad should not make a drastic difference in our life, Embrace both.

Accept people just the way they are

Every person has their own way of perceiving things and own idea of what they want do in their life. This may be because of their up-brining or due to hardships they are over come. We will never know.

We should accept people whole heartedly and try not to change/mould them to our requirements.

Don’t be a foot ball to others opinions

In the days of social media and we get opinions on everything that we do and that we like. Most of those opinions are just other persons random thoughts, which may change any time.

Listen to other’s opinions, implement only which will actually help and ignore the rest without exception.

Don’t seek intensions behind peoples mistakes

Plain and simple, mistakes are just errors without intent.

Forgive people, Do not over think and dwell on understanding why did they make that mistake

Realise few moments are inevitable

Imagine you are going for an interview and there is lot of rain and traffic (Also a black cat crossing the road), we try analysing why is this happening but in reality it’s just inevitable.

Few things doesn't have a particular reason and it’s no where connected with you.

Live in the present

Our mind is in a constant oscillation from past to future and do not pause in present to relish it. We either Glorify/Regret/Blame the past and Hope/Fear/Get Anxiety about the future. We also waste lot of time thinking about the past and try to make sense out of it.

Give the most importance to present by taking pause from all your tasks, breathe and realign your thoughts

Also, learnt beginner level breathing and meditation techniques.

Not sure how long it might take to implement these in my life, still this was a great start in a completely different direction.

All thanks to https://www.artofliving.org/in-en!