How I learned to stop Worrying About Change and Love Robin Sharma
I have a confession to make.
When I was in my teens, I used to devour Robin Sharma's books with as much guilty pleasure as when I used to surreptitiously enter my mom's kitchen to make Complan laddus with dollops of ghee (clarified butter)
Maybe, it's my age.
These days, I find Complan (or insert any health drink you've been seeing ads of late in your country) and Robin Sharma's books in the same boat: Extremely cloying, with lots of sugar and laboratory-made synthetic ingredients.
Here is the thing.
Despite my distaste, much to my horror, I discovered that I've internalized a peculiar behaviour pattern which you can find in most of the self-help motivational books.
If you want me to be precise, I would name this pattern "Outside-Context-first-Inner-Reality-Next" syndrome. Or if you will, call it OCOFIRN syndrome. It sounds nice this way, doesn't it?
If you've read a lot of motivation books, odds are you are already afflicted by this OCOFIRN syndrome. Here is a quick diagnostic test.
Let us say, you want to quit a job sucking your soul out.
Do you quit your job by putting your paper first and then work out with your mind and yourself to deal with the long mile of implications starting from regret to anxiety to frustration to peaceful acceptance?
or do you quit ONLY when you've cleared off all the cobwebs of doubts and have absolute clarity to deal with the transition?
Here is another test. Let me make this more pedestrian so that you get the drift.
Let's say you want to bring the gym into your fitness routine. Do you buy the subscription and then let that fear of sunk money drive you to the gym daily? Or do you buy the subscription only when you've figured out how to incorporate fitness into the rhythms of your life?
How do you disrupt and bring a new change to your life?
Do you first modify the outside context and slowly let it nudge you to change from within or do you work with your inner climate and then let that climate dictate changes outside?
I have repeated this OCOFIRN pattern so many times that I know that this has become my second habit. It has taken me time to understand its sub-optimal nature and unlearn this pattern. It eats up a lot of the mind's processing power because, at the end of the day, you are dealing with change you DON'T want every time.
Isn't change more inevitable when it is easiest to change?
Why make change hard?
When you practice Yoga, you learn to unlearn the mindset of goals and ask yourself three simple questions - 1)Who Am I? 2) Where am I? 3) In doing what I am doing, what am I really doing?
I’ve been reading the Authentic Yoga book and find it a fascinating supplement to my ongoing study of Yoga Sutras.
“Does Freedom to choose also imply freedom to not choose? It must necessarily be so, Otherwise the word freedom would lose its very meaning. It is this momentous discovery that has inspired the vision of reality that is Yoga Darsana”
Do you have the freedom to choose and unchoose?