The Addiction called Personal Growth

“Does it ever get exhausting to be this happy all the time?”, ”Are you afraid of the bubble bursting?”, “Is all this positivism real?”, “Why are you in 24*7 TED talk mode?”, “How can you be so unrealistic?”, “What are you smoking?”- Those are just some FAQs I get. To answer all these (in the most succint possible way) let me give you a hypothetical scenario, imagine you’re a child and I give you a video game that you absolutely loved and got hooked on to, just when you thought it couldn’t get any better I gave you more levels in it, perhaps a new Donkey Kong island with more cute creatures and scenes, just the right amount of challenge to keep you excited and going. Imagine if I kept doing that to you all the time, will you say, stop it, I want to go back to that other boring game I was playing before you introduced me to all this enthralling fun? Or will stay in the flow of the magic of this perfect video game that gives you a sense of satisfaction, this energy, this thrill and this sense of accomplishment? Well, simply put- I AM that child. But of course there are difficult levels and fires to jump across- shouldn’t that frustrate you enough to quit? What if, just like a video game you could find a hack? That would make the challenge all the more exciting!

I consider myself ‘lucky’ (what a word) to have found myself here, where my daily practices lead me to quick changes in perspective and allow me to perform better and maintain my states of bliss. As a Mindvalley follower, I am compelled to take my practice of Blissipline very seriously. I am now sharing some of my common practices (besides my regular meditation and yoga) that I use on an ongoing basis to stay in this enjoyable video game.

1. The combination of gratitude and change- On several occasions I’ve seen that people (especially those who don’t practice conscious gratitude) find it hard to see things for which they are grateful and can’t really ‘feel’ the joy of gratitude even though they acknowledge the presence of good things in their lives. In these times, I’d prescribe a powerful combination of gratitude and change. Change can be as simple as taking a different route to work, hanging out with someone new, trying a new coffee place or just listening to new music. By making small shifts like these, we either will like our old coffee place/route better and be thankful for it, or be thankful for discovering a new place!
2. Education vs Entertainment- There is nothing wrong with going to the movies and the occasional Netflix binge, however, over the last 4–5 months, I found myself slowly drifting towards education instead of deriving meaning from entertainment. While I find myself crying during the ‘The Intern’ or feeling excited watching all the Harry Potter movies back to back (best day ever), I largely devote most of my time watching something educational, inspirational and enriching. Although this was a change that simply ‘happened’ and was less conscious, I found it to be more valuable than some of the conscious changes I brought along. I cancelled my Netflix subscription and signed up for Mindvalley instead. It may sound like a big step to some people, but with the amount of time I was spending on Mindvalley vs Netflix, the ratio is disproportionate enough for the decision to have made itself.
3. Matching vibration- As a biomedical researcher, I always admire people who do real and wonderful scientific work. One such person is neuroscientist Moran Cerf. In one of his interviews, Moran spoke about how brain frequencies start aligning themselves. It is therefore advisable to hang out with comedians if you want start being more funny. With this serious advice, I find that my speaking skills have improved significantly by going to a Toastmasters club even before I got feedback/evaluations on my speaking. I feel more spiritually engrossed when I meet like minded who are interested in growing the way I am. I now make very deliberate efforts to find such people and ask my brain to get on board with their frequency.
4. Proving yourself. Not.- While I am a big fan of growing from pain (Kensho and Satori) I do not believe in ‘proving’ yourself. There is potential scope of growth through an idea such as growing from rejection and therefore proving something to everyone ‘out there’, but I think such type of growth is very limited and can take you only a few steps ahead. I found that once I got to a point of being self content, I automatically started developing a sense of contribution. I did not feel likeI was bashing against something, working hard and putting in effort. Yes, the hours are pretty much still the same, but it comes from being motivated and having a creative flow as opposed to the feeling of hard work. The natural feeling of waking up in a blissful and inspired state everyday is one million times greater than the experiencing that one tiny joyful moment where you managed to prove yourself, or at least believed that you did.
5. Acting on inspiration- Even the tiniest of steps make me feel immensely wonderful. Taking baby steps towards my inspired thoughts has made a large impact on my emotional life. In a practical, conventionally ‘real’ way I have not made a million dollars, had a million followers on my social media or published a whole bunch of papers in Nature. But the baby steps of working on simple things like communicating science effectively, bringing more aesthetic to my research, speaking about therapy openly and bringing people interested in personal growth together give me a HUGE sense of contribution.

To end this, I would like for you to know that I am also writing this blog as a special thank you to Vishen and the Mindvalley team. I am not getting paid by them, I am just in awe of what they are doing and how much this has impacted me. I give back in my own little ways with my social media, my art and my non scientific blogging. I hope that one day I can make a massive contribution to thank them for all the massive contributions that they have made and are contuining to make.