Book Excerpt from Feeling Great Creating a Life of Optimism, Enthusiasm and Contentment
By Dadi Janki, Peter Vegso, Kelly Johnson
Harmony
When you build a house, every brick counts. When you build character, every thought counts. You are what you think. Love, purity, peace, wisdom—the more you think of these qualities, the more you will become them.
One of the first things you need to learn in order to truly feel great is the importance of putting your life in order and finding balance. If there is confusion inside, there will be confusion outside; learning how to align your inner world of thoughts, attitudes, and feelings with your outer world of actions, words, and relationships is the first step—you simply can’t feel great when everything in and around you is unsettled.
—————————————————————————–
Maintain the balance of responding to situations
with a cool head and to people with a warm heart.
—————————————————————————–
Feelings and Emotions
In order to bring your life into harmony, you have to find emotional stability, because when your emotions are unpredictable or irrational or you are feeling out of sorts, you can’t possibly settle into a life of joy and contentment.
Emotions play a very big role in determining your ability to really feel great. Since emotions are a more superficial expression of your feelings, whatever the quality of your feelings is, that will also be the quality of your emotions. For example, if your feelings are grounded in concern or the desire to make peace, your emotions will reflect kindness and peace-keeping thoughts, but if you are feeling all knot- ted up inside—impatient and insensitive—that is what your emotions are going to reflect.
The goal is to develop good, helpful emotions, to the point that they become such a natural reaction for you that your negative emotions get squeezed out and have less room to thrive, and therefore become less spontaneous. The more room that you give good emotions to grow, the more spontaneous those positive qualities will be, and your outer expressions will reflect them instead of negative qualities. You will be creating a good, stable home for feeling great to take up permanent residence.
It’s not difficult to activate positive feelings—it just requires you to understand and explore your true identity, which in turn requires you to look inward.
Introspection
Introspection is the desire to know yourself, to go inward. Developing the ability to be introspective will not only help you explore your spiritual identity, but it will ultimately allow you to see your true self in the mirror of your heart. And the more aware you are of your true self, the greater your prospects will be for achieving genuine harmony in your life.
Overthinking
Sometimes the path is simple, but we make it much harder than it has to be, and that old habit of thinking too much takes over. We essentially get locked into these self-perpetuating thoughts, sending us down a completely different path, and then we find ourselves in a state of anger, depression, or even confusion. When that happens, change direction—change your thought patterns, and get back to a mindset of stability and calmness. Getting to that state requires the ability to find inner peace, but you won’t find it by getting into all the “stuff ” in your head—in fact, thinking too much actually gets in the way. You can’t think clearly when your mind is going in different directions, and you certainly won’t hear the answers that are trying to reach you.
When you find yourself being consumed by your thoughts, whether they are running through all the things you have to do that day or going over some stressful situation, you really need to take a time-out. You need a level head, an honest and open heart, and to find that foundational connection to your spiritual identity. When you can develop the habit of doing that, your brain settles down, you find balance, and you can start to do the real work of feeling great.
********************
Feeling Great, Creating a Life of Optimism, Enthusiasm and Contentment (HCI Books), is a fascinating and complete guidebook that offers a simple blueprint for a lifelong embodiment of true contentment by a triad of leading wisdom keepers–Dadi Janki, Peter Vegso, and Kelly Johnson. This book lets you really OWN a permanently elevated state of mind and way of life. Feeling Great breaks down the elements that must be present in your life to experience sustained peak living. It succinctly brings forth what needs to be cast aside, what needs to be adapted, and how to get from that place of emptiness to robustness as you build character traits that strengthen your contentment muscle. Feeling Great is available at www.hcibooks.com, Amazon.com and many bookstores.