.I have a guest post Portion Control In Life at Effortless Abundance.

Portion Control In Life is a post from: Avani-Mehta.com Download & Share: The Fabulous Motivators E-Book.

My answer came in form of a movie called Quints on Disney. This movie is about a kid named Katie who has very controlling and dominating parents. Her parents do wish good for her but they do not let her make any decisions at all. Then something happens, and her parents get busy with other things. This leaves Katie free for the first time in her life to choose how to spend her time, what courses to take, what classes would she like to attend. But, she doesn’t know what she likes or is good at. She never got a chance to try things out. She is completely lost. What can Katie do?

While my background and situation was totally different from Katie’s. I identified with her feeling of being lost.

Like Katie, so many of us go through this in one way or another. We get busy with routine life and lose touch with ourselves. After a point when we wake up, we realize we don’t know what we like or would like to do anymore. Sometimes, it’s people who are freed from dominating/controlling relationships who have to go through this – Being unsure about everything, not knowing what to do with their time, themselves and their lives in all. Sometimes its parents who are lost – they simply didn’t find time to look after themselves while raising kids. And now, they don’t know what else to do.

Katie got a simple answer to this from her teacher – “If you don’t know what you like to do, find out. Try out everything you can and you will surely find something that will hold your attention and with time become your liking and expertise.”

This solution seems so simple that we probably might reject it when we hear first. But it’s so true – Without exposure to different activities, what is the chance of that one true calling of ours finding it’s way to us! If you don’t know where to begin, try everything that comes your way. Life is anyways all about experiencing new things. And then, you can always pick up those you like and throw away the rest. But by choosing not to experience at all, you won’t know what you are missing out on.

I found my answer in this. I keep doing things I love and keep trying new things. Eventually, I am sure I will find my calling for life. What have I gained so far with this is a huge list of things I simply love to do. And tons of experiences to share and cherish as well. What have I lost? Nothing.

Have you found your calling for life? If yes, what is it? And how did you find it?

This post featured in following carnivals:

• Carnival Of Healing
• The Effortless Abundance Blog Carnival
• Carnival of Inspiration and Motivation
• Day Shifting and Paradigm
• Rich Life Carnival

Experiencing Life is a post from: Avani-Mehta.com Download & Share: The Fabulous Motivators E-Book.

The movie of my life pauses at moments I did not take time to tell loved ones how much I love them and how important they are to me. It pauses at moments I did not spend time with them thinking that life is long; I can always spend time later on. My heart is filled with sorrow for all these moments lost. For I realise that nothing is more important to me than them. For I realise that there is no other place I would like to be than with them.

My movie pauses at all opportunities lost. And I am filled with regret; to let a good opportunity go away for some reason which seems silly now. I repent that I did not do justice to everything that I am. I did not live fully. I did not live to become my best possible.

For some reason, I also remember small dreams which were put into background and long forgotten. These unfulfilled dreams hurt. I wish I had believed in them. I wish I had tried to make them come true.

As the movie ends, I feel – Is this it? Is this all what my life is going to be about? What kind of difference did my living make? What am I leaving behind?

Is this your story? I hope not. What does your movie tell you? And how can you make it better?

Update : Just a clarification – This is NOT my life story either

A Life Not Lived is a post from: Avani-Mehta.com Download & Share: The Fabulous Motivators E-Book.

Thinking about till what extent would I go to face my fears. And will I even think of doing so. Moving out of safety zone seems so much of an effort. And scary at times. Will I ever move on and show that much courage to force myself to go beyond the world I know I am safe in.

As I usually do, I closed my eyes to travel back to varied experiences that I have had when I moved beyond my safety net, when I persisted inspite of being afraid and then I travelled to those when I let my fears win. I heard conversations that I have with myself to find out what are my fears. What fears do I have that limit me in some way to be a part of this world, that don’t allow me to participate wholly. And most importantly what do my fears cost me.

This is what I found – the biggest, most exciting and most memorable moments of my life have been those when I went ahead inspite of fears and excelled. It does not matter what aspect of life I pick up – career, people, relationships; wherever I have faced fear and excelled, I have felt alive. Those moments by themselves are so powerful that they have become my source of support and morale boosters through out my life.

For times when I tried inspite of fear and failed, if I have excelled later on, these simply become some trying times I had and most of times, I don’t even remember them.

For times when I tried inspite of fear and failed and gave up, my fear remained. It persisted. Sometimes the fear increased. But hey, no harm done. I haven’t got killed by anything so far

Faced any fears lately? is a post from: Avani-Mehta.com Download & Share: The Fabulous Motivators E-Book.

Often we run away from things that we haven’t tried before. Because they don’t fall into things of ‘I know’ list. Because we are afraid of failing. Because we are afraid of looking like a fool. However, those new things are exactly what we should be trying. For these are the benefits you get out of them:

1. List of things ‘I know’ increases
If our concern for trying something new is that we don’t know how to do it, shouldn’t we still try the same? And try till we succeed to add something to our list of ‘I know’ things. The more new things we do, the more our list increases.

2. Our confidence increases
The more new stuff we try, the more our belief in ourself increases. We no more remain afraid of the new and unknown and know we are ready for anything that life throws at us. We become ‘Can do’ people and our confidence grows tremendously.

3. It is fun.
One of the best reason to try new things and not run away from them is that it is so much fun. Don’t you ever get tired and bored of doing the same things, that is already routine to you? What is the fun of life if we don’t get to try and achieve something new. Trying something new is definitely fun and exciting.

Learn and Have Fun is a post from: Avani-Mehta.com Download & Share: The Fabulous Motivators E-Book.

While possessed video talks about being possessed by the things we buy, what about being possessed by our negative experiences and memories.

It is said that a child has unlimited potential. And is blessed to see the world and self so. As this child grows, while the potential remains, belief in being unlimited goes away.

Often negative experiences scar us for life, they limit our worlds, they limit our possibilities. It’s as if these experiences have a strong hold on us, as if they possess us. We may stop believing in ourselves, we may stop believing in relationships; sometimes it’s subtle – we might just set some boundaries for ourselves. Over a period of time, experience after experience, boundary after boundary, our life can really get limited. The worse part is, we forget the reasons why those boundaries were set. We forget that “we” had set boundaries. And we start believing that we are limited.

While we all do have unique experiences that lead us to limiting ourselves, the reasons are the same. We limit ourselves to play safe. To avoid pain, avoid loss, avoid failure, avoid embarassment, avoid humiliation … the list could go on. What we ofcourse don’t realise is that we stand to lose more by playing safe. Innumerable opportunities of growth and success, unlimited possibilities of love, happiness and relationships and most importantly truly living life.

The cost is huge. When we try to avoid certain negative aspects of life by playing safe, we also lose out on all the potential positive outcomes of life. And I often wonder, whether being safe is worth this. What’s the whole point of playing safe if I stand to lose more than before. Isn’t the cost of playing safe bigger than what I am trying to avoid by playing safe in the first place? Wouldn’t it be better to be sorry for making mistakes than being safe and not making mistakes at all?

Better Sorry Than Safe is a post from: Avani-Mehta.com Download & Share: The Fabulous Motivators E-Book.

We experience emotions in varied degrees. For instance we can feel good from degree of feeling ‘pleasant’ to feeling ‘ecstatic’. Or feel not so good from a degree of feeling ‘a bit down’ to feeling ‘depressed’.

We also express our emotions using varied degrees/range of words. For example: We can express feeling good by using words ranging from feeling ‘not bad’ to feeling ‘fantabulous’. Or feeling sad by using words ranging from feeling ‘not so happy’ to feeling ‘hopelessly sad’.

Interesting point here is that there are two things which affect us:
1. How we feel
2. How we express what we feel

While how we feel determines what range of words we can use to express ourselves. Often, the words we choose influence the degree of our emotion/feelings. Strong words increase intensity of feelings and mild words reduce intensity of our feelings.

For instance, I can reply to a simple “How are you” by using any of these sentences:
* I am not sad
* I am ok, all right.
* I am happy
* I am very happy
* I am great
* I am fantastic

The emotion is ‘feeling good’ but the range with which I can express is huge. The response that I choose as my reply, not only conveys to others how I am but also to myself. My mind registers how I share what I feel and adjusts my feelings accordingly. Hence, if I express my feeling good as I am not sad, that’s exactly how I will feel – just not sad. Not happy or very happy or great. Simply not sad. Similarly, if I choose to say I am great, I will feel accordingly.

Feelings usually mirror the words we use to express them. Hence, changing the way we express, will lead to changing the way we feel. Don’t believe? Do a small exercise to check this. Pay attention to your thoughts, particularly to the words you use to express your emotions of happiness, sadness, anger, frustration etc. Find out your list of common words. And replace them with a new list of stronger or milder words. And see how it affects your emotions. If nothing, it will be fun.

I am interested in knowing your experience with this exercise. Do share with me.

How do your words make you feel? is a post from: Avani-Mehta.com Download & Share: The Fabulous Motivators E-Book.

The truth, of course is that a billion falsehoods told a billion times by a billion people are still false – Travis Walton

Do you lie to yourself? You are fat and you say I am just healthy; You are not doing well financially and you say nothing is wrong, everything is just fine; Your relationship is going bad and you say it’s probably nothing; You are struggling with some aspect of your life and obviously need help and you say its manageable, no big deal!

Well, this is just like a kid closing his eyes assuming that what he doesn’t like will go away. Lying to self, self denial is the worst one can do to self. By denying what is true, you rob yourself of the opportunity to work upon your problem area and make things work. For here is the thing with a problem: You deny, the problem remains; You accept, you have a chance of resolving it. Think about the amount of energy spent to keep on lying to self. If that by itself is not a huge cost to pay, you will have to keep lying for lifelong. For if there is no problem, how can you resolve it?

Lies remain, only truth sets you free is a post from: Avani-Mehta.com Download & Share: The Fabulous Motivators E-Book.

Some numbers which got me thinking:

Kind of puts time in right perspective. Makes me wonder what results I could achieve if I put in an hour a day behind something more constructive!

How does your table look like?

How did you spend your year? is a post from: Avani-Mehta.com Download & Share: The Fabulous Motivators E-Book.