Mind is a tool. It can be used for good and bad – both in a negative and positive way. Mind tends to hold each and every moment safely stored. There are good memories and bad memories. Good memories bring smiles, painful ones bring sadness. These memories can sometime create problems in a person’s life if the persons hold on to them stubbornly. They begin to suffocate.

Now, how to break this hold? First let us understand that it is not easy to break lose from the clutches of animosities, dejections, rejections and ugliness, from all these negative thoughts. To make this happen, all you need to do is stop depending upon others. As long as we live in dependence, we create such situations for ourselves when we become prone to pain and hurt. We are tied to the rope of expectations, always looking towards others, always expecting that if they do this for me, then I’ll be happy and if they don’t, we start sulking!

Remember, when we want to rule others, when we want to dictate and direct, we are never at peace because we are expecting. Parents dictate children, husbands to wives and wives to husbands. We are so much focused on actions, language, motives of others that we forget to live our own life. Everyone is trying to tell the other how to live, everyone is trying to live the life of another person. Those who don’t know how to live for themselves, are the people who are dependent on others for happiness. Somehow, others know that you are dependent. The wife knows that her husband will come to her for fulfillment, so she will not leave a single opportunity to put forward her demands. The husband also knows this and goes on doing his task. Are they not tormenting each other in the name of love? Moreover, the mind is always on a look-out for appreciation, for appraisals. This hunger is so great that we tend to put ourselves in odd circumstances.

We need to correct this. Learn to love yourself, accept yourself as you are and meditate. Learning to be in the moment, accepting it with full gratitude, gives us a fresh, new zeal to live with awareness. People are busy collecting more and more money – good houses, great cars, smart husbands or boyfriends, beautiful wives or girlfriends. Mind is hungry for flashy, designer clothes, thicker wallets, heavier jewellery etc. You work so hard to get all of this and yet you are not happy or contended. You are still dependent on someone else to say, “Oh, you are looking beautiful!” If no one praises you, you think you have wasted your time on all the make-up and the adornments you wore.

Learn to be with yourself, free from dependencies – you’ll feel the relief in the end. No one will give this relief to you. It is something for which you will have to work yourself. When you know it is your responsibility to live a happy life, why leave this till tomorrow! Do it now!

Breathe deeply, look outside the window, at the tree or the sky, shut your eyes with the deep resolve that you have taken this opportunity of a lifetime, that you have taken the responsibility for your life. Let the mind be free of all the pretensions and assumptions. Be natural, be in the moment – the moment that is called LIFE!