Life’s Amazing Secrets: How to Find Balance and Purpose in Your Life

by Gaur Gopal Das

‘Experience is not what happens to a man, it is what a man does with what happens to him.’

The secret of life is finding balance: not too much, not too little. Just as a car balances on four wheels, we must balance the four crucial areas of our life: our personal life, our relationships, our work life and our social contribution.

As we balance ourselves externally and internally, it is fundamental to our success that we never let go of the steering wheel—our spirituality.

‘Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, we cannot live without a spiritual life.’

Behind the smiles, everyone is going through personal struggles we know nothing about.

We have mastered how to look successful, but not how to organize our lives so that we feel successful.

We must find positivity in the bleakest situations and live by the principle of gratitude.

‘The mind is what we use to perceive the world. We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.

‘I am not saying these problems don’t exist, but the real problem is that when negativity consumes the mind, not only do we lose the vision to see the beautiful things around us, but also the ability to solve the problems that confront us. We have to train our mind to focus on the positive and feel empowered to deal with the negative.’

learnt on that day that when we think negatively of people, we should immediately counteract that energy by contemplating three positive qualities they have. I did make some awkward lingering eye contact with many of the monks in that hall as I gawked at them, leaving

The mind is like the tongue. It drifts towards the negative areas of our life, making us restless and uneasy. It schemes to uproot the problems that are causing us so much pain, not realizing that the persistent scheming is causing us more emotional damage.

When upon life’s billows you are tempest-tossed, When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost, Count your many blessings, name them one by one, And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.

Immanuel Kant said that the context of a situation matters. ‘One’s ability to appreciate beauty is related to one’s ability to make moral judgements,’

We experience worry and anxiety in life because we take things out of perspective.