The Heart's Path: Choosing Gratitude Over Negativity

 We internalize, not just what we do, but what we feel. — Dr. Brett

Having developed the habit of finding a problem in every idea, every new experience, every opportunity—the human heart develops the worst of all traits: the inability to be grateful. This fosters feelings of insecurity, inadequacy, and vulnerability in the face of positivity, sincerity, and grace.

Having made it a conscious and willful routine to pause and reflect on all the small and big advantages, gifts and wins — the human heart internalizes a deep sense of gratitude, a prevailing feeling of fulfillment, contentment, and inner tranquility.

Both these feelings stem from small, very tiny choices made daily—choices that grow, expand, and multiply until they become hard and dominant.

Meet an ungrateful person, and they may well shake your inner peace, make you doubt your heart’s purity, and influence a sense of inadequacy within you. It takes preparation and resolve to maintain one’s inner tranquility in such encounters.

Meet a grateful, sincere person, and you will feel a sense of freedom. For a time, you forget all your problems, your shortcomings, under their reassuring gaze. Your heart will expand. You will feel great indeed.

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Cancelo Alvarez

Reading Time: 1 minute

• 229 Words

Knowledge vs. Environment

 Education is Key to Success, But So Is the Environment You Engage With Every Day

We tend to focus on education as the primary driver of success, often neglecting the environment in which we are situated. Yet, knowledge alone is not enough. It helps you discover principles, the ‘right way,’ and then convert those insights into daily choices guided by values. However, your values can easily intermingle with those of your circle or community.

In fact, it’s very easy for this to happen because your circle often includes your parents and the community that raised you. Naturally, you’ve adopted their worldview and preferences. With the acquisition of knowledge, you’re attempting to reverse, relearn, and unlearn unproductive preferences and habits. But reversing and unlearning is an exceedingly uncertain process—one that requires more than just intellectual effort. It’s crucial that you change your environment simultaneously.

Why? Because what you learn can easily be used against you if your environment doesn’t support your growth. Phrases like, “You’re mean,” “You’re too ambitious,” “You’re not realistic,” or “You’re too serious,” can quickly undermine your progress.

In my opinion, great knowledge will only thrive when you are in an environment that recognizes, appreciates, and honors that kind of knowledge. This often boils down to your character and choices, which are deeply influenced by your surroundings.

As Darren Hardy wisely observed:

“The people with whom we spend our time determine what conversations dominate our attention, and to which attitudes and opinions we are regularly exposed. Eventually, we start to eat what they eat, talk like they talk, read what they read, think like they think, watch what they watch, treat people how they treat them, even dress like they dress.”

In other words, the environment you engage with every day shapes who you become just as much as the knowledge you acquire. To truly succeed, it’s essential to not only focus on your education but also carefully curate the environment that nurtures your growth.

The Mental Sunlight -- Breathing

 

Henepola Gunaratana: Mindfulness In Plain English

Book Summary in 300 words, 1 minute reading time:

What you are now is a result of what you were. What you will be tomorrow will be the result of what you are now. The consequences of an evil mind will follow you like the cart follows the ox that pulls it. The consequences of a purified mind will follow you like your own shadow. No one can do more for you than your own purified mind—no parent, no relative, no friend, no one. A well-disciplined mind brings happiness and self-assurance.

This is why we sit down each day with eyes closed, listening to nature or soothing music — Meditation is intended to purify the mind. It cleanses the thought process of what can be called psychic irritants, things like greed. Hatred and jealousy, things that keep you snarled up in emotional bondage. It brings the mind to a state of tranquility and awareness, a state of concentration and insight. In this state of self-awareness, dark mental clouds are temporary. In the opposite state, our minds are always cloudy, never experiencing the warmth of sunlight and the clear blue sky of contentment.

The idea of meditation is to go in as one person and come out a different person altogether, by making one aware of one’s own thoughts and actions, reflecting on them as much as possible, and remaining in the moment.

Civilization changes man on the outside. Meditation softens him within, through and through. Meditation is called the Great Teacher.

Patience is key. Patience. If you learn nothing else from meditation, you will learn patience. And that is the most valuable lesson available.

"What stops us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, confident, fearless, and steady? A mind that is beyond the reach of fear and desire...

A person with such a mind will naturally be cheerful and deeply joyful, finding delight in their own resources and desiring no joys greater than their inner joys."

— Seneca, Letters From A Stoic

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Further Reading: 

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

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Cancelo Alvarez