“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean;
if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”
“The difference between what we do and what we are capable
of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problem.”
“If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed
suicide.”
Mahatma Gandhi needs no long introduction. Everyone knows
about the man who lead the Indian people to independence from British rule in
1947.
So let’s just move on to some of my favourite tips from
Mahatma Gandhi.
1. Change yourself.
“You must be the change you want to see in the world.”
“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being
able to remake the world – that is the myth of the atomic age – as in being
able to remake ourselves.”
If you change yourself you will change your world. If you
change how you think then you will change how you feel and what actions you
take. And so the world around you will change. Not only because you are now
viewing your environment through new lenses of thoughts and emotions but also
because the change within can allow you to take action in ways you wouldn’t
have – or maybe even have thought about – while stuck in your old thought
patterns.
And the problem with changing your outer world without
changing yourself is thatyou will still be you when you reach that change you
have strived for. You will still have your flaws, anger, negativity,
self-sabotaging tendencies etc. intact.
And so in this new situation you will still not find what
you hoped for since your mind is still seeping with that negative stuff. And if
you get more without having some insight into and distance from your ego it may
grow more powerful. Since your ego loves to divide things, to find enemies and
to create separation it may start to try to create even more problems and
conflicts in your life and world.
2. You are in control.
“Nobody can hurt me without my permission.”
What you feel and how you react to something is always up to
you. There may be a “normal” or a common way to react to different things. But
that’s mostly just all it is.
You can choose your own thoughts, reactions and emotions to
pretty much everything. You don’t have to freak out, overreact of even react in
a negative way. Perhaps not every time or instantly. Sometimes a knee-jerk
reaction just goes off. Or an old thought habit kicks in.
And as you realize that no-one outside of yourself can
actually control how you feel you can start to incorporate this thinking into
your daily life and develop it as a thought habit. A habit that you can grow
stronger and stronger over time. Doing this makes life a whole lot easier and
more pleasurable.
3. Forgive and let it go.
“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of
the strong.”
“An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”
Fighting evil with evil won’t help anyone. And as said in
the previous tip, you always choose how to react to something. When you can
incorporate such a thought habit more and more into your life then you can
react in a way that is more useful to you and others.
You realize that forgiving and letting go of the past will
do you and the people in your world a great service. And spending your time in
some negative memory won’t help you after you have learned the lessons you can
learn from that experience. You’ll probably just cause yourself more suffering
and paralyze yourself from taking action in this present moment.
If you don’t forgive then you let the past and another
person to control how you feel. By forgiving you release yourself from those
bonds. And then you can focus totally on, for instance, the next point.
4. Without action you aren’t going anywhere.
“An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.”
Without taking action very little will be done. However,
taking action can be hard and difficult. There can be much inner resistance.
And so you may resort to preaching, as Gandhi says. Or
reading and studying endlessly. And feeling like you are moving forward. But
getting little or no practical results in real life.
So, to really get where you want to go and to really
understand yourself and your world you need to practice. Books can mostly just
bring you knowledge. You have to take action and translate that knowledge into
results and understanding.
You can check out a few effective tips to overcome this
problem in How to Take More Action: 9 Powerful Tips. Or you can move on to the
next point for more on the best tip for taking more action that I have found so
far.
5. Take care of this moment.
“I do not want to foresee the future. I am concerned with
taking care of the present. God has given me no control over the moment
following.”
The best way that I have found to overcome the inner
resistance that often stops us from taking action is to stay in the present as
much as possible and to be accepting.
Why? Well, when you are in the present moment you don’t
worry about the next moment that you can’t control anyway. And the resistance
to action that comes from you imagining negative future consequences – or
reflecting on past failures – of your actions loses its power. And so it
becomes easier to both take action and to keep your focus on this moment and
perform better.
Have a look at 8 Ways to Return to the Present Moment for
tips on how quickly step into the now. And remember that reconnecting with and
staying in the now is a mental habit – a sort of muscle – that you grow. Over
time it becomes more powerful and makes it easier to slip into the present
moment.
6. Everyone is human.
“I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any
other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my
errors and to retrace my steps.”
“It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is
healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might
err.”
When you start to make myths out of people – even though
they may have produced extraordinary results – you run the risk of becoming
disconnected from them. You can start to feel like you could never achieve
similar things that they did because they are so very different. So it’s
important to keep in mind that everyone is just a human being no matter who
they are.
And I think it’s important to remember that we are all human
and prone to make mistakes. Holding people to unreasonable standards will only
create more unnecessary conflicts in your world and negativity within you.
It’s also important to remember this to avoid falling into
the pretty useless habit of beating yourself up over mistakes that you have
made. And instead be able to see with clarity where you went wrong and what you
can learn from your mistake. And then try again.
7. Persist.
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they
fight you, then you win.”
Be persistent. In time the opposition around you will fade
and fall away. And your inner resistance and self-sabotaging tendencies that
want to hold you back and keep you like you have always been will grow weaker.
Find what you really like to do. Then you’ll find the inner
motivation to keep going, going and going. You can also find a lot of useful
tips on how keep your motivation up in How to Get Out of a Motivational Slump
and 25 Simple Ways to Motivate Yourself.
One reason Gandhi was so successful with his method of
non-violence was because he and his followers were so persistent. They just
didn’t give up.
Success or victory will seldom come as quickly as you would
have liked it to. I think one of the reasons people don’t get what they want is
simply because they give up too soon. The time they think an achievement will
require isn’t the same amount of time it usually takes to achieve that goal.
This faulty belief partly comes from the world we live in. A world full of
magic pill solutions where advertising continually promises us that we can lose
a lot of weight or earn a ton of money in just 30 days. You can read more about
this in One Big Mistake a Whole Lot of People Make.
Finally, one useful tip to keep your persistence going is to
listen to Gandhi’s third quote in this article and keep a sense of humor. It
can lighten things up at the toughest of times.
8. See the good in people and help them.
“I look only to the good qualities of men. Not being
faultless myself, I won’t presume to probe into the faults of others.”
“Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works
for the welfare of his fellow-men.”
“I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today
it means getting along with people.”
There is pretty much always something good in people. And
things that may not be so good. But you can choose what things to focus on. And
if you want improvement then focusing on the good in people is a useful choice.
It also makes life easier for you as your world and relationships become more
pleasant and positive.
And when you see the good in people it becomes easier to
motivate yourself to be of service to them. By being of service to other
people, by giving them value you not only make their lives better. Over time
you tend to get what you give. And the people you help may feel more inclined
to help other people. And so you, together, create an upward spiral of positive
change that grows and becomes stronger.
By strengthening your social skills you can become a more
influential person and make this upward spiral even stronger. A few articles
that may provide you with useful advice in that department are Do You Make
These 10 Mistakes in a Conversation? and Dale Carnegie’s Top 10 Tips for
Improving Your Social Skills. Or you can just move on to the next tip.
9. Be congruent, be authentic, be your true self.
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what
you do are in harmony.”
“Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and
deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.”
I think that one of the best tips for improving your social
skills is to behave in a congruent manner and communicate in an authentic way.
People seem to really like authentic communication. And there is much inner
enjoyment to be found when your thoughts, words and actions are aligned. You
feel powerful and good about yourself.
When words and thoughts are aligned then that shows through
in your communication. Because now you have your voice tonality and body
language – some say they are over 90 percent of communication – in alignment
with your words.
With these channels in alignment people tend to really
listen to what you’re saying. You are communicating without incongruency, mixed
messages or perhaps a sort of phoniness.
Also, if your actions aren’t in alignment with what you’re
communicating then you start to hurt your own belief in what you can do. And
other people’s belief in you too.
10. Continue to grow and evolve.
”Constant development is the law of life, and a man who
always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself
into a false position.”
You can pretty much always improve your skills, habits or
re-evaluate your evaluations. You can gain deeper understanding of yourself and
the world.
Sure, you may look inconsistent or like you don’t know what
you are doing from time to time. You may have trouble to act congruently or to
communicate authentically. But if you don’t then you will, as Gandhi says,
drive yourself into a false position. A place where you try to uphold or cling
to your old views to appear consistent while you realise within that something
is wrong. It’s not a fun place to be. To choose to grow and evolve is a happier
and more useful path to take.
This article is reprinted here with permission. Henrik
Edberg is a writer who lives on the east coast of Sweden. He is passionate
about happiness and personal development and writes about it every week on The
Positivity Blog and in his free newsletter.
Source: Gandhi's 10 Rules for Changing the World
--by Henrik Edberg, syndicated from positivityblog.com, Jun 28, 2013
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