Musings of an old Maverick: June 2018

Thursday, June 14, 2018

Suicide – From Snap to Oblivion!

1930 hrs

I stood on an extended balcony of a friend’s residence 24 floors up on a high rise building with only a 3 foot extension in front of me and a world hustling chaotically several feet below. Through the ravages of my mind I recalled the newspaper article I had recently read of a young girl who crossed over a similar extension on a high rise building eventually ending her existence once and for all. As I observed the sheer drop from where I stood the blood in my veins turned cold. I was appalled with the very thought of what could it possibly take any human being to just walk off a ledge into committing suicide in this manner. In fact, I was even more dismayed trying to understand why people would want to end their lives in whatever form they adopted, be it a sheer drop from a tall building, a noose hanging from a fan, slitting their wrist or even consuming pesticides. And as I watched the road far below I figured that committing suicide must require humongous amounts of courage! After all, if it wasn’t courage, what else can it possibly take?

That’s what I assumed till I decided to reach out to several suicide survivors. Being an active Life Counselor all I had to do was to speak to most of my ‘patients’ and through them connect with those who made that one last attempt but survived. And believe it or not, the ensuing journey was an education of a lifetime!

The Mind is a very powerful connect between the Soul and the Body and can be likened to fire which can cook your food and cook you too! Within the precincts of the Mind exists three minds: the Conscious, the Subconscious and the Unconscious Minds. The Conscious Mind consists abysmally 5% of the entire Human Mind. The rest 95% constitutes the Subconscious and the Unconscious Minds. The Subconscious Mind holds memories which are recent in nature while the Unconscious Mind records every moment of one’s experiences of life. It is an amazing storehouse of memories from the day we were born!

In a nutshell, the Conscious Mind converses with the outside world and the inner self through speech, pictures, writing, physical movement, and thought. The Subconscious Mind, on the other hand, is in continuous contact with the resources of the Unconscious Mind which constantly communicates with the Conscious Mind through the Subconscious Mind. It provides one with the meaning to all interactions with the world, as filtered through ones beliefs and habits. It communicates through feelings, emotions, imagination, sensations, and dreams. Hence the Subconscious and the Unconscious Minds play a very active role in tandem with the Conscious Mind to ensure an overall healthy and productive Mindset resulting in a remarkable existence of one self.

However, when the Conscious Mind begins to get excessively and relentlessly barraged with piercingly stressful thoughts and experiences, the Subconscious and Unconscious Minds strain to maintain the stability of the Conscious Mind. And as the Conscious mind ceaselessly becomes more and more turgid, it quite suddenly breaks away from the safe anchorages of the Subconscious and Unconscious Minds resulting in, what we call, the act of suicide. And this could happen at any given point of time: while walking on the road, working at the office, reading a book at home, working out at the gym or even watching an exciting IPL Cricket final!

For all of those who are presently harboring suicidal tendencies I can only advice:

1. Stay within the Powers of your Inner Being. There is enormous Greatness within you! Feel it, embrace it and believe in it!!

2. You can’t get out of life alive. So why prepone it? Life is a many splendored thing. Enjoy the meandering journey and don’t mentally resist when things don’t look too good. It won’t last forever! Never does!!

3. Spend time deep breathing and meditating. Stay in the 'NOW'. You don't live in the past anymore. And the future can become awe-inspiring if you concentrate on creating beautiful Masterpieces with the present moment! Appreciate yourself for who you are and not in comparison with anyone else. You are YOU! The final Creator of your own Destiny! There never is a need to be anyone else when you can be fabulously YOURSELF!

4. And finally, Celebrate Life…Celebrate being YOU!

And to all of those of you who are connected with someone struggling with suicidal tendencies:

1. Please avoid interacting if you can’t help or remotely understand how precarious the person’s Mind is at the moment.

2. Stop mirroring your personal stress and frustrations through your actions and words. It will have a deliberating effect and deteriorate the mental crises.

3. Be patient, loving and caring no matter how stressful the situation or relationship gets. It remotely compares to what’s actually happening in the person’s Mind!

4. And finally, you have to realize one burning truth: IT DOES NOT TAKE COURAGE BUT JUST A SNAP TO OBLIVION!!

Anand K Nair

Leadership & Motivational Speaker. Mentor. Counselor. Author. Business Consultant.

Founder,

Anand Nair Leadership Foundation

Email: anand@agnileadership.com

www.facebook.com/anandnairleadershipfoundation

Author of: The Sledgehammer's Edge

Wednesday, June 6, 2018

The Deceptive Desire to Finally Light “Just This One Last Puff!”

May 31^st, 2018.

Newspapers, magazines, journals, news channels and almost every media available announce the ‘World No Tobacco Day’ and endlessly woo smokers to give up the habit. A host of articles enumerating the hazards of smoking cover all the dailies delivered at doorsteps. The internet is abuzz with videos covering visual accounts of near fatal cases due to smoking. Commercials in almost every form of communication pump up the pot purée of information with likewise disastrous descriptions.

And yet the smoker reaches for his pack and lights another cigarette!

I remember years back when I was graduating, we used to jokingly term a cigarette as “a roll of tobacco with fire on one end and a sucker on the other!” Years later when most of us became ‘suckers’ eventually, the joke spiked out more embarrassingly than humorously.

The fact is, just like within every fat man there is a thin man dying to get out and vice versa, within every smoker is a man desperately trying to beat the habit of lighting up a cigarette every 15 minutes with a deceptive desire to finally “light that one last puff” once and for all…

The fact is that every smoker is absolutely aware of all the hazards of his vice and no amount of information, data, statistics, facts or figures proving it all will make that big difference resulting in the smoker chucking the habit.

The fact is that the smoker knows he’s hooked by a powerful drug called Nicotine existing in tobacco and as long as his brain craves it he will remain a prisoner to his vice.

Like every smoker, I knew I was literally burning away both my health and finances for just that craving for a few ‘puffs’ more. And as long as the craving taunted me night and day, I gave a damn about anything else but lighting up and believing how much I was enjoying every moment ecstatically as I deeply inhaled the smoke into my lungs giving myself a temporary ‘high’ till the next cigarette. And never mind the dirty nicotine stained teeth or the discolored finger tips.

But yet, there are smokers like me who finally did give it up, and quite suddenly! YES, it can be done and it’s actually no big deal!!

The truth is that no amount of emotional blackmailing or advice from relatives and friends made me make the decision to quit. Quitting a vice that one has lived with over several years can’t be done on somebody else’s opinion, guidance or suggestion. Quitting a vice is a very personal thing. The decision lies squarely on the victim of the vice and on nothing or no one else.

So then how did I manage to quit? Did I have an exemplary Will Power over others? Was it because I loved my family and close friends so profoundly that I wanted to do it for them? Or was it because of the circulation of so much information on the nuisances of smoking intermittently being bombarded right from several media options available to the permanent cigarette packet design?

Actually, it was none of those. Like I said, giving up any vice is a very personal decision and no one can ever influence it except one’s own mind! It was just one amazing moment in my life when I suddenly and most passionately wanted to change the way I existed. And just to never, ever light another cigarette in my life. The fact is that when I deeply desired to become the CHANGE I secretly always wanted to be, this desire overtook and overshadowed a continuously nagging desire to remain the SAME as always. And the moment that happened, I chucked it all away and never looked back again! So when I say giving up a vice is a very personal thing, I know that this is the truth because I am a practical witness to prosecuting my own iniquity.

To all the smokers across the world who are actually enjoying their regular bouts of ‘puffing’ it up, don’t bother about how good or bad it is for you. Don’t give a damn on who, genuinely or sincerely, want you to give up the habit. And don’t even remotely fancy that you lack a formidable Will Power to never light another puff (after all, how does it matter anyway). And of course, screw the fact that you have smoked away buying a new house or a fancy car or even some top of the line threads for your wardrobe with every cigarette you bought and puffed over the years.

But for those of you who secretly desire to quit smoking once and for all…all you got to do is do what I did. First, seriously contemplate on it. Then give yourself a comfortable time frame to quit. And as you gradually reach towards the end of the timeframe, continuously keep concentrating on crafting an intense desire within yourself to become the CHANGE that you covertly wanted to be instead of remaining the SAME as always. It’s really this simple. After all, you wouldn’t be doing all this if you seriously didn’t want a change!

CHANGE is an amazing constant. Yes, it will be a wee bit difficult in the beginning. A little tough in the middle. But AWE-INSPIRING at the end! It all depends on how passionately you have desired to embrace the CHANGE.

And believe me. If I can do it…SO CAN YOU!!