Life: The Business and Heart Side of It

"Mam, today I don't feel like working." - my house help said with helpless sadness.

After pausing, she sarcastically smiled and said - " but I have to work."

" I have to pay the school fees of my children."

It is the business side of life. It does not bother whether you like it or not - you do the daily mundane chores to run the show.

Some days, you will feel sad without a reason, but you have to wear an everything-is-good smile and carry your duty.

During my childhood, I saw my grandmother happily spending almost the entire day cooking different cuisines.

She would smile like an enlightened being and enjoy her world while cooking.

Sometimes, we would wonder how she could do the same job year after year and still enjoy it.

It is the heart side of life.

She was not working. She was living her life in a flow state.

You cannot avoid the sadness of life

Previously, I would get irritated and sad to do all those daily tasks that I did not like. Below is a snapshot.

• Waking up at 6 am
• Doing groceries on the weekend
• Spending a boring weekend( I have been following a dull weekend schedule for the last two years)
• Going back to an empty flat after work

Unfortunately, I could not change any of these circumstances by complaining.

So, I have accepted and made peace with it.

I am sure you must have many tasks you hate to do.

No choice.

I have realized one thing - sadness is part of life. Sometimes, you feel demotivated, cheated, and that life is unfair. If you try to change it, you will feel 10x those emotions.

Instead of complaining, accept it and be one with your pain. The idea of embracing pain felt weird to me initially. Why would anybody want to accept pain instead of joy? My previous approach to pain was to get rid of it. Then, I found the more I resisted pain, the more it hurt me.

So, I learned a different technique to handle pain.

In the video below, Gelong Thubten teaches how to build a friendly relationship with the feeling of discomfort.

This mindset will not change anything outside.

It will have a tectonic shift in your inner world.

Find a way to be in a flow state

The human mind always finds a way to solve a problem.

Even if you try to accept what you cannot change, you will still want to do something about it.

And that something will again be a trigger to change what irritates you.

I fell into this trap many times.

Finally, I tried a different approach, and it worked.

I often complained about living alone. I saw complaining would not get me anywhere. So, I started filling up the lonely hours with hobbies.

It was a completely magical game-changer.

Instead of watching movies in my free time, I do the activities that I enjoy.

• Writing
• Learning about writing techniques
• Painting
• Reading

I could not remove the emptiness in my apartment - I have transformed my inner void into a beacon of motivation.

I wake up every day excited about what to write or read. I think about creating a more engaging article and generating revenue from that.

The creative thoughts have kept me busy in my lonely apartment.

Pursuing hobbies re-ignite the heart side of life to carry the business of life effortlessly.

Whenever you feel sad, remember life is a beautiful game of balance. You are the alchemist of that balancing game.

"Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity." - Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist