Scrap your Book

By book, I’m not referring to that book we used to use in our school days which consisted of thick papers on which we were instructed to paste collages of images related to a specific theme. But, of course, you can perceive your life to be a scrapbook too. That will be more creative, than the lines of words.

A Fresh Start

Ok, the main focus here is the verb “Scarp”. I mean, discard your book. Discard your storyline so far. How you see yourself, how others see you, how you think others see you, discard all that. As
mentioned earlier, imagine your life to be a book. Scrap/discard all the pages that have been filled till now.

And I’m not suggesting something random here. Doing this may change your life. And this is exactly what led me to write my first book – The Flower of Fulfillment. And in this blog, I share the benefits and a few pointers to keep in mind while rethinking & redesigning your life.

Accountability

Of course, there’ll be some things you cannot change, like your parents, genetically inherited traits, and mainly, the actions you took till now also have a huge influence on you. But nonetheless, the whole point of this exercise is to give yourself the full authority from now on, to make choices you truly want. When you discard everything from the past and look forward to starting your life fresh from scratch, what’s happening is that you’re not only given full authority, but it also means, you’re taking full responsibility for whatever happens to your life from now on. In simple words, you are making yourself totally accountable for your life.

Think Again

And once you’ve decided to start thinking about and living your life from scratch, it’s not just full authority over your life that you get to enjoy, starting from scratch also means you are getting a second chance at designing your life. And that means you’re creating an opportunity to think about your life again. Think about all of your life choices, everything from your career, and your purpose, to your ideal relationship status.

Think about all of those again. What would be your ideal work? Why do you think it is your ideal work? Is it because it makes a lot of money or that your parents want you to become that? If it is just because of money, there are million different ways to make money. And remember, you have full authority. You are not obligated to any of your past pseudo-goals, nor to your parents, friends, cousins, etc. Think about everything from scratch.

Play the long game

Thinking all of it again also means you get to make choices like a player who’s playing the long game. We’ve already discussed this in my blog- Play the Long Game. We must see life in both ways. We must accept that we might have died yesterday or can die now or tomorrow. And at the same time, we must also see life as a long journey. Hence, when you’re rethinking all of your life choices again, think about what kind of health you wish to have when you’re 60. What amount of financial freedom do you wish to have at the age of 30? Think about what you would love to work on, till your last breath. Think about how you’ll be serving humanity till your last breath. Think about sustainability.

Now or Never

I must admit, “Now or Never” is slightly an exaggeration. I’m not discarding that someone can turn over their life completely when they wish to. But it is mostly true to most people that if you’re not able to choose and be happy now, and if you think you’ll be happy some other day far in the future, it’s not hope, it’s a delusion. Because most probably you won’t be happy. Happiness is in the now. We’ve heard this too many times that it sounds cliche now. But that’s true and we must design our daily life for happiness. And that’s why we need habits.

Habits

After you’ve thought about your life in the broadest and long view, it’s time to think about and implement habits that are essential to living the life you just imagined. For example, if you said you want to be in great health at 60, you have to ask yourselves this. Have you implemented exercising daily as your habit? Do you eat “healthy”? Do you get sound sleep every night? Have you adopted yoga as ‘the’ lifestyle? If you said no to any of these questions, then you probably cannot live the life you just dreamed of, right? If your work/career or anything is obstructing that ideal life, then it is time to rethink even that(work/career).

Awareness

And then there’s awareness, at the core of everything. To do all these, you must have awareness. You must have an awareness of life and of yourself. If you don’t know what aspects of life if at all it does, contribute how much to the fulfillment in life, how can you invest in them in your daily life? To even know what habits to inculcate and stick to, you must have awareness. And I think, my book – The Flower of Fulfillment can definitely help you here.

I’ll conclude this blog by insisting again to “Scrap your Book”. I urge you again to rethink and redesign your life keeping these pointers in your mind.

Thank you
Sanath Kumar Naibhi

Related posts:

The Habit that changed my Life!

Play the Long Game

You’re a Multi-passionate?

Are you a cog in the machine?

Not thinking is a Crime too!

The biggest problem for Humanity