But there was a time not so long ago when life looked very different for me. I loved playing poker and the only time that people in Mumbai like to play that game is ‘late-night-through-the-morning’. As a result, I would have dinner at midnight, go to sleep at 6am, wake up at 1pm, have breakfast at 2pm, lunch at 5pm and basically lived a life as decadent as one can imagine. Then I was diagnosed with arthritis, followed by high cholesterol. The doctor who saw my reports said that with the level of cholesterol that I had, I should have been dead. That was my wake up call. I decided to make some changes in my life.

I had to start by giving up smoking. Even if you eat healthy, sleep on time, exercise and do all the other good things for your health, as soon as you light a cigarette, you deflate your motivation to do all those things and soon you go back to the debauchery. There is an inherent mismatch in detoxifying your body and smoking. It did not make any sense to me. So I decided to kick the butt. It was precisely then that the phrase “Easier said than done” took on a whole new meaning for me.

‘Valid’ reasons to smoke

I realised soon enough that quitting smoking was one of the most difficult things to do. I also read somewhere that it is easier to give up cocaine than to give up smoking. It is just so hard to not ‘light up’. When you’re trying to give up, the kind of excuses your mind makes up for smoking that cigarette are sometimes hilarious and at other times downright pathetic. I’ve listed a few that my fellow smokers will identify with. [I smoked so much and for so long that I still consider myself a member of the smokers club!]

Stressful situations

Any kind of stress is a reason to light up immediately. Stress at home [especially if you’re married], stress at work, stress at the poker table, not to forget the massive stress while you’re on the pot early in the morning and can’t do the job. Happy situations: Exhilaration, great news, reasons to celebrate, winning the lottery… Must smoke, and NOW!

Beautiful locations

How can you be in the countryside, admiring a gorgeous sunset and not have a smoke in your hand? How can you even think of walking along Darling Harbour, breathing in the fresh, clean air of Sydney without a cigarette to relish the moment?

After sex

To prolong the pleasure.

With friends

That’s how you celebrate with your friends, by being one of them. When they all light up, you light up.

Without friends

When you’re lonely, who do you have with you, except your loneliness and your Marlboro Man?

When you’re drinking

How do you enjoy a nice chai or a cappuccino without lighting up? And when you’re having alcohol you need an ashtray, right? Anyone who smokes creates these mountains of blockages. These are like chains that tie us to the habit. Am I about to give you a formula that will break these shackles away and make you give up smoking?

You bet I am.

Don’t be fooled, go for the real thing

With all of the different methods that I have tried in my life I finally found a foolproof one that works like magic. Before I tell you the magic formula, I have to first tell you the other so called magic formulas that did not work.

• Nicotine patches
• Electronic cigarettes
• Hypnosis
• Self-help books
• Psychological consultations
• Punching myself in the stomach and making myself believe that the cigarette that I was about to have was worse than 30 of those punches. [Some clown suggested this and like a desperate monkey I followed even this idea!]

As you’ve probably guessed by now, none of them worked. So this here is the foolproof guide to giving up smoking, coming from someone who used to smoke up to three packs a day.

Rule #1

Bring yourself mentally up to the point where you really want to quit smoking

If you try to give up smoking at a time when you relish each drag you take and every circle you blow out resembles a beautiful painting by Rothko to you, it ain’t gonna happen. I would try to give up smoking, fail and then try again and fail again. What worked for me finally is when I brought myself to a state of mind when I knew that I simply had to quit. I began to hate cigarettes and what they were doing to my body. You need to psyche yourself into hating smoking more than you really do; when you are disgusted by it, that’s when you can undertake the exercise to give it up.

Rule #2

Cold turkey is the only way

There’s so much out there on how to give up smoking. There are programmes that suggest you to reduce your intake, write down your progress and reward yourself for your achievement one day at a time. I tried it and it didn’t work. Not the first time. Not the tenth.

The only style of quitting that works effectively is ‘cold turkey’. Just throw away the pack and the lighter and say “I QUIT”. You may need to buy a fresh pack and a new lighter after an hour, but that’s okay. Out of the 15 times that you say, “I Quit”, only one needs to work out for you. That’s it.

Rule #3

Train your mind to love yourself and accept your body as a temple

This fundamental truth not only forms the backbone of your attempt to give up smoking but is also the basic tenet of all spiritual teachings: ‘Love thyself’. This is the root or the Mool Mantra of the theory of happiness itself. How can you do anything nice for your body if you don’t love yourself? Why would you sacrifice junk food or drinking yourself to liver failure unless you first see God living in your own soul?

This is not only the first step towards giving up smoking but also the first step towards living a life of bliss and joy.

Rule #4

Rectify your lifestyle

Don’t even bother to read ahead if you think that you cannot adhere to this one. You’d be wasting your time.

To start with, you must follow a disciplined lifestyle and timetable. This one is absolutely non-negotiable. You must wake up early and by early I mean latest is 6.30am. Maintain a fixed time for your breakfast and lunch as per your convenience but follow the timing for your dinner and sleep time as per my suggestion. Your dinner must be before 7pm and you must go to bed before 10.30pm. The domino effect of bad habits and bad health emanates from not following this rule completely.

When you sleep late, you wake up late. Your body automatically craves junk food. When you eat junk food, you poison yourself with bad food and drink, and you begin to love the additional toxicity that the nicotine in a cigarette provides.

But the opposite is also true. Good habits and a detox regimen also has a domino effect on you. When you are on a detox, you automatically start to develop a natural dislike for junk food. There came a time in my life that from being a hard core non-vegetarian [wherein I could and did eat anything that once ‘lived’], I went on to becoming a pure vegetarian. My body and soul both rejected any form of meat. By rectifying your lifestyle, you pave the way for a positive mindset that is weary of toxins and craves for a positive outlook towards life.

Rule #5

Flush, flush, flush

The nicotine that is currently in your body must go. It needs to be flushed out. If not, it will keep giving you withdrawal systems.

Drink plain warm water, ginger water, juices, green teas, lemonades with a pinch of organic turmeric added to it. Consume anything else that is organic and healthy and does not come out of a box or a packaged bottle. The other way of flushing toxins is eating loads of fresh organic fruits and steamed vegetables. The more you eat these, the more nicotine you will be able to flush out. The last—my favourite one—is pure ghee, preferably homemade; include it in your diet. What I advise is to have two teaspoons on an empty stomach first thing in the morning. To all those who led you to believe that ghee is fattening and adds to your cholesterol, please tell them [nicely] to shut up.

Rule #6

Mentally prepare yourself to put on some weight

When you give up smoking, you start to actually taste food. You start relishing it. Nicotine can cut down your hunger, so giving it up can increase your appetite. You will start eating more than you used to. Just let it happen. Remember that it is more important to give up smoking at this stage than to look sexy and slim [if you are that].

Rule #7

When you go off it, STAY off it

This is where most smokers goof up. After successfully pushing through the initial 25 days or so, we actually believe we are in total control and allow ourselves a drag or two thinking that we have given up and it cannot lure us back. I once gave up smoking for an entire year before I stumbled upon a night of raucous frenzy. In a state of mindlessness, I ‘allowed’ myself a puff [or maybe it was two]. The next morning I was smoking a pack a day and graduated to my two packs a few days after.

After all the effort that you make to giving up this habit, it is absolutely imperative that you do not give in to a weak moment and fight it like you have fought for nothing else in you entire life.

And now for the good news

When you succeed in giving up smoking, the first thing that you gain is your confidence and your self-respect. You know that you have conquered one of the most ruthless chemicals known to man. You know that you’ve quit an addiction that would have killed you like it has killed millions before. There’s more:

• You will be able to taste those sumptuous meals you eat—priceless!
• Your sex-life improves dramatically. I’d imagine this to be one of the most compelling reasons for a lot of men to give up.
• You glow. The detoxification process clears your skin of toxins and infuses fresh oxygen into your cells, healing them, rejuvenating them and making your skin radiate and shine.
• You get your life back.

Give it up and experience how it feels to live a complete, healthy and a joyous life full of love, positivity and fulfillment.

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The tragedy is that despite knowing this fundamental truth, we continue to allow this turgid emotion to rule and destroy our lives. We allow our anxieties and traumas to keep us away from happiness, bliss and joy. We allow the decimation of celebration and laughter from our very existence.

Why do we do that?

The simple answer is ignorance. Ignorance of what causes stress in the first place. Not being aware of the root causes of anxiety, we continue to live a life of mindlessness and neglect. These are the principal causes of one of the biggest killers ever known to mankind.

In my Kundalini yoga classes, which deal primarily with the elimination of negative emotions and blockages, I have seen numerous souls easily reconnect with their inner vibrations and blossom like flowers from a bud. All by simply following a few basic principles elucidated below.

Not being aware of the root causes of anxiety, we continue to live a life of mindlessness and neglect

Don’t get attached to the outcome of your actions

When we work hard at something, a project, an examination or in our professional lives, we do it to excel and there is nothing wrong with that. The problem is when we get attached to the outcome of that endeavour.

The best possible reward of doing something is to do it with love and passion. That by itself is immensely satisfying as well as gratifying. It is by attaching ourselves to the applause, success and fame of our actions that we commit the folly that gives rise to that ‘sick feeling in our gut’ when we fail.

Do what you love and love what you do

In keeping with the first principle, it follows that we should do what we love to do. A surprisingly large number of individuals have the luxury of not doing what they don’t love to do. I have known professionals who at the age of 40 and 50 have changed their professions to follow their passions.

A lawyer I know became a professional wildlife photographer. A student of mine gave up her lucrative family business of wealth management to take up painting ceramics, something that she loved since she was a child. These are examples of just two beautiful souls who decided to take charge of their lives and not be governed by their fears and insecurities. To live happily ever after!

The best possible reward of doing something is to do it with love and passion

Decode the Matrix

Know this—this life as we know it isn’t real. We are trained from our very childhood to fail and to be unhappy. We are taught to love success, fame, achievement and greatness. The most important thing that we are never taught is how to be happy.

The Hollywood movie The Matrix is a perfect portrayal of this problem.

This life is structured to be controlled by a few who get richer as you grow unhappier. I have a friend who owns 16 Birkin bags and the unhappier she gets the more she shops. [The price range for a Birkin is $10,500 to $150,000—that’s between six and 95 lakhs a bag!]

The day I became happy in my life, I stopped shopping. I did not need anything at all to make me happy. I was already there.

This illusion and fake world that has been created for us has to be left behind to pursue a world of beauty, nature, music and love.

It is only the latter that can get us to shed our anxious, unhappy and stressful lives and allow us to live a life of bliss and joy.

Stop lying

Every time we lie, we create the vibration that is going to cut into our aura. Each time a truth is violated, we take a step closer to stress. Radiant people who have a glowing aura are remarkably truthful and honest people who do not lie, cheat or hurt anyone by their words or actions. The very act of being dishonest makes our subconscious minds hate ourselves and we move a notch lower on the spiritual path.

Integrity on the other hand makes us strong, gives us a powerful aura and blesses us with success and abundance.

The most important thing that we are never taught is how to be happy

Eat well

This cannot be emphasised more upon. You have to understand the relationship between what you eat and what you are. By dumping junk into our body, we allow the rot in our intestines to infect our brains and our thinking patterns. In fact, this is such a huge subject that entire books have been written on it.

Suffice to say that a sattvic and nourishing diet makes you ebullient and optimistic whereas a tamasic and junk food diet paves the way for a depressed and confused state of being.

Sleep well

Probably even more important than eating well is getting our requisite quota of sleep every single day. Sleep deprivation is one of the principle causes of stress and stress-related diseases prevalent today.

Sleep is the time when our body as well as our mind rejuvenates and repairs itself.

Some people believe that only the number of hours that they sleep is important and that their sleep timings don’t matter. They assume that if they go to sleep at the unearthly hour of 4am and wake up at noon the next day, they are fine since they have managed to get eight hours of sleep. Nothing can be further than the truth.

Integrity makes us strong, gives us a powerful aura and blesses us with success and abundance

Our body needs quality sleep, which is best between 9.30pm and midnight. After that, the quality of our sleep changes to being less beneficial and healthy. So the ideal time for you to go to bed is between 9.30 and 10.30pm. The first tangible benefit that you derive from such a practice is that the number of hours you need to sleep goes down. So if you could sleep for 9 hours when you went to sleep at 2am, you may now need only 6 – 7 hours.

The need for quality sleep in our lives cannot be overemphasised. Those who alter their lifestyles to incorporate healthier sleeping patterns shed stress, anxiety and depression to a great extent.

Meditate

If we can learn and train ourselves to cut out the noise, the chatter and the clutter from our minds, we can live better, richer and stress-free lives. The act of sitting silently in meditation has more benefits that can be explained and catalogued.

Meditation heals, de-stresses and creates equilibrium in your mind that is an apt foundation for a perfect life devoid of anxiety and stress.

Meditation re-wires your nervous system back to the state of calm and silence that you are born with. It helps you to connect with your soul and opens your heart to love and joy.

In this busy, dog-eat-dog life of ours, if we can just take 20 minutes to commit ourselves to silence and to travel within, it would be a giant step taken towards peace, calm and serenity in our lives.

Love

This is saving the best for last!

The energy of love and compassion is healing and nourishing for those who are generous with the amount of love they share with others in their lives. Those who love generously and unconditionally are the ones who are radiant, healthy and happy.

Please remember, it is not how many people love you that determines the love quotient of your life. Instead, it is the number of people that you love.

So it is obviously best to open up your heart—to give and share love and when you are done doing that, share some more.

See the difference it makes in your life.

All of the points mentioned above are not meant to be just de-stress mantras that you need to implement to control your blood pressure, cholesterol or your anxiety. Rather, they are pointers to a way of life which is the only way to be. These eight sutras should be inculcated as part of a lifestyle and mindfulness that is not limited to just reducing stress or healing ailments. They should be lived, breathed and spread to not only live a happy life yourself but also bring happiness, cheer and joy to this world.

To make this world a better place to live in.

The post 8 principles for a joyous and stress-free life appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

And then I got involved with yoga, spirituality and finally Kundalini Yoga. While practising Kundalini Yoga I came to one major conclusion, “If your presence does not work for you, nothing will.” You can have a room with three people in it. Someone walks in, nobody notices him. Or you can have a room with a 1000 people in it and one person walks in, and everyone stops what they are doing to look at this person. What do you think is the difference?

It is the calibre of the person.

When you walk into a room, your aura and your energy field is instantly recognised by every soul in that room. Every one of those souls knows exactly what you are all about. The people in whose body those souls reside may not know it but their souls do.

Haven’t you regretted a relationship or a business deal with someone and told yourself, “Oh, I had a gut feeling about not doing business with him and I should have listened to it.” That was your soul talking to you and telling you what it read about the energy of the other person.

So, all those years that I spent trying to ‘learn’ things to better my business skills were a waste of my time. Whether you want to impress your boss, your girlfriend or people around you in general, you should know that all of that is possible if you understand the meaning of calibre. Perfecting your calibre not only attracts people to you but also brings abundance, bliss and joy into your life.

We all have an aura—a magnetic field. Our actions determine whether this field will expand with time and keep expanding or it will shrink down to the bare minimum on account of those actions.

There are six fundamental truths to expanding your magnetism:

Honesty

Living an honest life, not lying to anyone, not cheating anyone and never coveting what does not belong to you, expands your aura. Every time you cheat someone or grab something that is not yours, it shrinks your magnetic field.

Humility

When you look at another soul, what are your thoughts? If you feel you are superior or are condescending to them, hurt their feelings out of your pride, you automatically shrink your aura. Being humble and living with grace is one of the most powerful ways to expand your aura.

Intention

When you meet someone, do you want something out of him or her? When you advise a client, do you have their interest at heart or do you just want to squeeze them off their money? When you say I love you to your loved one, are you being authentic or are you expecting something in exchange? You wear your agenda on your sleeve. Souls around you sense your intention and are immediately repulsed with ulterior motives and shenanigans. Having pure and clean intentions attracts positive energies and gives a big boost to your magnetic field.

Gratitude

You don’t really need to shell out a lot of money to thank someone. When you feel gratitude for someone’s actions deeply from within your heart, it is more than enough. Even if that person is not looking at you or even near you, your soul’s expression of gratefulness creates a wave that reaches that person and is registered with their soul. This flow of grateful energy is expansive and beautiful.

Compassion

This one’s definitely the most powerful. When you have love flowing out from your heart, your soul soars high; almost as if you are levitating. With compassion you heal yourself, cleanse your chakras and purify your soul. This expansion of energy is so powerful that it attracts anything that you wish for or need. Your aura shines and your skin radiates with the glow of love and kindness. Loving is the ultimate booster for our magnetic fields.

Wisdom

Wisdom is not gained from reading self-help books and listening to get-rich-quick audios. Wisdom comes from just knowing the stillness, the silence of your soul. It comes from understanding the texture of your soul and the purpose of your life. The ability to see the simplicity in complexity of life, and bliss even in the pain—that is true wisdom. The wisdom of being in a state of Zen comes from always being in bliss, peace, harmony.

When you adhere to the six truths, you live a life that is continuously evolving, growing and you keep climbing up the spiritual ladder. This adds to your calibre, your charisma, and when people see you they understand the meaning of the phrase “If your presence does not work for you, nothing will.”

The author is a kundalini yoga teacher and founder of www.anahata.in

This was first published in the January 2015 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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