How To Stay Sane During Difficult Times

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Welcome back to Success with Srini. Today on the podcast, we are talking about difficult times. Specifically, how to stay sane during difficult times, I have done numerous podcast episodes talking about this, today’s podcast episode is gonna be a little different, have a different viewpoint, since the last one doesn’t matter who you are, what you do, doesn’t matter how big or how small of a life you have, there is going to be a point in time where you will encounter difficult times. And the longer the life is, the more number of times we are going to encounter difficult times. So it does happen to the most powerful individuals who have walked the face of this earth. And it has also happened to every living being trees in the forest, small plants, they all have difficult times. They can’t express what they can’t say. But we know they’re facing difficult times. Every time there is rain, every time there’s a storm, the trees, the vegetation, everything they suffered. But they need but they suffer also, right they need water, but they also suffer. If something happens too much. They can’t say anything because they don’t have a voice. We do, we humans we do.

Now, what I’m going to do is I’m going to share a few remedies on how to deal with difficult times. And as a student of success, we should not avoid difficult times, we should accept them and expect them. So I’m expecting that difficult times will come in my life. And I’m also preparing myself to deal with them. So all the education, all the books, all these philosophers, trainers, mentors, all that is to prepare to deal with difficult times when they show up. Now when will they show up? They will show up sooner than you expect. And they will show up at a time when you are not aware. When you are you have taken life for granted. That’s when they show up. Let’s talk about some remedies. One of the strategies is every time there is a difficulty in life. Guess where it shows up? It shows up in your emotions. Emotionally, when you feel the drain when you feel the pull. Or when you feel rattled. That’s when you start to see that yeah, I have a difficulty. So it’s the emotions, it’s the feelings, the moods. So this standard advice is that you should release the emotions. Every time you’re going through, you’re suffering to something it’s, it’s been going on for a while, for a long time, you got to release that emotion. And for that, I have gone on to say this multiple times on this podcast, which is going talk to your friends, talk to somebody who you can relate to connecting with all that and obviously, your family, your friends, relatives, and all that and if it escalates beyond a certain point, go talk to a therapist or a coach who is external to the problem. I’ve gone on to say that multiple times, releasing emotion is important and how you do it is inconsequential to the discussion. Wherever you find success go do it.

Then comes the thought of separation during difficult times, you’ve got to separate yourself from the problem. And this takes effort, because thoughts and emotions are inter flexed, difficult to separate them. So align yourself in a certain way with the second set of thoughts that are away and distant from the difficult situation. And you do that every day till the situation itself goes away the difficult times. They go away. It’s hard, but can be done. It’s because sometimes people stay inside the problem. And they become hopeless. And they start questioning you know, why is this happening to me? When will this end? In the start looking for external solutions. Instead, pull yourself out of the situation and say okay, the situation is different and separate from me. Let me hold on to who I am with my identity with my values with my beliefs. I let this time pass by. I don’t get anxious, I don’t get worried. One of the beautiful ways to give you an example here specifically this happens in career professionals. I’m supposed to get promoted. I need to get to that next job. How come somebody else? Why not me?

One of the ways to deal with that situation is okay, everybody else is getting promoted. Everybody else is getting what they are seeking. My time is not here yet. And this is a face that I need to deal with. And when my time comes, I’m going to not get what I’m seeking. Now I could change the time. Oftentimes, I’ve seen people trying to change their situations, expecting a better outcome. Yes, every time you change a situation, that is a possibility, by changing an environment, or in this case, quitting the job taking up a new job, it does help. But it only helps to a point where it starts to be unhelpful. It means you may get what you want, but you’re also giving up that which you otherwise had. So the new job may introduce new situations and new problems and new challenges that you were not expecting you had control over all that in this job, but the new job took that all that away and give something else. It’s funny how life is it gives you things, it takes away things from you. Everything that you are going to get tomorrow is going to come with one day less in your lifetime. Everything you’re not is not getting that today, right? So you will get everything that you want tomorrow, let’s say. But then everything is coming with one day less. Because it’s not happening today. Interesting.

So one of the thought separation examples would be to constantly focus on the present. Everything that’s happening now, I’m not worried about what’s gonna happen tomorrow. It takes the anxiety takes the worry, takes the expectancy out from the thoughts. And once it is gone from the thought, obviously, over a period of time, it’s going to go away from the emotions also, hopefully. Then, we also say, during difficult times, act and activate. So Act means Sleep Well sleep, right, eat, right? And all that. All the activities, you whatever activities that you’re doing, make sure that you are doing them. People quit. And I give an example Long time ago on the podcast, my dentist told me patients come in to see her. It’s the first question she asked them you say Do you floss? How many times are you flossing? Like I stopped flossing three months ago. Why? Because my neighbor’s dog started barking in the middle of the night or something like that some weird reason something happens to someone in the world. And they stop flossing. Weird how we do these things. But yeah, so you got to keep the activities going. Despite the difficult times, that’s the message and then activate, what is Activate, Activate means that you exercise well. And you keep yourself active, you know, exercise, work out all those things. These are some things that are proven to work and help during difficult times. Now, here’s the key to all this. The key is acceptance. None of these things will work unless you accept two things, which is that there is not much that’s going to change despite you trying to change a lot after the acceptance, because times are times I can do everything but nothing can change, nothing will change. And I should accept that. And nothing I do will work. I also accept that. So I have to wait it out. But I can’t wait it out with depression and all kinds of psychosomatic disorders. I wouldn’t stay aligned, stay focused, stay positive, while I’m waiting for the difficult time to go away. And that’s what we call sanity. So acceptance is the key. Nothing can change quickly. And nothing I’m working on will help change anything. Nothing I’m working on will work. So amazing.

Okay, so hopefully, this is helpful. Hopefully, you get the emotion through which I’m addressing this. And if it is, then does me a favor, write a review, read the podcast and share it with a friend or a family member who you think will benefit from this. That’s all for now. That’s all for today. I’ll be here tomorrow and we’ll take up a whole different topic. Stay tuned. Bye now.

Five Ways To Escape A Small Life

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A few days ago on the podcast, I made a point, I said, living life is hard, doesn’t matter. Life in general is hard. But then I also said, even more, harder than living life is living a low life. So no matter who you are or what you do, you shouldn’t be living a low life. In fact, everything I do here, this podcast, my seminars, my radio shows, and workshops, is all about how to escape the low life. Guess what all of us, at some point, do fall into this pattern of living a low life, it doesn’t matter how successful anybody is and how much money they have, how much fame name doesn’t matter, we all fall into a certain part, it’s a certain duration of our lifetime. And maybe sometimes multiple times we fall into this phase or these phases where we can say that we are in the loan part of our life. And if you study the human mind, you’ll see that the brain by default, hits the lows multiple times throughout the day. So the lows and the highs are natural. But the pursuit, the pursuit of mankind is how can we escape the low life. So every innovation that has happened in the last 125 years, 200 years, whatever, every step of the way, was to escape the low life. You know, big cars, big houses, big roads, big industries, everything, everything is to escape the low life. So the pursuit is to have a big life.

The question is when we hit a phase, where we have gone to the bottom, which we all do, by the way, how can we come back up? How can we calibrate back to the higher side of us? And there are many thoughts around this, there is one specific thing I want to talk about today on this podcast, which is there are five things, all the five things but one of these five things can really bring you back and can give you a better life. The underlying formula to escape low life is to have a purpose, something that you wake up every day and look forward to and that is why passion purpose, all these things are highlighted in self-improvement. Everybody talks about it everybody, books are being written on it, seminars, workshops on it, all kinds of literature on this. So that is given. But then there are five other things that help you stay focused on your purpose, stay focused on your goals. And these things give a definition to the overall existence. The first and foremost thing that you need to watch out for is your thought the way you think people wake up in the middle of the night and process hundreds of thoughts, unwanted, unnecessary, have no relevance, thoughts being processed, people process hundreds of thoughts, people wake up opening their eyes, and they spend like two-three hours in the bed kind of living some altered life, the crossing all kinds of emotions, all kinds of thoughts. So thoughts have to be understood, they have to be addressed. And they have to be watched. So everything anything you do you do meditation, you go hike, you go run you do whatever you do, make sure that your thoughts are carefully protected, and your thoughts are aligned. So thought is a basic necessity to escape a low life. So I would put some good thought into my mind and listen to a good recording or a good podcast or, or a great idea somebody sharing and then I preserve the idea in my mind, oh, I need to work on this, I need to hold on to this. So once the thought enters the human mind, then the next thing we have to do is we need to protect it. Some good message, some good court, some good sermon from anywhere it wants, it enters my mind, I want to hold on to it. That’s the start.

Now once the thought is in place, we need one more thing next to it which is a little bit of willpower. If the thought has a goal associated with it or an outcome that needs to be worked on, we need a little bit of help. about just a little bit of willpower, we shouldn’t be pushing ourselves to do things we need to use that will within us to engage. So that the thought now starts materializing and manifesting itself. Now, once the will is there, I need a little bit of imagination, just a little bit of imagination, I need to imagine the outcome. I’m low and bottom at the bottom. At the bottom, I’m, I’m holding on to a thought and then a little bit of willpower to get up. And then I’m imagining that I’m out of this problem, I’m out of the situation. And once that imaginations place, now, we need an attitude, a positive attitude. Now, with a good thought, with, some amount of willpower, and some imagination places very natural to have the right attitude. But sometimes people do miss, lack attitude. They just don’t somehow they become angry, somehow they become whatever it is. So got to watch out for some attitudes. And then once the attitude is in place, we need a little bit of concentration. Guess what, all these things are hard, they’re difficult. It’s very hard to get a good thought into the mind. It’s very difficult to get activate the willpower in the mind. It’s hard to imagine when somebody is beaten down, it’s very hard for them to imagine a good life. It’s hard. But then what if you don’t bring the thought and if you don’t activate the willpower, you cannot imagine, then you cannot escape. There is no way out. In anything that you are doing right now. There’s no way out, you’re unhappy. You are in a bad spot. Wherever you are in your life. The only way for you to escape is to start thinking big, thinking positively. And thinking about the possible UI it can be done. Yes, I can do it. And you start aligning yourself that the only outcome from wherever you are right now is a positive outcome. You got to think the opposite. That’s why multiple podcast episodes I have done think the opposite. There was a podcast episode I did when I said, What’s the worst that you say? What’s the worst every line you say? So you wake up in the morning, and you say, all I will do today is talk positive. I have those days in my life. When I wake up, I only talk positive, not negative Nothing, not a single word. And at that point in time, if somebody attacks me or says something to me, I say thank you, wonderful, I’ll look into it, I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry, it can be done. I have done it. Use these words. These are false two words. And imagine what happens if you do that for 10 2015 days. The last time I did this for three months, consecutively, that’s the highest I’ve gone continuously talking positively. I talk that’s it. It’s hard, you know, once the mouth, the tongue, it talks positive. It’s very difficult for it to do it for a long time, it’s very difficult for the brain to talk negatively.

I’m not saying you don’t get angry or you don’t get rattled, none of those things, those things will happen because we are humans, we have emotions and all that. So those things do happen. But then you contain yourself at a level where you yourself are not contributing to it. So if something is coming at you, you are the stopping point it stops with you it doesn’t go beyond you get bosses getting angry, don’t come back and show it on your spouse at home. You have to start with yourself. His boss is getting angry at you don’t go to work and showing it to your subordinates It doesn’t work that way. You see. So effective use of thought will imagination a little bit of attitude and concentration. These five things will help you escape from any situation that you are in right now. And these are the ingredients for escaping specifically from a lowlife means again as qualified this word within which you’re unhappy, you’re sad, you have things going for you but then you don’t recognize them, you have good things happening for you, but then you disqualify the good and you sign up or you side with the negatives of the bad stuff. So all life is okay.

And by the way, the definition of life is all over the place. And you can look at it specifically in a courier font or from a finance run from a relationship run everywhere. And we talk about the wheel of life and all the aspects of life. A low life can hit any individual at any point in time in any area of their life. So, for example, a career might be going incredibly well. But then you have a very unhappy situation at home. You have an incredibly amazing situation at home, but on the career front job front there is something going on incorrectly. And just because this thing is wrong, it’s enough to drag you down emotionally and suddenly, if that happens for a long amount of time, you start to feel as if you’re living a low life. Okay, I hope you got to the point. I’m going to stop here and want to pick this up tomorrow. I’ll see if I have some more thoughts around lowlife, I’ll come back and we’ll have a longer in the bigger discussion. But for now, this is it. And I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Should We Separate Our Accounts?

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Welcome back to Success with Srini. Today’s podcast episode is a little different, very unique in the sense that a listener of this podcast, asked me a question, sent me an email, and asked me a question. So I am attempting to answer the question. I’ll record this, and I’m going to send this to them. If they like it, then I’m going to publish this as a podcast. If not, then this is not a podcast, as simple as that. Okay. But I’m going to speak as if I’m talking to the podcast, I’m talking to all of you. That’s something I’m going to address. So let’s go to the question first.

The question is, “Hi, Srini. I hope you’re doing well. I have a question for you and would appreciate your insight on this. What is the best way to keep financial independence in a married relationship? Is it okay to keep our finances separate? I realized that the main problem in some relationships is probably money, it may be possible that one person feels that they are being controlled by their significant other, it causes frustration and gives a feeling of being imprisoned. It also restricts the ability to take risks and explore various career opportunities, I thought, I to ask you this question because I know that your insight will be very helpful. Thanks.”

Thank you. Thank you for asking this question. And let me make an attempt to answer this. Let’s see. Now, every time a question like this comes in, any question can be answered from different dimensions? I can take a social dimension on this and answer this socially. I can also answer this religiously, philosophically, spiritually, culturally, and also personally, in different dimensions, it’s very hard to, to kind of retrofit an answer, in a way, because if I take one dimension, I’m gonna miss out on the other dimensions. But it’s very difficult for me to pick one and make you listen to it as if this is the only answer. It’s hard. That’s why a podcast is a great way to have communication when it’s two-way communication. And we are actually working right now, to make it a two-way, rather than a one-way thing. Today, I asked people to call me and leave me a message or email me with questions. But then going forward, we’re trying to see if we can make it the real-time thing. So let’s get into this. What I’m going to do is I’m going to first take a personal stand on this. So if I pick up in your shoes tomorrow, and if I’m going through this, how would I answer this question? Well, turns out that this happened to me personally, many, many years ago, we had a joint account. And I had an account, I got married, added my wife to the account. And all the money was coming into the account. And I was the guy who was spending literally, well, when I was asked multiple times, Hey, are you spending all this money? And my you know, my ego is? No, no, it all makes sense. But then I was does he spend happens unknowingly. And I had no control over my and didn’t have any budgets, I didn’t have any planning none of that stuff. So money was coming in, I was just freely spending the money, most of the money was going into business, and so-called businesses are not generating any return. Right? So there’s nothing for me to show.

This was a primary contention very early on. So a few years into this. We made a choice to separate accounts. We separate with accounts. And it’s not that I ever stopped asking her for money. It’s not that she stopped giving money. It’s just that you have to write a check now. So from her side, she had visibility on what checks she was writing to me. So she felt in control. See, it’s not about my behavior, even though my behavior in question was questionable. But it was more about a lack of transparency from my side, and accountability from my side, which was creating discomfort in the relationship. So knowing what I know now, I would highly suggest separating accounts. If one partner is feeling constrained, it’s better to separate the accounts. And this is also this is my experience, this also makes it culturally and socially appropriate in the sense that we are in times where we are advocating for equal rights, and everybody should have equal rights, everything. And the pursuit that we have got going is that we need to not only feel independent but also feel financially independent financial industry. NSC is one of the pillars of independence. And we are also seeking autonomy, we are also seeking a whole pyramid of things in our existence today, which was not the case back in the day.

Today we are in symmetric relationships. So anything I do, my spouse could do. Anything you do, your spouse could do. And there’s no difference. It’s in a good way. And I also made a point a long time ago, and if a species within the South Asian context, and I’m born and raised in India, people who are born in the 50s 60s men were born in the 50s 60s, and 70s, I think this holds true everywhere in the world, they haven’t really progressed as much, in the sense that they still behave and act as if they’re, they are the children of the parents. And I’m born in that timeframe. So, so I have not grown as much, but women in the last 100 years, have come a long way, which men cannot see. It’s a, it’s a weird dynamic man, woman have come a long way, men have not men are still stuck in the 60s and 70s, and 80s. So that evolution has not happened. And there is a level of you know, understanding that has to happen and some growth has to happen within that space collectively. As a a humanity, we have to grow. So that part is there. So back in the day, if I go and I talked about this multiple times to you know, my parents, I look at them and all, it was all complimentary relationships, what my mother did couldn’t she couldn’t do outside the house, what my father did outside of the house, you could not do inside the house and all that is very, back in the day, it all worked out that way.

But today, socially, culturally, we are in asymmetric dynamics when it comes to relationships. And in that symmetry, everything should be symmetric. So the accounts, you need to if you have control on the income, you need to have the control on the budgets and the spending, and all that you could have different opinions as a couple. Collectively, what do you need to spend on and how do you need to spend and how do you want to invest all that could be a collective decision. But then there has to be individual control on the money that’s coming in based on what I see now. Now, if you go back a little bit, spiritually, religiously and you pick up this question, depending upon which every spiritual book or religious book has addressed this question, this question has been addressed in Quran and Sunnah. This question has been addressed poveda if you study with us this question has been addressed in the Bible, also. And again, different ways to address this. But this has been addressed this question you know, what happens to a woman’s income, what happens to a man’s income and all that, and specifically quoting from Bible, you know, when two people come together to get married tools to become one, two souls become one soul, so all the pain, all the happiness, all the glory, all the misery, all the pains, all the suffering of yours becomes mine, mine becomes yours together, we are a couple. So that’s the gist of the story. So there shouldn’t be two accounts. Technically speaking, if you just follow the rules should be one account. Again, different angles to this question different dimensions to this. I believe the way I understood studying Quran is that a man has no right to a woman’s income. A woman can choose to give that to a man but a man has no right to a woman’s income. And then there is no reference to a woman’s income and Rigveda. But there are some references on trovi that I need to do some research on this myself. But then there isn’t much going there specifically talking about how the money is to be distributed and all those things. But there is a reference to this spiritually and religiously. And this is this has been addressed in different scriptures, socially, culturally, and where we live today, based on today’s context and the situation that we are dealing with today. financial control is an important part. And when couples do consult with me, I tell them that that’s what you know, it’s what it is. It’s what it is.

Now, you can have a joint account, where you put in some money for a specific thing, then it’s a different equation altogether. Sometimes individual accounts, sometimes, maybe one or two joint accounts, all those things you can structure it differently but then this is what it is. I hope I answered your question. And I told you exactly where I stand with it personally. And based on my understanding of or reading a few scriptures, or I understood, there could be some gaps in my understanding. But the more I work with people, the more I see that that control is important for them. And I’m taking today’s context as the context rather than the context that had been defined by my parents 30, 40, and 50 years ago. That’s all, hopefully, this is helpful, if please let me know. Thank you.