10 minutes later, I was convinced – Tolerance is a ridiculous concept.

Let me ask you something… Think of a person you really like – a friend, relative, anybody that you’re fond of. Do you tolerate them?  Or love them?  Why don’t you ever say this about your loved one “Oh, I tolerate my boyfriend just fine”.  When do we tend to use the term “tolerate”?  We use it in the presence of people we can’t stand, but simply have to put up with. For example, you might say “I can barely tolerate my boyfriend’s buddies” or “I can’t tolerate my mother-in-law anymore”. I can go on….. but I’m sure you see where I’m going with this.

We tend to consider tolerance as a good word. Heck, we’re teaching this stuff to our kids in school.  The word has the aura of peace, understanding and cohesiveness in society. Yet our language betrays its real meaning to us.

The opposite of tolerance isn’t intolerance…. its understanding. Where tolerance urges us to keep our opinions (of people we don’t like) to ourselves, understanding pushes us to try and see where they are coming from.

Isn’t that what this world needs? Our world is coming together at a stunning pace. We haven’t been exposed to so much cultural diversity in the past 50 years as we have in the past 10 years. And a lot of us don’t know how to handle it.  We almost feel as if our identity is under threat and the natural instinct is to assume a position of “We” vs “Them”… anything that makes us better than the others. You can extend this to any situation – the workplace, family, anything.

And as we can’t do anything about their presence, we tolerate them.

What if we didn’t tolerate them? What if we tried to understand where the other people were coming from? What if we thought “They’re not idiots. Let me see what they’re trying to tell me”. When we’re no longer taking the refuge of a weak word which (ironically) makes us feel superior as well, that’s when we’ll see our paradigm change.

The clumsy, geeky neighbor’s kid who’s always hanging around your kid’s toys may emerge to be a kid who looks for love wherever he can find it. The new immigrant with the funny accent at the office may emerge to be a brilliant strategist only if people would listen to him without laughing. And the beggar who bugs you for change may simply be a guy who’s given up on life. Heck, who are we to judge?

So next time, don’t tolerate…. Understand!

I walked into my 11 year old’s room and was about to wake him up that I just stopped. I looked at his face for a moment and quietly sat down on the side of his bed. I spent a couple of minutes looking at him… sleeping peacefully.

He seemed different this morning. I saw an innocent child trying to grow up as best as he could. I saw him encountering the trials and tribulations of “blending in” with everybody at school, the secret crush he has on a girl in his class, and holding his own among friends and foes. I saw him struggling with his Math homework and trying to make sense of numbers that don’t come easily to him.

I saw him fighting to keep his dreams of becoming a scientist alive. Sometimes, he’s short on ideas, but never on enthusiasm (how come I didn’t see this earlier?) I saw him resenting me whenever we disagreed, but NEVER being disrespectful.

My God, I really have a diamond in my life ! I lay down next to him and gave him a BIG hug for being just the way he was. He woke up moments later and mumbled “G’morning, Dad”. Except for the blast of the strong morning breath, it was the perfect start to my day

As I drove into work, I started thinking… We call (myself included) tend to look at people from our eyes… and they seem a certain way. But when we really make the effort to look at them from “their” eyes, a very different picture emerges. This morning the person I regarded as a “son” changed into a magnificent human being that I was blessed to call my child. 3 hours into my day and I’m already missing him. I can’t wait for the day to be over so I can go back and ask him how his day went – “from his eyes”.

So let me ask you this (and I’d love to hear back)… Have you “seen” your kid lately?

So I was staring at a classic case of both sides doing what they did with the best of intentions for the family. Both good people, with good intentions. But amid those good intentions lay the conflict.

Now I’ve never been crazy about money to this extent. Everybody is different and that’s the way I like myself to be. So I counseled him from my point of view and urged him to give up control of the money… I urged him to make some decisions that are simply fun – without any regard to whether they make financial sense or not. He listened intently and promised to think things through.

OK, so that chapter finished there. And then after a couple of days, I was called upon to take my own advice…

My wife wanted to buy some family room furniture on Boxing day. Now when we bought the house last September, we both decided that we won’t spend any money on new furniture for a year. But she’s been wistfully looking at the empty rooms and speaking about how good they’d look once there was furniture there.

Now buying a house isn’t a trip to Walmart. And the recent purchase has left my bank account with a rather empty feeling. And any future, immediate purchases would need to come out of the credit lines (something I detest diving into).

So the question confronting me was – just how much emphasis should I place on this desire of hers? Here were my options:

• I can say “We had an agreement. Lets honor it and buy the furniture next year”
• I can delay the matter by saying “Lets think about it”
• I can take the big financial hit and howl while I go berserk trying to pay it off.

But then, I recalled the lengthy discussions I had with my friend and realized that money is simply… well… money. I have to look at what it means to me compared to what’s really important in my life. I mean what will bring me more happiness? Looking at my bank statement or looking at my wife’s face when she enters the family room each evening?

The answer was clear.

The next day, we spent $5,000 on some gorgeous family room furniture. There were no compromises made on quality, especially when it came to selecting the recliners. After all, it’s my tushy that’ll be spending the most time in those chairs for the next 10 years and damned if I’m going to compromise on those

Looking back, I made the right decision. I still wince at the thought of paying the debt down, but you know what? I’ll pay if off eventually… it’s just money. Someone once said “Money is nothing but paper with an attitude”. I believe that.

So you say that there’s a person in your life that you love more than anything else in the World – even more than yourself. You say that all you really want is for that other person to be happy. That’s all fine and good, except that your statement may not pass the acid test. As far as he’s concerned, he just loves you for what you are, no matter what you do.

So lets take the test, shall we? Lets say you’re in a relationship (married or otherwise) and one fine day, you find that your significant other has run away with the mailman. Are you happy? If you really love that person, then you should be happy for her because now she’s clearly more happy than she was before. In 99.9% of the cases, you’re not going to be celebrating this event.

So what that really means is that we tend to love ourselves more than pretty much anything else. We love the people around us, our friends, family and our possessions… but we love them for ourselves.

So what is so wrong with this equation, you might ask ! Nothing, really, but I do believe that there is a higher form of love…. a higher platform that we can reach. And once we reach this platform, the way we look at people, relationships and possessions completely changes.

Ironically, we can learn this best from those we don’t give much credit for intelligence – dogs and babies.

Take your dog for instance. Each day, when you come back from school or work, this little fellow will run towards you, jump all over you, and makes no bones about how delighted he is to see you. He doesn’t care about the way you look, or dress. He doesn’t care how much money you have or what you do for a living. He doesn’t even care to remember how nasty and indifferent you might have been to him a day earlier. He’s just happy to see you, no matter who you are and what you do.

Can you remember the last time you did that with anyone? When it didn’t matter what they did or said… when your love was unconditional in every sense of the word?

Through the ages, the strongest bond has been between a mother and her newborn baby (even in the animal world). Why? that’s because the mother will love her child regardless of how the child looks, or behaves. I have yet to see a mother say to her baby – “If you crap more than 3 times today, I’m not going to hold you”. Childbirth is a difficult process, and even after the child arrives, there are some huge sacrifices and pains that the mother endures. Yet, each of those sacrifices endears her to her baby even more.

The strongest relationships are those that are forged on unconditional love… that you can say “I will love you no matter what you say or do”. When it isn’t important for the other person to respond or reciprocate… when you’re happy simply because the other person is happy… when you can finally let go and still be happy. I call this selfless love. And in my opinion, its the most powerful love of all.

Can you imagine the sense of security the other person feels when they receive this kind of love? The freedom of being loved unconditionally. Living without fear of retribution or rejection yet having someone else celebrating every moment of your life as if it were their own?

Think about it. Want to take it a step further? How can you apply the same knowledge to yourself – I mean loving YOURSELF unconditionally. Learning to forgive yourself and accepting yourself completely. I can say a lot on the subject, but I’ll leave that for another day.

But I would love to hear your feedback on what you think.

Till next time, have a wonderful life.

Seth

Here’s a quick 1-minute test. Go on.. do it. I’m betting you’ll fail.

Close your eyes and try thinking of “NOTHING” for just one minute. Don’t let any thoughts enter your head… think of nothing. Sounds easy? Go ahead… do it.

******* Waiting for you to try this one out ********

Well… what happened? If you’re honest, you’ll tell me that it was hard. If you actually did it, my sincere compliments. For the majority (and this means over 99% of you) who couldn’t do it, here’s why you couldn’t.We live in some pretty screwed up times. We have demands being placed on us right from childhood through adolescence and into adulthood. We have to work, play, communicate… we have social engagements, our cellphones are ringing, we’re under pressure from all sides.

“Do you “ever” relax? I don’t think so… How often have you been thinking about work while you’re showering or sitting in a hot tub? I’m telling you… we’re a mess.So what happens to our minds while its fighting multiple battles all at once? It gets scattered in a million different directions. As a result, Nobody’s Home. What that means is that we have no idea of who we are. There is a person inside us that we’ve never spoken with. We’ve never been calm… at peace… and most importantly… Alone.

I know from personal experience that if you can push yourself to do this exercise for 5 minutes, you’ll discover things about yourself that a $400/hr shrink can’t tell you. More importantly, you’ll find it easier to focus on what’s important in your life. Why? Because you’ve learned to control your mind.Your mind is like a sugar-crazed 4 year old kid… out-of-control and running around in all directions, screaming at the top of his voice. Now imagine your life being controlled by that kid. Doesn’t sound very nice, does it? The decision you have to make is to either have your mind as your oppresive master or an obedient servant. You call, my friend.

My personal target is to do this for 30 minutes. I have only reached 8 minutes so far, so I have a lot of work to do. But I’d love to hear what you have to say about your progress. And the best way is to leave me a comment or write to me at speakingseth@gmail.com

Till the next time…

Cheers!

Seth

If you enjoyed this post, feel free to leave a comment. Always good to hear constructive feedback.

Like it or not, we all have behaved like an elephant at some time or the other. Trouble is… most of us do it every single day ! Here’s what it means…

In India, when the baby elephants are very small, they’re tied with the thickest, strongest rope to the biggest possible tree in the jungle. Over the weeks, the baby elephant bites, tugs, pulls at the rope in an effort to free himself. Obviously, he doesn’t succeed. After a couple of months, the elephant gives up and is now ready to be taken into the workforce.

Fast forward to a few years ahead. You’ll see the biggest tuskers tied with the tiniest of ropes to a weakling of a tree in the forest. All it would take from the elephant is a small tug and the rope would give away. But does he give it that tug? Nope! Why? Because he knows he can’t break free from the rope.

Are you sensing what I’m getting to here? That’s exactly how each of us behave on a daily basis.

We have conditioned our minds into setting limits on ourselves. There are really no limits that exist on what we can do… the only limits that exist are the ones that exist in our minds !

Think back… think of all the times you never made the effort for something saying something like “I just can’t do it” or “I never have the time for it” or “They’d never help me if I asked. Why would they?” Do you remember talking or reading about a successful person and wishing you could be that person? What excuse did you give yourself for not being that person?

Trust me… we all have the capacity to achieve anything. The only difference is that the top achievers aren’t bull-shitting themselves. And they’re willing to pay the price to get what they want. I read somewhere that the reason people aren’t successful is that they don’t recognize success. That’s because its dressed in overalls and looks like work! And I’m not just talking about careers here…. I’m talking about everything – from work to relationships, from hobbies to passions.

So here’s my advice – Take off those mental shackles! No excuses! You have to believe that there are no limits on what you can do. And if you’re still apprehensive, you have to think – “What excuse am I giving myself now?” You’ll get your answer and when you do, discard that excuse.

So stop being an elephant. It can change the way you look at life.

Seth
If you enjoyed this post, feel free to leave a comment. Always good to hear constructive feedback.