The Science of the Mind

Thousands of years ago, in ancient India lived a sage Patanjali. He wrote a text on ‘The Science of the Mind’ called the YogaSutras, wherein he espoused the path calming the mind as the route to a happy and fulfilling life. He spoke about managing one’s mind as the path to happiness and fulfilment.  Today, his work has been validated by positive psychology and its leaders - Martin Seligman, Robert Emmons, Tal-Ben Shahar and more.

A three-step process to living our ‘best life’ as advocated by Patanjali:

Discover & Live our Best Life  = 

Pause  + Self-Awareness +  Authentic Intention  

Pause:  Is our freedom not to act, express or even think based on our past perceptions or memories. In current terminology, this is presented as delayed gratification, or simply a pause to create the space for us to think before we respond.   

Self-awareness:  Is our ability to use the space created by the pause to study our Self. To witness ourselves and observe, in a non-judgement fashion, what past of ours drives our reactions. Essentially what, today, we call self-awareness, so that it gives us the knowledge that we  base our choices on.      

Authentic Intention:  To accept who we are and live our authentic life, and in doing so making it a better place for fellow humans and the planet.  This is what we would term as the basis of setting our Intention.

The three components, together, form the way of living a life that is true to who we are, while ‘pausing’ from time to time to become ‘aware’ and fine tuning our ‘intentions’, and in doing so making it the Best Life for us and those around.

If you wish to know more about discovering and living your ‘Best Life’, join us at the next LifeShop or Being 2019.

Reference: https://yogainternational.com/article/view/yoga-sutra-2-1-translation-and-commentary