Category: Life

Thoughts Are More Important Than Actions

To think a negative thought about someone or something because it has fault is worse than having the fault yourself. 

“A prostitute and a saint lived in the same lane.

Each day, the prostitute would look at the saint and tell herself, oh, what a good man he is! He reads the Vedas and the Epics. He spends his time doing the God’s work and in prayer.

Meanwhile, the saint would look at the prostitute and shake his head at her profession and her lifestyle.

When they died, the prostitute went to heaven and the saint went to hell.

God said that sins and virtues were in the thinking, not in the doing.

Each got the afterlife they thought about for the other.

Don’t dwell on the mistakes of others, unrelated to your duty.

Thinking about them spoils your own karma, because it makes you angry, lazy or useless.

This is a story by Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa.” 

This exerpt is from Illumination at Medium – https://medium.com/illumination/the-prostitute-and-the-saint-743baf82adb0

We must try to think well of everyone and everything. We need to empathize and at the same time fight.

I will tell you about a situation in my life. 

I have heard about a group of people who think they are doing the right thing but deep down they know it’s wrong. And they justify it as if they have no choice but to do the wrong thing. 

It’s not illegal but it’s wrong. 

But there are some people who are so called “perfect”. They don’t have any material character flaws but they will demonize and criticise the people who are doing wrong. 

They criticise the people who are doing wrong so much that they hate and fill their hearts and minds with poison. 

Now let me ask you-

Is a person who does the harmless wrong things worse than a person who does nothing wrong but thinks the vilest thing in existence about other people?

Sooner or later the vile thoughts corrupt the latter so called “perfect” person.

I have also noticed it in myself that I sometimes feel insecure, and I tell myself that the other people doesn’t like me and want to see me. So I don’t make an attempt to see them. 

Well what if I change my thoughts to a more positive one? What if I say to myself that there’s no scientific reason why they don’t like me. In fact I can’t prove that they don’t like me.

Then things change quite fast for the better.

I think that negativity in a person comes from selfishness. It’s the superiority complex and the non-acceptance of other people’s emotions and situations that causes ego to swell in a person. 

“Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.”

The Dhammapada https://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/buddhism/dp01.htm

Thank you for reading this blog post and please comment “Yes” if you learnt something useful from this post. 

Falling In Love with Twitch Streamers

I have fallen in love with SuperCatKei and itsme_fruity. Both are from Singapore. I am grateful to have found them both. It’s so fun.

On 15th September I was casually browsing through Twitch and I came across a streamer who looked extremely devoted to her music.

I clicked on her. And there SuperCatKei was. It’s as if we were destined to meet.

No not exactly. But I feel in love with her cover of “Castle on the hill” by Ed Sheeran. And I subscribed. I am attending every stream even if it is for only a small period of time.

And then day before yesterday I met itsme_fruity. She is so funny. I love her personality.

Even though sometimes I feel stupid to ask questions about some discussion that’s going on, I am working on it despite my social anxiety.

I watched a horror movie ending after a long time on itsme_fruity’s discord channel. It was fun.

So that’s the thing, I attend their streams every day. And that’s awesome. It gives me hope.

Apart from that I am amazing. I feel like I am getting better.

An important observation I made about myself was that I get social anxiety even on Twitch. I was listening to the sample of an audiobook called “How to Be Yourself” by Ellen Hendriksen on audible.in and I noticed that Ellen Hendriksen said something like what I was thinking.

Ellen says something like how one feels like they don’t belong in society and feel like an outsider so much during social anxiety that they can’t express their feelings and words.

That’s exactly what happens with me. I remember every moment I feel like I was an outsider I felt more isolated even though everything was happening virtually.

And it’s a painful feeling. Everyone with social anxiety knows this.

So I think I should work on overcoming my social anxiety.

So much wisdom and insight from Twitch?!

Thanks for reading this blog post. I have a question for you. Do you have social anxiety and how do you deal with it?

A Special Blog Post for Making You Feel Good

So for the past weeks I have been through a strange mental journey of coming to a temporary conclusion of the belief that-“Life is hard”.

You may say, “Well of course life is hard.”

I am not questioning this strong fact. But let’s ask ourselves a simple question for the sake of curiosity and truth- “Does believing in the fact that life is hard make us do work where we can give a 100% of ourselves?”

Before answering the question, I would like to give you a brief background information.

I am in the process of healing from my mental health problems. I have severe social anxiety and a little bipolar disorder. For instance, I find it hard to go out of my home on a daily basis because I am afraid of interacting with people. And I have problems forcing myself to do anything because most of the time my mood dictates every action I take. It makes me feel crazy to do anything if I must use willpower to force motivation into my soul. Mind over body does not work for me consistently.

However, I can best do the things I have a strong emotionally powerful vision for or things that I am passionate about. The problem is my curiosity questions all the powerful visions and I am not passionate about something in the Steve Jobs style.

“You have to have a lot of passion for what you do… because if you don’t, any rational person would give up.”

Steve Jobs

Now, story time.

So nowadays I am staying at home most of the time partly because of anxiety and partly because I switched to an online Bachelor of Business Administration degree(I know most of my friends have graduated but I don’t compare myself to others).

And sometimes I get two of my cousin brothers (10year old’s) visiting our home during at noon time. They basically watch anime and only ask me if a certain movie is on hotstar or Netflix. I just tell them, and they do everything else. They are experts little 10year old’s. Right??

So, one day they were watching an anime that I watched season one of years ago. The anime’s name is Tokyo Ghoul.

As I watched it with them, I got interested.

In my free time I watched all the seasons of Tokyo Ghoul, and I was particularly inspired by a character in this anime.


His name is Hide (spelled Hye-Day). He is not the hero. He is the hero Kaneki’s best friend. In fact, we don’t see much of him in the anime. But his role in the ending of the anime is significant.

He is the person who is selfless, sacrificing, a true leader.

I don’t want to spoil the anime for you. You can watch Tokyo Ghoul on Netflix.

But I just wonder, what makes a person so determined and selfless. It’s certainly not in believing that life is hard that a person does selfless acts.

One can occasionally do hard things in life, but it takes extraordinary reason to do hard things consistently and becoming successful at it and “Life is hard” is not an extraordinary reason.

So I just started experimenting with different perspectives. First, I used the belief “Life is hard” to motivate myself to study more. I studied consistently for a week for a short amount of time. It was consistent. I chose this belief from observing people in my life. It’s their belief.

But the process of forcing myself was mentally taxing and exhausting. I was not happy.

Secondly, I resumed to my normal way of being and I read fiction novels and listened to my favorite songs.

I realized from all this that an inspiring future expectation creates passion. But it is not easy to have an inspiring future expectation that is also realistic.

So I am going to my career counselor for an appointment to help me pinpoint my post-graduate plans for me.

But to answer the question- “Does believing in the fact that life is hard make us do work where we can give a 100% of ourselves?”

The answer is NO!

I know life is hard. I also know this- life is beautiful. Beauty mesmerizes us and a beautiful future inspires all of us.

And it is not possible to give 100% of yourself or myself to the work unless you or I secretly love that work.

Thank you for reading this blog post. Also, I am not a mental health or career expert. I am Anirban, I am just an average person. This was a blog post about my realizations and story. If you like this post, then share it and comment what you want to comment. See you next time!