Secrets to Overcoming Procrastination Procrastination is not only the thief of time, it is the creator of subtle inner tension. You know you are cheating yourself. There are three secrets to overcoming procrastination. One, don’t wait till you feel like doing it – the feeling will come when you start doing it. Two, list all the things you have to do and then prioritise the list. Three, create a vision of the result and be motivated by the vision of the outcome, not the thought of the process. Control Normally control is understood as something which we need to have over others or situations. So when things go wrong, the first thought is tocontrol others. But since neither the situations nor the people are in our hands, we are unable to succeed in controlling them. Instead of trying to control something that we have no control upon, we need to start with ourselves. The more we are able to keep a control on ourselves with constant attention, checking and changing, the more we will be able to have everything in control. Negative Control And Domination In Relationships In a lot many of the different types of relationships we find ourselves in, may they be our personal relationships or at the workplace, we sometimes feel ourselves to be in a position where we feel we are being dominated and controlled negatively by the opposite person. A very common example of the above negative energy, in personal and non-personal relationships, is when someone gets angry with you and manages to make you react and get upset, they mange to dominate you. Over a period of time they start realizing that they possess an invisible and powerful remote control, using which, whenever they want to control you, what they should do is to get angry with you and that way they will achieve the desired control. Their anger becomes a remote control. When you react you are allowing this control or allowing the other's remote control to work. It is you that chooses to allow yourself to be influenced and dominated. It is important for us to realize that we can choose and take the decision to allow ourselves to be controlled and dominated, or we can choose to express what we feel without being affected by the reaction of the other and still maintaining our love, respect and good wishes for the other. Let us not allow ourselves to be dominated and influenced by entities external to us which includes objects and people or we will lose energy. Each moment we allow another person's remote control to work successfully or we allow an object to control and dominate our emotional state, we weaken internally. We become like a puppet in the other person's hands. A puppet is never powerful because it does not act on its own but is controlled by someone else. We need to prevent that, if we want to conserve our energy and remain spiritually strong. Meditation and spiritual knowledge both increase our spiritual strength and also increase our self esteem or self respect over a period of time. Both these increases help us remain in self control and not only disallow the other's remote control to work but also become assertive (not aggressive) and take a stand when required. Soul Sustenance Performing A Spiritual Audit At The End Of The Day - Part 2 Yesterday we had explained how self evaluation at the end of the day is extremely vital to one's progress and development. A useful exercise in this regard is keeping a daily chart for about 3 personality traits or points and filling it up every night (lesser than 3 is also fine, but not more , because then you might feel lazy in keeping the chart after a few days and also you might lose focus and the personality traits may not transform as much as you want). You could either evaluate yourself with a yes or no or perform a percentage wise evaluation like 50% or 90% for e.g. We have mentioned below, some of the common traits from which you could select the traits to keep a daily chart for. You could incorporate some other specific traits (not mentioned in this list), which you want to change or develop, depending on your personality: In the entire day, today; not only in my words and actions, but also in my thoughts: * Did I see everyone's specialties and keep good wishes for each one, in spite of obvious weaknesses being visible? * Did I remain free from all forms of anger, like irritation, frustration, grudge, revenge, etc.? * Did I ensure that I neither give nor take sorrow, hurt, pain from anyone? * Did I remain free from waste and negative? * Did I remain ego less? * Did I remain untouched by name, fame, praise, insult? * Did I remain stable? * Did I remain free from judgments, criticism, jealousy, comparison, hatred, etc.? * Did I keep a conscious of serving each one whom I met? * Did I bring the 8 main powers into practice and experience being powerful? * Did I remain in self-respect and give respect to everyone? * Did I practice being soul-conscious in actions and interactions? * Did I take a one minute break every hour to reflect, meditate and control the traffic of thoughts in the mind ? Message for the day Humility is to respect everything that comes our way. Expression: To love simple things is humility. It teaches to respect all that life brings. That means there is an ability to appreciate and value everything appropriately. So one is able to use everything that comes one way to the fullest extent for the benefit of the self and that of others. Experience: When I am humble I am able to remain focused on my inner peace and not lose my sense of personal well-being. I am able to simply learn from everything that happens to my life and add on to this sense of well-being. No situation is difficult or impossible to work on, but I am able to overcome all challenges with ease.