There is a saying, ‘Jaisi drishti waisi srishti’. This is nice and rhyming in Hindi/Sanskrit, but in English not so much. But the meaning is powerful – it says that the way we look at the world, is the way the world is.
An example in the Mahabharata illustrates this well. Both Duryodhana (Kaurava head, bad guy) and Yudhishtira (Pandava head, nice guy) were asked to go and find a good person in the kingdom. The story goes that at the end of the day, Duryodhana could find not even one person, whereas Yudhishtira found good qualities in everyone.
The application of this thought is more important than we give credit for. As human beings controlled by a monkey mind, we give in to mood swings all too often. When the going is good, the world seems nice and rosy, and when the tide turns, everything seems futile.
To be clear, just remembering the above saying doesn’t mean we will never encounter troubling situations in life. But having a happy mind will enable us to find solutions where none seem to exist. And that alone is the difference between those who are successful and those who are not. Because problems come to everyone. How they are tackled makes all the difference.
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