Once upon a time, there was a king who ruled a prosperous country. One day, he went for a trip to some distant areas of his country. When he was back to his palace, he complained that his feet were very painful, because it was the first time that he went for such a long trip, and the road that he went through was very rough and stony. He then ordered his people to cover every road of the entire country with leather.
Definitely, this would need thousands of cows' skin, and would cost a huge amount of money.
Then one of his wise servants dared himself to tell the king, "Why do you have to spend that unnecessary amount of money? Why don't you just cut a little piece of leather to cover your feet?"
The king was surprised, but he later agreed to his suggestion, to make a "shoe" for himself.
There is actually a valuable lesson of life in this story: to make this world a happy place to live, you better change yourself - your heart; and not the world.
1 comment:
Really, this story puts up a very valuable piece of wisdom.
This says about our changing our attitude… rather than changing the whole world.
Yesterday I was greatly privileged to hear P. Brahmvihari Swamiji from BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha at AMA.
His subject yesterday was a bit similar: “Positive Attitude for a healthy mind”.
Some gems from his oration yesterday (only those in connection with today’s story):
If you have a right attitude, it is more powerful than all army of the whole world.
When Hitler had conquered the whole of Europe, defeating UK was not a big deal.
At that time, UK was burning into fires; Hitler had forecasted that he has already won the war.
But the outcome was different: UK won the war in just a couple of days…
It was due to the right attitude of only one person: Winston Churchill, that made UK win the Second World War.
It was then Churchill first gave the sign of first two fingers shaping as ‘V’; saying V for victory.
It was the right attitude of only one person: Mahatma Gandhi that gave us independence.
We are the creator of our own happiness and our own misery.
Your attitude not only affects the way you live; but also affects the way you die.
One research from United States says that Health of mind will become the greatest concern for mankind in the coming years due to depression.
More people die from suicide than the total of people that die due to terror, war, homicides, accidents, etc.
And the figures are really terrible: 1 million die in suicides whereas 20 million attempt.
But as one of the very good psychologists William James say: The greatest discovery of this age is that man can change the altitude of his life by changing the attitude of his mind.
The three rules for happiness are:
1) Empty your mind: empty your mind with all negativities (negative emotions towards anyone).
2) Fill your mind: fill your mind with all positivities (positive emotions)
3) Fulfill it: fill this with spirituality – Only spirituality has the power to fill the deep spaces of your mind.
Here emptying your mind and filling your mind is a combined process. The only way of getting rid of negative emotions is by adding positive emotions.
The third rule is required since if you don’t have spirituality in your attitude, your positive and negative will change with your selfish motives.
Here the king wanted to change the whole world but only was required to change his own-self: changing his attitude.
Just change the way we feel for people; change the way we talk to people…
Change the way you look at people & everyone and as said in the story: the world is a beautiful place to live.
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