The inability to focus on work or an important projects adds to serious mental stress and anxiety. We have often faced this in our lives in whatsoever profession we may be engaged in. Academics, researchers, professors and teachers, artists, sculptors, dramatists, painters, writers, poets, lyricists, playwrights writers, doctors, engineers, lawyers, journalists, educators, administrators, politicians, sports and film personnel, celebrities, homemakers everyone has faced blockades in their creative and regular life at some point in their life. We mostly are able to over such psychological and emotional blockages abs blank pages of life after a short or long struggle and continue with our life, moving forward. But for some, the ability to get back to this regular lifestyle once you have got a psychological blockage in your mind is monumental. It is an unimaginably difficult and humongous challenge for some to get back to their daily routine. As a consequence, they suffer from acute depression, anxiety, frustration, despair, anger, and occasional helplessness unable to make any positive changes to their life in spite of the fact they are aware of this problem. But still, they are unable to get out of it; and therefore suffer both physically and emotionally for a considerable long period of their life. They later regret this obsession; but, presently they repeatedly fail to take any assertive action in spite of being aware of the consequences of their failures.

I have gone through similar psychological barriers in my young days too that made my each passing day agonizing and extremely painful. I was occasionally unable to focus on my studies during my undergraduate and graduate degree programs as far as I can recall now. I had no intention to cheat or waste my crucial study hours before the major exams; but, simply could not concentrate on the books and notes. Every day, I had a plan of accomplishing some of my study goals and since I could not focus, I failed miserably in securing those goals. Each adding day turned into an antagonizing experience for me. The harder I tried; most devastatingly I failed caught in a vicious cycle.

I knowingly wasted my crucial study time in doing unnecessary chitchats with my friends over phone or in person, ate a lot of junk foods and drank soft drinks that added to my unwanted weight gains and poor health, watched countless movies and useless TV serials, continuously read newspapers, magazines, and storybooks; but, failed to make an inch of progress with my pending assignments that started collecting dust on my study table. The more I failed I started getting isolated from my friends and family members including my parents. I wanted to hide my face in shame as they provided me the best they could for facilitating my education; and yet a ‘shameless me’ wasted their sincerity and efforts in helping me to build a good career for myself.

I used to constantly suffer from a deep mental agony both consciously and unconsciously for not being able to achieve my study goals. I do remember that with every passing day, my exam preparation time slowly vanished into oblivion and myself being held captive by ‘myself’ in a never-ending vicious cycle of non-achievement of even minor study goals. These repeated failures pushed me into long periods of sleeplessness with deep internal feelings of acute frustration, depression and anguish that I could not share with anyone around me. This persistent mental agony I felt facilitated my slide down the ‘ladder of life’, that I was supposed to climb in my professional life. Failure-guilt-agony and failure again turned into a regular cycle of my life which was otherwise so normal and regular in front of others. I was surrounded by an ocean of people around me; but, yet I felt lonely, isolated, scared and cornered all the time.

Slowly I started losing my self-confidence, spent long hours in the washroom crying or hiding from everyone; and worse even that I realize that I have started to ran away from myself….making my life even more miserable. With every passing day failing to achieve even a single goal further demotivated me to continue with my studies and …..slowly I started branding myself as a ‘looser’, ‘failure’, ‘retard’ and even a ‘useless’ member of the society who can contribute nothing positive or substantial to life at any point of time and is actually a ‘burden’ for my closed family members, friends and even the society at large. I will not hide that even negative suicidal thoughts crossed my mind in those dark hours; and I slumped deeper and deeper into unspeakable pain, agony, and depressive feelings; as well as suffering from the continuous guilt admission within myself as I am not being unable to overcome this challenge or obstacle in my life during that period to focus on my studies.

Even though based on my past performances, my teachers, professors and friends used to brand me as the brightest student in the batch, I had very little self-respect for myself. I started running away from my friends and family; and found myself emotionally trapped inside a bubble, separating me from all and pushing me into a dark fearful corner with no hope or aspiration in life. Every day, I felt that I was moving into a path of no return and deep melancholy with nothing to look forward in life. Later I noticed that these periods of mental agony happened during the long study leaves that ran for a month and when we didn’t need to attend college or classes. I used to be an entirely different personality when classes used to run regularly and had no negative thoughts or fear of jeopardizing myself. These impacted my success in my academic career and I found myself slowly transforming into a scared backbencher who wanted to possibly run away from everyone including myself.

Later someone exposed me to the life and daily life practices of Noble laureate and world poet Rabindranath Tagore. I was greatly inspired to note that how hardworking and sincere he was with his work; and how he divided his time meticulously to cater to both his personal and professional life successfully. He worked long hours of his creative writings, paintings and song compositions; yet he studied regularly, responded to numerous emails, supervised and directed regular activities of the Bishwabharati University during its teething period, prepared his erudite lectures, cared for ashramites and his family members and every other activity with a sense of deep sincerity and love.

I failed to understand how could an individual be so creative and productive; but, yet excel in successfully catering to his social and professional responsibilities. But as I dug deeper into his inspirational life, I learnt that he was a strict disciplinarian. He would go to bed post-midnight and get up early and spend time on his daily meditation. Following this he will get into his daily cycle of writing, resting, studying, supervising and managing his responsibilities. He forced and trained his mind into this regular discipline; and that helped him to slowly become an outstanding poet, lyricist, composer, writer, artist, playwright, novelist, storyteller, academic, educationist, reformer, visionary and above all the greatest humanist of our time. This glimpse of the monumental life of this polymath genius inspired and helped me to get out of my dark past.

Rather than trying to meet big and unachievable philosophical objectives; I started to focus on achieving small daily goals in my own life. Starting from morning to evening, I prepared a routine and tried to follow that diligently. I failed many times; but slowly over 2-3 weeks time I had a grip on myself. I stopped overreacting, overeating and drinking; as well stopped in participating in useless chitchats and was amazed to note how much additional time I could save per day. During this time too, I came across a teaching by Gautam Buddha where he preached an individual to look and improve upon his or her own life; rather than trying to impact the life of others.

Focusing on oneself is not at all selfishness; but an ability to explore our internal strengths abs weaknesses I realized. If I do not learn to take care of myself, I realized I would never be able to take care of others. I tried to remove myself from interfering with others lives and focus on my own. This changed my life and views and felt inner peace as well as in achieving small goals of my life. I learnt that I am my own teacher and my best friend; and that none knows me better than myself. Every small step I took in life and every small achievement made my life productive, happier and peaceful. I started moving out of my dark period and felt blessed and enlightened. My self-realization has been that self-control on our emotions, behaviours, greeds, fears, attitudes and activities determine who we are today, and we are going to transform into tomorrow. Self-development and self-improvement as preached by Swami Vivekananda are the two cornerstones of our life that we need to understand. An individual who could not take care of himself or herself could never achieve anything great good for society and this planet, I have realized in my life.

Procrastination is an evil sin that destroys our life. Our inability to take decisions, make choices and not knowing our ‘real’ strengths and limitations are the factors impacting our lives and actions. Sometimes we have to leave the struggle of our daily life, sit back and reflect on our memories, experiences, actions and inactions to regain our mental strength, work diligently without expectations and rediscover the path we need to follow in our journey called life. We always blame others including God for all our problems, failures and hopelessness. But we need to take responsibility for our own inactions, indecisions, uncontrolled emotional outbursts, greed, jealousy as well as unjustified hatred for others.

Only then could we realize that our life is much better that we perceive it to be. The more we blame others for our problems; the further we get swamped away in the doldrums. We need to learn to be responsible for our actions and inactions, adding the buck to others only increase our internal pain and agony. Don’t think that you are so important in life, no matter how powerful you are ! Because life can change in the fraction of a second. Always carry the ‘true’ empathy in your heart for those on the other side of the boundary; and thank yourself to see another beautiful day in your life. In the long journey we call ‘life’, I learnt that our life can only run in balance when we can control our inner self-expressions; and sincerely introspect our weaknesses and strengths with true objectivity and unbiased reasoning. 

.    .    .