How to Keep Your Head About You, When Everyone Else is Losing Theirs.

• March 25, 2020

Words of Wisdom

You weren’t prepared for this crisis. It’s disruptive and triggers uncertainty. 

But there’s work to be done. You need to make serious changes in how you’ve been doing your work. 

Life continues. And in order to continue with it…

You need a calm mind and inspired action.

Never fear, wisdom is here.

I’m sharing the wise words from passages I turn to when I’m faced with a challenge or crisis and I need to carry on regardless. 

Before the play-by-play chaos of the situation penetrates your mind, read and reflect on these passages every day for one week. 

They give you the wisdom and strength you need to be your best when everything feels like it’s falling apart.

You just do what needs to be done, leaving success and failure to the unknown. For everything is caused by innumerable factors, of which your personal endeavor is but one. Yet such is the magic of man’s mind and heart that the most improbable happens when human will and love pull together.

– Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897 – 1981), Hindu teacher

LESSON: Meet the need in front of you without worrying about outcomes. You can’t control everything. Let your will and heart guide you.

Empty yourself of everything.

Let the mind rest at peace.

The ten thousand things rise and fall while the Self watches their return.

They grow and flourish and then return to the source.

Returning to the source is stillness, which is the way of nature.

The way of nature is unchanging.

Knowing constancy is insight.

Not knowing constancy leads to disaster. 

Knowing constancy, the mind is open.

With an open mind, you will be openhearted. 

Being openhearted, you will act royally.

Being royal, you will attain the divine.

– Lao Tzu, Chinese Philosopher, 6th Century – 4th Century BC

LESSON: Start from stillness, stay consistent, keep an open mind.

If you can keep your head when all about you  

        Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, 

        But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

       Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

       And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

       If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

       And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

      Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

      And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

 If you can make one heap of all your winnings

     And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

     And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

     To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

     Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

 If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

     Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

      If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

      With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

       And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

– Rudyard Kipling, Poet, 1865-1936

LESSON: Don’t be swept away, stay true, keep trying.