What motivates you to change ?

Love or Fear ? Inspiration or Advice ?

Sometime ago, I went about telling my mom the importance of reading, telling her that she should start reading; I did that almost everyday to the point of nagging. After a few days, she had had it enough, “Why are you bossing around so much? If you want to read, read. But I don’t want to read.”

After a 2 second mountainous silence, she says, “You should start meditating”, the second time that morning. My parents are meditation geeks and freaks (I call them seeks just to prove the point), and usually it is the solution for everything, well, almost. And I used to get told to do that, almost half a dozen times everyday. That is when I realised I had been mirroring them in their behaviour. I should. They should. It runs in our family culture.

But of course, they want me to be happy and healthy and are telling it for my well-being. So was I. Reading is my meditation. I wanted them to know the benefits of reading as much as they wanted me to know the benefits of meditation. In the end, none of us was benefiting because we were enforcing it unconsciously on each other, when the other had no interest in it.

That night I thought about what made me change, ever in my life, because I really really wanted my mother to start reading. Why? That is another story. But I think we all want people around us to change in some way, for some reason, maybe to smile a bit more, or speak a bit less or be a bit more open. A bit this, a bit that.

I thought about all the major changes that I’ve ever applied in my life:

1.Most of them were because of fear. Fear of exam, fear of rejection, fear of expectations, fear of disease. It wasn't me, I swear, it was fear. I studied maths not for the love of it, but for the fear of failure in school.

“Because I needed to”.

2. A tiny minority of them were for the love of it. For example, I wanted to study architorture (like they say going through 5 years of architecture studies)so much, that all attempts of people scaring me out of it were futile.

“Because I wanted to”.

Change resulting out of love for something or someone lasts longer and proves stronger than change resulting out of fear.

Getting back to the story, I realised, I had all my life been told, what I should be doing, instead of what I could be doing. This, as I come to know of, is a common occurrence all around the world. We’re all getting advice when we don’t want it, and not getting inspiration when we want it. (Reality self check). I had been doing the same to everyone who crossed my path. I still do, more than I can count. But that night, I recognised, how it is really futile for me to expect people to change, just because I told them to. And how it is the same for others.

All the people who've genuinely got me to change for the better, are the ones who did so without directly telling me -I should do this, or be that.

They just shared what they did, or became. It may change me, or not. It is not their concern. I should focus on what I read, and what I become from reading, irrespective of whether it motivates my mother to read or not.

The next day onwards I stopped giving out my unsolicited advice on reading, or any advice for that matter, unless I was asked to directly. The silence baffled by mom, but it’s good so far. She has stopped telling me to meditate, without my asking her to stop (Mental whistles).

The next couple of weeks I spent categorizing the differences between advice and inspiration I got (and this is solely based on my limited experiences) and I’ve got to this mini table:

I have two of Mahatma Gandhi’s quotes to conclude:

‘Be the change that you wish to see in the world.’

and

‘My life is my message.’

Is your life your message ?