Then I will never be Born again. That didn't make any sense. The cosmic math was all fucked up. The following thoughts flooded my mind: Assuming we would all commit some sins in this life, even if we level out those sins from the past birth, we would have to be born again to atone for the sins accumulated in this lifetime. If x = y + z and all you can level out is the y of the equation, the remainder z ensures that you are born again. If the meaning of life is not to be born again, then why were we born in the first place? Just so that we are not going to be born again? That's quite ridiculous. I knew this old man merely used this philosophy to live as happily as he could. This includes experiences that build sensation awareness and capacity to regulate emotions. Childhood Trauma and Its Devastating Long-Term Effects: The ACEs Study Unlike in the twentieth century, trauma's devastating blow to emotional and physical well-being, cognitive development, and behavior has become common knowledge in recent years thanks to the pioneering research efforts of Dr Bruce D. Perry, psychiatrist and senior fellow from Houston's ChildTrauma Academy; Felitti, from Kaiser Permanente. It's increasingly apparent that trauma's ramifications are far more pervasive than formerly suspected. Without effective interventions, its mark is not outgrown or forgotten. In fact, the consequences worsen over time--wreaking havoc with our endocrine, immune, and cardiovascular systems alongside other mental and physical complications. One of the most impactful and internationally respected studies on trauma, the ACEs study (Adverse Childhood Experiences) conducted by Dr Felitti in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)12 was a long-range, in-depth analysis of more than 17,000 adults. It conclusively linked childhood trauma to the risk of suicide, alcoholism, drug abuse, obesity, and other health risks. Your ability to manage your emotions will depend on the things that you endured in the early part of your life.

If you were loved, nurtured, cared for, and protected, then you will most likely be more stable and feel as you are worthy and have value. For those who were neglected and or abused during infancy and throughout their childhood, they are the ones who consistently display negative emotions. Many times, when an individual has been raised in a somewhat normal home during their childhood, they will be better at handling themselves in difficult situations, as opposed to someone who has had a life full of abuse, they explode quicker. When you have the ability to control those sudden impulses, urges, and strong temptations, it builds up the strength that helps you manage your emotions. Stay Independent in Relationships Do not allow yourself to be dependent on anyone else for your basic needs, this is unhealthy, and it will eventually cause you many problems, and damage your self-esteem and your confidence. You need to be aware of who you are so that you are not in danger of becoming emotionally insecure. This will ensure that you do not consistently depend on others for our basic needs. Not everyone is a nice person who is willing to do things to help others; It explains the tendency for people to take on what they were told during their childhood into their adult life. It is extremely easy for a person to become insecure about an aspect of themselves due to it being instilled by someone as they become older. Keep in mind that this does not have to result from a major trauma. Let's say a person was made fun of in school for some aspect of the way they look, such as their choice of clothing. As they get older, they might find themselves calling every outfit they put together into question because they do not feel like they know what looks good and what does not. They are basing their opinion of themselves on the words of others. They are not taking into consideration the fact that children can be cruel without provocation at times- people, in general, have the capacity for this. They also are not considering the possibility that the other child might have felt jealousy toward them for being able to afford clothes that they could not, so they felt a need to tear their self-esteem down. It might seem far-fetched to imagine that you taught yourself to engage in negative self-talk, but that is what happens when our thoughts are allowed to run unsupervised. Here is what all of this negative thinking ultimately traces back to- there was one thought that came through your mind, and you paid too much attention to it. Too late you realize that it must have been an old cup from a week ago that never got thrown away, because you can feel something too horrible to even consider floating in your mouth, and you spit old coffee all over yourself in revulsion.

In my defense, this happened to me in college, and I've never looked at an unidentified coffee cup without suspicion since. Experiences, unlike intellectual arguments, can change your mind about something instantly and forever. Even if you haven't swallowed moldy coffee, that story probably still sparked some disgust and anxiety in you. Most of us have never received guidance about how to interpret these spikes of anxiety, and thus we often don't remember them or assign meaning to them. But we should, because these sparks are the blazing signposts that tell us that something important to us feels threatened. These signposts are unique to our personal histories and, as a whole, represent a map of our personal expectations, hopes, dreams, and disappointments about the world. COMMON ANXIETY TRIGGERS Expectations fall short of reality when: Someone says they hate a movie/article/song that you love. It was weird, but she had begun to include her death as a part of her experience. She started to believe that if she could prepare for her death, then she'd crush the power that death had over her. And after pouting and releasing a few thug tears (there's a theme here, guys) I realized that's how I had to deal with her death. Because we've all been duped right. Everyone dies! So I started to live with intention. I promise you that this is something that I work on daily. It doesn't come naturally to me. I don't think it's natural for anyone. Sometimes I need Jill Scott and Oprah to remind me that I have a purpose, and I have to find an intent to live. As humans, we are generally comfortable and fluent at simulating mental models that fit our natural reality.

But when things get more abstract is when hardship arises. Jeremy Merritt, a systems thinker, uses the market system to give an example of an abstract system. Price in the market is the token of total demand for a product. The market can't be tied down to a physical place and you can't generate a concrete picture of it in your mind as you could with the ocean. Yet you accept that something invisible and untouchable such as the market exists and has an impact on your life. Let's take a closer look at what happened in the economic crisis of 2008. When the crisis became global and threatening, people started decreasing their spending and saving money instead. Retailers in turn started to struggle financially because of the huge drop in their sales, so they dropped their prices to try to incentivize consumers to spend more. Consumers were, however, aware of the price drop, and in the hopes that prices would further drop over time, they refrained from spending. On the other hand, fear is ever-present. It is our task to learn how to live freely. So, we educate ourselves in the following manner: * In the case of being careful we learn how to avoid risks and danger. * In the case of fear, we learn how to liberate our minds and live a happier life. Very simple! DEFENDING OURSELVES FROM FEAR This is, I think, the most interesting part. Let me first put it in two simple sentences: Our nature, our essence is LOVE, LOVING COMPASSION, AN UNCONDITIONAL SELFLESS LOVING HEART. In the hope that in his next birth he might be born into some royal family.

But `live for another life'? What if there isn't another life? What if your karma is good but you are born again as a tadpole? You get an extra pink dot on the back of your hand. In order not to disturb his peace of mind, I decided to keep my inferences to myself and changed the topic. Didn't you say you are going to Dehradun? This train takes forty-one hours to get there. Two full days and nights. What's the rush to wake up? These important research results have enlightened practitioners worldwide. Defying conventional belief, this study famously revealed a powerful relationship between our emotional experiences as children and our overall health as adults. Dr Felitti, founder of the Department of Preventive Medicine at Kaiser Permanente in San Diego, is the renowned physician and researcher who accidentally hypothesized this causal relationship in 1985, after doing exit interviews with patients in his obesity program who dropped out despite their progress. What he discovered was astonishing. As the weight came off, so did their feelings of safety and calm. They were using eating as a way to self-regulate to stave off feelings of anxiety. Food was the coregulator. Not being satisfied without a thorough investigation, Dr Felitti led the revolutionary charge as coprincipal researcher into how ACEs affect adults. A survey with ten simple questions tied to ten types of adverse experiences was given to patients, and they received a score of 1 to 10 depending on how many categories of traumatic events they had endured growing up. This inventory linked these unresolved childhood traumatic events to addiction, violence, and mental and physical illness--including a predisposition toward early death. Be mindful that codependency can become addicting, so be careful when starting to date someone new, pay attention to the things that you allow them to do for you.