How to Find the Right Direction in Life

6th Jan 2022 | Author - Viraj Malik

All of us are special with our own unique destiny, however we often look for directions and inspirations from other’s life. In today’s world, trends from social media and the world around us greatly influence the direction our life takes. There is no universal right direction and the purpose of everyone's life is to find their own unique direction through individual efforts and wisdom.

Here are a few questions and conflicts which all of face at different stages of our lives and how we can address these using our own intellect and wisdom

1. Relationship- Usually what feels right in our heart is the right direction for us, but when we evaluate relationships with logic and other social parameters we often go wrong. There is an African saying "When you marry a monkey for his wealth, the money goes but the monkey remains". Life has inherent intelligence and love blossoms in our life to take us towards light in spite of being on a bumpy path. It’s the path which life naturally points towards and can provide the greatest opportunity for us to grow as human beings.

2. Work- There are templates which schools and colleges have for all of us to make us great engineers, doctors and lawyers, however seldom do we find people who truly love their work. This happens because they might have moved in the wrong direction in the work sphere and this is the reason they either don't enjoy the work or don't excel in their chosen field. The Japanese wisdom of Ikigai is a great reference for choosing our area of work. It is based on the simple logic that " we should do what we love doing and what we are good at, We can evaluate it with what’s required in the world and people are willing to pay for it.”

Life has a unique direction for all of us and we have been conditioned to think that constant struggle and fight is the only way to grow in life. However, sometimes what makes sense is to just create the silence and space in our mind and wait for life to give us directions so that we can align our individual will and energy in the direction of the universal life force. Most of the struggle and suffering of our life is when our individual track and life's direction are not aligned. Yoga is one of the best ways for us to bring into line our individual life force with universal force and ultimately create harmony. One can achieve a greater balance in life with practice of Yoga.

Here are few other tips for us to create more receptivity within us to get direction from life;

1. Prepare Your Body, Tame Your Mind through Yoga- We live in our minds so much that often we mistake the self-identity of the mind as our real identity. We sometimes forget that we are a life form that possesses the faculty of our mind and body. Very often our direction of life is being chosen by our mind and it completely misses the intelligence of the life force. Mind is like an organic computer which we are blessed with, we need to know how to operate it when we need it.  Nevertheless most of the time we live and operate as our mind says. Yoga helps us to gradually free ourselves from this mistaken identity of our mind and connects us with the life force which is operating through us.

2. Develop Openness through Meditation- Lets stay open to the possibilities of life. We often tend to create our own fixed ideas about the future and try to look at everything in a goal oriented way, through the prism of our own beliefs. Holistic practice of Yoga which includes pranayama and meditation will help us to create the opening in our minds with an attitude of gratitude and surrender towards life.