Happiness of A Car Salesman

Just to share a little short story that was told by Venerable Mahinda during a Dhamma talk, a story about a car salesman and his index of happiness.

"There was a car salesman who measured his happiness in life each month using a very simple formula - no. of cars that was actually sold / no. of cars he expects to sell. So during months when car sales were good, the salesman was filled with happiness but when times were bad, so was his mood."

"Take for example, he expects to sell 100 cars each month. In one of the months, he sold 75 cars - based on the formula, he would be 75% happy. A good percentage since he was happy most of the time. But what if he sold a single car during the month, then he would only be 1% happy - isn't that sad?"

"So the salesman tries extremely hard each month to sell as many cars as he could. But little did he realise, there is a much easier way to happiness - to lower his expectations."

"Remember the earlier formlua? If the denominator is 1 and not 100, he will be a very happy man, at least 100% happy if he managed to sell just 1 car alone. But what if we learn not to have Zero expectations? Anything divided by zero is always infinite in a maths formula, then our happiness will be infinite."

In just a simple short story, Bhante has provided a quick insight how much unhappiness can be caused when one has too much expectations in life, no matter whether the expectations are for ourselves or others.

However, we must not confuse expectations with goals, we still need to have goals in life so that we have something to work for so that we do not become complacent or lazy. With goals in life, we can make plans and place our efforts in the right direction and not let our thoughts or actions wander about mindlessly.

We may think of a goal as a destination, a snow-capped mountain that is a thousand miles away. From far, we already have the mountain in sight. If we expect to reach mountain in the next 2 hours, we are likely to be disappointed since it is very unlikely we can do so. But if we forget about pushing time to reach the mountain and just simply walk towards it with no expectation on the time required to get there, we may even find ourselves enjoying the walk itself.

Isn't that a lot nicer? =)

Breathing Mindfully

Watching your breath? Have you ever done so? Is it fast and hard or is it slow and steady?

Breath mindfulness is a technique that has been taught for thousand of years. You may wonder, don't we all know how to breathe? Yes, we all know how to but over the years as we grow, we forget, we forget how to breathe without a care.

Remember when we are all still a child, all of us knew how to breathe, how to do so without a care, to breathe each breath and marvel in each and every moment as we fill our lungs with air. Why not take this moment, slow down, put away whatever you are doing and just watch your breathe for a few minutes or so?

It is a marvellous feeling when we settle into it, our breath becomes lighter and so does our heart and mind. Our mind may be filled with activities at first but as we practice it over time, it becomes easier to be more mindful of our breaths. Most of us as we start off, our breaths are hard and fast because of the tension that has been built up in our mind and body over the years. But just let our body and mind settle and our breaths will follow suit. It will start to slow down and we will find that each intake of breath becoming smoother.

Our breaths can be reflected to be a mirror of our lives. Like each moment in life, each breath is unique in its own rights, some long, some short, some hard, some smooth, reflecting impermanence. Our bodies rise and fall as we breathe in and out, just like our lives, birth (rise) and death (fall) with some days of our lives somewhat harder than the rest while some days are more pleasant. As we reflect on this while we watch our breaths, we will understand life a little better and with that understanding, we naturally become more lighthearted and just simply marvel in the simplictity of it all.

Now that we realise breathing is such a big event, will you spend a few minutes of your time with it everyday? =)