Excerpts from Inner Engineering - Sadhguru (Part 1)

 Excerpts from Inner Engineering - Sadhguru (Part 1)

• Unless you do the right things, the right things will not happen to you.
• Story is about a person trying ice fishing. He isn't able to catch any fish.
• A boy comes along and catches fish in some time.
• On asking, the boy mentions, that one needs to keep the worms (bait) warm.
• The quality of our lives is determined by our ability to respond to the varied complex situations that we encounter.
• If the ability to respond with intelligence, competence and sensitivity is compromised by a conclusive and reactive approach, we are enslaved by the situation.
• Stress management?
• Why would anyone want to manage stress? We always manage things which are precious to us isn't it? Money, time, family, business etc. Is Stress precious?
• Anger s rooted in our false perception that we can change the situation by losing our temper with it.
• However, we do know the reverse is true.
• We can never change things for the better by forsaking our sense and intelligence.
• You only mess up your situations by getting angry.
• Human beings are in a perennial state of complaint. 
• They carry their complaints with them like a badge of their identity.
• There are many who live their lives lamenting that life has been particularly unfair to them.
• They cite instances of all the terrible things that have befallen them.
• What most people forget is that past events exist within us only as memories.
• Memory has no objective existence, it is purely psychological.
• If you are in a compulsive state of reactivity:
• Memory distorts your perception of the present.
• Your thoughts, action and emotions become disproportionate to the stimulus.
• If you retain your ability to respond
• Memory of the past will become an empowering process.
• We have a choice:
• Respond consciously to the present OR
• React compulsively to it 
• If terrible things have happened to you, you should have learnt from it and grown wise.
• If worst possible scenarios have befallen you, you should have been the wisest of the lot.
• Instead of growing wise, people become wounded.
• In a state of conscious response, it is possible to use every life situation, however ugly, as an opportunity for growth.