This is a short breezy article for a Sunday read, wherever you are on the planet! If you have seen the movie, Up in the Air, well there is a reference to this bit, however let me be very clear my thoughts are original as always! Join me as we try to know what this bag is all about and why does it really matter what we have in there and why we need to empty it from time to time!

The journey of your life is the pursuit of your soul to seek what it aspires for- your mind and body are the only resources that it ever demands to make that journey possible, sure enough, for that mind and body to function, you would need the required support that comes to you being part of the society that you are and this is where all the fun begins! Society sabotages your journey and purpose of your life by ending up putting into your bag a lot of stuff that you never really need and guess what, that burden of the excess baggage is the real enemy that not only slows you down greatly but in a few cases ends up most of the journey’s even before they really commence in the real earnest! Let me explain!

Consider, you are going for a trek in the high mountains, what would you carry with you? Mountain gear, medicines, first aid, food that lasts you with the relevant buffer and clothes that you just need about and the required tools and gadgets right? Now consider if instead of this, you were to add your high heels, professional attire, your laptop, a generator for power back up, a satellite dish ,a coal grill, food supplies for 7 days ( when you need for 2 days plus a day of buffer), what you will end up doing is, burdening yourself with unwanted and unnecessary baggage that has nothing to do with your aspiration to climb that mountain peak, neither does that excess load, serve any benefit to you (simply because you have too much of it!), so what’s the impact- well if you even start to think about getting started with that kind of a burden, any mountaineer will tell you, you are finished even before you begin! This is what also plays out in the book of our lives!

Grab that coffee and look around yourself wherever you are now, what do you see, you will see you are surrounded, hounded and always approached by all the things, people and situations which often mean so little and at times nothing when it comes to adding value either to you or to the other person or even for that matter to make the settings a great one! When was the last time you hit the office party and people actually said- that the party would be incomplete had you not come? And well when you actually not turn up- what happened? Did they stop the party? Cancel it? Or did the show go on and perhaps you were not even missed! You would be fortunate even if someone thought about you! The worst thing is that in the times that we live, we are glued to multiple screens and our day begins and ends by counting friends on a social media network, the number or likes , shares and what not- we just end up sweating for no real reason!

You see, get a life, the fact is no one really cares and the burden that you build upon yourself with this perception that you matter- is perhaps the biggest invisible load within the bag that you carry and that bag which seems to be getting bigger and bigger is nothing else but the bag of your mind! The bag is nothing but your fleeting, racing mind- and every time you drown it in clutter and all that doesn’t serve you or anyone else who matter you- you are just wearing it down and if you try to lead your life with a fatigued mind- you know where you will reach and in what shape you will reach- even if you get lucky enough to reach your destination or goal- you will barely be alive and instead of celebrating your success, you will just thank your stars, that you made it and fade away into nothingness in the pages of history!

We all more often than not, end up living and going about our lives, mindlessly aligning it to the sometimes unwanted bindings of social compulsions, peer reviews, “what will “x” think, what will “y” say kind of realms and this is from where the small pebbles start to fill in the spaces of your bag (read mind), once you have succumbed to this trap, then one after the other, you will end up aligning yourself to please that person, that group, that sector, that industry and so on and so forth and in that mad race to please, appease and be likable with the many, you will end up shortchanging yourself so badly that, at the end of the day you will start loosing the whole idea of who you are and the next time when someone asks you, “who you are”, your answer is almost always- I am the “ABC Sr. Director, Sr Manager, CEO, COO, CMO” you will be glued to the crutches of a label that the society has thrown at you and this label comes at the bargain of loosing your own self into the vastness of the world that you move around in! Think about this and tell me, how many of your best colleagues, mentors or people that you admire or that admire you , know one thing about you that makes you the unique person that you are- no I am not asking you whether they know if you can sing or not- I am asking, “How many of them know, how unique are you- what makes you who you are?” and likewise how much invested are you among the hundreds of online friends and colleagues that you say mean the world to you? How much do you know about who they are, what makes them special?

The chances are by now, you too have figured out how shallow and hollow all of this is and perhaps many things around have always been! Sure enough, there are genuine relations, people and connections that is what humanity is all about, the point that I am trying to make is the same, that there is genuine human connect out there, but once our bags are full of all that unnerving garbage that we have filled it up with, we have no space for what really matters to us and we have the burden of all the non-productive and un-serving nonsense that we get tagged up with and end up carrying that all our lives, for no real rhyme or reason!

Whether it’s about the relations- personal or professional, the connections that we make, the contexts of society that we find ourselves in, all of these are nothing but a manifestation of our own intent- how badly do we want to achieve what we aspire for! The more feeble is that urge to achieve ones’ aspiration, the more clutter and baggage will one find around and as one gets more aligned to what their aspirations are and as that urge begins to intensify, all that clutter, and non-serving garbage gets vaporized by the power of purpose driven action which is based on that founding intent to achieve what the aspirations are! So what’s the plan?

Simple, empty your bag, as often as you can and as much as you can, that’s the only way to fill it with the lightest possible necessities that will really serve you and provide you with is needed as you reach your goals/aspirations! Do away with all of the non-serving burden and garbage, memories that don’t help, friends who seem not to be there, when they should be, family that doesn’t heed, colleagues who aren’t what they mean they are…people, places and things everything that does not serve your purpose and your journey in the direction of your aspiration is but a baggage that will eventually sap you off every little ounce of your energy that you so badly need to reach the zenith and celebrate that puritan achievement! Hold on to, all that, is a part of that journey, people, places and things, for they serve you, are your strength, perhaps anchor you, perhaps propel you, perhaps guide you, perhaps nourish you, but that’s about that! All that adds value to you and to what you add value is what will create an empowering context and this is the unfailing foundation that each one of us needs to build upon for an unfailing future and live our aspirations and more importantly be able to celebrate them as we achieve them!

Final words, everything that adds value to you, to what you add value and all that creates an empowering environment for you to race ahead and achieve what your aspirations are, is what the essence of a good bag is! Everything and anything else and less than what I said above, is nothing but baggage disguised in the many forms that it can manifest – relations, obligations, favors, adjustments, peer thankfulness, etc. etc. eventually it is this baggage, which if carried along unchecked for too longs, ends up burdening an individual beyond a point of repair and more often than not people end up celebrating mediocre lives when in reality that would have had everything that it takes for being that extraordinary soul that they could have been! Human souls entrapped in this never ending, camouflaged baggage of relations, things and contexts is indeed the fundamental reason why, so many individuals are never able to be who they can be and why for every one success story there are possibly hundreds or even thousands of stories of failure and anguish, not because the people fell short, but rather they were shortchanged by the contents that they added up in the bags that they carried!

I leave you here for now with these thoughts, it’s a nice Sunday, time to clean up your bag, what do you think? Just keep it simple, all that helps stays and all that harms or doesn’t help, goes! Declutter the bag (your mind) and stay aligned to your aspirations! Lesser the baggage greater is your speed and longer is the celebration once you accomplish!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until than stay wise and stay blessed!