Labyrinths of Life

By Wasif Haq and Jarrar Alam

“Labyrinths of life” is a book that will help you get through tough times in your life whether be it your personal life, professional life or the difficult phase after losing important relationship. This book will help you to deal with life crisis easily and effectively as a strong person as it will guide you to change the way you look at life. There is no issue or problem that can prevent you from enjoying a happy and free life. There is a solution to every problematic area in our lives, so there is no absolutely no reason why we should feel confused or worried believing as if we have reached the ‘dead end’ in our lives. The book covers wide range of topics that will help you beat the stressful situations and use your failures to your own advantage, as it is only our thinking and perceptions that can make us feel either as a loser or a winner. Labyrinths of life will help you choose the right and the best track that you can follow to reach to your destination.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9781300493723

Book preview

Labyrinths of Life

Labyrinths of Life

(Getting through the tough times in life)

C:\Users\Cool Bluez\Desktop\cover 1 final.JPG

Muhammad Wasif Haq & Jarrar Alam Khan

Labyrinths of Life

(Getting through the tough times in life)

1st Edition

Copyright © Creative Commons Attribution 2.5

All rights reserved,2012

ISBN: 978-1-300-49372-3

Preface

Imagine if someone tells you that you can be a super being, a strong person who can deal easily and effectively through tough moments of life only if you change the way you look at life. We all are blessed with extra-ordinary powers and all resources that we need to excel ahead in life. There is a solution to every problematic area in our lives, then why do we get stuck up, confused or worried believing as if we have reached the ‘dead end’ in our lives. The truth being that it is only our thinking and perceptions that can make us feel either as a loser or a winner.

The idea of writing this book came to our mind when we had series of discussion about different phases, various problems and issues of our lives, reaching to the conclusion that we can deal with situations quite perfectly if we learn to understand how our brain thinks and react. We all must feel ourselves as lucky individuals who can deal with those situations which we label as ‘hard, tough and impossible’ only if we can modify our thinking pattern and approaches. This book is therefore directed to help you identify, modify and eliminate certain of those ‘hard to get rid’ of thoughts, habits or events which seem to act as a barrier in enjoying life to its fullest.

As with every project, the credit and infinite word of thanks to our parents, family, friends and to the people who took time and effort to go through various sections of the book and gave us positive as well as negative feedback. Without the help from these people, the book would not have seen the light of publication. I would like to mention the name of my friend Khurram Rasheed who suggested plenty of ideas to be included in the book and is the person who chose the final title Playing through labyrinths of life after going through several 7-8 titles for the book. Initially the book was named Walking through confused maze of life ; the reference to this will be found at some places in the book. Choosing a title picture which is original and reflective of the contents of the book was also a tough job. Jarrar and I both worked out with plenty of ideas but none seemed to work. Finally we called in one of the talented, freelancer photographer Arsalan Yahya for his input and yes the problem was resolved within few minutes. The picture describes the stages in life when we are confused and presented with plenty of options but unable to rightly choose the best way. Shooting the pictures for the book was a fun filled activity. Arsalan, Jarrar, Abdullah Ali and I experimented with random ideas in just an hour. We hope you like the pictures and the concept that we have tried to present in it. Finally we would like to express our greatest thanks to God for giving us the opportunity and energy to complete this work. We hope that you enjoy reading this book and do take time to inform us of positive as well as negative points that you come across this reading.

Wish you best of luck and a positive journey as you go move across various pages of Labyrinths of life.

Muhammad Wasif Haq

And

Jarrar Alam Khan

Dedication

We would like to dedicate our work to our motherland Pakistan, our parents and all the people who are going through tough time in their lives.

image002.jpg

Chapter 1 The ‘’Y’’ shaped Why?

In this introductory chapter, we will talk about how we unnecessarily over burden our mind and create confusions within ourselves by being too irrational and unrealistic. Every one of us faces tough time. The ‘problems’ and ‘troubles’ are bound to happen. We cannot have a ‘failure free, tension free, zero problem’ future ever. Thinking and wishing for such miracle to happen can only lower our self confidence, reduce our inner potential and consequently make us weak individuals who cannot sustain the challenges and tough times that we come across in our day to day living. On the other hand, if we learn to take problems as challenges, develop skills to tackle and manage these problems, much of the tension from our lives can be easily subtracted.

There are many types of problems and difficulties in our lives; some are the actual problems while others are perceived problems implying that just a change in thinking pattern and behavior can help you cope up better with tough times in life.

Let’s move to the first exercise which will help you elaborate what kind of problems you are having in your life and what you can do about them.

Exercise 1: Try listing all the issues that worry or strain you. Write them on a piece of paper. After you are finished, give yourself a break of ten to fifteen minutes. Take some walk and then return back to the ‘problem’ list. Broadly we can classify problems as follows:

untitled.PNG

Now hold your problem list and evaluate how many of the issues that bother and upset you are in your control and how many are just filling the list, draining your energy and are probably never going to get affected no matter what you do.

Exercise 1: Try to list your problems and after 10-15 minutes break, try to mark which problems can be managed by taking an action and which problems cannot be solved.

Let’s consider an example. Anita is an empathetic person; her friend is going through a relationship crisis. Anita is upset because of the ups and downs her friend is facing. She feels ‘her friend’s pain’ as her own pain and this has gone so much ahead that Anita finds herself constantly worried, tense and experiences mood fluctuations. Her progress at work is getting affected. She is having sleepless nights.

Ask yourself to evaluate Anita. Is she not taking unnecessary tension? Is there anything other than prayers and a good advice that she can offer to her friend in trouble? At the most she can help both of them to reconcile. Other than this, she cannot really do anything about it. Getting worried about things which are not in our control, which cannot be helped by our efforts are only causing us ‘pseudo troubles’. Once we learn to identify and eliminate those problems from our problem list which cannot be helped by us, we will be able to focus on the ‘genuine’ and real problems as well as live a happy life.

The title ‘’Y’’ shaped why refers to the questions that we often ask ourselves such as ‘’ Why does it always happen to me?’’, ‘’Why my important flight that was critical for my success got cancelled? It shouldn’t have happened to me’’, Why I am not as tall as my other class fellows?, and the list goes on. Fortunately some of the ‘’Y’s’’ or ‘’Why’’ can be answered but unfortunately many ‘’Y’s’’ have no answer, they are simply bound to happen and getting into ‘’Y this happened to me ‘’ is not some creative deal rather can only confuse you.

Tip 1: ‘Things which are not in your control should not be the ones to put you out of control’.

Likewise you can choose your own words, your own actions but you cannot help control others in speaking or doing the things which may be annoying to you. If you start to get upset because of ‘other people words and behavior’, you are doing yourself the greatest harm.

Let’s explain the factors that upset us often more than is required and make us repellant towards a happy life.

Behavioral aspects that help us do no good:

1. Ideas, perceptions & conceptions:

The most basic thing to deal with is our unrealistic approach towards our own self. Most of us think of ourselves as ‘’good’’ although in the wrong sense. We have developed an approach that bad things may happen to someone else but ‘’should not’’ happen to us.  We want to have ideal situations in our lives.  If we have