Direction of Life

By Nevzat Keles

Pour tears after 5 or 10 years for your time and dreams which you could not make come true. Crash your head on the walls as you haven't done anything about what you could. Whine to your close friends. Get sad. Listen to melancholic music. Complain about the time which is passing so fast. Continue to postpone your goals and dreams to the next years.

You should get rid of your mood being unhappy for the weekdays but just happy for the weekend. Waiting for weekend, holiday or retirement to live is big nonsense. In fact, you are continuously postponing your life without being aware of that. As if you have an evidence for more enough time to come. You prefer to define your happiness under specific circumstances, and most of the time postpone your happiness instead of living the moment. However, the happiness or unhappiness is actually in your hands.
This is a choice. A choice you should make sooner or later. Just like the choice Neo is offered between a red pill and a blue pill to go out of the Matrix. This is the moment of truth and you have to decide now. Will you take the red pill and reject to be prisoned in the Matrix, like all the other people in order to walk on your own path? Or will you take the blue pill and stay in the comfortable simulated reality of the Matrix, like all the other silent and obedient millions of people. In other words, will you reject the chance of building your own life and walking on your own path easily? Yes, this is just up to you.
Now, move on. Get into action and stop postponing yourself and your life. Take a step. Today or even right now. Otherwise, pour tears after 5 or 10 years for your time and dreams which you could not make come true. Crash your head on the walls as you haven't done anything about what you could. Whine to your close friends. Get sad. Listen to melancholic music. Complain about the time which is passing so fast. Continue to postpone your goals and dreams to the next years. If you really want to be successful then for sure you will be. You are the only one who can prevent yourself from being as successful as in your dreams. Means, you are the only one who can stop you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nevzat Keles
• Release date: Aug 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201392703

Book preview

Direction Of Life

Published by Nevzat Keles

Translated by Murat Yavuz

––––––––

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite eBook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

I would like to give my special thanks to my dear friend Murat Yavuz for his great efforts and enthusiasm for translating my book originally published in Turkish Hayatin Yonu into English. Nevzat Keles.

INDEX

Introduction and Back Cover

Ying Yang - Balancing the Terror and Enthusiasm of Being Human

What People Need Most?

Find Your Life Purpose for Happiness

Thoughts, Emotions and Fears

You Will Never Be Complete

How Fragile Creatures We Are!

Fears & Fear of Failure and Death

Why Are You So Afraid Of Change

Procrastination

Leave Your Comfort Zone

Death As a Motivation Tool

Motivate Yourself – Techniques of Self-Motivation

How Ordinary People Become Super Successful People

Power of Habit (Good-Bad)

Get Into Routine & Power of Routine

Bad Habits; Chains of Your Mind

Time Management

Pareto and Parkinson Principles

Opportunities and Risks in Life

Get On Action!

Never Stop & Never Give Up!

You Are On the Right Path

The Present

The One and Only (Unique) Truth of Life

Being Aware& Breathing & Meditation

Meditation of Gratitude

Universal Law of Attraction & Karma

Fate Vs Fatalism & Prayer

Get To Know Your Ego (Consciousness, Mind)

Unconditional Love and Compassion

Either Seem As You Are Or Be As You Seem

Sharpen Your Axe

Stay Away From Agitation and Emotion Vampires

Taking Cold Showers and Life Lessons

Don’t Waste Your Energy

Let Your Mobile Phone Increase Your Virtue and Wisdom

Power of Communication

Take Care of Yourself

What I Have Learnt From Life

Introduction and Back Cover

You only live once. Aware or not, you are granted with a huge potential as a human being. But unfortunately, you dedicate yourself on killing your hours, days and years with daily interests or worthless fun. Postponing your projects, self-improvement plans to next week, next month or next year are becoming your usual ritual.

You should get rid of your mood being unhappy for the weekdays but just happy for the weekend. Waiting for weekend, holiday or retirement to live is big nonsense. In fact, you are continuously postponing your life without being aware of that. As if you have an evidence for more enough time to come. You prefer to define your happiness under specific circumstances, and most of the time postpone your happiness instead of living the moment. However, the happiness or unhappiness is actually in your hands.

You always followed someone’s projects and tried to walk in footsteps of others. Always admired someone’s career, wealth and stories of success. You always envied that respectable and successful person who has found his ultimate project and clear direction. You have tried to be like him, to get what he asks and to follow his path. But obviously this didn’t work out. However, you need to find your own project and walk your own path instead of following others. Every single human being is unique and equipped with different abilities and gifts. Each single person has his own way, his own project and his own mission in this world. All you need to do is to think and find that project of your own. One man’s life cannot be simply consisted of eating, drinking, sleeping, populating the world, gathering wealth and prosperity and just living among the given boundaries. Your life should have a more significant purpose and you are probably meant for something bigger.

Telling that with one sentence, this book has been written to help you finding your own path and walking on that. I have tried to make this book as useful as a pill for myself and my readers. I have not written this book just for you and for the readers but for myself as well. I have not yet accomplished the whole stuff in this book but these are the stuff I want to and try to achieve. I have postponed myself for years and wasted my valuable time with nonsense. I have preferred the unhappiness although the happiness was just in my hands. Unfortunately I couldn’t be also one of those who can live the moment. On the contrary, I have stayed in the past or try to live in the future. But I am now determined to improve myself. I have decided to live the moment with joy, to face my fears, to discover my real potential, to steer my own life, to leave the earth in a better shape than I have found it in order to light a candle for brightness instead of swearing at the dark. Yes indeed, I have written this book more for myself than for you. I have thought that I could probably do something about changing ourselves which is one of the most difficult things. I have written to improve myself by writing and by reading which will help to write better. Yes, my time had come for new destinations but I could not pack up yet. I surely knew that one could never be fully ready. I have written that I could achieve it by reading and writing more. What could we achieve in this world if that hope would never exist? Said Montaigne" Let me tell that first, I have written this book for myself, for my close friends and for my family. I am the book itself. As much as I made up the book, the book made me up. I am not telling you the stuff what I already know but I am actually learning myself. I have written to let know; I am not telling to you, but telling that all to myself.

What about you? What is your plan? What do you think about the life, you and the universe? Do you live for yourself or for the others in the world? Do you have any plan about your own life? Do you look for success or fun in your life? Have you discovered your own life purpose? Are you able to change yourself by getting rid of that routine of yours? Will you be able to reflect that huge potential of yours to your life? As the professor asked during one of my favorite psychological seminar; ‘what do you wait for more that your orchid can bloom?’ You are the one who can answer all those questions. If you think that you live a life with boundaries which are drawn by someone else. If you think that you only play the given roles inside. If you think that you have no right to choose for your own life anymore. Then you cannot let anything pass by as it has happened till now. You need to steer your own life from now on. If you do so, you can then feel happy, peaceful and completed. Are you really waiting the day that your orchid will bloom itself? Don’t ever wait for that! Because, it will not happen. Everybody wants to make significant changes in his life. But very few can make this happen. Most of them wait for a magical touch instead of getting into action. If you think that you don’t know what to do or you have no time for anything, this book with useful information will help to make you aware how to find your own goals and life projects. I will share with you the knowledge which I have learnt from books written by several great philosophers and scientists. This knowledge contains very useful techniques which will help you to find your project and to bring this into life. So that, while you will be steering your own life, you will be also building yourself with full awareness.

This is a choice. A choice you should make sooner or later. Just like the choice Neo is offered between a red pill and a blue pill to go out of the Matrix. This is the moment of truth and you have to decide now. Will you take the red pill and reject to be prisoned in the Matrix, like all the other people in order to walk on your own path? Or will you take the blue pill and stay in the comfortable simulated reality of the Matrix like all the other silent and obedient millions of people. In other words will you reject the chance of building your own life and walking on your own path easily? Yes, this is just up to you.

Now, move on. Get into action and stop postponing yourself and your life. Take a step. Today or even right now.  Otherwise you will pour tears in 5 or 10 years for your time and dreams which you could not make come true. Crash your head on the walls as you haven’t done anything about what you could. Whine to your close friends. Get sad. Listen to melancholic music. Complain about the time which is passing so fast. Continue to postpone your goals and dreams to the next years. If you really want to be successful then for sure you will be.  You are the only one who can prevent yourself being as successful as in your dreams. Means, you are the only who can stop you...

Ying Yang - Balancing the Terror and Enthusiasm of Being Human

Inside each of us, there is the seed of both good and evil. It's a constant struggle between dark and bright. Inside each of us, there is a tension of cold and hot. Each evil person has something good inside even if that is as small as a spot. And each good has something bad inside in the same way. As we are all sinners somehow, we are also pure and clean in some way. Nobody's all good or bad, and nobody's all light or dark. Each darkness has a bright side even if that is as small as a spot. Inside each person there is a constant struggle between good and evil. Eckhart Tolle defines that as a loop of pain and pleasure or a loop of survival and death. He tells as; every pleasure or emotional high contains within itself the seed of pain: its inseparable opposite, which will manifest in time.

Ying-Yang truly defines us, our humanity, our conscience, our traffic between good and evil, our fluctuation between good acts and sins, our traffic between mercy and cruelty. These extremities are in fact very close to each other letting easy transitions from one to the other. They are much closer to each other than you ever thought. When you are close to success, the seeds of failure can easily destroy all your investment.  On the contrary when you are in depths of failure, be just ready to bloom. Success in personal improvement has also seeds of failure inside as failure has the marks of success arising inside. While your advantages may come out actually as your disadvantages, the opposite way is also possible by finding a way to transform your disadvantages into something good. Just like you start getting stronger when you accept your weakness.

Moments of pleasure and happiness inside you... Those pleasurable moments of you contain also the seeds of unhappiness and melancholy. The more you think you are happy, the closer you are to the sadness. Because you become more fragile when connected to the happines and pleasure. Those pleasurable moments start to hurt when not repeated. They are even inadequate when repeated. This is something like an addiction of alchohol, tobacco and drugs. You always tend to repeat the moments of pleasure and being high. Human brain releases dopamine and seretonin during these moments. These hormons makes you addicted to the subject act. You want to repeat that act in an incremental way. Eating hot is a perfect example. If you like eating hot, you increase the level of hot at each meal without being aware. Because the previous level is not good enough anymore. The pleasurable things make us addicted to them and start to hurt when they lack.

Ying-Yang loop comes across us everywhere. For example when everything is good in your life and you are happy then somehow you let go and don’t care about your health and condition. You eat fast food, gain weight, sleep and wake up irregularly. You just come to yourself when you get ill due to this incorrect life style. After that you start going on a diet, doing sports, eating well and care about your sleep and health. Just like me not caring about my chronic slipped disc disease and living as I want without caring about my weight and doing no sports. At the end, I found myself being careful about all when I got my slipped disc surgery with some screws put into my back.

Ying-Yang loop concept is also available within countries, governments or empires.  In entire life of human being, at empires getting stronger, bigger and then getting torn down, at anywhere in history. Nations get bigger and stronger in the same way and then they become empires at the end. The phases of standstill, regression, fading and dissolution follow after. There is no nation or empire which has not experienced this loop. Empires of Rome and Ottoman are good examples. Look at the magnificent kingdoms, empires and nations. Think about Turkey 20 years ago. Turkey was not so strong back then as it is now. Turkey was thought to be secure under NATO protection. Wars between Iraq and Iran or conflicts between Israel and Arabic countries were not even threats for Turkey. Problem of Palestinians or issues of Syria government were not something to deal. Turkey was standing in the middle of everything without interrupting any of these issues and following the vision of Peace at Home, Peace in the World. Greece was the biggest threat and enemy anticipated by Turkey at that time. Military readiness was even planned based on this threat. But Turkey has shown a great development in fields of economy, politics and military. Difference between Turkey and developed countries got smaller. While getting richer, Turkey got powerful in terms of military, gained power and self-confidence and then started to get involved into the conflicts of neighbor countries mostly due to increasing threat of terrorism. Turkey even shot down a Russian jet. This was such a happening that could trigger the World War 3 and could cause a great destruction. Fortunately this could be overcome with the common sense of Russia. The reality is actually; while a state is getting bigger and stronger, this brings independence and enables them dictating their own politics to the neighboring geography. This increases the risk of war and destruction. If there is no regression and destruction then there is also no improvement and growth. Because, nothing can grow and get stronger forever. This loop of destruction and growth delivers the life itself. The last empire, United States of America for instance may seem to be torn down soon. I assume we are going to witness that.

Human being is also a piece of this Ying-Yang loop and a victim as well. While one side of human desires to rise and improve the other dark side holds on to pleasure and dirty feelings. Means, while one side of human desires to be a great tree with branches rising to sky, the other side desires to take roots into the darkest deeps of the ground. As if the only way of rising branches till sky is having deep roots. As if wisdom and virtue cannot exist without bad.  Just like matter and anti-matter... The most important point is which side of human being will dominate at the end; just like the Matter won the war against Antimatter.

Sometimes it is impossible to live without getting terrified of being a human. I guess Nietzsche would just say so. Dreadful smell of food stuck between your teeth for 2 days, the reality that human body is consisted of mostly blood and clot, the fact that most beautiful women, the most handsome men, the greatest artists and scientists naturally farting, the fact that their sweat smelling bad and the dirt accumulating in their noses, our skins what we think as clean being a home for billions of viruses, fungi, and bacteria, our smelly feet (my feet don’t smell), the fact of smelly dirt piling up in our nails with humidity and fungus living in most intimate areas. God telling in Quran in Surah of Alak at 2. Aya as Created man, out of a (mere) clot of congealed blood. And telling in Surah of Nahl at 66. Aya as  And there is a lesson for you in cattle: We give you a drink from their bellies, from between waste and blood, pure milk, refreshing to the drinkers.(Thanks to God) Who wouldn’t say God is the greatest upon these words.

Wise Indian leader Don Juan tells "warrior is the one who can balance the terror and enthusiasm of being human. Definitely Don Juan was pointing out the psychologic, humanistic and bestial aspects of being human. Due to the nature of being a human, one can go all the way to the end in terms of wisdom and goodness; one can also go all the way to the end in terms of wildness, malice and perversion. He is pointing out that human being has no limits due to its nature. This is for sure Ying-Yang itself. Don Juan was indicating that human being with the cruel wildest beast inside can terrorize around, can make the most frightening massacres, can be wilder and more scary than the wildest animals and can be more disgusting, perverse and evil. What human being can do in greed and malice has also no limits. Some people have no limits at perversion. After performing all possible perverse stuff, innocent children or babies can even be the next target. Human can be so villain that you cannot imagine. One person can torture the other one with all possible forms. Without settling with it, he can even slaughter and eat that person. This can be seen as an extreme example but there are slaughters ongoing all around the world by using mass destruction weapons. Thousands of people can be killed with powerful bombs pressing just one button. Frightening level of unconscious and madness. There is also other aspect of being human which is enthusiasm. Human being is such a creature with no limits of improving in terms of wisdom, goodness and virtue. Enthusiasm of human being has also no limits at art, science, love, mercy and life esthetic. It is mentioned in holy Quran several times that human can be more worthless than an animal but also can reach to a higher level than an angel.

I was in Izmit to meet some friends recently. My wife and daughter have accompanied me to go to shopping. I met with them after meeting with my friends. We have seen a building with 4 flats with one half already torn down on our way to the restaurant. A demolition grab machine was tearing the other half spraying water to keep the dust down. It got my attention immediately. By each machine hit the building was collapsing slowly. Its columns, roof, concrete blocks of ceiling were falling apart from each other at each impact. Of course my wife and daughter kept on walking to go to the shopping mall leaving me there. Me and some other guys were watching this as if we are watching a famous theatre act. My daughter read it somewhere. If a group of men are watching something together, then it is either a match or a beautiful lady or a demolition machine. This situation can be also defined as Jerry Seinfeld tells "men peeping a closed construction area from a hole they can find. But my instinct was a bit different. I was watching this magnificient demolition like the loop of death and extinction  which is the transition power of life. Instead of dramatizing this demolition with what’s lived inside this building, I was perceiving it as a key and step of regeneration. This old building had to be torn down in order to build a new building where new people will live and new lives will rule. This is just like the trees in autumn losing their leaves, reducing themselves to their toughest parts; stems, trunks, branches and bark in order to prepare for cold. This watching of mine was just like Bediuzzaman leaving the mature fruits on trees and watching them going off for months with a great contemplation. This was just like a state or empire requiring to fall into parts in order to get bigger and stronger. Just like the loop of life. Just like the fellings of demolition, disappointment and unhappiness after a person being addictive of pleasure in the loop of pain and pleasure. Just like the death after life, Ying-Yang itself.

Ying-Yang is a duality, forcing to keep the energy apart. Duality is plus and minus. Means the energies of life such as; good – bad, right – wrong, female – male, all are known with opposites. You wouldn’t know good without bad. You wouldn’t know bright without dark. Male would not exist without female. Good acts would have no value if there are no sins. So then; malice, ignorance and darkness should not be judged. Understanding things only with your values of good would mean that you are ignoring all the other aspects. And we, human beings are so fragile indeed. Maybe we suffer as we lose our singularity. Duality and seperation causes pain. Will you be able to understand each creature, nature and that space letting anything to be possible created by Allah (God).  Will you be able to figure out that you are actually surrounded by completeness. Awareness of singularity can bring us happiness and peace.

I am finishing here with a paragraph from the book of Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. On the level of form, there is birth and death, creation and destruction, growth and dissolution, of seemingly separate forms. This is reflected everywhere: in the life cycle of a star or a planet, a physical body, a tree, a flower; in the rise and fall of nations, political systems, civilizations; and in the inevitable cycles of gain and loss in the life of an individual. There are cycles of success, when things come to you and thrive, and cycles of failure, when they wither or disintegrate and you have to let them go in order to make room for new things to arise, or for transformation to happen. If you cling and resist at that point, it means you are refusing to go with the flow of life, and you will suffer. It is not true that the up cycle is good and the down cycle bad, except in the mind's judgment. Growth is usually considered positive, but nothing can grow forever. If growth, of whatever kind, were to go on and on, it would eventually become monstrous and destructive. Dissolution is needed for new growth to happen. One cannot exist without the other. The down cycle is absolutely essential for spiritual realization. You must have failed deeply on some level or experienced some deep loss or pain to be drawn to the spiritual dimension. Or perhaps your very success became empty and meaningless and so turned out to be failure. Failure lies concealed in every success, and success in every failure. In this world, which is to say on the level of form, everybody fails" sooner or later, of course, and every achievement eventually comes to naught. All forms are impermanent.

What People Need Most?

Maslow's_Hierarchy_of_Needs_Pyramid.jpg

Maslow's hierarchy of needs (often represented as a pyramid with five levels of needs) is a theory in psychology proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation in Psychological Review. Maslow initially stated that individuals must satisfy lower level deficit needs before progressing on to meet higher level growth needs. Maslow expanded the field of humanistic psychology, explaining how human needs change throughout an individual's lifespan and how these needs influence the development of personality. Maslow's hierarchy of needs ranks human needs from the most basic physical needs to the most advanced needs. Human cannot get to next level of needs in terms of development without fulfilling the needs in current category.

Maslow categorizes the needs from the lowest level to the highest as below;

Physiological needs (breathing, food, water, sex, sleep, homeostasis, excretion)

Safety needs ( security of: body, employment, resources, morality, the family, health, property)

Love, Belonging needs (friendship, family, sexual intimacy)

Safety needs (self esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of others, and respect by others.

Self actualization needs (morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of prejudice, acceptance of facts.

According to Maslow, one would be at the level of necessities which that person’s daily activities aiming to fulfill. Without fulfilling the necessities of current level, one does not recognize the necessities of next level. For example; one who is able to access food but without feeling secure would not need to read books to improve his world vision. Montaigne tells in his Essays: It is so naïve to teach our children the stars and their motion in high sky before teaching their world. Anaximander wrote to Pythagoras stating "How can I deal with levels of stars where death and slavery are present threats? (Because, they were preparing for a war against Persian by then). Human is motivated