Yahya Patel

A mentor is a wise older person every hero regularly sees in good stories, such as Gandalf from the Lord of the Rings, Yoda from Star Trek, or Alfred from Batman.

The mentor represents a bond between parent and child, teacher and student, god and man. The mentor is there to help the hero to face the unknown future and to accept adventure.

In most hero's stories, the hero is busy in an everyday world when they get called to an adventure. Initially, they will be reluctant, either not feeling equipped for the task or too comfortable with life as it is.

The mentor will hand the hero supplies, knowledge, and the confidence required to face the adventure. When the story seems to direct to a dead-end, mentors are the ones who provide aid, advice, or magical equipment. Mentors show that we often learn life's lessons from someone else.

Today's world has comfortably dispensed with most myth and superstition for the last few hundred years.

That's the Enlightenment legacy: we have approached a very rational approach to life. This has brought us many great things, but it has also left us with a sort of meaning gap.

Our need for meaning around the concept of death is still very present.

So it's no wonder that psychics and spiritual mediums have come in with a their version of meaning: even if they don't really offer useful, they give this impression anyway.

Psychics and mediums have become very popular because we are desperate for some sort of narrative that gives us a sense of something bigger.

We know they sometimes are theatrical, but they tap into our need for that feeling of wonder, of transcendence.

You only find meaning in life by finding a thing that's bigger than you and immersing yourself in that thing.

And meaning is more important than happiness.

It happens when we focus on how you believe other people are doing you wrong or what you think they are doing to cause you pain. It means focusing on other people's flaws and how you feel mistreated.
This fuels feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, and despair.

How someone else treats you is outside your control.
But noticing who or what you are exposing yourself to is within your control. And so you should focus on that.

Be honest with yourself. If you are part of the problem, then you are also part of the solution.

Stop blaming others. If you feel helpless over a situation, it’s usually because you can’t see your part in it. Be aware of how you are standing in your own way.

Humans are fascinated by bad news. The appeal of ‘wrong’ is a striking psychological phenomenon that baffles many researchers.

Just like we cannot look away from a car accident happening in front of our eyes, doomscrolling or endlessly scrolling through news feeds and social media content can feel soothing.

Doomscrolling is a modern equivalent of the late-night 11 o’clock news that many families watched before going to sleep.

People find a topic and then get sucked in a vortex of information, provided by never-ending news cycles. We are biologically driven towards attending to our worried mind and searching for answers about the things we are afraid of.

• People want to take a constant dose of the emotion they are feeling (anger, despair, anxiety) as a way to program their coping mechanism, as being in a high-alert position is useful in times of danger.
• Others are drawn towards the negativity, as they endlessly browse through the comment section where verbal brawls are common.
• Due to heightened emotions, people scroll way past their need for valuable information, getting inside a negative spiral of stories and images that stimulate and expand on their mental state.

A survey conducted in Germany revealed that media exposure frequency, duration and diversity showed a sharp spike during a global crisis and that led to increased depression symptoms and anxiety.

Phone usage (beyond the normal 1 to 2 hours a day) has already been linked to anxiety, depression and a sedentary lifestyle which then leads to various diseases.

.. or GAD is when all the news and information make a bed inside your head and make it like a huge twitter feed of worries. Symptoms include muscle tensions, fatigue and depression. Doom Scrollers have similar, undiagnosed effects.

When we doom scroll, we are in a way practising for having GAD, just like running everyday changes our muscles, doomscrolling everyday changes our brain and psychology.

Doom scrolling is similar to gambling behaviour, as we scroll to find anything uplifting too, hooked on the expectation of seeing something good.

Just like a gambler keeps pulling the lever of a slot machine, we keep thumbing upwards to scroll through the newsfeeds.

Possible ways to stop or minimize doom scrolling can be:

1. Keep a track of how much time you spend on social media doing nothing, identifying the negative frequency.
2. Set a timer or use the inbuilt apps to close the doomscrolling feeds.
3. Establish a time to put your phone away at the end of the day, or to turn it off whenever possible.
4. Support others to move away from their phones, and go see the real world.

... you have 2 options:

• You can complain about it and hope it magically changes.
• You can set out to make a change.

If you are unhappy you owe it to yourself to make a change -- life is too short to delay any longer.

There could be a million different reasons, and it’s up to you to identify them. 

Whatever they are, just know that you aren’t going to find true happiness until you first single out what the problem is. 

Negative thoughts will only generate negativity and unhappiness. If you are constantly having a negative outlook, what do you expect will happen?

You could change that by shifting your attitude and understanding that you are in full control, and fully capable of changing your situation.

Excuses are made to justify remaining miserable. Eliminate all self-doubt out of your mind and commit to developing a plan to become happy. 

Determine what your ultimate end goal is and reverse engineer the steps you will need to take to reach it. 

Simply taking action doesn’t guarantee results; your journey to happiness could include mistakes, rejection and disappointment. 

But if you don’t take action there is only one guarantee, and that is your situation will never improve and you will remain unhappy.

Negativity Bias, a trait long recognized by psychologists, states that we are more attentive to negative experiences, stories and emotions. This quality is a kind of survival mechanism that has now evolved into our taste in current events.

Bad news has an attention-grabbing quality that makes most news outlets focus on disasters, crimes and other negative stories while leaving aside the feelgood stuff that often feels irrelevant to the viewer or reader.

An extensive study covering 17 countries revealed that people show stronger emotional reactions to bad news.

The allure of negative stories is so strong that people actively search for them online, something not seen with good news.

The literary world is filled with self-help books written by people from all walks of life, promising greatness, success, riches and manifestation to people who have happily lapped them up.

The repetitive and patronising words in the books are ridiculed by the cultural elite, who think that one can navigate life with ease using intuition and original intellect.

Philosophers in the west wrote self-help books almost 2000 years ago, whereas in the eastern world, The Bhagavad Gita and the Four Noble Truths Of Buddhism are essentially self-help for having a better, more fulfilling life, and are not simply old religious texts as many assume.

The redeeming truth is that the world has always required guidance to become something other than a clerk, a doctor or an accountant.

Any person has a potential beyond just being raised by a family, getting educated, finding a job, getting married and then retiring (though all of that needs guidance too), and self-help books elevate our understanding in many aspects.

The human body and mind has limitless potential, and most of it is untapped in a majority of people.

The naysayers who ridicule self-help books are viewing a human life as a static pond. A person is a river which has the potential to go and merge with the ocean. The self-help books, then become a guiding path for a person to go beyond their prescribed limits and blossom into what nature truly intended them to be.

• We all want a bigger slice of life, not relishing what we are doing, but in a hurry to jump to the next thing.
• Completing a task isn’t filled with contentment, but with a rush to grab something else or switch to a different task.
• Even the book we read or the food we eat is in a hurry, as there is a craving to try the next thing.
• When we travel, there is always an ‘itch’ inside us to check out all the cafe’s, beaches or museums, as we cannot sit still in one place.

In the urge to eat a bigger portion of life’s cake, we believe we shouldn’t waste our time and grab it while we can, unable to relax or relish life in a calm manner.

It is almost as if there is an invisible race going on, and we need to compete with others by posting pictures on Instagram at the earliest.

Our mind is full of kind of greed to consume life to the maximum. This is not your garden variety ‘i want more money’ greed, but a force inside us to live life to the fullest.

• This greed makes us abandon our peace of mind, our moments of real appreciation, as we rush to the next ‘high’.
• An added disadvantage of this kind of behaviour is that one is not able to understand the true worth of what we have.

Indulging in the greediness of life’s pleasures will create the wanting of more and more, making us lose the moments that are really important or appreciable.

One has to let go of those urges to rush which cling you to more of them. Let go of the tendencies of greed in your mind and feel the worth of what you have and counter those thoughts with the virtue of generosity.

This is not the 'giving stuff to others' kind of generosity, but the generosity of turning yourself from the influence to the self-centred view.

Give your attention to those who actually need your time, pay attention to yourselves in what you are doing and experience. Be generous to your actions with your dedication and self-realization.

• Cooking and cleaning can be fun! The way these films artfully portray everyday tasks encourages us to work hard even at dusting.
• A human relationship is more than just romance. The relationship develops from knowing the other person, having a common goal, and wanting that other person to succeed and be protected.
• We all feel overwhelmed sometimes, but we must keep going. It will lead to a positive transformation if we choose to act. 

• We have a lasting impact on nature, and we must be conscientious of it. "Princess Mononoke" taught us that the war humanity wages with nature is a losing one. 

• Hardship, while difficult, can improve your outlook on life in the end.

Studies show that those who go on vacations are more likely to have:

1. A decreased risk of having a fatal heart attack for men;
2. An improvement in heightening one's reaction time
3. An improved quality of sleep; and
4. Women are less likely to develop heart disease

Vacations allow us to wind down from our stressful reality and let go of responsibilities for the mean time to improve our well-being. We often become happier after a vacation because of the excitement and anticipation we experience.

Vacations aren't only on tropical islands or a different place, sometimes it could be in the confines of your home. This is called a staycation and often provides the same benefits: an chance to rest, break from the usual routine, and time to play.

Oftentimes, it could be even more relaxing than an actual vacation because you wouldn't have to go through crowded airports, no jetlag, or fighting for a good spot at the beach.

1. Read books and watch movies that stimulates your desire for adventure;
2. Pick up that old musical instrument that you've procrastinated to learn;
3. Cook yourself something palatable and have an aperitif to go with it;
4. Discover new games, online or board games;
5. Visit a virtual museum;
6. Go to a nearby park or if you're feeling a little bit more adventurous, go hiking; and
7. Try studying a new language just in case you decide to go to the country of your choice.