Go with the flow to evolve...

Lakshmi Kothaneth Are you thinking of self-development? Another group of people are thinking of space development.

It is not just us who have been looking at skies. Generations before us have been focusing on the sky for navigation to keep up with the sea routes.

But now we are thinking of space as space - the huge mysterious area not to terraform other planets, but for economic diversification as a potential for technology is tremendous.

But no matter how far we go we still need to know how we work internally.

According to experts there are three components of self-development - physical, mental and emotional.

Let us reflect on that a bit. As per the explanation physical development looks at health and energy, mental development focuses on developing intelligence, knowledge and skills and emotional development deals with managing emotional health and relationships.

We spent years on mental development with grading, assessment and evaluation but we hardly keep up with physical development unless there is a physical training class in school, and when it comes to emotional development there is hardly any effort spent on the area.

We are born with certain qualities, and then we acquire some more as we grow with life’s experiences. Some of which are positive and others could be negative.

We carry these qualities and if we are not corrected or do not have an inclination to overcome these obstacles then we carry the baggage to college, to workplace and then of course to family. And probably just like magnets we would attract similar patterns. The baggage gets heavier and soon unbearable.

The question is why don’t we give equal importance to physical and emotional development as much as mental development?

Today, however, we are beginning to realise their importance in health both physical and mental. If only we could have managed to bring in physical fitness routine, we could have avoided medications. And if we only knew how damaging suppressed emotions are to the body, we would have learnt to manage emotions earlier and saved relationships.

The stigma attached to seeking help for mental health steals away many opportunities from people who need it. Modernisation made living easy but brought in physical ailments.

CONFLICTS

In Japan a 99-year-old person is successfully rescued from underneath the rubble after the earthquake, in Gaza children who have not seen real life succumb to bombardments due to the conflict.

So where do conflicts come from?

People are physically fit and mentally knowledgeable, but are not able to manage emotions, or else why would one want to inflict harm on others.

Why would one not be able to help others, to teach children from whom education has been snatched away, and to get them water to drink leave alone medicines. If one is caught up in the internal conflicts why is not one able to survive or seek help?

The self awareness is equally important and the ability to self analyze. But motivation sometimes might need lot more acceleration than we think because it is the task of moving out of a dwelling we are used to.

There are numerous ways of coming out of the sticky mud that we have created on our own with our thoughts even if it is circumstances. The most important or essential one at first would be movement. Notice how we have come back to physical development. Maybe it is time we really took charge of finding the balance by developing all three components (physical, mental and emotional) from a young age.

This is probably why sports and extracurricular activities are important in schools. Many also feel as they grow older there is not much significance to exercises or self care. But maybe that is when we need it the most.

As we get older, emotions change too. Maybe our dependency on others grow, maybe our loved ones or friends are not around us anymore.

That is the beauty of life and we have to continuously learn and relearn, and the only way is to evolve, whether we have to learn the digital world, AI or catch up with space economy.

We can continue to bloom as we learn something new each day.