A little advice for a successful relationship

A little advice for a successful relationship

 I would like to share one of the golden advice for a successful relationship is: to keep it simple. That’s it. Don’t search for ways to make the relationship happy or make it work. Notice how much effort it’s taking of you to make it happen. Do you struggle to be yourself in it? Are you aware you are following the advice of your inner voice to change, to solve or to be responsible for it? Not sure?

Think of a relationship that exhausts you, ask yourself this:

What am I not willing to accept in this relationship?

Who am I in the relationship?

Is it truthful?

In any relationship, the moment we place pressure to be someone other than who we are, we will lose our selves in the process. We believe it requires a-lot of effort to make a relationship work by being someone another expects us to be. The “right kind of” employer, wife, husband, mother, father, daughter, son, friend and list goes on.

Now you may say, of course, that is logical, but is it?

Can you place your hand on the heart and truthfully say you are at peace with yourself? Within you, there are no judgments on other relationships or on people? The habits in our minds make it complex with doubt, expectations and insecure about a future. So to be simple sounds easier than done.

“ It’s simple to be happy. It’s difficult to be simple” –Rabinath Tagore

I struggled with this through mindfulness, yoga classes, all the coaching sessions and all the positive thinking that one was supposed to have. We fill ourselves with techniques and not only overwhelm ourselves but strain the relationships that matter to us. Overwhelm clutters the space of peacefulness. The mind remained hooked on judgments. How many of you have that as well? So many techniques to so many rules, relationships destined for more misery until it came to a point of no return.

The relationship, we place most pressure on is with the ones we love the most. We don’t want to disappoint them, fight or argue. Those relationships can take a moment to break and a lifetime to mend, most often, because of pride or rather the lack of humility. When it comes to those we don’t care for so much, it’s easier. The pressure we place on ourselves is less. While the ones that no longer seem possible to mend will play on the mind for a long time.

To be simple is difficult because it requires us to stop all the fixing and reconstruction. Take the pressure off ourselves expecting to change it and make a relationship work by turning our attention to the self. Look into the dark corners of fear or sadness, in the shadows, let the purity of true pain come forth. It can take a while for the simple solution of forgiveness to show up, because pride will spend hours, building up a wall to not feel that awful pain that drowns in a never-ending high wave of insecurity. But it will show up.

In the “zen “ style approach, practices such as contemplation, right understanding, and inquiry, is a gentler approach where all systems of health will balance itself out. Freedom from the mind. The path to free the mind from the pains of emotions through “right questioning or contemplation” offers a simpler and effective approach to the self. For some, it may take a while to surface from all the pain. When it does, a gentle stillness arrives, even if thoughts go on. Funny enough, the answers on how to respond to your relationships will also spontaneously show up. Pride will have no place or space to convince you, and the relationships you felt like having, will be there.

Discover: #befriendurmind in relationships. Contact me: @kirti168if you would like to share insights about a particular relationship. Finally, feel this article may benefit someone, pay it forward and share it out !

The importance of managing Expectations

The importance of managing Expectations

Expectation, what is that?

The expectation is the killer of living life happily. It’s the quickest route to trap the mind in an endless cycle of worries, concerns, and struggles. When we want to change our lives lies in The importance of managing Expectations, where it must be clear that the word “everlasting” is not possible. When choices are made based on expecting a different outcome, one lives in a constant state of doing, attempting to manipulate change to work, and stress the self to get a particular outcome.

This kind of behavior has a tendency to limit us in our relationships, decision making and discovering creative solutions. Such behavior rarely gets a favorable outcome. In fact, at its’ core, expectations will keep one tired and burnt out, which is also why many, who are doing contemporary yoga and meditation are receiving very little benefits. We are still trying to control ourselves in the process of relaxation, self-care, and de-stressing.

All beings want a favorable outcome, they want some sort of guarantee which is usually driven by a fear of the unknown. Change only knows the unknown and not expectation. Many join self-development pundits and mimic their method, in hopes to get the same outcome without releasing any old habit patterns from the past. We try and substitute them as quickly as possible as though time is running out, which again brings us to expectations. One is caught in an endless cycle of “why am constantly repeating struggle?”

I really use to look up to coaches and marvel at their way of optimism. I often had forsaken my own practice given by my spiritual friend, because it was far more boring to surrender and give up stuff. I use to believe in needing goals and a commitment to a secure future, something coaches are famous for. It felt more exciting and motivating to have self-empowering tools to feel good and forget about dealing with the thorns of emotional struggle.

Eastern philosophy has continuously emphasized on the opposite. Temporary relief is still pain. The key is to develop a muscle of effort to be effortless, drop the expectations factor to live a so-called happier life. So why do we need so many tools, methods or right ways to achieve the secrets to success?Is the “right” image of success an unnecessary expectation?

I remember, as I had decided to sit with myself and find out who I really was, my spiritual guide had shared with me “Kirti, what you are doing is not it”. I was annoyed! Here, I was following what everyone expected, do what everyone was doing and be surrounded by “have a coach” syndrome to achieve this positive success. They seemed to be the answer to move forward in life, so why wasn’t it happening? I felt like an episode of Karate Kid, where I was given chopsticks to understand life.

I resisted his words, I did not want to hear them, in fact, the coaches all shared how negative I felt because I had all these emotions re-surfacing and was honest about them. Why was it so frowned upon? I often thought “What a loser, I must be” and I began to place this enormous pressure on myself to change to be ‘positive’. All it ever resulted into was: another dead-end. I felt bad, why judge coaches? They really do have good intentions but I just couldn’t fulfill some expectations. I couldn’t place my finger on it. Perhaps not everyone is meant to follow that road, I thought.

Early last year, the coaches who kept telling me what to do, lead me to have some freaky breakdown. I decided no way, no more. Taking the pressure of the self and surrendering at the moment, was similar to taking off a heavy coat of self-expectations and feeling a sudden sense of release. No more pressure to force the self to be someone who I really have no desire to be…and be ok with it.

It was scary, who am I…. if I let all these expectations go?

I could feel the arrows of hope, desires and all kinds of expectations stabbed into my back… and as I lay there on the bed, instead of breathing, I was bleeding and exhausted. The time to surrender had arrived and a freedom showed up. For the first time, I tasted a moment of freedom, that was motivation enough to relieve my addiction and un-coach the self.


Leaving the coat behind and into quietness, I became acquainted with the demon of self-expectations. No longer fighting it and using the tools of stillness, I would take her out for a cup of coffee. No more aggression, no more words, or forcing the self into meditation or yoga. Just practice, practice, practice undoing all the complexities of a personality and return to being a simple human being. Honesty and sincerity with the self is a skill to master, a skill to no longer hide from anything that showed up. A skill that the demon of expectations struggles with. Within a few days, my life started to fall apart together. Watching the mind was no longer an enemy or a friend, and the acceptance of subtle expectations became more visible.

What is my take on coaches… now?

I don’t have anything against them. I only understood, if you choose the path to become friends with yourself for the benefit of all your relationships, coaching and spirituality will clash. The road of truth is not for the light-hearted. It takes courage to fall down because the truth never lies and offers no temporary relief. A feeling of peace will arrive and can remain.

Coaches are beneficial but serve little purpose when it comes to being free from expectations. Spirituality trains the mind to un-train expectations, and allow stillness to be there even when the mind is chaotic. By sharpening the focus, self-pressure is relieved and a space of clarity shows up. For a long time, I felt guilty, letting amazing coaches down, because I sensed a danger with simultaneously mixing coaching and spirituality. It feels like a battle between reaching a goal and going goal-less,. It’s a choice on how to manage the expectation, a choice that really cannot be mixed, at least not in my situation.

Each day of practice, I find the self smiling at the most simple moments in relationships. The desire to achieve success or perfections has softened away and a patience to accept relationships as they arrive. I’m careful now when clients approach me for #befriendurmind techniques. There is one question I now ask: do you want to feel better or do you want to be honest with yourself? Two very different intentions, roads and options in managing expectations.

One thing is certain, freedom is a goalless goal, that which is clear from any expectations. Regardless if you like the situation or not, the shift in it largely depends on the way expectations are managed. This requires a skillful approach to questioning our intentions, motivations, and desires before we express ourselves.

The Wise teachers of the East understood something that only constant practice to be effortless delivers: it’s the art to manage expectations. It will bring a lasting contentment, and the choice is left to every individual.

Send me an email kirti@kirti168.com or on social media @kirti168 if you have a question. Get your personalized calmness guide. Found this article useful? pay it forward and share it , maybe it will change someone’s else perceptions along the way and their relationship.




















The fact is:














Why clients recommend the Programs of #BeFriendurMind for their Relationships


Why clients recommend the Programs of #BeFriendurMind for their Relationships

I’m not for bragging, actually, it’s because we don’t know each other yet, all these recommendations are here! I mean why invest? You would want to have some trust that this program will be beneficial to you and for your relationship, right?


I agree!

Getting to know someone to befriend your mind, is an important, almost sacrilege decision. This is about our relationship goals. Not meditation, mindfulness or yoga, that is all a process. But having the right cocktail that will actually detox instead of toxificate the mind is crucial to your wellbeing!

This program is about “coming back to awareness”. When you are aware of yourself in the speech, emotions, and thoughts, the value of calmness and patience will arise and you can choose to see different perspectives. It’s difficult in this digital age to find the stillness in daily life, but there is a way, by using our busy life itself. Strange right?

Can I share a story with you about the person who changed my life, my expression of Relationships and pass on his words of wisdom to you?

He told me not to go on retreats or even vipassana meditations. At the time as a yoga teacher, I struggled, I wanted this, like a spoilt child wanting a lollipop. But years later, I understood what he was encouraging me, was not to not run away from problems but to walk through them and make peace with them. It gave a whole new meaning to the Godfathers word of wisdom “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer”.

Who you really are, is the inspiration for every relationship. You want to know more. Book a free 30 minutes and tell me whats going on. At the most I can say no, BUT, I may have someone in my network who can help you!

Up for it?


Relationship tips: move anger to calmness without meditation


Relationship tips: move anger to calmness without meditation

Your family unit is a mess,  anger is in the way….. it’s affecting your professional life…don’t deny it, many can see it. You struggle at home to express yourself, worried how the other person will respond, everyone is angry, then you go to work and take it out there. But then… one day… you have this one argument that is a no win-win for either of you, you leave the house but the argument continues in your head as you go on with your day.

You tried the whole mindfulness approach but hey! stuff gets in the way, mindfulness seems like a long process and you need a “cure” now! Yes, they are excuses, but the fact is you are not inspired. You feel more tensed than relaxed in your relationship and wonder where did it all go wrong. Both of you want to be right and neither wrong.

But remember… there will be that day… you know the one that you did not expect, that day you wished you never argued and stayed so strong in your opinion. You know, that day you said: “ I wish I had not….”

Anger, what’s the cost?

Why do we put off the practice of training our mind off, until something drastic happens? No one thinks it can happen to them, but how many lives have you known where sudden change shifted everyone’s life around it?

FACT: The brain eventually does get tired and fatigue itself but when you finally do want to take a different approach you can’t get rid of the consequences of putting it off in the first place. Your mind is like a computer, if you fill it with too many files, crashes will happen. Trust me, I’ve seen clients tell me the words “later”, and thinking things will fall into place but stayed angry until the day they were just too tired. It’s really painful to watch this because you hurt you.

 What is the cost and return on investment of experiencing Anger?

An example of cost: I get you, even as an ex-yoga teacher, I burnt -out even after the whole mindfulness courses. I burnt out, too, empathy fatigue, they called it, maybe it was the 8 classes a day. I call it a wake-up call or success fatigue. Working too hard on the company and costing my self- worth. What is the point of financial security for a rainy day, when the rainy day will be your health failing because of all the over effort getting the wealth in the first place and forsaking your emotional balance?

I felt something was missing, what was it…. So I stopped practicing the one size fits all mindfulness and started watching my mind using all the tools I had without sitting for meditation, I sat in stillness and gave myself the same practice I gave clients…. I saw the secret why it was not working and what works:

What wasn’t working was a mind forced to practice mindfulness, will never feel the effects of mindfulness. Because it’s done with the same way as I worked, with aggression. It’s the same energy quality as anger. Clearing the mind really depends on the kind of energy the mind runs on.

Now Mindfulness tackles this, yet for many, the quality of its benefit is low, because once a week really doesn’t do the trick but 66 days of small tasks will. Science has shared this evidence with us. The investment of 66 days, is like investing in the bank, every day a small increment through observation. Every day you invest small in yourself, will have long-term returns.

Yoga was brilliant in breaking this process down. Not the one you attend at a yoga class for 1.5 hours for exercise. Did you know that a mind is prepared for meditation? Did you know you reap results before sitting for meditation? Yoga had nothing to do with postures, in fact, all they are is an instrument to develop patience with ourselves and most of all for meditation to happen automatically…. yes, automatically.

Yoga is about clearing out the stuck energy. Are you aware of the thoughts in our head can influence our hormonal, immune and nervous system?…. and yoga practices clears this out, but not through yoga exercises alone.

Every mind expresses their personality differences. So very briefly, there are three kinds of energies behind the way we express ourselves. ( If you want the quiz to find out which one you are, you have to join the email list)

These three energies are:

whose mind is full of thoughts and keep thinking about them as a problem, they don’t want to take action, we call them the over -worrier

  1. whose mind is many thoughts trying to fix it, burning their energy , we call them over-thinker.
  2. whose mind is many thoughts scattered all over the place, they feel it’s too much, we call them the overwhelmed.

We approach our relationship with one of these three kinds of relationship.

Now let’s apply like mathematics ( though numbers are not my fave thing).

Ok, so roll with this for a moment, let’s observe 2 kinds of stuck situations you can have in your relationship with these energies:

Sometimes a relationship feels like a no solution right? whatever way you decide, you feel like its a dead -end. I call it the ( f*ck if you do and f*ck if you don’t approach) Both of these inspires anger.

Which one can be beneficial? Neither….. here is why….

The f*cked if you do approach:

Anger and Kidding me
Credit goes to giphy.com 

This can be split into two: 

1.The Over-thinker tends to be like this: your energy burns out because you keep trying to force a solution… The word: Trying is the key. How many times do you use that word? It’s dirtier than f*ck. Trying is a dead give away you are doing too much effort. The effort is needed but a fake effort is costing you.

2. The Over-whelmed tends to be like: constantly searching for the many many solutions and burns out by overwhelming itself, in forms of nervousness.

There is a tendency to hide these fears or not recognize them as causing trouble. With both these energies, don’t jump right away and say I don’t have fears, everyone does, we just don’t like anyone to know. What fear shows up in:

  1. Expecting a certain outcome to prevent something from happening that you don’t want. Notice your intention
  2. The effort it takes to stress on it and force something else to happen.

There is no cookie cutter approach to our mind, this is a bird’s eye view. 

 Start today and recognize it by this: what is driving you, is it your action fear-driven or relaxing in awareness without expectation?Notice it anytime of the day.

The f*cked if you don’t approach:

anger and sadness
Credit goes to giphy.com

Very often the over-worrier experiences this. Your energy doesn’t want to move but it is. In fact, it’s draining you by only thinking about the problem over and over and it’s probably suppressing or clogging the energy! The energy is spent differently, its weighing you down, because the voice in your head convinces you, what you want to do, will hurt another and judging you.

The first key is to: Observe yourself in this self-chatter and notice how involved you are in the fear and watch yourself step away from it. It’s usually called creating the gap or space… in this space, lots of choices and opportunity happens, because the brain juices can flow. 

Remember: in many instances, we fluctuate in between these three types but one is always more dominant, noticing is vital. The mind training stuff is effective when you can balance watching the self and strategically implement a decluttering process depending on the state of mind. This is key!

It takes practice, commitment, and patience. This is why science talks about 66 small habits or why even the Asians understood something with all the Eastern Philosophy and it has been successful even in their professional lives.

If you have patience in your financial investment, why not in your relationship investment?

What we can do together:

I always ask clients to tell their story with no filter, with one question: ” what’s on your mind?…what is it saying and send it to me”.It’s like the cupboard filled with worries, concerns, and have no clue where to start organizing or clearing up the mess.

Like the Marie Kondo book, clearing up the mind shifts the winds of your relationships, because:

  1. You begin to be aware of what works and doesn’t.
  2. We don’t know where or what to start looking, we clear out the suffering and train the mind to recognize what to see that is hurting you and your family.

Then we get down to the blueprint and implementation of it all. Training the mind is mindfulness, but we don’t necessarily need to sit for 20 minutes a day. We begin with seeing our life as it is then meditation will come easier to us.

Nothing breaks a heart more than to see a family fall apart because of arguments and emotional mismanagement. We have a choice, why wait to do something, when small daily tasks can influence your life, right there and then?

Want to discover more about the #befriendurmind practice, Tell me whats going on, schedule in a free 30-minute appointment and find out what is available for you to change your life, let’s make a workable plan and enhance your relationships. If not, get the book its available on Amazon, iBooks, Barnes & Nobles as an e-book. If your family matters than You matter… don’t forget that!. Contact me: https://linktr.ee/kirti168.