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Discipline your mind to live happily

I am in my sixties and I am healthy and fit. Until now, I successfully kept alarming conditions like diabetes and heart ailments at bay. I have no mental stress, worries or regrets. I enjoy my life to the fullest. Let me tell you a simple and one-word formula behind this content life — discipline. I also urge everyone to follow a disciplined regimen and make their lives happy forever.

Like any alert parent, my mother and father inculcated good habits in me from my childhood and discipline was prominent among them. But later, when I was immersed in the business and began chasing success and wealth, I forgot the importance of their words and suffered a lot. I nearly lost my life at one point, but fortunately, I got another chance at life, and since then I have never broken the discipline in my life.

Life teaches us in a very simple way. Humans can learn a lot from nature. Look at birds and animals. They start their day at dawn and rest in their shelter after sunset. They follow nature’s rules and timetable and so are happy. On the other hand, we humans often neglect the advice of our forefathers to live in tune with nature. We have adopted undisciplined, lazy and sedentary lifestyles, which have become the root cause of various ailments. We wake up late in the morning and sleep late at night. We take our meals of free will. We can’t avoid the temptation of junk and spicy food accompanied by carbonated beverages, smoking and alcohol. We neglect the importance of regular exercise and nutritious food. We spend quality time on entertainment, and that too in the virtual world. Why have we made our life so artificial?

The problem is serious, but the solution is simple. We have to return to our old wisdom. Discipline is nothing but making a timetable of our daily activities and keeping following it continuously. In my case, I follow two tutelages — one from a proverb and another from my mother’s advice. First is, early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. I have added three words to it. For me, it is- early to bed and early to rise, including regular exercise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. The other one is never eating and sleeping after 12. Have your daily meals before 12 am and 12 pm. Similarly, don’t go to sleep after these times. Once you are accustomed to your waking, exercising, eating and sleeping habits, you will experience that the flow of life is becoming smooth and steady without any turbulence.

Florence Nightingale once said: "Live your life while you have it. Life is a splendid gift. There is nothing small in it, for the greatest things grow by God’s law out of the smallest. But to live your life, you must discipline it."

Dr Dhananjay (Jay) Datar is a chairman and managing director of Al Adil Trading LLC.