How we can train our mind to have faith in ourselves?

From: Gouranga Sarkar

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
question from Gaurang Sarkar how can we train our mind to have faith in ourselves answer by first understanding who we ourselves actually are and then training ourselves to live accordingly in today’s competitive world this is a materialism often the word self-confidence is bandied around very passionately and frequently so the idea that we should have confidence in ourselves is considered very welcome very desirable and people feel that we should have a lot of confidence in ourselves it is true that we need to have confidence but that confidence is not so much in ourselves as independent self-sufficient entities separate from God as a self in self-confidence is often not understood in the Bhagavad Gita Krishna describes in 15.7 he describes that all living beings are my part and parcel so we are parts of Krishna and being parts of Krishna we have his potency and to the extent we connect ourselves with him to that extent we get power intelligence and grace from him so rather than trying to base our self-confidence on our material abilities which usually involves comparing our material abilities with others’ material abilities others with whom we are in competition and that only creates either inferiority complex or superiority complex which either way makes our life more complex so we focus on not comparing ourselves with others for gaining self-confidence not by thinking that there are so many people lesser than me because then whenever we find somebody who is better than us immediately our self-confidence will get threatened or even deflated so therefore our self-confidence comes not from it shouldn’t come from comparing ourselves with others but by comparing ourselves with ourselves that means we compare who we presently are with who we potentially are potentially all of us as souls as parts of Krishna are filled with all good qualities and are meant to act as empowered instruments of Krishna for our own ultimate good and for the good of everyone else so presently to the extent we are disconnected with Krishna to that extent we will be able to utilize our potential only partially and that’s why the more we connect ourselves with Krishna with our intelligence and with our heart that means we study the philosophy of Bhagavad Gita and then we offer our heart to Krishna we try to redirect our love towards Krishna then by that we will find our confidence increasing enormously because then we will understand that we are never alone and what we are doing is not just according to our own ideas we understand that we are always with Krishna and we are doing Krishna’s work in this world even if it is our own when we are pursuing our own careers actually when we become connected with Krishna when we become devoted to him then we are not pursuing our own careers independently we are pursuing our careers for Krishna’s sake because we want to represent Krishna respectably in this world and we want to use our talents which he has given us for his glorification and for our and everyone’s good so that reassurance that we at our core are inalienable, we at our core are indestructible we at our core are pure and that we are always loved by Krishna that gives us enormous boost of self confidence that will not come by any other kind of mental adjustment or exercise so training our mind to become Krishna conscious and understanding what Krishna consciousness means properly Krishna consciousness doesn’t mean chanting Hare Krishna or thinking of Krishna and withdrawing from the world because we are thinking about Krishna Krishna consciousness means using chanting attentively so that it increases our awareness of our connection with Krishna and then we can engage with the world, engage in the world for Krishna’s sake while being aware of our connection with him so by learning about the glory of Krishna and by developing our faith in Krishna then we will find that correspondingly our faith in ourselves will also increase and that’s what is the call by Krishna to Arjuna that even when Arjuna was faced with the most formidable battle of his life against the mighty and massive Kaurava forces Krishna assured him so in 11.33 it describes that so that applies not only to Arjuna specifically in that historical battle at Kurukshetra, it applies to all of us who are trying to serve Krishna in the various battles that we fight internally and externally when we are trying to do Krishna’s will in this world so by increasing our confidence in Krishna we can increase our confidence in ourselves also as his