What A Laptop Bag Can Teach You About Personal Development

We get used to live in our habitual patterns. Solutions to our problems may be nearer, yet we don’t easily find them. We get so much used to our patterns that we do not see the answers around.

Let me give you an example that may make things clear to you.

I have been using the same laptop and its bag for last three years. The software inside are updated and both (the laptop and its bag) have become an integral part of my life. I carry them with me every day to my workplace and bring them back home in the evening.

It was on that day that I realized a pattern of mine which I was never aware about anytime before. I never opened my laptop bag to its full possible opened-state. What I mean by this can be easily understood if you look at the photographs below.

Even though the bag had a capacity (or facility) to open fully, I never opened it beyond its half-opened state. I continued dealing with it the same old way which I initially learned to open it. The level up to which I opened habitually was enough for me to take the laptop out of it, but opening it up fully could have always helped me when I wanted to take small things (like: headphones, wireless mouse etc.) out of it. Yet, without being aware of its potential to open up fully, I continued handling it in the way I initially learned (i.e.: opening up just enough to take my laptop out).

This did not make much difference to my life. So, I remained in the pattern until one day I lost my USB flash drive. It is very small, and I searched for it everywhere (including inside my laptop bag- with its half-opened state), but could not find it.

I was quite upset as it had important information stored inside it for which I did not have any back up.

After few days of anxious search for it, I was exhausted and was resting in my bedroom on that Sunday afternoon. Something inside me made me look again inside my laptop bag. This time I was intuitively made aware about the fact that the bag could be opened up more than I was conditioned to open it and look for the things inside it.

This time I opened it fully! To its full potential. Then I could see everything inside my bag very clearly. Rather than searching in my habitual way (a blind search with my hands inserted into the half-opened state of my bag), I could see more inside my same bag.

My USB flash drive was lying deep inside me and waiting for me to grab it! I had searched it there many time before but could not see it until I acted differently beyond my conditioning!

This experience made me aware about an important aspect of life.

We are conditioned to open ourselves to only limited possibilities. We may not be aware about the fact that we are more than what we habitually do. We are more than we habitually think and know.

Efforts required to solve our life-problems are not always need to be dramitc. Instead, they are just a step ahead as it was the case with me in my experience shared with you here.

This has changed me from within. If I am not getting the result I want from any activity or project I am doing, I do not blindly keep working hard in the same old pattern. Instead, now I take a break. Soon I am shown a new way of dealing with the same work. This time it’s just a step up from my conditioned way of doing things. This changes the output I create.

I have learned to be aware that the potential to create what I desire is already there. It may be the case that I am not using it fully!

Lots of smile… 🙂

Dr. Sudeep Shroff
Going Beyond Condtioning