While coming home for lunch after picking up my kids from school Navneel was in full excitement. He did a quick mathematics and told me that another 3 red stars will get him a gold cheque. He also quickly listed his friends name who are almost at the same level. He was very optimistic about accumulating the remaining stars in coming days. I looked at his ‘treasure bank’ to understand the matter better. Class teacher gives red stars to the children for good behavior or doing some task well and black dots are for bad behavior or indisciplinary activities. A back dot also erases 3 red stars. Once you accumulate 10 red stars you are eligible to get awarded with a gold cheque during assembly. A very proud moment indeed.
After my analysis and understanding Navneel asked me, “Baba, where is your treasure bank”.
I smiled and said, “I don’t have any.”, I found it as a silly and childish question and thought of explaining him that these things only matter to kids. Adults do not care for such things.
So I asked, , “Why do you get the red star?”.
He immediately replied, “Because we behave well or do our task properly. Like one day teacher instructed to keep quiet and I kept quiet until teacher asked to speak. So I got red star for that day.”
He did not stop there and asked, “Why don’t you behave well in office so that you will get red stars. They will give you gold cheque. It’s so much fun”
I laughed and agreed, “Yes I will next time onwards.”.
Although I could avoid him and his simple questions by agreeing but it raised hundred questions in my mind. Are we giving importance to small but very essential things in our life? We get pleasure out of small things, small achievements, small accomplishments but we do not give importance to them because we feel we have grown much above these achievements. A simple act of doing our work diligently, behaving respectfully with our colleagues/friends, listening to every conversation before making an opinion, greeting people whom we meet, following all etiquettes, listening to parents, children, thinking about others in every situation and many other things like this make us good human being. We become more worthy to the society than burden. But these acts are never appreciated so adults gradually ignore these and run behind big things which they think might get appreciation.
We all have a never quenchable thirst for appreciation or attention, when we don’t get attention for small things we try to do big but if we don’t achieve big or don’t get appreciated for the big we try doing attention seeking things which might be harmful to the society, organization or self. But appreciating or getting attention for small things will let us do more of such things and remain good for the society, organization or family.
Appreciations now a days are done in various innovative ways. emails, public verbal/written accolade, monetary awards etc. But this is the area which needs constant innovation and creative thinking because like kids we don’t like to get the same things again and again. We want things to become big, beautiful and better as we do more of them. Most of the times money is the least factor in an award but the way it was presented matters a lot.
But when we look outward for appreciation we mostly get disappointed as there is absolutely nobody who can appreciate you the way you can do yourself. There is no better judge who can always give verdict in your favor other than you. While we are kids and still learning basic maths of life we need others to tell us what we did right and wrong, I feel as adults we have enough knowledge and capability to appreciate self. If we do so, we can remain content and motivated. We can capture small acts of good work or even good thought in a small book called, ‘Treasure Bank’ and keep on adding stars with reason why we gave star to ourselves. We can give black dot to self and deduct 3 red stars when we did something wrong. Once we accumulate 10 red stars then we can treat ourselves with something that we wished to buy or have.
Life is full of small achievements and happy moments. There is abundance of these moments. But unfortunately we only look for big moments which is mostly not in our hands or sometimes bigger than our our stature at that moment. While aiming for big is good and worth but must find happiness from the journey not only at the destination.
Namaste!!!
– Stray Dog
Life as Sakti 
True!… This is exactly what I do. Every time I add every small happy moment in my treasure bank and by looking @treasure bank I feel so happy and great about my self , sometimes these small happy moments boost up memory.
This is my habit… The reason I add because no one can’t take these memories from me but if I see or hear that if others has same happy moment or any moment matching to my story then immediately remove the happiness from my treasure bank ( 🙂 looks like childish but this what I am ) and put a red dot saying that I do not want to see this moment any more. But this is so difficult, sometimes it might require to change place or surroundings or people just to remove the happy moment from treasure bank.
Life is all about plus (+) and minuse (-). The more you add, life will be more happy (with people,place, environment )
Keep adding happy moments to treasure bank 🙂
True!… This is exactly what I do. Every time I add every small happy moment in my treasure bank and by looking @treasure bank I feel so happy and great about my self , sometimes these small happy moments boost up memory.
This is my habit… The reason I add because no one can’t take these memories from me but if I see or hear that if others has same happy moment or any moment matching to my story then immediately remove the happiness from my treasure bank ( 🙂 looks like childish but this what I am ) and put a red dot saying that I do not want to see this moment any more. But this is so difficult, sometimes it might require to change place or surroundings or people just to remove the happy moment from treasure bank.
Life is all about plus (+) and minuse (-). The more you add, life will be more happy (with people,place, environment )
Keep adding happy moments to treasure bank 🙂
True!.. This is exactly what I do. Every time I add every small happy moment in my treasure bank and by looking @ treasure bank I feel so happy and great about my self, sometimes these small happy moments boost up memory.
This is my habit… The reason I add because no one can’t take these memories from me but If I see or hear that if others has same happy moment or any moment matching to my story then immediatly I take out one of my happy moment from treasure bank (:) looks like childish but this is what i am ), put a red dot saying that I do not want to see this moment any more and it could be releated any relationship also(friend …) .
But it is so difficult to take out the memory, sometimes we might need to change the place, people, sarrounding and changing friends just to take out the memory from treasure bank
life is all about plus(+) and minus (-). The more you add, life will be more happy (with people, place, environment..)
Keep adding happy moments to treasure bank 🙂
Thank you for sharing your practice Swapna.
Thank You Sakti for sharing this Treasure Bank !!! Thought….. I remember , when I was in school I used to also share same things with my parents and sister when I used to get stars or Ice Creams for my work, That 5 stars on a page would give us so much happiness.
This is really True!!! I have heard people saying that when you are kid , that is the best phase of life and now I get why it is so, because when we are kids we are happy with small little little things which gave us so much happiness that there is no room for other thoughts to come in and we enjoy that moment.
I will start again collecting Red Stars for every good thing I do moving ahead and make sure I don’t have Black Dots… This Is really Simple way of being Happy !!!! 🙂
Glad to know that you could relate to this blog Dhaval. Enjoy 🙂
Thank You Sakti for sharing this Treasure Bank !!! Thought….. I remember , when I was in school I used to also share same things with my parents and sister when I used to get stars or Ice Creams for my work, That 5 stars on a page would give us so much happiness.
This is really True!!! I have heard people saying that when you are kid , that is the best phase of life and now I get why it is so, because when we are kids we are happy with small little little things which gave us so much happiness that there is no room for other thoughts to come in and we enjoy that moment.
I will start again collecting Red Stars for every good thing I do moving ahead and make sure I don’t have Black Dots… This Is really Simple way of being Happy !!!! 🙂