Making people ‘Life Ready’- Nijo Jonson on Life and Relationship

Mumbai: In a country like India, doing well in school is one of the most pressing concerns among parents and students. Parents go to extreme lengths to ensure that their children excel in academics; but have you ever wondered how relevant these school lessons really are when experiencing real situations which life throws at us? Interesting isn’t it? 

We live our entire lives wildly guessing and hoping that we do the right thing. No schools ever prepared us to manage our emotions when faced with, personal failures, break ups, office politics, along with many other important but unacknowledged issues. Thank god for people like Nijo Jonson, who took it upon himself to make people ‘life ready’ instead of just being ‘book ready’. 

Nijo Jonson is one of the fastest-growing internet sensations. Within a span of 10 years, he single-handedly has been able to garner a community of supporters which is over 1 million. Nijo has transformed his Facebook page into a platform to tell stories which are fictional, and which always ends with a positive message. Positivity runs as a theme through all of Nijo’s films because he recognizes the significance of a positive attitude. 

According to Nijo, a positive mindset doesn't mean that we keep our head in the sand while ignoring life's less pleasant situations. Positive thinking just means that we approach unpleasantness in a more positive and productive way. Nijo Jonson believes that our mind space is divided into three fundamental scapes- positive, negative and neutral scape.

The post- modern world is said to be the age of internet and 24 hour news channels. For Nijo, this social and media trend feeds our negative mind space as we are constantly consuming negative digital content on the clock. 

Production and dissemination of negative news is considered to be profitable by many leading companies because negative news always garner the maximum possible viewership; whereas news which are equally important fail to get enough coverage on Television or social media platforms. 

On the other hand, there is the positive mind space which when seen from the perspective of a content creator, is not profitable enough as people are less likely to share positive content as opposed to negative content but rewarding in many other ways. 

The neutral space is the space one should aspire to be according to Nijo because in this space our emotions are not too high nor too low but move in a  straight line. This space keeps our expectations in check, for instance, imagine your life is a car you are driving, it is inevitable for your car to never meet with an accident, be it a small scratch or a big dent. 

If we are able to view this accident from the neutral mind space, we will be able to respond to it in a way which is productive and practical. The problem with us is that we expect our cars to never meet with any accident and by chance, if we do, the incident gets the best of us; whereas with a neutral attitude, we will be able to embrace each incident as opportunities to learn from. Awareness about the three mindscapes has the potential to empower individuals to alter their state of perceiving reality, thereby influencing the way they respond to real-life situations. Nijo’s films do exactly this!

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