Question: In one of your poems you say to try to be pleased with yourself all the time. If you feel sad, frustrated or disappointed because a lot of things you didn't do or you did wrong, then how can you be pleased with yourself?

Sri Chinmoy: Even if you have failed ten times, if you have failed in everything that you did during the day, simply be pleased that you did not bring frustration upon yourself. Only take it as an attack. Fortunately, you did not surrender to it. You have to detach yourself from frustration as such. Tomorrow you will make a fresh attempt. But if you cherish frustration or surrender to it, how will you be happy? Let us say you tried this and that and you failed. But if you think of it as failure, complete failure, then tomorrow or the day after, you will not be inspired to again start your journey. Even if you have failed, be satisfied that you did not surrender to failure and you did not invite frustration. Right now you have not succeeded. But since you have not invited frustration, you should be pleased with yourself. It could have been infinitely worse.

Some people enjoy frustration. They invoke it. Then they want to continue with frustration because they feel they are making tremendous progress in this way. Some people have such a negative way of making progress. Unless they are miserable, they think they are not making any progress. As a matter of fact, their mind is tremendously enjoying frustration. It makes them feel very great. In your case, you do not enjoy or invoke frustration. So the following day you can easily make a fresh start.