The Subconscious mind: subconscious mind

Showing posts with label subconscious mind. Show all posts

Excusitis

“Mil gaye hote dil se dil to bewafa sanam na hote…
Tajmahal to kai banva lete agar banane wale ke haath kalam na hote ...“
Nope, I am not writing a romantic post, but these are the lines of a majnoo suffering from EXCUSITIS! Yes, it’s a disease, a disease of giving excuses. Every failure has this disease in its advanced form and most people have at least a mild case of it. I know people who can write a book on excuses-‘1001 excuses’! Such people are quick to explain why they haven’t, why they don’t, why they can’t and why they aren’t. I don’t know any great leader suffering from it. If it was, then Theodore Roosevelt could have hidden behind his lifeless legs; Eisenhover could have ducked behind heart attacks; R Venkatraman could have said ‘I’m too old to be a president’.
Once the victim of this disease has selected a ‘good’ excuse, he sticks with it. Then he relies upon it to explain to himself and others why he is not going forward. And each time the victim makes the excuse, it becomes deeper within his subconscious. Thoughts, positive or negative, grow stronger when fertilized with constant repetition. Like all diseases, this too has to be cured in its earlier stages.
A lame classification of forms of excusitis:-
1. Health excusitis
“My health is poor”, “I’m not fit for it”, “I have this disease” I have heard many. Now you hear this.
Hrithik Roshan was diagnosed at the age of 21 with Scoliosis and told he could never be an actor, dance and do all the things that a Bollywood actor needs to do. But now, he is the finest dancer in Bollywood. He also stammered until he was 15, but overcame it by extensive dialog practice. He was suffering from health problems but not health excusitis!
Kapil Dev was suffering from high fever when he made his 1st ODI century. Anil kumble broke his jaw during a Test match in 2002, but played until the end by tying a bandage around his face.
In 75% cases, health is just the state of your mind. Once, I was suffering from donno-what. I was diagnosed for 2 months, admitted for 16 days and finally a famous doctor from Budhrani hospital said, ‘You have no problem, it’s just the state of your mind. Leave medication, resume your normal life, you will be perfect’. And guess what, I was totally fit within a week! Mine was just an exaggerated weakness, which took over my mind and I got ‘Emotionally Induced Illness’.

2. Intelligence excusitis
I have heard people saying, “I lack brains” or “it takes a lot of intelligence to do that”. Most of us make 2 basic errors when it comes to intelligence: #1. We underestimate our own brain power and #2. We overestimate the other fellow’s brain power. What really matters is not how much intelligence you posses but how you use what you have. The thinking that guides your intelligence is much more important than the quantity of your brain power. Steve Jobbs is not a computer engineer, by education, still he rules the computer world.
There are some brilliant people who are failures. These people use their great brain power to prove why things won’t work rather than directing it to searching for ways to succeed. My dad once introduced me to a doctor in Ruby Hall who works for just Rs. 5000 even after getting a MBBS!
Don’t make yourself a fact-man (person who learns facts). Einstein was once asked how many feet are in a mile, to which he said, ‘I don’t know, but I can find out in less than 2 minutes’!

3. Age excusitis
This is a failure disease of never being the right age. People either think, ‘I’m too young’ or ‘I’m too old’. I wonder how few people know they are ‘just right’ agewise. Cleopatra Stratan was aged only 3 years when her two hours, 28 songs long concert was performed on August 20, 2006 in Bucharest. A 7-year old artist Kieron Williamson is named as world’s youngest successful painter. Michael Hussey debuted in ODI and Tests at 28 and 30 years of age respectively. He is currently the only player in the history of cricket to average over 50 in both forms of the game.
Curing out of age excusitis is not so difficult.

4. Luck excusitis
The worst one! “I attract bad luck”, “My case is different”, “Luck never favours me” and other countless quotes I have encountered. This is the easiest to acquire and the most difficult to cure. There is a cause for everything. In today’s world of scientific advancement, we have found a cause for every known phenomenon. Human affairs are no different. Its not ‘luck’ that gains George Clooney an Oscar, or Roger Federer a Wimbledon Cup. If it was the case then there would have been no competitions, but instead they would just place names in a barrel. The 1st name drawn would get 1st prize, and so on down the line.

People, who rise to the top in any occupation, get there because they have superior attitudes and use their good sense in applied hard work!

Excuse me please!

Kindling the inner truth

“Life is no brief a candle for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

--- George Bernard Shaw

I once read that people who study others are wise but those who study themselves are enlightened. And enlightened is the stage we all need to achieve in life. The purpose of life is a life of purpose. Those who are truly enlightened know what they want out of life. Clearly defined priorities and goals for every aspect of your life will serve a role similar to that played by the torch. You can revolutionize your life once you revolutionize the direction in which you are moving. But if you don’t even know where you are going, how will you ever know when you get there? It reminds me a story of an ancient archery teacher.

He was a great archer, a true master. On the final day of the archery course he gathered all his students to illustrate some virtues. There stood a huge oak tree at some distance. He placed a rose on the centre of its trunk. He took out his bow and arrow and a white handkerchief. He asked one of his students to put the handkerchief over his eyes as blindfold.

‘How far away from the rose am I?’ asked the master.

‘One hundred feet,’ the student guessed.

‘Have you ever seen me in my daily practice of archery?’ the master queried.

‘Yes sir. I have seen you strike the bull’s eye from a mark almost 300 feet away,’ said the student.

Then with his eyes blindfolded and feet placed securely in earth, he drew out the bow and with all his energy released the arrow. The arrow struck the large oak tree with a thud, missing its mark by an embarrassingly large distance.

‘I thought you were going to display some extraordinary virtues, master. What happened?’ asked the puzzled student.

The master smiled, looked at all his pupils and said aloud, ‘what you just saw confirms the most important principle to attain your goals and to fulfill life’s purpose: you will never be able to hit a target you cannot see.’

People spend their whole life dreaming of becoming happier, living with more vitality and having an abundance of passion. Yet they cannot even take out 10 minutes a month to write out goals and to think deeply about the meaning of their life. Goal-setting is not just for distinguished people. Anyone who wishes to improve the quality of their inner as well as their outer worlds would do well to take out a piece of paper and start writing out their life's aims. At the very moment this is done, natural forces will come into play, that start to transform these dreams into reality. Everything in your life is created twice- first in your mind and then in actual. On each average day about 90000 thoughts run through our mind (don’t be astonished!!). By writing out your desires and goals on a piece of paper, you send a red flag to your subconscious mind that these thoughts are far more important than the rest 89,999 !! Your mind will start to seek out all opportunities to realize your destiny. Concentrate every ounce of your mental energy on self-discovery. Learn what you excel at and what makes you happy. But remember, life is a little different from ‘3 idiots’, here you cannot sacrifice your social goals to achieve personal goals.

The human mind is world’s best filter. When used properly it filters out what you perceive as unimportant and gives you only the information you are looking at that time. At this very moment, as you sit in front of the computer, there are hundreds of things going on around you that you are not paying attention to. The moment you decide to concentrate on anything else, you start noticing it and all other things are filtered out. If all the things I just said sound larger-than-life to you, then its time to rethink. You master the art of goal setting –the life is all yours!! In the beginning start by setting smaller and short-term goals.

The post is getting longer although I wanna share more. The five-step method is coming in the next post. Wait for it !

'Aap beeti'

Well, this will unfold another side of me. I want to start this, with its relation to me. Throughout my schooling I spent life randomly living things out- no proper aims, no proper strategies, n blah blah blah. It was back then some1 insulted me in my 8^th grade. In those summer vacations, I analyzed what I was doing to my life. Co-incidentally, I happened to meet a man- a very motivated, energetic n confident person I had ever met. I was mesmerized with his aura. He had definite ideologies, principles, theories n al those big philosophical things we usually r scared of. Even I was…but slowly I was taken away by his simplicity, humbleness n generosity. He found the right abilities in me, but he knew I couldn’t manage them well. He got me into believing what he believed n shared a powerful ‘tool’ of his. U can’t say ‘shared’ but maybe introduced. Anyways, not caring much about the right word, I would say he told me about something known as ‘The Subconscious mind’. At inception, it was difficult to digest for me, maybe I wasn’t ready but hello …I had to tighten my seat belts. I didn’t know how far could that take me, but I was really fascinated. This man, whenever we met, told me short-stories, anecdotes and believe me I was getting actually hypnotized!! He told me several things n helped me organize my things, my goals, my life…

I had started achieving bigger things- top ranking at my school (1^st time), respect in other’s eyes (like never before) and most importantly I was carving a niche and carrying a similar (not same) aura as of his. I was loving all that I got. I spent almost 4 yrs (up to my 12^th grade), leading life as an achiever. Some day I lost contact with my mentor- maybe I wasn’t feeling the same for him. Some day I lost few of my achievements- maybe I was getting over-confident about me. Some day I lost my power, Oh My God, I lost my power- The power of subconscious mind (though ‘lost’ may not be the right word). I lost something which was responsible for building me a better human, had gone. How am I supposed to react? What am I supposed to do?

Then crept in the real menace- laziness! It took over me, in no time. There I ended up- a hap-hazarder again. Some day it turned out to be a bitter pain, the life I was leading was not the 1 I aimed for. Am I living someone else’s life? No, nope…it’s my life. Then? Am I dreaming some1 else’s dreams? No, not even that. But then I wanted an answer. Who else could answer if it isn’t me? Maybe I needed to meet a similar dynamic person once again (not that same person due to some ego problems). But hey….how often we encounter such people in life?. Hence past couple of months I have spent time in finding motivated people. Now, I suppose, I have people around me who have those qualities which could help me flourish. And also, I’m trying to become my own mentor. So, to cut the long story short, I have again started getting a hold on my subconscious mind and hitherto, I’ll be posting regularly about Subconscious mind n its fundas. I’ll wind up with a line Edmund Hillary said, when he failed to scale Mt. Everest the 1^st time-

“Look Mt. Everest, you beat me the 1^st time, I’ll beat you the next, cause u have grown all u wanted to grow but I’m still GROWING!!”