The mind is expert and tricking us. It will always create excuses and one excuse will lead to the other until we will hear it all and still remain the same.
Don’t make excuses make it a commitment as somebody said when you are interested in something you do it whether you like it or you don’t like it.
If we wish to accomplish a material goal or a spiritual goal we need to be focused. Our efforts should be having razor-sharp concentration.
There’s a beautiful story about a lady called Florence Chadwick. In 1952 she aimed at conquering the Catalina channel. She was an astonishing swimmer. She has been the best long-distance ocean swimmer in women’s history. She conquered the English channel two times either way and many other channels of the world and then she made an attempt in the Catalina channel shark-infested area in 1952.
When she made an attempt, it turned out to be a foggy and misty day a boat was accompanying her just in case of a shark attack. She has to be retrieved and the mother was in the boat. It was quite a distance and she continued the whole way until finally all she could see was fog and mist and she gave up and when she gave up she came to know later on that the shore was only 1.25 miles away.
So she said the reason I gave up was, I was not able to see my goal. Two months later she made another attempt, this time she had absolute clarity about how far the goal is and she succeeded.
All of us must have that clarity, what is our goal. When the goal is there you will be filled with enthusiasm to attain it. It is said that out of 100% of the people 5% write down the goals of their life and of the 5% who actually write them down and have clarity of vision, 95% of them achieve their goals because they have a target to hit.
Eventually, everything is difficult but with practice, it becomes my heart got here it becomes peace.
When we were children even to turn over the side, we needed practice and then when we wanted to stand up we tried with all our efforts but neither did our parents get disappointed. They knew it’s a part of the learning process.
On the first day if they had become disappointed the whole world would have remained safe. It is important to understand that it is a process. Some people expect quick results, other people when they don’t find the kind of results they expected become dejected but we must remember that in this process we need to slowly progress.
Pat Riley was one of the most successful basketball coaches. When the Los Angeles lakers had lost for two years in succession to the Boston Celtics the second year they put in their best efforts.
So the coach said now they are totally demoralized because they tried their very best. So he said all right now next year let’s do like this all of you improve in these five skills by 1% for one person. This much you all can do.
If you do that each of you will have improved 5% and together we will have improved 65%. This idea that practically 1% we can definitely do and that gave them a positive objective and next time they did it, they actually won.
So just keep improving 1% and very soon we’ll be transformed. We’ll be different people. So as in the world, so also in spirituality practice one of the most inspiring self-transformation books is the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.
He decided that he must improve himself. What to do? He analyzed these are the 13 areas on which I need to work. So he said: “All right if I try and work on all 13 together, it will never happen. Let me focus every week on one area.”
He blew up the chart, he gives it in his book and this time I will focus on this I must learn to be patient, next week I’ll focus on this when 13 weeks he had endeavoured on all 13 points then he would repeat again from week one and go again.
One cycle then again one cycle so in one year he has covered those 13 points 13 into 452 four times and that is how by practice he reached that state.
So in the same way, we also by repeated practice, we were slowly and surely steadying the mind in God.
Everybody is a bag of virtues and effects. Nobody likes harbouring within anger greed, desire, hatred & envy. If our mind contemplates the defects of others, first of all, it’s a poor reflection of our consciousness and second, such contemplation only increases our own defects.
This mind of ours is constantly creating thoughts. If we utilize that power in the proper direction we can completely transform our life. But that same thought power when is misused, when left uncontrolled can take us to the darkest depths.
When you are eating, sometimes you get a stone, now what do you do? Immediately you reject it. Why it’s not worthy of eating. If it goes inside garbage so we are so careful when it comes to putting physical things inside and with the thought process we are careless harbouring hatred, harbouring envy, harbouring resentment.
Half the energies go in. This is hatred, envy, resentment, fear. Now, these are unwholesome thoughts. So, first of all, we need to be aware, this thought is not good for me. When we are aware we can then put our practice into action and what is the practice to put into action, you practice the reverse thought.
In other words, a practice thought to neutralize that thought. Supposing you have got the thought of pride, now what to do? Should we just accept it and let it go inside? If it does, it’ll dirty the inside. So you have to take immediate action. What is the immediate action? You take it out and throw it away and you practice thought of humbleness, practice a reverse thought.
Habits will be neutralized by reverse habits. If you want to perform at the peak level your conscious mind will not be enough, you will need the subconscious and the first tool for programming our subconscious is Self Affirmation.
You speak positively to yourself. This conscious mind is what we are aware of and through the conscious mind, we program the subconscious. Hence the conscious mind becomes like a gateway for your subconscious.
There’s the story of roger bannister the 4-minute mile. In the modern Olympics right up to the year 1954 nobody had run the mile in less than four minutes. So all scientists doctors sports people used to give reasons why you can’t run the mile in less than four minutes. They would say your lungs are not big enough, if you try it you will have a heart attack and so on. So everybody’s self-talk was I cannot do it. But there was a person in England called Roger Bannister. He was a student of sports and he said I can do it. He changed his self-talk I can do it. The people said you cannot. You are running the mile in 4 minutes and 11 seconds, how will you do it. He said: “No, I will do it” and he kept on doing his self-talk until one day he crashed through the four-minute mile barrier and he ran it in 3 minutes 59.4 seconds.
Now everybody’s reference point changed, it can be done.
So everybody started saying, it can be done. In that very 27 runners crashed through the four-minute mile barrier and the next year 235 people did. Why? Merely because the self-talk changed.
So, Is your self-talk making you happy or is your self-talk making you sad? Think upon it.