Chapter 9 - How to Assign Empowering Meanings? (Mind Control, Day 7) Part-1 | Begin with “I” by Rohit Sethi - Self Help Learning PDF Download

How to Assign Empowering Meanings? (Mind Control, Day 7)

“I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work” ~ Pearl S. Buck

Second day of the weekend begins like the previous day. Ron was informed that this day would be devoted to a skill that can dramatically change anyone’s life if mastered. This morning Ron also has his five-year vision with the ‘have’ goals pasted on the bathroom mirror. 

“Ron, let’s get into our discussion.”

Principle 1: The ability to master our minds and assign empowering meanings is the most important tool in self-help and personal development

“In your pursuit towards your goals, you have to have a strong mental muscle. What I mean is that as events continue to happen, you need to be able to assign them positive meanings and take results as feedback instead of full and final failure. People, who fail and stop, become content with their failures. People who are absolutely committed to success carry on despite the number of disappointments they encounter. They do not stop until they absolutely obtain what they are looking for.”

“Using the soccer analogy, I can say that all the time, you meet people who are complaining about how they are not even getting the ball to score. When you dig deeper, you realize that they left the playing field long back. They are sitting in the stands! Something in their life hit them so hard that they never got up. They sat down within! We know how soccer works. It is not possible to get the ball each time you want to score. Sometimes you just need to wait, but ensure that it is not a ‘passive wait’. Rather, make it an ‘active wait’.”

“People complain on how they are not even getting the ball to score. When you dig deeper, you realize they left the playing field long back.”

“In the game of life, you do not have full control on choosing to be the player who scores the most goals. You might not always get the ball, but you can definitely be the player who scores each time they get the ball. If you can do that or not will depend on what you do when you do not have the ball. Do you complain about not getting a chance or you continue to better your game? Remember this: The world will not remember you for all the times you fail. It will remember you for the one time that you do not. Mind control is all about developing that discipline and getting up each time you fall down.”

“The world will not remember you for all the times you fail. It will remember for the one time that you do not.”

“This sounds quite interesting! Can you tell me more about this?”

“It takes time to get ingrained fully, but will never get done unless you start. Remember, we started this discussion in our early days. Start intervening in that moment of ‘I’ when you get to know of something or something happens and you assign a meaning to it. You already assign meanings every minute of your life, just that you do it unconsciously. Going forward, you meanings need to be more deliberate and empowering.”

“Your overall beliefs have a key role to play in this. You will not be able to assign meanings that are in contradiction to your beliefs. In this light, it should not come to you as a surprise when I tell you that one of the beliefs of highly successful people is that ‘Everything happens for the good’. This belief ensures that the meaning assignment mechanism assigns positive meanings. As Stan Dale said, ‘I’ve always been the opposite of a paranoid. I operate as if everyone is part of a plot to enhance my well-being’. Now, that’s definitely a good attitude to adopt!”

“It is unfortunate that structured education systems do not teach people about how their minds function. Practising mind control is a fundamental skill to living life and whatever we focus on, makes us feel accordingly. Recall memories from your last most amazing vacation versus moments where you were really embarrassed and see how you instantly begin to feel in both cases. You will be able to appreciate the direct correlation between what we choose to focus on and how we feel.”

“Recall memories from your most amazing last vacation versus moments where you were really embarrassed and see how you instantly begin to feel in both cases.”

“Oh, so is that why there is a constant push for positive thinking?”

“Yes. The core philosophy behind all positive thinking is related to this. You are being asked to consciously focus on positive side of things. When you do that, you feel emotions that make you feel good, and then you decide how you will act based on those emotions.”

“I am sure you have seen how on some days, you wake up feeling upbeat, and you automatically feel like being nice to everyone around. We have talked about these days earlier as well. On these days, don’t you find it easier to focus better at work? These days are a clear testimony to the assertion that our ‘Inner World’ defines our ‘Outer World’. With time-tested principles from the science of achievement, you can simply learn to put yourself in this state at your own discretion.”

“I will give you the steps to show you how this works:

1.  An event happens
2.  We choose what side of the event we focus on i.e. positive or negative
3.  We assign an empowering/ neutral/ disempowering meaning
4.  We feel a corresponding emotion
5.  In that moment we decide what we will do
6.  We take action”

Ron wants to interrupt. “Hold on Ron, I know exactly what you want to say! You want to say that you never do steps 2, 3 and 5. Correct?”

“How did you know, Ron+?”

“That’s what everyone says once this concept is presented to them. We are used to knowing that humans are creatures of emotion and not logic. Let me tell you something. We might be calling ourselves creatures of emotion but there is a consistent logic to how we feel the emotions.”

“We might be calling ourselves creatures of emotion but there is a consistent logic to how we feel the emotions.”

“What do you mean, Ron+?”

“Let me explain with an example. Imagine there are two colleagues A and B. A comes across a great opportunity to further his career. To this, B has four potential response options.

1. B can be indifferent as it is A’s life
2. B can encourage A out of his goodness
3. If B thinks logically, he can see this as a positive opportunity to further his own career and encourage A to take it up, knowing that as A becomes prosperous, A will create more opportunities for B as well
4. B discourages A, despite it being clear that it is a good opportunity for A”

“Where does option 4 come from? Since we are creatures of emotion, what sometimes gets triggered in such a situation is option 4. B gets jealous and discourages A from taking up the opportunity. B rationalizes by saying it can be too risky or might not work out for A and so it is not a good decision to take it up. On the inside however, B might know that he is not being fully honest. If you ask B why he reacted that way, he will tell you that we are creatures of emotion and when emotions take over, we cannot think logically.”

“What I am saying here is that to feel any emotion, we need to focus on something. In this case, it happened unconsciously. B, in his unconscious/ subconscious mind, very quickly ran all the assessment thinking how, if A takes this opportunity, he would get ahead of B. This is where the feeling of jealousy comes from. For untrained minds, this process is unconscious. Since we are so used to running these patterns every day, in real life, it comes across as:

1. An event happens
2. (Unconscious)
3. (Unconscious)
4. We feel a corresponding emotion
5. (Unconscious)
6. We take action”

“As you can see, by losing control on steps 2, 3 and 5, we lose control on deciding how to feel and choosing what to do accordingly. You will also appreciate how people who are stuck in negative patterns continue to remain there and continue to dislike their jobs or their relationships simply because they continue to focus on the negative aspects of each, and are unable to ‘think differently’ about them.”

“You can appreciate how people who are stuck in negative patterns continue to remain there and are unable to ‘think differently’ about their situation.”

“Sure, I get it now!”

“Ron, to become prosperous, you do not necessarily have to be a successful entrepreneur. You just have to believe in a potential successful entrepreneur. You will be able to identify them only once you are in the abundance mindset. Otherwise, you will continue to kill all potential chances of becoming prosperous by becoming jealous when you meet these people, as most others do, and continue to remain stuck where they are.”

“Can you give me some examples on how this can be applied in our day-to-day lives?”

“Sure. A core idea in mind control is to increase the level of your consciousness, that is, do not let petty things bother you. Be aware that every person defines ‘petty’ differently. Even for the same person, the definition of ‘petty’ might change as they go along with life. One of the ways to test your success with mind control is to check on the level of things that bother you currently. It is like the difference between standing in the middle of a busy road where it is loud. You smell the pollution, there are too many people trying to cross the road, pushing you from side to side. When you stand there, everything will seem to bother you!”

“If on the other hand, you take a higher view, say you go on top of a tall building, how would you feel there? There is less noise. You have fresh air. No one pushes you around. You have a lovely view. The same holds for life. Look at yourself and assess the level of problems that bother you. You may have seen people getting angry at waiters for goofing up their orders. If you live a bit higher, you might not get agitated over these things. You might take this as an opportunity to grow yourself, that is, to test your patience level, or to test if you can eat the dish with little less salt. If you can, it might just be better for you to move onto that for the long-term. If there genuinely was a goof-up, others will realize their mistakes and appreciate you for your patience. So all in all, you leave everyone in a positive mood and maintain positivity in the universe, instead of shouting at the waiters, and spoiling your day from where you continue to spoil everyone else’s day. Spoiling the day for others will have a ripple effect as they will pass it onto people they come in touch with. So in essence, you start something with your shouting and you do not even know how much negative energy it can create in the universe, and how its impact might come back to you.”

“Wow! I never thought about this ripple effect of the negative energy that we create in ourselves and others. I need to be more careful going forward!”

“True. Now that you are conscious of this, try to leave everyone you meet in a better state than they were before they met with you.”

“Always try to leave everyone you meet in a better state than they were before they met with you.

“Ron+, I understand that I can use my mental muscle to control the way I feel. What else can I do with it?”

“Controlling your emotions is the biggest impact. It is strong enough to transform your life already. You can also start using your mental muscle for other things. For instance, when you are on a flight and feel sleepy, close your eyes and begin to sleep. Use your imagination to imagine that you are sleeping on your bed, feel the texture of your sheets, feel the softness of your pillow, and feel the temperature of your room. Just doing this will enable you to sleep better and you will wake up lot more refreshed than otherwise. The same approach can be applied in a situation where you are feeling cold. In your mind, bring forth the memories of a time where you felt hot. Replay them with the same intensity in your mind. You will be surprised that you are not feeling cold anymore. This can be applied when you are feeling hot and want to feel cooler, too. The same techniques of mind control can play a key role in managing stress as well.”

“Can you please elaborate on this?”

“Ron, it is quite simple. Stress happens when we give something more importance than we should and we do it primarily because we get stuck in the moment and are not able to detach ourselves from it. Each time you face a problem and are fully absorbed in solving it, take a step back and think of what the impact of this problem would be in five years from now.”

“Each time you face a problem and are fully absorbed in solving it, take a step back and think of what the impact of this problem would be in five years from now.”

 “Finding positives in life is an art. Even after severe traumas, some people experience positives. Surviving a trauma tends to increase peoples’ inner strength and they are not scared of that anymore. Crisis situations provide a good test to check on ones’ relationships. You get to separate your real friends from others. This is highly dependent on how you view the traumatic situation. If you assign a meaning saying God is punishing you, you will be disempowered. If you assign that God is making you stronger to prepare you for bigger and better opportunities, you will really come out stronger.”

Principle 2: The power of choice, and we almost always have it, is the second most important tool in self-help and personal development

“We are making choices all the time. The key to achieving more in life lies in that moment of choice. That is the magical moment when we exercise our free will. You might have come across a lot of fatalistic people who claim there is no free will and everything is destined. Or they will claim that there is free will in low-impact choices such as what you will eat but not in highimpact choices such as what job you will get. From my experience, let me tell you this: The low-impact choices made consistently over years lead to high-impact outcomes.”

“The low-impact choices made consistently over years lead to highimpact outcomes

“Freedom is not the absence of commitments, but rather the ability to choose and commit oneself to what is best for them. To eat more or less is a choice. To exercise or not is a choice. To smoke or not smoke is a choice. To make a relationship work or not is a choice. To give 100% commitment at your work or not is a choice. To mistreat others or not is a choice. In fact, choice is such a powerful indicator that you can look at the choices a person makes and guess where they are headed in life. Remember that all choices have causal consequences.”

“You can look at the choices a person makes and guess where they are headed in life.”

“This is why I say it is important to have clear vision and goals, so that all our choices become consistent in a particular direction. The winds are random and are the same for everyone, but the sailor who knows where he is going can adjust his sail accordingly. Another way to look at it is, although the winds are same for everyone, you can see boats going in different directions because each sailor has their sail adjusted based on where they want to go. Where you will go is not a function of the winds, but really of how you set your sails.”

“Where you will go is not a function of the winds, but really of how you set your sails.”

“Once you have the picture of your vision or goal clear in your mind, you will be able to ask yourself each time, ‘What choice will take me closer to that and what choice will take me away?’ and then choose accordingly.”

“Ron, life is not what is happening to us, but what we ‘think’ is happening to us. Two boys from the same alcoholic father can have different destinies based on the meanings they assign to their birth in that family and the corresponding decisions they take. One who takes it as a ‘punishment’ will choose to suffer and become an alcoholic, inflicting the same pain on others around him. The other who chooses to take it as a ‘reason’, will elevate himself and become a volunteer, helping rehabilitation of other alcoholics and their families.”

“In another case, parents who really wanted a boy, but have a girl instead, have two choices. One, they can say that God does not love them and in return, they will not accept the girl as they never wanted her. Or they can say, since they wanted a boy and God gave them a girl, maybe there is a higher meaning in this. Maybe she will do something that has never been done by a girl before, so let’s do our best to raise her! Don’t you think that the experiences of these three souls will be different based on what the parents decide to choose?”