Chapter 9 - How to Assign Empowering Meanings? (Mind Control, Day 7) Part-2 | Begin with “I” by Rohit Sethi - Self Help Learning PDF Download

Principle 3: Listening more to your intuition and less to others is critical for mind control

“Ron, you are not alone in this journey of life. There is a senior partner with you all the time. This holds true only if you acknowledge its presence. To have a strong mental muscle, it will be helpful if you have a strong spiritual muscle. Like every other muscle, the only way to strengthen it is to train it. In the pursuit of your vision and goals, there will be times when things will not seem to be going the way you expected them to and all visible doors will seem to be closed. In these times, you will be feeling low, and will need to rely on your spiritual muscle.”

“The only way to strengthen a muscle is to train it.”

“To make friends with the creative force, the first step is to focus on how you feel at any moment. There are hundreds of words that can describe how you feel. But broadly, there are just three: good, neutral or bad. Feeling good brings you closer to the creativity zone while feeling bad takes you away from it.”

“We have touched upon this earlier. Let me elaborate. The creation process is really that simple, you need to:

1. Visualize the outcome with full vividness and intensity as if it were really happening to you
2. Feel the feelings you will feel if it were really happening
3. Show patience and receive it gracefully when you get it”

“As Dr. Wayne Dyer said, ‘Prayer is when we talk to God, Intuition is when God talks to us’. Pray with your full force and then make space to receive the answers. We almost always get them, though sometimes not in the same shape or form as we expected them to come in.”

“Try to focus on the source rather than the material things. As the anecdote goes, ‘A man was washing his new car when his neighbor asked him, ‘You got a new car?’ He replied ‘My brother gave it to me.’ The neighbor said, ‘I wish I had a car like that.’ The man replied, ‘I thought you were going to wish to have a brother like that’ or maybe ‘becoming a brother like that’”

“A very important element in achieving your goals will be ‘making yourself independent of the opinion of others’. As I said earlier, it is rather unfortunate but true that we live in a negative society. You can find hundreds of people who will tell you how you will not be able to achieve your goals compared to the few who will genuinely encourage you. Typically, the people who will demotivate you will be the ones who were either too scared to try new things in their own lives or are afraid that you might succeed.”

“A very important element in achieving your goals will be ‘making yourself independent of the opinion of others’”

“You meet two kinds of people. One kind will always give you specific and unsolicited advice on what you should be doing in various aspects of your life. I do not have anything against these people. They live in a world where others around them do the same to them and this is their way of expressing their love and consideration for you. The challenge is that since every person is a unique combination of ‘self-image + beliefs’, their advice is colored by their own life experiences and expectations. The other kind of people is the ones who believe in the power of listening to one’s inner voice. No matter what problem you present to these people and no matter which of these people you present the problem to, they will always give you one advice ‘Listen to yourself and go with what you hear!’”

“As Robert Frost wrote, ‘Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference’. When I say become indifferent, I do not mean you stop caring about how you impact the people around you. What I am really suggesting here is this: If you really listen to your intuition and act accordingly, there will be some people around you who will not agree with you. By all means, respect their opinions. But you do not have to conform to them. Following your intuition might not be the sole formula to become extraordinary, but listening to others and conforming each time is definitely the sole formula to become and remain mediocre.”

“Following your intuition might not be the sole formula to become extraordinary, but listening to others and conforming each time is definitely the sole formula to become and remain mediocre.”

“There are people who do not seem to be fully impacted by other people’s opinions. They hear what everyone around has to say and are objectively able to decide what to accept and what to discard. These are typically people with high self-esteem. This ability to be independent of other peoples’

opinions is a key characteristic of a strong mental muscle. As Les Brown said, ‘Someone’s opinion of you does not have to become your reality’. In fact, some of the people who are working strong on their goals might come across as arrogant. There is a high probability that at their cores, they will be nice people. What you find arrogance might be something they developed over many years as a defense mechanism to keep their vision and goals protected from the world around them.”

“As the saying from Andrew Carnegie goes, ‘Dealing with people is a lot like digging for gold: When you go digging for an ounce of gold you have to move tons of dirt. But when you go digging, you don’t go looking for the dirt, you go looking for the gold.’ People will have all kinds of opinions. It is you who needs to stay focused on what kind of responses you are looking for. If you are absolutely certain inside of you that you will succeed and are looking for people who can encourage you, continue to discard all opinions from people who discourage you and keep your eyes firmly set to look for the ones who do not. These are the giants you will stand on the shoulders of. As Isaac Newton said, ‘If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants’. Who are your giants, Ron?”

“I have never really given it a serious thought!”

“Ron, it is quite important in life to identify the mentors who genuinely care for your success. Even if you are one of the more positive people and are clued into your heart’s voice, you will still have highs and lows, although with lower frequency and intensity than others who have not dedicatedly focused on developing their mental muscles. In times of lows, your giants will pull you out and make you realize that people do not drown by falling in water, they drown by remaining there.”

“In times of lows, your giants will pull you out and make you realize that people do not drown by falling in water, they drown by remaining there.”

“Ron, if there was just one skill that if taught to people can make them invincible or unstoppable, it would be this: Getting up each time they fall! Once you decide where you are and where you want to be, it’s time for relentless execution. The difference between people who seem to get what they want and the others is that the former group doesn’t give up till they get what they want! Their inner sense of strength is so strong and their goals so inspiring to them, that they take every failed attempt as feedback and continue to move on.”

“If there was just one skill that if taught to people can make them invincible or unstoppable, it would be this: Getting up each time they fall!”

Principle 4: Discipline is the key to any worthwhile achievement and a strong mental muscle makes it possible

“Nothing extraordinary can be achieved without disciplined effort. A strong mental muscle is a critical requirement for disciplined action. A soldier doesn’t go to war every day, but his daily commitment and effort comes to the forefront when he does.”

“Use of mind control to bring disciple in life does not just help make the mental muscle stronger but also leads to an increase in one’s overall self-esteem. It is a self-reinforcing loop. The more you show discipline on some task, the more you can progress. The more you progress, the more you add to your self-esteem. The more you add to your self-esteem, the more discipline you show and thus make more progress. There is nothing that erodes self-esteem faster than unfinished tasks. There are so many activities you start to do and then owing to lack of not being able to follow through, you drop these activities midway.”

Figure 27: Self-reinforcing loop of discipline, progress and self-esteem

“There is nothing that erodes self-esteem faster than unfinished tasks.”

“Ron, it sounds so simple! But if it really is that simple, ‘Why do people not follow it?’”

“Well, most people do not get to kick this off and get left out. As LaoTzu said, ‘The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’. There are really just two things: To get started and to not stop till you get what you want. As Edison said, ‘Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time’”

“Ron, we covered this earlier. It is same as making better choices. The general understanding that people have for discipline is lack of freedom. Here again, it is an issue with perspective. In the short-term, it might appear as you are making choices that do not look attractive, but in the long-term, you create your future exactly as you want it. How is it a lack of freedom? In fact, it is the ultimate freedom! You are taking the power away from circumstances and getting it in your own hands.”

“Discipline might seem like lack of freedom in the short-term; in the long-term, it is the ultimate freedom.”

“Yes, that’s true! What do you suggest can be a good way for this?”

“A good way is to start by committing small time durations and waiting for momentum to kick in. If you start by saying that you want to leave coffee for a lifetime now, you will be overwhelmed right at the beginning and will fall flat on day two or three, as you will see a long way ahead. Never frame it as you are going to deny yourself of something, always frame it as having more choices and you are giving yourself something else.”

“A better approach is to say you will have something else, say green tea instead of coffee for ten days. Now on day three or four, you know it is just six or seven more days to go making it less overwhelming for you. This will allow you to go past the low point easily and then the positive momentum starts to kick in, so by the time you will be at day ten, you will already start to experience positive impacts of your new habit, that is, having green tea in place of coffee. At this point, you can decide to extend your decision from ten days to thirty days and see how your body continues to respond. At the end of thirty days, you might choose to continue with green tea. Even if you want to have an occasional coffee, you will not feel the same level of addiction and you will have regained your power over your habit. Imagine doing a few activities like this. How much it can boost your mental muscle! Since mind control is such a powerful life skill that once mastered can help you transform your life, we have slightly more exercises today.”

“Sure, let’s go ahead, I am ready!”

Exercise 1: Conquer your ‘meaning assignment mechanism’

“As a creative exercise, I encourage you to do this. Whenever something happens, any significant event in your life, force your mind to create at least four different meanings, two positive and two negative, on what all it could mean. Even within these meanings, adopt meanings along varying degrees. Assign one moderately positive meaning and one highly positive one. Assign one moderately negative meaning and one so negative that it totally paralyzes you into inaction and instant depression.”

“Why do you want me to do that?”

“Ron, when you start doing this exercise, you will have two key realizations:

1.  You will convince yourself that it is we who assign meanings to whatever happens
2.  You will take full control of your mind, totally disempowering it and next time it assigns a negative meaning, you will feel like laughing at it instead of taking it seriously. You will be asking your mind, ‘Are you really sure it cannot mean anything else?’”

“Going forward, as your mind assigns negative meanings, ask it ‘Are you really sure it cannot mean anything else?’”

“Thank you Ron+! This seems to be a powerful exercise. I will ensure that I practise it till it comes naturally to me.”