How to rewire your mind for success

“It is terrible. They have no respect for their employees,” she said angrily.
“I agree. You should not be working at a place and for people who have no respect for you. Are you looking for a change?” I asked her.
“Yes, but what if the next place is the same as this? I have changed three jobs in the last two years. I keep finding these horrible bosses!” she explained.
“I wonder why it happens to you.”
“I am just unlucky, I guess?” she said, shrugging her shoulders.
Of course, I told her that there is no such thing as luck. I also told her that it was fairly certain that she will find another terrible boss in her next job, and within a year, her resume would be so bad that people will stop calling her for interviews. Her career was in free fall, and she was adamant on blaming her luck!
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You had a long day at work and came home exhausted. You got into an argument with your spouse and spent the last hour before you slept looking through your social media feed, filling yourself up with the news that did not matter. You wake up in the morning feeling overwhelmed by another busy day that you are sure will drain your energy. You grudgingly get ready, and as you are having your breakfast, you get a text reminder of the electricity bill that you forgot to pay; the amount seemed to be inordinately high to you. The drive to work takes longer, and you have a review with your boss. You know how it will go!
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Reena turned 34 last week. Her family reminded her that it was time to find a good guy and get married.
“But, where are the good guys? I am done with these mean, lecherous men,” she confided in her best friend.
“Don’t give up. I am sure there is someone who is just right for you. You will find him someday,” her friend consoled her. If I was Reena’s friend, I’d tell her that she will never find a good guy because she only wants the bad ones. No good guy would ever come near her, or even if he does, he will turn into a bad guy!
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Have you ever had these situations in your life or have you seen someone go through them? I am sure you have because the world is full of people who refuse to be happy. Napoleon Hill said in his book ‘Think and Grow Rich,’ “You can be anything you want to be, if only you believe with sufficient conviction and act in accordance with your faith; for whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.” Powerful lines; but they raise an even more powerful question. “What is it that you believe in? Where are you putting your faith?”

If you are sub-consciously thinking about having a bad day or a bad relationship, you will get that! Through the series of events that we encounter in our life, our brain learns what to expect next. The expected event may actually happen or not. But, because our brain expects something will happen in a certain way, we often end up getting the outcomes that we anticipate. Our belief system or the subconscious mind pattern is largely an outcome of a lifetime of conditioning. I have often noticed that people who are unable to hold on to relationships have had troubled childhoods or similar painful experiences in the past. Over the years, they develop a belief which guides them towards relationships which do not last. With each bad experience, the belief gets strengthened, and even before they meet the next person, the subconscious mind starts sending warning signals. These signals are strong because they originate from the instinct to survive and protect yourself. Your body responds immediately to these signals, and even before something good could have begun, things collapse.

The same thing happens with people who have a terrible relationship with money. How often have we come across people who, despite having all the great ideas, resources and support, keep losing money in business? It is simply because their mind is conditioned to believe that they can never earn or save enough money and that being rich or abundant is not meant for them. They get what they expect.

People who carry the heavy baggage of limiting beliefs from their past often have a very pronounced flight or fight response. Their primary response to any new situation, even though it may hold potentials of vast happiness, is to look for survival first. Their survival belief system has become so strong over the years that they would choose anything but success or happiness as long as they can keep themselves in the state of survival, inertia and stagnancy. Have you ever seen a leader in any walk of life operating with this instinct?

How do you break the habit of being yourself

Dr. Joe Dispenza in his book “Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself” mentions that the only habit that we need to break in order to have the life we truly desire is the habit of being ourselves. What does this mean? Dr. Dispenza explains that our thoughts are very powerful as they make us respond in certain ways. Our thoughts create the feelings and emotions that we feel within our body. For instance, thoughts of fear create an emotion of nervousness, and our body starts to respond—we feel dryness in our throat, and perhaps, we start to palpitate. If fear becomes our dominant thought pattern, we will end up feeling nervous and anxious far more often. Over time, being nervous or anxious would become our temperament, and eventually, it would become our personality.

I am sure you have seen people around you who are almost perpetually nervous and anxious. They have sweaty palms or short breath or a suspicious gaze, and they avoid interacting with you and other people. Such people are so deeply in control of their subconscious mind which makes them behave this way. It has become their personality.

What thoughts are shaping your life

Ask yourself. What are your dominant thoughts? If there are certain things in your life that never work out like relationships, health or money, then what is the underlying thought that is making you believe that you can never get those things? Where did it come from? When was the first time you started feeling like that? Perhaps, it was some event from your childhood that left a deep and yet unknown impact on your mind. Finally, have you allowed that thought to shape and change your personality?

As I coach or generally observe people around me, I have come to believe that one thing that stops us from being successful is our limiting subconscious thought pattern. I have worked with people who understand everything that they hear and read. They agree with the concept of building awareness and clarity in life, and the importance of taking action. Yet, when I meet them a few weeks or months later, they tell me that they have not progressed.

It is deeply frustrating for them as it is disappointing for me as their coach. But, the reason is simple. My method of teaching is based on three broad pillars – Awareness, Attraction and Action. Attraction is the concept that we are learning now. It is the bridge between awareness and action. If the bridge has poor foundations, it will eventually break. It can’t handle the positive energy that needs to travel between the points where you become aware and the point where you have to take determined action.

Failure comes swift in such cases, and with every failure, comes a deeper loss of faith in self. Dr. Joe Dispenza says that in order to get past the habit of being yourself, you have to ‘think greater than you feel’. This means that we have to stop thinking in our old, habitual way and initiate a new belief system that is in harmony with our highest purpose and vision.

How do we do it?

To bring about this shift in our thought pattern we must change the beliefs that remain stored in our subconscious mind. It means that we must become aware of the limiting or self-defeating thoughts that are hindering our growth. Becoming aware entails far more than just ‘knowing’ what those thoughts are. It actually means that we also become aware of how our body reacts to those thoughts, what actions do we take or do not take as a result of these limiting thoughts and what outcomes do we eventually get. As you do this deep inner inspection of your own thought pattern, you will start to recognise the futility of such self-defeating thoughts. You will also become aware of the fact that the things that you fear or doubt are often unfounded and they actually never manifest.

The next stage of starting to think greater than you feel is to make a conscious effort to replace those limiting thoughts with more powerful thoughts. It is almost equivalent to replacing infected files in the computer with a fresh set of files. This may take time, but this is the most important work that you can ever do for your own good.

Use meditation as a tool to changing your habits

One effective way of breaking the habit of thinking negatively is to meditate each day. In a guided meditation that I help my participants to do, we first build deep awareness of our limiting thoughts. We remind ourselves of what those thoughts do to our body. Then, we start visualising how we really want to think and feel. When we meditate with the highest vision in our mind, we start becoming aware of the thoughts we need to imprint in our brain. These are the supportive and empowering thoughts that are needed for the vision to turn into reality. Eventually, in the course of this meditation, we envision living our life to our highest potential. It is at this stage that we begin to reap the benefits. This is where we start to replace the corrupted or redundant files in our brain with a fresh set of files.

When done over a period of time, this meditation can be incredibly powerful. As new thoughts start replacing the old ones, we no longer feel the same way as we used to in the past, and with time, we start to develop a new personality. Dr Joe Dispenza says that our personality defines our personal reality, and that is what we must strive to do.