How wrong I was! How petty my outlook! How narrow my vision!

It’s the intent that really matters

Although being a square peg in a square hole is a necessary condition for happiness, by no means is it sufficient. Doing what I love as a profession certainly made effort less painful and more enjoyable, but there was a sense of emptiness and restlessness—a feeling of struggle. It felt as if I was rowing my boat against an invisible tide or walking uphill with a heavy load, all alone. No doubt passion for my work provided me with the energy to keep moving—but still, the whole effort somehow seemed wasteful and avoidable. There must be a better way, I told myself.

Then I discovered that the problem lay in my intent. I noticed that when I was involved in a selfless act, everything came to me easily, as if under grace. On the other hand, when I did what I loved doing only towards the fulfilment of my own needs—financial or otherwise—I was bound to feel incomplete and discontent.

Personal success is not equal to contentment

I am an intrinsic part of the environment I live in—its people, its animals, its resources—everything. When I am focussed on achieving my greatest potential without regard to my world, I may work hard and do whatever it takes, but my end goal is individual, personal. In the past I followed my dreams and goals because I was raised to subscribe to the capitalistic view of the world, which says that individuals need to think for themselves and maximise their own wellbeing.

But when has the part ever been more well than the whole?

No matter how it appears, I can never truly prosper and feel well when all I think about is myself. I may succeed in accumulating wealth and finding fame but authentic happiness will evade me, peace of mind will remain a dream, and life will always seem like struggle. Being self-centred, I may reach great heights of success and take pride in my achievement but it will lack the contentment that comes when I join forces with the greater intelligence that makes the sun rise, the flowers bloom and the earth spin on its axis.

Moving away from personal fulfilment and glory

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”
— Rabindranath Tagore

That is why I have this longing to let go of my quest for personal success and instead focus on serving others, be useful to the environment of which I am an inseparable part. Of course I can continue to do what I love doing, but the intent now is not personal fulfilment and glory but the betterment of my world. I believe that doing so lets me flow with the tide because I am now involved in cooperating with the collective intent of greater good.

Success takes on a fresh new flavour when you do what you love doing in service of your fellow beings and the planet. I am born with many gifts and I have realised that I find my bliss in giving them away. What I receive in return is invaluable: the support of the whole Universe.

 
► Follow Manoj Khatri on Twitter and Instagram

The post Going beyond personal fulfilment appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

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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?”

Your Beliefs Guide Your Brain

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 Should 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 pattern 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 recognize 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 your limiting thought pattern 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 visualizing how we really want to think and feel. When we meditate with the highest vision in our mind, we start becoming aware of the thought pattern 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.

The post How to Change Your Limiting Subconscious Thought Pattern appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

• Use of sharp tones
• Non-acceptance of what is, what people say and what they do. Judging them wrongly
• Putting people in a tight spot, correcting them all the time
• Cutting people. Making people defensive by catching their words
• Replying literally to mere words rather than understanding the context
• Criticising, blaming, negative thinking and fault finding. Use of abusive or hurtful words
• Disturbed inner energy
• Haphazard breathing pattern
• Communicating everything, heightened righteousness
• Trying to love deeply and becoming possessive
• Inability to speak concisely, with few, sweet, slow-paced and gently spoken words.

We are the world

People are all the same at the core. Anything spoken out of unawareness triggers the unawareness in others. Psychologically everybody is the same, only actions seem to differ. We have the same brains but we don’t see it the same way because we have been competing with each other, artificially marking the brains as different. It is so evident that across the world human beings are suffering. We are living in a world of shortage; there is so much anxiety, fear, insecurity, confusion, mental illnesses, fear of getting hurt [emotionally and physically] and fear of death.

Initially, I tried to stay away from what I didn’t like in people and realised that I felt very uncomfortable. I resisted a lot to accept what I didn’t like in others. The transformation came when I started seeing myself in my friends, my parents, my neighbours, and the world as an extension of myself, just like my hands are am extension of me. The engine, i.e. the brain, is the same in all of us with just a difference in our interpretations, which is the root cause of all fights and conflicts around us. Once you start seeing yourself in others, you will not have to change anybody.

Other people have their conditioning, we have ours. They react to our conditioning; we see their reaction and not the reason behind it, which could be us or the way they see us.
We want to feel included in our circles all the time, accepted by people and for this we try to be significant and instead get excluded from our groups. Psychologically, our attempts to gain significance put us on a higher pedestal and others around us on a lower one. This gives a boost to our ego. The ego feels great in defeating people. Whereas when you drop the significance, you reach the other person’s level and are included by default. Significance is trying to be important or standing out from the rest. People are selling their happy stories all the time, they have become salesmen. Our naturalness is almost lost as people are more interested in showing us how happy they are by posting pictures on social media than in actually being happy. This has made us dependent on how many “likes” we receive for a social media post.

When the race to earn money and respect is over, we genuinely pursue what we, in our consciousness, want to do. When you think of making others win, contributing to the larger game, and accept their weaknesses, you surpass the ego and reach the natural state of consciousness.

You feel uncomfortable even amongst your own people because the ego has many expectations and gets hurt easily. With your own people the baggage that you carry is almost constant and much more than it is with strangers. But when you become aware and there is attention in the present, egoistic thoughts cease to make an impact. When you are able to practice this for some time, you will stop deriving pleasure from other people’s losses. Once your expectations drop, you naturally feel happy with people and the relationship then can be enjoyed at a much different level.

Our world reflects what we are

Once a dog ran into a museum where all the walls, the ceiling, the door and even the floor were made of mirrors. Seeing this, the dog froze in surprise in the middle of the hall, a whole pack of dogs surrounding it on all sides from above and below. The dog bared his teeth and all the reflections responded to it in the same way. Frightened, the dog frantically barked. The reflections imitated the bark and resounded many times. The dog barked even harder and the echo kept building. The dog tossed from one side to another, biting the air, his reflections also tossed around snapping their teeth. Next morning, the museum security guards found the miserable dog, lifeless and surrounded by equally lifeless million reflections. There was nobody who would have harmed the dog. Everything that is happening around us is the reflection of our own thoughts, feelings and karma. The negativity that stands between you and the right path is solely yours and not theirs.

Right action

When you have attention, you have energy and the thoughts lose control. So disruptive thoughts don’t operate anymore and right action takes place. Anything you do with an agenda or a planned outcome leads to pain as agendas and outcomes lie in the future and bliss in the present. All outcome-oriented actions are actually reactions to thoughts of tomorrow. The present is the place and when you act from it, it is appropriate and not in duality. Otherwise the mind keeps thinking “was what I did right or not” as the mind struggles with the past and the future. Right action is not possible when you are suffering because of uncertainty, unhappiness, insecurity, greed, envy, competitiveness and violence. Right actions are possible when the suffering stops.

How to be a good observer

When in public, observe your need to prove something, when with friends see the comparisons you make, when with parents see how you try to fix situations so that it doesn’t reflect badly on you, when scared see how the ego justifies your acts, see how you wonder whether or not people are looking at you, always seeking attention, see your thoughts about others, about yourself, about life. See how the ego keeps judging you internally, your actions, decisions and behaviour. People kill animals and then pray, “Thank you for feeding us.” It’s their ego that protects them from going into guilt mode. The ego always wants to be morally upright instead of correcting its own actions. It does not correct them because it is made through attachments. So it cannot correct itself by default. It is attached to what it feels is right for it, irrespective of the results it is getting.

You need a sharp mind to observe things but it is blunt because it is always running and we have not given it any rest. Once you will have the sharpness of the mind, you will be able to observe the movements of your thoughts.

Observe every bit of you. Just watch the way you walk, talk, smile, laugh, cry, behave, the words you use, the decisions you make, the food you eat, alcohol you consume, the cigarettes you smoke, your relationship, your image in your own eyes, the way people see you, your attempts at defining yourself through success and the clothes you wear. Just be present totally to yourself, your intentions, your conditioning, the way you think, the things you like, dislike, your judgments about others, about yourself, the way you perceive things, the way you assume things, and everything that is you and related to you. The moment you become present towards all this, without getting caught in opinions and judgments, a transformation will take place. The intensity with which you observe will determine the speed at which the transformation will happen. What is true for you is what you have observed yourself. And when you lose that, you have lost everything.

Adapted with permission from Freedom from the I by Shashank Kasliwal, published by Jaico Books

The post The way to tame your ego is to just keep observing yourself appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Do you rush to rescue your child?

Some parents personalise their child’s failures. When we over identify with our child, we feel all of their experiences as if they were our own. This is not only unhealthy for us, but it is unhealthy for our children. Our children have their own strengths and weaknesses. Their struggles are not our struggles. We are only there to support our children along the way. When parents feel the bumps of their children’s lives too deeply, they will do anything to rescue their child from hurt, pain or failure. They are quick to rush to the school to argue a low grade. They are at the sidelines, yelling at the referee during a sporting event. They are up late at night finishing their child’s school project because their child didn’t manage their time well.

When we rescue our children, we steal from them an important life experience—failure. We create a false sense of success. When these children grow up they are ill-equipped at handling failure because they never had to experience it as a child. Instead of rescuing our children, we inadvertently set them up for long-term struggle. As parents we have the opportunity to teach our children how to move past failure and disappointment. We can give them the tools to not only get through failure, but to thrive past it.

We can do that by conveying these messages to our children:

Everyone fails

Let your child know that everyone fails. That failing is a part of life. Tell them that they didn’t come out of the womb walking. They had to fall hundreds of times before their body learned the art of walking. Tell them that some of our greatest minds failed. Albert Einstein didn’t learn to read until he was seven years old. Thomas Edison’s light bulb invention failed 1,000 times before he was successful.

Share with your child some of your own failures. Letting your child know that you are fallible will help them see that failure is normal and that it happens to everyone.

Failure is part of success

Without failure none of us would ever experience success. When we fail, we are given the opportunity to learn from our mistakes and do it better. Help your child explore what they have learned from their failure. How would they do it better next time? Try to be motivating and not overly critical. Most children are already feeling pretty bad about themselves when they experience failure. You berating them won’t make them do better next time. For instance if your child did poorly on an exam you may say, “You didn’t study. You deserve that grade because you didn’t put in any effort.” While this may be true it isn’t going to inspire your child to do better next time. Instead, re-frame the failure by saying something like, “When you study you do well. You are intelligent and I love how you learn things so quickly. Next time, I know if you work harder on your subjects, you’ll do great on the exam.”

Failure is part of the process

Failure is often part of the process. Thomas Edison wouldn’t have been able to develop the light bulb if he hadn’t failed a thousand times. It was in those failures that he was given the clues on how to continually improve his project and eventually make one of the most important inventions of our time. Ask your child if they can think of a time their failure made them improve. Did they get better at a sport after practising? Did they learn how to balance on a bike after falling? Help your child make these connections.

It is your effort that matters

Focus on praising your child’s effort. If one child studied for five hours and got a low grade on an exam and the other didn’t study at all and got a perfect score, which child deserves more praise? When you only focus on results and not on the process, your child can get the wrong message. You want to foster hard work and praise effort, even if the end result is less than perfect.

As parents we understand failure well. Parenthood can be a struggle and most of us have felt failure at some point during the journey. If we can help our children see failure as a learning opportunity, we will be teaching them one of the greatest life lessons.

The post Have you taught your child the importance of failing? appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

“How are we raising our children? Are we raising them for now instead of yet? Are we raising kids who are obsessed with getting As? Are we raising kids who don’t know how to dream big dreams? Their biggest goal is getting the next A, or the next test score? And are they carrying this need for constant validation with them into their future lives?” — These hard hitting questions are posed by Dweck to make us think about how we may be unknowingly hurting our children’s prospects.

“Just the words ‘yet’ or ‘not yet,’ we’re finding, give kids greater confidence, give them a path into the future that creates greater persistence. And we can actually change students’ mindsets,” she says.

About the speaker

Carol Dweck is a pioneering researcher in the field of motivation, why people succeed (or don’t) and how to foster success.

The post Have you discovered the power of “yet”? appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

• Introduction: Laws of Attractions vs Laws of Creation
• If you don’t create your future, fate will
• What you accept, you experience
• Testing the limits of your potential
• Creating your own reality
• Knowing what you really want is important
• The 10-step approach to creating the reality you desire
• Learning to drive your experiences
• Reinventing your reality
• Conclusion: See what you can become

Introduction: Laws of Attractions vs Laws of Creation

The Laws of Attraction are concerned with how to draw close the things that you value and wish to acquire. This is achieved by forming the image of what you want, then attracting that within your reality. If what you want doesn’t already exist, you either need to create it or wait for someone else to do so.

The Laws of Creation are not about attracting what you want, but rather creating through desires, imagination, expectation, belief, persistence and energy the things that you wish to exist within your life.

Humans throughout the ages have created everything that can be observed within today’s physical world. Inventors, explorers, artist, architects, and others have created within reality what previously didn’t exist by using their knowledge of the Laws of Creation.

If you don’t create your future, fate will

The Laws of Creation or The Laws of Attraction are both vulnerable to procrastination, weak desires, lack of perseverance and the inability to maintain focus until what is desired is achieved. Many give up because what they wanted hasn’t been obtained within the limited time-frame they imagined. This could be due to lack of programming or not persevering long enough until what they want becomes real.

As the creator of your own perceived reality, your actions, thoughts, beliefs, and your mental and physical health, all contribute towards what you finally experience and perceive. If you don’t spend the time and the energy to create the future then fate will do that for you.

When you create the future you have choices but when fate creates your future you have to accept what comes your way almost unconditionally, at least initially.

What you accept, you experience

What you are prepared to accept is what you usually end up experiencing. Making no attempt to change or manage what is occurring means that you accept that such a state has the legitimate right to exist within your reality.

Creation is not only about bringing what you want into your life but also controlling what you wish to accept or reject. When things don’t go right, when undesirable situations get legitimacy within your life experience, the sole reason for their continued existence is that you didn’t negate or change them.

Your abilities are infinite, beyond comprehension, being limited only by your potential to perceive the possibility for success. All that is necessary are the desires, belief, expectancy, focus and perseverance, together with the application of the necessary energy levels to achieve your heart’s desires.

Testing the limits of your potential

It is important to wake up to the reality that there is no necessity for anything to be difficult, and that with the right mentality, everything does indeed become possible. Don’t be a “creation” of circumstances, challenge who you can be.

Readily accepting what has become the current condition, or surrendering to fate without even considering or testing the limits of the potential that could exist is how most people live their lives—this is a completely unnecessary state to endure.

Without searching for and pushing the boundaries of reality, the full potential of what can be achieved will never truly emerge; what is currently experienced will always be the basis of your ultimate reality. Only by testing the limits of potential is it possible to maximize life’s experience to the full.

Creating your own reality

Reality is based solely upon desires that are given perspective through imagination, and then the credibility to be brought to life by your firm belief in them. You create life from the pieces of reality that you bring together like a jigsaw puzzle.

Every moment is an opportunity to create what you desire most—by clearly focusing your imagination on what you want first, then through expectancy backed by belief to make desires legitimate.

You create each moment from the massive number of thoughts that you have, either consciously or subconsciously. Some experiences come to dominate your life, while others are fleeting in their ability to have an effect, yet they all contribute on some level towards your reality. The remainder of reality is either created by others or randomly by fate.

By taking full control of your thoughts, it becomes possible to take back the management of each element of your entire life, which can then be controlled as you specifically desire—outside the influence and manipulation of others or by chance.

The path that you create or follow does become the story of your life.

Knowing what you really want is important

Many are deluded into desiring various things that are basically just passing fantasies. There is a common trend to constantly shift desires, which change depending upon a particular infatuation at the time. Very few people stop to think clearly about what they “really” want or need, then put all their energy into pursuing that vigorously.

The decisions as to what you wish to pursue in life is your right; you should pursue those desires relentlessly until they become part of your life. Challenge the future by making changes that will come to enrich your life.

The 10-step approach to creating the reality you desire

The five pillars of creation are: imagination, clearly defined desires, positive expectations, belief, and persistence. Combining these elements of thought you are able to create in reality the things that you truly desire.

Reality is born through your imagination, which is crystallized into form by your desires, given impetus by your expectations, and made real through your beliefs. You create life from the pieces of reality that you bring together like a jigsaw puzzle.

Let’s look at each step:

Step 1: The objective

An important factor is to identify clear and precise details of what exactly you want, then to hold that image with a strong desire. Focus only on one specific desire at a time.

Step 2: Imagination

Utilizing the powerful combination of intuitive thoughts linked with creative inspiration, determine “all” the various elements that make up what you want. Remember to be thorough, for whatever is left out, fate or chance will fill in randomly. These elements are the main points to focus the imagination upon. What you seek cannot be drawn to you or brought into existence until you define it clearly.

Step 3: Desire

The energy of your desires set the stage for the potential you can attain. Desires are the basis of making things possible; to bring your thoughts into reality more clearly and precisely. Strongly desire what you want to be yours; drawing it to you with a focused intent.

Step 4: Visualization

Visualize in great detail the factors making up what you desire, then focus on those images intently, keeping the desire fixed and unchanged until what you desire actually becomes yours.

In order to gain the full benefit of what you wish to obtain or achieve, it is necessary to visualize your desires as existing in the current time and place—as if it has happened or is happening here and now.

Step 5: Belief

Your beliefs give legitimacy to your desires. The key to attracting or creating anything is by believing it to be yours, living your dream and playing the part like it can, in fact, become real.

Belief is what enables you to perceive in your mind’s eye what you desire. How quickly your desires materialize will always depend upon the intensity of your beliefs and your keen perception.

Step 6: Expectancy

Your expectations govern how your life will turn out. Have a strong expectation that what you want will become real within your reality; expectancy gives your desires energy to manifest within a reasonable time period.

Step 7: Perseverance

Persistent effort is required to keep focus upon what is desired until it is actually achieved. Don’t give up. Without changing the key elements you can embellish the various elements you isolated with more detail. Then continue the focused intent on the desire until what you want is achieved.

Many find they can’t hold the desire long enough, losing focus or changing their direction continually when what they desire doesn’t materialize immediately.

Step 8: Effort

Nothing was ever achieved without effort, both physical and mental. Determine whatever you need to do in order to create what you want within reality. And be willing to do whatever it takes.

Step 9: Dreams

Fortify your desires with dream planning. Think intently about your desire and what you wish to become real within your life. Prior to sleep follow the steps of imagining exactly what you want, together with a strong focus of desire, believe the desire is achievable, and expecting that what is desired will be yours for sure. It is ideal to cycle through the imagining, desiring, believing and expecting stages a number of times.

Step 10: The Meditation

Everyone has a favorite method for achieving a meditative state, these techniques can be quite fast, or be elaborate and take time. Meditation, when used proficiently, with suitable supervision can empower the ability to create within reality. As with dreams, focus your attention during a meditative state upon imagining exactly what you want, placing a strong focus of desire on obtaining what you want or wish to achieve, believe the desire is achievable, and expect that your desire will manifest without fail.

Learning to drive your experiences

Belief in the outcome is the fuel that drives reality

I took part in a speech contest against a number of professionals who were far better and experienced speakers than I was at the time. A few days before the event, I started imagining taking part in the contest, focusing in detail that everything would go perfectly. I imagined actually winning the contest, and visualized receiving the award. I won against all odds, surprising others and beating the favorite who had won many years in succession.

If you don’t decide exactly what you want fate will step in to rule your life

There was a man who desired a red sports car. Every day he imagined this car parked in his driveway, diligently. One morning he opened the living room curtains to find a red sports car in his driveway as if by magic. Rushing outside he met his neighbor who was very apologetic for parking his new car in the wrong driveway as there was no space in his own.

On analysis the man had gotten exactly what he wanted, simply a red sports car in his driveway. He had forgotten to add into the imagining the desire, the belief, the expectancy, that it was paid for, but most importantly that the car would belong solely to him.

Reinventing your reality

It is the combination of imagining every detail with a strong unending focus of desire, together with the belief that what you want is already yours—not will be or maybe—but already is yours; this is what will make your desires manifest within your reality more easily.

You have the sole responsibility for what happens to you in life, and are limited only by the unwillingness to take action.

Conclusion: See what you can become

The future will either be what you want, what others want, or what fate throws your way. Only by fixing your destiny clearly in your mind will you be able to achieve your dreams and life desires. Life will only give you what you demand, and then pursue.

The cost of anything is what you are prepared to do in order to achieve it. Don’t be a creation of circumstances, challenge who you can become. Open your mind to the infinite possibilities that exist for you by harnessing the powers of creation within you to make a life you truly deserve.

Don’t be so wound up in who you are that you fail to see what you can become.

The post The 10-step approach to creating the reality you desire appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

To me, being practical means conforming to the standards of thought and behaviour that the society has agreed as “safe”. Commonly, the advice is used to mean that if you do what you feel like doing, instead of what is considered practical, you will fail or produce an undesirable outcome.

Granted, you lower your risk by being practical and playing safe—but in the bargain you forsake any chance of achieving great success.

Our society places so much emphasis on being practical that unless we gather the courage and go against the tide, we end up being safe… and sad. For example, I don’t remember ever being encouraged to pursue my passions. Instead, the counsel I have received from well-meaning people has always tended to push me into making career decisions that will ensure that my future is “secure”. Not happy, mind you, but secure. Somehow security has come to represent happiness when all it means is avoidance of uncertainty, which many people find unpleasant.

Avoiding sadness ≠ Being happy

Over time, I have figured that being practical is often the difference between what you could’ve done and what you actually did. It means missed opportunities, suppressed emotions, and often—for a majority of people—a life full of regrets. So what’s the point of being practical if it leaves you unfulfilled? Is your goal to avoid sadness or to experience happiness?

Given a choice between being happy and being practical, I always choose happiness. I am aware that not every choice I make will end up working out my way. But the risk is worth it. At least I have the satisfaction that I made the choice NOT because it was safe but because it made me happy. That way, the pain of failures or undesired outcomes is something I am prepared for. Besides, it’s frees me from the bondage of practicality.

It’s worth remembering that some of the world’s most admired businesses today were once “impractical” ideas of a few freakish entrepreneurs. Some of the life-changing inventions were labelled as “foolish pursuits of crazy scientists”.  But then, like happiness, even greatness is impractical.

The post Happiness is not practical appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

I recognise the importance of the rear-view mirror in my car. As I drive, I often look into it—to help me navigate busy roads better. Driving without it is not only ill-advised, but downright dangerous. But, looking too much in the rear-view mirror is equally hazardous and can cause accidents, you will agree.

Now imagine the windshield and the rear view mirror with their sizes interchanged—the windshield as small as the rear view mirror and vice versa. Would driving become much, much more difficult? You bet it would! [Unless, you’re driving backwards]

Yet, when it comes to everyday living, this is how most of us live. By constantly looking back for benchmarks, we make our past much bigger than our present and future.

In the corporate world, for example, young professionals often set ambitious targets at the start of their careers. But if they miss these targets for some reason or another, the next time around they downgrade their targets to safe levels—in other words, lower than their past performance. In doing so, they enlarge their rear-view mirrors way beyond necessary.

It’s not just failure but success of the past too, which imprisons us. We tend to recreate past success by trying to do things the way we did it then. But resting on past laurels often backfires. Those who believe that just because something worked in the past, it will work in the future too, are ignoring the ever-changing world where nothing stays the same. Situations change and factors that were once responsible for success may no longer be relevant or may have disappeared altogether. We live in a dynamic universe that is changing continuously. Greek Philosopher Heraclitus expressed this beautifully, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

Those who believe that just because something worked in the past, it will work in the future too, are ignoring the ever-changing world where nothing stays the same

I am not saying that the past be totally abandoned. Certainly there are lessons that we can learn from it to improve our future attempts. Past is an important indicator—it tells you where you were—but it can never tell you where you can go and how soon you’ll reach there. For that, you have to look ahead. That’s why you glance momentarily in the rear view mirror, while keeping your eyes focussed on the road in front of you.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a personal goal or a professional objective, relying on past performance as a yardstick for the future is simply not a sound strategy. The baggage from the past acts as a constraint and, in the process, you often get into the wrong lane or take the wrong turn—and end up some place you didn’t want to go.

It’s worthwhile to remember that no great invention was ever made by looking into the past for reference—it’s the future that is full of possibilities. And future is born from the womb of the present. Taking the car analogy further, we can have the perfect plan for the future, factoring precise lessons from the past, but we won’t get anywhere unless the car moves. And for that, we need action in the now. Ultimately it’s the energy we generate in the present moment that takes us forward. So thank the past for its lessons but don’t dwell there too long. Live in the present moment and be ready for an unknown, exciting future.

The post Past imperfect, future tensed appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

But what if you discovered that this is a flawed premise?

The post Why you should not trust advice from successful people appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

There is a certain aura that surrounds him. You cannot escape his piercing eyes, his glowing face, his energetic demeanour and his 1000 watt smile. His responses are spontaneous and unpretentious and yet there’s a charm about him that makes him endearing. Meet Robin Sharma, the man who lives on his own terms, and shows you how you too can do the same…

Manoj khatri: Let’s start with The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. What inspired you to write such a book? Just like the protagonist, you too were a practising lawyer. So it seems to be an autobiographical account… are you the monk?

Robin Sharma: Yes, a lot of Julian Mantle’s story is my story. So you’re right. I was a litigation lawyer by profession. The challenge I faced was that I was living someone else’s life. I was living the life that society had sold me on the true meaning of success. I was well educated, I had a lovely office, I had two law degrees… and yet when I’d wake up in the morning, I’d feel completely empty and frustrated and disconnected with my purpose and my true values. So yes, Julian Mantle is me in many ways. Thankfully, I didn’t have a heart attack. But I went on my own odyssey and started searching—I wanted to understand what are the tools and what a life well lived is all about. And I made a profound transformation with what I learnt… about rewiring your mindset, rewiring your values and rewiring your behaviours. That’s what inspired me to write The Monk…

And it started as nothing more than a dream, I was laughed at. I think if you’re not being laughed at a lot, you’re not doing very much. I had a vision, and all I had going for me was my instinct, my gut. And I knew that people will be inspired by this book, they will connect with it and it will help transform them and help them become what they want to be. So I just went out there, step-by-step, sharing the message of the book with one person at a time. Soon the book started travelling around the world through word-of-mouth and it became what it is now.

Manoj khatri: Where did you learn the ‘rewiring’ part?

Robin Sharma: Well, you can say that I’m the product of every book I’ve ever read, every conversation I’ve ever had and every place I’ve ever been to. So everything has been my teacher. Suffering has been my teacher. Success has been my teacher. My kids have been my teacher. The taxi driver in Mumbai who told me that guests are God and that’s why he treats every single person as the most important in the world… he has been my teacher. So for The Monk… I got my inspiration from books, experiences and conversations and a lot of time just spent in solitude, in self-reflection.

Manoj khatri: It’s evident that The Monk… came about as a result of a transformation within you. And so did all the success afterwards. What does success mean to you?

Robin Sharma: I think that as we go more out into the world, it becomes even more important to stay alone. So what I try to do is spend most of my time with my family, my close friends, my team, my books, my journal… and in nature with my thoughts. I don’t watch a lot of TV. I don’t spend a lot of my time in restaurants. This way I stay connected with my core values and my core mission so that it doesn’t get diluted by the world around me. I think once you’re successful, what you want to do is protect your vision, conserve your energy and safeguard your values.

Manoj khatri: You seem to be absolutely clear about your priorities in life. But that’s what most people struggle with. They know that it’s important for them to give time to their families, their friends, their health and yet they seem to always put these lower in the list of priorities… many fear that they may not be able to fulfil their role as a good parent/spouse and so on unless they work hard and long. What advice do you have for those who are faced with such a dilemma?

Robin Sharma: Well, I say this with great respect, but most people haven’t made the time to think about what they want. And let’s go to the neurobiology behind this. It’s because we have a neurobiological instinct to follow what everyone else is doing. So, hundreds of years ago, when there was a threat of leaving the herd and being eaten by a cheetah, that instinct served us. But now we’re in Mumbai, Calcutta, or Chennai and we haven’t taken the time to think of what’s most important to us. We don’t know our own priorities; we don’t know our own values; we don’t have a vision. A lot of people say to me, “I’m too busy to do my vision.” But actually their busyness is just an addiction to mask the fact that they are really bored. If you don’t know what’s important to you then you’re going to have to fill the hours with too much TV and too much busyness. So how do you to avoid that? Number one, you do something as simple as planning. Take the time to write a one-page plan and ask yourself [I talk about it in my books] what five things must happen between now and the end of this year for this to be the best year you’ve ever had in your life. I call it my ‘big five.’ Every morning you look at your big five priorities and then you commit to them.

Number two, you look at your goals. How many people set goals for each quarter of the year and then build a schedule around advancing these goals? It’s all about the execution. People say, “Well, these ideas in The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari and The Leader Who Had No Title don’t work. But no idea works unless you do the work. So you’ve got to execute. Each day you’ve got to advance your priorities versus living the priorities of the world. You’ve got to turn off the TV or say no to every social engagement. You have to find a vision that burns inside you so much that you are willing to say NO to the entertainment, in order to manifest your vision. Study any great master and you’ll find that they didn’t spend the best hours of their days in distraction; instead they spent all their time pursuing their craft and their dream.

Manoj khatri: What is the biggest challenge to pursue your dream?

Robin Sharma: I think it is to leave the herd—it is one of the biggest challenges we face. We spend the best hours of our best days following the herd around us. And we think that just because most people spend their best hours watching TV, or sending text messages, we think this is how you live a life. And just because most people complain and give away their power, we think this is how you live. Yet, all masters and all leaders have one thing in common: they have the guts to leave the herd and live their life on their own terms—without any regard to what anyone else was doing.

Manoj khatri: Talking about leadership… how do you define it? And how can a leader strike a balance between her commercial goals and the human development aspect?

Robin Sharma: No matter what you do—run a company, make films or clean toilets—you can still show leadership. The number one way we give away our power is that we think we don’t have any. How many people say: I’m not the Managing Director or I’m not the boss so I can’t make a difference. I met a woman in South Africa, who washed people’s toilets and she thought hers was the most important job in the world. And she worked like Picasso painted. A job is only a job if we choose to see it as a job. All work has dignity, all work is noble. Whether you cook, you clean toilets, sweep streets, see it as a craft and see it as honourable. Make it better everyday. Inspire people by your mastery. So my message is: no matter what you do in your own work, see it as your craft and pursue mastering it everyday—because all work is a chance to express your creativity. All work is a chance for you to meet your fears and transcend them. All work is a chance for you to inspire other human beings. Therefore all work is chance for you to change the world.

Coming to your question… you asked how should leaders align the competing objectives business goals and the human responsibility. Well, I actually think they are not competing. The job of a leader is to grow more leaders. If you’re not inspiring the people around you and helping them do their best work, you’re not leading. But here’s my point. If you spend your days in inspiring and developing talent, encouraging the discouraged, helping them do what they never thought was possible… they are going to wow their customers, they’re going to be more productive, they’re going to meet their vision, they’re going to give their heart and soul to your business. What’s that going to do to the profitability?

Manoj khatri: I have not a single doubt that this is absolutely correct. But any transformation takes time—there is a lag between when you begin to do this and when it begins to show results. How does one develop faith?

Robin Sharma: Yeah, you’ve got to have the guts to believe in yourself when no one else believes in you. India is the land of the great Mahatma Gandhi. When he started the salt march, he was an army of one. All he had going for him was his conviction. And where does that come from? Sometimes you just don’t know. You just have to have a dream for your job, a dream for your life. And have the guts to connect with that. How do you stay true to that? Well, you write about it in your journal, which actually deepens your commitment. You get up early and you pray, meditate, visualise. Read great business books and autobiographies and stay inspired and block out negativity. When the critic says, “This will never work,” dismiss the critic. And if you get knocked down because you fail, you just get back up. And the more you do that, the stronger you get. And if you start advancing towards your vision everyday, you start to get some traction. You get some momentum. Like Gandhi… everybody who started following Gandhi empowered him and his vision. Right now, when I look at the global movement around The Monk… and The Leader… on social media, I get inspired to keep going. I could retire right now. So what’s keeping me going is that I’m starting to get more traction. More than ever before, people are saying to me they are making the transformation. So, step-by-step, when you start to get the results—which you eventually will, because success is a numbers game—you start to believe in your vision.

Manoj khatri: What are the five most important things you do to stay inspired and focused on your vision?

Robin Sharma: The first thing is just an idea: I’m not a victim. I show leadership. I don’t play victim and I own the results of my life. I take absolute responsibility. I’m not a cat or a dog. Victims make excuses. Leaders deliver results. If you look for excuses you’ll find them.

If you say, “I read The monk… but I can’t do it because I’m too busy paying my mortgage,” you will get to live out that excuse for the rest of your life. So it’s an idea but the more you think about it, the more it becomes a belief. Do not be a victim, show leadership and get big things done.

Second thing I do: I live in a bubble. I don’t want to live in a real world and I don’t live in a real world. Who wants to live in a real world? Because there, most people are victims, most people are negative. In the real world, most people gossip, and spend their best hours SMSing… I live in a bubble, a pristine bubble of absolute focus around positivity and getting my dreams done. What does that mean in practice? It means that I don’t really watch the NEWS. If someone’s negative, I walk away politely; my friends are positive; my home is inspiring; I love great books; I don’t read cheesy magazines; I don’t pollute my mind with toxic thoughts or influences because those will affect my inspiration, my ideas, my focus and my results.

Number three: Ideas without execution are a delusion. I plan, I schedule every morning. I’m meticulous about where my hours go. This is not just inspiration, this is tactical. I have a one-year plan and I have a five-year plan; I look at my plan every morning and I set a weekly plan. In that way, I execute, nearly flawlessly, all my goals for every quarter. Like a great business is all about strategic plans and execution, I have dreams but dreams without plans and sequencing don’t get done. So, become a master of planning, sequencing, execution and time management. The hours that ordinary people waste, excellent performers use. People say, I’m too busy.” Well, how many hours do you spend on SMS or on your smart phone?

Number four: I learn. The world belongs to learners. You look at Picasso, Jack Welch, Richard Branson, Lady Gaga… these people are students of their crafts. So if you look at any genius, they have one thing in common: they know more about their craft more than anyone in their field in the history of the world. I spend a lot of time listening to audio books, watching videos, reading, learning.

Number five: I love to journal. Journaling is when I reconnect with my vision, my values. I record the highlights of my day, so I pour gratitude via dopamine into my brain so I feel better. How do I stay inspired? Being inspired isn’t lucky. You ‘make’ inspired. You don’t discover success, you create success. My journal allows me to record my awareness so I stay very clear on what’s important. My journal allows me to notice the miracles of my day and allows me to learn and download the benefits and miracles that each day presents.

Manoj khatri: So what’s your typical day like?

Robin Sharma: The most consistent thing that I do is that I get up at 5am and I journal. That is the most consistent thing ever. I love having a cup of coffee… you know that its nature’s number one antioxidant and it boosts brain function? And with coffee, I write. I write about my victories, my gratitude, reconnect with my goals and how I’m feeling. And I always exercise first thing in the morning to kick-start my day. And then sometimes I do some meditation, but not consistently. The only consistent thing is the journaling, the exercising, and the reading.

Manoj khatri: Finally, what is your idea about the purpose of life?

Robin Sharma: I think on the last hour of our last day, when we look back and survey our life, what would have defined our life will not be the watch on our wrist, our social standing, the title on our business card and our net worth.

I suggest only two things will matter.

Number one: Who did you become? Were you fearless? Did you achieve a level of self mastery? Did you think great thoughts? Were you positive? Did you have excellent, strong character?

Number two: How many people did you help? How many lives did you touch? What value did you create through your creativity and productivity? In other words, did you leave the world better than you found it? My dad used to recite the words of the great Indian poet, Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. He said to me, “Son, when you were born you cried while the world rejoiced. Well Robin, live your life in such a way that when you die, the world cries while you rejoice.”

So purpose is about remembering that before you know it, it will all be dust. It’s time to step up and do great work that will change the world. It’s time to use your life not just for your own selfish needs but to inspire other people and to create value for other people and to build A FANTASTIC WORLD. And just because other people don’t think like this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t, if you want to become the Picasso of your life.

Manoj khatri: That’s a beautiful thought. Thank you so much Robin, for sharing your inspiring ideas with us.

Robin Sharma: Thanks for the opportunity, Manoj.

The post “Victims make excuses. Leaders deliver results” — Robin Sharma appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.