Your World — Flowers or Weeds?

“You are not what you think you are. But what you think — YOU ARE!” — Dr. Norman Vincent Peale

Here’s a mind fact — did you know that on an average day, a normal person runs about 60000 thoughts through his or her mind and nearly 95% of these thoughts are the same as the day before and the day before? Oh, that sounds stressful for sure.

Successes and failures in all areas of life including the material, emotional, physical or even spiritual world begins and ends within the 12-pound mass which sits on top of your physical self — your brain. Your outer world is nothing more than a reflection of the state of your inner world. Now the question is how do we set or reset our mindset so that our outer world becomes enriching and fulfilling, making our life a wonderful journey?

Let’s look at it this way — if you want to build a strong muscular body or the perfect bikini body for your next beach holiday, you need to have a super active lifestyle which will include at least 5 days a week at the gym, eating right, drinking lots of water, resting enough. Only then you can achieve your target. Here the target is the beach body and the process are the workout, nutrition etc. However, the variable that will decide whether you will follow the process or not is the state of the mind. You know what the result will be if the mindset is, “I will definitely start from tomorrow.”

To achieve all your goals and targets in life, you must train your mind first. If things right now are not working in your life as per your desires, its only because you have not cared enough for your mind. However, there is no quick fix for this if you are looking for real results. Lasting inner changes require time and effort. A crash diet creates a temporary illusion of ‘looking’ fit. It is only a healthy lifestyle that actually ‘makes’ you fit. A wise man has rightly said ‘persistence is the mother of all personal changes. ‘

Let us take a garden as a symbol of our mind. If we want a fertile rich garden, what do we need to do? Of course, nurture it and cultivate it. What will happen if you allow weeds to take root instead? How will your garden look? Good gardeners guard their garden like vigilant soldiers and make sure that the contamination never enters.

If you feed your mind every single day with worries and anxieties, fretting about the past, brooding over the future, self-created fears and other people’s opinions about you, can you expect your life to be rewarding? Most of us have fallen into a bad mental habit of thinking the same impoverished thoughts again and again and this predominates our lives. We allow worry to rob us of our life force. This may be regarded as blocking the enormous potential of your mind to work magic and deliver into your lives all that you want physically, emotionally and even spiritually.

Mental mastery comes through conditioning. What is this conditioning? It is a theory which says that the reaction or response to any object or any event by the person can be modified by learning. A babies mind can be conditioned to view an unknown person as an enemy. A child’s mind can be trained to eat junk food all the time or once a week. Similarly a grown ups mind can be conditioned to see alcohol as a pleasant vehicle for release or as a toxic substance to be avoided.

Most of us have the same raw material the moment we take our first breath. What separates those who achieve more than others are the way we refine the raw material. We are all born with the one mind which is neutral. It is only with how, and with what ingredients we choose to feed our mind, makes all the difference. Feed your mind with continuously uplifting thoughts day after day, look for only good in any given situation and the conditioning will be such that you will move towards your desired life state. On the other hand, if you feed your mind with self-doubting beliefs, lower energy thoughts (envy, hate, malice), continuous attack of news, social media and violent TV shows, you will doom your-self.

We might not be able to control the weather or a bad traffic or the moods of all those around us. However, we can most definitely control our attitude or the mindset towards these situations. This ability of will power to choose any thought has been gifted to us and this is the faculty that separates us from all other living creatures on this planet. This is what makes us human.

There is no such reality called the real world or one which we can call an objective reality. In fact, there are seven billion worlds for the seven billion people based on their individual perceptions of all things, concepts and so called “truths.” That’s why my right is your wrong, your good is my bad, your yes is my no.

The human mind is the world’s largest filtering device. We humans tend to filter all events as per our perceptions, expectations, sensory processing, past experiences and our mind sets.

An event ‘is’ just an event. The ‘is’ness of any event is lost because we label it as good or bad, based on our past ‘experience’ of a similar event which is stored in our ‘memory.’ The past experience was based on the interaction of our ‘sensory organs’ with the event leading to the formation of a ‘perception’ in the memory bank.

What really separates people who are habitually optimistic and those who are consistently low is how the circumstances of life are interpreted and processed. Weak minds lead to weak actions. A strong disciplined mind that is cultivated through daily practice and conditioning can cultivate miracles. Focus your mind only on what is important for you. Focus on your goals in life and then have 100% clarity about the process and daily rituals required to reach that goal. Then create the mindset that drives you to do the processes. Is it at all humanly possible not to achieve the goal after that? Concentrate your mind on the pursuit you love and carry out all the actions required with that mind. Do that daily and consistently.

Mind is like a fertile garden and for it to flourish you must nourish it daily. Never let the weeds of impure thoughts and action take the garden of your mind. Stand guard at the gateway of your garden. Keep it healthy and strong. It will work miracles in your life only if you let it.

The words of Henry Ford never gets old — “Whether you think you can — or your think you can’t — you’re right!”

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