When we are not in a good mood, forcing a smile on our face generally helps us because it is not possible to smile and remain in a bad mood, at the same time.
When a patient suffers from some kind of pain due to anxiety, giving the patient an anti depressant drug often helps. On the other hand giving the patient something which has no medicinal property but looks like a drug, can also get the same result. This is called a placebo effect.
But, by and large, most of our diseases get manifested in our bodies because of our stressful living conditions that make our body release toxic chemicals, as a result of our stressful thought processes.
Such toxic chemicals prevent other healthy cells to function normally if stressful conditions continue over a prolonged period. We all more or less know this fact but very few of us take positive and concrete steps to mitigate such stressful conditions in our life.
Regular exercise, meditation, yoga, proper diet, music, having loving relationships, being with nature, etc. help us nullifying the bad effects of toxic chemicals by releasing life-supporting chemicals like dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins that affect our happiness and well being.
If we want to lead a life of an extraordinary person, that we basically are, we need to incorporate some of the above practices into our daily life, as a matter of daily routine, to keep ourselves healthy and happy. Popping a pill every time we are physically or mentally out of tune is not really the answer.
While drugs and surgery are absolutely necessary for emergency situations, regular use of drugs to fight off some ailments often creates undesirable effects in some other parts of our body while attempting to cure us of specific diseases.
Our beliefs are everything
However, let us understand one thing very clearly. Our beliefs control our bodies, our minds and thus our lives.
Without getting too much into details, let me just say that latest biological research has established the fact that our genes and DNA do not actually control our biology but instead, DNA is controlled by the signals outside the cells in our body, including the energetic messages emanating from our positive and negative thoughts.
This findings go on to show that our bodies can be changed (from illness to wellness) as we retrain our thinking.
As I had mentioned elsewhere as to how to teach our children to realize that they are responsible to become rich for themselves and for their family to become financially free to pursue their dreams and to be able to help others in their time of distress, this was just an example of the influencing factors that determine our future behavior when we grow up.
In his path breaking book, ‘The Biology of Belief’, the famous cell biologist Dr.Bruce H. Lipton, has quoted a wonderful example of famous golfer, Tiger Woods.
Although Tiger Woods’s father was not a famous golfer himself, he used to make every effort to immerse Tiger in an environment that was rich in opportunities to develop and enhance the mindset, skills, attitudes, and focus of a master golfer. Tiger Woods was also largely influenced by his mother, who was a strong believer in Buddhist philosophy that primarily focuses on our mind control and spiritual growth.
Epigenetics
Dr.Lipton propounded the theory of ‘epigenetics’, the new science of empowerment.
Epigenetics literally means ‘control above genetics’ that has profoundly changed our understanding of how life is controlled. It simply means that genes are not our destiny. On the contrary, it is the ‘Environmental influences’ including nutrition, stress and our emotions, that can modify our inherited genes, without changing the basic blueprint.
Let us see how the cells react to its environmental stimuli.
It is actually the cell membrane (the outer cover) which is indeed a structural and functional equivalent of a silicon chip! This cell membrane is a liquid crystal semi conductor with gates & channels like a computer chip. The cell membranes have ‘receptor proteins’ and ‘effector proteins’.
The membrane’s receptors are equivalent of sensory nerves and the effector proteins are equivalent of action generating motor nerves. The gene containing cell nucleus does not program the cell. Data is entered into the cell via the membrane’s receptors which represent cell’s ‘keyboard’. The receptors trigger the membrane’s effector proteins, which act as the cell’s central processing unit (CPU).
Just like in a computer. The CPU effector proteins convert environmental information into the behavioral language of biology. Therefore, we are the drivers of our own biology and we have the ability to edit the data we enter into our bio-computer, just as surely as we can choose the words we type.
Our mind and body can be trained to do new things at any age! It can give a great booster dose to our self image by way of having a new body and a new mind!
‘Organize your mind – Organize your life’: 10 principles
In their famous book, ‘Organize your mind – Organize your life’, Paul Hammerness and Margaret Moore have described few major principles to improve our life conditions to become extraordinary.
Here, I am mostly quoting from his book, with some extra tips from my side.
Therefore to become extraordinary from our current state of being ordinary, if we think we still are, then following steps will help us:
1. Get clear on your top priorities and build your confidence.
Once we know our priorities, we would know which specific ones to take up first that we can tackle well, and where we need to have improvements. It is better to take up an area where we can make good progress quickly so that it further boosts up our motivation and makes us to attempt other weak spots with greater confidence and also to face more challenging situations with relative ease. We must make sure that whatever that we set out to accomplish, we are in a position to do that by all means.
Therefore, having a vision for each of our priority areas that we want to ultimately accomplish, and breaking it down to manageable pieces in terms of having short time-bound objectives is very important.
Moreover, by choosing only a few top priorities and one at a time, we will not get overwhelmed or feel inadequate.
2. Ignite your motivation.
The secret is finding out how a certain plan of action will really benefit us in a great manner or will bring us lot of joy or a sense of great achievement in life. If we keep focusing on the outcome, any sustained arduous effort will seem to be quite worthwhile. Therefore, we should connect our motivation with a higher purpose which is very dear to us.
3. Make sure that your pros outweigh your cons.
This means we should thoroughly examine the benefits that we are seeking versus the effort or the energy or the cost involved in making such changes. If our benefits outweigh the costs, it will be worthwhile for us to go ahead and it will also ensure that we have chosen the right priority and we will not get discouraged and quit it midway. We may involve some close friend or some well-wisher to get an unbiased view in choosing our priorities.
4. Adapt the mind-set of a scientist.
Since we are dealing with our own problems, we have to set our own priorities and would also require to find out what will work out best for us individually. Therefore, like a scientist, we should do a few initial experiments to see which is working for us best and drawing from our past experiences we can also decide what kind of change in our daily routine that we can adapt so as to achieve our goals.
With such experiments, we can finally adapt a certain course of action and certain changes in our daily habits to ensure that we can reach our goal within a desirable period of time and also with some level of predictable outcome.
Future is always uncertain but once we have a certain course of action laid out for ourselves and we also know our ability to follow it through till the end, it will bring in more clarity and therefore will give us more confidence and joy in such activity that is going to benefit us immensely.
5. It is important to discover our own strengths and focus on them.
Therefore, we should first figure out how we can effectively utilize our individual strengths in terms of certain skills or inherent talents to do some job well that will greatly benefit us as well as others. It may simply mean that if I am good at mathematics or English literature or some form of music, etc. I can always find a good number of people who will be willing to learn from me and will be glad to pay for my service, if earning money is an immediate problem for me.
Money solves many of our problems and it makes our life easy. But it demands great learning and skills to create value for which people are willing to part with their money. Therefore we should create value first to solve people’s problems.
Money will follow, once people are happy with the solution provided.
6. We need to maintain a positive energy to accomplish anything in life.
All of us have ups and downs in our life but when we are motivated to realize something in life, it is our positive emotions that will help us to keep going.
In other words, we would need to train our mind to focus on positive emotions through constant monitoring our thought pattern which tends to gravitate towards our past only to rake up old negative emotions that do not serve any purpose in the present. The only way to get rid of our negative emotions is through developing new habits that will help us getting better results. When we get better results, it will automatically recondition our mind to think positively and expect only positive results.
We cannot accomplish everything all by ourselves. Hence it is necessary for us take the help of those who can guide us. In short, we need to find suitable teachers from whom we can learn and grow. There is a saying “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear”.
We should stay open and be willing to learn from everyone and anyone.The teacher may appear in various forms. It may be one of our close friends, some expert in the field, may be a book written by someone who is highly knowledgeable on the subject or just a chance meeting with someone who has a great insight to offer that gives us just the answer we have been seeking.
7. Build a support team.
Many times, we need to be a part of a team with similar aspirations who can support each other, whenever we encounter any roadblock. Therefore, if we want to learn any new skill or want to join any program that demands lot of discipline and new learning, the members of such like minded group can always motivate each other and also share their learning with others, thus making the whole process that much easier.
Moreover, it can also result into having some sort of friendly competition among the group members to achieve what the best performers in the team are really able to achieve. Another great advantage of joining a team is to minimize any chance of quitting as there will always be someone in the group to pull us up whenever we are distressed or demoralized.
8. Change your story.
Lastly, we should never encourage our mind to indulge in the so called luxury of sympathy seeking behavior by repeating our sob stories to ourselves and to others around us. Let us remind ourselves that we should never indulge into such obnoxious luxury of our mind. Yet quite a few of us rather enjoy it to justify our misfortune.
The reality is that we ourselves are creating our own misfortune by constantly having such negative emotions. We become, what we think about all day long.
Therefore, we should immediately stop indulging in such behavior and instead change our life story to talk only about the great things that we have been enjoying and be really grateful for already having all such gifts in our life.
There is also no harm talking about all the beautiful things that we are expecting to come about in our life, but in a humble manner, so that it doesn’t sound like bragging.
9. Right now it is like this.
The first step in working with our current reality is to totally accept it, which is; “Right now it’s like this”. It works like a mantra because it helps us to face our reality. It doesn’t solve any practical problems. But it helps us getting into the right mental frame to contemplate our situation calmly and honestly. It helps us to become responsive, not reactive. This, in turn, makes it possible for us to deal with the problem and try to find solutions.
10. A small but very effective practice.
Simple routine with phenomenal results! As mentioned earlier, just develop a habit of writing your immediate goals in life, in present tense, as if you have already achieved them!
Just spare two minutes each time, once after getting up from bed and another time, just before going to bed. Initially, it may sound silly. But if you make this exercise your daily routine and feel the thrill of achieving your desired goals while writing the same (let it be a make-believe game), you will be surprised to find how quickly and how easily you are achieving your goals.
Needless to say, subconsciously, you will be driven towards all such activities that will help you achieving your goal.
