Ever since our childhood, we have been accumulating good advice from our parents, close friends and relatives, our peer group members and from those who are in positions of authority as also from text books and outside media sources.
However, at the same time, we have also been exposed to some wrong advice, even if they were given to us with good intentions, that have been pulling us down in our life. Thus quite unknowingly, we have been a victim of such poor thinking, poor judgement and poor behavior that are self-destructive.
Since such behaviors have been deeply ingrained in our character, we are now unable to get rid of them.
Come out of your comfort zone
However, nobody can prevent us from doing a retrospection to figure out such behaviors that are not serving any useful purpose to either make us feel good or helping us in any way to progress in life. But even when we become aware of such issues in our life, we often are unable to make any drastic changes in our behavior because coming out of our comfort zone and embracing a new pattern of behavior is certainly not easy.
In such cases we mostly feel imprisoned by our plethora of excuses that spontaneously appear in our mind. “This is not possible at this age”, “it is in my genes and I can’t help it”, “people will laugh at me if I suddenly start behaving in a different way”, I have always been like this and most of my friends are also like me”, etc.
But having read this book so far, I am sure most of us can now understand that it is absolutely possible for any of us to assert that anything that has been programmed into us and acts like a virus, is perfectly capable of being re-programmed if we decide that it is certainly worth our effort.
We must have the courage to declare ourselves to be much more capable or rather, powerful, than our old mind viruses that we have unknowingly downloaded into our mind and have allowed them to settle and do their dirty business inside our mind.
Now, will it be easy for us to change our negative behavior, all of a sudden? No. Is it worth the effort and our time? Absolutely yes!
Replace old with the new
The major problem that we mostly fail to change our age-old beliefs and hence our habitual behavior is because we tend to make only superficial attempts to change our negative thinking and negative behavior. Thus, it remains only a temporary affair, only to get back to our original self in no time!
Therefore, I think I would require to get into little more details of this whole issue so that it does not remain as just wishful thinking.
Let us first acknowledge the fact that thinking patterns and old habits cannot just be thrown away like any old dysfunctional part or removed like a tumor in the body, but can only be replaced with a new way of thinking and a new way of behaving.
For this, we must not only adapt to our new behavior but keep persisting till such time we are in a position to completely do away with our old habits. This is the reason why the short-term ‘change-therapy sessions’ do not work in our real life, at least, immediately.
If we want a lean muscular body, we must begin exercising daily by deliberately choosing to undertake certain pain on a daily basis to get the desired result. But we need to continue with this painful exercise on a daily basis till we reach a point when it no longer feels like a painful routine work. This will happen not only when our body starts adjusting with new routine but we also get to see the visible results in our body. Body pain will turn into a pleasure and exercise will become some sort of an addiction.
No pain, no gain
No pain, no gain. Same is the case with our mental exercise in an attempt to change the way we are accustomed to think and behave. But our natural tendency is to keep away from making any such attempt and it will keep us ordinary for the rest of our life, at least in some critical areas of financial freedom, relationships, happiness etc.
Now, the question is how do we begin to change ourselves to become extraordinary in our life? For this to happen permanently for the rest of our life, we need to introspect and figure out the root causes that are holding us back and also the pain or the cost (financial, emotional, social etc.) of making such changes and the ultimate rewards.
The belief that we cannot change our genetic behavior is being challenged by modern cell biologists like Dr.Bruce Lipton and others. Therefore, the reasons for our being overweight or being diabetic or being depressive in our character or being prone to heart disease or cancer due to genetically induced factors are no longer tenable, precisely because we can still change our susceptibility to falling victim to any such conditions with our new way of looking at life and by drastically changing our lifestyle that will rule out all such changes.
There has been a sea change in our medical and psychotherapy practices with the help of modern science.
Follow certain routine practice
Other than genetically inherited traits or diseases, we may also either inherit or absorb certain negative behaviors from others like having depression in adverse situations, alcoholism or addiction to drugs, sudden bursts of anger, low self-esteem, etc. But with our enhanced level of self-awareness and a burning desire to get rid of all such negative traits in our character we can overcome all these problems.
What I am talking about here is not about critical cases where we must take expert medical advice, for our body and mental health. I am talking about how we all can adopt a new way of thinking and behaving in a manner that can help us not only to protect us from any major form of disease (which often emerges out of our poor mental conditions and lazy lifestyle, sustained
over a long period) but can really help us to become extraordinary so that we can all fulfill our aspirations in life and also be happy and keep others happy.
It has been scientifically proved that prolonged stressful conditions in our life is the primary cause of heart disease, cancer or some chronic illnesses.
While it is quite natural for all of us to react to any stressful situation in life in a stressful manner, but continuing to have this stress in our life and not being able to overcome our depression or grief over a prolonged period is what destroys our health and happiness, both for the present and for our future.
As part of our daily routine, therefore, we must incorporate about ten minutes of normal breathing exercise, another ten minutes of alternate breathing exercise and at least another ten minutes of physical stretching exercise, preferably in the morning hours, before we start our day.
1. Simple Breathing Exercise; recite these two lines.
a) Breathing in ….., I calm my body (inflate your belly, while
taking maximum air in).
b) Breathing out…., I smile and I relax (slowly release all your
breath and deflate the belly).
Repeat this for about ten minutes. We may also like to call it our ‘meditation session’, when we try to focus only on our breathing and our well being and ignore other thoughts constantly bothering us.
2. Alternate Breathing.
a) Close your left nostril with a finger and breath in from the right nostril. Now release the finger from your left nostril and breathe out while closing your right nostril at the same time.
b) Now breathe in from your left nostril and thus continue with this alternate breathing for about ten minutes.
c) Use fingers of your one hand the way you feel convenient.
3. Do some stretching exercise or some yoga to keep your joints throughout your body stretchable and flexible.
4. In addition, go for a walk in the park for 15-20 minutes, at least three times a week, either in the morning or in the evening, as per your convenience.
As we are already aware of our body-mind connection, such apparently simple exercises will actually keep our body strong and youthful and our mind happy and peaceful. We need to just try them out first, feel it’s usefulness and then make it a part of our daily life.
This is one way to become extraordinary in our achievements in life for the simple reason that a good start at the beginning of the day with an energetic body and peaceful mind, will enable us to do things during the whole day in a much efficient and productive manner. Moreover, we can also take better decisions when our mind is uncluttered and peaceful.
Thus we begin the change, for a brighter and extraordinary future for ourselves and for those who matter to us.
