It is a strange phenomenon that what we call our reality is actually the way we are perceiving something at any point in time.
Therefore the so called ‘reality’ that is true for somebody, may not be the same for someone else, or say, what is true for you may not be true for me, everything else being the same.
The difference is in the ‘perception of reality’ and not the reality itself!
Does it mean that the reality can be different for different people, under the same circumstances? Yes, very much so. No wonder then, the success rate of different people for the same job are different under any given situation.
Therefore the key is, greater we use our brain at using its energy on the positives, the greater the chances of our success. More we see our reality as an opportunity instead of obstacles, more we can see our road to success. This is how an ordinary person can transform into an extraordinary person by shifting his or her perception of reality that we may call positive reality.
Extraordinary people are experts at creating positive realities.
Therefore for an ordinary person, it is not just the intelligence that he or she has, it is how much of his intelligence that he thinks he can use in a particular situation. When we associate with such people, it can become contagious. We can draw inspiration from such extraordinary people and learn from them this new way of looking at things or in other words, new way of using our intelligence that God or nature has provided to all of us in ample measure!
Lessons that we can learn from this book.
In his book, ‘Before Happiness’ by Shawn Achor, best selling author of The Happiness Advantage, has described such people as positive genius who do not just look at a glass as half full or half empty but instead, also look at the other possibility of having a pitcher on the table to refill the glass.
I am taking the liberty of specifically quoting a few major skills that Shawn Achor wants us to learn, as described in his book, if we are keen to become extraordinary in our life.
If I have learnt a lot from his book, should I not tell you the same?
a) Choosing the Most Valuable Reality.
Being able to choose a broad range of realities or possibilities for the same thing or the same situation and then choosing the best which sounds to be positive by looking at the reality from various angles and in more detail, so that choosing the best course of action that fulfills our need, becomes clearer and easier.
b) Mapping the Paths to Success.
We should identify only such goals that can have a great significance in our life, rather than choosing someone else’s life goals.
This exercise of exploring and prioritizing various life goals in various areas of our life, namely relationship goals, financial goals, career goals, health goals, social status goals etc. will make us more aware of our current position in life with respect to such areas of life. This exercise will also clear up many ways that we can improve our position.
Then we should proceed to seek the the most direct route or fastest route to achieve that particular goal, with a strong focus on the positive benefits that we are likely to derive, within a time frame.
Both our self belief and sense of purpose will help us keeping up our efforts till we reach our goals. However, social support will further strengthen our resolve to bring about changes that we want.
c) Using Success Accelerants.
When we break down our goals into small mini-goals that we are quite likely to achieve with some extra efforts, say goals having at least 70% likelihood of success, achieving them appears relatively easy for us. Celebrating each such small win, further motivates us to continue and reach other goal posts down the line.
When we focus more on what we are gaining in terms of achieving our mini-goals and their significance, rather than focusing on our arduous efforts, we remain motivated and we tend to accept our difficulties or occasional failures as part of the whole process of learning and re-energizing ourselves to remain focused.
d) Boosting the Signal by Eliminating Noise.
We are drowned in information, but are starved of wisdom! Therefore it is very important for us to recognize the signal, that is the information which is really helpful for us and ignore all the noise or all that overload of information that will only distract us from our path to success or that distorts our reality or misguide us.
It will not be easy but whenever we are confused, best thing is to find a teacher who has some authority in such subject and then take his/her guidance. We can also, however, take a clue from those who have already benefited by the advice of such teachers.
The other aspects of distraction in our life is our urge to indulge in our routine activities like checking mails etc. that we can easily minimize by assigning particular time slots in a day to finish such odd jobs. Thus we need to form strict habits that are productive and become their slave! Good productive habits will eventually drive away the wrong unfruitful habits that we have been accumulating over the years.
With each achievement of our mini-goals, we will gain more and more self-confidence that will really minimize our anxiety and maximize our self esteem and our chances of success.
e) Transferring our Reality to Others.
It is a common knowledge that if we want to learn a subject well, we should start teaching the same to others.
This way, we can open our mind to further possibilities of any perceived reality by incorporating others’ view points and at the same time transferring our newly discovered practical knowledge by helping others to follow the same practices.
In many a life situations, we actually end up learning more when we discuss our common problems. It is quite possible that others can possibly show us better ways of approaching the same problem, or in other words, helping us to view a perceived reality from a still another angle and finding another easier or faster route to tackle the same problem.
This way, we can have access to a collective intelligence to serve our purpose.
