How to achieve a success mindset?

"Footprints on the sands of time are not made by sitting down."
- unknown

What is Success? The dictionary definition is “Any favorable outcome constitutes success”. P.Yogananda put it as “ The ability to attract what we want when we want". Can it be a state of mind, a mind set which attracts a favorable outcome? Then what is a mindset? Psychologically a mindset can be looked at as certain patterns of thinking due to a certain habit of thinking (always) which gives the desired result.

How are we to achieve this success mindset? Is there a formula?

Napoleon Hill could be credited as the first person to spend a lifetime researching this topic. After twenty years of research funded by Andrew Carnegie (the second richest man in the world at that time) he came up with two books Law of Success & Think and Grow Rich (I strongly recommend these books)

I add a few lines from the publisher’s (Think and Grow Rich) note

“THIS book conveys the experience of more than 500 men of great wealth, who began at scratch, with nothing to give in return for riches except THOUGHTS, IDEAS and ORGANIZED PLANS.”

So what tools did these 500 men interviewed by Napoleon Hill possess? What were the common personality traits?

Three qualities stand out in these men, burning desire with a definite goal, fearlessness and a never say die attitude. I would like to present each quality with a related story or video

Burning desire

Edwin Barnes hardly had any money to travel to where Thomas Edison lived. Here was a penniless youth wanting to be Thomas Edison’s (already a great scientist/ businessman) business partner and not his employee. How did he convince Edison to work with him? How did he translate his burning desire into reality? In Napoleon Hill’s words “He presented himself at Mr. Edison's laboratory, and announced he had come to go into business with the inventor.

In speaking of the first meeting between Barnes and Edison, years later, Mr.Edison said, "He stood there before me, looking like an ordinary tramp, but there was something in the expression of his face which conveyed the impression that he was determined to get what he had come after.

I had learned, from years of experience with men, that when a man really DESIRES a thing so deeply that he is willing to stake his entire future on a single turn of the wheel in order to get it, he is sure to win. I gave him the opportunity he asked for, because I saw he had made up his mind to stand by until he
succeeded. Subsequent events proved that no mistake was made."

Just what young Barnes said to Mr. Edison on that occasion was far less important than that which he thought. Edison, himself, said so! It could not have been the young man's appearance which got him his start in the Edison office, for that was definitely against him. It was what he THOUGHT that counted.”

One great example of a burning desire with a definite goal is a video below about a millionaire who dropped out of high school to go after his passion.



Fearlessness

Lord Krishna in the Gita names fearlessness as the first of 26 qualities of a perfected man.

"My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost."
Richard Branson billionaire owner of Virgin
Do you think Branson found his way back?

Anything of value in this world has been achieved by either one person or a group being fearless or defiant towards an oppressor/market. Starting from Samuel Adams in the American revolution to Gandhi against the British to Richard Branson starting Virgin. So if you want success? Be fearless in promoting your idea, service or business!

I wanted to convey the feeling of fearlessness these great achievers feel and only the world's most fearless animal could do justice to it. See video below



Never say die attitude

"A quitter never wins and a winner never quits"
-- Napoleon Hill



Two young frogs fell into a bucket of milk. Both tried to jump to freedom, but the sides of the bucket were steep and no foundation was to be had on the surface of the liquid.
Seeing little chance of escape, the first frog soon despaired and stopped jumping. After a short while he sunk to the bottom of the bucket and drowned.
The second frog also saw no likelihood of success, but he never stopped trying. Even though each jump seemed to reach the same inadequate height, he kept on struggling. Eventually, his persistent efforts churned some milk into butter. From the now hardened surface of the milk, he managed to leap out of the bucket.--P. Yogananda

Tool to achieve “the mind set”

The single most quality to achieve this mindset is taking control of our mind.The video below sums everything I want to say




Conclusion: Is it possible for us to adopt the mindset of Edwin Barnes, a Badger and a frog in setting out to doing whatever we want to do? Hell yeah!!!!!

Why we fail & tools to deal with failure

This will be a two part blogpost the first one on failure and the next one in two weeks on Keys to Success

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work" -Thomas Alva Edison

I have always been intrigued by failure! I sometimes wonder nervously if we are even trained effectively to deal with failure? A passing glance at life teaches us that the special skill of dealing with failure has always been developed through trial and error in the school of hard knocks. One wonders if this is the most efficient way to learn? The answer obviously is no. Sadly, there is no road map to success we can print off the web, can we?



Then how do we deal with failures ranging from failed business ventures to bad grades in school to failed relationships and everything in between? What do we do when we feel we are in a totally helpless situation? In most cases, failure is accompanied by negative emotional expressions like despondency, depression, limiting self beliefs, and in some, even suicidal tendencies.

Last week on a flight to Boston, I met an extremely smart girl, a dentist, who shared her medical school experience on failure. Due to a small physical disability, she failed in one of her lab classes. She was not allowed to go to the second year because of an F grade. Here was a straight A student who has never gotten an ‘F’ in her life. The bitterness of failure was new to her, yes, she rebelled and how? She went on a drinking binge to sink her sorrows but to no avail. She realized in hindsight that she was lacking tools to deal with failure at that time. Too many of us do not know how to react when failure accosts us. We start doubting ourselves and give up the struggle!

Shakespeare once said “Our doubts are traitors, which often makes us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt”




Why fail?

We fail because we make mistakes, but we fail to understand the universe is set up that way.

Theodore Roosevelt said, “The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.” So, in order not to fail, we must not do anything! We must accept the inevitability of failure in our lives at some point or the other and not take it so seriously.

There can be several other reasons like inexperience, lack of judgment, luck, not wanting it bad enough, factors beyond our control, etc. but at its core, fear of failure is one of the chief causes of failure. Why “ fear”? Fear gives rise to negative thoughts, our thoughts are magnets which attract to us the very thing we constantly think about. ( Have you watched the secret?)



Fear paralyzes the mind into a state of shock and prevents us from using discriminative intelligence.
How many times has it happened to you the very thing you seek to avoid is what you always attract?




If you watch your thoughts during a down period, you do not FEEL good. In short, it is just a feeling, a feeling is nothing but a sustained emotion. It does not reflect the situation (situations are always neutral), it just reflects how we perceive the situation. Since it is just our perception, a feeling, it can be changed instantly.

The mind has a tendency to stay in a rut and will replay the situation over and over again. The goal is to get objective very quickly which depends on the emotional mental state you are in. Once you switch your emotional state, clarity sets in. Clarity is the precursor to success.

Key Tools for Immediate Relief:


Pose the million dollar question: Say to yourself “SO WHAT”?

Michael Jordan said “ There was never any fear for me, no fear of failure, if I miss a shot so what?” Is it possible this mindset made him the greatest basketball star??

Have a workout schedule/Sweat it out: Yes, it is psycho-physical, emotional discomfort can be healed by working the body. Vigorous exercise like running, swimming, yoga will release enough endorphins (“happy chemicals”) in the blood that can change your emotional outlook in a matter of hours. I have derived enormous benefit by working out when things were not going my way.

Know your purpose in life: When was the last time you asked yourself what is important to you? You might find that the thing you are striving to succeed in may not even be that important to your ultimate purpose in life. As Dalai Lama says “Sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck”

Introspect and Learn: Dalai Lama said, “When you lose do not lose the lesson.” Introspection is the first step towards recovering from failure. It is the ability to look at the incident sans emotion. Talk to people whom you admire and run the situation by them, their years of experience in wisdom can save you several years. Anthony Robbins suggests associating pain with the incident as one of the ways not to repeat a mistake.

Action Plan: When in doubt? Do!!! It is all about action. Peter Drucker in his essay on leadership suggests asking yourself “What should be done now? And follow it with an action plan. Action plan brings the focus to the solution.


It seems like failure is a necessary step to success, every person we think a success has had to deal with enormous amount of failure. Failure and success are different sides of the same coin, if you have one you inevitably must experience the other. Failure is a loyal friend who is not afraid to show us the mirror, whether we are in the dumps of life or floating high in the sky. Great ones have learned to welcome failure as openly, if not more, as success.

We will explore success in the next blogpost...

Reincarnation: A Scientific Approach

Welcome:

To begin with, I would like to welcome you all again to my blog. I got a lot of feedback from my last blog article and many felt it was too heavy to have it sent every week. So I have changed the format according to demand and made it once a month or would spread them as much as possible. Today, we will be covering, Re-incarnation, a very controversial and fascinating topic. Discussions on this topic have always evoked reactions, even from the usually unemotive. This is not particularly a motivational piece but is a very interesting topic for many of us.

Reincarnation: A Scientific Approach

Jesus Christ in Gnostic Gospels: Pistis Sophia
"Souls are poured from one into another of different kinds of bodies of the world."
Socrates
"I am confident that there truly is such a thing as living again, that the living spring from the dead, and that the souls of the dead are in existence."
William Wordsworth
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting. And cometh from afar."
Jalaludin Rumi (Islamic Poet of the 13th century)
"I died as a mineral and became a plant, I died as a plant and rose to animal, I died as animal and I was man. Why should I fear ? When was I less by dying?"
Benjamin Franklin
"I look upon death to be as necessary to the constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning." And, "Finding myself to exist in the world, I believe I shall, in some shape or other always exist."
Mark Twain
"I have been born more times than anybody except Krishna.
George Harrison
"Friends are all souls that we've known in other lives. We're drawn to each other. Even if I have only known them a day., it doesn't matter. I'm not going to wait till I have known them for two years, because anyway, we must have met somewhere before, you know."

What is re-incarnation? Wikipedia defines it this way “Reincarnation, literally "to be made flesh again", is a doctrine or metaphysical belief that some essential part of a living being (in some variations only human beings) survives death to be reborn in a new body. This essential part is often referred to as the spirit or soul, the "higher" or "true" self, "divine spark", or "I". According to such beliefs, a new personality is developed during each life in the physical world, but some part of the self remains constant throughout the successive lives.”

In all India based religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism etc ;) it is common parlance. The same holds true for many of the esoteric aspects of the major religions of the world like Sufism (Islam), Kabala (Judaism), Gnosticism and Esoteric Christianity (Christianity).

Several of us are intrigued when we see great talents in little children for example “How did Mozart read & write music at the tender age of five? He didn’t go to Julliard!” Why do we see so many children exhibit mastery over certain traits even though they have not learned it in this life? To answer these questions, I thought of taking a different approach to the issue, in early 2000, I posed a question to myself: Is it possible to prove Reincarnation scientifically (even though I consider myself a firm believer in the doctrine)?

I have always been uncomfortable believing blindly in the paranormal without being able to accord some level of scientific explanation or logic. Every theory, belief, should be subject to relentless scientific scrutiny, though at times, science may not have the tools(or the vocabulary) to explain them to our satisfaction. I thought to myself, I would be satisfied if my search leads to somebody who could at the least take a logical approach, or to take me to the threshold of being open to the possibility scientifically.

The next question that followed was, what is science then? “Science is empirical evidence, a proof of a hypotheses testable using observation or experiment” (Refer Wikipedia). Can we get empirical evidence for reincarnation? Yes, it seems so…

My search led to the usual theories, proofs from theologians, saints, philosophers. Another site got my attention; I was pleasantly surprised to see an article on the University of Virginia’s medical school website by a Dr. Ian Stevenson. I wrote two emails to Dr.Stevenson in 2001 and did not get a response. I read that he was extremely media shy and never agreed to come on TV to publicize his findings.



Dr. Stevenson, a fascinating character, was one of the first to take a scientific approach to the doctrine of reincarnation and spent his entire life as a scientist on the study of the paranormal. He studied several cases of reincarnation from around the world ranging from India, Srilanka, Myanmar, and Thailand including the U.S & Europe. He was always received with apprehension (though an active faculty at the medical school) by the scientific community for his research on the paranormal, in later years he was more accepted and published several articles in leading scientific journals.

Here is an interesting excerpt from an interview with Dr.Stevenson in the New York Times

“AFTER years of mockery from colleagues, Dr. Ian Stevenson, Director of the Department of Personality Studies at the University of Virginia, is finally getting respect. In ''Old Souls: The Scientific Evidence for Past Lives,'' (Simon & Schuster, 1999) Tom Shroder, a Washington Post editor, reviews the 80-year-old clinical psychiatrist's research on reincarnation and finds it hard to refute.

Mr. Shroder joined Dr. Stevenson on evidence-gathering trips to India and Lebanon, where they questioned subjects like Suzanne, 25, a nurse in Beirut who recalled her life as a woman who had died months before she was born. By age 2, Suzanne knew the names of 13 of the woman's relatives and could recount parts of the eulogy delivered at her funeral.

Mr. Shroder concludes: ''The only way to account normally for what people were telling us was to hypothesize some massive multi-sided conspiracy, either conscious fraud or some unconscious communal coordination among people from different families and communities with no obvious motive or clear means to cooperate in a deception.''

In a recent interview, Dr. Stevenson discussed his (present) life's work, but wouldn't say whether he himself remembers a past life. ''Readers should make up their own minds,'' he argues, ''not on the basis of what I believe or what anybody else believes.''

Click here for the full article http://query.nytimes.com gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE5DF133FF935A1575AC0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

Dr.Stevenson was known for this thoroughness and rejected hundreds of cases of children claiming to remember their past lives, if he found an anomaly. He needed all this questions answered accurately, only those cases with 100% accuracy were presented to the scientific community.

In one of the articles, his colleague mentions about his “stickler for accuracy” attitude: “Sometimes, word will get around about the child's statements, and someone in another village will recognize the story about the past-life person. The past-life family is contacted, and arrangements are made for a visit. Most of the time Dr. Stevenson has had to interview the families after this meeting happens, but a few times he has been able to be there when the meeting took place. Dr. Stevenson always takes very careful notes and has other people observing and taking notes as well, to safeguard against him making mistakes and to make sure the reporting is accurate and fair.”

Most of his subjects were children between the ages of 2-7; he believed that, it was the time the child remembers its past best. After the age of 7 the child gets too engrossed with the present environment and starts to lose much of the memories from the past lives. One of the salient features of Dr.Stevenson’s research is his study of birthmarks in children who remembered their past. He believed the study of birthmarks as the window into a child’s past incarnation.
He observed and discovered that in children who had these birthmarks, it was due to the child (in his/her past life) being injured in that spot while being killed. The child retained the mark in the present incarnation. Please see some of the pictures attached.

Figure 1.

Hypopigmented macule on chest of an Indian youth who, as a child, said he remembered the life of a man, Maha Ram, who was killed with a shotgun fired at close range.


Figure 2

The circles show the principal shotgun wounds on Maha Ram, for comparison with Figure 1. [This drawing is from the autopsy report of the deceased.]




Figure 3
Large verrucous epidermal nevus on head of a Thai man who as a child said he remembered the life of his paternal uncle, who was killed with a blow on the head from a heavy knife.





Figure 4
Severely malformed ear (microtia) in a Turkish boy who said that he remembered the life of a man who was fatally wounded on the right side of the head by a shotgun discharged at close range.



Figure 5
shows congenital absence of the lower right leg (unilateral hemimelia) in a Burmese girl. She said that she remembered the life of a girl who was run over by a train. Eyewitnesses said that the train severed the girl's right leg first, before running over the trunk. Lower hemimelia is an extremely rare condition, and Frantz and O'Rahilly (1961) found it in only 12 (4.0%) of 300 cases of all congenital skeletal deficiencies that they examined.

Dr.Stevenson’s research group gives several tips on their website to recognize if your child has past life memories:

Types of Statements a Child Might Make in This Kind of Case

Statements made by a child who seems to be remembering a previous life can be quite varied. The following is not an exhaustive list by any means. It is designed to give an idea of the kinds of things a parent or caregiver might hear, and in our Western culture, tend to dismiss as fantasy. It is also true that a child might say one or more of these things and not be remembering a previous life. It is probably best not to pump a child for information, nor to try and prevent him or her from saying such things.

"You're not my mommy/daddy."
"I have another mommy/daddy."
"When I was big, I ...(used to have blue eyes/had a car, etc.)."
"That happened before I was in mommy's tummy."
"I have a wife/husband/children."
"I used to...(drive a truck/live in another town, etc.)"
"I died ... (in a car accident/after I fell, etc.)"
"Remember when I ...(lived in that other house/was your daddy, etc.)"


Who sponsored his research?

His research was funded entirely by, Chester Carlson, the inventor of Xerography or Xerox. Mrs. Carlson, a believer in paranormal, was responsible for encouraging her husband to fund Dr.Stevenson’s research. After a few years, Mr.Carlson passed away which put a lot of pressure on Dr.Stevenson’s research as he had no support from the conventional scientific community. To Dr.Stevenson’s astonishment, Mr.Carlson had left over a million dollars in his will for his research, this fund helped for the next 35 years. Please read more here…

http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/personalitystudies/Stevenson.pdf


Somethings to ponder?

As the world comes closer, with amazing technological advances don’t you think that we are ready to explore the paranormal scientifically as done in some of the leading universities in the U.S. This line of questioning is very interesting to scientific minds, because, as in the words of great saints, true spirituality is provable, yes, empirically with proof. Many of the beliefs of early religions are being scrutinized with relentless accuracy. History books are being rewritten, throwing new light into ancient civilizations. It is an exciting time to be pondering about the paranormal don’t you think? The next time somebody mentions: “Talent is inborn and cannot be developed” we would look at the statement a little differently, wouldn’t we?


Here are some quotes on reincarnation from famous people

http://www.reincarnation.ws/famous_people.html

Discussion:

I would love to see some lively discussions on this topic, please feel free to share your experiences/stories you have heard of in the comments section.

References:

http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/personalitystudies/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Stevenson
http://www.ial.goldthread.com/interviews.html

Motivational Mondays: Sep 8th 2008

Health Tip:Alternate Breathing

How to deal with stress? What to do when we are anxious? Or when fear accosts us? Is there a tool which we can use without getting the traditional, boring advice from a “know it all”? In most such instances, we are looking for instant relief, and the good news is, that's exactly what this MM post covers.

The Yoga masters discovered the technique of Nadi Shodana or Anouloma Viloma and referred to as the alternative breathing technique in English. The technique has been practiced in India for thousands of years. I myself have been practicing it for the last 23 yrs. In my experience, it is one of the most powerful, instant relief techniques that has been presented to mankind. Why? It strikes at the root of the problem, which is OXYGEN, or the lack of it. Most people in negative emotional states (anxiety, fear, anger, restlessness, etc) have incomplete breathing accompanied by unpleasant feeling in the body. The biological reason is, there is not enough oxygen ( in layman's terms) in the blood which causes the heart to beat faster (more carbon dioxide).Without getting into the biology of it which involves complex functioning of hypothalamus, pons varolli and the medulla, simply put, alternate breathing balances the flow of energy (oxygen) equally to both hemispheres of the brain and harmonizes it.The two hemispheres of the brain are each (left side) responsible for optimum logical thinking and (right side) for optimum creative thinking.According to doctors most people breathe through only one nostril throughout the day and if it is through the right nostril? You are considered healthy. Another reason why you should be aware of the breathe, don't you think?

How to practice the technique?

• Gently press your ring finger against your left nostril and inhale slowly through your right nostril to a count of Seven
• Hold breathe for a count of Seven
• Exhale through the left nostril to a count of Seven while gently pressing the thumb against the right nostril
  
• Repeat same starting with alternate nostril
  

That's one complete round of Nadi Shodhana --

• Inhale through the right nostril
• Hold breathe
• Exhale through the left nostril
• Repeat in reverse
  

Begin with 2-3 min and add more minutes as you feel ready. Remember to keep your breathing slow, easy, focused and full. I have attached a video below which demonstrates the technique!

When to do it?

Do I need to answer that question? You should plan to practice them at least twice a day for 3 min each for best results or anytime you are not feeling that great!! You will be amazed at the instant relief this technique can bring you.It is best to practice it in fresh air or near open windows.

Benefits of the technique: Instant stress relief,cures anxiety,anger,restlessness and several other subtler emotionally unhealthy states,aids in fat loss(true) & sharpens concentration.

Reference:http://www.abc-of-yoga.com/pranayama/basic/viloma.asp

Business Tip: Power of goal setting

This is a very elaborate topic and I could spend days providing material on it but my aim is to be concise on very deep topics. I am sure many of us have seen the power of goals setting at different stages in our lives. I here present to you a systematic way of setting goals and how to achieve them. In my opinion, there is nobody better than Zig Ziglar ,who is considered an authority on this topic. Here is a bio on Zig http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zig_Ziglar

Find below a brief overview and a link with details (for the nerdy types)and the best 15 min video on goal setting by Zig -it is a classic!!

http://www.about-goal-setting.com/

The Goal Setting Blueprint

Step 1 - Intense Desire: Rocket Fuel For When You Set Goals!
Step 2 - Writing Goals Down Ties Them Up!
Step 3 - To Reach Goals: Bypass Resistance & Gather Assistance
Step 4 - Goal Planning: Use Deadlines As Lifelines
Step 5 - Goal Objectives: Looking Ahead To Get Ahead With Planning
Step 6 - When Reaching Goals Use Mental Pictures: Put An MGM Studio In Your Head!
Step 7 - Achieving Goals: The Remaining 90% - Sheer Persistence

My experience with goal setting:

I have never applied Zig's systematic approach to setting goals but I have followed a more crude but effective way of writing my goals.More often that not, I have achieved most of my written goals. I wonder what would happen if I exactly followed what Zig teaches?

Inspirational Story

This story is an amazing case of a boy from one of the most rural parts of India making it on a full scholarship to one of the best schools in the world. He can supposedly concentrate for more than 12 hrs at a stretch-WOW!!!


http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/may/13sld1.htm