You must be thinking what kind of question is this? Why would I be living someone else’s life? I am living as per my own terms and conditions. I am the master of my life.
Well, you want to believe that you are living life on your own terms but that is not true. Our life is governed by our beliefs, thoughts, experiences, social norms, ideals of our family,etc. Our existence comprises of physical body and mental body. Physical body is dependent on what, how, when we eat or drink, exercise or don’t, play or work but our mental body is made up of thoughts or beliefs which get formed in our mind based on our experiences or what we see / hear / think and start believing.
As good or bad eating habits, exercise or lack of it, adequate or inadequate sleep impact the formation of physical body, similarly thoughts, experiences, beliefs, ideas, biases give shape to our mental body.
Bruce Lipton, an American biologist, in his book Biology of Belief says that a child up to 7 years of age receives signals, inputs, information from his or her surroundings which get formed as beliefs or values in their brains ?. As the child grows these beliefs get reinforced by repeated display of action or discussions. The child’s brain starts believing them to be true, real, correct and begins following them.
Do you believe that all beliefs are always empowering or enabling? The answer is no. I always used to wonder how do some kids as young as 3 to 5 years old play around with animals-cuddle them, tease them, caress them without a freckle of fear on their forehead while the older ones are afraid of them.
There are a lot of kids who are not afraid of darkness till very young age as they don’t have a reference of darkness in their brains but as they grow they start fearing darkness.
Let me tell you why this happens. Most of us have heard situations where kids are brought up with threats like “ doodh pee lo nahin toh ? aa jayega” or “ jaldi so jaao nahin toh ghost ? aa jayega “.
These are simple examples of negative conditioning of brain which we pass on to our children when we are bringing them up. We instil these messages in the brain of our children and create a fear psychosis. Once the brain stores this information that darkness equals danger, next time when the child sees darkness his or her brain begins to look for message stored in brain related to darkness-what does darkness mean? Oh it means danger and passes on the message to body to feel afraid or get scared.
As we grow our brain continues to store information related to different topics which takes the form of beliefs of various kinds. Beliefs about your health, wealth, happiness, relationship, career,etc. As Richard Bandler, Father of NLP says “ Beliefs aren’t about truth. Beliefs are about believing. They are guides of our behaviour.”
How many of you believe you’re capable of achieving great things in life? How many of you who believe the above are taking actions to fructify it ? Don’t be surprised people answering in affirmative for second question are significantly lower than the ones for first question. There could be several factors holding them back.
~ i’m not sure if I will be successful.
~ can I take a plunge into this at this age?
~ I don’t have the time.
~ will my family support me
~ people I know have not been successful
~ No one in my family has ever done this
While some of these could be real, some are notional or fictitious, created by us but not unsurmountable. These are simple barriers created in our brain based on past experiences or in other words are programmed responses of our brain.
How do I overcome them?
KNOW WHO YOU ARE
Spend time knowing who you are.
• Think about what beliefs are you carrying, which ones are helping you progress and which ones are regressive?
• Identify your strengths. What comes to you naturally or what do you have penchant for?
• Acknowledge and own your development needs. Don’t ignore them if they are a hindrance for your progress.
LOVE WHO YOU ARE
Use your signature strengths to create value for others
Creating value provides happiness
Do what you love – it prompts us to take better care of ourselves
BE WHO YOU ARE
Self-awareness is the key to success. Knowing our forte or foibles facilitates effective channelling of our efforts. When we don’t live up to our full potential, our lives may be successful but not satisfying. Living up to ones’ full potential also includes expressing oneself.
Denying Self Expression = Depression.
Go and revive yourself, rewrite yourself, revitalise your potential, unravel your dreams to the world, express yourself. Create a new identity, write your own goals and go for them……
You are more than a number on the weighing scale !
You are more than your past successes or failures !
You are more than your the ailment you may suffer from !
You are more than your body !
As Oscar Wilde said – Be yourself, everyone else is taken.