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Tapping the Reservoir of Creativity

A peep into the past reveals the spellbinding spectacle of Yogis routinely achieving what we now think as immposible. With their splendid control over the mind, rishis could do almost anything.

All great and successful people are great and successful because they know how to draw power from their mind which is a reservoir of unimaginable power. That is why it is said that when you win the match with your mind, only then can you win the match in reality.

You have a mind and you should learn how to use it. You think with your conscious mind. Whatever you habitually think sinks down in to your subconscious mind which is creative. According to the nature of your thoughts, reality is created.

The urgent need of the hour:

The inconsistencies of todays life constitute the biggest puzzle. We wonder about our purpose in life. We are bewildered by the thousand twists and turns that we have to negotiate in our journey of life.

Our thoughts fly about uncontrolled as they lose their moorings of a definite purpose in our mind. The only solution to this baffling, bewildering problem is to train our mind to think positively and creatively, define our purpose in life, and endeavour to achieve it.

That is mind training, the most urgent need of the hour. But how do you train your mind?

The 5 Step path

The answer lies in a systematically designed 5-Step Path. It comprises :

- Carring out self analysis
- Developing the right attitudes and motivation
- Thinking positively and maintaining a positive mental attitude
- Setting goals
- Autosuggestion with relaxation and visualisation

Here is a practical way to take these steps :

Self Analysis :

Life today has become a battle of fierce competition, of rapid change, of increasing demands and of even greater expectations. We are constantly required to cope with these conditions which have made modern lifestyles so dangerously stressful. For it is the mind that has to bear the brunt of a life which has become a war of nerves.

We have to improve ourselves constantly to be able to meet the ever increasing challenges that every new day brings. To begin a conscious effort at self-improvement, we must first know where we stand. Self analysis help us to know this.

The strong and the weak points :

Sit on a chair comfortably. Close your eyes. Take a good, honest look at yourself with your mind's eye to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses. Then open your eyes and make a list of your plus and minus points. Be objective, unbiased, and identify which areas of your personality need to be improved.

For example, confidence in yourself is deficient. You may be afraid of public speaking. You may be lacking in communication skills. Your family life, marriage, sex, children and so on may need improvement.

Once you have indentified your weakness, you have to act to correct the situation. But before action comes, you have to prepare yourself mentally, decide to change your attitude and get motivated. This leads to next step which is dependent on your attitudes and motivation.

Attitude and Motivation :

The way you look at life and events is a very important factor in the success of your own life. If you have a negative attitude towards life, if you feel that nothing can be done to improve the situation at any given time, you are not likely to do anything positive to change it for the better. You do not have any motivation to do so because you feel that nothing can be done.

Fortunately the best thing about attitudes is that you can change them. Your attitude does not depend on factors such as colour, race, age, economic circumstances or status. You can change your attitude if you decide to do so. You can develop a positive attitude and that can be more important than anything else.

Power in Motivation :

Once you achieve a positive attitude then you become motivated to do things to change the situation. Motivation is the power behind the success of mankind. Motivation and power are closely linked. The foundation of all motivation is 'hope', therefore one should never lose hope.

For effective motivation you must have the right environment. If this is not right, if it presents demotivating factors, your motivation suffers a setback.

For instance, if your office environment is not good, it will definitely hinder your motivation. The best thing you can do then is to change your job, or start something else to remove the demotivators.

Everyday, we come across all kind of people, but the moment we see a motivated person we identify a number of characteristics which that person exhibits physically and emotionally. They are :

- A smiling face and sparkling eyes
- Smart appearance
- Feeling of self esteem
- Communicating with enthusiasm; talking about the future plans, looking at the past only as experience
- Turning opportunities in to success

In short, such a person exhibits a very positive attitude, a very purposeful motivation, and expectation of success.

You can develop such a positive attitude and purposeful motivation if you are determined to do so.

Positive thinking and maintaining a positive attitude :

This is achieved even in stressful situations. As a starter for cultivating this powerful habit, you can count your blessings, and feel happy about what you have. These blessings are your basic strengths. Feel the positive power that fills your thoughts when you realise that these strengths actually permit you to do many things.

Changing thinking patterns :

This feeling itself will put you in a positive frame of mind, and as you practise positive thinking, you will achieve success which will appear like a miracle.

Your thoughts arise from the information you receive from your five senses. You can control your thoughts. You can change your thinking process from negative to positive, both consciously and subconsciously.


Overcoming the negative :

You feel sad and depressed when you suffer a setback, a failure, or when confronted by problems. That is when you immediately begin to have negative thoughts. If you allow these negative thoughts to take root, your attitude becomes negative. These negative thoughts and your negative statements sink into your subconscious mind, and lead to disaster.

How do you deal with such a situation? The moment negative thoughts emerge in your mind, immediately turn and twist them into positive ones deliberately.

A failure or a setback is not the end of life. Think of positive alternatives. In the most hopeless situation, you will find hopeful silver linings if you look for them. If you cultivate positive thinking, you will surely find them.

Your subconscious mind which is an inexhaustible treasure-house of originalty and creativity will then supply you with bright solutions to your problems.

Garden of mind :

When you come up with a thought, it is a cause which leads you to a state, a condition. A bright, happy thought leads you to a bright, happy state of mind.

When you learn to think only positive, happy thoughts and find happy alternatives to negative ones, you are cultivating your subconscious mind like a wise gardener sowing good seeds to make his garden blossom into a beauty.

Your mind is your garden. Sow beautiful seeds of positive thoughts. Your subconscious mind will respond with a beautiful crop. Herein lies the priceless value of a habitually positive way of thinking.

Remember, the world within you, your thoughts, feelings, imagery which constitute it makes your external world. Look at it with sadness, and you will see only sorrow.

Observe how your sunny thoughts bring out the beauty and happiness of the world without. These positive thoughts are the cause, and the condition they lead to is one of beauty and happiness.

Enlightened people are intensely interested in the world within. If you follow their precepts and change your thoughts into bright, positive ones, the result is bound to be a happy state of mind.

Setting goals :

A goal is the target which you desire to hit in your life. A goal is what motivates you to work consciously to reach it. It draws you forward. When you achieve a goal, you are filled with satisfaction and even happiness.

The feeling of success motivates you further, and you aim higher and higher, and the upswing in your life continues steadily to greater success, prosperity and harmony.

Success within your reach :

Because you are unique in this world of teeming millions, your goals are your own; they are also unique. They are concerned with your thoughts, your activities.

When you set a goal and work for it, you are taking a positive step towards changing your life in a significant manner. To ensure that your life is improved in every way and that your efforts lead to the most desirable results, you must set goals which are positive, realistic and achievable. You should also set some limit in order to measure your success.

Setting goals and working for them can lead you not only to success, happiness and power but achieve exactly the dream of your life. And it is within your reach.

Autosuggestion with relaxation and visualisation, power over your behaviour :

Rigit from our birth, we are acting and behaving in response to suggestions. Suggestion is the principle behind human behaviour. Children at school follow the teacher's suggestions, sometimes even better than the suggestions given by the parents. The family physician cures your headache better than an unknown doctor. It is human nature to accept a good, positive suggestion, and when it is repeated it gets etched on the subconscious mind.

Advertising makes use of this principle all the time. Consider the repetitive messages involving suggestions that you are bombarded with on the TV such as in the Soap, toothpaste, shampoo advertisements and so on. Suggestions indeed have tremendous power over human behaviour.

Protective function :

One of the functions of the subconscious mind is to protect you mentally and physically day and night. It provides you with an unending stock of excuses to cover up your misdeeds.

Unfortunately however, it can become a habit and you will end up telling fibs and lies to hide behind and never own up responsibility for your acts. For real progress you must stop giving excuses.

Turning into positive suggestions :

When you learn to activate the subconscious mind, you lay your conscious mind off duty for a while, and erase all negative data from your subconscious mind and fill it with positive data via positive suggestions.

You do this by repeating these again and again to imprint them on your subconscious mind. This will result in changing you from within. For the subconscious mind begins to respond to these suggestions very fast.

Since you will be giving these suggestions to your own subconscious mind, they are termed autosuggestions. The are powerful, positive, affirmative statements such as: "I'm becoming better and better everyday in all respects."

Your subconscious mind responds positively and you become what you want to be. It is the key that ignites the engine which propels you forward towards achieving your goals, desires and dreams.

They are so powerful that they can erase negative suggestions which you might have accepted such as: "I've no chance. It's useless. Things are getting worse everyday."

Tune into positive suggestions for ultimate success. Can there be a simpler method than unlocking the enormous power that lies locked up inside you, and going ahead confidently towards success and achievement?

Mental and material success :

Everyone wants success; both mental and material, they want peace of mind, harmony and worldly wealth. The easiest way to achieve success is to train the mind to think positively, plan positively, act positively. This you achieve through constructive autosuggestion.

It is a reconditioning therapy. It will nullify the impact of negative thoughts of the past, change your behavioural patterns from those which seem to push you inevitably towards failure, and help you choose and achieve a new life full of success and joy, health and affluence, a life full of meaning, happiness and harmony.

Mind training .... a priceless boon that is yours to get on an exciting trail of happy events, enjoyable episodes and sure success. Start it today.

Dr. Asha Joshi