THE ATTITUDE BLOG

Control Your Thoughts

2012-09-26T11:00:00.002-07:00

How to watch your thoughts:

can you observe the thoughts? So you must be separate from the mind to see what the mind is doing.So the mind generates thoughts, which are mostly just energy forms. These thoughts pass through like clouds. We identify with some of these thoughts and obsess about them. So in truth all thoughts are just neutral energy forms, it’s “your” interest or association with the thoughts that makes them obsessive. If you can understand this truth, you have taken the first step towards getting rid of obsessive thoughts.

What Causes Obsessive Thoughts?

The truth is that you don’t generate thoughts, the mind does. It’s on auto mode most of the time. You can see this for yourself, can you predict what you will think 30 seconds from now? If you can’t how can you assume that you are generating the thoughts?

You are not your mind. If you are your mind then how can you observe the thoughts? So you must be separate from the mind to see what the mind is doing.

So the mind generates thoughts, which are mostly just energy forms. These thoughts pass through like clouds. We identify with some of these thoughts and obsess about them. So in truth all thoughts are just neutral energy forms, it’s “your” interest or association with the thoughts that makes them obsessive. If you can understand this truth, you have taken the first step towards getting rid of obsessive thoughts.

How to Stop Obsessive Negative Thoughts?

If you are asking this question, ask yourself another question – “is this question not another thought? It’s a thought about killing thoughts”. All your attempts at suppressing and stopping thoughts will fail because you will be using the mind to stop the mind. The police man and thief are both the mind, so how can the police man catch the thief?

So you cannot kill the mind by force. The mind dies its own death by the poison of disassociation.

What gives power to a thought? – Your interest. If you have no interest in a particular thought then it loses its hold over you. You can try this out now. Let the thoughts flow through your mind but don’t take interest in them. Just stay as a watcher and let the thoughts float.

Initially you might have a hard time watching thoughts because of your inherent habit of associating with each thought that arises. It helps to know that you are not your thoughts, that thoughts are just energy forms created in the mind. Watching the thinker is essentially a technique that allows you to maintain a very present state by stepping outside of your mind and watching all of its crazy fantasies and delusions. Having experienced it in great detail, I can say that it’s a lot like maintaining a state of meditation throughout your day. It’s not as intense as real meditation, but because an actual meditation session is usually so short, it appears to be a more powerful way of bringing about inner peace.

With a little practice you will get really good at watching thoughts and not involving yourself with them. You will stop giving power to thoughts by not giving them your interest. Thoughts die immediately when they are deprived of this fuel of interest. If you don’t associate with the thought or give power to the thought, it will wither away quickly.

Your mind conditioning and beliefs are also stored as memories. All this is unconscious storage; the mind does all this in auto mode. Perceptions and interpretations are created in the mind based on its past. These interpretations, perceptions and judgments come up as thoughts in the mind, and they can positive or negative depending on the mind’s conditioning. Thoughts are generated based on the past incidents/memories, future projections and interpretations on the present life situation. It’s like a computer trying to predict or conjure up projection based on the data it has collected so far.

When thoughts are negative in nature (thoughts of worry, anxiety, stress, lack, resentment, guilt etc) they produce resistance to the movement of your life, and this resistance is felt as suffering. Negative thoughts will always stand in resistance to the movement of your life, like blocks of stone in the midst of a swift current of water. Life is a stream of pure positive energy and hence any negative thought will stand in opposition to it, causing friction which is felt as suffering in the body.

You can focus on the positive thoughts generated in the mind, and thus develop a positive momentum in your mind. Every time your mind produces some positive thoughts, e.g thoughts of love, joy, excitement, abundance, beauty, appreciation, passion, peace etc, focus on it, milk it, and give attention to it. This will cause your mind to attract more positive thoughts and thus build a positive momentum. Whenever it thinks negatively, don’t give it attention or interest, this will cause the ebbing away of the momentum of negative thinking. It’s really that simple. Once you understand the mechanics of how thoughts gain momentum in the mind, you will be in total control of your state of being.

The Practice of Watching the Mind

All you need to do to get rid of obsessive thoughts is to watch the mind without getting involved. You will get really good at this with just a little practice. This practice, or “sadhana” as called in Hindu scriptures, is the root of awakening from the illusion of mind.

Without trying to understand this practice just implement it. The more you try to understand the more mind gets involved. Just watch the mind and you will soon see that you are not the mind at all. That the mind is like a machine in your head that generates thoughts based on your attention/interest. Be free of your mind by depriving it of your interest. This is the only direct path of becoming free of the mind.

Dreams without actions are fantasies !!

2012-01-17T14:32:00.000-08:00

We all know it's the big one! Let us give some time to it again. We all dream. In fact dreams are the music to our lives. As kids we all remain very excited about chasing our dreams, we fatacise the process of meeting our dreams to be as interesting as a treasure hunt. Yet as we grow older and face real challenges of life we find it easier to negotiate with our aspirations, our dreams and settle down with what life throws to us. Most of the times our dreams become unrealistic suppositions for us later in life.

Let's recall a childhood story now. A man got bunch of flowers for free. He kept the flowers next to bed and went to sleep. In his dreams he thought that when he will sell these flowers,then he will buy a cow and with that money, when he will sell the milk from cow, will open a bakery, will become a rich man and then will marry a princess and will have kids. Further he went on thinking that if the kids won't listen to him, he will beat them with a stick..... Thinking and acting that, way he subconsciously moved his hand over hitting hard the flowers and the flowers went down on floor and got crushed. Here the message was that if we just sleep over our dreams, they are never gonna come true.

Just because we have a dream it's proven by neuroscience, that we have a latent ability to fulfill that dream. Otherwise we wouldn't have noticed it at all.

The story above recreates a buzz in mind, that if we still try to overcome the negatives of our lives and put ourselves back on action mode we will be able to make our dreams come true.
I think there are 3ways to approach action with a happy heart or in an inspired way....
1. Faith: When we have faith in ourselves, our abilities, our dreams, we automatically feel motivated and love to pursue them. Pray to god, work on to have that faith. It surely will work wonders for you.
2. Desire: We need to have a burning desire for our goals, our dreams.
3. Choice: We need to have a dream of our choice only, not of parent's, wife's and so on. It should be worthy for us specially, for our heart. What holds us back from taking action if the giant monster Fear ! It can any kind of fear, fear of cricism, fear of failure, fear of change. I do have given few tips on overcoming fear in my last blog.
Hope it proves helpful to you. Having a daily action plan usually is very helpful in tracking our progress and ultimately meeting our dreams. Come on guys... Act now! Do something, acquire information, develop new skills, start moving, overcome your fears and relentlessly drive your plans to completion!!!

Enemy Number One.... Fear!!!!!

2011-10-22T01:36:00.001-07:00

If we need to get into the higher income group, we need to grow bigger. On the way will come situations, people, circumstances which not just scare us rather terrify us. What should we do then? The best thing that can be done is to accept that we are nervous. Let us admit that we are afraid of person or situation. Let us know that and let others know that too.
Fear most of the time is truly dangerous. It prevents us to act for what is important. We need to make us understand that its all mind game. Fear is thought process and when we learn to control our thoughts, we learn to overcome fear which ultimately effects our actions. Here are a few tricks to cope with anxiety, fear, nervousness or whatever we wanna call that demon.

1. Experts say that if we openly admit to everyone that we are afraid or we are nervous, it works wonders for us. It magically reduces our fear to bare minimal and helps in coping up with it.

2. We can tame our mind to think that the situation is trivial or audience we are gonna face are less in number or less in experience or friends who we haven't met since 15 years :)

3. Have a feeling that facing fear will make us stronger and there is no other way except to face it.

Here is a very good blog on overcoming fear that I managed to read today....

http://www.positivityblog.com/index.php/2008/10/03/how-to-overcome-your-fear-7-tips-from-the-last-2200-years/

4. Prayer is helpful in overcoming all types of fear. Faith and trust in God are perfect solutions to this human problem. It is a solution which helps us find serenity, peace and acceptance and strength. 5. Herbs, aromatherapy, laughter and slow deep breathing are additional ways to overcome all types of fear. Hope it helps us conquering our enemy number one!!!!!

Comfort is death!!!!!

2011-10-04T12:01:00.000-07:00

Well, as my thought goes....there is no straight way to head in life. Its like either you go up or you go down. Each of our mental activities, actions, habits, characters lead us to uphill or downhill in the journey. Nonetheless most of the times, it does takes efforts to move uphill and its easier, passive and comfortable for the downhill. Also, Out of 100 things that happens in our lives, 90 are due to our own creations, good or bad and its just 10 that are given to us by nature. So, most of the times our levels in life are due to us only.

In order to make sure that we are hailing upwards we should try never get into the comfort zone. We need to break our culture of becoming complacent after reaching a level decided by us. Generally after doing better than our competitors we stop making efforts to move further on. We make that level as our secured level, which I call as the 'COMFORT ZONE' and try to cling to it.

Lets get into the details of this 'COMFORT ZONE'. We start striving for being there which makes us watch out and stay away from deflection from it. There will be people who we would not like to meet or cannot meet, thoughts we cannot think, places we cannot go. Defending our zone becomes our whole sole mission. We become short of new innovative ideas, We do whatever that freezes us, numbs us to that comfort level. But, all this actually shuts down our mind, ideas and make us unknowingly lead the downhill journey.

Actually 'COMFORT ZONE' is an illusion of comfort, staying there makes us go to lower trajectory than where we are today. Reaching a certain level, being better than someone, all that cannot be our final goals. Our final goal lies in making efforts to move on further. Every time making situation better for us and for our society needs to be our only final destination. That surely will makes us the most COMFORTABLE!!!!

HAPPY FRIENDSHIP DAY!!!!!! Hola Amigos!!!!!

2011-08-06T23:27:00.000-07:00

Someone well said.."Friends are siblings God forgot to give us!!!!". The point of success of all stories is always somewhere related to the kind of friends we make or get on the way.

We all know that finally what we are depends on the kind of associations, relationships we keep. Yet I feel its easier said than done........ Sometimes these tired relationship don't release us and sometimes its very difficult to get positive associations too....

Lets work harder to get away from skeptics kind of friends who may eat up our confidence. It would be good to dynamically move on, analyzing which one to keep and which to limit contact with. Lets create rooms for newer friends and give permission to leave those who do not match our spirits.

Getting in touch with positive people, premium friendships is not easy again. They must be busy as everyone in this era of fast pace. The best way to touch base with them is to create value in their lives by giving your efforts and services.

That way may we can get access to their lives and lasting friendship too!!!Lets not make it a selfish reason of only getting something from them but by fulfilling their needs we can make a permanent bond which will nourish our lives forever.

The lesson from my father............. surviving failure

2011-06-19T10:32:00.000-07:00

I was a below average student..... used to get very less scores. It was always my dad always with me encouraging to try harder for better. He directed my energy by learning from past mistakes. It managed to increase my grades and also made me great at survivorship.

There is a Nike commercial,starred by Micheal Jordan where he says : "I fail over and over and over again in my life..... that is why I succeed". Have a look...... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45mMioJ5szc

Soichiro Honda said:

Success represents the 1% of your work which results from 99% that is called failure.

Its my father who made me believe that failure is not result of the mistakes we make but it is result of how we respond to our mistakes. When we succumb to a failure our vision gets blocked and dreams get vaporised. When we live upto a failure positively our confidence level increases in dealing with any horror that may come further.

Failure can refine us when we do not allow it to define us.

Thnks dad................

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY

Tuning Attitude.............

2011-06-14T14:39:00.000-07:00

William James once said: "The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering the attitude."
What basically is attitude? Its simply the way we react to different issues of life. A positive attitude or a right attitude can make a situation more profitable or can lessen the loss as the case may be.
Our attitudes can be result of our past experiences, of people who play big or small roles in our lives or because of our particular personality. But one thing is sure guys, no one was born with an attitude. Its only with time that we develop it. Which further means we all can moniter and change our attitudes.
If we compare our lives with an agricultural land we can say the 'positive attitude' are the 'crops' we reap for our profit, and the 'weeds' are the 'negative attitude' that can cause loss to us. As we need grow more crops and remove more of weeds to maximize profit, same can be compared with our 'attitude' in life as well.

One step further......the way we make efforts to grow crops on the land to get good results and even take care of them, same is the case with 'positive attitude' in our mind. Unlike weeds which grow by default, can be compared with 'negative attitude' in mind, to which none of us are permanently immuned and most of the times comes naturally from the society. Moreover they have deep roots as well....

Likewise, we need to make efforts to process and tune our minds to 'positive' and eradicate the weeds of 'negative',. It is an ongoing process without any end for anyone of us.

This post is not just about what I think, if any one has views similar or contrary to it,you are most welcome to share............

The Right Attitude.......

2011-06-05T15:11:00.000-07:00

Hi guys, I am starting this blog today by posting a million dollar question that life throws at us............ 'What attitude you have towards me' ?

They say that we need to have a 'shock absorber' attitude towards life. They mean we need to remain steady in every stuff that life throws on us. The more shock resistant we are the more success we have, means directly proportional.
So, is it that having positive attitude the sure shot way to achieve success? or why we need to take attitude topic so seriously?
I have one comparative situation to show the attitude effect: Suppose there was Mr. A who is going for a job interview but had low self esteem, visualizes that he will not get the job and on that day of interview he actually tends to make it happen as well. Another was Mr. b who was positive about getting job , was confident on the day of interview and surely again made it happen what visualized, he got the job.

I would say that having a right attitude not always gives us instant success, but surely is the foundation for the success. Its the basic step which cannot be avoided. Right attitude gives us right belief, that we can succeed. If we give defeat chance to enter our mind, it can convert thought process to negative, same goes well with triumph.......

Lastly, no one is immuned to negatives of life and also no one is born with positive attitude. In that case, we all can have a continuous Right Attitude learning and strengthening process in our lives. Books, associations or anything positive helps us in that.