Program Topics
One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Success is not just about acquiring material wealth, name or fame. The true definition of success is attaining the kind of success we define for ourselves, whatever that might be. Success can be mental, physical, material or spiritual. We all want to succeed at what we are doing, but is it possible for all of us to succeed? Is success a matter of luck and chance or is there a method?
When we don’t understand the fundamental principles, success is simply a matter of chance. Even some of the most successful people have no clue as to how they became successful, and a lot of them are simply chance phenomena. When so many people are striving to achieve something, it is natural that some people will get there.
We can draw very little from the stories of highly successful people; their stories are their own. As for the rest of us, we cannot afford to leave success to chance. We have to understand the fundamental science of success.
What we see in the outside world are different expressions of success. We never see the actual mechanism of success itself. When we aspire to a certain kind of lifestyle, we immediately start visualizing the future. We begin to dream and desire about what we want, and we begin to move in the new direction, but after a while we hit a dead end. This is because we only desired a certain kind of life; we never understood the fundamental principles of how to get there.
To find the key to success, we need to dive into our inner world of memories, thoughts, desires, emotions, beliefs and values. We have to understand how we function on the inside. We have to make sense of a vast ocean of things that are happening within us. Before we decide to flaunt a new bumper sticker on our car, we have to know if the engine is working or not.
Figuring out success is all about figuring out how our inner engine works, what fuels it, and what drives it.
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Now, let’s look at our two biggest existential fears; fear of death and fear of the unknown. These two fears manifest themselves in our lives in a multitude of ways. Fear of sickness, aging, poverty, aggression, and violence are all connected to the primary fear of death. Fear of death fuels the imagination of the mind to transform simple and seemingly harmless situations into fearful experiences.
If we don’t understand this hallucinatory nature of our minds, we will fall victim to its wild, fearful imaginations. This is also why we are afraid of the unknown.
The mind has the choice to imagine anything it wants to about an unknown entity, but it frequently chooses a fearful response because it is constantly driven by the fear of death.
Fear is not totally irrelevant and useless. Instinctual fear has its uses; it helps us to make quick decisions that protect us from immediate danger. It is not this instinctual fear of heights, strange places or wild animals that we need to be worried about.
The fear that is a result of our wild imaginations, driven by fear of death is what we need to address.
Franklin D Roosevelt put it perfectly when he said, “Only thing we have to fear is fear itself”.
The majority of our fears are generated within us, and external circumstances have very little to do with it. We have to understand the inner-functioning mechanism of fear and deal with it effectively.
The mechanism of imagined fear is the very foundation of our mind. With no problem, we can say that “fear is the mind and the mind is fear”. In a way, the only way to go beyond all our fears is by learning how to stay away from our minds.
This might sound crazy if you are just a mind. Because you are something more than the mind, it is possible. The mind is a collection of thoughts, most of which are generated through fear. We have the choice to fully accept this fearful mind as a part of our reality and live in fear all the time, or we can make a conscious choice to put some distance between us and our minds.
The very fact that we can watch and use our minds should tell us that we are not our minds. We can pick up a stone and throw it because we are not the stone. Similarly, we can watch a thought and get rid of it, because we are not the thought.
Who’s in Control?
In order to achieve something, you should be able to direct your mind and body in a certain direction. The most important aspect of success is learning how to get control over your mind and body. You might say, “Of course I am in control of my mind and body, who else could be in control of them?” In reality, you are very rarely in control. Most of the time, your mind and body control you. Let’s take a few simple examples to understand this.
If our minds were listening to us, then we should never get angry, frustrated or disappointed. If we are in control of our mind, then why do we torture ourselves with imaginary thoughts we don’t want to think? If we are in control, why do we have to go through so much emotional turmoil on a daily basis?
The simple fact that we get frustrated with situations tells us that we are not in control. The mind gets angry when it wants to get angry. It gets frustrated when it wants to get frustrated. It doesn’t wait for our opinions or instructions.
How often have we told ourselves, “Oh, I over-reacted. I shouldn’t get angry unnecessarily” and still you continue to get angry. This in itself clearly shows that what we want and what our mind wants are two very different things. When we find it hard to get our minds to listen to us, we are not in control. This is the reason why not all of us succeed. How can we succeed when our own mind doesn’t want to listen to us?
Most of the time we are not in control of our bodies, either. Why do we have to constantly struggle to get rid of our cravings and addictions if our body is listening to us?
When we already know that smoking or excessive drinking is not good for our health, why can’t we simply tell the body to drop the desire; it’s because we are not in control, the body is.
Why is it so hard to motivate ourselves to exercise regularly and keep ourselves healthy? It is because we are not in control.
We still somehow drag the reluctant mind and body along and accomplish a few things. Real success lies in getting our minds and bodies to listen to us. If we are able to achieve this, then we can experience holistic success in our personal and professional lives, in our health and happiness, and in our joy and fulfillment.
By getting our minds and bodies to listen to us, we can experience the exact kind of success we want. We don’t have to compromise on our dreams and desires. We don’t have to compromise on our physical and mental well-being, and we don’t have to constantly worry about motivating ourselves.
I wanted to change the world
When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world.
I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation.
When I found I couldn’t change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn’t change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family.
Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.
Author: unknown monk around 1100 AD
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So how do we get control of our mind and body?
The first and most important thing we need to do is start paying attention to our mind and body. We have to watch our minds and bodies constantly. We then have to stop acting on every little impulse of our mind and body. We have to look at our own mind and body as something different from us. We have to put some distance between “us” and “them”.
The only way to gain control is by moving away from automatic and unconscious actions to self-directed conscious action. Every single moment has to be watched and lived with full consciousness. This is the single biggest change we need to bring in to our lifestyle if we are to live a truly successful life.
Every thought has to be watched and every sensation of the body has to be observed. This sounds like an enormously difficult task to accomplish, because we very rarely watch our thoughts and impulses. but with regular practice, you will be able to observe each and every aspect of your mind and body.
The only way to control a desire or an impulse is by watching it when it is beginning to take over you. If you are not alert, the desire will simply overwhelm you. This is how you lose control of your mind, your body, and your life.
Learning to be conscious each and every moment is the greatest battle you can fight with yourself. As the saying goes, “The greatest battles are fought within the deepest recesses of our hearts”. Your greatest battle will always be with your own mind and body.
Consciousness is the key differentiating factor between success and failure. We cannot rely on knowledge and information alone to succeed. Knowledge is from the past.
Success in anything is a matter of observation of what is happening within and around us and responding to challenges and situations creatively. To be able to do this we need to be alert to what is happening around us; we cannot simply be lost in our thoughts all the time.
Successful people are great watchers; they watch everything with awareness. They watch people, behaviors, actions, trends and changes, and more importantly, they watch their own behavior, which gives them the ability to make good decisions. Consciousness is the key to success.
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with success, unexpected, in common hours.
– Henry David Thoreau
Methods & Techniques
Now, let’s look at a technique to build our awareness and consciousness in a scientific and systematic way.
Listening is an important aspect of our lives. We gather a lot of knowledge and information from the external world using the faculty of listening. Developing the ability to listen consciously can make a huge difference in the quality of our lives.
There is a way to strengthen your listening faculty: You can begin the process in a focused way by combining it with your daily meditations. Eventually this ability can be extended to all other activities throughout the day.
Pick a comfortable designated place for your meditation practice. Choose any pleasant music, preferably instrumental music. Sit in a comfortable posture and begin to listen to the music. There is a lot of difference between casually listening to music and using music to strengthen your listening ability. The key difference is in the level of awareness.
Throughout the duration of your practice, you must pay very close attention to the music. You need to watch each and every sound, note, tune and all other variations. Every time your mind is distracted with thoughts, gently bring the awareness back to the music.
There are two aspects to this exercise: One is that you keep your entire focus on the music and the other is to watch yourself going through this entire process. The key here is to not forget you amidst this process of listening. This is the difference between focus and awareness.
While focusing, you pick an object to observe and you shift your entire focus toward that object.
During awareness, you observe the observer as well. If focus is like an arrow, awareness is like the sky. Focus is directed toward one point and awareness is directed toward the overall process.
These techniques sound more complicated than they actually are. With regular practice of at least 30 minutes a day, you will be able to greatly improve your listening skills and awareness. After a few days of practice, you will naturally begin to pay close attention to the variety of noises and sounds around you. Your ability to stay focused during learning events, lectures and classes will improve significantly.
One of the most desirable qualities we look for in people is their ability to listen to us attentively. No one likes to try to communicate with people who cannot pay attention to what we’re saying. After several days of practice you will notice that you are more focused and aware, and are not easily distracted.
Meditation techniques are simple to follow, and their effectiveness lies in this simplicity. You might wonder what success has to do with a listening meditation. You will know the answer to this after a few days of practice. If success is about learning how to control your mind and body, then listening gives you the power to do this. This is a simple, yet very powerful technique. Give it a try for a few days and you can see the results for yourself.
Questions For Reflection
Question 1: What is your definition of success?
Question 2: What is our biggest obstacle to success?
Question 3: What is the key differentiating factor between success and failure?
Question 4: Is it possible to duplicate the success story of another individual? Why?
Question 5: Who’s in control: your mind? your body? something else?