REFRAMING

The world that we see is exactly not the same as we perceive. The reality is we frame the world according to our own internal communication. What kind of frame

you and I are putting around has the real meaning. If you change the frame of context, the meaning of experience changes instantly. The quality of life will depend upon the frame that we put on experience. The process of providing the frame is known as reframing. Reframing provides shape, size, and impact of experience. This is the reason as to why the same happening has different meaning for different individuals. Reframing makes our mind work in the desired direction. Generally, we have to give direction on two changes. One is situational change or context change and the other is content change. Through both the processes, you can resolve your internal conflicts and change your internal representation and internal communication. One of my friends Naresh Gupta visited me for giving an invitation card for his daughter’s wedding. He had one daughter. In conversation, I said that he would feel alone after the marriage since the daughter will go away. He gave a well-balanced, reframed answer that was fantastic.

He said “I am getting a son instead of losing daughter. Now I have both a son and a daughter.” I was really happy listening to such a great reframed answer.

SITUATIONAL REFRAMING

Process For Self-Transformation

•      Take the worst happenings of your life, which you never desired. Take the ones which had created absolutely the worst impact on your life.

•      Now think that what benefits are available in case you change the situation immediately and instantly.

•      A majority of the people complain about the same problem, but never take any action to change the situation.

•      Now you decide what kind of impact it will have in your life in terms of your emotions, on your physical power, and on your relations with whom you are associated. One thing is clear, if we want to get something, we have to leave something which has an undesirable impact on the future course of action.

In Saudi Arabia lot of oil wells were found. Of course, it made the land infertile. But if we change the context, we can see that it generated a lot of revenue or foreign currency with which Saudi Arabia could buy loads of grains which cannot be produced over there. Let’s take another reference—in the cities, cow dung is considered as a waste and, of course, everyone hates it. But in most parts of India, this is the most sacred ingredient in religious rituals. Before cooking food, even kitchens, are cleaned with cow dung.

Belief Pattern

My father used to say that Morarji Desai, former Prime Minister of India, used to drink his urine every day in the morning. This may have some scientific reason behind it, because he lived for 99 years and till the last moment he had no wrinkles on his face. It is all about belief. Belief is what makes you resourceful, powerful, and works for you and not against you.

When Edison was failing again and again in the process of inventing the bulb, he used to do a lot of reframing. In a family, if someone dies, everyone cries, but the moment we change the situation and think that the person has gone to heaven and his soul will rest in peace, then everything changes. A lot of rituals are performed on the fourth day and thirteenth day for the person who has died and prayers are offered for his soul to rest in peace. This process conditions the people to believe that their beloved has gone to heaven.

Content Reframing

In a situation, just change the meaning and impact of the happening. Look for opportunity in the situation, instead of loss. Because of this, the negative energy will be converted into positive energy. Emotions will go into a positive frame of mind. If your boss says, “You are an idiot”, then it hurts you. Immediately change the context and think that your boss said it out of love. You know it very well how we feel when our sweetheart calls us an idiot. Life is all about reframing. There was a drunkard,

whose girlfriend asked, “Why did you drink yesterday?” He replied, “There are only two reasons to drink. Either you are happy or sad. He said he had both the reasons. Happy because he had met his sweetheart and sad because why did he not meet her till then.” But in the army, when a commander commands, then he does not say move back, rather he says that let us attack the opposite side.We have to change the way we see the world, listen to the world, and feel the world. And because of this, our representational system is changed and of course subsequently our internal communication is also changed and at the same time our behaviour is totally changed. You can change any experience. You can change any happening. You can change any behaviour, you can control your own brain. You can produce the desired results. Now please reframe the following experiences:

1.      “My boss knows nothing—I can do better and can be the boss very soon.” Otherwise, you can always cry that boss is not good. When Rockefeller asked for a hike in his salary, his boss refused. He reframed this situation, “If I can work for him to make him a boss, why can’t I work for myself

We have to change the way we see the world, listen to the world, and feel the world. And because of this, our representational system is changed and of course subsequently our internal communication is also changed and at the same time our behaviour is totally changed. You can change any experience. You can change any happening. You can change any behaviour, you can control your own brain. You can produce the desired results. Now please reframe the following experiences:

1.      “My boss knows nothing—I can do better and can be the boss very soon.” Otherwise, you can always cry that boss is not good. When Rockefeller asked for a hike in his salary, his boss refused. He reframed this situation, “If I can work for him to make him a boss, why can’t I work for myself

By doing this, you can come to a conclusion about what should you do. You will take up the project with interest rather than frustration. You will neither spoil your personal life nor professional. You can

apply this to any situation. Suppose you are not able to communicate with somebody who is very senior to you. Or you don’t talk to any girl on the pretext that they are arrogant or probably they may refuse you. That feeling of rejection is always there. With reframing you can eliminate all your fears.

If your boss becomes unreasonable for a task given to you, instead of cursing him, follow the following steps:

Transform Your Thought Process

•      Take the image of your boss and put it on your dining table.

•      Assume that he is saying something about your upliftment, listen to his sound, the sound which you liked that time.

•      Generate a warm and soft feeling for him.

•      Hear him saying that he badly needs your help for the execution of a project. 

Responses of The Various Parts of The Brain

Central Brain

In this, hypothalamus and pituitary gland and limbic system are involved. This controls food habits, thirst, and the temperature of our body.

Now if you and I want to control ourselves we can control by changing our physiology. A minor change in our physiology can produce unbelievable results. If you are tilted towards left, generally you are bound to think about the past. What internal communication we give will be with reference to the past—people in the past, context of the past, situation of the past—everything will be of the past.

Now if you change that posture and tilt towards the right, everything including the eyeball, then you will think about the future. You will refer to the future context, future picture, and future situation—everything in future. Now if you sit down straight on your back, 

then your central cord is in standing position. All chakras will be in action and will be alert. This is the reason why most of the yogasanas are done in a straight posture. It provides coolness and calmness. Again, our right nose takes positive or fire energy and similarly left nose cools the energy. Therefore, in case you sleep on your left side, you take in positive energy, which helps you in digestion. In “Shiva Sutra”, a Hindu epic, Lord Shiva is called “Ardhnareshwar” which means half male and half female—the left part is female and right part is male. Generally this is the reason why females remain in the past. If a man and a woman go to a restaurant to have dinner, even after having left the restaurant, the woman will keep on talking about the food, about its ambience, whether it was good or too good. Here, I say in my seminars, your wife might fight over petty issues but she will be like a rock when a big problem comes. Generally, men are right-oriented and women are left-oriented. However, if your son is too girlish, then ask him to play the game such as Judo, Taekwondo, etc. and in case he is too aggressive, ask him to learn gardening and try to involve him in household chores.

The famous philosopher Simone de Beauvoir said that females are not born females. They are made females. Mother, family, and society start teaching them what to do and what not to do.

Reprogramming the Brain

The use of brain entirely depends upon an individual. If you change the picture, if you change the sound, if you change the feeling, then the meaning and context of an event will be changed. Now the question is, can we re-programme our brain? Yes, we can. We can, by disturbingthe current patterns and subsequently replacing the old pattern with the new one. The brain does not understand the difference between the reality and imagination. A person who masturbates experiences the same physiological changes

as what is experienced in an actual sexual intercourse. In one of my seminars, one gentleman came into my hotel room. It was 12 o’clock in the night. He said, “Please save me. I enjoy masturbation more than the real intercourse.” Look, imagined reality is more powerful than reality itself. It is all about how we use our brain.

In case you want to change your past patterns then simply follow the following commands.

•      Take a picture of what you want to be.

•      Make the picture bigger and bigger.

•      Now colour the picture with your favourite colours.

•      Get yourself associated.

(Associated means you are acting as a character there)

•      Now create sound in that picture.

•      Let it be the sound which you love to hear, sound and tempo you like from your heart.

•      Now bring this closer to your eyes.

•      Through your eyes feel as it has come closer.

•        Now see, listen, and feel simultaneously intensively.

In case anybody does this in an intense state, then the imagined behaviour will replace the real behaviour. Remember, if you tell your child that he is doing well in his studies, the child starts doing well and if you keep encouraging your child like this consistently, then he starts doing extremely well in his studies. In case parents start telling the child that he is not doing well repeatedly so as to scare the child, then in reality the parents do not notice but the child starts imagining that he is not doing well and hence imagination replaces the reality. Let me give you and example. Once I finished my firewalk seminar at 12 o’clock in the night. When I entered my hotel suite in resort Chokhi Dhani at Jaipur, I saw a participant waiting for me. She was crying. I asked her the reason for crying. She explained, “Everything is all right, but I cannot have sex with my husband.” They had been married for a year. They tried having sex many times but they could not do it. I suddenly recalled the case study of Milton Ericsson, in which the female was scared of sex. The reason of the fear was that when she was eight year old, somebody from the family had raped her. That pain was anchored in her mind, body, and soul. Subsequently, she developed a phobia. That phobia was creating problem in imagination and that imagination had become reality. My counselling worked like magic on her. Remember, past is not the same as the future. That participant was imagining pain. If you do anything consistently, even in imagination, then it starts looking as reality. It is all in the mind. Mind always gives you what you dream of. In order to activate your mind, choose affirmative words.

T h e   b r a i n   d o e s   n o t
understand  the  difference
between reality and imagination.
You just imagine consistently that
it will happen. If a wife doubts her
husband and always imagines him
with somebody else, then there
is a  possibility  that  after  some
time this might become reality

because she had asked the cosmos for the same thing. So it all depends upon how you demand your command. Similarly, if you have a particular taste before you actually eat the thing with that taste, you start experiencing it. Once I had a presentation in Kolkata. I had taken my family along. Since I was brought up in Kolkata, I distinctly remembered a particular taste of Jaiswal puri. As soon as I landed at the airport, I took my family to the restaurant where I used to go 10 years earlier. I started matching the old taste of the puri with the present. Again, in the same trip, I had used my technique to see the pictures. Once when I was leaving for Kolkata, Shri Amrendra Mahapatra, Director of MMTC had said, “You are young, the country needs you.” He advised me to go and give presentation to his managers. His statement was there in my mind. When I went to give the presentation there, I saw that I had a competitor from a big, giant training company. I used my visualisation process for my presentation. How was my presentation? Just after four days, I got a call from the Director Personnel, D. Satpati, asking me to come and fix a date for giving the training at Hindustan Copper. Visualisation process is nothing but a technique to use the brain systematically. We have heard people say, “Think positive, think positive”, but the biggest question

is “How?” In my seminars my entire focus is on “how”. Our destination is always governed by the process through which we use our brain.

In late 1970s, Narayana Murthy was
leading a division for Patni Computers
in Bombay. In 1981, one of the brothers
of Patni treated Mr Narayana Murthy
roughly. Narayana Murthy decided to
leave Patni Computers. When he left,
six other members of the company also
left. Out of them, one gentleman was
Mr Arora.  For Mr Murthy,  respect,
value,  process  was  more  important.
The  six  of  them  formed  a  company
by the name of Infosys. The company
did not do well till the liberalisation of
business in India. Mr Arora took the
other side of the picture. His acuity
was used in the other direction and it
is needless to say that he missed the boat.

Hence we have to know how to use our own brain in our own way, as we know that if we do not control it ourselves, then somebody else will come forward to control it. If you and I do not take control of our own reins then they will be taken up by somebody else. Those who have gone up to the top have taken control of their lives after having faced all kinds of challenges

HOW DOES YOUR BRAIN WORK

Our behaviour is all about the way we respond. Our response to any event or happening is affected by our behaviour and attitude. The context that we give to

this is most important. Our action, reaction, or proaction, is entirely contextual. Have we ever asked, “How do we process information to the nervous system?” Our nervous system is governed by sensory acuities. The following are the sensory acuities:

(i)	Eyes	(ii)	Nose	(iii)	Ears
(iv)	Tongue	(v)	Breathing pattern	(vi)	Lips

All the above sensory acuities sense the event according to the context. Now here is a job for the nervous system.

Story of USA and Starbucks

Our brain always works on a subconcious level. I was travelling from Los Angeles to India. I had to leave American Airways to catch Jet Airways for New Delhi. The flight time was at 4.30 p.m. from Chicago airport. My flight landed at Chicago airport at 1:30 p.m. I thought I would have a cup of coffee at Starbucks while waiting. But while going to Starbucks, my subconscious mind asked me to check at the counter. When I asked about the flight, the person said that the flight was about to take off and the final announcement had been made. Do you know why? There was a time difference from Los Angeles to Chicago—Chicago time was three hours ahead. Our subconsious always works.

Let us understand the function of the brain biologically. Our brain is like a telephone exchange. It works like a

supercomputer. It is like an atomic reactor. It is the most i m p o r t a n t t o o l of the incredible human machine. Our brain has following parts:

Our behaviour is all about

the way we respond.

• Cerebellum • Cerebrum • Brain Stem • Hind brain

Cerebellum

It is the central part of the dynamo. Whenever the blood circulation is high, then electricity is produced. When you ride a bicycle which is dynamo fitted, have you noticed what happens to light? You must have observed when you increase the speed, the power of the dynamo increases. Similarly, if you slow down the speed, then the power of the dynamo goes down. In the same way, if you increase the speed of the thought process, then the brain gets more blood. Our brain consumes twenty per cent of the oxygen that we inhale. So our brain needs thought process as well as physical activity. Like a dynamo, if you drive at a high speed, it gives more light and in case you drive at a low speed, it produces low light. Again, if you do not drive, the bicycle will not give you any light. The speed of blood in the mind is more when you are in peak states. That is the reason when you are in a peak state and anything happens, it gets anchored in our brain infinitely. Some teachers beat children with cane for any mistake. For many students the concepts of that particular question gets anchored on their hand. If you recall, then you will still remember for which concept your teacher had hit your hand with a stick. When a teacher takes up the stick 

then whole body goes into a response. That stick and the hurt gets anchored in the child’s brain and as a result the child starts hating the teacher. It all depends on how the student takes it. If the student takes it in a positive way, then the hurt and the cane becomes a stimulant to concentrated study. But this happens rarely.

The fundamental fact is that the moment the circulation of blood is higher, the awareness is more as the production of electricity is more. In fact, our subconscious brain is controlled by this electricity with the first ventricle and second ventricle. While sleeping, walking, running, our whole body is balanced with this dynamo function.

Cerebrum

This is the supercomputer. The meaning of command depends upon the past experience, past patterns, value system, and perceptions that the individual has.

Our cerebrum is divided into two parts—right and left. The right part constructs. Here construct means it thinks about something which does not exist. It takes the image in imagination. We have discussed the use of this in the chapter “Catch the liars”. The second part is known as left brain. Authentically, the right brain creates and the left manages what the right has created. When the left brain digs up, then the right manages the situation. In case balance is not created between the left and the right brain, then that invites depression. There is no medicine for depression. The only medicine that doctors prescribe functions to augment and make a balance between the left and right brain. Our supercomputer has about 20,000 chips, but

generally we use only 10% of the total. Yes, Albert Einstein could use 15% of the total usable chips. If we go deep into the understanding of the communication system scientifically then the following picture will come:

Frontal Lobe	: Logic and argument, discussion, and
	internal dialogue
Parietal Lobe	: Movement from toes to head
Occipital Lobe: Sight
Temporal	: Listening skills and patience in listening
Cerebellum	: Balance of muscles