MEANING OF LIFE

MEANING OF LIFE

Discover Your Goals 

Over the years I have developed a picture of what a human.Being living humanely is like. She is a person who understands, values, and develops her body, finding it
beautiful and useful; a person who is real and is willing to take risks, to be creative, to manifest competence, to change when the situation calls for it, and finds ways to accommodate to what is new and different, keeping that part of old that is
                                    still useful and discarding what is not.

Virginia Satir

He was travelling in his Mercedes Benz fromChandigarh to New Delhi. It was drizzling and there was a light wind blowing. The trees on both sides of the road seemed to be dancing with the wind. Just a day earlier this man had given a seminar for British Council in Taj Hotel, Chandigarh. While the car was moving, he started recalling the event in which everybody shook hands with him, considering themselves lucky and expressed their joy at meeting this man personally, whom they had only seen on television earlier. How can an average person, with a cost accounting degree, having no background in psychology make a successful mark on human psychology?

How can he make every participant walk on a burning bed of fire? How can a man, who ten years ago had no money to have food, to buy clothes, who was actually fighting for survival, now help the top companies to survive in tough times? For somebody who completed his education by borrowing money from his friends, no w to become a powerhouse for executives and CEOs of top business houses was a great achievement. Success does not entirely mean what I have done. This is not the benchmark of success.Success means different things to different people, but everyone has a dream. Some follow their dreams strongly by working towards them and some just dream and don’t take any action. I always remember what the former President of India, Dr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, had said, “Dreams are not which are seen in sleep, rather dreams are those which don’t allow you to sleep.” Life always gives you what you look for. There is a way to look at a dream and that is what exactly I teach in my seminars. I will share with you all the tools through which every individual can achieve his goals and can reach the zenith. To be a leader it is not necessary to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth. If an individual changes his understanding of the external world with the internal thought process, then success is bound to come. One has to have an attitude to bear the pain happily and counter the challenges of life at every stage.

Today, anyone in blue jeans can form a company. We have so many shining stars on the business horizon, e.g. Bill Gates, L. N. Mittal, and Sunil Mittal, to name a few. Cosmos has same impact on everyone. We need to understand the language of the cosmic world. Life always gives us what we desire. The day you think that you have not seen any beggar for a long time, the very next moment you will find a beggar around you. It is as if you asked the cosmic power to show you beggars. This is also known as reticular activity system. When you do an activity you find everyone is doing the same thing. Suppose you are constructing your house, you realise that many houses are being constructed at the same time. Cosmos does not discriminate whether you are from India, China, USA, Russia, or any other country or city.

UNDERSTANDING THE WORKING PATTERN OF AN INDIVIDUAL

If we look into the corporate world today, then we experience that the biggest challenge is to place the right person at the right place at the right time. If you see the information technology world, it is visible that the manpower turnover rate is killing. It is the greatest challenge to the manager to understand and manage the people at work. It is very challenging to train them in uni-direction.

Once, I was conducting my firewalk seminar. In that the director of the company, Sanjay Bhatia, narrated a motivational story. He explained that a company is like a boat and all of them are sailing in it. Now the boat will go ahead only when everybody rows in the same direction and everybody puts the energy that they have instead of watching who is putting what kind of energy and in what ratio.This story was highly motivational, but do you think everybody took it in the same spirit? No. There were many corporate executives from all parts of the country. 

Everybody would have taken this story according to their own paradigm. If you refer to Pareto’s analysis, who is an Italian Economist, you will find that 20% of the employees contribute to 80% of complaints and dissatisfactionIf we focus on 20% of the employees, 80% of the problems will be solved. Employee related problems can be tackled and eliminated if we understand the pattern of working of every individual. If any individual is posted at the right place or the place of his own interest, there will be job enrichment and enhancement in efficiency. We must know that the most important step is to identify an individual. Even the father of scientific management F. W. Taylor clearly says that we must identify the efficient workers and inefficient workers. Identification of employees leads to identification of human behaviour. Therefore, it is our primary duty to identify the workers and subsequently provide the work. Even parents must understand what their children deserve. Sometimes parents become unreasonable with their children.

Every individual has different patterns of life. Even in my seminars, when I crack jokes, some people laugh like anything, while some don’t. Earlier, I used to be a visiting professor at the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. There also if I used to explain any concept, then some people would be very happy while some would not. Several times I used to think why there was a differentresponse for the same action. It is because every individual has different patterns of life.

Let us understand the different behaviours of an individual.

1. Process-oriented

Some people are process-oriented. They go step by step. They believe in systems. They believe in mechanisms. They believe in orientation. I am not saying if this is good or bad. I am trying to make you focus on the nature of the person. Accounts people are process oriented. Sales people are goal oriented. Law firms believe that no work is complete unless the paper work is done. Human behaviour varies from individual to individual. Let me tell you about one person who believed in process and function and he gave the world a complete new mode of transportation.

A twelve-year-old boy was going along with his farmer father. He saw a train. He was so inquisitive that he went to the driver of the train and enquired how the train worked. His process based mind thought that if a train could work on a track, then why could not a chariot move on a plain road with a machine and not by horses. This process was settled in his brain. When his father used to think about seeds, soil, fertilisers, his mind used to work on the instrument which could be used in ploughing the fields. He worked in Detroit to repair various machines but there too he used to visualise the process of making a machine cart. At the age of 25 he got married on the condition that his first love would be the process of making a car only and nothing else. Later on, this person used towork in Edison Illuminating Company. He used to work day and night on the process of car manufacturing. On 4 June, 1896 this process based man brought the first car on the road and he was none other than Henry Ford. And today the whole world respects and admires the incredible mechanism produced by Henry Ford’s brain. These kind of people

must be put at functional work.

Techniques to Eliminate Phobias

1. Develop the alternative demand-oriented perspective

We should always take that word which has a meaning for the buyer. Instead of knowing the product, we should know the value and vision of the product. Eastman Kodak always says, “We preserve beautiful memories.” Revlon is a cosmetics manufacturing company, but they reframe “We are Hope in a Drug Store”.

2. Know exactly what you want

While reframing, we should be very specific. What is our deepest desire and why we must do it? According to ourvision, we go ahead for context reframing. But, destination will only make pathways. In ancient history, the son of a king called Siddhartha visualised his vision above death and sufferings from illness. Then he got the

power to leave his kingdom and subsequently he became the great sage Gautama Buddha. He touched and moved the life of thousands of people in India, China, Burma, Sri Lanka, Tibet, etc. He reframed that the secret of a happy life is not expecting anything from anyone.

3. What pattern you need to change

Focus on the pattern needs to be left and now create an empowering belief to enjoy the changing pattern. This cannot be achieved by one time thought, rather you have to practise it again and again.

4. Condition yourself

To reap the benefits, you and I have to practise it again and again. Then only it will be conditioned. Brain never understands any command unless it is experienced. In my firewalk, I always invest time to condition my participants. Once the masses are conditioned, brain takes action. I told them that the firewalk is a metaphor to their changed physiology. It breaks mental impossibility and will make you experience the fear. The only way to overcome fear is to experience it. That is exactly what firewalk does. Firewalk conditions the state and behaviour which subsequently produces results inspite of terrible fear. Youshould challenge fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear ofnot being good enough, fear of losing positions, fear of not being loved enough, etc. You should break the self-limiting belief. I believe that you can be anything what you wish, such as a businessman, millionaire, etc.

Overcome any kind of unrealistic relationship, which has got no existence today such as a broken relationship. We all had some of our unpleasant experiences in the past and the impact of that past limits us from living a great and playful life.

I condition through firewalk to change the internal representation about any event through internal communication. We all know that even in Mahabharata, Lord Krishna had asked Yudhishtra to reframe the situation of killing Ashwathama, the elephant, for getting an opportunity to kill the great Dronacharya.

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