Power within – 12 Strategies -

The previous 12 posts describe the 12 strategies!!

What is the key for the happiness in life? Now, you would have in your possession of all those things that you desired few years before. Now, you would have bought your dream house, car, fancy gadgets, farmhouse etc. but somewhere deep inside you, you might be experiencing emptiness, a craving to get more in the pursuit of your happiness.

My personal transformation has taught me some valuable lessons that drive my direction for a meaningful & purposeful life. Here is the formula that gives a solution to your present problem. First, understand your physical, mental & emotional energies & align those energies in identifying your true resource capabilities. Once that is done, you will see a proportionate growth in all the dimensions of the life i.e. your Health, Wealth, Relationships & spiritual development. This is what you might be lacking right now. For example, you may be good in generating wealth but not in your Health or other two dimensions & so on.

Here is my attempt in compiling twelve mental, emotional & physical strategies that give the desired alignment that you sought in understanding your Power within.

Achieve Active life beyond 50s,60s &above

Physical Strategies

1 Art of listening to the body

2  Physical Exercises: Basis

3  Consistency: Success

Mental Strategies

4   Mind Pendulum

5  Mind Centre Point

6  Mind Persistence

7  Mind: Wandering

8  Thoughts:Effects

9  Mind:Comfort Zone

Emotional Strategies

10  React vs Response

11  External Reality

12 Emotions:Memory

WISH A HEALTHY & PROSPEROUS YEAR 2018

Power within – 12 Strategies – Part 12 Emotional Strategy: EMOTIONS: MEMORY

"STRONGER THE EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT TO AN EXPERIENCE BETTER THE MEMORY STORAGE/RETRIEVAL OF THAT EXPERIENCE”

Memory:

 Your memory to a particular event depends on how strong you attach emotions to that event. Your experience to an event is deeply stored in your memory when the emotion attached to that event is high. This emotion can be positive or negative but that doesn’t matter. What matter the most is the intensity of the emotion. Memory storage and retrieval are faster when the intensity of the emotion to an event is stronger.

This is why; you could able to recollect your worst experiences of your life or the best happiest events of your life in a split of a second. The experiences would have happened twenty years before. But, it is still fresh in your mind as the emotion attached to the event is stronger.

Construct:

You are simply a construct of your past experiences. You do certain things and avoid other things in life. All these choices are primarily driven by your own past experiences. You and your behaviour are simply driven by your experiences to the events that accumulated over the years until now.

Take away: Here is your take away based on the above two principles. The primary difference between human and animals is to thrive above your survival. Animals exist here to survive whereas human exist to thrive. Thriving means that we create something of our own. Remember, we exist here to CREATE. With this mind set, we can change our experience, our memory storage & hence our own definition.

Personally, I was at my worst health condition at one point of time. Then, it was considered really bad. That desperate situation changed my experience of life & changed my own definition. The experience which was considered bad has given a new definition of me as a Health coach now. So, what was considered bad at one point of time has become good now.

This is going to be true in your case also if you simply review your own experiences. What was bad for you a year before is now causing good in your life. Fundamentally, when we are here to CREATE and so, whatever good or bad events are primarily steering us in the path of creation. So, here onwards, do not worry when an experience appears to be bad. You now know now how to redefine this experience. This event is exposing you to something good. When the emotion attached to an event is always converted into positives, your memory bank is stored with positive data and eventually, that convert to a person who is here to THRIVE.

Summary:

“Stronger the emotional attachments to an experience better the memory storage/retrieval of that experience”. Experience is stored deeply in our memory when the emotion attached to that experience is stronger. Memory retrieval is easier for the high emotional stored content. Simple Strategy: Mindful of the emotion that you attach to an event/experience.

Power within – 12 Strategies – Part 11 Emotional Strategy: EXTERNAL REALITY

CHANGE YOUR CONDITIONED MIND, CHANGE YOUR LIFE”

Our life experience is limited to the extent of how well our internal world is programmed. If one starts to experience this truth, it is not only inspirational but very liberating too. Personally, this is my experience of life. Such an experiential knowledge changes the way how one perceives the life. There was a shift that happened within me during the process of my personal transformation. Today, after eight years, if I look at the kind of people whom I deal on day today basis in my current life with the set of people whom I moved with eight years before, they are totally two different set of tribes. This alone is a proof of how our internal programming determining the external reality.

Intellectual base:

 Let me try to convince your rational brain to buy this idea. Consider a scenario of two friends taking a walk to the park in the neighbourhood. The experience of walk in the park is not the same for both of them even though the place & time of the visit are preciously the same. The experience of one person is completely different than the experience of another person.

The above example demonstrates the different lenses that every one of us carries. Yes, we use filters while perceiving the events. This filter makes our experience different than the experiences of others.

Filter:

 If your filter is good then you experience a wonderful life. If you experience hardship of the life then it is time to change this filter. What is this filter? Our past experiences of life are a set of collective database stored as our faith & belief structure. Our conditioned mind operates from this database which preciously acts as a filter. We say the mind is conditioned because it can’t act beyond the limits of this database.

In other words, my life experience is simply a construct of my conditioned mind. In fact, this is our internal programming.

Mind-Body Practice:

 So, changing your life experience is as simple as changing the way your conditioned mind works. This requires bit of regular mind-body practice. This practice makes you to become aware of the conditioned mind and hence get an opportunity to manage the conditioned mind.

Experiential knowledge: 

Above, I have given an intellectual base to convince your thinking brain. So, you now know the value of such a belief. But, “knowing” is different than “owning”. If you want to own this then you need to integrate this belief experientially through mind-body practice or some other practical means.

Once when you experience this faith then you know that you are the architect of your reality. This faith is an immense power. The way how you perceive your life is no longer the same. You live like you never lived like this before!!

Summary: External Reality is the mirror image of our internal state. Our life experience is limited to the extent of how well our internal world is programmed. (Or) My life experience is simply a construct of my conditioned mind.

Power within – 12 Strategies – Part 10 Emotional Strategy: REACT VS RESPONSE

Design:

 If you open up the books of neuroscience, you’ll come to know at a very abstract level that we have three layers in the brain namely the brain stem, limbic & prefrontal cortex. In simple terms, these are called as the lower, mid & upper brains. Each section of the brain has a unique function. The lower brain is called the survival brain, mid brain is called as the emotional brain & the upper brain is called as the thinking brain.

Evolution:

 Brain has evolved in few billion years. It starts with the survival first then with the emotions followed by the thinking ability. Considering the rate of growth of the brain, the brain has evolved very rapidly in the recent few million years. The size of the brain has increased to three fold during this period. The brain was five hundred grams few million years before and now it weighs one thousand five hundred grams. Most of this rapid development has happened in the upper section of the brain i.e. the thinking brain.

Living condition:

All these neurological systems in our brain are pretty much intact even in today’s living condition. We survive, we become emotional & we think and accordingly the respective brain section gets activated. Unlike other animals,

Human is a weak animal by nature. We can’t fly; we can’t run fast & so on. We always live in the dangerous situations & hence, our brain is evolved to look for the potential threads.

But in today’s scenario, we live in a very safe world in comparison to the living condition few million years before. So, the survival & emotional centres are slightly out dated mechanisms. The smartness rests in the way of how we utilise the recent development of the brain i.e. the thinking section of the brain.

React:

 If I react to a situation or to an experience then it is a spontaneous action from my brain which uses the lower & mid sections of the brain. So, we react emotionally out of fear, worry & anxiety for the given situation & hence, we engage the survival & emotional centres of the brain. This is an out dated mechanism in today’s safe world.

Response:

Response is a simply a mechanism of giving a slight PAUSE before reacting during an experience. This pause brings the thinking brain into the equation. Once thinking brain comes into the play, it changes the way how you assign a meaning to an event and hence changes the very nature of our experience itself. This is the new way of leading the life using the newly developed part of the brain i.e the thinking brain.

This habit if it developed then it changes the way one experiences the life. So, learn to “Pause” gives an opportunity to “Respond” instead of “React” during adversity.

Summary: Unlike other animals, human is a weak animal by nature. Can’t run fast, can’t fly extra.

Hence, our brain is evolved to look for the potential dangers always.

So, we react (emotionally out of fear& anxiety). This is an out dated mechanism in the safe world now. Practice to respond i.e Learn to pause before reacting.