Man and the Monkey Mind

Hi Friends,

I hope you are fine. Today is the third successful day, I consequently woke up on the pre-set time. Its a huge success for me considering it took 225 failures to finally reach a point, where I wake up with interest and enthusiasm. I am going to put this in my Victory Log.

As I think of my success over my mind in cultivating the real interest to wake up early morning, I see all of us at any moment of life are (1) Either in control of the mind or (2) The Mind is in complete control of us.

Mind in control

"Thoughts make things" as Napolean Hill says, we become our dominant thoughts. Everyone of us have heard this once in our life "Mind is like a monkey. Just like how monkeys jump from one tree to another, our mind wanders from one thing to another". When mind is in control, we lose consicous validation of our thoughts, which is what happens in completely drunk moments. The mind has our best interests in mind. It finds excuses why we should go back to sleep rather than getting up early in the morning, why we should not go to business at this time, what are the benefits of postponing some activity and so on. Mind targets for pleasures of life.

With its only agenda to seek pleasure in life, our mind if not controlled, could derail us from acheiving our goals. Its like a lunatic, who has no control over his mind. He doesn't have any goal. A lunatic wanders and for some reason we dont know what the lunatic really wants. The same applies to mind. Uncontrolled mind is like a storm, which leads to uncontrolled destruction of one's own life

We in charge of our Mind

If we look back in life, all great results are acheived when we were in control of our life. Everytime something had to be done, mind would seek pleasure telling us how to relax and avoid doing the activity. Its during these times, when we have exercised our control, we get things done and acheive success. Its the times, when we control our mind, make little sacrifices of the pleasures, we would be able to acheive worthy success in life.

Consider Mahatma Gandhi. Considering the beatings he got from the British, how easy it would have been for him to hit back. Its his purpose in control of his mind, that kept him focusssed on non-violence. The world remembers great leaders like Gandhi, Lincoln, Kennedy because they exercised control over their minds.

How to win our mind

In long term, its not a good idea to work aganist our mind. Sooner or later, this resitance would break up and take us to our old ways. This is what happened to my goal to get up early morning. 225 days of continuous failure before I acheived considerable control over my wake up time. When we have a purpose or goal in our life, we need to make sure that our powerful mind understands it and pledge to make it happen for you. There is a wonderful technique proved in scientific community that works wonders in one's life. Its the method of Auto-Suggestion.

Auto-Suggestion is the technique of repeating certain phrases over and over again, letting the mind sink on it. If you want to get up early, you could auto-suggest "I am getting up at 5 am everyday" several times as you go to sleep. This would tune up the subconsious mind not to say "how good it would feel to go back under the blanket". But when there is no purpose in getting up earlier, our mind could generate excuses. So a little modification to it "I am getting up at 5 am everyday and writing articles in my blogspot". This gives me a purpose why to get up early. A final powerful version is to add up why we want to do it "I am getting up early at 5 am everyday and writing articles in my blogspot so that i can effectively share with millions of potential readers". And most importantly as you repeat the words again and again, imagine and feel it happening. Emotions bring tremendrous power.

Keep your mind informed and tuned up towards your goals and you would require very little control to acheive them.

with luv,
Ashok.