PERSONAL SPECIAL..SUCCESS AND MINDSET

Gaining the mental edge

How much is success dependent on the mindset of an individual?

Does our success depend only on our skills and abilities?
Or does it have to do with the way a person thinks, feels and emotes?
Undoubtedly, it does.
A resounding majority of researchers have concluded that our mental approach can influence our performance by a factor of at least 10 per cent.  Hence, it becomes imperative for someone charged with a vision to know how to use his/her mind effectively in the process of realising it.
How much is success dependent on the mindset of an individual?  Is it only the result of one's skills and capabilities, the physical attributes that he/she is born with and the intellectual acumen gained through education? Or does it have to do with the way a person thinks, feels and emotes? Undoubtedly, it does. A resounding majority of researchers have concluded that our mental approach can influence our performance by a factor of at least 10 per cent.  Hence, it becomes imperative for someone charged with a vision to know how to use his/her mind effectively in the process of realising it.
In order to utilise our mind effectively, we need to understand the nature of the mind. Mind is its constituents, namely thoughts.  We perceive and experience the world of names and forms through our thoughts. We can differentiate a blue from a pink or a day from night because of thought. Thought labels an experience, interpreting some as good and some as bad. These thought forms become our opinions, ideas, perceptions, beliefs and conditioning. Thus the mindset of an individual takes shape.

The mindset of a person could start getting shaped right from a very young age, as early as infancy. Our views and beliefs are moulded by the world around us, in the form of parents, teachers, books, education, friends and so forth.  A real life story from the life of Thomas Alva Edison goes on to say a great deal about how his mindset was groomed from a very early age and which was instrumental in his inventing the electric bulb. As a child he came up with a crazy experiment to understand what makes birds fly while humans cannot. He persuaded the maid's daughter, a 10-year-old to take part in the experiment and promised that at the end of it she would be gifted with the ability to fly. The little girl believes in the story and agrees to swallow an awful potion made of smashed worms so that she can grow wings and fly like a bird. Edison confesses later to everybody after his stupid experiment was uncovered with the girl falling sick, that his conviction was if birds could eat worms and fly why not humans? Of course, he was reprimanded very hard for his perilous foolishness. His mother who was with him throughout the incident looked into his worried eyes and remarked, "My son, I know one day you would bring light into the world."

Well, whether that was merely a consolation or an inspiration or a prophetic line who knows, given that it was Edison who really brought light into the world. But it did produce a great mindset. When he went on to test the right metal to fit as the filament, he tested out thousands of metals for the purpose. The attitude he carried into his failures every time a metal proved him wrong is remarkable. In his words, "I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that don't work."
We need to understand that we are our ideas and concepts. If you want to give a different response to life we have to arise from a different perception. One world Academy believes that destiny is a conscious choice and we can bring about a great destiny when we "Shift the way we experience, shift the way we relate and shift the way we act".
Fortunately, a great mind set is not one hundred per cent dependent on a wonderful life experience. It is can be cultivated if one can bring attention to one's thoughts now, in the moment. Everyday we think almost 15,000 thoughts on an average but at any point of time the mind processes only one. Awareness/Attention gives you the freedom to choose not to be bound by a debilitating belief or view and move to a perception that creates greater happiness.  So if one could become aware of the thought crossing this moment, one is creating a great mindset and through that a great destiny. We must realise that we are in total control of our mindset and not a hapless loser thrown around by the forces of our mind.

--Purnima: The author is Faculty, One World Academy TASC 18/05/2011