friends,
This essay has been reproduced from the July issue of Dynamic Youth, the free online monthly magazine for Global Youth Development.
With best wishes,
K S Venkataraman
<link outdated-removed> ( Search On Cite | Search On Google ) . org
I believe…
I
Man is what he believes. AntonCheckhor
I believe in myself
I believe hard work has its reward
I believe relationship is real
I believe in cause and effect
I believe God has entrusted me to myself
I believe I am unique
I believe I can better my performance
I believe I can be happy
I believe in creative visualization
What is common among: Jesus Christ, Prophet Mohammed, Buddha, Einstein, Gandhi, Lincoln, Mother Teresa and Mandela? They believed in themselves and their philosophies. Life is all about belief. Belief is the birth of excellence. Beliefs are the commanders of the brain and brain is the most obedient servant. Belief delivers a direct command to your nervous system. Brain simply does what it is told. Antony Robbins calls it Schotama. "When you say, `you can't' you give your brain a command not to see/do." Your brain creates all possibilities not to see/do.
Activity
1 Stand up on both the legs. You are balanced.
2 Stand on one leg. You are a little imbalanced.
3 Close your eyes and stand on one leg. You are totally imbalanced.
Standing on both the legs is to have positive or empowering beliefs.
Standing on one leg is to have neutral beliefs. There is neither momentum nor loss of energy.
Standing on one leg closing eyes is to have negative or disempowering beliefs.
Classification of Beliefs
Beliefs are classified into: Positive beliefs, Neutral Beliefs and Negative beliefs.
Positive Beliefs
Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around you- Thoreau
Positive beliefs are empowering beliefs as they help you achieve greater things in your personal and professional life. NormanCousins, in his classic book
Anatomy of an Illness, narrates an energizing story of belief. Cousins describes meeting PabloCasals, one of the great musicians of the 20th century, shortly before the cellist's ninetieth birthday.
Casals' frailty and arthritis were so debilitating that he needed help on dressing. His emphysema was evident in his laboured breathing. He walked with a shuffle, stooped over his head pitched forward. His hands were swollen, his fingers clenched. He looked like a very old, very tired man. Even before eating, he made his way to the piano, one of the several instruments on which Casals had become proficient, with great difficulty, he arranged himself on the piano bench. It seemed a terrible effort for him to bring his clenched, swollen fingers to the key board.
And then something quite miraculous happened. The fingers slowly unlocked and reached toward the keys like the buds of a plant toward the sunlight. His back straightened. He seemed to breathe more freely. The very thought of playing the piano totally changed his state and thus the effectiveness of his body.
Another extraordinary incident to support the extraordinary power of empowering belief is the experience of VictorFrankl in the concentration camps. It was due to his and others' suffering in these camps that he came to his hallmark conclusion that even in the most absurd, painful and dehumanized situation, life has potential meaning and that therefore even suffering is meaningful. This conclusion serves as a strong basis for Frankl's logotherapy. Another important conclusion of Frankl was:
If a prisoner felt that he could no longer endure the realities of camp life, he found a way out in his mental life - an invaluable opportunity to dwell in the spiritual domain, the one that the SS were unable to destroy. Spiritual life strengthened the prisoner, helped him adapt, and thereby improved his chances of survival.
Man's Search for Meaning, p 123
The power of placebos is the power of positive beliefs. Placebo Effect is a phenomenon that a patient's symptom can be alleviated by an otherwise ineffective treatment, apparently because the individual believes that it will work. So the magic of the drug resides in the mind of the user. Placebos are inert substances which cause symptom relief. Placebos have been found to increase performance on a cognitive task to be effective in reducing anxiety. Diamond, in
Health Psychology, reports a sham operation for patients suffering from angina pain. The authors reported that half the subjects with angina pain were given a sham operation, and half of the subjects were given a real heart bypass operation. The results indicate that pain reduction in both groups was equal and the authors conclude that the belief that the individual has on operation was sufficient to cause pain reduction and alleviation of the angina.
Neutral Beliefs
Sometimes people produce outstanding results because they don't know something is difficult or impossible.
There is an incident of a student who fell asleep during the mathematics class. He woke up when the bell rang and copied the two problems that were on the board assuming that they were given as home work. He went home and labored to solve them. He tried all possibilities on his own. At last he solved them and took the solutions to the teacher. The teacher was quite stunned to see the solutions because the teacher, before writing the problems on the board said, "These two problems can't be solved. I will reward the person who solves these." The other students believed in what the teacher said and accepted that they would not be able to solve and gave up after trying.
It is said about bumble bees that they cannot fly. Scientifically they cannot fly because 1) the body of a bumble bee is heavier than the wings and the wings cannot carry, 2) they are not aerodynamically designed. But the bumble bees are flying psychologically as they do not know that they can't fly.
Negative Beliefs
The outer conditions of a person's life will always be found to reflect their inner life. JamesAllen
Shortly after Karl Wallenda, the great tight rope aerialist, fell to his death in 1978 (traversing a 75 foot high wire in downtown San Juan, Puerto Rico) his wife recalled, "All Karl thought about for three straight months prior to it was
falling. It was the first time he'd ever thought about that, and it seemed to me that he put all his energies into not
falling rather than walking the tightrope." He was virtually destined to fail.
Here is a classic example of how a suggestion killed a man.
A cousin of mine went to India and consulted a fortune teller who told him that he had a week heart, and predicted he would die before the next moon. He told his family about this and prepared his will.
This powerful suggestion was able to take root in subconscious because he accepted it completely. He told me that the fortune teller he had consulted was reputed to possess strange occult powers which enabled him to help or harm people. The man died as predicted, without ever knowing the cause of his own death.
Anything the conscious mind believes, the subconscious will accept and act accordingly. My cousin at the time he consulted the fortune teller, was happy, healthy, vigorous and robust man, in the prime of life. The fortune teller made a negative suggestion, which my cousin accepted. He was terrified and started constantly thinking about impending death. He told every one and prepared for it. He didn't have to do this- his actions were dictated by his own mind. It was his fear which caused his own death, or rather the destruction of his body.
The Power of Subconscious Mind by DrJosephMurphy
Beliefs and effects
The impacts of beliefs can be understood more with the illustration of Spirals. Belief spirals are: Downward Spiral and Upward Spiral. When the belief is negative, the outcome will also be negative. This negative outcome will reinforce the negative belief and the outcome will be further negative and so on till the situation become hopeless (Fig-1). On the contrary, when the belief is positive, the outcome will be positive. This positive outcome will reinforce the positive belief and the outcome will be further positive and so on leading to miracles
Always believe in the power of positive beliefs so that Health, Honesty, Happiness and Harmony will be yours.
Prof.RKrishnamurthi
Faculty-HRM
IBS, Hyderabad
Good luck.!.
Riya....