Be your own master (Part II)

Often our actions do not match our beliefs and our words. In psychology an attitude (belief about something) has three components- affect (emotions attached to the belief), behaviour (action) and cognition (the belief itself). Surprisingly our behaviour is not merely governed by our beliefs, it’s governed by the belief about that behaviour. So believing in something and acting on that thing becomes two separate entities. Which is why sometimes our words do not match our actions. Now to unite them, we need to form two separate but same beliefs. Like, don’t just tell yourself that you believe in it, say that you believe in doing it as well- that’s how you are unconsciously preparing your mind for that action.        

         

Now what about the times when you don’t know why you did something which diverges from your beliefs. What’s done is done and cannot be undone but the damage can be repaired. A routine we all should add in our lifestyle is of “analysing whatever happened during the day”. Before sleeping when you are all calmed and relaxed just go through your day mentally. Visualize whatever you think went wrong and what else you could have done in that situation, visual imagination helps you to prepare yourself for the future. Visualize what you can do now to correct it, plan up a strategy. Try to reason your own behaviour correctly by being totally rational and unbiased, it’s alright to make a mistake but it’s not alright to deny a mistake. Denying mistakes will only add up your piles for the future. Think about carrying the bag of that pile of mistakes on your shoulder throughout life, you really don’t want to load up that pile- it will only make your life tiring and heavy. So whatever wrong happened or whatever problem arose, deal with it that moment only because the next moment another one will arise and that’s how to bag becomes loaded.

Our thought process needs to be given way more importance than it is given. Whatever we think or whatever goes on in our mind really determines how we act. You might not be able to make a connection between seemly unconnected situations because we were not aware. The dots are very far away so sometimes we might not be able to connect them. Nothing happens out of the blue or out of luck, it’s a product of you and your environment. Kurt Lewin, a famous psychologist in his field theory expressed that behaviour is a product of person and his/her environment B=f(p,e). Being able to control yourself will give you the ability to control the environment, remember I said in the beginning that the change needs to start from within then only it can be moved outwards. Just like that the control needs to be started from within and then outside. I’d like to state a dialogue from a movie ‘The departed’ “I don’t want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me”. The control comes from awareness and consciousness. Earlier I talked about being aware of yourself and now- being aware of the surrounding. Whatever you feel, think and do somehow gets influenced by your surroundings because humans are constantly interacting with the world. Processing whatever is happening around you in an unbiased way is really important.

You might not be able to completely control the outside world but you can control it within limits. Again by being ‘aware of the surrounding’. Everything which is happening around you is reaction to some action so it’s all happening in a chain, it’s all connected and you need to find the connection, you need to connect the dots. Think of whatever is happening (events) as dots and there’s space between the dots, your job is to observe the dots and then draw the lines- lines which will determine what caused what (a chain of action and reaction). You need to be totally unbiased, rational, open and aware to be able to connect the dots with minimal errors. Once you know what caused it then you will be able to understand the situation inside out. And when you know what caused it you can even fix it by working on it.                                              

The whole control lies within you, you are your own master and of the world around you but you aren’t aware of your own powers. Realize the power which sits latent (hidden) inside of you. What’s keeping you away from your own power- is your realization, you just have to make that one step of realization. Once you start looking at the world without any biased lenses and connect all the dots and know that who’s in incharge - all the tangles and the fuss will be over. Life is quite simple and we have a tendency to make it complicated by just letting things happen while we have our eyes closed. Open up your eyes, be aware and totally conscious.