Learn how to use your thoughts to bend reality to achieve what once you thought was not possible.
The most intriguing part of the biography on Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson is the way he describes Steve Jobs to bend reality. Steve believed that common rules don’t apply to him and he was so influential that he made his co-workers believe the same.
One day Jobs complained to Larry Kenyon (the engineer of the Macintosh OS) that it was taking too long to boot up. Kenyon explained why reducing the boot-up time wasn’t possible, but Jobs cut him off: “If it would save a person’s life, could you find a way to shave 10 seconds off the boot time?”. He then showed on a whiteboard that if the Mac had five million users and it took 10 seconds extra to turn it on every day, that added up to 300 million or so hours a year — the equivalent of at least 100 lifetimes a year. After a few weeks, Kenyon had the machine booting up 28 seconds faster.
Bending reality has been there from the early days. We have seen monks praying for days without eating and drinking and still staying healthy. We have seen some people achieving the impossible like walking on the moon or making a free fall from space. All the things which seems impossible for some, are very obvious for some others.
There is a reason why some people can bend reality and some struggle hard even to live a simple life. We will spend some time to know how best we can bend a reality and achieve something we could not have dreamt of.
Control your thoughts
There is a popular saying that “You become what you think”. Yes! our thoughts are very powerful and so is our mind. Your thoughts attracts what you become. If you start thinking of something, you will start realising it. Some situation may take time, may be weeks or months. Some may happen within minutes.
There are instances like, you think of calling someone and the phone rings and it’s from the same person. This is not just mere coincidence, it is due to work of thoughts. Thought is like an energy field. If you learn to channel it and control it, you will be able to realise the potential you have which you never knew before.
Just like anything else, thoughts are constructive and destructive as well. And in order to bend the situation to your favour, you should have constructive thoughts.
Take an example of someone who wants to cross a Burma bridge. If you start thinking that you will be able to do it, you will be able to cross it. If you start thinking that you cannot cross it, you will slip and fall. Ones you start thinking that you will not be able to cross the bridge, you mind sends signal to your body to get ready for the fall. Your body starts preparing for the impact, rather than concentrating on balance. As a result, the body anticipates that fall and when you are there almost half way down, your mind overpowers your balance and you slip.
In real life, every situation in life is like the Burma bridge. You need to channel your thoughts towards crossing the bridge and not anywhere else. If you start thinking that you are now going to get what you want, you will realise that things are falling in place.
“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. ”- Paulo Coelho
Meditate
The next step on controlling your thoughts is meditation. Meditation is focusing your thought to a single direction, it is about achieving a state of mind that is aware of its surrounding and getting a healthy sense of perspective. You’re not trying to turn off your thoughts or feelings. You’re learning to observe them without judgment.
Mediation is not an exercise to be practised ever morning.
It is life style.
How may times you wander to a different thought while talking to a person, or while sitting in a meeting. Our mind is an unstoppable machine. And you cannot stop it, it is impossible. What you can do is to control it. Mediation helps you with that. To bring back the mind and thoughts to the present, where it should be and not in the past or in the future, It helps you stop your mind from wandering away from the person with whom you are talking, or out of the meeting room where it should be.
Mediation can start with a small exercise very morning, by telling your thoughts to stop wandering, by concentrating it on single direction, be it your heart beat or some music or some point of light. What ever you may like, you can start sitting for a couple of minutes and try to bring all your concentration and thoughts to a single point. Loose all the noise around you, let them fade away. You should be hearing only your heart beat and nothing else. This will slowly help you control your thoughts. When you start, meditation of few seconds will be difficult. Your mind will wander away. You will start thinking of something, may be the day ahead, some important meeting or some event planned for the day. You need to stop thinking and just concentrate only on one thing that is your heart beat. In couple of days you will have better control on your thoughts. And then you need to start practising this in your daily life. Put conscious effort in doing so. Slowly and gradually you will start giving un-divided attention to things you are doing and you will make less mistake and start becoming perfect in everything you do.
Murphy's Law
"whatever can go wrong, will go wrong." - Murphys Law
If you study the law closely, its again based on how you bend reality. If you start believing or even thinking that some thing will go wrong, you are inviting the situation and what you anticipate will happen. When you are thinking about “whatever can go wrong”, you are thinking about the negative situations. And when you start thinking about them, you are worried and start anticipating them.
Its like distraction from balance and getting ready to fall down from Burma bridge. Your mind unconsciously starts preparing for the fall and you start anticipating that things will go wrong. As you have invited them, like a very acquiescent guest, they come and things does go wrong.
Building a Habit
If you start practising some thing and continue to do it regularly, it becomes a habit. If you start controlling your thoughts and directing it towards positive things, you will have to practise it regularly, almost all the time to make it your habit and part of your life style. There is a myth, that practising something for 21 days makes it a habit. It’s not true. The period differs from person to person and for some it may take as long as 90 days. As per research done, it takes anywhere between 60-90 days for a practise to become a habit.
The habit formation happens in 3 phases:
Phase 1: The Honeymoon
When you start something, you will have all the zeal and enthusiasm. You will know that this is very easy. This period is called honeymoon period.
Phase 2: The Fight
After couple of days, you will start loosing control of your thoughts. You will again start to wander away from present into past or future. This is the most difficult time during which you need to make conscious effort to control your thoughts.
Phase 3: Second Nature
Once you have passed the second phase, you will find it easy to control it. Its easier getting here, however you always need to check your thoughts. It may be possible that you drift back to Phase 2.
