Just a moment back I felt as if the end of my career had come.  Is there a basis to such gushes of insecurity that stream into our minds that eventually spread throughout our body like the venom from a snake bite?  To me such a ‘down’ feeling, can be characterized by:

1. the inability to cope with stress,
2. a sense of worthlessness,
3. a refusal to accept uncertainty,
4. self righteousness (I am right and everyone else is wrong),
5. a tendency to see oneself as a victim and the world as an oppressor,
6. a paralysis of optimistic thinking and a crippling my pessimistic thinking,
7. procrastination, self-pity, excuse-finding
8. an impeding sense of doom and gloom
9. heaviness in the limbs
10. a desire to lock oneself away from every one, not to contact any humans. 

 

Such a state of being besieges me between the ends of a peak activity (be it work, business, or even studies) periods and the start of off-season activity periods. I psyche myself away from the grips of such ‘down’ feelings in many ways.  Not one technique is sufficient. This demonic octopus (this one with ten tentacles) must be tamed and transformed lest it sucks out all the energy off your spirit leaving a living corpse trying to find its way in the hell that its life will appear to it. 

 

At the beginning it took be a year to figure out and vanquish this vampire of spiritual and mental energy.  Now I don’t take more than four hours.  Actually I could take care of this monster right away, which I do in case of emergency but I like to play with it for about three hours because when you eventually win over it, you feel like a bigger winner. 

 

Now is the time to get the ten wings

 

It is time you too learn the principles and techniques to:

1. have nerves of steel that don’t bulge under any kind or level of stress
2. uplift you self-esteem to the stature of the unshakeable Himalayas
3. surf the waves of uncertainty, enjoy it, tease it and harness it
4. rise above the tyranny of the ‘or’ (either I am right or they are, we can’t both be right, someone has to be wrong) and take refuge in the all encompassing reality (all can be right at the same time, yet at a particular point of time, one right has to precede others)
5. see oneself as one with the creator, brushing your own destiny in the canvass of your life. 
6. be a die-hard and prove-me-wrong optimist because as a great man said, “Everything that has been accomplished in the world, has been done by an optimist nothing by a pessimist.”
7. just do it and throw all the non-sense fears of your actions back-firing into the dumpster
8. be blessed with the vision of imploding goodness and fortune in the coming years that is irrefutable amidst even minor setbacks such as bandhas and personal failures
9. feel as though you can fly, as if your feet are not on the ground because you have crossed the pull of mediocrity and ‘satisfactory’ to catapult yourself in the ‘space of excellence’
10. be connected to all of humanity and be charged by contact with it, every time to outdo yourself. 

 

Hey wait a minute …

 

What if you never suffered anything close to the ‘down’ feeling I described?  Does this have a clinical terminology in psychology?  What if you don’t want to feel the 10 great sensation of self-power listed above? 

 

The ten symptoms I enumerated above is something equivalent to a mild form of depression in psychology. However the stuff I am talking about here has nothing much to do with psychology.  This wisdom is about the ‘Success-ology’ or the study of success.  People who are climbing the ladder of success thus experience these ten symptoms.  If you want to join the ‘club of the successful’ getting acquainted with this ‘down’ feeling,  the alternative ‘up’ feeling and the process to get there will be a very useful weapon in your arsenal.  If you are already in the journey to success then, we have already clicked like to best buddies, isn’t it, mate?  On the other hand if you don’t want to join us in the pursuit of personal excellence then all these thoughts might be alien and difficult to relate you. However, I believe in a short while you will be inspired to break your mental barriers because you can’t not be tempted by the thrills of being on the road to personal success.   

 

It is okay…It is a balancing act

 

The biggest mistakes we do is to think that this ‘down’ feeling is a sign of

1. our weakness,
2. real trouble ahead
3. god’ s dissatisfaction towards us

 

We could not mislead ourselves further from the truth.  Most of us who are successful at the game of life, are successful because we are always

• interacting with people on a continual basis,
• smiling,
• laughing hindrances away
• uplifting others spirit,
• confronting back-benchers to come forward,
• challenging good people to exceed their performance
• charming our way through closed doors,
• taking risks by sharing information
• taking tough decisions as we speak
• commanding action, follow-through and completion
• resolving conflicts,
• ending cold wars between parties
• building and burning bridges of relationships
• negotiating to get the upper hand
• meeting people to foster commitment
• mixing the ingredients for team chemistry
• attracting, developing and retaining followers by doing whatever it takes to get the best of them on-board

 

All this work requires us to completely mesh ourselves with the world around us.  It is tiring work in terms of physical energy, mental calculations, and ego management.  The latter one is the hardest.  At times you have to swallow your pride, at others you have to roar like a lion.  All the time you have to use your discretion. 

 

All this work is well suited for the extroverts.  However even they succumb to fatigue when this routine is over extended.  What to speak about those who are introverts stuck in this world in the name of success? 

 

As I see it, this ‘down’ feeling is a call from our soul to

1. recon-ciliate our actions with our intentions
2. give some time for our own selves
3. laze around
4. experience how blessed you are with the power of high-energy by showing you what feeling millions of people live with everyday
5. thank people that helped you get here so far, ask forgiveness to whom you had to side-track to lead, and beg for more people to see you as a power-house of opportunity ; all this in the privacy of our minds

 

Once we accept this ‘down’ feeling as it is, we can then begin winning it over. 

 

An adventurer decided he would fly on a balloon all by himself to the north pole.  It would take 3 days or 72 hours.  The catch was that since he would be alone in the air he would not be able to sleep during that period.  He thought, “So what, I can win sleep.” The day came and he flew.  At the end the 48^th hour, suddenly his awareness was lost, and he dozed off for several hours.  The alarm rang when the balloon was about the crash.  He woke up just early enough to save himself from the clutches of death.  Scientist investigated this adventurer.  The moral of the story they came up with was: Sleep can’t be done away with; if you don’t go to sleep even then it will take over you. 

 

Similarly, those of us who are in the balloon of success, must realize that we can’t always be high in adrenalin of super-performance.  In success I see the equivalent of success as this ‘down’ feeling.  That is why if you are great achiever, you need to take a break once in a while.  However, many times , like me we don’t have the control over our time to excel: it is any time the situation calls for it either in the form of a business call or an emerging opportunity that can’t be missed.  At that time the ‘down’ feeling will kick in to tell us ‘take a break’.  We have to respond positively to this call of the spirit. 

 

Map it out

 

Take a piece of paper and a pen.  Write down all the things that are bothering you.  Categorize them as follows:

1. Things I think I shouldn’t have done
2. Things I think I should have done but did not
3. Things that are stressing me out
4. People that are getting on my nerves
5. Questions that are in ghost form and need to be spelled out
6. Analysis that is over-loading my mind
7. Emotional pains you are feeling
8. Things you want to say to somebody but will probably be unable to
9. Your plans as they come

 

Once all these are on paper, your head will feel lighter, long breaths will automatically fill your lungs and you will free from the dungeons of mental clutter. 

 

I feel sorry for people who say, “I don’t have the habit of writing.” When I hear this I actually hear, “I don’t have what it takes to succeed.” You don’t have to be a writer to write.  You write not for others, but for yourself.  Writing is one the best forms of healing.  Many of you might just have passed through the suggestion of writing lightly.  But let me warn you now and for all.  The level of success you will reach is proportional to the amount of paper you use up in the process of mapping out your mind. 

 

Writing your feelings and thoughts out is the equivalent of excreting for the mind.  What if you ate and ate but never went to the toilet saying, “I don’t have the habit of sitting in the pan because I believe it is a waste of time”?  It is a ridiculous proposition.  Men and women on the path to success will also realize that mind mapping using the 10 categories listed above which consist the first level out of over 100 levels, is as essential as visiting the ‘john’. 

 

Level 2 of mind mapping consists of linking various feelings and thoughts, finding a pattern and zeroing in the root cause of the problem. 

 

Use mental muscles

 

Once your mind is clear, use the following mental aptitudes to achieve different results that all together add up to give the 10 feelings of exhilaration mentioned above:

1.      Locate from which part of your body the negative feelings are coming: it will require you close your eyes, take long breaths and use the mental eyes.  When you find it you will know it because of the sensation is more intense.  It will make you breath a sign of relief.

2.      Using your will power, seal that part off.  Command the negative energy to stop coming out. 

3.      Whatever negative energy has come out, visualize it as black. 

4.      Using long breaths as support and transform the black energy into white light. 

5.      Let all the energy now come out of your bodily pores

6.      In a short while you will feel cleansed. 

 

The mind has the tendency to visualize the worst-case scenario and play it over and over again.  Tell me, if you are watching TV and a channel is airing something you don’t like, what do you do?  Obviously you change the channel.  Yes use the same trick and tune in to channel positive thinking and channel best-case scenarios.  It is as easy. 

 

You will know it has worked when a smile will naturally take over your grin. 

 

Of course successful people like you can’t afford to hide their head in the sand like ostriches.  What if this ‘down’ feeling was an intuition of potential problems?  In some cases it is possible. Again imagine that you have to listen to some news in the radio, but other people in the house don’t want to or don’t need to.  What do you do? Obviously, you lower the volume.  Yes, use the same trick and turn the volume of your mental analysis down, make the light dimmer, so that only part of the mind is disturbed and the remaining part can go on with blissful living.