Change the content of a thief, and you have a Valmiki. A sinner is transformed into a saint by changing the content of the being. Change the content of 'Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi' and you have Mahatma Gandhi.An atma is transformed into a mahatma when the content of the being is changed. Now, how to change the content of who you are? Thoughts constitute the mind, and the mind constitutes the content of the being. As your thoughts, so your mind; as the mind, so the man. The mind of each man is the man himself. Thought is another name for fate. We are I have a negative approach to everything. I even consulted psychiatrists, numerologists and astrologers, but to no avail. Please tell me - are all the negativities I am suffering because of my previous karma, my fate or because of hereditary issues? Please help me see this world in a positive way.We are what we are because of what has gone into our mind.What we will be will depend on what continues to go into our mind.The computer acronym GIGO - Garbage In Garbage Out - applies to the human mind too. But then the contrary is also true - Good In Good
Out. Remember, you can change yourself, if and only if, you change what goes into your mind.So, to improve the quality of your thoughts, you need to reduce your thought traffic. Too much of thought congestion will incapacitate you from working upon them. Every day, without absenteeism, hold your mind in concentration on any object of your choice -
could be watching your breathing (vipasana), regulating your breath (pranayama), chanting a mantra (japam), focusing on your chosen deity (bhakti) or just watching a glowing lamp or the waves in the sea. Hold your mind on a single point for few minutes every day. If you want to train a wild elephant, it has to first be tamed. Practicing 'concentration of mind' will progressively tame your mind.Then, nurture your mind with quality thoughts. From where do you source quality thoughts? Read self-help books (knowledge authored by great people), scriptures (wisdom of the messiahs) or listen to discourses (thoughts of realised beings). From the time you wake up to the time you go back to sleep, people who are themselves lost, confused and messed up in life keep influencing your mind. This unsolicited trespassing has to be countered by investing a few minutes with the legends of our time, so that you may be influenced by them. Without absenteeism, invest a few minutes every day on this intellectual treat - reading the thoughts and listening to the words of great people.And finally, without absenteeism, analyse your experiences at the end of every day. At the end of every day, just before you go to sleep, order a mental march past of all the experiences you went through in the day.
Recall each experience. Mentally pat yourself wherever you think you were right. Attempt a selfanalysis wherever you think you were wrong. In your own judgement, wherever you think you were wrong, weak or at fault, ask yourself what else you could have done instead; with what virtue you could have countered this weakness, and what can be done to correct that fault. Within days, you will be amazed to realise that you are not repeating the same mistakes (though there is always scope for new mistakes), and there is a new found motivation to do what is right, again and again. This is the process of introspection - looking into your actions and thereby gaining insight into your thoughts. While in all studies, the mind studies the subject, the beauty of introspection is that the mind itself becomes the object of study. Introspection awakens your inner voice. If you give life to your inner voice, then your inner voice will give life to you. “To him that hath, shall be given” is the law. The more we process thoughts of health, wealth, love, bliss and enlightenment, the more powerful will be the attraction for kindred things. So by improving the quality of thoughts, you will improve the quality of your mind, which in turn will result in an improvement in the quality of your life.
