March 18, 2021

When late Shri Abdul Kalam was president of India, he used to exhort the youth of the country to dream, and to transform dreams into ideas, and work hard to make ideas real in life. All great achievements of life commence with a simple idea or a stray thought. Those who can stick to their thoughts and ideas through thick and thin and struggle hard to realise them should invariably achieve success.

In psychology, we affirm this as the power of positive thinking, namely, the thoughts will become a reality and a person who dares to think can become a tremendous success. If not, you will be a failure in life achieving nothing.

Let me narrate an interesting incident: there were two brothers living in the slums. The elder one was seven years and the younger, five years. Their mother had died, and their father was a drunkard. We can imagine how hard their life was. The younger one started saying: “I want to change my life. I will never like to live like this in this slum.” He enrolled himself in the primary school meant for the slum children. He was intelligent. He finished tenth standard, got a scholarship and then went to college and finished MBA and after a few years became the CEO of a fairly big firm and started earning a lot and living a very comfortable life. The elder brother, accepted his condition, thought that he can do nothing, that he is helpless and continued to live there. See the difference between two brothers. One started thinking positively and the other accepted negativity.

With considerable confidence we can affirm that only 10% of our life depends on the actual present condition, and 90% on the response we give to the present condition. Just see the objects around you, the electric bulb, the computer, the TV, the chair on which you sit and the paper on which you write. All these objects at one time did not exist. Some one thought of them, worked at their realisation and their thoughts became reality. The comforts and conveniences of life which we have today our ancestors did not have. Because someone thought of these items and worked hard to make them a reality, we have all these things which we utilise. Now you start thinking and believe that your thoughts will become a reality and you will see them gradually become actual in your life. Thus the first step towards making our thoughts a reality is to think positive thoughts and affirm them again and again until they become real one day. The first general principle of life is: “I become what I think. I achieve what I want”.

The second principle in this can be expressed as “What I think, I experience”. If you repeatedly think of positive feelings, they will become part of your life and you will experience them. If you repeatedly think negative feelings, they will also become part of your life and you will experience them for yourself. If you think of happiness, joy, success and beauty, you will experience in your life happiness, joy, success and beauty. If you repeatedly think of worry, anxiety, tension and depression, you will all the time experience only worry, anxiety, tension and depression. If you say all the time, “I am worried, I am tensed and I am anxious” – then you are bound to experience worry and tension. There is very intimate connection between thoughts and feelings. The mind generates or produces feelings which you want to experience. If you think and affirm strongly, I am happy, I am joyful - there is no place for worry and anxiety.

Let me tell you something from my life-experience. I never heard the words ‘tension’ and ‘stress’ till I joined the college. In my family or even in my village no one uttered the words like, tension, worry, and stress. People in the village were stress-free and tension-free. Only in the college students started repeating these words. I think some decades back, no one experienced stress and tension as we do now. Nowadays even the UKG child repeats “I am tensed”. If we ask the child where the word was learnt, the reply will be, “my mummy repeats it every day”. It is definitely good for us that we stop repeating these words once and for all. They are negative words and they fill your life with negativity. Repeat always, “I am relaxed, I am happy and joyful”, and your mind will obey you and fill your life with happiness and joy.

The third principle can be expressed as, “What I imagine, I create”. Imagination is a picture in the mind. It is a creative and attractive thought. People thought Earth is the centre of the universe. Copernicus ‘imagined’, what will be the case if Sun becomes the centre of the Solar System? The thought gave him so much energy, that he became restless till he mathematically proved that the Sun should be the centre of the Solar system. Galileo imagined that there could be thousands of stars which we cannot see. The desire to see these invisible stars made him creative and he invented the telescope, so that he could see for himself innumerable stars and other heavenly bodies. All the things which we use today were imagined by someone and they became real in the world.

If we personalise these three principles and start applying them in our lives, we shall learn never to surrender to the negative ingredients of our present condition and embrace negativity that can make our life miserable. Our body and mind constitute a very sophisticated system. The mind brings into life whatever you think and affirm. As we take good food in order to be healthy we need to think good thoughts in order to build up a healthy future for ourselves.

Here below are few points which you can do well to remember always: (i) Know that your thought process is in your hand. You have to just train and practice every day to think positive thoughts. Every day is a new day. Begin the day with the affirmation: “I will be happy and joyful today, good with everyone I meet and radiate positive energy.” (ii) Give up the habit of brooding over the present situation, however painful it is. Never cultivate a habit of blaming others whatever happens to you. Think that the situation is posing a challenge for you to change and transform it. (iii) Have a clear vision about yourself, what you want to be. Do not leave your life to fortune tellers and to passing predicaments. You create your life, because you create your thoughts. You do not become what others think and predict what you will be. You become what you believe about yourself. Your beliefs and plans will manifest step by step in your life. (iv) How you spend your energy is to be decided by you and such activities become part of your life. If you wish to be a cricket player, spend your energy in cricket and you will become a cricketer. If you spend energy in singing, then you will become a singer. Just do not waste time thinking that you are worth nothing, that everyone is putting you down. If so, you can achieve nothing. This is negativity. Dismiss such thoughts with anger. (v) Finally have faith in yourself and believe in your capacities. Affirm your destiny. If you radiate positive energy in your words, not only you change your negative orientation, but also encourage others to think positively.

Start now to think positively if you have not done it so far. Practice for some days and months. You yourself will see how the things will change for you, how you will become courageous to face the challenges of the world.